How I know there is no God

[DoubtingThomas29]

I believe it is rational to claim there is no God for many reasons. Not the least of which, is the fact that for there to be a God, he has to have certain properties, and if no being exists with these properties, then there is no God.

Here is an example of what I am talking about. Most believers say, God has omnipresence. There is a serious problem with that, because no thinking feeling thing can be around us all the time watching us. We can clearly look around us and know there is no such thing as a being with omnipresence.

If there is nothing out there with omnipresence, which is easy to see by simply looking around and seeing nothing but an empty room, we can conclude only one thing, nothing is there.

So this begs the question, was the religious person wrong about God having omnipresence, or were they just wrong about the existance of God all together?

Well, it follows to say they were wrong about the omnipresence, and they clearly don't know what they are talking about, so it is up to us to look at the evidence and invalidate the claims of omnibenevolence, omnipotence, and the ability to have a personal relationship with something that is not there.

That takes alot, but once you do that you can conclude only one thing, we are just sophisticated animals, a product of evolution.

Sure we don't have the answer to everything as far as how the universe came into existance, but with enough time, enough philosophers, and human persistance. We will know to the finest details how we came into existance without any superstion at all, or books written thousands of years ago.

Hang in there we will get the explanations and there won't be a God in any of them.

We are the product of evolution, it was not a who that made us, but a what that made us.

If we can findout the universe is expanding, using math, then we got a good shot at finding out what caused the big bang.

Has anybody here taken a philosophy class?

 

[elcapitan]

Exactly, though one might suggest that if leprechauns did exist, they would be likely to generate some kind of archaeological footprint, so far not extant. Regardless, one cannot discount out of hand the claims of the existence of leprechauns, particularly considering the weight of oral tradition in their favor. New species are discovered every day- the existence of any particular mythological creature is not inconceivable.

Exactly, which is why I brought up an entity that can never produce evidence of it's existence.

This is true. It's not in fact a reasonable basis for excluding it from conversation, though certainly the fact that the origin of the idea is admittedly for the sake of satire indicates no one is actually making a claim about it but rather using it as a rhetorical device. On wouldn't have to analyze whether or not Coleridge's albatross existed to understand the point of the poem- nor is it necessary to argue whether or not the fabled unicorn exists.

Though, I think it doesn't usually get across the point that its proponents mean it to, at least not to theists. Indeed, as with many popular conceptions of God, the pink unicorn would not generate any physical evidence of itself, if it existed. Therefore, one cannot claim that it does not exist on the grounds of a lack of physical evidence. Claiming that the idea is absurd is not a logically tenable rationale for dismissing it either. As with the ever popular square triangle and unliftable rock, one side thinks it is being clever and humorous, and the other side thinks the first side is unintentionally making a fool of themselves. The circle goes round and round.

I think I agree with you. the IPU is merely a placeholder and does not disprove the existence of God.

Suppose the unecessary entities in fact exist? even if Ockham's razor were some sort of objective law of the universe (which it is not- the truth is often a lot more complicated than people think at first, anyone who has worked in science knows this) the application of it hardly indicates that a given thing is nonexistent.

That's why I asked a question about why we should posit such existence, instead of merely stating that we shouldn't.

I might not have thought that the existence of the giant squid was necessary, may even have assumed them to be mythical when they were presumed nonexistent. But they started floating up in the Pacific, nonetheless. And God is, of course, an entirely different kind of proposition, not an empirical claim but a claim about the essential nature of the universe itself, of which scientifically observable phenomena are only an aspect of.

It's true that some entities may exist which are unnecessary until evidence is found for their existence. Supernatural entities, however can't be a necessary part of such future explanations, because they can't produce evidence of their existence.

So the question remains: if empirical evidence of God can never be found, why should we posit His existence?

What is it that you think can be explained without God, and by what means? I do hope you are not referring to the scientific method, which you would be grossly misusing if you tried to make philosophical or cosmological claims with.

