Balaco Wrote:

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Through my research so far, I've found that this doesn't necessarily point to God. A lot of these points came from some threads on this site...for example I believe Rob presented the dice analogy. I presented the following posts to the Catholic Forum to see what their defense was.

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Objectively speaking, unlikely events, such as our existence, don't necessarily point to God. Even though some parts of the universe are precise...even if a small percent difference would've stopped us from existing, it's not impossible these things could've happened on their own. 

Human existence didn't have to happen, but it did. It ended up being the event that happened out of the many events that could have been possible.

A simple analogy I've found involves the roll of a die 1000 times over. Every last combination of the numbers produced by the die is equally as likely; equally as unlikely. The order being something like "2, 4, 6, 4, 3, 4, 1, 1 etc." or just "2" over and over is extremely unlikely, but just as extremely unlikely as any other outcome. It just so happened that, out of all the possible outcomes, that one occurred. 

I've also seen the lottery or disorders being used as analogies. There are billions of people in the world, each as unlikely to win the lottery or be born with a rare disorder, but it happens. 

Of course, human existence is (probably) much more complex than rolling a die or winning the lottery in a sense. Though if we look at it without immediately assuming that we had to or have to exist, the analogies remain relevant. For all we know, that small percent change in the elements would've led to the existence of radically different beings, rather than us humans.

Some other users also claimed that it could also be possible that the odds of us existing were 100% (without God existing)...but our knowledge is currently too limited to comprehend this. There could be a branch of physics/science that explains this, but we haven't learned it yet.....or our incomplete human minds are overthinking things. These last points here aren't exactly provable so I'm not necessarily defending them past their possibility.

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What kind of surprised me was that no theists really tried to refute it. One person admitted that the teleological argument isn't "absolute" proof of God and conceded that these points show that. 

Actually this person feels that it proves God is highly likely to exist, and that "atheists are putting a great deal of faith in the tiny sliver of a chance that God doesn't exist."  I don't really see how this argument necessarily proves either of these two; I laid out how it's scientifically possible that humanity didn't have to exist...though I suppose the theist mind in this case likely doesn't focus on how we didn't necessarily have to exist, as God's existence would answer that. I suppose other arguments for God's existence may reinforce the confidence in theists, which strengthens the validity of the teleological argument for them. I'll probably ask this guy for some clarification and then see if I can refute him.

Another simply mentioned that (as I said) Aquinas' teleological argument is much stronger than this one. 

The only other person who responded claims that the teleological argument, among every other single thing in the world, points to God, and supplemented that with an analogy on how there's many ways we don't believe in God. Wasn't really relevant to the discussion. I guess this might be another case of jumping to God for an answer rather than attempting to find a logical answer, though to be fair I don't know anything about this person's knowledge.

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To be fair, none of Thomas's 5 ways individually prove that a divine being exists. Instead, they demonstrate the existence of more abstract concepts like subsisting cause, being, necessity, intelligence, etc., and THEN he simply says that, when we say the word god, we mean those things.

1st way: An unmoved, prime mover of everything else that moves. "and this everyone understands to be God"
2nd way: A first/un-caused efficient cause of every other cause. "to which everyone gives the name of God"
3rd way: Necessary being which causes all other being. "This all men speak of as god"
4th way: Perfect being/goodness/truth/beauty which causes the incomplete being/goodness/truth/beauty of everything else. "and this we call god"
5th way: Intelligent and teleological being which directs natural things to their end. "and this we call god"

In other words, if all 5 ways prove what they claim to prove, then when a theist says "god exists", they mean that something exists which is unmoved, un-caused, necessary, perfect, and intelligent, which is the source, cause, and end of all other things. In short, it means that being-itself just simply is, of itself, and that's what we call god.

If such being exists, then it certainly has qualities we might call divine. That such a being exists, is not controversial, even if some people are not convinced. As so abstract, if it exists, it evades any direct concrete measurement or observation (humanity is limited to concrete sensual experience, and so are lab instruments analogously). We can only know it exists in an abstract and mediate way (from other things), i.e. we only know that it exists by analogy to how we know other things exist.

The controversy enters when people claim to have heard from this being, i.e. when people claim that this being has "spoken" to them.

(December 18, 2016 at 7:13 pm)Ignorant Wrote:

Balaco Wrote:

---

Through my research so far, I've found that this doesn't necessarily point to God. A lot of these points came from some threads on this site...for example I believe Rob presented the dice analogy. I presented the following posts to the Catholic Forum to see what their defense was.

--

Objectively speaking, unlikely events, such as our existence, don't necessarily point to God. Even though some parts of the universe are precise...even if a small percent difference would've stopped us from existing, it's not impossible these things could've happened on their own. 

Human existence didn't have to happen, but it did. It ended up being the event that happened out of the many events that could have been possible.

A simple analogy I've found involves the roll of a die 1000 times over. Every last combination of the numbers produced by the die is equally as likely; equally as unlikely. The order being something like "2, 4, 6, 4, 3, 4, 1, 1 etc." or just "2" over and over is extremely unlikely, but just as extremely unlikely as any other outcome. It just so happened that, out of all the possible outcomes, that one occurred. 

