To start off on a debate since it is allowed, I am going to go with one of the main subjects that appear in most people's discussions. Is God real?
RULES
-No flaming or trolling. Emphasis on flaming. Keep the argument down to a mild level.
-Back up what you say. I know it's hard for this, but don't just say something like "God is fake". Tell WHY you think God is fake, and use science to back it up if you have to. If you want to say "God is real", then the same goes for you. If you are going to use sources, then make sure they are credible, not just from someones blog (unless they source on that, and THAT source is credible).
-Keep this as mature as possible. This is basically like repeating the first rule, but don't let your emotions/beliefs get in the way of your argument. It makes you and your whole case look childish.
STARTING ARGUMENT:
God is not real because there is no scientific proof that he ever existed and did what he did (create people, make the world, etc.).
2get sage combo.
What the hell is "real?"
Don't tell me you still believe in reality.
/// Weather forecast for this thread: 1 strong trollstorm coming right up. ///
I got really into studying religion for a few years and I've come to the conclusion that most of it is bullshit but it's a very nice way to get involved within a community and potentially do some cool rituals (depending on the religion). I wish religion was not as conservative. I wish the Christian churches started using psychedelics for their communion. I bet people would benefit from it more, potentially gain stronger relationships, and discover themselves better. I don't mean full blown doses but something like the equivalent of a small amount of cannabis. I think the founders of the religions (Jesus, Siddhartha, whoever wrote the Vedas, etc.) or schools of thought didn't want it to turn out the way it is currently today (i.e. blowing up innocent civilians).
I think that before the Big Bang the event that preceded it was some sort of Deity that "jump-started" the Universe. I'm not very educated in science due to slacking off all of high school but I'm revamping that and taking science courses at community college (just finishing up biology with a B).
I also think it is best that everyone interpret the "holy texts" as metaphors or symbolism to reality as opposed to literal.
>>1
"God is not real because there is no scientific proof that he ever existed and did what he did (create people, make the world, etc.)."
You assume something like that God doesn't exist, or rather that he didn't create everything; it would all be evidence of him having created it if he did.
Logically what you've said is roughly:
There is no evidence that God created the universe, therefore God is not real.
As I just said, it's possible the entirety of what we observe is evidence of God.
In any event, what you've said is fallacious. It's an example (perhaps one of the most prominent examples) of the logical fallacy, "argument from ignorance".
And before anything continues, I suggest that the definition of God be established and stated clearly, preferably by the OP.
Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
I think one of the strongest arguments against the popular image of a personal loving god is the existence of evil, particularly senseless suffering.
Arguing over what "senseless" suffering is seems fairly weak to me.
God /gɒd/ Pronunciation Key - noun, verb, god·ded, god·ding, interjection
–noun
1. the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe.
2. the Supreme Being considered with reference to a particular attribute: the God of Islam.
3. (lowercase) one of several deities, esp. a male deity, presiding over some portion of worldly affairs.
4. (often lowercase) a supreme being according to some particular conception: the god of mercy.
5. Christian Science. the Supreme Being, understood as Life, Truth, Love, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Principle.
6. (lowercase) an image of a deity; an idol.
7. (lowercase) any deified person or object.
8. (often lowercase) Gods, Theater.
a. the upper balcony in a theater.
b. the spectators in this part of the balcony.
–verb (used with object)
9. (lowercase) to regard or treat as a god; deify; idolize.
–interjection
10. (used to express disappointment, disbelief, weariness, frustration, annoyance, or the like): God, do we have to listen to this nonsense?
>>7
That would be the "problem of evil," which has been debated for millenia by nearly every religion, except Buddhism and the dualists.
Some popular counterarguments:
I personally think the free will counterargument is the most convincing.
>>7
If absence of proof is not proof of absence, then I could make up any way that the world was created and there would be a possibility. That means that the possibility of God being existent is the exact same as say, a fat opossum underground who controls the world with psychic powers (creative, I know).
This means that God is fighting literally infinite amounts of possibilities, any which could be the truth. The only thing that makes God stand out from everyone else is that he is just the most common idea.
I suppose it's right to say that there is always a possibility, but there are an uncountable amount of possibilities that exist as well.
> If absence of proof is not proof of absence, then I could make up any way that the world was created and there would be a possibility.
You bet.
i don't know why people find that so troublesome.
> Evil exists in order that we have free will, which necessarily includes the freedom to do evil.
This is a total cop-out: A lot of suffering is caused by circumstances beyond the control of any one individual, or even group. If God allows suffering caused by no human, he cannot truly be considered good.
To exemplify, Mount Vesuvius explodes and all the inhabitants of Pompeii are killed. God could have whisked them off to safety, but chose not to. If free will was a concern to him, he could have asked them first if they wanted to die there, or preferred to be moved to safety. He did not.
I don't believe in God. I don't believe in feminist manginas like rich dawkins
>...and use science to back it up if you have to...
When you say science you mean the scientific procedure which I hardly find useful in this situation given that I'd have no controls for an experiment even if I had the right hypothesis.
>God is not real because there is no scientific proof that he ever existed and did what he did (create people, make the world, etc.)
Technically in science you can never prove anything. If you start by trying to prove something then it is not good science what you're practising there. The scientific method:
-Observation
-Hypothesis
-Experiment
-Conclusion
Is about testing a hypothesis and not trying to prove your ideas.
What I can use instead is logic by which based on syllogisms I can show how the Christian concept of god is fallible and thus, most likely, human invention (I'm not going to write it now, ask if you want me to) keep in mind that there might be another god completely alien to any human concept.
Finally, although not entirely relevant to the topic, keep in mind that religious beliefs and science are not opposite poles. It's like comparing apples to dogs, they are different things.
>Absence of proof is not proof of absence.
TRUE, I'm certain I'll use it.
>>15
"(I'm not going to write it now, ask if you want me to) "
Do it. I challenge you to do so on this holy day of 7/7/07. God shall now allow his disproof today!
>>1-16
poor lost souls of indivitualism.
Translation:
Ok, here it is:
>From Epicurus
Note that most of this only applies to the Judeo-christian version of God so this does not mean there isn't a (or many) God(s).
You can exclude me from your statement given that I sold my "soul" to a classmate in highschool.
Damn, my listing is screwed. :(
5, 6 and 7 are meant to be separated from 1-4. Same goes to 8-10.
How to use bullets instead of numbers?
Backing up >>16
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_noncontradiction
In logic, the law of noncontradiction (also called the law of contradiction) states, in the words of Aristotle, that "one cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time".
So, whenever ANY OTHER contradiction happens in the world, it is exposed as a lie, or whatever it may be. When it happens in religion, we just blow it off. Logic at its finest!
religion and god are not interchangable. otherwise, i agree.
> Note that most of this only applies to the Judeo-christian version of God so this does not mean there isn't a (or many) God(s).
I really don't know how come the followers of the Judeo-Christian god got so full of themselves. I mean, they could have kept him just a powerful guy in the sky, and his existence might have still be plausible, but no, they had to go and make him omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, all of which are logically self-contradictory.
In the old days gods were female and benevolent. Nowadays gods are male and vindictive - a sign of the times?
They were?
In the Western tradition, that just ain't so. The God of the Old Testament / Hebrew Bible was a nasty piece of work. The God of the New Testament is a fuzzy lovey-dovey hippy. The Greek and Roman gods were vengeful sex-crazed maniacs who turned people into trees, while the goddesses only resorted to having whole cities razed out of spite.
I don't pretend to know heads from tails in the Hindu pantheon, but Shiva is the god of destruction, among a myriad other thinks. Kali was a blood-thirsty drunk who ate dead people, then evolved into eating reality itself. She spends her time hangin' ten with Shiva, when they aren't trying to dance reality to bits.
Buddhism doesn't have gods per se, but Gautama Buddha was a pretty mellow guy.
Buddhism has some of the best hells, though.
"Saṃghāta – the "crushing" Naraka. This Naraka is also upon a ground of hot iron, but is surrounded by huge masses of rock that smash together and crush the beings to a bloody jelly. When the rocks move apart again, life is restored to the being and the process starts again. Life in this Naraka is 10,368*10^10 years long."
True, but with many gods, you don't have the same "problem of evil" that you do with a single god.
1 god:
There's evil.
If god is all powerful, he caused it. If he caused it, he's evil.
If He didn't cause it, he's not all powerful. Why praise him?
Many Gods:
There's evil.
It was caused by an angry or trickster god. Ignore this god or try to bribe him.
You just praise the good gods.
>>28
Discussions are living things!
Do all things require scientific proof in order to be true?
>>31
Heeey I remember you! (Is it really you? Or do you just like that site.)
And the answer is no.
Are you implying you don't have an actual proof god exists?
Yip it's me (Sye), haven't checked back here for a while and I see the debate is still going on :-)
So, if the answer is no, why does the person (you?) claim that God does not exist because they say there is no scientific proof?
No
@ proofthatgodexists.org
If you don't mind engaging on multiple topics of discussion at once in this thread, I'm also curious what you have to say to >>13 (or about theodicy in general.)
I realize that there is can be no definite proof that there is a god or that there is no god, and that the absence of evidence does not mean that there is no god. But while there isn't any evidence for god, people tend to forget that there is lots of evidence against the existence of such a beeing.
Given the number of paradoxes omnipotence and/or omniscience create (Heavy stones, evil, beeing mutually exclusive), given the really huge number of gods no one believes in anymore (Thor, Zeus, take your pick), given some at least mildly convincing theories on the actual origin of religion and the belief in god (Say, as a byproduct of children blindly believing what their parents say, which is of great survival value - if a kid listens when you say "Stay away from the huge cliff", chances are it'll live longer), given the wildly contradictory nature of most "holy books", given the uselessness of a god in explaining creation (So, god just popped into existance?), and given that most of the things once "explained" by invoking a god are now beautifully explained by elegant scientific theories which are often backed up by mountains of evidence, and likeley several other things I can't spontaneously think of the existence of a god, any god, must be considered really, really unlikeley, even more so the existence of any of the current major gods.
Single-valued logic: God did it. "Why is (something)?" "Because God wished it so". There is only one answer. Primitive science.
Dual-valued logic: Things are black or white. There is no in-between. Greek/aristotelian science.
Multi-valued logic: Things are never black or white. There are several gradients/possibilities/solutions. Modern science.
Infinite-valued logic: Future science.
What's the difference between gradients and infinite values?
As to 13, evil exists for a reason which is perfectly sufficient for God. I, for one, would not know what I was being saved from if there were no evil. Unlike that other poster, I do not claim to have more knowledge than God with regards to our perception of evil or good. The problem of evil is actually with the atheist though, If God did NOT exist, the whole concept of 'evil' would be meaningless. What one bag of advanced primordial slime does to another bag of advanced primordial slime, whould be completely irrelevant.
The point was showing the inconsistency of believing that God would require scientific proof in order to be real.
The problem is, logical argumentation regarding the question of the existence of God ALREADY presupposes HIS existence. In order to logically argue about the existence of God, one would have to, among other things, assume the universal, abstract, invariant laws of logic, which cannot be accounted for outside of God (and which are accounted for in the Bible). Please, however, feel free to posit another source for these laws, I shant hold my breath :-)
>>45
Did God also create arithmatic? That's another set of universal, abstract, invariant laws. I like the idea of the big ol' guy in the sky saying "Let two plus two equal four," way back when.
Anyway, I say that logic is a human abstraction (reapplied to abstract phenomena) of the universal, invariant laws of cause & effect, which were formulated by observing the natural world and which are accounted for in any physics textbook.
But maybe God created the natural world? That's cool with me; I'm a deist! Alternately, we could just be honest and admit we don't know the origin of nature or the universe, which doesn't seem to help your position any. The known (or rather, the proposed) is not inherently more probable then the unknown.
>>45
Oh wow, it's that badass flawed argument again.
Could we, as humans, exist in a universe without logic? We obviously could not, since that would throw any kind of laws of nature as we know them completley out. So, from a sufficient number of unviverses, we happen to live in our form in one of these universes where live like ours is possible, on a planet where life like ours is possible. If it was any different, we would not be able to observe anything, cause we wouldn't be here then.
It's the anthropic principle, it was old and wideley known years ago, and has gotten some theoretical backing by string theorists recently.
So, there you have your alternate explanation, which is infiniteley more likeley than some beeing which does not follow any physical laws and sometimes disregards some of the laws of logic suddenly popping into existence and deciding to create those same laws. (Besides, how does your try at an explanation proove that the christian god exists? A quick glance tells me that it only seems to attempt to proove that any god exists at all, but you seem to be focussed on prooving the christian one...)
(>>48 cont)
Also, there might very well be a perfetcly scientific explanation for our laws of logic and for the universe happening to be the way it is without invoking the antrophic principle (Altough I think that many universes are more likeley.). What you're saying is akin to "Science hasn't found an explanation, so god must have done this.". That is a dangerous thing to do, because what you should be saying is that science hasn't found an explanation yet.
A few thousand years ago, people thought the sun rose because some kind of deity dragged it across heaven or similiar things. Now, we know better. Some people thought that lightning was made by some deity swinging it's hammer. Now, we know better. Some people still believe that every sinlge beeing was created by some kind of deity, altough we have a much simpler explanation which is backed by evidence and is constantly beeing refined.
This kind of "God of the gaps" style argument is no more substantial than saying, for example, "I don't know why things fall down, it must be that invisible people are grabbing them dragging them to the ground.". That makes about as much sense.
In your previous long argument, you only ever claimed this but never backed it up. You never explained why you need specifically the christian god, and not any arbitary god.
Nor did you ever once realize that while you were attacking people for simply assuming that logic exists, you were simply assuming that God exists, which is exactly as baseless an assumption. Actually, it's a worse assumption.
One person says, "I assume that logic exist, and then make my argument."
You say, "I assume that God exist and also that he created logic for me, and then make my argument." Your argument is the by far weaker one, because it rests on not one but two arbitary assumptions.
Of course, there is little point in anybody telling you this, because you are not interested in seeking the truth, but only to support your weak faith with a pseudo-scientific argument that does not hold water but that you cannot afford to admit is flawed. If you did, you might be forced to question other parts of your belief, wouldn't you?
A real christian does not need any kind of proof to support his faith. He rejects any attempt at such a proof as a crutch for the weak. You're a sorry excuse for a christian.
There is no proof that ANY deity exist. History shows us that people make their own gods and worship them. Heck if you could fool millions of people that you are a prophet and make your own lifestyle..why not?
It's all been done before, humans don't need any deity whether they are the olympian gods, Anubis or Evil Yahweh,...
It makes things REAL, you got only one life and so has the universe.
do you have any proof that the universe only has one "life"?
Yes, one cannot make sense out of mathematics without God.
(Universal abstract, invariants)
God is not male, that is only how HE is referred to in the Bible.
