Does God Exist?

[TheKnight]

Originally Posted by Dan4reason

LovePeaceHappiness and I were having a debate about the atonement and he tried to support this by using arguments that assume that God already exists. When I confronted him with this he suggested I make a new thread about this topic, so here it is. The purpose of this thread is to use logic and reason to try to determine whether God exists, or at least find out whether it is likely that God exists.

I am defining God to be the Judeo-Christian God. There is no reason to say God exists any more than there is to say that unicorns exist because there is no evidence of God. This is a very common argument and is very persuasive.

Well, you know my opinion of God's existence from that other thread. I believe that an eternal thing-that-is-responsible-for-everything-else-that-I-also-call-God exists.

Why, then, do I believe in the Judeo-Christian God specifically?

Because, I think there is sufficient evidence to suggest that belief in the Judeo-Christian God is reasonable.

Perhaps the greatest of this is the survival of the Jews at large, and the specific survival of Judaism in its Orthodox form. It is not only their survival (which is not necessarily divine), but the fact that they predicted it long ago. How long ago? Well that is disputed, but long enough, consistently enough, and accurately enough to make it reasonable to assume that they've got at least some idea of why that is.

The fact is that there are these Jews, Orthodox ones specifically, who have been teaching and believing in Orthodox Judaism for a long time. They have done so in such numbers and conditions as to lead one to believe that they should be gone. Sociologically speaking, the fact that any of them remain in any largely influential number is highly improbable.

They say that it is because the god-thing, who I can't say I know much about otherwise, wants it that way. I could say they're wrong. They could be wrong. But I think that the benefits (a life of fulfillment, lower rates of all sorts of undesirable things in observant societies, etc) are worth the possibility that I might be wrong, that there might be no God, and thus find no real reason not to believe in Judaism (unless you think that a reality--in which the more I learn about it the more I realize I know nothing about it, is the result of chemical reactions occurring multiple times in an infinite number of places that results in what we have now, and where I need to find my own meaning in life--is a good reason).

Are there other religions? Yes. Do they have the similar benefits? Yes. But I like Judaism, and given the statements of these Jews who have existed for longer than any group as small and as targeted as they are, and given the fact that I do think there is an eternal thing out there responsible for everything else and the Jewish idea of it doesn't seem all that bad, I think it is reasonable to believe in the Jewish God and even the Jewish religion in its Orthodox sense.

Not to mention that there is no other religion which makes the claim that:

- God showed up to 3 million of their people
-gave them instructions (which they still sort of follow to this day)
-told them that they would be around for a really long time (under conditions that should have resulted in their extinction)
-they have a continuous chain of people going back for a really long time (back to Sinai) of people who have faithfully followed these instructions under these conditions with records of these people which date back that far
and also predicted it in a document that dates (even by secular standards) back long enough for it to have been something that wasn't written after the fact.

I assumed that your OP was a question "Why believe in the Judeo-Christian God?" Well I don't know what that is because Christians, Jews, and Muslims see God very differently. Hell, just among Jews we see God differently. But if you were to ask why I believe in Judaism as opposed to some other religion with a different god-concept, then the above post is my answer. I hope it suffices.

[Wombat]

Originally Posted by Autodidact

A baseline of probability for the universe? What are you comparing it against?

Your question was not in regard "probability for the universe"...it was in regard- "Does God exist?"---"... how should a person go about figuring out the answer to that question? What is the first step you should take?"

And I responded to that question-"Establish a baseline of probability and look for anomaly."

Nothing to do with "probability for the universe"....answer pertained to probability of God...please, do try to keep up with your own questions and what they pertain to

[foxjazz]

Many of us go through life asking that question, and many never get the answer they expect. I don't think whether or not God exists is the appropriate question to ask, but rather why is this question so important to us.

Obviously many of us believe and many of us don't believe God exists in one form or another. The concept of God exists I think for many of us raised to think about God existing. That belief I mean concept is something that binds many of us believers and unbelievers alike.

To spell it out, I think that unbelievers are skeptical and distrustful of believers because the believers tend to rely on something untrustworthy to form world views about the world, and therefore their life. And seeing (experiencing) unpleasant factual events about belief in general makes unbelievers ever more skeptical.

Believers on the other hand can't understand unbelievers because they think also (wrongly) that unbelievers have no reason for moral behavior.

Either way, it's really a waist of time trying to figure out anything substantial about God, it is we that need to better understand ourselves. It's the inner life that is more important than any of the hogwash you get from anyone that "has the answer" to your questions about God or even yourself.

