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

[Tiberius]

You did have a choice and you chose to do what the deity foresaw. That choice could have been choice A, B, C, or D. Whatever choice you made it would have been the choice that the deity foresaw since the deity can never be wrong.

If you had chosen A, that would have been what the deity always knew you would choose.
If you had chosen B, that would have been what the deity always knew you would choose.
If you had chosen C, that would have been what the deity always knew you would choose.
If you had chosen D, that would have been what the deity always knew you would choose.

Don't give me that. You literally just said, "You have no choice but to do what the deity has foreseen."

Don't tell me in one post that I have no choice, and then in another that I do have a choice. This is why I criticise you so often - you flip flop between two positions and contradict yourself. And that contradiction means your position is not correct.

I do not deal in hypotheticals. God does not tell anyone what He has foreseen, so you cannot ever know what God has foreseen. That means you cannot ever know what you will choose until you choose it. God knew what you would choose before you chose it because God has foreknowledge.

Case closed.

See my answer above.

Utterly irrelevant.

If God knows, then I have no choice. I MUST do what he has foreseen, and I can't possibly choose to do any differently. It makes no difference if he tells anyone or not. And, are you really saying that God is like, "Gee, I'd love to tell you, but I'm prevented from telling you, because that's the only way I can hold together my logical inconsistencies, and even then it doesn't really work."

You're just trying to sweep the problem under the rug, and it's obvious to everyone.

 

[Trailblazer]

True.

But if the method that you use is also used by other people, and it leads different people to different results, then I would say that it shows that the method in question is pretty useless at finding out objective truths. Wouldn't you agree?

No, I do not agree.

 

[Trailblazer]

Regardless of whether it came from within me or not, if it was objective truth, I must have some way of verifying it. Otherwise, how could I know it was the objective truth? And if all I can do is verify it within myself (as you have suggested), then I can never be sure that there is not some subjective part of myself distorting the results.

You want to know if the religion is objective truth and you believe there is some foolproof way of being sure but there isn't. All I can say is that if/when you are sure you will know it, just like me, and at that time you will no longer need to wonder about any of this and you won't be worried that it might be a subjective part of you that is sure..... you will just know you found the truth.

So, while it is possible that an objective truth could come from within me, I would have absolutely no way to verify it as long as it remains within me. And since it is far more likely that whatever I got was a subjective opinion, I would be forced to treat it as such until I could do some kind of external verification.

You are tying yourself in knots analyzing this process ad infinitum but it is your own thinking process that prevents you from believing anything is true, because you are so sure that what you might end up believing is subjective and thus it cannot be true. It makes no sense at all but it is what you have decided and I cannot talk you out of it.

What do you think external verification is going to accomplish? Whoever verified it also verified it subjectively, so all you would be doing is swapping their subjective opinions for your own. You would be no closer to the objective truth.

 

[Trailblazer]

Trailblazer said: Do you mean they could spot it with their own subjective opinion? How would that get us any closer to objective truth?
Do you mean that the more subjective opinions we have the closer we would get to the objective truth? How would that work?

No, I am saying that if we get lots of people to check, and they all agree, then it is unlikely to be the result of subjective opinion, because all of those different people will have different subjective opinions. If it WAS the result of subjective opinion, then we'd get a bunch of different answers.

After all, if everyone got it wrong in exactly the same way, that's a pretty slim chance, right? And the more people we get to check, the more justified we are in saying the result is accurate.

Think of it like this...

Let's say you have a bunch of tape measures. Each tape measure could be accurate, or it could be off by some random amount, you don't know. Now, you measure the length of the path from the front door to the street. What results could we get?

Well, perhaps all the results will be different. In which case, we can say that it's likely that all of the tape measures are wrong by some random amount. Maybe one of them is actually giving the correct answer, but we can't be sure which one, since we have no way to know.

Maybe we get two that give the same result, but all of the others give different results. In this case we can say that we think the two identical results are accurate, but there's only two in agreement, so we can't be completely sure. It is, after all, possible that two tape measures could be off by a very similar amount. Not likely, but still possible.

Maybe many of the results are similar, but there are still a few that are different. In this case, we can say that the tape measures that gave the same results are most likely accurate, while the others are wrong. Because, what are the chances that many tape measures would all be off by the same amount?

And if ALL the tape measures give the same result, then we are even more justified in saying that all the tape measures are accurate.

You said: "And the more people we get to check, the more justified we are in saying the result is accurate."

I am sorry to say but how many people agree that it is true has nothing to do with whether it is true or false. That is the fallacy of argumentum ad populum

In argumentation theory, an argumentum ad populum (Latin for "appeal to the people") is a fallacious argument that concludes that a proposition is true because many or most people believe it: "If many believe so, it is so."

