There is no God

[kev7]

TAB19:

What would you be against if there were no God then?

I already admitted that I cannot give you proof. I believe because I feel it in my heart. I don’t really know much about the philosophy of Atheism and am not trying to argue but why do you and the other self proclaimed atheists feel like you need to defame Catholicism or any other Christian religion? Do you all feel it is causing harm to you somehow? I feel like it is just like my philosophy prof argue for the sake of argue. If you replace a plank on boat is it the same boat? Maybe you all are actually seeking the Truth. What is your motivation? Go ahead and take your digs

I have also tried to explain to him that it isn’t proof of God that we require. We all have doubt, but at least we are open to either possibility.

His faith is in man our faith is in God and we hope for eternal life. We put our faith in something greater then ourselves.

I just think it is sad when people put their faith in man.

 

[kev7]

To say that there exists X and ~X is false

Catholics do NOT claim X through this logic.

142 By his Revelation, "the invisible God, from the fullness of his love, addresses men as his friends, and moves among them, in order to invite and receive them into his own company."1 The adequate response to this invitation is faith.

We say that we are gifted with the ability to understand the possiblity that God could exist.

The possibility is Gods invitation.

The response to this possibility is our Faith.

In fact, since it is a possibility for or against God faith is the only response to toward either value.

In other words atheists put faith in the fact that there is no God because proof does not exist.

 

[estesbob]

kev7:

I have also tried to explain to him that it isn’t proof of God that we require. We all have doubt, but at least we are open to either possibility.

His faith is in man our faith is in God and we hope for eternal life. We put our faith in something greater then ourselves.

I just think it is sad when people put their faith in man.

Just one mild disagreement-i have no doubt whatsoever.

I drove through into the mountians today. Absolutely beautiful after heavy snow in the last few days. I was thinking about Psalm 95:
“He made the earth and the mountians too, the dry land to was formed by his hands…”

Psalm 24 also entered my mind" O gates raise high your heads, open wider ancient doors, let him enter-the KING OF GLORY

The proof of Gods existence is all around us-we need only open our eyes. I have given Ty a hard time in this thread but mostly i feel feel pity for him. He is missing out on so much. So much time and effort spent trying to prove us wrong when all he need do is open his eyes to see the TRUTH we proclaim.

 

[kev7]

estesbob:

Just one mild disagreement-i have no doubt whatsoever.

I drove through into the mountians today. Absolutely beautiful after heavy snow in the last few days. I was thinking about Psalm 95:
“He made the earth and the mountians too, the dry land to was formed by his hands…”

Psalm 24 also entered my mind" O gates raise high your heads, open wider ancient doors, ler him enter-the KING OF GLORY

The proof of Gods existence is all around us-we need only open our eyes. I have given Ty a hard time in this thread but mostly i feel feel pity for him. He is missing out on so much. So much time and effort spent trying to prove us wrong when all he need do is open his eyes to see the TRUTH we proclaim.

yes but God wants us to come to him on our own terms.

It is actually only through FATIH that you are able to see the TRUTH.

In other words, with out Faith there is no material proof for God.

You are blessed in that way.

 

[mikew262]

estesbob:

Just one mild disagreement-i have no doubt whatsoever.

I drove through into the mountians today. Absolutely beautiful after heavy snow in the last few days. I was thinking about Psalm 95:
“He made the earth and the mountians too, the dry land to was formed by his hands…”

Psalm 24 also entered my mind" O gates raise high your heads, open wider ancient doors, let him enter-the KING OF GLORY

The proof of Gods existence is all around us-we need only open our eyes. I have given Ty a hard time in this thread but mostly i feel feel pity for him. He is missing out on so much. So much time and effort spent trying to prove us wrong when all he need do is open his eyes to see the TRUTH we proclaim.

