No Evidence For God, Why Still Believe?

I did not request you to reject Maslow’s ideas.

My point is, where you are relying on Maslow’s ideas to justify God exists as real, that is false and not possible because Maslow’s ideas are non-theistic.

So? Why can’t I appropriate his ideas into my own wherever they fit? Why must you pigeon hole everything?

It would be a lack of personal integrity to automatically believe. I am not Pascal.
Perhaps for an agnostic, a real deep proof of God is much more important than it is for a believer.

Also, we might need to ask ourselves:
Just What is this so-called God that cannot be proven to exist or not?

We sometimes argue over a god without having made a distinction of What God, a description (although a description is not the thing necessarily) but God has become like a million different species in the ocean of life for us.
Who can possibly know God based on THIS?

Note I presented re Maslow;

“They do not come from a supernatural God but from human nature.”

Re this, no matter how you ‘pigeon-hole’ Maslow’s ideas, they will not lead to your ‘God’.
As the statement indicate, the fundamental is human nature, i.e. psychological.

Here’s a suggestion: try reading what I actually write. Heck, you quoted me. What did the last sentence say?

Your integrity is based on evolution., genetic and memetic. Either you believe in the teleology of biological advances or you don’t. In our time it takes a brave soul to think God did it.

Why? Is “just because” any better of an explanation? “God” isn’t necessarily a man in the sky, you know.

Why can’t God be the cause of evolution? Our corporeal purpose is to evolve, to survive change, just as our mind form is to evolve, to survive change, beyond our corporeal form.

To be more precise;

Our corporeal purpose [empirically based] is to evolve, to survive change, just as our mind form is to evolve, to survive change, beyond our corporeal form.

Generally whatever is empirically based must be caused by something that is empirically- based.
The ultimate basis of the theists’ God is never empirical.
Logically one cannot conflate the two different basis.

Some theists claimed their God is empirical, e.g. the empirical bearded man in the sky.
If that is the case, then bring the evidence of an empirical bearded man in the sky to justify one’s claim.

Another counter argument is, according to Hume the grounds of ‘causation’ is psychological, i.e. customs, habits and constant conjunction. Try proving Hume wrong.
Therefore even if one can justify God as the ultimate cause, that is grounded on psychology.

The above are the reasons why God [the default] cannot be the absolute cause of evolution.

Let me remind you, Prismatic:

What did the last sentence say?

Wendy,
I do think God causes evolution.
As for Hume, he’s outdated by modern biology and cosmology. He didnot realize that the senses must reveal something real in order for us to survive. Yes the observer contributes to what is observed, but one would be amiss, solipsistic, to assume the observation is all there is. Hume flirted with solipsism. Communication among diverse minds has proved his claims to be spurious.

Note solipsism is a incoherent theory.
iep.utm.edu/solipsis/#H7

Hume did leave some gaps with his theory, nonetheless the psychological factors raised by Hume is still fact. It was Kant who closed the gap after his famous ‘Hume awoken me from my dogmatic slumber.’

Who and which minds? Any references to this point?

Ierrellus,

Perhaps it takes some brave souls in any time or era (do you really believe that THIS is the worst time in history?) to think that God did it; that is, if their thinking is based on investigation, examination, cognitive thinking and facts…not simply sentimentality and a need for some all-powerful entity or father figure to exist.

But what is so brave about automatically believing in a God?
What is so brave about letting go and “letting God” handle things?
Kind of foolish, don’t you think, capable of wreaking such havoc on the world?
What kind of evidence can we have for any type of God which we tend to believe in except for what our senses tell us or make us feel?

Think of all the tragedy, horror and destruction brought on by some of your same so-called brave souls because they seem to think and feel that God did it, or told them to do it, or they decided not to do something about it because they think and feel that a God would take care of it.

Do you believe in divine design because you believe in the kind of God which directly caused the universe and is omnipotent and omniscient? What if both directions are wrong?
What if it is something else which got it all moving?

