Does God exist?

[Chiki]

the rules only require faith, there are no levels to it.

@ olwen, first post: when i was a child, i reasoned that earth simply doesn't matter to god. nowhere in the universe does. if god cared, people wouldn't die in unfair ways. people wouldn't be born in unfair circumstances. moral beings don't have to act morally for things they don't care about. (if you've ever stepped on an ant, did you feel bad, good, or nothing at all?)

if god's real, and life is just a test, my test is a lot easier than most peoples' on the planet. why make my test easier?

there's a lot of reasons why committing myself to a god is inexcusable.

If we want to be ethical though, if ants have the contribute the slightest bit of overall happiness to the world, then we as humans should do our best not to kill them. We may be like ants to God, but that in itself is unethical.

[Klokinator]

End of topic please.

No, because theists always try to push for more and more god in the government, and even use lies to manipulate facts. For example, claiming the USA was founded as a Christian Nation, and that the founding fathers were Christian, therefore we should change the laws to make the nation more Christian.

In fact, it's the opposite. The USA (And I'm only speaking about the USA, not anybody else) was founded on the presumption of church and state being separate. Yet now, hundreds of years later, churches have special tax exemptions, and they push to control government more and more. This should not be happening. Atheism is all about letting people live as they want to live, Christianity and many other religions are about continually gaining more and more power over their other cousins in religion.

Edited June 22, 2015 by Klokinator

[eclipse]

No, because theists always try to push for more and more god in the government, and even use lies to manipulate facts. For example, claiming the USA was founded as a Christian Nation, and that the founding fathers were Christian, therefore we should change the laws to make the nation more Christian.

I, for one, haven't heard this argument anywhere in my local government. I'm positive it isn't because Hawaii's some bastion of progressive paradise (since getting the general populace to vote for something that's not "Democrat" takes a miracle).

In fact, it's the opposite. The USA (And I'm only speaking about the USA, not anybody else) was founded on the presumption of church and state being separate. Yet now, hundreds of years later, churches have special tax exemptions, and they push to control government more and more. This should not be happening. Atheism is all about letting people live as they want to live, Christianity and many other religions are about continually gaining more and more power over their other cousins in religion.

EVERY "religion" has a tax exemption. I put religion in quotes because there's certain ones that I feel do it for monetary reasons, rather than the faith. Said tax breaks are also given to non-profits, IIRC.

In other words, feel free to have a beef with religion, but don't spin it so hard.

---

I think the question of whether or not God exists should be an individual's choice to make. I have my faith for reasons that are purely my own, and I don't want anyone else to follow it simply because I said so. It's also why I never say WHY I'm Christian.

[Chiki]

Replying to Snowy's post in another thread here:

Wow... Just... Wow... That is so ungodly stupid I think even people who rabidly hate the notion of God would have to dismiss this as an argument. You may as well claim that George Washington does not exist because, alongside the painting of him crossing the Delaware, there is a painting of fairies making out as well.

But let me cut right to the core of this problem. No one believes Spiderman exists. Why? Everyone who reads Spiderman comes in knowing it's fiction. That's why the whole series even exists. It's fiction. Out and out. Not only that but there are actively multiple story plot-lines running through several different issues along with a multitude of other stories focusing on other heroes at the same time (Go Squirrel Girl!). That's not to mention the whole religious mishmosh that is the Marvel theological canon and how some people try to use it to get overly preachy and even possibly deny what is already written in the canon. I.E. claiming that there are no gods when actively poking Thor or telling Dr. Strange that magic isn't real.

By comparison the Bible has served as a book of theology, a record of history, and a guide for life. It has survived thousands of years because people have believed it to be the word of god and done their best to follow and adhere to it. They have used it to scold and try to reduce crime, to progress science, art, philosophy, and to gain further knowledge and understanding of humanity as a whole. It has been used to bring together entire communities under the same roof and has changed and affected the world thousands of years after it was around for the better. They are not in the same... anything... beyond the fact that they are on paper.

How do you know the Bible isn't meant to be a fictional story?

[Klokinator]

The bible says god is real. We also know the bible is real because the bible says it was written by god. And god says the bible is written by him, which we know because the bible was written by him and that's what it says he said.

Circular logic.

[Espinosa]

When you think about it, Christianity would still exist if the Bible were somehow made entirely inaccessible all of a sudden. Not protestantism though. The role played by the Holy Tradition is equally strong as that of the Holy Scripture in traditional Christianity; perhaps even stronger than it should be.

