Is it Rational to Believe God Exists?

[Charlemagne_III]

There is no credible evidence that God exists, so in the absence of evidence, I choose not to believe God is real.

Choose away.

But atheism is a doctrine for which there is no credible evidence whatever.

On the other hand:

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.”

I’m thinking this is not credible evidence to you because credible to you means, as Peter Plato suggests, something like a handshake with God.

Sorry, you have to earn that.

 

[Mystical_Seeker]

I came to the conclusion mathematically.

It’s hard to do it from the egocentric view of my own perception, but finally I was convinced that there was statistical support. Too many “meaningful coincidences” and too many times that things happened so I a) didn’t get killed, and b) got particularly “lucky” situations – toi the point it has to be statistically significant.

But that doesn’t mean there is a God; it could mean that there is some sort of order and I’m “tuned into it” in a sensitive way. Or I could have just been the luckiest person I can imagine. But it seems that somehow, I have always been taught lessons, but come through so many times, that somebody or something must be acting on my behalf.

And of course God works in “mysterious ways” so “they” say, which has worked out too because there were times I thought I was being done a terrible disservice but turned out to be a gift from God, to explore and heal hurts within myself that go beyond handling a situation to being anxious and upset etc.

What I had to do, was design a way of thinking and acting that brings me to serenity but takes into account that sometimes I believe in God and sometimes it just seems like “but that is just so weird. How can I be so lucky to think this world is rigged in my favor?” What that sort of feeling and the gratitude that ensues, I am free to do my agnostic flip-flop from time to time, and only enhance my sense of mystery.

MS

 

[glendab]

Hello 987MK.

It is irrational to believe in God, but we are often irrational animals.

I say it is irrational, as of course there is no proof that the God of Abraham exists, just as there is no proof that the various Gods of Hinduism exist…yet people still persist in their belief, despite a lack of tangible evidence.

I do not look down upon those who believe in God(s), but I do admit that when I come across someone who is highly educated, yet they still believe in God, I find it rather puzzling.

Being a persistent little bugger, I’m wondering why you are puzzled by higher education leaving the faith of some intact. Do you see the purpose of higher education as to “enlighten” those to an atheistic world view and get them to see the “reason” behind the rejection of God or gods and their respective religions? Rather elitist wouldn’t you say? It is my opinion that this is an irrational thing, no offense intended so please don’t take one.

Glenda

 

[glendab]

Hello 987MK.

The burden of proof does not rest with me to prove your God isn’t real. The burden of proof rests only with you to prove your God is real.

If I claim that there is an elephant in my pantry, but one only I can see. You do not have to spend even a second disproving my claim, rather I would be the one tasked with proving my claim correct.

So it is with God.

There is no credible evidence that big foot exists, so in the absence of evidence, I choose not to believe big foot is real.

There is no credible evidence that God exists, so in the absence of evidence, I choose not to believe God is real.

God doesn’t have to prove himself to you, you need to prove yourself to God. That is virtue. A man who refuses to see what he is looking at cannot have anything proven to him no matter how much evidence to the contrary you present to him.

Evidence? Go out side at midnight where there is little light pollution and gaze on the Heavens for about an hour and try to deny there is a God Who made it all and holds it in the hollow of His hand. Millions have done so and had their minds and hearts raised to higher things for ages upon ages. You’d be the odd fellow out of this group to remain in a state of stubborn denial that simplier minds can get with ease.

Glenda

 

[987mk]

Hello 987MK.

God doesn’t have to prove himself to you, you need to prove yourself to God. That is virtue. A man who refuses to see what he is looking at cannot have anything proven to him no matter how much evidence to the contrary you present to him.

Evidence? Go out side at midnight where there is little light pollution and gaze on the Heavens for about an hour and try to deny there is a God Who made it all and holds it in the hollow of His hand. Millions have done so and had their minds and hearts raised to higher things for ages upon ages. You’d be the odd fellow out of this group to remain in a state of stubborn denial that simplier minds can get with ease.

Glenda

If you’d been born in India to devout Hindu parents, you’d gaze into the heavens and thank your God Indara and not the God of Abraham.

 

[987mk]

Hello 987MK.

