Is there any proof God exists?

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When it comes to non-faith alternatives, we're still virtual infants. The rapid growth of technology and scientific discovery makes it look like secularism has been big for a long time. But in the past, secular living was anything but mainstream. There were many pertinent individuals along the way, but our current generations are arguably the first to embrace it en masse. Perhaps the results of science have finally pulled back the curtain on the wizard, whereas in the past science seemed more theoretical.

When I think of IS and faith based power struggles, I compare it to secular activities. Could a group like IS ever hope to reach the moon, or discover a cure for AIDS, or create flat-screen technology, or view distant galaxies via Hubble, or do any of the amazing things that progressive humans do?

And after seeing what IS did to ancient relics, it reminds me of my earlier days as a Christian in the 70's and 80's when we were told to destroy half of our music albums because they had satanic messages.

Rho. Let's get one thing straight. I do not reject the concept of the supernatural from some sort of ideological or emotional position. I reject it because it is palpable nonsense, but this is not the reason I reject religion as and other forms of manipulation via supernatural blackmail. This sums up my issue fairly well

But more than this I feel it is abuse to lie to children about science, whether you gave birth to them or not. Bringing up kids to at best distrust the broader scientific community by perpetuating the lie of biblical creation is abuse.

Which brings me to the next issue. the scientific method is a tool which allows us to get closer to the reality of the natural world. No one to my knowledge, has ever suggested that it can be used as a stand alone entity to predict anything, ie it is not a law of nature . As such the verification of the usefulness of the method is the technological world in which we all live. Technology and knowledge crawled along under under Aristotelian and scholastic natural philosophy. Indeed in many ways our knowledge of the natural world stagnated and went backwards after the sacking of Baghdad. It was not until Newton and his contemporaries that things picked up. The scientific method is the tool that took us from having no concept of gravity, to sending robots beyond our solar system in just over 300 years. To try and isolate the scientific method as some kind of non falsifiable hypothesis is absurd.

Which begs the question, has religion ever predicted anything that has ever come true? Has religion ever found solutions to natural phenomena, helped medicine in any way. In fact has religion ever done anything to enlarge our understanding of the natural world.

Food for thought, certainly.

The trouble with Islamic movements and making those kinds of comparison is that their activities are very well substantiated by scripture. The only peace is total submission, and while that has been a struggle within Islam since its inception, there have been vast swathes of time during which they came impressively close. The whole Islam=peace ideal conveniently overlooks the struggle in achieving the caliphate but rather focuses on Islam's long golden age.

The point being that despite our negative opinions of IS barbarism, Islam for a long time led the world in all kinds of innovation in virtually every discipline. Secular or not, progress is just part of human existence and would continue regardless.

Also, while Christians are often accused of being anti-progressive, for the longest time the Catholic church WAS the scientific community. They get a bad name for how they treated Galileo, but it's also easy to overlook the fact that the Galileo incident was in part due to the rigorous standards already in place. If Galileo approached a secularist scientific community the same way he approached the church with then-unsubstantiated claims, he'd have been laughed right out of academia. Indeed, we know now Galileo was dead wrong about many of his claims (circular orbits, for one, tides caused by the sun and not the moon, for another. After all, it had long been well-established even by that point in time that the moon was responsible for tides. Galileo hadn't done himself any favors).

Religion, no religion…makes no difference. Sooner or later people realize that they benefit any time they work to improve the human condition. If IS were to actually succeed, they'd simply pick up where they left off. The difference between religionism and secularism is religionists believe that there is something more important than the physical world. They'd rather sacrifice thousands of years of progress if that's what it took to please some deity or achieve some agenda. Eventually they'd establish whatever new world order they want, capitalize on the learning of the past, and their progeny would all become scholars and academics. They'd eventually take a liberal turn and allow peaceful coexistence with non- or anti-believers because those folks pose no real threat. And eventually, some OTHER group would take on their former mantel, wipe out all the moderate hypocrites and opponents, and you'd be right back in that cycle again. Progress is going to happen independent of religion, and slow-downs due to religious conflict really are trivial if you think about it. People are aware on some level that there is more to life than physical existence, and there's enough at stake in the afterlife that people will fight to the death to defend it.

I could go on, but I'm hoping to be asleep by midnight this time around...

And how do we know about that technological world in which we supposedly all live?

"What an incredibly stupid question."
Hitchens, we need him back.

Dent, are you telling us how to raise our children? Cause that sounds even more like ideological nonsense to me.

Freedom of religion is something I hope they never take away, then we'd be just another USSR waiting to turn into a @#$%hole.

Putin is a Christian, did you know that? I wonder why other republicans hate him, maybe because he's richer than them.

