Does God exist?

[Daedalus]

easy example from me. we see a table at our home. how the table can exist? there must be someone that invented the table right?we can see around us the universe that we sometimes less appreciate it by doing pollution. the universe also have 'someone' that created it. can something exist if no one that created it?

Couldn't resist replying to this. Here's the elephant in the room: if the universe cannot exist without being created, who created God?

Edited September 16, 2010 by Daedalus

[Mahuta ♥]

“I like this idea, it sounds poetic, but doesn't teaching humans something before they are able to make rational decisions (i.e. indoctrinating them with religion before they are adults) not count? If somebody told seven-year-old-me that if I prayed lots and never masturbated then I would go to heaven, but otherwise I would spend eternity on a very, very very hot barbecue grill going insane, then I would probably believe them. And maybe the years of beating this sort of idea into my head would make me believe that I 'felt' it to be true... but keep in mind that in clinical trials 30% of people doing controls, that is, taking pills with no active ingredients whatsoever, feel a notable improvement in their physical condition. The placebo effect is a wonderful example of what we can make ourselves believe when we put our minds to it (and even when we don't, not consciously at least).”

That’s what you think, I personally see that, some day, I am going to teach my child these kinds of beliefs early in his life, and I know for sure, that he will come across à lot of cases in his life, which will justify for him the things I taught him to believe. If I leave my child with no teaching of such beliefs, he’s going to find it very hard to even notice anything about these cases or even think they mean à thing.

My father for example taught me these things since early childhood, yet he NEVER made me believe them, I grew up, and I started seeing these..incidents in front of me or whatever, and I deduced and justified the things he taught me. Even then, he didn’t tell me “SEE? I TOLD you”..Now almost everything I believe are things I came to justify from my life experiences. I wasn’t blindly told to believe in these things.

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“This is a joke. I really feel this is a staggering issue. I feel like somebody just wrote: the fact that God answers your prayers has been proven scientifically. Seriously! What the heck is going on inside your mind? The existence of a soul has NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT been proven scientifically and for all likelihood never will. Your body weighs EXACTLY as normal when you are asleep. There are several things wrong with your statement: first, where does this soul-partially-out-of-body idea come from? Sounds like a joke. And you haven't cited your weight-when-asleep "scientific" study.”

The, soul leave the body during sleep, is what I believe in, and I am not going to discuss this specific part with you, because you seem to have made à decision that this theory doesn’t exist. Sounds like à joke to you, it’s not to me.

“Yet as much as we believe in the concept of "soul," this life spark remains strictly an article of faith. As central as it is to our perception of ourselves, it can't be seen or heard or smelled or touched or tasted, a state of affairs that leaves some of us uneasy. Without the soul, dead is dead. But if it could be proved to exist, a great deal of anxiety over what happens to us when we die would be vanquished.

Enter Dr. Duncan MacDougall of Haverhill, Massachusetts. The doctor postulated the soul was material and therefore had mass, ergo a measurable drop in the weight of the deceased would be noted at the moment this essence parted ways with the physical remains. The belief that human beings are possessed of souls which depart their bodies after death and that these souls have detectable physical presences were around well before the 20th century, but claims that souls have measurable mass which falls within a specific range of weights can be traced to experiments conducted by Dr. MacDougall in 1907.

Dr. MacDougall, seeking to determine "if the psychic functions continue to exist as a separate individuality or personality after the death of brain and body," constructed a special bed in his office "arranged on a light framework built upon very delicately balanced platform beam scales" sensitive to two-tenths of an ounce. He installed upon this bed a succession of six patients in the end stages of terminal illnesses (four from tuberculosis, one from diabetes, and one from unspecified causes); observed them before, during, and after the process of death; and measured any corresponding changes in weight. He then attempted to eliminate as many physiological explanations for the observed results as he could conceive:

The patient's comfort was looked after in every way, although he was practically moribund when placed upon the bed. He lost weight slowly at the rate of one ounce per hour due to evaporation of moisture in respiration and evaporation of sweat.

During all three hours and forty minutes I kept the beam end slightly above balance near the upper limiting bar in order to make the test more decisive if it should come.

