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Do you believe in God?

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Do you believe God exists?
1) God is a being, that one can have a personal relationship. A person God. 29%  29%  [ 55 ]
2) God is an impersonal force that guides reality as it is. He decrees our laws of physics, but does not intervene to break them. 12%  12%  [ 22 ]
3) God does not exist. Reality can be explained by scientific inquiry and the scientific method in by itself. 33%  33%  [ 62 ]
4) I am not sure. There is the possibility that God does exist, or does not. We must follow the preponderance of evidence when drawing our conclusion. 26%  26%  [ 48 ]
Total votes : 187

Deltaville
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13 Mar 2016, 9:38 pm

Claradoon wrote:
I've been trying not to say this but I gotta.

Dear B.Hons Math and Theoretical Physics, Law -

I like you and admire you. I respect your accomplishments. I remember how it is to be young and sure of anything. But just you wait till your long-deceased mother shows up to get you through a crisis. I'm sure there are scientific explanations for that, too, but they won't hold up.

There! I finally got that off my chest. I apologize if I've offended you, I don't mean to. I don't even mean to offend science. It's not either/or. What bothers me is the idea that science trumps everything.


I cannot tell what the point of your post is. If you think I am an atheist, then you are utterly incorrect. All of my posts in this thread, support the notion that God is still a reasonable belief, even amidst scientific advancement and inquiry.


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13 Mar 2016, 11:11 pm

Deltaville wrote:
Claradoon wrote:
I've been trying not to say this but I gotta.

Dear B.Hons Math and Theoretical Physics, Law -

I like you and admire you. I respect your accomplishments. I remember how it is to be young and sure of anything. But just you wait till your long-deceased mother shows up to get you through a crisis. I'm sure there are scientific explanations for that, too, but they won't hold up.

There! I finally got that off my chest. I apologize if I've offended you, I don't mean to. I don't even mean to offend science. It's not either/or. What bothers me is the idea that science trumps everything.


I cannot tell what the point of your post is. If you think I am an atheist, then you are utterly incorrect. All of my posts in this thread, support the notion that God is still a reasonable belief, even amidst scientific advancement and inquiry.


The point of my post is that science has nothing to do with whether there is a God. All of these scientific theories in this context got to me.



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14 Mar 2016, 12:10 am

Claradoon wrote:
Deltaville wrote:
Claradoon wrote:
I've been trying not to say this but I gotta.

Dear B.Hons Math and Theoretical Physics, Law -

I like you and admire you. I respect your accomplishments. I remember how it is to be young and sure of anything. But just you wait till your long-deceased mother shows up to get you through a crisis. I'm sure there are scientific explanations for that, too, but they won't hold up.

There! I finally got that off my chest. I apologize if I've offended you, I don't mean to. I don't even mean to offend science. It's not either/or. What bothers me is the idea that science trumps everything.


I cannot tell what the point of your post is. If you think I am an atheist, then you are utterly incorrect. All of my posts in this thread, support the notion that God is still a reasonable belief, even amidst scientific advancement and inquiry.


The point of my post is that science has nothing to do with whether there is a God. All of these scientific theories in this context got to me.

Clardoon, I agree with you in part. God is not something you can put in a test tube and pick apart using the scientific method... directly, that is. But what about evidence from creation? I refer you to the Scriptures:

Psalm 19:1-2 - The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky proclaims the work of His hands. Day after day they pour out speech; night after night they communicate knowledge.

So isn't Scripture here validating the claim that science and knowledge does have something at least to showing evidence for God? What are your thoughts?

Another thought: We cannot prove a man walked in a certain place 3,000 years ago. But if we find a petrified footprint that we can carbon date back to that timeframe... this gives us strong evidence to support that claim.


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marcb0t
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14 Mar 2016, 12:18 am

Hey, sorry guys. I've been really busy travelling and visiting a good friend on the road. My time is still limited, but I have little at the moment.

This one is for AspE. You said something quite a few posts ago that I was curious about:

AspE wrote:
1. Belief is never a choice.


What exactly does that mean?


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14 Mar 2016, 1:13 am

marcb0t wrote:
Clardoon, I agree with you in part. God is not something you can put in a test tube and pick apart using the scientific method... directly, that is. But what about evidence from creation? I refer you to the Scriptures:

Psalm 19:1-2 - The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky proclaims the work of His hands. Day after day they pour out speech; night after night they communicate knowledge.

So isn't Scripture here validating the claim that science and knowledge does have something at least to showing evidence for God? What are your thoughts?

Another thought: We cannot prove a man walked in a certain place 3,000 years ago. But if we find a petrified footprint that we can carbon date back to that timeframe... this gives us strong evidence to support that claim.


No, I can't see that at all. My problem is seeing science claimed as the paramount source of the existence of God. I can't go there. Perhaps you equate "knowledge" with "science" - exactly! That's the thing I don't believe.



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14 Mar 2016, 1:24 am

Claradoon wrote:
marcb0t wrote:
Clardoon, I agree with you in part. God is not something you can put in a test tube and pick apart using the scientific method... directly, that is. But what about evidence from creation? I refer you to the Scriptures:

Psalm 19:1-2 - The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky proclaims the work of His hands. Day after day they pour out speech; night after night they communicate knowledge.

