Who can give the best account of why there is a God?
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What you aren't addressing is how you can say (with 100% confidence) that god doesn't exist - there is no religion that is completely based on faith - they all have roots in the direct perception of something transcendental (saints etc).
In other words a noumenan is 100% undetectable to a person who is not subjected to the phenomenan - Just because you don't see god simply means just that - "You don't see god" - to carry it through to the 100% level of confidence with "God does not exist" requires either that you prove you are omniscient or are not deluded
Given the frailty of the human condition, that leaves us with one option.
This is why not even big atheists like dawkins will come out and say "I am 100% confident that god does not exist" - its only atheists that are bereft of philosophical training that say such things (BTW - I don't think you are deluded but more so caught up in the mood of bravado - which is a minor limb of delusion)
Lg,
Not true. All religions are based on a belief in the existence of something supernatural. There remains nothing known that can show such a phenomenon exists, could exist, might exist, or can ever exist.
Which cannot be shown to be real and requires an act of faith.
It’s an interesting and controversial concept, but that is all it is. You will have trouble showing that has any basis in reality.
No, that is incomplete. Non detection can mean; (1) it exists but has not yet been detected, (2) there is nothing to detect, (3) the object is deliberately avoiding detection. Simply based on common sense and credibility option 2 seems overwhelmingly the most likely.
No not really. We can examine history and see how these various god concepts were created from man’s imagination and ignorance and realize these ideas are entirely based on fantasy. While I can reason that a god of some type might come into existence say through the evolution of intelligence, and I would leave that option open, I can say with 100% confidence that the human created fantasy gods of Christianity, Islam and Judaism, at least, certainly do not exist.
Cris
So the high school drop out can sit comfortably on number 2 as well?
Like for instance there are numerous traditional approaches to painting trees
japanese paintings of trees
romantic european paintings of trees
indian paintings of trees
etc etc
They are all different and you could argue that they all put a bit of "local colour" inthere but there is no doubt that they are referring to an objective phenomena - trees. The indication is that they all have similar elements.
In otherwords your argument that the similarity indicates an evolution from concoction is just a tentative claim - like all tentative claims, they rest upon highly flexible evidence that can be swung around to declare the opposite from the same rationale or body of evidence
in other words you are doubting the authority that religion is based upon (the direct sense perception of saints and the words of scripture) - this is equivelant to the high school drop out doubting the physicists and the physics text book sin regard to electrons
Its common sense - if an object is perceivable by its symptoms, how do you propose to perceive it if the symptoms are not apparent to you?
Common sense (more like preconceived value systems)?
So the high school drop out can sit comfortably on number 2 as well?
This is not historically self evident - its a tentative claim unless you can determine what the saintly persons associated with a particular religion were actually perceiving (BTW - justifying a tentative claim with another tentative claim still makes it tentative)
How can you be certain that they are not perceiving or desiring to approach the same entity?
Like for instance there are numerous traditional approaches to painting trees
japanese paintings of trees
romantic european paintings of trees
indian paintings of trees
etc etc
They are all different and you could argue that they all put a bit of "local colour" inthere but there is no doubt that they are referring to an objective phenomena - trees. The indication is that they all have similar elements.
In otherwords your argument that the similarity indicates an evolution from concoction is just a tentative claim - like all tentative claims, they rest upon highly flexible evidence that can be swung around to declare the opposite from the same rationale or body of evidence
I wouldn't say I was exactly 100% on the position that there wasn't any intelligent creation behind this particular universe, but I'm so close that you might as well call it 100%. My reason being, any imagined notion (such as god) is so unlikely that for all the fantastic things we could imagine (limitless), actually existing, is 0%. Baby with the head of a turnip? 0%. A sentient creator? 0%. Heaven? 0%. Soul? 0%. Even if you go on and on for a million years inventing extravagant notions that are without evidence, and then have your assertions somehow verified at the end of it, you will end up at 0%. And I don't count perhaps more realistic beliefs based on reality, ie. the likelihood of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. That is a realistic belief, based on observation - observation of a planet like Earth and of trillions of other stars.
OK, to clear it up, I am 99.9999-ad infinitum-% confident there is no god. I will allow just a snidge of benefit of the doubt. One thing is for sure, it is not a 50/50 claim. A biological being, can not invent such a grand notion without any aspect of observation, and expect to be realistically correct.
Sure does... which is why stating superstition false is the wiser option than stating it to be true. Stating it a 50/50 probability is not delusional, just stupid.
