God convinced me he doesn't exist. What did he do to to convince you he does or doesn't exist??

[Clara Tea]

I'm coming to the belief that the universe has had innumerable beginnings and endings and is just recycled endlessly. So we're in just one of its many births now and in 10 trillion trillion trillion trillion years it will all burn out and then be reborn in some kind of Big Bang yet again. There's no answer to your question.

There is no science to back up my statement. But, I wonder if the universe keeps expanding until it forms the big bang (back in time to the beginning). That is, the beginning (alpha) might be the end (omega)?

 

[PureX]

Everyone is always arguing about whether or not God exists, and no one ever seems to ask what we should look for to actually determine if God exists or not. I mean, what kind of God are we talking about. What does it even mean to say that "God exists"? Exists how? By what reasoning? And how did we determine that is the reasonable criteria?

Atheists are always complaining that there is "no evidence" that God exists. Yet the only evidence they've ever looked for was evidence for something matching the stories and descriptions given in some religious book or other. Why? Why would they assume that such depictions are anything like God's actuality? Seems all they really want to do is disprove the religious depictions. They aren't the least bit interested in the actual question of God's nature or existence.

And really the same goes for the religionists that have become so comfortable with their religious images and stories about God that they never bother to consider that they are just images and stories about God; as their authors imagined God to be. None of whom have ever actually seen, or met, or otherwise interacted with the God they wrote about. So why are you so cock-sure that those authors knew anything about God? And what makes you think YOU know anything about God?

I don't think any of us knows anything about God except that the existence of something that we could refer to as "God" appears to be self-evident. I know I exists by the agency of my own self-awareness. "I think therefor I am." And I can know that you exist by the fact that you can presume your own existence by your own agency, as I did, which is not under my agency (control). I did not think you into being, nor can I think you out of being. Therefor, you are your own existential agent.

But there is another agency at work, here, that is neither yours nor mine. And that is whatever agency is responsible for the "medium" (let's call it "being here") within which we are both existing and recognizing each other's existence. Because neither you nor I are responsible for this existential medium. For our being "here". So something else must be. Though we have no idea what that something else, is.

"God" exists. We just have no idea what or how it is, or means.

 

[Heyo]

There is no science to back up my statement. But, I wonder if the universe keeps expanding until it forms the big bang (back in time to the beginning). That is, the beginning (alpha) might be the end (omega)?

There is a hypothesis by Roger Penrose called Conformal Cyclic Cosmology. It says basically that.

 

[74x12]

I had believed in God for 60 years. For the next 10 years I reverted to believing it was some kind of deistic god or higher power, but most certainly this higher power was NOT the Christian pagan god, Yahweh (Yahweh in case you didn't know was a minor Canaanite god in a collection of Canaanite gods that included Asherah, Baal and headed by chief god, El. The early Hebrews living among the Canaanites picked up Yahweh and made him their chief god). Recently I've decided to just go full atheist. I've never had any proof God exists; I've never had any prayers answered; the world is cruel unjust place filled with violence and death; the Bible is riddled with errors and inaccuracies; there's no proof a Jesus of Nazareth ever existed. It just makes more sense to me that it was natural selection that created this marvelous universe. We are a tremendously complex accident and we are now destroying the earth with our avarice. In 100 years global warming will have killed off most of the earth's population and rendered everything but the north and south poles uninhabitable.

What convinced you God exists or doesn't exist?

Riddled with errors and inaccuracies you say? You must mean your post.

 

[Twilight Hue]

I had believed in God for 60 years. For the next 10 years I reverted to believing it was some kind of deistic god or higher power, but most certainly this higher power was NOT the Christian pagan god, Yahweh (Yahweh in case you didn't know was a minor Canaanite god in a collection of Canaanite gods that included Asherah, Baal and headed by chief god, El. The early Hebrews living among the Canaanites picked up Yahweh and made him their chief god). Recently I've decided to just go full atheist. I've never had any proof God exists; I've never had any prayers answered; the world is cruel unjust place filled with violence and death; the Bible is riddled with errors and inaccuracies; there's no proof a Jesus of Nazareth ever existed. It just makes more sense to me that it was natural selection that created this marvelous universe. We are a tremendously complex accident and we are now destroying the earth with our avarice. In 100 years global warming will have killed off most of the earth's population and rendered everything but the north and south poles uninhabitable.

What convinced you God exists or doesn't exist?

That almost exactly how I progressed.

What convinced me most were the people themselves.

This involves a lack of transformation and communication that indicated to me there was no presense of any deity in communication along with any of its associated influences and power.

People were confused, had different interpretations, and their requests and prayers proved to be no different than the outcomes of people who didn't pray or made requests.

It dawned on me that that there was nothing special or unique that made things stand out that would qualify as "salt of the Earth, or light of the world" along with consensus and uniformity that would have naturally surfaced had a deity been present.

The crux came when one day I was sitting with the congregation and it dawned on me that the only thing really going on in the background was the air conditioning system. That was enough for me to seek out the sermon that the air conditioning system had taught me. Namely seek out what is actually there and the actual truth it brings.

