Good reasons to believe – or to doubt

[Zzyzx]

.
Good reasons to believe – or to doubt

Consider: A reasonably intelligent, informed, educated person who is truly neutral or undecided regarding belief in God asks you to give them:

Good reasons to believe that the Bible God exists

OR

Good reasons to doubt the existence of the Bible God



Supporting information would be helpful

[Tcg]

If you disagree, please show the other possibilities.

I've already provided one. You denied that it was one and are now denying that I provided it. You've even talked yourself out of one of your possibilities, so now you are discussing only two. Not that the number matters, your faith requires you to limit yourself to only one.


Any possibility presented, that isn't the only one you'd accept, will be rejected immediately, not because it isn't possible, but because your faith is too great of an investment to risk by considering viable options. It is a fragile faith that disallows one to even consider other options.



Tcg

[William]

1213: I think there is only three options, either someone/something created, or all has developed by chance, or that everything has always been as we can now observe.

Tcg: I can think of another:

"Something has always existed and is a constant state of change."

Theists who are trying to use nature as evidence of God won't like it simply because it explains existence without the need for a God of any kind.

Panentheist: Nature is a great example of evidence of GOD. The universe is great evidence of a Creator GOD.
Scientific analysis would not accept that nature has "always existed and is in a constant state of change" without changing the scientific theory that there was a beginning to the universe.

Tcg: Arguments that begin with, "There are only X number of possibilities..." are rarely convincing especially when it is easy to contemplate other viable options.

Panentheist: Contemplating other viable options have never dispelled the viable option that a Creator GOD exists. Claiming 'there is no need for a creator GOD to explain existence" does not mean a Creator GOD does not exist. It just means that those who declare it have see no personal usefulness to include the possibility that a Creator GOD does exist. Generally such people also believe that when their body finally dies, that will be the end of them forevermore.

[Zzyzx]

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[Replying to post 12 by William]

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[Tcg]

Scientific analysis would not accept that nature has "always existed and is in a constant state of change" without changing the scientific theory that there was a beginning to the universe.

This is an odd rebuttal given that I never claimed that nature has always existed. Additionally, I never claimed that the universe has always existed.


I suggested as a possibility that, "Something has always existed and is a constant state of change."

• Why the big bang was not the beginning
  
  First hints are emerging of a universe that existed before our own: an alien world of chaos where time, space and geometry were yet to form
  
  Although everyone has heard of the big bang, no one can say confidently what it was like. After all, recounting the beginning of time is about finding not just the right words, but the right physics – and ever since the big bang entered the popular lexicon, that physics has been murky.
  
  Perhaps no longer, thanks to an unusual way of delving into our universe’s backstory that has emerged over the past few years. In this view, the essence of space and time can exist beyond the confines of the cosmos, but in a state of roiling chaos we would not recognise. The big bang is not a hard-and-fast beginning, but a moment of profound transformation – one quite different from anything most of us could have imagined.
  
  
  https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg ... beginning/

[1213]

...surely such an entity would have known to cause a thunderstorm where the iron chariot tribe is and cause their chariots to rust?

What if they were protected from rain and well oiled?

[rikuoamero]

...surely such an entity would have known to cause a thunderstorm where the iron chariot tribe is and cause their chariots to rust?

What if they were protected from rain and well oiled?

If you're being serious...




So your god is that stupid? He can't think of a solution to an iron chariot tribe who oil their chariots?

[Zzyzx]

.

...surely such an entity would have known to cause a thunderstorm where the iron chariot tribe is and cause their chariots to rust?

What if they were protected from rain and well oiled?

If you're being serious...

So your god is that stupid? He can't think of a solution to an iron chariot tribe who oil their chariots?

Thank you both for the demonstration. Some defenses of Bible stories seem to not make sense. Anyone agree?


Nine of my reasons to doubt (or reject) the existence of the Bible God.

These are MY reasons. Anyone who wishes to comment on the points I raise is welcome to do so by constructing another thread – but not here. Instead, present YOUR reasons. Readers will decide for themselves what makes sense.

