Do you KNOW God does not exist?

[Thief]

how do you explain that huge leap in logic? you jump from complexity right to the necessity for God. all it takes is a quick read Stephen Hawkins to see that line of reasoning is flawed.

Stephen ain't what he used to be.

 

[Thief]

Do I know that 'God' exists......no.
Do I know that 'gods' exist.......no.
Do I believe that 'God' exists...no.
Do I believe that 'gods' exist....no.
~
Do I believe a single entity created the Cosmos...no.
Do I believe our Universe is all of the Cosmos.....no.
Do I believe 'God' created the Cosmos......no.
Do I believe 'gods' created the Universe....no
~
That's all I am aware of at this moment in 'time'.
~
Except....Life is Stuff...yes.....and I need some more coffee !
~
'mud

atta boy!...Mud

 

[Thief]

Your imagination has "enormous power over nature"?

Seems to me.....God's imagination has power over nature.

 

[Thief]

Seems to me.....God's imagination has power over nature.

There're many religions and many Gods.

Between many religion to religion, they cannot agree with each other that whose God is the true God. Many of them only believe their own religion's God to be the true God.

I look around me, i don't know why it's so complex, but it's not so important i guess.
As i have no supernatural experience with any God, i don't conclude that any God is the responsible for everything.

There would be only One Almighty.....so I reason.

 

[leibowde84]

Stephen ain't what he used to be.

He described this near the beginning of his career. So, what do you mean by that?

 

[Shad]

It is. Once you leave the universe, no one can make any claims about anything because there is a total absence of evidence.

Except that you are making claims aka assertions about it.

And the theist is equally certain that God does exist. Blind faith by any other name.......

The very claim as noted above... More so if you are agnostic deist then either you lack knowledge/evidence or believe such is impossible for/of your deity but believe in it anyways. It is illogical to believe in an ill-defined deity which you have no knowledge. Heck a unicorn is better defined than God yet most people think it is unreasonable to believe in unicorns.

Except for the birth/existence of the universe. What justification do you have for assuming a spontaneous cause?

Using the reason as pointed out by you in your own comment will do nicely. " Once you leave the universe, no one can make any claims about anything because there is a total absence of evidence." I do not need to leave said universe. We know of the BB and of the singularity. We have no observed cause thus it is reasonable to take the stance it was uncaused. Unlike you God position you must go outside the universe for your cause which according to you "Once you leave the universe, no one can make any claims about anything because there is a total absence of evidence" More so you have no reason to assume God is uncaused by your own argument...

Nothing, except the beginning of the universe. Deism does claim the belief that God initiated the universe (technically at time zero, when the universe was in an incipient limbo so to speak, my words) but has not interacted with it since. The Big Bang is the Big Impenetrable Question Mark.

This comment is illogical. If God created the universe at t=0 then there was a state of no-universal as a creation is a change thus must be within time. So by your argument there must be a T= -1 for there to be a limbo.

The watchmaker analogy is fine on it's own, but the continuation of it, even in dictionaries back then, was that God then walked away? Absurd! Why would God abandon the universe and not care? It was the demagoguery of the church (and still is) to imply that a non-interactive God is a non-caring God--since all theists know that God is a personal/interactive God.

No its fallacious and has been proven to be for over a century. The rest has really nothing to do with physics but is about religion thus is irrelevant.

 

[Cephus]

There is none, that's what we're talking about.

PS, sorry that word replace mutilated my last post. I didn't notice it earlier.

But there are plenty of theists who say "you can't prove I don't have evidence!" That's really what I'm talking about. It is the responsibility to present what you claim you have, if you don't present it for evaluation, then no one has any obligation to take the claimant seriously. Therefore, since no one has presented any actual, demonstrable, objective evidence for God, I think it's safe to say that none exists, no matter what anyone claims. Thus, we can safely dispose of any and all claims that God is real, at least until someone proves differently.

 

[StopS]

You're just sticking the "not" in there at different places

Well done, excellent observation.

I for one define God as the possible conscious force that caused the universe

Why "conscious"?
Can you compare that to an "uncaused" Universe, please? As from what material and as from what point in time did the Universe exist using what process?
You are sticking things into an area which makes little sense.

there's no evidence for either scenario

So why believe it?

Everything else science examines has some evidence available, but not the Big Bang

Do you think ignoring something makes it go away?

that doesn't allow you ignore that possibility

Why would you think I do?

claiming that the Big Bang was a spontaneous event

Who would do such a speculative, dishonest thing?

it is fair to speculate about the nature of God

Why?

which would interfere with our free will

What is that?

