Is it Rational to Believe God Exists?

[Peter_Plato]

Reading what is written rather than what we might have liked to be written is a good way to read any book. And with scripture, it can’t be revelation unless we let it reveal.

Sounds like you’re a substance dualist a la Descartes. The CCC does not agree with souls existing without bodies: 365 The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body.

I would suggest you are drawing inferences from the “unity of soul and body” that need not be made. In fact, the CCC does not agree that souls cannot exist without bodies - that is your camel nose in this discussion.

For Aquinas, there is no logical step made to a conclusion that souls cannot exist without bodies. Modern Thomists have been showing what hylemorphic dualism does and does not conclude in this regard.

To borrow and develop an analogy from an earlier post, you might think of the postmortem soul like a hand which has been severed from the body and which is not only kept alive artificially, but caused to move its fingers (and in this way to carry out something like its normal operations) via electrical stimulation of the muscles. The normal state of the hand is to be connected to and controlled by the body in such a way that it is the entire organism, and not the hand alone, that moves the fingers. But that does not entail that the hand might not also move them apart from the body, after being severed, by non-natural means. Similarly, the normal state of the intellect is to be connected to the body in such a way that it is the entire organism, and not the intellect alone, which thinks. But that does not entail that the intellect might not also think apart from the body, after death, by non-natural means.
edwardfeser.blogspot.ca/2011/08/vallicella-on-hylemorphic-dualism-part_25.html#more

For the Catholic Church, following Aquinas, the soul is immortal and infused by God into the human body, the soul does not simply dissipate when the body dies, it DOES continue to exist when the body dies.

If you want to insist that what the Church teaches agrees with you, you will need to provide the text that states specifically that the soul ceases to exist when the body dies, not merely reading into selected text, conclusions that simply do not follow from it.

990 The term “flesh” refers to man in his state of weakness and mortality. **The “resurrection of the flesh” (the literal formulation of the Apostles’ Creed) means not only that the immortal soul will live on after death, but that even our “mortal body” will come to life again.
**

Note: The soul does “live on” after death.

 

[Peter_Plato]

That’s kind of what I was talking about. The average Christian would not only find it incomprehensible, but completely irrelevant to their faith.

If any of that stuff was remotely important for salvation it would be in revelation.

Judging by polls and Bradski’s post on the state of Christian understanding, the “average Christian” finds even what IS important for salvation to be “completely irrelevant to their faith,” so I fail to see what your point here is.

Do you want to fashion what is relevant for salvation from the paucity of what the “average” find comprehensible, relevant or palatable?

Jesus did point out that entering the Kingdom would not be an easy matter, especially for those who are easily distracted by other endeavors they find more “relevant.”

Cf. Parables of the Sower and Wedding Feast.

‘You will indeed listen, but never understand,
and you will indeed look, but never perceive.
For this people’s heart has grown dull,
and their ears are hard of hearing,
and they have shut their eyes;
so that they might not look with their eyes,
and listen with their ears,
and understand with their heart and turn—
and I would heal them.’
(Matt 13)

 

[Peter_Plato]

Reading what is written rather than what we might have liked to be written is a good way to read any book. And with scripture, it can’t be revelation unless we let it reveal.

Ironic, really, considering what you do with the CCC below.

Sounds like you’re a substance dualist a la Descartes. The CCC does not agree with souls existing without bodies: 365 The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body.

It is the soul that animates and “forms” the material body, that does not entail a two way dependency. The soul acts on matter to “form” or “inform” it. That does not mean the body effects the soul in some symmetrical way. Nor does it say anything about what gives the soul its power to act on matter or whether a soul is dependent for its existence on the material body.

 

[stewstew03]

Thanks a lot PP for this paper. I will need a little time to study it further, but at first glance it appears difficult to reconcile many concepts here with the life and words spoken by Jesus, who was, or rather is, God.

We don’t have a transcript of the words of Jesus – we only have what God has chosen to reveal to us.

 

[stewstew03]

Non existent for the vast majority of any given population at that time. And most of the people who said that they knew what was going on were wrong.

