35 replies to this topic

[Wizdumb]

I've come up with a rationale which provides evidence in support of God's existence. I challenge you to disprove it.

The rationale is that want is the source of all things, including: needs, accidents, and random occurences. Because want is the source of all things, (what we might call) God must exist or have existed at one time.

Let me give you a few examples of how want is the source of things.

Accident: You go out digging for water, and you strike oil instead. You didn't want to find oil, but if you did not want to find water, you never would have found oil.

Need: If you want to survive, you need water, food, oxygen, etc.

Random Occurence: You want to go for a walk, cause it's a nice day. As you're walking down the street, a bird uses the bathroom on your head. If you did not want to walk down the street, you never would have gotten bird excrement on your head. Likewise, if the bird did not want to survive, it never would have eaten whatever it was that's waste product is now on your head.

A few things you have to understand. There are different kinds of wants. Wants of the mind, and wants of the body. You could also argue there are wants of the soul or emotional wants. When your body wants to eat, you get hungry. If your mind says no, sometimes it overpowers your body. Also, when two wants conflict, like in the case of rape, the more powerful want, or more powerful will, prevails.

If everything comes from want, it means our universe, and life as we know it, comes from want. It also means existence itself comes from want. As we all know, wants require living creatures (rocks do not have wants). Which means, if all things do come from want, (what we might call) God is responsible for us being here and, of course, exists or existed at one time.

So, I challenge you to prove there is even one thing in existence which does not come from want.

[Tormod]

So, I challenge you to prove there is even one thing in existence which does not come from want.

The Magellan Galaxy.

[rockytriton]

So, I challenge you to prove there is even one thing in existence which does not come from want.

Who wanted God to come into existence? We didn't exist, so it couldn't have been us.

[infamous]

I've come up with a rationale which provides evidence in support of God's existence. I challenge you to disprove it.

.

I am also a believer Wizdumb but the scientific method works the other way around. Challenging someone to disprove something is useless when we all are looking for facts to base our beliefs on. The one mistake most believers make is trying to prove their faith to others. Faith needs no proof, if it did, it wouldn't be faith. Like I said, I believe in God, for me this faith is a very personal thing. I can't explain it to others and I certainly can't prove it. Likewise, I can't insist that someone needs to disprove the existence of God to in effect, prove me wrong.

BTW, welcome to Hypography Wizdumb, you'll find many interesting topics to discuss so climb aboard.....................enjoy

[Eclogite]

So, I challenge you to prove there is even one thing in existence which does not come from want.

I think the rebuttals given above are sufficient, but you started me thinking in a particular direction.

First: your focus on the power of 'wanting'. This makes a lot of sense and seems to me to be another way of describing the 'drive' of living organisms to feed, to reproduce, to survive, and, in higher organisms to love and to invent and to create works of art and to discover things about the Universe.

Now a problem arises here, because this 'wanting' is an attribute of living things. Yet we often project this onto non-living things. (e.g. the oxygen atom 'wants' to fill its outer shell of electrons). Tormod has pointed out the illogic of this by citing the Magellanic Clouds.

Yet there are points when life arose from non-life, and more especially when consciousness arose from non-consciousness, when 'wanting' becomes a potent and literal part of reality. Perhaps, if we are to ever fully understand how these transitions took place we may need to use a combination of faith and science.

[alxian]

intelligences far more complex than we will have their wants as well

no matter how complex the system simple analogues to 'wants' will be found.

[pgrmdave]

"Wanting" is more a function of evolution. Assume that there are two groups of rabbits, one who 'wants' to survive, by eating, drinking, keeping themselves safe, etc. And another who doesn't 'want' at all. Which one is going to survive and breed? Only the ones who 'want'. Thus, wanting will, by necessity, be bred into all future generations, and not wanting will be eliminated.

[infamous]

Perhaps, if we are to ever fully understand how these transitions took place we may need to use a combination of faith and science.

This process has always been at work, before facts are known to science there must exist a faith that these evidences are there to be found. This gives birth to the investigation which in turn filters out the truths from the nontruths. Taken to the extreme, science will eventually define the substance of faith.

[C1ay]

As we all know, wants require living creatures (rocks do not have wants). Which means, if all things do come from want, (what we might call) God is responsible for us being here and, of course, exists or existed at one time.

So, I challenge you to prove there is even one thing in existence which does not come from want.

Rocks

[Eclogite]

Oh, dear. I have a sinking feeling that this may read like a "Now I'm going to blow my own trumpet" kind of a post. Bear with me,

before facts are known to science there must exist a faith that these evidences are there to be found.

