Scientific proof that God exists?

[BADecker]

(let's assume Christian god = absolute truth, for the sake of argument)

How can an absolute lie be an absolute truth? The truth is, Emperor Constantine the Great created the Bible (ie. the christian god) as an instrument to regain control of his empire.

So, for the sake of argument, if the christian god = absolute truth, then War = Peace, Freedom = Slavery, Ignorance = Strength.

[image]

Constantine did not create the Bible. Rather, he surrounded himself with scholars who knew the Hebrew canon, and the writings of the early Christian church as well. The scholars produced the Bible by using the Hebrew canon to filter out some early church writings. Because of this, we may possibly not have all the Christian writings that could be included in the Bible. The scholars, in their zeal to keep only the true writings, might have accidentally eliminated some writings that were borderline true, yet were true.

Constantine? Who really knows what is in the heart of another? Personally, I think that he believed Christianity, but held to other beliefs as well. At different times in his life, he may have been stronger in the faith than at other times. I hope he hadn't lost faith by the end of his life.

Did he use Christianity and the church to strengthen his political position? Certainly true! But why not? What better way to make a strong government than to base it on Christianity?

The Roman Catholic Church of today is barely Christian. True, they hold to the Bible. But they claim all kinds of things spoken by the Popes as well. And who knows what else they have as their beliefs along with the Bible?

Individual Catholic churches at different places in the world may seem almost the same as Protestant churches at times. At other times they are very different than Protestant. The Papacy almost doesn't care, as long as the particular parish or diocese supports the Papacy through gifts, and by acquiesing authority to the Pope/Papacy.

[1714171966]

1714171966

[1714171966]

1714171966

[1714171966]

1714171966

[Snail2]

This morning I've got an evidence of the existence of God from Cisco TAC. After a controlled power outage, one of our ASAs was unable to startup because of a flash error. When we asked for a replacement unit according to our support agreement, Cisco support said they will not replace the unit as this error was Act of God.
So God actually exist, he looks like a Indian bloke in his late thirties, his name is Mr Singh, living in England and working as an electrician. I've seen him with my own eyes (and I wasn't intoxicated) and still here. Good start for this week .

BTW God likes spicy hot somosas. This is something good to know is you have to negotiate something with him:).

I think you guys can close this topic now. Cisco TAC used to be right.

[BADecker]

This morning I've got an evidence of the existence of God from Cisco TAC. After a controlled power outage, one of our ASAs was unable to startup because of a flash error. When we asked for a replacement unit according to our support agreement, Cisco support said they will not replace the unit as this error was Act of God.
So God actually exist, he looks like a Indian bloke in his late thirties, his name is Mr Singh, living in England and working as an electrician. I've seen him with my own eyes (and I wasn't intoxicated) and still here. Good start for this week .

BTW God likes spicy hot somosas. This is something good to know is you have to negotiate something with him:).

I think you guys can close this topic now. Cisco TAC used to be right.

LOL !

That's a good one. God exists. You can tell by all the insurance companies, etc., that have "... an Act of God ..." listed in their contracts.

All these insurance companies can't be wrong, can they?

 

[the joint]

(let's assume Christian god = absolute truth, for the sake of argument)

How can an absolute lie be an absolute truth? The truth is, Emperor Constantine the Great created the Bible (ie. the christian god) as an instrument to regain control of his empire.

So, for the sake of argument, if the christian god = absolute truth, then War = Peace, Freedom = Slavery, Ignorance = Strength.

Please reread the post.

I'm invoking the assumption because the posters who I am referencing are speaking from that assumption.

Let me guess, you're an atheist and you saw that statement in my post and didn't care to read the rest of the post for context, right?   If you had, you'd see the very point of my post was to illustrate that at least one, and possibly all, posters here have faulty presumptions of what absolute truth is, and therefore they cannot all be correct.

[BADecker]

Premise 1:  There must be only one absolute truth which provides reason for -- i.e. it explains -- everything (tautological).

Yes, but. When you consider the size of the universe (assuming that existence is more than a mere mental aberration of some kind), and that the whole thing from max to min fits together and works quite well, and that it all works by cause and effect, who is there that might have any clue as to what the REAL truth is?

Premise 2:  There must be only one absolutely correct reason/explanation of that truth (axiom, i.e. absolute truth = absolute truth).

Usually explanations of things, if comprehensive, tend to be larger than the things themselves. This makes the truth to be its own explanation.

