Coloring outside the lines

[Wildswanderer]

Show you air? Just blow on your coffee, or stand in the winter wind at the bus stop. Or watch smoke. Air is physical. Radio waves? Tney make your radio work, and you can determine their qualities if you have the right instruments. Same with wi-fi. All these things are found in nature.

Which is evidence for a creator. The very fact that there is order and purpose is evidence that this world is not the result of an accident.
You do not see air but you see what it does, just as we usually don't see God but we see his handiwork.

 

[Wildswanderer]

If that were true, science would have noticed by now, don't you think?

Only if it allowed for that possibility. But they are getting closer to not being able to deny it anymore.

 

[Wildswanderer]

As I said, there isn't even the concept of a real God, such that if we found a real suspect we could determine whether it was God or not.

There isn't even a clear concept of "godness", the real quality a real God would have and a real superscientist who could create universes, raise the dead, travel in time &c, would lack.

I have no idea what that means.

 

[blü 2]

I'll take spiritual sense over that version of " common sense", then.
My version of common Sense tells me that if I see a world that appears to be designed it probably is... If I see beauty and order and purpose, it's probably not the result of random causation.

I too see beauty and order and purpose, and also squalor and poverty and famine, and murderous internecine war, and political dishonesty, and disgusting public morality and so on. Note that all those things are human judgments ─ if no human is around, they don't exist. Against a background of evolved moral tendencies in humans, and the evolved conscience and capacity for empathy, supplemented by learnt and cultural morality, "good" is what benefits or pleases me and mine and the causes I support, and "bad" is what's detrimental to them.

 

[blü 2]

Only if it allowed for that possibility. But they are getting closer to not being able to deny it anymore.

Deny what, exactly?

 

[Wildswanderer]

I too see beauty and order and purpose, and also squalor and poverty and famine, and murderous internecine war, and political dishonesty, and disgusting public morality and so on. Note that all those things are human judgments ─ if no human is around, they don't exist. Against a background of evolved moral tendencies in humans, and the evolved conscience and capacity for empathy, supplemented by learnt and cultural morality, "good" is what benefits or pleases me and mine and the causes I support, and "bad" is what's detrimental to them.

Well using that definition anything could be good or bad. If it benefits me to kill you and take your stuff that's good, right?
And I at least have a reason for all those things you seem to dislike. We call it " sin" and it's a corruption of the beauty and order that God originally created, brought about by humans and evil spiritual entities. In fact the Satan is called "chaos bringer".

 

[Wildswanderer]

Deny what, exactly?

That the universe had to be created by a super intelligence. It's impossible to believe that an accident could create such a complex place... So that we barely can get a glimpse of all that it entails after studying it for hundreds of years.

 

[blü 2]

Which is evidence for a creator. The very fact that there is order and purpose is evidence that this world is not the result of an accident.

It's the result of evolution, being adjusted to the demands and benefits of your environment. The universe doesn't exist in order to produce humans ─ that's just our ego talking.

You do not see air but you see what it does, just as we usually don't see God but we see his handiwork.

Again I say, if God were real you could show [him] to me ─ just as I can show you the wind, the EM spectrum, the temperature, a charged battery and a flat one, all of which are showable because they're real.

I have no idea what that means.

If God is real, then God exists in nature, and has description appropriate to a real being. And in addition to the usual qualities of a real being, this particular real being has an additional real quality that makes [him] "God ". But I can't find any definition of what that quality is, just as I can't find any definition of what real living thing God is.

Can you tell me what to look for, so I can determine whether this keyboard I'm typing on is God or not?

 

[Wildswanderer]

If God is real, then God exists in nature,

Well there's your first problem... God doesn't exist in nature, he's much bigger than that. I think you're looking for a god with a little "g", going around tweaking the order of things in the universe, instead of understanding that he fills the universe and beyond, that he has no limits, nothing created can hold his being.
Nature gives us the glimpse of God in the same way that a painting gives us a glimpse of the artist. Nature isn't God.

 

[blü 2]

Well there's your first problem... God doesn't exist in nature, he's much bigger than that. I think you're looking for a god with a little "g", going around tweaking the order of things in the universe, instead of understanding that he fills the universe and beyond, that he has no limits, nothing created can hold his being.
Nature gives us the glimpse of God in the same way that a painting gives us a glimpse of the artist. Nature isn't God.

So what test will tell me whether any real candidate is God or not?

 

[Bird123]

I don’t think such an awesome event would just consist of an empty void. Seems weak and as the internet would say, an EPIC FAIL, pun intended.

Is the void really empty? God is very very smart. God places great distances between certain planets for a very good reason. By the time one acquires enough knowledge to be able to span light years, one has acquired enough knowledge not to mess with the lifeforms found.

There are distances so far away that mankind does not have the capability to reach even through multi generation ships. Why would God make places like that? Simple. We are not the only fish in the sea. Since we aren't even close to be able to reach one, clearly, mankind is not ready.

Do you know why SETI does get any communications? Advanced beings aren't using something as primitive as radio waves.