It is so easy to dismiss religious claims by referring to the most toxic forms of religious fundamentalism as classic examples of belief in God. That’s the straw man most commonly used in arguments by atheists and agnostics. Face it, the God is dead or the God does not exist ideas are about a century old. These ideas do not address progressive religion as it has evolved and have not replaced the God belief with anything better. A second straw man is to reference outdated philosophy as revealing how brain/minds actually work. How about seeing religion and philosophy from the vantage point of the twenty-first century?

Ierrellus,

…by ALSO referring to the most toxic forms of religious fundamentalism as ~~ et cetera.
These references do paint a larger picture, do they not, about one’s particular belief in God and how that belief affects their own life and that of others.
Why would you dismiss them? That would be like sweeping the dirt under the rug?, no?

Have you ever put a puzzle together? Do you throw away the pieces which you just cannot seem to fit somewhere? Or do you try to figure out where they actually fit?

.

I myself am not sure of that. The names have changed and the circumstances but it seems to me that that same God exists and the ideas too.

What is it that you think WILL replace the same old God belief?

So, in a nutshell, where do YOU see God’s actual place in the twenty-first century?
Is your God an "I Am Who I Am or is your God an I Am Who I Am Becoming?

Do you think that your God is the same God in time (or out of time) NOW as was in time (or out lol) before any thought or conception ever occurred of this plausible Something?
Does or did the thought which brought God into existence change God?

Nothing I can propose would please you. I’ve stated my perspective again and again and yet you ask questions as if I had never tried to explain anything about my progressive religious beliefs. I believe evolution is not without purpose. Take it from there.
I reference the “god is dead” idea as coming into vogue after Nietzsche and as popular in the early 20th century. In any event, the idea does nothing to benefit the destiny of humans on the Earth or to remedy man’s inhumanity to man…
So you think you are immune to determinism? Every stem cell in your body “knew” what organ it would become.
I’ve had problems with Nagel since his “What It’s Like to be a Bat” essay, circa 1970s. He claimed we’ll never know what that is like. E. O. Wilson did a thorough rebuttalof the essay in his work “Consilience” in which he explains in detail what it’s like to be a bee.

If someone was denying those phenomena or if they were painting a rosy picture of religion in general, sure then it’s sweeping under the rug. But if it is not relevent to a point someone is making or if it is openly or implicitly fallacious - some (or many or even most) religious believers have done X, therefore religious belief is Y, then it is good that he points out the problem. And this is endemic to discussions like this. Sure, theists also focus where they want to in these kinds of discussions, some of them that is. But the sins of one group do not excuse the irrationality of the other and vice versa.

If we focus only on cases that fit our judgments of religion, we make precisely this mistake. You are defending the criticism by using the same argument as the criticism.

Given all the billions of people who have believed in God in that time, the evidence and proofs must be convincing to somebody. What the hell do you even mean declaring something that has convinced billions of people to be unconvincing? Unconvincing to you personally? Who cares?

And many others declare their belief is based on proof and/or evidence.

Because like five people have read your proof against the existence of God and zero of them took it seriously.

I wonder if you are aware of the ad populum fallacy.

For rationality sake, the bottom line is justification within an empirical-rational reality.

Who cares?
As a responsible citizen of the world, when informed of this stats and the whole range of evil acts by SOME [from a potential pool of 300 million]
thereligionofpeace.com/TROP.jpg
for humanity sake, one has to take note and care.

Then provide the proofs and justification with a credible platform which is no other than the empirical-rational one. Else which other?

Whether anyone agree with me or not, it is critical to take note of the stats of evil acts from theists [a critical SOME of large numbers] who act in the name of a God which is illusory and an impossibility.

While many theists concede this I would say more, at least within Christianity that I have encountered are not conceding this but seeing this as essential or positive. Not backed into a corner by someone’s great rationality but valuing faith. This should be coupled with the previous poster’s point that many others have empirical reasons for believing in God. If you think this is not the case, you probably lack an understanding of what empirical means, especially in philosophy. Further an examination of the processes through which you yourself arrived at beliefs is likely to contain many faith or intuition based beliefs, like many of the one’s you have about theists, what must necessarily be the case, what a valid syllogism is, the pacific nature of Christianity, and likely a host of other more personal heuristics you use to navigate the world, often successfully.