what would be evidence of God’s existence?
To start, the definition of a god that I am using is a conscious agent capable of creating universes. That rules out entities like Apollo. I don't think it's possible to prove that such a thing exists if it does, especially if it can't or is unwilling to make itself known. Wouldn't I need to see a universe created by a conscious entity to even begin to think that that might be a god? And even if I saw such a thing, how would I know that it wasn't a natural occurrence like an eclipse, with some advanced but naturalistically derived (abiogenesis and evolution on some distant planet or moon) intelligence taking credit for the event like a earthly wizard claiming, "I will now cause the sun to disappear" because he can predict it occurring. Or, even if the superhuman intelligence and power did create a universe, how could I distinguish whether that was a god or something else that had figured out how to mass produce universes?
Regarding your claim that atheists are continually asking you for evidence of a god, I haven't seen that. When atheists engage theists in such discussions, it's virtually always because the theist has made some claim that the atheist challenged. How many times have we seen that in this thread alone with comments like, "How do you know what God wants" or "What makes you think that God sends messengers or that someone you consider a messenger is actually that?" If that's what you mean by requesting evidence from you, well, yes that happens, but I'm pretty sure that nobody is going to discuss such matters with you until you make a claim that you can't support.
You might like the idea but that does not mean it is possible for God to speak to people directly and be understood.
Do you know about Sagan's invisible dragon in the garage: "Sagan offers a story concerning a fire-breathing
dragon who lives in his garage. When he persuades a rational, open-minded visitor to meet the dragon, the visitor remarks that they are unable to see the creature. Sagan replies that he "neglected to mention that she's an invisible dragon". The visitor suggests spreading flour on the floor so that the creature's footprints might be seen, which Sagan says is a good idea, "but this dragon floats in the air". When the visitor considers using an infrared camera to view the creature's invisible
fire, Sagan explains that her fire is heatless. He continues to counter every proposed physical test with a reason why the test will not work. Sagan concludes by asking: "Now what's the difference between an invisible, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all? If there's no way to disprove my contention, no conceivable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?"
Do you recognize your own account of God in that? Why don't we see him? He doesn't feel like being seen and won't do what he doesn't want to do. Why can't I hear him? Only messengers can hear him. And on it goes with a series of just-so additions to the account until the description is so complex that it falls to the bottom of the list according to Occam's Razor, since a much simpler explanation is that this entity doesn't exist.
But Sagan hits upon another interesting wrinkle. What does it mean to say that something which is indistinguishable from the nonexistent exists anyway? What it means is that one can ignore the possibility of that existence - treat it as if it doesn't exist - and make no mistakes because of that understanding or misunderstanding, whichever it is.
Once one has concluded that no god is impacting our lives with revelation, miracles, or answered prayer, what one is left with is the possibility of a non-interventionalist god like the deist god, who is said to have created our universe and then disengaged from it, exists. But what difference would it make if one did? Hence, apatheism, or the feeling that not only is there no reason to believe a god exists (apatheists live without religion or a god belief, and hence are also atheists), but there is no value in having such an answer were it possible to have. Is there an afterlife containing conscious entities? I can wait to find out if that's the case. Knowing it is wouldn't change how I live life, like learning about dark energy. Does it exist or not? Is the rate of universal expansion accelerating or not? The answers aren't important to me, and either possibility is fine. Likewise with gods that are indistinguishable from the nonexistent.
We're back to why anyone would want to be a believer. I don't see a clear reason to seek God.
Agree. I think I just made the argument for that position.
In the end, it's a matter of choice, and of faith, REGARDLESS OF WHAT CHOICE YOU MAKE (even atheism).
Nope. You never seem to learn what atheism is, or that it's a position derived from pure reason (skeptical empiricism). There is no unjustified belief involved in atheism.
But I don't think you know what an atheist's beliefs are. You seem to want to define atheist as somebody who claims that gods can't or don't exist, which is a small minority of people who don't believe in gods. Most are like me, agnostic atheists, who agree with you that gods can neither be ruled in nor out.
I think your definition of atheist would exclude me, which makes it a poor definition. If I'm not an atheist, then no such thing exists. But I think you like to call atheists faith-based thinkers, and for that to be true, you have to limit your definition of atheism to strong atheists, the minority.
Of course, every time you do that and somebody like me sees it, you will likely be told why you are wrong again. It doesn't seem to impact you at all. You don't rebut, and you don't modify your position to reflect understanding or agreement. Go ahead and rebut me this time. Tell me why my unwillingness to believe in gods without compelling evidence and my unwillingness to say that they don't exist is a faith-based idea. You can't, and you never even try. You just keep repeating this atheist faith trope.
But no, your belief that there is a god is not like mine that there is no good reason to believe that there is one. Yours, assuming you mean a conscious agent (see below), is faith-based. Mine is pure reason applied to the evidence for gods. It seems that you want to put the two on an even footing to create some impression of equivalence - "Your faith is on no firmer foundation than mine." But that is incorrect. My agnostic atheism couldn't possibly be on a firmer foundation. It contains no unjustified beliefs.
the debate ends up being about the imaginary mental pictures people generate in their mind to represent God, as opposed to addressing the great mystery of being that God actually is to humanity.
That sentence is no different in meaning than the same sentence without the word God unless you assign traits to whatever it is you mean by God. I acknowledge that there are mysteries. I have vague intuitions about a collective consciousness, about unknown and unseen aspects of reality that would be startling to discover, telic possibilities as in the universe may be striving to achieve something, and similar issues. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why are life and mind even possible? Are they inevitable simply because they're possible?
But I don't invoke Gods or use the word when discussing the mysterious. I don't need it. Gods are only one possible answer, and the word carries too much baggage to assign its meaning to be whatever accounts for those mysteries. Most people are going to conceive of a conscious entity when they see that word, when perhaps these mysteries have nothing to do with such a thing. Maybe all we have are the laws of nature, and they are enough to generate the world we find mysterious. Look at what happened when Einstein used the word God to mean the laws of nature. Millions think he believes what they do, when in reality, his beliefs are more like mine.
Anyway, maybe that's all you're doing as well. Maybe your beliefs are similar to mine. I don't recall you referring to your God as conscious or having intent. If not, you are doing the same thing Einstein did. Most people are understanding you to be referring to a conscious entity. And after months of debate with you, I still don't know what you mean by that word.
That being said, the whole idea of "miracles" is inconsistent nonsense. Here's the problem:
- a miracle is something that happens despite not being possible by natural laws.
- but natural laws are inferred from observation of what happens.
- this means that everything that happens is natural.
- so a miracle that happened would both be natural (since it's a thing that happened, and therefore form an observation that would be incorporated into natural laws) and not natural (by definition).
This is the same argument I make against the idea of supernaturalism. I've just generalized miracle to supernaturalism.
If a god exists that is causally connected to nature, as in being able to create or manipulate it, it's part of nature. Supernaturalism is an incoherent claim that is just another bit of Sagan's dragon - the reason why we can't detect this god empirically even though it actually exists. It lives in a magic place unrelated to this one except when it want to affect this one, such as travel from that one to this one (and back again) to appear incarnate and interact with man in the flesh.
