Is it Rational to Believe God Exists?

[glendab]

Hello JapaneseKappa.

Which is totally different from choosing one model over another “because God.” That quote is making a religious claim (that God is revealed in science.) I object to making scientific claims for religious reasons (i.e. that a scientific claim is correct because of a religious belief.)

To me some of the science we have points straight to God. Just the sheer ordering of things from the greatest to the least, the Universe and the atom. The order of things refutes the supposed randomness that is a major factor in the theories of those who would claim it all happened by happenstance. Phooey. Be wary of scientism taking you religious places you may not want to go.

Oh, I found another gal who in some ways reminds me of you. She’s written a book called Something Other Than God and has a BlogSpot if you’d like to take her to task as well. She’d probably welcome your challenging intelligence and forthrightness. conversiondiary.com/ ncregister.com/blog/jennifer-fulwiler/ Book is at: amazon.com/Something-Other-Than-God-Passionately/dp/1586178822 strangenotions.com/if-atheism-is-true-does-life-still-have-meaning/

Glenda

 

[Peter_Plato]

The insinuation that spiritually minded people are making is that “science can’t explain consciousness/insight/tides, so consciousness/insight/tides is a good reason to believe in spirity things!” The problem is that science isn’t out of ideas. There are theories (e.g. emergence) that could describe how consciousness/insight/tides come to be without any recourse to spirity things. To therefore use consciousness/insight/tides as strong evidence for spirity things is fundamentally dishonest; it is basically an argument from ignorance.

Its possible that science will fail to explain consciousness/insight/tides, but I don’t see any reason to think that the failure is inevitable or even likely.

Spiritually minded people are not making the argument that “science can’t explain consciousness/insight/tides, so consciousness/insight/tides* is a good reason to believe in spirity things.” You are making that argument.

Spiritually minded people, at least the ones I am aware of, have independent reasons why they believe in “spirity things” and, therefore, do not suppose speculations concerning “emergence” will bear out.

It isn’t that spiritually minded people are out of ideas, except to you, perhaps; it is that these people offer a different account for the emergence of consciousness and believe that account explains consciousness better than the “emergence” notion of some “scienty minded” folk. It isn’t an argument from ignorance - it is an inference to (at least at this moment in time) a better explanation.

*Not sure what “tides” has to do anything except to associate the “spiritually minded” position with an archaic one similar to linking biblical archeologists with young earth creationists (as you have done in previous posts) in order to discredit them. Now THAT was and continues to be logically illicit.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Not true. Merging together of atoms can be understood easily in terms of chemical bonding. Ionic bonds, between metals and non-metals form when the two atoms transfer electrons. Covalent bonds between nonmetals form when they share the valence electrons. And there are also metallic bonds. The reason that these chemical bonds form is because atoms try to achieve the state of lowest possible energy.

True for inorganic compounds, but not true for non-conscious living entities, which, to be fair, are probably what Japanese Kappa is referring to. The origin and existence of living organisms that do not have consciousness continues to be a vexing problem for materialists because that level of organization is not explicable in terms of chemical bonding, etc.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

A virus.

A virus may be at the edge of life, but is still life. It grows, reproduces, and dies. It is subject to mutation and evolution (natural selection). What else do you need to define life?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

It seems like the Creation of the Universe 14 billion years ago was itself a very great quantum leap. If the universe was created then, at the time of the BB, 14 billion years ago, then before that there was nothing. Then God in His Goodness created the universe.
However, could an atheist say that scenario presents a few questions such as for example:
God is unchangeable. He does not change. But before the BB, there was no universe, and presumably God was infinitely happy then. When He decided to create the universe, does that indicate a change of some sort? Just the mere fact of making a decision to create might indicate a change in one’s mind. Also, what was God doing before the universe was created?

I think maybe, like Einstein, you want to know God’s thoughts.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Spiritually minded people, at least the ones I am aware of, have independent reasons why they believe in “spirity things” and, therefore, do not suppose speculations concerning “emergence” will bear out.

It isn’t that spiritually minded people are out of ideas, except to you, perhaps; it is that these people offer a different account for the emergence of consciousness and believe that account explains consciousness better than the “emergence” notion of some “scienty minded” folk. It isn’t an argument from ignorance - it is an inference to (at least at this moment in time) a better explanation.

