What would count as proof of God

[Rhea]

Now also demonstrate every other interaction you think your god has with humans.

The point of the information in the standard model is this: If your god exists, it has never once interacted with humans.

If you’ve got a counter example to that, we are STILL waiting for you to describe it. (Why do you not describe it? Is it not trivially easy for you? What are you afraid of?)

 

[Learner]

I have a previous post of yours to get to, which should also cover your recent posts. I'll get there in a bit.

 

[Jarhyn]

Now also demonstrate every other interaction you think your god has with humans.

The point of the information in the standard model is this: If your god exists, it has never once interacted with humans.

If you’ve got a counter example to that, we are STILL waiting for you to describe it. (Why do you not describe it? Is it not trivially easy for you? What are you afraid of?)

Interesting enough, I'm not entirely convinced that after 3 billion years of being born, living, reproducing, and dying that certain things, certain ideas didn't get baked into the DNA.

In fact, I'd be willing to bet that DNA encodes some largely unexpected things.

To that end, I do think there are other things in our universe, "old ones" though also still really not 'gods', assuming that you don't accept literally a creator of a universe with omnipotence and omniscience acting as actual observable entities that create universes and have omnipotence and omniscience do as being sufficiently 'godlike' to be called a 'god'.

Oftentimes it came down to the idea that people recognized that there were large machines built of many people just acting as people act in the context that they were acting. Because they could not study the thing, did not even know how to study things in general, all they could do was see it and give it a vague me they attached to anything with momentum unto agency: 'god'.

 

[bilby]

"I'm wandering if the tester readily had monitoring equipment in place, somehow, forecasting exactly where a God interaction claim, a miracle claim or similar claim, would spontaneously happen, just at the right place and right time? Assuming God is not going to come to the lab on your request."

People regularly die in hospitals and facilities with well controlled conditions, and they often do so fairly predictably.

This has provided plenty of opportunity to test for the departure of a hypothesised 'soul' from a living body at the time of death, and such studies have been done repeatedly, mostly by religious people seeking to demonstrate that 'souls' are real.

No souls have been found.

Your desire driven hope that the tests you are frightened of might have proven impossible to configure is noted, and duly dashed on the rocks of reality.

What God would make souls detectable? Think about it, I think God has indeed! IF you can detect it, then you can interfere with it. Are we trust worthy, not to be playing with serious fire? Hmmm yes, I can imagine the curiosity being so great, that moral ethics would be in the way, for such a project; the testing and developement of "soul grabber machines," where a person in an experiment could get his or her soul sucked out - perhaps replaced by a another, who's soul was held in some four forces chamber or circuit, I'd dread the idea of a "welcome back mein Fuhrer" scenario, if you know what I mean.

It's such a bad idea, and concept (your god definition) for any god to create souls in the realm of four forces, which could easily be affected, just by the mere processes of the four forces. Like, "Oops my souls has just left my body because I'm trapped in some sort of electrical field I've stumbled upon," so to speak.

Yeah, but the matter of which humans are made is affected ONLY by those four forces.

So an undetectable soul is also a soul that doesn't interact with our bodies in ANY way. So it's literally nothing to do with us.

For 'you' to be both a soul that survives the destruction of your physical body, AND the physical body you currently use, requires that the soul be able to interact with matter. Which can ONLY happen via one of the four forces.

Your objection is nonsensical. It's just a statement that you still don't understand the physics.

 

[Jarhyn]

"I'm wandering if the tester readily had monitoring equipment in place, somehow, forecasting exactly where a God interaction claim, a miracle claim or similar claim, would spontaneously happen, just at the right place and right time? Assuming God is not going to come to the lab on your request."

People regularly die in hospitals and facilities with well controlled conditions, and they often do so fairly predictably.

This has provided plenty of opportunity to test for the departure of a hypothesised 'soul' from a living body at the time of death, and such studies have been done repeatedly, mostly by religious people seeking to demonstrate that 'souls' are real.

No souls have been found.

Your desire driven hope that the tests you are frightened of might have proven impossible to configure is noted, and duly dashed on the rocks of reality.

