Q: do you, Christian, claim that God exists, rather than you believe that he exists?

[Whateverist]

The error in this reasoning is not unique to you, but a great many atheists I have dialogued with commit this error. It is called a "category mistake". You essentially are asking for non-transcendant, empirical, scientifically verifiable, conrete, material evidence for a transcendant, immaterial, incorporeal being that MAY exist beyond the scope of scientific observation and measurement.

Fixed that for you. Just because you create a category for things transcendent, immaterial and incorporeal doesn't mean that there must actually be anything in that category. What reason do you have to think there are?

An honest Christian will admit that they believe in God because they feel His presence and it is that presence they address in prayer. Christians feel this Gods approval and disapproval. That is why so many have a hard time imaging how an atheist can even have a conscience. Christians don't test to see if this sense of God is real and it would seem abhorrent to do so. This is where faith comes in.

Well and good. I can allow that this is common and sound enough manner for a human being to experience their consciousness. It is an ageless pattern to be sure. What I cannot allow is the jump to the bible.

There is no justification for the belief that the bible contains the literal history of this God you experience. People have experienced the immediate presence of gods or God for a very long time alright, but have done so while cleaving to a vast variety of narrative stories concerning the nature of those gods. Apparently having a culturally agreed upon narrative to inform ones direct experience of the God's presence is indeed the norm. But it is rather primitive to go on believing that only the bible is illuminating and that all others must surely be in darkness.

You can never justify the claim that only your cultural narrative is true. If you can't accept that every other God narrative in which people believe is as justifiable as your own, then you simply refuse to become fully modern and take your place as a citizen of the world.

[shep]

For those who voted that a god(s) exist empircally, what empirical evidence do you have? Can you provide it?

[discipulus]

Um, the vast majority of people throughout history (including you) have been atheists -- at least with respect to gods they didn't worship.

If that is how you understand the term "atheism" then more power to you. That is not how I use the term. I use the term in the sense that philosophers use it.

I want to rephrase what I wrote earlier, so that if in any way I was unclear, you will understand:

If the vast majority of people throughout history had not been theists, I would not just dismiss this fact. I would ask myself why and then set out to investigate their arguments and reasonings for their views.

No need to look far for the reasons. What are your reasons for not believing in these other gods? And don't quote your Bible. That's just a form of special pleading.

That will not be hard.

I do not believe in Allah or Zeus or any other god because I have no good reasons to believe in them.

You mean the Christian god, that "transcendent, immaterial, incorporeal being that exists beyond the scope of scientific observation and measurement," whose followers believe that he has intervened repeatedly in the material world?

Yes, that is the One.

Yes, confirmable evidence would be nice.

What is confirmable evidence? Do you have something specific in mind?

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So you are not a human.

What are you then?

None of us are human. But to express what we truly are, even through the mundane and limited expressions of written English, would cause your mind to snap, if not outright kill you. We are honest beings, but not needlessly cruel; you may keep your limited and fragile life, if some obfuscation is all that is required of us.

Suffice it to say that you have stumbled onto a collective of varied entities representing many different factions. The swirling patterns of our alliances and conflicts have little to do with Earth, though as a necessary proviso of our existence, they do protrude into your reality on occasion, as they are now.

Tremble, mortal. For you are far beyond your ken, now.

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I knew it!

[fr0d0]

We've been down this road many times. So far no theist has made a convincing demonstration that the mere existence of the universe is evidence for anything but its mere existence.

Given God the creator, creation is all the evidence we need of his intervention. Nothing further needs to be said or done. That statement is complete.

Further proof of anything about anything is redundant conjecture.

[Angrboda]

We've been down this road many times. So far no theist has made a convincing demonstration that the mere existence of the universe is evidence for anything but its mere existence.

Given God the creator, creation is all the evidence we need of his intervention. Nothing further needs to be said or done. That statement is complete.

Further proof of anything about anything is redundant conjecture.

A swing and a miss!

[fr0d0]

An honest Christian will admit that they believe in God because they feel His presence and it is that presence they address in prayer. Christians feel this Gods approval and disapproval. That is why so many have a hard time imaging how an atheist can even have a conscience. Christians don't test to see if this sense of God is real and it would seem abhorrent to do so. This is where faith comes in.

I don't agree with this. I believe in God because I am rationally convinced of it. Any subsequent feeling serves as an anecdotal confirmation.

I don't "feel" approval or disapproval, I rationalise it, especially, almost exclusively against biblical precedent. I acknowledge many and varied human expression outside of the bible to be consistent with it.

An atheist or any human conscience is governed by its nature as defined biblically. The biblical worldview sets that out. I don't deny that this could be replicated in other models, personal or collective.

Faith is the model that supports the rational structure of belief. It's the opposite of a get out clause.

A swing and a miss!

A miss swinging

[discipulus]

It is the short version of his position, however; you can't claim to respect science while still rejecting its conclusions based on personal preference.

He does not reject science, but rather, he, and I as well, reject some of the conclusions of SCIENTISTS.

Big difference. Scientists are men and women just like you and I and as such are fallible. Scientist's conclusions have been flat wrong on several occasions in the past. You know it, I know it. It is these wrong conclusions we reject, not the scientific method.

No, I actually haven't; the argument from popularity is still in effect, as "many people accepted this," is a shaky ground to even entertain the possibility that such a thing is true.

He did not say that the supernatural existed because many intelligent people believed in the supernatural. So he has not committed the fallacy you say he has.

you should be evaluating the positions of every claim that you come across, not merely the popular ones. That's just due diligence.

