How to PROVE GOD EXISTS?

[Kevin Solway]

Xeno's paradox is nonsense

Yes, that's the point of them.

[Kevin Solway]

Do not confuse the existence of an immortal soul with the existence of God.

We haven't been talking about an immortal soul that I can remember.

And we haven't been talking about the real God, but about a possible conscious creator being who many people call God.

[brokenhead]

Kevin wrote:

Since you won't define exactly what you mean by "life" (other than "can be killed") then anything you say about life doesn't really mean anything.

Can you define it? It's sweeping statements like the one above that show the holes in your thinking. Your argument is particularly chain-like, and there are more than a few weak links. Life doesn't have to be defined in order to exist, Kevin! Do you honestly believe that anything must be defined or else it does not exist?

It is certainly not an intellectually satisfying one.

Truth is not satisfying?
These are not arguments.

Truth is eminently satisfying, which is why I'm trying to get you to see it. Again, if you do not consider what I'm saying to be arguments, fine. I am being perfectly rational, however.

You haven't pointed out any weaknesses so far.

Of course, you mean none that you will ackowledge.

You are trying to prove the possibility of such a God, and I am demonstrating that you wrong to attempt to do so, because there is no possibility - other than the possibility of an alien creator being (possibly evil) who must themselves have been created.

Okay, that possibility is closer to how I understand what really happened. The "possibly evil" part you threw in is telling: it shows a personal antipathy toward God not warranted even by the rest of your own arguments. You can only begrudgingly concede this possibility by adding that caveat.

You are only adding this possibilty because logically you have to. But I take it you will maintain that this "alien being" itself spontaneously rose out of some primordial muck or that its own creator did.

Your denial of life as a unique quality not reducible to purely physical or biochemical activity is the weak point of your weltanschauung.

Walking on water? Parting the red sea? It's not that I believe they are magic, but that I don't believe they ever happened.

FWIW, I don't believe either of these "episodes" happened,either. As I tell my Jehovah's Witnesses friends, the first rainbow didn't show up after the Flood. There was no pan-global flood, and you can see a rainbow from a hose when you are washing your car. Surely, the Lord didn't intend to imbue clean wheels with metaphysical significance.

Yet I don't deny any miracles associated with Jesus ever transpired. And I rather look for them in my own life, which if you have ever experienced a synchronicity, you would know what I am speaking of.

Personally, I find the Roman Catholic Church to be reprehensible in its violent, hypocritical history. But making the step to deny God exists is an unbelievable act of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It is intellectually dishonest. IMHO, that is.

My own belief is that Jesus is in fact a Creator Son of the Infinite Source, one of millions, created by the Infinite Source to in turn create local Universes - galaxies? - and populate them with all life, including Human, as well as a vast multitude of non- and semi-material beings which will oversee Human evolution.

Kevin, I can see it now. A lifetime spent debunking what you see as inellectual fallacies held by the rest of us poor slobs, including that grandest one of all, the notion of a God. Then, on your deathbed, that white light is going to open up in front of you, and you are going to pause and say quietly, "Never mind..."

[brokenhead]

brokenhead and Kevin:

Do not confuse the existence of an immortal soul with the existence of God. One has no bearing upon the other, unless you consider textual evidence to be evidence, which you cannot, because the burden of proof is on those who declare something positively, rather than those who deny.

Both of you seem to muddy the waters on a regular basis in this thread, and I suggest that you clear them before proceeding.

Thanks for clarifying everything.

That first sentence is solipsism to the extreme. The self, only and forever. An immortal soul sans a Creator is a leap of faith even gullible old brokenhead cannot make.

[Kevin Solway]

Kevin wrote:

Since you won't define exactly what you mean by "life" (other than "can be killed") then anything you say about life doesn't really mean anything.

Can you define it?

Defining "life" is like defining the colour "blue". Sometimes we see something and we say "that is blue", but other times we're not sure whether something is blue, or whether it is more black than blue, or more green than blue, because the boundaries don't obviously present themselves.

Life doesn't have to be defined in order to exist

It does have to be defined if you are going to conceive of it and talk about it.

You are trying to prove the possibility of such a God, and I am demonstrating that you wrong to attempt to do so, because there is no possibility - other than the possibility of an alien creator being (possibly evil) who must themselves have been created.

The "possibly evil" part you threw in is telling: it shows a personal antipathy toward God

That's not true. I'm simply observing that if a particular alien creator being, or more likely a group of them, had something to do with our creation, those aliens may be evil. We have no evidence one way or the other.

I take it you will maintain that this "alien being" itself spontaneously rose out of some primordial muck or that its own creator did.

Each being must be caused somehow, whether it be by a conscious creator being or by evolution from non-living material.

Your denial of life as a unique quality

There is something we call "life", but it is no more "unique" than the colour blue is.

