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

[Tiberius]

It is the outcome that will be but God does not DETERMINE that outcome, God just KNOWS the outcome because God is all-knowing and has foreknowledge.

How many times do I have to say it?

IT DOESN'T MATTER IF GOD ISN'T THE ONE THAT DETERMINES IT.

The problem is caused by the fact that it is determined at all.

 

[Tiberius]

No.

So I do not have a choice then, do I?

You are agreeing with me.

 

[muhammad_isa]

And I can't choose to do anything other than what is written there, can I?

Hence, no choice.

I'm sorry, but you are mistaken..

You have a choice of red or blue.
You can make any choice you like.
Hey presto .. it just happens to be what God knows.

..but you are saying that you haven't got a choice, because you have to pick what God knows.
That is deceitful. It is known as a modal fallacy. It confuses the scope of what is necessarily true.
"What God knows" is contingent [ dependent ].
Otherwise, one can argue that the future is set already regardless of your actions.

 

[Trailblazer]

Your attempts to hide behind wordplay are tiresome.

And these repetitive posts are tiresome and lead nowhere but in circles, but guess what? I have free will and I just used my free will to decide that I was not going to respond to anything else in this post and this is the best I have felt all day...
Free will is a charm.

 

[Trailblazer]

I'll never understand it because it doesn't make sense.

It doesn't make sense to you and that is why I just used my free will to decide not to talk about it anymore.

 

[Trailblazer]

I'm sorry, but you are mistaken..

You have a choice of red or blue.
You can make any choice you like.
Hey presto .. it just happens to be what God knows.

..but you are saying that you haven't got a choice, because you have to pick what God knows.
That is deceitful. It is known as a modal fallacy. It confuses the scope of what is necessarily true.
"What God knows" is contingent [ dependent ].
Otherwise, one can argue that the future is set already regardless of your actions.

I appreciate your efforts but it is a waste of time to try to reason with some people. They will never understand because they do not even want to try to see another perspective. They have already decided they are right and the only thing that matters to them is being right.

But another problem and an insurmountable one is that they know nothing about the nature of God so they are flying blind in every single debate about God. It is often comical to watch but sad to see and I get to a point where I realize it is an exercise in futility. If they have no genuine interest in the truth about God I have better things I can be doing. There are actually people who want to believe in God.

 

[muhammad_isa]

I appreciate your efforts but it is a waste of time to try to reason with some people. They will never understand because they do not even want to try to see another perspective. They have already decided they are right and the only thing that matters to them is being right..

I know what you mean..
However, I find many atheists argue along the lines that "science proves you wrong" etc. when discussing religion..

My post tries to explain why they are wrong according to the scientific/philosophical "laws of logic".
Naturally, not all atheists are scientifically minded..
Let's wait and see what @Tiberius has to say about it being a modal fallacy.

 

[joelr]

How on earth do you thing everyone would ever come to the same conclusion about a religion? That is logically impossible!
Well, I should not say it is impossible, but it is impossible the way people are at this time. In the future I think everyone will know that the Baha'i Faith is true, based upon what Baha'u'llah wrote:

“Warn and acquaint the people, O Servant, with the things We have sent down unto Thee, and let the fear of no one dismay Thee, and be Thou not of them that waver. The day is approaching when God will have exalted His Cause and magnified His testimony in the eyes of all who are in the heavens and all who are on the earth.”Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 248

There are things most people on Earth believe to be true. We believe the sun is a star and the basic physics of it as well as it's motion. A God would surely understand what evidence would convince everyone and would have no problem knowing and producing the evidence if it felt this was important.
In the future far less people will believe Bahai and other beliefs based on bad evidence (incorrect science, no actual prophecy, no accurate predictions, no philosophy, poetry that could be easily written by men) as if a God only wanted people who would believe based on terrible evidence?
And clearly people do just that. The evidence for Mormonism is terrible. In the 70s an Ethiopian Emperor who claimed not to be a God and was a confessed Christian died and not long after myths about him were created - his coming was prophesied in the OT, his birth was accompanied by miracles, he was a child with immense wisdom and powers, his actions were prefigured in the OT, performed miracles, was an incarnation of God, communicates with his followers after death and will one day return and live with his people in a kingdom of God. This is Haile Selassie of the Rastafari religion.

Critical thinking will hopefully win out before more "messengers" come and bring new radical versions of religions.

