God? (Got proof? Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more) [ed. title]

Great Debates
21

[QUOTE=GenericAzn]
However, what kind of proof is there to substantiate any of these beliefs?

If anyone has an answer other than “faith” please reply.
[/QUOTE]

I’ll reply anyway, even though my answer will boil down to “faith.” It’s sort of like the Babelfish in The Hitchhiker’s Guide - because it proved the existence of God, it eliminated him altogether.

If you’re serious about this issue, I would recommend “Religiion and Science” by Ian G. Barbour. It’s an excellent, but very dense, book aptly subtitled “Historical and Contemporary Issues.” He puts forth four ways of relating science and religion: Conflict, Independence, Dialogue, and Integration, and looks at the historical relationships between (largely Christian) religion and (largely Western) science.

He draws some very interesting analogies between science and religion, pointing out that, for most of us, we tend to take it on faith that science works. Very few of us have actually done any of the experiments upon which the basics of science rest, but we certainly believe them. One can definitely make the argument that most of our daily activities prove the correctness of science, because of our continuing interactions with the fruits of scientific advances. On the other hand, people who believe in God say that their daily lives are made better because they behave according to their religious beliefs, which is proof to them of God’s goodness.

Consider the situation where we, the teeming masses, were not told about the advances of science, but were only presented with the useful gadgets we have about us by a group of mysterious priests who exclaimed that these tools and toys were the result of revelations (to them, the priests) from a caring and loving God. Would we then all be religious believers?

Barbour makes the point that the faith community and the scientific community have many similarities. For instance, there are the religious mystics who tell of reaching elevated spiritual enlightenment and the scientists who create new theories, essentially ouy of nothing. One of the more fascinating topics to read about (at least to me :stuck_out_tongue: ) is how scientific theories, particularly major breakthroughs, are “discovered.” They are often described as flashes of insight rather than small incremental steps based entirely upon experimentation. Barbour argues that this is similar to the religious person who spends years in prayer and meditation, only to have a sudden revelation of religious truth.

I don’t happen to believe that this is an “either/or” question. Faith plays a role in both areas, as does experience. Religions are not well suited to develop scientific theories, and science is not well suited to answer questions of why the universe exists. Science can inform religion, and religion can inform science.

22

[QUOTE=Indistinguishable]
That having been said, by all means, feel free to attack kanicbird’s claims, or force him to back them up. Just don’t eject him from the table.
[/QUOTE]

I don’t want to attack anybody, it is just an apples and oranges thing. The op specifically asked for arguments not grounded in faith. I understand some people are compelled to share their faith, its ok, just beside the point in this instance. The simple answer is there is no proof and there can be no proof.

23

[QUOTE=GenericAzn]

And the whole idea of a hell and a heaven is very shifty and dubious because people haven’t come back from the dead to tell us what happened, and those that have been legally dead and come back to life don’t all have the same experiences.

If there really WAS one correct religion, then why doesn’t god/buddha/allah etc. prove it to us by crushing the other religions?

Or not even that, but by demonstrating through a simple miracle as is told about all throughout the biblical times.

If anyone has an answer other than “faith” please reply.
[/QUOTE]

I notice you mention “those that have been legally dead and come back to life don’t all have the same experiences.”
Let’s talk about those experiences, called near death experiences, but really are death experiences. I have been studying them for over 20 years, and what you say is not exactly correct. They are remarkable similiar in many aspects. They have caught the attention of many researchers which are conducting studies at some major universities.

First let’s define our target as being only those experiences that doctors were present and noted the patient as being clinically dead for at least 30 seconds. This will eliminate much of the confusion. Now we have a patient that is clinically dead, yet while dead, saw, and heard, not only the activity surrounding his body, but also participated in events we would call spiritual. These events included, but are not limited to the list below.
These are Characteristics from PMH Atwater’s book: Coming Back to Life, 1988.

I think we know a lot more about where we are going than we admit. OK. What is your take.

24

[QUOTE=Sgt Schwartz]
As an atheist, I will try to weigh in here. Jesus, Moses, Buddha probably existed. It would be extremely difficult to make up the men and the legends surrounding them.
[/QUOTE]

We’ve debated the historicality (word?) of Jesus a bunch of times, so I’ll leave that alone, and I have no idea if there’s any evidence for the existence of a historical Buddha (though that might be an interesting thread).

