I am an orthodox Christian, ask me a question!

[Ace Otana]

The first thing I really noticed about religion is that god is always beyond detection and empirical evidence.

God is supposed to be all powerful and yet can't even show up. Theists make all kinds of excuses to hide the real reason god is outside our detection and science. Some theists have even said god is outside space and time. So why should I believe this bullshit?

They have to put god way outside our scientific range or god would be torn to shreds.

God used to be the moon, sun and stars until science was able to study them all. Now god is somehow outside of sight and all known detection methods. Can't see him, can't hear him and can't find any empirical evidence of him. What a suprise.

That has to be the biggest reason I doubt all they say. I'm still waiting for evidence.
And jon, god is a made up character and is no differant from any other. God is no more likely than santa, easter bunny or jad. He is just an unprovable character like so many others.

[Jon Paul]

The first thing I really noticed about religion is that god is always beyond detection and empirical evidence.

He is not beyond detection and empirical evidence. I have explicitly said that he is within the realm of empirical and rational demonstration.


Evidence does not mean "direct detection". Evidence means something that testifies to and makes evident the truth of a thing. And there are such things in the case of God. There are footprints. Just like my metaphor, of a scenario where you see footprints in the snow of an animal, which is outside the reach of direct observation, but there are still things that testify to and makes evident the presence of that animal. There is empirical evidence, after the effect, a posteriori, like there is with God.

God is supposed to be all powerful and yet can't even show up. Theists make all kinds of excuses to hide the real reason god is outside our detection and science. Some theists have even said god is outside space and time. So why should I believe this bullshit?

All theists, if they are actually talking about the transcendent God, would say God is outside time and space. Otherwise he would not transcend the spatiotemporal universe, and would be a part of this universe, and not God.

Why you should believe it? On the grounds I have already given. You can keep calling it bullshit without providing any rational reasons for your failure to accept my evidence.

You are no better than an ignorant evangelical who has nothing else to say about evolution except for "Bullshit! Why should I believe this bullshit? My life is fine without it!"

That's exactly what you've said, and I can only guess this sort of thinking is prevalent in America, since both atheists and evangelicals employ it.

They have to put god way outside our scientific range or god would be torn to shreds.

I have already refuted this. You are just repeating your statements, like an evangelical protestant repeating that "evolution is from Satan".

The scientific method a priori excludes God as outside it's scope of investigation. This is called methodological naturalism, a methodological principle which limits the scope of scientific disciplines to investigation of the natural world and natural causes.

This scientific principle is relatively recent, more recent than the hypothesis of God. In other words, a transcendent, supranatural God as a hypothesis existed before the methodological naturalism of modern science was even formulated as a principle. So to say that God excludes science is wrong. It is modern science that excludes God, not as a possibility, but as outside of it's scope of investigation.

If you then ask for scientific evidence according to the principles of the scientific method (naturalism) for Gods existence, you are question-begging, for science a priori excludes the investigation of any proposition which involves an object that transcends the natural world, as outside it's scope.

That is the same as asking for evidence of God, with the small addition that the evidence is only valid so long as it conforms to the a priori principle that God does not exist and cannot possibly exist. It is a self-contradiction, for there can be no evidence that proves that God exists, if that evidence has to conform to the a priori exclusion of Gods existence as even a possibility.

It is simply question begging.

What you can do is demand evidence in the classical sense of science as "rational and empirical inquiry and investigation", so long as you don't make the presupposition of naturalism which a priori excludes the investigation of propositions that transcend the natural world, such as Gods existence. And that's exactly the kind of evidence I have given with my two arguments.

God used to be the moon, sun and stars until science was able to study them all. Now god is somehow outside of sight and all known detection methods. Can't see him, can't hear him and can't find any empirical evidence of him. What a suprise.

The God of the Bible was never the moon, sun or stars.

What I mean with the word God is not the moon, sun or stars. This is simply a straw man, because you are addressing an idea which is not mine, and which was never Christian or Israelitic. It has always been a transcendent God, the creator of the Sun, moon and stars.

That has to be the biggest reason I doubt all they say. I'm still waiting for evidence.
And jon, god is a made up character and is no differant from any other. God is no more likely than santa, easter bunny or jad. He is just an unprovable character like so many others.

Again, you are repeating your incredibly stupid straw men.

