Unspecified
Sea Gull
Joined: Jan 05, 2012
Age: 45
Posts: 207
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 Posted: Mon May 14, 2012 11:29 am Post subject: |
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Yes. Well.
I can put "God" and "proof" together in a sentence: "I have not seen convincing proof of the existence of a God". Saying the two words don't belong in the same sentence proves my point that believers do not require proof before they stake their entire lives (and that of their children) on something their parents told them. |
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ruveyn
Phoenix
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Age: 76
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Location: New Jersey
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| Posted: Mon May 14, 2012 11:33 am Post subject: |
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| Smigiloo wrote: |
Unfortunately the person in the "convince me of God" mindset is entering an arena where logical proof for validity is void - God denies entry via proofs and lays the cards on the table that you must believe to see rather then vice versa.
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Is one of your hobbies begging the question?
ruveyn |
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Smigiloo
Emu Egg
Joined: Aug 07, 2011
Posts: 5
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| Posted: Mon May 14, 2012 12:35 pm Post subject: |
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| ruveyn wrote: | | Is one of your hobbies begging the question? |
I'm not sure if I understand correctly. You mean do I challenge people with the question of God's existence? Not really; never. I wasn't attempting an apologetic defense of any view point. I was attempting to look at the form of the debate and why these separate modes of conclusion cannot be reconciled to one another and why the debate is frustrating for both sides.
| Quote: | | Smigiloo, what you are saying IS exactly what the skeptics have been saying all along: There is no proof for the existence of any gods, and the believers have to decide to believe *despite* this. |
Yes. I wasn't trying to support or dismiss any point of view - I was trying to see the difference between a believer's method of conclusion and the skeptic's (I don't try to use this word with a negative connotation) method of conclusion and how they are incompatible. And that to apply one of these modes to convince the other side generally brings no one anywhere else.
I have my beliefs which is obvious by some of the details in my post. But I was writing to explore what I think this kind of question means to either side rather then supporting/debunking any particular viewpoint. Hopefully I explained myself thoroughly, but ask me more if you need me to clarify what I was attempting to say. Thanks for reading. |
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techstepgenr8tion
that chatty American
Joined: Feb 07, 2005
Posts: 14836
Location: A beautiful vector among many
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| Posted: Mon May 14, 2012 9:05 pm Post subject: |
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| ruveyn wrote: | | Unspecified wrote: | | heavenlyabyss wrote: | The moment that God is proven to exist is the moment that the universe collapses.
God and proof do not belong in the same sentence. |
That is, in fact, as you know, simply an unsupported opinion. |
There is no empirical proof for the existence or non-existence of God. Which why one must believe that God exists. It is impossible to know for sure one way or the other.
ruveyn |
I think heavenly's statement reflect a specific hypothesis that he didn't state - ie. that everything generally outside of this is heaven, that there's no agnosticism or question anywhere else but here, and agnosticism is what makes this place unique or makes this place something like a human stress and development pressure-cooker. *If* that were the case, irrefutable proof would in that sense unravel the whole dynamic of what this place is for to begin with.
Not saying I necessarily believe that, just that its the specific case scenario where that statement makes sense and its not a particularly rare hypothesis among believers. |
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heavenlyabyss
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Joined: Sep 10, 2011
Posts: 530
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| Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 3:31 am Post subject: |
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| Unspecified wrote: | | heavenlyabyss wrote: | The moment that God is proven to exist is the moment that the universe collapses.
God and proof do not belong in the same sentence. |
That is, in fact, as you know, simply an unsupported opinion. |
Yes, correct. |
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heavenlyabyss
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Posts: 530
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| Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 3:37 am Post subject: |
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| techstepgenr8tion wrote: | | ruveyn wrote: | | Unspecified wrote: | | heavenlyabyss wrote: | The moment that God is proven to exist is the moment that the universe collapses.
God and proof do not belong in the same sentence. |
That is, in fact, as you know, simply an unsupported opinion. |
There is no empirical proof for the existence or non-existence of God. Which why one must believe that God exists. It is impossible to know for sure one way or the other.
ruveyn |
I think heavenly's statement reflect a specific hypothesis that he didn't state - ie. that everything generally outside of this is heaven, that there's no agnosticism or question anywhere else but here, and agnosticism is what makes this place unique or makes this place something like a human stress and development pressure-cooker. *If* that were the case, irrefutable proof would in that sense unravel the whole dynamic of what this place is for to begin with.
Not saying I necessarily believe that, just that its the specific case scenario where that statement makes sense and its not a particularly rare hypothesis among believers. |
That's an interesting interpretation. Sometimes I like to make cryptic remarks just to leave it open-ended and leave room for different points of view.
That isn't really what I meant though. I guess I just meant, the way I look at God, it is by it's very nature undefinable. No one has ever given an adequate definition of God to me before.
