The first valid evidence that god does NOT exist

[Immanuel Can]

Nothing can not exist because that is not possible.

This is the same category error. The term "nothing" refers only to the total absence of any things. "Nothing" is not something that you can expect to "exist," or anybody else can imagine could "exist," or that one can use the predication "exist" to refer to.

So there's no new information in the fact that it does not exist. It's not some kind of a wondrous realization; it's a dull and circular observation.

[Impenitent]

finding truth in a song is almost as efficient as eating soup with a tuning fork...

-Imp

No problem with that. So why the reference to a particular song?

you mentioned material world and the song came to mind, nothing more

-Imp

[seeds]

And if the experience I've had is a genuine one, it's going to be more than enough to secure to us the rationality of belief in God, just as one toe dipped in the Pacific Ocean is a genuine -- but limited -- experience of the Pacific.

I don't doubt your experience is a genuine one, in that I don't doubt you have had any number of experiences. What you need to demonstrate is that your interpretation of your experience is correct. It might seem plausible, because there are two thousand years worth of people working to protect the idea, and given that time, any proposition can be cocooned with yeah buts and what ifs, but strip that away, and the core story is no more believable than Senad Dizdarevic, Age or, shout out to me old mucker, seeds.

I realize that you and I have covered this territory many times in the past,...

...but hey, if you're going to list the questionable creation stories of some of the more outspoken lunatics on this forum,...

(btw, thanks a heap, old bean, for lumping your old mucker in with the likes of Age)

...then don't forget to include (in absentia) the millions of esteemed materialists who also offer-up highly questionable (and unprovable) creation stories.

I shan't bore you again with the details, but I am of course referring to the shallow thinkers who hold a religious-like "faith" in the notion that the unfathomable order of just our one little solar "system" alone...

(never mind the ordered status of the estimated two trillion galaxies of other solar "systems")

...can be attributed to the chance stumble-bumbling's of the blind and mindless meanderings of gravity and thermodynamics.

That's quite the unprovable "creation story," don't you think?

Yet that is almost precisely what hardcore materialists must accept if they are going to profess their, again, "faith" in the creative abilities of blind and mindless materialism.

Oh, and don't forget to include the creation story of yet another "branch" of esteemed materialists...

(such as Sean Carroll, Max Tegmark, and David Deutsch, to name a few)

...who resolutely believe that millions of "copies" of you, and of me, and of all two trillion of the abovementioned galaxies, just now "sprang into existence"...

(as in "branched-off" of our universe)

...from the alleged interplay that took place between your eyes and that of the photons of light emitted from your computer screen in the time it took you to read this sentence.

Boy, that's a doozy, no?

Indeed, when it comes to "unprovable/utterly nonsensical" creation stories,...

...I suggest that my story, Age's story (whatever that is), the new guy's "karmicons" story, the Biblical story, the Koran story, the Hindu story, the Buddhist story, etc., etc.,...

...are all put to utter shame by the sheer outrageousness of the materialist's MWI story, yet you failed to mention it.

How come?
_______

[Gary Childress]

And if the experience I've had is a genuine one, it's going to be more than enough to secure to us the rationality of belief in God, just as one toe dipped in the Pacific Ocean is a genuine -- but limited -- experience of the Pacific.

I don't doubt your experience is a genuine one, in that I don't doubt you have had any number of experiences. What you need to demonstrate is that your interpretation of your experience is correct. It might seem plausible, because there are two thousand years worth of people working to protect the idea, and given that time, any proposition can be cocooned with yeah buts and what ifs, but strip that away, and the core story is no more believable than Senad Dizdarevic, Age or, shout out to me old mucker, seeds.

I realize that you and I have covered this territory many times in the past,...

...but hey, if you're going to list the questionable creation stories of some of the more outspoken lunatics on this forum,...

(btw, thanks a heap, old bean, for lumping your old mucker in with the likes of Age)

...then don't forget to include (in absentia) the millions of esteemed materialists who also offer-up highly questionable (and unprovable) creation stories.

I shan't bore you again with the details, but I am of course referring to the shallow thinkers who hold a religious-like "faith" in the notion that the unfathomable order of just our one little solar "system" alone...

(never mind the ordered status of the estimated two trillion galaxies of other solar "systems")

...can be attributed to the chance stumble-bumbling's of the blind and mindless meanderings of gravity and thermodynamics.

That's quite the unprovable "creation story," don't you think?

