Why don't you believe in God?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


Natural law theorists who attempt to discern natural law apart from eternal law, apart from God, cut off the beginning and the end: they drop the idea that God instituted natural law before the dawn of time, and they drop the idea that the natural end of human existence is eternity with God.

Is a great deal of natural law preserved in the middle? Sure. But it is deprived of its Authority, its universal obligation, its complete consequences, and its ultimate purpose.

In other words, a theist and and atheist could exercise their reason and come to the exact same conclusions of the requirements of natural law. But the atheist's position would be an ideal that would never be met, and so a fantasy.

To be even more specific, an atheist could arrive at an ethical philosophy based on the words of Jesus: the 10 Commandments (except the first three, which are about God), do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. Those precepts could become the law of the land, of the entire Earth. And natural law without God would still be a fantasy.

Because human beings would continue to violate these precepts constantly and almost universally without consequence in this life. In fact, from the instant of a violation, an irretrievable moment in time and space, perfect justice in this life is absolutely impossible.

Natural law and ethics command how we "should" behave. Only the existence of eternal law, of a Lawgiver, can give natural law its due gravity. Otherwise, it is a thoughtful opinion, a hypothetical, a fine idea, but not reality.

1. Atheists don't care that God instituted the laws. They are imprinted on creation and that's all that matters from discerning of natural law.

Who imprinted them, if not God? The unintelligent matter and its material processes of which we are made? Why would unintelligent and undirected matter care if we lie, cheat, or steal?

2. Your statement that it is deprived of its ultimate authority is the same argument that we have been knocking down. Wanting an ultimate authority does not make it so.

It also does not prove a negative.

3. Your belief that without this ultimate authority, everyone runs amok does not match with reality. There are people who do not believe there is an ultimate authority, and they do not run amok.

I never made that argument. I argued that if even one human being ever did wrong without consequence, or one human being ever suffered wrong without restitution, then perfect justice was impossible in this life, if this life is all there is. Since billions of humans throughout history have both wronged and been wronged in matters large and small without consequence, perfect justice in this world does not exist.

4. Further if the purpose of God is to keep people from running amok, then why in His name does he not show himself say "hey, mess with me and you go to hell. here's the brochure". So God does not share your goal anyway.

Um, He did. That's the natural law written in our nature. But He didn't put it quite like that.

5. Next, as it has been pointed out before, the fact that the atheist's world does not have the ultimate Authority is not an argument for his existence. Wanting it does not make it so. No matter how many times you repeat it.

And it does not prove a negative, no matter how many times you repeat it.

6. The ideal you speak of is is not met anyway, whether we believe or not. That's just a fact. People commit sins, and ultimate retribution in the form of hell does not nullify that sin. And believers are not so satisfied in heaven's reward that they do not seek justice in this lifetime.

Absolutely, the ideal is not met in this world. "Seek ye not justice in this world." (Since my husband is an attorney, I am very close to this fact.) And since "eye has not seen, and ear has not heard," we don't know what God's justice will look like after this world, but we do have the Beatitudes to give us a lovely idea. And part of natural law is to seek what justice we can here, because this physical life is a gift as much as our eternal soul is a gift.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You end with a great story. It is very comforting and I can understand why you feel sorry for your in-laws who don't have it.

But you still fundamentally miss something. You put theism and atheism on a par by saying everyone engages in "wishful thinking". That's absolutely false, and I am saying this as a Christian. Atheism, skepticism, scientists, etc. are all at their core skeptics. They believe what the evidence says, and they do not believe the rest.

By trying to label everyone a "wishful thinker", you make it so easy to say "as long as I have to make a wish, I'll choose the wish that involves an infinite, loving creator and eternal life." Well, that's just not fair to the other side. Their skepticism causes them to face some serious consequences: there may be no plan for them, they were not created for a purpose, if they are alone in this world then they are just flat out alone, and that when they die there is nothing. What kind of wishful thinker chooses that?

As Christians, we have faith. We most often call faith a "gift". It is beyond our control, and contrary to many posters it is not the product of reason and will, unless the will part is a choice to believe things without evidence, in which case we might as well drop the "reason" part.

I don't think it is proper to chastise or pity people who do not have it. I think it is also good to test that faith with reason, and I think that this thread is helpful in that. Because a weak faith is no faith at all.

But there is no point in wrapping this up with the conclusion that faith is beautiful. Because to the skeptic who applies reason to all the evidence he can find, it is just a beautiful dream.

This is the OP. Thoughtful post. You gave me a lot to think about.

As to your question, I can only speak for myself, for when I did not have faith. I "wished" to be my own absolute authority. I thought all the other consequences were worth the "freedom" to do as I pleased in this life.

