I Believe God Exists

[stromboli]

OH NO NO there is a very definite difference between a dream occurrence and a real one. You "experience" a dream in a supposed separate reality, but when you awake, the dream experience ends. But EVERYTHING that you experienced by kicking the rock is still there. It will be there each time, no matter what your dream is. You are experiencing OBJECTIVE, OBSERVABLE, TESTABLE AND REPEATABLE REALITY. NOT A PRIORI REALITY. Bullshit on your "dream" dodge.

Read what you typed. Leave the forum and come back, type again. that is repeatable experience. Time had elapsed in the meantime. In a dream, time is not measurable. In every objective way imaginable or conceived, you can measure, test, feel, experience, catalog and observe. You cannot say, other than some philosophical BS, that you have not experienced a real existence.

How else can we measure reality? You say it isn't real, but in fact you have not given anything that is proof. Proof that is objective, testable, repeatable, observable by others and so on. THIS IS HOW WE TEST REALITY-EXPERIENTIALLY. THE FACT THAT A MASS OF PEOPLE OVER CENTURIES CAN ACQUIRE, PROCESS AND EXPERIENCE THE SAME DATA OVER TIME IS THE ONLY EVIDENCE WE HAVE.

SHOW US SOME OTHER WAY TO TEST REALITY. GO AHEAD, SHOW US HOW TO TEST AND DETERMINE WHATEVER IT IS YOU BELIEVE. PROOF THAT IS OBJECTIVE AND TESTABLE.

[Contemporary Protestant]

Dude that's mind boggling, whether reality is real or not

That reminds me of a time when a friend asked me "are you crazy?(he was serious)" I said "no" and he said "prove it"

It then occurred to me that one cannot prove their sanity, to me, that is an amazing concept

[Brian37]

Sooo....

I believe God exists. And I'm willing to debate with people who don't agree with me. And so here I am. Hi.

Which one? Lots of dead myths you don't buy into.

[Casparov]

I'm assuming (probably incorrectly) that this is a sincere challenge and you're simply spectacularly ignorant in a couple different ways.  So I'm going to waste a minute or two explaining to you how atheism is not actually a positive claim.

Firstly, I would like to say that I quite enjoy Matt Dilahunty and think he is a very logical person. He is someone I would love to have a conversation with.

But ShockofGod is the exact opposite of a logical person (either that or he's a troll I can't tell). I am offended that you would lump me in with ShockofGod...

SOG repeats the phrase "What proof and evidence do you have that Atheism is accurate and correct?" over and over again and then uses the fact that Atheist don't answer the unanswerable question as justification to declare some kind of victory over Atheists. He does this, but it should be obvious to every intelligent human being that he is simply asking an illogical question that cannot be answered, such as "Is the number four a bachelor?", and then celebrating a false victory when nobody can answer it.

Atheism is not a positive position, and does not require proof or evidence. I understand this and made a considerable effort to demonstrate that I understood this several times, yet here I am, having to explain this again...

I am not saying "Prove that God doesn't exist." because I understand that would be silly. What I am saying is "Prove that Materialism is true." Because I understand that what would make God an impossibility in the mind of an Atheist would be if Materialism were true. You are an Atheist because you have a world view that is not compatible with the existence of God, I am challenging your world view, which is Materialism, the positive assertion about reality that would negate the possibility of any kind of God.

I am not saying, and have never said that Atheism is a positive claim. I am saying that Materialism justifies Atheism, and Materialism is a positive claim, which requires proof just like any other positive claim.

Both theists and atheists accept the existence of the natural world.  That's not contested for obvious reasons.  Theists go one step further and assert the existence of a God, which naturally, atheists don't accept.  Take a wild guess who the burden of proof is on.  If you said the atheist, then you're wrong.

And that is the precise reason why Theists are constantly destroyed in debates with Atheists. Both Atheists and Theists accept Materialism, and then Theists try to assert the existence of God, which is incompatible with Materialism, and thus they have already lost the debate.

