Existence of God

[the Black Prince]

hey hey, cheers drusus, at least someone still likes my continuing presence here....

to be honest my personal opinion on this matter is verey clouded. i began life as a protestant, my father recently converted to catholic, and there are now many many religios debates as he pompously lectures us on how he has discovered the one true faith and the entire protestant religion is a lie, and close to heresy. however as far as i'm concerned the catholic church over the years doesn't take a very christian attitude in its practices, but i will not say any more on that, it is only my viewpoint and has no place here, for it will only incite religious flaming!

basically i have given up on religion, it has only caused me problems and solved very little in my life. i prefer the more buddist attitude my martial arts teaches me, it gives me the peace and spiritualism i need without the stupidity of any specific religion (and all religions have their stupidites - no offence)

i believe that buddism may well be the olny relgion to survive the expansion of science as they do no believe in any god, but more in the sancitity and continuance of life. (Arthur C Clarke SF writer can'r remeber which book...)

thankfully my beliefs do not require anyone else to believe them (morpheus - the matrix) but it is a common one among those torn between the science they learn and the religion they believe

[drusus]

Dear TBP after reading you're brillant post i go to see you're profile and what a surprise! you're only 19 and you are already able to say thing deeper like that. Really congratulation, me at the same age i was just thinking to go to bed with lot of babe....if feel so small :ph34r:


And the expression from A.C.Clarke is very beautifull according to me, bye!

[the Black Prince]

errr, check again mate!!!! 22/12/85, im 17!!! nearly 18, of course that makes your comments even better, hehehe

[morble]

oh, oh, ooh!! so many things to reply to!!

boris,

Let us not talk of that great and beautiful spectacle which was never made for me!

from the first Diderot quote.

I would say that the great and beautiful spectacle was made precisely for you...and you, and you and you and you. You in part create the spectacle by your observation of it. And I mean this literally, because there has never been a human being exactly like you. Sure, there have probably been people who were similar to you, but none were ever exactly the same, and they lived in different environments that shaped them differently. So, you are unique, and your apprehension of the spectacle is also unique, and cannot be accomplished in exactly the same way by anyone else. By your observation of the spectacle of the Universe, you are not only recreating and redefining it, but you are also, through your experience, redefining what it is to be a human being.

(and the joke was:...and the Indian boy thinks a moment and asks, "But what is the tortoise standing--? And the father interrupts him and says, "Son...it's pretty much turtles all the way down!" )

PRebel,

It's true that an infinity of possibilities must always include this one. It is very easy, though, to forget the staggering magnitude of infinity. But, just look at the extremely complicated machinations that all must work perfectly, and simultaneously, in order for a single cell to operate. Then consider the multitude of actions that must occur to operate a muti-celled body like our own. Then add to that the extremely complicated structure of conciousness. All of these millions (billions?) of parts must operate simultaneously within very demanding parameters just to get a single human to function. And a single human is a very, very tiny part of this one Universe.

I'm not saying that all life in all Universes must naturally create humans. Certainly there is room for other, even unimaginable, types of life in an infinity of Universes. But, all life that I see here is extremely complicated in even its simplest forms. It may be that life requires a high degree of complications, because only then can the various imbalances be created that allow life to continue outside of stasis. (I'm equating total stasis to non-life, or the absence of life, which I think is a supportable argument.)

To assume that this Universe was the single probability node, and that it is all that we experience merely because it is the only place where we are here and not somewhere else, is to assume an astounding and proligate waste of resources. If we are to subject the multiple universes to strict statistical mechanics, then the vast majority of all universes must be sterile and barren--not only of life, but of things.

I can't make the leap to a position so contrary to what I can experience of the Universe. In fact, from the parts I know most about, life here on Earth, I see that nothing is wasted. And if there is something not being used, then pretty soon another being or form comes into existence especially to make use of it. (Dung beetles, now there's a concept.) Seeing how Creation expands to make use of all the resources available to it, I can't reasonably conclude that there is an infinite number of "dry run" Universes full of failed and wasted resources. (I get your point about other types of existences. I'm talking here about void Universes.)

spqr, tbp, and drusus

god is a good idea for controlling the masses

Not exactly true, I think. RELIGION is a good idea for controlling the masses.

