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| Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - World Affairs / Debate - Does it matter if God exists? |
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Wopple Red Goomba Level: 8  Posts: 23/41 EXP: 2026 For next: 161 Since: 09-03-05 Since last post: 8 days Last activity: 8 days |
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| I had someone ask this on another forum and it always irked me that he didn't qualify the question enough, so I will. Obviously, it does matter if God exists. That is a given. The nature of the question is diffrent. It pertains to the rationalization and justification given by religous people. If we find this out, oh, then God did it this way. If we find that out, God did it that way. The most serious voices in Intelligent Design are allready saying, basically, that God was behind the scenes, pulling strings and causing all the evolution to happen, etc, and NOT that he just created them all in a miracle. Basically the nature of the question is this: If there are no miracles defining reason, if there is no proof besides faith, if everything God does is molded into a behind-the-scenes, God-caused-this-perfectly-explainable-by-science-thing-to-happen model, does it matter if he exists? Not in the afterlife, not if he is answering your prayers, but just as far as going through your life. If he never, ever, does anything that cannot be explained rationally through science, what, really, is he doing, and, does it matter? |
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Kefka Indefinitely Unbanned Level: 81 Posts: 3365/3392 EXP: 4826208 For next: 166641 Since: 03-15-04 From: Pomona, CALIFORNIA BABY! Since last post: 4 hours Last activity: 4 hours |
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| So then you need to question whether free will exists. If all of the above were facts, then no, it doesn't, so no, it wouldn't matter if it existed. However, if there is a falsehood amongst what has been stated, then... well, it still doesn't matter. Religion is going to be there anyway. Justifying our existence is something we'll never be able to do. If you can figure out a way to disprove that, then I'd really like to be there to watch it happen. | |||
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Wopple Red Goomba Level: 8 Posts: 25/41 EXP: 2026 For next: 161 Since: 09-03-05 Since last post: 8 days Last activity: 8 days |
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| Well I have yet to see anything that can't be explained, and the general trend of a miracle a day from god way back when, and jack crap now, also tends towards the "it's bs" theory. But in either event, there have been no movings and shaking from God in any visible way in recent history, so my question stands unanswered. | |||
alte Hexe Star Mario I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night Alive as you and me "But Joe you're ten years dead!" "I never died" said he "I never died!" said he Level: 99  Posts: 5293/5458 EXP: 9854489 For next: 145511 Since: 03-15-04 From: ... Since last post: 2 hours Last activity: 2 hours |
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| Give me a few more days...I've just finished reading a giant volume of St. Augustine's works. I'll tell you what's what when I'm ready. And it is all interpretive, Woppie. What constitutes providence? That's the real question. |
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Wopple Red Goomba Level: 8 Posts: 26/41 EXP: 2026 For next: 161 Since: 09-03-05 Since last post: 8 days Last activity: 8 days |
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| Exactly. Because your sister can die being hit by a car. That is certainly a physical, real possibility. however, if you interprit everthing in a religous view, it could be God's punishment, Satan, God calling her home, many many things other than her happening to be in front of a massive moving thing. So that is why I don't focus on that aspect. I focus instead on the grander, provable things that people say MUST be god. Miracles, etc. Because I think we are fast heading into a place where God does everything in a mysterious indirect way, making it so that you have NO REASOn to believe in God other than stories and faith. |
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Zer0wned Cheep-cheep Level: 17  Posts: 125/181 EXP: 21472 For next: 3271 Since: 08-16-05 From: Hermosa Beach, CA Since last post: 30 days Last activity: 30 days |
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| You should probably specify that you mean a god as opposed to the capital G God, which to my knowledge refers specifically to the christian God. Because the things you're saying don't exactly agree with the christian faith's "God", but rather an entirely new god who has theoretically done things in a very different way. As an Atheist I can only have faith that a god does not exist and of course, never has. Although I do find it perfectly as possible that a sentient being/force could have been behind the workings to create the properties of matter, and the matter itself, quite possibly in a controlled manner. Does it matter if any form of god exists? Yes...ish, but only to mankind. To us it matters as much as knowing who our father or mother is, who created us and what purpose they or another who is in command may have in store for us. Someone to praise, someone to hate, someone to go to for answers, someone of whom to ask for aid. Much like the parallel I've drawn, it matters more to some than others (not at all to some as well). But I'll continue to say until the day that I die that the concept of intelligent design and a greater being is to fufill a few primal needs. Originally posted by Wopple Quoted slightly out of context for emphasis. Point I've been trying to make since I was like 9  .(edited by Zer0wned on 09-16-05 09:42 PM) |
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Wopple Red Goomba Level: 8 Posts: 30/41 EXP: 2026 For next: 161 Since: 09-03-05 Since last post: 8 days Last activity: 8 days |
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| But that is more of what I mean. Of course there are the benefits of believing in a God, but that wasan't my question. I mean, if there is someone answering prayers, changing things, and being our shoulder to cry on in "mysterious" unprovable ways, or if they are just talking to themselves, does it really make a diffrence in their lives? Whether God is real or not dosen't seem to have an effect so long as everything keeps on making scientific sense. So, if there is a God and heaven or if we just cease to exist when we die, does it matter to us in this lifetime, so long as we believe in him? And I mean a god in general, with more emphasis on the Chrstain one. |
