Why it is silly to look for evidence of God

Ok. This is not your God and it is the general, usually defined God - "Cosmologus creatorious" not "mysticalus spiritualus" which is really just a human feeling. Now, you say we cannot find God. I accept that. We may not understand or know him either. That too is ok. But for this God, any god, to be of any meaning, any relevance to us, he must pass the "So what?" test.

So we can conclude that though gravity is invisible, intanglible and beyond actual existence, it exists because it matters to us and its effects can be demonstrated above random chance - so much so that it is a fact and a law.

So, what effect does this God have on us? Can we show that this effect is important and beyond chance? Why is this God necessary and why is he relevant to us?

 

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I agree. I think it is strange for someone to ask for evidence for the existence of God. If we look at classical theism, it affirms at least the following:
1) If God exists, God exists necessarily, in other words, God could not have not existed.
2) If God exists then He has no limitations, God is not limited in perfection, in power, in goodness and in knowledge.
3) If God exists then nothing can come into being or continue to happen without God creating it and sustaining it in existence.

There are various arguments (or proofs if you want) that attempt to establish the existence of God. Aquinas' 5 ways for example use change (1st), causality (2nd), contingency (3rd), degrees of being and transcendentals (4th) and final causality (5th) as premises in proofs that can in principle demonstrate the existence of something that just is necessary being itself (3rd), whose essence is its existence (2nd), that is intelligence analogously speaking (5th), that just is good (4th) and is purely actual (1st) and that is what classical theists call God. If such arguments are successful then it just logically follows that every contingent being that has ever existed and will ever exist just is evidence for God.

 

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But Jan, such a God would not matter - he would be irrelevant. He would fail the "So what" test.

 

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Quite right. He would be irrelevant because we want our independance. From a spiritual point of view, that is why we are here.

But God knows, we are in ignorance of reality, and that we cannot remain here. So He reminds of who we are, and where we come from, and we have a choice, either to grow up, or remain foolish.


jan.

 

No. He would be irrelevant ONLY because he has no effect on us. There is not supposed independance to be had - if there is, you just made the assertion, please do shoulder the burden of proof.

Such a God is NOT irrelevant, because he apparently affects us - by being some kind of guide as you suggest - such a God is not unfalsifiable and therein lies the catch for all theists - all, absolutely all relevant Gods are falsifiable - those that aren't falsifiable are not worth thinking about, since it fails the "So what?" test. As gmilam said, that's some good mental masturbation, but nothing more.

Hence the claim, God is not falsifiable but is important to us is false.

 

To be clear, Hindu ideas about "God created us" are quite different from the Christian ideas about "God created us."

In Christianity, a living entity (the soul) is generally not considered a necessary being, while God is: God must be, but the living entity is optional.
As far as I understood, this is not so in Hindu thought ("There never was a time when you and I did not exist").
In Christian thought, living entities are not thought of as "parts and parcels of God".

Exactly.

Yes.
It's actually awfully simple, once one thinks about it! It is simply a matter of taking some common definitions and following them to their logical conclusions.

Thanks for the understanding.

 

Indeed.
So in order to rightfully speak about "seeking evidence of God," we would first need to radically redefine the term "God" - so that he could be classified into the same category with Bigfoots, atoms, teapots and red socks.

 

I never said that, though. There is more detail to my argument.

I guess, for starters - try being happy while living the ordinary run-of-the-mill life for many many many years.


Given the usual definitions of God, it is not possible for us not to be affected by God.

 

aaqucnaona,

What makes you think He has no effect on us?
Do you think it is possible to write a play, or movie, where the characters believe that the creator has no effect on their lives, while in FACT the opposite is true, because the only reason they are there, is due to the creator.

Also, what would happen when the characters were no longer in character?
Do you think they would realise that they aren't really those characters, and that those characters are creations of the play/screen writer?

But he is ''irrelevant'' to some, namely, real atheists, who go about their day to day lives without even so much as a thought towards God.

But He is very relevant to both you and I.

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Don't you find the idea of applying falsifiability to knowledge on everything, in and of itself, illogical?


jan.

 

wynn,

More detailed, I would say. But not different.

Maybe if you read some of the biographies of the saints from way back, or even look at the works of people like Mother Teresa, you will get a different idea of Christian Theology, which would sit more comfortably with what you term as Hinduism.

Another thing to observe, is Christianity in India (i think the largest Christian population in the world), and you will see more of a resemblence to Hinduism.

jan.

 

Oh, I am open to deism - God made everything. But in the above analogy, the creator is truely and totally irrelevant practically, because the creator doesn't treat us like puppets or interfere in our daily lives. We may be here solely due to Him, but NOW he means nothing to us if he doesnt currently and actively do something in and for our lives. The same is for the characters, if they are actual conscious things.

So you mean they understand that they are just the creations and they actually have no external identity under those which the creator gave them?

He may have made us, we owe our very existence to him*. Ok. But why is he relevant to us? He is important, he made us, good. But why is he of any practical concern if he doesn't do anything? If he does anything, what is it that he does? This something affects us, and so it is falsifable - which is the main point here.

Why should it be illogical? It would be illogical in a dark room with me alone in it, but we have to world to base our falsifiability on. And if we dont work on falsifiability, coming up with ideas, considering the falisifiable ones, testing them and keeping those which fit - what is the alternative you suggest? Why is this alternative to be chosen unless it can be a better way to gather knowledge?

