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

[muhammad_isa]

Hmmm....What's the title of this thread again?

Well, consider this.
Theory of relativity is accepted by physicists, and the vast majority believe in the block-universe view of time. This means that the future is as the past .. a fixed block. It is just that the future is unknown.

Do you accept that as evidence that G-d exists?
No. I thought not.

Einstein was a deist.
Deism can be defined as the belief in the existence of God solely based on rational thought, without any reliance on revealed religions or religious authority.

Einstein rebelled against his Jewish background, but he still believed in G-d, albeit not the Abrahamic one.

 

[Sheldon]

Well, consider this.
Theory of relativity is accepted by physicists, and the vast majority believe in the block-universe view of time. This means that the future is as the past .. a fixed block. It is just that the future is unknown.

How does that evidence any deity?

Do you accept that as evidence that G-d exists?

Do you, seriously?

Deism can be defined as the belief in the existence of God solely based on rational thought, without any reliance on revealed religions or religious authority.

Yes it can. though that is of course not how Einstein defined it.

Einstein rebelled against his Jewish background, but he still believed in G-d, albeit not the Abrahamic one.

He was scathing about the Abrahamitic deities, and I don't care if he believed in mermaids, his scientific achievements don't evidence deities any more than it does mermaids.

He seems to be the ultimate appeal to authority fallacy - trap, that desperate theists can't seem to help falling into, as you have done here.

 

[Trailblazer]

Well, as a Baha'i, you know that the other religions have varied off the original message. I believe they have varied, but not all the time bad, and that I don't know if some of them had an "original" message.

So, I would think that none of them you have impressed as being true.

I might have been fooled into believing that they were true if I had not found the Baha'i Faith first, but now I know what is and isn't true. Nothing I could ever do could repay God enough for guiding me to the truth. I have no idea what I did to deserve such a blessing but I will forever be grateful.

“Be thankful to God for having enabled you to recognise His Cause. Whoever has received this blessing must, prior to his acceptance, have performed some deed which, though he himself was unaware of its character, was ordained by God as a means whereby he has been guided to find and embrace the Truth. As to those who have remained deprived of such a blessing, their acts alone have hindered them from recognising the truth of this Revelation. We cherish the hope that you, who have attained to this light, will exert your utmost to banish the darkness of superstition and unbelief from the midst of the people. May your deeds proclaim your faith and enable you to lead the erring into the paths of eternal salvation. The memory of this night will never be forgotten. May it never be effaced by the passage of time, and may its mention linger for ever on the lips of men.”

The Dawn-Breakers: Nabíl’s Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahá’í Revelation, p. 586

 

[muhammad_isa]

He seems to be the ultimate appeal to authority fallacy - trap, that desperate theists can't seem to help falling into, as you have done here.

No. I'm not quoting Einstein for his religious beliefs.
I'm quoting him on his scientific beliefs.
Specifically, the block-universe [ or Minkowski space ].

..and it is relevant to the subject we have been discussing.
Namely, the compatibility of free-will and a deterministic future.
The belief that they are incompatible, is due to a well-known modal fallacy

 

[Trailblazer]

I have two choices.

A or B

You are claiming that if I choose A, that a deity has always known I will choose A. Ipso facto I could not have chosen other A.

But if you had chosen B or C, a deity would have always known that you would choose B or C. Ipso facto you could have chosen A, B or C.

 

[Sheldon]

No. I'm not quoting Einstein for his religious beliefs.
I'm quoting him on his scientific beliefs.

So why did Einstein miss this evidence you've spotted in his work that made it in your own words "precisely the same as an omniscient deity knowing what we will choose"?

 

[Trailblazer]

Trailblazer said: The reason we ‘feel’ we have free will to make any choice is because God created humans will free will so we can make choices.

KWED said: You just said...
"You have no choice but to do what the deity has foreseen"

You will do what the deity has foreseen but you had a choice BEFORE you made the choice to do what the deity had foreseen.

Trailblazer said: Why can’t it be BOTH? Please explain logically why it cannot be both.