Being a persistent little bugger, I’m wondering why you are puzzled by higher education leaving the faith of some intact. Do you see the purpose of higher education as to “enlighten” those to an atheistic world view and get them to see the “reason” behind the rejection of God or gods and their respective religions? Rather elitist wouldn’t you say? It is my opinion that this is an irrational thing, no offense intended so please don’t take one.

Glenda

‘The more education a person receives, the more likely they are to become atheists’

Critical thinking shatters the belief in the supernatural.

psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201402/why-are-educated-people-more-likely-be-atheists

 

[PRmerger]

‘The more education a person receives, the more likely they are to become atheists’

Critical thinking shatters the belief in the supernatural.

psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201402/why-are-educated-people-more-likely-be-atheists

The scientific method, the university system and critical thinking are all products of…

the Catholic Church.

 

[987mk]

The scientific method, the university system and critical thinking are all products of…

the Catholic Church.

VW’s were a product of Nazi Germany.

Where something had it’s begining, does not necessarily reflect upon where it is today.

On another note, the Catholic Church suppressed science and inquiries in the dark ages…for centuries!

Critical thinking, a shame we can’t ask Galileo about his experience with science, astronomy, critical thinking within a Catholic dominated society.

 

[PRmerger]

]Where something had it’s begining, does not necessarily reflect upon where it is today.

Not to be critical here, but I do want to use my Catholic education and let you know that it helped me to be able to use grammar correctly. And to spell correctly.

Your post corrected: “Where something had -]it’s /-] its -]begining/-], beginning does not necessarily reflect upon where it is today.”

On another note, the Catholic Church suppressed science and inquiries in the dark ages…for centuries!

It’s too bad you’re not using your critical thinking skills, because you’ve been duped into believing a lie.

You would not have Mendelian genetics, the scientific method, Coulomb’s law, Calculus…

were it not for…

the Catholic Church.

 

[inocente]

By your reading of these lyrics, “the good folk of Texas” must also think they can hijack a blackbird after dying to get there, that is, if heaven is that kind of “place.”

I see nothing wrong with that. It’s much easier to comprehend and no less rational or fanciful than a heaven which is nowhere and nowhen.

 

[inocente]

No, actually, the above is confused because “professional codes of conduct” should be based upon sound ethical principles not merely “lifestyles you don’t like.”

You assume personal ethics MUST BE subjective and relative and therefore all individual moral principles MUST also BE subjective. Simply not true.

If there are sound moral principles for arriving at professional codes of conduct there are, likewise, sound moral principles for arriving at personal moral codes.

Where do you suppose professional codes of conduct and personal morals come from if not distilled from sound personal ethical codes. The same sound ethical principles that can be used to distinguish good from bad professional codes of conduct can be used to distinguish good from bad subjective moral principles.

Or do you suppose professional codes of conduct are merely relative and arbitrarily arrived at? That wouldn’t make them very “professional,” now would it? Nor would it provide any reason at all for professionals to follow these “codes” any more than their own subjective feelings.

By allowing “professional codes of conduct” as having some kind of moral authority you are allowing a non-arbitrary and objective ground for morals generally. Grounds which apply to personal as well as professional ethics and codes of conduct.

I make no such assumptions, just the reverse. The following is one example of what happens when doctors subjugate the Hippocratic Oath to “moral” demands:

*“The army had whole gay battalions who they just shunted aside and let be. But if things went wrong and you ended up in the hands of the psychologists then it could get very bad. In my case it began with the electric shocks and only ended after they’d already given me breasts, and then the army said it had abandoned the whole policy,” he said.

He is not alone. Thousands of other gays were subjected to electric shock therapy, hormone treatment and chemical castration through the 1970s and 80s, when national service was compulsory for white males and homosexuality was a crime." - theguardian.com/world/2000/jul/29/chrismcgreal*

 

[Charlemagne_III]

‘The more education a person receives, the more likely they are to become atheists’

Critical thinking shatters the belief in the supernatural.

psychologytoday.com/blog/the-human-beast/201402/why-are-educated-people-more-likely-be-atheists

Not really, Copernicus was a Catholic priest. Galileo was a Catholic. Isaac Newton was obsessed with biblical prophecies.

And then there’s this:

Max Planck Father of Quantum Physics

“There can never be any real opposition between religion and science; for the one is the complement of the other.”

