Each might describe the thing differently.

I sincerely strongly disagree with a lot of it as to certain folks on what is called the "far left" (they arent far left, really, but that is a whole different conversation), but it all seems to come from a place of sincerity.

Now, having said that, and reminding myself I am not the center of the universe , belief in a god is something we taught children to make them behave.

Or, this one may be less insulting (not intending to be in the first place). Last night, DR WHO episode was about 18th century witch-hunts with of course a meaning for today and the traitor in the WH and the 50 million sick fucks who support him.

But watching the people killing other people because of Satan; if you sink you are innocent and if you dont you are guilty, both ways you are dead, etc.



At some point an intelligent person concludes that it is all made up, all of it. That the leprechaun analogy is quite apropos.

So saying there is no evidence or your point that it doesn't matter, when applied to any other human made up thing like leprechauns, makes no sense unless you have an emotional investment. Nobody has an emotional investment in leprechauns, but if they did...

As to the far left, what constitutes the far left is a matter for debate.

But as to religion, and belief, if a person makes a declarative statement, a statement with no qualifiers, I will take exception to that and this thread is an attempt to point out the logical fallacy of making a statement like the title of this post.

We, meaning humans, simply cannot know enough to make the statement that there is no evidence...etc.

As to theists, we freely admit that our belief is faith based.



Were the witch hunts an attack on female healers and feminist centered earth religions?

I highly recommend. I am a new fan, my first season.

I never watch it.

But of course it is ONLY women who get "ducked" in the water, as it is called.

But the main person alleging witchcraft is a woman, who turns out is really an alien so it gets complicated

He hates humans.

Jerome Corsi forged Trump's birth certificate.

A common assertion, and thinly dressed in the language of logic and science, but a meaningless assertion.

And unprovable. As to self-evidently correct, that also is an unprovable assertion.

At this point.

There are some potential observations that could be made to support the bubble multiverse hypothesis (potential prior collisions and rebounds).

If you believe in the Christian God there are lots of testable hypotheses in The Bible. I have yet to see a mountain move though. Also Jesus did not return in the lifetimes of the apostles. Also no secular reports reports from Jerusalem of darkening, earthquakes, or the dead rising from the tombs around 33 AD.

The point is that making such unprovable statements for or against the existence of the Creator is sheer speculation.

corner of the universe to another.

then the scientific method says it's not even evidence...it's nothing. It's not even enough to qualify as wrong.

something has to be falsifiable to be subject to science. And if it isn't subject to even the scientific method i.e. "unprovable" then there is no evidence for it because there, logically, CANNOT be any evidence for it.

Evidence is a word with meaning. It's not hard. It's not mystical. It's pretty basic actually.

I'd think that theists and atheists would both ask similar questions given the scenario. But we differ when we reason about which conclusions or assumptions are reasonable.
When we deal with the unknown, uncertainty or maybe even the unknowable, why end the debate and make up an entity/god as an answer for all questions when there is no evidence for it?

And I freely admit that my faith and position are equally unprovable.

So perhaps statements such as "there is no evidence for the existence of God" should be avoided altogether. Given the unknowns, there are no reasonable assumptions, only positions.

There is nothing wrong with faith. It is not unethical, immoral, or illegal. You can neither prove nor disprove the existence of God. So what?

Believing on faith doesn't get you closer to finding out the truth, it has the opposite effect. You could believe whatever you want, true or false things, and base it on faith but it offers no mechanisms to lead you to the actual truth.
When faced with the unknown, the reasonable answer isn't to believe in something for which there is no sufficient evidence and just believe it on faith. It's admitting that one doesn't know and then we do our best to find out the real answer.

There is good that comes from faith. I hear you but I am not going to lump all religionists.

Is it only that which is provable?

Of course truth is not just that which can be proven.

The problem is that acknowledging that something cannot be proven, or disproven, is truth too. Therefore it is imparative to be honest and not represent something based on faith as being anything other than something based on faith.

At least that is my opinion, based on my logic.

And I will generally state that I admit that my faith is unprovable. But some prefer certainty in their beliefs.

And then too some are stupid and some are emotionally immature to be honest. Half the population has an IQ under 100.

Regardless of our opinions, current knowledge or whether we'll ever be able to find out certain things, events actually happened that led to the state of the universe we are in now, for example. There are definitely correct answers to the big questions we have.

But my point wasn't really dependent on any definition of truth or what we are trying to find out. It was generally about our approach to how we tackle unknown territory when we don't know the answers. In pretty much all fields, it's recognizing where we lack knowledge and then we explore to find out what is really behind a phenomenon. We tend to choose an approach that doesn't depend on faith but one that we hope will advance our knowledge and will objectively bring us closer to the truth. The real answer in that case would then be backed by testable and reproducible evidence, not dependent on who performs the experiment.

is, of course, a valid approach.

