Proof of God

[bennyboy]

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

Yes, because children don't know anything about the world, and cannot survive well without their parents' advice.

Do elders need guidance of God? Yes, indeed.

"As above, so below" only works if the entity above is a real thing, and not a fairy tale.

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.

Be careful. We're not arguing the social value of the God idea. I myself see much value in it. We are arguing about whether God is real, and whether we have proof that God is real-- he seems not to be, and we certainly do not.

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 problem with you is you say shit without actually asking yourself if it's true before you post it. I can easily differentiate between the death of a human and of a dog, because humans walk upright, speak language, and have culture.

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.”

I do not know whether this statement represents reality. There may be a God, or another context which defines right or wrong. But your constant efforts to change the subject are pointless. We are trying in this thread to decide whether there is proof of God-- and no amount of philosophical speculation represents proof.

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.

Read what you quote. I didn't say "scientific observations," I said, "real observations," by which I meant using one's eyes, ears, and knowledge to determine whether things are real or false. None of these things add up to Sky Daddy watching teens masturbate and clearing out a place in hell, or to a woman getting beaten because she refuses to wear a fucking towel over her head.

And that's one more thing-- do you not see that if God is real, your religion's fucking insane cultural conventions are an insult to that real God? Do you not see that God, if real, made hair to cover a woman's head, and that the arrogance of thinking a man-made scarf is a better head cover is a sin against that God's purpose? Do you not see that God must have given us the enjoyment of taste to determine what is good to eat, and pigs and shellfish taste good and are therefore good to eat? Do you not see that God, if real, gave people the strong desire to engage in sex so they would engage in sex? I tell you, if God is a real entity, the back-asswards cultural conventions of middle-ages desert people is going to make him pissed-- imagine the arrogance of a bunch of uneducated misogynists thinking they are qualified to speak for a perfect Creator!

[Hatshepsut]

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.

Trusting this is what Descartes argued, we can have at it beginning with premise (2), which introduces an artificial dichotomy. Why does the source of an idea have to be either inside or outside ourselves? Why can't it arise from a response we have to an outside thing, so that both inside and outside are involved? If we've passed on (2), then the conclusion in (4) itself adds a new premise, that no effect can be greater than its cause. Yet we have abundant examples of effects (Atlantic hurricanes) which are much greater than their initial causes (tropical waves over the Cape Verde Islands). We could add the sun heating ocean water as an additional cause and say that the energy dissipated by an effect cannot exceed the energy supplied by all its causes, to rescue (4). But once we get to (5), we must ask why the idea of God must have either the energy of God or some "greatness of qualities" he mentions there which God may have. The idea is not the thing idealized. I'm seeing a bit of Jello quaking here.

I'm pretty hip to God, but arguments along various lines-cosmological, ontological, first cause, and so on-have been running for centuries with no positive results. I don't believe the existence of God can be proved using any of the commonly accepted tools for reasoning. If things like quantum foams and inflationary epochs likewise are purely speculative, at least they can be analyzed within the rubrics of mathematical physics and some relation between them and the present state of the universe be derived and thus rendered plausible.

I propose that we accept God without proof. Perhaps based on the age-old prevalence of religious beliefs. I've heard the story that gods were invented to fill roles of agency for the frightening unknown, i.e. a god of storms to account for lightning, which we then conveniently know is caused by electrostatic discharges. I don't really buy that early peoples were so fearful as we suppose; they bravely confronted things much worse than summer thundershowers. In general, when humans coin a noun for something and begin talking about it, they are responding to some aspect of reality, not just to a mass delusion. So I accept that religious belief is a response to something real. However, I'm not foolish enough to think this constitutes an existence proof.

[robvalue]

What do you mean by "accept God"? If it constitutes any sort of belief rather than just professed belief, that is not a choice anyone can make. And I can't accept anything when I don't even have a coherent definition of what it is. Definitions varies from person to person, pointing much more to a vague abstract concept/construct than something actually real. Especially when they are not just partial definitions, but contradict each other.

For example, do you believe that a thmblxcornitor exists? Do you have any opinion or beliefs about it? Would it help if 100 people gave you contradictory and incomplete definitions of what it is?

http://youtu.be/qahB7mYhLxs

[Mr.wizard]

What do you mean by "accept God"? If it constitutes any sort of belief rather than just professed belief, that is not a choice anyone can make. And I can't accept anything when I don't even have a coherent definition of what it is. Definitions varies from person to person, pointing much more to a vague abstract concept/construct than something actually real. Especially when they are not just partial definitions, but contradict each other.

