Is it Rational to Believe God Exists?

[Estevao]

A lot of people critique Christians for not having memorized 20 iron clad arguments for their faith, but go to any high school biology class with a bunch of anti-evolution material memorized and you can make the students and probably the teacher look silly too. It doesn’t follow that evolution is false because the average man on the street can’t answer every objection to it.

 

[madera]

Not always. His parents could have died by a bomb launched from Israel into Gaza, killing the parents and causing terrible suffering to the child. How would this suffering draw a child who has not yet attained the age of reason, to God?

you have quite of an imagination.lol

 

[glendab]

Hello JapaneseKappa.

Careful with your words or you’ll walk into the Euthyphro dilemma.

I am well aware of how defining God as goodness works. He is also defined to be justice and mercy, so it’s pretty tautological to say that those things are always with him. The point is that unless you have some other way to reason about God, you basically have to admit you know nothing about “goodness.” If God told you to kill your son, you would have to do it because God’s will takes precedence over any conception of goodness your conscience might have.

Actions don’t become morally better just because we’ll be rewarded for them.
“Should I kill my grandma?”
“Should I kill my grandma if someone will pay me $1,000,000 to do so?”
“Should I kill my grandma if -]someone/-] God will pay me with heaven if I do so?”

The morality of the original question is unaffected by the potential rewards.

I like your example, however, I’m betting you cannot apply this thinking to another situation:
“Should I have sex?”
“Should I have un-protected sex?”
“Should I have the infant killed I conceived by un-protected sex?”
“Should I simply have sex, but only the ‘safe’ kind?”
“Should I only have sex when I’m sure it will reward me with good feelings?”
“Should I chose my sex partners with this in mind?”

Um, sorry if I hit a nerve, but I’m betting this pretty much sums up the evolution of a certain person’s sex life. One other thing. It is well known among those who look at the Catholic Church form the outside what our views are regarding these issues, and most know what our rules are regarding all of these things and whether folks admit it or not openly, it is usually the main reason folks choose to live and worship elsewhere. Sex keeps folks out of the Church and it is a choice they make and affirm every day. It colors the way they see the Church and her members. It creates a rift in all dialog and it sometimes causes folks, women especially to seek religious fulfillment in alternative religions or to reject religion entirely. Such thinking effects a good friend of mine and I have to be patient and understanding with her. At this point in time, she actually worships a “goddess” of her own choosing and claims this goddess helps her in her daily walk. She used to be Catholic. Oh dear. She may make it back; she may not. I’m not the only person in her life who is distressed by her choices, but I know they are hers and hers alone. Same as yours.

Glenda

 

[glendab]

Hello JapaneseKappa.

…What Buddhists or Humanists think about right and wrong is irrelevant to the internal consistency of Christianity. I’m not using Buddhist or Humanist definitions of right and wrong,** I am arguing that God’s actions violate his own religion’s teachings**.

So, here it is: God says “Thou shalt not kill.” People still die. God doesn’t exist then. When people die, God is defying His own law because no matter how they die, God killed them, whether by weather, disease, murder, accident, etc…ummmmmmmmmmmm…this is seriously silly but that is basically what you keep claiming. Our God, Jesus Christ, isn’t good enough for you because in the history of mankind horrors seem to happen and keep happening and if God really was God, He wouldn’t permit all this. Earth would become Eden again. No, you say earth SHOULD be Eden again and then you’ll accept God is really God. I hate to disappoint you JapaneseKappa, but that is never going to happen.

I also need to say your level of scholarship is impressive. You’re a smart gal. But all that smarts won’t get you to Heaven. Bottom line, self-love could give you a desire to give yourself a break instead of sending yourself to Hell. You are smart enough to know it exists, or you wouldn’t have spent so much time and energy forming arguments against our God and our religion. If it isn’t real, why bother taking years to study all the arguments against it? You’d simply dismiss it as nonsense and find other things to study and work on and better yourself with. But you’ve spent all those years and all that energy. So how is that? Or more importantly, WHY is that? It is obvious to me and to others. I’d say it is irrational to attempt to prove the God doesn’t exist.

