Proof of God

[EnterTheBowser]

MStreeter:

First off, if your friend wants scientific proof… there will be none. This is obvious. God deals with the intangible nature of humanity. So the key is to get him thinking outside the completely scientific mind frame. It’s important to realize that our understanding of science is always changing. Old truths become new fallacies and old fallacies become new truths. This begs the question: “How do you know what truth is?”

He won’t be able to answer this with any logic because on a purely Atheistic and scientific standpoint… there is no truth… only a world of relativities.

…

I think it a bit of a misconception to say that either:
Atheism entails that all knowledge must be derived from science, or
Atheists hold that all knowledge is derived from science

Now, it is indeed true that scientific theories are always open to revision, and have been heavily revised and even abandoned in the past. But regarding science, there seems to be good reason to believe that science is increasing in scope, precision, and accurace - all good measures of scientific progress.

In addition, although atheism may or may not entail the falsity of moral realism (I do not intend to debate the issue), I highly doubt that atheism entails the sort of postmodernist relativism you’re talking about. The only real way to demonstrate this would be using the Transcendental Argument for the existence of God, but in my opinion, that is not a particularly good argument. Given that I’m an atheist, I don’t think any theistic arguments are that great, but there are some that are better than others (notably any variant on the cosmological argument) and some that are worse (notably any sort of ontological argument). And TAG does not seem to be a particularly great argument.

 

[MStreeter]

EnterTheBowser:

I think it a bit of a misconception to say that either:
Atheism entails that all knowledge must be derived from science, or
Atheists hold that all knowledge is derived from science

Yes, I would agree with you on this. It was not my intention to stereotypically place all Athiests in this category. I only used this because most Athiests I have met (myself included) fall within this category.
EnterTheBrowser:

Now, it is indeed true that scientific theories are always open to revision, and have been heavily revised and even abandoned in the past. But regarding science, there seems to be good reason to believe that science is increasing in scope, precision, and accurace - all good measures of scientific progress.

I also agree with you on this point. I did not mean to appear as a regressive “science Nazi.” I would be completely ignorant and naive to think that science does not contain truth in regards to the tangible & physical world. However, I think it is important that people realize that although science has made great leaps it is not the definitive measure of everything in this world. I think most people would realize that the tangible side of this world is not a complete and encompassing representation of reality. (the definition & nature of reality is a discussion for another day. )
EnterTheBrowser:

In addition, although atheism may or may not entail the falsity of moral realism (I do not intend to debate the issue), I highly doubt that atheism entails the sort of postmodernist relativism you’re talking about. The only real way to demonstrate this would be using the Transcendental Argument for the existence of God, but in my opinion, that is not a particularly good argument. Given that I’m an atheist, I don’t think any theistic arguments are that great, but there are some that are better than others (notably any variant on the cosmological argument) and some that are worse (notably any sort of ontological argument). And TAG does not seem to be a particularly great argument.

As a Theist (and former Atheist) I would agree with this. Even though I have faith, I really have no definitive argument for the existence of God. But, thus is the nature of faith.

Keep the Faith

 

[Brain]

St.BJLabre:

Aquinas once argued a proof that is so simple people often dismiss it. In a nutshell, saying that God doesn’t exist is a contradiction in terms since God’s very nature is to exist. It is like arguing with someone over whether or not they can make a triangle with four sides. I know it seems kind of loopy, but I have thought about it a lot and I can’t find a problem with this argument.

thats the ontological proof, i LOVE it.

 

[MrWhy]

quote=itsjustdave1988 Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence.
(2) The universe has a beginning of its existence.
Therefore:
(3) The universe has a cause of its existence.

The cause of the universe cannot be of the universe. Thus, there exists a supernatural cause of the universe which transcends the universe. We call that cause God.
[/quote]

Space and time expanded as part of the universe. Space/time was not created by the Big Bang or the universe, but is an inseparable integrated property of the universe. i.e., There was no “before” the Big Bang. There was no point in “time” when the universe did not exist. This raises doubt of the idea that the universe had a cause, since cause and the related effect presumes time.

Put another way:

From this relationship between the universe and time we can conclude that the universe has always existed, it did not have a beginning, and there was no “before” the universe. The words “always”, “beginning”, and “before” assume time, and time (as we currently know it) only exists within the universe.

