Why don't you believe in God?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I actually like the sentiment expressed in 5:51. I would like to hear more of what you exactly mean by consciousness. Is that love and truth, too? Does every being (human or animal or whatever is out there) interpret it differently? Are these unconscious interpretations (or even conscious ones--more scary even, like the religious extremists out there) the cause of war, famine, disaster, murder that some like to "blame" on God?

By consciousness I mean awareness and the ability to purposefully interact with other conscious and unconscious things. Take a rock, for example. A rock is composed of atoms just like everything else, and so it is essentially a conglomeration of electromagnetic forces that keep it together. But your typical rock doesn't have properties that render it especially capable of generating or conducting, or even reacting to electricity. In my view, consciousness is a field that permeates the universe (a fifth field for those of you who study quantum field dynamics), and a rock therefore has consciousness properties just like it has electromagnetic properties. Though like electricity a rock appears to lack properties that make it especially capable of actually thinking. Humans, on the other hand, have a highly developed consicousnes using machine that is their brains.

There is some evidence of what I call the consciousness field. Take for example, the fact that IQ test scores administered to children have steadily risen since they first started being systematically administered. Are kids getting smarter, or are we somehow learning as a group how to take IQ tests?

[Anonymous]

There's a lot of gobbledygook on here.

[Anonymous]

Science can explain how the world works. But it can never explain the bizarre fact that a universe actually exists. It can never explain the bizarre fact that energy and matter actually exist (it can tell you how those things came into existence, though the big bang, but never tell you why a big bang happened to occur). It seems to me that "God" is our way of trying to discuss in metaphorical language our understanding that there is a mystery. It evolves with culture, location, and our deepening knowledge of this bizarre fact that a universe does actually exist. It is also a bit like the parables in the new testament. Why doesn't Jesus speak directly? Why does he speak in parables? I think it is because there are things that the English language (or probably any other language, although I am not fluent enough in any other to know for a fact) has difficulty expressing directly. Somehow, these truths comes through best through stories and art. God is one of these. Another thing I think of is this: why do most people tell their kids that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy exist when we know they do not and we know the kids will eventually find out? I think it is because we know that these "fictions", while really "fictions" are actually also truths. They are truths that we need, but can not express any other way (at least yet). When we throw away traditional religion, we do throw away lots of junk that has accumulated over the centuries. But we also throw away a truth that we don't yet know how to express or study any other way.

[Anonymous]

I'm not terribly religious, but I believe in God. I also believe in Evolution and the Big Bang, but part of me still thinks that someone had to create the stuff that started the whole process moving, and in my mind, that is God. I also think that the existence of the human soul is proof of God - it's one thing to create physical matter out of nothing, but I feel like the spark that separates us from purely instinctual life forms is a god-given thing.

I think that faith fills in the gaps between what we see and what we can explain. Science explains a lot of what we see and hear and feel, but there are still gaps in our knowledge, and I think people look to God and miracles and in some cases, the occult to explain things we haven't the tools to explain yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I did not want to get bogged down in theological arguments of particular religions. I will repeat what, I think, G.K. Chesterton said: very few people hate Christianity, but a great many people hate what they think is Christianity. There are some misconceptions cropping up here, but I want to stay on track:

Many people say there is no evidence there is God, but do not explain what that means. Could you elaborate?

I think theological arguments of particular religions are intertwined with your original inquiry - if you think that certain practices are acceptable under certain religions, of course you won't want to believe in God. What kind of God would allow women to be subjugated/gays to be persecuted? I don't think the two are easily separated. For some people, these theoretical arguments about "proving" the existence of god are determinative. Others look around at what "Christians" and "Muslims" are doing and think that any belief system that those people are following has to be a farce, because those people are crazy. "I don't believe in God because no God would set humans upon each other like dogs."

[Anonymous]

Religion is just man's attempt to understand our existence, why we're here, why we die, etc. We create it. How could one possibly believe it honestly? I can still have a strong sense of morality, have a reverence for life, etc.

How can one possibly believe in a god? If you do, what's to say that your god is true, when other human cultures have come up with other ways of understanding the universe, with multiple gods, etc.?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There's a lot of gobbledygook on here.

Yep.

One small observation: I can never understand the folks who somehow believe that "god" explains the universe, the existence of morality, or what have you. Take the origin of the universe: atheists don't believe a god created the universe. So "believers" ask, "Well, how did it begin then?"

"We don't know."

"Ah ha! *I* know! It's God!"

But you don't explain a complex phenomenon by grafting another, even more complex, explanation on top. To say that "God did it!" is to say, "I don't know."

