100% lack of evidence to God

[Polymath257]

Or they can all be right, so please back up your faith-based claim here.

Given that the various beliefs contradict each other, they cannot all be right.

 

[Polymath257]

Most people do not believe in "Ghosts, alien abduction, fake moon landing, 9/11 inside job, The Big Steal, etc, etc." Nearly everyone believes in God. Can you name anything other than God in the known universe where there is universal belief "despite the evidence"? You cannot.

The superiority of ones favorite sports team.

 

[PureX]

Just a short time ago in human history there was nothing in a room with us that we didn't see. Now we know the room is filled with a whole array of objects and energies and even life forms, that we can't see. And these are just the phenomena we know of, now. How many more might there be that we are as yet completely ignorant of?

So silly analogies about invisible elephants don't really mean anything, anymore. Because it turns out the world is full of invisible stuff. Some of it so strange and bizarre that we can't even imagine it.

"God" just isn't that strange of a possibility.

 

[Polymath257]

So everyone is born atheist but when they grow older, teach myths to their children, because . . . Adam and Eve had a source to discuss the issues with.

Or because their ancestors made up stories to stop the kids from asking why all the time.

 

[Polymath257]

Just a short time ago in human history there was nothing in a room with us that we didn't see. Now we know the room is filled with a whole array of objects and energies that we can't see. And these are just the phenomena we know of, now. How many more might there be that we are as yet completely ignorant of?

So silly analogies about invisible elephants don't really mean anything, anymore. Because it turns out the world is full of invisible stuff. Some of it so strange and bizarre that we can't even imagine it.

"God" just isn't that strange of a possibility.

And all of those things that are invisible can be detected by a variety of means other than visible light. That is how we know they exist.

So, all those that say God exists need to do is give a reliable method of detection.

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

They can also be right.

So how do you propose to find out which it is?

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

Clearly, I as a believer do have reason to.
My experiences in life lead me to believe that there is more to life than what is apparent.
i.e. this worldly life

I believe in the significance of existence itself, and do not turn my back on that, just because it can't be scientifically proved.

Whatever your personal reasons are for believing, it is irrelevant in context of the quote you are responding to, as that was a response to your suggestion that the same could be said concerning not believing in post #468

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

It is a deduction that assumes that this reality that we find ourselves in,
is all there is.

No it isn't, unless you wish to argue a false dichotomy.

Instead, it is a deduction that assumes a specific supposed reality as described by islam not likely to be real.

Disbelief of that particular specific supposed reality has no bearing on ALL OTHERS one could believe in - which are potentially infinite in number.

One cannot "deduce" the truth of that one way or the other .. it is not about scientific observation, and I would have though that obvious.

Ow I don't know...................

While I don't commit as a "materialist" (too dogmatic for my taste), I certainly can't deny that observable reality seems to be very much in line with such a worldview.

There's no known observation or data to contradict it.
The thing is though that we can't test for undetectable things. And if supernatural stuff is an undetectable thing, we wouldn't be able to know about it. And then materialism as a worldview would be wrong, if that undetectable thing actually exists.


On the other hand, one could ask the question what use or meaning an undetectable thing has. I'ld say: not much. Since the undetectable has no manifestation at all. Meaning that it has exactly 0 effect on anything.

And off course, I can come up with a potentially infinite list of undetectable things, only really limited by my imagination.

None of them are possible to demonstrate to be real or false, by nature of being undetectable.

So really, pondering such claims is just a waste of time.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

it is not hard to see that many people find it reasonable to believe in the concept of a creator, divine justice and life after death.

What they call reasonable doesn't matter to the critical thinker, who makes that judgment himself. Is the belief the sound conclusion of an argument provided to the relevant evidence? If so, the critical thinker will see that and conclude that the belief is reasonable, that is, the product of fallacy-free reasoning. And if the theist (or anybody else making a claim of fact) cannot do this, his conclusions are deemed unsound, unfounded, and not reasonable, even if he disagrees.

One could suggest the same thing for not believing in God. i.e. it's wishful thinking that there is no hell, that is a consequence of our deeds

But that is not how or why skeptics rejects the claim. You know why they do, or at the least, have been told so many times

You cannot reliably conclude that something unseen does not exist, because it can't be seen.

One can and should treat that which is said to exist but is undetectable, that is, makes no impact on observable reality, as nonexistent. See the comment to PureX a couple of posts below this one for a more thorough treatment of that idea.

 

[KWED]

It is a deduction that assumes that this reality that we find ourselves in,
is all there is.
One cannot "deduce" the truth of that one way or the other .. it is not about scientific observation, and I would have though that obvious.

So you assume that every claim of alternate realities and existence of supernatural beings are true, because it is not possible to disprove them.
What's that? You don't?
Why the inconsistency?

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

Not sure what you mean by "divide and rule tactic"

I see that you got no answer. I think he was referring to your breaking up his implied monolith of theism by comparing individual forms of theism against one another. He wants to talk about the collective, and how broad the consensus among believers is because so much of the world is believers. You're undoing that by pointing out that at most one of those systems of beliefs is correct, and dismissing the opinions of the 99+% or more who have obviously believed something untrue.

Ironically, the religionist believes there is no consequence for their actions - as long as they repent and believe. The serial child murdering, torturing rapist will go to heaven if they genuinely repent - so if they aren't apprehended by the police during their life they get off scot free. On the other hand, a teetotal, vegan, celibate, pacifist doctor who volunteers for disaster charities their whole life goes to hell because they have read the Quran and dismissed it as ancient superstition, and is horribly tortured for eternity. Where is the justice in that? Are the consequences reasonable? Do you really think that is how things should be?

I realize that these are rhetorical questions, and that you know the answers. That would be unjust by the standards of humanist justice, but the theist isn't using those. He's generally a divine command theory adherent. If God does it, it's just, and work back from there.

I saw a nice example of this on The Atheist Experience, a cable show out of Austin, Texas.

Host Tracie Harris said, "You either have a God who sends child rapists to rape children or you have a God who simply watches it and says, 'When you're done, I'm going to punish you' .. If I were in a situation where I could stop a person from raping a child, I would. That's the difference between me and your God."

Christian caller Shane answered, "True to life, you portray that little girl as someone who is innocent. She's just as evil as you."

This is how such beliefs corrupt moral judgment. The believer is forced to find a reason why what appears to be cruel or unjust is actually not that, and so decides that the victim must have deserved it. That thinking pervades Old Testament mythology. Man finds himself in a world red in tooth and claw, exacting out a living by the sweat of his brow as women die in childbirth, realizes that God could have given man paradise, and so invents a story that He did, but man disobediently threw it away, making it just for God to condemn man to this hard life. Likewise with the flood story and Sodom and Gomorrah. It's all justified however horrible the alleged acts of God were because man deserved it for sinning.

 

[It Aint Necessarily So]

we both can and do seek out the evidence that supports the conclusions that we want to (and often have already) arrive at. And this is as true for the theist as it is for the atheist, because we all do it.

It is not as true for the critical thinker as it is for the faith-based thinker. The former actively learns to not do that. I've noticed in a few true crime stories, the detectives will refer to training they've had to suppress preconceptions when investigating and learn to evaluate evidence dispassionately. They understand the importance of bringing this principle to the process, as does the experiences critical thinker. I'm sure a little tendentious occurs anyway, but with multiple detectives all trying to minimize such a thing, their investigation becomes more objective and less dependent on observer bias.

This is what scientists do as well when they devise medical trials and blind the patient and clinician as to who got the therapy being tested and who got placebo. This double blinding as a principle is a nod to this effort by critical thinkers to minimize observer biases based in hopes and desired outcomes of the study.

Now look at your comment again. Yes, we probably all do it, but one tradition actively seeks to minimize that, and does pretty well, while the other is likely unaware that there is a difference between the two and assumes as you seem to be doing here a false equivalence.

faith without discernment is insane. But faith combined with instinct and intuition, and an appropriate degree of caution can take us far further and faster than laboriously sifting through big piles of contradictory and inconclusive "evidence" ever could.

You keep making this claim that faith takes one further than strict empiricism. Every time you do, I ask you to say what that method has revealed to you that you think would be of benefit to others if they would just relax their standards for belief. And you never have an answer to that. So why should it be believed that there is any merit to taking that advice?

I can only conclude that you are either mistaken that there is any benefit to that way of thinking, or that the benefit is that it is a comforting belief that meets some need for the believer, and he has no desire or incentive to look at that idea critically. So, he scoffingly dismisses the strict empiricist with words like myopic, materialist, and scientism, not realizing that many of these people have no unmet need that theism could satisfy, and thus no incentive to deviate from a method that reliably generates correct ideas and recognizes and rejects incorrect ones.

Just a short time ago in human history there was nothing in a room with us that we didn't see. Now we know the room is filled with a whole array of objects and energies and even life forms, that we can't see. And these are just the phenomena we know of, now. How many more might there be that we are as yet completely ignorant of? So silly analogies about invisible elephants don't really mean anything, anymore. Because it turns out the world is full of invisible stuff.

You're conflating the real but as yet undetected with the nonexistent. Yes, people may have been unaware of bacteria or DNA or radiation at one time, but those things could all affect them nevertheless, and with the proper tools, they can be detected.

