Proof of God

[Harris]

Your summary of Aquinas represents the common modern interpretation of his argument. First, movement, in classical philosophy means 'change'. Change is going from potential being to actual being. Secondly, the unmoved mover is the starting point for an essentially order sequence that happens all in a single moment. It is not meant to be the beginning of an accidentally ordered sequence that happens over time.

My main purpose for quoting Aristotle and Aquinas was to highlight a fact that throughout known human history almost all people, from a layperson to a genius, at least once in their lifetime searched or argued for the proof of God. This is the clear indication that idea of God is inherent and not extrinsic or acquired.

Rene Descartes has explained this fact in his third Meditation roughly like this:

1. We have ideas of many things.
2. These ideas must arise either from ourselves or from things outside us.
3. One of the ideas we have is the idea of God—an infinite, all-perfect being.
4. This idea could not have been caused by ourselves, because we know ourselves to be limited and imperfect, and no effect can be greater than its cause.
5. Therefore, the idea must have been caused by something outside us, which has nothing less than the qualities contained in the idea of God.
6. But only God himself has those qualities.
7. Therefore, God himself must be the cause of the idea we have of him.
8. Therefore, God exists.

I did not quote Aristotle and Aquinas to criticise, rather to show there is no thinker in the history of humankind who would have escaped the idea of God.

Harris Wrote:
You are conferring meaning and value on an otherwise godless and thus meaningless universe.

Bennyboy Wrote:
Learn what "begging the question" and "argumentum an nauseam" are and stop doing them. We've given plenty of examples of meaning which are not dependent on fairy tales.

I do not remember when you have given “examples of meaning which are not dependent on fairy tales.”

Most of the time you guys tried to give meaning to the universe by the use of following terms:

Multiverse,
Strings in 11 dimensions,
Quantum Foam,
Loop Quantum Gravity,
Causal Sets,
Holographic universe,
Inflationary Universe,
Universe among Brane (membrane),
Universe in Black Hole, and
Big Bouncing Universe and Bumpy Space

These ideas have no clues for their support. However, they provide an ideal meal to self-deceivers who rebel against God and try to escape from the inherent idea of God.

Without God, both the Universe and Conscious Being are the product of meaningless Chance, Luck, and Accident and consequently are meaningless.

We don't need to discover good, only to define it. And so we have, each in our own way. We don't need the opinions of 1500 years-ago desert people to tell us what is right or wrong.

Do children need guidance of their parents? Yes, indeed.
Do elders need guidance of God? Yes, indeed.

The guidance of God is the only thing that has kept human societies away from relativism which if prevail shows that people’s basic ethical judgments would conflict even if they shared all the same factual beliefs and were fully enlightened as to the consequences of their views.

Harris Wrote:
There must therefore be something higher than the human intellect by means of which the good can be defined and the truth comprehended so as to leave no doubt.

Bennyboy Wrote:
No there mustn't. You keep saying this, but you haven't supported it.

My posts and responses are full of supporting material, which you are continuously ignoring to promote your own narrow selfish ideas.

Harris Wrote:
If such wrongdoers escape sufferings for their wrongs in this life, it would be fair if there were another world, a hell, where he would be made to suffer.

Bennyboy Wrote:
The desire for fairness should not be greater than the desire for honest observation and clear thought. There's no evidence for hell, and no reason to expect that such a thing exists.

Honest observations and clear thoughts reveal that the world is full of injustice. Without having Divine Justice, one cannot differentiate between the death of a human and death of a dog and that exactly was the case in Stalin’s USSR.

The doctrine of hell is the pragmatic approach that the threat of hell is a powerful incentive to moral diligence.

I am still waiting your response to my question:

Do you agree with the following statement of Dawkins?

“In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, and other people are going to get lucky; and you won't find any rhyme or reason to it, nor any JUSTICE. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, NO DESIGN, NO PURPOSE, NO EVIL AND NO GOOD. NOTHING BUT BLIND PITILESS INDIFFERENCE. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.”

Out of Eden, page 133.