Very recently, I recognized my "wish" in the Christian account of the Fall. The first humans were so close to God, their reason and will participated in eternal law . The temptation they faced was: Do you trust that God's will is best for you? Could you do better? Is He holding you back from even greater happiness? Do you want to decide for yourselves what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil? Do you want to be the Absolute Authority, and answer only to yourself? Do you want to be like God?

Pride. Obedience. Why humans turned away from their Creator at the beginning. And why I turned away some years ago. And why I still doubt sometimes.

That's where the will comes in. Faith is a gift, but you need to be willing to receive it. One day, I said, in my mind, "God, I don't know if you exist. I think you might only be a story. But I'm not certain. If you do exist, and you are who you are supposed to be, I want the Truth. If you are the Truth, please, I need your help."

That was my test of the "God hypothesis." (But you can't demand miracles (which, even when they happen, are not "proof" of God) and you can't give a timetable. That's demanding God to be your servant, when, if He is real, He is your King.)

And I'll be totally honest. I did not get the answer I imagined. My life was turned upside down.

If I were going to dream up my own God, He would be much more tame and lax than the Christian God. ("After all, he's not a tame lion.") But that's just me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


Natural law theorists who attempt to discern natural law apart from eternal law, apart from God, cut off the beginning and the end: they drop the idea that God instituted natural law before the dawn of time, and they drop the idea that the natural end of human existence is eternity with God.

Is a great deal of natural law preserved in the middle? Sure. But it is deprived of its Authority, its universal obligation, its complete consequences, and its ultimate purpose.

In other words, a theist and and atheist could exercise their reason and come to the exact same conclusions of the requirements of natural law. But the atheist's position would be an ideal that would never be met, and so a fantasy.

To be even more specific, an atheist could arrive at an ethical philosophy based on the words of Jesus: the 10 Commandments (except the first three, which are about God), do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and love your neighbor as you love yourself. Those precepts could become the law of the land, of the entire Earth. And natural law without God would still be a fantasy.

Because human beings would continue to violate these precepts constantly and almost universally without consequence in this life. In fact, from the instant of a violation, an irretrievable moment in time and space, perfect justice in this life is absolutely impossible.

Natural law and ethics command how we "should" behave. Only the existence of eternal law, of a Lawgiver, can give natural law its due gravity. Otherwise, it is a thoughtful opinion, a hypothetical, a fine idea, but not reality.

1. Atheists don't care that God instituted the laws. They are imprinted on creation and that's all that matters from discerning of natural law.

Who imprinted them, if not God? The unintelligent matter and its material processes of which we are made? Why would unintelligent and undirected matter care if we lie, cheat, or steal?

2. Your statement that it is deprived of its ultimate authority is the same argument that we have been knocking down. Wanting an ultimate authority does not make it so.

It also does not prove a negative.

3. Your belief that without this ultimate authority, everyone runs amok does not match with reality. There are people who do not believe there is an ultimate authority, and they do not run amok.

I never made that argument. I argued that if even one human being ever did wrong without consequence, or one human being ever suffered wrong without restitution, then perfect justice was impossible in this life, if this life is all there is. Since billions of humans throughout history have both wronged and been wronged in matters large and small without consequence, perfect justice in this world does not exist.

4. Further if the purpose of God is to keep people from running amok, then why in His name does he not show himself say "hey, mess with me and you go to hell. here's the brochure". So God does not share your goal anyway.

Um, He did. That's the natural law written in our nature. But He didn't put it quite like that.

5. Next, as it has been pointed out before, the fact that the atheist's world does not have the ultimate Authority is not an argument for his existence. Wanting it does not make it so. No matter how many times you repeat it.

And it does not prove a negative, no matter how many times you repeat it.

6. The ideal you speak of is is not met anyway, whether we believe or not. That's just a fact. People commit sins, and ultimate retribution in the form of hell does not nullify that sin. And believers are not so satisfied in heaven's reward that they do not seek justice in this lifetime.

Absolutely, the ideal is not met in this world. "Seek ye not justice in this world." (Since my husband is an attorney, I am very close to this fact.) And since "eye has not seen, and ear has not heard," we don't know what God's justice will look like after this world, but we do have the Beatitudes to give us a lovely idea. And part of natural law is to seek what justice we can here, because this physical life is a gift as much as our eternal soul is a gift.

1. No one has to imprint the laws. People have thought that the universe was too complicated and beautiful to be made without an intelligence behind it. Today we know that is not true. Even if you believe that God kicked things off, you must agree that he only set in motion a few basic forces and the rest unfolded accordingly. Those forces are not complicated enough to require intelligence. It is not as though someone wrote out the schematic for a horse. The same is true in morality according to the natural law philosophers, but if you really care you can read them. I am doubtful that you want to do anything other than joust.

