If God existed, would there be any atheists?

[It Aint Necessarily So]

I have provided evidence and atheists just say "that's not evidence."

Anything evident (to any of the senses) is evidence, but of what? Evidence for a god would be any finding better explained by invoking an unseen supernatural agent than a naturalistic explanation. You have said that the words of messengers are such evidence. I disagree. Those words are only evidence that somebody wrote them, not that that somebody was channeling a deity.That's not impossible, but there is nothing about those words that seems superhuman, so there is no reason to invoke a deity to account for them.

Christians will tell me the same about their Bible, but I don't see anything in it that couldn't be better explained by saying that people wrote it without divine influence.

Or the universe itself. We have a well-known theist on RF who likes to post salvos of beautiful pictures of nature and claim that that is evidence of a sentient creator with an eye for beauty. Not to me. The universe is merely evidence that it exists, not of its source if any. Her logical error is to drop naturalistic possibilities from her list of candidate explanations for why our universe is here without justification - just another credulity fallacy : she just can't see how the world could have so much beauty without there being a god. I can. Beauty is not better explained by positing a god, so it is not evidence of a god. That's just one of two possibilities, and the less likely one at that.

I think that atheists demonstrate that even if there were overwhelming evidence for the existence of God, there would still be people denying the obvious.

Most atheists are not in that category, and those that are would not be critical thinkers.

Most atheists believe everything for which there is overwhelming evidence, such as that the sun exists and is bright and warm, or that the earth is spherical, or that there is rioting in the United States these days, which tells you that they find the evidence actually presented for gods far from overwhelming or compelling.

All atheists say they would change their position if presented with evidence that could withstand their scrutiny. The problem is that there is no evidence that could withstand atheist scrutiny and that is why there are atheists.

I agree with this:

"I'm open to anything for which there's evidence. Show me a god, and I will believe in him. If Jesus Christ comes down from the sky during the halftime show of this Sunday's Super Bowl and turns all the nachos into loaves and fishes, well, I'll think ... "Oh, look at that. I was wrong. There he is. My bad. Praise the Lord." - Bill Maher

You seem to have left out the possibility that the reason we don't see compelling evidence for a god is because there is no god to detect. That's a logical error, since it very well may be the case that there is no god, acknowledgement of which would take your thinking in another direction and you would have two possible explanations for why nothing offered as evidence for a god is convincing to the atheist.

When I was addressing faith-based thought above, I mentioned the problem of making assumptions based on faith such as that there is a god. It takes you to conclusions like yours above that need not be correct.

I can usually count on atheists to be logical. But there is one atheist I know from other forums who is drop dead illogical... He is the one who inspired this thread by saying that there would be no atheists if God existed because God would make sure there were no atheists.

I agree with you here. Your atheist friend on the other site has made a logical error by assuming that if a god existed, it could and would make itself known. He is also thinking by faith, which causes him to generate too short a list of candidate hypotheses. He is assuming something not in evidence.

no evidence that exists that could ever live up to your expectations.

That's also true for the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus - no evidence that exists that could ever live up to my expectations. That's because I require evidence that convinces an open mind capable of critical thought. You imply that the demand for compelling evidence before believing is too demanding, but that is my standard for belief for anything, not just gods and religions.

Would Messengers of God be evidence built upon a logical fallacy? If you think so, why do you think so and what is the fallacy?

The fallacy is to attribute to a god what can also be explained naturalistically. You seem to have ruled that possibility out without justification, making your choice faith-based.

there never will be any independently verifiable evidence for God because God is not a material entity that can be verified in the material world

That's a pretty good reason not to believe in gods. That's exactly the case for every nonexistent thing, and to my knowledge, not the case for anything known to exist. Without that evidence that you suggest will never be forthcoming, there is no reason for a rational skeptic to believe that gods are not like all of the other creatures man has imagined for which there is also no evidence. If one doesn't adopt this strict empirical standard for belief, he is vulnerable to false ideas creeping in past his intellectual defenses and taking residence in one's belief set, which serves as one's mental map for navigating reality.

If one adds God Street to that map and there is no corresponding God out there, one is prone to making errors in judgment based on that belief. These days, that can be lethal if one feels a need to take one's family out to congregate every Sunday based on a false belief.