Look, you seem stuck in a rut. Gods are just the lazyman's excuse to not think and remain ignorant. I don't understand the origins of the Universe - so I'll go and find out. But I don't sit there and mumble something about some gods and pretend I have a solution.

 

[Pudding]

There would be only One Almighty.....so I reason.

As i don't have any supernatural experience with any One Almighty, so there is no reason for me to believe in any One Almighty.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Kinda forgot to reply. Just an example versus what one believes and what one knows.

The reason I say I know God does not exist is because I know that God is a belief not a fact. I find it weird to say "No one can know God exists" when He only exists as a belief to begin with.

I think we are so God focused that we made an belief something concrete. Since we see it as concrete, of course we cant know everything about it. If nothing existed but a claim and three letters, it makes me scratch my head that people would say "we cannot know God exists" and I think, how did you come up with an entity to exist to say you dont know about it.

Sounds like talking fiction as if it is real. I guess only the author knows its just a figment of his imagination. Hed be perplex to think people are debating the knowledge over an idea.

Anyway, cant think of how to explain it.

Well, my point is that knowledge is not the same thing as absolute certainty. The latter can entail the former, but the vice-versa is not necessarily true.

If the two things were equal, it would not make sense to speak of things like scientific, hystorical, etc. knowledge, since science, for instance, is not in the business of certainties. After all, nobody would say that humanity acquired a lot of "beliefs" in the last centuries. Everybody uses the word "knowledge" in case of science without a problem althought only very few, if any at all, of our progresses in understanding reality qualify as absolute certainties.

Incidentally, it follows from simple logic that if we declare ourselves agnostic about God, then we should be agnostic about the (literal) God of the Bible, too. Ergo, we should be agnostic about the earth being 6,000 years old, which sounds kinda weird.

So, no, I do not believe that angels do not carry planets around. I know it, althought I cannot give you absolute certainty that angels do not indeed carry planets around. As implausible as it can be, the angels carrying planets scenario is still possible. Same with God, basically. Implausible, but still possible. But that does not prevent me from asserting to know that God does not exist.

Btw, what makes you believe that I am a male?

Ciao

- viole

 

[Thief]

As i don't have any supernatural experience with any One Almighty, so there is no reason for me to believe in any One Almighty.

At the point of creation....choose...

Spirit first?....or substance?

What follows you choice is then your reasoning.
I say....Spirit first, as dead things don't beget the living.

 

[Thief]

and in the scheme of superlatives.....Someone is going to be Greatest in all respects.

the Almighty.

 

[Thief]

He described this near the beginning of his career. So, what do you mean by that?

Numbers play out.....then fail....
Have you ever really listened to what theoretical physicists say?

I have heard one popular fellow pronounce....theoretical physics has a 'problem' with infinity.
He spoke as much having demonstrated an equation that ends with...infinity plus infinity plus infinity.....infinitely.....

 

[Blastcat]

What I know....what I am sure of.....is one thing.
What I can prove is something less.

So, you can know something and not be able to prove it.
How about nobody can prove it.. not you, not anyone. Still "know" it?

Can you give us an example of that OTHER than some supernatural "knowledge"?
How does it work to say you know something for which there is no proof?

Like science 'believes' in dark energy and dark matter.

A scientific hypothesis isn't a belief. Science is a method. a body of knowledge. it can NOT believe in anything.
So, Could you rephrase that for me so that it makes sense?

The numbers the physicist play with lead the way.
But no proof.

No, you don't start with a PROOF for something, you start with a theory or a hypothesis, or some evidence.
But never a proof. Proof is something you get at the END of a research, not at the beginning.

If you make a hypothesis.. say, that a god exists, THEN you try to prove it somehow.
You say you know something ( you didn't way what ) .. if you have no proof for it, then what you say you know is less certain. If you have no reason or evidence for it, your claim that you KNOW that thing.. is spurious.

 

[ThePainefulTruth]

This is the argument from ignorance that I mentioned earlier: "I can't figure out what caused the universe, therefore God must have done it." You're committing a logical fallacy.

More putting words in your opponents mouth. That's just so cheap.

Deism has none of that. You have no revelations or miracles to point to; you only have your unjustified assumption that God must have created the universe.

