Does God exist?

[jbrown0059]

So you believe in God because you believe in God. Not very convincing.

“In an insane world, the sane man must appear insane!”

 

[ready]

Cerad,

I think I believe in God because I gave belief in Him a fighting chance when all was dark and hopeless for me - despite what reason alone was telling me (that a self-giving Trinitarian God was unlikely to exist.) I actively sought Him when evidence against a Trinitarian God of Love existed for me and deliberately chose to trust in one belief over another. I could have given up hope in a Trinitarian God and abandoned myself to agnosticism or atheism, but couldn’t. My nature wouldn’t let me abandon what I know in my heart is most fair and good.

 

[ready]

Cerad,

I think I believe in God because I gave belief in Him a fighting chance when all was dark and hopeless for me - despite what reason alone was telling me (that a self-giving Trinitarian God was unlikely to exist.) I actively sought Him when evidence against a Trinitarian God of Love existed for me and deliberately chose to trust in one belief over another. I could have given up hope in a Trinitarian God and abandoned myself to agnosticism or atheism, but couldn’t. My nature wouldn’t let me abandon what I know in my heart is most fair and good…and most reasonable for me to accept and believe in.

 

[PJM]

Sorry, it was pretty late, and I was perhaps being unclear.

You suggested that Jesus was someone whose experience of God manifested itself in the exterior world. You suggested that this was based on things like miracles and rising from the dead.

I’m pointing out that all you are reading is stories. These stories are mostly from his follower’s followers.

This isn’t proof. Other religions have god-like leaders (they claim) that really lived (they claim) and performed miraculous feats (they claim). Jesus isn’t any different in that regard, he’s just more popular.

I’m giving up this conversation now. It’s pretty clear that this is pointless. You believe because you believe, and this is all the proof you desire.

If I’m going to believe, I need something more robust.

My dear friend,

Do you believe that Ceasar existed, ot that The Crucades happened, or that Luther revolted, or that there was a 1st. World war?

Why do you believe these and not the reality of Jesus, where there is an abundance of historical evidence, and not just from His followers, from the Romans and Greeks.

What, who gives you the right to pick and chose? My friend, it is the very God you are denying

 

[PJM]

You are, therefore I AM?

**Almost **

"Exodus Chapter 3: “13 Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, "I AM WHO AM.” * And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, "Say this to the people of Israel, 'The LORD*, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you: this is my name for ever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

“I AM” therefore you are, and there for I am!

 

[PJM]

Quote:
If a person is greater then mere matter, would it not be reasonable too think that there is something even greater at the root of existence? …

Well, no, it would not be reasonable. Just because you judge some things to be “greater” than other things doesn’t mean that there’s an infinite ladder of greater and greater things.

Of course it does

Logic my friend, logic.

There are only two kinds of “things.”

Material things and spiritual things…

Material things have at least two or more parts.

Spiritual things like mind (not brain which is Matter), intellect, will and soul are Spiritual, as is God. See page 4, post # 52 and # 52

something “less” can’t procreate something “greater,” because things can’t share (or make) what they do not have.

Now lift you right arm up, put it down, now lift you left arm up, now put it down… you have just demonistrated “Mind OVER Matter.” The Spiritual always is superior and rules over / commands the Material, always.

Someting can only be what it is!

Something cannot be what it is not!

Dirt, grass, shrubs. trees, fish, and atom, a dog, humanity are clearly a line of provable superior, as in more complex, “things.”

Something, had to create these “things” and someting has to keep them in existance! That something, being, listen closely here;
had to be greater than all of the creations.

Logic tells us a lesser “thing” can’t produce a GREATER “thing” LOGIC

So if lesser and greater “things exist” (they do) then logic say’s there has to be a progression of things from lesser to greater, to GREATEST:shrug: Right! GREATEST, is what we call and know as God.

If we are unwilling to think, how are we ever to come to know truth?

 

[1holycatholic]

How about an observable phenomenon?

