Can you prove that God does not exist?

[RDM]

While it is impossible to prove that God does not exist (much as it is impossible to prove that he does exist) it is quite possible to prove that a specific interpretation of God is extremely unlikely.

With the evolution of religion I would say that the existence of a God figure seems incredibly unlikely as man has tended to use the supernatural to explain things he does not understand. This starts as simple things (fire, lightning etc) but as knowledge about the world increased then the Gods themselves evolved from the more animistic to much more human. What they are used to explain becomes ever more esoteric as ever more information is discovered about the world around us.

So we go from the spirits to the pantheons to the monotheistic faiths, religion evolving as mans understanding increases. It seems very much that religion is very much a human concept rather than one truely divinly inspired.

 

[Mr.Clark]

Has anyone considered that Atheism is not a lack of faith, but merely faith that there is no deity?

When defined more broadly, atheism is the absence of belief in deities, alternatively called nontheism. Although atheists are commonly assumed to be irreligious, some religions, such as Buddhism, have been characterized as atheistic

Show me evidence that God(s) exist and I'll believe in him/them. Until then, I'm as likely to believe in a God as I am in Russell's Teapot

There's no logical difference in between believing in God, Jehovah, Allah, Zeus, Ra, Thor, faeries, or alien abduction.

what, he simply knows what your choice is going to be, not taht he's has forced you to jump off the cliff.

Next pointless question please.

I never said he controlled your actions, merely that because he knew what you were going to do, you never actually had a choice. You always WERE going to jump off the cliff.

 

[yhack]

Alien could be on this planet and abduct people, they could be millions of years more advanced than us and be invisible.

 

[Mr.Clark]

That's my point. They could be there.

But without verifiable evidence (despite what the Fundamentalists say, the bible is not evidence...), I'm not going to believe in them.

 

[Dolph]

Show me evidence that God(s) exist and I'll believe in him/them. Until then, I'm as likely to believe in a God as I am in Russell's Teapot

There's no logical difference in between believing in God, Jehovah, Allah, Zeus, Ra, Thor, faeries, or alien abduction.

Absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence, unless you can guarantee that you know what you are looking for and that you would find it if it's there. Unless you put faith in logical positivism as providing a truth, your viewpoint is not logical in the case of an untestable hypothesis.

If a try and find a lit candle using a microphone and fail, does the candle not exist, or am I using the wrong tool and getting a false reading.

In order to say you can't find something, you have to know exactly what you are looking for, and know you're using the right tool to find it.

You can, of course, believe whatever you want, put your faith wherever you choose, but don't make the mistake of claiming your logic is good when it relies on too many untestable assumptions. Belief or non-belief can both seem logical, depending on the assumptions the person holding the beliefs puts their faith in.

The only truely rational and logical stance though, is that we don't know and can't know, at least not now, maybe not ever. That's agnositicism though, not atheism.

 

[iCraig]

Who is right or wrong?

Nobody knows. Anyone who claims that their belief in creation is true, is arrogant. Everybody is entitled to believe in what they like, but nobody, absolutely nobody can state what is right and what is wrong. It's the question that has baffled mankind for centuries and will continue to do so. I would imagine the human race will become extinct before we get the chance to uncover any sort of truth behind why and how we are here, and why anything is here.

I don’t know a single person that does not believe in God… even the hardened atheist admits there’s something out there they cant explain!

No, hardcore atheists believe in no Deity whatsoever. Those that are open to the concept of a God, are agnostic. A true atheists holds faith in no God, in the exact fashion that theists hold a faith in a God(s)

My personal belief (for those who are interested) is a little unpronounced. I don't believe in any specific God, as I don't think mankind has the capacity to understand our existence in such great detail from simply scriptures. The Big Bang model makes the most sense to me. The simplest explanation so far for what we started as. Anything beyond that is pure undiluted speculation. A Deity could be behind it all, or it could simple be as we see it as face value. Pure energy spread out across infinity.

 

[Dolph]

No, hardcore atheists believe in no Deity whatsoever. Those that are open to the concept of a God, are agnostic. A true atheists holds faith in no God, in the exact fashion that theists hold a faith in a God(s)

Someone open to the concept but who disbelieves due to lack of evidence isn't agnostic, they are a weak or negative atheist. (A strong or positive atheist denies any possibility of existance). An agnostic believes that the idea is unknown, unknowable or irrelevant.

