Does God exist? the definitive answer.

Dades

feannor wrote:

Just a thought

And what a thought!

A bit conjecture heavy for my heathen mind though.

LovelyHurling

amigaboy wrote:

Firstly to ask this question a definition of what is God must be given.

From what I have discerned God is, in the definition of most world religions, All-knowing; he knows all and sees all. To expand: he doesn't just know all this is know, but all that has ever been and all that will be. If he doesn't know all then he cannot be God, but just a powerful and very smart entity.

I dont agree with you. He knows all that has ever been said, thought, and acted, but God does not know what I am going to say next, because he has given me the gift of a free will, allowing for me to decide my own destiny, which he will watch and cast jusgement upon at the end of my life. The theory you have described is that of predestination, that souls are destined for heaven or hell when they are conceived. That isn't accepted by a lot of theologians. That isn't even a Roman Catholic belief. God doesn't know who the next Pope will be, God doesn't know if The Queen of England is going to awaken in the morning and murder a butler. If so, how could he ever have felt anger?

Equally hollow is the argument that complete knowledge ceases thought. Complete knowledge of the alphabet does not hinder my thinking about it, the letters, their shapes. Complete knowledge of a shopping list does not prevent me from thinking "I shall disregard that, and I shall buy this". If God had such complete knowledge of the universe he could still think about it.

God could, in theory, exist seperately to his universe in the same sort of relationship as an hour has with a piece of driftwood. They are not made of the same components, therefore they exist in different realms. They driftwood belongs to an hour at a specific moment in time, yet there is no planar relationship between the two

I do not believe there is any way of proving or disproving the existence of a God, that is why belief hangs on faith, not fact

jay-me

If god does not exist, one loses nothing by believing in him anyway, while if he does exist, one stands to lose everything by not believing.
***Blaise Pascal***

jay-me

I believe in the sun despite darkness. I believe in truth despite deception. I believe in peace despite war. I believe in love despite hate. I believe in life despite death. I believe redemption despite sin. I believe in Heaven despite Hell. I believe in faith despite fear. I believe in Jesus despite his crucifixion. I believe in God despite His silence. I believe in myself despite my flaws. I believe in you despite our differences. I believe.

Dades

jay-me wrote:

If god does not exist, one loses nothing by believing in him anyway, while if he does exist, one stands to lose everything by not believing.
***Blaise Pascal***

Perhaps one should not base a belief on the consequences of it, instead on the evidence put before them? Following Pascal's wager does a disservice to one's beliefs.

LovelyHurling

Agreed, fear is a crumbling foundation for a faith, despite being a strong agonist for belief. A newborn animal will shy away from a human when he believes that he will do harm, but when that initial fear fizzles out, his faith in the human will grow. Therefore to believe in something is easy and instinctive, to really have faith requires further effort.

All philosophy boils down to farm animals, really! That fear based teaching is a vector for cold unbending beliefs, it is a very unfortunate feature of a lot of churches, not least the Roman Catholic one, whose chairman's cold unbending beliefs have given him a notoriety. Such spirit too often results in such horrors as the mechanical mass - a symbol of fear ignorance and habit rather than faith.

Villain

Another question, if you believe God does excist do you believe he is a positive thing?

blorg

amigaboy wrote:

True, I made no attempt to pretty up the reasoning. But then this is a simple argument so it doesn't need any complicated pointing or references. the reality is that the truth is simple.

If it was so simple I can assure you that people would not have been discussing this question since the dawn of time. You should read a bit on the history of philosophy, the discipline was _dominated_ by this question from post-classical to modern times, and the philosophers discussing it were very far from stupid.

Tar.Aldarion

irish1 wrote:

Another question, if you believe God does excist do you believe he is a positive thing?

You shouldn't think of a God as just being a powerful think comparable to a human. If one exists it might be that is neither positive nor negative. The universe could be god for all we know. A good could be pure energy or thought thinking about thought. Nobody has any idea.

Catsmokinpot

the answer is there is no definitive answer, any of you who try to find an answer through logic are fools, at the center of our galaxy lies a supermassive black hole, and dotted around our galaxy are other tiny blackholes, at the center of a black hole is a singularity in which logic, space, time, and earth physics do not apply, and black holes are the most powerfull force in our universe. so, if the most powerfull entity known to man is completely illogical, how the hell do you think you are going to form a logical explanation about god?