How about this, how about Jesus makes an appearance at our dinner party tonight at around six o’clock? I’ll serve whatever he likes. No need to knock, it would be far more convincing if he walked through the wall.

Jesus apparently has the ability to do this, so I’m not sure why he would refuse. I promise we’ll all be on our best behaviour.

Why does an all-powerful God demand that we believe in him on ephemeral and rare evidence? It make no sense.

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/papalfrance08/pics/eucharist.jpg

 

[MegaTherion]

You can never refute the fact that even a topic in history which does not concern Jesus, Jesus was mentioned as having born to this earth. You wanted to say that the Jesus Christ mentioned in world history is not the Jesus of the Christians? Then who do you think is that Christ mentioned there?

You don’t seem to be understanding.

There is not enough evidence to claim that the miracle-working magic man Jesus of the gospels was real. Was there a person (or people) upon whom those legends were based? It’s possible.

A similar case is Buddha. There is not enough evidence to claim that the legendary Buddha depicted in the Pali Cannon existed (it is claimed that Buddha talked to gods and other myths). Was there a person (or people) upon whom those legends were based? It’s possible.

The dates that these people supposedly lived – which are significant to large numbers of believers – are sometimes used as reference points, but that doesn’t mean that we are asserting that the legends are historically accurante.

If I were writing about something unrelated to Buddhism, but wanted to mention how Buddhists interpreted an item relevant to my topic, I would write, “Buddhists who lived a thousand years after Buddha interpreted it this way…” I wouldn’t be saying that I had evidence that the Buddha of the Pali Cannon (who talked to gods) was real. I would be using a convenient reference point.

And incidentally, “history” isn’t some webpage at Washington State University. History is a human science that doesn’t rely on any one person’s opinions – it relies on evidence.

There is no evidence that the legends you believe in are true. Just like there is no evidence that the legends of the Buddha are true.

 

[MegaTherion]

1holycatholic:

The scientific method presupposes an orderly and rational universe. These presuppositions of the scientific method are not provable by the scientific method.

Not quite.

The scientific method makes certain rational assumptions:

1. That reality exists
2. That our senses connect us to that reality, to varying degrees of accurate perception.
3. That reality is relavtively consistent from moment to moment (the inside of my house doesn’t vanish when I’m outside)

Science is results based – we keep using it because it works. Everything that science accomplishes demonstrates that those rational assumptions are likely true or at the very least useful.

You cannot absolutely prove any of those assumptions by science (actually, you can’t absolutely prove anything at all with science – all scientific claims are provisional). But you can prove that those assumptions are likely true because they work.

MindOverMatter:

Logic is quite capable of bringing us to a degree of understanding that can provide good foundations for believing something is true.
Undermine logic and you undermine the very premise we use to interpret science.

I’m not undermining logic in and of itself. I’m undermining the kind of logic that starts from untrue premises.

Let’s try another example:

1. The Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world. If the world exists, the Flying Spaghetti Monster must exist.
2. The world exists.
3. Therefore, the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists.

If my premises (1&2) are true, then the conclusion (3) must be true. But my first premise is not true – we cannot determine its truth value, so my logical argument is not valid.

My point is merely that an argument can be logical (one step following from the next) without it being valid. Logic needs to be rooted in facts in order to be valid.

The fact that there are people with personal feelings and freewill in existence, strongly suggests to me, that there is more to reality then random events and physical law

Ok. So “feelings” and the sensation of free will are, for you, sufficient to indicate that there is a reality that transcends the physical.

I hate to break this to you, but we know quite a bit about the brain chemistry that is the source of “personal feelings.” This includes the so-called “spiritual experience,” which has been generated in laboratory conditions by applying a mild current to certain parts of the brain.

There are also a number of interesting experiments that show that a part of your brain makes “decisions” a few seconds before you consciously become aware of that decision (i.e. before you “freely” choose it).

It would appear that feelings and free will are rooted in the physical and that they emerge from the physical, not the other way around.

