INDISPUTABLE Rational Proof That God Exists (Or Existed)

[SkepticThinker]

I've heard those arguments about mythology and history. We do however have archeological evidence for Jewish settlements, like Samaria, Shechem, Shiloh, Bethel, and Hebron, and other settlements, villages and small cities. And there is enough archeological evidence to confirm the existence of both Northern Israel and Judea. Sorry, you can't use the broad stroke of mythology to dismiss the Bible.

If you like I can post references for those archeological studies.

So? I can show you that Rome actually existed, but does that prove the reality of ancient Roman gods?

Not so much.

 

[SkepticThinker]

All of this life is on planet earth.

That’s the point. Where’s the rest of the life in the universe? Something like 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000073% of the volume of the universe is habitable. So from my perspective, it seems that a lifeless universe is the more likely one.

Maybe my creator wanted to create life in this "one miniscule dot" and he created this entire vast universe full of empty space" so that his creation can marvel at his work, which is exactly what scientists are doing? What if that was the purpose? Scientists continue to explore all of this vastness, don't they? What if that was the purpose?

So you think that’s the most probable explanation? How do you calculate that probability?

And that brings me to another question. Why does god even need a finely tuned universe to create life within? If god is who you think “he” is, he could start with any universe at all, and make life happen. Given that, the fine tuning argument doesn’t really seem to me like evidence for your god.

Or you’re just employing “illusion of perspective” by imagining that everything was designed with us in mind because we seem to fit so well into the whole thing. Were tornadoes and tsunamis designed with us in mind? How about cancer? It’s obvious to me, that we are fine-tuned to the universe, not the other way around.

And according to Penrose, LIFE IN THIS UNIVERSE is fine tuned for human life. It is as plain and simple as that.

Penrose isn’t the be-all and end-all to the discussion about the origins of the universe. Sorry. He’s part of it for sure, but he’s not the last word, by far.

You keep brushing it off like it doesn’t matter, but we have nothing else to compare this universe to. That is important, because that’s how probabilities are calculated. For instance, we know that the odds of pulling a particular card from a single deck is 1 in 52 because we know how many cards are in the deck. (People get amazing combinations of cards every day in Vegas, yet you don’t think that’s miraculous at all. Why not?) But we don’t know how many possible universes there are. We don’t know the available range of constants we have to deal with. We don’t know what other combinations of nature’s constants could produce some form of life. We need to be able to observe different universes with different constants in order to experimentally verify the fine-tuning argument.

It doesn't matter, because THIS universe is fine tuned for human life. You call it lucky, I call it precision from a cosmic engineer.

Where’s the evidence for the being you believe created the universe?

No that is a scientific FACT.

All of a sudden you’re concerned about scientific facts? Funny how you completely disregard them when it comes to evolution.

It is not a scientific fact that the universe is fine-tuned for life. Do you think gravity was designed so people could skydive? Was wind designed so that we could windsurf?

Name me one scientists that has called in to question Penrose's calculations. It has been over 20 years since that publication, so name me one scientist that has disputed Penrose's work in this regard.

So his publication has been around for 20 years. Okay, has it been verified by other teams of scientists? Has it become accepted science? That’s the important part.

So you are saying it is more rational to believe in those astronomical odds than to believe that an intelligent designer orchastrated the process? And I thought only religious folks played the faith game.

How do we calculate the probability that the god you believe in exists?

Let’s go back to the cards and talk probability and astronomical odds. The odds of pulling the Queen of Hearts out of one deck of cards is 1 in 52. Put the card back in, reshuffle the deck and now the odds of getting the Queen of Hearts again are 2700:1. Do it a third time and the odds jump to 14,000:1 that you will pull the Queen of Hearts from the deck. Keep going from there, and the odds very quickly become astronomical. Must we posit divine intervention or some miraculous event when someone pulls the Queen of Hearts after it’s been re-inserted into the deck and the deck has been reshuffled several times? Is it a miracle from god when someone pulls a straight flush at a card table?

In order for your assertions to mean anything, you would have to show that the probability of god is vastly higher than the probability of a natural explanation for the constants found in nature. (Good luck calculating either one.)

More like the argument from "best explanation". What I have before me is a universe that is contingent followed by the fact that is specifically designed for human life. Only two explanations can be given to explain the causes of both, and based on effective argumenation in favor of Intelligent Design and the irrationality of naturalism, I conclude that Intelligen Design is the best explanation of the two.

LOL Nice try, but no cigar. You can’t imagine anything else, so it’s got to be god! Let’s explain a mystery with a mystery! Oh wait, that gets us nowhere.

