INDISPUTABLE Rational Proof That God Exists (Or Existed)

[1robin]

That has to be false since no one can become compelled to love a God who they do not believe exists.

And that is exactly why our love for him can't produce salvation but only results from it.

Yes, love comes from God to humans after they become saved

That is not what I said. I said we can't love something beyond all other things as we are commanded to that we have no knowledge of. We can only do that once an intimate relationship exists and that can only occur after we have been saved. It was not God's love that was in question. It was our love towards him.

, but my arguments are about what God requires of humans in order for them to become saved.

And your argument was 100% wrong and I showed why several times.

Surely God never saves anyone who has no appreciation for him at all, and does not believe that he exists.

We do not know God until we are saved. It is only faith in facts and their significance that produces salvation. Love flows from that salvation once acquired. We are separated from God by an infinite chasm until saved. How can we love what we have no perception of. I argue it is very hard even after the Chasm is breeched. To head you off at the pass I am talking about the love demanded by the verses you are using not some general regard.

No, salvation also requires believing that God exists, and it requires at least some love, admiration, and respect for God.

Did you read that verse that said we did not choose God but it is he that chose us. There is another that says Jesus died for us at a time when we did not care. That one is a little tricky. It means that he was trying to save us even when we did not want to be saved. One second you are a condemned sinner completely separated from God and the next a forgiven Child of God. It is his pro-action and only our PASSIVE acceptance of what he was trying to do long before we wanted to be saved. This is going to get very complex very fast if you keep misunderstanding the simple ways I have laid this out. You seem to suggest we can't love God at any point but then suggesting we must love him before we know him. It is impossible for both of those to be true and neither are.

Even if God has options within doing good things, he must do good things if he does anything. I am not able to love, admire, and respect God since I know that he can only do good things, and does not have the option to do bad things. Similarly, if a God had to always to bad things, I would not be able to criticize him since he had no choice except to do bad things. Without choice, morality, and right and wrong have no meaning.

Would you be able to criticize a God who always had to do bad things?

I could hate him and despise him and yes criticize him. See these links for refutations of all your arguments concerning freewill.

Defending the Truth: Does God have Free Will? Could He Choose to Do Evil?
Can God have free will if He knows everything?

 

[Agnostic75]

Defending the Truth: Does God have Free Will? Could He Choose to Do Evil?

I just read all of that article. A good deal of it discusses humans, which has nothing at all to do with God. Consider the following excerpts from the article:

If God created all things, then He necessarily created time. The creator of something also must exist outside of that very thing. Therefore God exists outside of time. God is eternal. He is not governed by time as we are. Thus term “future actions” and the knowledge of them do not apply to God.

I am not sure what that means, but there is no doubt that God’s actions are always governed by his nature whether he is inside or outside of time. Before God created time, he was good, and has always been good.

The more difficult part of this argument is to determine whether or not God is able to choose that which is opposite to His desire.

First, God could never be restricted by circumstances outside of His control simply because He is in control of all things.

William Lane Craig, and J. P. Moreland said the same thing, but that does not have anything to do with my arguments since my argument has been that God’s actions are always governed by internal factors, not by external factors. No skeptic would ever make a case that external factors could limit an omnipotent God.

Second, while God does have desires that conflict, He has desires which, in His immutability, are consistently stronger than others. For example, God desires all people to act righteously all the time, but He also desires for us to make the free choice to follow His righteous ways on our own accord. God could have made every man and woman to act perfectly our whole lives, without ever deviating from a set script. However, God’s desire that we have free will and the ability to choose to follow him was greater than His desire for us to behave all the time. Thus He chooses to allow us to make mistakes and act unrighteously.

Because God is who He is, he is free to choose according to His nature at all times.

It is not that God doesn’t have the free will to do so, He just will never be compelled to act anything that is contradictory to his nature. And God, by His very nature, is good.

