I can see no evidence for a deity. What some people count as evidence does not come across to me as evidence--never did and probably never will. Just doesn't make sense. Never did and probably never will. Back in the days very long before I knew about evolution my mother insisted that we "just know" that God exists because look at the beauties of nature! That has never seemed like a convincing argument to me at all. I don't understand how that can convince anybody.

Any observant person who grows up on a farm like I did knows that when you put seed in the ground and the conditions are right, the seed grows into whatever kind of plant the seed came from in the first place. Such a person also knows that babies of animals and humans come from the kind of parent that bears them. That's just the way the world works. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. The seasons come and go with predictable regularity. No schooling is required to learn this and no schooling was required for the aboriginals to survive for millennia in this environment.

Schooling and religion are secondary and learned. Becoming familiar with one's native environment is learned, too. But attaching religion or other philosophies to them is secondary to that, I believe. On the other hand, it may be natural for children to attach imaginary names to phenomenon they observe if adults don't give names to them. Most phenomenon come to us with names attached as we learn about our environment as children.

If left to natural evolution, new names evolve as new knowledge is acquired and old beliefs are abandoned. I'm not sure how long it takes for a radically new worldview to develop so that the majority of humankind feels comfortable with it. More than one century--that's for sure. How long ago was it that someone first suggested that the earth revolved around the sun and not the sun around the earth? I think today everyone is comfortable with that, and has probably been for a couple centuries. But the idea of evolution has been bouncing around for two centuries already (it started long before Darwin) and we know a lot of people are still extremely uncomfortable with it.

Something happened that "couldn't have 'just happened' but it did."

I had this really strong hunch that I should take my letter in for my doctor today--hand deliver it. It's one of those things where timing was everything. I wasn't sure if she was even in the office today. I had called several times and only got the answering machine. I seldom leave messages on doctor's telephones because when I'm online (which is a lot of the time) no one can return calls. I had myself a deep think. I did not think they had that specific message on the answering machine on days they were in the office. This was a migraine specialist, not a general practitioner, so she did not have to be in everyday. But yes, I concluded, I was going to go to the office.

If it was all locked up I would see if there was a mailbox were I could stuff it, or if I could put it between doors, or something, and when I got home I would leave a message on her phone telling her where I left it. Her office is in the kind of building that might have been a private home at one time. There was nothing valuable in the envelope so there was no risk that way. And I could always take it home as a last resort if there was absolutely no place to leave it.

When I got close to the office suddenly I saw something--there was a light on inside. My heart soared. She must be in! When I got closer I saw that the inside door was open. That was proof that they were open. And what's more, when I got into the reception area, I absolutely could not believe my eyes. I asked, "Are you Dr. ________?"

She said, "Yes, you and I met two days ago. Remember? And we talked about....?" So I was able to hand the letter directly to her and explain what it was about.

Apparently I had arrived during a split second when she was between patients. It had occurred to me how fortunate that would be, but I discounted the possibility because the chances of it happening would be so tiny. I knew if I was willing to wait an hour I could probably catch her but I've spent so many hours waiting when I had to see her that I had no desire to do that. I was going to count myself lucky if I could hand the letter to the receptionist.

As I walked out of the office it occurred to me that my mother would have said, "This is one of those things that could not have 'just happened.'" By that, she would have meant, "This is evidence of God ochestrating things." I'm thinking, yeah right. I didn't pray about this or anything. Sure, I did give it a lot of deep thought and conderation (which is all prayer is when you analayze it). I did have urgent intuitive hunches about it. (Now get this, I also knew how important it was to get the information to my doctor in time, and that it might already be too late. That can, in and of itself, make for intuitive hunches and feelings of urgency.)

On the other hand, the reason I did not give the information earlier was that I did not have it. Why did I not have it? There had been a new development in my condition. So why was it so urgent for her to have it and how could it have already been too late???

As some of you know, I'm working the system pretty hard to figure out how to survive with all my disabilities outside my native horse and buggy community. As part of getting all this organized properly I saw my doctor the other day to get her to write a letter for the government asking for authorization for one item--a very expensive medication she put me on. "Is it helping?" she asked, "because if it is helping it will be easier to get it authorized." After a pause she added, "Maybe it's still a bit early in the game." I said it's still a bit early in the game.

