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Thanks for your reply. I'll spend some more time reading it in detail at a later point. To clarify one thing: I haven't even read Dawkins' books. My stance on

Thanks for your reply. I'll spend some more time reading it in detail at a later point. To clarify one thing: I haven't even read Dawkins' books. My stance on "proof of god's existance" arguments stems from, among others, a very goos philosophy PhD which I had the fortune to have as a high school teacher for a while (until he quit and went back to scholarship). His favorite subjects were Thomas von Aquin and Immanuel Kant, both believers in Christian theological "proofs" of various kinds. I couldn't think of a less flamboyant word than "debunked". To put in other words: all of the proofs of god's existance that I have seeen have turned out to be logical fallacies. My best friend, who was strongly catholic most of his life, but went on to study phiolosphy, I think concluded the same. That doesn't mean he's lost his faith completely though. AFAIK he doesn't like to call himself a Catholic anymore though. Which brings me to another issue, if not the main one, with these proofs: which god's existance do they aim to prove? Belief in most religions seems mutually exclusive (in a single mind, and without redefining and muddying historical terms), as much as we'd like otherwise. "Proving" something like "there is an entity or cause of effect that is more powerful than any entities or causes of effect that we know" is not a proof of the existance of any particular human-defined "God".

scop 3y ago
Thanks for your reply! I wasn't trying to be spicy, just trying to write up a semi-thorough response in the middle of some tasks. I appreciate your feedback. There is something certainly to be said about logical proofs of God being inherently a very odd thing. How do you "prove" something that is Being Itself. In my religious journey I read a lot of philosophical books and while I was convinced by some of the philosophical arguments, they did indeed leave me a little empty. For example, I think the argument of contingency is a very good one, but even when accepting that I cannot say that I "know" or "see" or "believe" in God. It is like being told that some guy named Bob exists in a different city. Ok, so what? I haven't seen him, heard him, touched him. Until you see him, the abstract really doesn't bring you across the finish line so to speak. I look at philosophical arguments more about "clearing the ground" for God, placing Him within a "why this is a reasonable belief" context. T To actually encounter God is completely different, which is also why I found the historical arguments far more effective for me in my journey as we have in Jesus, so we are told, the God-Man making Himself known to us. We get to see God. I personally became very convinced of the historicity of the gospels after about 10 years of intensive study, having started out as somebody who enjoyed them as "myth". Yet this God is also peculiar: He suffered complete desolation on the cross. And here I find myself in this strange life, full of trials and sorrow, and I see Christ as fully explanatory of how suffering and hope possess meaning. I encounter Christ in these moments as I know that Christ doesn't remove suffering but transforms it. He doesn't take away my crosses, he makes them light and even, dare I say, full of love.
- moritzwarhier 3y ago
  I really appreciate your responses – while I basically remain at my POV, unable to really invest in religion in an ontological way, I do feel as part of an aged, Christian-based culture and feel very deeply about some aspects of this heritage, without really being Christian myself. For me, emotional experience of the world and expanding my mind has certainly led me to see religion differently than as a 15-year old, meaning much more reapectfully. I still fit into the atheist ane agnostic cohort but I see religion as part of the fabrics of civilization today. And transient, like language. But I value a lot of Christian culture (e.g. Bachs music and prior art) and some Christian values (e.g. ethics of forgiveness and human rights)
  - scop 3y ago
    I likewise appreciate your replies and thoughtfulness. You did remind me of one of my favorite "arguments" for God: > There is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. > Therefore there must be a God. > (You either see this one or you don't.) - Dr. Peter Kreeft (https://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm#2 https://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-ex...) Bach, man, if you look at my HN comments you'll probably see Bach mentioned at least 10% of the time. His music is unlike anything else out there: all individual parts unique and interesting yet everything forming a unified whole, constantly, across every single measure. You can listen to a cello line and be fully entranced and then listen to a violin going at the same time, likewise love it for itself, and then have the ability to then listen to them simultaneously and hear the harmonies. Every other composer I've listened to has a "dominant" section/theme, for example let's say the violins are playing a melody and the cellos are acting as a harmonic filler. It's beautiful, but listening to the cellos by themselves could be pretty boring. But with Bach, every single instrument is doing something enjoyable at the same time.
    - moritzwarhier 3y ago
      Yes <3 It sounds pathetic but sometimes I think his music has saved my life at a certain point. The fact that all voices are always "singing" makes it also very enjoyable to practise his music.
zigzag312 3y ago
Interesting discussion. If I may chime in, isn't the standard people set for proof of god's existence often impossibly high? Can't really blame anyone for setting the bar high, but are we sure it's not too high? Even in mathematics all proofs depend on axioms in some way. And axioms are statements considered to be universally true without proof. Is the bar for proof in this case set higher than for a mathematical proof? What is proof anyway? > A proof becomes a proof only after the social act of “accepting it as a proof.” This is as true for mathematics as it is for physics, linguistics, or biology. The evolution of commonly accepted criteria for an argument’s being a proof is an almost untouched theme in the history of science. In any case, the ideal for what constitutes a mathematical demonstration of a “nonobvious truth” has remained unchanged since the time of Euclid: we must arrive at such a truth from “obvious” hypotheses, or assertions that have already been proved, by means of a series of explicitly described, “obviously valid” elementary deductions. [0] Do we have any true 100% proof for anything (where we don't rely on some assumption that we consider true without a proof)? [0] A Course in Mathematical Logic for Mathematicians (2010), page 45
- moritzwarhier 3y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean by that. Acknowledging the axiomatic structure of logical reasoning is surely valuable. But if you want to relate this to mathematics, I think you should aim for more rigor. What definition of god you are even aiming to prove? Or accept as an axiom? And mathematical axioms are expected to be "self-evident", true! E.g., "if P is true, P is not false". Discussing these foundations of reasoning is interesting. But your conclusion sounds to me much like "we can't know anything and thinking is futile". The "100% proof" is a strawman — nobody demands one for God, as it is already impossible to perform a "100% proof" of the fact that the Earth revolves around the sun. As far as my feeble mind understands, this is not how science works. Philosophy of science has moved on from this a long time ago. Proving that something does not exist ist rarely possible outside of abstract mathematics. But it is not possible to describe God in purely mathematical terms either, right? At least not without straying far from any concrete monotheistic religion. At best we can agree that God is one of infinitely many theories which are impossible to prove or disprove. Which makes it something for which "theory" is not even the right word. But the more serious you take some religions, and the more you go back in time, this is not what religion was all about. Religion is not only inner peace and positivity. It has been the foundation of ethics, I guess — which is important to me, again! And I would not argue that ethics can be "logically proven". But religion also often demands obedience, and used to make very concrete statements about what is true or false in the physical world. Only the increased possibilities to prove some of that wrong (e.g. praying can defeat physics and cause miracles) led to today's, more fuzzy definitions of Christian faith, step by step, over the course of centuries. Of course I acknowledge that this is a matter of interpretation and any single religious person can choose to ignore organized religion and such claims — as long as they are allowed to. > Do we have any true 100% proof for anything (where we don't rely on some assumption that we consider true without a proof)? I am trying to interpret your comment in a more charitable way, but it just seems to me like a classic logical fallacy that would "prove" anything and basically makes any rational argument futile. If God is an intangible abstract concept without a measurable, tangible relation to the physical world: fine! If it is also not a well-defined abstract concept that allows itself to be proven or disproven: also fine! But then what's left is emotion, ideas, human thought, ethics. Those are powerful and important parts of civilization. But we have then left any logical argument about "proving god's existence". And it has been consensus for a long time that these arguments are futile, for the exact reasons discussed here. Pretending otherwise is what mads high school phiolosophy classes unbearable when there were to many zealousl religious students and a bad teacher. It derails into either woo rhethorics or a shouting match. And this is why I said that studying these proofs is an interesting intellectual exercise, and sometimes tells a lot about the societal context. But no, these are not proofs in the sense of a falsifiable scientific methodology.

