Is God Still Necessary?

Thanks in part to Stephen Hawking's theories regarding the universes ability to be born from a black whole and thus not require a divine and eternal entity to make it, are there any reasons left to believe in God, aside from simply wanting to?

 

Not that I am a Christian but I'd like to point out before someone else does that these theories are just that, theories. God is only a theory as well in all honesty, but that doesn't make it any less credible a theory than for example the black hole theory.
Peace n' love

 

In respeonse to this, I'll have to take a distinctly christian approach and argue for my beleif in god via my believe in the divninty of Christ (which may seem odd because the believe that God became a man is more strange than say a deist God in the least).

From as early as the mid-1st Century, Christians were being presecuted and willing to die for their belief in the death and ressurrection of the person of Jesus, called the Christ. This is hostorically attested. If we assume the existence of the figures of the Apostles (or at the very least James of Jerusalem, Peter, and Paul), then I think it would be unbelieveable for these men to die for a lie (that Jesus never extisted), or a metaphor (that Jesus somehow overcame his condition and did not truly rise from the grave), or even worse a misunderstanding (Jesus did not truly die, but merely was swooning. This is really a modern-centric view that we are infinietly smarter than people 2000 years ago because we really know what a dead guy looks like--never mind that Romans were experts at executing people).

Really, this relies on a lot of other assumptions, such as the truth of the testimony found in the Epistles and the general historicity of the Gospel accounts. Most will probable not be convinced by this simple arguemnt, but I will.

 

I think that for us humans, the concept of an almighty deity will always be with us in one form or another. People want to live forever as the self,also in one form or another after death and adhering to a set of principles given/written by those who came before us relative to the how,why,when of existance gives humans meaningful ways to explain "it all". Until proof positive manifests,one way or the other---this condition will continue.

 

Hm, it sounds like you are using the scientific definition of theory as interchangeable with the common laymen's definition of theory. In science, a theory is an explanation that has the backing of other scientists (arrived at through either/or or both/and the scientific method and mathematics. From this standpoint, the belief and God and scientific theory are not on equal footing.

@Ukr: Yeah, that's about the only reasoning I've been able to come across as well.

 

Not trying to deny your beliefs man, but you said that you didn't see how these apostles would be willing to die for something that wasn't true or didn't happen. What about Muslim radicalists? They die for their faith everytime someone straps a bomb to their chest and blows up a train or bus or embassy. My point is that they don't have any concrete evidence that their afterlife or god exists but they are still willing to do it. Also there are many cases of man gods in other more pagan religions from ancient times before Christianity, so the actual Jesus/God theory isn't that unique.

To Mcfuddy. While I understand that science backs it's theories well, I'd like to point out that no one actually saw this black hole or big bang or what ever else it may have been take place. So these backed theories of science are still just that, theories, with alot of people agreeing on them, just like the theory of God.

 

If we all stopped believing would god just become unemployed?

 

So you see no difference between a scientific backed theory written by the most brilliant mind on the planet and agreed up by many other brilliant minds is no different than belief in God?

 

What you said about scientific theory is valid, but it's doubtful that Hawking's views on this subject would qualify. For an extensive critique, see Spitzer, New Proofs for the Existence of God. You might also check out any and all of the numerous works of Paul Davies and Freeman Dyson for a different perspective. Like Hawking, they are scientists, have "brillkiant minds", and have opinions which are not fact but are consistent with scientific fact. Hawking's opinions on the matter, like theirs, are metaphysics, not science, nor scientific theory in the sense you defined it. That Hawking is "the most brilliant mind on the planet" is certainly not a scientific statement. His views on the subject of God are not supported by an extensive body of empirical evidence, rigorously tested and subjected to peer review, any more than anyone else's are.

 

For my two-penn'orth,I like to think there's something [note I say 'thing',not 'one'] that knows what's going on and why,on a macrocosmic scale.

I,being a mere artisan and far from as clever as Sheldon Cooper do not understand how,in the beginning,Nothing can compress itself to the point of explosion and become Everything..

Or how,if that postulation is correct,gaseous materials exceeded the speed of light by a long way in order to gain enough velocity to escape the Event Horizon of such an occurence,when we're constantly told the speed of light is as fast as it's possible for anything to travel at.

I don't understand why,if evolution really works,why there are so many different life forms...surely the whole process of evolution is to shrink the number of possible life forms,leaving just the most superbly efficient few.

I still don't get how cream,which is thicker than milk,is lighter than milk.
Or why light has an absolute speed limit,yet has no mass and is invisible.

Or why so much money and effort is spent devising better,more efficient ways of killing people in wars no-one wants or understands.

Or why if a thing has a 50/50 chance of going wrong,there's a 90% chance of it doing so.

So-if there's a chance there's something out there keeping tabs on all this confusion and making sense of it all...I'm ok with that.

It's not a belief or theory,just me erring on the side of I'd rather think there is than there isn't.

 

What did the blackhole come from or what was before the black hole?

 

A star.

 

For someone who has faith in God as Creator, this isn't a question. The answer is in the very nature of what God is believed to be, the creator of everything. What would prevent black holes or stars or anything else from being included in everything?

 

When and what did the star come from? It goes on and on.

Scientists believe that the universe came out of nothing. Theists believe it came from God. In reality it's unknown and we can only guess.

God makes more sense to me.

 

Where did god come from? Nothing? Something?

 

God just is....changeless.

 

Not all scientific theories are equally well supported, nor are all speculations by "brilliant" scientists scientific theories. The Hartle -Hawking proposal is extremely difficult to pursue empirically, and Hawking's latest headline grabbing pronouncement is on the same level as that of another "brilliant" scientist, Fred Hoyle, that the universe is a "put up job".

 

What defines a man of science to be smart if not the belief by the people of our world that he or she is smart? It is only belief that determines anything and everything we presume to know about our lives, the universe, or even God. If a man believes another man to be smarter than he, then he in effect is giving that man the word smart as a metaphorical cloak to wear. In the same context we can say that if a man says Jesus is God and that God aka Jesus has been around since the beginning of time and created all things at the beginning of time we are thus creating the entire concept of God ourselves and giving word to things that before humanity were entirely wordless. Words make things what we percieve them to be, and as an example of this I'll use the idea of what if I were the first person to encounter a tiger but instead of naming it Tiger I had named it Duck or some other word? Was the creature there before I named it? Yes. But is the concept of the creature being a tiger truly something that makes it a tiger? No. In effect what I am saying is that words are words no matter how we use them. So in essence without the words these two concepts of God and scientific explanation apart from God are equal.

 

What's a put up job?

 

Sorry .... too easy.