HEY GUYS i think i have a fairly good argument for the existence of GOD

[DrTorpedo]

Science can never "refute" God. Whatever that means

Exactly, you can't refute something that has no evidence of existing.

[blablablah]

Exactly, you can't refute something that has no evidence of existing.

Lack of evidence does not imply non-existence.

[DrTorpedo]

Lack of evidence does not imply non-existence.

That's all fair and well, show me the evidence for god.

[blablablah]

That's all fair and well, show me the evidence for god.

What do you mean by evidence?

[Rsardinia]

OP posted a bunch of big words to sound intelligent but he can't get past the fact he's irrational and still believes there's a boogeyman under his bed.

[DrTorpedo]

What do you mean by evidence?

Literally anything that proves to me that god exists and there is no other rational explanation for whatever it is that occurred, occurred.

[blablablah]

Literally anything that proves to me that god exists and there is no other rational explanation for whatever it is that occurred, occurred.

I don't know what you mean by "occurred", but I made a decent argument in this thread that tries to show God's necessary existence.

[DrTorpedo]

I don't know what you mean by "occurred", but I made a decent argument in this thread that tries to show God's necessary existence.

I read it and you assert that the pinacle of knowledge and knowing or in other terms, Nous is what is known as god. What I'm asking you to prove to me is the existence of what would be known as Phusis.

[blablablah]

I read it and you assert that the pinacle of knowledge and knowing or in other terms, Nous is what is known as god. What I'm asking you to prove to me is the existence of what would be known as Phusis.

Yeah, I get what you're saying, but I don't want to play your game. Thanks, anyway.

[Lucretius]

If you can make a coherent argument that makes sense of knowledge and truth without God, I'd love to see it (no, really).

We've already been over this. You just don't like my argument, because, by your assumption, it's wrong. You don't really have a counter-argument.

You want me to prove that knowledge and truth make sense without God, when all you've done is assume they don't. You have drawn no logical correlation between the two, showing why God is necessary for them to make sense. There is no logic behind your claim.

[Diab0lic]

lol get phucked *******.

Eat the corn out of my shiit you ignorant *******

[SinglePlayer]

Why does a God need to exist? It is for our own benefit to cooperate with others and help each other out. You know why? Because 5 are better than one. By yourself you have no chance against a bear in the wilderness. If you have 5 people with you, there is a much higher probability that you can outwit and kill the animal than if you were by yourself. If you help out ten people to build their houses, chances are when it's time for you to build a house they will help you too, and you will construct it at least 10 times faster than you would alone. Mutual benefit. This is how it began. You know this yourself - it's how friendships start. Do you honestly go up to a random person on the street and ask them to be your companion in God because God likes good people getting along? Or is it because something caused you to bond with the person, such as helping each other out in some situation.

As much as you wish to believe that you're a pure being from the start, you're not. You're good because being "good" usually gets rewarded in today's society. Good boys get a pat on the head and a chocolate. Bad boys get smacked and sent to time-out. Why do you think the Inquisition and a number of "Godly" organisations were so ****ed up and brutal? Because they finally got sanctioned right to torture and kill. They were always a piece of ****, they were just prevented from killing their own people by their society so they chose a more socially accepted form of torture and murder.

Wanna know the deepest reason you believe in God?

What happened when you were 5 years old and the monsters didn't let you sleep and you lay awake terrified in your bed? What happened when you had nightmares? You'd wake up and cry a little and your parents would come in and sit with you and talk and comfort you and reassure you that everything was safe. As you grow up you realise that your parents are mortal humans, and will be gone at some point. Who then will protect you from the darkness of the night? From that dark unknown we all have to face one day? The easy thing to do is run to religion. Believe and even if you die, you have heaven as the afterlife.

Instead of seeing the world for the dark place it is and spending your lives trying to make it a better place, you choose to stick your head in the sand and "believe" and "pray" and think you're making a difference.

[PlasticJanus]

If you can make a coherent argument that makes sense of knowledge and truth without God, I'd love to see it (no, really).

I already did this for you.

A proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to the facts.
A belief is knowledge if and only if it is true and it is justified.

No god necessary. As a matter of fact, this model is actually infinitely preferable to any which relies on God (or any other omnipotent being) to bridge the gaps, because it doesn't require any unverifiable and unfalsifiable assumptions.

Stay on target mate, you're not addressing the point. What evidence is there, that there is nothing after death; that death is the "end"?

There is good reason to believe that there is no afterlife, and no evidence to suggest that there is. The concept of a soul (or spirit, or whatever piques your fancy) is dependent on that of the mind. If a soul did exist but without a mind, then it would be wholly unlike anything imagined by modern theists. And we know lots about the mind, including its relations to the brain. If you damage the brain you damage the mind. We know that problems in the brain can lead to any number of problems in the mind, including loss of memory, of speech capabilities, of self-consciousness, and of reasoning, to name a few. It's completely illogical to imagine that destroying the brain in its entirety would have the opposite effect and that someone would go on experiencing existence after death with all their mental faculties intact.

