God's Existence Debate

The cluster revolves around arguments on proving or disproving God's existence, the burden of proof on positive claims, and analogies like Russell's Teapot and Pascal's Wager.

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Keywords

e.g OK lesswrong.com NOT wikipedia.org god prove evidence exist existence faith believe atheist proof believing

Sample Comments

wazoox Aug 10, 2010 View on HN

I bit exactly the same. However I feel somewhat cheated by the first "bullet", because of the way the question's formulated. I actually don't think that you need "irrevocable proof" to believe in God any more than to believe in something else. However we actually need extremely strong evidence in both cases; evolution has very strong evidence in its favour, while there isn't any evidence that God exists.Same thing for the second bullet : I stated that God has the freedom to achieve the logic

anigbrowl Sep 13, 2018 View on HN

That's essentially a religious argument. Please provide evidence for your claim.

Vecr Oct 4, 2024 View on HN

Absolutely it's an argument against God that almost none of those explanations contain God.If you want to enter more evidence or argue priors you can, but in the argument's current state it's highly effective.

lwhalen Dec 8, 2024 View on HN

You are backing into a very common fallacy, Pascal's Wager. "If not the christian god, why not the flying spaghetti monster" is what this usually boils down to. Anything that is presented without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

stan_rogers Jul 8, 2020 View on HN

Positive claims bear the burden of proof. Not believing a God or gods exist is the null hypothesis. There is no need to prove that a God or gods do not exist; there is a need to prove its/their existence. Why do people have trouble understanding that?

I don't believe in God because I've never heard a good reason to believe in God. I find it odd that you presume a need for a good reason to not believe in something. If I did need such reasons, I'd need a good reason to not believe in invisible pink unicorns, teapots in orbit around Saturn, and many other things. (Apologies if I've misinterpreted you.)

collyw Dec 15, 2014 View on HN

Your line of reasoning is pretty much the same as a religious person asking an atheist to prove three is no God. Of course that will be impossible to prove.The religious person is the one claiming something without and reasoning or evidence. Therefore the onus is on them to prove that God exists, rather than the atheist to prove he doesn't.There is no evidence to suggest that science will be able to observe an experience, so the onus is on you to prove that its a reasonable suggestion

Well since we can't prove it isn't true, it must be true.Just like invisible gods :)

ghsalazar Jul 27, 2013 View on HN

Great claims require great evidence. Prove God existence. Show us reproducible facts of God existence.Disclaimer: I'm a christian, but I know that God existence is just an assumption that I have made on faith, and it can't be verified nor disproved, because it isn't testable. It isn't scientific knowledge.

Herring Jan 17, 2010 View on HN

>God cannot be proved or disproved, so stop wasting your time!http://lesswrong.com/lw/i8/religions_claim_to_be_nondisprova...(tldr: skip to the last paragraph)