What empirical evidence could there be for God?

[Haven]

In my years of debating God's existence (both as an evangelical Christian and an atheist), I have heard countless philosophical arguments for the existence of God. The Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA), Anselm's Ontological Argument, the Teleological Argument, and the Moral Argument, among others, all seek to establish God's existence through the use of pure logic and reasoning. However, I have yet to see a Christian put forth an empirical case for God's existence (empirical, in this case, means physical, testable, analyzable by science). In fact, I don't feel that it is even possible, in principle, to put forth an empirical argument for God's existence, because of the common properties assigned to God (i.e., omnipresence, omniscience, timelessness, etc.).

So, for the debate question: What empirical evidence could there be for God? How would we discover this evidence? How could we determine it pointed to a God rather than a naturalistic entity?

For the sake of this discussion, a definition of God:

(1) A single, supernatural being that created our universe
(2) A personal mind with thoughts, feelings, emotions, and plans
(3) A maximally benevolent, morally righteous entity
(4) An omnipresent, omniscient entity
(5) An eternal being, the "first cause" of reality."
(

[spayne]

The last thing to knock on my door was the pizza delivery man.. But he just asked me to pay and tip him... And did you serious think posting this mind wipe nonsense would work on a former Christians to whom used to use the same arguments? .. Heh, I'm not that stupid or gullible. The only news is that all you have is a book of mind wipe to quote from..

I think perhaps you didn't realize that I was just being facetious with you because your many comments that seem to have nothing to do with the debate topic make it appear as though you are more interested in drama and sensationalism than actual debate.

[Clownboat]

My whole point was to cite a few things in the Bible that compell Christians - not atheists like yourself - to come to believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. You have never addressed one of my primary points in this thread, which is that the Bible contains language that specifically addresses all five of the proofs for God that were introduced by the author of this debate subject. As I said before, if you are curious about that, then go and pick up a Bible, ask God to reveal himself to you, and start reading and see where it takes you.

As I stated before, this is a worldview issue not an evidence issue. Your worldview leaves God out of the picture. Therefore, there is no amount of evidence that would be good enough to convince you. Jesus Christ himself could knock on your door and say "Hi I am Jesus Christ, and I want to be part of your life." And you would say, "Can you give me empirical evidence that you are really Jesus Christ?"

Then, your claim for the 'what is the empirical evidence for God' is that there is none?

I mean, why should I believe what you say about Jesus Christ, or any of your claims about 'sin, salvation and the afterlife'... you point to hearsay accounts in a book of religious promotional material , and expect me to accept it without question??

Do you have an actual argument, or are you just preaching?

You don't have to believe any of this Goat and nor would I expect you too. This is why I said that FOR THE CHRISTIAN, the Bible is evidence for the existence of God. God cannot be proven or disproven, so I am simply saying Christians see evidence of his existence in the Tanakh and the New Testament. And once again, I will give you my primary argument: the five definitions for God that were put forth in this debate question are all addressed in the Bible. If this is interesting to you, then go ahead and investigate further.

And finally, once again, my previous experience speaking with you on these boards has led me to conclude that you are not going to believe the evidence even if Jesus himself introduced himself to you. I'm not clear as to why you won't address these points in your response to me. We can go around and around with a dialogue, but honestly, it's a waste of time for someone who has already made up his mind.

Why does prayer never heal an amputee? That would be good evidence that would be hard to account for.

The quran is true because the quran is true. Is that evidence that you would accept?

[spayne]

My whole point was to cite a few things in the Bible that compell Christians - not atheists like yourself - to come to believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. You have never addressed one of my primary points in this thread, which is that the Bible contains language that specifically addresses all five of the proofs for God that were introduced by the author of this debate subject. As I said before, if you are curious about that, then go and pick up a Bible, ask God to reveal himself to you, and start reading and see where it takes you.

As I stated before, this is a worldview issue not an evidence issue. Your worldview leaves God out of the picture. Therefore, there is no amount of evidence that would be good enough to convince you. Jesus Christ himself could knock on your door and say "Hi I am Jesus Christ, and I want to be part of your life." And you would say, "Can you give me empirical evidence that you are really Jesus Christ?"

Then, your claim for the 'what is the empirical evidence for God' is that there is none?

I mean, why should I believe what you say about Jesus Christ, or any of your claims about 'sin, salvation and the afterlife'... you point to hearsay accounts in a book of religious promotional material , and expect me to accept it without question??

Do you have an actual argument, or are you just preaching?

