Does God Exist

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avalon
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Does God Exist

Post #1

Post by avalon »

Hey!

(Please don't delete this you can delete the other posts i doubled posted. Sorry)

Everyone seems to really not understand God. I am not saying I do but the concept is pretty easy. So this really gets me tense when people say God does not exist or does he exist?

Christianity never created the concept of God it is as old as humanity the concept of God and it is a valid concept and correct and extremely testable provable and will one day be answered. It is like gathering evidence for the existence of the invisible which some people did not believe invisible things existed until they discovered things which we cannot see in visible light or microscopic world.

Other societies adopted the term God because they like us believed and were correct in their beliefs and shared idols and stories of what they "think" God is. The term God developed and that is why people came together and stuck together because they wanted to get the Artwork the Idols, the stories in the undying curiosity.

So God is an alien, that is basically it in a nutshell. However it was said there are many Gods each dissimilar and they all have a nature. The Earth is not a personification of a Goddess, but she has a nature, and we refer to these Gods as Female, such as the Mother Land, or Britannia a Roman Goddess.

We all know Britannia exists it is so obvious we overlook it therefore it is proof of her existence and she has a temperate nature. Romans would ask what is the nature like of Britannia and they would describe her as magical, untamed, wild, armed with a trident, shield, with a dress blown by the relentless wind. This would be perfectly understandable by Romans not as some magical fairy in the sky.

There are other minor Gods the cause for everything around us an allegorical world view centered on all the things we admire and fear. Such as the folklore of ancient Europe about sandman in roman times it was called Hypnos his family were night, death and darkness, Hypnos was sleep. The power of sleep is very real and hypnos became the word for that altered state of trance in sleep which is real. But the myths around him are entirely metaphorical to understand in a short visual imagery to explain the word of the real phenomena. Rather than writing one hundred thousand words they wrote perhaps 50 words with imagery it is abstract thought.

This was Roman folklore called Mythology which was something to read in bed but did not believe as fact. They had philosophy to explain nature they didn't believe in the Gods as strongly as we believe in the Gods today. Cant you see that their beliefs in religion also transcend philosophy a creative way to explain what they think could exist, like aliens on other worlds. Likewise they didn't believe mountains were alive but they believed they existed and they had names for the Gods that created them to explain their point of origin of their creation.

That is why when you say does the Hebrew God exist, well just look at what happened to the Jewish people they were slaughtered throughout their history. And the story goes that the Jews killed his son... Get it now. The Gods exist but they might not be exactly like us..

You don't have to be alive to exist, you don't have to be sentient to be alive, you don't have to be intelligent to be sentient. The question is does God exist and well yes we know the Gods do exist, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Mars and well that is a modern thing but used exactly as Romans and Greeks would use the term a naming convention. But they didn't worship planets like people say they do, they merely honored them like today.

Does God exist, yes, did he create the universe, yes, is he omnipotent, yes, is he everywhere, yes, however is the Jewish God, the primordial creator deity. As i believed the Jewish God was the God of war and just look at the Israelite jewish history slaughtered by their enemies, brutalized and enslaved and exiled for their history. That is because the story goes that they the Jewish people killed the son of God.

I think this is an open and shut case

My question is what do people mean, when they ask does God exist? If i say does something exist and I don't understand what they refer to it is not evidence for the non-existence of something then push the onus of blame on me to prove something i have no idea what your referring to.

Now if you say does Jehova, Yahweh, Elohim exist? Well why dont you define what i am looking for. Who is that God you refer to? Because we know the universe exists and that is God they were referring to as the creator and he is masculine and created himself.

Now that is where the debate begins :) Who is God? What is God? Then I can say well perhaps there is no God at all except for within our imagination. And we should not worship any created being. So please define God so i can understand if it is provable.
Last edited by avalon on Tue Sep 24, 2019 10:38 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Does God Exist

Post #11

Post by mgb »

avalon wrote:My question is what do people mean, when they ask does God exist? If i say does something exist and I don't understand what they refer to it is not evidence for the non-existence of something then push the onus of blame on me to prove something i have no idea what your referring to.
Existence is not a property of God or of anything else. God is existence. This is easy to show. If X has the property 'existence' we have two things, X and existence. Now, the question is, does X exist? There are two answers;

(1). X exists.
In this case, existence as a property of X is superfluous since X exists in and of itself. X is existence.

