Dear Atheists: what would convince you God/Christ is Real?

[SimpleCaveman]

Easy, I don't.  

I don't know whether something can come from nothing, or whether nothing can exist...and I don't know how or even if the universe began.  No belief I do hold leads me to a belief or a conclusion on either thing, and neither thing is a premise of any beliefs about anything that I do hold.

Cool. Thanks.

[Pat Mustard]

Hello GUBU,

Awww does the little idiot have a sad because he has no refutation to my argument?  
Get over yourself and stop wallowing in baseless self-pity.

I have to hand it to you. You are consistent in your malice.

Do not ascribe to me attributes which are your own. I just simply don't take snide, lying comments lying down.

But hey, you're the perfect christian and I'm the evil satanist atheist who hates god, amirite?

[Pat Mustard]

Why is it that the representatives from the various faiths come here and try to insult us into believing what they believe?

Someone needs a better sales pitch.

Because sites like this only get the extremists. I know quite a few very religious people, and none of those I know in real life would even think of engaging in the kind of shitty behaviour that the likes of Simple Caveman are so in love with.

[arewethereyet]

Wait for it...Bel is going to explain the members of the forum to SimpleSimon.

[Belacqua]

And then we have to ask if thing is a defining quality of A (we don’t have to call it god), what does it mean to be a thing? Keeping in the same line as before, I take thing to mean something of this universe whether it’s quantum foam or latte foam. If that’s not what TGN meant, then I may need to adjust my statements. 

This is always a surprisingly tricky question when we're talking about the God of classical theology. "Thing" turns out to be a pretty fuzzy concept. Certainly God, in that tradition, is not said to be a thing in the same way that rocks and lizards are things. Nor is he a thing in the same way that heat waves or gravitational fields are things. 

I think we get nearer the mark when we start to ask whether goodness or justice are things. Or, as you say, whether being is a thing. 

My guess is that a lot of people get mislead by the idea of God being a thing -- they may assume this means he's one of the things we could list if we listed up all the other things in the universe. But I think this would be an error. As they say, "God and the universe do not make two." 

There is truth in theists not being able to adequately define god. Though I am a theist, I am trying to not come at this from that perspective but keeping it philosophical. (Or, at best, pop-philosophical)

It seems to me that this issue was pretty much dealt with by Plato. 

He makes it clear that the Forms are ideal and therefore not definable by the human mind. His whole schtick is that he challenges someone to define something we all know about -- like justice -- and demonstrating that no definition we can come up with is satisfactory. We know about things like goodness and justice, but no single definition is available for any of them. Some of the most important things in life are not definable. And of course this thinking is imported into Christian theology early on. No definition which the human mind can conceive of will adequately define a thing which exists only in the ideal. 

But Plato also teaches us how to do dialectic, as a way (I think) of talking in enough different ways about the indefinable thing that we can in fact improve our knowledge of it. This is partly by forcing ourselves to articulate our pre-conceptions -- a practice which often shows how inadequate those are. And of course being challenged by others forces us to rethink.

[The Grand Nudger]

After all of that, we end our post calling god a thing. Well done.

[h4ym4n]

It’s either a thing or no thing

[emjay]

And then we have to ask if thing is a defining quality of A (we don’t have to call it god), what does it mean to be a thing? Keeping in the same line as before, I take thing to mean something of this universe whether it’s quantum foam or latte foam. If that’s not what TGN meant, then I may need to adjust my statements. 

This is always a surprisingly tricky question when we're talking about the God of classical theology. "Thing" turns out to be a pretty fuzzy concept. Certainly God, in that tradition, is not said to be a thing in the same way that rocks and lizards are things. Nor is he a thing in the same way that heat waves or gravitational fields are things. 

I think we get nearer the mark when we start to ask whether goodness or justice are things. Or, as you say, whether being is a thing. 

My guess is that a lot of people get mislead by the idea of God being a thing -- they may assume this means he's one of the things we could list if we listed up all the other things in the universe. But I think this would be an error. As they say, "God and the universe do not make two." 

There is truth in theists not being able to adequately define god. Though I am a theist, I am trying to not come at this from that perspective but keeping it philosophical. (Or, at best, pop-philosophical)

It seems to me that this issue was pretty much dealt with by Plato. 

He makes it clear that the Forms are ideal and therefore not definable by the human mind. His whole schtick is that he challenges someone to define something we all know about -- like justice -- and demonstrating that no definition we can come up with is satisfactory. We know about things like goodness and justice, but no single definition is available for any of them. Some of the most important things in life are not definable. And of course this thinking is imported into Christian theology early on. No definition which the human mind can conceive of will adequately define a thing which exists only in the ideal. 

But Plato also teaches us how to do dialectic, as a way (I think) of talking in enough different ways about the indefinable thing that we can in fact improve our knowledge of it. This is partly by forcing ourselves to articulate our pre-conceptions -- a practice which often shows how inadequate those are. And of course being challenged by others forces us to rethink.

And does that satisfy you? Even if you or classical theology are not comfortable thinking of God as a material thing it's still presumably to you not-nothing? If so, then for me, they're tantamount to the same thing; why, and how, is there something not nothing, is to me the same core question as why, and how, is there not-nothing not nothing, so to speak. So in whatever über sense you mean God is above and beyond the material world, whether in a Platonic forms sort of way or something else, that's still not a distinction that makes any difference from my point of view, to the core question of how any non-nothing/thing can either arise from nothing or exist eternally.

[The Grand Nudger]

It doesn't make any difference no matter how we concieve of it. If, for example, we propose that god is not a thing..then every thing still popped into existence from...not a thing.

That's why this argument fails. Not on any item of disputable fact - it's worse, the form of the argument (natch) is faulty. You could plug in nothing but absolute facts and it still wouldn't be informative....but that's christianity for you. Which is not, in point of fact, anything to do with the god of classical theology. IDK whether Bel is bullshitting us or himself about this, primarily - but I've never seen him discuss the issue from anyplace outside of some busted christian apologists misunderstandings and misinformation.

[SimpleCaveman]

Hi GUBU,

Do not ascribe to me attributes which are your own.  I just simply don't take snide, lying comments lying down.

Never have I lied. Snide? Maybe.

So, if not taking those kinds of comments lying down is a good thing, then I shouldn’t take snide comments from you lying down? Okay.

But hey, you're the perfect christian and I'm the evil satanist atheist who hates god, amirite?

Do not ascribe to me attributes which are not mine.

I tried to talk with you as with a rational person. I still will. Your call.