Playboy

That is highly specualtive science. The question of God is extremely important to us and it is only natural that we are going to wonder, think and apply our logic to it. It doesnt make anyone fools. Who knows what the human mind can discover about the nature of the universe. If we never bothered thinking about anything that we thought was outside logic then the human race wouldnt advance very much now would it.

muesli_offire

You don't need to gaze as far afield as black holes/singularities to happen upon the startling incapacities of logic.

Catsmokinpot

Playboy wrote:

That is highly specualtive science. The question of God is extremely important to us and it is only natural that we are going to wonder, think and apply our logic to it. It doesnt make anyone fools. Who knows what the human mind can discover about the nature of the universe. If we never bothered thinking about anything that we thought was outside logic then the human race wouldnt advance very much now would it.

maybe fools was a strong word, im sorry, i just find logical conclusions about the existance of god to be stupid, and i hate the way athiests try to use it to get their point across, eg "microwavable buritto" AKA "the immovable object" argument.
logic is a point of view, created by a very very flawed mankind in order to get his/her head around the world. i think logic has its good points, but it can't be applied to situations where there is unknown variables.

you can't say that logically X is true if you just dont know, and you cant prove it, you cant just go home saying to yourself "i proved those stupid moronic god believers wrong" or "those stupid moronic athiests" because i used logic. just not gonna cut it, i believe for an explanation as to wether god exists. you have to look to the way you feel. for everyone its different, and no-one is wrong. for me? i dont know, but im open to the idea.

at the end of the day if you believe fully your a fool, even if he does exist god will probably be up there laughing at you saying "look at this fool spending his whole life worshiping me instead of living which is what i created him to do."

and if you wholeheartedly dont, your a fool. even if he doesnt exist your a fool because your not open to the possibility of something different other than what you have been taught, and it is being taught, maybe not directly but, evolution and science in general, disprove the oldskool belief system, but both were taught again by a very very flawed mankind. the idea of evolution doesnt prove that god doesnt exist, it only proves that people with no knowledge of what science even was! were wrong. theories about the big bang dont prove god doesnt exist, they only suggest that the universe began.

i think if your right in the middle, and he exists! being all powerfull and all knowing, and understanding the amount of different crap we have been taught by people about "the way things are" god will understand, and if he doesn't exist then at least your open minded.

frobisher

You haven't proved or disproved a thing. Your entire hypothesis is simplistic and arrogant.
Religon and god are two very, very different things. Remove the concept of religon from your post and your left with nothing.

Fair play for putting your ideas and thoughts out there though.

Catsmokinpot

frobisher wrote:

You haven't proved or disproved a thing. Your entire hypothesis is simplistic and arrogant.
Religon and god are two very, very different things. Remove the concept of religon from your post and your left with nothing.

Fair play for putting your ideas and thoughts out there though.

i didnt set out to prove anything. and thats exactly what i mean: nothing. we are left with nothing..... i used to discuss god all the time, does he exist doesnt he, the fact is, until we die... we will never know. and thats not somewhere people can just come back from.... so whats the point in arguing about it, and in particular try to bring logic into it... we will never know. so the best thing you can do is have an idea.

your telling me to take the religion out of my post, but logic is a belief system in itself, a process of elimination if you will, you build a set of beliefs based on information you gather. we have been taught to think this way by people, flawed people. i mean look at our history, logical thought has brought us technology, for us to denounce god and instead become god, atomic bombs, genetic engineering, cloning and its helped us to destroy ecosystems, and wipe out entire species. we're trying to destroy god with logic and now we are trying to become god with it.

ok ill take the religion part out of it if you like.

if you fully believe in god you are a fool. because ultimately you have no proof. your not open to the possibility that there is no god, no destiny and that everything is just a random occurrance.... your basing your beliefs on what everyone else has told you everything you have thought up to this stage, has been socially conditioned in to you.

if you dont believe in god at all you are a fool. because again, ultimately, you have no proof. your not open minded enough to accept the possibility that god exists, that maybe things are not under your control.... your basing your beliefs on what everyone else has told you everything you have thought up to this stage, has been socially conditioned in to you.

do what i do, sit on the fence... and think about for yourself, dont base your opinions on what others think, that brought the crusades, and a whole host of bad ****, ultimately science has not disproved the existance of god and will never, it doesnt even suggest that god doesnt exist. it only disproves what other flawed people have come up with. even science itself is getting rewritten all the time, and ultimately religion has never proved the existance of god and will never..... its all speculation.

but to truly be open minded ofcourse you will have to completely ignore everything i've said so far....

twentycentshift

god exists. but there is no definition of god.

everything is god and god is everything.

we can't define god because we don't have the power or ability to know it.

definitions can be debated, but existence is obvious.

muesli_offire

god exists. but there is no definition of god.

everything is god and god is everything.

