Do you believe in God?

[merrillmck]

This isn't evidence, this is a story. Provide the evidence of a god please.
Can you tell me & explain what is on my table right now? No? So, because you have no explanation, this proves there is a god? Ridiculous! Come on, I know you can do better than that!

I'd rather see these different religions here argue it out amongst themselves - no need for science to step in any more & defend itself. We've done plenty enough of that already.

If your religion is based on anything other than made up stories, post your proof here. Then try to explain to the other religion why your evidence is right, & theirs is wrong. You can't all be right now, can you?! And don't try to avoid this by arguing that ultimately you all believe in the same god, because you don't. Many religions have multiple, one, or no gods. And what "facts" you base your god's existence on, & what you believe you must do as part of your religion, differ wildly.

That's what this thread is for, to discuss & explain the basis of your views. It's OK to state your difference of opinion.

So come on, get started, or are you afraid that the foundation of your belief system is too weak to stand up to any scrutiny?


Still waiting.......

Since God isn't universally defined, it is nearly impossible to find evidence to support something that isn't universally defined. One definition is an all-powerful being; in that case, witnessing God do things that were otherwise impossible would seem to be evidence. [This leads the doubter to doubt whether it was God he witnessed or just a freak unexplainable event.]

Why don't you give the religious readers an example of something that could feasibly be evidence of God? Does that reader need to ask God to talk directly to you? What constitutes [scientific] evidence of God? Not that easy to answer.

Edit:

of course they aren't going to travel to the author of the paper's lab - they'll use the details provided in his paper to duplicate the experiment, after all, objective evidence doesn't rely on the observer for its truth.
and yes, some junk does make it through and get published - and later it gets discovered to be wrong and corrected - that's one of the beauties of science, it's an elaborate, self-correcting system.

Great in theory. Have you ever tried to reproduce a well-known paper? There is about a 0% chance that you'll reproduce it exactly. A paper usually talks about the outline, the idea, the theory behind the idea, the history of work leading up to the idea ... but rarely are the tedious details given in a manner that can be reproduced. Sometimes, this is because a business or individual wants to protect or slow the implementation of their idea so they can have a headstart (or monopoly) on the idea. Sometimes, it could be b/c someone is bullshirting the paper and results. In some cases, authors provide the tedious details at their website, in their book, or publish open source code. But that's typically not required to get the paper published.

[truthguild]

Since God isn't universally defined, it is nearly impossible to find evidence to support something that isn't universally defined. One definition is an all-powerful being; in that case, witnessing God do things that were otherwise impossible would seem to be evidence.

Why don't you give the religious readers an example of something that could feasibly be evidence of God? Does that reader need to ask God to talk directly to you? What constitutes [scientific] evidence of God? Not that easy to answer.

answer: not applicable. it is not the resposibility of the sceptic to decide what evidence would be accepted and then for the claiment to go out and look for that evidence - it is the responsibility of the claimant to make the claim, defining whatever in it needs to be defined, then present what evidence - if any - they have for their claim.

Edit:


Great in theory. Have you ever tried to reproduce a well-known paper?

me personally - no. people i know, yes.

There is about a 0% chance that you'll reproduce it exactly.

thus, before a scientific paper is submitted for peer-review, the person submitting it repeates the experiment multiple times and figures out the margin of error.

A paper usually talks about the outline, the idea, the theory behind the idea, the history of work leading up to the idea ... but rarely are the tedious details given in a manner that can be reproduced.

and a paper that vague wouldn't be published in any reputable peer-reviewed scientific journal - they have to be submitted with all the details the reviewers will need to duplicate it.

Sometimes, this is because a business or individual wants to protect or slow the implementation of their idea so they can have a headstart (or monopoly) on the idea.

which is relevent in business, but not within the scientific community.

Sometimes, it could be b/c someone is bullshirting the paper and results.

and they are quickly caught - and scientific peer-review is brutal on cheating; it's a 1-strike you're out system.

In some cases, authors provide the tedious details at their website, in their book,

and thus, they can just as easily include them in their submitted papers.

or publish open source code.

that's programming, not scientific journals.

But that's typically not required to get the paper published.

in a scientific journal, it is.

[zen-r]

Edit : I'm slower to respond than truthguild! ;)

......Why don't you give the religious readers an example of something that could feasibly be evidence of God? Does that reader need to ask God to talk directly to you? What constitutes [scientific] evidence of God? Not that easy to answer.....

