@chrisp-
who are you calling insecure (sounds like derailment to me! as an attack on my ethos)? i would argue that you who believes in God is far more insecure than I am. I need not lie to myself to feel happy.

@Don Corleone
There is nothing subjective about pleasure. Yeah, different things might be pleasurable for every person but the reactions in the brain causing pleasure are the same.

@Crazy Anglican
Well theists point of view falls down to "god can do anything, even if it goes against logic". If you see nothing wrong in this, then of course there is nothing to change your mind. If god can do anything, then there's no longer filters on reality, everything is possible.

P.S. How exactly are my views extreme?

P.P.S. No bible is not perfect, countless violence in it proves that. When we have a vengeful and violent god portrayed then somehow he doesn't seem like a loving father figure at all.

Any religion where men wear long flowing white gowns, I would NEVER trust.....

@Fanas: you state anything is possible with God, even if it goes against logic. This is true. And there are many people with many different thoughts and opinions about God. That said, it is logical for God to be illogical or above logic, as He is outside and above the universe and not subject to its laws, whether it is gravity, causality - or logic. From a human's point of view this would ofcourse result in the statement 'anything is possible'. But, for christians, God is not an abstract concept to ponder about. God has made His way into history, influencing the lives of people and eventually becoming a person Himself: Jesus Christ. How? We don't know, we can't understand. We can just wonder at the mystery of which God Himself tells us. So when you may think 'everything is possible', God Himself hs spoken and acted in our history, telling us who He is and what He wants from us. You can think what you want of it, but He hasn't told us he's riding a pink unicorn each saturday.

Anyway the point is that god is all knowing by definition, that means he knows future, if he knows future then future is predestined, therefore we can't change it, therefore we have no free will.

Oops, mis-post. Hang on a sec.

Ok here's my proper post:

@Don_Corleone: Thank you for suggesting some answers to my questions. I'd like to respond. For clarity I will repeat my original questions, and then your answers, and then my comments:

1. What evidence is there that God exists? As far as I can see there is none. Why would anyone subscribe to a theory for which there is not a shred of evidence?

Don Corleone: "Because there's at least as much evidence for the existence of God as for the non-existence of God."

What evidence? Statues weeping blood?

"The pure extent and importance of religion testifies to the existence of God."

/fail. No it doesn't. The extent of religion proves that lots of people believe in god. It does not prove the existence of God. You basically seem to be arguing "lots of people believe God exists, so this proves that he does". This is a very weak argument in my view. Lots of people used to believe the world was flat, and not spherical. The fact that lots of people believed this did not make it correct.


2. If there WAS a God, and he was 'good' and 'loving', why would he allow innocent people to die on a daily basis?

Don Corleone: "Because life without suffering is miserable. None of this "God is testing us" BS. Think about a world in which no one ever suffers. Life would be totally meaningless."

You have misinterpreted my question. I asked why INNOCENT people are allowed to suffer. It might seem justified for bad people to suffer, but why innocent people? I'm not sure I accept your view on suffering - but either way, it does not answer my question.


3. If there is a God and he wants us to believe in him, why doesn't he prove his existence?

Don Corleone: "Because He doesn't want to interfere with free will, and because a God who is proven to exists could have disastrous effects on the world. Besides, why should He want to? People believing in a proven fact seems like it wouldn't be something particularly pleasing to God."

People believe in proven facts all the time and it does them no harm. Surely if God revealed himself, and proved that he existed, people would stop arguing about him. Religious conflict and the huge suffering it brings would be ended forever.

The real reason God does not reveal himself is that he can't, because he does not exist.

And since you raise the issue of free will, I must say that I agree 100 percent with Fanas when he said: "Anyway the point is that god is all knowing by definition, that means he knows [the] future, if he knows [the] future then future is predestined, therefore we can't change it, therefore we have no free will."

If God existed and were omniscient, then there would be no free will, because the future would be pre-destined.


4. If God created everything, who or what created God? Who or what created God's creator? (Repeat until infinity)

Don Corleone: "This isn't an issue any more than the creation of the Universe without God. It's less, because we have no understanding of what "creating God" would mean."

On the issue of the creation of the universe, I like to believe that the universe has no start or end point, and that the timeline of the universe stretches to infinity in both directions.

