The problem with deep philosophical proofs for God is that they don't prove anything. The arguments may be sound and valid, but God simply can't be proved. The best evidence for me is that it seems there must be a God to account for a universe with its conscious creatures, and that I am subjectively conscious and able to think of such questions of whether there is a God.
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God Proof - Take 1
- Thread starter JCB
- Start date
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- Tags
- god; proof;
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
Can you explain how you know why your humanist morals, which don't exist in the animal kingdom, are valid?
Can you explain how you know why humanist morals are "more moral" than any other system, for example, the biblical system of morals? How did you come to give relative weights and values to subjective metaphysical concepts?
Bob the Unbeliever
Well-Known Member
Citation Needed.
Point of fact, what makes you say that these do not, in fact, exist in the animal kingdoms?
Here: Animal studies of *exactly* that, show that all mammals that have herd behavior, demonstrate empathy, and remorse. They also demonstrate sorrow at the loss of group members.
Moreover, studies among our simian cousins? Fully understand the concept of FAIRNESS.
Heck-- 2 year old humans have this instinctive behavior.
Morality is simply a formalized set of rules, based on empathy, fairness, regret and sorrow.
ALL emotions exhibited among animals.
Checkmate.
Easy: Fairness. The ugly bible is patently and 100% unfair, at it's very core.
The bible's god? Unfair in the extreme. It picks Special Favorites from among humanity, and uses those Teacher's Pets to commit mass murder, genocide, rape, pillaging and worse.
This unfairness continues into the NT too. It's deep in the Jesus message.
Finally? It is unfair to torture forever anyone, for finite acts (finite life).
Those simple concepts-- that even animals understand, proves the bible is morally bankrupt.
Since the bible's morals are evil? Any system of morals that does not include bible's unfairness? Is automatically superior.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
The issue in your post: you claim to root morality in what can be seen in the animal kingdom, then cite fairness as a reasonable standard. A lion preys upon the weak and the young to live. Next you will say that when weak and young humans suffer God is evil, but I never see you complain that lions hurt the weak.
Bob the Unbeliever
Well-Known Member
Strawman after Strawman. We are not speaking of Lions, and whichever gods they may or may not worship, are we? No we were not. Moreover: Lions, while group animals, are not herd animals. My specific examples were of herd animals, were they not? Did you miss that little tidbit, or did you deliberately and with malice, omit that fact?
But let's get back to the central point: your god remains evil, for the reasons I stated earlier: your beast-of-a-god uses TORTURE to get and keep followers.
Torture is always evil. Only an evil being would use torture.
Therefore? Your god? Evil. End of story.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
I see, you can determine what is good morally and what is evil morally based on herd animals. Thanks for clarifying.
Bob the Unbeliever
Well-Known Member
Nice bit of Strawman you have there. Cute. But about as useful as your... do-nothing god.
dfnj
Well-Known Member
Unlike animals, language and culture allow us to make judgments on our behaviors. Morally good is deeply rooted in the golden rule. I have argued you can interpolate the golden rule as building block for a religion's purpose. To align our selves with God and God's goodness means we take care of each other and help each other clean up any crap in our beds. Sure, people need to pull their own weight. But without a sense of connection and inclusion what's the point of participating. What is absolute is our own happiness should not come at the expense of other people's excessive suffering.
Welcome to the forum.
Here are a couple of Bahai papers regarding both logical proofs of the existence of God and scientific proofs of God which you might want to download in pdf and have a read when you have time. The scientific one is all in English but one paragraph is in French so don’t think hat it’s all in French. I found these papers very interesting.
1. Logical proofs of the existence of God
http://william.hatcher.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/logical_proof_presentation_200309.pdf
2 Scientific proof of God
http://william.hatcher.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/scientific_proof_existence_god.pdf
Order and disorder in the universe is it random or due to design?
order and disorder
Suppose we compare a pile of bricks and a well-built brick house. The pile of bricks represents disorder and the brick house represents order. If we want to transform a brick house into a pile of bricks, brick by brick, we can do this in any logically possible way. We can take any brick for the first brick, any brick for the second brick, and so on. All possibilities lead to a pile of bricks.
