Infallible proof of god

Yeah, it's funny: there's no reason to believe, but there's plenty of reasons to say you do. That's probably how religion has survived so long.

 

I believe he meant he defended people's right to believe freely. Correct me if i am wrong but that is what i took away from his post.

 

Because of your persistence in attacking them. I'm a humanist, and as such, I believe that I should not require the threat of punishment in the afterlife to justify being a good person. You don't seem to agree with that. I feel like you're a Christian deep down, since, without the threat of retribution, you seem to see little reason to be nice to anyone. I hate to keep addressing your age, but I can't understand how you've managed to get to middle age and still maintain this massive ongoing bugbear about people's "idiotic beliefs". It wouldn't be so bad were it not so inconsistent. Why do you restrict yourself to slating Christian belief in the Christianity forum? Why aren't you baiting Buddhists for their idiotic beliefs? Why not Muslims? Seems to me like you're either inconsistent (idiotic?) in your belief, or you're just too pussy to take on a religion that hasn't been rendered incapable of defending itself.

And now, to turn the question though: Why is it that their idiotic beliefs need attacking???

 

Kindness is my religion! Of course the human mind is a very powerful thing and can be made to believe anything. I always thought that people believed in god to make it easier to deal with the thought of death. I personally feel beleiving in anything that can't be proven is foolish. But that is not to say that people who believe in god are fools. I love everyone on the planet, and everyone deserves respect, compassion., & happiness. To each his own. Cheers and Metta

 

So . . . the question is . . . Real, hard, physical proof of what?

What exactly do you want proven? What are you seeking evidence of? What is YOUR definition of God?

It is a question of consciousness. With all respect to you and your knowledge, no human being's experience is infinite, no one's perception is infinite, no one's consciousness is infinite. Logically then, no one can fully define all that does and does not exist.

Now, you can settle for nothing more than what you already know (which may very well be the greatest knowledge anyone has ever known), but what would happen if your definition of God, and nothing else, was confirmed with real, hard, physical proof? It would eventually prove to be as limiting as any prison cell.

If you are truly seeking proof of the creative, omni-transcendent existence, then you have to suspend your belief that there can be no existence beyond your own experience. You have to try to find out what that existence (the one you want proof of) actually is. Until you know how "God" defines itself, any proof will be meaningless.

Peace and Love

 

they could point at the horizon and ask you to employ logic.

 

lol

 

Yeah, that's kinda facetious, isn't it. The fact that every person in the world doesn't know how it was proven that the Earth was round does not mean that they shouldn't believe it. If it impacted directly on their daily lives, maybe it would be super important, although on the other hand, few of us really know how internal combustion works, yet most of us have been in a car.

This "man in the street" line of argument is one I've thought about myself. But I don't see that the two are comparable; again, it comes down to falsifiability. The theory that the world is round could have been disproven if it was not true. Such is the way with most things. To my mind, the notion of a creator will never be falsifiable if the creator is presumed to be omniscient and omnipotent.

 

wow, I didn't realize it was that simple.

one wonders why billions of people through out thousands of years stared at the horizon, employed logic, and walked away convinced that the world was flat.

 

It isn't that someone "shouldn't" believe that the world is round.

My point was just that many people have blind faith in something, that they themselves cannot prove.

 

And that is clear and true--an obvious point. So why so much disputation? For our next exercise, who can prove that neodude exists?

 

Well, the faith is in the knowledge that someone has proved it, and many others have concurred.

As has been said, all human experience is based on faith to some degree. Language is a prime example: we can never be 100% sure that something we have said has been understood by another person - we can only base our belief that we have been understood on subsequent communication.

So if I use a specific word, that word may be understood as meaning something different by you. I will not know until I have heard your response, and possibly not for much longer. Of course, this is all subconscious, and as we gather "evidence" of what words are most commonly understood etc., we gain a "working theory" of language.

If I have faith in physics to keep on doing its thing, that faith will, more than likely, go rewarded. So while I still rely on my faith that future events will resemble past events, I have evidence to support my belief.

And so it goes.

 

Proof of God would be the life and universe itself would it not? The human body alone is so complex. If you don't like the word God, and the word "higher power" is more exceptable to you, than perhaps you should focus on the word "higher power". Even though the word higher power, would basically represent God.
That's just my point of view.

 

Looks like SelfControl has lost, well has lost his self control. I kind of figured once you had backed yourself into a corner you'd start flaming rather than admit you were fighting a losing battle. I love it when I can see these things coming. It's a good thing you're good at flaming because logic isn't your strong suit!

