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

[Sheldon]

Not really..

You said: So a deity doesn't know which choice I will ultimately make before I make it?

I showed you that Physics suggests that the future has "already happened" .. which means that is possible for a diety to know the future.

Do you believe in Einsteinian physics or not?
If so, do you argue that that means free-will is purely an illusion?
Many people do..

I asked a question, you are misrepresenting it as a statement, and you are ignoring the context of the post I was replying to. Now you are introducing a red herring that was not part of that discussion. Note I have made no claims about free will, only challenged the notion that a deity exists and knows what I will do and I still have any choices to make.

 

[Sheldon]

You have a poor memory and/or you have a difficulty in reading.

Ad hominem fallacy.

I have showed you the logical prrof that free-will and omniscience are not mutually exclusive, but you don't show me where I'm wrong.

No you haven't, and that is an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy as well.

I haev NOT attempted to prove that a diety exists .. you are in error.

Or offered a shred of any objective evidence, but look who you're telling.

 

[muhammad_isa]

No you haven't,.

There isn't much point in discussing anything with a person who ignores truth when it is shown to them..
Let me jog your memory.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Is the above illogical ?
I consider the above to be a proof that free-will and omniscience are compatible.

Anybody who says a person has no choice, as they HAVE to pick what God knows is guilty of a modal fallacy.
It is illogical and flawed, although it appears to be correct to the layman who hasn't thought about it.

Anybody who continues to propagate a logical fallacy is either willfully trying to mislead, or just trolling or unable to understand the rules of logic.
Which is it, in your case?

 

[Sheldon]

There isn't much point in discussing anything with a person who ignores truth when it is shown to them..

Well I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for now.

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.

Are you claiming this deity knew beforehand which one of those two choices that I would choose? As that was the claim I was responding to, and it would negate me having a choice, obviously.

..but you are saying that you haven't got a choice, because you have to pick what God knows.

It is axiomatic that if I have to pick the only one a deity knows I will pick beforehand then no other choices are possible. If all the deity knows is i will pick one, then you're describing any human being, not an omniscient deity, and not the one you and TB have been arguing for.

That is deceitful. It is known as a modal fallacy. It confuses the scope of what is necessarily true.

I disagree, since you and TB are dealing in hypotheticals here anyway. However modal logic cannot ignore what is necessary, and in order for me to have any choice, it cannot be known beforehand that I will make a single choice, the rest as I say is coloured bubbles.

"What God knows" is contingent [ dependent ].
Otherwise, one can argue that the future is set already regardless of your actions.

Trailblazer said that a deity knew which one choice I would make before I made it, and that is what I was responding to. If that were the case it is necessarily true I could only make that one choice. The rest is coloured bubbles.

Is the above illogical ?
I consider the above to be a proof that free-will and omniscience are compatible.

Well I don't, and if you are claiming a deity knows before hand which choice I will make, then that necessarily negates any other choices being made.

Anybody who says a person has no choice, as they HAVE to pick what God knows is guilty of a modal fallacy.
It is illogical and flawed, although it appears to be correct to the layman who hasn't thought about it.

Again I disagree, you just seem to have shifted the goalposts with semantics. If a deity knows beforehand what I will choose, then obviously I cannot choose otherwise. If a deity knows which choice I will make before i make it then all other choices are negated, if on the other hand it knows all choices i can make but not the one I will ultimately make, then it is demonstrably not omniscient.

Anybody who continues to propagate a logical fallacy is either willfully trying to mislead, or just trolling or unable to understand the rules of logic.
Which is it, in your case?

Well that's pretty hilarious given how often both you and TB have done this, and there are only 3 l's wilfully. The answer to that piece of sophistry however is neither, and the fact you resort to that level of sophistry rather suggests you are the one who is trolling.

You're making a claim that contains an innate contradiction, based on unevidenced assumptions, about a deity you also can demonstrate no objective evidence for. So you can claim a modal fallacy all you want, but it is necessarily true that for me to have a choice the ultimate choice I make cannot be known beforehand. If anyone is using a Modal fallacy here it is you and Trailblazer.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Trailblazer said that a deity knew which one choice would make before I made it, and that is what I was responding to.

We are discussing..

""What God knows" is contingent [ dependent ].
Otherwise, one can argue that the future is set already regardless of your actions."

What that means is that your statement "It is axiomatic that if I have to pick one a deity knows i will pick beforehand then no other choices are possible."

is incorrect. That is because you say "no other choices are possible", which is the same as saying "you have to pick what God knows".

..but "What God knows" can be either red or blue.

In other words your conclusion that there are no choices is illogical. It doesn't follow that you have no choice. It is a modal fallacy. It is untrue.