God, by definition, is not only greater than you have imagined, but is greater than you CAN imagine. So, any form of god that humans can even conceive of and label as God, must necessarily be only a small part of what God is. It would seem that humans define themselves and their relation to God by their choice of what portion of God they decide to worship. It's actually impossible for a human to truly worship God, because the totality of God, Who must be greater than all of His Creation, is a greater concept than a human can wrap his mind around.

The big question would seem to be whether God is just another name for Mystery, or whether there is a conciousness actually apprehending the Universe. Answering this question is quite difficult because you can't prove or disprove a logical consistency from within that same logical system; and because a consciousness that can encompass the entire Universe must surely be incomprehensible to the human brain, so even the purposes of that consciousness and its creation are unlikely to be comprehensible.

It's senseless to argue which view is "right"; we can only examine the evidence and each decide where to put our faith. Note that you cannot avoid having faith. Either the Universe is an extremely unlikely statistical occurence allowed by virtue of infinite possibilities, or it is an artifact created by intelligent design for a purpose.
Neither view is more provable; you just put your faith in one over the other.

how many people believe in a table? no one (well almost no one) you cannot believe in a table you cannot have faith in a table, becasue you know a table exists, it is obvious

In actual physical fact, all objects are made of atoms, and all atoms are made mostly of empty space. It's a gross, but useful, simplification to think of an atom as similar to a solar system, where the nucleus is the sun and the electrons are the planets. Think of the entire sphere of space enclosing that solar system, and compare how much is physical matter and how much is totally empty space. There is very little matter in the space occupied by an atom.

So, that table you "know" exists is in actual physical fact comprised mostly of empty space. I would argue that it exists only because you perceive its pattern of arrangement of tiny specks of matter and label it a table. Someone else, not necessarily human, could very well look at the same arrangement of tiny specks of matter in a large amount of space and label it pudding, or a bandersnatch. I say you have conjured that table out of empty space, in an act of faith or belief, because we can measure that what you claim is a physical object is in fact mostly devoid of any matter.

[Portuguese Rebel]

PRebel,

It's true that an infinity of possibilities must always include this one. It is very easy, though, to forget the staggering magnitude of infinity. But, just look at the extremely complicated machinations that all must work perfectly, and simultaneously, in order for a single cell to operate. Then consider the multitude of actions that must occur to operate a muti-celled body like our own. Then add to that the extremely complicated structure of conciousness. All of these millions (billions?) of parts must operate simultaneously within very demanding parameters just to get a single human to function. And a single human is a very, very tiny part of this one Universe.

I'm not saying that all life in all Universes must naturally create humans. Certainly there is room for other, even unimaginable, types of life in an infinity of Universes. But, all life that I see here is extremely complicated in even its simplest forms. It may be that life requires a high degree of complications, because only then can the various imbalances be created that allow life to continue outside of stasis. (I'm equating total stasis to non-life, or the absence of life, which I think is a supportable argument.)

To assume that this Universe was the single probability node, and that it is all that we experience merely because it is the only place where we are here and not somewhere else, is to assume an astounding and proligate waste of resources. If we are to subject the multiple universes to strict statistical mechanics, then the vast majority of all universes must be sterile and barren--not only of life, but of things.

I can't make the leap to a position so contrary to what I can experience of the Universe. In fact, from the parts I know most about, life here on Earth, I see that nothing is wasted. And if there is something not being used, then pretty soon another being or form comes into existence especially to make use of it. (Dung beetles, now there's a concept.) Seeing how Creation expands to make use of all the resources available to it, I can't reasonably conclude that there is an infinite number of "dry run" Universes full of failed and wasted resources. (I get your point about other types of existences. I'm talking here about void Universes.)

So, if i understood you correctly, you consider the undenyable complexity of life and the universe to proof of a third party intervention of a "creator" force (you did not specify what exactly do you believe to be this creator so i can't either). But you consider to be more logic that a "creator" made or influenced the Universe.