Premise 3:  There are two or more people in this post who state belief in the Christian god (let's assume Christian god = absolute truth, for the sake of argument), but for different reasons/explanations.

Do you mean your post here? Or did you mean "thread" but only said "post?"

Conclusion 1:  Therefore, the reasons/explanations provided by at least one (possibly all) of these posters is incorrect.

All. But even if it were correct, it would be incomplete.

Conclusion 2:  Therefore, at least one (possibly all) of these posters believes in something that is not absolute truth/Christian god.

Was Jesus blonde, brunette, or redhead? When the Holy Spirit talks to the heart of a person and works salvation in him, the color of Jesus' hair doesn't matter, and probably isn't revealed. The Revelation in the Bible says that His hair is "white like wool." Yet, it may not have been that color when He walked the earth.

Salvation of certain people among the masses of mankind is a thing worked by the TRUTH, not a thing worked by mankind's knowing of the whole TRUTH, which is impossible... at least in this life.

[bl4kjaguar]

Any application of truth, fraud, invalidity, etc., that you apply to the Bible can be applied just as easy to whatever you are talking about. Proof of falseness? Same KIND of proof that you would use.

Prove that the things that are written by your sources are not written by people. However, if an AI wrote them, the AI was originally programmed by people. Or, prove that this is not so.

It cannot be proven that any given Scripture is divinely inspired.

It can only be assumed from a preponderance of the evidence and by providing an answer to the content-source problem that a certain book is inspired.

Check out these links from early in the thread:

http://www.rivier.edu/faculty/pcunningham/Publications/CunninghamJP_Fall-2012-Vol-76-(2)-295-319.pdf
http://www.rivier.edu/faculty/pcunningham/Research/Problem_of_Seths_Origin.pdf

[bl4kjaguar]

Read that post and argue against it...

Where in that post did you even once mention plant evolution or human evolution? And what about the AECES Top 40?

It is very convenient to ignore certain information.

[Coincoin256]

Checkmate atheists. Take off your fedoras in defeat.

[bl4kjaguar]

A domesticated animal is still operating within evolution, be it a domesticated cat or ape (human).

That does not help to explain the gaps. Such an explanation ("evolution did it") fails to address the anomalies with a plausible explanation. Pye's article has some anomalies, and here are some more; a challenge for you:

http://www.us.net/life/

[bl4kjaguar]

Any proof of that, BADecker? Proof that the Bible is the WORD?

When will you expose my truth as a fraud or a joke?

I have already told you that the Bible has nothing to do with God; it was written by men.

Stop condemning your brother for no reason, BADecker.

You only condemn me because you obsess over your book and you do not know any better.

God will forgive ignorance, but you must stop attacking your brother.

I will respond to your points 1-8:
1. For a number of reasons, the Bible's message is not as clear as God's WORD.
2. The Bible does not tell us how to create manna, and it does not tell us which foods are particularly good for humans, unlike God's WORD.
3. God's WORD is spoken by God and recorded by God's scribe. Bible is written and re-written by men.
4. As you read in "Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered", not only did the Qumrun community have a metallurgical foundry in the center of the city, you also find out that the Teacher of Righteousness, this thing that they were totally preoccupied with, wasn't Moses or Christ. It says the high priest SWALLOWED the Teacher of Righteousness. How can the Bible or its adherents explain what is going on here when they do not even know what manna is? Are the Scrolls really pointing to a static teaching preserved through the ages as you allege? Hard to know without explaining the above.
5. Traditions are often corrupted. Are you going to do your own thinking or listen to the "traditional authorities"? Someone has spiritual authority over YOU?
6. Essentially the same argument is used to explain the historical existence of Krishna. By your logic, Krishna was real and the Bhagavad Gita is accurate. Krishna- History or Myth
7. The fact that there are so many discrepancies between ancient texts (more discrepancies than words in the NT in fact) shows that the text is subject to change.
8. How exactly will you find the whole truth in mainstream books like the Bible? Most of that book is written by a Pharisee. Don't forget that SATAN is ruler of this world, and obviously his message has spread far and wide.

[(oYo)]

(let's assume Christian god = absolute truth, for the sake of argument)

How can an absolute lie be an absolute truth? The truth is, Emperor Constantine the Great created the Bible (ie. the christian god) as an instrument to regain control of his empire.

So, for the sake of argument, if the christian god = absolute truth, then War = Peace, Freedom = Slavery, Ignorance = Strength.

