Is God based on “Facts” or “Trust/Faith”???

Before discusing God you should probably agree on what We are trying to talk about. Are we talking about some magical human like ultra being living up in the clouds. Because we as humans have the ablity now to veiw the earth from way up high outside of our atmosphere and we know no ultra being is ther. But wen were talking about mysterious forces like dark mater and the God particle and other invisible forces some of which they are begining to detect now that they still dont understand that seem to be out ther and involved in the expanding unvirse then we as humans and even scientist understand ther are forces beyond our comprehension that exist and arnt fully understood.....and they actualy do exist. Everything fits together mathematicly as if a design has been put together.

 

To me it is clear what the subject matter is. As far as there being some magical human like ultra being living up in the clouds this has not been seen as we humans explore our reason for existence. Soon mysterious forces like dark matter and the God particle will eventually be explained as humans evolve. Centuries ago humans thought the earth was flat. Some still do today. We wished to fly like the birds not much more than a century ago. Now we can circle the earth in less than 2 hours. Many unknown or misunderstood phenomena, the Aurora Borealis, earthquakes, eclipses, have been explained. Disease which once sent a person into recluse is now cured with a simple pill. As time passes and humans discover and learn the subject matter of this thread will lean further and further towards trust-faith basis and fact will be dispelled.

 

Right. The leap of faith. What the leapers are doing is placing a bet based on strong emotion or intuition, for which the heart is a metaphor. To me that might make sense as a last resort, if a decision must be made in the absence of evidence. Otherwise, I prefer hops of faith, from a foundation of evidence, reason and experience. I'm concerned that the blind faithers and anti-rational types can easily be manipulated and led astray by the demagogues who roam about the world preying on the vulnerable and intellectually compromised.

 

We are just a speck in the unverse and the rock we live on is a speck too, we are almost nothing compared to the the whole universe. Our brains arnt even complex enough to understand everything, and thinking we can is probably arragance on our part. You can solve something now, or in a 1000 years, but every day we find new things and make new discoveries and will continue to. Dude we cant even travel out of our solar system. And your trying to make God fit your definition of God, wich is why i asked define God and then we can discus that. Ofcorse there is no human like being walking around in the clouds, we got telescopes and can see that, so discusing a human like being walking in the clouds as God makes no sense.
Ps centuries ago some humans thought the earth was flat, but some humans were actualy tracking the movement of the sun, the distance from the earth to the sun, the measurment of around the earth and the time it takes to go round, ect

 

Alas, I am unable to define something that just doesn't exist.

 

So, scientists have discovered that a small race of humanoids ---approximately a meter tall that lived on an island in Indonesia as long as 700,000 years ago and maybe a million . Wonder what, if anything , they worshipped. And then merely 2000 years ago, a being comes along and declares himself the son of god. A little late to the scene, it seems.

 

Obviously. you have strong faith--in science!! Atheist Bertrand Russell once said mysticism and logic) that a truly rational person wouldn't expect the sun to be there tomorrow. You, however, purport to know what secrets science will discover in the future. I imagine this gives you a sense of confidence and helps you to sleep at night--as faith in God provides similar assurance to religious believers. I suspect that's one explanation of how human religions (and "irreligions") came about.

Science, in my estimation, is the gold standard of human knowledge, because it is based on rigorous testing of refutable hypotheses grounded in empirical evidence. That is its great strength, and also its weakness, since not all questions perplexing humans are susceptible to such procedures. We should draw a distinction between science and scientism, the notion that science can and will solve most human problems. I think when you're talking confidently about what science will discover in the future, you're in the realm of scientism.

