My favorite argument for the existence of God

[Deborah D]

Any scientist worth his salt also understands that truth must be supported with evidence. An old book saying something is not evidence.

It is evidence if that "old book" is written by the Creator of the universe who has made Himself known through His incredible creation. Enjoy the sunshine tomorrow because the earth is just the right amount of distance from the sun. Enjoy looking at the fall colors because he made your eyes to function so well that man copied His design in making the camera. Enjoy breathing because He made this earth's atmosphere to have just the right mixture of gasses. And on top of all these wonders, HE LOVES YOU SO MUCH that He came to earth and died so that you can have life! There's your evidence, and there's so much more than there is room to list all of them! I pray that someday you will know the overwhelmingly deep love of your Creator.

 

[marineimaging]

@xianghua, so how do you know "that nature has a beginning"?

There are three things to be so that we can be here. Time, space, matter. Take away any one of those three and the other two collapse into themselves and we cannot exist; and in that they do exist we can go backward to a place in time where matter did not exist, where time did not exist, and space did not exist. In that they do exist it must be that they did not exist, until they did exist. Only the unified and unequaled energy can have brought them into existence and that was God. No matter how you describe God, He is infinite, omniscient, omnipresent, all powerful. Nothing else explains how it is that all of the elements we need to exist is here and in perfect balance. If this is not true, explain the beginning because even before the "Big Bang" there had to be time, space, matter.... AND energy.

 

[ananda]

There are three things to be so that we can be here. Time, space, matter. Take away any one of those three and the other two collapse into themselves and we cannot exist; and in that they do exist we can go backward to a place in time where matter did not exist, where time did not exist, and space did not exist. In that they do exist it must be that they did not exist, until they did exist. Only the unified and unequaled energy can have brought them into existence and that was God. No matter how you describe God, He is infinite, omniscient, omnipresent, all powerful. Nothing else explains how it is that all of the elements we need to exist is here and in perfect balance. If this is not true, explain the beginning because even before the "Big Bang" there had to be time, space, matter.... AND energy.

Who created your god?

 

[Bungle_Bear]

How do you square this

matter did not exist, where time did not exist, and space did not exist.

with this

even before the "Big Bang" there had to be time, space, matter.... AND energy.

?

 

[paul becke]

Thanks for sharing, feel free to share more if you are so inclined. How do you know what you experienced was infinite, without being infinite yourself?

I was a Christian for 30+ years; many of those years I served as a teacher for both children and adults. After being questioned and not having adequate answers for those questions - even after studying the texts in Greek - I left Christianity and spent a few years learning about other religions and philosophies. I ended up consciously choosing early Buddhism as that which appealed to both my head and my heart, and I do not regret my decision.

I was attracted to religion again, to a re-binding of myself to the worship of God via Aldous Huxley's paperback essay on comparative religion, The Perennial Philosophy. Once 'the penny dropped', I realised I had made a big mistake in rejecting the religion of my early childhood, Christianity, notably, according to Roman Catholic belief.

Huxley thought that such belief in the 'brand leader' made sense, but, he felt that, unlike the canonised saints, he just could not stomach the thought of what 'the traditions of men' had done to it. However, I still had the lingering feeling that the eastern religions were generally more ascetical, spiritual and 'truthy' ! That is, until I read a book by Abbot Marmion, a Belgian Benedictine monk (sounds Irish to me, which he doubtless was ... in a Benedictine monastery... easily Googlable) - ironically, on the theme of the crucial significance of Jesus' Incarnation.

From that moment, it would be difficult to exaggerate the extent to which the scriptures came alive to me, after, candidly, being rather 'not alive'...; once the throne-room, after Holy Communion mindset was replaced by the understanding that it was our loving DAD that we were communing with...

