A God without compelling evidence?

[DBT]

People believe in all sorts of things that may not be true.

The number of believers is not necessarily evidence for the truth of a belief.

As for belief in God, there are probably as many versions of God as there are believers in God.

 

[Elixir]

People believe in all sorts of things that may not be true.
The number of believers is not necessarily evidence for the truth of a belief.

I'd like to think that. But for sure, there is almost always some correlation between what is true in the collective mind of humanity and what is actually out there being deemed true by humans. But "true" is a human concept, not some thing that has objective existence. If 100% of people believe and agree that something is "true", then it is as true as true gets regardless of the degree of its correspondence to reality. The evidentiary basis for that belief becomes irrelevant in the absence of falsifying evidence sufficient to convince at least one person.
Science works because it eschews "truth" in favor of probability. Its highest level of certainty is "theory".
"Proof is for mathematics and alcohol".

Gods are as real as people believe them to be. My assertion would be that this makes them only negligibly "true", since far short of 100% of people agree to any given god, and the concept is totally individual. Despite endless attempts to leverage science to "prove" gods, those efforts fall short because of both the nature of science and the nature of gods. Every individual has their own concept of god or gods. There is not only minimal agreement, one person is the max. And there is and always has been fighting over it... the utility of gods seems to be twofold: to provide solace to individuals, and to keep masses of fighting with each other.

Anyhow, iIMHO this renders gods relatively "not true",

 

[skepticalbip]

People believe in all sorts of things that may not be true.
The number of believers is not necessarily evidence for the truth of a belief.

I'd like to think that. But for sure, there is almost always some correlation between what is true in the collective mind of humanity and what is actually out there being deemed true by humans. But "true" is a human concept, not some thing that has objective existence. If 100% of people believe and agree that something is "true", then it is as true as true gets regardless of the degree of its correspondence to reality. The evidentiary basis for that belief becomes irrelevant in the absence of falsifying evidence sufficient to convince at least one person.
Science works because it eschews "truth" in favor of probability. Its highest level of certainty is "theory".
"Proof is for mathematics and alcohol".

You seem to be offering your very own personal definition of 'true'. Reality (truth) is what it is whether people believe or or even know it to be what is. People believing something does not make it true... or do you really believe that the Earth truly was the center of the universe until people learned differently and started accepting that it wasn't which, only then, actually (truly) moved Earth from the center?

One of the great things about science is that it finds and demonstrates that what people believed was true, wasn't. So we are slowly learning reality (truth) by finding more and more of that what we believed was actually not true.

ETA:
Belief and truth have very different meanings. Something believed may or may not be true. Something true may or may not be believed.

 

[OLDMAN]

The invention of hell is an important one from the perspective of those Catholics that have suffered in the name of Jesus. They have a real need to know that justice is going to be served those that mocked, cheated and enjoyed sin. They also need to know that bad people don't get to live good lives, while good people live bad lives, they need a final justice.
Of course they miss the point that it doesn't matter how many Jews you sent to the gas chamber, if you accept Jesus, your covered. And it doesn't matter how many Jews you saved from the gas chamber, without Jesus, you are doomed.

 

[skepticalbip]

^ ^
I can't help but think that whoever thought up the idea of hell must really enjoy Schadenfreude. Which raises the question of whether enjoying the pain and suffering of others is considered to be a sin by Christians.

 

[Keith&Co.]

^ ^
I can't help but think that whoever thought up the idea of hell must really enjoy Schadenfreude. Which raises the question of whether enjoying the pain and suffering of others is considered to be a sin by Christians.

Sin? It's the whole POINT for many of them!
All those believers that got glassy-eyed, spraying spittle as they described their Heaven, including being able to look down on the Lake of Fire, seeing the torments of the (your sinners here).

Where i grew up, it was going to be writhing masses of Catholics, communists, Californians, and ERA voters.
When i served, it was Catholics, Mormons, abortionists, Soviets, and Iranians.

