Do you believe in God? Why/Why not?

[vivster]

WolfpackN64 said:

vivster said:

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:

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.

This is simply wrong as only one side is claiming proof while the other side is hypothesizing and trying to find proof. The search for proof for or against god may be complicated but the conclusions drawn from having no proof are not. The denial of believing in something without proof does not equal denying the possibility. Denying possibilities is something that you and theists do. Science does not take their own answers they got from empiric evidence and hypothesis as ultimate truth. It merely uses it as a tool and is constantly both trying to disprove or proof their own convictions. How many theists try to disprove god on a daily basis?

The difference here is that if one scientist found undeniable proof that our current foundations of physical understanding are wrong, most of them would be absolutely thrilled about it because even disproving all we know right now will bring us even closer to the actual truth. How do you think theists and their followers will react if presented with undeniable proof against god? They will just say that it's impossible to disprove god and move on with their lives, which is the worst kind of ignorance. Because they have been taught from childhood that believing in something is just as valuable as having proof for something.

It's not just about having or not having proof, or believing and not believing. It's also about what you do with your own conclusions. Believing in something without proof is alright, scientists do it all the time, with the difference being that their beliefs are a hypothesis that has no claim to absolute truth until proven.