Evidence for a god existing or not existing

[ratiocinator]

I know by myself and within myself God exists. I’m 100% sure.

Unfortunately 100% certainty is not something one can rationally claim about anything in the world outside your mind. Even lots of objective evidence or reasoning won't give you 100% certainty.

 

[loverofhumanity]

What else do you see in nature? Go to Youtube and search "horrible parasites," and tell me if you see signs of God in them, too.

Parasites are a large and important part of global biodiversity. We do know that they play important roles in wildlife population control, ecosystem stability and flow, nutrient cycling, and potentially even buffering against the emergence of virulent diseases. There is some evidence of parasites being beneficial for their hosts, such as intestinal parasites possibly helping humans with disorders caused by inflammation of the intestines (e.g., Crohn’s disease), by activating the immune system.


Cosmos Q&A: Why we need to care about parasites

 

[ratiocinator]

Parasites are a large and important part of global biodiversity. We do know that they play important roles in wildlife population control, ecosystem stability and flow, nutrient cycling, and potentially even buffering against the emergence of virulent diseases. There is some evidence of parasites being beneficial for their hosts, such as intestinal parasites possibly helping humans with disorders caused by inflammation of the intestines (e.g., Crohn’s disease), by activating the immune system.

So are you claiming it was beyond your god's ability to design a biosphere without the suffering caused by parasites?

 

[loverofhumanity]

We see what you see, but we interpret it differently. I have a naturalistic candidate hypothesis for the existence of the universe that you seem to have dropped from your list of possibilities for no sound reason, an incredulity fallacy: I just don't see how it happened without an intelligent designer, therefore one must exist. If you understood the science, you would see how it might have occurred without a god.

Science has been steadily removing gods from physical processes for centuries now, producing what is now called the god of the gaps (in knowledge). The ruler god was dismissed after the first wave of scientists revealed the clockwork universe, where no god was needed to make the sun pass through the sky or electrons through a wire. Deism was born, the idea that god doesn't affect the universe. A god was stuill needed to build the universe, but not to run it.

Then came the second wave of scientists that showed us that material evolution (the Big Bang) and biological evolution could build the universe from a singularity and the tree of life from a single ancestral population.

Notice the special pleading fallacy in the incredulity fallacy, where you find a universe too complicated to exist undesigned an uncreated, but not the god posited to account for that degree of complexity. A god capable of creating such a universe would seem to be much less likely to exist undesigned and uncreated than its creation, but this gets a pass in the analysis.



The problem disappears when we recognize the distinction between sound waves and sound. A falling tree generates waves in the atmosphere around it, which are converted to sound by a mind. Sound doesn't exist outside of minds, like color. If there is nobody to hear the tree fall (animals that can hear count), sound waves are generated, but they are not converted to sound. Even if a tape recorder is capturing the event, there is still no sound until the tape is played to a hearing mind.

Does a dog whistle make a sound? Not to a human ear. Sound wave impact the ear drum, but the cochlea and auditory cortex don't generate sound.



Faith is a logical error. It cannot be a path to truth, since wrong ideas are as easily believed by faith as correct ones. What we want is a method to decide which ideas are correct and which are not so that only the former are believed. Critical thinking does this. Faith does not.

As for judging faith-based thinkers, I believe that they've made a mistake believing by faith, and place no value in any conclusions such a person has arrived at using faith-based premises. If a conclusion is predicated on a god belief, it's no more sound than the god belief, and of no value to the skeptic.

For some reason, this position irritates the faith-based thinker, who generally sees it as a personal attack, and becomes angry. I don't really understand that reaction. I know that he has no respect for the way I think or what I believe, either, but I don't know why I would have an emotional reaction to that or be personally offended, so I don't know why he does.



That's sarcasm, not religion. What do you think those people are doing in these "churches"? Not what goes on in a religious meeting.

The FSM meme was created to point out the absurdity of teaching creationism repackaged as intelligent design to skirt the law in the Kansas public school system.

Here's my prayer to his Noodliness You would be making a mistake to consider this an actual prayer as you would be to think that a FSM meeting place called a church has religious people in it. Both are humor:

Blessed be the Flying Spaghetti Monster, born of extra virgin olive oil, delivered Little Caesarian (in 30 minutes or less) and cast out of the Olive Garden carrying the Ten Condiments, who has come for our salivation. Killed by the Antipasto as foretold in the book of Romanos, Our Savory was snagged by a giant twirling fork, placed on a plate, and hurled onto a wall, where He stuck and dried for our sins. Cheese's Crust, how grated thou art! May there be pizza on earth and gouda will toward men.



Religion plays no part in the enduring work of either man. An atheist with Newton's mathematical skills could have written Principia except for the part where Newton invokes God to keep the planets in their orbits, since his math suggested that Jupiter and Saturn would throw planets like earth into the sun or out of the solar system. Successful theistic scientists learn how to compartmentalize their faith-based thinking and leave it outside of the laboratory or observatory. As soon as faith enters the process, it ceases to be science.

Incidentally, Laplace removed the ghost from the machine a century later by developing the mathematics necessary to demonstrate that the solar system was stable without the hand of any god. One less job for gods to do, which is the pattern of the entire history of science.



Appetizer: Deviled eggs
Main course: Shrimp diablo
Dessert: Devil's food cake



I think you have that backward. You think we are like you. You use every religious concept you can think of to describe us. To you, we're evangelists, steeped in faith, and our worldviews religions.