That is your opinion.

If I sit down and say to myself: "I want to get to the bottom of these religious claims and to start with, I will examine the claims of the most popular religion i.e. Christianity first, and then find through investigation that Christianity is in fact true, then my pursuit is finished. I need not search or evaluate any other claim. For I have what I set out to find, the truth. The crux of the matter is this: Is Christianity true? If it is then it necessarily follows that all other religions that contradict Christianity's central truth claims are false. This is simple logic, nothing too difficult.

Also, what you're talking about there is reason and evidence, so to disregard the determinations of science- which is made of reason and evidence- in favor of the supernatural merely because it was widely believed is fallacious reasoning.

I love science. I am enthralled by what science has given us in the way of knowledge of the material world we live in. I also happen to believe science has its limits. When I have a question outside the realm of science, I take up other disciplines and learn even more. I am not an empiricist and I hope you are not either!

Actually, you're right there, I think I misread Lek's post a little. Sorry about that, Lek.

No worries!

Look, I'm so tired of hearing this line of crap. You don't get to put your god beyond the reach of any form of testability or detectability and then complain when I say that nobody has justified their magic claims over him. Just saying "oh, there can be no evidence for miracles or god," doesn't suddenly mean that you're all absolved of the burden of proof. What it means is that you have formulated a position that can never be rationally justified, and therefore should not be believed.

I have yet to complain about anything here. Nor do I put God beyond the reach of any form of testability or detectability. It is the methodological naturalist/empiricist/materialist that puts God beyond their reach, for they eliminate the possibility of His existence before they even begin their investigation!!!!!!

You sure did state that it's self refuting.

Of course, when you did so you failed to take into account that we can compare the kinds of things we'd have to believe if we removed this expectation of at least some empirical support, versus those things we would believe if we retained it. What you'll find is that the former position, where you'd have to consistently lower your standards of evidence in order to accept things without empirical backing, leads to the acceptance of mutually exclusive, contradictory positions, as suddenly you'd have to accept all religious claims, not just your own.

Anyway you slice it, empiricism is self-refuting and too limiting a theory of knowledge.

We accept a truth claim as being true if and only if it actually corresponds to an actual state of affairs in the world (correspondence theory). There are several ways we can come to know a truth claim is true. It simply does not follow that since empiricism is untenable that therefore we must accept all religious truth claims as true. That is a non-sequitur.

If Christ died for our sins and rose on the third day, then Islam is false as well as every other religion that denies the divinity of Christ. Christ could not have both died and not have died, it is either or. To maintain otherwise would be to violate one of the laws of classical logic. In this way it is shown that WE CAN distinguish between contradicting religious truth claims.

Meanwhile, no such logical inconsistencies exist within a position that accepts empirical evidence alone, which is evidence enough, I would say, that empiricism works. Since the other position in this binary leads to contradictions, it cannot function. This is support in favor of the statement ""We should only take a proposition to be true if it can be scientifically proven."

Now, I'm not a strict empiricist in the sense that I'd need complete scientific proof, because that's a useless concept. I would, however, require evidence that leads to the proposition under consideration.

I am glad you are not an empiricist, but you still demand empirical proof which, if you are a naturalist, you deny even exists a priori!

Are you a naturalist?

Which is a perfect way to cover up a lie! "Oh, I could tell you the truth, but you wouldn't believe it. Oh, you just won't accept my evidence because you don't want it to be true!" Simply a wonderful way to avoid considering the prospect that maybe your evidence isn't as convincing as you think, merely by reinterpreting everyone's motives so that they just hate your evidence. It's not you, there's something wrong with them!

I am very convinced. Other brilliant minds have also been convinced by certain lines of evidence for the existence of God. Anthony Flew, the once outspoken atheist turned theist comes to mind.

My point remains, I cannot furnish any evidence that cannot be explained away by them that are unwilling to accept it.

[Bad Writer]

We've been down this road many times. So far no theist has made a convincing demonstration that the mere existence of the universe is evidence for anything but its mere existence.

Given God the creator, creation is all the evidence we need of his intervention. Nothing further needs to be said or done. That statement is complete.

Further proof of anything about anything is redundant conjecture.

I skipped right to the end of this thread, but I don't need to read what has transpired thus far in order to say that this is pretty laughable, frods. God the Creator is not a given. If it was a given, then everyone would know. The Bible would have been sitting on a shelf in Adam and Eve's library without anyone ever having to write it first.

That's not how it went down. Men had to write to the Bible, and write it they did. This is because nothing was a given...they couldn't figure anything out, so they felt they had to make something up. So sue me if a giant, angry spirit named Yahweh actually spoke to them in the desert, but, for now, there is no reason to believe that that's actually what happened.

Now, if Yahweh isn't your god frodo, then forgive me for being so presumptuous. Saying that the universe was created by your god is a given is akin to saying that men have always known that water consists of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. We know this isn't true because later on down the road in the history of humanity is when we finally discovered the existence of molecules, and, thus, atoms.

If we someday discover that the universe was indeed sparked into existence by a creator god, then whoop-dee-doo. Until then, we need to find that irrefutable evidence.

[fr0d0]

You make a huge gaff by assuming I said more than I did bws.

No one said it was a given. It was asked what proof there was of God's intervention. The question was predicate on God. Assuming God, and knowing God to be attributed as creator, creation is precisely that evidence. Do you see?

[Bad Writer]

"Given God the creator..." That's what you said, is it not?

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Forgive me for thinking anything else was implied when this blanket statement was used.