"A central thesis of the argument is that, compared to supernatural abiogenesis, evolution by natural selection requires the supposition of fewer hypothetical processes and thus, according to Occam's razor, a better explanation than the God hypothesis. He cites a paragraph where Richard Swinburne agrees that a simpler explanation is better but reasons that theism is simpler because it only invokes a single substance, God, as a cause and maintainer of every other object. This cause is seen as omnipotent, omniscient and totally free. Dawkins argues that an entity that monitors and controls every particle in the universe and listens to all our thoughts and prayers cannot be simple. His existence would require a "mammoth explanation" of its own. The theory of natural selection is much simpler than the theory of the existence of such a complex being, and thus preferable.[5]"

One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect, over the centuries, has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.

The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself. In the case of a man-made artefact such as a watch, the designer really was an intelligent engineer. It is tempting to apply the same logic to an eye or a wing, a spider or a person.

The temptation is a false one, because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. The whole problem we started out with was the problem of explaining statistical improbability. It is obviously no solution to postulate something even more improbable. We need a "crane" not a "skyhook," for only a crane can do the business of working up gradually and plausibly from simplicity to otherwise improbable complexity.

The most ingenious and powerful crane so far discovered is Darwinian evolution by natural selection. Darwin and his successors have shown how living creatures, with their spectacular statistical improbability and appearance of design, have evolved by slow, gradual degrees from simple beginnings. We can now safely say that the illusion of design in living creatures is just that – an illusion.

We don't yet have an equivalent crane for physics. Some kind of multiverse theory could in principle do for physics the same explanatory work as Darwinism does for biology. This kind of explanation is superficially less satisfying than the biological version of Darwinism, because it makes heavier demands on luck. But the anthropic principle entitles us to postulate far more luck than our limited human intuition is comfortable with.

We should not give up hope of a better crane arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology. But even in the absence of a strongly satisfying crane to match the biological one, the relatively weak cranes we have at present are, when abetted by the anthropic principle, self-evidently better than the self-defeating skyhook hypothesis of an intelligent designer.

More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Boeing_747_gambit

Frankly, I find this infinitely more compelling (and interesting) than the idea that there's a god-like being out there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There's a lot of gobbledygook on here.

Yep.

One small observation: I can never understand the folks who somehow believe that "god" explains the universe, the existence of morality, or what have you. Take the origin of the universe: atheists don't believe a god created the universe. So "believers" ask, "Well, how did it begin then?"

"We don't know."

"Ah ha! *I* know! It's God!"

But you don't explain a complex phenomenon by grafting another, even more complex, explanation on top. To say that "God did it!" is to say, "I don't know."

"A central thesis of the argument is that, compared to supernatural abiogenesis, evolution by natural selection requires the supposition of fewer hypothetical processes and thus, according to Occam's razor, a better explanation than the God hypothesis. He cites a paragraph where Richard Swinburne agrees that a simpler explanation is better but reasons that theism is simpler because it only invokes a single substance, God, as a cause and maintainer of every other object. This cause is seen as omnipotent, omniscient and totally free. Dawkins argues that an entity that monitors and controls every particle in the universe and listens to all our thoughts and prayers cannot be simple. His existence would require a "mammoth explanation" of its own. The theory of natural selection is much simpler than the theory of the existence of such a complex being, and thus preferable.[5]"

One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect, over the centuries, has been to explain how the complex, improbable appearance of design in the universe arises.

The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to actual design itself. In the case of a man-made artefact such as a watch, the designer really was an intelligent engineer. It is tempting to apply the same logic to an eye or a wing, a spider or a person.

The temptation is a false one, because the designer hypothesis immediately raises the larger problem of who designed the designer. The whole problem we started out with was the problem of explaining statistical improbability. It is obviously no solution to postulate something even more improbable. We need a "crane" not a "skyhook," for only a crane can do the business of working up gradually and plausibly from simplicity to otherwise improbable complexity.

The most ingenious and powerful crane so far discovered is Darwinian evolution by natural selection. Darwin and his successors have shown how living creatures, with their spectacular statistical improbability and appearance of design, have evolved by slow, gradual degrees from simple beginnings. We can now safely say that the illusion of design in living creatures is just that – an illusion.

We don't yet have an equivalent crane for physics. Some kind of multiverse theory could in principle do for physics the same explanatory work as Darwinism does for biology. This kind of explanation is superficially less satisfying than the biological version of Darwinism, because it makes heavier demands on luck. But the anthropic principle entitles us to postulate far more luck than our limited human intuition is comfortable with.

We should not give up hope of a better crane arising in physics, something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology. But even in the absence of a strongly satisfying crane to match the biological one, the relatively weak cranes we have at present are, when abetted by the anthropic principle, self-evidently better than the self-defeating skyhook hypothesis of an intelligent designer.

More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Boeing_747_gambit

Frankly, I find this infinitely more compelling (and interesting) than the idea that there's a god-like being out there.

I really have a hard time believing physics can come up with an explanation for why energy has to exist at all. An explanation for why there isn't just nothing. Once you postulate energy, you can use many world theories, etc to maybe explain everything else. But you are still left with "who created god", just rephrased as "why is there energy (=anything)?"

