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

[fr0d0]

That's one hell of a pile of unsubstantiated claims chatty. All seemingly irrelevant to the topic in hand too.

[Violet]

You mean that someone else had created a camera prior to your creation of matter? Then sir, i'm arfaid you aren't all that godly

Huh... I didn't think of that.

Like all other Gods before him Dotard disappears in a puff of logic

Who's to say your creation of the universe was instantaneous? Perhaps you could have created the camera and taken a picture sometime during the creation process

[leo-rcc]

You mean that someone else had created a camera prior to your creation of matter? Then sir, i'm arfaid you aren't all that godly

Huh... I didn't think of that.

Like all other Gods before him Dotard disappears in a puff of logic

Love the Douglas Adams reference.

[theVOID]

..which equates to the same thing in my opinion... so can you explain how you can dismiss those two arguments so I can see?

It IS NOT the same thing. Disproving two arguments for the existence of God does not mean i have disproved God entirely.

The 'first cause' argument is easy two disprove for two simple reasons, though there are many arguments that take it out:

1) It is a blatantly obvious case of special pleading, ie 'everything that has a beginning has a cause, except God'

2) Not everything that has a beginning has a cause, for example a Carbon-14 atom can spontaneously decay into Nitrogen 14 emitting ionizing particles without anything at all acting upon it, no force, no energy, nothing. It is a truly random process that is entirely uncaused. Therefore claiming that everything that has a beginning has a cause is false. Considering that, Occams razor can be applied to show that the Creator/Prime Mover requires one more assumption than the singularity while not having any basis in necessity and is therefore not the preferred explanation logically.

The argument from fine tuning is destroyed by the context and scale of the universe. The argument that the universe was made for life is rendered ridiculous by the fact that for one life supporting planet in a tiny corner of the galaxy is accompanied by incomprehensibly vast regions of empty space, galaxies with hundreds of billions of stars and a universe with hundreds of billions of galaxies. In this scale life does appear as an extremely low probability occurrence that can take place only in very rare circumstances.

[chatpilot]

Unsubstantiated by you fr0d0 since you are so dismissive of anything that contradicts your claims of truth based upon your conviction that god exists.

[Pippy]

"It is a blatantly obvious case of special pleading, ie 'everything that has a beginning has a cause, except God'"

No, it's a case of mental flatulence to consider that there is no end to the chain of causality. You're right that the best two arguments are causality and design, but I agree with Frodo, that I would like to see you try to topple them.
Either cause and effect go back in literal infinite quantities (which I forward CAN NOT exist in this reality, we can make a name for the infinite, and pretend to understand it, but it is not real in the sense that it can never happen). So it is special pleading that nothing made the universe, because it seems less likely that there is the impossibility of infinity, and slightly more likely that there is something we haven't figured out yet. you think god is impossible, but I think infinity in reality is more impossible.

And perceived design, also strong. There are a lot of factors that make life, and sentient life possible here today. It is either that they happened by chance, or by design. Either us being here now is fantastic good luck (and the further back, and smaller scale you look, it really is fantastic good) or it is not.

So we have two ideas. One is that the universe never really started, or that the thing that started the universe never really started, or that it did by chance. Then the universe built up to support billions of years of action, and million of life. Tens of thousands of years of advanced hominid life, and a few thousand years of sentience. As much as we can appreciate the beauty of the system, it is all just random. There is no reason that it ended up as such a beautiful machine.

Or, and I think more likely, there is more to the picture, if only because that world view is showing obvious flaws.

[Zhalentine]

"It is a blatantly obvious case of special pleading, ie 'everything that has a beginning has a cause, except God'"

No, it's a case of mental flatulence to consider that there is no end to the chain of causality. You're right that the best two arguments are causality and design, but I agree with Frodo, that I would like to see you try to topple them.
Either cause and effect go back in literal infinite quantities (which I forward CAN NOT exist in this reality, we can make a name for the infinite, and pretend to understand it, but it is not real in the sense that it can never happen). So it is special pleading that nothing made the universe, because it seems less likely that there is the impossibility of infinity, and slightly more likely that there is something we haven't figured out yet. you think god is impossible, but I think infinity in reality is more impossible.

