What are the best arguments for the existence of God?

[SocratesNow]

Neither evolution nor God can be proved "scientifically".

True science must be TESTABLE, REPEATABLE, and OBSERVABLE

Well, if God cannot be proven scientifically, is there any way to prove God's existence at all?

 

[eleos1954]

Well, if God cannot be proven scientifically, is there any way to prove God's existence at all?

We have the more sure word of prophesy ....

2 Peter 1:19
New International Version
We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.


Isaiah 46:10
10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:

 

[Ivan Hlavanda]

Thanks for responding!
However, I am afraid I don't see the universal application of your example, in the sense that many tens of millions of people have taken DNA tests and gotten completely different results than yours. I am also curious whether or not whichever institution or service provided the DNA test and its results was connected to Christianity in any way? I ask because most relevant scientific study, including opinions of christian scientists, has formed a consensus that our species is at least 100,000 years old, and if one follows the timelines of Adam's heritage found within the Bible, this fact contradicts the Adam and Eve story, and furthermore there is no genetic proof of their existence, and thus it seems that whichever service provided the DNA test was likely influenced by christianity, although I could be wrong. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!

The name of the company is Igenea based in Switzerland, and as far as I can see they are not related to Christianity. I am afraid I don't know how to answer the rest to give any satisfactory answer. Sorry.

Another argument might be that Evolution is not life and how can something not living give life, only live can create live, and God is live....which I know probably won't convince many.

The creation it self is evidence indeed. How everything is created perfectly, I don't know if you'd like to give some examples but I can think of million right now.

 

[faroukfarouk]

We have the more sure word of prophesy ....

2 Peter 1:19
New International Version
We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.


Isaiah 46:10
10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:

Good and relevant verses there.

 

[SocratesNow]

We have the more sure word of prophesy ....

2 Peter 1:19
New International Version
We also have the prophetic message as something completely reliable, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.


Isaiah 46:10
10 Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:

In that case, I have two questions. Firstly, do you believe that Biblical prophecy is more reliable and consistent than scientific discovery? And secondly, how can we reason that the Bible is the word of God? After all, if we cannot prove this, then using Biblical texts to prove the existence of God is merely circular logic and irrelevant to the debate. Thanks for your input!

 

[solid_core]

I apologize, I believed that I had done this. Hopefully this response will be more concise and less distracting. In one sentence, my rebuttal was addressing the entire contingency argument, and it was as follows. The contingency argument you supplied has one key flaw in my mind, specifically that it assumes that because the existence of God explains something, therefore it must be the correct explanation for that thing. This seems to be a logical fallacy and circular reasoning.

You probably did not understand the argument.

The argument is not "because the existence of God explains something, therefore God must be the explanation".

 

[SocratesNow]

The name of the company is Igenea based in Switzerland, and as far as I can see they are not related to Christianity. I am afraid I don't know how to answer the rest to give any satisfactory answer. Sorry.

Another argument might be that Evolution is not life and how can something not living give life, only live can create live, and God is live....which I know probably won't convince many.

The creation it self is evidence indeed. How everything is created perfectly, I don't know if you'd like to give some examples but I can think of million right now.

Thanks for the response!
First I would simply ask, with all due respect, isn't it true that your inability to sufficiently answer the critiques I provided to the contingency argument may be evidence of that argument's invalidity? And that aside, as I mentioned in my previous, rather long-winded reply, I mention that people used to believe that lightning was caused by Zeus throwing lightning bolts, because they couldn't explain it any better way. Isn't the reasoning that the creation itself is evidence of God's existence totally dependent upon the assumption that God is the only or best possible explanation of the creation? And I would love to hear your examples on how everything was created the way it was, thanks!

 

[SocratesNow]

You probably did not understand the argument.

The argument is not "because the existence of God explains something, therefore God must be the explanation".

Well, let me apologize for any and all potential misconstruence of the argument on my part, but I was not intending to say that that was the argument, but rather that it was an inherent assumption within the argument, the inherent assumption which is in fact the logical fallacy I was addressing. If you feel that my interpretation of the argument was flawed, I'd love to hear your specific response to my points.