But this thread in GQ seemed to come up with little evidence of a historical Moses. And I don’t see where it would be “extremely difficult” to make up Moses, certainly not any harder then it was for the Romans to make up Romulus and Remes, the Brits King Aurther, or any other peoples mythical “founding leader”.

25

[QUOTE=Public Animal No. 9]
He draws some very interesting analogies between science and religion, pointing out that, for most of us, we tend to take it on faith that science works. Very few of us have actually done any of the experiments upon which the basics of science rest, but we certainly believe them. One can definitely make the argument that most of our daily activities prove the correctness of science, because of our continuing interactions with the fruits of scientific advances. On the other hand, people who believe in God say that their daily lives are made better because they behave according to their religious beliefs, which is proof to them of God’s goodness.
[/quote]
The difference is, the scientists and “believers” in science find it trivial to prove that science works, since they have hard proof it does. All the religious have is the flat assertion that this or that good thing or behavior is due to God, while they carefully ignore all the bad things done in God’s name. It’s not the same at all; it’s another attempt to falsely claim that religion is the equal of science ( or engineering, or basket weaving, for that matter; anything that has actual evidence that it works ).

[QUOTE=Public Animal No. 9]
Consider the situation where we, the teeming masses, were not told about the advances of science, but were only presented with the useful gadgets we have about us by a group of mysterious priests who exclaimed that these tools and toys were the result of revelations (to them, the priests) from a caring and loving God. Would we then all be religious believers?
[/quote]
Yes, and we’d be crippled because of it. The religious attitude is incompatible with the scientific or engineering one; all the faith in the world won’t make a broken gadget work again.

[QUOTE=Public Animal No. 9]
Barbour makes the point that the faith community and the scientific community have many similarities. For instance, there are the religious mystics who tell of reaching elevated spiritual enlightenment and the scientists who create new theories, essentially ouy of nothing. One of the more fascinating topics to read about (at least to me :stuck_out_tongue: ) is how scientific theories, particularly major breakthroughs, are “discovered.” They are often described as flashes of insight rather than small incremental steps based entirely upon experimentation. Barbour argues that this is similar to the religious person who spends years in prayer and meditation, only to have a sudden revelation of religious truth.
[/quote]
And then they come up with evidence to prove or disprove it; if they can’t, it’s dismissed. Another false equivalence. You try to claim that religion and science are alike, by leaving out the parts of science that actually make it science, and not wild guesses.

[QUOTE=Public Animal No. 9]
I don’t happen to believe that this is an “either/or” question. Faith plays a role in both areas, as does experience. Religions are not well suited to develop scientific theories, and science is not well suited to answer questions of why the universe exists. Science can inform religion, and religion can inform science.
[/QUOTE]
No, religion corrodes at the touch of science; facts are anathema to it. And science becomes distorted and useless - and no longer science - when religion corrupts it.

26

[QUOTE=lekatt]
I notice you mention “those that have been legally dead and come back to life don’t all have the same experiences.”
Let’s talk about those experiences, called near death experiences, but really are death experiences. I have been studying them for over 20 years, and what you say is not exactly correct. They are remarkable similiar in many aspects. They have caught the attention of many researchers which are conducting studies at some major universities.
First let’s define our target as being only those experiences that doctors were present and noted the patient as being clinically dead for at least 30 seconds. This will eliminate much of the confusion. Now we have a patient that is clinically dead, yet while dead, saw, and heard, not only the activity surrounding his body, but also participated in events we would call spiritual. These events included, but are not limited to the list below.

[/QUOTE]

In my 25 years as an ED physician I’ve had a number of occasions to resuscitate people who were in the clinically sorta dead category. They were as near-death as anyone else’s near-death folks.

I made it a point to ask the coherent survivors what the experience was like.

Not a single one ever had a good story.

I think if you’re nutty, you’re nutty. And nutty folks who have a near-death experience (or are nutty enough to think they did) recount nutty events, indistinguishable from dreams or what they would expect to experience should they actually die.

