Proof God exists

Zombrex

bubonicus wrote:

which you invited a member of Islam to come onto and prove the existence of their god?

Lambs, slaughter!!!!!

Actually he came onto the atheist forum and claimed he had proof of God's existence. I simply asked him to state this proof

Though I agree with the lambs bit .. CatStevens is a braver (more foolish?) man than me

edanto

Wicknight wrote:

Faith is belief without reason.

I have faith in nothing, because there is nothing I believe where there is no reason for that belief.

You, and I, believe that no Gods exist. To me, that belief is analagous to a belief in God since it starts and ends with a feeling. It's an opinion, a perspective, call it something else if you don't want to call it faith - but it's something emotional no matter what we call it.

Having read a lot of your posts, I think that that reason you don't believe in God is because you have have no proof she exists. But people that do believe in God say that she doesn't need to prove her existence to exist. And on and on...totally irreconcilable viewpoints. I think they're both faith based - mine because I choose to dismiss metaphysical stuff and theirs because they choose to embrace it. I might be wrong, that's the chance I take with faith.

Dades

bubonicus wrote:

which you invited a member of Islam to come onto and prove the existence of their god?

Lambs, slaughter!!!!!

He needed no prompting to get into the thick of it. I think it's great to have someone here not be afraid to speak their case other than heathens for a change.

Keeps us out of the Christians' hair for a few hours at least.

5uspect

bubonicus wrote:

So for athesit's it's not about proof or belief, it's about trying to tell everybody else they are wrong.

I don't follow? I'm sure you're an atheist about many things? The orbiting teapot and the flying spaghetti monster for example. What makes the concept of the Abahramic god special?

bubonicus wrote:

I am trying to make a distinction between belief and what you know.

Do you know that there isn't a teapot in orbit around the sun?

bubonicus

Wicknight wrote:

I.
No they aren't

Yes they are!

5uspect wrote:

Do you know that there isn't a teapot in orbit around the sun?

Possible but highly improbable. But I think you miss read me.

I meant to say there is a difference in what we all believe and what we all know on a fundamental level.

Zombrex

edanto wrote:

You, and I, believe that no Gods exist.

I have no believe that no God exists, any more than I believe Steve Stauton isn't the captain of an intersellar attack ship from a far away galaxy.

I reject someone elses belief that a god or gods exist, and I would reject someone elses idea of Captain Stauton. It just becomes one of the endless infinate list of things I don't believe in.

It tells you nothing about my actual beliefs.

I do have a belief that the concept of gods is a product of human imagination and culture.

If you assign into the category of "my beliefs" everything I don't believe (which is an infinately large set of all possible imaginings) then "my beliefs" become a completely meaningless term. What I actually believe becomes completely lost in the endless list of every possible thing I don't believe in.

In that case it would take me until now until the end of the universe to list my beliefs.

edanto wrote:

To me, that belief is analagous to a belief in God since it starts and ends with a feeling.

No it doesn't.

My rejection of gods concept starts and ends with the fact that there is no logical reason to believe they exists, and that the explination that they are simply a by product of the human need to order and structure the perception of the world around him, is much more plausable and likely explination for why the concept exists in human culture.

edanto wrote:

It's an opinion, a perspective, call it something else if you don't want to call it faith

It is an opinion, it is a perspective. It isn't faith.

edanto wrote:

but it's something emotional no matter what we call it.

There is no emotion behind my reasoning.

If anything atheists are often called too cold, calculating and unemotive (that right sp?) in their logic preciesely because there is no emotion in their reasoning.

If your reasoning is based on emotion that is fine, but mine isn't. And I would imagine that is true of most of the posters here.

edanto wrote:

Having read a lot of your posts, I think that that reason you don't believe in God is because you have have no proof she exists.

I wouldn't say proof, I would say logical reason, and yes that is one of the reasons I don't believe she exists.

Evidence of God would be a logical reason to believe she exists, but so far we don't have any. So that as they say is that.

edanto wrote:

But people that do believe in God say that she doesn't need to prove her existence to exist.

Good for them.

edanto wrote:

I might be wrong, that's the chance I take with faith.

You might be wrong with something you think you know for certain.

