• Welcome to League Of Reason Forums! Please read the rules before posting.
    If you are willing and able please consider making a donation to help with site overheads.
    Donations can be made via here

Is it possible to prove God doesn't exist?

arg-fallbackName="*SD*"/>
Yes, of course I understand that. I am probably just more fascinated by how people answer questions than I am in debate these days. People really are fucking brilliant.

That's all fair enough. But, as a matter of genuine interest, can we at some point get to what you do think is evidence for God? I'm not trying to force you to do anything, if you just plain don't want to, that's fine, but I am curious and I suspect others reading this are too.
 
arg-fallbackName="ldmitruk"/>
That's all fair enough. But, as a matter of genuine interest, can we at some point get to what you do think is evidence for God? I'm not trying to force you to do anything, if you just plain don't want to, that's fine, but I am curious and I suspect others reading this are too.
Agreed. @Led Zeppelin, I'd like to read about your evidence for god.
 
arg-fallbackName="Desertphile"/>
In my experience, a typical Atheist response would be something like "Can you prove there is not a unicorn hiding in my closet?" as if it is rational for them to invent fantasies to reinforce their Atheism. But I guess that's how people are.

Do Atheists have any other perspective to offer besides this?

You do not even know how to spell "atheism" and "atheist." Why should anyone pay attention to you.

There is no such thing as "reinforcing atheism" {note spelling}. The lack of belief in the gods is the NULL state. Why are you pretending to not know this?

No one is trying to prove the gods do not exist. Why are you pretending to not know this?
 
arg-fallbackName="Desertphile"/>
I'll try to remember that. I have lived in Germany for so long now I think I just capitalize everything.
:) I am a writer as well as autistic; I suppose this is why I am a grammar Nazi.

My well-selling memoir Desert Soliloquy: a perfectly sane misanthrope hides in the desert includes two encounters with fundamentalist Christians while I was in Baker, California. I enjoyed both of them.
 
arg-fallbackName="Led Zeppelin"/>
Okay, cool. Then, I would submit that, when we talk about *God* in the theistic sense, being a divine being whose will and nature we need a divine revelation to understand, we are necessary talking about something unfalsifiable. We are necessarily talking about something that is so far outside our ordinary experience that we literally need a miracle to understand it.

We can describe why belief in a caused cosmos is reasonable and we can describe why we think that that cause is a being. But, descriptions of the nature of the cosmos or human nature or anything else that we can apprehend with our ordinary faculties can only ever justify deism.

The justification for theism is faith, which according to the Christian religion is a spiritual virtue and a gift from God. Faith can't be justified by the facts about world. That doesn't mean, (in my opinion anyway), that faith is bad or wrong or invalid, im actually open to believing things based on faith and divine revelation, but with great claims come great responsibility. We can't, on the one hand acknowledge that our belief in God and the western Christian tradition is an article of faith and on the other hand that we can just look at nature in order to *demonstrate* what is, necessarily an article of faith.

Doss that make sense?

Am I making any sense?
Sorry it's taking me so long to reply. I have had some stuff going on but am free this week so I should be able to get back at this tomorrow. Hope you will still be here. This is a very excellent forum but its a bit slow sometimes these days.
 
arg-fallbackName="Led Zeppelin"/>
That's all fair enough. But, as a matter of genuine interest, can we at some point get to what you do think is evidence for God? I'm not trying to force you to do anything, if you just plain don't want to, that's fine, but I am curious and I suspect others reading this are too.
I believe in God and I am a Christian. A couple quick reasons for this are;

I have never heard any meaningful secular explanation of how the higher functions we possess arose naturally from any secular explanation of the origin of the universe.

Things seems to me the way the Bible says they will be.
 
arg-fallbackName="*SD*"/>
I have never heard any meaningful secular explanation of how the higher functions we possess arose naturally from any secular explanation of the origin of the universe.

Ok, this is a straight up appeal to ignorance fallacy. You're saying that because you don't understand X that must mean it was God. This doesn't work. Incredulity does not an argument make. I don't know how the universe came to be either. There are some explanations posited, which can easily be looked up online, but even if you don't accept any of them that doesn't mean they're wrong, or that a God exists.
Things seems to me the way the Bible says they will be.