The complexity argument is a very interesting one because of the philosophical discussion it allows. But it can be played in more than one way. What about the necessary complexity of the "creator"? It seems logic to me to assume that a creating force with enough inteligence/power/know-how to create our universe must be, in itself, many times more "complex" than it's creation. Take the very greatest of mankind's creations, none of them even approaches the complexity of a human being.

This leads to the old question "who created the creator?" because if you cannot accept that our universe is achieved by successions of random events, then you also cannot accept that an all powerfull creator with it's inherent complexity, can have sprung to existance after a number of random events.

For a final point, i would like to say that the universe isn't as perfect as it may seem at a glance of an eye. This is a universe of constant unbalance and only momentaneum equilibria. And the living beings themselves have many marks of imperfection that should have been ruled out if they were inteligent designed.


PS: It's a pleasure to discuss with an inteligent person as yourself morble, since i am somewhat of a veteran in these kind of brainstorms and i find impossible to discuss this issue with fundamentalist people who believe pi=3 because the bible says so.

[the Black Prince]

morble, by what your saying, everything only exists by the fact that we percieve its existance in the way that we believe we see it? therefore, if the collective human race stppoed thinking a table was atble it could well vecome a chocoloate chip cookie or just a pile of "empty space". this in turn leads us to question the fact that if everything we see is empty space, and is in fact here as we percive it simply becasue we believe it occupies the shape it does, if we stopped believing in the world? would the world disappear revert to "empty space" and leave us floating in "empty space"! incredulous though that may sound, the idea has in fact already been discussed twice with two possible outcomes. the first by author terry pratchett, in various of his novels,in that the world only exists becasue we all believe it does. a shared dream, a shared hallucination.

the second theory expounds on this by saying, that if the world is empty space, and we live in this empty space which isn't in fact empty space, but meely a collection of finely spaced molecules assuming a shape thatour brain percieves to be both rela and solid, then what is real. becasue clearly a table, so full of holes and empty space cannot be real, becauew it is not solid. if, by definition real is merely a collective of images assembled electronically by your brain, then real is simply a set of digital impulses. in this instant then, what is to stop us believing that the entire world is NOT in fact some hallucination, and that we are in fact in the matrix! yes, this theory has been popularised by the matrix trilogy of films.

i realise this post is slightly of the topic of god, but if god is a matter of belief, and we humans are capable of believing in anything, then what is tostop us beliving in that the matrix exists, in fact one american argued that he killed people becasue the matrix told him to do it (he got let off, diminished responsibility, he was however declared insane and locked up anyway&#33

[morble]

PRebel,

Just to clarify, I don't think complexity is a "proof". Rather more of an indication, a hint.

The problem of "<poof> there&#39;s a Creator" is, I think, a perception problem created by our being rooted in space and time. All of our thoughts and ideas require time and space to occur. To be an Almighty Creator, God would have also invented space and time, and would therefore be outside of those constraints. So, there can&#39;t be a <poof>, no springing into existence, no "after", as related to the origin of God, because all of these are events that require a timeline as a prerequisite. The Bible actually probably comes closest to what is humanly describable by just starting with God as "already" existing.

I think the Bible is an excellent resource and have read it through several times and have a number of different versions in my library. The confusing part is that the spirituality, history, and allegory have sometimes been intertwined with basic societal and public health rules for living.

Some of the Bible is truly amazing, and science is just coming to understand the underlying truths written there in plain language. There&#39;s an astounding passage (in Numbers, IIRC) when Moses wants to see God face to face. God tells him that no man can look upon Him and live, but God puts Moses in the cleft of a rock and passes by before him, and Moses is able to see just after God passes by. The passage is describing how human conciousness perceives the reality of spacetime. Humans cannot see the present, because it takes time for your neurons to fire, and for the chemical exchange to occur at the synapses. So, we live in the immediate past, because everything we experience has already happened by the time we can understand it. It took centuries of physics, pyschology, and biology for us to figure this out, but it was in the Bible all along.

OTOH, I have no respect for those people who claim that we must live by every exact word of the Bible. These hypocrites are just picking and choosing passages in order to gain control over others. (Anyone sacrificed oxen and rams on the altar lately, as required by Leviticus?)

