INDISPUTABLE Rational Proof That God Exists (Or Existed)

[Gui10]

I love a good counter argument and I never balk about a counter position no matter how silly. The one thing I resent is the insinuation that faith is only possible given ignorance. Arrogance is the quality that is the hardest to see in ourselves and the easiest to see in others. I would add that it is also the easiest to see in an atheist’s argumentation. To say faith is an unreasonable conclusion and hint that it is the domain of ignorance is its self-ignorant. For that to be true you would have to say a large portion of history’s greatest intellects and scholars were brilliant in deductive reasoning but idiots when it came to belief in God. A very large proportion of the founders of the actual fields of science were believers. Not just scholars, not just brilliant scholars, but the most brilliant scholars in the history of man in evidence, testimony, history, math, science, philosophy, logic, and archeology have been believers. I will provide a few but the list is endless.

J. N. D. Anderson as "...a scholar of international repute and one eminently qualified to deal with the subject of evidence. He is one of the world's leading authorities on Islamic law...He is dean of the faculty of law in the University of London, chairman of the department of Oriental law at the School of Oriental and African Studies, and director of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in the University of London." This outstanding British scholar who is today influential in the field of international jurisprudence says: "The evidence for the historical basis of the Christian faith, for the essential validity of the New Testament witness to the person and teaching of Christ Himself, for the fact and significance of His atoning death, and for the historicity of the empty tomb and the apostolic testimony to the resurrection, is such as to provide an adequate foundation for the venture of faith."

At random:

Michael Green says that "...two able young men, Gilbert West and Lord Lyttleton, went up to Oxford. They were friends of Dr. Johnson and Alexander Pope, in the swim of society. They were determined to attack the very basis of the Christian faith. So Littleton settled down to prove that Saul of Tarsus was never converted to Christianity, and West to demonstrate that Jesus never rose from the tomb. "Some time later, they met to discuss their findings. Both were a little sheepish. For they had come independently to similar and disturbing conclusions. Littleton found, on examination, that Saul of Tarsus did become a radically new man through his conversion to Christianity; and West found that the evidence pointed unmistakable to the fact that Jesus did rise from the dead. You may still find his book in a large library. It is entitled Observations on the History and Evidences of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and was published in 1747. On the fly-leaf he has had printed his telling quotation from Ecclesiasticus 11:7, which might be adopted with profit by any modern agnostic: 'Blame not before thou hast examined the truth.' "

"The evidence points unmistakably to the fact that on the third day Jesus rose. This was the conclusion to which a former Chief Justice of England, Lord Darling, came. At a private dinner party the talk turned to the truth of Christianity, and particularly to a certain book dealing with the resurrection. Placing his fingertips together, assuming a judicial attitude, and speaking with a quiet emphasis that was extraordinarily impressive, he said, 'We, say Christians, are asked to take a very great deal on trust; the teachings, for example, and the miracles of Jesus. If we had to take all on trust, I, for one, should be skeptical. The crux of the problem of whether Jesus was, or was not, what He proclaimed Himself to be, just surely depend upon the truth or otherwise of the resurrection. On that greatest point we are not merely asked to have faith. In its favor as living truth there exists such overwhelming evidence, positive and negative, factual and circumstantial, that no intelligent jury in the world could fail to bring in a verdict that the resurrection story is true.' "

Add in the greatest experts on testimony and evidence in human history (Simon Green Leaf, and Lord Lyndhurst) plus:
Leonardo da Vinci
Nicholas Copernicus
Sir Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
Rene Descartes
Blaise Pascal
Robert Boyle
Sir Isaac Newton
Gottfried Leibniz
Adam Smith
Antoine Lavoisier
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Michael Faraday
Sir George Stokes
Gregor Mendel
Louis Pasteur
William Thomson, Lord Kelvin
Thomas Edison
Alexander Graham Bell
Nicola Tesla
Max Planck
Wright Brothers
Guglielmo Marconi
Niels Bohr
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Michael Polanyi
C.S. Lewis
Johannes Gutenberg
Enrico Fermi
Allan Sandage
The 50 Most Influential Christians of All Time
Even from this very incomplete list it can easily be seen that faith is intellectually justified and claims that it is not are themselves not justified.

I asked a simple question: ''what does intellectually valid mean?''

Does it mean ''true'' or does it mean that ''it is understandable that one can think that''?

Or does it mean something else?

SO, I reiterate;

I was not attempting to suggest my scholars made God true just simply that they indicate faith is intellectually valid and has much evidence.

