Proofs Of God(s)/ Reasons To Believe In One

It's been an age and a half since I started a new thread on here, but I'd like to address an issue that's always floating around whenever people are discussing religion: proof

This thread is not directed at those theists who believe they have no proof of their religious convictions but simply choose to worship on faith alone unless you believe that you have a specific reason to believe in a deity that can be used to convert people.

In essence, I just want to have religious people give me their proofs for god or logical reasons to believe, I'll do my best to come up with either my own or someone else's counter-argument.

Prove away.

There is no proof for the existance of a god/creator. Religious people make desperate attempts to claim they have proof, but it's always torn apart by science.

reply to post by MechanicalSunrise


Well, there are the scientific proofs, but there are also philosophical proofs and philosophical reasons that they have. I'd like to make this a discourse rather than a 'you are wrong!' thread.

First off, welcome back MIMS. It seems a very long time since we had our last chat on here.
I would just like to say that i have now come to the conclusion that no matter what evidence people come forward with, it can never be proof enough to convince a none believer that God exists.

The truth comes to each of us in different ways and as you know, my faith comes not from what i am told or by reading the bible. it comes from using the gifts of the spirit and seeing god in action through me.

I would say that i have used most of the gifts available to us but healing and words of knowledge are the ones most used. These gifts are used mainly when two or three gather together in gods name. In private.
When prayers are answered we don't run around shouting for joy that god is real, we just thank him and carry on with our lives.
I must now say that through experience, only a small proportion of Christians use these gifts as it takes a strong faith to believe that god will and does use us today.
I even know Christian ministers that don't believe that god heals in this day and age.

The only way i know how to convince others is to have them see and experience god at work first hand.
I moved house 8 months ago and i have not come across a church here that ministers using the gifts of the spirit.

I could roll off many instances of gods work but what is the point. they can easily be taken as delusions, coincidences or just plain lies.
The only truth out there is that which god will give you when he wants to. the problem there is that you have to be searching for him in the first place, or as he says "knock and the door will be opened".

Gone are the days when i would come on here trying to defend my faith, because people have been trying to do that for years on here and it just ends up as a battle ground between us and them....

I wish you all the best with your thread and will be interested in how it pans out.

Cheers
John

MechanicalSunrise

that's funny, science huh. science has been used to prove certain miracles in the church.

as for madness.

madness Iv'e been studying your post for a while, and this is my opinion. I like to think of you as a fencer. You keep God a possibility in the back of your mind but will never embrace faith.


Proof will be given to you shortly, actually all of us shortly. because imo every soul on this website will live to see WW3.

Until then there is nothing we can say or do to persuade you, it's up to each individual soul to believe by the things we see around us including the miracles and the complexity of nature.

Because even when we die, the unsincere soul can say to God. ' how do I now you are God '

proof involves faith but it also involves trust.


Like my grandmother who seen christ in her bedroom, she's an incredibly sane and normal very religious woman. I could not believe her but I know her heart, she doesn't lie, and why would she.

or my aunt who had one month to live and was cured by prayer, no medication from late stage cancer.


like saint gemma who bled the stigmata daily and in the sight of people would have normal hands and then bleed in their presence out of nowhere.


like my signature. eucharist of laciano italy tested by science.



But scoffers can always try to find loop holes. it's where the souls sincerity lies.

the soul that wants a God will most likely emrbrace them

the soul that doesn't want God to be real, usually can never be convinced.


It's on each individual madness.

peace take care.



[edit on 30-8-2010 by JesusisTruth]

reply to post by jon1


jon1, I'd be happy to believe if presented with evidence, I just take skepticism as the natural neutral position. Each religion claims its deity(ies) performs miracles and that we just have to have faith, but I'd like to see science back up these claims is all. Give me that and you've taken me a step forward.

reply to post by JesusisTruth

Originally posted by JesusisTruth
MechanicalSunrise

that's funny, science huh. science has been used to prove certain miracles in the church.

Back to the old routine it seems. This is the part where, like in the past, I ask you to provide instances of science proving the miracles of the Church. I've asked dozens of Christians both online and in my life to provide it to me, but it's never been done.