KWED said: You have a choice to make at Time T, between A, B and C.
Before Time T, god already knows what your choice will be (A), and he cannot be wrong.
So at T-1, you feel like you can choose A, B or C. You do not feel coerced into choosing A. You see each as an equal possibility.
However, you cannot choose B or C because then god would have been wrong, which is not possible.
Therefore you can only choose A. It is inevitable and unavoidable.

Now, you explain how you have the ability to choose B or C in this scenario. (Note: simply asserting "But We Have Free Will!!" is not sufficient)

You have a choice to make at Time T, between A, B and C.
Before Time T, God already knows what your choice will be, and he cannot be wrong.

If you were going to choose A, God would have known you were going to choose A.
If you were going to choose B, God would have known you were going to choose B.
If you were going to choose C, God would have known you were going to choose C.

So at T-1, you feel like you can choose A, B or C. You see each as an equal possibility.
You can choose A, B or C and God would have known which one you were going to choose because God is all-knowing and God cannot be wrong.
Therefore you can choose A, B or C.

Trailblazer said: In other words, how does the fact that God knows what we will choose determine what we will choose?

KWED said: Because, as you pointed out "You have no choice but to do what the deity has foreseen".

You will do what the deity has foreseen but you had a choice BEFORE you made the choice to do what the deity had foreseen.

This is where the cognitive dissonance comes into play. You accept the basic that god's infallible foreknowledge removes the possibility of choosing other options. The logical consequence of this is the negation of free will. However, your belief fundamentally requires us to have free will, so you simply continue to assert it, despite already having implicitly accepted that it is not possible.

This is where the cognitive dissonance comes into play. You refuse to accept the basic that God's infallible foreknowledge in no way removes the possibility of choosing other options. The logical consequence of this is that humans have free will to choose. God knows what we will choose but God’s knowledge does not CAUSE us to make choices. However, your belief fundamentally requires us to NOT have free will, so you simply continue to assert that humans have no free will, despite my having proven how it is possible.

Trailblazer said: You are conflating divine predestination and infallible omniscience and they are not the same. God’s infallible omniscience means that God knows everything that has ever happened, what is happening now, and everything that will ever happen.

KWED said: No I am not. I have repeatedly explained how they are different (although the ultimate consequence is essentially the same).

The end result is not the same. What God knows has absolutely no bearing upon what humans will choose to do. God knows what we will choose to do but God’s knowledge does not cause us to choose anything. However, if God had known and predestined what we would do we would have no choice but to do it.

Trailblazer said: Divine predestination would mean that humans have no free will. Free will could not exist if everything was predestined (predetermined) by God but there is no reason to believe that is the case. If that was true then humans would be no more than God’s puppets on a string, God’s programmed robots.

KWED said: I am not well-read in Baha'i ideology, but "Unto each one hath been prescribed a pre-ordained measure, as decreed in God's mighty and guarded Tablets.", coupled with infallible omniscience would seem to indicate predetermination.

“And now, concerning thy question regarding the creation of man. Know thou that all men have been created in the nature made by God, the Guardian, the Self-Subsisting. Unto each one hath been prescribed a pre-ordained measure, as decreed in God’s mighty and guarded Tablets. All that which ye potentially possess can, however, be manifested only as a result of your own volition. Your own acts testify to this truth.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 149

The pre-ordained measure refers to the varying capacities that we are born with. Please note that Baha’u’llah says that our capacities (that which ye potentially possess) can only be manifested as a result of our own volition (will). Clearly, humans have a will of their own, they are not controlled by God, but how free we are to act on our will is another conversation. Clearly, free will has many constraints.

Trailblazer said: Moreover, if free will did not exist humans could never be held accountable for their actions in courts of law.

KWED said: This is a theological, not legal discussion.
However, you are correct to a degree. External influence, background, coercion, etc can be used as mitigation for offences.

Reality is reality. If humans have free will then they have free will. They do not have free will according to the legal system and then suddenly NOT have free will in a theological discussion. If humans had no free will then they would not have any control over their own destiny and they would be reduced to God’s programmed robots. Such a life would serve no purpose at all because we could not learn and grow from out choices and the consequences of our choices.

