Evidence for a god existing or not existing

[RestlessSoul]

I already did. But it is truly amazing that people even have to ask. If one has to ask "why" to that question it does not bode well as to their ability to reason without bias.

The question you dismissed as silly was, who made the rule “if you can’t show it you don’t know it”?

Seems a reasonable question to me, not silly at all. I must have missed your answer to it.

 

[Trailblazer]

It is rather obvious. If people cannot defend their claims by "showing it" it is almost always because they do not really know it.

How do you know that they don't know it? How do you think a believer could "show" someone else that their beliefs are true? When we do present the evidence we are told "that's not evidence" and it just goes round and round.

If a person is honest then supporting one's claims will convince them. The problem is that people are quite often not honest when it comes to beliefs that interfere with their religion. And quite often people do not understand what proper evidence is. But since this is a discussion forum there is no excuse to make claims and then refuse to support them.

You put believers in a Catch-22 situation. You ask us to support our beliefs with evidence and then when we give you the only evidence we have atheists invariably say "that's not evidence."

The same applies in a court of law. The arguments of those that refuse to support their claims simply do not fly there and can have very negative consequences.

Believers can only provide the best evidence they have, just as in a court of law. When the prosecutor brings his best evidence, the judge does not say "that's not evidence!" The judge and jury hear the evidence and then they make a decision. But that does not happen with atheists because they won't hear the evidence believers offer; they just say "that's not evidence!"

 

[Trailblazer]

I must have missed your answer to it.

No you didn't.

 

[ratiocinator]

Haha. Sorry mate. That is wrong. When I say center I dont mean what you think.

Well I'm not going to bother ploughing though something where the very first part doesn't say what it means, doubly so as it reads like yet another fine-tuning argument.

 

[ratiocinator]

your empty denial is noted

You described something exploding and leaving an expanding shell or hollow sphere. The BB is not an explosion of something into into empty space. It's an expansion of space itself. You have entirely the wrong picture.

"The expansion of the universe is the increase in distance between any two given gravitationally unbound parts of the observable universe with time. It is an intrinsic expansion whereby the scale of space itself changes. The universe does not expand "into" anything and does not require space to exist "outside" it. Technically, neither space nor objects in space move. Instead it is the metric governing the size and geometry of spacetime itself that changes in scale. As the spatial part of the universe's spacetime metric increases in scale, objects move apart from one another at ever-increasing speeds."

-- Expansion of the universe - Wikipedia​

 

[firedragon]

Well I'm not going to bother ploughing though something where the very first part doesn't say what it means, doubly so as it reads like yet another fine-tuning argument.

Well, as other atheists in this thread you are also cherry picking one single sentence ignoring the post and dismissing based on your personal understanding without clarification. Nevermind. Lets get how atheists discuss here. And anyway, you simply didnt understand the point. Of course I do expect you not to engage but just make some remark like "doubly so as it reads like yet another fine-tuning argument". By the way its going, that's all one could expect.

So in your mind, what is the center? Is it the geometric centre? Where is this geometric centre? What is the edge? Is it a perimeter? In the hot Big Bang model, how is the radii calculated to get the division of temperature?

There were so many things asked to understand your position but you are of course ignoring them all thinking if you engage with a semantic it is a good argument. No. It only makes "no argument" a "good argument" for you. Thats what fundamentalist preachers did after the darwinian advent in the west. You are doing the same thing. Why dont you resort to engage with the post instead?

 

[ratiocinator]

So in your mind, what is the center? Is it the geometric centre? Where is this geometric centre? What is the edge? Is it a perimeter? In the hot Big Bang model, how is the radii calculated to get the division of temperature?

If you're talking about the universe (as opposed to the observable universe), as I said, it doesn't have a centre or an edge and the 'radius of the universe' is a rather misleading term for the scale factor in the metric.

I also noted that you ended up with the figure of 1 in 10^10^123, which is due to Roger Penrose (not sure what you mean by "Turin test"*) and is about the conditions at the big bang. He has proposed his own solutions. You might want to look up the Weyl curvature hypothesis or maybe his speculative cosmology in Cycles of Time.

* "We could try the Turin test," said Lobsang.
"Oh, machines have been able to pass the Turing test for years."
"No, the Turin test. We both pray for an hour, and see if God can tell the difference."
― Stephen Baxter, The Long War
Note: the Turing test is also irrelevant.

 

[Subduction Zone]

The question you dismissed as silly was, who made the rule “if you can’t show it you don’t know it”?

