Obviously you are one of those people who will never acknowledge "I do not know"...and would prefer to kid yourself with "alternate reality." — Frank Apisa

There you have it. You decide, purely on the grounds of materialistic ideology, that I am wrong without ever asking what my arguments are. I do acknowledge 'I do not know' if by 'know' you mean knowledge by intellectual means. I don't have an intellectual proof of God. I have already said this.

Precisely. I am missing the point.

While you are still looking for it and you'll never find it, because it is like trying to look at your eyes or reach the horizon. All you will accomplish is tiring yourself out.
Whereas if you were aware, it would come in to place all on its own. — Shamshir

That's some lovely poetry there, but I'm more interested in the actual topic, which is about evidence for God, which isn't about evidence for an abstract object like a circle, because that isn't what God is. If that is what God is, then there would be no controversy, and there wouldn't be any atheists asking for evidence of God.

Your problem is that you confuse something else for God, like the classic mistake of confusing the map for the territory, or you perhaps do this deliberately so that you can claim that God exists, but you don't like my criticism that by doing that, you would have trivialised the claim and missed the point of what the debate is about, so you dismiss my criticism.

We sceptics are asking for evidence of the territory, and you are telling us that the map exists. We aren't asking about the map. If, say, the map is a map of Atlantis, then we are clearly being reasonable by asking for evidence of the territory. And the concept of God is like a map of Atlantis.

The map doesn't exist either. And I think the problem is simpler than confusion, it's a willingness to jump headlong and blind into complacency, the safety of refusal and denial and the egoism of overcoming the invention of doubt. It is the egoism of purpose. Confusion is too open-ended and complex.

How is the human mind supposed to reconcile the vast emptiness of being except by turning itself into the meaning of life?

Does 'wildly controversial' mean they won't fit into the primitive rationale of materialism? That is too bad. — EnPassant

No, it doesn't mean that. Google the words if you're not sure what they mean.

Why are controversial ideas not compelling to a 'reasonable person'? — EnPassant

That wasn't my full objection. My full objection was that it was not only wildly controversial, but a set of bare assertions. And it should be obvious why that would not be compelling to a reasonable person. You would first need to provide supporting arguments for your bare assertions, which you haven't done, and also, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so they'd have to be damn good arguments. Given that you've failed to meet this burden in spite of repeated requests, you've been failing at philosophy.

As I keep saying, a large part of the problem is that materialists often think they have a monopoly on what is rational; scientism. If these people can't accept that rationality extends beyond science there is no talking to them.

That is the answer to the first post in this thread: there is no agreement on what is rational because the materialists insist on an abbreviated definition of rationality and anything outside it is 'nonsense'. — EnPassant

I know you have an axe to grind with "materialism" and "scientism", but that has nothing whatsoever to do with me or my objection, so you aren't dealing with the problem by attacking these positions. I am just applying a basic standard expected in philosophical discourse, which is different from preaching. Here you are expected to provide actual support for your assertions, especially if they are wildly controversial, which assertions along the lines that truth comes from God most certainly are.

If you don't like this standard expected of you, then this is not the place for you. And philosophy is not the academic discipline for you.

The map doesn't exist either. — whollyrolling

Please explain. :brow:

Humanity has been in existential crisis for maybe 4,000-15,000 years of recorded history, and we don't understand much more than we did when we began to record ourselves trying to understand ourselves and our environment. A territory is a human concept. A map is a human concept. It all seems sort of like painting a moustache on a painting of a unicorn and saying "I finally figured it out".

More bullshit!

People are willing to have a meaningful discussion with you, EnPassant, but you are averse to it...which is probably why you refer to it as "proper" discussion.

There may be gods involved in the REALITY of existence...but there is no way to know if there are or not...and allowing people like you to propose that their blind guesses have to be true makes no sense.

There is nothing wrong with you blindly guessing there is a GOD...just as there is nothing wrong with others blindly guessing there are no gods. But in the end...all we have are BLIND GUESSES. — Frank Apisa

If it's possible that gods are "involved in the reality of existence" then it's possible that the gods inform some people and not others of their existence. Perhaps they speak to those who are open enough to listen. If that were the case, the people to whom the gods speak would know directly, through acquaintance, the existence of the gods. They would not be "blindly guessing", but rather expressing their direct experiential knowledge, when they speak of the existence of the gods.

Of course the problem is that, in the context of philosophical argumentation, one is expected to produce inter-subjectively convincing arguments to support one's assertions.This is impossible to do regarding god or gods (and no doubt many other things) if your interlocutor has not had the kind of experiences involving god or the gods that you have.

