God doesnt exist

[begbert2]

@lekatt

I am justified in saying I met God, if, in fact, I did meet God. Now it may be easier for you to believe it, if I said I believe I met God, but that would not be correct.

As for people who have NDEs, we know they left their bodies because we have good, solid evidence showing they did.

I remember a news anchor that was interviewing a near death experiencer. The experiencer said, “I saw a light and was in the presence of God.” The anchor said, “so you believed you were in the presence of God.” The experiencer came back with, “no ma’am I didn’t believe I was in the presence of God, I was in the presence of God.” This rather unnerved the anchor and she went to commercial, on coming back from commercial the experiencer was gone. Why people are so frightened of God I can’t understand, unless it has to do with the teachings of heaven and hell. Or maybe it is just not cool to believe in God, or maybe . . .

The only difference between “I believe I met God” and “I know I met God” is an egotistical self-blinding refusal to accept even the possibility that you might be wrong, regardless of anything else. It’s the stated refusal to even entertain thoughts that might contest your worldview. That is what is unnerving; it looks very much like insanity, no matter how you look at it.

Also, persons who refuse to entertain opposing notions have historically had a tendency to force their ideas on others, since they KNOW they are right. This has often had unpleasant or even occasionally horrific results. So it’s not at all unreasonable to be leery of the starry-eyed and unpersuadable folks. From such fervor, disaster is bred.

Those people aren’t afraid of God. They’re afraid of you.

[Indistinguishable]

@Voyager

When Tweety said “I tought I taw a puddy tat” he didn’t contradict himself (or herself?) when he said “I did, I did see a puddy tat.”

Well, of course not. If anything, that would be confirmation.

Did God tell you something verifiable about the world that you did not know? Next time you see him, you can ask about P=NP.

Not that I don’t agree with you in principle, but you keep using P = NP as an example and I don’t think it’s a great one. Supposing God said “P doesn’t equal NP; however, if you want a proof from ZFC, I can’t provide one, as this fact is independent from ZFC”. How would you verify this? Sure, you could keep enumerating ZFC-proofs and seeing that you never get one of “P != NP” or of “P = NP”, and so, in a way, you get growing confirmation of the independence of “P = NP” from ZFC, the same way one gets inductive confirmation of any falsifiable statement in science. But how would you go further and verify that “P = NP” is not merely unprovable from ZFC but actually false?

[ITR_champion]

@I Love Me

OK, so my “argument” was a little longer than the OP’s. My point is the same old non-theist one: why is so much “credit” given to the existence of a god, and so little given to the existence of the IPU, FSM, Saturn Teapot, etc.?

Well, I believe that we’ve answered this question in countless threads already. Enormous numbers of people have had experiences with God, or with angels or other spiritual beings. The same cannot be said for the FSM and whatnot. Moreover, contrary to the claim that those who meet God are “on the crazy side”, they include millions of people who are entirely sane, grounded, and quite capable of all the mental tasks that we expect from a normal person. Moreover, they include doctors, teachers, policemen, and other groups of people not usually associated with the crazy side. They include some of the world’s greatest scientists (Newton), writers (Milton), and thinkers (Maimonides, Spinoza).

Hey, I’m willing to debate the God things till the cows come home, but the FSM argument is so weak that you’d think even the atheists would have given it a rest by now.

As for the continued selection of God and unicorns as the two things that definitely don’t exist, I continue to chuckle whenever I see this. Unicorns, you see, do exist. If not, then what is this?

[Indistinguishable]

@ITR champion

As for the continued selection of God and unicorns as the two things that definitely don’t exist, I continue to chuckle whenever I see this. Unicorns, you see, do exist. If not, then what is this?

That is a rhinoceros, not a unicorn. Despite the etymology, a unicorn is not just any creature with one horn; not in modern English. You can ask any native English speaker.

[I_Love_Me_Vol.I]

@ITR champion

Hey, I’m willing to debate the God things till the cows come home, but the FSM argument is so weak that you’d think even the atheists would have given it a rest by now.