 

[EnterTheBowser]

I remember, one day in New York City, standing in a subway station, and I saw one of the most beautiful sights of my life. There was a blizzard that day - I happen to love the winter and snow, by the way - and the snow was falling through the grates above the station, and drifting slowly down onto the tracks. Just the falling snow was well-lit in this dark subway station, and it was fantastically beautiful. In other words, I, an atheist, look around myself, and I see beauty and wonder in many, many things (one morning after an ice storm…). On the other hand, I don’t feel the grace of God surrounding me.

That being said, it seems that kev’s claim runs as follows:
We can’t know if God exists or not without first knowing if it is possible for God to exist (or not). Moreover, we cannot know if it is possible for God to exist based on reason alone. Reason cannot reveal alll truths; reason and faith are equally valid.

kev: If I have misrepresented your position, let me know now, before I start arguing against it. If you disagree, a statement of the problems with my formulation and a statement of what your argument actually is would be much appreciated.

I’ve seen several theists recommend stuff by CS Lewis; in turn I’ll have to recommend Bertrand Russell, in particular “Why I Am Not A Christian.” There’s a free version here: positiveatheism.org/hist/russell0.htm

But anyways, back to the most infamous of all the arguments in atheism’s repertoire: evil. I apologize if I misrepresent someone’s position; this thread is enormous and I’m trying to go from memory.

Anyways, last I heard, God did nothing to stop suffering because:
1: it improves people
2: if God stopped some suffering, he’d have to stop all suffering, and that would be bad.

In response to 1, I asked if we’d be willing to accept this reasoning from any human; I recall the answer was “I submit to the will of God” or something along tthose lines. I don’t see how this applies: if it is okay for God to let people suffer because it improves them, is it then okay for me to do the same?
Moreover, I also asked if there was suffering which does not improve people; I recall the answer was yes. If that is the case, why does God allow this sort of suffering - particularly if God knew beforehand whether or not it would be useful?
I also asked if there were other ways to make people better: apparently prayer does. If this is the case, why does a merciful God not do something about suffering? Why does he force suffering on us, when of our own free will we could choose to pray and thereby improve ourselves?

Regarding 2: let’s just limit the discussion to natural evils, since free will might be a compelling reason for God to not stop moral evil. Would it really be such a a bad thing if children were not born with their intestines on the outside? cybernoon.com/DisplayArticle.asp?section=fromthepress&subsection=inbombay&xfile=October2005_inbombay_standard8156 Would it be such a bad thing if good people were not struck down in the prime of their lives with excrutiatingly painful deaths due to cancers? Why should we ever suppose that this would be a bad thing?

Warning: that second link is not for the squeamish.

 

[AnAtheist]

kev7:

Although I’m not sure how you can still claim that there is proof that God does not exists. When you do that you fail to be open to “possibility”

No, that is not true. There are certain laws in this universe, which we think we understand, and by applying those laws, we can make statements without being open to possibility.
When you let go a stone it is going to fall down. You do not need to be open to the possibility it could fall up.
That is in short *how *I can say, there is proof, not the proof itself.

Actually I keep the possibility of a god, of a creator open. But when I look at the universe it is more probable there is no such thing. What I do say, is, that certain gods people have come up with, *cannot *exist due to the above said laws. (E.g. the Olympic Pantheon definitely cannot exist, when you climb up Mt. Olympos, there is no Pantheon. Really.)
Other possible god are so improbable, that I can safely dismiss those possibilites. Getting back to the stone example, it is thermodynamically possible under the right conditions, that a stone could fly, but that is soooo improbable, no need to think, the next stone I let go, will do that.

As for the Christian God: He is logically impossible. If you argue, he is beyond logic, then he may be possible, but still way too improbable to consider belief or even worship.

ps/edit: One of the biggest problem with Pascal’s Wager is, that it oes not consider enough possibilities. It just considers Christian God/no God. It does not consider other gods (like really bad ones) or no afterlife.

 

[Mijoy2]

EnterTheBowser:

I
Anyways, last I heard, God did nothing to stop suffering because:
1: it improves people
2: if God stopped some suffering, he’d have to stop all suffering, and that would be bad.