The nature of the universe is of philosophical concern, yet is also a concern of science. To say that the scientific method can't be used to make any philosophical or cosmological claims is to say that the scientific method can't be used to make any claims at all.

So far as I know, no non-religious worldview has stepped forward to make claims about why, for instance, the universe exists.

I'm not sure if this is what you meant by this, but the question of "how" is different from the question of "why". If that is the case, then you are right.

Claiming that there is no answer does not count as an explanation. It avoids the question nicely, but it doesn't explain anything, and like God himself, you couldn't expect any line of evidence that could establish its validity.

Ditto for claiming that there is an answer.

From the standpoint of logic, claiming the nonexistence of God is no more, and no less rational than claiming his existence, regardless of what "makes sense to you".

Ok. So the question remains: why believe in God's existence over His nonexistence?

 

[ArchaicTruth]

Ok. So the question remains: why believe in God's existence over His nonexistence?

Really it just comes down to personal experience and gut feelings, since when anyone hits the huge ass wall present when we get so far into the creation of our existence, no one has any real idea what the hell we are doing.

 

[DailyBlessings]

Since we seem to agree on all the other points, I'll just answer this one:

Ok. So the question remains: why believe in God's existence over His nonexistence?

Well, why not? It makes a lot more sense to me, as no doubt your viewpoint makes sense to you. And just as my viewpoint probably represents a physical or biological fact in your mind, I hold that your understanding of the universe is closer to the nature of God than you probably realize. We are not that dissimilar, and I've never been interested in converting anyone, at least not against their volition, and certainly not through scientific proof. True, it would be odd for me, who have known God in the personal sense, to suddenly stop believeing in him (though some have). But anecdotal evidence is convincing primarily to the one who experiences it, unless they are a good orator, and I am not. So long as no one is unrightfully claiming a rational advantage, I'm perfectly happy to let the plurality of opinion stand.

 

[DailyBlessings]

I believe it is rational to claim there is no God for many reasons. Not the least of which, is the fact that for there to be a God, he has to have certain properties, and if no being exists with these properties, then there is no God.

You've mentioned omnipresence. What other conceptions of God do you feel to be necessary to his or her existence?

Here is an example of what I am talking about. Most believers say, God has omnipresence. There is a serious problem with that, because no thinking feeling thing can be around us all the time watching us. We can clearly look around us and know there is no such thing as a being with omnipresence.

Why not? If the universe itself is god, as pantheists and panentheists insist, it is most certainly omnipresent, whether or not consciously so. And you would not expect it to look any different than it does. And if God exists on a spiritual or "supernatural" plane, as in the Newtonian model, he would not leave any physical evidence of his presence either, yet the fact of his omnipresence of God could still be true. Even if God were a physical entity, yet distinct from the universe, there are ways that omnipresence could be possible. Suppose God is a field of subatomic particles, like the ever pervasive neutrino? Billions of solar produced neutrinos pass through your body every second, literally bathing the earth with their next to massless presence. As a species, neutrinos fit or nearly fit a practical definition of omnipresence.

If there is nothing out there with omnipresence, which is easy to see by simply looking around and seeing nothing but an empty room, we can conclude only one thing, nothing is there.

Well, the room itself is certainly there. And that's only what you can see- most of the things that happen in your room don't happen in the visible spectrum.

So this begs the question, was the religious person wrong about God having omnipresence, or were they just wrong about the existance of God all together?

This is a logical fallacy. Perhaps in a practical sense, you might come to distrust someone who is repeatedly wrong, but it doesn't logically imply that they always are, unless they are wrong about a certain topic for a clearly definable reason.

Well, it follows to say they were wrong about the omnipresence, and they clearly don't know what they are talking about, so it is up to us to look at the evidence and invalidate the claims of omnibenevolence, omnipotence, and the ability to have a personal relationship with something that is not there.

This much is, as my friend Martin Luther would say, most certainly true.

