Something that is invisible and has no observable effect on the universe can only be an added complexity.Originally Posted by thehotelambush
What creation do you speak of? It isn't simplifying things to assert something was created when there is no evidence it was created.
The root of a tree is invisible yet it is its origin.
Why would an omniscient being care if a subjective being believes in it?
In my view, it would be foolish to believe in the existence of a root that cannot be observed in any way.
Between the invisible gods of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, it makes no sense to believe in one more or less than the others. Those ideologies that worship the Sun as a deity are more rational.
You don't have to be an omniscient being to know there is nothing rational about insisting on subjective beings believing the existence of properties they cannot verify.
The theists in this thread have resorted to metaphor and analogy in their arguments for "God".
But those arguments could be used "for" an infinite number of things.
Some of them at the very least believe that those who do not believe in their "God" will be tortured for eternity. It's one thing to not believe in a thing, but quite another to not venerate a thing. Even if its existence could be proved, I could not venerate a thing that could use torture for any reason, whether as a threat or as an actual practice. I think that's a damning argument. How can you logically rationalise an ideology that tortures someone for their honestly-held lack of belief? How can you warn others of beings claimed to be evil like Satan, when you endorse eternal torture (which in my view is the worst thing imaginable)?
I think trying to rationalize God is like trying to chew on your own teeth or like justifying the feeling of hunger. God is the ultimate rationalization. Believing in a higher power and an afterlife eases feelings of powerlessness and suffering during our existence. His existence follows ours, phenomenologically speaking.
First came man, who then saw that the universe was filled with something higher and bigger than himself. He was an actor, changing his conditions and fate as he liked. Yet he was affected by the world too, and he had to endure pain, loss, the imponderable. He was changed by the world, the same way he changed the world. Is it so absurd for him to assume that it was another, higher, agent acting through the inertness of the world? A God, using his will, like he used his?
"Fate", "natural laws", "God", "the Spirits of Ancestors", "Nature", "Society", whatever. Does is really matter in what you put your faith to explain the ungraspable? The cure works, so no need to fix something that ain't broken.
EDIT: I guess I wanted to say that God is in the eye of the beholder, same way that natural laws are. We are free to adopt the perspective we want, each one has different perks. Perspectives are only Truths in their own context.
Last edited by lkdhf qkb; 12-07-2020 at 07:51 PM.
God is described as creator - a source of the world, of anything in it. Monotheistic religions deal with an _image_ of this. This image helps to establish a mind state with some feelings and abbilities. Other is secondary.
It's not important how correct that image is. The important is what people get from using it. It's a model which is used to deal with our minds (including unconsciousness), with other people and the world. Same as any knowledge is only a model. It's useful and so it's is used. We know nothing about the reality - we only use models of it.
From materialistic view, it's possibly to identify God-Creator with an integrated image of anything in the world in all time. As universe creates the reality in future time moments, so is an expression of God.
Also anything was united in 0 time moment of the universe. That 0 state can be easier to understood as God. Anything was whole, anything was linked with anything, - influenced and was influenced. These links may stay in some form forever. Any part of the world represents the whole universe - it's is linked with anything and so may influence on anything and in any time.
When you feel united with the source of the creation (this corresponds with emotions of love) - your consciousness is linked with anything, it may change anything. This is noticed when events which you'd wished and which are rare in common - happen, probabilities are changed to fit your wishes.
do you want people to respond to and discuss/evaluate/disprove the peoples' replies of suggested possible logical reasons for the existence of a divine?
Socionics is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have, but I have it.
I can't click “like” on peoples posts due to the poor functionality of the site on my end. Just know that if you quoted me and were nice to me that I’m psychically sending you a like from my heart.
But why does something have to be picked up by the 5 senses to exist?
What if there existed things, for example, that could only be picked up by a 6th, 7th, or 8th sense?
What if there was an entity/world that existed that couldn't be completely picked up/comprehended by our brains?