2. No one is trying to prove a negative. We just don't believe in things that have no evidence. Unicorns. Three winged flying pigs. Forests of Candy Canes. You can go on and on about it but a negative can never be proven, no matter how ludicrous it is. I will never prove that three winged flying pigs don't exist. There is no possible way to do it. I can inventory every known pig, talk to every pig farmer, scour the literature, dig up fossilized pig bones, do a DNA analysis on pig families, and I cannot prove that a three winged pig does not exist. Am I forced to say to every proposition, no matter how unfounded, "well the jury's out on three winged pigs. I'm a three winged pig agnostic"?

3. You didn't say "run amok". You said "Because human beings would continue to violate these precepts constantly and almost universally without consequence in this life"

4. Well apparently since an awful lot of people still don't believe he exists, he could have chosen a better communication method if his goal was to keep order in this world. That actually makes the case that natural law is more suited to atheism than religion.

5. See 2.

6. You are now contradicting yourself. You have been holding out God as a source of perfect justice. How many times have you used that term? Well, if perfect justice is in the afterlife, then people would have no need to seek it in this world. And yet we do. All the time. Therefore believers by their actions demonstrate that justice is imperfect even under God.

[Anonymous]

6. You are now contradicting yourself. You have been holding out God as a source of perfect justice. How many times have you used that term? Well, if perfect justice is in the afterlife, then people would have no need to seek it in this world. And yet we do. All the time. Therefore believers by their actions demonstrate that justice is imperfect even under God.

No contradiction.

Any justice we pursue in this life must be imperfect. Eternal justice is justice perfected. "When that which is perfect is come, that which is in part will be done away."

We seek justice here because we are to seek good, and avoid evil: the essence of natural law. To seek justice on Earth is to participate in the eternal law as finite beings whose material bodies exist in time and space.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil [on Earth] is for good men to do nothing."

[Anonymous]

1. No one has to imprint the laws. People have thought that the universe was too complicated and beautiful to be made without an intelligence behind it. Today we know that is not true. Even if you believe that God kicked things off, you must agree that he only set in motion a few basic forces and the rest unfolded accordingly. Those forces are not complicated enough to require intelligence. It is not as though someone wrote out the schematic for a horse. The same is true in morality according to the natural law philosophers, but if you really care you can read them. I am doubtful that you want to do anything other than joust.

I swear this is a completely honest question: do you really believe that? If so, which authority's judgment do you trust enough to believe that?

[Anonymous]

2. No one is trying to prove a negative. We just don't believe in things that have no evidence. Unicorns. Three winged flying pigs. Forests of Candy Canes. You can go on and on about it but a negative can never be proven, no matter how ludicrous it is.

All of these examples are for potentially physical things. We have been discussing metaphysical things, such as God, souls, and justice.

Perhaps, rather than proving a negative, we've been affirming the consequent?

If there were no heaven, we would need to believe in one.

We need to believe in one, therefore there is no heaven.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

6. You are now contradicting yourself. You have been holding out God as a source of perfect justice. How many times have you used that term? Well, if perfect justice is in the afterlife, then people would have no need to seek it in this world. And yet we do. All the time. Therefore believers by their actions demonstrate that justice is imperfect even under God.

No contradiction.

Any justice we pursue in this life must be imperfect. Eternal justice is justice perfected. "When that which is perfect is come, that which is in part will be done away."

We seek justice here because we are to seek good, and avoid evil: the essence of natural law. To seek justice on Earth is to participate in the eternal law as finite beings whose material bodies exist in time and space.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil [on Earth] is for good men to do nothing."

Well then atheistic and theistic justice in this world are looking pretty indistinguishable. We have the same playbook etched in natural law, the knowledge of an ultimate authority does not provide justice on earth, we still have to seek justice here because justice in the afterlife does not satisfy us, and justice is imperfect in this world.

So justice in the afterlife is just more a description of heaven in your mind, like a muslim revolutionary who believes seventy-odd virgins are waiting for him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

1. No one has to imprint the laws. People have thought that the universe was too complicated and beautiful to be made without an intelligence behind it. Today we know that is not true. Even if you believe that God kicked things off, you must agree that he only set in motion a few basic forces and the rest unfolded accordingly. Those forces are not complicated enough to require intelligence. It is not as though someone wrote out the schematic for a horse. The same is true in morality according to the natural law philosophers, but if you really care you can read them. I am doubtful that you want to do anything other than joust.