I raised question 4 because of the 'intelligent design' argument which seems popular with some people at the moment. It is my view that intelligent design theory is self-defeating. It argues that the universe is so complex that someone must have designed it - and that someone is God. However, God seems pretty complex - so surely by the same argument, someone must have designed God, and someone must have designed God's designer... and so on.

@jamiet
Thank you for a reasoned and systemic response to my suggestions. I also feel I should clarify some points, and respond to others. We have the original question right above, so I will not repeat them.

1) "Because there's at least as much evidence for the existence of God as for the non-existence of God." - what I meant was that there is very little evidence of the existence of God, but none for his non-existence.

"/fail. No it doesn't." - I never claimed proof from this. It certainly isn't proof. As I noted above somewhere, I provided the example to show there is at least some weak - but indisputable - evidence for the existence of God.

2) I very much mean that if innocent people would not suffer, life would have little meaning. This is an interesting philosophical point. I think it's certainly worth thinking about what a world without undeserved suffering would really be like.

3)"People believing in a proven fact seems like it wouldn't be something particularly pleasing to God"-sorry, this was unclear. Certainly God wants people to believe in proven fact. But if God wants us to believe in him, he doesn't want belief from fact.

I don't think omniscience negate free will. Perhaps as Crazy Anglican suggests, omniscience includes branching based on an uncertain future. Omniscience just means knowledge of everything there is to know.

4. I think we agree on this point. God cannot be used effectively as a way to explain the existence of the universe.

@Crazy Anglican

Re: Branching. Are you saying that God knows all the branches that could be taken, but doesn't know which ones will be taken?

For full disclosure, I am an athiest, but I'm not interested in trying to disprove other people's beliefs. I'm just interested in listening to the arguments for the belief.

@ottovonbis,

Silly me. Did I not mention that I am atheist agnostic? After evolution became one of my pet interests almost 10 years ago (when I was 11), I realized that either science was wrong or only some diluted form of deistic creator was possible... it took only leprechauns and air planes to convince me. I'm all for secular state, my blood gets boiling when I hear about children dying when their parents choose prayer over medical attention, I laugh when I see the bulletproof popemobile and lightning rods over churches... But I try not to stick my head into any discussion just because I hear "God". Let the faithheads go at each other sometime. There are plenty of battles to fight. =)

@Chrispminis: Re parents choosing prayer over medical attention: you just said evolution is a pet interest of yours, so surely you can see survival of the fittest ideas will result in the death of these backward behaviours. (we also hold the idea of self-determination as important in our society, and uphold it in certain cases - not that i think society should decide who is or isn't fit or survival, but really... if you value the sanctity of your own blood, and thus refuse transfusions over the value of life, your own priorities are flawed and i don't have the right to tell others that their priorities are right or wrong; i have no problem with you dieing...)

There's a difference between believing in evolution and what amounts to eugenics.

I consider myself quite religious, but that doesn't stop my blood from boiling when I hear about children dying when their parents choose prayer over medical attention. I don't think parents should have that right.

There's also a difference between believing in God and in believing every event is dictated by God's will. God doesn't want Churches to burn down, well that's why we have lightning rods. Anyone who doesn't take precautions because they think God will protect them doesn't deserve His protection.

Eugenics has a bad name.

this is a really interesting discussion. I think alot of people put alot of thought into their responses.
I don't think that faith and science are mutually exclusive. I think a faith without any facts is a blind faith which is not the essence of what God wants. There are scientific facts that suggest an intelligent designer. Judging by #4 on Mr. Corleone's list though I get the feeling I may get railed for suggesting that. That's just where I am at though. I have read books that say alot of scientific evidence points towards an intelligent designer. Who that designer is however is a much different question.

I agree with zoofie. The question of whether there is an intelligent designer is important in the fields of biology and philosophy, but unfortunately, even if we do manage to prove intelligent design, that really has no bearing on the question of the God of the Bible. We can use the teleological and ontological and transcendental arguments for the existence of God all we want, but the fact is that (a) these arguments do not satisfy anyone as to the existence of a God, and (b) even if they did, all you have done is told someone that a God exists who created the world. You can not prove the love of God and the miraculous life, death, and ressurection of Jesus. You can not force someone to see the beauty and complexity of the Trinity or sanctification or the atonement or the incarnation, all vitally fundamental doctrines of Christianity. The love aspect of God is so neglected in these conversations that I find it sad to think that Christians would rather spend their time dealing in abstract arguments for the existence of an impersonal creator than in trying to tell people of the incredible experiences that they have had on an intimate personal level with this Creator.
We will never be able to argue or logicize or debate someone into heaven so why try? The most compelling arguments for Christianity in my experience are those that involve personal joy in finding that God loves us.

