Graham Oppy: Does God Exist?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ค. 2020
- Can God exist if the world is filled with suffering? And are there compelling arguments for or against God's existence?
Podcast: anchor.fm/braininavat
Facebook Group: / braininavat
IMDB: www.imdb.com/title/tt12490350/
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Thumbnail Art: Terry Gilliam from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
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Cool channel! Thanks for posting this discussion
That was a fantastic discussion. Thanks!
22:00 "How do you get imperfection from perfection?" I had a certain feeling about this for a long time, but I was never able to put it into words.
How do you get something from nothing if you are a materialist?
To answer your question, love is perfection and it assumes freedom, which will be misused.
@@jozsefnemeth935 There are more imperfections in this world than just those created through human free will.
I also don't think that there ever truly was nothing, something has always existed.
@@MsJavaWolfI’m curious what other imperfections you would suggest there to be? Things like pain serve an intricate purpose which aligns with “universal perfection” until a personal distaste for it arises. (sorry for how much I write below)
Corruption, evil, etc. arise from human indecency and a personal appeal, which a strictly material view of the world would agree with: That in matter there is no objective right or wrong but only opinion which, unless you are willing to supplement opinion as matter, means evil or imperfection is merely a construct.
Agreeing with that principle without drawing conclusions from it, the theist claim is simply that there are levels of goodness and that it is most desirable to approach the highest levels of that goodness which reach into infinity.
This is also to say that retrospectively there is no inherent imperfection in reality before a personal dissatisfaction with it arises, which Christian theology understands to be the fall of man, which can then be understood as an eternal concurrence rather than a temporal occurrence. Which therefore means, crudely, the human opinion which concocts imperfection as an attribute, as a consequence of its knowledge of the good, has in a sense been manifest through all of time… I know these ideas come across as overly abstract but there is no other way of clearly articulating them.
Great discussion, thanks!
Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to believe in a natural explanation of existence or consciousness rather than a new category of thing called the Supernatural of which we cannot distinguish from the imaginary, man-made or the fictional?
No. If by natural you mean material. We have no basis for material things no different than God things.
I agree with you
hey I know you! :D
Graham has a very interesting view on progress in philosophy. I never thought of it that way. Progress in philosophy is hidden because it turns into other fields.
Excellent discussion. Thanks! 👍👍
Graham is awesome. Thanks for the great show. The only problem was that green screen effect 😑
terrible iranians seem to love dr gramma pee
As a religious guy, I love Graham - if only we were all as kind and reasonable.
When I was an Atheist, I attended Cornell - a thoroughly secular university, whose first President, Andrew Dickson White, was the pre-eminent atheist academic of his day.
At Cornell, as a young atheist - which I was mainly out of disinterest - I had to take a required writing course, called a Freshman Seminar - as a universal academic requirement. I was disinterested in the Bible, but the only Freshman Seminar that fit my schedule was a course on the Bible.
We only studied two Old Testament books: Genesis and the Book of Job.
From Genesis I observed a number of things: The person or people who wrote this book were clearly trying to understand something they understood to be the cause of the universe. That is a thing or person they called God. So God is the cause of the universe. As the Bible story progresses, characteristics related to God are asserted, but those seem to come later. At the beginning, there doesn't seem anything about God being loving - just he make the world.
So I, too start my thoughts about God considering God to be the cause of the universe. I agree with Leibniz on this. All things have a cause, and if God is the cause of the universe, then obviously God exists - whatever God happens to be. Sure, the characteristics of God can and should be discussed and debated, but it strikes me we can and should simply know that God exists. Then from that point we can start to discern God's nature. It doesn't make any sense to debate something that clearly does not exist. What's the point? But if whatever causes the universe exists - which clearly it does - then our discussions take on meaning because we are talking about something real.
