Does God exist? (4 Viewers)

[boris]

That is 11% of your total postings in this thread.

 

[BradCube]

God exists. That's why a majority of wars have been fought because God instigated them, cos He is a hypocrite.
"Hurt Not Thy Neighbour"
Fuck. Where was that when the Crusades came around?

First thing to mention is that I am not in approval of the Crusades. They are a blemish on the churches record and I am willing to admit that.

But onto the main issue here. Is God a hypocrite because he has ordered the death of people yet commanded that we should not murder? The misconception to note here is that we make the assumption that what is wrong for us is also wrong for God. Simply put, God created life and he has the right to take it. Humans did not create life and therefore do not have the right to take it.

Most people when bringing up this issue like to quote or talk about places in the Old Testament where God commanded the destruction of whole cities. I have been listening to talks and reading up on this recently and have found that God always gave those people he was going to judge ample opportunity to turn from their ways (with warnings from prophets etc). The Israelites were also always to make an offer of peace before actually going into battle too. The opposition could either accept this offer or they could reject it at their own peril.

We should also keep in mind that God has reason for the destruction of these other cities (it wasn't just on a whim). Many of them were in what we would still regard today as corrupt (ie would approve the sacrifice of newborn babies).

 

[youBROKEmyLIFE]

I've been thinking this and I thought I would take the question back further. How do you know love actually exists youBROKEmyLIFE? If it is as mystical as you make out, why do you believe in love and not God? If it is not mystical, then you must have proof of it being so - in effect showing why your pixie idea's are inaccurate.

Well it depends which parts of it we're talking about? The question of why a person loves X instead of Y I'll admit I don't know the answer to and I'll reject any non-scientific theories as to why this is. This doesn't mean love (something I think is just a post-hoc construction by an intelligent species based on more simple urges) doesn't exist though.

It's like if I saw a volcano erupt but didn't know what caused it, that doesn't mean the volcano doesn't exist.

------------

So essentially, we do not understand why Jane loves Peter instead of Paul (but we know she does), we have absolutely no evidence for this however if we posit that a magical pixie shot Jane and Peter into love... it explains it. It's kind of like how we do not understand why we exist (but we know we do), we have absolutely no evidence for this however if we posit that a magical being did it.... it explains it.

What I say is that I don't know why X is true (Jane loves Peter / We exist), but I'm going to reject supernatural explanations. This is no more logical necessarily than saying "and I'm going to accept supernatural explanations", except that if you do not accept them all you are being logically inconsistent.

 

[BradCube]

My case really rests on the logic of explanation and, yet again, that ever-handy intellectual tool - Ockham's Razor. The general idea is this:

If information is conceived in terms of meaning ascription then in order for something to be information it is enough that we recognise it as such (i.e. that we ascribe meaning to it). Thus, when we say 'wow, look, a piece of information! How did that get there?' we need only answer 'information is there in virtue of the fact that we recognise it as being there'. Now, it is also possible that god designed aspects of the world to contain information, but the simple fact that information exists is not enough to show this. Why? Because we have a simple, naturalistic explanation based on meaning ascription which has no need to postulate entities with as much ontological significance as god. I am not saying that god is not a possible source of these structures, but rather that the existence of information, as such (given a relational, meaning ascription-based definition), does not entail the existence of god.

Long story short: god is superfluous to our explanation of why we find information in the world (given the definition of information you have used).

Ok so you're saying that there are other ways that this information which we recognize as have an intelligence can arise? I would agree that natural reactions and causes can cause information, but not the same sort of information we see in written works or in DNA. The information in normal causes seems to have a repeating pattern which can usually be shown in some sort of mathematically proof (ie the ripple patterns in water). However, from what I understand of the language in DNA there is no such pattern based on chemical attraction or natural causes.

 

[BradCube]

(p.s. it seems I recently broke 200 posts in this thread. Scary? I think so...)

How does one find this out?

 

[boris]

How does one find this out?

