Scientific evidence / arguments for God

[Straw Dog]

Hey Thief,

Cause and effect.
Is it not a scientific axiom?

There is this universe all about...and the cause is what?
The singularity just happened?
Not if you believe in cause and effect.

Something (Someone) had to be there....'in the beginning'.

I don't think a self starting substance concept is the way to go.
I prefer Spirit First.

Personally, I do believe in cause and effect. I just deny granting the singularity or Spirit or anything else the exalted status of being an "uncaused cause". I don't see a way to infer this truth from rational analysis of direct observations. Everything seems to be impermanent and arising in a codependent, dynamic network of complex causes and effects.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Is that why it is used as a primary source for archeology by both sides?
The Bible has about 5% scribal error, outside this it is historically scary accurate though after a thousand copies all other secular works are riddled with error so in time a few more may be found in the Bible but it has been burying it's historical critics just about as fast as they appear.

All of this is nonsense.
Provide evidence for your assertions for once.

Prove that murder is wrong without God. Heck prove good and evil are absolute categories of truth without God. If you look around I have spent a large amount of time explaining why God had sufficient moral justification for his actions.
Here is a satirical but extremely accurate poem on modern moral secularism. Pay attention to the bolded section please.
We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don’t hurt anyone
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.
We believe in sex before, during, and
after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy’s OK.
We believe that taboos are taboo.
We believe that everything’s getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated
And you can prove anything with evidence.
We believe there’s something in horoscopes
UFO’s and bent spoons.
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha,
Mohammed, and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher though we think
His good morals were bad.
We believe that all religions are basically the same-
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of creation,
sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.
We believe that after death comes the Nothing
Because when you ask the dead what happens
they say nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied, then its
compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps
Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Kahn
We believe in Masters and Johnson
What’s selected is average.
What’s average is normal.
What’s normal is good.
We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between warfare and
bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors .
And the Russians would be sure to follow.
We believe that man is essentially good.
It’s only his behavior that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.
We believe that each man must find the truth that
is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust.
History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth
that there is no absolute truth.
We believe in the rejection of creeds,
And the flowering of individual thought.
If chance be
the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky
and when you hear
State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten!
Troops on Rampage!
Whites go Looting!
Bomb Blasts School!
It is but the sound of man
worshipping his maker.
Steve Turner, (English journalist), “Creed,” his satirical poem on the modern mind. Taken from Ravi Zacharias’ book Can Man live Without God? Pages 42-44
That actually proves my point. What a strange conclusion.
Buddha was no more capable of assigning humans worth or making murder a moral crime than you are. However that does not mean his morals are not good just not justifiable without God.

Sorry Steve Turner, but this is garbage too.

Wow, a silly poem proves your point! If I write a poem or cite a story book, do I get to declare that I've proven my points too? Gimme a break.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Folks, thus spracheth Lord irobin, LOL...

As I previously mentioned, you think that without 'God' the world will descend into some sort of chaos. But just in the animal world, we have organization and structured behavior patterns designed to deal with aggression. The bonobos immediately come to mind, who effectively deal with aggression with sex and a maternally-organized society. What 'morality' or 'God' exists here? There is, instead a highly developed group consciousness working to create a harmonious society.

The fact that humans can create a system of aggression control amongst themselves (eg; Social Contract Theory) without a God tells us that there is some innate source of ethical understanding within man. It just makes sense, not from a moral standpoint, but from one of self-preservation. The infusion of a God only makes matters more complicated, and actually contributes to aggression, rather than to eliminate or control it. It divides people into those favored by God and those not favored by God, creating conflict between the two groups, as the bloody history of religious warfare is testament to.

Excellent point! I wish I had included that in my posts.

 

[Thief]

Hey Thief,



Personally, I do believe in cause and effect. I just deny granting the singularity or Spirit or anything else the exalted status of being an "uncaused cause". I don't see a way to infer this truth from rational analysis of direct observations. Everything seems to be impermanent and arising in a codependent, dynamic network of complex causes and effects.

Cause and effect was taught to me in grade school.
It was ( and still is) a fundamental.

