Prove me wrong: there is no God

[Alexis Jacobi]

When engaged in discussions about the existence of God, which I have done for many years on different philosophy forums, it has always distilled down to faith.

I get your point and I agree in some sense while I disagree in another. In a conversation on a forum, yes, one sort of does have to say “it is a matter of faith” (and you either have it or you don’t). But in reality genuine religionists have differing levels of certainty and therefore of “knowledge” that they employ (if that is the right word) continually.

There is another element too: historical verifiability. The results and achievements, the creations, of people, peoples and cultures that have a religious and spiritual practice at their base.

What do you think of that outline?

[Fanman]

Maybe there's a likewise short-and-straight answer to the "does God exist?" question too, and we just haven't found it yet? Either way, I think the possibility that the question can be answered logically justifies continuing epistemic enquiry. I mean, the fact is that we don't have a substantive logical answer either way, but both enquiry and discussion continue relentlessly.

If we are compelled to keep asking, since there's no direct revelation of god's existence, while logic remains impotent in extracting a god from a background of unconditional silence, at what point may the question itself become superfluous? Even if there were such an entity, why must it remain for humans to highlight a mystery of that which prefers to remain unknown and which no human has the power to reveal. If there were such an entity, I imagine it would be by its own entry and not by any power we have to make known which manifests it.

I didn't use the word "compelled", but if the "does God exist" question persists in the light of the fact that it cannot be proved or disproved through logic, therein lies the answer to your post — there's currently no definitive answer, and people are interested enough in the question to continue discussing it. One idea that I conceived many years ago is a Biblical-based argument framed around the New Covenant, while I was a believer (I have polished it a little since then), which was as follows:

Introduction: The fact that we cannot prove or disprove God’s existence empirically could be because we are not supposed to. Since it would not be congruent with his New Covenant. If the faculty of choice were removed by demonstrating God’s or Jesus Christ’s existence (empirically), and there was evidence of his miracles, the New Covenant would be void. The New Covenant expressly states, “anyone who believes in God’s Son has eternal life (John 3:36 NLT), which is the core tenet. The nature of proof is that it displaces the requirement for belief. Therefore, why would God void his own New Covenant by allowing us to prove his existence? That would epistemically make belief in Jesus Christ unnecessary and would result in God contradicting himself — "You know I exist, and also I want you to believe that I exist through faith." [of course that statement is oxymoronic]

Discussion: On this basis, which is logical, we can argue God will not allow his existence to be proved or disproved empirically because he is honouring the choice that the New Covenant presents. A recognisable characteristic of God in the Bible. Viz Christ’s sacrifice for the lives of humankind. It is necessary for God’s plan of salvation that the New Covenant remains valid. Necessity implies agency. I do not think chance or coincidence would constitute a refutation. In my view, there is no room for chance or coincidence within my argument. Therefore, his agency would seem to be the only logical answer. Given that the consensus is that God’s existence cannot be proved or disproved. I propose this is the case because he wants the choice of belief in Jesus Christ to remain.

Conclusion: That would demonstrate that God upholds his New Covenant and is congruent with his portrayal in the Bible. Thus, I believe I have established a valid reason that God will not allow us to prove or disprove his existence. He is justified in doing so for keeping people's choice and belief in Jesus Christ. He also has a cause for doing so; he wants people to believe, so there are grounds of validity, justification, and cause supporting my argument. Therefore, I think that what I am proposing is logical. Although inconsistent with what I have argued and the consensus. If God did not want us to do something, in this case, prove or disprove his existence. It would logically follow that his prevention would necessitate his existence. I do not claim to know if this is by design or a logical inconsistency in the Bible.

Obviously, the argument is not perfect, but I think it creates a reference frame that provides a substantive theological reason why belief and faith must remain for the New Covenant to remain epistemically valid. Without belief and faith, Jesus' own words collapse into nothing.

[Fanman]

When engaged in discussions about the existence of God, which I have done for many years on different philosophy forums, it has always distilled down to faith.

I get your point and I agree in some sense while I disagree in another. In a conversation on a forum, yes, one sort of does have to say “it is a matter of faith” (and you either have it or you don’t). But in reality genuine religionists have differing levels of certainty and therefore of “knowledge” that they employ (if that is the right word) continually.

