What do you consider proof of God, if anything?

[DavidHume]

I think that “organized” atheism is not a so-called better alternative to organized religion.

Maybe not, but maybe Unitarian Universalism is.

Having been an atheist for some time, I could tell you about what effects that had on my life. The things I did directly due to blasting God out of my life and, with Him, conscience, have caused me irreparable life-damage. So, it took a major beat-down to get me to reevaluate my belief system. It took the re-affirmation of conscience to put me back on the right track.

I’m very glad to hear that you got your life back on the right track. Naturally, I don’t believe that atheism necessarily implies the denial of conscience, but I can certainly see why it would appeal to accept both together.

I don’t mind belaboring this point. You are forgiven, I guess. I wish you well on your journey and look forward to more dialog with you. You have a unique gift; you have the ability to educe, to draw out information and thought from those you have discussions with, patiently and charitably. Plus, you have a good handle on the subjects you know.

I appreciate your compliments – you’ve definitely corrected many misconceptions I had about Aristotelian and Thomist metaphysics.

Here’s a thought-provoker which probably belongs in a separate thread: Assume that I decide that theism is better than atheism. What is there for me in Catholicism if I cannot, in good conscience, worship a God who does not preside over a system of universal reconciliation? This is not a hope of salvation for all; it is a demand, a prerequisite.

 

[1holycatholic]

For those who believe no proof is necessary

For fideists yes, for Catholics not so much.

For those who refuse to believe no proof is possible.

Substituting “possible” with “accepted” would be more apropos.

 

[Leela]

If I was talking about faith in the religious sense, as you seem to think I was, then yes I might be seen as “out of step”. But I was talking about plain old faith in certain things happening.
If you go back and look at my post that started this little jaunt you will see that I asked about whether there is anything in science that is accepted as Fact but cannot be proven.
This was responded to by a paragraph or two that basicallyonly said that science cannot prove anything. So if we cannot have proof it seems we are left with “faith” (like I have faith that the sun will rise). Then I was told that “Faith” isn’t the right word. by one person and a lengthy response from you that began by suspecting me of some “other” meaning or point.

All in all it appears that a simple answer is not possible to my initial simple question of whether there is anything that Science accepts exists but it cannot prove exists. Unless one takes the premise that everything that exists is aeccepted by science without proof because science cannot prove anything.

To be honest - I just started out having a little fun with the whole “proof” question. But as I’ve gotten responses it becomes glaringly obvious why Jesus told His disciples that we must accept faith like little children.
Cleanly - confidently - and simply. So that is how I try to accept and live my faith.

You deny it, but I see in the above the “it’s all just different flavors of koolade” move that I described and criticized earlier. You point out that science can’t prove anything (I agree depending on what you mean by proof) and say that all you mean by faith is the sort of unproven belief that the sun will rise tomorrow, but then jump to a completely different conception of faith in defense of religion when you say that “we must accept faith like little children.” You defend belief based on faith based on one definition, then use faith in your religion based on another. We believe things without proof all the time, but what we don’t do is believe things without evidence all the time which is what religous faith is.

What I’ve been suggesting is that instead of defining faith as distinct from proof, which is a useless distinction since proof is never the case, we ought to distinguish faith as defined in the Christian literature from belief based on evidence. We don’t generally accept beliefs like a little child. It would be a huge liability in our everyday lives to accept beliefs like little children. We want to have good reasons for our beliefs, and when we don’t have good reasons we make really bad decisions. The question I think you need to consider is why religious beliefs need to be accepted like a child when you wouldn’t think accepting beliefs like a child is generally a good thing at all.

I guess the long and short of all of this is -

GOD EXISTS - - - ALL THE REST IS DETAILS

Now, “Prove me Wrong!!!”

How might I try to do that? What sort of evidence would you consider to be inconsistent with the claim that God exists? If you can think of no way that anything would be any different if God did not exist, then it is meaningless to say that God does exist.

