Is it Rational to Believe God Exists?

[Tomdstone]

Just as YOU, as YOU, cannot “prove” that YOU are real to someone who refuses to believe that YOU are.

To a large extent, proof and evidence, are only as good as the recipient of that proof and evidence.

I could not, for example, supply any “proof” for my existence that a rock would accept. That “fact” in itself does not suffice to prove that I do not exist.

So merely because you have not accepted any proof does not mean either:

1. No such proof exists, nor that,
2. No such proof can ever be formulated.

So your claim that “you CAN no more prove that your God is real, than…” is simply an assertion for which you have provided, not a smidge of the kind of “evidence” you demand of theists. It is the “faith” claim of a fundamentalist atheist and nothing more.

At least, follow your own rules. If you demand “evidence” or “proof” from others, then be so kind as to take on the same burden yourself for the claims you make. Otherwise, be prepared not to be taken seriously.

You have no control over what others can or cannot do, nor over what God can or cannot do and to claim, as an absolute impossibility, (i.e., you CAN no more prove…) what others “can” or “cannot” do is overstepping what you are believably competent to claim.

In other words, making such a claim is, plainly speaking, evidence that you lack an understanding of the limits of your own logic.

You have overstepped your own boundaries, young man. There is a stool in the corner.

I think that many people who call themselves atheists are really agnostics or close to agnosticism in that they say that there has not been enough evidence to convince them of theism.

 

[987mk]

Are any of them Catholics? Why not?

The first one I read is also a member of the Tea Party! lol

You’ve cherry picked exceptions from the rule.

The fact is, the higher education someone receives, the less likely they are to believe in God.

psychologytoday.com/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201311/religiosity-and-intelligence-century-research

'The results show that religiosity has a significant negative relationship with intelligence, suggesting that stronger religious beliefs are associated with lower intelligence. ’

There are exceptions to every rule and as I said, it puzzles me greatly when a highly educated person continues to believe in God.

 

[Tomdstone]

The same applies to those who don’t believe it is rational to believe in God. Their self doubts haunt them, and they cannot refrain from visiting websites like Catholic Answers, …

This is another reason, why I suspect that many atheists should really be called agnostics.

 

[Tomdstone]

I suggest you start with this very basic Wiki page:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_scientists
.

However, when you consider the list of Nobel prize winners in physics or other sciences, you are going to find an abnormally large number of Jews on the list. Does that prove that Judaism is more correct than other religions?

 

[Tomdstone]

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

the Catholic Church.

Can you explain how the Catholic Church produced the scientific method, the university system and critical thinking in China? and in India?

 

[Tomdstone]

I have given you 20 arguments for God’s existence.
.

Sorry, some of us have missed the 20 arguments. Can you direct us to where the 20 arguments are listed? Thanks.

 

[glendab]

Hello CharlemagneIII.

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?

Your the best! Go team go!

Glenda

 

[Linusthe2nd]

Sorry, some of us have missed the 20 arguments. Can you direct us to where the 20 arguments are listed? Thanks.

20 arguments: strangenotions.com/god-exists/

Also to answer one of your last questions: ◦How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Thomas E. Woods

God Bless

Linus2nd

 

[Aloysium]

. . . There are exceptions to every rule and as I said, it puzzles me greatly when a highly educated person continues to believe in God.

I puzzle at why not everyone knows Him.
He’s right here, with us.

Just a few comments on the article you link:

. . . the authors state, “if more intelligent people are less likely to conform, they also may be less likely to accept a prevailing religious dogma.”

University, the Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Health Sciences, Behavioural Sciences - it is all about conformity.
That you seem to have bought the conclusions would prove my point. You didn’t say you were considered intelligent so maybe it doesn’t. Maybe it proves their point that some people will believe anything.

. . . more intelligent persons rely more logical reasoning and empirical evidence in their belief systems. It might not be intelligence per se that leads to a lack of religious beliefs, but a cognitive style that is more critical of the prevailing religious beliefs in a community.

You can’t get more logical than St Thomas. Logic needs assumptions. People have different views and logically arrive at very different conclusions. If an intelligent person believes that truth can be derived empirically, which it can’t because that assumption is not empirically derived, it is likely because they are conforming to opinions in their field. Perhaps they do not wish to conform to the truth, their own opinion held in higher esteem.

. . . religious beliefs satisfy a number of psychological “functions,” such as a sense that the world is orderly and predictable. The authors argue that intelligence confers a sense of personal control that negates the need for religious beliefs. A second function that religiosity might offer is greater ability to control impulses.

Again, it is the other way around. People do math and physics because the subject suggests the world is ordered. Everything is nice and neat in the intellect, in the notebook, the computer, behind all this clarity, everything is disordered, life is that way.
We are talking about Psychology Today, so we are not expecting much, but the relationships between intelligence, how it is measured, mental illness and how it is quantified are not sufficiently described.
What we have are opinions, suppositions, with no proof whatsoever - so much for empiricism.

