camerontigris

So I met with the Mormons last night (more about THAT exchange on another thread) and said something that I don't think they were expecting an atheist to say. I said that, given the right evidence, an atheist could believe in god. Now, my point was that, since god is claimed to have extraordinary qualities - in fact infinite power - that the kind of evidence to show that would likewise have to be extraordinary! So extraordinary in fact, that it would be virtually impossible to demonstrate the existence of god. Naturally they got all excited at the prospect that atheists could be converted given the right evidence, but missed the point that such evidence would have to be commensurate with an all powerful god.

But am I right in saying that the true atheist is all about evidence? If, hypothetically, an atheist received the hard evidence that was verifiable and convincing...would we have to change our view? Thoughts?

VivaHedone

Let's take an atheist as someone who believes that a god is absolutely impossible. The proof needed to demonstrate that a god did exist would have to provide a logical rebuttal of that position. Otherwise, if an atheist sees something that he knows to be impossible, he (or she) is more likely to believe what their brain tells them than their eyes.

christ-on-a-stick

Well, we wouldn't have to - I mean, look at how many theists cling stubbornly to certain beliefs that can be "verifiably and convincingly" demonstrated to be false... but I think most rational people would.

I hold truth claims about god, etc. to the same standard as everything else... not lower (the "faith" factor) but certainly not higher.

Clutch

Evidence could certainly lead me to believe that there exists some very powerful, very knowledgeable, very good agent. No such evidence has yet been introduced, though.

As for literally infinite instances of these properties -- well, what evidence should I take as sufficient to establish such a thing? I don't rule out the possibility, but I see no way to make sense of it.

SanDiegoAtheist

Sure. As one example I'm fond of using, if the stars one night rearranged themselves to spell out "Jesus is Lord" in every language used on Earth, I'd consider that to be sufficiently awesome proof of a sufficiently awesome power. Certainly, while it's POSSIBLE that there exist entities in the universe with power that awesome that are NOT a deity, I'd consider the difference, at that point, to be negligable - any entity (or entities) with that much power, are, as far as I'm concerned, a de facto deity with respect to myself.

Of course, theists look at me when I pop that on them and claim that I'm making a ridiculous assertion...but certainly their claimed God has that power, could use it, and would certainly win many converts by unequivocally demonstrating that power - and all without abrogating 'freewill' - since the choice would still be mine as to what I would do with this knowledge.

A far simpler (and also trivial) solution would be for God to simply make his/her/its presence known to all - again, this has no more bearing on freewill as long as presence (and perhaps attributes) are conveyed - and indeed, given that most theists are known to assert that God has proven him/her/itself in far more trivial ways (e.g. cosmological arguments using esoteric cosmic constants which we incompletely understand) - it seems that most theists accept that God CAN theoretically be proven (to any given individuals standard of proof) without adversely affecting excercise of freewill.

In short, I'd have no problem becoming a theist - IF AND ONLY IF that burden of proof is fulfilled though. It simply appears to me that most people who are theists are so because of 'proofs' which to me appear to be far from sufficient - some of which might be due to my education, but probably more so that I'm inherently skeptical of claims (historically, most claims are falsehoods), and require a pretty high standard of proof for exceptional claims.

The fact is, if I were CONVINCED by evidence, then I could no longer be an atheist - I may or may not choose to worship a given deity (although, pragmatically, I'd probably capitulate), but I certainly could no longer call myself atheist and be intellectually honest. Any deity worth his/her/its salt should KNOW what evidence is sufficient, and should be able to provide such evidence, if it so desired.

Cheers,

The San Diego Atheist

Fiach

I am perplexed that no poster has ever really attempted to define God. What exactly is God? How can we argue about the existence of God if none of us can define that of which we are debating?

There are several different quasi-definitions of God used on the various forums. The classic type is the anthropomorphic god. This God usually has a human personality with human emotions, human virtues, and human vices. These are manifested by jealousy, anger, rage, love, mercy, capriciousness, justice and injustice, insecurity (need for adoration as assurance of his supremacy), and forgiveness. He is omnipotent, omniscient, and the creator of all reality. This anthropomorphic god can range from the minimal anthropomorphism of Monotheistic Allah, to the marked human raging Monotheistic JHWH, to the every human Jesus Christ who is a God-human hybrid in a trinity that believers pretend to be Monotheism.

There are relatively undefined or poorly defined gods such as the one recognised by Deists, Unitarians, and Bahai’s. This god is conscious but clearly not human. He or She may or may not have emotions. That is not defined. He/She has but one function. That is to create the universe and the rules by which it runs.

Then there is the totally undefined God, not of a particular religious school of thought. People say they believe in a god-creator but say that nothing can be known about this god.

Another kind of god, believed by many American scientists, possibly to avert the charge of Atheism is the Inanimate God. This god is defined, as perhaps Steven Hawking would say, as the elementary forces of nature and the unified field theory of reality. This god is not a conscious being. It has no personality. It is incapable of thinking (cognition). It knows nothing. But its action results in the formation of universes, beginning with a big bang from a tiny singularity, and accounts for all of the properties of energy and matter. Those innate properties account for the evolution of matter from energy and nanoparticles, and the evolution of life from atoms combining into a series of increasingly complex molecules. Life evolves through stages of mobility, which requires some self-awareness and reactivity to cognition and intelligence. Intelligence is merely an animal behaviour evolved in stages for adaptation. This adaptation includes finding food, finding reproductive mates, and avoiding predators. As such thinking and intelligence is not necessary for a creator god who needs no food, needs no reproductive mates, and need fear no predators. Such a creator-god needs intelligence no more than a sponge needs a computer keyboard.