Glenda

 

[JapaneseKappa]

I like your example, however, I’m betting you cannot apply this thinking to another situation:
“Should I have sex?”
“Should I have un-protected sex?”
“Should I have the infant killed I conceived by un-protected sex?”
“Should I simply have sex, but only the ‘safe’ kind?”
“Should I only have sex when I’m sure it will reward me with good feelings?”
“Should I chose my sex partners with this in mind?”

You’re right, you can’t just invent a series of loosely related questions and claim this reasoning applies to them. I said that rewards don’t change the morality of a proposition. Most of your examples not only don’t use the same underlying question, but also they abandon the concept of a reward.

The point is that you can’t change the morality of an action (e.g. killing someone) by tacking on rewards. Consider killing in self defense. Self defense is not a reward. If you try to make it into a reward, you get nonsense questions like: “Should I kill someone if he will pay me my own life for killing him?” Self defense is a circumstance that can change the morality of the underlying question.

Some of your examples are even more wrong than mistaking self defense-like situations for rewards. The question about infant killing is entirely independent of the morality of sex which is what the rest of the questions seem to be about.

 

[Peter_Plato]

You are forgetting that the Holy Bible, the infallible word of God, tells us that God is a merciful God.

Yes, but it doesn’t tell us that God is indiscriminately merciful or that God does not consider anything about the person when showing mercy.

It seems to me that what is being forgotten is that God is, if anything, the eminently moral “decision maker” because HE ALONE has omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence in his “bag of tricks” when making any decision or determining any course of action.

Presumably that means IF he did not show mercy in this instance, THEN he had very good (read: indisputable) reasons for doing so. Perhaps he knew something about each and every child whose life was ended - that mercy would have been wasted, that their lives would be better off ended at that instant, or that some other, to us, unfathomable, reason for doing what he did obtained.

It seems to me that the only way this argument from problematic events in the OT CAN possibly work is if there is a presumption that the deity acting there is NOT omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipotent. The argument is a probative one that attempts to show, using the evidence, that the deity acting there could not have had those qualities. It fails, however, because those ARE precisely the characteristics required to demonstrate in a logically sufficient way that the agent spoken of in the OT does not possess 3Omni characteristics. Given that it is NOT 3Omni agents formulating the argument to begin with nor can these formulators possibly present, in a comprehensive way, what a 3Omni deity would have done, given ALL the facts of the case, the assumption cum claim that the 3Omni-God would not act in this way is fatuous, at best.

In any case, the existence of these problematic events is not an isolated theme. It is not as if these events just “popped up” in historical isolation. They are integral aspects within a continuing narrative of over 3500 years including other historically significant events which reportedly involved demonstrations of power and corroborating events. So, there are reasons, on the other side, for thinking this particular God is not merely a fabrication or an attempt to justify a mere “tribal action” on the part of some human group. They have borne out historically.

It would, in fact, seem somewhat silly to concoct a series of paradigmatically unbelievable events (plagues, angel of death, parting the Red Sea, columns of smoke and fire, etc.) in order to believably convince others outside of your tribe that some later genocidal actions were not merely about your tribe acting in a genocidal manner.

 

[Peter_Plato]

You’re right, you can’t just invent a series of loosely related questions and claim this reasoning applies to them. I said that rewards don’t change the morality of a proposition. Most of your examples not only don’t use the same underlying question, but also they abandon the concept of a reward.

The point is that you can’t change the morality of an action (e.g. killing someone) by tacking on rewards. Consider killing in self defense. Self defense is not a reward. If you try to make it into a reward, you get nonsense questions like: “Should I kill someone if he will pay me my own life for killing him?” Self defense is a circumstance that can change the morality of the underlying question.

Some of your examples are even more wrong than mistaking self defense-like situations for rewards. The question about infant killing is entirely independent of the morality of sex which is what the rest of the questions seem to be about.

This is a straw man argument. Who made the case that killing infants was necessarily about rewards? You did.