Intelligent design is not falsifiable and therefore not scientific. Believe whatever you want, but don’t pretend it’s science.

False, abiogensis isn't a closed case, and cosmologists can't rule out the God hypothesis, in fact, we have both empirical and logical evidence that points the opposite direction.

What I said is true. Every single process discovered on earth (and in the universe) to date, has been found to have a naturalistic explanation behind it. Everything. But according to you, this one thing has just GOT to be the one that’s got a god explanation behind it. And you’re the one talking to me about probabilities?

It is also true that abiogenesis is not a done deal ( I don’t think I said otherwise). We still don’t know nearly enough about it.

What god hypothesis? What empirical evidence? What logical evidence?

Cont'd ...

 

[SkepticThinker]

Yeah, and thousands of years ago everyone (except the Judeo-Christian followers) assumed that the universe was infinite and eternal. So "good thing there were people who actually cared enough to investigate the origin of the universe, rather than to just leave it at that ". Now we know that the universe is contingent and therefore had a beginning, and therefore an external cause is necessary.

Yeah, they were called scientists. They were people who actually cared about how things actually operate. Funny how the explanations they found were all natural ones. You’re not going to evade the point that easily.

We still don’t know that the universe had a beginning, we don’t know if it had an external cause and we definitely don’t know that that external cause is the god you personally believe in.

No natural hypothesis can escape the problem of infinity, which is if nature has always existed, time has always existed, and if time has always existed, then there would be no such thing as a "present" moment if every present moment was preceded by an infinite amount of prior moments.

Your god fixes this “problem” how?

That is something to satisfy you, but that is not a requirement.

Of course it’s a requirement when we're determining probabilities. How do you calculate probabilities if you have no way of knowing what range of constants are available? How can we know how many different arrangements of constants could produce life?

If Henry Ford decided to make only ONE automobile and was selfish enough NOT to tell anyone else how he made it, we would have no other automobile to compare it too, but that won't change the fact that the very one that he DID create is fine tuned for transportation. No other vehicle has to be even thought of..the fact is that the one vehicle that he made was fine tuned for transportation.

So we should just assume that one single car is the only available form of transportation? Are there no other means of transportation available at all? I mean, if you only have the one car, I guess we have to assume so. Nevermind the fact that cars are manmade and so we already know exactly what they’re designed for. They’re also not naturally occurring things that have the ability to reproduce.

Well in the case of the universe, it only had what you had. It isn't as if the universe borrowed "spare" energy from other universes, it only had what it had.

What??

Did we have any computers to compare with before the first computer was made? Did we have any televisions to compare with before the first television was made?

This is nonsense. We’re talking about PROBABILITIES. How do you calculate a probability when we don’t know what range of constants are available to us?

Yet, you won't deny that both the first computer and television was fine tuned??

I already explained to you long ago how we know things that are designed by humans are designed. It has nothing to do with complexity.

My goodness, if you only knew how specified things had to be. For example, right now I am at work (it is a slow day ) I am using a computer to type this very post. The computer has a CPU and monitor, with a printer and label maker hooked to it, not to mention the keyboard and things like that.

Now just take the monitor alone. Do you know how much goes in to just making the monitor, how much configuration that had to take place? How much engineering? Not just that, the monitor had to be made to be COMPATIBLE with the CPU. Do you know how precise engineers had to be to make the CPU? How much math goes into it? What about the printer? The CPU has to be able to read the printer, and you can't see what you are printing without the monitor (much less print), and the same thing applies to the label maker. If the label maker wasn't made to be compatible with the computer, then it wouldn't work properly.

This is specified complexity. It is not enough to just have the parts, you have to have the MIND, the intellect to be able to configure the parts together to make it all work. It is not something that happened by random chance. You don't get that kind of precision from a explosion at a Dell computer factory.

Now, if you start the universe off with a big bang at which mindless matter and energy and space began to expand, how do you go from the mindless matter and energy, to a configured human body that can think, eat, reproduce, etc.

That is why I think naturalism is completely irrational, and I don't have the faith to become an atheist.

And this is why analogies don’t work when we’re talking about nature. Please go educate yourself on evolution.
Naturalism is as rational as it gets. It’s the most demonstrable, reliably verifiable thing we’ve got going. And it has served us very well. If we stuck with “god did it” we wouldn’t know anything close to what we know now

 

[Agnostic75]

I am neutral on what Behe has claimed.

That is fine since one study showed that in the U.S., about 99.86% of experts accept common descent, which would include the majority of Christian experts. The same study showed that some of the people who are most likely to be creationists are women, people who have less education, and people who have lower incomes.

