INDISPUTABLE Rational Proof That God Exists (Or Existed)

[McBell]

Tsk tsk yourself.....denying judgment.

I find your judgments severely lacking, highly hypocritical, self serving, and to be quite blunt and to the point, plain flat out full of ****.

I understand you are afraid and have gotten to used to hiding from your fears behind your faith.

But that does not mean everyone hides behind their faith.

 

[Thief]

I find your judgments severely lacking, highly hypocritical, self serving, and to be quite blunt and to the point, plain flat out full of ****.

I understand you are afraid and have gotten to used to hiding from your fears behind your faith.

But that does not mean everyone hides behind their faith.

Back to your false accusations....again.
We've been here before.

 

[Thief]

By The Way...
I am still waiting for you to define "spirit" in a meaning ful way and to address the points you have gone out of your way to ignore.

Should I stop holding my breath?

Enjoy for now.
It will 'prove' terminal.

 

[McBell]

Back to your false accusations....again.
We've been here before.

what false accusation?
You have thoroughly demonstrated your blatant fears.
You have thoroughly demonstrated your blatant denial.
You have thoroughly demonstrated you cower child like behind your faith.

In fact, you have also demonstrated the only thing stronger than your faith, is your skill in denial.

 

[hexler]

The way atheists react on the statement there is a God reminds me of the book FLATLAND. You can download it http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/201
The story is, that there was a flat land, means a 2 dimensional land. Once there was a man and he was curious if there would not be more than that. He found the 3rd dimension. When he came home he was enthusiastic. " I found something great. It is really heaven. Much better than our country. When his friends heard this they became furious. "You are a betrayer. Never again you must say anything about this".
Such a reaction I did experience when I found out about God. Because before I was a sceptic.

 

[Thief]

what false accusation?
You have thoroughly demonstrated your blatant fears.
You have thoroughly demonstrated your blatant denial.
You have thoroughly demonstrated you cower child like behind your faith.

In fact, you have also demonstrated the only thing stronger than your faith, is your skill in denial.

And you actually think you understand denial.

 

[McBell]

And you actually think you understand denial.

Clearly I am not nearly as versed in denial as you.

When are you going to present a meaningful definition of "spirit"...?

Do you have plans to address the points you have gone out of your way to ignore?

If you were to address these two questions, perhaps we can be diverted away from your fear and denial....

 

[Mycroft]

Whether God is an all-knowing being, or a thoughtless being non-existent anymore, something had to start the first thing, the first science, and science cannot and will not ever explain the start of science, just as something cannot create itself. Before anything, there was nothing. Something transcendent, existent before anything, had to create the first something. That, we call God.

Sit down, sir. Have some tea. Now it's true that science doesn't know how the universe began. But if science knew everything there'd be no point to it! However. Just because science is brave enough to say 'Nope! No idea how that began!' that doesn't automatically lend itself as proof that the universe was created. It just means we don't know. Yet. The thing with science is that it will figure it out eventually. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe in ten years. Maybe in ten thousand years. But it will, eventually. But for now we're content to say 'We don't know yet'.

And you know what? That's quite alright!

 

[Meow Mix]

The way atheists react on the statement there is a God reminds me of the book FLATLAND. You can download it http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/201
The story is, that there was a flat land, means a 2 dimensional land. Once there was a man and he was curious if there would not be more than that. He found the 3rd dimension. When he came home he was enthusiastic. " I found something great. It is really heaven. Much better than our country. When his friends heard this they became furious. "You are a betrayer. Never again you must say anything about this".
Such a reaction I did experience when I found out about God. Because before I was a sceptic.

Flatland is a great book. You should read the modern "sequel" by Ian Stewart called Flatterland if you liked the original. Stewart returns the reader to Flatland through a new character, who if I recall correctly is a triangle because she's female (as in the original Flatland) and uses the plot to bring the reader through various topological and other mathematical concepts. It's really fantastic.

