Is it Rational to Believe God Exists?

[inocente]

Obviously "coming down from Heaven” is figurative language. You cannot use a metaphor to argue the truth of your point because by doing so you are turning the figure of speech into a literal expression (committing an equivocation) in the very act of employing it. You turn Heaven into a location in time-space by turning “coming down” into a literal act. Where is Heaven located in the space-time continuum, exactly? Heaven is eternal and immaterial so one doesn’t “come down” from it in the same sense as you would, say, “come down” from Boston to New York.

If you want to continue insisting “come down from Heaven” involves motion in the sense you want us to believe it does, then show the location of Heaven on Google maps so we can all check that motion is required for Jesus to relocate whenever a Mass occurs.

Not sure you’ll find many Catholics who would agree with you that Google is now the authority on heaven.

According to the Bible, heaven does have a location: “While he [Christ] was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven”. If Luke had been writing figuratively then he would have written the Greek equivalent of “carried to heaven” without the “up”. But by writing “carried up into heaven” he could only mean motion happening there and then, in space and in time, to convey Jesus towards and then into a place.

So I don’t think you’ve answered Tomdstone’s objection. To add to it, how do you explain God as simple and unchanging when John writes that “Jesus [God] did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.”?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Just to be clear, “Unmoved Mover” is an Aristotelian / Scholastic term which hinges upon Aristotelian metaphysics. Motion for both Aristotle and Aquinas ALWAYS involves a change from potency to act. There is no “motion” without unrealized potential. Ergo, God who is Pure Act, the fullness of Being has no potency, therefore cannot be “moved” in the Aristotelian/Aquinian sense - cannot change nor be changed.

You might be reading “Unmoved” in the sense of not changed by anything else, but, clearly, when we look into Thomistic (and Aristotelian) metaphysics, unmoved means more than that; it means not amenable to any change at all because there is nothing for the Unmoved Mover (Unchanged Changer) to change into because there exists no potential in God left to become actualized - all is actualized fully. God is pure act (Actus Purus.) He is not merely “unchanged” in the sense of cannot BE changed, but, more important, it is logically impossible for God to change at all - He is changeless. He is not just unmoved in the sense of not moved by anything else, but Unmoving AND Unmoved when causing other things to be moved.

 

[inocente]

Obviously "coming down from Heaven” is figurative language. You cannot use a metaphor to argue the truth of your point because by doing so you are turning the figure of speech into a literal expression (committing an equivocation) in the very act of employing it. You turn Heaven into a location in time-space by turning “coming down” into a literal act. Where is Heaven located in the space-time continuum, exactly? Heaven is eternal and immaterial so one doesn’t “come down” from it in the same sense as you would, say, “come down” from Boston to New York.

If you want to continue insisting “come down from Heaven” involves motion in the sense you want us to believe it does, then show the location of Heaven on Google maps so we can all check that motion is required for Jesus to relocate whenever a Mass occurs.

Not sure you’ll find many Catholics who would agree with you that Google is now the authority on heaven.

According to the Bible, heaven does have a location: “While he [Christ] was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven”. If Luke had been writing figuratively then he would have written the Greek equivalent of “carried to heaven” without the “up”. But by writing “carried up into heaven” he could only mean motion happening there and then, in space and in time, to convey Jesus towards and then into a place.

So I don’t think you’ve answered Tomdstone’s objection. To add to it, how do you explain God as simple and unchanging (unmoving) when John writes that “Jesus [God] did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.”?

 

[RGCheek]

Just to be clear, “Unmoved Mover” is an Aristotelian / Scholastic term which hinges upon Aristotelian metaphysics. Motion for both Aristotle and Aquinas ALWAYS involves a change from potency to act. There is no “motion” without unrealized potential. Ergo, God who is Pure Act, the fullness of Being has no potency, therefore cannot be “moved” in the Aristotelian/Aquinian sense - cannot change nor be changed.

