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.

[thebluetriangle]

Hi Goat and Zzyzx.

I happen to disagree, based on the statistical analysis. There have been a number of good mathematicians that have shown the 'bible code' to be pure superstition and fantasy. Open your eyes, and see it's wishful thinking.

There are mathematicians and statisticians on either side of the debate, all reaching the conclusions they desire. For this reason, any 'appeal to authority' (an informal logical fallacy in any case) is doomed to failure. I appeal to your inherent reasoning capabilities, in a spirit of open-minded inquiry. It's not difficult to see that a code exists. What is difficult is to accept the possibility in the first place, because the metaphysical implications are enormous.

God does not need to hide secret details in such a way that any large enough book will have the same predictions, that can only be found after the fact.

Once again, goat, you're trying to tell God what He can and cannot do. Just lay all your preconceived ideas to one side and look at the evidence.

I have a challenge to you. Using the bible code method, show me something that is supposed to happen BEFORE it a happens, and not something that it is rather obvious that it will happen too.

Use it to make a prediction.

Unlike the well-known equidistant letter sequence (ELS) codes, popularised by Michael Drosnin, the numerical code I have uncovered does not predict future events. On the contrary, it conveys a sensational message about events in the recent past, which had greater meaning than we had hitherto suspected. It also shows, Zzyzx, that many biblical prophecies, correctly interpreted, were essentially accurate.

The message itself? 9/11 represented the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the funeral of Pope John Paul II represented the resurrection of Jesus Christ and both events together represented, and were a manifestation of, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

thebluetriangle

[Zzyzx]

[thebluetriangle]

[Zzyzx]

[thebluetriangle]

[jamesearl]

[cnorman18]

Interesting. Absurd.

The original Bible Code research is much more interesting. Incidentally, Michael Drosnin's books are dreadful; he both sensationalized the research and failed to understand it. A much better book on the phenomemon--in fact, the only good book on it of which I know--is Jeffrey Satinover's Cracking the Bible Code.

The ELS phenomenon is more complex and nuanced--and equivocal--than has usually been presented. The phenomenon is not that one can find words and names in equidistant letter sequences in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible), but that related words show a tendency to be encoded at their shortest intervals in the same place. The first is true of any book of more than novella length, and is insignificant. The second seems to be true only of the Torah, and its significance, if any, is a matter of contentious debate even among those who believe it exists.

Later research seems to suggest that the phenomenon is neither as robust nor as objectively genuine as early research seemed to indicate. As far as I'm concerned, the jury is still out and may never come in. There is so much subjectivity involved in the selection of words and so much variance in the results--notice I mentioned a tendency above, which is arguably another subjective judgment--I think it improbable that the phenomenon will, or can ever be, proven to exist beyond doubt.

As a matter of interest, the phenomenon is believed to exist, again even among those who believe in it, only in the Torah. The Hebrew text of the Torah is probably essentially the same today as it was when it first reached its present form, with a variation of no more than a few (seven or fewer) letters. To anyone familiar with Jewish traditions about that document, and with the standard method of copying it, this will come as no great surprise. The text of the rest of the Hebrew Bible is a good deal less reliably accurate, and the New Testament is simply out of contention. Variations in the different extant manuscripts of those documents, even very early ones, are numerous and sometimes enormous. Some whole chapters do not even appear in some manuscripts, and substantial differences at the word and letter level are frequent.

The phenomenon described here is nothing more than a matter of cherry-picking and coincidence. Some may find it significant, for instance, that the Twin Towers resemble the Arabic numeral 11; it is probably equally significant that an open mouth resembles the Arabic numeral zero. In Hebrew, the number "eleven" would be written aleph-yud. Resembling -X'- in English lettering. The twin towers didn't look like that.

The writers of the Bible had no knowledge of Arabic numbers. Further, dates in the Hebrew calendar have no relationship whatever to the Gregorian civil calendar. The original Bible Code phenomenon invariably used Hebrew dating.

Classical Hebrew does not have separate symbols for numerals. It uses Hebrew letters--aleph for one, bet for two, and similarly for ten, twenty, and so on. It is similar to Greek numbering in this way (this explains, by the way, why the Greeks were terrific at geometry, but never developed algebra, or even arithmetic beyond the third-grade level in modern terms. Calculation with either the Greek or Hebrew numbering systems was incredibly difficult).

It is true that Jewish mysticism, called Kabbalah, sometimes uses a system called gematria; since every Hebrew letter is also a number, words have numerical values as well as definitions, and significant connections are found between words with the same value. This is never--repeat, never, as in not ever--thought or said to have predictive or historical importance, or any meaning beyond theological and moral instruction.

I have not bothered to look at the website linked here, nor in fact even read all of these posts with any great care; but even from the little I've attended to here, I doubt very much that this "new Bible Code" has any more significance than seeing a portrait of Jesus on a pancake. If you look for stuff like this, you will find it. It means nothing.

I remind the reader that I am a theist and a religious Jew.

Full disclosure; the original Bible Code research interested me, and was in fact the first thing that sparked my interest in Judaism and inspired me to read about it. The Codes are no longer of much interest to me, but Judaism has held my attention to the extent that I converted to that religion at the age of 50.

[Goat]

[LittlePig]

nine dog war

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.

