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

[Sheldon]

You can deny it as much as you like.

Oh I don't need to expend any energy denying it, though it's amusing to see you pretend otherwise. It's amusing how so many theists like to cherry pick science they think supports their superstitious beliefs, while denying objective scientific facts in an arbitrary ad hoc fashion, when they contradict aspects of that superstition.

 

[Sheldon]

How is that relevant? Baha'u'llah is a real person in history and you will find His name in all the encyclopedias.
Baháʼu'lláh - Wikipedia

So is New York, when depicted in the King Kong movie, that doesn't make King Kong real. The relevance is obvious. Just because someone existed doesn't make everything they claim or is claimed about them true.

 

[Trailblazer]

New York is in the new Spiderman movie, and it is a real place, that doesn't make Spiderman real. I have no idea what your link is meant to demonstrate sorry.

I am not sure what point you are trying to make about Spiderman. Are you disputing tat Baha'u'llah was a real person who lived in history?

 

[Sheldon]

I tell you what .. you show me G-d and I'll show you the equations

Do you understand the PRINCIPLE of relativity?
What is the point in going into the mathematical details of Minkowski space, if you don't know the basics?

Minkowski space - Wikipedia

 

[Sheldon]

I am not sure what point you are trying to make about Spiderman. Are you disputing tat Baha'u'llah was a real person who lived in history?

Are you disputing New York is a real place?

Does this mean Spiderman is real?

Just because something or someone real is in a book, doesn't mean everything in the book is true or real.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Oh I don't need to expend any energy denying it..

Oh, I think we've BOTH expended a lot of energy in support of our views

 

[Sheldon]

Oh, I think we've BOTH expended a lot of energy in support of our views

Not really, but that wasn't my claim anyway.

 

[Trailblazer]

So is New York, when depicted in the King Kong movie, that doesn't make King Kong real. The relevance is obvious. Just because someone existed doesn't make everything they claim or is claimed about them true.

Your analogy does not fly because King Kong is a fictional character whereas Baha'u'llah was a real person.

I was only talking about whether Baha'u'llah was a real person who actually existed. I was not referring to His claim of being a Messenger of God. Baha'u'llah existed but just because someone existed doesn't make everything they claim or is claimed about them true.

 

[Trailblazer]

Are you disputing New York is a real place?

Does this mean Spiderman is real?

Just because something or someone real is in a book, doesn't mean everything in the book is true or real.

Baha'u'llah was a real person whereas Spiderman is a fictional character in a book.
Baha'u'llah was not just real in a book, He really existed.
Whether what is written about Baha'u'llah is true or not is separate from whether He actually existed in reality.

 

[Sheldon]

Your analogy does not fly because King Kong is a fictional character whereas Baha'u'llah was a real person.

He may have been real, but that doesn't mean all the claims he made or that were made about him are true, Anymore than New York being a real place is evidence that King Kong was really there.

I was not referring to His (unevidenced) claim of being a Messenger of God.

Baha'u'llah existed but just because someone existed doesn't make everything they claim or is claimed about them true.

Exactly my point.

 

[Trailblazer]

He may have been real, but that doesn't mean all the claims he made or that were made about him are true, Anymore than New York being a real place is evidence that King Kong was really there.

I never said that the claims were true, even though I believe they are true, I only said that Baha'u'llah existed as a real person.

 

[Trailblazer]

On what basis?

You said: 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?

I said: No, I do not agree.

If the method that I use is also used by other people, and it leads different people to different results, that is to be expected since all people think and process information differently, but that does not mean that the method in question is useless at finding out the truth about God or a religion. Some people will find out the truth and others won't, because of how they think and process information, whether or not they have confirmation bias, etc. There are many factors that will lead people to different conclusions about the same information. There are many obstacles that need to be overcome in searching for the truth if one wants to find it. Depending upon their starting points, some people will have more obstacles to overcome than other people.

