Is it Rational to Believe God Exists?

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Hans_W said:
Are you saying that nothing died before Adam and Eve ate that fruit?
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I’m not saying it…"Yahweh God took the man and settled him in the garden of Eden to cultivate and take care of it Then Yahweh God gave the man this command, “You are free to eat of all the trees in the garden. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat; for, the day you eat of that, you are doomed to die.” Gn 2: 15-17

It’s certainly talking about man here. I don’t know if death came into existence for all of life at that moment or not. It would make sense to me if it did though. Why would God create a world with death (assuming sin was not part of the equation yet)? Adam and Eve squandered our inheritance with their sin and we live in a fallen world. The prophet Isaiah also implies a restoration of the conditions in the garden "On this mountain, for all peoples, Yahweh Sabaoth is preparing a banquet of rich food, a banquet of fine wines, of succulent food, of well-strained wines. On this mountain he has destroyed the veil which used to veil all peoples, he has destroyed death forever. Lord Yahweh has wiped away the tears from every cheek; he has taken his people’s shame away everywhere on earth, for Yahweh has spoken. Is 25: 6-8

As a Catholic I accept the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, a product of the 2nd Vatican Council. From Chapter III: "11 Those things revealed by God which are contained and presented in the text of sacred scripture have been written under the inspiration of the holy spirit. For holy mother church, relying on the faith of the apostolic age, accepts as sacred and canonical the books of the Old and the New Testaments, whole and entire, with all their parts, on the grounds that, written under the inspiration of the holy spirit, they have God as their author, and have been handed on as such to the church itself. To compose the sacred books God chose certain men who all the while he employed them in this task, made full use of their powers and faculties so that though he acted in them and by them, it was as true authors that they consigned to writing whatever he wanted written and no more.

Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the holy spirit, we must acknowledge that the books of scripture firmly, faithfully and without error teach that truth which God for the sake our salvation wished to see confided to the sacred scriptures…"

God Bless
 
In a situation where scientific evidence is absent, contradictory or incomplete, I think that it is rational to believe that a great force is at work. I, personally, find that to be the case regarding the beginning of creation. To this point, no satisfactory explanation has been found to explain why and how the Big Bang occurred.
That is where I personally place God…the first cause of creation.
 
oldcelt said:
In a situation where scientific evidence is absent, contradictory or incomplete, I think that it is rational to believe that a great force is at work. I, personally, find that to be the case regarding the beginning of creation. To this point, no satisfactory explanation has been found to explain why and how the Big Bang occurred.
That is where I personally place God…the first cause of creation.
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I agree. I also see him in the origin of life. Science has no definitive explanation for the jump from inanimate matter to living, single cell critters with the ability to look for and digest food, and the ability to reproduce. It’s simply absurd to think inanimate matter can do that without intelligent (name removed by moderator)ut. And this isn’t just ordinary intelligence. What does inanimate matter know about reproduction? This is a highly complex process that the smartest humans have only just begun to grasp. God Bless.
 
miguel said:
What does inanimate matter know about reproduction?
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Nothing.

We can marvel all we like about the vastness of the universe. But as Pascal so eloquently observed, a thinking human being is more marvelous than the universe, because he can think and the universe cannot. 👍
 
miguel said:
What does inanimate matter know about reproduction?
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Even before reproduction you see that matter was endowed with or directed by some kind of intelligence, though- that it progressed and transformed itself from simpler to more complex forms, life being a whole other incredible degree of that same process/direction.
 
Hello PMVC.
PMVCatholic said:
Well, to say God could be proven by empirical means would be to suggest that God is physical. Though He became man in the person of Jesus Christ, He ascended into heaven and is no longer available for empirical confirmation.
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So what do you say about the empirical data supplied by Eucharistic miracles in which the Host change to Heart materials and this was ascertained by forensic scientists? They tend to corroborate each other and the empirical data includes DNA!

Glenda
 
Hello JapaneseKappa.
JapaneseKappa said:
I could be convinced through evidence. If someone (or some people) were able to demonstrate a clear violation of some law(s) of the universe at will, I would be perfectly willing to entertain the hypothesis that they had supernatural powers. If subsequent investigation revealed no other plausible explanations, I could be convinced.

For example, suppose a faith healer was healing amputees (i.e. regrowing entire limbs.) There is currently no known method for accomplishing this so a supernatural hypothesis would be plausible (although natural limb regrowth is theoretically possible.) Before this could be deemed evidence of the supernatural, though, scientists would have to examine the healers methods. They would have to rule out things like deception (e.g. use of drugs) or coincidence (e.g. the faith healer’s ritual just happens to involve natural substances which combine to induce limb growth.) Once this was done, and the scientists were unable to reproduce the effects without the faith healer, I would be willing to strongly consider supernatural explanations.

