RE: Evidence God Exists
March 13, 2010 at 12:07 pm
(This post was last modified: March 13, 2010 at 1:08 pm by Frank.)
(March 9, 2010 at 12:15 am)AngelThMan Wrote: Without further ado, here’s the evidence: Humans are the only species, out of millions of species, which have evolved into an intelligent life form. Other species live pretty much to eat and sleep -- survival. If our evolution were only a result of natural selection, shouldn’t other species, or even just one, have evolved into intelligent beings after millions of years? But the fact is that no other species have been able to develop science, literature, art, music and intelligent thought process as humans have. Isn’t this evidence that God exists?
Yes it is, and for several reasons. For one thing it corroborates what’s written in the bible, which is that God created man in his image, and that animals are inferior. But to truly understand why my evidence points towards a deity one needs to be able to appreciate the grandness of this gift that is human intelligence. And you have to ask yourself, why are we the only species, out of millions, that have achieved this type of intelligence? Evolution is about natural selection, but shouldn’t at least one other species, out of millions, have benefited from intelligence? I think so. And there would be a myriad of other intelligent species if there were no God. If you can appreciate the grandness and uniqueness of human intelligence, then you’ll understand why only humans were given this gift, and you'll know why what I've outlined here points to a God.
In law we would say relevant evidence is anything that makes any particular proposition or theory more likely to be true. On that basis you may say the existence of humans, considering the low statistical probability intelligent life could develop randomly in such an inhospitable universe, does lend credence to the idea of a deity (and indeed absent any additional information I might agree with you). The problem of course is we do have additional information.
I'm frankly losing interest in this debate (because it is a settled question for me), which is why I've chosen to participate in an atheist forum; and not slug it out with theists on their forums. Nonetheless, I'm not hostile towards theists (at least not anymore). Certainly having certitude regarding your post-mortem fate must be comforting (and I won't pretend atheism offers any replacement for that). I won't even pretend (as many atheists do) that our own impending death, or the prospect of a future entropic death of the universe is somehow a great thing we should all eagerly look forward to. In fact I won't even say religion is terrible in all cases, or that it doesn't provide many people with guidance in their lives (and thus may be helpful in promoting things like social cohesion and even occasionally good behavior).
I simply acknowledge religion is untrue; and god probably doesn't exist. Why - because of the evidence. The starting place for the analysis must be religion itself. If we start out quibbling over nonsense like the Kalam argument, or other cosmological arguments, we wind up skipping over the most important question. Where did our concept of a god come from? Cosmological arguments and other apologetic devices (e.g. intelligent design) are merely post-hoc attempts to justify a preexisting belief system (which is the exact opposite of how science actually discovers things).
Didn't our concept of god come from the same place all the other dead religions in history came from? The more I've studied this issue the more I've discovered how conclusively theism can be debunked. A reasonable, unbiased analysis leaves no room for your god (William Lane Craig is flat out wrong - faith cannot be reasonable, unless you define "reasonable" subjectively). Indeed, according to the evidence, the first mention of monotheism in history wasn't even by the Jewish people, it was by an Egyptian pharaoh (who promoted worship of the god Aten). Archeologists have debunked the Exodus myth, evolutionary biologists and geologists have long debunked the creation account given in Genesis, indeed we've even traced some elements of the Hebrew bible to Sumerian civilization (e.g. the flood account).
Advocates of Christianity tell me there's evidence Jesus actually lived - I say great! I don't dispute that assertion (although it may be debateable, it's simply not worth fighting over). The central figures in many ancient Greek myths actually existed; nevertheless none of us believe all the supernatural myths associated with these individuals. There were numerous virgin birth motifs in pagan myths prior to Christianity; so why is the Jesus narrative so compelling? Simple, the Roman Empire adopted it as their official religion (and consequently it spread throughout Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa).
Another popular argument concerns the motives of the apostles. According to christian apologists the apostles had no possible motive for inventing this story; but I think that's patently false. They had every motive for inventing the story. If you were part of a small cult within a larger (but still very theocratic and superstitious) religious community, who claimed your leader was a god-man, yet that leader was executed like a common criminal, you'd probably look pretty foolish (and it's doubtful anyone would take you seriously, much less join your cult). If you wanted your cult and ideology to live on, you'd have to figure out some way to spin your leaders execution into a positive.
Do you know three quarters of all people during the first century, in the Roman world, were considered slaves. It's easy to see how a religion like Christianity could spread like wild fire in that sort of environment. And all this doesn't even begin to address the particulars of the evidence concerning, for instance, natural selection (but I'll stop here in the interest of some semblance of brevity).