Do you believe in God?

[elizabeth]

Peter, I laughed when I read this last post with the "fairies at the bottom of my garden"! At any rate, I do agree that you can't say that something could exist just because it cannot be disproven. It does seem that sort of statement doesn't go much of anywhere. One person could say, "well, God exists because you can't disprove it" while the other could say, "well, God does not exist because you can't prove it".

With Pythagorean's statement of:

"If God made an appearance before the world or some part of the world, then wouldn't he be joining himself with the world? And wouldn't that change the nature of the world? Such as creating a total unity out of a sensible plurality? And even after he did so, if he then left, if there were no empirical proof of His visit to the world people thousands of years later would still begin to disbelieve. So we would be back where we started."

Well, different religions believe that God has already shown himself, so-to-speak, and hence forth the religions sprang from these appearances. And if God does exist, and he created the world, why would it necessarily change the nature of it, for God to visit and prove himself? I mean, afterall, he is God, and he can do basically whatever he wants, right? And to the last part, where we'd be right back to where we started if he did show and then leave, well, I thought of something. Think of all the various religions that make up this world. Many of them hold beliefs that there was a time when God or Gods were very prominent in our human earthly existence. Perhaps God would punish or reward humans for certain behaviors. Now, my new question is, if a God does exist, and every religion is wrong, and God simply has never been around or made an appearance in any way, or if one or many of them are correct and he has been involved in our earlier days, why would he stop being involved? Why reward all those earlier generations with the luxury of a sort of faithless belief system, and the later generations with only faith? (Sorry if the wording is funny, I'm trying to express these ideas with as much clearity as possible).

But then to Peter's Darwinism of the species who would be social in nature and also intelligent would aquire morality.

This may be a bad example, but I'll try it anyway. There's a show on the television (i think the discovery channel) where these two men go to south america and study a tribe there that has been mostly untouched for centuries by the growing technological world around it. Because of the severity of the isolation, this tribe, and the surrounding tribes, hold what we might think of as primative ideas. For instance, one fellow from the main tribe did something to another tribe (i think he raped one of their women or something of the sort) and his very own tribe, his very family, gave him up to the other tribe to be killed because of his wrong doings. They did this because it was how things were done, to prevent a war, and because they thought it was what was fair.

Now, socially and intelligently, it prevently a war. Emotionally, however, could you imagine giving up your father, or brother, to be killed? Would you be able to? Or is this just an example of Moslow's triangle? And does have a certain cultural set of morals necessarily implicate a necessary belief in God?

[Peter]

Hi, Elizabeth, I'm glad you found the "fairies" reference amusing. I have to admit that it is not original but comes from the philosopher A C Grayling.

You raise the point that God's appearances seem to have been confined to times past. In his recent book "God Is Not Great", Christopher Hitchens repeats a point originally made by David Hume that reports of the appearances of the various gods are largely limited to the pre-history or early history of the human race, when the great majority of the people were illiterate, uneducated and credulous of any passing rumour. Reports of appearances of the gods were not the only fantastic tales to emerge from such societies. Tales of monsters, giants, unicorns, etc come from the same sorts of circumstances. It is noticeable that as soon as a society becomes at least semi-literate and partially educated, tales of this kind seem to dry up miraculously.

Moral codes vary tremendously between societies and when we look at tribal societies we can see lots of things that strike us as barbaric or impossibly demanding. (Perhaps some of these people would find aspects of our societies equally puzzling.) The point is that the impulse to care for our relatives, friends and for the weak is a natural outgrowth of our social feelings. There is no need to invoke the God hypothesis to explain them.

Peter

[<daleader>]

Yes I do believe in God, but there are various definition that are giving to God. The God that I believe represent goodness and doing good. To me God is just a good feeling that makes you do good stuff and stop you from doing bad. CAN I PROVE IT, I don't think we need to since no matter how much evidence for or against we would again believe what we want, until we get a different feeling that would tell us not too.
However we should never tell one why they should or should not believe in God, since it is just impossible to prove such things. Let them feel happy since if you convince one that there is no god, and that person has believed in it for it entire life, he would loss a huge part him since it had live with such entitiy for such long time

[<daleader>]

An issue, isn't an agonist failed to see the believe, he does not say that there is or there isn't a good. I am an agonist when it comes to religion but not god!

[Pythagorean]

Originally Posted by Peter

Pythagorean;

It seems that you too come with prior belief. Unlike me however you recommend no process of discovery (aside from perhaps reading Darwin), no method that might root out error. I say, go into nature alone and inquire for yourself. It will still be there.

Since the 17th Century, our culture has developed a uniquely effective way of rooting out error in our knowledge of the external world - the Scientific Method, involving hypothesis-generation and empirical testing of our theories.


The fact that an idea is fashionable also provides no guarantee of its being true.

I think we can agree that neither antiquity nor fashion provides any guarantee of truth. That is why the discipline of basing our explanations of the world on rational hypotheses tested by observation is crucial.