 

[solid_core]

If you feel that my interpretation of the argument was flawed, I'd love to hear your specific response to my points.

You did not make any points. You only assumed something about the argument.

If you want specific response, you must make specific claim in formal points.

"Formal" means in the form of definitions, statements and conclusion.

Also, use empty lines to divide logical parts of your text to make it more readable.

 

[eleos1954]

In that case, I have two questions. Firstly, do you believe that Biblical prophecy is more reliable and consistent than scientific discovery? And secondly, how can we reason that the Bible is the word of God? After all, if we cannot prove this, then using Biblical texts to prove the existence of God is merely circular logic and irrelevant to the debate. Thanks for your input!

Predicting the future (prophesy) isn't science, (it's supernatural). In the case of prophesy in the bible much of it is "verified" through documented history and/or archeology. One can accept that as "proof" or not .... people of faith do.

How much and with what percentage of accuracy is predicted by science? It's not ... science continuously changes.

 

[Chris V++]

Thanks for responding!
So, for the sake of argumentation, couldn't the same be said of anyone else making predictions which happen to come true at a later date? After all, the Bible makes an extraordinary number of prophecies, predictions, and assertions about the future, and their fulfillment rate isn't perfect, nor even reliable. Furthermore, specifically in regards to prophecies, it seems common for interpretations of biblical text to be inconsistently literal or subjective, in the sense that if and when the Bible includes a statement similar to the one you referenced, which appears to be fulfilled verbatim, we interpret it literally, while in other, non-fulfilled prophetic instances, we declare that said text was symbolic, or didn't mean exactly what it said, no matter how specific it was. In short, how are the fulfillment of certain biblical prophecies true if our metric for determining prophetic fulfillment is inconsistent, and if there are many times more biblical prophecies which have not as of yet been fulfilled rather than the other way around?

Sorry I misunderstood your intentions. I assumed you were looking for strategies to help convince unbelievers. As to the idea that there are many times more biblical prophecies that have not as of yet fulfilled? My understanding is the majority of them to date have been fulfilled. They Tyre prophecy I mentioned wasn't written as some vague symbolic imagery that was later interpreted to be prophetic. It self -identified as a prophecy within the text itself. It proclaimed such and such will happen and it did. It doesn't really beat around the bush: Isaiah 23 A prophecy against Tyre:
For Tyre is destroyed... and left without house or harbor.
From the land of Cyprus word has come to them.

What do you make of Jesus saying that that generation would live to see the destruction of the Second Temple? Was that vague and symbolic and open to interpretation?

 

[SocratesNow]

You did not make any points. You only assumed something about the argument.

If you want specific response, you must make specific claim in formal points.

"Formal" means in the form of definitions, statements and conclusion.

In all fairness, I don't see how I assumed to make a point. It seems perfectly clear to me that the contingency argument is what has some illogical assumptions, and it is those that I laid out.

Furthermore, I fail to see how I am required to make a claim, if all I am attempting to do is to demonstrate the flaws in the claim you bring up. If it must be specified further, my claim is that the contingency argument in question is wrong. I support this claim through the statements I have made previously, which again, have not been proven to be misinterpretations of the contingency argument, and I do not understand what I am supposed to be 'defining', again, since I am not making any claims other than a critique on your claim.

 

[SocratesNow]

What do you make of Jesus saying that that generation would live to see the destruction of the Second Temple? Was that vague and symbolic and open to interpretation?

Absolutely not. And my points wasn't that the Biblical prophecies themselves were vague or symbolic, but rather that we as people choose to interpret them as such when it isn't clear that they are or have been fulfilled. And I apologize if my intentions were unclear, I'm really just trying to understand everyone's perspective on this issue.

 

[solid_core]

In all fairness, I don't see how I assumed to make a point. It seems perfectly clear to me that the contingency argument is what has some illogical assumptions, and it is those that I laid out.