What I mean with God is a transcendent being, wholly other to the universe. All theists, if they are actually talking about the transcendent God, would say God is outside time and space. Otherwise he would not transcend the spatiotemporal universe, and would be a part of this universe, and not be God. The easter bunny does not transcend matter, time, and space. It is composed of it and dwells within it. Meaning that it is part of the universe, which excludes the possibility that it transcends the universe, and it's merely corporeal nature excludes the possibility that it is God.

I have already answered these absurd straw man objections in several posts.

If I am to consider god a possibility I must do the same with all superstitious beings and thought up characters. God is no differant from santa, easter bunny and I think you know the rest. They are all on the same level until evidence seperates imagination from reality. Did god create everything or he never actually existed. Did santa do it? Did Jad do it?

What you call God is irrelevant.

God is called God in English, Allah in Arabic, Elohim in Hebrew, etc.

What is relevant is what you predicate of God.

If you predicate materiality, spatiality and temporality to to the creator of the universe, which you inherently do if you say the easter bunny is the creator of the universe, then you are in fact contradicting yourself, because your are predicating constituents of the spatiotemporal, material universe to the creator who either transcends all those constituents or does not, and is therefore not the creator but a part of the universe itself, like the easter bunny or the FSM or Santa Claus.

All names and purposes that can be ultered for a being that is very improbable.

As Dawkins says, in Climbing Mount Improbable, improbability does not preclude actuality (as Arcanus pointed out). But my claim of God has nothing even to do with probability, as probability is merely the likelihood from our limited knowledge of the totality of the universe, of a thing to take place and become actual within the already-existing universe.

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But what makes you think that we are miserable? Did you know there is a third option when it comes to religion? There is always a good and bad side in religion's view but there is a third path and that is no religion at all. Have nothing to do with it.

As atheists we don't believe in souls, hell, heaven or god. So no worries. Nothing to fear.

I am quite aware of that. I was only clarifying Christian viewpoints.

You changed your signature.

"Gods have to be so far out of reach from science and any methods of detection because they are easily killed off by it. Strange how god disapears when science comes walking by."

I will repeat what I've already said to Minimalist.

It's not God whose outside the reach of modern science. It's modern science which a priori excludes God from it's scope of investigation, because the scientific method defines it's aim as "the investigation of the natural world". And so, modern science a priori excludes anything which transcends the natural world as within the scope if it's investigation.

God is certainly within the reach of the classical scope and aim of science as "rational and empirical investigation".

That it is beyond direct empirical observation doesn't mean there cannot be indirect empirical evidence and traces of God. Like many other things, for instance, other consciousnesses and minds. We can only observe the mechanisms associated with them, not directly observe the consciousness/mind itself.

Or, if you see a footprint on the ground and no one around, you can presume that someone has been around even though they are beyond direct observation, that footprint (or a fingerprint) still serves as empirical evidence after the effect. This footprint metaphor describes how we can know God through empirical a posteriori knowledge of the observed universe and its nature, as done in my argument.

It's not beyond empirical and rational test. If I believed that, I wouldn't make an argument for Gods existence based on empirical knowledge of the universe. The reason it is beyond scientific test is not because it's outside direct empirical observation (many things in science are, and yet they are attested to by empirical evidence after the effect), it is because the scientific method a priori excludes anything outside of the natural world as within the scope of it's investigation. It is the philosophical presupposition of naturalism; methodological naturalism.

Oops, mistake number 2!
Whatever you call your imaginary friend does not matter in anyway. A name is just a name.
I could reverse your argument - "I only call easter bunny exactly what my argument concludes."
"But the easter bunny of my theology is not an easter bunny of arbitrary predication. It's an easter bunny who is approached gradually, and not called easter bunny until the transcendent existence is properly defined and it's necessity explained."

No matter what the purpose of the claim of a being and its name, all made up characters are the same. There are no differances between santa to easter bunny, FSM, pink uniforns or gods. God is no more special or more likely than any of these made up characters. Neither of them can be disproved. The only differances are their names and purposes.

No. Their difference is that the easter bunny and the flying spaghetti monster are worldly, material, spatial and temporal and contingent objects, whereas the transcendent Other who I call God is immaterial, nonspatial, nontemporal and self subsistent rather than contingent.

Your easter bunny and FSM simply do not live up to the criteria of transcendence.

But we already know about animals and their footprints. God doesn't leave any.

