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Does God exist? (your opinion anyways.)

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Surely the means are not as important as the fact that He can do it.

 

Okay, I've got to jump on this.

For me, the means are far more important than a god having the capability. I see this sort of thing as a scientist, and if for some reason god were to exist, just knowing it existed would not be nearly enough; I'd need to know details.

 

You believe what you say is logical, but you're still trying to use your argument to try and 'prove' that I don't really 'know'. (even if you don't 'know' you're trying to do that) I feel pity for you.

 

Uh, I believe what I say is logical, but I'm trying to use my argument to prove a point? Isn't that the very point of using a logical argument?

 

The fundamental limit of knowledge is how much we can trust our experiences. We can be sure we're having them, but that's about it. We will always rely on a few basal assumptions, but the more and more we stack on top of those, the less sure we can be. The claim that god exists requires a set of very large assumptions to be made, what one might call the "leap of faith". If you claim to know that god exists, it implies that you can demonstrate your claim doesn't require this faith.

 

This is probably the best I can do to clarify what I'm trying to say.

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My answer is: Of course not. :lol:

We can never see ourselves as others see us. Even the mirror shows us in reverse.

.

.

If there was any logic in this world, it would be men who ride side-saddle, not women.

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That's the point, God doesn't seem to reveal himself to many people at once, and it tends to cause conversions when it does, making anyone not a believer not believe the people that have the knowledge.

 

Interesting, so what happens if someone who has visions/knowledge of the spiritual plane conflicts with your visions/knowledge of God? Do you immediately discount that knowledge as being credible because it doesn't fit into what you believe (this is the key word in these discussions) in something else, or call it hallucinations? And how do you know that the God who reveals itself to you is the one true God you pray too? For all you know, it might not be God at all...

 

I'm just playing satan's little helper here, since I've seen my fair share of things through conscious and dreams to have a firm enough stance in my knowledge. The beliefs of others aren't really of concern to me, so I don't get offended when conflicts arise in viewpoints, which happens a lot when my views get involved.

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Interesting, so what happens if someone who has visions/knowledge of the spiritual plane conflicts with your visions/knowledge of God? Do you immediately discount that knowledge as being credible because it doesn't fit into what you believe (this is the key word in these discussions) in something else, or call it hallucinations? And how do you know that the God who reveals itself to you is the one true God you pray too? For all you know, it might not be God at all...

Good question, but I'm not quite ready to put up a wall of text yet... (I'm not a writer, and a halfway decent explanation of my views on this would require a 5 page essay, minimum)

Don't insult me. I have trained professionals to do that.

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Large post incoming!

 

The way I see it, people that believe in God (or other deities) and claim to have a personal experience that "proves" the deity's existence, to be perfectly frank, have a hammer and are looking for a nail, and soon, everything looks like a nail (to stretch the idiom).

 

I'll give an example:

 

Let's say that there is this person with a deeply-seated belief that there's this monster that lives in a dimension next to ours that loves to eat single socks from a pair. This monster penetrates our reality to eat the single sock while you're doing laundry. Silly, right? Yes, I just made it up.

 

Now, let's say that this person does a load of laundry. After carefully placing the laundry in the washer and carefully removing all the laundry at the end of the cycle to make sure nothing is left in the drum, he notices that one sock is missing. To him, this is completely inarguable evidence of the sock-eating monster. After all, the sock is gone!

 

This person, however, is no longer interested in finding out what happened to the sock because, well, the monster ate it. Soon, there's a rank smell coming from the washer. Must be the smell of the waste coming form the monster.

 

Had this person been interested in finding out what happened, this person would've found out that, during the wash cycle, the drum holding the clothes had become off-balance, creating a regular open-and-closed gap between the drum and the shell of the machine. During the wash cycle, the 'missing' sock passed through that gap and fell into the shell of the machine. If this person dismantles the machine, he will find that the socks he fully believed, in his heart-of-hearts, were eaten by the monster, were, in fact, sitting on the ground. The smell that he was smelling was the wet sock(s) becoming mildewed over time and mold growing on them.

 

Now, a bit less outlandish:

 

Some people believe their residence or certain other buildings to be "haunted". They have unexplained (to them) feelings of dread or even physiological effects such as bleeding from the ears. The cause? No, not ghosts (sorry, Drs. Venkman, Stantz, Spengler and Zeddemore). Infrasound. Sound waves below or above the range of human hearing. Due to the rotation of the earth and tectonic plate activity (among other causes of vibration including traffic), pipes and such can resonate at such a frequency that a person cannot possibly consciously hear it but can still be detected by the sensitive organelles in the ears, throwing off the equilibrium and also glitching up the human brain just a bit (like spinning in circles for a bit and then stopping causes one to be dizzy and feel like they're spinning even when they're not). These sonic vibrations have an evolutionary component, as well, being that it's quite handy for survival purposes to be on guard when something like a tiger creates that kind of sound from far away though you can't hear it.