I don't need to provide any example. It is for those of religion to provide the evidence on which they know there is a god. Or even on which they think there might be a god, if they are one of those trying to hedge their bets either way!

Of course, there is nothing to provide, as demonstrated by the complete absence of anything throughout this whole thread. It consists mainly of people like truthguild being continuously hounded to provide ever more evidence on the side of science. Now it's time to turn the tables.

As we all know, the existence of a god isn't actually based on anything more than the wish for there to be a god.

......Great in theory. Have you ever tried to reproduce a well-known paper? There is about a 0% chance that you'll reproduce it exactly. A paper usually talks about the outline, the idea, the theory behind the idea, the history of work leading up to the idea ... but rarely are the tedious details given in a manner that can be reproduced. Sometimes, this is because a business or individual wants to protect or slow the implementation of their idea so they can have a headstart (or monopoly) on the idea. Sometimes, it could be b/c someone is bullshirting the paper and results. In some cases, authors provide the tedious details at their website, in their book, or publish open source code. But that's typically not required to get the paper published.

Nit-picking at science's attempts to acquire knowledge & provide verifiable answers?

Still a strange silence in the direction of getting religion to provide any verifiable evidence for anything at all. Why is this? A slight bias perhaps?!!!


Still waiting..........

[merrillmck]

answer: not applicable. it is not the resposibility of the sceptic to decide what evidence would be accepted and then for the claiment to go out and look for that evidence - it is the responsibility of the claimant to make the claim, defining whatever in it needs to be defined, then present what evidence - if any - they have for their claim.

Huh? Is this a court of law or are we having a conversation? I just presented a question. What could feasibly or hypothetically constitute scientific evidence of God?

As for the peer-review process. I think I've said all I'm going to say. I have experience in the field so it isn't like I'm talking out of my butt.

And finally, source code is pretty relevant in science these days. Whether computer science directly (operating system theory, computer graphics and vision theory) or the implementation of new finite-element analysis algorithms (mechanical engineering) or the uncovering of DNA code (requires pretty sophisticated software and algorithms). These programs sometimes are many thousands of lines in length and incredibly complex. So when the results of those programs support the idea, you publish the idea, describe it, show the results, ... and ... keep the source code to yourself. That's the norm in the top conferences and journals.

Edit:

Still a strange silence in the direction of getting religion to provide any verifiable evidence for anything at all. Why is this? A slight bias perhaps?!!!

Still waiting..........

What if I made the claim that

It is impossible to scientifically prove God exists.

Could you prove or disprove this statement? If it is true, then all your requests for evidence are pointless as no evidence exists that could prove God exists.

Now if it is false, how would the Christian, Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist ever go about showing scientific evidence that could stand scientific review.

Some goofy ideas:

- Get God on TV where people could call in and ask him to break known scientific laws and he'd do it for them while the world watched. His ability would prove he isn't human and either he's God or some very powerful alien. Of course this could be doctored TV. We have enough hour-long magician shows.

- Get God to speak to us directly.

- How about ask God to get the Earth to rotate in the opposite direction? Some miracle that would be obvious to all Earthlings.

- How about God to make the moon disappear.

Note that none of these are reproducable scientific results that can be performed by a human!

---------------

I think this is a decent metaphor: It is well-known in computer science that it is impossible to prove whether or not all programs run infinitely or finish. This is called the halting problem (wiki or Google it). It has been proven scientifically.

Similarly, it might be possible to prove

It is impossible to scientifically prove God exists.

If this was the case, no one could provide evidence and God would remain an issue of faith and not of science.

[zen-r]

Pure waffle.

I don't need to prove it (a god) doesn't exist, because I haven't said it can't exist.

I'm asking for the evidence which shows it does exist.

If you were to believe in everything which hasn't yet been proven to not exist, why don't you believe in the Great Peanut Fairy, the Purple Wingnut Overlord, the Ten All-Powerful Balls of Candlewax ....Ad infinitum?

I only believe what I feel is supported by sufficient evidence to reassure me that it is probably true. But it needs something.

You've got nothing.

Still waiting.........Yawn. There really is nothing to your beliefs, is there? Still you all skirt around the issues, & never come down to actually providing any evidence. Not even a discussion on the foundation of what your beliefs are supported by. Only "Ah, Buts" & "I have my reasons". Quite pathetic really.

Oh well, I gave you all plenty of chances to at least try to provide one shred of a reason to back up your claims. Over & over again I asked.