This then gets us to the question facing Atheists. In countries like the USA where Atheists are widely hated, would they be better off claiming to be theists. When asked to elaborate on God, they could reply with a Hawking style definition. They would be eligible to join the Boy Scouts of America, and previously Atheistic war veterans (10%) could join the Veterans of Foreign Wars now denied to them.

I think your question applies to the Judeo-Christian God. I will follow that in my next post.

Fiach

Fiach

If I were to be converted to theism, particularly the Judeo-Islamic-Christian God, I would have to be shown something that is impossible by the known laws of Nature.

Examples: Make time run backwards for just 24 hours.

Create an entirely new galaxy instantaneously within viewing range of the Hubble.

Immediately convert Mars in the flash of a moment, into a lush green planet with oceans. Or do the same with the Moon.

Have every amputee on Earth see the regrowth of their lost extremity in 3 seconds, at the identically same time world wide.

Make all cancers vanish at the same moment in every person in the world.

Give all monkeys the skill to perform calculus and differential equations.

If God will do all of the above, the odds are very good that I will convert to theism after personally verifying at least two of the above "miracles."

Fiach

camerontigris

A couple of posters have pointed out what kind of evidence might be required to proove the existence of god. Maybe we should look at what that evidence might show. The examples that showed the performance of, essentially, miralces would be sufficient (maybe) proof of some intellegence (as the examples cited all had some specific design) with awesome power. Now, does that prove ALL powerful. Surely not! The miracles cited, e.g. spelling out "Jesus is Lord" with the stars, had to do with physical phenomena. But could this power contradict basic rules of logic and definition. I would be highly impressed if an intellegent power could draw for me a square circle. But even this wouldn't be enough, because didn't we say ALL powerful. If the power is infinite, wouldn't the proof of this power BY DEFINITION have to be infinite? I think so.

Next, how can we possibly show all knowing? Again, this would have to be demonstrated to it's logical conclusion - which is infinite. So suppose this intellegent power imparted everything it knows to it's miserable subjects. Now how do we verify THAT? I mean if god told us what, exactly, the interior of a black hole looks like - would we have any reason to believe it if we couldn't verify it? But then I suppose one could say that if we were then all knowing, we would know a way to do that. And nevermind that fact that if we knew everything the all knowing knew, how would we know we knew it all and wouldn't we then be a third as good as god? Ok, next impossibility...

So, all good? Infinite good? This is like the name for the current Iraq operation: Infinite Justice. What is that??? How can justice be infinite. The only way that I can conceive of an infinite justice is justice applied to all cases of possible injustice and/or judgement. Well, this would take a while to figure out as each instance of justice would have to be applied situationally. And how long would this take?? Well, by definition, an infinite amount of time! So long after our medium size sun has expanded and engulfed the earth, we'll still be waiting for the results of the infinite justice/good problem.

But wait! If we got to the all knowing part first and god proved that it is all knowing, hence making us all knowing we would have to concede that we knew the answer to whether god was infinitely good. After all, if we believe Kant, we come to knowledge either by experience or by a priori reasoning...so we wouldn't need a demonstration of infinite justice if we could perfectly reason it a priori with our all knowing power.

This would also answer the all powerful question without the necessary demonstration. We would KNOW that god was all powerful, no demonstration necessary, thank you.

So I suppose if I were to ask for the proper proof of god's existence I would have to start with whether god is, in fact, all knowing. I could be the perfect know-it-all!! Just think, there wouldn't be a need for this discussion board...you could all just ask me!! And I would sound just like a fundamentalist on amphetamines!! And I'm sure you'd believe everything I said, right?

Phanes

I think Hume made a point in one of his works that you cannot move from an inductive argument using finite experience to a conclusion involving anything infinite. I also think it's pretty clear that he's right. The various teleological arguments in particular are (I believe) hit pretty hard by this. Anything you could possibly imagine (much less experience) would involve only a finite amount of power, knowledge, goodness, or whatever. And although some finites are absolutely gigantic by human standards, no finite amount will ever be more than a fraction of infinity (and even then it will be infinitely smaller by comparison).

You are, in effect, being shown a molecule of water as proof of an immense ocean.

I remember reading an article on the teleogical argument by Swinburne where he more-or-less jumps from "There is some sort of creator being" to "This being is infinitely powerful, knowing and good." His excuse? An absolutely infinite being is the simplest answer. Thanks, Captain Arbitrary.

Of course this problem can be circumvented just by proclaiming that God is very powerful, very smart, and very good, rather than infinitely so, but many theists are reluctant to yield even that much.

Wiploc

Of course. And I'll go further: We could do so even without getting good evidence. After all, every person who has become a theist so far has done so without good evidence, right?
crc