Philosophy Now Forum

If the proposition that something (God) exists is ultimately only assumed (because there is no evidence), how can there be evidence that it does not exist? How do we refute the existence of something that only exists in others' minds with evidence? Our best tools in this case are logic and reason, and even then, the best we can do is reduce the likelihood of such based on our known (empirical) models of reality. To claim there is 'valid evidence' can only mean that, according to your own subjective understanding, you have created a logical reason to claim that God does not exist. You cannot demonstrate this claim in empirical reality.

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 11:04 am

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 14, 2025 7:49 pmEnergy or material world (Energy is matter) is evidence that there is something besides Pure Awareness.

Well, it's a bit hackneyed, but how do you prove there is a material world?

Do you exist?

You are part energy and part material being.

Both of your bodies, the energy and the physical one, are, in fact, made of Energy.

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 10:37 am Senad wrote:-

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.

But 'eternal' is not the same as everlasting. Eternity has nothing to do with time as direction of flow or as measurement on a scale between beginning and ending.

True, it is a popular misconception to conflate 'eternal' and 'everlasting'. However thinkers understand that 'eternal' pertains to absence of time, space, or force: 'everlasting' pertains to duration through time, space, and force.

BTW another , lesser deficit in your use of English is you should spell God with a capital letter as God is a personal name of the deity of monotheism.

Eternal is a term defining time. Eternity is not out of time or absence of time; it expresses the Totality of Time - not in the linear sequence but eternal time in "everlasting" Now. In Eternity, all Time and its times, past, present, and future, are unified in the eternal Now.

I use the term Eternity to describe the temporal nature of Existence itself. It describes the time status of Existence of being eternal.

There is no Eternity beyond Existence, nor any standalone realm. That is possible only in metaphysical speculations like religions that falsely divide Reality with impossible borders.

In your terms, Existence as a whole is the Eternal Totality of Time and all times, while everlasting refers to partial and sequential times within it.

"God" is a general term for mythological beings, and not a personal name.

For example, god is a general term, while Yahweh is a personal name.

English speakers elevated god to God as a sign of their praising and subordinating themselves as small potatoes to the Capital G.

Age wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 6:26 pm

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 14, 2025 5:54 pm

Age wrote: ↑Thu Oct 09, 2025 9:27 pm

My observation does not assume any such thing.

The reason why you presumed such a thing is because of your already held onto belief.


1. What, exactly, is, supposedly, not about 'perception: but is about 'existence'?

2. My observation is based upon what actually exists, which you and others could not refute.


Once again you make presumptions. Presuming God has male genitals will help you lead you the conclusion, God does not exist.

your perspective presumes God does not exist. But, if God exists or not is about 'existence' instead, obviously.

If you say: "One only has to be open to see, hear, and recognize where God, Itself, actually is, exactly.", it means that you assume that god exists, but some can not see him.

No it does not at all.

I will suggest you do not make these types of absurd assumptions at all.

I will also inform you that you made that ridiculous assumption because of your 'current' belief.

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 14, 2025 5:54 pm That is about perception. You are trying to reframe the debate from existence to perception, and on the way, fabricate god's existence, claiming that he exists but people can not see him.

1. I do not do 'debate', but if you want to keep doing it, then okay.

And,

2. I am not doing what you are 'trying to' claim I am, here.

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 14, 2025 5:54 pm I am talking about the existence, or more precisely, non-existence of god, not about the perception of him. It is logical that if god does not exist, and he doesn't, nobody can see him.

Why have you gone off on this absolutely nothing I have been talking about and meaning tangent for, exactly?

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 14, 2025 5:54 pm I don't presume god does not exist, I know it and I proved it logically.

But, as the other posters, here, have already pointed out, to you, you have not actually proved what you believe and claim you have. And, for some of the very reasons that they have given you already.

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 14, 2025 5:54 pm God as Creator of the World from nothing does not exist because that is not possible.

Obviously. Only a very closed person would believe that some thing could come from no thing. But, the Fact that every thing comes from at least two other prior things in no way at all proves that God does not exist.

