Does God Exist? (1 Viewer)

[Vezzellda]

Ok, woh, lets see here. Why don't we stop with this whether the bible is true or not because that is just going around in circles. Ok, if we're talking about Christianity the more important thing to work out whether it happened or not, whether it is true or not is the person of Jesus. If everything Jesus claimed and did was false Christianity is codswallop and Christians are to be pitied over all mankind, but if everything Jesus said and did was true, then Christianity is true, because Jesus claimed to have died and risen from the dead (yes he was definitely dead) and I hope we all agree that this is physically impossible without the help of some higher power than ourselves (and there was definitely no technology back then). Physical death is final, Jesus claims to have risen from the dead and not only that he also predicted that he would. Ok then, lets see:

There are many many historical documents which document the life of or make reference to Jesus, and a variety of them are non-religious, Jewish and the like. If you even bother to investigate some of the evidence before putting it in the too hard basket, you will see that there are many many more times the documents documenting the life of Jesus than documenting the existence of Caesar Augustus, the occurrence of ancient historical events and figures that we accept to be accurate without a second glance. (I won't go into the accuracy of the actual copying and manuscripts at the moment).

Ok, and I have to address a point here that annoys me no end, that is when people say that Jesus was just a good teacher or a good man. Hello, a good teacher does not go around claiming he is the son of God, despite how perfect a life he might lead. A man who claims he is God but who is not, is either a liar or a loony. Therefore, the only options for this Jesus fellow are: the biggest liar ever, a psycho crazy madman or God. I think that the only way we can work this out is to read first historical books, then the books which have been written to draw all the evidence together and give you the opportunity to make a conclusion yourself. One man, a famous author and committed atheist, Josh McDowell, set out to actually disprove the life and story of Jesus by researching all the evidence thoroughly. However, in the end the book he produced was one that proved Jesus existed and was everything he had claimed to be, McDowell had been convinced by the hard evidence. For anyone interested its called; "Evidence that demands a verdict."

Alrightey now I have that off my chest, what do you guys say?

 

[Bone577]

Most animals are homosexuals???????eww. i didnt know that. where does it say that????

She didn't say most, she said many. Meaning i assume that homosexuality is natural.

 

[Monkey Butler]

Mossup, are you saying that people that have never experienced Christianity (or rather the Bible) or immoral or amoral? Because if our only source of morality is from the Bible, then surely those people who haven't experienced that in any way would be completely without morals. In this, you seem to be contradicting yourself. You say our only source of morality is the Bible, yet you say that morality was given to Adam and Eve by God in his command to not eat the fruit (by the way, isn't this story pretty much unequivocally disproved by science?). So either God's morality was imprinted in us through His command to Adam and Eve (in which case we DO have the intrinsic ability to differentiate right from wrong) or there was a massive morality gap between Creation and the writing of the Bible.
And as to saying that children don't know right from wrong, therefore morality isn't genetic: Children don't have any concept of the Special Theory of Relativity either, but that doesn't mean our knowledge of it came exclusively from the Bible. I know that's a pretty specious argument, but so is yours. Our morals come from what WE believe to be right, and while these may overlap with what the Bible says, to just blindly follow the teachings of the Bible, without analysing them on a personal level (I mentioned this about the 10 Commandments ages back: What do you do if your parents tell you to murder someone? Agree to or refuse to, either way you're breaking a commandment) is absurd.

 

[hmm?]

Why morality is independant of God


Okay buddy you just stepped over the line Do you know how many theories of morality there are? What you just said is that your theory of morality is correct and that no-one else's is. In ethics however, the theory you are advocating is one of the worst theories ever. It is highly dodgey and must be maimed:


Refuting the Divine Command Theory

Your claim (The Divine Command Theory)
The basic idea: God is both the source of moral truths, and (via the bible, church authorities, reason and prayer) the source of our access to the moral truths. God created the world and the moral values and moral laws along with it. What God commands/desires is good and right; and what God forbids/does not desire is wrong or bad.

"X is good/right" means "X is commanded by God" and "X is bad/wrong" means "X is forbidden by God".

