Atheists: What would be evidence of God’s existence?

[Sheldon]

It's remarkable to me that this deity always seem the choose to do what would be the case in a godless universe.

Created it that way, with an obsession for creating black holes apparently, for billions of years. Then finally when life emerges it's obsessed with dinosaur evolution for hundreds of millions of years. Great apes are relatively new species, but humans are a very very young species in evolutionary terms, and we are expected to believe we are the main show, the reason everything exists?

Then when you say, yeah I don't believe the entire universe exists so I can go to an eternity of bliss after I die, you're accused of being arrogant. You have to see the irony.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Created it that way, with an obsession for creating black holes apparently, for billions of years. Then finally when life emerges it's obsessed with dinosaur evolution for hundreds of millions of years. Great apes are relatively new species, but humans are a very very young species in evolutionary terms, and we are expected to believe we are the main show, the reason everything exists?

Then when you say, yeah I don't believe the entire universe exists so I can go to an eternity of bliss after I die, you're accused of being arrogant. You have to see the irony.

Well, yes. You do have a point.

 

[Trailblazer]

Trailblazer said: It is axiomatic that an omnipotent deity only does what He wants to do so we can conclude that the deity doesn't want do that.

If the deity wanted to make everyone into a believer everyone would be a believer, since an omnipotent deity can make everyone into a believer. This is logic 101 stuff. It is also what Baha'u'llah wrote.

If God proved to everyone that He exists then it would not be possible to distinguish between people and how much they really care about believing in Him. In short, God wants everyone to prove their worthiness.

It Aint Necessariy So said: It's remarkable to me that this deity always seem the choose to do what would be the case in a godless universe.

How do you know what a deity would choose to do if it existed? That is the hundred-million-dollar question.

This is also the case with the garage in which Sagan's invisible dragon lives. It is indistinguishable from a garage with no dragon in it. It's axiomatic that the dragon just doesn't want to be found. How do we know? Have we found it? No. If it wanted to be found, it would have made itself findable, so since we can't find it, the only possible conclusion is that it doesn't want to be found. It wants us to prove our worthiness by believing in it anyway, a common measure of worthiness, the willingness to believe for no reason.

If a deity wanted to be found, it would have made itself findable, so since we can't find it, the only possible conclusion is that it doesn't want to be found. The deity will never be found by anyone, not even by its Messengers. The deity wants us to prove our worthiness by searching for the only evidence that shows that it exists, the Messengers of the deity. A common measure of worthiness is the willingness to believe based upon the evidence the deity provides.

 

[Sheldon]

If God proved to everyone that He exists then it would not be possible to distinguish between people and how much they really care about believing in Him. In short, God wants everyone to prove their worthiness.

For all you know a deity just wants to weed out the most gullible sycophants. That sounds just as reasonable to me.

 

[muhammad_isa]

For all you know a deity just wants to weed out the most gullible sycophants. That sounds just as reasonable to me.

OK, you have no comment to make on post #3387
No problem, I can understand why..
You are more interested in disproving a deity's existence

 

[Sheldon]

"It already happened" is not a good enough explanation, I'm afraid.

Yes it is.

When we say "the future", we are referring to the block of time that, as far as we are concerned [in our frame of reference], has to be filled in with events.

We?

it HAS to be a fixed block .. it can be nothing else.
It is just that we don't know what it is.

We? Has to be?

Whether a diety exists or not DOES NOT AFFECT THIS in the slightest. We make our choices, and they become the past.

Deity? You've demonstrated nothing approaching objective evidence for any deity, and your claims don't seem to be offering any citations that support them? Vague assertions that Einstein's work evidences your superstitious fantasies won't do I'm afraid, and reeling off unevidenced claims is petty meaningless.

 

[CG Didymus]

No, God's knowledge does not determine anything that happens to us.
Only if God had predestined something to happen would it have been predetermined.

I know, just when you thought the blue shirt, red shirt thing was over, I've got a question for you. A person has made several choices during the day. They stayed five minutes longer at work. They stopped for gas, but went around and faced the opposite direction. When they pulled out, there was two lanes they could have chosen, they chose the inside lane to make a right turn. A van pulls up in the other lane, blocking their view of the oncoming cars, so they for the light to change. It changes. The van stops suddenly and a car misses them but hits this other person's car.