Total agreement. I said that a little more expansively (and I thought quite elegantly ) here: http://hypography.co...4&postcount=291

Thus, wanting will, by necessity, be bred into all future generations, and not wanting will be eliminated.

This is what I was driving at in my prior post when I talked about the various 'drives' of living things. It seems to me that this 'wanting' is very much about natural selection in action. I am interested in wizdumb's response to that notion.

[Fishteacher73]

Now a problem arises here, because this 'wanting' is an attribute of living things. Yet we often project this onto non-living things. (e.g. the oxygen atom 'wants' to fill its outer shell of electrons). Tormod has pointed out the illogic of this by citing the Magellanic Clouds.

Yet there are points when life arose from non-life, and more especially when consciousness arose from non-consciousness, when 'wanting' becomes a potent and literal part of reality. Perhaps, if we are to ever fully understand how these transitions took place we may need to use a combination of faith and science.

The issue here is that you are assuming that there is a difference. Our biology is based on electrochemistry (which is in turn based on physics). Our "wants" are based upon the "wants" of the molecules to form more stable patterns. There simply is no translation, just magnification.

[UncleAl]

want is the source of all things

Gravitation, magnetism, electric charge - stuff wants to clump together? Then what about repulsion of like magnetic or electric poles but not gravitational repulsion? Diamagnetism? If TNT wants to blow up, why does it hold together? What keeps a mountain lake filled above sea level? If water wants to flow downhill, why does it evaporate upward?

http://www.hfml.scie...nl/froglev.html
http://www.scitoys.c...c_graphite.html
http://www.fieldline...er/diamag1.html

Your thesis is absurd. You are in bed with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Great Pumpkin, the Keebler Elves, Tinkerbelle, the good Witch of the North, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Superman, AstroBoy... The Nine Billion Names of God... and all that textual crap Tommy Aquinas generated - a combination Barbara Cartland and Louis L'Amour of ditzy Catholicism.

If theology changed at Vatican II, then it never was nor is it infallible. Without an infallible magisterium plus indispensable keys to heaven, the entire human product of Catholic theology is corrupt and worthless by its own rules of engagement.

I challenge you to prove there is even one thing in existence which does not come from want

Consider a camera lens. Put a screen at a proper distance behind it and you see a focused image. Remove the screen - where is the image? Explain formation of the image and its reality/non-reality absent the screen.

Uncle Al says, "Mystics are baffled by the obvious yet possess a complete understanding of the nonexistent."

[Buffy]

Gravitation, magnetism, electric charge - stuff wants to clump together? ... Your thesis is absurd.

Our standard joke in marketing when it comes to advertising/graphic design is the line, "It *wants* to be blue." Always good for a laugh, but yes, anthropomorhising all sorts of things is taken somewhat more seriously by the anthropocentric. This sort of homochauvinism can however be, ahem, prejudiced.... This is in the same vein as "There is no 'try', only 'do' and 'not do.'" Yoda to the philosophical rescue.

You are in bed with Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny...

Hey! Some of us *do* believe in Santa and the Bunny! I "Pbbbbtttt!" in your general direction!

Cheers,
Buffy

[UncleAl]

I "Pbbbbtttt!" in your general direction!

Whoa! Bll the Cat is sacred! The Easter Bunny being an egg-laying out of wedlock bipedal male mammal is positively Aristotelian. Test of faith!

Uncle Al says, "ACK! THBBFT!" - and not a hamster or an elderberry scent in his whole family tree. As for the OP, a dose of Yoda for all possible falsifying counterarguments:

Criticism, "I don't believe it."
Faith, "That is why you fail."

http://www.vatican.va/
To paraphrase James Tiberius Kirk, "Why does God need a website?" (Star Trek V: The Final Frontier )

[C1ay]

The Easter Bunny being an egg-laying out of wedlock bipedal male mammal is positively Aristotelian.

Do you know why the Easter Bunny hides his eggs?


Highlight-->He doesn't want anyone to know he's been screwing chickens...

[Buffy]

Whoa! Bll the Cat is sacred! ... Uncle Al says, "ACK! THBBFT!"

There you have it: we all have our false idols to bear. I won't call your's small if you don't call mine small...

Scotty: Mr. Spock, a while a go you said that there were always possibilities?
Spock: Did I? I might have erred.
McCoy: Well at least I'll live long enough to hear that.
-- The Gospel of Kirk 3:24

Reverently Irreverent,
Buffy

[Dark Mind]

That's showing us something there .

C1ay IS an actual person . And I was beginning to think he was an omniscient android from the future... Or something...