And perceived design, also strong. There are a lot of factors that make life, and sentient life possible here today. It is either that they happened by chance, or by design. Either us being here now is fantastic good luck (and the further back, and smaller scale you look, it really is fantastic good) or it is not.

So we have two ideas. One is that the universe never really started, or that the thing that started the universe never really started, or that it did by chance. Then the universe built up to support billions of years of action, and million of life. Tens of thousands of years of advanced hominid life, and a few thousand years of sentience. As much as we can appreciate the beauty of the system, it is all just random. There is no reason that it ended up as such a beautiful machine.

Or, and I think more likely, there is more to the picture, if only because that world view is showing obvious flaws.

Time is simply the period between two points. If I choose any point in time and specify no end, would you agree that time would therefore be infinite? I don't see how you can claim that infinity can not exist...

From what I understand of your post, you believe in a creator because there is a small chance that random events occurred that lead to life? What do you think the odds of are of a creator coming from no where, or simply always existing (a lot more unlikely than random events)? Why do you think the creator coming from no where or always existing is more likely than matter always existing? Perhaps you can connect the dots for me on how you went from something having a low chance of occurring to a creator must exist in order for it to happen.

"Then the universe built up to support billions of years of action, and million of life. Tens of thousands of years of advanced hominid life, and a few thousand years of sentience. As much as we can appreciate the beauty of the system, it is all just random. There is no reason that it ended up as such a beautiful machine."

That sounds a lot like you're saying that the universe built itself up around life, whereas the saying "structure affects function" could never be more true. The universe is the structure and life is the function. Life is building itself around the universe. This can be seen by observing all the species on Earth and what features they have compared to what environment they are in. There is a reason you don't see reptiles in Antarctica, because the structure(cold weather) doesn't support the function (cold blooded animals with no way to generate heat internally)

[theVOID]

"It is a blatantly obvious case of special pleading, ie 'everything that has a beginning has a cause, except God'"

No, it's a case of mental flatulence to consider that there is no end to the chain of causality. You're right that the best two arguments are causality and design, but I agree with Frodo, that I would like to see you try to topple them.
Either cause and effect go back in literal infinite quantities (which I forward CAN NOT exist in this reality, we can make a name for the infinite, and pretend to understand it, but it is not real in the sense that it can never happen). So it is special pleading that nothing made the universe, because it seems less likely that there is the impossibility of infinity, and slightly more likely that there is something we haven't figured out yet. you think god is impossible, but I think infinity in reality is more impossible.

And perceived design, also strong. There are a lot of factors that make life, and sentient life possible here today. It is either that they happened by chance, or by design. Either us being here now is fantastic good luck (and the further back, and smaller scale you look, it really is fantastic good) or it is not.

So we have two ideas. One is that the universe never really started, or that the thing that started the universe never really started, or that it did by chance. Then the universe built up to support billions of years of action, and million of life. Tens of thousands of years of advanced hominid life, and a few thousand years of sentience. As much as we can appreciate the beauty of the system, it is all just random. There is no reason that it ended up as such a beautiful machine.

Or, and I think more likely, there is more to the picture, if only because that world view is showing obvious flaws.

Did i ever say once that this proves an infinite regress or multi-verse theory or the while hole hypothesis? NO - My position is that we do not know, all of these explanations are thus far unprovable and offer no more substance in favor than each other. The singularity is the only one with any supporting evidence, so it requires the least amount of assumptions, and considering that space and time in our universe came from the big bang and did not exist prior in this theory the logical conclusion is it would be infinite. We know for a fact that events on the Quantum level can be uncaused, so there is also support for the idea that the singularity spontaneously lost stability because in infinity in terms of quantum mechanics, every event that can possibly happen will happen, and if only stability and non-stability are possible then they must both happen. Of course this idea isn't a certain at all, but this far it is the explanation with the most evidence supporting it, evidentiary or otherwise.

For the record, i do not claim that God can be disproved for the reason that it is an unfalsifiable hypothesis - my position is that there is no evidence for the existence of God and therefore i withhold belief and will continue to do so until the evidence presents it's self, assuming it exists at all.

So before you go arguing against a position i don't hold again you might want to carefully process what it is i actually said.

[tackattack]

[fr0d0]