You are correct in stating that if both the Atheist and the Theist accept the assertion of Materialism, and then the Theist wishes to assert further the existence of God, then the Burden rests upon the Theist for making that further assertion, and he must provide proof.

I, on the other hand, am not accepting the assertion that we live in a material objective reality. I am remaining skeptical about your assertion of Materialism, and demanding proof of that at the onset. Which you have yet to attempt in any way.

So, either God and consciousness exist or both God and consciousness don't exist??  (Someone call the police, I think there's a hostage situation)

Btw, this is a false dilemma since obviously, there's no reason to suppose that consciousness couldn't exist without a God.

If Materialism is true, in your own words that means that "all things are composed of matter - that there is nothing that exists besides physical things". Consciousness is non-physical, therefore consciousness cannot exist if materialism is true.

The closest you've come to attempting to provide anything resembling evidence or proof for your positive claim about reality was:

Both theists and atheists accept the existence of the natural world.  That's not contested for obvious reasons.

If you cannot provide any proof for your world view, what you can at least do is admit that it is an unsupported assumption.

[Casparov]

OH NO NO there is a very definite difference between a dream occurrence and a real one. You "experience" a dream in a supposed separate reality, but when you awake, the dream experience ends. But EVERYTHING that you experienced by kicking the rock is still there. It will be there each time, no matter what your dream is. You are experiencing OBJECTIVE, OBSERVABLE, TESTABLE AND REPEATABLE REALITY. NOT A PRIORI REALITY. Bullshit on your "dream" dodge.

Read what you typed. Leave the forum and come back, type again. that is repeatable experience. Time had elapsed in the meantime. In a dream, time is not measurable. In every objective way imaginable or conceived, you can measure, test, feel, experience, catalog and observe. You cannot say, other than some philosophical BS, that you have not experienced a real existence.

I should make clear here that I am not contesting the fact that any experience is real. All experience is real. What I am contesting is the claim that what we are experiencing is an objective material reality.

If I hallucinate an experiencing of kicking a rock and feeling pain, what a felt and experienced is always going to be real to me, the experiencer. If I am a brain in a vat and a computer simulated the experience of me kicking a rock and feeling pain, or if I dreamt that I kicked a rock and felt pain, or if I am existing in an objective material universe and experienced kicking a rock and feeling pain, in every single one of those scenarios the experience was real.

But experience itself is immaterial. What I am asking for is proof that what you assert about reality is correct, that we live in an objective material reality. This is a positive assertion that requires evidence, justification, proof, just like any other claim. I do not know that Nick Bostrom's Simulation argument is less probable than your argument, unless you attempt to make one!

A simulated universe would satisfy every single requirement you come up with for a material universe. Repeatable experience. Time lapse. Consistency. Reproducibility. You have given me absolutely no reason to believe that a Material Objective Universe is more plausible than a simulated one. You have provided zero proof, and zero evidence. This is because there is none, unless I am wrong, which I might be.

There are two options available to every Materialist reading this, either provide some kind of proof to justify the positive claim you are making about reality, or admit that Materialism is an unjustified assumption.

[Casparov]

Which one? Lots of dead myths you don't buy into.

Hi Brian,

You're a little late to the party obviously. I addressed this early in the thread.

[Poison Tree]

You are an Atheist because you have a world view that is not compatible with the existence of God, I am challenging your world view, which is Materialism, the positive assertion about reality that would negate the possibility of any kind of God.

Oh, you've come to tell us why we are atheists? I think you'll find that a great number of us are atheist because evidence for god(s) is lacking--evidence you claimed you could provide. "You can't prove materialism, therefor god" is not evidence.

[Casparov]

  So, I'm not impressed.  I'm not even annoyed by you.  Your arguments are rubbish that we've all heard before and will quickly be quickly forgotten.

I do not doubt your capacity for cognitive dissonance and selective memory.