In the best of times, that false belief will cost one thousands of hours spent in churches and reading bibles to no benefit except those that have become dependent on religion and need it, and thousands of dollars promoting the church - a self-licking ice cream cone.

Or worse, vote for a psychopath because you he holds a Bible and you think that that is a good thing and a sign of moral integrity, another false road on the mental map that could cause one to prematurely and unadvisedly trust somebody because he appears religious.

Or be a climate denier based on faith. These are all examples of very bad thinking caused by letting down one's guard against such ideas and allowing them to creep in to take residence with the true beliefs derived from evidence and reason.

Why is it that atheists ask for what is impossible to procure whereas believers just accept God for what He is, unverifiable?

Because rational skeptics have a higher standard for belief than the faith-based thinker.

whatever is not provable has to be taken on faith. I consider that reasonable.

That's the opposite of reasonable. Reason precludes believing by faith. Do that, and you have left reason behind and chosen a different way to decide what is true about the world - guessing.

everything you cannot verify is not irrational superstition. That is not even logical and it demonstrates a bias and your inability to think outside of one box

Thinking outside the box does not mean embracing unreason. It means being creative and thinking in new ways, not believing without justification. I don't want to leave that box ever.

But that's just me. I don't ask you to do the same. You do, however, exhort others to join you and relax their standards for belief, but I'm not interested. Notwithstanding millennia of glorifying faith as a virtue, it remains a logical error - a guess believed without critical analysis. I can't see a good reason to do that to myself. If you ask me to do that because there is no other way to hold a given belief, my answer is no, that's how I keep such beliefs at bay.

 

[Trailblazer]

and there is plenty of personal evidence

The evidence I have is anything but personal.

 

[Thief]

seems to me....

God created Man
and the scheme of things would include extinction

do we not expect extinction?
of course we do

and at the end of it all
the believers carry on in spirit

and the nonbelievers are dust

so.....no atheists

 

[ChristineM]

The evidence I have is anything but personal.

If you say so.

 

[Trailblazer]

But why should we reach that conclusion?

I never said you should. Nobody should believe in anything without evidence for what they believe in.

If I told you there was an invisible, intangible, silent, odorless and tasteless elephant in your kitchen that had made himself so undetectable because he wanted you to search really REALLY hard to find him, would you believe it? Of course not. You'd conclude that the elephant just doesn't exist and I, in my desire to explain why there's no evidence for this elephant I am motivated to believe in, come up with all sorts of ludicrous explanations.

So when you do the same thing, why should I not reach the same conclusion about God?

Nobody is going to SEE GOD, because God is not a material entity, but is not the same as what you described, because God is detectable through His Messengers who are sent for that purpose. The Essence of God can never be seen, but the attributes of God are seen in His Messengers because they are mirror images of God. That is the premise, and should you choose to accept it many conclusions can be drawn from it.

Yes you are making excuses. You made one that I just replied to, claiming that maybe God is so hard to find because he wants people to look really hard for him.

Please tell me what is wrong with looking really hard. Have you ever found anything that was really worthwhile that you did not have to look for? Why would God make it easy to find Him, why should He? Most of what we work hard for in life is what is worth having.

You miss my point.

I am saying that what we find is exactly what we'd find if God doesn't exist. I'm not saying it proves God doesn't exist, I will freely admit that a God who wishes to remain hidden would result in much the same evidence as a God who doesn't exist at all.

But Occam's razor would suggest that we go with the simplest solution, which is that God doesn't exist.

Only the Essence of God is hidden, but God has been revealed through His Messengers. If we do not accept that premise then God will indeed remain hidden for us. I would never want to see God even if I could because seeing God would blow me completely away.

Simple is not always better, and in life the simple solution is not always the best solution. We have a complex brain with problem-solving abilities for a reason, not just to address worldly matters but also spiritual matters and that is all that will matter when the curtain call comes.

And so a person who claims to be a messenger for his God Zeus is not a messenger for your God. So if the existence of messengers for your god is evidence that your god exists, someone who is a messenger for a different God is therefore evidence that their god exists.