You might be reading “Unmoved” in the sense of not changed by anything else, but, clearly, when we look into Thomistic (and Aristotelian) metaphysics, unmoved means more than that; it means not amenable to any change at all because there is nothing for the Unmoved Mover (Unchanged Changer) to change into because there exists no potential in God left to become actualized - all is actualized fully. God is pure act (Actus Purus.) He is not merely “unchanged” in the sense of cannot BE changed, but, more important, it is logically impossible for God to change at all - He is changeless. He is not just unmoved in the sense of not moved by anything else, but Unmoving AND Unmoved when causing other things to be moved.

sigh This is where my Aspergers kicks in I guess. I view all that as theory couched in philosophical lingo and I agree with what I can understand, BUT then I think of Jesus moving on the water during a storm and I am lost.

 

[Peter_Plato]

But Jesus is part of God, right? And He did move once on Earth.

Why cant we have God the Father being the unmoved and unmovable, while the Son is the interface between the Father and His Creation Who does all the necessary moving?

All “motion” in the Thomistic sense originates in the nature of creation - it is drawn towards God, from potential to full actualization as magnetic things are “moved” towards a magnet. That movement is inbuilt into the teleology of creation. That is why creation is “from nothing” (ex nihilo.) Nothing is “absolute potential,” and “motion” the innate tendency towards fulfillment of potential. In this sense, God doesn’t “create” as an active motion, but rather, just by virtue of “being God,” being Pure Act, creation comes to be and moves towards its full actualization in God.

On the other hand, we cannot come to think of God as some passive entity that does nothing - just the opposite.

He does everything by virtue of Being God - with no effort or change on his part.

Of course, we cannot understand this, but we can glimpse at the idea obliquely.

I apologize for my amateurish terms and phrases, and appreciate your time and effort with your responses. You make me wish this site had a ‘like’ button for posts, lol.

:tiphat:

We’re all amateurs at this, stumbling around in the dark trying to see through the veil of darkness more clearly.

 

[Peter_Plato]

sigh This is where my Aspergers kicks in I guess. I view all that as theory couched in philosophical lingo and I agree with what I can understand, BUT then I think of Jesus moving on the water during a storm and I am lost.

Was Jesus moving on the water or was the water moving under Jesus and the storm around him?

 

[RGCheek]

Was Jesus moving on the water or was the water moving under Jesus and the storm around him?

roflm*o

I would guess that conservation of energy would suggest it was He moving on the water, but that is only a guess.

thanks for that laugh.

 

[stewstew03]

It doesn’t seem right because about 2000 years ago, God came down from heaven and became man.

According to your philosophy, God is unMoved. He does not move. However, at the time of the Consecration of the Bread and Wine, He comes down from heaven and the Bread and Wine becomes God. Before the Consecration, the Bread and Wine was not God. Does not the Consecration indicate a movement of God from Heaven to the Sacred Species?

The Bread and Wine is not essentially equal to God until after the words of Consecration, when the Bread and Wine becomes essentially God. So the essential location has changed, because the Bread and Wine are no longer at the location.

At the Incarnation, God came down from Heaven and was made man. In ordinary parlance, coming down from Heaven denotes movement. However, God is unMoved, and yet He comes down from Heaven and becomes present in the Eucharist after the words of Consecration.
Is it true that the UnMoved does move, since the UnMoved has come down from Heaven?

You keep asking the same question with regard to the Incarnation and transubstantiation. To be clear, these phenomena presuppose an eternal, other-than-this-world being. For God to take on the appearance of human nature (limited by space/time) presupposes that there is a divine nature (not limited by space/time). And transubstantiation presupposes a change to the substance of the host – from non-consecrated host to consecrated host. I don’t see how your proposals contradict the essence of God; namely, that He is eternal and perfectly actualized.

Can you be a little more clear on how God has “changed” vis-a-vis the Incarnation or Transubstantiation?

 

[Aloysium]

. . . According to the Bible, heaven does have a location: “While he [Christ] was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven”. If Luke had been writing figuratively then he would have written the Greek equivalent of “carried to heaven” without the “up”. But by writing “carried up into heaven” he could only mean motion happening there and then, in space and in time, to convey Jesus towards and then into a place. . . how do you explain God as simple and unchanging (unmoving) when John writes that “Jesus [God] did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.”?

God unchanging does not mean He is some eternal principle, nor that He is some sort of fixed spiritual idol constructed of supernatural concrete.

Through and in Christ we enter into that same loving relationship that exists between the Son and the Father.
Jesus sitting at the right hand of the Father does not mean, that all He does day in and day out is sit.
From that place in Eternity He reaches out to us, He creates and maintains the universe.
We are in time and God is eternal. Through the Word, we are engaged in a dialogue with Him.
There are realities one has to accept and through the grace of the Holy Spirit, the Truth is made clear.

