Probability of the existence of God

It is sad that you feel that life has no meaning. I agree that we are extremely complex. It is also true that many of us have delusions of grandeur. But if you really think about it, life is very special. This existence that you and I have here on earth is meaningful.If you really look inside yourself, I think you will find a part that cannot be explained by science. You will find something that exists that cannot be explained through a series of chemical reactions. There is an awareness that life has meaning and purpose. There is an awareness that you are special.

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"There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be." - Charles Sanders Pierce

I'm not attempting to ride the fence.... I believe that Jesus is God. No it doesn't. It doesn't say anything about doubt. You're assuming that belief has no doubt and then quoting a passage on belief and claiming that it has no doubt. Your reasoning is most circular.I believe, and I have a little doubt. Its not big deal really. I'm just being honest with myself. I could claim 100% belief and say that I KNOW god exists too. I'm just not going to lie to/delude myself That passage doesn't say there is no room for doubt either And 100% means lacking the intellectual honesty to admit that it is possible that you could be wrong.Why are you unable to admit that? You're claiming that it is impossible for you to be wrong about god's existence. That's bullshit. Well now your just contradicting yourself...If its based on faith then it isn't complete assurance. Complete assurance is the lack of faith. Then your god is worshiped by droids.But all this pedantic arguing about semantics is ghey anyways.I feel I proved my case about being unable to have 100% knowledge unless you are not being honest with yourself.The question is why can't you admit the possibility that you are wrong about god?

Hello,I thank God that you believe in Jesus Christ. I really think are differences are only due to definitions.I quoted John 8:24 and Romans 1:23 to show that we are required by God to believe in God. We are told that we have no excuse. In other words, we are told that we have no reason to doubt!You say: and This is where I think we are getting off track from one another. You see I understand the Bible to teach that faith is being convinced completely about those things you cannot see. Where you say the exact opposite that complete assurance is the lack of faith. If we could agree on this one point, then I think are differences would go away.Faith and belief are two ways of saying the same thing. If you believe (verb) in something then you have faith (noun). If you have faith (noun) then you believe (verb) in something.The Bible gives us a definition of faith in Hebrews 11:1:This is from the New American Standard version of the Bible:Hebrews 11:1 - "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen."By definition faith means that we are convinced of those things that we cannot see (i.e. the existence of God). If you are convinced that something exists, then what probability would you place upon that?>>>>>>>In James 1:6, we are told that faith does not allow doubt.James 1:6 - "But let him ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.">>>>>>>We see this again in Romans 14:23:Romans 14:23 - "But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and whatever is not from faith is sin.">>>>>>>Therefore, the fact that I have faith means that I am convinced that God exists. I have no doubt.Therefore, the probability that I would assign to the existence of God is 100%.>>>>>>>If you assign a probability of less than 100% to the existence of God, then you are not convinced that God exists. You may be saying that it is probable that God exists. However, that is not Biblical faith.Biblical faith requires being convinced in God and His promises, and being assured that God will deliver upon those promises.

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"There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be." - Charles Sanders Pierce

Are you saying you never sin?

I have no doubt either - having faith unto 100% conviction. But I'm not sure that that need be the case for all Christians at all times. More relevant than the dictionary definition to my mind. But conviction levels do vary about things. To exhort a person not to doubt (and highlighting the downsides of doubting) appears to me to be accepting of the fact that people doubt. The context isn't really dealing with doubt as to God and his existance. Although 100% certain of Gods existance and my eventual salvation, there are times when I doubt. They are but momentary blips occuring due to my taking my eye off the ball. But they occur. You could say I believe 100% x 99.98% of the time... and spent the rest of the time wondering if this isn't all a dreamEdited by iano, : No reason given.