At the end of three hours and forty minutes he expired and suddenly coincident with death the beam end dropped with an audible stroke hitting against the lower limiting bar and remaining there with no rebound. The loss was ascertained to be three-fourths of an ounce.

This loss of weight could not be due to evaporation of respiratory moisture and sweat, because that had already been determined to go on, in his case, at the rate of one sixtieth of an ounce per minute, whereas this loss was sudden and large, three-fourths of an ounce in a few seconds. The bowels did not move; if they had moved the weight would still have remained upon the bed except for a slow loss by the evaporation of moisture depending, of course, upon the fluidity of the feces. The bladder evacuated one or two drams of urine. This remained upon the bed and could only have influenced the weight by slow gradual evaporation and therefore in no way could account for the sudden loss.

There remained but one more channel of loss to explore, the expiration of all but the residual air in the lungs. Getting upon the bed myself, my colleague put the beam at actual balance. Inspiration and expiration of air as forcibly as possible by me had no effect upon the beam. My colleague got upon the bed and I placed the beam at balance. Forcible inspiration and expiration of air on his part had no effect. In this case we certainly have an inexplicable loss of weight of three-fourths of an ounce. Is it the soul substance? How other shall we explain it?2

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“Think about it. Why would your soul way anything? I mean if we're going to invent a metaphorical fragment of your person that does away with all chemical explanations for biological responses, why would it weight something? How does it go to heaven or hell if it weighs something. Please, if you want to be taken seriously don't post things like this.”

You are not going to convince me with what you believe, and I can say whatever I want and whatever I believe in, others seemed to be going fine with calling God “a perverted, twisted bastard with a sick sense of humour and a bottomless store of sadism” and think you guys think that’s freedom of speech, the you have no right whatsoever to say that to me.

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“This is the classic determinism vs. free will argument. For example, assuming your God exists, and he is omnipresent and able to do anything, as you insist he is, then wouldn't he know in advance what we were going to do? I mean, what goes towards you choosing your actions? Your nature, to an extent, the genes you are born with, sure, and mainly (I believe) the external influences during your lifetime. Also random things like whether the weather is good or not, stuff to do with luck, like whether your father was hit by a pulled that smashed into a rock and deflected and hit him in the throat, etc. But aren't these all under God's control? What external non-God controlled factor do you want to invent for explaining free will?”

To me you have control over your actions, the non-God controlled factor are the choices someone makes. Yes, God knows everything, yes, God could control ALL your actions, but he does NOT control the actions you are punished for, even that he can. As much the factors you said may influence someone’s actions in à negative way, he still could have chosen not to that thing if he wanted to.

I am having à lot of trouble with my relationship, à lot of fights, which led me to live in extreme stress and to not being able to concentrate on anything, plus the fact that my family doesn’t approve him to be my husband. Some of the girls in my family did NOT marry the ones they loved, and they are not happily married, and that had influenced me À LOT. My bf told me that if I just slept with him once..just once, my family will HAVE to agree on him.

I could have done that, and I know for sure that I will marry him if I did, yet I know that adultery and I did not do it. If the factors around me completely affected, I would have slept with him and got married.

[Mahuta ♥]

"if the universe cannot exist without being created, who created God?"

"The universe requires a cause because it had a beginning, as will be shown below. God, unlike the universe, had no beginning, so doesn't need a cause. In addition, Einstein's general relativity, which has much experimental support, shows that time is linked to matter and space. So time itself would have begun along with matter and space.

Since God, by definition, is the creator of the whole universe, he is the creator of time. Therefore He is not limited by the time dimension He created, so has no beginning in time God is the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity (Isaiah 57:15). Therefore He doesn't have a cause.

In contrast, there is good evidence that the universe had a beginning. This can be shown from the Laws of Thermodynamics, the most fundamental laws of the physical sciences.

1st Law: The total amount of mass-energy in the universe is constant.

2nd Law: The amount of energy available for work is running out, or entropy is increasing to a maximum."

I am not saying anything about what my religion tells me because for some odd reason you seem to be finding everything Islamic I believe in a joke.

