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Author | Topic: I Know That God Does Not Exist | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sarah Bellum Member (Idle past 596 days) Posts: 826 Joined:
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I've always taken the position that if someone could define what a "god" is, then I could decide whether or not such a thing exists, or whether I could decide or not.
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Stile Member Posts: 4295 From: Ontario, Canada Joined: |
Sarah Bellum writes: I've always taken the position that if someone could define what a "god" is, then I could decide whether or not such a thing exists, or whether I could decide or not. A very reasonable opening position. This thread started itself as a "huh, I wonder if I can actually defend this..." thought I had once, years ago.Turns out, it's not too difficult to defend, and I haven't seen anything that would overturn it. Granted... it depends on the every-day usage of the word "know" for almost everything.However, it needs to be noted that the general usage of the word "know" when talking about God isn't the same as this normal every-day usage of the word. Part of this thread is about identifying that difference - that people use a special-pleading-different-definition of the word "know" when they say "You don't know God doesn't exist!" than when they say something normal like "You don't know McDonald's doesn't sell Sharkfin soup!" But, if we refuse to use the special-pleading-different-definition - and enforce the same definition of "know" for God as we do for everything else... it's pretty easy to know that God doesn't exist. It's the difference between "knowing" something because you think/feel it vs. "knowing" something because you've checked it.The caveat is to include the fact that "checking" something doesn't necessarily force it to be true. It can be wrong, of course... "knowing" something doesn't force it to be a part of reality. It's quite possible for someone to edit the words "Sharkfin soup" onto McDonald's menu even if they don't sell it... or remove them even if they do sell it. Which brings us to the other part of this thread: Being able to check against something is always better than being able to check against nothing.And the more, various things we can check against... the stronger confidence we can have in something being a part of actual reality. Which tells us that the fewer things we can check against, after scouring for things to check against... especially those we can't check against anything at all are very likely to be imaginary only.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined:
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've always taken the position that if someone could define what a "god" is, then I could decide whether or not such a thing exists, or whether I could decide or not. I wonder if even the most accurate definition of a god would be enough. There are "gods" galore all over the world and perhaps the natives of the local tribes could define theirs for you but I wonder if it would mean anything to you. I couldn't believe any of it until I went on a reading binge about religions. Well, I had already begun to believe, or at least suspect, that there was something supernatural since I was among people who had various such beliefs and even though I scoffed at them it eventually raised the strong possibility in my mind that there must be SOMETHING here for so many people to believe such things. This was in a university town and the people were university educated. It was the seventies when all this stuff was happening around me, the Beatles had sold many young Americans on Maharishi and that opened up the flood gates for many other Hindu gurus and other Eastern religions. I scoffed at it all but then some friends took me to a very adept astrologer who said the most uncanny things about me I'd ever heard. That started me reading about various occultic practices. From there I went to religions, starting with Buddhism and Hinduism but soon also the fringey mystical "Christian" practices. My emotional reactions got pretty intense as I was considering that this stuff could be real, and I started having supernatural experiences of my own, some of them rather scary, but all of which I think had something to do with that intensity of feeling. Some of it was llke emotions taken to the nth degree. But then there was the apparition in my room too, threatening to kill me, which was certainly independent of me. I invoked a "Christian" phrase I'd learned from some of the fringey stuff and it went away, but the hair remained standing up on the back of my neck. I'd been an atheist, I thought all the stuff people around me were getting into was pretty nutty. In fact I thought it was the death of rational llfe and civilization itself. Then here I was believing in all kinds of stuff I could never have imagined before. So many different weird supernatural things I had no way of sorting it out. But I kept reading and eventually made my way to more standard Christian stuff. C. S. Lewis was important of course, though now I think of him as a bit on the fringey side too. Just a bit though compared to all the other things I've mentioned. As I saw my trajectory leading toward fundamentalism I was thinking "no no no, not that, please God" but that is indeed where I ended up. Because it convinced me of its truth. Not experience, truth. By the mid eighties I was pretty much a Christian believer, but I didn't have a church for a few years after that. Christianity made everything clear to me. It's amazing that way. It explains why we are the way we are, meaning the Fall, being originally made perfect but becoming sinners because our original parents disobeyed God. That was a remarkable insight to my mind. Wars and murder and suffering in general need an explanation and that does it. Original sin. And the nature of God is spelled out in the Bible in a very convincing way to my mind as well as why there are so many other religions. People here dismiss it all of course. But for me I was led to Christ on a track that ultimately sorted between truth and fiction and the Bible became the definer of all those things. It explains all the other religions in the world too, the work of Satan to imitate God which he earned the right to do when he brought about our Fall. I really don't think there is any evidence of these things in the end except witness evidence, and if you refuse to believe the biblical witnesses who to my mind are unimpeachably trustworthy you will never find the true God. Or those who preach the Bible at least. You may find other "gods" of course. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Tangle Member Posts: 9489 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.9
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Phat writes: Granted I don't fully understand the reason for all of this unimaginable belief, but I do believe that something crazy is destined to happen... That's because you've gone a bit crazy lately.
