Proof of the Christian God

[RonE]

In a current topic there was the following post:

Merely saying something is true does not make it true….
We as humans like to have proof.
Gullible people accept things, because it suits them…

And yet theists continue to claim that a creator being exists and that it made everything, despite repeatedly failing to provide any evidence to substantiate the claim....

I’ve seen other posts in the past on this site where theist claim to have scientific evidence of God. I never seen this actually done, usually their evidence is never presented, if something is presented it is invariably misquoted, or doesn’t say what the presenter claims it does.
So, to help us not be “gullible people�. This topic will be dedicated to theists to provide that which has been claimed but never provided, to my knowledge, real scientific evidence of the Christian god.
First, some definitions and parameters for debate:
1. Scientific evidence is evidence which serves to either support, or counter, a scientific theory or hypothesis. Such evidence is expected to be empirical evidence and interpreted in accordance with scientific methods. Standards for scientific evidence vary according to the field of inquiry, but the strength of scientific evidence is generally based on the results of statistical analysis and the strength of scientific controls applied. Wikipedia
2. The scientific hypothesis you will be trying to support with your evidence goes like this: “there is a god as defined in the Christian bible who is omnificent, omnipotent, omniscient, etc. and creator of the universe�.
3. This is not a debate about evolution, disproving evolution is not a proof that your god exists. Nor is it about attempting to debunk other scientific hypothesis or theories, unless doing so is direct proof that your god exists, disproving the theory of gravity is not evidence of your god.
4. Please follow the forum rules. “the Bible or other religious writings are not to be considered evidence for scientific claims.�

The rules for this debate are simple:
1) present your scientific evidence of your god
2) see #1

If you don’t have the evidence, please don’t waste everyone’s time.
If you don't like the OP create one for your own topic.

[Hawkins]

[Replying to post 148 by Hawkins]

So if the evidence of God can be shown scientifically, all humans are dead. The seeking of God with concrete evidence means the seeking of the death of all mankind.

Is this in and of itself true? It seems more to me to be an excuse given for why, when evidence of God is sought, he simply cannot be found.

o if a truth lies in there, or one of such claims is a truth, the only way you can reach such a truth (and reach it on time) is by putting faith in certain accounts of human witnessing.

Except how do we know which of many given claims is a truth, if we are not able to do anything to examine it? Is a truth the Abrahamic God? Jesus? What Muhammed said? Or something else entirely?
If we have to resort to faith, how then do we separate the dross from the gold? Anyone can say anything at all, and say that is true and one just has to have faith...

How can you examine the truth of history. Say, a book mentioned that George Washington said something. How can you verify that he actually did say that?

That's basically not the way how humans approach a truth. We don't examine that directly. Instead, we examine the reliability and credibility of the source. Another example is that daily news are broadcast every minutes. Humans in majority never bother to examine how truth each piece of news is. They instead speculate the credibility of the media from which they choose the extract the truth.

[Tired of the Nonsense]

[Replying to post 145 by liamconnor]

If by 'science' we mean the scientific method, then of course not. The scientific method can no more demonstrate the existence of God than it can that the battle of Carthage took place. There are various kinds of knowledge and each has its own method at yielding it.

The scientific method certainly CAN demonstrate that Carthage was defeated and destroyed. It's called archaeology.

However, it is worth noting that a sufficient number of cosmologists believe the universe is tweaked in such a way that implies 'external motive'. But whether they would say this is based on the scientific method I highly doubt. It seems more an interpretation of data.

The parameters of our universe are such that our sort of life is possible. And, low and behold, our sort of life exists. If the parameters of our universe were not such that our sort of life was possible, and yet we existed anyway, now THAT would imply external motive.

The current conviction is that we live in a multiverse of an untold number of other universes, each one with it's own unique set of parameters. If this is true, and I am certainly not declaring it to be so, then the possibility of one universe having just the right parameters for our sort of life becomes inevitable.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 150 by Hawkins]

Christianity is all about a covenant between God and man. The covenant specifies that humans will be saved by faith.

