Do you believe in God? Why/Why not?

[WolfpackN64]

vivster said:

WolfpackN64 said:

Good question. As for the cosmological argument, it only builds up to God, not against anything else that could be considered a necessary being or event. Problem is most discussion is done back and forth on the same arguments, but eventually someone will circumvent the discussion and look at other possabilities. Sorry if this awnser is somewhat dissapointing.

Don't worry, most of your answers in this thread were. We're used to it by now.

In the end what most people are arguing against is not necessarily the existence of a being that set the universe in motion but rather the portrayal of that being by major religions and the resulting massive social implications that plague us to this day.

I am a man of science and I will not blindly believe in a God that has no proof whatsoever. But I will never deny the possibility that some kind of being jump started the existence of the universe. Mostly because even if such a being exists that it has absolutely no meaning for human life on earth.

JWeinCom said:

WolfpackN64 said:

For one, Quantum particles or virtual particles do not "appear" out of nowhere. They're temporary states.

The assumption that this being is God is jist that, a reasoned assumption. No other necessary being really fits the bill so jumping inductively to this being God is a jump we logically can make.

The explanation for this being being uncaused is that it is a necessary being. The mechanism of which is that due to it's very nature, God would be uncaused.

And lastly, it's only flawed in the sense that you bring non-metaphysical arguments in a metaphysical argument to show how unlikely it would be. That doesn't really work either. Even then, the argument isn't fatally flawed.

Seems to me your argument is basically "I defined God as necessary so he must exist".  It's pretty devoid of any actual content.

If you're proposing a god that interacts with this world, then at some point reality enters the picture.  Unless you're arguing for a purely metaphysical god, you can't discount non-metaphysical arguments.

Going to respond to two at once since I finally feel like I'm reaching the end of my point in the entire thread here.

At first, the "proof" I put forward of God's existance is revelation (can be anything from ancient to modern day revelation), even thrown in a mention of personal experiance. Since that does not suffice for most people (and I understand that) and they want arguments to justify the believe in our portrayel of God, the most paramount question is whether such a being even exists at all. Hence my repeated defense of the cosmological argument.

Having reached the point where the cosmological argument is doubted, but still stands, we have now come full circle to the question: "But why is this necessary being God?". The awnser is, given the argument, we know it must be God through... revelation.

And here we have the crux of the real Christian argument. Tradition founds itself on Rational Theology, which explains that what it has learned is God through... Tradition. Just as the Atheïst critique is Empirical towards tradition, it must lean on Skepticism against Rational Theology, and eventually ends up back at Empiricism asking for proof.

We are seemingly both stuck with circular reasoning. However, the astute philosopher will see we're both arguing on Coherentist lines (in which beliefs can support each other and end up circular, but this does not have to be the case) and neither has build up any conclusive arguments to knock the other off of his foundations.

So we are both stuck without proof, our "truth" in our definition of knowledge, but we can both have justified beliefs in our arguments, which I certainly have as I have put them forward here.

At this point we can recognize the matter of God's existence is a great deal more complicated then many people brashly claim or we can dig ourselves in again and return to our trench warfare.