That being said, there are good reasons to be skeptical sometimes and other times there aren't. I wouldn't blanket all atheists under the "unreasonable skeptic" category, though I'm sure some are. It wouldn't be a very fair thing to do.

 

[Thief]

Flatland is a great book. You should read the modern "sequel" by Ian Stewart called Flatterland if you liked the original. Stewart returns the reader to Flatland through a new character, who if I recall correctly is a triangle because she's female (as in the original Flatland) and uses the plot to bring the reader through various topological and other mathematical concepts. It's really fantastic.

That being said, there are good reasons to be skeptical sometimes and other times there aren't. I wouldn't blanket all atheists under the "unreasonable skeptic" category, though I'm sure some are. It wouldn't be a very fair thing to do.

How nice...if only the atheists would do likewise.
(that is to say...not lumping all believers to the category of irrational)

I say it IS rational to believe in God.
I am very skeptical of disbelief.
so terminal.

 

[cottage]

Creation is the bringing into existence from non-existence. It had to occur if anything began to exist as the great philosophers for 4000 years have claimed. That is the explanation. I do not need to know why 2 + 2 = 4. I just need to know it does. The same is true of mundane things like gravity. We have not a clue how it works, why it works or what it is. It suffers no loss of credibility for that. Your confusing what is true of proof and what is true of existence. It may be true we need the natural to use as a "lens" to see God through but God would be no less real if nature did not exist.

The above is an example of a well known occurrence in academics. Things which have marvelous application are pushed beyond al use and relevance in every field of study. It is the same principle that gets everyone promoted at least on step beyond competence. A practical limit is never binding on an arrogant race. We always go beyond the point where things are useful. If you are familiar with Schopenhauer's 38 ways to win an argument (not to be right, simply win), half of them are tactics for obscuring simple concepts. I do not believe you are doing so on purpose but I believe you are borrowing from fringe philosophers or at least fringe philosophy that has only that purpose. Again the argument is intuitive, has no known exceptions, obeys al logical principles, and has been accepted for thousands of years by top scholars.

Here we have lots of words, sweeping statements, arguments from authority and a number of unsupported assertions, but no real argument as far as I can see.

1. The "world" exists.

Okay.

2. It must be eternal or have begun to exist from nothing.

This is absurd, ie: “or have begun to exist from nothing”. (My italics)

3. ALL evidence suggests it began to exist

It seems you want to rely on evidence and yet drop that requirement when it suits you to say things like this:

“Creation is the bringing into existence from non-existence.” Yes, we know what it means and there is no evidence at all of what is, in any case, an absurd notion.

And then there is this:

“ It had to occur if anything began to exist as the great philosophers for 4000 years have claimed. That is the explanation. I do not need to know why 2 + 2 = 4. I just need to know it does.” So, no “evidence”!

And 2 + 2 = 4 is necessarily true, whereas the world beginning to exist is not, and neither is the principle of cause and effect.

4. There is no known example or reason to think it could ever have created its self.

This is that old red herring again

5. It's cause must be beyond nature.

This doesn’t follow from anything given above

6. That cause is God. This one is not exactly inescapable but very very logical and reasonable.

And this is simply held as an article of faith.

Ok, then if multiple universes do not exist and this universe has every single indication of youth where is the eternity you need for your alternative theories?

The youthfulness of the world and its evolving nature is adequately explained by the Big Bang. But if the argument is that this world must answer to other worlds in order to explain its existence then surely so must those other worlds require an explanation for their existence, and so on and so forth, which as I’ve shown must also apply to God, as in all cases a contingent principle is required and thus the series can never complete to a first term since it exists within time and implies an infinite regress. But if the first term is internal to the world, but not itself material, then the physical world commenced and is sustained or renewed from within. No argument is being made here that the world is necessary, but that is no logical impediment to it having always existed (although it needn’t had), as both Leibniz and Aquinas apparently allowed. All speculation of course, but the world exists as a fact and not just as a concept, an act of faith, or a mystical belief. It is more plausible for what exists to answer to itself rather than to an object conceived by sophistry and invention, ie a being with no known existence. We can say we don’t have full knowledge of the world, while being confident in our belief that the world is actual, but we can’t say the same about God without having to assume his existence.

