How can anyone justify belief in God?

Great Debates
181

biker if you can back it up, then please do so. You’ve come in here, made a wild claim, and then offered nothing to support it.

I for one would disagree. The God that I believe in is not a figment of my imagination, nor is He a figment of anyone else’s imagination. I have stated elsewhere in this thread my reasons for my belief. If you can refute them in order to justify your claim, then by all means, attempt to do so, but base it on facts and evidence, not on sweeping generalisations, that may not even prove to hold true.

182

So you can substantiate your claim? All religions – ALL of them – are based on mans inability to deal with death How extraordinary!

Please let us know how you arrived at this conclusion. I’m sure that we would all like to know what your methodology was.

183

read the books or view the videos, available at the library of joseph campbell, “the power of the myth.”

http://hallaudiobook.com/nonfiction/44.shtml

184

read the books or view the videos, available at the library of joseph campbell, “the power of the myth.”

http://hallaudiobook.com/nonfiction/44.shtml
For example, Jesus ascended to heaven. The denotation would seem to be that somebody ascended to the sky. That’s literally what is being said. But if that were really the meaning of the message, then we have to throw it away, because there would have been no such place for Jesus literally to go. We know that Jesus could not have ascended to heaven because there is no physical heaven anywhere in the universe. Even ascending at the speed of light, Jesus would still be in the galaxy, Astronomy and physics have simply eliminated that as a literal, physical possibility, But if you read “Jesus ascended to heaven” in terms of its metaphoric connotation, you see that he has gone inward – not into outer space but into inward space, to the place from which all being comes, into the consciousness that is the source of all things, the kingdom of heaven within. The images are outward, but their reflection is inward. The point is that we should ascend with him by going inward. It is a metaphor of returning to the source, alpha and omega, of leaving the fixation on the body behind and going to the body’s dynamic source.

http://www.whidbey.com/parrott/moyers.htm

185

We do?

I’m not saying that heaven is a physical place vs. a spiritual place, that’s a whole other debate, but the fact is, we don’t know with any certainty that heaven doesn’t exist somewhere in the universe that we haven’t explored yet.

Now I assume you’re talking about this event in Acts chapter 1:

I agree that physically speaking this is impossible. But you forget that if you accept that God exists, and that Jesus is the son of God, a physical impossibility is not going to get in the way of God. In fact it says in other parts of the bible that “with God, all things are possible”. To quibble with a single passage, like this doesn’t work, because this description of events falls works on the basis that God and Jesus are who the bible say they are.

If you’re issue here is that a physical impossibility occurred, then it is explained if God exists, and your true issue is the initial existence of God. If you believe in God, you can accept this as a miracle and an expression of the power of God and the supremacy of God over the physical world.

Just because you have not seen a miracle personally, doesn’t mean that they don’t or can’t happen. My accpetance of such miracles stems from the reliablility of witnesses, including biblical witnesses. I believe these accounts because I believe that the Bible is the word of God. I believe this because I believe in the God of the Bible, and I believe what God says about himself in his book. I believe in God for reasons I explained in an earlier post, not the least of which is a personal revelation of God in my life.

Now, I take from your post, that you do not believe in God. This is the issue that we’re debating rather than whether a particular miracle occurred.

I believe in the laws of physics. I do not discard them at all to accomodate my belief in God. I just believe that God is above the laws of physics.

Now I don’t think that you’ve produced evidence to support your initial claim. You have produced a single example, which fits within the Christian belief system. This is hardly all religions.

186

Now you know how we athiests feel:D

187

Okay, for the sake of argument, let’s assume that this statement is true.

HOW does this demonstrate that ALL religion is based on man’s inability to deal with death? Your example doesn’t even demonstrate that of Christianity, let alone the other religions! At best, it only makes some vague claim that the Ascencion is a metaphorical event, and says absolutely nothing which pertains to the alleged “inability” to handle death.

So once again, please tell us what methodology you used to arrive at your claim. For now, you don’t even have to prove it rigorously. Just start by telling us what methodology you used to cover all the world’s religions, and to discern the motives of their practitioners.

188

biker, you seem to be dismissing the Bible – and God’s existence in general – by saying that miraculous events do not occur. Need I point out that this is circular reasoning? If God does not exist, then we should not expect miracles to happen. However, if God does exist, then the possibility of miracles becomes open.

If you claim that miracles do not happen, then you are assuming that God does not exist – which is the very point that you claim to defend. Ergo, circular reasoning.

189

Not so. A number of people in this thread have offered reasons for their belief. You may or may not agree with those reasons, but they have put them out there. You, on the other hand, have not. All I’m asking is that you provide some evidence and/or reasoning for your conclusion.

190

When it comes down the ontology of epistemology, I have to admit that I fell off the truck a couple of turns back. For those who don’t remember me, I am one of the Christians of the board, but not one of the theologians, or the logicians.

So, here I go, anyway.

I don’t justify my faith to anyone, except Jesus. I don’t try to convince anyone of anyone’s existence, except once and a while my own, if I really want something badly, and need to exist for a while. All that, and at times, I have to admit, the difference between me, and an idiot is pretty much a matter of personal choice on behalf of the observer.

But, the facts are only what we decide facts are. As our esteemed Polycarp has pointed out the number of people who have performed the arithmetic involved in Newton’s Laws, is far less than the number of people who believe that Physics is more logical than Theology. (Not even to mention toting all those cannon balls up ramps and such.) What passes for logic in the modern world is that three out of four doctors think you should use the pills they give you, and doctors are real smart, so you should do it.