As far as Epicurus goes, that equation does not take into consideration that God could have sufficient moral reason for what he does or allows.
"Also, there might very well be a perfetcly scientific explanation for our laws of logic and for the universe happening to be the way it is without invoking the antrophic principle (Altough I think that many universes are more likeley."
That's the problem with you non-believers, you live on faith.
"What you're saying is akin to "Science hasn't found an explanation, so god must have done this."
Actually what I am saying is that without God YOU have no foundation for science. All of science is based on the inductive principle or 'the uniformity of nature,' how do you account for the uniformity of nature outside of God?
Assuming that God exists accounts for logic, assuming that logic exists, accounts for nothing. By the way, how do you know that your ability to reason is valid?
Troll detected
>>58
Let's just give him the benefit of the doubt.
>>57
Oh c'mon, you know that is absurd. "Please proove that there is no proof!". Just show us some valid proof for a god if you happen to have it, that'd basically refute him. The burden of prooving your god is upon you, not vice-versa.
>>56
God just exists and god made the universe? Why not just throw out the middle man and go "The universe just exists"? It's just as valid.
>>55
We live on faith backed by evidence and often validated numerous times, theists live on hot air and and more often than not age-old writings of some sort from a time when having slaves and beating your wife was perfectly normal. We also usually have enough honesty not to rip other peoples statements out of context.
By the way, did you forget the part of >>48 about the anthropic principle? It's a perfecly valid explanation for the laws of logic as well as the uniformity of nature that does not invoke any god. No more "But you can't logically argue against god!" please, we can now, thank you very much.
>>54
Oh, great. So god is an immoral murdering asshole by human standards, but that's ok because he knows better.
>>53
Clearly, Pierre Samuel is god.
Can everyone please stop talking about "proof"? There is no such thing in science outside the disciplines of mathematics and formal logic, even though the OP made the mistake of mentioning "scientific proof" in his starting argument.
The burden of prooving your god is upon you, not vice-versa.
God just exists and god made the universe? Why not just throw out the middle man and go "The universe just exists"? It's just as valid.
We live on faith backed by evidence and often validated numerous times
re: "however, the proof that God exists is that without Him you couldn’t prove ANYTHING. God is the necessary precondition for intelligibility, intelligibility exists, therefore God exists."
> By the way, did you forget the part of >>48 about the anthropic principle?
re: "What is your evidence that the human reasoning you use to validate this evidence, is itself valid?"
What is your evidence that the divine reasoning you call upon to validate your own evidence is itself valid? I don't think either of us have any, so let's not needlessly cast doubt on our own reasoning. If it's flawed reasoning, the course of the debate will hopefully show it as it such.
> I reject your assertion that the burden is on me, however, the proof that God exists is that without Him you couldn’t prove ANYTHING. God is the necessary precondition for intelligibility, intelligibility exists, therefore God exists.
You're cherrypicking the parts of other peoples arguments you want to respond to, and ignore the rest, which is not a good thing to do. Go back to >>48, then try this again, please.
> What is your evidence that the human reasoning you use to validate this evidence, is itself valid?
Generally, it is based on logic and has served me pretty well so far, as it has served you, I assume, and specifically, you don't seem to be able to make a point.
> Hardly, God has characteristics which account for sentience, personality, invariance, among other things, the universe does not.
Apparently, this universe does have all the neccesary preconditions for life complex enough to be sentient to develop sentient life, as is shown by me and you existing. As for the why, see, for example, >>48 and followups. (Also, even if you were right, that would still be only a proof of any god, not the christian one, not even a single one - there could be many of them.)
What is your evidence that the divine reasoning you call upon to validate your own evidence is itself valid? I don't think either of us have any, so let's not needlessly cast doubt on our own reasoning.
If it's flawed reasoning, the course of the debate will hopefully show it as it such.
You're cherrypicking the parts of other peoples arguments you want to respond to, and ignore the rest, which is not a good thing to do.
Generally, it is based on logic and has served me pretty well so far
> No, I suggested that those who believe in the anthropic principle are the ones who live on faith (blind faith actually).
I don't believe in it. I merely present it as an alternative to your assertion that God is a necessary precondition to pretty much everything. Since there is no evidence in favor of either, both are equally probable; however, the anthropic principle is slightly more scientifically valid, therefore I like it better from a personal standpoint.
> My evidence is found in the God's revealed Word. You may not agree with my evidence, however it is an account for the validity of my reasoning, an account which you do not have.
I'm willing to accept the God's revealed Word as evidence. However, if by the God's revealed Word you mean the Bible, that document has had errors, mistranslations, deletions, additions, opinions, lies, and countless other alternations introduced into it by several thousand humans over several thousand years. Its reliability now is highly suspect. Please present a factual or at least a primary source as "evidence".
> Surely you see the circularity in such a comment!!! How could you possibly know that your reasoning was flawed unless you FIRST assumed that the reasoning you used to determine this, was NOT itself flawed.
I will know it if you convince me that my reasoning is flawed using your own reasoning.
> No, I suggested that those who believe in the anthropic principle are the ones who live on faith (blind faith actually).
The anthropic principle in intself is pretty much undeniable, so I'll just assume that you actually do know what you're talking about and attacking the many-universes part. Anyways, it is still far less complex than having a god, doesn't create paradoxon, doesn't need to invoke any kind of questionable age-old writings, and has in this interpretation backing in string theory, so I would hardly call this "blind faith".
> My evidence is found in the God's revealed Word. You may not agree with my evidence, however it is an account for the validity of my reasoning, an account which you do not have.
Did it ever occur to you all the written down stuff might just be made up? For all you know, it could be, unless your god has personally visited you and assured you it's all true.
> Surely you see the circularity in such a comment!!! How could you possibly know that your reasoning was flawed unless you FIRST assumed that the reasoning you used to determine this, was NOT itself flawed.
He's talking about specific lines of reasoning.
> First of all...who says it's not a good thing to do? Is this a universal wrong? What is 'good' in your worldview? Secondly, I do not have the time to respond to everyone's entire post.
Right, add "avoiding actually responding" to the list. Anyways, as for "firstly": Generally, what I consider "good", happens to be, in my worldview. (Yay, my opinion is my opinion. Big suprise.) "Universally good", for all I care, is what the majority of human beeings consider to be good, this is very likeley evolved behavior. And, "secondly": You aren't responsing because you don't have the time, you aren't responding because you can't.
> How do you know?
Do you run around on highways? I think not. Neither do I. We both came to the conclusion that that might be unhealthy through various observations and reasoning.
>>68
I've never liked the anthropic principle because it doesn't really help explain the functioning of anything. It's offered as an explanation for why things are as they are, but it's just a trivial response. It's just, "they are as they are because if they were otherwise, they would be otherwise." I couldn't disagree with that, but it doesn't seem to say anything at all. It doesn't say what cause implies these observed effects. It sounds to me like it positions the cause as the effect.
> It sounds to me like it positions the cause as the effect.
It does, to a point. If you add a multiverse to the mix though, it becomes unlikeley that life like ours could not exist in any universe. It's possible that there are other universes which are wildly different from ours, which also brought forth life, but not as we know if, maybe not even carbon-based.
It's still just a philosophical (And to a point, physical - Now I won't claim to have in-depth knowledge about string theory, google "string theory landscape" for some articles) construct, but it's entireley possible. That suffices for here, since >>55 wanted an explanation for 'the uniformity of nature,', and this is a valid one.
I would also say that it's wildly more likeley than any alternative people have come up with, but that
> It sounds to me like it positions the cause as the effect.
It does, to a point. If you add multiple universes to the mix though, it becomes unlikeley that life like ours could not exist in any universe. It's possible that there are other universes which are wildly different from ours, which also brought forth life, but not as we know if, maybe not even carbon-based.
It's still just a philosophical (And to a point, physical - Now I won't claim to have in-depth knowledge about string theory, google "string theory landscape" for some articles) construct, but it's entireley possible. That suffices for here, since >>55 wanted an explanation for 'the uniformity of nature,', and this is a valid one.
I would also say that it's wildly more likeley than any alternative people have come up with, but I think I've already written that up as far as I can in >>39.
> Assuming that God exists accounts for logic, assuming that logic exists, accounts for nothing. By the way, how do you know that your ability to reason is valid?
In this, and in earlier arguments, your entire argument rests on the use of the word "accounts". This word has no such special meaning in a logical argument. If you want to somehow argue based on it, you will first have to define clearly to us what your use of "accounts" is supposed to mean.
Either way, your faith is still pathetically weak. Faith backed up by proof is not faith. Faith backed up by proof that transparently invalid is even less so. It is nothing but self-deception.
you will first have to define clearly to us what your use of "accounts" is supposed to mean.Where does it come from?
Faith backed up by proof is not faithYou people just don't get it do you, you would have to FIRST have FAITH that your reasoning was valid BEFORE you could use it to prove ANYTHING.
You aren't responsing because you don't have the time, you aren't responding because you can't.Ha!
> You people just don't get it do you, you would have to FIRST have FAITH that your reasoning was valid BEFORE you could use it to prove ANYTHING.
What does that have to do with your lack of faith?
What does that have to do with your lack of faith?The point, to make it ABUNDANTLY clear, is that ALL reasoning is based on faith. My faith however, makes sense out of my ability to reason, while the faith of the non-believer does not. Just like last time I was on here, no one has (or likely will) try to give an account (explain where it came from) their ability to reason.
That still has nothing to do with what I was saying.
I was saying that your grasping for a "proof of God" means that your faith in God is weak. Real christians only need faith. They don't need any kind of "proof", and they'd look down on anybody trying to create such a proof for not having enough faith.
I was saying that your grasping for a "proof of God" means that your faith in God is weak.Huh? Who says that I need proof?!? Read the website, it says that NO ONE needs proof that God exists.
If you don't need it, why do you spend so much time and effort on it?
If you don't need it, why do you spend so much time and effort on it?Because I am commanded to 'give a reason for the hope that I have,' (1 Peter 3:15) and to 'demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God" (2 Cor 10:5)
If the "reason for the hope that you have" is a simple logical argument, that's once again a pretty weak faith.
And if you convert somebody with a logical argument, they won't have a real faith either, and they will be just as bad christians as you.
If the "reason for the hope that you have" is a simple logical argument, that's once again a pretty weak faith.Um, it has NOTHING to do with my faith. It has lots to do with yours, however.
And if you convert somebody with a logical argument, they won't have a real faith either, and they will be just as bad christians as you.Read the site again, people cannot convert people, and it ain't my job. Plus anyone who comes to faith in God via a logical argument does not come to faith in the REAL God, because that would indicate that reason and logic DO NOT depend ENIRELY on God. And buddy, I dodn't need you to tell me that I am a bad Christian, I can figure that out on my own :-)
> You aren't the only person running from God who engages me in conversation, sadly you are like most who avoid MY questions.
Unlike you, I haven't failed to answer any of your questions so far, as far as I can tell. If I have, feel free to repeat them. Answering and then giving a counter-question would be a start. Also, do not make baseless assumptions about other people.
So anyways, please answer me this one simple question: Since you have been given, many times, a possible alternate explanation for what you call the uniformity of nature (Note that this alternate explanation is even likeley, which it wouldn't even have to be.), which basically makes your "proof" crumble, why haven't you taken down, or corrected, your website yet?
> Plus anyone who comes to faith in God via a logical argument does not come to faith in the REAL God, because that would indicate that reason and logic DO NOT depend ENIRELY on God.
They don't.
> If the "reason for the hope that you have" is a simple logical argument, that's once again a pretty weak faith.
It's about your god, isn't it? I'd say it has plenty do with your faith, or lack of it. Once again, the real christians I know outright reject anything like a "proof of god", as such an idea undermines faith.
> Read the site again, people cannot convert people, and it ain't my job.
Then why are you trying to do it? Even from the perspective of your own religion, are you are doing is causing harm.
the real christians I know outright reject anything like a "proof of god"The 'real' Christians you know should read the Bible (Acts 9:22)
Then why are you trying to do it?I'm not. I am trying to obey a command.
Since you have been given, many times, a possible alternate explanation for what you call the uniformity of natureThe multiverse theory is not only a wild leap of faith, it answers nothing (as proponents of that theory admit), since it does not explain the origins of the multiple universes.
>>87
Same explanation as your god; they just suddenly pop into existence.
>>87
Oh, and what does it matter that it's a leap of faith? It's possible, thats good enough for here.
>Acts 9:22
That's pretty irrelevant. It has nothing to do with a proof of god's existence.
No, I still think you are trying to back up your own weak faith, and masking it by pretending to follow a command nobody else follows.
Or perhaps you are just acting out of vanity and trying to make yourself look more clever than those around you?
Same explanation as your god; they just suddenly pop into existence.You might do better here if you stopped attributing theories to me that I do not espouse. I do not believe that God "suddenly popped into existence," I believe that he has always existed. If you care to translate that view to 'material' entities, the floor is yours.
That's pretty irrelevant. It has nothing to do with a proof of god's existence.It has to do with proof of a deity, something which your 'real' Christian friends apparently deny.
> I believe that he has always existed.
k, sorry.
> If you care to translate that view to 'material' entities, the floor is yours.
Why would I need to? I'll just stay with "they just suddenly pop into existence.", which is a good enough explanation.
Oh, and what does it matter that it's a leap of faith? It's possible, thats good enough for here.How do you know that it is possible?
> How do you know that it is possible?
Because there is no reason why it shouldn't be.
Why would I need to? I'll just stay with "they just suddenly pop into existence.", which is a good enough explanationIf you are happy to rest your argument on material things just 'popping into existence,' from nothing, and 'creating' life, sentience, intelligence, abstract entitities, logic, human dignity, and morality, I will be happy to let anyone compare whose faith is more reasonable.
Because there is no reason why it shouldn't be.How do you know there is no reason why it shouldn't be?
>>97
This is ridiculous. You are asking me to proove something is correct, which cannot be done, that is a fundamental property of any scientific hypothesis - they can be disproved though, so if you have such a reason, out with it. If not, I'll assume there are none. It's your job to proove me wrong, not mine.
>>99
I don't know anyting for sure (<- besides that), obviously. Neither do you, which is another problem altogether with "prooving god". For all you know, all your input might be simulated, and what you regard as the word of god might be fake. For all you know, there is no past and no present, and there might only be "now".
Knowing that we do not know anything for sure besides that we do not know anything for sure is the only thing we know for sure. This is the only conclusion that needs to pressupose nothing, not even logic itself, since if logic is not there, we cannot know anything either.
I don't know anyting for sure (<- besides that), obviously. Neither do youSo you don't know anything for sure, yet you know that "Neither do I." I think that if you don't know anything for sure, you should live consistenly with your beliefs and stop making knowledge claims.
