How do establish that God revealed itself to anyone in the chain of scriptural authorship? And if it could somehow be established to be a fact, would any human being be qualified to make a determination as to the actual identity of an entity claiming to be God? Of course there is another way, you don’t unjustifiably attempt to establish the existence of this higher being, you allow this higher being to justifiably reveal itself. Why would an entity that wanted to be known only reveal itself to people who were psychologically primed to accept its revelation? Wouldn’t a more convincing approach be to make such a revelation indisputable to anyone?
And you can't even produce a single passage of Scripture to support your claim. At least the Flat Earthers can come up with arguments. I mean, they are nonsense, but at least they have the integrity to put them out there. Pretty sad that you can't even measure up to the Flat Earthers.
/// You say atheists know there is a god then you indicate otherwise. It seems you cannot decide. Of course it is not up to you to decide. I do not know there is a god. Claiming otherwise is the frigging bullshit. You cannot know what I know & do not know. You used the word approach & it applies to you as well as anyone. Regardless, you see things only from the "there is a god" presupposition, (willfully?) ignorant of the possibility of no god. You are stuck in that & it affects your view of everything. Nothing matters except your presupposition. Anything which seems to you to support it is good & anything which you think does not support it is easily dismissed. IF you have god given abilities, evidently they do not include the ability to answer most reasonable questions & to do unto others as you want them to do unto you & to give evidence of your claim. YOU do not want to discuss the god YOU accept & believe in. We attempt to find out from you but to no avail. I would be very foolish to accept & believe in what I do not know exists. I do not know any god exists. If you say otherwise a billion times, it will not change anything. You saying something does not mean it is true. You believing something does not mean it is true. Something being written in scripture does not mean it is true. I do not know there is a god & I do not believe that you know. When you say I do know, you are lying & you know it. <>
Recall my first post to this thread. Let's take an alternate topic and ask the same question. Suppose, that instead of asking about God, I were to ask the question "What is the evidence that the sun is real?" Or, in terms of my opening post "I invite our resident Sun-believers to put forward what you regard as the best evidence for the existence of this 'Sun' that you believe in." It occurs to me that, immediately, it would be possible to point to lots of suggestive evidence. For instance, there appears to be a big bright thing in the sky when you go outside, at least some of the time. That bright thing is demonstrably associated with heat and light. When the bright thing isn't there, the heat and light are both diminished. Of course, even to ask the question, we must have some shared idea of what the word "Sun" means in the first place. In a very real sense, that big bright thing in the sky is the Sun by definition. Application: I think that atheists and theists have some shared idea of what the word "God" means. Would the theists here argue that God is therefore real by definition? If so, what, exactly does the term "God" refer to? And what is the shared frame of reference that atheists and theists agree on in order to recognise the reality of the thing defined in that case? --- One way to tell if this "Sun" is a real thing is to consider what things would look like if it was absent. The first thing to say about that is that you don't make the Sun absent simply by refusing to call it the Sun. You're evading the point if you say "There's no Sun. That big bright thing in the sky is the foozwimple, not any kind of sun-thing that you Sunists say exists." We both understand that what requires explanation in the context of the question that was asked is not the name we give to the apparent source of the heat and light, but whether such a source exists or does not exist. So, the second (and third, and fourth) things the sun-believer will typically point to is that if the Sun did not exist (as described/defined), then the Earth would be cold and dark (for example), which is in stark contrast to what we all experience, Sun-believers and Sun-deniers alike. Application: what would the universe/ourselves/the earth/life/anything look like if there was no God? Would it necessarily look any different? If the theists say it would, they need to explain what the necessary differences are. Note: it is not enough to assert that "If God did not exist, nothing would exist". I could make the same claim about the Sun: if the Sun did not exist, then nothing would exist, so therefore because something exists, the Sun exists. That doesn't work as an argument for the Sun, or anything else, including God. --- On