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Does God exist? (6 Viewers)

do you believe in god?


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ninetypercent

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yes and no
sometimes I find that the existence of a god will help explain life's mysteries/coincidences
yet I also find god unbelievable because there is no proof for this.
 

birdy17

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When you're reading the bible, all through the old testament, what do you say to yourself the point of all the craziness that goes on is?
the old testament is pretty long. with stacks of stories in it, is there and particular part of the craziness to which you are refering.

but i see the craziness as, loyalty. that they realised that there is someone greater then themselves who deserves to be lived for and praised.
granted it can seem mythical cause it's from a time an culture that's hard to imagine outside of fiction but i spose yes, i see loyalty.
 

KFunk

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I don't see how any of those don't require time, but perhaps it's just because we're using a different definition of 'time'. I think time is the thing through which events can be said to occur or have occured, as oppose to just 'be' i.e. Time is merely the ability for causation to occur.

What sort of an operational definition are you working under?
I mainly had in mind Aristotle's Material and Formal causes. Being sloppy in our treatment of time and without considering whether or not it provides a necessary background for coherent thought, we could think about a table which simply exists, unchanging, without a temporal dimension. In this setting you might talk about the atoms/wood composing the table as constituting a material cause of the table, or of the idea (Platonic?) of a table constituting its 'tableness'. To use a different expression, one might similarly want to speak of the table as supervening on certain materials or concepts. I realise that I am just tossing these out there with fairly scant analysis.

There is a tendency to get very caught up with the variety of causation dealt with in science, due in part to language, education, and the way in which scientific discourse has displaced certain other ways of talking about the world. The idea I wanted to allude to was roughly the following - if it can be said that without X, Y would not exist, then there is a sense in which we can speak of X being a cause of Y (partly why the concept of supervenience is relevant). Science does deal somewhat in this kind of talk given that it still remains a reductionist enterprise, e.g. the table is composed of wood which is composed of atoms, and so on. If we can engage in similar talk in the areas of concepts, logic or metaphysics then we might have a notion of causation adequate to 'before time', though it is unlikely to be dynamic for obvious reasons (unless we engage in some Hegelian weirdness??).
 

Sultun

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I mainly had in mind Aristotle's Material and Formal causes. Being sloppy in our treatment of time and without considering whether or not it provides a necessary background for coherent thought, we could think about a table which simply exists, unchanging, without a temporal dimension. In this setting you might talk about the atoms/wood composing the table as constituting a material cause of the table, or of the idea (Platonic?) of a table constituting its 'tableness'. To use a different expression, one might similarly want to speak of the table as supervening on certain materials or concepts. I realise that I am just tossing these out there with fairly scant analysis.

There is a tendency to get very caught up with the variety of causation dealt with in science, due in part to language, education, and the way in which scientific discourse has displaced certain other ways of talking about the world. The idea I wanted to allude to was roughly the following - if it can be said that without X, Y would not exist, then there is a sense in which we can speak of X being a cause of Y (partly why the concept of supervenience is relevant). Science does deal somewhat in this kind of talk given that it still remains a reductionist enterprise, e.g. the table is composed of wood which is composed of atoms, and so on. If we can engage in similar talk in the areas of concepts, logic or metaphysics then we might have a notion of causation adequate to 'before time', though it is unlikely to be dynamic for obvious reasons (unless we engage in some Hegelian weirdness??).
You still haven't provided any evidence for you sky God...
 

BradCube

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Of course though, it's unfair to use probability here because chance is the only one with a probability which isn't 1.
How are we to know it's not due to physical necessity? There may very well be an eternal mechanism in the universe which necessitates our universe be this way.... Perhaps you'd call that a 'designer'?
No, we would call that physical necessity :p

As I outlined before, I think the one characteristic or requirement of being called a designer is that there is a mind involved - regardless of whether it exists "necessarily" (that is, out of necessity) or not.

