There is no evidence for God, so why do you believe?

[ppp]

How can you be "sure" when you have NO EVIDENCE?

When I have no evidence, I will let you know.

 

[timothy1027]

When I have no evidence, I will let you know.

Okay, THANKS!
I will be patiently awaiting your notification.

 

[Brian2]

Having said that, I'ld say the evidence against gods is the same as evidence against fairies, unicorns, leprechauns, etc...
And that is the total lack and absence of evidence for it and the total lack of evidence for anything "magical".

Life and consciousness is pretty magical.

There is no evidence of a bible god or indeed any other god.
Also, when it comes to specific gods, like the god of the bible, then there very much is evidence against said god.

No evidence of a Bible God, it has to have a falsifiable definition before there can be evidence for or agains, but there is evidence against the Bible God. Hmmm.

The bible includes all kinds of verifiable claims about this supposed god. Specifically events attributed to said god, like the flood etc.
And those claimed events are testable. And they demonstrably didn't happen.
So those claims are definitely false. They didn't occur.

Skeptics like to use the example of the flood, but only manage to show that a one world wide flood did not happen with water above Mt Everest.
But that does not deter a skeptic from claiming that this means that there is no Bible flood.

 

[Brian2]

It's called confirmation bias.

Are you saying that the evidence I use as subjective evidence and which you say is not real evidence, is actually real evidence.

 

[Brian2]

I hope it's from the culture of its day. Its God orders invasive wars, massacres of surrendered populations, human sacrifices, mass rapes, murderous religious intolerance, will not suffer a witch to live, and a death penalty for shaving your beard, women as property, slavery as normality including the rules for selling your daughter, and more. If those are part of your present culture, then you're down there with the gun massacre people, aren't you?

You seem to have a shallow interpretation of the Bible and of the events and laws described there and of the God of the Bible. Something from the skeptic classroom I suppose.

You keep running away from the simple question, how do you define real? What test tells you whether something is real or not?

That seems to be your problem. I give you things that are real and contrary to your definition of real and you ignore them.
Nothing wrong with defining God as invisible and non material

 

[Brian2]

"Subjective evidence" isn't evidence. It's a contradiction in terms.

No it isn't

You're basically admitting to a bias.

Who me? Biased?
Duh, of course I am.

You do realise how many flaws there were in that 'argument', even before the relativistic view of time finally killed it, don't you?

How many flaws? And was it even an argument or just waving of my hand and brushing it aside?
r e l a t i v i s t i c view of time? OK if you say so. I suppose you think it does not matter if time goes forward or backward, causality is not a consideration.

That's really somewhat irrelevant. The lack of an alternative doesn't make your baseless storytelling any more credible. What's more, of course, postulating a god explains exactly nothing about the big questions like: why do things exist and are as they are? These questions just get relocated to the proposed god. Why does this god exist and is the way it is? See? Nothing really explained at all. In fact, you just added to the total of things that need explaining. A giant leap in the wrong direction.

So belief in God is incredible. OK.

Actually having a creator enables answers or the possibility of answers for questions that otherwise could not be asked let alone answered.
eg. Why do things exist and are as they are? or, why does God exist and is the way He is?
With every answer comes other questions. I guess that means we better stop finding answers or we are going in the wrong direction.

People who question god(s) are just doing what everybody else does for other claims for which there is absolutely no supporting evidence or sound reasoning. It's theists who try to make a special case for their favourite species of god(s).

If you don't think God is a special case you have not considered God.

 

[Brian2]

Exactly. Scepticism is what everybody does, most of the time, with everything. If I told you I had an invisible dragon in my garage, you'd be right to be sceptical. But it's not just confined to fantastical ideas, it goes, for example, for scientific hypotheses too. The first things we ask of a new hypothesis is: why should I take this seriously, how can we test it, and how can it potentially be falsified?

