Bunyip
pro scapegoat
Hopefully that will bear fruit. Paranormal research is indeed a fascinating field - I would imagine that new technologies will enable us to look ever deeper.
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Arguments for the existance of God that don't fall into the "God of the Gaps."
- Thread starter leibowde84
- Start date
That is true for science. I think the wisdom of the eastern traditions has already bared fruit that is beyond the reach of current science. Where we differ is that you are only concerned with science. I have come to believe what one master says; the Vedas is like the letter 'O', a complete circle. Science is like the letter 'C', it is not complete.
Bunyip
pro scapegoat
Well I'm sorry you see me that way. I do relate to the worldview you have, more than you know. You do not know me or how I have lived my life. For many years I lived in remote areas and have had the priveledge of going to a number of sacred sites with indigenous friends. Some of these places had an indescribable power, Woolool Wooloolni on a moonlit night for a moment I saw shapes in the mist and felt a conection to the universe I had never felt before. I do not fail to experience the universe, but I do believe that science is the best tool we have to learn more about what we do not now understand. Not the only tool, but a great way to begin to cross the boundaries between our personal experiences of the universe and the broader consensus reality.
And yes, science will never be complete or absolute - it is a tool and a library no more.
Maybe that is because you don't present a consistent picture of your thinking. I see you in different thread make statements that are too strong and them slowly reeling them back.
It's good to see this side of you that is more open to the mystery of a universe that I believe must be vastly more complicated than our minds can grasp. If you have had such experiences, then you might consider that there might be some more advanced individuals who have things to tell us about those type of things.
Bunyip
pro scapegoat
I do not known what you mean, but will clarify any example you give. So example please?
, Well thanks I guess for the unsolicited advice, however I can only wonder why you must assume that I needed it. I have learned a great deal from minds far greater than my own and have made no extraordinary claims.
What do you make of the aboriginal special sites? To me, I would want to know/understand/consider whatever I could. Maybe our minds don't work alike so we'll never understand each other.
Bunyip
pro scapegoat
What can I say? Wow! I would love to show them to you, they are astonishing. Very varied and often gendered. I don't profess to fully understand it, but there is clearly more to the universe than meets the eye. I live in a vast forest, it was inhabited for 40,000 years. That leaves it's mark. There is a power, a sense of presence - a sense of all time contracting into the dreamtime. The Australian aboriginals represented some 300 distinct language groups - I have only had the priveledge of knowing a few dreamtime stories with the elders, and been to a handful of sites.
This, to me, does not sound like the same Bunyip that I know and....well, disagree with often.
Bunyip
pro scapegoat
Well you never asked I guess, you just assumed. I do not usually recount these experiences because I am not relying on them in my arguments.This, to me, does not sound like the same Bunyip that I know and....well, disagree with often.
I have hunted with the indegenous people, that is a spiritual experience that is of immeasurable value to me,
Shantanu
Well-Known Member
Have you read these arguments: The Essential Arguments against Atheism « Shantanu Panigrahi's Blog . Would be interested in discussing these with you. Thanks.
davidroemer
New Member
The cosmological argument for God's existence comes from Thomas Aquinas as explained by Etienne Gilson, not the famous 5 ways. It is based on the observation that humans have free will. This means humans are finite beings and finite beings need a cause. Hence an infinite being exists. In Western religions we call the infinite being God.
There is another argument. Some people are hardworking and thrifty. Others are lazy and have no money in the bank. They have different values. You can't say one is right and the other is wrong. But suppose on person likes to kill innocent people and another is repulsed by this. If it is true that murder is a sin, then God exists.
ruselwilliams
New Member
ruselwilliams
New Member
God is what we all are.......Life. But God as a concept, that of Religion or the Bible, can be experienced but only as a thought or as an emotion in the mind of the person that believes in it.The human mind cannot know anything outside of it's limitation of thought, and God is a thought. An atheist believes there is nothing there, a Christian believes there is something there, they are both beliefs. What we experience as life is also but a thought. We are so conditioned, so programmed that the when the biological hard drive is switched on in the morning, all the screen of consciousness can display is what it has been programmed with.
