Christians, what is your VERY BEST arguments for the existence of God?

[Tiberius]

A.) Please excuse me if I sound rude, but this is one of the most absurd things I have ever heard. "You don't get definitions from observing the natural world." Then where do you get them? How can you get a definition without first having something to define? X does not equal X because you have a bunch of people who agree to it, especially if said people have never even observed X in the first place. It's as ridiculous as saying God exists because a bunch of people agree to it.

Definitions are the meaning of a word. To get a definition, you look the word up in the dictionary. When creating a new word, you use your observations and reasoning to create a definition. There is a difference. You were asking Zhalentine for his own definition of an already existing word. There is no point in doing so, and he told you this much. If everyone used their own definition for words, nobody would know what each other were talking about. Instead of asking people for their own definitions of words, explain what you actually mean by "coincidence" and "accident" and we can compare this with a standard definition of those words.

B.) You cannot properly create a definition without first having a clear understanding of the defined. To have that, you have to have encountered the thing in question in real life.

I agree, and this wasn't what I was arguing at all. I was arguing against your assertion that we get definitions from observation, and whilst this is true when creating a new word, it isn't when dealing with already defined ones. To get the definition of pre-defined words, you look up the definition in a dictionary. As Zhalentine and I have already said, making up your own definitions for words is chaotic and ridiculous.

D.) However I disagree with your second statement. You can understand the person and their reason for believing as they do, but not their belief if you do not share it. However, if you accept that person as a friend and don't view them as against you simply for thinking differently than you, you can have better insight and understanding into their train of thought.

You might know their reason for believing such a thing, but there is a difference between knowing and understanding. If you understand how someone can believe a position, there is no reason from your point of view not to follow that position along with that person.

See A.) Are you suggesting that we should view reality based on definition, rather than create definition based on reality? That's ridiculous.

No. I'm fine with creating definitions based on reality. What I'm not fine doing is creating personal definitions for pre-defined words, and then asking people to do the same in hopes of having a rational comparison. As I've said before, this leads to chaos. If I define a cloud as "a warm feeling inside", and you define it as "a dog with long legs", it leads to disagreement. All the while, the people with the actual standard definition of a cloud are looking at us in confusion.

E.) I agree with this and will concede a bit on the subject. However, if you work from the basis of their being a God, then you can understand that being(God) much better than if you work from the assumption that there is not a God.

Well that's a bit obvious. Assuming there is no God means you cannot understand anything about such a being, since from that perspective it doesn't exist. However, do not make the error of thinking that because assuming the existence of something you can logically deduce attributes, you can "understand" God as a reality. It doesn't work like that. If you start from an assumption in a logical argument, you cannot use the same argument to prove the assumption.

I'm not lecturing you, but admitting to a character fault is not absolving of it. You would do well to speak to people respectfully in a discussion. Otherwise, why would they want to understand your side at all?

So you claim to not be lecturing me, and then go on in the next sentence to lecture me. Jebus.

I'll speak respectfully when the argument given is logically sound. You currently don't have that luxury. Do some convincing arguing, stop wasting our time with meaningless drivel about personal definitions, and we might get somewhere. The theists here who are respected members of the community are the ones who at least try to have a decent conversation, to present their views, and to be logically coherent.

F.) This is a fairly nice representation of 'coincidence', the example you provided, and I cotend that it appears by mere chance that the two people took the course of action they did. But look at the bigger picture; why did A and B both go to Venice, and why did they meet up? I submit to you that, regardless of whether they simply bumped into each other or had a prior engagement with each other, the meeting itself was a planned course because A 'knew', in a sense, that he/she had to meet B, and vice versa for B.

Your argument makes no sense. For instance, assume person A knew person B from childhood, and then went to separate corners of the world for 20 years, without any contact whatsoever. If person A plans a holiday to Venice, and person B does the same (separately), and they meet up in Venice, it is a coincidence. There is now "plan" to meet up, no pre-ordained series of events. The two people had no contact for 20 years, and "just happened" to meet up in Venice because they "just happened" to book their holidays to the same destination at the same time. Nobody "knew" they were going to meet, nor did they "have" to as you seem to think.

If they were planning the meeting, or they "had" to meet up for some reason, it isn't coincidence, since the two events are connected pretty directly. Coincidence only occurs when those two events converge at some point but not on purpose.

