Topic: Why do you believe God exists? - page 21. (Read 7963 times)

The primary reason I post on religion is because I know this is a hostile forum on the topic and the intensity of the subsequent grilling helps me refine my thoughts.

For example af_newbie successfully highlighted that my first claim is dependent on the a priori assumption of a mathematical and logical universe.

That assumption was not as clearly specified in my Argument for God as it should have been so I added another sentence to make it clearer.

These exchanges are useful which is the only reason I spend time on them. BadDecker is looking to save your soul. He is probably a better person then I because I really don't care what you believe or do with your life.

I follow where logic takes me. Logic points to God.


You clearly didn't understand my argument. It is not a proof of God. I have said that several times.

Instead my argument shows that the belief in God is logically sound and that it is likely necessary for higher level coordination and cooperation. It is a powerful rebuttal to those who foolishly insist that a belief in God is illogical or irrational. It is not a proof nor does it replace the necessity for faith.

If you have to believe in an entity erroneously called "God" {a fictitious construction reflecting human imagination}, it directly implies that you do not have sufficient knowledge; as many many discoveries have, and are still being made even to this day - scientific breakthrouhs if you will.

The plethora of interconnecting 'revelationary' knowledge bases have compelled a growing multitude of (mind you), previously believing "believers" (in many cases), to permanently and steadfastly cast asunder any and all iotas and tittles of these enslaving ideological crappy institutional mindsets, inflicted upon humanity for many generations.

When you do not know (sufficiently), you will inevitably, erroneously regress and digress to Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, conveniently abbreviated as FUD. This is, to say the least, very unfortunate, giving that almost the whole world live in an interconnecting web of growing (verifiable) knowledge.

When you FUD, you falter. After extended faltering, you come to a grinding halt. After you have halted, you begin to stagnate and finally you will die off.

Belief is dying off, for knowing has rightfully earned its place.

The question about "God", i find irrelevant, a mere grasping in the darkness, when all you have to do, is flick the light switch.

Your idea that there is no scientific proof for God is simply your belief. Since the proof for God is evident in nature, your belief is a religious belief.

Same can be said about me on what, I don't believe anything because I feel like it. There is no scientific proof for god, period. I never said it's impossible for some sort of god to exist, in fact I even said that perhaps super advanced aliens created this universe or perhaps there are a lot of universes, etc etc, possibilities are endless, however the god from the bible can be proven to be wrong.

I believe in god and evolution.
Assume where the first life came on search and how? Science can prove evolution but it doesnot say anything about the source of life. To know the source of life we need to know spirituality and that itself is the minor stairs to god.

Same can be said about you. At least there is proof that God exists. Believing proof is a philosophical thing that takes one into the idea if he should even believe that he exists and thinks. This topic doesn't get into that kind of nit-picking depth.

Let's be honest here, you are not looking for anyone to deconstruct your arguments. Nothing will change your mind because you already made a decision. You convinced yourself that god exists. You are clearly more intelligent than most christians/religious people. You were not convinced just with the bible, you needed more so this ''evidence'' that you found was good enough to trick your brain. Now you think you know god exists, you don't just believe it like the other believers, you have proof, it's not faith.

Good luck with your conjectures as well. Ultimately we all live out our beliefs an experiment in real time if you will.

Your belief's whatever they may be are similarly grounded in a priori truths which you cannot prove only assert. All beliefs trace back to the a priori aka assumed truths. Most people are unwilling or unable to actually question their foundations. Even nihilism is an assertion of this kind.
 
For clarity, however, I never said anything about the universe being intuitive. Nor do I agree with your claim that science has made discoveries that show the universe is illogical. I would argue the very opposite that the body of science is gradually revealing an highly ordered and logical creation.

"In principle, we can know all of mathematics. It is given to us in its entirety and does not change. … That part of it of which we have a perfect view seems beautiful, suggesting harmony; that is that all the parts fit together although we see fragments of them only. … Mathematics is applied to the real world and has proved fruitful. This suggests that the mathematical parts and the empirical parts are in harmony and the real world is also beautiful."

- Kurt Gödel

Please try to keep up we just went through a long discussion of what is necessary to apply Godel's theorem in the way I have. Af_newbie summed it up immediately above.


To apply Godel's theorem in the way that I did requires me to assume that the universe is ultimately logical aka that it is possible to describe every phenomenon in the universe mathematically. This is an assumption I make in my argument.

You can alternatively choose to believe as af_newbie apparently believes that the universe is illogical and thus globally indescribable with mathematics. Then you would reject my first claim as Godel's theorem would not be applicable.


You are twisting my words out of context again.

Who said anything about a proof? I have laid out a logical argument and like all logical arguments it rests on some basic assumptions.

