Does God Exist?

We can know something is the truth without being able to prove it when we have witnessed or experienced something ourselves. So then you saw the proof but you can not share the actual proof. Just the belief/conviction you gained from it.

 

ok.
So what do YOU think about God.
does he exist?
what are your beliefs Asmo?

 

I have stopped narrowing God down, well, at least proclaim it with certainty to others because I am not certain of the specifics of God myself. I personally have a hard time believing there isn't a god. So I am inclined to say yes, I belief there is one.
It could even be that God resides in the center of the universe, although I myself would not to dare to say I have proof of that I also think that, although lots of people crave for divine proof, having spiritual faith is much more important. I would almost say we are here on earth to look for it (but not say it with certainty naturally, because I can't )!

 

yes it is inevitable we are not the biggest baddest thing in all of existence.

no, nonphysical things do not owe jack to anything anyone thinks they know about them.

lao tzu hit it. yes there may very well be a god, gods or a god-like something, but, whatever you think it is, that ain't it.

likewise, when two people argue about it, they're BOTH wrong.

 

In the words of Feuerbach; god is an outward projection of human's inward nature.

Does god exist?

Materialistic, probably not.
Idealistic, yes.

Being an agnost myself I have to add 'probably' to the question of the existance of a material god. It is something that can not be known and therefore I can not call myself an atheist, but I consider myself an agnost leaning towards atheism.

 

I'll take a stab. God is ineffable. Nobody can say what God is exactly, so that poses a challenge in answering questions about His/Her/Their existence. As Protestant theologian Karl Barth put it "God is wholly other." I've been in fellowship groups where the term "Great Mystery" is substituted for the word "God". So the best I can do is express my own understanding, based on my personal life experiences, powerful social conditioning, reading and thinking about the nature of reality. Kant taught us long ago that our perceptions are inescapably filtered through fallible sensory apparatus and mental categories that prevent us from full knowledge of external reality. As Saint Paul says, "we see through a glass darkly". I think we can talk about God from a functional standpoint: what belief in God does for humans even when we can't offer anything like a precise definition.

The best I can come up with as a working definition is that God is the felt presence of a Higher Power "in whom we live and move and have our being." Not particularly original. The Higher Power, of course, comes from the Twelve Step recovery groups, and denoting any power that we recognize outside ourselves as controlling or guiding our lives--be it Yahweh, Allah, or Good Orderly Direction. So God is not necessarily the Dude in the Sky. The phrase "in whom we live and move and have our being" is from Acts 17:28. The "felt presence" part is mine, reminding us that what we feel might not be real in an objective sense although it can be important to us. Belief in God is an existential decision to bet our lives on this vaguely defined felt presence.

To me, God is, among other things, a code word for Ultimate Meaning and an expression of my sense that it's a great big wondrful universe we live in--as the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich puts it "the Ground of all Being", or as John Dewey prefers "the summation of human idealism". I've been influenced by psychologist Viktor Frankl, who sees the quest for meaning as the basic human drive. Writing from his observations in a Nazi concentration camp, Frankl thinks that the prisoners who survived were those who could find meaning to their lives even in that hellacious environment. The meaning could take a variety of forms:memory of a loved one, a ray of light coming through a cell window, etc. However, Frankl thought there were some human pursuits which are blind alleys when it comes to meaningful existence: wealth, status, power, and sensual indulgence. Pursuit of such things inevitably leads to emptiness. I tend to describe this in the vocabulary of religious metaphor: idolatry. These are false gods.

Does God have objective existence? I tend to reject the concept of God as the "Dude in the Sky" watching and judging us. I've been influenced by a couple of physicists, Dyson Freeman and Paul Davies, who see more to the integrated complexity of the universe than operation blind material force--but they admit that this is metaphysics rather than physics. So objectively, God is either the author of the laws of physics or the laws themselves. I've also been influenced by a personal "moment of clarity" (religious experience, psychotic break, whatever) in which a passage in Genesis took on new meaning for me: the part about humans being created in the image and likeness of God. From then on, I can't go to WalMart without seeing God in the aisles and checkout lines. Of course, I could give a perfectly naturalistic explanation to this psychological phenomenon, but the metaphor helped a lot to change my attitude and make me, in my opinion, a better person. Beyond that, I can't decide yet whether I'm a theist, deist, pantheist, panentheist or confused agnostic. But Jesus is my hero.

 

Erm, no, obviously. Probably going to be difficult to convince 3-4 billion people and the various heads of the denominations otherwise as it isn't in their interests, is it?

 

It is as difficult as it is pointless

Why would you convince 3 billion people of something you happen to not believe in? Just because you find it unlikely? Or because it can't be proved and therefor you can't be wrong?

 

I never mentioned 'unlikely'. I answered directly: no
I do not think the end result would be pointless just the endeavour would be.
Where does the burden of proof rest? I do not think with me.

 

Hence it is called 'faith' and not 'proof'. I think a lot of religious people don't care about proof or create their own kind of non-empirical 'proof'.