Best,
Leela

 

[djeter]

I think the whole question of the existence of God gets placed into perfect perspective by Alan Mittleman’s essay on Asking the Wrong Question. If you’ve never read it and debate these questions with atheists, you should. You can find it here:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/05/23/asking-the-wrong-question-a-meditation-on-the-question-%e2%80%9cdoes-god-exist%e2%80%9d/

A brief selection:

“The way the faithful use the language of “God the Father” and “His son Jesus Christ is constitutive of a way of life, without which the world would be poorer and darker. The work it does is not to name a mysterious being who may or may not exist or to conjecture under the guise of seeking a mostly mythic historical figure how he thought or felt about things that nowhere is he on record reflecting upon. The word God (or Jesus or the Holy Spirit) does not make a claim about the furniture of the universe. Rather, to speak of God (or Jesus or the Holy Spirit) is to underwrite a form of life that allows us to respond with love and courage and hope to the mystery out of which we come and toward which we progress.”

On the nature of the knowledge of God, Michael Novak has written a wonderful book called No One Sees God and worth a read for the faithful. He speaks to Mother Theresa’s and Carl Jung’s Dark Knowledge of God here:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/05/13/the-dark-knowledge-of-god/

 

[liquidpele]

I think the whole question of the existence of God gets placed into perfect perspective by Alan Mittleman’s essay on Asking the Wrong Question. If you’ve never read it and debate these questions with atheists, you should. You can find it here:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/05/23/asking-the-wrong-question-a-meditation-on-the-question-%e2%80%9cdoes-god-exist%e2%80%9d/

A brief selection:

“The way the faithful use the language of “God the Father” and “His son Jesus Christ is constitutive of a way of life, without which the world would be poorer and darker. The work it does is not to name a mysterious being who may or may not exist or to conjecture under the guise of seeking a mostly mythic historical figure how he thought or felt about things that nowhere is he on record reflecting upon. The word God (or Jesus or the Holy Spirit) does not make a claim about the furniture of the universe. Rather, to speak of God (or Jesus or the Holy Spirit) is to underwrite a form of life that allows us to respond with love and courage and hope to the mystery out of which we come and toward which we progress.”

On the nature of the knowledge of God, Michael Novak has written a wonderful book called No One Sees God and worth a read for the faithful. He speaks to Mother Theresa’s and Carl Jung’s Dark Knowledge of God here:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/05/13/the-dark-knowledge-of-god/

Very interesting, thank you for the links… however, I do question the following from the second link…

Atheists refer to Catholicism as “Theism.” This strategy is to set up a simplistic conception of God (the old white haired guy in the sky) or to lump all “Theisms” together and then to discredit some Old Testament caricature, an angry or vindictive God.

It’s easy enough to do, but it is dishonest. It is the God of the New Testament, The God of Thomas Aquinas, the Trinitarian God of Love who is a lot harder to get rid of.

The problem with it is that there are *many *people that do follow things in the old testament books and that have ridiculous views… many times have I heard someone quote the old testament as evidence of something! You can’t have it both ways, either stick with only the new or accept that the old is up for debate.

Grouping those who believe in a God as “theists” is just a convenience term, it is not meant to be derogatory by anyone that I know.

 

[Leela]

I think the whole question of the existence of God gets placed into perfect perspective by Alan Mittleman’s essay on Asking the Wrong Question. If you’ve never read it and debate these questions with atheists, you should. You can find it here:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/05/23/asking-the-wrong-question-a-meditation-on-the-question-%e2%80%9cdoes-god-exist%e2%80%9d/

I appreciate the author’s use of Buber:

"God, Buber felt, could not be discussed but only addressed—and that in the second person as “you.” To speak of God as if one were speaking of a thing, however recondite and mysterious, or of a distant person, was to speak of nothing more than a fictive character. For Buber, it seems, the word God named nothing real. Rather, the use of the word God, in the context of address, absorbs one in a way of life that touches on the real. All that we can really say of God is what we can say to God.

Faith, in this view, is never a set of belief claims. It is a way of life marked by trust, by affirmation of the goodness of being, by the repudiation of despair, and by an infinite openness to others and their needs. Buber contrasted religion, invidiously, to faith. Faith needs no tall tales. Religion cannot exist without them."