Yet that is almost precisely what hardcore materialists must accept if they are going to profess their, again, "faith" in the creative abilities of blind and mindless materialism.

Oh, and don't forget to include the creation story of yet another "branch" of esteemed materialists...

(such as Sean Carroll, Max Tegmark, and David Deutsch, to name a few)

...who resolutely believe that millions of "copies" of you, and of me, and of all two trillion of the abovementioned galaxies, just now "sprang into existence"...

(as in "branched-off" of our universe)

...from the alleged interplay that took place between your eyes and that of the photons of light emitted from your computer screen in the time it took you to read this sentence.

Boy, that's a doozy, no?

Indeed, when it comes to "unprovable/utterly nonsensical" creation stories,...

...I suggest that my story, Age's story (whatever that is), the new guy's "karmicons" story, the Biblical story, the Koran story, the Hindu story, the Buddhist story, etc., etc.,...

...are all put to utter shame by the sheer outrageousness of the materialist's MWI story, yet you failed to mention it.

How come?
_______

Is a theory based on principles of physics in the same or even a worse league credibility-wise with random dreams, illusions or guesses based on vague hunches that make us think something is the case? It seems like coming to the conclusion that there could be a multiverse based on logical, mathematical or theoretical implications of physics is qualitatively different from a scientific standpoint, than me concluding that I saw God in a patch of clouds in the sky that reminded me of a sculpture of Jesus I once saw or something.

The scientific perspective implies that with enough smarts and good enough experiments we might be able to learn the inner workings of reality itself someday. That seems to me to be somewhat on a better footing than one person having a lucid dream that he met aliens who told him about the nature of reality (If that's the sort of "proof" the OP is using).

[seeds]

Is a theory based on principles of physics in the same or even a worse league credibility-wise with random dreams, illusions or guesses based on vague hunches that make us think something is the case? It seems like coming to the conclusion that there could be a multiverse based on logical, mathematical or theoretical implications of physics is qualitatively different from a scientific standpoint, than me concluding that I saw God in a patch of clouds in the sky that reminded me of a sculpture of Jesus I once saw or something.

The scientific perspective implies that with enough smarts and good enough experiments we might be able to learn the inner workings of reality itself someday. That seems to me to be somewhat on a better footing than one person having a lucid dream that he met aliens who told him about the nature of reality (If that's the sort of "proof" the OP is using).

I understand where you are coming from, Gary, and to a certain extent I agree with what you are getting at. Indeed, my own theory suggests the existence of a multiverse.

However, the implications of the type of multiverse that is derived from the "Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics" (MWI) are so utterly ridiculous that, again, they make Senad's wild "karmicons" theory sound reasonable.

And if you doubt that, then you just haven't given much (if any) thought to the difference between regular old "multiverse" theories and that of the "Many Worlds" theory.

As one of my perhaps overused examples of just how ridiculous the "Many Worlds" theory truly is, the theory allows for the possibility that all 8 billion humans presently alive on planet Earth, along with the Earth and the sun and the rest of the 2 trillion galaxies of our entire universe,...

...may have just now come into existence a mere 10 minutes ago as the result of a branching that occurred due to the interplay between the quantum particles of methane gas from a loud and stinking fart emitted from the anus of a bear in the woods of a parallel universe.

I call it the "Tiny Toot" theory as opposed to the "Big Bang" theory.

Is that ridiculous enough for you?

And that's not even the most absurd of the MWI's implications.

Yeah, yeah, I know, some will accuse me of relying on the ol' "reductio ad absurdum" method of argumentation to rail against what some (such as Carroll, Tegmark, and Deutsch) believe to be a plausible theory.

But that's okay, because according to the theory, I'm probably giving the MWI an enthusiastic thumbs-up in a parallel universe as I fart 3 million new universes into existence from that universe, and then 3 million copies of me in those parallel universes each fart 3 million new universes into existence from their universes, and so on, and so on, ad infinitum.
_______

[Gary Childress]

Is a theory based on principles of physics in the same or even a worse league credibility-wise with random dreams, illusions or guesses based on vague hunches that make us think something is the case? It seems like coming to the conclusion that there could be a multiverse based on logical, mathematical or theoretical implications of physics is qualitatively different from a scientific standpoint, than me concluding that I saw God in a patch of clouds in the sky that reminded me of a sculpture of Jesus I once saw or something.