[Moralnihilist]

Casper,

You seem to be working under the mistaken assumption that all Atheists believe in materialism. I am an Atheist, I have no concern over what philosophy "thinks" may or may not be the root cause of our collected experience called existence. I am an atheist because of a lack of evidence of any gods existence. The fatal flaw in your argument is that you are starting with an assumption. Lets start with some facts:
1. Evidence continues to come forward shedding light into what was once dark and unknown.
2. God used to be the explanation of these unknown dark areas.
3. As knowledge increases the area that can be attributed to god(on faith) shrinks.
4. Unless one of these remaining areas of darkness contains evidence of a god eventually the light of knowledge will eliminate god.

Now then there will be, Im sure, be people who continue to believe in god. This will be because they still have a fear of death and want something to make them feel better about themselves at night. Or it will be because that they will not understand the knowledge that is being presented to them and will denounce it much like simpletons still try to deny evolution. But as the knowledge continues to become more common place and easier to be understood those that still believe will be pushed farther and farther away from mainstream society towards the lunatic fringe.

The fact that you claim to believe in a god, and yet are unable to accurately describe what exactly it is that you believe, and yet have the unmitigated gaul to demand that we defend a position that you have assigned to us confuses me. Firstly what makes you think that you hold enough importance to warrant a defense of what some believe? Secondly, if you can't be bothered to defend your beliefs what makes you think that we would be interested in defending ours? Thirdly, what makes you think that what you are putting forward hasn't been heard countless times before?

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Casper, have you been skipping your meds again?

[stromboli]

We perceive the universe experientially. We do it though every sense, every expanded sense, every technology that stretches our senses. Sorry, but a hallucination might seem real but it is still not provable in the same sense as what we perceive as reality.  We have a commonality of understanding across centuries of experience, technology, and so forth.

If a Paleontologist finds a skull of a formerly unknown animal, this is not a theoretical or fictional event, but a measurable event in objective terms. I has not been predicted, theorized or fantasized. It does not meet any criteria but that of being objectively real in space/time.

So it everything in our universe- all the laws of mathematics and science, all the elements, the physical state of matter, the hardness of concrete and so on, all together are a vast body of objective proof that the universe exists in a real way.

Objective testable proof that exists in space/time and meets every criteria of existence that we can measure. If you say well, experience is real but you haven't proven existence, by what criteria other than what I have given would you prove it? Gravity isn't touchable, tasteable, smelly or anything else but we know it is there because we have proven it through experimentation and observation. If you are saying that all the sensory methods available to us aren't proof of reality, then what is?

I haven't proven it? By what measure? Have you got a different sensory method that provides proof to back your statement?

So please sir, provide objective, testable evidence that a god exists. Or come up with some other criteria of testing that says
that the universe doesn't exist. Trust me, you close your eyes and walk through the forest, you will hit a tree.

[Casparov]

Casper,

You seem to be working under the mistaken assumption that all Atheists believe in materialism.

Hello Moral Nihilist,

I am not working under the assumption that "all Atheists believe in materialism", which I will demonstrate by quoting myself from my very first post concerning Materialism and Atheism:

I concede the point at the front that "Atheism does not equal Materialism" however it is my contention that in the great majority of cases, it is materialism which leads to the conclusion of Atheism. The two seem to go hand in hand. A Nihilist who believes absolutely nothing about anything, and is also an Atheist, obviously is not a Materialist, but also is obviously in no position to debate against. One cannot debate against someone who has absolutely no position whatsoever. As I have seen Atheists eager to debate evolution and Big Bang Theory, this leads me to believe that Atheists do have positive positions that they are willing and able to defend, and there must exist at least a few Atheists who are also Materialists. And it is these Atheists I wish to debate.

You have accused me falsely kind sir.

The fatal flaw in your argument is that you are starting with an assumption.

This fatal flaw you accuse me of I do not suffer from. Materialism is an assumption that most people start with, but I do not, unlike the great majority of the fine Atheists in this world, suffer from that flaw.

I am an Atheist, I have no concern over what philosophy "thinks" may or may not be the root cause of our collected experience called existence. I am an atheist because of a lack of evidence of any gods existence.

