Best Argument For or Against God's Existence

[jay17]

Hello all,

In your opinion, what's the very best argument for the existence of God? Conversely, what's the top argument against the existence of God? Interested to hear your responses and subsequent reasoning. Thanks!

I would ask each person that has an argument, for or against, why they require one.
What will they do with their arguments.
What do they seek to achieve.

 

[Davian]

Oh KCA, what have I done? We should stay on topic.....

You didn't do anything, it did it to itself.

Indeed. It was already burning when it got here.

 

[TillICollapse]

It was after 2-3 years of living on a rural property with my wife and first baby son. A simple quiet life style without too many distractions. There was no electricity or telephone.
A dream was remembered and reflected on as I worked at a project and then progressively and powerfully an energy drew me out of my self and it was as though another mind was shown to my mind and it was the mind of an immortal. In 5 seconds all the stored information of that mind was apparent and many complete ideas were shown. I couldn't breath and partially collapsed. I was not frightened but was a bit stunned, recovered and then walked approximately 200 meters to the cottage where we lived. I had never realized there is a God and how close and intimate He is to everything. God is like an observer just a little deeper and beyond the mind that is usually thought from and He fills the same space as me and in fact every object.

Many concepts or ideas were apparent and it was as though thoughts were coming from someones perfect mind. The difference between my mind was seen as a comparison and how mine did not measure up. A few years were spent enjoying whole concepts coming into my thoughts but eventually serious work needed to be done and the communication faded.
It is all difficult to rationalize and care was taken to keep these things to my self when around certain people because the information received was a bit ahead of its time.
I got involved and explored different technologies and attempted to build some devices. With the internet there are now people putting up videos of what they believe and have been working on and many of them have some truth when the experience is considered.
Those things that take my interest are how the earth operates and it is much like a space craft and time machine but the human is trapped because of the biology and mind that only sees and brings death and degeneration.
The Eternal God is before everything seen exists and His power comes through a pattern of what is seen and that regulates the power that enters. The pattern is easily calculated and if replicated with rotating fields of energy the rate can be changed. There is a spiral prescribed that determines a gradient that has slip. Everything is instantly manifested and gravity occurs and if the primary fields are distorted thrust will occur because the dimensional aspect of creation would mean that the mass is out of alignment with its field.
Humans do not have the ability to use the ultimate technology because all our learning is from a biological perspective. Humans have predatory mental instincts that are applied toward each other as they attempt to penetrate the subconscious.
The Bible is a serious book and if believed helps to condition and reassure the mind that has been changed.

Sorry I missed that you had replied. Can you give a practical example of some of the information you're talking about ? For instance, you said you tried to build some devices or something ? Or that the Eternal God's power comes through a pattern that is easily calculated and the rate can be changed ? Can you give an example of what that means ?

 

[Joshua260]

Did you forget to mention what he also said? Quantum nucleation.

Did you notice that he said that the universe probably did have a beginning?

 

[Joshua260]

And so since time in our universe is finite, are you saying that just throws actual infinities out the window altogether?

This means that they only exist as mathematical devices.

 

[Joshua260]

Then why are you using scientific theories and discoveries to back it up?

There's nothing wrong with that.

 

[Dave RP]

Hello all,

In your opinion, what's the very best argument for the existence of God? Conversely, what's the top argument against the existence of God? Interested to hear your responses and subsequent reasoning. Thanks!

In my opinion the best argument for Gods existence is that man has evolved to be curious and inquisitive about the world, the universe and their place in it. As we cannot understand how all the universe got here we have to invent a God. Then, because our lives are short and finite, and we see tragedy all around us, we need to believe in an after life. Belief in the existence of God allows us to cover those bases. Hence people will believe that God exists.

best argument against God is that it seems highly unlikely that this super spirit, however you would define the God of the bible, could have came into being - who made God being the classic statement. If God made all the universe for us, why did he make it billions of years ago and why are there billions of other stars, for me the whole thing just seems too far fetched to be believable.

 

[Joshua260]

It means a lot. It means that you consider yourself infallible, and that this discussion is one sided; there is no possibility of you being wrong, or of those that disagree with you being right.

You do this a lot. Will you please stop trying to divert the conversation from the topic at hand?

 

[Archaeopteryx]

There's nothing wrong with that.

In that case, I think Davian's question from earlier is highly pertinent: do you accept the standard model of cosmology?

 

[Kylie]

In my opinion the best argument for Gods existence is that man has evolved to be curious and inquisitive about the world, the universe and their place in it. As we cannot understand how all the universe got here we have to invent a God. Then, because our lives are short and finite, and we see tragedy all around us, we need to believe in an after life. Belief in the existence of God allows us to cover those bases. Hence people will believe that God exists.

I'm curious as to why you think this is a convincing argument supporting the existence of God. It seems more like a good argument to explain why we have religions.

 

[KCfromNC]

Did you notice that he said that the universe probably did have a beginning?

If you believe him, you're showing P2 to be incorrect. P2 is a statement of certainty instead of the probability you're referencing here.

 

[Dave RP]

I'm curious as to why you think this is a convincing argument supporting the existence of God. It seems more like a good argument to explain why we have religions.

You're quite correct, I meant this as a reason people need to believe in a God and therefore invent a religion (of whatever hue).

 

[nonbeliever314]

Did you notice that he said that the universe probably did have a beginning?

I did. What's more important is quantum nucleation. Quantum nucleation = beginning with something there already. Not from absolute nothingness.

 

[nonbeliever314]

This means that they only exist as mathematical devices.

