My experience is sufficient evidence for me. Evidence agreed upon by enough people that I deem rational is evidence enough for me as well. Your post had nothing to do with mine.

That is pretty much the word for word explanation I usually hear from Christians regarding their belief in Christ, or Hindus when speaking about Brahman, etc.

A lot of people have very deep feeling of trust in communion with God, just as you have very deep feelings of trust in sense data. Also, if those other people don't exist, then using them to verify what you believe is pretty foolish, no?

Yup, I'm speaking from my perspective, I never made an absolute claim about the existence of God.

Axioms: If you don't believe in one thing without evidence, then you shouldn't believe in other things without evidence.
All things have no true evidence

You don't believe in God or X unprovable thing;
therefore you have no reason to believe in science.

Logical extension of your statement: you should believe in nothing.

Define true evidence for me, also tell me if truth is absolute. I'm not sure if I understand the axioms.

Evidence is something that can be proven. As such it must originate in something which is self-evident or has also been proven.

The axioms are axioms you laid out with your statement. The second axiom is a fairly well-established principle.

Unless you define truth using the classical a priori a posteriori split, by which I define the universe and God separately. There are two kinds of truth.

Here is where I decided what evidence is sufficient for my belief. This is a better second axiom for me than the one you posted.

Revised Axioms: If you don't believe in one thing without evidence, then you shouldn't believe in other things without evidence.
Your experience is sufficient evidence for you. Evidence agreed upon by enough people that you deem rational is evidence enough for you as well.

You don't believe in God or X unprovable thing;
therefore you have no reason to believe in any other thing that isn't proven by sufficient evidence for you.

Revised logical extension: You should believe in nothing that doesn't have sufficient evidence for you.

That is pretty much saying, "I shouldn't believe in things without evidence unless I want to, because if I want to I can just say there is sufficient evidence for me." That's fine, but you can probably see why I reacted against it. Its sort of like saying "I mean to quit stealing as soon as I steal for the last time." The conclusion makes the statement obsolete.

Bear in mind, this isn't the "your beliefs" thread--it is the "existence of God" thread. I assumed that your original statement was intended to be an argument against the existence of God due to the context of the thread. I apologize if that was not your intention.

It's understandable. I figured that the thread title and the OP's original post was vague enough that saying my beliefs on the existence of God would still be on topic.

Either way, I was at fault for misinterpreting the intention behind your statement. I apologize. I stand by the fact that you've laid out a self-compromising stance, though.

I have, but I think I've been pretty consistent with what I think sufficient evidence is. If I had a near death experience that God gave me a back rub I'd probably start believing.

I can confirm the existence of myself.

I must assume that my senses are accurate at least part of the time. I recognise that I could be a computer simulation or a brain in a jar with wires hooked up to it. However, at the end of the day, if that experience is completely indistinguishable from the one I am currently in, then, for all of my intents and purposes, the reality I am experiencing is objective reality.*

So, based off of the assumption that my personal senses are trustworthy, at least some of the time. I can start to gather actual information based on my surroundings. I can also use the information gathered by other people, as long as I am aware that such information may be flawed and should be considered to be subject to review, as it could have been misperceived, misremembered, or miscommunicated (or all three).

*This is not the same as assuming there is a God. Unlike the assumption that there is a God, this assumption is far more likely to be true, as it assumes that there isn't a giant Truman Show-esque conspiracy, and that cells, honed by billions of years of evolution, can perform their tasks, at least some of the time.

On the other hand, the assumption that there is a God requires believing that there is an omnipotent being, who created the whole of the universe, but who, instead of telling us in aggregate, whispers to people who have eaten hallucinogenic mushrooms or nearly died of thirst or are merely attempting to control a populace, who then write down the visions they received once again lucid. Who made us perfectly in his own image, yet requires us to mutilate our genitals. Etc. Etc.

You don't have any way to determine if your senses are more likely to be valid than there is to be a God. You say that your proposition is far more likely because otherwise you have to assume that the whole Universe is a Truman Show-esque debacle, but that is a qualitative and not quantitative judgement, and as such you are judging it based on your sense data. The validity of your senses cannot be judged by your senses. You cannot validate your sense data against other people, because you are only aware of other people via your sense data. Therefore anything they say is implicit in your sense data already (see Schizophrenics using hallucinations to verify the truth of what their hallucinations have told them).

In the end, you are making the same first assumption that a person of faith in God is making; that something you feel or experience can be assumed to be true because it simply seems too convincing not to be true.

The belief in God only dictates that you believe that the Universe began. The prime mover is one definition of God (see Aristotle). Once again, you're using sense data to invalidate a theory which you think is contrary to sense data, which you are validating through sense data. It's wholly illogical; you take it on faith.

* sigh *

OK, let's go round the loop on solipsism one more time.

There appears to be an "I" who is "receiving" "impressions" from what appears to be an external world.
If "I" has no reference, then "I" cannot participate in this debate, hence anything further is void.
It therefore seems reasonable to assume that "I" am I, and in some sense I exist.

If the "impressions" I am "receiving" do not in fact exist (this appears to be your position, Gorgon), then all is illusion, and no conclusions can be drawn about anything. Any further discussion is pointless. Again, the only way to proceed is to concede the reality (NB not the accuracy) of the impressions.

If I am generating rather than receiving the impressions, then we arrive at classic solipsism. Nothing exists external to me, the perceiver and generator of these impressions; or if it does I have no means of interaction with it, since all my perceptions are self-generated. Any effect I have on anything "out there" will be purely random.

If I am in control of the generated impressions, then I should be able to manipulate them at will. A few basic experiments in trying to deviate from the "laws" of "reality" quickly convince me that that is absurdly unlikely.

