Do Gods Exist? Can You Prove Gods Exist? Do They Even Have To Exist?

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Definitions

God: (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being; (in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity; an image, idol, animal, or other object worshiped as divine or symbolizing a god; used as a conventional personification of fate; an adored, admired, or influential person; a thing accorded the supreme importance appropriate to a god; the gallery in a theater.

Atheist: a person who disbelieves in the existence of God or gods.

Veneration: great respect; reverence:

Existence: the fact or state of living or having objective reality; continued survival; a way of living; any of a person's supposed current, future, or past lives on this earth; all that exists; a being or entity.

In essence a god is anything or anyone who is venerated. A mortal man, an object, a fictional or mythological character, real or imagined, a concept like luck. Good or bad. To exist as a god could involve any of a number of specific applications. To exist literally, metaphorically, figuratively, as a fictional, metaphysical or mythological being, object or concept. In what specific sense any alleged god may exist may depend upon such context.

Questions for debate: Do gods exist? Can you prove they exist and do they even have to exist?

[bluegreenearth]

You may also need to define what it means for something to exist. Does existence necessitate some type of space-time? Is the concept of existence outside a type of space-time coherent?

[TRANSPONDER]

Definitions

God: (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being; (in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity; an image, idol, animal, or other object worshiped as divine or symbolizing a god; used as a conventional personification of fate; an adored, admired, or influential person; a thing accorded the supreme importance appropriate to a god; the gallery in a theater.

Atheist: a person who disbelieves in the existence of God or gods.

Veneration: great respect; reverence:

Existence: the fact or state of living or having objective reality; continued survival; a way of living; any of a person's supposed current, future, or past lives on this earth; all that exists; a being or entity.

In essence a god is anything or anyone who is venerated. A mortal man, an object, a fictional or mythological character, real or imagined, a concept like luck. Good or bad. To exist as a god could involve any of a number of specific applications. To exist literally, metaphorically, figuratively, as a fictional, metaphysical or mythological being, object or concept. In what specific sense any alleged god may exist may depend upon such context.

Questions for debate: Do gods exist? Can you prove they exist and do they even have to exist?

I think it is best to avoid confusion. One can use the term 'god' to refer to anything of importance or veneration, but they have identifiers beyond that. To call your baseball team, or favourite car you 'god' is asking for the confusion of equivocation. A Baseball team is a sporting team, a car is an object of transportation. A god is a spiritual being with intelligence and, supposedly, powers. Those are the ones we talk about here and the other definitions are best left out of the Forum as they belong in the sporting and petrolhead forums.

Ok so the question seems twofold.

Do gods exist?

Do they have to exist?

The second really is, generally, no. The world works as it does without gods and without needing to be created by gods. Once nobody knew the other explanations, so 'gods' were the easy hypothesis. They are no longer needed. Life and indeed consciousness does not require gods, or the explanations are good enough not to really need gods. I know the Believers point to 'a god is possible' but that does not make a go -to theory, but a Faithbased one.

True, Cosmic origins is a problem, and the best case for a creative being or 'god', though it does not answer which one it might be, or whether there is only one or many. Again 'don't know' (yet) is the right answer.It is not "God - until science can prove 100% that it happened without a god". But the faithful think the logic is 'a god (and of course the one they believe in) until the alternative explanation (without a god being necessary) is known. And even then they can deny the evidence.

[alexxcJRO]

Definitions

God: (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being; (in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity; an image, idol, animal, or other object worshiped as divine or symbolizing a god; used as a conventional personification of fate; an adored, admired, or influential person; a thing accorded the supreme importance appropriate to a god; the gallery in a theater.

Atheist: a person who disbelieves in the existence of God or gods.

Veneration: great respect; reverence:

Existence: the fact or state of living or having objective reality; continued survival; a way of living; any of a person's supposed current, future, or past lives on this earth; all that exists; a being or entity.

In essence a god is anything or anyone who is venerated. A mortal man, an object, a fictional or mythological character, real or imagined, a concept like luck. Good or bad. To exist as a god could involve any of a number of specific applications. To exist literally, metaphorically, figuratively, as a fictional, metaphysical or mythological being, object or concept. In what specific sense any alleged god may exist may depend upon such context.

Questions for debate: Do gods exist? Can you prove they exist and do they even have to exist?

1.
Existence of concepts like god/gods is just a way for people to deal with death anxiety and a very pitiful, miserable existence. “Opium of the masses”.

All previous concepts of god/gods have disappeared from the consciousness of the masses:

The Norden European people no longer believe in the Vikings gods: Odin, Loki, Thor, Freya.
The Greeks no longer believe in the Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Athena.
The Egyptians no longer believe in Ra, Horus, Anubis.
The Romanians no longer believe in the Dacians/Geto-Dacians god: Zalmoxis.
The Middle East people no longer believe in Ahura Mazda, Angra Mainyu, Mithra.
And so on.

