Does the claim "there is no God" require evidence/reasoning to support it?

[JDaniel]

And this probably fills you up with righteous pride that you are the one who is saved. Guess what, the Catholic Church does not teach that. It teaches that there is no saving grace for anyone which would assure their salvation. God’s mercy is inscrutable, and no one has “dibs” on it. Maybe only the atheists are saved because they use their God-given rationality to decide that the evidence is lacking, and God actually prefers reason and frowns on blind faith. Who can tell?

How utterly absurd. The Church teaches that there certainly can be “saving grace” that assures salvation. The church also is well aware that my so-called assurance, at this very moment, for example, can and often does wane. People change their convictions, their morals, their actions, their fervor, their loyalties, etc. My assurance must always be carefully safe-guarded and strived for.

For the Protestant, it does not. A Protestant believes he/she is assured of heaven merely by Baptism - no matter what actions (just about) he/she carries out later on in life.

For a person without belief, you certainly believe you can speak in place of God when and however you wish. You appear to be becoming more and more adamantly anti-Catholic in your more recent tirades. Are you testing the moderators?

God bless,
jd

 

[Moonstruck888]

That’s a welcome change from the usual refrain!

I’ll take that as a compliment.

In other words you have no respect for the opinion of the vast majority of those who have lived on this earth…

None at all.

So say you dogmatically - without giving any reason! That’s a return to the usual refrain…

Not really. I know what I believe and what I don’t believe. I know that better than anyone else.

The difference between all these fantasies and belief in God is substantial:

1. They have not been held by the vast majority of people since time immemorial.
2. They are not based on any evidence whatsoever.
3. They serve no useful purpose.
4. They have nothing to do with truth, goodness, justice, freedom, beauty or love.
5. They do not correspond to spiritual experience.
6. They have not inspired great works of art, science and literature.

1. Neither has Christianity. It is a comparitively young religion.
2. Neither is Christianity.
3. In the interests of cordial relations, I’m not even going to get started on that one.
4. That would be a matter of opinion.
5. That would be a matter of opinion.
6. Actually, they have inspired great works of art and literature and even some science.

That is a false assumption. You are equating belief in God as superstition even though you have** no convincing evidence **that God does not exist.

The fact that God cannot be observed is overwhelming evidence that God does not exist. You are preaching what Dawkins calls the argument from sheer will. It runs:

I believe in God. stamps feet I do! I do! I do! I do! I do! Therefore God exists.

You should have taken that into account when you made your derogatory statement about “superstitious people”. It is far more plausible that those who attribute the existence of the order, magnificence and beauty of the universe to **blind, purposeless processes **are the ones who are superstitious…

We all do that. Even with God in the equation, the Universe is utterly pointless, just repeating the same cycles over and over again until it’s eventual heat death.

 

[constantseeker]

Atheism is not a positive assertion of the non-existence of god(s).

It is purely a lack of belief in god(s).

Agnosticism is the belief that the existence of god(s) in unknown or uknowable.

 

[JDaniel]

Because there’s no evidence.

Moonstruck:

This statement either means that, (1) no evidence exists, neither can evidence ever possibly exist, or, (2) I have, to this date, not been made aware of any evidence to prove the existence of God. Clearly, the first one requires its own evidence. The second meaning indicates that you have not been aware which may be remedied by the simple act of making you aware of some proof or demonstration that satisfies your need.

God bless,
jd

 

[Charlemagne_II]

I have a theory.

All atheists are adults who as children made a god of Santa Claus. When they found out Santa Claus does not exist, they just knew there was no God. That is their proof!

Or as Plato might have put it, atheism is an infantile disease of the soul before it is an error of adult understanding.

The only way to cure the adult is to cure the child. SANTA LIVES!

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Moonstruck

Neither has Christianity. It is a comparitively young religion.

No it isn’t. Mary and Christ as savior were foretold in Genesis. Even the Jews believed a Messiah was coming. But they threw Him under the bus.

 

[tonyrey]

Because there’s no evidence.

 

[Moonstruck888]

Moonstruck:

This statement either means that, (1) no evidence exists, neither can evidence ever possibly exist, or, (2) I have, to this date, not been made aware of any evidence to prove the existence of God. Clearly, the first one requires its own evidence. The second meaning indicates that you have not been aware which may be remedied by the simple act of making you aware of some proof or demonstration that satisfies your need.

God bless,
jd

All you have to do is tell me one thing about God that can be tested methodically.

 

[R_Daneel]

How utterly absurd. The Church teaches that there certainly can be “saving grace” that assures salvation.

The trouble is that this “saving grace” is too fluid.

For a person without belief, you certainly believe you can speak in place of God when and however you wish.

I am trying to be logical. The assumption that God is infinitely just and merciful would mean that God would never “punish” anyone who has never committed any sin (as an unborn cannot do that) with eternal damnation. This is so simple, is it not? Since there is no “limbo” any more, what else can be the fate of an unborn than heaven?

You appear to be becoming more and more adamantly anti-Catholic in your more recent tirades. Are you testing the moderators?