I see a few problems with your eternal mechanism. The first is that it ventures away from the standard big bang model again (which proposes that all of space time came into existence at the moment of the big bang). Second problem I see is that your mechanism seems to lack any causal power. What allows it to bring a universe into existence? How can it decide, from eternity past, to all of a sudden start time and create something?

No... I'm not a proponent. But I find problems with the 'eternality' of a 'god' just as much as I do a theory of an eternal universe, or multiverse.
Go for it - I would be interested to discuss this at further length with you. Not because I think I have all the answers, but because I would like to become more familiar with these topics. Please feel free to list any problems (logical or otherwise) you see with the concept of a necessarily existing eternal God.

So your argument doesn't support a conscious designer any better than an unconscious one? Personally, as far as arguments in favor of a 'god' go, I feel that would be pretty weak and that the word 'design' is probably the trick there.
I'm confused. What does a necessarily existing being vs. an unnecessary being have to do with being conscious? As I stated before I think a mind is a requirement when talking about a designer. Adding to that, I think said mind would have to be conscious when designing (even if they are not now) - how could they design otherwise?
 

Enteebee

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BradCube said:
The first is that it ventures away from the standard big bang model again (which proposes that all of space time came into existence at the moment of the big bang)
I don't think that's right. The big bang afaik only deals with our observable universe, which we could presume is the entirity of existence, but I think that may be a little short sighted?

BradCube said:
Second problem I see is that your mechanism seems to lack any causal power. What allows it to bring a universe into existence? How can it decide, from eternity past, to all of a sudden start time and create something?
It doesn't "decide", it is an unconscious universal creation mechanism which 'just is' (much as you must postulate a God, just is). I don't see why it needs this conscious element of free choice?

BradCube said:
Go for it - I would be interested to discuss this at further length with you. Not because I think I have all the answers, but because I would like to become more familiar with these topics. Please feel free to list any problems (logical or otherwise) you see with the concept of a necessarily existing eternal God.
All I was alluding to was that I see no reason why giving something a consciousness makes it being eternal any better than speculating that the universe its self is eternal. Perhaps you can explain why you feel consciousness makes the 'just is' sort of argument more viable?

BradCube said:
I'm confused. What does a necessarily existing being vs. an unnecessary being have to do with being conscious? As I stated before I think a mind is a requirement when talking about a designer. Adding to that, I think said mind would have to be conscious when designing (even if they are not now) - how could they design otherwise?
Well.. for one example of unconscious design I would point to evolution - more specifically I think the existence of evolutionary algorithms, which have created for instance circuits which their human creators cannot understand:
http://www.cs.nyu.edu/courses/fall09/G22.2965-001/geneticalgex
 

BradCube

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I don't think that's right. The big bang afaik only deals with our observable universe, which we could presume is the entirity of existence, but I think that may be a little short sighted?
We needn't have to presume the entirety of existence (indeed, that would rule out the God hypothesis too!) but I think we do need to look at a cause which transcends spacetime.

P.C.W. Davies said:
If we extrapolate this prediction to its extreme, we reach a point when all distances in the universe have shrunk to zero. An initial cosmological singularity therefore forms a past temporal extremity to the universe. We cannot continue physical reasoning, or even the concept of spacetime, through such an extremity. For this reason most cosmologists think of the initial singularity as the beginning of the universe. On this view the big bang represents the creation event; the creation not only of all the matter and energy in the universe, but also of spacetime itself.
Bearing this in mind, I have to wonder what sort of mechanism you are proposing? How do you actually picture this mechanism working (can it even be pictured at all?)


It doesn't "decide", it is an unconscious universal creation mechanism which 'just is' (much as you must postulate a God, just is). I don't see why it needs this conscious element of free choice?
Yeah, I realized the word "decide" was crudely anthropomorphic when writing it - I was at a lack for words that could be substituted.

The problem I'm trying to show has to do with the way your mechanism can cause anything. If it lacks any "will" how can it suddenly create an entire universe to our specifications? If it can, given it's eternal past, why did it not happen yesterday, or for that matter an infinity ago?

