Evidence

[Ouroboros]

So, basically, the impression I'm getting is that you believe what you believe because you believe it. If a belief in a god is something that is just out there in the ether for people to feel, then why is there so much disagreement? With so many different religions out there, even if there is a supernatural power, almost everybody has to be wrong.

Since the natural laws, according to cosmology, and the physical reality came to be at the moment of big bang, the super-hot plasma of non-natural and non-physical reality is a "super"-natural thing and contained the power of the whole universe in one single point. That's a supernatural power.

You have to admit that the world, reality, existence, the universe, all of it is much more powerful than you or me. It existed before both of us and will exist after. It contains all that can be known about itself. The knowledge of the physical laws are innate as contents of its own existence. Or put it this way, it embodies all knowledge.

Now, the question is rather, is it conscious? Is it aware? Does it know we are here? Can we communicate with it? Those questions have different answers in different religions and beliefs. But the above is true even from a scientific standpoint.

 

[Copernicus]

I'll preface this by stating that I am atheistic. However, I have a very religious friend, and I am trying to see things from his perspective. What I am trying to understand, at a very basic level, is how someone can believe in a supernatural deity. There simply is no credible evidence to support the existence of one. Arguments like, "Well, then, where did all of this come from?" don't work because all they do is make the situation even more complicated. What created the creator? Then, it seems to me that tremendous amounts of (for lack of a better word) insanity are constructed around this belief in a mystic being (or beings). There are entire doctrines, entire codes of ethics, entire books that claim to have all the answers, but they are vague and antiquated. Even within the same religious tree, people can't agree on what they are supposed to mean. How can anyone view something so ambiguous, be it the Quran or the Bible or any other text, as a legitimate source of information or even guidance? Why is it that new religions, such as Scientology, are met with such disgust even though, objectively speaking, they are no more absurd? I mean no disrespect. I simply do not understand.

I very much share your wonder, Wondering. You bring up a question that motivates many atheists to come to boards like this in order to try to understand what appears to be a very common delusion in the people around us. "Faith" is not an answer, because it can be an excuse to maintain any belief at all. Faith of the religious sort is simply the position that evidence has no bearing on whether the belief is held to be credible. In reality, we believe in a lot of things--maybe most things--without having a lot of evidence to shore up the belief, but most such beliefs are accessible to evidential review. Religious faith is often explicitly exempted from that type of review.

If you pay attention to religious behavior, you will find that a lot of it is devoted to belief maintenance. Religious devotees spend inordinate amounts of time in meditation, prayer, self-deprivation, and devotional exercises that seem designed to keep the mind doubt-free ("Keep the faith!"). Other kinds of belief are not accompanied by that kind of behavior. For example, you won't find scientists fasting in order to demonstrate their commitment to belief in the Higgs Boson. Historians do not repeat mantras that assure themselves of the existence of Julius Caesar.

In the end, though, I think that most people of faith believe that they have looked at the world around them and found enough "evidence" to justify their commitment to their religious point of view. It is not as if they actually believe deep down that no evidence is required. Miracles constitute evidence. Catholic churches--especially old ones--might have religious relics that represent a concrete tie to the past. The Shroud of Turin is important to a lot of Christians. You don't have to be an eyewitness to a miracle in order to believe that it took place. After all, how many people have actually seen the rings of Saturn through a telescope? We trust in what books and scientists tell us. Folks of religious belief put their trust in sources of information that you or I find very difficult to trust. Why? Because they get something in return for that trust that you and I feel we don't need or that we cannot reconcile with other fundamental beliefs about the nature of reality.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

What I am trying to understand, at a very basic level, is how someone can believe in a supernatural deity.

I have a question, too. How can anyone believe that the structure of the human body, as complex as it is, with its circulatory to pump blood throughout the body, with its eyes for vision, with its digestive system to break down food and provide energy for the body, with its reproductive system to allow it to produce another offspring of its own likeness, with its immune system to fight diseases, with its nervous system that helps coordinate actions.....how can anyone believe that we get the specified complexity that the human body has from a non-intellectual source?