@ Fanas

You wrote

"Well theists point of view falls down to "god can do anything, even if it goes against logic". If you see nothing wrong in this, then of course there is nothing to change your mind. If god can do anything, then there's no longer filters on reality, everything is possible."

We're speaking of a word's definition. Omnipotent basically means exactly that. There is really no argument here. If God exists, and he's omnipotent, then free will and his existence (as an omnipotent deity) are not mutually exclusive. An omnipotent deity can by definition make things like that happen.

This argument can not be used in any way to "prove" anything. It's an argument from ignorance. It leaves you on the side of saying "I don't know how that could be done, so it can't" and me on the side of saying "I don't know how that could be done, but it's possible". What do we have in common? We both don't know. Therefore the argument has no real use in determining whether God exists, and as such has no value in choosing to live a religious life or not. It's simply another dead end logically.

As for the Bible being perfect or not. Upon what can you possibly base that? If (as you put it) that "vengeful and violent" God is really deeply concerned about the immortal soul of each person, If he works tirelessly to give as many people as will allow it an eternal existence of happiness. Then the Bible is most certainly perfect, and God is most certainly loving. He just has a set of priorities that you would like to dismiss in order to wrongly depict him as evil.

orathaic, that's a very confused view of evolution. Evolution is something that happens, like an object falling rather than staying suspended above the ground. It is not something that is necessarily "good" or "backward". It's a phenomenon, and any value judgements come from the individual and not from the science. Not to mention the immorality of welcoming the deaths of others nor the impracticality of expecting ignorance alone to remove religion from the gene pool, as though it were largely a heritable trait.

I have no problem with an adult refusing medical treatment and going with prayer (unless perhaps they have a highly dangerous infectious disease and pose a threat to those around them) because it is their choice as a consenting adult. However, these children were not consenting adults making their own choices... their parents should very much be charged for the death of their child.

@ tailmange

you wrote

"Re: Branching. Are you saying that God knows all the branches that could be taken, but doesn't know which ones will be taken?"

I'll have to be up front and say that I have absolutely no idea as to the reality of God's attributes. For the purpose of the argument though I was putting for the idea that a branching timeline would make for a different scenario. In this case God would be able to know all the possibilities of life and could tell the consequences of every choice ever made and (looking ahead) puzzle out those for every choice that ever will be made. In my book that's omniscient. There is knowledge and then there is precognition. If you insist that omniscient has to include flawless precognition (certainly a debatable point), then this idea will not be compelling. If however you don't then this is a workable definition. I preface and end this with the statement that we're arguing about a being that some of us don't believe in at all and others of us agree can't has attributes that we can't know for certain. That being said this is really a word game more than anything else. My actual reasons for belief are far removed from this.

Thanks for the answer. You're right, these arguments aren't the real reason most people believe in a god, but it is interesting to me and presumably many theologians as well.

I'm afraid I've always thought that omniscience includes flawless precognition, and some of the Christians I've spoken to seemed to believe that as well. Why would God need to puzzle anything out? Would that mean there would be a possibility, however slight, of God making a mistake in the prediction? If not, would that still pose a problem
to the existence of free will?

Anyway, these a rhetorical questions really and obviously don't affect your personal belief.

Regarding Eugenics: If people choose actions which will remove them from the gene pool who are we to stop them? Do we have the right to force them to comply with our views on what actions are right? (that going beyond telling them what we think they should do)

Eugenices is more like us deciding that we know best who should live and which genes should be removed from the gene pool. Which again is further from my point of view, because I don't think we should interfere un-neccesarily in other people's choices. (so I do think we should act to preserve our own lives when threatened, thus i could argue that we should act to stop parents from allowing their children from dying. Though I would argue that their parents are acting in what they believe is the child's best interest, and I don't see why our morale authority should trump their decision regarding how to raise their family. Maybe they are right, and God exists, and blood transfusions taint our bodies... so long as they don't try to force others to refuse blood transfusions then I say let them die.)

@zoofie: "There are scientific facts that suggest an intelligent designer."

i). What facts?

ii). If there was an intelligent designer, does this not suggest that the intelligent designer (who must be very complex) must have been intellegently designed?

