As Christians, What scientific truths/falsehoods can we attempt to answer with the cheat sheet of knowing that God does in fact exist?

None, if you are honest with yourself and understand your Christian eschatology. Salvation is by faith. Ephesians 2:8–9 “8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.”

And what is faith? Hebrews 11:1 “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

You have faith that God does in fact exist. You have never seen God, or measured God’s presence in any way except by your faith.

Superstition is a powerful thing. As is mass hysteria. Science is more so than either because its based on proof, not the unprovable and the creations of man.

A man with an experience is no match for a man with an argument. Talk to those who have that experience.Those whose lives have been touched in an indistiputible way will never forget the healing involved on so many different levels of their lives that was touched and impacted. We are all just energy…. everything a/effects everything.

@gravity That’s certainly true. But it fails to prove the existence of any particular God. The problem is that there are numerous people who claim such profound experience of the revealed presence of their God, but who believe in a God that is mutually exclusive with the one you believe in. Unless God is anything any given human wants him/.her/if to be—which is in direct contradiction to Christian eschatology—they can’t all be right. And therefore, that experience of the revealed presence of God must be possible when no true God is involved. It must me possible for it to arise out of the human mind.

Faith and science are not necessarily in conflict with one another. After all, science is the super-deluxe logic-wrench, and anybody can wield a wrench.

@ETpro Not necessarily. Consider: Christianity allows for a large number of supernatural entities with varying degrees of power and authority. Most of those entities spend their time keeping as many people as possible from God via such deceptions as they can come up with, at times even masquerading as God.
So it is perfectly possible for more-or-less genuinely supernatural experiences outside of Christianity.

@klutzaroo Statements like that in a forum like this are flame-bait, nothing more.

@Nullo Sometimes the truth hurts. There’s nothing wrong with that. Nothing at all. Trying to start something because of a simple truth in a forum like this is immature and unnecessary. Nothing more.

@klutzaroo Except that you can’t prove that yours is the truth, certainly not well enough to dissuade anybody here. In any case, your words (whether you intend them this way or not) are angled to ridicule, not persuade.

I’m not sure if this answers the question, but I think it highlights a few significant problems.

As far as I can tell, there is no observation that can’t be retrofited by a theist to be consistent with the existence of god. And, If a god exists, and god is omnipotent, it doesn’t exactly offer a very useful cheatsheet, as the answers could hypothetically change in unpredictable ways at any given moment, based on a supernatural whim, or cosmic indigestion. More specifically,the holy texts actually demand the laws of nature be suspended by god (directly or indirectly), every time a supposed miracle occurs.

Theist or not, if you want to understand how the the universe works (at least in any way that is convincing to others), you gotta use science.

And frankly, “knowing that god exists”, can in fact offer a potential obstacle to discovery, because science is hard. When science gets hard, it has often proved tempting for at least some theists to claim an answer can’t be found, and is a product of god’s handywork (ie. irreducible complexity), rather than a product of their own lack of understanding, effort, etc..

This doesn’t negate the fact that theism can also drive a theist to try to understand “god’s handywork”, and by so doing, make massively important discoveries via this motivation, but it does highlight that it’s hard to see any inherrent advantage of making unsubstantiated assumptions about how the universe works, prior to trying to understand how the universe works.

That’s proven repeatedly to be a very unfruitful approach to scientific discovery.

Here’s a wonderful talk by Neil de Grasse Tyson on this very point.

http://thesciencenetwork.org/programs/beyond-belief-science-religion-reason-and-survival/session-2-4

You can’t use science to prove that god exists as much as you can use it to prove vampires exist.

You can however, shed light on things that will go against the existence of these sort of beings. That doesn’t disprove their existence either.

But the difference is that the logic used to support disbelief is more intuitive and sensible than the logic used to support belief. Occam’s razor anyone?

TL;DR- Proving God exists takes as many leaps of faith (no pun intended) as it does to prove vampires exist.

History has proven that assuming God exists leads to the following conclusions:
– God agrees with you.
– God wants everyone to think like you do.
– Any action is permissible if God told you to.

In the scientific realm, I believe the process is to copy whatever secular scientists have discovered, find a novel way to insert God back into the equation, and then tell everyone that the secular scientists deliberately left him out of it.

Oh boy, I can see it coming again, the problem with questions such as this is you always get <redacted> who want who want to play the ”myth, superstition, fairy tale card”, they cry “science you can prove with this, that, or experiments”. You can only prove any science if you can actually get your hands on it otherwise it is still pretty speculative. Plus you can only detect something if you have the means to detect it. If I could travel back in time to the time of Caesar but I could not take any of the technology of today back there I could tell people there are gamma rays, radio waves, etc either naturally happening all around us or that can be created. I know it exist because I have used it in the present world but with no way to show them or detect it in their ancient world would it be real to them? They would believe it only if I was persuasive to get them to believe me even though I could not prove it because I had no means to prove it in their ancient time. What the “myth criers” try to do is bamboozle the issue by not even using their so-called intellect to fathom the plausibility that today’s science is just not advance enough to prove God. But to those who chose to believe there is God we are not so arrogant to know that and further more don’t need proof to have faith it is there.

@Hypocrisy_Central We don’t have any scientific evidence for god(s), but god(s) may nevertheless exist. True, but I haven’t seen anyone dispute that.

Regardless, it’s not arrogant to point out the lack of evidence for a hypothesis, and it’s not modest to fill in the unknown with one’s personal preferences.

I support this question. :)

This is probably the most productive and sensible religion question I’ve seen in a long time. Given that god is real, what does that imply? What can you predict? What advantages does it yield to know this fundamental truth about the universe? How is it useful to know this?

This is a particularly brave thing to ask, because if it turns out you were wrong after all, you might actually be able to tell. It means sticking out your neck. But if you really believe what you think you believe, you’ll happily take that risk; you can’t lose anyway.
If your faith is too weak, but you don’t want to admit that to yourself, you’ll go look for excuses why you don’t have to.

So here, finally, we have a fair contest. Let us look for things that would be different if there were a god versus if there weren’t any. Let’s list the concrete things we disagree about.
If we do it properly, then sooner or later, reality can be the arbiter of who is right.

As an atheist, I’ll take the same risk from my side. I believe I know for a fact that this universe is god-free, which implies (for example) that nature is not purposeful or intelligently controlled, so that non-human-controlled events will constantly undo or get in the way of each other’s effects, in the same way that wolves try to eat rabbits and rabbits try to keep wolves from eating them.

What is proof, other than convincing multiple people that something is fact? Proof and faith are not as far apart as people seem to think.

I’ve never seen an atom, other than models and drawings. we believe in them based on faith in science.

Most religious folks have never seen god, other than drawings and sculptures.

Is this different? I don’t think it is.

@FluffyChicken Larvae that, eloquently put.

@FluffyChicken
We have actually seen atoms.
With electron microscopes.
And besides, all our nuclear reactors, weapons, and any technology that has to do with radiation, would not even work if atomic theory were wrong.

@Fyrius How do you suggest we discover the implications of a god existing unless we know the nature of that god? If we want to know the effects of adding sulphuric acid to a chemical reaction, we need to first note the properties of the acid. If we want to know the hypothetical effects of adding a god to our universe, don’t we first need to know the character and powers of that god? I think before we can answer this question satisfactorily we need a solid definition of “God”.

@FluffyChicken “What is proof, other than convincing multiple people that something is fact? Proof and faith are not as far apart as people seem to think.”

Proof is convincing multiple people that something is fact according to given rules of logic, while faith is telling them that it is a fact but the reasons why are not that important. Big difference.

@FireMadeFlesh
Well noted, but I think it needn’t be a problem.
It’s a matter of definition. If people are going to postulate the existence of a god, it’s up to them to decide what exactly they want to postulate, and as a result it’s also up to them what predictions they’ll end up making.

I went ahead and made the assumption that a “god” is a superintelligence that has goals and a profound influence on what happens in the universe, so that the things that happen outside of our control should contribute to some goal or another being achieved.

And pardon my insolence, but being vague about god as a “mysterious force no one can understand or base predictions on” is the sort of excuse people make when their faith is too weak, but they feel a need to pretend it isn’t. If you truly believe you are right, you can afford to be explicit.
For that matter, if you can’t be explicit, your belief has no content. You’d basically be believing in nothing, only a label that’s not attached to anything.

@FireMadeFlesh @Fyrius Since the question states “as christians” some specific quality is probably to be taken from the bible.

I’m going to wait for a reply from the OP, but i think omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and omnibenevolence are going to sum it up pretty neatly.

I think that is a good working definition of God. Now, assuming the existence of such a being, what difference does it make? There are a number of theories about the cosmos, but none that includes periodic miracles to keep things in order. If God is constrained to follow the laws of physics, then what need do we have for God?

@LostInParadise Wait, wait, wait. I said i was waiting for OP for a reason: we need the definition for benevolence as well.

And we need to have at least one Christian vouch for the definition, otherwise we’re just debating a possible definition of the christian god which I, an atheist, posted.

If we’re going to do this, we’ve got to do it right. All cards on the table and nothing that can be construed as a strawman.

I suggest that we pit Christianity’s God against energy (a universally accepted constant, that if not God, contends for the position)

If God is not Energy, or Energy is not some aspect of God, but we also argue that energy is not destroyable…then God and Energy are divided….there can only be one Alpha and Omega, who is, and was, and will be….

@Ltryptophan
So what sort of thing is this “Christianity’s God”, then?
If you’d have to explain what “god” is to someone who grew up on the moon and has never heard of any of this religion business, what would you say?

Also, why would it be impossible that there’s more than one thing that cannot be created or destroyed?

@Ltryptophan I suggest that we pit Christianity’s God against energy
Hm. There is a huge difference between these concepts.

Also, the fact that they could well coexist without incident makes it, well, odd that one would “pit” them one against another. I would’ve more expected something like “God VS Chance”.

In fact, i suggest we go with “God VS Chance” (assuming we have to “pit” an entity against something else than “entity A VS no entity A”. Which Is kinda bogus but it’s a good starting point.) mainly because it works well for both groups: you have a clear win if you can prove that there is a purpose that is in line with the qualities of your God and is empirically demonstrable , we have a clear win if we can prove that there is no purpose that can fit your God’s qualities with the evidence we can gather from reality.

Also, before we begin: give your definition of “Christianity’s God” and related concepts (aka: benevolence, morality, purpose, and so on).

Not because i’m trying to play dumb, but because different sects have different definitions of both god and the collateral terms i listed, and i want to know what i have to work with. As Fyrius said: “If you’d have to explain what “God” is to someone who grew up on the moon what would you say?”

