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

[Tiberius]

Oh dear .. what can you not understand about "the present" only being in our frame of reference?
You can't talk about tommorow and the past as being definitive, as "the present" is only our perspective.

I repeat, an observer that is moving at a speed approaching that of light, relative to our frame of reference, does not share our perception of "the present".

Example
------------
Five years on a ship traveling at 99 percent the speed of light (2.5 years out and 2.5 years back) corresponds to roughly 36 years on Earth. When the spaceship returned to Earth, the people onboard would come back 31 years in their future--but they would be only five years older than when they left.

Combining the above with the fact that two events that are simultaneous when observed from some particular reference frame can no longer be considered simultaneous when observed from another reference frame moving relative to the first, we see that such a reference frame exists that is possible to know our future.

Can you explain why that relativity of simultaneity is limited to seconds or minutes?
Is it to do with the relative speed differences? The reference frame(s)?
The inability to move at the speed of light?
What exactly?

Yeah, and how does that explain how God has knowledge of a future that hasn't yet happened? I don't see how it gives the people on board knowledge of a future that hasn't happened yet, so why should it allow God to have such knowledge?

 

[Trailblazer]

If you don't mind me pointing out, animals have brains, too. Personalities, emotions, goals. Our brains, larger and more sophisticated than theirs, but from the same place.

Also, how did you decide when humans got a "soul"? And why animals don't? Is this a measurable thing?

Of course animals have brains and emotions but they do not have goals the way humans have goals and they cannot think in the abstract and discover the realities of things the way humans can.

“The human spirit which distinguishes man from the animal is the rational soul, and these two names—the human spirit and the rational soul—designate one thing. This spirit, which in the terminology of the philosophers is the rational soul, embraces all beings, and as far as human ability permits discovers the realities of things and becomes cognizant of their peculiarities and effects, and of the qualities and properties of beings” Some Answered Questions, p. 208

55: SOUL, SPIRIT AND MIND

I did not decide that only humans have a soul, that is my belief. I do not know when or how humans got a soul but I believe the soul is a creation of God. The soul is a mystery and it is thus not measurable.

“Thou hast asked Me concerning the nature of the soul. Know, verily, that the soul is a sign of God, a heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of men hath failed to grasp, and whose mystery no mind, however acute, can ever hope to unravel. It is the first among all created things to declare the excellence of its Creator, the first to recognize His glory, to cleave to His truth, and to bow down in adoration before Him. If it be faithful to God, it will reflect His light, and will, eventually, return unto Him. If it fail, however, in its allegiance to its Creator, it will become a victim to self and passion, and will, in the end, sink in their depths.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 158-159

 

[muhammad_isa]

Yeah, and how does that explain how God has knowledge of a future that hasn't yet happened? I don't see how it gives the people on board knowledge of a future that hasn't happened yet, so why should it allow God to have such knowledge?

Right .. you can't see it. I can.
Oh well.

 

[Hidingfromyou]

Of course animals have brains and emotions but they do not have goals the way humans have goals and they cannot think in the abstract and discover the realities of things the way humans can.

“The human spirit which distinguishes man from the animal is the rational soul, and these two names—the human spirit and the rational soul—designate one thing. This spirit, which in the terminology of the philosophers is the rational soul, embraces all beings, and as far as human ability permits discovers the realities of things and becomes cognizant of their peculiarities and effects, and of the qualities and properties of beings” Some Answered Questions, p. 208

55: SOUL, SPIRIT AND MIND

I did not decide that only humans have a soul, that is my belief. I do not know when or how humans got a soul but I believe the soul is a creation of God. The soul is a mystery and it is thus not measurable.

“Thou hast asked Me concerning the nature of the soul. Know, verily, that the soul is a sign of God, a heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of men hath failed to grasp, and whose mystery no mind, however acute, can ever hope to unravel. It is the first among all created things to declare the excellence of its Creator, the first to recognize His glory, to cleave to His truth, and to bow down in adoration before Him. If it be faithful to God, it will reflect His light, and will, eventually, return unto Him. If it fail, however, in its allegiance to its Creator, it will become a victim to self and passion, and will, in the end, sink in their depths.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 158-159

See, for me that's all just make believe.

I guess if you're satisfied with that answer, more power to you.

But I don't think it answers anything. You could literally substitute any fictional claim that pretends to differentiate animals from humans and end up with the same outcome, which is to say that paragraph has no validity.

