Does God Exist?

@RexRed,

RexRed wrote:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5Xx9IxlrEg[/youtube]

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@Frank Apisa,

"You ought really to be doing something other than arguing for the non-existence of gods."

Like what pray tell?

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@giujohn,

What if God were a billion times bigger than the universe? Could it work then?

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@RexRed,

RexRed wrote:

Last night I heard the best argument supplanting the idea that God does not exist.

Before I go into that let's set the parameters of what God would have to be to exist.

God would have to meet "at least" four main requirements.

1) God would have to be all knowing or omniscient. Most religious people think they know it all but God would actually have to KNOW IT ALL... This requires a brain much larger than the universe itself. Maybe the universe is God's brain. Consider though, an all knowing God would not produce holy books full of gaping errors in science and morality.

2) God would have to be all powerful or omnipotent. Although the universe has many forms of energy, the energy of God would have to be greater than all the energy in the universe and any other subsequent or parallel universes.

3) God would have to be everywhere present or omnipresent. So God would have to be both in hell and heaven, permeate all creation and exist also outside of creation.

4) God would have to be un-created, meaning, God did not evolve over an infinite number of years but simply is and always has been. Thus God cannot be an alien because an alien would have evolved from creation rather than be the catalyst for creation.

The crux of this discussion hinges on this one main point, "complexity"...

Do complex things i.e. God, simply exist or do they need to evolve over time and be designed by say the earth, moon and sun or other natural forces?

Humans are not the only designers, nature has the ability to design and nature requires no God to do so.

Most of science (physicists, chemists and biologists) adheres to the latter that complexity slowly and gradually over time develops from the more simplistic elements. The universe sprang out of quantum nothingness, chemistry sprang out of simple hydrogen burners (suns) going supernova and life sprung out of this chemistry and plasma emitted by exploding stars.

If there are scientific answers for the formation of the universe, chemistry and how life came into existence, then, where exactly does an omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent God fit in? What would be the purpose of such a God considering the universe did not need such a being to come into existence?

The question would be how did such a God like this proposed by theists and religion have ever come to be in the first place? What is the rationale for a God that was never created? It would seem if God was never created, then, under the same logic, God does not exist...

And if God created us in an image similar to their own then would that not make God also a form that was once born, evolved and grew from adolescence to adulthood? Do we not constantly change form over the course of our lives?

If God is all powerful why create a world that evidently evolved from the simplistic to the complex? Why wait billions of years for humans to evolve, why not simply wish fully evolved creatures into being?

It seems the God question is full of contradiction and holes in logic.

Could this be the nature of God to defy all logic, where the only thing that defies logic is that which creates? Is the nature of God absurdity? How can we be in the same image where we are extorted to be creatures of reason and logic but the thing which we are a mirror image of is illogical?

It seems evident that either the biblical parameters of God are flawed or the idea of God impossible. At the very heart of the God dilemma is the supernatural, thus science would have no validity under such conditions.

If God is superstitiously tipping the scales then the measurement of all matter both physical and metaphysical could never be verified by repetition and analysis. If this were the case then the constants of the universe would collapse due instability and light would not be constrained by physical characteristics.

This would be like having a yardstick that its bars of measurement constantly change. This is not the world we live in. Though physicists talk of time bending and light popping in and out of reality there are still natural phenomenon to explain these bends and ebbs in the fabric of the universe.

This discussion seeks to clarify both religious and scientific arguments for and against the existence of God.

I might add that, just because people choose to act out under the auspices of some imaginary God, that does not make this God real... Due to the radical and contradictory dogma of the religions it does provide many rational arguments against the existence of said God(s).

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@RexRed,

This is a typical materialist answer, Rex. Nice try, but what gives you the impression that if God exists He would be material, and therefore must be very complex and have a huge brain?

If God does exist (and I believe that He does), then he cannot be material, because God would Himself be the creator of all things material. He therefore must be other than material

But here's my argument for why God must exist. It's actually a very ancient cosmological argument.

God by definition would be the all powerful creator of the universe (defined as everything that ever began to exist).

Everything that begins to exist has a cause.

The universe began to exist.

The universe therefore had a cause.

In order to solve the problem (actually a logical absurdity) of an infinite regress of causes, we are forced to posit a necessary first cause to the universe, that itself was not caused. In other words, an entity that has the power, knowledge and ability to cause the universe to exist, but at the same time cannot be a part of what it caused. It therefore must be eternally existing.

That in essence is God; the necessary (out of pain of absurdity) first cause of everything that began to exist in the universe. It'then absurd to suggest that God, if He exists must somehow be complex, have evolved, and have an immense brain.

God is necessary. I would go so far as to say that on first principles of reason, God's existence is self-evident, and that atheism in all of its forms is rationally untenable. But that's another discussion.

