Re:To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they'r...
by coldtea on Tuesday September 13, 2016 @05:20AM
(#12486588)
>Namely, for any religion/concept of God, you can imagine another one that wants you to do opposite things. How do you know which God's existence to assume?
In some religions, the relation with God is a tangible and personal one. God "speaks to you" so to speak.
So you just "know" -- you're not starting from evaluating random entities against each other as if they're all equal.
Re:To tell someone they're wrong, first tell them how they'r...
by bonoboTP on Tuesday September 13, 2016 @07:09AM
(#12486976)
Exactly. But then this is already "evidence" to them about the existence of God. Such people have no need to ponder that "If evolution is true then there's no meaning in life so that case is uninteresting, so therefore let's believe in God since then life is meaningful".
If God "speaks to you", you already "know" he exists. This was precisely what I tried to point out in my previous comment. If you have a method to pick out a particular God out of all possible Gods, then this method (or something related) can also be used to reject atheism directly. There's no need for the elaborate argument that I responded to.
I think there's a bigger problem with the religious version that you presented. Namely, for any religion/concept of God, you can imagine another one that wants you to do opposite things. How do you know which God's existence to assume? You're back to trying to find evidence for one God against another God. In practice, this would probably also provide evidence against the claim that "no Gods exist". It's hard to think of evidence of the form "If there's a God, it probably wants X as opposed to not X." that really needs that pre-condition.
So the religious person may just as well go back to trying to gather evidence for God against no-God, because they need to gather evidence for God against the God-that-desires-opposite-things anyway.