.

I never heard these two reasons. This is not my understanding of why there is suffering. We suffer because there is sin in the world. The Christian faith is one of eternal life without suffering. First we need to choose, else we would not be indivials with a will of our own.

What I don’t understand reading these posts; why does the athiest seem to insist all there is is what they know, and or can learn. Why can’t there be more? Why can’t therre be a power greater then the mind of man?

When I went from atheism/agnosticism I didn’t necassarily go from one belief to another. I went from insistance I was right to the potential I may be wrong. Hence from non-belief to faith.

 

[kev7]

AnAtheist:

No, that is not true. There are certain laws in this universe, which we think we understand, and by applying those laws, we can make statements without being open to possibility.
When you let go a stone it is going to fall down. You do not need to be open to the possibility it could fall up.
That is in short *how *I can say, there is proof, not the proof itself.

It is actually, only true that a stone will fall down if it is subject to gravity. A stone doesn’t always have to be subject to gravity. So the problem with your example is that it first assumes a limited environment. With your example you have just shown that it is only possible to draw a conlcusion within a controled environment.

You can’t draw the same conclusion about God existance because you don’t have an understanding of all possible forms of existance.

I’m sorry but I just don’t understand how lack of proof equals proof

Proof is logically undefined unless you can define the environment from which proof is derived.

Actually I keep the possibility of a god, of a creator open. But when I look at the universe it is more probable there is no such thing.

Ok now you just made a totally different statement then the one you just made above. First you said that there is proof and now you are saying that it is a possibilty! It doesn’t sound like you are very sure of things.

What I do say, is, that certain gods people have come up with, *cannot *exist due to the above said laws. (E.g. the Olympic Pantheon definitely cannot exist, when you climb up Mt. Olympos, there is no Pantheon. Really.)

There is nothing about the christian God that you can disprove in such a way. We are talking about Gods existance here not the Greek Pantheon. These false Gods where replaced with the christian God anyway.

Other possible god are so improbable, that I can safely dismiss those possibilites. Getting back to the stone example, it is thermodynamically possible under the right conditions, that a stone could fly, but that is soooo improbable, no need to think, the next stone I let go, will do that.

Don’t you realize that with your use of the word “improbable” you are open the possbility of it being probable? This is where I agree with you. Man will always live in doubt. It is only through his faith that he can say that come to know god not through his own mesurment.

As for the Christian God: He is logically impossible. If you argue, he is beyond logic, then he may be possible, but still way too improbable to consider belief or even worship.

First you claim that is is possible for something like a god to exist (something that you can’t prove) and then you attack the christian God by saying it is impossible? Why is the christian God impossible and the the notion of ancient gods (that were replaced by the Christian God) possible?

YOU ARE NOT MAKING ANY SENSE. you keep jumping around from one thought to another.

ps/edit: One of the biggest problem with Pascal’s Wager is, that it oes not consider enough possibilities. It just considers Christian God/no God. It does not consider other gods (like really bad ones) or no afterlife.

**Lol… how can you claim to be an athiest and then claim that it is possible for NON christian Gods to exists?
Everyone reading your post here is just going to laugh and laugh hard for a long time.
**

 

[kev7]

EnterTheBowser:

I remember, one day in New York City, standing in a subway station, and I saw one of the most beautiful sights of my life. There was a blizzard that day - I happen to love the winter and snow, by the way - and the snow was falling through the grates above the station, and drifting slowly down onto the tracks. Just the falling snow was well-lit in this dark subway station, and it was fantastically beautiful. In other words, I, an atheist, look around myself, and I see beauty and wonder in many, many things (one morning after an ice storm…). On the other hand, I don’t feel the grace of God surrounding me.

That being said, it seems that kev’s claim runs as follows:
We can’t know if God exists or not without first knowing if it is possible for God to exist (or not). Moreover, we cannot know if it is possible for God to exist based on reason alone. Reason cannot reveal alll truths; reason and faith are equally valid.

kev: If I have misrepresented your position, let me know now, before I start arguing against it. If you disagree, a statement of the problems with my formulation and a statement of what your argument actually is would be much appreciated.

