Is it Rational to Believe God Exists?

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Charlemagne_III said:
“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.” Albert Einstein

How else can this be interpreted other than as a claim that God’s thoughts are behind the laws, and therefore God did it, and we should admire his superior unlimited spirit?
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How do you think a Hindu might interpret it?
 
Charlemagne_III said:
There is a great quantum leap from consciousness to self-consciousness, comparable at least from the leap of inanimate matter to animate matter. Dogs worry about the next bone to conquer. Men worry about the next planet to visit beyond the stars.
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You’ve just mentioned two species that are self conscious which doesn’t seem to serve as an a example of anything you claim. Which, in any case, is not correct.

The line between animate and inanimate is not clear cut in all cases And there is no single, agreed definition of what constitutes life.

And if I were to give you a list of a thousand creatures from bacteria to chimp, would you say that at one specific point along that list we changed from no self consciousness at all to complete awareness of the self? Even humans don’t become self aware for months after birth. Maybe even longer.

There is no quantum leap.
 
Bradski said:
The clue is in the name: they are all creationists.
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And that includes Darwin. 👍

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.” Origin of the Species, 1872 (last edition before Darwin’s death).
 
Bradski said:
You’ve just mentioned two species that are self conscious which doesn’t seem to serve as an a example of anything you claim. Which, in any case, is not correct.
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When you hear dogs discussing interstellar travel, let me know.

I can imagine a thing greater than the universe … God.

My dog cannot imagine anything greater than his next bone.

It’s called quantum leap. 👍
 
Charlemagne_III said:
You tell me. 🤷
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If you think that a Hindu would interpret it the same as you (that is, God is responsible), then you are correct. If not, you are not, as there are then more ways than one.

What you meant was, there is only one way you and other Christians can interpret it. Which is something of a circular argument. You are Christian because that is the only interpretation and that is the only interpretation because…you are Christian.
 
Charlemagne_III said:
And that includes Darwin.
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I’m not sure that someone who understands evolution as Darwin did could be described as a creationist. I don’t think that you are sure of that either.

You might want to believe that there is a fuzzy line between creationism and what actually happened to arrive at this point and maybe some tenuous connection between Genesis and the history of the planet. As if it’s not possible to accept scientific facts and still be a good Christian.

I will never understand that attitude.
 
JapaneseKappa said:
All theories are “desperate ploys” to understand the universe. There are a wide variety of theories regarding the origin of the universe. The majority of them came from “atheists in the physics department” and many of them are past finite. Scientists know that they don’t know the actual answer, if they employed your strategy and just picked past-finite models “because God” they would be terrible scientists.
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I am not clear that “because God” is any worse or less contentious an answer than “because emergent.” Somehow, for you, resorting to “because God” implies “terrible scientist,” but “because emergent” makes that proponent a veritable scientific genius. Seems a bit arbitrary is all.
 
Bradski said:
A virus.
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Doubtful. A basic characteristic of a living organism is that it has DNA, RNA or both. Viruses, typically, have RNA, some have DNA and a newly discovered one, apparently has both.

A better example of what might be difficult to describe as “living” would be a prion - NOT the variety of petrel, though; which is definitely “living.”
 
Peter_Plato said:
I am not clear that “because God” is any worse or less contentious an answer than “because emergent.” Somehow, for you, resorting to “because God” implies “terrible scientist,” but “because emergent” makes that proponent a veritable scientific genius. Seems a bit arbitrary is all.
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The insinuation that spiritually minded people are making is that “science can’t explain consciousness/insight/tides, so consciousness/insight/tides is a good reason to believe in spirity things!” The problem is that science isn’t out of ideas. There are theories (e.g. emergence) that could describe how consciousness/insight/tides come to be without any recourse to spirity things. To therefore use consciousness/insight/tides as strong evidence for spirity things is fundamentally dishonest; it is basically an argument from ignorance.

Its possible that science will fail to explain consciousness/insight/tides, but I don’t see any reason to think that the failure is inevitable or even likely.
 
Aloysium said:
  • The working poor today in most places have it worse than slaves in the past.
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The working poor have it bad today, that is true. However, they are not beaten and whipped and do not have the barrel of a gun or other weapon near their head, threatening them with bodily harm if they do not perform their work. The working poor were not tied down in ships with their hands and feet bound by ropes and shipped to faraway lands. The young working poor woman is not usually raped and used as a mistress by her boss today as has happened to the black young female slave with her slavemaster taking every immoral advantage over her. And the working poor are allowed to leave their job if they want to seek out another method of work. So I don’t see it as the same situation.
 
JapaneseKappa said:
The insinuation that spiritually minded people are making is that “science can’t explain consciousness/insight/tides, so consciousness/insight/tides is a good reason to believe in spirity things!” The problem is that science isn’t out of ideas. There are theories (e.g. emergence) that could describe how consciousness/insight/tides come to be without any recourse to spirity things. To therefore use consciousness/insight/tides as strong evidence for spirity things is fundamentally dishonest; it is basically an argument from ignorance.

Its possible that science will fail to explain consciousness/insight/tides, but I don’t see any reason to think that the failure is inevitable or even likely.
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It is not only ignorance but observation that consciousness appears to be something other than pure physical matter. Consciousness is part of the universe and as such scientists should be able to give an explanation in terms of scientific and material laws of nature, but so far, I don’t see where they have succeeded.
 
Tomdstone said:
It is not only ignorance but observation that consciousness appears to be something other than pure physical matter.
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It doesn’t appear that way to me.
Tomdstone said:
Consciousness is part of the universe and as such scientists should be able to give an explanation in terms of scientific and material laws of nature, but so far, I don’t see where they have succeeded.
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But they’re not out of ideas yet, so their ultimate failure isn’t some foregone conclusion.
 
Charlemagne_III said:
There are quantum leaps all over creation. 😃
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It seems like the Creation of the Universe 14 billion years ago was itself a very great quantum leap. If the universe was created then, at the time of the BB, 14 billion years ago, then before that there was nothing. Then God in His Goodness created the universe.
However, could an atheist say that scenario presents a few questions such as for example:
God is unchangeable. He does not change. But before the BB, there was no universe, and presumably God was infinitely happy then. When He decided to create the universe, does that indicate a change of some sort? Just the mere fact of making a decision to create might indicate a change in one’s mind. Also, what was God doing before the universe was created?
 
JapaneseKappa said:
It doesn’t appear that way to me.
.
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When you look at the science of physics you see atoms, electrons, quarks, laws of motion, physical forces such as gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear forces, none of which gives any hint as to how these physical objects and forces could merge to create a conscious being with the ability of self reflection.
 
Tomdstone said:
When you look at the science of physics you see atoms, electrons, quarks, laws of motion, physical forces such as gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear forces, none of which gives any hint as to how these physical objects and forces could merge to create a conscious being with the ability of self reflection.
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There aren’t many hints as to how they merge to create unconscious beings either, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
 
JapaneseKappa said:
There aren’t many hints as to how they merge to create unconscious beings either, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
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Not true. Merging together of atoms can be understood easily in terms of chemical bonding. Ionic bonds, between metals and non-metals form when the two atoms transfer electrons. Covalent bonds between nonmetals form when they share the valence electrons. And there are also metallic bonds. The reason that these chemical bonds form is because atoms try to achieve the state of lowest possible energy.
 
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