Philosoft

Well, we are told of the things this concept has allegedly done. But I don't really have any idea what "God" is, any more than I have an idea what "pilkfim" is.

philechat

Concepts of God differ from culture to culture, and we must not assume which concept of God to be applied to everybody. The Hindu God, for example, could easily be interpreted as both monotheistic and polytheistic (One God with many natures), while the Christian God is defined as "the One Trinity God who interacts with human lives and is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent." The Greek God would be Apollo, Dionysus, Hermes, and Zeus, each with his own character, and the Deist God is "some creator of the universe outside the universe, usually not interfering".

I call myself an atheist toward a personal God, and agnostic toward the deistic or pantheistic concept. Which God are we discussing here?

Jobar

everything is evidence that God exists

All the grimness and griminess, the parasites and the prostitutes, the dread and disease, are evidence that God exists?

All the evil and suffering we see in the world, are evidence God exists?

Is the fact that there are atheists, who disbelieve in any God, evidence that God exists?

You say that your statement above is equivalent to saying that "nothing is evidence that God exists." Those two together cancel out to silence; we can say not one word, not one syllable, about God.

And you know what? I think you are right. And there have been many others who think so, too. Once again I paraphrase the famous words of Lao Tzu-

"The God who can be talked about is not the real God."

Thomas Metcalf

Originally posted by Buck Swope :

It's not as if we're just stuck. You present what you think is evidence, and explain why you think it's evidence. I present what I think is evidence, and explain why it's evidence. That's how it's done, and I haven't seen good reason to think that endeavor is doomed to failure.

(1) x isn't evidence for y unless there's a reason to believe x is evidence for y.
(2) There is no reason to believe everything is evidence for God's existence.
(3) Therefore, everything isn't evidence for God's existence.

That's a proof. Now, you may dispute (1) or (2), but I think the only place you'll get anywhere is with disputing (1). But if you decide to reject (1), all sorts of weird consequences are possible. One of the most pressing is that you're going to have to abandon all internalist justification, I think, because it seems that for something to be evidence of something else, it has to seem to us to make that something else likely.

Lobstrosity

That's a rather pointless claim. Subjective knowledge isn't the kind of knowledge we're discussing and you know it. Science doesn't deal with subjective knowledge because it isn't really "knowledge" in the true sense of the word. It's some abstract personal concept unique to one individual. Science can tell us objectively why human beings might tend to find ice cream enjoyable, but of course it isn't anywhere close to being able to prove why one specific person thinks he likes it. This isn't a failing of science. Science deals with objective truths. God is an objective concept. The minute you let God interact with the physical universe (either via creation, answering prayer, making floods, etc), you make God (or at least the facet of God that interacts with our universe) something we can objectively address. Science can thus deal with God, or at the very least some part of God.

Big Spoon

The fact that everything that exists could have come about by chance (and it IS probabilistically viable - if you think it isn't you know nothing of probability theory. The analogy of a 747 and a junkyard is rubbish) means that there is no justification to cite everything that exists as evidence for god. Buck Swope's argument is wrong.
Thomas Metcalf is spot on.

AmericanHeretic

1) Everything exists, therefore it was created.

2) Personal experience is objective evidence.

3) Opinion is the equal of fact.

Do I have your prime tenets understood correctly?

A) The Big Bang. Please name the religion that espouses this to have occurred. If you cannot say your religion incorporates the Big Bang, it is disproven.

B) I saw Elvis. Since Elvis is dead, personal experience as fact is disproven.

C) I believe there is an Elvis Clone Army and this explains why I saw the King. Opinion as the equal of fact is proven inifitely arbitrary, and, as always, is merely an excersize in plausibility, unsupported by fact.

Bluefire211

You stated in your very first post that:

So you are simply making an assertion that means nothing to the rest of us? So you believe in God based on a completely unprovable assertion?

What else will you believe based on completely unprovable assertions?

Over and out,
Bluefire211

Jamie_L

Of course you can. It's easy. The stuff of middle-school science fairs. It goes like this:

Hypothesis: Ice cream tastes good to people.
Experiment: Gather a group of people. Have them all eat ice cream. Survey them to see if the ice cream tasted good.

Or, if you have more money and technology at your disposal:
Experiment: Gather a group of people. Using technology, determine their brain reactions when they eat things that taste good. Have them eat ice cream while monitoring their brains' "taste good" reaction.

Science is not some strange, high-tech, mystical endeavor. It's just observation and test, trial and error.

Sorry if this is a bit off topic.

Jamie

Mageth

Originally posted by Buck Swope
Well, I know that ice cream tastes good, but I can't prove it scientificly.

Continuing with Jamie_L's point, and still a bit off-topic:

MEMS tongue mimics taste buds

"The group has applied for several patents for the artificial tongue and envisions industrial uses that range from screening new foods for "good taste" to testing blood samples and dangerous chemicals."