Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
JuanDeFuca
Big Wall climber
Stoney Point
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 3, 2006 - 08:41pm PT
|
If you have no evidence why do you believe?
What purpose does it serve?
Is God some type of Psychological crutch when you suffer?
Do you really think an all loving all powerful God could sit by and let such evil roam the World?
If God is just sitting back and observing the carnage He is one twisted sick f*#k.
Juan
|
|
JuanDeFuca
Big Wall climber
Stoney Point
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 3, 2006 - 08:45pm PT
|
I just proved God does not exist.
Wow.
JDF
|
|
madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
|
|
To sharpen my question a bit: are you after scientific (i.e.: empirical) evidence? Are you after a deductive proof (for such are really the only "proofs")?
Could you prioritize your particular weighting of evidence? For example, would you prioritize this way: 1)deductive proofs; 2) experimentally verified, empirical statements; 3) cumulative case empirical arguments; 4) first-person observations; 5) anecdotal statements from third parties? Or something like that?
|
|
JuanDeFuca
Big Wall climber
Stoney Point
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 3, 2006 - 08:55pm PT
|
I do not think you can provide any evidence, but what ever you have will do.
Juan
|
|
madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
|
|
Uhhh... ok, Juan. Now I realize that this is a waste of my time. If your last two posts are to be believed, you really have no desire to think about this subject carefully.
There is a wealth of literature addressing the "problem of evil" (a trite rendition of which you mentioned). The problem of evil has been demonstrated (to educated, non-ignorant people) to have zero intellectual threat against theism. (The average person on the street, however, still finds it troubling.) The most famous and careful casting of the problem of evil was by Rachels, and that has been thoroughly decimated by Quinn (if you care to actually educate yourself on such matters).
It's easy to pop off with supposed theistic problems that are straw men or no longer seen as problems by people who think about such things for a living. It's as ridiculous as me saying something like, "Those stupid scientists. Anybody can see that fruit flys don't turn into whales!"
But... it's pretty clear at this point that you're not serious about this topic, so, I bid you good bye.
|
|
JuanDeFuca
Big Wall climber
Stoney Point
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 3, 2006 - 09:15pm PT
|
I am not interested in Philoshophical Mumbo Jumbo.
It would have to be physical proof of a creater.
If I was God I would have encoded it in the Big Bang Background.
I guess it comes down to
1. Did a creater create.
2. Does he take an active role in our lives.
3. Does he just like to watch.
Juan
|
|
cintune
climber
Penn's Woods
|
|
Hey Juan it's good that you are actually getting into this mano a mano with these theists, but if you keep it up they're eventually all going to tell you that you're just "not serious" and withdraw from the conversation, because, really, what else can they do? They Want To Believe. You want to know, and they can't give you that knowledge, because they don't have it themselves. They just have their will to believe, for various reasons, but it mostly boils down to denial of individual mortality. There is an entire industry of apologists who spin out endless reams of argument from authority on this unsubstantiated assertion that we can live forever, and that if we're good, we go to the big rock candy mountain in the sky. It helps to keep people in line, I'll give it that much. Some people like to read their horoscope for guidance every day, too. Whatever gets you through the dark night of the soul, I say. We'll all find out in the end. Treating one another decently while we're alive is just common sense because most of us prefer happiness to suffering. It's a no-brainer, and there's no need to dress it up in the form of divine commandments or anything else. Evil exists because some people are selfish stupid f*#ks. Simple as that.
|
|
Mountain Man
Trad climber
Outer space
|
|
So many assume God's mind is no different from theirs, so they judge Him according to their own minds.
I would advise them to love themselves beyond all limits, forgive everybody for everything, and behold the beauty of this earth that God has given us.
At the least, it will bring great joy.
|
|
Hurricane
Trad climber
Eldorado Springs
|
|
JDF,
Actually, your proof that God doesn't exist because of all the evil in the world and the fact that he could stop it, I agree, is a good argument against the beleif in God. Roughly it is:
1) God is omnipotent (all-powerful)
2) God is wholly good
3) God is omniscient (all-knowing)
4) Evil exists
5) An omnipotent and omniscient good being eliminates every evil
that it can properly eliminate
6) Therefore, God is either not omipotent, wholly good, or all
knowing because he allows evil to exist
7) Therefore God does not exist
Alvin Platingna a philosophy profesor at Notre Dame addressed this issue and is known in the philosophy world for solving this argument from evil in his book, "God, Freedom, and Evil" (about 100 pages long) in what philosphers know as the Free Will Defense, which shows that the existence of God is compatible both logically and probabilistically, with the existence of evil.
Roughly speaking the argument is:
God is omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect; God has created the world; all the evil in the world is broadly moral evil (brought about by free agents-namely mankind); and there is no possible world God could have created that contains a better balance of broadly moral good with respect to broadly moral evil.
If we our to love God, it has to be a freely given and not coerced or forced. To allow this freedom, one has to be free to do good and free to do evil. If God values this freedom of choice that could be at least one explanation why he allows evil to happen without interfering.
There is also a chapter dealing with natural evils (floods, hurricanes, etc. that is good)
Juan, I am still curious to know one way or the other, if you had all your questions and evidences for God and Christianity answered to your satisfaciton would you become a theist and follow Christ?
|
|
JuanDeFuca
Big Wall climber
Stoney Point
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 3, 2006 - 10:10pm PT
|
I learned much from Jesus when I read the book a Course in Miracles. You should really check it out if you have a real interest in Christ.
Now I seek a different path to the East.
Juan
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
Fear.