Seems a reasonable question to me, not silly at all. I must have missed your answer to it.

Then your request does not appear to have been in earnest since you could not miss the explanation.

 

[Subduction Zone]

No you didn't.

Are you calling him a liar? It doesn't seem that he could have missed it so you might have a point.

 

[Subduction Zone]

How do you know that they don't know it? How do you think a believer could "show" someone else that their beliefs are true? When we do present the evidence we are told "that's not evidence" and it just goes round and round.

It appears that you ignored that part of the response. Read it again.

I do assume the people that I am responding to are being honest. Far too often they are not. They know that they are wrong but think they can get away with their dishonesty with an attempt to shift the burden of proof. Otherwise one does support what one knows in a discussion.

You put believers in a Catch-22 situation. You ask us to support our beliefs with evidence and then when we give you the only evidence we have atheists invariably say "that's not evidence."

No, you are not paying attention and are now making.false claims. Most of the time theists simply do not understand the concept of evidence. Or what they post is such poor quality evidence that people laugh at it. You appear to be blaming others for your shortcomings here. Did you ask those people why what you posted was not evidence?

Believers can only provide the best evidence they have, just as in a court of law. When the prosecutor brings his best evidence, the judge does not say "that's not evidence!" The judge and jury hear the evidence and then they make a decision. But that does not happen with atheists because they won't hear the evidence believers offer; they just say "that's not evidence!"

Actually a judge will quite often cut someone off if what they are saying is not evidence. And please, once again, do not blame atheists for your shortcomings. If what you are posting is not evidence try to learn why.

What you are guilty of right now is attempting to shift the burden of proof. It is something that those in the wrong try to do far too often.

 

[blü 2]

ESP - Evaluating Statistics For Psychic Phenomena | Stats + Stories Episode 11 — Stats + Stories

UCI takes guesswork out of ESP and telepathy – Orange County Register

Dr. Jessica Utts is a professor and chair of the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Irvine, and the 2016 president of the American Statistical Association. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

She did statistical analyses of ESP (Extrasensory Perception) for the US government (cooperating with the Stanford Research Institute in the Stargate project (not the sci fi on TV)), and wrote a report to Congress evaluating government research into ESP.

So, ESP has been confirmed as a real thing.

Project MKULTRA was promoted by President George Herbert Walker Bush, and he believed in ESP. President Ronald Reagan believed in ESP, and consulted psychics so often that it could be honestly said that they (the psychics) ran the United States in lieu of Reagan.

The military used ESP, and police departments pay money (generated by taxes) for psychics.

The bible uses ESP in Revelation (psychic reading of St. John the Divine). Even the bible, itself, was written by divine inspiration with ESP about 100 years after the apostles and Jesus had died.

If ESP is real, and it is an unexplained phenomenon, why can't God be real, too?

After all, if information is stored and just floating in the air for us to read and use, why can't there be some entity tapping into this vast storehouse of knowledge for use by his own brain?

Revelation is coming true, right before our eyes.

Wikipedia informs me that ─

A report by Utts claimed the results were evidence of psychic functioning, however [her co-panelist] Hyman in his report argued Utts' conclusion that ESP had been proven to exist, especially precognition, was premature and the findings had not been independently replicated. According to Hyman "the overwhelming amount of data generated by the viewers is vague, general, and way off target. The few apparent hits are just what we would expect if nothing other than reasonable guessing and subjective validation are operating." Funding for the project was stopped after these reports were issued.​

If Utts is wrong, why can't reports of the supernatural be wrong?

 

[RestlessSoul]

Then your request does not appear to have been in earnest since you could not miss the explanation.

I still see no answer to the question, who made the rule? (if you can’t show it, you don’t know it).

Unless you are saying that you made the rule? Then why not just say that?

There are many things one person may struggle to show another btw. Love, for example. Time. Dark matter. Gravity.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I still see no answer to the question, who made the rule? (if you can’t show it, you don’t know it).

Unless you are saying that you made the rule? Then why not just say that?

There are many things one person may struggle to show another btw. Love, for example. Time. Dark matter. Gravity.

You did not look very hard since the explanation was in the post just before the one where I said "I already did".

It is a silly question because a little thought should make the answer obvious. If a person has a difficult time demonstrating his love I would have doubts about its existence. And Dark Matter is not a good example since those that believe in its existence do not tend to go so far as to use the " know" claim.

