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>This thread is for discussion of the validity of religion(s) and arguments for and against the existence of god/gods.

There is no arguments against the existence of gods. There are counterargument.

Do you have an argument to prouve that there is no santa?

>>5953
If there was a sect of people whose firm belief in Santa was begging to have a negative impact on my world, I'd come up with one.

You are in the strictest sense correct, but this is petty semantics and bickering over it isn't going to get us anywhere.

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If God is all powerful... Surely he could trick us into thinking our logic is valid, when it is actually totally incorrect. Thus, we can't know anything for certain. Thus, AGNOSTIC!
Break that circular logic.
Pic unrelated, just liked it.

theology played itself out for the most part in the middle ages. It managed to hang around thanks in part to the Great Awakening and poor education, but very few new insights have been gained since the Enlightenment happened. IMO, C.S. Lewis is perhaps the only modern theologian worth reading and even he is just a rehash of Augustine and Aquinas

The reason I believe in God is because this universe is so vast and mysterious, and our world has been crafted so perfectly, right down to a T. Even our bodies are practically machines, designed exactly right in order to sustain life and homeostasis. Physics follows a strict set of rules that, as far as we know, are never broken. Doesn't that seem like the work of a god? The work of a being with an epic, overarching plan, who is crafting things to fit his own needs, with his own designs? I think it is.

The reason I believe in God is because this universe is so vast and mysterious, and our world has been crafted so perfectly, right down to a T. Even our bodies are practically machines, designed exactly right in order to sustain life and homeostasis. Physics follows a strict set of rules that, as far as we know, are never broken. Doesn't that seem like the work of a god? The work of a being with an epic, overarching plan, who is crafting things to fit his own needs, with his own designs? I think it is.

"our world has been crafted so perfectly, right down to a T. Even our bodies are practically machines, designed exactly right"

Goodness child, who ever told you those things? The universe is not perfect and seamless as it first appears. Tell a cosmologist, planetary physicist, geologist or ecologist you think the world is perfect... brace yourself. ...and the "design" of our bodies and every other living body, even the mechanics of how bodies are designed, is a process that has nothing to do with perfection. 1st year bio students could make substantial improvements. There is no such thing in reality as perfect. If there were a creator god or more likely gods, they did a ramshackle hodgepodge job of shoehorning the processes that exist together into all this.

>>5999
Ha ha wow. Go study cell biology for a few years and then tell me the cell isn't a fucking hackjob. It's just layers and layers of "well, I guess this'll work for now" that has been accumulating for billions of years. If the cell was designed by an intelligent being, he is a piss poor designer.

>>6007

>It's just layers and layers of "well, I guess this'll work for now" that has been accumulating for billions of years. If the cell was designed by an intelligent being, he is a piss poor designer.

I'm an Atheist, but even I think this is a piss poor argument against the validity of religion. They can always point out the cells actually work despite being like that, or even that the designer knew imperfections would be necessary and must change over time. Being imperfect means it actually has to change, leading to evolution, etc. Being static on a genetic and cellular level pretty much equals death. Unless you're a roach.

>>5939
What is this religion and how do I join it?

>>5999
We know almost the exact instant that our universe jolted into existence. It's a goddamn long time. Which is a goddamn long time for a culmination of completely random events to occur to create something as complex as life. Nothing needs be designed, there was just so long for something to happen that it was bound to and it did.

>>6010
I suspect you are not a cell biologist.

>>6010
I suspect you have not really studied cell biology. It is bitingly obvious how the system was not designed.

>>6010
No. When he says it's a piss poor design, he means it's reeeeeeally a piss poor design.

For instance, on the macroscopic level, the recurrent laryngeal nerve descends down the neck and upper thorax, loops around the aorta, and then travels back up the neck to the larynx.

