How do you convince people god exists?

Bannasidhe wrote: »

As a non-mod hat wearing observation that is some attempt at rules lawyering and also utter nonsense.

You, yourself, are a-many deities (unless you do believe in ALL deities) therefore, going by your statement because you do not believe in the majority of deities it can be taken you believe in none.

A-anything and everything is the safe, default assumption until someone identifies a belief in something - be that deity or otherwise (e.g
naturalistic origins).

Once someone identifies a belief in something they become like me. They are a-everything but what they believe in.

Since I am not permitted to assume someone's beliefs I'll assume they have none unless they do state them.

If they have none then fine, I can skip discussing with them on the basis of life being too short. If they have a belief then we can discuss on the basis of a somewhat level playing field.

What atheists don't get to do is to play without showing their own hand. What they want: sit there throwing rocks and demanding evidence for a theists belief, whilst hiding behind their merely lacking a belief in God?

Where is the courage of their convictions (in the event they have any). Let them haul their light out from behind their bushel and face the problem of their occupying a faith position.

Panrich's beliefs on morals, philosophy, cricket, etc etc etc - or lack thereof - are Panrich's to outline, not yours to assume, and cannot be extrapolated to include all atheists. A fact which has been pointed out to you countless times

Panrich.gave some indication of naturalistic beliefs. But seeing as I am not allowed to make any assumption I'll assume he has no beliefs and terminate that discussion.

As soon as he has any (and it's looking like naturalistic origins) he can tell me why his faith based system trumps mine. Perhaps.

Bannasidhe wrote: »

Have you considered actually asking individual people what they do/do not believe? Then, once you have that knowledge, proceeding on that basis or are you wedding to assumptions borne out of your own bias?
It seems to me that you cannot conceive of atheists as being individuals but must instead fall back upon some fallacy that like Christians, atheists have some kind of core hive mind belief system - although we all know that Christians do not seem to truly have any such thing as the many many occasions when one Christians dismisses another Christian a not being a 'proper Christian' testifies.

I do understand that atheism is a church encompassing a broad set of widely diverging beliefs. That said, the bulk of folk on here display an adherence to naturalistic origins / empirical evidence uber allies / science as the route into all knowledge.

But it doesn't really matter what the beliefs are so long as the position is belief based. You see, atheists, in their rock throwing, omit to take account that their own position (what that is isn't so important) is a belief based one.

What you are not permitted to do is a)discuss a mod warning in thread (this is universal across Boards.ie) or specifically relating to your latest warning is b) tell other people what they believe. Your tendency to do so while ignoring them when they have told you what they actually do/do not believe is a feature of many of your posts and is, as has been pointed out many many times before, a form of trolling.

It seems strange that you seem unable to hold a discussion that doesn't involve you telling other people what they believe. It's like the religious equivalent of shout 'But Sinn Fein...' at every criticism of the current govt.

Hence my suggesting waiting until someone gets off the.pot and announces they have a belief system and are merely a-anything that isn't encompassed by their belief system.

Better that than throwing rocks from within their own glass house of belief.

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I might add that it is a bit galling for you to warn me for saying what another's beliefs are (when clues as to what those beliefs are are evident) when atheists here do that all the time themselves. I don't believe in a smithin' and a smothin' God for instance. But am regularly told I do.

jaxxx wrote: »

Whataboutism 102

Got a belief system?

antiskeptic wrote: »

Got a belief system?

I believe that you've a PhD and Masters in Whataboutery, yes.

Panrich wrote: »

I am not sure that you can see the difference in what I and others are saying and your assertions about them. I suspect it may be that you find it difficult to see that religious questions make no sense to the non-religious. I cannot stress how little thought I have previously given to the questions you posed that I originally answered.

The answers to those questions don't necessarily require much thought. They require a basis and the basis can be arrived at by the simplest means you like. The question is whether the answer is based on belief. Believing a teacher who said this is how it occurred whilst you were at school is sufficient. Not much thought went into it from your side. But you believe the teacher.

You accuse me of having 'faith' in my beliefs that we are no more than other life forms. I have no such faith. I think I understand that this is the reality of our existence but I base my positions on what rhymes with reason inside my head. If some evidence or reason invalidates this position, then my position will change accordingly.

Faith in reasoning (Rationalism) to establish truth. Faith in evidence (which is why I believe as I do) is faith based. I have faith that discernment and evaluation of the evidence available to me is accurate)

I think that your position is trumped by mine because my working premise has many less moving parts than yours.

I'm not sure I understand the quantitative evaluation process going on. In order to decide yours had less moving parts you would have to know how many were involved on both sides. And whether less would work

Less, per se, isn't a good thing. It may not be enough. And I'm not sure how, without faith, you'd be in a position to evaluate things for work ability.

