I was watching YouTube yesterday and an ad came on. I was in the other room and couldn’t turn it off right away. It was quite lengthy and religious in nature. They argued that the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution prove the existence of God. While I couldn’t really follow their logic, I have to admit that this is the first time I have heard this argument.
Now I am beginning to wonder if maybe the ad was sponsored by the U.S. government.
I’d kind of like to hear that argument.
“So, we’ve written a document that we can amend the heck out of; we’ve amended it a bunch of times, we can do it again if we please, and therefore it conclusively establishes for all time that…”
You know the S. Harris cartoon with the caption “then a miracle occurs” in some alleged proof? Same here. They should be more specific there, and the second time ain’t funny anymore.
No need, really. There’s a good chunk of the populace in the US that considers it God’s Chosen Nation and considers everything about it divinely inspired and justified.
(Unless they personally don’t like it, then it’s a Satanic corruption of God’s Chosen Land).
A new survey finds that almost one in three white evangelicals in America believe that the U.S. Constitution is divinely inspired.
The Background
“Some Americans clearly long for a more avowedly religious and explicitly Christian country,” according to a Pew Research Center survey. For example, the survey finds that about one in five Americans (19 percent) says the U.S. Constitution is inspired by God. The groups most likely to make that claim includes the highly religious (37 percent) and white evangelicals (37 percent).
From here.
I also would love to hear this argument, and which God. I’m betting they’re not talking about Jefferson’s God.
I just read an article in the New Yorker about the writing of the Declaration, and all the editing done to Jefferson’s draft by Congress. They offered Franklin the job of writing the draft, but he refused because he made it a policy of never writing anything that was going to get revised by third parties.
However, if they gave the Bible to a good bunch of editors, maybe it would get written to hang together better.
I have no idea if either of the below are what the OP overheard on Youtube, but just as there are plenty of Christians (nearly always conservative Christians these days) who like to argue that various things are “irrefutable proof” of the existence of God (their version of God), there are some guys out there who are making the same sort of claim for the Declaration of Independence.
As per the notes on the first video:
Then why did God put forth the separation of church and state and why are his true, fanatical believers working against that?
These Christians could find equal amounts of absolute proof in the existence of their particular god in a kitten, or a cantaloupe or a car crash. That brand of the Christian religion is the ultimate retrofit.
Yeah, the most they could possibly show is that the authors believed in God.
It was placed there as a a test for the faithful.
In a god.
Well, the devil is in the details.
If God exists, explain Trump as POTUS.
mumble mumble mysterious ways mumble mumble
I don’t want to get all philosophical, but I’m reminded of one of my favorite undergraduate philosophy courses with the late Robert Nozick. He explained that our our knowledge must “track” the truth as follows:
To know a proposition P (for example, “God exists”) is true, you must satisfy four conditions:
Fact: P is actually true.
Belief: You believe that P is true.
Sensitivity: If P were false, you would not believe it.
Adherence: If P were true, you would believe it.
Condition 1 may be up for discussion, but many religious types would deny Condition 3 completely. That’s the whole point of religious faith.
Nozick wrote at length about the subject and, whether one agrees with him or not, he can be fascinating reading.
BTW, I should give credit to Google AI for the above summary of his point of view. I stumbled with trying to write it myself, but failed miserably. Google provided a much clearer description of the subject.
TL;DR: Those with true faith in the existence of God CAN’T know whether he does or not.
At the head of any cult you’ll find those spreading lies, manipulating and seeking power & control.
Can’t we just go back to finding proof of Jesus on a scorched tortilla?
Years ago I was reading somewhere (couldn’t possibly tell you where) and a person who self-identified as a vegan teen girl wrote, of Genesis 9:3 (“Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. As I gave you green plants, I give you everything” (ESV)) :
“This proves there is no god, because why would a loving god allow humans to eat meat?”
I’m not going to advocate for the existence of God, but I do love the extraordinary leaps of logic it took for this lass to reach this conclusion. She’d be pushing 40 now so I wonder if she’s figured out her mistake.
The only proof of God that I find slightly convincing is that humans are on an extraordinarily different plane/level than animals (in the sense that, while we have flesh, blood and organs and bone, we are vastly intellectually more advanced than animals) and so the concept of “made in God’s image” or “somehow made to be different” is somewhat believable.
Never mind