Furthermore, I fail to see how I am required to make a claim, if all I am attempting to do is to demonstrate the flaws in the claim you bring up. If it must be specified further, my claim is that the contingency argument in question is wrong. I support this claim through the statements I have made previously, which again, have not been proven to be misinterpretations of the contingency argument, and I do not understand what I am supposed to be 'defining', again, since I am not making any claims other than a critique on your claim.

You are trying to reverse how formal arguments work.

You must disprove the argument in its statements or conclusions or prove its not in a standard form. You cannot just make some claims about the argument and wait for them to be disproven.

The formal argument stands until disproven. This is how formal arguments work.

 

[Ivan Hlavanda]

Thanks for the response!
First I would simply ask, with all due respect, isn't it true that your inability to sufficiently answer the critiques I provided to the contingency argument may be evidence of that argument's invalidity? And that aside, as I mentioned in my previous, rather long-winded reply, I mention that people used to believe that lightning was caused by Zeus throwing lightning bolts, because they couldn't explain it any better way. Isn't the reasoning that the creation itself is evidence of God's existence totally dependent upon the assumption that God is the only or best possible explanation of the creation? And I would love to hear your examples on how everything was created the way it was, thanks!

Your argument makes sense. Scientist are wrong all the time, why should you believe the example I given is a good question, I have never thought of it that way. My simple answer is that the scientist that don't support what happened in the bible are wrong, or are guided by the satan, thus this is only based on faith and therefore this fact that I've just written is not a fact, one could argue it is just an opinion.

There is the question of gods like zeus...why would there be more than one God? If God indeed exists, wouldn't He create everything, thus wouldn't God be God of all creation? Why would there have to be God of lightning, for what reason. God created even time and space, there was no time before and it was created with everything else. Why would God need time, God is independent of time and thus everything else, because if God was dependent of something He wouldn't be God.

Ok my examples are. Earth is perfectly balanced for human life. It is in the right distance of the right star (Sun), it cannot just orbit any star. It has perfect ratio of the gases in the air, it has oxygen, water and everything that is needed for human life. If one is to believe that the universe just happened, how? And if so why did universe explode, and then Earth was created, why did then the Earth just decided to have water and how did life begin in water, and why did the first sea animal then decided to go on land, why didn't it just die. How is evolution so perfect in so many all these coincidences. If all those examples above are let's say 1 in a million, then evolution or whatever you believe would have to be spot on in everything, not fail even once because if it did we would not be alive. And where did evolution come from? And how did evolution decide we need to see, and thus provided such complex mechanism as our eyes. and why if we cut our-selfs and we bleed our blood gets clotted so we don't bleed out. Wouldn't the first humans just bleed out because we haven't evolved into something that clotts our blood yet? And even clotting itself is such complex mechanism, it involves if I remember correctly 50 different proteins. What explains that if not a creator?

And how can the book of bible predict everything. How when the old testament is written centuries before Jesus, describe perfectly what happened to Jesus?

 

[mtatertayte]

I am very curious what arguments you all find most convincing for the existence of God, especially in the face of arguments individuals such as Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, or others bring up when contending with God's existence in the exchange of ideas. If you could share it would mean a lot, and hopefully we can find which ones are best!

You are alive.

 

[SocratesNow]

Predicting the future (prophesy) isn't science, (it's supernatural). In the case of prophesy in the bible much of it is "verified" through documented history and/or archeology. One can accept that as "proof" or not .... people of faith do.

How much and with what percentage of accuracy is predicted by science? It's not ... science continuously changes.

I agree that the results of scientific study continuously change, but science itself is merely an attempt to discover truth. And it is in that pursuit of truth that science eliminates its own contradictions and inaccurate claims, i.e. it is a constantly improving method of finding truth. However, there are natural laws which science, not the Bible nor any other force, has deduced, and these things have never been truly contradicted, such as the existence of gravity, for example. So I suppose the point here is that the fact that science can deduce objective fact, while the Bible seems infinitely open to interpretation and subjectivity is a case for scientific study over Biblical texts in the first place. Would you disagree?

 

[SocratesNow]

You are trying to reverse how formal arguments work.