To me it does not make much sense to discuss calculus and topology without first understanding arithmatic and basic algebra. To me it does not make sense to jump straight to Jesus without first understanding the God of the Old Testament, and even then, to start with Genesis 1.
wonderful answer, I have decided to never be an atheist but I am always fascinated with this contingency argument and how people get around with it, hence I came here, it makes my faith reassured that people who were atheists do actually revert back amidst the constant backlash on things which aren't explained in books, atheism is very logical but absurd in its derivations for the empty space of absence of religions.
thanks for reading.
peace.
It isn't clear to me that whatever causes the universe exists. I'll list some alternatives (with sub-alternatives):
1. The universe doesn't have a cause.
1a. It has existed forever.
1b. It came into existence out of nothing.
2. The cause doesn't exist currently.
2a. The cause existed in the past but no longer exists.
2b. Time isn't linear. There are multiple dimensions of time and the cause is presiding in another dimension of time but hasn't moved forward in the dimension we perceive.
2c. Retrocausality is possible, the cause doesn't exist and never existed, but it will exist in the future.
3. Time is an emergent property of the universe, and because cause and effect are temporal phenomena, and there is no time without the universe, there is thus no need (or possibility) for a cause of the universe.
I think Oppy himself hold the position that the universe doesn't have an infinite event, though, he thinks the necessary thing doesn't have to be God, it could just be a necessary entity. The proponents of the KCA have made progress showing why the necessary thing has to be God, it's debatable I guess(fine-tuning, moral, free will argument...). There is no way thing can pop into existence out of nothing, nothing could make actuality actual, because something has to be actual there, either from prior state or thing that exist necessarily. If nothing can pop into existence, then what stops them appearing infront of me now? For your third point, I think it's a mistake to assume there's nothing before time starts, it could be when time t=0, the first cause (necessary thing) and time came into existence altogether.
Defining the Good as that what God does seems a bit circular.
"God only does good things"
What are good things?
"That which God does"
It is logical. If humans were created by God, the standards of good and evil must have been given by God. For example, if God thinks murder is good and we will be made to believe so too.
In a word, God is the standard of good Himself, it is impossible for the Goodness Himself not to be goodness.
@succulentsfun
Then wouldn’t God also be the standard of evil Himself?
I fuckin love brain in a vat!
At what point do you face it that theists are going to say anything they can to hold their position because their position doesn't really have anything to do with their argument?
14:42 if this were our definition of good, we’d never be able to determine the difference between good and evil. Our intuitive understanding of good may not even be an approximation of “good” if torturing/killing a child could be “good” in some circumstances.
But maybe it's like thermodynamics. You can have local pain and suffering as long as on balance life is good. Also, while someone who believes in intrinsic moral worth of individuals would see a single atrocity as being qualifiably evil, a pragmatist would generally only be able to compare "good" and "evil" on a relative scale. If everyone was in intense pleasure and fulfillment most of the time, then even being slightly bored or less productive could be relatively negative on the scale of pragmatic morality, so at least for a pragmatist, there may be no good except as something is relative to bad or normal. So there are two possible ways out of this problem of evil. One is to require a zero baseline for the quality of human existence. The other is to argue that on balance life is good even if there is some evil.
The problem of eternal punishment held by some religions though would IMO more easily disqualify a certain type of god from existing.
1:03 One reason Atheism became may have become more acceptable in society in the 18th Century is that it became unfashionable to burn non-believers at the stake. Thoughts?
Is it good to be born despite the suffering in life?
No
#Antinatalism
Is metaphysical possibility the same as epistemological possibility? if not, then is the metaphysical possibility not possibility at all but actuality?
No. A clear example would be like this- we can clearly imagine the peano axioms being false or different. It is logically possible, but such an actual world is almost certainly not possible, hence there is a more stringent requirement for possibilities than mere conceivability. However, something like a unicorn or a female Graham Oppy are not in this category of conceivable but otherwise unbelievable.
