Does God Exist?

[Evil Hamster]

So let me get this straight. Man has known for 10s of thousands of years that God exists- what form that god takes generally varies by geographical location and what people were raised to believe. Still in every culture there is knowledge of some form of spirit that exists. Now "science" comes along and without any proof whatsoever declares God does not exist and religion have to prove He does?

Actually, Man has believed - without any proof - for thousands of years that many and varied gods have existed. They've all had different properties and some people decided to only worship a couple or just one of them. Then, when people started questioning what they had been told by the priestly caste, and asked them to prove that God existed, the priests had to rationalise their methods of social control. Slowly the "proofs" they offered have been shown to be a sham or not logically consistent, or explainable by some natural phenomenon. And so, free thinkers and rationalists have rejected gods of all shapes and stripes because there is no proof that any of them exist. You too are an atheist about 99% of gods that humanity has ever created. After all, do you believe in Thor? What about Nyame or Enki? Allah? No, didn't think so.

But that's the thing that I've been trying to explain for the last couple of pages. Scientists don't need to prove there is no God any more than they need to prove there is no flying teapot somewhere near Mars or pink unicorn in Scaredgirl's house. Even (indeed, especially) if there are generations of people who have believed in it, you must still ask them to prove it is there. You don't just accept it when a crazy person on the street tells you he's been abducted by aliens, you ask for proof. You don't accept what he says and then challenge everyone else to prove that he didn't.

To further expand on what I was saying- religion relies on faith, not "proof". Only science demands proof- unless science is attacking faith then no proof is necessary.

[Evil Hamster]

Atheism is the belief that there is no God. That belief is based on faith, not evidence- so atheism is also a religion.

Although thats using paradox reasoning, in all sense of the word, although it can be classified as a religion, it is first and foremost the lack of belief in god.

That's what I said.

[Forfeit]

Atheism is the belief that there is no God. That belief is based on faith, not evidence- so atheism is also a religion.

Although thats using paradox reasoning, in all sense of the word, although it can be classified as a religion, it is first and foremost the lack of belief in god.

[LightAngel]

I WILL GIVE EASY and SIMPLE ANSWER

Real God, exist....
Fake God, doesn't exist....

[Daxx]

Do most atheists believe in the big bang? because there's no reason to do that either.

I would guess that many would - maybe not all, since one's position on theism has nothing to do with the scientific theories to which one subscribes - given that there is a substantial amount of evidence which supports big bang theory (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/astronomy/bigbang.html). The second section is the relevant one, though you might want to read the first as well if you're making the point I think you're trying to make.

[sillyking14]

Most atheists do not believe in God's existence because there is no reason to do so.

correction: "most atheists do not believe in god because they [think] there is no reason to."

as the statement stands it is a simple assertion that is the heart of this argument, with my correction it more accurately describes the true situation which is: the existence of god from a humanistic perspective is mostly a matter 0f perspective, and from the religious perspective a matter of faith.

Not all atheism makes the positive claim that there is no God.

sure they do. the atheists that you are referring to claim that there is no god because there is no reason to believe that he exists. but nearly everyone in the world has an opinion on the existence of a god.

[Daxx]

Most atheists do not believe in God's existence because there is no reason to do so.

correction: "most atheists do not believe in god because they [think] there is no reason to."

as the statement stands it is a simple assertion that is the heart of this argument, with my correction it more accurately describes the true situation which is: the existence of god from a humanistic perspective is mostly a matter 0f perspective, and from the religious perspective a matter of faith.

When you say that you are taking something on faith, you essentially are saying that "I know there is no evidence to support my position. I'm going to take it anyway." How do you justify that?

Again, I'm pointing to the example of the teapot. Why would you choose to believe in God and not the teapot? And why not other gods besides Jehovah? You've not actually answered this question.

Not all atheism makes the positive claim that there is no God.

sure they do. the atheists that you are referring to claim that there is no god because there is no reason to believe that he exists. but nearly everyone in the world has an opinion on the existence of a god.

Rejection through lack of evidence is not taking a position beyond "God probably doesn't exist", and certainly isn't claiming "God definitely doesn't exist". That's different to making a positive claim. Do you understand?

[sillyking14]

ahh but you missed what i was trying to infer. the existence of god from an atheistic perspective is a matter of opinion. there is no substantial proof in either direction. and from a christian perspective the existence to god is a matter of faith. meaning that we have personally experienced god and so we believe. that is what empirical evidence is about. empirical refers to experiences. Christians have experienced god. anecdotal evidence is the result of empirical evidence. Christians share their experience with others. same is true for everything. empirical is personal, anecdotal is inter-personal.

