Does a Good God Exist?

[doubting_tommy]

One of the best things one can do to discover if the Christian God is the actual Creator, is to study the creation accounts of other religions. It will become crystal clear soon enough.

I don

[wyguy]

So the question is, why did God choose to actualise a world where humans would choose to sin, rather than a world where they would not? It’s not a case of needing to preserve free will, since the people in the sinless universe would still be choosing not to sin.

To be honest, I often wonder myself why God made angels, or human beings at all. He certainly didn't need the company.

I think that God wants His Creation to love Him - but for it to be actual love, and not compulsory love, the possibility of rejection must exist. For God to choose to "actualise" only the world where people did not sin, is still an act against free will, because God is choosing the one and rejecting the other based upon a predetermined outcome.

I only have one perspective- my own. It is not physically possible for me to see the world as God does, so I must make my own judgments about the information I have before me (and bear the responsibility for these decisions, of course). I have in front of me claims which are made by my fellow humans, about words they claim were authored by the creator of the universe. I think it’s only fair to ask for good reasons before believing such claims. The fact that this God is supposed to be perfectly moral and just, and yet is described in such a way as to seem not merely mysterious but downright malevolent, naturally adds to my suspicion over these claims.

You can debate the character of a judge while you are standing before him, but it doesn't matter when the issue is your law-breaking. Are God's Laws bad - or good? Are they reasonable enough to be obeyed? Our own human laws are based upon most of the 10 Commandments.

IF God exists (and, of course, I believe He does) then it is His right to make demands of us even if we don't like the rules. You may not like your boss at work, but you are still bound to obey company rules. You may not like the police in your town, but you still must obey the law - and have no right to complain if you violate those laws and suffer for it.

If God does not exist, then feel free to continue living as you do - you've got nothing to worry about.

This sounds suspiciously like an appeal to the logic of Pascal’s Wager, which has been pretty thoroughly discredited. Since there are an infinite number of possible gods, whatever way I live my life risks upsetting as many gods as it pleases. If I have no way of knowing which of these infinite possibilities is actually correct, then it hardly matters how I live my life with regard to what happens after- since I have more or less an equal chance of having a good outcome as a bad one.

Again, I have to ask if you've ever actually read the Bible? If not, read it and then compare what you've read with the "holy" books and writings of other world religions and you will come to the logical conclusion.

It never ceases to amaze me when atheists (not you necessarily) slam a book they've never actually read.

Of course you could; atheism does not necessitate naturalism (though naturalism does seem to necessitate atheism). One could believe that the universe had supernatural origins, but that whatever created the universe bears no resemblance to what human religions have referred to as ‘God’. Or, one could believe that a God created the universe, if one believed that naturalistic accounts cannot explain the universe’s origins, but that this god no longer exists.

An appeal to anything but naturalism in regard to origins or otherwise no longer makes you an atheist. Atheists do not believe in anything beyond the natural to explain anything. Supernaturalism and atheism are not compatible.

Causality as we understand it (which is not very well, when you get down to it), has a temporal structure such that the cause always precedes the effect. However, when physics starts to behave strangely, so does time, and when time behaves strangely, so may causality. When we are dealing with the origins of the universe we are dealing with physics which is as strange as it gets. It could be the case that causality’s temporal component doesn’t behave in quite the same way- an effect may precede a cause, for example, or may occur simultaneously. In this sense, it could be the case that something in the future causes something in the past, or that something in the present causes something else in the present. Weird stuff, and highly counterintuitive, but so is the idea that there exists an omnipotent supernatural being who simply willed the universe into being. And at least we have evidence for strange causal interactions (see for example, the phenomenon of quantum entanglement).

Here's the rub: You start with nothing and you will end with nothing. Nothing cannot create anything. Anything that comes into existance must have a cause. You can call things "strange" or "weird," but the root of the problem, even in regard to quantum entanglement, is that for any of those theories to work, energy and/or matter must already exist. Even a quantum "vacuum" is a sea of fluctuating energy.

If the Universe were just a mechanical consequence that would occur whenever sufficient conditions were met, and the sufficient conditions were met eternally, then it would exist from eternity past. The effect would be co-eternal with the cause. How then, do you explain the origin of a finite Universe ( as our Universe had a beginning and it will have an ending via "heat death") from a timeless cause? There is no ground for supposing that matter and energy existed before and was suddenly galvanized into action. For what could distinguish that moment from all other moments in eternity?