There are even philosophers who claim that multiverses produce proofs of God. IMO they are overreaching semantic parlor games like what you stated above, and that is why I do not use them. The deep end of cosmology, philosophy, and physics is very interesting but almost never reliable nor productive. I stay in the far more reliable, far less ambiguous end of the pool. The cosmological argument fits right in that reliable band of philosophy and every one of its detractors is flailing around in Mariana's trench of logic and reason.

Well I believe I’ve made a reasonably good fist of showing over time that in all its forms, including Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover, Aquinas’ Five Ways, the Kalam, Leibniz’s argument from Contingency, and Descartes’ causal argument etc, that the Cosmological Argument comes up against contradictions. And in response to where you said “…the argument has no known exceptions”, I'm saying there is no known instances where acts of creation have occurred; if I'm wrong then perhaps you would furnish me with an example or two?

BY concept I mean the Biblical description of God and it contains the most profound potential truths man has ever known and presents a very practical and useful concept of God.

Profound to you perhaps, as a believer, but to the rest of us the Bible is full of contradictions and has examples of barbarism, misogamy, murder, homophobia, sectarianism, and promotes a God who is vengeful, egotistic, jealous and as far from omnibenevolent as it is possible to be, as we see from everyday experience.

 

[1robin]

God as the Creator of the world is self-evidently unintelligible without the world, but the same doesn’t apply to the contrary because the world is perfectly intelligible without God; the point is made by the putative object having no existence outside the concept.

Of course the creator of X, as the creator of X is intelligible if no X exists. That is not exactly ground breaking wisdom there. However the existence of Y and Y in the role as creator of X is perfectly logical. God is not defined as only or dependently the creator of the universe. The creator alone is not a definition of God. It is an attribute of theological history. The world without either demonstrating it's infinity of self explanatory power and scope is not only unintelligible but is a logical absurdity. Not one thing known if fully explainable (especially not in it's most important attributes and origins) within its self. It is one side of an equality, with nothing on the other if God is denied.

In that case your statement rejects the teleological argument, and the Kalam argument as amended by Craig.

My statement was such a grammatical train wreck I do not see how you knew what I meant. My statements about information have no relevance to the cosmological argument in any form. Information has only one known source, mind. It can be copied but not created by biological mindless systems. However the mechanism that allows copying is also information. The biology that decodes it must even be tuned to the type of information transmitted. Information is the last place a non-theist should wander into. It gets real inconvenient real fast. I am curious what part of my mangled attempt at a statement was contradictory to Kalam or Craig. Both would say information is derived from mind.

God “able to understand”? (!) I seem to be constantly defending God against theists who undermine the concept of Supreme Being. It rather supports my theory that believers are protecting their own sensibilities first, as do we all of course. But anyway in the case of God the term intelligence is understood in human/animal terms and is then multiplied to an infinite extent; but for all that it still engenders the human/animal connotations that I outlined in my piece. The alternative is to say God’s intelligence has different meaning but that would be a self-defeating special plea.

That was confusing. Cognitive function is simply an ability to comprehend and process. That is a process that in our world is dependent on biology to an uncertain extent but is a concept with meaning with reference to what causes it. In theology our infinitesimal capacities are derived from God's infinite capacity. I deny the reversal of that derivative relationship.

This is not argument. It has an ad hominem air about it and so I’ll decline to comment further if you don't mind.

It was only a reference, it was not an argument. However God or God the arrogance it speaks to is all to true. If you think about it the groups who's careers are most conducive to arrogance are entertainers, sports stars, and academics. Publish or die is not the most conducive atmosphere for sober study.

