You can't prove God doesn't exist... more on the subject

[Willum]

"You can't prove God doesn't exist." is a frequent claim of theists.

It is not correct, we can and do prove things don't exist all the time, the standard is an academic one, not a de facto one, but that is not the topic.

The topic is to have the statement contested practically.

Is there anything you can do or say that invokes any relevance by god? Is there anything that can be done that has an God-related effect?
God doesn't stop murders, even genocides.
Nothing one has ever done have been observed to cause God to react, or respond in any way.

If he is perfectly irrelevant, then, he is perfectly irrelevant, yes?
If he does not interfere, he is useless.
A functional equivalent of not existing?

So if this is true, even if he does exist, why should we care?
He does his stuff, we do ours, and never the twain shall meet.

[Thomas123]

Willum states;
If he is perfectly irrelevant, then, he is perfectly irrelevant, yes?
If he does not interfere, he is useless.
A functional equivalent of not existing?
...........

Personally, I sense a sincerity behind your presentations despite their cyclical occurrence. Who is this ' he '?

Without clarification ,I would answer ,....
Yes!, to your first question.
The second bit makes no sense.
As does the third.

Your submission has me thinking about an old church ruin near my house. I noticed that it had a lightning conductor running down it's spire. It never interfered and must now, be retrospectively declared useless, perfectly irrelevant and having a functional equivalent of not existing.? What about the one on the new church.?

You are chasing shadows here!

[marco]

So if this is true, even if he does exist, why should we care?
He does his stuff, we do ours, and never the twain shall meet.

Shelley as a teenager was expelled from Oxford University for attempting to answer a similar question - he called his paper "The Necessity of Atheism." Those were the days when God held sway.

I think we have to say what we are attempting. If we are dealing with the general concept of beings more powerful than we are, it seems sensible to suggest in our expansive universe, someone tops our intelligence. Should we call this being a god?

But we are usually concerned with a judgmental being who checks what lies little kids are telling, or spies on teenagers indulging in verboten sexuality or shakes his head at the person who has stolen some money. All this is recorded for general consumption on the glorious Dies Irae, the day of wrath. He seems an unlikely being to begin with. If we are to examine his starring role in the Bible then it is much easier to assert, rather than prove, non existence. He has the same chance of existing as a unicorn with five heads. His silliness alone would disqualify him from working out Kepler's Laws of planetary motion. He fights with two primitive beings named Adam and Eve; thinks frogs will terrify Pharaoh; races across the sky exposing part of his divine body; and playfully asks Abraham to kill his son. Who would assert this foolish being made marks on our moon, presented Jupiter with umpteen satellites and granted Saturn beautiful rings before whizzing off into deep space, billions of light years away, creating something or other beyond human reach? If utter absurdity is acceptable as proof then Yahweh is dead in the Red Sea. He carries too many marks of his makers, notably misogynism, to be other than fiction. But for those who hold miracles are not to be made sense of by man there is nothing too absurd that it cannot be believed.

As for proving a negative, mathematicians can happily prove there is NO last prime number, and the proof is remarkably simple. But God of course defies mathematics.

[marco]

Willum states;
If he is perfectly irrelevant, then, he is perfectly irrelevant, yes?
If he does not interfere, he is useless.
A functional equivalent of not existing?
...........

Personally, I sense a sincerity behind your presentations despite their cyclical occurrence. Who is this ' he '?

Without clarification ,I would answer ,....
Yes!, to your first question.
The second bit makes no sense.
As does the third.

Your submission has me thinking about an old church ruin near my house. I noticed that it had a lightning conductor running down it's spire. It never interfered and must now, be retrospectively declared useless, perfectly irrelevant and having a functional equivalent of not existing.? What about the one on the new church.?

You are chasing shadows here!

May I join this shadow chasing? As far as humanity is concerned if God never presents himself and things go on as they would were there no God - hurricanes happen, populations are wiped out and diseases spread across the globe - then for us he is useless. For ghosts he might indeed have some function but we're not ghosts.

If he is never seen and never heard and plays no part in the human circus he is effectively non existent. Alternatively we can say he is dead, his adventures in the OT complete. So he is as non-existent as Julius Caesar, though we can discuss both.

Your lightning conductor in its working life had a use. If it still protects the ruin, it has a use. If some enterprising merchants take an interest in retrieving the metal they can usefully sell it. But if all its functions are gone it is the equivalent of being dead, as is Caesar, and as, I propose, is Yahweh. None of them affects our present existence, though your conductor could be reserviced. I wonder how we would do that with God.

[Thomas123]

The basic problem here ,marco ,appears to me ,to be ,one relating to illogical expectation on the part of the atheist. God is not a bail out loan. God is not a house pet to run on a wheel. We use God effectively or we don't. All human structures need to be earthed.

The opening post has personified God for it's own purpose. Even with personification, I have worked with people in my time who could be classed by the OP, as functionally non existent. How can God be dead or alive?

"To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
Mark Twain

Why does Willum want the God concept to show him recognizable results?
Why is the elimination of its presence so vital to him?

"There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreampt of in our philosophies."..or something like that!

[1213]

...
God doesn't stop murders, even genocides.
Nothing one has ever done have been observed to cause God to react, or respond in any way....

How do you know that?

[Willum]

[Replying to post 6 by 1213]

Just like he talks to you, he talks to me:
He says, "I don't stop murders and rapes and child molestation, because I like them, voyeurism excites me because nothing else is going on."

Why, how do you know he does?
Rape is permissible in the Bible for 50 sheckles.
Murder and genocide are allowable under certain circumstances, and, oh, by the way, murders are not stopped.

Unless you can generate some kind of psychological phenomenon that says men are planning to kill people at a much greater rate than reality dictates.

Good luck with that.

[Willum]

[Replying to post 4 by marco]

I certainly agree, except that God is less than a shadow. A shadow can be a blot on the Sun.
God has less substance and less impact.

[1213]

Just like he talks to you, he talks to me:..

To me God talks through the Bible. So, you were wrong and I just have to wonder why you make up think that are in no way true.

…Rape is permissible in the Bible for 50 sheckles.
Murder and genocide are allowable under certain circumstances, and, oh, by the way, murders are not stopped….

Please show the scripture that tells rape is permissible?

Murder is unlawful killing and never accepted in the Bible. Death penalty is not same as murder and it has been allowed in some cases.

What murderer continues forever?

[Zzyzx]

.

Murder is unlawful killing and never accepted in the Bible.

Thus, murder is defined by laws having jurisdiction in the case.

Unlawful: against the law; illegal

Law: a rule, usually made by a government, that is used to order the way in which a society behaves
https://www.yourdictionary.com/unlawful

If the law allows wholesale killing of Jews (as in Germany 1940s), it is not murder. Correct?