• You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

I don't see how God could plausibly exist (Christian definition of God)

Tamske

Writing...
Joined
Oct 22, 2009
Messages
1,764
MBTI Type
ENTP
I'd like to react to this one too. I'm running behind in this thread...

This is a fair point, and the best answer I can give to this is the following metaphor.
If I could talk to fish I don't think I could convince one that the ocean exists. After all what evidence would I give? (...)
If the fish has a brain at least as good as, say, an ape's, it should be possible. After all, we humans convinced *ourselves* that we live in an atmosphere, while air is so much thinner than water!

Instead if I really wanted to convice the fish I would use a different approach by trying to win his trust. Then he might simply take my word for it instead. I would do this because it is easier to convince the fish this way then by trying to convince him that the evidence really was evidence.
I'd use both. After all, I trust Galilei's ideas, not because I've known him and trust him in person, but because I can repeat his experiments and see for myself that his ideas were true. So here you've got the other way around - the trust is there because of the evidence.

And this is the approach that I think God has taken. He has sent trustworthy people like Jesus or Mohammad or Siddhartha to guide the rest of us. The decline in modern religion, I believe, has nothing to do with science. Rather it has to do with a lack of trustworthy religious leaders. Rising from the dead was just as irrational 2000 years ago as it is today. But people believe these things in spite of them being irrational because they trust the people giving the message. I became a Christian because I trust the authors of the New Testament. I also trusted the pastor of the church I've been attending the past several years. However I don't particularly trust either the Pope or Rick Warren or any other major religious figure I see on TV. The public figures give religion a bad name and I think that affects a person's view of religion more than any scientific evidence (or lack thereof).
I know a lot of nice priests, religion teachers and other believers I highly respect. No hard feelings. I didn't lose my religion because of the sex scandals in the Belgian church or something (I lost it before they became known). I've lost it because of lack of evidence. Of course, it helped that the atheist who kept on asking me questions was a good friend. But then again, I've got good believer friends too and they were in the majority.
So even though I believe in God I don't think science will find any "evidence" of God's existence. Not unless they find a way to measure the immeasurable. However I think anyone with doubts or skepticism could be made to change their mind if they found a believer they could really trust. Talk of evidence is misleading because no one has been convinced by evidence even though many of the greatest minds in history have believed in some sort of God or transcendent entity. Were Isaac Newton or Socrates really ignorant and irrational people?
About Newton and Socrates - of course they weren't ignorant and irrational. They were only wrong about some things. Newton devoted most of his life to alchemy which turned out to be false. I don't blame him for that - nobody had proved before that the alchemic ideas were false! That's what scientific progress is. If you do research, it's very well possible you're researching something that will turn out to be wrong. Reseachers don't have a teacher who knows the right answers. They are building brand new knowledge. Just because I think this is very important: while researching, you don't know whether your ideas are right or wrong. That's exactly what you're trying to find out.
And Russell and Einstein aren't dumb either - they didn't believe in a personal god. Einstein used the word "god" to express his awe for the universe but he didn't believe in a superbeing. Russell was very much an atheist - he's the one with the "you prove there is no teapot on orbit between Mars and Jupiter" idea I've borrowed already.
The difference? They came LATER in history.
 

The_Liquid_Laser

Glowy Goopy Goodness
Joined
Jul 11, 2007
Messages
3,376
MBTI Type
ENTP
If the fish has a brain at least as good as, say, an ape's, it should be possible. After all, we humans convinced *ourselves* that we live in an atmosphere, while air is so much thinner than water!

I wasn't trying to emphasise that the fish was in water, but that it was in an ocean. My points were that you can't measure something that is immeasurable and you can't discover evidence for something when everything is evidence.

Although even when it comes to convincing a fish that it is in water even though could take a while. Recall that humans were using mathematics for thousands of years before someone thought to use the number zero. Even things which seem obvious to us now are not obvious to someone who isn't used to thinking in that way.

I'd use both. After all, I trust Galilei's ideas, not because I've known him and trust him in person, but because I can repeat his experiments and see for myself that his ideas were true. So here you've got the other way around - the trust is there because of the evidence.

It's true that trust involves more that just a person's character. Competence is key as well. People trusted Dr. MLK, because he was able to rally people behind his cause. In his prime people trusted Ralph Nader's opinion about consumer products, because he always did his homework to make sure he found out about them. People also trusted the character of these two gentlemen. Both competence and character have to be present to inspire trust.