More sleeze. Why don't you try a forthright approach: I only have a speculation that God MIGHT have done it. Nice work if you can get away with it, which you must have been doing for quite a while for you to be so comfortable and repetitious with it.

Deism is just conventional theism with the unsupported bits stripped away, but by stripping them away, you undermine your own foundation and justification. The god you posit is no more justified than Russell's Teapot or Sagan's Invisible Dragon.

The teapot and the dragon are within the universe--that is if they're not made out of whole cloth. Uh, well I'll be damned, I wonder why you never thought of that. Try giving actual reason a chance.

The Problem of Evil suggests that any God is a non-caring God. Whether God is hands-on or hands-off is irrelevant to that question. Whether God knowingly commits a series of small acts or committed one big act from which all other acts flowed, the implications for God's goodness are the same.[/QUOTE]

Except that you are making claims aka assertions about it.

NOT assertions, speculations, of which there are only two.

The very claim as noted above... More so if you are agnostic deist then either you lack knowledge/evidence or believe such is impossible for/of your deity but believe in it anyways. It is illogical to believe in an ill-defined deity which you have no knowledge. Heck a unicorn is better defined than God yet most people think it is unreasonable to believe in unicorns.

So you reject the anthropomorphic vision of God adopted by most of the revealed religions, and decide to put your/my blind faith in a unicorn. Is that a male or female?

We have no observed cause thus it is reasonable to take the stance it was uncaused.

You're in the woods and you come upon a pot of beef stew boiling over a fire. There's no one there and no evidence that anyone had been there. A camcorder happens to be aimed at it and you rewind and watch it. One instant it's not there and then it is. Let's assume you have the expertise to tell that nothing tampered with the recording. So is it reasonable to take the stance that it was uncaused? You can't tell if natural law was violated or not, it's just there.

This comment is illogical. If God created the universe at t=0 then there was a state of no-universal as a creation is a change thus must be within time. So by your argument there must be a T= -1 for there to be a limbo.

Cosmologists and theoretical physicists say we know nothing before t=0--but it appears that you want to assert your theoretical physics as fact, never mind that it's unaccepted by any actual scientists--unless you have a Creationist hidden in a closet somewhere.

No its fallacious and has been proven to be for over a century.

OK then, let's have a reference, from somebody besides Pat Robertson that is.

Can you compare that to an "uncaused" Universe, please? As from what material and as from what point in time did the Universe exist using what process?[/'quote]

From time zero at the singularity which was the starting time for the Big Bang. Before that we know absolutely nothing........at all.

So why believe it?

There's no basis for reasonably favoring one over he other. I only favor one over the other because it offers hope.

Do you think ignoring something makes it go away?

No, but I'm beginning to believe you do.

Why would you think I do?

You'd have to answer that. I don't have a clue.

Who would do such a speculative, dishonest thing?

Atheists, obviously, there there are many, even a majority, who don't. And it isn't dishonest unless they claim that the alternative is impossible.

Why?

To try to make sense out of why God might have done all this when It could, being omnipotent, have done it instantly instead of over 13 billion years.

What is that?

What is what, free will? It's the ability to make moral choices about whether to violate the rights of another without divine influence, which would nullify the free will.

Look, you seem stuck in a rut. Gods are just the lazyman's excuse to not think and remain ignorant. I don't understand the origins of the Universe - so I'll go and find out. But I don't sit there and mumble something about some gods and pretend I have a solution.

It appears that all I've written has just bounced off you. This isn't a solution, it's a possibility; one that's reasonable and exposes all the "revealed" words of God out there. You'd think that alone would be enough for atheists to give deism a fair shake. But most of them are too busy shooting fish in the Christian rain barrel.

The reason I say I know God does not exist is because I know that God is a belief not a fact. I find it weird to say "No one can know God exists" when He only exists as a belief to begin with.

And a spontaneous universe is also a belief not a fact. Yet you ignore that only alternative in the name of blind faith.

I think we are so God focused that we made an belief something concrete. Since we see it as concrete, of course we cant know everything about it. If nothing existed but a claim and three letters, it makes me scratch my head that people would say "we cannot know God exists" and I think, how did you come up with an entity to exist to say you dont know about it.

Wondering about the source of the universe, something that man has wondered about since our self-awareness began, yet here we are with all that science has discovered, yet we're no closer to even the smallest bit of an answer. So now college freshmen gather around their associate philosophy professor and suck up his indoctrination as was done by tribesman and congregants before their shamans and priests for the last 10,000 years. Ain't "progress" a hoot?