[By God of course we mean the all good, all knowing, all powerful creator of the world. However this would make the definition of "good" in terms of God's commands circular. We would be defining good in terms of God and then defining God in terms of "good". So we'll define 'God' here as the all knowing, all powerful creator of the world.]

The good side of this is it is objective - human behaviour must conform to a higher moral law. Unforuntately, it is severely flawed.

Initial Problems
1. It presupposes the existence of God. This is obviously a MAJOR problem.

2. Divine Command Theory is tautological nonsense. What could it mean to say that God's commands are good? If "X is good" means "X is commanded by God," then "God's commands are good" would mean only "God’s commands are commanded by God" - which is a useless truism.

----

Is God the source or cause of moral values, or could there be morality without God?

The most important part is that God is indepedant of morality. Whether you're religious or not.

Assuming God exists, ask yourself this question:

Is a good thing good because God commands it,
or does God command it because it is good?

There are 2 answers.

The first:

God's commanding it is what causes it to be good. God is the good causer.

God created everything, therefore God must have created morality. Before God commanded anything, nothing was good; and before God forbade anything, nothing was bad.

What's wrong with this?

God's commands now look arbitrary. What reason did God have for commanding one thing, rather than another? What if God had commanded us to torture babies? In such a case that would mean torturing babies is good.

I'm sure you'll agree that such a proposition would be absurd. So we can't say that "good," by definition, is what the creator desires.

You might reply by saying that God, because he is all good, would never have commanded us to do these things. But this leaves us with circular reasoning (saying that the good things are all and only those things that an all good creator loves).

But consider this. If we say that the commands of a good creator makes things good, wouldn't the good act be good regardless of whether the creator commanded it? If so, what is good is determined independently of what the creator desires --


The second way of answer the quesiton
God is not the good causer, but the good detector. God commands us to act in certain ways because those acts are already and independently good, prior to god's commands. God forbids us from acting in certain ways (e.g. torturing babies) because those acts are wrong.

"God's commands are good" now means that he commands what he sees to be best (having perfect wisdom).

But morality is now indepedant of God! This means that there can be morality WITHOUT God! More importantly, God does not provide the objective source for morality, since rightness and wrongness are determined independently of God's commands.

Sorry Moonlight, but i just quoted your whole thing so i wouldnt have to read through it all again to get the bits that i wanted to address! haha - thanx-
hmm...gosh...where can i start?
Once again i'll say that i dont no shit about philosophy and i wont be trying to sound all flashy. Far kurnell - gosh - sorry - but for the average person your posts are really hard to read - but i must say that they do sound convincing because of all your references to critics etc - and obviously your influence from your uni course!...ok...
Firstly, God commanded what he has before society has conditioned us to conceive what is "right" and what is not. Therefore, assuming that God is The Benevolent One, what he commands must be good. However, it is not until you bring in your own analogy (torturing babies) of what God may have ordained as "good" that our social and cultural contexts and their influences on our thinking is manifest, and, therefore, we, ofcourse, deem torturing babies as "bad" (but of course he did not command us to torture babies). What im saying is that even if God had commanded us to torture babies then this would be seen as good because God is Benevolent and he has 'ordained' this to be so before human existence. That is, we would all be brought up through the generations (if we ever got there of course) knowing that torturing babies is "good". For example, it is permissible (as opposed to 'has been commanded' - sounds too forceful), by God, to kill animals to eat - society has conditioned us to also accept this. If this permission had not been given and society, thus, not accepting of this (as torturing babies) then we, too, would see killing animals as "bad" (as torturing babies is).
Therefore, "good", by definition, is what the Creator desires (or more correctly has desired - religion is not dynamic (excluding Christianity of course))
Gosh - ive said "ofcourse" a few times - i probably sound like a...hmm?
haha
this is fun - it really does make you think really really hard about what you're saying!
ps - jus wondering - (assuming, sorry, that you're an atheist) are all the people who do your course at uni (also) atheists?

 

[MoonlightSonata]

Okay…I wasn’t going to reply, but I just had to. Here is why the bible HAS to be used in this debate.

Human instinct didn’t come with morals. Morals don’t come naturally to humans. They have to be learned. So if morals weren’t human instinct…..then where did they come from???