You say the FSM argument is weak. Do you mean that there is no evidence to support the existence of a Flying Spaghetti Monster, or something else?

And, that thing about the unicorn made me chuckle too. A funny little illustrated joke from you, hooray. But as has already been pointed out-- a rhino is not the same thing as a unicorn. Ironically though, the FSM is a god and, logically speaking, every bit as real as Yahweh as I’m sure you would agree. (But are you believer or not?)

The Unicorn remains right up there with God and the FSM on the same hallowed pedestal–marvelous beings said by some to exist. But where are the photographs of them?

[Voyager]

@Indistinguishable

Well, of course not. If anything, that would be confirmation.
Not that I don’t agree with you in principle, but you keep using P = NP as an example and I don’t think it’s a great one. Supposing God said “P doesn’t equal NP; however, if you want a proof from ZFC, I can’t provide one, as this fact is independent from ZFC”. How would you verify this? Sure, you could keep enumerating ZFC-proofs and seeing that you never get one of “P != NP” or of “P = NP”, and so, in a way, you get growing confirmation of the independence of “P = NP” from ZFC, the same way one gets inductive confirmation of any falsifiable statement in science. But how would you go further and verify that “P = NP” is not merely unprovable from ZFC but actually false?

Interesting. I don’t recall ZFC at all when I studied complexity, admittedly a long time ago. I was thinking along the lines of a proof or a counterexample - and indication that it is unprovable would be interesting also. Perhaps God could come up with a better proof of its unprovability than just the statement that he enumerated all ZFC-proofs and found none. Which leads us to an extension of the old connundrum - are there so many ZFC-proofs that even God can’t enumerate them all.

Anyhow, thanks for the nitpick. I learned something new, and will have to look at this more closely in my copious free time.

[Voyager]

@ITR champion

Well, I believe that we’ve answered this question in countless threads already. Enormous numbers of people have had experiences with God, or with angels or other spiritual beings. The same cannot be said for the FSM and whatnot. Moreover, contrary to the claim that those who meet God are “on the crazy side”, they include millions of people who are entirely sane, grounded, and quite capable of all the mental tasks that we expect from a normal person. Moreover, they include doctors, teachers, policemen, and other groups of people not usually associated with the crazy side. They include some of the world’s greatest scientists (Newton), writers (Milton), and thinkers (Maimonides, Spinoza).

There have been plenty of people having experiences with ghosts, demons, succubi, incubi, and little green anal-probing men. People have seen Nessie, the yeti, and the sasquatch too. Do you give them the same credence?

I remember a poll about angels a while back, which showed a lot of people believed in them and thought they had met them. One lady said she knew angels existed because some guy helped her with a heavy bag at the airport, and then left. It had to be an angel. It made me think that I should hand out cards, telling people I help that if they consider my help evidence for angels, I’ll poke them in the snoot.

[ITR_champion]

@Indistinguishable

That is a rhinoceros, not a unicorn. Despite the etymology, a unicorn is not just any creature with one horn; not in modern English. You can ask any native English speaker.

I am a native English speaker. I agree that not every horned creature is a unicorn. But the rhino is a unicorn, i.e. a large quadruped with a horn springing from the the middle of the forehead. And contrary to certain assertions, this is no joke. It’s a demonstration of how something frequently dismissed as “mythical” can have a very clear basis in reality.

@I Love Me

You say the FSM argument is weak. Do you mean that there is no evidence to support the existence of a Flying Spaghetti Monster, or something else?

I mean exactly what I said, namely that the claim that the evidence for God is the same as that for the FSM, is false. And having already explained why it’s false in my previous post, I see no reason to repeat myself.

[Revenant_Threshold]

I thought the point of the FSM was as a response to Intelligent Design, rather than a general God analogy like the IPU.

[ITR_champion]

@Voyager

There have been plenty of people having experiences with ghosts, demons, succubi, incubi, and little green anal-probing men. People have seen Nessie, the yeti, and the sasquatch too. Do you give them the same credence?

