lol, Sorry above post genuinely made me laugh out loud.

Do you consider it absurd to say leprechauns don't exist because it's blatantly obvious that no one knows the answer?

And what claims would that be?

No one knows wether A god exists or not but I am fairly certain some proposed gods don't exist due to their contradictory definitions or claims. As many above already addressed you are misunderstanding the position of many atheists here so I'm not going to repeat it. I hope you can see that you were mistaken about what you've said.

Absurd is probably to harsh. But saying leprechauns don't exist is an unproven claim. Just like saying they do exist is an unproven claim.

Atheists are just as annoying as believers in regards to absolutes about this topic. No one knows.

What you believe is on you. But what you believe in and of itself isn't enough to make you right.

Let me ask you this, is it possible to prove a negative?

It's not possible to prove a negative... that's the point, everyone is is agnostic, to an extent.

I agree with you that a gnostic atheist is probably just slightly less ridiculous than a theist... anyone claiming to know, with absolute certainty, the non-existence of something is... well, delusional. I'd wager that 99% of the atheists here are agnostic atheists... we do not claim to know for sure that god doesn't exist, but we see no convincing reason for the affirmative. You wouldn't say you're agnostic about pixies or fairies, would you? Atheists feel the same way about the big guy in the sky.

You're confusing gnostic atheism with agnostic atheism.

Can a parallel be drawn between these two concepts:

The existence of man.

The existence of god.

Given
This idea is kind of abstract but.. I mean taken from an outside perspective.. like complete outside as in nothing exists perspective.


This is probably unclear, if someone knows or think they know what I mean and can express it more clearly it would b appreciated

I think, therefore I am ish?

I'm sayin... You wouldn't think humans exist without proof just like you wouldn't think god exists without proof. But humans do exist. That doesn't mean god exists, it just means its possible that god does exist.

Of course leprechaun's nonexistence is an unproven claim; we use don't exist or doesn't exist on a colloquial level only. It's always more accurate to say I don't believe it exists....even when referring to absolute nonsense. This, of course, is highly unnecessary since most people understand what we mean. As an aside, I tend to say doesn't exist only because it doesn't offer an implicit credence to something which I don't believe to be true.

The whole idea of having to preface a statement with "I don't believe" is rather silly because it leads you down an unnecessary and sometimes misleading road. You are forced to say stuff like "I believe the sun to exist" which is ridiculous in everyday conversation.

As for the question as a whole, here's a thread I started on this very subject.

Oops, you just did it. You cannot, for certain, say humans exist. You could be a brain in a vat, imagining all of this. See how silly it is to have to preface statements due to a lack of absolute knowledge?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_in_a_vat

I guess I just got to the correct level then

I have a question. Say god (the omni everything god ) came from the skys today. And told us everything in the bible or explained all this ****, how the university started , how humans arrived yada yada...
Would that prove god exists ... I don't think so. Even if he could give me the ability to fly...

Essentially even god couldn't prove he existed

It's (technically) impossible to prove anything exists, outside of your own mind. This, of course, isn't what most people mean when they say 'prove'. We all have our varying levels of evidence for which we require to 'prove' something, and that's really as far as it can go. As I mentioned earlier, I'm not sure if even the more common definition of 'prove' can be met with regard to a God claim:

I ran across this quiz on the Internet, and scored perfectly. I wondered how others would do:

The completely absurd theory that all 7,000,000,000 human beings are simultaneously being supervised 24 hours a day, every day of their lives by an immortal, invisible being for the purposes of reward or punishment in the “afterlife” comes from the field of:

(a) Astronomy;

(b) Medicine;

(c) Economics; or

(d) Catholicism

You are about 70% likely to believe the entire Universe began less than 10,000 years ago with only one man, one woman and a talking snake if you are a:

(a) historian;

(b) geologist;

(c) NASA astronomer; or

(d) Catholic

I have convinced myself that gay $ex is a choice and not genetic, but then have no explanation as to why only gay people have ho.mo$exual urges. I am

(a) A gifted psychologist

(b) A well respected geneticist

(c) A highly educated sociologist

(d) A Catholic with the remarkable ability to ignore inconvenient facts.

I honestly believe that, when I think silent thoughts like, “please god, help me pass my exam tomorrow,” some invisible being is reading my mind and will intervene and alter what would otherwise be the course of history in small ways to help me. I am

(a) a delusional schizophrenic;

(b) a naïve child, too young to know that that is silly

(c) an ignorant farmer from Sudan who never had the benefit of even a fifth grade education; or

(d) your average Catholic

Millions and millions of Catholics believe that bread and wine turns into the actual flesh and blood of a dead Jew from 2,000 years ago because:

(a) there are obvious visible changes in the condiments after the Catholic priest does his hocus pocus;

(b) tests have confirmed a divine presence in the bread and wine;

(c) now and then their god shows up and confirms this story; or

(d) their religious convictions tell them to blindly accept this completely fvcking absurd nonsense.

I believe that an all powerful being, capable of creating the entire cosmos watches me have $ex to make sure I don't do anything "naughty". I am

(a) A victim of child molestation

(b) A r.ape victim trying to recover

(c) A mental patient with paranoid delusions

(d) A Catholic

The only discipline known to often cause people to kill others they have never met and/or to commit suicide in its furtherance is:

(a) Architecture;

(b) Philosophy;

(c) Archeology; or

(d) Religion

What is it that most differentiates science and all other intellectual disciplines from religion:

(a) Religion tells people not only what they should believe, but what they are morally obliged to believe on pain of divine retribution, whereas science, economics, medicine etc. has no “sacred cows” in terms of doctrine and go where the evidence leads them;

(b) Religion can make a statement, such as “there is a composite god comprised of God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit”, and be totally immune from experimentation and challenge, whereas science can only make factual assertions when supported by considerable evidence;

(c) Science and the scientific method is universal and consistent all over the World whereas religion is regional and a person’s religious conviction, no matter how deeply held, is clearly nothing more than an accident of birth; or

(d) All of the above.

