God does proclaim himself to every individual. He is self-evident in the nature of creation, the ordered nature of reality, and is knowable to the intellect through reflection and study of creation. There is a difference between him not making himself evident, and people refusing to acknowledge his presence. You cannot blame God when people refuse to see him in the world around them.
Perhaps I am missing something very important. Have God ever did proclaimed himself to you? He didn’t in my case and many others I know.
God existence is not self evident at all. We didn’t need any argument if it was otherwise. You are self evident to me meaning that I know there is a person trying to communicate with me. Why things should be so complicate when it comes to God case, meaning that people are so desperate and different in accepting God?
Did I refuse to acknowledge your existence? Yet, I can resist in accepting God because he did’t provide a minimal level of evidence that he exist. That is very important when it comes to faith since your destiny is tighten to accept something you have no evidence for his existence at all.
I was not blaming God. I just raise a question.
If you’re looking for a physical / spiritual manifestation then… well, actually He did for me, but I know that’s not the norm. That does not change the he proclaims himself to us. Just because he doesn’t do it on your terms doesn’t mean he doesn’t do it.
Again, the fact that he doesn’t meet your personal criteria for self-evident doesn’t change the fact that He is. The very reality of existence is proof of the necessity of an external creator. We would not exist without an external force to create us, nothing comes from nothing, and since there is something, that something has to have been created. From there, we can look at the nature of existence, the reality of Good, the ordered nature of reality, the existence of rationality, the mathematical laws, constants, etc, and see that there is intelligence in that external creator.
Aside from, you know, existence itself, as noted above… I’d say that, at least, is minimal evidence for an external creator, which then causes you to consider the nature of that creator.
I know you weren’t, which I appreciate. I’ve just seen this sort of argument turned against God frequently, so it’s sort of a reflexive inclusion whenever the topic comes up >_>
I agree with this. I was essentially raised in an agnostic household. My parents never took me to church, and my Mom has practiced Wicca, black magic, astrology and she is a strong believer in reincarnation. I was surrounded by heretical beliefs. My step-dad is a Mason, and he also believes in reincarnation. Despite that, I have always known that God existed. Always. My faith never wavered on that. I see evidence of God everywhere that I look. The miracle of creation just amazes me. I know there are some people who believe that the existence of the earth is just some cosmic accident but I don’t see how that can be. The absolute perfection in every single created thing is just an amazement to me. The diversity of life is amazing. The way some forms of life are co-dependent on one another - there is one type of bee that is completely dependent on a single flower, and that flower is only pollinated by that one species of bee. It’s hard to explain that simply by evolution, because both the flower and the bee would have had to come into existence at the same time. Stuff like that.
First, why God should make difference? Second, how could you be sure that your experience, physical/spiritual, was related to God? It could be simply Satan trying to cheat you.
This criteria is very important. Just think about it, you go to Heaven because of your experience and other go to Hell.
I had a separate thread on ontological argument. To make it short, one need to understand consciousness, which is the essence of any being with the ability to experience and create freely. Existence is a mode of experience. Consciousness is primary and cannot be created or annihilated. Existence is not primary hence all ontological argument are false.
It does not. I know that you are a conscious being. Your existence just allow us to communicate.
Fair enough.
Isn’t uncertainty part of the nature of things?
What do you mean about why God should make a difference? Do you mean, why does he tangibly reveal himself to certain people and not others? I honestly have no clue, and couldn’t even offer a guess. Sorry.
No, I do not go to Heaven because of my experience. If I go to Heaven, it will be because I’ve persevered in God and not given in to selfish desires. When my experience ended, all the normal, every day troubles returned; some of them even got worse. I could have chosen to ignore the experience and write it off as a delusion and the experience would have profited me nothing. The only reason I chose to follow it, beyond the personal conviction that it truly was God speaking to me, was because I was open to the possibility of God. If I had already made up my mind that there was no God, then I would have written this off as a delusion and gone about my day. Most people have some experience of God frequently (not like mine, but like many I’ve had since, when I interact with other people, or with nature, or with mathematics), but many of them have already closed their minds to the possibility of God, so they do not see or accept the experience when it happens. Ultimately, this close-mindedness is not God’s fault, it is ours when we decide to stop seeking answers.
