What would it take to convince you that God doesn’t exist?

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frobert said:
Logical contradiction was my first thought also, then I though that a contradiction may likely change my view of God but not necessarily my belief in God.

For those saying there is nothing that will change “my” belief in God, isn’t that similar to an atheist saying “I need extraordinary evidence” The atheist likely believes there is no evidence to be found.
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If there were there no evidence the onus would be on atheists to give an alternative explanation of reality. Otherwise they would be unreasonable. It was an atheist, Sartre, who pointed out that we cannot sit on the fence indefinitely. Agnostics fall into the trap of believing they are uncommitted when in fact ignoring God in their daily lives is tantamount to being an atheist!
 
tonyrey said:
If everything were just a brute fact requiring no explanation whatsoever that very assertion would require no explanation whatsoever. In other words it would be absurd…
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:twocents:

I would imagine that this is how animals experience their environment, as events requiring investigation perhaps, but no explanation.
This state of affairs isn’t absurd to them because they are not in possession of a rational soul.
We, on the other hand, seek to understand that which is beyond the appearance.

And, in the case of dementia, where there is little capacity to remember and care for oneself, up until the end there remains someone who can connect with another, through a touch, a song, a kind voice. Love brings us to transcendence.

Even in a holocaust, in the overwhelming horror, pain and pity of a lost and broken humanity, individually felt, we are one with Christ crucified, to be reborn into true eternal life with God.

Should my resentments and hate, pride and greed tear at my relationship with God, as C.S. Lewis put it so clearly, “A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.” Regardless of what confusion I may fall into, the Truth remains eternal.
 
Aloysium said:
:twocents:

I would imagine that this is how animals experience their environment, as events requiring investigation perhaps, but no explanation.
This state of affairs isn’t absurd to them because they are not in possession of a rational soul.
We, on the other hand, seek to understand that which is beyond the appearance.

And, in the case of dementia, where there is little capacity to remember and care for oneself, up until the end there remains someone who can connect with another, through a touch, a song, a kind voice. Love brings us to transcendence.

Even in a holocaust, in the overwhelming horror, pain and pity of a lost and broken humanity, individually felt, we are one with Christ crucified, to be reborn into true eternal life with God.

Should my resentments and hate, pride and greed tear at my relationship with God, as C.S. Lewis put it so clearly, “A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.” Regardless of what confusion I may fall into, the Truth remains eternal.
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:clapping: Thank you for quoting those magnificent words of C.S. Lewis. They put us in our rightful place as minute creatures utterly dependent on our Creator for every moment of our existence…
 
dmar198 said:
All my reasons for believing in Him would have to be satisfactorily answered by better explanations, and if that happened I would become an agnostic because I would have no reason to believe in God or to disbelieve in Him. To move from agnostic to atheist, someone would have to come up with evidence that God does not exist. One possible way to do that would be to prove that the concept of God involves a logical contradiction.
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Actually, there’s a lot of debate on this subject. The prevailing view is that you can be a “strong” atheist that believes that there’s no God (which is what you’re describing), or a “weak” atheist who simply doesn’t believe in God the same way they don’t believe in fairies. As such, it’s possible to be an agnostic atheist, where somebody agrees that God’s existence is unknowable, but does not currently believe in God.
IWantGod said:
If it could be show that the foundation of all reality is essentially irrational, then i would have no reason to think God exists since things can just pop out of nothing and causally dependent beings can exist without a cause.

Everything can just be a brute fact requiring no explanation whatsoever.
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At the risk of being incredibly cliché, if you don’t believe things can exist without a cause, then what caused God? I ask only because I’ve never received an answer that made sense.
 
Shredderbeam said:
At the risk of being incredibly cliché, if you don’t believe things can exist without a cause, then what caused God? I ask only because I’ve never received an answer that made sense.
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A contingent being requires a cause or a being that begins to exist requires a cause. Its entirely possible that there exists a being that derives it’s existence necessarily from its own nature. Its act of existing is identical with its nature; that is to say its nature is the act of existing, as opposed to a nature that achieves its existence from the act of another nature.

Not only is such a being possible, such a being is necessary to explain why there is something rather than nothing at all.

This is different from the idea of a “brute fact” that has no logical explanation for its existence, since in this case it is it’s nature that necessitates it’s existence. I subscribe to the principle that a thing either derives its existence from its own nature or power, or it derives its existence from the nature or power of something else. There is no other possibility.
 
IWantGod said:
A contingent being requires a cause or a being that begins to exist requires a cause. Its entirely possible that there exists a being that derives it’s existence necessarily from its own nature. Its act of existing is identical with its nature; that is to say its nature is the act of existing, as opposed to a nature that achieves its existence from the act of another nature.

Not only is such a being possible, such a being is necessary to explain why there is something rather than nothing at all.

This is different from the idea of a brute fact that has no logical explanation for its existence. I subscribe to the principle that a thing either derives its existence from its own nature or power, or it derives its existence from the nature or power of something else. There is no other possibility.
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Thanks for the response.

The issue that I take with this is that it’s impossible to tell anything about the nature of the prime cause, since it’s only required characteristic is that it’s necessarily existent. For if God is necessarily existent, why not the universe?
 
Shredderbeam said:
Thanks for the response.