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 14, 2025 5:54 pm I have three pieces of evidence to prove it. I had a long and thorough debate with two AI machines, and they tried every possible thing to refute it, but they couldn't. Finally, they confirmed that my evidence god does not exist is solid and logically irrefutable.

LOL

Did you even have a discussion with these 'artificially, only, intelligent contraptions' about who and/or what the 'Thing' even is, exactly, which you assume and believe, a absolutely, does not exist?

If no, then what even is 'it', which you claim does not even exist?

If you do not answer and clarify, then any claim that 'it' does not exist is just ludicrous.

Even your claim that you have three pieces of evidence to prove it is nonsensical.

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 14, 2025 5:54 pm Check it here: https://god-doesntexist.com/first-valid ... -humanity/.

You deny my logical evidence, but not with reason of other logical counterevidence, but with faith.

LOL you keep making these utterly False assumptions, without you realising how silly and

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 14, 2025 5:54 pm You can't operate in the field of reason and logic, so you are constantly shifting to the magical realm of faith, where fictional creatures perform miracles like creating the World from nothing.

Even so-called "atheists" do not claim that 'the World' was created from nothing. So, 'trying to' claim that 'the World' was not created from nothing could be interpreted and used as so-called 'further evidence' that God does exist. It certainly is not evidence that God does not exist.

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 14, 2025 5:54 pm Your statement about god's genitals is a typical logical fallacy called a strawman. You are misrepresenting my claim about the nonexistence of god by falsely suggesting that I base my conclusions on god's genitals.

And you have, once more, just made another absolutely False presumption.

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 14, 2025 5:54 pm You are trying to divert the debate into the muddy and foggy swamp of apologetic manipulations. Manipulating means that you are a manipulator, and you don't have any legitimate arguments, let alone evidence for god's existence, but just irrationalizing your despair. As soon as you start manipulating, you admit you are lost. I did not say a word about god's genitals.

Did I even think you did, let alone say you did?

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 14, 2025 5:54 pm My claim that god does not exist is based on three pieces of evidence: scientific, logical, and ontological, and not on a nonexisting god's gender.

I know that you are fully programmed and indoctrinated into faith, but I offer you a chance to read the whole chapter with my three pieces of valid evidence, or even better, the whole series, if you want, get the whole picture, and think about it. Observe your urges to deny, fight, and pervert it with cheap manipulations. Analyze it with reason, and conclude with logic.

your continual distorted and False assumptions, here, are letting you down profusely, and absolutely so.

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 14, 2025 5:54 pm I have enrolled my series in Amazon KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited. If you are a member, you can find and read my books on KU. Amazon also started to cooperate with the public libraries so you can ask for my series in your local library to order it, and you will read it for free. Read more about it in my new article: God Does NOT Exist Books Free in Kindle ... in History

Here, 'we' have another example of 'another one' who can not see past its own beliefs

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Tue Oct 14, 2025 5:54 pm I friendly suggest you to be honest with yourself, as you can not trick me. Some things are possible, and some are not. Creating out of nothing is not possible, and it never will be. Creator god does not exist because he just can't.

LOL 'This one', still, believes God has a penis and gonads

Support your statements with rational, concrete, and valid arguments.

You are just floating in self-denial desperation, masking it with a nonsensical mockery.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 6:34 pm

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 9:19 am Nothing can not exist because that is not possible.

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

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

For those who think that nothing exists and god made a Creation out of it, it matters.

It is a big step forward to understand that nothing does not exist, as it is a foundation for the next truth, and that is Eternity of Existence (and not Creation).

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Fri Oct 17, 2025 5:20 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 10:37 am Senad wrote:-

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.

But 'eternal' is not the same as everlasting. Eternity has nothing to do with time as direction of flow or as measurement on a scale between beginning and ending.

True, it is a popular misconception to conflate 'eternal' and 'everlasting'. However thinkers understand that 'eternal' pertains to absence of time, space, or force: 'everlasting' pertains to duration through time, space, and force.

BTW another , lesser deficit in your use of English is you should spell God with a capital letter as God is a personal name of the deity of monotheism.

Eternal is a term defining time. Eternity is not out of time or absence of time; it expresses the Totality of Time - not in the linear sequence but eternal time in "everlasting" Now. In Eternity, all Time and its times, past, present, and future, are unified in the eternal Now.

