God's Existance

[Aloysius]

Basically it boils down to this. There are two fundamental possibilities, either everything will exist, or it will not exist. If you accept that everything does exist and are not some loony nihilist, then we can continue: everything does exist. But why is there not oblivion? Why is there not absolute nothingness? Assertion: Something causes everything to exist instead of oblivion. That something, we could call "existence" and see it as a force, or we could call it "God"... doesn't matter to me, all I know is that it is the basis of Existence, that which is the very definition of existence and causes everything which does exist to exist and causes everything which does not exist to not exist. And those are the definitions of God as per Genesis 1:1 and Exodus 3:14.

Question, then: is this force, this causation, this "existence", something which is personal? Answer: well, if we accept the paradigm which places this force as the causation for all that does exist to exist then to know something about its nature, we take something that does exist and fit it into the same formulated question through which we arrived at the conclusion that there is a force of existence. In this case: personality. There are two fundamental possibilities: either personality exists in the world, or there is no personality in the world. You know from experience that you yourself have personality, you are a person, and thus personhood exists. The causation of personhood must then be either equal or greater than your own personhood, as something less than personhood itself could not cause the existence of personhood.

Probing the nature of this "existence" force in this way, you really can deduce that the force of existence is all things good and perfect, the most perfect possible being, because everything that does exist must have its source in something either equal or greater than itself, but most likely greater than itself. And if something is the source of all of one or the other quality in the entire universe, it must then be the perfection of that quality by which to compare all minor aspects of that quality.

This all assumes the logically sound understanding that evil does not exist as a positive reality, but is only a twisting of good things. For instance: murder... free will is a good thing, life is a good thing, an ax is a good thing, but using those three in combination produces evil: it twisted good things. Putting that through the formula doesn't work, because that can be broken down into all good things which are indeed qualities of "existence" or "God" but need not logically be found in combination in the ultimate God. and since it is better than everything else, the same is true of attempting to extend imperfections up to God, because imperfectins are merely things which have degrees of non-goodness, God would be the perfection of the goodness that they do have.

[Socrates]

[quote name='heshmafluff' post='1319146' date='Jul 8 2007, 09:23 PM']You say "IS" the explanation with much confidence. If science ever goes past that point (which I doubt) you and many other people will have to eat your words (unless all they find is God. which would be exciting).

Not to disagree, since I believe that to be the truth, but if you were ever in a debate with an atheist I would say something along the lines of how since science has nothing past that, we believe that God is the first cause

or something. that way if there are any new developments you don't have to go back on previous statements (like the Catholic Church did with Limbo).

I will restate though that I agree with you entirely about God being the first cause.[/quote]
Without God, atheists usually explain the existance of the universe by positing some form of infinite regression, which is hardly intellectually satisfying.
Many will acknowledge the "anthropic principle" (that if one of countless factors about the nature of the earth and the universe were even slightly different, the development of intelligent life such as humans would not be possible), but explain this by positing a succession of infinite universes (at least one would "get things right"), or say simply that our universe must be the only one possible.

However, their beloved Okham's razor would favor a God rather than some system of endless universes as an explanation of how our universe came to be.
Such an explanation is rather like saying the works of William Shakespeare must have come about by an infinite number of monkeys randomly hitting type-writer keys for an infinite number of years.

Edited July 10, 2007 by Socrates

[CatholicCid]

[quote name='heshmafluff' post='1319146' date='Jul 8 2007, 09:23 PM']You say "IS" the explanation with much confidence. If science ever goes past that point (which I doubt) you and many other people will have to eat your words (unless all they find is God. which would be exciting).

Not to disagree, since I believe that to be the truth, but if you were ever in a debate with an atheist I would say something along the lines of how since science has nothing past that, we believe that God is the first cause

or something. that way if there are any new developments you don't have to go back on previous statements (like the Catholic Church did with Limbo).

I will restate though that I agree with you entirely about God being the first cause.[/quote]

I think this is actually pretty insightful if you think about how he said "is the explanation". That's where faith comes in.
In a debate, I do not believe such a distinction has to, or really should be made. At most, it should be somewhat assumed in a generous way by any debators. The statement "we believe this because science has yet to explain it" should just go along with the general idea that you are debating with the knowledge currently available to you. We though are able to define this 'unknowingness' by our faith. The statement then turns into "we believe this because we have Faith..."

[Hirsap]

I think this thread may be appropriate for consideration of this argument for God's existence. It's linked to in the Defense Directory I think. I speak of what is called the Kalam Cosmological Argument.