 

[iCraig]

Ah, I see.

 

[krisboats]

You slightly wrong there ... A lot of the bible is writen in a dialect of Greek that was used because you cant intrept words any other than the correct meaning.

Theres been ancient scrolls found eg dead sea scrolls that found that the bible today is the same as one many thousens of years ago.

Erm no it isn't.

MATT 28:20

I will be with you even to the end of the world.

In the king james version world is a mistrasnlation, among many mistranslations, the actual word being used is AEON... which means age.

Jesus is a representation of the age of pisces, and upon the end of this age, we will go into the age of aquarius.


So come on then... the bibles been mistranslated to give a different meaning to the one intended. Jesus won't be with us till the end of the world, its trying to say the age of pisces will be with us until we move into the age of aquarius in ~2150AD.

 

[Vonhelmet]

I never said he controlled your actions, merely that because he knew what you were going to do, you never actually had a choice. You always WERE going to jump off the cliff.

Maybe you were always going to do it, but only because you chose to.

Foreknowledge and choice are not mutually exclusive. God can know everything that will happen as a result of everyone's choices. That doesn't mean that the choices are already made, it just means that the way people make those choices is known.

 

[Vonhelmet]

In the king james version world is a mistrasnlation, among many mistranslations, the actual word being used is AEON... which means age.

For what it's worth, the NIV and probably most other newer translations use age.

So come on then... the bibles been mistranslated to give a different meaning to the one intended. Jesus won't be with us till the end of the world, its trying to say the age of pisces will be with us until we move into the age of aquarius in ~2150AD.

Frankly, age could mean anything if you want to start these kinds of discussions. Whichever interpretation you're quoting says it means the age of Pisces. The more traditional Christian interpretation says it means the age prior to the events foretold in the book of Revelation.

 

[Mr.Clark]

Absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence, unless you can guarantee that you know what you are looking for and that you would find it if it's there. Unless you put faith in logical positivism as providing a truth, your viewpoint is not logical in the case of an untestable hypothesis.

If a try and find a lit candle using a microphone and fail, does the candle not exist, or am I using the wrong tool and getting a false reading.

In order to say you can't find something, you have to know exactly what you are looking for, and know you're using the right tool to find it.

You can, of course, believe whatever you want, put your faith wherever you choose, but don't make the mistake of claiming your logic is good when it relies on too many untestable assumptions. Belief or non-belief can both seem logical, depending on the assumptions the person holding the beliefs puts their faith in.

The only truely rational and logical stance though, is that we don't know and can't know, at least not now, maybe not ever. That's agnositicism though, not atheism.

In your example, are people looking for the candle because they have seen some evidence of it's existence, or did someone just randomly one day say "I believe that there's a candle there, lets see if we can prove it..."

Just because someone comes up with an untestable hypothesis, doesn't mean that it's reasonable to believe it.

That said, without evidence of any sort, it's more logical not to believe in anything that can transcend the laws of physics (since the laws of physics define how everything can behave).

 

[Vonhelmet]

That said, without evidence of any sort, it's more logical not to believe in anything that can transcend the laws of physics (since the laws of physics define how everything can behave).

You're putting the cart before the horse. The laws of physics describe how everything we have observed has behaved.

 

[Dolph]

In your example, are people looking for the candle because they have seen some evidence of it's existence, or did someone just randomly one day say "I believe that there's a candle there, lets see if we can prove it..."

That's speculation on your part regarding the creation of the text though (note for the record that I'm not a christian or similar).

It's also irrelevant why someone was searching for the candle, the issue is that they were using the incorrect tool.

Just because someone comes up with an untestable hypothesis, doesn't mean that it's reasonable to believe it.

It's not reasonable to believe it's false either, the reasonable response is to treat it as irrelevant, as untestable hypothesis rarely do much useful. In a vast majority of situations, and especially for the purposes of scientific study, the god hypothesis is entirely irrelevant.

That said, without evidence of any sort, it's more logical not to believe in anything that can transcend the laws of physics (since the laws of physics define how everything can behave).

The laws of physics do not define how everything can behave. They define how things behave to our observations and underpin our predictive framework to allow it to function in a useful fashion. A small but subtle distinction.

 

[Mr.Clark]

My point being, once we find some evidence of a creature that defies the laws of physics, we have a starting point to study it and eventually rewrite those laws to incorporate the new evidence.