My assumptions are the least that make sense of the world around me. I do not seek grand answers to questions that do not enhance my day to day existence and therefore I do not have to make big logical leaps to concoct a worldview that gives some desired answers.

An ant does no differently. If the questions don't arise then answers you need not seek. Nevertheless, you will have a reason for the morality you operate according to. You may not question where it comes from but you do have beliefs about why this is wrong and that right. And those will trace back to origin and meaning style questions.

You can operate by believing without ever asking why you believe as you do.

So to say that I 'believe' that we have no cause, purpose or reason to be here is really a false claim. Of the evidence and understanding that I currently possess, that is a guess at an answer that I would not stand over in the face of new evidence to the contrary.

Or to put it another way: it is a weakly held belief. To be expected if you haven't really delved into the reason and root of why you hold it

In essence my worldview is simpler than yours and requires less faith.

Non-examination naturally makes things simple. Beliefs weakly held do not require much faith.

Simple doesn't mean that it is a sound worldview.

Bannasidhe wrote: »

For the millionth time Atheism is not a church of any kind - broad or otherwise.

It matters not a whit what the bulk of folk here - in your opinion - display an adherence to even if 100% of people here agreed on a philosophical position it would not mean that is the stance of all atheists.

In the sense they are a grouping without belief in God (when belief in God/Gods is so prevalent globally) I'd say that constitutes a church.

You.might want your subsets and differentiation but to the rest of us you have more in common (lacking belief in God) than you have in difference.

A bit like the Christian church.

Lack of belief is your flag (whether waved vigorously or not) just like Jesus Christ is the flag under which Christian's of all hues align.

You're looking at it from your perspective: seeing a world of difference between an atheist Buddhist and Richard 'Rational' Dawkins. I'm looking at it from my (and theists) perspective. That perspective has the world full of theists of some hue.









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Steve F wrote: »

When you die,you won't know your dead.
You'll know as much about it as the trillions of years before you were born.
Absolute and utter nothingness

What belief system caused you to arrive at that conclusion?

robindch wrote: »

Not permitted because it's something which you are simply dreadful at.

Your basic premise, which you wheel out in so many of your posts with the predictability of a one-trick pony, is that since everybody believes something, that all conclusions are equally questionable. It's a silly notion which some railyard preacher might have blared in Apologetics-101 to a bunch of straw-chewing rednecks, but on the high plateaus where the big thinkers roam, it's like farting in a lift.

Anyway as Bannasidhe points out, you could always try asking somebody what they believe and then proceed from there. While it's not something a preacher would do, it is what somebody interested in a discussion would do.

Yeah, yeah..

Nozz wheeled out the 'accumulated data set' of all mankind as his ace card. Trouble is, he can't show it's the accumulated data set of all mankind.

Nor can he show that that data set is being interpreted properly.

What have you got to elevate your beliefs?

Bannasidhe wrote: »

No - you do not speak for all theists therefore you cannot say that you are looking at things from a theists perspective in a way which implies all theists would agree with you.

Don't you speak for all atheists? What about atheists who think atheism is a church?

There are many perspectatives among theists - far too many to be reflected in your particular version of Christianity. You can't even claim to be indicative of how all Christians view things, never mind how the worshippers of Thor in Iceland, or Ganesh in Mumbai, or Iesous in Skopelos might perceive things.
You act as if you can speak for all - that your viewpoint will obviously encompass all theists - which is does not, and that your viewpoint can be tweaked to fit atheists, you just need to remove the 'God' part and replace it with a 'God shaped' hole/

There is no God shaped hole.
There is no God shaped anything.
Because to an atheist there simply is no God.

That is what you fail to grasp. Your belief, your god, your theistic perspective is utterly unimportant to someone for whom the concept of 'God' is meaningless.

All theists will agree that atheists have a common bond. Lack of belief.

Folk that see, see in different ways. But they will agree that those who lack sight have a common bond in lacking sight

(I know 'lacking sight' sounds as if the atheist is deficient. I don't mean it that way. That said, lacking belief is often posited to be a neutral thing by atheists. Whereas it can indeed be a deficiency)

karlitob wrote: »

It really is hard to know what you’re going on about.

Faith is a state of mind that leads people to believe something

Faith– it does not matter what – in the total absence of supporting evidence.

1. complete trust or confidence in someone or something.

There is no mention of whether the faith is based on evidence or not. Although convention would suggest we have complete trust in someone because they have given us good reason to trust them (a.k.a. evidence)

Ever hear of stranger danger?

