How can god not exist?

CT, I agree with your first line, and have no clue as to the nature of Spirit, although I believe in a higher power.
I dont agree with the second point you make, likely cuz I have seen too much that has no plausible theory, or reasonable explanation that I can find.
I'd like your opinions on precognitive dreams, astral travel, and life after death.
Do you believe in them? I only do cuz I have seen evidence up close and personal that was convincing. If i hadn't, I am not sure i would believe.

 

I'm fairly sceptic, but I like to think of myself as open minded, but so far nobody has been able to made me take any sort of equivalent of a 'higher power' but my good friend Jeff who's a brilliant philosopher, and we had some wonderful conversations about conciousness.

We are both lucid dreamers, which is probably why we think the way we both do.
Lucid dreaming is a wonderful thing and has opened my eyes to alot of things, and made me realise the power of the subconcious brain and how tricky it is. For example, I believe OBE's are a form of lucid dreaming, (OBE induction techniques are 99% similair to Lucid Dream induction techniques).

So with my experience with our tricky brain I believe that there's alot of answers and explanations for 'supernatural' things to be found in ourselves, rather then in some mysterious external force. I would also like to point out www.randi.org, which is a pretty good indicator for the amount of 'proof' out there on supernatural things.


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hmm. I kinda lost my own point in there somewhere, I'm sorry i'm not that good at discussion maybe i'll follow up later when I think of more

 

The opening statement of this thread is quite bizarre. No-one who disputes the existence of God as an entity says that not only does God not exist, but that no-one in the whole world believes in Him either. If that's a common argument I've never heard it.

Without any actual evidence either way (and I mean proof specific to the existence of God, not just some vague indication of something science might not understand), I'm open to the possibility of the existence of deities, but not necessarily as anything to be worshipped. Within my scientific mind, I can only really imagine gods as a highly evolved animal, just like humans.

 

Einstein theorised that the linear passage of time is merely a product of human perception of a wider continuum; that time does not necessarily have an arrow. With this in mind, it is quite possible that you would be able to see some event or place you have not perceived yet while unconscious.

As to life after death, I'm intrigued as to what you have seen which proves this.

 

My friends grandmother had a really cool OBE, while her heart had stopped, where she went from her room to the hospital lobby and saw her friends sitting there. She told them what they were wearing the next day, when they scoffed.
Also, she was never afraid of death after that. But the one that I won't forget is this one.

I used to work with a fellow who's wife died of lung cancer, though she was a nurse who never smoked. It was less than a year from diagnosis till she was gone. Around a month before she passed on she told him that she was going to send him some kind of a sign. He is a very honest, family-oriented, devout Catholic. Then, from her hospital bed a week before she passed on, she told him she knew what the sign would be....lightning.
I have only been to one funeral in my life, hers, and it was at 1PM at St. Anne's Church. As we arrived it was pouring out, really hard, the sky was low overcast thick clouds, and it was dark like twilight. We sat down, and got settled in, and then boom, thunder, and the lights in the church went out for a couple of minutes. Kelvin told me that when the thunder struck, he looked at his watch and it was 1 o'clock on the dot.
After the funeral, we came outside to find that there was not a cloud in the sky, I swear. Everything was soaking wet, and dripping, and the sun was shining in a clear blue sky.

This happened about 20 years ago.
Namaste, BG13

 

First, the many people believe in God argument is a fallacy. Just because many people believe it does not make it true.

You are correct that matters of theism only exist in one's mind.

Secondly, you are confusing yourself because concepts do exist in the mind, but there is no transference to reality. God can exist in the mind of someone, since man created God, but God cannot exist in reality.

 

Yes,

God has to exist.

Every human being must have had a father.

 

What is revealing, is that atheists do know that evil exists, and they embrace it.

 

False. Atheists are moral, upstanding citizens. After all, one does not read stories regarding atheists killing babies because it is suspected they are the anti-christ.

Statistically, theists are the immoral evildoers, as history has shown time and again, because they believe they are performing righteous (heinous) acts in the name of God.

Evil merely exists as a twisted mindset that veers from the norm. A supernatural evil does not exist.

 

I agree god has to be something, even if that something is only the broad concept of god. Like, if you were trying to explain to an alien what god is, you'd come up with something. Which is something and not nothing.

I use the lower case g, though, because upper case "God" implies a personality. A personality can't be conceptual, so I don't think it proves God exists, just that god exists. But that's not really what atheists are arguing against.