Bookshelf of euro games is a much funner flex than philosophy books. 👍
15:30 "millions of animal suffering" -- is there evolution without suffering? Can an ecosystem without negative feedback be autonomous, evolve towards some optimum even logically? Prof Rev Polkinghorn videos have more on this.
Maybe Dr. Oppy only supposes that there's still genuine evil, even if there's no God. But he needs to explain how goodness originates if atheism is true.What if what we call ""evil" is merely something we dislike or even hate?
What are good views on morality ?
1. don't be a dick
2. treat people the way they want to be treated
Ek het nie geweet Jan Van Riebeeck het 'n yt channel gehad nie.
In the problem of evil discussion, graham mentioned that he doesn’t think that the possibility that torturing/killing a child could serve some greater good is a plausible way out for the theist. Why is that?
The way i understand is that .. God is all powerful all knowing and all Good. If he is all knowing he can certainly invoke something in which a suffering of a child is not needed for a greater good . If we is all powerful he can implement the way in which ut can be done . If he is all good then he will do it . I think his main argument was that why is suffering needed for a greater good . Idk i might be wrong about what he said ... That's how I understood it
Epicurus?
Being able to create in no way bestows any other characteristics.
How do you know that?
@@machielrentmeester4882 I _think_ I’d agree with OP. The only characteristic in their statement *is* the ability to create.
To be convinced that God exists, we must first have the need for God; in other words, if we do not have the need for God, then we cannot be convinced that God exists.
I disagree.
To me, the arguments for gods existence where more plausible true than false. Especially the Leibniz cosmological argument.
Therefore I feel rationally bound to the believe in the existence of God.
I don’t think that rational theism can be reduced to loneliness or wishful thinking.
Does anyone want to engage with the Kalam Cosmological argument?
I think there is Kalam fatigue. So much has been written and said about it. It’s much more complicated then the simple presentation and logical form would have you believe. I mean, Alex Malpass co-authored a paper, had a 2-hour debate with Craig, and then had a 3-hour post-debate discussion, all focusing on just _one_ motivation for the defense of _one_ of the premises! What is talking about it in a TH-cam comment section really going to accomplish at this point?
I'd love to debate the KCA.
Samuel Stephens yeah man when you really dive deep into intellectual discussions especially when it comes to something so complex and big like our own existence meaning and purpose and god and so on so on one argument and even one point can be discussed for weeks by the brightest intellectuals yet they still haven’t covered 90% of what there is to discuss on the point or argument or discussion or whatnot
The problem I have with the Kalam is that God isn’t in any of the premises or the conclusion so I don’t even see it as an argument for god.
Oppy himself is one of the most notable critics of the argument who offered critiques of it in numerous texts.
This does not work. The original idea is that God (or some other entity) is all power not merely powerful. The difference is that an all-powerful being runs into a limit where the 3 ""alls" contradict each other as thus they can't all be true. A theist then runs behind the dodge the human beings have been given "free will" and thus God is not "all-powerful."
If WLC or Alvin Plantinga can't come on the show, and I suspect they wont, may I suggest trying Scott Oliphint.
WLC is too busy and Alvin Plantinga can no longer practice philosophy due to suffering from dementia. I suggest Josh Rassmusen or Robert Koons.
@@LogosTheos you serious about Plantinga suffering from dementia? We talked a bit 5 years ago. Hope he's doing fine.
Of course, every being - with life-force (gifted) - is living proof - of the Real Being.
The real life - is the Life-in-life. (Ram Chandra)
It does not amount to an argument better than elan vital. Which has been disproved.
Let us laugh with all nay-sayers - for that is proof and a fine one - of the life force, within - and will always be.
My one meditation guide - told me - that if your teacher does not have humour - run away from him - forthwith.
The Sufis have the same idea.
Humour is vitalising - for the heart, mind and the being, itself.
There is a kind of magic there - within and without.
Watch me - move and hear me sing and hee hee hee. Fare thee well.