In other words, why are *we* (humans) the masters of the universe, to determine whether or not something exists
Last edited by Computer Loser; 12-08-2020 at 06:02 AM.
You either believe in God or you don't. This conversation is productive only for people who have a desire to test their beliefs. Others have been through the gauntlet and made up their minds, they can not be convinced. On the other hand, I also believe that anything that gets people to think about God is a good thing.
but that's saying it's POSSIBLE that something is in some capacity true, like that there might be some version of a divine, not that we have any reason to believe there IS a divine.
Last edited by Computer Loser; 12-08-2020 at 05:50 AM.
I could go into many a thing, but it's because he isn't "just" omniscient. Rather, there are many facts the likes of you fail to acknowledge. Omniscience is but the start. He is also omnipotent and omnibenevolent (i.e. see the person of Christ).
To claim that his powers of omnipotence and omnibenevolence don't "add up" and thus declare him as evil is to be a gnostic heretic. The Gnostic heresy has yet to truly die because, well, at surface value they have a point. Upon further examination... well, would a truly benevolent God rob you of your free will "for your own good" as it were? If you say "yes" than good job you're an enthusiastic pod dwelling bug eater.
This also gets into the issue that God is the literal incarnation of Justice. Do you believe in Justice? If so, how and why do you deny him then? I'd wager you're making an idol of yourself. G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis had a good lot to say on that subject. I'd look it up if I were you.
I could go into many a thing, but (...)Rather, there are many facts the likes of you fail to acknowledge(...)than good job you're an enthusiastic pod dwelling bug eater
(...)I'd wager you're making an idol of yourself.
You make such a tragic habit of looking down on other people. That's not healthy, normal, nor loving/godly.
the thread is about proof.
the ideas you shared were useful but not on this thread.
Your ideas are about possibility.
your ideas were not about proof.
it's a really important distinction made in reasoning on divine existence.
Something doesn't have to be picked up by the five senses to exist, but since that is how humans perceive reality, I'd say anything that exists but isn't perceived by the senses is kind of a wild deduction. For example, dark matter in physics. Most experts believe it exists, due to its supposed influence on visible matter. But it cannot be proven, so it's still a weighty conjecture. And if it does exist, we only know of it through its influence on things we do perceive through our senses.
So in a sense, you're right. We aeren't masters of the universe to decide whether something exists or not on the grand scale of the universe. Our senses evolved here on Earth for survival purposes, were always used to pick up on things that exists on Earth, for example, within a certain spectrum of light and so forth.
But let's bring that statement back into its context.
I guess what I was trying to say with that statement is that logical "proofs" of the existence of God, while consistent in themselves, have no connection to anything we perceive through our senses, and that we can rationally understand following being picked up by our senses, so to assume such a God would exist solely based on abstract logic is fine, I guess, but it doesn't demonstrate anything this "God" does. To assume he appeared to Moses in a burning bush, or as Jesus, or to Mohammed, or whatever, is to assume specific instances in which something purely abstract is used to explain things which most likely have more prosaic causes. I could say it wasn't the God of Abrahamic faiths, but rather, another metaphysical entity doing these things, and there would be no reason to believe my argument would be any more wrong than that of the Abrahamic faiths. So you could "prove" that God exists, I suppose, using such means, it's just kind of curious how it doesn't prove anything about what God supposedly does, so it's kind of pointless, imo.
Indistinguishable doesn't mean identical. Moreover, if you believe in nonexistence after death, then the respawning of a cartesian ego would stand in direct contradiction with this belief. I thought reductive physicalists didn't believe in souls or similar concepts.
Nature's existence can be denied. If you try to logically rationalize nature, you'll notice that it's only a social construct. What makes them similar is that they are constructs that help us accept reality instead of rebelling against it.
Last edited by lkdhf qkb; 12-08-2020 at 08:54 AM.
