Proof of God

[Neo-Scholastic]

As for the nothing being Good or EVIL, bullshit, and stop fucking saying it.  Good and evil are definitions made by man to describe his feelings about things and events in his environment.  Most people have a negative emotional reaction to baby rape, or to the idea of baby rape, and so baby rape is considered evil.  No Sky Daddy is required.
me.

As I have completed Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics a few days ago, I can say most assuredly that ethics---and one that is unfortunately in this case quite antiquated in its opinion of women and slaves---need not rely on some notion of divinity to be rational and objective, and furthermore, the results of a secular approach (which is more or less what Aristotle attempts, and in my view, largely accomplishes) are almost guaranteed to be more intuitively pleasing to the senses of a person with a capacity for moral reasoning than religious dogmas are.

I agree with you that Aristotle  largely accomplishes his goal of creating a secular ethic. It is a good starting point for further debate. I don't think that you can isolate the Ethics from its traditional context. The notion of 'The Good' is an important consideration. He identifies the good that all men desire as happiness but his next task (if i remember correctly) is to show how happiness is achieved based on the essence of what it means to be human, i. e. a rational animal. This brings into play many concepts I wager you would not be as inclined to accept.

[Mudhammam]

As I have completed Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics a few days ago, I can say most assuredly that ethics---and one that is unfortunately in this case quite antiquated in its opinion of women and slaves---need not rely on some notion of divinity to be rational and objective, and furthermore, the results of a secular approach (which is more or less what Aristotle attempts, and in my view, largely accomplishes) are almost guaranteed to be more intuitively pleasing to the senses of a person with a capacity for moral reasoning than religious dogmas are.

I agree with you that Aristotle  largely accomplishes his goal of creating a secular ethic. It is a good starting point for further debate. I don't think that you can isolate the Ethics from its traditional context. The notion of 'The Good' is an important consideration. He identifies the good that all men desire as happiness but his next task (if i remember correctly) is to show how happiness is achieved based on the essence of what it means to be human, i. e. a rational animal. This brings into play many concepts I wager you would not be as inclined to accept.

Sure, as brilliant as Aristotle was and as much as I admire the way his mind worked, he was writing in the latter half of the 4th-century B.C.E. so we should expect that our conceptions of the good life are refined to the extent that our knowledge of ourselves, as individuals and as a species, has expanded a great deal. That being said, Aristotle gets much of it correct in my view, and not merely his definitions---of happiness, friendship, and the like---but his approach of the means between contrary extremes, the most important of which for his ethics is a recognition of the latter; that objective morality, whatever it may be, requires two opposing ends, which are universally recognized by a rather urbane enunciation of actual and potential pleasures and pains. On the one hand, it's at the other end of the spectrum in consideration of something like Nietzsche's moral theory or post-modernism, yet these two latter frameworks basically assume a project along the lines Aristotle that established, that whether it's a comparison between two polities or two mutually exclusive ethical systems, reason demands that we can and must evaluate them on terms that are open to criticism or confirmation.

What perhaps struck me the most was how similar Aristotle's ethics were to a modern-day moral realist like Sam Harris and the ideas he advocates in the The Moral Landscape---which is more or less an update.

[Harris]

[bennyboy]

I'm not trying to prove any God idea, and do not have to produce ANY ideas about God, logical or otherwise. I can only say that your religious tradition has glaring logical inconsistencies, and therefore IF there is a God, under any definition, it is not under the definition of your religious tradition.

“IF” God exist then in your opinion which is the most accurate definition of God? What you think how God should look like.

"IF" Boobledyboo exists then in your opinion which is the most accurate definition of Boobledyboo?

We know the difference between good and evil solely because of God’s revelation, and not by the exercise of our own reason. God makes the rules and whatever he decrees is just, yet God himself is under no obligation: if he wished, he could punish the righteous and admit the wicked to paradise. God creates in his creature both the power and the choice; then he creates in us the actions, which correspond to these.

We know the difference between good and evil because we have positive and negative emotions about things. It has nothing to do with Sky Daddy, and your argumentum ad nauseam is getting a little boring.