Apparently it was two days early. It was a preventative medicine for migraines. The only medicine I have yet found to be of any help for migraines is the kind that kills them as they come. That's supposed to be dangerous long term (not to mention extremely expensive) so we have to find something that prevents them from coming. I get a week of migraines about once a month. In between I'm fine. The day I saw her I was fine.

A day later the migraines kicked in again. But something was odd. I was able to control the pain with Ibuprofen. Never before has Ibuprofen made even a dent in the pain. So maybe it wasn't a real migraine. Sometimes I get other headaches that last for part of a day. I monitored it for 24 hours. It was exactly like migraines except I was able to control the pain with Ibuprofen. I decided if my doctor has not yet sent off that letter to the government she needed to know about this post-haste.
When I got there it was exactly in time.

Evidence for God???

Turn that around. It is evidence that all along what we thought was god was only our own common sense and happenstance keeping us alive. Our ancestors wanted to give it a name so they called it God. We can choose to put it back on the shelf and call it common sense and happenstance if we like.

I understand that atheism means the absence of theistic belief. But are there subcategories within Atheism? Is the statement "I believe there is no God" the same as "I have no belief in a God".

Since you identify as an atheist, RSM, I'm wondering what you think on this point.

Marti

I think we are talking about the technicalities of grammar here and abstract philosophical concepts. I get confused when debate gets on that level and am unable to answer your question.

However, there is a difference between "There is no God" and "I do not believe in God." The first is a proposition about God and the second is a proposition about my beliefs. Since, according to my Christian professors, God cannot be proven or disproven, I do not state that there is no God. Nor do most atheists I know. But we feel quite comfortable making statements about our beliefs.

For more information on atheism you should be able to find something if you search one of the organization linked from the website. I'm a fairly recent deconvert and have not had time to read up on all that is out there. Two subcategories of atheism I am aware of are hard and soft atheism.

I believe there is no God.

I do not believe in God.


I think there is a difference, no?

I am christian - not fundy - although you may think so CoG and Rsm.

I am still reading through all the material here, i wonder why there are not more contributions

Bobby

Some people probably say there is. Like I say above, I get confused about that kind of debate. That does not say that kind of debate is illegitimate. It just means I personally am incapable of participating in that kind of debate.



Hey Bobby! I'm human. I can't form an opinion about a person before I get to know them.



Your guess is as good as mine. I don't know.

I came across a Christian discussion forum called Yahweh's Truth on why people are atheists. I will copy a few selected posts that encapsulate the gist of it:



QUESTION: Why does the Christian not accept the atheist's testimony as speaking for atheists in general? Has HawleyluYah ever really listened to atheists? Or has he done as Christians have who hear my story? I have had Christians hear my story, then twist it to say that I deconverted because of being let down by people. Sure, I have been let down by people, but that is not why I deconverted. Many, many atheists say that. Others say they had the greatest lives they could have wished for. Outside of extreme physical abuse stories, I have yet to meet atheists who deconvert because of treatment at the hands of Christians. It is always and only because of deep convictions that the theology is wrong. The bad treatment is secondary.

I think the reason some Christians claim we are atheists because of being let down by Christians is that this argument is defensible. It is defensible because you can always say, "Oh you just happened to meet up with a bad church." Or "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven," or some other similar excuse. The answer "I see no evidence for God's existence" cannot be counter-argued.

The Christian can attack the atheist for being stupid, for being blind, for any number of things. The Christian can try to help the atheist see the evidence, argue about the evidence that exists, etc. But the argument has to start with basics. And the onus is on the Christian to find handles with which to lever the argument. This is back-breaking work! There are no pat answers or quick fixes. So of course the more lazy ones have to pretend to get inside our minds and tell us this REALLY is the way it is. No matter how soft the kid gloves, it still sucks.

I have heard of atheists whose Christians friends have really listened to their stories and questions. These friends confessed that they had no answers outside Jesus. I respect these friends for not pretending to know what they could not possibly know, and for confessing their obvious human limitations.

