We know there's a God because...

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Say there were no Bible, no Qur'an, no Bhagavad Gita, no religious texts of any sort. How would we know just by examining the world around us that there is a God?

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I know that this is possible because a missionary friend of my family's met an old woman in Russia who figured it out. Her father was a staunch atheist, and there were no bibles available.I never met this woman, and it's interesting to try to tackle this problem; although different people might take different approaches. Odds are slim that I could replicate her reasoning on the first try, and the approach I have in mind isn't a likely candidate. But I know the problem's been solved before.

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For myself, I would approach this question by asking what differences might exist between a world created by God and another world that came about in the absence of a God. Which would be expected to have more wars, more prejudice, more disease, more disasters? Certainly we seem to have enough of these to suspect the possibility of an absence of God in this world.

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I'm interested in how others might approach this question, and what answers they think are suggested.

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It seems correct to look for things that should or should not be present depending on whether or not God exists. You mention some bad things, which at first thought might seem fitting to be evidence against the existence of God, or evidence for a bad entity being in charge. You also need to account for the good.Others have mentioned design, and complexity. I expect you either don't acknowledge design, or you accept simple crystal structures as sufficient evidence that complexity can arise on its own. So I don't expect to make much progress beating that dead horse in this thread.A more entertaining example is available. Look at how robots and androids used to be portrayed in the '50s and '60s, and then became emotionless. As more was learned about computers & programming, it became common knowledge that they're confined to logic. So how is it that emotions came to exist?Even if one imagines molecules evolving into men, those men would be like Data before he got his "emotion chip". If you want to employ "natural selection", you need to demonstrate that emotional behaviour trumps logical behaviour so consistently that it matches our observations. (We could go off into complexity here too, since emotions don't work right without a system of mood control glands & receptors, but that's not important to my point.)Last I knew, nobody'd solved the problem of programming a meaningful sense of "self" into a machine. I wouldn't be surprised to find a claim that it'd been done, but from what I've seen of AI claims vs. reality they'd have to show me the real deal. So don't nobody bother with links on this just to be argumentative.My point is that all the known laws of nature are logical. Any system built by nature would have no source of anything other than logic. Errors could creep in, but bugs in a program don't make it emotional.I can think of a few more things, but this will do for now. Why doth the heathen rage?

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The problem I'm seeing in this line of reasoning is that it looks at the system (i.e. nature) as a whole, and not at the individual parts, as if nature were undertaking a major project in producing life.

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Emotion is an individual part. It would have been more accurate and just as meaningless to say I was looking at an individual part and failing to see the whole.

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This is inherently the same as first assuming God to see if God exists: you have already assumed everything is a coherent, goal-oriented process.

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You must have someone else in mind. Nothing in my post assumes a goal-oriented process. I do assume the present is a result of the past - do you object to that?I never stated that nature intended to bring about emotions. Intentions don't even matter. Whether or not it is my goal, if I blindfold myself and wander around for a few days I won't find myself on Saturn.What I find is that if I assume the absence of God, there is no reasonable way to account for the presence of many things, and emotions are on the list.

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The theory of evolution by natural selection states that the various parts of the system are in competition with one another, not working together toward a specified goal. Thus, each organism (and some would take this down to the level of each cell or each gene) can be thought of as selfish.

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Your capacity to project selfishness onto things does not make them selfish. Is my car selfish for keeping its gas in the tank and not draining it on the ground? Or is it just doing what it must because that's how it's built?And if that's what the "theory" states, it's handily dismissed by observing ants, wolves, white blood cells, and tons of other lifeforms.

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If something else outcompetes you, you generally die off. Thus, nature favors the animal that is more aggressive, not the animal that is more thoughtful.

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That attempts to answer the later part of the issue: once emotions exist, how would they fare in competition? You're long on assertion and short on evidence. And you assume emotions would exist without explaining how they'd come about.

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Animals that crave sex do better at reproducing than animals that stop to try to understand why they should have sex.

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Really? I wasn't aware of that. Survival of the horniest, eh?

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That's where emotions come from.

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Oh, from assuming they're available and asserting that animals possessing them would "win the competition"? As groovy as this may seem to you, it's just not my bag.

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But the only change I'm postulating to the real world is that all religious texts (and the knowledge contained therein) do not exist. The world is otherwise just as we find it today. Would there be no new miracles, no new fulfilled prophecies, that men could observe and conclude that there must be a God?

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Part of this is precluded. Without access to prophecies, one would be unaware if their fulfillment.There are plenty of miracles to be found if one is alert. I've had at least 6 tires blow out on me, and I know other people who've encountered the problem. It frequently results in making a vehicle uncontrollable. But nobody I know has been killed or even injured as a result.Teenagers, and children in general do lots of things that should get them hurt or killed. The number who are actually harmed is very small - I'd call it under 10% of what it should be if the world were purely natural. And frequently the ones who get hurt are the ones that keep trying stupid stunts far beyond the point where they should know better.These things are habitually dismissed by those who desire another conclusion. In fact, there's not much choice: dismiss them or give up something they cherish. But it wasn't so long ago there was acknowledgement of "Providence" even among those who weren't keen on any "religious texts". It's a matter of opening one's eyes and mind, or at least declining to close them.