At the microscopic level, the internal molecule that binds to cannabinoid receptors is a fatty acid derived molecule called anandamine. The thing about fatty acids is that they tend to stick together rather than float freely in an aqueous solution, such as cells. Now, you see the problem here is, cannabinoid receptors are placed in a terrible spot. You see, they are what are known as cell membrane receptors. The cell membrane is made up of what is known as bi-lipid layer, which is just another way of saying, a shit ton of fatty acids and fatty acid derived molecules. The anandamine is much much more likely to move into the membrane than it is to bind to the receptors. The body wastes energy making the stuff.

These are only two examples out of many.
And this is not the behavior of a being that is both omnipotent and omniscient. Hell, human engineers dont even fuck up this badly.

Is our world created by a personal God? We don't have prove for either side of the argument, which leads me to an attempt of an answer.

If there was no God, the statement "there is a God", wold not be disprovable, since you cannot show that something does not exist.
If there was a God, the statement "there is no God", would be disprovable, since you just had to "show" that God.
We also have the position that there is a God who is not personal but everything good or the inherent order of the universe. This position, however, is not valid, since there is no reason why we should name "Good" or "Order" as God. If I talk about God, I talk about a supernatural being who created the universe. I assume that such a God does not exist because I was not yet proven wrong.

If I look at the complexity of the universe, I could of course assume this was created for a certain purpose but it also could work much easier and attain the same goal. So why did "God" bother to create multiple Galaxies in which every Atom ist so incredible complex? It does not make sense.

So either God is a brilliant artist who just had shown his work, or the Universe just is there without a reason.

The things we can read in all those holy books assume that humans have a speacial role in Gods plan, but this seems unlikely since there is so much going on without any real impact on humans.

Omniscient. Omnipotent. Mutually exclusive.

Ok theists, since you're picking and choosing which currently familiar human attributes you like to see reflected in your idea of a god, go ahead and choose which of these supernatural attributes you prefer over the other.

Would you rather have a god that knows everything there is to know forward and backward in time, or one who is all-powerful to change it?

>>6072
God is both. He does not conform to human logic.

Well, that was easy. So he is powerful and powerless, and is able to know everything and isn't. That's not a limit of human logic, that's a limit of the logic of logic, sewed into the nature of this universe, which it's claimed he both created and operates in. ...making it his logic. Claiming he doesn't conform to any logic (and how do you claim know this?) is an excuse, and a poor one.

And if there's only one of them, it's clearly not a "he", as there would be no sexes of gods to choose from. Oh well, when you take your mythology directly from warring bronze-age barbarian hordes traceable all the way back to Akhenaten, you get the bad with the good.

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>>6084
Then if such a being does not conform to logic, why does he need to exist?

I could say the universe came into being because bananas are feathers. God doesn't exist because he exists. And so on...

Hell, I could even say God loves everyone so he sends them to Hell to be tortured, because 'hey, anything God does doesn't have to be rational, reasonable, nor logical.'

Secondly, I must ask you, How do you know this?

I would rethink over what you said, before you make a terrible mistake in judgement young man.

It seems Americans are a lot more interested in discussing religion than West-Europeans. As a Norwegian, I only know one guy who actively bothers bringing up the subject, and I don't think I've ever had a discussion about God/religion with any of my fellow philosophy students. While I understand that religion carries a whole lot more weight in American politics, it'd be interesting to see a first person account. The only reason I'd debate a religious person on the incredibly boring topic of the existence of supernatural entities would be to point out fallacies in their arguments, just I like to do in every discussion.

Not to be totally off topic:
>>5987
You must not have followed theology very closely. Aside from the Catholic church re-evaluating important parts of their metaphysics (the existence of purgatory etc), there have been quite a few interesting things going on in the field of Christian ethics. And last but not least, Don Cupitt has made some real headway with his non-realism account of God, which is pretty damned interesting. If you're interested, he's been interviewed twice for the Philosophy Bites podcast, short and sweet introduction to his thinking.

