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    1. #1
      Member tboothby's Avatar
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      Proofs and Dis-Proofs of God's existance

      This thread is concerned only with people personal ways to justify the existance or non existance of God (I mean this only in the Judeo-Christian sense). Please post your thoughts on this topic but keep all off topic discussions to a seperate thread. thanks a lot

      In other words, prove to me that God exists.

      Or

      Prove he/she does not.
      There are great truths and there are trivial truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is obviously false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.

      -Bohr

    2. #2
      Member Mystical_Journey's Avatar
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      i dont want to sound silly, but just want to get a basis for your question....

      Why do you want to prove/dis prove the existance of God?
      "I was looking back to see if you were looking back at me to see me looking back at you".



      Be Here Now

    3. #3
      Member tboothby's Avatar
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      I just want to hear peoples ideas/views, for my own interest/education.
      There are great truths and there are trivial truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is obviously false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.

      -Bohr

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      Member Kaniaz's Avatar
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      I don't have any solid proof either way - and I don't think there is any (solid proof). Else, we wouldn't be having this discussion

    5. #5
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      I know that God does exist the world could not exist without a force behind it or some reasoning. Even if the world was infinit which I beleve it is there still has to be some incredibly complex force behind it. So scientificaly god does exist in some way or another.

      I dont see why he is an entity thoe, or why he is called a he. I dont beleive this but I dont have solid proof. If he was as complex as he is then why did he create adam and eve they could have died and that would be the end of the human race. Besides its been provin that we evolved from an ape like creature. I think that some one considered there parents to be adam and eve and thought everyone else were there kids as well and passed it on then eventually people beleved it and changed the story over and over again. Everything else in the Bible is something that most likely changed over and over again or just began as a story anyway.
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      Member CAINE's Avatar
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      Originally posted by Redeyedwolfking
      I know that God does exist the world could not exist without a force behind it or some reasoning.
      So your saying that the universe couldnt exist withought it being created? If a God created the universe, than he would have to be more advanced than the universe. So its more possible for the universe always being here than a God creating the universe.

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      Member docKnubis's Avatar
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      i dont nessisarily belive in a god ...but a supream being
      you can't do that on the internet!.... wait yes you can do it again!

    8. #8
      Member willthepathfinder's Avatar
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      The natural order of the universe is chaos. Everything left to its natural order breaks down to its basic elements. Anything as complex as a human being or even as mundane as bacteria has to have a creative force behined it I think. I can't see how something like the diversity of life that exists on this earth can just happen spontainiously. That's proof enough for me.

    9. #9
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      First we have to understand what a "Judeo-Christian" sense of God actually is. Does that mean that the God they believe in is different from the one a Muslim believes in and different from the idea of Tao and so forth? Only if you confuse symbols with Reality. From an exoteric point of view every religion seems to be saying something different, but this is just an illusion. From the esoteric point of view they are all explaining the same experience, but in a different way! So what is God? "He" has been described as omnipresent, so by that description the better question would be "What is NOT God?" If God is everything always, there is nothing that is not God, including YOU right NOW! So the best question is "Who are YOU?" If you honestly seek to find the answer to this question, you will prove to yourself that God exists. Hey, what better time than right now, since that's all that exists?

      You are actually the infinite that exists eternally, but we'll get back to that. Usually we think of ourselves as an independent organism that is separate from our environment, a "subject" perceiving "obejcts" in "time". Sometimes we even go further and separate our organism into body and mind (ego). Why stop there? We go even further and separate our ego into things we like and dislike. But all of these separations are just illusory and ignore-ant. This separation (duality) is the cause of all our problems, not in itself but in how we take it. If you ask yourself "who am I?" what answer do you get? Its not your name, body, thoughts because these are all objects. In fact, the self that you usually think is you is also an object of perception. You can be aware of yourself being aware. Who is this that is aware then? You cannot find it because it is the one who is seeking. You can't see God because it is the one who is looking. There is no difference between subject and object, there is only non-duality. But our everyday mind forgets this, it wants to separate things into dualities to try to understand them. It wants to symbolize, conceptualize, and intellectualize Reality so it can "understand" it, but in order to do this it has to "separate" itself from Reality so that anything it comes up with is not Reality, only a symbol of it. So we create the dualism of subject/object, organism/environment as soon as we think and as soon as this happens we realize that we are going to die so we create another dualism, that of time, past/present, birth/death. Space is an illusion, all is inter-connected and infinite. Time is an illusion, the only thing that exists is the eternal NOW moment. The problem isn't that we create these dualities, the problem is that we take them to be Reality!