What science experiment would have useful conclusion if the effect and the cause of it are disassociated?

The singualrity however is beyond experiment.
Certainty can then be made only by reason.

Of course.....if you throw cause and effect to the wind.......

 

[Straw Dog]

Of course.....if you throw cause and effect to the wind.......

I don't, like I said. Did you? What causes Spirit?

 

[SkepticThinker]

Just checking in. Any scientific evidence for the existence of gods yet? Anybody?

Still waiting...

Keep waiting.

Don't hold your breath though.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Morality is inherent in God's nature.

And you know this ... how?

God's nature is about the most absolute concept possible.

It's dictatorial and arbitrary.

You won't anwser this but what the heck. Prove if God exists there also exists anything less arbitrary than his nature and the morals it results in.

This has already been pointed out by several people. God's morality is arbitary because it is subject to god's personal whims, it is dictatorial in nature, and it is to be accepted by humans without question and without thought. That fits the definition of arbitrary.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Well I agree with most of the first part. Without God morality is a tool that depends on a goal. However that goal is not objectively good but simply desirable. I disagree with the idea; I think you asserted that God is non-comprehensible. The Biblical God made us specifically to comprehend him, and if true is the most substantial foundation of morality theoretically possible.

Well, I'm sorry but he/she/it did a terrible job then. Because I am not aware of him/her/it. How many different religions are there and on top of that, how many different sects of Christianity are there? Seems like the all knowing, all-being creator of the universe did a really bad job in explaining his/her/its existence to us and exactly what he/she/it expects of us.

 

[Thief]

I don't, like I said. Did you? What causes Spirit?

And it is here...at the singularity...
Science and theology part company.

Science can't go there.
No photos, no fingerprints, no equations, no repeatable experiment.
You just have to think about it.

The words ....'I AM' ....are profound.

 

[1robin]

The point is: stop accusing me of approaching this subject from a position of bias. I am no more biased towards God's nonexistence than you are biased towards God's existence.

Would you please relax? My point was not you are anti-God, it was that you look at things through a non-theist lens. BTW you go straight from this to: (I don't operate from a position that God exists, and thus all religious morality is, to me, derived from human philosophy), which is exactly what I have claimed. To be clear I claim you do what you said in that statement.

Would I? I have no idea what basis God has for giving his instruction. I don't operate from a position that God exists, and thus all religious morality is, to me, derived from human philosophy. If we operate from the position that God does exist, I would need to know a lot about exactly what kind of God we were talking about and their reasoning before I can say it is morally justified. The point is that it is more arbitrary to say "it isn't justified if God says it isn't" than it is to say "it isn't justified because I have come to the conclusion through observation, experience and empathy that it would cause unnecessary harm". Do you understand that?

Of course I understand what you are saying and I know it just does not work. If God said for me to kill Stalin in his crib, I think me, you and virtually everyone would say that is immoral because we have limited knowledge. Go does not, he can see what Stalin would do and 20 million people would die if we go insist we evaluate God through our limited means. Of course this is very problematic in application but we are discussing hypotheticals. If God exists what he commands would be absolutely moral even if you, I, or everyone disagreed. Moral right and wrong are determined by his nature not our opinion.

Actually, I can. Murdering the vast majority of an entire planet is evil. Unless you disagree with that.

I did not say you could not simply assert it. I said you can't prove it or demonstrate it. You are simply redefining good and evil to mean whatever you wish. This is an appeal to sympathy argument. You are spinning things in order to steer me into agreement or looking like a moral monster. Unlike most no-ntheist’s, I have the courage of my convictions and do not spin anything. When God killed all but a few of the entire population in a literal or figurative flood he did it because he said every thought they had was evil. So using your limited and extremely fallible conclusions I imagine you would have let them all live and thereby inaugurated untold generations of oppression, chaos, murder, true slavery of the worst form, and every kind of evil imaginable so no it can be morally justifiable to kill almost all people and maybe all. I would rather cut off future people than produce an infinite number to do nothing but suffer. I was raised as a hunter and was taught to put a wounded animal out of its misery. I had a friend who was allowing a wood duck to suffer as he laughed about it. I killed the duck and hit him as hard as possible in the face. However your judgments could have potentially allowed a thousand generations to suffer constant horror and misery. Of course if known you would not have, that is the difference you do not know and God does.