Someone who is a messenger for a God is not evidence that their God exists unless the messenger can produce evidence that shows that he is a messenger OF GOD.

Someone who is a messenger for a God that does not exist is a false messenger. That is not evidence of a real God but rather evidence for an imaginary God.

Not true. Something can go wrong in a system without that being caused by the person who created the system.

So who is responsible for what went wrong, the one who created the system or those who are living and operating in it?

Because you are using your conclusion - that your god is the only one - as one of your premises. That's a logical fallacy.

It is not a premise, it is a belief. There is no reason to entertain something as illogical as there being more than one God. There are many conceptions of God but that does not mean there is more than one God. Why would there need to be more than one God who was omnipotent and omniscient? What would happen if there was?

But since you can't ever get someone else to check your conclusions, you have no way to make sure that your conclusion isn't influenced by some personal bias.

Even if it was checked by someone else, it would still be influenced by their personal bias. Do you see the problem? Why assume anyone knows any more than anyone else about God? We cannot rely upon what other people believe, we have to do our own research because at the end of this life we are only held accountable for our own beliefs as well as our behavior.

And I use the same reasoning to show you that there really is the invisible elephant in your kitchen. How you do not see the flaw in it, I have no idea.

The invisible elephant is not visible in any way but God is visible in His Messengers. There is no flaw.

 

[MonkeyFire]

Faith is a guess that one chooses to believe. That's a poor way to decide what is true about the world, and definitely not a path to truth. A path to truth should come to a single conclusion by all competent thinkers, just as properly adding a column of numbers produces only one correct or true result for all competent adders. By faith, you can believe that they add up to any sum you care to pull out of the air - which is what guessing is.

This is why there is only one periodic table of the elements, but thousands of gods and religions. Empiricism, or the consulting of demonstrable reality, is the only path to truth, by which I mean the quality that facts possess, facts being linguistic strings (sentences. paragraphs) that accurately and reproducibly map a portion of reality



No, faith doesn't rise to the level of knowledge. It is unjustified belief, and usually incorrect, which is why faith based beliefs like astrology and creationism are usually sterile, if not outright dangerous (climate denial, trusting and voting for a candidate whom all the evidence says is immoral and incompetent).



I'm not sure what you are calling intolerance. I don't care what you believe, just what you do that affects the things I care about.

But I reject faith-based thinking for myself, and don't have any use for any idea derived from the faith-based beliefs of others.

Today, I read a plea from my wife's niece on Facebook for everybody to pray for a resolution to events in the States. I gave her a like even though she and all of her relatives know I'm an atheist, and even though I consider her effort praying worthless except to comfort her. I count myself better off for not needing that comfort or any other need religious belief fills in others.



Actually, you sound like the bitter one. You clearly don't approve of people like me - atheists.

Nor do you understand us. It is very easy for a rational skeptic and an empiricist to have no god belief (actually, there is no other possibility without believing by faith, which is abandoning the principles of critical thinking), nor hate nor be bitter at any gods. Imagine being told that about your lack of belief in Odin. You really believe in Odin, but you hate Him and want to deny His existence because you are bitter that He doesn't do what you want. If that sounds ridiculous to you, well, then you know how your comment was received.

And your conclusions are typical of the wrong ideas generated by applying reason to faith-based assumptions. You simply assume by faith tat a god exists despite the absence of sufficient supporting evidence (error 1), you assume that even though they say they don't have a god belief that they actually do (error 2), and that therefore we must all be bitter about this god. Sorry, friend, but I just don't want to think like that. It's simply never helpful or useful.



Nice to see you here again. I always enjoy our discussions.

The term logical fallacies applies to arguments and the chain of reasoning that connects premises to conclusions. So it is arguments that are fallacious, not evidence.

The error that can be made with evidence is misinterpreting its significance, which is a mistake, but not a logical fallacy.

But every argument for a god is fallacious. I'll give you some examples:

"You can't prove there's no god, therefore there is one" - fallacy of ignorance as well as a burden of proof fallacy.

