Is it reasonable to believe in God?

[historia]

Is it reasonable to believe in God?

Note, the question here is not whether you think it is true that God exists, but simply whether such a belief is reasonable or not.

[TRANSPONDER]

If some indisputable rationale were to force us all to the same conclusion I'd call it tyranny.

If it was an indisputable rationale, then surely it should lead to the same conclusion. I don't see how tyranny comes into it.

Hello Brunumb. You're correct. An indisputable rationale would force us all to the same conclusion; otherwise indisputable could be disputed, and now words mean nothing at all. I must put my final exchange with Transponder in context before I answer your question. Greco-Roman philosophers lamented the futility of logic, because of diversity of inference ( diversity of inference is the differing conclusions each individual's logic arrived at). Each school of thought anguished over the conundrum, of diversity of inference, in its own way. In the end, each philosophical sect embraced nihilism, and differed only in how to define the width, length, and height of this misery, and what lifestyle would best cope with it ( hedonism, asceticism, fatalism,etc.) Though diversity of inference baffled the Koine Stammerers, it doesn't baffle me at all. What else could define the essence of free will if not diversity of inference? If some indisputable rationale forced us all to reach the same conclusion, thus eliminating diversity of inference, I'd call it tyranny; and free will a farce!

Ah. Epistemology or the 'How do we know what we know?' argument. I think that logic is a kind of reason; what makes more sense if it isn't provably so. Which is why Philosophy can only make proposals and argue which one is the more reasonable, but requires science to verify it, which is why I say if falls flat if one tries to make Philosophy do research - science. Because the problem with the Holmes dictum is that we often do not know all the parameters.

Without getting into a deep discussion on that (which is a quite interesting one) logic validated by outcomes, shows what is valid or at least reasonable, and a mistake that theist apologists often make is to think that something that cannot be proven 100% has no call to be believed and becomes a matter of Faith. Which means that whatever they want to believe is as valid as what it is reasonable to believe or even proven to be so.

So, nothing is 100% sure which is why 'brain in a vat' apologetics (to make us doubt everything we thought we knew) are used to try to sideline all inconvenient knowledge and leave Theist claims at least as good.

No. A sliding scale of verification, always with the door open for new information, is what is valid and that applies with logic as with science, which is only logic applied to looking at stuff. And as to that stuff about Greek nihilists, as I said to a philosopher with whom I was debating substance dualism and his arguments had collapsed and he was arguing Aristotles' colour principles, "Aristotle didn't even know what colour was".

At the outset of my entry into the debate, back when Pontius was a Pilot, Morality was a surefire apologetic for Theism. But, skipping the sea change of DNA, the Nietzsche problem of Nihilism was clarified by better understanding of what morality was. Effectively, Nietzsche had been fooled by this idea that without God there is no morality, which was based on his limitations to understanding the origins of morality (evolved instinct), as surely as the old Deists, still believing that a god had to have made everything simply because Darwin hadn't yet explained an alternative.

So, essentially, Philosophy, and especially old Greek Philosophy, though we may praise the work they did, like the old scientists and astronomers, are of the past and we have moved on and we cannot be hamstrung with their old ideas which, in a lot of examples have been superseded, in fact, by science, which has replaced their guesses with evidence. Thus you cannot Reasonably use Philosophy to invalidate knowledge nor the validity of the logic that enabled it.

[Yozavad]

I must confess a slight grievance with this site's format. I often find myself dissected and strewn upon several tables to which I never even sat! ( i.e., conversations of mine, with different people in different contexts, used by others for different conversations with different contexts.) At any rate, I don't disparage the philosophers of yore, nay, I consider them my cherished brethren! I called them, " Koine Stammerers", but with the highest regard of solidarity. They considered other tongues barbaric, and especially the "unfortunate" cultures of those foreign tongues of bar bar babble! I lovingly include those Koine Ponderers amongst the babble of us all . As I said before, I'm not an apologist. I don't dare presume their motives or methods. Nor do I fancy any particular Era over another. I glean knowledge from wherever I find it, be it the cave of Lascaux or my local library!

[TRANSPONDER]

This is, after an (informal) debate forum and a question is posed and we debate it out. That's what we do here.Nobody is decrying the philosophers or indeed scientists of old, but we have moved on. We should be referring to the latest in discovery and thought rather than chewing over the old savants and their unavoidable limitations.

[Clownboat]

How would it be possible to acknowledge/appreciate the God of the Bible as a creator if we did not have the Bible to supply the claims for example?

Well obviously if there was no bible we would have no way to acknowledge the God of the bible.

