The Rational Proof of God's Existence

[nino_savatte]

I'm considerably younger than you, Nino, that's all you need to know.

Another one of the many statements that you've made that cannot be substantiated. Indeed, like your "rational proof of God's existence" it cannot be proven. It's hogwash, bullshit, poodle vomit. You made the claim that you went to the states when you were 23 and as I said before, it's meaningless.

 

[phildwyer]

Another one of the many statements that you've made that cannot be substantiated. Indeed, like your "rational proof of God's existence" it cannot be proven. It's hogwash, bullshit, poodle vomit. You made the claim that you went to the states when you were 23 and as I said before, it's meaningless.

Come now Nino, you're in your 50's, that much is clear. Anyway, what are you on about, you old loony? Why this sudden obsession with age? Are you interested in talking about the subject of this thread, or are you just here to snoop?

 

[nino_savatte]

Come now Nino, you're in your 50's, that much is clear. Anyway, what are you on about, you old loony? Why this sudden obsession with age? Are you interested in talking about the subject of this thread, or are you just here to snoop?

You wouldn't know a 50 year old if you one came up and kicked you in the nuts. "Sudden obsession with age"? Hardly, you made the claim that you went to the States when you were 23 but as I pointed out, the statement is meaningless unless one knows your age...and like so many other instances of its kind, it is utter bullshit...much like your "rational proof of God's existence".

So, Onan the Barbarian, still think you are our intellectual superior?

 

[phildwyer]

You wouldn't know a 50 year old if you one came up and kicked you in the nuts. "Sudden obsession with age"? Hardly, you made the claim that you went to the States when you were 23 but as I pointed out, the statement is meaningless unless one knows your age...and like so many other instances of its kind, it is utter bullshit...much like your "rational proof of God's existence".

First of all, I *know* you're in your 50's, you've said so on here. Unless you were lying--which wouldn't be unheard of, now would it? Second, why do you find it hard to believe that I came to the States when I was 23? Third, why is this fact "meaningless" if you don't know my age? Fourth, do you have anything substantive to contribute to this thread, or are you just going to worry and witter about my age? If the latter, I suggest that you leave right now.

 

[Loki]

Cutting to the chase: This is just something I found with a google. I don't believe in much of it, but it's more interesting than Phil's endless droning about value and 'relativisitic "hyper-reality"'.


One of the most far-reaching consequences of the rationalism of the Enlightenment was the undermining of basic Christian faith among the educated classes. The effect was unintended because the project of many Enlightenment philosophers was to prove the existence of God using reason: Descartes and Leibniz assumed that God's existence could be rationally proved, indeed God was a necessary part of their philosophy.

There are many traditional "proofs" for the existence of God, and we will look at three of them: The argument from design, the ontological argument and the cosmological argument.

Traditional "proofs" of God's Existence

1) The argument from Design.

If you found a clock and examined the mechanism within it, you would probably think that this intricate mechanism was not the outcome of mere chance, that it had been designed.

Now look at the universe; is it possible that such an intricate mechanism, from the orbits of planets round the sun to the cells in your fingernails could all have happened by chance? Surely, this enormously complex mechanism has been designed, and the being that designed it must be God.

2) The ontological argument

God is the perfect being. As He is most perfect, He must have all perfections. If God lacked existence He would not be perfect, as He is perfect he must exist.

3) The cosmological argument (God as "First cause")

Everything that exists has a cause. However, there must at some time have been a cause prior to all other causes. This 'prime mover' or first cause is necessary to explain existence. This first cause is God.

Pascal's Wager

The French mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-62) put forward an argument that would appeal to agnostics. (An agnostic is someone who believes that it is impossible to prove God's existence.)

His argument goes something like this: God either exists or he does not. If we believe in God and he exists, we will be rewarded with eternal bliss in heaven. If we believe in God and he does not exist then at worst all we have forgone is a few sinful pleasures.

If we do not believe in God and he does exist we may enjoy a few sinful pleasures, but we may face eternal damnation. If we do not believe in God and he does not exist then our sins will not be punished.

Would any rational gambler think that the experience of a few sinful pleasures is worth the risk of eternal damnation?

Kant

Kant attempted to show how philosophy could prove the existence of God. Unfortunately, for him his previous work showed that we could not know reality directly as thing-in-itself. What is real in itself is beyond our experience. Even if God exists, we can not know God as he really is.

