Prove me wrong: there is no God

[Dubious]

...religion in the West is broadly characterized by a decline in traditional religious affiliation and institutional participation, alongside a corresponding growth in the religiously unaffiliated ("nones").

I said that. I said you are using your own experience in Western countries to suppose something that is simply not true of the larger world. And that's exactly what the sociological data says, as well.

Yes, you certainly implied it. But what the data states is this:

...while billions of people remain deeply religious and certain faiths are expanding rapidly in the Global South, the global relative share of institutional religion is shrinking due to the accelerating rise of secularism and religious "nones".

Note the word "global". But what would that mean to you who believes exclusively in the biblical account as being the one and only true religion while the others - whatever their belief systems, god or no god - are, to use Trump's favorite expression, fake news. Based on your insistence of the bible being the true word of god, wouldn't that imply an "involuntary kind of atheism" on their part by failing to believe in the biblical account - the Western orthodoxy which you unconditionally accept?

While the Western adherence to Christianity is gradually being eroded other non-Christian religions may be on the rise in certain areas which have, though religious, no affiliation with your beliefs. The net result is that the subtraction of belief in the West and the non-conformity of religions elsewhere is of no service to your insistence that religion globally is on the rise...which it isn't.

[Immanuel Can]

...religion in the West is broadly characterized by a decline in traditional religious affiliation and institutional participation, alongside a corresponding growth in the religiously unaffiliated ("nones").

I said that. I said you are using your own experience in Western countries to suppose something that is simply not true of the larger world. And that's exactly what the sociological data says, as well.

Yes, you certainly implied it.

No, I stated it.

But what the data states is this:

...while billions of people remain deeply religious and certain faiths are expanding rapidly in the Global South, the global relative share of institutional religion is shrinking due to the accelerating rise of secularism and religious "nones".

You need to read more carefully. "Institutional religion" means all "religions," and "institutional" ones. There are certainly some dead and dying "religions"; that's far from implying they all are. Some are rapidly growing, like Pentecostal evangelicalism is, for example (644 million adherents, with about 35,000 converts every day, calculated to be over 1 billion by 2050). So while the "institutional" entities, like the Anglicans, are taking a hit, others are picking up.

Your analysis completely lacks the breakdown between those that are struggling and those that are expanding...and there are both. The loss in one is not at all a loss to the other, anymore than the gain of one is the gain of the other.

Based on your insistence of the bible being the true word of god, wouldn't that imply an "involuntary kind of atheism" on their part by failing to believe in the biblical account - the Western orthodoxy which you unconditionally accept?

That's another badly missed guess. It's actually the more fundamental, more Bible-believing groups that continue to increase rapidly in numbers. The ritualistic, "institutional" ones that are struggling. The best way to be an expanding Christian group, it seems, is to be evangelical and fundamental. The quickest way to die is to be old, tradition-bound, to stand for very little and to compromise with modern secularism.

Biblical Christianity overall is expected to top 3 billion by 2050. China and India are currently hotbeds of growth for it as well; so are Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria, the Philippines, South Korea, Mexico, Russia...and they all have tons of people.

So you're just wrong again. You need to check the precise divisions in your statistics.

[Immanuel Can]

...I do know there are very compelling arguments for the existence of God...

Other than the ontological, cosmological, teleological and moral? I'm all ears.

Well, you already dismiss the mathematical-empirical and logical proofs for the existence of a First Cause. You declare them unconvincing, but for no reason: you can't create an infinitely-regressive chain of prerequisites. QED.

But QED isn't enough for you, it seems. So it's unsurprising that you've given the same unthinking treatment to things like the Kalaam or the teleological arguments. You've also given the superficial brush off to the argument from design, and the moral argument, both of which I've mentioned before.

I'm simply convinced you don't understand any of them. That's why I offered you The Blackwell Guide to Natural Theology. You couldn't read it and then think there weren't substantive arguments in favour of God, I'm certain. But you dismissed that, too.

So...I guess you're just going to dismiss all arguments. I can't stop you. So there's no next move from there. A man who refused to be convinced refuses to be convinced.

[promethean75]

Drudgery isn't as bad as it used to be, so the impulse to fantasize about redemption, divine justice, reward in heaven, etc., isn't as strong anymore in the more advanced societies. People are getting along better with the idea that they're gonna die because they have TV series to watch and six days of paid vacation to relax. In other words, the distractions are more abundant. Back in the day, all you did was plow muddy fields under grey skies all day. You had a lot of time to think about your death and how you're being worked over by some dirtbag land owner. That's the kind of life that needs religion and will cling to it.

But yeah, the west is in Comte's last 'stage'. Africa, India, central and south america, still in the superstitious second stage and will remain there until capitalism modernizes them.

Note also the irony. Capitalism, an ideology that would have never been brought to bear without hundreds of years of intellectual sabotage and brainwashing by the church, actually creates environments in which secularism grows and thrives. But now, brainwashing isn't necessary to keep order when capitalism can create a police state. This it does through its property laws and constitutions.