Rejection through lack of evidence is not taking a position beyond "God probably doesn't exist", and certainly isn't claiming "God definitely doesn't exist". That's different to making a positive claim. Do you understand?

yes. but, my point was that from the atheists perspective there is no evidence for the existence of god. from a christian perspective there is a lot of evidence. it simply depends on your perspective.

[Essence]

And therein lies the crux of the problem.  See, I have personally experienced God.  I converted to Mormonism, got baptized, and all that. 

But I have also personally experienced Arkanae, an ancient Goddess of the moon and the winds.  You might think I'm joking, but I'm not -- I've seen Her, spoken with Her, and to this day, even after converting to Mormonism, I still sometimes feel Her power when a sudden breeze strikes me and seems to pull my spirit out of my body and take it for a quick whip across the countryside.

Those two truths are both empircally proved by my experience -- and yet, most people would say that they are mutually exclusive. 

Similarly, I've experienced psychic phenomena: my wife and I have shared emotive states across a 120-mile space (I had an emotional breakdown, and she felt it, left her class, and called me despite the fact that she was in a different city at the time), I've seen and accurately interpreted auras, and I've had several deliberate out-of-body experiences. 

At the same time, I believe in the scientific process, and I believe that as a beast of consensus, humankind's knowledge base doesn't improve without science as the main drive of that improvement.  If it can't be measured by scientific methods, it's not really worth trying to claim as true -- which is why all of my personally very valid religious and psychic experiences don't matter a whit to an abstract argument like "does God exist?".

Individual experience, no matter how powerful and meaningful to that individual, doesn't actually change the world.  The best an individual can hope for is that his words -- not his experience, but his translation of that experience (thank you, Wittgenstein) -- get picked up by some group who believes that they can benefit from spreading them, and they get spread to the point of being accepted as kind of a "common-law fact".  When everybody 'knows' something, it doesn't matter if anyone actually knows it.   (As a fun example, try to find proof that cholesterol causes heart disease sometime...there isn't any that can't be torn apart in seconds by a student of the scientific method.)

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that subjective 'truths' aren't a valid arguing point, because they are:

1) Easily oxymoronic.  I have an extreme example, simultaneously and unselfconsciously holding beliefs in two mutually exclusive religious arenas -- but anyone who believes in the Right to Life and simultaneously believes we should kill the ragheads (or the abortion doctors, or the people on Death Row) has the same problem, and that's a lot more common.  Logic dictates that oxymoronic beliefs shouldn't be allowed to exist, but the human as a creature of experience doesn't actually give much of a crap about logic.

2) Impossible to factualize.  Until we have the ability to actually project memories directly from the brain into the world, we'll never know if you *actually* saw/heard/felt God.  And even if we can, there are a couple of seriously overwhelming reasons why it still won't work.  Firstly, memories aren't maintained in perfect clarity by the brain.  Hypnotherapists may beg to differ, but science has proven that hypnotherapy allows it's patients to reconstruct their memories, not remember them.  Details are frequently made up to fit.  Secondly, and more damningly, the 'imaging center' that the brain uses to recall memories is the same one that the brain uses to imagine.  In fact, in many ways, a memory can literally be called an imaging about the past.  There is just no way to scientifically tell whether such a projected memory would be accurate, or an imagination. 


When you get to the point where half of the world relies on evidence that is both impossible to factualize and potentially oxymoronic at it's foundation, you have to just shrug and say 'OK, you do that.' 

I do, and I'm one of the ones in that half. 


Essence

[sillyking14]

Similarly, I've experienced psychic phenomena: my wife and I have shared emotive states across a 120-mile space (I had an emotional breakdown, and she felt it, left her class, and called me despite the fact that she was in a different city at the time), I've seen and accurately interpreted auras, and I've had several deliberate out-of-body experiences.

this phenomena is covered by christian belief. according to the bible when you marry a person you are joined in spirit. of course there is a large discussion that we can have over exactly what marriage is but since it is entirely syntactical i would rather not.