Well people have certainly been trying to falsify the Bible, but with each new try that ends up being garbage, fantasy, bad thinking, plain incredulity etc etc I just end up seeing that Bible as being confirmed.

I don't see why claims about various versions of God or gods should be treated any differently? Do you think they should be? If so, why?

Sure if I can falsify a God story I will.
But there is falsify and there is just throwing stones.
Certainly not all the falsification attempts on the Bible can be true.

 

[ratiocinator]

OK if you say so. I suppose you think it does not matter if time goes forward or backward, causality is not a consideration.

The point is that time (and hence causality) are part of the space-time manifold, which is a physical part of the universe. You cannot therefore extrapolate it to consider some supposed cause for the universe.

Actually having a creator enables answers or the possibility of answers for questions that otherwise could not be asked let alone answered.
eg. Why do things exist and are as they are? or, why does God exist and is the way He is?

Don't know what you're even getting at here. As far as I can see, postulating a god answers nothing at all, except in a rather trite 'just-so story' kind of way.

With every answer comes other questions. I guess that means we better stop finding answers or we are going in the wrong direction.

If we genuinely answer a question, we tend to end up with different questions, rather than exactly the same ones moved to another place.

If you don't think God is a special case you have not considered God.

I assure you I have. Why do you think it a special case in this respect, i.e that it should be taken seriously despite the total lack of evidence or reasoning to support it?

 

[ratiocinator]

Well people have certainly been trying to falsify the Bible, but with each new try that ends up being garbage, fantasy, bad thinking, plain incredulity etc etc I just end up seeing that Bible as being confirmed.

Is this a joke?

I've read the bible, and was fully expecting it to contain profound truths and the message of Christianity I'd been taught at the time. What I found was an incoherent, disjointed, self-contradictory mess, with absolutely no consistent message whatsoever.

The endless contradictions are well documented.

Sure if I can falsify a God story I will.

What would falsify your version of God?

 

[Brian2]

This was in response to, "Yes. And why is that? Because the methodology works. Science is how we discover and demonstrate what is going on around us. I've asked you for a better methodology, and you've got none to offer. Faith certainly isn't going to cut it."

From your response here (or lack thereof), shall I assume that you don't have a better methodology than science has to offer? All you've done here is double down again.

Science "cuts it" when it comes to absolutely everything else that actually exists - science has been the best tool we've had for discerning fact from fiction about the world around us, for demonstrating the actual existence of things. But then suddenly, when it comes to invisible deities that people claim exist, suddenly, science is no good. Science suddenly can't help us determine what exists and what doesn't. Surely you can see this obvious excuse for what it is - a total cop-out.

No cop out, just that science has limitations and cannot find an invisible spirit. Science deals with the physical universe. If you think science should be able to or can determine whether God exists or not that is a faith called scientism, which I suppose you don't want to have anything to do with. It certainly goes past what science says exists and does not exist. iow science does not say God does not exist.

Science cannot make baseless claims without any evidence backing it up. Yes, you're right about that.

How did you "realize" that nature "needed a designer" and how did you determine that the designer is the specific version of the Christian god that you worship?

Insight, faith, intuition, revelation, I don't know. Not science however.

How very convenient. This is just more confirmation bias. Of course you have to account for all the extra baggage you're trying to drag into it. Why wouldn't you?

I am not making a God hypothesis that can be studied by science.
What baggage are you talking about?

Then why on earth do you believe them???

Faith, it is obvious to me, etc.

Sure it is, if this god set everything all up and then sat back and watched it all unfold without further intervention. I mentioned that in my last post but you seem to have missed it.

Which building blocks did this god design and how did he/she/it set it all into motion?

Science seems to be showing that plenty of intervention would be needed in the environment for things to happen as science suggests.
God designed everything and also the end products and it seems made the building blocks to reach a certain end point which God knew before hand and worked towards from the beginning.
Am I supposed to know how it was set in motion?

