Yes, but we believe that the universe is eternal, unless you are going to argue that, and I highly doubt that you can prove that. Perhaps God is in a dimension that we cannot fathom, as in Kurt Vonnegut's novel "The Sirens Of Titan," the tranfa-whatever-dibulum or something. In it the man, Niles Rumfoord, is trapped in this scientific phenomenon and appears on every planet for particular points in time all throughout the solar system, apparently trapped within a sunbeam of sorts. Here is the point of this: He could go forward and backward in time, and he knew what was going to happen and thus told people waht they were going to do and did things that did not change the future, but rather helped it more easily maintain it's way. Basically, God could be in another dimension in which we have no comprehension (Just as Einstein has spoke about with various dimensions) and is in past, present, and future all at once. Therefore, he could have created himself at one point, and has always existed despite having to create himself. Confusing, isn't it? Then again, we cannot comprehend it and only come to it with theory. It's like being able to look forward and see your back, and then throwing a baseball at it and hitting yourself. No wonder people have so much trouble with this, they give themselves brain aneurisms just like I just did. -Dan
I have a question, what do you mean by g/God? Do you mean just a higher being, because that is more easily believable than an unmaterial entity that we can only rely on belief via our minds. People believe that we were put here by someone else, perhaps aliens, who would then be considered a god, and we were made in their eyes as was them. However, that would be agains the grain of evolution. WE can create tiny forms of life, can we not? So how is it illogical to believe that someone before us created us in the same way, and that cycle could have always gone on for eons and eons. Perhaps we were what could be said as just a kid's science experiment in a petri dish. After all, we are just carbon when it comes down to it. -Dan
And if we don't don't prove(whatever that means) God's reality, are we to assume that God does not exist?
I think that you cannot say that he does not exist if we cannot physically prove it, simply because we cannot prove nor disprove it, there is no real debunkery happening that can completely disprove the lack of God, am I correct, or have I been out of the loop for years? I have Aetheist friends who even believe in a higher being, so come on now. -Dan PS TOTALLY off topic, I know.
paulisdead: Yes, but we believe that the universe is eternal, unless you are going to argue that, and I highly doubt that you can prove that. ************* M*W: Welcome to sciforums, paulisdead. I like your Username, but I hope you're not referring to yourself! Yes, the universe is eternal -- to us mere humans. It will be here long after we've gone. ************* paulisdead: Perhaps God is in a dimension that we cannot fathom, as in Kurt Vonnegut's novel "The Sirens Of Titan," the tranfa-whatever-dibulum or something. In it the man, Niles Rumfoord, is trapped in this scientific phenomenon and appears on every planet for particular points in time all throughout the solar system, apparently trapped within a sunbeam of sorts. Here is the point of this: He could go forward and backward in time, and he knew what was going to happen and thus told people waht they were going to do and did things that did not change the future, but rather helped it more easily maintain it's way. Basically, God could be in another dimension in which we have no comprehension (Just as Einstein has spoke about with various dimensions) and is in past, present, and future all at once. Therefore, he could have created himself at one point, and has always existed despite having to create himself. Confusing, isn't it? Then again, we cannot comprehend it and only come to it with theory. It's like being able to look forward and see your back, and then throwing a baseball at it and hitting yourself. ************* M*W: No, it's not really all that confusing. The 'original' concept of god is in our dimension, and we see it everyday, weather permitting. The problem is an error of semantics. The 'original' god to ancient humans was the sun which evolved into the 'son of god.' The 12 signs of the zodiac were the constellations, later called the apostles. God didn't create himself. Everything was created by the Big Bang. It was like an explosion probably taking billions and billions of years to occur. We are still experiencing the ripple effect from the BB, but according to our perception of relativity, it is happening so slow that we can't really perceive it. However, now that mankind has created the measurement of time, we can see and feel every 24 hours go by, every day go by, every week go by, every month go by, and every year go by. As of yet, we cannot perceive the past return or the future we have. All we have in this dimension is the present. ************* paulisdead: No wonder people have so much trouble with this, they give themselves brain aneurisms just like I just did.-Dan ************* Dan: It's simple, really. The problem is that Christians, Jews and Muslims would disagree with my theory. For some reason, they don't quite understand that the monotheistic god they believe in was only their anthropomorphized sun god of ancient Egypt. Again, welcome to sciforums where all your questions will be answered with love. ~ Medicine*Woman
Yeah you're right, the question posed in this thread can never really be answered satisfactorily by reasoning or otherwise. It's the same with history in that it cannot be proven; one could always argue, even against photographic evidence, that an event were some sort of conspiracy. Nevertheless, for me the fact that we exist at all as humans shows beyond reasonable doubt that a creator exists (it also happens that I have nothing to lose and everything to gain in believing). As for the easter bunny, I'm sorry to report that he (or she) was killed in a traffic accident some time ago. I saw it in the newspaper.