I do not know what you mean by objective truths. Truth is truth.

 

[Trailblazer]

The trouble is that there have been many times I thought I knew something that was objectively true and that I was sure of. I was convinced that it was not just some subjective part of me, but that I did actually have THE TRUTH. And then it turned out that I was wrong.

So I know from bitter experience that simply being sure of something is nowhere near enough to guarantee that something is the truth.

That happens to the best of us. I have been sure that one tenant I have was telling the truth and I was going to get my rent money only later to find out I was wrong and I was not going to get the rent money. How could I have known he was not telling the truth? I could have tried to verify that he really had money to pay the rent coming in but I never did that. I just waited to see if I would get the money. This last time I did something different. When the money orders did not come in the mail after a week, I asked him for proof that he sent them because I thought he might be lying, but I came to find out he actually purchased the money orders and made them out to me because I asked him to send me a copy of the receipts.

The upshot of this is that whenever we CAN verify if something is true or not, we should try to do so, but that is not always possible. How do you think we can have a guarantee that Bahaullah was actually a Messenger of God and thus God exists? We can verify the facts about Baha’u’llah but we cannot verify that He got communication from God, so that is a faith-based belief, but once you have faith then you know it is true. I am not suggesting that belief should be based upon faith alone but rather faith should be based upon whatever evidence we can procure.

I've already explained it countless times.

If I get others to verify it as well, then they are going to be likely to spot any places where I've made a mistake. And if I have let my opinions influence my determination, then the other people, who likely do not share all of my opinions, will be better placed to spot those instances where my opinions have influenced my judgement.

If you get others to verify it and they say you made a mistake that would just be their subjective opinion that you made a mistake. How would you know that what they identified as a mistake in your judgment was really a mistake? What reason do you have to think that their subjective opinion is any better than yours?

An opinion is an opinion, it is not factual or it would be a fact. Other people also let their opinions influence their determinations, then the other people, who likely do not share all of your opinions, will have different opinions. Why would their opinions about a religion be any better than your opinions? Why would other people who do not share all of your opinions about a religion be better placed to spot those instances where your opinions have influenced your judgement? How could they ever know what is going on in your head?

I've explained this to you many times now, and you keep ignoring it. I can only conclude you are extremely forgetful, or you are being deliberately dishonest.

No, I am not forgetful, I just do not agree with you. This method might work on things that are not of a religious nature but they won’t work with religion because religion can never be verified to be true or false so it is always a matter of opinion and nothing we can actually prove. In that way religion differs from everything else, practical matters of everyday life. For example, I was talking to another landlord who has many more houses than I do about how he handles tenants who don’t pay the rent. I took his opinion into account because he has been successful in negotiating with tenants. In the end though, I have to make my own decision as to how to proceed because my situation is different than his, and he agreed.

Regarding practical matters of everyday life, I often run my opinions and what I am doing past other people to see if they might have other ideas I could benefit from, but I do not do that when it comes to religion because religion is a personal matter and people believe or disbelieve in God or a religion for personal reasons and since religious beliefs can never be proven true or false, it is a matter of personal belief. I might believe the bodily resurrection of Jesus is a ludicrous belief just as they might believe that what I believe about Bahaullah being the return of Christ is ludicrous. I think I have mire evidence than they do but they think they have more evidence than I have. Where do we go from here? Neither one of us can prove we are right, all we have is evidence.

 

[Trailblazer]

Oh, absolute garbage.

If you get a hundred people to measure the length of a rope, and they all say it is 30 feet long, are you going to say, "I can't accept that answer, that's an argument from popularity!"

The only thing you said there that I agree with is, "[Religion] is not objectively true."

Argumentum ad populum is about what people believe.

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." Argumentum ad populum - Wikipedia

The length of a rope is an objective fact so it is not a belief – this rope has been measured and it is 30 feet long. Of course it is not an argument from popularity because it is not a belief, it is an objective fact. Of course, everyone will agree because it is provable! You cannot do that with a religion for obvious logical reasons, because it is not objectively true the same way that provable facts about the material world are objectively true.

