Do theists sort of think that belieiving in god makes god real?

[Keith&Co.]

In order to lose your faith in God, then God himself should have been the cause of your disappointment.

And that's exactly what drove me away from religion. At least part of it was people outside my head diagnosing my state of mind for me, and putting the blame on me.


Short story longer, i did lose my faith in the Church, first. I left it, looking for a church that had a decent lock on the God i still believed in. Found the same platitudes and attitudes everywhere else.

Searched wider, leaving Christainity, looking for The God, any God, any Gods. All offered versions and traditions failed to compel.

One day, woke up and realized i had been an atheist for a while.

You should say that you have lost your faith in theists.

Along the way, yes.
However, that's only part of the story.
I did continue to search and ended up an atheist.
But in the end, the only evidence i find for any deity is the people who believe in them, claim to speak for them, and attribute good things to them. So, losing faith in the faithful may be tantamount to losing faith in the object of their affections.

After all, GOD was not the source of my faith in the first place. It was from people around me telling me to faith.
When i questioned that, i found no gods taking up the slack from the people...

 

[remez]

SORRY

My last post 169 was incomplete (????? for some reason) here it is again with the complete post.

Yes, it is clear, I noted all of that in the post you replied to. Yet you posted all of that as if I didn't.

Please the semantics here are very precise (its an argument) and you are not totally clear on them. You are misinterpreting my use of the BGV and how it supports the KCA

Specifically I'm only using the BGV to infer a beginning. That is it, nothing more. I'm not using the BGV in any way to say what was there or not there at the beginning. You are extending my use of the BGV to address what was there or not there.

So when you say even if there was a beginning the BGV does not infer God is necessary, I’m actually forced to agree and disagree with you.

I agree with you that BGV has nothing to do with God being necessary. From my position God was necessary long before the BGV was discovered.

Where I disagree with you is that you claim “I inferred that the BGV inferred God was necessary.” I'm not inferring that at all with regards to the BGV.

Remember your charge was that I was playing games with the BGV. Well if I was doing what you were asserting then I would agree. But again I was not claiming that the BGV infers God is necessary, you were.

So specifically how am I playing games with the BGV if all I'm inferring is that the BGV infers that the universe had a beginning?

…… But it doesn't help because, 1) BGV doesn't ........... even tip evidence in its favor (which you don't admit)........

Provide your reasoning for this assertion. As it stands it just your opinion. For I do assert precisely that and provided evidence for my position.

I already did support it by showing what cosmologists say about it. The people who best understand the science disagree with you.

That is just a simple and blind appeal to authority. You offered no science or reasoning. More on that lower in the post.

Again, with the game playing. Or do you have a reading problem? You just quoted me saying, "You use BGV as part of your argument for God, because you think a beginning helps prove God." What I said is true. You use BGV as part of your argument for god. But it doesn't help the argument, even if it means what you thinks it means, because a universe that had a beginning is perfectly plausible within science, as even the BGV paper itself discusses.

Yes I quoted you and purposely and specifically to clarifiy the meaning there……….

……You use BGV as part of your argument for God, because you think a beginning helps prove God.

If you mean that I assert that the BGV supports premise 2 of the KCA that concludes God exists, then YES.

Again the semantics are critical here because this is an argument. Your use of the phrase "part of your argument" blurs the reasoning. The BGV is neither a premise nor the reasoning from premise 2 to the conclusion. The BGV is just one piece of evidence that supports a premise. Specifically and only premise 2. The reasoning from premise 2 to the conclusion is different PART OF THE ARGUMENT not involving the BGV.

Even the G of BGV doesn't believe a beginning is more likely.

I'm not concerned with what he believes, unless he can put some evidence behind it. I'm only concerned with what his theorem most plausibly infers.

That's inconsistent of you since you have quoted Vilenkin outside the paper.

Guth understands the implications of the theorem better than you (and WLC) do. As do Carroll and Page. There is more to cosmology than BGV, which they also understand and you don't.