1. There is nothing special about the Bible God (Abrahamic God) except in the minds of worshipers. It is just one of thousands proposed by the world’s plethora of religions. Choice of religions and gods is overwhelmingly reflective of those that are popular in the society in which one is raised. ‘Accident of birth’. Regional popularity is NO indication of truth. Evidence: maps of the distribution of religions (and thereby their gods) as well as statistics of regional religious preference indicate very high correlation between location and religious preference.

2. ‘Evidence’ for existence of the Bible God is comparable to ‘evidence’ for the existence of competing ‘gods’ – unverifiable tales by religion promoters, testimonials, opinions, suppositions – NONE of which rise to the level of verifiable evidence. All are subjective personal experience and/or psychological episodes. Appearing in written form (religious promotional literature) is no indication of truth or accuracy.

3. Bible tales describing the ‘god’ and its claimed actions are contradictory. Example: ‘Do not kill’ vs. ‘Kill all neighboring societies (but keep virgin girls for yourselves)’. God descriptions also mimic human emotions and characteristics and are no indication of an all-knowing and all-powerful supernatural entity (but worshipers nevertheless claim its omnipotence and omniscience)

4. Moral teachings attributed to the Abrahamic God do not represent a ‘perfect, loving, highly intelligent being’. Example above plus, subjugation of women, condoling and/or supporting slavery, allowing kidnapping and rape, dictating draconian punishment for minor infractions – including capital punishment for adultery and for gathering firewood on the Sabbath.

4. Events attributed to the Bible God are now known to be naturally occurring Earth phenomena – storms, droughts, volcanoes, floods, diseases, mental illness, crop failures, etc. Any Earth science 101 textbook explains such occurrences.

5. Following rules that clergy claim to be ‘from God’ may unnecessarily limit life choices, including mate selection, medical decisions, careers, clothing, reproduction, socialization, grooming. Evidence: various Abrahamic sects / denominations / cults set forth rules of conduct and often appearance. Some limit medical procedures or practices.

6. Believing Bible tales requires abandonment of what is known of the real world; such as ‘miracles’ which contradict knowledge (such as: reanimation of long-dead bodies, virgin birth, Earth rotation stopping for a day, star stopping over a specific location, demons cast into swine which drown themselves, water magically transforming into wine, donkeys and serpents conversing in human language, etc. If such tales (told as true) do not strain one’s credulity, perhaps they should.

7. Learning to accept magical ‘explanations’ for real world events compromises search for truthful and accurate answers and/or actually opposes advancement of knowledge. Evidence: Opposition to Galileo with the heliocentric universe concept, and opposition to embryonic stem cell research.

8. Religion places spirituality above reasoning and places faith above evidence and critical thinking. It considers faith (belief without evidence) a virtue (and a necessity for ‘salvation’) and considers critical thinking an enemy of religion (which is true – consult Martin Luther in this regard). Believing what clergy is selling is far more important than real world knowledge (‘so you can get to heaven after you die’).

9. Once a person realizes that donkeys don’t talk, virgins do not give birth, and people do not live inside fish, they begin to understand that Bible stories are myth, legend, folklore (called ‘religious tradition’) – and it is not a long step to recognize that long-dead bodies do not come back to life. Without the storied ‘resurrection’ and making a wandering Jewish preacher into a supernatural Jesus, Christianity is baseless (but it was a watered-down Judaism that was more acceptable to Roman officials who made it official state religion).

[Divine Insight]

...Consider: A reasonably intelligent, informed, educated person who is truly neutral or undecided regarding belief in God asks you to give them:

Good reasons to believe that the Bible God exists
...

I could give reasons why I believe, and he could then decide are they good or not. The existence of this world itself is for me reason to believe, because I don’t think there is any intelligent reason to think all this could come by chance. And reason why I believe what the Bible tells is, that it is accurate about what it tells about this world and people.

I'll tell you precisely why I reject your link of thinking (I won't even call it "reasoning") because to be perfectly honest your answer does not seem the least bit reasonable.

Why?

Well you demand that a God must exist in order to claim that the universe didn't just come into being by chance.

But then how did you God come to be?

By your same "reasoning",... your very God must have come into existence by pure chance, OR it was purposefully created and designed by yet a higher being.

In other words, the reason you give for believing in a God isn't reasonable.

