A proof or disproof for existence of God does not exist

[STT]

I don’t believe that any proof or disproof for existence of God exists. Why? There are arguments for these: (1) A person needs to be omniscient in order to prove that God exists since that is only God who is capable of understanding His essence. Hence a proof for existence of God does not exist and (2) A person has to be fool in order to disprove the existence of God as Bertrand Russell stated “If I were asked to prove that Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and the rest of the Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss to find conclusive arguments.”

 

[Tomdstone]

… A person has to be fool in order to disprove the existence of God as Bertrand Russell stated “If I were asked to prove that Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and the rest of the Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss to find conclusive arguments.”

AFAIK, Zeus and Poseidon were not omnipotent, all-knowing and all loving and all merciful and immutable and above time. However, God, as Catholicism teaches, is such. So the argument of Bertrand Russell does not apply here. And i don’t believe your first argument, since I don’t think you have to be all-knowing to examine the evidence for the existence of God.

 

[adamhovey1988]

I don’t believe that any proof or disproof for existence of God exists. Why? There are arguments for these: (1) A person needs to be omniscient in order to prove that God exists since that is only God who is capable of understanding His essence. Hence a proof for existence of God does not exist and (2) A person has to be fool in order to disprove the existence of God as Bertrand Russell stated “If I were asked to prove that Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and the rest of the Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss to find conclusive arguments.”

actually there are a lot of proofs for the existence of God and even the ancient Greeks apparently knew this some of the best Arguments for the existence of God don’t come from them though they come from Thomas Aquinas. I think a de facto position of agnosticism is illogical

 

[STT]

AFAIK, Zeus and Poseidon were not omnipotent, all-knowing and all loving and all merciful and immutable and above time. However, God, as Catholicism teaches, is such.

It doesn’t really matter. Simpler the God harder is to be convinced when it come to creation. Think of omnipotence for example. Creation is of course an easy task if you have an omnipotent God. But what omnipotence really is? We simply cannot comprehend. Hence it is pointless to define an God with such abilities when we cannot comprehend what these abilities are.

So the argument of Bertrand Russell does not apply here.

His argument of course follow. He was well aware of Christian God.

And i don’t believe your first argument, since I don’t think you have to be all-knowing to examine the evidence for the existence of God.

How do you define God? The creator. What is the minimal attributes for such a God? I don’t know. We, human, can also be creative when it comes to new idea. What is the maximal attribute for a God. Well, that is easy, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. What these attributes really are? Only God knows, if there is such a God. This means that you have to be all knowing to make sure that such a God could exist in principle in the first place.

 

[STT]

actually there are a lot of proofs for the existence of God and even the ancient Greeks apparently knew this some of the best Arguments for the existence of God don’t come from them though they come from Thomas Aquinas. I think a de facto position of agnosticism is illogical

I think that my argument follows and it is not illogical. Please read the third comment in post #4.

 

[KnowtheSilence]

For me I guess it depends on what you mean by “proof.” If you mean something like a mathematical proof, I would agree that you can’t prove or disprove God with that level of confidence; I don’t think that any of the deductive arguments for or against God actually work.

If you mean something more along the lines of “proving” something the way you would in a courtroom, then I think there are some possibilities. There are some decent inductive and abductive arguments on both sides (obviously I think that the arguments against God work better here).

So, while we might agree that proof/disproof of God doesn’t exist, I don’t think we would agree as to why. I don’t think you need to be omniscient to prove God exists, and I’m not following how the Russell quote shows you need to be a fool to disprove it.

 

[SecretCatholic]

I don’t believe that any proof or disproof for existence of God exists. Why? There are arguments for these: (1) A person needs to be omniscient in order to prove that God exists since that is only God who is capable of understanding His essence. Hence a proof for existence of God does not exist and (2) A person has to be fool in order to disprove the existence of God as Bertrand Russell stated “If I were asked to prove that Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and the rest of the Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss to find conclusive arguments.”

I suggest that you change your strategy to one of seeking probabilities, not certainties. For, as Descartes saw, there are just about no absolute certainties- except that you exist (in some form, though your identity is not an absolute certainty either, so you may be mistaken about that too!) No, you cannot have absolute proof that God exists- But you can’t have absolute proof that what you experience everyday is real either.

But I am confident that, after searching for many years and receiving God’s grace, God is real. The reality of God is far more convincing than atheism. I used to be agnostic (just check my first post). But I could no longer stay agnostic when I realized that the probability of God’s existence was way higher than the probability that atheism was true.

As I’ve said- you cannot have absolute proof of most things in life, but that doesn’t mean that one is reasonable in staying “agnostic” about them. I have no “absolute” proof that my parents love me. But that doesn’t mean that I stay “agnostic” about whether my parents love me or not. Instead, I take the data available and come to the reasonable conclusion that they did love me and continue to do so- based on the way they raised me, what they expressed and what they’ve done for me.