If I am found wandering the streets flagellating myself, wading into a filth river, mutilating my child’s genitals or kneeling down in a church believing that a being is somehow reading my inner thoughts and prayers, I am likely driven by:

(a) a deep psychiatric issue;

(b) an irrational fear or phobia;

(c) a severe mental degeneration caused by years of drug abuse; or

(d) my religious belief.

Who am I? I don’t pay any taxes. I never have. Any money my organization earns is tax free and my own salary is also tax free, at the federal, state and local level. Despite contributing nothing to society, but still enjoying all its benefits, I feel I have the right to tell others what to do. I am

(a) A sleazy Wall Street banker

(b) A mafia boss

(c) A drug pusher; or

(d) A Catholic Priest

Lol I almost asked for the key. Almost.

The more specific the definition of a particular god, the more comfortable an atheist might be in being gnostic about the existence of that god - for instance, re: a literal Biblical definition of God, someone could use things like errors in the Bible, immoral acts of a supposedly benevolent being etc to build a case for them being gnostic atheist.

I don't think taking a .0001% possibility and treating it as a a 0% possibility is a ridiculous position, nor do I think it's 1/100th as ridiculous as asserting that you're 100% certain that the most implausible of conclusions about the beginning of the universe is correct.

I can for instance say that the greek gods do not and have not ever existed outside of the imagination. Likewise, I can say that about any god. I may be ignoring an infantismally small unprovable chance, but as stated we do the same with faeries, unicorns, the boogy man, etc. I think allowing people the kindness of pretending that there's a reasonable chance that a god exists is harmful to society and human growth. It also gives them an out logically "Well, at least they think it's possible, rather they believe it or not."

We might as well be 99.9999% gnostic atheists, with .0001% agnostic.

I lost my faith, regained it, and lost my faith again. This forum was the catalyst for my first deconversion but ultimately wasn't why I deconverted. I wanted to prove the evolutionists wrong on this forum so I studied evolution. After studying it, I was convinced of the soundness of the theory. I quickly lost my faith for various reasons after that.

I had a brief reconversion and this forum was instrumental in my subsequent deconversion. I submitted my beliefs to the fire of this forum with an open mind and was convinced by the (IMO) better arguments.

hey joker, just in case you still have a little fear of hell fire from time to time, you might like this video!

That was very good. Thanks augie.

I'm not totally averse to this conclusion. I don't think you have a clear conception of the nature of God because of your incorrect views about the meaning of "existence." For instance, you claim that it is part of the nature of God to exist. Here you seem to think that it doesn't make sense to deny the existence of God because when we unpack what theists mean by "God" it ends up that the atheist is claiming that the actually existing God doesn't exist (which is a obvious contradiction).

But of course we can't understand "existence" in this way (as part of the concept of some object) or we could prove the existence of anything. For instance, we could say that Santa Claus exists because the definition of "Santa Claus" accepted by children is the actually existing Santa Claus.

Now, no doubt you are aware of this problem, so you might say that there is a difference here--it is not an inherent part of the idea of Santa Claus that he exists because we don't think that Santa Claus exists necessarily, whereas it is an inherent part of the idea of God, that God exists necessarily. That is, you conceive of God as a being whose very essence is to exist.

Now, as should be clear by now, I reject the Thomistic framework that underlies your talk of "essences" here. I don't think that concepts or beings have essences that are more than nominal. So objects exist, but there is not something (some Platonic Form or abstract object) that exists independently of those objects that IS existence.

Thus, I don't regard your claim here as a definition, but rather as a substantive claim about the metaphysical nature of the universe. When you say that you understand God as a being whose nature is to exist, then I will say that you are wrong, not just because of your definition, but because there is no being whose nature is to exist.

And here is a final question for you. Suppose we think that there is some being whose essence is to exist. How do we know that this being is God? It seems just as likely (much more actually because of the problem of evil) to me that it would be Aristotle's Unmoved Mover or a Platonic Form than the God of Christianity.

A couple points here.

First, it is possible to prove a negative.

Second, why are you assuming that in order to know that p, you must be completely certain that p?

For example, I don't consider myself an agnostic atheist--I think I know that God doesn't exist--but I am not completely certainly that God doesn't exist. This seems to conflict with your understanding of "gnostic" atheism.

I’m not sure of your point. The O.P. asked what good arguments theists have for the existence of God. Since I do adhere to Thomism and define God in a like manner, then the argument works for me. Obviously, if I held to your theory of intelligibility then I’d probably conclude as you, but since I don’t, I don’t. So while I suppose you could claim my way of looking at things defines God into existence, I could likewise claim your way of looking at things defines God out of existence.

The short answer is that theists believe God revealed his essence to Moses with “I am that I am,” which some take to mean, “I am the pure Act of Being.” That’s the bridge, so to speak, from the philosophical to the theological.

Here is what the best argument would contain, imo:

An explanation of why money doesn't work. What is it based on? Why is it valuable, and explain why that value is so easily manipulated.

An examination of God's economic theory and compare it to all other models.

Point out who the Israelites are. That there were 13 tribes, and Judah was only one (Gen ch. 49). God promises he would never cut off David's line of kings, even if the king sins. (2 Samuel 7:13-16, and repeated in a few other spots as well) Point out the separation of the House of Judah and the House of Israel.

If you can understand all of the above, you can understand the world, and how much sense the bible actually makes. It's like pulling Excalibur from the stone.

Your description sounds like an agnostic atheist imo - in what way do you not consider yourself this? You might have seen this before: