Prove God Exists - Act Three

[Blasphemous]

Actually Fred it depends what type of Atheism... Strong Atheism is the active disbelief in the existance of any deity... Perhaps it can be grounded in evidence that shows the concept is illogical, but generally speaking Strong Atheism is almost as illogical as Christianity. Well, not... Christianity's got all the Hell and Heaven stuff.. So SA is almost as illogical as hmmm... The general belief in the existance of a god.

 

[FredLC]

I am aware of that, and I have also discussed this before. Please, you check this link.

Regards .

 

[Erik Mesoy]

If material evidence were presented in regard of the actual happening of miracles, I'd cease being an atheist,

Even roman historians such as Josefus (norwegian spelling) recorded that Jesus rose from the dead.
Out in the Sinai desert you can find stones carved with Egyptian-like symbols that record Moses parting the Red Sea.
The seven years of famine, when only Egypt had grain and no-one else could buy it for love or money, are noted down in Arabia.
See "Guds egen Signatur", norwegian book, for a lot more. Watch out though- it gets into numerology and foretelling towards the end. The first part is fairly well researched, however.

 

[Plotinus]

i have a way to disprove god's exsistance so here it is, u guys keep saying that god allows us FREE WILL, but that very phase contratictes all exsisting science because, if god is all knowing and all seeing then he\she\it could see every exsisting particle in the Unieverse but if that were true he could see (science states that if one were to know where every thing in the Unieverse then one could accurately predict there indireactions thoughout all time) the future which implies the fact the everything that happerns due to FATE which doesnt allow FREE WILL so with that said either god is lazy and doesnt want to kill evil or GOD doesnt exsist because if he did the devil wouldnt exsist


BEAT THAT


IWIN

Looks like it's been sufficiently beaten already, but let me add:

(1) Science "states" nothing of the kind. Just because Laplace stated that in the late eighteenth century hardly makes it an eternal decree. In fact, scientists today do not agree on determinism.

(2) The deterministic principle you cite is indeed totally opposed to free will, if by "free will" you mean what philosophers call "contra-causal" free will, the idea that free beings can act in ways that are not wholly determined. But there are other kinds of free will, such as "compatibilist" free will, which states that you are free inasmuch as you are determined by yourself and not by others - and that is completely compatible with determinism, hence the name.

Contra-causal free will is the kind appealed to in the "free will defence" against the argument from the problem from evil, as Erik Mesoy did on the previous page. So if determinism were definitely true then the free will defence would certainly fail. But it doesn't follow that God does not exist, because -

(1) Theism does not necessarily involve belief in free will. On the contrary, take, for example, the Anglo-Saxons, who believed in God (and were converted to Christianity) but continued to believe very strongly in "Wyrd" or fate.

(2) There are other potential responses to the problem from evil. In fact, I think the free will defence is the weakest such response.

Of course, I find it hard to believe in a God who could allow people to make such ill-informed postings in such an illiterate manner, but perhaps that says more about me than it does about the universe!

 

[CurtSibling]

Plotinus, the colonel asked you to 'Beat That' - And you did: In fine style!



Good post!

 

[Plotinus]

Even roman historians such as Josefus (norwegian spelling) recorded that Jesus rose from the dead.
Out in the Sinai desert you can find stones carved with Egyptian-like symbols that record Moses parting the Red Sea.
The seven years of famine, when only Egypt had grain and no-one else could buy it for love or money, are noted down in Arabia.
See "Guds egen Signatur", norwegian book, for a lot more. Watch out though- it gets into numerology and foretelling towards the end. The first part is fairly well researched, however.

Actually, the Josephus reference to Jesus has undoubtedly been reworked by Christians at a later stage - no way did Josephus believe that Jesus was the Messiah, for example. It does look like Josephus did make a reference to Jesus at that point in his "Jewish Antiquities", but unless some incredible ancient manuscript is discovered we'll never know what he said.

I'd be interested to see some more concrete references for your other references, though... Unfortunately I have only one colleague who speaks Norwegian and I don't think her linguistic abilities might be up to numerology and suchlike!

 

[Plotinus]

Thank you, Curt!