But if we want to transform a pile of bricks into a brick house, we cannot do this in any possible way. We cannot, for example, place any upper brick before we have placed a certain appropriate number of lower bricks.
Thus, transforming a brick house into a pile of bricks represents a process that leads from order to disorder, or from the improbable towards the probable.
And transforming a pile of bricks into a well-built brick house represents a process that leads from disorder to order, i.e., from the probable towards the improbable.
Thus, if we built a brick house in the woods and left it to the forces of nature for fifty years, we would not be surprised to find that the house had degenerated into a pile of bricks. But if we left a pile of bricks under the same conditions for fifty years, we would be very surprised to find a well-built brick house in its place. The surprise we would feel in such a case represents our intuition of the truth of the second law of thermodynamics.
Since the human being is the most highly ordered structure in the known observable universe, the human being is the most improbable of all physical systems and thus the least likely to have been produced by a random process.
If something as simple as clay bricks cannot evolve into a house then it is even more unlikely that such a complex being as the human body formed from randomness. In that respect a supreme intelligence would have been required to design such a body just as the bricks require a builder to build the house and no matter how long left to the elements a house would not appear without a builder and a designer.
So what we call God is the Builder or Designer and Fashioner of the universe in my humble opinion.
Some of these quotes are from a Bahá’í paper on this topic.
http://william.hatcher.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/scientific_proof_existence_god.pdf
order and disorder
Suppose we compare a pile of bricks and a well-built brick house. The pile of bricks represents disorder and the brick house represents order. If we want to transform a brick house into a pile of bricks, brick by brick, we can do this in any logically possible way. We can take any brick for the first brick, any brick for the second brick, and so on. All possibilities lead to a pile of bricks.
But if we want to transform a pile of bricks into a brick house, we cannot do this in any possible way. We cannot, for example, place any upper brick before we have placed a certain appropriate number of lower bricks.
Thus, transforming a brick house into a pile of bricks represents a process that leads from order to disorder, or from the improbable towards the probable.
And transforming a pile of bricks into a well-built brick house represents a process that leads from disorder to order, i.e., from the probable towards the improbable.
Thus, if we built a brick house in the woods and left it to the forces of nature for fifty years, we would not be surprised to find that the house had degenerated into a pile of bricks. But if we left a pile of bricks under the same conditions for fifty years, we would be very surprised to find a well-built brick house in its place. The surprise we would feel in such a case represents our intuition of the truth of the second law of thermodynamics.
Since the human being is the most highly ordered structure in the known observable universe, the human being is the most improbable of all physical systems and thus the least likely to have been produced by a random process.
If something as simple as clay bricks cannot evolve into a house then it is even more unlikely that such a complex being as the human body formed from randomness. In that respect a supreme intelligence would have been required to design such a body just as the bricks require a builder to build the house and no matter how long left to the elements a house would not appear without a builder and a designer.
So what we call God is the Builder or Designer and Fashioner of the universe in my humble opinion.
Some of these quotes are from a Bahá’í paper on this topic.
http://william.hatcher.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/scientific_proof_existence_god.pdf
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
If you'd like to respectfully, reasonably discuss the nature of the problem of evil, I'm game.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
The golden rule? You mean, Jesus's golden rule, which He said roots morality?
Bob the Unbeliever
Well-Known Member
Not even remotely original with your Jesus character. We can show the Golden Rule pre-dates him by thousands of years or more.
Truly Enlightened
Well-Known Member
How animals behave is governed by their genes and instincts. Lions have evolved to become carnivores. In order for them to survive they need to eat meat. They play an important role in maintaining the balance of nature. It is not immoral for a lion to kill and eat their prey. If they could go to McDonalds and place an order as an alternative, you might have an argument. What if there was a world-wide food shortage. What do you think the moral behavior of humans would be? Do you think they would obey the first rule of morality(to do the least amount of harm)? Do you think they would obey the second rule of morality(to increase well-being)? How about the third rule(to minimize suffering)?
We are all animals(specifically apes), and under the right conditions will behave like animals(mob mentality, herd mentality). Remember the gas crisis in the early 70's? These moral constraints are hardwired into our genes through evolution. Without them our species could not have survived. In fact our species almost didn't. If a God does exist, He is either evil, or impotent. Your lion example is a logical fallacy(non-sequitur).