 

[TheBrokenSoul]

Why? We know where humanity came from without having to have been there to watch it. Observation in science doesn't mean observation of the unobservable past. It means observation of what is here now, and deducing what that past must have been like. That's how forensic investigations go, for example. Criminologists look at fingerprints, DNA, fibers, surveillance video, etc.. They all exist now and are all looked at now to decide what happened in the unobservable past. If we find a print in the car now, it's owner was in the car in the past. If the surveillance video shows people walking through an alley as we watch it now, it tells us what happened before.

We have enough evidence to conclude that the theory of evolution is correct beyond a reasonable doubt.



It does. It did.

That isn't even a decent argument in reply ,means nothing .

 

[muhammad_isa]

There are things most people on Earth believe to be true. We believe the sun is a star and the basic physics of it as well as it's motion. A God would surely understand what evidence would convince everyone and would have no problem knowing and producing the evidence if it felt this was important..

It is not possible to "convince" everybody.
Please answer the OP..
What would be evidence of God’s existence?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

So why wouldn't it be evidence for God if Baha'u'llah described knowledge that the people of His time could not possibly have had?

People come up with hypotheses about what might be true all the time. Some of these hypotheses get tested, and some of them get proven true. There's nothing in this process that requires any gods.

... and that's in the best possible case: that you're representing the "knowledge" described by Baha'u'llah in good faith.

There's a common tactic by many religious people (e.g. the "science in the Qur'an" types) to take vague, flowery, or otherwise unclear passages in their scripture and take a "Texas Sharpshooter" approach to reinterpreting them, taking anything that vaguely sounds like current scientific knowledge as "proof" that the author/prophet/whatever had knowledge from God.

Personally, I tend to assume that the person arguing that there's "science" in their scriptures is probably overstating what's actually in their scriptures this way.

 

[CG Didymus]

So someone makes a claim, and if they share your faith and say that it proves your faith is correct, then you just accept it?

I thought you said we should verify things. You don't seem to have done that here.

There's so many variables in religion. People can say they believe in it, and in their head actually not believe much of it at all. And I got to believe, that someone that goes to the extreme of trying to believe all of their religion literally, really doesn't.

For me, I can't believe in any of them completely, literally or enough for me to say, "Ah, this one is true." Before knowing what it was to believe in some of the others, I was taught and learned about one. I believed and it worked for me. Then a friend told about his religion. And it contradicted what the other religion had said was true. I tried it. I let myself believe it and it worked for me... until I found reasons to doubt... and to question it. I talked to people in a third religion. A religion that both the others said was true, but that didn't accept them as true. I asked, "They believe your religion is true, but you don't believe in theirs... Why? And they told me, and I agreed with them. That they had good reasons not to believe in those others. But, for the same reasons they didn't believe in those others, I didn't believe in them.

All religions have some good reasons and some benefits for people to believe in them. But there's also good reasons not to believe in them. Like Baha'is say, most all of the major religions have similar beliefs about being good, loving people. But then they get into their "spiritual", unprovable claims and beliefs. And beliefs about how accurate, how literal, how true their Scriptures are. Anyone, if they wanted to, could poke holes in those beliefs. And religions poke holes in each other beliefs, because they are contradictory.

Now Baha'is say they accept all the other religions. But, then even they reject most all of the doctrines and beliefs of the other religions. So what's left? The very general things that most all people believe in... be nice, don't lie, love they neighbor kind of stuff. Well, who needs a God to tell us that those things are better than hating, killing, and being greedy, selfish people. And that's what Baha'is expect the other religions to do... To put aside those beliefs that divide us. Which, for the other religions, includes some major doctrinal beliefs. But Baha'is expect people to accept their unprovable spiritual beliefs as true.

Lots of good stuff in the Baha'i Faith, that I'm sure if applied would help people get along with each other much better. But they have to add in... That there guy, is not only the return of Christ but the return of every promised one of all religions. That all religions are one, but most of the laws of the Baha'i Faith sound like they came straight from Islam. For some people the Baha'i Faith sounds so reasonable, so practical. But everything in it? Everything they say? I don't think so. And I'm glad to see that people here, especially the Atheists, keep finding glitches in their beliefs... Things that they say and accept as true, but aren't provable, so they aren't "objectively" true.