scop 3y ago

Thanks for your reply! I wasn't trying to be spicy, just trying to write up a semi-thorough response in the middle of some tasks. I appreciate your feedback. There is something certainly to be said about logical proofs of God being inherently a very odd thing. How do you "prove" something that is Being Itself. In my religious journey I read a lot of philosophical books and while I was convinced by some of the philosophical arguments, they did indeed leave me a little empty. For example, I think the argument of contingency is a very good one, but even when accepting that I cannot say that I "know" or "see" or "believe" in God. It is like being told that some guy named Bob exists in a different city. Ok, so what? I haven't seen him, heard him, touched him. Until you see him, the abstract really doesn't bring you across the finish line so to speak. I look at philosophical arguments more about "clearing the ground" for God, placing Him within a "why this is a reasonable belief" context. T To actually encounter God is completely different, which is also why I found the historical arguments far more effective for me in my journey as we have in Jesus, so we are told, the God-Man making Himself known to us. We get to see God. I personally became very convinced of the historicity of the gospels after about 10 years of intensive study, having started out as somebody who enjoyed them as "myth". Yet this God is also peculiar: He suffered complete desolation on the cross. And here I find myself in this strange life, full of trials and sorrow, and I see Christ as fully explanatory of how suffering and hope possess meaning. I encounter Christ in these moments as I know that Christ doesn't remove suffering but transforms it. He doesn't take away my crosses, he makes them light and even, dare I say, full of love.