So, show me the money.

as for madness.

madness Iv'e been studying your post for a while, and this is my opinion. I like to think of you as a fencer. You keep God a possibility in the back of your mind but will never embrace faith.

Well, I give every option the consideration as a possibility, but I can't embrace faith because I'm a person of reason. I need something scientific before I jump into a religion.

Proof will be given to you shortly, actually all of us shortly. because imo every soul on this website will live to see WW3.

I've been hearing that WW3 will come soon every year since I joined ATS nearly 5 years ago. Nothings happened yet, and I doubt any war would provide proof of a deity.

Until then there is nothing we can say or do to persuade you, it's up to each individual soul to believe by the things we see around us including the miracles and the complexity of nature.

Complexity of nature is an argument we've had before, it doesn't prove a deity and it belongs in the O&C forums or in the Science forums, but miracles are something you could prove if they were real. In fact you claimed in this same post that science has proved them. Show me the science and I might actually believe.

Because even when we die, the unsincere soul can say to God. ' how do I now you are God '

I'd say that's a very sincere question for someone who is in doubt. Since I am a skeptic I'd be very sincere to ask a potential deity how I know it is what it claims to be.

proof involves faith but it also involves trust.

No, proof involves reason and rational basis and evidence.

Like my grandmother who seen christ in her bedroom, she's an incredibly sane and normal very religious woman. I could not believe her but I know her heart, she doesn't lie, and why would she.

Personal experiences cannot be used in this argument unless they've got some proof behind it. Saying 'I trust my grandmother and she says she saw Jesus' doesn't mean anything because it's a claim that could have been a product of all sorts of things from personal delusion to not realizing that something was a dream.

or my aunt who had one month to live and was cured by prayer, no medication from late stage cancer.

This is the sort of claim you could actually have investigated by science to prove your story is true. I always here 'god cures cancer all the time' well, who? When? Where? Evidence please.

like saint gemma who bled the stigmata daily and in the sight of people would have normal hands and then bleed in their presence out of nowhere.

That was never proven scientifically, and we've probably talked about her before.

like my signature. eucharist of laciano italy tested by science.

Looked into that, but there isn't any evidence of a miracle, simply of human flesh and blood. There is no way of knowing that a piece of communion wafer and wine were turned into flesh and blood, nor where the source of the flesh and blood was from. We could do a DNA test on the flesh, but it could come from a poor Italian peasant instead of the expected source of a 1st century Palestinian Jew.

But scoffers can always try to find loop holes. it's where the souls sincerity lies.

These 'loop holes' are actually plot holes or giant gaps in reason. I'm being sincere by pointing them out. There's a gap in logic, I point it out because it's a gap in logic. Being insincere is accepting the illogical on faith alone.

the soul that wants a God will most likely emrbrace them

the soul that doesn't want God to be real, usually can never be convinced.

I don't care which is true, I just want to know whether or not there is a deity. From where I'm standing now there is no evidence for any deity, let alone a specific one. If there is evidence, I'll go for it.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul

well i think you raise a good point. Fair enough, people will always ask for proofs and miracles. And I think God provides miracles to every human beings so they have no excuse. I will not tell you about the creation of the universe, or even science is now starting to admit the idea of intelligent design. If you specialize in a subject, maybe its easier to see. am an electrical engineer, and the amazing thing is, when scientists and engineers go about designing/discovering something, its already there, just waiting to be discovered. I mean when they look at how electrons and electricity and conduction etc etc behaves, its amazing, its as they expect it to be, its been designed that way, and without that design already in place, it would be impossible to analyze, much less use. Thats one miracle that people should really consider. Ppl tend to think that humans are inventing things, but the truth is actually the ground works and the basics are in place, we just manipulate them. think about what made the original design/behavior (ad please dont even mention random. the chances of these things being random might be there, but its so small its almost zero).
But ah, people still need to see more solid proof.
THERE IS SOLID PROOF. Are you ready to see it though or do you just do these posts for the sake of them?
Solid Proofs is simply the Quran. It has three enduring miracles that every human beings gets to see if they look into it, so that NO ONE is excused. I will list them in the order that makes sense to you, but unfortunately that happens to be in reverse order in terms of importance.
1) Scientific Proofs: In our day and age, science is the bench mark. the Quran is simply full of scientific explanations. few simple examples of the top of my head, but by no means comprehensive (keep in mind the Quran was revealed around 700AD and written about 750-800AD, sorry I dont know the exact dates but they are close)
-quran talks about mountains being like pegs, and that they stabilise the earth. When did science discover that mountains are actually like pegs, and what you see on the surface is only a small part? when did science find out that mountains do actually stabilise the earth? when I say the Quran mentions that, I do not say like a metaphor or a parable, I mean quite literally it is said like that. Quran is not like the Bible or Torah, its different.
-Quran talks about the area where two seas meet, and that they meet yet there is a barrier between them such that they do not mix. science recently discovered that due to different salinity levels the seas do not actually mix.
There is hundreds more examples, but they are so common is the Quran that Muslims do not actually consider them a big deal. Look up 'Scientific miracles in Quran', you will get hundreds of articles/videos.
2) The Quran has stayed the same since the day it was written to this day. You will not find two different versions of it. It has been preserved in the original language (Arabic), thus it has not been tampered with even by one letter, fulfilling Gods promise that this is his book, and he will preserve it to the end of times (As the Bible and Torah have been modified/changed over the years, and now you can see many different contradicting versions of them, the quran is preserved so each man can see the truth for himself).
3) This is the biggest miracle of all. Unfortunately you would have to be a native speaker of the language of the quran to appreciate it. Although there has been successful attempts at conveying the miracle to non arabic speakers, the true impact of it is never fully appreciated.
U must first understand that at 700AD when the Quran was revealed, there was no science, so the miracle at that time had to be different. The Arabs back then were known for their linguistic prowess. They were great poets and story tellers.

So to show them a miracle, the quran was revealed in such a way that it blew them away. No matter how hard they tried and try they did, they could not come up with anything like it. It was written in such a way, the sentence structure was amazing, the paragraphs and flow were like never seen (and like still never seen). To an english speaker, imagine if you heard the most beautiful poem or song, that was so well written, and so well structured (and keep in mind that the arabic language is very very rule heavy and strict, much more than the english language). Now if the Quran was in english, it would be 100 times better than the best written peom or song or story. To analyse its use of words and grammatical structure is the work of thick volumes of books, and people that devoted an entire life for that matter. it would put Shakespeare to shame. Its so well written that modern day arabs struggle to fully come to terms with it. Thus a large part of them never fully understand it. Yet the main message is very simple and clear. does not require special skills or knowledge to understand. Problem comes when you want to go deeper and fully appreciate it. And it was all uttered by an illiterate man that did not know how to read or write.

Those are the miracles you asked for. they are as clear as day light. whether you choose to screw your eyes shut and not see them is up to you.
but I will tell you something, when you talk to an ex atheist, the first thing they say is they cant believe they did not see these things before, they were more involved in the hate of religion that they could not see it for what it truly was.

please dont start bashing the quran or muslims. if you doubt what i say read for yourself. if you really want to bash any way, i could point you to a couple of websites that you would love. you will come out convinced that muslims did actually pull of 9/11. and they probably killed jesus christ and JFK too lol.

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


''Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy''-Benjamin Franklin.If that isnt enough evidence that God exists then you are just to hard to please.I mean come on that has got to be the greatest evidentiary proof that God exists that i have ever heard.Who else could create something so wonderful as beer?

reply to post by madnessinmysoul


We, today, walk by faith not by sight.
here is a web link of proof of God.
Visit it, hit the proof button and honestly answer the questions.
Then we talk.

www.proofthatgodexists.org...

[edit on 30-8-2010 by slugger9787]

Originally posted by MechanicalSunrise
There is no proof for the existance of a god/creator. Religious people make desperate attempts to claim they have proof, but it's always torn apart by science.

Read CG Jung

Theres my proof.

As for the idea of a universal G-d. Learn Hebrew, read the Tanakh, and study kabbalah/chassidut.

madness you are so hardheaded, you missed the ENTIRE baises for my reply.

so i'll respond to these two and say nomore about it in this thread.


Back to the old routine it seems. This is the part where, like in the past, I ask you to provide instances of science proving the miracles of the Church. I've asked dozens of Christians both online and in my life to provide it to me, but it's never been done.

So, show me the money. [MIMS]


Ok how much you want, five dollars, three, I got silver dollars too. the tests in the italy eucharist miracle were taken directly from the eucharist, held for days and tested. It's not from a peasant woman. That flesh has stayed intact for 120 years in Italy.

again, it's impossible to prove anything because imo you don't want to believe so you say it's this and that and don't have trust even when there are documented amazing facts about certain miracles.





I've been hearing that WW3 will come soon every year since I joined ATS nearly 5 years ago. Nothings happened yet, and I doubt any war would provide proof of a deity.

[madness]



Yea well give it some time. The illuminati and freemasons have their timetable. they created 9/11 and they will create more. But you miss the point. The war will proivde proof because 1 third of humanity will die off, hoping not you, but if you go, you will come face to face with the one I know exist. Not to mention christs second coming.



time will do my talking. Until then believe what you will.


peace.









[edit on 30-8-2010 by JesusisTruth]

one more thing to say here. It's impossible to give proof about God because he's not seeable.

Yet he was seeable to saints and prophets and worked miracles in their lives. So imo the OP is a circular exhibition that will go asolutely nowhere.

just to warn the repliers to this thread.

like I said God ask for faith and trust in this life and through that saints seen God in ecstacy.

without a hint of faith, you will never have proof madness until you die and are in eternal seperation.


peace.





[edit on 30-8-2010 by JesusisTruth]

I currently do not have enough time to address this (or other) threads, but right now I'm just letting you know that I should be able to this weekend. I'm ridiculously busy and apologize for my inability to answer your questions at this time.

reply to post by mohammed_nz

well i think you raise a good point. Fair enough, people will always ask for proofs and miracles. And I think God provides miracles to every human beings so they have no excuse.

Ok, show me those miracles. I’d love to believe in something if every single person on the planet has proof of it.

I will not tell you about the creation of the universe, or even science is now starting to admit the idea of intelligent design.

Because the first is something the entirety of humanity only has an inkling about and the second is an outright falsehood, but at least you’re not discussing them.

If you specialize in a subject, maybe its easier to see. am an electrical engineer, and the amazing thing is, when scientists and engineers go about designing/discovering something, its already there, just waiting to be discovered.

I believe you mean that it’s rare for new data or inventions to go against the established order of the universe, which means we can predict how things will act to a certain degree (because we haven’t cracked the base code of the universe)

I mean when they look at how electrons and electricity and conduction etc etc behaves, its amazing, its as they expect it to be,

Yes, because we created lovely theories and hypotheses and tested them until the best one came about that predicted a plethora of things about electricity. It’s a long stretch from when we used to think that electricity was a fluid. Yep, we used to. Think about the way we describe it: it flows and has a current. Those are things you say about a liquid, but we didn’t know better when we named ot.

its been designed that way, and without that design already in place, it would be impossible to analyze, much less use.

Now you’re making a massive leap in logic that has absolutely no rational basis within the post or anywhere.

You’re stating that for something to be analyzed or used it must have an intentional design from a rational being. Please find a way to support this hypothesis, as I find no reason to accept it at face value.

Thats one miracle that people should really consider. Ppl tend to think that humans are inventing things, but the truth is actually the ground works and the basics are in place, we just manipulate them.

Of course, we’re not talking about the fabric of reality; we’re just finding new uses for the stuff that’s strewn across the universe. But then there’s the fact that we can actually conceive of things outside of the concept of our universe, we create fiction. There’s also language. Language an entire abstract, it’s not there in any way shape or form in the universe, but we birthed it into being to use it ourselves.

think about what made the original design/behavior (ad please dont even mention random. the chances of these things being random might be there, but its so small its almost zero).

I’ve proved to you before that the chances of any game of five card stud poker happening in any way is near zero, and that’s just working with a stack of 52 cards and five people.
I also brought up the point that you have yet to provide a probability that is apparently much higher that a divine being interfered. You can’t shout about the probability of an event happening making it unlikely without showing that another event has a much higher mathematical probability.

But ah, people still need to see more solid proof.
THERE IS SOLID PROOF. Are you ready to see it though or do you just do these posts for the sake of them?