It appears you’ve reached the pinnacle of wisdom. Or, is it possible someone will look back on the life of “Bradski” – say, 100 years from now – and scoff at how you thought you knew something, but were in fact completely wrong?

 

[Peter_Plato]

Thanks a lot PP for this paper. I will need a little time to study it further, but at first glance it appears difficult to reconcile many concepts here with the life and words spoken by Jesus, who was, or rather is, God.

How so? I mean besides the issues you have already raised that arise if the Creed and Gospels are taken too literally.

The following may help, but keep in kind that the CC does not use the word “literal” in the same way it is commonly understood. The allegorical sense is an aspect of the spiritual which cannot be completely expressed concretely so there has to be resort to figurative language, including metaphor.

The senses of Scripture

115 According to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual, the latter being subdivided into the allegorical, moral and anagogical senses. The profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of Scripture in the Church.

116 The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation: “All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal.”

117 The spiritual sense. Thanks to the unity of God’s plan, not only the text of Scripture but also the realities and events about which it speaks can be signs.

1. The allegorical sense. We can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ; thus the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ’s victory and also of Christian Baptism.

1. The moral sense. The events reported in Scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As St. Paul says, they were written “for our instruction”.

1. The anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge, “leading”). We can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem.

118 A medieval couplet summarizes the significance of the four senses:

The Letter speaks of deeds; Allegory to faith;
The Moral how to act; Anagogy our destiny.
119 “It is the task of exegetes to work, according to these rules, towards a better understanding and explanation of the meaning of Sacred Scripture in order that their research may help the Church to form a firmer judgement. For, of course, all that has been said about the manner of interpreting Scripture is ultimately subject to the judgement of the Church which exercises the divinely conferred commission and ministry of watching over and interpreting the Word of God.”

 

[stewstew03]

Ironic, really, considering what you do with the CCC below.
…

Exactly.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

 

[stewstew03]

I’m not sure that curiosity and finger painting equals knowledge.

But your ability to cut and paste polling data from the internet does…?

 

[RGCheek]

Right.
Of course, the multiverse has been proposed as a possible explanation of various irregular phenomena in the universe such as for example, the anomalous cold spot in the CMB. The idea is that anomalous features like the cold spot are evidence that one or more “other universes” — at some distant point in the cosmic past — bumped into our universe causing a bruising or cold spot. Please see:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMB_cold_spot
It is hypothesized that a supervoid along the line of sight of the cold spot is an explanation of the cold spot. And according to Laura Mersini-Houghton of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “Standard cosmology cannot explain such a giant cosmic hole” and the WMAP cold spot is “… the unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own” caused by quantum entanglement between universes before they were separated by cosmic inflation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMB_cold_spot

However, according to the recent paper: “Can a supervoid explain the Cold Spot?” by
Seshadri Nadathur, Mikko Lavinto, Shaun Hotchkiss, and Syksy R¨as¨anen,
(Dated: August 21, 2014)
arxiv.org/pdf/1408.4720v1.pdf
the conclusion is that the void found in the WISE-2MASS galaxy data is not capable of accounting for the Cold Spot temperature through the second order Rees Sciama effect. You can read this yourself at:
arxiv.org/pdf/1408.4720v1.pdf
For collection of data leading to detection of the supervoid, please see:
Detection of a Supervoid Aligned with the Cold Spot of the Cosmic
Microwave Background
arxiv.org/pdf/1405.1566.pdf
Further, for an older paper arguing that there are number of problems with the multiverse concept including the fact that the multiverse is observationally and experimentally untestable, please see:
Issues in the Philosophy of Cosmology
George F R Ellis.
February 5, 2008
arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0602280v2.pdf

Wow, thank you very much for the time and effort you put into this response.

I will get back to reading it later, I have things I have to get done today, but God willing I will get to this ASAP.

Thanks again!

 

[stewstew03]

You’re falling into the same mistake.