[wyguy]

Continued...

First of all, its not a scientific impossibility- the link I posted previously demonstrates that

Actually, it did not. It was pure speculation from beginning to end.

So, since we are discussing the origins of the universe, where *did* God come from?

God is eternal, and therefore doesn't need a beginning or a creator.

It is the dimension of "time" that demands a beginning. If time didn't exist there would be no "beginning." Time is God's creation and He dwells outside it's limits. Creation (the Universe) dwells within the element of time (is temporal) and therefore had to have a beginning.

I think thats probably true for most atheists. Richard Dawkins came up with a helpful way of conceptualising it, actually. Im sure there are some atheists who believe with 100% certainty that there is no manner of God whatsoever, but I dont think this is true of most. In any case, the best way to explain it I think is this: The atheist attitude towards the Christian God is identical in kind to your attitude towards the existence of Zeus.

An agnostic says we cannot know if a god exists or not - atheists say there are no gods. For atheists to know for a fact that there are no gods, they would have to possess knowledge of every corner of the Universe and beyond. If I were to say there was no gold in China, I would have to have knowledge of every square inch of the country to be certain there was no gold in the soil, water, products, or teeth of the people in all of China. If even one speck of gold was found in China, I would be proved wrong.

I dont understand this. Why would the study of what we presumably both believe to be fictional creation myths of other cultures/religions lead one to believe that the Judeo-Christian account is in fact correct?

It was one of the things that led me straight to the God of the Bible. Try it sometime.

If that follows (its not clear to me that it does), it only follows if one accepts the truth of the Bible. Cosmological arguments are not sufficient on their own. Indeed, if one accepts the truth of the Bible, cosmological arguments are probably not going to be necessary anyway. Many people who are not atheists and reject naturalistic explanations of the universe, will also reject the Christian account of the creator.

There cannot be a scientific explaination of the first cause of the Universe. Since it's the first state, it simply cannot be explained in terms of earlier initial conditions and natural laws leading up to it. It has to be a personal explaination - that is, an agent who has volition to create it. And because the cause of the Universe transcends time and space, it cannot be a physical reality. Instead , it must be non-physical or immaterial, and timeless. A mind can be a cause, and so it makes sense that the Universe is the product of an unembodied mind that brought it into existence. "Creation Ex Nihilo" - divine will constituting nature from nothingness. Which makes God, a personal Creator.

Scientists draw tentative conclusions based on the best information available at the time, and these conclusions are always open to doubt, to scrutiny and revision. Religions on the other hand, offer dogmatic truths which can never be questioned and which assume a kind of perfect knowledge which seems to demand far more faith than does science.

Scientists are always expousing, rejecting, and bringing back again theory after theory. Scientists are always competing against each other with "facts" on either side. And they hardly give an inch even when confronted with overwhelming evidence. That's why there are well respected scientists today who still reject the Big Bang theory. Not based on the evidence, but because they don't like the idea of the Universe having a beginning. And I can tell you why they don't like that idea...

And if a "truth" is true - it will always remain true. 2+2 will always be 4 - no matter how the winds of change blow.

[doubting_tommy]

I think that God wants His Creation to love Him - but for it to be actual love, and not compulsory love, the possibility of rejection must exist. For God to choose to "actualise" only the world where people did not sin, is still an act against free will, because God is choosing the one and rejecting the other based upon a predetermined outcome.

But there are logically possible worlds where people do not sin *and* where they exercise complete free will. These would be worlds where the possibility of rejection does exist, but where it is simply never chosen. (Of course, this all assumes that God only chose to actualise one possible world.) If it is an act against free will for God to choose one over the other, then it would seem to be an act against free will whichever world is actualised, unless God actualises all possible worlds (which is certainly possible) or unless God somehow chose to actualise this world

[doubting_tommy]

Actually, it did not. It was pure speculation from beginning to end.

Speculation involves exploring possibilities- a

[MorningGlory]

And the obvious fact that 2+2=4 whatever happens, casts serious doubts about the contingency of this fact.

And if this is not contingent, than it cannot have been defined by God's will, since that would make it contingent

again. This fact transcends God and limits His alleged omnipotence.

