Searching for GOD...

[Shaker]

It's not science that leads to my non belief, it is that believers have so far not provided a definition of a 'God' that is either logically contradictory or meaningless. As far as I am concerned we are not even at the starting gate in terms of  discussions about existence.

Beat me to it.

[jjohnjil]

Yes, Alan, science has far to go to explain everything, but as soon as you credit everything they have not yet discovered to an entity which itself is explainable, you are giving up on looking further.

Crediting 'God' answers nothing! It's the lazy way out!  We don't know X, oh, Goddidit!  We don't know Y, oh, Goddidit!  If science took that road we would all be back in BC 32! 

Take God out of the equation  and you can wonder at how it all works, discover new medicines, new ways of communicating - Using the Internet, instead of putting your hands together and talking to yourself!

I know your religion means a lot to you and somewhere along the line you've been convinced by something or someone that this entity is real .  It's scary to question it when you are so entwined in all the carrot and stick that Christianity has invented but, believe me, Alan, life is so much better when you're not bothered about spending eternity on a cloud or worrying that you might get thrown into a furnace. 

It won't be long before I am literally thrown into a furnace but it holds no fears for me . and it need not for you.

I am not using science (or lack of it) to prove God's existence.  My posts are aimed at opening up the possibility that God exists to those who try to deny this possibility.

My own faith is primarily based on personal experience of God in my life which is difficult to convey to non believers who do not know me, but these personal experiences will never allow the possibility of me dropping my faith in God.  I can't stop believing in someone with whom I have a personal relationship.

To open up the possibility that God exists to unbelievers, Alan, you need more than assert you have a relationship with him.  My young son had a relationship with a make-believe boy called Stewart Bennett and this make-believe kid did everything with him.  It was a real relationship to him as I'm sure yours is with God - to you, but not with someone who has no belief in such an entity.

The Bible was written at a time when there was no logical explanation for natural disasters, such as the Flood, so it was fully understandable that the people of that time thought it was due to some magic force they called 'God' being angry with them and they needed to somehow appease him/her/it.  The same thing happened during the Inca civilization when they made human sacrifices to appease their angry Gods - not that dissimilar  to Christ's sacrifice when you think about it. Surely we have come to think a bit differently after 2000/3000 years?

You say you can't stop believing in someone who you have a personal relationship with and no one is asking you to.  It is obviously a need you have and that's fine - but you must see that anyone who does not have such a relationship with God will not be convinced by you asserting that he exists, though as Nearly Sane rightly says, you can't even explain to us what form he takes or anything other than that 'He is'!   

Just as you cannot stop believing in him, I can't start believing in him - in exactly the same way as I can't start believing in fairies or Santa Claus - can you? 

If and when any of it starts to make sense, then perhaps I could think seriously about whether I believed in it.  It is a bit late now though, methinks.

[Alan Burns]

If and when any of it starts to make sense, then perhaps I could think seriously about whether I believed in it.  It is a bit late now though, methinks.

Once you find God, it all makes sense.  God comes to people in many different ways, and it is never too late.

[Walt Zingmatilder]

It's not science that leads to my non belief, it is that believers have so far only provided  definitions of a 'God' that is either logically contradictory or meaningless. As far as I am concerned we are not even at the starting gate in terms of  discussions about existence.

At the risk of you referring to me as ''a shite''.
People can slip into philosophical materialism from methodological Methodism although I agree this isn't science but scientists and those who confuse it with atheism.

[jjohnjil]

It's not science that leads to my non belief, it is that believers have so far only provided  definitions of a 'God' that is either logically contradictory or meaningless. As far as I am concerned we are not even at the starting gate in terms of  discussions about existence.

At the risk of you referring to me as ''a shite''.
People can slip into philosophical materialism from methodological Methodism although I agree this isn't science but scientists and those who confuse it with atheism.

Has someone swallowed a Dutch dictionary?  Sounds painful!

[Shaker]

Bertrand Russell.

Charles Darwin.

Robert Ingersoll.

I could expand this list enormously, though you'll be glad to know I won't. The point is that these men died as unbelievers or even active disbelievers in any gods, Christian one included. By your terms, Alan, was it too late for them?

[Alan Burns]

Bertrand Russell.

Charles Darwin.

Robert Ingersoll.

I could expand this list enormously, though you'll be glad to know I won't. The point is that these men died as unbelievers or even active disbelievers in any gods, Christian one included. By your terms, Alan, was it too late for them?

It is not my terms.
We have all been gifted with a lifetime on this earth.  I know that our existence was not the end result of billions of coincidences - we were brought into existence for a purpose - to find God and accept the salvation we have been offered.  If we fail to accept the salvation offered through Jesus Christ, our spiritual souls will not enter the kingdom of heaven, or to use the words of the Lord's prayer, we will not be delivered from evil.  This in a nutshell is what Christianity is all about.