In any case, the morality of a supposed God is not in question. The question is whether morality supposedly derived from God is more or less arbitrary than morality derived from a non-theistic source.

No, that is not he question. That is a semantic diversion, but regardless, God's morality is absolute. It is the polar opposite of arbitrary. There exists no higher plain or transcendent standard he could potentially be out of sync with. He is the source of morality itself. You however may be anything you dream up and have nothing whatsoever to do with moral truth at all. Prove morality as a category of objective truth even exists without God.

Erm, what? What on earth are you talking about and how on earth could you possibly know what I'd claim in such a spectacular set of circumstances?

If it makes you feel any better I and most of humanity would probably object to some "God told me to kill X" claim. However if God exists we would be wrong.

Huh? Now you're making even less sense. What would my faith have to do with anything?

If you had faith that God existed and that he ordered this then Hitler would have never lived to start WW2. Don't think I am picking on you, you can substitute anyone for you. These are hypotheticals not judgments. Calm down Bevis.

I've not said it is. It's an instinct. And, as a human being, I am aware that my life is (most likely) all the existence I get, and my life is filled with things I enjoy, things that make me happy, and I things I love to experience. Therefore, I want to enjoy it, be happy and have as many experiences as I can during it.

I did not challenge whether you enjoyed life or not. You have said human survival is moral. I said prove it is "good" and therefor moral. Enjoyment is not a moral foundation.

Again, I've not made any objective assessment of the good or bad value of life whatsoever, so this seems to be an argument you're having with yourself.

Yes you have, but if not then what is it you are arguing for. You say you have a better foundation for morality and then run from every moral relationship or conclusion. Show me a single objective moral fact without God. I can see the corner getting so tight that it will not be long before the trusty old "objective" semantics are relied on. That is always the last gasp. Continued below;

 

[1robin]

God doesn't change, but what God tells people is right or wrong does change - according to the Bible. Therefore, Gods morality is conditional, subjective, and arbitrary in all the same ways that you've accused secular morality of.

God's morality is not determined by what people do or say necessarily. If God is invariable but locked into a moral relationship with a being that does change then even when he stays the same moral evolution is necessary, good, and appropriate. If you can't get this after the parent/child analogy then you simply do not want to.

There's a huge difference between growing into maturity, and teaching an entire planet of humans that slavery and genocide is okay at one point and then not the next. That's not brain surgery.

That is not true. For instance before sufficient social safety nets existed a nonmalignant form of servitude (by the way which you simply dismiss) may have been necessary. It is complex when an infinite being must interfere but do so minimally with a fallible bunch of idiots who resent him half the time. There are millions of reason why what God considers morally appropriate might change as we do. This is being obstinate for its own sake.

You don't seem to understand a word I've said. How is it any more arbitrary if the sum total of your rationale is "God says it's good, therefore it's good" rather than "something that is good is something that produces the most positive effect, harms the least number of people, and pleases the largest number". That's not arbitrary.

If 1 + 1 = 2 is a fact and you say 1 + 1 is 17 you have determined that by arbitrary means. God is morality. He did not show up and declare murder wrong even though a higher standard says it is good. It is an automatic out flowing from his unchangeable nature. This is really getting absurd. What defines something as valid or arbitrary is whether it is determined in reference to objective truth or independent from it.

Again, you clearly haven't read a word I've written.

That is all too unfortunately false. I will try one last time. Let’s say that not my God but a an Avarian God exists. He has declared that chicken flourishing is morally good. Ok so we have as a fundamental fact of the universe that chicken optimality is right and true. In no place at no time is chicken oppression or non-flourishing good. To say that chickens should be restricted in anyway by anything is to state a moral lie. Now if I said to sacrifice a chicken to my God is good, I have simply asserted that is true independently of truth. If you say human flourishing is "good" and that obviously has resulted in millions of chickens spending their lives in 1 square foot cages being shot up with growth hormones then you have made a moral declaration that also is independent of truth. You can declare something moral but without God or some absolute transcendent that statement is no less arbitrary than saying rock or ice flourishing is good. It is made irrespective of fact. It assumes fact and is therefore arbitrary. If you still do not get it I give up.

