Evidence for God

You eat catfish too.

 

I cut the whisker off first, so no one can tell.

 

Parental and societal indoctrination is the reason why most Americans are Christian and 99% of Arabs are Islamic.

 

What I hope for the future is that every parent in any country have the freedom to instill the values that they feel best as parents, whatever those value are, rather than let a government instill the values deemed best by the state.

I am not a parent and its too late for me to be a parent, but I sure hope that parents will never loose the freedom to teach their children. We as society just hope that with the freedom that parents have that they do not teach their children rascism or hatred.

 

My point wasn't that children should be brought up by the state rather than their parents.

My point was that depending in which country/culture/religion you are born into - 9 times out of 10 -that is the religion/belief system you adopt for the rest of your life. So how can one know the real truth, or have the free will to choose it, if you have a 90% plus chance of adopting your parents religious beliefs?

 

My response wasn't to you Cranky, but was to the Dawkins paper in that he implies that someone should step in and take the responsibility from the parents because they are teaching their children about God.

I believe the statistics are high for children with Christian parents to walk away from church. I was one of those who did this. My mother tried to instill those values in me and I would have nothing to do with the belief though I was forced to go to church until my teens. So to those who are dreadfully fearful that children are brainwashed into believing in Christ can rest because in the US at least most children will make their own free will choice once they leave home for college or life. Anyone who is a true believer in Christ knows that belief in Jesus is and was always a free will choice. In the bible there is no example of Jesus / God ever forcing anyone to believe.

 

Are you guys still beating this dead horse? There isn't any evidence for god, all they have is faith. Faith is just a nice (spin) sounding word for "irrational belief maintained at all costs without any evidence whatsoeverl". All the so called 'evidence' is just wishful thinking. Like, I believe it because I want it to be true. You know, the lie we all want to hear; that there is life after death! bk

 

Or like, "my spouse really loves me?" Or my friends "really like me?" Faith is often based on observable behavior or phenomena. We know the mass of certain stars because of the way they affect the motion of other stars, the directions of their travel by the shifting pattern "dopler effect" of their light AFTER it leaves the source. We don't really need to SEE the star to know it exists in many cases.

Consider the question of faith next time you travel through a green light at an intersection without really looking both ways.

Is all faith, "blind faith?"

 

And that is the rub with many non-believers in that my faith, and what I consider faith to be, has met a burden of proof within my own context of assessment. It is as real to me as someone's car, and just because I cannot prove it to someone does not mean it has not met my burden of proof. Many of the reason presented for why I believe were not relavant to my personal search. Dawkins and others presume to understand why people believe in God, when it is completely an individual decision.

Submitting that the idea belief in a God is a form of mass hysteria, and socialization is plausible; however, it could also be that God truly exists. My faith lies in the latter, not the former, but neither can be empirically proven for humanity as a whole. It is only in the individual that this decision is truly capable of being proven. Some people need only small events or questions to sway one way or the other. Some people go much deeper. It is the insinuation that belief in God is representative of inferior intellectual ability that is most offensive. While there is an emotional aspect to the faith of many, including me. In my case there is also quite a bit of thought involved. I am as equally offended by believers who discount the use of intellect in their faith. It cannot be a completely emotional response, but it appears that in many, it is.

CDAKIAHONDA, thanks for providing proof that one need not be moronic to have faith. Your posts are fantastic, and I am heartened to read each of them because of your depth of thought.

 

TFF,

In a world of unnecessary violence, unfounded prejudices, and seemingly wasted potential, having opportunities to glimpse and share the search for meaning, to realize that there are still individuals that care to examine their own motives, beliefs...."our reasons for being," gives me the greatest hope for the future.

I suppose that has been true for ever, for many.

 

This is interesting:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110010724

It is about a debate between Dawkins and Lennox in Alabama.

 

The fact that a reasoned debate occured is evidence for a god.

 

It is important to remember the initial question that began this discourse, a question that asks simply if there is "evidence" for the existence of god? The question was not seeking indesputable "proof."

Evidence is simply that, it is not conclusive beyond all reasonable doubt, in fact, I would submit that "reasonable" doubt is a healthy state of mind. It is our doubts, about the absolutes of our conventional thought, and those thoughts that have preceeded us, that result in innovation. Our questions stretch our capacities for further advancement.

It has been argued here that with respect to religion, many choose to simply ignore their doubts. That is in fact true, and people suffer from that, but the converse can be said about those who disdainfully dismiss the posibilities inherent in such ideas.

The believer should be able to weigh his faith in light of the contridictory evidence, and the non-believer should be able to marvel at that which cannot yet be conventionally explained. Perhaps we are not quite so far apart as we might believe?

 

I think to start off, we'd need to define what constitutes evidence.

There's also a large part of me that would be absolutely gleeful if we assembled a bunch of evidence for God and it all pointed to God being something different to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic version.

 

I just picked up "God, Tthe Failed Hypothesis, How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist", by Victor Stegner. I'll report back when I've got a handle on the evidence. bk

 

If I were Druid and became Agnositc, would I doubt the existance of trees?

 

I think I will write a book titled "Science, Failed Hypothesis, How the Infinate and Mass shows that Science Does Not Exist because neither does Quantification." by Thoughtforfood.

 

Sure, but definitely NOT the god YOU have in mind, eh?

One thing that all of the 'believers' must get straight first of all is that NONE of them believe the same thing, so all of their 'gods' are different. This entirely factual statement renders their every 'belief' irrelevant to the entire population of the world. This includes spouses or children, who will grow up to have (in all cases) vastly different ideas, especially as they age.
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By the same token, we have to assume that God is better than us, more tolerant, more understanding, with deeper insights.

Assuming this to be the case would that higher being, set a stall that says he would burn all Christians (beacuse they aren't Muslim) or burn all Muslims (because they aren't Christian), or Jews etc, etc. That would be a level of condemnation and lack of tolerance generally (but not in it's entirety) a lot worse than us.

Let's assume there is a God, let's assume for a moment that God is a being on a much higher level than we are. Clearly, there's only one God, since a series of competing Gods, actually undermines ANY of the religous theories in one stroke, since they don't at any point make reference to that other God up here being a real _____. This one God can only therefore be looking at us and wondering how in all of creation, we made so many reasons to see differences, instead of similarities, to see something we hate instead of love, to see reasons to make war, instead of peace. And all in his name. Even if he started tolerant, it might well be enough to convince him to start burning most of us, just of what we are. And if we are truly in his image, we can't expect a lot of understanding, can we?

 

How would you know what god I have in mind, or even if I have a god in mind, eh?