Yay, this might just be the hundredth time I’ve heard this, possibly higher. I don’t do these posts for the sake of them, I do them to prove there’s no logical reason to believe in a deity.

Solid Proofs is simply the Quran. It has three enduring miracles that every human beings gets to see if they look into it, so that NO ONE is excused. I will list them in the order that makes sense to you, but unfortunately that happens to be in reverse order in terms of importance.

Oh, the old ‘holy book’ argument, this one never gets old. Let me just prep some popcorn.

1) Scientific Proofs: In our day and age, science is the bench mark. the Quran is simply full of scientific explanations. few simple examples of the top of my head, but by no means comprehensive (keep in mind the Quran was revealed around 700AD and written about 750-800AD, sorry I dont know the exact dates but they are close)

It’s ok, but next time I suggest simply doing a quick web search to come up with the dates after you’ve finished the post. We are on the internet, no simple fact should elude us.

-quran talks about mountains being like pegs, and that they stabilise the earth.

Could you please provide a reference to the passages or possibly a link to an online Qu’ran for future posts? It would simply be easier to respond to questions pertaining to them.

When did science discover that mountains are actually like pegs, and what you see on the surface is only a small part? when did science find out that mountains do actually stabilise the earth? when I say the Quran mentions that, I do not say like a metaphor or a parable, I mean quite literally it is said like that. Quran is not like the Bible or Torah, its different.

Science never discovered that mountains stabilize the Earth…in fact, it’s not a fact at all. I’ve been trying to look for it because it’s news to me, but the only places I find that even mention this ‘fact’ are all places that seek to prove the Qu’ran to be full of miracles.

Now, if you analyze the amount of surface variation that mountains have with the rest of the Earth’s surface, you can calculate that it’s actually less than the raised areas on a typical coin have with the flat surface of it. I don’t see how something so frankly insignificant could have any effect on stabilizing the crust or the whole planet, but I can’t really address this ‘miracle’ without you giving me a proper scientific source to look at and analyze alongside the portion of the Qu’ran you’re referencing.

-Quran talks about the area where two seas meet, and that they meet yet there is a barrier between them such that they do not mix. science recently discovered that due to different salinity levels the seas do not actually mix.
There is hundreds more examples, but they are so common is the Quran that Muslims do not actually consider them a big deal. Look up 'Scientific miracles in Quran', you will get hundreds of articles/videos.

Again, just as a matter of furthering the discussion, please provide me with a link to the portion of the Qu’ran you’re quoting.

Anyway, the Qu’ran makes an off-handed comment that two seas meet and do not mix so you’re going to gather from that single statement that it means the authorship was talking about the effects on salinity in the mixing of water? Unless you’re going to give me a passage where the Qu’ran mentions a purely scientific reason for it and doesn’t just throw an off-handed comment out, I’m going to have to just dismiss it as a lucky guess unless you’re going to provide the science to back it up.

2) The Quran has stayed the same since the day it was written to this day. You will not find two different versions of it. It has been preserved in the original language (Arabic), thus it has not been tampered with even by one letter, fulfilling Gods promise that this is his book, and he will preserve it to the end of times (As the Bible and Torah have been modified/changed over the years, and now you can see many different contradicting versions of them, the quran is preserved so each man can see the truth for himself).

How is that a miracle of any sort? That’s just rigorous prevention of editing… Also, do we have a first edition of the Qu’ran? It’s one thing to make the claim that it’s unchanged if we do, because that’s the only way you can prove the Qu’ran has been unchanged. But without a first edition to refer to, how would we know?

3) This is the biggest miracle of all. Unfortunately you would have to be a native speaker of the language of the quran to appreciate it. Although there has been successful attempts at conveying the miracle to non arabic speakers, the true impact of it is never fully appreciated.

Well, I’m a speaker of a language similar to Arabic (Maltese), so it might be possible for me to understand.

U must first understand that at 700AD when the Quran was revealed, there was no science,

Now you’re either misinformed or outright lying. There has been science since at least 3500 BCE, when the Sumerians started looking at the world and recording their observations. We have a detailed history of plenty of science between 3500 BCE and the rise of Islam, here’s

(Wikipedia link) en.wikipedia.org...

so the miracle at that time had to be different. The Arabs back then were known for their linguistic prowess. They were great poets and story tellers.

