Does God Exist?
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  Does God Exist?
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Author Topic: Does God Exist?  (Read 14781 times)
Alcon
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« Reply #25 on: March 13, 2012, 04:24:42 PM »

In my years as a scholar, I've heard alot of plausable and poor theories. I've never heard anything as stupid as matter just appeared from nowhere and things began to exist for no reason.

Therefore, unerring belief in an entity that appeared from nowhere and began to exist for 'no reason'?
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Kalwejt
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« Reply #26 on: March 13, 2012, 04:33:08 PM »


Lying is a sin.
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Miamiu1027
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« Reply #27 on: March 13, 2012, 04:49:44 PM »


lmao.  even his profile says he is 27, which would mean that he would be a remarkable case even to have a PhD, let alone "many years"
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Gustaf
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« Reply #28 on: March 13, 2012, 06:22:17 PM »


lmao.  even his profile says he is 27, which would mean that he would be a remarkable case even to have a PhD, let alone "many years"

Wasn't that an old Derek line as well, being a scholar?
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Gustaf
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« Reply #29 on: March 13, 2012, 06:24:08 PM »

You think we get eaten by worms? Well our bodies do.
What does that have to do with the question?
Isn't that your first post on here about the topic?
What on earth?  Are you a goldfish?  You asked me if I think being "right" is important and in my very first post that's exactly what I said.
So you think it does or doesn't matter if we're right? I can't seem to find it.

I quite obviously don't, but that has nothing to do with the issue.  The issue is that you do while also claiming your God is infinite and can't be understood (like I said from the very beginning).  How can you be right about something you yourself can't understand?

I like this evolution in you, acting like we're the ones shying away or not answering questions.  It's funny.

It wouldn't be my God, it would be God. I'm a scholar not a scientist. My goal is to research and argue ideas based on what is written with the foreknowledge that the events may have happened in some way or another. I demythologize and then re-mythologize. As for God my belief resides in the fact that something cannot just come out of nothing. In order to argue that there is no God you must be able to prove that something can come from nothing. How can I be right about something that I don't FULLY understand? That doesn't matter according to you. Now does it matter to me? Somewhat, but since I have yet to see that there is concrete evidence supporting that something can come from nothing, I am still in the belief that there is a God and that God must be infinite as a first cause.
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Middle-aged Europe
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« Reply #30 on: March 13, 2012, 06:44:16 PM »
« Edited: March 13, 2012, 06:47:42 PM by General Buck Turgidson »

Well, since God is omnipotent it is also capable of time travel. Therefore it could have travelled all the way back to time before the Big Bang and created itself.

God wouldn't have come into existence "just like that", although you would still be confronted with a paradox. Tongue
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Ernest
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« Reply #31 on: March 13, 2012, 07:26:54 PM »

The "it makes no sense for something to come out of nothing" argument for God's existence makes no logical sense itself.

If God sprang out of the void, then it does not follow that nothing else could not have also sprung out.

If God is eternal, then it does not follow that there could not be other eternal things.

And last but not not least, if one takes the theological position the God is the universe and the universe is God, then they are one and the same.

In short, while cosmology can help determine the logical validity of particular theologies, it is of no use in determining the logical validity of theism itself.
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Tidewater_Wave
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« Reply #32 on: March 13, 2012, 09:36:08 PM »

The "it makes no sense for something to come out of nothing" argument for God's existence makes no logical sense itself.

If God sprang out of the void, then it does not follow that nothing else could not have also sprung out.

If God is eternal, then it does not follow that there could not be other eternal things.

And last but not not least, if one takes the theological position the God is the universe and the universe is God, then they are one and the same.

In short, while cosmology can help determine the logical validity of particular theologies, it is of no use in determining the logical validity of theism itself.

God by definition exists outside of time and therefore outside of our understanding. To say "God would've sprang from nowhere" is an oxymoron because God cannot have a beginning or an end as that which is all being. I don't really get into theology when debating the existence of a creator or God. Theology is more for what God is rather than if God exists. That's a good question about eternity but as finite creatures I don't think we're capable of fully grasping the eternal or infinite.