You must disprove the argument in its statements or conclusions or prove its not in a standard form. You cannot just make some claims about the argument and wait for them to be disproven.

The formal argument stands until disproven. This is how formal arguments work.

Did I not disprove the contingency argument in its statements and conclusions? Did I not specifically point out that the argument is logically flawed because it assumes that if the theory of God's existence explains something, therefore it must be the only and true explanation for that thing? Did you not make a claim, proposing that the leibniz contingency argument was one argument which supported the existence of God? And did I not, as I have repeatedly outlined, state my specific critique of the argument, namely that there is an inherent assumption within this argument which disqualifies it from the start? And in regards to the idea that arguments are only valid if they fit some arbitrarily prescribed format, I must fully disagree. While structure is crucial within a debate, no argument should be disqualified or held as invalid for the simple fact that it doesn't fit an arbitrary structure for what an argument should look like. Finally, the idea that my critique of your claim is somehow a claim that I myself must defend, instead of it being treated as what it is, a critique of a theory, is simply illogical. I have presented my case against the leibniz contingency argument, and there is no reason for trifling issues such as the specific structure of my said critique, nor illogical ideas of what argumentation should look like, to distract from that.

 

[section9+1]

Believing that God exists is a good first step, but it has to get further than that. There's a million unanswerable questions. Laws of physics cause things to behave in a certain way. Why do they? Why don't objects with mass repel each other?

 

[SocratesNow]

Your argument makes sense. Scientist are wrong all the time, why should you believe the example I given is a good question, I have never thought of it that way. My simple answer is that the scientist that don't support what happened in the bible are wrong, or are guided by the satan, thus this is only based on faith and therefore this fact that I've just written is not a fact, one could argue it is just an opinion.

There is the question of gods like zeus...why would there be more than one God? If God indeed exists, wouldn't He create everything, thus wouldn't God be God of all creation? Why would there have to be God of lightning, for what reason. God created even time and space, there was no time before and it was created with everything else. Why would God need time, God is independent of time and thus everything else, because if God was dependent of something He wouldn't be God.

Ok my examples are. Earth is perfectly balanced for human life. It is in the right distance of the right star (Sun), it cannot just orbit any star. It has perfect ratio of the gases in the air, it has oxygen, water and everything that is needed for human life. If one is to believe that the universe just happened, how? And if so why did universe explode, and then Earth was created, why did then the Earth just decided to have water and how did life begin in water, and why did the first sea animal then decided to go on land, why didn't it just die. How is evolution so perfect in so many all these coincidences. If all those examples above are let's say 1 in a million, then evolution or whatever you believe would have to be spot on in everything, not fail even once because if it did we would not be alive. And where did evolution come from? And how did evolution decide we need to see, and thus provided such complex mechanism as our eyes. and why if we cut our-selfs and we bleed our blood gets clotted so we don't bleed out. Wouldn't the first humans just bleed out because we haven't evolved into something that clotts our blood yet? And even clotting itself is such complex mechanism, it involves if I remember correctly 50 different proteins. What explains that if not a creator?

And how can the book of bible predict everything. How when the old testament is written centuries before Jesus, describe perfectly what happened to Jesus?

Thanks, that was a great comment!
I am curious about what you believe faith means, since many people have faith in various ideas, despite the evidence against them, or in favor of contradicting ideas, and it is often used as a way to excuse a lack of reason behind an argument, although I am not saying that that is what you're doing here, and found your response incredibly insightful and respectful. I would also say that most if not all of the beauty and balance in nature (which I also find wonderful) can potentially be explained as a matter of necessity, in the sense that for millenia, members of species which, say, didn't have clots when they started to bleed, bled out, and thus died. In short, nature forces "coincidences" to occur, because without these "coincidences" species and members of species die, leaving only those who do have these traits to continue living and continuing their species. I would also contend that the bible has not in fact predicted everything, and however you cut it, many individuals believe it to be deeply contradictory. However, before delving into that discussion I'd love to hear your thoughts on what has been said so far!