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An ignostic was asked whether he believed in God, and said, "If you mean a big man in a cloud, as children conceive of God, then I am an atheist, for we have satellites now which would have surely seen such a creature if he existed. If you mean an all-encompassing God who is synonymous with the entire universe, then I am a theist... though I see no reason for having two words for the same thing. If you mean a vaguely-defined supernatural being whose existence cannot be tested, then I am a theological noncognitivist; it doesn't matter whether a meaningless thing is true or not, and I won't worry about it any more than I will about invisible pink unicorns."

>>6130

That I gnostic was not aware that an all-encompassing god that is synonymous with the universe is not a theology. If he believes in a theology, he is a theist. If he does not, or admits to not knowing, or comes up with a non-theological god concept, or doesn't care at all, then he is a-theistic. There are many names for each of these variations of a-theism, but all are a-theistic.

>>6144
Well, see, you're using the terms "theology" and "theism" under the etymological pretense that the Greek root "θεός" means "God (as per your definition". "θεός" may as well be synonymous with "universe". Regardless, it's still a meaningless term.

"God is nothing but a construct, created by man, to inspire fear and promote order" <-- best anti god quote I've ever heard

>>6128
To add to this fellows point, the Euthyphro dilemma.

Does God like certain things because they are morally good, or does he like certain things because he commands them?

If he liked them because they were morally good, then God did not set the standard. If he liked them because he commanded them, it would be too arbitrary. If God decided he liked murder one day, then murder would somehow become moral. Besides, if this was true, saying "God is good" would only mean that he obeys his own commands, and that there is nothing "good" about him.

>>6192
Well so are human rights.

>>6258
Why yes. Yes they are.

Buddhism. No gods necessary. No soul necessary. If you choose to pursue personal enlightenment so you may be at peace with the world, here are some philosophies that while pondering, you may benefit from.

Only remotely realistic religion I've seen thus far.

We know God doesn't follow the rules of logic, because if did, he couldn't exist. We do however know that everything in the universe follows the rules of logic, therefor it stands to reason that God can't exist in the universe. From that we can deduce that God exists outside of our universe, because if he didn't, he couldn't exist!
And since only an all-powerful, all-knowing being can exist outside of the universe, that being must be God, and then therefor God exists!

Checkmate gaytheists!

>>6339
no u.
I know all powerful myself does not exist in this universe so I am as an all powerful being must be existing outside of the universe so I'm God!
You must be a troll, or you definitely need to think more before you get yourself all snobbed up.

Believing in God is highly irresponsible and lazy. We are the new stewards of the planet, and of each other. By believing in God, you are giving up responsibility.

>>6409
This is actually a pretty good argument considering the negative effects almost all religions have.

Although I don't believe in god(s), I can't argue against the idea because there are only so many layers of reality that have been exposed by science. Until we can look at the core of existence, understand it's unfolding, and then state that it could happen on it's own, there will always be greasy little edifices for magical thinking to cling to.

>>6466
>>6409

Religion, in and of itself, is no more dangerous than other common human vices. One can enjoy alcohol without being an alcoholic, and one can have religion without becoming a complete twat.

>>6475
What you consider a vice is nonsense grounded in puritanical values you didn't invent, and that you probably haven't really thought about. The conversation is not about vices, and definitely not about what makes you a "twat".

When you accept the existence of a force greater than humanity you absolve yourself of responsibility. It's no surprise that religion supposedly makes people feel so "good", it alleviates the burden of suffering. I don't care if the person is on vaguely spiritual, or deeply and conservatively Christian. The phrase, "everything has a purpose" is the line of thinking that will keep humanity from overcoming suffering.

>>6477
I agree with Imhotep here, and would like to add that religion isn't really a vice. Drinking -as noted- doesn't always bring about alcoholism. Religion on the other hand, always brings about irrationality. It requires one to make beliefs that are grounded in faith, and almost always makes blind faith a virtue. If it didn't, it wouldn't be religion.
Yes, it's fine to get drunk on the weekends, just as it's fine for people to believe whatever they like. My beef is not the beliefs, but the means by which they are made and fostered.

