Can You Technically Disprove the God of the Bible?

[Lek]

Okay.  You think I'm using bad reasoning.  Do you believe that your wife, family or friends love you?  If so, how do you determine whether they love you, or if they are just pretending to do so?

Why do you think that a tu coque fallacy presents a cogent response to what I said? Even if you're right and you manage to herd me down the garden path you're trying to set up, why do you think the fact that I believe something completely unrelated based on bad reasons in any way improves your reasons for believing in god?

By the way, even your completely irrelevant response is a bad example, as we can provide physical evidence of brain states consistent with the emotion of love. I don't need faith to believe that, and two wrongs do not make a right, for the eighty thousandth time.

What I'm trying to show is that you accept and believe in things that have the same type of evidence for going for them--based on experience.

[Jericho]

But the 'evidence' we inherently have for people loving us is based on actual, person-to-person experience and exposure. Trying to use that evidence for God is useless, as he is not a physical entity and whose existence is questioned by many.

[Lek]

Sure, but so are the Iliad and the Odyssey, not to mention the Koran and the sacred books of Hindus, Buddhists, etc.  Only a fool, though, takes such books at face value.  Such books are a very low grade of evidence, so you are going to need something else to make your beliefs even close to reasonable.

The bible is far superior to any other "holy book.  It consists of a series of books written over many centuries, by numerous authors from different time periods, which carry on the message of the coming messiah.  Jesus fulfilled the prophecies.  The Koran all hangs on the testimony of one man.  Hindus' writings are so fractured as to be incohesive.  They just keep creating more and more gods.

I could take a philosophical approach, and ask you to prove that things cannot create something out of nothing, but I will set that bit aside for the moment.

That wouldn't be scientific.

In order for your argument to have any traction, you need to prove that the universe has not always existed.  If the universe has always existed, then not only does it not need a creator, it cannot have one.

If you mention the Big Bang in connection with this, that isn't going to get you what you need for this.  Right now, scientists tell us that the universe is expanding.  It is possible that the universe will continue to expand forever.  Another possibility, though, is that eventually gravity will slow everything down, and pull everything back together.  If that happens, then things will be going at tremendous speed when they eventually collide, causing a very big bang.  Perhaps that is what has happened in the past, and has been going on over and over again forever.  For you to make use of the Big Bang as evidence, you will have to prove that that is not the case, and I defy you to do that to the satisfaction of physicists who study such things.

Natural law doesn't allow for something to come from nothing.  There is also no way for science or mathematics to prove that the universe always existed.  You must step outside of your scientific box in order to contemplate that abstract idea.  You must use a different type of reasoning to come to the conclusion that what exists in the phyhscal world always existed and never had a beginning, which is what theists do.

No, it shows no such thing.  There could easily be nothing outside the universe.  You will have to come up with actual evidence that something exists outside of the universe for your story to be reasonable to believe.

Can natural laws account for the universe to expand into something that doesn't exist?  

Your feelings about Christianity are the same as many Muslims report about their feelings about Islam.  Your feelings are no better evidence than their feelings.  And since you both cannot be right, this means that your feelings prove absolutely nothing at all.

If you had been raised a Muslim, right now you would very likely be regarding your feelings as proof that Islam is true.  Or if you had been raised a Hindu, you would probably be regarding your feelings as proof that Hinduism is true.

Basically, what you are telling us is worthless as evidence.  You only feel it is valuable because you have largely ignored the fact that people of other religions feel precisely the same way about their religions.

If the evidence is truthful and leads someone to discover God, then it is very worthwhile evidence.

Sorry.  I don't know what happened with the formatting on this one.  I went back to edit and lost some markers and it's too long to mess with.

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But the 'evidence' we inherently have for people loving us is based on actual, person-to-person experience and exposure.  Trying to use that evidence for God is useless, as he is not a physical entity and whose existence is questioned by many.

How about the God-to-person experience?  If you can experience love from someone, why can't I experience love from God?  We're both having an experience that only we can verify.

[Esquilax]

What I'm trying to show is that you accept and believe in things that have the same type of evidence for going for them--based on experience.

The difference is that I actually have the experience; none of the things you listed point to any god, let alone the specifically christian one you believe in. Merely looking at reality, asserting by fiat that it's a creation, and then pointing at all the mysteries we have about how it came about and asserting further, based on no information, that they are impossible sans god, does not mean you have experiential evidence of god. It means you're stretching your beliefs through gaps in our knowledge to reach your conclusion, aka: the argument from ignorance.

