Prove me wrong: there is no God

[Immanuel Can]

A) Of course you do. Because you've arbitrarily decided that all religious beliefs are "superstititions," so NONE of them is true.

B) No, the axiom was "no such thing as an infinite regress OF CAUSES." The cascade of prerequisites is an essential part of the description. You've conveniently eliminated it, in order to make the claim look wrong. It's not. But you have to take the entire claim.

C) And I didn't say anything at all about "outside" any "box." It's just plain true.

D) If I call you "High King Mike, Supreme Overlord of Gath," I'm not merely naming you: I'm pointing out your rank and station, which is a super-important point. Likewise, "First Cause" is not merely a "name": it's the description of function.

A) ---- You ENTIRELY misunderstand what I am doing. I am arguing that "there is a god" is not DERIVABLE from anything about the material realm.

It certainly is. And I've been pointing it out.

You think I need to believe a "religion" TRUE for it to be useful.

No, but "useful" to what?

Whatever your answer is, that's going to turn out to be your 'religion.' Because that's the value you are holding sacred and treating as the touchstone of what is "useful." Do you know what 'religion' you're serving, right now? You might want to consider that carefully.

B) Precisely your problem with refusal to use symbolic logic, drawing conclusions from NAMES.

I've pointed out to you exactly why this accusation is mendacious rubbish. I won't bother to refute it again. You're boring me.

C) It is demonstrably NOT true "outside the box"...

I have no understanding of this "box" of yours, or what "outside" you're thinking of. Speak plainly, please.

D) Precisely the error. You are calling me "High King Mike, Supreme Overlord of Gath," and not merely naming you: I'm pointing out your rank and station, which is a super-important point.

Does your calling me/naming me "Supreme Overlord of Gath" make me supreme overlord of Gath? .

No, and I didn't say it did. I said that a name can be much more than a mere label: it can be a descriptor. "First Cause" isn't a name, actually. It labels no particular entity...yet. It's really a description of function.

And I don't believe you can't see that, so you're playing games.

[Will Bouwman]

...everyone is free to speculate and rationalise their own experience.

Sure...like everybody has a right to ride a unicorn.

That's a false equivalence.

But can they do it?

No, but it maybe that someone has a sensation of riding a unicorn. It is that experience about which they are free to speculate and rationalise. Some unfortunates might be so bonkers they actually believe they rode a unicorn; others will rationalise their experience more like, 'Man, this is good shit.' or 'I just had the wildest dream.' Then there are those who believe they experience some god. Now, comparing a god to a unicorn would be a false equivalence, but only the uneducated or dishonest would make such a comparison, so while every god that features in a book is a fictional character, there might yet be some god like being that exists in a way that unicorns do not*. It is conceivable therefore, that some people correctly attribute an experience to that god, but the experience might equally be attributed to psychosis or drugs. Anyone who insists their experience cannot be the result of psychosis needs to ask how they would know; while anyone who insists drugs cannot induce the experience of god, simply hasn't done the right drugs.

"A 2017 Gallup creationism survey found 38 percent of adults in the US held a view that "God created humans in their present form at some time within the last 10,000 years or so""

Oh, that's a different question. "When was man created" is quite a different thing from "when was the universe created?" We haven't even talked about the appearance of man on the scene...we're talking about the First Cause that precipitated the universe itself. That's a whole lot earlier, by everybody's reckoning.

You clearly haven't heard of Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis:
"The earth is only a few thousand years old. That’s a fact, plainly revealed in God’s Word. So we should expect to find plenty of evidence for its youth. And that’s what we find in the earth’s geology, biology, paleontology, and even astronomy."
https://answersingenesis.org/age-of-the ... dBncz8hZV7
Which bit of "God's Word" do you think they have misunderstood?

*Unless the King James Version is your Bible of choice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re'em

[Immanuel Can]

...everyone is free to speculate and rationalise their own experience.

Sure...like everybody has a right to ride a unicorn.

That's a false equivalence.

Not really. Both are examples of somebody having a perfect right to do something that only exists speculatively, but not in reality.

... they are free to speculate

Yes, they are perfectly free to speculate. But that will not make their speculations reality.

[Will Bouwman]

Hang on. I say:

...everyone is free to speculate and rationalise their own experience.

