Existence of God?

Ok, I’m always amazed at some of the arguments that so called intellectual geniuses come up with. If you examine a common oak leaf. The cellular structure of just one cell of that leaf is so complex and it works so perfectly with other components within the leaf that it is rediculous to say that there is not a supreme being that created the earth. The “Big Bang Theory” and the Evolution Theory have less evidence to back them up than saying there is a supreme being that created everything. The laws of science prohibit both of the theories above from being proved.
The facts lead to this: God made everything. Read the Bible and try and find flaws in it…

-Twolegsforwalking…

That science cannot prove these theories is not a comment on the theories but on the rigours of scientific process. Scientific integrity is such that even that if we drop an apple from a tree, science will not claim it was and will always be tru that it will drop. Religion on the other hand has decided to avoid these rigours for the sake of convinience in faith.

Secondly, the big bang theory, has been disputed in science, and is not nessesarily true. However it is based on evidence and not on whim like God is, there are far less unsubstantiated assumtions is this than in religion, which is packed almost entirly with single source information.

Thirdly is you look at the logical method of Occams razor, it is that the simplest thing is oftent the most true, and we should cut away at something until we find the most minimal explination. Either you have no real concept of what being all powerful would entail, or you have a true lack of understanding of science if you can say that it would be simpler for God to create the universe than for it to be non-religious. The laws of science are not abstract plucked out of mid air, but are based on a continuous foundation of laws. If followed in progression with the correct level of math, can be elegantly simple and beautiful.

I know very little about science, however I do know that…

Read the Bible and try and find flaws in it…
[/quote]

there is flaws in the Bible, and that there are scientific explanations for several ‘religious’ and ‘miracal’ events such as the plagues of Egypt and Moses etc…

Mount Etna errupted causing all the plagues, due to ash fall (darkness), blood river (dying fish from ash etc). Etna is miles away from Egypt but it was suggested that at that tie of year there was winds that explained the travels or the ash and a possible humongous tidal wave (the draw back and release of waters in the marsh land causing the ‘red sea split’ *this is not the red sea it is a translation mistake apparantly).

You can believe what you want. I don’t believe whole heartedly in these explanations but they make more sense to me than s omnipotent omniscient being controlling the elements.

There are other contradictions in the Bible, they include the teachings of divorce:
It was said (by Jesus) that divorce should be allowed if one of the couple has been unfaithful - Matthew 19:9
But it is also said that marriage to another person is adultery - Mark 10:10-12
So does this then mean that one can marry and divorce but can not then remarry?
What about God’s will to be fruitful and reproduce, does this left unfulfilled if you are the victim of domestic abuse in your first marriage, (a mere example, sorry if it offends anyone)

Your comments…

Starting with what you said about the splitting of the Red Sea. When you say the Mt. Etna caused all the plagues please explain to me how it caused the rest of the miracles… "Mount Etna errupted causing all the plagues, "-Quote…
You also talked about divorce. First of all, the divine standard for marriage is lifelong commitment to one’s spouse, and nothing else. Jesus makes this very clear that marriage is God’s ideal standard. It was goo that you chose the verses that you did because in our present society divorce is extremely common…So you are asking if Jesus is contridicting himself…No, I don’t think he is. I can’t write up my whole argurement right now so go to this website and read the article from this URL: christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-f004.html

Thanks for replying…

TL

That’s not true, all three theories can logical work together. God creates the big bang; this in turn then starts the chain reaction of evolution. Because God theatricality speaking can do anything then this is a possibility.

Twolegsforwalking:

It would seem that the concept of God is made up on a whim or as some claim as a psychological response to fear at the knowledge (or assumption) of eternal oblivion(death). This would seem to be the simplest explanation, but is it necessarily the only POSSIBLE one? Indeed, if consciousness does indeed depend upon brain process it would seem that the concept of God is ultimately a CAUSED phenomenon, and as such we have the function of the brain to account for the concept of God.

However, we cannot even begin to constrict or limit the causal structure of the world based on what we know (and even more sinisterly, what we “cannot know”), as the only thing we even vaguely understand in terms of cause-and-effect is physical/physical causality in terms of forces.
When it comes to consciousness, we cannot rationally establish a causal nexus between conscious experience and the physical, much less rationally establish the conceptual fact that consciousness depends on the physical in order to EXIST.

On this understanding, who can say that it is impossible for a God, conceived as a disembodied consciousness with causal powers over the world to have enabled the Big Bang and biological evolution? How can we establish that this is NOT the case?

In my view, the world that we experience is ultimately an “apparent” world susceptible to a vast number of logically posssible scenarios, agents, and causes as to how this world came to be-and no matter how strongly we may believe one possibility to be, for all we know the opposing possibility might be the one that is true.

But, this is only my view,
Jay M. Brewer
phenomenal_graffiti@yahoo.com

Why the h*** would God want to create Earth???!

d

why not?

phenomenal graffit@yahoo.com

Hey maybe we thought of TV before he did?