 

I apologize. You're right that my post came out a bit meanspirited, in keeping with the general tone of the thread. I do believe that no one has conclusive proof of the existence of God. It's highly ambiguous. I posted some of my reasons for betting on a Higher Power elsewhere, but I thought I might share some of them with you. I prefer to phrase the question: what elements of life make me think that there might be apects of reality that seem to be outside prevailing naturalistic frameworks, and may relate to a higher level of being within and/or outside of us? (1)I'm impressed by the fine-tunedness of the universe, and beyond that feel it's remarkable we won the cosmic sweepstakes, that we evolved into beings who are aware of reality, when the course of evolution didn't have to go that way;(2) I'm also pretty impressed with the phenomenon of consciousness, the most immediately accessible reality we know. There is Chalmers "hard question": how and why we have this phenomenal, subjective reality we identify as us inside our heads. He asks, why couldn't we be zombies? In other words, what function does consciousness serve from an evolutionary standpoint. Various suggestions have been put forward that consciousness helps somehow to perform some sort of integrating function, but I don't get it; (3) I'm generally awed by the phenomenon of existence. Like Einstein, Carl Sagan & Julian Huxley, I find the vast complexity and reguarity of the universe awe inspiring, and I have the same feelings toward humanity;(4) I'm fascinated by the phenomenon of synchronicity that Jung was also intrigued by--the uncanny coincidences in our lives that I and just about everybody else has experienced. Of course, naturalists would say they're just coincidences, & over the course of a liftime, everybody will experience several of them as a result of sheer chance. There are also the kinds of "paranormal" experiences that I hear about from friends who otherwise are normal, level-headed dudes--being healed of a wound by sleeping overnigt in a pyramid, seeing auras, etc. I take them with a grain of salt and put them in the X-files for future reference. (5) There's also that personal life-altering religious experience I and numerous others have had, which in my case can be explained entirely in naturalistic terms. It's not so much that science could never explain these phenomena; it's that science doesn't seem to be interested in doing so. None of these is particulary "supernatural", but they point to Something Big Out There and/or Within Us.
It seems plausible to me that there is a divine transcendant order that gives our lives what keenness they have and inspired our idealism. I don't believe in a bearded Sky God who micromanages our lives. My concept of God is like the Higher Power of the recovery groups--something beyond the self, whether a Higher Intelligence or an impersonal force, or even the universe itself. But none of this is "proof" in a scientific or courtroom sense.

 

Yes, calling someone "pet" (a fairly common term of endearment in England) clearly constitutes "flaming", doesn't it. Perhaps instead of declaring me to have "lost" you could rise above these most heinous slurs, and answer the questions put to you. Obviously everyone else can see how flawed my logic is but I'm kinda slow and stupid and need these things explaining to me. I'm not seeing any obvious signs that I have "lost", if you must insist on seeing this as a "win/lose" situation, and I've asked relevant questions which you've elected not to answer. If it helps, take a moment to recover yourself; you seem quite shaken after the verbal blitzkreig of my flaming. Take your time. It's okay.

I have removed the parts you put in bold. They should not offend you anymore.

*waits*

 

The key phrase being "we know". For all we know, our species' consciousness is shitty and defective. Because it's the only one we have, we lack any points of comparison. It seems great because we don't have a better one (I'm ignoring people who've claimed to be on a higher state of consciousness for pretty much this reason; how would they even know?).

 

Yes and I'm quite certain that: “Maybe while I'm gone you could grow up a bit.” Is also a fairly common term of endearment in England as well and doesn't constitutes "flaming" at all.

I elected not to answer because you have called this dialogue off topic and tedious tangential but if you insist.

You see in your mind your mind you continue to misquote me. Because of that your whole argument on this point falls a part rather quickly. If I had, as you assume, made the statement; “Because it’s true.” Then I would then have the responsibility to prove or explain that statement. But the simple fact is I never made that statement! My having instead asked the question: “Because it’s true?” I have merely asked the questioner if he might know if it’s true or not, thus requiring no proof or knowledge on my part. It’s simple common English usage.

This is quite a difficult question that philosophers have been debating for millennium; I doubt that I could add any thing meaningful to the discussion. I would add that proof of truth seems to vary from person to person and topic to topic so that some people need very little proof and to some no proof is enough.

Actually this is your assertion; I just took up defending it after you made it. It just seems quite reasonable to believe what is true.

Here I agree with your opening statement and although I find what follows an interesting thought it does not logically follow from your opening statement but then you may not intend it to.

 

I'm just amazed we have any at all. What is its evolutionary function?

 

Jeezus, if we're seriously going to just tard around over semantics, I don't see why I'm even pretending to understand the sentence in the first place, since my spell-checker says it's a fragment and that I/you should consider revising it. I don't see how it comes to bear though: guy asks why he should believe something, you answer by asking him if he knows it's true. And you're saying that's a perfectly good answer?

You seem remarkably loathe to speculate on any subject. It's not that surprising this thread's ground to a halt really. I'd rather hear your opinion than be told that you can't be sure, because, frankly, I know that.

Again, all I'm saying is, if you know something's true, you don't need to believe in it. That's why we believe in God and don't believe in gravity - because we don't need to believe in gravity for it to work.

I really wish you'd stop talking about logic. Not because I think we should all just think what we want and there's no right answer, but because when, as is the case on the subject of gods, we don't have enough information to draw a conclusion, we use reason to proceed. If we all stuck to pure logic, we'd all just have to admit we don't know enough to answer, one after the other, and there'd be no point in discussing the matter. Reason allows us to speculate without ignoring the facts - to make educated guesses, essentially. So no, the above doesn't follow "logically", but logic is what's been running this thread into the ground; everyone's too scared of looking gullible or, god forbid, Christian by making a leap.