 

[Sheldon]

We are discussing..

""What God knows" is contingent [ dependent ].
Otherwise, one can argue that the future is set already regardless of your actions."

What that means is that your statement "It is axiomatic that if I have to pick one a deity knows i will pick beforehand then no other choices are possible."

is incorrect. That is because you say "no other choices are possible", which is the same as saying "you have to pick what God knows".

..but "What God knows" can be either red or blue.

In other words your conclusion that there are no choices is illogical. It doesn't follow that you have no choice. It is a modal fallacy. It is untrue.

You haven't addressed my post, which is very dishonest, all you have done is simply repeat your previous erroneous claim.

If a deity knows what I will choose before I choose it, then all other choices are negated. If a deity knows all the choices I will make, but not which one I will ultimately choose it is not omniscient. There is no logical fallacy there, and modal logic cannot ignore what is necessary, as you are doing here.

 

[Sheldon]

"What God knows" can be either red or blue.

Does it know which one I will choose? Since this is not a difficult question, the only reason you keep ignoring this question must be sophistry.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Does it know which one I will choose? Since this is not a difficult question, the only reason you keep ignoring this question must be sophistry.

I can't "understand" why you ask this question, when you know that the answer is yes..
Almighty God is omniscient. He knows what we will choose.

..so if God knows that you will choose red, you MUST choose red.
It is obvious. If you didn't, then that would mean that G-d didn't know that you would choose red. The only reason that you can't choose blue, is because God knows what you will choose.
You COULD have chosen blue, but then, the initial conditional statement "if God knows that you will choose red" would be incorrect .. OBVIOUSLY

 

[Sheldon]

I can't "understand" why you ask this question, when you know that the answer is yes..
Almighty God is omniscient. He knows what we will choose.

..if God knows that you will choose red, you MUST choose red.
It is obvious.

Then I would have no other choice, which is all I have been saying, thank you for finally admitting it, quod erat demonstrandum...

 

[muhammad_isa]

Then I would have no other choice,.

No other choice?
You mean that you can only choose red?
You are absolutely right.

"no other choice" in this context means that you WILL choose red.
It doesn't mean that the reason why you will choose red is because you aren't free to choose blue IF YOU WANTED TO.

..but as we have said that God knows you will choose red, then how can you choose blue? It would be a contradiction

 

[Sheldon]

No other choice?
You mean that you can only choose red?
You are absolutely right.

"no other choice" in this context means that you WILL choose red.
It doesn't mean that the reason why you will choose red is because you aren't free to choose blue IF YOU WANTED TO.

..but as we have said that God knows you will choose red, then how can you choose blue? It would be a contradiction

So you think everything is predetermined then?

 

[Tiberius]

That is not true, because you had a choice BEFORE you chose to do what God knew you would choose to do.

If God knew the outcome, then no other outcome was possible. Thus I had no choice.

Stop saying it's a choice when it obviously isn't.

So what if God has information, how does that information affect what you choose to do?

How does that information cause you to choose what you choose?

Again, IT'S NOT A CHOICE.

If the actions that a person will take are known ahead of time, then the person in question does not choose to do them.

Doesn't matter if it's God knowing that I will wear the read shirt tomorrow, or me knowing the lawyer is going to run from the car in Jurassic Park. There's no choice.

You will not wear the red shirt because God knows you will wear the red shirt. You will wear the red shirt because you chose to wear the red shirt. If you had chosen to wear a blue shirt God would have known that you were going to choose to wear a blue shirt.

That's the logical equivalent of moving your vegies around the plate to make it look like you've eaten some when really you haven't had any.

What God knows is not what determines what color shirt you will wear or anything else you will do for that matter.

How many times do I need to tell you?

I'M NOT SAYING THAT IT DOES!

Tiberius says: “Judge! I am not guilty because I have no free will. If God KNOWS it, then I can't do anything different. God knew I was going to murder my wife so I could not do anything different. The instant God knew I would murder my wife I was not able to do anything different.”

Yes, it's clearly ludicrous. And that's why I don't believe in a God that knows the future. I've said this many times now. The fact that my religion marker says ATHEIST is a dead giveaway to most people.

Honestly, how many times do I need to keep telling you the same things over and over until you actually start paying attention?

 

[Tiberius]

It wasn't clear to me. No need to be arrogant about it after I admitted I was slow on the uptake.

I said, "Ah, so it's a METAPHOR. The gore it speaks of isn't literal gore, it's a figure of speech."

How could it have been unclear I was speaking about it being metaphorical? I literally wrote the word metaphor in all caps to make it stand out...

But anyway, I won't bring this up again...