 

[1robin]

All you’ve done here is to repeat the article you gave me earlier that leaps from science to non-science concluding with an argument by Craig – to which I showed that Craig’s argument results in there being two, and only two, possibilities both of which run to a contradiction and are therefore absurd. I’ve posted the argument several times.

That site contained Vilenkin's reasons why he thought the other eternal cosmological arguments were impossible. It contained Craig's impression of those reasons. Vilenkin, Hawking, Sandage, etc... have given a multiplicity of scientific reasons why eternal models of the universe do not work. I have tried to post but a few. I can't discuss them all. If you wish to discuss eternal "worlds" then pick a specific model and we can discuss it. I can't accept a personal commentary on Craig as an argument against that site of the others I have provided. There are no known natural eternals or infinites and there are no reasons to believe they exist, and many to believe it is impossible.

I’m not sure it makes sense to speak of “indicating the presence of unknowns”! But what I will say is by all means suppose the existence of some unknown thing by making inferences from what is known, but that doesn’t enable you to infer more qualities in the unknown thing, the supposed cause, than is required for the effect.`

A cause must always be greater than the effect. Sufficient causation requires that cause to have certain aspects. The creator of time cannot be in time, the creator of matter can be composed of matter, etc.... If every joule of energy in the universe was added together the cause must have at least that much. That is another reason nature can't cause it's self because nature never acts perfectly efficient. That is also why oscillating models are impossible.

All of our reasoning comes in two forms, those that are self-evident or true by definition, and those that exist as matters of fact. To say “truth is independent of perception” is to know what truth is; an assertion too far by any standard it seems to me! But while experience may not be a criterion of truth in terms of certainty, that is to say a logically necessary sense, it is universally the way we agree to what is the case. For example we accept that there is a moon, even though there needn’t be such an object, and we can explain how its existence can be confirmed, even to the extent of travelling there; and we accept that there is a world of physical of phenomena because denial would be self-contradictory. And while of course there are numerous examples of scientific hypotheses that cannot be replicated, as well as theories that turn out be wrong or false, they at least refer in all cases to the actual world, a world that we all share and experience. The physical world consists in form and matter, solidity and extension and is certainly explicable in those terms. In contrast the supernatural has nothing whatever to identify it and is simply just a belief that cannot be explained in terms of the former.
And there is no “objective moral realm” as some God-given law; there is only the learned experience that ensures we are able to co-exist with our fellow man in reasonable harmony. Right and wrong is simply a matter of what is beneficial and able to keep us from harm, and thus the prior self concept has a mutual gain for us all in practice. Our being utterly selfish is what enables our continued existence as a species and, incidentally, it works in exactly the same way for all other animals too.

Saying truth exists independently from perception is simply a brute fact. My perception is not conditional of anything's existence beyond claims about perception. The suns existence has nothing to do with my eyes or temperature sensory. Confirmation has nothing to do with existence.

To say that carbon is a part of the "world" but yet God is not is arbitrary. Why is the supernatural any different from any other type of reality. It can be verified or inferred through what can be easily detected, the same way the Quantum or wind can be. Supernatural truths do not have a higher level of improbability than natural truths even if they do have less certain methods of detection. The probability Christ changed water to wine by non-natural methods is determined by the testimony and evidence and is not less probable than it doing so by natural means. In fact since there exists no natural means it could change from water to wine then the sole probability is determined by the historical method. I have even used probabilistic calculus to debate the issue but it can be.

I have a TTLIO card that keeps failing and is making posting impossible. I will try later.

 

[metis]

God did not create the universe, world-famous physicist Stephen Hawking argues in a new book that aims to banish a divine creator from physics.

Hawking says in his book "The Grand Design" that, given the existence of gravity, "the universe can and will create itself from nothing," according to an excerpt published Thursday in The Times of London.

"Spontaneous creation is the reason why there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist," he writes in the excerpt.