That other driver was running late. He had a five o'clock appointment on the other side of town. The freeway was bumper to bumper, so he pulled off and took a right. The light ahead of him just turned yellow. He hit the gas. It turned red, but it was too late. He was going through. He saw a van start to pull out, so he hit the brakes and honked his horn. The guy in the van saw him and stopped. But he plowed right into the side of the other car.

Lots of choices, is it totally random and God had nothing to do with any of the choices or was it all part of God's pre-thought-out plan?

 

[muhammad_isa]

You've demonstrated nothing approaching objective evidence for any deity, and your claims don't seem to be offering any citations that support them?

You are replying to a post that is saying that it makes no difference whether a deity exists or not. Your reply is irrelevant to the points I raised.

Vague assertions that Einstein's work evidences your superstitious fantasies won't do I'm afraid..

The block universe is not a superstition. It is a consequence of the theory of relativity. The present is merely a perceptional illusion , as events can be shown to not be simultaneous in different frames of reference.

eg. If we have events A and B, it is possible that in one frame of reference event A happens before event B .. and in another frame, it is possible that event B happens before event A

Whatever you might think or understand about the concept of a block universe, it remains A FACT that the past is a known block, and the future is an unknown block.
That unknown block becomes known as it becomes the past.

Claiming that the future block is constantly changing is meaningless, and is also not possible, as you would realise if you understood the implications of relativity.

 

[Trailblazer]

I know, just when you thought the blue shirt, red shirt thing was over, I've got a question for you. A person has made several choices during the day. They stayed five minutes longer at work. They stopped for gas, but went around and faced the opposite direction. When they pulled out, there was two lanes they could have chosen, they chose the inside lane to make a right turn. A van pulls up in the other lane, blocking their view of the oncoming cars, so they for the light to change. It changes. The van stops suddenly and a car misses them but hits this other person's car.

That other driver was running late. He had a five o'clock appointment on the other side of town. The freeway was bumper to bumper, so he pulled off and took a right. The light ahead of him just turned yellow. He hit the gas. It turned red, but it was too late. He was going through. He saw a van start to pull out, so he hit the brakes and honked his horn. The guy in the van saw him and stopped. But he plowed right into the side of the other car.

Lots of choices, is it totally random and God had nothing to do with any of the choices or was it all part of God's pre-thought-out plan?

It is wishful thinking to hope that the blue shirt, red shirt thing is finally over. I'd wait a few days before getting my hopes up because there is no way of knowing who might stop by.

Whenever you start to talk about how one person's choices affect another person's choices you are starting to cross over into fate and predestination and that is God's domain since God is the one who determines our fate.

I never claimed that everything that happens in this life is controlled by or subject to the free will of man as many things are outside of our control, and getting into an accident even though you were driving safely would be a good example of this. I would not say this was part of God's pre-thought-out plan, but it is our fate. We cannot say that it is something God wanted to happen but because God does not interfere with what people choose to do, God allowed it to happen, so it was our fate.

Remember what I posted to you about free will vs. what God is responsible for?

“Some things are subject to the free will of man, such as justice, equity, tyranny and injustice, in other words, good and evil actions; it is evident and clear that these actions are, for the most part, left to the will of man. But there are certain things to which man is forced and compelled, such as sleep, death, sickness, decline of power, injuries and misfortunes; these are not subject to the will of man, and he is not responsible for them, for he is compelled to endure them. But in the choice of good and bad actions he is free, and he commits them according to his own will.”
Some Answered Questions, p. 248

Man is forced to endure them because God set it up that way since we live in a material world where some of the bad things happen are beyond our control.

I had a serious accident once six years ago. I was driving cautiously yet I was in the wrong place at the wrong time so I hit a 13-year-old girl because she literally ran out in front of my car in the dark when it was also raining hard, crossing the highway where she should not have been crossing to try to catch a school bus. It was later determined by the investigation that the girl was at fault and I was 100% in the clear but the school bus company was sued by the parents. That girl would have died had I been going the speed limit but I was going 35 MPH since I am such a safe driver and was driving for the conditions. She was badly injured but did not sustain any life threatening injuries, but can you even imagine how I would have felt if she had died, even though it was not my fault? As it was, I was unable to drive for three years after that and I only started driving regularly without anxiety for the last year or so out of necessity to go grocery shopping, since my husband does not want to go out anymore.