[Austin Glau]

wow... please simplify your points this is not a novel it is a forum i agree with most of the points you brought up, but i can't remember which ones since you wrote so much

[Sandwich]

That’s what you think, I personally see that, some day, I am going to teach my child these kinds of beliefs early in his life, and I know for sure, that he will come across à lot of cases in his life, which will justify for him the things I taught him to believe. If I leave my child with no teaching of such beliefs, he’s going to find it very hard to even notice anything about these cases or even think they mean à thing.

My father for example taught me these things since early childhood, yet he NEVER made me believe them, I grew up, and I started seeing these..incidents in front of me or whatever, and I deduced and justified the things he taught me. Even then, he didn’t tell me “SEE? I TOLD you”..Now almost everything I believe are things I came to justify from my life experiences. I wasn’t blindly told to believe in these things.

But don't you think though that that's exactly what the previous user just described? That what you're told becomes your reality? I mean, why do Christian people have Christian children and not Muslim or Hindu or whatever kids? If it's not because that's what their mum and dad tell them so they interpret the world in light of the information they've received from their parents (or other significant people), I can't think what it might be. I interpret the world in light of what my parents told me, and my friends do too. My Muslim friends had Muslim parents who told them all that kind of thing, my Christian friends had Christian parents etc. Nobody forces belief, but it happens nonetheless that we adapt to our environment and take on board what we're told. I even believed my parents when they told me that raisins were dried out dead flies. If enough significant people in my life had repeated that to me (and also if I were incapable of carrying out a practical test...), I'd believe it to this day. I would definitely not eat raisins.

I honestly think that the number of people with religion would be extremely low (perhaps non existant) if it weren't for this indoctrination by relatives, friends and society. And by indoctrination I'm not saying it's forcible or evil, but that it's passive, subtle and it happens, just like all other ideas get diffused to us. The evidence seems to be that if it doesn't happen to people, they don't bother with religion. Just like 5 year olds with nicer parents than mine love to eat raisins.

Also I read a book about the evolution of science (incidentally called The Weighing Of The Soul) and some guy named Rumsford, after some faulty starts which failed to account for convection, experimentally proved and concluded that the 'mysterious' weight loss was due to heat. There remains, to my knowledge, no physical evidence of a soul (unless you decide that it's the brain).

[Mahuta ♥]

It is kind of similar to what he said about this point, yes, perhaps I missed a point in that paragraph.

Trust me, you would be surprised at home many people FORCE their kids to believe in something, and even if they grow up to think otherwise, there is no way the parents will even consider giving them the freedom to believe what they want, now that's extreme. When I say to force a belief, I mean it in the sense that they give you examples, so horrible that you will believe what they tell you whether you like it or not. He said "otherwise I would spend eternity on a very, very very hot barbecue grill going insane, then I would probably believe them.", I see that as forcing someone to believe you, especially a child. Using the same example again, my father never ever used such examples or statements with me, and I will not do that with my child, because like I said, that is you forcing a belief on a child, indirectly. I completely disagree with that.

[Grumps]

Forcing isn't even the point. You are generally what you are brought up as, and while there are converters, I think that those that convert to atheism are more numerous than those that shun atheism. One can draw the conclusion that religion is mainly maintained by strong childhood conditioning, but atheism has something more (being logical).

"To me you have control over your actions, the non-God controlled factor are the choices someone makes. Yes, God knows everything, yes, God could control ALL your actions, but he does NOT control the actions you are punished for, even that he can. As much the factors you said may influence someone’s actions in à negative way, he still could have chosen not to that thing if he wanted to."

This is very basic moral philosophy. If you know about something bad going on and you do nothing to stop it, that is morally wrong. God knows that toddlers are being bum raped by old men, he knows that whole countries are starving to death, and he does nothing. He could commit a literally infinitesimally small amount of his attention and power to stop ALL evil in the world, yet he just chills.