The scientific perspective implies that with enough smarts and good enough experiments we might be able to learn the inner workings of reality itself someday. That seems to me to be somewhat on a better footing than one person having a lucid dream that he met aliens who told him about the nature of reality (If that's the sort of "proof" the OP is using).

I understand where you are coming from, Gary, and to a certain extent I agree with what you are getting at. Indeed, my own theory suggests the existence of a multiverse.

However, the implications of the type of multiverse that is derived from the "Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics" (MWI) are so utterly ridiculous that, again, they make Senad's wild "karmicons" theory sound reasonable.

And if you doubt that, then you just haven't given much (if any) thought to the difference between regular old "multiverse" theories and that of the "Many Worlds" theory.

As one of my perhaps overused examples of just how ridiculous the "Many Worlds" theory truly is, the theory allows for the possibility that all 8 billion humans presently alive on planet Earth, along with the Earth and the sun and the rest of the 2 trillion galaxies of our entire universe,...

...may have just now come into existence a mere 10 minutes ago as the result of a branching that occurred due to the interplay between the quantum particles of methane gas from a loud and stinking fart emitted from the anus of a bear in the woods of a parallel universe.

I call it the "Tiny Toot" theory as opposed to the "Big Bang" theory.

Is that ridiculous enough for you?

And that's not even the most absurd of the MWI's implications.

Yeah, yeah, I know, some will accuse me of relying on the ol' "reductio ad absurdum" method of argumentation to rail against what some (such as Carroll, Tegmark, and Deutsch) believe to be a plausible theory.

But that's okay, because according to the theory, I'm probably giving the MWI an enthusiastic thumbs-up in a parallel universe as I fart 3 million new universes into existence from that universe, and then 3 million copies of me in those parallel universes each fart 3 million new universes into existence from their universes, and so on, and so on, ad infinitum.
_______

Well, if it strikes you as that absurd, then maybe it is. I don't know what Carroll, Tegmark, and Deutsch believe about a "multiverse" but I saw where Brian Greene tried to use an example of how "now" exists indefinitely as information travels at light speed transmitting what happened "now" over the expanse of the rest of the universe. Maybe it's something like telescopes right now looking at galaxies the way they existed billions of years ago. I suppose stuff that happened billions of years ago is happening in front of us right now in a strange sense. I've heard physicists claim that the quantum uncertainty principle "really" is the product of "randomness". I wouldn't know how to begin to challenge that belief. Apparently, math is on their side and not on mine. But it seems that if a planet full of living beings blew up 10 billion years ago and we're just now witnessing it happen, that what we are witnessing a kind of "fake" event, or "perceived" past that is not the case at this instant in time. But I've heard it claimed that that is the wrong way to look at the past. It's difficult for us laymen to keep up with what the latest theories are and their full implications. I've always had a suspicion that "quantum" randomness wouldn't be truly random if we knew all the variables at work in an event. I remember when "Chaos theory" was a new thing. I'm still not sure if "Chaos theory" truly means there is "chaos" or if it's just our perception due to having limited knowledge and understanding of what is going on. Is there such a thing as "perfect" knowledge? And if there is, could the one who had it predict EVERYTHING exactly as it will happen based on understanding all the possible variables that affect an event?

[Eodnhoj7]

What would be the best book on Christianity for an atheist?

One with the valid proof that god does not exist.

Missing valid evidence for god's nonexistence is the atheist's Pain Point. For thousands of years, they have been arguing with theists about god's existence, but can't get past the word-against-word stalemate.

I have discovered the first valid evidence that god does NOT exist because that is not possible. In fact, in my new book series "It's Finally PROVEN! God Does NOT Exist The FIRST valid EVIDENCE in History", I present four pieces of evidence, scientific, logical, ontological, and experiential.

Read more about this breakthrough and game-changing book series on my webpage https://god-doesntexist.com/

P.S. I presented three objective pieces of evidence (the fourth one is subjective but fully supports and reinforces the first three) to multiple AIs - ChatGPT and Claude, and both acknowledged that they are logically irrefutable.

Of course God does not exist, only things exist and if God is above all things, existence, than God is not a thing.

However is god is not a thing, than God exists as the relative absence of things, God is the thus the act of distinction as absence.

If God is distinction than God is everpresent through all things yet not limited to anything.

Things only exist because of distinctions and yet distinction is not limited to things. Reality is purely a distinction within distinctions, God is infinite cycles within cycles that appears as effectively nothing in the absolute sense while dually is everpresent cycles within the relative sense.