The possibility of being wrong has very little to do with it. You can be wrong about anything, faithbased or otherwise.

Zombrex

bubonicus wrote:

Yes they are!

Tell me one "fact" about the universe that you know for absolute certain, that the possibility that you are, even slightly, wrong or mistaken in this knowledge is absolutely 0%, that what you think you know cannot be wrong.

Then tell me how you know that for certain.

Schuhart

edanto wrote:

To me, that belief is analagous to a belief in God since it starts and ends with a feeling. It's an opinion, a perspective, call it something else if you don't want to call it faith - but it's something emotional no matter what we call it.

I think there is truth in what you say. There’s no proof of a god, but some people have a sense of a divine that they hold on to. I dare say its been expressed in a million ways, but there’s an Emmylou Harris lyric “if there's no heaven what is this hunger for?” which I think makes a reasonable stab at the simultaneous doubt and hope that it involves.

I think the problem of interpreting that emotion is that we don't really have a clean slate to judge if this divine sense is just a social creation or something that is 'hardwired' as the article in the other thread suggests. One way would be to study persons raised as athiests, to see if any develop such a sense. However, even then they will likely have acquired their religion in a soical setting.

bubonicus

Wicknight wrote:

Tell me one "fact" about the universe that you know for absolute certain, that the possibility that you are, even slightly, wrong or mistaken in this knowledge is absolutely 0%, that what you think you know cannot be wrong.

Then tell me how you know that for certain.

I can drive a car. I know this because I drive it from A to B. If I tried to drive a car on the belief I can drive it, I don't think I would get very far.

You entering the realms of Philosophy.

To believe in something is not the same as knowing something.
Intrinsic to the concept of belief is implication that there is an opposite to belief, disbelief. Not everyone will believe something is true, but all sane and rational people will acknowledge an observable fact.

I can claim that I believe that it will rain at 3:00 AM, six years from today, and someone may agree with me and believe the same thing. If I hold a rock, and drop it, all who are present will acknowledge that a rock had been dropped...unless they are just choosing to be childish, whimsical, or are a philosophy major.

The difference between the matter of the rock and the matter of the rain, is the difference between an observable fact, and a thought accepted as a fact. One is present, provable, undeniable and concrete, the other, howsoever fervently believed, is not. The rain could come, my belief about it could be true enough, but there is no observable proof. There is nothing to point to, nothing to show, nothing to touch, nothing to smell, nothing to be experienced by the senses of myself or others.

The only way belief can be experienced is in the mind. Facts can be experienced both in the mind and by the senses...and what is more, unlike a mental hallucination, the sensory experience can be shared with others.

It is a common error of human beings to allow belief, to allow a mental construct accepted on faith, to become so important, so obsessive, that it is taken as the same thing as fact. Indeed, there are many emotional reasons why a person might be driven to do this, but it still remains that any belief is purely mental whatever it's origin, and the mind can be mistaken.

This means that all beliefs have as part of them an implied doubt. Facts cannot be doubted, they are observably real.

Zombrex

bubonicus wrote:

I can drive a car. I know this because I drive it from A to B. If I tried to drive a car on the belief I can drive it, I don't think I would get very far.

How do you know this? For that matter how do you know the car exists in the first place. How do you know you aren't attached to a machine in a purple glop living a virtual existance ala the Matrix? How do you know that you weren't created 2 days ok and had the memories of someone else put into your brain ala Blade Runner? How do you know you were not brainwashed yesterday so you believe you can drive a car today, but you have actually never learned?

The simple fact of the matter is that you don't. Just like the tea pot going around the sun it is possible, you can only say that it is very very very .. very very unlikely.

And that is all knowledge is, belief coupled with a very high likelyhood based on evidence and rational thinking. Faith is the opposite, belief in something coupled with hardly any evidence or rational logic.

But at the end of the day it is all still belief.

bubonicus wrote:

You entering the realms of Philosophy.

Bubonicus we are well well inside the realms of philosophy. Any discussion like this, any discussion about the nature of knowledge, belief and God is in the realms of philosophy.

bubonicus wrote:

Intrinsic to the concept of belief is implication that there is an opposite to belief, disbelief.