Yes I did resource Vilenkin. That was Vilenkin presenting the BGV and showing how those other models fared against the BGV. It was Vilenkin "doing the science." It was support for my position.

All you presented in context to Guth, was a picture of Guth holding a laptop claiming that he believes the universe is eternal. No science or reasoning just a picture. That in no way supports your position. Provide the science for Guth’s assertion that the universe is eternal and then you might have something to counter with. A silly picture just doesn’t cut it.

So how are you asserting Page helps your position and/or hurts mine?

And….

Another really critical issue here…..the first 7 words at he top of the Page quote are the most important.

In view of these beliefs of mine, I am not convinced that most philosophical arguments for the existence of God are very persuasive.

All that follows is premised on those first seven words. Contextually, just what are his beliefs?

Answer that and you see why Don Page concerns me little.

No, what he says about whether the universe had a beginning is based on science. Do I need to quote him again?

But the science he presents is based on his radical views of physical reality. Those first 7 words were an important disclaimer to what follows. What are his scientific views that allow him to say what you quoted? I know what those scientific views are and they do not reflect the data we have. You first need to make a case that those views are correct. I’m not going to do your homework for you. Until you can make a case that his views are more plausible, you are simply committing the fallacy of appealing to authority and your counter fails.

That is not a hand wave. I’m prepared to defend the KCA against Page and Carroll. But you need to present a case in the first place and stop blindly appealing to authority.

 

[humbleman]

In order to lose your faith in God, then God himself should have been the cause of your disappointment.

And that's exactly what drove me away from religion. At least part of it was people outside my head diagnosing my state of mind for me, and putting the blame on me.


Short story longer, i did lose my faith in the Church, first. I left it, looking for a church that had a decent lock on the God i still believed in. Found the same platitudes and attitudes everywhere else.

Searched wider, leaving Christainity, looking for The God, any God, any Gods. All offered versions and traditions failed to compel.

One day, woke up and realized i had been an atheist for a while.

You should say that you have lost your faith in theists.

Along the way, yes.
However, that's only part of the story.
I did continue to search and ended up an atheist.
But in the end, the only evidence i find for any deity is the people who believe in them, claim to speak for them, and attribute good things to them. So, losing faith in the faithful may be tantamount to losing faith in the object of their affections.

After all, GOD was not the source of my faith in the first place. It was from people around me telling me to faith.
When i questioned that, i found no gods taking up the slack from the people...

Wow.

I do agree that if I'm not comfortable in a place surely I won't go there.

Family and relatives are the most common source for an individual "to know" about God. I did have such an experience.

I didn't feel disappointed when I noticed the several things happening inside the life of religious people, they are humans like the rest, however, my interest in knowing about God was more from the point of research than from having beliefs.

If you feel that you are living better, that you can smile, laugh, feel free, and do good things in your life, then you are not missing much when you are outside a church. You found peace with yourself, and that is more important than any thing.

Contrary to what many preachers tell around, if God is first and I am second, and I just took God out of my life, then I'm first.

But God still "is there" and I always have my heart ready to be second, but not under the conditions of others but conditioned to a contract, an agreement between God and I.

This is what many men in the bible did, a pact, a contract with God. No one else setting the conditions but God and me. After all, believing or disbelieving in God is a personal thing.

 

[ruby sparks]

What's your position on elves?

 

[Keith&Co.]

I didn't feel disappointed when I noticed the several things happening inside the life of religious people, they are humans like the rest, however, my interest in knowing about God was more from the point of research than from having beliefs.

I find that hard to credit, since your 'research' on homosexual sex is anything but objective. It really seems likely that you were indoctrinated, first, then found ways to shore up your religious beliefs. But that's just a guess.

If you feel that you are living better, that you can smile, laugh, feel free, and do good things in your life, then you are not missing much when you are outside a church. You found peace with yourself, and that is more important than any thing.