[Kharvok]

Can op address the problem of evil?

[blablablah]

I already did this for you.

A proposition is true if and only if it corresponds to the facts.
A belief is knowledge if and only if it is true and it is justified.

This solves nothing. It's all contingent, all says nothing about truth. If you want to deny the knowledge of truth, that's your prerogative, but you're wrong and always will be.

No god necessary. As a matter of fact, this model is actually infinitely preferable to any which relies on God (or any other omnipotent being) to bridge the gaps, because it doesn't require any unverifiable and unfalsifiable assumptions.

You're existence is based on unveified and unfalsified assumptions, as I've explained to you ad nauseum.

There is good reason to believe that there is no afterlife, and no evidence to suggest that there is. The concept of a soul (or spirit, or whatever piques your fancy) is dependent on that of the mind. If a soul did exist but without a mind, then it would be wholly unlike anything imagined by modern theists. And we know lots about the mind, including its relations to the brain. If you damage the brain you damage the mind. We know that problems in the brain can lead to any number of problems in the mind, including loss of memory, of speech capabilities, of self-consciousness, and of reasoning, to name a few. It's completely illogical to imagine that destroying the brain in its entirety would have the opposite effect and that someone would go on experiencing existence after death with all their mental faculties intact.

Every civilisation in existence bar the modern West had belief in the soul. but that's by the by. There is as good a reason to believe in an afterlife, than there is to not believe in one.

[Caxoo]

The denial of the existence of God is logically incoherent.

A person could not operate as a person if they did not accept, through faith, the existence of metaphysical concepts such as the validity of human reasoning, the trans-subjectivity of human knowledge, etc, so through their very act of existing, every person is a metaphysician. A metaphysical framework, asserts, through its very existence, a theory and standard of knowledge, and a notion of what is ultimately knowable and true. Such a framework, if it is to be logically coherent, must have as its foundation, a source of ultimate knowledge and truth, which can be described as God, or recognised as a god-like entity, or even simply as the Coherence of Existence.

To deny the existence of this source of ultimate truth and knowledge, is a logical impossibility, because to deny it is to deny the existence of knowledge or truth of any kind; which, as we have already established, man is unable to do.

I do not accept an objective truth. At least, in any way that I can understand and therefore is relevant to me. Instead, I accept what I can see, touch, feel, smell, and taste. Empiricism is my best bet. There is no point (to me) in entertaining thoughts of an objective truth beyond its value in amusement and intellectual masturbation. I DO operate and act with the assumption of an objective truth while simultaneously denying its objective nature and deal with this cognitive dissonance because it's honestly more easy to do so than to go about life wondering "is any of this real?" I.e., I assume my senses aren't lying to me (a practical compromise, given that senses are our only way of interacting with the world), and if anything doesn't go against them, I assume it to be completely true.

Voila! Integrity of lack of faith maintained! Smart argument though

[DaCougarMech]

op throws around philosophy buzzwords to hide the fact that his argument makes big jumps without proving any of its premises

[blablablah]

I do not accept an objective truth. At least, in any way that I can understand and therefore is relevant to me. Instead, I accept what I can see, touch, feel, smell, and taste. Empiricism is my best bet. There is no point (to me) in entertaining thoughts of an objective truth beyond its value in amusement and intellectual masturbation. I DO operate and act with the assumption of an objective truth while simultaneously denying its objective nature and deal with this cognitive dissonance because it's honestly more easy to do so than to go about life wondering "is any of this real?" I.e., I assume my senses aren't lying to me (a practical compromise, given that senses are our only way of interacting with the world), and if anything doesn't go against them, I assume it to be completely true.

Voila! Integrity of lack of faith maintained! Smart argument though

Haha, thanks mate. I can't deny the existence of objective truth though. The implications of its existence are too vast.

[blablablah]

op throws around philosophy buzzwords to hide the fact that his argument makes big jumps without proving any of its premises

I was just describing the human condition, and drawing the necessary implications.

[Maiar]

gotta love the mental masturbation. How to say a lot without saying anything.

Lack of evidence does not imply non-existence.

And you would laugh at me if I told you an invisible gnome showed me the future.

[SHOaks]

OP your username is all that I saw in your post.

[blablablah]

gotta love the mental masturbation. How to say a lot without saying anything.



And you would laugh at me if I told you an invisible gnome showed me the future.

That does not follow.