Claiming to know something puts a huge burden of proof on the person making the claim. If I claimed that "I know that there is no god" you would rightfully be all over me.demanding that I show how I know this. And yet when a believer makes that error you defend him. This is hypocritical.

The poster that I responded to.claimed to know something. When put to the challenge it was clear that he only had a mere belief.

Once again, admitting that you have a belief is fine. I often won't challenge it unless I perceive it to be a harmful belief to others. But if you say you know something you better be ready to demonstrate that knowledge.

 

[RestlessSoul]

You did not look very hard since the explanation was in the post just before the one where I said "I already did".

It is a silly question because a little thought should make the answer obvious. If a person has a difficult time demonstrating his love I would have doubts about its existence. And Dark Matter is not a good example since those that believe in its existence do not tend to go so far as to use the " know" claim.

Claiming to know something puts a huge burden of proof on the person making the claim. If I claimed that "I know that there is no god" you would rightfully be all over me.demanding that I show how I know this. And yet when a believer makes that error you defend him. This is hypocritical.

The poster that I responded to.claimed to know something. When put to the challenge it was clear that he only had a mere belief.

Once again, admitting that you have a belief is fine. I often won't challenge it unless I perceive it to be a harmful belief to others. But if you say you know something you better be ready to demonstrate that knowledge.

Okay. Then suppose I told you that I believe - and this belief is based on lived experience - that one can know God, precisely in the manner that one can know peace, or know serenity, or know bliss? It would be very difficult to communicate that knowledge to one who has never known these things, except as abstract concepts.

This, I believe, is what religious people often mean when they say that they know God. And there lies the fundamental misunderstanding - the failure to communicate - that often arises when sceptics and cynics ask believers to justify or provide evidence for those beliefs which, to the believer, are experienced as knowing.

Then we have the expression ‘to know in the Biblical sense’, but perhaps let’s park that one up for now.

 

[ratiocinator]

Okay. Then suppose I told you that I believe - and this belief is based on lived experience - that one can know God, precisely in the manner that one can know peace, or know serenity, or know bliss?

If you know god in precisely the same manner as those things, then god (like those things) wouldn't exist outside your own mind, or, perhaps more accurately, even if it did exist outside your mind, you couldn't possibly know that it did.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Okay. Then suppose I told you that I believe - and this belief is based on lived experience - that one can know God, precisely in the manner that one can know peace, or know serenity, or know bliss? It would be very difficult to communicate that knowledge to one who has never known these things, except as abstract concepts.

This, I believe, is what religious people often mean when they say that they know God. And there lies the fundamental misunderstanding - the failure to communicate - that often arises when sceptics and cynics ask believers to justify or provide evidence for those beliefs which, to the believer, are experienced as knowing.

Then we have the expression ‘to know in the Biblical sense’, but perhaps let’s park that one up for now.

And I am not disputing your belief. My argument was with another poster that claimed to know. I might disagree with your belief, but I am not so foolish as to say that you do not have one.

But to say that you "know" God is still an abuse of that word.

 

[RestlessSoul]

If you know god in precisely the same manner as those things, then god (like those things) wouldn't exist outside your own mind, or, perhaps more accurately, even if it did exist outside your mind, you couldn't possibly know that it did.

Perhaps.

Are you familiar with the concept of solipsism? (genuine question btw, not trying to be a smart arse).

 

[Subduction Zone]

Perhaps.

Are you familiar with the concept of solipsism? (genuine question btw, not trying to be a smart arse).

I have never seen a solipsist that was not a smart donkey (I can't say "***"). One of the few stances that one can take in a debate where the opponent should be allowed to administer a healthy slap to the face.

 

[RestlessSoul]

And I am not disputing your belief. My argument was with another poster that claimed to know. I might disagree with your belief, but I am not so foolish as to say that you do not have one.

But to say that you "know" God is still an abuse of that word.

I assume you mean an abuse of the word know, rather than the word God?

I disagree. Language is fluid, and specific words generally offer a range of perfectly valid interpretations. The one I illustrated is legitimate linguistic currency which is widely recognised, I think.

 

[RestlessSoul]

I have never seen a solipsist that was not a smart donkey (I can't say "***"). One of the few stances that one can take in a debate where the opponent should be allowed to administer a healthy slap to the face.

Pretty sure you can say arse. There may be consequences, but I can’t imagine they’d be that dire.

Do you think slapping your interlocutor in the face is a demonstration of the strength or weakness of your arguments?