Evidence for god or gods?

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Can anyone provide clear evidence for the existence of a god or gods?
 
Because I’ve replied to so many of these already: please use the search function. There’s a thread asking this same question a week or so old.

But because I’m nice, I’ll point you in the right direction. Everything we can experience has a reason for it being in existence. The phone I’m typing this with exists because
someone put the components together. Before that, someone mined for the resources. Those resources themselves didn’t come to exist on their own. Something outside of those resources are responsible for their existence. Nothing we can experience can cause itself.

Likewise with the universe. Something outside of itself had to bring it into existence. But this can’t go on endlessly. Eventually, something has to exist that is uncaused. This cause couldn’t itself be caused by anything else. This we call God.
 
The existence of anything at all. Aristotle, Plotinus, Augustine, Aquinas, Liebniz… there are plenty of great philosophers who’ve demonstrated that nature points to God, that God is required for reality to be rational.

There are plenty of resources out there, but I found this book to be an interesting read: amazon.com/Thomas-Aquinas-Principle-Sufficient-Reason/dp/1534982256

I had some background understanding of the subject already when I read it, though.

Professor Edward Feser also has a forthcoming book coming out this fall titled “Five Proofs of the Existence of God .” This is not Aquinas’ Five Ways, but deals with arguments from each of the philosophers I mentioned above. I believe this will be relatively entry level reading, written for a popular audience. edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2017/04/five-proofs-preview.html?m=1

Edit: I hate phone posting. It took forever to get the links right.
 
Polytheism and atheism are on opposite ends of the extremes and become irrational. I guess we’ll start there… 😛
 
Thom18 said:
Because I’ve replied to so many of these already: please use the search function. There’s a thread asking this same question a week or so old.

But because I’m nice, I’ll point you in the right direction. Everything we can experience has a reason for it being in existence. The phone I’m typing this with exists because
someone put the components together. Before that, someone mined for the resources. Those resources themselves didn’t come to exist on their own. Something outside of those resources are responsible for their existence. Nothing we can experience can cause itself.

Likewise with the universe. Something outside of itself had to bring it into existence. But this can’t go on endlessly. Eventually, something has to exist that is uncaused. This cause couldn’t itself be caused by anything else. This we call God.
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Na, if you wait long enough a complete brass alarm clock can wash up on a beach that is produced by the random forces of the sea.

Now if you were to additionally tell me that at the very moment I looked at it the hands indicated the correct time as well - whoah, that would have to indicate intelligent design.
 
That you exist. That you continue to exist. That a perfect environment exists which supports and feeds you. That it was created and continues to exist. That you are the only species on earth than can ask a question, ponder the self and inquire into the eternal and infinite. Good place to start.
 
po18guy said:
That you exist.
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My parents were human, not gods.
That you continue to exist.
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Erm… That argument is only good for 100 years or so. Does your god/s cease to exist when I do?
That a perfect environment exists which supports and feeds you.
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False. 99.9999999% of the universe is very inimical to human life. Even on Earth, people starve to death so your “feeds” fails in many cases. Do gods only exist in fertile parts of the world and not in deserts or the poles?
That it was created …
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Assuming what you have to prove.
… and continues to exist.
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Protons have an infinite life because they are stable. Similarly electrons. Some other subatomic particles are unstable, but continuing to exist does not indicate divinity, unless every proton is divine. That would indicate a great many gods, and that monotheism was wrong.

rossum
 
tony12356 said:
Can anyone provide clear evidence for the existence of a god or gods?
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What would it change. Jesus walked here on earth and people still rejected him. But Yes there were witness in history who testify that Jesus did indeed come to this earth and reveal himself as the Son of God.

He was crucified died and was buried and rose again according to scriptures. He is seated at the right hand of the Father and will COME AGAIN to judge the living and dead.
 
Thom18 said:
Because I’ve replied to so many of these already: please use the search function. There’s a thread asking this same question a week or so old.

But because I’m nice, I’ll point you in the right direction. Everything we can experience has a reason for it being in existence. The phone I’m typing this with exists because
someone put the components together. Before that, someone mined for the resources. Those resources themselves didn’t come to exist on their own. Something outside of those resources are responsible for their existence. Nothing we can experience can cause itself.

Likewise with the universe. Something outside of itself had to bring it into existence. But this can’t go on endlessly. Eventually, something has to exist that is uncaused. This cause couldn’t itself be caused by anything else. This we call God.
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  1. You are assuming everything had to have a cause. Please demonstrate that the universe had a cause.
    2.Let me grant you that the universe had a cause. That still doesn’t get you to God. You jumped from the universe had a cause, to the cause of the universe is a deity.
 
tony12356 said:
Can anyone provide clear evidence for the existence of a god or gods?
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Tony,

What kind of evidence would you consider ‘clear’ – or even reasonable – for proving to you that a spiritual (i.e., non-physical, not-a-part-of-the-universe) God exists?
 
rinnie said:
What would it change. Jesus walked here on earth and people still rejected him. But Yes there were witness in history who testify that Jesus did indeed come to this earth and reveal himself as the Son of God.