@Uncle Ave I got you, thanks for clarifying.
Unfortunately, the "logical proofs" are pretty much all we have at this point - mainly to show that it's not unreasonable *logically* for the possibility of God's existence.
I wish there was some way to capture a little bit of God's essence, examine it under a microscope / test tube, and study God that way but sadly that's not possible. But even if it were possible, though, I'm not sure if humans could even wrap their minds around it lol
I did though want to point out this quote + the one you mentioned about being able to logically rationalize pretty much anything.
I hear this argument a lot, people will list things like Santa Claus, Spaghetti monster, maybe several “gods” such as Zeus, Poseidon, Vishnu, Buddha, Horus, and Apollo etc. They then say something to the effect of, “Tell me why you don’t believe in those gods, and I will use your very same reasons to tell you why I don’t believe in yours.”
The problem with this “argument” is that it’s not an argument at all. It’s a neat little play on words, but when looked at closely, it is not a logical reason for anything. The idea being presented is that just because there are many wrong answers, then all the answers must be wrong. However, if there really is just one correct answer, then of course all the others would be incorrect. For instance, if a person were to say, “You don’t believe that 2+2 equals 5 or 6 or 7 etc., therefore 2+2 does not have an answer" we know that would be incorrect.
To further illustrate, when Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, the story is told that he said that after trying 10,000 different filaments, he had not failed; he just found 10,000 things that don’t work in a light bulb. Now suppose a person were to say, “Tell me why those 10,000 substances did not work and I will use the same reasoning to tell you why the one thing you say will work, won’t.” Again, the fault in the reasoning is evident. The characteristics of the filaments that don’t work are obviously different from the ones that do. The fact is, no other God is the all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good Creator of life Who came down to Earth in human form and sacrificed His life for His human creatures simply because He loved them. It is that God, and only that God, Who truly fits all the criteria to be the singularly correct answer.
And again, I get that we can't really prove this in the lab, but I just wanted to point out that *logically* there is a right and wrong answer - and not everything can be equally rationalized
Last edited by Computer Loser; 12-08-2020 at 09:26 AM.
Occam's razor's the next answer to that in the logic & God discussion.
NO U
u smell like fart
Last edited by Computer Loser; 12-08-2020 at 09:56 AM.
poopy, watery fart
You are right that replacing the Abrahamic god with Zeus, Buddha, Apollo, Horus, Poseidon, etc doesn't make a huge deal of sense. Which is why I chose my words carefully when I said "another metaphysical entity". I kept it purely abstract. I don't want to offend you, but when you think about it, Judaism, Christainity, and Islam, as well as other mainstream or less mainstream religions still practiced such as Baha'ai, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism etc are all based on some form of myth. "Myth" isn't pejorative, but the actors and events of myths can't be placed in a real historical context, or can only in part (Jesus, Mohammed, or Buddha for example, are all people who probably existed but who's lives have mythologized aspects to them). Normally we think of myths when talking about Pagan beliefs, but most religions have some form of myth. To me one isn't more historically credible than another.
The point I'm trying to flesh out is this one: how do you go from Godel's argument, which is purely abstract - to Jesus praying in Gethsemene? Or his appearance to the apostles in such and such a place? These are specific events which (supposedly) took place in a specific time and place. I realize the particularities of religions isn't the topic of this thread, but it kinda is the point that I'm trying to make: even if you logically rationalize the existence of a supreme being, why do you think it is the one you believe in? How do you go from the purely abstract to the specific events of a religion's teachings, especially when so many religions claim some kind of faith in different events which are so specific and tied to time and place?
Note that I don't care what anyone believes, to each their own and I respect that, but I think this question is interesting.
oh god no. It smelled great. I'd eaten meatloaf. And I adore CPig, and if he says 'fart' to be goofy, I'm perfectly happy to be his wing-nanashi and be open about the human realities of my gases.
So, Occam's Razor is next move.
