An unorthodox belief in God.

[mickiel]

I did not want to put this in the religious section, because I am not religious. I am not christian, not with any group, but I do believe in god, and will explain and debate why. There are a growing number of believers in God who do not adhere to traditional religions and customs, nor explinations of god. I certainly don't. I have been banned from enough christian websites to know just how much we disagree. There are more views of god, than Christian - atheist views.

Why do I believe in god?

Well this list will be quite extensive, but I will begin with " Consciousness", and please excuse me for capitalizing consciousness. Some here seem to put meaning behind a simple capitalization, when there is none in this writer.

Consciousness, the governor of our behavior. I do not believe that a thing like consciousness can be the result of random evolution; although I believe in evolution, just not 100% of the common definition of the term, I think its a tool of god. Not a tool of magic luck. I think our consciousness was designed to continue to evolve, like many things God designed. And yes, I do figure that design requires a designer, or is evidence of one.

I do not think consciousness could be arrived at from things " lesser than itself", such as unconscious things like rocks, matter and chemicals; no. This fingers a god in my figuration.

How could we arrive at awareness as a result of magical physical unaware things combining slowly over billions of years? Even the flesh of humans and animals, which is another proof of God, how can we arrive at having flesh on bones, and then pop a thing like consciousness into it? This is asking more than facts and faith or belief, its asking us to accept miracles! Oh, all of a sudden individual bones decided to slowly grow into individual parts of the human body, like plants growing from the ground? Then each specific part had a mind of its own and injected itself into other parts and eventually got it right and formed a skeleton? Which then figured out 5 billion years later how to cloak itself in flesh?

And nature was kind enough to reward this thing with a brain?

And then somehow, a trillion years later, it DEVELOPED consciousness? Now I am being comical for sure, but you get the point. In my view, consciousness is " A spirit IN humans", which was put in the body by another conscious spirit; which again points me to a god. And that spirit is what consciousness is, its biblically defined as " The image of god", meaning consciousness. How is something physical, like nature or matter, going to produce a spirit thing like consciousness?

That is like saying that dead things can produce life. Which I think is another proof of god, only consciousness can birth consciousness , only life can produce life; only a human can birth a human; we are not continuous with the idiot hierarchy of speechless apes.

[Napoléon]

How could we arrive at awareness as a result of magical physical unaware things combining slowly over billions of years? Even the flesh of humans and animals, which is another proof of God, how can we arrive at having flesh on bones, and then pop a thing like consciousness into it?

So, your 'proofs of god' are simply an argument from ignorance. Colour me surprised.

[mickiel]

How could we arrive at awareness as a result of magical physical unaware things combining slowly over billions of years? Even the flesh of humans and animals, which is another proof of God, how can we arrive at having flesh on bones, and then pop a thing like consciousness into it?

So, your 'proofs of god' are simply an argument from ignorance. Colour me surprised.

I am ignorant of many things, but my awareness grows annually. We can only be conscious of, those things we are conscious of. We live, and life is evidence of god in my view, we learn, and learning is evidence of god in my comprehension. And we argue according to what we are conscious of. We think and live and move and have our being. We are living beings; conscious beings; and I cannot see consciousness as a result of unconsciousness.

[bennyboy]

You say you aren't Christian, but your arguments for a god are very Christian, specifically fundamentalist American Christian. I suppose you live in the Bible Belt, right?

I think you have some ideas, but you seem not to know about some of the concepts that you are about to be hammered on the head with. You are for sure going to be asked for evidence-- your belief won't be taken seriously unless you have meaningful evidence. I'd recommend you look up "supervenience" as well, and understand what it means, because your argument is essentially an argument against the supervenience of mind.

I'm with you on the sublime nature of mind. However, I'm not sure why you think the idea of a God is require-- or even, what the word "god" even means to you.

[Cato]

I am ignorant of many things, but my awareness grows annually. We can only be conscious of, those things we are conscious of. We live, and life is evidence of god in my view, we learn, and learning is evidence of god in my comprehension. And we argue according to what we are conscious of. We think and live and move and have our being. We are living beings; conscious beings; and I cannot see consciousness as a result of unconsciousness.

Meaningless word vomit.

Your belief isn't unorthodox, it's the same as every other god belief. You believe because you want to and then rationalize god's existence; in your case trivially with the life is proof of god bit.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

I accept your reasons for belief, but I do not agree with them. I think a combination of Occam's Razor and de-constructing some of the arguments from ignorance could debilitate your thesis on a universal (i.e. non personal) level.

But as I've never seen you before, welcome to the forum

[Esquilax]

Well this list will be quite extensive, but I will begin with " Consciousness",

Uh oh!

Consciousness, the governor of our behavior. I do not believe that a thing like consciousness can be the result of random evolution;

First things first: what you believe means exactly nothing. The only thing that matters here is what you can demonstrate to be true, and as of right now, we have plenty of evidence that evolution occurs and that we are evolved animals, and no evidence for anything else. Therefore, just on the weight of the evidence, evolution is sufficient to produce consciousness.