Regarding “Because God is who He is, he is free to choose according to His nature at all times,” that does not help you. That is because even if God has options regarding doing good things, he must always do good things if he does anything. I am not able to love, admire, and respect God since I know that he can only do good things, and does not have the option to do bad things. Similarly, if a God had to always do bad things, I would not be able to criticize him since he had no choice except to do bad things. Without choice, morality, and right and wrong have no meaning.

 

[Agnostic75]

Edit: Deletion of duplicate post.

 

[Agnostic75]

Would you be able to criticize a God who always had to do bad things?

I could hate him and despise him and yes criticize him.

On what basis since he would not be able to do any good things?

It would be illogical to commend, or condemn any behavior as being right or wrong if choice is not involved. That is why some murderers who are mentally incompetent do not go to prison.

That deals with accountability to morality. The action was still bad or evil even if that person was not accountable in the traditional sense. That is why they were taken out of society. Morality is a condition of quality not choice. It only requires that a transcendent standard exists. As long as the standard exists God can be morally good even if he had no choice.

You have refuted the following argument that you made:

I could hate him and despise him and yes criticize him.

An evil God would have his own transcendent standard, so it would be illogical for you to criticize him, and it would also be illogical for you to criticize him since he would not be able to be good. As I said, "it would be illogical to commend, or condemn any behavior as being right or wrong if choice is not involved."

Regarding "God can be morally good even if he had no choice," God can be good even if he had no choice, but not morally good since it would be illogical to commend, or condemn any behavior as being right or wrong if choice is not involved. I think that most college philosophy professors would agree with me that it would be illogical to commend, or condemn any behavior as being right or wrong if choice is not involved.

Salvation IS NOT BY ANY MEANS a response to our love. Our love is a response to salvation. We do not know God until we are saved. It is only faith in facts and their significance that produces salvation. Love flows from that salvation once acquired.

Are you saying that before people become saved, they do not believe that God exists, and have no love, admiration, and respect for him at all?

Can God have free will if He knows everything?

That article does not address my main arguments.

 

[Enai de a lukal]

.I don't know if you guys lack reading comprehension skills or what.

Oh sweet, sweet irony...

 

[Call_of_the_Wild]

What is pimp juice supposed to be? I am not even sure I want to know but I have heard it so much I was curious.

It is a drink that the rapper Nelly came out with a few years back. But it can also be used as a term of endearment, or in a negative sense, depending on the manner and context.

 

[1robin]

I just read all of that article. A good deal of it discusses humans, which has nothing at all to do with God. Consider the following excerpts from the article:

I am impressed that you would do that. In general most skeptics read until the first thing they do not like appears and then they condemn a 30 page article based on one line they disagree with (and most of the time their disagreement is not even valid)

I am not sure what that means, but there is no doubt that God’s actions are always governed by his nature whether he is inside or outside of time. Before God created time, he was good, and has always been good.

I think you may be getting several things confused I will state what I found meaningful about the section you mention.

1. I think you are getting the merits for love and freewill confused. God can be perfectly good and never create a single person nor save one he did create. God both has at least some freewill even though he must be good in order to choose that which was not forced upon him. He could have killed Adam and eve on the spot and still been good. He could have left no one alive during the flood and still be good, he could have never sent a flood and let us kill each other for a thousand generations and still been good. God does have the ability to choose to act or not independently of his being good. He can also be loved for those choices alone.

2. God is not looking into a crystal ball and seeing the future. People think that God is like us. Bound in time but able to look into future events. He is actually completely independent of time. I have no idea what that means but arguments about knowing the future are bad to start off with. Arguments about things independent of time are just no basis for determining anything. We have no idea what this would mean.

William Lane Craig, and J. P. Moreland said the same thing, but that does not have anything to do with my arguments since my argument has been that God’s actions are always governed by internal factors, not by external factors. No skeptic would ever make a case that external factors could limit an omnipotent God.

However even internal factors do not mandate an action. God can be good and never have created anything. He chose to act when nothing compelled him to is the argument. I do not believe you showed his capacity to choose that which he desired to be impaired at all but I am granting that to avoid areas of contention. Even after doing so there exists an infinite amount of things he has chosen to do or not.

