Is the question of God's existence the most important question of your life?

[belorg]

No. Science calls it singularity, Big Bang, blah blah blah, develops theoretical models, puts faith on those speculative models, and then tries to find evidence that supports the models. As there are many unresolved questions, science tries not to lose faith in those models (thus come the patches, like the ideas of dark energy and dark matter) or otherwise, through another act of faith (in science), hopes that one day science will be able to answer the unsolved problems or otherwise produce a better model.

Puttting faith on those speculative models is not a scientific approach. Actually, that’s a religious approach. There are no acts of faith in science. That does not mean that some scientists don’t put faith in models, but it runs against scientific method to do so.

Theology, philosophy, metaphysics, religion…they do not ask the “how” question at all, because it does not concern them. We simply focus on the reasonableness of the existence of a Creator, and on what this implies. We do not have a solution because, honestly, we don’t quite care about “how” the singularity produced more baryons than antibaryons and thus the universe has matter rather than only energy…all we care about is that it happened that way, a way that hints at an intelligent decision.

That seems like a “how” answer to me. Anyway, lots of things that used to hint at an intelligent decision turned out to be not the result of intelligent decisions after all.

I am also acquainted with quite a few events (besides the Big Bang) in which science has worked side by side with philosophy and religion (specifically the Catholic Church) and has simply affirmed that the event or phenomenon is at most an anomaly that science cannot explain at this time and with the current technology. For some of these events, we do provide solutions, and quite verifiable ones, as well. For others, we can only provide models based on a consistent body of knowledge - not unlike science does. But ultimately if a problem is unsolved, religion blames it on man’s limited, finite mind. How you’d think that we define God as a limitation or the result of a limitation puzzles me.

If a problem is unsolved, religion claims the solution is God while science admits there is no solution yet, but continues its efforts to find one.

 

[R_C]

Puttting faith on those speculative models is not a scientific approach. Actually, that’s a religious approach. There are no acts of faith in science. That does not mean that some scientists don’t put faith in models, but it runs against scientific method to do so.

When science accepts a model like the Big Bang, it is an act of faith. When you accept that man has the capability of understanding how the universe came to be, that is an act of faith. I could go on.

Anyway, lots of things that used to hint at an intelligent decision turned out to be not the result of intelligent decisions after all.

Why, because science showed how they come to be? That does not dismiss the plausibility of an intelligent creator. Just consider the solidity of the corpus of what we term “Mathematics”, which of course you think came out of sheer randomness, though its rules seem to be pretty much infallible and on them and solely through them science can express itself.

If a problem is unsolved, religion claims the solution is God while science admits there is no solution yet, but continues its efforts to find one.

Religion claims that God is the answer to the question, not the solution to a problem contingent to the answer given by man to the question. Faith and reason simply are not incompatible, and religion is not concerned with the answer to any question, but with the questions themselves. We live it to science to answer them. And while science has faith that man can answer them, we have faith that God gave man the ability to answer them.

 

[belorg]

Excellent point. But then, I wonder what you mean by God. The best definition I’ve heard so far is so complex and profound that I neither am able to fully recall it, nor would I ever dare to attempt to post it. I’ll simply say that it is by all accepted standards a reasonable definition. I mean, even Richard Dawkins had the honesty to admit that “a reasonably respectable case could be made for a sort of god of the physicist, god the mathematician”.

By God I mean a personal omnipotent being that is capable of creating things from abolsutely nothing.

I’ll simply add that, with all due respect, you did not *discover *anything, but rather you made a choice, the choice to believe in the nonexistence of God, a choice based on premises you consider sound and reasonable until a sharper mind proves you wrong or you yourself honestly question their validity on the face of new evidence.

I discovered that the concept of God is logically impossible.

God can be found through reason alone, but it’s hard work. Faith is a whole different story. Like falling in love, it is. Perhaps falling in love and loving is unreasonable, but that is irrelevant to the point that we still chose to do so and that no sensible human being refrains from doing so, be it with a creature, be it with a Creator, be it with both.

That God can be found through reason alone is disputed even among Christian philosophers.and we cannot choose to fall in love, although we can choose whether to act upon it or not. The same thing holds for faith I guess.

 

[belorg]

When science accepts a model like the Big Bang, it is an act of faith. When you accept that man has the capability of understanding how the universe came to be, that is an act of faith. I could go on.

Science does not accep a model like the Big Bang. And scinece does not accept that lan has the capability of understanding how the universe works.