If faith did not entail factual belief claims for Christians, then I for one would have no problem at all with Christian faith.

I thought that it was an excellent article, but we still need to watch out for the “it’s all just different flavors of koolade” move.

He writes:

“If you think that belief must be tied rigorously to evidence, on the basis of what evidence ought one to live a life of love, courage, and hope? What stories bear truth for you, and on what basis do you believe they do so? Is truth separable from stories with respect to matters of human significance? Can persons in the end live without a sense of the sacred? Do we inevitably discover sacredness in (or ascribe sacredness to) something central to our lives as persons and societies? If so, are we not better off anchoring the sacred in historic patterns of thought and conduct than in fresh enthusiasms? Does science open up a vista for us of wonder and delight, an iron cage of technical problems and complex moral consequences, or both? Does faith? And in the end, within reason, how shall we decide?”

These are important points, and I agree that they are more about our orientation towards life rather than evidence. They are about creating reality rather than describing reality. But faith is tied to believing religious myths as historical facts. If all believers wanted to say is that these stories help us make sense of our lives, that such stories provide the context for humans to interpret experience, there would be no problem. Christianity takes such stories and tells them as if they were historical fact, as something that happened once in a given time and place, while myths are powerful and true because they describe things that happen all the time and are happening right now.

Best,
Leela

 

[JRKH]

You deny it, but I see in the above the “it’s all just different flavors of koolade” move that I described and criticized earlier. You point out that science can’t prove anything (I agree depending on what you mean by proof) and say that all you mean by faith is the sort of unproven belief that the sun will rise tomorrow,

I guess I’m just too dumb to understand what you are saying here. There are many levels and kinds of faith just as there are many levels oand kinds of “Proofs” (not that they “prove” anything)

but then jump to a completely different conception of faith in defense of religion when you say that “we must accept faith like little children.” You defend belief based on faith based on one definition, then use faith in your religion based on another. We believe things without proof all the time, but what we don’t do is believe things without evidence all the time which is what religous faith is.

The ability to complicate a simple thing is what the academic and the politician is very Good at. We see it every day. (It depends on what your meaning of is is")
Whether I talk about having faith in the Sun or Faith in the Son, it remains the same.
I began this by asking s imple question to which the academics among us responded that there is no simple answer because what I asked cannot happen (science cannot rpvoe anything). From there it has just become a merry-go-round ride.

What I’ve been suggesting is that instead of defining faith as distinct from proof, which is a useless distinction since proof is never the case, we ought to distinguish faith as defined in the Christian literature from belief based on evidence.

Agreed - But first we need to reach a cnosensus on the parameters of the “God” that the OP is asking us about.

We don’t generally accept beliefs like a little child. It would be a huge liability in our everyday lives to accept beliefs like little children.

I couldn’t disagree with you more here. We accept most of our beliefs like little children. In fact, (unless you are a huge cynic) I would say that we believe and accept on faith almost everything we see and hear in a given day and our overall belief systems are based largely upon this daily (name removed by moderator)ut.

We want to have good reasons for our beliefs, and when we don’t have good reasons we make really bad decisions.

Maybe

The question I think you need to consider is why religious beliefs need to be accepted like a child when you wouldn’t think accepting beliefs like a child is generally a good thing at all.

First of all, as I said above, we accept more things “Like little children” than you suspect. We even accept many - many things as existing that we have never seen or will ever see. We accept them because others tell us and/or we have some indirect experience of them.

When you were small you accepted Santa Claus - and no amount of dissuation by others would dent that belief. Why?? because mom and dad told you about him. You saw him at the Mall, and you saw the results of that belief on Christmas morning.
Now you are older and know that “Santa Claus”, as a person, does not exist. Or does he?? What does Santa represent? Joy - Giving - Love - Brotherhood - Forgiveness - Miracles and many other highly prized traits and possibilities. We even discover that the mythical Santa-Claus is based loosely on a very real and Holy man - A Bishop - St Nickolas.
So - were we wrong to accept Santa Claus when we were little?
Of course not - for Santa Claus as a “person” was easier for us to understand and learn about than all of the individual “good things” that Santa Claus represents.
As we mature we drop the “person” and cling to the Truths that the “personage” represented.
Accepting things as Children is the best way to learn the real truths.
Ever heard of the Book, “Everything I needed to know, I learned in Kindergarden”?