I don't draw that conlcusion but you are welcome to your own interpretation of course.But let's not quote mine the Bible for definitions. Instead, let's think about this rationally. A very high probability that can be ever sooo close, but never, 100%. That's circular too: "I believe because I believe."I know you believe. And you claim no doubt. I don't think it is possible to be both intellectually honest and without doubt. You are deluding yourself into a position of no doubt when you should be questioning your beliefs. How do you know it is God? How do you know that it isn't Satan tricking you into thinking that he is God?and you didn't answer my previous questions...

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And 100% means lacking the intellectual honesty to admit that it is possible that you could be wrong.

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Why are you unable to admit that? You're claiming that it is impossible for you to be wrong about god's existence. That's bullshit.

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The question is why can't you admit the possibility that you are wrong about god?

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By saying that its 100% you are saying that it is impossible for you to be wrong.And you didn't touch on how god giving you undoubtable confidence makes you his robot:

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And God does not allow those who truly believe in Him, to doubt His existence. Even if that doubt is only 1% or less.

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Then your god is worshiped by droids.

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Eh? I am convinced of God. I'm just honest enought to admit that I cannot know that God exist without any shred of a doubt nor do I refuse to admit the possibility that I might be wrong.

No.However, I try not to sin.

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"There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be." - Charles Sanders Pierce

I agree that the two verses that I quoted are not talking about doubting God and his existence. However, they are both indicating that faith does not include doubt.The first verse in James (1:6) is related to doubting that your prayers will be answered. In other words, we should pray with faith. We should be convinced that our prayers will be heard and answered.The second verse in Romans (14:23) is doubting whether an action we have decided to take is sinful or not (eating meats offered to idols). If we are to do something, we need to be convinced that it is not sinful. We need to have faith.In both verses, there is an indication that faith means we are convinced. Earlier you say you have no doubt, and here you say there are times when you doubt. When you say that you doubt, does that mean that you question the existence of God? And if so, what would cause you to do this?Is it due to an intellectual observation (If evolution is true then God cannot exist)?Or is it due to an emotional situation (If there was a God, I would not be going through this situation)?No reason for asking, I am just curious.Thanks

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"There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be." - Charles Sanders Pierce

You would be asking me to admit something that I do not believe to be true. I am answering this question based upon faith, not based upon intellectual logic.Intellectually, I could be wrong about the existence of anything.But from the standpoint of faith, I am completely convinced.Let us take a physical example. If I was sitting in my car, using your logic, then I could not say with complete assurance that I was sitting in my car.It is possible my car doesn't exist. It is possible I am psychotic. It is possible I do not exist. It is possible the universe does not even exist. There may be a million possibilities.However, I would still be completely convinced that I was sitting in my car. Based upon my perception, and my view of reality there would be no doubt in my mind whatsoever that the situation I perceived to be true was actually true. I could say with 100% probability that I was sitting in my car, and that would not be intellectually dishonest in my opinion.The same is true with my perception of the existence of God. It is possible I am psychotic. It is possible that I do not exist. It is possible that none of us exist. Again, there may be a million possibilities.However, based upon my perception and my view of reality there is no doubt in my mind that the situation I perceive to be true is true. I can say with 100% probability that God exists, and I do not believe that is being intellectually dishonest. Actually, in my opinion, it would be dishonest for me to say that I doubt the existence of God when I do not. I am not God's robot because He has not given me undoubtable confidence. He has given each of us free will. Each of us can make our own decision about whether God exists or not (and we do). I can choose to believe that God does not exist. I can choose to believe that maybe God exists. Or I can choose to be convinced that God exists. The choice is mine.I choose to believe that God exists! All that means is that I have faith. I am convinced (100% sure) that God exists.Thanks

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"There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be." - Charles Sanders Pierce

