Evidence that God Exists

[ribozyme]

No good, Ammonius. Red herring. I want YOU to tell us exactly where evolution was reproduced in a laboratory, and where the results were published in a respectable scientific journal after peer review. While you’re at it, you can show us the same for the laboratory that created life.

What do you mean by “evolution” and “reproduced”. I think I have a reputable source that satisfies those criterion.

 

[Ammonius_Saccus]

What do you mean by “evolution” and “reproduced”. I think I have a reputable source that satisfies those criterion.

I got the impression that he meant the entirety of the process.

 

[ribozyme]

I got the impression that he meant the entirety of the process.

Likewise, and I think it is impossible to satisfy that criterion.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think you are misunderstanding what is necessary for good science.

talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/falsify.html

Kind of a fun article to read, but just another lightweight red herring. No journal articles. Give it up. :yawn:

 

[ribozyme]

Kind of a fun article to read, but just another lightweight red herring. No journal articles. Give it up. :yawn:

Do you REALLY want a journal article?

BTW, could you define “evolution” and “reproducible” before I give you the references.

Even if you do not have journal access, I will be happy to e-mail the articles in PDF format for you.

 

[Ammonius_Saccus]

Kind of a fun article to read, but just another lightweight red herring. No journal articles. Give it up. :yawn:

Here is a link. If this experiment had gone differently evolution would have been falsified. IT includes links to journal articles.

myxo.css.msu.edu/ecoli/

Here are some (not all are valid for what you want):
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Search&db=pubmed&term=evolution+experiments&tool=QuerySuggestion

How many do you want?

 

[Ammonius_Saccus]

Some more (not all are about experiments):

talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/refs.html

 

[Ridgerunner]

Here is a link. If this experiment had gone differently evolution would have been falsified. IT includes links to journal articles.
myxo.css.msu.edu/ecoli/
Here are some (not all are valid for what you want):
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Search&db=pubmed&term=evolution+experiments&tool=QuerySuggestion

How many do you want?

Just one. The one where they really produced evolution. It’s all very cute to throw a zillion articles out there, most of which are not actually accessible from the sites you give. But, looking at a few, this is all “when there’s lots of salmon, bears that are good at fishing proliferate, but when there’s no salmon, but lots of grubs, bears that thrive on grubs and are good at digging them up proliferate. Now, here’s all the stats about that.” Any cattleman with enough time and a mastery of statistics could do the same thing, and some have. But they’re still just cattle. You still have not come up with the experiment where the composition of the earth is reproduced, and you have dodged the question whether you reject the existence of black holes as soundly as you reject religion. I am not going to make my occupation chasing your red herrings and watching you bob and weave. You don’t have it, pardner. You don’t have where someone actually produced real evolution (not just some actuation or accentuation of a trait already existing within the DNA of the thing being experimented upon); a real species change. If you did, you wouldn’t cite me to a list of a hundred articles and tell me to go read them and find what you’re not willing to specifically point out. You would produce the article or the cite to it, the one that really does what you want. No, you would cite to me the explosive headlines in “Newsweek” announcing the dramatic breakthrough.

You have abandoned the “creating life out of nonlife” part of the evolution question. Might be true, but you haven’t come up with the lab that did it.

So you don’t misunderstand, I don’t particularly question evolution. What my actual point is, is that you accept things as true that are not established in the way you ask believers to do when it comes to their belief in God. You just plain don’t want to believe in God, and that’s a choice, not a scientifically-based position. The truth is, and some of the articles you have cited actually point this out, there is really no single yardstick for “scientific belief”. Some things are only mathematical conclusions that are accepted by the scientific community because they cannot be refuted and appear consistent with other mathematical calculations that have also been accepted. That’s a linguistic method of arriving at a logical belief in something, many, many things actually, that can never be lab tested, reproduced physically or proved in any other way. If you limit your beliefs to things that can be empirically proved and reproduced, then you’re not going to believe in a great deal of what is accepted in the scientific community, and I doubt you really do that. Thus my question about black holes which, of course, you have never really answered.

Yet, you say to believers “without using your language or logic, prove to me that God exists”. That’s like telling Stephen Hawking to prove the existence of wormholes without using mathematics. It is at least as impossible to prove empirically that God exists as it is to prove empirically what’s really going on in a black hole, or a “string” or a “brane” or any of the other myriad things scientists believe are a particular way. Science will almost certainly always have to do without examining what’s really going on in the core of the sun. Yet most would agree that it is just unreasonable to say it’s unworthy of study or that nothing can be believed about it or there can’t be anything there because we can’t get a thimbleful of it to hold it in a test tube and make another one just like it for comparison. You’re just asking everybody to play with a deck you stacked. And really, it’s getting boring.