Do I have to explain this again? Secular morality is developed over time, through examination, philosophy and empathy. How is that more arbitrary than "I know it's right because God said it"?

No that is ethics not morality. Ethics assumes subjective values, morality requires factual value. If God says it, how can you even theoretically prove it's wrong? By what standard? Even if he doesn't exist how can you prove that your morals are even theoretically objectively true? The greatest scholars on your side say it is an illusion, why can't you? If you can't give competent answers to the questions in bold there is no discussion possible.

Then why did God permit slavery, genocide and rape?

I need verses. I have already showed the "slavery and Genocide" issues in their proper context. BTW prove these actions were wrong first? Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, God and Christ thought they were morally right whose word are we to take? Yours? Why? Do you understand the difference between an active and a passive will in this context? What verse is rape claimed to be morally "good" in. If you do not answer my questions with more than a return question I will not respond.

Unless God changes their mind, in which case their nature is not absolute. It's conditional.

I said God's nature. Who the heck is their?

That's not even a coherent question. Also, stop asking me to "prove" things when you're clearly not willing to acknowledge any answer you don't like.

I am not willing to accept a diversionary question as an answer and I will not stop asking you to at least theoretically prove your points.

And your moral standard isn't yours at all. It's all determined entirely at random by what people a thousand or so years ago decided a supernatural being probably thought. You accepted your moral standard at face value, and follow it without questioning.

No, it's obvious you do not have a non-God assumed worldview at all. You are the paradigm of open mindedness. There is not a single word in your statement that is true. I do not do a small fraction of what morally I should, I do not like a lot of it, and you have no way to know the rest, even if true. This is silly and I give up again.

 

[1robin]

Interesting. So you disagree with determining what is good based on enlightened desires?

Not really, In a world of people that do not follow God I can't realistically force God's morality to be obeyed. Even in a Christian united states God is not mandatory. This gets a little complex but is another issue entirely. You are talking about application not justification. I find myself in a world that does not corporately acknowledge God. I cannot force it and even God has no demand that I do if possible. So we have to do the best we can. I believe we can decide axioms about how we wish to live. These however are more ethics in nature than moral. Moral has to do with objective right and wrong. Without God we are biological anomalies of no more worth than sea salt and a objective moral standard does not exist. IO we can say this or that is desirable or legal but we can't make it right or wrong. If you wish to research this concept I would suggest looking into the two types of Roman law. Even as Pagans they recognized the difference between right and legal. Laws that dealt with moral facts of nature and merely human ethics are called mallum in se' and mallum prohibitum.

But you agree with defining what is good based solely on what your god specifically desires? Either way, what is good comes back to what is desirable.

Not in the slightest. If and only if my God exists would they be right. He did not invent morality he is morality. There is no other standard that can be used to judge him by. He is the most capable of making moral precepts and his nature is absolute and determinative of morality. By what can you judge him? I admit that if he doesn't exist then theistic morals can be a terrible way to identify moral truth. Keep in mind we are discussing hypothetical justification not application. Christianity is designed for personal adoption not corporate enforcement.

How can I trust that your god's desires don't conflict with my best interests or moral conscience?

They may do so, however they would still be right. You can refuse to obey and even deny God's existence. What you can't do is prove him wrong if he exists? I am sure Herod and the child sacrificing Canaanites felt slighted by God. Were they? God can do or require things that you may hate and term wrong. Are they? How would you know? Actually there is a lot of very reliable philosophy and biology to suggest your brain is hardwired for human survival, not good. Why we are more valuable than the chickens we lock in cages and fill with chemicals then kill and eat by the billions? Maybe they are right. Without God you are practicing specialism not morality. The adoption or the character of God's morality are different from the fact his nature grounds morality absolutely. To prove my point, if Allah existed then bowing down to Mecca, Detroit, or the North Pole if he mandated it would be "right". I may resent and reject it and not do so but I would be wrong by any standard worth mentioning. Thank God Allah has little reason to believe to exist.