>>6477
>>6481
This is an interesting line of thought. I've often considered weaker iterations of faith to be harmless, but this paints theists as having a dangerous moral relativity (ie: "I'm right, you're wrong") that absolves them of the very things they define as sins - they just have to say the right words and/or perform the right ritual, like a child apologizing so they can get their toys back.
I'm forced to wonder if moral derelicts can ever be benign. It seems by relinquishing the right to auto-define one's morals, a person gives themself away.

I just want to add a quote that seems relevant:

"[] Philosophy is merely the widest science of all. Its reasoning method is the same as that of any particular science and of all particular sciences. And by that same method of reasoning, the inductive method, philosophy fuses all particular sciences into one great science. As Spencer says, the data of any particular science are partially unified knowledge. Philosophy unifies the knowledge that is contributed by all the sciences. Philosophy is the science of science, the master science, if you please. []"

"There is another way of disqualifying the metaphysicians, [] judge them by their works. What have they done for mankind beyond the spinning of airy fancies and the mistaking of their own shadows for gods? They have added to the gayety of mankind, I grant; but what tangible good have they wrought for mankind? They philosophized, if you will pardon my misuse of the word, about the heart as the seat of the emotions, while the scientists were formulating the circulation of the blood. They declaimed about famine and pestilence as being scourges of God, while the scientists were building granaries and draining cities. They builded gods in their own shapes and out of their own desires, while the scientists were building roads and bridges. They were describing the earth as the centre of the universe, while the scientists were discovering America and probing space for the stars and the laws of the stars. In short, the metaphysicians have done nothing, absolutely nothing, for mankind. Step by step, before the advance of science, they have been driven back. As fast as the ascertained facts of science have overthrown their subjective explanations of things, they have made new subjective explanations of things, including explanations of the latest ascertained facts. And this, I doubt not, they will go on doing to the end of time. Gentlemen, a metaphysician is a medicine man. The difference between you and the Eskimo who makes a fur-clad blubber-eating god is merely a difference of several thousand years of ascertained facts. That is all."

- Jack London's character Ernest Everhard in The Iron Heel

I find this to be an encompassing argument against metaphysics in general, which paints religion, at best, as a colorful waste of time.

>>6489

London is an idiot.

According to him anything that's non-tangible and doesn't produce immediate benefits is completely worthless.

>>6512
So he was a positivist I take it.

>>6512
Well that might be the worst reduction I've ever read. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the quote.

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(Pic obliquely related)

God exists if you believe he does.
Pragmatigally, what good does a belief in God do.
There are plenty of examples of someone being full and satisfied in their belief in God while they have used that belief to visit evil upon the world about them....and some have actually visited good on the world about them.
Ergo, a belief in god is a pragmatically neutral proposition.
What should be God is something you can believe in that will lead ONLY to good....What could that possibly be ?

>>6586
This is moronic and vapid blabber from someone trying to sound philosophical. Everything you said is diarrhea. I hope to the God who exists because I am believing in him that you are no older than 15. Please never post on this forum again.

>>6643
Calm down Imhotep. It's only 7chan /phi/. It's not like this is Stanford Philosophy department.
Sure it may be better, than say, Notre Dame. But even 50 monkeys at 50 typewriters is better than what comes out of the philosophy department of Notre Dame.

>>6659
Tell me that was not the stupidest thing you've read all month.

>>6671
Well, seeing as it's the beginning of the month... actually, no. It still isn't. Though, it is up there. Maybe he's a very good troll, perhaps?

>>6643
well he has brought some personal though to the topic while you have only spitted out a negative reaction to his input.
Your reaction defines you more than it defines him.

I appreciate his train of thought, moreover.

> What should be God is something you can believe in that will lead ONLY to good....What could that possibly be ?

Very nice. A shot a principles. Indeed "god" has to be overarchingly good.

>>6795
Gods don't have to be good. There's no reason to suppose that's a requirement.

sage'ing a sticky.

