Are there any good arguments for God?

[ImmortalFlame]

Test it for yourself.
The first thing necessary obviously is faith.

Stop right there. As soon as you have to assume something is true before you have a good reason to, you are committing a fallacy.

We must become possessed by the truth.
It must be our only concern.
We must live it in word and deed without exception.

If you have to rely on faith, then you are not interested in truth.

What is the truth and how do we become possessed by it?
"The truth" is different for everyone.

Then "truth" is meaningless, because "true" becomes indistinguishable from "false". To assert that truth is necessarily subjective is to render the concept of truth meaningless.

Not one of us see things from the same perspective, this means that we all see the same "truth" differently.

And yet there are many, many things that both you and I can verify identically.

You have provided nothing in the way of actual truth. Your logic is essentially "Believe whatever you want and it will become true to you". That tells you nothing whatsoever about truth. All it tells me is that you can't differentiate truth from delusion, and if that's the only justification you have for your position it's incredibly ironic that you feel you can accuse anyone of not being able to see the truth. If you believe truth is determined by personal faith, then the idea that anyone "can't see it" makes absolutely no sense - they're just seeing a "different truth" to what you see. You're obviously not convinced of your own reasoning.

This discussion is over. I doubt you have anything to teach me.

 

[allfoak]

This discussion is over. I doubt you have anything to teach me.

You are correct in your assertion that I cannot teach anyone anything.
Everything i say can be substantiated through experience.

It was never my intent to teach you anything.
We must learn on our own through our own experience.

You certainly gave me an experience that taught me something about myself.

 

[Blastcat]

I am an agnostic atheist. That means that while I don't believe in God, I don't say that I know for a fact that he doesn't exist. I am perfectly willing to change my position, but I will need some good evidence.

So, what do you think is the most convincing argument for the existence of God? I'm pretty sure I've heard them all. If you post an argument that I've rejected, I'll try to explain why I have rejected it.

Sorry, but you said it yourself... you need some good evidence. The BEST argument would be good evidence.
No theist has good evidence, so any of their arguments .. fail.

 

[Blastcat]

Well, by "existence" I mean "existing in reality, as opposed to things that exist only in the imagination."

- Then we should need to observe the phenomenon. Can we?

By "God", I am referring to any supernatural being/creator of the universe, etc, but I'm happy to keep it confined to any of the variations on a theme worshipped by Christians.

- Now you need to define "supernatural" and "being" and "creator of the universe".
We don't really KNOW what thingy the Christians actually believe in, there are many opinions...

 

[Blastcat]

The fine-tuning problem and related problems in cosmology and theoretical physics. I'm not convinced, nor am I prepared (as other agnostic/atheist physicists seem to be) to assert that the problem is so great as to necessitate an infinite number of universes in which our own is simply "fine-tuned" because out of infinite possibilities it is the one in which we could exist (nor yet am I prepared to yield to a particular method of anthropic reasoning I see as clearly correct, e.g., that espoused in Anthropic Bias). I am still trying to find what I believe to be defensible ways to conclude the issues are only seemingly so. But such issues continue to irk me.

I've heard Dawkins say that the fine tuning argument IF someone could prove it....would be convincing. But that's the problem, isn't it? Fine Tuning is as bogus as Intelligent Design.. and oh yes.. IS A PART of Intelligent design...

FT is a ridiculous misapplication of probabilities. Vegas thrives because most people have trouble with that kind of thing. So, the apologists just use people's ignorance and the Dunning-Kruger effect reels them in.

There's a sucker born every minute. If you want to sell bull****, just tell 'em what they want to hear.

 

[Blastcat]

If there's an infinite amount of universes there could be an infinite amount of things in them including an infinite amount of gods?

Why not?

 

[Blastcat]

We are looking at God's backside every time we look in the mirror.
It's not really the backside but more the outside.
Like our skin is outside of us but yet it is part of us.

It is rather difficult to imagine i know, but the material world is the backside of God.
God's face is hidden to us because it is to be found within us.
Everything is kind of turned inside out or outside in depending upon what you prefer.

Nice poetry. You don't believe this stuff literally, do you?

 

[Blastcat]

Only one interpretation addresses all quantum weirdness, the Transactional Interpretation. But physicists have been bending over backwards to try and show anything else is the answer, all because TI is a manipulation of time. ("How many times have I told you, Watson....) I think a big reason some are finally coming around is that instead of thinking of TI as transactions backward and forward in time, they're actually taking place outside, or in the absence of time. This "quantumland" explanation links timelessness to dark matter and dark energy. I think of it as multi-dimensions (another way to think of multi-worlds???) swamping the one dimension of time, which dimension can only exert itself in our 4-D universe which was extruded from all the other dimensions by the Big Bang.

