Does God Exist??
DOES GOD EXIST? here are some of my random musings about my main reasons to DOUBT and also to BELIEVE in God. I hope i've given equal weighting to both sides!
. . .
Reasons to Doubt the Existence of God
1) Biological evolution
It is often said by proponents of the “Intelligent Design” movement that evolution is “just a theory”, but this often reveals an ignorance of the meaning of “theory” in science! It is safe to say that Evolution happened. This is the very best biogenesis model that science can come up with given the weight of the evidence! This does go against the creation stories of most religions and suggest that we weren’t “intelligently designed” at all, but rather we evolved through a series of rather clumsy stages, through to what we are now, and indeed are still evolving. There are ways in which evolution can be factored into religion, including the “time-age theory” – which seems to be unique to certain groups of Christians where they believe that during the time in which God created the heavens and the earth, and the time when he performed all of the other feats of creation, Satan rebelled and fell from heaven, and this whole process took thousands/millions/billions/trillions (delete as appropriate –as taught by your sect) of years! This seems to smack of a certain type of desperation and most orthodox Christians have already discredited it as a theory!
The more legitimate theory at the moment is that of “theistic evolution” which is rather popular – to the dismay of young earth creationists who say the earth is 6000 years old and was created in a literal period of 6, 24 hour days! In the scientific community this is considered laughable!
So, in its purest sense evolution rules out the possibility of the existence of God – unless you believe in theistic evolution – this will be discussed later!
2) The existence of multiple religions
Generally there are multiple claims to truth when it comes to religions. There are monotheistic religions like Islam or Christianity. There are polytheistic religions – like some forms of Hinduism, there are Pantheistic religions such as Wicca and there are those institutions usually referred to as religions, that are in fact agnostic or mildly atheistic, for example – Buddhism!
The argument is from soteriology and states that if Islam for example is correct then Christianity de-facto is incorrect. If Mohammed is the only prophet of God then Jesus can’t be the son of God, and in fact God himself! If salvation comes only through Jesus Christ and him alone, then every other religion must be wrong!
There are of course other ways to look at this and we will look at this later!
3) The problem of evil
The question here is “if God created everything, then who created evil?” If God didn’t create evil, then where did it come from? Was it there before God? Did Satan create it?
Or – God created it! If God created evil does this not make him intrinsically evil himself? If God has no evil in him at all, then how could he possibly create it?
4) The allowance of tragedies
The assumption here is that God is a benevolent being who loves everyone. If, though, God is benevolent and full of love then why does he allow such tragedies such as Hurricane Katrina- or even Noah’s flood?
Reasons to Believe in God
1) Personal Conviction
This is of course, the least scientific option! This doesn’t make it any less potent! Experience is everything in many respects. We can’t empirically prove that love exists, but a scientist would be considered highly foolish if he or she declared that “love” doesn’t exist! However, there is no way to empirically prove that love exists, and there is no way to disprove it because it is impossible to prove that something doesn’t exist! The only proof we have to go on is personal experience and feelings.
So, perhaps belief in the existence of God can be rationalised on the basis that God is like love – he cannot be seen, or empirically proved – only experienced. Therefore personal conviction can be considered a reason to believe in God.
2) Religions beginning at the same time independently
There would be those who say that the existence of faith is, in and of itself proof that the object of the faith exists. There are many complex and brain-teasingly philosophically obtuse arguments to this effect and if anyone wants to know about them I can tell them! But, the point is . . . if religion is totally wrong and totally errant and there is no God whatsoever, then how is it that on any remote, far-flung part of the globe there are people devoutly worshipping this being that – aside from all the other names they call him/her/it, they call “God”? Surely the theory of the “god of the gaps” (meaning, if there is a gap in our knowledge we just assume de facto that it’s a work of god) theory doesn’t adequately explain this phenomenon?
3) Possible complementary rather than contradictory religions
Progressive/liberal Christians – and indeed, members of other religions, tend to see other religions not as competing, but rather as complimentary, in that one man who is a Hindu sees one aspect of God, the Christian sees another aspect of God and the Muslim, Jew, Sikh, Buddhist, Taoist, Jain etc all see different aspects of this one omnipotent and manifold God.
I guess the only question we can ask here is – If a God were to exist . . . would he/she/it be able to manifest itself in this way? The answer has to be yes, or else this hypothetical being ceases to be God . . . not necessarily proof of said “god” but, an interesting point to contemplate.
4) The First Cause
For every effect there must be a cause. For anything to ever have come into existence there must have been a cause for that thing, but there must have been a first cause to bring this law into existence. This is believed to be God.
5) Theistic Evolution
This is the idea that God Caused Evolution! This counters the argument against God from Biological Evolution! Nuff said!
MY CONCLUSION:
I guess that in the final analysis . . . it’s truly impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God. Actually, I suppose the only real way to test the existence of God is to have your own experience . . . and even then, it would not be scientific . . .
I guess the only way to conclude this is to say:
It’s better felt than telt!
SO MY QUESTION TO THE PEOPLE OF THE FORUM IS WHY DO YOU – OR DON’T YOU – BELIEVE IN GOD/OR GODS??
thanks
Tom.
thats the reason why im interested!
Originally Posted by bigtombowski
it ends up on your beach 
......and he murdered 387 why?
at least i hope he is..
My little bit
, reminds me still have some money to join 'partypoker', huh
That means BigTom is God 