To return to the question of truthseekers. I guess it is impossible to satisfy truthseeker's question because truthseeker will not accept honest answers. As HawleyluYah does with Chris's answer, many Christians distort and twist our answers to better fit their own ideas. Thus, it is not possible for us to make acceptable arguments against God's existence; they will distort or reject anything we say.

This, however, does not verify God's existence.

I think it is only in recent centuries that the question of God's existence has become serious. In the Classical Period, ca 600 BC-300CE, everybody from the slave to the emperor believed in a divine sphere. Only a few intellectuals like Socrates did not believe in some kind of a god. I haven't read Karen Armstrong's History of God, but in my OT course my prof argued for a development of the One God belief in Hebrew theology. In the beginning of the Old Testament there were lots of gods. It was only after the Babylonian Captivity that there was the law "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me"; the OT was not written before then. This would be in line with the Babylonian Mythology, which the Hebrew Bible seems to copy to a large extent.

The Romans didn't care which god their subjects served. I don't know too much about their religion--whether or not they were moving in the monotheistic (one god only) direction by about 300 CE, but we do know that the famous Constantine legalized Christianity in the 300s. We now have the Trinity with all its complicated implications.

Time rolled on, century upon century. Empires rose and fell and rose again. The same with churches. But no one questioned that there was a divine sphere. That was one of life's givens. Somehow or other, individuals began to question the age-old beliefs and were silenced. The mists of Medieval Europe were thinning and the questions would not remain silent. The printing press was invented in about 1490. No longer were ideas imprisoned in the brains that thought them. The information highway was now subject only to the speed of horses or ships. The price of books came within the realm of the ordinary person. The Roman Catholic Church was challenged in a way it had not been for a thousand years. The Reformation took place. Instead of One Church in the West we now have thousands.

Around 1650-1750 there was a strong movement in England of Deism. Deists were seen as atheists. Natural religion, science, higher biblical criticism, and Darwinism came on board by the mid-1800s. Finally, the conservative orthodox Christians had their fill and a strong reaction set in. This set in motion what is now known as fundamentalism.

Fundamentalists claim to be defending God and the Bible. As shown, in reality, they are inventing a tradition to defend. They have taken the Medieval mindset (divine sphere is a given) and nineteenth-century modernism (everything can be known with scientific clarity) and decree that everyone MUST believe in God or suffer the consequences. What they don't realize is that the Bible never says that. The Bible says: Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.

Note the plural. It does not speak about having no god at all. It only addresses having too many gods. Jesus addresses that problem, too. If thine eye be single, etc. Present-day advisers also know the value of being focused. Having too many projects going at the same time can be disastrous. Just be. Live your life. Quit worrying about whether or not god exists.

As I say elsewhere, I have yet to see evidence of God's existence. Forty seems to be the holy number. Moses was forty years old when called out of Egypt. He was another forty years older when called to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Then he led the Israelites for forty years. Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness. Then, according to some of the Gospels, he spent forty days on earth after the resurrection. Well, I gave Bible God fifty years to present evidence of his existence and he never materialized in any perceptible way. And I wasn't asking for much--just something that could not be explained any other way. Bible God can do that.

The fundamentalist who asks me how God can do this should not be surprised not to get an answer. I am a mere mortal and cannot be expected to know the mind of God. According to the Bible, the thoughts of God are so much higher than our thoughts as the heavens are higher than the earth. Fundamentalists claim left and right to know God's will and God's mind, etc. but that's just plain arrogant, unbiblical, and condemned by their own holy book. Practically every last thing that God commands, he also forbids. He says not to kill, but he commands to kill and condemns those who fail to do so. There are numerous examples of each. The "do not kill" issue is but one example.

I'm not sure at the moment where to find it but I'd look in Thessalonians. There's a passage that says no one knows what is in a man save the spirit that is in the man. One doesn't have to read the Bible to know the truth of this. Given that we barely know what makes our fellow humans tick, it's just plain presumptuous to claim to know what makes God tick, especially a God who can't make up his mind as to whether we should kill our enemies or turn the other cheek and go the second mile. The fact that our welfare states work half-decently proves that humans are fairly decent creatures at heart.

