Originally posted by Bob Enyart
ZK: You guessed it, I don't have the time, but I do invite you to call your questions into the radio show any weeknight (but not on July 4th, we're re-airing our interview with Norma Rogers, the nurse who found Juanita Broaddrick sobbing shortly after she says she was raped.) -Bob E.
Mr Bob Enyart, what about this "proof of God's existence" issue.
Why do you refer to this issue, when one asks a more preciese description of what God's existence is like, as "never mind".
Since you take the position in this battle of able of giving proof of the existence of God, don't you think an answer as "never mind" is less then adequate?
May I invite you to give a more satisfactory explenation for God's existence as "never mind", or make a more precise statement about what you mean with the existence of God?
Human history shows that we can only make a distinction between truth and falsehood in practice. Wether or not a human concept or idea applies to, and reflects correctly to reality, can be decided on ONLY through practice.
Human practice shows no indication for the existence of any Gods.
Which is an indication that the existence of such Gods may not be based on any reality, apart from, independend from and outside of the human mind.
To make a statement about Gods existence in a way in which God has existence apart from, independend of and outside the human mind, places the one making that statement of having the task of providing sufficient proof for that statement.
It makes no sense to base that assumption on the inability for the other one, to proof the opposite assumption (God is not existent).
In a satasfactoty and objective way, we may acknowledge that we can make a truthfull statement about God: "I don't know wether or not God exists, but I believe in one".
This position to be taken in, is something we can acknowledge as a truthfull statement, since it does not require us to actually be convinced that God exists, but neither it dispermits us to actually believe in Gods existence.
Science does not tell people what to believe or what not to believe. In fact the way we know through science how the brain works, we can work out a concept of "belief", and why this is a necessary part of our being. Nature provides us often with circumstances in which there is insufficient knowledge to base our actions on. But since the circumstances may be life threatening, our mind has to make some assumption on what is the case.
If our sensoray data and our memory and experience does not tell us in a sufficient way what to do, we are making an assumption, that is we interpret the situation in a certain way, and we can not logicaly explain what "caused" us to interpret the sitution. That is what believing is a about. It can be show that in such cases to believe something is better then not believing something, because it enables us to do something. If our internal logic would be wired up to not believe anything, unless we can be certain about it, this would lead to a "dead-lock" situation. We would become passive, instead of active. If nature would have provided such a deterministic way of decission making system, it would have already caused the human species to go extinct. We would never take any risks, we would not want to discover new horizons, etc. It would stop human progress all together.
This alltogther shows that the "belief system" itself, is an integral part of human nature. Believing, as in the situation in which we don't have any real knowledge or experience, to base our actions on, is therefore not something "wrong". On the contrary.
But because to believe in something is different from knowing something, which is to have actual and objective evidence for something, we should not intermix these two systems.
If we are confronted with a situation in which the actual circumstances do not enable us to have sufficient knowledge, we are entitled for believing in something, and as we don't have a logical reason to believe in something.
Any representation of a belief in something in a way, as would that reflect knowledge about the actual world, and not be just a guess which can neither be proven or disproven, is therefore a false statement. To belief in something is only possible in cases where neither a proof or a disproof exists. That's why it's a belief and not knowledge.
In regard to the topic on hand, the only possible position one can take is that we can show that in some cases, human knowledge is not able to make a statement about something, based on actual knowledge, observational evidence and prior experience.
But when a belief is presented in a way that it supercedes or merely replaces actual knowledge, or comes from ignorance (for instance not knowing how evolution works, or in general how science is performed), and is presented as a form of knowledge, we might become and should become suspicious. To believe in something is entirely different from knowledge. It's just because of the fact that we miss knowledge, that we can actually believe in something.
I am currently fourty years of age. I have no way of knowing how old I am gonna get. It might be today is my last day, and it might be I become a hundred years of age. Nevertheless I can make some reasonable assumptions about what my actual age is gonna be, based on available data. It might depend on for instance the energy I put in living a more healthy life, stopping the smoking habit, do some more body excercises, eat more healhy food, etc. In that way I can influence on the probability of me getting older. But there is no instance in which I can have actual prior knowledge about how old I am gonna get. So any statement I make about that, is residing on a belief. Some beliefs are more reasonable then others. Me believing that I am gonna be 200 years old, is something that is gonna raise suspicion, if I tell it to others. Actually, they will say that they don't believe that I myself believe that. But neither they can disproof that I might become 200, since for that they need to know my actual age I am gonna get, which is not known at this time. But they will doubt my belief nevertheless. And for good reasons, I suppose.