Um…they were? Can I have a source on that?

So to show them a miracle, the quran was revealed in such a way that it blew them away. No matter how hard they tried and try they did, they could not come up with anything like it. It was written in such a way, the sentence structure was amazing, the paragraphs and flow were like never seen (and like still never seen).

That could just mean that the Earthly author was a damn good author…but it’s also a moot point. Something being well written isn’t a miracle. They use this exact same argument with the Bible and it’s equally useless there.

reply to post by mohammed_nz

To an english speaker, imagine if you heard the most beautiful poem or song, that was so well written, and so well structured (and keep in mind that the arabic language is very very rule heavy and strict, much more than the english language).
Now if the Quran was in english, it would be 100 times better than the best written peom or song or story.

Are you sure this isn’t simply a matter of the Arab world moving the basis of what is the best to fit into making it the Qu’ran? Instead of the Qu’ran itself being so great it became great by the definition of ‘great Arabic’ being changed to ‘see: Qu’ran’.

To analyse its use of words and grammatical structure is the work of thick volumes of books, and people that devoted an entire life for that matter.

People have devoted their entire life to plenty of ridiculous things. Now, could you provide a link from a scientifically linguistic source to back up this claim? I’d love to see an Arab linguist not participating in apologetics do a study of the Qu’ran from a linguistic or philological point of view. The only things I’ve been able to find on the internet so far are either from Muslim apologists or from Christians trying to convert Muslims.

it would put Shakespeare to shame.

Except for its use of plot, dramatic structure, storytelling, pacing, character development, timing, and tackling of meaningful issues.
And keep in mind that Shakespeare wasn’t writing for the page with most of his works, he was writing for the stage.

Its so well written that modern day arabs struggle to fully come to terms with it. Thus a large part of them never fully understand it. Yet the main message is very simple and clear. does not require special skills or knowledge to understand. Problem comes when you want to go deeper and fully appreciate it. And it was all uttered by an illiterate man that did not know how to read or write.

See, now that’s actually an issue. Linguistically (and I’m speaking as a teacher of language), no language is written and spoken the same. Spoken style and written style are independent and spoken sentences rarely sound as good on paper as they do originally. That is why dialog in books is so often the most challenging portion.

Another problem is that you’ve yet to provide evidence that the Qu’ran is linguistically perfect. You’re just claiming it and saying that it is so. A miracle is only a miracle if you can demonstrate it.

And why would your deity give the world a miracle that only a about 246 million people in a world of nearly 7 billion people speak? Why not write it in English, which has about 350 million native speakers and nearly 1 billion second and foreign language speakers? It seems like not only a weak miracle, but a badly thought out one.

Those are the miracles you asked for. they are as clear as day light. whether you choose to screw your eyes shut and not see them is up to you.

The way you’ve provided them is not clear as light. You’ve shown me absolutely nothing to back up your claims of miracles. To summarize:

Argument from design: failed.
Argument from probability: failed, see a game of poker (for the second time against me)
Holy book arguments:
Mountains as pegs holding the Earth in place: Unsubstantiated by science, failed.
Seas not mixing: No evidence provided that the book in question shows a scientific understanding of this natural occurrence which would provide evidence of a miracle, failed
Book unchanged: Lack of proof provided that the Qu’ran is the same as it was in its first edition, failed. Also not a miracle, merely a rigorous prevention of editing.
Perfection of book: Lack of book’s perfection provided, failed.

but I will tell you something, when you talk to an ex atheist, the first thing they say is they cant believe they did not see these things before, they were more involved in the hate ofreligion that they could not see it for what it truly was.

Yadda yadda yadda, heard this before. I don’t care about religion in this post unless someone is trying to provide me with a reason to believe in one. I’m looking for truth here, not beliefs.

please dont start bashing the quran or muslims. if you doubt what i say read for yourself.

I clearly didn’t as that is not the point of this thread.

if you really want to bash any way, i could point you to a couple of websites that you would love. you will come out convinced that muslims did actually pull of 9/11.

