Does God exist?

[nutronjon]

Originally Posted by Cathryn

And which science is it? Science which is paid for? Or science which isn't?

 

Again you are getting religion and God confused! God is not religion!

 

Yes, they do have religion and God confused, and appear incapable of separating the two. I have determined this the nature of people posting here. If you would like a more open minded discussion of God, one that actually progresses, instead of going round and round in the same circle, PM me.

[C1ay]

Yes, they do have religion and God confused...

 

What's to confuse? The view that the question of whether or not God exists is inherently meaningless because (1) the notion of God has no consistent definition among the various religious factions, and (2) all definitions of God refer to words that do not point to anything verifiable or testable in the 'real world' but only to presupposed 'attributes' extracted through an arbitrary collection of other words. God is nothing but a word, the most ambiguously defined word in the dictionary.

[InfiniteNow]

InfiniteNow is the following statement true or false?

 

The logic of the statement is fine, but the premises on which it is based are not proven. It has been assumed a priori that those things exist, and then the logic is used based on that asssumption. I reject it neither as true or false, but unfounded and lacking validation of the opening premises.

 

 

Also, +1 on C1ay's comments. You really seem stuck in your way of thinking, nutronjon, and I don't understand why you cling so fervently to your imaginary entities.

[InfiniteNow]

YouTube - George Carlin - Religion is bullshit. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeSSwKffj9o

[Moontanman]

George Carlin was a big influence on my life, he was the first comedian I really felt a connection with. I loved his rant on god, an]all powerful invisible man in the sky will punish you forever if you violate the ten things you are supposed to not do and he needs your money! all religions need your money, they are all just ways to make money and control people.

[REASON]

George Carlin was one of my favorite comedians. I've been listening to him since I was a young teenager.

 

His comedic wisdom and style was unlike any other, and I loved the way he made me laugh.

 

I will miss him.

[nutronjon]

The logic of the statement is fine, but the premises on which it is based are not proven. It has been assumed a priori that those things exist, and then the logic is used based on that asssumption. I reject it neither as true or false, but unfounded and lacking validation of the opening premises.

 

 

Also, +1 on C1ay's comments. You really seem stuck in your way of thinking, nutronjon, and I don't understand why you cling so fervently to your imaginary entities.

 

"However, that which communicates motion to some other thing but is itself moved by some other force must necessarily cease to exist once this outside motion has ceased.

 

Let's try this. Exactly what does the sentence mean?

[nutronjon]

Is it right to hold Cicero and Kant are working with pretty much same concept of a moving force, and that both are focusing on a study of nature, not a book of mythology, resulting a completely different understanding of God, than one gets from reading holy books?

 

Kant's Philosophy of Science (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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

 

1. Physics: The Pre-Critical Period

Kant's early pre-Critical publications (1746-1756) are devoted primarily to solving a variety of broadly cosmological problems and to developing an increasingly comprehensive metaphysics that would account for the matter theory that is required by the solutions to these problems. Kant's first publication, Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces (1746), explicitly attempts to solve the vis viva controversy, which had been hotly contested ever since Leibniz's attack on Descartes' laws of motion in the Acta Eruditorum in 1686. While Kant attempts to occupy an intermediary position between the Cartesian and Leibnizian positions by maintaining that both mv and mv² could be conserved in different contexts, what is of particular note is how his solution in Parts II and III rests on the conception of force developed in Part I. According to this conception, force is understood in terms of the activity of substances, an activity that Kant then uses to explain how the motions of bodies are generated, to solve the mind-body problem, and to account for both the possibility of other, actually existing worlds and the three-dimensionality of space.

 

Kant develops his account of the nature of substance in greater detail in A New Elucidation of the First Principles of Metaphysical Cognition (1755). While the first two sections of this work undertake revisions of Wolff's principles of non-contradiction and sufficient reason, the third section argues for two substantive principles that are alleged to follow from the principle of sufficient (or rather, following Crusius, determining) reason, namely the principles of succession and coexistence. The main thrust of the principle of succession is directed against Leibnizian pre-established harmony, arguing that only causal connections between substances can bring about changes in their states. Kant's position appears to be designed to account primarily for changes of bodily states (with changes in mental states being parasitic upon them, as was explicitly asserted in the True Estimation). For he maintains that mutual changes of state require mutual interaction, where it is clear that changes in motion are precisely the kind of mutual change that he has in mind (since one body cannot move closer to another without the other body moving closer to it). The principle of coexistence then argues that harmonious causal interaction between otherwise isolated, independently existing substances is possible only by means of God's coordination (just as Leibniz thought was required for harmonious relations between the states of such substances).

[freeztar]

"However, that which communicates motion to some other thing but is itself moved by some other force must necessarily cease to exist once this outside motion has ceased.

 

Let's try this. Exactly what does the sentence mean?

 

It means that I can bounce a ball off the wall for my whole life, but once I cease to exist (die) then the ball will also cease motion (assuming Earth-based inertia).

[Galapagos]

"However, that which communicates motion to some other thing but is itself moved by some other force must necessarily cease to exist once this outside motion has ceased.

