A lot of people who don't believe in God request proof of his existance from those who do believe. Obviously nothing that would be accepted as proof by a non-believer can be presented.

So, I request that some non-believer proove that they exist. Proove that I am not in a dream, and this is not all fake. Or how do you know Im not a figment of your imagination? Maybe this is all fake and you are the only thing real about this world. Maybe not.

Proove that you exist.

[This message has been edited by SEN D-F (edited 02-08-2004).]

I don't.

Prove it. Prove you're a hallucination in my mind.

I guess believers and non-believers are even then. Neither can prove existence, of a God or themselves. This has certainly solved a lot...

Here's a fun thing to do, create a small world in your mind. Picture people running around, living out their lives. They exist in your mind. Hey look, you are now God. Do what you want with your little universe.

Who's to say we aren't just someone's dream, or however you want to interpret it.

As I don't exist, providing proof of my non- existance may prove to be just a little hard.

quote:Originally posted by SEN D-F:

Obviously nothing that would be accepted as proof by a non-believer can be presented.

This is not obvious at all. There are plenty of things that I would accept as proof of a deity's existence; verified miracles, a significant personal experience, etc.

quote:Proove that you exist.

The word is "prove".

I can send you pictures of myself, I can give you a history of myself, testimony from people who know me, postings I've made on the internet, etc. None of these are "proof" (I could have forged the pictures, made up a history, etc.), but with enough of this evidence it becomes far more likely that I am a real person than that I'm somebody else perpetrating a hoax.

Of course, all gods have going for them are inaccurate histories and high dubious testimony thousands of years old.

Ooga booga!

I think therefore I am.

- Decarte

good ol' cogito.

methinks you just want an argument of some sort, SEN D-F.

quote:Originally posted by lawst_kos:

I think therefore I am.

- Decarte

I was thinking about that quote from the second I saw this thread. Interesting.

Damn you and you're beating me to it!

An argument for my existence:

There are two possibilities to my existence, in your point of view. Either I am a figment of your own imagination or I myself exist. If I I'm a figment of your imagination, then I am an extension of you, therefore whenever I say, "I exist", the “I” would refer to you. I would be a conscious or subconscious manifestation of you; therefore I exist.



P.S. The cogito doesn't prove you exist to anyone else, just to you...

What would be the criteria for falsification of the proposition that there is a god?

In other words, if there wasn't a god, how could one show that?

Well formed, objective statements about reality, usually have some criteria of falsification. If the statement "There is a God." doesn't have any criteria for falsification, then there are reasons to think that the statement is not a well-formed, objective statement about reality.

I will expand a bit on my above point.

What I'm asking is this. What would it take to prove that there was no god?

"If you can show "_______", than that would be evidence against their being a God."

If you can't fill in that blank with some criteria, then the statement that there is a God seems to be without content since no matter what the evidence was, you would still believe in a God.

The credibility of a belief depends on the justifiability of its truth claims. There are three basic criteria we commonly employ to determine the validity and truthfulness of a worldview. These criteria affirm that in order for a belief to be true, it must be:

- Logically consistent

- Factually Verifiable

- Existentially Livable.

It is meaningless to say that reality is beyond logic or that beliefs are a matter of faith and devoid of reason for such a statement presupposes logic itself.

Your fake i'm real now leave my circle of experience.

quote:The credibility of a belief depends on the justifiability of its truth claims. There are three basic criteria we commonly employ to determine the validity and truthfulness of a worldview. These criteria affirm that in order for a belief to be true, it must be:

- Logically consistent

- Factually Verifiable

- Existentially Livable.



Then surely your existence is as credible as a God's existence...

Your existence is as "factually verifiable" as the existence of a God. Me viewing your posts (an ability of an existing human), is as logically consistent as me not viewing God (a possible ability of a God). It’s also just as "Existentially Livable" (What ever that means...)

...

To make a long story short, you can't disprove a null hypothesis. There's nothing to work with.

There's nothing to even indicate the said thing in question would be real, which makes one wonder where the idea came from at all.

Of course, it would make perfect sense if teh whole thing was fabricated nonsense.

For that matter, there is nothing to even indicate the said "three basic criteria" are even real. The three criteria actually refute themselves; the only way of saving them would be to include something else. Perhaps the possibility of humans accepting things without evidence... Faith. *GASP* http://www.totse.com/bbs/wink.gif (http://www.totse.com/bbs/wink.gif)

quote:Originally posted by Rust:



P.S. The cogito doesn't prove you exist to anyone else, just to you...

if you prove your existance to yourself, does it not follow that you've proved it in general.

i mean, how can you say "i know i exist" without implying that you do, in fact, exist for everyone else?

doesn't existing at all imply that the rest of existence interacts with you?

well put, Dark_Magneto, by-the-by.

quote:if you prove your existance to yourself, does it not follow that you've proved it in general.

i mean, how can you say "i know i exist" without implying that you do, in fact, exist for everyone else?

doesn't existing at all imply that the rest of existence interacts with you?



No, because you can doubt that you are talking to me, that your're sitting, or that I exist. What you cannot doubt is that you exist. Everything else could be imginary.