And still no answer to my question. Which was, "Do you think it takes faith to say "I lack belief in the claim that universe-vomiting tortoises brought the universe into existence. Do you have some evidence that universe-vomiting tortoises exist?"

Telling me that science hasn't anything to say about fairies doesn't address my question.

No, to say that you don't know seems to not require faith.
To say that science can tell us what exists and what does not, is going beyond saying "I don't know imo"

What are they? So far, you've offered logical fallacies such as arguments from personal incredulity and confirmation bias. Do you have something logical to offer?

It is logical or at least reasonable to look at all the ways that the universe and solar system and earth exist in a range where carbon based life can exist and to think that therefore a designer did it. It is at least as reasonable as to say chance did it.
It is logical and reasonable to look at Genes and genetic code and wonder how information came to be stored in code in the genes without a creator.
It is reasonable to look at the gene repair mechanisms we have and to say that a designer had to have done that

You should probably take your own advice here about sticking to what is demonstrable.

Faith is no problem for me.

 

[blü 2]

You seem to have a shallow interpretation of the Bible and of the events and laws described there and of the God of the Bible. Something from the skeptic classroom I suppose.

I approach the Tanakh as I'd approach any other ancient set of documents ─ in each case what, when, where, who, why. I have no desire to impose any view on them, rather for them to identify their own narrative, purpose and (often enough) politics.

So let me quote you the RSV's translation of the bible's own words to show you what I'm talking about,

Massacre of Surrendered Populations

Deuteronomy 7:1-2 “When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations...then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy." (Repeated at 20:16)​

​

Joshua 6:17 And the city [Jericho] and all that is within it shall be devoted to the LORD for destruction; only Rahab the harlot and all who are with her in her house shall live, because she hid the messengers that we sent. [...] 6:20 [...] they took the city. 21 Then they utterly destroyed all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and asses, with the edge of the sword.​

​

Hosea 13: 16 Samaria shall bear her guilt, because she has rebelled against her God; they shall fall by the sword, their little ones shall be dashed in pieces, and their pregnant women ripped open.​

Human sacrifice:

Exodus 22:29-30 You must give me the firstborn of your sons. Do the same with your cattle and your sheep. Let them stay with their mothers for seven days, but give them to me on the eighth day.​

Judges 11:29-40 [God does a deal with Jephthah, human sacrifice in return for military victory. The agreed human sacrifice turns out to be Jephthah's daughter.]​

​

2 Samuel 21 [God sends a famine. David asks God why, and is told that the late Saul had bloodguilt regarding the Gibeonites. David negotiates a satisfaction with the Gibeonites ─ seven descendants of Saul to be killed by impalement. This is done and God lifts the famine.]​

Mass Rape

Numbers 31:9 And the people of Israel took captive the women of Mid’ian and their little ones; and they took as booty all their cattle, their flocks, and all their goods. ... 14 And Moses was angry with the officers of the army ... who had come from service in the war. 15 Moses said to them, “Have you let all the women live? 16 Behold, these caused the people of Israel, by the counsel of Balaam, to act treacherously against the LORD in the matter of Pe’or, and so the plague came among the congregation of the LORD. 17 Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. 18 But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.​

And there's plenty more, if you want more.

That seems to be your problem. I give you things that are real and contrary to your definition of real and you ignore them.

You haven't defined 'real' for me. What test do you use to see if any particular proposed thing is real or not?

Nothing wrong with defining God as invisible and non material

As long as you're cool with the result, which is that the only manner in which God is known to exist is as a concept or thing imagined in an individual brain, not as anything objectively real.

 

[Brian2]

Which god? Have you even defined god yet?

I've seen your attempts at "easily" demonstrating that prophecies have been fulfilled and I'm sorry to say I was not impressed.

How can you show that prophecies come from god(s) at all?

Which god?

This one made me chuckle a bit. So some prophecies have been fulfilled "in a timely manner" while others were fulfilled "hundreds of years later."
You've just basically described random chance.