Harris Wrote:
For Islamic political philosophers, the divine law (sharia) revealed to Prophet Muhammad was a necessary and sufficient condition for bringing about human felicity as these laws are pure and not contaminated by the subjective preferences.

Bennyboy Wrote:
Except the preference of men to control women's sexuality and to hide their dirty, dirty faces under towels, you mean? Except the punishment of clear thinking with death, you mean? Yeah, pretty fucking pure and divine.

By clear thinking, do you mean Adultery, Homosexuality, Incest based on consensus, Alcoholism, Gambling, Racial discrimination, Egoism, Arrogance, Self-importance and above all unjustified killings of innocent children and civilians by using the slogan “war on terror”….

Harris Wrote:
For a thinking person these points are sufficient for drawing a conclusion that a person trying to conceal obvious traces of the truth behind chaotic assumptions and empty commentaries that is only to emancipate his immediate self-interested desires.

Bennyboy Wrote:
Nope. For a thinking person, fairy tales are fairy tales, real knowledge is inferred from real observations, and never the twain shall meet.

What scientific observations you have on your own conscious experiences? First, try to explain your own internal and subjective component of sense perceptions, arising from stimulation of the senses by phenomena (your qualia) with the help of science and after that try to condemn the idea of God by using that very lame science.

When i was a Muslim i had the same question but now i don't have that question anymore, lets suppose that universe had a beginning and an end it didn't come out of nothing, God created it but then the question arises "WHO CREATED GOD??" if you think that universe cant come out of nothing then how did God come out nothing and nowhere, he must have a beginning and an end, if you think like that then we are both Atheists in a way

A God capable of creating this gigantic universe wouldn't be bothered about little things like the affairs of men, do you care about what's happening on a dust particle under your rug??? you don't then why would God care??

the God that all religions created is not a real God, he is a small God with childish behavior and humanly desires, in the Quran he repeatedly says that he doesn't care about anything or anyone then why does he demand prayers, why does he demand good deeds??

the Islamic hell is too big a punishment for any crime, why would a God put people in hell just for not believing in him?? in my opinion none of the theists or Muslims even understand what the word God means

and in the end eternity is the scariest thing one can imagine, now again people have no idea what eternity is and how scary it can be, all pleasures fade away in an eternal frame of time and for the people in heaven they will eventually get bored even if it takes billions of years but what then they still have to live forever, Heaven sounds like an orgy its all about sex with virgins, Death gives meaning to life without death life is meaningless

Let us presume a man who is adult, fully conscious, and have no psychological problems rapes an eight years old girl just for pleasure. After raping, he cunningly kills her to wipe traces of his crime. If this man caught and you would be given an authority to punish him then which punishment would you choose for him? I guess you will suggest a capital punishment especially if that little girl was a close relative of yours.

Here is the question:

Do you think capital punishment is an adequate option for that heinous crime? I think no.

Here is another question:

If (somehow) Hitler and Stalin were brought back for the judgement then which punishment on earth can be considered as satisfactory for their crimes?

Stalin and Hitler had spread dreadful misery and had not faced any charges against their atrocious crimes during their lifetime. How would you (atheist) explain justice deprived of day of judgement and the sufferings in hell?

If (according to you (atheist)) there is no life after death and no judgment day then the universe is an immoral being where fittest has the right to have all the pleasures at the cost of lives of feeble. Dawkins has beautifully defined such a godless universe:

“In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, and other people are going to get lucky; and you won't find any rhyme or reason to it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.”

Out of Eden, page 133.

That's my main argument against the philosophical necessity of God if you're going to special plead a magical entity that didn't need to be created, then why not look to the universe as the first candidate of the eternally uncreated?  Why start making fairy tales of a Sky Daddy who hates women and burns fags?

Primarily, your question, “why not look to the universe as the first candidate of the eternally uncreated?” is illogical. Universe cannot be eternal neither in the past nor in the future. This is an established scientific fact.

Universe has a beginning and anything that has a beginning is a created being. Question is who created the universe. Perhaps, multiverse. Then who created the multiverse. Perhaps Brane. Then who created Brane. Perhaps, X. This pattern of axioms will lead to a regressive process, which will either be infinite or circular, or terminate in unfounded assumption.