Why, because science showed how they come to be? That does not dismiss the plausibility of an intelligent creator. Just consider the solidity of the corpus of what we term “Mathematics”, which of course you think came out of sheer randomness, though its rules seem to be pretty much infallible and on them and solely through them science can express itself.

I don’t think that mathematics came out of sheer randomness.

Religion claims that God is the answer to the question, not the solution to a problem contingent to the answer given by man to the question. Faith and reason simply are not incompatible, and religion is not concerned with the answer to any question, but with the questions themselves. We live it to science to answer them. And while science has faith that man can answer them, we have faith that God gave man the ability to answer them.

Science does not have faith.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

belorg

I discovered that the concept of God is logically impossible.

And you discovered this how?

And if it were logically impossible, as is a square circle, why do so many billions of people find it logically possible?

 

[teeboy]

No because I have received the fear of the Lord.

 

[Love4All]

If God is Love, as you believe, then no sane person will reject Love. And it is the duty of God to cure every insanity for Love’s sake.

?

Define “insanity.”

I wish you to clarify this position of yours some more. You say, “if God is Love, as you believe,. . .” Do you mean to imply that if it is not true that God is Love, then it is not necessarily true that “no same person will reject Love?” Does the non-rejection of Love depend on the Divinity of Love? Or did you rather mean to say that no sane person will reject love, in general, without regard to whether or not Love is Divine?

You seem to be subsuming every possible motive for the rejection of Love under “insanity.” That is possible. In such a case, it seems there would be seven principal categories of insanity, namely, pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, greed, sloth. Is that accurate to your mind? If not, then I submit, your definition of insanity isn’t really fitting the picture of possible motives for rejecting Love.

But you go ahead, you define insanity the way you are using it. Thanks in advance!

 

[Love4All]

The way I see it is that, while “science” has the intellectual honesty to acknowledge that some problems are unsolved, while “theism” does not have a solution either but somehow calls this non-solution “God”.

Theology is not Cosmology. Cosmology does not answer any theological questions (apart, of course, from whether God exists, but I know you disagree with the dictate of logic in that special case.) Theology does not answer any cosmological questions, apart from that God created everything.

Thus, it is impossible for God to be a non-solution or a solution to any cosmological question. It is like calling in an apple scientist to examine an orange.

 

[Love4All]

By God I mean a personal omnipotent being that is capable of creating things from abolsutely nothing.

I discovered that the concept of God is logically impossible.

You have not successfully argued for that position.

That God can be found through reason alone is disputed even among Christian philosophers.and we cannot choose to fall in love, although we can choose whether to act upon it or not. The same thing holds for faith I guess.

Faith is assent to revelation. Atheism is thus an obstacle to faith. There are several obstacles to faith, and the reason we discuss philosophy here is at least partly to understand those obstacles and find out how to remove them. It remains true that faith is willing assent, but in general one is unwilling to assent to that which seems illogical, and there are many philosophical errors that make faith seem illogical. One should seek, then, to disabuse himself of every such error. That is a good reason to be discussing philosophy in a Catholic forum.

 

[teeboy]

No because I have received the fear of the Lord.

I must add that fear of the Lord is a moment of God revealing himself.

 

[Julia_Mae]

When I said I discovered that God does not exist I was talking about what people generally mean by ‘God’, not about some vague undefeined new-age ‘something’ that some people want to call God.

No, you weren’t. You were talking about what YOU defined as God. Your idea in your own mind of something you have decided cannot be factual.

You have illogically conflated this very probably correct conclusion with the idea that all conceptions of God in all minds are false and nothing exists outside of Time/Space, apparently.

You have no idea what God is and your definition doesn’t even qualify as sophomoric. Therefore, you cannot possibly know or have discovered God does not and cannot exist. To say so makes you sound a bit foolish. That’s okay, we all do at times. You might want to simplify your statement of disbelief into something that makes you sound more reasonable.

BTW - if you were even slightly educated in theological concepts you would know that the profound, and apparently to you alternative, conceptions of God are neither New Age nor new, but found worldwide in ancient writings of mystics as well as in the words and writings of Catholics through the centuries.

I really don’t care much what you believe or do not, because you will know God sooner or later, anyway. Good luck with that.

 

[R_C]

Science does not accep a model like the Big Bang. And scinece does not accept that lan has the capability of understanding how the universe works.

**If science does not accept the big bang, then whybare our kids forced to study it on scientific textbooks? And why are millions of dollars of taxpayer money being invested throughout the world so that scientists may conduct advanced investigation to corroborate the model with empirical evidence? And if man does not have faith (that is, believe) that man can understand how the universe works, why does man keep trying to do so through science? **

I don’t think that mathematics came out of sheer randomness.