J.J. Thompson Discoverer of the Electron

“In the distance tower still higher peaks which will yield to those who ascend them still wider prospects and deepen the feeling whose truth is emphasized by every advance in science, that great are the works of the Lord.”

Werner Heisenberg Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

“The first gulp from the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass God is waiting for you.”

Arthur Compton Compton Effect, Quantum Physicist

“For myself, faith begins with the realization that a supreme intelligence brought the universe into being and created man.”

Max Born Quantum Physicist
“Those who say that the study of science makes a man an atheist must be rather silly.”

Paul A.M. Dirac Quantum Physicist, Matter-Anti-Matter

“God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe.”

Did all these theists people lose their power of critical thinking?

 

[inocente]

No, that’s death, the suicide of belief in truth.

There is good philosophy and there is bad philosophy. I don’t see how you don’t get that.

Oh yes, I get that you have your personal opinion of what is good and bad philosophy.

Is this what you mean by higher ethical standards?

I think ethics has little in common with badly designed amateur blogs.

The ethical position is simply that homosexuality doesn’t meet the necessary criteria to be considered a mental illness.

 

[PRmerger]

The ethical position is simply that homosexuality doesn’t meet the necessary criteria to be considered a mental illness.

Perhaps. But it’s clearly a disordered desire.

One needs only to look at the structure of our bodies to see that man was made for woman. Woman was made for man.

 

[RGCheek]

If the Creator can’t make any decisions He is less powerful than His creatures - which is absurd.

No, it does not since God’s inability to make choices has to do with His eternal nature, not power.

 

[inocente]

Not sure that the medical profession does have the high standards as you claim. I know a case of someone who was not bad at all, until they locked him in a medical facility that treats people with dementia. He was given a whole handful of various pills several times a day and went down from there.

I think the criterion for involuntary commitment is that the individual is a threat to himself or to others, and in many jurisdictions can only be ordered by a court.

 

[Peter_Plato]

VW’s were a product of Nazi Germany.

Where something had it’s begining, does not necessarily reflect upon where it is today.

On another note, the Catholic Church suppressed science and inquiries in the dark ages…for centuries!

Critical thinking, a shame we can’t ask Galileo about his experience with science, astronomy, critical thinking within a Catholic dominated society.

Unfortunately, these perceptions are based on a lack of education about the Middle Ages and about Galileo.

James Hannam has an excellent book called God’s Philosophers, where he demonstrates that the suppression of “science” by the Church did not occur. First of all because “science” as we know it today did not exist at the time and, second, because “natural theologians” (aka the non-existent “scientists” of the time) were quite free to speculate and offer a wide range of divergent opinions in the predominantly Catholic Church-run university system. The prevailing idea was that the universe was a creation of the omnipotent, omniscient God and that left anything possible for God in terms of “how” the universe works, so any wild speculation about the working of the universe “could” in principle be possible for God. There was great leeway.

The group that did most of the suppressing, ironically, were the astrologers who used mathematics and the prevailing belief about the heavens as a “firmament” surrounding the Earth - within which the planets and stars move on determinable paths - to earn great sums of money foretelling what would occur in the future by mathematically forecasting the positions of stars and planets and their effects on human destinies. Many wealthy monarchs and merchants used astronomers to guide them and rewarded them handsomely. Anyone broaching the subject of “the heavens” to put into question the prevailing views were severely attacked by these “astronomers” - at least some of whom were university scholars in mathematics or astronomy.

The Earth not being at the centre of the universe was one contentious proposition because it would throw out the working premise of these influential personages.

What was it you were saying about the “highly educated” and lack of belief in God? I see no correlation, except for the fact that the highly educated can be, but are not necessarily, susceptible to putting too much store in their own learning - or lack thereof.

 

[inocente]

This statement requires some disambiguation.

On the face of it, you are claiming it would be immoral for a psychiatrist to treat what s/he believes are the malformed moral ideas of others as illnesses.

It may be, in fact “moral” for the psychiatrist to do just that. If an immoral patient sincerely believes that it is morally “right” to kill all prostitutes, the psychiatrist rightfully should treat this ostensibly “moral” belief as an illness.

The reason your statement is so confused is because the meaning of “morals” in “to treat morals” simply means the extant moral beliefs of patients. These beliefs are not necessarily correct as moral beliefs, so the psychiatrist has no compelling prima facie reason to treat them as legitimate merely because the patient believes them to be “moral” beliefs.