Which you, Mr Can, compare to:

...everybody has a right to ride a unicorn.

and assert:

Both are examples of somebody having a perfect right to do something that only exists speculatively, but not in reality.

You sure about that?

[Immanuel Can]

Hang on. I say:

...everyone is free to speculate and rationalise their own experience.

Which you, Mr Can, compare to:

...everybody has a right to ride a unicorn.

and assert:

Both are examples of somebody having a perfect right to do something that only exists speculatively, but not in reality.

You sure about that?

Well, you actually can't "have a right" to do something that is not available to you in reality. I admit to being just a bit facetious, therefore.

One can speculate about past-infinite causal chains, as if such a thing could have ever existed. Like unicorns. But that won't make such a thing possible, even as speculating about riding unicorns won't get you one.

[Will Bouwman]

Hang on. I say:

...everyone is free to speculate and rationalise their own experience.

Which you, Mr Can, compare to:

...everybody has a right to ride a unicorn.

and assert:

Both are examples of somebody having a perfect right to do something that only exists speculatively, but not in reality.

You sure about that?

Well, you actually can't "have a right" to do something that is not available to you in reality.

Oh? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wizGq0WZitc

I admit to being just a bit facetious, therefore.

As I thought I understand, your belief is that your god gave us the right to speculate and rationalise our own experience. Therefore, in your view, the freedom to speculate and rationalise one's own experience does not only exist speculatively, but as a god given freedom, exists absolutely.
The downside, as you see it, is that if by the end of our time on Earth, we fail to speculate and rationalise as you have, at best your god will have nothing more to do with us for eternity. Your god apparently sees no value in human achievements that don't include him. What is the value of such a god?

[Immanuel Can]

I admit to being just a bit facetious, therefore.

As I thought I understand, your belief is that your god gave us the right to speculate and rationalise our own experience.

Well, we have a right to a personal conscience, and to act on that conscience. John Locke rationalized that right, explaining exactly WHY we must know that we have it. But the right to make things up that have nothing to do with reality? Nobody has such a right. Conscience has to do with the real; speculation is often highly unreal. Nobody can have a right to be unreal.

But one does have a right to be wrong, if one insists on it. And we always eat the consequences, whenever we do that. That right, we do have.

The downside, as you see it, is that if by the end of our time on Earth, we fail to speculate and rationalise as you have...

Belief in God isn't speculation. It's believing the evidence of your eyes, the promptings of your conscience, and the truth of what God has revealed. Speculation isn't involved.

[FlashDangerpants]

But the right to make things up that have nothing to do with reality? Nobody has such a right.

Rights are made up things with nothing to do with reality.

[Will Bouwman]

...we have a right to a personal conscience, and to act on that conscience. John Locke rationalized that right, explaining exactly WHY we must know that we have it.

Can't think of the bit you are referring to, but Locke, being the empiricist he was, took experience as the starting point of all reasoning; hence those of us who have a conscience know we do, because we experience it.
As Locke said:
"But in the great day, wherein the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open, it may be reasonable to think, no one shall be made to answer for what he knows nothing of; but shall receive his doom, his conscience accusing or excusing him."
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
If Locke claimed that conscience can tell us anything about reality, other than that we have a conscience, he was overreaching, in my view. Certainly, in the above quote, conscience has no impact on the things someone "knows nothing of." According to legend, Jesus thought otherwise:
"no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."
John 14:6

...the right to make things up that have nothing to do with reality? Nobody has such a right.

That's a lot of novelists on the naughty step then.

Conscience has to do with the real...

You and I are on different planets. I can speculate that you are alluding to some argument from morality; that you mean consciousness or you have lost your marbles. On my world conscience has to do with the feel.

...speculation is often highly unreal. Nobody can have a right to be unreal.

You've sunk into your useless wånker mode again. You can't make a case, so you just make meaningless assertions...

But one does have a right to be wrong, if one insists on it. And we always eat the consequences, whenever we do that. That right, we do have.

...and threats. Panto season has come early this year.

Belief in God isn't speculation.

Oh yes it is.

It's believing the evidence of your eyes...

Oh no it isn't. If I were simply to believe my eyes, I would look at, oh, the fossil record for instance, and conclude that humans and other great apes are descended from a common ancestor. To avoid that conclusion I would have to speculate some almighty bullshit.

...the promptings of your conscience...

