The first valid evidence that god does NOT exist

[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.

I submit that quantum physics has ousted the traditional transcendent, supernatural God and enthroned the totally immanent God---- who is of course a poetic way to describe Humanism.

[Will Bouwman]

Here's the thing I'm struggling with at the moment: if something is possible, what is there to stop it being actual?...

...Possibility is even more interesting than probability. The thing about God is that He can and does choose which possibility must be the case.

In which case god is either limited by some constraints on possibility, and therefore not omnipotent; or, as you suggest here:

What He chooses is what religionists call His "Word"...

Well then you get into the argument about free will. If god does all the choosing, what role do we play? See, one of the possibilities that make this bonkers idea sexy, is that it allows the possibility that a genuinely omnipotent and omnibenevolent god has created circumstances in which every soul has every possible choice available to them. Therefore, at least one iteration will make all the appropriate choices to please their god and make it through the Pearly Gates, if that is where you wish to go.
Think I'll pay a visit to the shrink now.

[Belinda]

Here's the thing I'm struggling with at the moment: if something is possible, what is there to stop it being actual?...

...Possibility is even more interesting than probability. The thing about God is that He can and does choose which possibility must be the case.

In which case god is either limited by some constraints on possibility, and therefore not omnipotent; or, as you suggest here:

What He chooses is what religionists call His "Word"...

Well then you get into the argument about free will. If god does all the choosing, what role do we play? See, one of the possibilities that make this bonkers idea sexy, is that it allows the possibility that a genuinely omnipotent and omnibenevolent god has created circumstances in which every soul has every possible choice available to them. Therefore, at least one iteration will make all the appropriate choices to please their god and make it through the Pearly Gates, if that is where you wish to go.
Think I'll pay a visit to the shrink now.

But constraints are relative conditions so they don't apply to God. He chooses what He sees to be good. As Christianity would have it , the Father ,i.e. the essence of God ,is mediated to us via His incarnation as a man. Islam and Judaism have their own mediation events.

Free Will is an invention for aiding social control. Monotheism’s coherence doesn’t depend on human free will —(See Spinoza and others)Monotheism can be coherent without free will, but ethical theism - the worship of a just God - cannot. Since Augustine and later Aquinas, theologians have wrestled with this tension: how divine omnipotence and justice can coexist with genuine human choice.

Some religionists, such as Al-Ash‘ari in Islam or William of Ockham in Christian scholasticism, deny that truth is an intrinsic attribute of God, treating it instead as dependent on God’s will.

Research credit ChatGPT

[Will Bouwman]

But constraints are relative conditions so they don't apply to God.

Ok. So God is unconstrained.

He chooses what He sees to be good.

Why could an unconstrained god not see more than one good?

[Belinda]

But constraints are relative conditions so they don't apply to God.

Ok. So God is unconstrained.

He chooses what He sees to be good.

Why could an unconstrained god not see more than one good?

God is neither constrained or unconstrained , those are human concepts subject to empiricism.
Immanent God does see more than one good. Immanent God is reality in process.For instance in the Book of Ruth, Ruth has to decide where her loyalty should lie with her dead husband's tribe or with her own birth tribe.

God’s presence is woven into human choices, not just imposed from above.

[Immanuel Can]

...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'.

All I pointed out was that one can claim different kinds of "experience." I didn't say I don't have one, or that you don't, perhaps -- how would I know about you, just as you wouldn't know about me? But not all "experiences" are equal. That much is for sure.

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."

I wasn't making an argument based on proportion of numbers, so no ad populum. I was just pointing out that the claim of the plausiblity of the existence of God is not at all a rare phenomenon, so the contrary argument -- say, that 'your experience doesn't count for most people,' or 'not enough people' have one or another kind of awareness of God doesn't really get much traction with reality.

[Will Bouwman]

All I pointed out was that one can claim different kinds of "experience." I didn't say I don't have one, or that you don't, perhaps -- how would I know about you, just as you wouldn't know about me? But not all "experiences" are equal. That much is for sure.

All experiences are equal in that they are experiences. You and I could have essentially the same experience, to which you say:

I find it personally amazing how hard people keep working to keep themselves from seeing it.

"It" being evidence for your god. It really takes very little effort to accept that there are different potential causes for precisely the same experience; certainly less than it takes to restrict the possibilities to one.

I wasn't making an argument based on proportion of numbers, so no ad populum. I was just pointing out that the claim of the plausiblity of the existence of God is not at all a rare phenomenon, so the contrary argument -- say, that 'your experience doesn't count for most people,' or 'not enough people' have one or another kind of awareness of God doesn't really get much traction with reality.

I disagree. The reality is that even among people who profess to be Christians, the plausiblity of the existence of your god is a rare phenomenon.