There is another element too: historical verifiability. The results and achievements, the creations, of people, peoples and cultures that have a religious and spiritual practice at their base.

What do you think of that outline?

I don't believe anyone has knowledge about God. No matter how sure people are, they cannot verify that certainty against anything literal. In my experience, all of the evidence I have encountered for God is anecdotal.

[Will Bouwman]

Quantum mechanics does not seem to imperil causality at all. But let's suppose some other theory did. What would that issue in? Only that science itself would be impossible. For we would be unable to deduce from any effect at all that there was any particular cause, or to assume that a phenomenon we observed and tested could ever be expected to be reproduced in the next experiment.

All human empirical knowledge is probabilistic, not absolute.

How do you reconcile the above?

[Alexis Jacobi]

I don't believe anyone has knowledge about God. No matter how sure people are, they cannot verify that certainty against anything literal. In my experience, all of the evidence I have encountered for God is anecdotal.

Those who have the experience would certainly differ with you. But whatever they experience cannot be transmitted to you and become your experience. But I nevertheless understand your point. In any case their experience is ultra-subjective.

[Fanman]

I don't believe anyone has knowledge about God. No matter how sure people are, they cannot verify that certainty against anything literal. In my experience, all of the evidence I have encountered for God is anecdotal.

Those who have the experience would certainly differ with you. But whatever they experience cannot be transmitted to you and become your experience. But I nevertheless understand your point. In any case their experience is ultra-subjective.

I’m sure they would, but to my knowledge, there’s no absolute basis for their differing. Through empathy, I can relate to their experience, but within my reference frame, their claims remain anecdotal, not substantive to date The issue isn’t subjectivity itself, but the absence of any external referent to which their subjectivity can justifiably be attached. I accept that they believe, but I do not believe what they do, which is fine epistemically. We're under no obligation to accept subjective religious claims.

[Immanuel Can]

It's always puzzled me that people have avoided the expression "Judeo-Christian." I understand why anti-semites to it...they don't want to give any respect or consideration to anything Jewish. And I understand the Jewish refusal to associate themselves with the NT, since they reject their Messiah and resent the Christian extension of their tradition. But it seems both unwise of them -- not strategic -- and untrue for anybody to imagine a Christianity divorced from its profound indebtedness to the Hebrew roots. One who studies the NT cannot possibly miss that, I would suggest, except by a massive effort of ignorance and contrary will.

Who do you think rejects it?

Antisemites. And the Jewish traditionalists certainly do. And so do the various groups of supersessionist theologians.

But in reality that which is called Christianity is extremely synthetic in the sense of amalgamating.

Well, unlike the traditionalist understanding of Judaism, it's universal.

Judaism is a domineering religion and it encourages a domineering psychology.

The traditionalist form of Judaism, you mean. Yes, it can tend toward that. So can institutionalized religion of any kind, including those that denominate themselves as "Christian" supersessionists.

I think that we are “profoundly indebted” not just to one particular sect or current as it pertains to the ancient world. Ideas that originated in Egypt long before Hebrew or Greek came on the scene can just as well inspire that sense of “profound indebtedness”.

I would say that our debt to Judaism vastly exceeds that we have from most other ancient traditions. Some of them formed our technologies, or our science, or our mathematics, say. But the role that Judaism had in forming our concepts, our laws, our morality, our interior lives and our psychology, as well as our technologies and social assumptions vastly exceeds anything we got from the Sumerians, or the Assyrians, the Etruscans or the Egyptians.

Perhaps only the Greeks can rival that influence; but they were late arrivals on the scene, and their contributions were somewhat different. The Hebrew legacy is still deeply under a lot of what we know and do. We just don't realize it, much of the time.

[Immanuel Can]

...rather that both Jesus and Christianity are thorough rejections of the Judaic matrix.

Not at all. Jesus Christ Himself made that abundantly clear. Just read the Sermon on the Mount, and you can't miss that.

I am a total and adamant supersessionist.

Then you will not be able to admit to yourself what you see. For it's right there, in the text. Any fair analysis cannot possibly miss it.

...Greek (pagan if you will) logos...