The more you detail it the better it is. Makes arguing easier and makes it harder for both parties to misunderstand the points and thus makes the whole debate flow better.

Obviously I’m not the ultimate ruler regarding this debate, i’m just trying to lay some basic groundworks so we can have a working framework for the debate itself. If someone has something to add/correct/object don’t hesitate to do so.

There is no God. There is energy.

@josie Who or What created energy? we came from nothing? really? and if so… how? there seems to be much intellectual design for us to come from nothing.

@gravity Just because we don’t know the answer yet doesn’t mean it came from a bearded fellow hiding behind clouds.

@Nullo Your own argument, if we accept it as true, proves that you do not know by your feelings of a divine presence that your God exists. Since there are claims for the existence of competing, mutually exclusive gods, each with their own pantheon of demigods and demons, it could just as easily be you who has been deceived by a minor spiritual being. Tthose who worship some other god could be the ones who have actually been in the presence of the one true God.

I hope you will take the time to watch the film that @AdamF posted in entirety. It raises some strong points for your consideration. And even if it leaves you unmoved, it has enough dry, scientist style humor in it I think you will enjoy the hour+ you spend watching it.

Let’s see. Dissecting my comment.

Superstition is a powerful thing. <- Provable. And an essential truth.

As is mass hysteria. <-Provable. And an essential truth.

Science is more so than either because its based on proof, not the unprovable and the creations of man. <- Probable.

@Nullo Go pick a fight somewhere else. Its not going to work here. Especially if you’re going to “fight” from such weak ground.

Rather than debating again whether god exists, isn’t the purpose of this thread to assume he does for the sake of the argument, and see what that means?

It seemed such a nicely fresh subject. Do we really have to get stuck again in the same tired conversations we’ve had a hundred times already?

@gravity there seems to be much intellectual design
See ragingloli’s post on another similar debate. Let’s not derail this one.

@Fyrius and @Thammuz Okay, lets run with that definition. (I don’t think it is necessary to pit God against anything other than No God).

If there is an omnipotent god, there should be a hole in the law of conservation of mass-energy. Since infinite power requires an infinite energy source, this god should be able to call on energy that isn’t there in the process of performing their omnipotent acts.

If there is an omniscient god, he obviously keeps his knowledge to himself, so we can’t do much with that one.

If there is an omnipresent god, then he must use this presence for a purpose. As such, we should be able to see effects of this presence. Australian Aboriginal trackers can follow a person across tarmac – every presence leaves a mark that the astute can recognise. If a god is present everywhere, there should be an aspect to every event (since he is involved in all of them) that cannot be explained by mechanical means.

If there is an omnibenevolent god, everything should eventually work out for the best. This isn’t hugely relevant, since the big picture will outlive us all. We are still suffering the effects of wars waged thousands of years ago – who knows if it will work out for the best? On a cosmological scale though, humanity is doomed by the steady increase in entropy. An omnibenevolent god would surely stop the expansion of the universe in time for humanity to survive the cold death we are destined for.

@FireMadeFlesh I wanted the OP to start off with his statement, so we could respond instead, for once…

@Thammuz Fair enough. I’ll try to pay a little more attention!

@FireMadeFlesh I’m just concerned because, as Fyrius said, this looks really promising, and i don’t want to ruin it. I think it’s probably better if we take it slow, without skipping steps. Let’s first see what definition the OP gives and what are his conclusions from that, then we’ll work from there. Or, at least, that’s what I’m going to do, you’re free to do whatever you want but it makes little sense to use my definition without a Christian to vouch for it.

It has been brought to my attention that it’s not very clear that I’m waiting for any Christian to pick up the ball. I’m saying “OP” because it seems only fair that since he’s started the debate, he keeps going with that, but at this point any Christian is welcome, seeing how OP is, at the very least, incredibly slow.

@Thammuz busy, incredibly busy I hope you are all still paying attention, I think the subject matter is worthwhile.

God may well be a bearded gentleman who hides behind clouds. I mean, not all the time…but maybe it happened??? If he was from palestine c. 0 CE then He probably was bearded. He probably does mortals a favor by hiding behind some sort of obstruction.

Anyway…

No time to debate if God and energy are pittable. I think it is a moot issue, because for all we know it might be assumed that God is somehow behind energy anyway (in the details of my q, and I would assert as much assuredly by faith).

Jesus. That’s who God is. That’s what Christians believe. That isn’t His only name though. That is not in my opinion a restriction on Him either, and certainly not His only Name. As C.S. Lewis loosely suggested maybe in some universes He is a great Lion?

Let’s not go there though, not now. Atheists and skeptics have skin in this since they can argue principally the opposite of what I am suggesting. They can say your “cheat sheet” gives no new information.

There are certain math or algebra problems that allow you to take bad solutions and rule them out…functions possibly. They might be of use as an example here. What we aim to do is offer that the Christian God is in fact a certain solution. If you make the universe revolve around Him you may get results in the same fashion you have gotten from a nuclear reaction even though the reaction was theoretical.

For me the point is settled. I have the reaction I need to believe…it has taken place. However, I understand it is not testable in a laboratory.

So I will limit the general nature of the position to a wider grasp of God for the sake of a potential laboratory, (this is a sort of farce at best sadly, because I am afraid an all powerful God can control when He is discovered.) The laboratory worthy God should be all powerful, uncreated, everlasting, certainly ungraspable in entirety, with no known limitations.

Nothing that is can be without Him. Not energy. Nothing. However He can remain…and remain unchanged without these things. An uber mystery which certainly unravels and consumes physics like a burning ball of yarn.

So my fellow kittens what will we play with, if our ball of yarn is kindling?

Suggested testing methods:

Well start at the beginning. In the beginning we can posit there is creation by Him. Now if we accept that what does it mean and what could we look for? See…I just can’t fathom much more than that. If I could I would have offerred it.

Ah, since He created. He must constantly keep up every moment going back to the beginning. He would be the crutch of time. It is only through His will that the current system continues to proceed in order. This would fit. So, unlike the big bang where the laws of entropy are accomplishing this task singlehandedly. It is God who is in fact behind entropy, and could pull the plug, or change the plug, or unhappen everything.

So, without Him entropy will fail. So look for the conscious aspect of entropy??

The point I am making is that it might be worth a go for both sides to try to start with intelligent design by an omnipotent being and attempt to work our way back to see if we can discover anything.

And if we get nothing, then hey!? What did we lose, time? Time’s relative!

@Ltryptophan Dude, you’re all over the place. Really. I, maybe, understood a quarter of your post, and that’s stretching it.

God should be all powerful, uncreated, everlasting, certainly ungraspable in entirety, with no known limitations.
Are you sure, I should take this as our working definition? Because this might well be an unconscious, uncaring first cause like the Demiurge or Azatoth. The christian god has other characteristics as well. Mainly a personality, intentions, desires, etc.

look for the conscious aspect of entropy
Mkay. The existence of a conscious aspect of entropy would imply that entropy isn’t a homogeneous phenomenon, because it would, essentially, be able to choose. Otherwise its being conscious wouldn’t amount to any difference from it being unconscious and could thus be disregarded as irrelevant, does that sound about right?

Since He created. He must constantly keep up every moment going back to the beginning. He would be the crutch of time. It is only through His will that the current system continues to proceed in order.
Is this a limitation that you’re imposing on your idea of god (Because it could just as well be a first cause and nothing else) or a conclusion form somewhere? Because if it’s the latter I don’t get the reasoning behind it.

The point I am making is that it might be worth a go for both sides to try to start with intelligent design by an omnipotent being and attempt to work our way back to see if we can discover anything.
Do you mean starting from nature, examining it and seeing if we can find out something about a hypothetical creator?

@Thammuz you’re right.

But its what I had.

@Ltryptophan What, that’s it? I was hoping for a reply to the points I brought up… Especially because i haven’t made any “positive” points yet and pretty much asked for clarifications all across the board…

@Ltryptophan Lets run with the creator part. We could do this over and over for different aspects of the Christian God’s nature, but I’d like to just look at and discuss one at a time.

If an omnipotent, omnibenevolent being created the universe, it should be very young. The Christian God is quite preoccupied with the activities of humans – after all, he died because humans didn’t quite turn out the way he’d hoped. That would make the 13.7ish billion years of the universe’s history before humanity quite unimportant and irrelevant. I would expect an all powerful god that wanted a relationship with humans would have created humans from the very beginning.
As our current observations stand, either the universe is old, or it is young but looks old. But what reason would a god have to deceive us about the age of the universe? Surely a universe that is still settling down from the initial process of creation would be undeniable evidence for the existence of this God.

So what would a young universe look like? Every day we would see new stars that we had never seen before, as their light suddenly reached us after having traversed 10,000 or so light years from their point of creation. We might even be able to see stellar objects being created in the far reaches of the universe. The universe would be very ordered. Rather than seeing galaxies merging, we would see them just setting off on their collision course, and be able to predict their collision in several million years time.
The Moon would have few or no craters, the Earth would still only have one major landmass (or else the continents would be in shapes that do not fit together), and all the Earth’s flora and fauna would be living in perfectly functioning ecosystems. We wouldn’t find that many extinct species in the fossil record. We may not even have a fossil record. Mountain sides would show a few cracks and strains from recent movement, but there would be no large folds. We would only have a few extinct volcanoes, and New Zealand and Japan may not exist.

I don’t know how you see the world, or if you have some theological reason why God waited 13.7 billion years to create humans in a round a bout way, but I think the universe as it stands is the product of chaos and physical law rather than thoughtful, considered, intentional creation.

@FireMadeFlesh And that goes without even mentioning the flat-out mercilessness of the ecosystem itself.

If an omnipotent, omnibenevolent[sic] being created the universe, it should be very young. Because? If one take into the fact the God is not a finite being like humans what would be equal to 5 minutes to God would be like 5 million years to us. As they say “A day to God is as 1,000 years to man” in God’s time you have to think outside-the-box.

I don’t know how you see the world, or if you have some theological reason why God waited 13.7 billion years to create humans in a round a bout way, but I think the universe as it stands is the product of chaos and physical law rather than thoughtful, considered, intentional creation. The time taken by God to populate the world was to our benefit. The world had to be prepared, if all the dinosaurs had not died along with the rain forest they lived we would not have oil today, and as a fuel source it is rather important. Chaos in the universe? There are more things in balance than chaos. If it was random chaos the Earth should be riddle with craters like the Moon and Mars. The eco system is so perfectly balanced it could hardly be called random chaos. What man needs most to survive is her in abundance, water and air, and trees, even to this day with all the manmade building materials the tree is still a vital part. Water the only element here that can be a liquid, solid, and gas, and is crucial to nearly every aspect of human life; there is hardly anything you can do with out water. And we humans we breath out the food the trees need and in return they give off what keeps us alive and provides the atmosphere that keeps the planet from burning up as the Moon would if it had something to burn, by day and keep it from freezing like a block of ice in the darkness.

