Normal

But if he excerised what would prove his existence to Mageth, he would be violating Mageth's free will. God cannot prove his existence to anyone without violating their free will. The only "goof" would be Mageth mis-interpreting the evidence to conclude god doesn't exist when he does.

Normal

My argument is that every belief of yours is an excercise of your free will.

You decide all levels of ambiguity for yourself.

How might the existence of trees be rejected based on the evidence? [/B][/QUOTE]

The definition of "Tree" falls prey to idealism. Read Berekley and Decartes if you're interested.

Mageth

Originally posted by Normal
On the contrary, proving anything to you by god's will is forcing you to believe. You decide if tree's are real, and you similiarly decide if god exists. No one is making you do either.

BUT all I'm asking God to do is provide evidence that is sufficient to establish He exists. A tree certainly provides sufficient evidence to establish it exists. Making a decision based on the evidence would still be up to me, according to your own arguments - whether tree or god. Even if God provided the evidence, wouldn't I still have to reach a conclusion using my "free will" based on the presented evidence, just as you claim I have to do for a tree? Using your own arguments, if I have free will, I could still "choose" to reject that evidence, as you appear to think I could do for a tree.

That's why it's different than "making me believe". And your tree argument, actually, undermines your position.

Would you know if you rejected potential evidence of his existence?

To know that, I would have to know that the evidence I rejected was "potential evidence of God's existence". How would one go about determining that something was "potential evidence of God's existence"? What, exactly, is "potential evidence"? And remember that I lack belief in god(s).

Well I'm not assuming you are in denial, I'm claiming it's possible you are in denial of evidence.

Your posts make it clear to me that you are indeed assuming that. You made it clear when you said things like:

"what you are basically asking is for god to remove the denial from you"

and:

"You want evidence beyond all doubt, for you admit yourself there could have been evidence that you denied, but you want more."

And how do you know you have not rejected god's attempt at proving he exists?

Have you stopped beating your wife?

In other words, your question commits the logical fallacy of a complex question. It begs the question of god's existence.

To know that would assume that I would "know" that a god exists to attempt to prove itself to me and has indeed done so. I know no such thing.

Trees must be mightier than your God, because I've never met a tree that had any difficulty at all at proving it exists.

Mageth, please understand I don't mean for any of my comments to be ad hom's, if they are please point them out and I apologize. For the purpose of this argument, however, I'm claiming there is a possibility you have already rejected god's evidence of his existence, which is in line with your exercise of free will.

I don't think I've accused you of making ad hominems.

I haven't "rejected" anything and am not in "denial". If this evidence is ambiguous as you claim, at most, due to its ambiguity and "potentiality", I cannot rationally reac a conclusion from the evidence that it had anything to do with a god. (You are still arguing with the built-in assumption that a god exists (as well as the existence of free will, I should add)).

I never said "withholds", I only hinted at the ambiguity of the answer derivable from that evidence. The evidence might be there, but the answer is a product of your free will.

You said on the second page:

"How could he show you without you writing it off as natural phenomena explainable by science?

and:

"The only way he could not interfere with your free will is to make the answer ambiguous and let you decide for yourself."

and:

"Were god to "show himself to you" in the manner you suggest, that would remove the ambiguity of the question completely."

How would he "make the answer ambiguous" if he didn't withhold evidence? You seem to be arguing throughout this thread that he withholds evidence to protect our "free will".

Of course not, and I'm not saying you should.

If I shouldn't hold myself accountable for not knowing what God has not provided, then God shouldn't hold me accountable either. To do so, he would be interfering with my free will.

I think it has to do with the "God should prove himself to me without interfering with my free will" paradox.

That appears to be only a paradox to you. And it's a bit of a strawman presentation of the argument I made, which was "what I would want is, if he exists, for him to let me know." That's an expression of my free will, and God, if he exists, is interfering with my free will by not granting my request!

Stephen T-B

Normal, so why was your god happy to go around doing all sorts of spectacular wonders in the days of the OT but has suddenly got shy?

(Remember that story about someone-or-other casting his rod on the ground, and God turning it into a snake; was there ever a more blatant attempt to influence the doubters?)

These days your god hides behind trees, and is so vague that no two people have precisely the same idea as to what "he" is. And is "He" a 'he" even?

He then makes it such a virtue to believe in him that if you can do, you go to Heaven and if you can't, you go to Hell.
I mean, what's all that about?

