Does God exist?

[SuF]

Vote in the poll, post your reasoning and defend your position. Any posts that don't have an explanation will be infracted.

I know this goes against one of the stickies but the section is very dead (this may help) and its been a long time since we had a poll so it'd be nice to see if the results change.

 

[Artie131]

Well to put it plainly yes. The reason I believe that God exists is because i have grown up in a Christian family which have instilled in me the ideal that God does exist. Though there is no proof, i still have my beliefs that he does exist just like everyone else does. I'm not here to say that everyone should believe in God, seeing as there are multiple Gods in a plethora of religions, I'm stating my belief and would like to see what others have to say about this topic.
TL;DR I believe in God because that is what i have grown up with and still hold truly today.

(should be a quite interesting topic to read about)

 

[Noam]

The chances of god existing are very slim because, throughout history, there has never been any occurrence that while originally used to purport evidence of god, was not disproven by science at some point in the future. There is no reason to believe that this trend should not continue into the 21st Century. The one concept I am willing to believe is Deism - the idea that a god structured the physical laws of the universe and then proceeded to ignore it completely - though I am generally not disposed to believe in it.

 

[SuF]

God does not exist because, throughout history, there has never been any occurrence that while originally used to purport evidence of god, was not dis proven by science at some point in the future. There is no reason to believe that this trend should not continue into the 21st Century. The one concept I am willing to believe is Deism - the idea that a god structured the physical laws of the universe and then proceeded to ignore it completely - though I am generally not disposed to believe in it.

Do you believe that it is possible that a non-deist god (being one that interferes with the universe) exists?

 

[Emperor Nero]

The fact that the concept of God can neither be proved or disproved (at this point of time) and is completely a subjective experience leads to this not really being an arguable subject. Unless you are claiming to have evidence that some sot of God does not exist.

Some people use faith to get through life and some people use logic. It is all about finding what you need to get through life really.

My stance on God is that it is impossible to prove or disprove with what we know now. A couple of interesting reads on this subject are the short stories - A Meeting with A Hick and Eversong which are both in the book Dangerous Visions.

 

[SuF]

The fact that the concept of God can neither be proved or disproved (at this point of time) and is completely a subjective experience leads to this not really being an arguable subject. Unless you are claiming to have evidence that some sot of God does not exist.

Some people use faith to get through life and some people use logic. It is all about finding what you need to get through life really.

My stance on God is that it is impossible to prove or disprove with what we know now. A couple of interesting reads on this subject are the short stories - A Meeting with A Hick and Eversong which are both in the book Dangerous Visions.

You can not prove that the monitor you are looking at actually exists. You could just be having a delusion. You can not prove anything actually exists and yet you still move through life as if you could. Why should god be any different? Staying in the middle is just a cop-out.

 

[JohnK]

I believe in a God, Supreme Being, Higher Power or whatever you want to call.

How is it that the Universe exists, and that everything was perfectly made?

 

[Sun]

Meh, I put no. I have a hard time believing the basic belief of God and Jesus Christ and all that. I have my moments when I believe, but when everything goes to shit, I lose all hope. It's just such a confusing thing to think about, along with many other topics. :/

 

[SuF]

I believe in a God, Supreme Being, Higher Power or whatever you want to call.

How is it that the Universe exists, and that everything was perfectly made?

What do you mean, "everything was perfectly made"?

 

[malakadang]

I believe in a God, Supreme Being, Higher Power or whatever you want to call.

How is it that the Universe exists, and that everything was perfectly made?

Let's first define the universe, and the implications of said definition.

The Universe: The totality of all existence.
This means that the Universe encompasses all of existence over the things that actually exist. This includes God, provided that he actually exists.

So, how did the totality of all existence, or in short, existence come to be? There are only 2 answers: existence had a beginning, or it is the case that existence had no beginning.

If existence had no beginning, then this implies that existence has always existed.
If existence had a beginning, this does not necessarily mean that something created existence.

Now, if existence had a beginning, it cannot be created by an existent (something that exists). This is due to the contradiction because if something where to create existence, it would imply that existence had already existed for the existent to create existence. Now, since God is considered an existent (something that exists), he cannot be the creator of existence, or, The Universe.

If we reject that existence had a beginning, then it means that the other alternative is that existence has always existed, which means that adding God into the equation is an extra complication.



As it stands, I don't believe in the existence of God because there is no empirical evidence that supports the existence of such a being. In addition, popular conceptions of God say this being has contradictory attributes which violate the law of non-contradiction, thus, these conceptions of God most certainly do not exist.