The psychiatrist has no ethical warrant for condoning or commending the beliefs as “moral” beliefs merely because the patient has them.

The other error you make is in assuming that the psychiatrist’s “moral” beliefs are not legitimately “moral” beliefs but merely on par with those of the patient.

Your most mistaken assumption is that there is no possible means by which to distinguish correct moral beliefs from errant ones. Thus you assume moral relativism is the de facto moral truth.

Moral philosophers may disagree somewhat on the content of what constitutes moral thinking, but the one point that is almost universally agreed upon is that moral relativism is logically incoherent. Yet, that is the ground of your position.

Why should anything be “highly unethical” for a psychiatrist if ethical simply reduces to what any individual thinks, as a matter of fact, what is right or wrong for them. Your position, allows that a psychiatrist who thinks it “acceptable” to treat morals they don’t like as illnesses has just as much warrant for doing so as your psychiatrist who believes otherwise, since “morals” including his own are merely individual and subjective in nature.

The disambiguation that is required is with regard to your use of “morals” in “treat morals she doesn’t like.” What you mean here is the set of moral beliefs currently held by the patient. Unfortunately, for you, at least, “moral” has another meaning - what is objectively good or bad for moral agents. Whether some, or even all, moral agents know or acknowledge such principles is irrelevant as to whether such principles exist.

Tacitly, you admit this, by claiming it is “highly unethical” for a psychiatrist to act in a certain way. Meaning all psychiatrists ought to be bound by such ethical principles as a matter of objective reality, whether they agree or not.

This is all very hypothetical but psychiatrists have a duty to help real people in real life.

Psychiatrists treat patients suffering from mental illnesses. So they must first determine whether there is an illness present, and the general criteria are whether there is suffering or endangerment or an impaired ability to live life, with detailed criteria in manuals such as the DSM.

Homosexuality does not of itself result in suffering (although bullying will) or in any impairment, and so isn’t a mental illness.

 

[Peter_Plato]

I make no such assumptions, just the reverse. The following is one example of what happens when doctors subjugate the Hippocratic Oath to “moral” demands:

No, actually. That is what happens when you draw immoral implications from moral principles. The Hippocratic Oath is a statement of “morals,” so what we have are the errant moral views of some in conflict with the relatively sound moral principles of the Hippocratic Oath.

You cannot damn all moral views merely because some practice morality poorly or use poor logical skills to draw errant moral conclusions.

That phenomenon is still alive today with the medical establishment endorsing “rights” to abortion and gay sex.

Liberty is, quite wrongly, taken as an absolute moral principle and the cost is the slaughter of millions of unborn. A far greater cost in terms of human lives than the one cited in your article. Unfortunately, there are doctors who perform abortions who, likewise wrongly, subjugate the Hippocratic Oath to their own “morals.”

 

[inocente]

The wise men and the elephant…

Just as the wise men all have legitimate points of view about the elephant does not entail they have the complete picture, but they are correct about some aspect or perspective on the elephant. The tail does look like a rope, the legs are like tree trunks, etc. etc.

Consequentialism, deontology, hedonism, pragmatism, natural law, stoicism, etc. may all present some facet of morality without giving the whole picture.

That does not mean they are all wrong and morality is completely different. Nor does it mean they are all wrong and morality simply doesn’t exist.

The elephant is a real beast, just difficult to characterize if you only have one perspective on it. Similarly, morality is a “real beast” although difficult to characterize if you want to take a singular perspective (hedonism, utility, law, detachment, etc.) on it. These all, in fact, may be facets of morality without telling the whole story.

Doesn’t mean morality doesn’t exist nor that it cannot properly be characterized or understood with some effort.

Ain’t no mountain high enough…

Sure morality exists, but most of us switch effortlessly between different systems according to the situation. In one situation we’re consequentialists, another we’re deontologists, another something else. That doesn’t mean those systems are necessarily wrong or faulty, it means that we don’t consider any of them adequate for all situations.

In turn that implies that morality cannot be reduced to any mere set of rules, that it must in some way transcend rules. And it does, since mercy, compassion, love are not bound by rules.

Rational is as rational does, and persons transcend rationality.