Regarding “Because God is who He is, he is free to choose according to His nature at all times,” that does not help you. That is because even if God has options regarding doing good things, he must always do good things if he does anything. I am not able to love, admire, and respect God since I know that he can only do good things, and does not have the option to do bad things. Similarly, if a God had to always do bad things, I would not be able to criticize him since he had no choice except to do bad things. Without choice, morality, and right and wrong have no meaning.

You are able. I have proven that many times. Freewill was defined by that author as the capacity to choose to act on what was desired. Pointing out God could not choose that which he would never desire is not an exception to that. You may reject that definition but until you do so God has freewill.
[/quote]

 

[1robin]

It is a drink that the rapper Nelly came out with a few years back. But it can also be used as a term of endearment, or in a negative sense, depending on the manner and context.

Can the drink be bought? I have never seen it.

 

[Agnostic75]

God can be perfectly good and never create a single person nor save one he did create.

But if God does anything, it has to be good, so he should not get credit for doing anything that is good because if he
does anything, he has to do good things. Without choice, morality, and right and wrong, have no meaning.

God both has at least some freewill even though he must be good in order to choose that which was not forced upon him. He could have killed Adam and eve on the spot and still been good. He could have left no one alive during the flood and still be good, he could have never sent a flood and let us kill each other for a thousand generations and still been good. God does have the ability to choose to act or not independently of his being good. He can also be loved for those choices alone.

No he can't, at least not logically since regardless of which particular things he does, he never has the option to do bad things. If what you said was true, you would logically be able to dislike a God who had to be bad, but you couldn't. Consider the following:

Would you be able to criticize a God who always had to do bad things?

I could hate him and despise him and yes criticize him.

On what basis since he would not be able to do any good things?

It would be illogical to commend, or condemn any behavior as being right or wrong if choice is not involved. That is why some murderers who are mentally incompetent do not go to prison.

That deals with accountability to morality. The action was still bad or evil even if that person was not accountable in the traditional sense. That is why they were taken out of society. Morality is a condition of quality not choice. It only requires that a transcendent standard exists. As long as the standard exists God can be morally good even if he had no choice.

God can be good if he had no choice, but he cannot be morally good since morality, right and wrong, and character, all depend upon being able to choose to do good things, or bad things.

Consider the following:

I could hate him and despise him and yes criticize him.

An evil God would have his own transcendent standard, so it would be illogical for you to criticize him. In addition, it would also be illogical for you to criticize him since he would not be able to be good. Further, it would also be illogical for you to commend him since it would be illogical to commend, or condemn any behavior as being right or wrong if choice is not involved.

However even internal factors do not mandate an action.

That is not true. Since God can only "do" the best possible things if he does anything, he can only "want" to do the best possible things, and he must want to do the best possible things since that is his nature. One of those best possible things was creating humans.

Even if it was true, the action has to be good, and God should not get any credit for being good since if he does anything, it has to be good.

God can be good and never have created anything.

I agree, but that does not have anything to do with my arguments.

The God of the Bible cannot exist since an omniscient, omnibenevolent God would know that some humans would figure out what I have figured out, and he would not ask all humans to love him since he would know that some humans would have figured out that it would be illogical for them to love him for doing good things since if he does anything, he has to do good things, and does not have the option to do bad things.

That writer of the article closes with the following:

"He will not do anything less than perfect. He has no reason to. He will never choose to do evil, for there is no power on heaven or on earth that could ever compel him even to entertain the idea. It is not that God doesn’t have the free will to do so, He just will never be compelled to act anything that is contradictory to his nature. And God, by His very nature, is good."

No, God does not have the free will to do so since his omnipotence always has to work in harmony with his omnibenevolence, and his omnibenevolence would not allow him to sin. You had admitted that God does not have the capacity to sin, and so has William Lane Craig, J. P. Moreland, and Thomas Aquinas, not to mention many other Christian scholars. The Bible itself says that God cannot lie, which means that God does not have the capacity to lie. Craig, and Moreland have basically said that God has no room for improvement, and needs no improvement. That has to refute what the writer of your article said, and the Bible also contradicts him.