Spiritually minded people can have whatever ideas they want. I would actually encourage to take the position that “My model of the world says that consciousness can only have spirity explanations; naturalistic explanations will fail.” But should we actually fund a naturalistic explanation, you must consequently reject that position and admit that it counts as evidence against your model of the world. If you don’t you’ll sound like…

*Not sure what “tides” has to do anything…

No, it’s just a joke based on the famous and goofy bluster of Bill O’Reilly:

O’REILLY: I’ll tell you why [religion’s] not a scam, in my opinion: tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can’t explain that.
SILVERMAN: Tide goes in, tide goes out?
O’REILLY: See, the water, the tide comes in and it goes out, Mr. Silverman. It always comes in, and always goes out. You can’t explain that.

That is what people sound like to me when making the argument that some scientific ignorance is evidence for God.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

It is not only ignorance but observation that consciousness appears to be something other than pure physical matter. Consciousness is part of the universe and as such scientists should be able to give an explanation in terms of scientific and material laws of nature, but so far, I don’t see where they have succeeded.

When you open up the brain is the neuron for God going to drop out on the table?

 

[Tomdstone]

When you open up the brain is the neuron for God going to drop out on the table?

I guess that you are joking now, as obviously there is no evidence of a neuron for God. The argument from consciousness is an argument that points to the existence of a non-material or spiritual nature in humans and possibly some animals as well. It would not prove the existence of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim God, but would only indicate that consciousness is somehow part of the universe and that there may be a larger, more universal consciousness in existence and surrounding us.
Yes, there are several good arguments for the existence of God, as we know from St. Thomas and from the many discussions here. However, they all seem to fall short in convincing atheists. This would not be true of a theorem in Euclidean Geometry such as the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees, or that an equilateral triangle is equiangular. Once presented with the proof, there is no argument. The result is incontrovertibly true for Euclidean geometry. Atheists present their arguments against the existence of God as they discuss the question of evil and suffering in the world, the question of how God could be unchangeable when He made the decision to create the world - why didn’t He create the world sooner? Why pick that exact time of 14 billion years ago? And in choosing that time, would that involve a change. And as the atheists see it, some of the examples given in the Old Testament do not point to an all-Loving Infinite Being. This then is why some people are going to choose agnosticism and say that 100 years from now you are still going to have these same arguments between theists and atheists with neither side convincing the other.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Atheists present their arguments against the existence of God as they discuss the question of evil and suffering in the world, the question of how God could be unchangeable when He made the decision to create the world - why didn’t He create the world sooner? Why pick that exact time of 14 billion years ago? And in choosing that time, would that involve a change. And as the atheists see it, some of the examples given in the Old Testament do not point to an all-Loving Infinite Being. This then is why some people are going to choose agnosticism and say that 100 years from now you are still going to have these same arguments between theists and atheists with neither side convincing the other.

But I think you will agree that none of these arguments pertaining to the character of god have anything to do with whether or not God exists. I think you would agree that the atheist must see the problem of evil persist as a problem produced by Nature, not God. so does that mean nature does not exist? No, the atheist would simply argue that nature is indifferent to our fate. So while you might argue that the character of God becomes an issue, you can’t use the character of god to defeat the very idea of God.

As you know, the Greeks and the Romans had any number of not so friendly gods, but they never used their gods’ not so friendly characters as a proof that they didn’t exist.

The problem of evil presented by some atheists in the Old Testament ought to be viewed as a problem of understanding God’s will, rather than as a problem of questioning God’s very existence. The greater problem for the atheist, where the universe came from, is one that he cannot solve without God or without positing the existence of some other unknowable cause for the existence of the universe. It used to be that atheists were comfortable thinking the universe is eternal. Now that is very doubtful, and the idea of Creation has been made more tenable by science itself. The Big Bang was not a convenient notion when it first arose in the scientific community and was resisted with great force. But the scientific community finally gave in. Atheists probably are very uncomfortable with the Big Bang. They would like to prefer a Big Crunch down the road or a Multi-verse to the idea of God. But they cannot get scientific verification for either of those alternatives.

Carl Sagan in Cosmos, 1980 A.D.