Why do you have faith in the so called truths inferred to you by your brain when it is something that arose purely by natural events and chance?

I don’t have “faith” in those truths. Science helps us to understand the best possible explanation based on the evidence available at the time – these explanations have practical application and are subject to change as we learn more and acquire more evidence.

It’s based on evidence and subject to change when we uncover more evidence – there is no faith required.

I’m not claiming that science can lead us to “absolute truth” – I don’t think human beings can have “absolute knowledge.” I think that we can know to the best of our ability at any given time what is likely to be true (or at the very least, what is useful for us).

Well…everything is ordered, intelligible and appears to work towards meaningful ends. The fact that a mother is compelled to love ones child, doesn’t look like to me as if the root cause of all events is chance.

You seem to think that evolution is random. It’s not. It’s based on natural selection – that selective process is orderly and leads to order…it’s just not intelligent.

Mother-love exists because it aids in survival. Hence, it was selected for.

[Evolution] doesn’t tell me why i love, why i fear, and why i have emotions, and why there is meaning and logic in nature.

There’s a lot of interesting work being done on neuroscience and evolutionary biology. Fear, as I’m sure you know, has a survival advantage. So does love, in that it promotes family groups (that stick together to help ensure survival).

Similarly, the ability to recognize patterns (even when patterns aren’t there) also brought with it a survival advantage. That’s the reason you have a natural drive to seek patterns and find “meaning” behind things (just like primitive people sought patterns in the stars and found “shapes” in the constellations, even though they’re not really ordered into shapes)

Well the idea that physical reality exists ultimately for no reason, is not only destroying reason, but is just a sinners dream. No purpose, no moral truth, no divine responsibility.

I never made the claim that reality exists “ultimately for no reason.”

I simply disbelieve the claims of god because there is no evidence for them.

Things appear to me, so far as i can logically deduce, to be greater in quality, then others. I cannot ignore this, because i am honest.

You’ve missed my point. You say that humans are greater than matter. I’m asking why it logically follows that there must exist something higher up. Maybe the scale of “greater than” stops at human beings. How do you know that it continues?

 

[MegaTherion]

Logic tells us a lesser “thing” can’t produce a GREATER “thing” LOGIC

Oh, I see what you’re arguing.

No, you are incorrect. We know that simpler organisms came first – complexity developed over time after countless generations of evolution.

This is a good example of something you’ve logically concluded that doesn’t match what we know about the world through evidence.

Incidentally, the example of me moving my arm is quite dumb. The impulse to move the arm comes from the brain. It isn’t magic that moves my arm – it’s a series of well-understood physical processes. When I move my arm, it’s matter that is moving matter.

 

[ready]

Mega Therion,

After having been sleep deprived for a week and going through the horror that I did, I could not believe the Bible was neccesarily from God or that Josephus and Eusibius were neccesarily authentic. And if their historical documentation did in fact reflect historical truth - that Jesus died under Pontius Pilate at the time of Ceasar Augustus did nothing to convince me that Jesus was anything more than a possible “dreamer gifted with miracles” who died an unfortunate death for His beliefs. But that’s greater nonsense than believing He died for mankind and fulfilled the prophesy of God’s chosen people who awaited their Messiah. Even the stars at the time of Christ’s birth, science proves through pictures of the stars back then, were indicative of something quite exceptional in the universe. There was a documentary on EWTN on the Star of Bethlehem that presents us with astronomical photographs of the time of Christ’s birth that were incredibly remarkable. Even the heavens reflected the birth of Christ of a Virgin. You might want to order the video.

 

[MegaTherion]

But that’s greater nonsense than believing He died for mankind and fulfilled the prophesy of God’s chosen people who awaited their Messiah.

So if the choices are between 1) legends springing up around a person (as has happened repeatedly in history – take King Arthur, for example) or 2) a supernatural being descending to earth and fulfilling a prophecy (which has never happened before or since in history), you think the first choice is “nonsense” and the second choice is the more likely possibility.