Don't be scammed by anyone, get an education (a real education). It involves a lot more than reading certain books, it involves a lot more than I can say here. Knowing you will never be certain about anything, is the beginning of wisdom.

[Wombat]

Originally Posted by TheKnight

Because, I think there is sufficient evidence to suggest that belief in the Judeo-Christian God is reasonable. .

I'm with that...not 'proven'...not (for me) even certain...but "belief in the Judeo-Christian God is reasonable"...and when I am watering the garden on a sunny spring friday afternoon with a light fruity white in hand....belief in God is >more< than reasonable

Originally Posted by TheKnight

Perhaps the greatest of this is the survival of the Jews at large,...

Again I am obliged to agree...From Exodus to the Babylonian exile to the progroms of the Middle Ages to the horrors of the modern era...no sane bookmaker in any period whould have taken optomistic bets on that survival.
I would also add the foretelling of exile and return as something not easily explained away.

Originally Posted by TheKnight

The fact is that there are these Jews, Orthodox ones specifically, who have been teaching and believing in Orthodox Judaism for a long time. They have done so in such numbers and conditions as to lead one to believe that they should be gone. Sociologically speaking, the fact that any of them remain in any largely influential number is highly improbable..

Exactly....it is a calculation of probability...and the outcome we have is "highly improbable".

Originally Posted by TheKnight

Are there other religions? Yes. Do they have the similar benefits? Yes. But I like Judaism....

Good for you. I aspire to being a Baha'i, I don't get to claim to be Jewish, but I do get to claim Judaism as a large part of my heritage, tradition, inspiration and belief. The Baha'i attitude towards people retaining their faiths is supposed to be- Please be the best Jew, Christian, Moslem you can be.

Originally Posted by TheKnight

Not to mention that there is no other religion which makes the claim that:.

May I add a seemingly silly one to your list?
Judaism (in my experience) generates the sweetest old ladies on the face of the earth. I'm serious, I get to meet and interact with quite a few elderly people and old Jewish ladies,are simply divine in their generosity of spirit...
(the old men? ... nuh ... not so much ;-).

[Dan4reason]

Originally Posted by TheKnight

Well, you know my opinion of God's existence from that other thread. I believe that an eternal thing-that-is-responsible-for-everything-else-that-I-also-call-God exists.

Why, then, do I believe in the Judeo-Christian God specifically?

Because, I think there is sufficient evidence to suggest that belief in the Judeo-Christian God is reasonable.

Perhaps the greatest of this is the survival of the Jews at large, and the specific survival of Judaism in its Orthodox form. It is not only their survival (which is not necessarily divine), but the fact that they predicted it long ago. How long ago? Well that is disputed, but long enough, consistently enough, and accurately enough to make it reasonable to assume that they've got at least some idea of why that is.

The fact is that there are these Jews, Orthodox ones specifically, who have been teaching and believing in Orthodox Judaism for a long time. They have done so in such numbers and conditions as to lead one to believe that they should be gone. Sociologically speaking, the fact that any of them remain in any largely influential number is highly improbable.

They say that it is because the god-thing, who I can't say I know much about otherwise, wants it that way. I could say they're wrong. They could be wrong. But I think that the benefits (a life of fulfillment, lower rates of all sorts of undesirable things in observant societies, etc) are worth the possibility that I might be wrong, that there might be no God, and thus find no real reason not to believe in Judaism (unless you think that a reality--in which the more I learn about it the more I realize I know nothing about it, is the result of chemical reactions occurring multiple times in an infinite number of places that results in what we have now, and where I need to find my own meaning in life--is a good reason).

Are there other religions? Yes. Do they have the similar benefits? Yes. But I like Judaism, and given the statements of these Jews who have existed for longer than any group as small and as targeted as they are, and given the fact that I do think there is an eternal thing out there responsible for everything else and the Jewish idea of it doesn't seem all that bad, I think it is reasonable to believe in the Jewish God and even the Jewish religion in its Orthodox sense.

Not to mention that there is no other religion which makes the claim that:

- God showed up to 3 million of their people
-gave them instructions (which they still sort of follow to this day)
-told them that they would be around for a really long time (under conditions that should have resulted in their extinction)
-they have a continuous chain of people going back for a really long time (back to Sinai) of people who have faithfully followed these instructions under these conditions with records of these people which date back that far
and also predicted it in a document that dates (even by secular standards) back long enough for it to have been something that wasn't written after the fact.

