Evidence for God #1

[DaveD49]

Two of the constant things I have heard from atheists on other sites is that first "There is no proof of God" and "There is no evidence for God". The first can be dismissed because to the total impossibility of there being "proof". The ONLY things that can be scientifically proven are within the universe. Anything outside of the universe or non-physical can only be theorized about, but NO "theory" is proof of anything. So, just as there can be no "proof" for God, nor can there be proof of alternate universes, membranes producing endless universes, etc. etc. In as far as the second assertion, that there is no evidence for God, that one is blatantly false as evidence for Him exists in many, many different categories. It is my intention to list some of them one at a time so as to get everyone's reaction as to the viability or lack thereof of the evidence presented. I realize that some, if not all, of these you have heard before and may have actually responded to. I already listed a few of the in a response to a earlier question, but I think that they will only get the attention they deserve if listed individually.

Topic for Debate: Do you agree or disagree with the following being evidence for the existence of God?
In answering please state clearly whether you agree or disagree
Your reasoning for doing so
Please rate from 1 to 10 with 10 being the strongest what you feel the strength of the evidence is.
If you have something further to add please let me know.

#1 The Existence of Scientific Laws

Everything about mathematics involves intelligence. One cannot add 1+1 without the intelligence to do so. Randomness cannot produce intelligence. No matter how many monkeys you have banging away on typewriters for whatever length of time, it is highly unlikely that any of them will ever produce the complete works of Shakespeare. They won’t produce even one of his sonnets. But even if they did that would be a semblance of intelligence, not the real thing. Intelligence would only be shown if the task could be repeated many times.

Therefore, the very existence of scientific LAWS, such as the Law of Gravity or the Law of Thermodynamics, is firm evidence of an intelligent being who is in some way responsible for the existence of everything. In our society are human laws just random words on a piece of paper? No. They show purpose and meaning which positively proves an intelligence behind them. In reality man-made "laws" are not laws at all, but rather rules which can be broken. However scientific laws can not be broken thus making them unlike civil laws. But they BOTH show a purpose. But in the case of scientific laws without them the universe could never exist. There is no reason why a universe created by randomness should be compelled to obey ANY laws, let alone display complex mathematics. Intelligence is absolutely necessary.

[DaveD49]

[Replying to brunumb in post #25]

Agreed.... I still am fairly new and didn't realize that button was there.

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #23

I sense the presence of Woo

I sense the presence of the Appeal to Ridicule fallacy.

Theists love to confuse and upset up with indeterminacy and the like in hopes to frighten us into fleeing to the God -claim for some reliable certainly.

Ad Hominem.

Sorry, the reliable laws of physics are good enough

They're not good enough to explain their own existence.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #23

I sense the presence of Woo

I sense the presence of the Appeal to Ridicule fallacy.

No. I explained what the argument was.

Theists love to confuse and upset up with indeterminacy and the like in hopes to frighten us into fleeing to the God -claim for some reliable certainly.

[/quote]Ad Hominem.[/quote]

No. It's a Theism apologetic I'm familiar with. Which I explained.

Sorry, the reliable laws of physics are good enough

They're not good enough to explain their own existence.

They are if you think about it rather than just deny it - until one gets down to the origins of cosmic Stuff. That's the gap for God, I've never denied it. But is not evidence for or against a cosmic intelligence. Let's see whether that covers my post.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to DaveD49 in post #28]

Sorry, like so many other Theist apologists you just don't get it. Yes, you can say we all have faith in the sense that we have to trust what we are told; we can't do all the research ourselves. But what information can be trusted? The evidence is that science researches, validates and regularly reviews the way the world works. Religion just makes faithclaims based on no science and often in defiance of it.

The rest of your post was about religious feelgood and believing it. There is NO good and valid reason to credit the god - claim or any religion.

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #24]

You said "The point is that a postulated creative intelligence is academic.It doesn'tin practice,matter whether the universe is run on regular physics or there is a Cosmic Intelligence that runs it or just pushed the Start Button. Unlessit is an intervening god."

In my experiences He is most assuredly a personal and intervening God.

T: "You know better than me whether you arer eally talking about Deistgod,in which case it is the 'god of all faiths and none', or whether you are talking about a cosmic minds that intervenes and may even be contacted mentally (aka 'spiritually'by humans on any Faith or even none, I suppose.

This is of course a neat answer to 'which god?' and is a welcome progression from'My Faith is right and all the others are false' which we get far too often. But of course it is still a logically untenable claim not least that this Cosmic Mind is somehow male."

In my search I dismissed Deism rather quickly because Deism does not really acknowledge an interactive God but rather just a creative force. I truly believe that He is interactive with us. The image of a "Cosmic Mind" could be correct, and yes I believe that He is the God of all no matter what faith or lack thereof. But I disagree that people think of Him as male. Certainly we use the male pronouns when we speak of Him and He has been depicted in art for centuries as a bearded old man, but almost all people realize that God is spirit and has no gender. We use male pronouns because there is no other pronoun to use that describes an intelligence with no gender. "It" would be inappropriate because it implies something without intelligence like a desk or chair.

Ok, so you Truly Believe that this cosmic creative force is interactive with us. In all the discussions that I can remember no valid evidence to credit such beliefs has been presented. It is all stuff that can be explained as stuff that goes on in the head, seeing coincidence as significant, various fallacious appeals, like size, complexity, order, the unknown, none of which are valid. The It is not credible by Faith or evidence, not really. And I apparenly think of any such postulated entity as an 'it' as much as you do. Aside from any sidelining of an equally credible female creative cosmic intelligence. It is tradition based on antique ignorance, really. Ok I do it, too as it has got to be a habit, but so long as we agree that in all credible probability the creative entity behind everything whether intelligent or not, is without gender.