@Hypocrisy_Central It seems people only remember half of that quote. “But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.” According to the Bible, he waited five whole days before he created man. Wouldn’t that have felt like five thousand years? If he loves humans so very much, wouldn’t he be impatient to create us and interact with us?

As for the chaotic nature of the universe, please see the link above.

Why would God create dinosaurs for the purpose of dying so that humans could burn their compressed remains for energy? Why couldn’t he have created the world fully formed with oil reserves, or even better with mountains in every locality in which we can build hydro-electric power stations? Why didn’t he give the Kalahari Bushmen any water?

There’s nothing wrong with my spelling either. Omnibenevolent is omnibenevolence as a singular adjective. One who is omnibenevolent possesses omnibenevolence.

@Hypocrisy_Central
You’re not keen on following links are you?

Let me copy and paste @ragingloli‘s reply to another post that thoroughly debunks your position:

“The universe is not fine tuned for life.
Most of the universe is vacuum. It will kill you instantly.
So do stars, black holes and their gamma ray bursts.
Most of the planets formed are either gas giants, which will kill you instantly, or barren rocks, which are either too cold or too hot, which will kill you instantly.
Only a tiny fraction of planets support life, and then only a tiny fraction of such a planet is habitable.
The inner core will kill you instantly, as will most of the planets interior.
The pressure at the depths of the oceans will crush you, volcanoes will burn you to a crisp, deserts will make you dehydrate to death, artic areas and mountains’ peaks will make you freeze to death, the upper atmosphere will make you suffocate.
Even of those handful of habitable planets, only a fraction of such a planet will not be hostile to life.
In fact, when life first formed on Earth, the planet was very hostile to life. Any life form as we know them today would have perished at that time. Instantly.
It is life itself which fine tuned itself to a universe that is unimaginably hostile to life.
Claiming that the universe is fine tuned to life is akin to claiming that a crane, spanning 5 lightyears from bottom to top, and that can only lift one hydrogen atom, is fine tuned to lifting.
I find such a claim so ridiculous, that there is not even a word for it.

(now, you may argue that such a universe is the most optimal universe possible. But if that were the case, the creator would have to be incredibly incompetent.)”

And let me also add that oxygen in too large a quantity is toxic. And very much so. So we live off something that would kill us if we were exposed to too much of it (As with water). And if you want to know how it would kill you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen#Toxicity. Not to mention that at VERY high levels of concentration it would effectively oxidate you to death, which is not a fun day out.

Also, the fact that what we need to survive is here in abundance as proof that this was designed to host us is a bogus reasoning and here’s why:

We developed on this planet, had we needed something that didn’t exist here in large enough quantities we would’ve been extinct by now, we aren’t because being omnivores helped our specie’s survival and thus those who had stricted dietary needs ended up dying or being less successful some other way.

And this happens all the time. Animals that specialise their diets too much (or their hunting habits or their physiologies) tend to go extinct very fast, see the giant panda. And imagine what would happen to the Koala bear if something (disease, other natural causes, us humans) wiped out the eucalyptus trees in Australia. A few would adapt to eating something else, maybe, but most of them would die off, either going extinct completely or effectively breeding out the need for eucalyptus over the next generations.

Imagine if, say, a banana intolerant monkey was born somewhere in the jungle. All monkeys eat bananas and, being social animals, they live in groups in a place with lots of bananas. This monkey has violent fits of vomit every time it eats a banana, so he doesn’t eat them. Which means that he either moves away from the group to somewhere where he finds lots of fruit he can eat without getting sick, which means he has to forfeit the group’s protection entirely, or he has to move further away from the group than the other monkeys to find food that is good for him, making him more vulnerable to predator attacks, in danger of getting lost and so on. I assume you have no problem figuring out this particular trait won’t pass on to the next generations as easily as the trait “can eat bananas, yum yum.”

(I know that not all monkeys eat bananas and that they can eat pretty much anything, it’s an exaggerated example used to prove a point. If you’re uncomfortable, substitute monkey with koala and bananas with eucalyptus leaves)

”the Earth should be riddle with craters like the Moon and Mars.”
It would be riddled with craters if it weren’t for this pesky thing scientists call “erosion”.

”we would not have oil today, and as a fuel source it is rather important.”
Only for the industrialised society Humans live in today. Humans were doing fine without oil for thousands of years, and they could have had an industrial revolution without oil, by, for example, using alternative energy sources earlier, which they would have been forced to use because of the lack of oil. Would have been better for the planet, and humans, too, in the end.
Unless of course you think it is “God’s Plan™” that humans wreck their planet with pollution, man made Global Warming, destruction of entire ecosystems, and human caused extinction of entire species, to satiate their greed for resources, land and trophies.

And to address the general point of ”intelligent design”, I see a lot of stupid design.
I see a sewage treatment plant just inside an entertainment park, I see a spine that is bound to get problems just by walking upright, I see eating, breathing and talking all being done via the same opening in the body, guaranteeing that someone on this planet will invariably choke to death on his food every minute. Would not have been much to ask for separate holes for breathing and eating. Goddamned Dolphins do it, so where is the problem, “God™”? And then there is the human eye, popular with creationists and intelligent design proponents alike. That is not an example of intelligent design. It is stupid design. It goes bad all the time for a lot of people, requiring them to wear glasses, contact lenses, get surgery, or go blind. The light receptors of the eye are facing away from the light source, behind a layer of obstructing tissue, with the optical nerves being in front of them and the entry point of the optical nerve into the eye creating a blind spot. Not to mention that the human eye is only receptive to a small fraction of light. We can neither see infrared light, nor ultraviolet light, nor any other part of the electromagnetic spectrum. People have no Idea how blind Humans actually are.
Then humans have genes for growing full body fur, and a tail. We still have remnants of extra teeth and fangs. Birds still have genes for growing teeth.
Then there is the whole lot of parasites that can only exist by feeding off of other living beings.
All that is stupid/malicious design.

Your answers for the most part ignore the question.

@Ltryptophan I had trouble finding any theme in your post that I could follow, so I just picked on one sentence: “it might be worth a go for both sides to try to start with intelligent design by an omnipotent being and attempt to work our way back to see if we can discover anything.”

So I tried to start with the assumption of the Christian God’s existence before the universe, and the goal of developing a relationship with humans. Is this not what you were looking for?

@Ltryptophan
Well, then, here is your answer.
”As Christians, What scientific truths/falsehoods can we attempt to answer with the cheat sheet of knowing that God does in fact exist?”
The answer is, none, because your premise is false. You do not know “that God™ does in fact exist”. You believe you know, based on an old book of questionable origin, but that is as far as it goes.

@Ltryptophan You’re putting an awful lack of effort on your part, you have to admit it. My post was entirely addressed to you, was all questions and requests for clarifications, and all you replied is:

@Thammuz you’re right.

But its what I had.

I didn’t even make a single claim, and you conceded. What the fuck are we supposed to do?

If I had to reply on your original post I would say what @ragingloli said: you don’t know hence you can prove nothing. End of thread. @Fyrius misinterpreted this and thought this was going to be a debate on the implications of a god from the scientific point of view, I got along with it and tried to start this fucking thing on the right foot by letting you have the initial statement. Which you made in such a cryptic and sparse way I had to ask you to clarify and you dropped the ball.

I’ve done my fucking part, where’s my intelligent debate?

@ragingloli
On the subject of “stupid design”, I have another one for you.
Every time I accidentally bite my lip while eating, I find myself thinking that if there were a person I could hold responsible for putting our teeth and lips so dangerously close together, I’d want to shoot him.

It hurts, dammit.

@Thammuz
Perhaps you’re right, and I misinterpreted the question. Either way it seems the insightful new ideas I was hoping for were too much to ask, as our religious friends show little interest in making their beliefs concrete and useful. A shame.

P.S.: You mad.

@Fyrius Hell yeah I mad

@Thammuz you’ll catch more intelligent debates with honey…

@Ltryptophan I fucking slathered the whole thing in honey, and you let it all drop.

I didn’t even own that wall of text of yours and, believe me, I could have. Instead i asked you to clarify your position to allow you to solidify it. That’s way more than most get from me, just look up my previous posts on this subject if you don’t believe me.

Maybe if this subject gets you very emotional you should steer clear of it.

My question was to inspire answers not a debate.

Thammuz, own…what a hateful word

@Ltryptophan The subject didn’t get me emotional up until the point where you dropped the debate with nary a farewell or tip of the hat. That got me emotional because I was expecting a debate, and I didn’t get it. Call me spoiled, if you want.

I was expecting an intelligent debate and I thought that if I jumped ahead like I usually do, preemptively posting every counterargument to you position, I would have ruined the moment, so I didn’t, I made an effort not to be a dick, I let you introduce your position, I asked for clarifications, and you conceded.

That is the intellectual equivalent of cockblocking.

And, actually, I’m more frustrated than angry, because I really don’t get why on earth you conceded. You say I’m right but I had still to say anything other than questions to you. I had not yet made a claim regarding your points, so what, of what I said, is right?

@Thammuz The universe is not fine tuned for life. I was addressing the part about Earth only. We all know the universe is not habitable or we would have done it or be in the process of doing it right now, if not for anything else but to see what minerals and such can be exploited from it.

@ragingloli Humans were doing fine without oil for thousands of years, and they could have had an industrial revolution without oil, by, for example, using alternative energy sources earlier, which they would have been forced to use because of the lack of oil Mankind has been using some sort of oil to burn for centuries, be it lamp oil, whale oil, or petro oil from the ground, and seeing man has yet to perfect solar fossil fuels reign supreme still.

Would have been better for the planet, and humans, too, in the end. Unless of course you think it is “God’s Plan™” that humans wreck their planet with pollution, man made Global Warming, destruction of entire ecosystems, and human caused extinction of entire species, to satiate their greed for resources, land and trophies. Seeing the spirit of the OP question was that we take God is real so in that spirit it always fall to man. God had everything perfect in the Garden of Eden, man messed that up with disobedience. If there is no God in the picture as Atheist would have it, then man totally owns all the screw ups in the world with no one to blame but him.

@Hypocrisy_Central So you just happened to ignore how the earth isn’t fine tuned for life either and how both me and loli pointed it out.