I think free will is very much a stupid concept. It's a particular egotism of the human race that has lead many to believe that people are different from worms or clocks or lego sets. We are constructs working mechanically and obeying physics. Legs, hearts, and even parts of the brain will continue to function perfectly normally outside the body if given proper nourishment and stimulation. There is only the illusion of free will we have developed to propagate the existence of the human race, much like skunks make a stink when frightened, albeit on a more complex scale. If given an infinite amount of time and knowledge, a physicist could calculate the exact state of the world right now from the ball of hydrogen or whatever it started as (unless you subscribe to chaos theory, but that's not free will either). We have no souls and we act under the pretense of free will.

Edited September 17, 2010 by Grumps

[Patel108]

What is bad about the free will concept? Isn't it just saying that people have control over what they do or am I missing something and it is something else?

Anyway, the only proof that there might be of a soul would be the near death experiences of people. I read somewhere that there are some people that were brain dead but they remained conscious and knew what was going on in the hospital and that it seemed that they were floating above their bodies.. Or that they met God or saw some white light. That might be the only that would constitute as proof I guess.

[baja]

God exists. The Tradition of the moon and the tradition of sun gives you clear proofs. You cant see god. But you can feel the power. God can be anything. He can come infront of u as a small kid asking you a question which made you stop and turn back while walking and suddenly a car crashes infront of you. You have been saved by that little boy.

Regards

ADMIN Edit: THIS POST HAS BEEN WARNED. Post like this and your will be warned too- Elsa (Lc)

[Daedalus]

This is like a bad, bad joke. I give up. If you really believe, in the year of 2010, with all the world's resources at your fingertips, that the soul has a weight (because of one discredited1907 study) then I fear for your future patients. I'm not going to say anything else on this thread. I think you are crazy.

ADMIN Edit: THIS POST HAS BEEN WARNED. Post like this and your will be warned too- Elsa (Lc)

Edited September 17, 2010 by ~Lc~

[IBnoob]

God exists. The Tradition of the moon and the tradition of sun gives you clear proofs.

The who and the what? what are those traditions? some kind of religious ceremony? HOW does it prove anything? induction?

[Magnus]

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

If god i omnipotent, why doesn't he make all of us believe in him as he wishes? If "GOD EXISTS" is printed in flames all over the sky, i bet you that everyone, at least all atheists like me, would believe in his existence. But no, he decides to NOT make us believe in him. How nice for us non-believers who will then experience eternal suffering in hell, no matter how good hearted we were on earth.

Edited September 17, 2010 by Magnus

[~Lc~]

This is like a bad, bad joke. I give up. If you really believe, in the year of 2010, with all the world's resources at your fingertips, that the soul has a weight (because of one discredited1907 study) then I fear for your future patients. I'm not going to say anything else on this thread. I think you are crazy.

ATTENTION ALL USERS

I just want to explain a simple rule for debating on the forum. Do not post inflammatory or directly offensive posts towards other users. It is a simple enough rule to understand. I've almost had it with the amounts of reports I'm getting from this thread about people being inconsiderate about other people's religious beliefs. Shame on you all for being in the IB and not knowing how to have a politically correct debate yet. I don't want to sound like the old Hag, or your teacher, but you know what I'm partly in charge of keeping this place polite. So keep your posts clean! if you don't want to use reasonable arguments then get out! we don't need your trolling opinions, simple as!

From this post onwards I will start warning people very harshly on the content of their posts. You've all been warned, and let Daedalus be the example of such posts.

Elsa.

[Amber]

I do believe that God exists, but I can also see the side many athiest believe in. Sometimes Im just not sure

[Heisenberg]

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going." - Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in The Grand Design.

These are two of humanity's smartest individuals. As they say, God is not necessary. I see arguments like: "how can the universe exist if God did not create it?" Well, why could it NOT exist if God did not create it? I see it as infinitely more likely that it created itself than that an omnipotent creature did it.

Also, if God created humans just to judge them afterwards, would not judging them as "bad" and throwing them into Hell be strictly evidence of God's own imperfection in creation? The bible states that God is perfect, yet he cannot be if his creations are imperfect. And still, omnipotency is a a paradox, and a paradox, per definition, cannot come into existence.

If God is omnipotent he can create a stone that is so big he cannot lift it, but if he cannot lift it, he is not omnipotent.

[Magnus]

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going." - Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in The Grand Design.