That is why sensible people who have faith in god or gods don't bother with such paltry arguments and the time-wasting talking-past-the-other that this thread so amply exemplifies.

Every atheist is an individual. Stop acting like there's an atheist manifesto.

All effects must have causes - the first cause is at a base of a pyramid of causality - all effects do have causes. Only the first cause, being beyond time and thus beyond causality does not have a cause. — Devans99

So you abandon the principle of sufficient reason.

An "atemporal", "eternal" cause of a universe that has a definite age (like 14 billion years) or a definite earliest time, is incompatible with the principle of sufficient reason, since such a cause lead us to expect an infinite age of the universe — there's no sufficient reason the universe is 14 billion years old and not some other age, any other age in fact.

That fine I suppose, but what does it entail? If the "reason" part of the principle is taken to be a generalized notion of "cause", then abandonment runs contrary to your statements above.

An indefinite past history does not run into this problem, like unbounded not infinite ("edge free"), or infinite.

Of course effects have causes, that's typically what we mean by those terms. They're events, which, in turn, are subsets of changes, i.e. temporal. "Atemporals", on the other hand, if there be any, would be inert, lifeless; "abstract objects" are the closest that comes to mind.

An object is abstract (if and) only if it is causally inefficacious. — Abstract Objects (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

That's some lovely poetry there, but I'm more interested in the actual topic, which is about evidence for God, which isn't about evidence for an abstract object like a circle, because that isn't what God is. — S

How do you know that is not God?

Have you seen God?

If you have seen God, why do you deny God?

If you have not seen God, how do you know what God is?

All effects must have causes — Devans99

I'm not saying you're wrong - I don't have the evidence for that - but I asked you whether you had considered the possibility of causeless effects, and you have simply asserted that all effects have causes. :chin: It seems you don't know - just as I don't know. :chin:

We sceptics are asking for evidence of the territory, and you are telling us that the map exists. We aren't asking about the map. If, say, the map is a map of Atlantis, then we are clearly being reasonable by asking for evidence of the territory. And the concept of God is like a map of Atlantis. — S

The problem is that the territory and map are qualitatively opposed. The moment you draw the map, it negates the territory by focusing all attention to the map as if it were the actual territory.

Athiest are correct in rejecting any evidence of God, in the sense that they are looking for direct evidence, but the only possible evidence that can be provided is indirect. They are wrong in the sense that they are looking for the evidence in the all wrong places.

Causeless effects would be something like quantum fluctuations - something coming from nothing. If something comes from nothing naturally then with infinite time, matter density becomes infinite, which is not the case. So that leads to a start of time and a timeless first cause.

All the valid universe origins arguments I'm aware of lead to a timeless first cause.

What about spontaneous symmetry breaking in quantum field theory?

That might count as a cause-less effect.

If it's something from nothing, it leads to infinite density with infinite time.

That's the general idea. I'm no scientist, but I understand this is one theory of how matter comes into existence, into existence from nothing.

And given that matter is absolutely determined by time and space, I agree that existence from nothing would imply some type of infinite and eternal reality underlying all material existence. In fact from the perspective of material existence, it is correct to say the infinite and eternal would appear as nothingness.

(I might postulate that matter comes into existence as a result of thought, but I don't want to incite a disgressing topic here).

OK thanks. Just pointing out that these something from nothing models all imply a start of time.

Back to the OP, the question is not appropriate without specifying a definition of God. If God is as per the definition of traditional religion, then asking for evidence is pointless, we can rule out the traditional definition of God on purely logical grounds:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5708/the-traditional-attributes-of-god/p1

If you restrict the definition of God to 'creator of the universe' then there is actually plenty of evidence for such a proposition:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5577/was-there-a-first-cause-reviewing-the-five-ways/p1

If you restrict the definition of God to 'creator of the universe' then there is actually plenty of evidence for such a proposition: — Devans99

But there is no absolute evidence to convert the committed atheist. Either the proof is inadequate and demands more (e.g. the cosmological or teleological arguments). Or the proof is indirect and unqualified because it cannot be directly verified (since God, as it were, is akin to a direct relation of subject to subject, and as soon as that relation becomes subject to object, the direct proof is negated).

It is correct for the atheist to reject such proofs. In the first mode of proof, no finite explanation can sufficiently circumspect an infinite reality; and, if the non-atheist respects the smallest extent of God's so-called magnificence, he would refrain from all such trivialities. And in the second mode of proof, the non-atheist is severing his direct relation to God, as subject to subject, by reorienting himself toward the objectivity in which the atheist is confined.