If you answer YES to question (ii) this poses a further question:

Who designed the intelligent designer of the intelligent designer? And who designed the intelligent designer's designer's designer? And who designed the intelligent designer's designer's designer's designer? (Repeat until infinity)

If you answered NO to question (ii) this also poses a further question:

So the universe is so complex that it must have been designed, yet at the same time God, despite his complexity, either always existed, or just sprang into being, in either case without being 'designed' by someone/something else. In this case you are concluding that it is possible for a very complex thing (God) to exist WITHOUT having been designed. Why can this not also be possible for the universe?

@Jamiet99uk:

Like I said earlier, if God exists He must be outside our reality/His creation/the universe. If not He would be subject to rules of time and space and therefor not even able to listen and answer to millions of dayly prayers. Do you agree with me on that?

Causality is also part of our reality. It doesn't exist without time. In fact, like Hume showed, our brain is 'configured' to find causality wherever we go - while it not nessecarily has to be so. Hume pointed to an apple falling from a table and a person moving his hand. We assume his push has caused the apple to fall but we cannot prove it.

This said, this perhaps is a non-argument when God is outside causality. In fact, he created causality, by creating, as part of His universe.

But what do you think? :)

About eugenics: we've seen where the Nazi government brought us--all 'undesired elements' neatly filtered away.

Yesterday we (christian students in Groningen) had an interesting speech. In Christianity, truth is a person. Huh, what? Yes. Jesus says of himself: I am the way, the truth and the life. But what does this mean? For some time, I have been pondering about this: the truth is a person. The speaker of that evening pointed out that since truth himself is a person - Jesus Christ - we can have a relation with the truth. So truth, for us isn't something of knowing, thinking or stating. It's living. For me, that's hard to implie in an unpersonal forum structure where discussion mainly focus on scholastic intellectual problems. While we debate about the truth or about the being of things we may well forget our personality--and Gods personality. So when we bring you the truth, we bring you a person--and we hope we reflect that Person for Who He is--for He is in us. Would you like to know the Truth? :)

@Ursa: "Like I said earlier, if God exists He must be outside our reality/His creation/the universe. If not He would be subject to rules of time and space and therefor not even able to listen and answer to millions of dayly (sic) prayers. Do you agree with me on that?"

To an extent I agree. Of course I am certain that God does not exist. But IF he did, I agree that it would be very difficult to argue that he was bound by the normal laws of physics as we generally understand them.

I know you'd understand. :) But in that case, why then should He be subject to causality?

I'm not sure what you're asking me here. Can you clarify this question?

Well, if I understand your argument correctly you say:

1) If God has created the universe, who has created God?

2) If you say God 'existed' in eternity, that's no proof for in that case the universe itself could've sprung out of nowhere.

(I hope I get these points correct)

The infinite intelligent designer argument implies causality. Everything, so we humans believe, in the cosmos has a cause. Life was formed on earth, the earth was formed from cosmic debris and gasses, just as the starts which ultimately find their cause in the so-called Big Bang, perhaps the first cause of the Universe (another question would be: where did this BB come from?). Reasonable alternative would be: the Universe's just always been there, it has no beginning or end (but then, we have some evidence of an expanding universe).

About causality, like I stated before, we view the world in causalities. If x, then y. We rely upon those causalities. Even if we don't want to. But to this respect, and it is almost not understandable, that like time, space and matter causality is just one of the elements of our universe. So if we agree, in logic terms, that if God existed he must exist outside the Universe or else He would be subject to His own laws, the laws of nature. Therefor above argument, tho a lot can be said about it, is false: the being of God implies He is not subject to laws of causation. I hope you understand where I'm trying to get--it's hard to use language to descibe something that cannot be described ;)

Another thing, about point two. You say if you believe in an eternal, or rather timeless God why not believe in an eternal universe? The difference here is that God is a Person, i.e. sentient being (for all we understand) and not a system. It depends ofcourse, whether you believe the universe is a cold and desolate where massive powers spread their influence over gigantic distances of unfathomable emptyness--or, you are a pantheïst and believe the universe has a soul or at least there's some intelligence outthere. In Christianity, furthermore in most Western philosophies the universe is a dead place, a large space with things flying around and all sorts of crazy stuff--but the intelligence, the Creator is not part of His creation (at least, until He decided to become human himself). Phoey...

* stars
* a cold and desolate place