Proof there is a God

Jan Ardena said:
Some claim that the earliest known scriptures are about 3.5 thousand years old.
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What does age have to do with it?
Are you appealing to antiquity?
Is this another "it has survived as an idea this long therefore it must be right!" argument?
There is no record of people seeing something miraculous, and inventing a god to explain it. Yet this figures in your world view as a fact.
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I consider it rational to assume that by the time written records began the notion of a god to explain anything miraculous occurring had already taken foot.
So they didn't need to invent one as thof on option was already there.
Why reinvent the wheel?
Another is to consider the possibility that humans were more advanced in those days, and we're were capable of remembering anything they chose to, in perfect detail, over the course of their very long lives.
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And there is evidence of this possibility... where?
Why would it be more rational to conclude this possibility rather than that offered by Write4U?
And how long are you considering to be "very long lives"?
Modern science is about understanding the objective, material world. Scriptures relates to the spiritual, eternal aspect of man.
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Why do you think man has a spiritual or eternal aspect?

Using the human being as a universe, and the personality as God. It could be said by minute organism living in and upon the body, that the body functions perfectly, no need for intelligence. And could also be argued that the personality is the reason the body functions precisely the way it does.
Who would be correct?
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Who indeed.
You have proof that you are?
And from that analogy, good intelligence can decode what is being said, and has done.
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So you have been led to believe.
The characteristics is what is important. Which is why atheists don't like to define God (unless it is derogatory), because it means they have to assign specific characteristics, which means they accept that is what God is (regardless of belief or lack of).
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True, if an atheist is going to go as far as claim that God does not exist then they should define that which they think does not exist.
Otherwise they would have to accept that that is what the concept of God is, but they could only accept that that is what God actually is once they are convinced of that God's existence.
Otherwise you head down the argument akin to "God is the cause of existence, we exist, therefore God exists."
I'm hoping we don't need to take you step by step through that argument as to why it is rather meaningless, albeit valid.
Scripture explains the ultimate science.
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Which is?
And being a science, of course there is repeatable evidence for it?
And you know this... how?
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The same question you seem to avoid answering, isn't it?
 
We already have 25 pages of the Kalam Cosmological Argument that went nowhere (or, rather, went around and around in circles - or as I call it, "got Janned") so we don't need a repeat of that.
 
I would very much like to believe that Jan was being deliberately pathetic with that response, to somehow make a point (not that any of us would necessarily understand that point).
Alas I think it merely encapsulates why people have an ongoing issue with the style Jan adopts.
 
Sarkus said:
I would very much like to believe that Jan was being deliberately pathetic with that response, to somehow make a point (not that any of us would necessarily understand that point).
Alas I think it merely encapsulates why people have an ongoing issue with the style Jan adopts.
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Exactly. A textbook example.
 
Yazata said:
http://www.krishna.com/ultimate-science

http://krishna.org/category/science/
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Wow, that first one comes across as the blind trying to convince the blind... some chemical reactions that they say can't be explained (by current scientific understanding)? Therefore the soul does it! \o/

The second is just a list of sciences (I'm not yet sure it's correct to use that term in this context, at least not with regard the conclusions they reach) aimed at promoting their agenda. If possible I may take a gander through some of them and see what insights they allow, but a cursory glance suggests they are aimed at giving just the merest hint of science in order to force-feed the agenda through a veneer of respectability. Some of them could be right at home in the pseudo-science forum, the forum for conspiracies etc.

Is this truly what Jan refers to as the "ultimate science"?
 
Sarkus said:
Wow, that first one comes across as the blind trying to convince the blind.
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I saw the remarks in the first link as an expression of a particularly Hindu take on pramana-theory. (In Indian philosophy, 'pramanas' are epistemologically valid ways of knowing things.) It kind of echoed some Western debates from the time of the scientific revolution.

On one hand there's a bottom-up 'bootstrap' approach in which our understanding of reality grows from experience. It begins in human life and grows from there, by expanding the range of observation, from testing hypotheses and so on. We gradually learn more and more, building on the fallible foundations of what we have already learned, but our inquiries not only remain open to revision, they never seem to reach a final conclusion either. That's how Western science proceeds. Prabhupada sees those characteristics as defects.

