Does God exist: A hopefully civil and fruitful debate

[Kalovale]

EDIT: @SaptaZapta

Define "God".

If you want to discuss something with perfect rationality, first you must define it precisely. Then we can apply logical rules of deduction to prove its existence or the impossibility thereof.

I'm talking about the omnipotent, omniscience and omnibenevolent being. I'm not entirely interested in his Catholic teachings, or the teachings mankind attributed to him, or the whole history of Jesus Christ.

I think we haven't had one of these threads ever since this subject got the green light from Eos, so let's give it a try.

Some things to keep in mind for the sake of civility and intellectuality.

• A person's stance need not be his own belief. There are two ways to argue: emotionally and rationally. We strive for the latter here.
  
• Be mindful that while one may fail to present a proof for his cause, it is still sufficient for him to defend the proposition so long as he had provided an argument for it to get things rolling (burden of proof). Things may not get resolved, but keeping it going until we get the most rationally defensible position would be acceptable, even desirable.
  
• Be critical and try to separate things that are usually lumped together, although help should be provided if you fail to do so.
  
• Added: Be clear about your idea; we aren't all inside your head. Try to develop a clear picture of your position and present it in as much detail as possible.

[*]Added: Since it is supposed to be a debate, please, to the best of your ability, justify your claims rationally.

I usually like to play angel's advocate (as there is a lot of criticism from the atheist's side), but for now, I'll borrow someone's point of view to get things going.

Also, evidence doesn't prove anything. It lends support to arguments concerning what is most likely the case.
Proving doesn't leave the realm of mathematics.
While I very well know I can't ask for evidence, let alone proof, of God, the absence of evidence is telling. God arises from unanswerable why and how questions. That doesn't do anything.
If God is as he is described in the bible, for example, he has mutually exclusive characteristics. He cannot be all good, all knowing, and all powerful with these results. Therefore, he is a contradiction. I will not look further than that because the argument of the bible unravels at the beginning.

A typical argument. How would you respond?

EDIT: To make things more concrete, I'll borrow the famous argument from evil as an instance of said 'contradiction'.

If God is omniscience, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, then whence comes evil?

Break-down:
- If God is all-knowing, he must be aware of evil.
- If God is all-good, he must be willing to stop evil.
- If God is all-powerful, he must be able to stop evil.
- So there cannot be evil in the world if God is all-knowing, all-good and all-powerful.
- But there is evil in the world.
- Therefore God is either not all-knowing, not all-powerful, or not all-good.

[Chew]

There's no "irrefutable answer" to that question as many others revolving around religions..
I just believe that God exists where the human ignorance begins.
Not trying to be rude, this sentence can be taken from 2 different views:
1. God is the answer to all humankind questions that doesn't have an answer. OR
2. In your ignorance you start believing in god.
It's your choice to believe or not.

[Kalovale]

@Chew: Okay, you made a few points, would you care to give some justifications for them? Let's start with this:

There's no "irrefutable answer" to that question as many others revolving around religions..

[MuscleWizard]

that question is impossible to answer, as all the people who know the answer are already dead

[Chew]

What I'd try to say there is that people will always seek ways to invalidate others people opinions (no matter what "side" they are), and I'm saying OPINIONS because nobody holds the truth, nobody knows if there's such "afterlife" as nobody has come back from the dead.
Why do people keep discussing about this? I don't know, people likes to argue I guess. And besides, it's good to hear what everyone has to say, even the foolish has something to say and maybe in this cluster of ideas/opinions we will discover the "truth" about god (if there's one).

[Zelkova]

What do you hope to gain from this, other than buttangry? I know you have a set of rules for this thread, but in this sort of setting they rarely hold.

[Kalovale]

What I'd try to say there is that people will always seek ways to invalidate others people opinions (no matter what "side" they are)

If there are ways to invalidate people's opinions, wouldn't you agree that they weren't right in the first place? Why should there be anything wrong with trying to do that? On the other hand, if the person has reached the answer and there are no possible ways to invalidate his position, however hard people try, they won't succeed in bringing it down, will they?

I don't see how that can guarantee that there is not an answer. We certainly have not reached it, but that's entirely different from it not existing in the first place.

[Chew]

If there are ways to invalidate people's opinions, wouldn't you agree that they weren't right in the first place?

Yes, but at this moment do we know who is right? or who is wrong?

Why should there be anything wrong with trying to do that?

I'm not sayin there's something wrong with that, in fact I'm saying that's great because we keep wandering around looking for "the answer".

On the other hand, if the person has reached the answer and there are no possible ways to invalidate his position, however hard people try, they won't succeed in bringing it down, will they?

Yes but as we asked it before. Who knows "the answer"?

Until we find some kind of proof to backup our opinions until they become facts, everything can be taken from any ideal perspective.

[Kalovale]

Yes, but at this moment do we know who is right? or who is wrong?

There is a distinction here, and I apologize for not having used better words.

The distinction has to do with justification. One can be a nutjob and still has the correct answer, after all, God either exists or doesn't exist. What warrants 'attacks' is their justification for their belief, and those can be good or bad.

For this purpose, we don't need to know the right answer.

So, by your own wording, an 'irrefutable answer' would be a position that is backed by the most defensible justification. Again, we certainly can justify our beliefs, and some do it better than others, so it's reasonable to expect that there is a best candidate.