> So you don't know anything for sure, yet you know that "Neither do I."
I did not say that. Reread:
> Knowing that we do not know anything for sure besides that we do not know anything for sure is the only thing we know for sure. This is the only conclusion that needs to pressupose nothing, not even logic itself, since if logic is not there, we cannot know anything either.
As you see, I know one thing for sure. (I know, I'd have to expand that sentence infiniteley, which for practical reasons I won't. Language can't really put this concept properly, I guess.)
> I think that if you don't know anything for sure, you should live consistenly with your beliefs and stop making knowledge claims.
As you very well know, there is a difference between scientific knowledge, which is gained by observation and validated by testing, and philosophical knowledge, which does not exist.
> Indeed the only way ANYONE can know ANYTHING for sure is through divine revelation by an omniscient being, exactly what Christians claim.
So, they claim that they know truth, and everyone else is wrong because they say that their god said so? That's laughable and does not show anything.
> Again, if you can't know anything for sure, please be consistent and stop making knowledge claims.
> As you very well know, there is a difference between scientific knowledge, which is gained by observation and validated by testing, and philosophical knowledge, which does not exist.
As you can see, I am trusting my senses, for practical reasons. That has nothing to do with not beeing able to know anything.
Besides that, this has sunken to attacking of messengers instead of arguments, and you do not seem to be willing to actually engage in debate, so I'll just leave it at that. You might as well, too, maybe you will see some day that you are wrong, maybe I will (Both are unlikeley, for different reasons ;) ). Bye, for now.
As you can see, I am trusting my senses, for practical reasons. That has nothing to do with not beeing able to know anything.Um, how do you know?
I don't know why you even bother trying to argue with this failure of a christian and failure of a logician. His arguments are as weak as his faith, and in order for the latter not to be shattered, he has to keep making absurd arguments to selectively ignore counter-arguments. You're not getting anywhere talking to such a man.
> What do you believe?
> Laws of Logic Exist. <<
> Seriously...What Do You Believe?
> Molesting Children for Fun is Absolutely Morally Wrong [facepalm.jpg]
I lol'd
>You people just don't get it do you, you would have to FIRST have FAITH that your reasoning was valid BEFORE you could use it to prove ANYTHING.
I don't have "faith" in the validity of my reasoning, I trust it. I have the scientific method to back me up and allow everyone else to confirm that my reasoning leads to same result so I trust every other member of the community to verify my reasoning. Even if I was wrong what defines a truth is that everyone accepts it for such, given that there is a lot we still ignore about the universe mistakes have happened when people believed that the sun goes around the earth or even more recent when we believed that stress caused peptic ulcers. Mistakes like this have happened and will happen again while we try to learn about this universe.
I also trust that the knowledge I have acquired through experimentation allows me to reproduce the results any number of times and to predict the outcome if the conditions in the experiment have been changed. Once again this is not faith.
>>How do you know that it is possible?
Nothing is impossible
I forgot to add that it is not part of science to prove god wrong, stop trying to confront them, they're not opposite of one another.
Tell that to the OP. This thread plus many others are in the wrong board.
> All things science, philosophy, natural sciences, sociology and other related academic topics are all talked about.
In the absence of a religion board it counts as philosophy, I suppose.
Maybe it could go on Personal Issues?
>>116
You seem pretty certain you can prove your beliefs with:
> the scientific method
Despite logical fallacies such as Appeal to Popularity:
> what defines a truth is that everyone accepts it
Weak Analogy and/or Proof by example:
> mistakes have happened when people believed that the sun goes around the earth
Argument from ignorance , Appeal to probability, Negative proof, etc...
> Nothing is impossible
Logical Fallacy...
Begging the Question, or,
Argument from Refusal to Google:
> explain further, otherwise it means nothing
>>118 seems to be suffering from this condition, which manifests mostly on the internet, where a person speaks only by naming logical fallacies. It is usually coupled with a belief in one's own argumentative superiority. Secondary symptoms include being a horrible bore.
I've been away from this place... I hope I haven't missed all of the action this thread will see. (I enjoyed the last round!) Despite a two-day absence, Proof.org guy hasn't said he'd gone away yet. I hope this thread won't just be a repeat of the last one... so far it looks like it sort-of is. Eh... Any other god-believers in the house? Any from any other school of apologetics? I tire of Presuppositionalism.
My case for atheism is simple: no reason to believe, so I don't. Of course, I am only able to consider potential reasons I have actually encountered. So far, none have cut the mustard.
Now, to respond to some points. Don't really want to get into 'proving logic' again... But if we absolutely must...
>The problem of evil is actually with the atheist though, If God did NOT exist, the whole concept of 'evil' would be meaningless. What one bag of advanced primordial slime does to another bag of advanced primordial slime, whould be completely irrelevant.
Irrelevant to who? To a non-existent god, well, yeah. But surely not to the primordial slime-bags involved!
>All of science is based on the inductive principle or 'the uniformity of nature,' how do you account for the uniformity of nature outside of God?
A is A. Things act in accordance with their nature. We observe objects and discover their properties. I have no reason to believe that things have a randomly changing identity, so I don't. So I expect things to behave with predictable consistency.
>>122
NO U
>>you can't know anything for sure
Last time I debated religion vs. science IRL it came down to this, despite the fact anyone can see that nobody in real life subjects claims to this degree of solipsist rigor. It would be utterly crippling. Noone would ever accomplish anything. And you know it.
>>118
WTF is the point of this post? Are you trying to actually communicate something, or just quoting random text with no context and following it with names of logical fallacies?
>>121
More non-information.
>>122
Apparently so.
this thread is boring.
>>125
WTF is the point of this post? Jisaku Jien
These are just my personal thoughts about the topic and about that website, to add something to the debate.
proofthatgodexists.org kept on debating, in despite of being owned many times, btw, I am completely against that website even if I do believe in God's existence, that does mean that I'm going to blindly accept that brainwashing logic as a proof.
Let me tell you this tale:
A scholar, who'd later become a saint was trying to find the truth behind god's existence. He readed countless books trying to understand the real nature of god.
One day as he was walking on the beach, he found a young boy, who was digging an hole in the beach. The boy kept went back and forth trying to fill this hole with the water taken from the sea, using a small cup.
The scholar asked him: "What are you doing?"
and the boy: "I'm trying to put the sea into that hole I've digged"
The scholar laughed at him:
"You're trying to dry the sea by using that cup?"
And the boy replied smiling:
"Aren't you trying to uncover the truth behind god by using your science as well?"
--------------------------------------------------------------
Allow me to use a different approach:
1)Think about someone you truly love
2)Prove me that you do really love that person like you can prove any physics or maths law.
I could do anything for the person I'm in love with, but if we take like 100 people, there may still be that 1% that won't believe me.
And that 1% may be right because there's not absolute way to be 100% sure of someone else feeling like you can do with math.
That's just to say that we cannot determine god's existence using science or logic in my opinion. I believe that only with our innermost thoughts and feelings, with that part of us that's "more than human" we can grasps the truth about god's existance and nature for ourselves.
So in the end: you can believe in god because "you feel it" with your soul, but you cannot scientifically prove neither your feeling or god's existance to anyone else.
>you cannot scientifically prove neither your feeling or god's existance to anyone else
It's been mentioned at least twice already, science isn't about proving things but about testing hypothesis.
While your argument makes sense to me to certain extent, I think it depends on your definition of truth and love.
Now, try not to feed the christian troll
>>128
but emotions and feelings are just neurochemical states of the brain that can be completely measured and even forcibly replicated with the right tools.
>>129
You're right about it, I apologize for being a little off topic with my post. About the "christian troll", do not misunderstand me, I just felt like using that christian tale to express my thoughts.
>>130
I do not know much about Neuroscience or brain's latest studies but I believe that there's still much to study about that matter and please correct me if I'm wrong.
Actually even if we assume that each and every sort of emotion is a neurochemical state of the brain, and that we can force it, I do believe that science is still far from defining a (100% failproof) list of natural trigger for each and every emotion and feeling.
>>128
The parable makes no logical sense whatsoever.
> That's just to say that we cannot determine god's existence using science or logic
To suggest that god is outside the realm of logic and scientific proof is outside the nature of the debate. It's mere mysticism, and when a person resorts to mysticism, that's usually when they've lost the argument.
> in my opinion
Well, at least this is truthful.
> you can believe in god because "you feel it" with your soul
Soul? Now you just have another state of existence to prove besides god, goddess, gods, or goddesses.
>>130 is 100% correct.
> I believe that there's still much to study about that matter
There's always much to study about all matters.
>>132
The "soul" I was talking about it's
>that part of us that's "more than human"
as I've mentioned above while explaning my opinion, and I used the parable for the same purprose...
While 129 and I guess 130 understood my post, even if they don't feel the same, and they made some deep critics about it, pointing our other facts. You should have been a little more "open minded" to catch it properly, instead of shielding yourself behind the fact that I am offtopic.
However, allow me to avoid any useless escalation of replies to justify, explain and specify better, any of my statment, as long as they're easy to undestand, if you do it properly, any critic would have been welcome.
>>> To be continued
God isn't real. Google for "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. Here's the abridged 4 chan version:
"There is no such thing as a Muslim Child. There is a child of Muslim Parents. There is no such thing as a Christian Child. There is a child of Christian Parents.
My specific hypothesis is about children. More than any other
species, we survive by the accumulated experience of previous
generations, and that experience needs to be passed on to children for their protection and well-being. Theoretically, children might learn from personal experience not to go too near a cliff edge, not to eat untried red berries, not to swim in crocodile-infested waters. But, to say the least, there will be a selective advantage to child brains that possess the rule of thumb: believe, without question, whatever your grown-ups tell you. Obey your parents; obey the tribal elders, especially when they adopt a solemn, minatory tone. Trust your elders without question. This is a generally valuable rule for a child. But, as with the moths, it can go wrong.
Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them.
Such trusting obedience is valuable for survival: the analogue of steering by the moon for a moth. But the flip side of trusting obedience is slavish gullibility. The inevitable by-product is vulnerability to infection by mind viruses.
Sociologists studying British children have found that only about one in twelve break away from their parents' religious beliefs."
"It would be a severe disadvantage, for example, when hunting or making tools, to keep changing one's mind, so under some circumstances, it is better to persist in an irrational belief than to vacillate, even if new evidence or ratiocination favours a change."
Douglas Adams:
"Religion . . . has certain ideas at the heart of it which we call sacred or holy or whatever. What it means is, 'Here is an idea or a notion that you're not allowed to say anything bad about; you're just not. Why not? - because you're not!' If somebody votes for a party that you don't agree with, you're free to argue about it as much as you like; everybody will have an argument but nobody feels aggrieved by it. If somebody thinks taxes should go up or down you are free to have an argument about it. But on the other hand if somebody says 'I mustn't move a light switch on a Saturday', you say, 'I respect that'.
Everybody gets absolutely frantic about it because you're not allowed to say these things. Yet when you look at it rationally there is no reason why those ideas shouldn't be as open to debate as any other, except that we have agreed somehow between us that they shouldn't be."
Andrew Mueller:
"Pledging yourself to any particular religion 'is no more or less weird than choosing to believe that the world is rhombus-shaped, and borne through the cosmos in the pincers of two enormous green lobsters called Esmerelda and Keith'."
"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear." Thomas Jefferson
"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." George Bush Snr.
Part 2
Bernard Russell:
"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is
a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit,
nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were
careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even
by our most powerful telescopes.
But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.
If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time."
Richard Dawkins on the Bible:
"The gospels that didn't make it were omitted by those ecclesiastics perhaps because they included stories that were even more embarrassingly implausible than those in the four canonical ones. The Gospel of Thomas, for example, has numerous anecdotes about the child Jesus abusing his magical powers in the manner of a mischievous fairy, impishly transforming his playmates into goats,
or turning mud into sparrows, or giving his father a hand with the carpentry by miraculously lengthening a piece of wood."
"Darwin's cousin Francis Galton was the first to analyse scientifically whether praying for people is efficacious. He noted that every Sunday, in churches throughout Britain, entire congregations prayed publicly for the health of the royal family. Shouldn't they, therefore, be unusually fit, compared with the rest of us, who are prayed for only by our nearest and dearest? Galton looked into it, and found no statistical difference. His intention may, in any case, have been satirical, as also when he prayed over randomized plots of
land to see if the plants would grow any faster (they didn't)."
"when asked whether I am an atheist, to point out that the questioner is also an atheist when considering Zeus, Apollo, Amon Ra, Mithras, Baal, Thor, Wotan, the Golden Calf and the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I just go one god further."
In other words, think for yourselves.
> that part of us that's "more than human"
Which part is that?
The gall bladder?
BOKU WA KAMI-SAMA
>>137
If you're going to try and wow us with your hardcore weeaboo-ism, at least learn some fucking Katakana.
神様で中学生
>>139
Better. I can thoroughly not understand you.
According to RikaiChan it translates to something like god in highschool.
Okay, some Japanese and anime trivia:
"God in highschool"/"Kami-sama de chuugakusei" is from the anime http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamichu
Not very related to >>137 because in "Kamichu" the god is a schoolgirl and BOKU refers to oneself as male.
The only link is "kami-sama".
Note that -SAMA indicates reverence, and that BOKU is a boasting or childish "I". Therefore "BOKU WA KAMI-SAMA" is showing that the speaker is not proficient in the language and/or quite vain.
So, god is real then, right?
"There is no such thing as a Muslim Child. There is a child of Muslim Parents. There is no such thing as a Christian Child. There is a child of Christian Parents.
Natural selection builds child brains with a tendency to believe whatever their parents and tribal elders tell them.
>>143 I'm not sure if the Japanese definition of "kami" can be applied to the Western definition of "god". The translators use "kami" to translate "god" from Japanese but that's because it's the closest equivalent.
"Kami is the Japanese word for the spirits within objects in the Shinto faith. "Kami may, at its root, simply mean 'spirit', or an aspect of spirituality. " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kami
A spirit within a forest would be a kami. The spirit within the Earth would be a kami. The spirit within the Universe would be a kami.
This leads to interesting speculation: what if there is more than one spirit claiming ownership of the object?
> So, let me see if I get this right...there is no such thing as an Atheist Child There is a child of Atheist parents.
Correct... do you have a point or is that all?
I asked them, they said that as long as I don't listen to retarded christians everything is fine.
I think his point is that rationality is in the eye of the beholder.
Anyway, what would be enlightening is to discover which beliefs children adopt in the absence of parental influences.
Maybe something like http://www.miaminewtimes.com/1997-06-05/news/myths-over-miami/ ?
>>150
Are you still arguing with yourself?
God made me an atheist, WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU TO CHALLENGE HIS WISDOM?
Ha ha oh wow, what a thread.
Prove that "God" DOES exist. I dare you all.