"You can't prove abiogenesis is even possible" - the other form of the fallacy of ignorance as well as another burden of proof fallacy

"The world is full of art and design, meaning that there must be an artist and designer" - this is a circular semantic argument (begging the question fallacy) and an equivocation fallacy. If a design can only be made by a designer, then you can't call what we see in the world design until we establish that such an intelligent designer exists and is its source. It's equivocation because it uses the word design two ways - any pattern including natural ones, and that made by a conscious designer. Get your target to agree that he sees designs in spiral galaxies and sand dunes, then slip your god in the back door by claiming without supporting evidence (and contrary to other evidence) that all designs need a sentient designer.

"A living cell is simply too complex to have organized itself undesigned and uncreated by an intelligent agent." - special pleading, a form of double standard that allows one to call a cell too complex to exist without an intelligent designer, but gives that intelligent designer a pass for needing an intelligent designer even though it would be orders of magnitude more complex than a cell.This is also a credulity fallacy - "I can't see how that happened, therefore it didn't, therefore God"

"The Bible correctly foretold that the universe had a beginning long before science figured that out" - Texas sharpshooter fallacy, where one overemphasizes the significance of the overlap between the biblical and scientific accounts while ignoring the much longer list of differences.

Faith - complete trust or confidence in someone or something.

 

[1213]

...Nor do you understand us. It is very easy for a rational skeptic and an empiricist to have no god belief (actually, there is no other possibility without believing by faith, which is abandoning the principles of critical thinking), nor hate nor be bitter at any gods. Imagine being told that about your lack of belief in Odin. You really believe in Odin, ....

Interesting, I am rational skeptic, and I think Bible God is the only intelligent reason for this world to exist. To claim He doesn’t exist, would mean to me that I should reject critical thinking.

I think it is possible that Odin existed. I have no reason to say he has not existed. I just wouldn’t keep him as my God, even if he would exist.

 

[Tiberius]

more like argument of the obvious

too many copies of a learning device......

you are not your own handiwork

and it doesn't matter if you are Christian of not

(I have no religion)

Again, the popularity of Christianity does not make it real. The popularity of a book does not make it true.

 

[Tiberius]

I never said you should. Nobody should believe in anything without evidence for what they believe in.

Oh, that's a bit bad. Nobody should believe in anything without evidence for what they believe in? That would seem to encourage people to believe in whatever they wish to be true and all they need is the tiniest bit of argument to support it.

Nobody is going to SEE GOD, because God is not a material entity, but is not the same as what you described, because God is detectable through His Messengers who are sent for that purpose. The Essence of God can never be seen, but the attributes of God are seen in His Messengers because they are mirror images of God. That is the premise, and should you choose to accept it many conclusions can be drawn from it.

In other words, once I accept the reasons you give to explain away the lack of evidence for God, I'll see the reasons why there's a lack of evidence for God.

How very circular that is.

Please tell me what is wrong with looking really hard. Have you ever found anything that was really worthwhile that you did not have to look for? Why would God make it easy to find Him, why should He? Most of what we work hard for in life is what is worth having.

Because in this case there's no way to tell the difference between someone who looks really hard and finds God because God chose to reveal themselves and someone who looked really hard and found God because they wanted to find God and so deluded themselves into thinking they found him.

Only the Essence of God is hidden, but God has been revealed through His Messengers. If we do not accept that premise then God will indeed remain hidden for us. I would never want to see God even if I could because seeing God would blow me completely away.

Excuses excuses...

Simple is not always better, and in life the simple solution is not always the best solution. We have a complex brain with problem-solving abilities for a reason, not just to address worldly matters but also spiritual matters and that is all that will matter when the curtain call comes.

And yet when it comes to worldly matters we can double check and verify, but when it comes to the spiritual we can't. Just what we'd expect to see if it was all personal opinion and not objective truth.

Someone who is a messenger for a God is not evidence that their God exists unless the messenger can produce evidence that shows that he is a messenger OF GOD.

And what evidence would that be?

Someone who is a messenger for a God that does not exist is a false messenger. That is not evidence of a real God but rather evidence for an imaginary God.

And given that I've never seen anyone who claimed to be a messenger for any God who could produce any kind of verifiable evidence, I guess that means all messengers for God are false messengers for imaginary gods.

So who is responsible for what went wrong, the one who created the system or those who are living and operating in it?