27

[QUOTE=George Kaplin]
Ugh. If we try that we’ll be here forever :slight_smile:

Seriously, Liberal started a thread called ‘Define God’ about 3 months ago which, although started with the best of intentions, turned into a 500+ post long trainwreck in which issues were raised only to be obscured and from which nothing remotely approaching consensus on the central question arose. Suffice to say you can’t define God to the satisfaction of everyone because:

(a) Scripture is so muddled, ambiguous, contradictory, internally inconsistent, and just plain badly written that it is possible to put forward a bewildering panoply of distinct, yet scripturally defensible conceptions of God ranging from a draconian, prurient, genocidal deviant obsessed with fire and brimstone to a touchy-feely father figure who doesn’t really care if you believe in him or not so long as you’re really nice to people.

(b) This inability to define God clearly through scripture has led to people thinking it’s OK to define God however they like provided that they have good intentions. This leads to facile definitions of God as an emotion, a presence, or as one particularly fatuous religious apologist put it, “The condition of possibility of any entity whatsoever, including ourselves”. Sufficed to say, such entirely meaningless definitions only obfuscate things and make defining God even harder than it is already.

I think the best way to define God is to stick to the characteristics we know most people believe at this precise moment in time. I think the following definition accomplishes that rather well, although your mileage may well vary.

“God: Omniscient, omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omnipresent, triune uncaused first cause. Once took an active interest in human affairs, although has been rather quiet of late.”
Edit: The “fatuous religious apologist” referenced above is a literary critic. The quote appears in a review of Dawkins’ “God Delusion”. I was not referring to any Dopers.
[/QUOTE]

I’ll admit that I’m not Albert Einstein in the brain department, but I can say in earnest that I’ve always known that God exists, even before anyone got to me with a Bible or so much as a word on the subject. I’ve never understood people that don’t have, or claim not to have, this innate knowledge. It seems pretty basic to me. Or, like the Buddhists will say, “God is closer to you than your jugular vein.”

I don’t wish to hijack the thread by saying this, but, I’ve had several experiences with God and Jesus (and the devil) throughout my life, and so it’s very hard for me to understand this disconnect that some people seem to have with their Maker.

A definition of God shouldn’t be so tough to come to. And for this type of discussion/debate it has to be established if it’s to be meaningful. It’s called an ontological argument, as I recall. That is, first the parties are to come to an agreement of the definition of God, and then go from there. I used to enjoy these types of debates when I was younger, but now that I’m a tired old man I only keep the serious regard for my own experiences, as they go way deeper than stuff written in books and egotistical people mustering their reasoning powers to take a stand that God either doesn’t exist or, they claim, they’re just not sure.

To put my own little argument out there, I’d simply say that for me there’s no question that a person can ask that has a more obvious answer. :slight_smile:

28

[QUOTE=GuyNblueJeans]
I’ve never understood people that don’t have, or claim not to have, this innate knowledge.
[/QUOTE]

Relating to things on a psychological level, including treating all of existence as if it were a person with intentions and plans and playing a role in your life, is a pretty obvious and common outcome of humans being such intensely social creatures. This is why people get mad at inanimate objects: it’s the pathetic fallacy. But just because we are prone to this sort of assumption doesn’t mean that it’s KNOWLEDGE.

People always say this, but when it comes out what they are really talking about, the experiences are a lot more vague and open to wide interpretation than the simple “I’ve had several experiences with God” language would imply.

29

[QUOTE=GuyNblueJeans]
I’ll admit that I’m not Albert Einstein in the brain department, but I can say in earnest that I’ve always known that God exists, even before anyone got to me with a Bible or so much as a word on the subject. I’ve never understood people that don’t have, or claim not to have, this innate knowledge. It seems pretty basic to me. Or, like the Buddhists will say, “God is closer to you than your jugular vein.”
[/QUOTE]

That’s because it isn’t innate, it’s interpreted. If it was innate, everyone would have it.

You sound confident of this. Confident enough to present actual evidence that it was in fact Jesus/God/Satan that you experienced, and not just a subjective experience you interpreted to be something you wanted it to be?

30

Got no proof, still believe.

Are we done yet?