I've also seen the lottery or disorders being used as analogies. There are billions of people in the world, each as unlikely to win the lottery or be born with a rare disorder, but it happens. 

Of course, human existence is (probably) much more complex than rolling a die or winning the lottery in a sense. Though if we look at it without immediately assuming that we had to or have to exist, the analogies remain relevant. For all we know, that small percent change in the elements would've led to the existence of radically different beings, rather than us humans.

Some other users also claimed that it could also be possible that the odds of us existing were 100% (without God existing)...but our knowledge is currently too limited to comprehend this. There could be a branch of physics/science that explains this, but we haven't learned it yet.....or our incomplete human minds are overthinking things. These last points here aren't exactly provable so I'm not necessarily defending them past their possibility.

--

What kind of surprised me was that no theists really tried to refute it. One person admitted that the teleological argument isn't "absolute" proof of God and conceded that these points show that. 

Actually this person feels that it proves God is highly likely to exist, and that "atheists are putting a great deal of faith in the tiny sliver of a chance that God doesn't exist."  I don't really see how this argument necessarily proves either of these two; I laid out how it's scientifically possible that humanity didn't have to exist...though I suppose the theist mind in this case likely doesn't focus on how we didn't necessarily have to exist, as God's existence would answer that. I suppose other arguments for God's existence may reinforce the confidence in theists, which strengthens the validity of the teleological argument for them. I'll probably ask this guy for some clarification and then see if I can refute him.

Another simply mentioned that (as I said) Aquinas' teleological argument is much stronger than this one. 

The only other person who responded claims that the teleological argument, among every other single thing in the world, points to God, and supplemented that with an analogy on how there's many ways we don't believe in God. Wasn't really relevant to the discussion. I guess this might be another case of jumping to God for an answer rather than attempting to find a logical answer, though to be fair I don't know anything about this person's knowledge.

---

To be fair, none of Thomas's 5 ways individually prove that a divine being exists. Instead, they demonstrate the existence of more abstract concepts like subsisting cause, being, necessity, intelligence, etc., and THEN he simply says that, when we say the word god, we mean those things.

1st way: An unmoved, prime mover of everything else that moves. "and this everyone understands to be God"
2nd way: A first/un-caused efficient cause of every other cause. "to which everyone gives the name of God"
3rd way: Necessary being which causes all other being. "This all men speak of as god"
4th way: Perfect being/goodness/truth/beauty which causes the incomplete being/goodness/truth/beauty of everything else. "and this we call god"
5th way: Intelligent and teleological being which directs natural things to their end. "and this we call god"

In other words, if all 5 ways prove what they claim to prove, then when a theist says "god exists", they mean that something exists which is unmoved, un-caused, necessary, perfect, and intelligent, which is the source, cause, and end of all other things. In short, it means that being-itself just simply is, of itself, and that's what we call god.

All 5 ways make an argument from ignorance. They're all flawed.
But no believer has ever been able to acknowledge this.... so I won't waste my time typing out how it is.

(December 18, 2016 at 7:17 pm)pocaracas Wrote: All 5 ways make an argument from ignorance. They're all flawed.
But no believer has ever been able to acknowledge this.... so I won't waste my time typing out how it is.

Thanks for sharing.

Quote:

Quote:Why does God allow the Bible to be so "unclear" at times?

"Unclear" may not be the best word to use in the title, but I didn't really know how to condense my thoughts. 

I know Christians/Catholics don't consider the Bible to have any contradictions, and regardless of whether this is true, why does God allow to Bible to seem like it could have contradictions? Why does God allow the Bible to be left up to so many interpretations that there's multiple denominations of the Christian faith? 

If the Bible is to be the infallible Word of God, why didn't God make it clearer?

These being Catholics, they explained how my questions work against sola scriptura. Most responders talked about how important the Church is to interpreting the faith. One explained how God's Divine Law is said to use both Scripture and Sacred Tradition to infallibly teach it.

Most responses I've gotten so far explained that God gave us the Church, only one Church, and other denominations are just considered to be due to human weakness. They say these other denominations have formed because they don't have the Church to interpret Scripture. I'd assume questions related to why God allows us weakness in this important aspect would be answered using free will as justification. This one Church was given by God before the Bible was written, and one person justified the variances within the Bible by explaining how the different authors had different perspectives and fields of knowledge.

I think this might be a good question to ask Protestants considering how different their responses would be.

So I ended up bringing these points over to Protestants. Some felt like God doesn't necessarily want them to understand certain verses before certain times, and feel like it's not a problem if they don't understand them until they get to Heaven. Some of these people brought up the matter of faith again....feeling that we ultimately need to trust in Jesus. 

One guy claims "God doesn't simply "allow" things to be unclear at times, but makes them unclear to outsiders". Not sure what he means by "outsiders"...I would imagine non-Christians, but I don't think that even makes sense. Doesn't this just make it harder for nonbelievers to follow the faith? I'll ask for elaboration.

