Evidence for God being "a superior being" ?

[Welsh cake]

Welsh cake I read your article about circular arguments and it applies to atheist as well as christians when neither knows what they are talking about. Remember I've stated several times that I'm not a part of this forum to try and get others to believe in God I'm here to learn about God through your disbelief.

No. Atheists haven't used circular reasoning *sigh* let me explain, here's the thing though about stating "we both don't know, therefore God is still real" and other such tired fallacies of arguments from ignorance, whenever debating in public for any given argument (and it's beneficial you pay close attention here) there is an implicit burden of proof on the party making the ontologically positive claim. Atheists (your audience) have made no such claim about its existence or non-existence, most admitingly will state they don't know whether a god might or not might exist therefore no burden can possibly rest on them, so in this particular instance, the burden is squarely fixed on Theists who assert a cosmic creator exists.

Should you, for example, claim the Loch Ness Monster is real, then the burden is on you and since its asymmetrical it will typically be a heavier burden the more extraordinary the claim; it does not rest with your audience who remain skeptical, attempting to ask them "prove she doesn't exist" is called 'shifting the burden of proof', while you maybe justified in your belief or personal experience of her mighty monstrousness, no one else would be until you can demonstrate she is real.

Now granted, whenever making ontological claims to knowledge you have to realise that it unrealistic to expect everyone on the forums to automatically accept the idea "Nessie exists" right off the bat because she's not a conventionally accepted fact like "trees have leaves", now your audience will have their own respective standards of evidence to satisfy, so when you present your epistemic claim of Nessie you'll either have an irrational crowd who'll reject the evidence provided, OR you simply fail to make your case when you can't demonstrate her existence when asked to.

For god or gods claims many of us non-believers (weak atheists) will often response with agnostic statements about what is ultimately knowable and use scientific principles from epistemology to empiricism to help us determine whether your claim is logically sound or not. If the scientific method cannot verify the idea, if the idea does not conflate with reality, or is detectable through observation or by any other means then we cannot possibly examine it, predict, confirm or even falsify it, however this gives your god concept no more ground in the community than werewolves, ghosts, vampires and other fairytales.

God(s) in this respect consequently become unknowable and nothing more. At this stage you should hardly be surprised if other minds are unconvinced by your supernatural claim, its all just speculation from there on end.

Now there are those of us here who not only reject your claims but go further to argue for the non-existence of god or gods (strong atheists). Remember the aforementioned asymmetry in the burden of proof? Well, both sides of the proposition regarding deities will carry a burden here, but it is not an equal one. First of all god(s), like the Loch Ness Monster don't conform to close conventional knowledge like "there are cows on a farm", if you claim a god exists you are seeking to add to our 'pool' or 'body' of knowledge, and possibly simultaneously undermine scientific facts already accepted by the wider community, so either way it's a far greater challenge to prepose something than it is to deny it.

Strong atheists have less of an ontological burden because they're not trying to add or remove facts from our conventional wisdom, "god doesn’t exist", is simply a null hypothesis. Not all claims are equal for starters, and more extraordinary the claim the more extraordinary the evidence must be. Strong atheists have evidence to support the non-existence of gods as processes such as self-replicating life-forms; physics, big bang and cosmology have natural occurrences and forces independent of thought or any intelligence. They can also argue from scientific census that matter and energy have always existed, they can't be created or destroyed, the universe has always existed in some form or other, and therefore it renders the god-created-reality concept as invalid at explaining phenomena or origins of space/time. It is also easier for strong atheists to make syntactically positive ontologically negative claims like "god does not exist, he's an imaginary concept" because our prevailing knowledge already establishes the asymmetry that a supernatural universe-creating deity is outside our conventional understanding of reality and therefore either logically unknowable or impossible to discern whether it is real or not.

You need to realise the unequal burden of proof is unbalanced further by your own claims; it is greatest on you to assert god exists, much less on atheists who assert there is no such thing, and not present on atheists/agnostics who assert nothing and merely are responding to the claim by applying scrutiny to see if it holds up and has any practical meaningful value or explanatory power within our shared reality.

In any case you cannot dismiss there is a burden of proof regarding your god claim, for the default position is disbelief (not always atheism, as you could be arguing for Allah while your audience only accepts Yahweh is the one true god) because if were to accept every single claim that presented itself our own ontology would quickly be rendered useless, our reasoning would become obsolete, facts and fantasy would contradict each other and all scientific inquiry would cease.

The only time you're ever excused from the invocation of the burden of proof is you're your argument takes the worse possible approach - arguing God is outside the realm of logic, because as the author of logic it no longer applies to him so he can make "a square into a circle" for example. When you argue that God is Transcendent AND Immanent, these illogical claims are outside our knowledge or intuition - they are easily dismissed from the get-go as absurd, incoherent and asinine.

I hope you understand your position and mine more clearly now. And for the record, I never once said your sole purpose on this forum was to 'convert' or 'redeem' us or whatever.

1- And I'm trying to explain the purpose. I'm trying to define a goal for love to evolve into, as an absolute. If I called it perfect love or absolute love would it be easier for atheists to swallow? Is it the word God tripping you up?

Not at all, the noun, the word usage is confusing, I see where you're coming from when you state a person's love maybe different from another's because perhaps they are fundamentally different in their personalities and behaviour towards others, but the word "love" already has a meaning and we've established its usage; it is within our cognitive capacities to perceive or express this abstract emotion, so I'd like you to demonstrate to me how they differ so drastically with your god concept, and how we are incapable of also expressing this yet also capable of distinguishing the two aren't the same.

In other words, your dumb argument is dumb and needs work.

3-By MY faith? I would say you're going to die. When you die you'll go wherever you belong, I don't know enough about you to make a further determination. Simply being an atheist doesn't put you in the bowels of hell or whatever your favorite hellfire catch phrase is. If you asking what the tenants of Christianity say will happen to people who know God and refuse him in eternity, then the answer would be an eternity of separation from God.

Then you must appreciate I'm already in a state of separation from God, so what's the difference? If its not being with sky daddy then where I am physically, meta-physically or according to you "spiritually" going to be after biological death if I don't share your core beliefs? I'll rephrase the question if you can't manage: Since your deity concept judges us what is this afterlife place/state he has planned for me and what will I experience there as an atheist?

And for goodness sake don't jump around again and state ''oh, god doesn't send you there, you choose to go there'' because no sane individual chooses an afterlife of eternal suffering for the IPU's sake.

4-Wish I'd own up to what? How could I logically be more moral than the absolute concept I use to improve my own personal morality, doesn't make sense. If you want me to admit I'm more moral than the concept you have of God, I could safely bet that I am. As far as God giving a shit about you, you're not reading the same book I am then. When Jesus came he went to the poor, the outcast, the sinners, the unbelievers, the lepers, the homeless. Jesus didn't come to save the rich, or the white, or the educated, he came to save us all. [/off soapbox]

Just which version of the Bible are we referring to exactly? You speak of Jesus' superior nature, the same Jesus who is judge in Matthew 25:31 who will someday separate the sheep from the goats, needless to say if this were remotely true I'd probably wind up on his left hand only for him to say "Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels". I'm really feeling the "God's love" here; based on the Biblical account he doesn't particularly sound like a very compassionate man/demi god to me Tack. Your interpretation of him and his sky daddy sounds an awful lot similar to some kind of Universalist edit, not saying you are one, but it is all rather inaccurate from what scriptures depict happens.

Sorry the responses have been a little delayed or emotional I've had strep and am quite grumpy from not eating for 3 days..

What's up friend? Are you fasting or something?