Do Gods Exist? Can You Prove Gods Exist? Do They Even Have To Exist?

[Data]

Definitions

God: (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being; (in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity; an image, idol, animal, or other object worshiped as divine or symbolizing a god; used as a conventional personification of fate; an adored, admired, or influential person; a thing accorded the supreme importance appropriate to a god; the gallery in a theater.

Atheist: a person who disbelieves in the existence of God or gods.

Veneration: great respect; reverence:

Existence: the fact or state of living or having objective reality; continued survival; a way of living; any of a person's supposed current, future, or past lives on this earth; all that exists; a being or entity.

In essence a god is anything or anyone who is venerated. A mortal man, an object, a fictional or mythological character, real or imagined, a concept like luck. Good or bad. To exist as a god could involve any of a number of specific applications. To exist literally, metaphorically, figuratively, as a fictional, metaphysical or mythological being, object or concept. In what specific sense any alleged god may exist may depend upon such context.

Questions for debate: Do gods exist? Can you prove they exist and do they even have to exist?

[Data]

Dear sir your the one not making any sense.
You keep repeating the same nonsensical, moronic, illogical things.
You said Jehovah created evil. That include "sin" too.
Jehovah is gonna save you from what he created himself.

Q: How is that making any sense?

Let's hope we don't hear crickets this time around too?

Asking the question repeatedly may get you the answer repeatedly. Interpreting the answer to be nonsensical, moronic, illogical doesn't make it those things. It makes the interpretation of those things. For example, my intepretation of Darwinian evolution being that a monkey's tail broke causing him to fall out of a tree where he found a suit and briefcase so went to work on WallStreet doesn't make the theory of evolution nonsensical, moronic, illogical. It does that on its own. So, maybe it will help if I explain it differently.

Mother puts you in a time out or judge puts you in jail. When it's time, they let you out.

[alexxcJRO]

Dear sir your the one not making any sense.
You keep repeating the same nonsensical, moronic, illogical things.
You said Jehovah created evil. That include "sin" too.
Jehovah is gonna save you from what he created himself.

Q: How is that making any sense?

Let's hope we don't hear crickets this time around too?

Asking the question repeatedly may get you the answer repeatedly. Interpreting the answer to be nonsensical, moronic, illogical doesn't make it those things. It makes the interpretation of those things. For example, my intepretation of Darwinian evolution being that a monkey's tail broke causing him to fall out of a tree where he found a suit and briefcase so went to work on WallStreet doesn't make the theory of evolution nonsensical, moronic, illogical. It does that on its own. So, maybe it will help if I explain it differently.

Mother puts you in a time out or judge puts you in jail. When it's time, they let you out.

Illogical, nonsensical ramblings devoid of any logic and relevancy.

Again talking in riddles is not gonna save u sir.

Jehovah is responsible for the "sinful nature" and evil. He created it. The analogy is useless and moronic.

It's like this. I(an incredibly powerful and intelligent being)create purposefully a mechanical robot race of beings which is inclined to engage in malevolent and evil manner. Including psychopaths automatons.

Then I come as its creator and promise it to save them from their nature which I imbued them with myself.

Q: Why in the Earth would I do such illogical, moronic and not necessary thing?
Q: Am I competing for the most moronic being in the omni-verse? Or what?


Let's hope we don't hear crickets this time around too!

[Data]

:D Our dear Data, that doesn't matter, whether you understand it or not. I think others will understand it very well and if not they are welcome to ask me about it. What it means is that your story about your own experiences and how you dealt with them and what you credit for it, is no kind of evidence for theism, but that Theists do secular things and credit some theism thing for it.

It always amazes me how people who post on forums like this don't understand the internet and analytical statistics. They think of themselves almost as television or radio celebrities informing and entertaining countless people around the world every day. It's not like that. If you have a website you used to be able to get freeware, online software you could implement on your site which would give detailed analysis of website traffic. We used to put a little counter on each page and you could click on it and see how many spiders - also called crawlers - which are bots, (software programs that search the internet) or actual people visited your page. How long they stayed, what pages they visited, where they were linked from, where they linked out to, the operating system they were using, their resolution, ISP address, the country, region or principality they were physically at. That sort of thing. Roughly 90% of all traffic on the internet is spiders, bots and crawlers. If you get 100 visitors 90 are bots, 10 are people. If you get 1000 hits, 900 are bots, 100 are actual people. Of the actual people 90% stay for less than a second.

