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RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God?
October 15, 2015 at 3:32 am
(This post was last modified: October 15, 2015 at 3:33 am by TheRocketSurgeon.)
(October 15, 2015 at 12:52 am)Lemonvariable72 Wrote: (October 15, 2015 at 12:49 am)snowtracks Wrote: Relax. Evidence is not proof. And, no one care if the atheist doesn't believe in God; but there is evidence. lots of evidence. Oh, was it mentioned that humongous amounts of evidence is not proof of God?
Flew in his book cited three main arguments for his change of mind: one is, cell complexity especially DNA - “intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together.” Page 75. He also said “follow the evidence wherever it leads”. Intelligence being involved in DNA would be a more plausible hypothesis then an undirected, purposeless, brute chemistry hypothesis. Let each individual decide for themselves, using their God-given intellect. Therefore Jesus.
Yeah, except Flew repeatedly and vociferously denied the Christian God, and affirmed that he was a Deist (or perhaps pantheist, since he claims to admire the Einsteinian version of God, which was pantheism). There's also a lot of controversy about that book, because of the religiousity of the ghost-writer/co-author who wrote on behalf of the declining Flew, one which contains a lot of Americanisms in the use of language, though Flew does seems to have supported the concepts behind the book, right to the end. Once Christians began to cite Flew as an example of someone "leaving" atheism, though, he did reaffirm that his idea of God was more along the lines of Einstein, who openly mocked the idea of a personal God.
Flew died of dementia, which is a slow, degenerative neurological condition that often ends up with the person being easily manipulable and suggestible, poorly-aware of their sense of self... a path which unfortinately I know well; I just watched my favorite and now recently-deceased grandmother go through it for a decade before succumbing late last year. For roughly the last five years of her life, her entire personality changed, except in brief flashes, and long before that she began to show signs of irrational thinking.
Christians should be very, very careful when they use Antony Flew as a reference for their ideas. Even if we presume he was completely in right mind during this whole process of deconversion and writing of the new books/articles (and in no way under the influence of religionists who were happy to "help" him write and publish, and of course to profit off the controversy and book sales caused by his conversion), which is a dubious proposition, he still does not agree with the Christian view of religion in even the slightest way. He is specifically quoted on numerous occasions that he believes only in a non-active, non-interventionist deity, except perhaps in the case of causing life to emerge from random biochemistry.
At best, he supports our Snowflake twins' position.
A Christian told me: if you were saved you cant lose your salvation. you're sealed with the Holy Ghost
I replied: Can I refuse? Because I find the entire concept of vicarious blood sacrifice atonement to be morally abhorrent, the concept of holding flawed creatures permanently accountable for social misbehaviors and thought crimes to be morally abhorrent, and the concept of calling something "free" when it comes with the strings of subjugation and obedience perhaps the most morally abhorrent of all... and that's without even going into the history of justifying genocide, slavery, rape, misogyny, religious intolerance, and suppression of free speech which has been attributed by your own scriptures to your deity. I want a refund. I would burn happily rather than serve the monster you profess to love.
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RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God?
October 15, 2015 at 4:13 am
(This post was last modified: October 15, 2015 at 4:14 am by robvalue.)
The problem with the question in the thread title is it's like me being asked:
"What would you consider evidence for ghartiiphranxicully?"
My answer is the same to both, and I think you can guess what it is.
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RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God?
October 16, 2015 at 8:26 pm
That which is here, needs no evidence. The fact that we need evidence of god is proof that god is not here.
The god who allows children to be raped out of respect for the free will choice of the rapist, but punishes gay men for engaging in mutually consensual sex couldn't possibly be responsible for an intelligently designed universe.
I may defend your right to free speech, but i won't help you pass out flyers.
Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities.
--Voltaire
Nietzsche isn't dead. How do I know he lives? He lives in my mind.
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RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God?
October 16, 2015 at 8:28 pm
One would think that any god would have no trouble convincing one of it's existence. The fact that it has failed to do so means either it does not exist or it does not care.
You make people miserable and there's nothing they can do about it, just like god.
-- Homer Simpson
God has no place within these walls, just as facts have no place within organized religion.
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RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God?
October 20, 2015 at 3:35 pm
(October 16, 2015 at 8:28 pm)IATIA Wrote: One would think that any god would have no trouble convincing one of it's existence. The fact that it has failed to do so means either it does not exist or it does not care.
I'm not so sure. There have been countless personal accounts of God being revealed to people in such that the one person believes but others may call that person crazy. If you walked in to a room at work and a being appeared to you claiming to be God, floating there angelically and knew things about you no one else did, would you believe? How do you know the room hadn't been filled with hallucinogenic gas?
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RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God?
October 20, 2015 at 4:02 pm
(This post was last modified: October 20, 2015 at 4:09 pm by Simon Moon.)
(October 20, 2015 at 3:35 pm)lkingpinl Wrote: (October 16, 2015 at 8:28 pm)IATIA Wrote: One would think that any god would have no trouble convincing one of it's existence. The fact that it has failed to do so means either it does not exist or it does not care.
