Proving Thor Exist: Reason why the proofs of God fail. (page 4)

bohm

i just did. i prayed for beer. nothing happened.

now im even more mad at god...

Qcmbr

Either there are natural laws or there aren't.

If a god operated solely through natural laws then there is no need for that god since natural laws do not require a god (water will still flow downhill, stars will still explode, evolution will still generate new species.) Such a naturalistic god would be no more potent or unchallengeable than a very clever alien or human who had discovered the same natural laws.

If a god operated sometimes through natural laws and sometimes through supernatural laws then such a god has been meticulous is being passive and inert during the age of science else we would have seen anomalous scientific results that could only be explained by recourse to supernatural laws. While there are still many laws that we are only just discovering there has not yet been any effect that scientists have held their hands up to and thrown back to the pope. This absent god of the past cannot be claimed by those in the present (since that god is passive now and therefore exerts no supernatural influences) without belief in recorded records from the time when that god was not passive. As such all records from such time, including any myth, have equal claim to right since no one religious record is any more supernatural than any other. If creation why not sea of milk or lightning causing hammer.

If a god operated only through supernatural laws and not through natural laws then there could be no natural laws since all laws would have to be supernatural (all natural laws would be a permission of the greater supernatural law and therefore a subset of that greater law - just as magnetism is merely a manifestation of electromagnetism not a separate law.) Thus every thought, motion, good act, evil act, light photon, child rape, falling sparrow etc. would be caused directly through this god's express volition and we are nothing more than an extension of such a god and have merely the illusion of consciousness and will.

PSacramento

Qcmbr,

You are impossing our limited view and understanding of Nature on God ( if he exists).

Perhaps in the years to come our current view of nature will change and becoem obsolete, orperhaps not, either way I don't think we can decitate what nature is in absolutes since we don't know what that is, nor can we take that view and dictate what we think a being far beyond what we view as nature is limited to or responsible for.

bohm

Qcmbr: I think its a legitimate view that God is required to create the universe.

Very simple model: We are a big simulation that run on some computer God has programmed. Our "laws" are entirely natural (a program God does not fix), but they could not exist by themselves.

(its not what i believe, its just for the sake of it. This type of argument, where it all came from, is properly what has caused me the most concern over time)

PSacramento

These are highly philosophicla questions and are great to discuss but not really possible to go beyond a certain point.

Still lots of fun though :)

That said, you're wrong and I am right !

:P

Of course, one day we may find that God is simply the Universe "trying to speak" to us at some cosmic level or just an incredibly evolved "first one" the travels through time and space, who knows.

sabastious

Lightning is a bad example because we all have seen it and have had a similar experience while witnessing it's effects.

Nowadays, it's more like:

1. You cannot explain the connection with God you feel inside yourself
2. The Bible (or another Sacred Text) can explain why you feel that way and you have demonstrated it for yourself and continue to do so
3. Now that the phenomenon within yourself can be explained and demonstrated then it is real
4. Because your connection with God is real and demonstratable then God is real

In reality, all we can actually prove to ourselves is what we see and feel. For all we know, we are the only one in this universe that actually exists...because we completely lack the ability to feel through someone else's perspective...

God cannot be disproved because you cannot change the feelings that people have about God, nor should anyone question them.

That said, when someones belief threatens our way of life or the lives of others... that is another story.

-Sab

Qcmbr

..but it is important to educate people about where those feelings come from. I used to think I had really been attacked by a demon due to a sleep paralysis episode while a missionary. Without the additional help and education how was I to know any different. Until presented with medical facts a demon was actually the best explanation!

Religious people are generally deluded - I don't say that to be nasty but it is a statement of logic (since two fundamentalist religions cannot be true at the same time and at their core most religions are fundamentalist -even if in practise they seem otherwise- therefore the majority of religious people must be believing in something false.) If the majority of people who believe in religion MUST be deluded this suggests that having a belief in supernatural religious things is not a reliable standard for truth. I will happily throw in homeopaths, astrologers, spiritualists and Jedi into the same wobbly boat.

I think beliefs - even personal ones - affect us all and so it is vitally important to challenge each others personal beliefs. Personal beliefs have been expressed in society by making property of women and children, sold millions into slavery, allowed genocidal wars in the name of god, have robbed most of society of valuable resources, have created immoral laws, have retarded scientific progress many times, have contributed to the spread of modern days diseases, have sewn up little girls vaginas, force JW family's to ignore each other at the mall - need I go on. Personal beliefs always influence our surrounding society and who we allow ourselves to be led by will always out.

Qcmbr

Bohm - I've always liked the computer simulation idea - actually it is the only avenue I leave at all open for any god! I would still class this however, as my third category (a god who operates only with supernatural laws) since being the first programmer (and clearly 'knowing' the end hence prophecy) he is responsible for all natural looking laws by the use of purely supernatural ones - there would never really be a law of health (100 points reducing by 2 for every zombie hit) since that law could be altered if 1337 god increases the game setting to hard (100 points reducing by 5 for every zombie hit.) Simply put the natural law only operates within the parameters allowed by the supernatural one and is therefore only an expression of a supernatural law.

bohm

Qcmbr: Thats a good argument. i didnt understand it like that.

Ofcourse no theist would buy the analogy, God need to defy any explanation so it does not seem goofy :

Seb, i ofcourse only believe that lightning would be a reasonable argument in the context of 8th century science (and if your religion happened to contain a thundergod!). But i think that in that context it does not matter to the argument itself people experience lightning often. We also experience natural laws all the time, or morals, or whatever goes today.

wobble

The problem is, if you do not believe in my God, how can I get you to do as I say ?

That is what really riles believers and gets them going on threads like this, I don't really think they want us non-believers to join their ranks out of altruism. (Whoops, they will now claim that altruism proves there is a God).

I am open to all views that can be either proven, or at least thought of as rational, but no believers come up with anything cast-iron, so it makes me deeply suspiscious that there is,and never was a live "God"

Proving Thor Exist: Reason why the proofs of God fail.

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