The people who read posts on this forum, or any other, are the people who are participating in the thread. Maybe. Maybe there will be other active participants who do a quick glance if it's a subject they might have interest in and aren't busy with some other thread and don't absolutely hate the people interacting in the thread or their debate style and are interested in the specific style of discussion (debate, study, science, Christianity and Apologetics, etc.) .

The bots then may index a page every hour, or day, or week, or month etc. depending on the interest generated by request in their search engines for that sort of subject material. That's the way it used to be. Now places like Facebook, X (Twitter), and especially Reddit, have replaced search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. as the places people search for information. You use Reddit's search instead of Google etc. because Google has become an advertising campaign, unreliable for a balanced objective. You used to search for something like atheism and get all sorts of results. Hundreds of thousands. Now you are more likely to only get page after page of the same advertising clients of Google.

So maybe you can find something you posted here in a Google search, only if the criteria for your search is a word for word portion of it not likely to be from one of Google's advertisers. The result being that very few people come from Google. I once spent $500 each on advertising for Google and I think Facebook was the other one, I don't remember. My analytics told me that not one of my visitors followed that advertisement, but most of my traffic was from the links I left on forums like this. (This was back in the day when I was serious about posting on forums and making a website.) So, a few people from forums, most of the people from Google searches, and none from the ads. Which means less and less people are following Google, more and more are following Reddit, etc.

And you are preaching to the choir. A small choir.

[Data]

The only thing being tricky, is you. You know exactly what I mean. Again, anything outside "Jehovah' first needed creation. This means, at one point, God ruled and existed/occupied "nothing at all" :shock:

I think, as I believe I've already said, it's your wording. It's like you're spinning it. Jehovah Ruled. You say ruled every time. Why? How did Jehovah rule over . . . Jehovah? There being nothing else to rule over. In a metaphorical or figurative sense? Hyperbolically, ironically? But your objection to Jehovah occupying nothing is the opposite spin. Like it couldn't have been an occupation of nothing in a scientific sense of the word. Which is why I keep telling you that the way the word nothing is used is possibly nothing in a literal sense that science couldn't possibly understand because science deals with the physical, with the known world after it had been created; or it could be a phrase like we would use in everyday language. If a cop rushes into a house where there may be a fugitive, he may later be asked what was there. He's not going to say there was an end table, a lamp, a plant, a throw pillow, a rug, a painting, etc. He's going to say - guess what? Nothing. He doesn't mean that there was no space, or time, or matter, or energy, or air. Anyone with any sense would understand that, unless - they were bothered by some ideological fixation and looking for an argument.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to Data in post #133]

You may speculate (at best) ass much as you like. here are even less people paying atttention to your guesses than to what I post. But yes, the problem is getting the ideas out there. So long as Someone gets the idea and peddles it as their own, it's fine. Bear in mind that every great motion had to start with one person.

That said, small numbers is one reason I went back to my old forum. You may be playing the not unknown ("You can't win even if you have the best of the argument" angle. It makes no difference. to enhancing your case (whatever it is) or undermining ours or nine.

[Data]

Illogical, nonsensical ramblings devoid of any logic and relevancy.

Again talking in riddles is not gonna save u sir.

Let's hope we don't hear crickets this time around too!

If there are ten thousand other discussions, I can find on internet forums where Wiseguy atheists and theists tit for tat you are likely to get nothing but crickets from me. Just ask Transponder. It isn't personal so it must be content. I've been there, done that, bought the t-shirt. You want my response skip all that and get to the facts.

Jehovah is responsible for the "sinful nature" and evil. He created it. The analogy is useless and moronic.

No. Sin means miss the mark. Jehovah set the mark; Adam missed it. We live in Adam's world.

It's like this. I (an incredibly powerful and intelligent being) create purposefully a mechanical robot race of beings which is inclined to engage in malevolent and evil manner. Including psychopaths automatons.

Then I come as its creator and promise it to save them from their nature which I imbued them with myself.

No, it's not like that. In any way.

Q: Why in the Earth would I do such illogical, moronic and not necessary thing?

You've gotta' be you, man.

Q: Am I competing for the most moronic being in the omni-verse? Or what?

That is a theory that I'm not at all willing to dismiss offhand. Because your analogy is silly doesn't make the facts silly. Latin abusus non tollit usum. Abuse doesn't negate proper use.

[Data]

[Replying to Data in post #133]
You may be playing the not unknown ("You can't win even if you have the best of the argument" angle. It makes no difference. to enhancing your case (whatever it is) or undermining ours or nine.

It's not a game. It's not a battle. You aren't on the field, you're on the sidelines cheering for your side. You're not giving me facts; you give me criticisms of ideologies. Most of which I probably agree with your conclusions, as far as I can tell, being as they are, without substance.

To me, the world is destroyed already. What political, social, cultural, ideological, financial, or religious nonsense you are talking about is already dead to me.

Q: Do gods exist?

A: Yes.

Q: a) Why? b) How?

A: a) Because people venerate them, b) literally, figuratively, hyperbolically, ironically, culturally, socially, religiously.

Q: Can you prove gods exist?

A: Yes.

Q: How?

A: This is a god.



Q: That isn't the kind of god I'm talking about.

A: The definition of atheism is a disbelief in the existence of God or gods: God is the most common God, Jehovah of the Hebrew/Christian, the Abrahamic faith, Allah, meaning "the god." The gods atheism by definition disbelieve, are any other gods not specified by name.

[edited for time, content, language. The studio erupts in a blistering barrage of blah, blah, blah, my beliefs are better than yours, religion, science, blah, blah, blah, but the doctrinal dissertation of prized theologian, blah, blah, the solar scriptura, blah, crusades, blah, ideology, et cetera, ad infinitum, ad hominin, Occam's razor, blah, blah]

[return from a message from our sponsors]

Q: Do gods have to literally exist to be gods.

A: No.

Done! Takes all the fun out of it, huh? Controversy for the sake of controversy.

[POI]

The only thing being tricky, is you. You know exactly what I mean. Again, anything outside "Jehovah' first needed creation. This means, at one point, God ruled and existed/occupied "nothing at all"

I think, as I believe I've already said, it's your wording. It's like you're spinning it. Jehovah Ruled. You say ruled every time. Why? How did Jehovah rule over . . . Jehovah? There being nothing else to rule over. In a metaphorical or figurative sense? Hyperbolically, ironically? But your objection to Jehovah occupying nothing is the opposite spin. Like it couldn't have been an occupation of nothing in a scientific sense of the word. Which is why I keep telling you that the way the word nothing is used is possibly nothing in a literal sense that science couldn't possibly understand because science deals with the physical, with the known world after it had been created; or it could be a phrase like we would use in everyday language. If a cop rushes into a house where there may be a fugitive, he may later be asked what was there. He's not going to say there was an end table, a lamp, a plant, a throw pillow, a rug, a painting, etc. He's going to say - guess what? Nothing. He doesn't mean that there was no space, or time, or matter, or energy, or air. Anyone with any sense would understand that, unless - they were bothered by some ideological fixation and looking for an argument.

You already (agreed/paraphrased) with my wording. It is you who are now engaging in spin. You also already agreed it makes no sense. And not like it makes no sense in that you have not studied enough, but instead logically. All you have is a claim --> (the Bible). You keep wanting to bring 'science' or 'ex materia' into the conversation. I have done my best to avoid them. But since you insist, maybe you will understand, using a differing explanation. Is it logical to ponder what is north of the north pole or what is colder than absolute zero? NO. They are logically nonsensical questions. Just like I ask you, where did God (reside/exist/dwell/other) before God had to first create it? It is another logically nonsensical question. -- Which demonstrates a 'supernatural creator' is not necessary or required. Why? Because 'something' outside God had to already exist eternally.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to Data in post #133]
You may be playing the not unknown ("You can't win even if you have the best of the argument" angle. It makes no difference. to enhancing your case (whatever it is) or undermining ours or nine.

It's not a game. It's not a battle. You aren't on the field, you're on the sidelines cheering for your side. You're not giving me facts; you give me criticisms of ideologies. Most of which I probably agree with your conclusions, as far as I can tell, being as they are, without substance.

To me, the world is destroyed already. What political, social, cultural, ideological, financial, or religious nonsense you are talking about is already dead to me.

Q: Do gods exist?

A: Yes.

Q: a) Why? b) How?

A: a) Because people venerate them, b) literally, figuratively, hyperbolically, ironically, culturally, socially, religiously.

Q: Can you prove gods exist?

A: Yes.

Q: How?

A: This is a god.



Q: That isn't the kind of god I'm talking about.

A: The definition of atheism is a disbelief in the existence of God or gods: God is the most common God, Jehovah of the Hebrew/Christian, the Abrahamic faith, Allah, meaning "the god." The gods atheism by definition disbelieve, are any other gods not specified by name.