And I find the "you can't prove anything, so theism is as likely as anything" basis for belief not only highly dissatisfying, but - and I hate to join the other camp - nutty.
And Madbolter1, I have to express surprise at the description of your journey to the extent it seems inconceivable that anyone would have made it out to agnostic would then travel all the way back to Adventist. That smacks way more of inculturation and less of reason and logic. Now I can imagine logic and philosophy leaving one with a bent for theism, but to make it from a that general concept back to a specific implementation, particularly the one you started with? Well, that clearly had to have been objective voyage by any definition to have returned you back to your starting point.
And your background in philosophy no doubt lends itself to the intellectual hocus-pocus of skipping far simpler common sense levels of shared understanding that would, for most of us suffice for "proof" relative to there being any "real world" implementation of [anthropomorphic] theism. I personally find the idea beyond nutty - I find it a fear-based response to the the unknown and unknowable. It opens the door to the societal manipulations that separate peoples one from the other and acts as the root foundation of war and genocide.
|
|
Hurricane
Trad climber
Eldorado Springs
|
|
Juan, me too. I sought that different path out east as well! I moved out east to Colorado and am no longer in Cali. Ice season has already begun in RMNP, and there is still 80 deg days in Eldo as well!!
(no pun intended)
|
|
mike
climber
tahoe city, ca.
|
|
Cause and effects my friends.
In Ghasso
|
|
Largo
Sport climber
Venice, Ca
|
|
The curious thing about all this talk about God is that so few ever consider or can imagine that "God" can be encountered in other ways but through doctrine and beliefs. Most so-called spiritual paths are not built on beliefs or arguments or thoughts at all, but on practices that quiet your evaluating mind (i.e., the mind that evaluates what you already know). I suspect that most of those who demand proof would not bother to put in the difficult work to ever find out for themselves, hence their interest is by and large not so much an inquiry as an exercise to verify what they already believe: there is no "God." This natually leads to circular shuck-and-jive landing them exactly where they've been sitting all long.
I remember being at the LA Zen center years ago engaged in a discussion with an old Sensai and one student said, "I'm an athiest." The Sensai said, "Congratulations. Who are you and what is your life?"
JL
|
|
JuanDeFuca
Big Wall climber
Stoney Point
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 4, 2006 - 12:46am PT
|
The problem to me is the Damm Paradox, How can anything be real or exist? How is it possible to have a creation. How is it possible to have a beginning.
The law of cause and effect requires a cause.
I cannot understand the nothingness that would precede a creation.
My mind can not comprehend it.
We must exist in some temporal loop of space time, no beginning, no end.
If I had a Bong this could get really good.
JDF
|
|
JuanDeFuca
Big Wall climber
Stoney Point
|
|
|
Topic Author's Reply - Oct 4, 2006 - 01:08am PT
|
In our Universe particles suddenly appear out of nothingness.
How is that possible?
JDF
|
|
healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
|
|
The discussions of "deep" comsological and philosophical conundrums are a purposeful distraction in this discusion. I think Juan (and I'm almost frightened to say it) - and I - aren't looking for exotic proofs of logic; we're looking more for pedestrian and mundane "proofs" that clearly display the existence of an [anthropomorphic] diety.
Simple things - the modern day equivalent of a burning bush. Float the Washington Monument 100 meters in the air for a couple of days; rain loaves and fishes down on every Walmart parking lot in America at noon tomorrow; a day without deaths, births, or spam; write a message in the sky seen by all people and understood in all languages; resurrect JFK; etc., etc. Hell, turn my cat purple; my couch blue, or my Camry peach; bring home the troops; or, given I'm a pretty easy sell on the whole, having me climbing 5.14 without breaking a sweat for a day would suffice.
Again, I'm a simple guy with simple needs - no need for all these highly esoteric and complex explainations for why there are no simple concrete "proofs" that would be an undeniable shared experience among a number of people, recordable on video, and simple to understand.
|
|
Hurricane
Trad climber
Eldorado Springs
|
|
stzzo wrote:
I've heard Christians use this argument a lot. It doesn't prove that god exists - more like it attempts to prove that the "because there's evil" argument doesn't disprove god's existence.
Your exactly right and I agree with you 100%. Plantingna's argument doesn't prove that God exists but rather it shows that it is possible that the existence of evil doesn't disprove God's existence. That was the main point I was trying to make. Cheers!
|
|
Blight
Social climber
|
|
"Float the Washington Monument 100 meters in the air for a couple of days; rain loaves and fishes down on every Walmart parking lot in America at noon tomorrow; a day without deaths, births, or spam; write a message in the sky seen by all people and understood in all languages; resurrect JFK; etc., etc. Hell, turn my cat purple; my couch blue, or my Camry peach; bring home the troops; or, given I'm a pretty easy sell on the whole, having me climbing 5.14 without breaking a sweat for a day would suffice."
Demanding proof which you know doesn't exist (and you know because, well, you just made it up) is just an easy way out of looking at the evidence which is there.
After all, what better way to avoid getting answers you don't like than to say that you'll only accept specific imaginary ones which you do?
|
|
Blight
Social climber
|
|
In our Universe particles suddenly appear out of nothingness.
How is that possible?
Many things both in science and religion seem contradictory or impossible if you don't understand them.
But with a little effort and learning, you'll usually find that they're not really that difficult after all.
The mechanism whereby virtual (and real) particles "appear" out of disturbances in underlying quantum fields isn't really difficult or even very complicated. But you'd have to read, study and learn before you understood it.
You say you don't understand this principle, or how God could exist?
Well of course you don't. You won't listen, won't study and won't learn. Obviously unless you change that, you never will.
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!