Both.

It is not a premise, it is a belief. There is no reason to entertain something as illogical as there being more than one God. There are many conceptions of God but that does not mean there is more than one God. Why would there need to be more than one God who was omnipotent and omniscient? What would happen if there was?

it's bnoth. You are using your belief as a premise.

Even if it was checked by someone else, it would still be influenced by their personal bias. Do you see the problem? Why assume anyone knows any more than anyone else about God? We cannot rely upon what other people believe, we have to do our own research because at the end of this life we are only held accountable for our own beliefs as well as our behavior.

If it is checked by many people, the personal bias of any one person will be removed, since that personal bias is unlikely to be shared by all the other people who check it.

The invisible elephant is not visible in any way but God is visible in His Messengers. There is no flaw.

And the invisible elephant is visible through me, his messenger.

 

[Thief]

Again, the popularity of Christianity does not make it real. The popularity of a book does not make it true.

again....none so blind as those who will not see

 

[Thief]

again.... I reiterate

seems to me....

God created Man
and the scheme of things would include extinction

do we not expect extinction?
of course we do

and at the end of it all
the believers carry on in spirit

and the nonbelievers are dust

so.....no atheists

 

[Katzpur]

If God existed, would there be any atheists?

This is a yes or no question, so please answer yes or no.

If you answer yes, please explain why there would still be atheists if God existed.

If you answer no, please explain why there would be no more atheists if God existed.

Thanks, Trailblazer

Yes. God's existence or non-existence is not dependent upon people believing in Him.

 

[Tiberius]

again....none so blind as those who will not see

So you call me blind because I don't believe the same thing as you.

Do you have anything of actual substance or just little insults like this with an after taste of arrogance?

 

[Trailblazer]

Nice to see you here again. I always enjoy our discussions.

It is nice to see you again too.

I have not been posting many of these atheist threads lately because they were inspired by a certain atheist I with whom I have been conversing on another forum for six years, but I stopped conversing with him for a while. But then he returned and I got the idea for this thread from something he said: “If God existed, there would be no atheists.” That was so absurd I had to post it here to satisfy my curiosity as to what other atheists and believers would think. Of course everyone on this thread said that "yes" to my question, atheists would still exist if God existed, and one obvious reason is because atheists would not know God exists just because God exists.

This atheist I gave been conversing with believes that if God existed God would prove to everyone that He exists, which is absurd. It is also logically impossible because if God exists God has not proven He exists to everyone, so that means that God would not prove He exists to everyone if He existed. This atheist commits an argument by assertion, the logical fallacy where someone tries to argue a point by merely asserting that it is true, regardless of contradiction.

The term logical fallacies applies to arguments and the chain of reasoning that connects premises to conclusions. So it is arguments that are fallacious, not evidence.

The error that can be made with evidence is misinterpreting its significance, which is a mistake, but not a logical fallacy.

But every argument for a god is fallacious.

Arguments for God, trying to prove God exists, are fallacious simply because nobody an ever prove God exists.
So I consider such arguments dumb, really dumb.

I'll give you some examples:
"You can't prove there's no god, therefore there is one" - fallacy of ignorance as well as a burden of proof fallacy.

Dumb. I cannot prove there is no Bigfoot that does not mean there is a Bigfoot.

That is a classic argument from ignorance because it asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false.

"The world is full of art and design, meaning that there must be an artist and designer" - this is a circular semantic argument (begging the question fallacy) and an equivocation fallacy. If a design can only be made by a designer,

Dumb, because there is no reason to think God has anything to do with the design, and it certainly cannot be proven. This is another argument from ignorance because it asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false and it excludes a third option, which is that there is insufficient information to prove the proposition be either true or false.

"A living cell is simply too complex to have organized itself undesigned and uncreated by an intelligent agent." - special pleading,

That is also an argument from ignorance because it asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false, and it excludes a third option, which is that there is insufficient information to prove the proposition be either true or false

 

[Trailblazer]

You have said that the words of messengers are such evidence. I disagree. Those words are only evidence that somebody wrote them, not that that somebody was channeling a deity. That's not impossible, but there is nothing about those words that seems superhuman, so there is no reason to invoke a deity to account for them.