Of the relative handful of creationist experts, a good percentage of them also accept the global flood theory, and/or the young earth theory, so their scientific objectivity is questionable.

The book of Genesis is not a reliable source of historical information. Since no one should take creationism, the global flood theory, or the regional flood theory literally, there are not any good reasons why anyone should take the story of Adam and Eve literally. If you wish, I will explain why the regional flood theory is not valid. A regional flood could have happened, but that theory is questionable for some textual reasons in the book of Genesis.

Many creationists claim that animals did not kill each other before the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, but animals killed each other long before humans existed.

 

[desideraht]

something had to start the first thing

This lends to the whole "If something had to start the first thing, then what started God?"

And if nothing needed to start God, you're contradicting your own logic. If you can admit God can exist without being Created... then the universe may simply Be, no need for Creation.

Humans are used to the logic of "something had to make something" because we are used to seeing that in our material world. But to create something from nothing is... irrational. Surely something (the universe) has to exist in order for Creation to exist. If you believe in God, the universe and the birth of God happened at the same time. Something can't exist outside of existence.

Before anything, there was nothing. Something transcendent, existent before anything, had to create the first something.

Can you not see how "something existing before anything existed" is contradictory? If God was the first something then God indeed did not create the first something—God WAS the first something in that scenario. Many consider "God" to be the universe itself rather than a "Creating", intelligent deity.

I personally see all "Creation" within the universe simply a manifestation of itself. To say an "intelligent" mind made everything—comparable to the Human Ego—is nothing short of arrogant and absurd, in My opinion.

 

[Cephus]

I've heard those arguments about mythology and history. We do however have archeological evidence for Jewish settlements, like Samaria, Shechem, Shiloh, Bethel, and Hebron, and other settlements, villages and small cities. And there is enough archeological evidence to confirm the existence of both Northern Israel and Judea. Sorry, you can't use the broad stroke of mythology to dismiss the Bible.

If you like I can post references for those archeological studies.

That's not to say that there is nothing historical whatsoever in the Bible, but it's pretty limited. Dean Koontz, the horror writer, once wrote a book that mentioned the street on which I grew up. Does that mean that the other elements of his books are somehow real? Of course not. Stephen King routinely writes about real places in Maine. Does that make the rest of what he writes about true? Not a chance.

Besides, we know that sites identified in the early 20th century were largely based on faulty scholarship, "Biblical archaeologists" would go out into the desert, find something and then simply flip through the Bible to see what they found, whether they actually did or not. Even Biblical Archaeology Review acknowledges that a huge number of supposed sites in the Middle East may be wrongly identified, we just don't know yet.

None of that changes anything I said previously.

 

[Cephus]

So? I can show you that Rome actually existed, but does that prove the reality of ancient Roman gods?

Not so much.

Better yet, I can prove New York City exists, does that mean Spider-Man is real?

 

[philbo]

Spirit first?...or substance?

What, like an apéritif?

 

[SkepticThinker]

Better yet, I can prove New York City exists, does that mean Spider-Man is real?

That was going to be my next example.

 

[Repox]

That's not to say that there is nothing historical whatsoever in the Bible, but it's pretty limited. Dean Koontz, the horror writer, once wrote a book that mentioned the street on which I grew up. Does that mean that the other elements of his books are somehow real? Of course not. Stephen King routinely writes about real places in Maine. Does that make the rest of what he writes about true? Not a chance.

Besides, we know that sites identified in the early 20th century were largely based on faulty scholarship, "Biblical archaeologists" would go out into the desert, find something and then simply flip through the Bible to see what they found, whether they actually did or not. Even Biblical Archaeology Review acknowledges that a huge number of supposed sites in the Middle East may be wrongly identified, we just don't know yet.

None of that changes anything I said previously.

Sorry, wrong again, many archaeological studies over the past two decades or longer have been conducted by atheist and agnostics. It sounds as if you know little to nothing about modern archaeology. They don't just find something and flip to the Bible.

 

[Repox]

So? I can show you that Rome actually existed, but does that prove the reality of ancient Roman gods?

Not so much.

The topic was mythology and the Bible. If you want to debate the existence of God or gods and you are an atheist, it is a waste of time because, of course, there is no evidence for supernatural beings, just as there is no evidence for scientific claims for multiple or parallel universes. Both sides of the fence have legitimacy problems.

 

[philbo]

Sorry, wrong again, many archaeological studies over the past two decades or longer have been conducted by atheist and agnostics. It sounds as if you know little to nothing about modern archaeology. They don't just find something and flip to the Bible.

er.. since when were the "last two decades or longer" in "the early 20th Century"?