>>6799
Abrahamic god, and especially god of the bible rest on being omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent.

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>>5959
Agnostic is not a position. If I were to say whether English was your first language or not, "I don't know" Is not an answer I'm going to take.

>>6807

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.

>>6814
"Do you believe X exists?" "I don't know"

It implies you don't know what you believe. It's not the same thing, like when someone asks, "Do you think it's going to rain on Friday?"

The question should be rephrased to "Do you live your life with the assumption that God(s) exists?"
The answer that could be given is yes or no. "I don't know," is a meaningless answer.

>>6816
Hmm. The question phrased that way is still incomplete, as more than one condition could result in a "no". One could simply not live one's life with the assumption that God exists, or one could live one's life with the assumption that God does not exist. One is absence of assumption concerning God, the other is active negative assumption.

>>6853
Yes, and these things concern belief, not knowledge.

Saying "I'm without knowledge" on a question concerning belief, shows a lack of understanding on the other person's part.

>>6814
Its not a choice. Quit calling it a 'choice', because its not. This idea that because there are binary conclusions, that its a choice is stupid. Its like when "certain people" equate the faith debate to 'The Theory of Evolution' to 'Christianity'. Its so vastly different than what's correct. Believing that something is true is compulsory.

>>6856
I wasn't referring to knowledge. I was pointing out that simply not believing in God and actively believing there is no God are two different states.

>>6866
Yes, but not deciding is not a choice.

If someone never hears about Judo-Christian philosophy, then talking about choices is an incoherent statement.

>>6867

So if someone ever hears about Judaeo-Christian theology, they must either actively believe it or actively disbelieve it? That sounds dangerously to the Christian position that one you learn of Jesus the only two possibilities are that you believe in Jesus or you go to hell, which in turn sounds an awful lot like The Game.

>>6870
What?

http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/p20.htm

Here's an discussion between Father Fredrick C. Copleston and Doctor Bertrand Russell. It's quite interesting (also fun to listen to). There's an audio file if you're a lazy fuck (like me).

We don't discuss the existence of God; God exist, period. Beyond that we cannot say nothing more about Its nature, that's a field for faith, maybe theology. So, discuss religion but not God's existence.

>>6981
what the hell is this hogwash? If someone makes a claim that something exists I'm going to investigate it. IF no evidence turns up in favor, but that someone still claims it exists (I'm looking at you Big Foot hunters) then I will laugh at him.
I laugh at you and your blind faith in divine existence.

>>6991
Please dont feed the trolls.

sage'ing a sticky

>>6993

Oh, you.

>>6129

Scandinavian countries are good at getting rid of Gods. The native religion was supplanted by Christianity in, what, a few decades? It's no surprise that Christianity is falling to the wayside so easily.

The United States are different. The US worships a lot of different things that form some kind of capitalistic Godhead in which a god exists: money, power, and liberty.

It's not just important to our politics - it's entirely engrained into our society. We have God on our money, on our walls, in our state buildings (Constitution? What's that? Lulz), and all over our presidents. It'll be a long fight to get the US to where the Scandinavian Countries are at.

Also, why the fuck do Europeans call us Americans? Canadians and Mexicans are Americans to - as is every person in the whole of South America.

>>6991

No evidence? Just look around... God is everywhere, and in you also; call it the Logos, Monad, whatever, He's real and out there. It's a shame that peolple confound God with religion; religion is a human construction around the inate and perceivable idea of God, nothing more, or you choose to believe it or not, move on. Don't turn your anger to religious institutions against God; release yourself from preconceived notions about God and accept Him as the fundamental origin of existence, not an supernatural being but the whole of creation.

But perhaps you are seeking another kind of evidence, mathematical maybe? If that's the case let me remind me you of a little fundamental theorem by Godel: the incompletude one: there are truths not provable in math, that is, there's no axiomatic system from which they can be derived, and if you believe Chattin, this truths not only exist but are the vast majority in the universe of all possible mathematical truths. Yes, God is just a number, but not a computable one, you dig?