31

See what you did, GenericAzn? You went and got lekatt worked up about his NDE again…

32

::yawn:: here we go again…

OK, I use the term “God” because

a) There are aspects of reality that I have experienced and a term for the relevant phenomena is useful if not absolutely necessary; and

b) I am convinced that the origins of theistic terms such as “God” are bound up in such experiences, even though the majority of the people who deploy “God” as part of their working vocabulary may not be using the term in that fashion.

Proof? You may think that’s a straightforward request, but it is not. Can you “prove” that justice exists? How about honesty? Or sang froid? Or elegance? Awareness?

If, hypothetically speaking, I were to assert that “God” is an entity, a being, manlike, bearded, cognizant, pissed off, tall, barefoot, and living in the clouds, I suppose you could be excused for asking for some corroborative evidence that such a Fellow does in fact exist. But surely you’re aware that despite all the literal-minded folks who were raised to believe in a babytalk version of God in which God is akin to a comic book character, etc, there are many who use the term sincerely to reference a complex of understandings which are more abstract and more meaningful philosophicaly and theologically than “Yeah, man, there’s a translucent dude in the heavens who creates and destroys shit, and you pray to him for favors and intercessions and stuff like that” - ??

33

As long as a mod was editing the title of this thread, couldn’t he have spelled “breech” right?

34

[QUOTE=CurtC]
As long as a mod was editing the title of this thread, couldn’t he have spelled “breech” right?
[/QUOTE]

How about “into” as well?

35

[QUOTE=CurtC]
As long as a mod was editing the title of this thread, couldn’t he have spelled “breech” right?
[/QUOTE]

He did. “Breach” is correct in this context. “Breech” is not.

Well, not unless you interpret “Once more unto the breech,” in a really nasty way.

36

[QUOTE=askeptic]
How about “into” as well?
[/QUOTE]

Take it up with Shakespeare.

37

[QUOTE=Miller]
Take it up with Shakespeare.
[/QUOTE]

Crap. :smack:

38

[QUOTE=Apos]
Relating to things on a psychological level, including treating all of existence as if it were a person with intentions and plans and playing a role in your life, is a pretty obvious and common outcome of humans being such intensely social creatures. This is why people get mad at inanimate objects: it’s the pathetic fallacy. But just because we are prone to this sort of assumption doesn’t mean that it’s KNOWLEDGE.

People always say this, but when it comes out what they are really talking about, the experiences are a lot more vague and open to wide interpretation than the simple “I’ve had several experiences with God” language would imply.
[/QUOTE]

I have no chance with you. “IF” you should ever sincerely want to know about God, then I very respectfully suggest that you humble yourself and go from there, even get on your knees and pray and pray and pray and fast and pray. (And, yes, my own ego is still as big as a mountain, so this advice applies to me, as well.)

39

[QUOTE=GuyNblueJeans]
I have no chance with you. “IF” you should ever sincerely want to know about God, then I very respectfully suggest that you humble yourself and go from there, even get on your knees and pray and pray and pray and fast and pray. (And, yes, my own ego is still as big as a mountain, so this advice applies to me, as well.)
[/QUOTE]
So, to receive evidence that God exists, I have to first believe that he exists?

40

[QUOTE=GuyNblueJeans]
I have no chance with you. “IF” you should ever sincerely want to know about God, then I very respectfully suggest that you humble yourself and go from there, even get on your knees and pray and pray and pray and fast and pray. (And, yes, my own ego is still as big as a mountain, so this advice applies to me, as well.)
[/QUOTE]

OK. I did it. Now what? Well not the fasting part. Hard to believe god only reveals himself to the hungry.

I have been to Baptist revivals, catholic mass, even been to the Vatican, I have stood on top of pyramids in Tepotzlan, the Pyramid of the Sun and the Moon near Mexico City, Baptized in a river in Alabama and in a cathedral in Milan, sat through Episcapal services and Lutheran even went to a meeting of “friends”. I have prayed and read the bible, the torah, the koran even the book of mormon and Pearls of great price (?) and many other religious books I have been to the Tigris and Euphrates valley and “the holy land” I have opened my heart, humbled myself, begged pleaded, even did shrooms on a mountain in southern mexico. I have put myself out there, and got nothing. As far as I am concerned if god does exist and he is what you and other theists claim, then to me he is no better than a dead beat dad who is behind on his child support.