I put down the rose colored glasses and the stained glass in my life shattered with a real feeling of liberation that I hadn't felt in a long long time as god was replaced by the genuine reality of nature and the universe.

You could say I had a sobering up from a drunken stupor and God 'returned' to where God always was, and that was a person's own reality of thought.

 

[Kenny]

It's not the nose that bothers me. Many people bump along, oblivious to the world around them, and blissfully uninformed.

The New Testament bible makes it clear that we must be informed about the bible.

It is like Mr. Magoo mistaking obvious signs of Global Warming, signs of evolution, and not seeing the benefits of condoms in stopping unwanted pregnancies and STDs. They say that none are so blind as those who will not see.

But that may not be so obvious to the poster which is why I amended my post to ask which God or gods is he seeking. Obviously I speak in light of my signature.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

That which doesn't exist, doesn't do anything. Having observed nothing that I would attribute to a God, I draw the inference that there isn't one. Thus, the question in the OP doesn't make sense to me. God, by virtue of not existing, has done nothing to convince me of anything, but that is quite enough for me to reach the correct conclusion.

 

[Thrillobyte]

There is no science to back up my statement. But, I wonder if the universe keeps expanding until it forms the big bang (back in time to the beginning). That is, the beginning (alpha) might be the end (omega)?

Sounds as good as any I've heard. IOW, who the hell knows?

 

[Nakosis]

I have a question -- and this relates to whether you believe God does or does not exist. Was the earth always existing? Were you around before you were born? Those questions are related, by the way.

I suspect something has always existed. The universe is constantly changing from what existed before to what exists now.

What was before has changed as the universe has changed. From what existed before to what exists now. That includes me.
Nothing is created. It is simply the universe changing from what was to what is.

 

[Sheldon]

What convinced you God exists or doesn't exist?

Nothing has yet convinced me that any deity exists, I am thus an atheist. However I will keep an open mind.

 

[Sheldon]

Everyone is always arguing about whether or not God exists, and no one ever seems to ask what we should look for to actually determine if God exists or not. I mean, what kind of God are we talking about. What does it even mean to say that "God exists"? Exists how? By what reasoning? And how did we determine that is the reasonable criteria?

Well that infers something about belief in an extant deity, and infers something about the belief even in its broadest sense. It is for anyone asserting a deity exists, to accurately explain what kind of God they are talking about, and what it means to say that God exists, or how, and of course by what reasoning, and what they determine is reasonable criteria, and how they determine their deity is extant.

 

[Sheldon]

Atheists are always complaining that there is "no evidence" that God exists. Yet the only evidence they've ever looked for was evidence for something matching the stories and descriptions given in some religious book or other.

That's a straw man fallacy, but why not just do what no religious apologists ever does, and start with the best most compelling reason they have for believing a deity exists?

 

[Sheldon]

Atheists are always complaining that there is "no evidence" that God exists. Yet the only evidence they've ever looked for was evidence for something matching the stories and descriptions given in some religious book or other. Why? Why would they assume that such depictions are anything like God's actuality?

Why would you assume that people who don't believe in any deity, would make any assumptions about what characteristics a deity must possess, beyond the unevidenced assertions of theists?

 

[Sheldon]

But there is another agency at work, here, that is neither yours nor mine. And that is whatever agency is responsible for the "medium" (let's call it "being here") within which we are both existing and recognizing each other's existence. Because neither you nor I are responsible for this existential medium. For our being "here". So something else must be. Though we have no idea what that something else, is.

You'd need to demonstrate something beyond unevidenced
assertion before I would believe this claim. Especially since it is an objective scientific fact that humans, like all living things, evolved slowly.

"God" exists. We just have no idea what or how it is, or means.

Pure unevidenced assumption, all of it.

 

[Suave]

I had believed in God for 60 years. For the next 10 years I reverted to believing it was some kind of deistic god or higher power, but most certainly this higher power was NOT the Christian pagan god, Yahweh (Yahweh in case you didn't know was a minor Canaanite god in a collection of Canaanite gods that included Asherah, Baal and headed by chief god, El. The early Hebrews living among the Canaanites picked up Yahweh and made him their chief god). Recently I've decided to just go full atheist. I've never had any proof God exists; I've never had any prayers answered; the world is cruel unjust place filled with violence and death; the Bible is riddled with errors and inaccuracies; there's no proof a Jesus of Nazareth ever existed. It just makes more sense to me that it was natural selection that created this marvelous universe. We are a tremendously complex accident and we are now destroying the earth with our avarice. In 100 years global warming will have killed off most of the earth's population and rendered everything but the north and south poles uninhabitable.

What convinced you God exists or doesn't exist?

"Some physicists have proposed a method for testing if we are in a numerical simulated cubic space-time lattice Matrix or simulated universe with an underlying grid.
[1210.1847] Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation

Based on the assumption that there'd be finite computational resources, a simulated universe would be performed by dividing up the space-time continuum into individually separate and distinctive points. Analogous to mini-simulations that lattice-gauge theorists conduct to construct nuclei based on Quantum Chromodynamics, observable effects of a grid-like space-time have been studied from these computer simulations which use a 3-D grid to model how elementary particles move and collide with each other. Anomalies found in these simulations suggest that if we are in a simulation universe with an underlying grid, then there'd be various amounts of high energy cosmic rays coming at us from each direction; but if space is continuous, then there'd be high energy cosmic rays coming at us equally from every direction.