God is unconcerned with the temporal death of the moment. We are nothing but clay to Him. The fact that a billion people starve to death is on us rather than on Him since it is not His job to play rescuer genie to a planet of bleeding heart whiners. So much for god the loving father. He's a total shit isn't he?
We were and are given the basic choice to trust Him or not...and evidently many of you secular humanist educated liberal whiners(sorry I'm on a rant ) accuse this hypothetical God of being unloving because He has the audacity to ask you to trust in His eternal plan and not run around doing what YOU think He has an obligation to do to "serve and protect" existing humanity with all of its own problems. You're describing a psychopath.
Perhaps God decreed that it must be that way because objective evidence would have led to a secular humanist minded unregenerated population to accept Him yet insist upon their own freedom to question and to doubt to remain in force. GibberishJe suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
God is unconcerned with the temporal death of the moment. We are nothing but clay to Him. The fact that a billion people starve to death is on us rather than on Him since it is not His job to play rescuer genie to a planet of bleeding heart whiners. Oh no no no Phat. Human being are made in the image of God and He loves us. Yes it was sin, our fault, that we suffer as we do but He wants us to do what we can to help the suffering because He DOES care. This is why Christians from the earliest days rescued infants and elderly and the sick left to die and gave them homes and institutions to help them, although I got this from books and can't produce the evidence to convince Theodoric. We are a special creation, not just "clay" to Him. It is Satan who keeps us all in the condition we are in. It is because the West became Christian, and I mean PROTESTANT Christian, that we have been so blessed with prosperity, all the rest of the world needs the gospel to get out of their poverty and misery, and that's why we send out missionaries. And now the Lliberals and others are disparaging this only way to help the world, disparaging our beliefs, disparaging the gospel which could make the West llke the third world with no ability to help ourselves let alone anyone else. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Sarah Bellum Member (Idle past 596 days) Posts: 826 Joined: |
But I just want to know what we're talking about.
I know a unicorn doesn't exist - if it's a magical quadruped with one horn. I know unicorns exist - if it's a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion.
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Sarah Bellum Member (Idle past 596 days) Posts: 826 Joined:
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Just because people believe something isn't proof. Even if a lot of people believe.
As for the "Fall" This goes against what you believe about the children not being punished for the sins of the fathers, doesn't it? Finally, what does "god" mean to you? If you're just saying that lots of supernatural things happened, but you don't know about the source, that's a different issue.
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Theodoric Member Posts: 9076 From: Northwest, WI, USA Joined: Member Rating: 3.7 |
That is my first response when people ask if I believe in their version of god. I ask them to define it so I can decide. Getting a coherent definition is very difficult.
Facts don't lie or have an agenda. Facts are just facts "God did it" is not an argument. It is an excuse for intellectual laziness. If your viewpoint has merits and facts to back it up why would you have to lie?
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined:
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Believing is not what I'm talking about. As you know, people believe all kinds of weird things. I'm talking about the WITNESSES that testify to the evidence for God. There's all kinds of evidence of God in the Bible, witnessed by lots of people. But if you dismiss all those people as deluded, as so many today do, you'll never get to the truth about God at all. Because the witness of the Bible is really the ONLY way to know the truth, about the true God AND all the other "gods."
As for the "Fall" This goes against what you believe about the children not being punished for the sins of the fathers, doesn't it? There are two ways to look at that. They are punished for their OWN sins no matter what, but there is still generational sin in operation too, meaning sin passed down from generation to generation through four of five generations, "OF THOSE WHO HATE ME" --meaning hate God. (Put "despise" where the Mad Censor has eliminated the word I chose). Don't ignore that phrase, it refers to generations of haters or despisers of God passing on their sins. However, I do need to read a good theology about this point myself but I'm sure of these two elements of it even if I don't quite get how to sort them among people. Generations of Christian believers do seem to have some protection from this effect though, just from observation. And new believers in a llne of unbelievers seem to be particularly subject to persecution too.
