Does God Exist?

God is simply the most logical explanation for everything. Take evolution, for example. It's not that evolution is scientific. Evolution is a religion, just like Creationism. Both of them, nobody was there to see it, so we don't know for sure. But the creation/God theory makes a lot more sense scientifically than the big bang. That's not necessarily addressing the full topic of belief in God, but i think it can be applied to a lot of these arguments.

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Err... I disagreed with what Graffiti is saying. Evolution is NOT a religion, and evolution CANNOT be compared to creationism. Unless you are saying biology is not a science. Evolution is one of the bedrock of biology. Lots of research in biology dealing with DNA has got to do with the evolution theory.


Actually, the people advocating that god exists are religious people. And most religious people belong to a faith, that is they are either Christians, Muslims, Jewish, Buddhists, Hindus, etc. Very few of them actually subscribe to multi faiths, that is they are both Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and Hindus at the same time, for example. So actually, whether god exists or not does not help them in their cause because they can't prove that their god exists and not others. Or for that matter, whether gods exist since there are some faith, like during the ancient Greece that have multiple gods. Of course, not everyone sees this logic. I have tonnes of friends that bought into the whole argument of the existence of god from some religious people and converted into their religion, saying god existed without realizing that other faiths proclaim the existence of god/gods as well. So which faith actually knows the truth? And should we use the word god or gods?

 

 

 

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Not really. If you're going to argue that evolution is science, then you've got to admit that creationism is a science as well. You've got two alternative theories to pick from. While creation, God making the world and all that in 6 days, might sound a bit far-fetched, and incomprehensible, evolution is even more so. At least if we believe that God created the world, then you just have to believe that he created, say, the animals, like snap. Ok, it's not within our mental scope to try to unravel that, but if you consider the alternative, that this primordial ooze became alive, and morphed into everything we see today, isn't THAT also stretching the imagination? Take appendages, for example. --bird wings. You say that it took millions of years for birds to develop wings, feathers, hollow bones, muscular dynamics for flying, and a whole lot more. The only reason they would grow these wings is if they were useful right away. But no. During this whole growth process, those wings were useless. So the evolutionary process would have reversed itself. One generation of birds decides it wants wings, then a couple generations later the bird with these stubs wonders what they're for, and decides it doesn't want them anymore. And we seesaw back and forth, ad infinitum. isn't it amazing how , of all those millions of years, and billions of birds that lived over those supposed millions of years, there are no tranistional fossils?
The Darwinian process, by which i refer to an apparent contradiction of the second law of thermodynamics, only works under controlled circumstances, in laboratories. Assuming that our world was formed through evolution, that definitely was not a controlled environment. As soon as that primitive life form would have evolved, it would have died.

How does that define a point? I mean, isn't the definition of an atheist someone who advocates that God doesn't exist.

To know whether your religion or lack of it was the right one or not, you'll pretty much have to wait until you die, and then I suppose we'll see who was right. Just to point out something, the Christians, Jews, and Muslims, in spite of all their differences, in essence believe in the same God. On the other hand we have other religions that have several to thousands of different gods. But no matter what people's religion, people inside are the same anywhere you go, and well, my personal belief is that there is a God, a higher being, by whatever name you want to call him, and to God, it doesn't matter whether you called him Jehovah or Allah or what have you. If your heart was in the right place, you sincerely believed, even if you were a little off, He counts it as belief and acceptance of Him, so you're pretty safe. Of course if you take the humanist route, of which i'm sure there are a lot of here, and you believe there is no higher power, no divine being, that there's no afterlife, that no matter how you live your life here, there no accountability in the afterlife, there we have the beginning of the breakdown of civilized society. Because while maybe some still choose to live their lives doing their best to help others, there will be those who succumb to man's innate nature, which is to do evil. And those are the ones that will ruin it for everyone else. That's not to say that religion is totally innocent. People kill each other in the name of God. The sad thing is that, while there are some who are misguided and actually believe they're doing their God a service by killing the infidels, where they're Muslims killing Americans, or Americans bombing Muslims, or Jews killings Palestinians, the other way around, etc, religion is many times simply used as a cover for greed, which is the basic reason for war. The Christian crusades against the Muslims, America destroying Iraq, etc, and religion is left to take the rap every time.