From: phenomenal graffit
To: Blutag

Probably not

Hey atleast i know God created the real world before MTV did rimshot

The world around us is very complex indeed. Some argue that the “apparent design” observered in nature means there is an intelligent designer. Well, the oak leaf can be as complex as you want it to be, but by looking at things in that perspective, aren’t there things that we could easily have designed better? Why not have it in our DNA that we couldn’t get sick, or couldn’t get physically hurt? Or that we couldn’t commit acts of evil? The point is that there are facts about nature, like the complexity of the oak leaf. These can’t be denied. The oak leaf is a complex structure. The question is what best explains the facts. This is where using GOD comes into question. There are ways to explain that oak leaf and it’s complexity based on science, physics, evolution etc. None of these require the blatant appeal to faith that a solution based on GOD does. So, with the two options on the plate, GOD or no GOD, which best explains the facts? Science does for one main reason. It can explain the world around us and it’s complexity, or it has the possibility of doing so, without the necessity for us to make a leap of faith, putting GOD in the spotlight. Any theory that can explain something with less on the needing end of assumption by the believer has more weight in the world of truth, does it not? Faith is needed because there is no direct link from the natural world to the supernatural world of GOD. That link is forged from the material of faith, and science comes along and suddenly the question turns from did GOD create the world to the question of GOD even existing. That distinction alone puts GOD’s position of CEO of reality and existence into doubt from the get-go, let alone his existence and role in the Universe as concrete and absolute, and we are told that we need faith in GOD, so right back at square one…

I agree with this, if I have understood it correctly. Are you saying that God is possibly the product of our fear of the unknown?
If so I think that is possible. But if we look at how fear and ignorance are interlinked:

part education (leaarning something but not all) leads to
partial ignorance which encourages imagination which can lead to
fear which with the help of opinions and imagination can lead to hate and
prejudice and eventually to
discrimmination.

This is only a question (I think)

but which way is this going? against the Christian faith or is the Christian faith encouraging this towards other things?

To: Sparky and Twolegsforwalking
From: phenomenal graffiti

It is indeed entirely possible (and even necessary) that belief in God arose from a psychological response to the fear of eternal oblivion, as some sort of supernatural middleman to wake us up after death.

But in all of the minds of all of the reflective or speculative humans that have existed in the history of the world, are we to expect that belief in God hinges ultimately and solely on fear of the unknown?

It would seem that it is equally possible that to some theists, belief in God persists because the concept ultimately stands the test of “whether or not exists” because God as conceived is a being that is naturally imperceptible on some views. There is only one other “substance” in the real world that is naturally imperceptible regardless of the existence of God or not: consciousness.

If God is conceived as a disembodied consciousness rather than some mystical “superghost” as described in some biblical texts we have the perfect nomologically (naturally) imperceptible being that resists atheistic assertions of nonexistence due to failure to show up to empirical court.

Most theists hold that while the world around us can certainly be explained by physical phenomena(and psychophysical phenomena) wholly without invoking “the Diety”-nothing in known science, philosophy, and epistemology does not rule the Creator out, as I argue that under the Disembodied Consciousness Criterion, borrowing interactionism to give this God causal powers over the physical world per Chalmers, we have cloned two indistinguishable worlds that for all we know could be the real world: An atheistic world and a theist world(following the Disembodied Consciousness Criterion and throwing away the “supernatural” and “spiritual” conceptions of God)

So the reason that the philosophy of God is divided between theist and atheist is the imperceptible nature of God, making it equally impossible to either prove or disprove God’s existance.
What would your conclution be if you were on niether side? Would you say that there may very well be no proof that there is a God, but there is no proof that there is not a God, therefore God must exist?
I’m not actually against God’s existence, I just think that ‘but there’s no proof against God either’ is logically sound but is a weak retort.

I also think that to call God a consciousness is to try and make connections to familar concepts to try and explain God. It would be using ‘consciousness’ as a metaphore, as consciousness is a term used for the mindstate of humans, and God is not human.

Are there many theologists here? It seems to me (from reading other posts here) that Christian people argueing for the existence of God overlook a valuable resource, being the texts of other religions. I say this assuming that a lot of christians seem to be fine with other religions on the basis that they’re all the same God anyway. One source I would like to hear about (if anyone here knows about it already) is about Kabbalah, as some sources I’ve read have said that Kabbalah is where Judaism orginated from. Could anyone here verify that? If that is true then as Christianity comes from Judaism then Kabbalah might be an excellent place to learn about the roots of God.
There are also sites that say Kabbalah stems from Judaism, though that was too long ago to be accurately established. Either way it’s a good source.

To: Mentat Monkey
From: Phenomenal Graffiti

As God is naturally imperceptible, it is impossible to “prove” whether or not God exists. But this is a far cry from saying: “Since you can’t prove God does not exist, then God exists.” No one (at least I’m not) jumping to ontologically committed grounds because one cannot prove a negative.

