God does not exist

How does anyone know they aren't looney?

Eh.

You're arguing a moot point that can't be "truely" proven 100%.

Just like BOG not giving evidence and making one post trolls.

Yet another stupid argument. God exists. How else could the universe have been created? The Big Bang is the stupidest theory I've ever heard of. I take it back, the second stupidest.

The point, once again, is that all you really know is that thinking itself exists.

If god exists, where is he? I don't see him anywhere. I haven't seen any definative scientific proof of him either. All I get are tall tails about god or gods or spirits from old books and other people, but none of them ever met god either, they just believe, without ever thinking that maybe, just maybe, there is no god. But no, there HAS to be! Why? Because I simply cannot believe otherwise, that is why.



Morons.

Yet another stupid argument. God exists. How else could the universe have been created? The Big Bang is the stupidest theory I've ever heard of. I take it back, the second stupidest.

Trollage.

The point, once again, is that all you really know is that thinking itself exists.

Does that not then lead to the fact that I exist?  Yes, thinking exists, you agree.  Developing and argument and making the claim that thinking exists requires thought, so I must think.  I am thinking, and the thinking is me.  Since thinking exists and I am thinking, I exist.

If god exists, where is he? I don't see him anywhere. I haven't seen any definative scientific proof of him either. All I get are tall tails about god or gods or spirits from old books and other people, but none of them ever met god either, they just believe, without ever thinking that maybe, just maybe, there is no god. But no, there HAS to be! Why? Because I simply cannot believe otherwise, that is why.



Morons.

That's like saying that because you can't see your brain that it doesn't exist. But you just kind of know it's there, because somebody told you so, and when you think about it, it makes sense that way. It's the same way with God and the Christian religion.

Just because what people say here is very predictable, I will also point out that if you're still alive there's no way you can see your brain. You might see an x-ray or something, but I've also seen pictures of a round Earth, and most people here say they're fake, so your brain x-rays could be fake also.

You could see your brain.  I worked with neuroscientists over the summer two years ago dealing with epillepsy.  They would open the top portion of the skull and place electrodes directly on the brain to try and detect where seizures were originating.  With the proper anesthetics, all it would take is a mirror or two for you to look directly at your own brain.  That's not to say you'd remember any of it, but that's a different story.

Then again, there are always lobotomies.

...ok than, atoms.  You cannot see them, but you are told they exist.

...ok than, atoms.  You cannot see them, but you are told they exist.

OH SNAP!!! kinda like a round earth hey! or a flat earth for that matter...  :?

...ok than, atoms.  You cannot see them, but you are told they exist.

Atoms are interesting because they exist on such a different scale that the human notions of existance start to get cloudy.  Nevertheless, the postulation that atoms do indeed exist -- and more importantly, the robust description of their properties -- enables us to explain observations that could not be otherwise explained.

This should not be taken lightly -- everytime you look at, say, your refrigerator, and conclude, "there's my refrigerator", you are skipping the step of "Maybe there's my refrigerator and maybe not, but believing that it's there enables me to explain why I can see it."

Quote from: "CrimsonKing"

...ok than, atoms.  You cannot see them, but you are told they exist.

Atoms are interesting because they exist on such a different scale that the human notions of existance start to get cloudy.  Nevertheless, the postulation that atoms do indeed exist -- and more importantly, the robust description of their properties -- enables us to explain observations that could not be otherwise explained.

This should not be taken lightly -- everytime you look at, say, your refrigerator, and conclude, "there's my refrigerator", you are skipping the step of "Maybe there's my refrigerator and maybe not, but believing that it's there enables me to explain why I can see it."

kinda like gravity hey  :wink:

why do people randomly bring FE into threads that have nothing to do with FE?

kinda like gravity hey  :wink:

Not exactly, since in that case there's an alternate explanation that works just as well.  In the case of atoms, there are no alternate explanations that work just as well.

Interestingly, on the god issue, even when gods have explanatory power, there's always some alternate explanation that works just as well.

perhaps looking at the name of this website could point u in the right direction?  

If god exists, where is he? I don't see him anywhere. I haven't seen any definative scientific proof of him either. All I get are tall tails about god or gods or spirits from old books and other people, but none of them ever met god either, they just believe, without ever thinking that maybe, just maybe, there is no god. But no, there HAS to be! Why? Because I simply cannot believe otherwise, that is why.



Morons.

Come now, don't you think perhaps that's a little ignorant?  You assume that people choose to believe in a god or gods simply because they cannot accept the alternative; however, people have put forth a number of good reasons for believing so.  Of course there's the usual "where did we come from?" question, which I hope you realize has not been fully answered.  It is my personal belief that the big bang model provides an accurate account of the universe for the past 12-15 billion years or so, but it hardly answers all questions about creation.

