Does God exist?

[litespeed]

MOON,

 

I only take notice of random chances if they becomes improbable in their own context. I give you myself as an example. Specifically, I have prided myselft in 45 years of maniac driving without ticket or crash. I mean, serious at the limit practice just about every day. And I know of what I speak, having practiced at Summit Point raceway in my old Z-28 Camaro years ago.

 

Further, I found myself in car heaven here in the Southern Appalacians. We have a particular road that lends itself to such endeavor. The road is multi laned in both ways. Affords plentiful sight lines and lots of room for error. The speeds to not exceed about 60mph in full four wheel drift. And the uphill traverse take about ten minutes.

 

My ride is a 5 liter supercharged Mark VII, and over a three year period of time I never made an error, NEVER was passed and no one ever got away. This includes a C5 Corvettes etc etc.

 

I turned in the Mk 7 into a garage queen and took up a simple 2.8 Cadi CTS as a matter of maturity in my old age and advanced state of decline. A mechanical failure in this vehicle left me upside down and backwards over a local 15 foot cliff sliding towards a small river. I remember specifically thinking how I would require an entirely new paint job. The insurance rep wondered how I had survived.

 

It was not all that dramatic, really. None of the air bags even deployed. And I was able to extract myself unhurt through the drivers window since the passenger window was kissing the ground. The first thing I noticed as I climed out was a wooden cross floating a few yards from me in the river. Seems it had been washed down from where I had left pavement, and was intended to commerate the three teenagers who had perished by drowning in just this spot.

 

I don't much believe in miracles, signes or omens. However, this one caught my attention. "There is more in this world then our various philosophies can imagine". That is a paraphrase from ancient times. Let it be simply stated. I can take a hint.

[litespeed]

Dankey,

 

I concur: Our improbable moon, combined with our improbable Goldie Locks liquid water orbit , combined with other, multitudinous improbable variables, seem to have produced a yet more improbable life form that is capable of advanced mathematics.

 

I am still hoping for SETI to find others, but two decades of data seem to be working towards less, not more, likelyhood. I am delighted to wait. However, I am compeled to speculate on the implications that we are the only ones. Me thinks this possibility gives gastro-intestinal distress to those who seem determined to believe intelligent design of any sort is an abomination.

 

What the hell diference does it make? Why be bound by random acts of of The Standard Model. Entangle particles at a spooky distance; radioactive decay without cause for each decay, increasing galactic expansion rate, dark matter, dark energy.

 

Good Grief, Charlie Brown. Keep an open mind!

[Pyrotex]

...I don't much believe in miracles, signes or omens. However, this one caught my attention. "There is more in this world then our various philosophies can imagine". That is a paraphrase from ancient times. Let it be simply stated. I can take a hint.

I'm with you, litespeed.

 

I had a very similar automobile accident when I was a senior in college. My car came to rest right-side-up near a pond. The car was totaled beyond recognition, but I didn't have a scratch on me. When I looked out the window, there was this little patch of pond right in front of me that had NOTHING floating on it. The rest of the pond had some leaves and a beverage can or two, but not this one spot nearest my car. It had NOTHING on it. Specifically, it had no cross or anything that even looked like a cross.

 

I can take a hint. I dropped out of church immediately, and never went back.

 

:shrug: Pyro

[litespeed]

Pyro,

 

We all make our own interpretations. However, I must ask if this matter led you to fewer automotive hyjinks? Plus, I must ask, given such probablilities. You would not be lieing to me, would you?

[litespeed]

PYRO,

 

I don't know if you are a scientist or not. However, my own experiences with scientist shows them to lack integrity. Specifically, I was included in the congressional investigation of the 1970's as to whether the US should convert to the Metric System. One of my assignements was to review a prospective national questionaire with scientists.

 

Specifically, one question had these possible answers. If we convert to the Metric System how much time would you propose: a) 5 years :shrug: 10 years c) 15 years d) no deadline. The scientist simply, and haughtily stated, "You should not even give the option of d".

 

Science. Bah. Humbug.