Mankind has been using some sort of oil to burn for centuries, be it lamp oil, whale oil, or petro oil from the ground, and seeing man has yet to perfect solar fossil fuels reign supreme still.
Except the only fossil fuel you mentioned is petrol. Whale oil doesn’t need fossilisation, nor does animal grease or vegetable oil.

And we wouldn’t be needing fossil fuels if they never existed in the first place, because we only need them because we’ve grown too reliant on them, so you’ve completely missed the point of loli’s comment.

Seeing the spirit of the OP question was that we take God is real so in that spirit it always fall to man. God had everything perfect in the Garden of Eden, man messed that up with disobedience. If there is no God in the picture as Atheist would have it, then man totally owns all the screw ups in the world with no one to blame but him.

So it doesn’t change anything whether god exists or not. You just said that with god it’s the human race’s fault and without god it’s the human race’s fault as well. Which is bullshit, and i’ll get to that in a moment, but it’s also kind of an odd thing to point out the way you did. You said if A then B and if Not A then B, as if the situation changed radically when in fact it stayed exactly the same!

God had everything perfect in the Garden of Eden, man messed that up with disobedience.

Unless you’re a creationist, which I sincerely hope you are not for the sake of mankind and my lingering faith in it, or otherwise uneducated, you will know that we’re by far the most recent acquisition of the cosmos we’ve explored.

With that in mind I ask you: were death, suffering, a gruesome and brutal natural order and a planet prone to natural catastrophes introduced the day the homo sapiens came on the scene and collectively decided, all the homo sapiens on the face of the planet, (because, sorry to tell you, there is no garden of eden and there were no Adam and Eve) to say “screw you god, we’re doing what we want”?

No they fucking weren’t. Thus, the problems are inherent in the design. We might have introduced new and interesting ways to fuck nature up, but we’re by no means the greatest offenders. Which means that either we’re right and there’s no real point and structure to all this, or the point exists and either god is incredibly incompetent or a complete dickwad.

@Thammuz If we posit that there is an omnipotent God That is the parameters laid out by the OP, what part of that is over your head? If you don’t want to tackle the question in the notion God is real and exist why are you hanging around? If everyone is playing football why do you keep insisting you need your glove and bat? So with that what I said holds true and you could not debunk a bunker of any type; just show you either can’t read enough to read the question or short on comprehension.

And we wouldn’t be needing fossil fuels if they never existed in the first place, because we only need them because we’ve grown too reliant on them, I guess in that case we would still be using whale oil and lamp oil if the great scientist did not synthesize an artificial alternative. The only reason ancient man did not use petro fuels is because he had no way to get to it or even knew it existed until discovered. Ancient man didn’t understand aeronautics but it still existed, had someone had the knowledge and means they could have had gliders fashioned back then and had a mode of travel far quicker than a chariot. Blame the evolution of man as to why we need those things now and why ancient man either didn’t discover it or invent it.

That is the parameters laid out by the OP
Aside for the incredible grammar, which makes me doubt your college education more every time, That statement is irrelevant. Yes, the OP said: “Let’s suppose that god exists.” I am doing that. That supposition alone doesn’t invalidate other evidence. We have EVIDENCE that evolution happened and still happens so we need to take that into account. We also have evidence of how it is impossible for a whole species to come from a single pair of exemplars, hence no adam and eve. This doesn’t violate the premise that in this discourse we are taking a god into account.

And i’ll have to remind you that catholics agree with this position while still believing the same god you believe. And so do many jews.

I’ll be back later for the second half of the post.

Welcome back to the “what if god exists” thread, and it sure is a beautiful day for a football match!
Up until now the game has been uneventful and rather pointless, but now the tension is on the rise! @Hypocrisy_Central is trying to make a comeback after being out of the game for most of the match, but now seems unable to keep his eyes on the ball. Meanwhile @Thammuz has lost his patience and is playing more aggressively by the minute!

The Christian team has moved the goalposts to dodge a ball that would have made a goal, and seems to have forgotten where to put them back. Overall they’ve been playing on the defensive for pretty much the entire game, shying away from the ball before the Atheist team even entered the playing field. With rare previous attempts either clumsily kicking the ball into random directions or missing it altogether, the Christians have yet to mount their first effective attack.

The Atheist team – which was supposed to play on the defensive today! – has waited for its opponent to take action, but finally decided to take the initiative and repeatedly shoot the ball at their own goal - which their keeper defended quite effortlessly – in an attempt to dash the Christian team’s hope of getting even a single shot in. The one remaining member of the Christian team is now joining the Atheist team’s attacks on their own goal. No shot from either team has made it through so far.

What’s this? @Hypocrisy_Central calls for a timeout. I hear his complaint is that the game is not being played the way it’s supposed to be played, blaming @Thammuz for not understanding the rules. That’s a strange complaint, coming from the team that seemingly refuses to play the game altogether. I might even say, a hypocritical complaint.

Can the game still sort itself out? Can the Christians still get their act together? Will the Atheists keep their cool? Or will this match degenerate into a disorderly mess?
Let’s find out… after the commercials!

@Fyrius That’s fucking brilliant.

@Hypocrisy_Central I’m back with more, ready? Here i go:

I guess in that case we would still be using whale oil and lamp oil if the great scientist did not synthesize an artificial alternative.
Damn fucking right, and that’s precisely why i said that we need fossil fuels only because we’ve grown reliant on them. While you said, and i quote: “The world had to be prepared, if all the dinosaurs had not died along with the rain forest they lived we would not have oil today, and as a fuel source it is rather important.” A phrase that implies that we need fossil fuels by default, and not because we’ve grown too reliant an them.

The only reason ancient man did not use petro fuels is because he had no way to get to it or even knew it existed until discovered.
Petrol was used in ancient times because petrol does naturally come to the surface in some areas of the world. Namely the middle east and northern africa which are the cradle of the human species.

Also: You’re missing the point, see below.

Ancient man didn’t understand aeronautics but it still existed, had someone had the knowledge and means they could have had gliders fashioned back then and had a mode of travel far quicker than a chariot.
You’re missing the point. I don’t even know why i bother pointing it out, but you are, and big time.
The point isn’t whether they used it or not, the point is that:

had it not existed at all we would have found a different way to produce energy, hence fossil fuels are not a good excuse for creating a planet billions of years before the birth of the species it was supposedly thought for.

Especially considering the damage that fossil fuels cause to the ecosystem and the fact that, either way, we’re dealing with an omnipotent being here so it could have just as well wished an equivalent into existence without having to create an entire ecosystem and then destroy a good chunk of it generating death and suffering for all beings involved.

It might take a long while, but I’ll enter the arena here…

Let’s start again at the definining of God. For the sake of this polite discussion it will not be possible to look at this from the greater whole of the Christian viewpoint. It would soon muddy the water of scientific certainty. Not that any certainty can be reached, but I think it is a worthwhile effort. Like rats we must try all aspects of the cage we are in, however futile they seem. Let me also apologize for not being absolutely clear in my earlier commentary. My suggestion is that if there is a serious interest here that we take this one step at a time, and come to an agreement before moving to the next step.

@Thammuz has said earlier something to the effect that a Christian God must have nearer to His full complement of attributes rather than some simple first mover concept. I don’t agree. Only discussing a particular attribute of God will help narrow the focus. It matters if we start with where He chose to live on earth over if we start with whether or not He was the creator of the universe.

So…the most important scientific assertion I think my religion can offer is that God did in fact create all that exists. That is an answer that is given with no proof! Now what I am suggesting is that we start by positing that as true and working our way back from there looking for impossibilities, incongruences. The most important thing we are looking for is a function of the position we are taking which is that claim that God was the creator of all things. Maybe there is a better opening fact about God that would work better?

Are you with me so far?

@Thammuz You see, the problem with picking that as a start is that that particular claim is unfalsifiable. We have no way to test what started the universe, so it’s really something that has no benefit being debated unless we do it in light of the full set of characteristics of the christian god.

If we do it the way you suggest we’re basically debating “deism vs atheism”, and the only reason why one would prefer one over the other is occam’s razor (the explaination that neesd to add the least new information is the most likely to be true) and, thus, the scientific principle not to postulate without evidence.

Meanwhile if we approach this with a more fleshed out concept of god we can actually find points of contact with things in reality we can actually test.

There is a formula we are looking for:

We hold that God exists, for the sake of argument, and we give Him a certain feature. The feature serves like a combination for a lock that may or may not exist. There are n number of locks that are identical to it. We have to try the combination on each lock. If any one of them opens, then the combination is true.

@Ltryptophan Which, in layman’s terms, means that we have a set of facts that should be true assuming a god exists. We test them and see, did i get that right?

@Thammuz I see what you are saying, but I can tell you that Christianity is foolishness when it comes to logic. So, if we are to flesh God out, I can resolve this matter hands down. Christianity is rubbish if you’ll be needing proof the likes of which can be documented and tested.

I’m not afraid to attest that, nor does it limit my faith in Jesus one bit. In fact, it should tell you that since I continue to believe despite knowing that, it is a significant faithful testimony to what I believe.

It won’t help here though. That is why I suggested that there is something more fundamental that can be looked into. For instance, If all things exist by the will of God only, then His will has to be part of everything. So there is an umbilical cord of some sort that comes down from God and keeps everything constant. What must be done if this is true is to either show no cord exists, or unveil it.

Yes you have it somewhat right. By testing the wording must mean X and Y only if G(feature of God((God’s Existence)) )

Look it may be impossible to approach this subject rationally. We are saying we know a feature of God. The only feature that I think we can gain answers from is something about His eternal nature.

Here is an example…

God has no beginning or end. Therefore, any consciousness possible will not be able to detect a beginning or end. We cannot detect a non existent state, since nothingness cannot be. Therefore, this contributes to this feature of God being potentially true.

The problem with the example I just gave is that it is not narrowable to a God. So we have to find a similar feature that is exclusive to God, and a Christian God preferably, that can be as attestable as that. Payment for Sin would require a very exhaustive liturgical announcement the likes of which would require large amounts of faith leaps. That is the type of fleshing out we need to avoid.

Benevolence won’t work, because we can’t say for certain what is in the best interest of all best interests!

This is the thing. Even if God Himself came here in all His glory, that is not enough for us to say yes…that makes Him God!

There is no amount of fireworks possible that can show to science that He is God…think about it…

I mean God could come into my room right now, and pop in and out of this dimension and take me with him on all sorts of Odysseys across every universe. But for human discourse he might as well be a fancy video game system for all we know.

Even if he could make us live “forever” or make us never need food, or give us new bodies, we could write these things off! Couldn’t we!

Furthermore, even if He gave us the tools to allow us to test all of this…we could say, this is very fancy software indeed!