 

[skepticalbip]

^ ^
I can't help but think that whoever thought up the idea of hell must really enjoy Schadenfreude. Which raises the question of whether enjoying the pain and suffering of others is considered to be a sin by Christians.

Sin? It's the whole POINT for many of them!
All those believers that got glassy-eyed, spraying spittle as they described their Heaven, including being able to look down on the Lake of Fire, seeing the torments of the (your sinners here).

Where i grew up, it was going to be writhing masses of Catholics, communists, Californians, and ERA voters.
When i served, it was Catholics, Mormons, abortionists, Soviets, and Iranians.

When I served in Vietnam (yeah, I'm an old fart) an expression among us grunts was, "kill a commie for Christ". I assumed it was a bit of sarcasm among us non-believers, never thought that it may actually have been originated by the Chaplin corps. hmmm, maybe it was.

 

[DBT]

People believe in all sorts of things that may not be true.
The number of believers is not necessarily evidence for the truth of a belief.

I'd like to think that. But for sure, there is almost always some correlation between what is true in the collective mind of humanity and what is actually out there being deemed true by humans. But "true" is a human concept, not some thing that has objective existence. If 100% of people believe and agree that something is "true", then it is as true as true gets regardless of the degree of its correspondence to reality. The evidentiary basis for that belief becomes irrelevant in the absence of falsifying evidence sufficient to convince at least one person.
Science works because it eschews "truth" in favor of probability. Its highest level of certainty is "theory".
"Proof is for mathematics and alcohol".

Gods are as real as people believe them to be. My assertion would be that this makes them only negligibly "true", since far short of 100% of people agree to any given god, and the concept is totally individual. Despite endless attempts to leverage science to "prove" gods, those efforts fall short because of both the nature of science and the nature of gods. Every individual has their own concept of god or gods. There is not only minimal agreement, one person is the max. And there is and always has been fighting over it... the utility of gods seems to be twofold: to provide solace to individuals, and to keep masses of fighting with each other.

Anyhow, iIMHO this renders gods relatively "not true",

Guess it depends on the terms and definitions being used. 'Truth' may refer to factual information, information that's well supported by evidence.

 

[Keith&Co.]

^ ^
I can't help but think that whoever thought up the idea of hell must really enjoy Schadenfreude. Which raises the question of whether enjoying the pain and suffering of others is considered to be a sin by Christians.

Sin? It's the whole POINT for many of them!
All those believers that got glassy-eyed, spraying spittle as they described their Heaven, including being able to look down on the Lake of Fire, seeing the torments of the (your sinners here).

Where i grew up, it was going to be writhing masses of Catholics, communists, Californians, and ERA voters.
When i served, it was Catholics, Mormons, abortionists, Soviets, and Iranians.

When I served in Vietnam (yeah, I'm an old fart) an expression among us grunts was, "kill a commie for Christ". I assumed it was a bit of sarcasm among us non-believers, never thought that it may actually have been originated by the Chaplin corps. hmmm, maybe it was.

One guy failed out of my launch-nukes-go-boom school saying he would faithfully obey the President's orders to launch nukes...or God's. You know, whichever came first.
I think they made him a yeoman.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Gods are as real as people believe them to be.

Man, i am real glad Dad never used that line about the Monster under my bed... quite the little feedback loop that would have been.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

^ ^
I can't help but think that whoever thought up the idea of hell must really enjoy Schadenfreude. Which raises the question of whether enjoying the pain and suffering of others is considered to be a sin by Christians.

Hell feels like a fall back position for believers. If there isn't a god at least there's a hell.

 

[aupmanyav]

What about post #88? And I'm saying we could be in a simulation and that means an intervening intelligent force is possible.
In post #91 I'm saying that the evidence doesn't convince skeptics but I think it can be said that there is some kind of evidence since billions of people believe in God....