[feplus]

Here's the problem in a nutshell: if you admit that God might have reasons for allowing natural disasters, then you must also admit that you can't make any moral decision whatsoever.

Couple of things to note:

1. You didn't argue this, but many believe that God doesn't stop any natural disasters. We can't say for sure. It's certainly possible that he stops some disasters in advance (which we never know about) and doesn't stop others.

2. I am not arguing for a deistic God. If God allows natural evils to happen, it must be in pursuit of some greater good. No exceptions.

So. There is a fundamental difference between how God makes valuative decisions and how humans make valuative decisions, but this does not lead us to moral paralysis.

God operates with perfect information.

Humans operate with imperfect information.

The reason God allows some natural evils to occur is because he possesses foreknowledge. We lack this foreknowledge. While God acts according to what is definitely moral, we act according to what is probably moral. God deals in certainty, we deal in justification.

This is analogous to the act/rule distinction of utilitarianism.

[Chiki]

Couple of things to note:

1. You didn't argue this, but many believe that God doesn't stop any natural disasters. We can't say for sure. It's certainly possible that he stops some disasters in advance (which we never know about) and doesn't stop others.

2. I am not arguing for a deistic God. If God allows natural evils to happen, it must be in pursuit of some greater good. No exceptions.

So. There is a fundamental difference between how God makes valuative decisions and how humans make valuative decisions, but this does not lead us to moral paralysis.

God operates with perfect information.

Humans operate with imperfect information.

The reason God allows some natural evils to occur is because he possesses foreknowledge. We lack this foreknowledge. While God acts according to what is definitely moral, we act according to what is probably moral. God deals in certainty, we deal in justification.

This is analogous to the act/rule distinction of utilitarianism.

The problem is that we can't trust our common sense to lead to even a slight confidence in morality, let alone probable morality. Our common sense morality would unequivocally lead us to saving the lives of 140000 people if a cyclone was going to kill that many people. If God's ok with letting that happen, how can you ever have the slightest bit of trust in any of your moral judgments at all?

[feplus]

Saving many lives from a natural evil is probably the moral course of action.

Sometimes it isn't, but making this judgment requires perfect foreknowledge.

We lack this foreknowledge, God possesses it.

For us, the moral thing to do is always to stop that natural evil; for God, the moral thing to do is sometimes stop that natural evil.

This argument won't satisfy everyone, but it's a starting point. We can trust our moral intuitions (and the teachings of whatever scripture one subscribes to) because they are reliable even if they aren't perfect.

[Chiki]

Saving many lives from a natural evil is probably the moral course of action.

Sometimes it isn't, but making this judgment requires perfect foreknowledge.

We lack this foreknowledge, God possesses it.

For us, the moral thing to do is always to stop that natural evil; for God, the moral thing to do is sometimes stop that natural evil.

This argument won't satisfy everyone, but it's a starting point. We can trust our moral intuitions (and the teachings of whatever scripture one subscribes to) because they are reliable even if they aren't perfect.

How do you know that?

If you were right and saving many lives from a natural evil was probably the moral course of action, then we could just risk it all the time and there'd be no moral paralysis at all. That would beat the purpose of the argument.

According to the moral paralysis argument, it's not probable. It's completely unknown.

Edited June 22, 2015 by Chiki

[feplus]

How do you know that?

1. Ceteris paribus, it is better to save lives from a natural evil than not save lives.

2. It is only better not to save lives if there is a greater cost associated with that action.

3. Humans lack the foreknowledge to know if and when there is a greater cost.

4. Humans ought to save lives from natural evils in all cases.

[Chiki]

1. Ceteris paribus, it is better to save lives from a natural evil than not save lives.

2. It is only better not to save lives if there is a greater cost associated with that action.

3. Humans lack the foreknowledge to know if and when there is a greater cost.

4. Humans ought to save lives from natural evils in all cases.

It's never ceteris paribus lol. That's the entire problem.

The problem is that you claim to know that it is probably right to save lives from natural evils. Where is your proof for this "probably?" How do you know it's usually better to save lives, knowing how interconnected everything is in the world we live in? Since it's all so complicated, you can never know with any certainty what the outcomes of your actions are going to lead to. I can't know whether or not saving 130000 people will lead to overpopulation and kill 1 million people in the future with any kind of certainty.

I repeat: if you were right and saving many lives from a natural evil was probably the moral course of action, then we could just risk it all the time and there'd be no moral paralysis at all. That would beat the purpose of the argument. According to the moral paralysis argument, it's not probable. It's completely unknown.