Originally posted here, adapted for these forums.

I have far more evidence for your existence (of the person to whose post I was replying) than I do for God's existence. I have enough knowledge of software programs to know that there's not a lot of people in the world who can post under your screen name. There's a few posts here in your name and they are similar enough to warrant being written by the same person. For people who post a long time and I read many of their posts, it gets to the point where I can almost tell just from the content and format of a post who wrote it. That proves that a person exists. There is no other logical explanation for the production of those posts so similar in style and content.

However, there is NO evidence for the existence of the supernatural. You say there is. Let me see it. Just so you know it, the Kalam Cosmological Argument is fatally flawed on more levels than I can count. I can direct you to a few discussions on it if you're interested. [For the benefit of people not familiar with the KCA, here are some links:]

• Beginning Of The Universe Evidence Of God's Existence
• Wikipedia Article on Kalam Cosmological Argument
• Craig Defends the Kalam Cosmological Argument
• Craig's Discussion Forums for KCA
• Chapter 8 "Cosmological Kalamity," in Dan Barker's book Godless (see below)

BTW, we also have more evidence for the existence of George Washington than we do for Jesus of Nazareth. Washington appears in the records of other nations, I would guess, not just in the history books of the United States. I would guess documents also exist that bear his hand-written signature.

Let's say Washington appears once in the archives of the government of Spain because of some business deal he transacted in Mexico, that his signature appears on important documents in the national archives of the USA, and that history books around the world say he was the first president of the United States of America. I'm sure the Brits have a record of this, too, and they might not be too happy about it. This means we've got record of the man's existence and of his position from several legitimate sources, from friends and enemies. PLEASE NOTE: I do not know for a fact that these pieces of evidence exist but they probably do, or something similar.

Even if we have only one or two hand-written signatures to prove Washington's existence as a living breathing flesh and blood human being like us, that is more than we have of Jesus' existence. No matter how many manuscripts we have about Jesus, he personally wrote not a single word, not even his own signature--except maybe in the sand. It seems he could write but he didn't.

In addition, not one historian of Jesus' own time from his own country--and there were more than one--bothered to report about the miraculous resurrections of "many" or the unusual darkness in the middle of the day; it was not an eclipse. Nor do they report of the dead people Jesus reportedly revived before his own demise. I think the Roman government would have been keeping track of the living and dying--and resurrecting--people. This is especially the case since the people who resurrected, according to Matthew, "appeared to many" in Jerusalem. This was not some hidden secret.

Here is the passage in NRSV:

Matt. 27:50 And Jesus cried again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.
51 And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom; and the earth shook, and the rocks were split; 52 the tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, 53 and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. 54 When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe, and said, “Truly this was the Son of God!”

According to Matthew the Romans saw it. Yet the historians of the time, Philo of Alexandria and Justus of Tiberius, don't record it. I get that from Dan Barker's Godless: How An Evangelical Preacher Became One of America's Leading Atheists, 2008, 251-254. In Chapter 8 of this book, as listed above, Barker also takes apart William Lane Craig's KCA and shows that it does not work.

That's a fairly strong evidence for no historical Jesus. And possibly no God at all??? Now let's see your evidence for God's existence.

If God did 'exist', would you want to know Him?
If you answer in the affirmative, why?

That's a rather unusual question in my experience. Are you aware that to "know" someone in the biblical sense means sexual intimacy? Christianity is a fertility cult if you look into it. Obviously, in order to know God in any sense of the word, first his existence needs to be established. But sure, if God is all that Christians say he is, and if he does everything for his followers that Christians say he does, of course everyone would want to know him. God is said to make people happier than anything else possibly could, and it is also said that those who don't believe in him will suffer excruciatingly for not believing. If he existed it would be just plain stupid not to believe in him.

But that is off-topic. Your question smacks of evangelization so I guess you believe he exists. What evidence have you got for his existence? The answer to that would bring the thread back on-topic.