The real slam dunk, though, is that we could take the noun "god" out of your list of experiences, past in some other god, and word for word, it would still fit. None of what you listed is specific to your god: any muslim could say that something can't come from nothing, therefore Allah must have created the world, and he has experiential evidence of that, for example.

[Jericho]

But the 'evidence' we inherently have for people loving us is based on actual, person-to-person experience and exposure.  Trying to use that evidence for God is useless, as he is not a physical entity and whose existence is questioned by many.

How about the God-to-person experience?  If you can experience love from someone, why can't I experience love from God?  We're both having an experience that only we can verify.

Because unlike God, my family's existence isn't in question. My family exists and their feelings are expressed through their actions which I perceive based on my experiences with them. God, on the other hand, is not an actual presence. Even when people claim to have 'felt' something from God, the source is questioned. You have literally no possible way to prove that what you feel is real to other people. As Esq pointed out, you can prove how others feel from testing (aka science).

[robvalue]

You can claim to experience love from god. You have no way of knowing or demonstrating that whatever feelings you are having are actually from that source. You may believe they are, but that doesn't make it true. They could equally well be from any supernatural source, or no supernatural source. The end result in the natural world is exactly the same.

How can you distinguish between a rush of chemicals your body produces when you think about the notion of god that makes you experience what you would expect "god's love" to feel like, and the real thing? In fact that would be interesting. Let's do a scientific test, we need to plug you into something which measures all your chemical stuff when you think about god, and your brain configuration, to find out what's objectively going on. I'll make some calls. Make sure your butt is clean, some of the stuff has to go up there. Well it doesn't have to, but you don't know that.

[Edwardo Piet]

Depends which interpretation of the God of the Bible is being disproven. Certain interptetations can be shown to be contradictory many others are just much too 'murky' as Daniel Dennett would put it.

[Pyrrho]

Sure, but so are the Iliad and the Odyssey, not to mention the Koran and the sacred books of Hindus, Buddhists, etc.  Only a fool, though, takes such books at face value.  Such books are a very low grade of evidence, so you are going to need something else to make your beliefs even close to reasonable.

The bible is far superior to any other "holy book.  It consists of a series of books written over many centuries, by numerous authors from different time periods, which carry on the message of the coming messiah.  Jesus fulfilled the prophecies.  The Koran all hangs on the testimony of one man.  Hindus' writings are so fractured as to be incohesive.  They just keep creating more and more gods.

It is easy to write a book that pretends to fulfill prophesies made in another book. I could do it with any text that makes prophesies, and so could you. So that is evidence of nothing.

Additionally, the Bible is known to be in error. For example, the Israelites slavery in Egypt and spending 40 years wandering in the desert are known by archeologists to be false.

Your analysis of the Koran versus the Bible is ridiculous. A committee can lie just as easily as a single man, if that is what they wish to do so. Additionally, you very casually dismiss other ancient texts without giving them the same consideration you give the Bible. In other words, you are just prejudging them. Which is to say, you are prejudiced against them, and prejudiced in favor of the Bible.

I could take a philosophical approach, and ask you to prove that things cannot create something out of nothing, but I will set that bit aside for the moment.

That wouldn't be scientific.

Who said it was? As you are not inclined to be scientific, it is an irrelevant and hypocritical objection.

In order for your argument to have any traction, you need to prove that the universe has not always existed.  If the universe has always existed, then not only does it not need a creator, it cannot have one.

If you mention the Big Bang in connection with this, that isn't going to get you what you need for this.  Right now, scientists tell us that the universe is expanding.  It is possible that the universe will continue to expand forever.  Another possibility, though, is that eventually gravity will slow everything down, and pull everything back together.  If that happens, then things will be going at tremendous speed when they eventually collide, causing a very big bang.  Perhaps that is what has happened in the past, and has been going on over and over again forever.  For you to make use of the Big Bang as evidence, you will have to prove that that is not the case, and I defy you to do that to the satisfaction of physicists who study such things.

Natural law doesn't allow for something to come from nothing.

If the universe always existed, something would not be coming from nothing. Something would always exist. Which is something you must allow to be possible, or God could not always have existed, and would need a beginning as well.

Indeed, the universe always existing fits best with our experience, as we have never witnessed universes being created or destroyed.

 There is also no way for science or mathematics to prove that the universe always existed.

That is irrelevant. For the present purposes, all that is necessary is for this to be a possibility.

 You must step outside of your scientific box in order to contemplate that abstract idea.  You must use a different type of reasoning to come to the conclusion that what exists in the phyhscal world always existed and never had a beginning, which is what theists do.

Again, that is a hypocritical objection. I never stated that science had all the answers. Indeed, since it is an ongoing process, no sane scientist would say that science presently has all of the answers.

