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Atheists: What would be evidence of God’s existence?

Azrael Antilla

Azrael Antilla

Active Member
mikkel_the_dane said:
Yes, a somewhat somehow sourced reference site would do:

https://undsci.berkeley.edu/index.php
And
https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/whatisscience_12

We can play words about this one, "Science doesn't draw conclusions about supernatural explanations"
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I am not linking a reference to the scientific method. That's just pointless. There's only one. Science is underpinned by independent reproducibility of results, by peer review. There is no more objective way of investigation. Science or the scientific method, cannot test or examine supernatural phenomenon, because getting ghosts to cooperate under laboratory conditions in order to perform repeatable analysis, is exceedingly problematic.
 
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SkepticThinker

SkepticThinker

Veteran Member
Trailblazer said:
The fact that a few atheists believe that I failed in some way you did not even state is not an adequate reply to what I said but rather it is deflection.

I said: I certainly do understand what evidence is. It is the atheists who don't understand what evidence is.

Now tell me why I do not understand what evidence is or do not assert that I don't understand what evidence is.
I can certainly explain why atheists do not understand what evidence is. Otherwise I would not have said what I said.
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Because the things you keep positing as evidence, are just more claims.
And then you claim that you haven't made any claims.
 
SkepticThinker

SkepticThinker

Veteran Member
Trailblazer said:
But none of them met all five of the criteria I listed. Are you really going to compare a cult leader to Jesus Christ or Moses or Muhammad? There is no comparison whatsoever. These cult leaders are phonies and they are liars if they claim that God spoke to them because no God ever communicated anything to them. At best they are deluded.
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How do you know?

Trailblazer said:
The reason is because the Bible was written by unknown authors, men who never even knew the Messengers of God/prophets. Is anything in the Bible verifiable?

By contrast, the Bab and Baha'u'llah wrote their own scriptures and we have the originals.
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Sheldon

Sheldon

Veteran Member
Trailblazer said:
1. God exists and there is evidence.
2. If there was no evidence God could not hold humans accountable for believing in Him.

There is nothing circular about either of those statements.
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Now that you've deliberately changed it by removing the word because, perhaps not, though I'm still dubious.

I also see no evidence demonstrated in either statement, and it certainly read like circular reasoning in the original post, but hey ho. More importantly you have tried to prove two unevidenced assertions, 1 That a deity exists, and 2 that there is evidence, by implying a third unevidenced assertion, 3 namely that a deity holds humans accountable.

Where is the evidence? bare assertions are not evidence, and you can't validate a bare assertion with another bare assertion, especially using the kind of circular reasoning fallacy in your original post.

I see no evidence at all, only a string of assertions, and the original claim amounted to circular reasoning, and using the word because, to link the unevidenced conclusion to the first two unevidenced assertions made that pretty obvious.
 
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mikkel_the_dane

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
Azrael Antilla said:
I am not linking a reference to the scientific method. That's just pointless. There's only one. Science is underpinned by independent reproducibility of results, by peer review. There is no more objective way of investigation. Science or the scientific method, cannot test or examine supernatural phenomenon, because getting ghosts to cooperate under laboratory conditions in order to perform repeatable analysis, is exceedingly problematic.
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Okay, so you take your own cultural version of science for granted and properly other concepts, too. Fine. I do it differently.
 
Sheldon

Sheldon

Veteran Member
Trailblazer said:
Whenever I say that Messengers of God are the evidence of God’s existence atheists say “that’s not evidence.” It's not evidence, it is a bare claim? You can't make a claim that there are "messengers of god" and expect anyone to just accept the bare claim prima facie, and the claim is not evidence of course.

So if “that’s not evidence” what would be evidence of God’s existence? Well it is for the person making the claim a deity exists to demsonrate sufficient objective evidence for their belief, it is absurd ot expect someone who doesn't share the belief to tell you what evidence you should have.

If God existed, where would we get the evidence? How would we get it? Again atheists don't believe in a any deity or deities, so asking there where the evidence for your belief should come form makes no sense?

As I see it there are only three possibilities:

1. God exists and there is evidence so we should look for the evidence.
2. God exists but there is no evidence so there is nothing to look for.
3. God does not exist and that is why there is no evidence.

I believe (1) God exists and there is evidence, because if there was no evidence God could not hold humans accountable for believing in Him. Again there is no evidence in there only bare assertions, and again it seems like a circular reasoning fallacy to me, What objective evidence can you demsonrate that any deity holds humans accountable? You can't just assert this as if it is a fact.

Why would God expect us to believe He exists and provide no evidence? That would be unfair as well as unreasonable. Well since atheists don't believe any deity exists, asking an atheist that questions seems rather pointless, don't you think?
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Sheldon

Sheldon

Veteran Member
mikkel_the_dane said:
We can play words about this one, "Science doesn't draw conclusions about supernatural explanations"
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The scientific method requires that all ideas and claims must be falsifiable, unfalsifiable claims are rejected as unscientific. The phrase often used is "not even wrong."

Science can't examine unicorns or mermaids either, but I'd find it hard to believe this represented a limitation of the scientific method.
 
mikkel_the_dane

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
Sheldon said:
The scientific method requires that all ideas and claims must be falsifiable, unfalsifiable claims are rejected as unscientific. The phrase often used is "not even wrong."

Science can't examine unicorns or mermaids either, but I'd find it hard to believe this represented a limitation of the scientific method.
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Oaky, can you do a standard analysis of which parts in your quote is science and which are not? Further if there are any normative claims, that can't be solved by science and if your description of science has in a part a normative claim? Or if you like prescriptive and not descriptive?
Further can you describe if you anywhere in that quote are subjective and if so, how?

