List of reasons to believe God exists?

[The Grand Nudger]

Which is tricky, because you're going to have a hard time pulling up morality in the lab. 

Labs "pull up harm" with regularity, the entire field of criminal forensics is devoted to it.  Not that we actually need a lab, harm is very often a thing we can detect with no equipment or training...though it has taken years to develop a body of knowledge regarding more subtle forms of harm that we can employ to predict the impact of some action or event x.

I agree with William Lane Craig that people just give lip service against free-will and morality, everyone actually believes in these things, no one actually doesn't believe in these things.

Probably has something to do with responding to religious misapprehensions thereof. I don't personally believe in religious descriptions of either thing, which are the only descriptions of either thing you are discussing when you use either term.

Frankly, I don't believe Atheists when they say God has not been proven to them, a few might be like that, but there is a great amount that isn't. They lack faith and don't believe, fine, doesn't mean it hasn't been proven.

-because you're a nut, but..now, there's a few, are there?  If there's a single one your religious beliefs have been proven false.  I take this as a good sign.  Your delusions are beginning to accomodate reality.  

There is another argument I made that is along the following lines that summarize it:

If objective morality is not real, we would not know an objective moral fact.
We know objective morality requires an absolute source and origin and judge that maintains it if it were real.
That is an objective moral fact we know to be true.
Therefore morality is real.

A poor argument for objective morality, and I'm telling you this as a person who has no trouble accepting or arguing for moral realism.  Let;s start with the beginning. 

Regardless of whether or not moral realism is true, there would be people who claimed moral knowledge.  We know this because in instances where we can demonstrate some moral proposition to be entirely subjective the claimant -still- calls it knowledge, considers it a fact.  

We don't know that objective morality requires an "absolute source and origin and judge that maintains it if it were real"...and, dryly, none of that has anything to do with an objective morality in the least.  

Since we don't actually know the above, and it isn't actually relevant to objective morality in the first place...it cannot be an objective moral fact we know to be true.

Therefore-...you are horrible at logic, and if people tell you..based on what you're describing above, that there is no such thing as your "objective morality"...then they wouldn't actually be wrong - but they wouldn't be arguing against moral realism - simply responding to your fact-free description of it. Unfortunately, for a great many people..fact free descriptions of morality are all they;ve ever heard described as- objective morality...and since that presents itself as a base contradiction in terms, it;s reasonable for them, in that situation, to assume that you're all a bunch of loons talking nonsense.

-Then I have to clean up your collective mess. When we ask ourselves "What is right and wrong" we are not asking ourselves "What did some fairy tell me to do/not do". This is why god is an irrelevance to moral realism, and why morality, including moral realism, is not a cogent reason to believe in a god. If there are moral facts, there are moral facts. If there is a god, there is a god. Neither depends upon or implies the other, and you are incapable of shoehorning it otherwise no matter how often you attempt to stuff the articles of your faith into a description of or argument for moral realism. I do think, though, that if you're going to make the attempt, you should at least put in the effort. God deserves your level best, no?

[Pat Mustard]

I feel there is more evidence (evidence, NOT proof), of the existance of the Christian God more than any other. So to get back to your list:

Wrong. You've exactly the same eivdence for your god as MK has for his, Mohandes K Gandhi had for his, Hypatia of Alexandriah had for hers and so on for every theist or deist in existence: None. What you have is a jumble of mythologies, post hoc justifications of evil actions and misattributions of natural processes.

But wait, it get's better. While we cannot disprove a generic god (a god essentially without attributes) the human created gods are easily disprovable, eg learning about how lightning woeks disproved Thor and thousands of his equivalents, yhwh is even easier, simply reading the bible laden with contradictions and impossible characterisations, disproves his exisentence. Yet science does for him to, hence why heliocentrism and evolution were so fiercely opposed by christian leaders of all stripes even when they were pronouncing holy genocide against each other.

[The Grand Nudger]

-as an addendum to the above, there's a certain efficiency to religious faith, in that it recycles the same incoherent rationalization across a great many subjects.  Misapprehension and mis-attribution wholly describe the notions, for example...that:

morality exists : therefore god
earth/animals/something exists: therefore god
this place is perfect for me: therefore god
I had an experience: therefore god
Magic Book: therefore god
Lots of People™ believe(d): therefore god
This is unexplained: therefore god
It would be shitty if there were no god: therefore god

[Pat Mustard]

WallyM, I have a question for you about morality. As I understand it, you believe morality to be a purely societal construct based around what is best for the community in general, and empathy was evolved to reflect that. Is that correct?

