Is there any proof God exists?

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Rho, many people base their belief in God upon logic, false logic but logic all the same. eg What was that shiny blue thing that came out of the sky, followed by a loud noise and a fire on the ground? Don't know, there must be a great being in the sky throwing fire causing spears at us.

Using god to explain the unknown has been going on since we first began asking questions about life. As knowledge progresses we attribute less and less to God. By your terms our knowledge of atmospheric events does not refute in any absolute terms that it is not god hurling fiery spears, which I find to be an asinine position to take.

If, as you seem to be suggesting, refuted the logical necessity for a first caused based upon the arguments presented, then that puts the argument into the "prove god didn't cause the lightning scenario".

For the record I do not have the faintest idea what caused the universe, I do know this however, there are many hypotheses based upon empirical science which are attempting explain it. These hypotheses make a great deal more sense than the "great being in the sky" did it, and by virtue of their basis in empirical knowledge of how stuff works have a greater probability of accuracy.

Further why would you find my empirical position for empiricism "disturbing". No doubt you find empiricism disturbing but why single me out for special notice?

Sure, sidestep the question. When you're prepared to be intellectually honest, let me know.

In the meantime, you're mistaking the effect of a natural impulse for the impulse itself. Humans do not have an innate tendency to believe in divine beings, rather they have an innate curiosity and desire to understand the nature of reality.

Thousands of years of doctrine and dogma, enforced with pointy sticks and blunt objects galore, have led to a society that is permeated with superstition and fairy tales. The obscene wealth which was used to build cathedrals, statues, monolithic sculptures and grandiose works of art are evidence only of the ignorance of man.

The invisible pink unicorn is a perfect analogy for a hypothetical creator who has thousands of variations just within Christianity.

Err... so a few arsholes and swindlers conquered the world and MADE an otherwise happy world of natural atheists believe in something at spear point? You really need to think that one over.

My point about the pink unicorn is that it's a horrible red herring to cast the origins of natural religion as Christianity or whatever your pink unicorn is. It was a global cultural phenomena for people to think of that, whether they were right or whether they were horribly benighted savages who just didn't have a modern science book to unbenight them.

I am coming from a body of channeled works that I channeled. There are mentions of God aka YHWH, Yahweh. He is a fake in my material and has a birth and parents in my channeled material. He is however given power, but he is evil and corrupt. There are clues to this in the bible in how he destroys his human enemies. He is God, he is above all, right? Why would he destroy a city for their beliefs? Well, anyway, in my work, he was a corrupted fool that thinks he is the best of all others.

Currently I'm channeling another contender to the title of God. He is just as egotistical and tyranical as the forebearer of the torch. When it comes to God as the Christian God, he is just a spoilede brat that never got spanked as a child and his ego was left to grow till it burst leading to our ruin on Earth. the guy walked away once he realizeed his power was fake and we learned it as well. It seems that he was not willing to stand up and put forth his virtues as written in his texts.

You're not a true empiricist, though, because you've acknowledged the flaws of empiricism and you avoid taking a hard stand on that position. Yours is the more reasonable view. I'm not singling YOU out, but rather drawing a comparison between your views and those of hard empiricism.

A consistent empiricist view would have to conclude that ONLY those things we can observe in the physical world are real. The trouble is that in the scientific world nothing gets a free pass, including empiricism. For empiricism to work would require evidence of, essentially, ITSELF, for which it is unable to provide. We've discussed something related to this before, but hard empiricism is a whole different animal. Because it is unable to hold to its own standard of evidence AND leaves no room for assumptions, presuppositions, axioms, or circular reasoning, it is, as they say, "not even wrong."

It's relevant because equating your views to that particular level of empiricism would be a strawman. Your views, if I understand correctly, are related to probability and to plausibility. One may interpret the data to show a high probability that God DOES exist and that God's existence IS plausible. One may CHOOSE to believe either way, or even something in between (I don't understand how someone could, but I'm sure it's possible).

