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

[muhammad_isa]

..As the clock counts down over your lifetime to Time T, both A and B seem like available options. At T-5 seconds you think "Hmm, A or B?" But at Time T, you have to choose A..

As you have gone to lengths to explain your understanding, I will reply..

You don't have to choose A.
The only reason that you choose A, is because you have postulated that God can't be wrong.
It is obvious, that if God knows what you will choose, you will choose A.
If you don't think that it is possible that God can know what you choose, then it is easy to understand that it is your own choice.

If you disagree, explain how choosing B is possible. Simply saying "But you can choose whatever you want!" is not an argument.

It is not possible that you can choose B.
What is the reason for that?
Is it because you were not free to choose? No, it's not.

Imagine a scenario in which God is observing a universe in which He does not interfere.
For us, we perceive "the present moment" as what we call "now".
For God, "now" was as billions of years ago.
The paradox relies on our perception of time.
Einstein has shown that with relativity, it is entirely plausible that a person in another frame of reference to ourselves, perceives what we perceive as "now" as "already happened".
In other words, you perceive time as absolute, but in fact it is not.

 

[KWED]

He didn't.
He famously said that "God did not play dice", referring to the phenomenon.

It was a metaphor. Einstein did not believe in any kind of interventionist god and repeatedly said so.
And why this obsession with Einstein quote-mining? He made his position on the subject clear many times. The closest he came to acknowledging any sort of god was Spinoza's "god is nature" pantheism.

 

[KWED]

As you have gone to lengths to explain your understanding, I will reply..
You don't have to choose A.
The only reason that you choose A, is because you have postulated that God can't be wrong.
It is obvious, that if God knows what you will choose, you will choose A.
If you don't think that it is possible that God can know what you choose, then it is easy to understand that it is your own choice.

IOW, "If god knows that when you choose you will choose A, and he can't be wrong, when you come to make a choice you have to choose A.

You are basically agreeing with me but you don't seem to realise.

It is not possible that you can choose B.

If the choice is A or B, and it is not possible to choose B, then you have to choose A. QED.

What is the reason for that?
Is it because you were not free to choose? No, it's not.

The reason is that god's infallible foreknowledge that you will choose A at that moment means that you cannot choose B.

Imagine a scenario in which God is observing a universe in which He does not interfere.

But such a scenario is irrelevant to this discussion, because this god does interfere.

For us, we perceive "the present moment" as what we call "now".
For God, "now" was as billions of years ago.
The paradox relies on our perception of time.
Einstein has shown that with relativity, it is entirely plausible that a person in another frame of reference to ourselves, perceives what we perceive as "now" as "already happened".
In other words, you perceive time as absolute, but in fact it is not.

It is irrelevant the means by which god obtains his infallible foreknowledge. The point is that at the moment you make a choice, in your linear timeline, god is observing you with the existing knowledge of what you will choose. He is not waiting for you to choose before he has that knowledge.
Remember that Allah not only knew that choice but actually decreed it 50,000 years before he created the universe. If he had that knowledge before spacetime existed, he cannot have observed it at all. It is pure foreknowledge of an event that has not yet happened.
Einstein can't help you with this one.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Remember that Allah not only knew that choice but actually decreed it 50,000 years before he created the universe. If he had that knowledge before spacetime existed, he cannot have observed it at all. It is pure foreknowledge of an event that has not yet happened.
Einstein can't help you with this one.

It is a metaphor. What does before he created the universe even mean?
As I say, you see time as absolute, but it is not.
You are describing the finite.
God, the Most High, is NOT finite.

Good day to you

 

[Sheldon]

He didn't.
He famously said that "God did not play dice", referring to the phenomenon.

He was using god as a metaphor.

“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.”

Edit: I see KWED bet me that one, kudos.

 

[Sheldon]

God, the Most High, knows best.

Now is that an observation, or are you talking about yourself? Only it isn't clear from that line.

 

[Sheldon]

You don't have to choose A.

God knows what you will choose, you will choose A.

 

[Tiberius]

No, I do not agree.

On what basis?

 

[Tiberius]

You want to know if the religion is objective truth and you believe there is some foolproof way of being sure but there isn't. All I can say is that if/when you are sure you will know it, just like me, and at that time you will no longer need to wonder about any of this and you won't be worried that it might be a subjective part of you that is sure..... you will just know you found the truth.

The trouble is that there have been many times I thought I knew something that was objectively true and that I was sure of. I was convinced that it was not just some subjective part of me, but that I did actually have THE TRUTH. And then it turned out that I was wrong.

So I know from bitter experience that simply being sure of something is nowhere near enough to guarantee that something is the truth.