There is also the fact that humans in general seem to be endowed with an inherent sense of right and wrong in the world which is non-existant in the wider animal kingdom.  I am not speaking purely about laws and doing what is legal or illegal, but morally acceptable or unacceptable.  There seem to be unwritten rules about what is allowed and what is forbidden, and guilt is a general consequence of performing actions that we perhaps should not.  Many people believe that humans must then have been endowed with such sense by a higher being or creator.  C.S. Lewis puts it better than I do for anyone who wishes to read this:

... Some of the letters I have had show that a good many people find it difficult to understand just what this Law of Human Nature, or Moral Law, or Rule of Decent Behavior is.

For example, some people wrote to me saying, 'Isn't what you call the Moral Law simply our herd instinct and hasn't it been developed just like all our other instincts?' Now I do not deny that we may have a herd instinct: but that is not what I mean by the Moral Law. We all know what it feels like to be prompted by instinct — by mother love, or sexual instinct, or the instinct for food. It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act in a certain way. And, of course, we sometimes do feel just that sort of desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is due to the herd instinct. But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not. Supposing you hear a cry for help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires — one desire to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.

Another way of seeing that the Moral Law is not simply one of our instincts is this. If two instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in a creature's mind except those two instincts, obviously the stronger of the two must win. But at those moments when we are most conscious of the Moral Law, it usually seems to be telling us to side with the weaker of the two impulses. You probably want to be safe much more than you want to help the man who is drowning: but the Moral Law tells you to help him all the same. And surely it often tells us to try to make the right impulse stronger than it naturally is? I mean, we often feel it our duty to stimulate the herd instinct, by waking up our imaginations and arousing our pity and so on, so as to get up enough steam for doing the right thing. But clearly we are not acting from instinct when we set about making an instinct stronger than it is. The thing that says to you, 'Your herd instinct is asleep. Wake it up,' cannot itself be the herd instinct. The thing that tells you which note on the piano needs to be played louder cannot itself be that note.

Here is a third way of seeing it. If the Moral Law was one of our instincts, we ought to be able to point to some one impulse inside us which was always what we call 'good,' always in agreement with the rule of right behaviors. But you cannot. There is none of our impulses which the Moral Law may not sometimes tell us to suppress, and none which it may not sometimes tell us to encourage. It is a mistake to think that some of our impulses — say mother love or patriotism — are good, and others, like sex or the fighting instinct, are bad. All we mean is that the occasions on which the fighting instinct or the sexual desire need to be restrained are rather more frequent than those for restraining mother love or patriotism. But there are situations in which it is the duty of a married man to encourage his sexual impulse and of a soldier to encourage the fighting instinct. There are also occasions on which a mother's love for her own children or a man's love for his own country have to be suppressed or they will lead to unfairness towards other people's children or countries. Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the 'right' notes and the 'wrong' ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.

By the way, the point is of great practical consequence. The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which will not make us into devils if we set up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials 'for the sake of humanity', and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.

Other people wrote to me saying 'Isn't what you call the Moral Law just a social convention, something that is put into us by education?' I think there is a misunderstanding here. The people who ask that question are usually taking it for granted that if we have learned a thing from parents and teachers, then that thing must be merely a human invention. But, of course, that is not so. We all learned the multiplication table at school. A child who grew up alone on a desert island would not know it. But surely it does not follow that the multiplication table is simply a human convention, something human beings made up for themselves and might have made different if they had liked? I fully agree that we learn the Rule of Decent Behaviour from parents and teachers, and friends and books, as we learn everything else. But some of the things we learn are mere conventions which might have been different — we learn to keep to the left of the road, but it might just as well have been the rule to keep to the right — and others of them, like mathematics, are real truths. The questions is to which class the Law of Human Nature belongs.

There are two reasons for saying it belongs to the same class as mathematics. The first is, as I said in the first chapter, that though there are differences between the moral ideas of one time or country and those of another, the differences are not really very great — not nearly so great as most people imagine — and you can recognize the same lay running through them all: whereas mere conventions, like the rule of the road of the kinds or clothes people wear, may differ to any extent. The other reason is this. When you think about these differences between the morality of one people and another, do you think that the morality of one people is ever better or worse than that of another? Have any of the changes been improvements? If not, then of course there could never be any moral progress. Progress means not just changing, but changing for the better. If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilized morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi morality. In fact, of course, we all do believe that some moralities are better than others. We do believe that some of the people who tried to change the moral ideas of their own age were what we would call Reformers of Pioneers — people who understood morality better than their neighbors did. Very well then. The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people thing, and that some people's ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something — some Real Morality — for them to be true about. The reason why your idea of New York can be truer of less true than mine is that New York is a real place, existing quite apart from what either of us thinks. If when each of us said 'New York' each means merely 'The town I am imagining in my own head', how could one of us have truer ideas than the other? There would be no question of truth or falsehood at all. In the same way, if the Rule of Decent Behaviour meant simply 'whatever each nation happens to approve', there would be no sense in saying that any one nation had even been more correct in its approval than any other; no sense in saying that the world would ever grow morally better or morally worse.