I know a Libyan guy that’s entirely convinced that Muslims did it and sees them as heroes. And another Saudi guy that does too. And a Lebanese Muslim guy as well. I also know an Iranian that believes they did it, but he doesn’t really think it was a good thing at all…

In fact, a plurality of the Muslim world believes Muslims were responsible for 9/11, as does a plurality of the world. Unfortunately, this isn’t a 9/11 conspiracies thread, so leave those out of here.

and they probably killed jesus christ and JFK too lol.

Yes, because if I’m so deluded that I cannot accept your religion I must believe that someone (who possibly didn’t exist) was killed by Muslims a few hundred years before the founding of their religion… maybe they had a time machine.

Originally posted by JesusisTruth
madness you are so hardheaded, you missed the ENTIRE baises for my reply.

so i'll respond to these two and say nomore about it in this thread.


Back to the old routine it seems. This is the part where, like in the past, I ask you to provide instances of science proving the miracles of the Church. I've asked dozens of Christians both online and in my life to provide it to me, but it's never been done.

So, show me the money. [MIMS]


Ok how much you want, five dollars, three, I got silver dollars too. the tests in the italy eucharist miracle were taken directly from the eucharist, held for days and tested. It's not from a peasant woman. That flesh has stayed intact for 120 years in Italy.

It seems you're the one that missed my point entirely. I didn't say that it wasn't flesh and that it wasn't 120 years old, I'm claiming that isn't a miracle. Preserving flesh isn't that hard to do. What I'm saying is that there's no way to know where that flesh came from without DNA analysis. If they found that the flesh came from someone who had the same genetic typings of a first century Hebrew living in the region of Palestine you might be on to something. The point is that I don't know where the flesh came from, so it could have been from a recently deceased Italian peasant that the priest had just performed the last rights on.

again, it's impossible to prove anything because imo you don't want to believe so you say it's this and that and don't have trust even when there are documented amazing facts about certain miracles.

I don't care one way or another. I don't want to believe, I don't want to disbelieve, I just want to accept whatever is the truth. If wanting to accept something is prerequisite to accepting it, evidence is probably not involved.

You've yet to provide any documented 'amazing' facts, you've only provided documented mundane facts.

I've been hearing that WW3 will come soon every year since I joined ATS nearly 5 years ago. Nothings happened yet, and I doubt any war would provide proof of a deity.

[madness]


Yea well give it some time. The illuminati and freemasons have their timetable. they created 9/11 and they will create more. But you miss the point. The war will proivde proof because 1 third of humanity will die off, hoping not you, but if you go, you will come face to face with the one I know exist. Not to mention christs second coming.

Not the area for this, so I'm just going to leave it. This isn't a 9/11 conspiracies thread, it's not an Illuminati and secret societies thread, and it's not a conspiracies thread of any sort.

And we've been waiting for the second coming for *checks watch* about 1970 years, give or take the existence of Jesus as a historical figure.

time will do my talking. Until then believe what you will.


peace.

Again, they've been saying that for 1970 years, getting hard to believe now.

And please use the quote function, it's a lot easier to reply to your posts when you do.

Originally posted by JesusisTruth
one more thing to say here. It's impossible to give proof about God because he's not seeable.

Yet 'he' is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient...Sort of the thing that you should be able to prove.

And I don't care if you don't think you can prove him, the burden of proof is on you, the claimant. You're making a claim, back it up.

Yet he was seeable to saints and prophets and worked miracles in their lives. So imo the OP is a circular exhibition that will go asolutely nowhere.

So first he isn't 'seeable' but he is to specific people? The problem is that, being catholic, you have a laundry list of times where you claim your deity involved itself in human affairs, marking instances where humanity should have evidence that the laws of physics were temporarily void. That should be all the proof I need to accept the existence of a deity.

And this is a non sequitur, the premise doesn't lead to the conclusion.

Here's your line of logic:
God is not seeable; Saints were able to see God therefore the OP is a circular exhibition that will go absolutely nowhere.

You have two premises:
God is not seeable
To saints God was seeable

And one conclusion
the OP is a circular exhibition that will go absolutely nowhere

The conclusion is entirely unrelated to the previous statements.

just to warn the repliers to this thread.

I'd politely ask them to simply stick to logical or fact-based arguments instead.

like I said God ask for faith and trust in this life and through that saints seen God in ecstacy.