I swear this is a completely honest question: do you really believe that? If so, which authority's judgment do you trust enough to believe that?

Absolutely, positively, yes. A few basic forces tell the story of the big bang from the tiniest fraction of the first second, until this time. It is remarkable how well a few fundamental equations explain pretty much every observation that we can make about the universe at the material level. I don't have to trust any authority. I don't have to decide whether to believe my minister or Stephen Hawking or whoever. I can read for myself. If you read and study physics, it is phenomenal. Everything from black holes to light bending around large masses to quantum entanglement to elementary particles. The theory is making predictions about these things that often take decades, even half a century, to prove. But one day we construct an experiment and there it is. You may not choose to believe in these things, but your computer does. It utilizes quantum mechanics. Your GPS utilizes general and special relativity. We still have gaps in knowledge, but the most amazing things at a cosmological level, the things that people once pointed at and said "proof of God" are now explained by a few equations.

This does not mean that God does not exist. It means that if he created it, he did not have a five hundred page design document. He unleashed a few simple forces from which everything else unfolds.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

2. No one is trying to prove a negative. We just don't believe in things that have no evidence. Unicorns. Three winged flying pigs. Forests of Candy Canes. You can go on and on about it but a negative can never be proven, no matter how ludicrous it is.

All of these examples are for potentially physical things. We have been discussing metaphysical things, such as God, souls, and justice.

Perhaps, rather than proving a negative, we've been affirming the consequent?

If there were no heaven, we would need to believe in one.

We need to believe in one, therefore there is no heaven.

Are you saying a thing is more plausible if by design it can't ever be observed? How would you know?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I swear this is a completely honest question: do you really believe that? If so, which authority's judgment do you trust enough to believe that?

Absolutely, positively, yes. A few basic forces tell the story of the big bang from the tiniest fraction of the first second, until this time. It is remarkable how well a few fundamental equations explain pretty much every observation that we can make about the universe at the material level. I don't have to trust any authority. I don't have to decide whether to believe my minister or Stephen Hawking or whoever. I can read for myself. If you read and study physics, it is phenomenal. Everything from black holes to light bending around large masses to quantum entanglement to elementary particles. The theory is making predictions about these things that often take decades, even half a century, to prove. But one day we construct an experiment and there it is. You may not choose to believe in these things, but your computer does. It utilizes quantum mechanics. Your GPS utilizes general and special relativity. We still have gaps in knowledge, but the most amazing things at a cosmological level, the things that people once pointed at and said "proof of God" are now explained by a few equations.

This does not mean that God does not exist. It means that if he created it, he did not have a five hundred page design document. He unleashed a few simple forces from which everything else unfolds.

.

I find all of this very fascinating--thank you.

What about life? Consciousness? It is my understanding we do not yet know how life arose from nonliving matter? And that the simplest single cell organism actually contains vast complexity?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

2. No one is trying to prove a negative. We just don't believe in things that have no evidence. Unicorns. Three winged flying pigs. Forests of Candy Canes. You can go on and on about it but a negative can never be proven, no matter how ludicrous it is.

All of these examples are for potentially physical things. We have been discussing metaphysical things, such as God, souls, and justice.

Perhaps, rather than proving a negative, we've been affirming the consequent?

If there were no heaven, we would need to believe in one.

We need to believe in one, therefore there is no heaven.

Are you saying a thing is more plausible if by design it can't ever be observed? How would you know?

.

Oh, dear! Back to epistemology...but it is too late to describe different ways we can know things.

For now, just note that rationalists who contend we may only know what the scientific method can prove have a self-negating system, for we cannot test whether the scientific method is the only way to know things using the scientific method. And even scientists and mathematicians use logic along with empirical evidence...deduction and induction...and so forth.

And it does up generally come down to probability rather than certainty, for physical and metaphysical questions, doesn't it? God is reasonable but not obvious--that, at least, is plausible?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I swear this is a completely honest question: do you really believe that? If so, which authority's judgment do you trust enough to believe that?

Absolutely, positively, yes. A few basic forces tell the story of the big bang from the tiniest fraction of the first second, until this time. It is remarkable how well a few fundamental equations explain pretty much every observation that we can make about the universe at the material level. I don't have to trust any authority. I don't have to decide whether to believe my minister or Stephen Hawking or whoever. I can read for myself. If you read and study physics, it is phenomenal. Everything from black holes to light bending around large masses to quantum entanglement to elementary particles. The theory is making predictions about these things that often take decades, even half a century, to prove. But one day we construct an experiment and there it is. You may not choose to believe in these things, but your computer does. It utilizes quantum mechanics. Your GPS utilizes general and special relativity. We still have gaps in knowledge, but the most amazing things at a cosmological level, the things that people once pointed at and said "proof of God" are now explained by a few equations.