I simply claim (again and again) that based on the imperceptibility of God, just as it is conceptually wrong-headed for a theist to INSIST that there DEFINITELY IS a God, it is just as wrong-headed for the atheist to DEFINITELY INSIST that there isn’t…because the imperceptibility of God leaves the question open.(Matt from Laguna Beach in another philosophy room stated this excellently)

Ultimately, we determine what exists and what does not exist (primarily) by the use of the five senses. Why do we say that the tooth fairy doesn’t exist, because we do not discern the tooth fairy with the five senses apart from representations of the entity in books, on television, or by word of mouth. We do not see the tooth fairy independently and spatiotemporally manifested apart from two-dimensional or verbal mediums.

This is what I call: “demonstrativism”(my term) for the fact that we determine what exists and what does not primarily by the senses. If a real physical entity is too small to be perceived by the senses, such as atoms or electromagnetic phenomena, we depend on CAUSAL effects of such phenomena on macroscopic (and sensorily perceivable) machines and instruments.

In short, anything that is not demonstrativist by nature is either deservingly imaginary( in the conceivability of beings that would be sensorily perceivable were they ever to show up, like Santa Claus, Superman, and the Tooth Fairy)-or perhaps logically possible, such as God under the Disembodiment Criterion.

As for consciousness, my view is that belief that God is consciousness without a brain and body is ultimately a CAUSED view, as beliefs are indeed caused by the brain. This does not rule out the logical and metaphysical(the way things might be in the world for all we know) possibility that a God is causing belief and nonbelief in the same God, or that all other “gods” in other religions for all we know are only metaphorical of the one God.

But this is only my view,

Jay M. Brewer
phenomenal_graffiti@yahoo.com

To: Phenomenal Graffiti

I should perhaps have been more pointed in what I meant as nothing I said was intended to prove anything. What I intended to say was that the deadlock between theist and atheist is not as logically even as it appears as a conceptually unbiased observer, having no pre-determined conclutions either way would have a harder time understanding the theist’s conclutions than those of the athiest.

To: Mentat Monkey

From: phenomenal graffiti

I suppose seeing things from a theist viewpoint is admittedly harder because the theist proposes something over and above the evidence and information gained by the senses.

Atheists invoke Occam’s razor to do away with this because the reasoning behind such an epistemological shortcut is simple( and this is what Skeptic claims all along-which I can sympathize with to a degree):

“Why postulate over and above the apparent world of sensory perception and mind/body coherence?”

The atheist world is admittedly the simplest world, requiring nothing more than fundamental transformations between matter and energy and consciousness supported only by the brain as long as it functions. You can’t get any simpler than that.

The theist, on the other hand goes over and beyond to postulate or speculate about the existence of beings that fail discernment by the senses and hold that consciousness might be able to exist independent of physical brain process in principle(even if not in practice).

I think ultimately the theist has some ground on the basis of the absence of a tie between knowledge and belief and existence, and imperceptible concepts. A theist is caused by (God?) (Nature?) to always believe in the existence of a God, and cannot shake the suspicion that a God for all we know might exist. Try as he (or she) might, a theist cannot for long live happily and freely the atheist lifestyle,or happily and freely support atheistic nonbelief…something just doesn’t feel right about it.

I think it all comes down to ontology beyond knowledge to settle all of the relevant issues, and we just don’t have what it takes for total knowledge to settle the question once and for all.

But that is only my view,
Jay M. Brewer
phenomenal_graffiti@yahoo.com

Phenomenal graffiti-

I am under the impression that you and I hold exactly the same beliefs; at least regarding the imposssibilty of absolutely knowing whether God exists or not. People can have a “relationship” with God, and perhaps they do, however no one knows if they are having a relationship with God, or are merely experiencing a psychological placebo effect. With that in mind, do you believe in God? At this moment I am unsure, and perhaps I always will be. I’m just curious as to what your thoughts on the matter are, and if you do not mind disclosing such personal information, could you explain why you hold the opinion that you do?

Faults in the bible:

To find fault in the bible all you have to do is look in the very first Chapter;Genesis.

If you follow the lineage of Adam you will find that according to the bible the world is only 6,000 years old. Yet all the dating methods that scientist use show that Earth is 4.5 billion years old.

Genesis also states that humans and animals were born on the same day. Yet how do you explain dinosaurs? They lived 200 million years ago. Homo-sapiens as we are today first appear in the fossil record around 150,000 years ago.

“The “Big Bang Theory” and the Evolution Theory have less evidence to back them up than saying there is a supreme being that created everything”

Exactly what evidence is there for a supreme being that created everything? Is the only evidence for this that you can’t believe that after 15 billion years of evolution a leaf can’t come into being?

“The facts lead to this: God made everything.” Again, what facts?