However you want to visualize the Ascension, that is your interpretation. The Bible does not give a location for heaven. If you seriously believe it does, please do tell us where.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Can you be a little more clear on how God has “changed” vis-a-vis the Incarnation or Transubstantiation?

God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not identical to Jesus the man. Jesus can change, can be born, can grow, can die on the cross, can enter the bread and the wine. The mystery of our faith, which cannot be understood with human logic, is how the Son and Jesus Christ can be one and the same, and yet not one and the same. Jesus can be crucified and die and be resurrected. God the Son always existed and cannot die any more than God the Father and the Holy Spirit can die. God joined his personhood with our personhood in the person of Jesus Christ. People should not try to make sense of this. It is a transcendental mystery that defies human logic, as are all the other mysteries of our faith: the Creation, the Miracles, the Mystery of Evil, etc.

We humbly submit to these mysteries. We shouldn’t be accountable for explaining them any more than the atheist should be held accountable for the creation of the universe without a Creator. That is the supreme atheist mystery. .

 

[stewstew03]

…
According to the Bible, heaven does have a location: “While he [Christ] was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven”. If Luke had been writing figuratively then he would have written the Greek equivalent of “carried to heaven” without the “up”. But by writing “carried up into heaven” he could only mean motion happening there and then, in space and in time, to convey Jesus towards and then into a place.
…

Putting your prooftext aside, it’s not surprising that the authors of Holy Scripture used finite concepts, is it? Or are you suggesting that Heaven is located in the atmosphere directly over Jerusalem?

 

[Tomdstone]

Obviously "coming down from Heaven” is figurative language…

I thought that the Nicene Creed was an infallible doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church declared and defined at the First Council of Constantinople (381): “who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man”? Now you tell us that it should be taken figuratively and you say it is obviously figurative? That is not right because it plays into the hands of those atheists who claim that much of what is taught by religion is to be taken figuratively or metaphorically and what religion teaches is not literally true.

 

[Aloysium]

I thought that the Nicene Creed was an infallible doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church declared and defined at the First Council of Constantinople (381): “who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man”? Now you tell us that it should be taken figuratively and you say it is obviously figurative? That is not right because it plays into the hands of those atheists who claim that much of what is taught by religion is to be taken figuratively or metaphorically and what religion teaches is not literally true.

If the First Council of Constantinople knew that you would have such a problem understanding their words, maybe they would have phrased it differently. It is figurative if there is only one meaning to words, that being your understanding of them.

He came down from heaven because heaven is ontologically higher than earth. Similarly, if heaven were described as being at the core of existence, then He would have come out from heaven. If heaven is described as the Ground of being, He would come up from heaven. Heaven is a state of fullness of being and therefore you will read that the Word emptied Himself to become man.

 

[Tomdstone]

Was Jesus moving on the water or was the water moving under Jesus and the storm around him?

Jesus was moving on the water if we take into account all of the forces involved. Similarly, the earth is moving around the sun and not geocentrism, since geocentrism cannot be explained in terms of the gravitational forces involved; even though, mathematically, you could draw a curve of the sun moving around the earth and curves with retrograde motion of the planets moving about the earth. In drawing such curves, however, you are not accounting for the physical force of gravity.

 

[Tomdstone]

We humbly submit to these mysteries. We shouldn’t be accountable for explaining them any more than the atheist should be held accountable for the creation of the universe without a Creator .

There are a lot of good reasons given as to why people believe in God. But apparently, according to some of the amateur philosophers here, some beliefs are metaphorically true, difficult to pin down in precise language, and not to be taken literally.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

There are a lot of good reasons given as to why people believe in God. But apparently, according to some of the amateur philosophers here, some beliefs are metaphorically true, difficult to pin down in precise language, and not to be taken literally.

Catholicism is a mystery religion. While philosophy is useful in demonstrating religious truths, it is not paramount. Revelation is paramount. There would be no Christianity if there were no revelation. And the truths of revelation are largely mysteries. A mystery can be taken literally and still not understood. We believe the universe was created, for example, but we have no idea how that was done. We can eat the body of Jesus Christ and drink his blood, but only God knows how we can do that. We can share thoughts God deigns to share with us, but we cannot get inside God’s head (metaphorically, of course, not literally). We need not ask God or each other to explain how the mysteries are possible. We accept and submit.

