Arguments from Design

Does the existence of the earth prove the existence of God?

  • Yes - The earth could not exist without God creating it.

  • No - The existence of the earth does not necissarily prove that God exists.


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juvenissun

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Given the Arguments from Design, do you believe that the creation of the earth supports the existence of God? *IMPORTANT!* The question here is not whether God exists, but whether or not this can be proven by the existence of the earth.

I did not vote. I understand what are you asking and I like to vote yes. But I do not like the word "prove".

We do not know how special is the earth yet. IF, a big if, the earth turned out to be the only place where human-like life exists, then I would vote a yes. So far, even I do think the earth IS special. But this is only my faith.
 
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seremela06

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If we could prove the existence of God, we wouldn't need faith, and if there's one thing the Bible teaches, it's that we need faith.
Do I think the Earth could exist without God? No. This is a position of faith, however, and cannot be shown empirically.

i agree with what you're saying. the individuals that choose to believe in god by faith will believe regardless of the circumstances. however, those who feel they must have proof of god's existence will likely spend their entire lives in search of that proof...
 
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busterdog

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If we could prove the existence of God, we wouldn't need faith, and if there's one thing the Bible teaches, it's that we need faith.
Do I think the Earth could exist without God? No. This is a position of faith, however, and cannot be shown empirically.

Said otherwise, the standards that the world imposes can never be satisfied, and that is why we would rather live by faith. Its just a better deal.

In order to prove the inherent worth of my spouse, one must either be in love already as I am or accept as of course the importance of that relationship of being "in love." In many violent places in this world, no amount of proof can justify her inherent worth as a human being.

I can "prove" she is a good mother because of the kids I have only to those who already "believe."

So, I think the whole proving thing is over-rated. It is a very, very limited field of inquiry.
 
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busterdog

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i agree with what you're saying. the individuals that choose to believe in god by faith will believe regardless of the circumstances. however, those who feel they must have proof of god's existence will likely spend their entire lives in search of that proof...

I am voting yes.

Reasons: I love the Lord and every good thing is evidence of Him. I will also tell you that I am very disappointed in the abilities of people to reason out any fundamental point of existence on their own. There is hardly any real proof of anything without this relationship.
 
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seremela06

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Said otherwise, the standards that the world imposes can never be satisfied, and that is why we would rather live by faith. Its just a better deal.

In order to prove the inherent worth of my spouse, one must either be in love already as I am or accept as of course the importance of that relationship of being "in love." In many violent places in this world, no amount of proof can justify her inherent worth as a human being.

I can "prove" she is a good mother because of the kids I have only to those who already "believe."

So, I think the whole proving thing is over-rated. It is a very, very limited field of inquiry.

good point! :)
 
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gluadys

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I would quibble a bit with the wording of the poll, especially the first option. I expect many of us who agree that the earth could not exist without God creating it also agree that the existence of the earth does not prove the existence of God.

It would have been better to use a more parallel wording e.g. "the existence of the earth proves that God must exist."

I voted "no", but I would not reject the first statement as it stands. I just took it to imply proof although that was not explicitly stated.
 
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busterdog

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I voted yes.

For the yes voters, I was one, what really is the difference?

Now the odds are, that if you believe that God exists, there is probably a better chance that you will indeed come to appreciate a creator God, if not come to saving faith. In that sense, it does tend to make a difference. However, the frail human logic of such reasoning is pretty underwhelming to me. "Odds" are pretty cold comfort and pretty far removed from truth.

Consider the philosopher who answered this question yes:

http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/atheist_philosopher_041210.html