Peace
James

How might I try to do that? What sort of evidence would you consider to be inconsistent with the claim that God exists? If you can think of no way that anything would be any different if God did not exist, then it is meaningless to say that God does exist.

Best,
Leela

You can’t. By your own admission nothing can be proved.
One either accepts that there is a God, or they reject it.

Peace
James

 

[djeter]

These are important points, and I agree that they are more about our orientation towards life rather than evidence. They are about creating reality rather than describing reality. But faith is tied to believing religious myths as historical facts. If all believers wanted to say is that these stories help us make sense of our lives, that such stories provide the context for humans to interpret experience, there would be no problem. Christianity takes such stories and tells them as if they were historical fact, as something that happened once in a given time and place, while myths are powerful and true because they describe things that happen all the time and are happening right now.

Best,
Leela

I think you are mixing in a few things. True that Christianity is rooted in an historical reality of Jesus Christ and many references in the gospels have been historically verified. But not all stories are manifestations of historical reality and Christianity uses myth to explain many of its beliefs. Luke Timothy Johnson writes: "Myth is a language seeking to express a truth about the world and humans that lies beyond what we can test and prove. It seeks to express the basic truths of human existence: where do we come from, why are we here, and where are we going?..

When Paul says, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” [2 Corinthians 5:19], he speaks mythically. His terms “Christ” and “world” point to empirical realities. But their meaning is so dependent on a specific human story that they cannot be analyzed historically or scientifically. The terms “God” and “in Christ” and “reconciling …to himself” are beyond even the possibility of being demonstrated. God is not an object we can locate and measure. Reconciliation with God is not capable of being tested.

Without such mythic language, Christians could not say anything about the world’s origin or destiny in God. …Myth finds its natural expression in narrative, and the creed itself tells a simple story…Because God is the main character in the story, it is, in the most proper sense, mythic. Christians are therefore, people who claim to live within a story whose protagonist is God – a character whose very existence cannot be demonstrated by the means of knowing most respected by the world."

Faith is not “tied to believing religious myths as historical facts.” If you are talking the nature of faith and the “knowledge” that it leads to, I would recommend again the selection from Michael Novak:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/05/13/the-dark-knowledge-of-god/

I have a selection of three Flannery OConnor quotes that I always think help atheists to understand the Christian mindset (or at least my mindset). One is this:

Does Truth Have To Satisfy Emotionally?
"I can never agree with you that the Incarnation, or any truth, has to satisfy emotionally to be right (and I would not agree that for the natural man the Incarnation does not satisfy emotionally). It does not satisfy emotionally for the person brought up under many forms of false intellectual discipline such as 19th century mechanism, for instance.

Leaving the Incarnation aside, the very notion of God’s existence is not emotionally satisfactory anymore for great numbers of people, which does not mean the God ceases to exist. M. Jean-Paul Sartre finds God emotionally unsatisfactory in the extreme, as do most of my friends of less stature than he.

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally. A higher paradox confounds emotion as well as reason and there are long periods in the lives of all of us, and of the saints, when the truth as revealed by faith is hideous, emotionally disturbing, downright repulsive… Witness the dark night of the soul in individual saints. Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul."

more here: payingattentiontothesky.com/2009/05/15/three-selections-from-flannery-oconnors-spiritual-writings/

I think many moderns are looking for that “emotionally satisfying” Truth and the kind of dark knowledge that O’Connor, Novak and Jung refer to leave the only “emotionally satisfying” truth available to them to be atheism. How true that is, I don’t know. It’s very difficult to get into any discussions about these things because the shadow of Bill Maher casts too far.

DJ

 

[Leela]

You can’t. By your own admission nothing can be proved.
One either accepts that there is a God, or they reject it.