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Zer0wned Cheep-cheep Level: 17 Posts: 131/181 EXP: 21472 For next: 3271 Since: 08-16-05 From: Hermosa Beach, CA Since last post: 30 days Last activity: 30 days |
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| For those that rely on a god for results, the concept of god is a nuisance, for those that "draw strength" or do good deeds in that name, I'd say just the opposite. So far, however, I'd say that most gods and concepts of are nuisances when net result is considered. Right or wrong , some people need to believe (most, actually  ), some don't, so I think it's impossible to address what you're stating in a generic sense, because it relies too heavily on an individual. |
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alte Hexe Star Mario I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night Alive as you and me "But Joe you're ten years dead!" "I never died" said he "I never died!" said he Level: 99 Posts: 5311/5458 EXP: 9854489 For next: 145511 Since: 03-15-04 From: ... Since last post: 2 hours Last activity: 2 hours |
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such is the impasse of faith. It is a definitvely positive crutch for anyone's life. But, it is often misused and turned into something far worse than a nuissance...As we have seen through so many wars and genocidal campaigns.  |
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Arwon Zora Level: 35  Posts: 475/506 EXP: 278115 For next: 1821 Since: 03-15-04 From: Terra Australis Incognita Since last post: 5 hours Last activity: 10 min. |
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| It often surprises me how often religion and "science" are set up as opponents. It's pretty insane really, given how many so-called religious people accept that evolution, astrophysics, gravity, all that stuff, do actually happen. They're not exactly hard to reconcile, if you're not some psycho on a school board somewhere in Deliverance-country, or issuing fatwas out of a cave in Central Asia. So yeah, I guess we're accepting as a given that all the relevant science and stuff is a given. If so, does God matter? does he make it more beautiful or special than a random universe? From a spiritual point of view I can see the beauty in the idea that a precisely calibrated set of physical laws, a few dozen fundamental particles, could be set into motion and end up creating everything from the Milky Way to wombats to the human orgasm. I believe they call this the "clockmaker" view, with Diety-of-your-choice as the "why" and the "who" to physics and chemistry's "how". I personally think there's far more amazingness and brain-bending awe in the idea that it all just happened randomly, a confluence of chances, because as far as a Universe™ goes, the product has some serious deign flaws, not to mention numerous breaches of Occupational Health and Safety standards. At the micro level, we can see that the very foundations of the Universe™ are unstable, the flaws are, effectively, terminal. The first thing that springs to mind is that the Universe™ has inefficient energy transferrence that leads to ever-increasing entropy. This could lead to the Heat Death of the Universe, which while a great name for a band, is not exactly a sign of a stable product. This is of course assuming that there's not a Big Crunch in the works. The system is, at an atomic level, unstable. Then in the macro, you've got all the innumerable horrors of existance, which surely indicate shoddy workmanship and less than stellar commitment to quality control. You've got things like intestinal parasites, harlequin babies, asteroids and worse randomly hurtling about, and hell, the kill/eat/be eaten cruelty of nature in general, the brief blinking tragic pointlessness of any given life... An intellegent designer has a lot to answer for. But if it's all random, accidental, there's beauty in the fact that we're here at all. If things had've fallen just slightly differently, we wouldn't be. And that's something awesome to reflect on during a late night philosophical bullshit session, preferably lying in the grass with someone special looking at stars or something. |
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Edea Red Goomba Level: 8 Posts: 26/36 EXP: 1824 For next: 363 Since: 08-23-05 Since last post: 11 days Last activity: 11 days |
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| Relevance is relative. I may think something 'matters,' but someone else might not. God, if it's there, in all likelihood probably thinks what it's doing matters. It's the Spiral Staircase of Inquiry; all children know what that is and how to use it. Simply keep asking 'why' until the person being probed, religious or otherwise, says either "Because!" and that's the end of it, or "Because God said so!" which immediately leads said child to personify a god for themselves, and in turn the cycle of faith renews itself. Perhaps God doesn't matter to me, but I'll bet -everything- matters to God, if it's there, and being the reality center of existence give meaning to itself in some sort of mindcrushing paradox. So, it does matter what we think of this 'God,' but it doesn't matter whether that 'what' is a Holey Trio or a seven headed dragon, or even nothing at all. As for free will; I think we -have- it. But that's not the issue. It's not whether we have it or not, it's when we actually used it. Time, assuming that it is a well defined dimension of our reality (and it may very well not be), should be static in nature, just as location, length and width. I mean, sure, you can make something smaller or larger, or change non-dimensional characteristics, but it's still that something, it is still constrained to reality's rules. So, time in its entirety should already be set. It would seem we have free will, but...we've already exercised it. And we can't even remember doing it because our memories aren't present in that timeframe yet. This is why I think a fair number of people have this idea of the universe looping on itself, even though from current observation it seems to be 'expanding'...and yet I think, expanding into what? Maybe it's expanding into itself...and that would explain the loop I've heard about. |
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