Finally, I would argue that it is the imperfections, imbalances, and momentary equilibria that are necessary for life. Life is an exquisite balancing act, and is in constant adjustment. When the adjustments stop, life ceases. It&#39;s the exquisitely chaotic and fractal imbalances and imperfections that allow a perfect Creation.

tbp,

I actually think the "incredulous" is probable. Reality seems to be a shared dream, a consensual reality, in which we have pre-agreed upon definitions. Some of this is certainly due to our senses, which apprehend and define physical reality for us in certain ways.

(Reality is not as immutable as it might seem, though, even on the most mundane levels. Running a freshman chem lab, I was struck by how differently people describe a liquid of a certain shade of color. Two people could look at the same liquid and describe it as purple or red, or yellow or green, or green or blue. Each observer was of average or better intelligence and was taking pains to accurately describe the liquid(s) as they saw it, yet the descriptions were different. You could say the fault lay in language skills, but you cannot discount the possibility that the reality was different for each observer. Scientific experimentation has also demonstrated that the sense of taste varies between people. Genetics determines if some people taste a certain chemical as very bitter or as tasteless. Depending on how their genes are strung together, some people experience an actually different reality from others observing the same event.)

You&#39;ll note that Jesus told His disciples that whenever two or more of them came together, there He would be. A single mind is not enough to create the reality. More than two adds to a greater consensus, but at least two must be present to create the reality.

I&#39;ve said in another thread that the Matrix trilogy is moden mythmaking. Classical mythology tried to examine man&#39;s relation to the natural world. The Matrix trilogy tries to examine man&#39;s relation to the digital (machine) world.

The fact is that every thing you are able to think happens because acetylcholine vesicles float through the synaptic gap and land on synaptic receptors in your neurons and nerves.

I wonder if time is not generated in this way, and if some of the vesicles got held up or switched in their landing order, then some parts of time would be reversed. Certainly, this would be reality for the person experiencing it. If one person experienced backwards time, then something must be wrong with them. If two or more people experience it, then who is to say that this is not a reality? To claim it&#39;s not real, you would have to fall back on rule by weight of numbers, and say that most other people don&#39;t experience time this way. Yet we&#39;ve already seen that people can participate in reality while their sensory data is giving them different perceptions of colors and tastes than a majority of other people.

The fun part of the Matrix is, you can&#39;t tell if the Matrix exists or not from IN HERE. Without a Morpheus element, you can&#39;t tell if you&#39;re inside or outside, or if there even is an inside and outside.

It&#39;s the same thing with physical existence and reality. Without a Morpheus element, there&#39;s no way for you to tell if you are really real. So, we define reality by our consensual observation and experience of it.

God may well have had the same problem. If all there is is God, then how does God know He is? (I running up against parsing limitations of language here, but I hope you can figure out the concept I&#39;m trying to describe.) God had to Create something that was Other than God in order to perceive Himself. Hence the Universe (or universes, if you wish). But all there was to Create stuff from was God Himself, so the Universe is the way for God to know Himself.

And our tiny lives in this universe are important because we are each unique and are defining in our own special way what the universe is, what God is, and we are as human beings through our experience of it, which is then shared to create a consensual reality.

[On a side note, I still like comedian Rick Dukkoman&#39;s quip: "You say this guy carved up 12 people without knowing it? The brain doesn&#39;t know what the body is doing? Fine. Kill the body. Put the brain in a jar&#33; ]

[drusus]

Dear Morble first of all i would say that i highly appreciate you for you&#39;re brillant analisys for MtW tactics&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;

If i can say some little thing...Well taking about bible like historical material his for me very...risky and for 2 point:

The first, you already know at what point the bible is a patchwork of text put to gether and largely modified during century. You know at what point bible is strongly incoherent (date of jesus birth, the town of birth, the date who he begins to preach....and so on). You know that the older exemplar of bible we had was made on 3th century. I take all this source on best theologian from Harward or Berkley University like I.Finkelstein or A.murdock.(laic theologian of course...)
You already know some part of bible have been writting for very special motive, like paul (hum,hum...saul) did.

