Theists, what are you're reason to believe that God really exists?
Post it here so we can identify every reason that you have.
I'm a theist but not a Christian.
My reason to believe in god are the following:
Some should have had started it all.
If we are intellectual beings, who could be the one who designed us this way if there is no god.
Somebody knows it all and that's god.
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If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to reply to that reasoning.
1) Unfortunately, using God to answer the question of how the Universe began only raises a bigger question than it answers - who created God? And then, who created whatever created God? This answer leads to something of a Russian Doll situation.
Claiming God started the Universe doesn't make you immune to the question of what started God, either. One of my Christian friends used this argument and when I retorted, he simply stated that God is infinite and forever, or some similarly abstract and vague answer. There is simply no reason why you need to insert a God into the equation since you could just as easily say that the Universe is infinite, and it being all-powerful means that it need not have been created. In the end, this point is only valid if you can prove God exists in a different way, thereby rendering this argument null.
2) The thread in the forums about illusions is quite relevant here, you should have a look. The complexity of life, especially our own intelligence, would suggest to the human brain that it requires a creator. It gives the powerful illusion that it is designed, but in actual fact it isn't necessarily the case. The phenomenally vast expanse of evidence in favor of evolution gives us an elegant, plausible, and overwhelmingly likely explanation of the existence of intelligent life.
3) That isn't really a reason to believe in God. That's a statement without justification, so I can say little to that other then "probably not, actually."
If you have any questions about my counterarguments or can see flaws in them, please let me know :)
Hello again Matty Arnold, I just joined this site today and I love it. I am a christian and a theist. I believe in God and that he is all powerful, holy, and eternal. I've already replied to one of your posts not ten minutes ago. And the post was similar to this one so I will give a similar reply. The universe was created by something that was eternal and supernatural. I'm using the arguments of Thomas Aquinas here which i'm sure you're familiar with. He doesn't prove that God exists, but he does prove that something eternal that existed outside of our universe created everything we know. This argument could serve as proof for any theistic religion. So it doesn't prove that the christian god exists at all. But it does open an empty placeholder for an eternal entity, I believe that space to be filled by the christian God Jehovah.
However, your rebuttal to that argument is the question "Who created God?". It's a contradictory statement to say that an eternal being was created. A created God is not worth believing in because it negates their power. So in a faith sense, God was never created, he can't be created because then he ceases to be God if he is. But, like you said, that is the in realm of vague answers. Thus, to use your analogy of the russian doll, eventually that russian doll ends and you have the center doll being the core for the rest. The center "doll" is the one I worship. Even if you believe that God was created, eventually an eternal entity had to create all the subsequent "Gods" that led up to the creation of the universe. If that is what you believe about the existence of God, then I believe in the God at the center of that russian doll analogy. Of course I don't believe there is series of Gods that created other gods which led to the creation of the universe, that seems really unnecessary. Why not just skip straight to the eternal God that created everything? That would make things so much easier! :)
But to reply to the original question, here are my reasons for believing in the christian God Jehovah.
1) The bible is the most historically and archeologically preserved and accurate book on planet earth. All claims made by the bible, that can be verified, have uncannily come true. What i mean by "can be verified"...let me give an example. Archeologists can't prove that the garden of eden existed even though the bible gives a location because God didn't allow humans to return the Garden after adam sinned. So if the bible is taken as true, the garden of eden can't be verified based on the fact that the bible said it was destroyed or at least inaccessible to humans. But all other historical events have turned out to be true. Therefore, I think, the bible is trustworthy in it's claim to the christian God Jehovah.
2) Creation. I'm no creationist and I think I will get destroyed on this argument but i'm going to put it forth anyways. The universe has rules, and I believe that an intelligent entity designed those rules. I believe that entity to be the christian God.
3) Morality. The bible has an explanation as to the origins of Good and Evil in the universe. And only religious standpoints have an explanation for why there is good and evil in the world. I don't believe that God created evil, but the fact that the idea of good and evil exists in the world is evidence of the christian God.
