Atheists: Would you like to believe in God if there was good evidence for God?

[Trailblazer]

So you are taking a pretty big gamble if that God indeed exists, don't you think? You must be fairly certain that this God does not exist.

Me taking a gamble suggests that I have some sort of a choice. Again, you are saying this as if I have a switch in my head I can activate that will automatically allow me to believe. I can't just DECIDE to believe in a god just because people claim there would be some benefit if I do.

I am certainly NOT suggesting that you do that because I know it is not possible to WILL a belief in God. All I am suggesting, if even that, is that you might give it more careful consideration before you decide there is no God.

If someone told you that magical pixies are real and that if you sincerely believe in them they will grant your every wish, would you somehow be able to 'make' yourself genuinely believe in magical pixies? If you couldn't, then you understand why I can't 'make' myself genuinely believe in your god.

I do not think it is a fair comparison to compare God to magical pixies for two reasons:

1. There is no reason to think that magical pixies exist, no evidence at all
2. Even if magical pixies did exist, they would have no bearing on our lives

That said, I can certainly put myself in your shoes because I have been posting to atheists 24/7 on several forums for over five years, so I understand how they feel about evidence and proof of God.

In short, atheists do not see ANY evidence that God exists. I wouldn’t see any either if I had not stumbled upon the Baha’i Faith way back when. I did not have any problem accepting that it had a Divine Author because there was and still is no logical explanation for how it all came to be unless there was a God involved. In short, no mere human being ever accomplished such a mission against all odds and opposition or wrote what Baha’u’llah wrote. That is proof to me. Obviously YMMV.

The argument some theists make, that because the universe exists and humans exist, that must be proof that God exists is a weak argument at best because there are other possible explanations for those, but I do not see any other explanations for what the Messengers of God were able to accomplish and what was left in their wake.

 

[Trailblazer]

I don't see it as a cacth-22 at all. It just means the default (non-existence) is maintained.

Okay, you are free to maintain your position because there won’t be any more evidence from God forthcoming.

OK, fine. But all that only applies if God actually exists. If not, then there is no messenger and no need to validate that messenger.

And that means we only have two possibilities:
1. God does not exist
2. God exists, uses a messenger, but you can't know the messenger is legitimate.

Once again, the logical position seems to gravitate to 1.

Obviously, if God does not exist there cannot be a Messenger “of God.”

I see a third possibility:
3. God exists, uses a messenger, and we can determine if the messenger is legitimate if we do careful and thorough research and investigation.

Speaking of possibilities, given the empirical evidence that we have, below are the three mutually exclusive logical possibilities:

1) God exists and communicates with Messengers (theist), or
2) God exists and does not communicate (deist), or
3) God does not exist (atheist)

 

[Trailblazer]

But I would go further. The evidence available is of incredibly poor quality. The *possible* existence of 'messengers' or 'prophets' with no way to verify either seems like a weak position, at best.

So, not only do we not have proof, but the quality of the evidence is so poor that even accepting it as valid is a stretch.

No, there is no way to *prove* that any Messenger was sent by God, but the evidence available for Baha’u’llah is of incredibly good quality

So, even though we not have proof, the quality of the evidence is so good that accepting it as valid is not a stretch.

Of course, you would have to *know* what the evidence for Baha’u’llah is before you would understand what I mean. I plan to post a new thread entitled Evidence that Baha’u’llah was a Messenger of God because @ Left Coast has asked me to post it more than once. Hopefully, I will post it next weekend if I do not get waylaid on other threads again.

 

[Trailblazer]

If you want a reasonable answer, try asking a reasonable question.

Your question is so loaded with assumptions that I don't know where to start unpacking it.

That was not really a question, I was just stating my opinion, so what is loaded about it?

Why do you think I am assuming that God uses Messengers? I never believed that until I understood why that is necessary.

 

[Trailblazer]

In the same sense that I'm taking a gamble by not wearing my flame-resistant suit (which I actually have from my racing days) when I leave the house to protect me from dragons' fire-breath.

Do you think I'm reasonable not to do that? If so, then explain why I should take the threat of God more seriously than the threat of dragons.

In short, because God exists. I am not saying you should feel threatened by that, because I do not believe in the hell as portrayed by Christianity. I really do not know what happens to atheists after they die but I have some idea what happens to believers. The known is always better than the unknown, especially when we are talking about all of eternity.

I am not suggesting Pascal’s Wager, only that you keep an open mind.

 

[Trailblazer]

I am not aware that we can prove anything, apart from analytical propositions (aka math).

So, no, if I had evidence I would not need to believe. Belief is left to those claims which have no evidence. Like the belief in Gods.