I never said that I could prove the universe is logical. I said that if the universe is logical then it is incomplete. It is a conditional argument not a proof.

Everything in our lives including the reproducibility of science is consistent with a logical universe. Only at the very boundaries of our knowledge with esoteric phenomena such a black holes and quantum effects so poorly understood that their continue to be multiple competing theories explaining what exactly is happening it is more difficult to say things are logical.

Black holes and poorly understood quantum phenomena strike me as shaky ground to rest a belief in an illogical universe upon but to each his own.

Again you are a talking in philosophical terms. Godel's theorem cannot be applied to that, period. There is even a book for it because so many people tried to apply it incorrectly.

Yes and this requires that the universe be fundamentally logical.

In other words every phenomenon in the universe must be describable by some type of mathematical axiom. Such axioms may be totally beyond current human understanding or knowledge but their existence must be possible.

As I said the fact that the universe is ultimately logical is assumed in my argument. I think this is both a reasonable assumption and mostly self evident.

Our limited understanding of quantum mechanics is evidence only of our ignorance and in no way shows that the universe is illogical or indescribable by mathematical axiom.

You are misrepresenting my statement. I only need to show that the universe is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic to show that it is incomplete.

I never said the universe can be entirely represented with elementary arithmetic. If the universe can be entirely represented mathematically such math is far beyond human understanding.

Here is the entirety of my first argument.

An Argument for God

This is a very foolish statement to make.

Even pure mathematics which is the closest we can come to absolutely proving something is built on core basic assumptions that cannot be proven.

Honest arguments clearly lay out the assumptions they make and allow the reader to decide if they accept them or not. Dishonest arguments hide their assumptions or deny that any such assumptions exist.

You can for example chose to believe that the universe is illogical and cannot be described with mathematics and that any success with this approach so far is just a very long string of random occurance but this belief is quite hard to reconcile with science let alone common sense.

Here is the formal logic behind claim #1. Credit for this goes to Perry Marshal who outlined it here:

See: The #1 Mathematical Discovery of the 20th Century

Stated in Formal Language:

Gödel’s theorem says: “Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory.”

The Church-Turing thesis says that a physical system can express elementary arithmetic just as a human can, and that the arithmetic of a Turing Machine (computer) is not provable within the system and is likewise subject to incompleteness.

Any physical system subjected to measurement is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic. (In other words, children can do math by counting their fingers, water flowing into a bucket does integration, and physical systems always give the right answer.)

Therefore the universe is capable of expressing elementary arithmetic and like both mathematics itself and a Turing machine, is incomplete.

Syllogism:
1. All non-trivial computational systems are incomplete
2. The universe is a non-trivial computational system
3. Therefore the universe is incomplete

This is a fair challenge.

"Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem applies not just to math, but to everything that is subject to the laws of logic. Incompleteness is true in math; it’s equally true in science or language or philosophy.

And: If the universe is mathematical and logical, Incompleteness also applies to the universe."

My argument assumes apriori that the universe is mathematical and logical. I take the position that the totality of human experience including science backs that claim.

Nevertheless I concede that I cannot prove it.

All systems of belief can be traced back to assumed axioms. Belief in a mathematical and logical universe is one of mine.

I would note that quantum mechanics in no way shows that the universe is illogical or that it cannot be described with mathematics.

Yes and we discussed your disagreement with my logic in great depth.
I hold that the argument is sound and found your rebuttals lacking.

Nevertheless I have no desire to rehash old debates and retread fruitless ground. If anyone wants to read that exchange they can do so.

The OP asked a question and I have responded. If he wishes to engage further I will oblige but otherwise am content to let the matter rest.

And again there are huge problems with that.

Claim 1: Incorrectly applying godels theorem.

Claim 2: Is not a scientific theory and is not ''the best known system that allows us to prove the truths we can and infer the truths we cannot'' There is very little on the internet about that ''theory'', your link also says ''even more simply still, a belief is true when it fits in with the set of all our other beliefs without creating a contradiction.'' which is simply wrong. It's also extremely vague and doesn't explain anything.

Parodium the link below is the logic that led me to believe in God despite the arguments outlined in your opening post.

It's a bit long so I will link to it rather then quote the entirety of it here. The words and logic are mine.

In it I demonstrate to my satisfaction that it is far more logical to believe in God then to deny his God's existence.

An Argument for God

If that's the case then there would be no need to live here and not directly in heaven. I asked you numerous times what's the point of earth, why not go directly to heaven and your response was always, god didn't want to force us and gave us free will yet you are saying in heaven we wont have free will. A 10 year old would understand the flawed logic here lmao.