There was also a little more to what I said. I was speaking about the beauty and the mystery of the universe. I would hate to break down all the majesty of the universe into concrete parts. If I were to realize all the beauty in the world all at once, my heart would explode. No human being can handle it. |
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heavenlyabyss
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Posts: 530
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| Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 3:55 am Post subject: |
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Okay, I realize I didn't directly respond to the original question, so I will respond to it more directly.
First of all, sound not working. Apologies, but I can't hear the videos...
Secondly, I'm not here to refute near death experiences but they are not proof of a God to an outsider, they are only proof of God to the person who actually has the experience. For all I know, these people are lying. I don't actually believe they are lying, but strictly speaking, it's not proof.
I mean, I knew someone who did a lot of DMT and he told me he saw what happened after death and there was no afterlife. So there is probably some personal bias going on in each afterlife experience.
Scientifically, we need a scientist to explain how near-death experiences actually work. I don't have that answer. |
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ruveyn
Phoenix
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Age: 76
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| Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 10:04 am Post subject: |
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| heavenlyabyss wrote: |
That isn't really what I meant though. I guess I just meant, the way I look at God, it is by it's very nature undefinable. No one has ever given an adequate definition of God to me before.
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In short, people who talk about God do not know what they are talking about.
It is all nonsense.
ruveyn |
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kxmode
Bible Student
Joined: Oct 15, 2007
Posts: 2664
Location: In your neighborhood, knocking on your door. :)
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| Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 11:19 am Post subject: |
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| One way or another all of you - regardless of what you believe - will soon know that God is real, he has name, and that he has a purpose for this planet and humans. And his purpose most assuredly doesn't involve keeping the status quo of this system of things in place. |
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Grebels
Toucan
Joined: Mar 06, 2012
Posts: 270
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| Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 12:09 pm Post subject: |
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| Unspecified wrote: | | Grebels wrote: | | Unspecified wrote: | Smigiloo, what you are saying IS exactly what the skeptics have been saying all along:
There is no proof for the existence of any gods, and the believers have to decide to believe *despite* this.
You realize that this is the exact same situation for believers of every single faith based religion, and they all believe that the story their parents told them is *the* correct one. They can't all be right (and chances are they are ALL wrong), and your certainty that yours is the one seems to me to be a bet with huge stakes. Your life is in the kitty (you provided the "cards" analogy). |
Unspecified, it seems to me that you and many others here are making wrong assumptions about belief and faith. |
OK, educate me. |
In this feely, touchy world I believe the sun will rise the next morning. At least it wopuld take a mighty big asteroid to stop the planet rotating on its path. I expect to wake up ans see the sun tomorrow and hope to be doing so for some years hence. I have faith that my friend will repay me the money I am owed, due to the trust between us. But this is not what we are talking about.
The normal laws of logic, or proof cannot apply. That is because the spiritual exists in another kind of space. What we may see are the effects of the supernatural on the natural. You can give me a hard time on this point, because one purpose of the church is to be the Body of Christ. That is to show Jesus Christ to this world in a touchy feely kind of way. Now you need not remind me what I am hearing from the US is “God hates fags,” and throw your money up to God and I'll catch what He doesn't need. I am seeing the love of God in places, but this tends to get swamped out in most people's perception.
In terms of God giving empirical evidence you would find acceptable, miracles and changed lives get explained away in natural, touchy, feely terms. People say, I am simply deluding myself.
Here is a figure I can use to try and explain. Imagine creatures in a two dimensional world trying to comprehend the three dimensional. How about trying to work with Euclidean geometry for Calabi Yau spaces. Think again of the 2 dimensional worlds where a cube lands on the surface. Inhabitants of flatland can only comprehend a square and maybe a shadow. Now suppose a sphere lands on the same surface. Flatlanders will observe a very small point, with a large shadow. A figure is not likely to be perfect, but you will see that the logic of Flatland can tell its inhabitants so much by deduction, but not strict logic in the 2 dimensional frame of reference. BTW have you read Plato's Cave. |
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01001011
Phoenix
Joined: Mar 04, 2010
Posts: 830
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| Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 1:34 pm Post subject: |
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| Grebels wrote: | | Here is a figure I can use to try and explain. Imagine creatures in a two dimensional world trying to comprehend the three dimensional. How about trying to work with Euclidean geometry for Calabi Yau spaces. Think again of the 2 dimensional worlds where a cube lands on the surface. Inhabitants of flatland can only comprehend a square and maybe a shadow. Now suppose a sphere lands on the same surface. Flatlanders will observe a very small point, with a large shadow. A figure is not likely to be perfect, but you will see that the logic of Flatland can tell its inhabitants so much by deduction, but not strict logic in the 2 dimensional frame of reference. BTW have you read Plato's Cave. |
Our science have moved pass that. We can formulate a theory using purely abstract language. Then the theory produces predictions that relates abstract objects with instruments we know, then we can make observation to falsify the theory.