Yeah, I remember that thread. I also remember refuting it. I won’t repeat my arguments again here. Suffice it to say, I disagree with your premise, and pretty much everything that flows from it.
In order for us to communicate, you must consider that I am an intelligent being capable of communication. You then must also consider if my understanding of words coincides with yours. You see my words, and you derive conclusions about my nature (a human being engaged in debate with you, on the opposing side, who believes in God) from those words. Similarly, when we view creation, Gods "words’ to us in this argument, we consider the nature of a being who would create something that I’m pretty sure we’d all agree is beautiful, magnificent, vast, complex, and well-ordered.
No, it doesn’t follow. Just look at number of religions and how confused people are on what the truth is. This seems to be more work of Satan than God.
Yes.
Why not? God has’t revealed himself to me as clear as Satan did.
No.
No. There are two ways to attack such a argument: 1) Where the mover (God) comes from? 2) We are consciousness and had a chance to become human. Consciousness is primary and cannot be created or annihilated.
Please read the previous comment.
How could Satan exist without God?
Yes.
No problem.
That is alright.
But your spiritual experiences direct your actions for future, hence they are matter. That is all my point.
Which part you don’t agree: Consciousness is primary or existence is not primary,
I don’t think so. What you call words of God, Genesis for example, is full of flaws and contradictions.
He is simply a conscious being, like me and you, and does need a creator. Consciousness is primary hence it cannot be created.
Imagine a world in which God revealed himself to everyone, in such a way that there could be no more doubt about his existence than one could doubt the existence of the sun or the moon. Imagine a world in which God appeared on a regular basis to every single person just as he appeared to Adam or Moses. How would that world differ from this one? Well, people would probably be much better behaved. Of course, they would still have freedom to disobey God, but they would be much less likely to, because they’d have a much harder time convincing themselves that they’d get away with it. And in many cases, when people do wrong, they can only do so because they’ve convinced themselves that what they are doing isn’t really wrong; such beliefs would be much harder to sustain for people in regular direct communication with an omniscient omnibenevolent being. Also, there would be no diversity of religions, as there is in this world; you would expect in such a world there would be only one religion which everyone followed, since all religious disputes could be instantly solved just by asking God.
I couldn’t follow the last part of your post. I agree with you that a world without doubt is a better place to live. I just couldn’t understand how did you conclude that such a world is impossible!?
I don’t know the factual answer but how about this? What if it is quite difficult for a person to meet God face to face. The story of Moses has a part where God tells him that he would reveal himself by passing by him but he could not look directly at him because Moses would die. Perhaps it is nothing like meeting a human being. Maybe that is why God chooses a person that has the ability to actually listen to him and follow his directions and then sends that person to speak to people. In the case of Jesus, he chose 12 disciples to carry out the spreading of the Gospel. But Jesus himself was killed after like 3 years of ministry. That is because the world could not accept him. The truth is, Bahman, most of us are evil and we are more likely to kill God than worship him because we are more inclined to listen to Satan than him. That’s a message most people find hard to accept because we tend to think we are good people. Jesus came to teach us evil people how to be saved. He said he did not come to call the righteous.
You deny reality. You make yourself a god when you deny that uncertainty is part of life. At the same time you deny uncertainty is a part of life, here you are asking questions about God. Does that make logical sense?
So you have always been conscious and were not created. Seriously? That’s an incredible assertion. Literally in-credible, it is not believable by a reasonable person.Originally Posted by Bahman
No. There are two ways to attack such a argument: 1) Where the mover (God) comes from? (Is that something you are uncertain about??)
2)We are consciousness and had a chance to become human. Consciousness is primary and cannot be created or annihilated.
God is omnipotent and omniscient. It would be very easy for him to reach his creatures. Don’t you think?
I don’t deny reality. Uncertainty in the sense that we cannot know future is acceptable, since the life of others are involved in. The rest is certain otherwise we couldn’t deal with reality, simply we could depend on things which are not intellectual.
This is not an incredible assertion. Consciousness is simply primary. Existence is the manifestation of consciousness and it is not primary, hence it is very easy to understand that you as human being didn’t exist and now exist. God is simply consciousness considering the definition of it: Consciousness is the essence of any being with the abilities to experience and create freely.