Does God exist?

I certainly don't believe in any of the common religions. I usually consider myself an atheist, but recently I've trended into agnosticism: the belief that there may be a greater power or there may not be one, as at present, we have no rational explanation for either case.

 

while being a firm Atheist myself thought it would be more fun to try and argue (not even sarcastically!) for the existence of God.


-One of the strongest evidences for God I have found is that matter exists, if the laws of the universe where even slightly different, by the tiniest amount, protons or neutrons would not form, matter would not exist and the universe would just be clusters of quarks and such floating around, what else other than a God could have fine tuned such a perfect balance so as to allow the Universe to form.

-Evolution also falls down when we look at things like the human immune response system, how could such a complex system develop via gradual evolution, it is far too complex for nature to have designed on its own.

-and another point is, why would you want to question the existence of God? Surely you have nothing to lose by holding faith, if there is no God, there is no loss as you die anyway the same as you had done if you were an atheist, but if there is a God, you have screwed yourself over by denying his existence.



Tried my best , would encourage people to try arguing against views they agree with, it is one of the best ways to keep an open mind, and I am interested in how people here respond to my points.

 

I'm sorry but you're just discrediting human intelligence/our understanding of the universe (so far) by pretty much saying that without a god, everything would just be random garbage floating around. Yes the universe is complex and beautiful, that doesn't mean it was created by some omnipotent being. Unless you're using a different term for God, since no one knows what God truly is.

Again, why discredit human intelligence and the beauty of the world?

Why would an omnipotent being need for us to submit to him/her and follow some useless guidelines in order for us to continue in the "after life"? I consider myself to be a pretty good person. I have code of ethics and a good moral code. Am I going to hell for not submitting to a certain religion? If so, I wouldn't want to worship that being anyway.

 

I'm not an atheist, but I tend to do the same thing when arguing with my friends. It does add more substance to the arguments, and definitely helps one to open his/her mind and either reinforce his/her beliefs, or completely change them.

Disregard what type of God he's talking about - it could be anything. In any case, he's not talking about beauty and complexity. Beauty and complexity can refer to, for example, the Grand Canyon, and we all know that that can form by natural laws.

Signs of intelligence (such as the DNA molecule, a code/language, much like binary) do NOT form from natural laws to our current scientific knowledge. To say hence it comes from God is committing a 'God of the Gaps' fallacy. But to say it is evidence of a higher intelligent being is not. Notice the word 'evidence', not proof. Evidence can easily be denied, but to our current scientific knowledge, this evidence only appears to be able to come from an intelligent mind. To say that one day science will debunk it is committing a 'Science of the Gaps' fallacy.

We shouldn't discredit human intelligence. But we shouldn't also be an arrogant species that believes everything has an answer. We cannot know everything - that's a fact. Just because evolution currently cannot explain the immune system, doesn't mean that we have to fill that hole with God. And just because it cannot explain it NOW, doesn't mean we have to fill that hole with 'science will one day find a reason'. There's nothing wrong with saying, 'I don't know', unless you have good evidence for what you believe. Don't get me started on dark matter.

This is starting to pertain to religion, which is not something I will discuss, as I am arguing for any God (call it whatever you want), not necessarily the God of religions. However, imagine you were to create a new race of robots. You would likely consider yourself the father of these robots. Now imagine these robots turn on you, and don't believe in you, don't believe in things you say, etc. You'd be pretty disappointed, no?

 

I like to consider God the Santa for Grown Ups. They both pretty much provide the same thing to humans 'Comfort' and provide 'Reasons' on why things exist. People use the idea of God as a reason on how the world was created, and than people use the idea of Santa for why you get Christmas presents under the tree.

I personally don't believe in any religions, and pretty much believe in what Rsaccounttrader believes in. The 'God' existing shouldn't be considered an argument. It's a discussion that cannot be supported by facts. You're basically sharing your imaginations with each other, no matter how much 'evidence' you think you're using.

I don't have any problems with people believing in God to a certain extent. As long as you're not pushing it upon me, I am fine with it. I think it's great that if you have that extra motivation/comfort in life at your high and low points.