Finally, religion might serve the function of enhancing self-esteem (most religions emphasize a personal relationship with god—a superior being), and religious communities offer a sense of belonging.

What was said earlier applies here. This is all made up and demonstrates a strong bias against religion.

I have heard some people say that they came to know God through the faculty of their intellect.
More come to God through what is beautiful - the mysteries and wonders of this world.
The majority, come through love.
Why that is, is because God is Love, Beauty and Truth - the fundamental Life, the eternal Existence, Who brings all this into existence, that we might know and love Him as He loves us.

You want to know God, be a loving person.

 

[Path_Finder]

The first one I read is also a member of the Tea Party! lol

And was 17 years old when he received that IQ score and apparently he is also a Coptic Christian and I would say of Egyptian heritage. It’s curious one would single out one trait.

What if one substituted skin color for where you wrote “tea party”.

 

[Path_Finder]

A few months ago, Amazonian tribes were found coming out of isolation. What is interesting is that virtually all mankind all over the world has believed in Supreme Beings, even those in the wild. This doesn’t say anything about rationality but nonetheless, is curious.

 

[Nogginer]

The Kalam Cosmological Argument is an excellent logical argument for the existence of God. It was originally developed by Muslim philosophers (don’t freak out, they’re Theists too) and later added to by Protestant Apologist William Lane Craig. It only proves Theism (God, of a sort, exists), not Christianity specifically, but it is a very solid proof. Roughly, it looks like this:

1. Everything that begins to exist has a cause.
2. The physical world, including time itself, began to exist
3. Therefore, the physical world had a cause. (Presumably God. More on that later.)

Now this argument is clearly logically valid (the conclusion flows from the premises), so the only way an atheist can refute it is by attacking the premises. The first premise is generally accepted. After all, it is true for every single case which has been tested. Everything that we know of that began to exist has a cause for coming into existence (not including the universe itself, since that is the thing to be proved). Chairs come into existence because of carpenters, storms come into existence because of weather fronts, etc. The first premise is just as certain as any scientific fact, or perhaps more so.

Someone could really only refute the second premise one way: to say that the physical world, and time itself, have always existed. If time has always existed, it means that the past is infinite. This, however, cannot be true. It is logically impossible. To explain why, let’s look at Aristotle’s two definitions of something that is infinite:

Potential Infinite: A potential infinite is something that is not, at the present moment, infinite. It is something that is becoming infinite by a repeated process (such as adding one to a number). If the process were to continue indefinitely, in theory the thing would become infinite. This is what is used in mathematics. (such as a line or pair of coordinate axes extending indefinitely, or a number being divided an infinite number of times to create an infinite number of decimal places). If an atheist were to say that time is a potential infinite, then he would have to admit that the past is finite since everything that is a potential infinite must start as something finite.

Actual Infinite: An actual infinite is a thing that is infinite now. Described as “a complete set of an infinite number of things”. The past cannot be an actual infinite since an actual infinite cannot be “traversed”. If one sets out to cross an infinite distance, he will never arrive at the destination. We have come from the past to the present, which means that the past has been traversed, which means the past must be finite, which means that time must have had a beginning.

This means that the physical world must have had a first cause, but what does this argument prove about the First Cause? It proves that He must be non-physical, outside of time, eternal, powerful, creative, and personal (i.e. He is a person, someone with a will, not a mechanical, cause-and-effect force). The First Cause must be personal because if He is the only eternal thing, then what could have caused Him to create the physical world other than Himself? It must have been done by His own choice and for no other reason, which means He has a will.

Here are some links to some of the research I did on this:
philosophyofreligion.info…ical-argument/
philosophyofreligion.info…e-of-the-past/
sites.middlebury.edu/fyse1229…tual-infinite/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actual_infinity

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Do you think that Stephen Hawking knows anything about the laws of physics? And yet he is an atheist?
huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/25/stephen-hawking-atheist_n_5882860.html

Do you think Einstein knew anything about the laws of physics?

“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.”

“In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for support of such views.” Albert Einstein, Einstein and Religion, page 97

 

[Tomdstone]

Do you think Einstein knew anything about the laws of physics?

“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.”

“In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for support of such views.” Albert Einstein, Einstein and Religion, page 97

Perhaps not an atheist, but I am not sure that Einstein was exactly a theist because he wrote:
I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.

• Albert Einstein, letter to Guy H. Raner Jr., Sept. 28, 1949, quoted by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic, Vol. 5, No. 2

 

[987mk]

Do you think Einstein knew anything about the laws of physics?

“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.”