Can you, without making a preposterous assumption, show that to be the case either with regard to Abraham, Moses or the Israelites, in general? Recall, in fact, that the Israelites did not have the well-formulated sense of after-life or Heaven that exists in current “Christian” cultures.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

This is a straw man argument. Who made the case that killing infants was necessarily about rewards? You did.

Can you, without making a preposterous assumption, show that to be the case either with regard to Abraham, Moses or the Israelites, in general? Recall, in fact, that the Israelites did not have the well-formulated sense of after-life or Heaven that exists in current “Christian” cultures.

It behooves everyone to be ready for it and not defiant toward the Father who prepares a place for us.

The morality of the original question is unaffected by the potential rewards.

 

[Tomdstone]

Yes, but it doesn’t tell us that God is indiscriminately merciful …

Not true. Holly Scripture tells us that the mercy of God is in all of his works.
Psalm 145:9
The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Are you so sure that there were not other methods to convince the Pharaoh? It seems lacking in mercy to kill the firstborn child of innocent civilians, and we read that God is a merciful God. If you ask the parents of these killed children, do you think that they would agree that God had been merciful to them?

You appear to be second-guessing God?

We have been over this ground before, but it’s as if you don’t read the posts that answer your objection. The killing of the innocents had a reason. God does not do anything without a reason. If it was the way to get the Jews released (and that was its effect) the strategy certainly worked.

But you continually make this argument that God is cruel to the children by taking their lives. That would only be true if they had no souls that would live on beyond their deaths.It is the presumption of atheists that nature must be cruel to take the lives of thousands in an earthquake or a flood, because there is no way to survive death.

It is the belief and hope of Catholics that the deaths of infants (for whatever reason) is compensated for somehow in the next life. That would be both mercy for the children of Egypt and mercy for the Jews who needed the Pharoah to free them from slavery.

 

[Peter_Plato]

…

Your post seems to indicate that “place” - as used here by Charlemagne - is synonymous with “reward.”

Originally Posted by Charlemagne III
It behooves everyone to be ready for it and not defiant toward the Father who prepares a place for us.

It isn’t.

The “place” is the completion, the “telos” for which we exist, the purpose for which we have been created.

A “reward” is extraneous, an add on for some meritorious act or endeavor.

The “place” is the gracious intention of God for us. It would be positively ungracious to not humbly accept as a “gift by invitation” that “place” which has been offered to us and positively presumptuous to view it as a “reward” for some action or merit of ours.

 

[PMVCatholic]

But one question is what is the mechanism behind feelings. Certainly, if you look at inanimate objects, there is no indication that they have any feelings. Similarly with cactus plants or an apple tree. Feelings are an indication of a living soul. How would a materialist explain a living soul? There is talk about complex adaptive systems and the interaction between different levels of complexity, but can a purely materialistic outlook explain the evolution of feelings from pure matter alone?

I agree. Consciousness has always been a tall hurdle for philosophers and scientists alike. How is it that some objects, such as humans, have intentionality while other objects, such as rocks, don’t? Many would argue that it is the existence of a complex brain, which is an amazing assembly of neurons. What I find perhaps even more amazing, is how something without a brain (such as an individual cell) can seem to have intentions in its behavior (such as the translation of proteins from RNA).

-Phil

 

[PMVCatholic]

I see you believe you can find GOd intellectually. No you cannot.
in order to find GOd you need to find HIm with the need that cannot be satisfied .in this world.
are you in pain? Are you an angry person and dont to be that way?
Just cry out to Him and if you are sincere, He will find you.
Simple.

Though I do believe that God reveals Himself to those who seek him sincerely with an open heart, I think that rational arguments for God’s existence can help justify that seeking.

“Man’s faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith. The proofs of God’s existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.”

-CCC paragraph 35

 

[PMVCatholic]

Please disregard my previous question.

In my humble opinion, I believe it is far more rational to believe in God with what I have learned. I hope you don’t mind if I share with you some reasons why.

I believe without God, the words true or false simply become meaningless, so the question I ask the atheist, is if there is no God, why do you believe it to be true?