So isn't Scripture here validating the claim that science and knowledge does have something at least to showing evidence for God? What are your thoughts?

Another thought: We cannot prove a man walked in a certain place 3,000 years ago. But if we find a petrified footprint that we can carbon date back to that timeframe... this gives us strong evidence to support that claim.


No, I can't see that at all. My problem is seeing science claimed as the paramount source of the existence of God. I can't go there. Perhaps you equate "knowledge" with "science" - exactly! That's the thing I don't believe.

Oh, OK. Thank you for clarifying.

In that case, I agree that science is not the paramount thing that can disclose or prove the existence of God.

The God I believe in is beyond the scientifically testable universe. And He is the source of all things.


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14 Mar 2016, 8:15 am


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14 Mar 2016, 1:09 pm


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“In the same way that you see a flower in a field, it’s really the whole field that is flowering, because the flower couldn’t exist in that particular place without the special surroundings of the field; you only find flowers in surroundings that will support them. So in the same way, you only find human beings on a planet of this kind, with an atmosphere of this kind, with a temperature of this kind- supplied by a convenient neighboring star. And so, as the flower is a flowering of the field, I feel myself as a personing- a manning- a peopling of the whole universe. –In other words, I, like everything else in the universe, seem to be a center… a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself- comes alive… an aperture through which the whole universe is conscious of itself. In other words, I go with it as a center to a circumference.”~ Alan Watts


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14 Mar 2016, 2:05 pm

marcb0t wrote:
Hey, sorry guys. I've been really busy travelling and visiting a good friend on the road. My time is still limited, but I have little at the moment.

This one is for AspE. You said something quite a few posts ago that I was curious about:

AspE wrote:
1. Belief is never a choice.


What exactly does that mean?

Just that. You can choose to interpret evidence in a certain way, but either you are convinced or not convinced. You cannot decide to believe something you don't believe. Just like you can't be commanded to love. Either you love or you don't.



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14 Mar 2016, 2:13 pm

NoahYates wrote:
God... the necessarily existent being... the prime mover of contingent things, the transcendent ground of all being. Thought to be Minded, Personal, unimaginably powerful, maximally good, the greatest conceivable being in all possible worlds--which necessarily exists in all possible worlds. The creative force that animates the universe. The Other and the True Self. The Tao. And incidentally, the Tao that can be told is not the Eternal Tao (Godel's Incompleteness theorem stated by ancient Chinese mystics.)

It's all the same to you isn't it? In doing so, you disrespect both monotheism and Taoism.

God is literally the stupidest entity imaginable. He's less intelligent than a fish or a plant. Evolution is just slightly more intelligent than pure randomness. If God exists, he has an IQ of 1. That's plenty to make a human, given 3 billion years to do it in.



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14 Mar 2016, 2:16 pm

NoahYates wrote:
AspE do you understand Godel's incompleteness theorem?

No, and neither do you.



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14 Mar 2016, 2:20 pm

AspE wrote:
NoahYates wrote:
AspE do you understand Godel's incompleteness theorem?

No, and neither do you.

This statement is fallacious. How can you claim that someone doesn't understand something if you don't understand it yourself?


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14 Mar 2016, 2:22 pm

By the way, welcome back AspE and Noah! :heart:


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14 Mar 2016, 2:58 pm

marcb0t wrote:
AspE wrote:
NoahYates wrote:
AspE do you understand Godel's incompleteness theorem?

No, and neither do you.

This statement is fallacious. How can you claim that someone doesn't understand something if you don't understand it yourself?

It's a rather strict mathematical theorem, and he's applying it to Taoism. This is why I respect fundamentalism more than new age pseudoscience, at least they don't mix everything up into a meaningless pile of woo.



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14 Mar 2016, 2:58 pm

marcb0t wrote:
By the way, welcome back AspE and Noah! :heart:

I do take the weekends off.



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14 Mar 2016, 3:31 pm

AspE wrote:
NoahYates wrote:
God... the necessarily existent being... the prime mover of contingent things, the transcendent ground of all being. Thought to be Minded, Personal, unimaginably powerful, maximally good, the greatest conceivable being in all possible worlds--which necessarily exists in all possible worlds. The creative force that animates the universe. The Other and the True Self. The Tao. And incidentally, the Tao that can be told is not the Eternal Tao (Godel's Incompleteness theorem stated by ancient Chinese mystics.)

It's all the same to you isn't it? In doing so, you disrespect both monotheism and Taoism.

God is literally the stupidest entity imaginable. He's less intelligent than a fish or a plant. Evolution is just slightly more intelligent than pure randomness. If God exists, he has an IQ of 1. That's plenty to make a human, given 3 billion years to do it in.


At this point I think its safe to assume you are a troll... so I will ignore you.


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“In the same way that you see a flower in a field, it’s really the whole field that is flowering, because the flower couldn’t exist in that particular place without the special surroundings of the field; you only find flowers in surroundings that will support them. So in the same way, you only find human beings on a planet of this kind, with an atmosphere of this kind, with a temperature of this kind- supplied by a convenient neighboring star. And so, as the flower is a flowering of the field, I feel myself as a personing- a manning- a peopling of the whole universe. –In other words, I, like everything else in the universe, seem to be a center… a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself- comes alive… an aperture through which the whole universe is conscious of itself. In other words, I go with it as a center to a circumference.”~ Alan Watts