Of course, I knew all along no-one would answer, because........Pah! I'm wasting my breath on you.


Not waiting......I'm outa here.

[merrillmck]

Pure waffle.

I don't need to prove it (a god) doesn't exist, because I haven't said it can't exist.

I'm asking for the evidence which shows it does exist.

If you were to believe in everything which hasn't yet been proven to not exist, why don't you believe in the Great Peanut Fairy, the Purple Wingnut Overlord, the Ten All-Powerful Balls of Candlewax ....Ad infinitum?

I only believe what I feel is supported by sufficient evidence to reassure me that it is probably true. But it needs something.

You've got nothing.

Still waiting.........Yawn. There really is nothing to your beliefs, is there? Still you all skirt around the issues, & never come down to actually providing any evidence. Not even a discussion on the foundation of what your beliefs are supported by. Only "Ah, Buts" & "I have my reasons". Quite pathetic really.

Oh well, I gave you all plenty of chances to at least try to provide one shred of a reason to back up your claims. Over & over again I asked.

Of course, I knew all along no-one would answer, because........Pah! I'm wasting my breath on you.


Not waiting......I'm outa here.

Don't assume it is my goal to prove God exists. Don't assume I believe in God.

My goal is to show that if you're waiting [on these board or in your life] for human or scientific method proof that God exists, you might be waiting for something that is completely impossible and non-existent. And that might be the only thing that is logically provable in this whole debate.

[compass]

Existence of God "proof" issue

What I would consider "proof" is to take a well known and accepted law of nature, scientifically validated, and have ono or more "special" persons do something that violates that law because of divine intervention/will/prayer/"the chosen one" effect, whatever.

Have the same (or another) person (or persons) repeat this amazing "divine" miracle, in the presence of sceptical witnesses are allowed to observe (but not intervene or obstruct) and check for fraud.

Let this be repeated a few times.

Then I would believe.

This is not an extraordinary onerous request. It is in fact part of the scientific method.
EVERY claim and prediction of science HAS to be verified before it is accepted as fact.

Example: The Special Theory of Relativity was accepted as a thoroughly solid theory since the 1920s. But it was verified in the 90s by measuring very accuratley the revolution period of Mercury.
Why? Well, Einstein's theory predicted that Mercury does NOT revolve around the Sun according to Kepler's laws, and that if we could measure things it would be found (miraculously ;)) that Mercury disobeys natural laws, by a small margin.
So, when we got to the stage that we could measure things better, this was indeed verified.
And then other astronomers tried it. And it was verified again. And again.
Now, another thing predicted, was that gravity "bends" light (not really, but this the popular expression for one of the effects of the space-time continuum).
You could not verify that gravity bends light in the 30s or 40s etc.
But now we have (again repeatadly and by more than one team) observed that the Sun's gravity acts as a giant "lens" by letting us see a star that is in fact at that moment in time behind the disc of the Sun.
And please observe that these 2 repeatable experiments, while quite different, both reinforce one theory.
They are not the only ones. The time dilation effect at great speeds was also verified by experiment, and I'm sure there are others.

Now, this is the kind of proof I'm talking about.

As for the peer reviewed Bible issue:

1. Chemists are not asked to review software security papers and vice versa. True. But a chemist, given time and all documentation and materials, can confirm or deny the claims of the software security specialist and the reverse is also true.

2. Even in modern times, claims made in published papers are checked out by other teams. Do you remember "cold fusion"? It was maybe 15 or 20 years ago, I don't recall exactly when. Published, with publicity, tam-tam, promises, etc. New discovery contradicts current scientific thought! Wow!
So, what happened?
Well, other people tried it and they could not reproduce the results.
Conclusion: bull**** paper.

So it does work.

Again, why should I (or any person with a solid education in physics, chemistry, biology and maths) need to believe there is God when the overwhelming majority of things, facts and phenomena that we observe have already been explained as being perfectly natural.
It just doesn't make sense.

[merrillmck]

Existence of God "proof" issue

What I would consider "proof" is to take a well known and accepted law of nature, scientifically validated, and have ono or more "special" persons do something that violates that law because of divine intervention/will/prayer/"the chosen one" effect, whatever.

Have the same (or another) person (or persons) repeat this amazing "divine" miracle, in the presence of sceptical witnesses are allowed to observe (but not intervene or obstruct) and check for fraud.

Let this be repeated a few times.