I guess it's sort of weird how human language works. Because if I say "Mythical creatures exist," most people might not have a problem with that. But if I say "Unicorns exist," then people might argue.

 

"I think, therefore I am." Doesn't mean that "I think of god therefore he is" makes it real.
In other words, the thought an sich is real because it is experienced by a thinker. That makes the thought real. Experiencing some god is just an interpretation of a thought.

 

You are misusing the word 'God'. Most theists would reject your argument because the thing that you are describing with the word 'God' has absolutely none of the characteristics that merit being called 'God'.

Gods are typically thought to be beings. They have personalities. They can engage in thoughts, they have the ability to reason and to have plans. They are capable of creation. Nothing in my mind, or anyone's mind, has those attributes.

I had a dog once. The dog died years ago. I still have thoughts and memories of the dog. The difference between the dog's existence and my ability to think about the dog is glaringly obvious.

Also it is possible for mistaken thoughts to influence behavior. I once thought I dropped my car key walking across a campus. The result is that I spent a good deal of time retracing my steps, looking at the ground for my keys. It turns out my keys were in my car. The thought that my keys were on the ground caused me to walk around looking for them, and yet that thought in fact had no relation to reality.

Thoughts do not have to bare any relation to reality in order to influence behavior, and the concept of something is entirely different from the thing itself. We can think about things that don't exist, that does not cause them to become real. That is like mistaking the map for the territory.

 

According to Paul Tillich, one of the most influential Protestant theologians, God cannot be a "being" because God is the "Ground of Being"--a metaphysical ultimate or first principle that organizes the rest of existence. Dewey defined God as the summation of human idealism--Justice, Truth, Beauty, Love, etc., rolled up into one as the ultimate end of our striving. Possibly, the laws of physics could qualify. The anthropomorphic entity of the Abrahamic religions is quite foreign to such religions as Taoism and Buddhism.
Yes, Virginia. There is a God!

 

Okie, even if you drop the 'god is a being' part of my post (and I certainly did not mean the bearded guy in the sky type being, but some sort of persona, as sophisticated as you care to imagine) my point still stands. Surely you believe that god is more than a thought. As you said god is a metaphysical ultimate and the ground of being. Surely human thoughts do not qualify as the metaphysical ultimate or the ground of being.

 

same way that it can. what we don't know we don't know. what we pretend to know we pretend.

 

You reason that God exists in people's minds. If "God" exists in our minds, then he obviously does not have the powers claimed by religions. And then , if he is in our minds, worship becomes useless; no matter how much you pray and sing and dance, your only talking to a voice in your head, and that voice which you call "God" can't do anything about the things you pour your heart into your prayers for. Once you relabel god into an abstract thought or into a part of science, the whole purpose of God loses its meaning. You don't worship thoughts and ideas, and no one worships quantum mechanics. If you turn to science for answers you have to abandon the ideas about God, because there useless. You can't understand how God can't exist because you've never rapped your head around the idea that maybe we don't need God. Consider that life could be completely the same without God, and you'll be able to understand that God doesn't exist.

 

all things can exist and not exist, with equal ease. furthermore, their doing so is not up to us, nor do they owe anything to what we think we know about them.
we can however, make objective observations about our surroundings. some anyway. and the honest method of doing so, is a procedure called science. which does not mean that things can only exist if they can be observed that way, but it does mean, that what we think we know that cannot be, has no means of verifying its accuracy.

 

But never can existence co-exist with non-existence of literally different things; the co-existence would have to include existing lacked ideas.

 

ever hear of shrodinger's cat? conceptually they do until you open the box.
and this is one box, nothing human has ever opened, though there be no end to those who claim to have.

it is not a matter though, of both existing, but of not having to pretend to know whether or not they do.

it is also a matter, of whatever does, owing nothing, to what anyone thinks they know about it.

god is a word humans have invented, to make excuses for the immorality of imposing hierarchy.

things you can experience but not physically verify certainly can exist. but not as a matter of having to.

so neat fun invisible things that give great hugs, don't micro-manage, and owe nothing to what anyone thinks they know about it, CAN too.

they just don't HAVE to, any more then we or the universe HAS to.

 

This you are talking about is the existence for the idea essentializing an object lacked: one organically developing "Cat" per say, and the other, the added agent lacking the Fact for the "lethal dose". What has to be is Existence of the non-living cat, or the Non-existence of the living (unsuccessfully) Killed cat. The cat died anyhow in Time. It was just when. God tells us, OR should tell us when.