Best and worst arguments for the existence of God (user search)
       |           

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?
April 25, 2024, 11:54:18 AM
News: Election Simulator 2.0 Released. Senate/Gubernatorial maps, proportional electoral votes, and more - Read more

  Talk Elections
  General Discussion
  Religion & Philosophy (Moderator: Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.)
  Best and worst arguments for the existence of God (search mode)
Pages: [1]
Author Topic: Best and worst arguments for the existence of God  (Read 5612 times)
Benjamin Frank
Frank
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 7,069


« on: July 11, 2022, 11:22:34 PM »
« edited: July 12, 2022, 06:22:03 AM by Benjamin Frank »

I believe that the cosmological argument combined with the teleological argument is the best justification for the existence of a higher power.


It depends on how you define 'God.' If you mean God as portrayed in the Bible, I don't believe there is any serious credible evidence to back that up, ultimately that's a matter of faith, which is fine to me as long as you don't tell me how to live my life based on this book that you believe to be true.

If you mean 'God' as in a creator of the universe, with the Bible being a fairly easy coincidence of stating the existence of this creator, then I think the evidence is very strong.

I don't agree with the teleological term, which apparently essentially means intelligent design. According to the standard counter argument, people see 'intelligent design' because they seek patterns even, or especially, when there are none.  That the earth and all major bodies in space are round is not due to some intelligent design, it's due to purely natural centrifugal force.

Even more so, the evidence is quite strong that there is no intelligent design. That many things are, in reality, very messy and not ordered, but that people don't notice because they want to see order, and that from observation it's evident that supposedly ordered things are a result of compromises based on natural selection.  

As far as I'm concerned, if there was intelligent design, why do I need to wear glasses? Wouldn't an intelligent designer God at least give humans eyes that don't ever need glasses?

However, in terms of a Universal Creator, the obvious argument is the numerical constants that need to be exact in order for the universe to exist. Apparently this is called the fine-tuning universe theory for God. For instance, in order for planets to exist. I'm not a physicist so I don't remember these constants because I really don't understand them but:

"And a third example of the universe’s being suited for us is its initial conditions, for example, that the universe began in a state with lots of usable energy.[3] Some philosophers and scientists estimate that some of these constants, forces, and conditions couldn’t have varied by more than one part in 1060 (i.e., a one with sixty zeros after it) and still permitted life."  (And that doesn't even mention the constants that need to exist for any universe to not simply implode upon coming into existence.)

https://1000wordphilosophy.com/2018/05/03/the-fine-tuning-argument-for-the-existence-of-god/#:~:text=This%20is%20the%20basic%20reasoning,the%20universe%20would%20permit%20life.

My view is ultimately that there has to be either an infinite number of universes for this universe with life to exist or a single creator of this universe, and I think it's far more logical to assume a single creator than an infinite number of anything.

This is seperate from the above argument about seeing patterns in chaos, because this is seeing patterns when previously there was nothing to see.  In this case, these patterns must exist for the universe (and the earth and life) to exist

On the scientist side, there seems to be a view of 'whatever you do, don't mention the God.' When Elon Musk (not that he originated the idea) popularized the notion of the simulated universe, all sorts of scientists jumped on it saying 'that explains so many things!' I don't see how a simulated universe differs in any way from a universe created by a 'God.'

The second strongest argument is all the life after death stories which are both too numerouos and too consistent to dismiss.  The term 'near death experience' is a very poor phrase because it's a misnomer.  A far more accurate phrase is 'post brain death experiences.'
Logged
Pages: [1]  
Jump to:  


Login with username, password and session length

Terms of Service - DMCA Agent and Policy - Privacy Policy and Cookies

Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines

Page created in 0.024 seconds with 12 queries.