Finally, what does "god" mean to you? If you're just saying that lots of supernatural things happened, but you don't know about the source, that's a different issue. I wanted to get across the path I took, first through Satan's territory when I was still an unbeliever, finally to what I recognize now as the true God. Satan won the right to deceive humanity in general because he succeeded in deceiving our first parents into sin. His devils or demons became the "gods" of all the human tribes in the world, propitiated by gifts and sacrifices and in some cases human sacrifice. India has hundreds of millions of these "gods." They are all devils or demons. All of them. There are very few Christians in India and they are persecuted by the other religions. So that is what a lower-case "god" is to me, these spiritual beings that are evll and follow Satan, the fallen angels who disobeyed the true God. If you have more specific questions I'll try to answer them. There are still true angels who obey God and serve humanity, but they aren't "gods" and don't pretend to be God as Satan does. The true God is ominiptent, omniscient and omnipresent, and is the author of our salvation from sin and from the tyranny of Satan and his demons, through the sacrifice of His Son who is also God with all God's attributes, but became a human being in order to be our perfect model and die in our place so that we might have eternal life, which we could never have without His intervention. The God of the Old Testament is God, Jesus Christ is God, the Holy Spirit is God. All the other "gods" are demons. The Fall put us under God's curse in a world now inhospitable to us in many ways, including our being subjected to disease and death when our first parents started out immortal. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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Sarah Bellum Member (Idle past 596 days) Posts: 826 Joined: |
But you don't believe that stuff about people being punished for the sins of their ancestors. That's why the Constitution has that passage about "corruption of blood" doesn't it?
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
I'm not familiar with that phrase in the Constitution so I can't answer you about that, but yes I do believe that sin is passed on from generation to generation, you can even track it in some families. This isn't about being PUNISHED for the sins of their ancestors, that isn't what scripture says, it says we inherit the SINS of our ancestors. But you are asking about "gods," let's not get too far off into this secondary topic for now.
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Dredge Member Posts: 2850 From: Australia Joined: |
506.
Tangle writes: How do you explain a loving god that allows and has created death, disease and suffering? Well, as far as humans are concerned, pain and suffering are a result of the Fall. As for the pain and suffering of non-human creatures, there is reason to believe their creation is a process of moving from imperfect to perfect: "The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper's nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea."ISAIAH 11:6-9 How do you explain that the same God that allows pain and suffering also promises this? ... “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.” (1Cor 2:9). "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, "I am making everything new!" Then he said, "Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true." He said to me: "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son." (Revelation 21:1-7).
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Tangle Member Posts: 9489 From: UK Joined: Member Rating: 4.9 |
Dredge writes: Well, as far as humans are concerned, pain and suffering are a result of the Fall. Crap. Adam and Eve, talking snakes, trees of knowledge and paradise gardens are primitive myth. And the idea of condemning all mankind forever for a act performed by a distant ancestor is evil.
As for the pain and suffering of non-human creatures, there is reason to believe their creation is a process of moving from imperfect to perfect: Also crap. You god is incapable of creating perfection? Where are we then Life 1.0? Are we waiting for the next minor upgrade?Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona "Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android "Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved." - Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.
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Pressie Member Posts: 2103 From: Pretoria, SA Joined:
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Tangle writes: I was thinking about that too. According to some holy books, the few people who survived the magic fluddie were not upgraded at all. They pulled off the same cr*p as before the magic fluddie. Got legless, did incest, etc. Maybe a better idea would have been for Spookie to just poof away all chemical reactions producing ethanol and all sex organs instead of trying the magic fluddie. That must have been too exhausting for Spookie to be able to do, seeing that He/She/It had to rest after poofing all of that into existence in the first place.
Where are we then Life 1.0? Are we waiting for the next minor upgrade?
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Phat Member Posts: 18262 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.1 |
You guys are as nuts as I am!
Seriously, tho...*ponders how to defend argument*... First off, God owes humanity nothing. The fact that He even decided to work with us in allowing our free will to choose Him to remain intact is far nobler than simply taking over and making us obedient zombies. But lest this topic gets too far off the intentions of Stile, allow me to address him and reframe this discussion:************************************************************* Lets start at post#60, Stile...shall we? Stile writes: I think that I understand your position. You basically argue that if we rationally search for "God" (as popularly defined/described) and we use all rational tools and methodologies at our disposal and we don't find anything, we can logically and honestly use your conclusion. Am I right so far?