It’s either the result of an intelligent mind or it isn’t. And if it isn’t, then it springs out of randomness.

Science does not have faith.

Every time a scientist upholds that a theoretical model is reasonable, it is an act of faith. Most of the models that science held were eventually fisproved by new evidence and better models were developed. Since the earlier models were not valid yet scientists accepted them and taught them, obviously they believed in them, they had faith in them. I dont think we are on the same page in defining faith, though. Otherwise this would be obvious.

Anyways I wanted to quote a statement by Stephen Hawkings, which makes it quite clear how science differs from religion. Hawkings noticed something, but as a scientist he naturally does’t try to answer why that something is there…he simply focuses on explaining how yhat something is there. Religion and metaphysics would try to respond to the why, without interfering with the work of the scientist answering how.

The universe and the laws of physics seem to have been specifically designed for us. If any one of about 40 physical qualities had more than slightly different values, life as we know it could not exist: either atoms would not be stable, or they wouldn’t combine into molecules, or the stars wouldn’t form the heavier elements, or the universe would collapse before life could develop, and so on.

 

[RemCua_VuNgoc]

**C?a hÃng trang trà n?i th?t Vu Ng?c 401 Lý Thu?ng Ki?t
Chúng tôi chuyên cung c?p các lo?i mÃn, rèm c?a van phòng, nhà riêngWebSite: vatgia.com/raovat/3414/7343718/chuyen-cung-cap-cac-loai-man-rem-cua-van-phong-nha-rieng.htmlD?a ch?: 401 Lý Thu?ng Ki?t, P.8, Tân Bình
SDT: 0909018456 g?p Trung
38653342 - 22490460 G?p Trung

**Vu Ng?c c?p nh?t thu?ng xuyên v? s?n ph?m mÃn sáo nhu mÃn sáo ngang, mÃn sáo d?ng, mÃn sáo g?, mÃn cu?n, mÃn roman, mÃn x?p, mÃn tre, mÃn c?u v?ng, lu?i ch?ng mu?i **

**Vu Ng?c c?p nh?t thu?ng xuyên v? s?n ph?m mÃn sáo nhu mÃn sáo ngang, mÃn sáo d?ng, mÃn sáo g?, mÃn cu?n, mÃn roman, mÃn x?p, mÃn tre, mÃn c?u v?ng, lu?i ch?ng mu?i. MÃn sáo d?c là khái ni?m v? thi?t k? tinh gi?n cho c?a s?, thÃch h?p ? nh?ng noi công c?ng, trung tâm thuong m?i, phòng lÃm vi?c ho?c nhÃ* ?, lÃ* s?n ph?m h?i d? c? tÃnh cách trang trà vÃ* công nang.M? Hung Gia c?p nh?t thu?ng xuyên v? s?n ph?m mÃn sáo nhu mÃn sáo ngang, mÃn sáo d?ng, mÃn sáo g?, mÃn cu?n, mÃn roman, mÃn x?p, mÃn tre, mÃ*n c?u v?ng, lu?i ch?ng mu?i **

---

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[belorg]

No, you weren’t. You were talking about what YOU defined as God. Your idea in your own mind of something you have decided cannot be factual.

I used this definition as an exmaple, since you asked me. The kind of God I discovered does not exist is the God lots of people believe in, including Catholics. Of course there are other possible God concepts and I have arguments against most of them.

You have illogically conflated this very probably correct conclusion with the idea that all conceptions of God in all minds are false and nothing exists outside of Time/Space, apparently.

I have never claimed that nothing exists outside of space/time. For all I know something might exist outside space/time. But if we are going to call whatever might exist beyond space/time “God”, then “God” becomes just a passe-partout term for all things we haven’t explaiend yet.

You have no idea what God is and your definition doesn’t even qualify as sophomoric. Therefore, you cannot possibly know or have discovered God does not and cannot exist. To say so makes you sound a bit foolish. That’s okay, we all do at times. You might want to simplify your statement of disbelief into something that makes you sound more reasonable.

You have no idea what God is either.

BTW - if you were even slightly educated in theological concepts you would know that the profound, and apparently to you alternative, conceptions of God are neither New Age nor new, but found worldwide in ancient writings of mystics as well as in the words and writings of Catholics through the centuries.

The definition I gave comprises most of these profound concepts. I am not talking about some sky-daddy. And I do not know whether you are aware the new Age thinking includes going back to some ancient traditions.

I really don’t care much what you believe or do not, because you will know God sooner or later, anyway. Good luck with that.