But theology is not science. Theology deals with, literally, the word of god. So it is based on faith that a god/gods exist, and it attempts to determine what it means to live as the god/gods wish us to live.

Welcome to DU, by the way.

But I suppose I didn't post much in the religion forums before.

Then you spoiled it by trying to unstate it. Your initial statement is accurate. Stop there. Either that or show some evidence.

And read the definition of truth.

You failed on logical grounds.

No evidence exists. If it did, you would present it, I have no doubt. One cannot ever prove a negative like that. Such proof is not needed. If you have evidence of the existence of any deity, present it. It is as simple as that. Otherwise your titular statement is true, and remains true until evidence is presented that falsified it.

Provide the evidence for your deity or stfu, I say!

you missed the point.

I think not.

You hold an unprovable position. Accept that and move on.

And you cannot define what would constitute proof of the nature of God, or of the existence of God.

There are two lines of evidence for other universes. One would be if the physical laws in this universe require that there be other universes. So verification of the appropriate laws would constitute the evidence, even if we cannot contact the other universes directly. The second line would be if there were in fact a way to contact the other universes that we don't yet know about. Since that would imply a connection between our universe and the others, we would have physical proof of them.

But if you can't define what constitutes proof of God, then all you have done is precluded the possibility of proof prior to your investigation. This is like the way creationists preclude the possibility of evolution by declaring in advance that nothing can contradict the Bible.

We should also note that prior to the twentieth century, nobody had any problem defining God or providing proofs for or against. So what have we forgotten about God?

They are removed from the constraints of having to deal with facts.

For example, the famous logician Kurt Goedel (a contemporary and friend of Albert Einstein) once wrote a purely mathematical proof that God must exist. (The proof became famous about 5 years ago, because it took that long to double-check it, because it's so complicated. They had to invent an entire new form of algebra for it.)

Goedel's proof rested on a few assumptions of the nature of the universe: First, that everything in the universe can be categorized as either good or bad. Second, good only begats good and evil only begats evil.

With that, he proved that there must be a highest good thing in the universe. Which he then interpreted to be God.

Goedel's proof is nice and all, but not applicable to reality, because in reality you cannot split the universe into clearly good things and clearly evil things. And sometimes good begats evil and sometimes evil begats good.
The whole proof has no connection to reality.

and we assume that on faith, the fact is that we cannot see anywhere but in this universe. So statements that there is no evidence are purely speculative. At best.

Then you can also assume covfefe is everywhere and that would make just as much sense as saying the Creator is everywhere.

Energy is life. And there are forms of energy that we can measure, and forms we can indirectly see by its effects on things that we can see and measure.

There is plenty of evidence for energy, and we understand it quite well. Everything is energy. But if we define the Creator as energy, we have done no more than made a synonym for energy.

And if the Creator is synonymous with a directed energy, a sentient energy, that still does not say where the search should be directed.

You could also say that covfefe is energy. Then what is covfefe but energy?

If the Creator is directed energy or sentience, then we could prove its existence by observing that energy is directed in some way not accounted for by physical laws.

which also describes us, in part, all we could know is that the Creator is a sentient being.


So where does one look?

There are lots of places to look for sentience. We've even looked there and found. Many people thought life was evidence of intelligent design, but it turned out natural selection is a better explanation.

You need to tell us. You're the one postulating the existence of your god, remember?

If I knew, there would be no question.

What would a universe without God be like?
What would a universe with God be like?

If we don't even know the difference, how are we supposed to notice that there is a difference?

In reality, most believers have no trouble defining their gods. It's only when we get into high-falutin theology that God suddenly becomes elusive.

and not about something that is outside, in the physical universe. So much about religion is experiential, not something that is measurable or detectable with the instruments of science. For example, how could anyone measure my sincerity. All you can do is observe my behavior and come to a judgment of whether you believe me or not.

And my view is that the Creator and creation are linked. What is created is a part of the Creator, and has a spark of the Creator.

I wonder why you felt the need to respond.

I'm doing something else right now. I'll get back to you later.

Do the personal messages asking you to continue doing what you are doing, and praising your efforts in this group become more numerous when you repeat that particular line?

Are you the spokesperson?

Same argument.

what they mean by god and what evidence there is for this god they claim exists.

Last edited Mon Nov 26, 2018, 07:48 PM - Edit history (1)

There is some mathematical support for the idea. Unfortunately that math is a couple of levels beyond my comprehension. So, like most, I am waiting for further information about acceptance by those who understand that math. So far, that does not yet exist.