Exactly, and we make discision based on how likely a belief in something is to be true.

You think it is very very likely that the belief you have that you can drive a car is true. This is based on the fact that you can remember learning to drive. You can, at any time remember what to do. The likelyhood that you cannot drive a car is tiny. Therefore you group this belief as part of what you know.

bubonicus wrote:

Not everyone will believe something is true, but all sane and rational people will acknowledge an observable fact.

If someone disagrees with you how do you know you are not the one being irrational or insane?

bubonicus wrote:

If I hold a rock, and drop it, all who are present will acknowledge that a rock had been dropped

You believe that, and you consider that belief likely enough that you would call it knowledge, but you don't know that for absolute certain.

bubonicus wrote:

The difference between the matter of the rock and the matter of the rain, is the difference between an observable fact, and a thought accepted as a fact.

But you only have belief that your eyes are telling you the truth.

I woke up this morning at about 2am and I saw something moving on my floor. I turned on my light and it was gone. Did I see something? Was there something there when I had the light off?

You say if too people see something it must be a fact. Why? What if one of the persons is lying? What if they are both nuts?

All you can do is make an assessment at how likely you think a belief of yours is to be true. You can never know for absolute certain that something is true.

Which is why the agnositc argument "How can you know for certain God doesn't exist" is so ridiculous. I don't know for certain ANYTHING. All I can do is make judgements on my beliefs as to the support for or against one. If I have a lot of evidence for a belief I call it something I know. If I have hardly any evidence for a belief I call it faith.

bubonicus wrote:

Facts cannot be doubted, they are observably real.

Facts can be doubted, observations can be wrong.

Newtons laws of physics were considered facts until the end of the 18th century when it was discovered that actually they weren't laws at all, because they did not work for the quantum level.

Nothing can be known for certain. We can only have degrees of belief.

Scofflaw

While the distinction that Wicknight makes between "knowing something" in layman's terms, and actually knowing something to absolute certainty may seem childish or whimsical, it is entirely relevant when we discuss belief.

As Wicknight says, he lacks any belief in God, because he has no reason to have belief in God.

Possibly what you are pointing out is that Wicknight has had to decide whether he has any belief in God, and that he has decided not to have any belief in God because he sees no logical reason to do so.

That means that Wicknight has a belief in reason, in logic, in empiricism, and in his own ability to make such decisions - but it is not the same as a belief that God does not exist. The decision that God has no evidentiary support, and therefore no existence, is merely one of the corollaries of the beliefs that Wicknight does have - it is not a separately assertable belief.

cordially,
Scofflaw

ianmc38

Cat Stevens are you a troll?

edanto

Wicknight wrote:

If your reasoning is based on emotion that is fine, but mine isn't.

Let's just be satisfied that we've come to the same conclusion in different ways. I'm surprised that you don't have any kind of feeling or instinct associated with that decision though. For me, I honest to goodness feel that there isn't a God. At least not in the 'big face in the clouds' kind of way (recently, I've had something of a crisis of atheism, but more anon). And that's based on what I know and feel about the world.

Scofflaw's post helped me to understand your distinction a bit better, cheers.

In your debate with bubonicus, your logic seems to be proceeding down the path of 'the only thing of which there is no doubt is doubt itself', which while logically quite strong, fails the lithmus test of reality. In that we can be sure enough of some things to consider them certain, for all intents and purposes. Things can have massive philosophical holes in them and still be functionally certain, and useful.

I don't think there's a man with a beard up there in the clouds looking down on us - but we'll agree that the story of him and his son were quite useful for teaching morals and generally explaining things for a quite a long time. I'm certain that there was a man called Jesus that was quite a straight-up guy, had a good way of going about things and influenced people's lives for the better. Do I have any proof of that? Hell, no. But I'm sure of it.

I guess it comes from trust.

Tar.Aldarion

ianmc38 wrote:

Cat Stevens are you a troll?

New to religious discussion are you? Heh...

Zombrex

edanto wrote:

In that we can be sure enough of some things to consider them certain, for all intents and purposes.

That is certaintly true.

The only time you need to bring the nature of truth and doubt into the subject is when someone (not saying you) claims something along the lines of the agnostic position is the only logical one, or that rejecting the concept of God is a belief not knowledge.

