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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
I voted yes.
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.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.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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?
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.