For this very same reason I realy doubt if people claim that they believe in God. Not that I can know, such a Deity does not exist, but nevertheless I am suspicious that one can actually belief that.
The reason why one should be supsicious is because even when we don't have actual knowledge to base our statements on, we do have a lot of experience in finding explenations for actual phenomena, which previously were explained as the "act of God".
We have thus far found a systematic and intrinsic order in the way how nature works, and found actual explenations based on physical phenomena, on how all kinds of phenomena work.
Even when there are still a lot of unexplained phenomena ahead of us, from prior experience I would assume we would not have to doubt the fact that we can find reasonable and sufficient explenations for such phenomena as well.
In this way the statement that there has been given no disproof of God, is not a satisfactoy answer. In the same way as nobody can proof that I am not gonna be 200 years of age, but still will be suspicious as to wether I realy can believe such a thing myself.
Given the way we already know how nature works and the way we eliminated any "supernatural forces", that there is not much room for any doubt on that part, that the rest of nature is explainable in a conceivable way also, without ever having to base ourselves on "supernatural forces".
A true believe can not be a true believe if we have knowledge which conflicts with our belief. Since human knowledge has so much knowledge already on so many phenomena of nature, conflicting with the possibility of there being any deities, this indicates that this belief conflicts with actual knowledge. One has to be either totally ignorant on this knowledge or stubborn, to pursue in believing in deities.
I grant anyone his or her personal beliefs, and neither any scientific knowledge should dispermit anyone to have one's own personal opions or beliefs. But this battle is not just about personal opinions, it is about stating and proving the existence of God beyond all reasonable doubt.
As might be expected, such proof beyond all reasonable doubt has not been given, which raises the question about the truthfullness of that belief in the first place.
It is perhaps due to this fact, that Mr Bob Enyart decided to play the "morality card". It causes him to make an untruthfull statement about the holocaust. His statements on the holocaust, which blame this human tragedy and most criminal act of all known history on the "a-morality" of atheism, is a shamefull statement. It's a shamefull fact to use this example, over the dead bodies of millions of people, to blame this whole tragedy on atheism.
Let us remind Mr Bob Enyard here that very soon after the nazi's ceased power, they were not aiming at destroying theistic institutions, churches and such. Instead, the nazi's were trying to erase there first and foremost enemies, communists, socialists, social-democratis, trade-unionists, anti-fascists and war resisters.
Which clearly means that the nazi ideology was not in conflict with any theist doctrine or theist institution, but in conflict with the atheist ideology, and especially that of socialism and communism.
The doctrines of the nazi's were anti-socialist and anti-jewish, and based on a racial ideology. The foundations for this ideology can be proven to be based on the influence and doctrines of theist institutions, like the catholic church. The catholic church survived this whole tragedy of WW 2 without any problem.
If the nazi ideology would in reality be in real conflict with theism, we would have expected the nazi's to have erased all those institutions, like they erased 6 million of jews, and killed 20 million russians, and many others.
I do not imply that amongst christians in general, there was not any resistance against the nazi's, and that also christians have become on a mass scale victims of the nazi regime. History shows that amongst the bravest resistance fighters against the nazi's during the nazi occupation we find both christian groups, communists, and people with other convictions/beliefs.
And even when we can show that nazi ideology (mis)used the doctrines of theism, that were spread throughout europe in the centuries before in order to create their criminal ideology, this does not mean that we should therefore blame theism as such for the occurence of the nazi-ideology and the mass murder on millions of people. This would be an a-historic interpretation of history, since it ignores the other imporant factors, which enabled the nazi's to cease power.
But at the very minimum it can be shown that neither atheism can be blamed for the nazi-ideology to cease power in Germany, and in fact the nazi ideology itself is not based on any atheist ideology at all. Especially the racial ideology, is in direct contradiction with evolution science.
Mr Bob Enyart therefore should therefore not have used that argument at all, and in the name of all victims of nazi terror, I think he should make a statement that he withdraws that conclusion.
I feel like you are ready to pounce. When I answer you may say "HA, See there! evolution is true and God doesn't exist." 