That takes alot, but once you do that you can conclude only one thing, we are just sophisticated animals, a product of evolution.

Why is that the only conclusion, and what is "just" about being a sophisticated living thing? It strikes me as pretty remarkable to me, our continued existence. Do you know just how many complicated natural processes, eventualities of fate, and moments of sheer fortunate coincidence have occurred and still occur every day to allow you to live and breathe and have your being? Don't knock it- every breath you take is the end process of billions of years of miraculous circumstance, and it is beautiful by nature.

Sure we don't have the answer to everything as far as how the universe came into existance, but with enough time, enough philosophers, and human persistance. We will know to the finest details how we came into existance without any superstion at all, or books written thousands of years ago.

This is a matter of blind faith on your part. I'm not saying that blind faith is bad, nor positivism in particular, but it is true that you "taken your reason as far as it can go, and then jumped." You feel intuitively that our knowledge will extend into previously unknown quarters, even though you have no strong basis in the present for believing this. Your ability to believe in things unseen is a fine thing, and one of the primary virtues of humanity, that which allows us to excel ourselves and open up areas of experience hitherto unknown in every generation. But, I think it is beneficial to recognize faith as faith.

Hang in there we will get the explanations and there won't be a God in any of them.

We are the product of evolution, it was not a who that made us, but a what that made us.

Why not both? I would regard myself as both a who and a what... God and the universe, too.

If we can find out the universe is expanding, using math, then we got a good shot at finding out what caused the big bang.

You think? How so, exactly?

Has anybody here taken a philosophy class?

Yes, and I love philosophy. Are you in one now, or were you just wondering? I took many philosophy classes in my undergraduate years, and they form one of the pillars of my seminary training now.

 

[DJPavel]

So long as no one is unrightfully claiming a rational advantage, I'm perfectly happy to let the plurality of opinion stand.

I think an argument can be made that there is certainly a rational disadvantage to explaining reality in terms of God's presense. If we agree that by "rationality" we mean choosing most efficient ways to meet our needs, then, unless you're talking about finding peace of mind in the promise of ultimate paradise, the scientific method will win over the God hypothesis any time of the day. With the power of the language, I can come up with a literally infinite number of explanations of reality. Some of them will be boring, some will be very appealing to my emotions, and some will help me meet my needs. How do I go about choosing which theory makes the most sense? Well, if I'm a rational person, then I will choose the one that will produce tangible results. Wouldn't you? How does God hypothesis achieve that? Again, please note that I'm not talking about the "I need the ultimate purpose in life" need. I would agree that for most of us, the God hypothesis would satisfy that need the best.

DJR

 

[dlamberth]

So what are your thoughts on all this?

My thoughts are that you are ONLY looking at the mental brain stuff about God and not at what happens with in a persons heart and soul. As such, your argument line is limited into a narrow crack and it does not look at other ways of knowing the Divine. So your not only not looking at the Divine Experience that people know and experience, but your also not looking at how that experience becomes alive with in human beings and how they are transformed by it.

.

 

[dlamberth]

I feel that we can know apostori there is no God, all though we can't rule him out all together.

I'm enjoying how you leave wiggle room for the possibility of a God.

.

 

[elcapitan]

My thoughts are that you are ONLY looking at the mental brain stuff about God and not at what happens with in a persons heart and soul. As such, your argument line is limited into a narrow crack and it does not look at other ways of knowing the Divine. So your not only not looking at the Divine Experience that people know and experience, but your also not looking at how that experience becomes alive with in human beings and how they are transformed by it.

In order for that to make sense, you have to already assume that there is a heart and soul separate from the brain. What leads you to believe that such entities exists, and how do you know that the "divine experience" is not biological in origin?

 

[DoubtingThomas29]

I'm enjoying how you leave wiggle room for the possibility of a God.

.