[brokenhead]

There is something we call "life", but it is no more "unique" than the colour blue is.

You cannot be serious. Something can be blue, and another thing can sort of blue. But you can't say an object is "sort of alive." It's either living thing or it is not a living thing. Even the word death implies life: a rock is not dead because it was never alive.

[Kevin Solway]

There is something we call "life", but it is no more "unique" than the colour blue is.

You cannot be serious. Something can be blue, and another thing can sort of blue. But you can't say an object is "sort of alive."

As I've demonstrated by the links I posted, it is not clear whether a virus is living or non-living. When we say that we "kill" a virus, it's only a figure of speech.

[brokenhead]

As I've demonstrated by the links I posted, it is not clear whether a virus is living or non-living.

It it not clear to you. Scientists who work with viruses had better have a firm grasp on what is alive and what is not.
Killing a virus is a technique used in making vaccines, is it not?
You keep talking about viruses. Why?

[Kevin Solway]

As I've demonstrated by the links I posted, it is not clear whether a virus is living or non-living.

It it not clear to you. Scientists who work with viruses had better have a firm grasp on what is alive and what is not.

No, it doesn't make any difference to the science precisely where the line between "life" and "non-life" is drawn.

You keep talking about viruses. Why?

Because they demonstrate how the boundary of "life" is something made up.

[brokenhead]

Because they demonstrate how the boundary of "life" is something made up.

Made up by whom?
Are you saying life is an illusion?

[Jamesh]

Because they demonstrate how the boundary of "life" is something made up.

Depends if one accepts fuzzy boundaries or not - that is a partial boundary that becomes more and more defined by the degree of observable differentiation. Fuzzy boundaries are a significant aspect of reality. All concepts are "made up from observations" so the concept of life is no different from all other concepts in that regard.

Life is the degree that a thing is caused by the "normal centrally calculated and controlled actions" of the thing, to take in from outside to create and sustain electrical flows throughout the parts of the thing.

Thus the boundary between life and not life can be fuzzy. A virus that is active can readily be referred to as life, while the same virus as a dormant entity - due say to a lack of suitable external supplies, like water - where no computerlike-controlled electricity/electomagnetism is flowing through the virus would not be called life.

Though a magnet or an atmosphere may have electrical flows, such flows are not "calculated and controlled" and as such a rock cannot be called life. A computer also is not life, because although it does have central calculation and control of flows of electricity, it itself does not create and sustain the electricity that flows through it parts.

[Laird]

There's no alternative to beginninglessness, so you're stuck with it.

That's funny, because I know that you're already aware of the Big Bang theory.

Look, I find problems with both beginninglessness and with the idea that time had a beginning. In my opinion it's unlikely that we'll find a model that explains things satisfactorily, but there's always hope. In the meantime I'll posit that perhaps reality just doesn't conform to our ideas of natural logic.

"The infinite past" is not a point in the past, so it is not relevant to the discussion.

But it is relevant, because it's part of the past and must have already occurred - the marker of time must have been there.

Kevin: This is the same as the sophistic argument about the ball which, when you throw it at a wall, can never reach the wall, because it has to traverse an infinite number of finite distances before it reaches the wall - which it can never do.

Laird: And as I explained a while ago in my rebuttal in that other thread, each of the infinite number of distances that the ball must travel before it reaches the wall is not in fact finite, but is infinitesimally small.

Kevin: In the example where each step towards the wall is half the remaining distance, each step is a non-zero, finite distance. So the problem is essentially the same.

I've already rebutted that argument, when I wrote that "time doesn't flow in half-by-half-by-half increments, constantly diminishing its rate of flow: rather it flows at a constant rate (ignoring any subtleties of relativity theory with which I'm not all that well acquainted). Again your model is flawed." You seem to be fond of reasserting ideas that have problems.

Laird: In contrast, I am not splitting up the infinity of your beginningless past into any artificial set of distances, I am simply remarking that one cannot ever reach the beginning, which you already agree with (see your first quoted comment above).

Kevin: David correctly remarked that the infinite past is not something you "reach", and nor is the present something you "reach". The concept of "reaching" involves artificially splitting the infinite up into segments.

From yesterday we reach today. Of course time "reaches", even if you want to view it only poetically.

[Kevin Solway]

Because they demonstrate how the boundary of "life" is something made up.

Made up by whom?

Whoever makes up a boundary.

Are you saying life is an illusion?

The boundaries are made up, so you can decide for yourself whether to define the resulting thing as an illusion.

[clyde]

In the meantime I'll posit that perhaps reality just doesn't conform to our ideas of natural logic.

Perhaps? See "Beauty and truth in physics", a talk by Murray Gell-Mann, who said,

You don’t need something more in order to get something more.

see: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/194

[Kevin Solway]

In my opinion it's unlikely that we'll find a model that explains things satisfactorily

I'm not interested in models - that's a matter for science.