That is my point. Without the Bible, there legitimately is no Yahwey.
From where I sit, I don't find the worship of this book (where you acknowledging the Creator and feel appreciation) to be anymore justified then worshiping claims from the Qu'ran, Mahabharata or the Ramayana.

JehovahsWitness wrote: ↑Thu Jan 19, 2023 5:31 pm
Worship is essentially acknowledging the Creator as the source of our life and feeling appreciation towards Him for that fact.

You and all others are only acknowledging claims from a holy book. You pretend IMO that you are worshiping the god that this particular holy book makes claims about, but in reality, there is the book and no other way to acknowledge this or any god.

We both can supply claims from this book that are made about its god concept. We are like the Muslim and Hindu in this regard. Therefore, I can only conclude that your god beliefs from the Bible are exactly as trustworthy as those made by a Muslim or Hindu. Surely you can see why anyone skeptical will notice this similarity?

In the end, the religious are like children, but instead of arguing about whose daddy can beat up whose, the daddy is a holy book. All holy books are daddys and unlike daddys, there is no way to show whose holy book is the toughest and yet this is the best we have to learn about the gods? Surely the gods if they were real could do better, no?

Why is the best that a true God can do the same as what a false god does?
Yahway: "Hey, don't blame me, I did just what those gods that don't exist did."
Clownboat: "Uh, ya... I noticed..." "That was kinda dumb don't you think."

[JehovahsWitness]

How would it be possible to acknowledge/appreciate the God of the Bible as a creator if we did not have the Bible to supply the claims for example?

Well obviously if there was no bible we would have no way to acknowledge the God of the bible.

That is my point. Without the Bible, there legitimately is no Yahwey.

I wouldnt go that far; that is like saying if you have no birth certificate, you were not born. Identification and existence are not the same thing.




JW

[William]

[Replying to Clownboat in post #274]

That is my point. Without the Bible, there legitimately is no Yahwey.

IF YHVH exists, THEN whether or not the bible exists, YHVH would still exist.

That the bible does exist and what the bible has to say about YHVH's existence, personality, agenda, et al is still only hearsay and subject to questioning debate.

[TRANSPONDER]

[Replying to Clownboat in post #274]

That is my point. Without the Bible, there legitimately is no Yahwey.

IF YHVH exists, THEN whether or not the bible exists, YHVH would still exist.

That the bible does exist and what the bible has to say about YHVH's existence, personality, agenda, et al is still only hearsay and subject to questioning debate.

It's still a bit IF, isn't it.One could say IF any of the other deities exist or a god that is none of the man -made ones. It is the validity of the Bible that makes the case for YHWH, nothing else - as a specific deity.

[William]

P1: That is my point. Without the Bible, there legitimately is no Yahwey.

P2: IF YHVH exists, THEN whether or not the bible exists, YHVH would still exist.

That the bible does exist and what the bible has to say about YHVH's existence, personality, agenda, et al is still only hearsay and subject to questioning debate.

P1: It's still a bit IF, isn't it.One could say IF any of the other deities exist or a god that is none of the man -made ones.

P2: Yes. The main point has to do with why these ideas made themselves known through the human instrument.

P1: It is the validity of the Bible that makes the case for YHWH, nothing else - as a specific deity.

P2: According to the bible, one can search the bible scriptures daily and be no closer to knowing YHVH...and as I mentioned, what the bible has to say about YHVH's existence, personality, agenda, et al is still only hearsay and subject to questioning debate ...

[Clownboat]

How would it be possible to acknowledge/appreciate the God of the Bible as a creator if we did not have the Bible to supply the claims for example?

Well obviously if there was no bible we would have no way to acknowledge the God of the bible.

That is my point. Without the Bible, there legitimately is no Yahwey.

I wouldnt go that far; that is like saying if you have no birth certificate, you were not born. Identification and existence are not the same thing.




JW

That you wouldn't go that far was already known. The fact remains, without the Bible, there is no Yahweh.
Same goes for the Muslim and the Hindu by the way, so don't dispair.

You all place faith in and worship a book (using your definition of worship supplied earlier) that makes claims about a god concept being our creator.

Which is why I asked why a real god would make itself known in the exact same way that humans depicted and explained their false gods? What's worse is that this kind of thinking forces a person to unjustly believe that holy books can't be trusted. Sorry, all holy books can't be trusted, less the one they place faith in.

Reason cares about special pleading. Faith does not.

[brunumb]

I wouldnt go that far; that is like saying if you have no birth certificate, you were not born.

Not at all. My actual existence is testament to the fact that I was born. Without the Bible we may only know about the gods from other holy books and have one less to choose from for worship.