What I am saying is that by mans reason alone we can’t prove or disprove the existance of God. With that conclusion, we can only accept that the existance of God is a question without an answer.

Logic isn’t the only part of human nature. Imagination, faith, hope, and love are also characteristics that we share.

It is only through faith that we come to know god. When we have faith we begin to see things in a totally different way.

I would also submit that until you try to think as Christ showed us. you won’t ever understand God.

If you want to know God then you need to try to walk the path that he has shown us.

In other words, in order to understand God you must first attempt to make the journey. If you never walk toward that Goal through faith and at least give it a try you will never move closer to any understanding beyond that which you can reason from your current position.

All you need to do is to try to be “christ like” in the way you think and how you perform your actions. The more you do this the more you will come to understand the hidden truths that God wants us to experience.

This is why many people here are saying that they see God in the smallest things all around us. They see him in each of us. They see him in the poor. And they see him in us when we move past the evils of our human nature and show love for others.

In other words, the truth about Gods existance is only revealed through experience. It takes faith to first walk the path of experience.

But anyways, back to the most infamous of all the arguments in atheism’s repertoire: evil. I apologize if I misrepresent someone’s position; this thread is enormous and I’m trying to go from memory.

Anyways, last I heard, God did nothing to stop suffering because:
1: it improves people
2: if God stopped some suffering, he’d have to stop all suffering, and that would be bad.

Your question is" if God exists why does he not stop suffering?

Let me try to answer this question. The answers that you gave are very weak.

Let me first explain what I have come to know to be the truth about God through my experience and faith.

Lets say that I put you in a room. That room has a light switch on the wall. There is a light above you that shines an keeps you at peace and keeps you alive.

This light above you is God. He fills your heart with love and that loveis so powerfull that it almost makes you cry. He is the source of your life.

In fact god loves you so much that he gave you that light switch. He would never want to force his love on you. After all, he loves you far too much to do that. His love is perfect.

Now, lets say you start to wonder what it would be like without God. Lets say that you make the choice to turn the light off.

Well… as soon as that happens there is an absence of God. You are in the dark and you don’t feel his love unless you have faith that he is still there. You even stumble around in the dark.

This is the nature of our existance right now. We are in the dark. That is why we say that Christ is the word of God that guides us back to that light switch and helps us turn it back on!

You see God loves us so much that he gave us his only son to help bring us back out of the darkness.

It is actually, our own fault that there is suffering in the world. The world could live in peace an love an find its way back to God. But sadly we chose not too. Sadly we reject god even though his love still exists.

It is lack of faith that causes suffering not God. We are to blame for it .

 

[kev7]

I would also like to add that God shares in our suffering. That is why Christ says, “what you do to the least of my brothers you do on to me”

So to say that God simply lets evil happen is wrong.

God experiences EVERY act of evil that we commit We should be ashamed of ourselves, but we are lucky enough to have a god that is forgiving. This love for us is perfect.

 

[hurst]

kev7:

What I am saying is that by mans reason alone we can’t prove or disprove the existance of God.

Then why would this be said in the Summa:

The existence of God and other like truths about God, which can be known by natural reason, are not articles of faith, but are preambles to the articles; for faith presupposes natural knowledge, even as grace presupposes nature, and perfection supposes something that can be perfected.
catholicprimer.org/summa/FP/FP002.html#FPQ2OUTP1

Thus, recognizing the existence of God does not require faith, since His existence can be demonstrated by the visible things of this world. But not everything about God can be known by natural reason, which is why revelation is required.

hurst

 

[Noggin]

buffalo:

Atheists - if you keep swimming in the ocean it is no wonder why you can’t see what is on land. Open your minds.

Many anecdotes shared in defense of faith can also be turned on its ear against the provider.