So what I am suggesting is that we find a parameter of God that is inescapable. A God Net… what a despicable blasphemy!

Not so much to “catch” Him, but rather to ascertain His existence. What I am suggesting is that without first knowledge of that as truth, it cannot be otherwise known.

Or, you cannot believe in God without first believing in God! lol

@Ltryptophan You do realize, i assume, that such thing cannot be done for two resons:

1) There is no way to test something that isn’t (and can’t be) defined

2) If there was such obvious proof there would be no need for faith.

Furthermore we’re running straight towards “taking energy and calling it god” (or “taking <insert perfectly normal phenomenon> and calling it god”) without any regard towardfs the definition of either.

Look it may be impossible to approach this subject rationally.
Then why did you suggest we did that?

God has no beginning or end. Therefore, any consciousness possible will not be able to detect a beginning or end.
Then he doesn’t exist because this phrase has an end. But, jokes aside, That’s another unfalsifiable claim right there. You can’t prove or disprove that because your existence didn’t start at the beginning of the universe nor it will last until the end. For all intents and purposes concerning this debate, at least. So you’re simply asserting that thse two follow eachother logically with no good reason to.

We cannot detect a non existent state, since nothingness cannot be.
You will never know that, because if nothingness existed you wouldn’t be aware of that. So we can say that absolute nothingness most definiotively doesn’t exist, but is could well exist in the future or have existed in the past. Again, you can’t prove that assertion because it’s completely unfalsifiable.

Benevolence won’t work, because we can’t say for certain what is in the best interest of all best interests!
Benevolence would work because we’re talking about an omnipotent being that would never need to sacrifice anything to get the result it wants. Hence there would be no sadness, no suffering, no evil and no natural catastrophes. Epicurus arrived to this obvious conclusion about 2000 years ago.

There is no amount of fireworks possible that can show to science that He is God…think about it…
Yeah… no. If all of a sudden an omnipotent being came down to earth and proved its omnipotence that sure as hell would make science acknowledge its existence. It wouldn’t prove it created the universe because, frankly, how the fuck would it prove that.

Even if he could make us live “forever” or make us never need food, or give us new bodies, we could write these things off! Couldn’t we!
No we could not. It is true that all sufficiently advanced science looks like magic, but this doesn’t mean that, after due testing, we wouldn’t agree that, yeah, there’s no explaination to why it’s able to do it.

Furthermore, even if He gave us the tools to allow us to test all of this…we could say, this is very fancy software indeed!
Only if we were really high on peyotl. Because, i’m sorry, i don’t mistake reality for software. Unless everything around us is consistently software (aka The Matrix) in which case it still makes no sense because we’d still be calling it reality.

So what I am suggesting is that we find a parameter of God that is inescapable.
Ok, define such trait in a falsifiable way that also necessarily implies a god and we’re good to go.

@Thammuz I disagree on the point that God’s merely presenting himself as the foremost power available makes Him God in the eyes of science. Like a child you could just say prove it right down to the bottom of existence. There will come a moment where He will not be able to allow you to grasp any deeper because you’ll never be Him, and at that moment science would say, what lies behind that wall, is what we have rested our doubt in. Maybe this is not insincere and works to create lots of cool tools on earth, but for God this is rebellion.

This situation unravels around knowing. I am convinced that if there were ever nothingness nothing could come out of it, because you cannot get nothing from nothing, if anything is to make sense that must hold. Maybe everything can come to nothingness, but that also seems impossible since you have to put things somewhere, since they were ever somewhere!

@Ltryptophan There will come a moment where He will not be able to allow you to grasp any deeper because you’ll never be Him
It could if he wanted. There’s nothing it can’t do. That’s the bloody definition of omnipotence. If it wanted to prove its existence i doubt it could fail to do so. Face it: omnipotence rules out any limitation you could throw between the gears.

If god wanted to prove its existence it would do so without any shadow of a doubt. Because nothing it couldn’t do.

I am convinced that if there were ever nothingness nothing could come out of it, if anything is to make sense that must hold. Unfortunately, not only this has no bearing on the point at large, but it is another unfalsifiable claim to add to the list. Reality doesn’t have any duty to make sense to you or to me. We have the means to understand something that makes no sense to us and make it make sense.

Would you please address the other points i brought up? Especially the one where i ask the falsifiable definition of a parameter of god that is “inescapable” and makes it also absolutely necessary for god to exist? (Along with what you mean by inescapable in this context, possibly)

If god wanted to prove its existence it would do so without any shadow of a doubt. Because nothing it couldn’t do

That is the problem. It is not God not being able to do something. It is creation not being able to do something. You would have to be God to understand every aspect of what it is to be God.

By inescapable I mean God is certifiably God by His “showing up” in an attribute that is seen and checkable in this world. Like a game camera.

Nothingness, in theory, makes sense. It is the absolute lack of anything at all. Now if that ever were a state of affairs, and I posit it never was, nothing could ever spring from it because there would be nothing from which to spring, would want to spring, or spring into!

I’ll say that maybe nothingness can come about through some unknown cancelling process but I think that is also not possible. Before I was born there was nothingness, I remember it!

Anyway, it is not what God can’t do, it is what we can’t do that “limits” our understanding of God. He intends for us to be limited for now. So that is what I am saying…

Trust me, it does not elude me that you have the logical high ground in regards to the tenable nature of religion….from the mind of man it is a farce! I know!

@fyrius how’s the game, now?

@Ltryptophan That is the problem. It is not God not being able to do something. It is creation not being able to do something.
Which is overwritten by god’s omni potence.

He intends for us to be limited for now.
You contradict yourself. I said that if it wanted to it could prove its existence without any doubt. You said it couldn’t and now you say it just doesn’t want to. Which is it?

By inescapable I mean God is certifiably God by His “showing up” in an attribute that is seen and checkable in this world. Like a game camera.
‘k, define an attribute of god in a falsifiable way that also necessarily implies a god. I don’t see the point of this endeavor if you keep dodging this question.

Now if that ever were a state of affairs, and I posit it never was, nothing could ever spring from it because there would be nothing from which to spring, would want to spring, or spring into!
Again, irrelevant to the discussion and unfalsifiable, why do you keep going on this point?

Trust me, it does not elude me that you have the logical high ground in regards to the tenable nature of religion….from the mind of man it is a farce! I know!
Then why do you accept it? You’re a man, it is a farce to you. Yopu’ve just admitted you’re doublethinking!

You accept that something is bullshit, and accept that it makes no sense, and then you believe it anyway. And I might add that you believe, unsurprisingly, a single specific version that you were brought up with while simultaneously dismissing many others that have as much evidence to support them. (And some make more sense than this one, like hinduism, or are more awesome like the norse religion.) That is not intellectually honest.

Faith seems like a farce to the uninitiated only…I see how it seems, and how it actually is.

This is the moment we’ve been waiting for, my friends! @Ltryptophan of Team Christian has finally shown initiative to take the ball!
And he certainly is running around with it left and right. Frankly, after so many manoeuvres, I can’t quite tell if he still has it. For that matter, it’s hard to tell if he’s running in the right direction for the established goal, or if he’s headed for another goal, outside the playing field.
@Thammuz of Team Atheist defends, trying to stop @Ltryptophan in his tracks, wherever he’s going. Seemingly having regained his composure now, @Thammuz takes the ball from @Ltryptophan in the middle of his benevolence-of-god manoeuvre, then drives it on into the same direction, aaand… scores a point for Team Atheist! Using the Epicurean Offence! Solidly executed.
A classic move, dating back to Ancient Greek football, to which it nevertheless seems no adequate defence has ever been developed. Except perhaps the Free Will Fallacy, which can under favourable circumstances distract the opponent long enough to take the ball and run with it. But @Ltryptophan didn’t use it, and so Team Christian is now behind another point. Too bad.

@Ltryptophan takes up the ball again and goes for it once again, continuing the same approach where he left off. The same… not particularly lucid… approach. What’s he doing? “You cannot get nothing from nothing?” “Things were ever somewhere?” I must say, this is a bold move. Such confidence. Or perhaps I should say, overconfidence. Many expert players would think twice before venturing into these areas of the field, since their chances of success would… Hang on! Where’s the ball? He lost the ball! It’s…
Ah, @Thammuz has it. And this is why this is usually avoided; these moves may work without fail on the familiar parts of the field, but near the periphery, if you trust them too much you might just end up kicking the air where you thought the ball would be. This is where I say something mean about Team Christian’s history when it comes to putting faith in the wrong things. Or I would, if easy jokes like that weren’t below me. Hehe.

To his credit, @Ltryptophan has definitely been making greater contributions in the previous few minutes than the rest of his team in the entire match. But will it be enough?
Stay tuned!

I do hope you realise I’m a horribly partial sports commentator.

@Fyrius I’m going to name my firstborn after you if you keep doing this for every thread i’m in.

Haha, fat chance.

@Fyrius Well, to be honest i wan’t going to follow up on that. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with your name, but i think i’m going to stick with italian names, if i end up being stuck here.

Oh, and as for being partial, we always have two separate commentators in sporting events here, because being unbiased is for pussies, apparently.

@Thammuz A phrase that implies that we need fossil fuels by default, and not because we’ve grown too reliant an them. It implies that way only to you <redacted> the same way. What hasn’t mankind gotten use to? Electricity was not a default either but now we really can’t live without it. Plastics as well, before there were plastics people got along but a lot of what is possible to day in many areas, life saving, shipping and then some would not have been possible without it.

Petrol was used in ancient times because petrol does naturally come to the surface in some areas of the world. Namely the middle east and northern Africa which are the cradle of the human species.* And they had oil wells in their vast oil fields to grease the wheels of Rome. Yeah…..yup. <swing and a miss>
*We won’t bring up education and spelling..

Especially considering the damage that fossil fuels cause to the ecosystem and the fact that, either way, we’re dealing with an omnipotent being here so it could have just as well wished an equivalent into existence without having to create an entire ecosystem and then destroy a good chunk of it generating death and suffering for all beings involved. It was not the oil, it was not the nuclear energy, it was not the trees, it was not the dirt, it was not anything other than mans misuse or mismanagement of the elements he had control of or involvement with. The animals do not really cause that much havoc on the eco system because they don’t try to change it to suit them as we do.

You keep bringing your chess pieces to a domino game and wonder why there is no board. If even for the sake of a question you cannot bring your mind to believe God is real then why not go preach to extol of science or lack of God to a thread that isn’t based on God being real?