...is essentially Gnostic. But in communicating to the Greek world, Biblical writers explain what it really involves. The argument of the NT is not that the concept is null, but rather that it represents a misunderstanding of the Word. So, with casual dexterity, John (for example) reattaches it to its conceptual root in Genesis. The argument is, the Gnostics seek in their flawed concept of logos what is actually fulfilled in Christ, the true logos of God.

That's a distinctive shared between Hebrews and Christians: both believe God speaks. He self-reveals. He does not leave people to thrash around, trying to find out who He is based on their own limited understanding of things, or to fall into the trap of some "Illuminati"; He makes Himself known, and consummately, His logos is Christ.

[Immanuel Can]

Quantum mechanics does not seem to imperil causality at all. But let's suppose some other theory did. What would that issue in? Only that science itself would be impossible. For we would be unable to deduce from any effect at all that there was any particular cause, or to assume that a phenomenon we observed and tested could ever be expected to be reproduced in the next experiment.

All human empirical knowledge is probabilistic, not absolute.

How do you reconcile the above?

Oh, very easily. Science itself does not "prove," in the precise sense that critics point out. Rather, it experiments and suggests what's most likely to be true, or repeatable, or general. But it's not absolutely certain, and never pretends to be, except among those who fail to understand the proper modesty of science done well.

Let's say we perform a scientific experiment. Our results come back that "when X, then Y." We try the experiment again. Same result. We try again. Same result.

Do we now have warrant to conclude that, when X, then Y? Maybe.

But we have to admit that, however many trials we have done, we have not done the complete set of trials that would be possible. We might have done 100. But what if, on trial 101, X yields A, B, or C? Since we have not done trial 101, we cannot know if that would ever happen. So we assume it won't, maybe. And we feel justified in concluding that when X, then Y. But there's a margin of uncertainty -- very small, perhaps, but always present.

That's science. Science never does 100% of the testing it's possible to do. Science takes it as probabilistic that X yields Y, but does not get so dogmatic that if trial 101 comes along, and the results are different, it's too proud to revise its hypothesis. Scientism, on the other hand (meaning naive thinking that science makes things absolutely proven or certain) will insist on its hypotheses in defiance of contrary evidence. It's not revisable by way of data, as real science should always be.

So even the best human knowing (if we take science to be exactly that) is probabilistic, not absolute.

But to address your concern directly, we should add this: if things happened by "quantum" unpredictability, then there isn't even one conclusion possible from science. Because in the alleged "quantum" way of assessing things, entities pop into and out of existence at random. So the first experiment yielded result Y. But it could easily have been A, B, C, or any other of innumerable alternate outcomes. In fact, given the infinite possibility idea, it would be unreasonable to suppose that any experiments would ever yield the same outcomes, and there would be no predictable causal link between the experiment and the result. Not even a probabilistic one.

Thus, science could not ever form a theory about why result Y ever happens. It would all be wildly unpredictable as to whether that result or some completely different result ensued. Or nothing ensued.

But that is not the universe in which we live. We live in a universe wherein science "works," albeit only in a very strongly probabilistic way. And we find it highly reliable, even if not perfectly so...so reliable that we are able to invent new technologies or just guide our daily lives based on the assumption of causal predictability. Most of the time, we're quite rational to do so, and things work out as we expect. But absent causality, no such things would be possible.

So what can quantum ideas do to undermine that? Quantum singularities are themselves a product of science, which depends on causality, and on the ability we have to recognize unusual and counterintuitive effects. If causality did not work, then one thing we'd never know about is quantum singularities. They would simply be ubiquitous...and as the old saying goes, "If you want to know about water, don't ask a fish." If we lived immersed in quantum random events, we would not and could not know anything about that. They would simply be our norm.

[Immanuel Can]

What you can get is exactly what Romans 1 says you can: that God exists, and that He is powerful, and something of His moral nature.

But everybody gets that. That is a relatively easy position to get to.

That is all that is initially necessary. And that's the argument in Romans: that men are "without excuse," because they already have the means to realize this.

But I assert that it is what one does with that understanding, after the fact of arriving at it, that makes all the difference in the world.