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People like me are in the habit of habitually dismissing subjective opinion. The miracle is that you had that many tyres blow out on you, they should have stopped doing that decades ago because of design improvements. But anyway, how many tyre blowouts occur before a fatality occurs to the driver? You haven't a scooby. As far as you are concerned it could be anything, meaning you have no idea if 6 is miraculous or merely humdrum.

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Mark

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You don't know what I do or don't know, so why do you even bother posting this trash? Are you limited to spamming insults, or something?

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You posted evidentially vacuous subjective opinion & claimed the rest of us can't see the evidence.

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Would it hurt you to be accurate? I doubt it. Might hurt your ability to feel like you've made an impact.I never said that. I said those who don't open their eyes and minds won't see it. I didn't place you in that group - you identified yourself as a member. If you choose to be a member it's one thing, but who do you mean by "the rest of us"?

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My point is that your "evidence" is entirely subjective, you have no idea whatsoever what the non-miracle state is compared to the miracle state. As such, you are utterly unable to claim anything as evidence of the miraculous.

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It's not very subjective - that's just your cop-out. It doesn't take a lot of brainpower to assess this. When driving, simply keep track of how much of the time it is safe to have a blowout, and how much the time it isn't. If you want precision, ride along with someone else, take notes, and use a stopwatch. Also, one shouldn't count any time when the vehicle is traveling under 35 M.P.H. because there's not enough stress on the tire for it to blow if it's properly inflated.As you advocate blindness, it is not surprising that you advocate a false method for studying the issue. Comparing statistics on how many people are injured due to blowouts vs. how many people are injured due to blowouts will give a null answer. Statistics on what the number would be in the absence of Providence aren't kept to my knowledge, and if they are I doubt one would be inclined to have much confidence in the agency publishing them.Of course this is only one example of the type of events an observant person can notice and evaluate. There are countless others; some are easier to evaluate and some are more difficult.

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I’m hoping that my response to the question wouldn't be epiphany but more questions.

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Fine. Here are some questions:
How do you know the motive of your "It"?
How do you know guts aren't desired, the best mechanism is desired, dictating your actions is desired, answering to your wishes is desired, etc?The last two seem to be in conflict. Have you rigged the result?

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Would it hurt to be accurate?

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Indeed! I said both things in the same paragraph in msg #48. Now you pretend I said one and not the other.ME:

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These things are habitually dismissed by those who desire another conclusion. In fact, there's not much choice: dismiss them or give up something they cherish. But it wasn't so long ago there was acknowledgement of "Providence" even among those who weren't keen on any "religious texts". It's a matter of opening one's eyes and mind, or at least declining to close them.

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This concludes my responses to your posts for now. I'm tired of this.

We seem to have established that there is ample evidence available in the world for even the underprivileged souls who lack access to the scripture to discover that a Creator exists.The predictable counter arguments are starting to come in, and they're not improving. The favorite trick is to assume from the start that there is no Creator. False assumptions serve to guarantee false results.It's claimed that persons who are astute enough to perceive the evidence will proceed to invent their own god. But why would they do so? Why would they not choose to seek the true Creator? Sounds like another baseless assumption, doesn't it?In the real world, God's Word is available, and it tells us that all who earnestly seek the truth shall find it.I have never in my life encountered a single argument against the existence of God that didn't rely upon seriously flawed assumptions. Will this thread be more of the same?

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...If I’m going to assume that the world is designed because it looks designed...

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That's actually a conclusion. It's based on evidence. Assumptions are the ones that have no evidence.

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So It is not required to obey my wishes, but merely to not intentionally deceive me.

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Why not? You've already reasoned a lack of love, but that still leaves the opposite available.It pays to examine all assumptions involved, and maybe try different sets. It's also good to try and see if evidence is available to support them so they can be promoted to tentative conclusions.I see your entity is singular, still extant, and concerned with people. Are you happy with this group?

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You mean this has been established in this thread? I don't think so.

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The opening post asks the question, "Say there were no Bible, no Qur'an, no Bhagavad Gita, no religious texts of any sort. How would we know just by examining the world around us that there is a God?"

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Can you answer this question? Iano appears to disagree that such evidence exists. He believes that unless God reveals himself to you that it isn't possible to know he exists with certainty.

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--Percy

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I have already answered it, and multiple methods of obtaining and following evidence have been presented.Knowing that things were created is a separate issue one would probably need to resolve before proceeding to try to identify the entity. I'm not sure Iano is talking about the exact same thing. Salvation is a direct revelation from God, but this isn't required to know He exists.And Iano hasn't been established as an authority in any case.

I already did provide the method.Oh! I left out the last little, self-evident step. Obtain a ratio by dividing unsafe time by safe time.Now this wouldn't be self-evident to one who hasn't yet been taught math at that level. Do you know what ratios are, or do you need a link?