And how about a combined Marvel superhero, Easter bunny, earth mother of all things? Would such a creature by definition be the same?
I don’t ask this to mock God, but rather to mock the poor logical argument that if we conceive an all-powerful in our mind, but definition the conception must be all powerful and must therefore exist.
The smell of baking bread.
The thought expressed in another way is: The rational conclusion is there is no other course but God
Having arrived at that point, the differences and diversity in thought come into play
Until then....no.
How’s this for an argument?
“If you exist, then God must exist”.
Virtual particles on into existence out of nothing.
There is a much simpler proof that God exists.
First. one must define God. The term means many things to different people.
The simpler proof is to experience God first hand. Why read and study the manual on how to ride a bike if you never get on and ride. The Bible is the manual on how to experience God. People keep reading the manual but never go for the ride.
I’m a neuroscientist and have presented and demonstrated on the “Neuroscience of Prayer” and “The science supporting the Bible.”
First, I define God as any level of consciousness that exists above the level that I exist. My Father’s Mansion has many rooms or levels. We are stuck in the basement. Jesus is God as He is in a higher level.
I invite atheists, agnostics and freethinkers to my presentations. I have had hundreds attend and have had many wonderful comments and feedback. I have never had a negative comment.
The human soul is much like an airplane and most people are stuck never getting off the ground. They read and study the airplane, but never get in and fly. They belong to the “Flat Consciousness Society!”
The entire process of the Bible and every other religion can be explained in “frequencies of consciousness” and how to purify and raise the soul frequencies to higher levels. Scientific studies have proven this.
Perception of reality is a function of the frequency of consciousness from which you view it. I merely raise my frequency and the souls of others becomes physical to me. It’s how the mystics of all religions do what they do.
Prayer, meditation and following the guidelines set forth in the Bible are the tools to raise consciousness frequency. Sin is any obstacle to Love that exists within a person’s soul. These are physical to me. In fact, if I walk near a person and merely push the memory of the sin many feet from a person’s physical body, it often knocks them off their feet.
You folks make this way to complex. Socrates understood what I am saying. Plato did not. Many of the Greek pre Socratic philosophers understood it too. It really is simple when you go for the experience rather than the intellectual understanding.
I’ve been reading Maimonedes’ “Guide for the Perplexed”.
Taking me a long time, each section very rich in thought-provoking analysis. And his voluminous references keep sending me off on tangents to further investigate.
But all in all, an excellent apologetic exegis.
Descartes is give credit for the statement, “I think therefore I am.” That really is a dumb statement as it is very circular. If I ask him who it is that “Is doing the thinking?” his reply would be “me”, or “I am.”
My reply would be, “Who is I?”
The human physical body is merely a cocoon for the development of consciousness, like a seed pod does for a plant, until it grows to exist without the seed pod and it sheds it. When you grow spiritually, you begin to perceive directly from consciousness without your 5 physical senses.
It takes some work, but you quickly learn to know the thoughts of others and learn more in epiphanies than reading and studying. In the beginning was the word, and that word was made flesh. A word is merely a metaphor for pattern of consciousness that has meaning. That is how we were made in God’s image. We are seeds of consciousness.
Anselm's ontological argument always seemed weak to me. If I understand it, he says that because I can imagine a God who is greater than anything then he must exist because his existence in reality would be greater than in my imagination. But I can imagine a lot of things that would be greater in reality than in my mind. That doesn't mean they exist. It just doesn't add up for me.
Because they stop at Darwin and never gave any thought to where everything came from
There’s no question that we live in a highly improbable universe. There is no explanation for, among many other things, the origin of the universe, the origin of life, and the origin of human life.
The current materialistic “explanation” is that we live in one of a very large number of universes, so that - as improbable as is our existence - there were many, many chances for something very improbable to occur. The materialistic explanation is that somebody eventually will win the powerball lottery every day for ten years in a row. For a rational person, if somebody were to win the powwerball lottery every day for ten years in a row, it would prove that that lottery was fixed.
The question isn’t how improbable is the universe, it is whether the Creator of the universe is a personal God, one who loves us and who is just and merciful.
The argument against there being a loving God is the existence of evil in the world. Once you consider that there is a loving God, then you have to deal with such facts as Adolph Hitler. The answer to this is that God has given us free will. But, why such enormous evil? Why wouldn’t a loving God have some kind of test in which innocent people weren’t hurt so badly by evil people?
As Christians, while we have answers to many questions, we too have unanswered questions. Thus, in this life, we need faith and hope in addition to love. Faith in what cannot be seen, and hope in the future. In the next life, when all questions are resolved, we will only need love.
The fool has said in his heart that there is no god
20 arguments for the existence of God:
1 argument from change
2 argument from efficient causality
3 argument from time and contingency
4 argument from degrees of perfection
5 argument from design
6 kalam argument
7 argument from contingency
8 argument from the world as an interacting whole
9 argument from miracle
10 argument from consciousness
11 argument from truth
12 argument from the origin of the idea of God
13 ontological argument: Anselm’s version, modal version, possible worlds version
14 moral arguments
15 argument from conscience
16 argument from desire
17 argument from aesthetic experience
18 argument from religious experience
19 common consent argument
20 Pascal’s wager
See that is the ultimate bottom line. I am a fundamental Christian because I accept Jesus Christ as Lord of All; I have an ongoing daily relationship with God who tells me when what I am thinking about doing is wrong and who often tells me things I should do that I have not considered. Invariably when God tells me to do it, I win.
That aside, the atheist who says "well there is nothing beyond this life; the universe is explained by the big-bang theory . . . . " misses the end point. Without God, you can hypothetically explain many of the obvious temporal fact you can see and touch--at the end, it is all still encompassed in the universe.
Where is the universe located? "The stars and the heavens are testimony to the existence and power of God." The bible outright tells you the overall outright power of the Creator and is testimony as to His existence. There is simply no other explanation than God.
If He doesn’t exist, current knowledge would make us the biggest accident in the history of ... history/pre-history/forever...
His creation cries out, no, SCREAMS a creator. Not JUST Jupiter.
Ever look at a map of ocean currents? They control (in part) our weather. So complex, yet all working together for our (all living things) benefit.
I always liked the saying about evolution, that if a tornado blew through a junk yard, you wouldn’t end up with a Mercedes.
Bible summary on this:
The fool says there is no God.
Everyone knows there is a God.
Some people suppress their knowledge of God , because of sin.