 

The main problem I have with organised religion is how much power and influence they are given, the same people calling down the rich for not paying enough tax, or complaining over government cuts would be outraged if we suggested revoking religious institutions tax free/charity status in order to pay for it, these religions drain so much from the economy and society yet people still willingly support or at best just ignore them. It is not enough to describe religion as harmless and to be ignored, it is a parasite on society worse than any disability forger and organised religion should be treated as such, fine believe in what you want, but don't expect special status for your ideals over anything else.

One of the biggest evils of religion I feel is the religion charities that exist, these vile people may for example only provide water/aid if people accept a copy of their bible with them, or add bibles into those shoeboxes you fill with toys for children. They turn their supposedly charitable work to force their idiocy onto vulnerable people, and I almost hope there is a God(not a Christian God though, he sounds like a horrible person, have any of you believers actually read any of the old testament?) so he could judge the work they do himself. Worst of all is these people often truly think they are doing good in spreading their virus into other countries and cultures, destroying just as valid local religions for a big tick from the giant security camera in the sky on their name.

Religion is also one of the biggest causes of division and war than any other cause, you don't believe in the same magic man as I do, so you deserve to die. How much better would the world be without religion, Science was held back for generations because ignorant small minded people refused to accept the Earth was not the centre of the universe, or that a vacuum could not exist because God is everywhere. How much better would the world be without crusaders, without Islamic extremists, without cult suicides.

Religion is what gives you morals, without religion and the 10 commandments we would all be completely lawless. First of all, which 10 commandments, the first set had a load of stuff about stealing sheep. Secondly is that the only reason you have any moral code, because of the fear of hell that your security camera in your head might pick up any 'bad' thoughts and punish you. What if your religion told you that you would go to hell if you didn't commit mass murder, you it be the might and moral thing to do then? Do you think all suicide bombers or killers think themselves evil? It is religion which has infected their minds and made them able to justify themselves.

Overall if I think the world is ever going to end, or destroy itself in war, it will be religion which causes it, small minded men blowing each other up over their imaginary friend's honour.



tl;dr and post ignored?

 

I think we are on the same page. The point I was trying to make was that just because we don't know, we shouldn't settle with what organized religion currently offers. I acknowledge the fact that we don't know what god is, if there is one, or how the world was created. I don't like the whole "you have nothing to lose, so why not have a comfortable ignorant mindset and just believe, you know, just in case" There is nothing wrong with saying "I don't know".

Of course we cannot learn everything. Knowledge has its limits and it ends with our dimension. My current theory is that if there is a god, it would not be bound by space and time, and not by our current reality. Maybe through evolution in the next millions of years we can understand the concept of god more and make it a reality. Of course this is just an idea but you get the point.

I am not omnipotent, religion claims that God is omnipotent. There is no reason why an omnipotent being would have such human emotions (for lack of a better word) as envy, jealousy, or whatever the outcome of betrayal is.

 

I'm sorry, but why? Why is too complex for nature to work out on it's own?

 

I would like to see you come up with a rational watertight argument for a God , it is a fairly common argument with more merit than most, how would your immune system develop through evolution, it is not like growing a wing for example where more survive as wing like things let something glide, the immune system is hugely complex and it is very difficult to see the steps in how it came about (although I am sure we will eventually).

If you read a few posts up, you can see I am defiantly not really in support of that.

 

But it still doesn't mean an omnipotent being can't have such emotions. Even if there's a God in another dimension/"reality" that has different laws than our universe, it doesn't mean that emotions do not exist in such dimension/"reality". They could be the same, different, or nonexistent altogether. But we cannot deny their existence (note that I'm agreeing with the premise of your argument that a God may exist if alternate dimensions exist).

Also note that when I speak of emotions in this context, I'm not referring to their chemical nature. I'm talking about the idea of being happy, sad, angry, etc.

If an omnipotent being can experience such emotions, then it shouldn't be so hard for us to understand why He/She/It would be disappointed with the human race, as shown from the example I gave before.

 

an omnipotent being would contain the capacity of the entire sphere of human emotion.