Consider:

"The difference between humans and animals is the soul."

"Ok, so can we measure it?"

"Nope."

"What does the soul do?"

"It's a mystery, but basically anything I need it to and entirely without empirical evidence. Basically just my say so and the books I drew this fictional information from."

"Nice! Like what can the soul do?"

"Oh, it lives forever! And doesn't need a body!"

"Why do we have bodies then?"

"Because . . . uh . . . so we can learn!"

"You mean we couldn't learn if we didn't have a body - why couldn't we just watch animals for millions of years and learn from them?"

"You have to experience it yourself."

"That makes sense. Why don't animals have souls?"

"Oh, because."

"Because what?"

"You know, God doesn't want them to."

"But I like my dog!"

"So what? It's going to die."

etc., etc. You can literally just make up anything and call it "soul." Pretty uninteresting for me.

 

[Trailblazer]

Unanswerable questions AND the fact that deities ruin our explanatory models.

How do deities ruin your explanatory models? I believe that science and religion are in harmony and they are not in conflict although they have different scopes of knowledge.

Here's the thing: I can make up any fiction and it'll have equal validity to your claims about your deity. To me, that's pretty good evidence that your claims are fiction.

Why would any fiction you make up have equal validity to your claims about your deity?

Here's the thing: It is illogical to say that just because you can make something up and it will be fiction that religious beliefs are also fictitious. That is called the fallacy of hasty generalization.

Hasty generalization is an informal fallacy of faulty generalization by reaching an inductive generalization based on insufficient evidence—essentially making a hasty conclusion without considering all of the variables.

Hasty generalization usually shows this pattern

1. X is true for A.
2. X is true for B.
3. Therefore, X is true for C, D, etc.

Faulty generalization - Wikipedia

For example, if a person x makes something up about the deity, person y makes something up about the deity, and person z makes something up about the deity, that does not mean that what is written in scriptures about the deity is also made up. To conclude that would be to commit the Fallacy of Hasty Generalization and the Fallacy of Jumping to conclusions.

 

[Trailblazer]

The tests I have outlined demonstrate that religious claims are equal to the claims of fiction.

The problem is that your tests do not demonstrate anything to anyone except you.
I could devise my own tests and say they demonstrate that my deity exists but that would not prove anything.

And I'm not conflating science and religion. I'm using science to show that the claims of religion are equal to fiction in their explanatory power.

Problem is, you cannot use science to show that the claims of religion are false because science cannot touch religious claims with a ten foot pole..

Please note that I see religion itself as a cultural system.

That is what you see but that does not make it the truth. Religion is related to culture but that is not where it originates. It originates from God.

 

[Hidingfromyou]

How do deities ruin your explanatory models? I believe that science and religion are in harmony and they are not in conflict although they have different scopes of knowledge.

Why would any fiction you make up have equal validity to your claims about your deity?

Here's the thing: It is illogical to say that just because you can make something up and it will be fiction that religious beliefs are also fictitious. That is called the fallacy of hasty generalization.

Hasty generalization is an informal fallacy of faulty generalization by reaching an inductive generalization based on insufficient evidence—essentially making a hasty conclusion without considering all of the variables.

Hasty generalization usually shows this pattern

1. X is true for A.
2. X is true for B.
3. Therefore, X is true for C, D, etc.

Faulty generalization - Wikipedia

For example, if a person x makes something up about the deity, person y makes something up about the deity, and person z makes something up about the deity, that does not mean that what is written in scriptures about the deity is also made up. To conclude that would be to commit the Fallacy of Hasty Generalization and the Fallacy of Jumping to conclusions.

Thanks for that explanation - very helpful!

I think you're incorrect though - my argument specifically stops at point 2. above, not 3. It goes like this:

1. fiction (A) has zero validity (X)
2. religion (B) has zero validity (X)
3. therefore X is true for A and B

I'm not generalizing zero validity to anything other than fiction.

Re: your final point: we can test the validity of all claims about deities. If they cannot be tested, their validity = zero, which is the same validity fiction has. Ergo, religion shares a lot in common with fiction.

 

[Hidingfromyou]

The problem is that your tests do not demonstrate anything to anyone except you.
I could devise my own tests and say they demonstrate that my deity exists but that would not prove anything.