Summarizing the two points:

- If your mechanism is timeless in the "just is" sense (like God) then I currently see it as casually impotent.

- If your mechanism is eternal in the sense that it has existed for an actually infinite amount of time then I see the same objections applying to your mechanism that apply to an eternal universe.

All I was alluding to was that I see no reason why giving something a consciousness makes it being eternal any better than speculating that the universe its self is eternal. Perhaps you can explain why you feel consciousness makes the 'just is' sort of argument more viable?
Let me make a distinction first. That is, that the teleological argument doesn't necessitate the "just is" nature of the designer. As I have maintained, I think it only requires that a mind is involved.

Separately from this, when posing a mind (and a conscious one at that) we are able to look at agent causation. This makes much more sense of how a temporal effect can arise casually from an eternally existing entity in my opinion. That is that the action of the agent is what marks the beginning of time. It is their choice to take action that necessitates time existing. This is as opposed to your eternal mechanism which seems stuck in eternity unable to break free.

As well as this, we have scientific and philospohical reasons for thinking that the universe is not eternal.



Well.. for one example of unconscious design I would point to evolution - more specifically I think the existence of evolutionary algorithms, which have created for instance circuits which their human creators cannot understand:
http://www.cs.nyu.edu/courses/fall09/G22.2965-001/geneticalgex
The difference in my mind is that evolution is not design, it is chance that looks like design. (chance in the sense of when we look at our explanations of physical necessity, chance and design). I see a multiverse hypothesis in the same way I see evolution in this regard.
 
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Enteebee

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We needn't have to presume the entirety of existence (indeed, that would rule out the God hypothesis too!) but I think we do need to look at a cause which transcends spacetime.
Do you understand my point though? That there's no reason why my unconscious universe creation mechanism can't transcend space-time just as good as a conscious God.

The problem I'm trying to show has to do with the way your mechanism can cause anything. If it lacks any "will" how can it suddenly create an entire universe to our specifications? If it can, given it's eternal past, why did it not happen yesterday, or for that matter an infinity ago?
It can cause things in the same way that at the earliest stages of the universe new elements were formed. Perhaps you believe God created the singularity, or what have you - but surely you might understand where I'm coming from when I say that after that there is probably no need for an interventionist God at all - right?

I do feel this line of reasoning begs the question, depending on how far we're willing to question things, in that you could claim that "all those unconscious processes after the singularity would not have happened but for consciousness" - However I also feel that it applies to both camps.

- If your mechanism is eternal in the sense that it has existed for an actually infinite amount of time then I see the same objections applying to your mechanism that apply to an eternal universe.
You can use the word eternal or transcendental, I really don't mind nor care to pick apart the semantics - However you think it is that your "God" gets out of these problems tell me why it doesn't apply to something without a mind? Furthermore, I wonder if by transcendental you mean something which exists outside of the rules of the logic our human brains use? If so, this makes my earlier comments that such questions are meaningless even more relevant - For how are we to guess about something which could occur outside of the realm of anything we'd have a pot shot of guessing?

The difference in my mind is that evolution is not design, it is chance that looks like design. (chance in the sense of when we look at our explanations of physical necessity, chance and design). I see a multiverse hypothesis in the same way I see evolution in this regard.
Evolution isn't chance at all though. You could not come up with solutions to the sort of problems dealt with in that article with a purely chance-based algorithm.
 

BradCube

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Do you understand my point though? That there's no reason why my unconscious universe creation mechanism can't transcend space-time just as good as a conscious God.
I understand your point, but this is not the issue raised in the quote you responded to. In your earlier post you claimed that the standard big bang model does not go beyond our observable universe. My response was to point out that it does go beyond what is just observable and extends to spacetime itself. This need not extend itself to existence of everything (even if many do infer this) but will limit existence to that which can transcend spacetime. You seem to not have a problem with this now that I’ve quoted P.C.W Davies. So with that in mind, I’m guessing we are both in agreement that our causes must transcend space time and this conclusion is outside of the big bang theory. That is, it is in addition to, but does not necessarily contradict it. Is that a fair summary?