Your assertion that atheists are swimming at sea is a dig at an ideology you do not understand or have not taken the time to understand. An Atheist has opened his mind. Yours is the one that is closed.

For instance you have closed your mind to the possibility that Joseph Smith of the Mormons restored Jesus’ gospel (Mormons contend with the catholics in that sense of the meaning of Truth). How can you be so sure that you are right and Mormons are wrong?

Have you prayed about the Book of Mormon? That book explicitly promises you that God himself will tell you Mormonism is true. The Qu’ran? Allah surely won’t let you down. He will lead you to The One and Only Truth.

How do you know Catholicism is True? Feelings? As in the feelings that the Mormons/Muslims/Pentecostals/Jehovah’s Witnesses feel in that their religion is The True One?

If you for any reason reject the Mormon god’s challenge to ask him if Mormonism is true or not… then you have no basis on which to assert your Catholic beliefs as Truth.

What if it is you who is the one swimming out at sea who cannot see what is on land?

Can you see your arrogance then?

As an atheist, I feel amazingly grounded… in reality. I can dismiss the contradiction in religious faith. All religions claiming to be true cannot be true at the same time. God is nonsense and if he were to exist, he is one confused entity.

Strip god away and one becomes amazingly more accountable in moral terms than the theist can conceive. For if he is good, and seeks after good things, there is no hidden compulsion to do so-- only a push outward to positively evolve himself, his family and his society. It is all his doing.

Theists are good because if they are NOT good… to hell with them. Literally. Thus saith your god.

I’d rather be or do good for more pure reasons.

Noggin

 

[Alois]

It is actually, only true that a stone will fall down if it is subject to gravity. A stone doesn’t always have to be subject to gravity. So the problem with your example is that it first assumes a limited environment. With your example you have just shown that it is only possible to draw a conlcusion within a controled environment.

You can’t draw the same conclusion about God existance because you don’t have an understanding of all possible forms of existance.

We can only assume that a rock won’t drop because we know of enviroments in which it won’t drop. If gravity were uniform throughout the universe, we would assume that a rock drops uniformly across the universe. Your logic is backwards.

I’m sorry but I just don’t understand how lack of proof equals proof

How does lack of proof in Hindu gods prove that there aren’t Hindu gods? I hope you’re not eating beef if you continue down this path of logic.

First you said that there is proof and now you are saying that it is a possibilty! It doesn’t sound like you are very sure of things.

Exactly. Any open-minded person will keep any possibility open. We just assume that the possibility isn’t truth because we have no rational justification for it. I’m sure you don’t believe there’s an invisible rhino behind you, but the possibility is there.

There is nothing about the christian God that you can disprove in such a way. We are talking about Gods existance here not the Greek Pantheon. These false Gods where replaced with the christian God anyway.

This is a “One True” logical fallacy. You assume that your Christian God is the “One True” God; where’s your proof of it?

Don’t you realize that with your use of the word “improbable” you are open the possbility of it being probable? This is where I agree with you. Man will always live in doubt. It is only through his faith that he can say that come to know god not through his own mesurment.

There are two forms of faith: religous and rational. Religous faith demands that you always believe in something, no matter what. If you don’t, after all, you’re going to hell. (at least in the Christian faith) Rational faith is faith in gravity being constant, but at any time it might not be constant because of some unknown variable. Religous faith has no dobut, rational faith is all about doubt.

Lol… how can you claim to be an athiest and then claim that it is possible for NON christian Gods to exists?

He never did, he was being (obviously) hypothetical. Let’s keep things in context.

 

[Alois]

Thus, recognizing the existence of God does not require faith, since His existence can be demonstrated by the visible things of this world. But not everything about God can be known by natural reason, which is why revelation is required.

So you believe God exists because of existence itself?

 

[Alois]

I would also like to add that God shares in our suffering. That is why Christ says, “what you do to the least of my brothers you do on to me”

So to say that God simply lets evil happen is wrong.

God experiences EVERY act of evil that we commit We should be ashamed of ourselves, but we are lucky enough to have a god that is forgiving. This love for us is perfect.