Mankind isn't even in the ball park. On the other hand, through learning, growing, and living our lessons, there will come a day.

God works on multiple levels with multiple views. One just must look beyond the surface. One must Widen that view and stretch that thinking for that which seems to be an empty void carries more knowledge than you could even imagine.

Religion uses the emotional half on people when it comes to God. Let's not forget a Being capable of all this must have Great Intellect. One will never truly know God without knowing this part. In short, God is so much more than could be contained in any book of Beliefs.

Where you see an Epic Failure, I see a MASTERPIECE!! Which do you think God really created??

That's what I see. It's very clear!!

 

[blü 2]

God doesn't exist in nature

Then in what sense is God real? Surely things either exist in the world external to the self, which we perceive with our senses ─ in which case they're real, have objective existence ─ or they exist solely as concepts / things imagined, in individual brains. It then follows that either God exists in nature or God is solely conceptual / imaginary.

Bear in mind that no objective test can distinguish the 'supernatural', the 'spiritual, the 'immaterial', from the imaginary.

he's much bigger than that. [...] he fills the universe and beyond, that he has no limits, nothing created can hold his being.

But those are imaginary qualities. No real thing has anything like that, nor even Superman's powers.

 

[ratiocinator]

But we all believe in a Creator God. The 7% of the world that doesn't are the ones lacking in common sense in my opinion.

In what way is it even sense? Sure it makes a nice 'just-so' story (and humans are well know for falling for those) but it doesn't really explain anything, it just bundles up all the difficult questions and effectively says "I dunno, it must be magic" and then invents a being to do all the magic.

Which is evidence for a creator. The very fact that there is order and purpose is evidence that this world is not the result of an accident.

This is a good example, a creator doesn't explain order and purpose because a creator would have to be very ordered and purposeful and there is no explanation for why the creator exists. Positing a creator to explain any order and purpose you perceive is a giant leap in the wrong direction and leaves you with even more unexplained order and purpose.

 

[Jimmy]

In what way is it even sense? Sure it makes a nice 'just-so' story (and humans are well know for falling for those) but it doesn't really explain anything, it just bundles up all the difficult questions and effectively says "I dunno, it must be magic" and then invents a being to do all the magic.



This is a good example, a creator doesn't explain order and purpose because a creator would have to be very ordered and purposeful and there is no explanation for why the creator exists. Positing a creator to explain any order and purpose you perceive is a giant leap in the wrong direction and leaves you with even more unexplained order and purpose.

Life is magical no doubt

 

[Wildswanderer]

So what test will tell me whether any real candidate is God or not?

It doesn't work that way.
How can anything you can fully comprehend be God? By definition he's beyond comprehension. But evidence for his existence is everywhere.
Of course there has to be faith involved but it's a reasonable faith.

 

[Wildswanderer]

Then in what sense is God real? Surely things either exist in the world external to the self, which we perceive with our senses ─ in which case they're real, have objective existence ─ or they exist solely as concepts / things imagined, in individual brains. It then follows that either God exists in nature or God is solely conceptual / imaginary.

Bear in mind that no objective test can distinguish the 'supernatural', the 'spiritual, the 'immaterial', from the imaginary.
But those are imaginary qualities. No real thing has anything like that, nor even Superman's powers.

Well that's solely your belief. Most humans believe in a spiritual world that is also real. Why do you put so much stock in your physical senses but not your eternal soul?

 

[ratiocinator]

How can anything you can fully comprehend be God? By definition he's beyond comprehension. But evidence for his existence is everywhere.

That's fundamentally contradictory. To the extent you can't comprehend something you can't know what the consequences of its existence or non-existence would be, and hence can't know what would be evidence of either.

 

[blü 2]

It doesn't work that way.

It does with real things. It doesn't work with imaginary / conceptual things.

How can anything you can fully comprehend be God? By definition he's beyond comprehension.

Read your own sentence carefully. You've just said God only exists as an idea, a concept, not as anything real,

But evidence for his existence is everywhere.

How do you know God is a male?

Of course there has to be faith involved but it's a reasonable faith.

And there has to be imagination involved, but it's a reasonable imagination, no doubt.

Well that's solely your belief. Most humans believe in a spiritual world that is also real.

If it's real, why are there so many different accounts of it, one per person? If a hundred people look at a dog, they'll all say, That's a dog, But when they dream, or imagine, or read about, the spiritual, the supernatural, the immaterial, the only thing they can do is imagine, no?

Why do you put so much stock in your physical senses but not your eternal soul?

Because the physical senses relate me to reality. And I don't have a soul except in some or other metaphorical sense.

 

[Wildswanderer]

That's fundamentally contradictory. To the extent you can't comprehend something you can't know what the consequences of its existence or non-existence would be, and hence can't know what would be evidence of either.

So I can not conclude a miracle happened if I see it happening even if I can not understand it? That's silly.

 

[Wildswanderer]

How do you know God is a male

Obviously God isn't a sexual being. We just use a male pronoun. He isn't either male or female, he's spirit. However he became a male human. He is not limited to being only one thing.