The Bible is the big book of multiple choice, a book of choose your own adventure. You can make it say almost anything you want it to say with various interpretations etc etc. Also noteworthy is the fact that not even Christians agree on what it says, what or who God is or what Christianity et al dictates. Which is why you have literally tens of thousands of different denominations who all vehemently, and sometimes violently disagree on practically every aspect of the religion, it's literally why there's not just more than one denomination, but multiple thousands.
 
arg-fallbackName="*SD*"/>
This is a very excellent forum but its a bit slow sometimes these days.

Aye. Forums just aren't what they once were, this isn't 2009 any more. Fora tend to take a back seat these days to other platforms which are more interactive and live. It is a bit of a shame, but ya can't stop progress. We'll keep going though, even if it is a bit slow.
 
arg-fallbackName="Led Zeppelin"/>
Okay, cool. Then, I would submit that, when we talk about *God* in the theistic sense, being a divine being whose will and nature we need a divine revelation to understand, we are necessary talking about something unfalsifiable. We are necessarily talking about something that is so far outside our ordinary experience that we literally need a miracle to understand it.

We can describe why belief in a caused cosmos is reasonable and we can describe why we think that that cause is a being. But, descriptions of the nature of the cosmos or human nature or anything else that we can apprehend with our ordinary faculties can only ever justify deism.

The justification for theism is faith, which according to the Christian religion is a spiritual virtue and a gift from God. Faith can't be justified by the facts about world. That doesn't mean, (in my opinion anyway), that faith is bad or wrong or invalid, im actually open to believing things based on faith and divine revelation, but with great claims come great responsibility. We can't, on the one hand acknowledge that our belief in God and the western Christian tradition is an article of faith and on the other hand that we can just look at nature in order to *demonstrate* what is, necessarily an article of faith.

Doss that make sense?

Am I making any sense?

Yes you are making a lot of sense. Believe it or not, this is something I never really spent much time thinking about before. I can partly agree with almost everything you said here. I would add that; If there is no God then "Faith" is just a stupidity. It could be an honest mistake, at best, or the result of a mental defect. Not a virtue.

My belief in God is either correct or incorrect. If I am correct, then it is because I have a correct understanding of reality and every argument against Him is false. To the best of my knowledge, I have never received any divine revelation from God.

In otherwords, If God is Just, then I am not just some lucky guy making random guesses at questions that are impossible for us to answer, who will stumble into heaven one day by accident while the unlucky guys who make the wrong random guesses are sent to Hell. So I think you must be wrong when you say "Faith can't be justified by facts about the world" I would say there must be things in this world that let us know about God's existence and His concerns about us.

There could be an infinite amount of things to consider in your post here. If Christianity is the result of God's divine interaction with us as a man on this earth, does that mean that me, being a Christian, have received a small bit of divine revelation from 2000 years ago? Is that faith? I have no idea..
 
arg-fallbackName="*SD*"/>
I would say there must be things in this world that let us know about God's existence and His concerns about us.

Why must there be? What's the inference structure here? There isn't one single aspect of this world that indicates the God of classical theism exists, much less the Christian flavour. As for 'His' concerns about us... where to even begin. Even if you believe the Biblical account, your God has 'concerns' about us eating shell fish, not picking up sticks (interpreted as work) on the Sabbath, wearing clothes of mixed fabrics, not coveting our neighbours oxen and where we stick our dicks.

I'm not trying to be glib or disrespectful, but I've read the damn thing, four times in two different languages and that's what it says. That isn't all it says, but that silly nonsense is in there regarding God's 'concerns' for us.
 
arg-fallbackName="Led Zeppelin"/>
Why must there be? What's the inference structure here? There isn't one single aspect of this world that indicates the God of classical theism exists, much less the Christian flavour.

Im not sure what you mean by a God of classical theism. Does it have anything to do with the idea that children are sexually repressed and we need to teach them how to masturbate? Or that we must find ways for people to their kill unborn children? Or that we should legalize drug use and suicide?

And I wouldn't call Christianity a "flavour". Abraham and Jesus are prime movers. Not Budda not Zeus. Not the Native American "Great Spirit" and not the flying spaghetti monster.

There is a reason why everyone knows I'm not talking about Zeus.