All you are doing is allowing your God to exist without explanation.

That's hardly a valid reason to believe in a God, IMHO.

If your God can be said to exist without having been created by an intelligent being, then there's no need to take that extra step of unnecessary speculation. You may as well just stop with the universe and accept that it can exist without having been created by an intelligent being.

So your line of thinking is not compelling in the least. In fact, it's not even reasonable at all. You would need a God that just magically came into being by "chance" without explanation.

So your Godless God is precisely as unreasonable as you claim a Godless universe is. By your very own argument.

[rikuoamero]

[Replying to post 17 by Zzyzx]

There is nothing special about the Bible God (Abrahamic God) except in the minds of worshipers. It is just one of thousands proposed by the world’s plethora of religions. Choice of religions and gods is overwhelmingly reflective of those that are popular in the society in which one is raised. ‘Accident of birth’. Regional popularity is NO indication of truth. Evidence: maps of the distribution of religions (and thereby their gods) as well as statistics of regional religious preference indicate very high correlation between location and religious preference.

Unless I'm very much mistaken, I've never heard of a situation where a god is worshipped/known about by one group of people, a god that is known to have been worshipped/known by another group of people a great distance away, and as far as we can tell there has never been contact between the groups.
Imagine if European explorers travelling to the Americas found Native Americans were already familiar with Jehovah, and the stories of King David, Jesus, etc.

‘Evidence’ for existence of the Bible God is comparable to ‘evidence’ for the existence of competing ‘gods’ – unverifiable tales by religion promoters, testimonials, opinions, suppositions – NONE of which rise to the level of verifiable evidence. All are subjective personal experience and/or psychological episodes. Appearing in written form (religious promotional literature) is no indication of truth or accuracy.

And among these stories are threats of a hell of some sort, reserved for (among others) non-believers...

Bible tales describing the ‘god’ and its claimed actions are contradictory. Example: ‘Do not kill’ vs. ‘Kill all neighboring societies (but keep virgin girls for yourselves)’. God descriptions also mimic human emotions and characteristics and are no indication of an all-knowing and all-powerful supernatural entity (but worshipers nevertheless claim its omnipotence and omniscience)

Something I've been musing over the past few weeks is that an "actual" real god would almost have to be a Lovecraftian Elder God, something unknowable to us humans, something beyond our ken, beyond our descriptions of good, evil, love, hate, etc. There is language regarding this from the Bible...but the religion still says their god is a personal god, who loves us, etc.
Well no! If I hear of a religion that teaches its adherents to practise a form of cannibalism one day a week, and that at either a specified or unspecified time, this god will come to the world and much destruction and death will occur...am I talking about a secretive cult of Cthulu or am I talking about the religion of Christianity?

4. Moral teachings attributed to the Abrahamic God do not represent a ‘perfect, loving, highly intelligent being’. Example above plus, subjugation of women, condoling and/or supporting slavery, allowing kidnapping and rape, dictating draconian punishment for minor infractions – including capital punishment for adultery and for gathering firewood on the Sabbath.

Basically, the morality can be summed up as "Do whatever we say our God has said". If someone comes along and says this isn't what God has commanded, or God has changed his mind or enacted new laws...kill that person.
I use this point as a mark against the so called intelligence of the Abrahamic god. A real intelligent god wouldn't have gotten into that trap, the trap where he supposedly commands (as per Deuteronomy 18) that false prophets be killed, but then comes along himself in the personage of Jesus and gets killed. He would have told the leaders that he is going to come on this specific date, do these very specific things, his name will be this name, and don't forget it!

4. Events attributed to the Bible God are now known to be naturally occurring Earth phenomena – storms, droughts, volcanoes, floods, diseases, mental illness, crop failures, etc. Any Earth science 101 textbook explains such occurrences.

Other than the Big Bang itself and what happened quote unquote before (if before as a concept can even apply), I can't think of a single phenomenon where a god can even be hypothesized as an explanation.

Following rules that clergy claim to be ‘from God’ may unnecessarily limit life choices, including mate selection, medical decisions, careers, clothing, reproduction, socialization, grooming. Evidence: various Abrahamic sects / denominations / cults set forth rules of conduct and often appearance. Some limit medical procedures or practices.