If there's a God making and enforcing these rules, prove it. So far you have a lot of blah blah blah and no proof that any of it represents reality.

As for the nothing being Good or EVIL, bullshit, and stop fucking saying it. Good and evil are definitions made by man to describe his feelings about things and events in his environment. Most people have a negative emotional reaction to baby rape, or to the idea of baby rape, and so baby rape is considered evil. No Sky Daddy is required.

And some people like Stalin, Mao … and their supporters define good as killing and raping people in millions. These people have positive emotional reaction on their killings and raping. Would you like to adopt their definition of good?

No. Because good and evil are subjective terms, and my subjective state is different than the state of those people, I will not share their definitions of good or evil, or of morality.

Tell me how many of your daughters were raped brutally. How many of your children were killed? Did someone kicked you out of your house and break it and made a pub, public house, or Disco bar while you are sitting in dust and begging for food and medicine for you and for your family?

If none of these things happened to you then why are you abusing God in place of giving thanks for the luxurious life He bestowed upon you?

If you want to see what is real calamity then only travel in Afghanistan and you will find not a single family who have not lost one or more members of their family (from child to old) because of the killings made by the socialist and secular forces.

Stop proselytizing.

I am firmly holding my position that good and evil have no meanings in the Godless Universe.

Then you need to learn how dictionaries work.

Man’s destiny is organized in a beneficent way, immutably determined by providence; every apparent evil is part of a larger good and is impenetrable to limited human logic and understanding.

Says who, and under what evidence? Under what definition? None that anyone who's outgrown fairy tales will recognize.

Let me ask a question: why do men lust after women, even though birth control and harsh laws will lead to non-reproduction and punishment? Your answer is that God is fucking with us: He gave us these desires to see if we could overcome them; and if we CAN, we will be rewarded with 72 virgins. My answer is that most of these behaviors represent vestigial behaviors-- they made sense thousands of years ago, and the slow process of weeding them out through sexual selection, natural selection, and artificial selection (like execution) has not caught up yet to the fast changes in society.

Please tell why people need Nobel Prize and electric chair. In other words, why people need reward and punishment?

Almost everything you say is based on a false assertion, or an unfounded one. You insist that the universe must have a beginning, but do not prove this to be so. You insist that people need reward and punishment, but have neither defined in what sense they "need" these things, or shown this to be so.

I believe my answer makes a lot more sense than your answer, and EVEN IF there were zero scientific evidence for evolution, my narrative would still make a lot more sense than yours. That's because my narrative is an extension of observable fact: some things persist, so it's probable that collections of persistent qualities will interact and move forward through time together. Your narrative is based on an entity who nobody can demonstrate having seen or communicated with, and whose definition is intrinsically contradictory.

Your observable facts have no roots neither scientifically nor philosophically. These facts are hanging in the middle of air without proper origins and evidences.

Look, whatever you say about my facts or interpretation of them, there is no point at which you can demonstrate that Sky Daddy represents a better fit for those facts than theories based purely on inference from what is observed. It is observed that patterns persist, and that some persist patterns can interact with each other to create new patterns. It is not observed that Sky Daddy had anything to do with it.

[Harris]

“IF” God exist then in your opinion which is the most accurate definition of God? What you think how God should look like.

"IF" Boobledyboo exists then in your opinion which is the most accurate definition of Boobledyboo?

We know the difference between good and evil solely because of God’s revelation, and not by the exercise of our own reason. God makes the rules and whatever he decrees is just, yet God himself is under no obligation: if he wished, he could punish the righteous and admit the wicked to paradise. God creates in his creature both the power and the choice; then he creates in us the actions, which correspond to these.

We know the difference between good and evil because we have positive and negative emotions about things.  It has nothing to do with Sky Daddy, and your argumentum ad nauseam is getting a little boring.

If there's a God making and enforcing these rules, prove it.  So far you have a lot of blah blah blah and no proof that any of it represents reality.