Also I think your criteria five is right that prophecy, and I mean no prophecy proves any truth. It is not meant to be in my opinion.

You might want to tell Trailblazer that, since she privided it in post 2618 as an example of "clear and unambiguous scientific knowledge that could not have been known by the people of the time." (As I requested in post 2439.)

 

[Tiberius]

Imagine you are a native. No red shirt and no blue shirt. Colour being a human choice only..

Wrong. Blue light sky only holy.

Humans are created naked.

No God in that self identification just two humans.

Then a researching liar just a naked human first tries to coerce your belief by the sophist words he uses.

Said by man's quote I speak on behalf of god.

So his brothers said no man is God. The message I got as I lived as just a Man hu man told me so. Angel messages heard as you live. Unlike my brother who thinks he is a God.

And he does. Says the substance God his man body owns. As a human god.

Science said God was direct formation in space vacuum zero only. As earth substances and gas substances.

Light is gas burning substance is not radiating metals also formed in space zero.

Reasoning. When the sun burnt out earths heavens space zero void vacuum sealed in metals. Inside O gods body. Then it rained until earth flooded.

Then mountain volcano erupted putting gases back. Was the teaching involving gas receipt by saviour asteroid. Putting gas cold back into space.

Reason stone products makes the Alchemy metal cooled by water. Cold water came from ice that was melted.

Ice never owned a metal. As the sun was first hot stone mass before it eventually iced. Metal was already inside its body.

The argument itself.

Natural history not reasoned first. Human want theory was. Correct answer given when life got sacrificed. After the FACT the correct answer.

Science was told you lied.

Dude, if you want to have a conversation to me, speak in understandable English.

I'm not going to respond to this gibberish.

 

[Tiberius]

Who, besides you, cares if it fails your criteria?

Anyone who cares about following things that are actually valid. Without those criteria, people would follow anyone who makes any claim about anything. We need some way to sort valid prophecies from the garbage ones, right?

 

[Tiberius]

An atheist want physically proof of a God or deity.....well sorry to say it to theists we can't give atheists what they want since believing in God is a belief and not something science will be able to prove for an other million years or so

The best we can do is to be good human beings and respect each others according to our actions words and thoughts. No matter if there is a God or not.

So you are saying that God is a fairytale?

 

[Tiberius]

But you are still the one who made the choice that God had foreseen.

Again, if I was bound to do what God had foreseen, then it wasn't a choice!

But you made that choice. If you had not made a choice nothing would have happened at all.

If y ou had actually read what you are responding to, you would have seen that I said, "Because there is no choice. There is only one possible outcome, and I can't avoid it. I must do what God has foreseen I will do."

Again, IT'S NOT A CHOICE.

That s patently absurd. Things do not happen if nobody makes a choice and causes them to happen.

You made the choice God knew you would make.

Oh rubbish. Things happen all the time that nobody chooses.

You made the decision that God foresaw but it was YOUR decision to make.

No, it wasn't a choice. A choice requires that more than one outcome is possible. But iof God knows ahead of time, then what he knows is the only possible outcome, isn't it?

You can make any choice you want to make and that will be the choice that God has forseen.

It's not a choice if there's only one possible outcome.

You mean it does not make any sense to you.

It literally violates the laws of logic.

A choice requires two or more possibilities.

If God knows I will wear the red shirt, then what are the possibilities?

I wear the red shirt.

That's the only possibility, isn't it? Wearing the blue shirt is NOT an option, because, as already stated, God KNOWS I will wear the red shirt.

So, once again (say it with me)

IF THERE'S ONLY ONE OPTION, THEN IT'S NOT A CHOICE.

 

[Tiberius]

You aren't explaining anything..
You are simply repeating a "trick" statement again and again.
..and refusing to engage in a logical analysis of it.

A choice requires two or more possibilities.

If God knows I will wear the red shirt, then what are the possibilities?

I wear the red shirt.

That's the only possibility, isn't it? Wearing the blue shirt is NOT an option, because, as already stated, God KNOWS I will wear the red shirt.

IF THERE'S ONLY ONE OPTION, THEN IT'S NOT A CHOICE.

 

[Trailblazer]

If a deity knows (in your own words) the ONE CHOICE YOU WILL ULTIMATELY MAKE...then clearly there never were any other choices?

There were other choices you could have made BEFORE you made your choice.
Had you made a different choice that would have been the choice the deity would have known you would ultimately make.

 

[Trailblazer]

Well unless one means something different to you than it does to me, I'm baffled you can't see the contradiction.

God's knowledge does not determine the choice we will make. We determine the choice we will make by choosing to make it. God knows what we will choose because God is all-knowing.