Is There a God?

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Is there a God?

Yes
29
33%
No
43
49%
Don't Know
15
17%
 
Total votes: 87

Trip
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Post by Trip » Tue Jan 13, 2004 1:11 pm

I've got proof that God exists: he spoke to me at about 3AM today after a night of drinking.

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Post by sbabb » Tue Jan 13, 2004 8:52 pm

If he sounded very much like your voice with a slur and a porcelain echo, that's definitely proof! 8)

Trip
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Post by Trip » Wed Jan 14, 2004 3:32 am

He told me that the great undo button has been clicked and another world disaster is coming to clean up His mess. He needs me to build a space ship and to gather DNA samples from each life form, a year's supply of food, and Miss Australia 2003 to procreate with. Think I can trust Him?

Apparently, President Bush is also working for the Lord and that I'm not to worry if his policies make no sense to me - they are all the work of a divine plan, even the new immigration reform proposal and the Mars plan. The exploitable labor will be used to lower wages to allow for an affordable space ship, stem cell research is needed to gather the DNA, Saddam was really working for Satan on a competing space ship - it's all so clear now!

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Post by somebody » Wed Sep 29, 2004 11:37 pm

Trip wrote:I'm suprised there are so many devout atheists - how can you prove there is no God?
How can you prove that there are no invisible elephants?

One can prove that the God of a certain religion does not exist by showing that it is logically impossible for it to exist. For example, one can prove that there exists no such thing as a round square. It can be proved by definition.

Trip
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Post by Trip » Thu Sep 30, 2004 12:24 am

heh, this is an old thread.

OK I'll bite, can you use logic to prove there is no God or even that there is no God of a certain religion?

I don't see how a square circle being impossible applies, b/c that is using set definitions, (heh, 2D defns. at that). In reality there is always a degree of uncertainty to our theories and laws.

I suppose an atheist could believe something was proof that a god(s) didn't exist just as a theist could believe something else was proof. There's always a degree of uncertainty though.

Y'know really nothing is certain, we just have to accept that we have no reason to question some things (ie. our senses are correct). More reasonable atheists must have come to accept that since there doesn't appear to be a God, there is no reason to question it just as there is no reason to question the senses.

It seems to me that there is a God, but I don't have any hard evidence or religion to prove it.
Last edited by Trip on Thu Sep 30, 2004 12:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

somebody
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Post by somebody » Thu Sep 30, 2004 12:47 am

Why do you not believe in the existance of invisible elephants then?

Trip
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Post by Trip » Thu Sep 30, 2004 12:48 am

I don't have any reason to believe in them. I'm agnostic in regard to them.

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Post by somebody » Thu Sep 30, 2004 12:49 am

Then why do you believe in the existance of a deity? There is no more evidence for God than there is for an invisible elephant.

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Post by somebody » Thu Sep 30, 2004 1:00 am

Trip wrote: I don't see how a square circle being impossible applies, b/c that is using set definitions, (heh, 2D defns. at that).
God has a set definition too. The definitions are set by religions. That is why I said that "One can prove that the God of a certain religion does not exist by showing that it is logically impossible for it to exist."

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Post by Trip » Thu Sep 30, 2004 1:04 am

B/c the Universe seems to have been created.

Heh, I'll take this up with you tomorrow or so. I'm no good for this sort of thing right now. I hope you don't go through and pull up any of the other crap I've written in this OT forum, esp. not some of the late night political rants that made sense but needed clarifying.

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Post by somebody » Thu Sep 30, 2004 1:08 am

Trip wrote:B/c the Universe seems to have been created.

Heh, I'll take this up with you tomorrow or so. I'm no good for this sort of thing right now. I hope you don't go through and pull up any of the other crap I've written in this OT forum, esp. not some of the late night political rants that made sense but needed clarifying.
Then what created God? If you are going to say that God is the uncaused cause, then you can also say that the universe is also uncaused. The addition of God just complicates things.

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Post by Straker » Thu Sep 30, 2004 1:15 am

you can prove that there can be no such thing as a round square, because math is the only discipline besides logic that is completely defined and contained within the language it uses. outside of math, that's like saying there can be no such thing as a motorcycle with 4 wheels and an enclosed passenger compartment... well, duh.

but in real life, get a square moving near c and it can become all sorts of neat shapes, so what?

it is more or less impossible to prove that something did not happen/does not exist, ask a British libel attorney.

don't misconstrue that as coming from anyone but an atheist though. the only thing that makes me question that at all is pondering the beginning of time and the edges of the universe, but even then, a god has to come from somewhere. more likely that all of existence is an infinitely recursive simulation or something equally silly.

also, ancient thread, and dumbest poll ever

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Post by somebody » Thu Sep 30, 2004 1:21 am

"Prove" may have been too strong of a word. But at the very least can you not show that it is more likely that God does not exist?