If we are going to define God to be the sun, then I would retract my statement. I can no longer say that I know God does not exist because the sun does exist and God is a bunch of chemical reactions in a ball of flaming gas that most certainly does exist. I would be wrong... and the search for God would be over. However, if someone does not accept such a definition and thinks that God is something more than the sun, something more along the lines of the popular definition of our times... then my statement still stands. I know that God does not exist. Stile writes: Yes. A pre-requisite is to be as honest as possible. Moving along...
I think it does stand up, although it does hinge very much on a strict definition of "how we know things" which comes from holding a personal priority on rationality and epistemology. ( honesty is kind of assumed as a priority in any sort of academic thought experiment, I would think?)Stile writes: Sounds reasonable.
I also think that the definitions I've provided do match the general usage of "knowing things" that we use every day.And I think that those who deny that my statement is acceptable are simply equivocating on the term "know" so that it means some sort of absolute-truth-sense for this statement... but those same people do understand that the term "know" does not include that same absolute-truth-sense when they use it in everyday language for other non-God ideas. Stile writes: OK. Keep in mind, however, that my agreement with your methodology presupposes that I won't be unduly influenced by my feelings. For example, in the past 3 times, I have attended a Spirit Filled Church, I have cried freely and unusually. No external cues led to this reaction. Bambi didn't die onscreen. Nobody whom I knew personally had died or was sick. Mom is still alive. My life, therefore, had no rational reasons why I would cry at all. I know myself and I know that I don't cry easily. So why am I crying so often lately??
When I started the thread, I was simply thinking of the popular idea held by our current society... That God is a rational concept of some entity that sits back and governs good things and helps out people who pray to Him and used to do grand miracles but hasn't felt like it since we started to monitor such things. But now I think it will hold for any and all conceivable definitions of God that do not include God being an inanimate object and do include God being at least "something more" than humans and relates somewhat to the popular idea held by our current society. And the proposal, of course, must be rational as well. stile writes: Yes, really. Why the heck am I crying so much? What is touching me?
As for God being something more than humans and relating to the popular idea currently held... if God is not such a thing... I think it is then honestly up to the individual asking to define what it is they mean when they use the word "God." I think I've attempted to make my definition of "God" as broad as possible, but I'm open to new ideas. After all, if "God" isn't what everyone uses the term as... how am I supposed to rationally frame a statement about it? This is simply obvious. The statement is a rational conclusion about the existence of God based upon the data we have and the rational analysis. How can we possibly make a rational conclusion about something if the thing in question isn't rational in the first place? If we are admitting that the definition of "God" is irrational in the first place, then there is no reason to say whether or not we know He exists because we all know that irrational ideas don't deserve any rational consideration in the first place. It should be noted that if we're going to define "God" as something like "that which cannot be defined" or "whatever God is if God actually exists" that these are irrational concepts and do not deserve any rational consideration. And, really, I do not understand an argument of the form "You can't say that because you are not considering the irrational!!!" ...um, really? Stile writes: Rationally I can agree with your logic. Emotionally is where my belief finds strength. Bada Boo Bada Bing, Go Figure!
I do not think that an as-yet-undiscovered-God is impossible. However, I do think the following: All rational concepts of God known to us have been tested and found to be false.It is impossible to test an irrational concept. It is impossible to test a concept that is as-yet-undiscovered. Therefore, we have investigated the idea to the best of our abilities.Therefore, we can rationally conclude that "I know God does not exist." Stile writes: My emotional catharsis is my primary subjective feeling that causes me to question my rationality.
I would ask for you to show me how any current data we do have is rationally indicating that God may exist in a certain place.Stile, responding to TrueCreation writes: You need to quit excluding your emotions from the data. More and more, I predict that people will be overwhelmed emotionally at future events. Of course many will jump right into religion without critically examining their beliefs....but I would argue that in times of crisis, belief becomes a better go-to crutch than logic, reason, and reality. Are you trying to say that in restricting my method to the rational, that I've excluded God from the get-go because God is necessarily irrational? That is, that God is necessarily an exception to the rules of nature? Therefore, I need to accept irrational ideas (your suggestions about using philosophical statements...) in order to "correctly" ponder this question? Edited by Thugpreacha, : No reason given.Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. ~RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." ~Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith You can "get answers" by watching the ducks. That doesn't mean the answers are coming from them.~Ringo
Subjectivism may very well undermine Christianity.In the same way that "allowing people to choose what they want to be when they grow up" undermines communism.~Stile
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