* which [probably] is not true, there could have been anyone here in my place - what I am is not something predetermined and 'fed' into me, it is something that emerges as a result of the experiences of my life. In what sense do you mean "he made us"? Evolution and embryogenesis are both competely naturalistic as far as we know, no supernatural claims about them have enough reason to be considered true.

 

It's amazing the lengths people will go through to rationalize the non-evidence of an non-detectable, non-measurable, non-falsifiable entity or force.

It's like adding zero to an equation. Add as many as you wish and still it has no effect.

 

It's amazing how some people refuse to read.

 

To test or not to test, that is the question?

"Given the usual definitions of God, however, God cannot be found by such a search principle"

For all of known history, that may very well have been the case, but it now appears of if history has successfully turned even this most contentious corner. Science is in for a very big rethink, while religion will be left starring into it's own theological abyss.

For the first wholly new interpretation for two thousand years of the moral teachings of Christ is published on the web. Radically different from anything else we ever know of from tradition, this new teaching is predicated upon a precise and predefined experience, a direct individual intervention into the natural world by omnipotent power to confirm divine will, command and covenant and "correcting human nature by a change in natural law, altering biology, consciousness and human ethical perception beyond all natural evolutionary boundaries."

So like it or no, a new religious teaching, testable by faith, meeting all Enlightenment criteria of evidence based causation and definitive proof now exists. So for anyone who would search out this reality, that door has been opened, to test or not to test, that is the question?

As I am a newbie unable to post links, just google: The Final Freedoms

 

I see. You're saying only God can make the air you breathe, according to the definition you believe corresponds to a God you don't believe exists?

Good to see you aren't stuck on a particular definition.

I think that's actually your problem, you can't or won't look beyond what you call "usual definition". Personally I can't find any particularly good reason to believe any definition is true. I think you're limiting yourself to this particular "usual definition" because it's much easier for you to rationalise. But really, that's all you're doing, and it isn't "the answer", because you haven't really defined "the question".

So I'll ask again: can you prove that you are not God?

 

Wynn
"Given the usual definitions of God, it is not possible for us not to be affected by God."
You are confusing the definition of god with his actually existence. Remember that the map is not the territory. You can define many things that are pure non-sense, defining them does not make them real. I can define the attributes of the invisible dragon in my basement, but that does not mean there is an invisible dragon in my basement.
I know nothing about any god, but then, neither do you.

 

What on earth are you talking about??

Prove to whom, why, on what terms?

 

You are simply taking for granted that common-sense empiricism is the supreme method for obtaining knowledge.

:shrug:

I do know some things about approaching this topic that you don't.

 

I don't even know what "the usual definitions of God" are, or why we should accept them. (It seems like an implicit demand that Christian theology be accepted a-priori.)

The definition of 'God' that people are talking about here seems to be approaching a 'Matrix'-style 'brain in a vat' situation. That's where all of our possible experience is simply... fake... a simulation, not real. It's an illustration of the bigger and far more ancient problem of skepticism. How can we ever tell the difference between truth and falsity if every possible piece of evidence might itself be false? (To a certain extent, the whole history of modern post-medieval Western philosophy is a giant meditation on the problem of skepticism.)

I might be mistaken, but Wynn seemingly wants to argue that 'God' (whatever that is) is the kind of thing about which evidence isn't applicable. In this case, all the events of the universe remain exactly the same (a few special miracles excepted perhaps) whether or not 'God' exists, the difference being that the theist wants to define everything that happens as being due to 'the will of God'.

My own opinions about "pure nonsense" (literally, not perjoratively) are similar to yours, I think. (If you think you're Grumpy, you haven't seen me griping yet. Welcome to the board, btw.)

Science provides us with a pretty good means of producing naturalistic accounts of natural events, by linking them together causally. If a theist account doesn't add anything to that, then it becomes kind of superfluous from a physical point of view and can be dropped. That's what's happened over the last few hundred years as natural theology's receded.

But even if the theistic account has proven itself impotent in explaining individual events within the universe, there's seemingly still the more metaphysical 'Matrix' issue. Perhaps the entire universe, including all of its contents and their relationships, is somehow 'virtual'. Maybe it's a dream or something. Or maybe there's a 'God' in a transcendental 'heaven' somewhere who is madly pulling all the strings and upon whom everything's fundamental being depends. Who knows? And who can possibly know, when all the possible evidence that we could use to make the determination is potentially part of the illusion?

It seems to me that we are always going to be left with that kind of doubt, it's inescapable. The way I conceptualize it is to say that it's just another and much more portentious way of acknowledging that we can always be wrong, that we can always be mistaken. No matter how we think things are, conceivably they may really be some other way. That possibility of error will probably always be with us as long as we remain human.

But this universe that we do experience, that we can have evidence about, is where we live our lives and it's what defines 'reality" for human beings like us.

Maybe we will discover after we die that it's all a game or a test or something else. I sincerely doubt it. I have no reason to think that. On these kind of skeptical theories, I seemingly can't have any reason to believe that. We certainly have no way of choosing among some uncountable number of alternative transcendental possibilities. We probably can't even imagine most of them since by definition they would transcend human experience entirely.

 

I've actually been trying to show how atheists are working themselves up over nothing.

If atheists would just consider the usual definitions of "God" (notably: omnipotent, omniscient, all-attractive, all-wise, the Supreme, the source/origin, the controller etc.), they'd see that there is nothing to fear neither from God, nor from theists.

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