Can We Determine God's Existence - Writers Forum

BuildUpThatWall · 03-24-2008, 01:17 PM

My father recently admonished me for doubting God's existence. This essay is a response to the core of his argument; that we as lowly humans can not begin to understand god. If we can not understand what god is, then we certainly can not determine his existence

Any criticism or feed back is greatly desired. Thank you

Can We Determine God's Existence

We do not have the intelligence and/or the means to understand the real truth of god.

There is a satisfying sense of mystery in this statement. It is as though the truth was really as profound and incredible as to deserve our abject faith and worship. This statement is a pedestal on which a beautiful and sublime god may rest, unperturbed by the pettiness of man. All of mankind’s faults and his fallacies are attributed to his inability, his incapacity to comprehend the serenity and tranquility that this vision of god inspires.

The god of this statement is as powerful as he is wise, and he “works in mysterious ways.” Ways in which we would not understand fully and would border on ingratitude to question. For me, the combination of wisdom and power implies benevolence and even love, for without love and compassion why not use that power to destroy us at any fateful whim?

There is a temptation for me allow my disbelief to fall to faith in the face of such a transcendent god, free from the shackles and limitations that his association with man has created. Free of stain or flaw, and worthy of blind faith, worthy of worship, worthy of adoration, of emulation. There is an urge to accept this explanation so that the questions of life and purpose and death may have some semblance of closure, so that my instinctual need to have meaning, may have meaning. There is a desire to accept god so that I may have god’s acceptance, a need to believe in something so that I may have something to believe in, a want to be at peace with the question so that I may put the question to rest.

But there is another desire in me. A desire to tear the lofty and abstract sentiment down from it’s cloudlike heights and ferociously assail every flighty implication insinuated. Why don’t we have the ability to understand god? Why don’t we have the means to ascertain the one real truth? What is the real truth we are actually discussing? Why are we asked to believe in a thing that we can not understand yet given the means to ask questions?

I can hear the indignant: “Who are you to question god?” I can hear the compassionate: “You must learn the meaning of faith.” I can hear the credulous: “With all of god’s miracles that surround us you’re stupid if you don’t believe.” I can hear the spiteful: “You will have plenty of time to ask questions in hell.” And I can hear the rational: “God’s will is simply not ours to comprehend.” Yet, still I question.

Then am I an arrogant faithless imbecile who is going to burn in hell for not accepting such a simple explanation? I should hope not. I don’t think I am any of those things, but rather, in the words of Pascal, “I am so made that I can not believe.”

My conundrum: Do I doubt my creation because I was created to doubt?

In truth, the vague and extraordinary ‘deist’ god I described above is not the one that I doubt exists. With regards to the ‘deist’ god I would agree that we have not the means to prove or disprove his existence. The direct result of his vagueness is that we may (1) not seriously doubt his existence and may (2) ascribe any attributes to him that make doubting him less desirable. Similarly, albeit on a smaller scale, we can not prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Lock Ness Monster, now affectionately know by believers as “Nessy”, does not exist. In truth, if this were the god we were discussing I would not have cause to doubt.

It is the Christian god that the above statement does not apply to. It is the ‘one real truth’ of the Christian god that we have the means and the intelligence to discern. The Christian god is not the same as the ‘deist’ god. The Christian god is the god of the bible, of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, not the sublime mystery described above. The Christian god of the bible did not intend to be a beautiful mystery; his will and his existence are made perfectly clear to his followers.

It is god himself that makes his truth known during the exodus, it is god himself that dictates the covenant, and lays down the laws of Leviticus and then again in Deuteronomy. It is the Christian God who exiles the Hebrews to wander the desert for 40 years for the crime of doubt and condemns nations to fall to Joshua for being heretics. Doubt is why the kingdom was split under Solomon and, according to the Prophets like Hosea, Jeremiah, and Isaiah, why Israel falls to the Assyrians in the 8th century and why Judah falls to the Babylonians a century and an half later.

There is no sublime mystery attributed to God in the ancient Hebrew bibles. From the beginning of Pentateuch, Adam and Eve are presented with a specific set of rules given directly to them by God, and they should break those rules at their own peril. This sequence of events (God makes his presence and will known personally, then man ignores him, God punishes man) is, according to Bart Ehrman “...a refrain that is repeated throughout the whole of the Old Testament”. There is no mystery here. In fact, to not understand God’s real truth (that he exists and he has some very important guidelines for you to follow) is to incur his wrath.

There is no room for sublime mystery left to us in the New Testament either. Jesus is the son of God, the God of the Old Testament, who walks among us performing miracles and preaching god’s will directly to us. Again, there is no lofty secret concealed from us. Jesus describes exactly how God feels about us and about how we should feel about him. How we should behave and how we should treat others. How we may assure our entrance to heaven and for what crimes we may be condemned to hell. For good measure he is resurrected after is death to make sure that we got the point.