Trailblazer said: Some things are predestined by God but other things are left to the free will of man and thus they are not predetermined.

KWED said: OK, so you accept that god predetermines at least part of our lives.

I certainly do accept that there is a thing such as fate and predestination. I am none too happy about my fate most of the time but sometimes I am grateful for it.

Trailblazer said: Man is forced to endure them because God set it up that way since we live in a material world where some of the bad things happen are beyond our control.

KWED said: This issue is about free will, meaning the choices we make. It is not about whether we contract Covid or get hit by a bus.
But are you saying that those things are determined by god?

I am saying that whether we get hit by a bus is determined by God because it was not a choice unless we deliberately walked out in front of a bus. Otherwise, it was our fate to be hit and it is related to what other people chose to do that caused us to get hit. Whether we contract Covid or not is also our fate although some might argue that it is related to free will if we put ourselves at risk for catching Covid by our chosen behaviors.

Trailblazer said: I never claimed that at Time T you could choose B, C, or D when God already knows you will choose A. You will choose A if God already knows you will choose A, but you will not choose A because God knew you would choose A. You will choose A because you wanted to choose A. If you had wanted to choose B, C, or D, you would have chosen B, C, or D and God would have known which one of those you were going to choose.

If God had predestined that you would choose A you would have no choice but to choose A, but the fact that God knew you would choose A does not cause you to choose A.

KWED said: All you are doing here is moving the problem back a step. It is irrelevant what we choose, whatever it is, that choice is still fixed by god's foreknowledge of it.

It is not fixed by God’s foreknowledge because what God knows is not fixed. What God knows is determined by what we choose to do. As we go through life and make choices these are the choices that God always knew we would make. If we chose A instead of B, God would have always known we would choose A.

No one is claiming that god's foreknowledge causes our choices. It merely fixes them, makes them inevitable.
God is not making you choose A against your will when you want to choose B.

How is fixing the choices any different from causing them?

Trailblazer said: 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?

KWED said: Obviously not. That action must happen.

What you do not understand is that what God knows (what is written on the Tablet of Fate) has not happened in this world until it has happened. There are two kinds of fate, a conditional or impending fate and a decreed fate. A conditional fate can be altered by God according to what we choose to do but a decreed fate will never be altered, it is set in stone so it will happen no matter what we do.

68: FATE

Question.—Is the predestination which is mentioned in the Holy Books a decreed thing? If so, is not the effort to avoid it useless?

Answer.—Fate is of two kinds: one is decreed, and the other is conditional or impending. The decreed fate is that which cannot change or be altered, and conditional fate is that which may occur. So, for this lamp, the decreed fate is that the oil burns and will be consumed; therefore, its eventual extinction is a decree which it is impossible to alter or to change because it is a decreed fate. In the same way, in the body of man a power of life has been created, and as soon as it is destroyed and ended, the body will certainly be decomposed, so when the oil in this lamp is burnt and finished, the lamp will undoubtedly become extinguished.

But conditional fate may be likened to this: while there is still oil, a violent wind blows on the lamp, which extinguishes it. This is a conditional fate. It is wise to avoid it, to protect oneself from it, to be cautious and circumspect. But the decreed fate, which is like the finishing of the oil in the lamp, cannot be altered, changed nor delayed. It must happen; it is inevitable that the lamp will become extinguished.”
Some Answered Questions, p. 244

In other words, some things like death are decreed, fixed and settled, so they are going to happen eventually and we cannot alter that. However, we can alter when we die by not standing out in the road in front of a moving truck!

 

[Trailblazer]

What "facts" are these, and how do they prove that the Bahai god exists?
Some examples please (actual references, not just claims).

Many facts about the Baha'i Faith are in the book I cited, Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era, but there are many other books that contain facts. This is evidence to me that the Baha'i Faith is true.

There is no such thing as a Baha'i God, there is just one true God who revealed all the religions.
There is no proof that God exists, there is only evidence. Evidence is not proof.

evidence: the available body of facts or information indicating whether a belief or proposition is true or valid. https://www.google.com/search

Note that evidence does only indicates whether a belief is true. It does not prove anything.