It can cause things in the same way that at the earliest stages of the universe new elements were formed.
How is that? Additionally, how does it escape the problems of initiating an event when given an eternal existence casually prior to this point?

Perhaps you believe God created the singularity, or what have you - but surely you might understand where I'm coming from when I say that after that there is probably no need for an interventionist God at all - right?
Now this is a different issue entirely. Firstly I have to ask, “needed for what?”. If you mean needed for our existence then, no, an interventionist God is not needed. If you mean whether God’s existence is needed once the universe is created, I don’t really know, but would be inclined to say yes.

Also, I should point out that I think there is a distinction between what God needs to do at bare minimum and what he can/chooses to do freely.


I do feel this line of reasoning begs the question, depending on how far we're willing to question things, in that you could claim that "all those unconscious processes after the singularity would not have happened but for consciousness" - However I also feel that it applies to both camps.
I’m going to need you to expand on this for me. How does it beg the question, and in what sense does it apply to both camps?



You can use the word eternal or transcendental, I really don't mind nor care to pick apart the semantics - However you think it is that your "God" gets out of these problems tell me why it doesn't apply to something without a mind?
I think God gets out of the problem because he can freely and eternally choose to create a universe with a beginning (via freewill). I don’t think this works for the eternal mechanism because I don’t see how it could “start” anything. What changes it from a process of non-creation existing eternally, to creating a universe?

I am also concerned about the casual power of your mechanism as a whole. What gives it the ability to cause anything? What does “eternal/transcendental mechanism” even describe when the framework of spacetime is pulled away?

Furthermore, I wonder if by transcendental you mean something which exists outside of the rules of the logic our human brains use? If so, this makes my earlier comments that such questions are meaningless even more relevant - For how are we to guess about something which could occur outside of the realm of anything we'd have a pot shot of guessing?
Not at all. I regard logic as necessary in the same way I regard God’s existence as being necessary. Logic is exactly the type of thing that I propose transcends spacetime.


Evolution isn't chance at all though. You could not come up with solutions to the sort of problems dealt with in that article with a purely chance-based algorithm.
Maybe I should have been more clear about what I meant by chance. Whilst a multiverse proposal is generally regarded as chance based, it is based on a 1 hit strike. Evolution is slightly different in that, whilst being chance based, the ones that don’t hit the mark are discarded and only ones in a similar vein to working models are kept. Both are still chance based, it's simply that evolution has a way of better choosing which dice it should roll, so to speak.

For example, from the article we read:
http://www.cs.nyu.edu/courses/fall09/G22.2965-001/geneticalgex said:
To kick off the experiment, Thompson created a population of 50 configuration programs on a computer, each consisting of a random string of 1s and 0s”
and

http://www.cs.nyu.edu/courses/fall09/G22.2965-001/geneticalgex said:
Finally, the algorithm introduced a small number of mutations by randomly switching 1s and 0s within individual programs”
If this doesn’t indicate a chance based solution, I think we’re on different pages.
 
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Enteebee

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If we extrapolate this prediction to its extreme, we reach a point when all distances in the universe have shrunk to zero. An initial cosmological singularity therefore forms a past temporal extremity to the universe. We cannot continue physical reasoning, or even the concept of spacetime, through such an extremity. For this reason most cosmologists think of the initial singularity as the beginning of the universe. On this view the big bang represents the creation event; the creation not only of all the matter and energy in the universe, but also of spacetime itself.
Yes sorry, that is correct. I am attempting to postulate a solution to the problem which is basically... exactly like your 'God' but without a consciousness.

First I'm going to deal with how you propose to deal with the problem:

I think God gets out of the problem because he can freely and eternally choose to create a universe with a beginning (via freewill). I don’t think this works for the eternal mechanism because I don’t see how it could “start” anything. What changes it from a process of non-creation existing eternally, to creating a universe?
God is transcendent, has free will and chooses to create the universe.
An unconscious mechanism creates the universe.