There simply is no credible evidence to support the existence of one.

Actually, there are many. Alvin Plantiga gave a lecture in the 80's of two dozen or so theistic arguments for the existence of God. Pick one, and tell me which one you can refute.

Arguments like, "Well, then, where did all of this come from?" don't work because all they do is make the situation even more complicated. What created the creator?

Who said the creator was created?

 

[Copernicus]

I have a question, too. How can anyone believe that the structure of the human body, as complex as it is, with its circulatory to pump blood throughout the body, with its eyes for vision, with its digestive system to break down food and provide energy for the body, with its reproductive system to allow it to produce another offspring of its own likeness, with its immune system to fight diseases, with its nervous system that helps coordinate actions.....how can anyone believe that we get the specified complexity that the human body has from a non-intellectual source?

They study the theory of biological evolution and come to understand how it works to produce such complexity. Richard Dawkins made a compelling case for how it works in his classic The Blind Watchmaker. He also dealt with the fallacious argument from incredulity--that something is false merely because one cannot imagine how it works. The problem that people have with evolution is that they tend to measure events in terms of human lifetimes. So it seems extremely improbable that the biological complexity that we observe could have come about in a span of time that we can understand intuitively. Dawkins dealt with this by providing metaphorical ways to grasp the concept of geological time.

Actually, there are many. Alvin Plantiga gave a lecture in the 80's of two dozen or so theistic arguments for the existence of God. Pick one, and tell me which one you can refute.

Plantinga's arguments are highly controversial, but none of them lead us to the conclusion that the necessary "God" he sought to prove followed from his arguments, even if they had worked logically. Most such arguments are really attempts to prove the "deist" god, not the one depicted in religious scripture such as the various versions of the Bible. However, his arguments failed even at that.

Who said the creator was created?

If everything was created, then God had to be created. If there is something that wasn't created, then it doesn't necessarily have had to have been God, a super-powerful, super-knowledgeable, intelligent being with the power to create a universe. It could just be that physical reality has always existed in some form or other.

 

[Wondering1701]

Since the natural laws, according to cosmology, and the physical reality came to be at the moment of big bang, the super-hot plasma of non-natural and non-physical reality is a "super"-natural thing and contained the power of the whole universe in one single point. That's a supernatural power.

You have to admit that the world, reality, existence, the universe, all of it is much more powerful than you or me. It existed before both of us and will exist after. It contains all that can be known about itself. The knowledge of the physical laws are innate as contents of its own existence. Or put it this way, it embodies all knowledge.

Now, the question is rather, is it conscious? Is it aware? Does it know we are here? Can we communicate with it? Those questions have different answers in different religions and beliefs. But the above is true even from a scientific standpoint.

Okay... what? I'm sorry, but I don't think this really has anything to do with what I said. I'm not asking whether the Universe is sentient. I want to know how people can believe that they have the right impression of god when nearly everybody else has a very different idea.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

Okay... what? I'm sorry, but I don't think this really has anything to do with what I said. I'm not asking whether the Universe is sentient. I want to know how people can believe that they have the right impression of god when nearly everybody else has a very different idea.

Arguments like, "Well, then, where did all of this come from?" don't work because all they do is make the situation even more complicated. What created the creator?

Things are so much easier when I can just quote myself rather than write a new response:

Of course, the one thing that scientists all over the place acknowledge is that they don't promote certain theories out of any anti-religious bias...wait:
"To the hard-line physicist, the multiverse may not be entirely respectable, but it is at least preferable to invoking a Creator. Indeed anthropically inclined physicists like Susskind and Weinberg are attracted to the multiverse precisely because it seems to dispense with God as the explanation of cosmic design"

Ok, so maybe there's a bit of bias, but at least scientists have testable, empirically based theories and would never believe in something just because it "feels" right or for any other religious-like reasons...