And there is a bonus.  In accepting Jesus as our saviour, we become more like Him and hopefully help to make this world a better place for everyone by turning against evil.  I accept that many people who call themselves Christian have not lived up to the Christian values laid down in the new testament, but the ideal is to "love one another as I have loved you".  And if only people practised this command, our world would be a far better place to live in.

[Shaker]

It is not my terms.
We have all been gifted with a lifetime on this earth.  I know that our existence was not the end result of billions of coincidences

You don't understand natural selection. I am not amazed by this fact.

we were brought into existence for a purpose - to find God and accept the salvation we have been offered.

Assertion. 

If we fail to accept the salvation offered through Jesus Christ, our spiritual souls will not enter the kingdom of heaven, or to use the words of the Lord's prayer, we will not be delivered from evil.  This in a nutshell is what Christianity is all about.

The Christian notion of an offer is evidently very different from the one with which I'm familiar, then - your conception of an offer seems to be of the kind favoured by New Jersey mafiosi and East End gangsters in the 1960s, which is to say "You're perfectly free to pay us protection money if you want to or not if you don't want to, so long as you remember that if you don't we'll break your legs and carve up your wife's face." An offer to you, Alan, no doubt; barbarous thuggery to me.

At least one thing unites atheists with Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Zoroastrians, pagans and the like; they all by definition reject your Kray twins/Richardson gang definition of an offer. Are they all "not delivered from evil"? (And what evil is this anyway?).

[Alan Burns]

You don't understand natural selection. I am not amazed by this fact.

I know that I have had this accusation thrust upon me whenever I dare to question the capability of this rather crude selection process to produce something with a complexity many, many magnitudes greater than any human creation.

It amazes me to see just how much complexity - some of which (for example conscious awareness) has not even been discovered yet - can be attributed to the magical process of evolution by natural selection.

[Shaker]

I know that I have had this accusation thrust upon me whenever I dare to question the capability of this rather crude selection process to produce something with a complexity many, many magnitudes greater than any human creation.

Who was the last human being to have had three and a half billion years of cumulative selection to try to build something?

It amazes me to see just how much complexity - some of which (for example conscious awareness) has not even been discovered yet - can be attributed to the magical process of evolution by natural selection.

It's not magical, Alan. The basics are very easy to grasp, though of course you can get as complex and as technical as you like.

You're the one who peddles magic, remember.

[Alan Burns]

(And what evil is this anyway?).

The Devil's greatest ploy is to convince people that evil does not exist.

[Nearly Sane]

(And what evil is this anyway?).

The Devil's greatest ploy is to convince people that evil does not exist.

Just to point out that Shaker did mot say anything about there being no evil. He just asked which evil. Can I suggest you answer the question?

[Shaker]

(1) That didn't answer the question;

(2) That phrase is "... that he doesn't exist."

Still nonsense, obviously, but if you're going to quote nonsense at least let's get it right.

[Spud]

It still makes no sense. If Adam didn't know that disobeying "God" was wrong, it was unjust to condemn him for doing so.

By 'knowledge of good and evil' is meant, knowledge in the sense of experience. So you have free will to choose between good and evil actions, but you don't 'know' them until after the action.

If you choose an action but don't know that it is wrong, it is totally unjust to punish you for it afterwards.

Why? If I'm not punished I might do it again.

You might - that surely is where explanation rather than punishment comes in, yes?

That won't help though because human nature is curiosity- wanting to see if the authority will really carry out the punishment. If I've already been warned that I will be punished if I do such and such, then it is not unjust to carry out the punishment, if I go ahead and do it.

So, if it is human nature, and your God created human nature and is omniscient, and if it will lead to challenging his authority, he created humans by your logic to challenge his authority and be punished?

No- no more than you or I would have children just for the sake of disciplining them.

[Leonard James]

Assuming that "God" created us, he created us without wings, and consequently we can't fly. That doesn't mean we have no free will.

Substitute "incapable of doing wrong" for "wings", and the same thing applies.

[torridon]

I am merely highlighting the fact that science has come up with nothing to contradict what civilised human beings have been aware of for thousands of years - that we are not just flesh and blood, and that we have an immortal soul.

Erm several inaccuries in that.  Rather than being pedantic, I'll just point out the obvious - that traditional beliefs in a soul and immortality have found no validation through science, and the fact that such beliefs were widespread is no validation either. Before Copernicus most every human on the planet believed Sun and Moon and the stars revolved around Earth, making our planet the centre of all things.  But we were all wrong.

Scientific discoveries have barely scratched the surface of true reality.  With every new advancement in science we seem to uncover more mysteries.  To try to extrapolate from what science has discovered to date in order to predict the reality of our existence is most definitely not good science.