“Blessed are those who have not seen, yet believe.”

 

[JWH123]

Or would you say it is more rational to believe God doesn’t exist based on lack of sufficient evidence? I understand that science can neither prove or disprove the existence of God, given that science uses empirical evidence within the observable universe to reach conclusions. God, being supernatural by nature, could never be proven by empirical means. However, I still believe that one could possibly come to the conclusion that God exists using reason. That being said, I still wonder what is more reasonable: believing that God exists, or not believing. Both take faith. Any (name removed by moderator)ut would be much appreciated.

-Phil

I submit that it would be irrational to believe that no supreme power exists. Whether or not you use the word “God” to refer to this supreme power is up to you. But there exists too much complexity in the universe to allow for the theory of blind luck creation. For example, someone, or something, decided that our planet should be 93 million miles away from the star that it orbits. Any closer and we’d all be burned to a crisp. Any further away and the temperature would be so cold as to be unable to support the life forms that live here.

No, there is DEFINITELY a supreme power, which is almost certainly an creative being. There is no other explanation possible. As far as I’m concerned, the part of the God question which requires faith is believing that God is not only all-powerful, but merciful and all-loving. I will give you that there is no empirical evidence for that; we believe it because that is what Christianity teaches us to believe through the Bible, but those who deny the Bible have no reason to believe in a LOVING God.

 

[Helpful_Atheist]

I submit that it would be irrational to believe that no supreme power exists. Whether or not you use the word “God” to refer to this supreme power is up to you. But there exists too much complexity in the universe to allow for the theory of blind luck creation. For example, someone, or something, decided that our planet should be 93 million miles away from the star that it orbits. Any closer and we’d all be burned to a crisp. Any further away and the temperature would be so cold as to be unable to support the life forms that live here.

No, there is DEFINITELY a supreme power, which is almost certainly an creative being. There is no other explanation possible. As far as I’m concerned, the part of the God question which requires faith is believing that God is not only all-powerful, but merciful and all-loving. I will give you that there is no empirical evidence for that; we believe it because that is what Christianity teaches us to believe through the Bible, but those who deny the Bible have no reason to believe in a LOVING God.

Well let me ask you a question, is it at all surprising that life would evolve on a planet with the proper conditions to support life? or in other words you say that if the earth were any closer or further from the sun we couldn’t live on it but why would it have to be earth? Who is to say that life wouldn’t form on some other planet? And more importantly is that earth has not, and will not always be able to sustain life. So while you say that some things are so complex that it appears that the universe was built for us I would like you to think of this anecdotewhich for the record I did not come up with although I forget the name of the person who did)

A flower growing out a crack in the concrete may look and notice that it seems highly unlikely that it could grow there yet it did. Had the crack formed two inches further away then it would not have been over a dirt patch and any smaller and the flower could not grow yet the crack was not design it was coincidence and if no flower had grown no one would notice and I believe the same could be said of humans, had the sun been closer or further we would not be here(Which would be sad) but nothing would be different.

We pay attention to these facts because they are significant to us. In a deck of 52 cards picking any 13 cards at random and they all being spades is the same chance as the cards being any random combination of 13 cards.

 

[RGCheek]

Well let me ask you a question, is it at all surprising that life would evolve on a planet with the proper conditions to support life?

The theory of evolution has nothing to do with abiogenesis.

 

[Bradski]

The theory of evolution has nothing to do with abiogenesis.

If the discussion is regarding certain aspects of evolution, then any problems perceived in coming to a theory of abiogenesis are irrelevant. That’s because abiogenesis is implicit in evolution. You cannot have evolution unless life actually starts - whether it started by natural or supernatural means.

So it is redundant to say that ‘life started and evolved’. It is simply sufficient to say that life has evolved on this planet. That it started is, obviously, a given.

And expressing surprise that the earth is exactly the right distance from the sun from us (not you, RG) is like being surprised that you have exactly the right amount of skin to perfectly cover your whole body. Not too much…and not too little.

Must have been designed that way, surely. Couldn’t have happened by chance…