My proof for God. Critiques please

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Now,
Just a follow on to the expected response. (And I am aware that the unexpected, may be the real response.)
I have always wondered, why this or that individual could or would say something outrageous. Once, I had an acquaintance, who said things like “you mean Dog, or maddog, when anyone talked about the subject of God.
In those days, I was wondering if he existed also. Those discussions with real people, were my attempt to find out if God was real, or just a mistaken view or even a designed view for some purpose.
In that time frame, I was a research technician with the schooling of an Electrical Engineer, but without having taken the last requirements. Well. This individual scared me. How could a person, who had the requirements of truth and accuracy in his job, I thought, maintain this absurd position, and still be counted on in other matters of research? I asked him.
I asked: “Can you really say that God does not exist? Can you really not see that there is some possiblity of a diety out there?” He answered: “No I cannot say that there is not a possibliity that God exists.”
I then asked, in the vernacular of the times,: “So what gives?”
He responded, “My mother was a horrible religious hypocrite. I am responding to her treatment of me by her.” I understood, by listening, that she was a Chirstian and apparently very horrible to at least him and possibly other family members. He was responding in this way to her and her religion.
I have never found a person, ever, who said the possibility God exists was not in fact a truth. I have looked. My last best candidate said: " There are degrees of Atheism.”
I have tested this. I have not tested this enough. Is there anyone out there who can truly say that there is no possibility of the existence of God?
 
curtish1947 said:
Is there anyone out there who can truly say that there is no possibility of the existence of God?
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Obviously not; no one can truthfully say a false thing. Although they may believe (falsely) such a proposition to be true.

So no one can truthfully say that God does not exist, although they could say they truthfully believe it.

I have met people who say they truthfully believe God does not exist.
 
Moonstruck888 said:
Okay, since you clearly do not understand what observational evidence actually means nor how it is used, I’ll play it your way and pretend to be a philosopher for a second.

God cannot be seen, heard, touched, tasted, smelled or detected in any way. No one has ever come back from the dead to confirm that there is an afterlife, and the spirits of dead people cannot be detected in any way.

Therefore God either dies not exist, or it’s existence is irrelevant.

Now, present your evidence that God exists.
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Jesus rose from the dead and told us that there is an afterlife. Over 2 Billion Christians believe this to be true. How many witnesses do you require?
 
Moonstruck888 said:
Okay, since you clearly do not understand what observational evidence actually means nor how it is used, I’ll play it your way and pretend to be a philosopher for a second.
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You clearly do not understand what ** any type of evidence** is nor how it is used. There is **no evidence whatsoever in **the physical world! We infer the existence of everything we see, hear, taste, smell and touch…

Our primary datum and sole certainty is the fact that we are thinking, feeling, having sensations, communicating and making decisions. If you didn’t have a mind you wouldn’t know anything exists! There would be no such thing as knowledge, insight or evidence in a **mindless **world…

Do you think can get out of your mind and remain sane? :rolleyes:
 
davidv said:
Proving my point. You won’t accept the evidence of a historically real person, who proved to those around Him that He was God.
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The historical evidence you talk about is all second hand and, assuming it to be accurate, written many years after the man Jesus was murdered. In other words, the evidence you speak of is very thin.
 
tonyrey said:
You clearly do not understand what ** any type of evidence** is nor how it is used. There is **no evidence whatsoever in **the physical world! We infer the existence of everything we see, hear, taste, smell and touch…

Our primary datum and sole certainty is the fact that we are thinking, feeling, having sensations, communicating and making decisions. If you didn’t have a mind you wouldn’t know anything exists! There would be no such thing as knowledge, insight or evidence in a **mindless **world…
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All that proves is that you can see, hear, taste, smell, touch, feel, communicate and think.

It does not prove the existence of the supernatural.
 
wheels10 said:
Jesus rose from the dead and told us that there is an afterlife. Over 2 Billion Christians believe this to be true. How many witnesses do you require?
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One contemporaneous witness would be nice.
 
Coolduude,
Code: 
  Dog went nuts at 5am so I’m “up betimes” as Samuel Pepys used to say in his Diary.   I reread your last post in response to me and had to laugh at something I’d missed.  When I said in my last to you that philosophy shouldn’t be done in any kind of big hurry (or when your overtired I’ll add now) I could have used your post as a case in point.  You complained in essence that you are talking about addition, in regard to the space-time continuum which you defined as a mathematical model, not division.  This in response to my remark about a continuum being indivisible in mathematics. A little bit of alertly awake thought would probably have prevented that remark by reminding you to think only mathematically. If you can add something to something it implies logically that that particular something is divisible and you can divide it up by various operations including subtraction, multiplication by fractions, as well as the operation known as division itself. It’s a fact of logic analogous to the fact that in Euclidian geometry 2 parallel straight lines imply that they will never cross even if extended through infinity.  You don’t have to spell all this out all the time.  That’s what parallel means.  In mathematics definitions are very precise and have strictly logical implications.  
   Any way, I’m killing time. Maybe it’s time to introduce myself as I see myself philosophically and theologically.  Religiously I am simply A Catholic Christian, Denominationally I am Roman Catholic.  Philosophically and theologically I consider myself as basicly a neo-Thomist.  Not a Thomist.  A neo-Thomist by my own informal understanding of the term.  For me that means Thomas Aquinas  makes more sense to me than any other major philosopher who has had pretensions of taking on all the big issues in philosophy.  At least up to his time.  