<image snipped>

Please reread the post.

I'm invoking the assumption because the posters who I am referencing are speaking from that assumption.

Let me guess, you're an atheist and you saw that statement in my post and didn't care to read the rest of the post for context, right?   If you had, you'd see the very point of my post was to illustrate that at least one, and possibly all, posters here have faulty presumptions of what absolute truth is, and therefore they cannot all be correct.

No, I read your whole post and understood what was in parentheses as being a statement independent of context, since in one of your conclusions you again stated absolute truth as being synonymous with christian god.

Conclusion 2:  Therefore, at least one (possibly all) of these posters believes in something that is not absolute truth/Christian god.

BTW, I am not an atheist, but an anti-theist. Basically, I hope there is no omnipotent god, because if there really is one I believe it to be a malevolent asshole.

@BADecker, Just to clarify, I know Constantine didn't create the bible with his own hands, but by his will.

[darkota]

Any application of truth, fraud, invalidity, etc., that you apply to the Bible can be applied just as easy to whatever you are talking about. Proof of falseness? Same KIND of proof that you would use.

Prove that the things that are written by your sources are not written by people. However, if an AI wrote them, the AI was originally programmed by people. Or, prove that this is not so.

It cannot be proven that any given Scripture is divinely inspired. Mankind always has a choice.

It can only be assumed from a preponderance of the evidence and by providing an answer to the content-source problem that a certain book is inspired.

Check out these links from early in the thread:

http://www.rivier.edu/faculty/pcunningham/Publications/CunninghamJP_Fall-2012-Vol-76-(2)-295-319.pdf
http://www.rivier.edu/faculty/pcunningham/Research/Problem_of_Seths_Origin.pdf

The problem with all your logic, is that Humans do not always have a choice on the things the bible talks about. Some people are born with the attraction to the same sex, do they have a choice? No. Some people are born with all sorts of diseases and deformities, do they have a choice? There are even people born without the ability to feel empathy, do they have a choice? No, and etc. It's all neurological, and has nothing to do with "god". If you didn't know, chemicals throughout your body and brain determine how happy, depressed, anxious, you are and etc. Take out the chemical Oxycontin from your brain for example, and you'll enter into a depressed state since that chemical is responsible for feelings of happiness and love.

This whole concept of "choice" is limited only to our day to day actions, if your god really existed, then we should all be entirely equal, so our journey to the choice of (right) or (wrong) would be fair. How can you expect someone born with a large, unfair, disadvantage like a inherited disorder, disease, deformity, hugely negative environmental situations, to possibly have as equal a choice as someone who was born with all their needs and wants met?

As I type, there are high hundred of millions to billions of people around this earth who are poverty stricken, diseased; millions of women and children held captive in the sex slave industry, millions of abused wives and women raped, a plethora of murders and hate crimes, and much much more, and then there are the few that have all they could ever want and more... Are you happy with the work of your god?

Please...while it's as they say, impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God, I'd say the arrow is leaning heavily on the, " God does not exist" side.

[bl4kjaguar]

This whole concept of "choice" is limited only to our day to day actions

Your choices are limited by your identity.

A negative or weak individuality commonly gets only what others decide to give,
but a firm, strong, positive, well-developed individuality, in reality
controls the ship of their life and destiny,
and eventually will gain possession of what they want.

This discussion of mine with BADecker is about the content-source problem.

My point is that it is far too easy to ignore inspired writings
and to fail to think critically about them
by choice.

[bl4kjaguar]

How can you expect

God is not known to meet human expectations.

God is profoundly mysterious.

Many refuse to accept while they wait and wait and wait for the truth THEY EXPECT!

[BADecker]

Any proof of that, BADecker? Proof that the Bible is the WORD?

When will you expose my truth as a fraud or a joke?

I have already told you that the Bible has nothing to do with God; it was written by men.

Stop condemning your brother for no reason, BADecker.

You only condemn me because you obsess over your book and you do not know any better.

God will forgive ignorance, but you must stop attacking your brother.