You may look at that as wiggle room, but consider this, maybe we can't know everything to 100% certainity about reality, like maybe we are in a dream right now, or your just hallucinating that you are reading this post. But when you consider the evidence and you see that there is just mountains and mountains of explanations to how we came into existance without the need of a God in any of them. Then in a sense we do rule him out together, it is just that if you are going to be scientific in your explanation you have to make like a statistical claim. Such with significance level alpha equal to one percent we reject the null hypothesis that there is a God of any shape size or imagination. Meaning there still is some chance that like a being named God lives on Neptune and watches us with a telescope for instance, but it just is so absurd we say enough is enough, there is no reason to hold out a hope. No practical reason any how.

That is how I feel about it.

 

[DoubtingThomas29]

Dear Daily Blessings,

That is great you took philosophy probably a lot of it.

Do you enjoy debating ontological arguments for the existance of God?

I am about to apply for jobs as a high school teacher, but don't worry, I only talk about religion on the internet. Honestly I try to avoid these discussions in public. I just save them for the internet and close friends.

I got one friend who is agnostic, he is so cool to talk with about this stuff.

Anyways, I am thinking about going back to school probably like two years from now, to just study some philosophy. What topics do you think are the cooliest to discuss? Like there is morality, and there is other topics, but what other topics do you like?

I like talking about the philosophy of religion, and stuff from metaphysics, like how do we know things. I believe that some things we know with absolute certainity, because contradictions cannot happen. I feel that one day the human race will progress so far that they will be able to know with one hundred percent certainity how everything works in the Universe and what caused the big bang.

I believe that, because look how far we have come as a species. I mean, it is mind blowing. If we can put a man on the moon, then I believe one day we will know how the universe came into existance with no superstion required.

An example of knowing something to absolute certainity like all unmarried men who have never been married are bachelors except the pope. We know that Apriori. And someday we will know to that degree of certainity how this all came to be, we just got to not kill ourselves in a huge war really.

What other topics do you or anybody like from Philosophy. How about the doctrin of Temporal Parts?

 

[dlamberth]

How about the Philosophy of the Mystics?

.

 

[DailyBlessings]

Dear Daily Blessings,

That is great you took philosophy probably a lot of it.

Do you enjoy debating ontological arguments for the existance of God?

Honestly, no. I don't think anyone has contributed anything new to that question in centuries of discussion, so I see it as somewhat a waste of time. Ethics and morality are more interesting to me- applying different models of philosophy to the real problems of the world and sorting out the best response from the plethora of ideas. I also really enjoy discussing the philosophy of science. My dissertation, if I were ever to return to school and write it, would be the on the synthesis of scientific revelation with spiritual tradition, in the vein of Teilhard de Chardin's sadly incomplete masterwork The Phenomenon of Man. I believe we are on the cusp of a new Reformation, or Rennaissance if you like- we are reaching the point where old ways of thinking about the world are no longer functioning, and people are beginning to realize that a broadened way of thinking about the world and each other is necessary. Nearly every crisis in the modern world breaks down to a failure of communication, not just in terms of words but also ideas, and finding ways to adapt to a plural cultural universe is the solution.

I must say, I admire your positive attitude towards human knowledge. Would that more people were more optimistic! I think too many of us give up on finding the solution even before the question is even asked, in assuming too dark a view of the future.

 

[elman]

I feel that we can know apostori there is no God, all though we can't rule him out all together. I feel that a person can't believe religion is man mad and still believe there is a God. There maybe a remote chance that there is a creator, but really a God would have to be one we could have a personal relationship with and he would have to be all loving and all powerful, which obviously isn't the case when you look at the evidence.

This is how I know there is no God, I look at all the religions that have ever existed, and I know all those religions were just stories that people were making up. I don't see how christianity isn't just a different story, given the fact we can't prove God exists and therefore we can't prove any of Jesus miracles actually happened. So God and the Leprchan fall into the same category, we can't prove Leprchans exist and we can't prove God exist, so there you go the two are one in the same, just about. There is not much difference between the two.

