# I doubt the existence of ghosts/God/supernatural things will ever be factually proved **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 4, 2008, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-doubt-the-existence-of-ghosts-god-supernatural-things-will-ever-be-factually-proved/475750 "2008-12-04T21:29:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-doubt-the-existence-of-ghosts-god-supernatural-things-will-ever-be-factually-proved/475750/121 "2008-12-11T14:50:23Z")
> [@lekatt](#): > > God’s love is unconditional, I don’t consider other to be bad. I was using them as an example. If there is a god, it is very obviously unconditional. Anything goes. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-doubt-the-existence-of-ghosts-god-supernatural-things-will-ever-be-factually-proved/475750/122 "2008-12-11T15:39:14Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > I think both believers and non-believers would accept the notion that IF there were a “god” or supreme being, that it would by definition be omniscient, omnipotent, incorporeal probably eternal and perhaps inscrutable. In other words, infinitely everything. I don’t. Why does a god have to be all-powerful? Ancient legends often pitted God One against God Two, and they had different powers. Or why can’t there be a god who is territorial? The god of Africa doesn’t mess with Europe and vice-versa. If you’re going to make gods up, why not invent them the way you wish? Let’s have a god of rain, a god of snow, and a god of cute little puppy dogs. Or maybe gods have a finite life span. Why does a god have to be eternal? Greek and Roman myths have gods being born, dieing or being banished. How about the Creation God expiring and superceded by a newer god with different duties and powers? Even the Christians have a story that Lucifer was a fallen angel. Now what’s the difference between an angel and a god? Level of powers? If an angel has to serve a god master, how come the Devil broke those bonds and now has considerable equality with the primary god? That’s far more powerful than an angel helpmate. So it look like your god can do whatever you design him to do. Give him powers, or take them away, your choice. There are no rules. “Make peace with your God, whatever you conceive Him to be: Hairy Thunderer or Cosmic Muffin.” – [Deteriorata](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deteriorata) ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-doubt-the-existence-of-ghosts-god-supernatural-things-will-ever-be-factually-proved/475750/123 "2008-12-11T17:34:03Z")
> [@Kalhoun](#): > > Where do you see “love and grace”? Mankind is about as loveless and graceless as any barren wasteland of DNA could possibly be! This is a serious question. When you look around and see the state of things, do you really see an overlay of love or grace that overrides the shitstorm we’ve created for ourselves? Really? With all those believers out there pulling for the god answer to remove the bad from our lives, are you seeing something that actually resembles “love and grace?” What keeps you forging ahead with this idea? > > The prevailing mood is greed and hate, with a smattering of “what can WE do to fix it, now that the superpower has abandoned us??” tossed in for shits and grins. I will continue to try to fix what’s wrong with us in any little way I can, but that is topped off with a hearty “thanks for nothin’!” to the all-powerful god concept. Kalhoun, I think you’ve hit upon the exact dead center of what delineates the faithful from the faithless. And be clear that I’m not saying the views of the faithful are in any way better — or even preferable — to the views of the faithless. They’re just different, is all. I do not hold for you, as Der Trihs does for me, that you are dangerous or horrible in some way because of your stance on faith. Not to mention the fact that you’re consistently respectful (albeit a bit passionate) in the way you communicate. All that said, the only way I can really explain it to you is that what God sees as an event is what we see as a process. You would expect that an eternal (i.e., timeless) being would see both the beginning and the completion of everything simultaneously, given His frame of reference — eternity. One can say, in fact, that from God’s perspective, all three of these are true at once: (1) the universe does not yet exist; (2) the universe is unfolding; and (3) the universe has ended. And it doesn’t matter whether it takes billions of years, trillions of years, or googols of years. Eternity is eternity, and the whole set of spacetime is a proper subset of it. (There might be other models of continuum that involve something other than spacetime.) So, what you see all around you is the ongoing process, observed by we temporal species, of morality unfolding. The universe is an amoral backdrop or stage upon which we act out or moral play, the script for which we write out ourselves. You are seeing both grace and greed. You are seeing both love and suffocation. From the point of view of the faithful, we all are declaring, by the moral decisions we make, where we stand with respect to the absolute — which, of course, we believe is God and you (likely) believe is nonexistent. We, meaning the faithful, can’t perfectly articulate the nature of that absolute for you because it is an aesthetic plateau that we can’t reach. If I stain it with characterization, I will already have ruined it for you. Unfortunately, I find it necessary somewhat to disclaim certain preconceived notions that some people reading this might undersandably have. When I say I don’t know what perfect goodness entails in full, it means that I refrain from making moral judgments about others. I won’t condemn anyone’s moral choices simply because I have no standing to do so, having made so many poor choices myself. So just because I say God is perfectly good, it does not mean that I think He opposes homosexuality or any the other