Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Worse than that, it is the gap for God argument combined with the 'label everything God' argument. And as the whole is more than the sum of its parts, is more than twice as bad as both.
So in the end God can be neither proven, nor disproven. You guys sure wasted a lot of time bickering.
Not at all. There is utility in pointing out... continuously and constantly... that the claim there is a god is not just slight but ENTIRELY unsubstantiated and is therefore no more true or useful than anything else you simply make up on the spot.
I wrote a very similar proof of God's existence here, with a slightly different definition of God
And it similarly vacuous in that it says almost nothing at all. It is just the linguistic relabeling of things using the word "god". Nothing more.
Plus the nonsense in your link are complete non sequiturs to your thesis such as the line "Real life Atheists are not reasonable people. While an Atheist may accept gravity, he will not accept yahweh or natural law because he denies morality."
That is just false and empty ad hominem strawmannery that takes away from, not adds to, your blogs opinion.
This ploy of just finding something we all accept like 'beauty', 'morality', the Unknown, 'nature' and attach the label 'God' to it and say 'Hey -God exists' is no more than a rhetorical trick.
The 'God' label - should it be accepted - is then used to suck in Bible, Jesus, and some kind of worship ritual.
I am personally offended that anyone would think we are going to be taken in by such obvious intellectual dishonesty.
I might add that I wonder if it's a trick most people who do it don't realize they're doing. I don't know how it works exactly....
I think some people tend to find something to call god - love/the universe/peach cobbler/etc. -then attach more complex characteristics onto it without entirely knowing they're doing it.
They make their own religions...and they sometimes get irritated at people who don't agree with their definition of god, or who don't follow their religion, just like some theists who follow organized religions do.
The up side is that the "god is love" types can be quite friendly (in my experience)...even while their god of love slowly mutates into a being with appendages and a personality, somewhere in the back of their minds...and they begin to assume (somewhere in the back of their minds) that when you say you believe in their god formerly comprised of nothing but love, you also believe in the newly spawned one, with newly grown arms and legs and a sombrero.
Then finally...we have this:
Spinach-Eating Huitzilopochtli!
I have composed haikus in his honor:
Great spinach-eater!
We like that you eat spinach!
Not sacrifices!
Go battle the moon!
Eat lots of spinach great one!
Not sacrifices!
Go battle the moon!
Keep the sun rising each day!
Popeye showed the way!
Speak for yourself. I'm another person who accepts the fact that everyone will have their own view of god.
All people and each religion has a different perspective, that is just human nature. Just as a color blind person is able to see certain colors and not others, everyone has an individual view of what 'god' is. Just because there is a majority that says god is a supreme being in heaven does not make it so. All that makes is a majorities perspective. Prior to the bible and those who wrote it, primative man had a different view of what was considered a supreme being.
In many places, it is -wrong- for an adult to have sex with a child, in other places that is an accepted thing. So because the majority say its wrong, then that makes it wrong for everyone, even where it is accepted and been part of the culture for decades?
Word use and popular definitions change. Take the word 'gay'. Gay used to be used to convey the feeling of joy and happiness. Today when the word is used it means either a homosexual person, or is describing an item that is 'not right'.
Two definitions that are completely in contrast and unrelated to the words original definition.
I agree.
I've posted this several times...applicable here too:
From a strictly "Real World" standpoint...all that one has to do is give their definition of "God", and that covers it.
MOF...If one were to say, "To ME, God is the big rock outcropping on my property"...and that rock outcropping does, in fact, exist...God then exists--as that person defines God.
Another can't then turn around and say, "That rock outcropping may exist...but it isn't God...show me evidence that it's God".
That's not how "God" works...God doesn't have to be some thing, or person, or action--it can be, but it doesn't have to be...God doesn't have to be something tangible, or even in any way discernible beyond a conceptualization..."God" is whatever anyone might define/perceive "God" to be...NOT what someone might think God MUST be, to be God.
Since "God" need be nothing more than the perception by someone that something or someone is "God" to them...the evidence of the perception of God, IS the evidence for God.
So...if ANYONE says they have a perception of God (and 98% of all the people that have lived DO)...and they actually DO have that perception, thus their perception exists...then God exists.
Even if God is just the concept of God in the conscious thought of the masses...if that conscious thought of God does, in fact, exist...then God does, in fact, exist.