Free will has to mean having the option to sin. The writer of the article says that "free will requires two things: The ability to do what one desires and the option to do the opposite of what they desire." The word "option" has to mean that something is possible under certain circumstances. There is no circumstance under which God can sin.

 

[I.S.L.A.M617]

Can the drink be bought? I have never seen it.

You can get it at Spencer's. I dunno if you guys have Spencer's or that's just a New England thing, but yeah...

 

[Agnostic75]

We do not know God until we are saved. It is only faith in facts and their significance that produces salvation.

Faith in what facts?

Do people who get saved believe that God exists before they get saved?

 

[SkepticThinker]

Works for me.

Great.

I’ve already stated that the cosmological constants and values of our universe that allows for life to be permissible. We already know the probability of life forming in our universe, thanks to Roger Penrose, and the numbers are so astronomically small that to think that life could have formed by random chance is chicken feed, as Penrose puts it.

I know you’ve already stated the stuff about cosmological constants and all that. But the problem with your assertion that the UNIVERSE is fine-tuned for life is that the universe is vastly lacking in life. If you’re going to claim that the UNIVERSE is fine-tuned for life, then you’re going to need to demonstrate the existence of all this life you speak of. Earth has life on it, sure, but there’s a hell of a lot more to the universe than earth. And let’s say these cosmological constants didn’t exist or existed in some other form … well so what? Then no life would be here, or some other form of life may be here (on EARTH). Looking at life on earth doesn’t tell you much about the rest of the entirety of the universe. Other life does matter if you’re going to make the assertion that the UNIVERSE is fine-tuned for LIFE.

Penrose’s hypotheses and his objection to big bang theory are not accepted science at this point. His calculations regarding the probability of life forming in the universe (under the current set of physical properties), couldn’t possibly have taken into account the number of possible other universes that could have formed with different physical properties that could still lead to some form of life, never mind the fact that we have no other universes to compare any of this too. I’m guessing that you agree with what he has to say because it reinforces your belief in god or something, which also explains why you reject all of the rest of science on the matter (presumably because it doesn’t reinforce your beliefs in your god). Obviously, I could be wrong.

Well, so far there hasn’t been any evidence of common ancestor. So therefore, I will go by what makes sense to me…since science has to find a way to explain the fine tuning of the universe and also abiogenesis…I will logically conclude that intelligence come from intelligence, and life came from life…instead of the evolutionists view that intelligence came from non-intelligence and life came from non-life.

On the contrary, ALL of the existing evidence points to common descent. Even without the fossil record, genetics alone demonstrates common ancestry. We have to follow the evidence, that is, if we’re looking for the facts.

Science isn’t about what makes sense to each individual. It is what is demonstrable, verifiable, and testable. And common ancestry is demonstrable, verifiable and testable. And if you disagree then perhaps you could explain how we can reliably determine paternity via DNA testing.

FYI: Abiogenesis and evolution are separate things. Evolution only deals with the diversity of life after it has appeared.

And we wouldn’t be here having this discussion.

Right. So? That certainly doesn’t mean we had to be here.

Once again, life elsewhere is irrelevant. We do know that life is fined tuned for where WE live. Everything else is irrelevant. If life is permissible elsewhere, then the fine tuning applies to there as well. If you start off with a big bang, you don’t get the kind of low entropy needed to make life permissible. You will get chaos and discourse, not organized and orderly processes.

Of course it’s relevant when we’re talking about the UNIVERSE. The universe, apparently, is not all about US.
But since you’re apparently only talking about earth for some reason, it needs to be pointed out that the earth is not a closed system and so your assertions about entropy and such don’t apply. (Also, entropy and disorder aren’t the same thing and entropy can actually be used to produce order, in some cases.)

But since we’re actually talking about the universe (or supposed to be) I should also point out that there’s nothing orderly or organized about a lot of things in the universe. Take black holes for instance. What’s orderly and organized about black holes?