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
Arguably, it goes back to the Garden, which predates any ancient faith you might consider besides Christianity.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
I appreciate your thoughtful, detailed post. Here's what stood out to me:
"It is not immoral for a lion to kill and eat their prey."
How do you decide something that intangible, the amorality of instinctual action? If I instinctually worship the Christ or follow the scriptures, am I immoral, amoral or moral?
"We are all animals(specifically apes), and under the right conditions will behave like animals(mob mentality, herd mentality)."
Then how is it that so many studies show differences between twins? How is it that so many historical turning points rest on people turning against the crowd, or even singlehandedly turning the crowd (I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him...)?
"If a God does exist, He is either evil, or impotent."
If a God does exist, and authored original morality, on what basis would you judge God's morality, since you'd be using a God-given conscience/morality to do so?
How is God impotent in allowing free will? Should God only stop rapists and paedophiles from having utter free will? Is that "appropriate"? Or is it simply that when God's plan doesn't include your will totally, God is evil or impotent? How do you know when a child dies, for example, whether that child will be another Hitler, or (shudder) goes straight to Heaven to avoid being contaminated by, say, atheists on religious forums?
And how, if you can see so clearly exactly what is good, what is evil, what is instinctual and therefore amoral, can you say there is no God who gives absolute morality to this world?
Truly Enlightened
Well-Known Member
There are many things that you've said that needs to be addressed. It is my cognitive reasoning abilities that allow me to conclude, that the act of any carnivore killing its prey for food, has nothing to do with its sense of morality. Do you think that our early human hunter gatherers were immoral to kill to provide food for their families? Do you think that they and the lions, didn't play a vital role in maintaining the balance of nature? Why do you think that there are more prey, then there are predators? More insects, than there are birds? More plants than there are insects, birds, and herbivores? We are all animals by definition. Do you think that male lions committing infanticide are aware that they are committing an immoral act? Both actions are instinctive, and serve a purpose(surviving and reproducing).
I don't see the connection between the behavior of the mob, and the biological, chemical, and environmental changes that effect twins, once they are born. If food reserves are very low, people will revert back to their suppressed tribal nature. They will do anything to acquire food, protect their family, and defend their territory. I used the gas shortage scare to demonstrate what people are capable of doing in a crises. Just imagine what a world wide food shortage would cause?
How is God evil or impotent? If God is omniscient, omnibenevolent, and omnipotent, then how can any evil exist in the world? Power can't change knowledge. Therefore a paradox exists. Since all three terms are mutually exclusive and logically contradictory, all three can't exist at the same time. Therefore, God is limited(impotent), ambivalent, or evil. I don't think that disease, hunger, thirst, suffering, and our genetic and hormone systems, have any relevance to free-will? Since a God would know all possible causes, and all possible outcomes, free-will would have no relevance at all. In other words, since evil exists in this world, only Occam's Razor should apply. There is no God. There is no evidence for a God. There is only humans creating their own God(s) to placate their fears, and conceptualize their hopes as being rational.
The definitions of the words, you can look up yourself. But, good is to cause the least pain, the lest suffering, and the least hardship to another living creature. Evil is the opposite of good, and is determined by its action and its intent. Instinctual behavior is the involuntary genetic expressed information we receive from our ancestors. Instincts are amoral attributes. Genetic expressions are also amoral. A psychopath's autonomic nervous system is wired totally different than most people. They have no pathways to empathy or compassion for others. Are their malevolent actions immoral or amoral like the lion? Or, does any immoral act require at least the ability to know the difference between good and evil? Or, right from wrong?
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Bob the Unbeliever
Well-Known Member
False. The modern bible does not date back much beyond about 500BCE.
Whereas there are civilizations right now on earth, older than 30,000 years.
Your "garden" is 100% myth, therefore. Sorry about that, chief.
BilliardsBall
Veteran Member
What is the oldest known writing/stele?
What is the oldest known agrarian civilization?
Do these date back one or two million years, do you think?
james blunt
Well-Known Member
The proof of God is Gods miracle , a miracle that even I can't explain but can express in math .
Z.P.P (zero point pressure ) is a miracle.
Z.P.P (zero point pressure ) is a miracle.