I propose that to have a position about the existence of God (meaning to not be an agnostic), is to have a concern and a philosophy about what may or may not be the root cause of our collected experience called existence. Correct me if I am wrong, but you truly had no concern, you'd be an Agnostic Nihilist instead of an Atheist Nihilist.

Lets start with some facts:
1. Evidence continues to come forward shedding light into what was once dark and unknown.
2. God used to be the explanation of these unknown dark areas.
3. As knowledge increases the area that can be attributed to god(on faith) shrinks.
4. Unless one of these remaining areas of darkness contains evidence of a god eventually the light of knowledge will eliminate god.

Yes but let's not forget these facts:
1) Scientific knowledge has not been a steady build, progress has instead been made through paradigm shifts.
2) It used to be scientific suicide to believe the earth was not flat, and then that the earth was not at the center of the universe, and then that atoms actually existed, and then that Newtonian Physics was false, and now that Materialism is false.
3) As knowledge increases we come to understand that what we previously held as truth was actually just an approximation.
4) If God actually exists eventually the light of knowledge will illuminate what God is. (though it most likely will turn out to be very different than what we had previously conceived)

Now then there will be, Im sure, be people who continue to believe in god. This will be because they still have a fear of death and want something to make them feel better about themselves at night. Or it will be because that they will not understand the knowledge that is being presented to them and will denounce it much like simpletons still try to deny evolution. But as the knowledge continues to become more common place and easier to be understood those that still believe will be pushed farther and farther away from mainstream society towards the lunatic fringe.

I believe you are right but only if you are referring to specific religious dogmatisms and limited conceptions of God. Surely we will grow out of these superstitious and fearful clingings to religion. But I do not believe spirituality itself is going anywhere. The only conceivable scenerio in which all spirituality and belief in afterlife and God go entirely extinct is the scenerio in which Materialism triumphs as the only possible solution, in which case all of those things would be impossible. That is precisely why I am so interested in discovering at least some tiny sliver of proof or at least one piece of evidence for this positive assertion about reality, as it's truth would indeed extinguish my own belief.

I, like anyone else, do not wish to be wandering around with a world view that is ultimately false.

The fact that you claim to believe in a god, and yet are unable to accurately describe what exactly it is that you believe, and yet have the unmitigated gaul to demand that we defend a position that you have assigned to us confuses me. Firstly what makes you think that you hold enough importance to warrant a defense of what some believe? Secondly, if you can't be bothered to defend your beliefs what makes you think that we would be interested in defending ours? Thirdly, what makes you think that what you are putting forward hasn't been heard countless times before?

god noun \gad also god\
                   :     The supreme or ultimate reality  :  The ground of all being  :  Infinite Mind.

Perhaps you skimmed over the beginning of this thread but I spent considerable time accurately describing what exactly it is I believe, and I, like anyone confronted with a positive claim that they disagree with, simply demand positive assertions meet the demands of the burden of proof. Have I no right to remain skeptical of a positive assertion that has no apparent proof or evidence to back it up? This sounds like Special Pleading to me. All positive assertions require evidence and are subject to the burden of proof. Not "all positive assertions except mine."

I am very willing to provide evidence for my own beliefs about the nature of reality, but I am intentionally holding out until after it becomes painfully clear that Materialists are not willing to provide even a sliver of evidence for theirs.

[Contemporary Protestant]

Casaprov, do u k what a scroyle is?

[Casparov]

We perceive the universe experientially. We do it though every sense, every expanded sense, every technology that stretches our senses. Sorry, but a hallucination might seem real but it is still not provable in the same sense as what we perceive as reality.  We have a commonality of understanding across centuries of experience, technology, and so forth.

If a Paleontologist finds a skull of a formerly unknown animal, this is not a theoretical or fictional event, but a measurable event in objective terms. I has not been predicted, theorized or fantasized. It does not meet any criteria but that of being objectively real in space/time.

So it everything in our universe- all the laws of mathematics and science, all the elements, the physical state of matter, the hardness of concrete and so on, all together are a vast body of objective proof that the universe exists in a real way.