moritzwarhier 3y ago
I really appreciate your responses – while I basically remain at my POV, unable to really invest in religion in an ontological way, I do feel as part of an aged, Christian-based culture and feel very deeply about some aspects of this heritage, without really being Christian myself. For me, emotional experience of the world and expanding my mind has certainly led me to see religion differently than as a 15-year old, meaning much more reapectfully. I still fit into the atheist ane agnostic cohort but I see religion as part of the fabrics of civilization today. And transient, like language. But I value a lot of Christian culture (e.g. Bachs music and prior art) and some Christian values (e.g. ethics of forgiveness and human rights)
- scop 3y ago
  I likewise appreciate your replies and thoughtfulness. You did remind me of one of my favorite "arguments" for God: > There is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. > Therefore there must be a God. > (You either see this one or you don't.) - Dr. Peter Kreeft (https://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm#2 https://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-ex...) Bach, man, if you look at my HN comments you'll probably see Bach mentioned at least 10% of the time. His music is unlike anything else out there: all individual parts unique and interesting yet everything forming a unified whole, constantly, across every single measure. You can listen to a cello line and be fully entranced and then listen to a violin going at the same time, likewise love it for itself, and then have the ability to then listen to them simultaneously and hear the harmonies. Every other composer I've listened to has a "dominant" section/theme, for example let's say the violins are playing a melody and the cellos are acting as a harmonic filler. It's beautiful, but listening to the cellos by themselves could be pretty boring. But with Bach, every single instrument is doing something enjoyable at the same time.
  - moritzwarhier 3y ago
    Yes <3 It sounds pathetic but sometimes I think his music has saved my life at a certain point. The fact that all voices are always "singing" makes it also very enjoyable to practise his music.

zigzag312 3y ago

Interesting discussion. If I may chime in, isn't the standard people set for proof of god's existence often impossibly high? Can't really blame anyone for setting the bar high, but are we sure it's not too high? Even in mathematics all proofs depend on axioms in some way. And axioms are statements considered to be universally true without proof. Is the bar for proof in this case set higher than for a mathematical proof? What is proof anyway? > A proof becomes a proof only after the social act of “accepting it as a proof.” This is as true for mathematics as it is for physics, linguistics, or biology. The evolution of commonly accepted criteria for an argument’s being a proof is an almost untouched theme in the history of science. In any case, the ideal for what constitutes a mathematical demonstration of a “nonobvious truth” has remained unchanged since the time of Euclid: we must arrive at such a truth from “obvious” hypotheses, or assertions that have already been proved, by means of a series of explicitly described, “obviously valid” elementary deductions. [0] Do we have any true 100% proof for anything (where we don't rely on some assumption that we consider true without a proof)? [0] A Course in Mathematical Logic for Mathematicians (2010), page 45

moritzwarhier 3y ago
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Acknowledging the axiomatic structure of logical reasoning is surely valuable. But if you want to relate this to mathematics, I think you should aim for more rigor. What definition of god you are even aiming to prove? Or accept as an axiom? And mathematical axioms are expected to be "self-evident", true! E.g., "if P is true, P is not false". Discussing these foundations of reasoning is interesting. But your conclusion sounds to me much like "we can't know anything and thinking is futile". The "100% proof" is a strawman — nobody demands one for God, as it is already impossible to perform a "100% proof" of the fact that the Earth revolves around the sun. As far as my feeble mind understands, this is not how science works. Philosophy of science has moved on from this a long time ago. Proving that something does not exist ist rarely possible outside of abstract mathematics. But it is not possible to describe God in purely mathematical terms either, right? At least not without straying far from any concrete monotheistic religion. At best we can agree that God is one of infinitely many theories which are impossible to prove or disprove. Which makes it something for which "theory" is not even the right word. But the more serious you take some religions, and the more you go back in time, this is not what religion was all about. Religion is not only inner peace and positivity. It has been the foundation of ethics, I guess — which is important to me, again! And I would not argue that ethics can be "logically proven". But religion also often demands obedience, and used to make very concrete statements about what is true or false in the physical world. Only the increased possibilities to prove some of that wrong (e.g. praying can defeat physics and cause miracles) led to today's, more fuzzy definitions of Christian faith, step by step, over the course of centuries. Of course I acknowledge that this is a matter of interpretation and any single religious person can choose to ignore organized religion and such claims — as long as they are allowed to. > Do we have any true 100% proof for anything (where we don't rely on some assumption that we consider true without a proof)? I am trying to interpret your comment in a more charitable way, but it just seems to me like a classic logical fallacy that would "prove" anything and basically makes any rational argument futile. If God is an intangible abstract concept without a measurable, tangible relation to the physical world: fine! If it is also not a well-defined abstract concept that allows itself to be proven or disproven: also fine! But then what's left is emotion, ideas, human thought, ethics. Those are powerful and important parts of civilization. But we have then left any logical argument about "proving god's existence". And it has been consensus for a long time that these arguments are futile, for the exact reasons discussed here. Pretending otherwise is what mads high school phiolosophy classes unbearable when there were to many zealousl religious students and a bad teacher. It derails into either woo rhethorics or a shouting match. And this is why I said that studying these proofs is an interesting intellectual exercise, and sometimes tells a lot about the societal context. But no, these are not proofs in the sense of a falsifiable scientific methodology.