“Plenty” is a vaguely-defined word. I’d be interested in seeing what evidence you offer to justify the claim that “plenty” of people have seen everything on that list.

(But for the record, my answers are: ghosts-yes, demons-yes, succubi-no, incubi-no, little green anal-probing men-no.)

[Indistinguishable]

@ITR champion

I am a native English speaker. I agree that not every horned creature is a unicorn. But the rhino is a unicorn, i.e. a large quadruped with a horn springing from the the middle of the forehead. And contrary to certain assertions, this is no joke. It’s a demonstration of how something frequently dismissed as “mythical” can have a very clear basis in reality.

You are of course a native English speaker, fair enough. And it was pure nitpickery on my part, as I noted; I don’t care that strongly about whether you call a rhino a unicorn or not. But I think you do have to admit that this is a little unusual; that most modern speakers would require of a unicorn that it be a kind of horse. Though, as you note, the myth of the unicorn is thought to have arisen, in part, from corrupted accounts of observations of the rhino.

[begbert2]

@ITR champion

“Plenty” is a vaguely-defined word. I’d be interested in seeing what evidence you offer to justify the claim that “plenty” of people have seen everything on that list.

There are certainly enough of them that arguing that religion is more credible due to having more believers is an example of the Argumentum Ad Populum fallacy.

[Voyager]

@ITR champion

“Plenty” is a vaguely-defined word. I’d be interested in seeing what evidence you offer to justify the claim that “plenty” of people have seen everything on that list.

(But for the record, my answers are: ghosts-yes, demons-yes, succubi-no, incubi-no, little green anal-probing men-no.)

I’ve got books full of such experiences, from my high school years. They change with time - the succubi of yesterday are the anal probers of today. However, someone who says they chat with god makes out a lot better in our society than ghost viewers - he may even get elected president. Thus you’d naturally expect more of them. But this is not a vote on odd experiences.

So, why would you believe in demons but not incubi, for instance? Is the physical explanation good enough for you in this case but not for demons or god? I always thought incubi were a specific class of demon, so I’m particularly interested in why demons but not them.

[Indistinguishable]

@Voyager

Interesting. I don’t recall ZFC at all when I studied complexity, admittedly a long time ago.

Ah. ZFC is a particular collection of axioms for set theory, which, due to the foundational role of set theory in modern mathematics, means it serves as a particular foundational theory for mathematics as a whole. One could, of course, pick a different set of starting axioms to work with, and various people do, but none are nearly as popular as ZFC. Among the modern day mathematical community, ZFC is pretty much taken as the gold standard for mathematical proof; i.e., a statement is considered proved, by the mainstream mathematical community, when it’s been given a proof which can be carried out from the axioms of ZFC.

However, like any other formal theory, if ZFC is consistent, then there are statements which it neither proves nor disproves. (This is the essence of Goedel’s Incompleteness Theorem, although, technically, Goedel’s original result required further assumptions which were only later shown to be unnecessary by Rosser). And, for all we know, P = NP could be one of those; indeed, a great many people believe, for various reasons, that it is. So it is possible that there are no proofs or disproofs of P = NP which would be accepted by the current mathematical community according to their current standards.

I was thinking along the lines of a proof or a counterexample - and indication that it is unprovable would be interesting also. Perhaps God could come up with a better proof of its unprovability than just the statement that he enumerated all ZFC-proofs and found none. Which leads us to an extension of the old connundrum - are there so many ZFC-proofs that even God can’t enumerate them all.

The tricky thing about P != NP is that even a counterexample would require some proof to demonstrate that it is a counterexample. That is, suppose P does equal NP, so that there is some polynomial-time computer program which solves the Traveling Salesman Problem. God could present us with the source for such a program and the polynomial describing how long it takes to run, but in itself, this would not be enough; we would still have to be convinced that the program always gave the correct answer. We would still need a kind of proof.