I would tend to agree.

So, ultimately, i do not feel any lack in my life that would be satisfied only by the happiness that the Faithful claim to hold, and to be the only ones who truly hold it.

Contrary to what many preachers tell around, if God is first and I am second, and I just took God out of my life, then I'm first.

I didn't take God out of my life. I looked and looked and found no God, just rumors of gods. Taking the deception out of my life was a good step.

But God still "is there"

And AGAIN i ask you for any reason at all to think this is true. Evidence, a good argument, something other than poor math or incredulity, please.

This is what many men in the bible did, a pact, a contract with God. No one else setting the conditions but God and me.

Occam's Razor would suggest that it's YOU setting up the conditions. You and you alone are sufficient to explain the 'contract' you have with what you interpret as god.
Which is fine. Lots of people do that.

I have an agreement with my teddy-bear, Tapioca, that i give him more attention than i give my wife's bear, Cocoa. But the jealousy Tapioca feels? That's really all in my head.

 

[humbleman]

I find that hard to credit, since your 'research' on homosexual sex is anything but objective. It really seems likely that you were indoctrinated, first, then found ways to shore up your religious beliefs. But that's just a guess. I would tend to agree.

So, ultimately, i do not feel any lack in my life that would be satisfied only by the happiness that the Faithful claim to hold, and to be the only ones who truly hold it.

Contrary to what many preachers tell around, if God is first and I am second, and I just took God out of my life, then I'm first.

I didn't take God out of my life. I looked and looked and found no God, just rumors of gods. Taking the deception out of my life was a good step.

But God still "is there"

And AGAIN i ask you for any reason at all to think this is true. Evidence, a good argument, something other than poor math or incredulity, please.

This is what many men in the bible did, a pact, a contract with God. No one else setting the conditions but God and me.

Occam's Razor would suggest that it's YOU setting up the conditions. You and you alone are sufficient to explain the 'contract' you have with what you interpret as god.
Which is fine. Lots of people do that.

I have an agreement with my teddy-bear, Tapioca, that i give him more attention than i give my wife's bear, Cocoa. But the jealousy Tapioca feels? That's really all in my head.

A covenant like God with man is a contract.

In every contract both sides will obtain something from it.

I think I found what God might take for him from such a covenant, but that is a different topic. Not here.

About man, he will obtain something, which is promised in the covenant.

However, as I said before, God puts his conditions.

You want to have a contract with him, then you must consent to those conditions.

You don't like his conditions... aakkk! sorry, the covenant is not for you. Simple.

You might take for granted that humans had reasoning already input in their brains in order to become aware of what is considered good and bad.

Dogs know when they did something bad, but they learned it after once you weren't happy with their behavior. so they just remember the event or they just remember your face or way of acting to know about something wrong.

How humans by themselves settled rules? What motivate them? Power? If power, why then reading Plutarch ancient kings ruled under better amendments than the ones found in the US Constitution? It was not supposed to be the contrary?

In just generations man to reach such just laws in their societies is not in agreement with beasts behavior status compared to humans.

Humans acquired intellect from somewhere else. Please avoid to mention millions of years of humanity if you don't have at least 200 fossils per century. Otherwise will be pure imagination from your part corroborating a never happened "evolution" of the brain in humans thru millions of years

Read the part of creation of Adam and how Eve was formed.

Read it with "doctor's eyes". Forget religion, analyze it with clinical view.

What you will read is a surgeon who will put anesthesia to Adam and make him sleep. The surgeon will cut his side, pull out a bone, close the wound. While Adam is in recovery, this surgeon will perform the most advanced technology to clone Adam using his bone and make a woman. Perhaps took years for Eve to grow up, perhaps she was cloned as an adult already. Perhaps, as a clone, she was a woman with male's face, Adam's face.

These verses of the bible, when read them with doctor's eyes, reveal that whoever was the surgeon, he is 6,000 years ahead in scientific knowledge than us.