In this case, you don't need to call "nothing, distinction, and absence" "god". You can use their native names: nothing, distinction, and absence.

But, before that, two of your "ifs" put all your theory under the question mark. You first say "if", and then proceed like it is already true.

"if God is above all things" and "If God is distinction": first answer your own questions, support them with valid evidence, and then formulate a conclusion.

To look in a dictionary you would see one word leading to another, one word nested within and through other words. To say "x" is "x means y". This is the natural course of definition.

Given the universality of "distinction and nothingness" and God having a universal nature, to equate the two conceptual paradigms is not irrational nor a stretch.

If cyclicality is universal to all things by degree of things repeating across time, and the inherent symmetry of things by degree of repeated limits, the cycle can be congruent to a Divine Order which is inevitable in existence as existence.

So...evidence? Evidence is purely an interpretation that match perceptual patterns. You have to be more precise what you mean by evidence. Some claim empiricality is pure evidence, others abstraction (logic, math).

If God is subject to purely existence than God would cease to be all powerful as existence precedes God. Existence would be the God above God. God must be beyond existence...effectively nothing so to speak.

If God is everpresent, and distinction is everpresent across all existence, than God exists through everpresent distinction. Distinction is existence itself, it allows for the empirical and abstract but is not limited to them and what is empirical and what is abstract are but distinctions. Distinction is proto-existence.

So God is both nothing and occurs through distinction (proto-existence).

What now?

Nothingness is the everpresent potentiality by which distinction occurs. We know distinction by change for change manifests contrast.

Change occurs as the emergence and dissolution of distinctions (you can use the term "limits, boundaries, forms" if this is easier to conceptualize).

The emergence and dissolution of distinction can only occur if there is the space to do so, this space to do so is 'void as potentiality'. Things occur only of specific things are absent in the space by which the thing occurs.

Each distinction is the means for further distinctions as a distinction is empty it itself without the relationship to other distinctions. Each distinction as empty in itself is the space for other distinctiona to occur from said distinction.

If all distinctions are void in themselves and are the means by which other distinctions occur than nothingness is the central cause of being by which distinction is the actuality of nothingness.

Void is beyond being, as not being. This is God.

Void is everpresent across distinction as the means of distinction. This is God.

[Age]

...it seems to me you are claiming that while everyone experiences god, anyone whose interpretation is different to yours is condemned to whatever your particular version of hell is.

Well, will, there are "experiences" and "experiences." Let me suggest what I mean by that.

I know who Taylor Swift is. In that sense, I have "experienced" her. I have seen her likeness on TV. I have heard her music. I have even heard some rumours of her romantic attachments lately. They're all in the press. But would you say I have "experienced" Taylor Swift? In a sense, yes; I know she exists. But in another sense, no; I've never met her, have no real contact with her, don't even desire one, and have little use for her music and none for her personal life.

Which way are we using the word "experience" when we say men all have an "experience of God"? I suggest it's in the first way. All men know He exists,

Next you will be, laughably, 'trying to' claim that all adult males of the species human being also know God is a male.

you really do say some of the most stupidest things "immanuel can".

1. Why do you claim that only all 'men' know?

2.That God is male gendered? And,

2. That a male gendered God exists?

that Creation displays his handiwork, that morality is real, and so forth. But that's not the important issue: the important question is, what is their relationship to Him? How deep and accurate and personally committed is that relationship? Or do they have only the relationship I have with Taylor Swift, which admittedly is full of holes, generally negative and disapproving, and practically dismissive?

your relationship with the actual Thing that some call God has more 'holes' than the relationship that those who even disbelieve in God's existence have.

[Age]

...it can be known, for sure, that 'thoughts', themselves, exist. Which are, obviously, some thing other than awareness.

What is a thought without awareness?

An unaware thought.

What is awareness without a thought?

[Age]

Hey, don't despise a cup of seawater. It's a genuine sample of the Pacific Ocean, which remains fully real, despite my limitations in sampling it.

I don't despise the seawater you have in your cup, I just reject your belief that it gives you a better insight to the Pacific ocean than anyone else's cupful.

I haven't said that. All I'm implying is that the little cup of seawater would give that man a genuine experience with the Pacific Ocean, however small; and somebody else's dry cup would give them nothing at all.

But, if the 'pacific ocean' does not even exist, in the beginning, then the 'dry cup' might well be actually showing, and revealing, 'much more'.