The question I have though is why do people trust scientists when they are talking about religion or philosophy? I tend to trust scientists when they are talking about science, but why should I care about their opinion about anything else?

About Newton and Socrates - of course they weren't ignorant and irrational. They were only wrong about some things. Newton devoted most of his life to alchemy which turned out to be false. I don't blame him for that - nobody had proved before that the alchemic ideas were false! That's what scientific progress is. If you do research, it's very well possible you're researching something that will turn out to be wrong. Reseachers don't have a teacher who knows the right answers. They are building brand new knowledge. Just because I think this is very important: while researching, you don't know whether your ideas are right or wrong. That's exactly what you're trying to find out.
And Russell and Einstein aren't dumb either - they didn't believe in a personal god. Einstein used the word "god" to express his awe for the universe but he didn't believe in a superbeing. Russell was very much an atheist - he's the one with the "you prove there is no teapot on orbit between Mars and Jupiter" idea I've borrowed already.
The difference? They came LATER in history.

As an aside I find it interesting that when we actually listen to the other person when discussing religion or politics, we find that the core disagreement may not have little to do with religion or politics. For example this piece seems to imply that mankind has become more enlightened with time. But I don't see things this way. I see mankind as becoming more knowledgable but not more enlightened.

To answer this directly though my metaphor was simply about God in general rather than a personal God, and Einstein most certainly believed in God. But if you want to find evidence of a personal God, then you have to go out and look personally. You're not going to make a personal connection with someone by reading about them in a textbook. Finding a personal God is more like finding a spouse. You have to go out and find this person yourself. (Although I suppose some people find their spouse or their personal God through their parents.)
 

Tamske

Writing...
Joined
Oct 22, 2009
Messages
1,764
MBTI Type
ENTP
Immeasurable. I've got difficulties with that.
If something has influence on reality, it is measurable. Take for example souls. They are different from matter but still they sort of live within our bodies and minds. They influence our bodies and minds. So they interact with matter. If they interact, you can measure them. It might be difficult. But we've measured neutrinos too; those very light and neutral particles which only interact with the weak nuclear force. We needed a swimming pool full of detergent to do it, but we did! We even determined their mass.
Now from what I gather about the common definition of "soul" it has more influence on our brains than a neutrino would.
So you can measure it.

We did measure the atmosphere too - which is akin to your fish's ocean. We even measured the solar system beyond our atmosphere and the stellar system beyond that. We measured light coming from billions of years ago and billions of light-years away and made a guess at the age of the universe. The more we measure, the more we discover - everything always turns out bigger, older and stranger than we thought it was.

What's so difficult then about measuring the influence of souls on our bodies? Incidentally, the scientists who concluded souls didn't exist DID start from the hypothesis that they do exist and wanted to prove that. Only it didn't work. So they weren't biased in favour of soulless humans. On the contrary, they were biased towards the existence of souls. Something happened which made them change mind.
 

Qlip

Post Human Post
Joined
Jul 30, 2010
Messages
8,464
MBTI Type
ENFP
Enneagram
4w5
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
^^^ The question is too big, and it's too easy to stray from. In order to prove or disprove the existence of God, you have to set a definition for God first. The OP was pretty kinda general: Christian 'type' of God. Even within the Christian world, there are different ideas as to his existence.

Case in point, not all Christians believe in a soul as you described, and definitely Jews don't. Souls are also believed to be just another way to describe a 'person' and not some type of etheric existence.
 

The_Liquid_Laser

Glowy Goopy Goodness
Joined
Jul 11, 2007
Messages
3,376
MBTI Type
ENTP
Immeasurable. I've got difficulties with that.
If something has influence on reality, it is measurable.

This is close. If something has finite influence on reality then it is measurable. Infinite, immeasurable, boundless; these words are synomymous. You cannot measure that which is infinite by definition.

Take for example souls. They are different from matter but still they sort of live within our bodies and minds.
...

I suppose that depends on what you are definition of "soul" is. From studying the scripture I've found the word soul might also be interpreted as "person", "life", "self", or "mind" depending on the context of the passage. All of those things are tangible though. It doesn't surprise me that no evidence of an intangible soul exists, because personally I never thought there was one. But I realize that there are many people who don't agree with me, so if you want to debate the existence of an intangible soul with someone, you'd probably find a better debate with someone else.