Edited June 22, 2015 by Chiki

[feplus]

Knowing with certainty is unnecessary. If you can justify an act as more probably ethical than not, that's satisfactory.

I don't believe you appreciate the consequences of your radical paralysis argument. Most people would agree that, in a vacuum, saving a life is ethical. Sometimes it isn't, but with imperfect foreknowledge it is the appropriate course of action.

If we deny this on the grounds that "it's completely unknown," that renders every teleological moral paradigm paralyzed, theist and secular.

[Esau of Isaac]

It'll be interesting to see if this thread can remain civil. Fingers crossed.

@Klok: The "atheist's wager" is typically handled via free-will theodicy. God is willing and able to prevent evil, but chooses not to in order to preserve moral autonomy. What about this response is unsatisfying to you?

This falls upon more narrowly defining omnipotence. If He is simply maximally powerful, He may lack the ability to preserve both moral autonomy and truly prevent evil. However, should you present Him as being truly all-powerful, such an act is not impossible.

Semantics aside, I think Espinosa's post deserves more attention haha:

As a matter of fact, yeah, you should probably talk to theists (and I'd say just people in general, because you miss a lot of obvious things when you subject the little details to such scrutiny) more often to get the full picture of their views. I don't know why the 'goodness' part of that equation needs to be emphasised or argued however, because people believing both that God exists and at the same time isn't good are either polytheist (in which case there's no 'g' in God to be capitalised and the whole issue sorta fades away), conscious theomachists or really marginal sectarians. You don't seem to be arguing with any of these groups (and I'd advise against that enterprise for the sake of one's sanity tbqh), so it seems like a largely pointless distraction unless logical mindgames are the sole reason for such an activity.

Could've quoted the rest of the post, but it's bulky and the idea is more or less clear (you've been repeating it all over the forums too).

One problem here is that you imagine God as a person who at some point in time discovers there's trouble brewing and casualties to be had if nothing is done. There's all sorts of trouble happening in the world (I personally wouldn't care to distinguish too much between grief caused by somebody's will or natural causes for reasons that I won't go into right now) without end, and the idea of a god you're trying to propose implies a very awkward concept of a world that is nothing but Superman's stage, where one great person solves and rescues and saves, and everybody is in complete safety. Such a concept is not particularly compatible with the Christian view of virtue, as people would take all the endless rescuing for granted and have no motivation to grow spiritually in the way expected of them by the set tradition of ascesis. This is also very much connected with God's arguable invisibility - if God's presence were physical and obvious, men would make no effort in forming any connection with God. on Christianity, a huge gap stands between man and God, one that isn't passed by just learning and understanding certain things with the mind alone.

Then there's another really erroneous supposition that longevity equals goodness. Even without going into whether people's morality is God's morality (to a certain extent is has to be as long as we believe we've been created in God's image), do we (we can readily answer this part while we never can do the same with the matters divine) believe that it's always good to live the longest? Would everyone like to live beyond 100 years? You said you were quite concerned with what theists really think - take Mother Teresa as an example that's culturally familiar to you: do you think she valued people's longevity more than their salvation, valued both equally or valued their salvation and orthodoxy in the Christian faith more?

There are more important details that I'm sure you've just forgotten. On Christianity, a person's death doesn't mark such a significant milestone as it does in a secular viewpoint where existence expires quite literally upon one's death. It is believed that God does not distinguish between the living and the dead, and all are equally important to Him. We do care about the vitality of our loved ones, but what about God? God is not passionate in the sense of passion being a weakness.

One more thing. Christians don't see God as existing in any restriction of time (and space), therefore a situation where God's omniscience enables him to literally -find out- about trouble brewing, because God isn't located anywhere in particular on the timeline for that scenario to be possible. What is such an existence even like? My imagination doesn't help my mind conceive it, personally. In Christian theology, there's a distinction between apophatic and cataphatic theology, one describing what God is not and the other what God is. In the Christian tradition, God hasn't revealed Himself sufficiently and there seems to have been more success in describing what God is not, giving a more negative account of God's essence.

This applies to traditional Christianity and should differ considerably in the case of Judaism (where it's really "okay" to be an atheist and still be a Jew, while the worldview of actual religious Jews differs greatly from that of Christianity considering the sharp change Christ's teaching brought upon in human history) and Islam - in the latter case, Allah is believed to re-create the universe every instant and the implications of that on free will and the issue you raised are such that I cannot defend anything from this point of view. I do not have the information about how Muslims interested in the issue resolve this problem.