Your own views on this do not eliminate in any absolute terms the possibility for God, merely the logical necessity. However, the problem this presents is that while the presence of God as a First Cause may not be logically necessary, neither is the absence of God a logical necessity. Whether God or the absence of God are logically necessary or not has no bearing on REALITY. Either God actually created the heavens and the earth or He didn't. Can you PROVE in any absolute way that God DIDN'T create the universe? Can I PROVE in any absolute way that God DID create the universe? The fideists are dead on here. We don't know. We merely choose to believe one way or another for our own reasons, and I find that if faith isn't rooted in reason, neither is the opposite view. We are all ultimately people of faith if there is no ultimate logical basis for what we believe.

You're still at it, Arty. Flogging fakes! Empirical is what is determined by observation, measurement, experiment and all that. There is nothing even remotely "empirical" or "scientific" about the ideology you're flogging.

You merely assume (for your own ideological "reasons") that your fancies are "scientific" or "empirical" to give yourself credibility. You continue to claim "logic" in your defence and in your assault on the naïve and credulous even though you clearly don't know what it is or how it works.

Nobody, but your mates and you are claiming any "great being in the sky"... that's just another red herring/straw man you (plural) invent to divert any discussion into a blind alley full of thugs with knuckle-dusters of specious nonsense.

Maybe, one day, we'll be able to have some discussion about proofs of God's existence.

Still at it Davy believing in your imaginary friend who has never been there for you! The same imaginary friend who allows people to suffer and die from AIDS and cancer because well hes not perfect at all or capable of doing anything!

I suggest that friends, real or imaginary, have little or nothing to do with science or proofs of anything.

There are exceedingly disagreeable persons around though for whom a "friend" is simply a vassal or a kind of ornament for their ego. Now, what are they called?

Anyhow, I repeat: ... nothing at all to do with friends, that I can see.

The God family forefathers were able to do amazing things. With a little chewing gum, some twine, a stick and a couple frogs they could do miraculous things. But each successive generation of the God family inherited less of the talents of the previous. Which I guess explains why the current generation is MIA.

If that's how you choose to misinterpret my point then sure, why not.

Tell me, if you will, what the traditional punishment is for blasphemy.



I've underlined the important logical error in your argument. Can you name a living being who, without instruction, thought of "God" all by themself? The Judeo-Christian god was spread by instruction, it is not an inevitable autodidactic conclusion. The invisible pink unicorn might just as easily have been the God Du Jour in second century Rome.

Gods are tools for self-promotion, societal control and enslavement. Any argument against that is an argument from blissful ignorance of human history.

I realize that is a tongue and cheek statement but ironically, per my current perception and definition of this three letter symbol named GOD, it is incredibly insightful.

I never found GOD in church. I've always found GOD within ME and in Nature.

Truly no words are required, and I do mean that literally.

Science now shows that we live in a connected Interdependent Universe named as Nature, generally speaking, and some folks connect to THIS Universe more than others, as human beings have a 'plastic' natured mind AND BODY, subject to environmental challenges, neuroplasticity, epigenetics, classical evolution, AND THE RESULTING HUMAN adaptations that can be overall positive or negative in effect and AFFECT.

HOWEVER, THE MOST IMPORTANT thing to understand for human well being in balance with the rest of NATURE PER WHAT I AND MANY PEOPLE INCLUDING the Gnostic reports of Jesus name as a similar metaphor for the living GOD of ALL THAT IS a continual moving and changing force, as an Interdependent RELATIONSHIP FOR ALL THE 'DETAILS' OR 'TREES' INVOLVED..

YES, TRULY IN THE CASE of human beings the most important part of that for basic survival, as a human being is the AFFECT PART OR MORE SPECIFICALLY EMOTIONAL AND SENSORY EMPATHY.