Ciao

- viole

Evidence is not proof. There is evidence that God exists but there is no proof.

 

[Trailblazer]

That does not prevent from there being two, or more, all-whatever.

Ciao

- viole

There is only one true God. The other gods are imaginary gods.

 

[Trailblazer]

Well, the atheist, as any rational person should do, is think like this:

God is almighty. If He managed to make Himself known to the middle man, aka prophet, why not to the the rest, as well?

Because God does not want to and God only does what God wants to do.

That should be quite easy. According to the Bible He did it all the time.

Actually, the fact that you take seriously the middle men is self defeating, for it entails that

1) either God can make Himself known to humans and you do not need middle men, or

2) He cannot, in which case the middle man just made things up.

The latter being the most obvious conclusion. Since not existing things cannot do anything.

God can do whatever He wants to do but God only wants to make Himself known to middle men who make God known to all the other humans. Humans who don’t like that will just have to miss out on knowing God.

 

[Mock Turtle]

You cannot prove their existence of your own consciousness. You only know for sure that you exist: it is the only factual piece of evidence that you have. There is a book by Robert Lanza called Biocentrism that clearly shows all the quantum physic studies can only be understood properly when you understand that consciousness is creating matter, not the other way around. You have absolutely no evidence that the physical world exists outside of consciousness, all you know for sure is your own existence.

Yes, I am aware of this, but in my ignorance I prefer to believe that life does exist external to myself, given the numbers who die but who don't seemingly affect the rest of us that much - and that consciousness arises from physical matter. Just makes more sense to me, and I don't claim to justify it any more than I can justify a lack of belief in God or gods. Our minds just work that way - we just make sense of the evidence presented - or not, if we leave some things as being unknown.

 

[ChristineM]

As I said, the Hebrew word does mean sin or moral evil. There is no verse in the Bible which says God created sin.

Wanna play semantics?

If the bible OT is a selective clone of the Tanakh and the hebrew word means sin then where is the argument?

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

I don't think that is the way it works because no one among us can determine such things. As finite humans we do not have the prerogative to know at all whether the world is better off because of some disaster or not.

Right: that's why I used the word "maybe." By what you're saying, we can't be sure that crushing children to death is good; we just have to leave ourselves open to the possibility that crushing children to death might be good.

Besides, the scriptures have also stated that this world is fallen due to sin and therefore bad things occur, such as earthquakes.

Please explain how earthquakes would be caused by human sin.

And just to be clear: you do agree that at least some of the suffering and calamity that human beings encounter is created by God, right? That seens to me the whole point of the Bible verse we've been talking about.

Murdering innocent people is clearly against God's law. I think your argument falls flat.

The question of whether God has forbidden something seems to me separate from the question of whether there's hidden good.

On the contrary, Jesus is our example and while on the earth He demonstrated compassion and alleviated suffering wherever He went. That is what Christians are called to do. This world is full of suffering caused by human sin, which outside of God's will, yet God uses everything to draw people to Himself and bring wholeness.

How do you decide which suffering is aligned with God's will and which suffering goes against it? You just said at the beginning of the post that we can't tell.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

In short, because God exists.

.... you believe.

But we're talking about what attitude people who don't already believe that God exists should take, not the attitude of people who are convinced of God.

I am not saying you should feel threatened by that, because I do not believe in the hell as portrayed by Christianity. I really do not know what happens to atheists after they die but I have some idea what happens to believers. The known is always better than the unknown, especially when we are talking about all of eternity.

I am not suggesting Pascal’s Wager, only that you keep an open mind.

I've kept as open a mind as I think the situation dictates, just as I do for any other fantastical claim.

Just because something can't be absolutely disproved in a philosophical sense doesn't mean it's enough of a real possibility that we should adjust our actions in case it's true.

Take an outcome that we know not only might be possible, but definitely is possible: that when you're swimming in the ocean, random fluctuations in salt concentrations in the water will cause an island of salt to crystallize beneath you and carry you out to sea.

This is a real possibility. The odds are extremely low, but we could calculate the probability and it wouldn't be zero.

Unless you can show that your god is at least that likely, why should we pay it any mind at all?

Do you leave yourself open to things you can't disprove?

For instance, maybe sometime in the future, you'll encounter a unicorn who can give you life-changing advice, but only if you befriend it by feeding it licorice gumdrops. How will this claim that you can't disprove inform your actions? Will you start carrying licorice gumdrops just in case?

 

[Polymath257]

Evidence is not proof. There is evidence that God exists but there is no proof.

And the evidence is of very poor quality and can easily be explained by simpler constructs.

There is only one true God. The other gods are imaginary gods.

Well, that's a claim, but you have even less evidence of this than you do for the existence of any deity.