The world is a sick place, run by sick fucking liars. When you allow them to corrupt your mind, you will no longer have any standard of good and evil. You will just sit back in awe of our own destruction and say "There must be no God"

Don't do it, bro! Don't give in to them!

 
arg-fallbackName="*SD*"/>
Im not sure what you mean by a God of classical theism

It's sort of self explanatory really.
Does it have anything to do with the idea that children are sexually repressed and we need to teach them how to masturbate? Or that we must find ways for people to their kill unborn children? Or that we should legalize drug use and suicide?

No, it doesn't have anything to do with any of that, what are you talking about?
And I wouldn't call Christianity a "flavour"

It isn't derogatory, it just means species or type.

Abraham and Jesus are prime movers

Says who?

There is a reason why everyone knows I'm not talking about Zeus

I don't recall anybody in this thread even hinting that they thought you were talking about Zeus.

The world is a sick place, run by sick fucking liars. When you allow them to corrupt your mind, you will no longer have any standard of good and evil. You will just sit back in awe of our own destruction and say "There must be no God"

What are you talking about? This is just waffle and has nothing to do with the thread, or the conversation anyone in it is having.

Do you notice how you didn't really address any of what I said, you just pivoted off in all sorts of very weird directions. You seem like a nice enough chap, but you might want to have a think about whether you're equipped to deal with the conversation in a serious way, as opposed to typing up random stuff that doesn't really have much to do with anything.
 
arg-fallbackName="Dragan Glas"/>
Greetings,

Happy New Year to everyone!
In my experience, a typical Atheist response would be something like "Can you prove there is not a unicorn hiding in my closet?" as if it is rational for them to invent fantasies to reinforce their Atheism. But I guess that's how people are.

Do Atheists have any other perspective to offer besides this?
As has been pointed out by others, it's not for atheists to prove a negative - that a deity doesn't exist - but for believers to prove that one does.

There are two types of deities - theistic (interactive) and deistic (non-interactive)

Religions all over the world make the same claims:

1. Our deities exist;
2. Our deities created everything - including people;
3. Our deities wrote/inspired our religious texts;
4. All other deities, religions, and religious texts are false;
5. Therefore, our religion is the One True Religion.

In relation to 1 and 2 above, Richard Carrier did a article on probability theory and the likelihood that a deity exists - he shows that it's more probable that there are a infinite number of deities rather than just one (polytheism is more likely than monotheism0. The same argument works for universes - the multiverse is more likely than a universe.

At one time it was thought that a rainbow was a spirit, until Newton showed that it was just diffracted light.

Similarly, if we found naturalistic explanations for every phenomenon, this would show that there's no need for a theistic deity, since it would negate the need for any intervention by said deity..

A deistic deity, on the other hand, is a different matter. Since such a deity only creates a naturalistic universe - no souls, life-after-death, heaven, hell, etc - we would only find naturalistic explanations for everything, which would not rule out a deistic deity.

As *SD* noted, many concepts of God can be dismissed due to internal contradictions or logical incoherence. This means that the viable concepts of God have to be logical, which results in a logical contradiction (particularly relevant to MrBatman's topic).

P1: God created everything - including the laws of logic;
P2: God's existence is contingent (dependent) on the laws of logic:
C: Therefore, the laws of logic pre-exist God.

Which raises the obvious question:

Whence the laws of logic?

It remains for the believer to do the following - as I've posted elsewhere in this forum:

1 Prove that it's possible for any deity to exist;
2 Having proven 1 above, prove that the deity in which you believe exists to the exclusion of all others;
3 Having proven 1 and 2 above, prove that the deity in which you believe created and/or has anything to do with physical reality;
4 Having proven 1, 2, and 3 above, prove that the deity in which you believe has anything to do with your religious texts (and religion).

kindest regards,

James
 
arg-fallbackName="ldmitruk"/>
And I wouldn't call Christianity a "flavour". Abraham and Jesus are prime movers. Not Budda not Zeus. Not the Native American "Great Spirit" and not the flying spaghetti monster.
You still haven't provided any evidence for the existance of the Abrahamic God, let alone evidence they are so called prime movers. I also find it funny you don't consider Christianity a flavour of religion, given there are over 45,000 denominations of Christianity. Which one of them is the "true" faith?
 
Back
Top