Evidence God Exists

[Watson]

So you're saying they may have had a sense of how things operated, they just didn't have the science and technology to explain the specific processes at work? I have no doubt that they understood the natural world in their own way, but we've gained an incredible amount of knowledge since then, and our current understanding has evolved accordingly.

Yes, our amount of scientific information has increased a thousandfold since the times of the Bible and its stories, I will agree with you there. Have we gained any real knowledge, though? Ever heard the old phrase 'the more I see the less I know'? Because there is a lot of truth to that. And it basically sums up what I'm saying about science. Just because we've beheld the processes of life and the universe does not mean we know what they are or why. We don't know that they will always work the way they do, or even why it is that they work the way they work. The more about the universe we uncover, the more questions we will have.

Contrarily, I would definitely agree that our amount of understanding of this world has increased since then. We understand the way things work and how. We understand the place of certain phenomena in the scheme of things, and the relation of that place to other phenomena in our world. Science has pushed us to look at relationships between natural occurrences, and to seek answers as to how those occurrences actually, well...occur!

In what ways do you believe God reveals himself, other than private revelation?

In short? The world itself. All of it is revealed to us in 'private revelation' because we are merely subjective entities. Only by acknowledging the objective world around us as truly objective, and recognizing our place within it, do we draw closer to God and the way in which he works. We see his creation and we understand what part of it that we are.

I sincerely doubt that things were ‘more fantastical’ in the past. Why would the laws of nature be suspended back then, but not today?

It was just a speculative suggestion, not meant to be taken seriously. Sorry about that. But really, if things were far more fantastical back then, how are we to know? We don't. So to say that it probably never happened is a broad dismissal of a very possible occurrence.

What perceptive abilities did our ancestors possess, but that we have now lost?

You know, I hadn't though of it that way, to be honest with you. This gives me something interesting to think about and I thank you for that. Perhaps the people back then were more perceptive of magic, God, and the existence of both in the world around them for some reason. Or maybe, back then, life was just plain simple enough to behold these things without too much else getting in the way. We'll never really know, I suppose.

In that different time period, I suspect that people gave a great deal more weight to supernatural explanations, particularly because of the lack of other kinds of knowledge and evidence.

Perhaps people back then simply had a clearer view of the mystical aspects of life, and their impact on the world, than we do now bogged as we are with such complicated lives.

However, I realize that humans have long had a need to find meaning and purpose and feel connected to something beyond the natural world. A yearning for the spiritual, I guess you could say.

Why do we have that yearning, do you think?

This doesn't mean that there actually is another dimension or Great Spirit or anything, but I think it says a lot about the meaning-making and symbolizing powers of the human brain.

We have an amazing ability to link things together in life. We also have an amazing ability to ignore or blind ourselves to connections, as well.

*snickers* 'Great Spirit...hehe...it's a reference...without you meaning it to be...hehe...

If there is a god, it's really not something we could ever understand.

Agreed.

I don’t know how some religious people can insist that they know the mind of God, or they know what God wants of us

I've not heard many religious people claim to 'know' the mind of God before. Please, if you can cite specific instances, that would be grand.

or what being in the presence of God (in the afterlife) would be like.

Well I believe it's possible to have an understanding of what the presence of God feels like, but not what the afterlife is like at all. Does that still count?

The only way our ancestors could make this god entity comprehensible was to believe that it thought, felt and behaved at least somewhat like a human, because human motivations were the only kind they knew.

Or to compare God's actions and processes to human motivations. There is a difference between comparing something to something else, and saying that something is something else; i.e.- Lightning is God's voice is a comparison rather than an outright literal statement.

Does it need to have a reason? And if it does, why must the reason involve an intelligent supernatural being?

I don't know. Does it need to have a reason? Ask yourself as much and think about what it is to have a reason in the first place.

We’re all searching for meaning and direction in our lives. We automatically look for patterns and tend to capitalize on coincidence.

There is no such thing as coincidence. Do you believe there truly is no meaning to life?

If you believe a certain path is the right one, and you hope that things will work out, they often do.

A friend of mine once summed it up nicely for me when he said 'When you have a goal, the universe conspires to help you achieve it.' And I truly believe that.

I’ve had experiences just like you’re describing here, without attributing any of my intuitions to an outside force.

Perhaps you should take a second look at those experiences and examine their place in the larger scheme of things. How did they impact you, as well as those around you? To what end did you achieve your goals? Did you get the result you planned for, or did you get something else? And if you did get something else...why?

You make a very good point. How can we ever know that anything really exists, if we’re all seeing the world from within our own subjective minds?

I still think there’s something to be said for science, however. Science is the accumulation of knowledge over hundreds and even thousands of years, and evidence is tested by many different minds working together, collaborating and confirming their findings. If a theory is found to be inconsistent or to lack observable evidence, it is not held onto because of any strong intuition that it might be true.

I wasn't discrediting science in the least, as I find it to be a very fascinating subject overall. But I also understand and accept the fact that there are places science can't go, limitations it has within its foundation. Science can do many amazing things and explain to us a lot about the universe. But there are questions it can't answer from a purely subjective view-point, whether that view-point is collectively held by many or not.

Religious experiences, on the other hand, can never be tested or confirmed to represent anything in the real world. There is no accumulated knowledge or evidence, only the persistent feelings and intuitions of people who are all too ready to give credit to God.

First of all, I was not 'all too ready to give credit to God' in the slightest at the time of many of my own experiences. As I stated before, I was an atheist at the time. So I was actually resistant to the idea of giving God credit for anything. But the more I sought answers for my questions, the less I had without some considerance of the possibility of God. Only when I fit that piece into the puzzle did the picture begin to make sense.

Secondly, subjective experience only has value if there is an objective, right...? Then what is this objective? How can it be tapped into? And why does religious testimony hold less weight than scientific testimony, if both are based on subjective experience en masse?

And God, as a theory, can never be disproved; and as we know, an unfalsifiable argument is no argument at all.

You can't 'disprove' anything entirely beyond a shadow-of-a-doubt. Therefore, all arguments are 'unfalsifiable', rendering all arguments invalid.