Not-That-Bright 609
KFunk 202
davin 178
BradCube 176
HotShot 137
sam04u 137
ur_inner_child 134
SashatheMan 112
littlewing69 106
withoutaface 99
lengy 95
c_james 94
katie_tully 92
gerhard 87
MoonlightSonata 86
Schroedinger 84
transcendent 83
T-mac01 82
kobz 69
webby234 64

Next time you're in User CP, press the column that says 'replies'

 

[BradCube]

Well it depends which parts of it we're talking about? The question of why a person loves X instead of Y I'll admit I don't know the answer to and I'll reject any non-scientific theories as to why this is. This doesn't mean love (something I think is just a post-hoc construction by an intelligent species based on more simple urges) doesn't exist though.

It's like if I saw a volcano erupt but didn't know what caused it, that doesn't mean the volcano doesn't exist.

------------

So essentially, we do not understand why Jane loves Peter instead of Paul (but we know she does), we have absolutely no evidence for this however if we posit that a magical pixie shot Jane and Peter into love... it explains it. It's kind of like how we do not understand why we exist (but we know we do), we have absolutely no evidence for this however if we posit that a magical being did it.... it explains it.

I'm not asking you to show the cause of love, I'm asking you to prove that it exists full stop. Whether this proof relies upon it's causes is up to you.

The volcano example is pretty different since you know it exists based on your properly basic belief in your eyesight. You do not have this same sort of proof for love though.

If you cannot prove that love does exist, then I would suggest that you seem just as illogical in believing in it as I do in Gods existance.

Edit: My point is simply that we all believe in things which are not empirically verifiable so I don't see why God is more illogical than any other belief similar in this way.

 

[BradCube]

Ahh, thanks Boris. I'm catching up Kfunk!

 

[youBROKEmyLIFE]

Well first I think it's interesting that you haven't addressed this point:

So essentially, we do not understand why Jane loves Peter instead of Paul (but we know she does), we have absolutely no evidence for this however if we posit that a magical pixie shot Jane and Peter into love... it explains it. It's kind of like how we do not understand why we exist (but we know we do), we have absolutely no evidence for this however if we posit that a magical being did it.... it explains it.

As for your own:

I'm not asking you to show the cause of love, I'm asking you to prove that it exists full stop.

What practical aspect of it would you like me to explain? Love is a construct like "Marxism".

Edit: My point is simply that we all believe in things which are not empirically verifiable so I don't see why God is more illogical than any other belief similar in this way.

These are human constructs, not actual things. Would you like to claim God as another human construct? Because I can definitely believe in the existence of this concept of "God".

 

[BradCube]

Well first I think it's interesting that you haven't addressed this point:

The reason I didn't address it was because you ignored what I was saying in my last post and went back to the other argument again. To me we can substitute any reason in for something happening that we do not understand and none of them will hold a significant value over another. ie pixie vs unicorns vs "it just is mentality".

In this manner, I see no reason to think that God is any more illogical than any other reason we don't have proof for. So certainly this is an agnostic proof and not an atheistic one.

What practical aspect of it would you like me to explain? Love is a construct like "Marxism".

The parts which you thought were mystical in your previous posts.

 

[BradCube]

These are human constructs, not actual things. Would you like to claim God as another human construct? Because I can definitely believe in the existence of this concept of "God".

It doesn't matter if they are human constructs or not. We have no way of proving our own logic or reasoning yet we don't seem to regard that as a human construct.

It's problematic because once you start saying things like "It's a human construct" that can be applied to absolutely everything which we regard as reality since it originates from a human mind.

 

[youBROKEmyLIFE]

To me we can substitute any reason in for something happening that we do not understand and none of them will hold a significant value over another. ie pixie vs unicorns vs "it just is mentality".

In this manner, I see no reason to think that God is any more illogical than any other reason we don't have proof for. So certainly this is an agnostic proof and not an atheistic one.

I agree, that's why I said:

What I say is that I don't know why X is true (Jane loves Peter / We exist), but I'm going to reject supernatural explanations. This is no more logical necessarily than saying "and I'm going to accept supernatural explanations", except that if you do not accept them all you are being logically inconsistent.

---

The parts which you thought were mystical in your previous posts.

I already said.

The question of why a person loves X instead of Y I'll admit I don't know the answer to and I'll reject any non-scientific theories as to why this is. This doesn't mean love (something I think is just a post-hoc construction by an intelligent species based on more simple urges) doesn't exist though.

----

It's problematic because once you start saying things like "It's a human construct" that can be applied to absolutely everything which we regard as reality since it originates from a human mind.