[DaCougarMech]

I was just describing the human condition, and drawing the necessary implications.

your implications come off as assumptions. a general truth about the universe exists and that's about as far as your argument proves

"ultimate truth" is about as laughable a term as "ultra fact", and you'll have to do a hell of a lot more than write two lines to convince anyone that the existence of fact implies in any way that a god of any non-distorted definition exists

[blablablah]

your implications come off as assumptions. a general truth about the universe exists and that's about as far as your argument proves

"ultimate truth" is about as laughable a term as "ultra fact", and you'll have to do a hell of a lot more than write two lines to convince anyone that the existence of fact implies in any way that a god of any non-distorted definition exists

It'd help if you could show me where I went wrong in my argument. Cheers mate.

[TickleMyPeon]

Why is it a logical impossibility? Man is not debating the existence of knowledge or truth as they both have a place in our ontology, but rather the existence of God is up for debate because there is no proof of an omniscient and omnipotent being other than the proof given by Man who has no knowledge or truth of the existence of God.

If you're argument is that a source of ultimate truth and knowledge has to exist in order for any truth or knowledge to exist...one could argue that the very metaphysical nature of knowledge and truth is subjective to people's realities. Of course there are laws to the Universe, but certain specific knowledge and truths are subjective based on perspective.

If you want you can read the Allegory of the Cave by Plato: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave

Faith in itself is NOT knowledge, having faith in the existence of God is nowhere near the same as having knowledge of God. Which we do not have.

The very concept of God was invented by Man, the concept of knowledge in itself cannot be invented by Man because knowledge exists outside of our belief; it is a metaphysical concept that has proof in its existence through our own relative knowledge of things.

sums up what i was going to say. gj

[PlasticJanus]

This solves nothing. It's all contingent, all says nothing about truth. If you want to deny the knowledge of truth, that's your prerogative, but you're wrong and always will be.

Theories of knowledge and of truth are contingent, yes. If you don't like that, boo-hoo. If, instead, you don't understand it (as seems to be the problem) go take a course in both epistemology and metaphysics.

You're existence is based on unveified and unfalsified assumptions, as I've explained to you ad nauseum.

All that exists does so regardless of any assumptions in our metaphysical framework. Furthermore my belief in existence (whether the existence of my own mind or existence in general) is not based on any unfalsified assumptions, and it counts as knowledge because it is both true and justified, as Descartes's cogito explains.

Every civilisation in existence bar the modern West had belief in the soul. but that's by the by. There is as good a reason to believe in an afterlife, than there is to not believe in one.

No there isn't. I just gave you perfectly good reason to believe that there isn't an afterlife, and you've yet to provide any for the contrary position.

[blablablah]

Theories of knowledge and of truth are contingent, yes. If you don't like that, boo-hoo. If, instead, you don't understand it (as seems to be the problem) go take a course in both epistemology and metaphysics.

You can shove your post-modern, contradictory, "there is no truth" **** up your arse. It's patently false.

All that exists does so regardless of any assumptions in our metaphysical framework. Furthermore my belief in existence (whether the existence of my own mind or existence in general) is not based on any unfalsified assumptions, and it counts as knowledge because it is both true and justified, as Descartes's cogito explains.

Descartes' cogito is pure assertion. It tells us nothing of the human condition.

No there isn't. I just gave you perfectly good reason to believe that there isn't an afterlife, and you've yet to provide any for the contrary position.

No you didn't. You constructed some absurd fantasy about the mind, and then speculated on it. That's absolute ****e.

Plato and Aristotle both believed in the concept of a soul. I'm in better company than you.

[PlasticJanus]

You can shove your post-modern, contradictory, "there is no truth" **** up your arse. It's patently false.

That wasn't a post-modern or relativistic assertion. I'm not saying that there is no such thing as truth, nor that truth is relative to the individual. However, in order to assert that truth exists, it's necessary to choose which criteria by which we evaluate truth, otherwise called a theory of truth. You learn this on the first day of any metaphysics course. The criteria used is correspondence to fact, not some Platonic ideal. Given the null hypothesis, your argument is patently false.

Descartes' cogito is pure assertion. It tells us nothing of the human condition.

Descartes's cogito is true a priori; it is self-verifying. I wasn't saying that it tells us anything about the human condition. I was simply saying that measuring existence by correspondence is infinitely preferable to inventing a God because it does not implement unverifiable or unfalsifiable assumptions.

No you didn't. You constructed some absurd fantasy about the mind, and then speculated on it. That's absolute ****e.

I constructed no such fantasy. I just pointed out things that we've known about the mind-brain connection for decades, and you've decided to stop responding with actual arguments. If you'd care to reread it again and point out any actual fault, I'd be happy to go over it with you.

Plato and Aristotle both believed in the concept of a soul. I'm in better company than you.

Plato and Aristotle lived over two thousand years ago. I congratulate you on the fact that your opinions would have been the norm two millennia ago, but that does nothing to further your argument.

[Maltese-Falcon]

The problem with this theory is that you're basically arguing from a position that everything has a foundation or origin. This isn't necessarily true and is a logical fallacy and science is leaning more towards this more and more.