Atheist Philosopher, 81, Now Believes in God

By Richard N. Ostling, Associated Press
posted: 10 December 2004 09:31 am ET
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NEW YORK (AP) _ A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God -- more or less -- based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.
At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.
Flew said he's best labeled a deist like Thomas Jefferson, whose God was not actively involved in people's lives.
"I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins," he said. "It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose."
Flew first made his mark with the 1950 article "Theology and Falsification," based on a paper for the Socratic Club, a weekly Oxford religious forum led by writer and Christian thinker C.S. Lewis.
Over the years, Flew proclaimed the lack of evidence for God while teaching at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele, and Reading universities in Britain, in visits to numerous U.S. and Canadian campuses and in books, articles, lectures and debates.
There was no one moment of change but a gradual conclusion over recent months for Flew, a spry man who still does not believe in an afterlife.
Yet biologists' investigation of DNA "has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved," Flew says in the new video, "Has Science Discovered God?"
The video draws from a New York discussion last May organized by author Roy Abraham Varghese's Institute for Metascientific Research in Garland, Texas. Participants were Flew; Varghese; Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder, an Orthodox Jew; and Roman Catholic philosopher John Haldane of Scotland's University of St. Andrews.
The first hint of Flew's turn was a letter to the August-September issue of Britain's Philosophy Now magazine. "It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism," he wrote.
The letter commended arguments in Schroeder's "The Hidden Face of God" and "The Wonder of the World" by Varghese, an Eastern Rite Catholic layman.
This week, Flew finished writing the first formal account of his new outlook for the introduction to a new edition of his "God and Philosophy," scheduled for release next year by Prometheus Books.
Prometheus specializes in skeptical thought, but if his belief upsets people, well "that's too bad," Flew said. "My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato's Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads."
Last week, Richard Carrier, a writer and Columbia University graduate student, posted new material based on correspondence with Flew on the atheistic www.infidels.org Web page. Carrier assured atheists that Flew accepts only a "minimal God" and believes in no afterlife.
Flew's "name and stature are big. Whenever you hear people talk about atheists, Flew always comes up," Carrier said. Still, when it comes to Flew's reversal, "apart from curiosity, I don't think it's like a big deal."
Flew told The Associated Press his current ideas have some similarity with American "intelligent design" theorists, who see evidence for a guiding force in the construction of the universe. He accepts Darwinian evolution but doubts it can explain the ultimate origins of life.
A Methodist minister's son, Flew became an atheist at 15.
Early in his career, he argued that no conceivable events could constitute proof against God for believers, so skeptics were right to wonder whether the concept of God meant anything at all.
Another landmark was his 1984 "The Presumption of Atheism," playing off the presumption of innocence in criminal law. Flew said the debate over God must begin by presuming atheism, putting the burden of proof on those arguing that God exists.
My question is whether this proof amounts to much at all. Lets put aside saving faith and piety for the moment. We all agree that the devil believes in God, but there is little significance in that.

Trying to look at it empiracally or ontologically or something like that, what is it at base to recognize a creator? Awe? Cold sweats? Fear? Panic? Death? Rapture? If we assume there is a God, how does one just reason through it and that's all? If you consider just a handfull of the supposed attributes of God even in religions generally, and not just the Bible, how does that not shatter how one regards the past, where one is and a view of the future? (And why do we Christians just "do Church" indifferently, for that matter?)

If one really accepted the existence of God on the basis of evidence, shouldnt the evidence demand the following:

Isa 6:5 Then said I, Woe [is] me! for I am undone; because I [am] a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.

Rev 1:17 And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last:

So, I think the question is one worth asking, but can we handle the real fact of that existence, can we handle the truth, (a la Jack Nicholson) in any real sense? Has our formerly atheist philosopher proven any fact of any significance?

One thing the OP question does seem to prove pretty well is mankind's lack of knowledge. Being unable to account for existence means that it is pretty important to find out why not, since whatever made this thing happen is pretty far beyond us and is probably also capable of eliminating us and of being in control yet beyond the abilities of man to detect.

Scripture suggests maybe there is proof in creation.

Rom 1:20 For since the creation of the world His invisible [attributes] are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, [even] His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse,
Rom 1:21 because, although they knew God, they did not glorify [Him] as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
And while I may be at odds with scripture to an extent, I still have a very hard time seem the mere existence of God being proven by mere existence of us and our world, though existence should lead a rational man to a search that ends with God being in evidence.
 
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Van

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The question, what made the Big Bang bang, appears in many forms. According to science, some transcendent force caused the Big Bang to bang. Something from outside, the primordial first cause of everything. So the existence of the earth, the stars, everything proclaims the glory of God. But if we try to go further, and say that God is Yahweh, then the existence of earth provides no support. But a Creator, of unknown nature, is a scientific fact. So naturally, I voted yes. :)
 
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busterdog

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The question, what made the Big Bang bang, appears in many forms. According to science, some transcendent force caused the Big Bang to bang. Something from outside, the primordial first cause of everything. So the existence of the earth, the stars, everything proclaims the glory of God. But if we try to go further, and say that God is Yahweh, then the existence of earth provides no support. But a Creator, of unknown nature, is a scientific fact. So naturally, I voted yes. :)

I remember very clearly facing this question as a kid in Sunday school. The question the kids were always asking the teacher (my Mom playing devil's advocate) was, "Well, what created ....... (fill in the blank)." You can push that question ad infinitum and never come up with a satisfactory human explanation at the end of the debate.

It seemed then and still seems that we had put our finger on something important, but hadn't proven that God created anything, much less who he was. There is something unsatisfactory about the whole dynamic of this type of debate, though it does seem clear that the greatest foolishness is confident atheism in the face of this question.

You put your finger on the matter with the word "unknown." "Unknown nature" creates all sorts of trouble for human thinking, or at least it should -- regardless of whether you are TE or YEC.

The sacred cow I want to take down here is the notion that our notion of evidence for God is really a rational inquiry in the way that it is usually presented. No offense to the OP. The question does need to be explored. This question is a VERY good test for our ability to know what (or who) "Exists." It is not a good test for whether God can be proven. We should be humbled as a species.
 