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@brandonsays,

But there's no reason to think that everything that exists had a beginning. If that were the case, then your god would have to have had a beginning and, following your line of reasoning, its own creator. Unless you want to commit the fallacy of special pleading.

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@FBM,

Even a little understanding of how religion was established by the old cultures would lead to the conclusion that gods were created by man. Even the biblical stories have their precedence in Egyptian and Mesopotamian history.

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@FBM,

I was very specific in stating "everything that begins to exist has a cause."

This does not imply that a necessary first cause has a cause. What does not begin to exist does not have a cause.

I think we have evidential confirmation in Big Bang cosmology that the universe began to exist.

But on a higher plane, I mentioned the need to resolve the absurdity of an infinite regress of causes. In other words, if the universe is eternal and was not caused, then there would exist an infinite regress of causes in time and space, which presents a myriad of logical absurdities. The only equation that resolves that absurdity is that there exist a nexessary first cause that is itself uncaused and therefore eternal. It must be immaterial, or it cannot be a first cause. Again, I don't believe there's any rational way to escape this conclusion, which is why I believe God's existence is self-evident, and why I believe the burden is not on God to show us that he exists. The burden is on us to trust that our rational conclusions regarding God are valid against pain of absurdity. The rational person will when having examined reasons first principals, conclude that God must exist.

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@brandonsays,

But to assume there is a god without the ability of humans to understand the purpose of this planet is not rational, because humans give values about this unknown god that is not explainable. They are human values.
What happens on this planet is ALL NATURAL; it can't have any judgement about good and bad. Those are human values.

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@cicerone imposter,

Cicerone,

The origin of human morakity is another discussion altogether, which I'm interested in, but can we stick to the issue here?

I'm not talking about assuming there is a God. I'm talking about the only conclusion we can make in light of the existence of the universe and reason's rules against pain of absurdity. My first contention I will try to put more simppy for you. We don't get something out of nothing. Yet cerrent cosmological models indicate that all the matter in the ubiverse had a biginning. I.e, there was a "time" when nothing existed. Then all of a sudden things began to exist in a causal web, that has led to where we find ourselves now, in space and time.

Our rational sence causes us to deal with certai absurdities inherent in such an observation. Either:

1) The universe began to exist out of nothing as current cosmology implies, or,

2) The universe has always existed, which current cosmology appears to reject, or,

3) There's other universes, which contributed to the development of the current one, which current cosmology doesn't address, scientifically (perhaps speculatively) and which has precisely 0 evidential support.

Which would you put your money on?

So the conclusion based first on reason's rules, and secondarily on evidence, suggests that God caused the universe into existence. It is hardly an "assumption", but a logical conclusion on pain of absurdity. Other concerns, such as our ability to understand the purpose behind God's creation are secondary issues.

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@brandonsays,

I'm afraid not. There is no logical or empircal reason to think that the state preceeding the Big Bang was non-existence. And since time itself was included in that state, there is no reason to claim that it did not extend eternally into the past. That's a much more likely hypothesis than the existence of an invisible being with magical powers. Sorry, but no sale.

1 Reply

@cicerone imposter,

cicerone imposter wrote:

Even a little understanding of how religion was established by the old cultures would lead to the conclusion that gods were created by man. Even the biblical stories have their precedence in Egyptian and Mesopotamian history.

Yep. This is among the conclusions I reached when I was studying the history of the Bible, World Religions, etc, in university. I educated myself right out of belief. Wink

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@FBM,

Well, not exactly. You have to contend with infinite regresses, if in fact the universe is eternal. You haven't even begun to address that. Materialism as infinite. Hmmmmm.

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@brandonsays,

I don't think you quite understand what "infinite regress" means. There's no logical or empirical justification for the claim that time can't be infinite.

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@FBM,

Well, yes, there is. Have you heard of the "Herbert's Hotel" dilemma with actual infinites? I think there are other illustrations, but let's stick with a popular one.

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@FBM,

Btw, there could be no empirical objection to infinite regresses, because it is really outside the scope of empirical investigation. I think you will agree that it is a philossphical/metaphysical issue.

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@brandonsays,

The Standard Model does not forbid infinite time, rather it predicts the heat death of the universe and an infinite future. I'd go with what real scientists say over a book of Bronze Age myths, thank you.

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Quote:

Temporal finitism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Temporal finitism is the idea that time is finite. The context of the idea is the pre-modern era, before mathematicians had understood the concept of infinity and before physical cosmology.
...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_finitism

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@FBM,

The "Bronze age myth book" agrees with infinite future, so they at least got that right. As I already stated, the problem with an infinite past is not an impirical problem (so I would agree with you with regard to the "standard model"). But as I mentioned, it does have problems metaphysically. Care to address those?

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@FBM,

Evidence that Wiki gets thing wrong occasionally? Give me a break. Better sources are in order here.

1 Reply

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