Note: None of these reasons are proof for God, but evidences that give a basis for my faith in God. Because I can never prove that my god exists, all I have is evidence that supports his existence. And the reason I believe in the christian God and not other Gods is because other religions don't have the same basis for faith that I have come to know in the christian faith.
I hope my post is helpful to some and that matty, you find my rebuttal at least satisfactory. :) Please feel free to point out any holes you see in my arguments.
I won't restate everything from the other forum topic since I replied to you there, but if you think that you should "skip straight to the eternal God.... make things so much easier" then you have to follow that logic further and ask "why not cut Gods out altogether?" Your argument sounds a lot like Occam's Razor, but not quite complete. You can make fewer assumptions yet. Now for your other point :P
1) This I also tackled in my other post, but I'll briefly sum up my analogy here. I believe that all the places in the James Bond novels are real, but that doesn't mean the story really happened. Plus, the Bible isn't completely historically accurate. It's right on a lot of things but contradictory on many others.
2) I can see why you think something must have created those rules, but there is no reason on Earth to assign that role to the Christian God. There are infinite possibilities and without further evidence, your guess is as good as mine. It being the Christian God is mere speculation.
3) Religion absolutely does not hold a monopoly on morality whatsoever, and this is one of the only theistic arguments that actually make me quite annoyed. The Bible offers one (flimsy in my opinion) explanation for good and evil, but we already have one that there is masses of evidence for - evolution. I recommended someone in another forum post read The Selfish Gene, which describes evolution, and more specifically the evolution of altruism and selfishness so eloquently that I cannot hope to match it here. I will be incredibly brief ans state that for social animals like humans, an inherent sense of morals is beneficial and has therefore evolved with us. Humans aren't the only animals with morals, as we have seen by observing, for example, other primates. God is not required for morals, and what's more, the morals set out in the Bible are really quite horrible. Cultural morals develop over time, and I only have to give the recent examples of racism and homophobia to demonstrate this. We have moved on from things that were once acceptable in spite of the morals that remain in the Bible ever unchanged.
I agree that God can never be proven to exist. In fact, I can never prove that he doesn't, but as you say, evidence can be given for it. And if the evidence is convincing and numerous to the extent that one outcome is much more likely than the other, it's safe to say that it is correct. I, for example, try not to use the phrase "evolution is correct" because I can never conclusively prove that it does. What I can say is that the evidence for it makes me 99.999999% sure that it is, and for that reason I make the assumption that it definitely is correct. I believe that this is the same for God, and that it is so unlikely that he exists, I will continue to assume that he definitely doesn't.
Firstly, you can't cut out gods all together because then what created the Universe? We can assume the Universe was created because it began a finite time ago in a cataclysmic event known as the Big Bang. Therefore, whatever brought the Universe into existence must, itself, be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, eternal (and without cause), and personal.
Religion certainly holds a monopoly on morality. Evolution tells us that certain things are *socially unacceptable*, but this does not define them as *morally wrong*. In some places around the world, homosexuality is considered socially unacceptable, but this does not make it wrong. And morals existing in other animals besides humans doesn't disprove the existence of God.
To answer your first question, probability and possibility alone can account for the creation of the Universe. If something can happen, given no time constraints, then it *will* happen eventually. Anyone with a decent eye for dice, let alone quantum physics, could tell you that.
Social acceptance or nonacceptance wouldn't account for morality, unless you're dealing with a population that houses an unusually high percentage of sociopaths. We have, within our own human brain, a circuit that runs through Broca's areas 4 and 6, along with the amygdala and when necessary the hypothalamus, that checks the proposed actions of the medial and prefrontal cortices against the feelings that would be evoked were these same actions to be done outside of us. It's this biological circuit, religion irrelevant, that is credited with the development of morality.
Animals also have this circuit, though it is arguable that because their medial and prefrontal cortices are not as developed, they do not have as strong a moral sense as humans and their related genus. Arguably.