You want to say there is no God and no afterlife then you piss or get off the pot. Do you have scientific evidence from the anti-other side that show there is no God there? Maybe you have someone who has been there and came back with an eye witness account? Did they capture it on a camera phone or fax the info back? You have nothing more than what I have; a belief only we believe on opposite ends of the spectrum. You want me to belief what you think, you show me the proof since it is proof you say rule the day. Prove there is no afterlife or nothing after we die? Well?

You have to prove that there is an afterlife/god/whatever because you are making the positive existential claim, but whatever…

@Hypocrisy_Central You’re really fucking boring, i don’t even know why i bother replying to you anymore.

It implies that way only to you <redacted> the same way.
No. It implies that. It does because you’re saying that God created the world way before our arrival exclusively for our benefit and, thus, that he had to create petrol because we would have needed it.

Let aside the fact that it could have skipped the intermediate steps and just create petrol, he should at least be omnipotent afterall, this directly implies we need petrol as a default. We need it today, but we could’ve needed, say, water, which is much more abundant and, given an omnipotent being, could also be fuel.

We are talking about a being that can do anything so I don’t see how creating water that is also the most efficient fuel on the planet would be a problem for him. Heck, if the writers of Star Trek could come up with a guy whose solution to an asteroid on collision course with a planet was “change the gravitational constant of the universe, easy!”, i assume an actual omnipotent being would have some more aces up his sleeve.

And they had oil wells in their vast oil fields to grease the wheels of Rome. Yeah…..yup.
Did I say that? No I fucking did not. What I’m saying is that oil is not a new resource, as you claimed saying that “The only reason ancient man did not use petro fuels is because he had no way to get to it or even knew it existed until discovered.”

Unless you mean the Roman empire is not ancient history, I have to tell you, they did use it. They did not use fuel, but they did know what petrol was and, in the area I mentioned, it was used to light lanterns, which is really the extent any liquid fuel was used at the time.

If even for the sake of a question you cannot bring your mind to believe God is real then why not go preach to extol of science or lack of God to a thread that isn’t based on God being real?
I am taking a god into account. I just take only that into account. A god’s existence doesn’t automatically make the bible not bullshit. If you’re too thick to get that, that’s really not my problem.

Also, how convenient that you always leave out the actual arguments in my posts when you reply. Your nickname is much more appropriate than I thought.

Do you have scientific evidence from the anti-other side that show there is no God there? Maybe you have someone who has been there and came back with an eye witness account? Did they capture it on a camera phone or fax the info back? You have nothing more than what I have.
Ah, come on! Not this shit again! Yeah, no. There is such a thing as burden of proof, and you would never believe me if I told you I had an invisible ethereal non-fire-breathing mute telepathic dragon that communicates only with me in my living room.

Atheism is the default position, just as much as not believing in Zeus, Thor, Amaterasu, Vishnu, Jupiter, Raiden, Santa, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy. Or are you on the fence about those as well? You are making a claim, I don’t care how many of you there are and I don’t care how long you’ve been making the claim, you have to prove it. I don’t have to prove shit as long as there is no evidence provided. (“A claim offered without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence”)

Until I have evidence of something I have no reason to believe it exists, no matter how impossibly nice a thought and how intrinsically important it would be if true. Period. If you don’t like that, that’s your fucking problem. Science works that way. If I want to claim the gravitational constant is actually 2, I’d better have some fucking experimental data to back that up or I’ll be laughed out of the room.

@Thammuz You’re really fucking boring, Come outside-the-box for a change you won’t get bored of those 4 walls, floor and ceiling.

It does because you’re saying that God created the world way before our arrival exclusively for our benefit and, thus, that he had to create petrol because we would have needed it. Lets open the box and let you free from it 1st Do not human set up trust funds and college funds for their kids? Maybe even you had one since you claim such a stellar education while you were pooping your diaper or concerned with your PlaySkol toys your parents, as many across the world, set aside money for later in your life when you needed it, and they didn’t give you the blow by blow of every dollar that went into it because you didn’t need to know it yet. The oil, electricity, radio waves, etc was always here and when man had the ability to harvest or use it sometimes even before he was fully responsible he found or discovered it. Can you see that? Why am I asking that? The box is closed again.

And they had oil wells in their vast oil fields to grease the wheels of Rome. Yeah…..yup.
Did I say that? No I fucking did not. Well I guess superior intellect if you want to call it that is not good enough to ferret out sarcasm, and since sarcasm is the dish best served dry you might want to wash that down with something…..

Atheism is the default position, just as much as not believing in Zeus, Thor, Amaterasu, Vishnu, Jupiter, Raiden, Santa, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy. Or are you on the fence about those as well? First of all lets get you from the box once more Atheism is not a default it is more like a denial covey hole. You mentioned Thor, Zeus, and such, you didn’t mention Horus, Ra, Shiva, etc. etc. Mankind on just about every continent, every creed have had gods. Even the Incas and the Mayans had gods, Atheism is a duck dodge and hide maneuver to go all out to not admit there is anything greater than man on the planet or even in the universe. Strange how I have not heard any scientist take a stand to unequivocally say there are extra terrestrials. Some say it is likely but none will use the evolution logic and say yes there certainly are, unless you have a name? Know one who published a national or international paper that says such? No? Second the Easter Bunny, Santa, Thor and the likes have nothing at all to do with my soul or the after life so why would I even waste time with them?

Until I have evidence of something I have no reason to believe it exists, no matter how impossibly nice a thought and how intrinsically important it would be if true. Period. If you don’t like that, that’s your fucking problem. Science works that way. You believe there is nothing after death with no proof, so you are in no better position. If you had a dragon that only you can see that would not serve as the I can hold or measure it proof you keep touting. Still leaving you no better off than you say I am. You can’t produce anyone who has been there and back, or any place I can view by telescope, or measure by any means. You have no idea you can prove of where your life force will go calling it a soul might make you burst into flames and is highly debatable you would have one anyhow when you die. You have a belief that it will just fade away, cloud 9, the great white zephrum, who knows. I have a faith the life force aka the soul will live on, I can’t proof it anymore than you can prove it won’t, not even with all your science, science is limited like that. If you can’t handle that then it is your problem. Oh snap I forgot to cuss to try to make myself sound more authoritative

@Hypocrisy_Central Uff… I’m done replying to you. you’re making me so wary I can’t even start cussing you out and get modded. Consider this my last reply to you, and don’t bother replying because you’re seriously sounding like a broken record.

The oil, electricity, radio waves, etc was always here and when man had the ability to harvest or use it sometimes even before he was fully responsible he found or discovered it.
Yes. I know. That’s not the point. The point is that assuming an omnipotent god those would have to be the best possible options, if they’re thought and created for our benefit.

I can think of better ones, therefore they are not therefore either I’m better than god or these aren’t intelligently designed for our benefit.

Remember that chemistry and physics are not limitations for an *omni*potent being, therefore he could have created a non-polluting fuel that also served as food and breath freshener that was spontaneously secreted by pink fluffy bunnies in enormous quantities, without breaking a sweat. That, afterall, is what *omni*potence is for.

Well I guess superior intellect is not good enough to ferret out sarcasm
It is, it just so happens that i find sarcasm incredibly irritating when spouted by someone who is consistently missing the point since the beginning of the debate.

Mankind on just about every continent, every creed have had gods.
Which changes nothing because, guess what, none of those cultures ever proved anything. They used the gods as a way to explain the world around them. That’s why all the polytheistic gods are incarnations of the forces of nature. Also, not all cultures have gods. Google “Piraha people” if you don’t believe me. They’re a tribal people with no god figures, no creation myth and no concept of history.

Atheism is a duck dodge and hide maneuver to go all out to not admit there is anything greater than man on the planet or even in the universe.
Atheism is the position of not taking something for granted only because it was taken for granted by people before you.

I don’t believe any god, I have no reason to think there is something beyond this life, nor have I any reason to believe there is such thing as a soul and a related omnipotent being or set of beings that cares deeply about it. Therefore I don’t.

There might be something, I don’t know and I’m open to evidence.

Before you have that, though, kindly stop trying to equate “not accepting that you have a baseball before seeing said baseball” to “accepting that you have a baseball on your word for it” I’m sure you can tell there’s a difference. And, if you can’t, you’re not worth debating because you evidently lack the base necessary for rational discourse.

Strange how I have not heard any scientist take a stand to unequivocally say there are extra terrestrials.
Not strange at all. It’s very unlikely that there aren’t seeing how life occurs naturally and there’s a mind bogglingly high amount of planets in the universe that could concievably host it but, until there is evidence for their existence, it’s the default position not to claim there are. Just like with god. Is it that hard to comprehend?

Second the Easter Bunny, Santa, Thor and the likes have nothing at all to do with my soul or the after life so why would I even waste time with them?
Pascal’s wager, again. Nice.
Thor has. So has Zeus, Ra, Vishnu, (which comes from the same pantheon as Shiva, and I only mentioned the ones I could name off the top of my head.) Jupiter and so forth. If you don’t die in battle you’re going to Hel, if Odin is real. Your soul is going to Hel. Plus if Odin is real, Valhalla is much better than the Christian heaven. You get to fight at the side of the gods every day, eat at a delicious banquet every night, all the while being tended to by beautiful Scandinavian women. I’d pick that over worshipping a jerk every day of the week for all my life.

So if you actually think you’re justified in ruling them all out only because “they have nothing to do with your soul”, think again. Every culture has an afterlife with houses of gingerbread and happiness (According to the respective culture’s idea of good. Valhalla, the Elysian fields, Heaven, being reincarnated in a higher life form, etcetera) for the good and houses of poo and razorwire (Hel, Tarterus, etcetera) for the evil. And every culture sends their equivalent of the soul there (because, since corpses don’t disappear, it would be very far fetched to claim the body itself goes there).

Plus, even assuming they didn’t have anything to do with your soul, which they do, how do you know Jesus isn’t a false prophet and that the Jews are not right instead? There were many people who claimed to be the Messiah, so many, in fact, that some jewish jokes even refer to the village idiot as the “Messiah spotter”, what makes him better than the others?

You believe there is nothing after death with no proof, so you are in no better position.
No positive claim requires no proof. I don’t say “there is definitively nothing after this world” (Gnostic Atheism). Because I can’t know. I say that I have no reason to think there is something, therefore I don’t believe there is. I don’t know for certain and therefore I don’t claim to. I still reject every claim that is not substantiated by evidence on the basis that it is completely interchangeable with any such claim and therefore utterly irrelevant until evidence is presented. I don’t know what is beyond life, but as long as no evidence of something is provided I will assume nothing is, to keep coherence with the standard. Just like I will assume there is no Thor, no Zeus, etc.

If I did not do that I would have to believe all of them, because if no evidence can be proof of something then every claim that has no evidence has to be regarded as true.