"Despite the growing popularity of the multiverse proposal, it must be admitted that many physicists remain deeply uncomfortable with it. The reason is clear: the idea is highly speculative and, from both a cosmological and a particle physics perspective, the reality of a multiverse is currently untestable...For these reasons, some physicists do not regard these ideas as coming under the purvey of science at all. Since our confidence in them is based on faith and aesthetic considerations (for example mathematical beauty) rather than experimental data, they regard them as having more in common with religion than science."

(both quotes are taken from Carr's introductory paper in the volume:
Carr, B. (Ed.). (2007). Universe or multiverse?. Cambridge University Press.)

 

[The Wizard]

I will give a quote:

Doubt is useful for a while. ... But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."
-Yann Martel, Life of Pi

We must travel with certainty.

Good quote... the movie was inspiring as well..

 

[Wondering1701]

Actually, there are many. Alvin Plantiga gave a lecture in the 80's of two dozen or so theistic arguments for the existence of God. Pick one, and tell me which one you can refute.

Uh... I don't know how credible I'll seem if I choose the argument I'm going to refute. Why don't you choose your favorite?

Who said the creator was created?

So... the creator just exists? From nothing? You just spent an entire paragraph drooling over the complexity of the human body.

How can anyone believe that the structure of the human body, as complex as it is, with its circulatory to pump blood throughout the body, with its eyes for vision, with its digestive system to break down food and provide energy for the body, with its reproductive system to allow it to produce another offspring of its own likeness, with its immune system to fight diseases, with its nervous system that helps coordinate actions.....how can anyone believe that we get the specified complexity that the human body has from a non-intellectual source?

Certainly, an all-powerful creator of everything would have to be WAY more complicated than a person. So, if you're going to argue that the creator just exists, why not argue that people just exist? And that they literally needed nothing to produce them. That's way simpler than assuming a being of spectacular complexity was needed to make less sophisticated beings of spectacular complexity.

 

[Willamena]

I'll preface this by stating that I am atheistic. However, I have a very religious friend, and I am trying to see things from his perspective. What I am trying to understand, at a very basic level, is how someone can believe in a supernatural deity. There simply is no credible evidence to support the existence of one. Arguments like, "Well, then, where did all of this come from?" don't work because all they do is make the situation even more complicated. What created the creator? Then, it seems to me that tremendous amounts of (for lack of a better word) insanity are constructed around this belief in a mystic being (or beings). There are entire doctrines, entire codes of ethics, entire books that claim to have all the answers, but they are vague and antiquated. Even within the same religious tree, people can't agree on what they are supposed to mean. How can anyone view something so ambiguous, be it the Quran or the Bible or any other text, as a legitimate source of information or even guidance? Why is it that new religions, such as Scientology, are met with such disgust even though, objectively speaking, they are no more absurd? I mean no disrespect. I simply do not understand.

There's no evidence to support the supranatural, but there is evidence that allows it. Nihilism, the logical deconstruction of the world around us, and negation and the acknowledgement of non-dualism, open the agnostic door for many possibilities.

 

[Wondering1701]

Not necessarily; exclusivism is only one possibility.

Many people take the religions as different expressions of the same thing, and as different manifestations of the same divine Source, because humans are a varied species and it is ultimately part of God's that we can be given a choice of ways, and/or because humans attempt to relate to the Divine in ways they know, using language, folklore, myths, history, and more from their own places of origin. (I'm the latter.)

Personally, I'm at home in a gurdwārā, mandir, mosque, church, (I'd imagine a synagogue, but there isn't one in my city so I've yet the pleasure of visiting one -- here's to hoping!) or in nature; I see them as from the same author.

Each religion clearly sends a different message. I don't see how those messages can be reasonably reconciled unless you assume that every religious doctrine is a misinterpretation of one entity's will. However, I respect the open-mindedness of your approach. If everyone lived like you, bigotry wouldn't be a problem.