For Kant the Christian could have faith in God, and this faith would be consonant with reason and the categorical imperative. Given that human beings have the autonomy to create moral values, it would not be irrational to believe in a God who gives purpose to the moral realm.

Hegel

Hegel thought that the God of religion was an intuition of Absolute Spirit or Geist. Hegel's Geist is not like the transcendent (outside of our consciousness) God of traditional Christianity. For Hegel God is immanent and when we have understood that history is the process of Geist coming to know itself it appears that we are all part of Geist, or God.
Feuerbach and Marx

For Feuerbach and Marx religion is seen as the projection of the human essence onto an ideal: God does not make man. Rather "God" is the invention of human consciousness. Marx also sees that religion is part of an ideological view that encourages the oppressed to accept their fate. As he says: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions."

Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) agreed with Kant that the existence of God could not be proven by reason. However Kierkegaard did not think that it was rational to believe in God, rather one should have faith in God even if this seems to reason to be absurd. To put it another way reason has no place in faith. God is beyond reason.

Kierkegaard is regarded as the first existentialist.

Nietzsche: The Death of God

"Have you not heard the madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place and cried incessantly, 'I seek God!, I seek God!' ... Why, did he get lost? Said one. Did he lose his way like a child? Said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? Or emigrated?... The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his glances.

"'Whither is God'? He cried. 'I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. All of us are his murderers...'"

"...the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they to were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke and went out. 'I came too early,' he said then; 'my time has not come yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering -it has not yet reached the ears of man."

In these passages Nietzsche is showing the inevitable unfolding anthropocentrism (lit. putting man at the centre of the world) implicit in philosophy since Kant. If we view our existence through human categories, then our concept of God is itself a human creation.

Nietzsche is not simply asserting his atheism; he is suggesting that once we are aware that the concept of God is our own creation we can no longer base our religious and moral beliefs on any notion of a divine external reality.

In the period that Nietzsche was writing, the death of God was just beginning. Western thought was starting to face the prospect of a radical change in its orientation, and it wasn't quite ready to own up to it yet.

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche represent opposite reactions to the inability of rationality to give a rock solid theoretical proof of God's existence. Kierkegaard calls for us to embrace God even if it seems an absurdity, while Nietzsche says it is time for us to create a new mode of being, with human creativity at its centre.

The atheist existentialist Sartre accepted God's death and much of his writing is attempt to look at the human condition in a world that is without a prime mover who could have provided a basis and structure for the understanding of being.

The twentieth century

Anglo American analytic philosophers of the twentieth century have tended to agree that philosophy may help us clarify religious concepts, without giving us a secure foundation for religious belief.

Many people claim to have had a religious experience, to have experienced the divine directly. This experience is direct and is of a different quality to sensory experience or intellectual discovery, and therefore outside of the scope of philosophy.

The view that the existence of God cannot be proved or disproved by philosophy has not stopped developments in modern theology. Theologians are attempting to balance the anthropocentric view of God presented by philosophers since the Enlightenment with the need to provide a spiritual path and a guide to an ethical and meaningful way of life.

http://www.philosopher.org.uk/god.htm

 

[nino_savatte]

First of all, I *know* you're in your 50's, you've said so on here. Unless you were lying--which wouldn't be unheard of, now would it? Second, why do you find it hard to believe that I came to the States when I was 23? Third, why is this fact "meaningless" if you don't know my age? Fourth, do you have anything substantive to contribute to this thread, or are you just going to worry and witter about my age? If the latter, I suggest that you leave right now.

Where did I say that "I was in my 50's" please provide evidence. What? You can't? More bullshit.

It is meanningless when you tell someone that "you went to the States when you were 23", particularly when the person you are adressing does not know your current age. I would have thought an intelligent postgrad like yourself would be able to grasp a concept so utterly simple. Looks like I was wrong.

I won't be leaving this thread because you demand it. If you think that I am going to capitulate to your bullying and browbeating, you really are living in a fantasy world.

So my onanistic wee chum, you have given no proof of God's existence which only leads me to one conclusion: this thread is an extension of your already vastly inflated ego and nothing else.

 

[phildwyer]

Where did I say that "I was in my 50's" please provide evidence. What? You can't? More bullshit.

