Is it Rational to Believe God Exists?

[Tomdstone]

Medicine is a science that reflects the complexity of life.
Clearly there is much disagreement in every area.
Look at psychiatry: What year is this? I wonder what are the diagnostic criteria, agreed to at the latest meeting of the American Psychiatric Association.
I suppose if one is looking for agreement and simplicity, one will look in the direction of mathematics and physics, as the science to which it is nearest.
As to real life, it is a totally different matter (pun intended).

One reason the marriage annulment rates have shot up since 1960 is because of the introduction and acceptance of psychological reasons for supporting an annulment, which reasons were not allowed in the past.

 

[Aloysium]

I am by no means arguing against Psychiatry.
There have been amazing strides in the area.
I was trying to assert that life is complex, and it would be unexpected to find in areas that really matter, anything close to universal acceptance.

As to annulments, I don’t know the criteria, but what better reasons are there than psychosis, intoxication, emotional immaturity, sociopathy, masochism, sadism, and whatever other psychological disturbances that impair the capacity for informed choice.

 

[Tomdstone]

I am by no means arguing against Psychiatry.
There have been amazing strides in the area.
I was trying to assert that life is complex, and it would be unexpected to find in areas that really matter, anything close to universal acceptance.

As to annulments, I don’t know the criteria, but what better reasons are there than psychosis, intoxication, emotional immaturity, sociopathy, masochism, sadism, and whatever other psychological disturbances that impair the capacity for informed choice.

If you are going to psychoanalyze every criminal, you are going to come up with all kinds of excuses as to why he committed his crime. Why have punishment if every criminal had impaired capacity for his bad choice. Why not have mental hospitals instead and have the doctors of psychiatry treat these psychologically impaired individuals?

 

[Peter_Plato]

I thought that it was philosophers, not scientists, who were supposed to tell us about the nature of reality. Scientists create models of reality and then try to confirm these models with experimental or observational data.

Note: "…agreement amongst scientists on the nature of physical reality.”

I didn’t say they tell us about reality, it is that they inquire into the nature of (again) physical reality in order to understand how it works.

Is that NOT what you think scientists do?

 

[Aloysium]

If you are going to psychoanalyze every criminal, you are going to come up with all kinds of excuses as to why he committed his crime. Why have punishment if every criminal had impaired capacity for his bad choice. Why not have mental hospitals instead and have the doctors of psychiatry treat these psychologically impaired individuals?

Imho, some people are untreatable. No excuses, but it helps to understand.
Some people are destructive, have no boundaries, little self control and may feel they have every reason to do as they please.
Punishment just teaches avoidance. We need justice and there is little enough of it in this world. Society does need protection from certain individuals and they actually need protection from themselves.
The prison system itself in too many instances has been shown to be psychopathic, brutal and inhuman. That said, I recall speaking to an individual who felt better in jail. There were clear rules and he knew where people were coming from. In society this person felt, he could not trust the smiling faces as they were just as likely to stab him in the back as to be nice to him; he felt there were no standards, enforced by swift and firm punishment, just laws in a system he felt had been always out to get him…
I cannot see how someone who unwittingly (even thinking they knew what they were getting into) “married” a lying abusive psychopath would ever have been truly married under God. They wouldn’t know who the person was and their spouse would never have honestly committed themselves to the relationship and to God.

 

[Tomdstone]

That hardly qualifies as evidence, does it? It certainly wouldn’t convince me that God does not exist.

At most that observation would raise the question of what kind of God this God really is?

That is, does God bring both good and evil into the world?

But it certainly doesn’t prove there is no God.

But God is all-benevolent. Why would God create evil if He is all benevolent?

 

[Charlemagne_III]

But God is all-benevolent. Why would God create evil if He is all benevolent?

You are still not talking about the existence of God. You are talking about the character of God.

By the way, does God directly create evil, or does he permit others to act in evil ways?

 

[PRmerger]

But God is all-benevolent. Why would God create evil if He is all benevolent?

What would the world look like in which there was no evil?

Would it necessarily make humans automatons–unable to choose to do right or wrong? Only programmed to do right?

 

[Aloysium]

But God is all-benevolent. Why would God create evil if He is all benevolent?

What is more rational than to believe that love is central to existence, that in it we find truth and beauty, fullness of life.
Look at the world around you. The people you see every day; is it better to be a rock? Some poster have made it clear that they would prefer to have been created as such.
Does a supernova come even close to exceeding the magnificence, the complexity, the mystery of a human being?
What do you believe to be closer to the truth?
What is the nature of reality?

 

[Tomdstone]

By the way, does God directly create evil, or does he permit others to act in evil ways?

See Isaiah 45:7 God is quoted as saying:"…I make peace and create evil."

 

[tonyrey]

See Isaiah 45:7 God is quoted as saying:"…I make peace and create evil."

God creates evil only in the sense that He is the **ultimate **cause of everything. An Old Testament prophet cannot be expected to make philosophical distinctions between modes of creation.

 

[tonyrey]

I thought that it was philosophers, not scientists, who were supposed to tell us about the nature of reality. Scientists create models of reality and then try to confirm these models with experimental or observational data.

Only materialists believe all reality is scientifically explicable.

 

[glendab]

Hello Tom.

But God is all-benevolent. Why would God create evil if He is all benevolent?

God didn’t create evil. Read Genesis. When God got done the work of creation, He said it was good and then He added man and woman to His created universe and then said it was very good! What God creates is good. the angels God created were also good when He made them but some fell and became evil and evil does evil so evil is what they are. Man too fell, but his deeds aren’t all evil. And he will be redeemed by God if he turns from his evils to God who holds out salvation to him if he returns to him with all his heart.

So, your question is unanswerable because in order to refute it, one would have to concede that God creates evil, which He doesn’t. Satan and those fallen angels in league with him, destroyed themselves and still prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls just as the prayer says, by the permissive will of God. They can only do their evils where God allows. Men who choose to do evil are the source of the evils they do and the ills their evils inflict on men are all man-made, again by God’s permissive will. If you understand this you won’t think the God is the author of evil. He isn’t.

Glenda

 

[inocente]

The Church will never be out of a job when there are people like you to convert.

Is truth ever divided against itself?

In the Protestant world that’s an apparently endless pursuit.

Yes, and all those Jews reading your OT, anyone would think they wrote the books or something.

And then there’s all those Muslims too.

No doubt it would be a much tidier and simpler if Texas ruled the world.

 

[inocente]

So there has always been agreement amongst scientists on the nature of physical reality?

The progress of science is what, then, simply facade? Scientists have it secretly all figured out and there is no debate, contention or dissension in the ranks. Ultimately, scientists are all of one mind about everything scientific? :ehh:

The truth of it is that scientists still hotly debate an endless number of topics precisely because the truth about those topics is not fully understood in much the same way that philosophers debate a plethora of topics for exactly the same reason.

We appear to be back down the rabbit hole in Millinocket.

We seem to have lost each other. I’ll rewind.

In something such as physics, experiment is the final arbiter, and all physicists from all cultures can agree on that.

But that doesn’t apply, for example, to systems of ethics. There are many competing ideas, with no agreement on which if any is best. Not because philosophers of ethics are irrational or incompetent but because no one agrees on what the final arbiter should be, or even if there is one.

And that’s often the case with humans, we don’t all live in the same subjective or collective reality. What we think is reality varies hugely by period, by culture, by station, etc.

So to get back to the OP, a person or group can try to dictate to everyone else how we should conceive of heaven or of God, and what is and isn’t rational, and what is and isn’t the truth, but they can’t succeed because rational people do not agree with them by reason of period, culture, station, etc.

And while some may not like the mess, it’s not a problem, it’s good, because if everyone thought the same then no one would question anything and nothing would ever change for the better.

 

[stewstew03]

…
No doubt it would be a much tidier and simpler if Texas ruled the world.

I’ve been saying this for years…

 

[inocente]

Peter Plato has said, and I agree, that there is as much disagreement among scientists as there is disagreement among philosophers.

Nope.

Science is based on hypotheses, and in research there are often many competing hypotheses. There is lots of argument over where to put resources and budget for experimentation, because scientists are people too, and that’s what people do.

But as the results come in, they have to give up on failed ideas, because all scientists know that if it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong. Experiment is judge, jury and executioner.

Philosophers have no equivalent arbiter to put an end to dispute. Competing philosophical claims can all be valid logical arguments, so there’s no way to get down to one. There can be more of them everyday.

That’s life.

 

[stewstew03]

…
But as the results come in, they have to give up on failed ideas, because all scientists know that if it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong. Experiment is judge, jury and executioner.
…

Not always. Sometimes ideas are discarded by way of the majority. See, for example, the evolution of homosexuality in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (which was largely driven by political and social pressure).

 

[inocente]

See Isaiah 45:7 God is quoted as saying:"…I make peace and create evil."

My divinity teacher was a great fan of Isaiah. Those who claim the bible only contains one truth ignore the differences between writers. Isaiah’s vision is a god greater than we can imagine.

I’ve been saying this for years…

Yes, truly Lubbock is the New Jerusalem. Although I prefer the other corner.

And just to point out to another poster that the good folk of Texas also have the sense to know that heaven is a place :

*Highway 90
The jobs are gone
We tend our garden
We set the sun
This is the only place on earth blue bonnets grow
Once a year they come and go
At this old house here by the road
And when we die we say we’ll catch some blackbird’s wing
Then we’ll fly away to heaven come some sweet blue bonnet spring

youtube.com/watch?v=WABdrZCJ5Ys*

 

[RGCheek]

What would the world look like in which there was no evil?

Would it necessarily make humans automatons–unable to choose to do right or wrong? Only programmed to do right?

How can anyone have free will if there is no possibility of choosing poorly?

Apparently God would rather work around the problems of evil that we have with Free Will and also have Free Will than to not have free will worship.

Freely given worship > the problem of evil.