That’s not at all what I said. You CAN prove that a hypothesis is false, you just can’t prove that a hypothesis is always true. For a hypothesis to be scientifically valid it must be falsifiable. We have to be able to imagine the sort of evidence that would convince us that the claim is not true. If you can’t say what sort of evidence you would consider to be inconsistent with the claim that God exists, then it seems pretty meaninless for you to make that claim. A difference has to make a difference. What sort of experiences would you consider to be evidence that God does not exist?

 

[geometer]

That’s not at all what I said. You CAN prove that a hypothesis is false, you just can’t prove that a hypothesis is always true. For a hypothesis to be scientifically valid it must be falsifiable. We have to be able to imagine the sort of evidence that would convince us that the claim is not true. If you can’t say what sort of evidence you would consider to be inconsistent with the claim that God exists, then it seems pretty meaninless for you to make that claim. A difference has to make a difference. What sort of experiences would you consider to be evidence that God does not exist?

Well, Leela isn’t it reasonable to understand that we might not all have the same ability to obtain experiences? For instance not everyone would be physically fit enough to climb Mt. Everest. Isn’t it reasonable that there are not only ordinary experiences but also extraordinary experiences that are had by only a few people.

Saints have visions of God and also participate in miracles. This is how it is, but in the scripture we are all called to be saints. So it is a matter of choice. Some desire the experiences of the saints enough to attain to those kinds of experiences. Most will not or can not, like Darren in the TV series bewitched. For some people ontological insecurity can become overwhelming, even when being instructed in a philosophy 101 course. Extending ones knowledge of reality is very threatening to very many people.

I really don’t believe that one must be so defiant about what people report about there personal experience. It is a matter of discernment and trust. It is not a matter of gaining physical measurements in order to isolate elements of a new technology. That’s just tinkering.

When we report our own experience or hear the experiences of others all the possiblities are simply not known. You have to accept that there simply have to be people who have experienced greater varieties of real experiences than you. Your metaphysics simply can not embrace every kind of real experience, not yours, not anyones…

 

[RobNY]

That’s not at all what I said. You CAN prove that a hypothesis is false, you just can’t prove that a hypothesis is always true. For a hypothesis to be scientifically valid it must be falsifiable. We have to be able to imagine the sort of evidence that would convince us that the claim is not true. If you can’t say what sort of evidence you would consider to be inconsistent with the claim that God exists, then it seems pretty meaninless for you to make that claim. A difference has to make a difference. What sort of experiences would you consider to be evidence that God does not exist?

Are you claiming that falsifiability is a necessary condition for philosophical theses? Would you side, then, with the logical positivists?

You may be right when you say “for a hypothesis to be scientifically valid it must be falsifiable.” But then you go on to say that the claim that God exists is meaningless unless one provides the conditions of falsifiability. But the claim that God exists is a philosophical, not a scientific, thesis.

You are led, then to this problem. Either keep,

1. For a hypothesis to be scientifically valid it must be falsifiable.

with the result that you can no longer conclude that proofs for God’s existence require falsifiability.

Or, amend your statement to,

1. For any hypothesis to be valid, it must be falsifiable.

The problem with this is that, (a) its truth value seems inscrutable, (b) it seems self-defeating, a la the famous refutation of the logical positivists, i.e., that (2) is not itself a falsifiable hypothesis.

I would say, myself, that your statement seems like a relic of outmoded mid-20th century logical positivism.

God bless,

-Rob

 

[bobzills]

1. For any hypothesis to be valid, it must be falsifiable.

There is a question here about what is meant by falsifiable. For example, take the statement true in the real world, “I have a mother and a father.” Now the fact is that this is true in the real world, but in the virtual or conceptual world, perhaps we could conceive of a situation in the past which would result in this not being true, say my parents did not get married. However, that situation did not occur in reality and therefore how would you falsify such a truth: “I have a father and a mother.”

 

[geometer]

There is a question here about what is meant by falsifiable. For example, take the statement true in the real world, “I have a mother and a father.” Now the fact is that this is true in the real world, but in the virtual or conceptual world, perhaps we could conceive of a situation in the past which would result in this not being true, say my parents did not get married. However, that situation did not occur in reality and therefore how would you falsify such a truth: “I have a father and a mother.”