Someone else mentioned a Ph.D. I have no Ph.D and never claimed to.
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Miamiu1027
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« Reply #33 on: March 13, 2012, 09:55:50 PM »


Someone else mentioned a Ph.D. I have no Ph.D and never claimed to.

I did.  since you are a scholar, what degrees do you have, and in what?
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Tidewater_Wave
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« Reply #34 on: March 13, 2012, 10:05:36 PM »


Someone else mentioned a Ph.D. I have no Ph.D and never claimed to.

I did.  since you are a scholar, what degrees do you have, and in what?

I'm sending you a private message rather than stating where I've attended and the degrees I've earned and I hope that you honor the privacy.
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Tidewater_Wave
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« Reply #35 on: March 13, 2012, 10:10:45 PM »

and for the record I do have a B.A. as well as have attended graduate school
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Alcon
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« Reply #36 on: March 13, 2012, 11:09:01 PM »

God by definition exists outside of time and therefore outside of our understanding. To say "God would've sprang from nowhere" is an oxymoron because God cannot have a beginning or an end as that which is all being. I don't really get into theology when debating the existence of a creator or God. Theology is more for what God is rather than if God exists. That's a good question about eternity but as finite creatures I don't think we're capable of fully grasping the eternal or infinite.

...Your response wasn't really on-point to his post, and you also ignored my post for no apparent reason.
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Tidewater_Wave
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« Reply #37 on: March 13, 2012, 11:50:20 PM »

God by definition exists outside of time and therefore outside of our understanding. To say "God would've sprang from nowhere" is an oxymoron because God cannot have a beginning or an end as that which is all being. I don't really get into theology when debating the existence of a creator or God. Theology is more for what God is rather than if God exists. That's a good question about eternity but as finite creatures I don't think we're capable of fully grasping the eternal or infinite.

...Your response wasn't really on-point to his post, and you also ignored my post for no apparent reason.

I'm sorry which post?
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Tidewater_Wave
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« Reply #38 on: March 13, 2012, 11:55:56 PM »

Yes by definition. What we know to be a first mover or first cause, first essence is what is God. Now the presence of God is highly flawed by religion, especially in ancient times but the idea of God throughout history does show the evolution of what we know is not God; humanity and every other part of matter. I must ask; are you referring to the God of Christianity or monotheism or a creator?

If you define God as an entity that can just come into existence, why can't the universe just come into existence, or whatever?  Is anything capable of just coming into existence definitionally "God"?

God never began to exist nor will God ever cease to exist.
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jmfcst
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« Reply #39 on: March 14, 2012, 12:04:41 AM »

and for the record I do have a B.A. as well as have attended graduate school

Why have the gods left you alive?
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Alcon
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« Reply #40 on: March 14, 2012, 12:08:45 AM »

Yes by definition. What we know to be a first mover or first cause, first essence is what is God. Now the presence of God is highly flawed by religion, especially in ancient times but the idea of God throughout history does show the evolution of what we know is not God; humanity and every other part of matter. I must ask; are you referring to the God of Christianity or monotheism or a creator?

If you define God as an entity that can just come into existence, why can't the universe just come into existence, or whatever?  Is anything capable of just coming into existence definitionally "God"?

God never began to exist nor will God ever cease to exist.

If God can be a causeless agent, why can't the universe or the universe's cause?  Why does a causeless agent have to be a deity?
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Tidewater_Wave
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« Reply #41 on: March 14, 2012, 12:20:57 AM »

Yes by definition. What we know to be a first mover or first cause, first essence is what is God. Now the presence of God is highly flawed by religion, especially in ancient times but the idea of God throughout history does show the evolution of what we know is not God; humanity and every other part of matter. I must ask; are you referring to the God of Christianity or monotheism or a creator?

If you define God as an entity that can just come into existence, why can't the universe just come into existence, or whatever?  Is anything capable of just coming into existence definitionally "God"?

God never began to exist nor will God ever cease to exist.

If God can be a causeless agent, why can't the universe or the universe's cause?  Why does a causeless agent have to be a deity?