So, if we know Mohammed din't listen to an angle in a cave, and we also know that christianity was an oppressed cult for over two hundred years, which does mean we have no good reason to believe Jesus came back from the dead. Then there is half of the believing world right there rejected, the other half pretty much is just made up too, in my opinion.

So there you go if you know religion is man made, then you know God does not exist, the one follows the other.
We know this apostori by looking at religious claims and all those religions and denominations that are out there.

So what are your thoughts?

I am just basically looking for a philosophical debate where we can agree to disagree, but still have a little fun performing mental exercises about how do we know things, either apostori or apriori about the claim of the existance of God, and how do we know different things too. So if you want to jump in and tell me why you don't believe Islam, or why you don't believe Hinduism then we could talk about that too. The debate should be fun for everybody, try not to get offended. Religious beliefes should be just an opinion pretty much.

If someone wanted to believe their dog made the universe, what is wrong with that? Nothing not a thing, obviously we couldn't take him seriously the way we have to with people who are hindu or muslim, but still it is okay to have weird belief like that. If you wanted to think a Leperchan made the universe and he lives in the woods somewhere, there is nothing wrong with that. It is weird, but there is nothing wrong with it.

So what are your thoughts on all this?

Jesus taught we were created by a loving God to be loving to each other. That is an idea one can agree with or disagree with, but what is the idea of the Leprecaun that is supposed to be the same as this?

 

[DoubtingThomas29]

Alright Elman I shall attempt to explain,

We cannot prove Jesus made the universe, also we cannot prove a Leprchan made the universe. They are both in that category.

I claim, we can only know things for sure, if we can prove them to be true. For instance we can prove pythagorean's theorem, that a^2+b^2=c^2 where a and b are legs of a right triangle, and c is the hypotenuse of that right triangle. We know pythagorean's theorem Apriori that is true.

However one cannot honestly claim they know God made the universe because it cannot be proven.

Now here is what I am saying there is a lot of evidence that our Earth formed 4.6 billion years ago, and for about 9.1 billion years before that, all these elements, that you can find on the periodic table started to get made in huge Blue stars, bigger blue stars made atoms with heavier mass because of the protons and neutron in the nucleus. Over that whole 9.1 billion years, different kinds of atoms were formed through the evolution of stars. The atoms in our body were once in a star that blue up from long ago. It is from those stars that our atoms came from.

And it wasnt a who that made those atoms or those chemicals, it was a natural process that when given enough time, made our own planet without help from any thinking thing. There is evidence for this, and science is filling in the blanks for us as we just wait long enough to find the answers.

I am optimistic, that nothing is beyond human understanding, maybe we don't have all the neccessairy genes floating around in our gene pool just yet, but with enough time, the human race will be able to produce people as smart as Karl Gauss, Renee Des Cartes, Albert Einstein and Daily Blessings on a Regular baisis.

Think about how far we have come? Like one hundred thousand years ago, we were marching around Africa burning down jungles to scare away predators, and now we can fly in a jet all away around the world, and know to the finest details how that works.

 

[dlamberth]

Alright Elman I shall attempt to explain,

We cannot prove Jesus made the universe, also we cannot prove a Leprchan made the universe. They are both in that category.

I claim, we can only know things for sure, if we can prove them to be true. For instance we can prove pythagorean's theorem, that a^2+b^2=c^2 where a and b are legs of a right triangle, and c is the hypotenuse of that right triangle. We know pythagorean's theorem Apriori that is true.

However one cannot honestly claim they know God made the universe because it cannot be proven.

Now here is what I am saying there is a lot of evidence that our Earth formed 4.6 billion years ago, and for about 9.1 billion years before that, all these elements, that you can find on the periodic table started to get made in huge Blue stars, bigger blue stars made atoms with heavier mass because of the protons and neutron in the nucleus. Over that whole 9.1 billion years, different kinds of atoms were formed through the evolution of stars. The atoms in our body were once in a star that blue up from long ago. It is from those stars that our atoms came from.