>>7027
*loud wet fart sound*

>>7027
I'll oblige. How do you know that god is everywhere?

>>5999
i just want to point out that there is only a very small percentage of terrain on the planet that we can actually survive on. The reason we've grown to all these different places is really because we've managed to create shelter to shield us from the elements. Not to mention that the sun, our primary source of life and energy, gives us cancer.

Our bodies are very flawed. We breathe and eat through the same tube. We go to the bathroom through our reproductive organs, raising the risk of infection. Our bodies are fragile and we get sick/die very easily.

>>5999
i just want to point out that there is only a very small percentage of terrain on the planet that we can actually survive on. The reason we've grown to all these different places is really because we've managed to create shelter to shield us from the elements. Not to mention that the sun, our primary source of life and energy, gives us cancer.

Our bodies are very flawed. We breathe and eat through the same tube. We go to the bathroom through our reproductive organs, raising the risk of infection. Our bodies are fragile and we get sick/die very easily.

>>7038
actually the laws of physics are broken all the time, by beetles, bumble bees, and electrons at least.

>>7040
lol no

Even those things follow the laws of nature.

>>7037

I'm not talking about omnipresence, but of the quality that pervades the universe and links all the things in it. Look no further than the big bang: all things in the universe arise from a space-time singularity, an infinitesimal point that expanded to stars, planets, flowers, humans, the cosmic background radiation, and so forth, so whatever give rise to the big bang - let's call it God - is everywhere as we are single instances of His creation. The same analogy can be applied to humans; if we look into our dna we see the roots of our ancestors until 50 000 years ago to the first migrations of the modern men out of Africa, so that the so called 'mitochondrial eve' - the root of mankind - is also everywhere and will continue to be so in every coming generations

>>7050
A thing's source does not permeate through and become the thing's "essence." Steel is not iron ore. Polyester is not oil. To say that a supposed god is "in everything" because he allegedly initiated creation is just as absurd as saying rubber trees are in tires.
Furthermore, you have already contradicted yourself.
"let's call this god" you said of the source of the big bang. This is a supposition; a "suppose for the sake of argument" argument, but earlier you claimed quite definitively that "God exists, period."
You can't make such an existential claim from a supposition in the way you did.
Finally, your analogy of historical DNA as being something like god's operation is ludicrous. Causal connections are not proof of a god's existence, they are causal connections and nothing more. When you say "this is everywhere" i assume you mean that there are clues to this history in all human's DNA ("everywhere" that certainly is not), but this is again as meaningless as saying chickens are everywhere in a cake because they supplied the eggs.

Further, the Big Bang wouldn't have been the big bang as it were, had a being been required to initiate it, nor had there there existed a being to initiate it.

Nature is not a chariot, and neither requires nor allows for a god to pull it around.

Monotheism is rebranded sun-worship. Get over it.

>>7054

Again, i'm not talking about omnipresence - the quality of being in more than one place simultaneously. All your objections are flawed by the fact they are refuting something that's not claimed in my assertions. What i'm talking about is the 'feeling' of the presence of God in all things as manifestations of His creation and rooted in the same origin that connects everything; i'm not saying the big bang is everywhere, what i say is that trough cosmological evolution we can extrapolate the existence of a big bang and from it we can infer the existence of God, because matter/energy doesn't arise spontaneously (causal connection did you say?), so God is that something that fills the picture, the entity that breaks the 'absurd' of existence: the primordial being. So God's everywhere is not a physical claim but the awareness of God's work in all things

Also, i haven't contradict myself; God is just a name and thus subject to multiple meanings and interpretations - philosophical, religious, logical, etc. I might as well have said 'let's call it string theory', wich by the way is the best candidate we have now to a pre-big bang explanation, but then how string theory came to be? and we could go on and on, until we get to the point that God is inescapable: the singularity of the multiverse

>>7058
This reasoning is ancient. What you are talking about is the idea that there must be a Prime Mover, an uncaused initial cause that sets the sequence of causality.