This type of argument is known by several names,[1] including appeal to the masses, appeal to belief, appeal to the majority, appeal to democracy, appeal to popularity, argument by consensus, consensus fallacy, authority of the many, bandwagon fallacy, Argumentum ad populum - Wikipedia

The converse of this is that if many or most people do not believe it, it cannot be so, and that is fallacious. So the fact that only a few people have subjectively determined that the Baha’i Faith is true and many more people have subjectively determined that Christianity is true, that does not mean anything at all.

Religion is not science and it cannot be weighed and measured and verified scientifically. It is not objectively true, it is either true or false, and how many people agree that it is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not. In fact, the opposite is true for religion, especially when it is a new religion, as it is more likely to be true if only a few people believe it, since few people believe in a religion when it is a new religion, that is the pattern of history.

Matthew 7:13-14 Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

“The Book of God is wide open, and His Word is summoning mankind unto Him. No more than a mere handful, however, hath been found willing to cleave to His Cause, or to become the instruments for its promotion. These few have been endued with the Divine Elixir that can, alone, transmute into purest gold the dross of the world, and have been empowered to administer the infallible remedy for all the ills that afflict the children of men. No man can obtain everlasting life, unless he embraceth the truth of this inestimable, this wondrous, and sublime Revelation.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 183

Sorry, but religion does not work the way science works because religion can never be proven as a fact and thus all people can ever have are subjective opinions about the objective facts surrounding the different religions.

And that's why I say religion is utterly and completely useless as a method for finding out any objective truths about the universe.

As I have told you before religion is not a method to find out objective truths about the universe. The purpose of religion is as follows. If you are not interested in this purpose I see no reason for you to try to determine which if any religion is the truth.

“The Great Being saith: O ye children of men! The fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race, and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men. Suffer it not to become a source of dissension and discord, of hate and enmity. This is the straight Path, the fixed and immovable foundation. Whatsoever is raised on this foundation, the changes and chances of the world can never impair its strength, nor will the revolution of countless centuries undermine its structure. Our hope is that the world’s religious leaders and the rulers thereof will unitedly arise for the reformation of this age and the rehabilitation of its fortunes. Let them, after meditating on its needs, take counsel together and, through anxious and full deliberation, administer to a diseased and sorely-afflicted world the remedy it requireth….” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 215-216

 

[RestlessSoul]

True, but so often the religion I have seen is so similar to the indoctrination as to be indistinguishable.

You mean all religions seem to have similar defects? Perhaps they do, but then perhaps they all have similar merits also. There must be some reason why every culture in human history has adopted some form of spiritual practice. This has surely been fulfilling a much deeper need than simply explaining how the world came to be. Because even if science - which is really just the application of our own, human qualities to the exploration of the material world - one day manages to tell us exactly where the universe came from, and how, we'll still want to know why we are here, and why the universe went to all the trouble of existing.

 

[Trailblazer]

Don't give me that. You literally just said, "You have no choice but to do what the deity has foreseen."

That is what I just said:

You chose to do what the deity foresaw. That choice could have been choice A, B, C, or D. Whatever choice you made it would have been the choice that the deity foresaw since the deity can never be wrong.

Don't tell me in one post that I have no choice, and then in another that I do have a choice. This is why I criticise you so often - you flip flop between two positions and contradict yourself. And that contradiction means your position is not correct.

You did have a choice and you made a choice. You could have chosen between A, B, C, or D and you made a choice between them. Whichever choice you made was the choice that the deity knew you would make (foresaw) because the deity can never be wrong.

If I say any more, I am just going to muddy the waters.

If God knows, then I have no choice. I MUST do what he has foreseen, and I can't possibly choose to do any differently.

You WILL do whatever the deity has foreseen, but if you had chosen to do something differently the deity would have foreseen that.

You're just trying to sweep the problem under the rug, and it's obvious to everyone.

There is no problem for people who can think logically and know about God, what it means for God to be all-knowing, and how that plays out in relationship to humans in the material world. Unfortunately, atheists don’t know anything about God so that cannot understand how God’s all-encompassing knowledge has no bearing upon human free will choices. That is why their arguments end up being illogical. It is as if you are trying to drive a four-cylinder car on two cylinders and that is why you are stuck and not getting anywhere.

Who is everyone? It seems to me that I have as many people agreeing with me as you have agreeing with you even though not all of them posted replied. Take a look at the ratings and you will see. It is three for three so you are not winning anything.

 

[KWED]

No, that is where you are wrong.
G-d does not fix anything.