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #33

Ad Hominem.

No. It's a Theism apologetic I'm familiar with.

You make the accusation that theists "love to confuse".


They're not good enough to explain their own existence.

They are if you think about it rather than just deny it - until one gets down to the origins of cosmic Stuff. That's the gap for God, I've never denied it. But is not evidence for or against a cosmic intelligence.

The origins of cosmic Stuff are entirely the point. The very fact that the "gap" is there indicates a deficiency in materialism.

[William]

[Replying to DaveD49 in post #1]

Topic for Debate: Do you agree or disagree with the following being evidence for the existence of YHVH?
In answering please state clearly whether you agree or disagree
Your reasoning for doing so
Please rate from 1 to 10 with 10 being the strongest what you feel the strength of the evidence is.
If you have something further to add please let me know.

#1 The Existence of Scientific Laws

I agree in principle.

What you are referring to as "Scientific Laws", are discovered through the process of investigation of the physical universe. The discoveries constitute the evidence for the likelihood that we exist within a Creation, which therefore implies a Creator.

I rate the strength of the evidence 10 and the strength of my ability to work correctly with the evidence at around 8.5 or so...

Some of the evidence which I find contributes to my agreeing that we exist within a created thing, I share consistently, here on this message board, as well as on other message boards;

[William]

[Replying to Athetotheist in post #35]

The origins of cosmic Stuff are entirely the point. The very fact that the "gap" is there indicates a deficiency in materialism.

This is the case because it appears that the universe came from a beginning event, and thus the gap.

Couple that with its integrated mathematics and the fact that the Earth exists within it and the forms upon it are unfolding in ways that show the mathematics integrated therein, and we have evidence of mindfulness [rather than chaotic mindless randomness] that the whole universe is some kind of Created Thing.

[Athetotheist]

[Replying to William in post #36]

Topic for Debate: Do you agree or disagree with the following being evidence for the existence of God?

(quoting DaveD49)
Topic for Debate: Do you agree or disagree with the following being evidence for the existence of YHVH?

Why did you change the question?

Are you suggesting that scientific laws can indicate the existence of only one particular deity?

[DaveD49]

[Replying to William in post #36]

Thank you for your post and your agreement. I was beginning to think that I was the only one on this board which had people that could think outside of the box.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to TRANSPONDER in post #33

Ad Hominem.

No. It's a Theism apologetic I'm familiar with.

You make the accusation that theists "love to confuse".


They're not good enough to explain their own existence.

They are if you think about it rather than just deny it - until one gets down to the origins of cosmic Stuff. That's the gap for God, I've never denied it. But is not evidence for or against a cosmic intelligence.

The origins of cosmic Stuff are entirely the point. The very fact that the "gap" is there indicates a deficiency in materialism.

Ok. Use of Woo in theist apologetics. I have seen often Theist appeal to indeterminacy for example as a method of arguing that science is invalid (the observer affects the result). In the same way, they argue imperfect human perception (science is only opinion) and in earlier debates 'Quantum' was tossed at us as a way of arguing that it was all too confusing and upsetting to physics, so that we could rely on science. I countered in those days with 'whatever is happening at quantum level, the laws of physics still work'. I talk of Woo now as the apologetic is the same - using weird stuff about science: quarks, string theory and the holographic universe to try to imply that science really couldn't explain anything.

This is not Ad Hom - 'to the man' it is refutation - 'to the argument'. Woo is not an attack on the user, it is a somewhat well -poisoning term, but I have the means to beat the army, I don't need to poison their well. Rather, the false argument is you pointing the finger at me, because you can't beat the argument - you in fact are doing the ad hom 'Oh you are So WUDE'. So I must be wrong. Old trick.

Sorry for the length but as it is often a lot quicker to make a false claim than to rebut it.

So the 'gap in materialism'. No the appeal to 'gaps in materialism' is the failure in the argument. The unexplained and the unknown neither invalidate materialism, science or atheism, nor do they validate a god -claim, which is relevant as even if you refuted science, materialism and evolution, geology and continental drift along with it, that wouldn't do a single thing to validate a god.

Again the fallacy is on your side, I am sure, because I have seen it so many times, the need to dismiss, debunk and deny science, because it gets in the way of the god- claim. Dismiss the science and the god -claim stands. No. The god claim is invalid until validated, NOT to be taken as a given and then all evidence against dismissed by things it doesn't know, things it got wrong and scientists are fallible humans. Appeal to unknowns is axiomatically no argument as there have been unexplaineds from antiquity but science has answered more and more. And where it disagreed with religion, religion has turned out to be wrong (1).

Scientific materialism has earned enough credit that it is logically the go - to hypothesis even for unknowns, and God isn't.

(1) aside from claiming to be right by fiddling religion to fit science - e.g 'of course everything wasn't done in 6 days', - the Bible says it was, specifically. 'Oh well, divide the age of the universe into 7'. No, The Bible says 6 days with morning and evening, dark and light. I have yet to see even the most denialist Bible apologists say that God flicked the light switch every 2 billion years to simulate the day and night. that would mysteriously become 24 hours when he got round to making the sun and moon some time after the Vegetable and fruit crawled out onto land.
Aside from that we have the debunk of Tyre which was never destroyed for long, the persistence of Babylon until after Romans and Daniel turning out to be a history, not a prophecy (sorry, Newton was as misguided about that as he was about alchemy) and the few things it turned out to right about don't actually help the Bible apologists, that's even if anyone ever did deny Pilate, David or the Hittites.