This is one of the best things ever - touches the heart and describes the link - of life from human to the Divine - within and the Divine cosmically realised, also.
It describes quite adequately - how and why - one has been meditating on HIM - formally - for about 52 years and at increasing depth and wonder.
Although me Mom said - that I was asking her about God - from the almost earliest days - of existence - in our family.
One does not have to express this to anyone - as one does not have to obey anyone - but HIM - in how one prays.
That this credo - disproved - you say - does not mean that it is not - Life -- within - Life - for meself and others.
What is self evidently experienced - is real - especially when the Divine - must be feeling - that a sincere aspirant - is 'chasing' - Him, alone.
One is born of love - bourne by love - and one will merge -in the Beloved's heart, at last - becoming love.
(Some secrets of the mystic way shared here - many sincere seekers are thinking/doing the same - with obvious diverse elements, too)
(Normally keep silent - but here - one has the salad before one - from the German.)
Yoga is practice - and this continues - even after passing....
By definition god is good? How?
Because He revealed it.
@@machielrentmeester4882 Although I don’t want to go for a line questioning that just goes “How do you know that” ad infinitum... how _do_ you know that? How do you know it wasn’t the devil just saying he was god and that he was good?
@@DanielLee1 Because all the evidence of Scripture suggests that the devil does evil, as well as what we see throughout history. For example, you never hear of Satanic hospitals for children, yet Christians who believe in God and act upon the goodness of God will build establishments that will honor God as being good. If it were the devil who was good, why would he allow God to take the credit? He wouldn't.
@@EdgeOfEntropy17 at the same time though - if the devil was trying to trick you, surely he’d have to come up with at least _good_ things to help convince you. Maybe, the truth is that the only way to get into an eternal paradise after death, you have to only believe things that have real tangible evidence, and this is the devil’s way of getting people to believe in something on little to *no* evidence? Just for the sake of argument.
@@DanielLee1 I can see your point, but again, if I am God, or if I am the devil, who hypothetically is God, and I have more power than the opposing force, then I would at least make myself known as God in some form. I wouldn't allow some book that says I am the enemy to exist, if I am an all powerful God.
Suppose this all-powerful God wanted to create a world with people to glorify him, which is suggested as the main reason for us being here according to Christians. What could have been more effective than to create a pleasant, happy place for people to live in and to show his own existence for any hesitant clearly? This would have been a clear-cut instead of this gruesome trial and hide-and-seek childishness Christians is offering. They are actually putting forward a rather silly, small-minded creator.
"by definition... God is good !" they say..
Well.. why not go a step further and maintain that by definition he exists ?
You see what the design problem is ?
You need a supernatural creature to give you the rules.
So you create a fairy-tale ( think ... tooth fairy ! ) but then you have to "prove" it. So you go through all kinds of nonsensical mental gymnastics that these two characters throw at us...!
Sigh...
That's stupid.
Try this
"we were created. "
Analyse that
Yo it has 666 views. Its cant possibly be a mere coincidence. /s
Because I can’t understand why he allows what he allows, must mean that God does not exist.
No! Just the attributes.
lol - did my comments get Cancelled ... rofl
Hi Chad, we never removed your comments. It's possible they didn't post correctly?
@@BraininaVat i tried to respond to you .. but they keep cancelling the comment ... Whos "They" ... No idea
great show though
@@jokingatheist Sorry about that, Chad. We always enjoy hearing from you.
Really? I'm to find it in some way compelling to accept the idea that a god exist based on notion that it just knows more? It would be far more believable to me to entertain the existence of a god if the claim was made that it's just cruel. Godly morality is flawed.
Our mental models of the Christian god are really off. Any god that powerful would own everything in the universe, the lovely stuff, the horrifying stuff. It would all be intentional. Needless to say I don't believe in that mental model of reality.
So Jesus didn't rise from the dead?