Evolution of religions is akin to Evolution of Species of Living things and Evolution of Languages.
Religions and gods will appear and then die off. Go extinct. Others will appear. Some will morph into other things. Small change over time. Long timespans will yield incredibly different results.
In few thousand years Allah and Yahweh-Jesus will probably vanish from the consciousness of the masses leaving place for other mythical gods that also will give place to other mythical gods. And so on add infinitum. Or maybe they will morph into unrecognizable things.

C: For as long as humanity exists and death anxiety exists religion will probably exist.

2.
To answer your question is it possible a god like being exists. Most definitely such being is indifferent to our affairs given the current arrangements: great suffering, death, misery + great confusion and diversity on what god is and what it wants.

C: A deistic concept seems the most plausible, possible.

3.
Worshiping, praise, adoration, gratuitous submission has evil, malevolent connotations and it’s related to an inflated ego.

Totalitarian, evil, malevolent characters such as Hitler, Ceausescu, Kim Il-sung, Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatin, Frieza required adoration, worship, praise and gratuitous submission from their followers.

If a very powerful, very knowledgeable, very benevolent and very wise being exist it will be akin to the likes of Yoda, Goku, Gandhi, Buddha. It would not require worship, praise, adoration and gratuitous submission from anybody.

It is possible a very powerful being exists and is indifferent in respects to the well being and affairs of humans akin to the likes of Azeroth.

Azathoth is a mindless force of Chaos-objective randomness that happens to be extremely powerful. He simply is. Existing but not much else. With no real ability to think in either the abstract sense or the simple way non-human animals way. In his random, unintelligibly, mindless way Azathoth created or dreamed the universe as we know it into existence. He did this unintentionally, unaware of the occurrence. He will be equally oblivious, unaware when he destroys it. There's no point behind his actions, it's just happenstance when he does something.

“Azathoth is a deity in the Cthulhu Mythos. He is the ruler of the Outer Gods,[1] and may be seen as a symbol for primordial chaos.
[O]utside the ordered universe [is] that amorphous blight of nethermost confusion which blasphemes and bubbles at the center of all infinity—the boundless daemon sultan Azathoth, whose name no lips dare speak aloud, and who gnaws hungrily in inconceivable, unlighted chambers beyond time and space amidst the muffled, maddening beating of vile drums and the thin monotonous whine of accursed flutes.[11]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azathoth

C: The concept of worship, praise, adoration, gratuitous submission is meaningless for

- If it is required it comes from an untrusty malevolent, egotistic being. No point in giving it.
- For a mindless force like Azathoth its unnecessary and irrelevant.
- For a minded very powerful, very knowledgeable, very benevolent being its unnecessary as it is not required conform the ontology of such being.

[1213]

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Questions for debate: Do gods exist? Can you prove they exist and do they even have to exist?

Can you give an example of how to prove existence? For example, how would you prove to me that you exist and are real?

[TRANSPONDER]

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Questions for debate: Do gods exist? Can you prove they exist and do they even have to exist?

Can you give an example of how to prove existence? For example, how would you prove to me that you exist and are real?

There's a problem there.Why should the arbiter be what you are willing to accept as proof? Or to put it another way, why should we accept what you are willing to accept as proof as being meaningful? You should first prove to us that your parameters for credibility of your beliefs and opinions are themselves worthy of crediting.

Off you go.

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Questions for debate: Do gods exist? Can you prove they exist and do they even have to exist?

Can you give an example of how to prove existence? For example, how would you prove to me that you exist and are real?

Personally? If I were your God, in order to prove my existence to you I would insist on coming to your home and staying as a guest - a really annoying guest - until you got rid of me. And my dangerously overweight and audibly flatulent black Labrador retriever named boozer.

But that's just me.

I think that you're on the right track. Each individual should decide for themselves what it would take to prove the existence of their own God to themselves and not worry about what anyone else thinks.

But, to prove it to someone else, I guess it would depend on them, not me. It would vary. I suppose generally speaking. Like Jesus said, if the rocks came alive and told the unbeliever they still wouldn't believe. In fact, these days the unbeliever would not only disbelieve the rocks but also charge them rent.

[boatsnguitars]

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Questions for debate: Do gods exist? Can you prove they exist and do they even have to exist?

Can you give an example of how to prove existence? For example, how would you prove to me that you exist and are real?

Personally? If I were your God, in order to prove my existence to you I would insist on coming to your home and staying as a guest - a really annoying guest - until you got rid of me. And my dangerously overweight and audibly flatulent black Labrador retriever named boozer.

But that's just me.

I think that you're on the right track. Each individual should decide for themselves what it would take to prove the existence of their own God to themselves and not worry about what anyone else thinks.