SADLY ENOUGH, as is the case, as a stereotype perhaps, is that most scientists are stuck in a specialized mechanical cognition area of mind, and literally do not more fully experience the emotional and sensory areas of life, simply, as ironically, the same science, overall, shows that a mind stuck in mechanical cognition represses those CONNECTING areas of the experience of human being with the rest of nature; most importantly HUMAN BEINGS.

I'VE Never met an 'empath', who didn't believe in the connecting force of this three letter metaphor for the Interdependent Relationship of ALL things.

However, I've met plenty of 'psychopathic', clergy type folks, who base their life on money, power, and control of other human beings in dominance FROM notching checks in belt loops for having sex with women as objects with no empathic connection to raking in cash from the congregation to buy a bigger house.

People who are successfully connected with other humans and nature, generally speaking, do not need material THINGS and subjugating power over other HUMANS to simply be content.

The greatest emptiness in life is not feeling a genuine oxytocin connection to other humans, and the proprioception sense that is now considered by some scientists as the 6th sense of humans that is sorely undeveloped in modern humans from A LIFE SPENT AS sedentary, IN NOT MORE FULLY CONNECTING to rest of the environment in ACTUALLY FEELING IT AND NOT JUST 'SEEING' IT WITH THE OTHER 5 SENSES.

There is a spectrum of human connection to other humans and animals ranging from the archetypal 'psychopath' or 'cold hearted devil' that tortures small animals and sets fires just to see the damage, to the 'angel' or human 'empath' WHO HAS SO MUCH LOVING connection to humans and animals that they cannot bear to look at those sad animal commercials, and cannot separate the feelings of others from their feelings.

I for one, live in the second area of life.

However, I for one, have the 'privilege' of moving to the first part that is truly what I understand as literal human hell now, with the loss of that connection precipitated by catastrophic multiple illness.

The first thing I noticed is my cat noticed, when I could no longer feel that oxytocin feeling when I petted him.

He could sense it and recoiled from my touch with his ears peeling back toward his head, in discomfort of the 'psychopathic' touch, of a human with no soul.

Yes, that connection to the rest of humans; that oxytocin/mirror neuron connection that I was blessed with extremely strong where my connections to people, INCLUDING TOTAL STRANGERS, IS like a never ending romance of love THAT was suddenly gone, with extreme and chronic illness taking it all away.

And in addition, my sensory connections to the rest of nature that were exquisite for me from birth, left my life experience as well.

And then I finally understood, what it was when people talk about not having heart, SOUL, and spirit, as I never realized it was possible to LOSE WHAT I HAD THAT WAS A REAL AND EMPIRICALLY MEASURED HUMAN PHENOMENON.

NO ONE IN SCHOOL, EXPLAINS HOW IN TECHNICAL TERMS ONE CAN LOSE WHAT IS UNDERSTOOD AS THE HUMANITY THAT KEEPS HUMANS CONNECTED, AND motivated strongly to socially connect as it is simply a feeling of bliss to connect with oxytocin and mirror neurons FULLY IN TOW.

BUT there is the other thing, and that is feeling comfortable in one's own skin, per the environment that skin lives and moves in that I never really had.

And now with the exercise of physical intelligence by way of ballet and martial arts style TOTALLY CREATIVE INNATE INSTINCTUAL, INTUITIVE MOVEMENT, I FEEL ONE WITH MY ENVIRONMENT, TOTALLY INTEGRATED IN SENSORY WAY AND ADDITIONALLY WITH MASTERY over my emotions in regulation experienced with control by me, instead of others.

I am impervious to the affect of a manipulating psychopathic-like mind now.

I literally float on land, in balance, as characterized by the onlookers who watch me move.

And truly that is like the mythological Ninjas or the primitive folks who can manage to stay invisible in rain forests that includes both humans and bonobos.

Yes, humans, overall, have forgotten and are increasingly forgetting the most important types of human intelligence, and that is simply connecting in a most blissful way to the rest of humans and nature that truly is PART OF the Interdependent Relationship of ALL of Nature, also known as GOD.

