Disproving the Existence of God

[evildrneil]

Well no, I don't have to and cannot prove a negative, the burden of proof goes the other way.

 

Surely you've just borked the entire thread - if you can't prove a negative then a thread title "Disproving the Existence of God" is a logical inconsistancy!

[flamingjimmy]

Surely you've just borked the entire thread - if you can't prove a negative then a thread title "Disproving the Existence of God" is a logical inconsistancy!

 

That would be true were it not for the fact that the OP used a specific definition of god and not a general one. The thread title would be a logical inconsistency on its own. But it is clarified in the first post.

[flamingjimmy]

I would have said that a rational believer (or atheist) is one who says "I believe X but I know that I can not prove it's veracity but it works for me so I'm happy in that belief" where an irrational beleiver (or atheist) is one who will state a belief as hard fact.

I would argue that holding baseless beliefs is irrational.

 

Surely the burden of proof lies with whoever makes a claim of obsolute fact?

 

But you need to take my 'claim' in context. And not context of this thread, the context of the whole world. Left to my own devices, I would never have come up with 'no such a thing [as a spiritual truth] exists'. I'm not really claiming anything, I'm just denying the claims of others, in this case: onewheeldave.

[*_ash_*]

I don't think we were created with evil in us and I don't believe babies are born evil. If you see or hear a baby telling lies, stealing, committing adultery or any other number of things then let me know. The problem comes when we see something we want (for example) and we have the choice to either take it or walk away.

I'm sure I read something different from you earlier, but there are a few discussions going on, and I wasn't in that one. So I'll not bother continuing with that.

This is where self comes in and you are in control of self. Self says I want that for myself and self takes it. It is down to you and you are in control of yourself so don't go blaming God for your actions. Some women's groups are fond of saying "It's my body - its my choice" and dead right it is. Only you can take responsibility for your actions and it is you who will have to answer in court for what you did.

If only you can take responsibility, then why ask god for forgiveness? Sounds like 'passing the buck' to me.

 

Shouldn't the "self" take responsibility themself? I would rather someone [a person] forgive me for my actions, than commit something that I know is wrong, only to ask god for forgiveness.

I know myself and I know I have wrong thoughts and I won't deny that on occasions I have succumbed to those wrong thoughts. In Bible language that makes me a sinner and I admit it, but I think I am the only one on here who does.

 

Other people on here tell me how good they are. All I can say is that I am pleased for them, but I just wonder how well they really know themselves?

 

What is a wrong thought Grahame, out of interest?

 

A wrong thought could be one of a thousand things. You might think having an alcoholic drink or betting on a horse is a bad thing. If you succumbed to either of those, I'd harbour a guess that most people in this discussion would forgive you (or to put it more simply, they wouldn't give a ****)... perhaps it would only be a wrong thought in your own head.

 

Part of understanding 'selfish' oneself, is knowing what is wrong, for your own preconceptions of what 'wrong' is. For that reason, everyone has different meanings of wrong. Yours are perhaps based on biblical writing.

[Smithster]

You are blaming the environment now for what the Ripper did!

 

According to that argument it should be his parents or his friends in the dock.

 

I disagree with you and so does the law. We are all accountable for our own actions.

 

Yeah that's it Grahame. Take one individual case and completely twist what I said, while completely avoiding the question. It's precisely what I have come to expect. I'm going to go all Paxman on you now and I'm going to continue asking you until you answer the question...

 

How do you reconcile your two statements "I do not believe that we are born with evil in us" and "Mankind is inherently evil" which are completely contradictory?

[Hairyloon]

What point is that then?

That if you define God as something that cannot possibly exist (eg omnipotent, or invisibly pink), then you can easily construct a logical argument to disprove his existence.

 

If you reject that definition and instead define god as "an entity with powers we don't understand", then his existence becomes almost certain.

[redwhine]

That if you define God as something that cannot possibly exist (eg omnipotent, or invisibly pink), then you can easily construct a logical argument to disprove his existence.

So wrong on so many levels.

 

No god I've ever heard of could possibly exist. It's beholden on the believer to have faith in it despite its impossibility.

 

The more impossible the god concept, the harder it is to disprove.

 

 

If you reject that definition and instead define god as "an entity with powers we don't understand", then his existence becomes almost certain.

Non sequitur.

 

That definition wouldn't even be worthy of contemplating giving it the accolade of god.

 

If such an entity did actually exist, how would we know? How could we know? If its impact was undetectable due to our inability to understand, nobody would know it was there.

[six45ive]

That if you define God as something that cannot possibly exist (eg omnipotent, or invisibly pink), then you can easily construct a logical argument to disprove his existence.

