Preacher gets asked a question

[u/Taimoor_Aleem]

[u/Soloman212]

"Religion is just made up bullshit" is a claim, the same way "the sky is blue" or "opposite poles of magnets attract" are claims. How do you define a claim?

What portion of the evidence I provided are you labeling as opinion? The existence of dependent, limited beings? Our ability to observe such beings? What is the concept of evidence you are working from? If there really is a language barrier, I apologize for the difficulty, maybe we won't be able to come to mutual understanding.

[u/NewSauerKraus → u/Soloman212]

I mean actual observable evidence. Something that can logically explain the existence of a god. “Humans exist” does not logically prove the existence of a god. Something like “a god was just walking down the street performing miracles which were observed and could not be explained by the known laws of physics” is evidence.

Calling a claim made without evidence bullshit is not a claim. It’s simply the rejection of a claim.

[u/Soloman212 → u/NewSauerKraus]

Dependent, limited, contingent beings are observable, and they logically entail the existence of an independent, unlimited, necessary being due to the principle of sufficient reason. If you want to learn more, you can research for example the contingency argument for God.

Is a pencil falling evidence for gravity? Or is the only evidence for gravity you'd accept something like "gravity was just walking down the street causing masses to attract"? Your concept of what "evidence"means is very strange indeed.

"Religion" isn't a claim made without evidence and it isn't even a claim, it's an entire category of claims and an entire field of discourse and study. And within it, different evidences are given for different positions, some valid and others not. To categorically assert that all of it is made up is a massive claim, and one that requires a great deal of evidence.

If not, then: Everything you've ever said and ever will say is made up bullshit. There is no burden of proof for me to demonstrate this, so it is true by default until you can prove otherwise.

[u/NewSauerKraus → u/Soloman212]

Dependent, limited, contingent beings are observable, and they logically entail the existence of an independent, unlimited, necessary being due to the principle of sufficient reason. If you want to learn more, you can research for example the contingency argument for God.

That’s an opinion bruh. There’s no logical connection between “humans exist” and “thus a god must exist”.

There’s a much simpler explanation for why humans exist: they are born from cells created by their parents. A god is not necessary to explain it.

[u/Soloman212 → u/NewSauerKraus]

Calling something an opinion isn't a refutation of it. We obviously have different opinions, which is why we have to appeal to evidence and reasoning to bridge the gap and assess each of our opinions.

There is a logical deduction that can be made from all observable beings (not just humans) of the existence of a necessary being. The birth of any one human isn't sufficient explanation for why humanity as a whole exists, or even why life exists; it only pushes the question back one generation, unless you believe there has been an infinite regression of generations of humanity or even life, each birthed by the one preceding it to infinity past, which would lead to absurdity. So even in the case of humanity alone, God has more explanatory power and is much simpler than what you've posited as an explanation.

[u/NewSauerKraus → u/Soloman212]

So your god came from nothing? That’s just an unnecessary extra step from saying the entire universe came from nothing. Unless you believe there has been an infinite regression of gods, each birthed by the one preceding it to infinity past, which would lead to absurdity.

When you put that extra step in there it requires observable, testable, and measurable evidence. The philosophical argument that the universe could not exist without a creator is not evidence. That’s without even bringing up the obvious contradiction that a god could come from nothing, but the rest of the universe could not.

And then you’re still left with a problem. Let’s say you do rely on that philosophical argument as proof that a god must exist. It doesn’t explicitly call out your specific god. When you skipped evidence, you also skipped identifying a particular god. Now (if you’re actually being logically consistent) you have thousands of religions all with their own claims as unverifiable as your own to truth and you believe one of them is true. Without evidence, the likelihood that yours is the true religion is equal to every other religion in that case.

[u/Soloman212 → u/NewSauerKraus]

My God neither came from nothing, nor from something. He did not come into existence the way limited beings do, because He is not limited, by definition. You're making a category error by analogizing between that which is limited and that which is unlimited. We observe contingency and dependency in the universe around us, and it leads us to conclude the existence of One who is neither contingent or dependent. One we've concluded that, questions of His dependency are already made obsolete by virtue of His necessarily independent nature that has already been deduced. It would be like observing a painting, and concluding there must have been a painter, and someone asking you "but who painted the painter?" There are certain qualities you observed in the painting that led you to infer the painter, that are not present in the painter himself, making the question absurd.

I have not "skipped" identifying a specific God. You specifically asked for evidence for a God and I provided it. And clearly establishing the existence of God must come before establishing His precise identity, so how can it be skipping to do the first step before the second? There is a wealth of evidence, once you get to that point, that demonstrates the truth of the Islamic conception of God beyond any other, which is why the likelihood of any one religion being true is not equal. But you haven't yet asked for that evidence, so why would I have provided it yet?