And some people like Stalin, Mao … and their supporters define good as killing and raping people in millions. These people have positive emotional reaction on their killings and raping. Would you like to adopt their definition of good?

No.  Because good and evil are subjective terms, and my subjective state is different than the state of those people, I will not share their definitions of good or evil, or of morality.

Tell me how many of your daughters were raped brutally. How many of your children were killed? Did someone kicked you out of your house and break it and made a pub, public house, or Disco bar while you are sitting in dust and begging for food and medicine for you and for your family?

If none of these things happened to you then why are you abusing God in place of giving thanks for the luxurious life He bestowed upon you?

If you want to see what is real calamity then only travel in Afghanistan and you will find not a single family who have not lost one or more members of their family (from child to old) because of the killings made by the socialist and secular forces.

Stop proselytizing.

I am firmly holding my position that good and evil have no meanings in the Godless Universe.

Then you need to learn how dictionaries work.

Man’s destiny is organized in a beneficent way, immutably determined by providence; every apparent evil is part of a larger good and is impenetrable to limited human logic and understanding.

Says who, and under what evidence?  Under what definition?  None that anyone who's outgrown fairy tales will recognize.

Please tell why people need Nobel Prize and electric chair. In other words, why people need reward and punishment?

Almost everything you say is based on a false assertion, or an unfounded one.  You insist that the universe must have a beginning, but do not prove this to be so.  You insist that people need reward and punishment, but have neither defined in what sense they "need" these things, or shown this to be so.

Your observable facts have no roots neither scientifically nor philosophically. These facts are hanging in the middle of air without proper origins and evidences.

Look, whatever you say about my facts or interpretation of them, there is no point at which you can demonstrate that Sky Daddy represents a better fit for those facts than theories based purely on inference from what is observed.  It is observed that patterns persist, and that some persist patterns can interact with each other to create new patterns.  It is not observed that Sky Daddy had anything to do with it.

To protect your position you have started picking bits and pieces out of my comments and quoting them out of context to distort their meanings unwisely.

You are conferring meaning and value on an otherwise godless and thus meaningless universe. You may think we human beings are the product of blind evolutionary forces and you may think that we are part of a godless universe but in doing so, you are totally undermining the basic principles, which run the universe.
 
I have argued:
 

• Godless universe can only be understood in terms of Chance, Luck and, Accident. If Universe is not the product of Chance, Luck, and Accident then anything or anyone who is able to create and sustain orderly and intelligible universe is God.
  

 

• Chance, luck, and accident are relative to already existing objects. These are incoherent notions in the absence of everything (i.e. in nothingness).
  

 

• If our minds are the product of chance then chance literally, eradicate the evidence that the person is after all trustworthy.
  

 

• Without God, our minds can only produce chaotic assumptions about the existence of the universe and about existence of our own conscious beings.
  

 
You wrote:
 
“No. Because good and evil are subjective terms, and my subjective state is different than the state of those people, I will not share their definitions of good or evil, or of morality.”
 
The question is can judgments about moral values justifiably lay claim to universal agreement merely on expressions of subjective preferences.
 
It is not possible for the human intellect alone to attain a proper knowledge of the true and the good. For human reason is not capable of comprehending things as they are in reality. 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. This can be done only through divine guidance. It is incumbent, then, on every person to know that among all laws there is one divine law, which gives this guidance. Only a divine law can take us beyond the objectives of merely utilitarian legislation, which seeks no more than social order and stability, and can open up to us the possibility of our genuine felicity.
 
In secular states, normally political superiors set the laws. These laws have the concepts of commands, duties and sanctions. They lay down some general rule for the guidance of human conduct.
 
If certain wrongdoers become moral agents, the view that they deserve to suffer for their conduct would be undermined. 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. It would be fair if Stalin (assuming that he was a moral agent) were made to suffer in hell.
 
If moral values are matters of subjective preference that means the base ideology is centred around a specific idea, be it race, class or nation. Such ideology necessarily involves terror a systematic, institutionalized, carefully planned and legally unrestrained use of physical and psychological violence. Good examples are Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pott, and many other similar personals.
 