      Herein lies the confusion most people have with religion, they take the symbols to be the truth. Lets take the one Redeyedwolfking presented: Adam and Eve. When taken literally (there were two people named Adam and Eve who started the human race) we come up with all sorts of crazy ideas. But Adam and Eve is a second creation story dealing with the "separation" of non-dual knowing and dual knowing (btw, 'In the beginning' = eternal NOW) and as we have just seen to talk about non-duality is literally impossible, for as soon as you say something about non-duality you have created a duality, ha! So the only way to describe something like the "creation" or "God" or anything of the like you have to use metaphors, or symbols. Judaism and Christianity are HEAVILY metaphorically! Adam and Eve were not two people some long time ago (time is an illusion, creation/destruction is happening right NOW), but rather symbols of duality. Note that they ate from the tree of KNOWLEDGE! And once that happened they knew all dualities (good/evil, light/dark, organism/environment, birth/death, etc.)! Once you look at the Bible in this way it makes much more sense.

      So in response to the original question: The only way to prove God is to yourself and by being yourself! There is no other! You are everything around you (will clarify more later if necessary, have to go now).

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      Originally posted by CAINE+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(CAINE)</div>
      <!--QuoteBegin-Redeyedwolfking
      I know that God does exist the world could not exist without a force behind it or some reasoning.
      So your saying that the universe couldnt exist withought it being created? If a God created the universe, than he would have to be more advanced than the universe. So its more possible for the universe always being here than a God creating the universe.[/b]

      even if the universe created or is keeping itself in existence itself which is what I beleive. It could still be said that a god created it in a sense that it is forceful in keeping itself in existence. To me god is the force of existence the infinit energy that keeps the world in place.
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    11. #11
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      Originally posted by Redeyedwolfking
      I know that God does exist the world could not exist without a force behind it or some reasoning. Even if the world was infinit which I beleve it is there still has to be some incredibly complex force behind it. So scientificaly god does exist in some way or another.
      Why does everything have to have reasoning behind it. Or even be governed by causality. Maybe causality is a false construct human minds put on the world to try to connect an otherwise irrational universe.

      Anyway I have a proof that prooves god doesn't answer everyones prayers.

      Every man prays his enemies are vanquished.
      Men still exist.
      Therefore God doesn't answer everyone's prayers.
      Super profundo on the early eve of your day

    12. #12
      CT
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      Ramblings and tangents, by CT...

      Life is nothing more then complex chemical reactions.

      Life is nothing more then a complex molecular structure that can, through complex chemical reactions, assimilate ('eat') other molecules ('food') and replicate itself.
      This 'eating' and replicating are just chemical reactions that happen because those chemicals came in contact with eachother, just as you can put two other chemicals in contact with eachother and an explosion will occur.

      There were probably molecular structures that made perfect replications of itself every time, but the molecular structure that copied itself but changed slightly from time to time, has become abundant because of the well known phenomenon called evolution.

      Think about it. A molecular structure that copies itself. It uses up resources in the area (it 'eats') to copy itself, but each time it copies itself, and every copy of itself, can be slightly different. Perhaps the molecular structure of one copy is different enough from the original in such a way that it reacts with other chemicals then the original. Many of these chemicals might make the newly formed molecular structure unable to make another copy of itself, so that one just stops replicating. But what if the molecular structure just so happens to be able to react faster with other chemicals, so that it can replicate faster? Then there will be more replications of that molecular structure, and more copies of copies, etc. There might eventually be so many molecular structures of the type that can 'eat' faster that the original can not find any more 'food', and they stop replicating. And all thats left is the one that 'eats' faster. Thats evolution in a nutshell... Also read the article bradybaker posted about 'avida' software, very very interesting.

      It has been proven that these replicating molecular structures can form, and did form, billions of years ago. Life happens without god, life does not NEED God to design it, the conditions under which life occurs were present those many billions of years ago, and life happened.

      (tangent here The existance and presence of the atoms out of which these replicating structures exist are a whole different story that I dont know enough about, and science is still trying to figure that question out.

      And here is where faith comes in:
      Religious people claim 'God did it' and thats the end of it.
      'Science' (the search for truth, basicly, or 'what happened') claims "We dont know how it happened. We are trying to find out how it happened, God might've done it, but we cant be sure of it, something else might've caused it, but we cant be any more sure of that either. From the observations we make today, we can figure out what happened yesterday."

      There's no way to be sure of what happened in the past. If you're raised with your religion, you will probably choose to believe in God, indoctrinated by your parents who took you to church, or by society. Basically everyone who's opinion you valued told you "God did it" untill you believed it. Thats actually brainwashing. If you're sceptical and able to look past that, you will see that 'science' honestly tries to find out the truth, the reasons for making the claims about existance that they do are because thats what the evidence tells them. As opposed to 'God did it, its in the bible."

      If God really did it, it will be proven (as much as you can prove something) that he did it, by means of 'science' because the nature of science is to figure out the truth.

      So far, that search of truth has come back with things that do not point to God creating the universe.
      And thats why I am skeptical of the existance of God.

    13. #13
      Member tboothby's Avatar
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      Originally posted by willthepathfinder
      The natural order of the universe is chaos. Everything left to its natural order breaks down to its basic elements. Anything as complex as a human being or even as mundane as bacteria has to have a creative force behined it I think. I can't see how something like the diversity of life that exists on this earth can just happen spontainiously. That's proof enough for me.
      Thanks for answering the question.

      Please everyone read the first post and restrict your answers to the question posed.
      There are great truths and there are trivial truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is obviously false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.

      -Bohr

    14. #14
      Member Kaniaz's Avatar
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      Originally posted by tboothby
      Please everyone read the first post and restrict your answers to the question posed.
      Many people have learned that enforcing this point eventually becomes useless (I understand what you mean in the first few pages, though). But when it reaches like, four pages, in a few days, it's bound to tangent off into another discussion. But hey, any discussion is better than no discussion.

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      Originally posted by willthepathfinder
      The natural order of the universe is chaos. Everything left to its natural order breaks down to its basic elements. Anything as complex as a human being or even as mundane as bacteria has to have a creative force behined it I think. I can't see how something like the diversity of life that exists on this earth can just happen spontainiously. That's proof enough for me.
      If you're applying this concept of complexity requires design, then why is god exempt from the rule?

      -spoon

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      Hmm well I don't beleive that god exists. I believe what CT is saying - that basically, when you break it all down we're just complex formations of atoms that have learnt to think, and therefore think that we are more than the sum of our parts. I think that we just can't really come to terms with this, and we like to try and think we are more than the blink of an eye in the scale of the universe, and so we have to have some reason behind it all.

      I think, therefore I am. That means the reason I am here, that "I" exist is simply due to the fact that I am a conscious life-form. If I was not conscious, I would be a lump of atoms, no more, no less. Who should I therefore be crediting for my own existence? Myself.

      Who should we all be worshipping and paying tribute to? Ourselves, our own minds. We get inner strength from ourselves, our own beings, not something else. Eh I'm rambling on here.

      Things aren't as dramatic as people think. We're just blobs of stardust.

    17. #17
      Member Belisarius's Avatar
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      But it isn't thinking that defines the self, it is percieving. What percieves? Is it a part of our brain? It is impossible to test. So right here every conscious second we are stared in the face with a neccessary truth that noone can prove through science, our very existance as conscious beings. All of these things are so subjective that we can't look at them from an objective point of view.
      Super profundo on the early eve of your day

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      To percieve you have to think. Let me explain.

      Cogito, ergo, sum: I think thereore I am.

      Descartes had a problem - what if everything he saw, everything in the universe was just a magic trick by some demon or devil? What if he himself was just a magic trick by some demon? How does Descartes know that he himself exists?
      He reasoned that if he is thinking then he must exist, because there has to be something doing the thinking. Therefore 'he' as a conscious being exists.

      This might sound a little off-topic, but this is why I think god doesn't exist. There is no 'higher being', for we're all 'higher beings' anyways - matter that has learnt to think. The reason that we - thinking, conscious beings - exist is that we have evolved a brain and complex thought. No more, no less.

      "Well what are the chances of the universe coming from nothing? Surely there has to be some higher being - eg Christian God to allow the order and complexity in the world..." NO. Given the fact that the universe exists, and the immense amount of matter floating through it, life is INEVITABLE.