There is nothing mysterious about what God is and what God wants for anyone reading the bible literally. Even for the non-fundamentalist there is little room for the sublime. If you only take literally Jesus’ existence and his teachings and forget the rest of the bible you still have a direct from-the-horse’s-mouth understanding of God’s existence and his intentions. Again no mystery, no feel good interpretations are left for the believing Christian. Lewis Carol, in his famous theological undertaking “Mere Christianity”, says about Jesus, “Let us not come with any patronizing remarks about his being a good teacher. Either he was the son of god or he was lunatic or something worse. He did not leave it for us to decide, he did not mean to.” Simple, clear, cut and dry descriptions of what god is and what he wants is what you get even if you are a ‘bare-bones’ believing Christian.

It is on this basis that I make the claim that we do have the intelligence and/or the means to find out the ‘one real truth’ of the Christian God; that truth being of his existence. We have literature, history, philosophy, theology, archeology, astronomy among many other means (not to mention the bible) to help us determine this truth. Moreover, I believe that, for anyone who would claim the Christian faith, not only do we have the means and the intelligence to discover the one real truth, but we have the imperative to discover the final fact, lest we get the answer wrong.

BOURBON · 03-24-2008, 02:02 PM

....beg pardon??

Sam Winchester · 03-24-2008, 02:23 PM

Can We Determine God's Existence

We do not have the intelligence and/or (this is a shorcut which usually damages a sentence and often leads to confusion. I would avoid it)the means to understand the real truth of god (You may not believe in God, but his name still gets a capital G). There is a satisfying sense of mystery in this statement. It is as though the truth was really as profound and incredible as to deserve our abject faith and worship. This statement is a pedestal on which a beautiful and sublime god may rest, unperturbed by the pettiness of man. All of mankind’s faults and his fallacies are attributed to his inability, his incapacity to comprehend the serenity and tranquility that this vision of god inspires. The god of this statement is as powerful as he (again, this should be He) is wise, and he “works in mysterious ways.” Ways in which we would not understand fully and would border on ingratitude to question (fragment. Consider adjoining this to the previous sentence with a semi-colon). For me, the combination of wisdom and power implies benevolence and even love, for without love and compassion why not use that power to destroy us at any fateful whim? There is a temptation for me allow my disbelief to fall to faith in the face of such a transcendent god, free from the shackles and limitations that his association with man has created. Free of stain or flaw, and worthy of blind faith, worthy of worship, worthy of adoration, of emulation. There is an urge to accept this explanation so that the questions of life and purpose and death may have some semblance of closure, so that my instinctual need to have meaning, may have meaning. There is a desire to accept god so that I may have god’s acceptance, a need to believe in something so that I may have something to believe in, a want to be at peace with the question so that I may put the question to rest. (Though there is little grammatically incorrect about this sentence, if I'm being honest, it seemed all a little too over the top.) But there is another desire in me. A desire to tear the lofty and abstract sentiment down from it’s cloudlike heights and ferociously assail every flighty implication insinuated. Why don’t we have the ability to understand god? Why don’t we have the means to ascertain the one real truth? What is the real truth we are actually discussing? Why are we asked to believe in a thing that we can not understand yet given the means to ask questions? I can hear the indignant: “Who are you to question god?” I can hear the compassionate: “You must learn the meaning of faith.” I can hear the credulous: “With all of god’s miracles that surround us you’re stupid if you don’t believe.” I can hear the spiteful: “You will have plenty of time to ask questions in hell.” And I can hear the rational: “God’s will is simply not ours to comprehend.” Yet, still I question. Then am I an arrogant faithless imbecile who is going to burn in hell for not accepting such a simple explanation? I should hope not. I don’t think I am any of those things, but rather, in the words of Pascal, “I am so made that I can not believe.” My conundrum: Do I doubt my creation because I was created to doubt? In truth, the vague and extraordinary ‘deist’ (deism is the belief that there is a supreme being in the Universe. To say a 'deist God' makes no sense. Would God consider himself 'deist?' I doubt if that word works there) god I described above is not the one that I doubt exists. With regards to the ‘deist’ god I would agree that we have not the means to prove or disprove his existence. The direct result of his vagueness is that we may (1) not seriously doubt his existence and may (2) ascribe any attributes to him that make doubting him less desirable. Similarly, albeit on a smaller scale, we can not prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Lock (Loch) Ness Monster, now affectionately know by believers as “Nessy”, does not exist. In truth, if this were the god we were discussing I would not have cause to doubt. It is the Christian god that the above statement does not apply to. It is the ‘one real truth’ of the Christian god that we have the means and the intelligence to discern. The Christian god is not the same as the ‘deist’ god. The Christian god is the god of the bible, of Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, not the sublime mystery described above. The Christian god of the bible did not intend to be a beautiful mystery; his will and his existence are made perfectly clear to his followers. It is god himself that makes his truth known during the exodus, it is god himself that dictates the covenant, and lays down the laws of Leviticus and then again in Deuteronomy. It is the Christian God who exiles the Hebrews to wander the desert for 40 years (it was the Israelities who were made wander the desert for 40 years) for the crime of doubt and condemns nations to fall to Joshua for being heretics. Doubt is why the kingdom was split under Solomon and, according to the Prophets like Hosea, Jeremiah, and Isaiah, why Israel falls to the Assyrians in the 8th century and why Judah falls to the Babylonians a century and an half later. There is no sublime mystery attributed to God in the ancient Hebrew bibles. From the beginning of Pentateuch, Adam and Eve are presented with a specific set of rules given directly to them by God, and they should break those rules at their own peril. This sequence of events (God makes his presence and will known personally, then man ignores him, God punishes man) is, according to Bart Ehrman “...a refrain that is repeated throughout the whole of the Old Testament”. There is no mystery here. In fact, to not understand God’s real truth (that he exists and he has some very important guidelines for you to follow) is to incur his wrath. There is no room for sublime mystery left to us in the New Testament either. Jesus is the son of God, the God of the Old Testament, who walks among us performing miracles and preaching god’s will directly to us. Again, there is no lofty secret concealed from us. Jesus describes exactly how God feels about us and about how we should feel about him. How we should behave and how we should treat others. How we may assure our entrance to heaven and for what crimes we may be condemned to hell. For good measure he is resurrected after is death to make sure that we got the point.
There is nothing mysterious about what God is and what God wants for anyone reading the bible literally. Even for the non-fundamentalist there is little room for the sublime. If you only take literally Jesus’ existence and his teachings and forget the rest of the bible you still have a direct from-the-horse’s-mouth understanding of God’s existence and his intentions. Again no mystery, no feel good interpretations are left for the believing Christian. Lewis Carol, in his famous theological undertaking “Mere Christianity”, says about Jesus, “Let us not come with any patronizing remarks about his being a good teacher. Either he was the son of god or he was lunatic or something worse. He did not leave it for us to decide, he did not mean to.” Simple, clear, cut and dry descriptions of what god is and what he wants is what you get even if you are a ‘bare-bones’ believing Christian. It is on this basis that I make the claim that we do have the intelligence and/or the means to find out the ‘one real truth’ of the Christian God; that truth being of his existence. We have literature, history, philosophy, theology, archeology, astronomy among many other means (not to mention the bible) to help us determine this truth. Moreover, I believe that, for anyone who would claim the Christian faith, not only do we have the means and the intelligence to discover the one real truth, but we have the imperative to discover the final fact, lest we get the answer wrong.

