Evidence for God...

by tec 251 Replies latest jw friends

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  jgnat

  I'm trying to puzzle through your motives for starting this thread, tec. I appreciate our mutual affinity for your peace at living with your faith even if it has shaky provenance. You are not demanding certainty where it cannot be found. Our difference, I think, is in your need for evidence. That's mixing reason with faith, which I am convinced cannot be done. Though I live by faith, I am also embracing my logical side and the associated pleasures of an ordered mind. I keep them apart as oil with water; mutually incompatible.

  I am further confused by your presentation to an audience, of which some will demand that reason be applied. Those who live by strict reason and observation will reject your evidence. It is fine for you, but is unconvincing to the outside observer.

  If you are appealing to an audience wider than the athiest, who are you trying to convince? From my worldview, this is the class of muddled thinkers who go by their gut and have considered only shallowly what drives them forward. I can barely speak to people like this, unless it is "Pass the bread."
• 

  InterestedOne

  Regarding the cosmological argument, here is a rebuttal. I think it's interesting how he points out how the argument begs the question.

  http://notungblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/my-rebuttal-to-william-lane-craig%E2%80%99s-opening-statement-part-ii-the-cosmological-argument/
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  jgnat

  So, putting my reasoning hat on, let's look at this argument:

  - Life does not come from nothing (or death, which is a form nothing). Life come from the living, and this is a universe of life. Not a universe of inanimate, lifeless, things. I can imagine that 'objects' -inanimate and lifeless - might, possibly, come from nothing. But living things must come from something living. There is no life in nothing, to spark life in something lifeless. To animate the object, so to speak... so that it becomes life.

  That we live in a glorious world brimming with life is awe-inspiring. I am settling in to a belief as Albert Schweitzer concluded, that the underriding current in religious aspirations is "reverence for life."

  What is life and is not life is muddier than it might seem. Take viruses, for instance. They are only technically alive when they come in contact with a host. So do viruses contain the Breath of Life? They come from 'nothing', or a dormant state that cannot reproduce, cannot generate, cannot move.
• 

  NewChapter

  His words are poetry, and convey so much better than what I tried to say about man not being able to think up something outside his reality, experience, sight, knowledge.

  What exactly about this god is not based on previous knowledge and experience? This god was made up and limited by the knowledge of those that created it. It did not come from the outside, but from the inside. There is not one trait that this god is attributed with that is not already evident in humans. There is not one bit of knowledge that this god had, that was not available to the people that created it.

  And you are wrong about one shade---humans CAN think up things beyond their reality. Fiction. The big questions, The WHY. That is what makes us different than other species. Had George Lucas ever seen a light saber? No. Do we conclude that knowledge of light sabers must have come from an outside source? No. We know that Lucas saw lights and lasers and swords---and he simply combined a bunch of known things with his imagination to come up with a new weapon.

  Your argument, Tec, does not acknowledge what humans are capable of. We can do more than take in information, we can build on it. We can CREATE. We can think symbolically. Why you insist that humans just could not have made up god concepts is just beyond me. I am creating a god as we speak.

  In a world full of fiction and science, music, art, literature, to hold the position that humans are incapable of making up gods to answer their questions is just---I don't know---closed minded? So let's think about gods. Why such a widespread concept (although NOT universal). Well it makes sense. In the human experience, everything created is created by humans. It is not a huge leap to come up with a superhuman that creates the larger things. Did you dream of someone who died? But you can't see that someone while awake? But they were there! But not here? So there must be some special 'there' where they still walk.

  Einstein thought thoughts that no one ever thought before. We are capable of taking in available evidence and extrapolating it. That's logic. Sometimes we start from a place of ignorance--and we end up anywhere. Sometimes we start from a place of knowledge, and the journey is more directed and supported. But to pretend that it is just impossible for humans to create gods and spiritual things is to deny that we are able to think creatively and symbolically.

  It is not adequate evidence. In fact, it is not evidence at all.

  NC
• 

  elderelite

  Tec my dear i gotta say.... You thread tittle promised evidance. Something concrete, provable, something that allows for soild belief.

  I havent seen anything that Comes close to proof. Im sorry tec.... Is there anything concrete, solid evidance, that is "proof"?
• 

  THE GLADIATOR

  Tammy, if you believe that Jesus communicates with you, then no further evidence is required. It is a personal subjective experience that you choose to share. Other humans cannot validate your experience, they can only relate theirs. Sharing involves telling others about your experience and makes the experience more vivid. Defending yourself against the challenges that sharing attracts, can help to strengthen your belief. Opposition helps you to define your belief.

  As a Jehovah's Witnesses I spent many years of my life debating with householders and insisting I had found ‘the truth.’ It turned out I was wrong. I can never again know such certainty. Fortunately I do not wish to be certain. I enjoy the freedom of letting go and allowing my mind to come to rest where it will.

  I have had many robust debates on this forum and criticized Christians for their apparent contradictions. It is a pointless exercise. I have learned that people will believe what they want to; they will only change if and when they are ready; opposition strengthens belief.
• 

  Flat_Accent

  Einstein thought thoughts that no one ever thought before. We are capable of taking in available evidence and extrapolating it. That's logic. Sometimes we start from a place of ignorance--and we end up anywhere. Sometimes we start from a place of knowledge, and the journey is more directed and supported. But to pretend that it is just impossible for humans to create gods and spiritual things is to deny that we are able to think creatively and symbolically.

  It is not adequate evidence. In fact, it is not evidence at all.

  

  That was beautiful.
• 

  ziddina

  I think this video may be appropriate here...

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iMmvu9eMrg&feature=related
• 

  still thinking

  I love the Ingersoll quote, Still. His words are poetry, and convey so much better than what I tried to say about man not being able to think up something outside his reality, experience, sight, knowledge.

  But to have this seeking for the spiritual... this conception of the spiritual... from a purely physical species?

  I am pleased to hear that you enjoyed the quote tec. However, I struggle to see how you can think it supports what you are saying about spiritual things.

  You appear to be contradicting yourself. In one breath saying that we are unable to think of anything outside of nature, 'therefore' spiritual things must exist for us to think of them....and that we are unable to imagine/create the idea because we are physical and know only the physical......but we can see that the god concept fits well within human nature.

  I fail to see your logic, when everything in the spiritual is just an extension of the physical, mans mind and imagination. It is not a new concept. It is not seperate from our thinking. You seem to disqualify man from being 'spirtual' in a sense. Spirit of course being his energy, emotions and desires. These are not different from the created god that we worship. He is a reflection of our needs and desires.

  If we are capable of creating the idea of aliens because of our desire and the world around us....what makes god or spirits so different? We know that our world exists, we know we are not the only galaxy, we know how small we are in the universe and that there is a possibility that life might exist somewhere else....logical.

  We have emotions, we have dreams, we love, we feel pain, and we were unable to explain the world in a physical sense. So it would be a logical step for mankind to attribute all these qualities and emotions to a protector, a father figure, a way to explain natural events with human concepts.

  A fear of death....would naturally lead to creating an afterlife. The hope of things to come and that life does not end. The thought that maybe we came from somewhere...so where will we be going? Human questions need human answers...'God' answers all these questions. And as the god concept evolves more and more qualities are attributed to him. Perfectly human in every way.

  For myself, the more I look at logic and reason, the less I believe in a god. But, I still have a remnant of belief. In what, I no longer know. So I have to come to the conclusion that belief is simply emotion that needs no evidence to support it.
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  sooner7nc

  The following is all the evidence for God that I have gleaned from this thread.