the matter of epistemology, we must have a certain shared frame of reference. In order to discuss the possibility of a Sun, we need to be able to agree in advance that warmth and light typically require a source, for example. We need to agree that heat and light themselves exist, independent of this postulated "Sun" thing we're debating. But these aren't big hurdles. It's not hard to reach agreement on experiences we all share. Application: in contrast, it is not at all obvious that the universe as a whole requires a source, and in particular, it is not at all obvious that a source fitting typical descriptions of "God" is required. --- We could ask a more complex question, of course. For example, I could ask "What's your best evidence that the Sun is a star?". Or I could ask "What's your best evidence that the Sun is made mainly of hydrogen?" You might need to have some specialist knowledge to know what constitutes good evidence of either of those things, and I might need some specialist knowledge to be able to evaluate the evidence you put forward. But notice this: even if I might lack the expertise to fully evaluate your evidence, it is not a pre-requisite that I share your belief in order for your evidence to even make sense. It's not a valid response to my question for you to say "Only somebody who already believes the Sun is made from hydrogen is qualified to understand any evidence I might put forward for that claim. And the fact you're even asking the question proves that you're an evil Sun-is-hydrogen denier, so that tells me that presenting the evidence would be a pointless exercise. Why don't you go off and google some sacred sun-is-hydrogen texts? Come back and talk to me again once you believe that the Sun is hydrogen. Until then, I refuse to point you to any evidence." Application: Jan Ardena's and Musika's refusal to provide any evidence of God on the grounds that atheists would first need to believe in God in order to appreciate the evidence is empty. If suitable evidence exists, then its validity as such must be recognisable independent of the particular conclusion that it is supposed to support. This is what it means for something to be evidence of something else. To expand a little on that: I don't need to have a pre-formed belief in stars or Suns to accept the methods for identification of hydrogen. And this in fact strengthens the value of hydrogen as evidence of the Sun's composition. I don't have to start by believing that the Sun is made of hydrogen. I can check for hydrogen in the Sun independently of any prior belief I might have about the Sun's composition. Question to theists: is there any way I can check for the existence of God that is independent of my prior belief on that question? --- Final note: it is, in general, possible for a person to go from a state of non-acceptance of something to acceptance, based on evidence. For instance, if I say "The Sun is made of hydrogen" and you start from "I don't believe you" or "I'm not convinced about that", then by presenting appropriate evidence I can change your mind, in principle. I can convince you. It is true that some effort might be necessary on your part. For instance, you might not know how hydrogen is recognised, but in principle I can explain that, or you can find out for yourself from other sources. One additional important point here is that you don't ultimately have to accept any complicated argument based on authority to identify hydrogen (say). Provided you are willing to buy into some generally accepted definitions of words (which is necessary to ensure we're both talking about the same thing), you can in principle check for yourself whether each step in the evidence/reasoning process that leads to the conclusion (in this case that the Sun is made of hydrogen) is true or false. There is no sacred Sun-is-hydrogen text that you must accept as an authority at the beginning of your inquiry. Caveat: you can't simply define something into existence, other than as a concept or idea. It's not enough for me to say "I define the Sun as a big ball of hydrogen in the sky." My saying that doesn't make the Sun exist in reality; it only makes the concept of a Sun exist in your mind. I haven't created a Sun merely by defining a word; at best I have created an idea. When we talk about evidence what we're doing is checking whether our ideas correspond to an observed reality. The idea of a Sun is all well and good, but if we all lived in a deep dark cave all our lives we'd have no idea whether the idea had any connection to anything real. No matter how many stories or sacred texts we had mentioning this "Sun", there would be no way to tell from inside the cave whether it was a real thing or just a fantasy*. To know whether it was real (as opposed to merely believing that it might be real) we'd have to venture outside the cave and collect some actual evidence. --- * (To any pedantic physicists who might be reading: yes, yes, I know that in this particular example there would be ways, but you get the point of the analogy, I hope.)