I’d like to repeat that: you think that magic happening is the more likely possibility.

And your evidence for this assertion is:

Even the stars at the time of Christ’s birth, science proves through pictures of the stars back then, were indicative of something quite exceptional in the universe.

I mean, anyone with even reasonably developed critical thinking skills can see that whatever the stars were doing doesn’t make choice 2 any more likely.

As I understand it, it is possible that a comet or supernova was visible in the years around the time that Christ was supposedly born (Hailey’s comet passed the earth around 12 BCE and the Chinese record some astrological event around 5 BCE – some have speculated that it might have been Uranus [unlikely, as it is too dim] or a supernova from a nearby galaxy).

A comet or a supernova are not remotely supernatural and do not indicate that anything “special” is happening. Unless, of course, you believe in astrology (bunk pseudoscience).

 

[ready]

MegaTherion,

No, I do not believe in astrology. All I am saying is that in the sky at the time of Christ’s birth, as these astonomical photographs indicate, there was a number of strange phenomena taking place in the heavens. (You’d really have to order the video from EWTN.) And given the miracles of our time manifesting God’s greatness (through Padre Pio, for example and hosts turning to blood in front of eyewitnesses) and the cases of exorcisms and demonic infestations (where object’s move, levitate, etc.) we see God and the Devil at work. What else explains supernatural phenomena?

 

[Snerticus]

Originally Posted by Sideline forums.catholic-questions.org/images/buttons_cak/viewpost.gif
How about an observable phenomenon?

*How about this, how about Jesus makes an appearance at our dinner party tonight at around six o’clock? I’ll serve whatever he likes. No need to knock, it would be far more convincing if he walked through the wall. *

*Jesus apparently has the ability to do this, so I’m not sure why he would refuse. I promise we’ll all be on our best behaviour. *

Why does an all-powerful God demand that we believe in him on ephemeral and rare evidence? It make no sense.

http://www.catholicherald.co.uk/papalfrance08/pics/eucharist.jpg

That’s the best answer anyone can give! It’s hilarious… and true!

Thanks!

In other words sideline, you’ve already been invited to countless dinner parties where Jesus was the guest of honor and makes an appearance. The fact that you don’t recognize Him is the problem here. You don’t see, therefore you don’t believe. Like Thomas in the Gospel. But because you want proof, that’s precisely why you’re not getting it.

Why does an all-powerful God demand that we believe in him on ephemeral and rare evidence? It make no sense.

Easy, because in order to believe, you need faith, and that is something you lack. If and when you aquire it, you will understand and “see” the things you can’t now.

 

[PJM]

=cerad;4782861]So you believe in God because you believe in God. Not very convincing.

My dear friend in Christ,

If you really want proof of God’s existence, go back to page 4 and post # 50 and # 52.

Please feel free to refute it

Love and peace,

 

[ready]

Those two posts were great. Anybody open to Truth should have no problem accepting them in the least.

 

[MindOverMatter]

You cannot absolutely prove any of those assumptions by science (actually, you can’t absolutely prove anything at all with science – all scientific claims are provisional). But you can prove that those assumptions are likely true because they work.

So you admit, so far as science cannot prove all of its underlying assumptions, that a degree of faith is at work in science.

I’m not undermining logic in and of itself. I’m undermining the kind of logic that starts from untrue premises.

Then you need to show why the Christian starts from untrue premises.
For example; is it reasonable to believe that something can come out of nothing by itself uncaused.
Is it logical to believe that matter can move by itself uncaused.

My answer is no.

Let’s try another example:

1. The Flying Spaghetti Monster created the world. If the world exists, the Flying Spaghetti Monster must exist.
2. The world exists.
3. Therefore, the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists.

If my premises (1&2) are true, then the conclusion (3) must be true. But my first premise is not true – we cannot determine its truth value, so my logical argument is not valid.