 

[Willamena]

Each religion clearly sends a different message. I don't see how those messages can be reasonably reconciled unless you assume that every religious doctrine is a misinterpretation of one entity's will. However, I respect the open-mindedness of your approach. If everyone lived like you, bigotry wouldn't be a problem.

That's not a bad assumption at all.

 

[Wondering1701]

Of course, the one thing that scientists all over the place acknowledge is that they don't promote certain theories out of any anti-religious bias...wait:
"To the hard-line physicist, the multiverse may not be entirely respectable, but it is at least preferable to invoking a Creator. Indeed anthropically inclined physicists like Susskind and Weinberg are attracted to the multiverse precisely because it seems to dispense with God as the explanation of cosmic design"

Ok, so maybe there's a bit of bias, but at least scientists have testable, empirically based theories and would never believe in something just because it "feels" right or for any other religious-like reasons...

"Despite the growing popularity of the multiverse proposal, it must be admitted that many physicists remain deeply uncomfortable with it. The reason is clear: the idea is highly speculative and, from both a cosmological and a particle physics perspective, the reality of a multiverse is currently untestable...For these reasons, some physicists do not regard these ideas as coming under the purvey of science at all. Since our confidence in them is based on faith and aesthetic considerations (for example mathematical beauty) rather than experimental data, they regard them as having more in common with religion than science."

(both quotes are taken from Carr's introductory paper in the volume:
Carr, B. (Ed.). (2007). Universe or multiverse?. Cambridge University Press.)

This still has virtually nothing to do with what I said originally. However, you make it sound like scientists are actively trying to debunk the existence of god. Really, they're just trying to figure out the truth. Unsurprisingly, those things look very similar.

When we're treading on the very fringes of human understanding, we have two options. Either we can attempt to come up with an explanation, or we can accept that we're not there yet. The latter option has no chance of advancing our knowledge, so the former is clearly preferable. Speculation is a healthy part of scientific advancement as long as speculations are not taken to be facts. And they aren't. Many scientists don't think multi-verse theories make sense. Many do. None of them steadfastly insist that a multi-verse is impossible, nor do they insist that one exists. The multi-verse is simply one of many, many ideas. STUDYING it AS A POSSIBILITY because the numbers work out is perfectly reasonable in the absence of more concrete evidence.

 

[Wondering1701]

I will give a quote:

Doubt is useful for a while. ... But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation."
-Yann Martel, Life of Pi

We must travel with certainty.

Doubt is not my philosophy. I accept that for which there is credible evidence. I deny that for which there is no basis. Traveling with certainty when you're almost certainly wrong doesn't sound like a very good idea to me. Like, imagine a bus driver saying, "No WAY that bridge is out directly ahead. Let's go for it!"

 

[Kilgore Trout]

Different people have different criteria for what they find as credible evidence. Some people see a beautiful vista and find that as evidence of a creator, some people hear a story about a kid who says a few vague things about places or objects and find that as evidence of reincarnation, some people watch Ghost Hunters and find that as evidence of ghosts. Some of this comes down to personality, some to experience, and some to knowledge. Many people who have low requirements for evidence often simply lack the tools and knowledge to understand why it isn't credible.

Many atheists I've known tend to be rationalists, and this is often the result of a sincere and persistent pursuit of knowledge, which exposes them to a wider variety of the likely causes and influences which other people miss when evaluating evidence. However, I think most people find evidence that works for them in relation to what they believe. It just might not stand up to the scrutiny of someone more experienced and knowledgeable.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

This still has virtually nothing to do with what I said originally. However, you make it sound like scientists are actively trying to debunk the existence of god. Really, they're just trying to figure out the truth. Unsurprisingly, those things look very similar.

I always enjoy when people tell me what scientists are doing. It makes it so much easier to understand my field when I am told what it is I do.

Also, you're wrong. We "scientists" have biases of our own, and when it comes to cosmology, you will find those who prefer one theory to another for reasons that have nothing to do with science. It happens in neuroscience too, but in quite different ways.

When we're treading on the very fringes of human understanding, we have two options. Either we can attempt to come up with an explanation, or we can accept that we're not there yet.