His argument Presupposes that this world we're in isn't where the rebellious souls are sent to under go character building hardship. Hare Krishna Theology claims this material world is a kind of prison for rebellious souls.
They believe that animals have souls?
Do you have evidence? If not, then the possibility isn't worth considering.
@@irish_deconstruction there's no evidence for dark matter. If we apply thag logic consistently then half the things scientisr consider would be thrown out.
This argument is weak.
im not a theist but one theodicy I like is:
Premise 1 God wants us to develop virtue by doing maximally good things
Premise 2 the most maximal good thing is to eliminate suffering and evil
Premise 3 therefore God allows evil and suffering for us to eliminate it.
but there are clearly evils we cannot really alleviate. Why not make the world more terrible, or less? You cant really prove that the amount of suffering we have now is in fact the exact right amount for us to develop virtue. It's essentially just speculating. Also, someone can always just challenge premise 2 by saying it is good relative to not alleviating suffering but it's bad relative to having a world without suffering to begin with. And premise 2 is also just speculation since we dont actually know god's intentions. You'd first have to know what the ultimate good would be and then say god would want that, which would require a separate argument or set of arguments.
@@mothernature1755 Good objection, there clearly are evils such as natural disasters that we can't alleviate. However thinking in an abstract way it may be possible that we can end all suffering for all humans and animals, though it may be hard it may be possible. If it is possible to eliminate all suffering and doing this is a good or the most moral action, then God may allow cancer in children for us to eliminate sometime in the future. However I'm not convinced by this defense or theodicy this is just something I created in my spare time that may work in a deistic framework, but really isnt compatable with religion.
Sadistic as fuck might as well created hell on earth the increase the "goodness".
Let's suppose developing virtue requires eliminating suffering and evil.
As far as I know, God did not eliminate them, "when" they don't exist. If humans eliminate those, then they would do something great God did not do. If God does not need to develop virtue, that begs the question of why humans have to do it. In principle, an omnipotent being could create beings who would not need more than God needs.
Even assuming eliminating suffering and evil is required, that doesn't explain the need for suffering and evil a person would not allow their loved ones to go through. Parenting would be like the Jigsaw serial killer games to make people appreciate life. And even in AI experts discuss rules to avoid machines making certain bad decisions that would cause, for instance, deaths.
If God has much more power and knowledge than humans and is hierarchically above, it is expected to have more responsibilities. If humans are expected to intervene when there are some kinds of problems, God is responsible to avoid them.
Also, in principle, eliminating suffering and evil doesn't help the victims. For instance, suppose a girl is kidnapped, tortured, and raped for a long time, killed, and the body was hidden inside a box and cemented. That happened in Japan. Whatever suffering and evil are eliminated, that girl was a victim, felt extreme pain, and died.
I think this could make sense in theory but I find there are too many cases of meaningless suffering on an individual level.
Yes, maybe as a species we become more virtuous by eliminating those evils, but what about all the people who died meaningless deaths without the chance to become more virtuous?
For example a child that dies young arguably didn't have enough time to really reflect on the evil of the world or to grow spiritually in any meaningful way and if it had no chance to hear about a specific God (or for example be baptized) might not even enjoy eternal life.
Such a child would really just be sacrificial lamb for others to learn from it's miserable, short life, I don't think that is compatible with my view of morality.
Yes god gives you freewill but then punishes you for all eternity if you don't believe what he wants you to. The thing is god is copied from one of the Sumerian gods that predated him as is a lot of the bible so the answer is no god does not exist.
Gives me hope to think that God exists...
And yes, evil does exist...
The thought experiment fails because it doesn’t reveal the whole picture. On the Christian view of God He also loves his creation and He is so holy and perfect that even umpire thoughts, not just actions, are sinful. So unless God wanted to be completely free of humanity, whom he loves and is working to redeem, he must stay his hand.