Since God is supposedly ineffable, defining Him/Her/It is quite a challenge. Human concepts of God are not unlike scientists' concepts of dark matter or dark energy , which are "proposed solutions to as yet unresolved gravitational phenomena";
What are dark matter and dark energy, and how are they affecting the universe? | Scientific American
Dark energy is one of the biggest puzzles in science and we’re now a step closer to understanding it
Or the "universe from nothing", which proposes that matter comes from relativistic quantum fields without explaining where those come from.
On the Origin of Everything (Published 2012)
Physicist George Ellis Knocks Physicists for Knocking Philosophy, Falsification, Free Will | Scientific American
Or "multiple universes", which account for the apparent order of our universe, but lack empirical testability and falsifiability.
Does the Multiverse Really Exist? | Scientific American
Does the Multiverse Really Exist?
Opinion | A Brief History of the Multiverse (Published 2003)
Our Improbable Existence Is No Evidence for a Multiverse | Scientific American
Multiverses and Cosmology: Philosophical Issues
These metaphysical theories have the advantage to non-religious believers in accounting for the integrated complexity of the universe in completely naturalistic terms which would, if true, add to the body of scientific theory we've already identified through rigorous testing. There are definite advantages to science in seeking naturalistic instead of supernatural explanations for phenomena. I wouldn't want it to operate any other way. And yet too much confidence in it leads easily to scientism.

If you find such theories comforting or somehow compelling, believe in them. You might be right--or not. But they are metaphysics in scientific clothing. I personally see no reason to think scientific knowledge (in the wrong hands) might not destroy us before we can put such speculations to the test. But I find it useful to bet on science--and God--in coping with uncertainty and evil in human existence. I don't have the same faith in humanity, but there's at least hope!

Wow! Hard atheism! Haven't seen that for awhile. Most atheists I know prefer the "soft" variety--"I don't believe there's a God", or as Richard Dawkins prefers, "there probably is no God". Hard atheism, the claim that God "just doesn't exist" is a definite assertion about reality, and as every debater knows: (s)he who asserts must prove.

God, like ghosts, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster, belongs to the category J.W. N. Watkins called "haunted universe" doctrines (Mind, July, 1958). They are beyond the reach of science to disprove, cuz they are unfalsifiable. I'm inclined not to believe in the ghosts, Bigfoot, and the Loch Ness Monster, since the eyewitnesses impress me as flakes or pranksters. Carl Sagan made a good case against them in The Demon Haunted World. And my concept of the Deity is radically different from the Dude in the Sky most devotees seem to favor. But many intelligent people, including a majority of scientists, either believe in God in the traditional sense (33%) or in some kind of Higher Power, Universal Spirit, or Deist creator (18%) Scientists and Belief--the way some believe in dark energy and matter, abiogenesis, the multiverse, and a universe from nothing. They do so because of reasonable but unverifiable inferences about the nature of reality.

 

We, of course, don't know what, if anything, they worshiped or how intelligent they might have been. Some archaeologists think religion might pre-date modern humans, based on the burial practices of hominids like Neanderthals
New Evidence Ends the Neanderthal Burial Debate
New Evidence Suggests That Neandertals Buried Their Dead | Scientific American
https://www.science.orgdoi/10.1126science.337.6101.1443#:~:text=The stakes are high: Most archaeologists still think,who is not a member of the team
And more controversially, Homo Naledi, a creature who lived some 300,000 years ago in South Africa.
Claims that ancient hominins buried their dead could alter our understanding of human evolution
Did Homo naledi bury its dead? Debate rages over human relative.
Then, of course, we could debate whether or not burial is a good indicator of religious belief, even when accompanied by grave goods.

 

Better late than never! I bet you also don't think Santa makes it around the world on Christmas eve, delivering the goodies to every worthy boy and girl. Christian apologists will tell you that God is inscrutable, that to God a day is like a thousand years, etc. I don't believe it, although millions do. Taking an historical-metaphorical approach to the Bible, Jesus' birth around 4-6 BCE is plausible. Messianic fever was in the air. Lower class Jews were groaning under Roman taxation and the encroachments of Hellenism. Josephus, in Jewish War, identifies a dozen or more Messianic claimants during the period, including Judas of Galilee who led an uprising in 6 BCE against the tax supposedly brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem. According to the Gospels, Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, as well as the Son of Man, a figure in the book of Daniel. Whether or not He did depends on whether we trust the Gospels as accurate. I'm mainly attracted to the portrait and message of Jesus reported in the Gospels, accurate or not: the preacher of peace, love, and understanding for all, including society's rejects and least advantaged.