For example, do you believe that a thmblxcornitor exists? Do you have any opinion or beliefs about it? Would it help if 100 people gave you contradictory and incomplete definitions of what it is?

http://youtu.be/qahB7mYhLxs

Lol, pretty funny video.

[Hatshepsut]

What do you mean by "accept God"? If it constitutes any sort of belief....For example, do you believe that a thmblxcornitor exists? Do you have any opinion or beliefs about it?

Well, on faith. As we do in math when we say, "Let S be the set of all barbers who shave every male who does not shave himself." As in AA, where we try only for God as we understand him. Perhaps even the red, pre-owned Honda Prius god who is also a blue Chevy Tahoe, with documentation and driver testimonial but not currently on showroom floor. Failure to believe will lead to eternal torment by the Thmblxcornitor!



Just don't give any money to the salesman.
~ Regards,  

[Neo-Scholastic]

Harris, it looks like you understand the lengths to which some AF members will go to shelter themselves from the truth. I’ve noticed one particular strategy of theirs. I call it the but-but-but method. Once they realize that their first objection is bullshit they jump to the next in line, as in, “but but but…who created god?” After you point out that the universe had a beginning they say, “…but but but…the multiverse…”. Then when you show how unscientific, unparsimonious, unfalsifiable that theory is they say “but but but..the anthropic principle.” Then when you present the logical necessity of and evidence for teleology, they say, “but but but…but but but…but but but…” We’ll see how that strategy plays out when they stand before the White Throne.

[TheRealJoeFish]

Harris, it looks like you understand the lengths to which some AF members will go to shelter themselves from the truth. I’ve noticed one particular strategy of theirs. I call it the but-but-but method. Once they realize that their first objection is bullshit they jump to the next in line...

Of course, the bolded never happens, so...

Sorry, I'm just being snarky.  That's another one of our defense mechanisms.

Additionally, I will point out that... well... you and Harris might have very different conceptions of the "White Throne."  We atheists will get pwn'd for denying teleology, and Harris will get pwn'd for denying Jesus.

Or maybe you'll get pwn'd for denying Muhammad.

(Noting how many incompatible religions exist, and that the arguments for each of them are always the same - that's another of our strategies)

[Cyberman]

Show me one thing that supports the notion of a god, that cannot be explained by more mundane things which might themselves need explanation, that doesn't have its basis in crusty mythology. That's all I ask. The stone in my shoe is capable of proving its existence. Why can't a god?

[Neo-Scholastic]

I'm pretty hip to God, but arguments along various lines-cosmological, ontological, first cause, and so on-have been running for centuries with no positive results.

Maybe that’s because rust never sleeps. The same objections keep reoccurring because the people of today only see the ontological arguments from within the framework of modern analytic philosophy. For example, Anslem’s proof makes no sense on its own. It only becomes compelling within the Scholastic tradition. Scholasticism distinguishes between the mental conception of a thing and imagination of the same. Likewise for Aquinas’s 5 ways. Their effectiveness rests on a nuanced view of causation that has been lost since the time of Descartes

I propose that we accept God without proof. Perhaps based on the age-old prevalence of religious beliefs… I accept that religious belief is a response to something real. However, I'm not foolish enough to think this constitutes an existence proof.

I understand your position and respectfully disagree. Belief in God cannot be separated from beliefs about God’s nature. The ‘age-old prevalence of religious belief’ does not represent a monolithic understanding of what constitutes the Divine. Different cultures could be responding to various unrelated things. In particular, Christianity cannot be separated from its historicity. To paraphrase St. Paul, either Jesus rose from the dead or He didn’t. The identity and nature of Deity is highly specific in Christianity and that distinguishes it from the other religions.

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Show me one thing that supports the notion of a god, that cannot be explained by more mundane things which might themselves need explanation, that doesn't have its basis in crusty mythology. That's all I ask. The stone in my shoe is capable of proving its existence. Why can't a god?

Have you ever considered that the stone in your shoe is proof of God? Seriously. The bare fact that sensible bodies persist in their being while also being subject to change, the intelligibility of reality, and the human capacity to reason allows us to identify necessary truths. 

[Cyberman]

Ok. How does a stone in my shoe prove anything other than there's a stone in my shoe? Please pretend I'm more than six years old.