Then this faith stuff is just made up B.S. that is preventing you from maintaining intellect. And your opinion is wrong. Maybe you just don't understand what 100% really means. I think you're using it incorrectly because you've basically contradicted yourself. With those million possibilities, you cannot know, 100% that you're sitting in your car. It can be so close that it is negligible and using 100% could imply that so its not that big of a deal. And there's a difference in that we all can accept that cars and poeple both exists and that people can sit in cars. However, with the huge variety of poeple's gods that they all know that exists, and while they cannot all be correct, the chances of you being deluded are way higher than the chance that you're not really sitting in a car.Enough that people are gonna call you out for saying that you know100% that god exists, where they won't so much if you claim to be sitting in a car. I don't believe you at all. You could choose to believe that god doesn't exists but you can't admit that you don't know, 100%, that he exists!If you can simmply choose, willy nilly, that you believe that god exists 100%, then you are just making stuff up in your head and purposefully deluding yourself to believe the things that you think that you should be believing.I find this to be total dishonesty and an utter slap in the face of God. Hell, you practically just kicked Jesus in the nuts! That's bullshit.And if you've chosen this 100% belief, then how do you know you've chosen the right God? You could simply be wrong about which god you've chosen to believe, without a shred of doubt, exists! That's no where near 100%.

That's a relief! Welcome to EvC

Meaningful to us. "Meaning" is a human concept. There is nothing special about living vs nonliving matter.Nice of you to ignore most of my post and focus on how "sad" you are for me. That would be the "delusions of grandeur" part I was talking about.News flash: all of humanity is compeltely insignificant in the grand scheme of things. If all of us were to die out tomorrow, life on Earth would not stop. Hell, most life would do better without us messing around with the environment. On a grander scale, in a few hundred milion years when our Sun reaches its red giant stage and vaporizes the inner solar system including Earth, the Universe will not notice. Space will continue expanding, stars will continue to die and be reborn from the ashes of their predecessors, and the series of chemical reactions that were the essence of your life will have absolutely no effect on anything.But that doesn't mean that life has no meaning. Life has whatever meaning we assign to it. I place a value on my life despite the fact that my life is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. The fact that we are nothing more than an incredibly complex set of chemical reactions does not prevent that.Are there things about humanity that cannot be explained by science? That's a difficulet question to answer, since science isn't quite finished examining us yet. But we were talking about life, not specifically human life.So I'll repeat myself. There is nothing whatsoever that distinguishes a Hydrogen atom that happens to be part of a DNA molecule from a Hydrogen atom in a water molecule. There is absolutely nothing that seperates living matter from nonliving matter. In a very real way, non-living matter is turned into living matter as it is incorporated into living creatures for growth, energy, and reproduction - and that matter does not change in any detectable way. It simply becomes part of a series of chemical reactions that we identify as "life.""Life" is defined primarily in three ways: living organisms reproduce; living organisms have some sort of metabolism, though the methods of metabolization vary; and living organisms respond to their environment. We do not define "life" as containing DNA, because we have examples of both DNA that is not alive, and examples of life that do not contain DNA. There is nothing "spiritual" or "special" about life that we have detected or have required in our models (that is, everything we know about life works just fine without mentioning any sort of "spiritual" component, and we have no reason to believe such a "spiritual" component exists, so at best "spirits" are irrelevant and at worst nonexistent).Your "sadness" at my opinion over the meaning of life is a gigantic, irrelevant appeal to emotion. How you "feel" about reality is irrelevant, ironically just another series of electro-chemical reactions in your brain."Logic" and "reason" seem to be foreign concepts to you. You insist on a 100% probability of the existence of your specific deity, and when asked why, you respond with circular reasoning ("I have faith so obviously I am convinced," which as mentioned previously boils down to "I believe so I believe"). You ignore anything posted of substance and focus instead on an appeal to emotion. You make bare assertions with absolutely no evidence or even a rational chain of thought to lead to them.So let's stop the intellectual dishonesty. If you really think you can be 100%, absolutely certain of anything, whether that be the existence of a deity or even your own existence, you are being intellectually dishonest. There is an infinitely small chance you are a figment of my imagination, or being mind controlled by aliens, or living in the Matrix, and that everything you know with "100% certainty" is completely and utterly false. If you refuse to acknowledge this, you are unwilling to participate in any form of honest debate and are instead here only to have your own subjective beliefs preached back to you for your own personal validation. That's not what this site is here for.There is most definitely not a 100% chance of god existing. If there were even a 99% probability, you would be able to produce some sort of objective, observable evidence that suggests as much. You are incapable of doing so. There is no objective evidence in this Universe that we have so far detected that directly, objectively lends evidence suggesting a deity exists. In the absence of any objective evidence whatsoever, the probability of any entity existing is not 100%, nor 99%, nor 50%, but rather almost 0% - exactly the same probability of fairies, Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, goblins, trolls, zombies, vampires, werewolves, and His Holy Noodliness the Flying Spaghetti Monster existing.Absence of evidence is evidence of absence. It doesn't prove that the entity does not exist, but it acknowledges that, in the absence of any objective evidence whatsoever, there is no reason to believe it does exist.