This is not a logical argument to begin with. You are making a straw-man of Christian metaphysics and logic.
Christians infer the existence of a transcendent being by showing that physical reality doesn’t have in itself a sufficient explanation for its own existence and that therefore one must transcend physical reality for a sufficient explanation; and they produce various arguments to support this. Your argument, like naturalism, assumes first that the spaghetti monster exists (circular argument) and that therefore the world exists and must exist because of a spaghetti monster. But you have not shown us the reason why the existence of the world infers the existence of a spaghetti monster.

The Christian does not do that. What the Christian might do, although he or she may believe in God by faith, is put forward a theological or hypothetical concept of God, and then demonstrate through inductive and deductive methods why such a concept is the best explanation for the empirical evidence that we see. This is the practice of inductive inference. That is not the same as a circular argument; although i can see why somebody like you would be confused.

For instance; we know what a thing would look like if it was created for a purpose because we create things for a purpose, and we are personal beings. If we see things in nature that appear to work towards purposeful ends then one can infer quite reasonably, though not empirically, that there is some kind of transcendent personal nature behind the existence of our universe. And with the impossibility of an empirical proof, there is nothing wrong with having a reasonable faith especially if it is the best and only sufficient explanation for the observable phenomena. I believe that this is enough. You are simply hiding behind the principle of empiricism. Catholics merely claim that their faith is reasonable as in logical; not empirical. Naturalism is not logical and does not reflect my experiences as a creature with freewill.

 

[MindOverMatter]

My point is merely that an argument can be logical (one step following from the next) without it being valid.

The argument was not logical. It was a straw-man and a circular trap.

Logic needs to be rooted in facts in order to be valid.

No. logical arguments need to have empirical verification in order to have empirical certainty. An argument from probability is not certain, yet if it is based on evidence, it is not an invalid argument, neither is it unreasonable to have a faith based on the probability of something being true. Inductive arguments, and the argument from probability, is something all human beings use in their daily life so-long as the topic of investigation is important to them. God; so far as God means having an objective purpose, moral value, and meaning in life, is obviously not important to you.

A truly invalid argument is one that is contradictory to the logical and empirical evidence.

Ok. So “feelings” and the sensation of free will are, for you, sufficient to indicate that there is a reality that transcends the physical.

These are not my only arguments for the existence of God. But i think they are sufficient enough to seriously undermine the premise of naturalism.

I hate to break this to you, but we know quite a bit about the brain chemistry that is the source of “personal feelings.” This includes the so-called “spiritual experience,” which has been generated in laboratory conditions by applying a mild current to certain parts of the brain.

Brain chemistry does not explain why there is such a thing as emotion and love. The fact that a certain quality is actualized when a specific 3 dimensional geometric pattern is achieved in space time, does nothing to explain why such a quality exists at-all in the first place. It merely shows that there is a relationship between patterns, qualities and the principle of causality. The ultimate answer can only be found in what ever caused physical reality.

The fact that you can manipulate the mind to generate spiritual experiences, does nothing to show that under ordinary circumstances spiritual experiences are not ultimately caused by or infer a supernatural will. One could argue that the “God module” exists precisely so that we could experience God in a particular way that relates to ordinary sensory experience. This is not unreasonable given the fact that God is ultimately an immaterial being that transcends the world of sense perception. One could never “see” God as he truly is, and thus the existence of a specific module for spiritual experiences. The brain could be manipulated to generate other experiences, but does that mean experiences on a whole are not real or reliable? Obviously not. It seems to me, that you merely over-emphasize the God module in prejudiced, rather then in understanding.

There are also a number of interesting experiments that show that a part of your brain makes “decisions” a few seconds before you consciously become aware of that decision (i.e. before you “freely” choose it).

So you’re telling me that scientists, whom have no freewill, freely did experiments that proved that we have no freewill?

There can be no freewill if blind chemical reactions are the prime motivation of what you do and say. If your brain chooses something before you act; either you are causing that choice, or there is no you.