It's good writing, but for a few grammatical things, and the lack of capitals on 'God'. Other than that, it's written quite well. Having said that, I'd be very weary of this style of writing (I write similar myself) because there is a tendency to overdo it to the point of verbiage. This is bad. You want to avoid seriously, over-technical writing. For a thesis, it's okay. Not for an essay where you're disputing the facts of God's existence. Be careful of that. That aside, well done.

Sam.

Underground · 03-24-2008, 08:22 PM

Sounds like you are questioning things I understood along time ago.Here is my take on God.

God is an idea. Ideas are only thoughts. Thoughts only occur because of the five senses. Those senses only occur because of the physics of the world outside the body and inside the body. All thoughts are composed of those sensations. There is no thought that has no origin in physics, because all thoughts are caused by physics. Those physics are the five senses to us. It is the only way we sense the world.

There are two kinds of thoughts: fact and fiction. Facts are thoughts that have a direct correlation with the world. Fiction is a group of thoughts put in an imaginative order, but have no correlation with the world, because of the order. God is simply a bunch of facts put into a fantastic order and regarded as having a true correlation with the world. God is only an idea. God has no physical correlation.

People get confused and think the imaginative idea of God must be real, because they sense one part of the God idea as real because, the ideas that compose the God idea do have physical correlations. But this is a fallacy I cannot remember at this time. Calling the part the whole or something like that.

And, spirituality is also an idea that has no physical correlation, but is composed of ideas that do have physical correlation. It too has an imaginative order that puts it in the category of fiction.

Use physics and psychology and you can trace how the image of God became real to you. If you take the time to do this you will be enlightened with atheism. If you don't, you will be babbling in the religious nonsense for the rest of your life.

BuildUpThatWall · 03-25-2008, 09:57 AM

I do share most of your sentiments underground. I am a little less of a materialist personally, but an anti-theist not the less. The point is to construct an arguement that will reach an already religious audience, hiding behind commonly held misconceptions like "we cannot understand god's will, so why try".

Thank you Sam, The 'diest' sentence needs some reworking. I meant to use the word deist as sort of an adjective....I'll see if I can clean that up.

Also.....it was C.S. Lewis.....Not Lewis Carrol....who wrote "Mere Christianity"...Not sure what I was thinking there....

I was hoping for some comments on the overall arguement....Is it affective?

Rogozhin · 03-25-2008, 09:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by BuildUpThatWall

Is it affective?

No.

I'm not slighting you though, you just don't seem to have any background in combined theological studies. You need to do some reading.

For now, I recomend the sermons of this man...
YouTube - Ravi Zacharias "Postures of the Mind, Affections of the...

Also here...

http://www.relevantrevolution.com/mp3/ravi-sin.mp3
http://www.bmuze.com/pmuze/upload/Se...Ravi_logic.mp3
http://htod.cdncon.com/o2/rzimht/MP3/JT/JTOctQA-1.mp3

His doctrine is to teach Christianity from an evangelical standpoint, while knowing himself that Christianity is only a western theology. And Jesus, the only western allegory for the "teacher" that we can call to.