[seeds]

I submit that quantum physics has ousted the traditional transcendent, supernatural God and enthroned the totally immanent God---- who is of course a poetic way to describe Humanism.

Quite the contrary, Belinda.

Quantum physics (at least from my reading of it) has given credence to Bishop Berkeley's concept of the universe being the MIND of God.

And that's because if it is indeed true that the universe is the MIND of a higher consciousness, then the fundamental substance from which the phenomenal contents of that higher MIND is created should resemble "mind-stuff," in that it should be able to be formed into absolutely anything "IMAGINABLE."

And that is precisely what quantum physics (quantum mechanics) implies regarding the substance from which the stars, planets, and our bodies and brains are created.

And just to be clear, that discovery no more zeros-in on what God truly is than would an accurate (scientific assessment) of the substance from which our own thoughts and dreams are created would provide us with a clear understanding of what the "thinker" of thoughts, and the "dreamer" of dreams truly is,...

...for in both cases, the actual ontological status of what both we and God truly are,...

(as in what our "I Am-nesses"/"souls" truly are)

..."transcends" the substance that the "I Am-nesses" use to create what we call "reality."
_______

[Immanuel Can]

All I pointed out was that one can claim different kinds of "experience." I didn't say I don't have one, or that you don't, perhaps -- how would I know about you, just as you wouldn't know about me? But not all "experiences" are equal. That much is for sure.

All experiences are equal in that they are experiences.

That's like saying, "All dogs are equal, in that they are dogs." Even if true, it misses a whole lot. There are chihuahuas, and there are great danes. There are small experiences, and there are profound ones.

It really takes very little effort to accept that there are different potential causes for precisely the same experience; certainly less than it takes to restrict the possibilities to one.

Causes are always limited to what is both available to and capable of causing the phenomenon in the first place. Sometimes, that's only one thing. Sometimes it's a couple. Usually, there's a balance of probabilities that makes one much more probable than the other. But all empirical knowing, being a matter of data+faith, involves a potential margin of indecision -- but often, that margin is not very large.

It's hard to discuss in vague terms, as you are now doing. In specific cases, it's usually easy to see which is which.

I wasn't making an argument based on proportion of numbers, so no ad populum. I was just pointing out that the claim of the plausiblity of the existence of God is not at all a rare phenomenon, so the contrary argument -- say, that 'your experience doesn't count for most people,' or 'not enough people' have one or another kind of awareness of God doesn't really get much traction with reality.

I disagree.

I'm not sure you really can, with a 92% statistic going the other way, and another 4% uncertain. It leaves you only a 4% margin with which to ground your "disagreeing." It seems that quite a lot of people have a belief that their experiences do warrant at least a basic conviction that a God or gods do exist. Atheists are a statistically rare breed, actually; and their lack of experience would not tell against the experiences of others, because the fact that one man says "I never experienced that" doesn't imply somebody else didn't.

The reality is that even among people who profess to be Christians, the plausiblity of the existence of your god is a rare phenomenon.

I don't think it is. But if you do, I'd be interested in the evidence that you use to prove to yourself that you know what they experience.

[seeds]

Ya gotta understand that materialism is a very broad church.

As is spirituality.

What's your point?

In its simplest form, it is just the belief that there is something other than ideas,...

No, old bean, in its simplest form...

(at least in regard to the "hardcore" version of materialism)

...it (materialism) is a faith-based belief system...

(if not overtly professed, then it must be acknowledged as such by sheer default)

...whose popes, and ministers and deacons all believe that the unthinkable order of the universe, which led to the manifestation of life, mind, and consciousness on what seems to be a perfect and impossibly stable and well-equipped setting,...

...a setting (the Earth) that is powered by a perfect (almost inexhaustible) source of heat, light, and DNA-driving energy,...

...was somehow achieved by, again, the blind and mindless stumble-bumbling's of an unconscious substance that could not possibly have had the slightest clue as to what it was creating until...

"...lo and behold..."

...consciousness emerged from what the mindless substance had "accidently formed itself into" during the billions of years leading up to that miraculous (unplanned) moment when "something" that could consciously assess the remarkable status of the setting from which the conscious "something" emerged --> emerged.

Now ^^^that^^^ (in my humble opinion) is the "simplest form" of what the belief in materialism actually entails.

But since you bring it [MWI] 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?...

...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?

Hmm, let me think for a second. Oh, I know, how about practicality? Or logic? Or common sense?

(Oh dear, I feel a rant coming on. I'll try to keep it short.)

I mean, we can't even begin to fathom how just this one unthinkably vast and complex universe came into being, but we nevertheless estimate that it took at least 13.8 billion years to reach its present state.

Yet here you are seeming to defend the "possibility" of it being "possible" that trillions of almost precise copies of it (and of you and me) - "instantly" spring into existence (fully-formed) every second of every minute of every hour of every day, etc., etc.,...