By contrast, proof establishes a fact. There is no proof that God exists or that any religion if true. There is only evidence that indicates that.

Proof: evidence or argument establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of a statement: https://www.google.com/search

 

[Watchmen]

No, that is where you are wrong.
G-d does not fix anything.

You say "he fixes that choice before we get to make it"..
G-d does nothing of the sort.
You are putting the cart before the horse.

You make your choice. You choose whatever you like.
NOW let's examine whether G-d was right or not..

It is untrue that G-d's foreknowledge limits the choice that we can make. It is a logical fallacy. I have already explained it, but you don't seem to understand the language and math of logic theory.

Repeating over and over again that "we have no choice because we have to choose what G-d knows" without showing us WHY, is meaningless.

If there’s a fallacy, it’s that a supposedly omnipotent, omnipresent god who exists in all of time and space simultaneously knows we will make a choice that will harm us and/or others, and does nothing to stop it.

If your child, who you love, finds a kitchen knife and decides to stab himself through the eye, and you had the power to stop it, wouldn’t you do so?!?!

 

[Trailblazer]

Oh dear. We went though this at the time.
1. Claims like "His person" and "His revelation" are evidence that it is true is just circular logic of the lowest order. It is mere assertion, not evidence.

Never did I say that the claim is the evidence. The claims and the evidence that support the claims were listed separately on the post I linked to.

Questions for knowledgeable Bahai / followers of Baha'u'llah

2. Those magical prophesies are nothing of the sort. I went through the one that was supposed to detail Napoleon III and explained why it it bore little resemblance to the actual events.

Let's look at another. You claim the passage addressed to Wilhelm I in 1873 "O King of Berlin!... Do thou remember the one whose power transcended thy power [Napoleon III], and whose station excelled thy station. Where is he? Whither are gone the things he possessed? Take warning, and be not of them that are fast asleep" prophesies WW1 and WW2.
For starters, Wilhelm died 30 years before WW1 started.
Second, predicting geo-military upheaval and reversals of fortune in 19th century Europe was hardly magic. Any political commentator could have predicted that empires rise and fall. Bahaullah himself uses a recent example of just such a thing.

Another "magical prophesy" was telling the popular monarch of the world's largest and most powerful (and still growing) empire that she was going to be successful.

So, we can see that far from providing any "evidence" for the existence of a particular version of god, you have merely illustrated dogmatic belief and confirmation bias.

Sorry, none of those were intended to be prophecies. They were warnings given to the kings and rulers.

The Tablet to Kaiser Wilhelm I is not about WWI and WWII

O banks of the Rhine! We have seen you covered with gore, inasmuch as the swords of retribution were drawn against you; and you shall have another turn. And We hear the lamentations of Berlin, though she be today in conspicuous glory.
Tablet to Kaiser Wilhelm I

In one of His Tablets written before the first World War (1914–1918), ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explained that Bahá’u’lláh’s reference to having seen the banks of the Rhine “covered with gore” related to the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), and that there was more suffering to come. In God Passes By Shoghi Effendi states that the “oppressively severe treaty” that was imposed on Germany following its defeat in the first World War “provoked ‘the lamentations [of Berlin]’ which half a century before, had been ominously prophesied.”
Bahá’u’lláh, "The Kitáb-i-Aqdas", 90

Most Baha'is believe that the Tablet to Kaiser Wilhelm I refers to WWI and WWII, and "another turn" is WWII, but contrary to what is popularly believed among Baha'is, "another turn" is World War I and the oppressive treaty after that was the "lamentations of Berlin".

 

[Trailblazer]

Ultimately I can only choose 1 of those, and you have repeatedly claimed a deity always knew which 1, so no another choice would not be possible, it is a logical contradiction.

You could have chosen either A, B, C, or D. All those choices were possible until you made a choice.
The deity always knew which choice you would make.

It's kind of like a man can choose to murder his wife or not murder his wife, but after he murdered his wife he could not go back and choose NOT to murder her. The choice was made and she was dead. God always knew whether the man would choose to murder his wife or not because God is all-knowing.

