Can God Exist? - Objectivism Online Forum

Can God Exist? - Objectivism Online Forum

This was written a few months ago to the WhyIslam.org Forum, but may be of interest to your readers.

If There Were a God.

The Muslim's make much of Allah, as the one and only God. The Jew's have Jehovah, the God of Abraham, the God of the Ancients. Then comes Jesus and Christianity with their True God. These religion's, and most others, agree on there being but One God, and, given His unique position it seems logical that they all are right on that one point. There can be only one God, in that more than one would confuse the issue, no end.

So, what must be the attributes of this one God? First, He must be Omnipotent and, so, be able to create the Universe and all that there is out of nothing. Second, He must be Omniscient, knowing all that there is to know. Third, He must be Eternal and be aware of all that ever was, and all that is, and all that ever will be. (Time does not exist for Him.) Fourth, He must be Infinite, hovering over all that we can see in the Heavens, to infinity in whatever direction we choose to gaze. Fifth, He must have always existed, being exempt from having had to be created (of necessity, the one exception). Finally, He must have been terribly lonely and quite desperate to have brought into being such a motley assembly of creatures that Man has turned out to be.

For what reason would God have created Man and then set him one against another? A quick review might start with the spread of Islam, in the Centuries following the Prophet Mohammed, from Spain to the Philippines, by bloody conquest, with the cry being "Kill the Infidel". Then there was the "Kill for Christ" cry of the Crusades, again a period of bloody conquest, an activity accompanying the thousand year Dark Ages, when Christianity was in charge. This was followed, despite the so-called "Enlightenment", by a series of more secular Wars, such as our Wars against England, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War's I and II, the Korean War, the obscenity of the Viet Nam War, and, now, our grotesque War against Iraq and the Terrorists.

One might be forgiven for asking, "Why would an all-knowing God have created Man with such a penchant for murder?" He obviously knew, as He was putting together the Plan for Man, that these creatures would immediately become engaged in killing one another, culminating with the current irrationality of a Muslim World of one billion souls being given the responsibility, via the Jihad of the Prophet, of killing the remaining nine billion residents of Earth, unless they embrace Islam! Something's amiss.

There is another thing common to all religions---they are, without exception, the product of an exercise of Faith in the Unknowable. Thus they are, of necessity, built on the ideas of their originators, with the various Rules and Regulations being written down by a succession of Priests, each supposedly in response to instructions received during a personal visit by God, or, at least, by a Prophet of His. Unavoidably, however, there were Rules put into the various Holy Books that were more calculated by the priests to enhance their power over their followers than to express the Will of God; Rules that an Almighty God would seemingly not need, nor be too interested in.

No self-respecting God would possibly have created the mess we see around us. To impute to Him such an Effect is to bring Him down to the level of man, and to insult the very concept of God. Could it be that we are all the unwitting victims of a collective hoax, started by the witch doctors of pre-history and continued through the ages by the various priests that followed, as a pretty good scam? The logic of this answer is pretty obvious. Only those programmed from birth could be sufficiently gullible to accept such fantasies, most without so much as a raised eyebrow, and to even give their lives for it.



QUOTE(Felipe @ Apr 6 2005, 10:48 AM) *

I remember discovered the full epistemological reasoning for the answer to this question being an interesting exercise. So, I ask, can God exist?


Felipe:

This was written a few months ago to the WhyIslam.org Forum, but may be of interest to your readers.

If There Were a God.

The Muslim's make much of Allah, as the one and only God. The Jew's have Jehovah, the God of Abraham, the God of the Ancients. Then comes Jesus and Christianity with their True God. These religion's, and most others, agree on there being but One God, and, given His unique position it seems logical that they all are right on that one point. There can be only one God, in that more than one would confuse the issue, no end.

So, what must be the attributes of this one God? First, He must be Omnipotent and, so, be able to create the Universe and all that there is out of nothing. Second, He must be Omniscient, knowing all that there is to know. Third, He must be Eternal and be aware of all that ever was, and all that is, and all that ever will be. (Time does not exist for Him.) Fourth, He must be Infinite, hovering over all that we can see in the Heavens, to infinity in whatever direction we choose to gaze. Fifth, He must have always existed, being exempt from having had to be created (of necessity, the one exception). Finally, He must have been terribly lonely and quite desperate to have brought into being such a motley assembly of creatures that Man has turned out to be.

For what reason would God have created Man and then set him one against another? A quick review might start with the spread of Islam, in the Centuries following the Prophet Mohammed, from Spain to the Philippines, by bloody conquest, with the cry being "Kill the Infidel". Then there was the "Kill for Christ" cry of the Crusades, again a period of bloody conquest, an activity accompanying the thousand year Dark Ages, when Christianity was in charge. This was followed, despite the so-called "Enlightenment", by a series of more secular Wars, such as our Wars against England, the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War's I and II, the Korean War, the obscenity of the Viet Nam War, and, now, our grotesque War against Iraq and the Terrorists.

One might be forgiven for asking, "Why would an all-knowing God have created Man with such a penchant for murder?" He obviously knew, as He was putting together the Plan for Man, that these creatures would immediately become engaged in killing one another, culminating with the current irrationality of a Muslim World of one billion souls being given the responsibility, via the Jihad of the Prophet, of killing the remaining nine billion residents of Earth, unless they embrace Islam! Something's amiss.

