Logically speaking: God is knowable

This is rather a trivial fallacy. Since God is claimed to be omnipotent and omnipresent, the claim that there is a God is a universal, not a particular claim; and it can therefore be falsified by the observation of a single place where he is not or thing over which he has no power.YOu speak of him as though he might have got lost under the sofa cushions or something. But when we talk of "God", that's not the sort of thing we mean. If he is anywhere, he is everywhere.

Iano, What's that got to do with anything? I could make an internally consistent argument stating that fairies exist at the bottom of my garden, which by definition would be logical. Or for that matter, that god doesn't exist. Or that unicorns, kraken, leprechauns, etc. ad infinitum do/don't exist. You can make a logical, evidence free argument for the existence of Tolkien's Dwarfs (or Dwarves), & so on.Being "logical", which simply means "consistent", in & of itself is meaningless.The point is that from an evidential point of view both 1 & 7 are both evidentially vacuous. That the arguments made for both are internally consistent is rendered pointless without evidence.MarkEdited by mark24, : No reason given.

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

I have read that it has been found possible to evoke religious experiences by electrical and chemical means (I don't have references available just now, but will look for them if required). Given that, I don't see how one could be confident that such experiences, which I suppose include God revealing himself, can be relied on without external confirmation.

Anyone who claims to be at 1 or 7 has to be deluded because either position requires a certainty about the source of their absolute certanty that it is impossible to have.The key difference is that those of faith are necessarily 1s whilst those that call themselves atheists would more likely describe themselves as 6.999999999Rs as they would generally accept that absolute certainty about anything requires the sort of faith that they oppose!!

Amazing post. You said in two sentences what I struggle to get across in paragraphs.

I was just going to write something along those lines and then I saw your post.I concur that no atheist can ever be a perfect 7, I think the phrase would be 'convinced beyond reasonable doubt' rather than 'know'.anyway, well said!

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the pigeon and some days you'll be the statue."

Indeed. I tried for at least half an hour to formulate this clearly... always coming up short.
Finally I thought to myself: "Wait a minute, maybe someone's already tried to say this", and indeed someone has... quite clearly.Just for the record, I'd planned to say something like:

Not, the case. You CAN be a 7 and yet still admit you could be wrong.Sure it’s a inconsistency but that’s never stopped the 1s has it?I am a 7.I believe that nothing of the divine, or supernatural exists. This encompasses God, The Morning Star, Demons, Angels and all the things that people convince themselves go bump in the night. None of it exists.I believe this with all of my heart, I AM certain of it.I do however realise that, although the evidence (or utter lack there of) does lean towards this conclusion it does not categorically prove it. It can’t. That leaves me in the position of KNOWING the statement above is true, while at the same time I know I don’t have the evidence to back that claim up.In the light of this I do have to caveat my belief with “but I could be wrong”. I’m not though. It’s just intellectual honesty forces me to add that caveat. It doesn’t change the fact I am a solid 7.

Edited by Infixion, : Erased.

You can certainly think you know that God exists.But you can also think you know that God doesn't exist.In both cases you could be wrong.How do we know when we actually know something? When it comes to God - we suddenly find ourselves in a philosophical labyrinth of madness. Let us bring to mind Descartes' evil genius construct. A suitably evil and powerful genius could convince us that we know God, when in fact we don't - and vice versa.For example:You wake up - you are sure you have just been in a terrible car crash. God stands over you (or however you conceive God in this circumstance), and introduces you to the residents of heaven, reveals some great secret allows you live in paradise for what seems like a thousand years. Then he sends you back to earth. Naturally - you know God exists, you met him personally!Of course, whose to say that a wicked spirit didn't kidnap you, erase your memory, planted a memory of a car crash and then forced you to have a religious hallucination. I therefore call on the 'brain in a jar' thought experiment to demonstrate that we can never really be a 1 or a 7 since we can never know anything to a confidence level of 100%If we accept the possibility that supernatural agents could exist - we have to accept the possibility that a supernatural agent exists who is not God, who could do the above. This entity could convince you that God has ceased to exist - thus you'd know that God does not exist (anymore).You could be certain God exists, have utter faith that it is the case that He does. Still - you cannot philosophically have no doubt whatsoever. If you cannot admit to some level of doubt about something you are either not thinking on the right level, or you are suffering from a delusion.I am not even a '1' on that scale when it comes to the existence of the keyboard I'm typing on. Is there any revelation that I can have that would mean I would know God better than I know this keyboard? How would someone differentiate that revelation from delusion? How would I know from my own frame of reference that I wasn't deluded when God revealed Himself? Indeed - an evil genius could simply remove the doubt from my mind using supernatural powers.If somebody knows that they are Napolean, they know that Napolean is alive. Of course, they don't know they are Napolean - they are deluded into thinking with 100% certainty that they are Napolean and their delusion allows no room for doubt.That's the philosophy side of things, as for the logic? Logically speaking: anythingP1: I say that I know God does not exist
P2: What I say I know, I know
C: I know God does not existAssuming no evil geniuses or delusions¹, you can know that God exists by meeting Him. However, you can know that God does not exist by meeting Him and then Him telling you that he is going to cease to exist, followed by Him ceasing to exist.