[Age]

I reply to the original post:-

But there were no atheists until the last few hundred years. There is no recorded history of people who did not believe in the existence of God or gods until the last few hundred years.

Hi, I asked AI Copilot for some of the sources:

Ancient Atheists and Non-Believers

1. University of Cambridge Study

Tim Whitmarsh, Professor of Greek Culture, argues that atheism is as natural to humans as religion. His research shows that ancient societies tolerated and even embraced atheistic thought, especially in polytheistic cultures like Greece and Rome.
“People in the ancient world did not always believe in the gods… atheists thrived in the polytheistic societies of the ancient world.”

Source: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/dis ... s-religion

2. Battling the Gods: Atheism in the Ancient World

This book by Tim Whitmarsh explores ancient Greek thinkers who rejected divine authority. Key figures include:

• Diagoras of Melos – openly mocked religion and was labeled “the first atheist.”
• Theodorus the Atheist – denied the existence of gods and was exiled for his views.
• Democritus – proposed a materialist universe without divine intervention.

Source: https://www.worldhistory.org/review/180 ... ent-world/

3. Wikipedia: History of Atheism

The entry outlines how explicit atheism dates back to ancient India, China, and Greece. Philosophers like Charvaka in India and Xunzi in China rejected supernatural beliefs.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_atheism

The karmicons, energy beings, and humans from higher dimensions, and members of the Evil Karmic Organization, believed that the universe is in balance between Good and Evil. They created our part of the cosmos in a dialectical form of dual opposition - yin-yang, white and black, theists and atheists, to establish the "balance" between opposing forces.

They were Evil, so they made a step further and intentionally created conflicts between the oppositions to produce negative energy. Read more about the Karmic Organization here: https://god-doesntexist.com/the-karmic- ... the-truth/

The karmicons also created all religions, gods, and faiths, including Yahweh, Jesus (who never existed as a real person), angels, and Satan and demons. If you start observing the world, you will see this dual pattern. If you want to check my statement, I suggest you learn lucid dreaming and use it to meet inhabitants of other planets you dream with every night.

They will tell you that I am telling the truth, and that incarnations are ended. What does that mean? People from the higher planets were forcibly incarnated into people from lower planets. Earth is the lowest, and that is the reason we didn't incarnate. Before incarnation, the karmicons created plans and karmic scripts for the incarnants with details from birth to death. They predetermined everything - thoughts, feelings and emotions, words, and acts. All of them.

Part of the karmic script was also religious orientation. Religious believers on Earth believe in god because the karmicons programmed them to believe. The atheist on Earth doesn't believe in god because the karmicons did not program them to believe in him.

Learn to lucid dream and ask people from other planets about incarnations - if they were forced to go and if they have ended. Here is the article with explanations and exercises: https://god-doesntexist.com/lucid-dream ... in-dreams/

If you want, I will assist you gladly.

By the way, in my book series, I present three objective pieces of evidence and one subjective, experiential. I have decades-long and regular communication with the karmicons, and I know they created all religions, gods, and faiths as part of the incarnational scripts for incarnants who were forcibly incarnated on lower humans' baby bodies.

Religious believers believe that their god movie is real, while I know that it is just a movie, as I know the scriptwriters and directors who created them and their movie.

Remember The Matrix? That's it, a planetary Simulation.

Luckily, the karmicons' Drama is running out, and the day is coming when we, the new Cosmic Administration, https://god-doesntexist.com/cosmic-administration/, will present you the Truth, together with material evidence and concrete persons that created Earth, and in our case, all of its' religions, gods, and faiths, and programmed believers to believe in fairy tales.

Greetings Senad and welcome to the PN loon asylum.

I see that you've already met a few of my fellow patients.

In order to save you from losing a few precious brain cells, I was going to warn you about patient Age who seems to believe that he is channeling an incorporeal intelligence who inspired the writing of the Bible way back when,...

Once again, your persistent belief and claim, here, could not be more skewed, nor False. But, please do not let that stop you from repeating your own distorted beliefs, here. Even after you have been informed that your own interpreting is Wrong.

[Age]

I don’t often (ever?) agree with you, but you’ve summed up the whole business here. BTW, that is why I am an agnostic. I suppose theists as well as atheists could cite the same reasons.

You neither agree nor disagree as far as I am aware. Anything in particular you have disagreed with and whY?