This is what makes me think that "he is there".

If this "story" was to fabricated by the ancient man, then ancient men had a better technology than ours.

 

[ruby sparks]

To me, one of the big issues is the problem of evil.

Related to this, though on a lesser scale, is the problem of mischief.

Some think that the existence of elves is a good explanation for this.

What's your take on that, humbleman?

 

[ruby sparks]

[If this "story" was to fabricated by the ancient man, then ancient men had a better technology than ours.

Hm. You think they'd have gotten geocentricity right in that case. And pi. Also that there wasn't water above the firmament. I could go on and on......

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Then, they don't accept the existence of a god by belief.

My faith in gods dwindled and died mostly because of the way the theists around me answered questions. Platitudes, accusations, name-calling and apparently making it up as they went.

That's because you possess an intellect, and the intellectual curiosity that naturally accompanies it. How you feel is certainly important, but at the end of the day what you know and what makes reasonable sense will largely prevail over the emotional glurge arising from your rat brain. Not so all.

So a magic spaceman that is keeping a log of the activity of your sex organs sounds juvenile and intellectually insulting. Therefore you look for a better, more reasonable explanation about someone's claim that there is a magic spaceman keeping such a log. You conclude that the person making such an idiotic claim does not possess the same intellect, the same command of knowledge, the same curiosity and literally the same kind of brain. You conclude that the individual is different, same as any other of the myriad of differences you will encounter within any human group.

And today that group of humans that would have killed you in the past can no longer do that. You are relatively free to live your life without pledging fealty to such asinine stupidities. This is a good thing, but those primitive superstitions about magic spacemen and sexual activity still prevail across large swaths of the human population.

My advice? Call a spade a spade and make no apologies. But always try to help people who are intellectually disadvantaged.

 

[Keith&Co.]

A covenant like God with man is a contract.

But I have no reason to believe gods exist. So if god is a construct of your imagination, your contract with said being is merely a sort of masturbation.

Might as well say that Gandalf has promised to invite you on his next adventure. PROMISED!

How humans by themselves settled rules?

Your incredulity is not an argument i find reasonable or compelling.

What motivate them?

Rules allow for more complicated communities, and for the transmission of learning to new generations. Like weapons, like fire, like designated hitters, developing them changed the course of history, but was neither inevitable nor a gift from a supreme being.

Power? If power, why then reading Plutarch ancient kings ruled under better amendments than the ones found in the US Constitution?

Better is kind of subjective, isn't it? How do you measure 'better?'
And how do you mean 'amendments?' Didn't those kings rule by oral law? Does one actually amend oral law, or just speak new laws?

It was not supposed to be the contrary?

i don't know. Where was Plutarch mentioned in the Federalist papers? I don't have my index handy.

In just generations man to reach such just laws in their societies is not in agreement with beasts behavior status compared to humans.

I'lll take self-serving incredulity for $500, Alex.

Humans acquired intellect from somewhere else.

No real need to believe that.

Please avoid to mention millions of years of humanity if you don't have at least 200 fossils per century.

Pulling numbers out of your ass is not a compelling argument, either.
Can you actually support this demand for 200 fossils per century? Or do you just throw in a high number and feel confident that no one will match it?

Science doesn't work that way. Science theories remain the best explanation we can come up with for the observations we actually make, not some ill-intentioned demand that we can't tell the story until we meet some inflated demand for evidence.

Otherwise will be pure imagination from your part corroborating a never happened "evolution" of the brain in humans thru millions of years

So, you're not interested in how science actually works.




Imagine, if you will, the incredible impact of my surprise.

Read the part of creation of Adam and how Eve was formed.

You mean Adam and Woman.

Read it with "doctor's eyes". Forget religion, analyze it with clinical view.

HOW can you read a myth without religion?