That is as impossible as proving god doesn't exist.
Both of them are quite stupid, by many reasons. Just be a "good" person and if there isn't a God you will have lived a good life, and if there is a God you will be rewarded for your excellent behavior.
Circular logic is circular.
>>154
31 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory.
32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.
33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34 "Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.
35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,
36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'
37 "Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink?
38 When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you?
39 When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'
40 "The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'
41 "Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
42 For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,
43 I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'
44 "They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'
45 "He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'
46 "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
>>157
That's easy, I'll just borrow the words of someone wiser then me:
"Reason is, and ought only to be, slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." - David Hume
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4705
Now, this doesn't exactly explain the trustworthiness of my ability to reason, but it applies to you just as well as it applies to me and all others here; that taken into consideration, this 'debate' suddenly makes a whole lot more sense.
You might also wish to peruse one of Hume's other great works, "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion."
According to the Bible, the Snake was the nice one who gave Man the knowledge, and god was a narrow-minded, jealous bastard who threw Man out of the Garden in retaliation.
>>160
While refreshing my memory of the work to answer that silly question, I found a passage a little more pertinent to your argument as stated in >>45. Rather then playing games of semantics, shall we revisit the original subject of this thread?
"They are still more frivolous, who say, that every effect must have a cause, because it is implyed in the very idea of effect. Every effect necessarily pre-supposes a cause; effect being a relative term, of which cause is the correlative. But this does not prove, that every being must be preceded by a cause; no more than it follows, because every husband must have a wife, that therefore every man must be marryed. The true state of the question is, whether every object, which begins to exist, must owe its existence to a cause: and this I assert neither to be intuitively nor demonstratively certain, and hope to have proved it sufficiently by the foregoing arguments." - Part III, Sect. III; please read it for the 'foregoing arguments', it's a little long and I do not want to copypasta it all
If you disagree with Hume's proof that not all beings must be preceded by a cause, please answer me this: What is the cause of the effect known as God? Would it not be more proper to pay our respects to that cause instead of its avatar?
If you do not disagree, why is it any less valid to postulate that logic, morality, or the physical world have always existed than it is that God has always existed?
>>161
DURRRRRRRRRRRRRR
>>163
Disregard that, I suck cocks.
> God is not an effect.
In that case, neither are logic, morality and the physical world.
Since the law of cause and effect does not apply to the divine entity, that law can no longer be considered universal and inviolable, and thus it is foolish to demand that some phenomenon of nebulous origin must be 'accounted' for while another is not. You are attempting to use the rule to prove the exception to the rule. This does not work.
>>166
Similar to >>46, I believe logic is a reapplication of natural laws, making it at its heart part of the physical world. I think morality is a social construct, but do not discount that societies other than our human one might exist or have existed to ponder it ever since the beginning of cosmology (lol aliens.) And I do not know what took place before the Big Bang, nor does anyone else. In short, I am an agnostic concerning those matters.
>>168
I will concede morality, because I do not wish to debate it. You may consider my inclusion of it to be in error.
I did not state that natural laws caused the laws of logic. Rather, I believe the laws of logic are a subset of the laws of nature, which humans have adapted to other purposes.
I did not state that Big Bang caused the physical world. It is a singularity, which makes it impossible to postulate meaningful theories about the nature of the physical world prior to the event.
>>170
If I had to pick, it would be the physical world. However, thanks to the Big Bang essentially erasing the history of the universe prior to it, I have no grounds whatsoever on which to make that judgement and so I won't do so.
Anyway, my point was that if God is uncaused, it opens the door for all sorts of other seemingly inexplicable phenomena to be without cause as well. You can't just say "All things must be traceable back to an origin EXCEPT for God, He is Special." If you are going to prove the existence of God using scientific laws, He must obey those laws as well.
>>172
Perhaps my choice of words in >>165 was poor. I meant not to state my own beliefs, but rather propose that if God is exempt from causality, then perhaps the phenomena I listed are exempt from causality as well. You can't rule out the convenient explanation for some phenomenon and not others.
My understanding is that if God is not required to obey natural laws, such as the law of causality, it means either two things: those laws are invalid, or God is supernatural. That which is supernatural is by definition outside the bounds of science. Your argument may be true, but if you hold that God is omnipotent (making him exempt from every natural and scientific law), it is neither scientific nor a proof and is an inadequate rebuttal to the opening argument of this thread: "God is not real because there is no scientific proof that he ever existed."
> My argument is that one cannot make sense of ANYTHING let alone causality, without God (a personal, omnipotent, immaterial, timeless being) as the first cause.
You know, there's a funny pattern throughout history. All sorts of phenomena (though particularly the dramatic) that contemporary scientific knowledge was unable to adequately explain - rain, lightning, earthquakes, life itself - was thought to be the work of gods or of God. As scientific explanations for these phenomena were developed, tested, and refined, the belief in a divine origin of these phenomena slowly faded away and in many cases disappeared entirely.
I see no reason why this pattern should not continue, until some distant day science has succeeded in explained everything, and there is no room left beyond it for gods to dwell. That is my faith.
> I see no reason why this pattern should not continue, until some distant day science has succeeded in explained everything, and there is no room left beyond it for gods to dwell.
I don't see that ever happening. At best/worst the believers still around would be either theists or deists. There will always be stones left unturned.
I see no reason why this pattern should not continue, until some distant day science has succeeded in explained everything, and there is no room left beyond it for gods to dwell. That is my faith.
> The problem is that the non-theist has absolutely zero basis for assuming that nature is uniform.
wrong
> random, chance world
your view, not science
> You base your faith in a science
semantics
> that is only possible because God exists
prove it
> You see the problem with such a position is that you cannot account for the science that you have faith in.
I account for it with my own senses.
All science is based on facts; all facts can be verified with the senses. And if you cast doubt upon our own senses, demanding that they need accountability, then we have no business debating the nature of reality at all (also, we are probably Buddhists.)
If there's one thing we must be certain of for science to work, it is that we exist, we percieve, and we percieve correctly.
Is there any knowledge that isn't gained through either taste, smell, sight, hearing or touch?
You have been proved wrong several times already and you keep pretending it didn't happen. Please leave now!.
> The problem is that the non-theist has absolutely zero basis for assuming that nature is uniform
And you have zero basis for believing in your god. What else is new?
> You would never put someone in a rocket and send them to space unless you were able to predict exactly what would happen when you lit the rockets.
I think you misunderstand science. Science can never 'predict exactly'; it can only be really, really sure. Those who sent a man to space were taking a risk - a risk well calculated and considered extremely minute, but for all they knew Ahura Mazda might have been waiting invisibly above the stratosphere with his hammer of smiting for the first human foolish enough to try and escape his domain. They literally did choose to brave the unknown, and thanks to them, now we have definite facts about space instead of inductions which we're pretty confident about but that might, somehow, be in error.
> You have no basis for such an assumption.
I base it on the fact that everything I, and every other scientist, has ever observed is in line with such an assumption. Theories with no known exceptions to them are called laws or principles; this one is the 'principle of uniformity.' They are no more rock-solid then the rest of science, but when we observe something that seems to violate a law, we start to examine the anomaly very closely rather then immediately cast our suspicions on the law.
> Still though, let me ask you this, is all knowledge gained by the senses?
Sounds like more semantic games.
Well, I would say that it is impossible to determine the truth or falsity of knowledge not gained through the senses, thus it has no business in science.
Then the answer is yes. Now you answer mine.
Science can never 'predict exactly'; it can only be really, really sure.
I base it on the fact that everything I, and every other scientist, has ever observed is in line with such an assumption.
Then the answer is yes.
> Still though, let me ask you this, is all knowledge gained by the senses?
No, sometimes we have hallucinations of a 900-foot tall Jesus that picks up an office building and then brags about it.
> Maybe you could tell me by what sense you came to know that ALL knowledge is gained through the senses
Well, it wasn't from an oral tradition invented by tribesmen that stoned people for believing in the wrong god and thought the world was ending at every solar eclipse.
> asking by what sense you came to know that ALL knowledge is gained through the senses.
Irrelevant.
Senses are our means of gathering information about the world. The only knowledge that isn't gained through the senses we are born with.
Whether through textbooks or tomes, the words of a preacher or the words of a teacher, everything we learn comes through our senses.
You have the same senses I do. Whatever conclusions we come to both use the same imperfect senses.
If you have any other mysticism you'd like to share... please don't.
> Aside form that flip-flop
I'm not the poster you think I am, so there was no "flip-flop" since I am not that poster.
Either way, demanding an immediate answer then balking when clarification is presented is not a "flip-flop", and does not reveal a weakness in any argument or capacity for reason.
As for the substance of this loaded political implication (that the ability to change ones mind is a weakness of character), it couldn't be further from the truth.
> The only knowledge that isn't gained through the senses we are born with.
I question this statement. I assume you are referring to animal instinct, but can reactions programmed into our mind on an unconscious level really be described as 'knowledge'?
I suppose we should ask proofthatgodexists.org to define 'knowledge' to his satisfaction.
Whoops, somehow I became terminally confused while writing that reply. Ignore the mixed-up post references.
Now will you answer what knowledge isn't acquired through senses?
>>198
I am pretty sure the answer is going to be along the lines of spiritual knowledge.
If so, I'll save us a post and inquire in advance how he is able to verify the truthfulness of such. Or perhaps more importantly, how others are able to verify the truthfulness of such.
Truth is sort of a nebulous concept, but I think the best benchmark we've got for it - so far as it pertains to the nature of reality - is near-unanimous opinion. The chief reason we place our trust in our senses and the natural world it reveals is that everyone (barring physical weakness or disability) perceives it in the same way, whereas it is blatantly obvious that the six billion of us on this planet perceive God, Allah, Buddha or whatever name you prefer to call him/her/it in some very different ways.
> We'll talk about my basis later
No, we won't. You'll just drag out that old chestnut about how your god somehow "accounts for" something else, and you'll dodge the question, never admitting that your belief is entirely irrational and on much shakier ground that anybody else's.
> Not to mention the fact that 'changing one's mind' flies in the face of any evolutionary model.
Changing our minds is the very strength behind science, if we can't do this, it doesn't work.
Changing our minds is the very strength behind science, if we can't do this, it doesn't work.
Man, you're so incredibly confused about different philosophies here, it's not even funny. None of that has anything whatsoever to do with evolution. You're just grouping together everything you disagree with under one label. All you manage to do is look incredibly ignorant.
Hey, look, man. If you want to argue against something, how about you first go out and learn what the hell it is.
> You happen to 'fizz' atheism
No, I don't. I 'fizz' ignorance. From ignorance I can 'fizz' anything I want.
Doug Wilson? Are you referring to the hockey player, the interior designer or the Christian Theologian?
Interesting how your post does not include any refutation. Tell me how free choice comports with any evolutionary model?
>>205
Interesting that you think I'd bother discussing anything with one such as yourself.
Go and finish high school so I can explain it to you and you'll understand it.
On a side note, wasn't christianity the responsible for burning Galileo for defending heliocentrism? Tell me, has your retarded religion changed its mind already or are you so retarded that still believe the world is flat and square and the middle of everything?
Please leave and stop making an ass of yourself, do it for your kids: it must be shameful for them to have you as a parent.
The correct description of your statement is "not even wrong". It is so non-sensical, it cannot be refuted. It's like trying to refute a statement like "an apple is five".
>>210
Because it was a reproductive advantage.
> no one here can tell me
How Insightful
You are missing the point. Explain how biochemistry = choice.
>>213
Evolution itself does not purport to explain how biological traits function, it merely describes the process by which they became more commonplace in a given population.
However, choice seems pretty easy to account for. Many types of insects and other simple organisms are unable to interrupt preprogrammed patterns of behavior in response to rapidly changing environments; for instance, a digger wasp that is eating its prey and is then caught by a predator will not flee, but will continue to eat until it is itself eaten. The ability to interrupt instinctive behaviors in response to emergencies would obviously be a survival advantage in this case, thus it was selected for in more complex forms of life. "Choice" is a far more refined version of this ability to adapt mental processes to the situation at hand.
We do not know much about the biochemical basis of choice, but it's thought to take place primarily in the orbitofrontal cortex of the brain.
> We do not know much about the biochemical basis of choice
So you don't really know ANYTHING AT ALL? Nice Flip-Flop.
[Insert mystic escapism to defend lack of valid response and failure to address post >>1]
proofthatgodexists.org = unable to learn.
Please, make the tiniest effort to understand that what you're asking is like asking how economics can explain the taste of oranges. Evolution has never pretended to have anything to do with the question of choice. It makes no statements about it. That's the domain of philosophy.
http://www.truthseeker.com/truth-seeker/1993archive/120_5/ts205f.html
The evidence for evolution goes beyond the scope of philosophy (and beyond your comprehension as well).
(FYI, >>221 ain't the same Anonymous Scientist as me. I'm not sure why he/she directed that post to >>220 instead of >>218.)
> Um, evolution IS philosophy.
This is why people keep telling you to go back to school before trying to make an argument. This is a ridiculous statement, and just shows that you are either a) a complete fool or b) blindly parroting fundamentalist dogma with no basis in reality.
Possibly "and" instead of "or".
I typed "proof of macroevolution" into Google, and the first hit was http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/. You know how to use Google, don't you? You could have done it yourself, if you had actually wanted to learn anything.
Somehow, I'm thinking you're not really interested in learning.
>>224
c) a troll
Here's a summary of a proof stated by Ian Johnston at http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/essays/courtenay1.htm
1) All living things come from living parents. (Evidence: Spontaneous generation was disproven centuries ago. Apart from that, lack of opposing evidence or alternate theories.)
2) There are many species alive today that are very different from each other. (Self-evident, I would hope.)
3) Very long ago, fewer and simpler organisms existed than exist now. (Evidence: Fossil record.)
Conclusion: Unless God is constantly creating new species out of nothing, "macroevolution" has to have occurred. Darwin's theory is the best naturalistic explanation of how that has happened.
Addendum in Ian Johnson's words: "To make the claim for the scientific truth of evolution in this way is to assert nothing about how it might occur. Darwin provides one answer (through natural selection), but others have been suggested, too (including some which see a divine agency at work in the transforming process). The above argument is intended, however, to demonstrate that the general principle of evolution is, given the scientific evidence, logically unassailable and that, thus, the concept is a law of nature as truly established as is, say, gravitation."
> timeline is spurious
Your post is a little hard to understand, but I'm guessing this is your main counterargument.
Why do you say the timeline of the fossil record is spurious? For the most part it's based on a very simple principle of geology, the law of superposition - in layman's terms, this law states "new dirt is deposited on top of older dirt." Extrapolated, the meaning is "new dirt containing new fossils is deposited on top of old dirt containing older fossils." Do you disagree with this?