Now, if that sort of thing happened regularly, the collective effect would be fairly convincing evidence for the supernatural.
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I think you are asking too much of God. You are asking in effect: “I’ll believe in You IF You prove Yourself to me and not until then.” Hardly an Act of Faith. A god that would comply with that type of demand isn’t a god at all, but a people pleaser who needs followers to be successful. You can find the phony version in abundance in various places, but once past the bunk, one tends to lose one’s religion and grow cynical of all religions.

Glenda
 
Hello again JapaneseKappa.
JapaneseKappa said:
My preferred version of the thought experiment is to imagine we send a group of babies off to another planet along with all our scientific knowledge and none of our philosophical/theological knowledge. If we contacted them in a few thousand years, what might they have come up with?

I think it is well established that our early religions typically formed as attempts to explain natural phenomenon (e.g. ocean storms, thunder, the sun.) So if a “philosophically primitive” civilization already had the natural explanations for those things, would they ever posit the existence of a God?

It’s obviously possible that they would, but I think it is not some foregone conclusion. I will note that our historical “proofs of God” come from people who had already been exposed to the concept of gods. Would someone without any exposure to ideas about gods ever come up with and be convinced by those proofs on their own? If they did, would their God be fundamentally different from ours? For example, they might conclude that God is perfectly a-moral instead of perfectly moral.
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You should read “Lord of the Flies.” Really.

Glenda
 
hello Hans.
Hans_W said:
I would be careful here. The Problem of Evil is a huge problem and you cannot just sweep it under the rug. What about the immense suffering going on in nature?
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I think the greatest tragedy is to be surrounded by suffering and have it tear one from the bosom of God. Suffering for me, and I do suffer being disabled, increases my dependence on God to just get through the day. But for many they expect what I consider the Hallmark version of God - He’ll wipe away every tear, but they expect it here and now. And some suffering to that shallow a relationship with Jesus, and they quickly fall away. Those types tend to use evil and suffering as an excuse to disbelieve in God. They want a fairy Godmother with a magic wand instead of a God Who handed Himself over to the ignominious death He died on the Cross.

The problem of evil can be squarely laid at the feet of two things: the devil and the effects of Original sin on man. That’s it. Those two do it all. And we will have trouble until we depart this life. To expect less is actually unrealistic.

Glenda
 
Hello JapaneseKappa.
JapaneseKappa said:
Oh? Here is an example of an unclear revelation from my short time on this forum: I was told that this passage, spoken by Jesus:Does not actually mean that “It would be better for him if he had not been born.” Instead, we are supposed to read it as though we are a Jewish person who has become familiar with Jesus’ new teachings, and the fact of the matter is that “It would not be better for him if he had not been born.” If that is “abundantly clear” I think you have never read any good textbooks.

Why should God want to soften people’s hearts? It seems to me that the bible says he hardens people’s hearts:But perhaps the passage is just unclear and there is some other non-literal interpretation.

Also, there are plenty of examples of God inflicting natural suffering on totally innocent people. For example, God made an innocent child suffer for 7 days before dying: But I suppose that the interpretation of this passage might not be clear either, and there is yet another alternative explanation that allows us to salvage the concept of a loving God.

The point is that if God loved us, there would be no reason for him to allow us to suffer because of disease or famine for example. He could prevent it and soften our hearts another way. He does not do this, it is circumstantial evidence against the existence of God.
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If you ask me God hardened the Pharaoh’s heart because if Moses had be able to depart the very first time he asked to with all the people Israel, God wouldn’t have ever been able to show His great might which got witnessed to by all the people then, Jew and Gentiles alike and was spoken of for hundreds of years afterwards and He struck with such power that there were those who feared the God of the Jews for a long time afterwards. There’s more that could be said, but I’m no Biblical scholar.

The passage you quoted about the son of David dying after the 7th day is actually supportive of Jesus and can have a Messianic meaning pertaining to the shifting of the Sabbath to the eighth day those who were awaiting the Messiah among the Jews looked for as a sign. I’m not a Biblical scholar, but I think this passage about the death of the son of David is the origin of the search for the eighth day, the day of resurrection we celebrate at Mass. I do know for sure that the eighth day did arrive and that is why we celebrate on Sunday and not Saturday, but the part I’m unclear about is if this passage is actually it’s first mention in the Scriptures. You could check with others on that regard.

