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Can God be disproven?

Johnson

Johnson

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Piggybacking off another thread I was reading about how the world would change if it was provem with 100% certainty that there was no God(s), is that a flawed premise? Could it be possible to prove with complete certainty that God(s) doesn't/don't exist? If so, what would be the hypothetical method used to perform such a proof?

Disclaimer (please please read) - this is NOT an argument as to whether or not God(s) exist(s). So take your "no need to prove anything, I already KNOW there is no God" zingers and stick em waaaaay up into your lower intestines. And vice versa, you can also store your "can't prove God doesn't exist because I KNOW he does" right next door deep in your bowels.
 
Johnson said:
Piggybacking off another thread I was reading about how the world would change if it was provem with 100% certainty that there was no God(s), is that a flawed premise? Could it be possible to prove with complete certainty that God(s) doesn't/don't exist? If so, what would be the hypothetical method used to perform such a proof?

Disclaimer (please please read) - this is NOT an argument as to whether or not God(s) exist(s). So take your "no need to prove anything, I already KNOW there is no God" zingers and stick em waaaaay up into your lower intestines. And vice versa, you can also store your "can't prove God doesn't exist because I KNOW he does" right next door deep in your bowels.
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I can come up with a scenario that would prove God DOES exist. All he/she/it has to do is show up one day and be like "hey, I exist, stop killing each other dips*its!"
 
Johnson said:
Piggybacking off another thread I was reading about how the world would change if it was provem with 100% certainty that there was no God(s), is that a flawed premise? Could it be possible to prove with complete certainty that God(s) doesn't/don't exist? If so, what would be the hypothetical method used to perform such a proof?

Disclaimer (please please read) - this is NOT an argument as to whether or not God(s) exist(s). So take your "no need to prove anything, I already KNOW there is no God" zingers and stick em waaaaay up into your lower intestines. And vice versa, you can also store your "can't prove God doesn't exist because I KNOW he does" right next door deep in your bowels.
Click to expand...

The concept of God, as I understand it, couldn't be disproven because it's a construct that would exist outside the frame of natural science.
 
Dude. I can't even prove you exist.
 
Cant prove a negative. Only note the profound absense of evidence and draw your own conclusions.

And in order to prove god exists, we would need to agree on a definition for the word god. Multidimensional being? Creator of everything in the universe? A carpenter who lived 2000 years ago and performed a few tricks any mediocre street magician could do?

Personally I dont believe a thinking entity created the universe. I dont think the universe ever "began". More like it cycles, the big bang was the start of this cycle. Do I know for sure? No. But there is more evidence for that than some magical sky wizard that for some reason created a vast universe, but only cares about one tiny planet. And he has a plan that makes all the bad **** happen to you ok. He needs your money. And if you believe in him with no evidence, you get rewarded after you die.

Cant prove a negative, but come on, use your brain. Religion is a scam for the elite few to control the ignorant masses. Its been used in different ways as a means of control since we first saw a lightning bolt strike a tree and discovered fire. Most religions today are just derivitives of past religions changed to contemporary times. For instance the messiah was big in Egyptian times to, funny how the story of Horus and Jesus line up perfectly isnt it. As does Mithra. And dont even get me started on how much of christianity is based on paganism. Its almost like a group of people in control of a vast empire (Romans) sat down and thought up a marketing strategy to get as many believers as they could to secure their power and position during a great upheavel. Say where is the seat of Christianity? Rome? Wow, shouldnt it be in a place Christ actually lived in?
 
Johnson said:
Piggybacking off another thread I was reading about how the world would change if it was provem with 100% certainty that there was no God(s), is that a flawed premise? Could it be possible to prove with complete certainty that God(s) doesn't/don't exist? If so, what would be the hypothetical method used to perform such a proof?

Disclaimer (please please read) - this is NOT an argument as to whether or not God(s) exist(s). So take your "no need to prove anything, I already KNOW there is no God" zingers and stick em waaaaay up into your lower intestines. And vice versa, you can also store your "can't prove God doesn't exist because I KNOW he does" right next door deep in your bowels.
Click to expand...

Can a negative be proven? Or is the old, it's there, we just haven't seen it or discovered it yet routine apply? God, gods, religion is based on faith for the most part. Do you believe in ghosts, UFO's, the super natural, witchcraft, voodoo and many more? Are they real? How about Bigfoot?

There are many strange things in this world of ours, many without explanation. I personally do not think any of the above to include god can be disproven to have existed or even exist today. It all goes back to proving a negative. I personally believe in the unexplained and the unknown. I may put a very low probability on many of the above, but that doesn't mean they aren't possible.
 
According to the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy....

YES!!!
 
ThoughtEx. said:
Cant prove a negative. Only note the profound absense of evidence and draw your own conclusions.

And in order to prove god exists, we would need to agree on a definition for the word god. Multidimensional being? Creator of everything in the universe? A carpenter who lived 2000 years ago and performed a few tricks any mediocre street magician could do?

Personally I dont believe a thinking entity created the universe. I dont think the universe ever "began". More like it cycles, the big bang was the start of this cycle. Do I know for sure? No. But there is more evidence for that than some magical sky wizard that for some reason created a vast universe, but only cares about one tiny planet. And he has a plan that makes all the bad **** happen to you ok. He needs your money. And if you believe in him with no evidence, you get rewarded after you die.

Cant prove a negative, but come on, use your brain. Religion is a scam for the elite few to control the ignorant masses. Its been used in different ways as a means of control since we first saw a lightning bolt strike a tree and discovered fire. Most religions today are just derivitives of past religions changed to contemporary times. For instance the messiah was big in Egyptian times to, funny how the story of Horus and Jesus line up perfectly isnt it. As does Mithra. And dont even get me started on how much of christianity is based on paganism. Its almost like a group of people in control of a vast empire (Romans) sat down and thought up a marketing strategy to get as many believers as they could to secure their power and position during a great upheavel. Say where is the seat of Christianity? Rome? Wow, shouldnt it be in a place Christ actually lived in?
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GREAT POST!!!

When you study pre-Christian religions you learn fast that Christianity is the epitome of plagiarism.
 
Johnson said:
Piggybacking off another thread I was reading about how the world would change if it was provem with 100% certainty that there was no God(s), is that a flawed premise? Could it be possible to prove with complete certainty that God(s) doesn't/don't exist? If so, what would be the hypothetical method used to perform such a proof?

Disclaimer (please please read) - this is NOT an argument as to whether or not God(s) exist(s). So take your "no need to prove anything, I already KNOW there is no God" zingers and stick em waaaaay up into your lower intestines. And vice versa, you can also store your "can't prove God doesn't exist because I KNOW he does" right next door deep in your bowels.
Click to expand...

Well.. before you get to that point.. you first have to define 'what is god'. Can you what god is, using terms that are not merely conceptual and metaphysical in nature, or using the actions attributed to God? Before something can be tested, it has to be properly defined. Can you do so?
 
If whatever god it is has irreconcilable characteristics, logically contradictory that simply cannot exist together, then yes, that conception of god can't exist.
 
Johnson said:
Could it be possible to prove with complete certainty that God(s) doesn't/don't exist? If so, what would be the hypothetical method used to perform such a proof?
Click to expand...
First, “proof “ doesn’t really exists outside mathematics and alcohol ;) . In wider science, the idea that anything is definitely and unquestionably proven or unproven doesn’t apply, only the most likely conclusion on the basis of the available evidence. That said, because so many fundamental things has so much evidence and because we’d all go insane if we second-guessed literally everything, we effectively treat a whole set of things as “proven”. In the context of this kind of question, I think it’s better to read the word along the legal lines of “beyond reasonable doubt”.