It is conceivable that the independence of P = NP from ZFC could be proven from ZFC (modulo the assumption of ZFC’s consistency) or from some other set of immediately plausible axioms, thus providing God with a path to bestow upon us clear evidence of this fact. But it’s also conceivable that there might not be any such path. There might be A) no proof from immediately plausible axioms of P = NP, and B) no proof from immediately plausible axioms of Fact A, and C) no proof from immediately plausible axioms of Fact B, etc. God might know the truth value of P = NP, and have no simple evidence to provide us with for it, and no way of accounting for this lack of simple evidence, other than his own assertion.

So that’s why I don’t think the truth value of P = NP is a great example of verifiable information God could give us. Among mathematical statements, something like the Goldbach Conjecture would be better: if it’s false, then God could provide a counterexample which we could easily verify, and if it’s true, then at least we could gain some inductive confirmation of this by brute-forcely checking up to larger and larger bounds. And something like “Which, if any, side can force a win in chess?” would be even better, in a way: it would take us a damn long time to check, but whatever answer God gives, we could eventually exhaustively confirm.

Of course, extramathematical statements would be even better. “Hey, I lost my glasses. Could you tell me where they are?”. And demonstrations better than that: “Hey, I lost my glasses. Could you make me a new pair?”. But God is probably too lazy.

Anyhow, thanks for the nitpick. I learned something new, and will have to look at this more closely in my copious free time.

No problem. Nothing makes me happier than talking to people about this stuff.

[Mangetout]

@Voyager

Since enjoyment is internal, there isn’t any difference there. But say you are in the desert, and see an oasis in the distance. Since the oasis is persistent, you can be darn sure you are seeing what looks like an oasis. Deserts being deserts though, you won’t know for sure if you are actually seeing an oasis or just an illusion until you go and check. If a helicopter swoops down and rescues you, you may never know.

So my reaction would be: I saw what looked like a panther, but I’m not sure if it really was a panther or a large black dog or something similar. And the circumstances do count. If you are looking at the panther enclosure at the zoo, and see a black streak, you can be pretty confident it’s a panther and not a count. If you are in your backyard it would be the reverse. This isn’t to say it couldn’t be a panther - just that I wouldn’t call the newspapers or animal control without some more evidence.

Well, sure, but in the case where you really completely believe you experienced something - it makes no sense to say “I believe I experienced…” - because if you really believe it, there’s no distinction (from your POV) between that and any other experience. For a person who fully believes they got a really good look at an escaped panther, it’s completely appropriate just to say “I saw a panther” - belief is implicit anyway, with anything.
In fact in such a case, “I believe I saw a panther” does not convey any more useful or pertinent information than “I saw a panther” - and may in fact work to the contrary - and inject an impression of greater doubt than is actually present.

Remembering, of course, that you the listener are under no obligation to believe the assertion at any level, or to acknowledge it as truthful or accurate- in fact you’re free to respond in pretty much any way you choose - to express doubt, to argue, to scorn, to ignore and walk away - whatever you like.

[lekatt]

@Voyager

In our culture, unfortunately, it is considered impolite to call bullshit on such claims. You can get tarred with the epithet atheist. You would be quite correct in saying you believed you saw god whether you did or did not. When Tweety said “I tought I taw a puddy tat” he didn’t contradict himself (or herself?) when he said “I did, I did see a puddy tat.”
But what distinguishes your experience from a purely internal one? Did God tell you something verifiable about the world that you did not know? Next time you see him, you can ask about P=NP. After all, the Lord of the Universe, who knows all and sees all, can say something a bit more verifiable than “You should love one another.” The scriptwriters for Oh God could come up with that one without divine guidance.

The answer is yes, ok, and there is nothing more important to say.

[lekatt]

@begbert2

The only difference between “I believe I met God” and “I know I met God” is an egotistical self-blinding refusal to accept even the possibility that you might be wrong, regardless of anything else. It’s the stated refusal to even entertain thoughts that might contest your worldview. That is what is unnerving; it looks very much like insanity, no matter how you look at it.

Also, persons who refuse to entertain opposing notions have historically had a tendency to force their ideas on others, since they KNOW they are right. This has often had unpleasant or even occasionally horrific results. So it’s not at all unreasonable to be leery of the starry-eyed and unpersuadable folks. From such fervor, disaster is bred.

Those people aren’t afraid of God. They’re afraid of you.

I said what I did because that is what happened, ego had nothing to do with it. I didn’t feel glorified by the experience, rather I felt very humbled by it. Now, are you qualified to determine who is insane and who isn’t?

As for forcing anything on you, don’t hold your breath. I don’t care what you believe.

Why would they be afraid of me, I have no special powers, or talents, nope, pretty normal I would say.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@ITR champion

I am a native English speaker. I agree that not every horned creature is a unicorn. But the rhino is a unicorn, i.e. a large quadruped with a horn springing from the the middle of the forehead. And contrary to certain assertions, this is no joke. It’s a demonstration of how something frequently dismissed as “mythical” can have a very clear basis in reality.

Do you believe in UFOs?

Flying objects that have not been identified are just as real as one-horned quadrupeds.

[Little_Plastic_Ninja]

Ehh.

I’ll give my same old tired argument. I have, I believe, felt the presence of God. I have felt it more than once. I felt it on a perfectly normal and dull spring day on my way to class, I felt it while driving along a freeway. Both times the feeling was extraordinarily intense, to the point that I wandered around during the first one with a big crazy grin on my face feeling absolute and complete love for the entire world and everyone in it and I had to pull over to the side of the road for the second one, clutching the steering wheel and trembling as though I’d just come inches from falling off a cliff.

The human mind is powerful. Perhaps I just imagined this. Perhaps I imagined and constructed the feeling of utter rightness and belonging when I walked into the church I now try to attend regularly. Perhaps the sensation I feel during those services – a feeling like taking a cool, pleasant shower on a hot day – is only in my mind. Certainly other people feel that euphoria sitting under a tree or running a marathon or flying through the sky. They are free to do as they will, and so am I. Very likely my choice to (re)convert to Christianity has something to do with having been brought up Christian; then again, I was brought up pagan from the age of eleven, so that might not work. I was agnostic and apathetic for a long time. Now I’m not.

The thing is, I’m unfussed. You can hook electrodes to my head and detect for me a difference between my normal state and the state I am in when I commune with my God. I will not say they don’t exist, nor will I say they are irrelevant. You can regale me with the power of the human brain to control nigh everything about the body. I will agree. You will say we can fool ourselves into anything. I will, again, agree.

But I believe in God. I understand you don’t, and that’s okay. I understand you think I’m a fool, and that makes me a bit sad – not because you don’t believe in God, but because you have written me off as a credulous fool because I believe something you think is ludicrous, and I think we may both have more to us than our beliefs about God. I know there’s more to me. You can tell me it’s irrational to believe in God, that His existence is unproven and unprovable, and I will smile and nod and shrug. I have no need to prove His existence to you. Either He will show himself to you or He won’t. Either you will see it or you won’t. Either you will care or you won’t. I have no control over that, nor do I wish it.

I can sympathize with being against organized religion. I don’t think religions should be given a free pass. But I think this little quote is true: “by their deeds you will know them”. I know men and women who spend their whole lives feeding the hungry, clothing the naked (or at least the badly dressed), housing the homeless. I know men and women who pay lip service to love and kindness and worship, instead of God, money – or worse, they worship the Church.

I just love God. I would love God if there was no church. I would love God if there was nothing but me in a big green field. I would love God if there was nothing but me, lying alone in agony and grief. I understand that bothers you. Be so kind as to remove yourself from my head, in that case. You wouldn’t be comfortable there anyway.

[Little_Plastic_Ninja]

@Thudlow Boink

Do you believe in UFOs?

Flying objects that have not been identified are just as real as one-horned quadrupeds.

Entirely. That thing shooting overhead, I don’t know what it is. Some kind of flying craft. Similarly, an injured or mutated goat may have one horn.