I agree with you too, about most of this. Non-existence is an extremely difficult thing to prove, even for ordinary things. It can be done, but it's very hard. But take it to the task of trying to disprove a transcendent, timeless, omnipotent Being, God, and one would oneself have to have the capacities of God to do it.

It is, in fact, very simple and easy to do.

When God is called a "he", and thus defined as being male, and this "he" claimed to have created absolutely every thing, then to prove that this "he" does not exist can be done in two ways. Which no one could refute. This, by extension, proved to not exist.

you adult human beings, here, in the days when this is being written, hold some very strong and very distorted beliefs about how it is too hard and too complex to just understand, and know, how things actually work, like for example, the brain, the Mind, the Universe, et cetera, as well as believing it is too hard and too complex to just find out what the actual irrefutable Truth if things is, exactly, like for example, who and what you human beings and God are, exactly, and whether things like God actually exist or not.

These things are some of the most simplistic and easiest things to know, for sure, and thus are irrefutable by any one.

I make only one caveat. I don't actually agree with your definition of faith. I know the skeptics find it convenient to define it as something like, "belief with no evidence," or else "belief against evidence"; but that's just so they can have an easy pseudo-win, and depart the field rejoicing too early. They know that if one accepts their terms, then one has already lost, because they've loaded the assumptions against faith in their basic definition. Fortunately, there's no justification in their insistence that the relation between faith and reason is antithetical.

Better definitions are not only possible but available. Here's one:

"Faith is simply the process of applying what you do know with certainty to a new situation about which you are not completely confident. Faith projects intelligently."

Now, that's a much better understanding of what faith is.

Here, 'we' can see a prime example when one conveniently 'tries to' to define a word so that they can have an easy pseudo-win, and depart the field rejoicing too early. They know that if one accepts their terms, then one has already lost, because they have loaded the assumptions for that word in their basic definition.

We might also say that this combination of faith and previous experience is at work every time one steps into an elevator. One doesn't know for certain that the elevator box won't plummet and kill one, as maybe one has been told that some elevators have done in past...but one can be pretty sure it won't, and accept the entailed uncertainty and the part of it that involves not-knowing readily, because it's not highly likely that elevators will fail. [/quote]

Once again, what 'we' have, here,.is another human being 'trying' their absolute hardest to justify of using and doing some thing, which is completely unnecessary and which is actually not just destructive to them but also if continued on with is destructive to the whole of humanity.

But, do not let this Truth change 'your ways', here, "immanuel can".

you believe you know better than others, here, do you have absolutely no reason to change, for the better, for the betterment of 'you', and others.

And, of course, it's quite certain God will not.

[Will Bouwman]

I realize that you and I have covered this territory many times in the past,...

...but hey, if you're going to list the questionable creation stories of some of the more outspoken lunatics on this forum,...

(btw, thanks a heap, old bean, for lumping your old mucker in with the likes of Age)

Ah, well the lunacy is not in the ideas, it is in the conviction with which they are held. I can't prove that the ideas of Mr Can, Senad Dizdarevic, Age or any of the other prima facie nutters are wrong. What would make any of them actual nutters would be their insistence that only their interpretation could be true. I think the tentative way you present your ideas excludes you from that.

...then don't forget to include (in absentia) the millions of esteemed materialists who also offer-up highly questionable (and unprovable) creation stories.

Ya gotta understand that materialism is a very broad church. In its simplest form, it is just the belief that there is something other than ideas, and the working hypothesis of day to day physics is that the something is at least one quantum field. For practical purposes, a field is anywhere that a force can, at least in theory, be measured, generally by observing the effect on objects upon which the field has influence. Materialism is the belief that something other than ideas causes those effects, which seems entirely plausible, but no competent physicist will insist we really understand any of the mechanisms that result in fields such as electric, magnetic or gravitational, all of which we can measure very accurately without knowing what causes them.

I shan't bore you again with the details, but I am of course referring to the shallow thinkers who hold a religious-like "faith" in the notion that the unfathomable order of just our one little solar "system" alone...

(never mind the ordered status of the estimated two trillion galaxies of other solar "systems")

...can be attributed to the chance stumble-bumbling's of the blind and mindless meanderings of gravity and thermodynamics.

That's quite the unprovable "creation story," don't you think?

Yup. But then all creation stories are unprovable.

Yet that is almost precisely what hardcore materialists must accept if they are going to profess their, again, "faith" in the creative abilities of blind and mindless materialism.