I use the term Eternity to describe the temporal nature of Existence itself. It describes the time status of Existence of being eternal.

There is no Eternity beyond Existence, nor any standalone realm. That is possible only in metaphysical speculations like religions that falsely divide Reality with impossible borders.

In your terms, Existence as a whole is the Eternal Totality of Time and all times, while everlasting refers to partial and sequential times within it.

"God" is a general term for mythological beings, and not a personal name.

For example, god is a general term, while Yahweh is a personal name.

English speakers elevated god to God as a sign of their praising and subordinating themselves as small potatoes to the Capital G.

I don't know how I can engage with you in a discussion. You are all over the place, in everything you say.

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Fri Oct 17, 2025 4:51 pm Energy.

You use that word as if it means something different to what we on Earth mean. You can read about that in my fabulous comic book: https://willybouwman.blogspot.com/2024/ ... ation.html
As I said, if enery is other than described,

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri Oct 10, 2025 8:53 amHave a word with your physics top expert. Ask him or her what energy is. The mystery is not that there is energy, it is that there is something for energy to apply to.

Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 3:34 am

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 9:33 am

Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 4:01 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What now?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You are again jumping from "if" to "sure".

Nothing can't exist because that is not possible.

Void as nothing also does not exist.

God as Creator does not exist because that is not possible.

There is only Existence that was never created and will never disappear.

Existence is eternal.

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 10:16 am

seeds wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 9:54 pmI 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.

seeds wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 9:54 pm...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.

seeds wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 9:54 pmI 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.

seeds wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 9:54 pmYet 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?

Existence is eternal. It was never created, which proves god's nonexistence as Creator; it also means that Everything is already actualized. "Possibility" or the Buddhist potentiality is not possible.

There is no empty space in Existence in which actuality could boil, and there is no empty space to which it could actualize and materialize.

Existence is full, and there is nothing beyond it.

Impenitent wrote: ↑Fri Oct 17, 2025 12:58 pm trust me...

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

-Imp

Yes, partially, that is true.

Luckily, there are more and more religious believers questioning religion, deconstructing and leaving it.

I try to help all who are becoming rational, offering them the truth, inspiration, and support.

Belinda wrote: ↑Fri Oct 17, 2025 5:36 pm

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Fri Oct 17, 2025 5:20 pm

Belinda wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 10:37 am Senad wrote:-



But 'eternal' is not the same as everlasting. Eternity has nothing to do with time as direction of flow or as measurement on a scale between beginning and ending.

True, it is a popular misconception to conflate 'eternal' and 'everlasting'. However thinkers understand that 'eternal' pertains to absence of time, space, or force: 'everlasting' pertains to duration through time, space, and force.

BTW another , lesser deficit in your use of English is you should spell God with a capital letter as God is a personal name of the deity of monotheism.

Eternal is a term defining time. Eternity is not out of time or absence of time; it expresses the Totality of Time - not in the linear sequence but eternal time in "everlasting" Now. In Eternity, all Time and its times, past, present, and future, are unified in the eternal Now.

I use the term Eternity to describe the temporal nature of Existence itself. It describes the time status of Existence of being eternal.

There is no Eternity beyond Existence, nor any standalone realm. That is possible only in metaphysical speculations like religions that falsely divide Reality with impossible borders.

In your terms, Existence as a whole is the Eternal Totality of Time and all times, while everlasting refers to partial and sequential times within it.

"God" is a general term for mythological beings, and not a personal name.

For example, god is a general term, while Yahweh is a personal name.

English speakers elevated god to God as a sign of their praising and subordinating themselves as small potatoes to the Capital G.

I don't know how I can engage with you in a discussion. You are all over the place, in everything you say.

Explain:

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri Oct 17, 2025 5:41 pm

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Fri Oct 17, 2025 4:51 pm Energy.

You use that word as if it means something different to what we on Earth mean. You can read about that in my fabulous comic book: https://willybouwman.blogspot.com/2024/ ... ation.html
As I said, if enery is other than described,

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri Oct 10, 2025 8:53 amHave a word with your physics top expert. Ask him or her what energy is. The mystery is not that there is energy, it is that there is something for energy to apply to.