The only Messengers of God that wrote their own scriptures were the Bab and Baha’u’llah. Some people believe Joseph Smith was a Prophet who heard from God but I do not believe that.

The scriptures that Baha’u’llah wrote, what we all “the Writings” are certainly not the only evidence, they are only part of the evidence. Baha’u’llah explained how we are supposed to establish the truth of His claim. First, we examine His own Self (His character); then we examine His Revelation (everything that surrounds His Mission on earth); and then after that we look at His words (His Writings).

As part of the evidence, I also consider the prophecies that He fulfilled by His coming, the predictions He made that have come to pass, and the religion that was established as the result of His Revelation.

Christians will tell me the same about their Bible, but I don't see anything in it that couldn't be better explained by saying that people wrote it without divine influence.

You are in the right ball park, because people did write the Bible, Jesus did not write it, and there is the hundred-dollar difference between the Writings of Baha’u’llah and the Bible. Had Jesus written the Bible, the Bible would be on par with the Writings of Baha’u’llah, but the Bible is oral tradition, and the disciples of Jesus did not even write the Gospels; they were the Gospels “according to Luke, Mark, Matthew, and John.”

Most atheists are not in that category, and those that are would not be critical thinkers.

Most atheists believe everything for which there is overwhelming evidence, such as that the sun exists and is bright and warm, or that the earth is spherical, or that there is rioting in the United States these days, which tells you that they find the evidence actually presented for gods far from overwhelming or compelling.

So what you are willing to believe is objective evidence, that which you can see, feel, hear, touch, and smell; but the real evidence is to be found by study, by using your intellect and your logical mind, exercising critical thinking, but looking at all the possibilities.

I agree with this:

"I'm open to anything for which there's evidence. Show me a god, and I will believe in him. If Jesus Christ comes down from the sky during the halftime show of this Sunday's Super Bowl and turns all the nachos into loaves and fishes, well, I'll think ... "Oh, look at that. I was wrong. There he is. My bad. Praise the Lord." - Bill Maher.

I think atheists are asking for more than is reasonable if they want God or Jesus to show up on earth. Bill Maher might think that is funny but it won’t be so funny if there is actually a God. The thing is that atheists are willing to take that risk because they are so sure there is no God. I consider that foolish unless they sincerely and earnestly looked at all the possibilities for God and still came up empty-handed. In that case, there is no more they can do, and I really believe God understands this.

You seem to have left out the possibility that the reason we don't see compelling evidence for a god is because there is no god to detect.

That's a logical error, since it very well may be the case that there is no god, acknowledgement of which would take your thinking in another direction and you would have two possible explanations for why nothing offered as evidence for a god is convincing to the atheist.

As I told Tiberius, God can only be detected in His Messengers, because that is how God set it up.

It is a logical possibility that God does not exist but the primary problem with believing that is that you would then have to explain how entire cultures were built up around the great religions throughout all of history. No other single factor has influenced human behavior and society as has religion. To say that all came from man is a real stretch because no men other than the Messengers of God/Prophets have has that kind of enduring influence. I am trying to appeal to logic here.

If you read this chapter you would get a broad overview of the Baha’i viewpoint on religion within the context of history and its relationship to present day society. RELIGION AND CIVILIZATION

When I was addressing faith-based thought above, I mentioned the problem of making assumptions based on faith such as that there is a god. It takes you to conclusions like yours above that need not be correct.

Imo, nobody should ever make assumptions based upon faith alone, because faith without evidence is blind faith. Recently, I asked a Christian on another forum why she believes that Jesus is God and Jesus rose from the dead. She said she believes those things basely solely upon faith and she does not believe there is any evidence to support these beliefs! I nearly keeled over. She kept asking me what the evidence was to support the claims of Baha’u’llah and when I told her she did not seem to understand what I meant by evidence.

I agree with you here. Your atheist friend on the other site has made a logical error by assuming that if a god existed, it could and would make itself known. He is also thinking by faith, which causes him to generate too short a list of candidate hypotheses. He is assuming something not in evidence.