For example, if God is all powerful and good, then evil should not exist. But evil does exist. Therefore God does not exist.
Last edited by somebody on Thu Sep 30, 2004 1:40 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by Straker » Thu Sep 30, 2004 1:34 am

somebody wrote:If God exists then why is there evil?

Prove may have been too strong of a word. What I meant is that one can show that it is more likely that God does not exist.
yeah, that's the best part about people thanking "god" for helping them live through a tornado/gunfight/plane crash/truck bombing.

otoh, if there was no god, Florida wouldn't be getting punished for being too stupid to know how to vote!

i did mean to address the "god of other religions" thing in my first reply though. yeah, it's trivially easy and tidy to do it that way, with the "there is no god but my god" and "everyone else is going to hell for worshipping false idols" stuff but that sort of limits it to a worthless circular argument, since you have no way to get out from there. :P

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Post by Tibors » Thu Sep 30, 2004 1:30 pm

I don't know if a god exists. But if he does, I see no reason to worship him.

To the question on the first page: What do you find when you get to the end of the universe? A restaurant of course.

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Post by somebody » Thu Sep 30, 2004 2:45 pm

Straker wrote:it is more or less impossible to prove that something did not happen/does not exist, ask a British libel attorney.
Can you not prove that Antec did not produce the Sonata case a billion years ago? Doesn't God seem to be out of reach in terms of proof of nonexistence because people define it as a mysterious entity and refuse to truly define it?

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Post by RaNDoMMAI » Fri Oct 01, 2004 5:25 am

Wow I cant believe no one said anything about aliens yet! I personally would rather believe we were put here by aliens then by a “god”. Do you guys really think as big as the universe is, that we are the only intelligent creatures?

~RaNDoM

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Post by somebody » Fri Oct 01, 2004 12:49 pm

No, I don't think that it is likely that Earth is the only place where intelligent life exists. But I do not think that we have been visited by any intelligent extraterrestrials. The distances between solar systems is just too great for that to be likely.

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Post by Straker » Fri Oct 01, 2004 8:00 pm

somebody wrote:Can you not prove that Antec did not produce the Sonata case a billion years ago?
sort of trivial example, but to be pedantic, you still can't, all one could say is that we haven't dug one up yet. :P
i was referring more to (still rather well-defined) things like attempting to prove your own past intents, and proving your own actions did not have a negative effect on someone else's income/credibility etc which is obviously impossible.
a much simpler and still well-bounded problem would be to prove that the entire universe did not come into existence precisely 12 minutes ago.
somebody wrote:No, I don't think that it is likely that Earth is the only place where intelligent life exists. But I do not think that we have been visited by any intelligent extraterrestrials. The distances between solar systems is just too great for that to be likely.
i'd agree that "we" have probably not been visited - it's nearly impossible for intelligent life to not exist elsewhere, but the timing would have to be... well, i wouldn't be an atheist if we managed to find any civilization at a similar level to our own. time began what, 6 billion years ago? people have been around for a hundred thousand or so, 200 years ago we were just cavemen with steam, nice clothes and gunpowder, and in a thousand years (if not 100) only cockroaches and fish will be living here. so the chance of encountering anything we can even comprehend gets cut down by a factor of 100 million or so on top of the chance of simply finding intelligent life or life finding us.

having said that, remember the distance alone isn't a huge problem - initially, manned moon landings were supposed to be one-way missions too. once we're capable of getting moving anywhere near c, time dilation will allow us to travel thousands of light years within the span of a career for anyone on board. not sure if any human would be able to cope with still being young when their daughter's grandchildren are centuries in the ground, and of course noone on Earth would ever know what came of it, but the option is still there, especially in the context of a mass exodus or similar. the bigger problems are things like navigation, colliding with anything big enough to be visible when you're moving that fast, surviving when even background radiation gets blueshifted into x-rays etc etc :P

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Post by somebody » Fri Oct 01, 2004 8:51 pm

Straker wrote:
somebody wrote:Can you not prove that Antec did not produce the Sonata case a billion years ago?
sort of trivial example, but to be pedantic, you still can't, all one could say is that we haven't dug one up yet. :P
Couldn't you say the same thing about proving a positive then? If I asked whether you could prove that Antec did produce a Sonata case today, I imagine you would say that the cases being produced aren't actually real. They are in fact illusions.
Straker wrote:i wouldn't be an atheist if we managed to find any civilization at a similar level to our own.
Wouldn't you be committing the lottery fallacy?