Other responses generally claim that the Bible isn't 100% clear so that we can work through the challenges and become strengthened.

(December 18, 2016 at 7:30 pm)Ignorant Wrote:

(December 18, 2016 at 7:17 pm)pocaracas Wrote: All 5 ways make an argument from ignorance. They're all flawed.
But no believer has ever been able to acknowledge this.... so I won't waste my time typing out how it is.

Thanks for sharing.

It's easier than I thought: http://wiki.ironchariots.org/index.php?t...as_Aquinas

(December 18, 2016 at 6:55 pm)Balaco Wrote: Objectively speaking, unlikely events, such as our existence, don't necessarily point to God. Even though some parts of the universe are precise...even if a small percent difference would've stopped us from existing, it's not impossible these things could've happened on their own. 

Human existence didn't have to happen, but it did. It ended up being the event that happened out of the many events that could have been possible.

A simple analogy I've found involves the roll of a die 1000 times over. Every last combination of the numbers produced by the die is equally as likely; equally as unlikely. The order being something like "2, 4, 6, 4, 3, 4, 1, 1 etc." or just "2" over and over is extremely unlikely, but just as extremely unlikely as any other outcome. It just so happened that, out of all the possible outcomes, that one occurred. 

I've also seen the lottery or disorders being used as analogies. There are billions of people in the world, each as unlikely to win the lottery or be born with a rare disorder, but it happens. 

Of course, human existence is (probably) much more complex than rolling a die or winning the lottery in a sense. Though if we look at it without immediately assuming that we had to or have to exist, the analogies remain relevant. For all we know, that small percent change in the elements would've led to the existence of radically different beings, rather than us humans.

Some other users also claimed that it could also be possible that the odds of us existing were 100% (without God existing)...but our knowledge is currently too limited to comprehend this. There could be a branch of physics/science that explains this, but we haven't learned it yet.....or our incomplete human minds are overthinking things. These last points here aren't exactly provable so I'm not necessarily defending them past their possibility.

--

What kind of surprised me was that no theists really tried to refute it. One person admitted that the teleological argument isn't "absolute" proof of God and conceded that these points show that. 

Actually this person feels that it proves God is highly likely to exist, and that "atheists are putting a great deal of faith in the tiny sliver of a chance that God doesn't exist."  I don't really see how this argument necessarily proves either of these two; I laid out how it's scientifically possible that humanity didn't have to exist...though I suppose the theist mind in this case likely doesn't focus on how we didn't necessarily have to exist, as God's existence would answer that. I suppose other arguments for God's existence may reinforce the confidence in theists, which strengthens the validity of the teleological argument for them. I'll probably ask this guy for some clarification and then see if I can refute him.

Another simply mentioned that (as I said) Aquinas' teleological argument is much stronger than this one. 

The only other person who responded claims that the teleological argument, among every other single thing in the world, points to God, and supplemented that with an analogy on how there's many ways we don't believe in God. Wasn't really relevant to the discussion. I guess this might be another case of jumping to God for an answer rather than attempting to find a logical answer, though to be fair I don't know anything about this person's knowledge.

My bolded.

I just don't see any advantage in attributing our existence to a god instead of chance. To say a god created us gives us no understanding into how that was done, it merely hands the explanation to a black box we call "god". I just can't see how that makes anyone feel as if they've gotten a satisfactory answer. I prefer to just admit I don't know and wait for more evidence or insight. But assigning the answer to a black box does not count as any kind of explanation in my book.

(December 18, 2016 at 6:55 pm)Balaco Wrote: Actually this person feels that it proves God is highly likely to exist, and that "atheists are putting a great deal of faith in the tiny sliver of a chance that God doesn't exist."

Many of these arguments are intended to show that god is necessary. They are not intended as a direct proof of god's existence or to show what the likelihood of his existence is. The idea is that god has to be real or the universe doesn't make sense. But this relies on the gaps in our knowledge of the world and the universe. There may have been a time when lightning was indicative of the existence of a god, just like there was a time when it made sense that the Sun revolved around the Earth. We may never learn enough to eliminate all of the gaps that god can be wedged into, and so god will continue to exist in an ever-diminishing form for a very long time.

Yup, "God" is just pushing all the questions one step back. It answers absolutely nothing at all. It's a mental dummy/pacifier.

(December 19, 2016 at 2:52 am)robvalue Wrote: Yup, "God" is just pushing all the questions one step back. It answers absolutely nothing at all. It's a mental dummy/pacifier.

Indeed god is the "answer" to questions we don't really understand yet and always will be. I find that hilariously suspicious.
"I haven't looked in the attic"  "He's probably up there then"

Hi Balaco! Even as a Christian, I can always respect a position of healthy skepticism.  Tell me, have you ever considered that maybe the evidence of whether God exist or not, is the same evidence? As in, whether you choose to believe in a God (or absence of God(s)), all of the evidence will support your position. 

So in essence, it all starts with you. What do you want to believe?