 

I'm not denying that it is possible, I'm just simply saying that it makes no sense that a being that could do ANYTHING would be degraded to a human level. I fully understand that when it comes to the concept of god, anything goes, as we know nothing of it. I just can't get around the idea of an omnipotent being taking extreme actions (such as sending people to hell) just because it let its emotions get the best of it.

 

Okay. But for me, if I were to have a race of robots that I created, and they were to turn on me... yeah, I'd get pretty pissed at them

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_sequitur_(logic)
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=immune+system+evolution

 

If God created humans and humans disappoint him, he must've messed up somewhere. Doesn't bode well for his omnipotence.

 

Not necessarily. That's like me making a program that randomly outputs a string of letters. If I were to showcase this program in front of a company that wanted to buy it, and it outputted 'shdfsde', then I'd obviously be happy with it - it's doing its function. If it outputted 'fuckuall', I'd be pretty disappointed, even though it's still doing its function of creating a random string of letters. It's still a perfect design of a perfectly random program. It's just that some of its outputs are not exactly what I'd want.

If you tell me that I can safeguard against such words by placing a filter, then the program is no longer a perfectly random program. I would have failed to create a perfectly random program. In order for it to be perfect, there will be some disappointing results.

Such is the case with free will. If God made humans with free will, there are different ways people will react to things. If God made it that they can only react to things in a good way, then that would completely dismiss the concept of free will. The idea of free will is that you can do anything. Even if some of the things you do may disappoint others.

If you're going to argue against free will, that's a different story. If you're going to bring religion to the argument, save it. I've said numerous times I could be talking about any God. Some religions advocate determinism, some advocate free will. We'd be getting nowhere.

 

No. First, you're forgetting to factor in omniscience (you would know that the program would output "fuckuall," and you'd program it anyway, so you'd have no right to be disappointed). Second, humans are not random; our actions are governed by many chemical factors which, ostensibly, God imposed upon us.

 

No. First, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that a random string generating program can output a bad word. I'm aware of it. Yet if it did happen, I'd still be disappointed, irregardless if I was aware of it.

Second, you're arguing against free will, not randomness. Randomness was part of the analogy - it's analogous to free will. You're trying to discredit the analogy by disagreeing with the initial premise of my argument, being that humans have free will. You're essentially going to the free will versus determinism argument. In any case, phenomena that happen at the quantum level do appear to be random, if we're going to boil it down to particles. Might as well, if we're already boiling it down to chemicals.

Free will versus determinism arguments rarely get us anywhere, because it's not necessary that they're mutually exclusive. Even atheistic websites (such as http://atheism.about.com/library/glossary/general/bldef_freewill.htm) say that it's possible that both free will and determinism could mutually exist. It's like me arguing that a Neapolitan ice cream sandwich tastes like strawberry, and you arguing it tastes like chocolate, and John arguing that it tastes like vanilla, when in reality, it's all three flavors.

 

I disagree worh snoopchicken. Free will is not the ability to make an executive choice. Free will is the ability to make an unpredictable executive choce, which I do not believe we have as we only act based on our DNA and our environment.

 

You're simplifying things, if that's the case. Read upon the emergent property (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence), if you'd like.

Most scientists seem to agree that there appears to be an 'illusion' of free will (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will#In_science), but it's created by deterministic sources (chemicals, DNA, environment, etc.), and hence, determinism is true. But if that's the case, why don't we boil everything down to the quantum level, where everything appears to be occurring randomly? Does that mean our deterministic chemicals are also an illusion as well? Randomness poses a big threat to determinism, because if everything truly is random at the quantum level, then why do some things appear predictable at the macro/micro level?

That's because you cannot simplify things like this. Even if we know the way particles work at the quantum level, even if we know how the brain works, even if we know the way chemicals react in our body, etc. it doesn't mean that the product of their interactions is an illusion. Quantum physics is just a perfect example to this - unless, of course, you're willing to argue that everything around us is truly random, as quantum physics may postulate. But I doubt anyone would really believe that. Especially you, since you already implied the claim that with adequate knowledge, all choices can be predictable.