Does God Exist?

I am not comfortable with any judgement against me. I am innocent. I am not comfortable with a conviction against anyone as they share my inheritance and as is done to them is also done to me. I am not comfortable with suspicious neighbors. Who decides what is morally sound but a soliloquy of the moralizer?

 

They have an absolute effect on your own ability to see. The words of another variously influence us. What you say I can take or leave but I cannot escape the effects of my own thinking or proclamations.

 

I feel that one of the biggest hurdles to overcome when considering something such as "is there a God" is filtering through all the learned crap. One needs to be very diligent to discern between social and cultural influences and personal observation/experience.
When you approach a topic such as the existence of a God and get into religious views and politics, you have already failed in the quest to answer the question.
That's why these "discussions" are always a farce and a joke, because folks get so obsessed over religion and politics that the original question, "Does God exist?" has long been forgotten.

The concept of a God entails an a priori' aspect to all of the cosmos, so why get bogged down in silly human mis-perceptions, why not just cut to the chase and look to the natural world for evidence.
Makes a helluva lot more sense than going back and forth over silly ideologies.

personally I have yet to find any contradictions between nature and the concept of a God animating it all.


for me the smoking gun is life as that is the real marvel and wonder of the universe.
everything else can be explained in a manner that does not require a God or creator, except that thing called life.
Whatever it is that animates and gives purpose and intent to matter to the extent that we can reflect and question these marvels is where the answer lies, IMHO.

 

I got a post removed for saying someone is "Full of it" while showing two clearly contradictory statements which provided evidence for such, when they were going on the offensive in a crass manner. Now that post potentially could have been useful to help someone examine the errors in reasoning they are making and perhaps help them make more cogent arguments, if they didn't take it as a personal attack and were sincerely open to improving their rhetoric abilities.

For practical purposes, I ascribe to the atheist position over the agnostic position in regards to an autonomous, Personal God. I think the atheist position carries more conviction to it and there is pretty much No evidence for such a being outside some anecdotal, undefinable feelings some believers have, which I don't find anymore convincing then the relative undefinable feelings of unease one may experience in the dark, when nothing is there.

The probablities for a Yaweh or personal God are way too low in my eyes. Reformulating a Dawkins quote, There is a possibility of an autonomous deity, just as there is a possibility that there are unicorns flying around the sky tonight or come morning time you wake up and find yourself on Mars. However, if I were to entertain the notion of a sentient God, I think it would be more plausible to be outside of the Universe, rather than intertwining with space/time and universal laws. Because being intertwined with the universe seems to suggest that God becomes subject to the laws of thermodynamics and then should be measureable in some respects, also subject to entropy and therefore could not be eternal. So a God outside the Universe, makes something like Simulation Theory seem rather intriguing.

I haven't read much regarding his ideas but Spinoza suggested that God and nature are mostly interchangeable, as a persisting substance. This sounds poetic on the surface but then 'God' is part of the violence, death and disease as well, which I think most theists will want to divorce their conception of God from. Perhaps most theists would opt to what I refer to as the 'Gestalt God' that the whole of God would be greater in some way, then it's constiuent parts.


In regards to God being an invocation, we can really dispose of religion at that point right? I don't see the point of clinging on to creation myths or people walking on water and dying for our sins if 'God' is something we simply call on to ourselves. NeonSpectral's invocation test suggests, to me, contrary to thedope's response this depiction of God is mute and not really of any true objective value. Relaxxx's notion of God being essentially interchangeable with the superego perhaps may suffice here, although I think his thoughts could be further developed in this regard.

The calculations in physics and cosmology seems to be pointing towards a multiverse or the universe is either 'split' off from other universes or going through cycles, which may kind of shoot cosmology in the foot for awhile. Because if there is smoking gun evidence of other universes, then science pretty much has to wait for the technology to catch up to physically measure this stuff, which to throw a rough estimate out there based on my limited understanding, would likely be at least a couple centuries to provide physical evidence beyond calculations for that kind of stuff. That's not to say there will not be further discoveries of our own universe in the mean time.