You're speaking to a former Christian here. I already know about this.

So if God is evident, what faith do you have for you to be saved by such a covenant.

So what of the apostles? Or the Hebrews who witnessed God first hand, according to tales from the Old Testament?

1) God shows Himself up. Any god should show up in front of humans unless he has a reason to hide behind. The Christianity God has such a reason. He granted a covenant which requires humans to be saved by faith. There's a reason why the covenant has to be so. It goes beyond the discussion topic of this thread though.

From my perspective, that reason is the reasoning of fallible humans, who may very well have come up with it as an excuse.

Did God tell you this reason himself, or are you relying on the writings of ancient humans from thousands of years ago?

We put faith in a small amount of humans who we believe are he closest to a possible scientific truth. We call this small amount of humans as direct witnesses the scientists. By putting faith in them is the way how humans in majority reach a scientific truth.

False analogy. Do you know the difference between scientists and the clergy of religions?
Scientists have results. If a scientist says he can build a rocketship and explore space, he can demonstrate this.
What about a priest though? If a priest says he can, oh I dunno, explore the divine or something like that...how does he show it?

[Hawkins]

[Replying to post 145 by liamconnor]

If by 'science' we mean the scientific method, then of course not. The scientific method can no more demonstrate the existence of God than it can that the battle of Carthage took place. There are various kinds of knowledge and each has its own method at yielding it.

The scientific method certainly CAN demonstrate that Carthage was defeated and destroyed. It's called archaeology.

However, it is worth noting that a sufficient number of cosmologists believe the universe is tweaked in such a way that implies 'external motive'. But whether they would say this is based on the scientific method I highly doubt. It seems more an interpretation of data.

Archaeology are mostly guess works. It relies on one's interpretation to stand.

That said, To be more realistic please fetch randomly any history book written more than 1000 years ago then show us how many sections of the book are supported by archaeology.

[Hawkins]

[Replying to post 150 by Hawkins]

Christianity is all about a covenant between God and man. The covenant specifies that humans will be saved by faith.

You're speaking to a former Christian here. I already know about this.

So if God is evident, what faith do you have for you to be saved by such a covenant.

So what of the apostles? Or the Hebrews who witnessed God first hand, according to tales from the Old Testament?

1) God shows Himself up. Any god should show up in front of humans unless he has a reason to hide behind. The Christianity God has such a reason. He granted a covenant which requires humans to be saved by faith. There's a reason why the covenant has to be so. It goes beyond the discussion topic of this thread though.

From my perspective, that reason is the reasoning of fallible humans, who may very well have come up with it as an excuse.

Did God tell you this reason himself, or are you relying on the writings of ancient humans from thousands of years ago?

We put faith in a small amount of humans who we believe are he closest to a possible scientific truth. We call this small amount of humans as direct witnesses the scientists. By putting faith in them is the way how humans in majority reach a scientific truth.

False analogy. Do you know the difference between scientists and the clergy of religions?
Scientists have results. If a scientist says he can build a rocketship and explore space, he can demonstrate this.
What about a priest though? If a priest says he can, oh I dunno, explore the divine or something like that...how does he show it?

It is you who don't understand what science and history are.

They are completely different kind of truths. Let me shed some light on this.

There are basically 5 categories of truths, and the way how each type can be approached by humans may vary.

1) scientific truth
a repeated or repeatable pattern governed by a set of rules. Science is the discovery of such a set of rule behind such a repeating pattern. Since the nature science is that it is about something repeatable, one can thus examine it or its truth repeatedly and at will.

2) History
History happens only once. You can't observe the second time, not to speak infinitive number of times as you can to science. The only way which works exclusively is by believing the accounts of witnessing which you (as an individual) consider credible.

Archaeology strictly speaking is not the proof but the assistance of witnessing. It is similar to video and audio records, they are used as the assistance of human witnessing. Strictly speaking they are not proof as they can be faked in uncountable ways.