Here I think you are saying that God's 'choice' is the first cause? Well I still fail to see how this is any different from saying that the unconscious mechanisms action is the first cause.

Asking what causes the mechanism to create the universe is no different than asking what causes God to have free will, as far as I can see.

How is that? Additionally, how does it escape the problems of initiating an event when given an eternal existence casually prior to this point?
I believe in quantum physics (and even, due to a fairly recent example in classical physics) you can have events which do not have a cause.

Ahh found it:
The Dome

Now this is a different issue entirely. Firstly I have to ask, “needed for what?”. If you mean needed for our existence then, no, an interventionist God is not needed. If you mean whether God’s existence is needed once the universe is created, I don’t really know, but would be inclined to say yes.

Also, I should point out that I think there is a distinction between what God needs to do at bare minimum and what he can/chooses to do freely.
I mean once God has created let's say, the singularity from which space-time emerges does he necessarily have to be involved for the rest of the universe to work? If not, you can surely see that there are unconscious processes which lead to creation.

I’m going to need you to expand on this for me. How does it beg the question, and in what sense does it apply to both camps?
What I mean is that, if you accept there was no need for a God after the begining of time to steer processes along then surely you can see that there are some natural processes which create (for instance the early universe forming new elements). An obvious answer to this is to say, "well sure I accept that - but this begs the question because they are only really natural if we can say that they werent started without a God" - I hope the way both camps can beg the question there is obvious.

Not at all. I regard logic as necessary in the same way I regard God’s existence as being necessary. Logic is exactly the type of thing that I propose transcends spacetime.
But logically you believe in cause and effect, yet we have examples of things which seem to happen without cause? Why must we assume there was a cause? Furthermore, could you provide me with some examples of what you believe is 'transcendental logic' ?

Maybe I should have been more clear about what I meant by chance. Whilst a multiverse proposal is generally regarded as chance based, it is based on a 1 hit strike. Evolution is slightly different in that, whilst being chance based, the ones that don’t hit the mark are discarded and only ones in a similar vein to working models are kept. Both are still chance based, it's simply that evolution has a way of better choosing which dice it should roll, so to speak.
Well, if you dig deep enough sure there is an element of chance... but isn't there still chance when dealing with a God with free will? I mean, a God with free will isn't necessarily going to create our universe. By this standard I believe my mechanism which skips free will is better as there is no chance component.
 

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God is transcendent, has free will and chooses to create the universe. An unconscious mechanism creates the universe.
Here I think you are saying that God’s ‘choice’ is the first cause? Well I still fail to see how this is any different from saying that the unconscious mechanisms action is the first cause.
My concern here is not over whether God is the first cause, but rather, his ability to cause even when given an eternal existence. The eternal mechanism in contrast seems casually impotent. I don’t see how it has the ability to start anything, and if it does, why hadn’t it happened before that point, given that it’s already had infinity go by in the past? I'll expand on these areas to be clear in the problems I see.

The Problems Facing an Eternal Mechanism (eternal in the same “just is” way as God)


- We need a definition of what your eternal mechanism is. What are you proposing? If it is immaterial and outside of time, what exactly is it?
- The only entities we know of which can posses the property of timelessness and immateriality are minds or abstract objects, like numbers.
- If, in objection, you want to claim that your eternal mechanism is incomprehensible or unable to be known, then it essentially becomes a meaningless proposition. Why are you even proposing that which you have no knowledge or understanding of (and more to the point, why should we take this as the most plausible explanation?)?
- If you were able to overcome these problems, you still need to give an account of how it is that your mechanism has casual power. Furthermore you need to explain how it can begin causing things when it had previously (that is, casually prior) existed eternally unchanged. What allows it to begin time if not a choice or decision? In my mind, any other explanation seems to indicate that time already existed.