[Moontanman]

Litespeed, why do you ignore my questions, i asked some very specific questions and answered some of yours but you insist on your idea that unlikely occurrences are some how mystical. With 6,000,000,000 people on the planet all doing nutzoid things like driving crazy, trying force raccoons out of pipes with gasoline, or fishing with dynamite with 6,000,000,000 I would expect to see anomalous things happening quite often. Bullets going through a person head with out killing them, being impaled by a steel bar and it misses all the organs, the list is long and odd but when you have 6,000,000,000 people doing everything they can you would have to expect the occasional incident that is outside the bell curve. I can see no reason to attribute the unusual to a god.

[Pyrotex]

...You would not be lieing to me, would you?

Well...

I would call it a "jest" that was making fun of "omens".

 

Pyro :shrug:

[Moontanman]

Here is a story off another forum about odd things caught while fishing, is this divine intervention or just luck, it's certainly an unlikely occurrence.

 

Quote (Originally by Aqua Sanctuary)---

weird story.. Fly fishing at dusk in the summer. I was flipping my line back and fourth and just as I was doing the last flip a bat took my fly in mid air. The line was behind me and I ended up jerking the poor bat into the water. Almost as soon as the bat hit the water a 4.5 lb bass took the bat.

 

Who was god with here? the bat, the bass or the fishermen?

[litespeed]

Pyro,

 

In all good humour there is nothing to say. You may be kidding me about teenage antics, but I am speaking of decades long behaviour without incident punctuated by the above. I don't believe there are no athiests in foxholes, having occupied plenty of my own. And I never took any theological meaning when I survived unblemished this or that mortal incident, but others were less fortunate. However, none of those incidents left me with the improbable circumstances I encountered later.

 

For the record, I do not claim any supernatural intervention or message. But I have lived a long enough and weird enough life to know when something REALLY weird has happened to me. At that point, and given the clear life and death circumstances. I did not quibble.

[litespeed]

Further, I must confess I have been following Duke University ESP experiments for decades. The basic procedure is for the subject to quess which of five shapes on a deck of cards the experimener is looking at. The results statistically significant in favor of the quess.

 

Then there is the slightly embarrassing funeral I attended for my grandmother. She had the preacher read her promise to return for visits in the future. A decade later I had a dream where she confessed she needed to fullfil her promise, but it was a mistake. She said it was a serious burdon on her to do this, since it required an unwelcome change in her status. She simply relayed there was nothing to worry about, and that she would go back to where she belonged in the first place.

 

Any Freudians available. I think I could use one.

[C1ay]

Getting back to the original topic, does God exist. I think this question obviously depends on a coherent definition of what God is or the whole discussion is meaningless. Definition anyone?

[JMJones0424]

Here's my definition of god (or gods):

 

One of many memes created by humans to explain phenomenon that they are either incapable of or unwilling to explain using reason. I think it is important to note that most (if not all, but I don't know enough to say all) primitive cultures either created their own god memes or borrowed those of neighboring cultures. This might imply some biological need to explain the unexplained. Science could therefor be viewed as a natural progression of that need, although with obviously different results.

[Thunderbird]

An eternal, archetypal image of life.

[Pyrotex]

PYRO,

 

I don't know if you are a scientist or not. However, my own experiences with scientist shows them to lack integrity. Specifically, I was included in the congressional investigation of the 1970's as to whether the US should convert to the Metric System.....

Well, on the face of it, I would suggest that one should not make sweeping generalizations based upon one anecdote. Or even a few.

 

On the scalp of it, I invite you to consider that scientists, as a group, have many of the same quirks and personality flaws as do non-scientists. I have met scientists who were arrogant, painfully shy, forgetful, inconsiderate, insensitive, lacking in personal hygiene, or terrified of public speaking. I suggest that scientists are human, too, and that we should not judge them against an unreasonable set of expectations.

 

History is full of tragically flawed scientists. Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke come immediately to mind.

 

Am I a scientist? Yes, I would say so. Others might consider me an engineer or a programmer. But my thirst for knowledge and understanding is insatiable. I read books on many scientific subjects. When I was much younger, I also read books on the paranormal, such as ESP and such, but discovered that those fields never led to anything useful or explanatory.

 

I'm not arrogant, but I have been accused of being impatient on more than one occassion.

 

My definition of god? It changes with the years, but one I used to be fond of was:

God is an invisible friend with magic power whose miraculous interventions are indistinguishable from low-probability natural events.