On the other hand, it could be an elaborate plot leading to some nefarious end that I’ve yet to figure out. You have real cases of a happy, married person who truly believes she is loved by her spouse actually find out that her husband was a government spy sent on a mission to infiltrate environmental groups (look this up- It happened in Britain!)

I see nature much like a computer program- it’s a system which functions on some basic principles. It bewilders me to no end how one could seriously believe that such a system has not been designed nor set up and that it needed no power outside itself to come into existence nor to sustain its very existence now. I find the current atheist response of “brute fact.” or “some day we’ll figure it out, but the answer can’t possibly be God.” to be shocking and myopic.

Now, as for proofs- Again, its the case of probabilities. The probability that Zeus exists is not high. However, we really can’t totally discount that some being existed in our past which was called Zeus and seemed to have to properties people back then ascribed to him. That said- it’s really unimportant, in the scheme of things. Zeus, as well as the other gods would have just been contingent creatures like us, albeit very impressive ones. Same goes for extraterrestrials. But the existence of God- the very source of existence, one who is not contingent- is a VERY DIFFERENT kind of proposition.

We are not talking about proving or disproving the existence of this or that being. We are talking about coming to the conclusion that the necessary being is necessary, because the existence of nature cannot be explained otherwise. You can come to know this via contemplating the fine-tuning argument, for instance, or via exploring the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

Add to all of this a little of Pascal’s Wager in the form of the fact that life objectively means NOTHING without God and eternal life, and that without God we have no objective morality- that is nothing is really right or wrong- And you’ll quickly realize that believing in God is the only logical option. Yes, there are better arguments for God that there are arguments for atheism. No, no “proof” is absolutely certain. But you can be confident that belief in God is warranted and vastly preferable.

Good resources this:

Fr. Robert Spitzer: magiscenter.com/god-and-modern-physics-12-modules/
Dr. William Lane Craig: reasonablefaith.org/

 

[Mort_Alz]

I don’t think there is a mathematical proof level of certainty that God exists. But, proof is not why people believe. Conversely, faith is also not “belief without evidence.” That would just be silly. You have to have SOME evidence in order to believe. Taken together, this means that faith is to believe in something with evidence, but without 100% certainty.

If you think about it, then, faith is no different than the rest of our knowledge. 90% if not more of what we know is based on flimsy evidence, especially as individuals. Have you been to Australia? No? Then you are taking it on authority that such a place exists. What’s that? You HAVE been to Australia? Then you are taking it on authority that it is shaped the way it appears to you on a map. Even scientific knowledge is not 100% proven. When we are “certain” of a scientific law we haven’t PROVEN that it’s how things are, we’ve only proven that it’s how things have been so far.

 

[e_c]

A person needs to be omniscient in order to prove that God exists since that is only God who is capable of understanding His essence. Hence a proof for existence of God does not exist

I don’t understand what the essence of limestone is, but I can prove that it exists.

If we literally don’t know at all what we mean when we say “God,” then we could actually be proving God’s existence all the time and just not be aware. If I don’t know at all what God is, God might be the number 4 or the color yellow or tapioca pudding. We can prove the existence of these things.

 

[e_c]

I suggest that you change your strategy to one of seeking probabilities, not certainties. For, as Descartes saw, there are just about no absolute certainties- except that you exist (in some form, though your identity is not an absolute certainty either, so you may be mistaken about that too!) No, you cannot have absolute proof that God exists- But you can’t have absolute proof that what you experience everyday is real either. [etc.]

I don’t think there is a mathematical proof level of certainty that God exists. But, proof is not why people believe. Conversely, faith is also not “belief without evidence.” That would just be silly. You have to have SOME evidence in order to believe. Taken together, this means that faith is to believe in something with evidence, but without 100% certainty.

We can know with certainty that God exists through natural reason. This is the teaching of Scripture (“He is known by the things He has made,” etc.) and of the Church (Vatican I) - it also happens to be the teaching of Descartes! This is distinct from having a “perfect confidence in the fact” at every waking moment.

 

[ffg]

I don’t believe that any proof or disproof for existence of God exists. Why? There are arguments for these: (1) A person needs to be omniscient in order to prove that God exists since that is only God who is capable of understanding His essence. Hence a proof for existence of God does not exist and (2) A person has to be fool in order to disprove the existence of God as Bertrand Russell stated “If I were asked to prove that Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and the rest of the Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss to find conclusive arguments.”

I don’t believe a lot of things too, but sometimes I am proven wrong in that my beliefs are contrary to truth. However, it takes me to be open to listening and learning to even be possible to understand or change.