Just because you're a Christian doesn't make you right about everything. Putin wants to control Ukraine and stick it to the EU. He doesn't actually respect their sovereignty or the legitimacy of self-rule. It's not the first time he's absorbed former Soviet-bloc countries right back into Mother Russia through brute force. Russia is a mess right now, hence why his tactics have been to foment internal unrest and loosely support any Russian groups involved. He knows he's in no position to pull off an all-out assault. It's really no surprise Republicans don't like Putin. He reminds us too much of our own president.

Oh look out, what are you going to ask next "prove you are not a tree"?

For starters unless you want to bring in some postmodern a esoteric BS into the discussion I think the fact that we are discussing this in the manner we are is a good example of the contemporary technological world we live in. One that I contend would not exist without a means to separate what works and what does not at a level beyond basic observation.

And before you start please do not bother with consciousness or life itself as proof of god. All you will be doing is invoking "God of the gaps". God as an answer tells us nothing, and gives us nothing material. God does not give us antibiotics, gps, computers, climate prediction. As to consciousness there are plenty of theories and new studies looking into the matter all from a naturalistic perspective.

Last edited by DentArthurDent on 14 Mar 2015, 12:26 am, edited 1 time in total.

Never said I was always right, never said Putin didn't do those things, and never said I did or didn't like him for doing said things.

Prove religion is abusive to teach children, and prove I don't have a right to raise my kids to believe in God.

I'm not saying ridiculous things at all. It is my choice to raise my children to believe in God, not yours. If you have kids, those kids are the ones you will be responsible for not mine, or anyone elses children.

If religion was abusive to children, we'd be a lot worse off than we are now. Get real.

Lying to children about science to imbue a belief in biblical creation is abuse. It is the abuse of trust. Kids trust their parents, they believe them. Deliberately and wilfully installing false knowledge into young impressionable minds is plain wrong. So is the demand that kids go against their natural sexual tendencies. Homosexuality is not a sin, neither is masturbation. As for contraception if people want to enjoy sex without a horde of kids why oh why cant they. So yes in these respects I think some aspects of religious morality are abusive.

More to the point I do not think that because you sire a child gives you exclusive rights over it. You have no more right to f**k with its head than you do its body.

oh and by the way the quote you have used was aimed at Rho not yourself. Bloody heck this new site is annoying just tried to add @rho to my previous post to avoid any further confusion and it wont let me.

Last edited by DentArthurDent on 14 Mar 2015, 12:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

Really, I think kids not committing suicide because they cannot bear the "shame" of being homosexual, or blowing themselves up in the name of allah would be a great start. Not to mention all the pregnancies caused by the idiotic celibacy vows

and as for this

Are you assuming we all send our kids to that place? You're stereotyping religious folks. Not all muslims are extremists either, nor are all Christians extremists, nor are all athiests Anti-theist like you.

This is truly a sad and narrow view you express here of GOD, Mr. A different Name. Your verbal intelligence is to be lauded and is expressed very well. But what you are missing here is the same as many fundamentalist Christians and that my friend is a verbal expression of the ONENESS with Mother Nature aka GOD that primitive people's have been expressing in ART from the earliest historical records known to mankind.

In FACT, 'THE FIRST GOD MIN', in Egyptian LORE, THE GOD OF FERTILITY EXPRESSES WHAT IT MEANS TO SURVIVE WITH PENIS FULLY IN TOW AND IN HAND TOO, TO CELEBRATE THE TOOL OF LIFE THAT MAKES LIFE HAPPEN FOR HUMANS, and as science now shows, one of two male and female flesh and blood tools used to celebrate the lust in humankind to the point of measured instruments for girth and lubrication that drives human creativity and productivity at core of human being.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this stuff out or any verbal intelligence of standard IQ measure of note, at all.

And truly it doesn't take a rocket scientist to determine stuff like girth or lubrication, as it is in the eyes of the enabled holders of the passion IN bright DOPAMINE ENHANCED eyes, and manifest creativity and productivity that is easily visible to the human eye without words.

LUST in all its forms is what drives humankind truly forward. It is the core source of creativity and productivity and the most ancient of GODS of LORE that reflect this part of human nature reflect the GOD that IS NATURE, AS WELL.

I MEAN SERIOUSLY, it's nice that we have the tool of science to describe the world around us, including the laws of the GOD of Mother Nature nicely manifest in textbooks, so we no longer have to fear if the SUN will rise and regain its measure of light after a night's rest or rebirth after an eclipse but never the less, to forget and not practice what truly connects human beings non-verbally in the art of sensual life that includes all things of lust in sexuality; emotions of affective empathy, including the elements of oxytocin and mirror neurons in biological reductionism that connect us to other animals, and a full six senses that connects us to the rest of the environment, most importantly proprioception, the ability to feel the world without the other five senses, TRULY DOESN'T MAKES full SENSE, IF FULLER HUMAN INTELLIGENCE(s) LIKE THIS IS/ARE NOT PRACTICED AS ART, AND INSTEAD JUST THE DETAILS OF SCIENCE.