1) It is centered around the concept of the impossibility of an infinite set, and argues that since the universe, if it was eternal, would have to have had an infinite number of events prior to the present moment.
2)However since it is impossible for this actual infinite to exist in the first place (owed to the contradictions and absurdities arising when one assumes the possibility of an actual infinite existing in reality), it is reasoned that the universe began, and therefore, has a cause transcendant to it. E.g.: the present moment could not be reached if it takes an infinite number of events to reach it.
3) This leads to a timeless Being existing; a Being which is Personal, owed to how only a Being with the capacity to will something is necessary to bring about a created universe. Now this is what I understand of the rest of the argument to an extent . For think about it: if it were a blind force constrained to bring about an effect through irresistable natural impulse, and this 'force' were changeless (not being bound by time), then the conditions for the effect would always have existed. Then the universe would always have existed, but this is shown not to be the case (above). On the other hand, if this Being had not the natural impulse to produce the universe, then the universe would never have existed. The only way to get around this is to assume a Being with intelligence and will to direct its power to produce an effect within time (in creating time).

I realise this goes against St. Thomas' method, insofar as it requires the universe to have had a beginning. (Whereas St. Thomas Aquinas' arguments work even if we assume the universe is eternal). Still, I think it's an interesting argument.

[heshmafluff]

[quote]But why is there not oblivion? Why is there not absolute nothingness? Assertion: Something causes everything to exist instead of oblivion.[/quote]

This is an excellent answer. I have been in debates like this more than once, and have never heard the question why thrown in. It has always been about the hows and the whats...

Thinking about this, the only answer is God. Anyone who tries to answer something different must admit that there is some force behind everything (the existance of God) and then a reason for it (the Will of God) and in the end would be stuck.

Again, I like this answer; thank you very much for bringing it up.

[Justified Saint]

On such questions of existence proofs (principally of God of course), I like to keep in mind what Manfred Frings has said in summarizing the Catholic Phenomenologist Max Scheler:

"Existence itself is not provable. What can, strictly speaking, be proven are only propositions that have already been found. Furthermore, proofs can only pertain to already known existing things. The object must be there first in order to be able to be proved. In the philosophy of religion, therefore, proving the existence of God begs the very question in that the existing obejct is not there first."

I have found the foregoing usually to be true since most existence proofs tend to presuppose the very categories of being necessary to establish God's existence. God's existence can be inferred, deduced, implied but "proven" seems to strong for me since such language and its accompanying experiments tend to reduce God to a principle of scientific knowledge.

[Aloysius]

only if you say "scientifically proven". It is an erroneous precept of materialist modernity that only science can prove something; philosophy and logic can indeed prove something as well, it's just more easily disputed in our times. But once upon a time something proven by theology would have been held more sacrosanct than something proven by science; it's all in the focus you give to these things. but there are different types of 'proof' and science and math do not hold exclusive copyrights to the word 'proof"

anyway, I disagree with your definition of proof and do indeed believe that philosophy can prove things such as the existence of God.

[carrdero]

[b]can God's existance be proven?[/b]
Sure but proving this to someone else who hopes this entity happens to have the same aspects as they expect is something else entirely.

[Justified Saint]

[quote name='Aloysius' post='1331007' date='Jul 16 2007, 01:15 PM']only if you say "scientifically proven". It is an erroneous precept of materialist modernity that only science can prove something; philosophy and logic can indeed prove something as well, it's just more easily disputed in our times. But once upon a time something proven by theology would have been held more sacrosanct than something proven by science; it's all in the focus you give to these things. but there are different types of 'proof' and science and math do not hold exclusive copyrights to the word 'proof"

anyway, I disagree with your definition of proof and do indeed believe that philosophy can prove things such as the existence of God.[/quote]

Yet, at least in the spirit of the definition above, it is impossible to prove that God exists since God is not an object set before onself as though an object among many others. "Proof" in the scientific sense is a matter of manipulation and if there is any legitimacy to you notion of different understandings of "proof", the theological one cannot be at all confused with the scientific one. For me, I have no problem reserving the exclusive right "to prove" to math and science because, with the definition above, they can only ever be concerned with facts and the manipulation of objects. If this should be a matter of discomfort to religious people, that only suggests to me an anxious insistence on the very things that science does.

Along these lines I would borrow Heidegger's distinction between calculative and meditative thinking. Calculation is a matter of proving, but meditation is a matter of thinking itself.

Edited July 17, 2007 by Justified Saint

[FattyBones]

God's existence can be proven scientifically. Pray for a large number of things. They must be possible and not evil, ie God can and would grant these parayers if He existed. Figure out what the odds are of those things happening, at least to the stage of "Likely/Even/Unlikely" . If significantly more of the things happen than chance dictates do indeed happen, then God exists. Of course, prayer is like bug repellant for most Atheists, so they'll never try it. I tried this experiment, and it is a large part of why I beleive in God today.

However, I'm pretty sure it goes against something or other, perhaps in the Bible, to "put God to the test". I did it anyway, observed the good results, and then ate some bacon.

[FattyBones]

Oh, and as for the big bang . . . (To atheists)

You see a building and you think "a hundred people worked for a month to build this".

You see a mountain and you think "vast geological forces twisted and crushed the earth's crust into this shape".

You see something common as the sun shining and you think "Thermonuclear reactions are changing molecules and realeasing heat and light."

But you see the world in all it's complexity, and think "It just happened."

"It just happened." is a poor, pathetic use of Okham's razor.

Fie!