 

[Colonel]

Moron. Allcaps and lack of spacing. Huge arrogance. ULUSE.

ok this is just a jackass statement i mean there is no reason that.

next u cant disprove my arguement for in the fact that you cant dis prove science next to answer the arguement someone made saying that god exsists outside of time, even though something lives out side of time it is still aware of time and therefor understands it but the exsistance that exsists out side of time is not possible as if it were it would just prove my orginal arguement even more.

ok science does say it its one of the most best ideas in Quatum Physics

next what u religon ppl keep saying is that we have TOTAL free will which u just contraticed so u made that arguement against urself

i have no arguement against the anglo saxon bit but it could just be said that they werent fully converted in which case they dont fully believe in there new religon

and as for the very last statement damn u religous ppl are *******s i mean fine u dont like my grammer so what shut the hell up that isnt the arguement u just think it strengthens ur arguement which it doesnt. and as for the illinformed part, i would like to know what u think i am illinformed about just because i dont believe as you do

 

[Plotinus]

Colonel, you're ill-informed because you seem to think that there is only one definition of "free will" in the world, and you further seem to think that anyone who believes in God must also believe that that kind of free will exists. Like it or not, the Anglo-Saxons didn't believe in that kind of free will, but they believed in God. The same was true of the Stoics and of a whole bunch of deists in the eighteenth century, not to mention Descartes, Spinoza... the list is endless.

You can argue against that kind of free will if you're trying to overthrow the "free will" defence for the problem of evil, and I think you'd be right to do so, but you can hardly claim that simply stating that free will does not exist refutes theism. You haven't proved that contra-causal free will does not exist - you have just stated (erroneously) that science disproves it.

And whether you like it or not, quantum physics does not entail determinism. You can see an introduction to quantum physics at http://higgo.com/quantum/laymans.htm and an explanation of the most famous version of quantum physics, the "Copenhagen" interpretation, at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/

Now, the Copenhagen interpretation could be said to argue against free will, in that it allows apparent randomness in events in the universe. Randomness is just as opposed to contra-causal free will as determinism, because according to contra-causal free will, free acts are neither determined nor simply random - they are something else! I think this is where the theory breaks down, because it is so hard to explain just what a free act is supposed to be.

Here is a link to a conversation with Richard Swinburne, who is a famous philosopher who defends not only the existence of God but free will as well - http://www.philosophers.co.uk/portal_article.php?id=33 I think that Swinburne's arguments are quite wrong, but bear in mind that he made his name as a philosopher of science, not one of religion. He doesn't think that modern science disproves free will, and in that, at least, he is surely right.

And if you not only make unwarranted assumptions in your post but end it with IWIN I think you can expect people to make equally trenchant comments back at you!

 

[Colonel]

I despair. How many times must I repeat this? God must allow evil in order to allow free will! I have not skipped the real question. I have answered it, repeatedly, and you have refused or ignored the answer. FREE WILL IMPLIES CHOICE. CHOICE IMPLIES MULTIPLE ALTERNATIVES. IF GOD DESTROYED ALL EVIL, THERE WOULD BE NO ALTERNATIVE TO GOOD. THE POWER DEMONSTRATED BY CREATING BEINGS WITH FREE WILL IS GREATER THAN THE POWER DEMONSTRATED BY ZAPPING EVIL THINGS.

i will use this to make my point, u say belif in god does not need belif in free will so read the above mentioned quote and now ucan either agree with my orginal arguement a few pages back it had something to do with why the devil would exsist if god did, or my arguement from a few posts up.

 

[Plotinus]

[Colonel] That's Erik Mesoy's view of it and his way of arguing that the existence of evil does not disprove the existence of God. If you look at my response to that on the previous page you can see that I think his argument is very flawed.

But just because he believes in God and free will doesn't mean the two have to go together. As I said, there are other ways of arguing that the existence of evil is not incompatible with theism. For example, you could argue that God created evil because, in some way, it brings about a great good. Some philosophers today adapt the theology of Irenaeus and argue that God creates evil deliberately to create a universe that forces us to think and to better ourselves (Origen argued something like this in the third century). Such a belief is completely compatible with the most hardline determinism you can think of. Again, I don't think it really works, although I do think it's better than appealing to free will as Erik Mesoy does.

So in the context of your original post, which was asking why God would allow the devil to exist - you might say that the devil does things that God wants him to do. In the Bible, that's exactly what he does - see, for example, the opening chapters of Job. Whether or not there is free will is irrelevant to that consideration.

