Anyone got proof of God

[nine dog war]

I have heard all the retohric, the Bible versus etc etc etc

What Im looking for is proof to the hypothesis of God. I would love to see tangible proof or if not at least one logical argument. So far I have not seen nor heard either.

Please note the words "Tangible" and "Logical". If wish to use quotes from the religious texts then please prove the vadility of the source. e.g. If you quote from the Bible book of Luke please provide proof Luke existed and was not completly stark raving mad.

Blessed is the mind too small for doubt for it is easily filled with faith.

[LittlePig]

AB

This is the "elephant" in the skeptics room be ignored. You minimize the creation of God. But at the same time you can only suggest something occurred from nothing. Now THAT is the weak and fantasy opinion.

Weak and fantasy? How so? Compared to what? What elephant are you talking about?

And you way simplify "We don't know so goddidit". You totally misrepresent creation with this statement. For one, there is no "We don't know..so" If you are going to speak for the non-skeptic, please get closer to the reality.

Please explain. How do you know God did it? Rebutting 'you don't know' with a 'you don't know' sounds like a lotta 'you don't know' to me.

[Goat]

It may be wise to simply say, "We don't know how life originated" rather than saying "We don't know so goddidit". It is not of critical importance in our life to know the origin of life or of the universe. If we never know for sure how they came to be, our real life will not be affected.

This is the "elephant" in the skeptics room be ignored. You minimize the creation of God. But at the same time you can only suggest something occurred from nothing. Now THAT is the weak and fantasy opinion.

And you way simplify "We don't know so goddidit". You totally misrepresent creation with this statement. For one, there is no "We don't know..so" If you are going to speak for the non-skeptic, please get closer to the reality.

That, actually , is pretty damn near the argument that is being used. If you boil down your arguments, that is exactly what it simplifies to. Sure, some double talk and distraction is involved, but that is just to make you feel better

[bernee51]

Bernee,

Interestingly these 'chemical events' power a nervous system which underpins, in the case of we humans, a self aware consciousness. This consciousness is evolving. One of the mechanism which influences this evolution is enlightened self interest. Reason is a sub set of enlightened self interest.

What can you point to as support for your obviously firm belief that the chemical events that gave rise to these thoughts of yours are more "true" or "logical," or have any more significance than the chemical events that gave rise to your last bowel movement? What makes them more real and less a fantasy than the chemical events that produced your last dream?

Funny you should mention that (not bowel movements - fantasy). All our perceptions are indeed somewhat of a fantasy. They are mental constructs. All we make of the world happens in our mind. That our mind is a function of our nervous system is demonstrate dby the evolutionary procees that brought about the human nervous system. This evolutionary process can easily be seen in the very structure of our nervous system.

Your use of a syllogism prompts me to ask the question, yet again, "What, in your view, is 'reason' exactly that we should care about offending it?" What can you suggest to me is a basis for us to believe that the chemical events in Aristotle's skull have any relevance to the chemical events in ours? A dead Greek apprehended the syllogism. What therefore do syllogisms have to do with us--and why--in your worldview?

I base my worldview on attention to the mindful awareness of the happiness ans well being of all. 'Reason' is any action that supports that mindfulness.

I have the mind and character of God as a basis for my belief that there is a rational order and a moral order (respectively) to the universe, which Aristotle merely apprehended.

Correction..you have belief in the mind and character of god.

What's your basis for your belief in a rational order in this universe, that you mention "reason" and use syllogisms?

If you could answer the question "who am I?" the solution to this dilemma would be apparent.

There are consequences to rejecting the Christian God (and ONLY in rejecting the Christian God!), and in making one's self, and not the Word of God, the reference point for judging reality, one of which is the loss of a basis to believe in an omnipresent, immaterial, universal standard of thought called "reason" or "logic." Without the "Logos," as He is described in Scripture, there is no ground to believe in omnipresent "logic."

That is correct...there is no omnipresent 'logic'. And there is no danger in rejecting your particular version of god, any more than there is in rejecting Zeus or Odin.