You may be right, but I think that constructing a model for a universe without a first cause is impossible - nothing would logically exist without a first cause.

So I would have thought atheists have to logically accept a first cause.

The question of whether the first cause is intelligent or not:

1. The universe is fine-tuned for life. This seems to requires intelligence.
2. The prime mover argument: something has to move by its own accord. Is autonomous movement possible without intelligence? Automatons require an intelligent agent to create them.
3. To be the first cause, to cause without being caused, requires some form of internal orchestration; IE intelligence.

nothing would logically exist without a first cause. — Devans99

Spontaneous symmetry breaking is exactly that. I'm not saying it is the answer to a cause-less effect, but it should be closely considered.

The question of whether the first cause is intelligent or not: — Devans99

How is it possible to qualify the unqualifiable? Can we really even talk about an ultimate and absolute intelligence, when we barely know barely shit about the pitiful human intelligence?

Spontaneous symmetry breaking is exactly that. I'm not saying it is the answer to a cause-less effect, but it should be closely considered. — Merkwurdichliebe

The example often given is the Mexican hat potential:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_symmetry_breaking#Mexican_hat_potential

So you have a ball balanced on top of a sphere; the symmetry breaks when the ball falls to one side. I would have thought that the 'cause' of the symmetry break is the fact that the ball was slightly off centre to start with? If it was perfect; it would never fall to one side?

And I'm not sure how symmetry breaking can create matter. And it does not help if it does because it leads to infinite density.

How is it possible to qualify the unqualifiable. Can we really even talk about an ultimate and absolute intelligence, when we barely know barely shit about the pitiful human intelligence. — Merkwurdichliebe

To be an uncaused cause clearly requires an internal driving force / self motivation. That is likely requires some form of intelligence. I don't think we have to completely understand intelligence before we can recognise it in other situations.

The trouble with truth is that, if you are too demanding about the quality (?) of the truth you seek, you will find nothing. Many issues do not contain Truth in the sense we might prefer, so we have to find ways of discovering and using approximations, unsatisfactory though that may be. — Pattern-chaser

Of course, however, people use this as a cop-out in order to not have to scrutiny their theories. They misuse the fact that absolute truth might be impossible in order to imbue their incomplete logic and reasoning with more truth-value than it has. It's the "because you can never know what is truly true, I'm not wrong" reasoning, which is a philosophically infantile method of reasoning.

So you have a ball balanced on top of a sphere; the symmetry breaks when the ball falls to one side. I would have thought that the 'cause' of the symmetry break is the fact that the ball was slightly off centre to start with? If it was perfect; it would never fall to one side? — Devans99

It's not my theory, but I think it adds interest to the topic. I just take these theories at face value, they hold no real importance to me. But if you are compelled to look deeper, I suppose you could decimate it through conceptual analysis.

And I'm not sure how symmetry breaking can create matter. And it does not help if it does because it leads to infinite density. — Devans99

I believe the gyst is that tachyon condensation leads to a vaccuum, and out of the vacuum, the basic component of matter appear out of nowhere. But, do yourself a favor, don't kill yourself analyzing quantum field theory, it is a long and looping thread.

To be an uncaused cause clearly requires an internal driving force / self motivation. That is likely requires some form of intelligence. — Devans99

I hope I'm not treading old ground, but, what about a self-caused first cause?

I don't think we have to completely understand intelligence before we can recognise it in other situations — Devans99

But we do if we are going to adequately explain the unintelligible intelligence of God to an athiest.

I believe the gyst is that tachyon condensation leads to a vaccuum, and out of the vacuum, the basic component of matter appear out of nowhere. But, do yourself a favor, don't kill yourself analyzing quantum field theory, it is a long and looping thread. — Merkwurdichliebe

Thanks I may take a look at it. Presumably requires FTL (for tachyons) so that does count against it, tachyons have imaginary mass!

I hope I'm not treading old ground, but, what about a self-caused first cause? — Merkwurdichliebe

To create oneself seems to require a causal loop which would require something like circular time. The only place in spacetime to get the matter/energy for the Big Bang is the Big Crunch so actually circular time is not completely far fetched. If it was all completely eternal (future real) then maybe you could say it does not need a cause.

But I feel it would still probably need a cause:

- The universe is fine-tuned for life. So there must be a fine tuner. But the fine tuner’s environment must also be fine-tuned for life. Implies another fine-tuner. This infinite regress must terminate with a timeless fine tuner who is synonymous with the timeless first cause.