Yes indeed. One can act on that knowledge, or pretend it does not matter. That's a big difference.

If one knows that God exists, it's a small step to desire to know more, and to know what one's relation to such a Being ought to be. One has a moral conscience, so one can either respond to it or suppress it, as well.

So one can decide, "I want to know you, O God, and I want to fulfil Your intentions for me," or "I do not care to know the God I know must exist, and do not care what He wants. And that makes one huge difference to where one goes from there.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Antisemites. And the Jewish traditionalists certainly do. And so do the various groups of supersessionist theologians.

I think “anti-Semitism” is a word that no longer should be used. It is more or less like “Nazi”. It is far too broad.

Some anti-Semites hardly have any reasons for their Judenhass (a better term in my view) and their reactions are psychological.

Some Jewish traditionalists embrace the term, like Dennis Praeger.

I cannot think of any good reason to reject the term since there has always been so much intercommunication between the two groups even in times of cultural tension.

The traditionalist form of Judaism, you mean. Yes, it can tend toward that. So can institutionalized religion of any kind, including those that denominate themselves as "Christian" supersessionists.

You recognize other poles within Judaism other than that of Orthodoxy? I’d never thought to ask you that. I see all branches that are not Orthodox as nearly invalidated. The farther from the “original form” the stranger the deviation becomes. And then: California Reform (which I grew up in) where Judaism is really just a dim memory and Jewishness nearly a meaningless label.

I would say that our debt to Judaism vastly exceeds that we have from most other ancient traditions. Some of them formed our technologies, or our science, or our mathematics, say. But the role that Judaism had in forming our concepts, our laws, our morality, our interior lives and our psychology, as well as our technologies and social assumptions vastly exceeds anything we got from the Sumerians, or the Assyrians, the Etruscans or the Egyptians.

Judaism was a carrier of a great deal that literally came from other sources. And in Judaism these became, as it were, focused. And there is (in my mind in any case) no way to minimize either that (what has carried) nor what is original. There is no sense in denying or rejecting anything.

However I must nearly completely disagree with you insofar as the pagan traditions (or cultural matrices) seem clearly to be the origin (insofar as ‘origin’ can be determined, of our religion, philosophy, mathematics and astronomy, natyrsl science, biology, medicine, literature, history, political thought and certainly art and architecture.

It is quite possible to see “the Greek traditions” as receiving, as it were, a “spark” that effectively ignited our civilization and really to push on that element which is “supersessionist” in a spiritual sense.

This is the point (it took me some time to discover it) where our perspectives diverge. To define “logos” implies ultra-universal. That is to say that “logos” operates in all parts of the Cosmos, but Judaism is simply a development on earth and in history. You have to imagine logos operating in other worlds totally distinct from Earth. And it will express itself in terms similar to mathematics (because universal). No Judea, no Halacha, no Jewish mission. It would all have occurred under very different terms and among intelligent beings we imagine but can’t really conceive of.

This is why I place special emphasis on Logos and less emphasis on “Jesus” historically understood. I realize this is not strictly ‘kosher’ if you’ll permit the pun.

[Alexis Jacobi]

If one knows that God exists, it's a small step to desire to know more, and to know what one's relation to such a Being ought to be. One has a moral conscience, so one can either respond to it or suppress it, as well.

Well, as I presented to Fanman: religious figures in many different traditions express in scripture and by way of art and poetry what is their “experience”. But it is only communicable to a degree. Plato did speak of activities or disciplines that brought about a “spark” that becomes self-igniting in the individual so prepared. Obviously other traditions — Buddhism, Vedanta, etc. — define both tge “spark” and the “self-ignition”. So “knowing God exists” is only knowing, rather than believing or hoping, when the “spark” is realized.

Yet it is different, though not completely so, from tradition to tradition.

As to “moral conscience” I am so far unable to find any tradition so very developed as that of the Christian tradition. But this is because Christianity is really (this is my own view and focus) Greco-Christianity.

[Immanuel Can]

Antisemites. And the Jewish traditionalists certainly do. And so do the various groups of supersessionist theologians.

I think “anti-Semitism” is a word that no longer should be used. It is more or less like “Nazi”. It is far too broad.