Medicine Woman, your theory is quite intriguing and I don't doubt that the egyptians might have worshipped the sun, considering that they built pyramids oriented in a particular way towards it. However, according to the bible, God made himself known very early on to people such as Noah and Abraham. If the concept of God originated not from himself but from the sun, I don't see why the early authors would have any reason to replace that with a more abstract concept.
Ok I'll go with that and rephrase my premise: does lack of evidence make theism irrational? Sounds like hard agnosticism, that we cannot know one way or the other. How do we know we can't know?
We can't disprove anything supernatural. But we can firmly assert that it is highly unlikely. God is supernatural. The supernatural doesn't exist. God doesn't exist. I will provide strong logical evidence showing why the supernatural doesn't exist. Is there any need for a first cause? by Nathaniel Branden: Question: Since everything in the universe requires a cause, must not the universe itself have a cause, which is god? Answer: There are two basic fallacies in this argument. The first is the assumption that, if the universe required a causal explanation, the positing of a "god" would provide it. To posit god as the creator of the universe is only to push the problem back one step farther: Who then created god? Was there a still earlier god who created the god in question? We are thus led to an infinite regress - the very dilemma that the positing of a "god" was intended to solve. But if it is argued that no one created god, that god does not require a cause, that god has existed eternally - then on what grounds is it denied that the universe has existed eternally? It is true that there cannot be an infinite series of antecedent causes. But recognition of this fact should lead one to reappraise the validity of the initial question, not to attempt to answer it by stepping outside the universe into some gratuitously invented supernatural dimension. This leads to the second and more fundamental fallacy in this argument: the assumption that the universe as a whole requires a causal explanation. It does not. The universe is the total of which exists. Within the universe, the emergence of new entities can be explained in terms of the actions of entities that already exist: The cause of a tree is the seed of the parent tree; the cause of a machine is the purposeful reshaping of matter by men. All actions presuppose the existence of entities - and all emergences of new entities presuppose the existence of entities that caused their emergence. All causality presupposes the existence of something that acts as a cause. To demand a cause for all of existence is to demand a contradiction: if the cause exists, it is part of the existence; if it does not exist, it cannot be a cause. Nothing does not exist. causality presupposes existence; existence does not presuppose causality. There can be no cause "outside" of existence or "anterior" to it. The forms of existence may change and evolve, but the fact of existence is the irreducible primary at the base of all causalchains. Existence -not "god" - is the First Cause. Just as the concept of a causality applies to events and entities within the universe, but no to the universe as a whole - so the concept of time applies to events and entities within the universe, but not to the universe as a whole. The universe did not "begin" - it did not, at some point in time, "spring into being." Time is a measurement of motion. Motion presupposes entities that move. If nothing existed, there could be no time. Time is "in" the universe; the universe is not "in" time. The man who asks: "Where did existence come from?" or "What caused it?" is the man who has never grasped that existence exists. This is the mentality of a savage or mystic who regards existence as some sort of incomprehensible miracle - and seeks to "explain" it by reference to nonexistence. Existence is all that exists, the nonexistent does not exist; there is nothing for existence to have come out of - and nothing means nothing. If you are tempted to ask: "What's outside the universe?" - recognize that you are asking; "What's outside of existence?" and that the idea of "something outside of existence" is a contradiction in terms; nothing is outside of existence, and "nothing" is not just another kind of "something" - it is nothing. Existence exists; you cannot go outside it; you cannot get under it, on top of it, or behind it. Existence exists - and only existence exists: There is nowhere else to go.