When one doesn't feel it, it simply does not exist in practical terms.

And I've been to both the Heaven of CONNECTING MORE FULLY TO THE GOD OF Nature or the absence of the FEELING CONNECTIon with IT, in the literal hell of no connection with Nature AKA GOD.

And after experiencing both, it is clear to me, why some folks here, will never ever experience the real GOD of Nature, more fully, particularly like our so-called 'ignorant savage ancestors and primitive peoples', WHO still do with never the need for a book of empty words, with no heart, soul, or spirit, inherently living AND NATURALLY LOVING IN THOSE WORDS.

'THE WORD' IS NEVER HOLY, UNLESS THERE IS A REAL HUMAN HEART, SOUL, AND SPIRIT WHO LIVES UNDERNEATH THOSE WORDS.


AND TRULY, COLD HEARTED, SOULED, AND SPIRITED PEOPLE WILL NEVER EVER CONNECT TO GOD LIKE THIS, until by WORK AND practice or BY real life miracle they are reborn again, AS SIMPLY A FULL HUMAN BEING, AS IS THE CASE OF WHAT HAPPENED TO ME IN REAL LIFE THAT I have been able to empirically document and measure.

The "Phoenix" is a human being more fully realized in metaphor, and not a myth at core, as many other MYTHOLOGICAL analogies for human ARE AT CORE.

AND THEN THERE'S the pressing 930LBS with my legs, REGAINING THE INNATE STRENGTH OF MY PRIMATE COUSINS, the dancing 'miracles' that generally speaking thrills my metro area, and the way 'all the YOUNG women' seem to 'love' me now, with complete women strangers telling me that to my face, for no other reason, than being impressed by my humanity as A male EXTREMELY EXPRESSED FREELY AS SUCH IN VISIBLE MOVEMENT IN BOTH FEMININE AND MASCULINE BALANCE.

I JUST REMEMBERED NATURE BY WAY OF HARD WORK AND PRACTICE, DRIVEN BY RELATIVE HUMAN FREE WILL, with the real life EMPOWERING EMOTIONAL elements of faith, hope, and belief in me GAINING TRUST IN THE REST OF NATURE AKA GOD ALONG THE WAY, WHERE NOW IT IS AT 100%.

AND yes, there are mystical elements that no words can FULLY describe, PER A level of human ecstasy that no words CAN ADEQUATELY EXPRESS, AND where there are folks who do not experience IT that it is almost just as well THAT IT is not discussed, as it is a totally different dimension of experiencing life in a bliss that goes a thousand times, at least, above, what folks describes as a human orgasm.

I can live there forever, now, If I like; however, I work to help others, on the more elementary parts of connecting to Nature AKA the Interdependent Connection FEELING PART OF IT, WITH SUCCESS, AT least in real life, as my spirit in connecting FORCE IS LITERALLY TOO POWERFUL FOR MOST PEOPLE TO MISS, when they FEEL IT EMANATING FROM ME IN REAL LIFE.

AND YES, THIS IS REAL, AS EVEN SCIENCE SHOWS THAT THE OXYTOCIN, AND MIRROR NEURON EXPERIENCE IS A TWO-WAY FORCE OF HUMAN CONNECTION.

AND truly, as science shows, THIS IS WHAT IS OFTEN BUT OBVIOUSLY NOT ALWAYS MISSING ON THE SPECTRUM THAT IS AS DIVERSE AS ANY OTHER GROUP OF HUMANS 'in the wild'.

But it never fails, and I am not directing this at you personally, as I think you feel it, AS you just DON'T NAME IT GOD LIKE I, AND THE PRIMITIVE FOLKS DO IN OTHER WORDS, LIKE GREAT SPIRIT OR WHATEVER BUT PEOPLE who do not feel it can rarely believe in it, as It is real when felt.