On the other hand if you want to talk about free will that is something else entirely. According to Descartes each of us has free will and that is a prerequisite to studying the world around us. Furthermore our free and independent mind must be given to us by God. Whether people realize it or not we implicitly believe in free will when we give weight to the conclusions of science.

We did measure the atmosphere too - which is akin to your fish's ocean.

The ocean in my metaphor was meant to represent everything that exists, not simply the atmosphere. I apologize if the metaphor did not make my point clear. I realize that all metaphors have their limitations.
 

Lark

Active member
Joined
Jun 21, 2009
Messages
29,569
Guffaw.



There is no evidence of god; there are no worthy arguments that play in his favor.



It's a reference to the sophistry.

You know of course that there is a distinction between evidence and argument, then again you could dismiss that as sophistry, stock reply of a sophist though so...
 

Tamske

Writing...
Joined
Oct 22, 2009
Messages
1,764
MBTI Type
ENTP
This is close. If something has finite influence on reality then it is measurable. Infinite, immeasurable, boundless; these words are synomymous. You cannot measure that which is infinite by definition.
Infinite means "bigger than every number" so yes, it is measurable. If it's bigger than a meter, a kilometer,... even 10^{100} m, you've measured it. You didn't get an exact number, but you did set a lower bound on the length. There's even a concrete example of this. People have measured the lifetime of a proton to be longer than 10^{30} seconds.
But let's get back to the question here. I'm not discussing the properties of a god. I'm discussing his (her, its, whatever) existence. It's so big you can't measure its existence???
That was the very first thing being measured of a muon, by the way. Not properties, just: "hey, this thing is not a proton, neutron, electron or neutrino! It must be something else!"
I've never measured something like "This is not coincidental, not natural, not man-made,... it must be something else!"

I suppose that depends on what you are definition of "soul" is. From studying the scripture I've found the word soul might also be interpreted as "person", "life", "self", or "mind" depending on the context of the passage. All of those things are tangible though. It doesn't surprise me that no evidence of an intangible soul exists, because personally I never thought there was one. But I realize that there are many people who don't agree with me, so if you want to debate the existence of an intangible soul with someone, you'd probably find a better debate with someone else.
I meant a non-material thing. If you agree that a soul/mind/self is made of ordinary matter and obeys the same ordinary laws of physics as, say, a stone... then I agree about its existence. But when people talk about a soul, they usually mean "something beyond ordinary matter" and more than sometimes even "something that lives on forever even after your matter self (your body) has decomposed... My point was: "if there exists such an immaterial thing which has influence on our bodies, it should be measurable." And meant to extend to god, too. If a god is there, his/hers/its/... (I'm telling you, I'm not particular about properties like gender, whether he has a grey beard, green punk hair or tentacles; the size, mass, energy,...) influence should be measurable.

On the other hand if you want to talk about free will that is something else entirely. According to Descartes each of us has free will and that is a prerequisite to studying the world around us. Furthermore our free and independent mind must be given to us by God.
If you assume there is a god! And I think you're assuming even more in this sentence: that god is somehow able to steer us like puppets and has actively cutted the strings to make us free-willed. But if there isn't a puppeteer to begin with... free will is much easier to understand. And I'm a great fan of Ockham: if two different theories describe the same effect, choose the easiest.

Whether people realize it or not we implicitly believe in free will when we give weight to the conclusions of science.
True. Moreover, for science to work you need to believe in other things too: that there is a sort of structure to our universe, that it's predictable, and that our senses don't mislead us. Most people actually believe in that - maybe not if you ask them right out, but they live as if they do. They go home after work as if they are sure their house is still there and didn't mutate into an octopus! You don't even think about that!

The ocean in my metaphor was meant to represent everything that exists, not simply the atmosphere. I apologize if the metaphor did not make my point clear. I realize that all metaphors have their limitations.
The universe has been measured too. Maybe we didn't see everything yet. Maybe there exist more universes, just like at some point we realised there exist more than one solar system. It's very well possible. But its existence (maybe only of a part of "everything") has been measured. Its size? Like I said in the beginning - there is a lower bound.

Did you find a part of god yet? Did you find a lower bound?
I only found upper bounds to him (her,...): his influence is not significantly bigger than pure chance.
 

Mole

Permabanned
Joined
Mar 20, 2008
Messages
20,284
God will not be mocked.