I'm not so sure. There have been countless personal accounts of God being revealed to people in such that the one person believes but others may call that person crazy. If you walked in to a room at work and a being appeared to you claiming to be God, floating there angelically and knew things about you no one else did, would you believe? How do you know the room hadn't been filled with hallucinogenic gas?
And there's the rub.
People all through history of differing god beliefs claim to have had personal experienced of their god revealing itself to them, yet I'm sure you don't believe their encounters with their gods are accurate, correct?
Why should Christian personal accounts of encounters with the god you believe exists, be any more compelling to us, than accounts of people having personal encounters with other gods that you don't believe exist, be to you?
You are correct, the image of a being claiming to be the Christian god as you describe it, could vary well have natural, mundane explanations.
But you claim that your god is extremely powerful, and knowledgeable of all things (the 'omnis'). A being with those attributes would know before his 'angelic appearance' to us would not be convincing (maybe it would convince some of us), and would know that we would not be convinced. Therefore, he would do something else that would convince us.
If he thought that his 'angelic appearance' would convince us, and we were not convinced, he's not much of a god then. Or at least, he does not have the attributes Christians claim their god has.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
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RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God?
October 20, 2015 at 4:13 pm
(October 20, 2015 at 4:02 pm)Simon Moon Wrote: (October 20, 2015 at 3:35 pm)lkingpinl Wrote: I'm not so sure. There have been countless personal accounts of God being revealed to people in such that the one person believes but others may call that person crazy. If you walked in to a room at work and a being appeared to you claiming to be God, floating there angelically and knew things about you no one else did, would you believe? How do you know the room hadn't been filled with hallucinogenic gas?
And there's the rub.
People all through history of differing god beliefs claim to have had personal experienced of their god revealing itself to them, yet I'm sure you don't believe their encounters with their god are accurate, correct?
Why should Christian personal accounts of encounters with the god you believe exists, be any more compelling to us than accounts of people having personal encounters with a god you don't believe exist, be to you?
You are correct, the image of a being claiming to be the Christian god as you describe it, could vary well have natural, mundane explanations.
But you claim that your god is extremely powerful, and knowledgeable of all things (the 'omnis'). A being with those attributes would know before his 'angelic appearance' to us would not be convincing (maybe it would convince some of us), and would know that we would not be convinced. Therefore, he would do something else that would convince us.
If he thought that his 'angelic appearance' would convince us, and we were not convinced, he's not much of a god then.
First Simon, I make no such claims of 'omni' anything, you are generalizing there.
Second, I also have no qualms with any personal revelations from anyone and their experience with their God. I've read stories of people saying Krishna came to them, stories of Allah coming, stories of Jesus, etc. They are everywhere, but those anecdotes are personal and nothing more. Who am I to claim them false? Those experience have no bearing on my own beliefs.
I would say that he has revealed himself in history and that our mere existence and this universe speaks to the existence of something greater out there. It is hard for God to reveal himself meaningfully, harder than we may think. If we are willing to simply accept Him then yes of course He can come to us in any way. Part of the Christian claim is that God has revealed himself in history, through fulfilled prophecy, through the resurrection, through historical events which are critically examinable. But we've had all of these discussions before. I was simply pointing out the conundrum of a God revelation necessarily needing to be supernatural and being skeptics we find natural explanations and easily reject the supernatural. I think the only thing that would work is a full mass reveal to all people in the sky so isolated psychosis would not be valid explanation. But what i'm describing is what's written in Revelation I suppose.
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RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God?
October 20, 2015 at 4:32 pm
(October 20, 2015 at 4:13 pm)lkingpinl Wrote: Second, I also have no qualms with any personal revelations from anyone and their experience with their God. I've read stories of people saying Krishna came to them, stories of Allah coming, stories of Jesus, etc. They are everywhere, but those anecdotes are personal and nothing more. Who am I to claim them false? Those experience have no bearing on my own beliefs.
This is the misunderstanding, or close to it, of the atheist position. You don't have to claim these personal anecdotes to be false; indeed, you don't have that right. On the other hand, if you automatically swallow every personal anecdote uncritically, you're swimming out into very dangerous water full of confidence hucksters and similar bottom-feeders.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God?
October 20, 2015 at 4:35 pm
(October 20, 2015 at 4:32 pm)Stimbo Wrote: (October 20, 2015 at 4:13 pm)lkingpinl Wrote: Second, I also have no qualms with any personal revelations from anyone and their experience with their God. I've read stories of people saying Krishna came to them, stories of Allah coming, stories of Jesus, etc. They are everywhere, but those anecdotes are personal and nothing more. Who am I to claim them false? Those experience have no bearing on my own beliefs.
This is the misunderstanding, or close to it, of the atheist position. You don't have to claim these personal anecdotes to be false; indeed, you don't have that right. On the other hand, if you automatically swallow every personal anecdote uncritically, you're swimming out into very dangerous water full of confidence hucksters and similar bottom-feeders.
Most certainly Stimbo, which is why personal anecdotes should have no bearing on anyone else's personal beliefs. They are unfalsifiable and you could end up believing anything. Take them at face value and for what they are. Personal anecdotes, something that cannot be corroborated.
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RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God?
October 20, 2015 at 4:38 pm
Just to clarify, I wasn't intimating that you were misunderstanding the atheist position, simply that your post identified and highlighted it.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
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