To sum it up: My position is “there has been no proof of X, therefore i don’t accept X as true”. This goes for anything that should form my understanding of reality to any relevant degree. (E.G. i will believe “on faith” that my friend missed the bus, and that’s why he’s late, because it really doesn’t change anything. I won’t believe on faith that a book well over 2000 years old, written by people who couldn’t tell the difference between manure and Nutella, is correct because it contains absurd notions and extraordinary claims that, if true, would need me to overwrite pretty much anything that makes logical sense. Simple as that.)

I have a faith the life force aka the soul will live on, I can’t proof it anymore than you can prove it won’t, not even with all your science, science is limited like that.
You can’t prove it, I don’t need to prove anything. You’re making the claim.

Anyway, I really don’t care what you believe. You’re incredibly defensive on this subject and yet it’s every religion that flat out states they need you to make a leap of faith. If everyone needed to do so then faith would be a meaningless standard and no religion would go around advertising how awesome it is to have it. @Ltryptophan Is at least honest in saying that religion doesn’t make the slightest bit of logical sense, you on the other hand seem to be hellbent on proving that it does. It does not, get over it. Catholics realised this a long time ago and that’s why they don’t try to convert adults anymore, they get you into catechism when you’re too young to tell bullshit from reality.

And with this, I’m done replying to you on this subject. I’m seriously tired of explaining the same thing over and over and having someone throw Pascal’s wager at me twice in two debates really means he’s not worth debating. You can stop replying to me from now on.

@Thammuz your requirements for discourse are unhelpful. I find your caustic sentiments a tell of your insensitivity. You most certainly can be shown your words are empty. Furthermore, whether I do it, or another I am likewise certain you will not be reasoned with.

Admirably you take your own side, but there are major problems with your ability to maintain composure. Your hotheadedness doesn’t spice your words, nor add the disciplinary smack I think you think you have. It just leaves you unapproachable, like a poisonous reptile.

Be there God or none you would do your attitude a favor to check it. @Hypocrisy Central may not have the answers you like, but beware he is right and you anger his silent partner with your insolent dissent, to what are cool headed replies.

If you want an argument on what belief is I will let you have it. Otherwise attempt to work your intelligence into solving the problem I have laid out in the question.

If you have an ounce of wit make cooler use of your quill from here out.

@Thammuz You believe there is nothing after death with no proof, so you are in no better position. No positive claim requires no proof. I don’t say “there is definitively nothing after this world” (Gnostic Atheism). Because I can’t know. I say that I have no reason to think there is something, therefore I don’t believe there is.

Hope you buddies can pass it on now that you have learned to quit while you are behind Rather than pick the carcass of all that prettle clean I will just focus on where you validated my point to a T. You believe by not beliving in God that there is no afterlife, that is a default for you but still a belief. A belief you can’t prove and I am sure don’t ever want to, there is no way you can knock me about not having the proof you need or want when you have not an ounce of proof to prop up the hype you claim. I can easily say by how many gods and in how many lands over the centuries belief in God is the default position and those who don’t believe is an after effect of coruption by Satan. In any case it comes down to what side a person wants to believe. Last chance, you have proof to the contrary? No?

He does not need to prove anything. Why?
Because the burden of proof lies with you.
You are making the positive claim of existence, so you are the one who has to provide evidence for its existence. The other side does not have any logical obligation to prove your claim wrong.
When you claim that John Smith murdered someone, then it is you who has the obligation to prove his guilt. The other side does not have to prove John’s innocence. And if you can’t provide evidence for John’s guilt, then the default action is to reject your claim.
It is the same thing with fairies, goblins, dragons, invisible teapots in orbit around Mars and, last but not least, God and the afterlife.
As long as you can not prove the existence of gods, the afterlife, or anything supernatural, then it is irrational to accept your claim of their existence.
These are the basics. And they are undisputed.

@ragingloli if what you are saying will be the grounds for accepting things as true, you would soon find the world emptying of all certainty.

Of course, rationally we accept some things as true although they are not a priori knowledge…if that term is even sensible.

Maybe…instead of taking the big toys out…we can just play nice, and discuss, if nothing else, whether the question I have posed is even feasible.

@Ltryptophan
I am not talking about absolute certainty, because such a thing only exists in mathematics.
What I am talking about is providing sufficient evidence and facts to have reasonable certainty.
Contrary to most things in life, claims about the supernatural just do not do that.

@ragingloli, the only thing is absolute certainty. If we aren’t playing for keeps then we’re not playing.

@Ltryptophan
I have no idea what that means.

If nothing is certain then all our assertions are conjecture. If we think that is true then the only truth is that there is no sure truth!

If we agree instead that some things are believable, we can establish what is real.

But this is ontological stuff why not attempt to focus on my q if it is answerable?

@ragingloli As long as you can not prove the absence of God and the afterlife, and the oblivion of the soul at death, then it is irrational to accept your claim of their non-existence. These are the basics. And they are undisputed. Yes, as long as you have no proof you have no afterlife then why should I even have the thought to believe it. For me the stakes are too high to go chasing after a pipedream simply because I find it too repugnant to have something more than me that might have my destiny at stake. As long as you can’t prove there is no afterlife you truly are in no better position; after all why would I believe something you can’t prove which I believe incorrect?

@Ltryptophan the only thing is absolute certainty. If we aren’t playing for keeps then we’re not playing.
Then you are not, because the only thing you can have in that regard is bloodyminded stubbornness and refusal to take evidence into account and change your mind accordingly. It is not a virtue to have faith, it is a refusal to accept when you’re proven wrong.

We know the scientific method works. Why? Because you’re using its fruits to blabber about needing absolute certainty. All you use to live is, in some measure, avaible to you because of the scientific method.

Descartes suggested what you said a few posts ago (if what you are saying will be the grounds for accepting things as true, you would soon find the world emptying of all certainty.) but even him would not stop looking both ways before crossing the road (well, he didn’t have the problem of dodging cars so maybe he did, but that’s beyon the point), no matter how much solipsistic bullshit one could actually start believing, nobody is going to reject the de facto knowledge that walking out your door is better than walking out of your bathroom window if you live at the top of a skyscraper.

So, you can be convinced all you like about your religion, that doesn’t make it any better, doesn’t make you right and doesn’t make it any more of a tenable position than any other religion you care to name. Those of us who still care if something is true (as in ”demonstrably true”) will not give a single solitary fuck about how convinced you are.

But this is ontological stuff why not attempt to focus on my q if it is answerable?
I’m still waiting for you to address the points i raised in my reply to you, instead of scolding me because of my manners towards someone else who completely deserved them and only addressing the last point, which was rethorical, by the way.

The point was the the falsifiable definition of a parameter of god that is inescapable and makes it also absolutely necessary for god to exist. You yourself wanted to find something that would settle this question: there it is. Define this and we can proceed to test your claim that such thing exists.

I cuss, ok? Both IRL and online. I don’t find there’s anything wrong with cussing in itself and there is no rule against it on the site as long as it’s not direct insults. As for being caustic, that’s how i debate, because when i’m being caustic people get upset and show their true colours, worked well in the past and still works now. It’s like a poker game, i poke, you err. Terrible joke, i know, i’ll go sit in the corner.

And besides, I even commended you in some measure in my reply, what more do you want?

@Hypocrisy_Central
For me the stakes are too high
God is not going to let anyone who believes only because that’s the safe bet, so you should start working on actually believing instead of covering your ass, if that’s your position.

@Hypocrisy_Central
The default position on everything is that it does not exist. Only with evidence it becomes rational to believe in something’s existence.
Example:
The chair I am sitting on does not exist. The evidence for its existence is: I can see it, I can touch it. When I hit it with something, I can hear it. When I go close enough, I can even smell it. I can measure its weight and its volume. I can take it apart to analyse the parts. Lastly, I can sit on it. All these make it rational to accept the existence of the chair.
Let’s look at the opposite case.
You claim that the chair exists. But neither you or anyone else can see the chair, touch the chair, hit it and hear the chair, smell the chair, measure its properties, take it apart to study it, or sit on it. Neither do any of the other methods we could employ (sonar, radar, infrared cameras, x-ray). Why should I, or anyone, believe that the chair exists?
To do so would be irrational.
And here you are claiming that not believing in the existence of the invisible, intangible chair has the same footing as believing in the existence of that chair. Because that is what you are claiming about god and the after life.
You are utterly, and unequivocally, wrong.
You are in a worse position than us. As long as you have no evidence for your claims of an after life, or god, we can reject these claims, just as we can reject the claims for the existence of Thor, Odin, Zeus, Jupiter, Amaterasu, Ra, Quezacotl, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Dragons, Goblins, Fairies, Nessie, Bigfoot, Yeti, Sasquatch, the invisible flying teapot in orbit around mars, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Ceiling Cat, and above all, me being your Lord, the one and only God.
In how many of those do you believe in? Because according to your logic, you have to believe in all of them.

”For me the stakes are too high to go chasing after a pipedream simply because I find it too repugnant to have something more than me that might have my destiny at stake. As long as you can’t prove there is no afterlife you truly are in no better position; after all why would I believe something you can’t prove which I believe incorrect?”

Oh look, pascal’s wager. How do you know it is the christian god? Could just as well be the muslim God, or Odin, or Zeus. Why don’t you believe in them? They too have a bad place for you after you die. Apparently your stakes are not high enough, otherwise, you would not put all your money on just one god out of thousands.

Also, you are chasing after a pipedream. The pipedream of eternal bliss in the christian paradise.

@ragingloli * high five *

@ragingloli there is no chair, and there is no spoon and your measurements are flawed by a perception that is perhaps hallucinating.

You have no foundation! It is only what you are choosing to believe for what you think are good reasons.

No matter how many people agree with you, and despite any “advances” you think are being made in science this rediculous argument I am making is 100% VALID!!!

So, don’t just go ignoring the past 200 years of philosophy. I assure you that if you do I will enlighten you.

@Thammuz just because I and other great christian men have interacted with this world as it is, doesn’t “mean” anything, unless you are just creating a system of belief that says what you are saying is the only valid way to live.

In ourbelief Jesus did not obey the laws that make jumping out windows looney tunes. So, if you were there to see it what then?

Look, these arguments have been parsed out for centuries, neither of us will find ourselves in any better position then faith.

Now as for this construct you are attempting to get me to answer, it is simply a distillation of my own question. Trust that if I knew the answer I would share it. The fact that I do not certainly doesn’t mean that there is no such answer.