Feel free to believe in determinism. But my experiences tell me otherwise.

It would appear that feelings and free will are rooted in the physical and that they emerge from the physical, not the other way around.

The only thing that is evident, is that feelings exist in relation to physical phenomenon. This does not explain why i have freewill, emotions, desires, and beliefs.

 

[MindOverMatter]

I don’t have “faith” in those truths. Science helps us to understand the best possible explanation based on the evidence available at the time – these explanations have practical application and are subject to change as we learn more and acquire more evidence.

The idea that logical beliefs are not valid is a brick wall that you invented. It doesn’t change the reality of things.

It’s not. It’s based on natural selection – that selective process is orderly and leads to order…it’s just not intelligent.

So you agree that there is an orderly foundation to reality. Where does that order come from?

Mother-love exists because it aids in survival. Hence, it was selected for.

It does not exist just because it aids in survival. This is ridiculous. Natural selection selects those pre-existing aspects of nature that are compatible to environment. However, this does not explain why mother love exists. It doesn’t explain why my mother loves me. Or why i love her.

There’s a lot of interesting work being done on neuroscience and evolutionary biology. Fear, as I’m sure you know, has a survival advantage. So does love, in that it promotes family groups (that stick together to help ensure survival).

It doesn’t explain why there is such a thing as fear and love as i have explained above. These are not explanations.

Similarly, the ability to recognize patterns (even when patterns aren’t there) also brought with it a survival advantage. That’s the reason you have a natural drive to seek patterns and find “meaning” behind things (just like primitive people sought patterns in the stars and found “shapes” in the constellations, even though they’re not really ordered into shapes)

You have a poor understanding of the explanatory function of Evolutionary Theory. A reasonable naturalist would not make such a blunder. You are saying that qualities such as love and fear ultimately exist merely because they aid in our survival. False, so far as the science of evolution is concerned. They certainly have a survivability factor, but this in itself does not explain why such things exist in such a meaningful manner. Your arguments almost sound like they are trying to show purpose behind natural events.

I never made the claim that reality exists “ultimately for no reason.”

You would have to unless your willing to transcend physics.

I simply disbelieve the claims of god because there is no evidence for them.

You disbelieve because you don’t want to believe. There is plenty of logical reasons for believing in a transcendent personal God.
But I’m not going to waste my time on those who want to play hide and seek.

You’ve missed my point.

No. You have missed mine.

You say that humans are greater than matter. I’m asking why it logically follows that there must exist something higher up. Maybe the scale of “greater than” stops at human beings. How do you know that it continues?

What ever caused physical reality, would have to explain the existence of love, desire, fear, emotion, people, natural laws. Some kind of mind could explain why such things exist; because such a mind could design and purposely create the universe in respect of its own eternal nature, bestowing upon reality its eternal ideas. Physical reality is require to have qualities, such as law and order, before it can ever begin to have any explanatory power. Therefore things such as law and order, have to be explained by something else. Only a mind can explain the meaning that we find in nature. Just like a only a programmer can explain the meaningfulness found in a program. If i wish to explain the values, meanings and intelligibility that i find in objective reality, then i must transcend physical explanations necessarily due to the nature of that which I’m trying to explain or account for. The Universe cannot possibly explain itself. Its a logical impossibility. I don’t need empiricism to realize that science only explains one aspect of reality, and thats a very shallow aspect indeed.

Therefore you either have to say that the universe exists for no reason; or you must transcend physical reality until you find a being that can explain itself and the Universe. Such an entity would evidently be personal in nature, since one has transcended the reality of accidents or blind causality; and the only other kind of cause that is logically possible is a “personal cause”.

 

[ready]

I’m watching Fr. John Corapi on EWTN and he just defined the word exists to be lives. As Fr. puts it: Christ (God) lives in His Church.

If like Nietze (sp?), you believe God is dead and does not live in the world, I guess you can’t accept that He lives (exists) in His Church, His Mystical Body on earth.