I gave your deity (specifically yours) trust and faith for about 15 years, let's say 8, because I won't count myself from ages 0-7 as being able to properly understand such concepts. I got nothing out of it.

without a hint of faith, you will never have proof madness until you die and are in eternal seperation.

That's also logically fallacious. The only way to get evidence is to begin to accept the conclusion? That is nonsense.

peace.

You just implied that the greatest suffering possible in your worldview will befall me and you're wishing me peace?

My Brother,

You originally asked for proof of the existence of God. Well here is what I consider proof enough for me.

If their was God and he created man in his image, every single man and woman on this earth would have some trait in common. Something that makes us who we are.

I have found that trait.

We ALL want to be LOVED.

If we were randomly created beings from some primordial soup, why would this one trait resonate within all of us?

We are born to Love and we are dependent from birth on receiving Love. How much we receive and don't receive in life makes us who we are. We are beings of Love.

Love, is the closest understanding we can come to God.

Do you not feel it in your very core Brother? Do you not want to be loved for who you are? YOU ARE!

With Love,

Your Brother

reply to post by slugger9787


Hey look! A strawman argument that I have no way to respond to in any shape or form!

I'll take an example from that link. After stating absolute logical laws exist, absolute mathematical laws exist (which I think is red herring, since mathematical laws are an abstraction used for us to quantify the universe...), and absolute scientific laws exist, I was asked if absolute moral laws exist.

I was then presented with this little snippet here:

I feel that the best test to determine whether or not you really believe that absolute moral laws exist, is not whether you feel that atrocities like rape and child molestation could be right somewhere in the universe, but whether they could ever be right if perpetrated against you or someone you love. Please keep in mind, I am asking what YOU believe, not what you think anyone else believes.

Actually, that isn't the best way to determine if absolute moral laws exist. In fact that's taking a single example and using it to affirm the entirety of an argument.

I was then given two choices:

Button 1: Molesting children for fun is absolutely morally wrong
Button 2: Molesting children for fun is not absolutely morally wrong

I do not think molesting children for fun is ever right, but that doesn't prove anything.

The existence of a single moral absolute doesn't mean the existence of an absolute code of morality.

Let's take a better example to look at the existence of an absolute morality:

You have a train going down a track and it will hit 10 people, you are at a railroad switch that could divert the train to a different track. On the second track there are 9 people, on the third track there are 8, on the fourth there are 7.

Which of these choices is the absolute moral choice?

Well, if you don't hit the switch, 10 people will die from your inaction, but if you hit the switch at least 7 people will die from your direct action.
There is no directly moral choice, only a choice that is simply more moral than the others.

So the argument at the link you provided is flawed at a certain point, so I cannot continue.

The buttons should probably be myriad there anyway.

A question for you: Would you molest a child to prevent it from suffering the most horribly atrocious death by torture possible?

I probably would. It would be incredibly difficult, I would feel horrible about doing it, but I would at least take solace in the fact that the child could have suffered a worse fate.

Can you please provide me with a better proof or possibly with a defense of the proof you provided?

Originally posted by madnessinmysoul
Let's take a better example to look at the existence of an absolute morality:

You have a train going down a track and it will hit 10 people, you are at a railroad switch that could divert the train to a different track. On the second track there are 9 people, on the third track there are 8, on the fourth there are 7.

Which of these choices is the absolute moral choice?

Well, if you don't hit the switch, 10 people will die from your inaction, but if you hit the switch at least 7 people will die from your direct action.
There is no directly moral choice, only a choice that is simply more moral than the others.

My Brother,

Your paint a non-existent situation to support your stance. So, lets modify it a bit to suit your line of thinking.

The People on the tracks are your own family members. They are the dearest people to your heart. You see that they will undoubtedly die if you fail to choose. Who do you choose to kill, your mother, your father, your sister, your brother, your own children, your wife?

Who here who knows love COULD make that choice?

My Brother, at the moment of choice in this scenario, I could not make one. It is here that I would pray to something bigger than I for help. If it does not come, I would have to accept that it was HIS will.

I did not control the train from the beginning, nor will I assume the controls to take out those I love.

With love,

Your Brother

Sometimes, no action, is the moral action.