“Peek-aboo! You can’t touch me, see me, measure me; there is no way of detecting whether I’m here beside you or on the other side of the Galaxy (both places, actually); if you pray to me I might answer your request, but then again I’m more likely not to. If you worship me I might make you happy, but then I might also allow you to see your children become atheists; I might allow you to have a wretchedly unhappy marriage, be divorced, raped, robbed, murdered, die slowly of disease, be drowned, killed by an earthquake, a storm or a volcano. On the other hand, there is nothing I cannot do - except convince you I exist. And if I were to try doing that, hey, it’d be a violation of your free will, which in Old Testament times I wasn’t too interested in, which is why I worked all those miracles. Now, it’s up to you. You’ve got to have Faith - then you can believe. (Except, of course, no-one believes as a result of having Faith - everyone has Faith as a result of wanting to believe.) It’s the people who want to believe I like. I like them so much I give them ever-lasting life. I hate the people who don’t want to believe. They go to hell for that. OK, I know people don’t actually ‘choose’ to believe or not to believe. I know it’s a response that’s made as a consequence of a million, million ‘conditioners’ which begin at the time of conception, but I’m God. I can do anything. If I want to send those suckers to hell, no-one’s going to stop me.”

Normal. Can you please tell us about the God you believe in? I mean what sort of an entity is it? And tell me this: before it created the universe and the space-time-continuum, where exactly was it? And what exactly was it doing?

Mageth

Normal, in two posts above, you say:

But if he excerised what would prove his existence to Mageth, he would be violating Mageth's free will.

and then:

My argument is that every belief of yours is an excercise of your free will.

You seem to be contradicting yourself.

Division By Zero

I found an article on Berkeley's idealism, which I read (vague though it was), and which also contained this one-sentence summary:

"Nothing, including material objects, exists apart from perception; external objects are ultimately collections of ideas and sensations."

In other words, there is no such thing as a "tree," exactly; only a bunch of associated perceptions that we have defined as a "tree." Is this correct?

If this is what you're arguing, so what? The collection of perceptions known as "tree" can be perceived by anyone, and all who perceive them agree on what their perceptions are. No one walks outside, stands in front of a tree, and sees nothing. No one can move their hand through the space occupied by the tree and not feel it. Not so for God- I can't see him, converse with him, or shake his hand; I have no God-perceptions.

If we all perceive these trees, and our perceptions agree, then what is the significance of saying "the definition of 'tree' is just the sensations coming from the thing defined as 'tree-' there exists no real 'tree?'" Fine for philosophy, but irrelevant as to whether this tree-perception exists. It doesn't answer the question of how the set of tree-perceptions we have can be used to refute the existence of a seperate "entity" (for lack of any other word) that emanates these tree-perceptions; unless you meant that our "free will" to disbelieve in trees meant the free will to accept idealism, which I really don't see as relevant.

Have I misinterpreted this rather vaguely-defined idealism thing?

In any case, if you think the claim "Trees exist" is ambigous, why can't God give equal evidence for his own existence without leaving the claim "God exists" just as ambiguous? If he has given this evidence, then what is it?

Normal

According to you, a tree provides sufficient evidence to establish it exists. According to you, god does not provide sufficient evidence. Either way you are the author of your own belief system, and free will hasn't been infringed upon.

Potential evidence is anything you define to be in support of a conclusion. Like you said, running headlong into a tree can be said to be potential evidence of the tree existing.

Well in actuality I'm not assuming anything, I'm merely presenting the possibility.

Not really. It's not a complex question, it's an honest question about the nature of evidence. You wouldn't have to "know" anything about god, except for the concept. Just like you wouldn't have to "know" anything about a tree to judge it's existence, except for the concept.

Because you choose to accept the evidence of those trees you meet as being conclusive.

I just thought you might interpret some of my comments as attacking your character ie. "Oh, he's just in denial". I do not mean for my comments to come off this way, I'm trying to make inferences about the nature of evidence and proof.

I'm not assuming anything except that you choose your own beliefs.

A tree similiarly "withholds evidence" as it does not allow us to know the tree-in-itself. We judge the existence of the tree based on the evidence we are given.

I think he'd be more judging your use of free will then interfering with it, but my original comment about this had nothing to do with god. It is about you judging for yourself what are appropriate inferences using your own free will.

How? An act of god to prove himself to you is violating your free will to believe that god does not exist.

Normal

Similiarly, the gods of the Iliad and the gods of the Odyssey "got shy". If proof of god(s) comes through poems, that is your inference, not mine.

I think it's rather naive to assume the concept of god being vague is a modern phenomena.

If you believe the bible.

This discussion has little to do with the god I believe in then with the god people assume does not exist.

I don't know how you reasonably expect me to answer any of this.

Normal

I must say you have a good ability at interpreting idealism given your admited lack of experience.

You don't preceive your perceptions as being god-perceptions. That is my point. It is up to your interpretation.

And if "we all" perceive the earth to be flat, there exists no round earth?

How do you know it is not "just as ambiguous"? You are deciding what constitutes evidence for what. Perhaps for you, tree's are unambiguous (yes), and god is unambiguous (no). The point is it's up to your interpretation.

DMB

No Normal, you were the one who suggested that god might make or might have made an attempt to prove his existence to Mageth. If he could make an attempt that didn't work, and god being omniscient knew wouldn't work, then he goofed. -- Or is he a masochist or something?