There's a bit of radiometric dating involved, but carbon-14 decays to undetectable levels at around 60,000 years, and there are few other isotopes suitable for dating fossils and sediments. Geological evidence is the primary tool for constructing the timeline of the fossil record.
> Which new species are you talking about?
Those species that are present today, but are not present in the fossil record. Where did they come from?
Evidence:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6548719.stm
Will you say that god just happened to have recycled a protein from his protein database?
Oh, did that site have too much proof for you, so you had to ignore it? Ok, just pretend I copy-pasted all the contents on that site, and start refuting.
It is more reliable than the belief of a cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as youy master so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree.
> the god of atheism
Strawman. Atheism rejects all gods. This is the very definition of the atheism. Whether it's logical or scientific is up for debate. But we're not debating the validity of Atheism, we're debate the existence of God. (Yes, there is a large difference)
The comparison is invalid because time is not a god in any scientific sense. It's finite, limited in 'power', has no worshippers, and likely will one day cease to exist. We can also see it's effects, so we know it's real or 'real enough'.
You may be confusing atheism with science. They are not mutually exclusive, but are not the same.
> a dinosaur became a chicken?
Strawman. This is the same argument as monkeys 'becoming' humans. Not even creationists use this long-dead fallacious argument.
> Your proof relies on the assumption that God DID NOT create the different species. This is 'question begging.'
False. We also make the assumption that:
All these are reasonable assumptions. If any of these were true, we'd have to prove it was true. The same goes for any god(s) and/or goddess(es).
By making these assumptions, we have a foundation to base our beliefs on (all of science, religion, and philosophy). If you wish to reject these assumptions and invalidate all human knowledge, then we can further discuss our collective course of action here:
http://4-ch.net/general/kareha.pl/1165280951/
In other words, the hypothesis that God is constantly creating new species without anyone noticing - like the other assumptions that >>237 listed - is (as far as I'm aware) completely devoid of factual evidence for and factual evidence against it, and thus beyond the domain of science altogether. It is not inherently false, but it's plain silly to try to disprove a scientific law by proposing it as an alternative.
Even if it were assumed to be true, I think it would be awfully curious how God created the various species in such a way that the fossil record shows us a clear evolutionary path of descent for nearly every one of them. Either that or He fabricated the fossil record completely. Is it all a divine joke, or some sort of test of our faith?
Once again, "proofthatgodexists.org" ignores arguments he can't answer. That's pretty immature.
You were given a list of proofs of macroevolution. Start refuting, or admit that you can't.
>>239
If you mean http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/, actually, it is a summary of evidence supporting macroevolution - not proofs of macroevolution. Many of the evidences are conveniently packaged with criticisms and alternate explanations, so proofthatgodexists.org wouldn't even have to do any extra research arguing against them; he can just parrot those which appeal to him most.
Not quite what we were looking for, I think. It's nice to see a fair, balanced and well-referenced webpage on the subject, though.
>Your proof relies on the assumption that God DID NOT create the different species. This is 'question begging
your proof relies on the assumption that the bible is completely true...yet you cant prove that either
I think ptgeorg has given up, let's not all pile-on and invite further recycled debate.
more importantly why is god constantly proofing new species into existence only to kill them off a short time later
i can only think of 3 explanations
god doesn't exist
god does exist but doesn't actively maintain the universe and most of the scientific view of the universes origin is correct
the creationist view is correct and the Christian god is just one sick fuck
I vote for permasage
what i believe is god only exist in your heart not any kind of physical form. i've read somewhere, that the power of thought of many people if they think as one, eventually can make it come true... so maybe thats the thing with god, he came true because many people believe he's exist.
Heart is a muscle. If you have something living in there then it is an infection. See a doctor.
We created God, he didn't create us. He is the sum of all unknowns.
>>245
Whenever people have no Idea how something happened, like how universe was created, or how something which seems impossible becomes possible for no apparent reason, it is called God.
People and societies are flat out assholes who never admit that they are clueless of the workings of the universe and cling to God to give them meaning to what they can find no meaning in.
Religion is like this set of instruction on top of millions of people's minds. Of course this will have uncontrolled effects which looks like have been a miracle or someshit, but are actually are done by the people as a whole. Only because they are a mass that believe the same thing.
/245
Another thing: why is it that we believe that logic can explain everything. Logic can be inherently flawed. Its just a system of thought that we regard as perfect and follow it. In other words, you can prove god exists with logic, and you can prove that it doesn't exist, hell, you can probably prove anyshit to anyone using logic , but either side of the argument you wont know you are right or wrong.
God did not create humans, humans created god.
If it's a belief then it is a thought. The organ you use for that is the brain. Therefore, not the heart. The heart pumps blood.
>The organ you use for that is the brain.
Some people use instead their gonads for that. :)
>>250
dude, you're not going to say to your girlfriend "i love you with all my brain". you're gonna say "i love you with all my heart", i want to see you said option no.1 to a girl, i want to see what she thinks about you.
the same with belief, if you "think" that you want to believe something then. you gonna say that "im gonna believe you with all my heart" not "im gonna belief you with all my brain"....
my friend just ask a similar question: which came first, chicken or egg?
Egg of course, evolutionarily chicken was not the first egg-laying animal.
In the sentence "which came first, chicken or egg?", the word "chicken" comes first. :)
>>252
That is a phrase left over from older times. It is obviously not correct in a biological sense, but it is so commonly used to convey a message that it is still being used.
Back on the topic though, I do not know whether God is real or not. I do not know what religion is the "proper" one to follow. No matter if God is real or not, I try to live my life in a morally positive way.
The whole thread "Is God real?" is flawed, because the OP has not defined "God".
>will you still gonna ask a girl "i love you with all my brain" ??
It's none of your business but I'll reply anyway. I've never told anyone "love you". And if were to say it I'd say just "I love you" without any cliché attached to it.
Let this thread die already.
Language is but a collection of clichés,... So if you wand to express your love without clichés, keep your mouth shut and do things ;-)
Sounds good to me, I'll do it as soon as I find the object of my love.
I said "I love you" to a few girls but I never felt the need to append anything to it. YMMV.
So that's the answer to whose question?
How is that related to the main to topic?
Let this thread die already.
Bump.
Is some sort of divine being real or not? I think it's safe to say that the existance of such a being cannot be proven in anything even resembling a scientificaly acceptable way.
I also think that it's pointless to try to convince another person of it's existance/non-existance. When has anyone who's ever really made up their mind about it changed their mind because f points raised in a debate over it? I think maybe never. So I say this debate = completely pointless.
Yeah it's pointless, but as I said several times already in this thread that's because "God" is undefined.
For example if we define "God" as Nature and/or the Universe, then "God" is real, yes.
If we define "God" as a money-making scheme created by some fat priests since immemorial times to exploit the superstitious mortal man, then yes it's real.
If we define "God" as 42 ID:Heaven, then lol no, it's completely unreal.
omg another stupid debate on a stupid subject. why bother arguing? all youpeople are doing is trying to force your beliefs onto others. cant we all just live together and forget about who follows what religion and who believes in god?
Its called faith for a reason. that reason is that there is no proof for or against a god.
/thread
I haven't been here in a long time (think a year or more) and this was on the top so I'll respond to it. I'll be simple so I can be understood.
I know God exists, I've proven that he exists. It's simple and it's an experiment others can perform as well, meaning it's repeatable. Millions of people have done the experiment and found it valid and I've met literally hundreds of people in my lifetime that have proven the existence of God themselves. They are witnesses, as I am, of the existence of God.
We prove the existence of God by first asking if he's there. Then we have faith enough to do as he asks and we receive answers in the form of his intervention in our behalf.
It always works.
For example. Let me imagine that I'm testing whether tithing is a real principle given by God. I need to have faith enough to pay tithing. As I pay tithing I'm rewarded for my efforts. As I continue through a cycle of paying my tithing and receiving blessings I have then proven that tithing is real and came from God.
I don't have faith. Faith is the belief in something that cannot be proven. I have proven the existence of God. I pray, I read scripture, I feel his spirit in my life, I obey his commandments, I receive blessings and I understand them as miracles in my life which bring me closer to God, the cycle continues.
I no many others that have done the same and they too can tell you this. If you don't yet have faith enough to believe in God, perhaps you can have faith enough to believe in me and others like me who have proven the existence of God. I can show you how you can find out for yourself and prove his existence as well.
Simple.
So in other words, you say "God, my main deity, you up there?" and drop a dime in the box, the next time something good happens in your life, God must have done it for you as a way of saying "Yep. Here I'm is"?
In principle it could work. Not I obey and something good happens, but some thing much much more specific. For example, if a Diety says "Don't eat Lobster, or you'll break out in blue polkadots", then what you do is eat lobster and look for blue polkadots.
However there are other plausible tests. For one, if a deity created the universe, all statements that that diety makes about the universe must be true. So if you checked the Book, and found false statements of physical fact -- that diety isn't real.
Or if the diety is said to be outside of time, he should be able to predict the future -- very very specifically. Not "There will be a disease outbreak" but "There will be an outbreak of a diease that strikes the immune system. This disease will kill 40% of the population of Earth." Not "Wars and Rumours of Wars" but "The Germans will take over half of Europe and throw Jews in ovens". In other words, specifics, names, dates, locations, events. And not in the poetic symbolic form either. Symbols can be interpreted after the fact to mean anything.
There is no evidence for a god, other than people thinking there is one because they like the idea of it and re-affirming this to each other. Let's drop this.
Hey, this is the Science board... how about some Science?
Intercessory prayer and cardiovascular disease progression in a coronary care unit population: a randomized controlled trial.
OBJECTIVE: To determine the effect of intercessory prayer, a widely practiced complementary therapy, on cardiovascular disease progression after hospital discharge.
CONCLUSIONS: As delivered in this study, intercessory prayer had no significant effect on medical outcomes after hospitalization in a coronary care unit.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=11761499
>>273
Proof that God hates people with cardiovascular disease.
The simple answer is yes that is correct. However it seems that you're not understanding or at least not accepting it.
I'll give you an experiment that you can try yourself and you'll receive the proof you're looking for. Tithing is a good one and it's been mentioned already. Tithing, simply enough, is a tenth. In this case a tenth of your income.
For the next year each paycheck you get I'd like you to pay 1/10th of your income to a church. Choose a good one, I don't want you donating to the Church of Satan because you think it's funny. A decent, good church that teaches good principles. Whether it be Shinto or Muslim or Christian donate 1/10th of your income to that church for 1 year. Pray while you do this to know if God is real with a desire to know. After a year you will see the change in your life paying tithing will bring. Prove God, he will show you he's there.
Let's assume for a second that god does exist, how do you know he relies on church to mediate his/her/its will? What makes you think he/she/it even listens?
Here is a good experiment to validate yours, get a good sample population and have part of them donating to cheesus and another part to donate to the church of satan (assuming it exists) and another part wont donate at all. After rone year evaluate the the rate of "success" in you sample population even if it's on an arbitrary value (let's say 0-10) then do some stats and make an analysis of variance. If your god relies on some human institution to mediate his/her/its will then one of the sample populations will be significantly more "successful" than the others.
Now, this is a good experiment because you have controls. Now, go back to high school and learn how to develop a good hypothesis and a good experiment.
Also, be aware that my experiment does not test the existance of a god but goes on the assumption that a exists and thus tests that deity's acceptance of people through an institution.
>>275 This experiment will only prove that giving money to some perceived-to-be-worthwhile cause may give someone a better feeling than hoarding money for oneself, not prove the existence of some invisible being. There is no causality in this experiment.
>I've met literally hundreds of people in my lifetime that have proven the existence of God themselves. They are witnesses, as I am, of the existence of God.
Look, seriously, DO the experiment. I'll tell you it works. Hundreds of others can tell you it works. Just because you THINK it doesn't work doesn't mean you know anything. If you choose not to try and find God you won't ever find him and you're the one that has chosen to live in ignorance.
Don't foget to do the other half of the experiment. Stop tithing for a year and see if you see no sign of God around. After both years, compare your results.
Sex scandal hits Atlanta-area megachurch
"At its peak in the early 1990s, it claimed about 10,000 members and 24 pastors and was a media powerhouse. By soliciting tithes of 10 percent from each member's income, the church was able to build a Bible college, two schools, a worldwide TV ministry and a $12 million sanctuary the size of a fortress.
Today, though, membership is down to about 1,500, the church has 18 pastors, most of them volunteers, and the Bible college and TV ministry have shuttered — a downturn blamed largely on complaints about the alleged sexual transgressions of the elder Paulks."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071120/ap_on_re_us/preacher_paternity_8
>Look, seriously, DO the experiment. I'll tell you it works. Hundreds of others can tell you it works. Just because you THINK it doesn't work doesn't mean you know anything. If you choose not to try and find God you won't ever find him and you're the one that has chosen to live in ignorance.
SERIOUSLY, learn how to make an experiment. You have to take into account all possibilities before you can assume the cause of an event. Also, I don't live in ignorance but I live in logic.
Anyway, I promise I will perform your experiment as soon as you finish/repeat high school.
>try and find God
And once again, the variable "God" is undefined.
Compilation cannot proceed. Program aborted.
http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/
cut thread here
But you have another problem. You haven't really defined what a blessing is. This makes the experiment worthless even if you do the control.
What you need is something specific, something that an outside observer will agree is a "blessing". For example, if we had identical twins, inject both with a disease of our choosing (nonfatal of course), we could have one tithe and the other not. If tithing works, tithing twin should heal faster than nontithing twin. Then we have something.
But just having a vague "something good will happen" means nothing. It's too subjective. I like sushi, my brother hates it. So if we both get sushi, I record it as positive, my brother records it as negative. That won't work in an experiment. You need something objective and publicly observable.
You might as well spend 10% of your income at the casino.
But in >>276 the success isn't specific. You can't do statistics on people rating whether or not they feel blessed or not. You'd need something specific, because the observers are biased. Someone who believes in God will feel "blessed" by something an athiest would call "lucky". So the same feeling gets a different result based on the bias of the observer.
Check cure rates on a disease and at least you've got something that isn't going to be a hit for believers and a miss for unbelievers. Bias in this case is going to piss all over any results you get if you're going to allow participants to self-rate.
Then let me define success (like it matters for an experiment I won't perform):
-Health
-Good income
-No problems
-Happiness
-Satisfaction with their own lives in whichever terms means for each single participant
Happy? let this thread die now.
>>288. that's a miserable definition of success.
Nope, not happy. How about you die now, and we keep the thread alive?
'SUPERSTITION' IN THE PIGEON
B. F. Skinner
A pigeon...is put into an experimental cage for a few minutes each day. A food hopper attached to the cage may be swung into place so that the pigeon can eat from it. A solenoid and a timing relay hold the hopper in place for five sec. at each reinforcement.
