Well in fact, under that criterion, not only does a God exist (you didn't specify which one) but almost every god ever conceived exists, because they (or the idea of them) have all had an effect on people.

Given your argument:

As andrewk stated, every form of deity must exist, at least the ones currently being worshipped/acknowledged.

Ancient aliens must exist.

Magic and the occult (ghosts, demons, palm readings, out-of-body projection, etc.) must exist.

And so on and so forth.

Under the argument, there is no distinction between the effects caused by people's beliefs in something existing and that something actually existing, which is clearly false.

I agree that a god, as a human created being in our minds, affected and still affects our lives one way or another in the way we behave, the concepts we have in terms of faith, and even the fact that we are having this argument in the first place.

Under that logic, I would say anything imaginary like unicorns, Harry Potter, Big Brother, and any of those fictional beings exists. They all have affected our lives whether it may be significant or minor.

Is there anything new here?

I'm giving you all scientific proof of God(s) existence.

Science uses observation, hypothesis testing, and experiment to narrow down a list of possible causes for an observed phenomenon. You have not shown any testings of hypotheses, any studies, any numbers- all you have is the observation that people behave in certain ways and that said people say they do so because of a particular god.

Now, as a scientist (or just a philosopher), we have to consider the various opposing possible explantions (hypotheses) in order to test them to see if we can prove any false. It is true a possible explanation for at least one god is that said god exists. However, you have no demonstrated, even in the weakest philosophical sense, how the competing explanation- people act that way because of their belief in a particular god, not because said god exists- is false. This is especially bad given that we know that this hypothesis has to be true, given that people believe and base their actions around mutually exclusive gods.

I take a stone, weigh it and measure its dimensions or throw it at a window. There is an effect - the scale moves, the window shatters. I don't need a competing hypothesis because I now have measurable, detectable proof that the stone exists.
Likewise Ican see people avoiding pork, going to church, praying, doing charity, all of which are detectable, measurable effects of God. Therefore, god exists

Likewise Ican see people avoiding pork, going to church, praying, doing charity, all of which are detectable, measurable effects of God. Therefore, god exists — TheMadFool

If these are God's effects, whose effect is this?

I take a stone, weigh it and measure its dimensions or throw it at a window. There is an effect - the scale moves, the window shatters. — TheMadFool

How does it matter?

Because there are different things that I can call the sources of these effects. In the stone example the effect could be my will to break the window (therefore my will exists) or my body (therefore my body exists) and in the second the cause of the effect could be again my will or my body. Or I could even say that the idea of God is the cause and since ideas can have effects, ideas exist (but not God himself).

One might say that oases and mirages both exist phenomenologically, however, only one will quench one's thirst, and this is a significant difference. The whole trouble with mirages is that it looks as though there is an oasis where there isn't one. Gods that exist only as illusions are a pain.

Your argument sounds very similar to Chany's. However, as I presented my argument we've already moved beyond the hypotheses construction phase.

To clarify this a little more let me take the example of the ether hypothesis of science. Its existence was suspected/hypothesized just as god's existence was. Then we move to the second stage. In the case of ether scientists tried to detect the effects of ether on their instruments. They didn't find any but had they found some they would have concluded ''ether exists''. Now use the same logic for god. We look for the effects of god in our world. I see plenty - prayer, temples, festivals, marriage ceremonies, burial rituals, etc. It's quite obvious now that I must conclude that god exists.

They didn't find any but had they found some they would have concluded ''ether exists''. — TheMadFool

Or maybe they could have several hypotheses that explained the effects. That's my point. Ideas, will, the self, or matter explain the effects as well. Many people would say that they explain them better. So, it's not that obvious, at least to me!!!

1. You never actually explained why andrewk's rebuttal on how you prove every god (even gods that logically oppose each other's existence) or my rebuttal with proving ghosts and the occult exist do not show the form of your argument is faulty.

2. You never falsified my equally valid hypothesis to explain the observation, one that you must accept in at least some cases because certain gods cannot coexist: people's belief in their god causes them to perform actions, not the actual existence of said god. Said god could not exist and people would still behave the way they do based on the false belief that said god exists.

3. You created a false analogy between the stone-window and god-people. With the stone, I clearly see the cause and watch the cause create the effect. With god, I only see the effect of people's behaviors, not the cause of god in any direct sense, so much so that I can question a god as an actual cause. To make the stone anology proper, imagine we have a broken window. We want to find out what caused the window to break, but we have a bunch of possible causes: baseball, stone, sledgehammer, bullet, and so on, all of which are valid, but untested, hypotheses as a cause of the broken window.

This seems to be a rather tedious discussion. On the one hand you have someone who says that an effect, such as mythology on behaviour, is proof of existence. On the other you have logic that would discount this theory completely. It seems that the OP is not looking for evidence against their hypothesis, but affirmation that they have found "god" (lowercase because which one right?). My question to this is, if the OP regards theological thinking to be sound, how can a supernatural force make any measurable impact on the natural world? That is, the entirety of the inability to disprove a negative relies on the fact that we cannot be sure that a god does not exist. However, in this instance, for a measurable impact on the natural universe, this god must also be of this universe, and by our current understanding, this energy must not be able to leave the system. Thus, we must be able to conduct an experiment to test the existence of a god, which as to date has yielded no results. To me, this exercise merely proves that false logic exists. "Everything in this world is either a potato or not a potato" is just as useless as the reasoning behind the original premise.

Let me try to explain. I can't do it better than this so please try to understand my point of view.