 

[Bunyip]

Cosmologists and theoretical physicists say we know nothing before t=0--but it appears that you want to assert your theoretical physics as fact, never mind that it's unaccepted by any actual scientists--unless you have a Creationist hidden in a closet somewhere.

Dude, there is no 'before' T=0. You are talking nonsense. Before time?

 

[Blastcat]

And I for one define God as the possible conscious force that caused the universe as opposed to the other possibility that no-God is the possible unconscious force that caused the universe.

A possibility. Well, everything is at least possible to some degree. We humans don't know anything with absolute certainty. Not even logical laws are absolutely certain. But many things are HIGHLY probable, like the laws of logic. And some things are HIGHLY IMPROBABLE like gods and demons and Big Foot and alien abductions.

All of the above ARE possibilities. .. probable? No, not really. What about Santa? I always go back to Santa. You see, Santa is MAGIC.. got that Xmas magic, you see. Up there in the NORTH POLE... invisible to unbelievers.

Possible? Why not? Probable? You decide. I decided when I was around 5.

There's absolutely no evidence for either one, and the question is not about the existence of God, directly, it's about what caused the universe.

Yep, who knows?

Yes, and there's no evidence for either scenario....at all.

Yep, no evidence, No knowledge. Maybe a dozen interesting scientific scenarios. But NO evidence, NO knowledge. FOR a creator god OR anything else. So the creator god claims are completely illegitimate.

They can claim all they like, but we know they have no evidence, and no proof. Forget about it. IF the apologists ever GET evidence or proof, it's going to come from the SCIENTIFIC community first. NEVER the preachers who sit all day looking at their books. You don't learn about NATURE by staring at old books all day.

Everything else science examines has some evidence available, but not the Big Bang,

The reason we have a BIG BANG THEORY is due to the evidence. Don't confuse evidence for PROOF. Nobody says the big bang has been PROVEN.. but there is overwhelming evidence for the big bang. However, nobody claims to know what CAUSED the big bang, if that's even a coherent idea. Maybe there wasn't even a cause in the usual sense of the word.

Quantum level physics and astrophysics is weird like that.

so just because you can say there's no evidence that God caused it, that doesn't allow you ignore that possibility and go straight to claiming that the Big Bang was a spontaneous event, without any evidence.

We should also not get too optimistic about a creator god. We know the genesis of that old story. It's not exactly, shall we say, rocket science. It's more in the way of myth story making from a long time ago, BEFORE any science.

Exactly. A revealed, supernatural, miracle causing God, while not impossible (God could have chosen to be that way I s'pose), is 100% lacking in evidence for it. The only two scenarios that fit the evidence is no God or a laissez faire God.

You have evidence for a laisser faire god? That's news to me. I'd love to see the evidence for that.

Being as there's no evidence either way, it'd be 50-50.

I don't agree that it's 50-50 at all. We have a LOT of evidence that nature exists.. Like a 99.99999999999999 probability that reality exists and none at all for gods.

The prior probability of ANY god... is zero. Not 50. Now, if I'm feeling generous, WHICH I am.. I will gladly say that nothing is absolute. So, how about we RAISE that zero to say.. .00000000000000000001 percent probability to 1, which is nature. Now, since nothing is absolute.. I'm going to be generous again, OHHH im so freaking generous and take down nature to a lowly .999999999999999 percent instead of a ONE.

So, in my generous example, the ratio I get is 0.00000000000000000000001 to 0.99999999999999999 that any god exists. Give or take a few zeros. The zeros should match.. Just imagine they match. That would be a better ratio. But NEVER 50-50.

On a scale of 100.. it would be something like 1 to 99 for the existence of any god. A far cry from 50-50 in any case.

Yes and No. There's no evidence to assume whether there's a God or not,

There is NO evidence that a god exists. That part, you got right. However, the fact that there is NO evidence for the existence of god IS evidence that no god exists. If something DOES NOT EXIST, we should EXPECT no evidence FOR it's existence.

Right?.. if I say there is a green dragon in my basement.. and you go LOOK and find NO EVIDENCE OF ANY DRAGON.. it's kind of normal to say something like " Hey.. there's NO dragons down there."

But if we see weird colored giant poops , weird huge eggs, a lot of gold, a damsel in distress, lots of burned things AND a dragon.. It would be evidence FOR a dragon. Then you could say something like "Hey, i'm pretty sure there IS a dragon down there."