Let's go back to the times of ancient civilizations where a powerful Empire enslaved an entire group of people. Let's use the Egyptians enslaving the Jews as the example. Obviously having slaves is good for the Egyptian community. They rely on it for everything, and without the forced labor of these "lesser people" they wouldn't live the comfortable, high quality life they have. Let's say one of these Egyptians is a sociopath... lacks empathy of any sort and to make matters worse has a particular fetish for violence and forced sex. He's super horny one night and so decides to take care of these urges by going out and raping a Jewish slave girl. He's not going to get in trouble for it because no one who matters will believe her instead of him, and even if they did, they wouldn't care... it's just a slave girl anyway. He feels zero remorse, and in his mind, it's not big deal at all. Also, it won't have a single negative effect at all in his community.  

Is what he did still immoral? If so, why?

Your god as described in the bible would consider what you describe a moral act, provided the nationalitites of the man and slave were reversed.

---

As far as animals go, I'm no animal expert, but as far as I understand it animals don't have moral awareness. They act on instinct. When I hear or see an animal being violent or cruel to another animal, I certainly don't think "Wow, what a shitty thing to do... that dog sure is super morally depraved." I suppose I could be wrong on that though.

Wrong again. Observational studies have shown that other primates exhibit sets of rules with rewards and punishments which very closely mirror human morality. Anyone who has ever owned a dog will have the experience of being reproached when the dog feels a wrong has been done to them. Just because animals don't have the same ability to form societies & shared cultures as humans do, that doesn't allow us to think we are unique in possessing morality.

Especially when we constantly see behaviour in animals that if we saw it in humans would be judged on a moral scale.

[Catholic_Lady]

I'm so glad Wololo (aka Tazzycon) showed up to tell me I'm wrong.

What ever would I do without you oh wise one??

[Amarok]

You're an idiot and first class at that, you might impress your fellow atheist but with me.... well you're an idiot.

Your opinion means nothing .

Exactly! And I don't need JEDP or Q either! If someone doesn't believe that all Scriptures are God-breathed, then why would that person even give a shit which human author someone claims God assigned to write that book whether JEDP, Q or Moses?! And if all Scripture is God-breathed, then why would the ones whom believes that even care which human author wrote it?

Umm no their devastating in their own right to the mystic legitimacy of the bible . I was just pointing out they are far from all we have to refute the existence of Moses or his authorship . As for why people who don't except it's divine origins should care . Even if it's not history proper it teaches us what ancient people thought and believed .  Id say that's interesting in it's own right . As for people who will ignore the evidence . Well that's their folly.

 There is a reason Ecclesiastes and Hebrews have no biblically assigned authorship: WHO CARES!

People who care about truth do

---

Stop being ridiculous, the word planet means wondering star, they had no idea what they were other than heavenly bodies moving strangely but with consistency. They were points of light and other than their movement they did not know what they were.

Nope false  . But even if it were the case the fact they knew they were there and were distinct from other objects is enough.

I have said the same thing and it did not go over well with the atheist here, so I'll tell you what I've been told, bring your proof or it's just hearsay. Got it.

I already answered this . Peoples reaction does not invalidate what i have said .And most atheists have done their homework on theism so it's no comparable  . You can call a vast league of study hearsay i don't care . And yes i got that your lazy and want easily looked up facts spoon feed to you . Sorry i'm not your teacher. Your a big boy who can read .

[The Grand Nudger]

@ Wololo
One does wonder how many dog misdemeanors and high crimes we, as owners, commit in the eyes of a dog...unawares only because we are not able to adequately communicate between each other and lack sufficiently common points of reference.  

As you mentioned, in some cases we do.  My dog doesn't like to be confined.  She routinely attempts to escape just as people do in similar predicaments.  She also gets pouty when I'm eating good food and she has a bowl of dry cereal.  She doesn't like to be hurt and doesn't like to see my kids hurt each other...she'll gum and playbite to break it up..or drag the ends of their pants.... but doesn't break the skin.  Freedom and fairness.  Harm, harm avoidance, duty and social bond.   

She's also convinced that she deserves a reward for the behaviors above.  If she thinks she's successfully broken up a border war between the tiny chimps she'll come directly back to the head gorilla, sit, and wait for her pupperoni.  The greatest reward, is to take her outside sniffing around for rabbits. Desert, authority, cooperation.

