the case against the case against god

[chris(tnt)rhol]

Hello all. First time on this forum, would love to discuss atheism.

Has anyone on this forum given any thought as to the kind of evidence which would convince you that god exists?

[Alex K]

No, atheists don't think about their position. That's why they usually convert instantly if you tell them the news about Jesus.

Kidding, of course, we've had this discussion many times, the search function here just doesn't find it for me right now.
But let me answer you with an important question: can you please define what you mean by God? In the generality you ask the question
above, it is completely meaningless unless you want the atheists do that work for you and define for you both the notion of God and
the necessary evidence. What one tends to end up with then is many different opinions using different definitions of the word talking past
each other, and that's a waste of time.

So, again, define more secifically what you mean by God (Properties etc.), try to be as precise as possible.

[TubbyTubby]

How about showing up once in a while, it has been a couple of thousand years after all.

If that's too tricky then I suppose make something happen that defies natural laws. Perhaps stopping the earths rotation for a few hours or parting an ocean would be good enough for me.

Certainly none of this walking on water or turning water into wine bollocks, I've already seen Dynamo do that stuff.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Hello all. First time on this forum, would love to discuss atheism.

Has anyone on this forum given any thought as to the kind of evidence which would convince you that god exists?

Absolutely. An unambiguous miracle. An appearance by a god. Prayers answered at a higher rate than chance. A list of rules for good living that human beings couldn't have worked out for themselves.

In fact, I'm willing to entertain ANY evidence for the existence of gods. That being said, personal testimonials, faith, goddidit, and Pascal's Idiotic Wager don't qualify as evidence.

Welcome aboard.

Boru

[Cyberman]

Basically, I'll consider anything that actually warrants the conclusion that any god/s exist at all. What I'm not going to do is leap instantly to the least plausible conclusion while there are far more rational cards on the table, à la the Holmesian Maxim tempered with Occam"s Razor.

[Cato]

It seems to me that an omnipotent and omniscient being would have no problem figuring this out. So, even if god were real I'm not in the business of worshiping incompetent dolts.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Has anyone on this forum given any thought as to the kind of evidence which would convince you that god exists?

Something other than nothing at all?

Welcome. Glad this is your first time on the forum as if it wasn't I'd have to assume this account is a sock and then ban you.

And then I would have a sad

[ManMachine]

Hello all. First time on this forum, would love to discuss atheism.

Has anyone on this forum given any thought as to the kind of evidence which would convince you that god exists?

What a start... Excellent question! A Socratic approach to atheism, I like your style.

For me (and I mentioned this in other posts) this cuts to the heart of systems of belief, what level of evidence does it take to convince us that a presented fact is a truth. This is, of course, an idiosyncratic issue, each of us demand different levels of proof according to our own internal values.

For me, there is never enough proof to provide certainty in anything, in a sense everything we experience is a system of belief in some way. I may believe in gravity as a force as I watch the hammer fall to the ground but Einstein tells me that this is only my relative perception of distortions in spacetime, and that gravity is no more a force than centrifugal force is - because it is actually an artefact cause by conservation of momentum (inertia) and direction.

What tends to be real to me and offers sufficient evidence to be a 'truth' is that which I can reason. I cannot reason a god, it makes no sense to me. I also hold scientific theory to be a system of belief, but it is a system of belief I can reason with.

Scientific theory is only prediction, it's truth is always historical, we predict - it happens - we claim the truth of the prediction. It's a retroaction. And as the cliché goes (and it's a cliché for a reason), we all have 20/20 hindsight, it's a mistake many, many people make and take as absolute proof of the 'truth' of science,

Letting go of the belief in the absolute 'truth' of scientific theory in favour of accepting it as a system of belief will be, IMO, the next great human breakthrough. Not just because of my opinion on the matter but because science itself is beginning to question if we have run into the limits of what we can understand.

To directly answer your question ... enough evidence to enable me to reason there was a god on my own terms, which so far, has not happened.

MM

[robvalue]

Hiya welcome

Its a difficult question, because it's such an outrageous claim that the evidence would have to be spectacular.

And the most important thing is defining the claim, as has been noted.

If it's a claim like the Christian God as commonly described (omni everything) then there is no evidence that would suffice. It's not consistent either with itself or reality. You'd have to somehow show how contradictions are possible in reality and logic doesn't work like we think it does. But then you're kind of scuppered if you want to just use any standard kind of evidence to state your case as you threw away all your tools. (Stuff like wave/particle duality is not a contradiction, it's a demonstration of our limited understanding of what we are observing.)

If it's just a vague claim about some powerful something or other, but not with unlimited powers, then just some standard testable evidence would be fine.

It's the default sceptical position to not believe anything without a good reason. So far no good reasons have been put forward. It's all logical fallacies, unsupported assertions, deception and emotional manipulation. I've yet to see anything that doesn't fall into one of those categories. I defer to my personal gods, Matt and Don. Skip to 9:30 if you want to get the low-down of how to tear apologist arguments apart, and why I don't give current religious claims any credence:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng2VFfb-4gA

[Tonus]

Has anyone on this forum given any thought as to the kind of evidence which would convince you that god exists?

Before I became an atheist, the answer to that question turned out to be "surprisingly little," seeing as I had accepted the existence of god uncritically from childhood and simply assumed it to be the case. Confirmation bias took care of the rest. It's when I began to try to make a much stronger case for his existence that I realized two things: one, the evidence was sorely lacking and what little did exist was entirely self-serving. Two, it made no sense for the god that I was worshiping to require any level of detective work to find: his own sacred book explained that he was as hands-on as one could imagine.

The evidence that would convince me that god exists... is god. The explanations for his convenient disappearance are unconvincing, especially in light of the way every other religion seems to have had its very active god suddenly pull a Greta Garbo a few centuries before it would have been possible to get a fairly reliable record of his words or actions. Almost as if humanity had finally decided that it'd had enough of gods and relegated nearly all of them to storybooks.

Call me when god shows up. Not when he draws the virgin Mary on a window using grime and dust, or when he shapes a cloud into something almost resembling an angel, or when you make a decision that you swear must have been guided by some unseen hand, or whatever else it is that serves as sufficient evidence to convince 99% of the people who believe in a god that they have zero actual evidence for.