 

Let's try this. Exactly what does the sentence mean?

You might benefit from reviewing the wiki page on the Unmoved Mover argument:

 

Unmoved mover - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

And here is a video of physicist Sean Carroll speaking briefly about motion at the Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0 symposium

 

YouTube - Sean Carroll clip from Beyond Belief 07 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_b0K_HlZFA

[Pyrotex]

"However, that which communicates motion to some other thing but is itself moved by some other force must necessarily cease to exist once this outside motion has ceased.

Let's try this. Exactly what does the sentence mean?

It doesn't appear to mean anything.

 

I can give an example of a cue ball, struck by a pool cue. The cue ball traverses the table and communicates motion to a second ball.

 

The cue ball does NOT cease to exist.

 

I cannot think of ANY, ANY real example that fits your sentence.

[Turtle]

"However, that which communicates motion to some other thing but is itself moved by some other force must necessarily cease to exist once this outside motion has ceased.

 

Let's try this. Exactly what does the sentence mean?

 

Whatever it means, or doesn't mean, it put me in mind of Hofstadter & his discussion of figure/ground. :)

...A simple example is the dialogue preceding Chapter III. Called “Sonata for Unaccompanied Achilles”, this dialogue directly quotes only one character, Achilles, while he converses over the phone with his friend the Tortoise. They talk about the mathematical notion of figure and ground: how, by defining one subset of a given set, you implicitly define another subset of that same set -- the part that is not included in the first subset. ...

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid / Douglas R. Hofstadter

[nutronjon]

And what makes the gas move?

[InfiniteNow]

That's a meaningless and specious question. What you are truly driving at is why does gas move, which is laden with subjective meaning and absent of objective relevance. We can tell you how gas moves, but the why is up to you, complete with your subjective filters.

 

 

What is your point?

 

 

This thread is about the existence (or, more appropriately, the lack thereof) of a purple unicorn... erm... leprechaun... erm... Thor... erm... Baal... erm... Zeus... erm... I mean... uhhm... god.

[Boerseun]

I think he's looking for the "Original Cause", an age-old attempt at proving the need for some sort of deity. It kinda goes like this:

 

Why does a cue ball move?

Because you hit it.

Why did you hit it?

Because chemicals in your muscles allowed for it.

How did the chemicals get there?

From food you ate.

Where did the food come from?

From an animal that was killed and you bought from the butcher.

How was the animal killed?

With a gas gun.

Where did the gas gun come from?

...

...

...

and so on and so forth.

 

The argument is that everything has a cause, and, according to their reasoning, there was a First Cause, which "unambiguously" proves the existence of God.

 

Well, in some sense it might be, but to our current understanding, the First Cause was the Big Bang - evidence for that abound with the Hubble Flow, and with CMBR.

 

That's also the point where conventional science breaks down, and whatever the cause of the Big Bang was, is open for debate. With very little evidence either way. But if God does exist, and caused the Big Bang, that was the very last act of God we know of - he kinda lit the fuse to the universe bomb and exited stage left. Or not. Maybe it was the Vogons. Praying to a God which did only that and nothing since is kinda like an astronomer praying to a supernova. The supernova exploded, and the resulting expanding debris field looks pretty in his telescope, but... uhm, that's about it as far as how a distant supernova can influence your life.

[LJP07]

God almost certainly does not exist.

 

If intelligent life has been around for hundreds of thousands of years...that begs the question...why did he decide to only come 2000 years ago?

 

In the Bible it states "That people of a homosexual nature should be killed"...If the all-perfect God is the Creator, why did he create the chance for something which he disagrees with, to come into being, considering that scientifically, it's been proven that these people are born with it??

 

Speaking of an all-loving God which also contradicts the previous statement, why in the first 5 books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Leviticus, and Exodus, the 5 Books of Moses...does he claim so many peoples lives by stoning and killing and promotes widespread hate...this hate cannot be moral which is what a God persists we live by.

 

As pointed out by another member here, the Universe is everything including God, if there was a beginning of the Universe, there must have been nothing, then there was also no God, so religious people shoot themselves in the foot!

 

There's a few of my arguments, the main being, that it's just plain NONSENSE!

[Moontanman]

God almost certainly does not exist.

 

If intelligent life has been around for hundreds of thousands of years...that begs the question...why did he decide to only come 2000 years ago?

 

In the Bible it states "That people of a homosexual nature should be killed"...If the all-perfect God is the Creator, why did he create the chance for something which he disagrees with, to come into being, considering that scientifically, it's been proven that these people are born with it??

 

Speaking of an all-loving God which also contradicts the previous statement, why in the first 5 books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Leviticus, and Exodus, the 5 Books of Moses...does he claim so many peoples lives by stoning and killing and promotes widespread hate...this hate cannot be moral which is what a God persists we live by.

 

As pointed out by another member here, the Universe is everything including God, if there was a beginning of the Universe, there must have been nothing, then there was also no God, so religious people shoot themselves in the foot!

 

There's a few of my arguments, the main being, that it's just plain NONSENSE!

 

I once read that everything not forbidden is mandatory, do what we need to do is figure out of god is forbidden or mandatory.