Assuming that N. Branden, shares the same strong, hard opinion as yours, on what non-circular reason does he base the statement "the supernatural doesn't exist"?
you are saying here that there is nothing left to discover, your super tools have explored everything there is to explore and the conclusion is 'nothing exists that we cannot percieve' its like a blind man declaring 'i have seen the world with my own eyes and there is nothing to look at'
on the fact that, it has no objective effect, on the five senses. correct, but they would'nt be super tools just your senses. of course you could always believe, your imagination is real, could'nt you.
replace 'supernatural'--a term which suggests something more than natrual--with 'deepernatural'......so a deeper sense of natrual would imply spirituality wouldn't it? This is what pre-patriarchal Earth religion was all about. experiencing reality in a deeper way. beyond the confines of an egoic boundary, or rigid sense of one's self Can THat be proven? how you mean? by the criteria of a mindset that dismisses subjectivity? obviously not. that mindset is coming from a sperficial understanding of the individual and reality
I thought you first used the terminology supertools, but it was godless. so I'm sorry for the mixup. however we all have things to enhance our senses, sometimes just feel more normal it's your senses that discern things not the enhancements, the enhancement just help like hearing aids, glasses, etc..
Wrong!. Wrong again!!. What I mean is that every thing that we perceive, with our telescopes, Hubble for example, Microscopes, quantum physics, etc..is all that we know that exists, I've never declared that we've discovered everything there is to discover, fact is we've barely scratched the surface. However what I am saying is that no other "reality" exists beyond this one, no other existence exists beyond this one, because in order to prove such an existence one would have to do it from that "other" existence, since you can't than there's no way to prove any other existence other than the one we can perceive. Hence no "outer, or other" dimension of existence exists, because in order to belive such a farce you would be denying this one!. Godless.
replace 'supernatural'--a term which suggests something more than natrual Actually, it means NOT existing in nature. This is what pre-patriarchal Earth religion was all about. experiencing reality in a deeper way. No, it was the same as it is today, people believing in things that don't exist. If a god existed, there would be a single religion with every person on earth knowing that god.
but that does not say that in 'this reality' we have percieved all that exists. so there is existence existing beyond our perception of existence.
Um.... I can barely 'prove' that I am really sitting on a chair typing this message or that an apple really exist. Descartes' radical doubt: since I know that I have been deceived by my senses before, there is no way I can prove that they are not deceiving me right now. Hume's skepticism and the problem of induction: we only gather information from our senses and these form our ideas. However, ideas can never be only founded on reason alone, we rather function by habit and joining events together. In addition, there is no rational foundation to believe that what occured the first 100 times I did something that it will still occure the 101st time. This said, reason itself is bankrupt and powerless to form absolute judgements. Russell also had a similar complaint concerning epistemology, but my memory is shaky and I don't feel like digging it up again. (So go look if your that interested). This said, there is no way I can prove the existence of God more than I can prove that an apple is really in the room and really red. Humans function by conjectures which are not founded on anything else than contingent experiences which could logically change at any whim. Thus we are stuck with conventional wisdom. Prisme P.S. Despite all the above, Descartes had an interesting argument as to the existence of God which escapes the problems of senses: since nothing in this world could trigger our senses in the belief of a God (see, touch, smell, taste, hear), the idea of God must have been ingraved by our Creator in our souls. That is why we have a distinct cognitive impression of a unknownable and absent thing in the world.
banana: Medicine Woman, your theory is quite intriguing and I don't doubt that the egyptians might have worshipped the sun, considering that they built pyramids oriented in a particular way towards it. However, according to the bible, God made himself known very early on to people such as Noah and Abraham. If the concept of God originated not from himself but from the sun, I don't see why the early authors would have any reason to replace that with a more abstract concept. ************* M*W: Well, there's the problem -- the bible. If Moses wrote the first five books and talked about his monotheistic Yahweh, he was referring to the Sun. However, it's highly doubtful that Moses did the writing, especially since his own death was described in detail. I don't believe that "God made himself known," since early humans perceived the Sun to be God. The "early authors" perpetuated the mythos of the Sun God and, as time passed, the original monotheistic deity was anthropomorphized which complicated matters. Bottom line, the sun's the sun, and there is no God.