It is logic to say that things are too complex to be godly, but then all that tells me is you have trouble understanding things that I don't.
It is logic that is based on "probably" and therefore does not matter to absolutely anyone with any clout. Try this:
If god is the creator, and the universe was created, god must exist.
No probability needed. Only flaw is it's not the Christian god, just an object that created the universe.
And if the universe was not created, which is incredibly daft of you to say, then he doesn't. But it was, so shush.
Also checkmate atheists.
O I was responding to the top of page 10. I am new at forums. Either way, that works.
Edit: I fixed it so you can understand better the context of my smol argument with Timber that will never be resolved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology
An optimist - does not get discouraged under any circumstances. Life upheavals and stressful events only toughen him and make more confident. He likes to laugh and entertain people. Enters contact with someone by involving him with a humorous remark. His humor is often sly and contain hints and double meanings. Easily enters into arguments and bets, especially if he is challenged. When arguing his points is often ironic, ridicules the views of his opponent. His irritability and hot temper may be unpleasant to others. However, he himself is not perceptive of this and believes that he is simply exchanging opinions.
http://www.wikisocion.net/en/index.php?title=LIE_Profile_by_Gulenko
A razor to cut yo mustache
1) Was the universe created before or at the same time we became aware of it? How can you prove either?
2) If God created the universe, who created God?
True. It's mainly because reductive physicalism is something we tend to think of as being reached by a process of skeptical unbelief in things, rather than belief in something. With death, we have no way of testing what happens beyond it or if nonexistence really is the fate after death at all, so even belief in nonexistence after death is something a skeptic might doubt. So this applies more to skepticism than a positive belief in reductive physicality, although I'd conjecture belief in the latter makes as little sense as belief in anything that's unfeasible to verify.
It's more a problem for the observer's ability to test everything that for a framework of which you've assumed the final function.
Eternal torture is only a hangup if you believe an omnibenevolent being exists.
Although in my view, an allegedly omnipotent and omniscient being resorting to such a practice must be a very weak and stupid being
Punishing subjective people for not believing something to exist that does in fact exist is not the mark of a being that is concerned with establishing the truth. And punishing people for their honestly-held beliefs is the very opposite of omnibenevolence.I could go into many a thing, but it's because he isn't "just" omniscient. Rather, there are many facts the likes of you fail to acknowledge. Omniscience is but the start. He is also omnipotent and omnibenevolent (i.e. see the person of Christ).
To claim that his powers of omnipotence and omnibenevolence don't "add up" and thus declare him as evil is to be a gnostic heretic. The Gnostic heresy has yet to truly die because, well, at surface value they have a point. Upon further examination... well, would a truly benevolent God rob you of your free will "for your own good" as it were? If you say "yes" than good job you're an enthusiastic pod dwelling bug eater
This also gets into the issue that God is the literal incarnation of Justice. Do you believe in Justice? If so, how and why do you deny him then? I'd wager you're making an idol of yourself. G.K. Chesterton and C.S. Lewis had a good lot to say on that subject. I'd look it up if I were you.
An omnipotent being concerned with subjective beings believing the truth should be capable of ensuring this. But "belief" and "knowledge" are two completely distinct things. The only way an omnipotent being could make it so that every being knows the truth is to make them omniscient.
"Justice" is a subjective notion - there is no objective truth there. But even by the Christian standard, it fails to be just. It punishes a being that it claims is innocent. An omnipotent being that does that can only be "evil" - they are able to prevent the punishment of an innocent being, but decides not to.
I don't think "God" can be a rationalization, because it doesn't explain anything. It is essentially "I say God created everything, now stopping asking questions about why everything exists, and certainly don't ask what caused God".
Faith is an unfounded belief, and so cannot be said to explain anything. Yes it DOES matter if you have unfounded beliefs. It would be better not to have them. History has been full of people who have attempted to justify actions based on such unfounded beliefs, with disastrous consequences.