 

The majority of the 3-4 billion think 'God' is real/have more than a 'faith' in...
The people that have 'faith', as you put it, do not matter as far as I am concerned.
Well, I suppose they are also wrong to cop out and call it 'faith'.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsgP8LkEopM"]Nahko Bear (Medicine for the People) ღ Aloha Ke Akua - YouTube

Watch and listen to this <3 He was atheist too, but through his research he found something greater than he could imagine. Himself x

 

I need to read the lyrics. I will when I get home. When not on my phone.

 

Atleast he has a sense of humour.





Nahko Bear (Medicine for the People) – Aloha Ke Akua Lyrics

Lend your ears, lend your hands,
Lend your movement, anything you can.
Come to teach, come to be taught.
Come in the likeness in the image of God.
Because, you can be like that.
With all that humbleness, and all that respect.
All of the power invested in me,
be it hard to love my enemies.
All of the black bags,
over the heads of the dead and dying.
The more I understand about the human race,
the less I comprehend about our purpose and place
and maybe if there was a clearer line the curiosity would satisfy.
Time based prophecies that kept me from living,
in the moment I am struggling
to trust the divinity of all the guides
and what the hell they have planned for us.
I cry for the creatures who get left behind
but everything will change in a blink of an eye
and if you wish to survive,
you will find the guide inside.​

​

I go back and forth every single day,
the clarity that comes to me in a choppy way,
as the feelings
and the places
and the seasons change,
the galaxies remain.
Energy fields cone the body in space.
The angels that are coming from a spiritual waste.
The hate that gets me distant from my spiritual pace.
Ten fold the manna when the planets are in place, in polar alignment.
We’re on assignment.

Bodies on consignment.
Return them to the circus,
and what is the purpose?
What is the purpose and would you believe it?
Would you believe it if you knew what you were for,
and how you became so informed.
Bodies of info performing such miracles.
I am a miracle made up of particles
and in this existence,
I’ll stay persistent,
and I’ll make a difference
and I will have lived it.​

Aloha, Aloha , Ke Akua, Ke Akua,
Aloha, Aloha, Kuleana, Kuleana,
Aloha, Aloha , Ke Akua, Ke Akua,
Aloha, Aloha, Kuleana, Kuleana,​

Each day that I wake,
I will praise I will praise.
Each day that I wake,
I give thanks I give thanks.
Each day that I wake,
I will praise. I will praise.
Each day that I wake,
I give thanks, I give thanks.


​

And the day that I do wake up
and transcend the holy makeup,
I am capable, I am powerful.
And the day that I do wake up
and transcend the holy makeup,
I am on my way to a different place………..
Hut da da da doooo ……….​

I am not a leader, just a creature.
Stick the peaches of my teacher when you follow where they lead.
All mysterious ways of nature and I am in to it.

Changing management.
And there are various ways to conquer this, monotonous, metropolis,
my stubbornness is bottomless,
my fear is this is talking shit
and I am wide awake and I am taking names.​

I am not a leader, just a creature.
Stick the peaches of my teacher when you follow where they lead.
All mysterious ways of nature and I am in to it.
I am into it.
Changing management.
And there are various ways to conquer this, monotonous, metropolis,
my stubbornness is bottomless
my fear that this is talking shit,
and I am wide awake.
Mmmm and I am takin names.​

And there are various ways to conquer this, monotonous, metropolis,
my stubbornness is bottomless
my fear that this is talking shit,
and I am wide awake and I am takin names.​

Do you speak to me like you speak to God?
All the love and understanding between the father and the son?
Do you believe in the perfectness of where you are?
He’s my people he’s my children it’s the land that I would fight for.
I saw an ebonese telling me to patiently move the music medicine around the planet in a hurry.
Cuz there’s no time to waste.
Got to wake up the people time to stand up and say,
we know what we are for
and how we became so informed.
Bodies of info performing such miracles.
I am a miracle.
Made up of particles
and in this existence
I’ll stay persistent
and I’ll make a difference
and I will have lived it. ……..
Hmm​

Aloha, Aloha , Ke Akua, Ke Akua,
Aloha, Aloha, Kuleuna, Kuleana,
Aloha, Aloha, Ke Akua, Ke Akua,
Aloha, Aloha, Kuleana, Kuleana,​

Each day that I wake,
I will praise, I will praise.
Each day that I wake,
I give thanks, I give thanks.
Each day that I wake,
I will praise, I will praise.
Each day that I wake,
I give thanks, I give thanks.​

And the day that I do wake up and transcend the holy makeup,
I am capable.
Hm that’s right, I am powerful.
And the day that I do wake up and transcend the holy makeup,
I am on my way to a different place a a ace!
Ho ho ooo eh eh eh eh na na na na na na na hm hm hm hm​

Aloha, Aloha, Ke Akua, Ke Akua,
Aloha, Aloha, Kuleana, Kuleana​

 

What does "proof" mean? What is evidence? What is "faith"? Different levels of proof are required in different contexts. Dictionary definitions include: "evidence that establishes the truth, validity, quality, etc. of something"; evidence having probative weight", "argument or sufficient evidence for a proposition", etc. But different levels of evidence are required in different contexts. There is scientific proof, proof in criminal trials, proof in civil trials, proof in administrative decision making, etc., and there are risks involved in using any to get at the "truth".