Then in that case the universe would be a God. It doesn't necessarily have to be a deity. By universe do you mean all that is?
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Tidewater_Wave
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« Reply #42 on: March 14, 2012, 12:24:07 AM »

Yes by definition. What we know to be a first mover or first cause, first essence is what is God. Now the presence of God is highly flawed by religion, especially in ancient times but the idea of God throughout history does show the evolution of what we know is not God; humanity and every other part of matter. I must ask; are you referring to the God of Christianity or monotheism or a creator?

If you define God as an entity that can just come into existence, why can't the universe just come into existence, or whatever?  Is anything capable of just coming into existence definitionally "God"?

God never began to exist nor will God ever cease to exist.

If God can be a causeless agent, why can't the universe or the universe's cause?  Why does a causeless agent have to be a deity?

Actually yes the universe's cause can be a causeless agent. I misread your first question due to the hour. That universe's cause is what we know to be God.
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The Mikado
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« Reply #43 on: March 14, 2012, 12:45:54 AM »

Can you really extrapolate something like Aristotle's Unmoved Mover into something you can call "God," given all the Abrahamic trappings that word (especially capitalized like that) has received?  The Unmoved Mover redefines "god" to its minimum possible definition: a force that set the universe in motion.  The Unmoved Mover is not necessarily eternal, is not necessarily omnipotent, is not necessarily omniscient...f**k, is not necessarily conscious or sentient and may be acting out of dumb instinct.
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Just Passion Through
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« Reply #44 on: March 14, 2012, 01:10:25 AM »

Yes.
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Associate Justice PiT
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« Reply #45 on: March 14, 2012, 02:04:32 AM »

Can you really extrapolate something like Aristotle's Unmoved Mover into something you can call "God," given all the Abrahamic trappings that word (especially capitalized like that) has received?  The Unmoved Mover redefines "god" to its minimum possible definition: a force that set the universe in motion.  The Unmoved Mover is not necessarily eternal, is not necessarily omnipotent, is not necessarily omniscient...f**k, is not necessarily conscious or sentient and may be acting out of dumb instinct.

     That was my thought, really. From the atheist scientistic viewpoint, the universe began with the Big Bang. The issue is, the proponents of that viewpoint cannot to their satisfaction account for how matter came to exist, much less in the configuration that allowed the Big Bang to occur.

     Let's say then that it happened because a single proton decayed, just to throw something totally random out there. To identify that proton as God, which seems to me to be a natural application of the "unmoved mover as God" idea, strikes me as degrading to any notion of God or gods.
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Alcon
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« Reply #46 on: March 14, 2012, 04:27:30 AM »

Then in that case the universe would be a God. It doesn't necessarily have to be a deity. By universe do you mean all that is?

err...so, if my very not-sentient coffee mug was a causeless entity, it would definitionally be God?  This is just not what I think people mean when they say "God"
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« Reply #47 on: March 14, 2012, 12:20:36 PM »

Maybe. To give a flat out yes or no would be rather arrogant, considering the absolute lack of tangible proof on either side of the argument.
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Tidewater_Wave
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« Reply #48 on: March 14, 2012, 12:26:04 PM »

Then in that case the universe would be a God. It doesn't necessarily have to be a deity. By universe do you mean all that is?

err...so, if my very not-sentient coffee mug was a causeless entity, it would definitionally be God?  This is just not what I think people mean when they say "God"

Yes the presence of God has been highly exaggerated throughout history.
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Tidewater_Wave
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« Reply #49 on: March 14, 2012, 12:32:19 PM »

Maybe. To give a flat out yes or no would be rather arrogant, considering the absolute lack of tangible proof on either side of the argument.

This is along the lines of what I've been saying. It's not possible for the finite to completely grasp the infinite in terms of understanding. Also, there is the flying spaghetti monster argument that scholars throw out there in order to combat the argument that we can't disprove God's existence. I find the first mover argument to be better though if one is arguing for God's existence. I mean they're right we can't disprove the existence of a flying spaghetti monster just because we haven't seen one, but then I raise that a flying spaghetti monster does not have to exist. Something that we know to be a first cause or first essence to quote Aquinas is what we know to be God. Shadows of this can be seen in deism where God started the universe as if winding up a clock and letting it run on its own. There are alot of theories out there but "matter just coming into existence on its own for no reason" is likely the worst theory I've ever heard or read. We'll never prove or disprove God's existence so the heated arguments over it are trivial.
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