I suggest you abandon your flirtation with an aphoristic mode of presentation, as I am assuming it is this, and not your own ineptness, which has led you to blatantly contradict your first statement by supplying the unsuppliable, namely, a definition of God.

definitions can be debated, but existence is obvious.

But, can't existence be debated?

twentycentshift

muesli_offire wrote:

I suggest you abandon your flirtation with an aphoristic mode of presentation, as I am assuming it is this, and not your own ineptness, which has led you to blatantly contradict your first statement by supplying the unsuppliable, namely, a definition of God.

But, can't existence be debated?

i can go along with the idea that existance can be debated. i will concede that i must consider that further.

but dude, you're snobby. that whole first paragraph is kind of negtavistic and insulting. all i was trying to say was that god does exist (if existence exists, i concede), but our traditional and dated definitions of what god is may need to be reconsiedered.

can't we be friends and not play the insult game?

bobbi

no its all fiction, no real evidence no god

Zita

I am a firm "believer" that there is no god of any sorts...

I really think the belief in gods or a god stems from people in the long distance past not understadning nature and science and so believeing that, for example, the sun was a god, because it rose everyday and it helped with harvests etc blah blah.

I have never read anything that would make me think that there was a god or gods.

The earth and the solarsystem and the universe are all natural and not created by a deity or super being.

The question of where we go after we die etc.... Just like everything else, we die, our bodies decompose. Our "soul", if you believe in that... I think that our essence lives on, but in the memories of people we knew and not in any other ghosty kind of way.

Dave3x

Zita wrote:

I am a firm "believer" that there is no god of any sorts...

I really think the belief in gods or a god stems from people in the long distance past not understadning nature and science and so believeing that, for example, the sun was a god, because it rose everyday and it helped with harvests etc blah blah.

I have never read anything that would make me think that there was a god or gods.

I think that the main rational foundation for belief in God is the question of origin- science has failed to explain the origin of existence, and nearly every religious system has claimed God (whatever that may be to them) as the creator. Thus, the belief in God need not be (and I would say, has not for thousands of years) centered on the operation of physics, astronomy and nature.

Further, if we are going to discuss God in a philosophcal way, we should probably leave our opinions at the door as much as possible. Not completely, but I mean to keep an open mind (e.g., I'm catholic, but there's so many other interesting and plausible concepts of God).

AngryBadger

Your argument is too reliant on implicit assumptions.

In short, you say god is all knowing, and that the universe is everything that can possibly exist, according to the available texts God has interacted with the universe, therefore if god does exist proof of this interaction if the lynchpin of that existence, however since god already knows everything then he cannot exist since the act of knowing everything precludes all potential for thought, thus eliminating the major determinant of existence/sentience "I think therefore i am".

All nice and tidy, but your assumptions are too broad. Why is god all-knowing? Why must he have interacted with the universe in any conventional sense? Could the interactions you speak of not have been achieved by vassals in his service, of which he had many?

More importantly, why would we accept your definition of god as "All knowing", or the universe as everything that exists, (except things we can't interact with since their existence can't be proven)? How can you presume to place such linear limitations on a concept as large as "God".

For the record I don't believe in god in any established sense.

dbs_sailor

Another thing that no-one's really mentioned is that a lot of religous people I know believe God is the "master of time." His timeline cannot be measured while our existence is defined by our perception of time.

The reason I'm mentioning this is because if God created the universe and put in place a series of scientific laws he also introduced the concept of linear time so as to make a species totally unequal to him. Blah. I'm not getting this across very well.

What I believe:

I always found it arrogant that people believe an omnipresent, omnipotent created us and our world, and not just that, trillions of stars and billions of other empty galaxies just so we could look up late and night and see shiny likkle dots. =D

"Someone really, really powerful created us and loves us. He made us in his image. He's just.. gone for a while, he'll be back though."

That effectively sums up the collective beliefs of several of my religous friends.

The reality is we are totally insignificant, and our race is experiencing a temporary state of delusion which we will eventually evolve out of, only to go extinct. Every living thing is subject to scrunity by something bigger.

We're tiny like. Heh heh. Take a look at one of those "Map of the Known Universe" posters and try to pinpoint Earth, or try to pinpoint yourself on an atlas. It's so funny listening to people trying to convince you that God cares about a little pinprick and the day to day events that we face.

As Einstein said : "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings."

In 1 million years time, who will remember humans?