I never quite follow the arguments that start with the Big Bang, and end up proving that God exists, or doesn’t exist. “Before the Big Bang . . .” Every single word in the phrase is used in error. Before has no referent, it wasn’t big, it didn’t go bang, and we have no vocabulary or grammar which describes the conditions of the origin, which by definition does not include the operation of Newtonian or Quantum Physics.

Heck, if God wanted to, He had an entire Planck interval to wander around in the absence of anywhere to wander around in, doing whatever He wanted to to the absence of anything to do it to.

Anyway, my point is that Science is actually only science, and it is just a method of understanding what we can perceive, and measure. It has nothing to do with matters outside of the physical objects and forces of the universe. Logical proof of the existence of God is every bit as empty of sense as “Before the Big Bang.” The same is true of disproof. Real scientists are far to busy sorting buttons and lining them up in rows to bother with inconsequential things like that.

Now from the other side, it is quite different. I would never try to prove to you that God exists. If I succeeded, I would have robbed you of your faith, and given you only proof. What a poor bargain that would be! The Lord would never forgive me . . . well, actually He would. But that’s another story.

Don’t bother with all that stuff. It is pointless, hurtful, and counterproductive. Just spend your time and energy being as loving, kind and generous as you possibly can be, as often and as long as you possibly can. When you screw it up, don’t waste time feeling bad about it, just change it, and start loving again. Leave the Salvation part up to the Lord.

If I am wrong, and logic and science finally do disprove the existence of God, you will have spent your life making the world a place of Love, and kindness. How bad would that be?

Tris

“Sic transit gloria mundi. And Tuesday’s usually worse.” ~ Robert A. Heinlein ~

191

[…Lib egresses quietly back into the void for a spell, knowing that all is right with the world…]

192

it is impossible to debate people of faith.

you want me to back up my statement about all religions. my answer was to read “power of the myth,” it is all there. you have a man, joseph campbell who spent all his life studying religion.

all human populations, regardless of location, even on remote desert islands, form some kind of faith based religion because of their inability to deal with death. you want me to tell you in a short paragraph, what i have spent a long lifetime learning.

many of you use the assumption that the bible is the word of god. the bible was written by the catholic church, in the third century, in a terrified response to the growing islam faith. read an occasional history book, it’s all there.

i am not trying to challenge anyone here, i am simply trying to pass along what i have learned in a lifetime. i was baptized and raised a presbyterian and am now a born again atheist hopefully with a sense of humor.

the bottom line for me is that to lead a successful existence one must simply be kind to his fellow man.

193

See this is the problem with a debate like this; it’s OK for you to make bold assertions (which you present as fact) based on your lifetime of experiences and observations, but anyone who disagrees with them (based on their lifetime of experiences and observations) is merely chasing an escapist delusion.

I’m not going to flog the dead horse of denying the possibility of proving a chair, but I’ve had experiences, a whole load of them and compelling ones at that, that lead me to believe that there is a God. Furthermore, these experiences aren’t invalidated by anything I’ve yet come across in my (admittedly incomplete) exploration of science and the physical world. What would you do in a similar situation?

194

life is a learning experience.

stick with it and learn everyday of your life. the answer is to be open-minded, which i think i am.

i have no problem with you having faith in something i don’t particularly believe in. i studied the bible, i read the bible, the bible is a collection of myths. myths that have been around much longer than the christian bible. this is what joseph campbell explains and backs it up with a tremendous amount of “facts.”

what you experience in your lifetime will not cause me any problem. we all want to think there is some form of higher power. i do, it is just not your god. i am one of those tree hugging nature boys, hahaha.

195

biker, others have studied and read the bible and assimilated this with their world experience and come to a different conclusion. Your bland statements that this or that is a myth really do nothing to counter their own weighing of the evidence - it takes reasoned argument to back a position not mantra.

And I do apologise for the hijack, but have you noticed that “ohio” written all in lower case actually looks a bit like a motorbike? Very appropriate for our… spiritually challenged and lower-cased friend.

pan

196

I must admit I’d be inclined to discount any “occasional history book” which offered this version of events. On the one hand, we know that the bulk of the bible was written, and was in regular devotional use, before the birth of Christ. On the other hand the prophet Muhammed was born about AD 570. The assertion that the bible was written the the third century in response to the growth of Islam therefore flies in the face of well-established historical evidence. It is ironic (to put it no higher) that somebody who is supposed to be taking a scientific approach to issues of belief should rest his arguments on such an obvious myth. I cannot avoid suspecting that he may have uncritically accepted this myth because it appears to support the conclusion he has already decided he wants to reach.

197

LOL

198

http://www.mythosandlogos.com/Campbell.html

this site is an excellent introduction to joseph campbell. if any of you “open-minded” individuals have a moment check it out.

from your spiritually challenged ohio biker friend…
to uds,
yes the stories of the bible were “written” over hundreds of years but they were not put into book form until the third century when the catholic church decided which stories it wanted in and which stories it did not. this was done in the sixth ecumenical council.

unfortunately i have to get to work, will check back later in the day.

199

Well I’m convinced. How about you mangetout? And I’m sure that lib is hanging up his prayin’ pads even as we speak.

pan

200

Which, of course, has no relevance on their authorship or dates of authorship.
Ergo, it is an irrelevant point.