You don't have to believe any of this Goat and nor would I expect you too. This is why I said that FOR THE CHRISTIAN, the Bible is evidence for the existence of God. God cannot be proven or disproven, so I am simply saying Christians see evidence of his existence in the Tanakh and the New Testament. And once again, I will give you my primary argument: the five definitions for God that were put forth in this debate question are all addressed in the Bible. If this is interesting to you, then go ahead and investigate further.

And finally, once again, my previous experience speaking with you on these boards has led me to conclude that you are not going to believe the evidence even if Jesus himself introduced himself to you. I'm not clear as to why you won't address these points in your response to me. We can go around and around with a dialogue, but honestly, it's a waste of time for someone who has already made up his mind.

Why does prayer never heal an amputee? That would be good evidence that would be hard to account for.

The quran is true because the quran is true. Is that evidence that you would accept?

If there is language in the Koran in which God is characterized as, to quote haven's debate topic,
(1) A single, supernatural being that created our universe
(2) A personal mind with thoughts, feelings, emotions, and plans
(3) A maximally benevolent, morally righteous entity
(4) An omnipresent, omniscient entity
(5) An eternal being, the "first cause" of reality."

then I would be more than willing to further investigae the Koran. This is, once again, the argument I am making for the Bible. It has all of this language contained with it.

Why don't you go and study the Koran and see what you find and please report back your findings.

[Flail]

My whole point was to cite a few things in the Bible that compell Christians - not atheists like yourself - to come to believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God. You have never addressed one of my primary points in this thread, which is that the Bible contains language that specifically addresses all five of the proofs for God that were introduced by the author of this debate subject. As I said before, if you are curious about that, then go and pick up a Bible, ask God to reveal himself to you, and start reading and see where it takes you.

As I stated before, this is a worldview issue not an evidence issue. Your worldview leaves God out of the picture. Therefore, there is no amount of evidence that would be good enough to convince you. Jesus Christ himself could knock on your door and say "Hi I am Jesus Christ, and I want to be part of your life." And you would say, "Can you give me empirical evidence that you are really Jesus Christ?"

Then, your claim for the 'what is the empirical evidence for God' is that there is none?

I mean, why should I believe what you say about Jesus Christ, or any of your claims about 'sin, salvation and the afterlife'... you point to hearsay accounts in a book of religious promotional material , and expect me to accept it without question??

Do you have an actual argument, or are you just preaching?

You don't have to believe any of this Goat and nor would I expect you too. This is why I said that FOR THE CHRISTIAN, the Bible is evidence for the existence of God. God cannot be proven or disproven, so I am simply saying Christians see evidence of his existence in the Tanakh and the New Testament. And once again, I will give you my primary argument: the five definitions for God that were put forth in this debate question are all addressed in the Bible. If this is interesting to you, then go ahead and investigate further.

And finally, once again, my previous experience speaking with you on these boards has led me to conclude that you are not going to believe the evidence even if Jesus himself introduced himself to you. I'm not clear as to why you won't address these points in your response to me. We can go around and around with a dialogue, but honestly, it's a waste of time for someone who has already made up his mind.

Why does prayer never heal an amputee? That would be good evidence that would be hard to account for.

The quran is true because the quran is true. Is that evidence that you would accept?

Two excellent questions, both deserving their own separate thread. Care to start them? I have often wondered why faith healers, self described as tools of God working to heal the sick and imbued as they are with Jesus' teachings to 'do unto others', are not parked 24/7 in the cancer wards and military hospitals 'doing their thing'.

[Haven]

If there is language in the Koran in which God is characterized as, to quote haven's debate topic,

My five points are not "my" five points, but are simply a reiteration of the claims about the attributes of God made by most Abrahamic (Christian, Jewish, and Muslim) theists, which is why I used them for the sake of argument. Personally, I do not see any reason to assume why a god must necessarily possess all of these five attributes.

(1) A single, supernatural being that created our universe
(2) A personal mind with thoughts, feelings, emotions, and plans
(3) A maximally benevolent, morally righteous entity
(4) An omnipresent, omniscient entity
(5) An eternal being, the "first cause" of reality."

then I would be more than willing to further investigae the Koran.

The Qur'an makes all of these claims about God (Allah), often in the same manner as the Bible. Here is a website that discusses the Muslim concept of God; you'll find it very similar to the Christian concept of God (and yes, it covers all five points):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_in_Islam

This is, once again, the argument I am making for the Bible. It has all of this language contained with it.

So does the Qur'an.

[spoirier]

My list of possible empirical criteria for the divine inspiration of a religion, would be a little too long to be posted as a message here, so you can see it in my web site. If you know any page that developed another significant list of criteria and that cannot be found by following my current links, please tell me and I can link to it too.

[AquinasD]

Maybe not, however, you can still examine them by looking through a mirror.