However even if we assume this is true, it does not follow that said initial cause must be an entity with intent and agency.

>>7055

Who said that God is pulling the universe? As far as i'm concerned i believe in a self-sustained universe governed by the laws of physics, and if that was all there is to say about it we probably didn't need to pull God to the picture, but in a universe of cause and effect the big bang couldn't had operate on itself to trigger himself, so if the big bang was the effect we can recursively track the cause to something outter to the space-time universe we are in, and God, in that view and according to the implicit defenition i give, is the only candidate around

>>7059

Yes, you nailed it, but nowhere i said otherwise, what i claim is the inevocal existence of God, but make no further assertions about It's nature (including a personal or sentient God), that's the realm of faith, and as i said: or you have it or you don't

>>7059

Yes, you nailed it, but nowhere i said otherwise, what i claim is the inequivocal existence of God, but make no further assertions about It's nature (including a personal or sentient God), that's the realm of faith, and as i said: or you have it or you don't

>>7058
>What i'm talking about is the 'feeling' of the presence of God in all things as manifestations of His creation and rooted in the same origin that connects everything;
This gave me the "feeling" of constipation. I don't see how this is any different from what I refuted, that an originator does not continue through the creation. A "feeling' that something exists is not evidence that something exists. I feel strongly that aliens exist, but that alone doesn't mean they do. You may not be talking about omnipresence, but you seem to be talking about something very close to it. To say that "everything is god" because you think god caused them to come into being makes the same fallacy i mocked above... there is no iron ore in steel and the blood, sweat, and tears from the workers is not actually in the steel (i hope)

>>7061
So if we are positing that an impersonal first cause can exist without itself being caused, what makes it more logical to assume that an unknown event caused the earliest known event than it is to assume the earliest known event is itself that first cause?

>>7064
I'll simplify this.

If we assume that God can exist without a cause, then why not save a step and assume the the universe can exist without a cause?

>>7063

Are you trying to deliberately miss the point? Did you notice the quotes in the 'feeling' sentence? When i say 'i feel' i didn't mean literally as in 'i believe', for a believe is an act of faith and to me God is above that; a believe is something that requires faith, a kind of hope in something, so we may apply them interchangably as in i hope/believe Obama win/loose the election, also i might say i believe Christ is the son of God and that's an faith-based utterance, but i don't say 'i believe in God', God exist, it's an axiom (axiom 0 to be more precise, let axiom 1 be a theory of everything or something) of the universe, is given, not proved or demonstrated.

Consider the micro-world of euclidian geometry: it has beautiful theorems about plain geometry derived from a set of postulates/axioms; so in this micro-universe the axioms are God, the same way supose i randomly setup a set of rules and initial conditions in Conway's game of life that strangely would evolve to a state where life and conscience emerged, should my craft be dependent of what cells 3C or B2 in the grid choose to believe as to their origin? I guess not, even considering i was very able to conceal the autorship to the game agents - in fact, they would be able only to see their 2D grid world and infer the laws of physics (the rules) trough inspection of their world behaviour, but not aware of a runing microship or a programmer.

Likewise the preposition that 'God is everywhere' is metaphor, because we can only speak of God trough metaphor and analogy (unless those who claim they are prophets); it's kind of sad we know nothing and therefore can say nothing about the only thing for sure in the universe

>>7061

because the first known event of the universe is itself part of the universe and therefore subject to the laws of physics that postulate that everything has a cause, so whatever caused the first known event of this universe must be an event form an outer universe or dimension, and we don't know if the same laws apply there at all (maybe the laws we see here are a subset or a special case of those); Einstein uniformity principle applies only to the space-time universe we inhabit

>>7064

because the first known event of the universe is itself part of the universe and therefore subject to the laws of physics that postulate that everything has a cause, so whatever caused the first known event of this universe must be an event form an outer universe or dimension, and we don't know if the same laws apply there at all (maybe the laws we see here are a subset or a special case of those); Einstein uniformity principle applies only to the space-time universe we inhabit

>>7074

if we assume the universe exist without a cause, than the universe is God, a pantheist philosophical and metaphysical view

>>7080
Except the laws of physics as we know them formed during that event, and were in flux as it occurred.