Oh, and don't forget to include the creation story of yet another "branch" of esteemed materialists...

(such as Sean Carroll, Max Tegmark, and David Deutsch, to name a few)

...who resolutely believe that millions of "copies" of you, and of me, and of all two trillion of the abovementioned galaxies, just now "sprang into existence"...

(as in "branched-off" of our universe)

...from the alleged interplay that took place between your eyes and that of the photons of light emitted from your computer screen in the time it took you to read this sentence.

Boy, that's a doozy, no?

Indeed, when it comes to "unprovable/utterly nonsensical" creation stories,...

...I suggest that my story, Age's story (whatever that is), the new guy's "karmicons" story, the Biblical story, the Koran story, the Hindu story, the Buddhist story, etc., etc.,...

...are all put to utter shame by the sheer outrageousness of the materialist's MWI story, yet you failed to mention it.

How come?
_______

For the same reason I didn't mention the ideas of Plato, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel or any of the thousands of possibilities explored by scientists and philosophers over the ages - there's just too many of them. But since you bring it up, yeah it's a doozy. Here's the thing I'm struggling with at the moment: if something is possible, what is there to stop it being actual? To put it another way, if you remove everything that exists, including any gods, have you eliminated possibility? I don't know the answer and while I understand Senad Dizdarevic argues that you can't create something out of nothing, and I suspect Mr Can would claim that without his god nothing is possible, my gut feeling, my aesthetic choice as I sometimes frame it, is that even if god is removed, or does't exist in the first place, possibility remains. Therefore there is something greater than any god and all versions of the ontological argument are unsound; unless possibility in some sense is god. Now, am I mad enough to think that is possible? Absolutely, but not so mad as to believe that because it is an irrefutable hypothesis, it is therefore true.
It's a fun idea though and it is a context that can make sense of the many worlds interpretation. If it is possible that possibility is in some sense 'god' and can create anything, what prevents 'god' from creating every world that is possible? Is a god that does that not greater than a god that can only create one imperfect world? How might a god create every possible world, you say? Well, one way is to create a universe in which every possible quantum state is real - if a particle can go left, then in one corner of the universe, it does so; in another, it goes right and, here's the bit that really freaks you out, in every possible corner, the particle goes in every possible direction. If a god that could do that exists, why would it not do so?

[Will Bouwman]

...it seems to me you are claiming that while everyone experiences god, anyone whose interpretation is different to yours is condemned to whatever your particular version of hell is.

Well, will, there are "experiences" and "experiences." Let me suggest what I mean by that.

I know who Taylor Swift is. In that sense, I have "experienced" her. I have seen her likeness on TV. I have heard her music. I have even heard some rumours of her romantic attachments lately. They're all in the press. But would you say I have "experienced" Taylor Swift? In a sense, yes; I know she exists. But in another sense, no; I've never met her, have no real contact with her, don't even desire one, and have little use for her music and none for her personal life.

Which way are we using the word "experience" when we say men all have an "experience of God"? I suggest it's in the first way.

In which case you have no direct experience of 'God'.

You can explore the whole ocean. But it has to be the genuine Pacific you're exploring, or you still have no knowledge of the Pacific. If you're in the Atlantic or the Indian, you're simply in the wrong waters. So whatever we say about God, it needs to be true of God, not merely true according to some wish about God.

If, as in Christianity, for example, Jesus Christ says, "I and the Father are one", and "He who has seen Me has seen the Father," and as in Islam, somebody else says, "God has no son," then you've got a decision to make: it's no longer a case of a big enough ocean, as you suggest -- rather, very clearly you're now in two different oceans. You'll have to pick.

But here's what won't make sense: believing contradictory things about God at the same time. That's not even logically possible

Which brings us back to the argumentum ad populum you attempt here:

The evidence of God is around us. It's on every side, actually. I can see it, and so can almost the entire rest of the human race, at least in partial measure; for 92% of them believe in at least the likelihood of some sort of "god."

You cannot claim that people who believe in the Atlantic ocean support your belief in the Pacific. I don't know how many people are committed to the very limited interpretation you have of your indirect experience of 'God', but I suspect it is commensurate with the amount of water in a teacup relative to the Pacific ocean.

[Belinda]

I realize that you and I have covered this territory many times in the past,...

...but hey, if you're going to list the questionable creation stories of some of the more outspoken lunatics on this forum,...