The issue that I take with this is that it’s impossible to tell anything about the nature of the prime cause, since it’s only required characteristic is that it’s necessarily existent. For if God is necessarily existent, why not the universe?
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Because the nature of the universe changes, it has emergent properties. If everything in the universe necessarily existed - *that is to say necessarily actual as opposed to potentially actual *- the universe would not change at all. It would be, as Thomistic Philosophers say, Pure-Actuality.

The Universe is not Pure-Actuality, and so it is not a Necessary Being or in other words a being that derives its actuality or existence from its own nature.
 
IWantGod said:
Because the nature of the universe changes, it has emergent properties. If everything in the universe necessary existed - that is to say necessarily actual as opposed to potentially actual - the universe would not change at all. It would be, as Thomistic Philosophers say, Pure-Actuality.

The Universe is not Pure-Actuality, and so it is not a Necessary Being, a being that derives its actuality or existence from its own nature.
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Why does the universe existing necessarily preclude change? I’ve never heard of this argument before, thanks for sharing.
 
Shredderbeam said:
Thanks for the response.

The issue that I take with this is that it’s impossible to tell anything about the nature of the prime cause, since it’s only required characteristic is that it’s necessarily existent. For if God is necessarily existent, why not the universe?
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The Prime Cause certainly has more than one required characteristic. It must also be an adequate explanation of the universe and rational beings…
 
I would have to be convinced that life has no meaning.

That love is just an illusion and nothing more than chemical reactions in the brain.

The natural world would have to be ugly and/or chaotic.

All my prayers would go unanswered.
 
tonyrey said:
The Prime Cause certainly has more than one required characteristic. It must also be an adequate explanation of the universe and rational beings…
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The universe, sure, but why rational beings?
michaelArc said:
I would have to be convinced that life has no meaning.

That love is just an illusion and nothing more than chemical reactions in the brain.

The natural world would have to be ugly and/or chaotic.

All my prayers would go unanswered.
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Life can have meaning without God, it just depends on what your definition of “meaning” is. For example, an artist’s meaning/purpose in life could be to complete their magnum opus.

There is a large body of evidence detailing what chemicals are involved in love in the brain.
That said, love being based solely upon chemical reactions wouldn’t make it just an illusion.

The natural world is extremely ugly and chaotic. We can find beauty in places, sure, but try explaining that to a gazelle being eaten alive by a lion.

Regarding your prayers, I vaguely remembering reading that the purpose of prayer wasn’t to change God’s mind on something, but rather to bring yourself closer to understanding God’s will. I could easily be completely wrong on that, however.
Charlemagne_III said:
The question does not allow a logical answer. 🤷
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How so?
 
STT said:
The very fact that we are imperfect.
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No, that’s not proof or disproof of God’s existence. Why would anyone or anything have to be perfect if God exists or doesn’t exist? You’d have to answer that question in order for your assertion to make sense.
 
Della said:
No, that’s not proof or disproof of God’s existence. Why would anyone or anything have to be perfect if God exists or doesn’t exist? You’d have to answer that question in order for your assertion to make sense.
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God is perfect therefore His act of creation should be perfect. We are imperfect so we could not be the creatures of a perfect God.
 
STT said:
God is perfect therefore His act of creation should be perfect. We are imperfect so we could not be the creatures of a perfect God.
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We were perfect, but Satan entered in.
 
STT said:
God is perfect therefore His act of creation should be perfect. We are imperfect so we could not be the creatures of a perfect God.
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You didn’t answer the question, though. Why would it matter? Does God’s perfection mean that he HAD to create anything to be “perfect”, and by what standard are you applying the term “perfect?”

No, God didn’t have to do anything at all–not even create thee universe and certainly not us. And being God, he could create anything anyway he wanted/wants.

Sorry, but your assertion doesn’t answer the question.
 
frobert said:
The question is an offshoot from another thread “Is it true that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?” which is a question for the atheist that got me thinking about a similar question for theists: “What would it take to convince you that God doesn’t exist?”
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I think only through self delusion and falling away from God, trying to justify my sins after the fact by believing he doesn’t exist. In other words creating my own reality where God doesn’t exist so that I could justify to myself why I chose something other than God.

It would be different if you never knew someone existed and it was in your advantage to deny them to support your lifestyle. But, if you already have a relationship with that person then it becomes much harder to deny them. So it’s not just a matter of arguments to convince you to deny this person because you already know them. So it is not the same for a Christian who knows and loves the Lord to apostasize as it is for an atheist who does not know or love God to become a Christian. It can never be just a matter of arguments when it comes to love. And that is what Christians can experience is true love for God. Christians willing to give up their lives for him. It kind of boggles the mind to think that some atheists think of God as merely an imaginary friend when there are so many people who have given up their lives for God. You don’t give up your life for an imaginary friend. There is obviously more to it. And people have experienced miracles of God in their lives that can only be satisfactorily explained through the work of a benevolent God.

The problem of evil does not disprove God’s existence. It doesn’t even disprove a benevolent God’s existence. I may not know why God doesn’t heal everyone but I do know that he does heal some people. And he does miraculously intervene in people’s lives. With so much evidence of God intervening in people’s lives throughout history there is no reason to think God is merely imaginary.
 
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