And it wasnt a who that made those atoms or those chemicals, it was a natural process that when given enough time, made our own planet without help from any thinking thing. There is evidence for this, and science is filling in the blanks for us as we just wait long enough to find the answers.

I am optimistic, that nothing is beyond human understanding, maybe we don't have all the neccessairy genes floating around in our gene pool just yet, but with enough time, the human race will be able to produce people as smart as Karl Gauss, Renee Des Cartes, Albert Einstein and Daily Blessings on a Regular baisis.

Think about how far we have come? Like one hundred thousand years ago, we were marching around Africa burning down jungles to scare away predators, and now we can fly in a jet all away around the world, and know to the finest details how that works.

I think your missing something here. Knowing that we were created to be loving and compassionate with each other has a way to open our hearts to others, and BE loving and compassionate. Even if one does not believe that God created us, we still are a creature who is made to respond to love and compassion. Jesus taught us the importance of Love and Compassion. That is what he spent the majority of ministry on. It's seeming to me that your munched up about everything else except that which causes us to be Loving and Compassionate.

.

 

[ArchaicTruth]

Something quite major you're missing DoubtingThomas, is defining that which you are trying to disprove. If I give you x, and tell you to tell me if x is a real or imaginary number, you can't tell me because you can't define x as specific number. So tell me, what are you disproving?

 

[Teufelhund]

X is a variable it isn't a specific number, that's it's point, that's pretty fundamental algebra. However on that not, how does a jet engine work? I don't know, and I fly alot. I do not think that humans have become dramatically more intelligent than they have ever been, it is intelligence that leads to evolution but the survival of the prolific. Insects and rodents will always be there, yet majestic wolves die out. I do not personally think that to be absolutely sure about God is possble but the same holds true for everything. Even the Pythagorean theorum, you will find that in more advanced mathematics you find that all most all of the rules have exceptions, with increasing severity the more you study.

 

[Skavau]

So there you go if you know religion is man made, then you know God does not exist, the one follows the other.

This is false.

God as a concept is not exclusive to religion.

You can't disprove God, because whaddya know? Who put us here? The world, nay, the universe was made just so, in a specifically planned manner.

I fail to see any reason to believe the universe was 'made' or done in a 'specifically planned manner'.

How else is it we are the only planet with life on it in our solar system?

We happen to be fortunate. Appealing to probability is not a particularly good argument.

Besides...were you there when Jesus rose from the dead? How do you know he didn't? And my side of the "reverse" question you might ask is because I believe it on faith.

I can very much assure you that you weren't there Zeus killed Salmoneus. You do though, and with good reason I assume - see no real basis to believe in such a thing.

Skavau

 

[DoubtingThomas29]

Dear Sakavu,

I feel that if we know religion is man made, for instance we know Mohammed did not talk to an angle in a cave. Then we can conclude only one thing God is a man made idea here , man created God. If God created man then there would b e evidence of that, and all we have is an absence of evidence.

It does follow that if you know religion is man made then you have to go with the flow so to speak and conclude that to suggest there is some supreme b eing that did make us but has not told us yet, is to play make believe, much like with trying to believe in Leperchans.

About being mad loving compassionate people, I do not believe everybody is loving and compassionate which presents a problem to what you are saying about God making us as little robots all loving and compassionate.

There is a huge spectrum of different types of humans, and I for one believe that some children are born with mental illness that is detectable at an early age and even trained psychologists will say this child is going to grow up and be a burden on society. For real, I heard a psychologist tell us she felt a two year old was going to spend her life in prison. It is just that some children are so screwed up that doctors can tell the child is abnormal. Typically they're too hyper and scream all the time.

Nature can be cruel and I for one am not having children of my own, I will adopt a healthy child with an IQ of at least 110.