Problem is, you cannot use science to show that the claims of religion are false because science cannot touch religious claims with a ten foot pole..

That is what you see but that does not make it the truth. Religion is related to culture but that is not where it originates. It originates from God.

You're actually incorrect here. The tests are universal and they're not mine. They're simply how scientific models work.

The basic formula works like this: We have a claim X about a phenomena Q. We can therefore make up hypotheses about X and Q to see if they affect each other. If they do not affect each other, if their claimed effects cannot be tested, their validity is zero.

Second, we can try adding the X claim to any explanatory model and see what happens. If it makes the model better, then X has very strong validity and probably exists. If X makes the model worse, we can dismiss it as irrelevant (at best).

Re: your last sentence: this is false. Religious claims about the nature of reality can be tested. Religious claims that aren't about the nature of reality cannot be tested. Additionally, your sentence here ignores history - keep in mind that science has, ever so slowly, wrested explanatory models from religion by demonstrating superior explanatory and predictive power. In other words, science has demonstrated, throughout history, that religious claims about the nature of reality have zero merit.

 

[Trailblazer]

The evolution of the brain didn't start when we evolved into humans.

I never said it did.

At what point? Could you explain exactly where you claim a deity inserted this soul?

I would not know at what point. Only God is privy to that knowledge.

So how come we are still evolving?

Why wouldn't we be? I believe that humans continue to evolve throughout all time.

They are entirely unevidenced, are not remotely needed or evidenced in all of evolutionary science, and the other claims are just meaningless bare assertions.

I never claimed they are. Religion is not science.

Then what are you basing your claim it is part of a scientific fact like species evolution on?

I never claimed that my beliefs are part of a scientific fact. Science and religion are different scopes of knowledge and they do not overlap. They are like two wings of a bird that are separate from each other. Both science and religion are necessary for humanity to survive and thrive and evolve but they address different aspects of our life on earth. Science addresses the physical reality and religion addresses moral behavior and spiritual reality.

 

[Trailblazer]

See, for me that's all just make believe.

I guess if you're satisfied with that answer, more power to you.

For me it is real, not make believe, but you are free to hold any position you want to.

But I don't think it answers anything. You could literally substitute any fictional claim that pretends to differentiate animals from humans and end up with the same outcome, which is to say that paragraph has no validity.

What you are saying is not logical and I already explained why. In short, just because there can be many fictional claims that does not mean that there is not one claim that is actually true in reality.

By the way, more has been revealed about the soul than you listed. We cannot ever know the nature of the soul but we can know the function of the soul.

 

[Trailblazer]

Yeah, and how does that explain how God has knowledge of a future that hasn't yet happened?

For God, everything has already happened. There is no past, present, and future, God knows everything simultaneously because omniscience is an attribute of God.

“Every act ye meditate is as clear to Him as is that act when already accomplished. There is none other God besides Him. His is all creation and its empire. All stands revealed before Him; all is recorded in His holy and hidden Tablets. This fore-knowledge of God, however, should not be regarded as having caused the actions of men, just as your own previous knowledge that a certain event is to occur, or your desire that it should happen, is not and can never be the reason for its occurrence.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 150

Question.—If God has knowledge of an action which will be performed by someone, and it has been written on the Tablet of Fate, is it possible to resist it?

Answer.—The foreknowledge of a thing is not the cause of its realization; for the essential knowledge of God surrounds, in the same way, the realities of things, before as well as after their existence, and it does not become the cause of their existence. It is a perfection of God.......
Some Answered Questions, p. 138

 

[Hidingfromyou]

For me it is real, not make believe, but you are free to hold any position you want to.

I hold all kinds of positions! Why, right now I'm sitting

What you are saying is not logical and I already explained why. In short, just because there can be many fictional claims that does not mean that there is not one claim that is actually true in reality.

If one claim were true, it would not have zero validity when we tested it.

True claims do not have zero validity. That's where the testing part comes in. So, yes, we can differentiate between fiction and reality . . . by . . . testing them. I'm somehow not getting this part of the argument across. I suck

By the way, more has been revealed about the soul than you listed. We cannot ever know the nature of the soul but we can know the function of the soul.

How can you know the function of the soul?

Wait! Let me guess: it's in your mythology text.

Why should we trust that mythology text over any other mythology text?

Wait! I got this: because you really believe it to be true. Further, you believe that evidence supports its claims!

