Does God exist?

[Panserborne]

Look I can't really be bothered with this anymore. I don't really have any massive disagreements with you. My main issue was your huge overreaction to (and speculation about) the guy who posted that ad. Then, some issues with definitions. (I'm still not convinced by your fundamentalist argument about atheism. Atheism has no beliefs to set on principle. When I said "There are no positive claims to belief in atheism", it should have been without the "positive". No claims to belief full stop.)

Just a few last things. You wrote "If you want to go in to that, we have two conclusions from Plato. One, justified true belief is not adequate for a definition of knowledge. Two, things that are not justified, not true, and not believed cannot be knowledge." (I'm not sure if this is you saying this, or you paraphrasing Plato. I thought Plato believed justified true belief just was what constituted knowledge. But my history is shaky) This 2nd point my be true, but is tricky. Under externalist views, beliefs can be knowledge if they are reliable enough, that is, if chances were one wouldn't hold that belief if it were false.

I don't know, you go on to say we can't prove or disprove god (is this the reason for your agnosticism? How many gods are you agnostic with respect to. All of them?) but that seems rather uninteresting, because, as you have surely heard many times before, the burden of proof lies on the people making a positive argument for a belief, not on the default position of lack of belief. And then you say we can't know more of the world than ourselves. This either doesn't make sense, or is over my head. Could well be the latter. But I just don't understand what this means. Some kind of rejection of empirical observations? Is it, in your view, impossible to gain knowledge through science, through non a-priori means? You're welcome to believe that of course, but it seems rather uninteresting, and doesn't leave much room for human progress. Radical skepticism to the extreme?

Edited March 31, 2009 by Panserborne

[SharkSpider]

Look I can't really be bothered with this anymore. I don't really have any massive disagreements with you. My main issue was your huge overreaction to (and speculation about) the guy who posted that ad. Then, some issues with definitions. (I'm still not convinced by your fundamentalist argument about atheism. Atheism has no beliefs to set on principle. When I said "There are no positive claims to belief in atheism", it should have been without the "positive". No claims to belief full stop.)

Just a few last things. You wrote "If you want to go in to that, we have two conclusions from Plato. One, justified true belief is not adequate for a definition of knowledge. Two, things that are not justified, not true, and not believed cannot be knowledge." (I'm not sure if this is you saying this, or you paraphrasing Plato. I thought Plato believed justified true belief just was what constituted knowledge. But my history is shaky) This 2nd point my be true, but is tricky. Under externalist views, beliefs can be knowledge if they are reliable enough, that is, if chances were one wouldn't hold that belief if it were false.

I don't know, you go on to say we can't prove or disprove god (is this the reason for your agnosticism? How many gods are you agnostic with respect to. All of them?) but that seems rather uninteresting, because, as you have surely heard many times before, the burden of proof lies on the people making a positive argument for a belief, not on the default position of lack of belief. And then you say we can't know more of the world than ourselves. This either doesn't make sense, or is over my head. Could well be the latter. But I just don't understand what this means. Some kind of rejection of empirical observations? Is it, in your view, impossible to gain knowledge through science, through non a-priori means? You're welcome to believe that of course, but it seems rather uninteresting, and doesn't leave much room for human progress. Radical skepticism to the extreme?

Well, this is much easier to respond to, thanks. First issue is that atheism shouldn't have beliefs set on principle, though many atheists have such principles. If one fundament is that there is no god, then it is possible to be a fundamentalist, sinc ethey can't prove it. My point was that in philosophical terms, there's no difference between denying something and claiming something, if neither argument is justified. They're both claims, and the default position is irrelevant in terms of absolute truth, though quite relevant in common sense, which you may already know is frowned upon in philosophy.

Anyways, I think that your comment about agnosticism as uninteresting stems only from lack of discourse on the matter, which is no fault of your own. Anyways, I only moved to absolute rejection of knowledge to show that my proof was indeed, valid. Plato, in his discourse, did state that justified true belief was not perfect, because of its inherent circularity in one sense. The idea is that by any way of thinking, knowledge of god or no god is impossible. By absolute rationalism, it is impossible, but by empiricism, it is impossible because it hasn't been done yet, nor does it look like it can be done. Really, the more ambiguity your system of "knowledge" has, the easier it is to dismiss the idea of proving whether or not there is a god. Radical skepticism, as I said, is only required when people start making claims they shouldn't make. If you're more in to common sense, how about saying that if god could be proven or disproven, it should have been done by now. No progress at all, in 2500 years, that's really worth noting as a real proof, yet 2500 years of philosophy sprung from this very question. Sure, I won't believe that a flying unicorn is god, in fact I would be inclined to disagree with you. That being said, I simply state not that you are wrong, but that you are not justified in making the statement, which is true. It's an idea of justification versus truth, and I state, perhaps boldly, that no religious or atheist ideals are justified as truths are, instead, they are beliefs that are not justified. That's all I'm really saying.