Eerm why not ?  Science works by taking the current state of knowledge and then taking a guess, in effect (aka a hypothesis), about some aspect of reality not yet understood, and then devising ways to test that guess. And at least science starts from as sound a base as possible, ie our current state of knowledge, whereas your thinking takes as its base traditional beliefs that date from a pre-science age. Thats the dodgy approach.

[torridon]

..... Any details on this soul, what it is made of, where it comes from, how it attaches to a body, how it communicates with a body, all such details are absent, and this lack of detail betrays the whole idea as an evasion pretending to be a solution.  If you go up to a goose and say 'boo' to it, do you really think that it has to have a soul in order to experience the inner sensation of fear ?

The goose, like most animals, simply reacts in a very predictable way.  We have no real evidence that it can experience the inner sensation of fear in the same way that humans do...

You are dodging my question.  Yes, the choices a goose makes might be more predictable than the choices a human makes, but I wasn't asking you about predictability in this case. And of course we cannot determine through empirical methods that other animals have some sort of inner experience analagous to ours. But that is the reasonable assumption that I am sure you make every day, unless you are a solipsist, which I doubt. 

So let's try that again :  do you think that a goose must have a soul in order to experience the inner sensation of fear ?

[Sriram]

I am merely highlighting the fact that science has come up with nothing to contradict what civilised human beings have been aware of for thousands of years - that we are not just flesh and blood, and that we have an immortal soul.

Erm several inaccuries in that.  Rather than being pedantic, I'll just point out the obvious - that traditional beliefs in a soul and immortality have found no validation through science, and the fact that such beliefs were widespread is no validation either. Before Copernicus most every human on the planet believed Sun and Moon and the stars revolved around Earth, making our planet the centre of all things.  But we were all wrong.

Scientific discoveries have barely scratched the surface of true reality.  With every new advancement in science we seem to uncover more mysteries.  To try to extrapolate from what science has discovered to date in order to predict the reality of our existence is most definitely not good science.

Eerm why not ?  Science works by taking the current state of knowledge and then taking a guess, in effect (aka a hypothesis), about some aspect of reality not yet understood, and then devising ways to test that guess. And at least science starts from as sound a base as possible, ie our current state of knowledge, whereas your thinking takes as its base traditional beliefs that date from a pre-science age. Thats the dodgy approach.

There has been no 'Copernicus' in this area who has proved that soul and after life do not exist. In fact, science has done nothing to disprove anything spiritual at all. Science has only been examining the mechanisms through which material  processes work. Nothing more.

There are millions of cases of NDE's  and other paranormal phenomena that are evidence of an after life. Science just does not want to accept it.... preferring to dismiss these cases as merely brain generated experiences ( )

[Leonard James]

The Devil's greatest ploy is to convince people that evil does not exist.

Quite apart from the fact that there is no evidence that such an entity exists, by what authority do you claim to know what its 'ploys' are?

[Shaker]

There has been no 'Copernicus' in this area who has proved that soul and after life does not exist. In fact, science has done nothing to disprove anything spiritual at all.

... whereas, ironically (and unintentionally), you've just proved that those with unevidenced and preposterous beliefs love to wheel out the argument from/appeal to ignorance (also called the negative proof fallacy) at every possible opportunity.

[torridon]

There has been no 'Copernicus' in this area who has proved that soul and after life does not exist. In fact, science has done nothing to disprove anything spiritual at all. It has only been examining the mechanisms through which material things  processes work. Nothing more.

Maybe you're right up to a point, scientists don't generally concern themselves with the task of disproving traditional beliefs, more commonly they look at what can be observed and tested and we build up a knowledge base founded on that.  That doesn't mean that all beliefs that fall outside the that scope are likely to be correct, quite the revese, generally speaking most beliefs are going to be wrong, just by sheer probability, that is the value of science, it is a sharp tool to discover the nuggets of truth hidden amongst the dross.

There are millions of cases of NDE's  and other paranormal phenomena that are evidence of an after life. Science just does not want to accept it.... preferring to dismisss these cases as brain generated experiences ( )

Eerm, all experience is brain generated Sriram, as far as we know; that's the purpose of a brain, to generate experience.  If you stub your toe, it is your brain that generates the experience of pain on behalf of the toe; if you admire a sunset, it is your brain generating the redness you see, it is not 'out there'.

[jjohnjil]

I am merely highlighting the fact that science has come up with nothing to contradict what civilised human beings have been aware of for thousands of years - that we are not just flesh and blood, and that we have an immortal soul.

Erm several inaccuries in that.  Rather than being pedantic, I'll just point out the obvious - that traditional beliefs in a soul and immortality have found no validation through science, and the fact that such beliefs were widespread is no validation either. Before Copernicus most every human on the planet believed Sun and Moon and the stars revolved around Earth, making our planet the centre of all things.  But we were all wrong.