WELL, my friend, I have been literally compared to the GOD MIN, in real life for 'good' fully FELT empirical reasons.

And WHEN I GO TO RAVE DANCE ME, AT 54, AND MY girl FRIENDS, YES FRIENDS, ALL in their early twenties hanging all over me in the art of dance that I continue to practice and perform like a ballerina real life PAN, if you can imagine that, me at 233LBS of 930LBS of kick a** power, IMAGinE the deLight I have when my good FRIENDS that are these young and gorgeous girls ask me to see A LINK FOR MY FREE VERSE NUDE POETRY, where I copy MIN DOWN TO 'smallest' DETAILS IF YOU GET MY DRIFT, TO THE TUNE of Lady Gaga's Born this way.

Here's the deal, WE (most of us, anyway) are literally born connected to mother nature aka GOD, not CLASSICALLY EVOLVED to gain the illusion of separation, either through false IDOLS OF gods of separation, or literal ways of abstract verbal thinking that puts 'us' in a world of illusion in our mind that is just THAT in relative way to the real flesh and blood world to delight in all 6 senses and infinite spectrum of emotional nuance in life AND TO CONNECT TO ALL THAT IS AKA GOD MAKES US MINI-UNIVERSES UNTO OURSELVES IF FULLY EXPERIENCED, expressed AND NOT SHUT DOWN BY THE ILLUSIONS OF limiting cultures and verbal abstract concepts.

So what I'm saying here is verbal intelligence is nice but if one stays there too much, INCLUDING STUFF LIKE THE FRIGGING BIBLE or other fundamentalist details in the devil way of life, one misses the TRUE fuller PI OF LIFE, JUST IN RECOGNITION OF TODAY, THE 14TH OF MARCH, TOO, TO SUIT THE SCRIBE OF SCIENCE THAT IS IMPORTANT, YES, BUT IN TRUTH WITH MORE, so MUCH MORE, takEN in TO NON-VERBAL recognition, ONLY A FLAKE OF THE GOD THAT IS ALL THAT PRODUCES MORE WITH A STIFF MIN THAN A WELL INKED PEN.

And again, 'we' as in me are/is not just talking about little ones running about here and there, we are TALKING ABOUT A STIFF MIN AND ITS VENUS OR APHRODITE COUNTERPART THAT is truly at core responsible for all the frigging byproducts of culture all around us, not a frigging text of book or sanskrit alone.

But anyway, experiencing all the nuances of life is the BEST PART OF ALL. TO DWELL TOO MUCH IN ONE PART OF MIND IN TRUE EFFECT AND AFFECT IS REALLY SEPARATION FROM THE GOD OF NATURE.

AND MY MINISTRY OF LIFE IS TO CONNECT, AND BABY I EVIDENCE IT ALL THE FRIGGING WAYS OF WHAT LIFE CAN BE WHEN FULLer EXERCISED and practiced continuALLy, AS SUCH, in the link here of even MORE PROOF OF THE GOD OF MOTHER NATURE I LIVE HErE, MANIFEST IN HUMAN NATURE IN THIS FOLLOWING LINK THAT CANNOT BE REFUTED when the flesh and blood hits the delight of road in life, otherwise known as the heaven in now, as forecast by the so-called real Jesus in the Gnostic Gospels in link here, two (too).

Your GOD that you talk about and don't believe in, isn't real; my GOD that I manifest in FLESH AND BLOOD AS THE PART THAT IS ME, IS IRREFUTABLY REAL.

AND SOME PEOPLE RECOGNIZE THAT GOD IN ME, PER 'NAMASTE', AND SING IT BACK IN arms of young women browsing my body in flesh and blood and vicariously, virtually to(O)(;) poetic words shared with the rest of the International world of online poets, in my expanded circles, as such.

I connect in emotions, senses, FLESH AND BLOOD, and little AND LONG WINDED non-verbal written words of love and passion, where most males dare not go.

But i for one...

AIN'T SCARED, BABY..

AND FRIGGING LIVE, AS A CHILD OF GOD FULLY EXPRESSED WHERE MOTHER NATURE AND HUMAN NATURE LIVE AS ONE FLESH AND BLOOD SUIT OF LIFE.

OTHERWISE KNOWN AS PAN OR MIN, IN MYTHOLOGY COME FLESH AND BLOOD LIFE true in living color.

I listen to the HUMAN combined with MOTHER NATURE TRUE AKA GOD spirit within, and manifest it in REAL LIFE, in heArt, and sOUL FOR ALL TO SEE with more than just words of eyes.