 

But I'm not the one that's defining god. I'm talking about how god is defined in the xtian faith as being omnipotent (all powerful), omniscient (having all knowledge), benevolent (doing good deeds) and omnipresent (is everywhere at all times). This is the point I clearly made in my opening post which the article I linked to discusses further, culminating in the only conclusion that you can come to which is that the god of the bible simply doesn't exist.

 

So here's the article again if you missed it the first time.

 

'Albert Einstein famously said, “Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I am not sure about the former.” Nothing provides better proof of the truth of this statement than the persistence of religion in human affairs. The widespread belief in the god of Abraham shames us before all other species, making a mockery of our claim to intelligence.

 

The inherent absurdity of faith is revealed most clearly in the central dilemma that religion has never been able to solve, exposing to us the vulnerable belly of the beast. That is, religion must somehow explain the existence of evil in the presence of god (an endeavor known as theodicy). Despite heroic efforts, all attempts at theodicy have failed completely. The bottom line is clear. In a world that knows evil, an all-powerful god responsible for all creation must be evil. That interpretation is unavoidable and certain. But given that a few billion people will insist on disputing the claim, we will show next how no other conclusion is possible.

 

Some who oppose the notion of a brutish ugly deity propose that god did not intentionally create evil. If so, that leaves us with the question of evil’s origin if not from the hand of god. In one scenario, evil flourished as an unintended consequence of human depravity once his newly-minted Adam and Eve started roaming the Earth. God was surprised by evil, but allowed it to exist once brought to his attention. In another scenario, evil sprang to life without god’s permission at all, as a rude cosmic surprise. Both scenarios would give god a pass on being evil himself, but they create yet another dilemma. In either scenario, god is not omnipotent. After all, if evil exists as a mistake or without god’s permission, we must conclude that he is incapable of peering into and controlling the future, a decidedly un-god-like attribute. None of this is looking too good for Mr. Big. Let’s review our two choices: first, an all-powerful god must be evil since evil exists and god created all, including evil; or, second, god’s work somehow got beyond his control, with evil coming along as something like a divine blooper, a mistake not typically associated with an all-powerful thing. We can only conclude, then, that god himself is evil or he is benign but with diminished powers. And a god with limited powers is no god at all.

 

Religion solves this conundrum the old-fashioned way: by making up a silly answer with truly contorted logic. The answer in this case is free will, but only for human beings. Somehow, when god gathered his last strength to make humans before taking a one-day vacation, he decided to give his new creation – but not spiders, beavers or parrots - the ability to choose a path not preordained by god. This divine grant of free will solves the dilemma because people can choose to be evil without implicating god. Whew!

 

Unfortunately, the idea holds water no better than a cracked sieve. Even the briefest examination lays waste to the claim that free will was or could be granted by an all-powerful god. The idea is an absurd oxymoron: the very act of granting free will would remove the possibility of omnipotence. Let’s see why by looking at the combination of free will, evil and prayer in the presence of an omniscient god.

 

We can start with prayer. If god has a plan for everything and everyone, prayer could not affect his behavior. If he changed his plan according to a prayer, that would be an admission that god’s original plan was flawed, making him fallible. If only those prayers that fit into god’s original plan are answered, then the purpose of praying is defeated. With preordained fate, prayer could not change any outcome, which is the very purpose of a prayer.

 

Aha, you might say, the trick is that god gave mankind free will – that allows for the legitimacy of prayer. But prayer cannot work in the case of free will, either. If we have the power to choose our own destiny, prayer has no role to play. If I pray to god for a certain outcome, just the act of praying is an admission that I do not determine my fate; I admit my fate is in the hands of god, that god can change the outcome of my life, making the notion of free will redundant. The idea of free will is religion’s version of having your cake and eating it too. You can have a god who already preordained everything, and you can pray for a different outcome anyway, and you have free will to change your destiny. Simultaneously holding three mutually incompatible ideas is a form of insanity.

 

An argument often provided to counter this line of reasoning says that god knows what every person will choose beforehand, but the person does not; the person is still making a choice. How oddly tautological. Whatever we choose, our choice is according to god’s plan because we chose it! But if god already knows what we will choose, already knows the outcome of every choice, that is not free will, only the cruel illusion of free will. The choice was already made at the beginning of time, meaning there never was any choice at all.

 

Another common argument is that free will allowed humans to fall from god’s grace, without impugning god’s character. That is simply defining away the problem without solving anything. If god is all-powerful, he could have created a species of humans who chose to use the gift of free will only for good. That his creations chose to behave badly means that such behavior was either god’s original intent, or that god is not all-knowing.