1. What does ''intellectually valid'' mean?

2. Last time I checked, the term ''faith'' precisely means to believe something without evidence.

 

[Agnostic75]

I can't do this here. PM me. BTW I am an amateur military historian. I know way more about military history than my faith would certainly justify and I do not care what a debater would do, Military officials killing millions by policies justified with false data [at times on purpose (the false part)] is a sad and obvious fact of history that anyone who ever served in ww1 or ww2 etc...knows only too well. I have been as polite as possible but I insist this be done somewhere else and I will not respond here again.

You do not have to reply, but I will reply to your false and misleading claims.

A mere claim of false data regarding gays in the military will not do. I reply with research, and you reply with rhetoric. You were quite content to argue at length in the other thread until you got into trouble. You made a completely false claim that homosexuality cannot be justified, a claim that no medical organization would agree with, and that even common sense alone proves is false, and you made the misleading claim that homosexuality is harmful. If homosexuality is harmful, how do you account for so many healthy homosexuals? I should have asked you days ago for your definition of the word "harmful." Healthy gay people who read your arguments would be left wondering whether or not you were in your right mind since no rational person would claim that a healthy person is not healthy.

Numerous professional researchers disagree with you, and most of all, many rank and file soldiers, in over 30 countries, including the U.S. It would be impossible for you to know more than rank and file soldiers in over 30 countries. It tells a lot about you when you mentioned that the data are false since you automatically conclude that any data that disagrees with your opinions are wrong. How can personal testimoney from rank and file soldiers be false? What qualifies you to criticize experts in over 30 countries?

We are not in WW1, or WW2, we are in today, and today, acceptance of homosexuals in the Western world is generally way beyond what it was even 10 years ago, let alone over 50 years ago.

The debate has never been about whether or not gay soliders can adequately perform their jobs well. Rather, the main issue is the perception of gays by heterosexuals. The "unit cohesion" issue is primarily religious bigotry. This is easily proven by the successes in over 30 countries, most, or all of whom have smaller percentages of religious conservatives than the U.S. has. In the U.S., lots of documented research has proven that the most outspoken opponents of homosexuality by far are religious conservatives. Such being the case, that is proof why allowing gays in the military has worked well for many years in countries that have smaller percentages of religious conservatives.

You could claim that religion is not a major issue, but few people would believe you. Anyone with even a modest amount of common sense knows that religion is a major issue regarding all kinds of things, including gays in the military. Quite naturally, it is axiomatic that the fewer religious conservatives there are in a military, the less there will be issues about unit cohesion. Any sociologist would know that, but is doesn't take a sociologist to know that.

In one of my previous posts, I mentioned a research article at
What Does the Empirical Research Say about the Impact of Openly Gay Service on the Military? | Palm Center, The aritlce is by Dr. Nathaniel Frank. In part of the article, he said:

"The U.S. military’s own researchers have consistently found that openly gay service does not undermine cohesion, and the military has repeatedly sought to condemn or suppress these conclusions when they emerged. Yet no research has ever shown that open homosexuality impairs military readiness."

You have clearly lost three debates, 1) your false claim that homosexuality is never justifiable, 2) your misleading claim that homosexuality is harmful, and 3) your claim that gays in the military does not work well anywhere in the world.

Idle rhetoric is not an adequate substitute for documented research.

 

[1robin]

I asked a simple question: ''what does intellectually valid mean?''

Does it mean ''true'' or does it mean that ''it is understandable that one can think that''?

I thought it so simple your question signified something much more complex. It means it is reasonable.

1. What does ''intellectually valid'' mean?

2. Last time I checked, the term ''faith'' precisely means to believe something without evidence.

1. Reasonable to think something.
2. I found different definitions:

<LI style="LIST-STYLE-TYPE: decimal" class=vk_txt>Complete trust or confidence in someone or something.2. Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.

These are not quite what I mean either so let me define what I mean by faith.

Faith: Trust in a conclusion no wholly derived by fact. It can be 90% fact and 10% hope. It can be 50% evidence and 50% logic. Etc....It is trust in something not 100% proven.

Did this finally provide what you asked for?

 

[Agnostic75]

I have never denied such data exists.

I never said that you did.

I said I can equal it and probably exceed it with it's opposite and what you provide is not an accurate reflection of reality for the reasons I gave.

No you can't, and you did not give any documented reasons why the article that I mentioned is wrong. I post research, and you post rhetoric.