There is another thing common to all religions---they are, without exception, the product of an exercise of Faith in the Unknowable. Thus they are, of necessity, built on the ideas of their originators, with the various Rules and Regulations being written down by a succession of Priests, each supposedly in response to instructions received during a personal visit by God, or, at least, by a Prophet of His. Unavoidably, however, there were Rules put into the various Holy Books that were more calculated by the priests to enhance their power over their followers than to express the Will of God; Rules that an Almighty God would seemingly not need, nor be too interested in.

No self-respecting God would possibly have created the mess we see around us. To impute to Him such an Effect is to bring Him down to the level of man, and to insult the very concept of God. Could it be that we are all the unwitting victims of a collective hoax, started by the witch doctors of pre-history and continued through the ages by the various priests that followed, as a pretty good scam? The logic of this answer is pretty obvious. Only those programmed from birth could be sufficiently gullible to accept such fantasies, most without so much as a raised eyebrow, and to even give their lives for it.

James B. Wright May, 2004
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B.Royce
God exists---in the mind of each believer. God is a believer's capacity for wishful thinking when he implicitly regards it as having power over existence and calls it God. A fairy is a believer's capacity for wishful thinking when he implicitly regards it as having power over a limited aspect of existence and calls it a fairy.

Discussion or debate about gods and/or fairies based on accepting the believer's assertion that the figments of his imagination exist anywhere else but in his own mind is not only a waste of a rational man's time, but grants the believer a level of seriousness he does not deserve.
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AisA:
If one finds a god, must that god have a creator as well? According to this logic, the answer should be yes. There could never be a "first" anything, because it would have had to have been preceeded by something else. What existed before god? Who or what created god?
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So, where is your evidence that there exists a place not bound by physics? What evidence do you have a non-physical plane? What evidence do you have to support that some being exists in it? Stating that the universe, which exist in a physical plane, must have been created by a being that exists outside of the physical plane does not make it so. Particularly when you use an analogy of a being that does exist in a physical plane, a watchmaker, creating something else that exists in a physical plane, a watch.
--------Pity for the guilty is treason to the innocent. - Ayn Rand
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Functional structure does not imply a designer. The idea (I won't say concept because I'm not comfortable I would use that word properly) "design" makes sense only in contrast with that occurring naturally. You look at a watch and know it is designed because you know that gears and bands and glass faces don't occur naturally. Also, as RC already discussed, the God/design issue is twofold: either

1. everything has a designer, which applies to God's God's God ad infinitum, or

2. something(s) exists which does not have a designer, in which case why would you be uncomfortable with the idea that nature (which you know exists) has just always existed in some physical form, but comfortable applying that same idea to "God" (which you do not know exists--at least, not without some serious epistemological funny business)?
--// Matt Stein
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-banned-
God is like a black hole. We cannot observe a black hole directly. As a singularity, there is no possible physical device, according to our current understanding of physics, that would allow us to observe it directly. In the sense that it is without dimension, it is like God. Nonetheless, scientists assert the existence of black holes based on their effects. Likewise, I assert the existence of God based on God's effects. God cannot be directly perceived, but God's influence can be. Where is your evidence for Ayn Rand? Can you point to her? No, she is dead. Only her writings and images remain, in other words, effects of her existence. The universe is God's Atlas Shrugged. Its existence necessitates its author.

Why must all universes have the same logic? Not to mention the fact that I never posited a non-physical universe. In fact, I said the opposite, that god exists without dimension. God does not require a medium. As far as I know, this universe is the only one there is.

Thus the proof of god is in the necessity of god. I am proposing that reality as we know it could not exist without the intervention
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One difference is that you can't present evidence based on the effect of god. Supposing that black holes really do exist, then we would be able to do things that experimentally test the existence of such a thing, which is impossible with god.

There are a lot of problems in your "definition" of god. I take it that what you mean is that there exists a being, which has those properties that you gave, and the purpose of giving a definition is to identify that being as opposed to, say, me. I am quite puzzled at the idea that "god" is bound by time -- that isn't something that I've ever heard a god-believer say. I don't know what you mean by "bound by space". I'm not bound by space, either; do you mean that god's extent is universal (i.e. that his physical presence encompasses all locations where there is matter)? You are also claiming that god cannot be physically detected, which means that he does not interact with the physical universe (not to imply that there is any other kind). Now if you are just saying that he cannot be seen, because he does not absorb any visible light wavelengths, then all you need to do is get a UV light or whatever. The problem is that if god is exlcuded from the universe, then he can't have any effect on the universe, so you could not even have indirect evidence that it exists. Like a black hole, you could push a star into it and watch it disappear, spewing off x-rays.

As for your specific evidence, structure does not not exist. The universe exists, and it has a definite nature, which we can grasp in terms of the concept "structure". The alternative would be that the universe has no nature, that it is all random chaos, that there is no existence, and thus no universe. Objectivism holds that the fact of existence is axiomatic; it would be nonsensical to deny existence. The fact of existence need not be explained by anything else, i.e. god cannot be axiomatic. God is totally unnecessary to explain the fact that existence has a nature -- without a nature, you have no existence.

Simply positing a dichotomy between the physical universe and a parallel non-physical universe does not make the argument. You claim that all things in the physical universe require a cause and yet you don't require that of the non-physical universe. Why? Simple consistency demands that you impose the same requirement on all universes that you are positing. In addition to positing god, you also require another arbitrary evity, the non-physical universe. The burden of proof on you grows, since now you also have to prove that there exists a non-physical universe. Even if you could prove that, you would still have to prove that there is a god in that universe.-

&& Okay, gotcha. Here's paid put to that argument. The disproof of god is in the superfluity of god. I am proposing that reality as it exists (which we understand in part) could easily exist without any intervention. && //Dave Odden

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