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

[muhammad_isa]

Whatever choice any of us face (whether it is A 0r B, or one of 50 options), our response is determined to a degree by the nature of our lives up to that point, in relation to that decision..

Yes, I have no problem with that.. it's called experience I would say. There would be a reason why we choose things. That doesn't mean that we aren't free to choose.
You are merely 'tinkering' with the definition of free-will.

 

[muhammad_isa]

If you knew, with absolute certainty and a complete inability to be wrong, that I would order chicken for dinner tonight at a restaurant - when I came to order, could I choose beef or fish? No, obviously not, because you cannot be wrong. Do I still have the ability to choose beef or fish? Another no.
So if I cannot choose, and have no ability to choose, where is my free will?

No, no, no .. you do NOT know what you will choose
..and even if you did, it does not follow that you don't WANT to choose what you apparently 'have to' .

 

[Aupmanyav]

What is weird about it? Humans have free will to make moral choices and we are judged according to the moral choices that we make.
The fact that God knows what we will do has nothing to do with what we choose to do. God knows what we will do because God is all-knowing. It is as simple as that.

Yeah, we choose what we do? An imaginary entity like God cannot affect our choice.
We are judged? Where? When? By whom? First establish the existence of such a judge.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Christians that believe Jesus is God? Baha'is say are wrong, yet they have millions and millions of followers. I don't believe the claims of Joseph Smith, but more people believe him than believe in Baha'u'llah. So does a "prophet" need to be true to get people to believe in his claims? Or just sound kind of true, because no one can really prove it one way or another.

You get it right. Such a prophet or his made up story is judged by the number of people that are fooled into accepting him.

Why shouldn't God let them do what they choose to do? He created humans with a rational mind and free will to choose and He sent Messengers to reveal teachings and laws, so if humans reject those teachings so if they make the wrong choices that's on them.

It is quite apparent that in case a God created humans, he did not create them rational, otherwise people would not indulge in evil deeds. And just like God, the messengers sent by him also failed because humans still engage in evil deeds. It is a foolish thing to expect that where he himself failed, his prophets / son / messengers / manifestations / mahdis will succeed. That people still make bad choices, and that clearly means that this supposed God and his self-proclaimed prophets / son / messengers / manifestations / mahdis are nothing other than a farce.

 

[Sheldon]

Just because God knows what we will do that does not mean the future is fixed. The future is not fixed. It is changing constantly.

I know, I never claimed it was fixed, and I don't believe in fate anymore than any deity. I was responding to a claim made by a theist.

 

[Sheldon]

They would be mutually exclusive IF and only if, that which was fixing it was beyond your control. But it isn't.

Then the future is not fixed, which was what you claimed.

 

[Sheldon]

BTW, God heard my cries and He answered them is not an assumption, it is a faith-based belief.

Precisely my point, and I quoted the assumption verbatim, so it's not a straw man. As for cherry picking your posts, no offence but your posts sometimes seem to go on a bit, with woolly platitudes, and so I can't comment as they don't mean anything to me, they come across as deepities.

 

[Sheldon]

The people who do horrible things are to blame, God is not, because God does not do those things.

IF you could stop a paedophile raping a child one assumes you would. According to your belief a deity exists that could easily stop this, and does nothing. It would be like me letting it happen if I could stop it, and just phoning the police later to punish them, that's the deity you're describing.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Then the future is not fixed, which was what you claimed.

I'm coming to the conclusion, that you are trolling

my post #2460:-
"If the past is fixed, then we demonstrably cannot change it, thus free will is negated"

The above is not true .. would you agree?

 

[Sheldon]

I'm coming to the conclusion, that you are trolling

my post #2460:-
"If the past is fixed, then we demonstrably cannot change it, thus free will is negated"

The above is not true .. would you agree?

Your conclusion like much else you post is erroneous. We have no control to change the past, if that is what you're suggesting.

However you asserted that the future is fixed, and that we have free will. If the future is fixed or predetermined then that would negate free will entirely.

 

[Sheldon]

OK.
This is your argument ..
"Nope, your claim the future is fixed negates the possibility of free will."
"The idiocy of that assertion is self evident sorry."

I have tried to explain it to you.
You have a fixed idea, and want to stick.
It's your choice

According to you I don't have a choice, as the future is fixed. Does the word fixed mean something different to you than it does me?

Adjective
...predetermined and not able to be changed.

 

[muhammad_isa]

We have no control to change the past, if that is what you're suggesting.

Of course we can't change the past .. it is fixed. Does that mean that the past is a series of events that people were somehow "forced" to do?
..or is it possible that the past can be fixed while people exercised their free-will?

 

[Sheldon]

Predestination and infallible omniscience are two different issues (although the effective outcome is the same, a negation of free will).
Infallible omniscience is not god deciding what we will do, it is making the outcome of our decision inevitable by the inability of his foreknowledge to be wrong.