You have already accepted in previous posts that the future is fixed before it happens by god's infallible omniscience.

You say "he fixes that choice before we get to make it"..
G-d does nothing of the sort.
You are putting the cart before the horse.

"The future is fixed by him knowing what it will be before it happens", if you prefer.
Either way, at any given moment we can only choose the option that god already knows we will choose, as you have already admitted.

You make your choice. You choose whatever you like.

It seems that way. But what "whatever we like" is inevitable because it has to bo the one option that god knew we would choose, before we chose it.

NOW let's examine whether G-d was right or not..

Why? We know he was right. He has to be right. He cannot be wrong because he is god and his foreknowledge is infallible.

It is untrue that G-d's foreknowledge limits the choice that we can make. It is a logical fallacy. I have already explained it, but you don't seem to understand the language and math of logic theory.

You have dome nothing of the sort. You have merely keep asserting that even though what we choose must be the same as god already knows we will choose, we can still choose whatever we want. There is your logical inconsistency. And really not sure where you think maths comes into it.

Repeating over and over again that "we have no choice because we have to choose what G-d knows" without showing us WHY, is meaningless.

I have explained why.
Ironically, it is you who keeps repeating the same flawed claim.
You have admitted yourself that our choice must be the one god knows we will choose. God knew this before we made that choice. Therefore when we come to make that choice, there is only one possible option available. By saying that god only knows what we will choose because we have already chosen it is logically incoherent in the context of foreknowledge.

 

[KWED]

Don't be ridiculous. You can choose whatever you like.
The fact that your choice will be the one that G-d knows is because you have postulated that G-d can't be wrong.
You say "If G-d can't be wrong" .. which means that G-d knows what you will choose..
..and NOT that you have to choose anything.

I notice that you keep avoiding the issue of predetermination.
It's like the defendant who keeps challenging one witness when he has already been convicted by DNA evidence.

 

[KWED]

Don't be ridiculous. You can choose whatever you like.
The fact that your choice will be the one that G-d knows

So, "you can choose whatever you like as long as it is the one choice that god knows you will make".
I agree.

is because you have postulated that G-d can't be wrong.

I have not postulated that, it is a simple fact in the context of the god we are talking about. Do you claim that god can be wrong"

You say "If G-d can't be wrong" .. which means that G-d knows what you will choose..

Correct again. He knows what you will choose (and he knew before the earth existed), and he cannot be wrong.

..and NOT that you have to choose anything.

At a particular moment you have to choose between A and B. Your choice (at Time T) has to correspond to the choice god knew (at T-billions of years) you would make, which is A.
As the clock counts down over your lifetime to Time T, both A and B seem like available options. At T-5 seconds you think "Hmm, A or B?" But at Time T, you have to choose A. You cannot choose B, because if you chose B, god would have been wrong for billions of years. And that is not possible.
If you disagree, explain how choosing B is possible. Simply saying "But you can choose whatever you want!" is not an argument. It is just an assertion that you repeatedly fail to support.

 

[KWED]

[GALLERY=media, 9646]COG DIS by KWED posted Nov 23, 2021 at 7:39 AM[/GALLERY]

 

[KWED]

A fixed future is implied by relativity, yet you still argue that we are not free to choose.

You are contradicting yourself here. A fixed future implies lack of choice.

I have repeated many times..

Repeating nonsense does not make it make sense.

An agent is free to do otherwise, if they can do otherwise if they WANT to do otherwise.

You are simply asserting that we can choose any possible option without explaining how it is possible when our choice must correcpond to the one god already knows we will make.

..but you just plough on with your incorrect assertion.

You are the one who keeps asserting "We must choose what god knows what we will choose, but we can choose anything".

You are arguing that "if a deity knows the one choice we will make, before we make, then the other choices are an illusion"

Correct.

What sort of an illusion could it be?

The illusion that we could have chosen to choose B.

How do you envisage that a diety has forced you to make a choice?

Straw man. This has been explained many times.
God does not force you against you will. His infallible omniscience makes your choice inevitable. Think of it as something like... what you want being subconsciously determined by god's knowledge.

Then there is the problem that god actually decides the outcome of all events. So you have no chance of claiming we have free will.

 

[KWED]

An omniscient deity implies a fixed future.
Einstein's theory of relativity ALSO implies a fixed future.

This means that it is not about deities. It is about the concept of a fixed future.
Einstein believed in a fixed future and NOT IN A DEITY. I never said that he did believe in a particular deity. He was a deist. The reason he believed in a fixed future is because relativity implies it.

