Of course we can't prove God or have evidence

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Frankenfurter

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I’ve surfed many threads here. I see atheists claim that we can’t prove God exists or show any evidence for him.

I have never worried about such things.

If God is beyond us, any test we have for him fails. Any attempt to prove him fails. And he knows this. Jesus was frustrated by those who demanded proof. What a skeptic might accept as proof is irrelevant.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

I have always found this self evident.

I prefer to look for God in the human heart, in the eyes of a baby, or in the embrace of a loved one. I take great pleasure in the Gospel passages where God says that if we do his will and love him he will dwell within us,

Anybody else?

🙂
 
I’ve come to realize that out and out proof of God would negate most free will in humans. If we all knew that God was here with us, and had no doubts, of course we would choose God. No free will in the matter.
 
Sebrina said:
I’ve come to realize that out and out proof of God would negate most free will in humans. If we all knew that God was here with us, and had no doubts, of course we would choose God. No free will in the matter.
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Definitely, because, look at how Lucifer chose, right? :confused:
 
I tend to think Atheists have some bone to pick with God at some level in their life, either they think they create their own prosperity and power with out any help what so ever or they achieve it and figure they owe God nothing, or they have suffered a lot of pain in life so thus there must not be a God.

I feel sorry for those who don’t believe in God and do pray that those people encounter Him.

Your analogies for how you see God is great and true, and who couldn’t blame Jesus for being frustrated with skeptics in his time, how insane that the Son of God has to prove who He is. More over He did prove it, but still either He was seen as a threat or people wanted more proof. More insanity.

I get tired of the cheerleader mentality of oh Americans are so great and we support each other/ the " American spirit ". As nice as it sounds we are giving credit that is due to God to a nationality a country. Or some disaster comes about be it natural or man made, and people come together to help and the media drools over it with oos and ahhs of how beautiful it is, but the second someone mentions that is God or Christ working His compassion, ya mine as well be a babbling psychopath or axe murderer.

perspective i suppose.

woo i went on a rant.
 
Frankenfurter said:
I’ve surfed many threads here. I see atheists claim that we can’t prove God exists or show any evidence for him.

I have never worried about such things.

If God is beyond us, any test we have for him fails. Any attempt to prove him fails. And he knows this. Jesus was frustrated by those who demanded proof. What a skeptic might accept as proof is irrelevant.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

I have always found this self evident.

I prefer to look for God in the human heart, in the eyes of a baby, or in the embrace of a loved one. I take great pleasure in the Gospel passages where God says that if we do his will and love him he will dwell within us,

Anybody else?

🙂
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Nice thoughts. 🙂
 
I agree.

Plus, it all depends on how we define evidence. For many people today evidence is scientific, something performed in a lab, following a set of specific rules. And that just doesn’t work because such an approach is very limited (it can only deal with the material) and it is not applicable to the material in question.
 
The Church teaches otherwise.

scborromeo.org/ccc/p1s1c1.htm

“Created in God’s image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of “converging and convincing arguments”, which allow us to attain certainty about the truth. These “ways” of approaching God from creation have a twofold point of departure: the physical world, and the human person.”

We can know God’s existence with certainty using the light of natural reason. It just so happens that modern philosophy is hell-bent on losing its grip on reality.
 
No, I don’t worry about those things. Or try to explain why I believe as I do, I just say my prayers and try to live my life the best I can. And I’m too old to worry about what an atheist thinks, God love them.
 
I think St. Thomas Aquinas, for one, would strongly disagree with you.
 
Let’s not lose sight of the teaching of the First Vatican Council:

“The same Holy Mother Church holds and teaches that God, the source and end of all things, can be known with certainty from the consideration of created things, by the natural power of human reason : ever since the creation of the world, his invisible nature has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.”

The method of demonstrating God’s existence is not empirical-scientific, i.e. it is not that we see data and postulate or build a hypothesis to explain the data. The proper method is metaphysical, so we take indisputable premises about reality (for example, “things change” or “there are contingent beings”) and use them to reason to the conclusion that God must exist (see a good study of Aquinas’ arguments for this, such as Aquinas by Edward Feser. There’s a lot behind the arguments in the *Summa Theologiae *that you won’t get if you just take a quick glance at the five ways). And it is fitting that we ought to use metaphysical reasoning rather than empirical-scientific reasoning to show God’s existence, since empirical-scientific reasoning is inherently probabilistic (these data seem to follow this explanation best) whereas metaphysical reasoning, if it is properly done without errors in logic, is infallible.
 
Frankenfurter said:
I’ve surfed many threads here. I see atheists claim that we can’t prove God exists or show any evidence for him.

I have never worried about such things.

If God is beyond us, any test we have for him fails. Any attempt to prove him fails. And he knows this. Jesus was frustrated by those who demanded proof. What a skeptic might accept as proof is irrelevant.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

I have always found this self evident.

I prefer to look for God in the human heart, in the eyes of a baby, or in the embrace of a loved one. I take great pleasure in the Gospel passages where God says that if we do his will and love him he will dwell within us,

Anybody else?

