Merged A Proof of the Existence of God / Did Someone Create the Universe?

Buddha said:
You raised several interesting topics. I didn't address them in my post because they are irrelevant to my presentation. However, I'll briefly address some of them. As you said, there is no way of telling how many Creators there are. Actually, I can prove that there is only one. Religious people say that God came from nowhere, he always existed. I hold a different point of view, and I will be happy to discuss it at another thread because this topic deserves special attention.
Please, be patient, I will provide my logical proofs in a near future. This is one of the reasons why I joined this group -- I want to see how my strongest opponents respond to my ideas.
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Thanks much for the reply, and I am sure that the Forum will be post the proofs that you describe.

However, as for myself (and quite a few of the other Forum members) expect that any subsequent proofs that you provide will be just as wrong as the first proof you provided.

To explain, I have been a Forum member for many years and every time that someone has claimed that they have some sort of proof of god, of angles, of demons, or space aliens, or some other nonsense, then that someone has always been wrong.

So by all means post this proof of yours.
 
JayUtah said:
Also, a deductive proof requires one or more syllogisms. Perhaps you could post the first of yours.
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Better yet perhaps he could post it with the proof.

You know, the proof he claims to have.

That this thread is about.

All else is currently off topic.

Buddha, present your proof.
 
Buddha said:
I'll get to this topic at another thread. Please, be patient. I wrote about myself at the Welcome thread. You could check it to see where I stand on the evolution in particular and religion in general
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Can you at least reassure us that your proof isn't the old "the probability of complex living things arising by chance is so low it can't have happened" argument? That would not be deserving of anyone's patience.
 
Buddha said:
I'll add one more thing because it was mentioned at this thread. Did God create the world in 6 days? Of course he didn't, the 6-days span of time is nonsense, it came as a result of incorrect translation of the biblical text by poorly educated initial translators of the Bible, and later it became a tradition. My own translation is that the universe was created in 6 stages. At least two biblical scholars share my point of view. No, I am not a biblical scholar, currently I work as a Data Analyst for a consulting company. But I have some knowledge of ancient Hebrew.
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Just a suggestion, but it would be best to skip the "explanation" of what יום and ימים and תולדות mean in Genesis and that "the 6-days span of time is nonsense".

There are people on this forum who speak Hebrew and already know what the text says.
 
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Buddha said:
I'll get to this topic at another thread. Please, be patient. I wrote about myself at the Welcome thread. You could check it to see where I stand on the evolution in particular and religion in general
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To be fair, the mods did create this thread for exactly the purpose of you giving your proof.

Why not use this thread? And why do we have to be patient? You say you have the proof. Why not just post the proof, instead of letting yourself be distracted?
 
theprestige said:
To be fair, the mods did create this thread for exactly the purpose of you giving your proof.

Why not use this thread? And why do we have to be patient? You say you have the proof. Why not just post the proof, instead of letting yourself be distracted?
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Precisely. I don't really care where he stands on evolution or religion in general or for that matter about a six day creation. He claims he can provide proof of god, he should stop dancing and back it up.
 
Buddha said:
Please, be patient, I will provide my logical proofs in a near future. This is one of the reasons why I joined this group -- I want to see how my strongest opponents respond to my ideas.
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I feel the number of pages this thread has garnered already proves your audience has been patient enough. You either have this proof already and can present it in your next post, or you don't have it and thus you might want to revise the degree to which you are confident you can achieve it.

As Zivan has noted, you can assume we, collectively, are already well versed in whatever groundwork would need to be laid before you present your proof. Don't spend endless time in premises and preliminary"education."
 
Buddha said:
......... Archbishop Berkeley was the first Western philosopher who provided a correct proof that the Creator exists.......
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So are you just going to repeat whatever incredible logic this bishop came up with, or do you have a "proof" of your own? If the latter, in what way does yours differ from that of the bishop, and if his is "correct" (gee, why did no-one tell me about this?), in what way is yours an improvement on his?
 
Buddha said:
I define it as "someone who can do anything he wants" That would also include creation of the universe because God wanted to create it, obviously.
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This isn't greatly helpful in designing a test of any sort. Whatever the outcome, you could simply argue that God didn't "want" to do it. Can he make the lights flicker? Of course, according to you, he has that ability. But would he make the lights flicker? According to your definition, maybe or maybe not. So, if I created a test whereby God had a 10 minute window to make an electric light flicker, it's not really a very good test. No matter what happens, you still get to claim your definition of God has at least not been disproven.

But then there's the problem of logic. There are certain things that cannot be done. Classically, we might ask if God can make a rock so heavy he cannot lift it. Can God inhabit the exact same space as a particular proton in an atom of tungsten? Everything we've been able to scientifically observe says no. Can he change the gravitational force of an object? Once again, observation says no.

Whatever your God wants to do, it appears that so far he wants to set into motion a series of laws regarding energy and matter and then sit back and never interfere with them in any way.