[litespeed]

Hi Pyro,

 

I agree that scientists have all the same personality characteristics and quirks found generally in human kind. However, scientists are, by definition, required to abide by the scientific method, or loose credibility. In this particular case I was actually horrified to find I had more objectivity as a congressional investigator with a simple BA then this paragon with PHD in one or another scientific field. And it has only gotten worse.

 

Specifically, I have read Scientific American since the 1960s. Always looking forward to the next astronomical anomoly, theory, etc. In recent years they developed an increasingly annoying political commentary page. Their particular buggaboo at the time was The Existential Threat Of Intelligent Design Theory in the public schools.

 

If ever there was an inconsequential topic of conversation, that was it. But they were SERIOUS! The war against actual barbarian Jihdists who behead homosexuals, immodest women, and kill themselve to stop the Western Scientific Method was very very bad thing. The war against Creationism and any sort of religious activity in the US seemed far more important to them.

 

And don't get me started on the man-made catastrophic existential threat of GW! THERE IS NO FRIGGN UNIVERSAL CONSENSUS is entirely self evident if you simply google 'deniers'. It reminds me of Galaleo labeled a heritic.

 

God, I hate having been a campus leader with the radical side of the 1960's. It was purile then (ok since we were purile kids), but it seems never to have grown up, and just about that entire accademic generation has infested just about every accademic field. To such an extent I felt compelled to resign from Scientific American.

 

PS: I gave up on the New York times when it discontinued its great forums section (The very best confrontations from every corner of the globe were there. The best of the best on everything from the proper translation of the talmud to everything else) into, jezzus, BLOGS.

[litespeed]

Clay - You wrote: "Getting back to the original topic, does God exist. I think this question obviously depends on a coherent definition of what God is or the whole discussion is meaningless..."

 

Agreed. And we can list some of them for judgement.

 

1) The Yaweh God of the Hebrew Torah.

MY JUDGEMENT: Probably does not exist, and if he does, he is an evil space alien.

 

2) Jesus God of the new testament.

MY JUDGEMENT: I don't know what the hell happened to the body. However, the Shroud of Turin is very plausibly his burial shroud. Further, Paul of Tarsus is the father of Christianity, not Peter. Finally, of the three Middle Eastern religions self designated as descended from Abraham, ONLY Christianity is compatible with modern life.

 

I have no comment on The Divinity of Jesus. But I don't believe people who made fraud on a resurection would be willing to die for the concept. Maybe he just didn't actually croak at that specific time. I don't know, and neither does anyone else.

 

3) Allah as described in the Koran.

MY JUDGEMENT: Worse then Yaweh. Kill this. Kill that. Torture such and such to get the money. Assasinate poets at night. Plunder the infidels. [Koran Chapter 8 describes how to divie up stuff] dictatorship of the masses by the religious police through the Caliph.

 

4) The multidudinous Gods of India.

MY JUDGEMENT: Perhaps comforting. Inefectual. Amusing. Not actually harmless, but almost.

 

5) The Religious Denials of Athiestic Marxist Socialism.

MY JUDGEMENT: Worse then even the human sacrifice religions of Meso America. The number of dead left at the alter of athiesm in The Soviet Union, and Mao's Great Leap Forward Are beyond atonishment. Worse even then Germanic Christian National Socialism.

 

6) Whatever the hell brought our universe into existence. Now THATS a God! Furthermore, That God looks ever more interesting as the possible number of intellectual civilizations in the universe continually contract towards, perhaps, just us.

 

I welcome disputation.

[JMJones0424]

I concur with number six, in a way.

 

From an essay at Edge: BEYOND REDUCTIONISM: REINVENTING THE SACRED By Stuart A. Kauffman

 

Is it more astonishing that a God created all that exists in six days, or that the natural processes of the creative universe have yielded galaxies, chemistry, life, agency, meaning, value, consciousness, culture without a Creator. In my mind and heart, the overwhelming answer is that the truth as best we know it, that all arose with no Creator agent, all on its wondrous own, is so awesome and stunning that it is God enough for me and I hope much of humankind.

 

I like Carl Sagan's famous quote, "If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe."

 

To say that a god created the universe, especially in the literal Judeo-Christian sense, I think is demeaning to the beauty and complexity of all the various processes involved to end up with the collection of atoms I call me. Even the "master clock-maker" god of Newton trivializes the beauty and complexity of nature.