And I’ve answered this at least 3 times. Roger Penrose calculated the odds of our universe obtaining its low entropy condition by chance alone is 1:10(10)[10]…the first 10 is the base, and the 10 in parenthesis is the exponent and the 123 is the second exponent…that is a 10 followed by 123 zeros, which is a very astronomical and inconceivable number. There is no rational way anyone can accept that we are here by random chance.

Roger Penrose, "Time-Asymmetry and Quantum Gravity," in Quantum Gravity 2, ed. C. J. Isham, R. Penrose, and D. W. Sciama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 249.

And I’ve responded to it three times, but it’s as though you’re not even reading my responses.

See my above response in regards to your Roger Penrose assertions.

So since you’ve done so much research, what is he lying about?

Practically everything he says is either an outright lie or a distortion, which is why I generally refer to him as “Dr. Distortion.” He makes claims that have no bearing in science (including claims which are completely contrary to known science), he constantly and repeatedly misrepresents the intentions and findings of scientific papers and takes quotes completely out of context to give them meanings that were never intended by the person being quoted.

Cont'd ...

 

[SkepticThinker]

Evolution isn’t scientific. All you’ve ever seen is animals producing their own kind. You accept by faith that million of years ago, these voodoo changes were taking place. That isn’t science. That is religion.

Evolution is as scientific as it gets. The exact same scientific method that is used to demonstrate evolution is used to demonstrate germ theory, gravitational theory, big bang theory, thermodynamics, plate tectonic theory, and everything else we know about the world we live in. And the most amazing part of it all, is that evolution is confirmed by practically every field of science in existence. All the evidence from geology, biology, cosmology, botany, archaeology, paleontology, etc., all converge and demonstrate the reality of evolution. This is why I have such a hard time understanding why some people do not accept evolution and all I can come up with is that they feel it contradicts their religious beliefs (though I’m not exactly sure why).

Are you not familiar with the existence of genetics and DNA? Nobody says any of these “voodoo” changes you speak of have ever taken place. Evolution is constantly happening. It is demonstrable. It is observable. It is testable. There are mountains of evidence supporting it. It’s one of the most well attested scientific theories in existence. There’s nothing religious about it, but I find it kind of odd that you wish to make it into something religious. Are you trying to make it comparable to your personable beliefs about the god you believe in?

I don’t want to be rude or anything, but it’s like you haven’t read or taken in a single thing I’ve said. It’s evident in your responses, which leave out the bulk of explanations I have provided for you. Why is that? I went into great detail to explain to you what evolution actually states about how things evolve, and you just keep coming back to this weird assertion where you think evolution dictates that millions of years ago species gave birth to other species, which is just a completely inaccurate claim. If you don’t understand what I said, please let me know exactly what it is I’m not explaining properly and I’ll clarify for you. But evolution does not dictate that at any time, ever, some species gave birth to an animal of another species.

BINGO AMIGO. Macroevolution, that is.

Macroevolution is the result of a lot of microevolution. Challenge it all you want, but just know you’re challenging accepted, demonstrable, testable science. In fact, if you could empirically demonstrate that macroevolution doesn’t occur, you’d probably win a Nobel Prize. People have been trying to falsify evolutionary theory for over a hundred and fifty years now and have yet to do so. What does that tell you?

This leads me to another question … Do you accept germ theory? How about gravitational theory?

If we all share a common ancestor then that IS the best that animals were producing different kind of animals. You believe that the dogs came from a non-dog. If the animal that all dogs came from was not a dog, then that is an ANIMAL PRODUCING A DIFFERENT KIND OF ANIMAL.

No, it is not. Dogs came from non-dogs, yes. But there was never a day when a wolf gave birth to a dog or a Greyhound gave birth to a Chihuahua. What happened was, due to various environmental factors, some populations of wolves began to become domesticated, by necessity. Maybe there was a shortage of food for some reason, so the wolves had to start hanging around human camps because there was food there. The wolves who were better at interacting with humans (rather than being killed by them) would survive to pass this trait onto their offspring and so eventually you would end up with a population of wolves who would be comfortable around human beings (because the ones who wouldn’t interact amiably with humans were killed off by the humans or died from starvation or something else). That’s just the first “step” so to speak, and we’ve already got population changes. Indeed, DNA evidence indicates that dogs are direct descendants of the gray wolf (the dog genome has been completely sequenced). Humans stepped in at some point and started artificially selecting for the desired traits they were looking for which created greater changes in populations that further distinguished these animals from the original populations of wolves they came from and now we have cockadoodles, Chihuahuas, greyhounds, etc., etc., etc. that are no longer wolves.