So why bother, you ask? I bother so that we can simply accept at least some degree of agnosticism, and move in to something called discourse, that rarely, if ever, happens on forums. The reason for this is that some common ground needs to be found, and rarely ever is, since people find it easy to reject that which doesn't fit in to their belief system. I would question how you find it interesting to believe something, knowing full well that you don't truly know it. I used to be an atheist myself, because it seemed so incredibly obvious that the bible was wrong, yet after a few good TOK lessons on knowledge, it wasn't too hard to realize I had no clue, and that nobody else would have a clue, either, if they also looked at it rationally. That being said, the interesting part comes from what you do after you know there's ambiguity. Ideas like psychology, free will, metaphysics not related to religion, the dualist/materialist thing, etc. all become way more open if you look at them from a more objective standpoint.

[Mr. Shiver]

Notice how atheists call it a lack of belief, whereas non-atheists call it denial.

Who gets to decide on the actual definition? Now there's something to think about.

[SharkSpider]

It's only lack of belief until someone questions your lack thereof. I would argue that since religion poses a question "Could there be a god," it is inevitable that anyone with knowledge of atheism would know the definition of theism, and have thus considered and been unable to disprove the idea of a god. By that regard, someone who knows theism can only become atheist by denying the possibility of theism, for whatever reason. Theoretically, then, the natural state is ignorance, and atheism only comes from consideration and rejection of a theist ideal.

[WaTlvr]

don't turn around. there's a giant invisible pink unicorn behind you. It moves so fast, you can't touch it or feel it. But it's there. you can't PROVE it's not there!

If it's invisible, how do you know it's pink? How do you know it's even there?

[Austin Glau]

if its invisible how do you know it is not there?

you don't.

[purple]

if its invisible how do you know it is not there?

you don't.

What's your point? That God exists because he's not falsifiable?

[Austin Glau]

in a way, for those who believe so. I was just trying to bring some TOK into this debate...

guess i failed

[bLub]

Nope, he doesn't exist. He was an "invention" of people to have something to believe in. We don't know so many things and not knowing stuff makes people frustrated. They need something to "hold on to". If something goes wrong, they can blame "him" (or her of course ;P) And in some way it's good; it helps people to overcome problems, to "move on"... there might be even more crime without religion (since god doesn't "permit" it, believers don't do it)... on the other hand, of course, there are many religions in our world and people "fight" because they think their religion is the right one... (thinking of WW2...)

[Smiling Wolf]

World War II was caused by the failure of the Treaty of Versailles, the failure of the League of Nations, and the power-hungry fascist called Hitler. Other than the fact that multitudes of Jews were killed, religion did not play any significant role in World War II

[Tilia]

Yeah but if there was no god firmly implanted in their brains. Say Christianity was the first religion (I don't know what is, too lazy to do research on this), so before it there was no God or nothing.

Don't think one can say what was the first religion, but at least Jewish religion existed before Christianity, but most native religions are probably as old as the native civilizations.

[Mahuta ♥]

I believe Jewish religion, Christianity and Islam are all coming from the same source or principal, and each one came to correct what went wrong with the one before it.

[~vola]

returning to the very simple question in the topic, does god exist?

no, he does not. he told me so himself.

[/fake reply]

He exists insofar as you think he does.

[Austin Glau]

He exists as a spiritual outlet. Some may not think he is there, since he doesn't present himself in a manner like most people would see an all-powerfull being. I believe that god exists, and that not all religons are false. Some religons, such as the spagetti monster and some satanic mockfull religons i would not consider to have truth to them, but most religons come out of the same root, the same foundation, which is true. most religons have their share of truth to them as well.

What i find interesting is how scientists have spent much of their time trying to disprove what we believe is true about relavant historical events, such as the great flood, the migration of the isrealites, ect. I think scientists should keep to themselves and focus on imporving science not trying to make science grow over religon by trying to disprove major events.