You keep talking as if you live in a universe ruled by my God, and not the universe necessarily implied by atheism, which would be atomistic, chaotic, irrational, and objectively meaningless. The reason you do so is because you do in fact live in the universe the Bible says you live in, and are just sinfully denying what you know in order to retain your sovereignty over against His rightful claims on you.

You say it is ruled by god. I can see no need, reason or evidence that this is the case.

Every word out of your mouth presupposes that the Christian God lives and reigns, in that every word out of your mouth presupposes the omnipresent mind of the Logos referee-ing our respective propositions on the grounds of their logic or illogic. The same goes for every word out of your mouth that evidences a belief in an objective moral order by which you can condemn particular instances of wrongdoing.

I do not claim an objective moral order. I claim an evolutionary advantage to acting from enlightened self interest. Teh 'golden rule' is the reason we evolved first tribes and then communities as we know them today.

I therefore call upon you to repent of your sins--including denying the God you obviously rely on in your argumentation to be there--and to lay down your arms and embrace the terms of peace He offers you in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Do so and you will not only have forgiveness in Him, and life eternal, but finally have a basis to believe in the objective logic and objective morality whose reality you already give testimony to by your every utterance.

While I acknowledge and accept the strength of your belief, it is my opinion that you are mistaken.

Your religion is a clearly a product of cultural evolution. The scriptures you hold as the word of god are as mythical and metaphorical as any of the many others mankind has authored. The very god you hold so dear is clearly an concept that has evolved as humanity has evolved. This is not a decision I have come to but the conclusion arrived at after many many years of study, contemplative practice and self inquiry.


May you be happy, kind, loving and peaceful

[Robert]

Except of course, we have a lot more evidence. For one, when it comes to Julius Caesar, we have a lot more contemporary sources for Julius Caesar'ss, including his burial site, dozens of records from him , testimony from dozens upon dozens of sources that are relatively unbiased, AND we take all the supernatural claims about Julius Caesar with high skepticism. We take all the claims of him being God , and whose divinity was proclaimed by a comet as stories.

As for Abraham Lincoln, we have photos, we have his body.. and we have reports from hundreds of news papers that are unrelated to each other about his activities.

So, you are building one massive 'straw man' there.

It isn't a straw man just because you don't like it. What's more, when you suggest that my neural firings were illegitimate compared with yours on the basis of their having violated an objective, immaterial and omnipresent rule of "good thinking," you're living in the universe I suppose, not the universe you suppose. What's your basis to say that there is a Universal that governs our particular propositions, and where does it grow that you have touched it and therefore believe in it?

You're shifting your standards, which is to be expected. Re: Lincoln: MSS of eyewitness accounts from men we have never seen are no less "tangible" than photos of individuals we have never seen, and they are no more easily falsified, especially to the trained eye who has a large number of textual witnesses which to work. The nature of the evidence might be different, but not on the level of "tangibleness." You might prefer photographic evidence or newspapers to eyewitness accounts, but you can't do so on the ground of tangibleness (Lat. tangere: to touch). Also, we may have his body, but you haven't touched it, so why do you believe in it merely upon authority? Moreover, even if you manage to touch it, you can't touch his presidency, you can only touch paper that testifies to it.

On the matter of Caesar, you're kidding yourself on a number of levels. First, trying to find "unbiased" accounts from his time is a fool's errand. No one of that day was neutral about C. Julius Caesar, and anyone familiar with the subject wouldn't suggest otherwise. Second, the MSS evidence 'proving' his existence, or his deeds (e.g., his Commentaries chronicling his invasion of Gaul, which also is hardly unbiased) is accepted as history, even though it is much less well attested in the MSS than the NT, for our MSS copies about him are much fewer and much farther removed from the events than is the case with the NT--and those are two of the most important criteria for 'textual reliability.' Third, to reject the existence of the men and of the basic history is quite a different thing, and quite a different argument than merely rejecting the accounts of "supernatural" occurrences among those accounts. You could say, as most unbelieving scholars in Western history have, that you reject the supernatural but embrace the basic history--their standards regarding what constitutes history requires them to--but you haven't done that, and that shows your lack of familiarity with what constitutes historical evidence or a sound textual tradition of transmission.