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.
 
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.
 
“And cover not Truth with falsehood, nor conceal the Truth when ye know (what it is).”
Al Baqarah (2)
-Verse 42-
 
And say: "Truth has (now) arrived, and Falsehood perished: for Falsehood is (by its nature) bound to perish."
Al Israa' (17)
-Verse 81-
 
“Verily We have propounded for men, in this Quran every kind of Parable: But if thou bring to them any Sign, the Unbelievers are sure to say, "Ye do nothing but talk vanities."”
Ar Ruum (30)
-Verse 58-

[Neo-Scholastic]

According to the first-mover argument, whatever is moved (that is, caused to move) is moved by something else. It is impossible, however, that there should be an infinite series of moved and moving beings; hence there must be a first unmoved mover. Aquinas argues that a first mover would have to be both a first cause and a necessary being; he then goes on in the next parts (Ia, qq.3-11) of the Summa theologiae to argue that such a being must have the attributes of God.

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.

[downbeatplumb]

To protect your position you have started picking bits and pieces out of my comments and quoting them out of context to distort their meanings unwisely.

You are conferring meaning and value on an otherwise godless and thus meaningless universe. You may think we human beings are the product of blind evolutionary forces and you may think that we are part of a godless universe but in doing so, you are totally undermining the basic principles, which run the universe.

I have argued:
 

• Godless universe can only be understood in terms of Chance, Luck and, Accident. If Universe is not the product of Chance, Luck, and Accident then anything or anyone who is able to create and sustain orderly and intelligible universe is God.
  

 

• Chance, luck, and accident are relative to already existing objects. These are incoherent notions in the absence of everything (i.e. in nothingness).

 

• If our minds are the product of chance then chance literally, eradicate the evidence that the person is after all trustworthy.
  

 

• Without God, our minds can only produce chaotic assumptions about the existence of the universe and about existence of our own conscious beings.
  

 

It is not possible for the human intellect alone to attain a proper knowledge of the true and the good. For human reason is not capable of comprehending things as they are in reality. 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. This can be done only through divine guidance. It is incumbent, then, on every person to know that among all laws there is one divine law, which gives this guidance. Only a divine law can take us beyond the objectives of merely utilitarian legislation, which seeks no more than social order and stability, and can open up to us the possibility of our genuine felicity.

 

In secular states, normally political superiors set the laws. These laws have the concepts of commands, duties and sanctions. They lay down some general rule for the guidance of human conduct.
 
If certain wrongdoers become moral agents, the view that they deserve to suffer for their conduct would be undermined. 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. It would be fair if Stalin (assuming that he was a moral agent) were made to suffer in hell.
 
If moral values are matters of subjective preference that means the base ideology is centred around a specific idea, be it race, class or nation. Such ideology necessarily involves terror a systematic, institutionalized, carefully planned and legally unrestrained use of physical and psychological violence. Good examples are Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pott, and many other similar personals.

 

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.
 

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.
 
“And cover not Truth with falsehood, nor conceal the Truth when ye know (what it is).”
Al Baqarah (2)
-Verse 42-
 
And say: "Truth has (now) arrived, and Falsehood perished: for Falsehood is (by its nature) bound to perish."
Al Israa' (17)
-Verse 81-
 
“Verily We have propounded for men, in this Quran every kind of Parable: But if thou bring to them any Sign, the Unbelievers are sure to say, "Ye do nothing but talk vanities."”
Ar Ruum (30)
-Verse 58-

So its true because it says its true.

What utter tosh.

[bennyboy]

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

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.

It is not possible for the human intellect alone to attain a proper knowledge of the true and the good.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

[Twisted]

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

[robvalue]

Indeed, when we ask who created God, we get special pleading. God needs no creator, contrary to all the arguments the theist has presented so far.

Really, they replaced the mystery of where the universe "came from" with where did the creator of the universe come from, and they still have no answer. But they pretend they do, it just "doesn't need one". Well bucko, in that case maybe the universe doesn't need one. Special pleading is not convincing.