The thing is these ideas don't hold up, as you say, in reality.

Take the agnositic argument that it is the only logical belief in relation to God. That might be technically true, but I doubt an agnostic is that uncertain about everything else.

I can't know for ceratin anything, so I can't know for certain their isn't a god. THat doesn't mean I can't be an atheist, or that atheism isn't a logical position. Atheism is not as logical as positon as agnositic, but then no one is truely agnostic. Everyone organises their beliefs into what they have faith in, what they believe in, and what they think they know. This is the real world application. But these are still all just beliefs, assigned different weight depending on the logic used to support the idea that the belief is true.

Atheism is the application of your "all intents and purpose" clause at the end. While we accept that we can never know anything for certain, in the day to day lives we still assign such high probablity to certain facts being true or untrue that we can, for all intents and purposes in the real world, call them true or reject them.

It is the inconsistency that some show, particularly agnostics, that I am attempting to highlight, that someone can claim that it is impossible to know one thing, yet claim it is possible to know another.

Saying I can know that is an apple, but I can't know there is no God is not true. In reality you can't know either, you can't know that is an apple, and you can't know there is no God.

But you can apply the same level of reasoning to why you believe that is an apple to your rejection of the concept of God. The processes are the same.

I hope that makes sense.

edanto wrote:

I guess it comes from trust.

Sorry I'm not following that last point about Jesus. Who do you trust?

bubonicus

Wicknight wrote:

How do you know this? For that matter how do you know the car exists in the first place. How do you know you aren't attached to a machine in a purple glop living a virtual existance ala the Matrix? How do you know that you weren't created 2 days ok and had the memories of someone else put into your brain ala Blade Runner? How do you know you were not brainwashed yesterday so you believe you can drive a car today, but you have actually never learned?

Nothing can be known for certain. We can only have degrees of belief.

Seeming you are looking at this from a philisophical way. where a fact is often given the definition: 'certainty in a justified true belief'.

In science 'fact' is an objective and verifiable observation. It is usually contrasted to a theory, which is an explanation of or interpretation of facts.

So we will just have to leave it there I guess, You go your philisophical way and i go about my Scientific way.

I understand what you are saying but I just don't subscribe to such an extreme philisophical outlook on life.

Good conversation.

Later,
Bub.

edanto

Who do I trust?

People that passed the story of JC down through the ages. There's no way of knowing exactly how much of it is true and to what it extent it was embellished for the sake of telling, but the jist of it is a damn good story and worth telling.

The point I was making is that I've got no proof that he existed. All I've got is trust in the people that passed the story along and that's enough to convince me of the basics.

Zombrex

bubonicus wrote:

In science 'fact' is an objective and verifiable observation. It is usually contrasted to a theory, which is an explanation of or interpretation of facts.

In day to day running neither do I. Which is why I am an atheist, not an agnostic

Not to continue the discussion to much off topic, but I would point out that there is no such thing as an absolute proof or fact in science. Any scientific theory or idea that is not falsafiable, ie where there is no possibility that it is incorrect or where no counter example can exist, is considered outside of the scope of science.

For a theory to be acceptable in modern science it must be possible that it is incorrect, even if it isn't, otherwise it is not admissable.

A lot of people (particularly Creationists) don't realise this, and neither did I until recently. They believe science is about proving things, where in fact it is about disproving things until you get as close as possible to an understanding of how something is or works.

Science realises that it can only model the universe to a certain level of sophistication, it cannot model the universe perfectly, and it cannot ever prove anything for certain.

It is actually a very interesting subject, a good place to start is Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiable
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterexample

Zombrex

edanto wrote:

Who do I trust?
People that passed the story of JC down through the ages.

Not to be attacking your religous beliefs or anything, but I see of no reason at all to trust those people

But if you trust them that is fair enough, i'm sure you have your reasons.

edanto wrote:

but the jist of it is a damn good story and worth telling.