If he moves in mysterious ways then I want to understand the details behind his motives because I don't trust shady people.

Me neither, GK Chesterton answer the question "what is wrong with the world" with the answer "I am" sincerely GK. Christians are not the source for morality and are unique in believing they have all failed. Seeking God and his mystery’s is what religion is all about. Finding him is what Christianity is all about. The Bible says it is the wisdom of God to conceal a matter and the glory of kings to find it out.

Proclaiming that your god has moral authority doesn't make it true. How can we test it? Or do you believe that might makes right?

Again this is a whole separate (several subjects). I did not believe in God because I preferred his moral requirements. In fact positing a Biblical God is to determine you have failed him. I found him to be true, then experienced him, then tried to live up to his standards failing every day. God's moral standards are primarily meant to illustrate my moral corruption not appeal to myself centeredness or make me happy. I also found his moral codes consistent with humanities basic moral instincts and the only comprehensive explanation of them. Evolution is a partial explanation for some of our ethics but not a comprehensive explanation of all our moral reality. I am happy to discuss why the Biblical God exists but that is a separate issue.

 

[ArtieE]

I also found his moral codes consistent with humanities basic moral instincts and the only comprehensive explanation of them.

Has it not occurred to you that it's much more logical that the only comprehensive explanation for God and His moral codes is that people took humanities basic moral instincts and just attributed them to Him for more clout?

 

[SkepticThinker]

Of course I understand what you are saying and I know it just does not work. If God said for me to kill Stalin in his crib, I think me, you and virtually everyone would say that is immoral because we have limited knowledge. Go does not, he can see what Stalin would do and 20 million people would die if we go insist we evaluate God through our limited means. Of course this is very problematic in application but we are discussing hypotheticals. If God exists what he commands would be absolutely moral even if you, I, or everyone disagreed. Moral right and wrong are determined by his nature not our opinion.

What you've just described is arbitrary morality. Congratulations.

 

[SkepticThinker]

I did not say you could not simply assert it. I said you can't prove it or demonstrate it. You are simply redefining good and evil to mean whatever you wish. This is an appeal to sympathy argument. You are spinning things in order to steer me into agreement or looking like a moral monster. Unlike most no-ntheist’s, I have the courage of my convictions and do not spin anything.When God killed all but a few of the entire population in a literal or figurative flood he did it because he said every thought they had was evil. So using your limited and extremely fallible conclusions I imagine you would have let them all live and thereby inaugurated untold generations of oppression, chaos, murder, true slavery of the worst form, and every kind of evil imaginable so no it can be morally justifiable to kill almost all people and maybe all. I would rather cut off future people than produce an infinite number to do nothing but suffer. I was raised as a hunter and was taught to put a wounded animal out of its misery. I had a friend who was allowing a wood duck to suffer as he laughed about it. I killed the duck and hit him as hard as possible in the face. However your judgments could have potentially allowed a thousand generations to suffer constant horror and misery. Of course if known you would not have, that is the difference you do not know and God does.

And yet all of that happened anyway, which your god already knew because he knows all. So it was a pointless waste of human life.

Non-theists can demonstrate where their morals come from, and have explained and demonstrated that to you several times now. So there goes that assertion as well.

 

[SkepticThinker]

Again this is a whole separate (several subjects). I did not believe in God because I preferred his moral requirements. In fact positing a Biblical God is to determine you have failed him. I found him to be true, then experienced him, then tried to live up to his standards failing every day. God's moral standards are primarily meant to illustrate my moral corruption not appeal to myself centeredness or make me happy. I also found his moral codes consistent with humanities basic moral instincts and the only comprehensive explanation of them. Evolution is a partial explanation for some of our ethics but not a comprehensive explanation of all our moral reality. I am happy to discuss why the Biblical God exists but that is a separate issue.

Where are god's commandments against rape, slavery, harming children, genocide?
Do you not think these are moral issues?

 

[Debater Slayer]

***Mod Post***

Thread closed for staff review.
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