Dawkins expressed his position clearly. He is an atheist in regards to having no belief in an intelligent creator, leaning towards saying there isn't one at all. He even has a chapter in his book titled "Why there almost certainly is no god". I also subscribe to saying there almost certainly is no god. There is effectively a 100% chance that there is no intelligent creator, because with a grand imagination, you could postulate an unlimited number of hypothesis for the creation of the universe... and the intelligent concious creator would represent just a single drop of water in all of the oceans in the universe.
No matter how many times we guess the event behind the existence of the universe, we will always be wrong.
Lg,
You’d need to show that any such direct perception ever occurred, and that the scriptures reflected reality other than fantasy based on the ignorance of the times in which they were written. Since we have nothing today to indicate that anything supernatural exists or can exist or has ever existed then there is no reason to suspect that those ancient texts or claims have any credence.
No nothing in the least similar. The analogy doesn’t apply. No claims in religion regarding supernatural phenomena have ever been substantiated, which means the ancients and the scriptures you reference have no credibility, and hence no reason to recognize them as authoritative.
The issue is that no one can show that anyone has any such perceptions, they are just unsubstantiated claims. Since there is no other support for the claims and there is no other precedence for such phenomena, and that the claims are vastly extraordinary, then there is no reason to consider them true or actual.
Here credibility is based on extensive observations of normal phenomena, but the supernatural is extraordinarily different and hence requires extraordinary evidence for support which is entirely absent. Common sense will indicate no need to believe obvious fatasies.
This analogy is not relevant here as explained above.
There is nothing independent to suggest they were perceiving anything, that’s the problem. They may well have perceived something but we have no way to know. Given the fantastic nature of the claims and the absence of any other precedent then there is no reason to believe their claims.
Analysis of the origins of these religions and the myth-making culture that gave rise to them. I.e. the early superstitions and religions were never based on objective observations but on the human need to explain phenomena beyond their very limited understanding of the universe, the natural desire to refuse that death must be an end, and a political need to justify power. These desires were universal and gave rise to the myriad of different religions and ideas for gods to satisfy these requirements, but the basic elements as I’ve listed were very similar as you note with your tree analogy. The difference is that while trees are real, gods are not, but the need to explain the unknown is real. So in the absnece of science religions were invented to plug the gap. We don't need religions any further.
No. It is based on my studies of the origins of religions, especially Christianity.
You forget that there is no evidence to support religious claims that’s why all religions depend entirely on faith and have no choice but to stress faith, i.e. belief without logical proof. All the evidence I see from history is one of extensive myth-making, plagiarism from earlier mythologies, rationalization of phenomena in the absence of modern science, and a need to yield political power by claiming authority of imaginary gods.
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i believe in God because i feel his presence in my life.
He's never failed me even though i've failed him a couple of times.
do atheists think the earth just came up out of thin air w/o God being behind it.
sometimes you just think about everything and wonder whoever did these stuff must be powerful.
i guess some people worship science. but who created science.
there's no best account of why there's God because it's not like math where there has to be a proof. it's like English literature where there are different approaches to interpretation.
The muslims have a different way of looking at God than do we Christians.
He's never failed me even though i've failed him a couple of times.
do atheists think the earth just came up out of thin air w/o God being behind it.
sometimes you just think about everything and wonder whoever did these stuff must be powerful.
i guess some people worship science. but who created science.
there's no best account of why there's God because it's not like math where there has to be a proof. it's like English literature where there are different approaches to interpretation.
The muslims have a different way of looking at God than do we Christians.
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Man created science. Most atheists indeed believe, by definition of the word that describes them, that there is no Creator responsible for all that is in existence. The universe we have now is simply the result of an unbroken chain of events that goes all the way back to the Big Bang.
I have always been fascinated at how one cannot imagine a universe without God, and another cannot imagine a universe with one.
lowi said:
The allegory of the blind men and the elephant...
Leo Volont
Registered Senior Member
Albert Einstein once said that it was not so much a question of whether or not there is a God but whether there is a Providential God. A God that is indifferent and uncaring is as good as no god at all.
A so a God worthy of consideration would have to be a Providential God... a God that is willing to intercede every so often.
Well, then, do we have any indication that a God, or any Supernatural Influence has ever 'interceded'? Sure we do.
There is a huge supply of documentation about Miracles, supernatual Saints, Divine Revelatory Apparitions... all that stuff.
Now, the favorite tactic of Atheism is to suggest that the only claims for Religion are thousands of years old. And many of the Religions are willing to allow the argument. But, really, there are many miracles that have been documented well into the modern era. This is our Proof of God... of a Providential God.