I think she means that for an hypothesis to be scientific there must be a real test of the hypothesis that could show that it is false. It can pass such a test and be verified as true, and still have fulfilled the requirement of falsefiability.

Some proposals are not falsifyable because they are existentially contingent. Like evolution. No one has ever observed macro-evolution, we have no idea of what the biochemistry would be. So, the hypothesis that macro-evolution has happened in the past can not be tested. In the scientific sense evolution does not exist, because of lack of observational data.

Just like that Vietnamese deerlike creature was said not to exist, until reports were verified by competent observers. Even though, there were many very acurate wood cuts of the creature known for quite a while before it was photographed.

Kodak is a actually worshiped is some circles as the god of our ontological understanding.

The woolly horse in Tibet was also said to be completely extinct for maybe millions of years. But, surprize they still raise woolly horses in Tibet.

Or the ceilacanth fish thought to be extinct for 80 million years, found in deep sea waters in the 1930’s.

All we need is one reproducible observation of evolution, and then there’ll be do it yourself kits for your kids to play with…

 

[JRKH]

That’s not at all what I said. You CAN prove that a hypothesis is false, you just can’t prove that a hypothesis is always true. For a hypothesis to be scientifically valid it must be falsifiable. We have to be able to imagine the sort of evidence that would convince us that the claim is not true. If you can’t say what sort of evidence you would consider to be inconsistent with the claim that God exists, then it seems pretty meaninless for you to make that claim. A difference has to make a difference. What sort of experiences would you consider to be evidence that God does not exist?

I apologize for the misunderstanding.

My original question was this:

Is there anything that is scientifically accepted that cannot be proven?

The response was that Science cannot “prove” anything to which I responded that, without proof we must take things on faith.
The use of the term “Faith” was then disputed, or at least called into question.

Now, by the above you are saying that Science cannot prove the sun does exist, but rather would need to prove it does not exist. Is that right?
If it is then, in the Matter of God, it appears we must work from the viewpoint that He does exist unless it can be shown that He does not exist.

Of course - as you say above, we would have to agree on what sort of evidence would be valid. Which brings us back to the central issue of the fact that there is no agreed upon understanding of either the “God” or the “reasonable evidence” (proof) between us.
However I have not seen anyone address this issue so we are left with talking past one another.

Peace
James

 

[liquidpele]

I apologize for the misunderstanding.

My original question was this:

Is there anything that is scientifically accepted that cannot be proven?

The response was that Science cannot “prove” anything to which I responded that, without proof we must take things on faith.
The use of the term “Faith” was then disputed, or at least called into question.

Now, by the above you are saying that Science cannot prove the sun does exist, but rather would need to prove it does not exist. Is that right?
If it is then, in the Matter of God, it appears we must work from the viewpoint that He does exist unless it can be shown that He does not exist.

Of course - as you say above, we would have to agree on what sort of evidence would be valid. Which brings us back to the central issue of the fact that there is no agreed upon understanding of either the “God” or the “reasonable evidence” (proof) between us.
However I have not seen anyone address this issue so we are left with talking past one another.

Peace
James

You have a major misconception there. Lets say I have a theory that the sun revolves around the Earth. There is evidence for that… it comes up and goes down the same each day… you can predict it, etc. However, science says that while you have evidence for it, it can’t be “proven”… but it can be disproven, which it was.

It was not “faith” because we didn’t just accept it. We found, though further testing, that it was a false theory, and thus abandoned it in search of a new theory that then explained all the new evidence as well. Think about how the church perceived this new evidence, and you’ll see the big difference between “it’s the current theory” and “faith”.

 

[MindOverMatter]

Reasonable world-veiw

We only live once. So to me, it is not simply about what we can know by certainty. This is to rigid, and in terms of practical living, is unreasonable. It is about which is the most reasonable thing to believe about “being” while you exist. What is the most reasonable world-view?

Reasonable beliefs in critical times and all times.