Can you, using your definition, create a repeatable test that (if positive) definitely shows the existence of God?

Remember, I don't have any desire to definitely show the non-existence of God. I'm not sure I could definitely show the non-existence of anything. Whatever test we undertake should be yours.

What test do you suggest we do?
 
Loss Leader said:
This isn't greatly helpful in designing a test of any sort. Whatever the outcome, you could simply argue that God didn't "want" to do it. Can he make the lights flicker? Of course, according to you, he has that ability. But would he make the lights flicker? According to your definition, maybe or maybe not. So, if I created a test whereby God had a 10 minute window to make an electric light flicker, it's not really a very good test. No matter what happens, you still get to claim your definition of God has at least not been disproven.

But then there's the problem of logic. There are certain things that cannot be done. Classically, we might ask if God can make a rock so heavy he cannot lift it. Can God inhabit the exact same space as a particular proton in an atom of tungsten? Everything we've been able to scientifically observe says no. Can he change the gravitational force of an object? Once again, observation says no.

Whatever your God wants to do, it appears that so far he wants to set into motion a series of laws regarding energy and matter and then sit back and never interfere with them in any way.

Can you, using your definition, create a repeatable test that (if positive) definitely shows the existence of God?

Remember, I don't have any desire to definitely show the non-existence of God. I'm not sure I could definitely show the non-existence of anything. Whatever test we undertake should be yours.

What test do you suggest we do?
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it still doesn't matter at this point because the definition he gave "somebody who can do whatever he wants" already fails as a proper, rational, and meaningful definition.

What he basically says is that "god is a thing which has no limits on what it can do (i.e., omnipotent)." This only tells us what this thing isn't and not what it is. It's the exact same thing as if I said, "flazmathor is omnipotent." One thing, how do you know this? Human beings are limited and certainly not omniscient nor omnipotent so there is nothing that can be shown to a human being which will prove omnipotence.

So then if it's walked back to merely "creator of the universe" again it fails with all the other already demonstrated rebuttals that are not relevant to repeat here, other than it still does not tell us what this being is that is capable of universe creation.
 
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Buddha said:
Vast majority of the theists accept existence of God on faith. Well, I belong to minority of the theists who require a logical proof of God's existence. I am in a good company: Archbishop Berkeley was the first Western philosopher who provided a correct proof that the Creator exists.The Rapture thing wouldn't work for me because I do not believe in it; this silly concept came as a result in incorrect translations of certain biblical texts.
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If 300 years ago, Bishop Berkley already proved that God exists, then it's entirely redundant for you to spend your time trying to claim your own proof now ... instead all you have to do is show that Berkley really did prove that God exists.

By the way, we cannot even "prove" that living species have evolved on Earth over billions of years, and we can't actually "prove" quantum theory or relativity either ... in fact afaik, without some prior assumptions we cannot actually prove that 1+1=2 (at least not in any practical sense that could relate to real existing objects).

Instead, what we discovered from Quantum Theory in the 1920's is that literal certainties, i.e. any literal "proof", appears to be impossible in this universe. The best we can ever do, is to show overwhelming evidence for anything. And that's what's done for the major theories of science (QM/QFT, GR, Evolution etc.) ... and the evidence and mathematical foundations for those "Theories" is vastly stronger than anything called a "proof" in philosophy or theology, and even more so when compared to religious philosophical beliefs of the 1700's.
 
To try to move this thread towards Buddha's promised proof of God (which I hope will be coming soon) I thought I'd look up Bishop Berkeley's proof of God:

Whatever power I may have over my own thoughts, I find the ideas actually perceived by Sense have not a like dependence on my will. When in broad daylight I open my eyes, it is not in my power to choose whether I shall see or no, or to determine what particular objects shall present themselves to my view; and so likewise as to the hearing and other senses; the ideas imprinted on them are not creatures of my will. There is therefore some other Will or Spirit that produces them. (Berkeley. Principles #29)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley
 
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Agatha said:
To try to move this thread towards Buddha's promised proof of God (which I hope will be coming soon) I thought I'd look up Bishop Berkeley's proof of God:
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Well, that's me convinced.

That the Bishop wasn't blind anyway...

If Buddha's proof is of a similar quality it's unsurprising that he lacks the confidence to share it.

No more digressions Buddha, share your proof or retract your claim.
 
JayUtah said:
"I can't will my brain to work differently than it does, therefore God." Or am I oversimplifying?
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Kinda. This quote is a few more lines down in the Wiki article and I think it's a better summation (sorry): "Rather, the perception of the tree is an idea that God's mind has produced in the mind, and the tree continues to exist in the quadrangle when "nobody" is there, simply because God is an infinite mind that perceives all."

So according to the good Archbishop, god is a "mind" which is infinite and omniscient (and just implants sensations into our brains so that nothing outside of our minds actually physically exists), while our good Buddha here says that god is a being which is omnipotent only.

Neither definition, of course, is meaningful nor coherent in any way.
 
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