"I always flinch in embarrassment for the believer who trots out, 'Atheism is just another kind of faith,' because it's a tacit admission that taking claims on faith is a silly thing to do. When you've succumbed to arguing that the opposition is just as misguided as you are, it's time to take a step back and rethink your attitudes." - Amanda Marcotte

Many faith-based thinkers seem to be unaware that it is possible to only think critically. It's really pretty easy to eliminate faith-based thinking and faith-based beliefs from one's repertoire, but it generally requires a university education. In a class on evolution, you'll see the evidence and argument Darwin used to arrive at his conclusions, and your professor won't ask you if you believe it, just whether you learned what was taught. In time, one learns to think only in that matter when deciding what is true about the world, and goes back and removes the faith-based ideas that crept in before learning to think like that, which is what the church leaders are afraid of when Johnny goes off to college.

The mind is a fascinating thing. Here I do observe ones own mind deceiving oneself into trying to rationalise there is no God and not only failing dismally but fooling itself into the superstition and fallacy that there is no God.

I’m well past that stage. From fanatical atheist to critical thinker then when I realised I was fooling myself all along, there was God.

But it was a painful journey in which my pride and ego took a massive beating before I eventually accepted that there is no way there is no God and that all some have done is continually deceive and fool themselves into thinking there is not.

If people want to continue to allow their imperfect mind continue to entrap them into believing there is no God then I pity them but I’m not playing that game and am free of their rhetoric and blind fallacies that God does not exist, it’s solely their imagination,

For me God exists, He’s real and He recently sent Baha’u’llah to help us unite the world and establish peace.

 

[loverofhumanity]

Unfortunately 100% certainty is not something one can rationally claim about anything in the world outside your mind. Even lots of objective evidence or reasoning won't give you 100% certainty.

With God all things are possible. It’s called the state of certitude or knowing.

 

[RestlessSoul]

So are you claiming it was beyond your god's ability to design a biosphere without the suffering caused by parasites?

Don’t think anyone is claiming that. You seem to me to be constrained by your own very limited conception of what may constitute divinity.

 

[loverofhumanity]

So are you claiming it was beyond your god's ability to design a biosphere without the suffering caused by parasites?

God has many worlds and He creates them each how He so chooses.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Nonsense. I know by myself and within myself God exists. I’m 100% sure. No need to prove it to anyone.

No, that is only belief if you cannot support it. People are 100% sure of all sorts of nonsense only to find out later in life that they were wrong.

 

[Subduction Zone]

God has many worlds and He creates them each how He so chooses.

And how do you "know" this?

 

[loverofhumanity]

No, that is only belief if you cannot support it. People are 100% sure of all sorts of nonsense only to find out later in life that they were wrong.

Of course I can validate it to myself and I only need prove it to myself. I am not wrong. I have found truth and I stand by that.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Of course I can validate it to myself and I only need prove it to myself. I am not wrong. I have found truth and I stand by that.

Sorry, but the easiest person for someone to fool is himself. The path you are following all but guarantees that you are wrong in your beliefs.

 

[loverofhumanity]

And how do you "know" this?

He told us. God speaks to us through His Messengers and through Them we learn to distinguish truth from falsehood.

 

[Subduction Zone]

He told us. God speaks to us through His Messengers and through Them we learn to distinguish truth from falsehood.

Now it appears that you are going to further confirm your error by referring to a book of myths.

 

[loverofhumanity]

Sorry, but the easiest person for someone to fool is himself. The path you are following all but guarantees that you are wrong in your beliefs.

That’s exactly why I feel so sorry for all the atheists here because they’ve fallen into such superstition that there is no God. But once I was a very strong atheist so I think there’s hope for them if they can stop being closed minded.

 

[loverofhumanity]

Now it appears that you are going to further confirm your error by referring to a book of myths.

More like the Book of Life but then I once believed the myth of no God until I ceased allowing my mind to entrap me. Now I see and know, no more confusion.

 

[Subduction Zone]

That’s exactly why I feel so sorry for all the atheists here because they’ve fallen into such superstition that there is no God. But once I was a very strong atheist so I think there’s hope for them if they can stop being closed minded.

People that have fooled themselves tend to feel that way. It is a compensation method to deal with the doubt that what little rational thought that they have raises.

Here is a question that you probably cannot answer:

How do you properly test your ideas?

 

[Subduction Zone]

More like the Book of Life but then I once believed the myth of no God until I ceased allowing my mind to entrap me. Now I see and know, no more confusion.

Yep. You just failed.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Evidence? Of what? I was talking about perception, and the manner in which one experiences consciousness.

So not even evidence? Just confirmation bias?

 

[loverofhumanity]

People that have fooled themselves tend to feel that way. It is a compensation method to deal with the doubt that what little rational thought that they have raises.

Here is a question that you probably cannot answer:

How do you properly test your ideas?

Why don’t you just give in and accept when you’re not able to peddle this superstitious fallacy about no God to those who ‘know’ He is?

Every person has been born with the innate ability to recognise God. Not everyone does though. Obstacles can be ignorance, wilful blindness, considering ones knowledge to be superior in every way, not willing to be open minded.

Those who overcome these barriers see God as clear as the sun. Those who don’t, struggle all their lives trying to rationalise God all the while using their own faulty rational and intellectual tools.

 

[loverofhumanity]

Yep. You just failed.

According to who? You are?