Does God exist?

[AbsintheClock]

Zeus is the big cheese, and all the other gods were like his angels. I dunno. As for norse same deal but with Odin.

[I1I1I1I1I1I1I11111I1I1I1IIIIIII1I1I1I1I11I]

Guys I hate to tell all you people who don't believe in gods but I AM THOR GOD OF THUNDER

[Pube Ron Paul]

God, as referred to in the words of Jesus Christ, I believe to be synonymous with several the same God of several other religions including, but not limited to, Judaism Zoroastrianism Hinduism (I'll explain this one in a bit) Islam (Qur'anic dispensation) and the Babi and Baha'i faiths.

While other deific concepts exist, in my experience they tend to be perversions or extrapolations on a single original Being or inventions based on individual imagined personifications of various paradigms and superstitions. The latter, for instance, would include the Japanese kami or the various Greek deities and demigods, ancestor and idol worship and the like. The former would include things like Levant Judaism, present day Hinduism, or the Pagan Arab religion in the time immediately preceding Islam, where aspects of these respective cultures' understandings of God (Elohim, Brahman, Allah) have been expanded to be themselves considered separate deities, or where God has been simply added to a tribal pantheon or humanized with more personified features such as offspring or partners.

Even in many of those former instances I mention, I find myself often suspecting monotheistic roots that have been extrapolated on so severely that they're unrecognizable. I find things that hint at this in the writings of Plato sometimes, for instance, and from Siddharta Gautama (though I find it very hard to tell what's genuine and what's the muddy waters of the ages...welcome to the problem with most religious scripture.) For the purpose of total honesty, however, I do not know how much of that is me reading too much into perceived subtleties out of the belief that humanity has always had some form of Divine guidance from the same single Source.



I'll try and keep this relatively concise but I warn you I can't do justice to years of investigation on the matter in a single post, I hope I can at least convey a general idea.

The short answer is "Yes, in the Revelations and conduct of the Manifestations of God, in their Prophecy, and in the effects of their Revelations on the human character and in the evolution of society as we know it, as well as in Creation itself."

I am fully aware that statement is insufficient to communicate how one reaches this conclusion through these things, nor would I expect anyone to believe in God simply based on that statement.

One of the keys to each Revelation is to consider it itself, and not the current standards amongst fellow human beings, to be the standard by which its own validity is judged. One would judge the Torah by the standard of the Torah, or the Qur'an by the Qur'an, etc. The claims which each make should be weighed against what it itself says.

Likewise, the conduct of the Manifestations must not be considered merely in the light of present standards, but in direct relation to the claim of their position, the nature of their revelation and, not least of all, the veracity of the account. For instance, one must remember with the Bible that loads of books of accounts were not considered accurate enough for inclusion, and there have been great schismatic battles over which are canonical and which are apocryphal. The same can be said for Hadith, largely in part due to Muhammad's longer life and greater span of sociopolitical prominence during His life, and also due in large part to the succession crisis and subsequent Fitnas and schism of Sunni and Shi'ite.

In terms of Prophecies, I could provide numerous examples but, if desired, I can provide a single one which I consider to be extremely clear and compelling. Doing so in this post would make it rather unreadable, however, so I'll do it in a separate post if there is any interest whatsoever. There are ones that are clearer and ones that are less apparent, largely in part due to the fact that such things often Prophecy more than one thing - the Qur'an, for instance, in accordance to its own teachings, alludes to every single thing in existence specifically, though it may do so in means so implicit or allegorical that it is nearly impossible to fathom (such as through the abjad numeration of individual letters of each word) as it would have to be considering the limited size of the Qur'an and the nigh infinite complexity of the universe. Other revelations, similarly, express things with manifold meaning, some literal, some allegorical.

As far as its effect on human character, one must consider things with due justice. It's easy to draw simplistic conclusions as "Religion -> Ghandi's Peaceful Philosophy -> Good/True" or "Religion -> Spanish Inquisition -> Bad/False". For this one, one has to be familiar enough with the teachings in question in the first place to consider where one is viewing the effects of those teachings being applied or merely the effects of those teachings being invoked. Both relevant parties, for instance, claimed to have based their deeds on the words of Jesus Christ, but the disparity in their conclusion and conduct is clear and apparent. One would have to be somewhat familiar with the actual teachings of Christ in order to determine which more accurately represents application of said teachings.

As far as the above, the concept of progressive revelation also deserves mention. The laws of Leviticus, as is apparent to anyone who has truly read them carefully, would be completely incompatible with humanity today. One must consider as well the time and state of humanity for each revelation.

Finally the last one, Creation itself. One can draw loads of information from every single thing, from the behavior of a single atom, to the vastness of the heavens, to why your dog stares at you when you're taking off your clothes. Me? I dunno I'm not that smart. I think conservation of matter and energy coupled with the fact that anything exists and moves in the first place is a good place to start though, as well as the nature of both biological and structural evolution, and human consciousness. I kind of reached a dead end at the existential nature of fallibility in our perception and memory, particularly from viewing time third-dimensionally (I'm sure I've brought up this subject quite a few times before on the boards). This did help me to understand my lack of a frame of reference for something infinite that transcends the third-dimensional physical reality box we're trapped in, and helped me to understand things like part of the wisdom for God communicating through intermediary Manifestations.