 

[Foghorn19]

Since everyone else is giving their two cents on “proof” for the existince of God (or lack thereof), I will as well. This is actually my first post on this board and I am happy to be here! I am a recent graduate of a Jesuit university where I majored in Philosophy and History so most of my post will be an attempt to be philosophical rather than scientific.
I for one believe there is a God but I never came to this belief by any argument. While there are several good arguments for the existence of God, I believe the best is the “second way” of Thomas Aquinas which is from causation. The argument goes as follows: everything that is existence has not always been in existence for something caused it to come in to existence. For example, my existence was caused by my parents and the existence of a plant, no matter how old, was caused by a seed from another plant and so on and so forth. Next, nothing can be the cause of itself. This is pretty self-explanatory; in order for something (me for example) to be the cause of its own existence it would have to first exist before it came into existence…yeah, that is not possible. Third, this series of causation cannot go on forever into the past…there must have been a beginning! If there was no beginning then how could there be a middle or an end? So, since there are some things in existence (obviously), there must have been a beginning that was uncaused…what Aristotle called an uncaused cause. This uncaused cause is what we christians call God (Aquinas).
I know this “proof” will not satisfy some people, but I think it is solid. The only time I have seen someone refute this “proof” is when they argue that there is no such thing as causality (which, if you do not believe in causality, try walking out a 5th floor window and see what happens).
Well I have already typed too much for my first post and for this I apologize.

God Bless!

 

[Kepha15]

God exists. And there’s nothing I know with more certainty.

 

[Ammonius_Saccus]

J You still have not come up with the experiment where the composition of the earth is reproduced, and you have dodged the question whether you reject the existence of black holes as soundly as you reject religion. I am not going to make my occupation chasing your red herrings and watching you bob and weave. You don’t have it, pardner. You don’t have where someone actually produced real evolution (not just some actuation or accentuation of a trait already existing within the DNA of the thing being experimented upon); a real species change. If you did, you wouldn’t cite me to a list of a hundred articles and tell me to go read them and find what you’re not willing to specifically point out. You would produce the article or the cite to it, the one that really does what you want. No, you would cite to me the explosive headlines in “Newsweek” announcing the dramatic breakthrough.

You have a warped view of science. Just because a full reproduction of evolution (or the Earth) cannot be reproduced in laboratory does not mean that it cannot be test experimentally. By your view of science there is hardly any science at all.

You have abandoned the “creating life out of nonlife” part of the evolution question. Might be true, but you haven’t come up with the lab that did it.

Life from non-life is not a part of evolution. And, no, there is not experimental evidence for how this happened.

So you don’t misunderstand, I don’t particularly question evolution. What my actual point is, is that you accept things as true that are not established in the way you ask believers to do when it comes to their belief in God. You just plain don’t want to believe in God, and that’s a choice, not a scientifically-based position.

There is tons of evidence for evolution. If there was the same level (or even a lower level) of evidence for God, I would believe in God, too.

Science will almost certainly always have to do without examining what’s really going on in the core of the sun. Yet most would agree that it is just unreasonable to say it’s unworthy of study or that nothing can be believed about it or there can’t be anything there because we can’t get a thimbleful of it to hold it in a test tube and make another one just like it for comparison. You’re just asking everybody to play with a deck you stacked. And really, it’s getting boring.

The core of the Sun can be studied and tested indirectly. You don’t have to have a thimbleful. The same is true of black holes. We don’t need direct empirical evidence to empirically test for them. Although the evidence for them has not definitely shown black holes to exist there is strong evidence to suggest they do.

This Wikipedia article seems pretty good and discusses some the evidence for black holes. I didn’t notice any obvious errors (they would have to be obvious for me to notice)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole#Evidence

 

[Ammonius_Saccus]

God exists. And there’s nothing I know with more certainty.

Do you have any evidence to justify this belief?