So, I don't yet accept that as a theory that is likely to explain anything. I'm reading about it though. It is interesting.

There is no scientific support for any hypothesis for the existence of deities. No math. No unexplained phenomena that require specific intervention.

Admitting that something remains unexplained is not evidence of a deity or deities.

It was a fascinating article, and broke the whole multiverse thing down in a way I think I understand what they actually mean by it. Not that there are literal parallel dimensions where I am in this exact spot, but a millionaire, but that way far out beyond where we can observe, farther than light has traveled to us, a portion of space has collapsed and expanded much like our portion has. Much like there are multiple galaxies in our universe, there are multiple universes in the multiverse.

that's what I took from it, will read it again.

That article did a pretty good job with helping to do that. Really understanding it, though gets deep into esoteric math. Beyond my level.

As to whether the OP read the whole thing, I can't say.

That there is nothing to suggest that the fundamental rules would or should be any different, And Hawking says as much, we can only go on assumptions.

is that God has had an impact on the physical Universe. Is so, there should be some evidence of it. And not the evidence that the Universe began and runs perfectly fine without any outside supernatural agency.

If God had no impact at all, why call him God.

So there is that.

as I explained in my post.

What do you base you faith on if there is no evidence at all?

Faith requires a belief in something. It does not require evidence, or faith and belief would not enter the equation at all.

billions have had faith and belief in things that do not exist?

But unprovable does not mean the same thing as "do not exist".

Zues and Baal and Orsirus and Janus. They all could exists as described in the myths.

Jesus came to America as the Mormons believe?

Those unprovable things could exists?

We can "see" many of them. But that "seeing" does not limit what exists to what is "seen" by us on earth.

that he doesn't believe The Creator™ has had an impact on the physical Universe. He says The Creator™ "figuratively lit the spark of creation that was the Big Bang." It didn't literally create, you see, so of course it has had no impact on the physical world.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/1218281252

Like you, I don't understand why anyone would bother with a god that can't even literally create stuff.

It does not have to be a man with a white beard,.or any other physical form. There is too much we do not understand about life and consciousness to be arrogant enough to be absolutely certain. Even Richard Dawkins admits he isn't certain there isn't a God.

I consider myself to be an atheist, but I cannot be absolutely certain. I have no evidence there is or isn't a God,any more than evidence of Bigfoot, but maybe I am the evidence. Maybe we all are. To be here, now thinking these thoughts, to have arrived here, only as a result of a chain of events of which the chances were so remote as to be nearly impossible, I have to think that it was a miracle, maybe not of a spiritual white beard kind, but still a miracle for all that has happened to happen as it did to be here.

We have some answers, but to use the OP analogy, there is so much we cannot see in this room, so much we cannot explain, that we don't have much chance in seeing what the next room looks like.

written by bronze-aged nomads is used to force an entire moral code on others. Why should this book, full of justified murder, rape, and slavery STILL be used to explain things that were not understood over two thousand years ago?

If the "book" is seen as alegory and read in the context of it's time as fable, I am fine. If, however you scream it's contents as literal truth, and apply the many meaningless standards of behavior to 21st Century humankind, I can only view you as a delusional idiot! If you claim to talk to a personal, responsive GOD, I can not respect your intelect. You are living in a child's world, or suffering from psychosis.

Fundamental religions of all flavors are political tools used to send young armies to die for the preservation of monarchs. THEY HAVE NO PLACE IN THE 21ST CENTURY!

I am OK not knowing what happens after my last breath. Overwhelming evidence suggests that my acumulated memories will be lost permanently. If something else magical happens, GREAT! I refuse however to live my life based on eternal consequences dreamed up by spiritual hucksters over the centuries.

Theists are delusional, period. Sad, to be sure. Gods are as utter nonsense as leprechauns, unicorns or Paul Bunyan.

A word without meaning, nothing more. Can one even have faith in covfefe? If not, then how is it different from God?

Just like they cant show evidence for superman at this time.

Then maybe we'll talk about proof.

This latest effort appears to argue that it is incumbent on people who do not believe in abject idiocy and nonsense to define the nonsense and prove it is idiotic.

I can do that, but indeed it would be more appropriate for a believer like the op to state exactly what this “god” is that the op believes exists.

There is no evidence for it's existence... but it is needed for our laws of the universe to be true, laws which make sense until we take away the mass the dark matter adds which we can't find but must be there.

We just can't see it directly, so we don't know what it is.

we see it's effect on the Universe. it is called dark matter because we have not found out exactly what it is yet.
It is like DNA, we had a good working model of evolution without knowing the chemical process. Then Watson, Crick and Franklin discovered DNA. But there was evidence for it before that.

