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

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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?

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I'm out. "There is no gods?!" is grammatically wrong, or as you say, stupid.

Yeah! God isn't the one God you keep saying it is. You don't seem to realize that a god, gods, a goddess, goddesses, aren't necessarily anything you say they is. Atheist always do that. It's stupid. It are stupids. That bug you? Huh?

[1213]

Proof is evidence or argument establishing or helping to establish a fact or the truth of a statement, you and I and the atheists are proving God here, all the time. Proof is not certain infallible knowledge, though people, especially atheists who argue against God in the name of "science" like to think. That is replacing faith with overconfidence for the sake of ideology.

Interesting. My source says:

Proof is a fact or piece of information that shows that something exists or is true.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio ... lish/proof

Evidence is one or more reasons for believing that something is or is not true.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio ... h/evidence

[1213]

... If God turned up as a paying guest it wouldn't be God - in your opinion. What makes your opinion of what God would or would not do the final arbiter of judgment?...

Bible tells certain things about God. If someone calls him the God, but is in contradiction with the Biblical message, then he obviously is not the Bible God. So, to me Bible is the arbiter. And to me Bible God is the only one that I am willing to keep as my God, because He shows greatness unlike anyone else.

[boatsnguitars]

I'm out. "There is no gods?!" is grammatically wrong, or as you say, stupid.

Yeah! God isn't the one God you keep saying it is. You don't seem to realize that a god, gods, a goddess, goddesses, aren't necessarily anything you say they is. Atheist always do that. It's stupid. It are stupids. That bug you? Huh?

Not sure what your previous post was about, other than to show your terrible taste in music.
Not sure what your last one one is for, except to chase the latest shiny thing you feel you need to address.
Not sure what any of your posts are except to tell us what you believe to be true, from your perspective and then pretend you are immune from having to defend anything.
Not sure if you can completely grasp that you aren't the authority on what a god is or isn't.
I'm not at all sure if you're an atheist who believes in gods in some inane sense, or a theist who thinks they have discovered the secret of the universe and simply want to assert your 'knowledge."
Either way, I'm not interested unless you can actually back up any of your assertions.
I'll tell you what, why don't you and 1213 have a nice long discussion on what God is, verify your findings, and let us all know what you two Theologians settle on?

Sound fair?

[Data]

Sound fair?

Excellent. Strategically, I think that that is exactly where I want to be in order for me to continue my plan.

[TRANSPONDER]

I'm out. "There is no gods?!" is grammatically wrong, or as you say, stupid.

Yeah! God isn't the one God you keep saying it is. You don't seem to realize that a god, gods, a goddess, goddesses, aren't necessarily anything you say they is. Atheist always do that. It's stupid. It are stupids. That bug you? Huh?

possibly. The thing is that a few god - apologists roll up here, they do not set out their stall, keeping some unorthodox doctrine or belief hidden, and they triumphantly trot it out "Hah! That isn't what I mean by 'God' you lose; gocha, Checkmate atheists". Yes it would bug us to pull cheap tricks like that. But in the end it gets the apologist (every time it happens, which is not too uncommon) nowhere as we either reposition the debate or say 'We don't care; only mainstream religion and its' doctrines bother us, we do not care about an individual tinfoil - hat personal sect of one personalised creed".

Bottom line, we can disregard you if your beliefs are so individual and outre that nobody cares, or we can debate on some sort of general basis, up to you.

p.s do I want to watch a video I guess is about semantics? I guess I'd better....

Ten seconds in, That's all I need. Either a strawman (which means it doesn't matter) or a video debunking the strawman, since, as we don't use it anyway and you don't need to instruct us about the way semantics can be used to cheat, the video wasn't making a point we didn't know. I do recall someone making a big, fat, deal about definitions of God (something of value) which is a silly and dishonest argument. You didn't need to tell us, and in fact you wasted a post.

[POI]

Questions for debate: 1) Do gods exist? 2) Can you prove they exist and 3) do they even have to exist?

1) Likely not.
2) No. It's hard to prove something which likely does not exist.
3) No.

[TRANSPONDER]

I think it is best to avoid confusion.

Hear, hear.

One can use the term 'god' to refer to anything of importance or veneration, but they have identifiers beyond that. To call your baseball team, or favourite car you 'god' is asking for the confusion of equivocation. A Baseball team is a sporting team, a car is an object of transportation. A god is a spiritual being with intelligence and, supposedly, powers.

But that isn't true. A baseball team is a sporting team, a car is an object of transportation and a god is anything, including, possibly, either one of those things. While some gods are spiritual beings with intelligence and, supposedly powers, most gods aren't. In the OP I gave the definition of God, but it isn't very accurate. Just the common use. Though it gives examples of gods, it doesn't tell you what it means to be a god. The only requirement to being a god is to be worshipped or venerated. Which just means great respect and reverence.

Those are the ones we talk about here and the other definitions are best left out of the Forum as they belong in the sporting and petrolhead forums.