 

[Ammonius_Saccus]

Since everyone else is giving their two cents on “proof” for the existince of God (or lack thereof), I will as well. This is actually my first post on this board and I am happy to be here! I am a recent graduate of a Jesuit university where I majored in Philosophy and History so most of my post will be an attempt to be philosophical rather than scientific.
I for one believe there is a God but I never came to this belief by any argument. While there are several good arguments for the existence of God, I believe the best is the “second way” of Thomas Aquinas which is from causation. The argument goes as follows: everything that is existence has not always been in existence for something caused it to come in to existence. For example, my existence was caused by my parents and the existence of a plant, no matter how old, was caused by a seed from another plant and so on and so forth. Next, nothing can be the cause of itself. This is pretty self-explanatory; in order for something (me for example) to be the cause of its own existence it would have to first exist before it came into existence…yeah, that is not possible. Third, this series of causation cannot go on forever into the past…there must have been a beginning! If there was no beginning then how could there be a middle or an end? So, since there are some things in existence (obviously), there must have been a beginning that was uncaused…what Aristotle called an uncaused cause. This uncaused cause is what we christians call God (Aquinas).
I know this “proof” will not satisfy some people, but I think it is solid. The only time I have seen someone refute this “proof” is when they argue that there is no such thing as causality (which, if you do not believe in causality, try walking out a 5th floor window and see what happens).

I hate to just post a link, but it late and I am too tired to write a proper resposne. This link from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy discusses some of the issues with this argument. It the end it only raises a possible explanation about reality. However, there just no evidence that it actually describes reality.

plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/#4

Well I have already typed too much for my first post and for this I apologize.

No need to apologize. I started this thread for an open and hoenst debate of the issues. Write as much as you want since the thoughts of people who are interested in this topic are exactly what this thread is about.

 

[JimO]

And if you’re wrong, you may be doing others a great disservice in telling them the Good News.

Not if it leads to them having peace. It’s not something to force on a person or even guilt them into believing, although I can understand how many people would think this way given the poor example of a lot of Christians.

 

[TOP]

Only an obessed person would need evidence for everything to get through life. Do you trust that a hamburger was cooked to the right temperature? Do you trust your spouse? What about germs in public places, did the janitors do their jobs correctly? Show me some evidence so I can go out in public and get out of this box. My life is at stake. What about uncoming traffic, is that person going to stay in their lane? I want some proof! Forget past experience, I don’t rely on just that, or others telling me it is safe to go outside. Ravings of a lunatic? Give me some odds at least. What about the other 70% chance I won’t live due to my cancer? Hope, faith, thats for suckers? BTDT. All these posts to entertain a madman or is it just malice for one particular subject? Tim

 

[FightingFat]

Seen this? peterkreeft.com/topics/first-cause.htm

 

[Lance]

My belief in God is a gift from the Holy Spirit.

 

[Foghorn19]

I hate to just post a link, but it late and I am too tired to write a proper resposne. This link from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy discusses some of the issues with this argument. It the end it only raises a possible explanation about reality. However, there just no evidence that it actually describes reality.

plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/#4
Thank you for responding to my post! And I know how you feel about posting on a deep subject when you are tired so no worries. How about adopting one of the objections to the argument I put forward and, after we discuss that objection, then you can move on to another if you chose ? Please do not copy and paste from the Stanford Encyclopedia and do not ask me to respond to every objection because that would be asking too much of me in one sitting and I believe most people would find such a discussion as too much. But, before we have any discussion, let me make just one thing clear…I am not arguing for the christian God. I am arguing for the god of philosophers.
Thank you for reading this post and I look forward to your (or anyone’s) reply.

God Bless!

 

[wcknight]

What about all the people that had Muslim experiences? Or Buddhist experiences? Or Atheist experiences?

I admit I have not examined every miracle claim, but all the ones that people have told me to look at had other (more likely) logical explanations.

There are not nearly as many miracles claimed in other religions as there are in Christianity or in Catholicism in particular. The Catholic Church has a formal process to investigate claims that have some legitimate basis.

And even after discounting all the hoaxes, and old wives tales there are literally hundreds of legitimate verifiable miracles. No other faith can even claim a fraction of that number. What miracles do Muslims or Buddhist claim ??? With the Catholic Church it has been been on-going for almost 2000 years almost on a continuous basis.

Should you investigate even a small number of such claims, you will find that there can be no logical or medical or physical explanation for any of these, since one of the criteria for a verified miracle is that no such explanation can exist otherwise it is discarded as not a true miracle.

Just one for example, how can you explain away, a host during a mass turning it a real beating human heart ??? The evidence is there with eyewitnesses. Serveral other Eucharistic miracles of a similar nature are documented, one turning into human heart tissue and others bleeding real blood. All with the same blood type (don’t know if DNA analysis has been done, but it probably has or will be)

Some of these events are recent within the last 50 years, some are over 500 years ago.

 

[temporarilyqual]

I’m not well- schooled in philosophy, but as to Ammonius’ original query, the “ontologic argument” for God’s existence was offered by St. Anselm, Doctor of the Church, in the 11th century.