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How about an appearance from god himself once in a while? Devout religious theists insist god is real so why doesn't this so-called god show everyone he's real?
Christians insist Jesus is the direct son of god and he was born to a virgin woman. You know perfectly well this is physically impossible, so where is the proof that this story is true?
The Virgin Birth is of no particular consequence to my belief system, but the "physically impossible" argument just doesn't hold water. This is largely why Hume's work on miracles, which was once thought to have put the matter to rest, no longer carries significant weight in philosophical circles. If there were a creator of the universe such as Christianity posits, nothing would be physically impossible. He could suspend the operation of the laws at will to serve his larger purposes.
A Virgin Birth is inherently improbable and inconsistent with all the other evidence we do have, as Human emphasized, but Christians would cheerfully concede this. In their theology, the Virgin Birth is a unique event, so of course all the other evidence would be inconsistent with it.
The gospel accounts of Matthew and Luke are the sole evidence for the Virgin Birth, which is thin evidence indeed; but for a Bible literalist, it is sufficient.
The Virgin Birth strikes me as the sort of thing someone came up with because someone else asked, "Wait a minute - if Jesus had an earthly father, how could he have been free of the taint of original sin???" Whether taken literally or not, it serves to emphasize the point that Jesus was uniquely blameless before God.
"Why doesn't God just appear in the sky and settle the issue of his existence?" is another frequent complaint that just doesn't withstand scrutiny. We would all love this, of course, or at least think we would. And if there is a God of the sort Judaism, Christianity or Islam posits, he certainly could do this. But it would be coercive. It would completely undermine what Christianity understands to be God's plan for humanity - i.e., for humans to learn to appreciate the distinction between good and evil, to evolve and mature by learning to deal with a variety of difficult circumstances and choices, to recognize that one is incapable of always acting the way one intuitively knows to be right, to acknowledge that one is ultimately dependent on God and his grace, and to freely turn to God.
It's the same sort of flawed logic that asks, "Why didn't God just make a world where all possible choices were good ones - where we could choose between vanilla or chocolate ice cream but never had to worry about poison?" The answer being: because that would have reduced God's plan for humanity to a silly cartoon.
There may, of course, be no God and no plan for humanity at all. My point being, most of the challenges that non-believers raise are fundamentally misguided. As misguided as a believer screaming at an atheist, "You're wrong because the Bible says so!"
I haven't read the whole thread, but the answer to the OP's question is "Of course there is no 'proof' of the sort you're talking about." Religious belief, like atheism, arises out of one's assessment of the available evidence, one's life experiences, and one's intuition. Where is the "proof" of any system that purports to explain the ultimate nature of reality? There isn't any "proof." There is simply belief, some level of conviction on the part of the individual.
Even at the highest level of human intellectual attainment, one serious scientist looks at the universe and sees clear evidence of Intelligent Design; another looks at the universe and sees nothing of the sort. What each sees is influenced by a host of other factors. Each factors what he sees into a belief system of some sort. The fanatical Intelligent Design proponent has no more (or less) "proof" than does his atheistic counterpart, merely evidence and an interpretation of it.
Christians start with the axiom, "The Bible is the Word of God" (although they vary widely in their interpretation of what that means). Atheists start with the axiom, "There is no God." The definition of an axiom is "that which is assumed to be true without proof." Neither the atheist nor the Christian is obligated to provide the other with "proof" of his axioms.
That's no quite logically correct. The burden of proof is on the claimant. "There is a god' is the claim. The atheist position is not to assert 'there is no God" (even if some atheists actually think that is so) but to not accept the claim without convincing proof. There is no burden of proof on the atheist to 'prove' their -non -acceptance of the claim, though of course we should give good reasons why we don't find the arguments for a god convincing.
That's no quite logically correct. The burden of proof is on the claimant. "There is a god' is the claim. The atheist position is not to assert 'there is no God" (even if some atheists actually think that is so) but to not accept the claim without convincing proof. There is no burden of proof on the atheist to 'prove' their -non -acceptance of the claim, though of course we should give good reasons why we don't find the arguments for a god convincing.
But atheists do make the claim. They boldly declare that the Bible is a book of fiction and there is no God as if it is proven fact. Well, back it up. They never do.
But atheists do make the claim. They boldly declare that the Bible is a book of fiction and there is no God as if it is proven fact. Well, back it up. They never do.
It comes down to this;
I clain I have a million dollars in the bank.
You cannot prove I don't which by your argument proves that I do have that money. The bank can see no evidence which only means they should accept it on faith. Just because they can't see it does not prove it's not there!
But atheists do make the claim. They boldly declare that the Bible is a book of fiction and there is no God as if it is proven fact. Well, back it up. They never do.
But atheists do make the claim. They boldly declare that the Bible is a book of fiction and there is no God as if it is proven fact. Well, back it up. They never do.
We boldly claim we do not believe in the biblical God due to 0 evidence. And yes, you can count me as one who believes the Bible is largely fiction.
That's no quite logically correct. The burden of proof is on the claimant. "There is a god' is the claim. The atheist position is not to assert 'there is no God" (even if some atheists actually think that is so) but to not accept the claim without convincing proof. There is no burden of proof on the atheist to 'prove' their -non -acceptance of the claim, though of course we should give good reasons why we don't find the arguments for a god convincing.
There is no "burden of proof" in life. Individuals reach their own conclusions on the basis of their unique life experiences, unique studies and interpretations of the evidence, and personal intuition. The believer ("There is a God") is the "claimant" in the atheist's imaginary court of life. The atheist ("There is no God") is the "claimant" in the believer's imaginary court of life. A believer has no obligation to prove anything to an atheist. An atheist has no obligation to prove anything to a believer.
It strikes me as disingenuous to characterize the atheistic position as a quasi-neutral one that does not affirmatively assert "There is no God" but merely "We decline to accept the theistic claim without convincing proof." This seems a pretty obvious ploy to elevate atheism to a higher intellectual position than it actually occupies. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (just to cite a readily available source) defines atheism thusly: "Atheism means the negation of theism, the denial of the existence of God."
Once a believer and an atheist have staked out their respective positions, they accept certain diametrically opposed axioms. All they really can do is talk (or scream) past one another in an effort to reassure themselves and their respective camps that their beliefs are well-founded (and perhaps impress the body of people who have not yet joined either camp, which is why such debates are so often conducted on college campuses). But in that debate, there simply is no "claimant" who has "the burden of proof." There are simply two believers who have come to different positions on metaphysical questions for which neither will ever have "proof" sufficient for the other.
But atheists do make the claim. They boldly declare that the Bible is a book of fiction and there is no God as if it is proven fact. Well, back it up. They never do.
I agree with you. Atheists do often claim that the burden of proof is on the Bible -believers to show that it is true. I don't agree. The theist apologetic point 'why then don't you reject all other books' is well taken. The Bible at least deserves the same consideration as any other book purporting to tell reliable information.
I accept the burden of proof and I say it has been discharged. I discharged enough of it to you, Jeff, mate, to back up my rejection of it And you simply held up the Tyre prophecy (Failed) and said "That's all you got" as if that wasn't quite enough.
Jeff, you are dead and buried on the Bible -veracity claim. Please don't try to dig your way out moaning for brains
This occurred to me after I wrote post #188: Almost everyone is familiar with the statement "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." It is often asserted when discussing paranormal phenomena - ghosts, for example. As a principle, it is perfectly reasonable. Claims of highly unusual phenomena should require a very high level of evidence.
But the statement is typically a ploy by debunkers whose real position is: "There cannot be anything such as ghosts because the axioms of the materialistic paradigm to which I am irrevocably wedded will not allow them." This sounds far less reasonable, of course, than "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
The game is, the debunkers assign to themselves the sole responsibility for determining what evidence rises to the level of "extraordinary." Alas, that level is never reached and never will be. No matter how much evidence accumulates, the threshold of "extraordinariness" is never reached.
Someone who is not irrevocably wedded to the debunkers' paradigm is perfectly free to say: "I'm not wedded to your paradigm, I think the threshold of extraordinariness was reached a long time ago, and I am satisfied ghosts exist even if I don't understand exactly what they are." (That's what I say, actually.)
Similarly, when an atheist says "We don't claim there is no God, merely that there is no convincing evidence," essentially the same game is being played. The evidence will never be "convincing" to an atheist because, by the axioms of atheism, it cannot be. The real atheistic position is "There is no God."
This is not to single out atheists, because believers of all types play some version of this game in order to sound less intractable than they really are.
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