THE BIBLE

The bible is the reason we have morals. Who wrote the bible?….well the bible is the inspired word of God. So there fore the bible was written by God. God wrote the 10 commandments and gave us morals. If we believe that the morals in the bible are good and right, then why don’t you believe that God exists?

People accepted these morals because the bible said. People believe that it is wrong to cheat on your girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife, because the moral was learnt from the bible. so if u believe in morals, then you must believe in God. Because GOD made morals.

Ah, no:

Why morality is independant of God

Okay buddy you just stepped over the line Do you know how many theories of morality there are? What you just said is that your theory of morality is correct and that no-one else's is. In ethics however, the theory you are advocating is one of the worst theories ever. It is highly dodgey and must be maimed:


Refuting the Divine Command Theory

Your claim (The Divine Command Theory)
The basic idea: God is both the source of moral truths, and (via the bible, church authorities, reason and prayer) the source of our access to the moral truths. God created the world and the moral values and moral laws along with it. What God commands/desires is good and right; and what God forbids/does not desire is wrong or bad.

"X is good/right" means "X is commanded by God" and "X is bad/wrong" means "X is forbidden by God".

[By God of course we mean the all good, all knowing, all powerful creator of the world. However this would make the definition of "good" in terms of God's commands circular. We would be defining good in terms of God and then defining God in terms of "good". So we'll define 'God' here as the all knowing, all powerful creator of the world.]

The good side of this is it is objective - human behaviour must conform to a higher moral law. Unforuntately, it is severely flawed.

Initial Problems
1. It presupposes the existence of God. This is obviously a MAJOR problem.

2. Divine Command Theory is tautological nonsense. What could it mean to say that God's commands are good? If "X is good" means "X is commanded by God," then "God's commands are good" would mean only "God’s commands are commanded by God" - which is a useless truism.

----

Is God the source or cause of moral values, or could there be morality without God?

The most important part is that God is indepedant of morality. Whether you're religious or not.

Assuming God exists, ask yourself this question:

Is a good thing good because God commands it,
or does God command it because it is good?

There are 2 answers.

The first:

God's commanding it is what causes it to be good. God is the good causer.

God created everything, therefore God must have created morality. Before God commanded anything, nothing was good; and before God forbade anything, nothing was bad.

What's wrong with this?

God's commands now look arbitrary. What reason did God have for commanding one thing, rather than another? What if God had commanded us to torture babies? In such a case that would mean torturing babies is good.

I'm sure you'll agree that such a proposition would be absurd. So we can't say that "good," by definition, is what the creator desires.

You might reply by saying that God, because he is all good, would never have commanded us to do these things. But this leaves us with circular reasoning (saying that the good things are all and only those things that an all good creator loves).

But consider this. If we say that the commands of a good creator makes things good, wouldn't the good act be good regardless of whether the creator commanded it? If so, what is good is determined independently of what the creator desires --


The second way of answer the quesiton
God is not the good causer, but the good detector. God commands us to act in certain ways because those acts are already and independently good, prior to god's commands. God forbids us from acting in certain ways (e.g. torturing babies) because those acts are wrong.

"God's commands are good" now means that he commands what he sees to be best (having perfect wisdom).

But morality is now indepedant of God! This means that there can be morality WITHOUT God! More importantly, God does not provide the objective source for morality, since rightness and wrongness are determined independently of God's commands.


Secondly:

Stop using the Bible!

[Anyone frustrated with Bible-quoters can quote this passage to stop people from irrelevantly talking about the Bible to show the existence of God] --

You cannot use the Bible to prove the existence of God. To do so is a fallacy called begging the question, or similarly, circular reasoning. It is this:

1. The Bible says God exists
2. How do we trust the Bible?
3. Because it is from the word of God, etc
4. How do we trust that it is the word of God?
5. The Bible says so
--
6. How do we trust the Bible?
7. Because it is from the word of God, etc
8. How do we trust that it is the word of God?
9. The Bible says so
10. How do we trust the Bible?
11. Because it is from the word of God, etc
12. How do we trust that it is the word of God?
13. The Bible says so
14. How do we trust the Bible?
15. Because it is from the word of God, etc
16. How do we trust that it is the word of God?
17. The Bible says so