I'm jumping in on this conversation pretty late, but out of all 13 pages (so far), I haven't seen what the OP is asking for. If the supernatural cannot be experienced/observed by the natural (as is sometimes said on this board), then no empirical proof for god or miracles can be given. But Christians and other theists tend to claim that the supernatural does indeed interact with the natural, although only in a peculiar way which avoids human detection, except sometimes when it is detected and properly identified as supernatural. These notions would need to be clarified a bit before anyone could know what empirical evidence for the supernatural should be. Much like God, it's hard to discuss what isn't well defined.

otseng

Part of the problem is that the OP is not clear on what the topic of debate actually is. I take it to ask, "Are there any logical arguments for the existence of God?" I respond that there is at least one, and I provided the thread with an argument that is "tangible" and "logical".

A causal universe is evidence that something was caused, not that it was caused by YHWH or any other god. Complexity assumes open-ended combinations of simpler elements, and it does not imply a specific source of the elements or processes of recombination. So your argument is a non sequitur.

achilles12604

Have you examined the infinate universes and first cause threads? How about the information about the resurrection?

The resurrection itself can't be 'proven.'. Unproven supernatural claims do little to prove other unproven supernatural claims.

First causes can be constructed in many ways, and the more elegant and self-consistent ones leave God out of it (IMO, of course).

achilles12604

One of my favorite quotes is from Renown Atheist Richard Dawkins during the discussion with Francis Collins for Time magazine. In short he admitted, like Einstein and Hawkings, that there seems to be a yet unknown common formula which could be used to tie the universe and everything in it together. I say this could easily be a sign of something outside of our universe, or better yet, an intelligence which organized our universe before sending it on its way.

Is TOE suggestive of something outside of our universe or that the material of our universe is made up of the same stuff? Unity and harmony do not imply a creator, only a common source of being.

biker

Oh really! Explain, in detail, your proof, beyond all doubt, undeniably, that God, does not exist?

You asked for it.

IF God is posited to experience sequential moments (via thought or action)
and IF God is posited to have always existed without beginning
and IF the past cannot be infinite at any given moment (see below)
THEN God (as posited) does not exist due to self-contradiction.
That covers the significant versions presented by theists. But the option of redefinition is available for the stout of heart.

If you have a hard time understanding why the past cannot be infinite, ask yourself how one gets to the present if an infinity of sequential moments have to elapse prior to arriving at the present (i.e. if there is no beginning, you can't get to the end). If the proof seems too 'intangible' to be satisfying, I can only say that God is too slippery a subject to offer anything more than intangible satisfactions.

-----------------------------

As an aside on the Bible code issue, any complex system will exhibit many patterns. If I throw dust on the ground and look hard enough, I will find my own portrait. It's simply a matter of connecting the right dots. cnorman18 mentioned something similar about finding a portrait of Jesus in a pancake. This is akin to what happens when artists 'render' a subject. They find meaningful patterns in material that is not conceptually related of its own account. The mind constructs meaning out of meaningless arrangements without the aid of pencils by exercising selective focus (this would be called the 'subtractive' method in art making). It says more about the mind doing the relating than the material being related. Books, letters, numbers, and the Torah only add another level of potential meaning and mystery to the process since the material being reorganized is actually a collection of symbols. If dirt was a language, my dirt portrait would be downright mystical. Any combination of symbols can be interpreted as meaningful. Hence the popularity of random, suggestive word combinations for rock-n-roll band names. Let's hear it for the Peanut Turtles!

[thebluetriangle]

Hi jamesearl.

You do not seriously think that the two towers killing less then 3000 people would have been prophesied in your Bible?The U.S has killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the middle east, why is this not 'prophesied'? How can this tiny pathetic event killing ONLY around 2500 people be worth more then hundreds of thousands of none-americans?

In terms of numbers killed, 9/11 was tiny. In terms of impact upon the collective psyche of humanity 9/11 was indeed massive. It was a staged drama, watched by the entire world as it happened, discussed next day by everybody in the world, a world that now uses the terms 'pre 9/11' and 'post 9/11' (almost like BC and AD) to indicate the subsequent change in the international political climate that occurred. 9/11 TV coverage has been voted (in the UK) as the most dramatic news coverage of all time.

9/11 also destroyed the aura of invincibility that surrounded the USA and burst the bubble of insularity that distanced it from the rest of the world and its problems, problems often caused or excacerbated by the USA itself. Tiny, pathetic event? I don't think so.

Also, What was the PURPOSE of the prophesy? Is there none?

I'm not sure what you mean by this question. Isaac Newton's view was that the purpose of biblical prophecies is to allow us to identify events after they have happened, so that we can understand God's will and can more accurately interpret the meaning of the event itself. I think I agree with that.

Do you believe The U.S is the chosen country of your God?

No. God is on all of our sides.

That americans are more worth then other nationalities?

No. But I wonder how you could have gleaned that from my previous postings. I'm a Scot, by the way.

If so, how do you explain the dismay the country is living in (poverty, violance, poor educated etcet)?

The USA is still, I believe, the richest country in the world. Some of this was accumulated by the hard work and enterprise of its citizens. Much, however, was gained from the exploitation of other countries. In fact, Americans have no compunction about exploiting each other, one of the reasons why the wealth is so unevenly distributed. Your poor are a stain on your collective soul.

The USA (and most of the rest of the world) has largely forgotten God and worships at the altar of mammon, despite being nominally religious. What do most people put their faith in? God's providence or financial security? 9/11 was a reminder of who is really in control. It was a finger pointing at man's greatest flaws: his avarice (represented by the twin towers) and his use of force to back it (represented by the Pentagon).

You are not serious?

Oh yes I am.

thebluetriangle