I don’t see what this has to do with the debate at hand. You’re simply “saying so” instead of proving so. I can say a lot of things are true, but does that make them so?

 

[Alois]

What I don’t understand reading these posts; why does the athiest seem to insist all there is is what they know, and or can learn. Why can’t there be more? Why can’t therre be a power greater then the mind of man?

Why should there be more? Why should there be a meaning? Just because you want something doesn’t mean it will be there.

Why should you be wishing for some being to take you into Heaven when there are so many things yet to be achieved here?

 

[EnterTheBowser]

Problem of evil responses:

1- Suffering is just a lack of God; if we all accepted Jesus, there would be no suffering.
2- Sin exists in the world and that is the cause of suffering.
3- God experiences all the suffering that humans experience.

3 doesn’t even make any sense. Is it okay for me to allow you pain if I also experience the same pain?

I’m not sure exactly what 2 means. Is this about original sin - things like muscular dystrophy exist because of the ancient sin of our ancestor? If that’s the case, then it is nothing that could be properly called just be anyone who speaks English. If your father, for example, stole my car, does that make it okay for me to shoot your dog? Probably not.

Regarding 1: why, then, do people who do accept Jesus suffer, and who do those who do not prosper? Moreover, why doesn’t everybody know about Jesus? It hardly seems fair to let people suffer because they haven’t flipped a light switch that they don’t know is there. And lastly, I am treating this argument with way more seriousness than it deserves. Suffering is not a lack of God. What in the world does the pain of pancreatic cancer have to do with Jesus?

 

[Alois]

What in the world does the pain of pancreatic cancer have to do with Jesus?

They’ll find some connection. They always do. It’s the nature of the game. :yawn:

 

[EnterTheBowser]

Alright, kev7, is this your argument:
1-It is impossible to make a rational argument for either the existence of the nonexistence of God without knowing everything in the universe - “all forms of existence.”
2-Therefore one must take the existence or nonexistence of God on faith.

I wonder if you hold to the following (given that 1 is really just a specific instance of this more general statement):
1’-It is impossible to make a rational argument for either the existence or nonexistence of a thing without knowing everything in the universe

Now, this premise is immediately false. In the language of predicate logic, there are some sentences that are false in every structure. And some sorts of God probably fit into this category. But this probably isn’t enough to rebut the argument; maybe we can limit the premise to logically possible things.

However it is rather problematic, because it would seem to lead to the following conclusion:

2’- Therefore one must take the existence or nonexistence of a thing on faith.

But this applies to everything, every single thing we want to consider. And the real problem is that faith can’t rank beliefs - there’s no reason to have faith in one thing as opposed to another. Reason can say that hypothesis X is more reasonable than Y, but faith can hardly talk about whether one belief is better than another. One isn’t more “faith-ful” than another.

And furthermore, I’d assert that the premise, in addition to being problematic, is wrong. For one, it is ought to be intuitively obvious that we do not, in fact, need to know everything in order to know some things - or at least to have reasonable certainty. Again, in the language of logic, I do not need to know the entire structure to know if a sentence is true. For example, if we’re considering (N, <), I don’t need to know every single member of the relation < (and I can’t, seeing as how it’s infinite) to know that the following sentence is false: (for every)x(for every)y(x<y → y<x). I only need to know, for example, that 1<2 is a member of < and 2<1 is not. (Heck, if we want to consider a case other than the standard <, I don’t even need to know the general rule that the relation follows or all the members of the relation; if I know that 1<2 is a member of it and 2<1 is not, I can still conclude that the sentence is false)

That being said, there are often good reasons for rejecting a hypothesis, even if we don’t know every single thing that exists. And even in the absence of positive arguments for the nonexistence of God, should all positive arguments for the existence of God fail, parsimony provides a strong incentive for rejecting the God hypothesis.

Anyways, I’ll stop arguing this point if you’ll state the following: there are no rational reasons for believing in your God.