 

Perhaps a benevolent god created a world with evil, but he chose to do so for good reasons. He created evil, but is not evil himself. Assuming this logic, some argue that evil and suffering are necessary in order to know god. Well, that is simply another example of solving the problem by defining it away, and ultimately contributes nothing. Since god is all-powerful, he could have just as easily designed the world such that suffering was not required to know him.

 

Let’s look at a real case of evil, that of Slobodan Milosevic and his choice of genocide: only three scenarios are possible. One, god knew beforehand the choice Milosevic would make, and did nothing to prevent the outcome; two, god knew beforehand, but could do nothing to change the outcome, or three, god did not know what choice Milosevic would make. From these three possibilities we must once again come to the same conclusion we reached earlier. In a world in which evil and suffering exist, god is either all powerful and is responsible for that evil and suffering, through design or neglect, or god is benevolent but not all-powerful. Nothing else is possible, other than the obvious conclusion that god does not exist. With evil in the world, an all-powerful god cannot be benevolent. Whether god’s power is diminished either as an original state of being or as a consequence of voluntarily relinquishing his power to human free will, the effect is the same. If god is benevolent and not culpable of evil, he has no control over evil. If god is not evil, he cannot alter our fate. No amount of twisted or convoluted logic can change that immutable conclusion.

 

That conclusion yields an obvious and terminal problem for prayer. If your baby is seriously ill, you pray to god for her recovery. Why? If god is all-powerful, he would already know the fate of your baby, and your prayers would be for naught. Whether you prayed or not, your baby’s fate is already sealed, pre-ordained, for better or worse, by the all-powerful god. Plus, since an all-powerful god must be evil, since he is responsible for everything in the universe, including evil, he might take joy in your suffering, since he has allowed so much grief to visit the human condition long before your child became ill.

 

Alternatively, if god is benevolent, he is not responsible for the evil and suffering in the world, meaning he has diminished powers since forces exist in the universe for which he has no responsibility and no hand in their creation. You would be praying to a being without the ability to control human fate, rendering the prayer useless. If god has no control over evil, praying to him to stop evil and suffering makes no sense. Prayers to an all-powerful and evil god are futile; prayers to a benevolent god are useless. You might as well pray to the tooth fairy. At least with the tooth fairy you get a dollar.

 

The notion that an all-powerful god granted humans free will is one of the most egregious examples of religion’s inane absurdities. But the situation becomes positively surreal when people believe that praying to an all-powerful god can alter the outcome of events according to the entreaties of the prayer. Yet the idea is widespread.

 

The flip-side of human free will is also important to examine; that is, does god himself have free will? If not, can god grant what he himself does not have? An all-powerful god is all-knowing, meaning god knows all of his future actions, and all of the choices he would make. Here is the rub: god could not change those choices, otherwise his earlier knowledge would have been wrong, meaning god would not be all-knowing! All omniscient god therefore has no free will to choose actions, since all actions must be preordained. God becomes an observer of his own omniscience since all knowledge of the future precludes any changes to that future. Any god with free will would have to be imperfect, and would by definition not be all-knowing.

 

So an all-knowing god, who cannot possess free will, cannot grant something he himself does not have. But a bigger problem remains. Free will implies a future with no predestination. A god who knows all, about everything past, present and future, could not create any free will that would prevent that knowledge of the future; the very act of creating free will would destroy the fact of omniscience.

 

These obvious arguments are not new, and in fact date all the way back to Epicurus, as summarized by Moojan Momen in 1999:

 

"The presence of evil and suffering in the world has ever been argued by some philosophers from Epicurus (341-270 BCE) to David Hume (1711-1776) to cast doubt on the existence of God. Other more modern writers such as Freud and Marx sought to show that religion’s explanations of the presence of evil and suffering were based on delusions."

 

And so we have the human species embracing what is nothing but an insane delusion. How embarrassing. I hope no alien species is watching this spectacle of ignorance. We would be the laughing stock of the universe.'

 

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/5...ite-underbelly

 

If you reject that definition and instead define god as "an entity with powers we don't understand", then his existence becomes almost certain.

 

Then I would simply reject your definition of god as 'an entity with powers we don't understand' on 2 bases.

1/You've already defined it as an entity so a different definition (god) isn't necessary.

2/Then after defining it as an entity you then go on to claim that his existence becomes almost certain which not only anthromorphises this entity but you then claim to have a certain knowledge about something that you've already made clear you don't understand. Fail on numerous counts I'm afraid.

[milquetoast1]

Well no, I don't have to and cannot prove a negative, the burden of proof goes the other way.