For a human, the "laws of nature" are descriptive, not prescriptive. Our understanding of what they are comes from observation, and is not purely a matter a faith. But maybe there is some truth in what you say - maybe there isn't anything that is truly knowable. (That can be considered knowledge, rather than belief). If I visualise a "triangle" - does that mean in the same instance the "triangle" is defined and is thus a fact, or is there a distinct act of thought separate from the visualisation which cannot be assumed to be in concordance with everything I visualise?
Regarding belief in God easing feelings of powerlessness, consider this study:
People would be better off taking responsibility for own their own actions, and being encouraged to be more self-sufficient.It is difficult to run a randomized controlled trial on AA for these reasons. AA claims, based on its most recent (2007) survey, that 69% of its members have been sober for more than one year.[16]
However, studies have been conducted. A study published in book form under the title Outpatient Treatment of Alcoholism (Brandsma et al., 1980), was an NIAAA-funded study of AA and three alternative therapies: lay-led Rational Behavior Therapy (similar to today's SMART Recovery program); professionally conducted one-on-one Rational Behavior Therapy (today called Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy); and professionally conducted one-on-one, traditional (Freudian-based) insight therapy.
The study came to a number of conclusions:
The study showed that alcoholic men who went to Alcoholics Anonymous became 9 times more likely to subsequently “binge drink” than those who used a cognitive behavioral approach. What’s more, they were also 5 times more likely to binge than a control group who received no help with drinking. "Our study suggests further confirmation of this in our severe dropout rate from this form of treatment {Alcoholics Anonymous}. It is probable, as Ditman et al.'s (1967) work suggests and ours confirms, that AA is just not effective as a coerced treatment with municipal court offenders. (Brandsma et al., 1980, p. 84)"
Peele and Bufe assert, "The increase in binging behavior among those exposed to AA in this study militates against coercing DUI offenders into AA attendance. One very possible reason for the increase in binging is the emphasis in AA upon inevitable loss of control after even one drink, as codified in the AA slogan, "one drink, one drunk." (As we saw in Chapter 1, this assertion is not true, except to the extent that drinkers believe it to be true.) What likely happens is that for those exposed to AA, this inevitable loss-of-control belief becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, when a true-believing AA member slips and has a drink, or even eats a rum ball or ingests a bit of mouthwash containing alcohol, he or she could be provoked to embark on a full-bore binge." Given this, one can't help but be alarmed at the common practice of coercing DUI defendants into AA attendance and 12 step treatment.[17]
Steven Slate concurs with Peele's and Bufe's assessment of this study commenting that standard 12-step based treatment teaches people that they have no control over alcohol use, that their ‘disease’ is progressively getting worse (whether or not they’re currently drinking), and that a single whiff or sip of alcohol will send them on an uncontrollable rampage of drinking. It is commonly said within the recovery culture that if you start drinking again after a period of abstinence, you will go right back to your most extreme levels of drinking, and then quickly go far beyond that. In stark contrast to the foundations of cognitive behavioral approaches, the purveyors of conventional treatment and average 12-step members alike, vigorously oppose any suggestion that problematic substance use is a freely chosen behavior.[18]
Don McIntire of Burbank CA was given access to the AA membership surveys from 1968 through 1996. His article showed that 81% of first timers attending AA meetings drop out in the first 30 days and at the end of 90 days, 90% of them have left AA. At the end of the first year, only 5% remained in AA. He suggested that those who leave AA in the first 90 days be excluded from the survey sample in determining retention rates, thus increasing the retention rate percentage to 50% from 5% by only considering those newcomers, the 10% who remain in AA past 90 days.[19][20] A Cochrane Review of eight trials found that none unequivocally supported the efficacy of AA.[21] A 2009 metanalysis (Kaskutas 2009) found two trials to be supportive of AA, one null, and one negative trial.[22] Based on meta-analysis, the Handbook of Alcoholism Treatment Approaches ranks AA as the 38th most effective treatment for alcoholism out of a list of 48 treatments[23]
Rather than dwell on suffering, or even regarding it as is desirable or a permanent state of nature, I think we should actually take progressive steps to reduce the causes of suffering.