No possible evidence that you could provide would be equal to the personal testimonies of current servicemen in the militaries of over 30 countries in the world, but no number of personal testimonies would ever convince you that you are wrong because of your religious confirmation bias.

 

[1robin]

I never said that you did.



No you can't, and you did not give any documented reasons why the article that I mentioned is wrong. I post research, and you post rhetoric.

No possible evidence that you could provide would be equal to the personal testimonies of current servicemen in the militaries of over 30 countries in the world, but no number of personal testimonies would ever convince you that you are wrong because of your religious confirmation bias.

I told you not in this thread time and time again. This is technically stalking and is against forum rules though I have no intention of reporting it. I will get back to the thread you escaped from soon, and handle these issues there as I think you may do something even more desperate if I don't.

 

[Agnostic75]

I told you not in this thread time and time again. This is technically stalking and is against forum rules though I have no intention of reporting it. I will get back to the thread you escaped from soon, and handle these issues there as I think you may do something even more desperate if I don't.

I will patiently await for your return to the other thread, but I do not expect you to show up there soon, if ever. This will be my last post in this thread. If you happen to show up there, please notify me by private message.

 

[1robin]

I will patiently await for your return to the other thread, but I do not expect you to show up there soon, if ever. This will be my last post in this thread. If you happen to show up there, please notify me by private message.

NO. And I have already posted there three times in the last hour so much for your hunches. I will deal with your posts there soon.

 

[Agnostic75]

NO. And I have already posted there three times in the last hour so much for your hunches. I will deal with your posts there soon.

I said that my previous post was my last post in this thread, but I would like to make one more reply. Regarding my hunches, I was referring to you replying to my posts, not to someone else's posts.

 

[Gui10]

These are not quite what I mean either so let me define what I mean by faith.

Its not about what YOU mean by faith its about what faith MEANS.

 

[1robin]

Its not about what YOU mean by faith its about what faith MEANS.

No it is not. The official definition, which there are quite a few is just someone elses arbitrary idea about what it means. It has no more validity than mine and mine is not much different from theirs anyway. There is no objective definition of faith by which everything must be judged. The closest there is in this context is the Biblical definition and my description is very close to it. This reminds me of something scientists do that has always frustrated me. They invent arbitrary categories for life. They shove this thing in one and another thing in another. Fine so far, but they then draw meanings or make predictions about things based on which invented category they arbitrarily decided to shove things into. In the hope of avoiding semantic technicalities and instead debating issues I will give you an "official" definition for faith that says the same thing I did though I have no idea why it is necessary.

The assent of the mind to the statement or proposition of another, on the ground of the manifest truth of what he utters; firm and earnest belief, on probable evidence of any kind, especially in regard to important moral truth.
Read more at Definition of Faith - BrainyQuote

 

[steeltoes]

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.

Before anything, there was nothing? I don't believe you, energy/matter always existed. There was never a time before when there was nothing, that's just a baseless assumption on your part.

 

[tumbleweed41]

Before anything, there was nothing? I don't believe you, energy/matter always existed. There was never a time before when there was nothing, that's just a baseless assumption on your part.

Speaking of assumptions, what do you base your assumption on?

 

[steeltoes]

Speaking of assumptions, what do you base your assumption on?

The assumption that there is something rather than nothing, a very safe assumption wouldn't you say? That there was nothing before there was something is an additional and needless assumption, not so safe.

 

[1robin]

Before anything, there was nothing? I don't believe you, energy/matter always existed. There was never a time before when there was nothing, that's just a baseless assumption on your part.

That is far more than an assumption, it is the latest cosmology, see: Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin’s Past-Finite Universe. Even within the very simple and accurate scientific philosophy of the Kalam cosmological argument there can't be an infinite anything. That same line of reasoning has been around since the Greeks and is still just as true as ever. If energy always existed then the number of past fluctuations would have been infinite. How did we go through an infinite amount of past fluctuations to arrive at this one? Nothing can fluctuate or change unless time exists. If time is eternal then the past number of seconds is also infinite and you have the same problem. It just won't work. I have no idea where you got your claim but if it was Newton’s conservation laws they only apply once we have energy. Natural law can't create anything. Any claim to there having always been energy or time is not only an assumption without any justification it is an absurd assumption that produces logical impossibilities.

 

[tumbleweed41]

The assumption that there is something rather than nothing, a very safe assumption wouldn't you say? That there was nothing before there was something is an additional and needless assumption, not so safe.