But, to prove it to someone else, I guess it would depend on them, not me. It would vary. I suppose generally speaking. Like Jesus said, if the rocks came alive and told the unbeliever they still wouldn't believe. In fact, these days the unbeliever would not only disbelieve the rocks but also charge them rent.

Yep, that tracks. Religious belief is useless. Just believe whatever, then blame the non-believer for their non-belief. What a freakin' useless bunch of garbage.

[TRANSPONDER]

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Questions for debate: Do gods exist? Can you prove they exist and do they even have to exist?

Can you give an example of how to prove existence? For example, how would you prove to me that you exist and are real?

Personally? If I were your God, in order to prove my existence to you I would insist on coming to your home and staying as a guest - a really annoying guest - until you got rid of me. And my dangerously overweight and audibly flatulent black Labrador retriever named boozer.

But that's just me.

I think that you're on the right track. Each individual should decide for themselves what it would take to prove the existence of their own God to themselves and not worry about what anyone else thinks.

But, to prove it to someone else, I guess it would depend on them, not me. It would vary. I suppose generally speaking. Like Jesus said, if the rocks came alive and told the unbeliever they still wouldn't believe. In fact, these days the unbeliever would not only disbelieve the rocks but also charge them rent.

No, and yes. Each person does have the right to believe what they beleive, and God coming as a guest into the head, if not their house, is plenty for most of them.

But No, that is not how evidence and reason works. You need more that what the individual is willing to believe. That is why we have discussion, validation and peer review. In order to stop the too easily persuaded from foisting their errors of thinking onto us.

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I think it is best to avoid confusion.

Hear, hear.

One can use the term 'god' to refer to anything of importance or veneration, but they have identifiers beyond that. To call your baseball team, or favourite car you 'god' is asking for the confusion of equivocation. A Baseball team is a sporting team, a car is an object of transportation. A god is a spiritual being with intelligence and, supposedly, powers.

But that isn't true. A baseball team is a sporting team, a car is an object of transportation and a god is anything, including, possibly, either one of those things. While some gods are spiritual beings with intelligence and, supposedly powers, most gods aren't. In the OP I gave the definition of God, but it isn't very accurate. Just the common use. Though it gives examples of gods, it doesn't tell you what it means to be a god. The only requirement to being a god is to be worshipped or venerated. Which just means great respect and reverence.

Those are the ones we talk about here and the other definitions are best left out of the Forum as they belong in the sporting and petrolhead forums.

Well, I, Uh . . . what?!

No, no, no. Do any gods exist? No, says atheism. Then, astonishingly, atheism tries to limit the definition of gods, dismissing about, at a guess, 90%. A god doesn't have to be spirit, it doesn't have to be intelligent, it doesn't have to have powers. It doesn't have to be real, and it doesn't have to exist, so, while the specific god in question in forums like this may be of primary concern, that doesn't mean the other 99% don't exist.

Ok so the question seems twofold.

Do gods exist?

Do they have to exist?

The second really is, generally, no.

That isn't true unless you dismiss most of the gods. You're limiting the definition on the basis of one type of gods. Supernatural. I think that's ideological. Let's rephrase the question. Do lords exist and does the supernatural exist?

The world works as it does without gods and without needing to be created by gods.

The trouble with that statement is that you can't prove it because it's never been done. It doesn't matter if the gods really exist or not, the world has always been predicated upon mythological presuppositions. It's never been tried to work the world without gods.

Once nobody knew the other explanations, so 'gods' were the easy hypothesis.

I don't believe that. It's an assumption always made by unbelievers but it isn't very sophisticated, well-constructed or supported by reason or logic. It's only the assumption that individuals who don't believe in gods don't need them, and that's easy to say when your entire world is founded upon them. Not so easy to demonstrate when pretty much everything around you is predicated upon them. Look around. The days of the week, month, the planets, medicine, automobiles, candy. Everything is named after mythological gods.

They are no longer needed.

I don't think they were ever needed as such.

Life and indeed consciousness does not require gods, or the explanations are good enough not to really need gods. I know the Believers point to 'a god is possible' but that does not make a go -to theory, but a Faithbased one.

The definition of faith is trust. All theories are faith based. The Latin word credit means to believe. Words like credential, credible, and credit. Think of your explanations without those, or life in general.

True, Cosmic origins is a problem, and the best case for a creative being or 'god', though it does not answer which one it might be, or whether there is only one or many.

Again, you're limiting the definition of gods to supernatural.

Again 'don't know' (yet) is the right answer. It is not "God - until science can prove 100% that it happened without a god".

I don't think science has any relevance. Science is wrong more often than not. Whether science could prove 100% God or not God makes no difference to me.

But the faithful think the logic is 'a god (and of course the one they believe in) until the alternative explanation (without a god being necessary) is known. And even then they can deny the evidence.

Everyone can deny the evidence. That's what evidence is for.