Well, I, Uh . . . what?!

No, no, no. Do any gods exist? No, says atheism. Then, astonishingly, atheism tries to limit the definition of gods, dismissing about, at a guess, 90%. A god doesn't have to be spirit, it doesn't have to be intelligent, it doesn't have to have powers. It doesn't have to be real, and it doesn't have to exist, so, while the specific god in question in forums like this may be of primary concern, that doesn't mean the other 99% don't exist.

Ok so the question seems twofold.

Do gods exist?

Do they have to exist?

The second really is, generally, no.

That isn't true unless you dismiss most of the gods. You're limiting the definition on the basis of one type of gods. Supernatural. I think that's ideological. Let's rephrase the question. Do lords exist and does the supernatural exist?

The world works as it does without gods and without needing to be created by gods.

The trouble with that statement is that you can't prove it because it's never been done. It doesn't matter if the gods really exist or not, the world has always been predicated upon mythological presuppositions. It's never been tried to work the world without gods.

Once nobody knew the other explanations, so 'gods' were the easy hypothesis.

I don't believe that. It's an assumption always made by unbelievers but it isn't very sophisticated, well-constructed or supported by reason or logic. It's only the assumption that individuals who don't believe in gods don't need them, and that's easy to say when your entire world is founded upon them. Not so easy to demonstrate when pretty much everything around you is predicated upon them. Look around. The days of the week, month, the planets, medicine, automobiles, candy. Everything is named after mythological gods.

They are no longer needed.

I don't think they were ever needed as such.

Life and indeed consciousness does not require gods, or the explanations are good enough not to really need gods. I know the Believers point to 'a god is possible' but that does not make a go -to theory, but a Faithbased one.

The definition of faith is trust. All theories are faith based. The Latin word credit means to believe. Words like credential, credible, and credit. Think of your explanations without those, or life in general.

True, Cosmic origins is a problem, and the best case for a creative being or 'god', though it does not answer which one it might be, or whether there is only one or many.

Again, you're limiting the definition of gods to supernatural.

Again 'don't know' (yet) is the right answer. It is not "God - until science can prove 100% that it happened without a god".

I don't think science has any relevance. Science is wrong more often than not. Whether science could prove 100% God or not God makes no difference to me.

But the faithful think the logic is 'a god (and of course the one they believe in) until the alternative explanation (without a god being necessary) is known. And even then they can deny the evidence.

Everyone can deny the evidence. That's what evidence is for.

Other definitions of gods are irrelevant here. Because religions only deal in the kind of invisible beings floating about influencing life and our existence. Other definitions simply do not matter unless you give some reasons why they are relevant.

Belief is based on trusting what we are told. Science is based on what can be shown credible on evidence; it is worth believing or having trust as you say. Faith (faith in the teachings of religion) on the other hand does not have scientifically validated backup but Faith (s I use the term anyway) is belief and trust without good reason and even in defiance if the evidence. Your dismissal of science and what it has explained and validated, compared to religious claims that have not made their case, just shows what a flawed method of reasoning you are presenting here.

That explanations for things that were once unexplainable were done with proposing mythological, supernatural and magical entities is surely evident with volcanoes, lighting, thunderstorms and even illness. To say it is an assumption is wickedly bad apologetics.

This persistent science - denial, when they help themselves to the products of science that give then a superb life compared to what it was in history (in dentistry to give just one example) and trust the products of science to work every day, while dismissing them as though they were worth nothing if it doesn't support unsupported beliefs in the supernatural (or in your case something else, flying saucer pilots with advance technology perhaps?) is one of the most shortsighted and flawed mindsets of the theists. I call it the Venomfang fallacy as a video debunking that poster's apologetics video shows up the flawed thinking as well as anything.

I'll see whether I can link it/.

Got it first time. what a memory



It's staggeringly arrogant of this fellow to have the sauce to claim this faithbased mythological thinking as reasoning, philosophy and critical thinking when it is doing the opposite of all those things (appeals to faith, rhetoric rather than philosophy and appeals to the unknown and the gap for god instead of critical thinking). Now, you may say 'I'm not a creationist', that you aren't talking about supernatural types of gods. That doesn't matter; what matters is that you were committing the same types of errors of reasoning in your dismissal of of science.

[Data]

Questions for debate: 1) Do gods exist? 2) Can you prove they exist and 3) do they even have to exist?

1) Likely not.
2) No. It's hard to prove something which likely does not exist.
3) No.

Do Lords exist? Can you prove Lords exist?

[POI]

Questions for debate: 1) Do gods exist? 2) Can you prove they exist and 3) do they even have to exist?

1) Likely not.
2) No. It's hard to prove something which likely does not exist.
3) No.

1) Do Lords exist? 2) Can you prove Lords exist?

Same answers.

1) Likely not.
2) No. It's hard to prove something which likely does not exist.

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Care to address posts 32, 34, and 36?