I don’t know how someone would disprove God.

A person who doesn’t believe the evidence that is available, doesn’t make the evidence ‘not real’, which seems to be a requirement to even start down a path of disproving.

Concluding differently about evidence doesn’t eliminate the evidence.

On the other hand, there have been plenty of ‘proofs’ considering the real-ness of evidences. That doesn’t mean we don’t evaluate / scrutinize the evidences.

Of course the ‘proof’ is the evidences as real and unaltered joined with trustworthy folks.

People get stuck on the word ‘proof’, we have 26 letters to work with, sometimes we have to see the meaning past the letters.

How do you know you were born where your birth certificate says?

There are people in this world who you could show a video of you being born in front of the hospital entrance sign which includes the name of the town and city, and they would still not consider that evidence good enough for proof.

That happened in Jesus’ time as well, only not through video, but real events. He did something (out of nature - to prove Himself as who He claimed to be), and people who saw it first hand didn’t believe.

It’s not crazy that today people don’t believe either. Concluding differently doesn’t have an effect on what is true.

 

[fisherman_carl]

I don’t believe that any proof or disproof for existence of God exists. Why? There are arguments for these: (1) A person needs to be omniscient in order to prove that God exists since that is only God who is capable of understanding His essence. Hence a proof for existence of God does not exist and (2) A person has to be fool in order to disprove the existence of God as Bertrand Russell stated “If I were asked to prove that Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and the rest of the Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss to find conclusive arguments.”

So you don’t think that if God took you up to heaven into his presence that you would have proof? You think you have to be omnipotent? None us are omnipotent. I don’t have to be omnipotent or have the nature of an orange in order to understand an orange. I just need an intellect which was created in the image of God to know oranges or even to know God, since that is what it was created for, to know him. We just need God to give us the ability to know him in order to know him. We don’t need to be God himself.

 

[STT]

For me I guess it depends on what you mean by “proof.” If you mean something like a mathematical proof, I would agree that you can’t prove or disprove God with that level of confidence; I don’t think that any of the deductive arguments for or against God actually work.

If you mean something more along the lines of “proving” something the way you would in a courtroom, then I think there are some possibilities. There are some decent inductive and abductive arguments on both sides (obviously I think that the arguments against God work better here).

I mean a mathematical proof. I however don’t think that any other proof based on evidence is complete. They are all subject to doubt and discussion.

So, while we might agree that proof/disproof of God doesn’t exist, I don’t think we would agree as to why. I don’t think you need to be omniscient to prove God exists, and I’m not following how the Russell quote shows you need to be a fool to disprove it.

You need to be omniscient in order to prove God. Why? One of the attribute of God is omnipotent. Is that possible to have a being with a such a capacity? Only a omniscient can know this.

Do you agree with the previous statement? You will see how does Russell argument follow if you agree with it.

 

[STT]

I don’t understand what the essence of limestone is, but I can prove that it exists.

If we literally don’t know at all what we mean when we say “God,” then we could actually be proving God’s existence all the time and just not be aware. If I don’t know at all what God is, God might be the number 4 or the color yellow or tapioca pudding. We can prove the existence of these things.

One of the God’s attributes is omnipotent. Do you think that we can understand it? We cannot. We then strive on a concept which we don’t understand and prove the existence of God as a creator. Does that logically sound to you?

 

[STT]

I suggest that you change your strategy to one of seeking probabilities, not certainties. For, as Descartes saw, there are just about no absolute certainties- except that you exist (in some form, though your identity is not an absolute certainty either, so you may be mistaken about that too!) No, you cannot have absolute proof that God exists- But you can’t have absolute proof that what you experience everyday is real either.

I have no proof for the fact that I exist either. I only believe so. To me the only certainty that we have is that experience exist.

But I am confident that, after searching for many years and receiving God’s grace, God is real. The reality of God is far more convincing than atheism. I used to be agnostic (just check my first post). But I could no longer stay agnostic when I realized that the probability of God’s existence was way higher than the probability that atheism was true.

Of course we are not talking about faith and belief here.

As I’ve said- you cannot have absolute proof of most things in life, but that doesn’t mean that one is reasonable in staying “agnostic” about them. I have no “absolute” proof that my parents love me. But that doesn’t mean that I stay “agnostic” about whether my parents love me or not. Instead, I take the data available and come to the reasonable conclusion that they did love me and continue to do so- based on the way they raised me, what they expressed and what they’ve done for me.

You can of course have your own belief. All I am saying is that you cannot prove God.