 

[Trailblazer]

Since no theist can demonstrate any objective evidence that any deity is even possible

Evidence does not make God possible. God either exists or not. Evidence is just what people want in order to know if God exists or not.

 

[lukethethird]

Atheists: What would be evidence of God’s existence?
He'd have to appear on the cover of TIME as God of the year.

 

[Trailblazer]

Atheists: What would be evidence of God’s existence?
He'd have to appear on the cover of TIME as God of the year.

And that would be evidence how?

 

[lukethethird]

And that would be evidence how?

It would be exhibit one for making me a believer and then questions like yours would just bounce off of me.

 

[Tiberius]

Well if that’s your experience, then fair enough. So you were indoctrinated, as many people are. It often seems that there is nothing like a good dose of religion early in life, to drive people away from God when they are old enough to think for themselves.

But I would say that there is religion, there is religious indoctrination, and there is God. These things are related, but they are not the same. Sometimes religion can fail in it’s purpose, and drive us away from God. Then it’s up to us to decide how to proceed, if we want to find a way back to the latter.

True, but so often the religion I have seen is so similar to the indoctrination as to be indistinguishable.

 

[Tiberius]

What do you mean by "I don't have a choice, do I?"
Of COURSE you have a choice !
You have chosen A.

The only reason that you can't choose B is because you have already said that G-d knows you will choose A.
If you choose B, it contradicts what you have already said

You don't seem to understand.

If A is the only possible outcome, there is no choice.

 

[Tiberius]

But logically speaking, that does not mean that the methods whereby other people have found God are nothing more than indoctrination.

Some of us were not raised to believe in God at all. My mother and father were raised as Christians but they dropped out of the Church before we were born. My father died when I was 12 years old before he ever heard of the Baha'i Faith. My mother told me later that my father became an atheist. Much later in her life my mother became a Baha'i, after all of us three children had become Baha'is.

True.

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?

 

[Tiberius]

That is illogical because it could be the objective truth that came from within you.

Regardless of whether it came from within me or not, if it was objective truth, I must have some way of verifying it. Otherwise, how could I know it was the objective truth? And if all I can do is verify it within myself (as you have suggested), then I can never be sure that there is not some subjective part of myself distorting the results.

So, while it is possible that an objective truth could come from within me, I would have absolutely no way to verify it as long as it remains within me. And since it is far more likely that whatever I got was a subjective opinion, I would be forced to treat it as such until I could do some kind of external verification.

 

[Tiberius]

Do you mean they could spot it with their own subjective opinion? How would that get us any closer to objective truth?
Do you mean that the more subjective opinions we have the closer we would get to the objective truth? How would that work?

No, I am saying that if we get lots of people to check, and they all agree, then it is unlikely to be the result of subjective opinion, because all of those different people will have different subjective opinions. If it WAS the result of subjective opinion, then we'd get a bunch of different answers.

After all, if everyone got it wrong in exactly the same way, that's a pretty slim chance, right? And the more people we get to check, the more justified we are in saying the result is accurate.

Think of it like this...

Let's say you have a bunch of tape measures. Each tape measure could be accurate, or it could be off by some random amount, you don't know. Now, you measure the length of the path from the front door to the street. What results could we get?

Well, perhaps all the results will be different. In which case, we can say that it's likely that all of the tape measures are wrong by some random amount. Maybe one of them is actually giving the correct answer, but we can't be sure which one, since we have no way to know.

Maybe we get two that give the same result, but all of the others give different results. In this case we can say that we think the two identical results are accurate, but there's only two in agreement, so we can't be completely sure. It is, after all, possible that two tape measures could be off by a very similar amount. Not likely, but still possible.

Maybe many of the results are similar, but there are still a few that are different. In this case, we can say that the tape measures that gave the same results are most likely accurate, while the others are wrong. Because, what are the chances that many tape measures would all be off by the same amount?

And if ALL the tape measures give the same result, then we are even more justified in saying that all the tape measures are accurate.

Sorry, but religion does not work the way science works because religion can never be proven as a fact and thus all people can ever have are subjective opinions about the objective facts surrounding the different religions.

And that's why I say religion is utterly and completely useless as a method for finding out any objective truths about the universe.