You are tying yourself in knots analyzing this process ad infinitum but it is your own thinking process that prevents you from believing anything is true, because you are so sure that what you might end up believing is subjective and thus it cannot be true. It makes no sense at all but it is what you have decided and I cannot talk you out of it.

What do you think external verification is going to accomplish? Whoever verified it also verified it subjectively, so all you would be doing is swapping their subjective opinions for your own. You would be no closer to the objective truth.

I've already explained it countless times.

If I get others to verify it as well, then they are going to be likely to spot any places where I've made a mistake. And if I have let my opinions influence my determination, then the other people, who likely do not share all of my opinions, will be better placed to spot those instances where my opinions have influenced my judgement.

I've explained this to you many times now, and you keep ignoring it. I can only conclude you are extremely forgetful, or you are being deliberately dishonest.

 

[Tiberius]

You said: "And the more people we get to check, the more justified we are in saying the result is accurate."

I am sorry to say but how many people agree that it is true has nothing to do with whether it is true or false. That is the fallacy of argumentum ad populum

In argumentation theory, an argumentum ad populum (Latin for "appeal to the people") is a fallacious argument that concludes that a proposition is true because many or most people believe it: "If many believe so, it is so."

This type of argument is known by several names,[1] including appeal to the masses, appeal to belief, appeal to the majority, appeal to democracy, appeal to popularity, argument by consensus, consensus fallacy, authority of the many, bandwagon fallacy, Argumentum ad populum - Wikipedia

The converse of this is that if many or most people do not believe it, it cannot be so, and that is fallacious. So the fact that only a few people have subjectively determined that the Baha’i Faith is true and many more people have subjectively determined that Christianity is true, that does not mean anything at all.

Religion is not science and it cannot be weighed and measured and verified scientifically. It is not objectively true, it is either true or false, and how many people agree that it is true has no bearing on whether it is true or not. In fact, the opposite is true for religion, especially when it is a new religion, as it is more likely to be true if only a few people believe it, since few people believe in a religion when it is a new religion, that is the pattern of history.

Matthew 7:13-14 Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

“The Book of God is wide open, and His Word is summoning mankind unto Him. No more than a mere handful, however, hath been found willing to cleave to His Cause, or to become the instruments for its promotion. These few have been endued with the Divine Elixir that can, alone, transmute into purest gold the dross of the world, and have been empowered to administer the infallible remedy for all the ills that afflict the children of men. No man can obtain everlasting life, unless he embraceth the truth of this inestimable, this wondrous, and sublime Revelation.” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 183

Oh, absolute garbage.

If you get a hundred people to measure the length of a rope, and they all say it is 30 feet long, are you going to say, "I can't accept that answer, that's an argument from popularity!"

The only thing you said there that I agree with is, "[Religion] is not objectively true."

As I have told you before religion is not a method to find out objective truths about the universe. The purpose of religion is as follows. If you are not interested in this purpose I see no reason for you to try to determine which if any religion is the truth.

“The Great Being saith: O ye children of men! The fundamental purpose animating the Faith of God and His Religion is to safeguard the interests and promote the unity of the human race, and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men. Suffer it not to become a source of dissension and discord, of hate and enmity. This is the straight Path, the fixed and immovable foundation. Whatsoever is raised on this foundation, the changes and chances of the world can never impair its strength, nor will the revolution of countless centuries undermine its structure. Our hope is that the world’s religious leaders and the rulers thereof will unitedly arise for the reformation of this age and the rehabilitation of its fortunes. Let them, after meditating on its needs, take counsel together and, through anxious and full deliberation, administer to a diseased and sorely-afflicted world the remedy it requireth….” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 215-216

Safeguarding the interests and unity of the Human race and fostering the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men does not need a literal God. Or religion.

I am interested in what is ACTUALLY TRUE about the universe, and the best you can do is an idea that you say is true, not because it's actually true, but because it can be used to make things better.

 

[Tiberius]

You mean all religions seem to have similar defects? Perhaps they do, but then perhaps they all have similar merits also. There must be some reason why every culture in human history has adopted some form of spiritual practice. This has surely been fulfilling a much deeper need than simply explaining how the world came to be. Because even if science - which is really just the application of our own, human qualities to the exploration of the material world - one day manages to tell us exactly where the universe came from, and how, we'll still want to know why we are here, and why the universe went to all the trouble of existing.

The thing is, the merits we get from religions don't actually need religion. We can get those same benefits from other philosophical viewpoints without needing to say there's a deity involved.

 

[Tiberius]

That is what I just said:

You chose to do what the deity foresaw. That choice could have been choice A, B, C, or D. Whatever choice you made it would have been the choice that the deity foresaw since the deity can never be wrong.