I see nature much like a computer program- it’s a system which functions on some basic principles. It bewilders me to no end how one could seriously believe that such a system has not been designed nor set up and that it needed no power outside itself to come into existence nor to sustain its very existence now. I find the current atheist response of “brute fact.” or “some day we’ll figure it out, but the answer can’t possibly be God.” to be shocking and myopic.

Of course you can believe so.

Now, as for proofs- Again, its the case of probabilities. The probability that Zeus exists is not high. However, we really can’t totally discount that some being existed in our past which was called Zeus and seemed to have to properties people back then ascribed to him. That said- it’s really unimportant, in the scheme of things. Zeus, as well as the other gods would have just been contingent creatures like us, albeit very impressive ones. Same goes for extraterrestrials. But the existence of God- the very source of existence, one who is not contingent- is a VERY DIFFERENT kind of proposition.

What is God? The creator. How He could create thing? He is omnipotent. What is omnipotent? We don’t know. This is obviously a fallacy. How we can prove God as creator if we don’t know what omnipotence is? That is why I conclude that a person has to be omniscient in order to be able to prove that God exists. Human is not omniscient hence he cannot prove God’s existence.

We are not talking about proving or disproving the existence of this or that being. We are talking about coming to the conclusion that the necessary being is necessary, because the existence of nature cannot be explained otherwise. You can come to know this via contemplating the fine-tuning argument, for instance, or via exploring the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?”

The existence could be necessary. I have a thread on this in here.

 

[STT]

I don’t believe a lot of things too, but sometimes I am proven wrong in that my beliefs are contrary to truth. However, it takes me to be open to listening and learning to even be possible to understand or change.

I don’t know how someone would disprove God.

A person who doesn’t believe the evidence that is available, doesn’t make the evidence ‘not real’, which seems to be a requirement to even start down a path of disproving.

Concluding differently about evidence doesn’t eliminate the evidence.

On the other hand, there have been plenty of ‘proofs’ considering the real-ness of evidences. That doesn’t mean we don’t evaluate / scrutinize the evidences.

Of course the ‘proof’ is the evidences as real and unaltered joined with trustworthy folks.

People get stuck on the word ‘proof’, we have 26 letters to work with, sometimes we have to see the meaning past the letters.

How do you know you were born where your birth certificate says?

There are people in this world who you could show a video of you being born in front of the hospital entrance sign which includes the name of the town and city, and they would still not consider that evidence good enough for proof.

That happened in Jesus’ time as well, only not through video, but real events. He did something (out of nature - to prove Himself as who He claimed to be), and people who saw it first hand didn’t believe.

It’s not crazy that today people don’t believe either. Concluding differently doesn’t have an effect on what is true.

What is God? The creator. How He could create thing? He is omnipotent. What is omnipotent? We don’t know. This is obviously a fallacy. How we can prove God as creator if we don’t know what omnipotence is? That is why I conclude that a person has to be omniscient in order to be able to prove that God exists. Human is not omniscient hence he cannot prove God’s existence.

 

[STT]

So you don’t think that if God took you up to heaven into his presence that you would have proof? You think you have to be omnipotent? None us are omnipotent. I don’t have to be omnipotent or have the nature of an orange in order to understand an orange. I just need an intellect which was created in the image of God to know oranges or even to know God, since that is what it was created for, to know him. We just need God to give us the ability to know him in order to know him. We don’t need to be God himself.

You know what orange is but you don’t know what orangeness is. You need to be omniscient to know what omnipotent is. Hence human cannot provide a proof for existence of God with the attribute, omnipotent, that they don’t know what it is.

 

[Tomdstone]

you don’t know what orangeness is.

Orangeness is orange color which is seen when looking at light with a wavelength between 585–620 nm. It has a hue of 30° in the Hue Saturation value model.

 

[fisherman_carl]

You know what orange is but you don’t know what orangeness is. You need to be omniscient to know what omnipotent is. Hence human cannot provide a proof for existence of God with the attribute, omnipotent, that they don’t know what it is.

One doesn’t need to fully comprehend all that God is to prove a slice of God. Or a slice of an orange. one can Know or prove but a slice of God’s existence, but it is enough to know that he exists. To know anything more about him we would have to look at what he has revealed to us about himself.

 

[fisherman_carl]

Orangeness is orange color which is seen when looking at light with a wavelength between 585–620 nm. It has a hue of 30° in the Hue Saturation value model.

That is interesting. But, it is only a quantitative analysis of orangeness. It does not describe all that orangeness is. There is a qualitative aspect to it also. This is something that physical science can never detect. And, thus, if you look at the universe through science alone you miss quite a lot, only seeing the universe in terms of numbers and what can be measured. If I described you as 5’10", 180lb would that describe all that is you? Of course not. There is much more to you than what science can measure. And some would argue that the best things about you are what science can not even detect.