That's completely to miss the point, but still, touché.

Maybe something more like "You cannot take your eyeballs out in order to see what it would like if you didn't have eyeballs would look like" would get the point across to people who don't like analogies. But that's less melodic.

I think a universe with a god/gods would be noticeably different than one without such a being/beings.

First, let's not pretend that "gods" is equivocal in any substantial sense to "God." Polytheistic gods are no more than powerful beings, but they are far from being omniscient, omnipotent, absolutely simple, and so on.

Second, this is to ignore that God is necessary. If God is necessary, it follows that He exists in every possible world. As such, there is no such possible world that God doesn't exist in; there is then no possible state of affairs where God doesn't exist, there is no kind of what-it-would-look-like where God doesn't exist.

As such, there is no particular way the world would look like if God existed as opposed to whether God doesn't exist. If God exists, then a world that God doesn't exist is just a world that doesn't exist. That's what it would look like if God doesn't exist.

I also feel that only a godless universe would contain gratuitous evil, and this universe certainly has its share of gratuitous evil.

This is the problem of evil.

[TheJackelantern]

Is it just me, or are the Christians / theists just posting appeals to ignorance arguments, and avoidance / deflecting arguments? ... Still waiting for this supposed evidence, and for them to actually engage in honest discourse.

(1) A single, supernatural being that created our universe
(2) A personal mind with thoughts, feelings, emotions, and plans
(3) A maximally benevolent, morally righteous entity
(4) An omnipresent, omniscient entity
(5) An eternal being, the "first cause" of reality."

Wouldn't reality itself be first cause? I think you are skipping a step here .. But ok, we can accept the possibility that some entity could have induced a big bang.. Though a GOD that would not make in terms of "first cause"..You are unwilling to apply infinite regress here it seems. ... Your other premises contradict each other, especially if you go by the Biblical Deity.. Maximally righteous to the point where even Genocide becomes morally just. Your premise 4 is pantheism, and you may as well call me GOD then... Are you calling me GOD? .. Your premise 5 is impossible... Only reality itself can be first cause of anything and be eternal.. Conscious things can not possibly be eternal. But of course theists intentionally ignore why consciousness can definitely not exist without cause... Rocks require less cause to exist.. So that argument is an utter fail.

What's even worse is that the only people properly addressing other peoples posts and arguments are the non-theists here.. I wonder why that is.. :/

I can almost guarantee that people will rarely come to faith for purely intellectual reasons and because of empirical evidence.

I will reiterate what I have already stated: the five definitions for God that you put forth in your debate question are all addressed in the Bible. And for the Christian, this is evidence for the existence of God. If you were truly sincere about your debate question, and wanted truth instead of just intellectual sparring, I would think this would be of interest to you.

So you have no evidence of the existence of your GOD.. See, this discussion is about actually establishing truth and not asserting it.. Learning the difference might help you with this debate. :/ So why is it that you can't admit you don't actually have any evidence and that you just believe.. Is it really that hard to be honest? So why are you joining a debate forum when you are entirely unwilling to comply with the debates in any sort of honest manner? Your on a site that deals with intellectual sparing, you are not on facebook saying what's up to your friends and family.. You can't even properly address my posts "/.. And I am sure you aren't going to admit that the Pantheist GOD exists as we all know where that places your religion / deity...

From what I can tell, you are not able to comply with providing any actual evidence that would actually substantiate and validate the existence of your deity. This to which is a self-refutation btw.

[Flail]

TheJackelantern wrote:

So you have no evidence of the existence of your GOD.. See, this discussion is about actually establishing truth and not asserting it.. Learning the difference might help you with this debate. :/ So why is it that you can't admit you don't actually have any evidence and that you just believe.. Is it really that hard to be honest?

The lack of evidence for God has been pointed out repeatedly, ad nauseam on this site, but it is such a crucial and oft ignored point it bears repeating...and repeating. To some theists, just the mention of the word 'evidence' sets them off as if the word itself was an affront. Since there is no evidence of any kind regarding the existence/non-existence of any particular supernatural being WHATSOEVER, the honest position is that we are all dealing with speculation pure and simple...and those who have been trained or who choose to believe with all their 'heart and mind' in some version of the BibleGod are being superstitious.

[KCKID]

So, has God been disproven or totally destroyed by the majority on this forum? I'm just curious as to what the intended outcome of this particular topic is supposed to be. Is it intended to mock or to belittle those who choose to believe in a deity coupled with the hope of eternal life despite the lack of impirical evidence available? Or, is it intended to convert those who presently believe in God and eternal life to the equally religious but devoid of hope concept of "life basically has no meaning and when we die we die?"