There is a major distinction between proving (or disproving) a specifically defined god and the idea of there being some form of deity. As soon as a god is given specific characteristics, they have the potential of being logically disproven on the basis of logically disproving one of those characteristics. So if you have a god defined as having created the universe a literal 4000 years ago yet we have copious evidence from multiple sources that many things are much older than 4000 years, that would effective prove the god with that specific characteristic doesn’t exist.

You can’t disprove the generic idea of there being some kind of deity but only because you can’t disprove anything if you don’t define it. It strikes me as an entirely meaningless proposition and does fall in to the area of some religious proponents who explicitly define their deities as having some unknown or unknowable aspects to avoid these kind of logical challenges. We could claim literally anything exists if we attribute it with a characteristic which makes it impossible for us to understand it but nobody would take us seriously unless we call that thing is a god.
 
Johnson said:
I can come up with a scenario that would prove God DOES exist. All he/she/it has to do is show up one day and be like "hey, I exist, stop killing each other dips*its!"
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No, that would be god making itself known, not us proving god's existence. In order to "prove" anything you need evidence. So first, you have to decide what valid evidence is for the existence of anything.
 
HonestJoe said:
First, “proof “ doesn’t really exists outside mathematics and alcohol ;) . In wider science, the idea that anything is definitely and unquestionably proven or unproven doesn’t apply, only the most likely conclusion on the basis of the available evidence. That said, because so many fundamental things has so much evidence and because we’d all go insane if we second-guessed literally everything, we effectively treat a whole set of things as “proven”. In the context of this kind of question, I think it’s better to read the word along the legal lines of “beyond reasonable doubt”.

There is a major distinction between proving (or disproving) a specifically defined god and the idea of there being some form of deity. As soon as a god is given specific characteristics, they have the potential of being logically disproven on the basis of logically disproving one of those characteristics. So if you have a god defined as having created the universe a literal 4000 years ago yet we have copious evidence from multiple sources that many things are much older than 4000 years, that would effective prove the god with that specific characteristic doesn’t exist.

You can’t disprove the generic idea of there being some kind of deity but only because you can’t disprove anything if you don’t define it. It strikes me as an entirely meaningless proposition and does fall in to the area of some religious proponents who explicitly define their deities as having some unknown or unknowable aspects to avoid these kind of logical challenges. We could claim literally anything exists if we attribute it with a characteristic which makes it impossible for us to understand it but nobody would take us seriously unless we call that thing is a god.
Click to expand...

In another thread a poster takes this exact tact and your bolded argument here is in line with my thinking. I call it dancing around god.
 
Johnson said:
Piggybacking off another thread I was reading about how the world would change if it was provem with 100% certainty that there was no God(s), is that a flawed premise? Could it be possible to prove with complete certainty that God(s) doesn't/don't exist? If so, what would be the hypothetical method used to perform such a proof?

Disclaimer (please please read) - this is NOT an argument as to whether or not God(s) exist(s). So take your "no need to prove anything, I already KNOW there is no God" zingers and stick em waaaaay up into your lower intestines. And vice versa, you can also store your "can't prove God doesn't exist because I KNOW he does" right next door deep in your bowels.
Click to expand...

In order to prove or disprove God; first you must define; what is God, what is existence.

The existence of God, or that some personality is (or isn't) God may be unproveable, but intuitively obvious.

Pythagoras' fourth(?) theorem that if you have two parallel lines and a third line crosses one of them then it must at some point cross the other line was left with no proof and Mathematicians have spent their whole lives trying to prove it and failed.

Pythagoras' theorem isn't true in all cases because space is curved.

If you take the equator on a globe and jar it so that it crosses the equator at a small angle it will not cross the fifteenth parallel.
 
Johnson said:
I can come up with a scenario that would prove God DOES exist. All he/she/it has to do is show up one day and be like "hey, I exist, stop killing each other dips*its!"
Click to expand...

You mean like in the end of the movie "2010" ?
 
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