The difference between something that exists, or is real, and something that does not exist is the ability of the former but not the latter to interact with other real things (things that actually exist). Most theists will tell you that gods and the supernatural realm are not detectible by any means. Is it a coherent position to say that something exists that is undetectable not just because the right machine hasn't been built yet to discern its presence the way the microscope revealed bacteria, but because it makes no impact on our reality?

The only way I can reconcile real with undetectable even in principle is to posit two separate realities with no no causal connection between them, where each contain elements that occupy time and space and interact within one of these two realities, but that the two realities and their elements don't interact with one another. Such a thing seems logically possible, but irrelevant to denizens of either reality. Each can treat the other as nonexistent, which is how claims of an undetectable supernatural realm that is undetectable by any means are viewed - it doesn't matter if such a thing has an existence separate from ours.

Of course, to add to the incoherence of this concept, we are also told that God reaches across the causal divide anyway and performs miracles or answers prayer or informs messengers or whatever the claim. Suddenly, they become detectable only to disengage again when we look. The skeptic understands that this idea of something being real but undetectable by any means is a device for claiming that the nonexistent and therefore undetectable is real anyway.

 

[KWED]

You cannot reliably conclude that something unseen does not exist, because it can't be seen. That is circular reasoning.

Rejecting the existence of that which cannot be detected in any way is not "circular reasoning". It is a logical conclusion based on available evidence.

It is still an assumption .. based on the principle that physical reality [ this universe ] is all that exists.

And what evidence do you have that there is something beyond this physical universe, that can affect events within this physical universe? That seems to be a majorly unsupportable assumption.

That is false. There is reason to believe it to be true, otherwise nobody would believe it.

Childhood indoctrination, credulousness, delusion, wishful thinking, etc are all reasons why people believe stuff that is not true. However, their belief does not make a thing true. This is not just confined to religion.

 

[Mock Turtle]

So everyone is born atheist but when they grow older, teach myths to their children, because . . . Adam and Eve had a source to discuss the issues with.

If you like (but it's mostly ignorance we are born with), and I'd rather they had a good education in thinking skills, and hence to be able - as they mature and are suitably educated - to have the tools to be able to make sound judgments. Like discriminating one religion from the many and the alternatives, and hence able to make their own choices as to such if they so choose, rather than what we mostly have.

 

[PureX]

And all of those things that are invisible can be detected by a variety of means other than visible light. That is how we know they exist.

So, all those that say God exists need to do is give a reliable method of detection.

Except that our "reliable methods" are still very limited. And the likelihood of there being more and much stranger phenomena in the room with us remains a very strong possibility. That's the part you seem to be keen on ignoring, here. In your mind you pretend that science rules out "God", when in fact it only bolsters the possibility.

 

[KWED]

Interesting you should say that about wishful thinking. I was thinking that it would be very, very hard for me to believe that someone is transferred into an insect, cow, snake, or whatever in the "next life."

If you were raised in a religion where that was a core element of doctrine, you would probably find it easy to believe.

Jesus did say that the good news of God's kingdom would be preached in all the inhabited earth, so this leads me to believe that many would have the opportunity to see and possibly understand.

But anyone who has been raised to believe in a different religion will dismiss it as nonsense in the same way you do with other religions.

 

[Polymath257]

Except that our "reliable methods" are still very limited. And the likelihood of there being more and much stranger phenomena in the room with us remains a very strong possibility. That's the part you seem to be keen on ignoring, here. In your mind you pretend that science rules out "God", when in fact it only bolsters the possibility.

And until there is actual evidence, there is no good reason to believe anything specific: only that there are things we do not know.

How does science bolster the idea of 'God'? There is no evidence of such a being. Many people say there can be no evidence of such a being. So what possible reason is there to believe such a being exists?

 

[KWED]

They can also be right.

But you agree that popularity is not an indicator if something is true, or even beneficial.
Ask a thousand children whether they would prefer ice-cream or porridge for breakfast.

 

[KWED]

Clearly, I as a believer do have reason to.

Now that is circular logic.

My experiences in life lead me to believe that there is more to life than what is apparent.

What experiences would those be, because nothing I have experienced suggests that there is "more to life than what is apparent"? And what is that "more"?

I believe in the significance of existence itself, and do not turn my back on that, just because it can't be scientifically proved.

What is "the significance of existence"?

 

[Polymath257]

Now that is circular logic.

What experiences would those be, because nothing I have experienced suggests that there is "more to life than what is apparent"? And what is that "more"?

Well, there is more than what is apparent: ultraviolet light, radio waves, ultrasound, neutrinos, atoms, etc. None of those is apparent, but we know they exist.

What is "the significance of existence"?

The most significant thing about existence is that something exists.