Deep down there is some numbed part of my conscience that is pricked by my taking the piss out of someone not on their best form. It tells me nothing about reality beyond that.

and the truth of what God has revealed.

Well, that's one hypothesis.

Speculation isn't involved.

Oh yes it is.

[Immanuel Can]

...we have a right to a personal conscience, and to act on that conscience. John Locke rationalized that right, explaining exactly WHY we must know that we have it.

Can't think of the bit you are referring to, but Locke, being the empiricist he was, took experience as the starting point of all reasoning; hence those of us who have a conscience know we do, because we experience it.
As Locke said:
"But in the great day, wherein the secrets of all hearts shall be laid open, it may be reasonable to think, no one shall be made to answer for what he knows nothing of; but shall receive his doom, his conscience accusing or excusing him."
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
If Locke claimed that conscience can tell us anything about reality, other than that we have a conscience, he was overreaching, in my view.

He wasn't, actually.

You've found the right passage. Good on you for that. It makes it easier to talk about. What you find is this: Locke speaks of what he calls "The Great Day." Every single Christian in his audience knows what he's talking about. It's the Day of Judgment. Locke is saying that all human beings will be called to account before God: as it is written, "...every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess to God." Immediately, his audience's mind would go to that, even if ours, today, does not.

If you read on, Locke makes three deductions from that. The most obvious is that God, as Creator, has given those He has created (particularly human beings, who are the ones on the Day of Judgment) an unalienable "right to life." That is, if God gave them a life, nobody has a right to take it away from them, or to murder them; and if somebody does that, as Locke himself says, he'll find himself afoul of God. So there's the right to life.

But what about the right to liberty? Well, if we all must give account to God on the Day of Judgment, how shall we do so, if we had no freedom to choose? If we are to be called to account for our steward-responsibility for God's creation, it must be the case that we have options to use, fail to use properly or even perhaps abuse that steward-responsibility. And that means that God has given every man freedom...not absolute freedom, of course, but the ability to make choices, within his particular place in the world, with the particular options open to him, of good, or not so good, or bad things. One who deprives another of such an option is, as Locke puts it, working against God, whose purpose is to make that man accountable for his choices at the Great Day. So every man has a right to freedom.

But what about the third of Locke's triad, property? How is that relevant? Well, if men are stewards of God's creation, they must have something at their disposal with which to enact that. It's all fine and dandy to say they have freedom; but if that freedom is not coupled with the having of the disposition of something, it can't be put into practice in any way. Human beings must, then, have something that is placed in their charge, some objects or environments, over which they are accorded responsibility and have a right of disposition. Thus, without specifying exactly what kind of property is in view, Locke is able to add that men all have an unalienable right to hold and dispense some kind of property.

Three rights. But all rationalized from The Day of Judgment -- which is precisely why secularists find the idea of rights insubstantial. Not believing any of the three requisite things, they cannot figure out how men have any rights at all. So the idea of rights just seems to float free, for them, of any anchoring, and to be a gratuitious and empty claim. And if they were correct, and there's no God and no Day of Judgment, Locke himself would agree with them, that there can be no such real thing as "human rights."

Certainly, in the above quote, conscience has no impact on the things someone "knows nothing of." According to legend, Jesus thought otherwise:
"no man cometh unto the Father, but by me."
John 14:6

What you're drawing out of that quotation is not clear to me. Can you explain more clearly?

...the right to make things up that have nothing to do with reality? Nobody has such a right.

That's a lot of novelists on the naughty step then.

Not at all. All it means, though, is that one cannot have "a right to write novels." As one professor so pithily put it, "Rights are not trumps." That is, one cannot simply slap down the word "right," and then insist one has it. So there can be no "right" to anything that cannot be properly rationalized, as Locke has done: no "right to health care," no "right to abortion," no "right to a wage," no "right to an education," even. These are merely things some of us WANT, perhaps, but not things that can ascend to the level of any "right." They're wants, not rights.

Conscience has to do with the real...

You and I are on different planets. I can speculate that you are alluding to some argument from morality; that you mean consciousness or you have lost your marbles. On my world conscience has to do with the feel.

What I mean is that one cannot have a conscience about fiction. One cannot be bad for owning too many unicorns, or good for having given charity to leprechauns. This is because when one believes something is unreal, it is absurd for one to have a conscience about it. How can I praise or blame myself for doing something I have never done, or could never do?