I am interested in what is ACTUALLY TRUE about the universe, and the best you can do is an idea that you say is true, not because it's actually true, but because it can be used to make things better.

If you are looking for objective facts about the universe you best consult science, not religion.

If what Baha’u’llah wrote -- 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 -- is actually true then what Baha'u'llah revealed in His Writings towards that end it can be used to make things in the world better.

 

[Trailblazer]

You again fail to understand.

The deity knows what I will do BEFORE I make the choice. There is NEVER a point at which I could make a different choice.

You again fail to understand.

The deity knows what you will do BEFORE you make the choice. At any point BEFORE you make the choice you could have made a different choice. If you make a different choice that choice will have been the choice the deity knew you would make.

All you can think of is one thing – the deity knew I would do X so I had to do X. What flies completely over your head is that if you had chosen to do Y the deity would have known you were going to choose Y. There is no way you can explain why you could not have chosen either X or Y, you just keep repeating the same old tired mantra.

You chose to do what the deity foresaw. That choice could have been X or Y. Whatever choice you made it would have been the choice that the deity foresaw since the deity can never be wrong.

Again, the deity knew BEFORE I made the choice. I was locked into something which had already been set in stone.

No, the choice was not set in stone unless it was predestined by God, in which case it would be an irrevocable decree that will happen as God decreed it. Whatever is decreed by God is our fate and we have no control over it.

God’s knowledge does not set anything in stone at all. Omniscience is an essential attribute of God. God has always known the choices we will make because God is all-knowing but God’s knowledge in no way causes or prevents us from choosing freely.

There is nothing logical about either your arguments or God.

My arguments are logical because I know something about God but there is nothing logical about God since God is not subject to logic.

 

[Watchmen]

No, that is not okay, because the parents are responsible for their children so the parents should be using their free will to stop the children from doing what they should not be doing.

And yet God doesn’t even do this.

 

[Tiberius]

I tell you what .. you show me G-d and I'll show you the equations

Do you understand the PRINCIPLE of relativity?
What is the point in going into the mathematical details of Minkowski space, if you don't know the basics?

Minkowski space - Wikipedia

I can't show you God because he doesn't exist.

However, you claim he does exist, and you also claim that relativity allows him to know the future. So provide the maths to back it up, or you've got nothing. Stop making excuses.

 

[Tiberius]

You said: 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?

I said: No, I do not agree.

If the method that I use is also used by other people, and it leads different people to different results, that is to be expected since all people think and process information differently, but that does not mean that the method in question is useless at finding out the truth about God or a religion. Some people will find out the truth and others won't, because of how they think and process information, whether or not they have confirmation bias, etc. There are many factors that will lead people to different conclusions about the same information. There are many obstacles that need to be overcome in searching for the truth if one wants to find it. Depending upon their starting points, some people will have more obstacles to overcome than other people.

I do not know what you mean by objective truths. Truth is truth.

I'm certain I've explained this to you before.

Objective truth - something that is actually true in reality, something that is true for everyone.

As opposed to a subjective opinion.

Religion is worthless at finding objective truths.

 

[Tiberius]

That happens to the best of us. I have been sure that one tenant I have was telling the truth and I was going to get my rent money only later to find out I was wrong and I was not going to get the rent money. How could I have known he was not telling the truth? I could have tried to verify that he really had money to pay the rent coming in but I never did that. I just waited to see if I would get the money. This last time I did something different. When the money orders did not come in the mail after a week, I asked him for proof that he sent them because I thought he might be lying, but I came to find out he actually purchased the money orders and made them out to me because I asked him to send me a copy of the receipts.