Second , i just want to write a part of an interview from the brillant archeoloque Jean.Yves Empereur (alexandria specialist). He&#39;s talking about the god existence..."if humanity will be destroyed by a cataclysme and if 2000 years later human survivant find the Lord of the Ring book, that don&#39;t prouve that Gandalf was a God..."

[morble]

good points, well taken. B)

I didn&#39;t mean the Bible is a historical resource, although it does follow a basic, generalized thread. For me, it&#39;s more a resource for examining human perceptions of and attempts to relate to God. And yes, the Bible as we know it didn&#39;t get codified until around the 3rd century. Most of the New Testament texts didn&#39;t get written until shortly before then. The genius of it is that it still applies, not as a history text, but as a spiritual resource.

I don&#39;t think humans can prove the existence of God in a scientifically acceptable manner. If there is no God, then you can&#39;t prove He exists. If there is a God, it is still impossible to prove He exists from inside the framework (reality) He created; such a proof is a logical impossibility because you must use the logic of the system to try and prove something outside the system where the logic applies.

Still, it seems to me that there is Something There. I&#39;m pretty sure it&#39;s not some old guy with a white beard and a robe--although wouldn&#39;t I be embarrassed if that turned out to be the case. All one can do is taking existing observational data and try to construct a cohesive hypothesis as to what the truth is. Then you can compare the hypothesis against observed occurences, both future and past, to see if the model is consistent and cohesive. That&#39;s the scientific method, and it&#39;s still the best way I know of to try and figure out how this physical reality we&#39;re stuck in actually works.

[drusus]

Well, seems you&#39;re strongly intellectual than me...but if can only make one observation...So you take the bible like an human perception of god, for me i take bible like an political act...I take an exemple When Moises accross the red see for leaving Egypt, RamsesII and his army was kill under the see, right?
We all know that Ramses was find in his doom and of course never be kill under the red see (and actually his momy is in New York). This his fact, right?
Well why someone have been write such fairytell, and i repeat why?
For me, and i repeat just for me (i&#39;m not a genius) it is an strong political act to affirm jews minority importance compare to the great power that was egypt under RamsesII (one of the most important and imperialist pharaon like ToutmosisIII) government.
Second why Saul(Paul) cancel jews tradition in that will become christian religion ? (i mean for exemple cut an part of penis, sorry i don&#39;t know the english word for that, or that was forbiden to eat with someone non-jews) Well he wanted to have an strong religion who could have more adept than jews and incorporate Roman Empire. This is political act, this the search of power and not of god.
I repeat this just my point of view.
Tk&#39;s for listen me

[morble]

Well, I don&#39;t think the Bible is a political act, though it has certainly been used many, many times to support politcal acts. Ultimately, it&#39;s a story about the Hebrews. (More exactly, it&#39;s a story about the Hebrew Messiah.) But what for me is the most endearing aspect of the Hebrews is that the focus of their lives was God and man&#39;s relation to/with God. That&#39;s part of what gives the story such great relevance to anyone examining or questioning the same subjects today.

The last theory I heard is that Moses&#39; flight took the Hebrews across a marshy area. Historically, there is evidence that there had been floods and heavy rains in the years just previous to the Exodus. The Egyptian chariot wheels got bogged down in the muddy marsh and had to stop, while the Hebrews were fleeing on foot and could continue.

The actual text reads like a flash flood occurred. (Exodus 14:15-31) Certainly flash floods are possible in desert terrain, even on a cloudless day, as I have personally observed when I lived in Arizona. The text mentions "Egyptians lying dead on the shore" but nowhere is it claimed that Pharoah was killed during the Exodus, so maybe you&#39;re thinking of the Hollywood movie--which can&#39;t be considered a reliable source. The text mentions "walls of water to right and to left of them", which might indeed be storytelling embellishment--maybe there were just puddles of water.

All in all though, I don&#39;t think it can be disputed that the Hebrews went to Egypt, were slaves there, and then, for some reason, they left Egypt and became a free people. I suspect the 10 plagues may have been "interpreted" a bit to make them seem more drastic, but something very unusual and forceful must have happened, because slave owners don&#39;t just suddenly let 400,000 slaves walk away free.