[Anonymous]

Frankly, I find this infinitely more compelling (and interesting) than the idea that there's a god-like being out there.

I really have a hard time believing physics can come up with an explanation for why energy has to exist at all. An explanation for why there isn't just nothing. Once you postulate energy, you can use many world theories, etc to maybe explain everything else. But you are still left with "who created god", just rephrased as "why is there energy (=anything)?"

Indeed. And putting aside the many problems with Darwin's theory, why are there creatures to evolve at all?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not terribly religious, but I believe in God. I also believe in Evolution and the Big Bang, but part of me still thinks that someone had to create the stuff that started the whole process moving, and in my mind, that is God. I also think that the existence of the human soul is proof of God - it's one thing to create physical matter out of nothing, but I feel like the spark that separates us from purely instinctual life forms is a god-given thing.

Right, but that doesn't explain anything. You're just replacing one piece of ignorance with a greater one.

I think that faith fills in the gaps between what we see and what we can explain. Science explains a lot of what we see and hear and feel, but there are still gaps in our knowledge, and I think people look to God and miracles and in some cases, the occult to explain things we haven't the tools to explain yet.

This is absolutely the case. That's why folks used to think the sun was a god, and now revert to "God is love, and the sum total of all souls on Earth" or some such thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Frankly, I find this infinitely more compelling (and interesting) than the idea that there's a god-like being out there.

I really have a hard time believing physics can come up with an explanation for why energy has to exist at all. An explanation for why there isn't just nothing. Once you postulate energy, you can use many world theories, etc to maybe explain everything else. But you are still left with "who created god", just rephrased as "why is there energy (=anything)?"

Indeed. And putting aside the many problems with Darwin's theory, why are there creatures to evolve at all?

Re-read the PP comment. The idea that a theist talks about "the many problems with Darwin's theory" is laughable. But furthermore, it's intellectually impoverished to say, "You can't tell me why there has to be energy! Why isn't there nothing? You can't answer that, but I can: It's because there's this infinitely complex phenomenon called 'god' that I define with a wave of my hand."

God may not exist, but He's an extremely powerful tautology. He doesn't "explain" anything; "god" is the sound of otherwise rational people throwing in of the towel. It's an abdication of our responsibility as adult human beings with cognition.

[Anonymous]

Once you postulate energy, you can use many world theories, etc to maybe explain everything else. But you are still left with "who created god", just rephrased as "why is there energy (=anything)?"

It's just question-begging to say those are equivalent questions. Who invented Poseidon, smarty pants?

[Anonymous]

This is the first thread on DCUM I've read where I've felt "aha ... there ARE people like me out there".

I look forward to atheism being more acceptable in society.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Once you postulate energy, you can use many world theories, etc to maybe explain everything else. But you are still left with "who created god", just rephrased as "why is there energy (=anything)?"

It's just question-begging to say those are equivalent questions. Who invented Poseidon, smarty pants?

Poseidon? The Greeks, I guess. or the Etruscans? My comment doesn't claim there is "God", and especially not an anthropomorphic God. But it does mean to imply that there is a mystery that I do not think can ever be explained by physics. Just because, in the past, we did not yet have the right language/knowledge to ask the right question (and probably still don't) doesn't mean the question we were trying to ask, with "God", wasn't a legitimate question, however ill-phrased and clogged with artifacts produced by our experience and humanity, our attempt was (and still is).

[Anonymous]

Even isolated communities develop some kind of "God" sense. Of course, they don't use the same name or know the same stories. But I believe our brains are hardwired to believe in God. There have been studies on the human brain that have isolated that portion of the brain believed to be responsible for our spiritual beliefs.

I think it takes a conscience effort NOT to believe in God. I'm not talking about religion. I'm talking about the belief that we have a creator. How is it difficult to understand? A newborn has no idea who you are for the first several months. He has no concept of life, of mommy, of daddy, of anything outside his limited world. Yet those things clearly exist. The newborn couldn't prove it. But he knows instinctively that he has a need to be loved and cared for.

Maybe we are like newborns....incapable of understanding God. Maybe we are like microscopic organisms. We know they exist. I doubt they could prove we do.

I do know that we are spiritual beings temporarily inhabiting our human bodies. I also know that my spirit desires a relationship with God. My understanding of God is very different from my parents. And truthfully, we are all probably wrong about the nature of God. But I know without any doubt that God exists. And that he hears my prayers.

I challenge those of you who have never truly experienced God. Spend some very genuine time seeking God. Spend time in quiet meditation and prayer. Ask God to show himself to you during the next week. I'm not talking about religion. I'm talking about making a very real effort to connect with your creator. Be open and be genuine. I'll bet if you are open, God will reveal himself to you in some way during the week. Will you be brave enough to be open to the experience?

Please don't see this post as condescending. It's not meant to be. And you have nothing to lose by taking this challenge.