ecco

Dante A:
No. No. No. No one bears the burden of disproving anything supernatural. The burden is on those who believe in the supernatural. The teapot is a really good analogy.



DavidB:
David, most were born and raised religious. They are surrounded by religious parents, siblings and peers (to say nothing of the nation’s leaders). The best you can hope to do is create enough doubt to start them on a journey of self-exploration.

It has nothing to do with intelligence! What we learn in our formative years, like language(s), is very hard to overcome.

Nuwanda

My hat's off to you. I appreciate that you do not limit the discussion to scientific evidence.

That being said, it can no longer be said that there is no evidence for God's existence. One can say that he/she does not believe the evidence, but they cannot say that evidence does not exist.

Tuffa Nuff

What standard of evidence is required to falsify anything which does not exist, especially when that something is defined as being undetectable. Any evidence for a theistic belief depends upon accepting the existence of the god to begin with.

All people are atheistic at one level or another. What standard of evidence does a Christian require, for the falsification of the Hindu gods and godesses...

http://www.sanatansociety.org/hindu_..._goddesses.htm

???

Gawen

Precisely. If it is said, “God exists”, the statement is meaningless and cannot be verified empirically. If it goes further to say “God is good” the statement is equally meaningless. For how does one prove something OF something that cannot be verified?

Cheerful Charlie

I have several good replies to that. Here are two of them.

http://iidb.org/vbb/showthread.php?t...ht=omnigenesis
http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...68#post4600868

What I call the Omnigenesis argument and the supergod arguments.

The claims that God is omni-everything and creator of all are theist claims, supposed derived from revelations form God, the Bible, Quran, Vedas and more.

But these attributes create some rather contradictory logical problems that show God so defined by these revelations is utterly impossible. And these are not the only such arguments, but these are two rather strong ones.

There is no evidence for God. Only a priori claims derived from alleged revelations. From a logical point of view we can prove this type of God is impossible. Lacking evidence, all that is offered to the atheist are claims.

Strong or positive atheism is the claim God can be demonstrated not to exist. And here we see that is easily enough done. Strong or positive atheism takes the burden of proof on its shoulders to demonstrate God cannot exist and succeeds. In fact, it is almost trivial to do.

Note Omnigenesis is really two arguments in one. If God is defined as having created all, is omnibenevolent, all good, and omniscient, God is impossible. If God is defined as omnipotent, creator of all and all good, that fails also. Se we have two converging proofs God is impossible here.

And the fact that these claims, derived from supposed revelation are utterly impossible, resulting in multiple overlapping contradictions, demosntrates that all these revelations are not in fact revelations. The basic raw materials of theism are not evidence for anything, much less God's existence. We have taken out revelation also, not just God. Theists must now prove revelation is trustworthy to use that as a source of claimed truth from here on out. They can no long ask us toa ccept revelation as factual or trustworthy.

Some theists here will take refuge in special pleading, God is incomprehensible to mere mortal man. "How can mortal and finite man hope to understand an infinite God?" But any God who's claimed attributes create impossible contradictions cannot exist, and an incomprehensible God that has these attributes cannot exist either, no matter what other attributes it may have. It is very comprehensible to that point and cannot exist no matter how otherwise incomprehensible it may be. The Supergod argument takes out all open ended Gods outside and beyond logic so that dodge is closed to theism. God cannot be incomprehensible in that direction. Any otherwise incomprehensible or inscrutable god cannot be creator of all, outside logic, omnipotent, or omniscient. It must be lessor kind of God far below the standard theists' Gods and revelation is still disproven so you cannot base such an incomprehensible God on the Bible or Quran et al.

Basically, God is a very vulnerable idea.

Cheerful Charlie

fishbulb

What is the evidence, and which god's existence does it support?

As far as I am aware, there is not and has not ever been any evidence to support any of the myriad gods that have been conceived. As far as evidence for a creative intelligence of some sort or another behind the Universe, the evidence today is actually weaker than it has ever been. In pre-Copernican, pre-Darwinian times, the hypothesis that the Universe and the Earth (at the center of it) might have been purposefully designed by an intelligent being was a plausible one, given what people did and did not know about the natural world. Today, we now know that things that once looked as though they were the product of deliberate design are actually the result of impersonal and unintelligent natural processes, and that what once looked like a well-ordered Universe with the Earth at the center of it is actually a chaotic place of unfathomable vastness, with the Earth situated in a completely nondescript and decidedly un-special part of it. The Earth's biosphere may once have looked like it was cleverly designed to work as a well-oiled machine, but we now know that the biosphere we see today is just a transient state, the product of the forces of evolution reacting to ever-changing conditions, and that it has and will continue to change radically and often violently over time. Systems that once appeared to be finely-tuned and carefully designed have now been shown to be haphazardly evolved one piece at a time, and whose inefficiencies and limitations testify to the way they developed through accretion and reaction to their immediate environment, and not to any long-term plan. The argument that the Universe was deliberately made the way it is is no longer a plausible one, and there is certainly nothing to suggest that any of the specific religious mythologies, doctrines, or faiths concerning a god have any substantial basis in fact.

OneInFundieville

In response to a similar question in "coming out" on another board in which I participate...

You're spot on right that I often do make falliable judgement calls based upon incomplete information every day. I do my best to do what I can to find evidence in making those decisions. Such as trying to find out something about that doctor I'm about to go see, even if in the hopes of none other than my insurance company did something in the doctor's credentialing process.

I also recognize as a sapient human being, I often make shortcuts to make many such decisions faster and easier. Some primatologists in looking at the evolution of mind have even theorized that religion is, in part, a by-product of this.

In this context, because "I make choices based upon limited information and limited reasoning skills, therefore the universe is caused by an uncaused cause," just doesn't seem to connect for me.

The fact that I make decisions like this, to me, seems to attest to my limited knowledge and my limited decision making capabilities. That's all.

kennethamy

Why is a statement meaningless if it is unverifiable? "The last existing living thing on earth will be a red rose" is, in the nature of the case, unverifiable. But we both know what it means-don't you? And even if the statement cannot be verified, don't we know that the rose will have the characteristics that all roses have? So, although we cannot verify the rose, don't we know what some of its characteristics are?

It is false that mermaids exist. And we have a lot of biological evidence that they don't. For example, the theory of evolution, for it is impossible that mermaids could have evolved.

LuisGarcia

Interesting. Any chance of a link?

Zorathruster

As far as the intellegence of theists vs non theists. Intellegence has part of it's nature the ability to grasp sometimes very complex relationships and qualia of various entities and objects. Realistically, the rather complex "god" and religion objects would require a more complex modeling ability than rejecting that postulation. Additionally, intellegence has a social aspect. The ability to get along with classmates. Part of that is achieved by accepting the widely held suppositions and assertions of the group. That again would reinforce that intellegence would more readily acceptance of theism as opposed to non theism. Another aspect of intellegence is economy of effort. By accepting theistic assertions a person would not have to do the vast amount of study and thought required to resolve the question of theism. When to fight and when to just ignore the opposition whether they are better or not would be an intellegent choice.

Therefore, while you might call theists shallow, easily swayed, and lazy, what they actually might be is adaptive, pragmatic and selective.