That doesn't really have any reflection on if it is true or not. Lots of works of fiction are damn good stories.

bubonicus

Wicknight wrote:

In day to day running neither do I. Which is why I am an atheist, not an agnostic

Not to continue the discussion to much off topic, but I would point out that there is no such thing as an absolute proof or fact in science. Any scientific theory or idea that is not falsafiable, ie where there is no possibility that it is incorrect or where no counter example can exist, is considered outside of the scope of science.

For a theory to be acceptable in modern science it must be possible that it is incorrect, even if it isn't, otherwise it is not admissable.

A lot of people (particularly Creationists) don't realise this, and neither did I until recently. They believe science is about proving things, where in fact it is about disproving things until you get as close as possible to an understanding of how something is or works.

Science realises that it can only model the universe to a certain level of sophistication, it cannot model the universe perfectly, and it cannot ever prove anything for certain.

It is actually a very interesting subject, a good place to start is Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiable
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterexample

Answering you is now way off topic. But I understand all that. We have now delved into what is science. That is still not what I am saying.

Actually I forget what the original debat was, but for now to end this, I am agreeing with you about science, but you see things from a philosophical perspective. And I don't.

You can question our alleged reality until the not so real cows come home to a house that is only in their imaginations. But we can still not prove or disprove if there really is a god, and does it make a difference in a hypothetical universe.

We see things differently that is the reality of it.

phew!:D

CatStevens

O My :eek: All these posts Masha'Allah
Anyway, I glanced some posts here, well, I think some of you agree that God's existence is possible so the one who believes that he/she isn't atheist in my opinion
Peace & Love
Yours Sincerely
CatStevens

Asiaprod

CatStevens wrote:

Anyway, I glanced some posts here, well, I think some of you agree that God's existence is possible so the one who believes that he/she isn't atheist in my opinion

I think you are forgetting that this forum is for both Atheists as well as Agnostics.:)

bubonicus

Asiaprod wrote:

I think you are forgetting that this forum is for both Atheists as well as Agnostics.:)

and other:D

Zombrex

CatStevens wrote:

O My :eek: All these posts Masha'Allah
Anyway, I glanced some posts here, well, I think some of you agree that God's existence is possible so the one who believes that he/she isn't atheist in my opinion
Peace & Love
Yours Sincerely
CatStevens

Anything is possible Cat. It is possible there is a tea pot floating around the sun.

We can only deal in what is likely. And "God" is very low on "my likely scale", down there with me getting hit in the head by a fire breathing dragon at 4.34pm tomorrow afternoon. That is so unlikely to happen that, in day to day layman terms I would say that is certainly not going to happen. Just like I can say, in laymans terms, I am certain there is not a God.

I would ask you though, do you think it is possible that God doesn't exist?

Would the fact that everything continues to work, function and make sense if you remove the concept of God from the equation not be a hint?

robindch

> It is possible there is a tea pot floating around the sun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVQoxrrMftA

Asiaprod

bubonicus wrote:

and other:D

Oh indeed, must never forget the other(s)

CatStevens

Asiaprod

Asiaprod wrote:

I think you are forgetting that this forum is for both Atheists as well as Agnostics.:)

No dear I didn't forget that, but as I wrote in my first posts here in this thread I wanted to talk with atheists

Peace & Love
Yours Sincerely
CatStevens

Funsterdelux

CatStevens wrote:

Asiaprod

No dear I didn't forget that, but as I wrote in my first posts here in this thread I wanted to talk with atheists

Peace & Love
Yours Sincerely
CatStevens

If you believe that athiests exist then I have come to the conlusion that you must have a doubt about your own beliefs, lol. You never answered my question from yesterday, Cat. or is it Mr Islam?

Asiaprod

Wicknight wrote:

Would the fact that everything continues to work, function and make sense if you remove the concept of God from the equation not be a hint?

Could be a problem there. To the non believer, yes that holds true. IMO the believer will tell/discover a different story.

I wonder what would indeed happen if tomorrow someone came along and proved conclusively that there was no God. What would believers do? How would they react?

CatStevens

Funsterdelux

Funsterdelux wrote:

You never answered my question from yesterday, Cat. or is it Mr Islam?

Did ya ask me that yesterday, maybe I didn't notice that or your entire post, anyway, I already wrote a disclaimer in my sig + profile.

Peace & Love
Yours Sincerely
CatStevens