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Post by Trip » Fri Oct 01, 2004 10:16 pm

somebody wrote:
Trip wrote:B/c the Universe seems to have been created.

Heh, I'll take this up with you tomorrow or so. I'm no good for this sort of thing right now. I hope you don't go through and pull up any of the other crap I've written in this OT forum, esp. not some of the late night political rants that made sense but needed clarifying.
Then what created God? If you are going to say that God is the uncaused cause, then you can also say that the universe is also uncaused. The addition of God just complicates things.
I don't say that God is the uncaused cause b/c I know nothing of him/them. I simply do not make the assumption.

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Post by somebody » Fri Oct 01, 2004 10:21 pm

Trip wrote:
somebody wrote:
Trip wrote:B/c the Universe seems to have been created.

Heh, I'll take this up with you tomorrow or so. I'm no good for this sort of thing right now. I hope you don't go through and pull up any of the other crap I've written in this OT forum, esp. not some of the late night political rants that made sense but needed clarifying.
Then what created God? If you are going to say that God is the uncaused cause, then you can also say that the universe is also uncaused. The addition of God just complicates things.
I don't say that God is the uncaused cause b/c I know nothing of him/them. I simply do not make the assumption.
Why do you assume that their is a God if you know nothing of it? How does God's existence relate to the existence of the universe if you know nothing of God?

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Post by Trip » Fri Oct 01, 2004 10:25 pm

I believe he/they created the universe. As I said before, it seems more likely than there being no god. It's a belief.

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Post by somebody » Fri Oct 01, 2004 10:38 pm

Trip wrote:I believe he/they created the universe. As I said before, it seems more likely than there being no god. It's a belief.
Then please explain how there can be evil if God exists? Also, are you refering to the Christian God?

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Post by Trip » Fri Oct 01, 2004 10:54 pm

What is evil, and are you certain we'd be better off without it?

No, I'm not referring to the Christian God.

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Post by somebody » Fri Oct 01, 2004 11:26 pm

Trip wrote:What is evil, and are you certain we'd be better off without it?

No, I'm not referring to the Christian God.
Evil includes murder and harm without reason. Also, please explain the existence of suffering.

Yes, I am certain we would be better off without evil.

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Post by Trip » Fri Oct 01, 2004 11:59 pm

I'm not.

Heh, you're not a Brave New Worlder are you? (reference to the book Brave New World, I dunno how popular it is so you may not have heard of it)

The way I see it is there's a natural way of life, a healthy society, that is ideal for us to live in. In it there is still murder, pain, and suffering - that is just a part of life. Perhaps the bad allows us to better appreciate the good. Perhaps things we see as bad are actually good - ie. they lead to better things.

So the purpose of life is pleasure to you? To whom do you wish pleasure, or for whom is it your business to work towards pleasure for? To just yourself; to your friends, family, and acquaintances; to humans; to animals; to all lifeforms in general? And if all lifeforms, would a virus, GMO, or artificially intelligent computer be lifeforms?

One could argue that humans are not perfect and that though the ideal society might include suffering, a more perfect being's ideal would not. I'm a naturalist and am not implying that I think like this, but I think the statement adds to this discussion all the same.

EDIT: Oh and my little ideal right now is a hierarchical and rooted society focused mostly on the local. Heh, the near opposite of Marx I suppose.

Anyway, I see the bad that comes with freedom as superior to the good that comes with the controlled end of suffering. We must be free to do bad, within reason, though also be punished for it. Some societies might decide the death penalty is necessary for certain crimes.
Last edited by Trip on Sat Oct 02, 2004 12:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by somebody » Sat Oct 02, 2004 12:53 am

This may be how you feel, but there are plenty of people who dislike suffering. One of them happens to be me. So for the many people who dislike suffering, please explain why there is evil and suffering if God exists.

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Post by Trip » Sat Oct 02, 2004 1:20 am

How can suffering be ended? We should work to make ourlives as good as they can be and should also be fair to others outside our group. Other groups should be free to do as they please as long as they don't affect my group. That's my political view.


Your claim is that the universe isn't all that great b/c of suffering, thus it wasn't created by a diety? Interesting view. However, this doesn't work for me b/c there's nothing better to compare it to.

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Post by somebody » Sat Oct 02, 2004 1:50 am

Your first paragraph is irrelevant. I said nothing about humans ending suffering.

Yes there is something to compare it to: a world without suffering.

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