Until that evidence comes along, belief in it is pointless and in most cases in the modern world, counter-productive.

 

[Dolph]

My point being, once we find some evidence of a creature that defies the laws of physics, we have a starting point to study it and eventually rewrite those laws to incorporate the new evidence.

You appear to still be assuming that the scientific method is the correct (and possibly only) tool to gather and collate evidence. You do realise science is predictive, not explainative, don't you? (That is, science is concerned primarily with predictive accuracy, rather than absolute truth, and it's methods, processes and assumptions are tailored to this approach)

What if the scientific method wasn't able to gather and collate such information, for example due to a lack of repeatability, or the true mechanism being lost in favour of a simpler, but still predictively accurate one?

Until that evidence comes along, belief in it is pointless and in most cases in the modern world, counter-productive.

Ignoring other possibilities or mechanisms in favour of your own beliefs is rarely a good idea, something that applies to faith whatever approach it's directed at. It applies double when you put faith in something to provide answers and explainations it was never designed to do.

You should use the most appropriate tool for the job, and as someone with a pretty good scientific education (I have a degree in chemistry), the further you get into science, the more you realise it's not the most appropriate or only tool for jobs it's not designed for.

 

[krisboats]

For what it's worth, the NIV and probably most other newer translations use age.



Frankly, age could mean anything if you want to start these kinds of discussions. Whichever interpretation you're quoting says it means the age of Pisces. The more traditional Christian interpretation says it means the age prior to the events foretold in the book of Revelation.

Since ancient times the term "age" in this sense has been used for the different 2150 year intervals the sun moves into, which are each given a sign of the zodiac. when jesus is asked where the next passover will be after he is gone he says:

Behold, When ye are entered into the city, there shall a man meet you bearing a pitcher of water... Follow him into the house where he entereth in

The symbol for aqaurius has always been a man pouring a pitcher of water. Coincidental after this age of pisces the new age is the one of aquarius? I think not.

 

[Vonhelmet]

Since ancient times the term "age" in this sense has been used for the different 2150 year intervals the sun moves into, which are each given a sign of the zodiac. when jesus is asked where the next passover will be after he is gone he says:

Age means a lot of things. Am I now not allowed to use that word if I don't believe in astrology?

The symbol for aqaurius has always been a man pouring a pitcher of water. Coincidental after this age of pisces the new age is the one of aquarius? I think not.

What, so no one in Jerusalem at that time could carry a pitcher without being mistaken for an astrological symbol? Plenty of people carried pitchers of water. You could pick anything and say it was related to astrology. There's that parable about giving your children what is good for them... that mentions a scorpion. Is that suddenly a reference to Scorpio? How about Samson killing the lion? Leo?

I also find it ironic that we're arguing about the accuracy of the Bible by reference to astrology.

 

[krisboats]

Age means a lot of things. Am I now not allowed to use that word if I don't believe in astrology?

I said in that sense. I didn't mean age as a word in general. "I will be with you until the end of the age" clearly shows age being used to represent a timespan. THE age, not his age, your age my age in relation to how old we are. Similar to the description of things like "the dark ages" its a passing of a vast spanse of time. Which was most commonly used with the 2150 year periods known as ages.

What, so no one in Jerusalem at that time could carry a pitcher without being mistaken for an astrological symbol? Plenty of people carried pitchers of water. You could pick anything and say it was related to astrology. There's that parable about giving your children what is good for them... that mentions a scorpion. Is that suddenly a reference to Scorpio? How about Samson killing the lion? Leo?

They're asking him about the next passover of time after he is gone. I'm not randomly plucking them out of thin air here like you are. The words written in the bible correspond with astrological events and do all the way through. The birth sequence of jesus.... thats completely astrological. Then theres more references to astrology all the way through it. Lookup the story of horus, his borth sequence is EXACTLY the same as the one of jesus and yet it was written in egyptian glyphs 3000years bc.

I also find it ironic that we're arguing about the accuracy of the Bible by reference to astrology.

I'm trying to show how it could have been misconceived, and who's to say i'm not right? Why couldn't a bunch of guys in ancient times ripped off a load of stories from around the world and used them to form a book? Why is linking it with astrological events any less correct than someone beleiving theres a giant man in the clouds and that the ends of the world is coming because of things written in it?

 

[NashTax]

We simply cannot.