“In view of such harmony in the cosmos which I, with my limited human mind am able to recognize, there are yet people who say there is no God. But what really makes me angry is that they quote me for support of such views.” Albert Einstein, Einstein and Religion, page 97

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated.** I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.** If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
*
Albert Einstein, letter to an atheist (1954), quoted in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffman*

It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere…
*
Albert Einstein, “Religion and Science,” New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930*

 

[Charlemagne_III]

It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated.** I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly.** If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
*
Albert Einstein, letter to an atheist (1954), quoted in Albert Einstein: The Human Side, edited by Helen Dukas & Banesh Hoffman*

It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere…
*
Albert Einstein, “Religion and Science,” New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930*

It’s true that Einstein’s views of a personal God are not complimentary. But neither was his view of Atheism.

And he certainly did see a higher power at work designing and creating the universe.

So did Isaac Newton.

“This most beautiful system [the solar system] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”

But do I get it from you that Newton and Einstein must be lacking in critical thinking skills, whereas yours are vastly superior?

By the way, when you get to college, I think you will learn to put quotation marks around your quotes, or you will be charged with plagiarism.

Just some friendly advice from the old Prof.

 

[PRmerger]

However, when you consider the list of Nobel prize winners in physics or other sciences, you are going to find an abnormally large number of Jews on the list. Does that prove that Judaism is more correct than other religions?

LOL!

I suppose it would if someone here were positing: there is a correlation between the number of Nobel prize winners and the truth of a religion.

Has anyone here been positing that?

 

[987mk]

It’s true that Einstein’s views of a personal God are not complimentary. But neither was his view of Atheism.

And he certainly did see a higher power at work designing and creating the universe.

So did Isaac Newton.

“This most beautiful system [the solar system] could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.”

But do I get it from you that Newton and Einstein must be lacking in critical thinking skills, whereas yours are vastly superior?

By the way, when you get to college, I think you will learn to put quotation marks around your quotes, or you will be charged with plagiarism.

Just some friendly advice from the old Prof.

Funny, it doesn’t feel very friendly.

‘Why Intelligent People Are Less Likely to Be Religious’

christianitytoday.com/ct/2013/august-web-only/brains-and-belief-arent-mutually-exclusive.html

I find it kind of silly that you’re insinuating that I presented an opinion that intelligent people could not possibly believe in a God or many Gods.

I never said that and for the life of me, why do you feel the need to insist I did?

 

[RGCheek]

Actually, being eternal is not inconsistent with being in the flow of time. The “present” may be a point of contact between the two.

But being outside the flow of time means everything in all time lines is ‘present’, does it not? That does not remove the need of being in a moment in the future or past simultaneously to show change and thus be in the flow of time, does it not?

God’s beard, if He had one, would always be the same length and not a growing beard because He does not subject Himself to change via the flow of time.

Correct me please if I am wrong. I rather enjoy my comeuppance. It is personal growth and how can I grow if I don’t learn what I am wrong about?.

There is no logical reason for claiming being in the present precludes existing in the past or eternally.

I am not arguing that.

How would you know that humans exist “entirely” within “the flow of time” without complete knowledge of what it means to be human or what constitutes the boundaries of the flow of time? Are you claiming you know fully what constitutes being “human” or “in time?”

WE can know subset about an entity or class of entities without being required to know everything about them. This is simple deductive and inductive logic.

The same goes for the flow of time; I work on partial but sufficient data; where is it inaccurate?

If so, how do you know that you have full grasp of that knowledge?

I am sure that I do not, but then again I don’t think it a requirement in order to discuss some of those things that we do understand.

See:

jstor.org/discover/10.2307/2026047?uid=3739392&uid=2460338175&uid=2460337935&uid=2&uid=3737720&uid=4&uid=83&uid=63&sid=21104236788931

I can only read the first page and have to get some kind of account with some institution on a list.

I will see what I can do but I am on a limited budget.

Thank you for your response.

 

[PRmerger]

All 20 are nothing more than thought experiments.

None of them prove the existence of any God, let alone your specific God.

Take one of them–the one you fine the most reasonable–and offer your refutation.

Right now, I am taking the atheistic position and saying: I don’t believe you’ve read any of the proofs for God’s existence.

Let’s see some evidence for this in the form of your refutations.

And only a fundamentalist would say that out of the multitude of proofs for God’s existence that NONE of them are at least mildly compelling.

That type of attitude is the same as those Truth Deniers in the league of Holocaust Deniers, Young Earth creationists, and those that believe we never landed on the moon.

If you can’t even offer 2 or 3 arguments for God which you find to be reasonable to explore, you are recusant to reason and a fundamentalist, similar to the folks who say, “I don’t see any good reason to believe we truly landed on the moon!”