I conclude then, that though the difference between people's ideas of Decent Behaviour often make you suspect that there is no real natural Law of Behaviour at all, yet the things we are bound to think about these differences really prove just the opposite. But one word before I end. I have met people who exaggerate the differences, because they have not distinguished between difference of morality and differences of belief about facts. For example, one man said to me, 'Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?' But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did — if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbors or drive them mad or bring bad weather — surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did? There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simple about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believes there were no mice in the house.   -    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/ownwords/mere1.html

Come now, don't you think perhaps that's a little ignorant? You assume that people choose to believe in a god or gods simply because they cannot accept the alternative

no, i find that people will believe things to make them feel safer, or understand, or give them a sense of control. Many diabetes patients don't take their meds, not because they're crazy, but because they simply believe if they don't take it, it might go away...if they believe in something hard enough it could happen. They prefer to do this rather than face the alternative that they will possibly be living on drugs for the rest of their lives.

believing in god gives us a sense of control, because we know that if we keep him happy we get heaps of goodies, or atleast not struck down by lightening. The ultimate example of this is ancient Greek Gods...people just created them wen the felt like it, and if someone stood against it they were seen as showing hubris, and putting themselves above the gods.

God's were created to help us understand earthquakes, floods, famine, everything, they gave us an answer...how is this any different from today's world?

Quote from: "BOGWarrior89"

Ok, wiki the incompleteness theorems, read them, think about what I said, read them again, and THEN if you are still lost, ask me again.  I'm not going to do all of the thinking for you; sometimes you have to do it for yourself.

No.  I've read about them before in some depth; thanks for your rather infurating presumption of my ignorance.

My understanding of those theorems is that they put limits on what can be proved.  Rather, they guarantee that consistent systems that can be interpreted to model the natural numbers will contain true statements that cannot be proved.

Nowhere do they state that any proofs are invalid.

You brought up Godel seemingly, to me, to imply that mathematical proofs are not really proofs, but merely reflect the consensus of mathematicians.  It's quite clear that that's not what Godel's theorems are about.

What is your interpretation of the theorems?

I'm not saying that Bogwarrior necessarily had any idea what he was talking about, but there is one important corollary to the incompleteness theorem which does cast a certain amount of doubt on mathematical proof, which is the following:
Any axiomatic system which can prove it's own consistency is necessarily inconsistent.

Therefore, we can't know for certain that the axioms upon which we base mathematics are consistent, and so to a certain extent, mathematical truth is based on faith in the axioms. Of course, this is a very small amount of faith, since the axioms all appear to be true. It certainly takes less faith to believe, for example, that there are objects called "sets" which have some properties laid out in axiom form (in the Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory axioms) than it takes to believe in an all-powerful and all-knowing being who created the universe. But it is, perhaps, something to consider.

God's were created to help us understand earthquakes, floods, famine, everything, they gave us an answer...how is this any different from today's world?

But by definition of a "god," could a god truly be created by men?

In any case, in response to the rest of your post, I never meant to say that people don't believe things for such trivial reasons, just that it frequently is not the case.  A lot of perfectly sane people do have valid reasons for choosing to believe one thing over another.

You assume that people choose to believe in a god or gods simply because they cannot accept the alternative; however, people have put forth a number of good reasons for believing so.

I think most people who disagree would claim that the goodness of those reasons is contestable.

There is also the fact that humans in general seem to be endowed with an inherent sense of right and wrong in the world which is non-existant in the wider animal kingdom.

Are you sure it's nonexistent in the wider animal kingdom?  I have not really investigated the question; have you?  It seems probable to me that other social animals would have some instincts about right and wrong.

It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act in a certain way.

I am concerned by the use of the word "strong" here.  It is likely that some instincts feel strong but aren't, and vice versa.  I hardly think that the individual is capable of the level of introspection required to quantitatively measure the strength of a desire.

But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not.

This is begging the question.  Maybe it really is the same.  Maybe the feeling of wrongness is exactly the result of failing to immediately comply with a certain instinct.

Another way of seeing that the Moral Law is not simply one of our instincts is this. If two instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in a creature's mind except those two instincts, obviously the stronger of the two must win. But at those moments when we are most conscious of the Moral Law, it usually seems to be telling us to side with the weaker of the two impulses.

Aha, my fears have been realized.  Worse yet, C.S. is again begging the question: if in fact the "weaker impulse" and the "Moral Law" are one and the same, and the Moral Law causes you to follow the weaker impuse, then it could just as simply be explained that the impulse was not in fact weaker.

I mean, who's stronger: a malnourished quadripelegic (sp?) backed up by the Army, or a single champion weightlifter?

...

I am regrattably too weak to read the rest of Lewis's article.  I have a feeling, though, that arguing in such inexact terms, and on the basis of what-seems-to-make-sense rather than what's actually known about the neurology of instinct and desire, renders the article an interesting work of speculation, but nothing more.

Sorry to go off topic a little but the current debate is boring and tedious.  Based on all the information we have, we can easily make the assumption that we exist and we should be happy with that.


The hardest part in believing in the Christian god, for me, is this;

The bible says that "faith without works is dead" (James 2:24-26).

Essentially the Earth and our lives are like a test to see if we are ready to be with God or not.  God won't prove to us that he exists because that would ruin the test - we need to have faith in God to reap the benefits.  The line from James is basically saying that we can't have faith if we don't put in an effort to have that faith.  To begin with you don't need a lot of faith - there is the common analogy for seeds - you plant seed of faith and then look after it and it grows into a fruit tree and you get lots of fruit .  If you don't look after the tree then it will wither and die.  But surely to plant the seed - to put in even the slightest amount of genuine effort requires a tiny amount of faith.  Where would that faith come from?  You can't have faith without effort and you can't put in effort without faith.  

While obviously people do believe in God, I think the reasons they believe are not a case of planting a seed and putting in effort.  There is some other event or reason in their lives that has led them to believe what is essentially an illogical and irrational view.

While I could be seen to be putting in effort and I genuinely would like to know if God exists or not - I also feel that I am as completely sure of his non-existence as I am sure of anything.  Obviously we can't know 100% that God doesn't exist - just like we can't know 100% that gravity will continue to have the same effect tomorrow - but I am as sure that effects of gravity tomorrow will be the same as they are today as I am sure that God does not exist.

I'm sure Christians will say that I'm not having an open mind, and maybe that's the case but I don't know how to change my frame of mind.  I can't consciously change how I view God without new evidence or argument but the Bible clearly says that I won't get that until I have faith.  If God really does exist then I can never believe in him.  It's not a choice at all, you can't choose to believe things, you have to be convinced that they are true.  Can a genuine Christian just decide to not believe in God for no reason?  Of course not.  Neither can I just decide to have any genuine faith.  

My experiment will completely fail unless God does exist but the Bible is wrong - that's really the only way I can see myself finishing the experiment with an opinion other than God does not exist.

The bible says that "faith without works is dead" (James 2:24-26).

...

The line from James is basically saying that we can't have faith if we don't put in an effort to have that faith.

I may be wrong but I felt that this line from James is intended to mean that faith isn't enough to get into heaven: you need to do [good] works as well.  It sounds more like your interpretation is better applied to "faith without work is dead" than to "faith without works is dead".

My experiment will completely fail unless God does exist but the Bible is wrong - that's really the only way I can see myself finishing the experiment with an opinion other than God does not exist.

That's depressing.

Quote from: "BOGWarrior89"

You can't prove anything exists, so stop trying.

I can prove that I exist.

No, you can't.  You could be a figment of our imagination, an alien, a robot, an unexplained atmospheric phenomenon ... the possibilites are endless.

You're arguing a moot point that can't be "truely" proven 100%.

Just like BOG not giving evidence and making one post trolls.

I do what?  I don't understand what you are trying to say.

No, you can't. You could be a figment of our imagination, an alien, a robot, an unexplained atmospheric phenomenon ... the possibilites are endless.

I think perhaps he was saying "I can prove to myself that I exist."  However, I still claim that, in the end, you find that the only thing we can truly prove is that thinking exists.  I can doubt that my body exists.  I can even doubt that my "self" exists.  But when I doubt that "doubt" exists, I'm left to conclude that the only way I can disprove "doubthood" is if "doubthood" exists for me to disprove it.  Actually, that's gibberish but it kind of gets to the core of things...

You can't prove anything exists, so stop trying.

I can prove that for any given number, there exists a larger prime number.

No, you can't. You could be a figment of our imagination, an alien, a robot, an unexplained atmospheric phenomenon ... the possibilites are endless.

That doesn't mean I don't exist.  All it means is I might not be human.

Quote from: "BOGWarrior89"

You can't prove anything exists, so stop trying.

I can prove that for any given number, there exists a larger prime number.

And if there exists a mathematical system that isn't designed that way?  Your claim doesn't allow for other systems, outside your comprehension.