Every single scientific theory is necessarily falsifiable, existential and a posteriori (open-ended). You can not ground it absolutely. If you could ground science then you would have proved that the sources of science, the sources of the universe, were themselves physical in nature (such as a Grand Unifying Theory). But Materialism in philosophy remains only a theory. The rational hypothesis that is tested by observation is always only probable, contingent and a posteriori. This is, in fact, the very nature of the physical universe itself and science cannot be an exception within the physical universe. Science does not exist as causa sui (cause of itself) but the human mind with the aid of science, as I have stated (and you have ignored), may penetrate into the foundations of natural existence.

This is why atomism had to be adopted in the 16th Century by the doctors. Atomism or the scientific method is an historical movement. And you can't seperate the physical sciences from empiricism or atomism, or materialism, which remain, for all their glory, speculative philosophies regarding the ultimate nature of the universe.

Here is an informative essay on the subject: by Ivor Leclerc


I might add that this is also why success in the physical sciences tends to be culturally dependent. This is why, for example, rabid ideological atheists (you know who you are!) are so reviled by the decent populations which make up the developing world. In fact, as I see it, the current terroristic moment in world history is nothing less than the revulsion paid by these non-western people against emprically-driven nations who are too dogmatic, closed-minded and smug regarding their obscene materialistic life-style.


But what I really think, is that atheists want the power to become gods themselves, it's too bad that they lack the capacity to make the necessary philosophic arguments (for atomism, for example). This philosophic vacuum makes the atheist-come-god little more than an intellectual laughing-stock with his superficial tendentiousness.

The error that is made here, Peter, is purely philosophical and intellectual. That science cannot prove or causally ground itself is a truth. Those who believe that science can a priori prove itself are in error.

And so it seems to me that those who desire to be an atheistic god on earth must arm themselves with philosophic argument. Because you may be able to economically oppress the peoples of the earth with empirical force, but this doesn't make their arguments any less valid than yours (if you have any). Unless of course, atheism is more about power than reason(?).

[Pythagorean]

Originally Posted by elizabeth

And if God does exist, and he created the world, why would it necessarily change the nature of it, for God to visit and prove himself? I mean, afterall, he is God, and he can do basically whatever he wants, right?

I don't see God as a person-like deity who makes external appearances in the form of a large bearded man with magic powers. I say that the external universe is the body or bodies that make up the surface of God. And so whatever God "does" he does it naturally. Just as whatever you or I do we must do naturally.

My point was that there exists an inner substance which is something like the soul of the universe or nature. When human beings have created deep cultures throughout history (such as the Jew culture) this depth of culture may have allowed them to, at times, brush against the inner substance of the natural order of things and the outcome was the historical interpretation of their national or cultural God. But it is human depth and the adventure of the human mind that gives insight. The soul of nature does not come out to greet human beings, it is human beings who must work hard and 'tunnel' so to speak, to reach the insight regarding the intelligible sources of things. This is why education is absolutely required. And with the aid of science we may now begin to 'tunnel' better and reach levels of power and beauty and understanding regarding the internal existence of nature.

[skeptic griggsy]

Peter and DJames, yes! The source is just the mere feeling of super consciousness behind and beyond the cosmos.But as Existence- the cosmos- is all there is,there is no behind or beyond.God could only be immanent,not transcendent. Scientists , not theologians, as Dawkins well notes, are the ones concerned over the transformations of Existence.The Big Bang was not a real beginning of Existence, just a transformation .It will be bud to bud or bounce to bounce for the transformations. And as matter-energy can be neither created nor destroyed, the immanent God has no work to do! And there is no evidence for the inner soul of the Universe.

[Peter]

You are so right, Pythagorean, when you say:

Every single scientific theory is necessarily falsifiable, existential and a posteriori (open-ended). You can not ground it absolutely.

The fact is that all our theories are similarly limited and prone to error - even your own theory that the universe has a soul and that the Jews were able to tap into it. I assume you agree with this since a neutral reader would be justly suspicious of a writer who proclaims the fallibility of his opponent's ideas but finds it possible to exempt his own from the same limitations.

A rational approach to knowledge would accept the fallibility of all our ideas from the start, demand evidence for each of them and allocate belief in proportion to the evidence. (As soon as evidence for a soul of the universe is produced, I will consider it.) As a subset of rational approaches to knowledge, the scientific method is expressly designed to detect its own errors. That is why it has been so successful. It happens that our culture invented the scientific method, so we can be justly proud of it.

Peter

[Pythagorean]

Originally Posted by Peter

As soon as evidence for a soul of the universe is produced, I will consider it.

If we went by common-sense evidence people would still believe that the world stood still. As I said, it took the adoption of a certain philosophy in order to get the results of modern science.

And here's a little science quizz:

Which weighs more, an ounce of gold or an ounce of lead?

(Note: It's a trick question.)

[Peter]

[quote=Pythagorean;4385]If we went by common-sense evidence people would still believe that the world stood still.

Restricting ourselves to "common sense evidence", ie evidence which is immediately available would make no sense at all. It hardly needs to be stated that an extension of sources of evidence is required in order to extend our range of knowledge.

In order to continue this discussion on a constructive path, it is worth pointing out that the process of achieving knowledge can be divided into two phases: the imaginative construction of a possible explanation and the checking of that explanation against evidence. The imaginative phase is a creative process and therefore personally satisfying, but as long as we stick at that point we only have a possible explanation, not a confirmed one.

Peter