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Not to be insulting or anything, but I must say that mentioning in a forum religion is near pointless. Sure, at Astahost you were lucky every person who posted here was respectful, but I doubt that would be the case elsewhere. Religion is about what people believe, and insulting other people's beliefs (as you are blatantly doing here by claiming that believing in science is pointless) isn't so great. Just live and let live. At the end of the day, a single forum post isn't going to change anyone's opinion at all, but might incite a good amount of flame wars. God is one of those super sensitive topics....

As for me, I don't care if God exists, and I'm basically agnostic. If it turns out he/she/it exists, then great. Otherwise, no biggies. If I can't see him/her, I'm going to just ignore him/her until I can.

Oh, they've found some proof for that recently, it was about crocodile fossils, I believe. But getting to my main point--why does it matter if it's a science or not? It's simply another belief. Why can't we just all be respectful of each other's belief's and quit complaining that one is right and the other is wrong? Neither side currently has enough proof to back themselves up, so just forget about convincing others. And by the way, I'd have to say that Darwin's theory is (currently, anyway), more rational than the creationist's theory. So you saying that it's "also stretching the imagination" is only true for you. It doesn't apply to everyone else, so that's not a valid argument.

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That's the point i was trying to make. It's simply another belief, and ok, stretching the imagination might consist of creationism for one person, and evolution for another. So while i back the creation theory, I'm happy to respect other people's beliefs as well. Knowing that either side won't back down, it's more of a debating sport. I hadn't meant to give the impression i was flaming anyone.

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Both evolution and creation are full of fallicies and neither can be "proven" correct because in science nothing can be proven or disproven. Things can be presented in a logical way that seem to be generally correct but there is always a chance that they can be shown incorrect. Being at an international christian school I have heard many of the arguments for creationism and more than a few for evolution. Neither has much proof behind it. I believe in a Creator who designed the world with intelligence hence the Intelligent Design theory.



I agree with the first part of your statement here. I think that we definitely should be very respectful of other's religions because it is their right to believe whatever they wish. I also agree that neither side really has enough proof to scientifically "prove" their theory correct. However I have to disagree that Darwin's theory is more rational because as it is it has some major fallacies that make it quite incredible. The main one I can think of now is how is it that no evolution is happening today. But that is another topic. Creationism also stretches imagination quite a bit. Creationism takes the beginning of the world and describes it as being made by a single all-powerful being. This is hard to believe because of the popular argument "IF God is real, show him to me." No one can do that so therefore people count that off as an unlogical belief.



I agree with what Graffiti said because I think he is right that you cannot accept evolution as science and make creationism a religion. However, I prefer to think in terms of the Intelligent Design rather than creationisn because I also think that many creationists are just religions fanatics. I really disagree that Evolution is on of the bedrocks of biology because I think that biology is made up of many things and that Creationism and Evolutionism are just parts of this science NOT basis.

my humble opinion

-Cyborgxxi

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Every culture has had its gods. The ancient agrarian cultures had their fertility gods; the Greeks and Romans had their pantheon; Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have their one god of all. At all times and in all places people have thought that there is more to life than the material world around us.

Belief in a God or Gods, it seems arises naturally the world over. It seems that there is some element common to all human experience that causes us to look for something transcendent on which to build our lives. Generally speaking, if we have an innate desire for a thing then that thing both exists and is good for us. The natural instinct to look to the transcendent, therefore, which is made evident by the fact remarked upon above that every culture of every time has had some form of religion, suggests that there might well be something transcendent out there to be found.

Every effect must have a cause. This universe and everything in it is an effect. There must be something that caused everything to come into existence. Ultimately, there must be something “un-caused” in order to cause everything else to come into existence. That “un-caused” something is God.