You hilariously claimed to have, and I quote, "faced down Jim Crow." Jim Crow finally ended circa 1968. For you to have been big enough to have "faced him down" you must have been at least 16 by then. So you are now at least 53. Anyway, its obvious from your posting style.

 

[laptop]

What are you on about

It's a sketch for a critique, not a summary you're supposed to agree with, silly.

There's smuggling going on, and I'm fairly sure it's near that point of the argument.

 

[Azrael23]

You can only experience what you believe.

You believe your an animal with no greater purpose at all....you live that.

You believe your a being of infinite conciousness and a component of the greater conciousness we name God....You live that.

Its all about free choice. (although don`t get me started on media)

 

[nino_savatte]

You hilariously claimed to have, and I quote, "faced down Jim Crow." Jim Crow finally ended circa 1968. For you to have been big enough to have "faced him down" you must have been at least 16 by then. So you are now at least 53. Anyway, its obvious from your posting style.

You weren't paying attention at all were you? For someone who claims to have an extensive and intimate knowledge of the US, you don't half come across as ignorant. You honestly think Jim Crow disappeared when the 1965 Civil Rights act was promulgated? What a fucking idiot...what a fucking onanistic idiot.

So phil, evidence please or will you continue to speculate in your own masturbatory fashion?

 

[phildwyer]

You weren't paying attention at all were you? For someone who claims to have an extensive and intimate knowledge of the US, you don't half come across as ignorant. You honestly think Jim Crow disappeared when the 1965 Civil Rights act was promulgated? What a fucking idiot...what a fucking onanistic idiot.

So phil, evidence please or will you continue to speculate in your own masturbatory fashion?

Really Nino, your masturbation fetish is getting out of control. I'm having my breakfast here, do you mind? Anyway, the fact is that you're in your 50's and everybody knows it. Now if you'll excuse me, there are people here who are raising substantive issues. I suggest you find a different thread to infest.

 

[Azrael23]

You people are all pathetic.

Listen to you arguing over inane tripe, each trying to justify their own preconceptions of the other. You do realise your in the same boat, your on the same planet and deep down probably have the same big questions.

 

[nino_savatte]

Really Nino, your masturbation fetish is getting out of control. I'm having my breakfast here, do you mind? Anyway, the fact is that you're in your 50's and everybody knows it. Now if you'll excuse me, there are people here who are raising substantive issues. I suggest you find a different thread to infest.

If I am in my 50's then you are certainly 16 and no older. "Everyone knows it"? Once again you demonstrate just how deluded you are because I don't think many people would agree with you - particularly those who have met me. As for my "masturbation fetish", that's you projecting yourself onto me. You understand what is meant by "projection" don't you?

As this post shows, you have no intention of making serious discussion. You are here to wind people up and to bully and browbeat those you see as your intellectual "inferiors". What this shows even the amateur psychologist is that you have a serious psychological disorder - possibly of a narcissistic nature.

I'd seek therapy if I were you.

 

[phildwyer]

As for my "masturbation fetish", that's you projecting yourself onto me.

I wouldn't project myself onto you if you were Elizabeth Hurley. Anyway, enough of this. I'm sorry Nino, but I want you to leave this thread immediately. As you have openly boasted, your only purpose here is to derail any serious discussion, and this issue is simply too important to allow that to happen. Perhaps a few days away will do you good, calm your nerves, and maybe you can return then. Now I have to go to work, but I will address the rest of the serious objections to my case so far tomorrow. With any luck, we can then return to the issue of whether value is best described as an "idea" or a "spirit."

 

[Azrael23]

This thread just won`t die.

Please lets talk about something constructive. If God is real then it won`t be proven with some exercise of logic but with actual experience of the concept.

 

[RubberBuccaneer]

This thread just won`t die.

Please lets talk about something constructive. If God is real then it won`t be proven with some exercise of logic but with actual experience of the concept.

The thing is with peoples experiencences, and you get this a lot in all arguements, is they're not necessarily transferable.
So a lot of people argue along the lines of so and so happened/didn't happen to me,so it's not true. Whereas it should be in my experience it's not true.

I think Phils trying to get a more concrete proof than this.

Whether he has fuck knows I haven't read the thread, I just want to know the result.

 

[gurrier]

You people are all pathetic.

Listen to you arguing over inane tripe, each trying to justify their own preconceptions of the other. You do realise your in the same boat, your on the same planet and deep down probably have the same big questions.