If a clock is now arranged to present the food hopper at regular intervals with no reference whatsoever to the bird's behavior, operant conditioning usually takes place. In six out of eight cases the resulting responses were so clearly defined that two observers could agree perfectly in counting instances. One bird was conditioned to turn counter-clockwise about the cage, making two or three turns between reinforcements. Another repeatedly thrust its head into one of the upper corners of the cage. A third developed a 'tossing' response, as if placing its head beneath an invisible bar and lifting it repeatedly. Two birds developed a pendulum motion of the head and body, in which the head was extended forward and swung from right to left with a sharp movement followed by a somewhat slower return... None of these responses appeared in any noticeable strength during adaptation to the cage or until the food hopper was periodically presented...
The conditioning process is usually obvious. The bird happens to be executing some response as the hopper appears; as a result it tends to repeat this response.
Why is a thread about god in science anyway. Don't we have a place for religious dweebery yet? Pfft.
My experiment:
1)I walked into my kitchen grabbed a plate and placed it on the table.
2)I ask in a clear and loud voice "Attention god if you are omnieverything make a ham and cheese sandwich appear on this here plate!".
3)I wait 5 minutes.
4)I go into the fridge make a sandwich.
Conclusion:God couldn't make a sandwich but I could so that means if I can make a samidge and god can't that I am vastly superior to god and therefore he isn't omnifantastic or that I am in fact god but if I am god then why did I do the experiment?If I was god shouldn't I have known then if I am god yet I didn't know that would mean i'm not omnispectacular but if god isn't omniamazing..............
> "Attention god if you are omnieverything make a ham and cheese sandwich appear on this here plate!".
I just felt I had to get a post in here before the inevitable equally ham-fisted anti-evolution counter argument showed up.
Gentlemen!
I am proud to announce that I have not very recently stumbled upon indefatigable proof that god, or really cool aliens, who would be roughly equivalent for all pratical means and purposes; do, does, did, and may have in fact existed at one point in the future!
Such proof MUST be observed first hand at http://www.timecube.com/ in a most rigorously and professionally scienctiferiffical fashion.
Apparently there is no way something of this magnitude could have come into existence naturally, without presupposing a form of ribonucleic base bonded with four-helix single-sided simultaneously rotational cubes; obviously we have every expectction to reproducibly prooved this as soon as we come down.
Thusly as such &c, the erudite MUST entertain the notion that there is something, Ergot Gratis: supranatural, afeet!
>>293
Silly atheist, you didn't say what kind of bread you wanted the sandwich made with! God can't read your mind!
This thread brings the lulz.
Let's start from first principles. What is a "god?" What do we mean when we say the word? How do we define it? What attributes does a "god" have?
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♪ ／ ＼ RANTA TAN
ヽ(´Д｀;)ﾉ RANTA TAN
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>>294 "Thou shalt not test the Lord your God."
is which god real?
the christian one? Alah? Zeus? Quetzalcoatl?
any/all of them?
the existence of a divine being cannot be scientificaly proven, or disproven.
>>302
winner
>>302
Actually it can be proven; we just don't know how or if or whatever but God or the aliens who created us could well just appear in Earth tomorrow and thus it's scientifically proven. It just cannot be disproven.
>>304
The question is: How can you be convinced that the being has divine power and not highly advanced technology?
>>305
No, the question is: what does "divine being" even mean in a human context?
this thread has been going around in circles with people rising the same arguments over and over again, why don't you all read the whole thing before even thinking that you have something worth to say?
this thread has been going around in circles with people rising the same arguments over and over again, why don't you all read the whole thing before even thinking that you have something worth to say?
it all only boils down to one thing: belief or unbelief.
Everyone who posts in threads like these deserves a long and painful death, including me.
And especially >>300 for bumping it.
God may be real but it is not in the way the bible says.
I notice that after 312 posts, still nobody has come up with a single definition for that "God" thingie.
God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipotent
it seems narcissistic of us humans to try to fully understand something like the concept of an all powerful being with the amount that we learned in our meager exisitance
You know... any good discussion about God should start with a list of definitions.
So, the question "Does God exist?" has to come up and narrow it down to the following definitions:
Starting the argument without actually defining the parameters is stupid. In the end all you get is a dozen idiots beating off their meats ideologically, to no benefit.
God is not a single concept, but has multiple incompatible meanings for different cultures. A god of rain would not at all be considered a god by certain cultures, if humans can also induce rain. Some people would consider an immortal a god, others not.
As for god being almighty, omniscient, etc,... There is a logical flaw there. An entity so complete can only be the full universe/reality. And if so, why not just call it reality, universe? And if it's not, then it can't be almighty.
Also, I can't imagine that there can be something which has a will, but is still infinite. Having a will implies a limit on which to exercise this will.
All in all, I find the concept of infinite almighty god the most broken there is. But hey, if it makes people happy to feel they have a strong father looking for them, why not?...
exactly, it's not possible for humans to try to perceive something that is infinite and shit like that and try to understand it with our finite knowledge. it's like trying to cram an entire ocean into a water cup, it's just not possible, at least for now
I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying that if you want a useful discussion, do it properly.
Because you can discuss about the nature and existence of God as a construct of intelligence.
You can discuss the existence of the experience of divinity, because if anything, there seems to be some kind of evidence of something happening when one meditates or experiences an ecstatic vision (what happens? Why, parts of the brain shuts down. Ha ha, I know right?).
You can discuss the effects of God as a historical reality, which not only was responsible for the Sistine Chapel and the poetry of Rumi, but also the Inquisition and pogroms.
You can even discuss the absurdity of a God who exists as a separate, material entity, and point out the philosophical and evidence-based holes, and conclude, quite rightly, that God has no material existence.
You can even point out that doctrines like fundamentalism are bad because they are ideologically and philosophically untenable. After all, what kind of God only allows a limited number of his creations access to paradise and damns the rest to eternal suffering? You can say these things, and you can make claims about it.
But to start the conversation saying, "So... does God exist?" You're trolling. Not only that, but it's old trolling.
>it's not possible for humans to try to perceive something that is infinite and shit like that and try to understand it with our finite knowledge.
If you are speaking about god, allow me to disagree,... Of course, one could say that god is by essence impossible to understand by humans, and then it would be impossible to discuss about it. But that's just a postulate. You can also assume that god is just an human construct and as so totally within reach of human understanding.
Basically, you can't postulate that god is outside of human understanding. It may well be that it's the case, but we don't know, and can't assume that.
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: "I am looking for God! I am looking for God!"
As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost him, then? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances.
"Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto."
In short: HA HA HA, CONGRATULATIONS. YOU'RE FUCKED NOW.
the only way i can think of to counter the assertion of, "if god is omni-all, why is there still evil?" is to present my fellow anonymous with Alvin Plantinga's line of reasoning towards the exisitance of evil:
along with this line of reasoning:
The second is a pathetic cop-out, and I can't imagine anyone taking that seriously. As for the first, I'd say that having a plan that involves massive suffering would preclude one from being "good". Especially if one is omnipotent and can create any outcome by just willing it into action, without the need for a plan of any kind.
The fact that god can't achieve a greater good without evil means he's not almighty,...
Maybe you should also define omnipotence.
Able to do anything, even leave the toilet seat down.
God is real. nuff said. AND HE ROCKS!!!
in before (and probably after but I'm too lazy to check) giant unmovable rock argument
Forget God, what if an unstoppable rock hits an immovable rock?
The unstoppable rock bounces off, because changing trajectory is not stopping.
"I'd say that having a plan that involves massive suffering would preclude one from being "good"."Problem is, without God, you have no absolute standard by which you can call anything 'good.'
"The fact that god can't achieve a greater good without evil means he's not almighty,..."Problem is, without God, you have no absolute standard by which you can call anything 'evil.'
Is an action morally good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is morally good?
>>332 Depends, if it bounces in the exact opposite direction then it would have stopped to do so.
>>334 Oh noes. Quick, someone form a working group.
If we're talking Elohim/Yahweh/Jehovah/Allah, for this particular God it's the former.
God says murder is evil, but if God tells you to sacrifice your own son than it's evil not to obey him.
So biblically speaking the only sin is disobedience.
Is an action morally good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is morally good?Neither. An action is morally good if it conforms to the charcter of God.
"So biblically speaking the only sin is disobedience."Nope, but murder does fall into the category of disobedience. Murder is an absolute moral wrong. Keep in mind that murder is 'that killing which is unlawful.' If God commands it, it is not unlawful, and therefore not murder.
Yes, you do. Human suffering.
>>339
This reduces God's benevolence to a tautology: "God is good because God conforms to the character of God." I see no reason why it could not, hypothetically, have instead been in God's character to revel in human suffering, rendering such a characteristic morally good. Thus morals that derive from the nature of God are just as arbitrary as those which derive from the nature of humans.
Moreover, it would seem that this makes God incapable of committing evil, and thus not omnipotent.
> If God commands it,
Thank you for proving my point.
All sins are equal in Yahweh's eye because they all derive from disobedience of His commands.
> Murder is an absolute moral wrong
Not according to the Word of God.
Ecclesiastes 3:3
3:1 To every [thing there is] a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
3:2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up [that which is] planted;
3:3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
3:4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
3:5 A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
3:6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
3:7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
3:8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
Yes, you do. Human suffering.
Moreover, it would seem that this makes God incapable of committing evil, and thus not omnipotent.The ability to contradict oneself is not a power, it is a weakness. You might just as well say, God can't be omnipotent, because he can't be God, and not be God at the same time and in the same way.
All sins are equal in Yahweh's eye because they all derive from disobedience of His commands.Nope, all sins are NOT equal, all sins, however, make us equally undeserving of God's grace.
A time to killPerhaps you should read my post again. Murder is that killing which is UNLAWFUL. Lawful killing is not murder.
You can't answer those questions about your god, either, so I don't see why I should bother.
You can't answer those questions about your god, either, so I don't see why I should bother.You positted 'human suffering' as an absolute moral standard, I didn't. Support your claim.
And you posited 'god'. You support your claim first.
And you posited 'god'. You support your claim first.God, as He has revealed to us, has created us in His image to conform to His moral nature. God, is universal, not made of matter, and invariant, and thus accounts for the nature of absolute (universal, abstract, and invariant laws). An absolute moral wrong is anything which does not conform with the moral nature of God, as He has revealed to us. Now, you may not agree with the support for my claim, but, what is yours? What is your absolute standard of 'human suffering,' and by what absolute standard is it 'bad?'
Which god is that, exactly? There are a whole lot of them to choose from, and they all have different laws. Which ones should we follow?
And which one is that? Back up your answer.
Is it just me, or is the postulation that an absolute moral standard of good and evil would not exist without God completely irrelevant to theodicy?
The problem of evil does not cast any doubt on God's existence: it casts doubt on whether God, if He exists, is both benevolent and omnipotent as is the popular Judeo-Christian conception of Him. If God and/or morality don't exist at all, then the problem is moot.
As such, I don't think it even belongs in this thread. You should start a new one if you want to debate it further, separate from the problem of God's existence.
Anyway, theodicy aside, proofthatgodexists.org's central argument as I understand it seems to be that all absolutes (logic, morality, uniformity of nature) have to derive from a transcendental and likewise absolute existence - God.
My question is, why does this absolute have to be God? Why can't it just be an absolute? If it is a god, how do we know it is the Judeo-Christian God? Since it's transcendental, it is impossible to formulate any meaningful theories about it, and I don't see there could exist any evidence of its precise nature either.
it casts doubt on whether God, if He exists, is both benevolent and omnipotentOnly if one begs the question by presupposing that God could not have a morally sufficient reason for the evil in this world.
My question is, why does this absolute have to be God? Why can't it just be an absolute?Posit what you believe, and I will be happy to refute it.
Since it's transcendental, it is impossible to formulate any meaningful theories about it, and I don't see there could exist any evidence of its precise nature either.Again, only if one begs the question by presupposing that God could not reveal things about Himself to us in such a way that we can know them for certain.
> Nope, all sins are NOT equal
James 2:10
For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.
Please find a scripture passage that lays claim to a hierarchy of sin to support your argument. No Dante, please.
> Murder is that killing which is UNLAWFUL. Lawful killing is not murder.
God makes the law.
Biblical law is God's word.
Breaking that law is sin.
Sin is disobedience.
> Posit what you believe, and I will be happy to refute it.
I believe that we cannot know anything (in the sense that it is usable as a scientific fact) about anything that is transcendental. Other than its existence or non-existence, perhaps.
> Again, only if one begs the question by presupposing that God could not reveal things about Himself to us in such a way that we can know them for certain.
Perhaps you could present some examples, assuming God has done such things already and your counter-argument is not purely hypothetical.
> The one true God of Christianity, as He has revealed to us.
He has not revealed this to me. I'll need some actual proof first. And yes, I am the same person, and I will back up my claim as soon as you back up yours, as you made your claim first.
And yes, I am the same person, and I will back up my claim as soon as you back up yours, as you made your claim first.I did back up my answer. God is the source of absolute morality as He has revealed to us. As I said, you may not like my claim, or how I back it up, but, I believe it is your turn, then we can compare notes. What is the absolute standard by which you determine what 'suffering' is, and what is the absolute standard by which you call it 'wrong?'
I believe that we cannot know anything (in the sense that it is usable as a scientific fact) about anything that is transcendental. Other than its existence or non-existence, perhaps.How about you tell me how it is possible for you to know ANYTHING?
Perhaps you could present some examplesKnowledge, or proof of any kind, is evidence that God exists, for without Him, neither would be possible.
> I did back up my answer. God is the source of absolute morality as He has revealed to us.
You are begging the question. You need to give some proof that the god you are referring to is actually the christian god. You have not provided any so far.
> As I said, you may not like my claim, or how I back it up, but, I believe it is your turn, then we can compare notes.
How about I just say "I'm right, end of story"? It would be as valid as your claim.
So no, you still haven't done anything. Provide some justification that the god that you say has to exist for logic or whatever to be valid actually is the christian god.
So no, you still haven't done anything.Well, as I said, you may not like my claim, or how I justify it, but your refusal to even attempt to justify your own speaks volumes.
> How about you tell me how it is possible for you to know ANYTHING?
By observing it with my own five senses. We went over this back in >>177-230 or thereabouts. Was it not resolved to your satisfaction?
> Knowledge, or proof of any kind, is evidence that God exists, for without Him, neither would be possible.
I don't understand why knowledge would be impossible without God. Please elaborate.
As for "proof", such a concept only exists in formal sciences such as logic and mathematics, and is necessarily based on a set of axioms.
Is God an axiom?
By observing it with my own five senses.How do you know that your senses, or the reasoning with which you interpret them are valid? Surely you would agree that knowledge cannot be attained through invalid senses or reasoning?