(btw, thanks a heap, old bean, for lumping your old mucker in with the likes of Age)

Ah, well the lunacy is not in the ideas, it is in the conviction with which they are held. I can't prove that the ideas of Mr Can, Senad Dizdarevic, Age or any of the other prima facie nutters are wrong. What would make any of them actual nutters would be their insistence that only their interpretation could be true. I think the tentative way you present your ideas excludes you from that.

...then don't forget to include (in absentia) the millions of esteemed materialists who also offer-up highly questionable (and unprovable) creation stories.

Ya gotta understand that materialism is a very broad church. In its simplest form, it is just the belief that there is something other than ideas, and the working hypothesis of day to day physics is that the something is at least one quantum field. For practical purposes, a field is anywhere that a force can, at least in theory, be measured, generally by observing the effect on objects upon which the field has influence. Materialism is the belief that something other than ideas causes those effects, which seems entirely plausible, but no competent physicist will insist we really understand any of the mechanisms that result in fields such as electric, magnetic or gravitational, all of which we can measure very accurately without knowing what causes them.

I shan't bore you again with the details, but I am of course referring to the shallow thinkers who hold a religious-like "faith" in the notion that the unfathomable order of just our one little solar "system" alone...

(never mind the ordered status of the estimated two trillion galaxies of other solar "systems")

...can be attributed to the chance stumble-bumbling's of the blind and mindless meanderings of gravity and thermodynamics.

That's quite the unprovable "creation story," don't you think?

Yup. But then all creation stories are unprovable.

Yet that is almost precisely what hardcore materialists must accept if they are going to profess their, again, "faith" in the creative abilities of blind and mindless materialism.

Oh, and don't forget to include the creation story of yet another "branch" of esteemed materialists...

(such as Sean Carroll, Max Tegmark, and David Deutsch, to name a few)

...who resolutely believe that millions of "copies" of you, and of me, and of all two trillion of the abovementioned galaxies, just now "sprang into existence"...

(as in "branched-off" of our universe)

...from the alleged interplay that took place between your eyes and that of the photons of light emitted from your computer screen in the time it took you to read this sentence.

Boy, that's a doozy, no?

Indeed, when it comes to "unprovable/utterly nonsensical" creation stories,...

...I suggest that my story, Age's story (whatever that is), the new guy's "karmicons" story, the Biblical story, the Koran story, the Hindu story, the Buddhist story, etc., etc.,...

...are all put to utter shame by the sheer outrageousness of the materialist's MWI story, yet you failed to mention it.

How come?
_______

For the same reason I didn't mention the ideas of Plato, Berkeley, Kant, Hegel or any of the thousands of possibilities explored by scientists and philosophers over the ages - there's just too many of them. But since you bring it up, yeah it's a doozy. Here's the thing I'm struggling with at the moment: if something is possible, what is there to stop it being actual? To put it another way, if you remove everything that exists, including any gods, have you eliminated possibility? I don't know the answer and while I understand Senad Dizdarevic argues that you can't create something out of nothing, and I suspect Mr Can would claim that without his god nothing is possible, my gut feeling, my aesthetic choice as I sometimes frame it, is that even if god is removed, or does't exist in the first place, possibility remains. Therefore there is something greater than any god and all versions of the ontological argument are unsound; unless possibility in some sense is god. Now, am I mad enough to think that is possible? Absolutely, but not so mad as to believe that because it is an irrefutable hypothesis, it is therefore true.
It's a fun idea though and it is a context that can make sense of the many worlds interpretation. If it is possible that possibility is in some sense 'god' and can create anything, what prevents 'god' from creating every world that is possible? Is a god that does that not greater than a god that can only create one imperfect world? How might a god create every possible world, you say? Well, one way is to create a universe in which every possible quantum state is real - if a particle can go left, then in one corner of the universe, it does so; in another, it goes right and, here's the bit that really freaks you out, in every possible corner, the particle goes in every possible direction. If a god that could do that exists, why would it not do so?

Possibility is even more interesting than probability. The thing about God is that He can and does choose which possibility must be the case.What He chooses is what religionists call His "Word" . excuse the capital letter "He" ---it's convenient for marking the personal pronoun not as an honorific. God is the Measurer par excellence. Measuring is what He does for a living. Believers accept God's measurements as the only possibility to be actualised.

*Daoism paints a good allegorical picture:- the multitude of possibilities is female and the actualising event is male .

*Similarly God impregnated Mary.

*Similarly Zeus impregnated Leda and others.