 

[Colonel]

ok, if you belif god gave us free will then u believe that god infalable in which case the devil would not exsist and you would also believe that god knows everything, in which case god cannot exsist because if he knows everything he would know the future that does not allow free will ANY form of free will so either u believe that he exsists and is not all powerful and is not infalable\omnipotent and is not all powerful in which case there is no real point to belif or you believe he doesnt there is not other choice

 

[Plotinus]

Colonel, you should know perfectly well that you're presenting a whole series of false dichotomies there:

(1) Why should a belief in God's infallibility mean that the devil couldn't exist? As I said in my last post, it's perfectly possible to believe that the devil does God's will (either consciously or not). The notion that the devil is a kind of opponent to God isn't very prominent in the Bible. You seem strangely fixated on the devil as a disproof of God...

I assume that the point you're trying to make is that the existence of evil is incompatible with the existence of a God who is both perfectly good and omnipotent. If that's so then you need to explain your argument a little more fully - just citing the devil isn't going to be enough.

(2) Theists don't, as a rule, believe that God knows *everything*. They believe that he knows *everything that can be known*. Now, if there is such a thing as free will (I assume you mean contra-causal free will), it is possible to argue that truly free acts are intrinsically unknowable. Therefore, God can not know them, but still be omniscient. You might say that in granting free will God deliberately limits the boundaries of what is knowable - and therefore his own knowledge - in order to give his creatures more freedom. Why he might do that, of course, is another matter.

(3) I've already told you that if you define free will as being self-determined, that is compatible with determinism (obviously). Probably the most famous philosopher to develop this notion of free will was Spinoza. And since it is compatible with determinism, it is perfectly possible to know what a self-determinedly free being would do in the future, if you know everything. So if God gives his creatures compatibilist free will, there is no reason to suppose that he doesn't know what he is going to do.

The point you must understand is that most philosophers, on whatever side of the debate, define omniscience as "knowing everything that can be known" - just as they define omnipotence as "being able to do anything that can be done". Under these definitions, there are things an omnipotent being cannot do - such as make it the case that 2+2=5. "2+2=4" is a mathematical truth, a logical truth, one that could not be otherwise, no matter how powerful you are. Similarly, perhaps it is true that the actions of a truly free being cannot be known. Perhaps it is true that freedom and predictability are *logically* incompatible concepts. But if that is so, then even an omniscient being would not know the actions of a truly free being, without any damage to its omniscience.

In other words, you have to establish what you *mean* by all these things. What do you MEAN by "free will"? What do you MEAN by "infallible"? What do you MEAN by "all-powerful"? You can't just say "X, therefore Y, therefore I win". You have to explain what you mean by X, what you mean by Y, and why one entails the other. That gives your position strength and some kind of depth. The alternative is just shrill exclamations and assertions that are very hard to argue with because, in reality, there's nothing to them.

 

[FearlessLeader2]

... of concepts that have nothing to do with God, and are therefore strawman arguments against His existence.

Omnipotence-- Nowhere in the Bible is God described as omnipotent. I would think it safe to say He is supremely potent, in that no other is as strong as He, but even as a devout Christian, I can go no farther than that without backup from God. This defeats/destroys the 'rock so heavy God can't lift it' strawman, and Catholicism.

Omniscience-- See above argument on omnipotence. This defeats/destroys the 'existance of evil' strawman, and Catholicism.

Satan being the punisher of bad people in a firey jail, illogically acting on behalf of his enemy and being mean to people that think like he does-- The Bible says that the dead are conscious of nothing, so this entire heaven/hell bit is sheerest nonsense. This beats the 'inherent silliness' strawman, however, it also falsifies most sects and cults of Christendom, and Catholicism.

I find that most arguments against Christianity fail against it, but succeed handily against false Christianity. To that end I admire them, but their great success against what the world regards as true Christianity is unfortunate, as it makes life harder for real Christians...


Back to the matter of 'proof'...
Faith cannot be proven, only vindicated. The whole point of having faith in something is that one is acknowledging that there is no tangible benefit to doing so, nor any tangible reason to do so, but one is doing so regardless because the claimant to that faith is seen as trustworthy, and one is willing to risk them being wrong or lying, in order to claim those intangible rewards that logic and the evidence of our eyes say are vain hopes.

The god described in the Bible (the real one actually described there, not the false one 'interpeted' from there) is a trustworthy, patient, and loving god who wants the best for His creations. He is willing to be patient while we and Satan experiment with self-rule until it is demonstrated to be impracticible. Those of us who have faith in His intervention after that point will be rewarded with that 'best' that He wants for us.