What you will read is a surgeon who will put anesthesia to Adam and make him sleep. The surgeon will cut his side, pull out a bone, close the wound. While Adam is in recovery, this surgeon will perform the most advanced technology to clone Adam using his bone and make a woman. Perhaps took years for Eve to grow up, perhaps she was cloned as an adult already. Perhaps, as a clone, she was a woman with male's face, Adam's face.

::Yawn:: That is NOT a clinical account of the creation in the second chapter. You're adding details from science to try to make your myth seem grounded in science.
We can also read the creation myth to support UFO's and alien involvement in our development.
OR we can read the story and decide that it's allegory, that 'evolution' is everything it appears to be and the story isn't even really meant as history.

Whatever you want to see there, you can.

How do you feel about the theory that the 'rib' that was removed from Adam was actually a penile bone? That this 'just so' story was created to explain why some of the animals that they butchered had one, but Man did not.

These verses of the bible, when read them with doctor's eyes, reveal that whoever was the surgeon, he is 6,000 years ahead in scientific knowledge than us.

Whatever you want, sure.

This is what makes me think that "he is there".

Nope. No, it doesn't.

YOU already think that he's there, THEN interpret the story to match what you want to believe with the world you accept. IF you were convinced of evolution, you'd read Genesis to match that.

If this "story" was to fabricated by the ancient man, then ancient men had a better technology than ours.

The fabrication is on your part, matching your view of technology.

 

[humbleman]

To me, one of the big issues is the problem of evil.

Related to this, though on a lesser scale, is the problem of mischief.

Some think that the existence of elves is a good explanation for this.

What's your take on that, humbleman?

DEGENERATION.

 

[Keith&Co.]

[If this "story" was to fabricated by the ancient man, then ancient men had a better technology than ours.

Hm. You think they'd have gotten geocentricity right in that case. And pi. Also that there wasn't water above the firmament. I could go on and on......

I just think that ONE VERSE about God sterilizing the site before and after the surgery would have saved COUNTLESS lives over history.

I just read about the life of Joseph Lister. How doctors were using knives, saws, aprons and tables that were encrusted with blood and bits from other patient. How doctors resisted the theory of 'germs' for various reasons, and refused to wash their hands before treatment, because they took it personally, the suggestion that they were the cause of harm to the very people they were trying to help.

One verse of scripture made available from the beginning, even if proper TECHNIQUES weren't applied, some effort to make the theory acceptable...

But, no. Pray, sacrifice a lark, anoint with oil, lay on hands... Nothing about boiling tools or even changing the bedsheets.

 

[Keith&Co.]

What's your take on that, humbleman?

DEGENERATION.

In all caps, no less, Ruby. That's GOTTA be convincing, huh?

 

[Hermit]

How humans by themselves settled rules? What motivate them?

The principal rule is: " whatsoever ye would that men should do to you: do ye even so to them." Well, that is the King James Version of it, but the Bible is not the first time it was expressed in writing. Not by a long shot. The Papyrus Ramesseum, kept in the British Museum, was written somewhere between 1650 and 2000 BCE. On one side of it is a story titled The Eloquent Peasant. It includes the sentence: "Now this is the command: Do to the doer to make him do." A later papyrus (ca. 664-323) puts the same command in a negative form: "That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another."

Similar expressions of the same rule have been found among other sources in Sanskrit, Tamil, Greek, Persian and Roman texts, all of them predating the alleged birth of Jesus Christ.

We do not need to invoke a god for this law. The need to live as an individual in a society consisting of other individuals is what motivates it, which is why it was invented so many times in so many societies and so many places throughout history. You might say, rather than god-ordained, it is the product of mother. Mother Necessity, that is, mother of invention.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

[If this "story" was to fabricated by the ancient man, then ancient men had a better technology than ours.

Hm. You think they'd have gotten geocentricity right in that case. And pi. Also that there wasn't water above the firmament. I could go on and on......

I just think that ONE VERSE about God sterilizing the site before and after the surgery would have saved COUNTLESS lives over history.