Questions regarding these rules are not encouraged. If one is a Jehovah's Witness, for example, one is not permitted to have a blood transfusion. My mother got one a few weeks ago, she's not in the best of health. If she had been a JW, she very likely would have died.
I'm wondering now, scratching my chin - if one is a JW, and studying medicine or biology, is one permitted to examine blood cells, to extract them and put them under a microscope? What determined my own food allergies was the result of a blood test, using a sample taken from me.

Believing Bible tales requires abandonment of what is known of the real world; such as ‘miracles’ which contradict knowledge (such as: reanimation of long-dead bodies, virgin birth, Earth rotation stopping for a day, star stopping over a specific location, demons cast into swine which drown themselves, water magically transforming into wine, donkeys and serpents conversing in human language, etc. If such tales (told as true) do not strain one’s credulity, perhaps they should.

My own commentary on that is - why stop there? If one is a believer in a god who can do anything, this means anything. What if one is a juror at a trial? Well a god could have intervened and done anything - maybe the defendant was teleported into the bank vault, even if there is CCTV footage of him entering a hotel a thousand miles away. There's basically no rule-book as to what is and is not possible. God doesn't have to explain his purposes to us, he could have done the teleportation, and if what is normally evil to us is done by God, then it's good by default. There's no way to say that this isn't what happened.
But no, this isn't what happens, even with Christians in the real world acting as jurors. So they forget about their omnipotent god, and stick to what is known to be true, what can be shown to be true.

Learning to accept magical ‘explanations’ for real world events compromises search for truthful and accurate answers and/or actually opposes advancement of knowledge. Evidence: Opposition to Galileo with the heliocentric universe concept, and opposition to embryonic stem cell research.

Especially since "God-did-it" doesn't actually mean anything. Did what? How? When? Using what materials? There's nothing in that phrase. If we say "Jack built the house", we might mean Jack used wood, concrete and cement, (and other materials), worked from sun-up to sun-down, followed a blueprint, and maybe had help from professionals.
There's nothing with this with God. So, let's suppose Jesus rose from the dead. How? When? What happened? Who did it? God did it. How? When? What was done exactly?

Religion places spirituality above reasoning and places faith above evidence and critical thinking. It considers faith (belief without evidence) a virtue (and a necessity for ‘salvation’) and considers critical thinking an enemy of religion (which is true – consult Martin Luther in this regard). Believing what clergy is selling is far more important than real world knowledge (‘so you can get to heaven after you die’).

If something is actually true, but is unknown to a specific person, then the person who already knows it should not be afraid of critical thinking. Let's say you told me your mother's name was Martha, Z. You would not be worried if I responded saying "I don't believe you, do you mind if I consult records to make sure?"
What gets me worried is when I'm being told X is true, but I'm not allowed to question, and that believing X is paramount for my survival. Not only was it important that Jesus die for my sins, but apparently the benefit from that won't kick in, unless I believe it happened.

Once a person realizes that donkeys don’t talk, virgins do not give birth, and people do not live inside fish, they begin to understand that Bible stories are myth, legend, folklore (called ‘religious tradition’) – and it is not a long step to recognize that long-dead bodies do not come back to life. Without the storied ‘resurrection’ and making a wandering Jewish preacher into a supernatural Jesus, Christianity is baseless (but it was a watered-down Judaism that was more acceptable to Roman officials who made it official state religion).

In my case, it was realizing that a claim made by a priest of the religion was obviously false. The bishop claims we now have the Holy Spirit, or it's among us or something to that effect...and that's when I realize he's talking nonsense. I don't see or sense a spirit. So what else could he and his fellow priests be wrong about? Maybe they're lying...

[1213]

...
So your god is that stupid? He can't think of a solution to an iron chariot tribe who oil their chariots?

My point was to show that your idea about the rain was not very intelligent. It shows you have not given much thought on this matter. However, I am not God, I am not all knowing. I don’t know what the reason was why the chariots were a “problem�. But I am sure that it is not necessary about the abilities, but about what is good solution in that situation. Even if person would be all-powerful, it doesn’t mean he always uses all power.