Objective testable proof that exists in space/time and meets every criteria of existence that we can measure. If you say well, experience is real but you haven't proven existence, by what criteria other than what I have given would you prove it? Gravity isn't touchable, tasteable, smelly or anything else but we know it is there because we have proven it through experimentation and observation. If you are saying that all the sensory methods available to us aren't proof of reality, then what is?

I haven't proven it? By what measure? Have you got a different sensory method that provides proof to back your statement?

So please sir, provide objective, testable evidence that a god exists. Or come up with some other criteria of testing that says
that the universe doesn't exist. Trust me, you close your eyes and walk through the forest, you will hit a tree.

stromboli, how do you even know that your hands actually exist? By looking at them? By feeling them?

If you were just a brain, nothing else, no body, no eyes, no hands, no legs, nothing but a brain. And someone had connected a bunch of wires to your brain that were hooked up to a computer. And the computer was programmed to send electrical signals down the neural passageways and synapses in your brain that mimicked the exact same electrical signals that are being passed down your neural passageways right this second from your sensory organs, what would you see?

In reality, you would be a bodiless brain, with no hands, hooked up to a computer with wires. But what you would be experiencing because of the electrical signals the computer was sending to your brain, was a rich vibrant reality. One in which you could look down and see your hands. And grab an apple and and feel it in your hands, and bite it and taste its sweetness. You would BELIEVE you were in a material objective reality, but you would be entirely WRONG about that.

If the computer was programmed to produce a character in your virtual reality to walk up to you and ask, "Prove that we are existing in a material objective reality!" What would your argument be? Would it be:

We perceive the universe experientially. We do it though every sense, every expanded sense, every technology that stretches our senses. Sorry, but a hallucination might seem real but it is still not provable in the same sense as what we perceive as reality.  We have a commonality of understanding across centuries of experience, technology, and so forth.

If a Paleontologist finds a skull of a formerly unknown animal, this is not a theoretical or fictional event, but a measurable event in objective terms. I has not been predicted, theorized or fantasized. It does not meet any criteria but that of being objectively real in space/time.

So it everything in our universe- all the laws of mathematics and science, all the elements, the physical state of matter, the hardness of concrete and so on, all together are a vast body of objective proof that the universe exists in a real way.

Can you see that none of what you said is proof or evidence that you exist in a material objective universe? Everything you described could be simulated by a computer. Everything. And because of this, Materialism is no more probable than the Simulated Universe hypothesis or any other viable theory.

If a character in Skyrim closes his eyes and walks through a forest, trust me, he will hit a tree. But this is not proof that he exists in an objective material reality.

[Mr.Obvious]

Here's the problem. Any proof we can offer, you will see as invalid because there is an off chance that reality isn't real. Any evidence we show you would be therefor useless to you. You seem to wish us to prove the existance of the actual world by finding a spot 'outside' of it and from there prove it exists because only that way you can get a 'actual proof' of that reality. But to go outside reality to prove reality is just something that isn't possible if all there is, is actual, tangeable and materialist reality.
This is not a new thought in philosophy. What is actualy reality? Am I truly typing on a laptop?
OR
Am I dreaming that I'm typing on a laptop? Am I hallucinating this? Am I sure of anything but my own existance (i think therefore I am)? Am I just a computerprogram? ...
But here's the thing. To see the universe as a measurable and material place is the only position backed up by any kind of evidence. And it's a position of not claiming anything you can't proof to be true within that framework.
The immaterialist universe assumption is not equally valid because there is not even proof for it within it's own framework. And it's not the only other option out there. You've named a few, for all I know I'm a mind being tested on by aliens to see if I accept reality. For all I care I'm scientist who'se created a matrix and is now doing a test-run and has created something we can accept as a lifetime of reality but I'll wake up as the real me only a second older. Perhaps we are all reborn with our souls in another plain of existance. Perhaps the there is only a mind-hive of God.
There is no telling what you may think viable if you abbandon reason and the limited proof we have. And none of the above are philosophically speaking impossible. They just do not add to a workeable and useable understanding of reality nor are they in any way likely. Definitely not more than the one stance we have this 'limited'  proof for.