I'd appreciate it if you could define your "God".
I have asked on this forum in the past for unique observable properties of "God", but I don't think I got any suggestions.
The Large Hadron Collider is able to detect even the smallest particles of matter, but it has never observed the "all-powerful" being you speak of. I can only conclude that your being is not all-powerful.
An argument isn't needed to disprove your "God". Until it has been observed in some way, it doesn't even qualify as a hypothesis.
The creation of something from nothing has never been observed, and never can be.
Apparently God doesn't explain anything you want to know, and that's fine. Would any answer to your questions really satisfy you?
Saint Augustine of Hippo attempted to solve this paradox by asserting something like "God created himself, since he's the source of everything, he's eternal and exists beyond beginning and end". These questions have been adressed by theologians for centuries. Religion doesn't forbid curiosity, as you can see for yourself in this thread.
Is the problem really the "unfounded belief" or the intolerance some people have to the beliefs of others? The hate and exclusion?
Sure, laws of nature are descriptive. Until some fascist comes along and beats you up "because of the law of survival of the fittest". I don't know if things are truly knowable(that's an assumption, not knowledge) or not. Maybe there are just different kinds of truths? Different kinds of knowledge?
- Would you turn to science to ease your pain when you lost your family? To ease your fear of death?
- Would you turn to religion to solve climate change?
Aren't we ourselves the cause of most of our suffering? Belief in God isn't some lazy excuse for not taking responsability for one's own life. There are things that are beyond our control, only a fool would deny that. Death, the social environment in which you're born, and so forth....
This study doesn't really fit in here because it sounds like you're comparing people that go to church with alcoholics(which are sinners ironically) as if they were 'enslaved' by their beliefs. Beliefs they need like a junkie some shot of cocaine. There is definitely a community effect, but reducing religion to that aspect is missing the point of individual faith. Unless we're talking about sects, the point is not to control your mind, but to appease it without loosing your free will.
It often does forbid curiosity.
What questions was I asking, and what was the paradox?
I could say that I am the source of everything and that I created myself - it would be less logical than what you ascribed to Augustine. It does not explain anything if it cannot be observed.
Unfounded beliefs is primarily the problem, I’m not sure exactly what you mean by hating and excluding the beliefs of others.
There’s only one truth, but that doesn’t mean that people do not have personal taste.
I should turn to people who are qualified in easing pain, through measures proven to ease pain.
I don’t fear death in itself - I fear dying.
I see no place for superstition anywhere.
Who is “we”? I don’t like the way you phrase that, because it implies “we” as individuals have an teleological understanding of our actions.
I think for a significant number of people - probably in the billions - God is at least sometimes a lazy excuse for not taking responsibility for one’s life. Think of all those who say things like “God wills it”, for when both “good” and “bad” things happen. It’s no different to those who believe in astrology - people who superstitiously make the sign of the cross, or who say “Hail Mary” or “Bismillah” or whatever. When unfounded beliefs are a key part of the mentality of so many people, I think the world is greatly deprived. Similarly, when I consider the billions of people throughout history who have believed that it is acceptable to torture a being for eternity, I think about how such dogma has normalized violence and brought great harm.
The Alcoholics Anonymous require members to assert belief in a “higher power”, so they are no different to people who go to church who believe in a higher power. The study showed that it made people feel they had less agency.
God, I'd look positively dashing with a mustache.
They look like a lot of work though with grooming, and I'm not about that life
So Occam's Razor and God....
Let's all sing amen to that!Now, how much would you like to donate to our Holy Church of Fanatic Empiricism? Fund our crusade against all religions, only we have found the truth! Sharing is caring!
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