 

[Divine_God]

No one can completely prove that a god ( theistic or deistic ) does not exist. I will say, that any human conceptualization of a god is highly inaccurate and the concept of a god in itself is highly unlikley. So I responded with no.

 

[malakadang]

No one can completely prove that a god ( theistic or deistic ) does not exist.

You can if the God you postulate contradicts itself, which in most modern cases it does.

 

[Emperor Nero]

You can not prove that the monitor you are looking at actually exists. You could just be having a delusion. You can not prove anything actually exists and yet you still move through life as if you could. Why should god be any different? Staying in the middle is just a cop-out.

What you're arguing is a metaphysical argument. If we don't see it, and we don't consider it a part of our reality does it actually exist. Yet you still claim to be an atheist which means you are arguing that through the lack of any direct empirical evidence God does not exist. So you're essentially saying that you believe that nothing exists using your previous logic, because if we can't prove anything exists for certain than nothing exists using the logical properties of atheism. You can either have your scientific argument or your metaphysical argument, but using both is contradictory.

 

[Annex]

The problem with these types of polls and threads is the definition of god is so well undefined that its impossible to get a full grasp. Whenever you hear Albert Einstein or Hawking talk about "God" they are talking about the physical laws of the universe, not the Deity from the bible.

If you are talking about a god from scripture its quite the simple answer of no, however if you are referring to a somewhat less literal meanings such as the physical laws of the universe then yes there is.

There is a reason that every story of people seeing God is either a small party of people (less than 5) or they all die after seeing him, yet before being able to record the incident.

I believe in a God, Supreme Being, Higher Power or whatever you want to call.

How is it that the Universe exists, and that everything was perfectly made?

You don't know the half of astronomy if you believe the Universe was perfectly made. The only reason we exist is because of imperfections in the universe. The fact that there was slightly more matter than antimatter in the making of universe, and the fact that the gas was EVER so slightly imperfectly spread is the only reason we actually exist.

Then there are black holes where time actually stops at the singularity should you survive the descent into it.

Have you ever considered as well that before the big bang the universe was smaller than an atom and thus the quantum theory allows something of this size to simply appear out of nothing which is inherently unstable, but instead you would rather believe in someone creating everything, but then run into the infinite paradox of who created the creator.

 

[T V]

You can if the God you postulate contradicts itself, which in most modern cases it does.

What if those contradictions are Man's doing?

You don't know the half of astronomy if you believe the Universe was perfectly made. The only reason we exist is because of imperfections in the universe. The fact that there was slightly more matter than antimatter in the making of universe, and the fact that the gas was EVER so slightly imperfectly spread is the only reason we actually exist.

Doesn't that mean that those imperfections made the Universe perfect for the existence of life as we know it? I'm assuming you know what the fined tuned Universe is?

 

[red0roses]

Yes, nothing comes into existence from nothing or a magical "big bang" which creates something. I do agree with other posts that say tangible evidence proving or disproving a God is nonexistent. This means that it is one's choice to find "truth" and once you find what you believe all else would seem to be folly. That makes these threads very hard/impossible to reason in which it is in the stickies not to make them

 

[Lord LaLa]

Ive voted no purely becase there is no third option to abstain.

I am in mixed minds as i do not believe that one singular scripture "God" is real while i also dont think our creation was meer chance. I believe that there could be a higher purpouse for our being here but we will only find out if that is true or not when we die. Untill then as long as we are decent human beings and enjoy our lives then our lives will be fufilled.

 

[malakadang]

What if those contradictions are Man's doing?

Could you elaborate? Are you referring to the contradiction in the postulation of God, or the interpretation of God being contradictory?

Yes, nothing comes into existence from nothing or a magical "big bang" which creates something.

Assuming this is true, how did God come into existence? Also, the Big Bang is merely the expansion of what already exists, nothing has been created.

 

[Emperor Nero]

If we take the concept of God as an entity being more than the universe and something that can control every aspect within said universe, it is incomprehensible. We don't understand what was before the Big Bang, we don't even know what is past the reach of our telescopes. We have barely scratched the surface of what the universe is, and if God is more than the universe it would be reasonable to assume that all of those who have made assumptions or assertions about the God fella are wrong and have no clue what God actually is.

If God was real would it be reasonable to assume that it would be incomprehensible to humans?

 

[Snatchmasta]

Uuuuh. We can't really determine whether god exists or not. However the logic/reasoning behind religion is intrinsically flawed and perpetually shrinking in validity.