(2). X does not exist.
It is incoherent to say a non existent X has a property, let alone that of existence.

This means existence is not a property of anything. Whence, God and existence are the same thing.

In the beginning there is primordial existence/God. God creates and through creation emerges into being, which is more than existence. Being is life.

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Re: Does God Exist

Post #12

Post by elijahpne »

[Replying to post 1 by avalon]

After stating that "Scientists and others sometimes use the word "God" to mean something so abstract ... that He is hardly to be distinguished from the laws of nature," Steven Weinberg, Nobel laureate for his work on fundamental forces, added:

"It seems to me that if the word 'God' is to be of any use, it should be taken to mean an interested God, a creator and lawgiver who has established not only the laws of nature and the universe but also standards of good and evil, some personality that is concerned with our actions, something in short that is appropriate for us to worship. . . . This is the God that has mattered to men and women throughout history." - Dreams of a Final Theory, quoted in Add Meaning to Your Life Permanently ( https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1101998030#h=33 )

Surprisingly, Weinberg's criteria for God is closely akin to the description of the Biblical God - considering the fact that Weinberg is an atheist. Let's examine two of the criteria that he proposed for "God".

(1). "God ... a creator"

Scientists used to believe that the Universe was eternal - it had no beginning - and, therefore, has no maker. Conversely, then, if the Universe had a beginning then there is a "maker" - there is a "God". Fair assumption? Was there a beginning then?

Professor of astronomy David L. Block wrote: "That the universe has not always existed - that it had a beginning - has not always been popular." Yet, in recent decades evidence has forced most who study the universe to believe that it really did have a beginning. "Virtually all astrophysicists today conclude," reported U.S. News & World Report in 1997, that "the universe began with a big bang that propelled matter outward in all directions." - Did It Really Have a Beginning? ( https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/101999441#h=3 )

The late Dr. Robert Jastrow, a well-known astrophysicist and NASA scientist once remarked: "What is the ultimate solution to the origin of the Universe? The answers provided by the astronomers are disconcerting and remarkable. Most remarkable of all is the fact that in science, as in the Bible, the world begins with an act of creation." ~ Robert Jastrow Quotes ( https://www.azquotes.com/author/29579-Robert_Jastrow ). "Creation" by whom? The same Dr. Robert Jastrow, while the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, was forced to admit: "In the face of such evidence, the idea that there is a God who created the universe is as scientifically plausible as many other ideas." - Does it Make Sense to Believe in God? ( https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/110 ... p=par#h=30 )

The British theorist Edward Milne wrote a mathematical treatise on relativity that concluded by saying, "As to the first cause of the universe, in the context of expansion, that is left for the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him. - New York Times, June 25, 1978 Have Astronomers Found God? ( https://www.nytimes.com/1978/06/25/arch ... t-the.html )

Thus, the Universe had a beginning and , therefore, has a "maker", and that is God.

(2). "God ... a lawgiver who has established the laws of nature and the universe."

This phrase bespeaks 'intelligent design." Have scientists found evidences of intelligent design in the Universe? Note the following statements:

One of the strong evidences pointing to intelligent creation of the material universe is that a knowledge of higher mathematics is necessary to achieve an understanding of it. Chance action by blind forces is not the creator of mathematical order and laws. Remarking on the role of mathematics in nature, P. A. M. Dirac states: "It seems to be one of the fundamental features of nature that fundamental physical laws are described in terms of a mathematical theory of great beauty and power, needing quite a high standard of mathematics for one to understand it. You may wonder: Why is nature constructed along these lines? One can only answer that our present knowledge seems to show that nature is so constructed. We simply have to accept it. One could perhaps describe the situation by saying that God is a mathematician of a very high order, and he used very advanced mathematics in constructing the universe." - Dirac, God is a Mathematician ( https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/ ... hematician )

