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[Slightly Live]

Judgmental assumption? Thinly-veiled insults? I have to say, your earlier post was quite a pleasure to read.

I'd like to know whether you think the unprovability of theistic existence means equal probability of either possibility.

I hope you are not referring to me when you are speaking about thinly-veiled insults. I have no reason to insult you or anyone on here, and, if I decided to insult anyone, it would be as obvious as the ban that would follow me.

We can insult each other's ideas, positions, stance, side, arguments, etc, just not each other personally. I respect anyone that firmly sticks by any argument, even if I disagree with them or their view.

Right, back to what you said. I believe theistic existence is unprovable. However, this doesn't mean the opposite is equally likely.

Every single account by man, about the existence of God or Gods, holds no water. Whether it from an Abrahamic tradition, tribal, nut jobs like Scientology, cults or oriental tradition, none of them. None of these can be proven by means of testing, many have been proven wrong and one of the biggest tenants stems from voices in people's heads or other silly delusions. There's never been a theistic tradition who's tenants and claims could withstand examination by science. If so, it would radically change science as we know it. I would really love for some miracle to be provable, it would be a great shake up, an interesting thing to happen to science. It's not going to happen though, no matter.

So, what evidence do we have for a God/s? What is a God/s?

OK, say we go with a simple definition that a God/s is a being/s that exist outside of our body of knowledge, in a place we cannot detect or measure and this being/s are responsible for creating the universe at the point of time we currently call the "big bang". The figurative "mother/s" or "father/s" of all creation.

The proof of their/his/her existence, by this definition, is the universe itself. Any human derived evidence should, at this point, be written off and excluded on the basis of extreme contradiction.

Going on the basis that we cannot directly prove or disprove this deity/s existence (because we are going on the theory that if they do exist, they exist outside our ability to measure or record them conventionally) and seeing that we only have the universe itself to go on as evidence for either side of this argument, this is what I think.

Science has been developed gradually. We have increased our understanding of the universe greatly, we have constantly revised what we knew when we ideas or proofs have come along and adapted these into our understanding. As we develop science the universe suddenly becomes less mysterious.
We explained the lights in our sky as being stars, actually suns millions of light years away, dispelling fairy tales about super beings. We explains the origins of man, not through the instant work of some higher power, but via the process of evolution throughout millions of years.

The experiment in the OP is just one example of how we're making steps in the right direction with science. How, if we can't go back in time, we can recreate conditions from the past and see if we are right and wrong.

We developed the ability to date the earth itself, we now have a good idea of how old our planet is, how old our star is. We developed better understanding of afflictions, curses were dispelled as diseases and we then were able to combat them with vaccinations, cures.

Throughout history, science has been tested and revised. Theories are put under examination, tested, we gather evidence, we create evidence if none exist and contradictions are eliminated over and over until we get it right.

We can explain the history of the universe, the laws of the universe all the way up to a few seconds after the moment of creation, the big bang. We have to paint in broad strokes, but when dealing with the history of everything, that would be expected. Do we know everything? Far from it, but we're getting there. We will probably never know everything about everything, but we humans are pretty good at finding out as much as they can and striving to hit impossible targets.

So where does this "creator" fit in? He's not needed for anything after the big bang, everything after that we can explain, if not today, then tomorrow, or the day after that. The big bang is probably the only main mystery, but why should we accept that a being was responsible, we should not. Everything else we have attributed to god/s has been proven false, one by one. Like dominoes, reasons for believing in the super natural are falling one by one, knocking one down after another. We reap the benefits of this.

Science is beginning to explain the big bang, we have string theory and others popping up. So, what else is unexplained? Not much. So, if we can reasonably explain the beginning of creation, the formation and development of the universe and everything in between, where does it leave god/s?

No where. In terms of rational human understanding, the is no place for a god/s to exist. Thankfully, with god/s being unmeasurable and existing outside any method of recording, or proving, then we say god/s does not exist or is very unlikely to.

If something is unprovable and unlikely to exist, then you safely say it is irrelevant. Which god/s are in today's society. Or, well, that's how it should be.

Equal probability of either possibility is not possible, one is much more likely than the other. Theistic possibility is not the most likely.

 

[Mgoblue201]

For me it comes down to a couple of very simple exercises:

Consider the Source.

Christians choose to ignore the teachings of Islam and to a certain extent, the Old Testament, in spit of near identical sources - Middle Eastern religious zealots who wished to instill their teachings on the broader public. All are Abrahamic and all claim a common deity. And all are demonstrably and even canonicaly written by men (even the Koran is said to be penned by a person, not the literal hand of God, but rather his "guidance.")

That's why miracles are attributed to these folks later - to give their claims supernatural credence. Otherwise they carry no special weight beyond the content of their prose.

It also comes down to a selection of philosophy, since it fails at a logical level. Christians or Muslims as societies have selected the one that they prefer and even more vitally, the one they inherited. You can't ignore the legacy aspect. Conversion numbers at the time of those teachings are tiny, but multiply exponentially over time. Choice is a small percentage of faith selection. The vast majority of faiths are inherited at birth with no choices offered.

Some of the miracles probably did "happen" - driving out demons and healing the blind, stuff that can easily be explained in retrospect. After all, these people believed that miracles were being done, and they were often "signs". You are right, however, that miracles were often inserted into stories in order to show God's fingerprints. They reek of morality tales and were often presented as solutions to contemporary Hebrew issues disguised in story format.

I'm sure this is heresy in some circles, but the Bible is a mess of a book. It's the kind of thing that feels like it was slowly added to over the course of hundreds of years. It shows no forethought by a timeless deity. It's inefficient and often obtuse. There's little context to anything. A holy book shouldn't have to rely on letters that lack a sense of time or place because ultimately you have to cross check any single passage with all other similar verses that have a completely different literary and historical context. There's digression upon digression and multiple takes on a similar problem or theme. No wonder there's so much confusion. Instead of laying everything out in simple to understand terms, you have the old law and the new law and a series of suggestions by a bunch of authors but the words of Jesus over here and it lacks a central framework. Any human author could have done a better job. That's the problem with relying on a loose collection of books from people who claim to have been inspired from God. And this represents the best thing that could be cobbled together in order to represent certain tenets. It says nothing for all of the books left in the cutting room.

 

[OpinionatedCyborg]

Muslim/Confucianism?

I was thinking in terms of the West, but yeah, the Muslims were out ahead early on (Christian monks learned a lot from them, actually!).

 

[mollipen]

Believing the Bible is infallible is not a condition for being a Christian.

A little late to all of this, but this has always been the biggest problem I've had with a lot of people who are Christians. If was Christian, and my beliefs in God mostly came from one particular source (the Bible), you had better damn well believe I'd want to make sure that that book was the real deal, because otherwise I'd be living a lie in my connection to God. I would think Christians would want every word of the Bible scrutinized, to be sure that there is no mis-communication or falsification in what stands between them and God.