Do you have any idea how long people have argued over what quantum systems actually "are"? Susskind, one of the two physicists cited as preferring the multiverse theory because he thinks it makes it easier to leave god out of the equation published a paper not long ago (co-authored, actually) on the necessity of a multiverse interpretation to understand decoherence (or the measurement problem). Einstein spent much of his life trying to show that quantum physics was wrong because he had deep seated ideological reasons for wanting the deterministic positivism of classical mechanics in the late 19th and early 20th century.

In cognitive neuroscience, there are at least two central divisions, each with supporting experiments and evidence. One is embodied cognition and the other is not so easily labeled (perhaps massive modularity, or even "classical" cog. sci.). It isn't that we don't have evidence. We have massive amounts of evidence. But people disagree on what the evidence means.

This "we have two choices" is simply not true. People always have an explanation. God, fate, classical determinism, recovered memories, cognitive dissonance, dramaturgy, emergence, and on and on.

The latter option has no chance of advancing our knowledge, so the former is clearly preferable.

Yes, eugenics did WONDERFUL things for humanity. And the creation of the biomedical model of mental illness so that psychiatry could still claim that their medical qualifications made them better equipped than clinical psychologists? That was good to. We have two main diagnostic manuals which are excellent when it comes to inter-rater reliability. Of course, only because they were designed to do this, and there is virtually no evidence (and plenty of counter-evidence) against the idea that each diagnosis has a distinct etiology.

Do you know why we have quantum physics, despite how completely counter-intuitive it seems (how it violates the basic principles of logic, talks about systems that are dwell in Hilbert space rather than our own, etc.)? Because two people had demonstrated very clearly what light was. Young showed beyond any doubt that it was a wave. Einstein demonstrated clearly that it was not. We had two experiments, each evidence for a different explanation. And there was nothing wrong with either experiment. There was nothing problematic with the evidence. It fit in both cases. However, the entire theoretical framework was flawed.

The reason that quantum physics exists is because of how simple and clear the experiments were. There was no way to make them "fit" into classical physics. This is not true of a great deal of scientific research. Which makes it very difficult to determine whether a theory is right, because the evidence supports it, or the theory is wrong, because the framework is flawed.

We always explain.

And they aren't. Many scientists don't think multi-verse theories make sense. Many do. None of them steadfastly insist that a multi-verse is impossible, nor do they insist that one exists.

I can give you the references. You can start with Susskind:
Bousso, R., & Susskind, L. (2012). Multiverse interpretation of quantum mechanics. Physical Review D, 85(4), 045007.

If it isn't available for free somewhere I can make it available to you. And many others.

The multi-verse is simply one of many, many ideas. STUDYING it AS A POSSIBILITY because the numbers work out is perfectly reasonable in the absence of more concrete evidence.

It isn't simply one of many, many, ideas. When you find Susskind's paper you'll see he and Bousso argue that the many-worlds and multiverse interpretations are the same (one entails the other). Not all would agree, but we have only a few basic options: relative-state theories, irreducibly statistical theories, and giving up on realism.

 

[Sha'irullah]

I know this is overly simplified but the construction of all that we see is far beyond complex to be simplified by the excuse of random occurrences to say that a creator or intelligent start does not begin it. Followed by the inert ability man has to even be spiritual and believe in a higher being.
Also a few dreams of spiritual euphoria will add to it

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

They study the theory of biological evolution and come to understand how it works to produce such complexity. Richard Dawkins made a compelling case for how it works in his classic The Blind Watchmaker.

I don't find it compelling because it raises more questions than answers. He talks about the complexity of the eye in his book, but in order to get to the point where you an eye for sight, you have to have a brain. So what came first, the brain or the eye? What came first, the stomach or the appetite? What came first, the testicles or the penis? What came first, the blood or the veins? What came first, the heart or the blood? What came first, the disease or the immune system? Before you can even begin to answer those questions, you have to have a fine tuned cosmos for life to even remotely begin on earth, and then you had to have fine tuned conditions on earth for evolution to even remotely begin.