The burden of proof in a criminal trial is "beyond a reasonable doubt", which places a heavy burden on the prosecutor. But of course "reasonable doubt" is ultimately a judgment call on the part of a lay jury. The burden in science is similar, but the evidence consists of empirical findings pertinent to refutable hypotheses, and the "jury" consists of expert peers and the verdict is always temporal and in flux. Civil cases use "preponderance of the evidence"--more likely than not, or as is sometimes said "a 51% probability" (but that gives bogus precision to a judgment call on the part of lay jurors listening to conflicting evidence. Then there is the standard for the administrative decisions that govern our health, safety, and welfare. The most rigorous of these is the "substantial evidence test": enough evidence to convince a reasonable person to take a particular course of action, even though another reasonable person might take a different one . As a practical matter, the substantial evidence test--the least rigorous of the tests--is the one I think is most applicable to our day-to-day decisions, and the one I use most often on matters like religion and ethics.

What is "evidence" also varies with the context. In science, the evidence must be empirical and subjected to rigorous testing. In the courts, evidence is subject to rules of admissibility, excluding things like hearsay. In administrative hearings, hearsay is admissible, but must be weighed according to its probative value. In making life decisions, I include as evidence my personal experiences, readings, street wisdom, and intuitions, as well as hard evidence that would be allowed in science and courts. In particular, I'm willing to consider "soft" evidence from the social sciences and history that might make "hard scientists" turn their noses up. Hard science is the gold standard of human knowledge, giving us confidence that the findings are factual. But scientists often avoid, or have trouble getting funding for, research on subjects that don't lend themselves readily to rigorous empirical testing. When they do take on such issues, the results have often been unsatisfactory--like those ridiculous studies on the power of prayer. Science is best in avoiding Type One (false negatives) errors, at the risk of Type Two errors (rejecting things that might be true). For humans making life decisions, those Type Two errors can be important.

Faith is belief in things that are not supported by sufficient evidence to pass muster in science, courts, or administrative decison-making processes.
I think of it as what Martin Luther called a "joyful bet", and use it as a last resort. Faith can be blind or it can be an educated bet, supported by the best available evidence. I'm a "best available evidence" person myself, and I insist that my bets are at least not contrary to science and reason. I see no meaningful difference between faith and the postulates and assumptions on which science is grounded. We assume that the empirical evidence we've gathered is real and that our tests are not the result of supernatural tricksters playing with us. But when I use faith, I recognize that it's less reliable than other forms of decision making. Some of my co-religionists seem to think they can bypass the burdens of thinking and gathering evidence just by believing. But when we do that, we have a high risk of being wrong. I assume that I'm wrong about possibly a majority of my beliefs and decisions, but intuitive risk taking produces results I find acceptable. The standards of science are best in gaining reliable knowledge, but they can be unhelpful in playing the stock market.

 

Naiwen, I just want to say that since you joined us, you have started a very large number of threads for a newbie.

Are you aware that you don't have to start a new thread every time you want to say something? Use the Thread Title Search to find related threads and consider adding your post to one of them.

 

the capacity exists, for anything that sees fit to exist, to do so.

existence does not obligate anything to resemble what we may think we know about it.

whatever things may exist, our human speices is neither the biggest nor the smallist, neither the most important nor the least.

and certainly by no means the only.

do god or gods exist? i doubt we have either the capacity nor the means to objectively know.

if we subjectively feel that they do, this is no problem, just as long as we remember, that another mans words, be they written in stone, or carved on bamboo, are only another man's words.

 

i do not believe an evil god exists. i do not believe a god that is at war with anything exists. but i do believe things no one knows anything about exist, and that one or more of them, may resemble your idea of a god in one or more ways. though none of them are obliged to do so.

 

i believe it goes without saying, there are things greater then ourselves, even as there are things which are less. i'm talking about the non-physical here, not other species of living organisms.

at the same time, what we pretend to know about nonphysical things, is, for the most part, our selves pretending.

but you know, the things is, we don't have to do that. if there wants to be one god, or no god or zillions of them, that is up to it or them, not us.

 

Yeah, God exists. But it isn't .. it's not always .. socially acceptable to say so (or BELIEVE it). Commonly, people do not want other people to know God, love God, "believe" in God .. they hate God and want others to hate God, too. And there's a war. Both sides want to win but the ones who are truly hell-bent and determined to win are haters of God and religion. They want religion DESTROYED and God right along with it.

But that's the far extreme dark side of reality talking.

God exists and I can prove it, easily.

Of all things that can ever be said about God (God is an endless conversation), the simplest fact of God is that ... God is a word.

That isn't being clever. It is an absolute fact. Do you believe in words? Would seem strange to not believe in the existence of words .. we're looking directly right at them.

Christ was Word in the flesh.

oh my GOD! Try this .. oh my WORD.

John 1:1 is easy enough to understand.