I think you&#39;re right about Paul. There is justification within the Gospels and the words of Jesus to say that the conduct laws of the Torah need not apply any longer. However, I think Paul was looking to push the issue to make his new religion more popular. I think his invention of the Trinity was solely to make Christianity more acceptable to Gentiles, so that more of them would convert. (In fairness to Paul, the Trinity concept was almost certainly reworked by later church elders to give it more political clout.)

Paul was the third of the Elijah-Messiah-Moses triad that was supposed to cap and complete the Messiah story. (John the Baptist and Jesus were the other two.) Ultimately I believe Paul failed in his holy task, because he went for the short term political gains (to be had from converting large numbers of people) instead of the longer term goal of institution of the Kingdom of Heaven.

But that&#39;s a whole other discussion. Answer in a new thread and we can discuss it there.

[Kazak borispavlovgrozny]

Originally posted by morble@Nov 20 2003, 03:06 AM
I don&#39;t think humans can prove the existence of God in a scientifically acceptable manner. If there is no God, then you can&#39;t prove He exists. If there is a God, it is still impossible to prove He exists from inside the framework (reality) He created; such a proof is a logical impossibility because you must use the logic of the system to try and prove something outside the system where the logic applies.

ok, one question and one comment. The question, what is your definition of god? Or rather, the god which you disscus?

The comment is that while sciencetifically impossible fo teh obvious reasons, philosophically it is possible to prove-disprove the existance of god given certain parametersare pu ton his existence. Dont think of these parameters as limitations, but as definitions. lets say we have GOD A confirm by Scripture 1. If Scripture 1, which tell u sall we need to know about God A says pronouncement P, and pronouncement P is negated by Pronouncement Q in existence, then God A is a false God.

For example:

God A : Ra ( for examples sake)
Scripture 1 : In the book of teh dead
Pronouncement P: it states that Ra is unchanging and ever truthful, and will come to earth in time K and destroy it.
Pronouncement Q : Time K+1 and no Ra, no Destruction.

This is assuming, as most religions do, that scripture is to be taken as literal in some extent.

Case 2, much more potent:

God is parametrized my the "omni&#39;s", not by scripture by by definition, the essence of God is his omnipotence, omnibenevolence, omni-(random good stuff, not bad )

If god acts in such a way, or rather appears to act in such a way to counter act his omni-X, then he is not a true god.

This is assuming your god is a rational god, if god works outside the bounds of reason and logic ( i.e. he can both be and Not be), then your screwed and theres no way to find out a ye sor no..and this appears to be the case if he does exist -_- Now, heres the kicker and the really interesting part...if he works outside the frameork of reason, we wouldnt even know what to look for? he&#39;s so unreasonable, that if he were to be beside you know, you would never comprehend it..freaky eh?Of course, the same can be said about that angry unicorn on the dark side of the moon

hooray&#33; for my thought experiment...hope it made you think, because it sure wont get you any closer to the answer..unless you find the proximate answers

P.S. -> if anyone knows any proximate answers, email me &#33;
P.P.S.-. if anyone, ( you know who you are) quotes any scripture, at all in this discussion to try to illustrate fact, you will be shunned from the forum of reason

damn, we need a priest, we are all agreeing&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;&#33;

[morble]

uh, oh. I quoted Scripture. (But it was as a reference to the source, not as a claim to fact, so I&#39;m ok. )

boris, I think that anytime you try to define God in human terms, you are necessarily creating limitations. Ultimately, God is ineffable and unknowable in His totality. I think I can go along with the string of "omni-"s as a sort of definition, but the true meaning of these terms can&#39;t actually be fully comprehended by humans. Our comprehension of the terms is just an approximation, a handle to help us use the concepts (even though we can&#39;t full understand them&#33.

Certainly gods (or at least their prophets) can be disproved when Ra doesn&#39;t return, or the spaceship doesn&#39;t come out from behind the comet. But disproving such minor gods does not mean that there is not still an "omni-" conciousness that created this Universe and is still intimately and directly involved in every part of it.