ETC -- Circular reasoning. So believers, please stop using the Bible. Thankyou

 

[MoonlightSonata]

Firstly, God commanded what he has before society has conditioned us to conceive what is "right" and what is not. Therefore, assuming that God is The Benevolent One, what he commands must be good. However, it is not until you bring in your own analogy (torturing babies) of what God may have ordained as "good" that our social and cultural contexts and their influences on our thinking is manifest, and, therefore, we, ofcourse, deem torturing babies as "bad" (but of course he did not command us to torture babies). What im saying is that even if God had commanded us to torture babies then this would be seen as good because God is Benevolent and he has 'ordained' this to be so before human existence. That is, we would all be brought up through the generations (if we ever got there of course) knowing that torturing babies is "good". For example, it is permissible (as opposed to 'has been commanded' - sounds too forceful), by God, to kill animals to eat - society has conditioned us to also accept this. If this permission had not been given and society, thus, not accepting of this (as torturing babies) then we, too, would see killing animals as "bad" (as torturing babies is).
Therefore, "good", by definition, is what the Creator desires (or more correctly has desired - religion is not dynamic (excluding Christianity of course))

Are you saying God is the good causer (he created morals) or the good detector (he knows what is good and bad in his perfect wisdom)?

haha
this is fun - it really does make you think really really hard about what you're saying!

It does doesn't it? Very stimulating

ps - jus wondering - (assuming, sorry, that you're an atheist) are all the people who do your course at uni (also) atheists?

I'm not an atheist, I'm agnostic

I'd say most people at uni are either agnostic or atheist, but I'm not sure

 

[hmm?]

If everything Jesus claimed and did was false Christianity is codswallop and Christians are to be pitied over all mankind, but if everything Jesus said and did was true, then Christianity is true, because Jesus claimed to have died and risen from the dead

this was actually quoted by someone
haha - i accidently erased the 'quote'





How could "God" die in the 1st place?

 

[hmm?]

causer and consequently detector of good in us

 

[MoonlightSonata]

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

Well I hate to tell you this because you will be surely disappointed. But people had laws (such as for murder) etc well before the bible was written.

:uhhuh:

 

[MoonlightSonata]

Addressing a point about the divine command theory post --

causer and consequently detector of good in us

The good causer then. That means before God created morality, there was no good or bad. If the decision as to what would be good and what would be bad was God's, then surely that is both subjective and arbitrary! If good and bad can change at the whim of God, it is not objective, nor rational.

 

[Vezzellda]

Just some questions MoonlightSonata: Just wondering are there any Christians doing your Uni course ie Philosophy? And, has doing that particular course made you more confirmed in your beliefs? And what are your reasons for being an agnostic instead of an atheist?

 

[trickster_812]

undefinedundefinedundefined There is THE God! The one and only God! There is proof that he exists in the Bible.

 

[Monkey Butler]

Oh God, don't say that Trickster, it just takes us back to the start of the circle, i.e. the Bible can potentially be proven false, why is your God better than another God (or how is your God different to any other God) why should that God be followed, etc.

 

[MoonlightSonata]

Just some questions MoonlightSonata: Just wondering are there any Christians doing your Uni course ie Philosophy?

Well my uni course is Arts/Law; some of my subjects include philosophy. I'd say that there are mostly agnostics/atheists in philosophy (though there is usually at least one religious person in the class). There are considerably more Christians in first year philosophy though (although still dwarfed by the number of non-believers).

And, has doing that particular course made you more confirmed in your beliefs? And what are your reasons for being an agnostic instead of an atheist?

haha this feels like I'm on rove or something

I've always been pretty much agnostic, and all philosophy has done is provide me with (a) the tools I need to argue properly, and (b) the theoretical arguments behind my beliefs (or non-beliefs rather).