3) Present events
They can be verified, as unlike history, their effects may still last. An example is the existence of president Trump. If you choose not to believe the media, you can verify his existence by paying a visit to the White House. This is however not the case if you try to proof the 2nd president after George Washington. You have to believe with faith about what have been written down about him. The point here is, you don't have more evidence about George Washington, you may have more witnessing about him for a cross reference to be used (as assistance) to validate the credibility of what is said. You have more accounts of witnessing because he's more famous.

4) Touchable truth
That is water is wet. You can handily tell them as it's part of daily life contacts.

5) Unreachable truth
Humans don't have all the knowledge of this universe. There are always something humans don't know. There are always knowledge beyond the touch of humans living in a certain time frame. Such as black holes relative to stone age humans. The truth is completely isolated from them. Similarly, shall hell be a truth it is completely isolated from today's humans.

If there's time machine to send you back to stone age. Humans there may reach the truth of black hole by putting faith in you.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 155 by Hawkins]

I notice you answer none of my questions, imply I don't understand science or history, [strike]say there are 5 categories of truths only to give us three[/strike]...

Yeah, I'm not going to put much stock in what you say.

As for your analogy regarding the 2nd POTUS...if I go read historical documents from the time period, any that reference the 2nd POTUS will inevitably say it was John Adams, even those who would have been opposed to him. When we try to do the same for Jesus, we notice that at the time of his ministry, he wrote nothing himself and apparently not one other person wrote about him, despite the tales in the NT about him riling up the Jewish priesthood.
It's only decades afterward that we have documents from him, and then, only from people speaking in his favour, with the tales about him growing ever more fantastic as the years go by.

[Hawkins]

[Replying to post 155 by Hawkins]

I notice you answer none of my questions, imply I don't understand science or history, say there are 3 categories of truths only to give us two...

Yeah, I'm not going to put much stock in what you say.

What you put here are assertions without an argument. Yeah, that's what you can do!

The answers to your question is that some kinds of truth can only be reached by putting faith and putting faith alone, which you failed to realize. You failed to realize because you mistakenly think that every kinds of truth can be like a science for you to get a result from.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 157 by Hawkins]

You failed to realize because you mistakenly think that every kinds of truth can be like a science for you to get a result from.

I don't think this at all. My angle is that yes, there are some things we cannot figure out, at least not at the moment, perhaps someday in the future we can.
However, with those things that are quote unquote truths...how do we figure out whether or not they actually are truths?
Take the Christian God for example. You suggest to just put faith in him. Why should I? There are many competing religions on this planet, all with their own ideas about a god or God. It's a stalemate.
The way I see it, if I had a gun to my head and was being told to put my faith in something...how would I choose? For all I know, you may be right and Christian God is beyond the ken of science...but that doesn't help me learn whether or not Christian God actually is true!

[liamconnor]

[Replying to post 152 by Tired of the Nonsense]

The scientific method certainly CAN demonstrate that Carthage was defeated and destroyed. It's called archaeology.

Suppose our primary sources containing stories about Carthage had all been lost, what could we infer strictly from the archaeological remains that are currently available to us right now?

The fact of the matter is that archaeology is more akin to history than science. It cannot reproduce battles in a lab. Its conclusions are based on arguments, not experiments.

It is commonplace nowadays for atheists to invoke archaeology without fully understanding what it actually tells us, let alone how much archaeological evidence there actually is.

[liamconnor]

[Replying to post 157 by Hawkins]

The answers to your question is that some kinds of truth can only be reached by putting faith and putting faith alone,

I will piggy back here and remind everyone that "faith" is not exclusive to religion. It is exercised everyday by all of us in acquiring knowledge.

If you have ever said, "Hey, did you hear about that stabbing on Central Ave..." you are exercising faith in the reports that brought you that news.

If you have ever skipped the grocery store because your spouse called to say, "Hey, I already got milk" you are exercising faith.

If you believe in any historical event without investigating it thoroughly for yourself, you are exercising faith.

Even if you have investigated it, you are exercising faith in the historical methods to give you solid stances.