 

[Polymath257]

Okay, you are free to maintain your position because there won’t be any more evidence from God forthcoming.

Obviously, if God does not exist there cannot be a Messenger “of God.”

Right. And, there are potentially people that will be *thought* to be messengers from God even though no God exists.

I see a third possibility:
3. God exists, uses a messenger, and we can determine if the messenger is legitimate if we do careful and thorough research and investigation.

I'm trying to imagine what sort of evidence would allow that to be the case. So, suppose someone claimed to be a messengers from God, others believed this person to be a messenger from God, this person was able to mesh the different previous stories about God together, this person was able to give sage moral advice, etc.

Would this be evidence that they are a messenger? No. We *first* have to know of the existence of God before we can even address the question of whether any particular person is a messenger. Even an absolutely exemplary person would NOT even be *evidence* of the existence of a God, let alone that this person was a messenger.

Speaking of possibilities, given the empirical evidence that we have, below are the three mutually exclusive logical possibilities:

1) God exists and communicates with Messengers (theist), or
2) God exists and does not communicate (deist), or
3) God does not exist (atheist)

My problem is that there are three possibilities:

1. God exists and there is evidence enough to support a belief in that existence.
2. God exists and there is not such evidence.
3. God does not exist.

In the case of 1, I would want evidence at least as good as the evidence for dark matter. We don't know what it is, but we know it is there.

I think we can agree that we do NOT have evidence for the existence of God to this degree. If you disagree, please present said evidence.

The problem comes in deciding between 2 and 3. As far as I can see, they are observationally equivalent. And that means that 3 wins by default.

For me, bringing in messengers only complicates the reasoning because you cannot know (or even have evidence) that someone is a messenger unless you *previously* know there is an entity to be a messenger from.

Think of it like this. Suppose some person sudenly announces that they are a messenger transmitting a message from a civilization in a distant star system. Why would you believe them? Well, if they could *point* to the star system, that would be a very good first step. If they gave information that only someone from that star system could know, that would be helpful. But if they only gave commonly (or even uncommonly) known *human* knowledge, then we could reasonably reject their claims.

 

[Trailblazer]

And just to be clear: you do agree that at least some of the suffering and calamity that human beings encounter is created by God, right? That seems to me the whole point of the Bible verse we've been talking about.

Technically speaking, yes, because God created a material world which is a storehouse of suffering, and there is much more suffering for some of us than for others. Some of that is caused by evil people do, like the mass shooters, and some of it is simply inherent in a material world where some of us just have to struggle to exist day to day.

This would be totally unjust, if God had not created a spiritual world where there will be no more suffering, but He did, so those who suffered so much here will have a recompense in the next life.

“O My servants! Sorrow not if, in these days and on this earthly plane, things contrary to your wishes have been ordained and manifested by God, for days of blissful joy, of heavenly delight, are assuredly in store for you. Worlds, holy and spiritually glorious, will be unveiled to your eyes. You are destined by Him, in this world and hereafter, to partake of their benefits, to share in their joys, and to obtain a portion of their sustaining grace. To each and every one of them you will, no doubt, attain.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 329

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Technically speaking, yes, because God created a material world which is a storehouse of suffering, and there is much more suffering for some of us than for others. Some of that is caused by evil people do, like the mass shooters, and some of it is simply inherent in a material world where some of us just have to struggle to exist day to day.

This would be totally unjust, if God had not created a spiritual world where there will be no more suffering, but He did, so those who suffered so much here will have a recompense in the next life.

So instead, it's only somewhat unjust?

 

[paarsurrey]

As far as I'm aware there has never been an example of consciousness existing without a physical brain. The physical brain that I happen to possess is the result of my parents procreating. Thus my existence is proof that my parents procreated.

Does that clarify matters?

When as a child one gained consciousness for the first time, one had no proof/evidence of one's parents except other people telling you that they were your parents. So, it is not proof of your parents existed before you except hearsay. Right, please?

Regards

 

[paarsurrey]

paarsurrey said: ↑
Can a conscious human being exist without that human being's parents first existing? Please

No they cannot... however my parents, though conscious, were not conscious prior to their birth and I have no reason to believe that they will remain conscious after their death. Thus they are not 'eternal consciousness'.

That was not my question, please. Please read the question again and answer it if you please. I did not talk of the "eternal consciousness" in my question.

Regards

 

[viole]

Evidence is not proof. There is evidence that God exists but there is no proof.

I am afraid there is so much evidence that God exists as there is evidence that my garden is infested by invisible fairies.

Ciao

- viole

 

[viole]

There is only one true God. The other gods are imaginary gods.

You say so. I can say there 34 different gods, with exactly the same evidence.

Ciao

- viole