I would caution about throwing around too many "omni-"s, though. Omnibenevolence, as we would interpret the word in the modern day world, might not be operative when we try to apply it to the totality of God. The Old Testament God was a pretty rough and tough Diety. The message of Jesus was to reveal a God that is loving and forgiving like a good father. If God is truly "omni-", then both views are legitimate aspects of God. The God you choose to conceptualize and worship says a lot more about you than it does about God.

And I think it&#39;s true that God may often not be recognizable to us, even if he&#39;s right beside you. I actually believe that is happening all the time, although I don&#39;t really think God is inhabiting a human body and walking around and talking like a human being. (There&#39;s a TV show in the US called Joan of Arcadia that I think is fun to watch. It plays off of Joan of Arc&#39;s visions, and has God inhabiting various bodies to talk to Joan--a little trite, but hey, it&#39;s TV, after all.)

[drusus]

Boris you talking to me? If i did something wrong i&#39;m so sorry of that it wasn&#39;t intentionnal

[drusus]

Seem wasn&#39;t to me so...

First of all Morble sorry for my lack of knowledge on the bible, you&#39;re right i see the scene of the red see on TV&#33;

So i would make an experience Morble, so listen this please...

Well supposing that after read you&#39;re brillant post i decided to belive, for exemple to be christian/jews/muslim..., so immediatly i wonder one thing why on this earth they&#39;re are so many religion? monotheist, polytheist, so many way to pray in god?. Why all people of this earth doesn&#39;t know the same god at the same time?Why my god forgot so many people?
Well after i wonderwhy is there one god, or many, or not a god but an superior mind (kind of architect ) who create this world?
Well after i want to see my god,talk with him, i need help from him. So my girlfriend live me to go with my brother, my dog eat a piece of my foot, and they are a nuclear war near my house&#33; Damn i REALLY need help, i pray, i cry, nothing happen, no answer. My loved god refuse to speak with me, refuse to help me...
So why?Well after i think he can&#39;t simply heard me cause he is very important and complex, i&#39;m nothing compare to him, just a mealbag in fact, an idiot, a piece of crap...I&#39;m very disapointed cause i belive in god i love him, why he don&#39;t love me?So after i wonder (again...) If i can&#39;t see/speak/have help from him why he created us, why he created this world if we can&#39;t interact each other? Maybe he was booring and he decided to create a giant Trueman show?
So i resume we can&#39;t see it, we can&#39;t speak with him and he don&#39;t help us...So my last question i did to myself, what utility have god in my life?
For what raison he created this world/planet/galaxie?

Dear Morble can you answer me cause now i feel so sad

[Portuguese Rebel]

Some of the Bible is truly amazing, and science is just coming to understand the underlying truths written there in plain language. There&#39;s an astounding passage (in Numbers, IIRC) when Moses wants to see God face to face. God tells him that no man can look upon Him and live, but God puts Moses in the cleft of a rock and passes by before him, and Moses is able to see just after God passes by. The passage is describing how human conciousness perceives the reality of spacetime. Humans cannot see the present, because it takes time for your neurons to fire, and for the chemical exchange to occur at the synapses. So, we live in the immediate past, because everything we experience has already happened by the time we can understand it. It took centuries of physics, pyschology, and biology for us to figure this out, but it was in the Bible all along.

I for one would like to see the opposite of this occur. First, a non-scientist comes out with an hyper-advanced knowlage and then scientists check it out for veracity. Generally (to be on the safe side and not say allways) what happends is that there is a discovery and only then will someone search for a specific part of the bible wich can be interpretated to fit the new discovery. This also goes for many other writtings, with the most notorious one to be the prophecies of Nostradamus. An event takes place and only then someone will quote an almost uncomprehensible sentence in ancient french and twist its interpretation to fit the new event. Sometimes the same sentence is even used in different events.

The Bible actually probably comes closest to what is humanly describable by just starting with God as "already" existing.

So god was self created?

The last theory I heard is that Moses&#39; flight took the Hebrews across a marshy area. Historically, there is evidence that there had been floods and heavy rains in the years just previous to the Exodus. The Egyptian chariot wheels got bogged down in the muddy marsh and had to stop, while the Hebrews were fleeing on foot and could continue.