I could not immediately understand post 88.
Our situation does not require an intelligent force. Do Relativity or Quantum Mechanics require intelligent force?
That is no reason. They have been indoctrinated, and in many cases barred from questioning for fear of death.

 

[DrZoidberg]

What about post #88? And I'm saying we could be in a simulation and that means an intervening intelligent force is possible.
In post #91 I'm saying that the evidence doesn't convince skeptics but I think it can be said that there is some kind of evidence since billions of people believe in God....

I could not immediately understand post 88.
Our situation does not require an intelligent force. Do Relativity or Quantum Mechanics require intelligent force?
That is no reason. They have been indoctrinated, and in many cases barred from questioning for fear of death.

Me neither. To me it looks like an argument from ignorance. If I'm to summarize what I think excreationists argument is, it's that we could be living in a simulation. The whole world as we know it could be inside a simulation and we'd never know. From there he makes the logical leap that that proves that God exists. Or something. Like I said, I can't follow the logic of it either. The possibility of something being true is not the same thing as something being true, or even likely.

@excreationist, is that a fair summary of your argument?

 

[Elixir]

People believe in all sorts of things that may not be true.
The number of believers is not necessarily evidence for the truth of a belief.

I'd like to think that. But for sure, there is almost always some correlation between what is true in the collective mind of humanity and what is actually out there being deemed true by humans. But "true" is a human concept, not some thing that has objective existence. If 100% of people believe and agree that something is "true", then it is as true as true gets regardless of the degree of its correspondence to reality. The evidentiary basis for that belief becomes irrelevant in the absence of falsifying evidence sufficient to convince at least one person.
Science works because it eschews "truth" in favor of probability. Its highest level of certainty is "theory".
"Proof is for mathematics and alcohol".

You seem to be offering your very own personal definition of 'true'. Reality (truth) is what it is whether people believe or or even know it to be what is.

It's a semantic quibble. To me, you seem to conflate truth and reality. I draw a distinction between reality, truth and belief.
IMHO (and maybe it is a little idiosyncratic) reality and truth are not synonymous.
Reality is, as you say, what it is regardless of beliefs of what is held to be true.
I see beliefs as individual - no confirmation needed by science, reality or general consensus of truth.
Truth is a consensus. If 100 percent of all people hold something to be "true", that's as true as true gets. It's a human judgment and can be "wrong" as later determined. At that point it is supplanted by a new "truth".
For example Newtonian physics were, to science, (correctly, provisionally) true, but to most people educated in the matter, simply "true". Then reality intervened when science discovered that it doesn't operate in consistently Newtonian ways at the margins of the microscopic or at very high relative velocities.

One of the great things about science is that it finds and demonstrates that what people believed was true, wasn't.

Meanwhile, reality hasn't changed except in the microscopic realm of neural activity. What people believed was true is replaced by what people now believe is true. The key is the plural form of "person", not necessarily any correspondence to reality (much as I'd like to think that such correspondence improves with every new iteration of "truth"). IOW, there is a new consensus, and the new truth takes over from the old truth.
I make this distinction largely because of assertions of "truth" from such quarters as religions, where there are vast swaths of people agreeing upon "truths" that in fact have little or no correspondence to reality. I think it's utilitarian to let the word "true" operate in that realm rather than try to convince religious people to go find some other word for their collective beliefs. It's pure semantic utility.

 

[excreationist]

People believe in all sorts of things that may not be true.

The number of believers is not necessarily evidence for the truth of a belief.

As for belief in God, there are probably as many versions of God as there are believers in God.

My belief about the intelligent force is that it doesn't want to be obvious - that's about it. Even if I was getting specific messages from him it could be deceptive...

Like I said in the OP, a key belief I have is from the Godfellas episode of Futurama:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL7e05pClKM

"...Bender, being God isn't easy. If you do too much, people get dependent on you. And if you do nothing, they lose hope. You have to use a light touch like a safecracker or a pickpocket... When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."