This reality provides sufficient reason for the all powerful, all knowing, perfectly moral God to stay his judgment for a time. He still judges, He still punishes both in life and at death but His judgment is not rendered immediately because of the countervailing moral reality of his love, grace and patience.
Mushy bullcrap. So loving to torture people forever for thoughts, as if you can control your thoughts. What will your next thought be? It's unpredictable spontaneity.
Meta-character So your criticism is no longer that God is not just in holding people accountable for their actions, for which he gave them a lifetime to accept his free gift to avoid. Instead you are now complaining that God is punishing you even though you are guilty and don’t want to accept His gift where by He took on the punishment you deserve? Which is it? I already dispelled with the notion that God can’t be all the things He is. He also is gracious enough to have literally taken the punishment for you already and you just have to accept it in your heart. Can’t blame a judge for punishing and unrepentant criminal who chooses every option that leads to justice being served on the criminal.
@@randomname2366 It's no one's fault if God gave them a nature capable of "sin."
Meta-character The Christian God didn’t create humanity to sin but did give us the freedom to chose. This freedom is why we can be held responsible for our actions. Moreover, it is possible for us to avoid sin by choosing other actions. The same way law abiding citizens can chose to not become criminals. We are held to a standard because we are meant to emulate God to all of creation. If God wasn’t as great as He is than He would not be worthy of worship. God does not force us to sin or even tempt us to sin but we are certainly capable of it and the capability is why we also have a responsibility.
@@randomname2366 Free choices are unpredictable and random. Why did Adam choose to sin rather than not?
Is life worth it if you end up in hell?
Would a good, merciful and loving God create a place like Hell in the first place? This is more suitable to a demon.
The Bible at least directly says that it would have been better for Judas if he was never born.
If you take ' god ' out of the equation as the speaker argues you are still left with the problem of suffering . I think the speaker is arguing for anti natalism in humans with the extra problem of preventing animals from reproducing . Of course if you take animals out if the equation then it might lead to the death of the biosphere . So Mars for example would be regarded as the best planet as it is free from suffering . By default the speaker is an ambassador for Prof David Benatar I think ? ✌️.
I would love to hear a discussion between Graham oppy and benatar actually!
@@jezah8142 I would be interested in anything involving David Benatar . I also have the highest regard for Bernardo Kastrup. He gives a wonderfully scientific basis for idealism ✌️
1. Oppy overlooks the fact that his naturalism is overconstrained: the dumb substance and its quantity or state can hardly be a necessary entity even at the world beginning. He also strolls over the possibility that our notions are likited by the human experience and that is why we think like ants in a garden. Thus it is much much more plausible to suspect a necessary being in a transcendent realm than supposing that theuniberse is all there is and can explain itself. This is the simplicity of theism. Considering what complexity evolved from LUCA, or what complexity mathematics have, why could not a simple but absolute being generate a stream of causations,.reasoning , etc. X that starts little and reaches large complexity?
2. Oppy models Christians by strawmans. Christians also beleive that love is perfection and person is the highest form of existence. So, the assumption that the universe is all there is, hence purposeless and impersonal can bring about persons just by necessity or chance is a fairly weird logic unless a person is just a thing.
The Catholic Church accepts the proven tenets of evolution. So, that explains the necessity of negative feedbavk, henve sugfering. Love explains freedom and autonomy which brings about evil. And there is a realm where the temporal suffering is compensated for. In a nutshell. But atheists also have a hard time explaining the Bible.accounts.
3. Oppy is happy to talk about attractive and unatracktive ideas but what is his opinion on Pascal s wager , namely that the stakes and the limited life stem forces us to make a decision as a person?
Traveled into a new kingdom finding the bodies of men, women and children hanging from the lamp posts from a distance. Then you felt terrified, deciding the kingdom must be terrible, and you ran away? Seems to be reasonable. But what you didn't know was that, it was just scenes of a movie being filmed, maybe yourself was also in the movie. There was a prefect kingdom there indeed, but you missed it.