The actual text reads like a flash flood occurred. (Exodus 14:15-31) Certainly flash floods are possible in desert terrain, even on a cloudless day, as I have personally observed when I lived in Arizona. The text mentions "Egyptians lying dead on the shore" but nowhere is it claimed that Pharoah was killed during the Exodus, so maybe you&#39;re thinking of the Hollywood movie--which can&#39;t be considered a reliable source. The text mentions "walls of water to right and to left of them", which might indeed be storytelling embellishment--maybe there were just puddles of water.

All in all though, I don&#39;t think it can be disputed that the Hebrews went to Egypt, were slaves there, and then, for some reason, they left Egypt and became a free people. I suspect the 10 plagues may have been "interpreted" a bit to make them seem more drastic, but something very unusual and forceful must have happened, because slave owners don&#39;t just suddenly let 400,000 slaves walk away free.

The exile of hebrews in egypt is one of my favourite parts of the bible. I mean, the story of moses and the plagues and the miracles during the escape, it&#39;s literally very entertaining (the movie was excelent too ).
It is also one of the parts of the bible were it can be matched with other sources. Many christian historians have tried to hammer down evidence to fit exactly the account of moses, the literal version that is. In my view that is a fatal mistake for literalists.

Because it is impossible to explain the opening of the sea (absolutely no evidence whatsoever of something like this ever happening) the story gets twisted (no sea but a swamp, no sea but a sudden flood). While they do this they make consessions to the literal version wich is quite clear, there were walls of water and they closed down on the passing egyptians and killed quite a few.

About the plagues i saw a show on history channel just the other day about two guys set to "prove" it. It was unbelievable, they searched for anything that could fit the evidence and hammered it down to size to fit the account, using only natural events (native flies, frogs, cow disease, locusts, sandstorms to explain the darkness...). The most intriguing was the explanation of the death of the first born. They said that the oldest was sent to collect the grain in the silos and the grain was infected with some kind of fungus but, get this, only the top portion of the grain. Then, because of the famine, the first son would get most of the food and only the first son was killed because only him had eaten enough to reach toxic levels.

They somehow forgot to mention that the rich families had no need to give more food to the eldest and that all their sons (not to mention the adults too) would have died, and this is mentioned nowhere. They also fail to say how did moses triggered all of this (a scientific explanation to be tried demands this) natural catastrophes. But reasoning is irrelevant in this case, since that if all the story of Moses was true the egyptians would have covered their monuments with references to Moses, not to mention that the hebrew god would either replace the old gods of be part of the set of gods, since he demonstrated his power in a more visible way than all the other egyptian gods put together.

I would caution about throwing around too many "omni-"s, though. Omnibenevolence, as we would interpret the word in the modern day world, might not be operative when we try to apply it to the totality of God. The Old Testament God was a pretty rough and tough Diety. The message of Jesus was to reveal a God that is loving and forgiving like a good father. If God is truly "omni-", then both views are legitimate aspects of God. The God you choose to conceptualize and worship says a lot more about you than it does about God.

Omnipotence is a funny thing, since it is, by principle a philosophical one word oximoron. If a being is omnipotent he can create a stone he himself cannot lift, but in turn, if he cannot lift it then he is not omnipotent.

[the Black Prince]

another easy question to ask about the existance of god is, if there is a god, and he loves everyone, why does he allow so muchsuffering in this world. for surely, if god existed, and he loves us, then he would eradicate suffering.

clearly suffering exists (would anyone like to disagree?), therefore god cannot, simple

[Kazak borispavlovgrozny]

Thsi is going back to his omnibenevolent argument, and it can be negated by saying that free will, which i ssupposedly the source of all evil, is a greater good that not having fre will. Thats one of the proximate questions i was talkign sbout, thatahs the questions thatneeds answering to philosophicaly catagorize god as real or not, based on the parameter of his being a super swell guy(which we assume to be, given factual events otherwise..interesting isnt it...) .

ps..not so simple

[drusus]

He, he this time i think that the discussion is ended&#33;&#33;&#33;

[Kazak borispavlovgrozny]

Wrong dear drussus, the discussion will never end....