>>7082

Exactly. That's why i refer earlier to a theory of everything as a kind of axiom 1 of the universe, because some believe that in the primordial plasma soup of the big bang existed only one fundamental force that would eventually break up in the four we perceive today

>>7081
If the universe is God, then why not get rid of the term "God" and just save us the trouble?

But theists wont because such a God is not the God of the Bible that makes all their wishes about their existence come true.

I like how, no matter how far people go with their shaggy god theories, all the way to the timeless beginning of the universe, they still, fashionably, limit themselves to the modern concept of a single, never plural, god entity, as if that somehow makes more sense.

You're not trying to prove a god or twenty gods, or a whole civilization of supernatural beings. You're trying to validate a badly outdated series of myths that are already well understood by anyone who looks into their history, to be several ignorant and violent early bronze-age civilizations attempts at understanding the world and forcing an ethical code amongst their awful people.

If God is the universe, then why not get rid of the term "the universe" and save all the trouble of conflicting with theists about it's existence.

It even sits nicely with both monotheists and polytheists when arguing over the existence of the existence of a single/many gods.

>>7085

Well, does it really matter, i mean what's in a name? For me, a crow perhaps denotes a black thing with feathers and wings that fly, for a scientist it might be for instance something belonging to the corvus brachyrhynchos species of the corvus genus belonging to the corvidae family, but in spite of what me or the biologist say the little bird don't give a damn and get on with is business.

The names of God are indeed a very scholary subject probably as old as the scriptures themselfs, with all sorts of designations and titles ascribed to it in the Tanakh. The scholars don't even agree as to the correct pronuntiation of the tetragrammaton (YHVH in english) hebrew representation of the name of God, being Yahweh the most common.

Perhaps the best definition of God is the one gived by the Lord to Moses: 'I Am what I Am'; right so, things are just what they are, the definition is the thing itself. But the danger is that we must comunicate and wrap this ideas/definitions in human languages with their inner subjectivity and redundancy - Wittgenstein was probably right when he said that all philosophical problems are language problems; mathematics or natural language might not be tailored for such a task but are the best we have

>>7084
So you're trying to apply the laws of causality to the event which itself established those laws. If the event which caused causality needs a cause, then the event which caused it also needs a cause, repeat. This is the paradox of infinite regression, which the concept of the prime mover was formulated to solve.

>>7090

Indeed. So for the sake of sanity let's consider moment 1 when we have a full universe pack with planck scales, quantas of energy, and all of that. The big bang itself - the begining of expansion (or super-inflation if you prefer) - implicitly requires a previous event to trigger it and transform all that kinetic energy; recently Stephen Hawking advocated the search for clues in the cosmic background radiation of clashs with other universes in the past, that might be such an event, in accordance with M-theory which prescribes it in the form of membranes clash

>>7086

That 'awful people' are your ancestors dude, show some respect. Who knows how future generations will judge us, 'awful people', and how much of our 'shaggy' theories about nature will be classified as myths, that's called evolution; science is not the art of being right but mostly of being wrong; Bohr said once that a specialist is someone who had made all possible mistakes in a given field, in the same vein Einstein once said that someone who had never been wrong have never attempted something new. That's the main advantage of science against religion and its ethernal dogmas, because the world is movement, the worls is chage, science might even exclude religion but never excludes God - God is the supreme constant of the universe, the one that precede all others

>>7095
You're trolling right?

Or is this honestly your opinion?

>>7096
I'm an atheist, but he sort of has a point. I don't personally think it goes far at all in proving the existence of 'God', and it doesn't go anywhere in proving the mythology of, say, the Bible, but I wouldn't say he's trolling.