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper [fuse] and set the universe going," he writes...

And, indeed, he argues, any form of intelligent life that evolves anywhere will automatically find that it lives somewhere suitable for it.

From there he introduces the idea of multiple universes, saying that if there are many universes, one will have laws of physics like ours - and in such a universe, something not only can, but must, arise from nothing.

Therefore, he concludes, there's no need for God to explain it. -- God didn't create universe, Stephen Hawking argues – CNN Belief Blog - CNN.com Blogs

 

[cottage]

Of course the creator of X, as the creator of X is intelligible if no X exists. That is not exactly ground breaking wisdom there. However the existence of Y and Y in the role as creator of X is perfectly logical. God is not defined as only or dependently the creator of the universe. The creator alone is not a definition of God. It is an attribute of theological history. The world without either demonstrating it's infinity of self explanatory power and scope is not only unintelligible but is a logical absurdity. Not one thing known if fully explainable (especially not in it's most important attributes and origins) within its self. It is one side of an equality, with nothing on the other if God is denied. [/font][/color]

You’re saying the creator of the world, as the creator of the world [sic] is intelligible if no world exists! That’s what you’ve written, and it makes no real sense as far as I can see. If the world doesn’t exist how can there also be a creator of a world, this world, that happens to exist? And the term Creator is not an “attribute”; it is necessary to the concept. We can conceive of a being that is less than all powerful, but sufficiently powerful to create the world and we can certainly conceive of a being that was indifferent to suffering as that corresponds with reality, but the world exists and therefore it is logically impossible for a god to be the Necessary Being and not be its Creator.

My statement was such a grammatical train wreck I do not see how you knew what I meant. My statements about information have no relevance to the cosmological argument in any form. Information has only one known source, mind. It can be copied but not created by biological mindless systems. However the mechanism that allows copying is also information. The biology that decodes it must even be tuned to the type of information transmitted. Information is the last place a non-theist should wander into. It gets real inconvenient real fast. I am curious what part of my mangled attempt at a statement was contradictory to Kalam or Craig. Both would say information is derived from mind.

I can’t make much sense of the passage either, or my response, now I re-read it.

That was confusing. Cognitive function is simply an ability to comprehend and process. That is a process that in our world is dependent on biology to an uncertain extent but is a concept with meaning with reference to what causes it. In theology our infinitesimal capacities are derived from God's infinite capacity. I deny the reversal of that derivative relationship.

You say: “Cognitive function is simply an ability to comprehend and process.” Yes, exactly! And that is why, as I explained in my analysis, that anthropomorphic analogy cannot be applied to God. And to apply that erroneous analogy to God infinitely is to infinitely compound the error. By definition the Supreme Being doesn’t “comprehend and process” information. God doesn’t weigh the balance of probabilities, carefully consider data, or learn from experience; that is what humans do! The Supreme Being, if there is such a thing, doesn’t reason: it/he is reason.

 

[Meow Mix]

How nice...if only the atheists would do likewise.
(that is to say...not lumping all believers to the category of irrational)

I say it IS rational to believe in God.
I am very skeptical of disbelief.
so terminal.

Who said all atheists do? :thud:

 

[Enai de a lukal]

Oh, irony.

 

[Ouroboros]

It's only irrational to believe in an irrational God.

 

[Mycroft]

H

I say it IS rational to believe in God.
I am very skeptical of disbelief.
so terminal.

Rationalé is relative. But the belief in any supernatural dimension or entity stems from mans attempt to rationalise things which he did not have the tools to understand it with. Lightning and Rainbows were once thought to be manifestations of god's moods and promises. Why? Because nobody understood the processes behind lightning, couldn't - the tools to do that didn't exist. But we know there's nothing supernatural behind lightning anymore.

god is the antithesis of knowledge.

 

[Willamena]

It's only irrational to believe in an irrational God.

One that does things for no reason?