I will respond to your points 1-8:
1. For a number of reasons, the Bible's message is not as clear as God's WORD.
2. The Bible does not tell us how to create manna, and it does not tell us which foods are particularly good for humans, unlike God's WORD.
3. God's WORD is spoken by God and recorded by God's scribe. Bible is written and re-written by men.
4. As you read in "Dead Sea Scrolls Uncovered", not only did the Qumrun community have a metallurgical foundry in the center of the city, you also find out that the Teacher of Righteousness, this thing that they were totally preoccupied with, wasn't Moses or Christ. It says the high priest SWALLOWED the Teacher of Righteousness. How can the Bible or its adherents explain what is going on here when they do not even know what manna is? Are the Scrolls really pointing to a static teaching preserved through the ages as you allege? Hard to know without explaining the above.
5. Traditions are often corrupted. Are you going to do your own thinking or listen to the "traditional authorities"? Someone has spiritual authority over YOU?
6. Essentially the same argument is used to explain the historical existence of Krishna. By your logic, Krishna was real and the Bhagavad Gita is accurate. Krishna- History or Myth
7. The fact that there are so many discrepancies between ancient texts (more discrepancies than words in the NT in fact) shows that the text is subject to change.
8. How exactly will you find the whole truth in mainstream books like the Bible? Most of that book is written by a Pharisee. Don't forget that SATAN is ruler of this world, and obviously his message has spread far and wide.

We have only words in our debate here. For example, none of us proves the formula for making manna or even suggests it.

When you examine the content from every angle, of both the teachings you prescribe and the teachings of the Bible, you find that Bible teachings outweigh the teachings of everything else. The weight of Bible teaching is in the direction of salvation of souls, not the formula for the "bread" called manna.

[bl4kjaguar]

For example, none of us proves the formula for making manna or even suggests it.

God's WORD suggested it, more info on ORMEs ("manna") in there...

We are only exchanging words because you are not motivated to read the WORD. As a result, I have to tell you every way in which God's WORD is superior.

When you examine the content from every angle, of both the teachings you prescribe and the teachings of the Bible, you find that Bible teachings outweigh the teachings of everything else. The weight of Bible teaching is in the direction of salvation of souls, not the formula for the "bread" called manna.

When I examined the content from every angle you proposed (8 points/directions), I found that God's WORD is superior to your Bible in every case.

There is no proper understanding or explanation of souls and rebirth in the Bible. You allege that the message is salvation of souls, but that message is much more clear and literal in God's WORD if anything!

Even though the Bible is filled with references to reincarnation.

[BADecker]

Any application of truth, fraud, invalidity, etc., that you apply to the Bible can be applied just as easy to whatever you are talking about. Proof of falseness? Same KIND of proof that you would use.

Prove that the things that are written by your sources are not written by people. However, if an AI wrote them, the AI was originally programmed by people. Or, prove that this is not so.

It cannot be proven that any given Scripture is divinely inspired. Mankind always has a choice.

It can only be assumed from a preponderance of the evidence and by providing an answer to the content-source problem that a certain book is inspired.

Check out these links from early in the thread:

http://www.rivier.edu/faculty/pcunningham/Publications/CunninghamJP_Fall-2012-Vol-76-(2)-295-319.pdf
http://www.rivier.edu/faculty/pcunningham/Research/Problem_of_Seths_Origin.pdf

The problem with all your logic, is that Humans do not always have a choice on the things the bible talks about. Some people are born with the attraction to the same sex, do they have a choice? No. Some people are born with all sorts of diseases and deformities, do they have a choice? There are even people born without the ability to feel empathy, do they have a choice? No, and etc. It's all neurological, and has nothing to do with "god". If you didn't know, chemicals throughout your body and brain determine how happy, depressed, anxious, you are and etc. Take out the chemical Oxycontin from your brain for example, and you'll enter into a depressed state since that chemical is responsible for feelings of happiness and love.

This whole concept of "choice" is limited only to our day to day actions, if your god really existed, then we should all be entirely equal, so our journey to the choice of (right) or (wrong) would be fair. How can you expect someone born with a large, unfair, disadvantage like a inherited disorder, disease, deformity, hugely negative environmental situations, to possibly have as equal a choice as someone who was born with all their needs and wants met?

As I type, there are high hundred of millions to billions of people around this earth who are poverty stricken, diseased; millions of women and children held captive in the sex slave industry, millions of abused wives and women raped, a plethora of murders and hate crimes, and much much more, and then there are the few that have all they could ever want and more... Are you happy with the work of your god?

Please...while it's as they say, impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God, I'd say the arrow is leaning heavily on the, " God does not exist" side.

Blakjag is right when he talks about Satan being in control of the world. Satan is not God. He is extremely less powerful than God. But he is way more powerful than people in some ways. People fell to him in the Garden, and are subject to him in many ways right now.