God is not an animal, like a car is not a brush, and a mind is not a rock. It was a metaphor. And the point was exactly that God does, metaphorically speaking, leave "footprints".

What makes you think god created everything?

I have provided many answers to this question and elaborated on them in countless posts now. I have provided two kinds of arguments, one is the epistemological argument, which I have already spent hours elaborating on, notably on page 16. But what is relevant to the metaphor of the footprint of an animal, is the a posteriori argument. I have provided an a posteriori argument that bases it self on the reality of the universe and it's nature, and thus utillises a "footprint"-approach (a posteriori / after the effect) by taking it's premise in what is known to be actual before coming to the conclusion of what explains it. That is opposed to, for instance, the ontological argument, which is an a priori argument (before the effect).

Just because the univurse exists doens't automaticly mean god did it. Not everything needs a designer or creater. Evolution is a process that requires no outside intelligance. Planets, solar systems and galaxes can form on their own.

Of course, but all those things already presuppose the existence of reality and the universe.

How did god come into existance? How did he create energy?

How did God come into existence?

The question asks for temporal account for the ontogenesis of a nontemporal being whose ontogenesis is accordingly nontemporal. The question is, in other words a fallacy, because it applies a standard to something to which that standard in and of the nature of the thing does not apply. It's like asking "What exists outside of the totality of all existence?". The question is meaningless because it contradicts itself by positing existence outside of "the totality of all existence", a self-referential self-contradiction. Like the question of "When/how did God come into existence?" is positing temporal existence in "God", a word which implies, by definition, a nontemporal being.

How did he create energy?

Energeia (greek) is the word that in Latin is translated into actus. The conception of God as actus purus means that God, in his essence is pure energeia. In other words, any energy in the universe is the actualising (or energizing, in the Greek) principle of God at work. So he created the universe out of nothing, but the power (energy) to do so lies in his own nature.

What makes you so sure he exists and done what you think he did. I don't believe in this fairytale of yours. It's too simplistic, it lacks details and it lacks evidence.

There are many details in it, but I did not come here to pour out details, but rather to sketch a general picture of some reasonable grounds on which to accept Gods existence.

Even if there was a god, which god and why? Also why should I believe it?

The God that my argument establishes. If you are asking what attributes he has, then the answer is the attributes emanating from our understanding of God as transcendent, that the argument necessitates (omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence, maximal perfection, immutability, eternality/nontemporality, immateriality, nonspatiality, etc).

When I look around I see formation not creation. Things can form on their own.

Formation and creation are not contradictions. In fact, some of the words used for "creation" in Hebrew and Greek in the Bible also mean to "form". But it's also true that even when things in our world apparently form on their own, they never really form own their own independently of the rest of the physical universe. It's rather an interplay of forces that already have been formed and already have received their existence which continues the cycle and procession of new formations.

In other words he made everything, I cannot detect him in any form. That makes it very hard to believe in such a thing. No evidence and no detection possibilities. I'm being told that there is an invisible flying man in the sky that cannot be found but is there somehow. Sorry if I seem skeptical but I don't believe that for a moment.

Well, no, that is not what you are being told.

Evidence does not mean "direct detection". Evidence means something that testifies to and makes evident the truth of a thing. And there are such things in the case of God. There are footprints. Just like my metaphor, of a scenario where you see footprints in the snow of an animal, which is outside the reach of direct observation, but there are still things that testify to and makes evident the presence of that animal.

This is why I reject religion. I don't think this arguement is going to shift anything soon so I guess we might as well call this one a agree to disagree.

But you have not refuted my arguments. You have just repeated a typical atheist straw man, and repeated the sentence "evidence of God is impossible", because direct observation is. Though I certainly disagree. Evidence does not mean direct observation.

Ace, you signature really reveals your naive scientific realism, something that is not at all implied by the principles of the scientific method.

"God does not exist until I see evidence (scientific evidence) that says otherwise."

Of course, the problem is that the question of Gods existence is outside the boundary of scientific method and investigation, just like the question of whether reality exists.

The naive evidential-subjective realism is also laughable. Whether you see and accept evidence or not, is not the same as whether there is evidence or not, or whether God does exist or not. If that was so, then a caveman thousands of years ago would be equally entitled to repeat your arbitrary demand that, if he does not see and accept evidence for this or that or not, then surely that thing does not exist. And then we are commiting a fallacy we can right call subjective evidential realism.