In ancient Egypt levels of literacy were very low, less than one per cent. britishmuseum.org/explore/themes/writing/literacy.aspx

That’s probably less than the literacy of the people living in the Middle East in biblical times. To say that ‘the Egyptians knew how the world worked’ is like taking Neils Bohr and saying that Scandinavians are expert at quantum theory.

This is not a controversial point I’m making. But it’s one that flies under the radar of almost everyone.

Check this out from CBN:

It’s clear that many Americans – including Christians don’t know their Bible. Just look at the numbers from a recent study:

"More than 60 percent of Americans can’t name either half of the Ten Commandments or the four Gospels of the New Testament.

Some 80 percent including “born again” Christians believe that “God helps those who help themselves” is a direct quote from the Bible.

And 31 percent believe a good person can earn his/her way into heaven.

According to a recent George Barna study, most self-proclaimed Christians don’t believe that Satan or the Holy Spirit actually exist. And even though the Bible is very clear about the sinless nature of Christ, 22 percent believe that Jesus sinned while he was on the earth". cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2009/June/Do-You-Know-Your-Bible-Many-Christians-Dont/

If those sort of percentages represent Christian knowledge today, with access to everything you’d ever need to become informed, what do you think it was like a couple of thousand years ago?

Your ability to martial evidence is clearly above average, and I have no doubt many people would look to you for wise advice as opposed to some mortal who may have walked the earth in “biblical times” (before all this knowledge on the interwebs, and when literacy rates were so low). However, I’m wondering if you could use your internet skills and ability to read to provide evidence for your earlier assertion that those pre-internet, illiterate folks that roamed the earth thousands of years ago believed heaven was in the sky and hell was in the ground. Thanks!

.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Right.
Of course, the multiverse has been proposed as a possible explanation of various irregular phenomena in the universe such as for example, the anomalous cold spot in the CMB. The idea is that anomalous features like the cold spot are evidence that one or more “other universes” — at some distant point in the cosmic past — bumped into our universe causing a bruising or cold spot. Please see:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMB_cold_spot
It is hypothesized that a supervoid along the line of sight of the cold spot is an explanation of the cold spot. And according to Laura Mersini-Houghton of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “Standard cosmology cannot explain such a giant cosmic hole” and the WMAP cold spot is “… the unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own” caused by quantum entanglement between universes before they were separated by cosmic inflation.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMB_cold_spot

However, according to the recent paper: “Can a supervoid explain the Cold Spot?” by
Seshadri Nadathur, Mikko Lavinto, Shaun Hotchkiss, and Syksy R¨as¨anen,
(Dated: August 21, 2014)
arxiv.org/pdf/1408.4720v1.pdf
the conclusion is that the void found in the WISE-2MASS galaxy data is not capable of accounting for the Cold Spot temperature through the second order Rees Sciama effect. You can read this yourself at:
arxiv.org/pdf/1408.4720v1.pdf
For collection of data leading to detection of the supervoid, please see:
Detection of a Supervoid Aligned with the Cold Spot of the Cosmic
Microwave Background
arxiv.org/pdf/1405.1566.pdf
Further, for an older paper arguing that there are number of problems with the multiverse concept including the fact that the multiverse is observationally and experimentally untestable, please see:
Issues in the Philosophy of Cosmology
George F R Ellis.
February 5, 2008
arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0602280v2.pdf

All this has no weight of probability. The multiverse hypothesis is just that, hypothesis. It has no proof and, as physicist Paul Davies points out, it is not scientific because it is not falsifiable. You would think all the atheists who complain about the proofs for God by saying they are worthless because they are not falsifiable, would be equally critical of the multiverse hypothesis and regard it for what it is … pure science fiction.

 

[glendab]

Hello Bradski.

When the bible was written, there was only up and down. Heaven was up and hell was down. God reigned on high and came down to the mountain, Jesus ascended to heaven and sinners were thrust down to hell.

These weren’t literary conveniences. People actually believed it back then. And in fact, I’d say that most people today still believe that heaven and hell are actual places and that God is ‘up there’ (doesn’t He still watch ‘down’ on us?). And if you ask them where heaven is for example, a not inconsiderable proportion of people will point upwards.