He was crucified died and was buried and rose again according to scriptures. He is seated at the right hand of the Father and will COME AGAIN to judge the living and dead.
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First off the only supposed eyewitness accounts of Jesus are from 4 anonymous writers. The earliest fragment of these accounts comes from Papyrus 52. This is from the gospel of john and only dates back to around 125 CE. So at this time we don’t have any original works and we don’t have any eyewitness accounts from outside sources. By the way we have more eyewitness accounts of Bigfoot, but that doesn’t mean he exists.

csntm.org/Manuscript/View/GA_P52
bible-researcher.com/papyrus.52.html
 
tony12356 said:
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rinnie:
What would it change. Jesus walked here on earth and people still rejected him. But Yes there were witness in history who testify that Jesus did indeed come to this earth and reveal himself as the Son of God.
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First off the only supposed eyewitness accounts of Jesus are from 4 anonymous writers.
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We’re getting a bit far afield. Rinnie, Tony asked for evidence of God. It doesn’t make much sense to discuss Jesus – even vis-a-vis the claim that He is the Son of God – if we haven’t addressed Tony’s question of whether we reasonably claim that God exists.
 
Spot on.

The comparative mate to “atheism” isn’t “Catholicism”. It’s merely “theism”.
 
tony12356 said:
  1. You are assuming everything had to have a cause. Please demonstrate that the universe had a cause.
    2.Let me grant you that the universe had a cause. That still doesn’t get you to God. You jumped from the universe had a cause, to the cause of the universe is a deity.
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When Thomas Aquinas proposed the argument from causation (what I described), the big bang theory hadn’t yet been proposed. Since then, however, various proofs have come to light that point towards the idea that the universe hasn’t always existed. This means that something had to have caused it. You can’t go from nothing, to the universe existing, and say that nothing caused this.

And all I said is that we call this (whatever caused the universe) God. Feel free to substitute “God” with anything else. I never said that “God” had to be a sentient being, or love its creation, or anything except that He/She/It/They has to be eternal, and thus uncaused. Obviously I believe in the Christian God, but that’s another conversation for another day. All I attempted and am attempting to do is prove the existence of a being or other entity that brought everything else into existence. Maybe this is one God, one of many gods, or an impersonal force holding everything together. My objective here isn’t to prove my concept right, only to prove that there can’t be an endless string of causes going on forever, because it would have no beginning. That’s illogical, so it can’t be correct.

Rant over.
 
Thom18 said:
When Thomas Aquinas proposed the argument from causation (what I described), the big bang theory hadn’t yet been proposed. Since then, however, various proofs have come to light that point towards the idea that the universe hasn’t always existed. This means that something had to have caused it. You can’t go from nothing, to the universe existing, and say that nothing caused this.
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Not to undermine how scientific evidence of an actual beginning to the universe is in line with Catholic teaching, but I want to clarify that Saint Thomas Aquinas’ most famous arguments for God (the five ways) did NOT assume a beginning to the universe. They are framed to apply even in the hypothetical case of the past stretching on for infinite time with no beginning.

To be clear, Aquinas did reason philosophically that, given there is a God as he describes, the universe existing infinitely into the past is not philosophically coherent and so there must have been a beginning in time, but that only followed after his five ways had already argued God’s existence without making that assumption as part of their logic.
 
Thom18 said:
And all I said is that we call this (whatever caused the universe) God. Feel free to substitute “God” with anything else. I never said that “God” had to be a sentient being, or love its creation, or anything except that He/She/It/They has to be eternal, and thus uncaused. Obviously I believe in the Christian God, but that’s another conversation for another day. All I attempted and am attempting to do is prove the existence of a being or other entity that brought everything else into existence. Maybe this is one God, one of many gods, or an impersonal force holding everything together. My objective here isn’t to prove my concept right, only to prove that there can’t be an endless string of causes going on forever, because it would have no beginning. That’s illogical, so it can’t be correct.

Rant over.
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I sorry, but playing with words isn’t an argument. Lets assume for a moment that virtual particles is what caused the universe to exist. By your own definition the virtual particles are considered to be God. Not only are you rejecting the actual definition of God, but your rejecting how the vast majority define god. Just a quick google of the definition of God will show you that God is defined as a supreme being or deity.
 
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