On the other hand there's a top-down approach where conclusions are deduced from first principles. That's more akin to how mathematics proceeds and it was how Western science was conceived in medieval times.

Prabhupada was insisting not only that the top-down approach of consulting authorities is far superior, but that the origin of 'Ultimate Science' is ultimately Krishna, who Prabhupada identifies with God Himself. So Ultimate Science is ultimate because it's become a system of divine revelation. (What could be more authoritative than that?)

That's the significance of the Hindus insisting that sabda (authority) is a valid pramana, while others like the Buddhists denied that and argued that sabda always reduces to another of the pramanas, since authority is only as credible as whatever it is that justifies the things said. The Hindus wanted to underscore the standing of their Vedic traditions (which at the time weren't 'scriptures' at all but oral traditions passed on by the Brahmins). The Buddhists argued that even the Buddha's discourses (collected as the Pali canon of Buddhist 'scripture') still needed to be verified in one's own experience.

The second is just a list of sciences (I'm not yet sure it's correct to use that term in this context, at least not with regard the conclusions they reach) aimed at promoting their agenda. If possible I may take a gander through some of them and see what insights they allow, but a cursory glance suggests they are aimed at giving just the merest hint of science in order to force-feed the agenda through a veneer of respectability. Some of them could be right at home in the pseudo-science forum, the forum for conspiracies etc.
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I posted that second one in a fit of snarkiness. It basically has the Krishna consciousness people dismissing the biological/physiological understanding of life and attributing life to the vitalistic function of soul. It has them rejecting science's cosmological time scale, though for very different reasons than the young-earth creationists. (They estimate from their reading of the Bhagavad Gita that the universe is currently about 155 trillion years old.) It has them dismissing Darwin and biological evolution. It has them dismissing any idea that life could have originally arisen from non-life. And it perceives Western science as a backward and atavistic force that seeks to reduce humans to the status of animals. They even believe that the Apollo Moon landings were hoaxes.

Is this truly what Jan refers to as the "ultimate science"?
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Jan isn't likely to tell you that.
 
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Exchemist said: Why don't you tell me? :D
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Jan has me on ignore, so none of my posts will show to him, now will anything of mine that you quote - presumably unless you remove the name from inside the "quote" and perhaps put it in the body of the quote, like I've done to yours above.
He therefore quite possibly has no idea what you're referring to as a textbook example.
But then he should also be sensible enough to know that if he puts people on ignore that there will be some posts he might not understand, or follow, because he has made himself not privy to that part of the conversation.
 
Religious inspired ideas are speculative concepts. It is fine to speculate and imagine what might be or could be, but religions go to an extra step and assert their speculations represent unassailable truths. This is the essence of "faith" (belief without evidence), and such an approach is inherently not evidence based. A proof in any reasonable debate requires a significant degree of evidence to be convincing and credible. "Faith" does not provide that requirement which leaves the question "is there proof of God" somewhat hanging and unanswerable - no available evidence (yet?).

Reasoned arguments (e.g. logic) depend entirely on evidence for their success, but religions argue based on faith instead of evidence, which of course leaves their assertions outside of reason and logic. This leads to the inevitable conclusion/question - why attempt a reasoned debate with religious folk? I have seen this said elsewhere a few times - if it were possible to reason with religious people then there would be no religious people. So as many of us have concluded to our eternal frustration, Jan Ardena is religious and we are somehow expecting a reasoned argument? I don't mean that as a personal attack on Jan but instead explaining why our expectations are not reasonable.

And to the question of proof. In science there are no proofs. The highest status we can achieve in science is theory and a "proof" in science can only be defined as "confirmed to such a degree that it would be unreasonable to withhold provisional consent." There is always a degree, perhaps very small, of some doubt, with any theory. Mathematics is the only discipline where proof is possible.

And regarding evidence. We typically define evidence as something that we can observe with our senses or can calculate mathematically - i.e. empirical evidence - the scientific method. But what of the religious claim of direct perception? The idea that a divine entity communicates directly with the consciousness of a person bypassing the senses. Untraceable and not testable by science - can we ignore this claim? Of course such claims are indistinguishable from simple delusion - a far more credible and believable position.
 
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