I don't understand why knowledge would be impossible without God. Please elaborate.In order to know anything, one would have to know everything or have revelation from someone who does, else it would end in an infinite regress of 'and how do you know that?' The Christian claim is that God has revealed some things to us, in such a way that we can know them for certain (i.e. murder is wrong, love is right). So if you were to ask me, how I know that murder is wrong, I would answer, 'because God has revealed this to us, and God knows everything.' Hopefully you can see from my point above that claiming knowledge is gained autonomously through the senses, doesn't cut it.
As for "proof", such a concept only exists in formal sciences such as logic and mathematics, and is necessarily based on a set of axioms.Then that very statement would have to be invalid as it cannot be proven.
Is God an axiomI would say that God has made himself evident to us, not that He is self-evident.
You have been owned dozens of times, GTFO
So basically, you think you can make any invalid claim, and then just say "you may not like my claim" and thus escape from ever having to justify anything you say? That is incredibly dishonest. Hardly befitting of a christian.
Now, a challenge: Prove your claims, or never post again.
> How do you know that your senses, or the reasoning with which you interpret them are valid? Surely you would agree that knowledge cannot be attained through invalid senses or reasoning?
Consensus and verification. The vast majority of people would be able to agree, for instance, that the sky and the ocean are a similar hue. Someone arguing otherwise would be grounds for the investigation of a visual or mental defect in the individual, or perhaps a local anomaly in the sky/ocean (pollution these days...)
Now, I'm aware that reasoning seems to contradict the argument against the theistic worldview, since the majority of the world population does believe in a God or gods. However, there are major disagreements about the nature of this God, and that is enough to give me doubt. Christians are the most populous, but they're split about half-and-half over the question of whether the Pope is Christ's representative on Earth. Twenty percent of the world believes there is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet. About ten percent believes in Vishnu, Shiva, etc and another ten percent don't believe in gods per se, but believe one can achieve a godlike state by achieving enlightenment. So on and so forth.
I think that when so many people disagree about something so vehemently, something odd is going on, and it's probably not that seventy percent of humans on Earth are brain-damaged.
Another major problem with spiritual knowledge and experiences - demonstrated by your failure, thus far, to explain the precise nature of how God has revealed himself to you - are that they are almost wholly ineffable, nor transferable by any other means. Most sensory experiences are ineffable when you get down to the basics - try and describe "blue" without using any sort of analogy, simile or metaphor - but at least one can point to the sky and say "That's blue." As far as I know, there's nothing you can point to and say "That's God." You can merely present your ontological arguments, have us read the prophecies come of other people's spiritual experiences from thousands of years ago, and hope that we arrive at a similar epiphany.
I doubt your spiritual beliefs because, being non-transferable, there is no way for me to evaluate for myself whether they are true observations or the product of faulty senses or reasoning. Properly done science can always be reduced to observations; one can travel to the Galapagos and see the same things Darwin did back when he wrote his controversial little book. But when you point at logic, I see only a set of convenient axioms. When you point at morality, I see a social construct.
> Then that very statement would have to be invalid as it cannot be proven.
It cannot be proven that there exists no concept of proof outside of formal sciences such as logic and mathematics? I suppose so, but that just makes my statement falsifiable, not false.
Please read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability
As I see it, the reason that proof only exists in formal sciences is that in the natural world, there are an infinite number of potential confounding factors which may disprove a theory once they are discovered. Therefore certainty is impossible unless you remove the natural world and replace it with a set of axioms - such as the bases of logic and mathematics.
By the way, two other interesting pages on Wikipedia I found while researching that last post:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_Argument_for_the_Non-existence_of_God
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_%28logical_fallacy%29 (something that everyone posting in would do well to keep in mind)
So basically, you think you can make any invalid claim, and then just say "you may not like my claim" and thus escape from ever having to justify anything you say?Um, nope, I said, I have positted my claim, I am waiting for you to posit yours so we can compare their justifications. Not holding my breath though.
Consensus and verification.Do you use your senses and reasoning to determine whether or not there has been a consensus on the validity of senses and reasoning?
I think that when so many people disagree about something so vehemently, something odd is going on, and it's probably not that seventy percent of humans on Earth are brain-damaged.Nope, they are ‘suppressing the truth in unrighteousness.’ (Romans 1: 18-21).
Another major problem with spiritual knowledge and experiences - demonstrated by your failure, thus far, to explain the precise nature of how God has revealed himself to youYou never asked. God has revealed Himself to us through His Word, and through His creation.
You can merely present your ontological arguments, have us read the prophecies come of other people's spiritual experiences from thousands of years ago, and hope that we arrive at a similar epiphany.Nope, I do not use ontological arguments, nor do I appeal to the spiritual experiences of others, I simply state that without God, proof of anything is impossible. Should be easy to refute, just tell us how proof of anything is possible without God.
I doubt your spiritual beliefs because, being non-transferable, there is no way for me to evaluate for myself whether they are true observations or the product of faulty senses or reasoning.I am not appealing to my spiritual beliefs, I am simply asking you to account for proof and knowledge according to YOUR worldview.
Properly done science can always be reduced to observationsPerhaps you can give me an example of science that has been reduced to observation, and tell me how you know that its findings are valid?
When you point at morality, I see a social construct.When you point at a social construct, I see arbitrary morality, and a worldview that says raping babies could be right.
suppose so, but that just makes my statement falsifiable, not false.Never said it was false, I said it was invalid, or ‘without foundation,’ and therefore meaningless.
Therefore certainty is impossible unless you remove the natural world and replace it with a set of axioms - such as the bases of logic and mathematics.Are you certain of that, if so, what axiom did you use to derive that conclusion? Also, how do you account for the laws of logic and mathematics according to your worldview?
> Do you use your senses and reasoning to determine whether or not there has been a consensus on the validity of senses and reasoning?
Yes, because it is impossible to communicate with others without using the senses, and impossible to understand what they say without using reasoning. I suppose my ability to communicate with and understand others cannot be taken for granted; there is a chance that I am severely psychotic and this discussion is taking place entirely in my imagination, or that the entire universe is in fact a fabrication of my mind, per metaphysical solipsism. However, in those cases I don't see that it really matters since I must just be arguing with myself.
> God has revealed Himself to us through His Word
Would this be the Bible? I know of no evidence that indicates that's anything other than a record composed (probably from earlier oral traditions) by various scribes/priests around 1000-500 BCE, some tracts written by a radical sect of Judaism in the 1st century, and other apocrypha of earthly origins. The book itself claims that it is the word of God, of course - but so do the Avesta, the Koran, etc.
> and through His creation.
I have no quarrel with deists. However, there's no evidence to back them up either.
> Should be easy to refute, just tell us how proof of anything is possible without God.
There's a discipline called "quantum logic" that successfully maps the principles of classical propositional logic (minus the distributive law, for easily understood reasons) as projections on a Hilbert space, which is an Euclidian space generalized to infinitely many dimensions. An "Euclidian space" means that it is a theoretical space in accord with various observations a Greek dude named Euclid once formulated by observing the geometry our very own world.
Is that what you were looking for? A way to account for logic that is grounded in the physical world?
> Perhaps you can give me an example of science that has been reduced to observation, and tell me how you know that its findings are valid?
The color of the sky due to a phenomenon known as the Tyndall effect (or Rayleigh scattering), which states that small molecules suspended in a gas, solution, or other colloid scatter shorter wavelengths of light (like blue) more than they do long wavelengths (like red.) An experiment that demonstrates this is to mix a little soap into a tank of water, then shine a beam of white light through it in a dark room; done properly, the sides of the tank will emit a slightly bluish light, while the end of the tank shines a reddish light. During the daytime, the direction in which sunlight reaches the earth is random and thus a large amount of visible scattering takes place, but at dawn and dusk sunlight is focused over the horizon and we see the unscattered light instead.
I know this piece of science is valid because my teacher repeated the experiment for us in 6th grade, and drew a diagram of the sun, the earth and a gigantic cosmic fishtank to illustrate the analogy.
> When you point at a social construct, I see arbitrary morality, and a worldview that says raping babies could be right.
Undoubtedly someone has raped babies in the past, and God, despite being omnipotent, did not intervene; He allowed those babies to be raped for a reason that is morally sufficient for Him. Does that not mean that God also views raping babies to be 'right' in certain situations?
I'd rather discuss morality in the "problem of evil" thread though.
(continuation of the above reply, it was too long for the comment field)
> Never said it was false, I said it was invalid, or ‘without foundation,’ and therefore meaningless.
If it's invalid, then why not demonstrate it as invalid by showing me a formal proof that is outside the domain of logic or mathematics? I would prefer a peer-reviewed source.
> Are you certain of that, if so, what axiom did you use to derive that conclusion?
A philosophical one, I suppose, stated by Socrates: "One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing."
In other words, as human beings are not omnipotent, it is impossible for us to formulate a theory that anticipates every eventuality and confounding factor - unless we create our own closed system in which such things do not intervene.
> Also, how do you account for the laws of logic and mathematics according to your worldview?
I mentioned one way of accounting for logic above.
As for mathematics, that seems pretty easy to derive from physical observations as well. If I have an apple and take another one, I now have two apples. If I measure the circumference of a circle and divide it by the diameter, I have an irrational number commonly known as pi. Mathematics can be, and was, built up from observational principles like these.
> Um, nope, I said, I have positted my claim, I am waiting for you to posit yours so we can compare their justifications. Not holding my breath though.
No, see, you once again seem unfamiliar with how an argument works. There's no "comparing" to be done. You need to back up your own claims, completely independent of what anyone else says.
And you haven't.
Now do so, or stop posting.
COME HERE FOR A FREE INTELLECTUAL WORKOUT AGAINST OTHER TROLLS LOOKING FOR A FREE INTELLECTUAL WORKOUT!!!! GANBATTE
why o why are there soooo many people who choose to be "anonymous".....um....maybe you don't know what your talking about?Or you do but a scared that you will be made fun of?
LET ME MAKE IT CLEAR....I AM NOT AFRAID TO SAY THAT I "BELIVE"
THAT THERE IS NO GOD!!! If we have been here for thousands of years..why can't we find SOLID PROOF that god is real?
How is there space...how is there room for space...how is life possible?...If there is a "Space"...then there has to be somthing else...right...i refuse to belive in a GOD...but i also refuse to belive that a buch of "gas" formed from nothing and blew up to create what we call "life"......there is not enough room in our heads to cumpute life...but we all know that
wheather we choose to belive or not...religin runs all of our lives...every war every dissagrement goes back to beliefs...how is it that we as a socity still conform to the government who themselves refuse admit one way or the other....but our money still says "in GOD we trust"....REALLY you trust in somthing that can't possibly be real....but millions upon millions belive in aliens....me personally i also belive in them. I think that they know how why when and where we came to be...hell we might even be a new breed of them....thats just it we don't know and we never will as long as we pretend that it's not a possibility...i'm not here to pass judgment...i just think that we atlest give it a chance....hell nobody belived in dinosours until they triped on one and "what the hell is that?"...So in conclusion i request that we take a good hard look deep inside of ourselves and ask...."why do we still go to a place called church for spiratul healing..when all it is is a business."
James WatsonIf there were really a God he wouldn't have created people like James Watson.
thousands of years ago, when people were starting to civilize and make permanent establishments, they saw natural phenomenon. Phenomenon such as an earthquake, tornado,hurricane,hail,an asteroid,and many other natural occurrences could influence a primative people into coming up with ideas to explain them, thusfore creating a religion. Look around the world, there are hundreds if not thousands of religions that exist. The religion you practice is influenced by the area you reside in, and the religious practices and customs are influenced by the natural wonders of a specific region. Therefore concluding that there is no god. The idea of god is different among everyone because of how they percieve god. God is in the mind of the beholder, yours to create and shape into your very own idea, unique from the next person. When you die in this life i believe there is nothing after. I think that death is like before you were born, possesing no concept of the natural world, of logic and reasoning, absolutely no perception whatsoever of anything. but thats just my opinion
No one's mind has changed about anything as a result of this thread.
You're right, but several individual minds have probably been changed.
hi five punctuation mistakes
Question:
What is the difference between these two statements?
"I do not believe that God exists"
and
"I believe that God does not exist"
If you knew for a fact that God exists, the first would apply but not the second?
1) cant prove God exists, cause it could all be random nothing ness that means nothing; and all could be controlled by chance.
2) cant prove he DOESNT exist, cause for all you know he is making sure everything happens, or at least, keeps things happening.
so...take whatever you want. since physics/etc breaks down at the moment of the big bang, i see God as the only choice for that, at least. or, who knows? in 100 years we may find another cause, opening up faster-than-light travel; and the big bang explained away.
or, whatever.
This thread needs moar null hypothesis.
"I believe, and if my belief has basis, the One in whom I believe surely knows this in the absence of my official declarations. The mind has fashioned for itself in history many different models of God, holding each in turn to be the one and only truth, but this is a mistake, for modeling means codifications, and a mystery codified ceases to be a mystery. The dogmas seem eternal only at the beginning of the stretching road of civilization. First they imagine God as the Angry Father, then as the Shepherd-Gardener, then as the Artist enamored of his Creation, therefore people had to play the respective roles of well-behaved children, obedient sheep, and finally that of enthralled audience. But it is infantile to think that God created in order that His creation bow and scrape from morning til night, in order that He be loved, in advance installments, for what will come Yonder, if Here happens not to be to one's liking, as though He were a virtuoso, and in exchange for repeated rounds of prayerful cheering prepared eternal encores to follow the terrestrial performance, in other words saving His best number for the falling of the mortal curtain. That theatrical version of Theodicy belongs to our dim and distant past."
"If God has omniscience, then He knows everything there is to know about me, and knew it moreover for a time immeasurably long, before I came forth out of oblivion. He knows also what He will decide regarding my--or your--fears and expectations, for He is no less perfectly informed about all His own future actions; otherwise He would not be omniscient. For Him no difference exists between the thought of a caveman and that of an intelligence which engineers will build a billion years from now. Nor do I see why the external circumstances of a profession of faith should make much difference to Him, or--for that matter--whether it is homage someone offers, or a grudge. We do not consider Him a manufacturer, who waits for approbation from His product, since history has brought us to the point where thought genuinely natural in no way differs from thought artificially induced, which means that there is no distinction whatever between natural and artificial; that now lies behind us. You must remember that we can create beings and mentalities of any kind. We could for example give rise to creatures that derive mystic ecstasy from existence, and eventually in their adorations directed at the Transcendental there would materialize a purpose a purpose characteristic of bygone prayer and worship. But this mass production of believers would be for us a pointless mockery. Remember, we do not beat our heads against the wall of any physical or inborn limitation to our desires, such walls we have torn down, and have stepped out into the realm of absolute creative freedom. Today a child can resurrect the dead, breathe life into the dust, into metal, destroy and kindle suns, for such technologies exist; the fact that not everyone has access to them is, as I think you will agree, unimportant from the theological point of view. Because the bounds of human agency, marked off with such precision in the Holy Book, have been attained unto and thereby violated, and the cruelty of the old restrictions is now replaced by the cruelty of their total absence. Yet we do not believe that the Creator hides His love from us behind the mask of both these alternative torments, putting us through the mill, as it were, in order to keep us guessing. Nor is it the Church's office to call both misfortunes--the bondage and the freedom--promissory notes, endorsed by revelation and to be paid, with interest, by the heavenly treasurer. The vision of heaven as a bank account and hell as a debtor's prison represents a momentary aberration in the history of the faith. Theodicy is not a course in sophistry to train defenders of the Good Lord, and faith doesn't mean telling people that everything will work out in the end. The Church changes, the faith changes, for both reside in history; one must therefore anticipate, and that is the task of our order."