The Problems Facing an Actually Infinite existence of the eternal mechanism (it has existed forever in time)

It is important first to realize that the term “actually infinite” is different from “potentially infinite”. When talking about an actual infinite, we are talking about a collection of definite and discrete members whose number is greater than any natural number. By contrast a potential infinite is a collection that is increasing toward infinity as a limit but never gets there.

The problem arises when traversing an actually infinite existence. In order for us to arrive at the moment of the “big bang”, temporal existence of the eternal mechanism has traversed an infinite number of prior events. As a result, when looking at how an event such as the big bang came we are driven back further and further into the infinite past making it impossible for any event to occur. Thus, if the series of past events does not have a beginning, the creation event could never come to be.

To see this, suppose we have just met a man who claims to have been counting down from infinity and is now finishing, “-3, -2, -1, 0”. One could ask, why didn’t he finish yesterday or the day before or the year before? After all, an infinite amount of time had already past so that he should have no problem finishing. As a result there is no point in the infinite past where we could find the man finishing his counting as he should have already finished. Similarly, there is no point in the infinite past were we should find the big bang occurring, since given an infinite past, it should have already occurred.

The only out for you that I can see is if you were to adopt a B-Theory (or tenseless) view of time.

Asking what causes the mechanism to create the universe is no different than asking what causes God to have free will, as far as I can see.
I see these as quite distinctly different. We are not examining how necessary beings have the properties that they have (after all if they are necessary there need be no explanation of how they attained their properties). Rather we are examining how the properties they do have allow them to carry out what we propose they do. My objection is that given your eternal mechanisms properties (or lack thereof) I see it as casually impotent and unable to cause anything when placed in the scenario of existing necessarily and eternally. Why should it cause anything and how does it do this? Without a mind, how is it not bound to exist as it always has for all eternity? What causes the change in behaviour?

I believe in quantum physics (and even, due to a fairly recent example in classical physics) you can have events which do not have a cause.
Interesting reading there – I wish I had a greater knowledge of physics to do it justice in investigation. Nevertheless I don’t think it’s really needed for my part.
Just quickly, this response didn’t really answer my original question. I was asking for an explanation of how particles coming into existence during the big bang is similar to how your mechanism brings the universe into being. Linking an example of motion without causation in classical physics leaves me with more questions than answers :p

Back to your original point though, if we extrapolate these findings essentially you seem to be saying that: “Since we have examples of events without causation, it is entirely possible that the universe could come into existence uncaused”. Firstly, I’m surprised that you would go this way. What purpose does your eternal mechanism now have if the universe can come into existence without a cause?

Secondly, I think there is a big difference between some event being uncaused and something coming into being uncaused. In the first, we are looking at an event within a pre-existing environment whilst in the second we are looking at something coming from nothing. The second I think we should be very wary of given our metaphysical intuition that something does not come from nothing – a principle which is confirmed everyday in our experience of life. It’s amusing to me that we have essentially transitioned from a teleological argument to a cosmological one. The Kalam Cosmological Argument seems to tie together some of the points we’ve been discussing.

Kalam Cosmological Argument:

1) Whatever begins to exist has a cause
2) The universe began to exist
3) Therefore, the universe has a cause

I mean once God has created let’s say, the singularity from which space-time emerges does he necessarily have to be involved for the rest of the universe to work? If not, you can surely see that there are unconscious processes which lead to creation.
Nope he doesn’t necessarily have to be involved and sure, there are unconscious processes which lead to creation. The difference, of course, between these unconscious processes we observe and your mechanism is that they all contingently depend on the other processes and causes prior to them. Essentially they all come back to the big bang.

What I mean is that, if you are accept there was no need for a God after the beginning of time to steer processes along then surely you can see that there are some natural processes which create (for instance the early universe forming new elements). An obvious answer to this is to say, “well sure I accept that – but this begs the question because they are only really natural if we can say that they weren’t started without a God” – I hope the way both camps can beg the question there is obvious.
I think a theist can maintain that processes are natural even if God was the cause of the big bang. This is because when one says natural, it usually means that it is in accordance with the laws we observe within the universe.