The difference between ourselves and other animals, particularly animals closely related to us and even more particularly animals closely related to us and with a similar natural social structure as makes them easy cohabitators (read: dogs) is not that we possess some thing x wholly absent in them...but that our agency in that regard is better developed and more capable - even though, at the end of the day, we fail at moral competence for all the same reasons a dog does.  

It was an accident.
I don't understand.
I was following orders.
He aint family.
I don't care.
I'm scared.
I was distracted.
But I really want it.
I fucking hate that guy.
I'm super hungry.
Think of the kids!

@Tiz.
I bet he thinks that "Moses" ghostwrote those portions of magic book that concern events after "Moses' " death with his spiritpen, too......it is a magic book, after all. Call me crazy, but if I were a believer, I'd be distancing my patriarchs from fiction written in their name.

[Amarok]

@Tiz. 

I bet he thinks that "Moses" ghostwrote those portions of magic book that concern events after "Moses' " death with his spiritpen, too......it is a magic book, after all. Call me crazy, but if I were a believer, I'd be distancing my patriarchs from fiction written in their name.

Would not put it past him 

[henryp]

1) I'm an atheist.  You're an atheist. Why do you keep bringing up what religious people think?  It's like tourettes with you people on here. 
2) The discussion is about whether humans being harmed is objectively immoral.  Which is tricky, because you're going to have a hard time pulling up morality in the lab.  So right of the bat, if you are a believer in science and 'show me proof', objective morality probably isn't for you.  But it sounds like you're just getting into this stuff.  I think you'll find that most people here think objective morality is dopey idea.  You just caught a bad break that the person you were taking the side of held such a lousy opinion.

1. Yes, you're an atheist. The implicit "you" was rhetorical.

2. To be accurate, I'm just getting into the philosophical stuff regarding morality and ethics. It does not mean I never did any reading or thinking regarding morality. It's just that most of the time I've pondered morality was with respect to the claims theists made themselves. Not too long ago, I was an avid moral subjectivist due to my ignorance of what academic philosophers had to say in the field of ethics. But for a while now, I've been wary of adhering strictly to moral subjectivity and now consider myself to be an agnostic regarding the question of whether morality is purely subjective. I see the points made by Khemikal and Tizheruk, but I have to have time to think about these matters. At this point, I see no problem with objective morality being possible in the absence of God, but what is the best system to have is the other question I have been pondering about myself. It's certainly not the theistic system, which is (as I keep saying) practically useless. So yeah, that's basically my stance right now with regards to morality. I am way more into metaphysics than I am into ethics, though.

1)  I understand you weren't directing it at me.  But you and I were the ones exchanging posts.  So it's a bit of a non-sequitur to address christian beliefs again, in a discussion you and I are having that has nothing to do with christian beliefs.  Talking about christians, for the most part, isn't that exciting.  But here we have atheism, where we've got all these different opinions on how people should live their lives and there's substantial disagreements on the nature of a godless world, and you're still hung up on the God stuff.  You're an atheist.  You've made the call on their pitch. It's time to move on.  Don't be one of these losers who just follows around the 5 theists and says "Nuh-uh" after every post, and that's the extent of their philosophical endeavors.  

2) The thing with objectivity, is that it's premises also have to be objective.  An objective conclusion based on a subjective premise is subjective.  That's where people are going to try and slip one by you.

[The Grand Nudger]

2) The thing with objectivity, is that it's premises also have to be objective.  An objective conclusion based on a subjective premise is subjective.  That's where people are going to try and slip one by you.

I suspect that this will devolve into a meaningless or trivial subjectivity.  That we are all subjective agents, and necessarily so, does not prevent us from recognizing or describing objectivity.

I subjectively experience writing this post. You subjectively experience reading it. It's existence, however....and the truth of whether or not there is a post, and the contents of the post, can be objectively determined apart from either of our subjective experience thereof. Now...it might be helpful to mention that the objection above is not actually an objection to moral realism itself, but a more fundamental objection to the existence of facts or our ability to possess them. If you object to this, how can we communicate or argue for anything..including the nonexistence of or inability to possess facts?

The claim of moral realism is small, unencumbered by any additional requirements. There is no need to deny our subjectivity in order to assert or demonstrate moral objectivity, no need to "slip" anything by anyone. That;s not to say that people don;t do that...that people won;t make the attempt in order to argue that some subjective or arbitrary (or divine) x is objective morality. They will, and they do. That;s because those people are bad at logic, and bad at moral realism..not because there's some particular issue with moral realism in that regard.

If -that- is what you're objecting to, then you're objecting to incompetence, not moral realism. You are responding to their mistakes, not the claim itself.