Topic: Scientific proof that God exists? - page 484. (Read 845654 times)

Not sure what you mean, exactly. But consider this fanciful thought.

Imagine for a moment that God exists, and that He is very powerful, way beyond understanding. Imagine, also, that for His own purposes He sees you and is even aware of your thinking.

So, one day you happen to be a bit more favorable of Him in your thoughts. For whatever reason (or non-reason) you simply think good thoughts about God one day. God wasn't expecting this from you (because He designed people to be great enough that He doesn't quite know what people will think from day to day). So, God goes all the way back to the beginning of creation, and tweaks it and time so that things match your feelings for the day. And He does this kind of thing on a regular basis, not only for you, but for all people. People never know that God does this, because they exist inside the changes as though it had never been any other way.

The point? We don't know how collapses caused by entropy are upholding the general structure. For example. Modern medicine has shown that as a person gets older, and as his immune system wears out, certain parts of the immune system kick in to cover areas that other parts have failed in. The immune system is extremely complex. Yet, over time it fails, and the person dies.

A similar thing is happening with the universe. Because of the complexity of the universe, we simply don't see it easily. But we see it when we examine the fossil record and see that there are only about a third of the plants and animals still around than there used to be. Life is dying off, becoming extinct. Entropy, but a very slow one.

The whole thing acts according to structure. Yet the structure is dissolving.

There are several things that are virtually necessary in life for a healthy person to live. Everyone needs air to breathe, water to drink (or at least to be absorbed through the food he/she eats), and food. In certain climates, people need clothing and shelter.

Since a person isn't completely full of all possible experience, he is going to find things in life that will be different than what he expected. Because of this, people live by faith, faith in nature, faith in their experiences, and if they understand about God, faith in God.

In its simplest form, religion is only a combining of faith and experience. Religion is how one acts based on what he believes, which is based on his imperfect and incomplete experience. His religion changes slightly with each new experience. And nobody's personal religion is exactly the same as that of anybody else. However, because ALL people have the same, basic needs in life, each person's religion is similar to that of every other person, down deep, at the core of their being.

For the sensibility of the world and abdication of "Man."

Is it not curious that this absence of entropy termed "structure" would so frequently prove succumb to that?

Why is this conversation even happening?!?!?   Believe what you want to believe.  Don't believe what you don't want to believe.   Both sides are right!  It's a personal thing folks...

Take a look at what the Bible - the best source we have for this - says. God did it because wickedness increased throughout the world beyond a certain point.

Science is showing us that there is structure in nature. Science is showing us that nature adapts to certain structural changes. Science also shows us that nature collapses in areas where the structural changes are too great. The science of psychology shows us that people go mad if their psychological structure gets too far out of whack from what it should be naturally. So, why is science so unwilling to look at the spiritual, structures in the universe? It's in spiritual structures that we see hints of God.

As a prelude to recognizing the existence of God, one must recognize that people live and thrive on faith.

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From http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith?s=t :

faith
[feyth]

noun
1. confidence or trust in a person or thing:
faith in another's ability.
2. belief that is not based on proof:
He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion:
the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.:
to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5. a system of religious belief:
the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
6. the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.:
Failure to appear would be breaking faith.
7. the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one's promise, oath, allegiance, etc.:
He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.
8. Christian Theology. the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.

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Who among people knows for an absolute fact what is going to happen at any time in the future?

Personally, experience has taught me that I can feel confident that some things will happen. Yet, some of the time I have been wrong. Since I didn't know then that I was going to be wrong when I was wrong, how do I know that I am not going to be wrong now?

The point? I live by faith. That faith is based on my experience of the way things work in life and the universe. When I am wrong, my experience is tweaked a little, so that the next time circumstances are similar to something I have experienced, the expectations of my faith are also different. I still don't know for a fact what will happen any given moment. So, I live by faith that my experience has provided me with enough information to make correct decisions, and to be comfortable in life.

Until I am humble enough to recognize that I live by faith, and that my experiences don't cover all situations and circumstances, I'm never going to be able to find REAL proof for God or anything else. I am only going to wind up deluding myself into beliefs that may or may not be true.

Perhaps, but Man's humanness is an extension of his animal heritage; it is not an extension of a hole.

