What would count as proof of God

[steve_bank]

Dew sounds like Christian and conservative media...'atheist-secular' science that hates god or wants to disprove god and destroy religion..

Dew, what is a belief in a god but no particular god mean?

Are there many gods? Was creating the universe a team effort? I read that the Greeks had a temple to the unknown god, in case they missed one.

How woud you rate the quality of design of the universe by your creator? Killer asteroids, earthquakes, hurricanes. Birth defects.

 

[TomC]

'Atheism' says nothing about cosmology.

A big part of the problem here is that while atheism doesn't say anything about cosmology, atheists often do. They don't always qualify their assertions with "It seems to me..." or anything like that.

"There is not and cannot be a God" is a big, unsupported, assertion. Most non-theists don't say that, but some do. I find many hard atheists quite as irrational and limited as hard theists. There aren't many, but enough to be aggravating.
Tom

 

[steve_bank]

'Atheism' says nothing about cosmology.

A big part of the problem here is that while atheism doesn't say anything about cosmology, atheists often do. They don't always qualify their assertions with "It seems to me..." or anything like that.

"There is not and cannot be a God" is a big, unsupported, assertion. Most non-theists don't say that, but some do. I find many hard atheists quite as irrational and limited as hard theists. There aren't many, but enough to be aggravating.
Tom

Yes, as I often say craziness is not limited to theists. I also say the word atheist really has bno meaning.

When I go to bed I sometimes listen to Coast To Coast AM with George Nory on the radio. Did yiu knw if you put mushrooms in sunlight they will absorb vitamin D from sunlight?

One can be atheist and believe in magic crystals and casting spells.

Used by theist media and preachers atheist is a convenient bogey man. Dew is isllustring this.

Some Christians are rational on science. I worked with hard core creationists who were very good engineers.


A survey in England asked about beliefs. One conclusion was that asking self defined atheists about beifs was pointless, the term is ill fefined as used by people. I reject gods but I believe in something greater than humans, a higher power.

For myself I draw on naturalism and freethought which is more definitive than just atheist. Science is the best tool to underhand reality, theists call that scientism as being opposed to theism.

My response is always philosophically, scientifically, and philosophically creation can not be proven. The pop science shows like NOVA portray the BB as fact, which I reject. I callit a good theory based on the avilbale evidence, but not fact.

I go with Popper, fr someting to be objective scince it must be testable. He used the word experimentalist, which means all that we really know objectvely is an experiment. As denate and thought sreads from experiment it becomes progesively subjective. Interpretaion. Philosohy.

The BB is mathematical philosophical speculation, not objective science.

 

[Keith&Co.]

How woud you rate the quality of design of the universe by your creator? Killer asteroids, earthquakes, hurricanes. Birth defects.

Yeah, I'm hoping we get into that. Drew really focuses on 'uncaring forces' in what he poses as The Atheist Model. He seems really, deeply concerned about the universe not intentionally making life.
I look at the death estimate from the latest eruptions, and Harlequin babies, and telemarketers, and wonder just what qualities he's noticed the universe has that reflects 'caring' in its design.
Surely that's the distinction between, say, a deist universe and an atheist one.

 

[Drew2008]

'Atheism' says nothing about cosmology. I know of no science that clams the unverse has a starting point. An infinie unverse has no need of a creator.

The problem is that "universe" means "everything that exists".

Anywhere you look for the word universe and its definition you'll get something like this...

The universe (Latin: universus) is all of space and time[a] and their contents,[10] including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. According to this theory, space and time emerged together 13.799±0.021 billion years ago,[2] and the universe has been expanding ever since.

They are even confident when the universe came into existence.

 

[Drew2008]

Again, there are limited possibilities.

Universe without beginning or end.
Universe sprang into existence form nothing.
A creator did it, without explaining how the creator came to be.

Yes there are unlimited naturalism in the gaps explanations...

Just for the record I don't claim to know how a Creator came into existence. If the Creator did require a Creator that would still make theism true. So what's the point of that argument?

 

[Drew2008]

Dew, what is a belief in a god but no particular god mean?

It means I'm a theist. I believe the universe and our existence was intentional as opposed to a-theists who claim its not the result of intent or plan or design.

 

[TomC]

They are even confident when the universe came into existence.

I'm not sure who you mean by "they" in this sentence.

Competent scientists have traced the known universe back to a point in time(give or take a few billion years). Beyond that, they don't make claims. Even if confidently asserting opinions seems like it.