 

This infrasound can ALSO create vibrations in the human eye, creating possible glitches in a person's sight including amorphous shapes at the corner of your sight and when you turn toward it, it's gone.

 

The US military experimented with infrasound to induce panic in people such as the Viet Cong. And it worked.

 

Santa, as well (to go with the upcoming holiday season). Santa Claus is a tidy explanation about how neatly wrapped gifts can appear under the tree while the children are sleeping; a jolly fat man came into their house while everyone is asleep and provided presents because they have been good for the majority of the year. They don't realize the number of children receiving presents on Christmas morning all over the world would induce some pretty extreme physics upon Santa's sleigh because they have nothing to compare it to. They don't realize that it's the parents (and other people) that have shopped for many days, weeks, or even months, to provide for their children at Christmas time.

 

Back on topic, I have never seen any person's "personal experience" to be evidence of anything but vibrating pipes, missing socks, or presents under the tree: Lack of all the evidence leading to incorrect conclusions.

 

If you believe, that's great. Don't claim, however, that you have conclusive evidence when you don't. In the entirety of written human history, not a single piece of evidence has ever been provided for a single supernatural deity. In contrast, the vast preponderance of the evidence shows that deities are created by humans to explain what they feel they can't explain ("God of the gaps").

 

I have challenged many to provide the evidence they say they had and not a single person has ever been able (and many are quite unwilling) to provide that evidence. I find this to be quite telling.

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I don't believe in any God of any kind. The way I see it is if there was such a being why would he hide himself from us? Also most religions preach about peace and to quote one of them "love thy neighbor" but then go on to say apart from everyone who isn't like you they deserve to die. They also haven't changed for thousands of years some of them. But that's religion which isn't the question although it is related. In response to the question I cannot believe in a God that there is no proof of but as I am of a scientific mind if you can provide proof that can be checked and is viable I will change my opinion based on the facts in front of me

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To answer the question simply, yes. Now, for the longer, more complicated answer. I believe something that is sort of fundamental among most people. I believe that the universe is infinite, and that it is constantly expanding. This means that every combination of molecules and atoms exists somewhere in the universe, as well as certain areas that have different laws and that work differently than our location does. For example, somewhere in the universe, magic exists. Because of this, I believe that not only does God exist, but it is impossibe for Him not to exist. This goes for every other religion as well, even parody religions like Pastafarienism (not sure if I spelled that right) or the religion that worships an invisible pink unicorn. Now, even though I believe this, I don't believe in all of the ideals that were told to us through a religion's prophet. I think that yes, during that time, God may have felt that the ideals in the Bible were the right way to live, but humans used to think that the Earth was the center of the universe and that it was flat. My point is, opinions and beliefs change over time. During the time of Jesus, God was a more primitive being and believed different things than He does now. I keep using Christianity, but this is true with any religion. The deity worshipped during the days of it's prophet is not the same deity we worship now. At least, that's my opinion on the subject

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I have a number of problems with this:

 

The Universe may be infinite (or not) but that does not mean the number of elementary particles remaining after the Big Bang is infinite.

 

The number of possible combination of particles is definitely not infinite and is limited by the constraints of the fundamental physical laws and constants in the Universe. To date there is no evidence that these may differ in different locations, at least within the observed Universe.

 

Finally, any God, which is a product of this Universe cannot be God in true sense of the meaning - he/she/it will simply be an organism possessing powers appearing supernatural to humans (just as our ability to launch space rockets may appear supernatural to frogs)

 

frog_astronaut.jpg

 

 

:-)

 

Regards

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The number of possible combination of particles is definitely not infinite and is limited by the constraints of the fundamental physical laws and constants in the Universe. To date there is no evidence that these may differ in different locations, at least within the observed Universe.

So unknown metallic alloys in asteroids that we can only make artificially here on earth (as well as several new atomic structures which aren't even on the periodic table yet) is contradictory to that, neither is the difference between brown dwarfs and blue giant stars... We haven't even begun to map it all, but so far I have yet to hear a single "this is identical to all the rest" statement from an astronomer or true scientist. (a true scientist cannot ever state "there is no God"... It would violate the definition of being a scientist, and change it to being a religious person)

 

The only times I've ever heard that statement is when Atheists use it as "evidence" that there is no God. (even though the statement itself is false)

Don't insult me. I have trained professionals to do that.

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a true scientist cannot ever state "there is no God"... It would violate the definition of being a scientist, and change it to being a religious person

 

I totally agree.

 

Regarding the rest of "there may be incredible stuff in the Universe which we know nothing about" - that is also true but my main point about that was that any creature that developed/evolved inside this Universe, no matter how powerful or advanced it might be, would not be God but just an ET.