Why I brought that up is that the kind of god you're conjuring with your ideal tools is not the God of Christianity. If you do not account for the whole picture, such as some of the aspects I brought up above, you cannot claim that you've found an inner contradiction in a system of thinking - you simply show that you probed a belief system (rather superficially) and failed to make sense of it, showing the great limitation of your own tools and failure to remember vital aspects of the belief system you're examining more than anything.

[Chiki]

Knowing with certainty is unnecessary. If you can justify an act as more probably ethical than not, that's satisfactory.

I don't believe you appreciate the consequences of your radical paralysis argument. Most people would agree that, in a vacuum, saving a life is ethical. Sometimes it isn't, but with imperfect foreknowledge it is the appropriate course of action.

If we deny this on the grounds that "it's completely unknown," that renders every teleological moral paradigm paralyzed, theist and secular.

You haven't justified anything, though. How do you know it's more probably ethical than not? You've just said it, yet provided us with no reasoning. Repeating yourself won't accomplish anything.

I was just thinking about this interesting consequence before you made this post, and I concluded that it was a serious problem for utilitarianism (since you have no idea what the consequences of your action are going to be) and I think it's right. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/#WhiConActVsExpCon

One final solution to these epistemological problems deploys the legal notion of proximate cause. If consequentialists define consequences in terms of what is caused (unlike Sosa 1993), then which future events count as consequences is affected by which notion of causation is used to define consequences. Suppose I give a set of steak knives to a friend. Unforeseeably, when she opens my present, the decorative pattern on the knives somehow reminds her of something horrible that her husband did. This memory makes her so angry that she voluntarily stabs and kills him with one of the knives. She would not have killed her husband if I had given her spoons instead of knives. Did my decision or my act of giving her knives cause her husband's death? Most people (and the law) would say that the cause was her act, not mine. Why? One explanation is that her voluntary act intervened in the causal chain between my act and her husband's death. Moreover, even if she did not voluntarily kill him, but instead she slipped and fell on the knives, thereby killing herself, my gift would still not be a cause of her death, because the coincidence of her falling intervened between my act and her death. The point is that, when voluntary acts and coincidences intervene in certain causal chains, then the results are not seen as caused by the acts further back in the chain of necessary conditions (Hart and Honoré 1985). Now, if we assume that an act must be such a proximate cause of a harm in order for that harm to be a consequence of that act, then consequentialists can claim that the moral rightness of that act is determined only by such proximate consequences. This position, which might be called proximate consequentialism, makes it much easier for agents and observers to justify moral judgments of acts because it obviates the need to predict non-proximate consequences in distant times and places. Hence, this move is worth considering, even though it deviates far from traditional consequentialism, which counts not only proximate consequences but all upshots — that is, everything for which the act is a causally necessary condition.

This view solves the problem just fine.

But God obviously isn't a proximate consequentalist, so it won't work to solve the moral paralysis problem there.

Edited June 23, 2015 by Chiki

[feplus]

If you're not going to grant the common-sense claim that saving a life is more ethical than not in a vacuum, we won't reach any productive conclusions.

Proximate consequentialism is to my knowledge a small minority view (and suffers from apparent arbitrariness). Your paralysis problem applies to the vast majority of consequentialists, who would share my feelings that denying the most basic moral truths makes ethical dialogue impossible.

[Chiki]

If you're not going to grant the common-sense claim that saving a life is more ethical than not in a vacuum, we won't reach any productive conclusions.

Proximate consequentialism is to my knowledge a small minority view (and suffers from apparent arbitrariness). Your paralysis problem applies to the vast majority of consequentialists, who would share my feelings that denying the most basic moral truths makes ethical dialogue impossible.

The entire problem is that we're not in a vacuum. I've already said this:

It's never ceteris paribus lol. That's the entire problem.

The problem is that you claim to know that it is probably right to save lives from natural evils. Where is your proof for this "probably?" How do you know it's usually better to save lives, knowing how interconnected everything is in the world we live in? Since it's all so complicated, you can never know with any certainty what the outcomes of your actions are going to lead to. I can't know whether or not saving 130000 people will lead to overpopulation and kill 1 million people in the future with any kind of certainty.

Please think on what you're going to say more carefully before posting.

It does apply to the majority of consequentialists. I'm not the only person to argue this (the reason for paralysis is different here though):

http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/infinite.pdf

Edited June 23, 2015 by Chiki

[Irysa]

If you're not going to grant the common-sense claim that saving a life is more ethical than not in a vacuum, we won't reach any productive conclusions.