I find it rather astonishing that people can believe that everything came from a singularity (or whatever theory you hold to) and this blind, unintelligible, and unguided process that followed resulted in all this human intelligence and specified complexity that we have in this world. Yet somehow people think that it takes so much faith to believe in God? Have you (in general) really sat down and analyzed your position and what it would mean to say that "God doesn't exist"?

He also dealt with the fallacious argument from incredulity--that something is false merely because one cannot imagine how it works.

I wouldn't say "false", but I would say less plausible than its opposition. That is like taking a monkey and locking it in a room for a week with a paint brush and paint, only to return to the room and find out the monkey has painted a picture of George Washington and his troops crossing the Delaware River. That is rather unplausible, right? I find that more plausible than someone believing that the universe came from a non-intellectual entity which mysterious gave rise to complex matter over billions of years which resulted in the specified complexity we see with us today; from the complexity of the DNA code, from the complexity of the human body, and the concept of the human mind.

The problem that people have with evolution is that they tend to measure events in terms of human lifetimes. So it seems extremely improbable that the biological complexity that we observe could have come about in a span of time that we can understand intuitively. Dawkins dealt with this by providing metaphorical ways to grasp the concept of geological time.

No doubt Dawkins and others have tried really hard to come up with naturalistic explanations, but quite frankly I don't think those explanations are enough. When you take away the fluff and feathers and all of the technical babble...and once the smoke clears we are basically left with the concept of "Given enough time, anything could have happened". That is why all of these changes takes so long, billions and billions of years. It is almost as if theists worship God, while naturalists worship time lol.

Plantinga's arguments are highly controversial, but none of them lead us to the conclusion that the necessary "God" he sought to prove followed from his arguments, even if they had worked logically.

If you are referring to his Modal Ontological Argument, tell me which premises you disagree with.

Most such arguments are really attempts to prove the "deist" god, not the one depicted in religious scripture such as the various versions of the Bible. However, his arguments failed even at that.

And that is why as a Christian I use the argument based on the Resurrection of Jesus to point DIRECTLY to the Christian God, so there are no if's, and's, or but's about it.

If everything was created, then God had to be created.

The kalam cosmological argument, my favorite, doesn't state that everything was created. The argument states that everything that begins to exist has a cause. God wasn't caused, so therefore God wasn't created.

If there is something that wasn't created, then it doesn't necessarily have had to have been God, a super-powerful, super-knowledgeable, intelligent being with the power to create a universe. It could just be that physical reality has always existed in some form or other.

If a physical reality has always existed in some form or another, that would mean that time is infinite and the past is eternal. Due to philosophical arguments against this concept that cant be the case. You will also have the problem with thermodynamics if you postulate a past eternal cosmos. These problems must be addressed before you logically hold to such positions.

 

[Breathe]

Each religion clearly sends a different message. I don't see how those messages can be reasonably reconciled unless you assume that every religious doctrine is a misinterpretation of one entity's will.

To some extent, yes, although it depends how they are interpreted. They could be seen as divinely revealed, or as human constructs to attempt to know the Divine, who is so beyond comprehension and human understanding that they're cultural interpretations.

The different gods are no problem from my perspective, really; the different gods can be seen as manifestations of this Supreme Divinity; I see the different gods as different facets of the attributes of this God, who exists as all (including us).

So, for example, Gaṇeśa, the Elephant-Headed God Manifestation of Hinduism, is the Lord of Removing Obstacles. I don't really believe he exists as an actual entity, sitting up in the sky, so no actual elephant head -- but its appearance translates like this:

And his story has a meaning behind it, too. ​

The same with Lord Narasiṃha, the half-man half-lion avatāra (avatar; "incarnation") of Lord Viṣṇu (the sustaining attribute of God). The story goes like this (and yes, I typed this by myself, except for a small bit here 'n there. ):

There's a rākśasa (a sort of humanoid demon) whose brother was killed by a previous incarnation of Viṣṇu (Varāha) because he was evil. The rākśasa wants revenge upon Viṣṇu, so he lives a life of austerity and worships Brahmā (the Attribute of Creation). After much time, Brahmā offers Hiryaṇyakaśipu a blessing; he can have any wish he desires.