You might agree that James' exhortation is aimed at Christians. In exhorting them not to doubt he presupposes they might be inclined to doubt. Otherwise there is no point exhorting them not to doubt.Given that a Christian can doubt, it follows that there will be different degrees of conviction between individual Christians.- Clearly it would happen at times when my faith tank is low. For faith is the substance..etc.As the amperage (substance) dwindles so does the motor (conviction)slow down. Why would that happen? God's discipline turning off the taps? Sin separating me from God? Worldy concerns gaining an upperhand? Satan getting his jollies?- Like evolution, God and his gospel can at time seems too fantastic to be true. Unlike God and his gospel however, there isn't enough faith (= evidence) in the universe to put the Humpty Dumpy of evolution back together again for me.

Catholic Scientist says: then you say: You say that you believe that Jesus is God. Then you use his name in an irreverant manner! Who is dishonest?Do you believe that Jesus was 100% convinced in the existence of God? Do you think that Jesus Christ was wrong when He claimed that God exists? What probability do you think that Jesus would place on the existence of God? How about his apostles, were they convinced?You are not convinced that God exists! You are not convinced that Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be! You lack faith!You say: You do not even understand what it means to have faith from a Biblical perspective.Because you lack faith you are attempting to attribute your lack of faith to others. You are in effect saying because I cannot have assurance, then no one can have assurance. You are even implying that Jesus cannot have assurance.I am convinced that God exists! I am convinced that Jesus is the son of God! I have faith!

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"There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be." - Charles Sanders Pierce

I think even Jesus had his doubts....He was made man and men have doubts. What do you think he was doing during his teenage years? Prolly trying to figure out if he really was the son of god. And if Jesus absolutely KNEW, then God cheated. That would make Jesus' sacrifice no longer a sacrifice. How easy would it have been to walk right up to the cross if you knew that you'd be fine anyways?Its only a sacrifice if he made a sacrifice, and knowing that everything was going to be okay anyways makes it no longer a sacrifice.Hell, Jesus even asked God why he forsake him.....And its like that sig I've seen around here:"If you know you're goind be raised from the dead in three days, dying isn't a sacrifice, its a painful inconveniece." No, I'm not convinced that God exists. I believe that he exists because of my faith. If you really know that God does in fact exists, then you don't need any faith at all. You know. Correction:I do not even understand what you think it means to have faith from a Biblical perspective. Only if Jesus was man. And yes, no man can know with 100% assurance that god exists. It is impossible. For you to claim that means that you're either crazy or lying. That or you're just using the phrase improperly. If by convinced you mean know 100%, then you are contradicting yourself.Faith is for things that you don't know for sure.

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And I see you've avoided those 'tough' questions I asked again....How do you know its god?How do you know you have the right god?How can all those people who have the wrong god(s), KNOW that those gods exist too?Edited by Catholic Scientist, : see ABE: