Existence of God vs. Validation of Christianity

There is a difference, though most people think that trying to prove God's existence means trying to prove Christianity. There was an interesting discussion on this topic on a blog recently at http://gnosos.blogspot.com/2005/12/r...nosticism.html.

I got thru half of it, sorta, when my eyes glazed over. All that analyses over an entity that's reputed to defy human analyses in the first place. Whew. A parallel discussion should be "Reason vs Rationalization".

One thing I've discovered is that there is no proving that the God of The Bible exists. A God that created the universe and everything in it has an allergy to iron, can get snookered by Satan and has an appetite for blood.

You'd think we'd get a God that could do better than that.

Clara Listensprechen wrote

I got thru half of it, sorta, when my eyes glazed over. All that analyses over an entity that's reputed to defy human analyses in the first place. Whew. A parallel discussion should be "Reason vs Rationalization".

One thing I've discovered is that there is no proving that the God of The Bible exists. A God that created the universe and everything in it has an allergy to iron, can get snookered by Satan and has an appetite for blood.

You'd think we'd get a God that could do better than that.

The black background color and white text makes it difficult to read. I did read it all and yes, only miracles are evidence to prove God. All other reasoning the author presents leads us to a possible god concept, but not a personal god from any given religion.

I think that if there is a god out there, it is definately not the god of a particular religion. Those gods are simply products of the culture of the people.

[Sternwallow]

myst7426 wrote

I think that if there is a god out there, it is definately not the god of a particular religion. Those gods are simply products of the culture of the people.

I agree. Seems to me that the only reason we might suspect that "there is a god out there" is because of the claims made by various religions. If there were only one religion, their's would be the only god to prove. Because there is no intimation of a god outside of religious traditions, I see no reason to consider attempting to prove its existence.
I'll leave it to the religious claim makers to supply evidence for a god that can't figure out where in the Garden Adam might be hiding.

I got to the 6 types of arguments on that site... All are stupid. The last one had Pascal's wager in it. I'm sorry. I have more than 3 active brain cells, which is pretty much all you need to show the stupidity of 'Pascal's Wager".

Every one of these arguments are a result of deciding on a result, then creating an agument to 'prove' it.

It reminds me of the story... One man, trying to show to another that mankind's knowledge is limited... draws a big circle with a smaller circle within: "The big circle, he explains... is all knowledge. The smaller circle is that which is know by man. God could be hiding anywhere in here between the circles..." What an Athiest would do, it to draw a third circle, smaller than the rest... inside both of the other circles and say "Well then, This is what YOU know. I'll accept you as an expert only on what's in THIS circle."

RenaissanceMan wrote

I got to the 6 types of arguments on that site... All are stupid. The last one had Pascal's wager in it. I'm sorry. I have more than 3 active brain cells, which is pretty much all you need to show the stupidity of 'Pascal's Wager".

Every one of these arguments are a result of deciding on a result, then creating an agument to 'prove' it.

It reminds me of the story... One man, trying to show to another that mankind's knowledge is limited... draws a big circle with a smaller circle within: "The big circle, he explains... is all knowledge. The smaller circle is that which is know by man. God could be hiding anywhere in here between the circles..." What an Athiest would do, it to draw a third circle, smaller than the rest... inside both of the other circles and say "Well then, This is what YOU know. I'll accept you as an expert only on what's in THIS circle."

The point is that only miracles(if they even exist) can provide evidence for God. From what I understood, the author was refuting most common arguments for the existence of the Christian God.

I don't buy that "only miracles prove God" stuff because what was a miracle in yester year we perform ourselves routinely today. Don't all our doctors cure the sick? Sure, we don't cure everybody, but it's not the case that we don't cure anybody.

The only time Jesus flew in the air was at the Ascension. We folks fly all the time.

C'mon, admit it--when a person got healthy, it was a miracle; when a person got sick, it was a demon infestation. That was the total extent of their medical practice back then.

Clara Listensprechen wrote

I don't buy that "only miracles prove God" stuff because what was a miracle in yester year we perform ourselves routinely today. Don't all our doctors cure the sick? Sure, we don't cure everybody, but it's not the case that we don't cure anybody.

The only time Jesus flew in the air was at the Ascension. We folks fly all the time.