Intuitive reasonings aren't enough if we seek to define morality in such a manner. The whole point of the argument (and discussion surrounding it) is to try to better understand morality by testing it and having to rationally explain it.

I could argue that part of the reason we agree that saving a life is more ethical is simply a biological trait and isn't infalliable - absoloute psychopaths exist. I'm not terribly interested in going down the biological line though, but this point itself then means we can't just "assume" one is better. Ultimately we may come to disagreements about what the purpose or meaning of anything even is as a result, but that's just philosophy.

Edited June 23, 2015 by Irysa

[feplus]

The entire problem is that we're not in a vacuum. I've already said this:

You asserted this, yes. You didn't justify it.

You have philosophy friends. Ask them if this radically skeptic attitude leads to productive moral dialogue. They will agree with me.

[Pride]

If you're all discussing whether features attributed to the Judeo-Christian God are contradictory, the answer is obviously yes.

But what's the point of asking that? All you've done is say that something that shouldn't exist, doesn't exist. Does this make any other godlike figure across religions fair game for being acceptable in "logical" discussion, so long as I can prove there isn't anything contradictory in its known nature? If that's the case, I can imagine a God right now who demands a specific set of moral values, doesn't contradict them, and then bring it in as valid endorsement for said morals in "serious" talks, right?

"Does God exist?"

Obviously God only exists if I say it does.

[Chiki]

As I thought, this is a serious problem for utilitarianism :P

http://people.umass.edu/ffeldman/WTD.pdf

Utilitarians are attracted to the idea that an act is morally right iff it leads to the best outcome. But critics have pointed out that in many cases we cannot determine which of our alternatives in fact would lead to the best outcome. So we can't use the classic principle to determine what we should do. It's not practical; it's not action-guiding. Some take this to be a serious objection to utilitarianism, since they think a moral theory ought to be practical and action guiding. Some utilitarians respond by revising the principle by appeal to expected utility.

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=3663976

A recurring objection confronting utilitarianism is that its dictates require information that lies beyond the bounds of human epistemic wherewithal.

I hope this debate doesn't degenerate to me having to copy paste titles and opinions from professional philosophers again. =_=

[feplus]

But quoting links is your specialty. Why deviate from your bread-and-butter?

No one argued this wasn't a problem for utilitarianism. I said exactly the same thing many posts ago: that your paralysis argument can be applied to most any teleological ethos.

[Phoenix Wright]

i'm a little confused. do you both agree that it is better to save a life from "natural evils"? (which, by the way, what are those again? natural disasters?) is the problem that that statement is hard to justify? or do olwen and others disagree that it is better to save a life from natural evils? i'm asking for a gut-feeling response, not for an argument, regardless of the answer.

also, while i'm at it, how can something be "naturally evil"? or should i be interpreting it as, "a dangerous event god chooses not to intervene with, but could," making it evil?

[feplus]

I can't say whether we agree because I'm unsure what exactly Chiki is arguing. Hopefully he chimes in to explain.

By "natural evils" I mean evils brought about by natural events- disease, natural disasters, etc. Contrast with "human evils," evils brought about by human action- murder, rape, etc.

[Chiki]

But quoting links is your specialty. Why deviate from your bread-and-butter?

No one argued this wasn't a problem for utilitarianism. I said exactly the same thing many posts ago: that your paralysis argument can be applied to most any teleological ethos.

Uh.. then what on earth were you trying to argue against?

Moral paralysis is a serious problem for utilitarianism, and it poses a serious problem for the existence of God. If you can't come up with a counterargument for this point, please stop posting in this thread with your empty, mysterious and evasive posts.

i'm a little confused. do you both agree that it is better to save a life from "natural evils"? (which, by the way, what are those again? natural disasters?) is the problem that that statement is hard to justify? or do olwen and others disagree that it is better to save a life from natural evils? i'm asking for a gut-feeling response, not for an argument, regardless of the answer.

also, while i'm at it, how can something be "naturally evil"? or should i be interpreting it as, "a dangerous event god chooses not to intervene with, but could," making it evil?

1. Yes, we agree that it is better to save a life from natural evils. Yes, they are natural disasters.

2. The statement that it's better to save a life from natural evils cannot be defended at all if you believe in God, since God lets people die all the time.

3. Something is natural evil iff it is an event uncaused by people that decreases the overall utility in the world (assuming utilitarianism).

I have no idea what feplus is trying to argue anymore.