Pictures tell more words than these words, WILL EVER DO, no matter how long, dictionary complex, abstract OR ORGANIC, i can ever make 'em, TO BE OR NOT TO BE.

Truly words are so frigging limited compared to life.

That is where the bible and science will always fail, in SIMPLY LIVING A FULL LIFE WITH HUMAN NATURE FULLY EXPRESSED WITH MOTHER NATURE, INCLUDING other human natures TRUE THAT IS GOD IN TRUTH, IRREFUTABLY PROVEN, AS SUCH, WHEN THE FLESH AND BLOOD FULLY CONNECTS TO THE ROAD OF GOD LIFE.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/thomas.htm

And to be clear, I do all this ART of human being to inspire the reading audience, simply to live free with the GOD of Nature, as a fuller expressed human nature being, and also IN the real life audience IN my flesh and blood world.

The darkness I perceive here, in your otherwise known now intelligently expressed words, only inspires my light, and whether or not you read a word of this ART that is another expression of me with GOD, is totally meaningless to me, if as such to you, as that is your will friend, and never mine, alone.

http://katiemiafrederick.com/2015/03/12/arthur-forest-dude-set-free-in-pan-of-action/

I can't take the assessment seriously that belief is something outdated, outmoded, now knows that it's wrong and needs to feel a mass upwelling of guilt for its existence in the face of an atheism preaches true certainty (while denying true certainty out the other side of its mouth as a cover). I disagree with the assertion for the same reason you highlighted - evidence and critical thinking.

Part of the landscape today - one's only allowed to interpret the results of double-slit/quantum erasor if they have a PhD or two in a scientific field, things like the effect of thought on random generators (global consciousness project as a great example) are considered 'not proven yet' and will have decades of people - just like the double-slit experiment - blaming methodology for the results, everything else is either 'anecdote' or it's pseudoscience, not pseudoscience based on broken or skewed methodology but classified as such because it's peer-reviewed among researchers in a field whose field is collectively labeled 'pseudoscience' for its outcomes. Somewhere along the line science left the science business and got really worried about politics and ontology - thus we have the confusion of two concepts because they go by the same name; science the method and Science the clerical institution.

As far as I'm concerned if someone wants to work with ceremonial magic or even practice neoshamanism in the park - it's fine, there's something to work with both at the neurological level (hacking your own brain) and there's also the idea that you're gaining a foothold on what one might be able to call the objective subjective, that funny place where thought flows over from purely being a thing of the mind (or whatever background radiation we might consider the collective unconscious) and starts having effect on a person and their environment in far more interesting ways. There's been a considerable push by society in the last couple centuries to throw consciousness out as a hallucination, I'd at least agree that libertarian free will is something of an artifact of information (ie. not accounting for your own inputs) but to the extent that consciousness has interface with our environments it means that it's an area, like learning languages or learning how to ride a bike, that should be part of human self-actualization and healthy living, whether by magic outright or by the desire to go to church or mosque and pray and/or receive communion, which really for Catholics is an edible talisman charged by the priest and the belief that the egregore of their institution and those in the pulpits confers on the priest to create such talismans. In Fremasonry and Rosicrucianism, Theosophy also, the environment we call the universe curates an evolutionary process not only of cells and bodies but also of consciousness - it's what makes reincarnation of consciousness and recycling of it a sensible hypothesis (a reductive materialist would say energy isn't created or destroyed, a yogi would simply add to that equation that information isn't destroyed either, to have both information and consciousness floating around out there and interacting means that one could view this as a chemical reaction and even chemical enrichment of sorts). That process is simply considered The Great Work, it's the universe doing something with what it's given us - ie. information and consciousness, it's work toward alchemy's magnum opus.

So no, I don't find the suggestion that reductive materialism and empiricism have utterly stomped out all meaningful inroads to a different ontology particularly cogent nor interesting or even intimidating. New-atheism/antitheism gets scary in its temper tantrums and sloppiness at times but that's it.

To use a term like pink unicorn, I don't have a problem with the concept of a pink unicorn, but a reductive materialist would mean it - correct me if I'm wrong - as an absurdity, and the same with the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It's telling people 'If you don't agree with us you believe an absurdity' or, as you stated well above, they've 'suspended critical thinking'. I don't really care what other people do or whether they have any interest in the things I or other people like me do or like to look into and research, just when it comes down to the use of ignorance and bull-headed dogma as a weapon it's tempting to stick my foot out and it's been made even more tempting that it's right now charging my way. A person can be an expert in everything and to that extent I have sympathy for people not sharing my views, but it's tough to respect when people try to evangelize by brow-beating. Brow-beating isn't a tool of reason, it's a caustic form of hypnotic suggestion and it's usually employed by people who have a particularly egotistical grip on their views which is the point where someone's often so vested in what they believe that facts simply won't matter.

More Atheist logic:



And then the Iphone appeared: