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 Posted March 30th, 2005 04:18 PM IP   
Does God Exist ?
interesting papers.............
http://www.doesgodexist.org/
Rick 
Kenilworth #29 Red Deer, Alberta, Canada
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The Revealer
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Posted April 21st, 2005 11:27 AM IP
To me the answer is yes, definitely. I think however that people tend to put to many "restrictions" and/or HUMAN conditions on just who or what God actually is, so therefore are limited in finding the answer to this question on their own.
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Bondi
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Posted May 9th, 2005 03:54 PM IP
Does God Exist? tough one to answer, depends on what description of God you wish to use.
Do you mean the Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc etc ideal of what God is or isn't?
There is something, no matter how hard I try there is always something there greater than my current understanding. One day I will have the answers.
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skiendhu
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Posted May 9th, 2005 08:59 PM IP
Quote:
Bondi wrote:
Does God Exist? tough one to answer, depends on what description of God you wish to use.
Do you mean the Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, etc etc ideal of what God is or isn't?
There is something, no matter how hard I try there is always something there greater than my current understanding. One day I will have the answers.
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Perhaps the question should have been - What is a supreme being.
Isn't it possible that there are other definitions of a supreme being besides the religous ones
For instance, the sun worshipers considered the sun to be the supreme being. who's to say that they were wrong?
Physists will quote the law of physics as the great creator. and who's to say that they too are wrong?
The fact is, nobody "really" knows, we're only guessing and hoping that we are right.
S&F
skiendhu
Practical experience is the best teacher
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Bondi
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Posted May 10th, 2005 04:44 AM IP
Couldn't agree with you more.
I think you tend to get problems with sterotyping.
If you say God in my local pub everyone would think your a Christian or Catholic, people wouldn't even know of the other religions of the world.
You say Supreme Being and people will think of two things, Super Man or a Deity of some sorts, not many would concider the Scientist viewpoint.
In the end it is a very personal explination, and I don't think the education we receive as children really prepare us for this. When i attended school there was only the bible, not mention, tuition or exposure to the other cultures of the world, the other possibilities. I sometimes wonder if Christianity and Catholicism would be so popular if it was not the religion taught in the majority of public schools, but that is a different topic!
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shaneking
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Posted October 29th, 2005 02:56 PM IP
This thread reminded me of thsi thought I have:
An ant walks across a CD and simply experiences that it is smooth and flat and round.
How could the ant possibly have any concept that the CD is encoded with MP3 files and that they could play music that not only just makes the air vibrate but actually conveys emotion ? The ant could not even begin to understand these "higher" concepts of reality than the mere shape of the CD that it traverses.
The Ant - CD relationship seems to me like the human - G-d relationship. It is so complex that we may not even begin to understand the true concepts of G-d even though we have faith which means we recognise that there is someone or some concept that is so beyond us.
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skiendhu
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Posted October 29th, 2005 10:52 PM IP
I can't accept that example
On the one hand you have two objects that you can see and touch, take apart and analyse.
On the other hand you have one object that you can see and touch and take apart and analyse, and one that is not an object, cannot be seen, touched or taken apart and analysed.
So how can you compare the two examples.
S&F
skiendhu
Practical experience is the best teacher
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russellholland
Master Mason
Posts: 998
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Posted October 30th, 2005 01:22 AM IP
Brethren
Am I a god to the cell in the end of my finger?
I bring it into existence
I sustain it
I may destroy it as collateral damage in some enterprise unknowable by the cell.
In my turn I am the cell in the end of the finger of a greater being.
Cheers
Russell
Russell Holland
Caboolture 266
UGLQ
Australia
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shaneking
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Posted October 30th, 2005 04:12 AM IP
In reply to your theory, I would say that you are not a G-d to the cell in the end of your finger.
You are but a process in the big scheme of things. The buck stops with the Supreme Being.
G-d is not the end of a finger of a greater being because He/It IS G-d !
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Peter Taylor
Master Mason
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Posted October 30th, 2005 06:43 AM IP
I copied this from somethinga while but can't remember where! I find it informative:
Philosophy and the proof of God's existence
One of the most far-reaching consequences of the rationalism of the Enlightenment was the undermining of basic Christian faith among the educated classes. The effect was unintended because the project of many Enlightenment philosophers was to prove the existence of God using reason: Descartes and Leibniz assumed that God's existence could be rationally proved, indeed God was a necessary part of their philosophy.
There are many traditional "proofs" for the existence of God, and we will look at three of them: The argument from design, the ontological argument and the cosmological argument.
Traditional "proofs" of God's Existence
1) The argument from Design.
If you found a clock and examined the mechanism within it, you would probably think that this intricate mechanism was not the outcome of mere chance, that it had been designed.
Now look at the universe; is it possible that such an intricate mechanism, from the orbits of planets round the sun to the cells in your fingernails could all have happened by chance? Surely, this enormously complex mechanism has been designed, and the being that designed it must be God.
2) The ontological argument
God is the perfect being. As He is most perfect, He must have all perfections. If God lacked existence He would not be perfect, as He is perfect he must exist.
3) The cosmological argument (God as "First cause")
Everything that exists has a cause. However, there must at some time have been a cause prior to all other causes. This 'prime mover' or first cause is necessary to explain existence. This first cause is God.
Pascal's Wager
The French mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-62) put forward an argument that would appeal to agnostics. (An agnostic is someone who believes that it is impossible to prove God's existence.)
His argument goes something like this: God either exists or he does not. If we believe in God and he exists, we will be rewarded with eternal bliss in heaven. If we believe in God and he does not exist then at worst all we have forgone are a few sinful pleasures.
If we do not believe in God and he does exist we may enjoy a few sinful pleasures, but we may face eternal damnation. If we do not believe in God and he does not exist then our sins will not be punished.
Would any rational gambler think that the experience of a few sinful pleasures is worth the risk of eternal damnation?
Kant
Kant attempted to show how philosophy could prove the existence of God. Unfortunately, for him his previous work showed that we could not know reality directly as thing-in-itself. What is real in itself is beyond our experience. Even if God exists, we can not know God as he really is.
For Kant the Christian could have faith in God, and this faith would be consonant with reason and the categorical imperative. Given that human beings have the autonomy to create moral values; it would not be irrational to believe in a God who gives purpose to the moral realm.
Hegel
Hegel thought that the God of religion was an intuition of Absolute Spirit or Geist. Hegel's Geist is not like the transcendent (outside of our consciousness) God of traditional Christianity. For Hegel God is immanent and when we have understood that history is the process of Geist coming to know itself it appears that we are all part of Geist, or God.
Feuerbach and Marx
For Feuerbach and Marx religion is seen as the projection of the human essence onto an ideal: God does not make man. Rather "God" is the invention of human consciousness. Marx also sees that religion is part of an ideological view that encourages the oppressed to accept their fate. As he says: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions."
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) agreed with Kant that the existence of God could not be proven by reason. However Kierkegaard did not think that it was rational to believe in God, rather one should have faith in God even if this seems to reason to be absurd. To put it another way reason has no place in faith. God is beyond reason.
Kierkegaard is regarded as the first existentialist.
Nietzsche: The Death of God
"Have you not heard the madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place and cried incessantly, 'I seek God!, I seek God!' ... Why, did he get lost? Said one. Did he lose his way like a child? Said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? Or emigrated? The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his glances.
"'Whither is God'? He cried. 'I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. All of us are his murderers...'"
"...the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they to were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke and went out. 'I came too early,' he said then; 'my time has not come yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering -it has not yet reached the ears of man."
In these passages Nietzsche is showing the inevitable unfolding anthropocentrism (lit. putting man at the centre of the world) implicit in philosophy since Kant. If we view our existence through human categories, then our concept of God is itself a human creation.
Nietzsche is not simply asserting his atheism; he is suggesting that once we are aware that the concept of God is our own creation we can no longer base our religious and moral beliefs on any notion of a divine external reality.
In the period that Nietzsche was writing, the death of God was just beginning. Western thought was starting to face the prospect of a radical change in its orientation, and it wasn't quite ready to own up to it yet.
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche represent opposite reactions to the inability of rationality to give a rock solid theoretical proof of God's existence. Kierkegaard calls for us to embrace God even if it seems an absurdity, while Nietzsche says it is time for us to create a new mode of being, with human creativity at its centre.
The atheist existentialist Sartre accepted God's death and much of his writing is attempt to look at the human condition in a world that is without a prime mover that could have provided a basis and structure for the understanding of being.
The twentieth century
Anglo American analytic philosophers of the twentieth century have tended to agree that philosophy may help us clarify religious concepts, without giving us a secure foundation for religious belief.