So, your assumption is as based incredulity?

 

[PolyHedral]

If energy always existed then the number of past fluctuations would have been infinite. How did we go through an infinite amount of past fluctuations to arrive at this one?

...-3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3...

Like that.

 

[1robin]

...-3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3...

Like that.

Is this representative of all your arguments? Take this to a cosmologist and see if he publishes that as an explanation of anything, outside a list of integers from -3 to +3. When someone claims that there is anything substandard about how a Christian arrives at faith and then gives this as proof that an infinite series can be crossed in time just makes me tired and is quite absurd. BTW I showed this to my PhD in engineering boss and he is currently still laughing. He studied under one of Hawking’s colleagues and dealt with these issues in M theory. In this case M stands for make it up as you go. Your example reminds me of Dawkin's cartoon drawn and claimed as prrof the eye evolved. Not that I do not agree with eye evolution but these methods are certainly not proof of anything. If I see anyone on the cover of Time magazine holding up a poster with those digits on it as proof of the eternal nature of the universe I officially give up on science.

 

[steeltoes]

That is far more than an assumption, it is the latest cosmology, see: Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin’s Past-Finite Universe. Even within the very simple and accurate scientific philosophy of the Kalam cosmological argument there can't be an infinite anything. That same line of reasoning has been around since the Greeks and is still just as true as ever. If energy always existed then the number of past fluctuations would have been infinite. How did we go through an infinite amount of past fluctuations to arrive at this one? Nothing can fluctuate or change unless time exists. If time is eternal then the past number of seconds is also infinite and you have the same problem. It just won't work. I have no idea where you got your claim but if it was Newton’s conservation laws they only apply once we have energy. Natural law can't create anything. Any claim to there having always been energy or time is not only an assumption without any justification it is an absurd assumption that produces logical impossibilities.

I didn't say that time always existed, anyways the conditions before the universe started to expand are unknown, but there was something. Nothingness cannot begin to expand. I know it's not possible to describe what was because that implies time, it's difficult to explain what was before the Big Bang because there is no such thing as before, but there were conditions. To assume that there was nothing doesn't help to explain much either.

 

[1robin]

I didn't say that time always existed, anyways the conditions before the universe started to expand are unknown, but there was something. Nothingness cannot begin to expand. I know it's not possible to describe what was because that implies time, it's difficult to explain what was before the Big Bang because there is no such thing as before, but there were conditions. To assume that there was nothing doesn't help to explain much either.

That is a reasonable description of the facts as we know them and is also the heart of the entire issue. At one time nothing existed. No time, no space, no matter, no energy. Out of nothing nothing comes but yet we have a lot of something. Given those two well established facts we are left with needing something to bridge the gap. The only possible candidates are a disembodied mind or an abstract concept. Abstract concepts are causally impotent. The number 1 never created anything. Not even natural law can create things. So we are left with only a disembodied mind as the cause. Philosophy can also make general but reasonable determinations about what characteristics this being must have. That is called causal efficiency or capability. It must be more powerful that all the energy in the universe, from our point of view that would be (omnipotent). It must know how to do everything and create everything that the universe has in it (omniscient). It must be present everywhere to act in and outside of space (omnipresent), and he must be personal in that he was capable of choosing to act (theistic). It must be timeless to exist outside of time, it must be non-material to exist outside the universe and space. Every one of those is based on philosophic principles that have no know exception. Those characteristics are a perfect match to the God described in Genesis 4000 years ago. Long before those men had any scientific idea what characteristics needed to be given to a fake God when they began the greatest "lie" in history? When you add all this up it makes the Christian God the only candidate for the cause of reality as we know it. Is it proof? Of course not but it is very indicative. I do not ask atheists to agree with me but I insist they do not dismiss such a valid concept by ridiculous and absurd intellectual gymnastics. Everything you want to know about the cosmological argument on both sides can be found here: Cosmological Argument (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
It has been discussed since the ancient Greeks and is still as powerfull (in fact more so, since the latest science shows the universe is not infinate) today as it has ever been.

 

[tumbleweed41]

I didn't say that time always existed, anyways the conditions before the universe started to expand are unknown, but there was something. Nothingness cannot begin to expand. I know it's not possible to describe what was because that implies time, it's difficult to explain what was before the Big Bang because there is no such thing as before, but there were conditions. To assume that there was nothing doesn't help to explain much either.

You are assuming that physical laws as we know them existed "before" (yes, I wish we had a better term) the singularity.