And you have proof that it is not? Heaven is a place. I’m planning on spending my eternity there. Where, pray tell, are you planning on spending yours?

Glenda

 

[JapaneseKappa]

All this has no weight of probability. The multiverse hypothesis is just that, hypothesis. It has no proof and, as physicist Paul Davies points out, it is not scientific because it is not falsifiable. You would think all the atheists who complain about the proofs for God by saying they are worthless because they are not falsifiable, would be equally critical of the multiverse hypothesis and regard it for what it is … pure science fiction.

While it is true that there are various hypotheses that have not yet made contact with experiment, they differ from religion in one important respect: the people who believe they are plausible are actively trying to find some way to test them.

People *would *object if some scientist came up with some untested hypothesis and started telling people they would be punished in science hell if they didn’t believe the hypothesis.

 

[JapaneseKappa]

And you have proof that it is not? Heaven is a place. I’m planning on spending my eternity there.

Well for one thing, we now know the earth is round, so “up” for one person is “down” for another.

 

[Peter_Plato]

While it is true that there are various hypotheses that have not yet made contact with experiment, they differ from religion in one important respect: the people who believe they are plausible are actively trying to find some way to test them.

People *would *object if some scientist came up with some untested hypothesis and started telling people they would be punished in science hell if they didn’t believe the hypothesis.

Well, one problem with the hellfire proclaiming scientist is that s/he would have no authority to condemn anyone to “science hell.” If the Creator of all that exists has laid down parameters in terms of human behaviour and the consequences of serious transgressions, then whether or not “people object” really is irrelevant as to the final outcome. Obviously, the scientist has no power to make his threats effectual, so they are nothing more than scientistic off-gassing.

Whether God’s warnings should be heeded or not is something we all need to decide for ourselves, but they certainly are not of the same category as overbearing and self-assertive demands from cocky scientists.

 

[tonyrey]

Non existent for the vast majority of any given population at that time. And most of the people who said that they knew what was going on were wrong.

Actually, not much has changed really.

The vast majority of any given population know what is right and what is wrong…

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Well, one problem with the hellfire proclaiming scientist is that s/he would have no authority to condemn anyone to “science hell.” If the Creator of all that exists has laid down parameters in terms of human behaviour and the consequences of serious transgressions, then whether or not “people object” really is irrelevant as to the final outcome. Obviously, the scientist has no power to make his threats effectual, so they are nothing more than scientistic off-gassing.

Whether God’s warnings should be heeded or not is something we all need to decide for ourselves, but they certainly are not of the same category as overbearing and self-assertive demands from cocky scientists.

Consider this hypothesis: science hell exists, and people who don’t believe in science hell go there to suffer for eternity, before going on to their religious afterlife. That would be a stupid hypothesis from a scientific standpoint, and if anyone went around asserting it without proof they would be rightly ridiculed.

In the same way scientists do not go around asserting things like string theory or models of the universe that lead to multiverses. If they did, people would raise the same sorts of objections, contrary to Charlemagne’s complaint.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

While it is true that there are various hypotheses that have not yet made contact with experiment, they differ from religion in one important respect: the people who believe they are plausible are actively trying to find some way to test them.

Then there are people who believe in heaven and hell, two other plausible universes, and they are actively trying to find some way to test them. But the real proof will be ending up in one or the other. And that for some will be more proof than they wanted.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

People *would *object if some scientist came up with some untested hypothesis and started telling people they would be punished in science hell if they didn’t believe the hypothesis.

Interesting point. Eternal hell is for later. The hellfire of science is for now with nuclear weapons.

Science has told us believe in science, and we may kill you anyway with the weapons created by science.

“In some sort of crude sense … the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.” Robert Oppenheimer

 

[JapaneseKappa]

Interesting point. Eternal hell is for later. The hellfire of science is for now with nuclear weapons.

Science has told us believe in science, and we may kill you anyway with the weapons created by science.

“In some sort of crude sense … the physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.” Robert Oppenheimer

Nuclear weapons are a product of engineering.
cowbirdsinlove.com/46