 

Regards

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A bit off topic, but who says the unverse ever started? Feel free to call me an idiot if I'm wrong, but I believe there's a theory that says the universe could have always existed but that it's existence is sort of like a wave. The universe expands, reaches a limit, collapses, and then repeats, or something like that, meaning that a deity would truly be a deity and not an organism.

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That theory has no evidence whatsoever to support it other than the fact that the universe appears to be expanding, and that it appears to be slowing it's expansion. Of course, that could just as easily be within the margin of error for the tests...

Don't insult me. I have trained professionals to do that.

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Actually the universe's expansion is accelerating, meaning that a "cyclic" universe or "big bounce" is very unlikely. In general, in order to take any kind of prediction about anything we essentially have to assume that the basic rules which the universe follows remain constant over time and space. If not, then no observations have any meaning because we would have no way to draw "borders" of where law B begins and law A ends. Any description modeling a change of physical behavior between two areas would in itself be a model of a rule set governing the entire system. There's basically no way to study the world without assuming that the universe can't simply change rules at any given moment or place.

 

Now, our model of these rules can be off enough that certain things could appear to be governed by a different logical system, but when that happens scientists generally take this to mean the models are incomplete, rather than attempt to create separate models.

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Now, our model of these rules can be off enough that certain things could appear to be governed by a different logical system, but when that happens scientists generally take this to mean the models are incomplete, rather than attempt to create separate models.

And yet we still get things like the "big crunch" theory being thrown around as an attempt to disprove God. (which interestingly enough is a being believed in by many of the greatest scientists in history)

Don't insult me. I have trained professionals to do that.

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Just remember that a belief in "God" does not necessarily equate to a belief in the Catholic God, or the Baptist God, or the Mennonite God, or the Methodist God, or the Episcopalian God, or any form of God that most self-identifying "Christians" would be inclined to recognize.

 

A scientist would not say "there is no God" because there are just too many definitions of God to make them all disprovable.

 

A scientist would ask the Believer to DEFINE God, and then observe and experiment to test whether the definition matches reality (it usually doesn't.*)

 

Since believers generally don't want to / can't successfully define God, we reach an impasse, and Occam's Razor implies.

 

*this is mainly because your standard definituions of God are inherently self-contracdictory.

He just kept talking and talking in one long incredibly unbroken sentence moving from topic to topic so that no one had a chance to interrupt it was really quite hypnotic...

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Very true, and then there are also those who can't define God as something that "scientists" would accept for a definition.

Don't insult me. I have trained professionals to do that.

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People paint themselves into corners by making their claims hyperbolic.

 

Take "omnipotent." It's a nice buzzword, but what does it MEAN? Well, taken normally, it means you can do anything, even the impossible. If I can even THINK of the idea, an omnipotent being can do it, even if it's impossible.

 

So you run into problems when I say "come up with a way that you can have free will and NOT suffering." Because clearly, the God-claimants say that is impossible. But an omnipotent God can DO the impossible. Which begs the question as to why a God who is both loving AND omnipotent can't be bothered to do the impossible (after already having done it SO many times, according to claims) to the benefit of Its creation?

 

A way out of this is to say that the God has to follow its own rules. But a constrained God is not an omnipotent one, because there are things it can't do.

He just kept talking and talking in one long incredibly unbroken sentence moving from topic to topic so that no one had a chance to interrupt it was really quite hypnotic...

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How about a quantum God - he has done everything there is to be done, possible or impossible. You need to observe each God's deed to collapse its wave function and fix it in reality. Obviously, in the real universe you can only observe the possible wave functions, leaving the impossible to remain in their superimposed eigenstates forever - so it's your fault as the observer and not God's if you can't see the impossible deeds! ;-)

 

Regards

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Take "omnipotent." It's a nice buzzword, but what does it MEAN? Well, taken normally, it means you can do anything, even the impossible. If I can even THINK of the idea, an omnipotent being can do it, even if it's impossible.

 

So you run into problems when I say "come up with a way that you can have free will and NOT suffering." Because clearly, the God-claimants say that is impossible. But an omnipotent God can DO the impossible. Which begs the question as to why a God who is both loving AND omnipotent can't be bothered to do the impossible (after already having done it SO many times, according to claims) to the benefit of Its creation?

Can and will are two entirely different words... Just because He can do something, doesn't mean He will do it. He created this universe to test us, and right now He's testing us this way. Doesn't mean He doesn't know the outcome, or that He can't come to the same conclusion a different way. (just a thought)

 

There are always going to be problems truly understanding an omnipotent omniscient being's actions, since we can not comprehend what it is like to be that being.

Don't insult me. I have trained professionals to do that.

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