The second thing is, you need to stop using the word random to describe evolution immediately, as it's not an entirely random process at all. The initial mutations are random, but once they come up against an environment with physical laws and so on, the ones that persist long enough to become a part of the gene pool are no longer random. So, quit it with the oft used theistic strawman version of evolution, please; it does nothing but disrespect all our intelligence, including yours.

although I believe in evolution, just not 100% of the common definition of the term, I think its a tool of god. Not a tool of magic luck. I think our consciousness was designed to continue to evolve, like many things God designed. And yes, I do figure that design requires a designer, or is evidence of one.

Again, what you figure isn't an indicator of what's true; in fact, that's an argument from ignorance. As to your last sentence, you'd need to demonstrate that there is a design for life before you go off on how designs need designers.

I do not think consciousness could be arrived at from things " lesser than itself", such as unconscious things like rocks, matter and chemicals; no. This fingers a god in my figuration.

This is the same argument from ignorance as before, but more importantly: "lesser," how? According to what standard? And why should the universe care about that standard at all?

How could we arrive at awareness as a result of magical physical unaware things combining slowly over billions of years? Even the flesh of humans and animals, which is another proof of God, how can we arrive at having flesh on bones, and then pop a thing like consciousness into it? This is asking more than facts and faith or belief, its asking us to accept miracles! Oh, all of a sudden individual bones decided to slowly grow into individual parts of the human body, like plants growing from the ground? Then each specific part had a mind of its own and injected itself into other parts and eventually got it right and formed a skeleton? Which then figured out 5 billion years later how to cloak itself in flesh?

Okay, stop. Now I have to ask: exactly what is your level of education about evolution? Because what you just posted was not only a completely insipid misrepresentation of what evolution is and how it works, but more importantly, you could find this stuff out with a little time on google!

Here's some info on the evolution of bones. That took me all of five seconds, which doesn't say a whole lot of good things about your interest in fact checking for correctness before you start talking. Evolution is a gradual process, it has none of this "oh, this stuff all just suddenly decided to grow here for no reason!" crap. Remember what I said before about insulting our intelligence?

And then somehow, a trillion years later, it DEVELOPED consciousness?

Your incredulity at a thing is not evidence against that thing. I also find it interesting that you'll be simply baffled by the idea that consciousness could develop naturally over many billions of years, and yet you have no trouble believing in a super powerful creative consciousness appearing whole out of nothing, for no reason, and then building a universe. Are you honestly applying your own arguments against your god belief too, or are you just expecting that this'll only work one way?

Now I am being comical for sure, but you get the point. In my view, consciousness is " A spirit IN humans", which was put in the body by another conscious spirit; which again points me to a god. And that spirit is what consciousness is, its biblically defined as " The image of god", meaning consciousness. How is something physical, like nature or matter, going to produce a spirit thing like consciousness?

"In my view," nobody cares. What you believe isn't instantaneous fact because you believe it, and if you're not interested in providing evidence then we have no obligation to rebut you either. Do you have anything more substantial than a list of things you believe?

That is like saying that dead things can produce life. Which I think is another proof of god, only consciousness can birth consciousness , only life can produce life; only a human can birth a human; we are not continuous with the idiot hierarchy of speechless apes.

How do you know any of what you just said? Knowledge is demonstrated, not just asserted, so... how do you know?

[mickiel]

You say you aren't Christian, but your arguments for a god are very Christian, specifically fundamentalist American Christian. I suppose you live in the Bible Belt, right?

I think you have some ideas, but you seem not to know about some of the concepts that you are about to be hammered on the head with. You are for sure going to be asked for evidence-- your belief won't be taken seriously unless you have meaningful evidence. I'd recommend you look up "supervenience" as well, and understand what it means, because your argument is essentially an argument against the supervenience of mind.

I'm with you on the sublime nature of mind. However, I'm not sure why you think the idea of a God is require-- or even, what the word "god" even means to you.

I am not Christian, although I may agree with them on a very few things; I agree with atheist on some things, and some Christians I know think I sound like an atheist. As far as supervenience , I think things can occur unexpectantly , but if it was deliberately done, that is different. In example, if I walk down a street and find a dime, I think nothing of it. If I walk further and find 3 dimes on the ground, I can begin to suspect things. If I walk further and find 100 dimes on the ground, yet each standing on their edges, perfectly balanced, then I can KNOW that this was deliberately done.

Now the universe is far more than dimes on the ground, but I can see deliberate design in it. I can see an anthropic type of principle, which is just more evidence of a god in my view. If the dimes were not balanced by some precise force, it could not be done. If the earth was closer to the sun, it would be too hot and we would not exist. If it was much further away, we could not exist.

No, things in our reality are too deliberate , the earth was obviously well suited for humans.

[Napoléon]

some Christians I know think I sound like an atheist.

They must not of ever spoken or seen or heard from an actual atheist then...

[Fidel_Castronaut]

No, things in our reality are too deliberate , the earth was obviously well suited for humans.

This is a classic fallacious argument contained in a thesis of fine tuning.

What % of the Earth exactly is well suited to humans? I think you'll find if you do a statistical analysis of the total surface area of the earth, a tiny % of it is actually habitable.

It's also looking at the equation the wrong way around. Humanity (indeed, every species) has evolved to the environment in which it inhabits (or finds itself inhabiting). Those that do not, die out. We have evolved lungs to breath a nitrogen rich oxygen atmosphere, not had a nitrogen rich oxygen atmosphere put there to suit our lungs.