I believe there are in fact irrefutable arguments for the existence of God in so far as they are based upon reasonable axioms. What i mean by this is that, before we ever come to the question of God, there are in fact certain concepts that are reasonable to believe in; such as, there is such a thing as change and being. I cannot “prove” with absolute certainty that there is in fact such a thing as change, and i dare say that some would even argue that i cannot prove that i exist. However it is reasonable to believe that i exists and that there is change, as they appear to be evident in everything we do; and are necessary in our actually doing anything or even thinking. In other words, it is impossible for me to discover that i don’t exist, or that there is no change, or that i don’t have freewill, for my even asking such questions presupposes that there is such a thing as freewill, change and existence. We have “personal knowledge” of “truth” only in respect of these things being true. It is therefore pointless and unreasonable to ever consider the negative as being true, in regards to reasonable beliefs, even if they are true. Also, it follows from these axioms or beliefs, that God necessarily exists. We can be certain of Gods existence insofar as they follow from what appears to be self evident to the senses. The fact is, we would not under normal circumstances question that there is such a thing as change or being since such things seems obvious. But we seem to want to apply such skepticism in regards to Gods existence when we realize that God follows from such principles or when we want to prove a purely materialistic world-view. Suddenly what was so reasonable before, is now under attack. I find that interesting.

I will argue this.

In order for reality to be sufficiently explained, there must lie at its root an absolutely perfect and timeless being. Any other explanation for existence lacks the sufficiency and the fullness of explanation. Anything that purports to explain the reason why there is such a thing as a reality, must have within its role as an ultimate explanation, objective “perfection”. It must be a perfect being. For anything that lacks perfection is reliant upon something else, and thus we have an infinite regress that is always reliant on something else, never fully coming to a reason for why there is something that changes. You have an “infinite chain” that is reliant on something that never existed outside of it. Thus there is no reason for it to exist in the first place, there is no potentiality for it; because the potentiality for its existence infinitely transcends and precedes its being, and therefore doesn’t exist. Thus an infinite regress is like fools gold. It looks like an explanation; but its a false explanation in respect of sufficiency. Its an unreasonable thing to believe, even if its true, just like it is unreasonable to believe that there is no such thing as change or existence or objective reality. It is a more stable and conceptually satisfying idea that time and effect proceeds from that which is objective perfection; perfect being.

One can either remain agnostic or embrace the best explanation. I don’t have to prove the existence of perfection to any degree of certainty, because it already makes the best sense of existence as a concept or a principle of being. It necessarily follows that anything which can fully explain existence, must explain itself and exists of its own accord necessarily and timelessly, and thus is by definition perfect. Otherwise existence has no reason for being, no explanation; it shouldn’t exist if you believe that all things have an explanation. The only other explanation is that reality exists for no reason. One could say that there is such a thing as the brute fact. But scientific brute facts are not explanations, but rather they express the inability of a person to understand the reason for somethings existence in respect of physics. There is no justified reason to believe that a different explanation cannot be sought elsewhere. If you have no unwarranted prejudice against the supernatural, a perfect transcendent being is the best explanation in terms of actually trying to explain everything.

It is apparent to me, however, that i only understand perfection by way of analogy, so it seems there is an aspect of perfection that is for ever clouded by mystery in so far as my inability to comprehend, but it is still fully explanatory as a necessary principle of existence; it must exist. But in any case, I know what perfection is not. It is not that which changes or is caused to change, or begins to exist. Such things do not exist by virtue of their own existence. They exist by virtue of that which is ultimately “existence” by nature of its being.

Thus existence transcends that which is changing beginning and becoming.

Therefore it is reasonable to believe that there is such a thing as a “super-nature”, from which all physical laws originate. It is not physical. It transcends all time and space while permeating all things at the same time. It is by “nature” existence.

The only way to defeat this world-veiw is to say that the world is not rational. But is this reasonable to believe?

 

[DavidHume]

The only way to defeat this world-veiw is to say that the world is not rational. But is this reasonable to believe?

Now that’s an opening I can drive a truck through…

 

[JRKH]

You have a major misconception there.