things Bible thumpers so dispair over. I like how Francis of Assisi put it: “Love, and do what you will.” You would be among the first to say, I’m sure, that the era of man is but a blink in the evolutionary time scale, and scarcely discernable in the time scale of the universe at large. Similarly, from God’s perspective — a perspective that I believe we eventually will share — all the struggles are already over. The curtains have fallen on all the moral plays. Every moral decision has already been made. Time is finished. Morality is all about delineation, just as there will be those who are comforted by this information and those who are unsettled by it. Whose morality is right, and whose morality is wrong? No one among us can say. And I submit that if we could, then there would be no free moral will. Instead, what we have to do is just whatever we believe is right. Whether we have aligned ourselves with God won’t be determined until we see Him face to face, as it were, and decide for ourselves whether He is something we would rather moved toward or move away from. It is epistemically possible that I will be surprised, and will find God to be as you have described Him: a terrible beast who plays with us as a cat plays with a captured mouse. If so, it will mean that that is the model I chose for myself. But it is also possible in the same way, that you will be surprised, and will find God to be as I have described Him: a gracious being Who loves you. If so, it will because you made the kind of moral choices that would align you with such a being. Now, you will of course raise another possibility, namely that we will find there is no god of any kind. But I think that in these discussions, we really can’t come to understand one another unless we accept one another’s premises when it comes time to examine one another’s arguments. Otherwise, there’s no point in discussing anything at all because we will never come to the same conclusions since I take the existence of God as axiomatic and you don’t. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-doubt-the-existence-of-ghosts-god-supernatural-things-will-ever-be-factually-proved/475750/124 "2008-12-11T17:53:46Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Otherwise, there’s no point in discussing anything at all because we will never come to the same conclusions since I take the existence of God as axiomatic and you don’t. Are you willing to extend the same courtesy to other believers in the supernatural? If someone comes to the message board believing that the existence of ghosts is axiomatic, should we say “Ah, well. Everyone has their own beliefs. We must agree to disagree.” What you’re doing is a form of special pleading. You’re asking that religion be given a special exemption from empiricism. If you want to reject empiricism as a valid epistomology, you free to do that. But intellectual honest demands that if you reject empiricism you should do so across the board, not merely when it’s uncomfortably applied to your own beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-doubt-the-existence-of-ghosts-god-supernatural-things-will-ever-be-factually-proved/475750/125 "2008-12-11T18:11:41Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > I think that “I don’t know” is honest if one does not know. I think “God does not exist” is honest for the atheist whose life experience has never included an encounter with God. But for the faithful, “God exists” is the only honest tenet we can possibly hold. It would be more honest for a faithful person to say, “I \*think \*God exists.” which can be true. Saying “God exists” by itself is simply wishful thinking. ---
**Author:** ![Syntropy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/65b543/32.png) [@Syntropy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Syntropy)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-doubt-the-existence-of-ghosts-god-supernatural-things-will-ever-be-factually-proved/475750/126 "2008-12-11T21:15:04Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > I think that “I don’t know” is honest if one does not know. I think “God does not exist” is honest for the atheist whose life experience has never included an encounter with God. But for the faithful, “God exists” is the only honest tenet we can possibly hold. Got it. Although when I said dishonest I was referring to those in both the theistic and atheistic camps who swear up and down they have incontrivertible evidence for their assertions. My flavor of atheism runs more along the lines of this: All available evidence so far shows no deity and what we used to be sure was divine intervention or judgment we now know is merely our physical world. Science is closing gaps and still no proof of a creator. There is no “heaven” above the earth, only more space. Likewise, Hell does not exist below the Earth’s crust. In order to prove a god at this point, that god would need to be physically present and at that time, I’d be open to changing my mind. But I don’t really see it happening. > [@](#): > > As an aside, I’d like to point out that I do recognize the rather substantive difference between a person who is a cultural theist and a person who is a devout theist. Some people might believe in God only in an intellectual or emotional sense, or it might even be the case that people do not believe in God in any meaningful sense other than lip-service, but still associate themselves with theism and theists because of circumstances like the convenience of networking, or even for nefarious purposes like political or monetary gain. I needn’t tell you, I’m sure, how important it is to differentiate such people from people whose faith is rooted in devotion and in the confidence that God is with them in their daily lives. Sure. And I lived as such a theist for many years before finally deciding that though it may hurt my family I needed to be honest with them and myself. > [@](#): > > We need you here. I say that even though you and I disagree, and you are obviously a formidable debating opponent. It is in coming to understand one another that we can better understand ourselves. I know that sounds like a cliche, but it is nevertheless true. There is a certain Socratic edification in fleshing out the views of others. Thank you. 