TL;DR - WHAT DO YOU MEAN TL;DR THIS IS THE SHORTENED VERSION

That really ties into what I was saying earlier about God and the Fed. Having federal officials, whether judges, bureaucrats, or congressmen, impose a new definition of marriage on the people is an act of social engineering profoundly hostile to liberty. We've got to oppose this type of change. Keep same sex marriage decisions in the hands of the couples, not the hands of a bloated bureaucracy.

-Ron Paul 2012

[F U Clock]

St. Anselm proved God existed lemme lay the proof on you:

St. Anselm: Would you agree that were God to exist, He would be the greatest thing to exist, so that nothing could be greater?
You: Yes.
St. Anselm: And would you not also agree that real things are greater than imaginary things.
You: Yes.
St. Anselm: By this, we can infer that God must exist, because nothing can be greater than God, and real things are greater than imaginary things, thus no imaginary thing could be greater than a real thing, thus God, the greatest thing of all, must be real.

BOOM bitches.

[Topcatyo]

St. Anselm seems like a really dumb guy.

I've always held the belief that I don't give a shit whether or not he exists because either way I have not nor will I be affected by whether or not he exists, so I have no reason to worry about it.

But if you want me to say yes or no I say no, he doesn't exist, and if you want proof you can fuck off because with this kind of thing it's impossible to prove either way.

And if there is a god, he's not like the God worshipped in Christianity or any of the gods worshipped in any other religion. If some being is advanced enough to create everything and control everything and blah blah blah then how is it even remotely possible for God to be within our realm of understanding.

[Topcatyo]

Also try to convince the guy whose porn folder is nothing but hentai that real things are greater than imaginary things.

Also this thread hasn't turned into a flame war yet. You guys disappoint me do me proud.

[BoomStick Clock]

Agnosticism is the only true answer to this, which is to say we can't answer it either way and most likely never will.

[FLOUNDERMAN_CLOCK]

Agnosticism is the only true answer to this, which is to say we can't answer it either way and most likely never will.

get off the fence coward

[buttplug]

Agnosticism is the only true answer to this, which is to say we can't answer it either way and most likely never will.

That doesn't mean you can't choose to live one way or another depending upon what evidence you find. Like Albino said it doesn't have to be a 50-50 probability.

Also Flounder was joking with that comment since that is a common joke among internet atheists about agnostics.

Also try to convince the guy whose porn folder is nothing but hentai that real things are greater than imaginary things.

anime boobs aside I don't think that everyone values reality and fantasy in the same way. I'd say it is subjective.

[BoomStick Clock]

That doesn't mean you can't choose to live one way or another depending upon what evidence you find. Like Albino said it doesn't have to be a 50-50 probability.

Also Flounder was joking with that comment since that is a common joke among internet atheists about agnostics.

 
anime boobs aside I don't think that everyone values reality and fantasy in the same way. I'd say it is subjective.

I said nothing on living with the choice of believing or not, I simply said that the question can't be definitively answered.

[buttplug]

Corpse, how can we know that all the the world religions of the past and present are truly based in an ancient faith and are not just reflections of human wants and ideas? If you would say it is through texts and prophecy, I would ask how do we prove these texts are actually inspired by the echoes of an ancient deity?

[Sombra]

Corpse, how can we know that all the the world religions of the past and present are truly based in an ancient faith and are not just reflections of human wants and ideas? If you would say it is through texts and prophecy, I would ask how do we prove these texts are actually inspired by the echoes of an ancient deity?

I believe proto-language started developing around like 3000 BC so if you're going to assume they were conveying complex ideas to each other it was probably within that time.

edit: so I was way off nvm I'm a retard

[F U Clock]

Also try to convince the guy whose porn folder is nothing but hentai that real things are greater than imaginary things.

Also this thread hasn't turned into a flame war yet. You guys disappoint me do me proud.

Haha, I see your point, but my counterpoint would be - Which would one of those hentai fans prefer, a computer image of a hentai girl or that same hentai girl somehow made real and tangible right next to him. I bet you he'd pick the real one. Unless it'd just be too freaky looking IRL...

[Kombucha]

Guys I hate to tell all you people who don't believe in gods but I AM THOR GOD OF THUNDER

me2

[BoomStick Clock]

Haha, I see your point, but my counterpoint would be - Which would one of those hentai fans prefer, a computer image of a hentai girl or that same hentai girl somehow made real and tangible right next to him. I bet you he'd pick the real one. Unless it'd just be too freaky looking IRL...

http://sexylosers.com/comics/sl003.gif
&
http://sexylosers.com/comics/sl004.gif

most likely results to that scenario.

[BoomStick Clock]

Re-iterating here, this question is unanswerable at this moment in time and is likely to continue to be unanswerable, all we can really do here is theorize on the existance or non-existance of a deity or several deities based on our own beliefs, however since beliefs are anecdotes and not facts one can simply claim that the likeliest event in this debate is that it's the flying spaghetti monster and that'd still be as valid a claim as any other.

[MonsterMunch]

butts

[Kombucha]

butts

Do butts exist?

[RobClock]

Do butts exist?

cough

[AlbinoClock]

Agnosticism is the only true answer to this, which is to say we can't answer it either way and most likely never will.

I once held this same position but I've changed my mind. Let me explain why.

While it may be true that there is no real evidence for or against god, this does not mean that each is equally probable. It doesn't make sense to believe in something without any evidence, which is a blow against the side of theism, so atheism has a higher probability.

This becomes extremely obvious when you insert anything other than god. We have no evidence one way or another of the existence of unicorns, but no one would say that the most logical position to take is that of equal probability of unicorns existing or not.