Proof and evidence will always equal Science

[brewer]

You can argue for the existence of god but you can't argue god into existence.

Maybe not, but it give ontologists something to do.

Boru

Good for them. But they need to stop telling me why it's important.

[R00tKiT]

I've hit a bit of a conundrum regarding the "proof of the existence of God" question.

You can't do it.

Ask a theist to define:
Supernatural
Divine
Faith
Spirit
Soul
God

And you get vague wishy-washy crap that either doesn't mean anything, 

I don't know much about other religions, but Islam acknowledges that the soul is undefinable, unknowable: 

"And they ask you about the soul. Say: The soul is one of the commands of my Lord, and you are not given aught of knowledge but a little." (Qur'an 17:85)

This line of revelation purportedly came to the Islamic Prophet when a group of Jews challenged him to reveal the reality of the soul. 

https://islamqa.org/hanafi/askimam/11962...ammad-saw/

A false prophet would have cobbled something together as the reality of the soul to maintain the facade of prophethood. 

Yet when you logically define things using scientific methods and terminology, you essentially break down how it works and what it is/what it does. So, asking for observable evidence of god, the divine, the spirit, is going to intrinsically change the nature of those things because the mystery, the vague unknown quality has been revealed and now the thing is just a "thing". It's real. We know how it works, what it is. 

Erasing that mystery and limitless potential erases the supreme nature of these things. Because now they have limits. It's physical. If a theist ever came to me and brought me someone that I could physically touch, see, and communicate with, and they showed me some crazy power and explained "this is how that is done"(like mutated genetics or advanced technology, etc.) And then they said, "Here he is. This is my God. The one I told you about this whole time. The one who created the planet(through some interspace geological farming project where planets are amassed or his evolution allows him to have geo telekinesis where he could bring together rocks and elements from space into one giant mass) and created all life(through genetic engineering or bringing embryos from his own planet here, or maybe his evolution has allowed him to get pregnant and he literally had a few kids and plopped them here, etc.). He's really real!" 

I would ask, "why are you worshipping some dude? He's right there. I can see him. He's not magic. He's not all-knowing. He's just advanced. He's got bowels and picks his nose just like you and me. Why are you on your knees for someone that merely got you out of a test tube and arrived here on a ship that takes fuel?"

Like, they'll never find "the guy" that is god, whether he looks humanoid or is some cosmic horror incomprehensible alien, because he doesn't fit into the vague mystery. Even if when they found him, he had a white beard and glowing white robes and owned all the shit in the Bible and Koran, once we pointed out that he could be physically explained and they were challenged for getting on their knees for a physical dude who poops and pees(or has some genetic mutation that eliminated his need to eliminate but that can be studied and explained), they might backtrack and be like, "that's not him." 

You know. Like how they did when it was explained what lightning is. "That's not him. I thought it was but now that I know what lightning is, that's not him. That's not my god."

Thank you for proving what I have been repeating in these boards for two years. God and the soul belong to a different category, you can't dissect the supernatural in a laboratory. And yet this is precisely what athests ask for when they drop their "give me evidence for God". It also became clear to me that there can't be deductive proof for the divine, because deductive reasoning is merely about logical consistency, it doesn't add information -let alone existence- to the premises.

Let's take the famous syllogism : "All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal." One easily sees that the conclusion is contained in the premises, i.e. it doesn't add any information to the premises. The conclusion kind of just reminds you of what the two premises mean when taken together.  Therefore, if there were a deductive syllogism proving God, God would be the conclusion, and the premises would "contain" God. And yet, by the very definition of God as the most perfect being imaginable, nothing can contain this being. There is no premise about this world or some universal law of thought that contains God.

The most sophisticated case for the theistic God today is probably Swinburne's lengthy inductive argument in his book "The existence of God". His argument is based on a distinction between scientific explanations and personal explanations. He argues that the world is better accounted for by a personal explanation (personal God) than by purely scientific, naturalistic explanations.

[brewer]

jesus fucking muhammad, reason has left the building, I'm out.

[Neo-Scholastic]

You can argue for the existence of god but you can't argue god into existence.

Who exactly is doing that? No one. That's who.

[brewer]

You can argue for the existence of god but you can't argue god into existence.

Who exactly is doing that? No one. That's who.

I disagree. There are plenty in the society where I live that argue a metaphysical god has direct/causal impact on the physical world. AFAIC this where most of the theist/atheist conflict arises. That and the entitled judgement of belief in a metaphysical god imposes.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Who exactly is doing that? No one. That's who.

I disagree. There are plenty in the society where I live that argue a metaphysical god has direct/causal impact on the physical world. AFAIC this where most of the theist/atheist conflict arises. That and the entitled judgement of belief in a metaphysical god imposes.

That is a different issue. I am replying to somethibg else. No one thinks a logical demonstration conjours god into existence.

[polymath257]

You can argue for the existence of god but you can't argue god into existence.

Who exactly is doing that? No one. That's who.

That is precisely what the Ontological Argument is trying to do.

[zwanzig]

I disagree. There are plenty in the society where I live that argue a metaphysical god has direct/causal impact on the physical world. AFAIC this where most of the theist/atheist conflict arises. That and the entitled judgement of belief in a metaphysical god imposes.

That is a different issue. I am replying to somethibg else. No one thinks a logical demonstration conjours god into existence.

You're right. No one thinks that. And no one said that.

[Ranjr]

Should a theist propose a god whom science does not rule out, I would listen.  That means, a god who didn't exist before the universe or create it.  One who doesn't know everything, will things to happen, or defy natural laws.  That god would at least have a chance to exist.

[brewer]

I disagree. There are plenty in the society where I live that argue a metaphysical god has direct/causal impact on the physical world. AFAIC this where most of the theist/atheist conflict arises. That and the entitled judgement of belief in a metaphysical god imposes.

That is a different issue. I am replying to somethibg else. No one thinks a logical demonstration conjours god into existence.

Do you mean no one on this forum, or just you? I think Klor is a conjurer, Winter also. Plenty of theists (christian) that I encounter IRL believe that metaphysical argument = existence.