Overthinking ANY subject results in burn out of brain cells and a headache. Refer to Scripture for the answers to why, how and who.

[wyguy]

But there are logically possible worlds where people do not sin *and* where they exercise complete free will. These would be worlds where the possibility of rejection does exist, but where it is simply never chosen. (Of course, this all assumes that God only chose to actualise one possible world.) If it is an act against free will for God to choose one over the other, then it would seem to be an act against free will whichever world is actualised, unless God actualises all possible worlds (which is certainly possible) or unless God somehow chose to actualise this world randomly.

Well, as Scripture shows that the drama is only being played out on our planet, we can speculate until the cows come home about what "may" be "somewhere" else.

Some of the 10 Commandments may express useful and indeed moral laws- I would certainly agree with the prohibitions against killing and theft, for example, but that does not mean that they are divinely inspired. I would not think it would be a good idea to reflect every Biblical commandment in the law of the state- I dont think we should put people in prison for worshipping false gods or for committing adultery., for example.

The point being, as God created us and sustains our lives, He has every right to give us Laws and expect them to be obeyed - even if you don't happen to like them.

even if the Bible did seem more authentic to me, Im not sure why that would lead me to accept it- simply because I do not find the alternative accounts to be plausible does not mean that the Bible should be accepted

It's a good place to start. Then follow up by examining fulfilled prophecy, scientific knowledge unknown at the time of it's writing, and it's consistency over 66 books spanning 2500 years.

May I recommend a book? "Evidence That Demands A Verdict" by: Josh McDowell.

Also, "The Case For...." (Christ, Faith, A Creator, The Real Jesus) books by: Lee Strobel.

I must disagree with this. The problem may be that so many atheists are also naturalists that the two become conflated with one another. Strictly speaking, atheism is a position about the existence of God. It does not follow from the claim that one supernatural entity does not exist, that no supernatural entities or powers exist. Its certainly conceptually tidier if one rejects the supernatural entirely (as the vast majority of atheists do), but its not a contradiction to believe that there is no God, but that supernaturalism is true on some scale. I imagine most Buddhists would fall into this category as they do not believe in a personal God but they believe in supernatural concepts like karma and reincarnation.

Take this as a compliment: You are one weird atheist.

Right, but these claims suppose that causes are temporally prior to their effects, which is an assumption based on our ordinary intuitive understanding of causality- an understanding which may not hold once you look at events on the quantum level or events at a point in time where time itself is behaving in unusual ways.

And again, even at the quantum level, something must already exist (energy and/or matter). Nothing creates nothing, and there is no such thing as infinite regression.

These seem to be conceptual as well as scientific problems, and Im not certain that they wouldnt equally apply to the God hypothesis as they would to a naturalistic account.

They wouldn't because God is super (or "above") natural(ism). He is not subjected to his creation.

Speculation involves exploring possibilities- a universe from nothing is a scientific possibility according to Krauss. Our current scientific understanding of the universe does not rule it out.

It doesn't rule it out if all you have is faith. Which is all they have. Something creating itself from nothing has never been observed, replicated, and is not supported by any scientific laws or evidence. It exists solely in the imaginations of those scientists foolish enough to claim it.

[wyguy]

Continued...

In which case you need to explain how something can be created in the absence of time. (Also, it may be a mistake to think of time as a ‘thing in itself’- The Kantian view of time, for example, holds that time is an aspect of human cognitive apparatuses- an ordering principle through which we conceptualise the world.) How does the concept of eternity make sense in the absence of time? What was God doing ‘before’ He created time, if priority is a temporal concept?

Time was created by God for our benefit - period. And is needed in our temporal Universe. Yes, it is indeed "an ordering principle through which we conceptualise the world." That's why the Bible says one of the reasons God gave us the sun, moon and stars was to be able to know the days and seasons. It is not a creative "force" and would not be "needed" by an omnipotent God to create.

Eternity for us will simply be time without end.

Would you consider yourself agnostic with regards to the existence of Zeus? If so, then yes, the vast majority of atheists are agnostics. If not, when you say you don’t believe Zeus exists, you are making the same sort of claim that atheists make about the Christian God.

Call God what you like - I happen to think the Christian God makes the most sense scientifically, logically, and morally.