Lol, just when when the working classes were coming out from under one spell (the church), another one is inmediately cast on them (the law).

[Will Bouwman]

...I do know there are very compelling arguments for the existence of God...

Other than the ontological, cosmological, teleological and moral? I'm all ears.

Well, you already dismiss the mathematical-empirical and logical proofs for the existence of a First Cause. You declare them unconvincing, but for no reason...

That is not true. For example:

Firstly, it is based on an unsound premise - that the world is causal. As I said, quantum mechanics seriously challenges that assumption. Secondly, I'm not convinced the leap from numbers to reality is valid.

...it's unsurprising that you've given the same unthinking treatment to things like the Kalaam...

Well, if you understood the Kalam argument, you would understand that the second premise is unsound, and if you understood quantum mechanics, you would understand how if there were an uncaused cause, it might have been a random quantum fluctuation.

...or the teleological arguments. You've also given the superficial brush off to the argument from design...

Which are the same thing. As I mentioned, I spent two years looking at precisely these questions; it was you who superficially brushed that off by blaming my professor.

...and the moral argument...

The basic argument of which is circular.
P1 If there were no god, there would be no objective morals
P2 There are objective morals
Therefore God exists.

So, one might ask, how do you know there objective morals? Answer: because God exists.

I'm simply convinced you don't understand any of them.

The difference is that I can look at them dispassionately.

That's why I offered you The Blackwell Guide to Natural Theology. You couldn't read it and then think there weren't substantive arguments in favour of God, I'm certain.

I wouldn't have wasted time on arguments that I don't think substantive, but on careful inspection, they are not conclusive. They might be an aid to your faith, but they are not proof.

[Iwannaplato]

I've probably spent an hour trying to come up with a foolproof answer to your question with no success.

I appreciate the humility and honesty in your response, Gary. Just to be clear, often people who don't believe in God, attribute qualities to God and then show the problems this leads to. Unbelievably powerful, becomes can break the laws of logic (make a stone so heavy they can't lift it or free will if God knows everything) Christians, often, defend these absolute, total adjectives because they think they have to, and the whole thing becomes some kind of ontological proof there is no God, when it's based on ideas that may nor may not be necessary for a deity to embody. And there are religions and believers who don't believe in these utterly unqualified, mathmatically perfect adjectives, so it is not necessary for people who believe in God to assert those qualities for their God.

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.

It certainly could be wonderful, but I am not even sure what it would mean.

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.

Yes. We can look at religious texts, even Christian ones, as not asserting these kinds of totalizing adjectives, but just using poetic language to describe an entity so beyond our knowledge, power, and goodness. But given that many Christians are afraid to think these qualities are not infinite, we suddenly have some of the silliest deduction wars.

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.

I don't think a better world is dependent on those qualities being so infinite. But I think you are right. We can, it seems safer, so we do. Or at least the Abrahamists do this.

[Iwannaplato]

IGod must be benevolent, omniscient and omnipotent.

Why must God be those things?

Would you have it that God is not these things?

Yes. And once you move outside of Abrahamic religions, it's less common to think that way. Also, even in those traditions, the actually scriptures don't make claims that the kind of infinitely without limit versions of knowing stuff, being able to do stuff, and being good are assumed. It's often poetic language describing an entity that is way beyond us in power and knowledge and goodness.

But in any case there have been and are traditions where God is not like that. Heck, the OT does not present a God like that.

[Iwannaplato]

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

Well, you are siding with the cladists. The way we must categorize is simply by last common ancestor nodes, period. But the Phentists and the Evolutionary Taxonomists, while recognizing that the same genetics, see humans as not belonging in the same group. Also, the wording is very confusing. The actual cladist wording if one is being strict would be that they are all members of Hominidae. Mixing everyday language and scientific terms exacerbates the conflict. We could say that humans, chimps, gorillas and orangutangs are all hominids. Rather that humans are apes, which is confusing. Also it could be made clear that this is based on a specific way of looking at species divergence and does not entail many of the things that immediately come to mind with saying humans are apes.

So, the fossil record. The fossile record would show human fossils surrounded by human made physical culture, including tools, architecture, art, technology and so on. In incredible distinction for what is found with other hominid fossils. Those evolutionary scientists, and as far as I know not particularly theistic scientists, who are critical of cladism, what to group in other ways. Personally, I think the different taxonomies are useful and there's no Highlander need to say There can only be one. They support different kinds of categorizations of species and these different 'maps' can support different kinds of research, for example. But the main point is that the ET and P arguments are not weak ones. Can there be other reasons to separate out a species that is so different from the members of its group, if we determine that group in the way the cladists do? I think the answer is yes. Because birds are a nested subgroup of theropod dinosaurs, a robin is genealogically closer to a Tyrannosaurus rex than a crocodile is to a lizard, or than an ichthyosaur/pterosaur is to a dinosaur. To at least some of the ETs this means the cladists are wrong. To me, a fan of pluralism in Taxonomy it doesn't make them wrong, but it supports not thinking that is the only way to group species.