Then I would believe.

This is not an extraordinary onerous request. It is in fact part of the scientific method.
EVERY claim and prediction of science HAS to be verified before it is accepted as fact.

I agree with what you've said here. I'd personally like to witness such a "proof."

But I do think it is an extraordinary request!

Think about what you're asking for:

1. A supernatural feat or miracle
2. The cooperation of a "special" person (God, prophet, whatever)
3. The feat repeated multiple times
4. And I think it is implied that you'd like to be a witness!

According to the Bible, Jesus did #1,#3 [feeding of thousands with essentially a basket of food; he did this multiple times] and #2 obviously he was performing these things to help convince non-believers. But you weren't a witness.

According to the Quran, Muhammad did #1, #3 [he produced water from his fingers] and #2 obviously this was showing him to be "special." But you weren't a witness here either!

Personally, I find the blind-religious believers troubling and I lean more towards the scientific route. However, I think there are a lot of holes in those of us (including me) who want proof/evidence of God. Imagine if the deists are correct and God created the world but doesn't participate. If that's the case, then #1, #2, and #3 are impossible simply because God chooses not to cooperate with our requests.

Finally, the point of my earlier posts is that regular X10forum posters cannot give proof of God because they aren't "special" #2 ... well ... anyway ...

[chevyand]

Great Discussion here. I think Bertrand Russell (Why I am An Atheist) had it right but not until he was on his death bed. He had written the book and is quoted on his death bed that he wished he had taken the other position of why i am a Christian. He believed if he was wrong he was going to Hell and therefore it would have benefited him to be a believer because in fact if he was wrong in that case nothing would happen when he died.

Since God isn't universally defined, it is nearly impossible to find evidence to support something that isn't universally defined. One definition is an all-powerful being; in that case, witnessing God do things that were otherwise impossible would seem to be evidence. [This leads the doubter to doubt whether it was God he witnessed or just a freak unexplainable event.]

Why don't you give the religious readers an example of something that could feasibly be evidence of God? Does that reader need to ask God to talk directly to you? What constitutes [scientific] evidence of God? Not that easy to answer.

Edit:


Great in theory. Have you ever tried to reproduce a well-known paper? There is about a 0% chance that you'll reproduce it exactly. A paper usually talks about the outline, the idea, the theory behind the idea, the history of work leading up to the idea ... but rarely are the tedious details given in a manner that can be reproduced. Sometimes, this is because a business or individual wants to protect or slow the implementation of their idea so they can have a headstart (or monopoly) on the idea. Sometimes, it could be b/c someone is bullshirting the paper and results. In some cases, authors provide the tedious details at their website, in their book, or publish open source code. But that's typically not required to get the paper published.

[ichwar]

Not waiting......I'm outa here.

Hmmm, are you beat? lol

Anyways, you're asking us to prove God does exist. But you obviously don't understand science. You ought to know that science can't prove anything. It can provide plausible evidence, and it has, but it can't prove a single thing. This is because science is totally, trial and error and a lot of guesswork. *note, I'm not saying that there's anything faulty with the scientific process, it's just that the way it is performed, it is totally incapable of actually proving anything.

With that in mind, let me provide a bit of evidence for a creator.

For those of you who don't believe anything without citation, the following points are extracted (not word for word, but close) from the book Handy Dandy Evolution Refuter by Robert E. Kofahl, Ph.D.
1) Mutations can only modify what already exists. The tendency is to preserve and not to innovate. There is no evidence that a mutation or series of mutations have ever created a new structure or organ.

2) Theorists are still arguing over the basics of evolution. One of these current arguments is over whether evolution progresses mainly by natural selection of advantageous mutations or by the accumulation of neutral mutations. If after a couple hundred years, specialists still can't agree over the basic mechanism of their theory, perhaps the whole idea is wrong.

3) The source of new genes has not been established. A source for new genes to be formed has yet to be demonstrated with any certainty.

4) The wild types are stronger than mutated types. A very few experimentally observed mutations in the fruit fly, Drosophila, reportedly confer a slight advantage under special conditions in the laboratory. However, the observed mutated flies have proven generally inferior to the wild type, and under ordinary conditions populations tend to revert to the wild type. The DDT-resistant populations of houseflies illustrate this fact. They do not reproduce as effectively as the wild type in the absence of DDT.

I could go on and on with all these little things that when combine provide a massive problem for evolution as well as massive evidence for just believing in a Creator.