I use two terms for energy:

1. Small letter energy: fluids, resources, fuels, etc.
2. Capital letter Energy: The whole material world, which consists of all energy states - fluid, gas, and material ones.

For example, humans have two bodies, the energy one and the physical one. Both are made from Energy.

Energy does not apply to anything outside of it because there is nothing material outside of it. There is only Pure Awareness outside of it, but it can not affect, as PA is just a nonmaterial superstate.

Energy is already Everything material.

Senad Dizdarevic wrote: ↑Fri Oct 17, 2025 6:07 pm

Impenitent wrote: ↑Fri Oct 17, 2025 12:58 pm trust me...

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

-Imp

Yes, partially, that is true.

Luckily, there are more and more religious believers questioning religion, deconstructing and leaving it.

I try to help all who are becoming rational, offering them the truth, inspiration, and support.

every little bit helps

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8bh18a8lKg

-Imp

Duplicate

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Fri Oct 17, 2025 2:14 pm It seems to me that it isn't the experience that is profound, rather the response.

The response can only be proportional to the experience. If it's out of proportion, one way or the other, the response is unwarranted.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 9:59 pm

Will Bouwman wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 9:15 pmIt 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.

Well, God only does those things that are harmonious with His own nature. So there are some things that God won't do. Those are listed in the Biblical text, actually. And there are things that are simply contradictory or incoherent, and God doesn't do those things either, because they're self-contradicting and irrational.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 9:59 pmSometimes 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.

We'll need a specific case, then.

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.

Probably. But that doesn't tell us much: it just shows that man's natural awareness of God is fallible, and can become misguided.

So no, all empirical knowing is not "a matter of data+faith".

Actually, it is...as every scientist knows.

No scientist has ever performed the total set of all possible tests on any particular scientific hypothesis. At some point, he stopped testing, regarded his hypothesis as "confirmed," and moved forward. But he didn't KNOW with certainty that the next tests, the ones he didn't continue to perform, would not show up some anomaly or disconfirmation; he just assumed that he'd done a reasonable sufficiency of tests to confirm the hypothesis.

When he stopped collecting data, he started exercising faith in what the subsequent tests would have shown, had he done them. But he didn't. And he didn't know. He just had faith that his first data was good for the rest. And probably, he was right: but again, he didn't know for sure he was right. He just thought he had reasonable certainty.

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.

Not at all, actually. I would say that they know God instinctively, and they either submit to what they know, or distort it with their own willfulness or the cultural baggage they prefer, or prefer not to think about it, so as to avoid the cognitive dissonance involved. But deep down, they know it isn't right. We all do.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Oct 12, 2025 3:49 amIt'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:

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun Oct 12, 2025 3:49 amYou 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:

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Oct 15, 2025 6:05 pmAll 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.

Your gloss attempts to make my statement stronger than I made it. I don't say there are "no special experiences," or that people can know God by mere common experience. What they can know is actually quite minimal: they know that God does exist, and they know somewhat of his nature. But their relationship, unless it advances by other means, or what you call "special experiences," perhaps, is very first-level. And it can't go beyond the first level until they elect to respond to what they DO know already, and should know. But when they do, God provides them with higher and more precise "experiences," as you call them, so that they can know more and relate to Him more deeply.

However, you also say:

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Tue Oct 14, 2025 3:01 pmSo 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. [/quote] No, it means Atheists lie. That's all. They have the same means to know God exists, but they refuse that first step, and so, as Romans says, "their foolish heart was darkened."

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?

Both happen, actually. The two are not mutually exclusive at all. And rather than the higher knowledge of God being only accessible to "a small fraction," it's freely offered to any who will accept that God exists, and expect Him to be "the rewarder of those who seek Him," as Scripture puts it. In other words, those who will put their faith in Him. And that's an unlimited offer.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Thu Oct 16, 2025 5:28 pmAtheists 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?

The Atheist's problem is not that he has a "lack of experience" or that he has any reason to believe there's no God; it's that He suspects there might be, and rejects Him.

God doesn't "favour" one over the other; the Atheist simply chooses his own response, and is rewarded accordingly -- having rejected even the first information about God, he gets no more.