So, don't suggest Luke didn't exist without more to go on than evident prejudice. Just make the argument that x or y or z event is 'impossible' and then deal as best you can with my attack on your basis to form that position.

Finally, you have only spilled a little electronic ink on the "asides" in my argument, and, sensibly, avoided the main points regarding methodology. I urge you to think about the thrust of my argument a little more.

Soli Deo gloria,

Robert

[Robert]

Bernee,

You have taken a little longer to reproduce the same product that you did when you presented merely two-thirds of a complete modus tollens syllogism, and that would be, not two-thirds of a good argument, but nonsense. Please take no offense at this observation. I have not come in here to humiliate but merely illustrate. I have come to illustrate that Christ owns his enemies, and that His light sends them scurrying into the dark corners of the kitchen floor.

The fear of the Lord is surely the beginning of wisdom. The unbeliever's thoughts are 'subjected to futility.' I have endeavored to prove the first statement, and you have volunteered proof of the latter. Only when a man believes in this God of the Bible can he talk credibly about things like logic and reason, only then can he begin to find wisdom. Where then is the debater of this age?, asks the Apostle Paul. He is in full flight before the light of the living Word.

All these points are made by the book you ridicule, yet they are clearly evidenced as utterly true by your behavior. The Bible is foolish? Was it foolish of the Lord to commit His truth to disparate men, to prophets and apostles, across 1500 years of time and allow it to be ascertained by later generations only through the imperfect labor of textual criticism? After a fashion of thinking, I suppose it is foolish. But as we've proved by our encounter, the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of men, for a man with his Bible can nevertheless, despite its putative folly, confound the 'wise men' of this dying age.

Where once you bragged about your corner on the market of "logic" and "reason" you are now forced to confess that your beliefs allow no room for objective rules of logic and reason ("there is no omnipresent 'logic'", you said) , and you are made to affirm now that all thoughts are fantasy. Wherefore then your pride and arrogance in ridiculing what you believe are merely the random evolutionary/social "constructs" of other multicellular organisms when all are equally fantasy or equally the product of random chemical and social evolution?

No, bernee, your behavior is not what one would expect to find in a mere multicellular organism, this taking of time out of your very brief existence to ridicule other multicellular organisms over their own particular random pattern of meaningless combinations of brain chemicals. Ridicule serves no articulable evolutionary function. You take the time to ridicule Christians and make (now obviously false) pretenses of "logic" and "reason" over against their faith because you are a sinner who wants to persecute Christ in his children. The Bible's explanation of this behavior of yours is much more credible than anything you can come up with from an 'evolutionary' framework.

I call upon you again to repent of your sins and lay down your arms. You cannot prevail against Christ. He has already won. Consider yourself a petty feudal baron in rebellion against a great King (as are all men of our fallen race). This King has declared you and all us petty barons guilty of death, but He has also made a gracious provision for our pardon and He has sent His emissaries to bear the tidings of this truce. The terms of this armistice are that you lay down your arms (your arguments), repent of your crimes, bend the knee, ask for forgiveness and try to add no terms of your own to this final offer of peace. You are surrounded by His power and you cannot escape. You will receive no other offer or chance. Reject it and you face His power and wrath. Embrace it, however, and you shall find not only forgiveness for your sins, but you shall be given eternal life with Him and you will be given a throne alongside that of His very own beloved Crown Prince. Only by surrendering your throne can you win a lasting one. Only by losing your life for for His sake can you find it.

The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.

Faith in Christ is not the death but the rebirth of your mind, and the beginning of wisdom. "I am the way, the truth and the life, and no man comes to the Father but through Me."

Do not reply to me, but consider. For I will engage in no more 'debate' with you, but I will, if you are interested, exchange personal messages or emails to explain the Reformed Christian faith to you and educate you in the Gospel of our Lord.