Now being speculative here, perhaps our universe is simply larger than we currently maintain and there are like 'pockets' of dark flow, which may not necessarily be evidence of other universes but perhaps could be voids of antimatter. That's not based on any hard calculations or evidence on my part, just an idea that comes to mind. Matter and antimatter annihilate each other upon interaction, so perhaps the light that we cannot capture further than the big bang gives way to the antimatter dominant parts of the universe or something. This discrepancy could resolve, in part, the issue of why there is observeably so much of a tilt towards matter rather than anti-matter.

The dilemma of nothing and conversely infinity that faerylights mentioned earlier, is one I struggle with as well. Based on the quantum mechanics stuff such as quantum fluctuations and the emergent complexity the nature of the universe appears to display, if I were forced to choose one, I am leaning towards nothing being a boundary.

 

"When you approach a topic such as the existence of a God and get into religious views and politics, you have already failed in the quest to answer the question.

That's why these "discussions" are always a farce and a joke, because folks get so obsessed over religion and politics that the original question, "Does God exist?" has long been forgotten."


OOPS! THERE it is. Well said.

 

"At the individual level (ignoring the culture the individual is embedded in) if the individual's convictions are never challenged; again we have stagnation. There is nothing to instigate mental growth or to facilitate a greater, or at least a different understanding of anything."

This is exactly why it is up to the individual to persue his own knowledge base.

 

And to challange our own concepts. If you lived as a hermit, would you not challenge yourself daily in the search for knowledge?I do understand your point, however, when it comes to disscussing something as open ended as this is, there is nothing but speculation. Period.

 

Agreed.

I disagree. Why have we already failed in this quest by getting into diffeerent religious views (and even politics)? I don't see it is the case necessarily.

I agree however, that getting one's panties in a twist about other people's specific thoughts or beliefs on God and accompaning matters (morality, good/evil etc.) is indeed ruining most discussions. MeAgain has well explained how challenging eachothers writings is good and even necessary, but there seems to be always a point where people feel overly right and can't respect an opposite belief. When people have a problem with religious/spiritual faith on itself it is of course a given that they will have a hard time challenging such a person's posts without becoming disrespectful. It can be done though.

 

What do you mean as discussing something open ended as this?

 

yeah, I've always pondered why it's so fucking hard for some folks to simply say "I don't know", because when you strip away all the BS, it is all any of us can honestly proclaim at this juncture when it comes to questions of God and such.

 

Yeah, happened to me to in a different thread, where I also became too personal (apparently that was the reason) without meaning to attack or become disrespectful. Annoying and even dubious that it happened, but I hope you don't let your discussion style or how you perceive your convo partners affect that in a negative way

I find the rest of your post even more interesting, but will have to react to it later!

 

To answer your question, open ended just means that there is no definitive answer , thus the conversation would never end.

 

Agreed

 

Why would the conversation need to end...? Some people do come here to discuss other things besides their sex lives.....

It is a topic people have discussed through the ages, so why not here? It makes for some very interesting points from everyone.....

 

Unless you believe God is in some sort of metaphysical superposition of simultaneously existing and not existing, I'm not sure how you can conclude there is no definitive answer.

 

^
It is not definitive just because there is no evidence. I am not saying this as a believer but as someone who tries to objectively look at the concept of God. For people who believe there actually is a definitive answer, same with the people who are certain God doesn't exist. Their definitive answers are just very different from eachother (opposite even)

I guess some people like it to end because for them it is conclusive and they have a hard time seeing other people still arguing about something they have the obvious definitive answer for. Except for others it is evident D) that for the objective person there isn't a conclusive answer and I also don't have such a hard time accepting it isn't conclusive.

 

and being non conclusive for most, is why, it is discussed ad nauseum.....

I am just being funny...saw a thread of one liners that are smart ass...so that is my smart ass one liner for the day put here.

 

For whatever reasons, it is a conversation, in truth, that has no real end..until death.
We can speculate,ponder,and debate untill the cows come home..we will come to our own conclusions based on all the things that have been mention by all and more.
There are no iron clad authorities, although we would like to believe there are.