So you accept that god's infallible omniscience fixes the future, but your response is that relativity may also fix the future.
1. This is called "whataboutery".
2. If, as you admit, the future is fixed, then we have no free will, whatever the cause. Therefore under the god of Islam we have no free will. Therefore Allah cannot be justified in punishing us for our "choices". QED.

 

[muhammad_isa]

So why did Einstein miss this evidence you've spotted in his work that made it in your own words "precisely the same as an omniscient deity knowing what we will choose"?

He didn't.
He famously said that "God did not play dice", referring to the phenomenon.

 

[muhammad_isa]

You are contradicting yourself here. A fixed future implies lack of choice.

It would seem that way. Many people cannot get their heads around it.
However .. if it is our own choices that fix it, then it is no different than the past .. and most people can understand how our choices fixed that.

You know what?
I'm done. If you can't understand what I'm saying, so be it.
God, the Most High, knows best.

 

[KWED]

Theory of relativity is accepted by physicists,

Tautology.

and the vast majority believe in the block-universe view of time.

No they don't. It is an issue of much debate amongst physicists.

This means that the future is as the past .. a fixed block. It is just that the future is unknown.

But under a god universe, the future is known, so the comparison fails.

Do you accept that as evidence that G-d exists?
No. I thought not.

Einstein was a deist.

No he wasn't.

he still believed in G-d, albeit not the Abrahamic one

"The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses" - Einstein, writing in 1954

 

[KWED]

No. I'm not quoting Einstein for his religious beliefs.
I'm quoting him on his scientific beliefs.
Specifically, the block-universe [ or Minkowski space ].

..and it is relevant to the subject we have been discussing.
Namely, the compatibility of free-will and a deterministic future.
The belief that they are incompatible, is due to a well-known modal fallacy

If the future is fixed, then we have no free will. That is axiomatic.

All you have done is cite another system, along with Islam, where free will is negated. You are simply confirming the argument, not refuting it - but you don't seem to realise it.

 

[KWED]

But if you had chosen B or C, a deity would have always known that you would choose B or C. Ipso facto you could have chosen A, B or C.

Exactly.
Whatever the outcome of an event, our choice at that event must match the one god already knows. It is irrelevant what that outcome is.

 

[KWED]

Many facts about the Baha'i Faith are in the book I cited, Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era, but there are many other books that contain facts. This is evidence to me that the Baha'i Faith is true.

There is no such thing as a Baha'i God, there is just one true God who revealed all the religions.
There is no proof that God exists, there is only evidence. Evidence is not proof.

evidence: the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid. https://www.google.com/search

Note that evidence does only indicates whether a belief is true. It does not prove anything.

By contrast, proof establishes a fact. There is no proof that God exists or that any religion if true. There is only evidence that indicates that.

Proof: evidence or argument establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of a statement: https://www.google.com/search

So, you are declining to provide any of these claimed "facts". Just more vague handwaving.

 

[KWED]

If your child, who you love, finds a kitchen knife and decides to stab himself through the eye, and you had the power to stop it, wouldn’t you do so?!?!

Ah, but the parent has given the child free will, so it's ok (apparently).

 

[KWED]

Never did I say that the claim is the evidence. The claims and the evidence that support the claims were listed separately on the post I linked to.

Questions for knowledgeable Bahai / followers of Baha'u'llah

Can't see any evidence of fulfilled prophecies there. Just the usual religious platitudes.

Sorry, none of those were intended to be prophecies. They were warnings given to the kings and rulers.

The Tablet to Kaiser Wilhelm I is not about WWI and WWII

O banks of the Rhine! We have seen you covered with gore, inasmuch as the swords of retribution were drawn against you; and you shall have another turn. And We hear the lamentations of Berlin, though she be today in conspicuous glory.
Tablet to Kaiser Wilhelm I

In one of His Tablets written before the first World War (1914–1918), ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explained that Bahá’u’lláh’s reference to having seen the banks of the Rhine “covered with gore” related to the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), and that there was more suffering to come. In God Passes By Shoghi Effendi states that the “oppressively severe treaty” that was imposed on Germany following its defeat in the first World War “provoked ‘the lamentations [of Berlin]’ which half a century before, had been ominously prophesied.”
Bahá’u’lláh, "The Kitáb-i-Aqdas", 90

Most Baha'is believe that the Tablet to Kaiser Wilhelm I refers to WWI and WWII, and "another turn" is WWII, but contrary to what is popularly believed among Baha'is, "another turn" is World War I and the oppressive treaty after that was the "lamentations of Berlin".

The book you referenced claims that they are prophecies relating to specific events.
If you disagree, why did you cite it as evidence?