...all for the sake of fulfilling the outcome of each and every "possibility" implicit in the quantum wavefunction, of which there could be a near infinity of possibilities looming in the workings of the quantum underpinning of just our little everyday reality here on just this one planet alone.

And that's not even taking into consideration how many subsequent, fully-formed copies of you and me and this universe that, again, "instantly" spring into existence from the near infinity of universes that branched-off of our universe.

Anyway, the whole point of me sidetracking off into this rant about the MWI was to highlight the fact that it's not just us religious nutjobs and space cadets who come up with (and believe in) some pretty wild "creation stories."
_______

[Age]

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,...

...however,...

(and I mean you no offense, for it would be hypocritical of me [based on my own whacky assertions] not to be open-minded to all possibilities)

...I nevertheless see that you, with this "karmicons" business, could give Age a run for his money.

Again, I don't mean to come off as ridiculing or summarily dismissing your claim,...

...however, if you are going to insist that it is impossible for God to have come into existence from "nothingness" or "somethingness" or whatever it was that gave rise to his (her/its) being,...

...then perhaps if you could give a quick explanation as to how (and from what) these "karmicons" came into existence, it would help clarify your argument.

(P.S., for future reference, if you are going to quote Copilot, or any other chatbot, it would help if you clearly indicate where the quote ends.)
_______

Thank you, you are very kind.



Age has already started to deconstruct his god, so he is halfway to becoming an atheist. He said that his god didn't create the universe from nothing, and that he is not eternal. I will recap his, for most of the Christians, heretic position, in another post.

I understand him and his obsessive fixation that god exists. He is not the only one. Religion is a madhouse, and faith is a mental illness.

We can see the harmful effects of karmic programming everywhere. Besides religious believers, we also have violent persons, sadistic torturers, and addicts who are literally destroying themselves, thinking that that is good for them. They even pay for their poison and financing their illness.

A person who impersonates god and gives Age a false impression of being the "God's chosen one" is just a human from another planet, a karmicon, a karmic con, who is executing part of the karmic script for Age. He is two to three meters above and in front of him, watching him constantly, hearing and feeling everything Age experiences.

I know that my statements about karmicons sound like fantasy. I don't expect you to believe me on my word. We don't need another religion.

That is why I offer a way to check and confirm them.

Every science has its own research methods. Philosophers think. Astronomers observe. Architects digg.

Luckily, and for the time present, there is a superb and easy method to meet inhabitants of other planets and check my statements. Learn to lucid dream and personally meet people from other planets you already dream with every night. Here is the explanation and exercises: https://god-doesntexist.com/lucid-dream ... in-dreams/

I will gladly assist you with your training and research.

There are millions of lucid dreamers on Earth, but they use it for fun, flying, jumping, and playing. There is also the Monroe Institute researching this ability for decades.

Learn and use it to meet inhabitants from other planets. Ask them the questions from my article, and you will realize what is going on and understand that I am telling the truth.

I did not say that "it is impossible for God to have come into existence from "nothingness" or "somethingness" or whatever it was that gave rise to his (her/its) being".

I said that god as Creator of the Universe does not exist because that is not possible - to create Something out of nothing is not possible.

The karmicons, energy beings, and humans from higher dimensions and planets came into existence the same as everybody else.

Existence, not Creation, is eternal. That means that it was never created and will never be destroyed. That also means that everything and everybody in Existence is also eternal.

We never came into existence; we are eternally present in our timeline - in our part of Existence. In one moment, we became conscious (partially during the pregnancy, and fully after birth), and in another moment we lost consciousness (in the Karmic System, they transformed lower humans to their incarnants - humans from the higher planets who were forcibly incarnated into them - after one-week life review on computer tablets - and they lost their personal consciousness, and "died" the second death.

Or in short, people who died on Earth were alive and conscious one week before the karmicons killed them again and transformed them into their incarnants. They left their physical body on Earth and continue in their energy body. That is the same action we perform every night when we dream, exiting the physical body with our energy body.

Existence is Eternal, think about the implications ...

I usually mark quotes; in the above case, it ends with the "Source:".

Considering that you, still, can not comprehend, and so keep misunderstanding, what I have said and meant it is no surprise at all that you say and believe what you do, here.

[Belinda]

I submit that quantum physics has ousted the traditional transcendent, supernatural God and enthroned the totally immanent God---- who is of course a poetic way to describe Humanism.

Quite the contrary, Belinda.

Quantum physics (at least from my reading of it) has given credence to Bishop Berkeley's concept of the universe being the MIND of God.

And that's because if it is indeed true that the universe is the MIND of a higher consciousness, then the fundamental substance from which the phenomenal contents of that higher MIND is created should resemble "mind-stuff," in that it should be able to be formed into absolutely anything "IMAGINABLE."