What God would make souls detectable? Think about it, I think God has indeed! IF you can detect it, then you can interfere with it. Are we trust worthy, not to be playing with serious fire? Hmmm yes, I can imagine the curiosity being so great, that moral ethics would be in the way, for such a project; the testing and developement of "soul grabber machines," where a person in an experiment could get his or her soul sucked out - perhaps replaced by a another, who's soul was held in some four forces chamber or circuit, I'd dread the idea of a "welcome back mein Fuhrer" scenario, if you know what I mean.

It's such a bad idea, and concept (your god definition) for any god to create souls in the realm of four forces, which could easily be affected, just by the mere processes of the four forces. Like, "Oops my souls has just left my body because I'm trapped in some sort of electrical field I've stumbled upon," so to speak.

Yeah, but the matter of which humans are made is affected ONLY by those four forces.

So an undetectable soul is also a soul that doesn't interact with our bodies in ANY way. So it's literally nothing to do with us.

For 'you' to be both a soul that survives the destruction of your physical body, AND the physical body you currently use, requires that the soul be able to interact with matter. Which can ONLY happen via one of the four forces.

Your objection is nonsensical. It's just a statement that you still don't understand the physics.

I think a more interesting observation to make would be:

Our thought process is explained entirely by the action of our neurons...

Our neurons' behavior is explained entirely by the action of our chemistry...

Our chemistry is explained entirely by the intersection of the principles of quantum probabilistics and the rule of large numbers.

If we have souls, such can be manufactured through the intersection of transitive elements (such as transistors or neurons).

Now, this does not invalidate the existence of a different kind of soul: one that, as a planck-frame-wise interaction, replaces all the atomic shell configurations on some relevant transitive boundary to a state that carries a different message in than the matter... Or as a much bigger trick, manipulates the probabilistics so that the rule of large numbers does not yield the expected result.

The thing is, Learner's cosmology fundamentally relies on this being a simulation. We have observed that it is fundamentally a property of our universe that it may host simulation. Universes may be simulated.

Our universe may be simulated.

So, this is proof that there are zero or more gods.

We cannot rule out "or more".

Strangely, we can rule out "zero". We just have to catch one.

Get to it, learner! Go catch us a god! Good luck and all that. Oh, and remember that the minute you actually catch one, it's liable to go into stealth mode, or even just run a full re-roll because there is no fate in our world for a real god that isn't a bad end.

 

[Rhea]

Now also demonstrate every other interaction you think your god has with humans.

The point of the information in the standard model is this: If your god exists, it has never once interacted with humans.

If you’ve got a counter example to that, we are STILL waiting for you to describe it. (Why do you not describe it? Is it not trivially easy for you? What are you afraid of?)

Interesting enough, I'm not entirely convinced that after 3 billion years of being born, living, reproducing, and dying that certain things, certain ideas didn't get baked into the DNA.

In fact, I'd be willing to bet that DNA encodes some largely unexpected things.

To that end, I do think there are other things in our universe, "old ones" though also still really not 'gods', assuming that you don't accept literally a creator of a universe with omnipotence and omniscience acting as actual observable entities that create universes and have omnipotence and omniscience do as being sufficiently 'godlike' to be called a 'god'.

Oftentimes it came down to the idea that people recognized that there were large machines built of many people just acting as people act in the context that they were acting. Because they could not study the thing, did not even know how to study things in general, all they could do was see it and give it a vague me they attached to anything with momentum unto agency: 'god'.

I am sorry to report that I do not understand your point in this post.

 

[Jarhyn]

Now also demonstrate every other interaction you think your god has with humans.

The point of the information in the standard model is this: If your god exists, it has never once interacted with humans.

If you’ve got a counter example to that, we are STILL waiting for you to describe it. (Why do you not describe it? Is it not trivially easy for you? What are you afraid of?)

Interesting enough, I'm not entirely convinced that after 3 billion years of being born, living, reproducing, and dying that certain things, certain ideas didn't get baked into the DNA.

In fact, I'd be willing to bet that DNA encodes some largely unexpected things.

To that end, I do think there are other things in our universe, "old ones" though also still really not 'gods', assuming that you don't accept literally a creator of a universe with omnipotence and omniscience acting as actual observable entities that create universes and have omnipotence and omniscience do as being sufficiently 'godlike' to be called a 'god'.