WELL, IT IS A GREAT SPIRIT, IN THE SENSES AND EMOTIONS MORE FULLY CONNECTED WITH IT, LITERALLY AS SUCH.

BUT THE KEY IS, IT IS NOT A NOUN, IT IS A CONNECTING FORCE ONE ACTUALLY EXPERIENCES AND FEELS BY WAY OF EMOTIONS, AND SENSES, AND NEVER EVER empty skeletons of words, alone.

Words are nothing, COMPARED TO THIS GOD I AM TALKING ABOUT, IN REAL LIFE BLISS OF CONNECTION, ALL AROUND, INSIDE OUT, ABOVE SO BELOW.

AND YEAH, SAME STUFF THAT THE GNOSTIC JESUS, is 'talking' about, WHOEVER THAT IS WRITTEN BY IN THE LINK BELOW.

IT'S A UNIVERSAL HUMAN THINGY, for healthy balanced folks.

And hell no, it doesn't require any frigging human instruction for it, just human flesh and blood that more fully works.

I sensed it looking over the river at age 3, like I had been here forever, before I could even speak.

Written language becomes my first roadblock to eventually losing this connection with 'GOD', AND NOW THE ROADBLOCKS ARE AS FAT AS ANY CAMEL I KNOW AND AS SMALL AS ANY EYE OF A NEEDLE I SEE. BUT I FOR ONE, TOTALLY IGNORE AND 'CONQUER' THEM.

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

TO KNOW GOD IS A LIVING FEELING THING;

NOT DEAD WORDS;

NEVER, EVER, NEVER.

And truly, in at least my case, this is WHAT IT FEELS LIKE IN SONG
TO COME ALIVE FROM

STONE..

REBORN AS HUMAN SIMPLE AND TRUE like a 'GREEK GOD' OR 'MUSE', IN TRUE EFFECT
AND MOST IMPORTANTLY

AFFECT.



And REALLY, the quickest litmus test, for me to know, whether or not folks experience GOD, whether they name IT THAT or NOT, is how they connect to other human beings or animals, in both words, SPEECH, and NON-VERBAL actions, expressed.

I rarely see a person who personally attacks another person OR ANIMAL, who REALLY believes AND CONNECTS TO 'GOD'.

And from a scientific perspective, per how I analyze GOD here, in systemizing 'old', general definition, of science way..

THAT MAKES almost PERFECT, RATIONAL SENSE.

I can sense someone doesn't believe in GOD before they tell me, about 99% percent of the time, per my mental PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY LIKE notes, when I experiment with this REAL LIFE GOD PHENOMENON.

AND I HAVE EXPERIMENTED WITH LITERALLY ALMOST 100 THOUSAND FOLKS.

AND MY EXPERIMENT goes on, both for EXPERIENCING ME, and OBSERVING OTHERS, with or without THIS CONNECTION, PER 'GOD'.

SOME PEOPLE EXPERIENCE 'THE FORCE' STRONGLY AND ARE EVEN missed when their physical presence is not felt.

SOME PEOPLE EXPERIENCE 'THE FORCE' WEAKLY AND EVEN CATS RECOIL FROM THEIR TOUCH.

Truly, GOD IS NOT 'ROCKET SCIENCE'.

GOD IS 'COMMON

SENSE'.

I don't know, you're still trying to yank my point off godknowswhere and make it something it wasn't - whether you have any idea you're doing it or not.

My point: a pink unicorn is a specific idea. A phenomena of belief in deities or deity coming up from tribes all over the world from East to West to the jungles and island peoples does not get caged into The Bible. You can't really dangle something like a 'pink unicorn' and say it represents the broad phenomena.

Punishment for blasphemy? I still don't think you've figured out that Christianity was not a global event existing since left the trees in Africa.


You're still dragging this off somewhere else.

