My Inquiry

[KevinM1]

It seems we once again have a massive amount of replies that basically relate to the fact that because there is no proof of God, he must not exist. As to the whole "if God is loving why is there evil in the world," I can only say that I don't understand it either. God works in mysterious ways sounds like a very lame argument, but it is true. As a man with very limited understanding of the entire picture of the Universe, I have no way of fathoming how God works or the thought processes he goes through. The evil in the world could be a testing of faith, it could be the Devil's interventions- there are a few explanations I can think of, but again, he's God and I'm human. I can't understand his thought processes.

Prove it.

As we've all said in this thread (and others... so many others), assertions alone aren't evidence of anything.  Neither are the fuzzy warm feelings you experience when you think about your god, pray to it, whatever.  Evidence must be evident to others.  That's what the word means.  So saying, "I dunno, but I believe" is, I'm sorry, absolutely worthless when it comes to defending your belief.  It's just wishful thinking, based on fantasy, fear, and the desire of eternal paradise.  In any other context, it would be considered delusional:

"I don't have proof, but I believe that Optimus Prime is not only real, but has a vested interest in my thoughts and actions, of which he is perpetually aware."
"I don't have proof, but I think Stonehenge was built by aliens who are monitoring my brain activity through a combination of ESP and transmitters mounted in my fillings."
"I don't have proof, but I think Zeus is the one true god.  He likes to turn into sheep and fuck random women."
etc.

From the outside, it's amazing to see this literal cult of personality surrounding nothing more than self-contradictory myths.  And it works because gods are purposely ill-defined.  The Christian god is omniscient except when it isn't, omnipotent except when it isn't, quick to anger most of the time, doling out punishment rather than understanding and forgiveness, except when its kind and forgiving.  And every church has the bits and pieces they stress over others, cherry picking what they think is best at the expense of everything else (why do you think there are over 40,000 sects of Christianity on this planet?).  At the personal, level, the theist fills in the rest of the blanks, relying on the tired 'mysterious ways' excuse to wave away discrepancies.

This is propaganda 101.  Seriously.  Politicians employ that technique all the time with phrases like "Bringing America back" and "I'm a <insert state here> candidate, unlike my opponent, the Washington insider (dun dun dunnnnn)" and a whole host of others.  Phrases and terms that don't actually mean anything by themselves, but we fill in the lack of information with our own wants, needs, desires, etc.  Religion and politics (and, remember, religion was politics for most of human existence... still is in many places) merely provide a basic foundation of tenets.  Everything else is deliberately half-baked because, psychologically, we become emotionally invested when we fill in the blanks.  Your deep, personal relationship with god?  Actually a relationship with yourself as you create the perfect god for you in your head by merrily filling in the holes in its definition.  It's why your god is different than anyone else's, even within the same church.  And it's why theists take it so personally and defend it so passionately.  It's a designed response.

To get back to the issue at hand, if you want to convince us of anything, you'll need to do a lot better than attempting to pass off assertions as evidence of anything.

So, first, define your god clearly.
Then, produce evidence for it that isn't actually evidence of something else.

And even if you can, you do realize that even if all of us agreed that a god (it might not be your god *gasp!*) does exist, many of us still wouldn't worship it?  Many theists tend not to realize that even if a god exists, we wouldn't just reflexively worship it.

[The Grand Nudger]

That's because many theists (and frankly, this is because they are just human beings -first and foremost) have the mental process of -livestock- when it comes to their beliefs. You show em the fence, and they never even think to ask why.

[abaris]

You show em the fence, and they never even think to ask why.

Or consider jumping over it.

[Simon Moon]

It seems we once again have a massive amount of replies that basically relate to the fact that because there is no proof of God, he must not exist. As to the whole "if God is loving why is there evil in the world," I can only say that I don't understand it either. God works in mysterious ways sounds like a very lame argument, but it is true. As a man with very limited understanding of the entire picture of the Universe, I have no way of fathoming how God works or the thought processes he goes through. The evil in the world could be a testing of faith, it could be the Devil's interventions- there are a few explanations I can think of, but again, he's God and I'm human. I can't understand his thought processes.

You seem to have a reading comprehension problem. 

Almost every one that replied to you stated we are not claiming that a god does not exist.

The atheist position is that, because there is insufficient evidence to support the claim that a god exists, there is no justification to believe one does.

A god may exist, but if so, it has succeeded in remaining hidden, and therefore is indistinguishable from a god that is nonexistent.


If you can't understand how god works, how do you make any statements about his attributes?

Here's a question for you; how do you know that 'God' is the good one?

[Tonus]

It seems we once again have a massive amount of replies that basically relate to the fact that because there is no proof of God, he must not exist.

Apply this to any and every other god or mythical or legendary creature, or even stuff like alien races or your child's imaginary friend, and suddenly that approach is perfectly reasonable and easy to understand. Apply it to your god, and suddenly it's a fallacious attempt to dismiss the truth of the matter. Figure out why you make that exception, and you might see where the problem is.

[QuarkDriven]

Here's a question for you; how do you know that 'God' is the good one?

Well Simon Moon... I don't know if you've heard... But, there's a book... lol

#hamisanidot

[Mister Agenda]

Hello all! I was scrolling through the Internet tonight and I got on the topic of the existence of God, and ended up stumbling across this site. I'm currently looking for any evidence I can find that God does/does not exist (I'm a Christian), so it would be awesome if you guys would post your best rebuttals against the existence of God here for me to look at. I realize that sometimes I only see one side of an argument so I would like to put this out to you guys so I can see this argument over the existence of God from both sides. Thanks!

The best argument against God actually being real is that there is no convincing evidence to support the proposition and no argument that doesn't rest on a fallacy or extremely weak premises. We have to be right every time and Christians only have to produce one good argument; and all they have are hundreds of bad ones.

[Mister Agenda]

Wow. Well, the entire forum is replete with arguments about this, so my advice would be to lurk and read through some of them. You'll find loads in the atheism and religious sub forums.

To be parsimonious and to the point, the most compelling evidence against a god (however defined) is the current lack of any evidence for a god. Remember, there is no onus whatsoever on the audience to disprove a claim when the proponent has no evidence in which to falsify. Rather, the person saying "there is/are a god/gods" needs something more than "because I believe it!" to make anyone take notice of their claims.

And that something, as a very minimum, would have to be something testable, verifiable, and repeatable. Maybe, just maybe, if those can be satisfied to a good degree, there is something worth investigating in the claim. Otherwise, there's a large scrapheap of god claims where it can be consigned.

Hmmm. And I suppose that would bring us back to the whole there is no proof for the existence of God but there is also no proof against the existence of God. Thank you for the advice on lurking, I will get right to that

We also don't have proof against the existence of leprechauns, unicorns, the boogeyman, or thetans. You've got your God in the category of 'could conceivably exist'. The number of things that could conceivably exist is infinite, 'could concevably exist' is not a valid reason to think 'actually does exist'.