I agree there are problems there, but please understand I'm not trying to duck the question in that way... To me love is a human construct, but we apply it to things such as when one person is willing to sacrifice for another, right? So that would be a physical application of the construct.

Perhaps you'd want to ask me how I know when someone "loves" me? I don't, I don't know their mind and it doesn't matter... They're nice to me is all that I can say. Is 'God' the same for you? If it is then I have more problems, but tbh, why not?

People appear to like me, this is more than enough for me, the truth of whether they do or do not is of little consequence.

 

[advanced sam]

now i know im gonna sound stupid,
but how do you quote two different peoples replies at the same time

 

[BradCube]

now i know im gonna sound stupid,
but how do you quote two different peoples replies at the same time

You just change the persons name of who you are quoting. For example

{QUOTE=ThePersonYouWantToQuote}text text text {/QUOTE}

(And of course make sure they are the square brackets and not the ones I just used in the example. The square ones look like this [ ]

So just copy and paste the text you want from the people you want to quote into the replies and make sure you have the correct names.

 

[KFunk]

Ok so you're saying that there are other ways that this information which we recognize as have an intelligence can arise? I would agree that natural reactions and causes can cause information, but not the same sort of information we see in written works or in DNA. The information in normal causes seems to have a repeating pattern which can usually be shown in some sort of mathematically proof (ie the ripple patterns in water). However, from what I understand of the language in DNA there is no such pattern based on chemical attraction or natural causes.

I still don't think we're on the same page here. Patterns exist in nature, of course. More abstractly, structures exist in nature. Whether information supervenes on these structures depends (using your definition) on meaning ascription. Thus information only exists relative to a population of meaning-ascribers --> in a sense one could say information comes into existence when we reocognise it or, instead, that it always existed relative to a standard of meaning-ascription that we were eventually to create.

If meaning ascription is what creates information (of this sort) then god is not needed to explain any identified instance of information (because we can provide a simple, naturalistic explanation without postulating unnecessary entities). Do you understand how I am using Ockham's Razor here?

 

[advanced sam]

NNNNOOOOOOO! its not working.

 

[Iron]

Hey KFunk,
Interested in what you think about Nietzsche, both on God and in general (truth, will, etc etc)
I feel he must be fought.
Save us from this teutonic fiend!

 

[advanced sam]

NNNNOOOOOOO! its not working.

You just change the persons name of who you are quoting. For example

{QUOTE=ThePersonYouWantToQuote}text text text {/QUOTE}

(And of course make sure they are the square brackets and not the ones I just used in the example. The square ones look like this [ ]

So just copy and paste the text you want from the people you want to quote into the replies and make sure you have the correct names.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[KFunk]

Hey KFunk,
Interested in what you think about Nietzsche, both on God and in general (truth, will, etc etc)
I feel he must be fought.
Save us from this teutonic fiend!

Haha, to be honest I don't know Nietzsche well enough to say much that is constructive. Sure I have a few of his works on my shelf (as most people who got into philosophy in their teens will) - namely The Birth of Tragedy, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil and Kauffman's companion - but every time I tried reading his material I felt that I lacked the requisite background of greek literature and religious texts needed to fully penetrate his meaning. Certainly, many of his aphorisms are fairly accessible but his more complex ideas regarding god, truth and the will to power seem to involve a lot of complex (and, I suspect, very ironic) interplay with various texts (he was, after all, a philologist by training).

Thus Spoke Zarathustra, in particular, is steeped in metaphor and literary allusion. Take a single example like this sentece from 'Of War and Warriors' in Thus Spoke Zarathustra - "I see many soldiers: if only I could see many warriors!" Some will read this as support for war, but then notice that the word soldier is derived from the word solidus which is the name for the currency of coin in which Roman soldiers were once payed. We can thus discover another reading where the soldier represents someone who does things for a salary (or something other than inner drive towards some end) whereas the warrior fights for passion's sake, driven by an inner 'will to power' perhaps. In this case he may not be talking about war at all. Anyway, I'm sure you catch my drift. Nietzsche is hard to read.

However, if you have any personal passages or interpretations that you want to toss on the table for a bit of analytic chiselling then I'm more than happy to abide.

 

[Daisychain121]

Do you see the wind advanced Sam??