If there were good supporting evidence, then faith would be superfluous, for the evidence would compel us to believe it anyway.

I have faith that my car brakes will halt my progress. That faith is based on evidence.


Your supposition about religious faith (which is the faith I think you are talking about) is based on your supposing the faith holder has no evidence. I don't have faith in your supposition - for you can provide no evidence that I have no evidence.

All you potentially* can do is suggest that your faith in a philosophy about what constitutes evidence is correct. But since you can't evidence your faith in this regard, your faith has to be considered by outside observers as blind faith.

Which is the point. Atheists who believe evidence is limited to that which can be seen, touched, smelled etc are expressing their faith in a philosophy which holds so. They can't evidence it and so throw rocks at theists from their position in a glass house.



*potentially. I don't know what you believe and have been warned not to project beliefs onto you.

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

What I do is accumulate all the evidence offered to me and make educated guesses on the state of the universe. I do not "believe" or "disbelieve"..... these are your crutches not mine..... any of the positions that leaves me in however.

What you believe is what it is that constitutes 'evidence'. Now, you are better than the one who would run to a dictionary at this point. But were you to, and you chased down the words that are used in such a definition, you would likely find that they don't terminate in the demand that evidence be empirical.

Perhaps you don't argue that evidence need be empirical (for I am on thin ice with the mods in this regard). Perhaps you argue that the evidence that I have is no use to you because you cannot access it.

That would be fair enough if you halted right there. But you don't. You go on to argue that the 'accumulated evidence at your disposal' indicates that I have no evidence. Which is poppycock really: all the evidence in the world of a primitive tribesmen, which leads him to conclude 'skygod' at the sight of an over flying passenger jet, is a comment on the quality of his evidence, not on the actual reality.

But you presume you are on the high throne, as it were. When you really have no means to ascertain that.

Hence stalemate the offer, welcome as a fart in a tent as that might be.

The example you previously ran away from and ignored was that of my being able to fly. I do not believe I am capable of flight without the aid of technology. I however also do not believe I am NOT capable of flight without the aid of technology either. Perhaps I am.

What I do however have is a data set replete solely and wholly with examples of people who leave surfaces without the aid of technology. And in 100% of cases they plummet downwards.

I do not "believe" I am the exception to this. Nor do I "believe" I am the same. Rather I can only make my best guess based on the data available to me. Prudence alone has me act as if I operate under the assumption/belief I can not fly.

I do the same. We are talking about that which we are not in agreement with. Evidence. How do we decide what it is?

You argue from all that makes sense to you. There can be no succour in the Royal We since there are too many who deviate from the Royal We. Indeed, it need take only one to deviate from a Royal We to present you with the same problem. You, or many, many youz can be but tribesmen. Or blind, as the Bible puts it.

I also appear to be in a universe with the rest of you people. I have no idea how this came to be at this time. There are plenty of hypothesis out there. However the data set available to me contains NOTHING at this time to suggest that the explanation for this lies in the machinations of a non-human intelligent and intentional agency.

There is plenty in the data set to suggest God. But you have what you feel are more satisfactory answers. And that has all been argued to death and life is too short. So, cutting to the chase: it tends to be when those answers aren't sufficient: a person cannot suppress a sense that their life must have more meaning than can be attributed to accident and happenstance for example, that the alternatives are considered in fresh light. Or, like me, a sense of my own being disjointed and not right that opened the door. The gospels are replete with the myriad of ways in which pain drives a man from his self-directed, self-defined, self- determined path. Sick, lame, prostitution, thief on a cross, bereavement, having achieved a position of power but empty, following religious laws but still out of sorts. Every which way a man can find himself toppled from the throne of reliance on self is in there. Indeed, it surprises me that that message is so sorely missed.

We are made to be children. To have someone to run to who looks after the big picture. We need a dad (and a mam).

Had that not happened, had I not reached a place where the same answers that satisfy you now, failed to satisfy me, then I would, naturally, have carried on upon the straight line that saw me arrive at that point.

And so I think you are doing only that which you can see no alternative for: going where the evidence, insofar as it is available to you, leads.

Same for me. Pressures came upon me, the old answers (which, though not so thought out as yours, certainly didn't come within a rat's ass of God) didn't work and I surrendered them, not knowing where that would lead.

So. I respect where you are. I don't hold you to be dishonest or combative or obtuse. I just think you project the information you have onto others. As if their experiences and the information that could very well become available to them in the event God is in this with us, ought be measured by your measure


For you are not agnostic in this. You take a positive, Dawkinsian approach. That your information is the highest available information against which all else be measured.

There is just one problem with that Nozz. God, in the event of his existence and his communion with those who come to realize they need him, need not bow to your rules.