And still another way:

Time is a property of the universe. Without the universe the concept of time is meaningless, so there cannot have been such a “time” when the universe did not exist. So rather than concluding that the BB leads us to “the universe had a beginning” it leads us to the opposite conclusion, the universe did not have a beginning.

Among a majority of cosmologists and physicists there is general agreement about the BB theory, though as time regresses closer to the BB, hypothesis replaces theory, conjecture replaces hypothesis

 

[MrWhy]

St.BJLabre:

Aquinas once argued a proof that is so simple people often dismiss it. In a nutshell, saying that God doesn’t exist is a contradiction in terms since God’s very nature is to exist. It is like arguing with someone over whether or not they can make a triangle with four sides. I know it seems kind of loopy, but I have thought about it a lot and I can’t find a problem with this argument.

“God’s very nature is to exist”. Does this mean existence is God’s only nature, God’s main nature, or just one of many natures. The Word “very” would imply existence is the main nature. “is to exist” seems a little detached and uninvolved. How would Aquinas or anyone else know this was God’s very nature? Is this just one of those niffty sounding phrases that actually says nothing?

MrWhy

 

[Philthy]

Joan45:

I was asked by an Atheist to justify my belief in God. Any sugestions?

Your desire for help in this situation is perfectly natural, but it indicates that you may not have thought seriously about the question before. My suggestion is that you begin a self-search to understand why you believe in God. Don’t read anything at all yet, simply try to understand why you personally have faith in the existence of God.
Write down your reasons, whatever they are. Once they are written and saved, you should begin your reading what others have to say.

 

[deekod1967]

Originally Posted by deekod1967
If there is no God then religion would not have come to exist - there is your proof

ISTPQ:

that doesn’t make much sense at all. sorry, but it doesn’t.
QUOTE]

Humanity has always been religious by nature. But the question is - why has humanity always yearned to know it’s creator? The answer - our Creator made us to want to know and love Him That is why religion itself is proof of God’s existence.

 

[hurst]

MrWhy:

Space and time expanded as part of the universe. Space/time was not created by the Big Bang or the universe, but is an inseparable integrated property of the universe.

So goes the most recent hypothesis… yet they are unproven assertions. Further, they seem to be distractions from what really matters, and attempts to avoid the issue of causality.

In fact, it can be shown that “time” is not part of the physical universe, in that it is imposed onto the physical universe and not emanating from it. For even apart from the consideration of the beginnings, we still have the differential between yesterday and today to show us that the universe is not the same today as it was yesterday. So it did not always contain itself. Nor does it contain all possible information - nor can it.

And don’t begin to bring out 4-D math equations to prove that part of the existence of things in the “universe” includes their whole time span. The future does not exist yet, so how do you know? I find it ironic that so many scientists claiming to be sober and objective resort to such superstitious or presumptuous imaginings as if they were fact. It is a sign that they reject the testimony of their own consciousness.

It reminds me of this verse:

Romans 1:25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

hurst

 

[hurst]

MrWhy:

i.e., There was no “before” the Big Bang.
There was no point in “time” when the universe did not exist. This raises doubt of the idea that the universe had a cause,

The elephant has been in the living room since it was little. Just because an elephant can’t fit through the door right now doesn’t mean it couldn’t have come in and grown up. Still, your conjecture ignores the elephant right now.

Even if one were to initially agree that the universe always existed, one must soon recognize that it cannot continue to exist by itself. There was a point in time yesterday when the universe of today did not yet exist. There was a point in time 100 years ago when the people chatting in this forum did not exist. So at a minimum, part of the universe did not always exist. Each sequential change in the universe had to occur by some motive prior to its manifestation.

And what is moving everything to the laws of nature in a regulated sequence? Certainly not us. We often wish to speed up or slow down the sequential passing of moments. Certainly not an atom, which cannot even keep itself together in the presence of other catalysts. Certainly not light, which is subject to our manipulations. And not space, which is not an active agent. What, then, causes the universe to pass from one moment to the next?

MrWhy:

since cause and the related effect presumes time.

It presumes a sequential order.

MrWhy:

Time is a property of the universe.

Rather, time is the demarcation between states of the universe.