Glenda
 
Hello JapaneseKappa.
JapaneseKappa said:
Quite right, if you loved your son you would not murder him. But what if you God told you to do something unloving (e.g. in the case of Abraham?)

What if God told you to slaughter an entire tribe of people (e.g. Amalek)? Is “Gott mit uns” a justification for violations of the “love thy neighbor” part of the equation?
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You keep pointing to Messianic stuff in Scriptures that point to Jesus Christ. Abraham and his son are that - the prefiguring of Jesus Christ in the Old Testament accounts. The test of Abraham in the light of Jesus Christ being sent by a loving Father to us for Crucifixion makes no sense to a person who thinks God’ sole purpose it to please them and make them happy and comfortable. Yes, a parent who loves a child will do this most of the time, but what happens when the child tries to run across the street in traffic or tries to stick his finger in the electric socket? The child gets admonished rather severely so as to have a clear message imprinted on his mind to not do those things. Children can be easily spoiled by permissive parents and those who withhold discipline do great harm to their children.

Did God murder His Son by sending Him to die on the Cross for sinners? He knew He would die that way.

Glenda
 
Hello HansW.
Hans_W said:
I don’t want to change the direction of this thread into a Creation vs. Evolution debate, but I see evolution of life as the only explanation for death and suffering.

If God created us and all life forms through the process of evolution, then naturally, death and suffering was the only way to get to higher, more advanced life forms.
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Sounds like you’ve got a justification for eugenics going on in your mind.

Glenda
 
Hello JapaneseKappa.
JapaneseKappa said:
Perhaps we have arrived at the root of the issue. Maybe God’s imagination is as poor as yours and so he can’t come up with any better ways to use his omnipotence than genocide. If I were omnipotent I would have just prevented Amalek from inventing such a cruel religion in the first place.

The obvious state of affairs, though, is that you have no answer to this problem and so you are looking for some sort of tu quoque justification for dismissing my points. God wouldn’t be committing genocide by not creating hell-bound people because you can’t do anything to people that don’t exist in the first place.
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The removal of man’s free will would be in order in your If/Then statement. Man has free will. The right use of it makes all the difference in the world, and man’s ultimate outcome - i.e. Heaven or Hell. Without a choice we’d simply be robots and slaves existing without any real joy. Heaven is the destination, not perpetual paradise on earth. That is my answer to your “problem.”

Glenda
 
glendab said:
Hello JapaneseKappa.
The removal of man’s free will would be in order in your If/Then statement. Man has free will. The right use of it makes all the difference in the world, and man’s ultimate outcome - i.e. Heaven or Hell. Without a choice we’d simply be robots and slaves existing without any real joy. Heaven is the destination, not perpetual paradise on earth. That is my answer to your “problem.”
Glenda
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So lets be clear about what you are saying. You are telling me that the slaughter of Amalek, and God’s slaughter of the firstborn of Egypt was not a violation of those people’s free will. However, if God had simply not created or found some way to convince those people to convert, he would have been violating their free will. I think this is very simply wrong.

For example, God couldn’t have simply appeared to the people in a flash of light and asked them “-]Saul, Saul,/-] why do you persecute me?” After all, that would take away their free will! It was clearly much better to simply kill them all.

You cannot “remove” anything from something that doesn’t exist. God didn’t create a pet unicorn for me; that doesn’t mean God “removed” the unicorn’s free will. It’s true that the unicorn couldn’t actually have free will unless it existed, but the unicorn couldn’t actually have anything without first existing. A hypothetical person, just like my unicorn, can hypothetically have free will; the hypothetical person never actually needs to exist.

That is why I still say that the existence of natural evil and lack of perfectly clear instructions constitute circumstantial evidence against God.
 
miguel said:
I agree. I also see him in the origin of life. Science has no definitive explanation for the jump from inanimate matter to living, single cell critters with the ability to look for and digest food, and the ability to reproduce. It’s simply absurd to think inanimate matter can do that without intelligent (name removed by moderator)ut. And this isn’t just ordinary intelligence. What does inanimate matter know about reproduction? This is a highly complex process that the smartest humans have only just begun to grasp. God Bless.
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A testable claim! Will you hang your faith on and by this issue? Will you firmly assert that you believe God was the cause of life, and there is no naturalistic explanation? If science finds such an explanation, will you admit your faith was a lousy criteria for determining true statements from false ones?
 
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