These kinds of things happen every day and make the thoughtful person wonder how God could be all-loving. At the very least, God owes us a big reward in heaven for making us endure life in this material world.

 

[CG Didymus]

Created it that way, with an obsession for creating black holes apparently, for billions of years. Then finally when life emerges it's obsessed with dinosaur evolution for hundreds of millions of years. Great apes are relatively new species, but humans are a very very young species in evolutionary terms, and we are expected to believe we are the main show, the reason everything exists?

Then when you say, yeah I don't believe the entire universe exists so I can go to an eternity of bliss after I die, you're accused of being arrogant. You have to see the irony.

Baha'is believe there is life on other planets and that there will be interplanetary unity someday. Probably not in the near future, though.

 

[CG Didymus]

It is wishful thinking to hope that the blue shirt, red shirt thing is finally over. I'd wait a few days before getting my hopes up because there is no way of knowing who might stop by.

Whenever you start to talk about how one person's choices affect another person's choices you are starting to cross over into fate and predestination and that is God's domain since God is the one who determines our fate.

I never claimed that everything that happens in this life is controlled by or subject to the free will of man as many things are outside of our control, and getting into an accident even though you were driving safely would be a good example of this. I would not say this was part of God's pre-thought-out plan, but it is our fate. We cannot say that it is something God wanted to happen but because God does not interfere with what people choose to do, God allowed it to happen, so it was our fate.

Remember what I posted to you about free will vs. what God is responsible for?

“Some things are subject to the free will of man, such as justice, equity, tyranny and injustice, in other words, good and evil actions; it is evident and clear that these actions are, for the most part, left to the will of man. But there are certain things to which man is forced and compelled, such as sleep, death, sickness, decline of power, injuries and misfortunes; these are not subject to the will of man, and he is not responsible for them, for he is compelled to endure them. But in the choice of good and bad actions he is free, and he commits them according to his own will.”
Some Answered Questions, p. 248

Man is forced to endure them because God set it up that way since we live in a material world where some of the bad things happen are beyond our control.

I had a serious accident once six years ago. I was driving cautiously yet I was in the wrong place at the wrong time so I hit a 13-year-old girl because she literally ran out in front of my car in the dark when it was also raining hard, crossing the highway where she should not have been crossing to try to catch a school bus. It was later determined by the investigation that the girl was at fault and I was 100% in the clear but the school bus company was sued by the parents. That girl would have died had I been going the speed limit but I was going 35 MPH since I am such a safe driver and was driving for the conditions. She was badly injured but did not sustain any life threatening injuries, but can you even imagine how I would have felt if she had died, even though it was not my fault? As it was, I was unable to drive for three years after that and I only started driving regularly without anxiety for the last year or so out of necessity to go grocery shopping, since my husband does not want to go out anymore.

These kinds of things happen every day and make the thoughtful person wonder how God could be all-loving. At the very least, God owes us a big reward in heaven for making us endure life in this material world.

I would hope a loving and just God would get more involved. I don't know how you see it. but my Christian friends did believe God was guiding them... and is in control. But you know how it goes, something bad happens and they say, "It must have been God's will." Yeah, like a poor kid that made the choice to join the marching band. And that school getting chosen to play in that parade. And why oh why did that guy have to drive on that road on that day?

 

[Tiberius]

I have verification that is personal to me, that does not mean you would see it as verification to you

But that's not really verification then, is it? If it's personal to you, then it's just a subjective opinion. Things that are objectively true aren't personal to a few people, they are objectively true for EVERYONE.

 

[Tiberius]

That’s exactly what I’m asking you to do, or at least to consider, yes.

You can neither prove nor disprove God using reason or logic. And logic is not built on irrefutable laws, only constructs which it must be possible to transcend. Logic and reason begin to encounter their limits, for example, when we consider the true, non linear nature of time.

Well, if we're going to just ignore the laws of logic, let's have God making square circles, or rocks so heavy he can't move them.

You see, we should not be asking what tools we need in order to find God, because that will always start with the unproven assumption that there is a God.