There is a nature beyond the animal: the hole. (In truth, black hole exemplify being here.)

And, for that, it may be said that humanity is, indeed, an extension of beast; it is an extension of that mad belligerence that is beast.

Thought it was after Methuselah that God decided "okay im cool lets kill off these stupid humans" 

Also, section on Wikipedia is enlightening:


http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Criticism_of_atheism&oldid=521473812#Atheism_as_faith

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_atheism#Atheism_as_faith

Man's humanness did not emerge by refusing Man's animal heritage, but upon an extension of what it is.

If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. Man is hardly likely to render arbitrary determinations upon himself!

I appreciate this quote, I think it better illustrates what I was trying to express. Thank you for posting it.

One can render determinations about others out of moral nihilism, that is, render wholly arbitrary determinations upon them.

Considering that, how is "religion" necessary?

There is some support for the idea that religion, at its most basic or elementary level, is innately human:

http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=5159



http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Secular_religions#Does_secular_religion_exist.3F

The editors at RationalWiki think that the definition of religion "invariably" includes a specific kind of belief, but this is not the consensus in the social sciences; rather, "every person holds (and perhaps indeed needs) a set of values and morals and makes their judgments about actions and people based on this."

So basically, a religion is just a belief or opinion about something non-empirical.

I think that by defining religion as any belief system that requires "faith" you've just pushed the question down a level.  Now we have to know what you mean by "faith".   My definition of religion for this kind of survey would have to include some sort of ritual practice.  But again, I think it's really hard to draw a line here.  I mean, ritually say "fine thank you" when someone says to me "hello how are you".   Yet, I wouldn't consider this practice to be religious.

Like you, I'm no expert in theology or anthropology.  However, I tend to think that most people underestimate the range of human variation in culture and practice and experience.  Perhaps relevant to this discussion, I have read a lot about how aboriginal cultures of the pacific northwest may not have had a distiction between the "natural" and "supernatural" as we have.  See, for example, Wayne Suttles "Coast Salish Essays".

First, Thank you for an intelligently written rebuttal. One would have to identify religion as a broad spectrum word encompassing any belief requiring faith. Its true that religion would not be a quality inherited through biological systems but to be humans is to be more than the sum of your parts. Can philosophical predispositions be argued to be genetically inherited traits? Unfortunately this is out of our realm of understanding at present, one can only assume. I challenge you to present to me any civilization that did not have a religion at its core. Again by religion I mean any spirituality requiring faith IE Ancestor Veneration, Indigenous spiritualism, monotheism. Essentially any belief where by morality, ethics and worship are taught by means of storytelling. I am not calling you out here, I would really love to research a civilization that existed without religion it would be amazing to find out how long they existed for and how successful they were.

Obviously were I do not cite a source I am expressing an opinion so take it for the conjecture that it may be. I am not an expert of Theology or Anthropology.

That "faith and spirtualism are innately human" is an interesting hypothesis.  The evidence you present that "there has never been a human civilization in recorded history without some sort of 'religion'" is interesting, and seems to bear on the question, but IMO, you need to go a lot farther to show innateness. 

Consider, for example, that you might find that every human civilization in recorded history has the word "fish" somewhere in their records.  This doesn't mean that humans are innately programmed to write "fish" when they write.  It's just as likely that writing "fish" is a product of our environments as of our biology.  Also, consider that there are vast numbers of humans who have lived outside of "recorded history".  It may be that "religion and spiritualism" are as much an aspect of the organization of cultures who write things as an aspect of the biology of the humans who wrote them.  Finally, you might not be right about your claim that "every human civilization in recorded history has some sort of 'religion'".  Seems like that claim depends a lot on your definition of religion.

Faith and spiritualism are innately human, it has been with us for as long as we have had the ability to ponder existence. There has never been a human civilization in recorded history without some sort of "religion". Atheism and Darwinism one could argue, are also faiths.

To group people together with extreme fundamentalist psychopaths, simply because they have faith in a higher power is in and of itself a form of extremism.

You and people like you are what is wrong with the world.

We need all the crazies located in one place so we know who they are, this is like the Christian version of ISIS on the internet.

Yeah, I did just compare you assholes to ISIS, deal with it.