Even Albert Einstein, arguably the most famous physicist of all time, remarked: "The scientist's religious feelings take the form of rapturous amazement at the harmony of Natural law, which reveals an Intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection." - Albert Einstein > Quotes > Quotable Quotes ( https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/68179- ... -rapturous )

I leave to the reader to deduce for his/herself the implications of these discoveries. But as for me, the very first verse in the Bible rings true loud and clear: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." - Genesis 1:1

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Re: Does God Exist

Post #13

Post by jimtatertayte »

avalon wrote: Tue Sep 24, 2019 10:05 pm

So please define God so i can understand if it is provable.
God is life. Life is God. You are alive, therefore you have proved it.

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Re: Does God Exist

Post #14

Post by nobspeople »

[Replying to avalon in post #1]
Who is God? What is God?

God is whomever and whatever one wishes it to be as, best I can tell after being a Christian for decades (not any longer).
e should not worship any created being
To each their own. Personally, I don't care who or what one wishes to worship or not, so long as they don't 1) force that belief on me or my family and 2) don't harm me or my family.
please define God so i can understand if it is provable.
Even IF God was a real thing, there's no way to define it sufficiently enough for another - that would be up to them to do on their own accord. That is, if they want a personal relationship with it. Otherwise, pick whatever definition you want - seems to work for many Christians throughout time so why wouldn't it work for you?
Have a great, potentially godless, day!

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Re: Does God Exist

Post #15

Post by Miles »

jimtatertayte wrote: Sat Sep 19, 2020 11:38 am
avalon wrote: Tue Sep 24, 2019 10:05 pm

So please define God so i can understand if it is provable.
God is life. Life is God. You are alive, therefore you have proved it.
God is chocolate. Chocolate is god. You know that chocolate is real, therefore I've proved the existence of god.


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Re: Does God Exist

Post #16

Post by Athetotheist »

How about this:

God is the inexplicable principle underlying everything which can be explained.

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Post #17

Post by Athetotheist »

Divine Insight wrote: Tue Apr 21, 2020 4:00 pm
avalon wrote: Now we know their are forces of nature which are governed by laws naturally occurring
No we don't know any such thing. In fact, we actually invented this entire idea.

What we have done is look at what nature does and describe it. We then call our descriptions of how the universe behaves "laws".

But in truth the universe isn't obeying any laws. Moreover, our descriptions are not even sound. If the universe had to obey our mathematics (i.e. are laws or descriptions of it), it wouldn't run at all. It would instantly crash and burn.

So it's actually a misguided notion to think that the universe is governed by laws, it's not.
It's not improper to refer to the universe as following laws. We don't just observe the universe behaving in certain ways; we observe it behaving in certain ways consistently. That tells us that there are principles in play. If there were no such principles, the universe's behavior wouldn't be consistent.

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Re: Does God Exist

Post #18

Post by Miles »

Athetotheist wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 9:27 am How about this:

God is the inexplicable principle underlying everything which can be explained.
So then he's not the inexplicable principle underlying everything which cannot be explained? Interesting there's this qualification.


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Re: Does God Exist

Post #19

Post by Athetotheist »

Miles wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 3:41 pm
Athetotheist wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 9:27 am How about this:

God is the inexplicable principle underlying everything which can be explained.
So then he's not the inexplicable principle underlying everything which cannot be explained? Interesting there's this qualification.
There's no qualification; I'm suggesting that God is what cannot be explained.

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Re: Does God Exist

Post #20

Post by Tcg »

Athetotheist wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 4:57 pm
Miles wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 3:41 pm
Athetotheist wrote: Fri Mar 26, 2021 9:27 am How about this:

God is the inexplicable principle underlying everything which can be explained.
So then he's not the inexplicable principle underlying everything which cannot be explained? Interesting there's this qualification.
There's no qualification; I'm suggesting that God is what cannot be explained.
Which is it? Is God, "everything which can be explained" or "what cannot be explained?" Both are unsupported claims and they contradict each other.


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To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods.

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