So time is finite, physical infinities don't actually exist? There's many other things that could be infinite besides time. If they do exist. You can't just rule them out. But you will because you're not that open to other possibilities besides that of god and a finite universe, which you already admitted.

 

[Davian]

You do this a lot. Will you please stop trying to divert the conversation from the topic at hand?

The topic at hand is the critiquing of arguments for or against God, specifically your KCA at the moment.

It would be intellectually honest of you to openly declare that you will not accept any critique as valid, if this is the case. Is this the case?

 

[Athée]

Best argument for: I would say the existence of the universe. Not the Kalam necessarily but I think people have always found the God of the gaps persuasive (not correct ultimately but convincing while the gap exists) and in my mind the existence of the universe at all is a pretty big gap. We don't really know how it came to be, or even if coming in to existence is the right way of thinking about it. If there is anywhere that throwing up our hands and saying.. Because magic/God this would be the place.

Against :
The sufficiency of naturaliam as an explanation for so much.
The weakness of the case for specific deities. A transcendent force is hard (impossible?) to ultimately disprove but named Gods like Yahweh are less problematic to dispose of.

 

[nonbeliever314]

I need to read up on some math related things, but my hypothesis is basically this..
Whatever all of reality truly is, if what we experience is actually reality, it's here. This particular universe, and any others could have had a beginning, but I think there is much more to it than just considering a universe or universes all there is to reality. I take to the MUH, and with that in mind, if I or someone could prove that it's either simpler that reality was always here, as opposed to it somehow starting that could be a nail in the coffin for a god. It's far more complicated to have a beginning to reality, than to not have one. If all of reality (not saying just a universe(s)) is a mathematical structure, that leaves open more possibilities. Probably be some type of proof by contradiction, to pull it off. I don't think that would violate the Incompleteness theorem since I'm not proving self-consistency for a system. (I hope I blabbered that right...)

 

[Joshua260]

It is completely relevant. If you are personally discrediting the very individuals you are citing as supporting your KCA, should not everyone in this forum be aware of it?

This is just off-topic and I will not address it. Please stay on topic.

 

[Joshua260]

Now all you have to do is demonstrate that this philosophical argument can be applied to that period of "time" prior to the current expansion of the cosmos.

There is no prior to the beginning of time.

 

[Joshua260]

Joshua -- I may regret jumping back in here, but you repeatedly reference Hawking, and seemingly out of context. For example:



Here is an article of Hawking's you previously picked from, where I'll quote from to show a fuller context:

"It seems that Quantum theory, on the other hand, can predict how the universe will begin. Quantum theory introduces a new idea, that of imaginary time. Imaginary time may sound like science fiction, and it has been brought into Doctor Who. But nevertheless, it is a genuine scientific concept. One can picture it in the following way. One can think of ordinary, real, time as a horizontal line. On the left, one has the past, and on the right, the future. But there's another kind of time in the vertical direction. This is called imaginary time, because it is not the kind of time we normally experience. But in a sense, it is just as real, as what we call real time.

The three directions in space, and the one direction of imaginary time, make up what is called a Euclidean space-time. I don't think anyone can picture a four dimensional curve space. But it is not too difficult to visualise a two dimensional surface, like a saddle, or the surface of a football."

That doesn't sound like Hawking is claiming imaginary time is nothing more than an imaginative contrivance. If you want to claim something like this is just imagination and philosophy and involves no mathematics, I'd like to see you flesh that out and explain how you come to that conclusion.

Also, if you further read that article, you'll see that Hawking DOES state the singularity exists ... in "real" time. The time we experience now. It doesn't exist in imaginary time, in imaginary time it's just a point from which the universe expands smoothly.

"The conclusion of this lecture is that the universe has not existed forever. Rather, the universe, and time itself, had a beginning in the Big Bang, about 15 billion years ago. The beginning of real time, would have been a singularity, at which the laws of physics would have broken down. Nevertheless, the way the universe began would have been determined by the laws of physics, if the universe satisfied the no boundary condition. This says that in the imaginary time direction, space-time is finite in extent, but doesn't have any boundary or edge. The predictions of the no boundary proposal seem to agree with observation. The no boundary hypothesis also predicts that the universe will eventually collapse again."

If I understand at least the basics correctly, he is stating that there *is* a singularity from which time and the universe (I believe he is basically meaning the observable universe, considering the way he describes it throughout the lecture) came forth from, but when attempting to explain the origins of the entire universe from the context of the Hartle-Hawking state ... that point appears like any other point in time along the imaginary time axis. IOW ... it didn't ALL originate with the singularity, as previously thought. "What came before the singularity ?" is what the Hartle-Hawking state attempts to address. So he is describing two periods of "existence" ... the beginning the universe where things like "beginning of time" apply, and then BEFORE that (before the Planck Epoch), when things like that don't apply and break down (at the singularity) and may become meaningless. I believe when you reference him, you are picking things out of context, and mixing and mashing ideas. I haven't read ABHOT in a long while, however simply referencing that lecture and other online articles, it seems to me you are taking him out of context.

I've already gone through some of these circles with you weeks ago in this thread, so it's not totally fair of me to post and run, but I'm not interested in going round with you again. However if you'd like to address, in detail and with equations that you understand AND can explain, why the very concepts you are referencing are nothing more than imaginative contrivances ... feel free. Seeing as how you pick from those same proposals and concepts to try and support your own statements, which I think you do out of context.

Quite simply, Hawking believes that the universe began to exist.

Then why not just stick with referencing the Holy Spirit ... why go through all of this with the KCA and whatnot ?

Because I can't use the witness of the Holy Spirit as evidence for others. Surely, you understand that.