[Taku]

Of course not, we're all star children

[KhainiWest]

I don't believe in an orthodox god. Frankly I believe there is a higher power up there, but not one as petty as the one presented to us in most religious texts.

[Kalovale]

I don't mean to sound negative, but I didn't mean for this thread to be an opinion poll.

[DrRusty]

A god that created the universe in 6 days and jots down notes of every aspect of everyone's lives? lol, no... definitely not. Religion is just an end result of people's ignorance, fear, or quest for power.

Now, as for an intellectually superior alien race? sure I can get around that

[Derosis]

God, by many would say, is a creation of our own mind. A sense of self-security that if one has done unjust they can re-affirm themselves in religion. Religion is a counterbalance to our day-to-day lives that can help one with their stressful moments of life.

So we can affirm that the book is the proxy that gives us these thoughts of stories that can change our selves so much that we believe the book to give us enough insight that we could believe it to be, and so some of us do.

[SaptaZapta]

Define "God".

If you want to discuss something with perfect rationality, first you must define it precisely. Then we can apply logical rules of deduction to prove its existence or the impossibility thereof.

[Kalovale]

I'll try to work with what I consider to be the reason behind your beliefs.

A god that created the universe in 6 days and jots down notes of every aspect of everyone's lives? lol, no... definitely not. Religion is just an end result of people's ignorance, fear, or quest for power.

Now, as for an intellectually superior alien race? sure I can get around that

Barring the metaphysical nuances (God existing independent of our understanding), this is an acceptable claim. As I understand it:

- Religion claims that God exists.
- Religion was not founded on that good faith, but out of 'ignorance', 'fear', or 'quest for power'. (*)
- Therefore what religion claims cannot be true.
- Therefore God does not exist.

(*) seems like a huge claim. Any defense for it?

-----------------------

God, by many would say, is a creation of our own mind. A sense of self-security that if one has done unjust they can re-affirm themselves in religion. Religion is a counterbalance to our day-to-day lives that can help one with their stressful moments of life.

So we can affirm that the book is the proxy that gives us these thoughts of stories that can change our selves so much that we believe the book to give us enough insight that we could believe it to be, and so some of us do.

Again, I'll first try to reformulate this into an explicit form, bear with me.

- God's existence and religion help us positively in our struggle during the stressful day.
- It is therefore possible that man invented the idea of God and religion to help himself get by.
- Thus God and religion are both fabrication. (**)

(**) A possibility being a necessity seems like a huge leap to me.

EDIT: @SaptaZapta

Define "God".

If you want to discuss something with perfect rationality, first you must define it precisely. Then we can apply logical rules of deduction to prove its existence or the impossibility thereof.

I'm talking about the omnipotent, omniscience and omnibenevolent being. I'm not entirely interested in his Catholic teachings, or the teachings mankind attributed to him, or the whole history of Jesus Christ.

[DrRusty]

It's right in the Religion wiki under "Origins and development"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion

One important way in which religious beliefs accomplish this is by providing a set of ideas about how and why the world is put together that allows people to accommodate anxieties and deal with misfortune

also, didn't the guy who started scientology do it to get rich? Not to mention this stuff which is actually pretty hilarious http://www.cracked.com/article_18885...-get-laid.html

[Derosis]

@Kalovale; Yup you got it.

[SaptaZapta]

@your edit: that's easy, then. Omniscience and omnipotence are mutually contradictory, in addition to each of them contradicting the known laws of physics (and if you're going to start arguing that God might exist outside said laws of physics, outside time and causality - then what exactly can we base our "rational discussion" on? What facts can be agreed upon, that we can derive any conclusions from?).

As for (omni)benevolence, that requires further definition.

[Kalovale]

It's right in the Religion wiki under "Origins and development"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion



also, didn't the guy who started scientology do it to get rich? Not to mention this stuff which is actually pretty hilarious http://www.cracked.com/article_18885...-get-laid.html

Be mindful of their choice of word.

it seems apparent that one thing religion or belief helps us do is deal with problems of human life that are significant, persistent, and intolerable. One important way in which religious beliefs accomplish this is by providing a set of ideas about how and why the world is put together that allows people to accommodate anxieties and deal with misfortune.

@your edit: that's easy, then. Omniscience and omnipotence are mutually contradictory, in addition to each of them contradicting the known laws of physics (and if you're going to start arguing that God might exist outside said laws of physics, outside time and causality - then what exactly can we base our "rational discussion" on? What facts can be agreed upon, that we can derive any conclusions from?).

As for (omni)benevolence, that requires further definition.

- Omni-benevolence requires the being to always do the most known good.
- I honestly don't think we humans are arrogant enough to think that our model of the world is not fallible. At the current rate of the metric expansion, if we were born into the world a hundred billion years later (or so), our picture of the universe would have merely our own galaxy in the middle of endless darkness [citation needed]. There would be no theory of Big Bang as well as any chance of arriving at it, given the availability of the observable phenomena. As such, I argue that contradiction to the known laws of Physics is not a viable appeal. Regarding the contradiction among themselves, you'd have to elaborate.

citation

One of the favorite videos of the atheists. Watch around 49:00 onward for citation.