Well, believers of other religions "know" their mythologies to be true as strongly as you believe in yours.

This brings us back to my original argument. All these mythologies are equal in validity, and equal to fiction.

 

[Hidingfromyou]

For me it is real, not make believe, but you are free to hold any position you want to.

Also the above is wise.

We're all subjective beings who mistake our subjective experience for objective reality. So, yes, what you're telling me is real for you.

 

[Trailblazer]

Thanks for that explanation - very helpful!

I think you're incorrect though - my argument specifically stops at point 2. above, not 3. It goes like this:

1. fiction (A) has zero validity (X)
2. religion (B) has zero validity (X)
3. therefore X is true for A and B

I'm not generalizing zero validity to anything other than fiction.

Re: your final point: we can test the validity of all claims about deities. If they cannot be tested, their validity = zero, which is the same validity fiction has. Ergo, religion shares a lot in common with fiction.

Everything you have is just a personal opinion, it is not a fact.

That religion has zero validity is only your personal opinion.
If claims about deities cannot be tested, their validity = zero is only your personal opinion.

Your personal opinion is no more valid than my belief. The hundred-dollar difference is that I have scriptures as the basis for my beliefs and all you have are your personal opinions.

 

[Hidingfromyou]

Everything you have is just a personal opinion, it is not a fact.

That religion has zero validity is only your personal opinion.
If claims about deities cannot be tested, their validity = zero is only your personal opinion.

Your personal opinion is no more valid than my belief. The hundred-dollar difference is that I have scriptures as the basis for my beliefs and all you have are your personal opinions.

If it's just my personal opinion that religious claims to reality have zero validity, please give me the religious claims that contradict me!

I'd love to know them!

 

[muhammad_isa]

I'd love to know them!

Don't you know them already?
How can you say that they have no validity if you don't know them?

 

[Trailblazer]

You're actually incorrect here. The tests are universal and they're not mine. They're simply how scientific models work.

The basic formula works like this: We have a claim X about a phenomena Q. We can therefore make up hypotheses about X and Q to see if they affect each other. If they do not affect each other, if their claimed effects cannot be tested, their validity is zero.

Second, we can try adding the X claim to any explanatory model and see what happens. If it makes the model better, then X has very strong validity and probably exists. If X makes the model worse, we can dismiss it as irrelevant (at best).

Re: your last sentence: this is false. Religious claims about the nature of reality can be tested. Religious claims that aren't about the nature of reality cannot be tested. Additionally, your sentence here ignores history - keep in mind that science has, ever so slowly, wrested explanatory models from religion by demonstrating superior explanatory and predictive power. In other words, science has demonstrated, throughout history, that religious claims about the nature of reality have zero merit.

Scientific models cannot test religion.
Science has no predictive power, religion does.
Science cannot explain anything other than why things work in the material world.
Science does not know anything about the purpose of physical reality.
Science does not know anything about spiritual reality.
Science does not know anything about what humans were created for and why we are here.
Science has not demonstrated that religious claims about the nature of reality have zero merit.
That is a bald assertion.

Game over.

 

[Trailblazer]

True claims do not have zero validity.

That's right, and that is why my claims do not have zero validity.

 

[Hidingfromyou]

Scientific models cannot test religion.
Science has no predictive power, religion does.

Religion has zero predictive power. Scientific explanatory models that are confirmed have great predictive power.

Science cannot explain anything other than why things work in the material world.
Science does not know anything about the purpose of physical reality.
Science does not know anything about spiritual reality.
Science does not know anything about what humans were created for and why we are here.
Science has not demonstrated that religious claims about the nature of reality have zero merit.
That is a bald assertion.

Game over.

1. Ok, sounds good!
2. The purpose of physical reality?

Uhm, what?

3. Spiritual reality = fiction. Hence, it can't be measured. Zero validity.
4. Humans weren't created. We evolved.

Mythological claims about human creation = again, zero validity. Make-believe. All equal.

5. You're quite wrong here, my friend. History has shown that scientific explanations of reality have removed religious explanations in every single discipline of knowledge.

Remember the sin theory of disease? Gone. Replaced by the germ theory.
Remember the earth centric solar system? Gone.
Remember spontaneous creation? Gone.
Catastrophsim? Gone.

 

[Hidingfromyou]

That's right, and that is why my claims do not have zero validity.

Please give me a true claim from your religion that has validity.