Easily oxymoronic

hmm.. the example you give is not an oxy-moron. the difference between abortion and putting to death a criminal is the difference between murder and the disbursement of justice. to give a clearer example. many of the people on death row have [b[proven[/b] that they are deserving of some punishment or another. the exact punishment must be decided by the people that are in charge of justice. as has been pointed out god himself not only allowed but ordered the death penalty, in fact he personally killed people. so killing a person because of their crimes is not wrong in theory. however is some specific cases it might be wrong. however, abortion is the killing of innocent people. killing them before they even have the opportunity to do something wrong.  so there is no way for humans to justly decide if they are deserving of death.

Those two truths are both empircally proved by my experience -- and yet, most people would say that they are mutually exclusive.

hmm....that is interesting. and true if you are not lying about the experiences. and that is where faith comes in. i personally believe that there is a reasonable explanation as to how that is possible while still being able to maintain my belief that god is, and was, and is too come. in exactly the same way many "strong" atheists would believe that you imagined both experiences. and that even if they can't prove it now that someday perhaps humans will be able to discover a reasonable answer that coincides with their belief.

Impossible to factualize.

it is true that the core of christian (and really any religion) is impossible to factualize as scientists define facts. and that our beliefs are entirely based on personal experience. but that is what we have. so we use it to the best of our ability, and let God do the rest.

When you get to the point where half of the world relies on evidence that is both impossible to factualize and potentially oxymoronic at it's foundation, you have to just shrug and say 'OK, you do that.'

and here is where i disagree. well...no not actually completely disagree but......well you'll see.
from my experiance there are mainly        types of evangelistic Christians.
1. there are those that know what the believe and why they believe it. these are the people like mother Teresa. you might call these people "true" christians except that "true" is an incredible misnomer.
2. people that know what they belive but they have very little understanding as to why others don't. these are the people that daxx describes as being the ones that "put there hands to their ears and say lalalalala i don't need to listen to you." the problem with that analogy is that it makes it seem like these people are being unreasonable. when they aren't. the vast majority of people around the world have little understanding about what the "scientific" arguments are. they don't understand. so even if you do have irrefutable evidence that absolutely proves that god doesn't exist and you try to show it to them, it still won't convince them. not because they are being unreasonable. but because they don't understand the evidence and are therefore incapable of letting it mold what they believe. so they are in fact being more reasonable to ignore you than you are in accusing them of being unreasonable.
3. there are people that know what they believe and use it to hurt others. these are people that get the most media attention. people like those that did bad things during the crusades. or the people that burnt jews at the stakes, blamed them for the black plague, and all kinds of other ridiculous things. (i truly don't understand how people could have been so dumb as to blamethe jew for what they did at the cross. i mean, really? if it weren't for the sacrifice of jesus on the cross then christianity could not exist.) anyway this third group is the group that is the most dangerous, both to atheists and christians alike. they twist the word around to suit their fancy and to set themselves up as superior to other people which is clearly against the bible.

so in summary. when you talk to people that belong to the first group simply dismissing them is ridiculous. instead you should work to understand why they believe what they believe. the second group you cannot have a discussion about proofs and evidence with simply because they do not understand what you are saying. not everyone is a scholar. the third group...... if you dismiss these people and say "yeah..you do that" then you are as guilty of the terrible things that they do as they are. especiallyif youknow what they are going to do.

[Kurohami]

Some say science is against the existence of God. But that is not necessarily true. It all basically depends on what do we call a God. If you mean a human like existence that care about the sin and justice in the world and do deliberate things to behold justice and punish the sin, and will thaw from our prayer for forgiveness, then I would say that other than sole beliefs, there are no proof that such a God exist. But if you mean a existence that made the world how it is and who made all that happens happen, then in a sense, something must be making these happen, so there must be some sort of existence which is being called God. Albert Einstein, who is amongst the most famous scientist of all time, said that science is human's attempt to understand the behavior of this far superior intelligence that made the world how it is. So, there is gravity, but why is there gravity? You can say is the God. But is this God some form of materialized thing just like us? Probably not. And this God only make things the way it is, it acts, but doesn't react, it doesn't care about what people do and doesn't do, it can't hear our prayers and it does not care about us in any particular ways, it's just there(or indeed not there). So, it all depends on what do you think God is and what is the definition of existence. Of course that's how I perceive things, it prevents me to fall into a endless loop of pointless pondering.