Now, I genuinely struggle not to laugh out loud at the human antics of the characters we are introduced to, their humanity, their foibles are so accurately conveyed in the words of scripture. So much of everyday life is comical to me, anyway, so 'upside down' has God allowed us fallen men and women (but notably, the former) to commandeer the order of the world to our liking, i.e. it is almost entirely run by the most worldly, the least spiritual people - which, nevertheless, does not necessarily signify that they are the worst, the most short-sighted, people! They just tend to be !

So, now, I see Christianity as what it claims to be, i.e. in a class of its own, containing the fulness of truth, irrespective of our often hapless efforts not to muddy the water. Good luck on your path, anyway. It is certainly not without its beauty.

PS: I deleted a brief passage which was no longer my experience. I believe it had been aberrant, rather than normal, anyway.

 

[paul becke]

How do you square this
with this ?

The deepest mysteries are bound to be paradoxical. NDEers speak of an inevitable passage of time, but that the duration of it cannot be gauged, stating that it is weird. In the Catholic church, we do speak of these paradoxes as divine 'mysteries'. (The primordial one, of course, is that of the nature of the Holy Trinity, itself).

However, the acknowledgment of the failure of our mortal, worldly intelligence is actually a great gift, since our scientists, having accepted such mysteries, have been able to use them as springboards, stepping-stones (depending on how pedestrian or recod-breaking the discoveries .... !) to launch into further perfectly logical and empirically-verifiable advances.

Little wonder, therefore, that all the major paradigms of physics - not to mention those of mathematics, such as those of the particularly devout Christians, Isaac Newton (a distinct oddball, however), GALILEO (and Kurt Godel, an unequivocal follower, though less devout) - were discovered by passionate deists, such as Einstein, in his productive, younger days - when - moreover his admiration for the historical Jesus, 'the luminous figure of the Nazarene', as he described him, seemed almost boundless!

Yes, even physicists and mathematicians have long found that such paradoxes/mysteries proliferate, the more deeply that the nature of matter is penetrated. Even physicists and mathematicians ? What am I saying ? Physicists and mathematicians in particular !

Here is what Robert Jastro, one-time head of NASA, had to say :

“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

 

[paul becke]

There are three things to be so that we can be here. Time, space, matter. Take away any one of those three and the other two collapse into themselves and we cannot exist; and in that they do exist we can go backward to a place in time where matter did not exist, where time did not exist, and space did not exist. In that they do exist it must be that they did not exist, until they did exist. Only the unified and unequaled energy can have brought them into existence and that was God. No matter how you describe God, He is infinite, omniscient, omnipresent, all powerful. Nothing else explains how it is that all of the elements we need to exist is here and in perfect balance. If this is not true, explain the beginning because even before the "Big Bang" there had to be time, space, matter.... AND energy.

'In the beginning was the Word...'

- The Gospel according to John, 1.1... the beginning of John and of his Gospel, and of everything bar God who has no beginning or or end.

Through the discovery of the DNA code (not binary, but quaternary), it was confirmed that information precedes matter, ergo design, etc. Gates states that it is a kind of software, immeasurably more complex and sophisticated than any software Microsoft has been able to come up with.

Well, while existing at the 'nano' level, enlarged to the size of a small village, the simple, one-cell, E-Coli bug would be a vast, functioning factory of incredible complexity and sophistication - with all the functions of a 'state of the art' factory and more : inventory, 'just-in-time' procurement and storage, quality control, refuse removal, the lot ...

 

[marineimaging]

'In the beginning was the Word...'

- The Gospel according to John, 1.1... the beginning of John and of his Gospel, and of everything bar God who has no beginning or or end.

Through the discovery of the DNA code (not binary, but quaternary), it was confirmed that information precedes matter, ergo design, etc. Gates states that it is a kind of software, immeasurably more complex and sophisticated than any software Microsoft has been able to come up with.

Well, while existing at the 'nano' level, enlarged to the size of a small village, the simple, one-cell, E-Coli bug would be a vast, functioning factory of incredible complexity and sophistication - with all the functions of a 'state of the art' factory and more : inventory, 'just-in-time' procurement and storage, quality control, refuse removal, the lot ...