In the meantime I'll posit that perhaps reality just doesn't conform to our ideas of natural logic.

It does conform to logic, regardless of what your "natural logic" is. You are probably talking about a system of logic.

"The infinite past" is not a point in the past, so it is not relevant to the discussion.

But it is relevant, because it's part of the past

What is? You aren't talking about a point in the past, so what are you talking about?

"time doesn't flow in half-by-half-by-half increments, constantly diminishing its rate of flow

It doesn't matter what size the increments are, the point is that there are an infinite number of them, which can never be traversed.

Laird: In contrast, I am not splitting up the infinity of your beginningless past into any artificial set of distances

Yes you are. If you think that you haven't "reached" the infinite, then you are splitting it up into increments. For example, you are splitting it up into a distance you have been and how much further you have to go. There are an infinite number of such increments, as in the example of throwing the ball at the wall.

David correctly remarked that the infinite past is not something you "reach", and nor is the present something you "reach". The concept of "reaching" involves artificially splitting the infinite up into segments.

From yesterday we reach today. Of course time "reaches", even if you want to view it only poetically.

Yes, but you can't think of "reaching" the infinite, for the reason explained above. It is a nonsensical concept with regard to the infinite.

It's a bit like finding fault with the colour blue because you can't live inside it. The two concepts have nothing to do with each other.

[brokenhead]

Laird wrote:

Look, I find problems with both beginninglessness and with the idea that time had a beginning. In my opinion it's unlikely that we'll find a model that explains things satisfactorily, but there's always hope.

Physicists posit the Big Bang theory to satisfy Einstein's equations of General Relativity. There are other solutions as well.
In A Brief History of Time, Hawking wrote that asking what preceeded the Big Bang is like asking what lies ten feet north of the North Pole.

[brokenhead]

All right, Kevin, then what is love? And don't say it is an emotion which evolved to keep bands of primates together in order to better further their species.
Why do living things seek to reproduce at all? Why does the complex of molecules we "merely label" as living need to make other molecules so complex as well? How do you account for the Life Force, the imperative to survive and reproduce?

[Kevin Solway]

All right, Kevin, then what is love? And don't say it is an emotion which evolved to keep bands of primates together in order to better further their species.

It is a chemical reward which encourages a certain kind of behaviour.

Why do living things seek to reproduce at all?

They are programmed to do so, in the same way as your keyboard seeks to send a certain character to the computer when you hit a key on it.

Why does the complex of molecules we "merely label" as living need to make other molecules so complex as well?

Why does your keyboard need to send a character to your computer when you hit a key?

They don't "need" to, but they do because they are programmed to do so.

How do you account for the Life Force, the imperative to survive and reproduce?

Those things which are driven to reproduce will be likely to reproduce. Just as those keyboards which can successfully send characters to the computer will be more likely to not be thrown away or go out of production.

[brokenhead]

They are programmed to do so, in the same way as your keyboard seeks to send a certain character to the computer when you hit a key on it.

Yes, but programmed by whom, Kevin?
My computer did not program itself.
(Am I saying that Bill Gates is like....? Ew!)

[brokenhead]

Truth, Courage, Honesty

Sound familiar? All reducible to biochemical reactions?

[Kevin Solway]

They are programmed to do so, in the same way as your keyboard seeks to send a certain character to the computer when you hit a key on it.

Yes, but programmed by whom, Kevin?

Programmed by their causes - their past.

Truth, Courage, Honesty

Sound familiar? All reducible to biochemical reactions?

All reducable to causes, yes.

[brokenhead]

All reducable to causes, yes.

So, cause and effect is what it boils down to. Reduces to.
Everything in your philosophy implies time, not just time but linear time.
So you reject the Big Bang theory because the BB itself has no cause?

[Kevin Solway]

All reducable to causes, yes.

So, cause and effect is what it boils down to. Reduces to.
Everything in your philosophy implies time, not just time but linear time.
So you reject the Big Bang theory because the BB itself has no cause?

The Big Bang theory has meaning within the context for which it was designed.

There are other theories which encompass the Big Bang theory and have countless big bangs happening, each creating their own "universe".

[Sapius]

There is something we call "life", but it is no more "unique" than the colour blue is.

You cannot be serious. Something can be blue, and another thing can sort of blue. But you can't say an object is "sort of alive."

As I've demonstrated by the links I posted, it is not clear whether a virus is living or non-living. When we say that we "kill" a virus, it's only a figure of speech.

In other words, I guess one cannot actually trust definitions.

[brokenhead]

Kevin Solway wrote:

When we say that we "kill" a virus, it's only a figure of speech.

brokenhead writes:
When a murderer says he has killed your child, it would then have to be only a figure of speech as well.

Kevin Solway will write:
Yes, a figure of speech that may get him the death penalty.

How am I doing?