      An astronomer decided to calculate the probability of other planets in the Milky Way galaxy having the same physical make-up, temperature, chemicals, gasses as Earth. He then factored in the probablitiy of life forming, then of life evolving into complex animals, then of these animals forming a complex civilisation like our own. He came to the conclusion that in our own galaxy there were likely to be over 1,000,000 planets or chances of this happening. That's a lot, and that's only in our Galaxy.

      So yes, the chances of life etc forming are complex, the chances of so much balance forming seems small, but when compared to the entirety of the universe it pales into nothing. It's like saying "wow I just saw a car with the plate SDF 383 (or whatever), with all the cars in the world, what are the chances of that?" Of course it's going to happen, seeing as you spend each day amongst hundereds of cars.

      And tha balance and order that Christian Creationists talk about? If life wasn't balanced, it wouldn't exist. Life, matter and the universe balances itself naturally, or it would't be, and that's why the complexities and varieties form.

      Things exist, but some people can't come to terms with it, especially Christians.

    19. #19
      Member tboothby's Avatar
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      But where did matter come from? How was it created? It is a scientific fact that Nothing cannot produce Something. So what produced matter??
      There are great truths and there are trivial truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is obviously false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.

      -Bohr

    20. #20
      CT
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      Originally posted by tboothby+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(tboothby)</div>
      But where did matter come from? How was it created? It is a scientific fact that Nothing cannot produce Something. So what produced matter??[/b]
      as roller said: <!--QuoteBegin-Roller

      Things exist, but some people can't come to terms with it, especially Christians.
      most likely there never was 'nothing' it has always been there.

    21. #21
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      Originally posted by Kaniaz
      I don't have any solid proof either way - and I don't think there is any (solid proof). Else, we wouldn't be having this discussion
      Now permanently residing at [The] Danny Phantom Online [Community], under the name Mabaroshiwoou.

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    22. #22
      Member bradybaker's Avatar
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      Originally posted by tboothby
      It is a scientific fact that Nothing cannot produce Something.
      Not true.
      "This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time."



      The Emancipator MySpace

    23. #23
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      There is no proof for against the existence of God, it is an undecidable question in the system of human thought. I would recommend looking into the work of Kurt Godel a very famous logician who worked on the study of mathematical foundations in the middle part of the century. The theorem is also quite famous not often mentioned it is called Godel's Incompleteness Theorem. Basically it says that any system that is interesting enough to formulate its own logical consistency must also be inconsistent. That is there must exist some statement which can be both true and false at the same time.

      This does not mean that in reality these statements are both true and false it means within your system they are. The way to deal with these questions is not to assert that they are both true and false (in fact) but rather to recognize that they are formally undecidable under the system. Human thought is a system arising from neural networks and social psychology and some other stuff in which, try as we might, we cannot prove either the existence or the non-existence of God.

      We simply have to make a choice that makes sense for us. Now you may be tempted to say, but Jones how can that be? I think as the days roll on you will realize that the debate goes on and on not just because people are stubborn about their beliefs, but because there are always little inconsistencies about any argument for or against the existence of God. The question is undecidable without further evidence, so you are free to believe what you like based on the evidence you have and to be happy with it.


      Regards,

      EJ
      Only your mind can see the future

    24. #24
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      Originally posted by Redeyedwolfking
      I know that God does exist the world could not exist without a force behind it or some reasoning. Even if the world was infinit which I beleve it is there still has to be some incredibly complex force behind it. So scientificaly god does exist in some way or another.

      but now: who or what created the "force/god", or how did it came into being without a WORLD where he could get to?


    25. #25
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      Originally posted by CryoDragoon+--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(CryoDragoon)</div>
      <!--QuoteBegin-Redeyedwolfking
      I know that God does exist the world could not exist without a force behind it or some reasoning. Even if the world was infinit which I beleve it is there still has to be some incredibly complex force behind it. So scientificaly god does exist in some way or another.

      but now: who or what created the \"force/god\", or how did it came into being without a WORLD where he could get to?

      [/b]
      he doesent have to come into existence if he is existence. I posted something else about the existence of God before I dont know if its on a different topic or what but I think that the existence of God has the answer right in the sentence. I think that it makes most sense that existence is infinite and there for is the creater of itself. So god is existence
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