Comments

  • Why I think God exists.


    To respond to an experiential testimony to the experience of the divine is not well thought out and churlish - I try to refrain from using such harsh language in a philosophical setting, but to undermine the veracity of someone's claim such as that is highly uncharitable; though the specific name of the scientific journal is escaping me right now, there was a study done (then subsequently covered in the New York Times) showing that Evangelical Christians, when (what is known as) speaking in tongues, utilized a part of the brain which is otherwise inoperative - they [the Christians] call the feeling of taking part in such an act as a religious experience. This is not unlike the Calvinist idea of Sensus Divinitatus, whereby he [Calvin] posited that humans have an engrained psychological faculty whereby they are able to "experience" God. So please - do not dismiss an experience such as this as a mere hallucination or the ramblings of some madman when there are a number of fascinating arguments for the truth value of these claims.
  • Why I think God exists.


    While I find the design argument compelling, fine tuning arguments have a proclivity to be tenuous and prone to objections - especially by skeptics who are generally apt to note the overwhelmingly chaotic nature of our universe specifically, and how the genesis of the human species is nothing more than a statistical anomaly bound to happen due to the sheer size of the universe and the varying natures present throughout every solar system / galaxy, and so on - Bertrand Russel expanded on this in his unpublished Is There a God specifically. Unequivocal evidence for or against the existence of God are, on the whole, not compelling in my opinion - rather I believe the burden of proof to be on the non-Theist to affirm non-Theism, as opposed to giving into the proclivities of weighing facts of natural science against ecclesiastical traditions.
  • Why I think God exists.
    The argument that you seem to be addressing seems to be "given that physical things exist, such as the components of a book, is it also the case that the narrative of a book exists?" I think this argument can easily be boiled down to a case for or against the existence of mind-independent entities. Though not completely analogous in content, I think if we are truly, at the course of this discourse discussing the being of mind-independent things - without delving into an discussion about whether or not a thing exists if someone is not there to give it a certain nomenclature รก la some Postmodernists epistemological views, if we affirm Mathematical Platonism (particularly through the works of Frege) then it would seem apparent that numbers themselves exist independent of a mind. And if I'm being charitable in my analogy between the two subjects, numbers / narratives, then I would see no problem with saying that an abstract concept such as a narrative exists, though perhaps not in the same form of basically as numbers.
  • Why I think God exists.


    Without delving into the theology of a purported God, e.g. His possible physicality / relation to the universe or time, etc., your argument - if it is in fact sound (which I am not debating, whether I take issue with its entailments), it [the argument] seems to only pertain to mind-dependent "things", or ideologies that have some type of sway on a person(s) conduct. I believe the "effects" you mentioned, between the rock and a supposed God are of wholly different natures; if a rock is thrown at something breakable, the thing will break - this seems to be an immutable conditional sate of affairs; yet if God exists and has an effect - specific rites, diets, clothing - then via this analogy, the effect of God on a population should be equally uniform, but this is very obviously not the case. Christians revere the sanctifying aspect of water via baptism, while Zoroastrians revere fire for the same sanctification reasons - if God were able to be proven via means of effects He has on people (which seems like a variant of a First Cause argument), then the effects employed by the people who believe in God should be consistent with one another - yet they aren't.
  • Pascal's Wager
    I believe you misunderstood my main point: Pascal's Wager should not be viewed as an Epistemological proof for the existence of God, which you seem to interpret it as. I instead view it as a "burden of proof" argument, upon which there is greater rewards for the theist (yes, I concede, if they choose to worship the "correct god") than the atheist, who, regardless of the verification of any religion, is choosing the losing side when taking the gamble whether or not one chooses to worship any god or gods. This is not a matter of statistics, which, according to your seemingly Evidentialist point of view (I say this because you reference a lack of evidence towards one side or the other, which is a faulty viewpoint in my opinion - though this is for another discussion), does not warrant a 50/50 split - and yes I maintain the belief that your view is wrong - on the grounds of Richard Price's Four Dissertations, whereby he utilizes Bayesian statistics to say that even if someone observes the tides coming in 1 million times the assigned 50% probability that the tide mysteriously does not roll in one day is between 1 to 600,000 and 1 to 3 million - which is utterly absurd; so let us please put this issue of statistics beside us; separately, Propositional Logic and Mathematical Theorems are vastly different - this I maintain as well (for reasons not only apparent to a Logician or a mathematician, but to a student of these subjects also). Let us return to the main argument, then: Let us assume there is no God, and one acts religiously, living virtuously and no engaging in revelry - upon death nothing happens to her, as there is no God and no eternal ramifications - likewise under the assumption that there is no God, and one believes as such, she engages in hedonism, pleasure without restrain, and upon death nothing happens. Here the atheist is better off having lived a pleasure-filled life, while the theist lacked in such regards. In the opposite direction, let's assume God exists - if one chooses the correct God and lives piously, they go to heaven - in the obverse, under the assumption that God exists, and the atheist maintains their atheism, upon death they receive eternal damnation. Here the disparity between due rewards is astronomically different than a life lived frivolously or not, given the assertion that there is no God. Even if one chooses the wrong god to worship, their chances of going to heaven upon death are greater than the atheists 0% chance. Here is why Pascal's Wager is an argument for the burden of proof and not an argument for or against God's existence: it is an argument for the reader to consider the ramifications of the presumption and acting out of Theism or Atheism.
  • How do you feel about religion?
    Correct me if I am wrong, but your personal view seems to be reminiscent of a sort of Naturalistic Evolutionary form of religion - at this point I would point you towards Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism, which I find highly compelling. But I personally hold the Calvinist Foundationalist view of Sensus Divinitatus, whereby, even though it may seem organized religion is on the decline, even many of those not affiliated with any religion affirm some form of Spiritualism or Deism. It would seem deviant, by your standards then, to even affirm any form of Spiritualism, Deism, Atheism or Agnosticism, whereby it does not cohere with the group mentality of a certain society (should that be an Atheist in Rome or a Theist in China). It would then seem to me that a compulsion towards the divine, i.e. Sensus Divinitatus, is part of the human condition, whereby we seemed to be endowed with a "God tracker" of sorts within us - this may explain the phenomena of Spiritualism.
  • Pascal's Wager
    I would first caution you from using the term "according to logic", since in your response you vaguely relate mathematical statistics (which I believe to be fallacious) to the wager, and at no point you utilize propositional logic within your argument. As to your assertion that Pascal's wager is a purported argument for the existence of God is also an incorrect interpretation, in my opinion. The argument that Pascal's Wager tries to convey, from my interpretation, is the "burden of proof" argument - simply put, this is to say that, according to the wager, because the risk inherent in affirming atheism if there is a God (i.e. damnation is the result of this affirmation), the stakes are exponentially high; according to the wager, high enough to affirm theism. This interpretation is, of course, subject to the "many gods" objection - which is a much stronger argument, though I believe it has its faults - but to assert that Pascal's Wager is meant as an argument "for" the existence of God, and not the burden of proof being on the atheist rather than the theist, is a misunderstanding of the core argument.