G.) What was the quote I saw somewhere around here in a signature? It was something to the effect of "science is not a study of what is impossible or possible, but what is less likely and more likely." Observing the facts of the matter and the scenario that night, I can see no more likely explanation that does not jump through hoops and use flawed definitions than to say that God and the universe itself were conspiring to help and advise my friend that night. And that does not just mean 'God did it.' There is beauty in simplicity.

Your inability to see what is more likely has no affect on what happened. Your inability to come up with another explanation does not mean the only explanation that you have is the correct one. It's a standard argument from personal incredulity, and it's a logical fallacy. We gave you an explanation, that it was a coincidence, and you have failed to disprove that explanation. Whilst it is not disproven, it is still a possibility. Throwing definitions around like they don't matter and quoting Holmes isn't going to do you any favours here. There is indeed beauty in simplicity. God, however, is not simple. Coincidence, is.

H.) Then you have completely misunderstood the message I am delivering and I may do just as well to be speaking with a brick wall. You barely understand what I am talking about, so don't let your imagination run wild with theories on what I am like or how I act, please.

Might I interject, that if you think I don't understand what you are talking about, you should attempt to explain yourself more clearly?

I.) No, I do not believe they exist in the sense that they are physical people who have existed and who can be traced back as having ancestors/decsendants or any living relatives. Do I believe that stories, words with which we humans use to express our feelings, can communicate on a level deeper than literal or metaphorical? Ah, yes I do, and therein lies my answer.

Cut the cryptic bullshit. Explain how a story is evidence / proof of God's existence, when stories are written by people, people who are fallible, subjective, and capable of lying or misrepresenting a point. Write a mistake down on paper and get enough people to believe it, and you have yourself a problem. This is why we rely on things other than anecdotal evidence to prove something.

J.) ...How does this relate to what happened to my friend that night, at all? That's all well and good to say that the universe came into existance through the Big Bang(a theory I'm not quite keen to believe, but oh well), but how in the holy mother of anything does that account for what happened to my friend? I presented you with evidence in the fom of what happened to him, you refuse to see it as such, however, and thus block your mind off to the idea that there may be more than one kind of evidence.

My apologies, I think I crossed threads somewhere.

In response to your story about your friend, it is quote possible that he was just in the right place at the right time. He didn't accept the ride, as you said, because he was being polite. He didn't ask you out because there were police cars. To assume that these things happened because God was guiding him is to say that God manipulates reality in such a way that would interfere with "free will" (or are you sensible and don't believe in such a thing?). The point is, to say that God was guiding him, without any actual evidence, is to be completely moronic. You have no reason to believe that God guides people. God isn't even in the story. The guy just happened to be in the right place at the right time, and your assumption that God guides us leads you to conclude that this is evidence of that. However, as I've already pointed out to you, you cannot prove an assumption is the assumption forms part of the basis of the argument.

K.) God was, and God is everything. When the universe came into existance, so to did God. When the Big Bang occured, so to did God. Now if you're little singularity can exist suddenly out of nowhere, and if God was also part of that singularity, then he is there. Don't give me ultimatum before you observe and think about my response.

So at some point in time, God didn't exist? I think that's what I'm getting from your argument. So please, if this is your view, explain what caused God to exist. You claim everything needs a cause. What is God's? Oh, and it wasn't an ultimatum, it was a dichotomy. Either everything has a cause, or it doesn't. Hence why I wanted (and still want) you to explain how God cannot have cause, given that you seem to think everything needs one.

Ad hominem? Really? Where did I insult you at all, I merely pointed out that it is you who chooses to ignroe certain kinds of evidence because your perspective and perception is that there only is one kind of evidence. So yes, that is your fault, but no, that is not meant as an insult.

Ad hominem's aren't about insults in general. They are about distracting from an argument because you draw attention to a supposed fault or flaw of the opponent. In this case, you assert (without evidence or reason) that the only reason I don't understand your argument is because I don't want to. It's a baseless claim, and completely untrue.

L.) No, I did not assume it was because it hadn't been disproven, I assumed based on my understanding of God, and because there was no more likely explanation, that the arranger was God. If you have some other arranger which you can present, that seems more likely than God(and this is working from the assumption that you even understand God), then by all means, I would be willing to examine that idea.