Oftentimes it came down to the idea that people recognized that there were large machines built of many people just acting as people act in the context that they were acting. Because they could not study the thing, did not even know how to study things in general, all they could do was see it and give it a vague me they attached to anything with momentum unto agency: 'god'.

I am sorry to report that I do not understand your point in this post.

Discussion of a basic premise hiding behind the op subject of what it is we are discussing: the things that people called gods don't not exist; they merely cannot exist as the people observing the phenomena originally expected them to.

For instance, "Mammon". It is a phenomena of human nature that people come to feel entitled to continue having that which they have had. This, combined with the very human nature to hoard, which we all can fairly well recognize when someone else does it but are generally blind to ourselves, combined with a broken system of ownership for which having this thing gives leverage to have more...

And suddenly we have the shape of a monster made entirely of us, that consumes us with our own desire and power to consume.

It takes a spirit all its own. People called this system "Mammon". They used the word 'god' to describe it. It's just a set of behaviors programmed into our DNA. Culture and ideology got wrapped up in justifying the behavior because no matter who it hurt, it gave power to, through power over, to those who act as it's teeth. Layers of flesh formed of the collective justifications and systems and systemic dependencies that are built onto it within our society today.

These days the thing even has the semblance of an immune system and claws in the form of it's libertarian army and ideological underpinnings in Randroid philosophies. It has growth layers which drive changes in terminology so as to fool each new generation into thinking "oh, this 'trickle down' is different from the last one!"

It is a big, large, ugly self-sustaining system that metabolizes human lives.

Ancient people saw this system, and thought of it as a "god".

We have different words for such things now, is all.

 

[Drew2008]

What Theist set that requirment? To my knowledge, Theism claims god comes before any creation, as such a universe existing is not required for a God to exist.

The definition of theism.

theism
[ˈTHēˌizəm]

NOUN

1. belief in the existence of a god or gods, especially belief in one god as creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures.
   
   
   

 

[pood]

LOL, Drew, you really are something, just as dishonest as can be. Why do creationists always have to lie, if they possess the truth? Makes you wonder.

I already went over this with you, and of course you ignored it. The SECOND CLAUSE is separate from the first. The word ESPECIALLY does not mean EXCLUSIVELY. By your OWN DEFINITiON, which of course you stole from somewhere, and under the rules of English, the first clause can stand alone. Since the standalone first clause does not entail that god create anything, your argument is refuted by your own definition.

 

[Jarhyn]

What Theist set that requirment? To my knowledge, Theism claims god comes before any creation, as such a universe existing is not required for a God to exist.

The definition of theism.

theism
[ˈTHēˌizəm]

NOUN

1. belief in the existence of a god or gods, especially belief in one god as creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures.
   
   

I find it interesting, @Drew2008, that you have not spoken one bit about the things I bring which make your expectations of what 'one god as a creator of the universe' says specifically... Well, I contravention of your beliefs:

That if someone as fucked up as I am is perfectly capable of being exactly an omnipotent, omniscient creator god of a universe, Heaven, goodness, even actually using their power to intervene in ways that YOU want... those are all wildly unlikely.

That the belief in such can arise completely separate from the actual reality.

That while there are ways to prove the existence of simulation creators within that simulation IFF they intervene, you have not actually done any of that.

That if simulation creating gods do not intervene, that universe does not actually have a unique identity: that it is created by all and no circumstances that generate that outcome, regardless of platform or implementation, and that our universe is indistinguishable from such a one as best we can tell.

That mythologies describing creator gods do not actually have any leverage on their existence or behavior.

That you have provided zero evidence that there are necessarily greater than zero gods.

I gave you a really nice, low, fixed goalpost to knock it over: show me a wave that is predicted to originate as a result of non-causal phenomena, and then pinpoint the origin of such a wave through observing it.

I expect the easiest form to look for would be gravitational waves as a result of new mass just... being somewhere

Harder forms of waves to observe would be if there was an effect, as previously noted, on the resolution pathways of matter.

The hardest would be to get an actual Avatar on a slab and then observe that the resolution pathways of the particles within it's brain are non-causitive or disobey the rule of large numbers.

Even if you did that, though, actually fingered a god, my own experience and observations would indicate it would be a very bad idea, and would not end well for you.

Because my own direct observations would indicate that there is no good end for a revealed god.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Hey, you know? I have come across 3 atheists that have said they've seen and heard ghosts, being quite sure they've not imagined it.. Of course they still think there's an explanation somewhere, within the parameters of human comprehension, and the realm of the four forces apparently, but we've not found it yet, but there is hope.

I've known hundreds, and there are hundreds of millions of people who wrote letters to Santa. Seems they all figured that one out.

 

[Rhea]

I already went over this with you, and of course you ignored it. The SECOND CLAUSE is separate from the first. The word ESPECIALLY does not mean EXCLUSIVELY.

This is what I find most instructive about religionists.

That they preach a thing; in other words, they make a claim and presume it is definitive - and assume, end of discussion.
Then, someone refutes it; logically, clearly, easily, completely.
And the religionist, without shame or hesitation, repeats the same preachy claim again, with a smug self-assurance that they were definitive.

And the world watches, jaws down, appalled, as you stand up and say something that we’ve all learned is NOT TRUE, and that you have the same information that we see, and we just watch you gaslight yourself and try to gaslight us.

And we ask ourselves, if this is what religion requires to survive, then there is no substance to it at all. It falls completely apart.

Drew:
does your faith require dishonesty to maintain it? How can you not have understood pood’s clear and obvious explanation of why your definition does not claim what you said it claims?

You just stood here and shouted, “the sky is green!” And we took out a spectrometer and found the wavelength is definitely not in the green part of the spectrum, it is in the blue part. And ten minutes later you stand up again and shout, “the sky is green!”

What are we to think of you?
What are we to think of your religion? Your god?
That it is all a lie that you gaslight yourself with?


If we can watch you (and so many of your fellow religionists) lie to yourself so cheaply and easily, what are we to think about the people who told the resurrection story? How can we consider any of you to be reliable witnesses?

Don’t you SEE what you do to your witness?

 

[Rhea]

It boggles my mind that you have no concern for the reputation of your religion.
Plumb flummoxes me.

 

[Drew2008]

What is a god? What are its characteristics? What is the mechanism by which a god creates universes?

No idea. Theism isn't the claim theists know how God exists, where God comes from or how God creates a universe. Its an explanation for the four facts I've noted above. Those facts have to be true for theism to be true. They're not proof theism is true but it is evidence.

Theism is the claim "I believe in god(s)". Agnosticism of the god, the state of not-knowing about the god, is the reason to not believe it. If all you want to do is assert your "four facts", that's nothing but emoting about how perplexed you feel if existence wasn't intended.

There can be a number of possibilities to explain why existence turned out like it did. Maybe, just maybe, there's a god of some sort in there somewhere. But if there is, there's only one way to justify that its existence has any degree of likelihood -- and that's to know some better details about the hypothesized god (other than your emotional state of feeling perplexed if there isn't one). You keep saying you don't know any details of the god... but that's the reason to NOT believe. If you were using logic to reason this through instead of emotions, you'd realize this not-knowing is the basis for disbelief in the god.

There are other competing theories such as multiverse and inflationary theory. Folks in here complain about God in the gaps arguments yet you continue to ask questions about things neither I, you or anyone else knows about so you can pounce and say God of the gaps. We agree (I assume) that the universe exists. No one really knows how it came about. There is no natural forces did it facts or god did it facts that settle the issue. We can only argue from facts we do agree on and those are post universe.

We can say one thing. The four facts I've submitted in favor of theism have to be true for theism to be true. If any are not true, theism is false. In contrast none have to be true for the belief God doesn't exist to be true. No one would be around to observe it but no universe would prove God doesn't exist and the slogan there is no evidence of God's existence would actually be true.

I know if this discussion were to go on for 50 pages at the end of it most (all) of the atheists in here will fold their arms and say see still no evidence, facts, data or any logical rational reason to believe its even remotely feasible our existence was intentionally caused. That rhetoric only convinces your own group of committed believers that no evidence exists and no Creator is necessary.

F1 The universe exists
F2 Life exists
F3 Intelligent life exists.
F4. The fact the universe has laws of nature, is knowable, uniform and to a large extent predictable, amenable to scientific research, the laws of logic deduction and induction and is explicable in mathematical terms.

No one would say I believe the universe was unintentionally caused by mindless lifeless forces therefore it doesn't surprise me in the least bit that we observe a universe that 'has laws of nature, is knowable, uniform and to a large extent predictable, amenable to scientific research, the laws of logic deduction and induction and is explicable in mathematical terms.

Not to mention the other four conditions which are dependent on F4. . All which have to be true for theism to be true none of which are necessary for atheism to be true.

F5. Scientists, engineers, IT people (intelligent humans) have caused a virtual universe to exist.

You'll disagree this has any significance of course that's expected. This forum hopefully isn't an echo chamber on to itself. I hope some impartial folks peek in and see what the noise is about and weigh the respective arguments. I argue that scientists, engineers and IT people that caused, designed and created a universe are the gods of that universe. The virtual universe was created using the theist method of causing a universe (albeit a virtual one) to exist. Planning, design and intent caused that universe to exist.

For the hundredth time I don't know how a transcendent being came into existence or how such a being would cause our universe to exist. You have no facts about how any forces came into existence at all. In the future we may have technology to not only create design and intentionally cause a virtual universe to exist but cause, design virtual beings to exist. No doubt if those beings find themselves in a nearly identical situation to ourselves they will argue about the cause of their existence. Some will argue it was caused intentionally pointing to the same facts I've referred to. The theists in that universe are correct.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I don't know how a transcendent being came into existence.

Or if they are real or what they are or where they are or ....

 

[Elixir]

I don’t know how the invisible purple unicorn got in my garage, but its footprints are all over the place.

 

[pood]

Look! The sky is green!

Also, just for Drew’s edification, a virtual universe is not the same thing as an actual universe.

In the 1930s, a couple of kids invented Superman. Presto! Superman is real, and those kids were gods!

 

[abaddon]

I just want to be clear on what a god is. So far, from a couple posters, I have this information: anything that's outside of a creation yet is the creator of that creation, is a god. So I make photographs and am transcendent to them therefore I'm a god and so are a billion other people. Am I getting the gist of it right?

Just so long as A creator exists, then EoG becomes true.

It's a desperate gambit, to make god into practically anything in order to force EoG to be true. And this sophistry is supposed to be convincing?

Drew2008 adds the special touch that though the creator-being is transcendent of his creation, his transcendent existence is dependent on the creation's existence!

Again, Drew, without a better description of the god than (in effect) "something that makes universes 'come into existence'", there's no way to know what evidence supports that it exists. Your "four facts" are the starting basics of ALL beliefs so there must be more than that for the gawd thing to be considered a likelihood.

The blabber about simulations only illustrates the role of metaphor in theist thinking.

 

[Elixir]

Look! The sky is green!

Also, just for Drew’s edification, a virtual universe is not the same thing as an actual universe.

In the 1930s, a couple of kids invented Superman. Presto! Superman is real, and those kids were gods!

Virtual universes already exist within our universe. So our universe is probably a virtual one within an even more real one. This raises the question-
Is the @Learner god the god of this universe, or of the universe within which ours is contained, or the one within which that one is contained, or … is it turtles all the way down, and Learner’s god only had to create turtles?
Important shit, people. I hope y’all get it sorted out before all those turtles wander off….

 

[Rhea]

We can say one thing. The four facts I've submitted in favor of theism have to be true for theism to be true

You keep saying this as if it is difinitive. As if it means something.

It’s so weird that you do this, despite all of the discussion that you have read that shows how meaningless it is.

Your “four facts” have to be true for a lot of imagined things to be true.
that does not make your imagined thing true. At all.

You keep claiming this makes them “more true” because you arbitrarily took observable facts and said they were building blocks for your thing.

Do you not realize anyone could do this about any imagined thing and claim it is now “more true” because they crafted a definition that includes existing things?

You claim (by extension) that leprechauns are more likely true than not because 4-leaf clovers exist.
You claim that the Loch Ness monster is more likely than not because of the existence of Loch Ness.
You claim that Yeti is more likely than not because of the existence of glaciers in Nepal.


Do you not see how utterly ridiculous you make your god look?

Your argument is terrible. It doesn’t help define a god or demonstrate one. All it does is cheapen the idea to be exactly on par with Leprechauns and the Yeti. You make your god a laugh line.