“Ten or twenty billion years ago, something happened – the Big Bang, the event that began our universe…. In that titanic cosmic explosion, the universe began an expansion which has never ceased…. As space stretched, the matter and energy in the universe expanded with it and rapidly cooled. The radiation of the cosmic fireball, which, then as now, filled the universe, moved through the spectrum – from gamma rays to X-rays to ultraviolet light; through the rainbow colors of the visible spectrum; into the infrared and radio regions. The remnants of that fireball, the cosmic background radiation, emanating from all parts of the sky can be detected by radio telescopes today. In the early universe, space was brilliantly illuminated.”

Book of Genesis: Centuries before Christ: “In the beginning God said: ‘Let there be light.’”

As astronomer Robert Jastrow pointed out in God and the Astronomers.

“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

“True science to an ever-increasing degree discovers God as though God were waiting behind each closed door opened by science.” Pope Pius XII

 

[Tomdstone]

But I think you will agree that none of these arguments pertaining to the character of god have anything to do with whether or not God exists.

Not sure, because according to Catholic theology, God must have the properties of all-Good and all-Powerful and never changing. Atheists seem to have problems with these properties. Take for example, the property of never changing. God never changes but is the same in all eternity. But in 1000 BC, God did not see the world through human eyes and He did not speak to the world with a human tongue, and He did not smell flowers with a human nose. Then 1020 years later, 20 AD, God did see the world through human eyes and He did speak to humans with a human tongue and He did smell flowers with a human nose. The atheist might assert that this is a change, at least as we humans define change in our day to day conversation. If it is not a change, then how does the Catholic philosopher define change?

 

[Bradski]

A virus may be at the edge of life, but is still life. It grows, reproduces, and dies. It is subject to mutation and evolution (natural selection). What else do you need to define life?

It cannot reproduce without a host. Two virus (varii?) cannot reproduce on their own.

If you want to define what life actually is, then you must accept that anything that doesn’t fall exactly within that definition is not alive.

Or that the defenition of life is not as cut and dry as you’d like to think.

 

[Peter_Plato]

…The result is incontrovertibly true for Euclidean geometry. Atheists present their arguments against the existence of God as they discuss the question… …of how God could be unchangeable when He made the decision to create the world - why didn’t He create the world sooner? Why pick that exact time of 14 billion years ago? And in choosing that time, would that involve a change.

The problem here is in viewing God as a being in time, as having a history of kind and sometime within THAT history he “decided” to create the universe. This isn’t, however, the view of classical theism as expressed by people like Aquinas, or even CS Lewis.

“14 billion years” says something about the age of the universe, not about the “time” frame in which God decided to do anything about it. Nor does the age of the universe have any implications about how God goes about deciding anything.

God, in classical theism, is eternal which means he is not constrained by time, nor does he abide in any temporal schema at all. It may, in fact, be that the universe merely exists eternally in the mind of God with time-space, matter, energy, etc being simply its limiting defining characteristics - characteristics which only apply to it, just like Euclidean geometry only applies to objects defined by Euclidean geometry.

Hence God did not actually “create” the universe at a time 14 billion years ago, but rather conceives of this particular universe - in atemporal, eternal Now - as having the limiting characteristics of duration, spatial extension, etc. etc. - a kind of self-contained space-time “bubble” that simply and wholly exists in the mind of God.

This would seem incontrovertibly true for classical theism in the same sense that “the sum of the angles of a triangle is 180 degrees” is incontrovertibly true for Euclidean geometry. It would seem to be a problem for those who don’t understand or accept classical theism and , therefore, draw errant conclusions because of that. If one doesn’t understand or accept Euclidian geometry, the same problem arises.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Or that the defenition of life is not as cut and dry as you’d like to think.

I could certainly agree that the virus is a special kind of life, and if you like, on the verge of life, but I don’t think biologists have disqualified it as a living organism. Certainly not all biologists. Inorganic matter does not grow, reproduce, and die.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Not sure, because according to Catholic theology, God must have the properties of all-Good and all-Powerful and never changing. Atheists seem to have problems with these properties. Take for example, the property of never changing. God never changes but is the same in all eternity. But in 1000 BC, God did not see the world through human eyes and He did not speak to the world with a human tongue, and He did not smell flowers with a human nose. Then 1020 years later, 20 AD, God did see the world through human eyes and He did speak to humans with a human tongue and He did smell flowers with a human nose. The atheist might assert that this is a change, at least as we humans define change in our day to day conversation. If it is not a change, then how does the Catholic philosopher define change?