I don’t understand at all how you move from the assumption that science cannot explain the origin of the universe, to the assumption that the universe had to be created by a disembodied mind. A mind, as far as we know, can only be a cause when it is embodied (indeed, so far as we know, a mind can only *exist* when it is embodied)- even if we make the assumption that the mental is not reducible to the physical, we have no evidence to suggest that the mental does not supervene on the physical and no evidence that a mind can exist outside of the physical nor operate outside of space and time.

I simply gave you the Christian point of view because the Bible says God is spirit. My point was to simply show that the Creator of the Universe is personal Creator.

Scientists are working on the cusp of human knowledge, theories are proposed and tested and those which are falsified are rejected. A consensus will never be 100% (but when is it ever, even when it comes to matters of religion?), but the science that is done today operates on a foundation of successful scientific discoveries. Uncertainty and debate is inevitable, and indeed necessary if the truth is to be uncovered, but it is pretty clear that science has delivered on a number of fronts. It is simply not true to suggest that scientists hardly give an inch when confronted with overwhelming evidence. When overwhelming evidence is accumulated, a consensus is reached- we see that with the examples I offered above- the vast majority of scientists accept that the Earth orbits the sun, that germs cause disease, and so on.

The point is, the "scientific consensus" of today will be the "hopeful monster" theory of tomorrow. And there are plenty of scientists that cling still today to the "Punctuated Equilibrium" hash of yesteryear, like they cling to the "nothing created everything" nonsense despite the overwhelming evidence that proves otherwise.

Like Richard Dawkins suggesting life was "seeded" here by aliens, because life creating itself from dead matter is a scientific fairy tale that the majority of evolutionary biologists still hold tight to - against all evidence to the contrary.

Why?

Why do they do that?

The answer is obvious.

Read what evolutionary biologist and geneticist Professor Richard Lewontin wrote:

"‘We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

- Richard Lewontin, Billions and billions of demons (review of The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan, 1997), The New York Review, p. 31, 9 January 1997.

[doubting_tommy]

Well, as Scripture shows that the drama is only being played out on our planet, we can speculate until the cows come home about what "may" be "somewhere" else.

It’s not mere speculation, it’s an argument which casts into question the very nature of God. It reveals that God could have created a world without sin but, for some mysterious reason, chose not to. If God could not actualise the possible world where nobody chooses to sin, then He is not omnipotent. If God did not realise that the world he was actualising would contain sin, then He is not omniscient, and if God chose to actualise a world with evil when He could have actualised one without it, then He is not omnibenevolent.

The point being, as God created us and sustains our lives, He has every right to give us Laws and expect them to be obeyed - even if you don't happen to like them.

Why? A man may create a gun, but that does not give him the right to use it as he sees fit without any restrictions. A mother may sustain her child, but she may not kill it. Why does the fact that God creates and sustains me give Him the right to command me?

And again, even at the quantum level, something must already exist (energy and/or matter). Nothing creates nothing, and there is no such thing as infinite regression.

By saying that ‘something must already exist’ you’re implying that the something comes first, and then causes something else. But when you go back to the beginning of the universe causality may not work this way- our current understanding of causality is based on inductive reasoning stemming from our observances of causes preceding effects. If time itself has a ‘beginning’, then, by definition, nothing can precede it.

They wouldn't because God is super (or "above") natural(ism). He is not subjected to his creation.

Is He subject to the laws of logic?

It doesn't rule it out if all you have is faith. Which is all they have. Something creating itself from nothing has never been observed, replicated, and is not supported by any scientific laws or evidence. It exists solely in the imaginations of those scientists foolish enough to claim it.

Since these are simply suggestions and possibilities, I don’t see where faith comes into it. Nobody is claiming that these suggestions are true, which would require faith. The beginning of the universe has not been observed or replicated, which is one of the reasons scientific hypotheses about its origins are so contentious.

Edited January 4, 2011 by doubting_tommy

[doubting_tommy]

Time was created by God for our benefit - period. And is needed in our temporal Universe. Yes, it is indeed "an ordering principle through which we conceptualise the world." That's why the Bible says one of the reasons God gave us the sun, moon and stars was to be able to know the days and seasons. It is not a creative "force" and would not be "needed" by an omnipotent God to create.

But how can time itself be