If you don't want to, because I believe you can, we will stop for now.
 
Subduction Zone

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Trailblazer said:
Work for what, that is the hundred-dollar question.
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Being polite did not get you to own up to your errors. How many people have made almost the exact same corrections here? We are not reading off of a script. We all see the same errors. We all have explained to you. And you know who I mean by we. Do I need to go through the threads and give you a list? By the way, you claim to have studied psychology. Sure you are aware that when "we" is used in a context to describe the people that have refuted you that it is deflection to imply that it is something else.
 
Sheldon

Sheldon

Veteran Member
mikkel_the_dane said:
Oaky, can you do a standard analysis of which parts in your quote is science and which are not?
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I'm not sure I understand the question, my post was an observation on the claims being made about the method, I wasn't writing a scientific paper. EDIT to be clear i am not a scientists and have no scientific qualifications, I was merely offering a response to the idea that science being unable to examine the supernatural does not to me indicate a limitation of or flaw in the scientific method. Since the supernatural may simply not exist, and science cannot examine what does not exist. Though I don't claim it does not exists obviously, but I certainly don't believe anything supernatural exists, unless someone can demsonrate some objective evidence for it?

mikkel_the_dane said:
if there are any normative claims, that can't be solved by science
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Sorry but again I'm not sure I follow, there are obviously many things we have yet to understand, so I'm not sure why we would speculate on how effective any method might be on those things. However the results and successes of the method demonstrate unequivocally is by far and away the best method we have for understanding reality.

mikkel_the_dane said:
Further can you describe if you anywhere in that quote are subjective and if so, how?
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Well I'd have though that was for others to say? i mean I try always to strive to be objective, but if I am offering just an opinion then I usually say so. Did you think anything I said was merely subjective? if you did I will certainly examine it and try to give a candid response.
 
Subduction Zone

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Trailblazer said:
Fair enough. Abdu'l-Baha was not infallible and he should not have been addressing scientific subjects because that was not within his purview. I believe he was wrong on more than those things. Baha'u'llah did not grant him authority to speak about science, only religion.
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And as @joelr and others, along with me as well, have pointed out the prophecies fail because they are overly vague.

Let me try to explain this. Let's say that there was a real "messenger of God". He makes some prophecies. One of them seems to have been fulfilled because an event happened that roughly matches a vague prophecy. But then another group sees a different event that appears to have fulfilled it. So they begin to argue about which one fulfilled it. That is often how new sects form. We see that in Christianity. There are different events that have been claimed to have fulfilled the various prophecies of the Bible. But as I said, we have a real "messenger of God" and the prophecy was fulfilled. But the event was a third one that no one noticed.

That is the problem with vague prophecies. You never can really tell that if an event actually was "the Event" or not. That is why any vague prophecy has failed. If they are vague they are failed prophecies because we can never be sure if they have been fulfilled or not.

Also, vague predictions of war are double failures. First for being vague. Second for predicting every day events that will happen. An example of a prophecy that fails because it is too likely to happen would be if I were to sa:

"Trailblazer, the next time you drive on the road you will see a red car". Now that is a rather specific prophecy. It has a sort of a time limit since you probably drive your car at least a few times a week. It says what you will see and what color it will be. The problem is that every time that you go on the road you will probably see a red car. Predicting that there would be a war, without getting specific about what countries and when, in the time of your prophet would be close to me predicting that you would see a red car.

That is a failed prophecy because it is something that is all but guaranteed to happen.

The list I gave to you was reasonable. You would not even discuss it because you probably saw that it was. You could only reject the list only because it eliminated all of your prophecies. You could not come up with a valid reason to reject the list.
 
Sheldon

Sheldon

Veteran Member
Subduction Zone said:
And as @joelr and others, along with me as well, have pointed out the prophecies fail because they are overly vague.
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I concur, as that has been my experience of such claims. However i would also add that even were a claim for extremely accurate and very unlikely prophecy demonstrated to come true, we'd have something we couldn't explain, to make assertions based on that strikes me as an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy, as of course all miracle do, so irrational by definition.
 
Subduction Zone

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Sheldon said:
I concur, as that has been my experience of such claims. However i would also add that even were a claim for extremely accurate and very unlikely prophecy demonstrated to come true, we'd have something we couldn't explain, to make assertions based on that strikes me as an argumentum ad ignorantiam fallacy, as of course all miracle do, so irrational by definition.
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True, but it would still be better than the nothing burger that we see of religious prophecies of any religion. And of course there is the rare prophecy that is fairly accurate. It has an event. It has a time limit. And it has a clear result. The problem with those prophecies is that they inevitably fail. Then we will see attempts to reinterpret the prophecy after the fact.
 
Azrael Antilla

Azrael Antilla

Active Member
mikkel_the_dane said:
Oaky, can you do a standard analysis of which parts in your quote is science and which are not? Further if there are any normative claims, that can't be solved by science and if your description of science has in a part a normative claim? Or if you like prescriptive and not descriptive?
Further can you describe if you anywhere in that quote are subjective and if so, how?

If you don't want to, because I believe you can, we will stop for now.
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Every scientific question, has a scientific answer. Science cannot answer metaphysical questions. Nor can it answer questions relating to that which posseses no measurable parameters. Like supernatural controlling entities. What is the mass of say the Islamic God? How do I test for the presence or absence of Allah's mass? For example.
 
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