Thousands, even millions, of tribes of people - less than 50 persons each. A shaman in each one, not much communication between most of them. They had beliefs in animal spirits, in sentience of the elements, that if they could make a headdress of bearskin that they took on the power of Bear or if they had some tiger claws they could take on the power of Tiger by contagion. This WAS our inquiry into the world around us and our assumptions based on it. You'd have a bunch of people dancing around the fire while drums are beating - throwing themselves emotionally into a frenzy toward a certain idea until an internal experience was triggered for them. That also had a lot to do with what they believed, that with the right work their own brains edified it.

As man communicated further tribal concepts like these morphed into ideas like fate, universal mechanism, and karma. A few more distillations and you had the roots of the major five religions in the world that anyone could name off.

You're reinventing world history based on what you think of Christianity - and I see a lot of that around here. That's why I don't want to haggle with you about Christianity, it was never my point. 'God' can just as well be an umbrella name for an animistic universe, a pantheistic universe, or a panentheistic universe, so the 'God' concept is not one that absolutely means 'Christianity', or Judaism or Islam, and I don't see any suggestion that I'm stretching definitions. Even most polytheists would have to admit that their Gods and Goddesses were subsets of something larger that they drew their being from. The idea that some people believe they've learned all there is to grasp on the subject because they learned a few things about Christianity really baffles me.

Well this is not my understanding of empiricism, to me empiricism holds that observation is the "primary but not necessarily the only source of knowledge" to quote Wikipedia "Empiricism is a theory which states that knowledge comes only or primarily from sensory experience". More to the point it is the cornerstone of the scientific method To paraphrase Richard Feynman "if it disagrees with experiment then it is wrong", which is a sentiment I hold to.

As such, the primary observational evidence for god shows there is none, however in the case of something that is not falsifiable by experiment we need to look at probabilities based on what we do know. Given that we have a solid base knowledge of how this earth and the physics of the universe work, we can say "there is no need for god".Add to this the complete and utter lack of primary evidence for God pushes its existence even further down the probability scale.

All that is left for rational scientific debate is the existence of a non interventionist God IE Deism. Once again we see that judging by what we are learning from our universe, and making rational assumptions of what that might mean for outside the universe, the need for a sentient being to kick things off once again starts looking improbable compared to natural causes.

You saying "ah there might not be a need for God but that does not mean he does not exist" is bordering on the facile. I might as well state that even though there is no need for the universe to have come about by the collision of an anti-matter bowl of petunias and a matter sperm whale, does not mean it did not happen.

But, like you say regarding deism, it really does not matter at this juncture in our knowledge, and no deist has ever stated that certain people should be put to death, or sex and marriage is not allowed between people of the same sex. But Rho, you are not a Deist, far from it. And as such your theistic views can, and have been tested eg we now understand and very importantly can PREDICT climatic events, no longer attributing storms etc to an intercessory god as did your religious forebears, there was even a prayer experiment, which, involving thousands of Christian showed prayer was no better than placebo, and as for Creation . Essentially scientific knowledge has done away with any rational argument for a theistic god, all that is left is the facile argument "ok we know all about the natural laws but you cannot prove god is not using them at his will"

Last edited by DentArthurDent on 11 Mar 2015, 6:35 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I like that explanation of Empiricism.

Of course you would because it takes empirical out of where it is appropriate and useful and applies it where it is irrelevant. Try, for example, to "empirically" dissect the stuff we call life. The only way to detect its presence is by what it does. The difference between a dead organism and a live one is not merely the presence of various physical atoms.
You can take all the atoms that make up even the simplest typical (they're all different) "living" organism and wait for as long as you like but it won't turn into a live virus. On the other hand you can take a live virus and, if it can't reproduce, it will die and revert to its simplest chemical constituents... and you won't have to wait even years.

Empiricism is one of those isms that tries to make a whole belief system out of one simple practical element taken way out of context. A very common tactic of snake oil salesmen and other charlatans out to deceive the unwary.

No