It's theists who make precise claims. YEC Christians have, I know. Down to the year and time of day (9am).
Tom

 

[Drew2008]

Nobody knows how or why the universe exists, yet you focus on that area as though it can support anything about God, when it is silent on the issue.* That is very telling, since you apparently ignore all the present day claims about God that can be evaluated much better, and where theism clearly fails.

I never said anything about how and I agree nobody knows. We do agree regardless of how it came about that it does exist. If it didn't exist the claim God created the universe would be falsified. The fact it does exist makes the claim it was intentionally caused by a creator more probable than if no universe existed. If I claimed the existence of a virtual universe was the result of scientists, engineers and IT people the fact a virtual universe exists is evidence of my claim.

 

[Keith&Co.]

.

Again, there are limited possibilities.

Universe without beginning or end.
Universe sprang into existence form nothing.
A creator did it, without explaining how the creator came to be.

Yes there are unlimited naturalism in the gaps explanations...

No, there are not.

Just for the record I don't claim to know how a Creator came into existence. If the Creator did require a Creator that would still make theism true. So what's the point of that argument?

It means your solution to the existence of the universe requires a solution.

 

[abaddon]

I never said anything about how and I agree nobody knows. We do agree regardless of how it came about that it does exist. If it didn't exist the claim God created the universe would be falsified. The fact it does exist makes the claim it was intentionally caused by a creator more probable than if no universe existed. If I claimed the existence of a virtual universe was the result of scientists, engineers and IT people the fact a virtual universe exists is evidence of my claim.

This is your 'a corpse can be evidence of murder' thing again.

The evidence of murder would be a bullet hole or other wound, or poison, or a letter saying "I killed him!". The body itself isn't evidence of murder.

You damn well do have to say something about the HOW.

We could find a virtual universe was made by surmising the HOW. If the engineers aren't directly known to exist, what you do is look at the virtual universe for evidence of how it was engineered.

Same with the house. Even if it appeared weirdly to have just "come into existence", you surmise a HOW it can have been built and look for the traces to confirm it. Those traces are evidence. The house itself is not.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

.

Again, there are limited possibilities.

Universe without beginning or end.
Universe sprang into existence form nothing.
A creator did it, without explaining how the creator came to be.

Yes there are unlimited naturalism in the gaps explanations...

No, there are not.

Just for the record I don't claim to know how a Creator came into existence. If the Creator did require a Creator that would still make theism true. So what's the point of that argument?

It means your solution to the existence of the universe requires a solution.

Nothing like making up your own problem to posit your magical solution.

It is an infomercial!

Host: Tired of the cascading of creation to the beginning of time?

Crowd: Yeah!

Host: Are you exhausted of trying to figure out the origin of the universe?

Crowd: Yeah!

Host: Do you wish there was a solution to the first cause?

Crowd: Yeah!

Host: Well you are in luck. Sure all things need to be created to exist but what we have here is an innovation of ginormic proportions. Something that magically fixes everything.

Guy in Crowd: How about logically?

Host: *motions to security*. Something that magically fixes everything!

Crowd: *applause*

Host: We call it god! It is all powerful, all knowing, everywhere, and best of all it doesn’t need to be created to exist completely and utterly removing the need to speak of its own origin.

Crowd: *awe*

 

[Jarhyn]

So, the one thing I can think of that would prove the existence of a super-dimensional entity whose relationship is roughly orthogonal to the relationship I have with a universe I poof into existence within it (an observed architectural possibility), and the seed is calculable from what we currently perceive as noise, and then some thing at some point observationally diverges from the behavior dictated by seed at some point, then this would be a "finger in the pie".

It appears that our universe is HIGHLY resistant to showing such marks on account of the apparent randomness, and if it happened before we started looking, we would never be able to derive the seed without knowing the imprint.

Imagine a game.

This game has a random number generator, or other program controlling it. What is important to note is that the sequence of it is determined somehow from a value and the game always plays out the same way.

Now imagine there is a controller in your hands as you watch this video of gameplay, rendered through this ridiculous process.

As soon as you pick up the controller, though, things will change.

We prove or disproves god by, as processes in this crazy game, deriving the seed or system that calls the dance of our determinant "virtual" sequence and determining whether what we see has been altered by some measurable delta.

 

[bilby]

'Atheism' says nothing about cosmology.

A big part of the problem here is that while atheism doesn't say anything about cosmology, atheists often do. They don't always qualify their assertions with "It seems to me..." or anything like that.

"There is not and cannot be a God" is a big, unsupported, assertion. Most non-theists don't say that, but some do. I find many hard atheists quite as irrational and limited as hard theists. There aren't many, but enough to be aggravating.
Tom

It's not a particularly big assertion, any more than "there is and cannot be a dragon in my garage" is a big assertion.

And it's not unsupported; For all but the most esoteric and unpopular ideas about what 'god' might be, the fact that they do not and cannot exist is supported by their being contradictory to quantum field theory.

For any of the mainstream gods to exist, QFT would need to be very badly wrong.

It's not.

We checked.

 

[Drew2008]

Your "logic" (I'm being kind) via an analogy...

God made me a sandwich.
I have a sandwich, this is evidence that God made it.

Analogies are often self-serving...this one no different. Your analogy here to be kind is to compare a sandwich something we've all made and seen to the existence of the universe which no one really knows how it came about. The irony is in your analogy we do know that sandwiches are intentionally put together by intelligent design (or personal taste). I haven't seen any that come together by unguided mechanistic forces...have you?

Or how about:

I had sex with Alison Hannigan.
I have a penis, that is evidence that I had sex with Alison Hannigan.

Why is this one better? You're penis would have no probative value its not required to have sex with someone.

 

[bilby]

'Atheism' says nothing about cosmology. I know of no science that clams the unverse has a starting point. An infinie unverse has no need of a creator.

The problem is that "universe" means "everything that exists".

Anywhere you look for the word universe and its definition you'll get something like this...

The universe (Latin: universus) is all of space and time[a] and their contents,[10] including planets, stars, galaxies, and all other forms of matter and energy. The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological description of the development of the universe. According to this theory, space and time emerged together 13.799±0.021 billion years ago,[2] and the universe has been expanding ever since.

They are even confident when the universe came into existence.

The problem with this argumentum ad dictionarium is that it doesn't change anything.

If the word 'universe' doesn't mean to you what it means to me, then simply replace it in my argument with any word or phrase that does mean 'everything that exists', and you will see that my argument still stands.

Semantic weaseling doesn't get you anywhere.

You can't explain the existence of everything that exists by reference to something that's not a part of everything that exists, because by definition that thing doesn't exist.

So you are left with either accepting its existence as a brute fact, or hiving off a special part of everything that exists, which you then call 'god', and credit with making the whole thing exist.

But either that leaves you with an equally difficult problem in explaining how 'god' exists, so you have solved nothing; Or it leaves you with the claim that a part (or all) of reality can exist without explanation, so you have eliminated the need to invoke a god to begin with.

Not only is 'god' not the answer; 'god' cannot even be a possible answer.

See? The word 'universe' doesn't appear anywhere in this revised argument, yet it gets us to the exact same conclusion.

Nobody cares what the dictionary or wikipedia says about the word 'universe'. It has zero effect on the actual argument being made. Invoking it is just a quibbling distraction with zero actual content.

 

[bilby]

Again, there are limited possibilities.

Universe without beginning or end.
Universe sprang into existence form nothing.
A creator did it, without explaining how the creator came to be.

Yes there are unlimited naturalism in the gaps explanations...

Just for the record I don't claim to know how a Creator came into existence. If the Creator did require a Creator that would still make theism true. So what's the point of that argument?

The point is that the creator cannot be an answer to the question 'why do things exist', if the creator is itself a thing that requires a creator in order to exist.

So now you are invoking an entity for which there is no evidence, in an attempt to NOT explain the thing that you invoked it for in the first place.

You are saying that an infinite regression of creator creators is somehow a more reasonable idea than the mere eternal (or spontaneous) existence of all the stuff for which we do have evidence. How does this help? How is this more reasonable, or more plausible?

 

[bilby]

Dew, what is a belief in a god but no particular god mean?

It means I'm a theist. I believe the universe and our existence was intentional as opposed to a-theists who claim its not the result of intent or plan or design.

What is the universe intended for? Why would you think that it might have been intentionally created?

If it's intended for life, then why is there almost no life anywhere in it, and why is there so much of it? What was the point of having trillions of galaxies, rather than just one?

For that matter, what was the point of having more than one star?

 

[Drew2008]

Same with the house. Even if it appeared weirdly to have just "come into existence", you surmise a HOW it can have been built and look for the traces to confirm it. Those traces are evidence. The house itself is not.

Its exactly what evidence is, evidence is a fact that makes a claim more likely. I went through what evidence is before I even listed one fact.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Same with the house. Even if it appeared weirdly to have just "come into existence", you surmise a HOW it can have been built and look for the traces to confirm it. Those traces are evidence. The house itself is not.

Its exactly what evidence is, evidence is a fact that makes a claim more likely. I went through what evidence is before I even listed one fact.

Just like me having sex with Alison Hannigan.