And the funny thing is pluralism is a given in the biological sciences. A scientist may way study cross-species and tree branches echolocation. Scientists will use terms like 'invertebrates' even in scholarly articles even though it's not technically correct in cladism. Nor is 'fish'. Yet both appear in respected journals.

1) The debate, even with Abrahamists who do not believe evolutionary theory, could be softened if instead of the questionable assertion humans are apes, was put in the more correct language: humans, gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutangs are all Hominidae. And they are grouped there because of....and the exact genetic reasoning in that taxonomy. To be even more diplomatic, one could immediately acknowledge that this does not mean there are qualitative differences between humans and the other members of the group. Of course, this is not going to satisfy many theists, but it has the benefit of being more accurate cladist language, and being less confusing, actually.
2) Even within science there is controversy over taxonomy. Again, not meaning the ETs and the P taxonomists are theists.

[Iwannaplato]

double post

[commonsense]

Why must God be those things?

Would you have it that God is not these things?

Yes. And once you move outside of Abrahamic religions, it's less common to think that way. Also, even in those traditions, the actually scriptures don't make claims that the kind of infinitely without limit versions of knowing stuff, being able to do stuff, and being good are assumed. It's often poetic language describing an entity that is way beyond us in power and knowledge and goodness.

But in any case there have been and are traditions where God is not like that. Heck, the OT does not present a God like that.

Then it must be my personal opinion.

[Gary Childress]

If we are indeed products of a higher power, then all the suffering and destruction we potentially face in the real world do not tell us that God is benevolent toward all humans. Do some humans "deserve" the destruction they receive? If they do, then it seems to me that I must deserve that destruction also because I'm no better than most people caught in the middle of a war zone or disaster (whether natural or manmade by other humans and inflicted on the innocent). And honestly, I'm not going to live in fear that God is going to punish me for being a fallible human being. So if God wants to strike me down for "blasphemy," then I hope he does it quickly and painlessly. Otherwise, I don't think much of a God who presides over a world falling apart from climate disaster, resource shortages, and constant strife. Sorry, God. (But not really.)

[promethean75]

How can you be sure that 'god' isn't trying to encourage you to go to war with the world instead of retreat from it? What if all the suffering and betrayal (by man) is supposed to be a stimulus and not punishment? What if christianity has mindfucked you and led you to believe in a type of 'god' that doesn't exist? What if the nature of 'god' is not at all like how Christianity describes it?

Lemme tell you how i come to this weird conclusion. It's difficult for me to call 'god' malevolent. That just doesn't make sense. An eternal god that just fucks with people for whatever reason. What is it... boredom? It doesn't make sense.

What could make sense, however, is that I've been wrong about what i thought 'evil' was and that, in fact, such evil could actually be good. Because i can't square what is happening to me with a benevolent god, it must then be that these things are a stimulant... or even gifts. For instance, the misfortunes i have suffered might have been invitations to action... and instead, i interpret it as the work of an incompetent god fumbling about or a malevolent god doing mischief. This is the Christian poison doing its work... confounding everything and drawing out self-doubt and contempt in the sufferer.

What if god's favorite nephews are the sociopaths? I'm not kidding bro... y'all might have the whole shit wrong.

Could The Problem Of Evil just be one gigantic misunderstanding of the nature of God? Could it be that these philosophers are just pussies wrecked by the Christian mind virus?

[promethean75]

Yeah, there's only one kind of benevolence in the universe, and it's the forfeiting of some advantage for the benefit of another. The only time benevolence comes into existence is when one ego takes a loss for another. And even that gesture is shady because the ego taking the loss enjoys that loss, enjoys his ability to give and... just a little... to put someone in his debt (remember when i did x for you, bro. Now you're gonna do me like that? That's effed up, holmes.)

Everything else in the universe gives two phucks about you.

Now, how do you feel? Even the guy holding the door for you is a selfish bastard because he wants to be a nice guy. You're just a means to that end.

Altruism is the disguised egoism of someone who uses you to earn cool points.

[Fanman]

Yeah, there's only one kind of benevolence in the universe, and it's the forfeiting of some advantage for the benefit of another. The only time benevolence comes into existence is when one ego takes a loss for another. And even that gesture is shady because the ego taking the loss enjoys that loss, enjoys his ability to give and... just a little... to put someone in his debt (remember when i did x for you, bro. Now you're gonna do me like that? That's effed up, holmes.)

Everything else in the universe gives two phucks about you.

Now, how do you feel? Even the guy holding the door for you is a selfish bastard because he wants to be a nice guy. You're just a means to that end.

Altruism is the disguised egoism of someone who uses you to earn cool points.

What is your source for this information?

[promethean75]

My ideas are sourced by sound mind and body, honest inquiry, passionate curiosity and a commitment to reason and the search for truth, sir.

Good day to you.