Instead, we should ask ourselves which tools we have that have proven themselves to be reliable, and then use those to find out about the world, and we should also ask ourselves which tools have be UNreliable, and then abandon those tools precisely because of their unreliability.

And, sorry to say, religion falls squarely into the unreliable category.

 

[Tiberius]

You are purely stating the obvious
If G-d knows that you will choose 'A', then how can you choose anything else?
You have already stated that G-d can't be wrong.
If you choose 'B', then you have contradicted yourself.

i.e. it is necessarily true due to the first premise .. nothing to do with being free to choose or not

..but then, that doesn't matter to you, does it?
You are only trying to confuse us all .. rather than clarify the issue.

Not at all. In fact, I agree with you. If God knows that I will choose A, then how could I possibly choose anything else?

And if I can't possibly choose anything else, then I don't have a choice, do I?

 

[Tiberius]

That's true, and that is precisely WHY we can never look at one prophecy to try to prove why was the return of Christ/Messiah. We have to look at all the Bible prophecies in their entirety and William Sears did just that in his book.

William Sears, Thief in the Night

But it doesn't matter how many there are. If they are all built on subjective interpretations, then the result is still going to be a subjective interpretation.

 

[Tiberius]

That is correct, but how do you know what the deity has foreseen? You do not know, only the deity knows.

Doesn't matter if I know. The deity knows. And if the deity can't be wrong, I have no choice but to do what it has foreseen.

But that doesn’t work. God does not exist in time so God is not constrained by time. God did not know something on Monday. God knows everything all the time (I mean time as we humans refer to time, since God is not constrained by time.)

Let's say I'm going to do something on Friday.

God already knows what I will do and when I am going to do it because God is all-knowing.

If I don't decide to do it until Wednesday, then that means that on Tuesday I could still have made another choice.

From the day I was born God knew the choice I was going to make and on which day I would make that choice because God is all-knowing.

I'm afraid not.

If God knew what you were going to do since the day you were born, you could not have chosen to do something different the day before.

It's just like how if I put Jurassic Park on, I know the lawyer is going to run out of the car during the T-rex attack scene from the moment the movie starts. I know everything that will happen during the whole movie, and I know it all the time (I have seen that movie a LOT of times). So there's no way that the lawyer could choose to do something different during the scene with the sick triceratops, for example.

Simply put, if the outcome is known, there is no free choice.

 

[RestlessSoul]

Well, if we're going to just ignore the laws of logic, let's have God making square circles, or rocks so heavy he can't move them.

You see, we should not be asking what tools we need in order to find God, because that will always start with the unproven assumption that there is a God.

Instead, we should ask ourselves which tools we have that have proven themselves to be reliable, and then use those to find out about the world, and we should also ask ourselves which tools have be UNreliable, and then abandon those tools precisely because of their unreliability.

And, sorry to say, religion falls squarely into the unreliable category.

But your method hasn’t worked though, has it? You have not found God.

 

[Trailblazer]

I would hope a loving and just God would get more involved. I don't know how you see it. but my Christian friends did believe God was guiding them... and is in control. But you know how it goes, something bad happens and they say, "It must have been God's will." Yeah, like a poor kid that made the choice to join the marching band. And that school getting chosen to play in that parade. And why oh why did that guy have to drive on that road on that day?

I believe that God does guide us but I don't believe God gets involved in any other way, such as in planning out our lives, as some Christians believe. I don't believe that God is controlling things although I believe that God is in control of things.

Nobody knows why bad things happen to good people, there are so many things we don't know. It does not seem fair.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

But your method hasn’t worked though, has it? You have not found God.

Well, as a skeptic I accept some negatives as a correct answer. So I haven't found God, but to me that is not a problem. I accept that you for your understanding apparently have found God. Can you accept that I do it differently?

 

[RestlessSoul]

Well, as a skeptic I accept some negatives as a correct answer. So I haven't found God, but to me that is not a problem. I accept that you for your understanding apparently have found God. Can you accept that I do it differently?

Yes, of course. We each have our own path to walk, and no one has the right to tell another "My way is the only way". Many people do make such claims, but that doesn't seem very helpful or honest.

I wish you well in your journey.