The upshot of this is that whenever we CAN verify if something is true or not, we should try to do so, but that is not always possible. How do you think we can have a guarantee that Bahaullah was actually a Messenger of God and thus God exists? We can verify the facts about Baha’u’llah but we cannot verify that He got communication from God, so that is a faith-based belief, but once you have faith then you know it is true. I am not suggesting that belief should be based upon faith alone but rather faith should be based upon whatever evidence we can procure.

Not the same thing. In that case you got the evidence that you were right.

I'm talking about something where you were 100% sure you were totally correct, and then it turned out you were wrong.

And you've never provided anything other than faith as a reason to believe in any religious claim.

If you get others to verify it and they say you made a mistake that would just be their subjective opinion that you made a mistake. How would you know that what they identified as a mistake in your judgment was really a mistake? What reason do you have to think that their subjective opinion is any better than yours?

Because you can go and see if they are right, for a start. If they say, "Hey, I think you forgot to account for such-and-such," you can go and see if you did account for it or not.

And, as I've already explained to you, if you have many people all telling you the same thing, it's not likely that they're all going to be mistaken in the same way, is it?

An opinion is an opinion, it is not factual or it would be a fact. Other people also let their opinions influence their determinations, then the other people, who likely do not share all of your opinions, will have different opinions. Why would their opinions about a religion be any better than your opinions? Why would other people who do not share all of your opinions about a religion be better placed to spot those instances where your opinions have influenced your judgement? How could they ever know what is going on in your head?

That's why I don't use opinions, I use the testable, verifiable, and repeatable evidence we get from science.

No, I am not forgetful, I just do not agree with you. This method might work on things that are not of a religious nature but they won’t work with religion because religion can never be verified to be true or false so it is always a matter of opinion and nothing we can actually prove. In that way religion differs from everything else, practical matters of everyday life. For example, I was talking to another landlord who has many more houses than I do about how he handles tenants who don’t pay the rent. I took his opinion into account because he has been successful in negotiating with tenants. In the end though, I have to make my own decision as to how to proceed because my situation is different than his, and he agreed.

Regarding practical matters of everyday life, I often run my opinions and what I am doing past other people to see if they might have other ideas I could benefit from, but I do not do that when it comes to religion because religion is a personal matter and people believe or disbelieve in God or a religion for personal reasons and since religious beliefs can never be proven true or false, it is a matter of personal belief. I might believe the bodily resurrection of Jesus is a ludicrous belief just as they might believe that what I believe about Bahaullah being the return of Christ is ludicrous. I think I have mire evidence than they do but they think they have more evidence than I have. Where do we go from here? Neither one of us can prove we are right, all we have is evidence.

Again, special pleading. You have to say religion works differently because reasons because if you don't, you'll be left with a religion that just doesn't work.

 

[Tiberius]

Argumentum ad populum is about what people believe.

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." Argumentum ad populum - Wikipedia

The length of a rope is an objective fact so it is not a belief – this rope has been measured and it is 30 feet long. Of course it is not an argument from popularity because it is not a belief, it is an objective fact. Of course, everyone will agree because it is provable! You cannot do that with a religion for obvious logical reasons, because it is not objectively true the same way that provable facts about the material world are objectively true.

The only thing you said there that came close to being right was that religion is not objectively true.

As for the rest of it, the whole idea of getting people to check your work and point out errors is called PEER REVIEW, and it's a part of SCIENCE. It's part of the process that tells us that we actually ARE dealing with objective facts! That's how we know they are right!

If you are looking for objective facts about the universe you best consult science, not religion.

Yes, I know. Religion is worthless at finding out the truth about the universe. And I do go with science rather than religion.

Religion is nothing but a whole lot of effort that doesn't even give you anything you can be sure is true. It's just a waste of time.

If what Baha’u’llah wrote -- 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 -- is actually true then what Baha'u'llah revealed in His Writings towards that end it can be used to make things in the world better.

Yeah, IF. That first word there is very problematic for you. Come back and talk to me when you can do better than IF.