  That qualification is the crucial point.  His ideas need translation not just from Latin into English but into our contemporary categories of thought.  In Apologetics that means for instance that we cannot assume time is finite for all purposes, and for those purposes for which we insist on time’s finitude, we can’t do so relying on Thomas’s arguments.  Thomas would certainly agree about this in the question of time because his argument for it is theological, not philosophical.  I say this because pretty much everything in the Summa depends on the existence of God as a given.  Not just the philosopher’s god, but God as known through Revelation.  Time is finite because God created it, and it will end. This approach simply will not do for mathematics and physics.  Period.  It will not do in Philosophy either because Thomas did not have the advantage of reading Critique of Pure Reason.  Which explains why I have referred to God as the ultimate but not the proximate cause of time.  I made the reference someplace back in the thread about time as a human concept.
Anyway. Time to walk the dog. Whose schedule is apparently the center of daily life for both my wife and me.
 
curtish1947 said:
I have never found a person, ever, who said the possibility God exists was not in fact a truth. I have looked. My last best candidate said: " There are degrees of Atheism."
I have tested this. I have not tested this enough. Is there anyone out there who can truly say that there is no possibility of the existence of God?
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That depends upon the definition of God you choose. If you are referring to the God of The Catholic Church, well then, here I am. Your test is finished.

An omniscient and omnipotent entity who created the known universe, and mankind, such as the God adopted by most popular belief systems cannot exist.
 
greylorn said:
That depends upon the definition of God you choose. If you are referring to the God of The Catholic Church, well then, here I am. Your test is finished.

An omniscient and omnipotent entity who created the known universe, and mankind, such as the God adopted by most popular belief systems cannot exist.
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Show us your evidence for this statement that makes it something besides your opinion.
 
momor said:
Show us your evidence for this statement that makes it something besides your opinion.
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_John

The teachings of Jesus in John are very different from those found in the synoptic gospels.[63] Thus, since the 1800s scholars have generally believed that only one of the two traditions could be authentic.[63] Today, prominent, mainstream historians largely tend to discount the historical value of John. Few scholars regard John to be at all comparable to the synoptics in terms of historical value.[40][106] E. P. Sanders and other critical scholars conclude that the Gospel of John contains an “advanced theological development, in which meditations of the person and work of Jesus are presented in the first person as if Jesus said them.”[107] The scholars of the Jesus Seminar assert that there is little historical value in John and consider nearly every Johannine saying of Jesus to be nonhistorical.[108] Geza Vermes discounts all the teaching in John when reconstructing “the authentic gospel of Jesus.”[109]
 
momor said:
Ah, your agnosticism is showing again.
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I fail to see how. I said that scholars are divided on the validity of the Gospel of John as an historical source.

That has nothing to do with my atheism / agnosticism. Anyway, I would point out that any agnostics that have no positive belief in God are in fact a subset of atheists.

Atheism is a lack of belief in God. Theism is a belief in God. Agnosticism is concerned with knowledge. An agnostic could believe in God but not make a claim to knowledge of God, which would make him a Theist. An agnostic could not believe in God but acknowledge that he cannot disprove God. That would make him atheist.

atheism.about.com/od/aboutagnosticism/a/atheism.htm

I have no belief in God whatsoever. I don’t even waste a second’s thought on the idea that I might be wrong. On the other hand, I do acknowledge that I cannot make a claim to be able to prove there is no God.

Therefore I am agnostic and also a dyed in the wool Atheist.
 
momor said:
Show us your evidence for this statement that makes it something besides your opinion.
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Why bother? I have submitted this material in a number of other CAF posts, on various threads. which a search will disclose if your interest is genuine. And if so, we might pursue the subject.

However, I’ve read a few of your posts, and have no interest whatsoever in attempting to engage a conversation which involves physics and logic with someone who replies with bible verses, however interesting they may be. Better you argue with Moonstuck, who also depends upon dogma and assertion. You are well suited for one another.

If I have misjudged your qualifications for honest mental engagement, please inform me so that I can apologize, you may forgive me, and we can set about having some serious conversations. Thank you.
 
greylorn said:
Why bother? I have submitted this material in a number of other CAF posts, on various threads. which a search will disclose if your interest is genuine. And if so, we might pursue the subject.

However, I’ve read a few of your posts, and have no interest whatsoever in attempting to engage a conversation which involves physics and logic with someone who replies with bible verses, however interesting they may be. Better you argue with Moonstuck, who also depends upon dogma and assertion. You are well suited for one another.

If I have misjudged your qualifications for honest mental engagement, please inform me so that I can apologize, you may forgive me, and we can set about having some serious conversations. Thank you.
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I have to say Mr. greylorn, I have read through your posts and your views frankly rather fascinate me. You’re an interesting figure.
 
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