List of reasons to believe God exists?
December 3, 2017 at 9:10 pm
(This post was last modified: December 3, 2017 at 9:12 pm by henryp.)
It seems to me people believe in God through a combination of explaining the physical world and explaining a desired non-physical world.
You want people to have intrinsic value. Objective morals. An afterlife. A soul. There's a laundry list of things like that where you can assert those may exist if there's a God. But they are not tangible things. I don't think there's any reason to believe them other than wanting to believe them.
Meaning, there's nothing tangible to make you think humans go to 'heaven' when they die. You can't pick up a fork, and measure it, and say "See, there's probably a heaven, and human soul will continue to exist in some form for all eternity!"
With this stuff, I would say these are consequences of God's existence, rather than things you use to prove God. More dismissively, I'd call it a wish list. Here's a bunch of things we'd like to be true. Only way for that to be possible is for there to be a God. I would not consider the things to be an argument for God, rather they are possible but unverifiable (while living) consequences in the event there is a God. Is that fair to say?
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So with that in mind, that all of the previously mentioned things ride on God existing; Arguments for God existing rely on explaining the physical world.
The big one is that existence exists, and it seems like there's probably some explanation for that. From what I've gathered, the argument is intuitively, it seems like something needs to have set the ball rolling a few billion years ago. Why not some type of God like thing?
If I'm making a list of why believe in God:
1) God could explain why we exist.
2) ...
3) ...
4) ...
What's #2 and on? Are there any other tangible things where God seems like a needed or likely explanation?
Or does it all come down to the guess that maybe billions of years ago, God created stuff seems like a good enough guess that you're all in on God, and while you're at it, why not all the soul/heaven/angels stuff too?
Doesn't it seem flimsy? If that domino falls, and some nerd explains the origins of the universe, would that be the end of it? Is there anything left?
You want people to have intrinsic value. Objective morals. An afterlife. A soul. There's a laundry list of things like that where you can assert those may exist if there's a God. But they are not tangible things. I don't think there's any reason to believe them other than wanting to believe them.
Meaning, there's nothing tangible to make you think humans go to 'heaven' when they die. You can't pick up a fork, and measure it, and say "See, there's probably a heaven, and human soul will continue to exist in some form for all eternity!"
With this stuff, I would say these are consequences of God's existence, rather than things you use to prove God. More dismissively, I'd call it a wish list. Here's a bunch of things we'd like to be true. Only way for that to be possible is for there to be a God. I would not consider the things to be an argument for God, rather they are possible but unverifiable (while living) consequences in the event there is a God. Is that fair to say?
---
So with that in mind, that all of the previously mentioned things ride on God existing; Arguments for God existing rely on explaining the physical world.
The big one is that existence exists, and it seems like there's probably some explanation for that. From what I've gathered, the argument is intuitively, it seems like something needs to have set the ball rolling a few billion years ago. Why not some type of God like thing?
If I'm making a list of why believe in God:
1) God could explain why we exist.
2) ...
3) ...
4) ...
What's #2 and on? Are there any other tangible things where God seems like a needed or likely explanation?
Or does it all come down to the guess that maybe billions of years ago, God created stuff seems like a good enough guess that you're all in on God, and while you're at it, why not all the soul/heaven/angels stuff too?
Doesn't it seem flimsy? If that domino falls, and some nerd explains the origins of the universe, would that be the end of it? Is there anything left?