Have you considered fucking off and finding some people worthy of sharing your infinite consciousness with?

 

[nino_savatte]

I wouldn't project myself onto you if you were Elizabeth Hurley. Anyway, enough of this. I'm sorry Nino, but I want you to leave this thread immediately. As you have openly boasted, your only purpose here is to derail any serious discussion, and this issue is simply too important to allow that to happen. Perhaps a few days away will do you good, calm your nerves, and maybe you can return then. Now I have to go to work, but I will address the rest of the serious objections to my case so far tomorrow. With any luck, we can then return to the issue of whether value is best described as an "idea" or a "spirit."

I'm going nowhere. I want to see your "argument" continue to be shot down in flames. I want to see you squirm and wriggle and pontificate and browbeat others with your meaningless witterings...while you remain oblivious to your shortcomings. I want to see you present even more far fetched nonsense dressed up as "serious intellectual debate", so that I may laugh even more at your blind stupidity.

You don't have to "want" to project yourself: you already have done that. But only an egomaniac like you is incapable of seeing this. Egomaniacs are not very good at self-criticism or self-analysis. Self abuse (in the Victorian sense)is as far as you get. "Liz Hurley" eh? Some peple have no taste. I wouldn't mind but she can't act for toffee and is a scab.

 

[Azrael23]

Have you considered fucking off and finding some people worthy of sharing your infinite consciousness with?

I found you worthy

 

[Pickman's model]

You people are all pathetic.

Listen to you arguing over inane tripe, each trying to justify their own preconceptions of the other. You do realise your in the same boat, your on the same planet and deep down probably have the same big questions.

yr right!

i want answers to the same question gurrier does!

Have you considered fucking off and finding some people worthy of sharing your infinite consciousness with?

any chance of an answer?

 

[Purdie]

Listen to you arguing over inane tripe, each trying to justify their own preconceptions of the other. You do realise your in the same boat, your on the same planet and deep down probably have the same big questions.

It's what philosophy is all about ... it pays the bills. Maybe you're in the wrong forum ?

Do you ever wonder if your eye is a black hole

 

[Crispy]

This thread just won`t die.

Please lets talk about something constructive. If God is real then it won`t be proven with some exercise of logic but with actual experience of the concept.

We're already knee deep in worms and you open another can?

 

[Azrael23]

But these worms are Marks and Spencer

 

[Purdie]

With any luck, we can then return to the issue of whether value is best described as an "idea" or a "spirit."

To some value is an idea ...
Spirit is the excecutor of ideas.

 

[Maidmarian]

With any luck, we can then return to the issue of whether value is best described as an "idea" or a "spirit."

Humm ---- I`m interested (but FAR from convinced).

I mean, maybe this thread is taking on a life of it`s own & ergo, may best be described as "spirit"?

Is it evil or benign though, eh ?????




Anyway, carry on !

 

[bluestreak]

surely all we need to do to prove god exists is die. phil, you go first mate.

 

[parallelepipete]

You can only experience what you believe.

Well then we're all completely buggered, and we might as all go home and sit in silence by ourselves. Though it's a useful viewpoint if you came home and found your partner in bed with someone else. "Nope, don't believe it's happening..."

You believe your an animal with no greater purpose at all....you live that.

You believe your a being of infinite conciousness and a component of the greater conciousness we name God....You live that.

Its all about free choice. (although don`t get me started on media)

Q. You believe you are a bird and can soar through the air - do you live like that?

A: Splat.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Just means you didn't believe hard enough!

 

[fractionMan]

spot on!

 

[Azrael23]

It amazes me how lump-all people still are.

I have flown, so have millions of other people. In that people fly in their dreams all the time, they astral project and experience flying....is that any less real than the collective dream we share whilst "awake"?

To fly in the world of matter you need specific characteristics defined again by "matter". Perhaps if you were that powerful that you could control matter using your mind (its definitely possible in theory) then maybe you could will yourself to fly, superman stylee, in the end.....who cares?
However the concept of spiritual knowledge and concepts of God are VERY different in that they are not of matter and therefore will not be accessed by matter or any logic borne of the indoctrination into matter.
These concepts will be understood and experienced with your conciousness. Why? BECAUSE YOUR CONCIOUSNESS REACHES BEYOND THE WORLD OF MATTER.



but you already knew that.