The unambiguous part made me chuckle a bit too. The supposed Biblical prophecies are some of the vaguest stuff I've ever seen. I mean, Nostradamus did a better job of it.

Really?

It's on you to figure out how to show it's true.

How to show it's true to someone who has learned the skeptic handbook and brings up silly excuses at every turn.
I guess prophecy is just one of those subjective evidences I have and cannot prove them to people, just show them.

That is exactly what did happen. Human beings worked to "fulfill the prophecy." God didn't create the state of Israel in 1948 - human beings did that.

Israel was a nation thousands of years before 1948.
Interestingly it seems that Churchill was against setting up the State of Israel.
So the Israel was set up and the land divided as prophesied and so the prophecy was fulfilled, but skeptics take to way out of believing that it was a fulfilled prophecy because of imagining how it happened and not what was prophesied and what happened.

 

[Brian2]

Neither does the Bible. Unless you want to trap yourself into circular reasoning.

What I gave is nothing like " The Bible is true because it says it is true". That would be circular reasoning.
The Bible is a collection of documents written hundreds of years apart and by different authors and they confirm each other to an extent.
Certainly prophecy confirms the Bible as from a supernatural source that knows the future.

 

[Brian2]

How would humans somewhat accurately recording what was going on around them, demonstrate the existence of the Biblical god? And how exactly do you define that god, by the way?

That history includes the Bible God and prophecies from that God which have happened.

We've been over this one before. Using mental gymnastics in some attempt to turn what is obviously described in the Bible as a global flood into a small local flood, renders the point of the story completely moot.

Not if other floods at the time in other parts of the world destroyed those parts and people. But saying people is no problem for a God who felt like getting rid of us all but decided against it with Noah and family and why not others also in other areas.

 

[Brian2]

I still object to the claim of evidence for belief being the scripture of any one religion including the Bible. The problem is the self-justification of belief based on confirmation bias.

What about the many others with diverse and conflicting claims to yours and claim 'evidence?'

I think the Bible gives good grounds for being the true scriptures, but yes, I have faith and can be seen as having confirmation bias also.

 

[Brian2]

No, it isn't. That's the point. It's a logical fallacy. Not a trustworthy methodology.

I'm not saying that it proves anything, just that faith is a good way forward when everything else has reached the end of the road. So no logical fallacy there.
BUT once done, once faith is received, you might find confirmation of it as you go forward.

 

[Brian2]

Morals do and should change over time. As we learn more as a species our ability to implement better moral behavior becomes possible. Moral beliefs need to be pragmatic to be effective. So that morals will change does not bother me very much. It is what is predicted. If I was suddenly transported to a time 1,000 years in the future I might have a very difficult time adapting to the new morals. But I would at least hopefully try.

Morals don't always go to a better place imo.

 

[Brian2]

No, it explains the Bible for rational thinkers. There is evidence that clearly shows that is the case. You have to have endlessly self contradicting beliefs when it comes to your God to try to defend him. That is self refutation when you do that. There are Christians that realize that the Bible has severe problems when abused literally.

Believers in the Bible are also as rational as others but their faith, and their God, helps them to see through the presumptions and silly arguments that people life Richard Carrier use is trying to show that the Bible was a result of a type of plagiarism from other cultures.

If God is real then why can't you make a rational argument for his existence?

I did by claiming that out internal life is as real as out physical existence.

 

[Brian2]

No, not at all. The Bible is not evidence for God. If it was you would be able to show it.

I believe it, so it is evidence for me.
People do see reasons not to believe the Bible however, but that does not turn it into "not evidence" for me.

 

[Brian2]

Haven't we been over the failures of prophecy in the Bible? I do not know of any valid biblical prophecy that has come true. I know of some that have failed incredibly badly. Didn't we discuss how the Tyre prophecy is an example of a failed prophecy?

I remember that discussion about Tyre and how you refused to acknowledge what was written in the Bible. Sigh.
What other do you think have failed?