Many people claim to have had a religious experience, to have experienced the divine directly. This experience is direct and is of a different quality to sensory experience or intellectual discovery, and therefore outside of the scope of philosophy.
The view that the existence of God cannot be proved or disproved by philosophy has not stopped developments in modern theology. Theologians are attempting to balance the anthropocentric view of God presented by philosophers since the Enlightenment with the need to provide a spiritual path and a guide to an ethical and meaningful way of life.
Regards, Peter
PM Lodge Albert 448, PM Lodge Discovery 1789, Provincial Grand Secretary of Forfarshire, Hon. 54, 164, 299, 327, 486; PZ RA Chapter Albert 503, Installed Mark Master, AASR (30th), PMWS Rose Croix, ROoS, KT, KTP, OSM, RCC, RAM, CC, SRIS, Squaremen
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Dave Mavity
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Posted October 30th, 2005 02:45 PM IP
I rather like Russell's view on this. It's got a Hermetic/Kabbalistic flavor to it, and tends to follow the "as above, so below" idea.
S&F,
Dave Mavity
Academia Lodge #847 F&AM, Oakland, CA: Traditional Observance, baby.
Golden City Lodge #1 AF&AM, Golden, CO
Oakland, CA Valley A&ASR
Intra Nobis Regnum Iehova
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skiendhu
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Posted December 2nd, 2005 09:51 PM IP
If God exists, and I have no doubt that he does, when he created the universe and everything in it, what was he standing on while he was doing it.
S&F
skiendhu
Practical experience is the best teacher
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ramzev
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Posted December 8th, 2005 08:42 AM IP
Quote:
skiendhu wrote:
If God exists, and I have no doubt that he does, when he created the universe and everything in it, what was he standing on while he was doing it.
S&F
skiendhu
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Along the same lines...If G-d is all powerful, can he make a rock that he cannot move?
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Leomarth
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Posted December 8th, 2005 09:12 AM IP
I have no doubt that a God exists. That being said, I don't think we can never prove or disprove existance. I do think we can rationalize out what type of character God might, or might not, have however.
The "Traditional "proofs" of God's Existence " that Brother Taylor quoted though, I have never accepted - and here is why...
Quote:
1) The argument from Design.
If you found a clock and examined the mechanism within it, you would probably think that this intricate mechanism was not the outcome of mere chance, that it had been designed. |
The way the universe works, is disorder tends to flow into order and vice-versa. If you have twenty planets floating about, and they're not in compatible orbits - some of those planets will be destroyed by collisions with other planets. The rest will work out their own orbits and it will appear that everything in the universe was set that way so that all the planets ran smoothly. The laws of physics, we cannot prove God did or did not set them up any more than we can prove something that leaves no physical evidence did anything.
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2) The ontological argument
God is the perfect being. As He is most perfect, He must have all perfections. If God lacked existence He would not be perfect, as He is perfect he must exist. |
Logically, I reject the idea of a "perfect" God. A perfect being would have no motivations whatsoever. He would not be motivated to create, would not be motivated to act in any sort of way because he has no *needs*. Why would God need "companionship" from humans? He wouldn't. Emotionally, he would be perfect. Would God want to share his love? Why? Would God want to see "the outcome"? No. Because he, being all-knowing, would automatically know the end. Nothing would surprise him. What motivates God? Nothing. Therefore, I reject a perfect being. I believe that a God would have to have some imperfections.
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3) The cosmological argument (God as "First cause")
Everything that exists has a cause. However, there must at some time have been a cause prior to all other causes. This 'prime mover' or first cause is necessary to explain existence. This first cause is God. |
What made God? If *everything* has to have a first cause...
Quote:
Pascal's Wager
His argument goes something like this: God either exists or he does not. If we believe in God and he exists, we will be rewarded with eternal bliss in heaven. If we believe in God and he does not exist then at worst all we have forgone are a few sinful pleasures. |
This is my very favorite. What this is saying is "Accept God out of Fear." and I refuse that. If I am going to worship a being, it's going to be out of Love - not Fear.
Now - do I believe a God exists? Yes. Why? Not from any scientific belief, or philosophic belief, or logical demonstration. But because of simple faith. I choose to.
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Freemason Discussion Group :: Freemasonry :: Philosophical Discussion :: Does God Exist ? |
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