The reason God doesn't simply wipe out Satan the same way that you see people slaughter aliens in movies is this. God placed within people an essence of Himself. Properly used, that essence would have been stronger than Satan in the Garden, if the people had used it properly. Instead, they voluntarily listened to Satan rather than to God, and fell into Satan's dominion.

God could destroy Satan faster than lightening if He wanted to. But because of the nature of what Satan is and how he has imbedded himself inside of people, God would have to take down people at the same time. God doesn't want to do this. That isn't what God created people for... their destruction. The way that God is doing it is saving some of the people. Some of them, like Blakjag, don't want to be saved.

What are people? The Bible explains what people who are on His side are. They are the children of God. Come and be one of the children of God in the only way that is available. We die because that is the only way to uproot Satan out of our lives. God will raise us again, to life without even the slightest hint or shadow of Satan. God raised us to life the first time. He can do it again.

Remember one thing in this thread talk. No explanation will ever be enough. If it were sufficiently large to cover all the bases, there would be no way for understanding it. The Bible offers enough to be saved, and to live a right life as much as possible at the same time. Even if the Blakjag writings were on the up and up, rather than simply a method for making money or pushing some people to fame so Blakjag can be lifted up as well, their explanation of things would simply drag people down with lots of words, rather than building them up to life everlasting the only way it can be done, through the Word of God as expressed in the Bible.

[Cortex7]

A domesticated animal is still operating within evolution, be it a domesticated cat or ape (human).

That does not help to explain the gaps. Such an explanation ("evolution did it") fails to address the anomalies with a plausible explanation. Pye's article has some anomalies, and here are some more; a challenge for you:

http://www.us.net/life/

Almost all arguments against evolution are "but the gaps".

There needn't be gaps.

People find it very hard to understand that a seemingly clever design can have happened without prior plans or blueprints, but they do!

How did molecular evolution generate metabolic recipe and instructions using a representational symbol system?

The concept of the metabolic recipe was not forethought and engineered, it was not designed.

The working recipe emerged through evolution. Many many non working recipes were tried and failed.

Evolution only favors a surviving replicator (obviously).

The complexity of life emerges.

What programmed the error-detection and error-correcting software that keeps life from quickly deteriorating into non-life?

The self correcting mechanisms within a genome were not programmed, they themselves emerged trhough an evolutionary process. The simplest start down this path probably happened by a genome having informational redundancy possibly having multiple copies of the same information and then choosing best of (have 3 copies choose 2 if 1 is different), the life that could do this more efficiently (by consuming less energy) would be favored survivors/reproducers. And so there is a driving force to make the correction mechanism more elegant (use less energy).

Error correction mechanisms were themselves mutated, most failed miserably, the best replicated onward.

Evolutionary drive for self correction mechanisms will be highest during times of turmoil, for example times when earth had alot of incident ionizing radiation for one reason or another.

I am sure of my answer here because I have myself used synthetic genetic algorithms to optimize various lossless audio compression codecs. I have witnessed complexity beyond which I entered as the programmer. This complexity emerges and will not be understood by the programmer.

I have also used evolutionary genetic algos to optimize parameters on very complex systems (neural net topology and weight setting), to brute force tune such systems would take far too long (years), but the evolutionary algo performs multidimensional gradient descent to good solutions very quickly.

I cannot stress enough how amazed I was to see such complexity and order arise from VERY simple operators.

These operators are: Crossover and Mutation.

These operators happen naturally in any self replicating chemistry.

I recommend learning a little about the subject you seem so keen to dismiss:

http://www.obitko.com/tutorials/genetic-algorithms/crossover-mutation.php

NOTE: The above page uses far clearer and simpler language than the text you linked, which reads like it's written by a dunce with a scientific thesaurus.

EDIT:
Incidentally, Self correcting codes, when you visualize the information flow topology, have very simple repeating patterns.

These codes also appear to be in the very quantum fabric of spacetime itself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1LCVknKUJ4&feature=player_embedded#!
To me that's more interesting than them existing in life (which is kind of to be expected).

[bl4kjaguar]

No explanation will ever be enough.

Then shut up and listen.

We don't NEED your stinkin' explanations, OK?

[Slark]

No explanation will ever be enough.

Then shut up and listen.

We don't NEED your stinkin' explanations, OK?

That is exactly why I have problem with hardcore believers. They do not have any proof beside: 'I say so' and they tend to be aggressive. Just be civil, please.