MrWhy:

Without the universe the concept of time is meaningless, so there cannot have been such a “time” when the universe did not exist.

Sequential order can happen apart from the physical universe. “Time” is the sequential order associated to the physical universe, and in that sense your statement can be seen as making sense. But you should not thereby restrict all sequentially ordered actions to the “time” bound up in the physical universe.

MrWhy:

So rather than concluding that the BB leads us to “the universe had a beginning” it leads us to the opposite conclusion, the universe did not have a beginning.

I think what has happened is that terms have been contorted to hide an undesirable conclusion.

Cause-effect does not need the physical time of the universe. Rather, cause-effect in the physical universe uses up time. Otherwise, the universe of physical time could not ever change. If it truly always existed, and nothing else existed, then nothing else could change it.

So there is other cause-effect that does not need physical time, and does not happen manifestly in the physical universe. And it happens continuously. We need not go back so far as the “beginning” in order to recognize that there is a cause-effect right now that is external to the universe.

hurst

 

[MysticRose]

Joan45:

I was asked by an Atheist to justify my belief in God. Any sugestions?

Gotta love Atheists… there is a saying that it takes more Faith to be an Athiest than it does to believe in God… because quite truthfully it does take more Faith to believe in non-existence than to believe in existence. Of Course though, an Atheist, will tell you that they do not believe in Faith in order to get around this one.

Ask your Atheist to prove as Scientific Fact, or Empirical Fact that God does not exist without the use of the theories of man. Quite frankly, even with these you can neither prove nor disprove the eistence of God as Scientific FACT. **Since this cannot be done conclusively, by due process of exclusion ** then the theory has always existed that a God may exist, otherwise why would they continually trying to be disproving it?

The fact is your Atheist must believe in those theories of non-existence, therefore have Faith in them, before he has Faith in the existence of God.

Atheists love to talk circles around you of course, and make you believe that having Faith in something that we cannot see feel and touch, God to them, is therefore useless endeavor. We on the other hand believe and have Faith that it is a useless endeavor to have Faith in the ever changing THEORIES proposed by mankind as to why the earth has come to be in existence, and therefore mankind.

There also have been theories generated by men to prove God’s existence and as quicly as they are generated the whole of the Scientific community goes up in arms to do two things,

1. disprove it
2. to discredit the Scientist that generated the theory.

I wonder why that is? Is it because they are justifiably looking for truth and for empirical Scientific fact or if it is because they themselves BELIEVE differently therefore their FAITH is based on something else? If someone is looking for OBJECTIVE TRUTH then it should not matter where it comes from, but to the Scientific community that are Atheistic it DOES matter and therefore any such theory would have to be squashed.

The point is this PRIDE involves a lot of things, if it was genuinely Scientifically proven for Fact that God existed then would it be man who could take the credit for it or would he have to give such credit back to God himself?

Any manner of believing in something takes Faith … Therefore your Atheist has simply chosen to place his FAITH in man than in GOD… We have simply chosen to place or Faith on a Higher Power, On God … On a Supreme Author to the Universe. One where the Story does not change or you do not have a whole bunch of Scientific theories to choose from, that are changing from one day to the next as to how what when and where …

It is that simple…

 

[MrWhy]

hurst:

So goes the most recent hypothesis… yet they are unproven assertions. Further, they seem to be distractions from what really matters, and attempts to avoid the issue of causality.

In fact, it can be shown that “time” is not part of the physical universe, in that it is imposed onto the physical universe and not emanating from it. For even apart from the consideration of the beginnings, we still have the differential between yesterday and today to show us that the universe is not the same today as it was yesterday. So it did not always contain itself. Nor does it contain all possible information - nor can it.

And don’t begin to bring out 4-D math equations to prove that part of the existence of things in the “universe” includes their whole time span. The future does not exist yet, so how do you know? I find it ironic that so many scientists claiming to be sober and objective resort to such superstitious or presumptuous imaginings as if they were fact. It is a sign that they reject the testimony of their own consciousness.