🙂 I’m enjoying the site very much. It is good to see a place where more than one point of view is accepted as valid. Too much of the internet is taken up by sites that only allow preaching to choirs. Sorry about the pun. I’m looking forward to more discussions with you. > [@](#): > > In my limited experience, people who identify themselves as Christian (the sort of god you describe) often define Him in a similar way. I call it “star struck” faith. For them, it’s like a fan describing the object of his admiration. “She is beautiful and smart, electrifies the crowds, and has the voice of an angel.” Contrast that sort of view with the view that her closest friends and family might have of her. “She is kind and vulnerable with a low self-esteem, and I worry about her being swept up by her rise to stardom.” > > People of devout faith view God the second way. And by that, I don’t mean they have a morose or defeatist view of him, but a… well… more personal and intimate view than the star struck believer. The most important thing about God is not His power or His knowledge or His ubiquity. The most important thing about God is His love and grace. > > If you want to understand me, that is probably the single most important thing to understand All good things to know. It’s an interesting contrast. Rather like going from the megachurch Baptists up the hill to the little non-denominational place. Less glitz more practicality. Still not my thing but the people are more reasoned in their approach. ---
**Author:** ![Kalhoun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3bc359/32.png) [@Kalhoun](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kalhoun)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-doubt-the-existence-of-ghosts-god-supernatural-things-will-ever-be-factually-proved/475750/127 "2008-12-11T21:25:38Z")
> [@Liberal](#): > > Kalhoun, I think you’ve hit upon the exact dead center of what delineates the faithful from the faithless. And be clear that I’m not saying the views of the faithful are in any way better — or even preferable — to the views of the faithless. They’re just different, is all. I do not hold for you, as Der Trihs does for me, that you are dangerous or horrible in some way because of your stance on faith. Not to mention the fact that you’re consistently respectful (albeit a bit passionate) in the way you communicate. Passionate…great euphemism!!😉 > [@](#): > > All that said, the only way I can really explain it to you is that what God sees as an event is what we see as a process. You would expect that an eternal (i.e., timeless) being would see both the beginning and the completion of everything simultaneously, given His frame of reference — eternity. One can say, in fact, that from God’s perspective, all three of these are true at once: (1) the universe does not yet exist; (2) the universe is unfolding; and (3) the universe has ended. And it doesn’t matter whether it takes billions of years, trillions of years, or googols of years. Eternity is eternity, and the whole set of spacetime is a proper subset of it. (There might be other models of continuum that involve something other than spacetime.) Whoa there…you’re assuming a lot. Your theory of How Things Work is being presented as fact, and it is most decidedly not. It is nothing but wishful speculation. You have no way of knowing how a god perceives the world. I also find it curious that you omitted the fourth (and most probable) option: that the universe always existed, resulting in no need for a creator. However, a god’s timeline vs. our timeline has nothing to do with the lack of control exhibited over a Very Very Bad Species. He has the ability to erase our capability to suck, yet chooses not to. He has the ability to create perfect beings (with no reason _whatsoever_ for doing it) and yet made highly flawed creatures. A god’s perfection would not allow for differences in a timeline that would result in his blink being our drawn-out cesspool of existence. There is no need for mortality in a perfect god world. We would exist side by side with a loving and graceful god, equals in every way. Anything less would be unacceptable to a perfectionist. Nor would it be graceful for god to create beings who don’t see the need to believe that he’s there. You see where I’m coming from. The elitism alone in claims of god experiences does nothing to promote the cause. This cannot be characterized as love or grace by any stretch of the imagination. It is, at best, apathy. > [@](#): > > So, what you see all around you is the ongoing process, observed by we temporal species, of morality unfolding. The universe is an amoral backdrop or stage upon which we act out or moral play, the script for which we write out ourselves. You are seeing both grace and greed. You are seeing both love and suffocation. From the point of view of the faithful, we all are declaring, by the moral decisions we make, where we stand with respect to the absolute — which, of course, we believe is God and you (likely) believe is nonexistent. We, meaning the faithful, can’t perfectly articulate the nature of that absolute for you because it is an aesthetic plateau that we can’t reach. If I stain it with characterization, I will already have ruined it for you. Again, you’re making assumptions that can’t be supported – not even if I were persuaded to believe the god moment you experienced was actually what you think it was. Of course we see both grace and greed. Of course we see both love and hate. That’s what humans do. However, that is NOT what one would expect to experience in a world created by a perfect something that loves us. > [@](#): > > Unfortunately, I find it necessary somewhat to disclaim certain preconceived notions that some people reading this might undersandably have. When I say I don’t know what perfect goodness entails in full, it means that I refrain from making moral judgments about others. I won’t condemn anyone’s moral choices simply because I have no standing to do so, having made so many poor choices myself. So just because I say God is perfectly good, it does not mean that I think He opposes homosexuality or any the other things Bible thumpers so dispair over. I like how Francis of Assisi put it: “Love, and do what you will.” See, there’s that “love” word being tossed around again. _What does that mean?