This does not mean that God does not exist. It means that if he created it, he did not have a five hundred page design document. He unleashed a few simple forces from which everything else unfolds.

.

I find all of this very fascinating--thank you.

What about life? Consciousness? It is my understanding we do not yet know how life arose from nonliving matter? And that the simplest single cell organism actually contains vast complexity?

We don't know the exact origin of life. But we can see how complex organisms are related to the very simplest ones. And we can go farther than that. We can show that a single protein can self-replicate and can exchange attributes with other, similar proteins. The fact that a simple protein can spontaneously create "offspring" coupled with the knowledge that RNA/DNA is the stuff of complex organisms points to a simple origin as opposed to a very complex one. Even if you believe in God, it seems unlikely that he would choose a complicated, engineered path when we see available paths that are simple ones.

Consciousness is a long discussion. But the question as it applies to religion is whether consciousness is separate from the body or whether consciousness arises out of the physical structure of the brain. I tried to get people interested in a mind-body experiment to explore this, but it didn't get off the ground. Maybe tomorrow if anyone is interested. It starts from a thought experiment where you replace one neuron in your brain with an electrical component that performs the same function. You do this again and again. Now when does the person stop being a person? Most people say Bob is still Bob all the way through the process. And that's where things start getting interesting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

2. No one is trying to prove a negative. We just don't believe in things that have no evidence. Unicorns. Three winged flying pigs. Forests of Candy Canes. You can go on and on about it but a negative can never be proven, no matter how ludicrous it is.

All of these examples are for potentially physical things. We have been discussing metaphysical things, such as God, souls, and justice.

Perhaps, rather than proving a negative, we've been affirming the consequent?

If there were no heaven, we would need to believe in one.

We need to believe in one, therefore there is no heaven.

Are you saying a thing is more plausible if by design it can't ever be observed? How would you know?

.

Oh, dear! Back to epistemology...but it is too late to describe different ways we can know things.

For now, just note that rationalists who contend we may only know what the scientific method can prove have a self-negating system, for we cannot test whether the scientific method is the only way to know things using the scientific method. And even scientists and mathematicians use logic along with empirical evidence...deduction and induction...and so forth.

And it does up generally come down to probability rather than certainty, for physical and metaphysical questions, doesn't it? God is reasonable but not obvious--that, at least, is plausible?

OK. The scientific method is pretty much the acquisition of knowledge through evidence. If you know of another way to do it, offer it up.

And probability is used in science, but not in the way that you imply. Saying that science deals in probabilities means that they carefully analyze a set of data and determine the mathematical probability that their result is due to random chance. It is not the same as saying "nothing is certain, so everything is just an opinion", or "does God exist? Well there is a lot of unexplained stuff in the world, so probably".

[Anonymous]

I should have added that logic and reason are used within the scientific method. But logic and reason must operate on facts. If A, then B and if B, then C logically allows one to say If A, then C. But A still has to be established.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You end with a great story.

Because to the skeptic who applies reason to all the evidence he can find, it is just a beautiful dream.

This is the OP. Thoughtful post. You gave me a lot to think about.

As to your question, I can only speak for myself, for when I did not have faith. I "wished" to be my own absolute authority. I thought all the other consequences were worth the "freedom" to do as I pleased in this life.

Very recently, I recognized my "wish" in the Christian account of the Fall. The first humans were so close to God, their reason and will participated in eternal law . The temptation they faced was: Do you trust that God's will is best for you? Could you do better? Is He holding you back from even greater happiness? Do you want to decide for yourselves what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil? Do you want to be the Absolute Authority, and answer only to yourself? Do you want to be like God?

Pride. Obedience. Why humans turned away from their Creator at the beginning. And why I turned away some years ago. And why I still doubt sometimes.

That's where the will comes in. Faith is a gift, but you need to be willing to receive it. One day, I said, in my mind, "God, I don't know if you exist. I think you might only be a story. But I'm not certain. If you do exist, and you are who you are supposed to be, I want the Truth. If you are the Truth, please, I need your help."

That was my test of the "God hypothesis." (But you can't demand miracles (which, even when they happen, are not "proof" of God) and you can't give a timetable. That's demanding God to be your servant, when, if He is real, He is your King.)

And I'll be totally honest. I did not get the answer I imagined. My life was turned upside down.

If I were going to dream up my own God, He would be much more tame and lax than the Christian God. ("After all, he's not a tame lion.") But that's just me.

.


I don't think the Christian God is a beautiful dream. Perfect justice would be quite demanding when it finally happened.