Our historical achievements which we are so proud of will amount to nothing after our earth dies and looks like a bigger version of Mars, and our galaxy has been obliterated by a collision with Andromeda in about 5 million years. Sorry to be a bit negative, but I say enjoy it all while we can, and don't take it so seriously.

However, God might be a being that jumpstarted our evolution and the evolution of other beings like the 2001 monoliths. Great book/film. =D

[edit] I'm really sick today, sorry if none of that made sense. =(

Excelsior

I am an orthodox Christian. I agree with the great German theologian, who was assasinated by the NAZIs weeks before liberation, Dietrich Bonhoeffer who wrote:

A God whose existence could be proven would be nothing more than an idol.

Chicago

This was sent to me today. Don't know how true it is but found it interesting. Thought it might add to the thread.


A University professor at a well known institution of higher learning challenged his students with this question. "Did God create everything that exists?"
A student bravely replied, "Yes he did !"

"God created everything ?" The professor asked.

"Yes sir, he certainly did," the student replied.

The professor answered, "If God created everything; then God created evil.

And, since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are,

then we can assume God is evil."

The student became quiet and did not respond to the professor's hypothetical definition.

The professor, quite pleased with himself, boasted to the students that he had

proven once more that the Christian faith was a myth.

Another student raised his hand and said, "May I ask you a question, professor?"

"Of course", replied the professor.

The student stood up and asked, "Professor, does cold exist ?"

"What kind of question is this ? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold ?"

The other students snickered at the young man's question.

The young man replied, "In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics,

what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat.

Everybody or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy,

and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy.

Absolute zero (-460 F) is the total absence of heat; and all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist.

We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have no heat."


The student continued, "Professor, does darkness exist?"

The professor responded, "Of course it does."

The student replied, "Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either.

Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness.

In fact, we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colors

and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness.

A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it.

How can you know how dark a certain space is ?

You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct?

Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present."

Finally the young man asked the professor, "Sir, does evil exist?"

Now uncertain, the professor responded, "Of course, as I have already said.

We see it everyday. It is in the daily examples of man's inhumanity to man.

It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world.

These manifestations are nothing else but evil

To this the student replied, "Evil does not exist, sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself.

Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold,

a word that man has created to describe the absence of God.

God did not create evil.

Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart.

It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat,

or the darkness that comes when there is no light."

The professor sat down.



The young man's name -- Albert Einstein


Baker & McKenzie LLP is a member of Baker & McKenzie International, a Swiss Verein.

Son Goku

Off-topic but this stuff just annoys me for some reason.

Chicago wrote:

The young man's name -- Albert Einstein

My eye sockets aren't large enough to support the gigantic eye roll this Jack Chic-esque story requires.

It's another one of those "Look a scientific atheist idol was actually a Christian/supportive of it, take that you atheist".

Despite the two physics anachronisms contained within the passage, the one gigantic anachronosim in Einstein's life and the fact that Einstein always professed disbelief in a personal God, the most glaring moronism is the way the professor talks.

Very unusual for a late 19th Century German Professor and Einstein was only ever taught by one professor, Minkowski and Minkowski was a Lutheran.

popinfresh

Ah my favourite argument. Just to bring up a 'few food for thoughts'

There is no scientific proof for god.
Yes, that is true, but what also has to be taken into consideration :Can you think of a sceintific experement that would prove or disprove a god?, and do you know of anybody carrying out these experements?

I personally don't know if there's a god or not, but one thing I am sure of is that this image of a man with a beard living in the sky is bull****. And another thing I'm sure of is that evolution did happen. There's evidence to indicate that. But I don't like this A or B mentality that people have where either God made us or evolution did. And if evolution did happen then God cannot exist.

Nobody is even really sure what life is, and yet people think they have sufficient knoledge to argue whether or not there's there's a divine form of life.
Maybe god's actually some Alien emporer who ordered the intervention of evolution on the planet called earth, so that intelegent life would evolve. That idea is bull****, but hey, I think ppl should get out of this A or B mentality.

StJimmy

God did not create Man, Man created God.

biko

Excelsior wrote:

A God whose existence could be proven would be nothing more than an idol.

I disagree (albeit ateist and all). If God was a certainty, not a faith, everyone would worship him/her/it, no? Deism has screwed things up.

hotspur

At the risk of bringing actual philosophy into the debate what are the opinions of you guys and gals of what is called the ontological argument. God is defined as :
"a being than which nothing greater can be conceived "
The argument is then that a being which exists would be *greater* than a being which doesn't exist, therefore according to this definition of God - God must necessarily exist!