It seems to work

[The Drunken Actuary]

I've been thinking about this for a while and I just can;t see how god can really exist. Anyone have anything insightful to offer?

[USCanuck]

I also have thought a lot about that recently. After September 11th, I'm convinced there is no God.

[General Kenobi (ret.)]

http://www.newadvent.org/summa/100203.htm

[The Drunken Actuary]

Obi-Wan:
I checked out your web site and remain thoroughly unconvinced. I'm not sure if you are joking or you actually beloeive these 'proofs' are valid. The first 'proof' of the existence of god goes something like this: Anything in motion must be put in motion by something else. Since nothing can put itslef into motion God must have put the 'first' thing in motion. This proof gives no account of how god was put into motion. All of the arguments seem to follow the same logic: that in order to explain the world we need a god. But it seems to me that you are merely avoiding the question. Where did god come from and why do you feel it necessary to invent something even more complex to explain something you so not understand.

[Andy Lang]

For all you secular humanists, agnostics, nontheists and plain old atheists, check into the two major issues of the Skeptical Inquirer on this topic--one this year and one last.

Brilliant stuff written by brilliant people, many of them top scientists, like carl Sagan, who was blackballed by many in the sciences for years for his views.

BTW--most polls continue to say that 90% of Americans believe in God.

Although overstated it still tells you something important about human beings--but then maybe you don't want to know that.

There is a serious and fairly large body of scientists who claim there is 'religious gene' that we have that once upon a time helped us survive and now will help us become extinct, as the planet protects it's own.

This gene cuts off neuron connections to the rational thinking part of our brains--chanting monks use it all the time, as do many in the current Bush admistration.

Think of that the next time we have a ferocious 1 in 100 years storm that now comes nearly every year, or when another person gets skin cancer from too much sun exposure, as Bush just did.

Instead of Bush being remembered as the person who waged War against Terrorists, he is more likely to be remembered as the Big Oil Guy who caused global warming to increase so much we couldnt stop it in time.

Bt then, at that point, no one will care.

Just as they do not care at this time. Gotta win the war.

Take it for what it is worth, but I have a slightly different definition of God. A God is a force that causes people to act with a certain morality or set of beliefs. God(s) could have created man, or man could have created God(s). Whichever of the two possibilities happened, God now exists because there are these belief systems which people use to determine "correct" actions within everyday life. Any belief which you follow is in a sense a force that has power over you, it dictates your actions. Whether one chooses to disseminate these attributes of the belief system (or if they were disseminated from) to many Gods or assign them all to one God does not matter, as the same result is achieved, a code of morality in which the believer bases his (her) actions.
Basic summation, I have no idea about the creation of the world, but God(s) do exist and the majority of people like having those fatherly and motherly figures in control of this place.


Side note based on Cogito, ergo sum. I think therefore I am. It stops there, all that I know about existence is that I think, you may all be creations of my mind and I may be the only God who created you guys as a form of placation to ease my boredom with myself. Well, anyway. . .

[General Kenobi (ret.)]

I'm entirely serious. You are quite correct in characterizing in saying that at least the first three proofs are very much the same idea.

The fourth proof is not very amenable to modern ways of thinking, and I wouldn't care to defend it to most people because its assumptions require a lot of argument to support. (I think it's valid, but not very helpful.)

The fifth is basically the argument from design.

This proof gives no account of how god was put into motion.

That's precisely the point of it. God is the unmoved mover, the uncaused cause, the necessary being causing unnecessary things to be.

St. Thomas addresses the infinite regression option in his third way:
1) Assume it is possible for things to exist or not to exist; that is, nothing exists in and of itself.
2) Assume an infinite amount of time has already passed, since we are barring, as an hypothesis, the unmoved mover or the uncaused cause.
3) Then, since nothing exists without a cause, and since it is possible for nothing to exist, at some point in the past, nothing existed.
4) At some point in the past, nothing existed, and, since nothing exists without a cause, therefore nothing exists now.
5) But things do exist now, and therefore something must exist of itself, uncaused by anything else.

[Andy Lang]

Science and religion are diametric opposites

Each time science proves something that religion used to say proved god exists,to justify the power clerics hang onto, religion first resists, then moves to another area we know little about.

Time has been known to be relative, and indeed stop at the speed of light. Since we cannot acheive the speed of light, since it is like an asymptotic constant or ever know everything, since at that point we are god, thus religion will move again to somewhere else to justify itself, over and over ad infinitum, until fewer and fewer things are not known and there are fewer and fewer believers, then god is dead, for all practical purposes.


Bye bye, ignorance.
Hello science.
Bye bye Miracles.
Hello science.
Bye bye John Ashcroft.
Hello Janet Reno.
Bye bye hegemony.
Hello democracy.
Bye bye God.
Hello Freedom.
Bye bye Wars.
Hello Peace.
Bye bye Evil
Hello Good.

Or is it?

Hello Bush.
Bye bye planet.
Hello Big Business
Bye bye freedom.
Hello money.
Bye bye mankind.
Hello Mamman.
Bye bye god.

[The Drunken Actuary]

OWK:
Maybe I'm missing your point but it seems to me that you are simply arguing for the existence of god because you have no other explanation for the existence of the universe. This seems like just a cop-out to me and still requires an explanation for the existence of god. The universe is complex enough, why make it more so by introducing a god that created it with the snap of his fingers?

This has always troubled me. I have also been troubled by the haphazrd way in whice the Bible seems to have been compiled.

[E. Blackadder]

And let's not forget the obscure languages in which it was written: Aramaic (sp?); Hebrew; Greek...

Why not Chinese, Spanish, and English?