And that's the problem with religions, even one like the Baha'i Faith... The believers feel as if they have to stand up for their religion, that, no matter what, it has to be shown to be true in everything they say. I hope there's some kind of all-loving, positive creative force out there, but I hope it isn't like the God of religion. And I hope that we are free to make choices that matter, real choices, and, if we make the wrong choice, to keep learning from our mistakes.

 

[Tiberius]

I'm sorry, but you are mistaken..

You have a choice of red or blue.
You can make any choice you like.
Hey presto .. it just happens to be what God knows.

..but you are saying that you haven't got a choice, because you have to pick what God knows.
That is deceitful. It is known as a modal fallacy. It confuses the scope of what is necessarily true.
"What God knows" is contingent [ dependent ].
Otherwise, one can argue that the future is set already regardless of your actions.

What you are saying makes no sense.

If God knows ahead of time what I will do, I MUST act in the way he saw. I can not act in any other way.

That means I have no choice.

Allow me to ask you the same question I asked Trailblazer.

Right now, God comes to you and says, "Hey, Muhammad, tomorrow, Tibs is going to wear the red shirt."

Now tell me, is there anyway that I could choose to wear the blue shirt after God has told you that I am absolutely guaranteed to wear the red shirt?

 

[Trailblazer]

I hope there's some kind of all-loving, positive creative force out there, but I hope it isn't like the God of religion. And I hope that we are free to make choices that matter, real choices, and, if we make the wrong choice, to keep learning from our mistakes.

You can hope all you want, but the evidence indicates that God is revealed through Messengers who establish religions. If you have decided they are not true why keep talking about them? Why talk about the Baha'i Faith at all? I don't like to waste time talking just to talk, if the talking leads nowhere, talking about the same things over and over and over again.

I know what I believe is true based on my own reason and logic applied to the evidence for the Baha'i Faith so I have no need to talk about it to people who just want to argue and try to prove I am wrong. What an utter waste of time I could be using to talk to people who might be interested in God and/or the Baha'i Faith or to do something else.

 

[Tiberius]

And these repetitive posts are tiresome and lead nowhere but in circles, but guess what? I have free will and I just used my free will to decide that I was not going to respond to anything else in this post and this is the best I have felt all day...
Free will is a charm.

Well, you don't have to respond to anything else. But a non-answer is hardly going to support your position, is it?

 

[Tiberius]

It doesn't make sense to you and that is why I just used my free will to decide not to talk about it anymore.

It literally violates the rules of logic. It doesn't make sense to ANYONE. Even if that person believes that they have figured out a way for it to make sense.

 

[Trailblazer]

Well, you don't have to respond to anything else. But a non-answer is hardly going to support your position, is it?

I told you a long time ago I am not here to debate and prove I am right, I am here for a discussion, but no discussion can be had when people already have their minds made up and they don't even want to look at another perspective.

 

[Tiberius]

I told you a long time ago I am not here to debate and prove I am right, I am here for a discussion, but no discussion can be had when people already have their minds made up and they don't even want to look at another perspective.

And I've told you many times that I am happy to consider any perspective you have to offer. I will even abandon my current views and embrace a different point of view. All I need is evidence.

 

[Trailblazer]

It literally violates the rules of logic. It doesn't make sense to ANYONE. Even if that person believes that they have figured out a way for it to make sense.

It makes sense to me an a lot of other people, including @muhammad_isa.
What you believe is no logical at all and he explained why.

The problem is that you do not know anything about the nature of God. You cannot understand how God can know something and we can still have free will without understanding how what God knows does not affect what we choose to do. The ONLY reason we will choose to do what God knows we will do is because God knows we will do it. We can choose a or b or c, but whatever we choose will be identical to what God knew we would choose since God always knew what we would choose.

God's knowledge was not the CAUSE of what we chose to do. We made a free will choice and acted upon our choice and thereby caused it to happen. God has always known exactly what would happen because God is all-knowing. It is as simple as that.

 

[Trailblazer]

And I've told you many times that I am happy to consider any perspective you have to offer. I will even abandon my current views and embrace a different point of view. All I need is evidence.

But you have made it abundantly clear that you don't like what I have presented as evidence and you don't consider it to be evidence. You have also said you have concluded that the Baha'i Faith is false. I concluded it is true a long time ago and I am not changing my position because I know it is true. I do not believe it because I want it to be true, but because of the evidence and because it makes logical sense to me.