I already told you, simple coincidence presents a reasonable and rational conclusion that is far more likely, namely because the events are not connected by some supernatural unseen force. If they "just happened", they do not require further explanation. The same cannot be said for your God though, since the existence of such a being itself is a extraordinary claim. Sherlock Holmes would have been proud of the saying "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". You have a book and your personal feelings. Somehow I think the good Holmes wouldn't be impressed.

M.) Go back and re-read H.) & I.), they demonstrate effectively the proper way of reading the Bible. You cannot hope to understand even one word of that book if you take it as bits and pieces to be taken ltierally or metaphorically. You must look at the underlying message of the book entire, and then perhaps you can understand it. Look at the bigger picture, it is much simpler than you would think.

As I've said repeatedly now, enlighten me. Present your evidence or piss off. Give me the section or sections of the book that support your point, and explain them. If you have to explain the underlying message too, do that as well! It's really not that hard. If you have a point which you claim is supported by your book, you should easily be able to explain it. Otherwise all I have to go on is your word, and I'm afraid I don't trust that one bit.

N.) Eintstein's theory of relativity is something, correct me if I am wrong, has been brought into contention time and time again. As such it is still a theory, becaue it is a hypothesis supported by several 'facts' which may or may not be true. (Assumptions.)

A universal law such as gravity is something we do not understand, but which we know to work and be true. We may speculate and come rather close, but for the time being there is no certain 'fact' of gravity. On top of that, what do black holes have to do with anything we've been talking about?

No, it's stood pretty well for the last 95 years. All evidence currently supports it. A "theory" in the scientific sense is not a "theory" in the general sense. A scientific theory is the best explanation which covers all the facts. It has surpassed hypothesis stage because experiments have confirmed it. There are no assumptions behind the facts that science has extrapolated, other than the assumption upon which science lies: materialism. Having said that, if materialism is proven untrue, it doesn't mean that matter and energy don't exist, just that there might be more to matter and energy. The facts behind Einstein's theory would remain the same.

Oh, and black holes are gravity wells in space that were predicted by Einstein, and we have a pretty good idea of where some of them are, further confirming Einstein's theory. When a theory gives predictions, and these predictions come true, it's a pretty good bolster for the theory's veracity.

I can't help but feel all this is a digression from the initial topic at hand, anyway. xP I was asked to present my very best evidence for the existence of God, and I did. However, it was taken in bits an pieces and cut up into billions of ways so as to look at it 'closer' when in doing so, the original evidence itself was destroyed completely. Look at what I said in M.) above. It's not the tiny parts which make it up, but the simplicty of the overall thing as a whole. You must look at the bigger picture.

This is the problem, you cannot look at the bigger picture whilst there parts of your picture that are supported by fallacious logic. If one part of your picture is wrong, you cannot hope to suggest that the entirety of it is correct.

And it seems, Tiberius, that you also address my posts in a similar fashion. Instead of taking them as a whole, a message delivered in it's entirety, you have taken to xamining each piece of my posts one-by-one, without examining what they look like together. So you have missed the underlying message.

If you wish, I could simply not break up your post into sections and then write my criticisms afterwards. It would be the same words, but the formatting would be terrible. If your argument cannot withstand scrutiny, being picked apart, and poked at, it isn't a good argument at all. The best arguments can be sliced and diced and withstand every counter-argument successfully. Yours can't.

You also asked me to specify certain passages from the Bible which would back up my point. Do you really want me to do that? It's impossible, because then I'd be breaking the Bible down into bits and pieces and tearing down the original message of the book as a whole. That doesn't mean you have to read the entire Bible, by the way, because guess what? I have not ever read on single page frm the Bible. Not a one.

But with my understanding and knowledge of it's message, I can see the big picture and what the Bible is trying to communicate. If you want a basic answer for this, here it is; peace, love, and understanding. That's it. That's the Bible.

-Watson

So you base your belief around a book you have not read, and make assumptions about a God you believe in because (fuck, I don't know why you believe in it if that is the case), and your proof is nothing other than you like the story of peace, love, and understanding. I have plenty of stories like that, and all of them are more peaceful and loving than the Bible is. You can claim the Bible is a peaceful book all you like, but you haven't read it, and your claim doesn't reflect the book itself. There are plenty of hate-filled messages in the Bible, plenty of violence, and plenty of misunderstanding. Perhaps you should read it...you might learn what is actually in it.