Scientific discoveries have barely scratched the surface of true reality.  With every new advancement in science we seem to uncover more mysteries.  To try to extrapolate from what science has discovered to date in order to predict the reality of our existence is most definitely not good science.

Eerm why not ?  Science works by taking the current state of knowledge and then taking a guess, in effect (aka a hypothesis), about some aspect of reality not yet understood, and then devising ways to test that guess. And at least science starts from as sound a base as possible, ie our current state of knowledge, whereas your thinking takes as its base traditional beliefs that date from a pre-science age. Thats the dodgy approach.

There has been no 'Copernicus' in this area who has proved that soul and after life do not exist. In fact, science has done nothing to disprove anything spiritual at all. It has only been examining the mechanisms through which material things  processes work. Nothing more.

There are millions of cases of NDE's  and other paranormal phenomena that are evidence of an after life. Science just does not want to accept it.... preferring to dismisss these cases as brain generated experiences ( )

How would anyone ever 'disprove' the spiritual, Sriram?  Whatever science came up with, it would be countered by "Ah, but it's beyond understanding!"

[Sriram]

There has been no 'Copernicus' in this area who has proved that soul and after life does not exist. In fact, science has done nothing to disprove anything spiritual at all. It has only been examining the mechanisms through which material things  processes work. Nothing more.

Maybe you're right up to a point, scientists don't generally concern themselves with the task of disproving traditional beliefs, more commonly they look at what can be observed and tested and we build up a knowledge base founded on that.  That doesn't mean that all beliefs that fall outside the that scope are likely to be correct, quite the revese, generally speaking most beliefs are going to be wrong, just by sheer probability, that is the value of science, it is a sharp tool to discover the nuggets of truth hidden amongst the dross.

There are millions of cases of NDE's  and other paranormal phenomena that are evidence of an after life. Science just does not want to accept it.... preferring to dismisss these cases as brain generated experiences ( )

Eerm, all experience is brain generated Sriram, as far as we know; that's the purpose of a brain, to generate experience.  If you stub your toe, it is your brain that generates the experience of pain on behalf of the toe; if you admire a sunset, it is your brain generating the redness you see, it is not 'out there'.

The 'means' to something is not its source. The RAM in your computer is not writing out these messages....you are. Your car engine does not take you anywhere...the driver does.

[Sriram]

I am merely highlighting the fact that science has come up with nothing to contradict what civilised human beings have been aware of for thousands of years - that we are not just flesh and blood, and that we have an immortal soul.

Erm several inaccuries in that.  Rather than being pedantic, I'll just point out the obvious - that traditional beliefs in a soul and immortality have found no validation through science, and the fact that such beliefs were widespread is no validation either. Before Copernicus most every human on the planet believed Sun and Moon and the stars revolved around Earth, making our planet the centre of all things.  But we were all wrong.

Scientific discoveries have barely scratched the surface of true reality.  With every new advancement in science we seem to uncover more mysteries.  To try to extrapolate from what science has discovered to date in order to predict the reality of our existence is most definitely not good science.

Eerm why not ?  Science works by taking the current state of knowledge and then taking a guess, in effect (aka a hypothesis), about some aspect of reality not yet understood, and then devising ways to test that guess. And at least science starts from as sound a base as possible, ie our current state of knowledge, whereas your thinking takes as its base traditional beliefs that date from a pre-science age. Thats the dodgy approach.

There has been no 'Copernicus' in this area who has proved that soul and after life do not exist. In fact, science has done nothing to disprove anything spiritual at all. It has only been examining the mechanisms through which material things  processes work. Nothing more.

There are millions of cases of NDE's  and other paranormal phenomena that are evidence of an after life. Science just does not want to accept it.... preferring to dismisss these cases as brain generated experiences ( )

How would anyone ever 'disprove' the spiritual, Sriram?  Whatever science came up with, it would be countered by "Ah, but it's beyond understanding!"

Yes...science cannot disprove the spiritual. So don't claim that it does.

Its not just about saying its all  'something beyond' or 'out there'.  Its about actually explaining the issue of the self and consciousness. Its about explaining NDE's and other para normal phenomena instead of dismissing them as imaginary, wishful thinking, brain generated etc.

Its about seeing beyond the processes to their source. The 'why' rather than the 'how'.

[Sriram]

Eerm, all experience is brain generated Sriram, as far as we know; that's the purpose of a brain, to generate experience.  If you stub your toe, it is your brain that generates the experience of pain on behalf of the toe; if you admire a sunset, it is your brain generating the redness you see, it is not 'out there'.

Taking your example of stubbing the toe. The source of the pain is not the brain...by the way. The source is the event of stubbing the toe. The brain and the nervous system only convey the pain....to the consciousness.  And what is this consciousness? Science has no idea.