The existence of God is plausible to many thousands of millions (billions) of people. And the existence of God is implausible to a tiny number of people.

And what is plausible is believable.

However what is plausible is threatened by what is implausible. And we are now seeing that threat met with violence.

It is quite natural to defend one's beliefs with violence. We see beliefs defended every day here with insults and violence is not far off. I read in the newspaper that the USA is preparing its population for Islamicn nuclear attack to avoid panic.

God will not be mocked.
 

wildcat

New member
Joined
Jun 8, 2007
Messages
3,622
MBTI Type
INTP
Well does that mean that you cant discuss religion with athiests?

If its resolution you're talking about then they can be just as resolute as each other. A lot of the time I think people are working out their own personal issues and often there's a lot of social psychology and dynamics at work when they reach their conclusions.

Yes. I can discuss fundamentalism with atheists. It has nothing to do with religion.
True. People see through the screen of their personal life.
 

wildcat

New member
Joined
Jun 8, 2007
Messages
3,622
MBTI Type
INTP
I assume that, if people come to a thread like this, they would like to discuss. Of course they'll defend their opinions, why not, that's what I do too. I myself lost my belief because of lots of great discussions - and I'm ready to gain it back, too.

Even as a believer, I was of the opinion that I should have arguments for it. My reasoning was: "if I lose my belief just by discussing or by thinking about arguments, then it wasn't worth to keep to begin with!"

Another thing I've been itching to post here:

There are two possibilities.
Either there exists a god (or more than one , or goddess(es) - I'm talking really generally here, about super-beings able to communicate with humans and influence their lives) or there is no god.

Now people fall apart in three categories depending on which hypothesis they assume as true.

Agnostics give each hypothesis around 50% chance - "I don't know whether there is a god or not"

Theists assume one of the hypotheses and will change when proof is presented. "There is a god". That's how most human minds work - we assume lots of things and will only be surprised if it turns out to be false. We all assume things like "if I let a rubber fall, it will go down" and "if I heat this water, it will boil". So our theist starts from "there is a god" and will only conclude there is none if sufficient proof is presented.

So do atheists. Only they start from the other hypothesis, "there is no god" and will only conclude there is one (or more) when sufficient proof is presented.

Yes. Well put.
Maybe the set is the other way around altogether.
Atman was bored and he created the illusion of the universe to divert himself.
The illusion cannot see the real. The real can see the illusion.
Does the illusion exist? Yes.
Does Atman exist?
Wrong question.
 

The_Liquid_Laser

Glowy Goopy Goodness
Joined
Jul 11, 2007
Messages
3,376
MBTI Type
ENTP
Infinite means "bigger than every number" so yes, it is measurable.

This is not quite right. Infinite means "not finite". What does finite mean?

fi·nite   
[fahy-nahyt]

–adjective
1. having bounds or limits; not infinite; measurable.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/finite

Infinte means no bounds, no limits and not measureable. Anything which is infinite cannot be measured by definition.

If you assume there is a god! And I think you're assuming even more in this sentence: that god is somehow able to steer us like puppets and has actively cutted the strings to make us free-willed. But if there isn't a puppeteer to begin with... free will is much easier to understand. And I'm a great fan of Ockham: if two different theories describe the same effect, choose the easiest.

This is the first time I've heard this argument. Perhaps you could elaborate? Generally I've heard atheists argue against free will and Christians argue in favor of it. If the simplest explanation is that free will exists without God I would like for you to elaborate as to why that is.

True. Moreover, for science to work you need to believe in other things too: that there is a sort of structure to our universe, that it's predictable, and that our senses don't mislead us. Most people actually believe in that - maybe not if you ask them right out, but they live as if they do. They go home after work as if they are sure their house is still there and didn't mutate into an octopus! You don't even think about that!

I agree. :)

Did you find a part of god yet? Did you find a lower bound?
I only found upper bounds to him (her,...): his influence is not significantly bigger than pure chance.

I can't really understand your last sentence. In that I can't understand how a person can see the influence of any sort of deity as purely chance. For this to be true one must give an adequate (and non-cynical) explaination why religion is a universal phenomenon.
 

BlueGray

New member
Joined
Oct 7, 2009
Messages
474
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5
People have a fear of the unknown. When events occur that they can't describe, rather than accept it as an unknown they attribute it to a greater being. Thus, religion. There is also trust and communication. When one person reaches a conclusion, those surrounding them learn of this conclusion from them. It's not like Christianity formed in multiple places; different religions popped up to handle such situations.