You again fail to understand.

The deity knows what I will do BEFORE I make the choice. There is NEVER a point at which I could make a different choice.

You did have a choice and you made a choice. You could have chosen between A, B, C, or D and you made a choice between them. Whichever choice you made was the choice that the deity knew you would make (foresaw) because the deity can never be wrong.

If I say any more, I am just going to muddy the waters.

Again, the deity knew BEFORE I made the choice. I was locked into something which had already been set in stone.

You WILL do whatever the deity has foreseen, but if you had chosen to do something differently the deity would have foreseen that.

Again, the deity knew BEFORE I made the choice. I was locked into something which had already been set in stone.

There is no problem for people who can think logically and know about God, what it means for God to be all-knowing, and how that plays out in relationship to humans in the material world. Unfortunately, atheists don’t know anything about God so that cannot understand how God’s all-encompassing knowledge has no bearing upon human free will choices. That is why their arguments end up being illogical. It is as if you are trying to drive a four-cylinder car on two cylinders and that is why you are stuck and not getting anywhere.

There is nothing logical about either your arguments or God.

 

[KWED]

if it is our own choices that fix it,

But under the Abrahamic god it isn't our choices that fix our choices (that would be circular logic). It is god knowing what our choice will be before we make it that fixes it.

then it is no different than the past .. and most people can understand how our choices fixed that.

So you accept that a fixed future (however that future is fixed) necessarily means that it cannot be changed. And if the future cannot be changed, then the concept of reward or punishment for our future actions is fundamentally flawed.

You know what?
I'm done. If you can't understand what I'm saying, so be it.

Oh, I understand what you are saying, and I have explained to you why it is flawed. It is you who seems to be unable to understand it.
I also notice you are legging it without even touching on the problem of predestination by divine decree. Quelle surprise.

God, the Most High, knows best.

The evidence would suggest otherwise.

 

[KWED]

It is a metaphor. What does before he created the universe even mean?

I agree that it does raise certain questions, but it's how Muhammad explained the concept of Qadr.

As I say, you see time as absolute, but it is not.

I do not see time as anything in particular.

You are describing the finite.

Again, I'm not describing anything. Those are Muhammad's words.

God, the Most High, is NOT finite.

The period of time between two events is finite.

 

[muhammad_isa]

He was using god as a metaphor.

I know.

 

[muhammad_isa]

So you accept that a fixed future (however that future is fixed) necessarily means that it cannot be changed. And if the future cannot be changed, then the concept of reward or punishment for our future actions is fundamentally flawed.

No, I don't. We have to be responsible citizens and seek our destiny, whatever it may be.
The fact that I can't change the future, doesn't prevent me from taking responsibility for my actions.

 

[KWED]

No, I don't.

You are literally arguing against yourself...

We have to seek our destiny, whatever it may be.
I can't change the future,

If you can't change the future, your destiny will simply arrive as planned, whatever you do.

The fact that I can't change the future, doesn't prevent me from taking responsibility for my actions.

If you can't change the future, you are not responsible for it.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Well, we're certainly not getting any out of you.

Well, you would claim that.
I've never said that what we choose doesn't affect the future.

You just can't see that it is our choices that MAKE the future what it is, if our futures can also be known.
You see it as contradictory.

You take "time" at face value.
You don't take into account Einstein's theory of relativity.

 

[Trailblazer]

So, you are declining to provide any of these claimed "facts". Just more vague handwaving.

The facts about the Baha'i Faith can be found in various books, many of which are available online to read or download from the Baha'i Reference Library.

The basic facts about the Baha’i Faith can be read about in this introductory book. I prefer the older version which is in the older Baha’i Reference Library:
Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era

The fully downloadable version is in the newer Bahai Reference Library:
Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era

The following slideshow depicts the life of Baha’u’llah from birth to death (1817-1892)
The Life of Baha’u’llah, a photographic narrative

Brief history of the Baha’i Faith

The history of the Baha’i Faith began in 1844 with the coming of the Bab. The two books that depict the history are The Dawn-Breakers (Nabíl’s Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahá’í Revelation) and God Passes By (1844-1944). Of course the history going forward is still to be written.

Those books can be found in the Baha’i Reference Library:

Baha’i Reference Library (old version)
Baha’i Reference Library (new version, downloadable)

Other books that go into great detail about the actual mission of Baha’u’llah are as follows:

The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, Volumes 1-4, which cover the 40 years of His Mission, from 1853-1892

 

[Trailblazer]

Ah, but the parent has given the child free will, so it's ok (apparently).

No, that is not okay, because the parents are responsible for their children so the parents should be using their free will to stop the children from doing what they should not be doing.