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation
Silas R. Beane, Zohreh Davoudi, Martin J. Savage
(Submitted on 4 Oct 2012 (v1), last revised 9 Nov 2012 (this version, v2))

An anisotropic distribution of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays would be consistent with the simulation hypothesis,

In the study, published September 22,2017 in the journal Science, the researchers gathered over ten years of data taken with the Pierre Auger Observatory to determine whether high-energy cosmic rays were hitting Earth equally from all directions. They are not!


HOMESCIENCEVOL. 357, NO. 6357OBSERVATION OF A LARGE-SCALE ANISOTROPY IN THE ARRIVAL DIRECTIONS OF COSMIC RAYS ABOVE 8 × 1018 EV

Observation of a large-scale anisotropy in the arrival directions of cosmic rays above 8 × 1018 eV
THE PIERRE AUGER COLLABORATION A. AABP. ABREUM. AGLIETTAI. AL SAMARAII. F. M. ALBUQUERQUEI. ALLEKOTTEA. ALMELAJ. ALVAREZ CASTILLO[...]F. ZUCCARELLO Authors Info & Affiliations
SCICENCE
22 Sep 2017
Vol 357, Issue 6357
pp. 1266-1270
DOI: 10.1126/science.aan4338

Observation of a large-scale anisotropy in the arrival directions of cosmic rays above 8 × 1018 eV (science.org)

The proof is out there: A Matrix based structured simulated origin for cosmic rays!"

What makes humans so special? | Page 2 | Religious Forums

Our Universe Is A Simulation - Here's How It's Rendered

 

[Sheldon]

Riddled with errors and inaccuracies you say? You must mean your post.

Why would you be minded to respond in this way, yet offer precisely nothing in the response beyond vapid denial? What in the post (in your opinion) was inaccurate, and why? Offer something tangible, and cogent, and that approaches debate.

 

[Wildswanderer]

I had believed in God for 60 years. For the next 10 years I reverted to believing it was some kind of deistic god or higher power, but most certainly this higher power was NOT the Christian pagan god, Yahweh (Yahweh in case you didn't know was a minor Canaanite god in a collection of Canaanite gods that included Asherah, Baal and headed by chief god, El. The early Hebrews living among the Canaanites picked up Yahweh and made him their chief god). Recently I've decided to just go full atheist. I've never had any proof God exists; I've never had any prayers answered; the world is cruel unjust place filled with violence and death; the Bible is riddled with errors and inaccuracies; there's no proof a Jesus of Nazareth ever existed. It just makes more sense to me that it was natural selection that created this marvelous universe. We are a tremendously complex accident and we are now destroying the earth with our avarice. In 100 years global warming will have killed off most of the earth's population and rendered everything but the north and south poles uninhabitable.

What convinced you God exists or doesn't exist?

Your title is an oxymoron.
God convinced you that God does not exist?

Um, ok?

I don't agree with anything else you said either.
God convinces me daily that he exists.
Explaining that is almost impossible unless you too have experienced God.
Just for one reason: I see no reason a beautiful world would happen by accident. It's too much to have just happened without a designer.

 

[osgart]

These two videos total about 12 minutes. There's quite a few philosophers of today who are persistently formulating arguments for the existence of God.

The totality of existence is possibly not self existent. Yet something self existent; that which cannot not exist, must exist.

So that's the very beginning of an argument for God.

I sense that there are a lot of arguments that could sound interesting. Logic though is only useful when operating from demonstrated knowns is my feeling.

Another argument is about how an infinite regress points to a necessary existence. There must be a foundational existence to support the infinite regress.

 

[Heyo]

There's quite a few philosophers of today who are persistently formulating arguments for the existence of God.

That's news to me. I haven't encountered a new argument for gods existing for quite some time. In fact, most of the "new" arguments are simply reformulations of arguments that have been debunked hundreds of years ago.

 

[Sheldon]

God convinces me daily that he exists. Explaining that is almost impossible unless you too have experienced God.

Circular reasoning fallacy, textbook. You're convinced of something, but can't explain it unless it's to someone else who is also convinced of it. Not very compelling.

I see no reason a beautiful world would happen by accident.

Straw man fallacy, and a false dichotomy fallacy in one sentence there. It's irrational to simply assume we are limited to those two choices, the one you favour, and the straw man you have used to make it appear an easy choice. This is also a very common mistake or deliberate sophistry I see theists use, just because the earth's existence might have involved chance events, does not suggest it all came about purely by chance, far from, as evolution for example is driven by very complex mechanisms like natural selection.

It's too much to have just happened without a designer.

Wow, an argument from personal incredulity fallacy. Note this assumes a designer far more complex than the universe, yet its existence doesn't prompt the same incredulity. Get ready for the special pleading fallacies. "It always existed" for example.

Whatever your subjectively belief, if the best arguments you have can make, use 4 separate known logical fallacies in a single post, it is impossible to ignore how irrational these claims are.