I sure wish other atheist would tell him that because he will never listen to me. I never thought of what you said about him thinking on faith; that is a real winner. Of course I have told him repeatedly that he is assuming something not in evidence which is an argument from ignorance. Of course he denies that because he has a strong belief, and that belief is that if God existed God would communicate directly with everyone. Of course that is an argument by assertion, especially because it is contradicted by the evidence of no God communicating directly to everyone.

You imply that the demand for compelling evidence before believing is too demanding, but that is my standard for belief for anything, not just gods and religions.

I agree that the evidence should be compelling, much more so for belief in God than for belief that the contractor will do a good job on your house, given what is at stake.

The problem is that the only evidence God provides is the Messengers.

I do not expect you to accept Messengers of God as evidence, I am just laying my beliefs on the line. I never would have even thought about God had I not stumbled upon the Baha’i Faith and read about Baha’u’llah and read His Writings. I would never have believed in God based upon the Bible, but now I can see how it is evidence, because of what the Baha’i Faith teaches about the Bible.

That's a pretty good reason not to believe in gods. That's exactly the case for every nonexistent thing, and to my knowledge, not the case for anything known to exist.

That is a reason for atheists, the primary reason, but I do not consider that logical because immaterial things can and do exist and some of them can even be detected by scientific methods. God is not going to be detected though, because He chooses to stay under the radar. I do believe that God could make Himself known to everyone by some method if He wanted to because that is in the Qur’an and Baha’u’llah quoted that:

“He Who is the Day Spring of Truth is, no doubt, fully capable of rescuing from such remoteness wayward souls and of causing them to draw nigh unto His court and attain His Presence. “If God had pleased He had surely made all men one people …” Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, p. 71

All one people means all believers.

Without that evidence that you suggest will never be forthcoming, there is no reason for a rational skeptic to believe that gods are not like all of the other creatures man has imagined for which there is also no evidence.

I understand that perspective. Let me put it this way: If it does not seem reasonable and logical to you, don’t believe it. I assume that is why you escaped from Christianity. God did not give is a rational mind so that we would have irrational beliefs, like people long since dead rising from their graves and going up to meet Jesus in the air.

That's the opposite of reasonable. Reason precludes believing by faith. Do that, and you have left reason behind and chosen a different way to decide what is true about the world - guessing.

I will have to call you on this one because I have to believe many things I cannot prove on faith in everyday life. For example, could not prove my husband would be what I hoped, so I had to believe that if was I to marry him. I have to have faith whenever I rent one of my houses to a new tenant because I cannot prove they will be a good tenant. I could not prove the septic company was going to be honest and do only what was necessary, so I had to trust him…. The list goes on. My point is that this insistence that we cannot believe anything on faith is not reasonable.

Thinking outside the box does not mean embracing unreason. It means being creative and thinking in new ways, not believing without justification. I don't want to leave that box ever.

I am not suggesting you do, especially because you used to be in another kind of box I would not wish on anyone. I was never in that box but I have an imagination.

But that's just me. I don't ask you to do the same. You do, however, exhort others to join you and relax their standards for belief, but I'm not interested.

No, I am not enjoining anyone to relax their standards because I don’t think anyone should go against their own standards that they set for themselves, I certainly wouldn’t do that so why would I expect anyone else to? I just present what I believe when it is relevant to a dialogue and because I like to share and exchange ideas with people. Of course I present my theistic views but I have no more interest in making you a into believer than you have in making me into an atheist.

 

[Trailblazer]

Again, the popularity of Christianity does not make it real. The popularity of a book does not make it true.

That is called 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, voxpopuli,[2] and in Latin as argumentum ad numerum ("appeal to the number"), fickle crowd syndrome, and consensus gentium ("agreement of the clans"). It is also the basis of a number of social phenomena, including communal reinforcement and the bandwagon effect. The Chinese proverb "three men make a tiger" concerns the same idea. 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.

 

[Tiberius]

That is called 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, voxpopuli,[2] and in Latin as argumentum ad numerum ("appeal to the number"), fickle crowd syndrome, and consensus gentium ("agreement of the clans"). It is also the basis of a number of social phenomena, including communal reinforcement and the bandwagon effect. The Chinese proverb "three men make a tiger" concerns the same idea. 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.