Here your man is making the common, fundamental error of conflating our ability to make guesses about future events with gods infallible omniscience.

If you knew, with absolute certainty and a complete inability to be wrong, that I would order chicken for dinner tonight at a restaurant - when I came to order, could I choose beef or fish? No, obviously not, because you cannot be wrong. Do I still have the ability to choose beef or fish? Another no.
So if I cannot choose, and have no ability to choose, where is my free will?

I think we might be heading towards omniscient lite. I have heard this kind of apologetics before, god knows everything, but simultaneously does not know everything, compelling isn't it. It goes like this, a deity knows every possible outcome that you will choose, but you are free to choose one, so you still have free will. Except then I asked does the deity know which one I will choose?

Either answer will show again that divine omniscience and free will are mutually exclusive.

I liked the answer the Hitch once gave, as it made me laugh. I'm paraphrasing but it went like this...

Yes ok if you insist on a yes no answer, then yes I have free will, in fact you could say I have no choice but to have it.

 

[Sheldon]

Of course we can't change the past .. it is fixed. Does that mean that the past is a series of events that people were somehow "forced" to do?
..or is it possible that the past can be fixed while people exercised their free-will?

Past tense, it is fixed now that it has passed. If it was fixed before it happened as you claimed that would negate me having any choices at all, let alone the misnomer of free will. Since I live in a temporal universe. So I have no will of any kind over the past, as it is now fixed. Are you still claiming the future is fixed?

 

[Sheldon]

Predestination and infallible omniscience are two different issues (although the effective outcome is the same, a negation of free will).

Thank you...

 

[muhammad_isa]

Past tense, it is fixed now that it has passed. If it was fixed before it happened as you claimed that would negate me having any choices at all, let alone the misnomer of free will. Since I live in a temporal universe. So I have no will of any kind over the past, as it is now fixed. Are you still claiming the future is fixed?

..you are dodging the question

is it possible that the past can be fixed
while people are exercising their free-will?
Yes or No?

If it was fixed before it happened..

Before or after are purely our perceptions.
Both time periods are a series of events.
They are both fixed.
.. it is just that we know what the past is, but not what the future is

..so what fixes the past? Events fix the past, including those that arise from decisions we make.
..and what fixes the future? It is identical .. the same as the past, above

 

[RestlessSoul]

If we had access to more data about the future, we would be able to make better predictions about the past.

Which may sound like an absurdity, but it’s one of the conclusions of this recent paper about time symmetry in quantum mechanics

The arrow of time in operational formulations of quantum theory


In the meantime we exist only in the present; and nothing is fixed, all perception is a function of the perspective of the observer.

 

[KWED]

I don't know exactly what God sees .. how could I???

You said ... "The fact that God is aware of the future IN NO WAY takes our free-will from us."
Therefore you must have very specific knowledge of how god sees the future and how that affects our choices.
You need to understand that when you say something, it has meaning and implication.

I AM saying that the future is fixed .. just like the past is fixed.

I agree that under the concepts of predestination or infallible omniscience our futures are fixed and cannot be changed.
What I don't understand is how you go on to insist that we still have free will to alter that future.

We still have a real choice. It is us that is "fixing it", in exactly the same way as the past is fixed. Why you are thinking that, is because of our perception that somehow, the future and the past have a different nature.

You are failing to grasp the key issue here. Without god's infallible omniscience, there would be no fixed future because there was no inerrant template which every action and event must match.
It is only our choices being observed by god that fixes them, not the choices themselves. Remember that we are not "outside spacetime". We experience time in a linear progression. Whatever choice I make tomorrow has not been made until I make it.

They don't .. the past was once the future.

That's like saying that a tree is the same as a table.

An "observer" that has a different frame of reference, does not force a person in another to act in a certain way. [ think Einstein and relativity ]

Again, no one is being "forced" to do anything. It is just that every decision is inevitable, regardless of how freely choses it seems to the subject.

Stuff & nonsense .. sorry

Under the concepts of predestination and infallible omniscience, that is pretty much what is happening - although it depends on which version of god we are talking about.
Which is your preferred version of god?

 

[KWED]

I see.
Oh well, we aren't all scientifically minded.
Do you know anything about science or Einstein?
..probably not.
As you were

Ok. Explain how "science and Einstein" mean that a person's future is fixed in the same way as their past is.

Also, if they are the same, how can we change the future but not change the past?

 

[muhammad_isa]

..no one is being "forced" to do anything. It is just that every decision is inevitable, regardless of how freely choses it seems to the subject..

..well now you're saying that there is no such thing as free-will.
If you can't accept that we make choices freely, and want to complicate the issue by suggesting that we only APPEAR to be making choices but in reality we have no choice at all, then you are wasting both of our time