Is God real?

orc said:

I believe because I was raised to do so. Faith is trusting in something that you cannot see.

Click to expand...

No. Faith is believing without or in spite of sufficient evidence. It is a sick and disgusting notion.

orc said:

I believe because I was raised to do so. Faith is trusting in something that you cannot see.

Click to expand...

Of course you were raised to do so, if you weren't exposed to the psychological pollutants of belief and faith during your social conditioning and upbringing, you wouldn't think such nonsense. Faith is the surrender of logic, perhaps our greatest tool in deciphering Reality and the Cosmos. The moment you allow belief to manifest and guide you is the moment you conjure a pseudo identity and psychologically remove yourself from Reality, the only perspective yielding an authentic comprehension of existence. From there, one begins their voyage down an artificial pathway, a lifestyle of wishful thinking, and delusional happiness now solely devoted to sustaining denial and the injustices their beliefs promote.

I have strong difficulties picturing our Reality to be one where an omnipotent God would utilize the same tool that perpetuates and maintains delusions and distorted perceptions of reality upon society, that tool being namely faith, to ultimately determine who goes to his dystopian paradise to worship him like a drone colorless of emotions or who endures an eternity of hellfire in purgatory once we're dead. Truthfully, I find it extremely easier to picture that to be just simply bullshit. Honestly. Don't assert what authority figures dictate to you as truth to be Reality, whether it be your teachers, parents or president. Question them and demand evidence. If you have no filter of thorough skepticism, you'll believe any absurdities.

Leader said:

No. Faith is believing without or in spite of sufficient evidence. It is a sick and disgusting notion.

Click to expand...

What do you believe in? I'm just curious.

Yeah said:

What do you believe in? I'm just curious.

Click to expand...

I would label myself as a humanist. I don't want to call myself an atheist because I'm cautious to label myself by what I don't believe in.

Leader said:

I would label myself as a humanist. I don't want to call myself an atheist because I'm cautious to label myself by what I don't believe in.

Click to expand...

How do you think the world got here as a humanist?

I think that the big bang and evolution is a lot more realistic than a guy on a throne judging the universe. I mean who knows God could be real, that would be dope. but untill I see some definitive proof, I don't believe.

Yeah said:

How do you think the world got here as a humanist?

Click to expand...

The Big Bang was the start of the universe. From there, billions of stars began to form from the gases and heat caused by such a big event. Stars soon began to start dying and others were born. Our star, the Sun, was born roughly 10 billion years after the Big Bang. It's field of gravity pulled mass amounts of debris and gas into it orbit. That debris slowly began compacting into larger masses, and those larger masses into even larger masses.

That's only a brief description. There is much more that goes into it.

Leader said:

The Big Bang was the start of the universe. From there, billions of stars began to form from the gases and heat caused by such a big event. Stars soon began to start dying and others were born. Our star, the Sun, was born roughly 10 billion years after the Big Bang. It's field of gravity pulled mass amounts of debris and gas into it orbit. That debris slowly began compacting into larger masses, and those larger masses into even larger masses.

That's only a brief description. There is much more that goes into it.

Click to expand...

Remember the rules... Chaos cannot create order.

Yeah said:

Remember the rules... Chaos cannot create order.

Click to expand...

Didn't you read any of my previous replies?

Leader said:

The Big Bang was the start of the universe. From there, billions of stars began to form from the gases and heat caused by such a big event. Stars soon began to start dying and others were born. Our star, the Sun, was born roughly 10 billion years after the Big Bang. It's field of gravity pulled mass amounts of debris and gas into it orbit. That debris slowly began compacting into larger masses, and those larger masses into even larger masses.

That's only a brief description. There is much more that goes into it.

Click to expand...

That's so easy to believe for you bu the way I see it is...

Say there was a junk yard full of old, worn down, and rusty cars; then a tornado ripped straight into it; then after the tornado dillutes, there lays in the middle of the junk yard 3 brand new, shiny Lamborghinis. If I told you this happened in my town, Would you believe me?

I hope you can see the relevance with our universe...

Yeah said:

That's so easy to believe for you bu the way I see it is...

Say there was a junk yard full of old, worn down, and rusty cars; then a tornado ripped straight into it; then after the tornado dillutes, there lays in the middle of the junk yard 3 brand new, shiny Lamborghinis. If I told you this happened in my town, Would you believe me?

I hope you can see the relevance with our universe...

Click to expand...

That argument is old and useless.

Claim CF002.1:

Order does not spontaneously form from disorder. A tornado passing through a junkyard would never assemble a 747.

Source:
Hoyle, Fred, 1983. The Intelligent Universe. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, pp. 18-19.

Response:

This claim is irrelevant to the theory of evolution itself, since evolution does not occur via assembly from individual parts, but rather via selective gradual modifications to existing structures. Order can and does result from such evolutionary processes.

Hoyle applied his analogy to abiogenesis, where it is more applicable. However, the general principle behind it is wrong. Order arises spontaneously from disorder all the time. The tornado itself is an example of order arising spontaneously. Something as complicated as people would not arise spontaneously from raw chemicals, but there is no reason to believe that something as simple as a self-replicating molecule could not form thus. From there, evolution can produce more and more complexity.

Click to expand...

This response deals more with evolution, but it's the same idea.

Leader said:

That argument is old and useless.


This response deals more with evolution, but it's the same idea.

Click to expand...

You said it yourself. Shifting the burden of proof.

Yeah said:

You said it yourself. Shifting the burden of proof.

Click to expand...

How did I shift the burden of proof?

Cann!bal said:

The God hypothesis doesn't solve anything, it just arises another question, which is where did God come from? If we decide that God always existed, we can save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed. If we decide knowing whether God is real is an unanswerable question, we can save a step and conclude that the origin of the universe is an unanswerable question.

Once you comprehend quantum physics, something from 'nothing' is completely rational and possible.

Click to expand...

I haven't read the rest of the thread, but this reply is a common misconception of the first cause argument.

You view it as:

1. If something exists, it has a cause.
2. The universe exists.
3. Therefore the universe has a cause we call God.

With this argument I agree; God would need a creator as well, requiring an infinite loop.

The actual Thomistic argument would be more along these lines:

1. All things that had a beginning have a cause.
2. The universe had a beginning (Big Bang)
3. Therefore, the Universe had a cause.

God, being non-physical is thus outside of spacetime and not confined by causality, time, etc. Therefore He can create while being uncreated Himself.

I'm agnostic. So I don't see him to be real, but it's just my opinion.

Paul H. said:

I haven't read the rest of the thread, but this reply is a common misconception of the first cause argument.

You view it as:

1. If something exists, it has a cause.
2. The universe exists.
3. Therefore the universe has a cause we call God.

With this argument I agree; God would need a creator as well, requiring an infinite loop.

The actual Thomistic argument would be more along these lines:

1. All things that had a beginning have a cause.
2. The universe had a beginning (Big Bang)
3. Therefore, the Universe had a cause.

God, being non-physical is thus outside of spacetime and not confined by causality, time, etc. Therefore He can create while being uncreated Himself.

Click to expand...

Did you even read my post? I don't perceive it that way.

Cann!bal said:

Did you even read my post? I don't perceive it that way.

Click to expand...

I must confess I didn't. Oops.

A lot of people get the argument wrong, anyhow

On the topic of God being unknowable: that's somewhat the Catholic teaching. We can't so much know what Hod is but what He isn't. By knowing what He isn't, we can somewhat know what He is.