 

[SkepticThinker]

The topic was mythology and the Bible. If you want to debate the existence of God or gods and you are an atheist, it is a waste of time because, of course, there is no evidence for supernatural beings, just as there is no evidence for scientific claims for multiple or parallel universes. Both sides of the fence have legitimacy problems.

As you said in the post I responded to, we're talking about mythology and history. I'm on topic then.

Care to actually address what I said?

 

[Repox]

er.. since when were the "last two decades or longer" in "the early 20th Century"?

Why don't you don't understand? A decade is ten years and is usually defined in sequences of ten. So for 2005, the decade would be 2010 to 2020. The preceding decade would be 2001 to 2020, etc.

It would help if you did an internet search of archeological studies for Palestine.

 

[Repox]

As you said in the post I responded to, we're talking about mythology and history. I'm on topic then.

Care to actually address what I said?

You were talking about spider man. Is there a point to that? If you are referring to proving the existence of God, I already addressed that. If you are an atheist, it is a waste of time. As for the Bible, if would be purely mythical if there weren't all of those arch. studies. Yes indeed, all those villages and small cities really did exist. So, you question is not related the mythology of the Bible, it is about the credibility of God. Why don't we ask a more relevant question. Where is the evidence for a natural science explanation for the universe? If you have one, post it. That would eliminate God as the creator. If there is no natural science explanation, both science and religion have the same problem, no evidence.

 

[SkepticThinker]

You were talking about spider man. Is there a point to that?

I was talking about ancient Rome and Roman Gods. Philbo was talking about New York City and Spiderman (and he already laid this all out for you as well). The point being that just because a location is mentioned in a book, doesn't mean everything else in the book actually happened as written. Philbo gave a further example, where in a Dean Koontz book, there is a reference to the street he grew up on. Does that mean the Dean Koontz story actually happened as written in the book?

The answer is, of course not!

If you are referring to proving the existence of God, I already addressed that. If you are an atheist, it is a waste of time. As for the Bible, if would be purely mythical if there weren't all of those arch. studies. Yes indeed, all those villages and small cities really did exist. So, you question is not related the mythology of the Bible, it is about the credibility of God.

I'm referring to your assertion that because there are actual real places mentioned in the Bible, that everything else in the Bible is true as well. One doesn't follow from the other, as indicated by the examples both Philbo and I provided.

This has everything to do with the mythology of the Bible.

 

[Repox]

I was talking about ancient Rome and Roman Gods. Philbo was talking about New York City and Spiderman (and he already laid this all out for you as well). The point being that just because a location is mentioned in a book, doesn't mean everything else in the book actually happened as written. Philbo gave a further example, where in a Dean Koontz book, there is a reference to the street he grew up on. Does that mean the Dean Koontz story actually happened as written in the book?

The answer is, of course not!


I'm referring to your assertion that because there are actual real places mentioned in the Bible, that everything else in the Bible is true as well. One doesn't follow from the other, as indicated by the examples both Philbo and I provided.

This has everything to do with the mythology of the Bible.

No, you should be specific. Places and many events in the Bible have been confirmed by science, therefore those things are not myths. If you are referring to beliefs you may can them myths, but don't claim the whole Bible is a myth when it is not.

 

[philbo]

Why don't you don't understand? A decade is ten years and is usually defined in sequences of ten. So for 2005, the decade would be 2010 to 2020. The preceding decade would be 2001 to 2020, etc.

It would help if you did an internet search of archeological studies for Palestine.

Yes, but the early 20th Century would be a hundred years earlier. That was why I commented.

I was talking about ancient Rome and Roman Gods. Philbo was talking about New York City and Spiderman (and he already laid this all out for you as well). The point being that just because a location is mentioned in a book, doesn't mean everything else in the book actually happened as written. Philbo gave a further example, where in a Dean Koontz book, there is a reference to the street he grew up on. Does that mean the Dean Koontz story actually happened as written in the book?

That wasn't me (it was Cephus) - but would it help if I said I was thinking pretty much that before I read that post?

 

[Cephus]

Sorry, wrong again, many archaeological studies over the past two decades or longer have been conducted by atheist and agnostics. It sounds as if you know little to nothing about modern archaeology. They don't just find something and flip to the Bible.

Did you read what I wrote or did you just want to make things up and attack strawmen? Go back and re-read what I said.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Yes, but the early 20th Century would be a hundred years earlier. That was why I commented.




That wasn't me (it was Cephus) - but would it help if I said I was thinking pretty much that before I read that post?

Oops, apologies to Cephus!

And yes, it helps.