Prove that anyone, anytime, EVER considered something/anything or someone to be "God"...and THAT is all the "hard evidence" that would be needed to prove the existence of God.
As respects, "The Way It Works In The Real World"..."God" is a conceptualization, a perception...like labeling someone a "king" or a "champion", for whatever reason you care to perceive them as that.
I'm sure you've heard someone call some athlete, entertainer, musician, or other, a "God"...or some woman a "Goddess"?!
"God" is a TITLE...regardless of what some DEMAND a "God" be to be "God". That title can be assigned to anyone or anything one cares to define/perceive as such.
Thus...all that has to be "proved" is that the perception/conceptualization of "God" has occurred in anyone at any time, to "prove" that "God" exists.
Like something/someone you "know" to be "Your Love", or "Your Hero"...you can assign someone/something as "Your God".
Of course...some will not accept this...because then "God" most certainly exists...and their "God Allergy" compels them to reject that concept at all costs.
This would never work because those atheists use concepts such as gravity as reasons to prove God doesn't exist. Let's me put it this way. If Jesus couldn't convince people God exists by walking on water, or changing water into wine, or being resurrected, then these very simplistic examples sure won't accomplish that either.
Did Jesus walk on water? It's odd that Luke doesn't mention it, even though he writes about the events at Bethany.
Did Jesus change water into wine? Nobody but John mentions it.
Did Jesus resurrect? The stories about it are so totally different that it cannot be regarded as credible. Mark doesn't even have a story about it, and a later summary had to be added later on.
That's not how "God" works...God doesn't have to be some thing, or person, or action--it can be, but it doesn't have to be
Then no word "has to be" what it is. "Cake" could mean my car. "Stupid illiterate forum poster" could be an airplane.
But for communication to work there has to be at least some consistency to language. It does not have to be static and rigid either, but a certain minimum level of consistency is required. "god" has some very common meanings and relabeling things that already have labels as "god" for no other reason than to be able to say "god exists" does nothing at all save make the speaker look silly and desperate.
It is just linguistic trickery and desperation we are seeing from the OP and people like yourself. Nothing more.
This only takes a second and it really irritates certain people *Cough* Dawkin's Witnesses *Cough*.
Anyway, first, what is God? To answer that question, let me tell a quick story:
Two college guys, one artsy, one a frat boy, are sitting in their dorm. The artsy one says "hey, let's go to the beach and see some beauty." The frat boy stands up, convinced his roommate means girls in bikinis and says "sure, let's go!"
They get to the beach, and it's not what the frat boy had in mind. See, the Frat Boy is from the East Coast and has newly arrived at University of Washington in Seattle. The beach is one of our wild beaches here in the Washington State. It looks like this:
The frat boy sees no girls, no boobs, and screams "there's no beauty here!" The artsy guy says "look at those cliffs! There is plenty of beauty here"
The frat boy screams "everybody knows beauty is girls in thongs with big boobs!" and walks away.
Moral? Beauty is a nebulous term.
God is like that: a nebulous term. Always has been. If it wasn't, then there wouldn't be hundreds of religions, each with a different definition for God. From omnipresent to omniscient but not omnipresent, from pantheist to pantheonist, they all have a different conceptualization for God.
So, now, keeping that in mind, let me prove God exists:
“God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It's as simple as that.”-Joseph Campbell, "The Power of Myth"
So, God, as a metaphor for something within and without, beyond and near, as the thought between the thoughts and the sound of silence and the movement of stillness etc, does exist. God is that thing which is there, but can't be defined by human language...and no, I don't mean that Dawkin's fallacy of the "God in the gaps." It is not about an explanation for unexplained phenomenon, but it is that which is within and without that can't be quantified into human language. God is not an explanation for why the room exists, but it is the thing you feel in the stillness of the room which you can't name.
And spare me, SPARE ME, the old "well, you're just saying God is a feeling" line. Maybe it is...AND?! So what, our human emotions mean nothing? Are you advocating we all become robots?
And if you use the same other, tired line of "that isn't really God", just reread the story about the frat boy who thought the cliffs on the beach aren't "real beauty."
Also, no need to mention the "well, that's not what most people think God is, so you're wrong" "argument" either. That's a argumentum ad populum, a fallacy. Just as "most people" don't think an abandoned factory would be beautiful, I do...so, is the abandoned factory not beauty, or is beauty (like God) simply a nebulous term?
So, God is proven. End of story.
Might as well call it a jelly bean.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