[Daedalus]

He exists as a spiritual outlet. Some may not think he is there, since he doesn't present himself in a manner like most people would see an all-powerfull being. I believe that god exists, and that not all religons are false. Some religons, such as the spagetti monster and some satanic mockfull religons i would not consider to have truth to them, but most religons come out of the same root, the same foundation, which is true. most religons have their share of truth to them as well.

What i find interesting is how scientists have spent much of their time trying to disprove what we believe is true about relavant historical events, such as the great flood, the migration of the isrealites, ect. I think scientists should keep to themselves and focus on imporving science not trying to make science grow over religon by trying to disprove major events.

I'm not really going to comment on this debate, because in my opinion, it is unnecessary. If you believe in god, he exists. If you don't believe in him, he doesn't. It is impossible for a human being to perceive reality as it is, and we are only aware of reality after it has passed through our filters.

On the other hand I think you might be looking at some aspects of scientists' work in the wrong way. First, I seriously doubt that scientists attempt to disprove things like the great flood. That would be up to geologists or historians or something, but not physicians and chemists and biologists. Secondly, I think that most people who end up disproving significant religious historical claims start out trying to prove them. It is much more likely that somebody who believes in something sets out to find historical basis to the fact than somebody who doesn't believe in it to start with sets out to prove others wrong. At least, that is what strikes me as most likely.

A small interesting tidbit though: the more educated you are, and also the higher your IQ, the less likely you are to be religious. To me that statistic speaks volumes.

[Narcissist]

If I was some cool guy acting as leader of some cool community I would probalby soon realize that I do not have the power to fix everything, neither to answer all questions.

Would'nt it be just a very clever idea, to blame eveything that does not work properly, on some other (much cooler) guy? Would'nt it be easy to explain that I'm just a messenger, the chosen one, to guide according to the rules set by that other cooler guy?

Rule would be facilitated immensely!

There's a reason why religious belief is present on all continents.

1. We live in communities.

2. A community naturally appoints a leader. A good leader is either truly successful in ruling, or persuasive enough to convince people that he is so. Any weak leader will be replaced.

3. There is no such thing as "perfect leadership" and as community grows so does scepsis against the leader. Maybe there are better leaders?

4. The leader is forced to create the ultimate convincor: Something that can be applied to history, appeals common morals and ethics, is connected to emotion... contains odd rituals... et viola - religion.

Man seeks explaination.

Man created mathematics.

Man created God.

So, yes, God exists. Though religion is merely a medium for brainwash.

= My theory and opinion.

[Tilia]

I believe Jewish religion, Christianity and Islam are all coming from the same source or principal, and each one came to correct what went wrong with the one before it.

Yes, if I'm correct, these three religions all share the Old Testament and believe in it. At least theorethically, a religion that follows all the rules prescribed by God in the early books would be quite cruel, in my opinion.

[tyla]

My analogy for this question is simple. Imagine a powerful machine created by man, with some functions never created before. Only the inventor would know how to operate the machine and without the inventor giving the sense of 'seeing the creator', the machine cannot see who made them. So, does God exist? The same applies here. How about human being? Are we also created by men? Without God giving us the sense to see Him, here we are, arguing since we can't proof it.

[Sandwich]

My analogy for this question is simple. Imagine a powerful machine created by man, with some functions never created before. Only the inventor would know how to operate the machine and without the inventor giving the sense of 'seeing the creator', the machine cannot see who made them. So, does God exist? The same applies here. How about human being? Are we also created by men? Without God giving us the sense to see Him, here we are, arguing since we can't proof it.

This is a crazy argument based on the assumption that there was creation somewhere along the line which has no real evidence for it and a reasonable amount (e.g. evolution) to suggest that either the version of creation we've been given is some sort of a euphemism for what history and evidence tells us happened, or that creation didn't happen. Even the Christian religion as I understand it has god directly intervening in tonnes of stuff, especially in the somewhat unpleasant, violent and genocidal old testament, and in the new testament sending his son down to live with people etc etc etc so clearly humans do have a sense to see god -- either that or at one point they had one and then it mysteriously disappeared! In other words its a circular argument with nothing to back it up. Even the biblical account doesn't back it up and the bible is more or less the only reason the theory is proposed in the first place (for Christianity, in any case).

[julie-h]

Define 'God' in depth... Then asks who believes God exists.

I don't believe in God as any religion puts it...But I believe in a superior force, in a universal energy. Something is there affecting and controlling parts of life and the world, but there is no definite way to actually know what that force/energy is or how it functions.