[Kamietsu]

Does God exist? Personally, I do not denounce God or a god/dess, but I cannot say that I believe in their existence completely. A lot of what has happened in the universe seems almost far-fetched to, I can usually find some way of understanding it, either through science or coming up with my own ideas about it, which is heavily influenced by science. So, ultimately, no, I do not believe in the existence of the much debated Christian God. As for the other god/desses and possible super-beings that could be out there, I find I somewhat believe in some of their existences. I do enjoy the idea of a separate god/dess having power over different things, popularized by the greek/roman(i don't have too much knowledge of how their god/desses original formed if not originally by them.) But much like the decks here, I tend to tweak things to my liking because I find it implausible that some of the religions out there could not have been formed just because of a neat little story, or something of the like. So I say why shouldn't I come up with my own idea based on the neat little stories I hear and read of?

About the big bang theory and such, I saw a show recently on the science channel talking about how there could potentially be plenty, if not an infinte, number of parallel dimensions out there, all 'floating' in their own membrane that holds them together and the big bang was simply two of these many parallel dimensions rippling against one another. I find that theory to be rather amazing in my mind (as I tend to love fantasy type things and this seems right up my aisle and crave for something fantasy like to be real, yes I am that pathetic to want to go on some awesome journey with dragons and suchness ) but also it sounds as another plausible theory for the big bang, dimensions, etc.

Can something be made from nothing? Yes, I firmly believe without a doubt that it could. Can I prove it? No. Can I disprove it? I believe not, but I'm sure others with dispute the ability to disprove something from nothing. But if God can magically and spontaneously create all we know today out of nothing, why not believe something could spontaneously spring for from nothing unforced? Is it that much more bizarre than some magic being crafting all we know today in seven days? In the beginning there was complete and absolute nothing, no tiny super-dense sphere or swirling infinite energy, no god, no anything. Pure nothingness. I believe this nothingness was in itself a hyper-intense force. That sounds odd I'm sure, but I don't fully understand what keeps me on this planet. Why does an object of such size exert a force pulling everything down to its core? With size and density are googles and googles of invisible special particles surrounding my body and keeping it bound to what spawned them? I honestly don't know and I am not sure if there is a known theory of it or not. I've never looked into it, but i suppose i might.

So back to the hyper-intense force of pure nothingness. If a force can bind me to the ground, I believe the force of nothing when in such an astronomically large scale has the power to spontaneously create for some reason I have not yet thought of. Maybe so it can sustain itself more. Maybe the astronomical force of the infinite nothingness was like a high tension cable waiting to snap. It's a working idea

However, I believe that whoever is making a claim should be the one to prove their claim. You say God doesn't exist? Prove it. You say he does? Prove it.

And for science and religion, I think they can go side by side swimmingly as long as one does not try to prove/disprove the other. Knowledge, I say, is the reason they overlap and cause such trouble. I'm fine being ignorant of God's existence if he does exist. It will not complete me to suddenly discover that He exists, nor will it crush me to suddenly see proof that without a notion of doubt that He does not exist.

But I do not live by that homeless guy on the street. It's all hearsay. We did not live in the times the bible was written so we cannot see for ourselves if man wrote down exactly what God narrated to him. Go ten thousand years from now, will those people reading about our history necessarily believe it exactly as written? I know I wouldn't. Come on, seriously, some dude named Hitler killed 6 million people because they were and believed differently than he? That sounds pretty far-fetched to me, or so it might ten thousand years from now. In fact, even now there is not always proof that what's written in our history book and historical documents ever happened. To us, the newest generation who did not live through WWI, WWII, and everything before that, all we can do is take what's written and believe it. History is basically a godless religion. You have to have faith that what you are told, what you read, is fact, truth. Of course we can go to ground zero where the world trade centers fell. We can go to all the historic places that are in the world and see evidence of the wars that happened, of almost anything that happened in each historic landmark. But will those still be there ten thousand years from now? I sincerely think not.

Personally, however, if believing in God, gods, goddesses, Evil aliens inhabiting your bodies thanks to Xenu, if whatever you believe makes you happy, then no one has any right to try and stop you from doing just that. I would never attempt to convert someone to atheism, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. If they were open minded and wanted to learn, sure I'd happily teach them everything i knew and believed. What makes people happy is what's most important, I believe. God or no God, no one has the right to take that away from you. After all, everyone in the USA, isn't that part of what this country was founded upon, the persuit of happiness?

In short:

Believe in God: No
Believe in high power/other god/ddesses: Somewhat
Something from nothing: Yes
If you claim something you should be the one to prove it.
Religion and Science can coexist.
Basically all textual parts of religion and the such is hearsay.
As long as it makes you happy.