God's existence

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And how do you stand? Are you enthusiastic about it?

I prefer to remain neutral. I can't make a stand. =/ But i am leaning toward the non-existence of God. And i'm not exactly enthusiastic about quite a few things, unless it involves discovering something new.

I suppose. More boring than I hoped for. More mechanical too, although I shouldn't be surprised by that at all.

Were you hoping for a rebellion against an omnipotent being? I suppose that might have been a more interesting answer.

Well, given how much I had to prod you, yes! I think I am going to post another thread on this issue though.

The last episode of BSG answered this question for me. I won't spoil TRUE UNDERSTANDING for anyone else. Just watch.

1:
One of the reasons I believe that God exists is the fact that the universe exits. And because the universe does exist, I can easily conclude something else had to exist before the universe, since the law of physics states that nothing can never desire or wish something into existence; but I believe something pre-existing and eternal can. I can think of two possibilities for the source of this eternal existence: an eternal universe or an eternal Creator. And since modern science has pretty much ruled out the possibility of an eternal universe, then I believe that to mean God exists.

2:
Since I do believe that God exists, I naturally base my belief system around His moral teachings, but I don't believe in imposing my beliefs on anyone, for that seems contradictory to me. But I do think that Christianity and creation are quite logical and should be allowed to be examined as such in the world of ideas.

3:
I think if science could prove by performing repeatable scientific laboratory experiments that God the creator of the universe, the One who I believe exists outside of time and space, does not really exist, then I would probably have to become a born-again atheist. After all, facts are facts and proof is proof.

I'm so conflicted here. Your #1 is honestly ridiculous reasoning, but you honestly won me over being so rational and egalitarian in 2 and 3. Why do you believe God exists? (I'm not saying you're wrong to believe, even with my own persronal opinion what it is, but I'm genuinely curious)

He's trying to use the cosmological argument for the existence of God. Perhaps there is a phrasing issue involved? Like, I think he could have been clearer if he just stated a well-developed form of the argument using premises and showing how it is deduced, but most people are unlikely to do that anyway.

... can't be proven scientifically or disproven in the same way. But it sure seems more plausible that the god of the Bible or any other god haven't ever, doesn't now or ever will exist.

At least the god of the Abrahamic faiths is defined to be supernatural. That is "above-nature", which per definition can't be detected by anything currently inside nature.

The assumption that this god listens to prayer and cares about how humans live their lifes or not is just wishful thinking and fear of death.

It would at least take a God with a much steadier hand and more stable temperament than what a lot of popular religions seem to hold as the mainstream dogma. Then again, to be more leviathan than our known universe - I have a hard time figuring that I'd get that worked up over people if I were in shoes that size (probably infinite confidence to the point where the real internal battle would be against one's own sloth or complaisance).



I don't see where your first point needs to contradict with a God who listens to prayers, listening is listening which doesn't necessarily have to translate into action. Likely if the case were made that there is a heaven or life hereafter and there was only one life or maybe lives chosen at our will - that's just 70 or 80 years of being smacked around, beaten, constantly under some form of duress, compared to hundreds of thousands of years possibly in-between it only that earnest of an issue while we're here and kept completely in the dark about what's outside of our own sphere that we can detect with our own senses. Inaction could also be looked at like this - with the way our world is constructed, would we stand a chance of learning to be as wise, really ponder the bigger questions, push ourselves to work out own own answers, if we had those answers resolved in certainty?

The fear of death bit or need for wishful thinking, I could imagine that maybe being a childhood or young adult issue for a lot of people but you'd have to reason that as everyone gets older and learns more about the absolute value of the world they live in and what its worth to humanity, what humanity is worth to itself, and that death is as inevitable as puberty - there's nothing to really fear, unless you both believe in free will and a particular variant of a higher power who is a bit unhinged to where they act as if they have to struggle in a small-time popularity contest or as if they were of such limited power that we were in danger of overpowering and defeating them at any second. In contrast to that, most forms of theism and even atheism (ie. Buddhist nirvana without the mess of having to come back to this duty rock over and over to earn oblivion) actually give you very little to fear about death. Even as something of an agnostic theist (believe there's someone up there - not sure how well we understand him/it), I figure what ever is - is. We're all really composites of our genes, our neural wiring, what we can and can't perceive, who raised us, what's happened to us, if we care at all about ourselves we do our best with what we have - if there's a steady God that's all gratus, nothing to worry about. If there's no God, no life hereafter, or both - its everyone's common fate anyway on one hand and on another, oblivion's not that bad of a concept.

What I struggle with though is the notion that, with everything I said above, that I'm the only one of 6 billion or one in even a million who think this way - deep down I'd have to imagine it pushes on the edge of maybe 30 - 40% of theists in general out there. To me though that sense of things debunks the necessity of it being fear, ignorance, or whatever weakness or neediness that people keep trying to pull it down to being. Sure, we can kick the common denominator on both sides of the argument (or for all intents and purposes pretend its the only thing that exists within a class of views) but its purely cathartic, it solves nothing and yields no insight.

I don't believe in a specific God. That being the God of Classical Theism, ya know, the dead one?

Well anyways, I base my reasoning for this lack of belief in God(s) in the lack of proof for them existing. Of course by the same token I have no proof they don't exist. So then I get to logic. By my logic, why would a supernatural creator be needed for the universe? If the universe requires said creator, why would said creator not require a creator? It doesn't make logical sense, because you're pulling something out of nothing to prevent pulling something out of nothing.

Onwards from that, I see no personal need for a God anyway. I do fine on my own, and care more for people than immaterial objects that I cannot see nor measure nor find. Furthermore, why do I need a God? It removes all the fun from learning and knowledge, why need science or atoms or mathematics, when you can merely say 'God did it'. And I can't do that, I can't turn my back on all these things I love because of anything, let alone a being with a vast lack of evidence.