I therefore conclude that I exist within some larger framework, and that I am capable of receiving impressions from it which imply that it has some consistent pattern of reaction which is not under my control.

I assume that my perceptions are not completely accurate, so by repeated trials with minimal variations I build up a picture of how the non-me portion of reality functions. This in no way undermines the reasoning above.

• ------------------

To then re-state the overall topic: given that I exist in some sort of reality, why should I believe that this reality interacts in any way with a being designated as God?

• (It is generally assumed for simplicity in the context of this and similar threads that God refers to a singular, personal, being which created and/or maintains reality. If you want to argue for or against some other version, then fine, but please state exactly what version you are referring to.)

You made a series of unjustified assumptions (or really assumptions justified by ends rather than means) to get from "I may or may not exist" to "I exist and there is a world external to me that also exists, and I can deduce things about that world via logic and sense data." That is my only point.

You made those assumptions because they were the only way to get any further, otherwise you couldn't prove anything. So the person who believes in God is simply making one more assumption to be able to prove something by the principle of sufficient reason: you cannot understand something until you validate its origins. Since we know HOW the Universe started (the big bang), but not what came before that or why that happened, we must then have a prime mover to solve for anything.

If you believe in sense data, you're making the same logical conclusions based on the similar logic that a person believing in God is. You have sight, they have the sense of faith (originating mostly in the right parietal lobe rather than the occipital lobe). You make those assumptions because without it you can prove nothing, as do they. I am not saying that there is or is not a God, or that there is or is not existence, or that sense data is or is not valid. I am just pointing out the extreme parallel between the two proposed positions. Assuming one is better than the other seems silly.

As you correctly point out, the steps I took were meta-arguments, based not upon truth (solipsism may be true, in which case you are a figment of my imagination), but upon utility - this discussion then has some purpose.

I can not see a similar justification for "you cannot understand something until you validate its origins". Could you perhaps outline your reasoning there?

Beyond that, your argument appears to be along the old "first mover" lines - everything must have a cause, therefore there must be a God to act as first cause. That falls before the question of "What caused God", unless you want to concede (as Pratchett put it) "Elephants all the way down".

Here is an example of the principle of sufficient reason:

Why did the sun rise? Because the Earth is rotating.
Why did the Earth rotate? Because it is part of a complex system which mandates rotation.
Why is it part of this system? Because it was formed with these laws of physics in this solar system under the conditions by which it was formed.
Why was it formed then and there? Because those are the conditions set up by the big bang.
Why was there a big bang to set up those conditions? I don't know.

If I can't answer the final extension of A (which would be an infinite chain), then my answer to A is conjecture. I don't really understand that cause of the Earth rotating, I just witness that it rotates.

For the record, the entire idea of the first mover is that it does not require a cause. It causes itself. That is in its definition.

I am not saying there is or is not a God. I am not arguing for a prime mover. I am saying that if you argue that belief in God is simplistic, but do believe in sense data (as many have done), you are not acknowledging the exact same basic assumptions in your own understanding of the Universe.

And I am saying that they are not the "exact same assumptions" as I pointed out in my previous post.

See, the awful thing about these religious debates is that I actually WANT to participate, but then that means reading like 10 pages of massive text-walls in order to understand where the argument is.
FML.

Please point to where you do this, because what I see is me saying, "You are making assumptions in your argument which presuppose the argument and are made by means rather than ends" and you saying "yes, that is true." That is the same type of assumption that somebody who believes in God makes. Ergo, I see a strong similarity in the two arguments.

Also, I am not arguing in favor of the existence of God, as I've stated numerous times. Seeing how I am not arguing for a God, godhead, or first mover, I do not need to define one.

For the record, I am adherent of an Abrahamic religion, and I believe that God and goodness are mutually causal.

So we're good then. Your argument, the thing we'd been on for three pages, is based on an omnipotent god (If God is not omnipotent, then it isn't certain that he can make evil=0, and it isn't certain that this world isn't the world of minimal evil, and as such your argument is based on assertions that can't be made in good faith) and since you acknowledge that an omnipotent god cannot be discussed logically, you acknowledge that your argument uses logic to predict the actions of a being that does not have to act logically, and is therefore irrelevant.

For bonus points, if God is omnipotent I can prove that I am God and also the entire cast of Friends, and so are you.

1. God is omnipotent
2. God can make a burrito so hot he can't eat it, then eat it anyway (Logically sound, if he can do anything he can do this)

1. The (hypothetical, he doesn't actually have to make it for this to work) burrito is inedible
2. The burrito is edible

1. Either the burrito is edible or I am Chandler (True statement, the burrito is edible)
Since the burrito is also inedible, rendering the first part of the statement false, the second part of the statement must be true
QED, I am Chandler. Anything can be substituted in there and it comes out the same way. If God is truly omnipotent then everything is true and also false.

And that is why an omnipotent God can't be used in logical discourse.

Gorgon, you seem to repeatedly use the tactic of arguing in favour of a particular position, then when faced with an argument against it saying "But that's not my position, that's what <x> would say". I find that rather irritating. For the sake of rational argument, could you please pick a position (regardless of whether or not that is your personal view) and stick to it or concede that it is flawed before shifting ground.

As I understand our sub-thread so far, you had suggested that because our senses are unreliable, we can know nothing. I replied by showing that in order to have a meaningful conversation, we had to assume that
a) I exist
b) The outside world exists,
c) I can derive some information about it from my senses, including that
d) You exist.
I did not claim that this was proven, merely that these assumptions allow a meaningful debate.
You then claimed that "A Christian" would say that God's existence is a similar necessity.

At this point, I see nothing in what you have written to support that. If I've missed something I apologize. Could you please go over why you (or your protagonist) think there is a necessity for God's existence in order to facilitate this conversation?