No, it shows no such thing.  There could easily be nothing outside the universe.  You will have to come up with actual evidence that something exists outside of the universe for your story to be reasonable to believe.

Can natural laws account for the universe to expand into something that doesn't exist?  

What is the problem with something expanding into nothing (which is another word for "something that doesn't exist")? If there is nothing other than the universe, then what is there to stop the expansion? There would have to be something in order for the universe to run into anything and be stopped from expanding.

Your feelings about Christianity are the same as many Muslims report about their feelings about Islam.  Your feelings are no better evidence than their feelings.  And since you both cannot be right, this means that your feelings prove absolutely nothing at all.

If you had been raised a Muslim, right now you would very likely be regarding your feelings as proof that Islam is true.  Or if you had been raised a Hindu, you would probably be regarding your feelings as proof that Hinduism is true.

Basically, what you are telling us is worthless as evidence.  You only feel it is valuable because you have largely ignored the fact that people of other religions feel precisely the same way about their religions.

If the evidence is truthful and leads someone to discover God, then it is very worthwhile evidence.

...

You are begging the question with that. You assume that your position is the truth, and then you say that anything that leads someone to it is good. And that is also very poor reasoning, as any logician will tell you. A fallacious argument that accidentally has a truthful conclusion is still a fallacious argument and an example of bad reasoning.

With the feelings that Muslims have that Islam is true, does that prove that Islam is true? If not, then feelings do not prove anything. Which means, your feelings that Christianity are true prove nothing whatsoever about the truth or falsehood of Christianity.

[Lek]

It is easy to write a book that pretends to fulfill prophesies made in another book.  I could do it with any text that makes prophesies, and so could you.  So that is evidence of nothing.

Additionally, the Bible is known to be in error.  For example, the Israelites slavery in Egypt and spending 40 years wandering in the desert are known by archeologists to be false.

Your analysis of the Koran versus the Bible is ridiculous.  A committee can lie just as easily as a single man, if that is what they wish to do so.  Additionally, you very  casually dismiss other ancient texts without giving them the same consideration you give the Bible.  In other words, you are just prejudging them.  Which is to say, you are prejudiced against them, and prejudiced in favor of the Bible.

For what you say to happen, it wouldn't have been done by a committee, but by individual authors over centuries in time.  The conspiracy would have had to have been passed along over a thousand years in time.  Hardly possible.

Who said it was?  As you are not inclined to be scientific, it is an irrelevant and hypocritical objection.

Actually, it wasn't hypocritical.  I was pointing out that you also use philosophical and abstract reasoning.

If the universe always existed, something would not be coming from nothing.  Something would always exist.  Which is something you must allow to be possible, or God could not always have existed, and would need a beginning as well.

Indeed, the universe always existing fits best with our experience, as we have never witnessed universes being created or destroyed.

That the universe always existed is something that could never be proven by science. Scientifically-speaking it has the same validity as God creating the universe.

What is the problem with something expanding into nothing (which is another word for "something that doesn't exist")?  If there is nothing other than the universe, then what is there to stop the expansion?  There would have to be something in order for the universe to run into anything and be stopped from expanding.

You would have to answer the question of whether or not matter can exist within nothing. How can matter exist in a place that doesn't exist?

You are begging the question with that.  You assume that your position is the truth, and then you say that anything that leads someone to it is good.  And that is also very poor reasoning, as any logician will tell you.  A fallacious argument that accidentally has a truthful conclusion is still a fallacious argument and an example of bad reasoning.

With the feelings that Muslims have that Islam is true, does that prove that Islam is true?  If not, then feelings do not prove anything.  Which means, your feelings that Christianity are true prove nothing whatsoever about the truth or falsehood of Christianity.

The way I meant it was that if someone is led by my evidence to find out that God does exist, that means that my evidence is valid. Also, as far as logic goes, would you consider all findings from quantum science logical? Logic changes with new discoveries.

[Polaris]

Since I am not going to take the time to respond to all these posts, testing the supposed evidence of the supernatural is nothing similar to testing or denying/affirming the existence of the supernatural itself. You can test the evidence that is claimed through science, but the very nature of the supernatural means that it cannot actually be tested by the laws of science.

And I can say that the depiction of God 3,500 years ago is inaccurate in parts of the Bible because I learned the evolution of the OT from one of the foremost Biblical scholars. Took ten minutes for one of my Christian friends to leave/drop the class when she realized the History of Ancient Israel wouldn't be taught from a Biblical perspective (though the Bible did end up getting validated quite often for its historical accuracy.....you know when you remove the supernatural references attributed to specific events).