Aristotle proposed First Unmoved Mover argument simply to show that idea of infinite regressions is illogical. Almost all great thinkers agreed on the illegitimacy of the infinite regression, which is inadequate for a logical calculus.

The demand for the proof of God normally come from those who are the followers of their own selfish desires, who normally are arrogant, and who rebel against Divine Laws as they think they are superior to anyone. This demand is as old as human history itself. Although whole universe is the proof of God but by demanding proof of God, you are not demonstrating any new behaviour.

“The people of the Book ask thee to cause a book to descend to them from heaven: Indeed they asked Moses for an even greater (miracle), for they said: "Show us Allah in public," but they were dazed for their presumption, with thunder and lightning. Yet they worshipped the calf even after clear signs had come to them; even so we forgave them; and gave Moses manifest proofs of authority.”
An Nisaa (4)
-Verse 153-

“Is then one who is on a clear (Path) from his Lord, no better than one to whom the evil of his conduct seems pleasing, and such as follow their own lusts?”
Muhammad (47)
-Verse 14-

There is an alternative. Anything other than God.

Emptyspaceness can be at the beginning but I agree not absolutely nothing.

As Lawrence Kraus speaks and writes of a universe from nothing I agree with Sam Harris on the matter: He is mistaking something that's almost nothing for nothing. Anything at all coming from absolutely nothing is absolutely logically impossible.

Basically the scientific definition of empty space and the dictionary definition of absolutely nothing are different just like the latest most refined sciebtific definition of an atom and the original ancient greek definition of atom are different.

The alternative to god could be anything at all more reasonable, more simple less complicated and sufficiently so.

Basically God is never an explanation ever because he generates more questions and conplexities than he explains. Just makes shit worse, goes absolutely against Occam’s Razor.

Krauss has tried to exploit the argument of Leibniz, "Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?” to promote his idea of “Nothing.” The cosmological theories to which Krauss refers have exactly zero relevance to Leibniz’s question. Leibniz came to the conclusion that the answer is to be found in God, Who exists necessarily and is the explanation why anything else exists.

Hawkins has also reflected the idea of Leibniz:

“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. WHAT IS IT THAT BREATHES FIRE INTO THE EQUATIONS AND MAKES A UNIVERSE FOR THEM TO DESCRIBE? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?”
Page 174
A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
Hawking

The idea of God is the simplest compared to most of acquired ideas and that is the reason people worship, plead, repent, and submit their wills to the will of unseen God. This simplicity is because this idea is intrinsic and not extrinsic. This idea is similar to our subjective conscious experiences that we appreciate the most. This idea is the closest to self if not supressed artificially by imposing materialistic justifications to support fabricated and unnatural pleasure seeking practices.

Harris Wrote:
By definition, Natural Selection is bound to terminate everything and everyone for the flourishment of the Fittest. Hitler and Stalin were following these rules submissively.

LostLocke Wrote:
Oh wow. No.
Natural selection says nothing of the sort.
Thanks for playing science. Here's your parting gift....

Whether Natural Selection and survival of the fittest are different approaches to a same concept or not it does not matter because Natural Selection has no scientific description.

Someone's betraying his inner jew hater, with that last comment, lol.  Tell me, Harris, what was "fittest" about the Nazis?  How might Hitler have been "following those rules submissively".  How about Stalin?  Whats with Hitler and Stalin anyway....what does a guy have to do to get some Pol Pot up in this motherfucker? Continuing, do you understand the difference between natural and artificial selection? Are you entirely certain that there's an -actual link- between Hitler, Stalin, and natural selection? Or, is it possible...that someone has lumped a bunch of negatively valued things together and -told you- this tale in order to exploit your very obvious associative compulsions?

Do you or any of your professors has the proper scientific definition for Natural Selection? If Natural Selection has no Scientific definition and you call Natural Selection a Science then why should not I name Natural Selection or the Survival of the Fittest as Stalin, Pol Pot, or Hitler.