I assumed that your OP was a question "Why believe in the Judeo-Christian God?" Well I don't know what that is because Christians, Jews, and Muslims see God very differently. Hell, just among Jews we see God differently. But if you were to ask why I believe in Judaism as opposed to some other religion with a different god-concept, then the above post is my answer. I hope it suffices.

Well, I don't know if God had anything to do with the survival of the Jews. There is no evidence of supernatural aid from God. I do think they survived because they were good with money.

[fantôme profane]

Originally Posted by Dan4reason

Well, I don't know if God had anything to do with the survival of the Jews. There is no evidence of supernatural aid from God. I do think they survived because they were good with money.

[Wombat]

Originally Posted by Dan4reason

Well, I don't know if God had anything to do with the survival of the Jews. There is no evidence of supernatural aid from God. I do think they survived because they were good with money.

"good with money" in a nut shell-

“The First Council of Nicaea, in 325, forbade clergy from engaging in usury (canon 17). At the time, usury was interest of any kind, and the canon merely forbade the clergy to lend money on interest above 1 percent per month. Later ecumenical councils applied this regulation to the laity”


“As the Jews were ostracized from most professions by local rulers, the church and the guilds, they were pushed into marginal occupations considered socially inferior, such as tax and rent collecting and moneylending. Natural tensions between creditors and debtors were added to social, political, religious, and economic strains”

Usury - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Denied access to any other profession...the Jews became "good with money" because they "were pushed into marginal occupations considered socially inferior" and then (historicaly) persecuted, hounded and looked down upon for being "good with money".

Go figure.

[St Giordano Bruno]

I could approach it this way:

The time I casually ask a very liberal Rabbi

What is God?
He replies. "God is the laws and principles which created the universe."
Then I say "according to Stephen Hawking and other scientists like Paul Davies, the universe created itself through a spontaneous creation process like a quantum fluctuation or something"
The Rabbi then concludes in accordance to the major premise he made "well if Stephen Hawking is right then that would mean the universe itself is God"

[TheKnight]

Originally Posted by Dan4reason

Well, I don't know if God had anything to do with the survival of the Jews. There is no evidence of supernatural aid from God. I do think they survived because they were good with money.

No evidence of supernatural aid? Perhaps. But they claim that it was due to supernatural aid and well, given the number of correct predictions they seem to make and considering the amount of time they've been able to do it, I don't think it's unreasonable to believe such a claim. Especially when the negative consequences for being wrong are non-existent. Unless of course you think it is a negative consequence to have people motivated towards a goal of peace and operate under a system of laws that produces lower statistics of alcoholism, depression, divorce, substance abuse, sexual violence, and domestic violence in societies that abide by it.

[OneThatGotAway]

Originally Posted by Dan4reason

LovePeaceHappiness and I were having a debate about the atonement and he tried to support this by using arguments that assume that God already exists. When I confronted him with this he suggested I make a new thread about this topic, so here it is. The purpose of this thread is to use logic and reason to try to determine whether God exists, or at least find out whether it is likely that God exists.

I am defining God to be the Judeo-Christian God. There is no reason to say God exists any more than there is to say that unicorns exist because there is no evidence of God. This is a very common argument and is very persuasiv e.

First of all: God do exist. You can determine that from logic and reason like everything else. I also believed that Aedam, Aebraham, Mashe, Nebuchadnezzar, Julius Caesar, and George Washington existed also; although the only evidence I have are historical documents. The funny thing is that atheists also believe in these men; even though they cannot scientifically proved that they have ever existed. Now why is that belief?

Many theists and atheists believes that Osama bin Laden is still alive although they cannot scientfically prove that he is still alive. Their logic and reason of the historical evidence have led them to conclude that it is possible that he is still alive. They believed without concrete proof.

Now what scientific instruments can mankind use to uncover the God of Yishrael who deliberately uses his powers to stay INVISIBLE according to his plan? What logic and reason can scientists use to uncover a stealth God? And even more important, what instruments do you use to conclude that the God of the Heavens and Earth do NOT exist?

Honestly, you will find that logic and reason will lead you to consider the evidence that is available:
1) His Holy Scriptures;
2) Related Archaeology;
3) His Creation;
4) The Nation of Yishrael

This will leave you to only two choices:
I) I believe the evidence;
2) I don't believe the evidence

Man's scientific instruments will not give him an edge in beyond these two conclusion in either direction; to do assume otherwise is to reveal their bias and bigotry. Some believe in science like a religion. Why is that?