Computers cannot exist without time. We cannot exist without time. Today we look at doctors who say they can heal because the sciences now allow us better understanding of the illnesses and the human body. What they need though, is time. Take time away and the healing stops. It becomes the excuse. "Had you come in earlier we could have healed you." "Had that breast cancer or colon cancer been caught in the early stages we could give you a better prognosis." It takes time to heal. Even Jesus project the use of time to heal when he could have simply done it with a thought. He made Lazarus family wait until they were CERTAIN he was dead, then he arrived at the tomb and called for Lazarus to come out. He took the time to make a paste of mud and to administer it to his eyes of the blind man and then to speak the words to be healed out loud. Not because HE needed time, but because the people needed time. All of these things Jesus could have done in a millionth of a nano-second with just a thought. Jesus could have even healed the blind man before he was born. I knew you before you were born is a good indication of God's understanding of our need to reference time as it affects us and creation, but the OP is seeking a reference that is not biblical. Using the fact that time is mentioned in the bible can help unify the understanding that time is not discarded in the creation model, nor are we Christians rejecting time as we do understand and use time in the entire creation model. AND, in that manner it must also be used in the entire evolution model. But what if carbon dating is based on corrupt information and all of the starting points can be brought forward to a matter of 10,000 years. That would knock the evolution model out, completely. Because evolution demands that time be ever existent and not created. Yet, as a prime element of our existence as one of the legs of time, space, and matter in that they do exist and in that time and space and energy had to exist to bring matter to the model, then that they do exist points to a creator in the design to also define what their constraints must be. Time running amuck and uncontrolled would prohibit the universes existence.

 

[Aman777]

How do you square this
with this ?

Marineimaging:>>even before the "Big Bang" there had to be time, space, matter.... AND energy.

He's right since God changed energy from His world into matter in the physical world. It took Albert Einstein until a hundred years ago to discover the SAME. Amen?

 

[ananda]

I was attracted to religion again, to a re-binding of myself to the worship of God via Aldous Huxley's paperback essay on comparative religion, The Perennial Philosophy. Once 'the penny dropped', I realised I had made a big mistake in rejecting the religion of my early childhood, Christianity, notably, according to Roman Catholic belief.

Huxley thought that such belief in the 'brand leader' made sense, but, he felt that, unlike the canonised saints, he just could not stomach the thought of what 'the traditions of men' had done to it. However, I still had the lingering feeling that the eastern religions were generally more ascetical, spiritual and 'truthy' ! That is, until I read a book by Abbot Marmion, a Belgian Benedictine monk (sounds Irish to me, which he doubtless was ... in a Benedictine monastery... easily Googlable) - ironically, on the theme of the crucial significance of Jesus' Incarnation.

From that moment, it would be difficult to exaggerate the extent to which the scriptures came alive to me, after, candidly, being rather 'not alive'...; once the throne-room, after Holy Communion mindset was replaced by the understanding that it was our loving DAD that we were communing with...

Now, I genuinely struggle not to laugh out loud at the human antics of the characters we are introduced to, their humanity, their foibles are so accurately conveyed in the words of scripture. So much of everyday life is comical to me, anyway, so 'upside down' has God allowed us fallen men and women (but notably, the former) to commandeer the order of the world to our liking, i.e. it is almost entirely run by the most worldly, the least spiritual people - which, nevertheless, does not necessarily signify that they are the worst, the most short-sighted, people! They just tend to be !

So, now, I see Christianity as what it claims to be, i.e. in a class of its own, containing the fulness of truth, irrespective of our often hapless efforts not to muddy the water. Good luck on your path, anyway. It is certainly not without its beauty.

PS: I deleted a brief passage which was no longer my experience. I believe it had been aberrant, rather than normal, anyway.