There’s few proofs or facts available anywhere in this discussion domain. There’s some evidence about space/time theory, which should be present before anything can be called a theory. In my original post it was stated as: “Among a majority of cosmologists and physicists there is general agreement about the BB theory, though as time regresses closer to the BB, hypothesis replaces theory, conjecture replaces hypothesis”. From that it would seem that the BB and related general ideas about time qualify as theories. A reasonable position would be to accept these as the dominant theory among those who spend the most time in study and thought about the topic. As we learn more the theories will change, or accumulate more evidence.

Ideas that go beyond these theories, or try to encapsulate these theories, or offer an explanation for their cause would be conjecture or assertion. Would these be conjectures about theories?

The infinite regression of time is a conundrum that’s beyond our current knowledge. We should consider the possibility that as a species we may be lacking some mental trait or power that is essential for understanding this mystery. Other species have limits to their understanding of time. Our ability is better, but may be still be inadequate.

Oh yes, how do you “show that “time” is not part of the physical universe, in that it is imposed onto the physical universe and not emanating from it”? Never heard of this.

 

[Joan45]

Thank you to everyone who has responded. It really helped.

 

[itsjustdave1988]

From this relationship between the universe and time we can conclude that the universe has always existed, it did not have a beginning

We can conclude no such thing. You might be able to convince yourself to cling to this postulate, but the leading cosmologists do not.

Nobel-prize winning physicist Arno Penzias:

Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say “supernatural”) plan.

[Arno Penzias, “Creation is Supported by All the Data So Far,” *Cosmos, Bios, and Theos,

Henry Margenae and Roy Abraham Varghese, editors, LaSalle, Ill, Open Court, 1992, p. 83]

 

[hurst]

MrWhy:

Oh yes, how do you “show that “time” is not part of the physical universe, in that it is imposed onto the physical universe and not emanating from it”? Never heard of this.

It is something given by the testimony of our consciousness. We are only conscious of a single moment at any given time, and so all other moments, past or future, are not actually part of the physical universe in that single moment.

It also follows from the recognition that what is in the universe at this moment is not the same as at some point in the past, e.g. yesterday. There are new people in the world today who weren’t here yesterday. They clearly were not “always part of the universe”. Also, elements, protons, and even quarks break down and transform.

It is also strengthened by the fact that no force or object has been found to cause the next moment in “time” to actually occur. (No single quark, photon, atom, or region of space causes it). Instead, all observable phenomona are governed by the passage of sequential moments that are imposed upon it from something undetectable.

Conscious moments are not “part of” the universe, but the universe has its activity in the passage of those moments. It is evidence of the activity of the power of the Creator, who keeps all things in His Hand, so to speak.

hurst

 

[hurst]

MrWhy:

A reasonable position would be to accept these as the dominant theory among those who spend the most time in study and thought about the topic.

I agree when it comes to calculating rocket trajectories and such things. But when it comes to truth and philosophical knowledge, they are limited.

Ask any advanced mathematician about the “Continuum” debate, and you will find that it has divided their community but without affecting the validity of theorems in general. They simply cannot prove it either way. Math is not “high enough” of a science to discern such a thing.

Likewise with natural, measurable phenomena. It can’t disprove higher truth. The supernatural is not mutually exclusive to the natural, nor does it destroy it, nor is it dependent upon it. Instead, the natural is dependent upon the supernatural, like the shape and existence of a doughnut hole is dependent upon the dough, though not made of dough.

hurst

 

[trogiah]

Joan45:

I was asked by an Atheist to justify my belief in God. Any sugestions?

I have not found any “proofs” of God’s existence to be very satisfying. What finally made sense to me is this:

Reality is real. Existence exists. “God” is the name I give to reality. It is the term by which I attempt to address existence.

The name for God that Moses heard come from the burning bush tells me that this approach is reasonable.

The question is not “Does God exist?” (because by this reasoning existence is God by definition) but the more relevant question is “Can I know this God on some kind of personal basis?”

I believe that Jesus knew Reality the way an only and most beloved son knows his own father. And I believe Jesus shows us the way to know Reality in this way.

I believe this because the more I follow the teachings of Jesus, the more in touch with Reality I become.

That is how I see it. Hope it helps.

peace

Jim

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Joan45:

I was asked by an Atheist to justify my belief in God. Any sugestions?

There is no such thing as proof of God - and if there were, it would be worthless.​

It’s a proof of atheism to ask for it ##