May we continue to live in interesting times.

It must be nice to consider yourself to be the world's leading quantum physicist.

 

[Blastcat]

Proof that God exists starts with us.

The Hermetic teachings are the most straight forward teachings i know of on how this question should be approached and understood.

If you ever bother to give some evidence for your weird ideation.. I will bother to consider your thoughts at all.
Do you CARE that someone thinks you make sense at all?

 

[Blastcat]

That's how definitions work: we define words in terms of other words that are either synonyms of those we wish to define or variant forms of that word (or which contain that word). Semantic concept is by definition and is trivially ambiguous, informal, and ill-suited to formal logical analysis (which is why it is largely absent from proofs and logical derivations).


No. Trivial proof by definition and semantic equivalences amount to nothing. Demands for specific, formal definitions of concepts are likewise bereft of value, serve no purpose in dialogue (except insofar as they are intended not as arguments but to clarify), and run counter to meaningful dialogue. Semantic games benefit no one but can be exploited by anyone.

I disagree. If we don't know what the other person means by a term, there is really no USE discussing it.

 

[McBell]

This video may remove your doubts and make believe on God

Only if you already a choir member.

 

[Blastcat]

Only if you already a choir member.

and like cheesy videos

 

[Blastcat]

You are correct in your assertion that I cannot teach anyone anything.
Everything i say can be substantiated through experience.

It was never my intent to teach you anything.
We must learn on our own through our own experience.

You certainly gave me an experience that taught me something about myself.

I hope that if you can't teach, that you might learn.
What have you LEARNED by the exchange?

 

[Tiberius]

Sure. The problem is that hypothesis testing/NHST is fundamentally flawed. The solution is to rid ourselves of it (as has been proposed for many decades).
Another problem is that there is no The Scientific Method, and we should stop teaching that this nonsense exists.

Saying it is flawed is NOT summing up what the problems are. It is just repeating your assertion that there are problems. You have not told me what the problems are.

I want answers, not more vague claims.

 

[Tiberius]

I would never be able to prove to ANYONE that there is a God. I can say that a faith was good for me, I can show how a FAITH in God have turned people's lives around, but I could never and would never even attempt to try and prove God to anyone.

But faith in something doesn't mean that the something in question actually exists.

Anyway, I would never try to say that religious faith doesn't exist.

 

[Tiberius]

I think about the best argument theism has going for it is metaphysics. The idea that we need something to base things on before we can speak of 'things'. My issue is that this is only an argument, and is not evidence. It also contradicts the typical view of god- that god cannot be described in human terms. How do you say god can't be described in human terms, and then set about doing just that?

But couldn't we use this argument to claim anything we want exists? By this logic, Cthulhu exists.

 

[Tiberius]

Sorry, but you said it yourself... you need some good evidence. The BEST argument would be good evidence.
No theist has good evidence, so any of their arguments .. fail.

Agreed.

 

[Tiberius]

- Now you need to define "supernatural" and "being" and "creator of the universe".
We don't really KNOW what thingy the Christians actually believe in, there are many opinions...

Supernatural - operating in a way that is inconsistent with the laws of nature as we discover them.

Being - any thing which can act independently (such as how I can decide to go and look on facebook if I choose to, as opposed to a rock which moves only as gravity and other external forces dictate.)

Creator of the Universe - an entity which is responsible for the formation of the universe through either an intentional action, or some other intended action which may have resulted in the universe unintentionally.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Saying it is flawed is NOT summing up what the problems are.

I already did that. There are many decades worth of arguments on this, and I provided you with links to summaries (including my own), summaries in my posts, and citations. You asked me to summarize an entire post (and ignored at least one other). So I provided as much summarization as is possible. If you don't want summaries, read and respond to the entire post.

I want answers, not more vague claims.

Read all the studies you ignored because they were from "social sciences" (where the paradigm was begat) and the posts and links I've already provided. Or do as you did and ask for more summaries. You either want the REAL (detailed) answer, or not. Asking for me to "sum up the problem" with entire scientific paradigms that have existed for decades in "a few sentences" is ludicrous nonsense. Either do your homework, or don't. We'll proceed in either case (or won't, as the case may be).

 

[Rainbow Mage]

But couldn't we use this argument to claim anything we want exists? By this logic, Cthulhu exists.

That was part of my point yes. When I said it really is just an argument. One can make an argument for anything.

I think its probably the best theism has going for it, not because of any truth, but because its aesthetically pleasing. It makes people feel like the universe has something solid and concrete it stands on, rather than being a chaotic vortex in flux.