So, while the existence of morals outside of humans does not disprove god, the presence of morals in humans doesn't prove god in any way either.
I would love to hear some rebuttals to what matty typed, because if anyone actually comes up with a good argument it would have to be something truly unique and new.
There is no argument that woukd make any sense coming from a religious point of view. There is no such thing. Not yet at least.
I'm not a religious person. I have no religion now. I was once a catholic but defy its belief now. The only thing that was left after defying Catholicism is my belief about the existence of god. I don't see any flaw on Matty's counterargument. It was well-explained.
Universe is not infinite. It's around 14 billions years old.
For me God is infinite, no name, no religion, no physical characteristics, no words to describe, and something we cannot apprehend.
I read this statement once:
"We cannot contain the infinite in the finite"
We cannot explain the unexplainable
Our mind is vast but has limit, god is limitless, so our mind can't reach
god has no name, all that has name had beginning and end
he has no beginning nor end, existed beyond time and universe.
That's my view, and that's my intuition says so.
Well, that's the kind of thing I was talking about :)
I agree that the Universe had a beginning, indeed it was around 14 billions ago (I saw an article recently that the Universe is a bit older than we thought, our estimation went from 13.7 to 13.8 I think :P) but your description here is a prime example of, to quote myself, " some similarly abstract and vague answer". There's not much more to say really, just reread my original post as my retort to this post, because I can't really see anything new. I maintain that there is no reason at all to assume that God is infinite and beyond time and the Universe, and if he is then my question stands - what made God?
What you say is actually quite contradictory, for if God is infinite and beyond time, then this constitutes Him being uncaused, and without a beginning. The thing is, when you argue "what created God" you're not arguing against the Abrahiamic god, because He was not created.
I belibe a question like "what made god" is way beyond our brain capacity. The way to understand this might be too complex to ever be discovered by us. We think we are some sort of special form of living beings, but we are very primitive and very fragil creatures. We have certainly overrated ourselves.
This fact in itself is some of the reason we invented God in the first place. We have overrated ourselves, assuming that we are so complex that God must have made us. That's actually a little arrogant when you think about it.
I agree to the post of Paul, If god was made, then he's not god at all. He was the Supreme being because he was not made and he was there even before the universe existed. I'm also thinking that even if there are other universe other than ours or what we can call multiverse, it will still lead to the Supreme maker or creator. He's like energy, "can't be created nor destroyed" but it doesn't mean that he will just transfer from one form to another because he's the first energy ever present and no one can take his form. Also, using the term "he, his, or him" doesn't mean that god is a male entity. He has no sex but we're just using male pronouns to show his dominant characteristic.
Before people go on thinking that the Bible is the oldest and most complete history of it's time, I would like to remind you that the texts of the University of Alexandria (a full scholarly system which puts most modern ones to shame) has existed for almost that entire time. The records that it holds pre-date Moses by a long shot! They were hidden during the time of the Roman invasion in Egypt... and recovered just a few years ago, preserved in salt water (a technique shared by the Ancient Norse, who also pre-date Hebrews) just off the shore of the Nile Delta.
Thanks Sammy! That's some good information and now I have to spend the rest of the night researching that until I learn mor eand fully understand it. I think I'll be up a while now.
And now you know why I make most of my posts at 5am :) Research is addicting, watch out!
I know there was recently found a the largest archaeological find in terms of Egyptian artifacts preserved in the ocean, I find things related to the Egyptians quite interesting! I wonder what they will be pulling out of the Mediterranean, I hear its nearly a whole city preserved.
And here we are :) Thank you BBC!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3707641.stm
The first thing I noticed in the first comment was the question of "who created God?" Well, that assumes God is created, which He is not. In the debate room, there is a blog entitled "What is God?" by dtommy79. Here I show what my version of the Christian god looks like based on logic and reason. I might also add that you *cannot* claim the same for the Universe--that is is absolute, eternal, and without cause--because modern cosmology tells us that the Universe *did* have a beginning a some 13.75 billion years ago in a cataclysmic event known as the Big Bang.