I believe to follow the concept of a purely material universe to it’s logical conclusion, pulls the rug out from under the New Atheists. As John Lennox say’s, If as they claim, there is nothing in the universe except matter and energy, some of which blindly and randomly evolved into the human mind, then how can we rely on our minds in the first place to arrive at this conclusion? Our minds are themselves, according to this Darwinian view, mere random purposeless movements of atoms, unable to recognise truth, or beauty, or goodness, to know anything, or to do science for that matter.

And yet other scientists of undisputed intellectual stature with diametrically opposed views concur that, ‘The reason why what is in my little mind can understand a bit of what is out there is because both of them are traceable back to the same grand designer.’

C.S. Lewis I believe also explains it very well.

“Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It’s like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.” - C.S. Lewis

“The theory that thought is merely a movement in the brain is, in my opinion, nonsense; for if so, that theory itself would be merely a movement, an event among atoms, which may have speed and direction but of which it would be meaningless to use the words true or false.” - C.S. Lewis

And I believe John Lennox also explains it well.

*"The very fact that we do science, means we believe that the universe is rationally intelligible. Why does a scientist believe it is rationally intelligible? Atheism tells us that the human mind is the human brain and it’s the end product of a mindless unguided process, why should I believe anything it tells me if that’s the case? Whereas theism tells me that there is intelligence behind the universe and behind the human mind which fits perfectly with science.

In fact the rise of science in the 16th and 17th century came about because people expected law in nature, because they believed in the Law giver (God). So science and faith in God fit perfectly together."* - John Lennox

Thus I believe it’s not science and theism that are in conflict as some atheists claim, but rather science and atheism that are in conflict, because I believe atheism cannot trust the cognitive faculties we use to do science, as C.S. Lewis say’s atheism and science is like expecting the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.

Thus I believe by denying God, the honest skeptic becomes skeptical of his skepticism.

I also like this quote from C.S. Lewis -

Please continue to next post -

Very well put. I agree wholeheartedly.

-Phil

 

[Tomdstone]

You appear to be second-guessing God?

Would you say to a parent of a child who has just been horribly killed in a terrible accident, that he was killed because of the mercy of God?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Would you say to a parent of a child who has just been horribly killed in a terrible accident, that he was killed because of the mercy of God?

Neither does dying in any number of ways necessarily conflict with the mercy of God.

I am not clear that any of us really understands the mercy of God sufficiently to adequately portray it to a grieving parent. On the other hand, it would seem just as malformed to claim the child died beyond the reach of God’s mercy.

 

[madera]

Though I do believe that God reveals Himself to those who seek him sincerely with an open heart, I think that rational arguments for God’s existence can help justify that seeking.

“Man’s faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith. The proofs of God’s existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.”

-CCC paragraph 35

Mans faculties are tainted by a demon they listen to.
the bible tells us to be still to know God for that very reason.
The judeo meditation brings us to that stillness.
That is God’s secret.

 

[miguel]

…Our God, Jesus Christ, isn’t good enough for you because in the history of mankind horrors seem to happen and keep happening and if God really was God, He wouldn’t permit all this. Earth would become Eden again. No, you say earth SHOULD be Eden again and then you’ll accept God is really God. I hate to disappoint you JapaneseKappa, but that is never going to happen…

Glenda

Never? Why do say that? What do you think heaven will be like?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Not true. Holly Scripture tells us that the mercy of God is in all of his works.
Psalm 145:9
The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works.

Perhaps mercy is “smart” in the sense that even though widely distributed it discriminates where and how its effects will be manifest.

Light, for example, bathes everything but is absorbed by some things to a greater or lesser degree based to some degree on colour. With some, light merely bounces off. Perhaps mercy operates similarly, penetrating some, being repelled by others.

Pharaoh, for example, was said to have hardened his heart. Perhaps “hardened” it to the mercy of God by not letting it penetrate?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Would you say to a parent of a child who has just been horribly killed in a terrible accident, that he was killed because of the mercy of God?

Of course not.

I would say “He’s in heaven with God.”