Thank you for sharing. I mainly converted away from Christianity because "eternal life" was less appealing than "permanent cessation of discontentment/suffering" - the latter seemed more fundamental to me. Good luck on your path as well!

 

[HitchSlap]

It is evidence if that "old book" is written by the Creator of the universe

But it wasn't... it was written by men, some known, some anonymous, some pseudonymous. We have no original manuscripts, and those fragments that do exist have been heavily copied, redacted, and co-opted from other works.

who has made Himself known through His incredible creation.

If you say so. Personally, I have no good reason to believe this.

Enjoy the sunshine tomorrow because the earth is just the right amount of distance from the sun.

You're not suggesting that one habitable planet out of trillions is anything more than chance, are you?

Enjoy looking at the fall colors because he made your eyes to function so well that man copied His design in making the camera.

I do enjoy looking at nature and all of it's wonders. But the reason my eyes work is the result of millions of years of evolution, not design. The camera, however, is a much better design than the eye, well, because it's actually designed.

Enjoy breathing because He made this earth's atmosphere to have just the right mixture of gasses.

You got that backwards, we evolved to breathe the existing atmospheric gasses.
It's why we can't breathe on Mars.

And on top of all these wonders, HE LOVES YOU SO MUCH that He came to earth and died so that you can have life!

Meh, not impressed. And if he loved us so much, there wouldn't be a hell.

There's your evidence, and there's so much more than there is room to list all of them! I pray that someday you will know the overwhelmingly deep love of your Creator.

I disagree with your definition of evidence.

 

[Aman777]

But it wasn't... it was written by men, some known, some anonymous, some pseudonymous.

False, since only God knew more than 3k years ago:

That there was an enormous length of time between the big bang and the lighting of the first Stars. Scripture shows that the bb was on the 3rd Day/Age Genesis 2:4 and the first Stars appeared on the 4th Day/Age. Genesis 1:16 Science has recently discovered that it was 180 MILLION years, in man's time from the bb to the first Stars. Each Day/Age to God, is billions of years in length, in man's time.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/.../first-stars-universe-big-bang-edges-space-scie...Feb 28, 2018 - Now, scientists peering back into deep time suggest that the earliest stars didn't turn on until about 180 million years after the big bang

Mankind has imagined where life first came from on our Planet. Genesis 1:21 states clearly that "every living creature that moveth" was created and brought forth from WATER, on the 5th Day, which was some 3.8 billion years ago, in man's time. Science confirmed this 3k year old history just two years ago.
Meet Luca, the Ancestor of All Living Things - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/science/last-universal-ancestor.html Jul 25, 2016 -

God revealed Himself because He must tell the Scientific Truth and He did in Genesis. In the last days, God will pour out this Scientific Truth upon ALL flesh Act 2:17 of the last generation, leaving them without excuse. Since it's already happening, future scientific discoveries will continue to confirm what God told us thousands of years ago in Genesis. It's empirical testable evidence of God.

 

[HitchSlap]

False, since only God knew more than 3k years ago:

That there was an enormous length of time between the big bang and the lighting of the first Stars. Scripture shows that the bb was on the 3rd Day/Age Genesis 2:4 and the first Stars appeared on the 4th Day/Age. Genesis 1:16 Science has recently discovered that it was 180 MILLION years, in man's time from the bb to the first Stars. Each Day/Age to God, is billions of years in length, in man's time.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/.../first-stars-universe-big-bang-edges-space-scie...Feb 28, 2018 - Now, scientists peering back into deep time suggest that the earliest stars didn't turn on until about 180 million years after the big bang

Mankind has imagined where life first came from on our Planet. Genesis 1:21 states clearly that "every living creature that moveth" was created and brought forth from WATER, on the 5th Day, which was some 3.8 billion years ago, in man's time. Science confirmed this 3k year old history just two years ago.
Meet Luca, the Ancestor of All Living Things - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/science/last-universal-ancestor.html Jul 25, 2016 -

God revealed Himself because He must tell the Scientific Truth and He did in Genesis. In the last days, God will pour out this Scientific Truth upon ALL flesh Act 2:17 of the last generation, leaving them without excuse. Since it's already happening, future scientific discoveries will continue to confirm what God told us thousands of years ago in Genesis. It's empirical testable evidence of God.