As for what I expect: I expect of men who would involve themselves in such lofty subjects to have just as elevated dialogues despite their beliefs. Bar room vernacular is distracting, and only helps bring the sort of emotions into a discussion that are best avoided.

Why avoid the emotions, because like Olympians we are after truth, and that which takes away from it is empty and wasteful.

Remember what you are after. If it is the answer to this question then help attempt to dig for that. If you have concluded that like any belief in God is baseless, then make your conclusion, with better strokes of style, and move on.

Or ask if any of us want to be talked down from our position in what you think is a mire.

I’d just like to add that most everything that men have made in my opinion is adaptations of a caveman’s club. They are a bit fancier now but in the end they don’t change the game. We’re still mortals walking around trying to find meaning, some believing they’ve found it and others believing all our clubs will never have a target.

For this reason poetry and art seem to be the best of what men have accomplished.

Thammuz don’t bog your brightness down with attempting to free your fellow man from quicksand they are enjoying by offerring a barb-wire lifeline. I mean, unless that’s really all you have…

@ragingloli
The default position on everything is that it does not exist. Only with evidence it becomes rational to believe in something’s existence. Don’t blame me that your default position is an imperfect position. With logic like that radio waves, electricity, aeronautics, etc did not exist until some one was able to understand it. Weather or not anyone believes something there are things that exist no matter what.

(Lets get you out of the box for a moment, it is awful crowded in there) The actual position we are in is there is a chair, but it is in a bunker that can’t be breeched, has no windows, and a lock on the door that can’t be picked or removed. I say there is a chair in there and you say it is not. Just because I can’t prove it to you by opening the door and letting you look in to see it doesn’t make it not in there. You can’t get in to show me there is no chair so we are in no better position. I have a shipping receipt that says there is a chair in there, you don’t care to believe the document and believe the bunker empty. Until you can get in there and see there to show there is nothing in there at all your default is faulty. It matters not that you can sit in the chair, smell the leather, feel the wood, or see the color if you can’t even get to the chair and have never seen it yourself.

(You can jump back in the box and “high five” @Thammuz now.

@Hypocrisy_Central
The default position is in regard to whether something should be believed to be existent.

“_The actual position we are in is there is a chair, but it is in a bunker that can’t be breeched, has no windows, and a lock on the door that can’t be picked or removed. I say there is a chair in there and you say it is not. Just because I can’t prove it to you by opening the door and letting you look in to see it doesn’t make it not in there. You can’t get in to show me there is no chair so we are in no better position. I have a shipping receipt that says there is a chair in there, you don’t care to believe the document and believe the bunker empty. _”

There is no bunker to begin with, and the receipt you have is of unknown origin, scribbled with bad handwriting and grammar, with no way to verify its truth. And what’s more, all around the place lie receipts of equally questionable truth content, stating that the chair is actually a car, a washing machine, a dinosaur, and pot of vegetable stew, respectively.

Say, do you believe in Odin?

(Lets help you from the box once more)

There is no bunker to begin with, and the receipt you have is of unknown origin, scribbled with bad handwriting and grammar, with no way to verify its truth. And what’s more, all around the place lie receipts of equally questionable truth content, stating that the chair is actually a car, a washing machine, a dinosaur, and pot of vegetable stew, respectively. Yes there is. I believe what I do because when we die I believe there will be an event, you believe what you do because you believe when we die we just do, and there is nothing after that. The point after death is that bunker. Neither of us is going into it and coming back to tell anyone yes there was a chair, or no there was no chair”. Until you actually get to the other side you are believing what you believe by input you received here. You see the receipt and can’t make it out or read what is on it because you care not to learn how to read it. I know what it says and it is no dinosaur, guacamole dip, car, boat or anything else. It matters not anyhow, what is in there you can’t see, you can’t get to it, you can’t do anything with it from where you are. And if you can’t see it, small it, touch it, you can’t measure it or not see it to say it isn’t there. If you can bring word back from the other side, maybe from someone we all know that died like JFK, Martin L. King, etc and they can say “Nah, died and saw nothing”, then maybe you might have a straw to fight with, can’t do that, you really have no idea what happens after you die.

”I know what it says and it is no dinosaur, guacamole dip, car, boat or anything else.”
So you disregard all the other receipts lying around for no reason, while million others each are convinced that their receipt they picked up is the truth, e.g. they are absolutely sure that it is a car, a washing machine, a dinosaur, and pot of vegetable stew.
And no, if that bunker is supposed to be the afterlife, and the chair god, then no, there is no bunker, at least if it is there it is as intangible as the chair itself. You can not see it, you can not touch it, hear it, smell it, taste it, nor discern its present by any other method. You claim there is a bunker with a chair inside, the guy next to you claims it is a dinosaur in a villa, the next claims it is a tornado in hollowed out pumpkin, all based on nothing more than hand scribbled pieces of paper that have been written by some unknown people who disappeared into the unknown thousands of years ago.

You claim the default position is that there is a bunker with a chair inside. But by your own logic, the default position is also that there is a villa with a dinosaur inside, and that there is a hollow pumpkin with a tornado inside, yet you say you know that these other ones are not true, even though you have not proven them wrong.
Since you can not prove them wrong, you are in no position to reject their versions. All according to your logic.

Also, you still have not answered my question: Do you believe in Odin?

@ragingloli Also, you still have not answered my question: Do you believe in Odin? What is the point? You don’t believe in him either and it still does nothing to the fact that you cannot prove what happens to you after you die or if your soul will live on. You have not produced a single witness to prove your thought really a reverse belief. You say there is scribbling because you do not know how to read it, plain and simple, at worse you just want to deny it and fake not knowing what it said. Let someone believe their sould will go to a dinosaur, Club Med or wherever, they can’t prove that either. I don’t have to prove it to believe it that is why they call it a “faith”, now you on the otherhand have to have proof because you can’t say anything is real absense of fact. So, where is your fact that the souls doesn’t live on after you die? Surely you have some equasion that measures distanse, time, temperature etc that proves the soul or the life force just fades away at death….show me the “soulfax”.

@hypocrisy the point is that according to your logic, the default is that Odin exists, and you have to prove that he does not exist. Your logic, not mine.

”You have not produced a single witness to prove your thought” Witnesses are the weakest form of support of a claim.
Either way, neither have you produced any witnesses, by your own admission.

”now you on the otherhand have to have proof”
No, I do not. I am not the one making a claim. You are. I am not accepting your claim because you can not support it. Just as I do not accept claims of fairies or bigfoot.

And I call them scribbles because they are scribbles. Written by primitive people who have not been to the other side, and of which you know nothing else. Filled with contradictions and falsehoods (flat earth, earth the centre of the universe, sky a solid dome, origin of current lifeforms and humans, etc.). Not only your particular scribbled paper, but the others, too.
It makes them essentially worthless as support for anything.

”because you can’t say anything is real absense of fact.”
That’s right, and neither can you. in terms of reasonable assertion. That you do anyway is another story. You accept things as true based on nothing but old texts whose contents contradict know scientific facts, which should make you doubt the validity of the overal document.
That means you accept things as true based on nothing, and in face of evidence to the contrary. And that is the definition of “Faith”. Faith is, by definition, the weakest source of certainty about the state of reality. A source of false certainty.
Let it be said, that I have no certainty that there is no afterlife. There may be.
But as reality stands, it is extremely unlikely, especially in light of the fact that human (and animal) consciousness is nothing more than electrical signals circulating in one’s brain.
The fact that you can change your personality 180 degrees just by altering your brain chemistry, means that the human mind is the brain in action.
Where does your porn go when you destroy your hard drive?

You remind me of that one geologist who openly admitted that even if all the evidence in the universe pointed towards an old earth, he would still be a young earth creationist.

Enjoy your stay in Tartarus, because that is where you will go when you die. Prove me wrong.

@Ltryptophan neither of us will find ourselves in any better position then faith.
If that’s the case, then faith is a meaningless standard and you can prove whatever you want without using it, because we’re all using it by default. Oddly enough you can’t prove anything Jesus did but I can prove that jumping out a 5th storey window is bad for you. Go figure.

Now as for this construct you are attempting to get me to answer, it is simply a distillation of my own question. Trust that if I knew the answer I would share it. The fact that I do not certainly doesn’t mean that there is no such answer.
Until you prove there is such a thing, that’s exactly what it means.

Side note: so, let me get this straight, you’ve started a debate titled “As Christians, What scientific truths/falsehoods can we attempt to answer with the cheat sheet of knowing that God does in fact exist?” But you were asking “What is a definitive proof of the existence of god that could be scientifically tested?” (Answer: there is none, otherwise we’d all believe in god by now.) Clarity is your friend, man.

Remember what you are after. If it is the answer to this question then help attempt to dig for that.
I cannot, I don’t share your belief, hence whatever suggestion I could put forth that ends up being provably wrong would be discarded by default on the grounds that I don’t understand god the way you do or some shit. If you want me to list off things we would expect if an omnipotent, benevolent, omnipresent, omniscient being existed and we don’t find in nature just tell me and I’ll do it. I have a barrel full of those. Just please don’t tell me to if you’re going to rationalise them away with bog standard bullshit excuses like “god works in mysterious ways”.

If you have concluded that like any belief in God is baseless, then make your conclusion, with better strokes of style.
Already did, twice in this thread, and as a general rule IRL, that is why I am an atheist.
I’m not moving on because I was under the impression that the point was finding a scientifically testable proof of god and I wanted to join in on determining what would be acceptable proof.

I’d just like to add that most everything that men have made in my opinion is adaptations of a caveman’s club.
Ok, turn your computer off, throw your fridge out of the window and go live in a cave with a club (and only a club) for a month, then we’ll talk.

We’re still mortals walking around trying to find meaning, some believing they’ve found it and others believing all our clubs will never have a target.
And others not giving a shit, like me, because I don’t need someone else to give meaning to my life, thank you very much.

For this reason poetry and art seem to be the best of what men have accomplished.
They’re so fucking useful, aren’t they. It’s because of art that you can hope to push 80 (or 75 if you’re an American) and because of poetry that you can be in instantaneous contact with someone who lives halfway around the globe so you can make him lose his shit one more time in a day.

Thammuz don’t bog your brightness down with attempting to free your fellow man from quicksand they are enjoying by offerring a barb-wire lifeline. I mean, unless that’s really all you have…
That’s the best fucking analogy for truth I’ve ever read. You’ve earned yourself a GA, my man.
And yeah, sorry, the truth hurts. Just like going cold turkey or entering rehab does. But you can sink in your quicksand if not living in an imaginary world is not worth a little suffering to you.

Just don’t try to claim that it is the real world, because it isn’t. Sorry.

As they say elsewhere, this thread is dildos.