nonbeliever_92
Well-Known Member
Wait, are you saying that you're the leading authority on what is logical?
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Reasons for the belief in no God
- Thread starter Subby
- Start date
Wait, are you saying that you're the leading authority on what is logical?
nonbeliever_92
Well-Known Member
Subby are you asking why Atheists claim there is no God and what evidence they have for such a claim?
nonbeliever_92
Well-Known Member
If god and the universe were part of the same equation, it'd be equivalent to 2+2+x=4 where x=God.
WanderingSoul
Member
There doesn't seem to be any rational way to declare God non-existent.
Here's why:
First we must have a working definition of the God we seek to disprove.
If we all agree for the sake of argument that God is...um...Omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, and also the creator of the universe, then we have simply presumed as possibly existing the very attributes we are trying to prove non-existent. It seems that if we accept our presumed attributes as a valid definition of God, then we are tacitly admitting that such a God may in fact exist.
It's akin to circular reasoning, to me.
PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
Not quite. A valid course of argument is to assume that such a God does exist, and then show that it contradicts something we know to be true.
WanderingSoul
Member
Any definition of God would naturally have to be consistent with our current understanding of reality to be a valid definition.
If I said God was not eternal, but 10,000 years old, most intelligent people would be justified in declaring me a crackpot thinker. All presumed attributes would have to be consistent with our current "truths" or the argument would be fatally flawed. Further, these presumed attributes are naturally--and inevitably--derived from our expectation of what would be necessary for such a being to exist. We are of course biased in any effort to define God as a being sufficiently suited to our expectations.
That's why God's existence can't be logically disproven. In any argument, we have rigged the deck to deal a hand we are trying to prove can't exist.
PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
Only because we're considering versions of God that don't contradict evidence. If we had space travel, the Ruler of the Universe could be the Hitchhiker's Guide version.
WanderingSoul
Member
It is absurd to speak of proving the non-existence of supposed supernatural entities.
Belief in God is nothing but an aesthetic choice. It can't be expected to be sustained rationally, nor is there any need of justification for not taking it.
Why do you say that?
We can define all sorts of things that aren't consistent with our current understanding of reality.
Can you understand me when I say "flying pig"? Do pigs actually fly?
WanderingSoul
Member
Right, I agree.
In spite of what the starting post said, we are being asked to prove a negative. One can prove a negative, as long as there is no impossible barrier in the proposition. I can prove there does not exist a unicorn in my garage by looking; but I can't prove there does not exist one somewhere in the universe, for obvious reasons.
We aren't even given a working definition of God to start with here; nevertheless, prove it doesn't exist.
If God is omnipresent but not detectable via our senses, then God could be just as much in my garage as anywhere else in the universe, yet I still could not disprove such a God. On the other hand, if God is a corporeal being, I still can't disprove God, because God could be anywhere in the universe I cannot explore.
It's impossible to disprove such a being as long as the proposition has attached an impossible barrier that disallows negation. God is "everywhere," but can't be detected with our senses, means that God can't be disproven. If God is corporeal and detectable, I still can't disprove God, because God could be anywhere in the universe.
You might as well have just asked everyone to PROVE God, since in the absence of proof, one has essentially proven the negataive proposition, due to lack of evidence.
McBell
Unbound
Absence of proof does not equate proof of absence.
I disagree.
One of the key elements of the definition of God, IMO, is that God is an object of human worship. This implies that some sliver of humanity in some time and place posesses or posessed real knowledge of God.
A God that no human being ever knew about, whether experientially or by logical deduction from some fact about the natural universe, is not a God.
However, if you expand the definition of God to include "things that people would call 'God' if they found out about them, even if they don't know about them now", then I suppose you can't disprove the existence of that sort of "God", but you can still do a good job at demonstrating its irrelevance, which is close enough to disproof for me.
WanderingSoul
Member
So knowledge of God is simply a matter of aesthetics?
So if I pray for god to reveal itself to me, and shortly after I experience a revelation in which god is manifestly, and without doubt, the cause of the experience, then the revelation falls within the realm of aesthetics?
I disagree...
The experience may have been "beautiful," but I don't believe in the experience because it is so. My conception of beauty cannot be the cause of the experience. I don't believe in something's existence because it's beautiful; I must first accept the existence of that thing--even if imaginary--before I can think of it as beautiful.
Do you think I should reject the truth of my revelation of God as self-evidently true, and in its place accept your theory that my knowledge of God was merely an aesthetic choice?
Is your aesthetic opinion more powerful than the power of God?
This is all hypothetical, of course, with my revelation.
WanderingSoul
Member
Any definition of God, for the sake of argument, has to be a working definition. It makes no sense to define a God that is inherently incapable of existing.
WanderingSoul
Member
Right, and I wouldn't say that it did; that's why I was careful to add, "essentially," to that statement. I saw the inherent flaw in the remark.
It's all a matter of inference, based on the best evidence. In the absence of sufficient cause for a belief in God, I am confronted with the hypothesized fact of God's non-existence. I accept the negative proposition to be true in the absence of of contrary evidence.
Yet many people do just that, IMO.
WanderingSoul
Member
In regard to the first sentence: We can't include that in our definition because that presumes God's existence. If we include in our definition, "God is an object of human worship," then the conclusion of God's existence is imbedded in the definition. The definition then is reduced to a statement of belief, without rational foundation.
In regard to the 2nd sent: No, what it implies is that a portion of humanity has had a belief in "God" entities since the dawn of recorded history, and most probably, far earlier. No doubt, millions of people believed they had "real knowledge" of Zeus and Pan, but that knowledge has been reduced to myth and legend for most rational thinking people of today.