Check out an experiment done by geneticist, Dmitri Belyaev, where he attempted to breed tame foxes and within several generations ended up with a tamer fox that began to exhibit dog-like characteristics (floppy ears, spotted coats, tendency to bark and short snouts, for just a few examples.) A fox didn’t have to give birth to a non-fox for this to occur. A simple selection for “tameness” produced not only tameness but a variety of physical characteristics within several generations of foxes. This shows us that small changes at the genome level can have much larger effects on behavior and morphology. All of this happens without a fox giving birth to a non-fox. Small changes amount to larger changes over time. See how this is demonstrable?

Do you think wolves and dogs are the same “kind?” (What is a kind, anyway? It is not a scientific term.)

I’m not a biologist, so my explanations are probably lacking. So if you still don’t understand this process, this site will walk you through it:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/VADefiningSpecies.shtml

What are you talking about?? As I just mentioned, you believe that dogs came from a non-dog. That is an example of an animal producing a different kind of animal. So what the heck are you talking about? How can you even argue that we all share a common ancestor, but don’t believe in macroevolution??? And don’t give me that “macroevolution is a creationist term” crap, I am only using the word to describe the concept.

A dog did not come from a non-dog. Dogs came from dogs and over time and after various genetic changes, non-dogs emerged. Individuals don’t evolve, populations do. See above.

Yeah, we observe that dogs produce dogs, cats produce cats, etc. If this is all evolution is, then I am an evolutionist, but unfortunately, it isn’t.

It certainly doesn’t say that one day a dog produced a non-dog, or that a chimp gave birth to a non-chimp.

So the dog didn’t come from a wolf, which is a non-dog?? Wowwww

Dogs came from wolves. A dog did not come from a wolf. It’s an important distinction that I think speaks to the root of your misunderstanding of evolutionary theory.

 

[nash8]

You can get it at Spencer's. I dunno if you guys have Spencer's or that's just a New England thing, but yeah...

We got Spencer's in ATL, and I'm gonna have to see if we have Pimp Juice there. They used to sell it in the gas stations, but I haven't seen it in a while. That's stuff is phenominal with some tequila.

We do, however, have Crunk Juice and that is some good shiznit too lol.

 

[I.S.L.A.M617]

We got Spencer's in ATL, and I'm gonna have to see if we have Pimp Juice there. They used to sell it in the gas stations, but I haven't seen it in a while. That's stuff is phenominal with some tequila.

We do, however, have Crunk Juice and that is some good shiznit too lol.

I love Crunk. It tastes like Flintstone vitamins lol. 90s throwback, anybody?

 

[nash8]

I love Crunk. It tastes like Flintstone vitamins lol. 90s throwback, anybody?

Flintstone vitamins formed the core of my diet for a good portion of my childhood years lol. Love those things.

 

[I.S.L.A.M617]

Call_of_the_Wild- FYI: A wolf isn't a "non-dog". They are both of the same genus, meaning they share near-identical DNA. Wolf= canis lupus, Domestic dog=canis familiaris

 

[FranklinMichaelV.3]

Species is apparently a hard term to really define, but I notice that people rarely talk about the other categories. Which to be able to understand biology are very important to know.

 

[1robin]

Faith in what facts?

Do people who get saved believe that God exists before they get saved?

They might believe before but they know he exists after they are saved. There is a difference in believing in a person and knowing the person.

 

[1robin]

Species is apparently a hard term to really define, but I notice that people rarely talk about the other categories. Which to be able to understand biology are very important to know.

Species is a fertility barrier isn't it?