Well, you are raising a whole host of questions that have nothing to do with whether God exists. The mysteries are not anything an atheist could object to, since we have never pretended that the mysteries are logically solvable with human intelligence alone.

Einstein could deduce the existence of a God without reference to the Catholic God. So I think any objection to the existence of the Catholic God might be valid according to the atheist’s demand that there be no mysteries (which I think is rather an arrogant demand, as if God should be understandable * in toto* without any mysteries), but then the atheist is still left with refuting the existence of Einstein’s God.

“My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.” Albert Einstein

I think Einstein at least had some humility about understanding God’s nature.

 

[stewstew03]

Not sure, because according to Catholic theology, God must have the properties of all-Good and all-Powerful and never changing. Atheists seem to have problems with these properties. Take for example, the property of never changing. God never changes but is the same in all eternity. But in 1000 BC, God did not see the world through human eyes and He did not speak to the world with a human tongue, and He did not smell flowers with a human nose. Then 1020 years later, 20 AD, God did see the world through human eyes and He did speak to humans with a human tongue and He did smell flowers with a human nose. The atheist might assert that this is a change, at least as we humans define change in our day to day conversation. If it is not a change, then how does the Catholic philosopher define change?

There was no change in the nature of God in 20 AD – the change was phenomenological not ontological. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us… means that we experienced God in an extraordinary way; not that God adopted the nature of Man.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Yes, there are several good arguments for the existence of God, as we know from St. Thomas and from the many discussions here. However, they all seem to fall short in convincing atheists.

That’s very true. They might convince anyone disposed to believe in God, but not anyone determined not to believe in God. Pascal admitted this. So did Kant. That is why Pascal conceived the wager argument, which is very difficult for even an atheist to refute, and many of them on their deathbeds admit it. Jean Paul Sartre is one of the more famous examples, but also Antony Flew.

Proofs always must appeal to the head, but as Pascal famously said, the heart has reasons reason cannot grasp.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

To me some of the science we have points straight to God. Just the sheer ordering of things from the greatest to the least, the Universe and the atom. The order of things refutes the supposed randomness that is a major factor in the theories of those who would claim it all happened by happenstance. Phooey. Be wary of scientism taking you religious places you may not want to go.

I have no problem with that, just like I have no problem with people who say that science points them away from God. It’s fine if you believe randomness shouldn’t exist based on your God-theory, but you have to be willing to admit your God-theory could be falsified by evidence. In other words, when people observe random behavior, you can’t just deny that what they observe is “true” randomness, or deny that your God-theory makes the claim in the first place.

Oh, I found another gal who in some ways reminds me of you. She’s written a book called Something Other Than God and has a BlogSpot if you’d like to take her to task as well. She’d probably welcome your challenging intelligence and forthrightness. conversiondiary.com/ ncregister.com/blog/jennifer-fulwiler/ Book is at: amazon.com/Something-Other-Than-God-Passionately/dp/1586178822 strangenotions.com/if-atheism-is-true-does-life-still-have-meaning/

I don’t really feel the need to, it looks like others already have. I don’t really put too much stock in conversion stories; I know that many religious people convert to atheism for the wrong reasons, and I am pretty sure that non-religious people frequently convert to religion for irrational reasons as well. The only time I find them even somewhat relevant is if they have some track record of intellectual honesty and clear thinking. I’ve heard my share of witness testimonies from troubled teens and average Joes, and while I am happy those people found something they like, I have never felt compelled to think that their new beliefs must be correct. Like the heartfelt witness stories, a random blogger really doesn’t do anything for me.

 

[Tomdstone]

God, in classical theism, is eternal which means he is not constrained by time, nor does he abide in any temporal schema at all.

The Catholic Church teaches that about 2000 years ago God came down from heaven and was made man. I believe that this is an infallible teaching, is it not?

 

[stewstew03]

The Catholic Church teaches that about 2000 years ago God came down from heaven and was made man. I believe that this is an infallible teaching, is it not?

Not sure if you read my other post, but I’ve pasted it below for convenience:

There was no change in the nature of God in 20 AD – the change was phenomenological not ontological. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us… means that we experienced God in an extraordinary way; not that God adopted the nature of Man.

 

[stewstew03]

…but you have to be willing to admit your God-theory could be falsified by evidence.

If you can prove God doesn’t exist, I am certainly open to hearing (reviewing) the evidence.