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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.
I've noticed most who proclaim there is no God work very hard to maintain their non-belief, so why would anyone want to convince them otherwise?
There's actually scriptures that seem to instruct not to engage in such.
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.
Okay, I will admit that I replaced every instance of "God" in your post with another amusing concept and couldn't stop LMAO.
Ahem... Please explain how this "God" - whatever it means - had a son who came to earth and sacrificed himself for our sins and gave everyone eternal life.
I did not need to do any reading- Just the bare fact that we are alive - on earth - is a miracle...that miracle is all the proof I need- Thank you...
That is not proof. It is not even evidence. It is an open question. Open questions are evidence for nothing.
However you demonstrate exactly what I mean when I talk about faith as being the art of assuming your conclusion true in advance in order to fit the evidence to it. Your "proof" is nothing more than intellectual masturbation and confirmation bias.
I did not need to do any reading- Just the bare fact that we are alive - on earth - is a miracle...that miracle is all the proof I need- Thank you...
I am alive in the west in the 21st c with enough cash to live on and good health.
I could have been a two year old bronze age kid knocked on the head and buried under a city wall. I could have been a Chinese peasant killed, piled up and burned in the Taiping rebellion. I am not. Where I am is as 'miraculous' as us being alive at all, and no more. That is not proof of the existence of a god, but a far too easy pretext for believing it.
You have every right to believe it is 'proof' but I have every right to disabuse you.
The Swollen Foot Syndrome: God truly IS in the details!
Quote:
Originally Posted by AREQUIPA
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.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Grizzly Addams
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.
"Those atheists" huh? You left out what was truly in your mind I'll just betcha: You really wanted to say "Those damned morally bankrupt atheists" Btw, neither He or the mythical ad-on Jesus cartoon character actually ever achieved any of those oft-cited miracles.
You know, the ones missing from earlier versions of that very "fluid" biblical story book, but were added in later for dramatic theatrical effect? Story tales are so damned easy to write, and to have the illiteratii believe in full on. Seems that's not very hard to achieve, is it?
Like all the side-stepping Dodging and Weaving actions as witnessed in this amazing thread du jour! Seems that every God fearing theist here has gone wild-apple metaporialistic, assigning whatever their favorite poem, rock, thunderous ovation in the skies, or cute little flea-bitten puppy, is God incarnate.
How frickin' convenient!
Why... wait a danged minute here! My foot! It's sorta pulsing this morning (ignore that I wacked it hard yesterday and it resultingly swelled up: Limb edema I think medical science calls it. You guys assign a different meaning, as in:!). Why... I'll BE! It's GOD! He's now present in my foot! Come look everyone! God's in my foot! Glory Be, and PTL!)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nozzferrahhtoo
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.
Science never guesses at what it later calls a theory. In fact, "theories" are well-tested claims based on tests and observations. Your lack of scientific understanding is typical of most all Christian apologists who claim to understand what we technocrats know as fact. If I were leery of the hypothesis of gravity, I'd then set up a series of logical tests of it's so-called power. Then I'd test it to significance as per modern statistical requirements which do, yes, absolutely assure at least some assignable confidence that the findings, whatever they might show, to be accurate.
Even if such a test completely disproves an hypothesis, I would then proceed on with perhaps a better test design. (NOTE: Disprovals of hypotheses happen all the time in honest scientific tests but NEVER in so-called tests of the validity of Christianity. Science is always self-correcting, while you guys simply charge on and adjust the outcomes or conclusions of so-called "tests" to suit your original hair-brained ideas! Fact and easily demonstrable! Seems you have infinite faith in every single one of your fellow Christian hackers!)
As for quibbling ad infinitum:
Quote:
Originally Posted by lovesMountains
Folks on this forum always do
That's simply because we morally bankrupt atheists feel the need to counter the endless outpouring of silliness and outright blatant fakery that persists here in the early 21st Century. How can it be, we of the intelligencia ask over and over, when we see total unquestioning belief in such things as a totally literal interpretation of, say, Noah's Ark & The Great (but impossible...) Fludd. Or of God having laid down the Grand Canyon all in one afternoon with the explicit intent of fooling later geologists and biologists. What a kind, loving and understanding God, eh?
What a dullard, I say.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gabfest
I've noticed most who proclaim there is no God work very hard to maintain their non-belief, so why would anyone want to convince them otherwise?
There's actually scriptures that seem to instruct not to engage in such.
I no longer need to work hard, as you claim to maintain, my total disbelief in unicorns, of dancing fairies out on my lawn at night, of orbiting teapots around the sun, or in a claim made by an obviously uneducated biblical author of all the biblical magic shows . I mean, of course, "educated" by todays standards ... or will you maintain the minstrels and authors of the bible had exactly the same understanding of their real world as the average grade 8 school kid now has? Really You do? I'm not impressed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Oleg Bach
I did not need to do any reading- Just the bare fact that we are alive - on earth - is a miracle...that miracle is all the proof I need- Thank you...
Really now. I've asked you specifically severla times, ,Oleg, to define for me, in simple point form, what you believe our understandings of Evolution and origins are. I m,san, your honest idea of what it is your are so intent on denying. In other words, in case you still don't get it, what it is that we do believe in. Here, let me get you started:
Evolution's Key Elements
1) DNA exists as a biochemical molecule that is capable, when arrayed into a genome code in a living organism, of reproduction and of then reliably carrying it's unique genetic code on to the next generation.
2) That such DNA has been demonstrated to produce genetic variability thourgh chance mutarions as it reproduces, or from a num ber of clerl identified means within it's cell.
3) That such mutations, most likely lethal, but on rare occasions, can be beneficial.
...and so on and so forth.
You can go on from here, and as I say, show us exactly what it is that you know we scientists agree on, but that you do not. In fact, when you ID a point which you vehemently disagree with, you could pehaps do us the favor of telling us why, for example, you'd completely disagree with a point.
Like saying, just as an example mind you, "DNA NEVER mutates in vitro, so therefore mutation-driven changes cannot EVER occur!". Just an example you understand...
I and many others here await your thoughtful and sincere response, which would go such a long ways to us understanding your perspective on these timely and important topics.
Otherwise, having given you the opportunity to express your doubts in a thoughtful and non-combative forum, but without any response from you despite our polite requests so many times, we'll just have to move ahead without you, so to speak. How sad, because then you'll be left behind in the settling dusts of antiquity and irrelevance. Just as we're all seeing happening within the formal Church and it's now fearful administrators. ("Good God A;'mighty: we be losin' our income and security, balanced in the past on the backs of our hugely illiterate congregation.
That damned Internet: spoiling everything we've worked so hard to achieve over the centuries! What with the easy sharing of truth and information, we're all gonners!
Frightened Churchly Fear-Mongering High Priest overheard yowling: "Hey!! I know: let's burn down the Internet. Yeah,. that'll do it! Hit the streets with those old cardboard placards we used to use, but we'll just repaint them with "Burn Down The Unholy/UnGodly Internet! Yeah! That's it! That'll do it!! Yeah!!!
Therefore I have definitively proven that God does not exist.
Care to prove me wrong Moderator cut: deleted ?
Last edited by june 7th; 08-05-2013 at 03:35 AM..
Reason: Rude innuendo.
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The Swollen Foot Syndrome: God truly IS in the details!