The same cannot be said for 'god'. Really why can you feel 'god' while our most sensitive scientific instrument cannot? Without a falsifiable theory, there is simply nothing to believe. |
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shrox
Phoenix
Joined: Aug 12, 2011
Posts: 3254
Location: OK let's go.
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| Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 2:46 pm Post subject: |
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| If a very ancient adult human bone fossil with no growth rings was discovered, what might one make of that? |
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Unspecified
Sea Gull
Joined: Jan 05, 2012
Age: 45
Posts: 207
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| Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 3:30 pm Post subject: |
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| shrox wrote: | | If a very ancient adult human bone fossil with no growth rings was discovered, what might one make of that? |
Hehe - nice. That would be a good one. Check for evidence of navel.  |
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Unspecified
Sea Gull
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Age: 45
Posts: 207
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| Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 4:11 pm Post subject: |
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Grebel, thank you.
I watched a debate about the afterlife yesterday, and one of the Rabbis (Bradley Artson Shavit) said very much the same thing (in a very annoying voice, but hey - I'm not holding THAT against him). The idea seems to be that there is something that believers believe in that is outside what we are allowed to point at and talk about. I have read what you say, and I understand your analogy with dimensions very well. The ant that lives on a rolled up sheet of paper, kind of thing. The Rabbi used an idea of an eye expert who lived in a black and white world and learned everything about how monochrome entered the brain, and then someone gave her a colour TV. Same thing. The ant and the eye expert (and presumably the informed unbeliever) know everything about the world from their point of view, oblivious to the big picture that is *right there* if they just have their eyes/senses/hearts/something opened.
Calabi Yau spaces was the turning point for me when I read Greene's string theory book, because of the way they made the intellectually unavailable singularity go away. They made me a believer. Nice touch. Except in my case it is like this: I have read something that stretched my powers of understanding to the maximum, and I was convinced that the guy who wrote it understands this sufficiently to let his understanding of the universe make changes to mine. This means that for now, I "believe" that string theory is on to something. I am rooting for them. I hope that they keep finding things.
Your "something", though, is different from person to person. You all have a "something" that you can't point at, can't communicate, can't explain, but it's never the same, and some times changes depending on what a skeptic asks you. I tried taking acid a couple of times in my youth, and I am a father. Both of those experiences are unexplainable. Only people who have taken acid can talk about it meaningfully. Only fathers can talk about THAT meaningfully. I have things like that in my life as well. Huge, mind blowing, massively existence-altering things.
Only believers can talk about faith meaningfully. I get that.
But the RESULT of some basic faith-forming understanding of the world is so very often that a whole big mess of ... non-related sh** ... is mixed in. You talk about Jesus. Jesus is easily orders of magnitude away from the "unexplainable otherness" that you are talking about. A creator god is orders of magnitude away from that. Let's say (and it's not accurate, but let's say it anyway) that the colour TV/Calabi Yau/Acid dimension that we can't talk about meaningfully leads everybody who enters/accepts/understand/shares it to believe that there is a spirit being that created the universe. There is still the question of why there is no evidence of this in our ordinary dimensions (just like String Theory is just a mathematical toy until someone can show evidence of even *one* of those extra dimensions needed for the maths to work). Not least, there is the question of why this thing we can't name causes most people to become completely certain about the stories of their parents. If it is a "force" or even something at all, how come you're a muslim if you're born in Abu Dhabi, a Mormon if you're born in Salt Lake, and a Hindu if you're born in Varanasi?
Does this "spiritual space" have to lead to a celestial dictator who cares about whether you sleep with your hands on top of the blanket?
Edit: Oh, btw: here's the afterlife debate. Good points (well, some good points...) from all four.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbzd6ZbCowY&feature=related
(shrox: NDE doesn't survive the debate at all. )
Last edited by Unspecified on Tue May 15, 2012 4:21 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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AspieOtaku
Leader of the Otaku Legion
Joined: Feb 18, 2012
Age: 30
Posts: 5902
Location: Mountain View, California, United States
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| Posted: Tue May 15, 2012 4:16 pm Post subject: |
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If god does exist it is most likely not that of human form but like a universal matrix of sorts and might be somewhat different from that of a 2000 year old book called the bible since human civilization is more than 10000 years old and the earth is over 4 billion years old. The main concept or utterance of Evolution gets most Christians riled up as well because the refusal to accept life forms change over time due to natural selection when it has been proven over and over true. Howbout if god does exist then he or it must have designed man and all other life forms to change over time for the better and for man in his or its so called image "not appearence but behavior to govern all other life forms""playing god so to speak in carrying out his or its sort of tasks on our own free will. "example synthia first living life form syntheticly made by humans using a computer.
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