The only proof that will ever be forthcoming re God's existence is the vindication of the faith demonstrated by His followers when Armageddon occurs. It will not be possible to demonstrate new faith after that point, only to acquiesce to the fact of God's existence and decide whether to serve Him or not. That will be harder for those who had no faith to do than those who did.


EDIT: changed 'word' to 'world' as intended.

 

[Colonel]

Omnipotence-- Nowhere in the Bible is God described as omnipotent. I would think it safe to say He is supremely potent, in that no other is as strong as He, but even as a devout Christian, I can go no farther than that without backup from God. This defeats/destroys the 'rock so heavy God can't lift it' strawman, and Catholicism.


ok this arguement in its self cannot be the very definetion of the word God implies omnipotence, you cant say that a being that could create a universe but could not be omnipotente, also the reason i dont agree with any arguement in defense of god is because of the fact that you have no scientific basis for belif. You cant prove he exsists besides threw religous stories which in themselves are not able to be proven, so untill someone provides some scientific basis for there belif, i refuse to follow blindly into the religous crap

 

[FearlessLeader2]

Omnipotence-- Nowhere in the Bible is God described as omnipotent. I would think it safe to say He is supremely potent, in that no other is as strong as He, but even as a devout Christian, I can go no farther than that without backup from God. This defeats/destroys the 'rock so heavy God can't lift it' strawman, and Catholicism.

ok this arguement in its self cannot be the very definetion of the word God implies omnipotence,

Loki was a god, but he was not credited with creating anything but trouble. A god is anything that is worshipped.

you cant say that a being that could create a universe but could not be omnipotente,

Sure you can. I can say that a woodworker can create a chair but not wrestle elephants, can't I? I just did, so I must be able to.

also the reason i dont agree with any arguement in defense of god

(No matter how well thought out, reasoned, or stated.)

is because of the fact that you have no scientific basis for belif.

Two things: 1) Why do I need one? 2) There is no scientific evidence against God, and plenty of faith-inspiring reasons to believe He exists.

You cant prove he exsists besides threw religous stories which in themselves are not able to be proven, so untill someone provides some scientific basis for there belif, i refuse to follow blindly into the religous crap

The openness of your mind is refreshing to behold. Re-read again, please, the section on faith from the post you quoted above. Left to right, top to bottom, take Tylenol for headaches, Midol for cramps.

 

[Colonel]

one loki was a polythesitic god and cannot be compared to a monotheistic religon because in that religon the power of there gods would have been spread over many gods,
ok um the wood worker part, he can wrestle an elephant possibley wont win be he could do it, next if there was a creature we thought to be god but was NOT omnipotent then couldnt there possibly be more then one of him, and if that were true couldnt he be dead by now maybe another one of his kind killed him. Also the reason i think anyone defending god needs scientific proof and not religous conjecture is because
1. in order to disprove god's exsistance one would need proof
2 there are many things in science that disprove parts of religon and a put alot of scientfic information and you have something to disprove god's exsistance as i have shown in other posts
Here are a list of scientific facts which disprove parts of religon and in which help to disprove gods exsistance
~Theroy of Evoultion
~the Quatum Physics idea i mentioned early (forgot the name)-disproves free will
~the fact that 2 people cannot create an useable gene pool to create a race (disproves the adam and eve story and the noa's ark story)
~now to disprove any type of religous event involveing the sky
-comets
-astroids
-metor showers
-astroid hitting earth
-comet hitting earth
-and if u believe in them even Alien's

 

[Blasphemous]

Colonel, even though I haven't found a good reason to consider the existance of a deity a viable option, your attempts at disproving this concept are not very successful and not very well thought-out.

 

[Colonel]

i am pretty sure my arguements are better then the religous fantics that have yet to even attempt to present ANY scietific fact to support there belif, and that in its self proves the fact that there is no actual proof besides u religous stories which in themselves are disproved by scientfic fact

 

[Saga of Gemini]

i am pretty sure my arguements are better then the religous fantics that have yet to even attempt to present ANY scietific fact to support there belif, and that in its self proves the fact that there is no actual proof besides u religous stories which in themselves are disproved by scientfic fact

Like Ive said before science cannot prove or disprove the existence of God, but neither can prove or disprove the existence of any moral or estethic principle.

now would you say those two dont exist?.