There are lots of people who have never known God, so , you might want to take your own advice and “simplify your statement of belief into something that makes you sound more reasonable.”

 

[belorg]

?

Define “insanity.”

I wish you to clarify this position of yours some more. You say, “if God is Love, as you believe,. . .” Do you mean to imply that if it is not true that God is Love, then it is not necessarily true that “no same person will reject Love?” Does the non-rejection of Love depend on the Divinity of Love? Or did you rather mean to say that no sane person will reject love, in general, without regard to whether or not Love is Divine?

No sane person will reject love, whether divine or not.

You seem to be subsuming every possible motive for the rejection of Love under “insanity.”

Yes.

That is possible. In such a case, it seems there would be seven principal categories of insanity, namely, pride, anger, lust, envy, gluttony, greed, sloth. Is that accurate to your mind? If not, then I submit, your definition of insanity isn’t really fitting the picture of possible motives for rejecting Love.

I don’t mean some temporal rejection of Love, I mean fundamental rejection of Love. Most people at times are too proud to accept love, or too greedy etc. But when it comes down to rejecting love altogether in all circumstances, that would amount to insanity because then you would be working against your own best interest. And consistenltly working against your own best interest is what I would call insane.

 

[belorg]

If science does not accept the big bang, then why are our kids forced to study it on scientific textbooks? And why are millions of dollars of taxpayer money being invested throughout the world so that scientists may conduct advanced investigation to corroborate the model with empirical evidence? And if man does not have faith (that is, believe) that man can understand how the universe works, why does man keep trying to do so through science?

Our kids are required to study it on scientific textbooks because at the moment it seems to best explain observed phenomena. They are not forced (or at least they shouldn’t be) to believe that it is the only possible model. It’s just that other, alternative models have more problems.

And the ‘faith’ man has that he can understand how the universe works is better described as conditional confidence. because man has discovered lots of things about the universe that seem to work, he has some confindence that he will also discover other things. But this can never amount to the sort of certainty associated with a faith.
That’s not to say that there are no scientists who treat scienceas a faith, but that goes against the scientific method.

It’s either the result of an intelligent mind or it isn’t. And if it isn’t, then it springs out of randomness.

That’s a false dichotomy. And it leads to an infinite regress. Because an intellingent mind presuppuses mathematics while mathematics are the result of an intelligent mind which presupposes mathematcis, which are the result of an intelligent mind …

Anyways I wanted to quote a statement by Stephen Hawkings, which makes it quite clear how science differs from religion. Hawkings noticed something, but as a scientist he naturally does’t try to answer why that something is there…he simply focuses on explaining how yhat something is there. Religion and metaphysics would try to respond to the why, without interfering with the work of the scientist answering how.

The universe and the laws of physics seem to have been specifically designed for us. If any one of about 40 physical qualities had more than slightly different values, life as we know it could not exist: either atoms would not be stable, or they wouldn’t combine into molecules, or the stars wouldn’t form the heavier elements, or the universe would collapse before life could develop, and so on.

That is a good illustration of what I mean. The theist, upon hearing this, immediately jumps to the conclsuion that God must have done it. The scientist tries to figure out how that might work.

 

[belorg]

You have not successfully argued for that position.

Which was not the point of this thread.

Faith is assent to revelation. Atheism is thus an obstacle to faith. There are several obstacles to faith, and the reason we discuss philosophy here is at least partly to understand those obstacles and find out how to remove them. It remains true that faith is willing assent, but in general one is unwilling to assent to that which seems illogical, and there are many philosophical errors that make faith seem illogical. One should seek, then, to disabuse himself of every such error. That is a good reason to be discussing philosophy in a Catholic forum.

Of course one should seek to disabuse oneself of error, but one should not presuppose that everything that does not happen to fit one’s preferred belief is an error.

 

[belorg]

Theology is not Cosmology. Cosmology does not answer any theological questions (apart, of course, from whether God exists, but I know you disagree with the dictate of logic in that special case.) Theology does not answer any cosmological questions, apart from that God created everything.

Thus, it is impossible for God to be a non-solution or a solution to any cosmological question. It is like calling in an apple scientist to examine an orange.

So, “God created everything” is not a solution to the cosmological question: why is there a universe?

 

[tonyrey]

I don’t need to prove anything like that. If you think I consist of something else, then you prove it…

It seems you don’t have to prove anything at all! You make yourself infallible and invulnerable as if you have privileged insight into the nature of reality…

 

[belorg]

It seems you don’t have to prove anything at all! You make yourself infallible and invulnerable as if you have privileged insight into the nature of reality…

You are the one making the claim, so the burden is on you.