Further, what you define as "scientific" evidence does not embody all kinds of evidence or knowledge there is; it was never meant to do so, either. The scientific method was never meant to be an epistemic pantheon covering all kinds of knowledge and evidence. It was meant to be a method to investigate the natural world and reality by developing theories on empirical grounds to explain and predict various empirical facts. But there are many kinds of knowledge which are not scientific; which are not the result of a scientific investigation, and which are not supposed to make predictions or explanations of other empirical epistemes, such as should scientific knowledge. The scientific method has developed strictly as a matter of the research of various natural causes in the pursuit of understanding of empirical data. So the scientific method does not itself cover all kinds of knowledge. And nor should it.

Your mind does not exist until I see scientific evidence that says otherwise. The problem is, that whether anything exists outside of your mind, or whether reality exists at all, is not covered by the scientific method, but is one of the presuppositions (like the scientific method itself) which is needed for rational integrity to make reasonable judgements in accordance with empirical reality. Even more so, the epistemological argument establishes God to be such a presupposition, necessary for rational integrity and coherence.

[Ace Otana]

So many words all to say so little. Your evidence is not good enough. Not in a long shot.
God is just a character like any other thought up character. I mentioned that in the past gods used to be suns, moons ect. ect because as science advances god vanishes. Being beyond direct empirical evidence is translation to me as useless evidence.

[Jon Paul]

So many words all to say so little. Your evidence is not good enough. Not in a long shot.

You have done nothing to refute it. You have simply repeated this sentence, like an american evangelical repeats that "I don't accept the evidence for evolution. Not good enough. Not by a long shot".

God is just a character like any other thought up character. I mentioned that in the past gods used to be suns, moons ect. ect

In which past? The very first part of the Bible, Genesis, says that God created the sun, moon and stars, and this is a very old belief system, which has always stated that God is transcendent.

Besides, what you are doing is simply a straw man, because you are addressing a claim which is not mine, to distract attention from my actual argument and suspend judgement.

because as science advances god vanishes.

Science, at least modern science, doesn't even deal with the proposition of Gods existence. It excludes it a priori as outside it's own scope of investigation, because it only investigates the natural world and natural causes, and so it has no ambition of testing the proposition of God.

Being beyond direct empirical evidence is translation to me as useless evidence.

So if you see a footprint in the snow, and there is no animal, or a fingerprint on a gun, and no person, you conclude that this is useless evidence, because the agent which put it there (the animal or person) is outside of direct observation?

Of course you don't. Much empirical evidence in science is not based on direct observation, but to the contrary, empirical obsevation of facts after the effect, which testify and make evident the truth of a phenomenon that caused this "trace" of it (the footprint, the finger print, or whatever it might be).

[Minimalist]

OK, we get it.

You believe in fairy tales and we don't. What's next?

[Jon Paul]

OK, we get it.

You believe in fairy tales and we don't. What's next?

I believe in rational argumentation, and you believe in calling names to avoid accepting my arguments.

[Ace Otana]

OK, we get it.

You believe in fairy tales and we don't. What's next?

So true. Obviously he noticed something we heven't and is clearly smarter.

Better to simply reject the claim.

[Jon Paul]

So true. Obviously he noticed something we heven't and is clearly smarter.

Better to simply reject the claim.

Ace, ace, ace. Of course. When someone throws a meaningless name-calling at me, you jump right on the wagon, because you are intellectually bankrupt.

[Ace Otana]

So true. Obviously he noticed something we heven't and is clearly smarter.

Better to simply reject the claim.

Ace, ace, ace. Of course. When someone throws a meaningless name-calling at me, you jump right on the wagon, because you are intellectually bankrupt.

You need to try better than that. I've had far worse.
Belief in a flying invisible man is a step closer to insanity.

[Jon Paul]

You need to try better than that. I've had far worse.
Belief in a flying invisible man is a step closer to insanity.

True, and I'm glad I don't believe in such a "flying invisible man", which is yet another straw man that doesn't address my actual belief or argument.

Just another example of your intellectual bankruptcy. Appealing to fallacious tactics by attacking viewpoint X, instead of my actual viewpoint Y, and claiming to thereby debunk viewpoint Y, even though you have only attacked a caricature of your own imagination.