🙂
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I’d say that belief in God has always been a properly basic belief, so while I contemplate it a lot, I can’t say I doubt it a lot.
I would disagree with you when you say we cannot find evidence. There is a plethora of evidence, including personal experience. Whether this evidence is enough to convert a non-believer or comfort a doubter is another question, and it depends on the person.
 
Also, proof of God would be a great benefit to free will, since free will is the power of choosing good things; the fact that we can choose evil is only because we see it as an apparent good even though it is not truly good (like if I see adultery as an apparent good because it will give me pleasure - but it is actually wrong and evil).

A large difference between rational animals (humans) and other animals is that while other animals always choose what is good for them and in accordance with their nature, we, by our intellect, can know the truth about things, including what is good for us, and then, by our will, can freely choose to pursue this good; indeed the will only chooses what the intellect presents to it as good in some way, or as desirable. Thus the will is both inherently oriented toward choosing what is good, and it is dependent on the intellect for an act of judgment on the thing to be willed.

But it can happen, since we have an imperfect intellect and will, that the intellect presents something which is objectively bad as an apparent good, and the will chooses it. This is what happens when sin is committed. But this choice is because of a defect in the intellect, which was wrong, and a defect in the will, which rejected its own nature, as it is oriented toward choosing the good. So choosing evil is not exercising our free will but corrupting our free will. Thus advancing our knowledge of what is good for us by, for example, proving the existence of God does not remove our free will but helps us exercise it.

By the way, I’m taking that pretty much straight from Leo XIII’s encyclical Libertas. The relevant part is near the beginning. It’s really worth reading.
 
An atheist who saw the sort of Road to Damascus “proof” that would convince them God really exists would then immediately race to their former atheist buddies
and begin to give their eye witness testimony, full of excitement and numinous awe.

And can guess what their reaction would be?

*…deluded,
…halucinating,
…liar,
…extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence
…thats not evidence, *
 
Add me to the camp that says we most certainly can know of God’s existence and many of his characteristics through natural reason alone. Don’t play into the atheist untruth that we have no evidence so we must rely on faith-meaning-I-believe-with-no-evidence.
 
There are not proofs in the sense of tangible evidence that provide absolute certainty. I think there is still an element of faith involved even in Aquinas’s proofs - this is implied by the fact that their effect is understood to be incomplete if you do not take all 5 of them in sum. If they were true proofs in the mathematical sense, then a single one would be “rigorous” and sufficient.

I don’t mean that believing in God is merely a matter of faith. Reason plays a part. But hard-heartedness can certainly make one feel justified in rejecting the evidence.
 
Those who do not see, or do not want to see proof for God are always looking in the wrong places.
 
AuditVocemMeam said:
…
And it is fitting that we ought to use metaphysical reasoning rather than empirical-scientific reasoning to show God’s existence, since empirical-scientific reasoning is inherently probabilistic (these data seem to follow this explanation best) whereas metaphysical reasoning, if it is properly done without errors in logic, is infallible.
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Unfortunatelly, these days people have a very low interest in philosophy. I looked up some data on a website with documentaries, and they had about 400 documetaries dedicated to history, 200 dedicated to religion, and only 13 dedicated to philosophy.
This is the mentality of this days, empirical-scientific, get a job etc…
 
Frankenfurter said:
I prefer to look for God in the human heart, in the eyes of a baby, or in the embrace of a loved one. I take great pleasure in the Gospel passages where God says that if we do his will and love him he will dwell within us,

Anybody else?

🙂
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I noticed something interesting after watching a Peter Kreeft video on you tube. I watched an atheists rebuttal video. What was extraordinary about the contrast in the 2 videos weren’t the arguments. It was the tone of each video. Dr. Kreeft was kind, and humble to everyone in the q&a session. His whole demeanor was very easy to watch. The atheist on the other hand was the polar opposite. He was condescending, arrogant, and mocked Dr. Kreeft through his whole argument on why Dr. Kreeft was wrong about everything. They both made a case for their sides not so much in their arguments, but in their being. I could see Christ in Dr. Kreeft, and the atheist exhibited pure hatred and contempt. He was awful to watch. I wasn’t surprised when clicking on another of his videos that he was making a case for how murder can be moral. I also notice the same thing watching Richard Dawkins telling his fans that they need to ridicule Catholics with contempt how hate filled he is. In his debates with John Lennox I notice the same contrast in demeanor as Dr. Kreeft, and the atheist who mocked him.

The intangible silent witness on both sides is not unnoticed. I was so turned off to the mocking arrogant ridicule that there was no need to listen to the arguments. I could see Christ in Dr Kreeft, and I could see the atheists father in him, and it wasn’t pleasant.
 
I’ve always seen the proof of God’s existence in the rationality of man. The creature tells us something about its Creator. The effect tells us something about its cause. If man is an intelligent creature, it follows that whatever caused his existence is not unintelligent as some people propose.
 
raikou said:
I’ve always seen the proof of God’s existence in the rationality of man. The creature tells us something about its Creator. The effect tells us something about its cause. If man is an intelligent creature, it follows that whatever caused his existence is not unintelligent as some people propose.
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Indeed, we should look rather in ourselves than to look for evidence in a material world.
We have love.
 
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