Secondly, I believe in God because I believe God is necessary for our existence. Science will never be able to tell us how our Universe was created simply because science was not around to observe it. Science, matter and energy did not exist until 10^-43 seconds (one Planck time) after the Big Bang. If this is true, then science cannot be or provide an explanation of the cause of the Big Bang, simply because it was not around to observe said cause! Picture it as such: You walk into a room *right* as the first punch of a fight is being thrown. Since you were not around to observe the cause of the fight, you will never be able to explain it. You can only ever explain the effects of this cause. Science was not around to observe the cause of the Big Bang, therefore it can never give us an explanation for it. This is where God steps in. This is merely one reason I believe in God. I shall state another.
Life. The chances of it happening by complete and total random chance are 1 in 10^125. There are only 10^80 elementary particles in the *entire Universe*! That gives you an idea of just how slim it really is. Now, this does not mean that it couldn't happen by random chance, but if you claim that it still did I must ask the following: If you were placed against a wall and 1,000 men with guns were aimed at you, there exists a small (infinitesimally small) chance that they *all* might miss, but do you believe they will? No. Why not, then?
Great, so you've disproved science. I'm cool with that.
But, in no way did you prove god.
They're not two sides of the same coin, you know?
My job is not to prove God. My job is to provide reasonable evidence for His existence.
... and how exactly do you think you're doing that? I'm *sure* you must have missed my point, or perhaps you're just missing yours.
I'm still waiting for a scientific explanation of the cause of the Big Bang... and of the fine-tuning of the Universe... and of the creation of life...
... and we're still waiting for yours. I think you've misunderstood the order of operations here.
But in case you actually are interested rather than just annoyingly rhetorical, here you are. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nucleosynthesis
Probability accounts for an incredible amount of natural law.
This is quite the forum of hate. The only difference between this and religious forums is that there is a "doesn't" between "God" and "exist". Everyone has their reasons for believing and disbelieving. Why can't people share that without criticism?
This is a recent and hopefully temporary development, check out the forums were we do share our reasons and have much more intelligent discourse.
-_- look, I just want people to be more respectful. Attacking people for being religious makes the more moderate atheists such as myself look like monsters in the eyes of theists, who we have to live amongst whether we like it or not. This kind of behavior makes my life and the lives of many other atheists harder.
Then, I suggest you might want to look at how this thread was progressing *before* trolls got here, paying attention to the dates of the previous posters. You may notice that it was quite a civil discourse with some really interesting info... up until a certain point, with a particular person who unfortunately takes civility as some kind of offhanded invitation for imposition.
One person's action is another person's reaction... perhaps you're not really seeing things from their true beginning. There's always an opportunity to enhance your perspective :)
I just am having problems with a particular theist at this time I tried to be nice in the beginning but he just went to far. ther eare many other theist on here I respect and am nice to I gotta side with Peck against SOG though cause SOG is way out of bounds, is not respecting the place he is in and needs to get the point ,something he does not seem to be fond of doing.
Peck has gotten better since when he first got here. I was not always on Peck's side still not actually and I was probably a little to mean to him.
I I am upset because SOG is taking up the lion share of posting with his views he has admitted are to show show atheist that " atheistic thinking is invalid and holds no supportive evidence." - See more at: http://www.atheistrepublic.com/comment/reply/1198/5021#sthash.9bWaME1H.dpuf
It kind of turning the forums into a site to be used against us and this is something I am not going to tolerate.
So, when I apply logic and use evidence to show why an idea is wrong, that makes me a troll who is rude and disrespectful? I thought that was the point of a debate; to show why the opposing view is wrong or invalid. I have not once attacked atheism in the way some of you have attacked me, mind you. I have never used an ad hominem attack against anybody, nor have I directly insulted somebody, for anything, including being an atheist. Yet I have found that I have been made fun of for being a theist.
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