- We seem to be able to tell the difference between 'now' and 'then', so something about 'now' is different. IE even with eternalist models, a current time pointer is required. What set that in motion originally? It must be a timeless first cause.

Mexican hat — Devans99

I gotta get me one of these.



This fits nicely into my point about God's unintelligible intellect. We try, with science, to understand how it happens, but we know so little, it is a pathetic ignorance.

Considering fine tuning...how can we possibly understand fine tuning at the level of God? If I was an atheist, I would definitely reject fine tuning as evidence of god. (Add. I can never understand the mechanic, simply by dismantling an engine he designed and built.)

And concerning the arrow of time, what can we possibly know about the archer who fired it, other than looking at the composition and trajectory of the arrow. If I were an atheist, I would definitely reject the arrow of time as evidence of god.

Clearing out things, faith is not wishful thinking or delusion, because faith is belief in the unknown — SethRy

But faith is rarely that. Faith, as in religion, is a belief in something very specific. Faith in the unknown, or rather a fascination with the unknown is somewhat closer to atheism. In atheism, accepting the unknown as an uncharted territory is one of the interesting and intriguing parts of not relying on faith in God for anything. Where theists find atheism to be like a black hole of nothingness, that being an atheist is to have this empty void of meaninglessness, I rarely find atheists to have such depressing outlooks. It might also be why many theists have a hard time accepting anything outside of their belief because doing so is like staring into a void. It's scary to lose all sense of a grand meaning to everything. However, there's little sense in philosophy to let emotions guide logical and rational reasoning. Anyone who use themselves, their feelings and personal liking as proof of anything has only flawed arguments to show.

Causeless effects would be something like quantum fluctuations - something coming from nothing. If something comes from nothing naturally then with infinite time, matter density becomes infinite, which is not the case. — Devans99

Define "causeless effects" as "something coming form nothing", then refute the latter? :chin: This depends for its validity on causeless effects being identically and exclusively equal to something from nothing. It is not clear to me that this is the case. You seem to be offering yet more assertions.

This fits nicely into my point about God's unintelligible intellect. We try, with science, to understand how it happens, but we know so little, it is a pathetic ignorance. — Merkwurdichliebe

Still we must keep on trying. Some progress has been made. On simple questions like 'was there a first cause?' I feel answers are possible. 'Great minds think alike' and whilst our minds our puny compared to God's mind, on the simple, basic stuff we should agree. So I think for simple questions, it is possible to 'know the mind of God'

Consideting fine tuning...how can we possibly understand fine tuning at the level of God? If I was an atheist, I would definitely reject fine tuning as evidence of god. — Merkwurdichliebe

You are probably right. I have quite a lengthy argument that the universe is fine-tuned and that the SAP and WAP do not apply, but this is not the place for it.

And concerning the arrow of time, what can we possibly know about the archer who fired it, other than looking at the composition and trajectory of the arrow. If I were an atheist, I would definitely reject the arrow of time as evidence of god. — Merkwurdichliebe

I think a start of time is demonstrable, see here for example:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5302/an-argument-for-eternalism/p1

If there was a start of time, time must have been created by something; a timeless first cause.

I think the requirement for a first cause in order for anything else to exist has been known about for a long time, right back to Aristotle at least. It has become clouded in recent times with ideas like quantum fluctuations. I believe that in recent times, we have moved further away from the truth. It’s a fact that the most obvious metaphysical arguments are thought up first in human history and are therefore are to be found in ancient texts. Occam's Razor tells us to prefer obvious arguments. Hence I personally find the first cause arguments irrefutable. My favourite is Aquinas's 'Argument From Necessary Being' which I paraphrase as:

1.Can’t get something from nothing
2. So something must have existed ‘always’.
3. IE if there was ever a state of nothingness, it would persist to today, so something has permanent existence.
4. It’s not possible to exist permanently in time (an infinite regress; it would have no start so could not be), so the ‘something’ must be a timeless first cause.

Faith, as in religion, is a belief is something very specific. Faith in the unknown, or rather a fascination with the unknown is somewhat closer to atheism. — Christoffer

For the non-atheist, faith is more like a specific intention in relation to the uncertainty of the unknowable. Atheism is more of a belief that the knowledge that can be extracted from the unknown is reliable. The difference between faith and belief: faith is a fixed and necessary position; belief is amendable - any alteration in understanding has the potential to change one's belief.