[edited for time, content, language. The studio erupts in a blistering barrage of blah, blah, blah, my beliefs are better than yours, religion, science, blah, blah, blah, but the doctrinal dissertation of prized theologian, blah, blah, the solar scriptura, blah, crusades, blah, ideology, et cetera, ad infinitum, ad hominin, Occam's razor, blah, blah]

[return from a message from our sponsors]

Q: Do gods have to literally exist to be gods.

A: No.

Done! Takes all the fun out of it, huh? Controversy for the sake of controversy.

You don't get to tell me what it is, or isn't. You are not the arbiter. I'm sure I told you before. I don't care what you think the world is or is not. If you have given up hope, that's up to you. Even if you are winding us up for fun, that's irrelevant, if points are being made. You may think you are the puppetter, but that is not the situation. What more you got?

Semantic games with irrelevant definitions. That game is done, and you are wearing your fingers out to no purpose. Anything more? No, pointless and meaningless Blah, to use your term and a lame excuse that you are playing about with us.. Like I say, you are not the puppet master, though you may think you are. True, there is little here even relevant to the Forum, let alone the topic, but we may be able to do something about that. The kind of god you are talking about is what is known on the forum as 'not relevant to the topic'.

To the atheist Axiom (no 6 I recall) "It takes far less words to say "There are fairies at the bottom of my garden" than to explain why there probably aren't", one might add that it takes fewer words to show something is meaningless trash than to post a page of it.

[Data]

You already (agreed/paraphrased) with my wording.

I'm trying to understand EXACTLY what you mean by rules and nothing. I'm pointing out the possible applications. I've stated it scripturally supported that Jehovah existed before anything. There may be a Bible passage in some of the many translations that actually say "Jehovah ruled over nothing" in which case it becomes a matter of translation and interpretation. I'm not disagreeing with you I'm asking you exactly what the hell you're talking about. It may be scripturally supported in some sense, it may be a translation or mistranslation, or interpretation of one of those. It could be any number of things. If you could put aside the religious chip on your shoulder for a moment and tell me it would be great. Keeping in mind that science, although great and wonderful, doesn't matter much in this discussion. It doesn't matter what science says nothing is, it matters what Moses or Jehovah say it is. And what you say it is because you're the one talking about it.

It is you who are now engaging in spin. You also already agreed it makes no sense. And not like it makes no sense in that you have not studied enough, but instead logically.

Use your words wisely, dude. What makes no sense? Ruling over nothing in a literal sense makes no sense, yes. Jehovah existed before anything. There was nothing except Jehovah prior to creation. Yes. What is nothing? Jehovah didn't "have" to create anything. He wasn't wandering around in nothing wondering where he could hang his hat.

All you have is a claim --> (the Bible).

All I have is an opinion. All anyone has is an opinion. You refused my offer to explain the Bible to you. You never acknowledged my detailed interpretation of the Bible in the link I provided. If the Bible is the claim, you aren't taking a very scientific approach to debating the claim. "Oh, you read about God in some book." "And you read about science in some book."

You keep wanting to bring 'science' or 'ex materia' into the conversation.

I do?! Oh, sorry. Let's leave that out then, my bad.

I have done my best to avoid them.

Good job. Carry on.

But since you insist,

Nice try.

maybe you will understand, using a differing explanation. Is it logical to ponder what is north of the north pole or what is colder than absolute zero? NO.

Okay.

They are logically nonsensical questions. Just like I ask you, where did God (reside/exist/dwell/other) before God had to first create it?

Nowhere you could comprehend. No spiritual or physical place. Just God.

It is another logically nonsensical question. -- Which demonstrates a 'supernatural creator' is not necessary or required.

For what? To create? Because he didn't have a street address? I wouldn't argue that a "supernatural creator" is necessary or required for anything. That's nonsensical. If God created everything, then, in past tense, it would have been necessary for him to have done that. Duh! If only God existed - always, prior to that - what time did he create everything? There wasn't time until God created the universe. Was God necessary or required for time to exist? How would I know? For all I know time was farted by a Yupik just north of the North pole two thousand years ago. Is it necessary or required for that to have happened? If you want your digital watch, it was, buddy. I can tell you.

[sighs]

What was the question? The answer is either Sigourney Weaver or Ernest Borgnine, I can never tell the difference. What any of that has to do with anything I don't know.