Lots of skeptics here saying that there is no evidence that God exists is exactly what this key belief is about....

Here is another quote from a Matt Groening cartoon (video game) which I believe in:

See post #13 onwards....
https://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?22331-Selection-pressures-for-long-hair-and-beards-in-humans



BTW in post #88 I said:

"I think "God" (an intelligent force) might have a sense of humor" (see Futurama and Simpsons game references)

 

[excreationist]

What about post #88? And I'm saying we could be in a simulation and that means an intervening intelligent force is possible.
In post #91 I'm saying that the evidence doesn't convince skeptics but I think it can be said that there is some kind of evidence since billions of people believe in God....

I could not immediately understand post 88.
Our situation does not require an intelligent force.

In post #88 I'm saying that examples like the Connect 4 set and the upside-down Bible are reasons I have a hunch that an intelligent force exists. Though like I say, skeptics can explain it away as being coincidence.

Do Relativity or Quantum Mechanics require intelligent force?
That is no reason. They have been indoctrinated, and in many cases barred from questioning for fear of death.

No nothing that skeptics accept as true requires an intelligent force. That's why I'm saying that I believe in a God that isn't obvious.

 

[excreationist]

Me neither. To me it looks like an argument from ignorance. If I'm to summarize what I think excreationists argument is, it's that we could be living in a simulation.

Yes that is part of it. Plus the whole God not being obvious.

The whole world as we know it could be inside a simulation and we'd never know.

We can't be sure but I think my experiences give me a hunch that there is an intelligent force and I think a simulation is the most likely reason to explain this. (rather than the Christian explanation for God that he has existed forever)

From there he makes the logical leap that that proves that God exists.

No that is mainly based on post #88 and other experiences. And I never talk about proof of God... in fact I quoted in the OP:
"When you [God] do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all"
See also post #91.

Or something. Like I said, I can't follow the logic of it either. The possibility of something being true is not the same thing as something being true, or even likely.

@excreationist, is that a fair summary of your argument?

I never asserted this as being true. I have been constantly saying that according to skeptics this intervention of an intelligent force can always be explained away (as coincidence, delusion, hallucinations, or fraud) Though that technically doesn't disprove that some of these experiences actually involved an intelligent force giving things a nudge.

 

[DBT]

In post #88 I'm saying that examples like the Connect 4 set and the upside-down Bible are reasons I have a hunch that an intelligent force exists. Though like I say, skeptics can explain it away as being coincidence.

Do Relativity or Quantum Mechanics require intelligent force?
That is no reason. They have been indoctrinated, and in many cases barred from questioning for fear of death.

No nothing that skeptics accept as true requires an intelligent force. That's why I'm saying that I believe in a God that isn't obvious.

Is belief sufficient? To be satisfied with what we believe is sufficient?

 

[excreationist]

In post #88 I'm saying that examples like the Connect 4 set and the upside-down Bible are reasons I have a hunch that an intelligent force exists. Though like I say, skeptics can explain it away as being coincidence.

Do Relativity or Quantum Mechanics require intelligent force?
That is no reason. They have been indoctrinated, and in many cases barred from questioning for fear of death.

No nothing that skeptics accept as true requires an intelligent force. That's why I'm saying that I believe in a God that isn't obvious.

Is belief sufficient? To be satisfied with what we believe is sufficient?

Sorry I'm not sure what you mean... are you talking about a belief in the Christian God in order to be "saved"? Has it got something to do with "When you [God] do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all"

 

[DBT]

Is belief sufficient? To be satisfied with what we believe is sufficient?

Sorry I'm not sure what you mean... are you talking about a belief in the Christian God in order to be "saved"? Has it got something to do with "When you [God] do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all"

It's not so much the article of belief, but reason to believe. What reason to believe, to be convinced that something is true, when there is insufficient evidence to support a conviction? Desire? Hope? Meaning? Fear?