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¹Gigantic and unwarranted assumption

Hello, Iano. So as a theist, what you are saying is that the spectrum presupposes two very real realities over and above itself:
God Exists.
or
God does not exist.It can be said that we as humans may never actually know either of these absolutes for certain,right?In rebuttal, it can be said that we can know God.We can know Him as well as we can know our Mothers.We can know Him as well as we can trust our instincts and reflexes when driving a car. Surely one could theorize that the road ahead is but an illusion of the senses, but as anyone who has ever experienced an acid trip knows, anyone in that state of mind simply pulls over and quits driving until they are certain enough of the perceptions within their mind so as to continue driving----right? Data in regards to supernatural experiences ranges from UFO survivor stories to Charismatic conversion experiences
from otherwise reasonably sane individuals.It is true that an encounter with an alien (or a Heavenly presence and angelic/demonic spirit) cannot be proven to the satisfaction of any instrument yet devised by humans. The only tool that we have is our own subjective conclusions---based on our professional and personal observations of an individual. 1. God exists, despite anyones data.
7. God does not exist, despite anyones belief.So you are saying that we humans are either strong 2's or strong 6's based on our sanity, experiences, intuitions, confirmations, and relationship with the reality that we perceive, right?erhaps Iano is asserting that 1 and 7 cannot both be true.A believer may feel so in communion with the Spirit that they are able to confidantly assert 1 as a reality. They do not have to be God to assert this...they merely have to be in communion with God.A strong atheist may feel so grounded in logic and in the fallicies thereof that they are able to confidantly assert 7 as a reality. They are strongly in communion with human wisdom.This goes well in line with a couple of Bible scriptures which I have interpreted to explain the difference between God and the Devil.To Wit: is=1. (for the purposes of our discussion) is not=7, (for the purpose of our discussion.)The point of my scriptural example, and my interpretation thereof, is to show that two spiritual realities cannot exist at the same time.Thus 1 and 7 cannot both be true. One is true and the other one is not true. So can we assert that Dualism is not a logical spiritual reality?We can agree that for the purposes of this discussion, the two positions cannot both be true. There is no gray area. God either exists or He doesnt. At least Iano and I agree on that premise. The two positions cannot coexist in absolute reality.

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“There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way” --C.S.Lewis

isn't that a good reason to differentiate yourself from the theists ? otherwise, your atheism is just as much a religious belief as their theism. Now, to me, belief in something without any basis is nothing but wishful thinking. The way I read that is that you wish that nothing supernatural exists. now we're definitely getting into the realm of religion. see, the problem I have with that is that it's self-contradictory. How can you be absolutely be convinced that god doesn't exist, while at the same time admit to the fact that you could be wrong ?I am convinced beyond reasonable doubt that the Christian God doesn't exist. At the same time, just like you, I admit that there is no absolute and conclusive evidence towards this conclusion and I just might be wrong. Hence, I class myself as a 6.999 on the aforementioned scale.IMO, classing myself as a 7 would make me just an inverted theist instead of an atheist.

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"In life, you have to face that some days you'll be the pigeon and some days you'll be the statue."

No it can't. Logic is logic and the person who is deluded and says he knows God doesn't exist could not make the case logically. He would still need to know everything there is to know in order to state that - meaning he is GodThis thing about delusion is a bit of a red herring. To know something means it is the case without any possibility that it is not - with a provision: namely, one assumes that the reality one exists in is objectively the reality. And what we condsider to be a deluded person is us stating that their reality is not the objective one - but that ours is. But ours may not be. We can be deluded too and we have no way of saying otherwise.So, if a person knows something it means that that is the case - assuming that their objective reality is actually the objective reality Once a person decides their reality is objective then they can know lots of things. That is all that knowing can mean. So when I say that logically a person can know God exists then they can. This does not mean he does actually exist though.

See the message above to Catholic Scientist and see does that clarify things

You have no method by which to attach degrees of plausibility so you must refrain from doing so. This is solely about logical possibilities. It does not apply to the other side because the other side much deal with logic, deluded or no.