Our server costs ~$56 per month to run. Please consider donating or becoming a Patron to help keep the site running. Help us gain new members by following us on Twitter and liking our page on Facebook!
Current time: May 2, 2024, 3:03 pm

Thread Rating:
  • 1 Vote(s) - 1 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
What would you consider to be evidence for God?
RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God?
I wouldn't consider the following "evidence for God," for the two reasons that A) it need not refer to God in the sense of a personal deity or an entity with intentionality or teleology, and B) it wouldn't fall into the category of things for which I would consider a demand for evidence to be appropriate, but certain speculations have led me towards the inclination that materialism is false, and, if materialism is false then it leaves the door open for some thing or things that theologians have traditionally identified with God's essence - I simply insist that they have taken their speculations too far.

I'm inclining towards the belief that materialism cannot be true because 'truth,' 'value,' 'being,' and other such concepts - which comprise the entirety of our mental lives outside of raw sensation - appear to only possess intelligible being, which is to say, these principles, not unlike physical laws, don't exist in material objects. I don't know what it could mean to say that they do. Rather, they exist in intellects. But if they are to have any relation to the external world, if to say 'X is true' is to have any meaning outside of how I, one individual, relates to the world, then the very notion of 'truth' must transcend the intellect. I can see no other refutation of the Protagorean doctrine that "man is the measure of all things' i.e. truth is relative, unless "the true" is an identifier of some abstract quality that subsists independent of my intellect, that is, objectively, by which statements of truth or falsity can be measured against it. And the result of this is the plain fact that nobody, to take one example, can deny absolute truth without affirming it. There are some propositions that are universally, absolutely, objectively true, such as "God either exists or does not exist," and these such statements seem to have a quality to them that is eternal and immutable; another is the fact that 7 has always been a prime number, regardless if any brain sufficiently advanced enough to formulate its truth in language has only recently begun to exist. The same, I believe, goes for morality or, as I said, any other principle that we either have an innate understanding of or know through experience and discovery - yes, discovery - as opposed to invention. I do not believe that humankind invented the truth that 2+3=5, or that causing another to suffer for no reason is wrong, or that two separate events in time and space sometimes have a causal connection, or even reason itself; these are rather ideas that we discovered, using a language that we did, indeed, invent. That much at least I think is defensible. As to what this abstract reality is, how it is connected to material beings such as ourselves, I do not pretend to understand in the slightest degree. Nor do I know what is the difference between saying that something exists in the abstract, and yet is objective, or external, and saying that there is a 'spiritual dimension.' Whatever is meant by these terms, I do know that truth exists in such a way that it is not material on any definition of materialism as I have come to understand it.
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza
Reply



Messages In This Thread
RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God? - by Athene - September 7, 2015 at 11:35 pm
RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God? - by Athene - September 7, 2015 at 11:43 pm
RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God? - by Pyrrho - September 8, 2015 at 11:25 am
RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God? - by Athene - September 8, 2015 at 11:51 am
RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God? - by Pyrrho - September 10, 2015 at 11:31 am
RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God? - by IATIA - November 28, 2015 at 11:45 pm
RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God? - by Heat - November 30, 2015 at 9:20 pm
RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God? - by IATIA - December 12, 2015 at 12:44 am
RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God? - by Mudhammam - January 9, 2016 at 4:05 am
RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God? - by GUBU - September 18, 2016 at 3:35 pm
RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God? - by GUBU - September 11, 2016 at 7:39 pm
RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God? - by Cato - November 2, 2016 at 11:57 pm
RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God? - by Tonus - November 27, 2016 at 10:38 pm
RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God? - by Tonus - December 15, 2016 at 10:15 am
RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God? - by Tonus - December 27, 2016 at 12:14 am

Possibly Related Threads...
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  If you learned that the god of [insert religion] is real, would all bets be off? Sicnoo0 58 4110 February 25, 2024 at 1:04 am
Last Post: Nay_Sayer
  Dear Atheists: what would convince you God/Christ is Real? JJoseph 207 10875 February 12, 2024 at 1:51 am
Last Post: Goosebump
  The Historical Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Nishant Xavier 38 2488 August 7, 2023 at 10:24 pm
Last Post: LinuxGal
  When were the Gospels Written? The External and Internal Evidence. Nishant Xavier 62 3382 August 6, 2023 at 10:25 pm
Last Post: LinuxGal
  Veridical NDEs: Evidence/Proof of the Soul and the After-Life? Nishant Xavier 32 1705 August 6, 2023 at 5:36 pm
Last Post: LinuxGal
  Isaiah 53, 700 B.C: Historical Evidence of the Divine Omniscience. Nishant Xavier 91 4821 August 6, 2023 at 2:19 pm
Last Post: LinuxGal
  Conscience and the Moral Argument as Evidence for the Goodness of God. Nishant Xavier 162 8175 July 9, 2023 at 7:53 am
Last Post: Deesse23
  Signature in the Cell: DNA as Evidence for Design, beside Nature's Laws/Fine-Tuning. Nishant Xavier 54 2904 July 8, 2023 at 8:23 am
Last Post: Fake Messiah
  Why the resurrection accounts are not evidence LinuxGal 5 1057 October 29, 2022 at 2:01 pm
Last Post: LinuxGal
  Can you consider Atheism an ethnicity UniverseCaptain 31 2770 September 27, 2021 at 7:23 pm
Last Post: UniverseCaptain



Users browsing this thread: 3 Guest(s)