These are two of humanity's smartest individuals. As they say, God is not necessary. I see arguments like: "how can the universe exist if God did not create it?" Well, why could it NOT exist if God did not create it? I see it as infinitely more likely that it created itself than that an omnipotent creature did it.

I do agree with your point, but you have to also be critical to what you read too. Even though Stephen Hawking is the most known person within this subject, does not mean he is the one you should trust the most. It is just his popularity that make ordinary people believe in him. Neither Hawking nor Mlodinow have earned them selves a noble price in physics. According to wikipedia, Mlodinow has no notable awards, and Hawking only three compared to f.eks. Albert Einstein who did state to believe in a God:

""I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details." - Albert Einstein. He did not believe in a personal god, but a god as a creator, he did not deny.

You could ask further questions about Hawking's statement that a god is not needed since the law of gravity exists; who created the laws of physics? Even though Hawking only just states that a God i not necessary needed, he cannot say what is, or is not needed to create the laws of physics. So that leaves believers free to believe that a God is the reason behind it all.

As I have stated before, I do not believe in a God. But i know i cant say with certainty that a God does not exist, so i don't deny people it.

But The idea of a personal God is quite alien to me and seems even naive.

Also, if God created humans just to judge them afterwards, would not judging them as "bad" and throwing them into Hell be strictly evidence of God's own imperfection in creation? The bible states that God is perfect, yet he cannot be if his creations are imperfect. And still, omnipotency is a a paradox, and a paradox, per definition, cannot come into existence.

If God is omnipotent he can create a stone that is so big he cannot lift it, but if he cannot lift it, he is not omnipotent.

Just wanted to give you thumbs up for that one !

Edited September 20, 2010 by Magnus

[Heisenberg]

Of course I'm not stating that Stephen Hawking is definitely 100% correct, or that his statements prove God's non-existence. I'm simply stating that his statements, as one of humanity's most qualified on the subjects of physics and how the universe works from a human perspective, should be taken more seriously than a religious person whose opinion is based upon a "religious experience" (s)he experienced under his/her childhood or based upon his/her parents' indoctrination of the person from an early age.

There is also a good reason why he is the most known person in popular physics; he actually is one of the most intelligent men on the planet.

As for awards, having them or not do not prove your intelligence or the opposite respectively. Just because one has a Nobel Prize in physics does not mean this person is more qualified than the next physicist. Fifty to one hundred years ago, a prize was something big. Today the world has progressed too much for individuals to become heroes within their respective fields. There are plenty of young men and women with the genius of Einstein today, but they are not, individually, enough anymore. Oh sure, every now and then a discovery is made and an award is presented to the group or individual who made it, yet an award meant, as mentioned, a lot more in the past two hundred years than it does now.

When it comes to Einstein, Einstein explicitly stated that he does not believe in God; he merely uses God as a metaphor in some of his statements, such as the famous: "God does not play dice with the universe." He wrote an article for a magazine/newspaper or whatever it was, in which he denied his belief in God, as a response to the fact that religious people believed him to be one of their own.

On your note about the idea of a personal god, I am completely agreed. It is unbelievably vain and self-conscious to believe that some allknowning entity is constantly watching over you etc.

Edited September 20, 2010 by Heisenberg

[C.James]

When it comes to Einstein, Einstein explicitly stated that he does not believe in God; he merely uses God as a metaphor in some of his statements, such as the famous: "God does not play dice with the universe." He wrote an article for a magazine/newspaper or whatever it was, in which he denied his belief in God, as a response to the fact that religious people believed him to be one of their own.

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly." Einstein.

Thought I'd bring in a quote to clarify the situation.

[Heisenberg]

Yeah, that's probably what I was looking for. Thanks.

[eshylkaratas]

Hey guys! There are so many evidences for the existence of God. Look around you. What do you see? Sun,plants, mountains and balance between everything. Macroorganisms and microorganisms live in a balance. There must be someone who created and controls them. And when we are thrilling or have no way to solve something, we refuge to something which is the most powerful, the most knowledgeable and everything most. Why we need to refuge to something? Because God put that need or feeling inside us.