What would you suggest as another designation for people who hate Jews merely for being Jews? We certainly need some word.

The traditionalist form of Judaism, you mean. Yes, it can tend toward that. So can institutionalized religion of any kind, including those that denominate themselves as "Christian" supersessionists.

You recognize other poles within Judaism other than that of Orthodoxy?

This is why I speak of "traditionalism" rather than, say, the Orthodox, Hassidim, Reformed or Conservative. Then, of course, there are other sects...and secular Jews. I'm trying to find a single label to pick out those who are culturally, genetically or religiously Jewish, without any exclusionary narrowness. As you know, yiddishkeit is multivalent, in that way.

But one of the remarkable things about antisemites is that they hate them all, regardless of their degree of assimilation or their secularism or whatever. I remember Holocaust survivors marvelling that nothing they ever did could placate their enemies...no position they took, no amount of denial, no amount of acculturation, no collaboration, nothing. It seems they were hated for nothing other than being Jews.

California Reform (which I grew up in) where Judaism is really just a dim memory and Jewishness nearly a meaningless label.

Perhaps. But you remember your own association with it...and those who hate Jews will remember it, too. This is what I'm suggesting: that if it's hard for a Jewish boy to forget he's Jewish, it seems even harder for an antisemite to forget. And the latter has no particular incentive to want to do it, either.

Among the goyim, it's really better for a Jewish person to trust people who recognize and are grateful for the cultural debt than to try to curry favour with those who are working assiduously to erase it. Historically, that hasn't worked out well, as a strategy.

It is quite possible to see “the Greek traditions” as receiving, as it were, a “spark” that effectively ignited our civilization and really to push on that element which is “supersessionist” in a spiritual sense.

I think that's likely a form of self-loathing, both for us goyim and for any secular Jews who might favour it. Whatever else we can say, we do owe a great debt to Judaism; it would be a poor way to repay that debt by eradicating them from history.

You have to imagine logos operating in other worlds totally distinct from Earth.

I don't see that we do. "Imagining" is always possible; but it's often unrealistic.

No Judea, no Halacha, no Jewish mission. It would all have occurred under very different terms and among intelligent beings we imagine but can’t really conceive of. This is why I place special emphasis on Logos and less emphasis on “Jesus” historically understood. I realize this is not strictly ‘kosher’ if you’ll permit the pun.

Now, that IS a flight of imagination. Not so much not-kosher as not a "have to" at all.

You know, we never know what "would all have occurred." What we know is what did occur, and how it came about it the real world. And it is to that that we can have any moral duty...not to mere imaginings and speculations about what "might have been" if we had lived on some other imaginary world.

[Dubious]

Well considered based on the frame of reference you commit to. My view is different.

Why is it that whenever we in the West refer to god it invariably defaults to its biblical description? Could it be it's the only one we're trained to believe as its true manifestation, while others are mentioned merely as a point of comparison replete with an implied separation between true and false?

There is the common theological version of god which exists exclusively through the subjectivity of faith yielding the experiences which prompt one to believe, this being more or less its "found version".

Then there is its metaphysical edition which has has very little relation to biblical lore. Instead it becomes a quest to discover the cosmic entrails of a hidden god directed more by its ambiguity within the cosmos than by any scriptural denotations and deformations which exist solely as subservient metaphors of a fixed belief system which inevitably remains static and dogmatic.

It is the seeking aspect within this latter narrative which transforms into an incremental influencer of consciousness wherein by minute degrees we close the gap, though never finalized, into a different order and definition of god, one which becomes evermore dynamic as it progresses.

Anyway, that's my view of a god quest, completely extraneous to any biblical deity whose identity and creation was constructed by humans as rendered by its history of which we have long ceased to be ignorant.

The god of scripture is not the lord of creation but a metaphoric personalization meant to exclude the impersonal which is usually a measure of distance between oneself and the mysteries one encounters.

[Will Bouwman]

Quantum mechanics does not seem to imperil causality at all.

Then you don't understand quantum mechanics.

But let's suppose some other theory did. What would that issue in? Only that science itself would be impossible. For we would be unable to deduce from any effect at all that there was any particular cause...

As in quantum mechanics, which is science and not impossible.