I don’t see that I have a misconception here at all. I did not say anything about how the sun acted but rather that the sun exists. The rest of what your post below relates to the activities of the heavenly bodies and to perceptions

Lets say I have a theory that the sun revolves around the Earth. There is evidence for that… it comes up and goes down the same each day… you can predict it, etc. However, science says that while you have evidence for it, it can’t be “proven”… but it can be disproven, which it was.

Yet in all of this the existance of the sun was a given and that is what I stated in my post.

It was not “faith” because we didn’t just accept it. We found, though further testing, that it was a false theory, and thus abandoned it in search of a new theory that then explained all the new evidence as well.

Actually what you relate above is incorrect. The research that resulted in the new view of how the solar system works was not about the sun but rather an effort to explain the retrograde movements of certain planets at certain times. This led to the Sun centered theory. However, while not disupting this theory of the Solar system, one could still make the argument that everything revolves around the earth simply because this is where we view everything from.
My personal observation continues to be the same as the ancients. The Sun rises and sets while I stand still. The only way that I personally can accept the “Sun Centered” theory is to accept the “evidences” and “proofs” of someone else who says that we do NOT stand still.
Finally, while I can accept the logic of the arguments and it does make for a “neater” model of the Solar system, this new theory changes nothing about my existance under the sun which has been continually “Accepted” as existing and is, virturally alone, responsible for Charging the Earth with Life.

Think about how the church perceived this new evidence, and you’ll see the big difference between “it’s the current theory” and “faith”.

Perhaps, but I dare say there have been many new theories down through the centuries that have been scoffed at and ridiculed just within the scientific community that were later became a “standard”. Therefore it can be said that, once a perticular theory has achieved a widespread acceptance over a long period of time, it becomes accepted with “faith” that it is correct. Any change to such a generally accepted and long held theory is almost always met with widespread scepticism.

Of course in all of this the “Sun” remains - and is scientifically accepted without proof.

Now finally - None of this gets us any closer to a mutually agreed upon “God” around which this discussion needs to revolve. Is there anyone out there who is willing to discuss a “definition” of God by which we can judge the “evidence”???

Peace
James

 

[Leela]

Are you claiming that falsifiability is a necessary condition for philosophical theses? Would you side, then, with the logical positivists?

You may be right when you say “for a hypothesis to be scientifically valid it must be falsifiable.” But then you go on to say that the claim that God exists is meaningless unless one provides the conditions of falsifiability. But the claim that God exists is a philosophical, not a scientific, thesis.

You are led, then to this problem. Either keep,

1. For a hypothesis to be scientifically valid it must be falsifiable.

with the result that you can no longer conclude that proofs for God’s existence require falsifiability.

Or, amend your statement to,

1. For any hypothesis to be valid, it must be falsifiable.

The problem with this is that, (a) its truth value seems inscrutable, (b) it seems self-defeating, a la the famous refutation of the logical positivists, i.e., that (2) is not itself a falsifiable hypothesis.

I would say, myself, that your statement seems like a relic of outmoded mid-20th century logical positivism.

Hi Rob,

Thanks for your response. Your questions may bring some clarity to this discussion.

I do mean to describe only scientific hypotheses when I say that in order for a hypothesis to be scientifically valid it must be falsifiable, but I think that someone is enterring into that sort of claim in stating that there is proof that God exists in this thread. People have cited all sorts of evidence and have thus enterred into the evidence game where it is reasonable to ask “if this evidence is supposed to ammount to support of your claim, then what sort of evidence would be inconsistent with your claim? What would disprove your claim?” If the fact that a plane “miraculously” lands in the Hudson is evidence of God’s existence, what does it mean when a plane crashes in Buffalo? If there is no answer, then your belief in God is not based on evidence after all.

If I were a believer, I would take djeter’s approach. I would argue that the question of proof for God is the wrong question to be asking.

Best,
Leela

 

[liquidpele]

Now finally - None of this gets us any closer to a mutually agreed upon “God” around which this discussion needs to revolve. Is there anyone out there who is willing to discuss a “definition” of God by which we can judge the “evidence”???

Peace
James

I think you took my example of the sun too literally. It was just an example of a scientific theory that was adjusted with new evidence.

Why does the discussion need to revolve around defining God? Surely everyone would not agree.