A/theists have some shared notions, but when it comes to defining the relationship between things (like, say, God and this world, or God and the living entity) you will start to see radical departures. Before one could ask such q's, one could ask whether it is appropriate to discuss the absolute absence of God from reality as a means to understand the subject. IOW, does God occupy the same ontological status as the sun (ie, a thing "of" reality or a thing that sustains the very platform of it)? If one demands that God does, one can go back to the point of definitions. If, as an atheist, one deems God to be in the same category as the sun, is one now talking about a definition accepted by theists? If not, what is the point of atheists lodging such q's? Managing to determine what is necessary for reality, and furthermore determining what reality would look like in the absence of such necessities is a very problematic path (mainly because you would have nothing to compare it to). I think one can safely say that if one would undertake such a mysterious sojourn, one would be required to either abandon empiricism at the very beginning or access some sort of omni status of consciousness .... which don't seem to rate big in the atheist dept, so it seems strange that you would make such requests. --- The further you move away from demonstratable relationships of cause and effect available to the lowest common denominator, the further you move away from a unanimous consensus. That is not an epistemological fault, but rather an unavoidable aspect of it (some might even declare it a virtue). If you don't want to accept things simply on the face value of experts in the field, it would probably require extensive years in further education, and not merely "some specialist knowledge". To grant you the greatest charity and overlook the extensive years of formative education one has to weather the belief of what the system demands in order to pursue an academic vocation, at the end of the day you are still talking about things (namely, the sun) that are empirical in nature. You never succeed in moving away from begging the question. If God doesn't occupy the same ontological status of things like the sun, its an exercise in futility to try and draw epistemological parallels. Try use your empirical knowledge of doors and elevators to get direct audience of a corporate industrial magnate or politician, and see how far you get.
JamesR cont .... As I said earlier : In short, the main struggle you will havewith this subject is that the "evidence" for God is not determined or constrained by the standard "veil of perception" that commonly surrounds our ideas of things in this world. This is because of the ontological position God occupies. In short, despite your insistence that this is not the place to get into definitions of God and reality, such issues of definition and relationship are primary. In fact, thats how all epistemology works : by definitions of relationship between "seer" and "object" one determines the process of acquiring knowledge. If you fail that, you can't even peer down the right end of a telescope (or, at the least, the knowledge you get from doing that is radically different). To recap, it may be easier to evidence God in a manner contrary to the definition of God, but that just leaves you with a dumbed down definition. It then becomes a question on why do you believe it is necessary to utilize dumbed down definitions of God, which takes us to the hubrisvof atheism being the world view where you are not allowed to have world views, and so on. Do you notice here how you are talking exclusively about the epistemology of empiricism? IOW the general principle you are riding of "evidence should work like this" is simply the epistemological essence of empiricism. Take it to problems where empiricism cannot function, and you will be left holding a square peg before a round hole. Hence the suggestion that there is an epistemological format that follows definitions. If you want to look at application that follows a definition, you are required to look at epistemology. Empiricism is but one aspect (as opposed to the universal usurper) of such investigations
He wasn't. He was talking inclusively about the empiricism of epistemology. Since you are not using dumb definitions of God, you can provide suitable examples of evidence that God is real. Any time now.
Suggestions have already been offered in this thread ... even in what you had to edit down to make a response.
Not by an overt or claimed theist. After 16 pages, not a single example. The closest approach is in post 197.
Who would be an expert in the field of knowing God? We do occupy the same ontological status as the sun. If God doesn’t, what connection does it have with our reality? How does anyone know what ontological position God occupies? Does the absence of a physical God necessitate the assumption of a non physical one? Your answer seems to be that if we can’t find what we desire in this reality, we pull epistemological keys out of our asses, unlock imaginary ontological doors, and gain access to it in our imagination. IOW, if God can’t be experienced materially, we’ll just imagine one to experience in our minds.
It's a God joke - i.e. your God is an alien overlord and we have no reason to think his interests coincide with our interests.
Sounds more like your God since it explains more about where you are at the moment. From my side it sounds more like a Trump joke.
Not at all. The question is, Why would ANYBODY obey ANY technologically superior entity? Why would ANYBODY think that that entity's interests coincided with their own?
Nope - because you haven't posted any links to that example you promised in Scripture. You just Googled and linked to four results you found, one of which was a long list of vaguely related Biblical passages. You are a dishonest liar, and your only recourse seems to be claiming you did things you did not. Want to prove me wrong? Then do so. You have claimed that Scripture is "jam packed" with examples. Give us one. Not a Google search result, or a Youtube video you found through a Google search. Just one example of what you claimed the Bible is "jam packed" with.