Darn, I thought I had you on ignore.

3...2...1...

 

[Aman777]

Darn, I thought I had you on ignore.

3...2...1...

Some are as dumb as they look.

 

[HitchSlap]

Good question. The answer is the Bible tells me so. Even though God has always existed, He created the universe, and therefore, it has a definite beginning.

Yet, I'm sure you don't do everything the bible says. For instance, I hope you haven't stoned your kids for misbehaving?

Deuteronomy 21:18-21 King James Version (KJV)
18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:

19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;

20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.

21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

 

[Aman777]

Yet, I'm sure you don't do everything the bible says. For instance, I hope you haven't stoned your kids for misbehaving?

Some don't know that God always tells us the perfect way to act IF you want to be perfect. None of us are and that's WHY Jesus had to die for our sins. Many spew hatred and disbelief while confusion fills their minds since they THINK they know more than God. They don't know that they must account for every idle word, Today.

 

[Kylie]

It is evidence if that "old book" is written by the Creator of the universe who has made Himself known through His incredible creation. Enjoy the sunshine tomorrow because the earth is just the right amount of distance from the sun. Enjoy looking at the fall colors because he made your eyes to function so well that man copied His design in making the camera. Enjoy breathing because He made this earth's atmosphere to have just the right mixture of gasses. And on top of all these wonders, HE LOVES YOU SO MUCH that He came to earth and died so that you can have life! There's your evidence, and there's so much more than there is room to list all of them! I pray that someday you will know the overwhelmingly deep love of your Creator.

No it isn't.

If I have a book that says that it is William Shatner's diary, does that mean it is really his diary? Of course not, since anyone can write "This diary belongs to William Shatner" on a book.

 

[Aman777]

If I have a book that says that it is William Shatner's diary, does that mean it is really his diary?

The Bible is unlike any other Book since its first chapter tells us of recent Scientific discoveries and others which are FUTURE to 2018. It's too bad you don't understand.

 

[paul becke]

'Deborah D said: ↑
who has made Himself known through His incredible creation.
If you say so. Personally, I have no good reason to believe this.'

Are you serious ? What else but an omniscient, omnipotent god could have created and, up to this moment, continue to sustain, a universe of such size and complexity ? You have a very riotous imagination. You should find this article interesting :

Experience, Rational Debate & Science Depend On The Supernatural

 

[Kylie]

The Bible is unlike any other Book since its first chapter tells us of recent Scientific discoveries and others which are FUTURE to 2018. It's too bad you don't understand.

Wow, I've seen Muslims say the same thing.

So I guess that means you believe the Koran now?

And are you really REALLY saying that the Bible predicts things that haven't been predicted? How do you know if they haven't been predicted? I mean, why don't you use the Bible to make a prediction about something we have no scientific knowledge of? Say dark matter. Use the Bible to give me scientific information about dark matter. We are likely to make scientific breakthroughs regarding dark matter in the next few years, so we won't have too long (in all likelihood) to see if you are right. So go on, use the Bible to give me information about dark matter that science does not currently know. Let's see how good you are.

Because all you are doing is making POST-dictions, not PREdictions. It's easy enough to take a metaphorical account steeped in metaphor and find a way to interpret it that agrees with science that has been discovered, and then claim the metaphorical account was never metaphorical and was instead a literal description that was meant to be interpreted in the way that matches up with what science has already discovered. Any fool can do that. But if you are REALLY correct, you should be able to use the Bible to make specific predictions about something science has no knowledge of. So, let's see you do it. Doesn't even have to be about dark matter. It can be about anything you want.