Do you think the word of God is the truth: why or why not? — Joseph Walsh

It is difficult to know what God “says” or even if one can speak of Him in this way. If you believe that Jesus was God, then you can get some evidence from the New Testament, but there are also Gospels that didn’t make it into the Bible. My view is that figuring out the nature of God is a matter that is helped by studying various religions and philosophies, as well as science, maths, and humanities studies.

I'm not going to worry about whether or not I capitalized the word god just because it may offend someone else if I don't. My name is Taylor and I will not be offended if someone refers to me as taylor. It worries me how easily offended people are these days.


Man: *Punches another man* "You didn't capitalize my name in the email!!!"

You seem to assume God, or god, is a term that everyone understands. Why not start with what you think him, her, it, or them is.

I capitalize proper names and such because I am an anal-retentive pedant when it comes to such things. I take no offense at other people’s punctuation, spelling, grammar, etc. I also tend not to get offended by other people’s speech or behavior as long as it isn’t too personal. When I do take offense to something, I try to ask myself why I am getting so upset.

How do we even know if a god wants his/her/its name capitalized?

I don’t think any good god would even care about it.

Nature knows what God/dog/god wants!

dog bless you

True. I just do it out of courtesy.

Ya. The whole history of philosophy has a whole bunch of thoughts on God. The Greeks had some which were interesting. "There cannot be a single, simple body which is infinite, either, as some hold, one distinct from the elements, which they then derive from it, nor without this qualification".

I do not have enough information to make a good assessment of God. There is so much history that I shouldn't even begin to deal with ideas that I don't naturally relate to.

The cool thing it seems to do today is too offend for the sake of offending. If people offend without reason to offend, then it should be excused. People do that because they are edgy comedians.

That's a good point. I do it out of respect for another person's view. You can't really stop people from doing things out of the nature of free will. But just because you can do something doesn't mean you always should. I believe in Fate or Nature by the way, things that are out of our control, like people who purposefully try to offend because they are funny (not).

I don't think this conversation went well. We didn't have a very serious discussion. Oh well. It seems to be the cool thing to offend or to not be serious about God. You can't really stop people from doing things, but I was hoping to have some serious philosophical arguments on what you think about those questions. I think what gets people answering is that you offer a view and they try to destroy it and add their own view. You guys are funny because your jokes are old as stale toast.

Why should I have access to infinite knowledge of God if I am a finite being? — Joseph Walsh

I don't think any finite being can have infinite knowledge of anything. Where could they store the knowledge? Some philosophers (eg Kant, who was at least a Deist if not a Theist) go further and suggest we can have no knowledge at all about God. I am inclined to agree.

Do you think the word of God is the truth: why or why not?

I don't think we could ever know if any given writing is the word of God. It's safest to assume that no human writing is the word of God. But that doesn't mean we can't respect others' beliefs about it, and maybe even in some cases find wisdom in parts of it. Just as long as the writing doesn't tell people to mean to one another. That's when trouble starts.

What are the ramifications of a disbelief in God?

Many, and it depends on the person and which version of God they don't believe in. Some people get good things from belief in a version of God, so a nonbeliever would miss out on that, except that they may get the same benefit from some alternative belief or practice. Some people perform terribly evil acts motivated by belief in their version of God. Again, a nonbeliever would not do that unless motivated by some other belief, such as White Nationalism.

How do we know that God exists?

Some people believe they have met God. That seems a fair enough reason to believe. I have not met Her, so I remain open-minded. Some versions of God are so self-contradictory that they could not exist unless we decide to discard logic - eg the version of God that is said to love us perfectly yet will torture us forever in hell if we are not convinced enough to believe.

How do I like this? haha

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Please mostly use the capital letter for "God", even if I am a stoic and do not believe in God but in Fate and Nature. People on this forum do believe in the word of God and we should respect their opinions with the same faith as we have in our own opinion or in the universe. — Joseph Walsh

I tend to use "God" about a specific entity within the context of a specific religion. I use "god" when I'm talking about the general concept of god. As Phil Connors says:

Why should I have access to infinite knowledge of God if I am a finite being? — Joseph Walsh

You can't

Do you think the word of God is the truth: why or why not?

That presupposes words from God. If there were such, they'd be true.

The Bible isn't the word of God. God didn't write the Bible. A bunch of men wrote the Bible.

...distinctly fallible men who weren't above frequent forgery, and various morally-abhorrent positions and words.

What are the ramifications of a disbelief in God?

It implies disbelief in what one doesn't have a definition of...disbelief without an object of disbelief.

Our "New Atheists" say that, rather than actively disbelieving, they merely don't believe. That's a perfectly reasonable position, to not believe in what they don't have reason to believe.

But where our Atheist friends go wrong is when they evaluate others' beliefs. That's when they forget their professed absence of active disbelief.

How do we know that God exists?

"Exist", in an objective, noncontextual, unqualified sense, is undefined for the things of phenomenal world, the logically-interdependent things. And, even if "Exist" meant something within that realm, it wouldn't be meaningful to even try to use that word for other than that.

For humans to debate whether God exists, is like for mice to debate whether humans chew hardwood or softwood.

My suggestion:

Forget the Theism vs Atheism debate. Of course it's reasonable to not believe in what one doesn't know of reason to believe. Leave it at that.

You don't know of justification for others' beliefs? Yes. Leave it at that.

Michael Ossipoff

12 F
1852 UTC