C'mon, admit it--when a person got healthy, it was a miracle; when a person got sick, it was a demon infestation. That was the total extent of their medical practice back then.

Well, I do not think miracles happen at all. But if they were to happen(real miracles), they would be the only persuasive evidence for the Christian God.

You're right miracles of the past were not miracles at all. People were just ignorant or inflaming a story through oral hearsay.

Yes, a remarkable miracle would even convince me--like if Pat Robertson or Benny Hinn would have actually volunteered to faith-heal brain-dead Schiavo and actually restored her to perfect health. I'd be an instant convert.

But they didn't, did they.

Clara Listensprechen wrote

Yes, a remarkable miracle would even convince me--like if Pat Robertson or Benny Hinn would have actually volunteered to faith-heal brain-dead Schiavo and actually restored her to perfect health. I'd be an instant convert.

But they didn't, did they.

Nope, the only miracles today are crying statues, salt stains that look like Mary, and people who claim they were suppose to die and they got better and automatically attribute it to god because they prayed to him to cure them. The body an mind is capable of amazing things we do not fully understand yet. I would like to see someone resurrected from the dead(after 3 days), now that would be a miracle.

[Sternwallow]

Miracles are not possible because they must manifest themselves as physical and natural effects in order to be detected. Those physical effects, in principle, have traceable causes even if we don't currently have the technology to find them. So, a miracle today, as it was in olden times, can only be Arthur C. Clarke's definition "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". We may therefore freely translate "miracle" as "an unusual event and I don't know how it happened".

This concern over miracles, a.k.a. God poking a stick into our anthill to see how we scurry, misses the main point altogether. God (specifically the Christian adaptation of YHVH) should be clearly manifest everywhere one looks. God as a concept is inadequate as a premise for Christianity precisely because he is not observable. The religious contention that certain knowledge of God would somehow harm our free will is totally without merit (a complete cop-out for the inability of religion to display a single item that could only exist through the action of a volitional creator). I know with certainty that there are courts and prisons yet I am free to break the law, and many people do so. On the other hand, if I truly believed in God, Heaven and Hell, there is no way I would risk any sin whatsoever. I would "sell all I had, give it all to the poor”, and, wrapped in my only coat, take up residence in a church praising God with every last breath. I see few people who do this so I surmise that none of the Christians I meet is a true believer.

Faith is a null concept. It is entirely too easy to have faith in totally false things. The only way to choose what to believe is to apply knowledge logically and, even then you are hampered by the limitations on available knowledge. Faith validated by knowledge and logic is no longer faith, it has become more knowledge. So whatever faith remains cannot be validated and it is very likely to be quite wrong.

Short answer: a miracle wouldn't do it for me.

[Sternwallow]

Miracles are not possible because they must manifest themselves as physical and natural effects in order to be detected. Those physical effects, in principle, have traceable causes even if we don't currently have the technology to find them. So, a miracle today, as it was in olden times, can only be Arthur C. Clarke's definition "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". We may therefore freely translate "miracle" as "an unusual event and I don't know how it happened".

This concern over miracles, a.k.a. God poking a stick into our anthill to see how we scurry, misses the main point altogether. God (specifically the Christian adaptation of YHVH) should be clearly manifest everywhere one looks. God as a concept is inadequate as a premise for Christianity precisely because he is not observable. The religious contention that certain knowledge of God would somehow harm our free will is totally without merit (a complete cop-out for the inability of religion to display a single item that could only exist through the action of a volitional creator). I know with certainty that there are courts and prisons yet I am free to break the law, and many people do so. On the other hand, if I truly believed in God, Heaven and Hell, there is no way I would risk any sin whatsoever. I would "sell all I had, give it all to the poor”, and, wrapped in my only coat, take up residence in a church praising God with every last breath. I see few people who do this so I surmise that none of the Christians I meet is a true believer.

Faith is a null concept. It is entirely too easy to have faith in totally false things. The only way to choose what to believe is to apply knowledge logically and, even then you are hampered by the limitations on available knowledge. Faith validated by knowledge and logic is no longer faith, it has become more knowledge. So whatever faith remains cannot be validated and it is very likely to be quite wrong.

Short answer: a miracle wouldn't do it for me.

So if Hinn could restore Schiavo to former health and coherence, that would only make you mad that he could gloat about his powers, ey?