But one does have a right to be wrong, if one insists on it. And we always eat the consequences, whenever we do that. That right, we do have.

...and threats.

I'm not threatening, Will. I'm pointing out a fact.

But yes, when one realizes that fact, one can feel threatened. What's threatening there is merely the automatic relation between action and consequences, though; it has nothing to do with me threatening anything that doesn't always happen anyway.

Belief in God isn't speculation.

Oh yes it is.

It's believing the evidence of your eyes...

Oh no it isn't. If I were simply to believe my eyes, I would look at, oh, the fossil record for instance, and conclude that humans and other great apes are descended from a common ancestor.

If you'd actually looked at the fossil record, I promise you wouldn't conclude that. We have nowhere near enough supposed transitional stage fossils to support any such narrative.

However, you don't have to go for something so obscure. Look around you, right now. You're living in the midst of a highly-organized, highly-sophisticated system of life and dynamics, with everything interdependent and carefully balanced relative to the alternate possibilities randomness would throw up. If you see what you're looking at, you must marvel at its complexity and apparent purposefulness. Even such a staunch Atheist as Dawkins has begun one of his books with an extensive confession that it is so. He writes:

“I think that when you consider the beauty of the world and you wonder how it came to be what it is, you are naturally overwhelmed with a feeling of awe, a feeling of admiration and you almost feel a desire to worship something. I feel this, I recognise that other scientists such as Carl Sagan feel this, Einstein felt it. We, all of us, share a kind of religious reverence for the beauties of the universe, for the complexity of life. For the sheer magnitude of the cosmos, the sheer magnitude of geological time. And it’s tempting to translate that feeling of awe and worship into a desire to worship some particular thing, a person, an agent. You want to attribute it to a maker, to a creator. What science has now achieved is an emancipation from that impulse to attribute these things to a creator."

Really, Richard? You admit that prima facie, we all think of the world as created, but that "science" has now taught us to disbelieve the testimony of our own eyes, to fight the obvious conclusion and to opt for a less obvious one? That's going to be a heck of a case to make, don't you think?

So even Dawkins realizes that, on the surface, our world looks very created, and that our consciences prompt us that way -- even to the point of what he calls "worship". He just insists we must fight our eyes and disbelieve anyway.

But of course, we can also believe our eyes.

Sometimes, they tell us the truth.

[Iwannaplato]

IGod must be benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent.

Why must God be those things?

[Gary Childress]

IGod must be benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent.

Why must God be those things?

I've probably spent an hour trying to come up with a foolproof answer to your question with no success. Every answer that has come to my mind has so far been unsatisfactory. I am most tempted to say that it's because it would be the most wonderful thing in the world if that were the case. But that's maybe not an explanatory answer in itself that serves as an "explanation" for "why" some of us have reached that conclusion when other seemingly successful religious traditions have not. But maybe it's a bit like the proverbial answer to why a dog licks its own balls. Proverbial answer: Because it can. We can imagine a better world; therefore, we imagine a better world.

[Fairy]

Because it can. We can imagine a better world; therefore, we imagine a better world.

That’s better!
Because it can, yes, Immanuel Can ( God is with us ) because better is always what God wants for us, and doesn’t that feel better.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me”
It’s true man, just feel it deep in your bones, you love the bones of you, that’s why you prefer a better world.
Whether you are alive or dead, you will abide in the infinite sea of God’s love. Because there is only love. Live Love Lovely. LOL

[Gary Childress]

Because it can. We can imagine a better world; therefore, we imagine a better world.

That’s better!
Because it can, yes, Immanuel Can ( God is with us ) because better is always what God wants for us, and doesn’t that feel better.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me”
It’s true man, just feel it deep in your bones, you love the bones of you, that’s why you prefer a better world.
Whether you are alive or dead, you will abide in the infinite sea of God’s love. Because there is only love. Live Love Lovely. LOL

If you say so.

[Will Bouwman]

If I were simply to believe my eyes, I would look at, oh, the fossil record for instance, and conclude that humans and other great apes are descended from a common ancestor.

If you'd actually looked at the fossil record, I promise you wouldn't conclude that.

What in the fossil record would compel me to conclude otherwise?

We have nowhere near enough supposed transitional stage fossils to support any such narrative.

Okie dokie, so what is your explanation for the transitional stages we do have?