I'm only agnostic, not an atheist, because I don't think you can prove the non-existence of God. I don't think you can entirely rule out the possibility. Perhaps a difference between atheists and agnostics is that atheists think the possibility of God is extremely, extremely small (and make the inference that God does not exist). I don't think it can be proved (though I do believe the possibility is quite small), and so I don't believe anyone can make valid claims either way

 

[Trev]

how wierd r those devil worshipping cults

 

[mossup]

Mossup, are you saying that people that have never experienced Christianity (or rather the Bible) or immoral or amoral? Because if our only source of morality is from the Bible, then surely those people who haven't experienced that in any way would be completely without morals. In this, you seem to be contradicting yourself. You say our only source of morality is the Bible, yet you say that morality was given to Adam and Eve by God in his command to not eat the fruit (by the way, isn't this story pretty much unequivocally disproved by science?). So either God's morality was imprinted in us through His command to Adam and Eve (in which case we DO have the intrinsic ability to differentiate right from wrong) or there was a massive morality gap between Creation and the writing of the Bible.
And as to saying that children don't know right from wrong, therefore morality isn't genetic: Children don't have any concept of the Special Theory of Relativity either, but that doesn't mean our knowledge of it came exclusively from the Bible. I know that's a pretty specious argument, but so is yours. Our morals come from what WE believe to be right, and while these may overlap with what the Bible says, to just blindly follow the teachings of the Bible, without analysing them on a personal level (I mentioned this about the 10 Commandments ages back: What do you do if your parents tell you to murder someone? Agree to or refuse to, either way you're breaking a commandment) is absurd.

even if you have had no contact with the bible, many many years ago, other people in your family line, or friends of your family, would have had some kind of contact with with the bible. Morals and thoughts are passed on by mouth, and watching the way people live their lives.

you don't have to have been in contact with the bible to know morals.........only people you know.

as to the "honor you father and mother" commandment, if they tell you to murder someone, then they are breaking a commandment themselves, and you would to if u killed someone. To do what they say isn't necessaraly "honoring" them...

 

[Vezzellda]

Hmm... but saying that you don't think it can be proved either way, is it sensible to be undecided about something that involves the very nature of life and the universe? Because one of them has to be true, because clearly they both cannot be true at the same time.

How do you know that it is impossible to know, how can you be certain that we must forever remain uncertain?

How can you say that the ultimate reality, God's existence or non-existence, is unknowable unless you know everything that is possible to know? Can you rule out God unless you know everything?

There was a story of a man who thought he was dead and was persuaded to go to the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist assessed his case and decided to solve the case by convincing the man of one simple fact- that dead men do not bleed. After several weeks he thought the message got through but when he punctured the man's arm and blood came out the man shouted, "I knew I was right! Dead men do bleed afterall!"

Message of this story- Please everyone in this forum, keep an open mind to the evidence on the issue

 

[mossup]

God works in my life.......and i don't know where i'd be if it wasn't for him answering my prayers

 

[joujou_84]

hmmmmmmmm. we still going? r u guys trying to break the record for the longest thread? ive noticed that there are some new ppl who have joined this disscusion. did u guys read the previous 60 pages. ur arguments have already been used, discussed and discarded. this thread is going round in circles.

 

[MoonlightSonata]

Hmm... but saying that you don't think it can be proved either way, is it sensible to be undecided about something that involves the very nature of life and the universe? Because one of them has to be true, because clearly they both cannot be true at the same time.

It is very sensible to reserve judgment on something you know nothing about, rather than asserting baseless views that drastically direct human behaviour.

How do you know that it is impossible to know, how can you be certain that we must forever remain uncertain?

I believe we have no way of knowing, at the present time. If someone manages to prove the existence or non-existence of God, there we go, but for now I think that is impossible.

How can you say that the ultimate reality, God's existence or non-existence, is unknowable unless you know everything that is possible to know? Can you rule out God unless you know everything?

No you cannot, hence why I am not an atheist.

There was a story of a man who thought he was dead and was persuaded to go to the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist assessed his case and decided to solve the case by convincing the man of one simple fact- that dead men do not bleed. After several weeks he thought the message got through but when he punctured the man's arm and blood came out the man shouted, "I knew I was right! Dead men do bleed afterall!"

Message of this story- Please everyone in this forum, keep an open mind to the evidence on the issue

Yes, very well but so far there is no evidence