Yes, that is a fallacious argument.

Now, I recall you asking me for examples of fallacious arguments for God. You asked me this back in post 66. Here's a perfect example for you.

 

[Trailblazer]

Oh, that's a bit bad. Nobody should believe in anything without evidence for what they believe in? That would seem to encourage people to believe in whatever they wish to be true and all they need is the tiniest bit of argument to support it.

I meant that nobody should believe in anything without evidence .

In other words, once I accept the reasons you give to explain away the lack of evidence for God, I'll see the reasons why there's a lack of evidence for God.
How very circular that is.

There is evidence for God, Messengers are the evidence. That is not circular because the Messengers are not God.

Because in this case there's no way to tell the difference between someone who looks really hard and finds God because God chose to reveal themselves and someone who looked really hard and found God because they wanted to find God and so deluded themselves into thinking they found him.

There is no way around this because God will always be something we have to search for and find. God is not going to prove He exists to anyone.

And yet when it comes to worldly matters we can double check and verify, but when it comes to the spiritual we can't.

That’s just the reality of the situation, the way God designed it.

And what evidence would that be?

The evidence for Baha’u’llah is everything that surrounds His Life, including His early life; His character as demonstrated by His works; what He did during His mission on earth; the scriptures that He wrote; prophecies that He fulfilled by His coming; the predictions He made that have come to pass; the religion that was established as the result of His Revelation.

That is my more comprehensive list, whereas Baha’u’llah explained how we are supposed to establish the truth of His claim. First, we examine His own Self (His character); then we examine His Revelation (everything that surrounds His Mission on earth); and then we look at His words (His Writings).

And given that I've never seen anyone who claimed to be a messenger for any God who could produce any kind of verifiable evidence,

See above, as the evidence for Baha’u’llah is verifiable.

Both.

I tend to agree with you about that.

If it is checked by many people, the personal bias of any one person will be removed, since that personal bias is unlikely to be shared by all the other people who check it.

And if many people believed it was true or false, what would that prove? I remind you of this fallacy:

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."

The converse of this is that if many or most people do not believe it, it cannot be so, and that is fallacious.

 

[Tiberius]

I meant that nobody should believe in anything without evidence .

In that we are agreed.

There is evidence for God, Messengers are the evidence. That is not circular because the Messengers are not God.

Then a messenger for God A is evidence for God A, and a messenger for God B is evidence for God B, correct?

There is no way around this because God will always be something we have to search for and find. God is not going to prove He exists to anyone.

Which is what we'd also expect to find from a being that doesn't exist. So we're going to need something extra so we can determine which case it is.

That’s just the reality of the situation, the way God designed it.

And for absolutely no reason.

The evidence for Baha’u’llah is everything that surrounds His Life, including His early life; His character as demonstrated by His works; what He did during His mission on earth; the scriptures that He wrote; prophecies that He fulfilled by His coming; the predictions He made that have come to pass; the religion that was established as the result of His Revelation.

So the story of him? The story can't serve as evidence that the story is true.

That is my more comprehensive list, whereas Baha’u’llah explained how we are supposed to establish the truth of His claim. First, we examine His own Self (His character); then we examine His Revelation (everything that surrounds His Mission on earth); and then we look at His words (His Writings).

And people of many different faiths have made identical claims about their beliefs. I see no reason to doubt them but believe you.

See above, as the evidence for Baha’u’llah is verifiable.

You have provided no specific claim and provided no evidence to support that claim outside the story.

And if many people believed it was true or false, what would that prove? I remind you of this fallacy:

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."

The converse of this is that if many or most people do not believe it, it cannot be so, and that is fallacious.

But the difference is that when you have many people checking it and examining it, it's not just opinion. We don't say that the statement that the Earth is an oblate spheroid is an argument from popularity just because lots of people say it. And that's because there is verifiable evidence for that claim. You don't need to just accept someone's word for it. You can, in theory at least, go and test the claim for yourself.

 

[Thief]

So you call me blind because I don't believe the same thing as you.

Do you have anything of actual substance or just little insults like this with an after taste of arrogance?

I was quoting scripture....

you fit the quote