But logically you believe in cause and effect, yet we have examples of things which seem to happen without cause?
The examples you cited didn’t show coming into existence without a cause, but nevertheless I don’t regard this as logic anyhow. I regard those as metaphysical intuitions.

Why must we assume there was a cause?
Because this is one of the most commonly affirmed and observed metaphysical intuitions we have. I think it’s certainly more plausible than its negation. If one wants to deny that whatever begins to exist needs a cause, then they must make sense of why anything and everything doesn’t just pop into existence.

Furthermore, could you provide me with some examples of what you believe is “transcendental logic”?
Sure, some logical impossibilities include “married bachelors” and “round squares”. Logical rules will probably fit in here to, ie. modus ponens, modus tollens, hypothetical syllogism etc.

Also on this note, I think mathematics will be in a similar position ie 1 + 1 will always equal 2. I should note that we are not simply playing semantics here. It doesn’t make sense to say that in one possible world “2” is in fact equal to our “5”. This would confuse the issue because we are addressing the truth of the equation and not the particular symbols used to do so.

Well, if you dig deep enough sure there is an element of chance.... but isn’t there still a chance when dealing with a God with free will? I mean, a God with free will isn’t necessarily going to create our universe. By this standard I believe my mechanism which skips free will is better as there is no chance component.
You’re confusing the reasons we are talking about chance here. Our original reason for discussing chance was in regard to the teleological argument when looking at one of the factors which could have been responsible for the fine tuning. This, of course, is different from the God hypothesis since God is able to overcome any improbabilities logged against pure chance by having intelligence that can simply design the universe we observe.

Onto the next point, I don’t think it makes good sense to talk about God’s free willed choice in terms of chance as it’s not as though there are probabilities involved. He simply chooses freely to create our universe. He was able to do otherwise but this doesn’t equate to meaning that there is any chance or probability involved for him in doing so – it is a choice and not chance at its basic level.

I think part of the confusion may stem from the fact that we often say things like, “there is a chance that person x will do action y”. What I think we mean is that we can see some reason/s for x doing y and hence it becomes reasonable to think that x may choose to do y. However, what we don’t mean is literally that there is (say) an 80% chance that x will do y – our minds don’t operate like the flip of a coin or the roll of a die. We simply make a choice based on the relevant factors involved.
 
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I really feel shit these days and I feel like im empty iside. After this semester im going to take frequent visits to the mosque.....srsly, I don't know how atheists and agnostics live their lives. I feel empty right now and I need religion to brainwash me so I can feel that i have a purpose in life.
 

ajay12

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I really feel shit these days and I feel like im empty iside. After this semester im going to take frequent visits to the mosque.....srsly, I don't know how atheists and agnostics live their lives. I feel empty right now and I need religion to brainwash me so I can feel that i have a purpose in life.
I don't know about you, but I have friends and family who are my purpose in life.
 

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When i voted on this poll, without looking at the results first, i voted yes which made the votes a precise 50/50 split at 249 / 249 (i think that was the figure, at least).

Now we can argue all day about which side has the most logical root but the fact of the matter is that no matter how hard we argue there will be no winner.

there are ignorant people on either side and more informed people on either side.

Now, you can take any number of modes of thinking if you want to be philosophical about it: absurdist, existential, nihilistic, whatever. Or you could be scientific/ mathematical. each has major holes in it because

We are human.

The point is that in the end any argument will have a counter-argument because not only are the premises are poorly constructed but so too are those who argue them.

it is possible to argue for/ against any number of fallacies in a convincing fashion, to us at least.

this isn't maths or english. the nature of the question is too broad to be put under a microscope and too ill-defined to be seen in the stars.

"Does god exist?" is a poor question if you ask me.

1. the definition of "God" is highly subjective.
2. the word "does" suggests tense. are we including time into this argument?
3. "exist" has not been defined. exist at this point in time? in this universe? in my mind? as what?

Does everyone here understand the actual question being asked with those three words alone?
 

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