_ It can’t possibly mean the same thing to everyone, which in turn makes it impossible for anyone to follow Francis’ advice. In other words, it’s just another buzzword that dilutes the power and authority that’s attributed to gods. > [@](#): > > You would be among the first to say, I’m sure, that the era of man is but a blink in the evolutionary time scale, and scarcely discernable in the time scale of the universe at large. Similarly, from God’s perspective — a perspective that I believe we eventually will share — all the struggles are already over. The curtains have fallen on all the moral plays. Every moral decision has already been made. Time is finished. But why do you think that? WHY??? How could you possibly claim to know what a god’s perspective is? Again, you are applying human attributes and logic. That doesn’t work with the supernatural. > [@](#): > > Morality is all about delineation, just as there will be those who are comforted by this information and those who are unsettled by it. Whose morality is right, and whose morality is wrong? No one among us can say. And I submit that if we could, then there would be no free moral will. Instead, what we have to do is just whatever we believe is right. Whether we have aligned ourselves with God won’t be determined until we see Him face to face, as it were, and decide for ourselves whether He is something we would rather moved toward or move away from. He’s\* god\*, fercrissakes! Why do we have options? It’s his bat and ball! By making god perfect, you’ve eliminated the possibility of imperfect morals, choices, behaviors, and ultimately, _people_. And if you don’t have people, you eliminate the need for god. Perfection is the absolute downfall of the whole concept. Either he’s perfect and therefore unnecessary or he’s imperfect, and therefore not worthy of worship (not that anything is, in my opinion…but for those of you who indulge…) > [@](#): > > It is epistemically possible that I will be surprised, and will find God to be as you have described Him: a terrible beast who plays with us as a cat plays with a captured mouse. If so, it will mean that that is the model I chose for myself. But it is also possible in the same way, that you will be surprised, and will find God to be as I have described Him: a gracious being Who loves you. If so, it will because you made the kind of moral choices that would align you with such a being. I didn’t describe him (I don’t believe in him). But he could not be anything _but_ that if he exists and interacts with this world. Now, you could say that he doesn’t do anything at all, in which case see “worship worthiness” comments above. However…let’s say god does exist. If god won’t reveal himself to us and we don’t know what pleases him (other than the Very Bad Behavior he exhibited in the bible), how do you figure he loves anyone? > [@](#): > > Now, you will of course raise another possibility, namely that we will find there is no god of any kind. But I think that in these discussions, we really can’t come to understand one another unless we accept one another’s premises when it comes time to examine one another’s arguments. Otherwise, there’s no point in discussing anything at all because we will never come to the same conclusions since I take the existence of God as axiomatic and you don’t. You still haven’t explained in simple non-circular terms why you feel god exists. The experience you had, while real to you isn’t credible evidence for an all loving, all controlling superbeing…not even to most believers. They might believe there’s a god, but very few believe he interacts with anyone. So…if we go with a _personal god_, i.e., one who only communicates with you, your understanding of god is only relevant to you. No one else need give it a second thought, because it can never have any effect on our lives. In short, a personal god is not a superbeing. If it’s not universal, it doesn’t count. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2008, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-doubt-the-existence-of-ghosts-god-supernatural-things-will-ever-be-factually-proved/475750/128 "2008-12-11T21:31:16Z")
> [@Pochacco](#): > > Are you willing to extend the same courtesy to other believers in the supernatural? Yes, of course. That doesn’t mean I accept their premises for myself, and when I debate you or other atheists, I do not expect you to accept my premises for yourselves. I’m just asking for respect among us all. I don’t think it is productive to make sweeping generalizations about people being fools or delusional or dangerous just because of their theology or lack thereof. And so… > [@](#): > > What you’re doing is a form of special pleading. …I’m really not. I’m asking nothing more of you than I am willing to extend. > [@Syntropy](#): > > All good things to know. It’s an interesting contrast. Rather like going from the megachurch Baptists up the hill to the little non-denominational place. Less glitz more practicality. Still not my thing but the people are more reasoned in their approach. Very perceptive. It so happens I am a Friend. Unprogrammed. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-doubt-the-existence-of-ghosts-god-supernatural-things-will-ever-be-factually-proved/475750.md?page=6)