And that is precisely what quantum physics (quantum mechanics) implies regarding the substance from which the stars, planets, and our bodies and brains are created.

And just to be clear, that discovery no more zeros-in on what God truly is than would an accurate (scientific assessment) of the substance from which our own thoughts and dreams are created would provide us with a clear understanding of what the "thinker" of thoughts, and the "dreamer" of dreams truly is,...

...for in both cases, the actual ontological status of what both we and God truly are,...

(as in what our "I Am-nesses"/"souls" truly are)

..."transcends" the substance that the "I Am-nesses" use to create what we call "reality."
_______

Berkeley is an idealist(immaterialist).An idealist(immaterialist) holds that ideas cause reality, with the proviso that God harmonises ideas with what is the case (His 'Word'). So "the universe" according to Berkeley is not the idea of a higher consciousness but ,among other ideas ,is a human empirical idea .

I doubt if any reputable physicist would claim that any science including physics is infallible. It follows that theories like relativity and entanglement are not 100% true. My contention is not that quantum physics ousts God but that quantum physics adds value to the immanence of God as compared with the transcendence of God.

As for the transcendence of God who knows! The transcendent essence, what theologians call the Father, can be defined only by negation. That is because all attributes are human ideas.

Indeed Christianity with its doctrine of incarnation in Jesus Christ of the Father, is a thoroughly satisfactory explanation and, a human icon being in place, is a better divine sign than those of Islam and Judaism(But that is only a personal choice).

[Impenitent]

trust me...

affirmatively proving or disproving matters of faith is a fool's errand

-Imp

[Will Bouwman]

All I pointed out was that one can claim different kinds of "experience." I didn't say I don't have one, or that you don't, perhaps -- how would I know about you, just as you wouldn't know about me? But not all "experiences" are equal. That much is for sure.

All experiences are equal in that they are experiences.

That's like saying, "All dogs are equal, in that they are dogs." Even if true, it misses a whole lot. There are chihuahuas, and there are great danes. There are small experiences, and there are profound ones.

What is more profound about a great dane than a chihuahua? It seems to me that it isn't the experience that is profound, rather the response.

It really takes very little effort to accept that there are different potential causes for precisely the same experience; certainly less than it takes to restrict the possibilities to one.

Causes are always limited to what is both available to and capable of causing the phenomenon in the first place. Sometimes, that's only one thing.

Well, if that one thing is a god that can do anything, there is no limit to what that one possibility can do.

Sometimes it's a couple. Usually, there's a balance of probabilities that makes one much more probable than the other. But all empirical knowing, being a matter of data+faith, involves a potential margin of indecision -- but often, that margin is not very large.

Ok, so let's look at some empirical facts.

It is an empirical fact that people across the world have experiences that they attribute to some god.
It is also a fact that most will attribute their experience to a god that features in their cultural heritage.

In each case there is plenty of data to support the fact; I don't need any faith to empirically know that. So no, all empirical knowing is not "a matter of data+faith". The faith is in the interpretation of the facts. How then are we to interpret the above two facts? Well, there are no limits to how they might be interpreted, but let's look at two: yours and mine. As I understand, you believe that people's cultural heritage blinds them to the accurate interpretation, the result being that the vast majority of people who have ever lived will spend eternity separated from your god, and that is a very bad thing. I, on the other hand, look at those two facts and interpret them as meaning people will attribute their experience to a god that features in their cultural heritage, because that god features in their cultural heritage.

It's hard to discuss in vague terms, as you are now doing. In specific cases, it's usually easy to see which is which.

Too vague, eh? Ok, so you assert that:

You can know him from the natural world, from your own nature, from conscience, and from revelation...all of which he's made available to everybody.

and:

All men know He exists, that Creation displays his handiwork, that morality is real, and so forth.

According to which there are no special experiences that are necessary to believe in the same god as you. However, you also say:

So an Atheist can only insist there's no God by also insisting nobody has ever had any genuine experience of God -- never anyone, in any religion or by any miracle, and never in history, even once.

Which implies there are special "genuine" experiences that only some people have. So which is more probable: that your god reveals itself in day to day experiences, or that some small fraction of humanity is privileged with "genuine" experiences?

Atheists are a statistically rare breed, actually; and their lack of experience would not tell against the experiences of others, because the fact that one man says "I never experienced that" doesn't imply somebody else didn't.

If an atheist is so because of "their lack of experience", why does your god favour some humans over others?

[Will Bouwman]

Ya gotta understand that materialism is a very broad church.

As is spirituality.

What's your point?

Well, it is that:

In its simplest form, it is just the belief that there is something other than ideas,...

That doesn't rule out the possibility that the something is spirit.

No, old bean, in its simplest form...

(at least in regard to the "hardcore" version of materialism)

Nothing to do with me, mate.