"Faith is, at one and the same time, absolutely necessary and altogether impossible. Impossible to fix once and for all, there being no dogma a mind can latch onto with the certainty of permanence. We defended the Holy Writ for twenty-five centuries, using tactical retreats, circuitous interpretations of the text, until we were defeated. No longer do we have the bookkeeper's vision of the Transcendental, God is neither the Tyrant, nor the Shepherd, nor the Artist, nor the Policeman, nor the Head Accountant of Existence. Belief in God has had to cast off every selfish motive, if only by virtue of the fact that it will never--not anywhere--be rewarded. If God were to prove capable of acting contrary to logic and reason, that would be a sad surprise indeed. Was it not He--for who else?--that gave us these logical forms of thought, without which we would know nothing? How then can we accept the notion that an act of faith requires the surrender of the logical mind? Why give us first the faculty of reason, only to do it violence by setting contradictions in its path?"
"In order to mystify and make obscure? To lead us first to the conclusion that there is nothing Later On, then pull heaven out of a hat like some common magician? We hardly think so. Which is why we ask no favors of God in consideration of the faith we hold, and present Him with no demands, for we are finished and done with that theodicy based on the model of commercial transactions and payment in kind; I shall give thee being, thou shalt serve and praise me."
"Put no more questions to me then, but give some thought into what a faith like mine must mean. If someone believes for certain reasons and on certain grounds, his faith loses its full sovereignty; that two and two equal four I know right well and therefore need not have faith in it. But of God I know nothing, and therefore can only have faith. What does this faith give me? By the ancient reckoning, not a blessed thing. No longer is it the anodyne for the dread of extinction, no longer the heavenly courtier lobbying for salvation and against damnation. It does not allay the mind, tormented by the contradictions of existence; it does not smooth out those edges; I tell you--it is worthless! Which means it serves no end. We cannot even declare that this is the reason we believe, because such faith reduces to absurdity; he who would speak thus is in effect claiming to know the difference--permanently--between the absurd and the not absurd, and has himself chosen the absurd because, according to him, that is the side on which God stands. We do not argue thus. Our act of faith is neither supplicating nor thankful, neither humble nor defiant, it simply is, and there is nothing more that can be said about it."
Yes.
No.
Yes.
Mu
wat
One afternoon a student said "Roshi, I don't really understand what's going on. I mean, we sit in zazen and we gassho to each other and everything, and Felicia got enlightened when the bottom fell out of her water-bucket, and Todd got enlightened when you popped him one with your staff, and people work on koans and get enlightened, but I've been doing this for two years now, and the koans don't make any sense, and I don't feel enlightened at all! Can you just tell me what's going on?"
"Well you see," Roshi replied, "for most people, and especially for most educated people like you and I, what we perceive and experience is heavily mediated, through language and concepts that are deeply ingrained in our ways of thinking and feeling. Our objective here is to induce in ourselves and in each other a psychological state that involves the unmediated experience of the world, because we believe that that state has certain desirable properties. It's impossible in general to reach that state through any particular form or method, since forms and methods are themselves examples of the mediators that we are trying to avoid. So we employ a variety of ad hoc means, some linguistic like koans and some non-linguistic like zazen, in hopes that for any given student one or more of our methods will, in whatever way, engender the condition of non-mediated experience that is our goal. And since even thinking in terms of mediators and goals tends to reinforce our undesirable dependency on concepts, we actively discourage exactly this kind of analytical discourse."
And the student was enlightened.
dont worry, when we die, one of us is going to be VERY dissapointed
>>397
FALSE. Please submit the evidence you have of the continuance of consciousness after death. You have to be CONSCIOUS in order to be DISAPPOINTED.
>>398
I've submitted the evidence online. Simply click on my name.
yaaaay~ (・∀・)
>>398
the point of that statement was that either the religious dude wasted his entire life worshipping a god that doesnt exist, or the guy who doesnt believe in god and being sent to hell. from a 3rd person's pov, one side is going to lose
ITT we're not aware that other people have indeed heard of Pascal's Wager, and might even reject it on the grounds of the false dichotomy it presents.
I wonder what world Pascal was living in. For his theory to work, there can only be one existing religion or atheism. Yet there are thousands of them.
I think we have several possible solutions to the GOD problem
1.) Monotheism
2.) Polytheism
3.) Spirits
4.) Atheism
And of course even then, you are left with the question of which rule set to follow and which beliefs you must hold. If Allah is the true God, he won't take your Buddhism, and if it's the Norse pantheon, then Odin may not like Christians.
I'll take number three.
Here's to Alcohol-- The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
FOOLS!
I've only read the first post, but (straight from wikipedia):
In the philosophy of religion, Occam's razor is sometimes applied to the existence of God; if the concept of God does not help to explain the universe, it is argued, God is irrelevant and should be cut away (Schmitt 2005). It is argued to imply that, in the absence of compelling reasons to believe in God, disbelief should be preferred. Such arguments are based on the assertion that belief in God requires more and more complex assumptions to explain the universe than non-belief.
people who think life without god is too complex (ie: EYES ARE JUST SO COMPLEX) don't understand evolution
Buddhism doesn't endorse any Gods. In the original form of Buddhism, the ultimate reward for enlightenment is Nirvana, or death. True death, release from the cycle of reincarnation which just creates more suffering. The only reason why reincarnation occurs is because we are attached to this world in one form or another. Love of self, love of consciousness, love of material things, love of others. That is what brings us back, even if all things are flux, which in turn, results in loss, which results in suffering.
>the ultimate reward for enlightenment is Nirvana, or death
I think this is a bit of a simplification. It's true that nirvana means "blowing out" and a lot of people take it to mean that nirvana is the blowing out of consciousness like the extinguishing of a candle, but buddhists seem to be more concerned with the overcoming of the ego rather than consciousness as such, and since they hold that the ego and consciousness are distinguishable, and that there is a universal consciousness, they believe that the dissolution of the ego does not result in the annihilation of consciousness in the absolute sense, only the disappearance of that ego.
death prevails......yes....
But as a new user for this board, an active Wikipedia reader (or researcher), being used to hear and trying to understand religious doctrines and getting used to the rationality on the side makes live in agnosticism forever....
(throws himself to the bed in blank, sad mood)
God exists... that's that
>>410
what a convincing argument!
>>410
Cannot prove, cannot disprove.
Agnosticism wins again.
Seriously, I'm very tired of this argument. It's 400+ posts long. Can't we just agree to disagree?
Another agnostic here. You, all except us fucked our world so much that we are living in your own created hell.
FUCK FOR BOTH OF YOU BELIEVERS AND ATHEIST!
>>414
Is this true?
If Squeeks said so then it must be.
Agnostics say you can't prove or disprove a God.
So frankly, it's much more intelligent to not believe in one.
Just because it's POSSIBLE, doesn't mean you have to consider it as true. Anything is POSSIBLE, but most things aren't Probable.
>>417
so that means we can only either believers and unbelievers right?
But what is this unknown something with which the Reason collides when inspired by its paradoxical passion, with the result of unsettling even man's knowledge of himself? It is the Unknown. It is not a human being, insofar as we know what man is; not is it any other known thing. So let us call this unknown something: God. It is nothing more than a name we assign to it. The idea of demonstrating that this unknown something (God) exists could scarcely suggest itself to the Reason. For if God does not exist it would of course be impossible to prove it; and if he does exist it would be folly to attempt it.
Learn the truth:
Agnostic here;
The fact that it is possible means that it could be true. As we have no information for or against the overall idea of a god, we can't logically say that we know anything about how likely it is that there is a god.
If we go by the old standard of ignorance, then the chance that there is a god is 50/50. It is no more intelligent to BELIEVE that there isn't a god than to BELIEVE that there is one. Either way, both views are steeped in 'faith' and 'belief', as there is no concrete evidence at all either way.
The most logical path, then, is to admit ignorance; we just don't know. If you can do that, then you can take steps to remedy any lack of knowledge or insight, instead of putting all your faith into your guess.
no god only facts.
youtube.com
^
search
^
proof that god dosn't exist.
∧＿∧∩ ／￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣￣
（ ´∀｀）/＜ Can God create a boulder so heavy he
＿ / / / ＼ cannot lift it? Not so omnipotent, is he?
＼⊂ノ￣￣￣￣＼ ＼＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿＿
||＼ ＼
||＼||￣￣￣￣￣||
|| ||￣￣￣￣￣||
.|| ||
wrong since God is omnipotent he contains all reasoning and truth so He would not do something that would be the abscense of reason since that would be contrary to his nature. One cannot act irrationally if he contains the essence and is reason. creating a rock that you cannot lift is irrational therefore God would not do such a thing as it would be contrary to himself as he is truth and reasoning
or whatever
> creating a rock that you cannot lift is irrational
I'm pretty sure I could do that, without being irrational in any way whatsoever.
>>424
In the words of "Jesus-H-Christ", who posts on reddit, discussing how He (God) can be His own son:
"Humans can comprehend only one internally consistent logical model, but gods can hold several mutually inconsistent models in their mind at the same time (like superposition in quantum physics). Reality does not match any single model (or meta model at infinitum, you get the idea), you need to apply several at once. I contain multitudes, so I can grok reality easily. You guys are left with one truth at the time (you can switch between them though, like in binocular rivalry)."
Thus, God can create a boulder in one logical model which humans using another logical model (such as atheism) may perceive Him as being unable to lift.
I WANT TO BELIEVE*
*that this is all trolling and no one could possibly believe this stuff
>>426
He just means to say that God makes up clever arguments for not proving himself wrong. You know, kind of like that kid in middle school who always bragged about his ten video game systems but never invited you to his house.
What are we calling god, and why are we assuming we know any damn thing about its attributes?
"God does this, god thinks this way, god has these attributes."
"Just being good won't cut it for salvation."
How do you know ANY of this??
"God's attributes explain x, y, and z."
Yeah, isn't that convenient that we've made up a story that seems to work as long as you don't think too hard?
>>What are we calling god, and why are we assuming we know any damn thing about its attributes?
We can only take God's own words, the Bible, to get a picture about him.
Don't worry >>432, people will stop thinking you're an idiot if you just look at facts, not a fairy tale story.
how do you know the bible is god's own words?
Question: "Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?"
Answer: Why do bad things happen to good people? That is one of the difficult questions in all of theology. God is eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, etc. Why should we human beings (not eternal, infinite, omniscient, omnipresent, or omnipotent) expect to be able to fully understand God’s ways? The book of Job deals with this issue. God had allowed Satan to do everything he wanted to Job except kill him. What was Job’s reaction? “Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him” (Job 13:15). “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised” (Job 1:21). Job didn’t understand why God had allowed the things He did, but he knew that God was good and therefore continued to trust in Him. Ultimately, that should be our reaction as well. God is good, just, loving, and merciful. Often things happen to us that we simply cannot understand. However, instead of doubting God's goodness, our reaction should be to trust Him. "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight" (Proverbs 3:5-6).
Perhaps a better question is, "Why do good things happen to bad people?" God is holy (Isaiah 6:3; Revelation 4:8). Human beings are sinful (Romans 3:23; 6:23). Do you want to know how God views humanity? “As it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know. There is no fear of God before their eyes” (Romans 3:10-18). Every human being on this planet deserves to be thrown into hell at this very moment. Every second we spend alive is only by the grace of God. Even the most terrible misery we could experience on this planet is merciful compared to what we deserve, eternal hell in the lake of fire.
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Despite the evil, wicked, sinful nature of the people of this world, God still loved us. He loved us enough to die to take the penalty for our sins (Romans 6:23). All we have to do is believe in Jesus Christ (John 3:16; Romans 10:9) in order to be forgiven and promised a home in heaven (Romans 8:1). What we deserve = hell. What we are given = eternal life in heaven if we would just believe. It has been said, this world is the only hell believers will ever experience, and this world is the only heaven unbelievers will ever experience. The next time we ask the question, “Why does God allow bad things to happen to good people?”, maybe we should be asking, “Why does God allow good things to happen to bad people?”
>>436
summary:
god has his reasons, he's fucking god you don't question him
things could be a lot worse you know
you should be asking a different question which i won't try to answer either
orz..God..orz
Watch part 1 of the movie Zeitgeist. It's on Google video.
Basically, it's point is that all religions stem from ancient sun worship in some way.
Furthermore, don't say "It doesn't matter what I think," IT DOES. "God works in mysterious ways and we can't understand him," Yes, we can. Humans invented him. When he seems evil, rather than saying "Well, it's not my place to judge God," realize that it is.
When you doubt your god, when you "struggle" with your god, listen to yourself. That's your reason and sensibility kicking in. It will advance your knowledge and intelligence if you listen to it.
The burden of proof is still with the side that has to explain why anything exists at all. Qualified deism FTW.
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: "I am looking for God! I am looking for God!"
As many of those who did not believe in God were standing together there, he excited considerable laughter. Have you lost him, then? said one. Did he lose his way like a child? said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? or emigrated? Thus they shouted and laughed. The madman sprang into their midst and pierced them with his glances.
"Where has God gone?" he cried. "I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers. But how ave we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What did we do when we unchained the earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving now? Away from all suns? Are we not perpetually falling? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there any up or down left? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is it not more and more night coming on all the time? Must not lanterns be lit in the morning? Do we not hear anything yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we not smell anything yet of God's decomposition? Gods too decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? That which was the holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off us? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we not ourselves become gods simply to be worthy of it? There has never been a greater deed; and whosoever shall be born after us - for the sake of this deed he shall be part of a higher history than all history hitherto."
And the multitude said to the madman, "We are an Intenet Hate Machine, and we did it for the lulz!" And they went on their way, leaving the madman unable to respond.
God Exist when Human Exist...
but God Doesn't when Human Doesn't Exist.
That is why Human creates Gods,
not Gods creates Human.
so what you're essentially saying is that once humans cease to realize an object's existence, that said object ceases to exist. OK