There is no evidence that any God had an effect on the Universe.

not the same but ....

because we only have data from radio telescopes. Same as faith.

Why would anyone in that room suspect there were other rooms? What would be the thing that initiated the idea of their existence?

Unlike your blank room, the universe we inhabit has many windows. We have still not explored that universe fully. However, our long exploration of it has led to the hypothesis that there may well be other universes. That possibility is being looked at, at least mathematically. However, we still have unanswered questions about the one we inhabit that limit our ability to understand the multiverse, if it actually exists.

In the end, however, we are almost certainly restricted to the universe we inhabit. We may someday understand the multiverse concept, if it can be described, but we are unlikely to be able to actually observe anything beyond our own. It doesn't matter, though. The existence or non-existence of other universes does not have any impact on us. We're locked in our tiny little corner of the one we inhabit.

As for deities, there have been many of them invented by humans. They come and go. We don't even agree on the definitions for them. Like the multiverse hypothesis, it doesn't matter, though. Any deities that possibly exist seem to have no actual effect on our reality.

way of understanding quantum superposition. It currently has no good evidence that it is more than that. Instead it brings in a lot of its own problems. But it has become the current goto answer for purveyors of woo and other bullshit.

know and turning it into some sort of mystical spiritualistic thing. Frankly, it's no different from the purveyors of the "Matrix" idea. They hijacked quantum physics that way, too, and tried to tie it to superstitious beliefs.

There is science to it, but that's hard. Magic is easy. So, let's make it magical or something.

It's one line of cosmological thought that I'm following. Where it leads, I'll have to wait and see. As I said, the math is beyond my capability to follow.

Think of this universe, the one we live in, as one room in a house. A room with no currently observable doors or windows. A room from which, at this point, we cannot leave.

You raised some of the questions that were clearly omitted from the basic setup.

Our universe isn't some simple little room with four walls and no windows or doors. Humans have only recently explored it, with the capabilities accelerating fantastically in the past half century or so.

Not only do we have doors and windows, we have the ability to create tools and processes to extend and analyze what we observe. We're not locked into some room. Instead, we have complete visibility of the entire universe, which is almost 14 billion years old and expansive enough to hold almost endless things to examine.

The analogy of that bare room is not at all representative of our complicated and still unexplored universe. The two things are not comparable. But, simple ideas suit simple ways of thinking, even if they are a poor match for the comparison. It reminds me of the simple examples that religious apologists use to distract from real explanations.

We know far more than the person in that featureless room.

accepting, simply for the argument, that the multiverse theory is correct.

But as we know, speculation is only that. It is not evidence for anything.

So when anyone says that there is no evidence for the existence of God, they are really only saying that they cannot see any such evidence.

Assuming again for the sake of argument that there is a Creator, we can only speculate about the nature of that Creator.

Theists accept on faith the existence of the Creator. Atheists do not, or claim uncertainty.


So there is no proof to present here.

And we *have* observed phenomena that can be explained by multiverse theory.

But regardless, no scientist currently proposes multiverse theory with the same intensity and certainty that theists like yourself propose "god." It's just an interesting piece of speculation that answers some questions, introduces others, and could explain certain observations. Yes, observations.

Why don't you be the first to present evidence for your god on the meager level of multiverse evidence? That would be an amazing start.

Assuming again for the sake of argument that there is a Creator, we can only speculate about the nature of that Creator.

No, this is wrong. Entire religions (including yours) have been established based on precise *beliefs* about your god. You are a Christian. You are certain that a man named Jesus was the son of your god. You are certain that he was crucified and died in order to forgive you of your sins. This is what it means to be a Christian, is it not? If I got your beliefs wrong, then correct me. Explain exactly what it is you believe. You never have on this forum. Never.

And finally, for what must be at least the hundredth time, I must correct you - I am not aware of any atheists here who claim to PROVE there is no god. Once again, I state that this is a straw man of your creation. Stop arguing against straw men, and acknowledge what atheism (at least what MY atheism) really is: a simple disbelief of your claims. WILL YOU DO THIS AT LONG LAST???

Faith requires a belief in the unprovable.

You consider yourself a Christian. Explain why. You have done nothing but jerk EVERYONE around on this forum. Get on the record. Explain what you believe and why. Are you unable to? Are you afraid to?

I believe in the essential message of Jesus to do to others as you would have them do to you.

Others have espoused the golden rule - including many who came BEFORE your Jesus fellow.

Ergo, you are NOT a Christian.

Do you still consider yourself a Christian? Why or why not?