This does bring into question what we call empirical evidence overall doesn't it?

It's as if the only thing you are sure of is that your own mind exists yet there is nothing but feeling(not sensory perception) indicates of your mind's existance.

Mind cannot be defined but it defines mankind.

Everything else is nothing but electrical impulses interpreted by your brain. All of which can be induced by drugs.

I think the real question is: does your will create your body or does your body create your will. Before you become conclusive think about this for a second. If you are your body then you are just a thing. If you are your will then you are an active creator of your surroundings, provided you want to believe space time is real.

quote:Originally posted by ilbastardoh:

If you are your body then you are just a thing.

Every"thing" is just a thing.

in first grade i firmly believed that everything was in my imagination and nothing was real (i was a fucked up child). but if it all is in my head, then i congratulate myself for dreaming up things like coffee, music, and internet.

quote:Originally posted by UnknownVeritas:

I guess believers and non-believers are even then. Neither can prove existence, of a God or themselves. This has certainly solved a lot...

Nonbelief is not different than belief.

quote:Originally posted by SEN D-F:

Proove that you exist.

This isn't answering directly: I believe in God, but I don't believe he exists, don't believe he is a "he", don't believe he is a being. He is more than all of that. He is all of those things AND none of those things.He is less than all of those things.

quote:Originally posted by Dark_Magneto:

"If you can show "_______", than that would be evidence against their being a God."

If you can't fill in that blank with some criteria, then the statement that there is a God seems to be without content since no matter what the evidence was, you would still believe in a God.

[/b]



Alright, I don't know if this applies to anyone else.. but to me this was a nonsensical ramble. You had your points in there, but what was this? It's almost as if you're proposing that I have no choice in the matter of my beleifs.. I do not beleive in any god, so how is it that if one fails to satisfy you with their ideals, that god still exists to them? Everyone has their own beleifs, and no factual statement can change that, you know as well as I do that's freedom of choice.

(If you meant something else with your post, I appologize for mis-interpreting.)



**edit: Shortened Dark_Magneto's quote.

[This message has been edited by [G-Prime] (edited 02-10-2004).]

quote:Originally posted by [G-Prime]:

Alright, I don't know if this applies to anyone else.. but to me this was a nonsensical ramble. You had your points in there, but what was this?



I was simply giving a demonstration of why belief in unevidenced assertions is logically bankrupt.

If nothing could come along, even in theory, that could disprove what your already believing in with no proof at all, then your belief is baseless.

if you believe in something with no proof at all, then turn around and demand proof to prove you wrong, then what are you asking for? Is there any proof at all that could possibly come up that would make you say "Ok, you proved me wrong. GG."?

No, there isn't, because your already believing in something through no proof of its own. Your belief can't be proven true, can't be proven wrong, not even in theory, and it is thus worthless.

For any idea to be considered valid, it's going to need a way to know if it is wrong (even if it's just in theory) in the case that it actually is.

Atheism can be falsified by proving the existence of any God.

Flat-earthism can be disproved by showing the earth is round.

Belief in varous gods are not capable of falsification because they don't have things tied directly to them. The older gods were tied to weather partterns and all sorts of testable shit, so now they are extinct because those godtheories made specific predictions and they turned out to be wrong, but current popular gods make no predictions, aren;t tied to anything, and exist arbitrarily.

If you believe in gods and they didn't exist, you would never know if you were wrong. Since you can never know if you are wrong or right then there's no point.

To separate fact from fiction, we have to agree that reality is objective. Once you abandon objectivity, all bets are off and any absent-minded bullshit becomes as equally valid as anything else; so objectivity is necessarily required for the most accurate statements in reguards to reality.

quote:

It's almost as if you're proposing that I have no choice in the matter of my beleifs.. I do not beleive in any god, so how is it that if one fails to satisfy you with their ideals, that god still exists to them?



You don't believe in God. Ok. Is that a falsifiable statement? Sure is. A god of any stripe could manifest in Madison Square Gardens in some huge avatar, complete with it's own familiars swarming about and totally prove you and every other atheist wrong.

quote:

Everyone has their own beleifs, and no factual statement can change that, you know as well as I do that's freedom of choice.



Yeah, everyone has their own beliefs. Some are just further removed from reality than others.

quote:

(If you meant something else with your post, I appologize for mis-interpreting.)



Yeah, i think you missed what i was trying to say exactly.

quote:Originally posted by 4Sight:

Ooga booga!

What an intriguing insight.

*takes notes* http://www.totse.com/bbs/biggrin.gif (http://www.totse.com/bbs/biggrin.gif)

1.34.7/8127

ill prove to you i exist.

meet me at a place of your choice.

write a letter to your lawyer that i should be exempt from any punishment regarding whatever actions i perform

then after i blow your brains out....you will realise i exist.



hope to see ya soon.......

Exactly mate, i have said this a few times before and people just reject it. Well not many, not mentioning any nameS *COUGH*Xilmun (frontle lobe)*COUGH*. Although i took it a bit further and explained it better. Any way, there's n proof that "reality" is objective, for all I know it could be subjective!

i just made ur dick 3 inches long, by taking away 1 inch