However, the existence of God cannot be proven or disproved. The Bible even says that we must accept by faith the fact that God exists.
If God exists, then we are accountable for our actions to Him. If God does not exist, then we can do whatever we want without having to worry about God judging us. I believe that is why evolution is so strongly clung to by many in our society - to give people an alternative to believing in a Creator God. God exists and ultimately everyone knows that He exists. The very fact that some attempt so aggressively to disprove His existence is in fact an argument for His existence.

As nations turn their backs on God, living as if He does not exist, sin
abounds—political corruption, lying, slander, public displays of debauchery, violent crime, abortion, theft, adultery, drug-taking, drunkenness, gambling and greed of all kinds. Economic woes follow as taxes increase and governments borrow money to pay for bigger and bigger police forces, jails, and social security systems to patch up the problems.


There is some unknown beyond which science and human thinking stops. We leave all our actions to this something unknown. This unkown is the super power which we belive is there and as we name is GOD.

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Well, I am basically a person that only kinda mind my own business. Not very much actually gets my attention. Don't quite like to get into debate with people since I am basically, well.... lazy!! Hehe...
However, there is a trend to push religion into science, into economics, into education and etc. and that is something that kinda gets my attention. I actually believe in a higher being but not quite sure whether there is only one God or multiple Gods. I am definitely not affiliated to any particular religion.

Now, back to what Graffiti said. Hehe...


Now, what makes you say that as soon as a primitive life form evolved, it would have died? SARS virus have evolved from some primitive virus found in birds. In fact, there is a huge effort amongst health care professionals to check the spread of H5N1 virus. Now, are you saying they are all wrong and wasting precious government resources since once the H5N1 virus mutates into something that threatens us, human beings, it would just die off, so there is no need to worry? By the way, if we were to throw out evolution and instead adopt creationism, what are we to do with the SARS virus? Are you saying that God created the virus to kill human beings? And please... don't tell me that only those that don't believe in God died from SARS...


And then, there is the moral argument as to why God must exist, or need to exist for society to function. Graffiti and abartar argued that, but Graffiti goes on to say that wars and persecution had been done in the name of God. That is exactly my point. The argument that society would corrupt without God is kinda pointless since there are tonnes of examples of society getting corrupt with God around. Abartar goes on to make the link between economics and the corruption that results from the non-existence of God.


My question now, is, tell me how many teocratic states in the world today that is rich? I mean, those states are ruled by people who believed in God, so there shouldn't be any corruption and their economies should be in excellent condition. I would really like to know. At the very least, it can changed my perception of teocratic states.

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Evolution cannot really be compared to creationism. Evolution does not provide an explanation of how everyhting started. It just proposes that species/sub species change over time. Evolution does not necessarily debunk creationist religions. One can believe in both evolution and creationism (christianity for example).

Evolution is a fact. It has been proven and there are countless examples to back it up. I am not saying that we all came from monkeys, but it is a fact that animals can evolve over generations many generations. Cetain types of diseases evolve quite rapidly, many times due to their sloppy genetic encoding during replication, resulting in many mutations, which over time lead to new characteristics. The Incan people who lived up in extremely high altitudes developed larger hearts and lungs which helped them breath in high altitude/low oxygen. There are many many other examples.

As for me, I guess I would be considered agnostic. I don't have enough information to come to any definite conclusion so I choose not to commit to a specific theory.

As Arbitrary said these discusions tend to go no where in online forums and it tends to be a touchy subject.
This forum is full of many different people from diverse backgrounds, cultures, beliefs and places and that creates a wonderful opportunity to learn from each other. I would rather celebrate and our differences, rather than argue over them.

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I love watching these topics grow

Anyway,



I don't quite believe that belief in God and corruption necesarily go hand in hand. I believe that corruption exists all the time whether in the government or in the church. Also many wars are fought in the name of God or gods because people like to fight and it's any excuse to fight. I think that the real problem is not belief in God but the lack of morals as discussed in the Bible. If everyone followed the Ten Commandments as best they could then evil in the world would significantly decrease. Whether or NOT they followed God. I believe that God wishes us to follow him but to do that means to follow the laws he set down and many christians today fail to do even that.

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