People observed the universe and all its wonders. All types of people - idiots, average joes and very intelligent people. Having made their observations they came up with two hypothesis:

1. The universe and all it wonders arose by chance

2. God created this universe

These are the competing hypotheses you both are referring to.

I choose to test the hypothesis that god exists by searching for the effects of god. I find plenty as mentioned above. Now am I not right in concluding that god exists for I find many many effects?

Of course there is the competing hypothesis that everything arose by chance. How do you test that? Beats me. And being untestable the chance-hypothesis (if I may call it that) is actually unscientific.

I hope you understood now?

Chance and natural selection in the case of evolution is often misunderstood. I think the same is true in this case. You have not yet defined the god you are trying to prove exists, however it appears to be monotheistic... So which "god" are you trying to prove? One of the Greek gods? One of the Viking gods? All have given their followers art, music and military success. I once wrote a poem about a storm because of the sheer ferocity. So this must prove the existence of the storm? I have also read books that involved elves, goblins, dwarves, magicians and demons. Does this mean that all these things also exist? If so, I am excited. Bring it on.

I don't understand :P

I choose to test the hypothesis that god exists by searching for the effects of god. I find plenty as mentioned above. Now am I not right in concluding that god exists for I find many many effects? — TheMadFool

No, you are not right :) You just assume that it is God's effects. You haven't showed that they are indeed God's! What I mean is something like this...

If I have the flu, then I have a sore throat.
I have a sore throat.
Therefore, I have the flu.

But having the flu is not the only cause of a sore throat since many illnesses cause sore throat, such as the common cold or strep throat.

You have not yet defined the god you are trying to prove exists, however it appears to be monotheistic... So which "god" are you trying to prove? One of the Greek gods? One of the Viking gods? All have given their followers art, music and military succes — Accursius

All of them.

I once wrote a poem about a storm because of the sheer ferocity. So this must prove the existence of the storm? I have also read books that involved elves, goblins, dwarves, magicians and demons. Does this mean that all these things also exist? If so, I am excited. Bring it on. — Accursius

I'm not a mathematician but to speak mathematically if there's no problem with the soundness of the main theorem I care not for the corollaries.

I'm giving you all scientific proof of God(s) existence. — TheMadFool

>:O I think he's pulling your legs guys. Best let him stay beneath the bridge.

>:O I think he's pulling your legs guys. Best let him stay beneath the bridge. — Thorongil

I have to agree with you. Either this is a very witty and clever use of reason (A suspected witch that drowned in a body of water is innocent) or we are enabling something we shouldn't.

You are simply proclaiming the teleological argument and are trying to phrase a philosophical argument in science in order to make your argument appear stronger.

You cannot scientifically test either hypothesis "God exists" or "chance created" without being able to falsify either. You cannot run tests at all because it would require us to be outside the universe and set up a bunch of tests on possible worlds.



Normally, I would agree with you, but I have seen very bad arguments before, particularly on the topic of god.

I think he's pulling your legs guys. Best let him stay beneath the bridge. — Thorongil

I agree. I could not help but to laugh at that statement: "Scientific proof"...hahaha, I'm sorry.

I'm a scientist myself, so it makes it worse...lol

:) Where's the error in my reasoning?

Where's the error?

To clarify, a piece of stone ''exists'' because it has an ''effect'' on other objects that exist e.g. you can break your neighbor's window with it, — TheMadFool

I don't agree with that requirement. If you had some sort of particle isolated in a vacuum, that for some reason couldn't not be in that vacuum, in principle, that wouldn't imply that the particle in question doesn't exist. It wouldn't have any effect on anything, and maybe you couldn't know that it existed, at least not via direct evidence, but you can't conflate epistemology (re how you know something) with ontology (re what there is).

Re the God thing, the idea of God certainly exists--after all, here we are talking about it. Is it anything other than an idea that some people have though?

I'm giving you all scientific proof of God(s) existence. — TheMadFool

Science is empirical. Empirical claims are not provable.

I don't agree with that requirement — Terrapin Station

Ether or better I declare the existence of a particle ''foolon'' that has no mass, no charge and cannot be detected by any known scientific instrument.

you can't conflate epistemology (re how you know something) with ontology (re what there is). — Terrapin Station

I'm not conflating anything. I'm actually staying true to the scientific principle of verifiability of a hypothesis. In other words you detect the effect of x and then infer the existence of x.

Science is empirical. Empirical claims are not provable — Terrapin Station

What do you do with empirical claims?

Ether or better I declare — TheMadFool

What? "Either or better I declare"? That doesn't make grammatical sense to me.

I'm actually staying true to the scientific principle of verifiability of a hypothesis. — TheMadFool

Wait--there are a number of problems with this, but the first one I'm curious about is this: how are we getting from "verifiability of a hypothesis" to "this is what it amounts to for something to exist"? You're apparently claiming that those two are the same thing. What is the basis of that claim?

What do you do with empirical claims? — TheMadFool

What do you want to do with them? You can do all sorts of things with them. You just can't prove them. At best you provisionally verify them in lieu of falsification.

Also, you ignored "Is it anything other than an idea that some people have though?"

You're apparently claiming that those two are the same thing. What is the basis of that claim? — Terrapin Station

I'm not claiming anything. Science makes the claim that for something to exist its effects must be detectable, measurable and clearly god(s) does have easily observable effects.

What do you want to do with them? You can do all sorts of things with them. You just can't prove them. At best you provisionally verify them in lieu of falsification. — Terrapin Station

Perhaps you can explain to me the difference between ''prove'' and ''verify''.