 

Surely you've just borked the entire thread - if you can't prove a negative then a thread title "Disproving the Existence of God" is a logical inconsistancy!

 

No, because as six45ive said in the OP, and has repeatedly said, the logic was being applied to a "omniscient, benevolent, omnipotent (and some might say omnipresent) all powerful being". Such a god is logically inconsistent, and yet is the definition of God (capital letter) that is believed by the vast majority of believers.

 

As for burden of proof, and the correct definition of a'theism, I tried to explain this in #250, and I will try to expand upon it here:

 

Theist Ver.201.001: There is a God. This God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. God appointed the Jews to be his chosen people in order to set an example of holiness and ethical behaviour to the world.

A'theist: I don't believe in the claim made above.

 

etc, etc ...

 

Theist Ver.1421.007: There is a God. This God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. Jesus Christ is the Messiah, sent by God. By dying and rising from the dead, Jesus made up for the sin of Adam and thus redeemed the world, allowing all who believe in him to enter heaven. Jesus was God.

A'theist: I don't believe in the claim made above.

 

etc, etc, etc .....

 

Theist Ver.1421.024: There is a God. This God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. Jesus Christ, sent by God, was his son. By dying and rising from the dead, Jesus made up for the sin of Adam and thus redeemed the world, allowing all who believe in him to enter heaven.

A'theist: I don't believe in the claim made above.

 

etc, etc, etc, etc .......

 

Theist Ver.3756.102: There is a God. This God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. God was revealed to Mohammed (pbuh) his prophet. Mohammed (pbuh) flew to heaven and back on a winged horse.

A'theist: I don't believe in the claim made above.

 

etc, etc, etc, etc, etc ........... and etc, until ....

 

Deist: There is a god. This god is unknowable. This god does not intervene with the functioning of the natural world in any way.

A'theist: I may or may not believe in the claim made above. I don't really care.

 

 

 

In summary, speaking for myself and most a'theists I have met on my travels thus far, a'theists simply reject the claims made by theists. The burden of proof lies with the theists.

 

In addition, I will say that what really annoys me is when theists describe a deistic god when arguing with a'theists, or so called sophisticated theologians that describe god in terms of deistic definitions, but then retreat to their places of worship to praise their theistic women hating, gay hating God.

 

[six45ive]

Some people do use them interchangably yes - but I specified a definition and used that definition so there shouldn't be any problem with semantic confusion.

 

Yes and I pointed out that your terminology was wrong to try and conflate beliefs with simple opinion when you're discussing an important issue like the belief in a god with the opinion of who was the better group, the Rolling Stones or the Beatles.

 

OK opinions on the video:

 

1. I reject his notion of agnostic as to do with "knowledge" - he seems to have gnosis and epistemiology confused.

 

No he's got it correct.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/agnostic

 

2. I don't believe that beliefs need any sort of validation - actions and facts require evidence and validation but not beliefs.

 

As he clearly stated in the video that 'beliefs inform actions' and therefore there needs to be an understanding of the value that can be given to those beliefs so we can make a rational judgement about the actions carried out because of those beliefs.

 

3. I do believe that to state "there is no god" is a position of faith as your making a statement of belief not of fact.

 

No because the definition of faith is; 'belief without evidence/proof'. In this thread I've provided some evidence that gives an understanding that it's impossible for a theistic god to exist.

 

I think it's perfectly accurate for a theist to state that an atheist will not understand how they think - and vice versa. You obviously had a lot of trouble understanding how people would pray to a non interventionist god but the do. It's by no means a "dark corner of desparation" but a fairly self evident fact I would have thought?

 

My bold.

I'm still waiting for you to explain that one to me.

 

Further I seriously reject your conflation of scientist and atheist - I'm a scientist and in no way an atheist.

 

And that's OK but most scientists are atheists.

 

Perhaps you should have used a more meaningfull title then?

 

No, I'm quite happy with the title. It broadens the scope of discussion from a purely theistic god to the undefined god which is clearly no god at all.

 

I would have said that a rational believer (or atheist) is one who says "I believe X but I know that I can not prove it's veracity but it works for me so I'm happy in that belief" where an irrational beleiver (or atheist) is one who will state a belief as hard fact.

 

Then you'd be completely wrong.

I would have said that an irrational person is one who says "I believe X but I know that I can not prove it's veracity but it works for me so I'm happy in that belief and how it informs my actions" where a rational person is one who will "withold a belief until such evidence comes along that is required to meet its burden of proof".

 

Surely the burden of proof lies with whoever makes a claim of absolute fact?

 

No just those that make a claim.