I just read about the life of Joseph Lister. How doctors were using knives, saws, aprons and tables that were encrusted with blood and bits from other patient. How doctors resisted the theory of 'germs' for various reasons, and refused to wash their hands before treatment, because they took it personally, the suggestion that they were the cause of harm to the very people they were trying to help.

One verse of scripture made available from the beginning, even if proper TECHNIQUES weren't applied, some effort to make the theory acceptable...

But, no. Pray, sacrifice a lark, anoint with oil, lay on hands... Nothing about boiling tools or even changing the bedsheets.

Ignaz Semmelweis helped more people than magic jesus and all the magic jesus minions.

 

[Learner]

How humans by themselves settled rules? What motivate them?

The principal rule is: " whatsoever ye would that men should do to you: do ye even so to them." Well, that is the King James Version of it, but the Bible is not the first time it was expressed in writing. Not by a long shot. The Papyrus Ramesseum, kept in the British Museum, was written somewhere between 1650 and 2000 BCE. On one side of it is a story titled The Eloquent Peasant. It includes the sentence: "Now this is the command: Do to the doer to make him do." A later papyrus (ca. 664-323) puts the same command in a negative form: "That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another."

Similar expressions of the same rule have been found among other sources in Sanskrit, Tamil, Greek, Persian and Roman texts, all of them predating the alleged birth of Jesus Christ.

We do not need to invoke a god for this law. The need to live as an individual in a society consisting of other individuals is what motivates it, which is why it was invented so many times in so many societies and so many places throughout history. You might say, rather than god-ordained, it is the product of mother. Mother Necessity, that is, mother of invention.

The golden rule etc...from the beginning (imo) ... the conscience and compassion / love for exanple; IS part of the image of God.

 

[Learner]

To me, one of the big issues is the problem of evil.

Related to this, though on a lesser scale, is the problem of mischief.

Some think that the existence of elves is a good explanation for this.

What's your take on that, humbleman?

The issue of evil for me is.... "who is willing not to do evil with their "free will?" generallly speaking.

Like the elves perhaps: Satan's image portrayal changed much later, during the medievial period: red with horns and tail holding a trident. Not too dissimilar imo from the word "dragons" to the word "dinosaurs" that did not appear till the 1840's.

 

[Learner]

I just think that ONE VERSE about God sterilizing the site before and after the surgery would have saved COUNTLESS lives over history.

I just read about the life of Joseph Lister. How doctors were using knives, saws, aprons and tables that were encrusted with blood and bits from other patient. How doctors resisted the theory of 'germs' for various reasons, and refused to wash their hands before treatment, because they took it personally, the suggestion that they were the cause of harm to the very people they were trying to help.

One verse of scripture made available from the beginning, even if proper TECHNIQUES weren't applied, some effort to make the theory acceptable...

But, no. Pray, sacrifice a lark, anoint with oil, lay on hands... Nothing about boiling tools or even changing the bedsheets.

Ignaz Semmelweis helped more people than magic jesus and all the magic jesus minions.

If only they would have remembered "cleansiness is next to Godliness",

Besides there were many church hospitals centuries ago run by nuns and monks, so Jesus seems to me more helpful. Old French term for hospital ... hôtel-Dieu, "hostel of God."

 

[ruby sparks]

What's your take on that, humbleman?

DEGENERATION.

In all caps, no less, Ruby. That's GOTTA be convincing, huh?

I don't even know what it means.



My point is that believing in elves as the cause of mischief is as valid as believing in god as being responsible for the creation of the universe. The arguments are of exactly the same nature. It's just that elves have fewer supernatural attributes. They are lesser (supposed) entities of essentially the same kind.

 

[ruby sparks]

The issue of evil for me is.... "who is willing not to do evil with their "free will?" generallly speaking.

How does that work for tsunamis, or cancer? Or for the parasitic worm Onchocerca volvulus, which causes river blindness, and which only has human hosts?