That definition of finite is problematic. You can place bounds or limits on stuff and have it remain infinite. Saying that happy is not a number does not mean that there are not an infinite amount of numbers.
 

Tamske

Writing...
Joined
Oct 22, 2009
Messages
1,764
MBTI Type
ENTP
This is not quite right. Infinite means "not finite". What does finite mean? (...)
Infinte means no bounds, no limits and not measureable. Anything which is infinite cannot be measured by definition.
What's then the difference between infinite and non-existent? If something is non-existent, it isn't measurable either. If you say "infinite" I think of two things - either infinitely small or infinitely big. If something is infinitely big (insert any scale here - infinitely good, infinitely powerful... are the ones most readily attributed to a god - but I don't shrink from infinitely massive or other things) you can at least put a lower limit to it.
Infinitely small - why worship a "god" who is infinitely less powerful than a human, who has infinitely little influence on the world,...? Such an entity is not worth to worship.

This is the first time I've heard this argument. Perhaps you could elaborate? Generally I've heard atheists argue against free will and Christians argue in favor of it. If the simplest explanation is that free will exists without God I would like for you to elaborate as to why that is.
Strange! This is the first time I've heard of atheists arguing against free will.
Let me revise the Christian thing.
First of all there is a God with a free will. This one wants some company, creates (whether in six days like the Bible tells or with genetic manipulation which can't be distinguished from spontaneous evolution - I don't really care about the details here.) plants, animals and humans. Then he actively endows the humans with a spark from his free will.
So you start already with something with free will!
Why can't I start with something with a free will too? Why do I have to prove that you can create free will with nothing but chance and selection? You've got a much bigger problem than that! Where does that free will of God come from??

I can't really understand your last sentence. In that I can't understand how a person can see the influence of any sort of deity as purely chance. For this to be true one must give an adequate (and non-cynical) explaination why religion is a universal phenomenon.
Why is religion universal? Because that's how humans are built. We always want explanations and causes for everything. We humans can't accept chance. We invent cause-effect relations and start believing in them. If you put manure on your field you'll get a better harvest. If you don't sacrifice a lamb to the Sun God, spring will not come back next year. If you change the direction of stirring while making dough, the bread will not rise.
You don't want to risk spring not coming back, so you won't experiment with "not sacrificing a lamb" this year. Until someone does.
The whole history is riddled with new ideas and beliefs coming up and old ones discarded or proven false.
Religion is not as universal as it used to be...
 

Procyon

New member
Joined
Dec 20, 2010
Messages
3
MBTI Type
INTJ
Enneagram
8
Actually, it is rather obvious that the Christian God is illogical. The essence of christianity is that God made the Universe, and Adam and Eve, who ate a fruit from a talking snake, which caused us all to be sinners, and then sent himself as a sacrifice to himself, in a bid to please himself. Despite his omniscient characteristic, he could not prevent Adam and Eve from eating the fruit, he could not prevent people for disbelieving, and yet claims free will exists when he would send his creations to hell. To make it worse, evil believers qualify for heaven, while good nonbelievers go to hell. The Universe is so obviously not designed, and it is obvious that if a God existed, he would have deliberately made it appear as such. And when Christians say that it is to 'test their faith', it gets annoying that they reject evidence. Of course, we have the FSM to back us up.

Furthermore, the irony deepens when God is considered 'all loving', when any rational thought immediately shows that God is bloodthirsthy and self-centred. If the Christian God existed, Heaven would be no better than Hell.

The deist God would make a much better case. However, the existence of any God in the first place is, prima facie, unlikely.
 

Tamske

Writing...
Joined
Oct 22, 2009
Messages
1,764
MBTI Type
ENTP
What's the difference between priceless and worthless? Would you seriously say they're the same?
If both are defined as "can not been expressed in terms of money", yes. But they aren't.
Priceless can be defined as: "more worth than any money" while worthless can be defined as "less worth than any money."
The same is true for "infinitely big" = "bigger than every measure" and "infinitely small" = "smaller than every measure". Both can be compared to a measure. Not I, but Liquid Laser was telling "infinite" meant "can not been expressed in terms of measures". If you take this definition (which I don't) then yes, you can't distinguish between infinite and nonexistent.
 
Top