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seremela06

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I would quibble a bit with the wording of the poll, especially the first option. I expect many of us who agree that the earth could not exist without God creating it also agree that the existence of the earth does not prove the existence of God.

It would have been better to use a more parallel wording e.g. "the existence of the earth proves that God must exist."

I voted "no", but I would not reject the first statement as it stands. I just took it to imply proof although that was not explicitly stated.

yes, but the topic of the post is "the argument of design" which is the idea that the earth's existence proves the existence of god.
 
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Mallon

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I remember very clearly facing this question as a kid in Sunday school. The question the kids were always asking the teacher (my Mom playing devil's advocate) was, "Well, what created ....... (fill in the blank)." You can push that question ad infinitum and never come up with a satisfactory human explanation at the end of the debate.
Technically, I don't think that line of questioning can be pushed back past the Big Bang because once we ask ourselves what caused the Big Bang, by definition we are considering a force that is outside all of space, matter, energy, and time itself (i.e., it could not have been caused because there was never a time at which it didn't exist). Therefore, whatever caused the Big Bang must have been infinite in all dimensions.
 
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busterdog

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Technically, I don't think that line of questioning can be pushed back past the Big Bang because once we ask ourselves what caused the Big Bang, by definition we are considering a force that is outside all of space, matter, energy, and time itself (i.e., it could not have been caused because there was never a time at which it didn't exist). Therefore, whatever caused the Big Bang must have been infinite in all dimensions.

I think we agree.

Lets look at your answer to the question for a moment.

If the OP question leads to "something infinite in all dimensions", is that an answer to the question in any sense? Or, can the question be answered if that is where it leads.

Lets look at a hypothetical answer for the purposes of comparison. Lets say you want to know what caused the big bang and there is good evidence that it was "something infinite, and inconceivable in scope and character, except that we know it was pink in color." In the latter example, you do have some content, but do you still have an answer in any meaningful sense?

I think the assumption often is that the answer is a real answer, despite the fact that it is partially infinite, if I might coin an absurd phrase. Too often mankind seems to think that this is some kind of an answer.

My point: these questions are loaded questions, but loaded for failure by people who indulge in sloppy thinking. Not the OP necessarily, but anytime we are talking things where we have this issue of an infinite power, what exactly are we doing? The other point: Jesus as the incarnate Word of God is the only way to solve the knowledge problem posed in the OP and in Genesis 3. He is person, and so we do know of whom we speak, despite the problem of dealing with an infinite God.
 
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busterdog

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You say "faith" where I would say "credulity" or "gullibility".

But, to use your word, "faith" is what fills the collection plate, and so naturally ""faith" is important to con... er,clergy.

:wave:

Faith in the Higgs Boson also filled some pretty big CERN collection plates.

Its not as if faith is the exclusive province of the overtly religious.

A number of faith healers can demonstrate as much or more success than Freud.
 
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busterdog

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At least the Higgs Boson had math to back it up.



But physicists don't claim that progress in quantum mechanics can only be achieved by dogmatic faith. The collider may support or falsify a theory. "Faith' is most admired when it flies in the face of reason and fact.

Psychoanalysis is art, not science. Dreams are about incorporating short-term into long term memory. Freud's work on dreams, and his discovery of the sub-conscious mind are seminal, even in a society that just shoves pills down in preference to understanding.

But, why the digression? What does Freud have to do with the discussion?

:confused:

So, if we just use the right pigeon hole for religion and faith healing, and say, perhaps that it is 'art', then we neednt fret the implied notion that faith is for gullible subjects and charlatan leadership?

Freud is a very good example of a lot of money being paid for a practice deemed by most modern people as being a reasonable exercise. And, yet its successes are less documented than those of faith in Jesus Christ.

As Freud said, "Much will be gained if we succeed in transforming your hysterical misery into common unhappiness."

Now the Freudians are pretty good at inducing the stuttering man to stutter yet more by introducing words for poop, for example. But curing people is another thing altogether. Religion unfortunately hammered by those who indulge the double standard and encourage us to spend millions to endow chairs and programs for failed models of psychoanalysis. And if failed religion is your problem, get a copy of Cosmopolitan and tell me whether Freud should be judged by that example of dream interpretation. And yet you would judge religion by its failures. It has been centuries since anyone had their head drilled for Jesus sake, yet the Freudians were trepanning within the last few decades.



Perhaps your comments about faith werent intended to be provacative, but if you use words like gullible and con, dont be surprised if the educated believers put you in your place.
 
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pgp_protector

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I would quibble a bit with the wording of the poll, especially the first option. I expect many of us who agree that the earth could not exist without God creating it also agree that the existence of the earth does not prove the existence of God.

It would have been better to use a more parallel wording e.g. "the existence of the earth proves that God must exist."

I voted "no", but I would not reject the first statement as it stands. I just took it to imply proof although that was not explicitly stated.

ditto
 
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