Robert Vincelette
Member
The gaps of Heisenberg indeterminacy which proves that the mechanics of electron transitions in the chemical actions in the brain that manifest themselves as consciousness is not pure cause-and-effect mechanics that would be possible to predict if we knew exactly every physical parameter: every force and motion, of every electron; it operates by probability only, giving us a gap that makes free will possible.
We cannot use this as proof of God, we can only use it as disproof that we can conclude pure atheism, thus, we cannot answer questions through gaps.
We can speculate that free will is preserved by God refusing to let us have proof He exists because if we could know, we would be aware that God is watching our every action and everything we would do would be controlled by the incentive of what God would do to us after we die. We would no longer have the freedom to choose the likes of Kant's categorical imperative in how we behave, life would be nothing but a meaningless pursuit of the cosmic carrot-stick of Heaven.
This argument fails on two counts:
- it contains the compositional fallacy: "everything in the universe needs a cause, therefore the universe itself needs a cause." (An example with the same logic that shows the fallacy more clearly: "each cell in the human body can't be seen by the naked eye, therefore the human body can't be seen with the naked eye.")
- it contains an argument from ignorance (the "God of the gaps" in the OP): effectively, you're arguing that because you can't identity any other cause for "finite beings", it MUST be your God.
"I can't figure out why murder is wrong, therefore God." Another "God of the gaps" argument.
fire
Member
Some have theories and others faith, but all are One from the source that designed reality in such a way that makes discovery of its origin impossible. It is true that some have personal proof of God, but they didn't get it through efforts of the body, which is a part of the One. After becoming enlightened about the origins of physical matter, or the universe, that indeed it is all an elaborate illusion with no tangible essence beyond imagination, but not your imagination, your foundational understanding shifts away from everything known, and allows for input of truth. Before this phenomenon, or enlightenment, it is impossible to comprehend beyond current reality. Those who make it this far, which included the Buddha, and stop spiritual progression, rest upon non-duality, or monism as their belief system, which still falls short of the discovery of God, as it was all intended in the first place. Following the admonition of Jesus, "to love God beyond all boundaries" one may, or can, discover God, but only upon the principle of paradox, which if discovery were not to occur, God would cease to be God. The problem of course for these rare individuals is, they possess something impossible to convey to You! And so all the others simply fall back upon their base instincts of denial and criticism, which leads further down the rabbit hole within this illusion.
William Occam was a Franciscan friar and philosopher who died around 1347. He propounded a principle in logic called “Occam’s razor.” It is sometimes called the law of parsimony and goes like this: the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible. When there are competing theories, choose the theory that makes the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities. In other words, when you don’t know the answer, don’t make one up. Many have conjured a god when unable to explain things in the universe or in their own lives.
So I guess my confusion is you talking so seriously about 'science this' and 'science that' and 'George, science would differ with you' attitude. I believe in science and would not hold beliefs in contradiction to science. But with experiences like you say are real and the experiences of an untold million others, I would come to the opinion that science is great but that it cannot answer any of the questions we really want to know and there must mindboggling things beyond its current reach.
And I would give fair hearing (not blind acceptance) to many masters that claim knowledge of beyond the known physical dimensions.
idea
Question Everything
One account is of the spiritual creation, and the other of the physical creation - the generations of the heavens, and of the earth... We existed as spirits in heaven before we existed as physical beings on earth - that is why we call God our "Heavenly Father" - before we came to earth, He was the Father of our spirits in heaven. There are many different creative periods, multiple beginnings, and multiple ends.
Science might make ground at a snail pace through this. And this is fine because science must be rigorous. But I fairly consider if there may be other wisdom traditions that have gone way further down the road (but cannot be independently verified by all with the same rigorousness as western science). We must consider all information and argumentation then in determining our personal beliefs about all this.