I don’t think that I am anti-catholic. I am questioning the beliefs as exposed by some posters on the board. I am very much aware that this is a moderated discussion, and the decision of what is permissible is the prerogative of the moderators. I would never question the decision of the moderators, and so far my posts have not been deemed inappropriate. That is good enough for me.

 

[Moonstruck888]

There’s no evidence for your claim that there is no evidence!

Actually there is. We have scanned the Universe with spectroscopes, with radio telescopes through the whole EM band. We have looked into the furthest interstices of space, back in time billions of years. We have found objects and phenomena to boggle the mind and fire the imagination.

One thing we have yet to find is God. Even most Theists have pushed God outside of the known Universe to try to explain this frankly embarrassing derth of evidence away.

Then your criteria must be false. Justify them.

Not my criteria, God’s.

In actual fact, the New Testament of the Bible explicitly states that worshipping anything outside the trinity is blasphemy and idolatory. This means that Catholics, who worship the Jew’s mother, are hanging their coats on very shaky nails.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Moonstruck

*Actually there is. We have scanned the Universe with spectroscopes, with radio telescopes through the whole EM band. We have looked into the furthest interstices of space, back in time billions of years. We have found objects and phenomena to boggle the mind and fire the imagination.

One thing we have yet to find is God. *

You can’t even find Santa Claus! What good are you?

 

[Moonstruck888]

You can’t even find Santa Claus! What good are you?

I’m not going to rise to the bait Charles.

 

[tonyrey]

There’s no evidence for your claim that there is no evidence!

Your **physicalist **notion of evidence is clearly defective. It wouldn’t even show that you exist!

Then your criteria must be false. Justify them.

Not my criteria, God’s.

In actual fact, the New Testament of the Bible explicitly states that worshipping anything outside the trinity is blasphemy and idolatory. This means that Catholics, who worship the Jew’s mother, are hanging their coats on very shaky nails…

You will be very fortunate if you get away with that vituperative calumny…

 

[Moonstruck888]

Your **physicalist **notion of evidence is clearly defective. It wouldn’t even show that you exist!

I just pinched myself and it nipped. It looks like I do exist.

You will be very fortunate if you get away with that vituperative calumny…

I don’t see why. It’s a statement of fact. Worshiping the virgin Mary is idolatory. She is not part of the trinity.

As it happens, I used to be involved in the warez scene way back in my misspent youth. I’m pretty good at covering my backside. I don’t have a static IP address. If I get banned for making a simple statement of Biblical fact, I’ll make a quick adjustment and Moonstruck999 will continue where I get kicked off.

Incidentally, I resent your contention that I was being vituperative. What I said was salient to contesting the point that you made that I was countering.

 

[JohnDamian]

I just pinched myself and it nipped. It looks like I do exist.

Such a posteriori Logic only demonstrates that what appears to be a feeling appears to be indicating an apparrent connection between a potentially percieved occurrance and a potentially real entity. That does not constitute proof.

I don’t see why. It’s a statement of fact. Worshiping the virgin Mary is idolatory. She is not part of the trinity.

You are correct in the latter part. Worshipping Mary is idolotary and no Catholic in good standing and in full knowlege would worship Mary. Most Catholics only venerate the Virgin Mary, as we venerate the saints as good examples; not as the greatest ends.

 

[Moonstruck888]

Such a posteriori Logic only demonstrates that what appears to be a feeling appears to be indicating an apparrent connection between a potentially percieved occurrance and a potentially real entity. That does not constitute proof.

It’s good enough for me.

If you prick God, does he bleed?

 

[davidv]

It’s good enough for me.

If you prick God, does he bleed?

He did in ~33 AD.

 

[JDaniel]

All you have to do is tell me one thing about God that can be tested methodically.

I realize what must be done. It has been done. However, you have completely and surreptitiously modified the rules of demonstrative logic in order to keep your thesis from allowing your eyes to be opened.

I can’t do much better than Aquinas. Nor can I do much better than Anselm. God IS Prime Mover of everything. God IS the First Efficient Cause. God IS every thing’s Necessary Cause. God IS the most perfectly Predicable Being and thus is the cause of all inferior geneses, God IS the Final Cause. God IS the only unknown exigency to enter the minds of men and thus must exist as we know nothing that isn’t previously familiar to us in some way. And, finally, God must be the Creator as finite Being cannot self-create.

You can do several things with the foregoing: you can trash them all; you can fail to give them sufficient consideration in order to know and understand them; or, you can deny them. In the latter case, you then have an affirmative burden of proof.

God bless,
jd

 

[JohnDamian]

It’s good enough for me.

If you prick God, does he bleed?

Oh yes, it **seems **likely that the percieved world is the real world at present, much like in the past it **seemed **like the earth was the centre of the Universe.

 

[Moonstruck888]

Oh yes, it **seems **likely that the percieved world is the real world at present, much like in the past it **seemed **like the earth was the centre of the Universe.

Are you some kind of a solipsist? This is absurd. There is simply no reason whatsoever why I should discount the very very very very high status probability that I and the world do exist.