Soli Deo gloria,

Robert

[bernee51]

All these points are made by the book you ridicule, yet they are clearly evidenced as utterly true by your behavior. The Bible is foolish?

I did not say the bible was foolish - I said it was myth and it cannot be shown to be anything other than myth.

Where once you bragged about your corner on the market of "logic" and "reason" you are now forced to confess that your beliefs allow no room for objective rules of logic and reason ("there is no omnipresent 'logic'", you said) , and you are made to affirm now that all thoughts are fantasy.

Please show me where I was bragging, I was not 'forced' to admit anything. The fact that all we perceive is mental construct is an obvious one.

No, bernee, your behavior is not what one would expect to find in a mere multicellular organism, this taking of time out of your very brief existence to ridicule other multicellular organisms over their own particular random pattern of meaningless combinations of brain chemicals. Ridicule serves no articulable evolutionary function.

Please show me where I have expressed ridicule.

Is it within your beleif system to bear false witness?

Faith in Christ is not the death but the rebirth of your mind, and the beginning of wisdom. "I am the way, the truth and the life, and no man comes to the Father but through Me."

Christ also supposedly saif - "I and the father are one" He was speaking then of all humanity. God is closer than you think - look inside.

Ask "Who am I?"

Do not reply to me, but consider. For I will engage in no more 'debate' with you,

You cannot finish what you have not begun.

[Fallibleone]

Have I stumbled into an online church by accident? It's the sort of thing I'd do...

[Zzyzx]

.

Do not reply to me, but consider. For I will engage in no more 'debate' with you . . . . .

It is understandable that you would avoid debate with Bernee. He is one of the best -- and theistic debate opponents typically discover, as you may have, that they are "out of their depth" in public debate with such a strong adversary.

Preaching is not effective in debate – and it is not honorable to spam debate threads with sermons in lieu of sound argument.

[McCulloch]

The fear of the Lord is surely the beginning of wisdom. The unbeliever's thoughts are 'subjected to futility.' I have endeavored to prove the first statement, and you have volunteered proof of the latter.

You have not proven the first. I believe that the admission of one's own ignorance is the beginning of wisdom.

Only when a man believes in this God of the Bible can he talk credibly about things like logic and reason, only then can he begin to find wisdom. Where then is the debater of this age?, asks the Apostle Paul. He is in full flight before the light of the living Word.

Some of the world's greatest logicians have been unbelievers. While you may disagree with him theologically, you cannot consistently assert that Bertrand Russell did not speak credibly about logic.

I call upon you again to repent of your sins and lay down your arms. You cannot prevail against Christ. He has already won. Consider yourself a petty feudal baron in rebellion against a great King (as are all men of our fallen race). This King has declared you and all us petty barons guilty of death, but He has also made a gracious provision for our pardon and He has sent His emissaries to bear the tidings of this truce. The terms of this armistice are that you lay down your arms (your arguments), repent of your crimes, bend the knee, ask for forgiveness and try to add no terms of your own to this final offer of peace. You are surrounded by His power and you cannot escape. You will receive no other offer or chance. Reject it and you face His power and wrath. Embrace it, however, and you shall find not only forgiveness for your sins, but you shall be given eternal life with Him and you will be given a throne alongside that of His very own beloved Crown Prince. Only by surrendering your throne can you win a lasting one. Only by losing your life for for His sake can you find it.

The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.

Faith in Christ is not the death but the rebirth of your mind, and the beginning of wisdom. "I am the way, the truth and the life, and no man comes to the Father but through Me."

Thank you so much for that Robert. None of us have ever heard that message before. The clarity that you have made your point and the evidence you present to support your argument is astounding!

Do not reply to me, but consider. For I will engage in no more 'debate' with you, but I will, if you are interested, exchange personal messages or emails to explain the Reformed Christian faith to you and educate you in the Gospel of our Lord.

Did you not notice that this site is called Debating Christianity and Religion? The point of debate is to come closer to truth by examining the evidence and arguments supporting all sides of an issue.