Iowi,
Hi and welcome to sciforums.
Hi and welcome to sciforums.
Those are emotions you generate yourself and are invoked because of the sense of security and comfort that comes from a belief in such a powerful father-like protector. There is no external source.
Pity we can’t ask those who prayed and died, like 9/11 victims, or victims of Auschwitz.
The problem with inventing a creator to explain the universe leaves open the question of who created the creator, did he just come out of thin air all by itself? The more rational explanation is to assume the universe is infinite since we have no reason to believe it hasn’t always existed.
Or you might think about it logically and realize there is no need for anything to be created, especially when physics shows us that nothing is ever created or destroyed.
Science is not a religion but a set of processes that allow to acquire knowledge with significant confidence that much of it is accurate.
Why shouldn’t there be a proof for a god, just like in math?
The Nobel Prize winner Elie Weisel had lived only for God during his childhood in Hungary; his life had been shaped by the disciplines of the Talmud and he had hoped one day to be initiated into the mysteries of Kabbalah. As a boy, he was taken to Auschwitz and later to Buchenwald. During his first night in the death camp, watching the black smoke coiling to the sky from the crematorium where the bodies of his mother and sister were to be thrown, he knew that the flames had consumed his faith for ever. He was in a world which was the objective correlative of the Godless world imagined by Nietzsche. 'Never should I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live', he wrote years later. 'Never shall I forget these moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.
One day the Gestapo hanged a child. Even the SS were disturbed by the prospect of hanging a young boy in front of thousands of spectators. The child who, Weisel recalled, had the face of a 'sad-eyed angel', was silent, lividly pale and almost calm as he ascended the gallows. Behind Weisel, one of the other prisoners asked: 'Where is God? Where is He? It took the child half an hour to die, while the prisoners were forced to look him in the face. The same man asked again: 'Where is God now?' And Weisel heard a voice within him make this answer: 'Where is He? Here He is - He is hanging here on this gallows.'
One day the Gestapo hanged a child. Even the SS were disturbed by the prospect of hanging a young boy in front of thousands of spectators. The child who, Weisel recalled, had the face of a 'sad-eyed angel', was silent, lividly pale and almost calm as he ascended the gallows. Behind Weisel, one of the other prisoners asked: 'Where is God? Where is He? It took the child half an hour to die, while the prisoners were forced to look him in the face. The same man asked again: 'Where is God now?' And Weisel heard a voice within him make this answer: 'Where is He? Here He is - He is hanging here on this gallows.'
No one can give a good reason why, because even if they do, the atheists, having knowledge of everything, will know they are wrong in every aspect.
I could quote numerous anecdotes of instances of ecstatic love for God in abominable situations. They illustrate what it means to be cent per cent surrendered to god (distinct from only surrendering to god under certain conditions).
SB 1.8.25: I wish that all those calamities would happen again and again so that we could see You again and again, for seeing You means that we will no longer see repeated births and deaths.
"My dear Lord, Yamaräja has placed me in a situation which is full of filthy and obnoxious smells. There are so many insects and worms, surrounded by the stools left by different kinds of diseased persons. And after seeing this horrible scene, my eyes have become sore, and I am becoming nearly blind. I therefore pray, O my Lord, O deliverer from the hellish conditions of life. I have fallen into this hell, but I shall try to remember Your holy name always, and in this way I shall try to keep my body and soul together."
"I know no one but Krishna as my Lord, and He shall remain so even if He handles me roughly in His embrace or makes me brokenhearted by not being present before me. He is completely free to do anything and everything, for He is always my worshipful Lord unconditionally."
Or to put it back in a context that you are probably more familiar with, do you ever read of Jesus jumping ship like weisel does? Why?
Cris
How would you determine whether someone has perceived something or not?
your argument is circular - "scripture is wrong because it is wrong"
The reason you have nothing is because you disregard the two channels that establish something - saintly persons and scripture
just like no claims about electrons have been substantiated to a high school drop out
once again - scripture/saintly persons are wrong because they are wrong
Lg,
I have no doubt.
Or it illustrates overwhelming irrational gullibility.
The effect of brainwashing at its best.
Just two hands working vastly overwhelm 10 thousands hands praying. But another good example of gullible people following their fantasies.
An example that the power of indoctrination can distort reality absolutely.
Don’t be silly, Jesus is a mythical character, the myth makers wouldn’t have written anything about him that didn’t fit their fantasies.
Then, your faith in god is actually the faith you place in those who claimed to be in direct perception, and not in a god at all.