I mean, it COULD be a hallucination of some kind .. but hey.. great evidence.

The total and complete lack of evidence? .. pretty much builds a case for NO dragons.

no.....but....it is fair to speculate about the nature of God IF It created the universe.

We can speculate all day. I would say that a creator god would be BIG. So what? Does that really mean anything?

Determining how the universe came to be is indeed impossible; and the strange thing is that may be by design so that we don't know that It exists which would interfere with our free will.

Yeah, the creator god of the universe may be hiding. Peek a boo. Here is a quote from Arthur C. Clarke about that very subject you might find interesting: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

But we can't assume that because we can't assume the lack of evidence as evidence. Yet......

Yes, we can assume that the lack of evidence is evidence of the lack of a god. However, evidence isn't PROOF.
Evidence might be a PART of the proof, but for a creator god, the evidence would have to be FANTASTIC evidence before anyone in their right mind would say that they have PROOF of a creator.

Maybe some extraordinary being with super powers might be able to fool us convincingly.,Talks like a god, walks like a god, does magic like a god... IS it a god?.. Hmmm good question. Maybe it's a demon. Demons have powers.. Aliens with time travel capabilities .. How about HUMANS with time travel capabilities?

Come back from the future and .. mess with our brains.. using brain messing equipment.

That's a problem. What's that A,C Clarke quote?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic? I think that could apply here.
I think it would be pretty easy for people from the future to fool most of us.

Ahhhhh but I would be skeptical. I would ask.. how can we know for sure? Can't rule out deception from an advanced agent.

 

[ThePainefulTruth]

Dude, there is no 'before' T=0. You are talking nonsense. Before time?

Whyn't you say you weren't serious?

A possibility. Well, everything is at least possible to some degree. We humans don't know anything with absolute certainty. Not even logical laws are absolutely certain. But many things are HIGHLY probable, like the laws of logic. And some things are HIGHLY IMPROBABLE like gods and demons and Big Foot and alien abductions.



All of the above ARE possibilities. .. probable? No, not really. What about Santa? I always go back to Santa. You see, Santa is MAGIC.. got that Xmas magic, you see. Up there in the NORTH POLE... invisible to unbelievers.

Possible? Why not? Probable? You decide. I decided when I was around 5.

That pink unicorn lies dead in the streets yet you keep whipping it. You just can't bring yourself to understand that it never was alive to begin with.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

More putting words in your opponents mouth. That's just so cheap.



More sleeze. Why don't you try a forthright approach: I only have a speculation that God MIGHT have done it. Nice work if you can get away with it, which you must have been doing for quite a while for you to be so comfortable and repetitious with it.



The teapot and the dragon are within the universe--that is if they're not made out of whole cloth. Uh, well I'll be damned, I wonder why you never thought of that. Try giving actual reason a chance.

I don't really care about your personal beliefs or about engaging with your insults. The bottom line for me is this: since deism is fundamentally and inherently irrational, I see no need to worry about it being correct.

 

[Unveiled Artist]

Hey. You accidently put your posts to me within stops's quote, so I cannot copy. It will take awhile on this phone.

Yes. They are both beliefs or assumptions. Why concider anything a fact unless we KNOW not believe it as such. Many scientists and even science professors will admit what some things science has somewhat found are hypothesis or theory rather than fact.

Take big bang for example. It's explained as theory and belief not a fact.

Origins of the Universe, Big Bang Theory Information, Big Bang Facts, News, Photos -- National Geographic Making a point; cant talk about it no more than what I read.

So, thinking God somehow created the universe is a great stretch of belief. Humans want to find a meaning to life. They feel everything has a creator. Only a person can create. No human has created us. BINGO! It must be God.

(Mind you, if God exist it would only be one God(s) of one faith. Belief in God is not a fact but based on a lot of things. Evidence that God does not exist lies on psychology and human thought. Take these two way, God can only exist with the human need to believe in Him)

Here is an interesting website that explains our need to believe in a supreme being EVEN IF He does not exist.

Five Causes of Belief in God | Psychology Today

"What this work does suggest is that moderate shifts in belief can occur when people are feeling things, such as a fear of death, a lack of control or a need for justice, and when they are exposed to suffering or are thinking experientially. " ~Except from site above​

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I dont understand where you going with the second comment about college people. Progres in God being true or progress that science is shifting to show God-belief is old fashion?
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Your comment in 278 about the unicorn is one of my points. Yet, we beat it as if somehow it is there and alive.