"I wish for immortality," says Hiraṇyakaśipu. Brahmā refuses, but states he can offer him mortality with conditions.

So Hiraṇyakaśipu asks that he cannot be killed: inside a residence nor outside, at daytime or night, on the ground nor in the sky, by no weapons, by no humans nor animals, demigod, nāga nor demon, by living or non-living things or creatures created by him. In addition, to give him the "siddhis".

Brahmā agrees and blesses him, before vanishing. Hiraṇyakaśipu thinks he's won over death.

One day, Indra and other devas attack his home while he is performing austerities on a mountain. They spare Kayadu (Hiraṇyakaśipu's wife), who is sinless. She goes with the age Nārada (willingly) and his good influence affects her unborn baby. When born, his son Prahlāda, becomes an ardent worshipper of Viṣṇu, which angers his father, and decides to kill him, but each time he tries, he fails.

Prahlāda refuses to accept his father as the supreme Lord of the universe. Hiraṇyakaśipu asks his son if Viṣṇu is in this pillar of the house. Prahlāda answers he is in everything, which makes Hiraṇyakaśipu angry; he smashes the pillar and attempts to kill his son.

Then, Viṣṇu incarnates on earth (as Narasiṃha) and moves in defense of Prahlāda. In order not to upset the boon that was bestowed upon Hiraṇyakaśipu, he incarnates as Narasiṃha.

Hiraṇyakaśipu can not be killed by human, deva or animal; Narasiṃha is neither one of these as he is a form of Vishnu incarnate as a part-human, part-animal.

He attacks Hiraṇyakaśipu at twilight (not day or night) on the threshold of a courtyard (neither indoors nor out), and puts the demon on his thighs (neither earth nor space). Using his sharp fingernails (neither animate nor inanimate) as weapons, he disembowels and kills the demon.

After killing Hiraṇyakaśipu, Narasiṃha is furious, nobody is able to calm him down, except Prahlāda, whom he crowns king.​

The story has many meanings, which is why I thought that I would share it:

1. Anyone can be blessed by God if they work hard, even a rākśasa.
2. Even if you try to outsmart God, you will never succeed.
3. No matter where you were born, you can be good and loved by God
4. Death will find a way.
5. God protects his devotees.

And much more; others can extract more. This is the beauty of religious scriptures, you can come back to them and continue to find more from the texts.

Do I believe it happened? Nope. But still. We in the West currently view myth as worthless. It isn't.

However, I respect the open-mindedness of your approach. If everyone lived like you, bigotry wouldn't be a problem.

Thank you.

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

Uh... I don't know how credible I'll seem if I choose the argument I'm going to refute. Why don't you choose your favorite?

The Modal Ontological Argument

So... the creator just exists? From nothing? You just spent an entire paragraph drooling over the complexity of the human body.

So what's your point?

Certainly, an all-powerful creator of everything would have to be WAY more complicated than a person. So, if you're going to argue that the creator just exists, why not argue that people just exist? And that they literally needed nothing to produce them. That's way simpler than assuming a being of spectacular complexity was needed to make less sophisticated beings of spectacular complexity.

The concept of "the more complicated something is, the better chances of it being created" only works for created things. God was not created, so this line of reasoning doesn't apply to him.

 

[Wondering1701]

I always enjoy when people tell me what scientists are doing. It makes it so much easier to understand my field when I am told what it is I do.

I was defending your field against someone who made the accusation that science seeks to disprove God. Of course there are going to be isolated examples of when this has been true. The scientific community as a whole, however, really does work the advancement of human knowledge. It works to find the truth. In what way did I tell you what it is you do?