So often we forget that we are mere finite beings, bound by our own dimensions and time. We see and think within a wall but we like to believe our wisdom is the highest in the whole universe.
Sam Lebens is sympathetic to your view. Check out the episode we did with him on solving the problem of evil.
@@BraininaVat NO. God didn't just stand by and watch. He came into the human history to take the worst sufferings and died on the cross, to overcome evil and death, to save and redeem. If we see human history as a movie, God is the Director, we are the actors/actresses play with our freewill. Evil and sufferings are allowed to exist in the movie but their existence is for the purpose of ultimate good - only the Director can see and control the whole movie. We do need to take responsibility for our evil doings with our freewill and be judged in the end. And God is merciful and gracious, He has paid the penalty and offered salvation. You can freely choose whether to accept and being purified. The world is like an furnace, may not be a very pleasant place,
“But He knows the way I take;
When He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold." (Job 23:10)
Christianity has the answer, and has demonstrated what is the greatest love and perfect justice, via a world filled with suffering.
@@succulentsfun It seems like you are mixing your metaphor with real life in a way that doesn't apply. In an actual movie, the director exists outside of the story. If a bunch of people die in the story of the movie, and it was the directors idea, the director shouldn't be blamed for killing those people, because he didn't really kill them, they were acting. Stripping away the metaphor, God does kill a lot of people. There are real bodies on the lamp posts.
Also, if God grants salvation, it does not seem as if people can freely choose it. People cannot choose what they believe. If I told you to just start believing that Australia doesn't exist or else something bad would happen, you wouldn't be able to. That is not to mention the millions of people that either lived before Christ or never heard his word before in their lives. Did they do something wrong to not be saved?
@@jeremykarnick6843 You are getting there. So, you understand the director should not be blamed when there is violence, suffering, death in the movie if the purpose of the movie is for good. So how do you know you are not in a "movie" without realizing it? If you are living in a box, how can you sure there is nothing outside of the box? How do you know if you are not living in an electronic simulation? How do you know if you are not in a matrix? Maybe pain and death are real, but according to Christian doctrine, it is temporary.
“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. . ” (2 Corinthians 4:18)
Judge, is God’s business, we don’t know how and how much the others knew. But I know that you and me will not have the excuse. So, tell me this: if Jesus Christ is real, would you love him? If Jesus Christ stands in front of you, would you become a Christian? According to a survey, 85% atheists gave the answer “no” - which proved exactly what’s written in the Bible. Believe or disbelieve, it is out of your heart.
If you are willing, a prayer will do, “Lord, I believe;help my unbelief!”
@@succulentsfun It will never,ever cease to amaze me that there are people in the world, namely Christians,who,seemingly, are able to convince themselves that defence of any and all suffering is the best position to take.
What about the torture and murder of unborn children from abortion which is called health care?
The overwhelming majority of aborted pregnancies happen without any human intervention. For the Christian who views abortion as murder, this would suggest that God is a murderer.
Plus the biblical god nowhere specifically condemns abortions, but does specifically support and even command it.
@@canwelook Since the introduction of the legalisation of abortion in the uk there has been over ten million intentional killings of innocent unborn babies . I guess you have no figures for abortions that were not intentional but occured due to natural causes?
It may suggest to you that God intentionally aborted babies in the womb but that would be a naive view involving a misunderstanding of the created nature of all things in the world. That God permits bad things to happen does not imply that He intentionally brings then about.
As for your last point The fifth commandment states :
Thou shalt not kill (murder)
@@diggingshovelle9669
Clearly you have not studied your bible. There is not a single verse that specifically forbids intentional abortion. The 'Lord' overtly placed a monetary value on all lives... and babies under one month and the unborn were valued at ZERO. Your biblical god INTENTIONALLY murdered all Egyptian first born babies. Your biblical god instructed his priests on the method to INTENTIONALLY abort the unborn from extramarital sex. Your biblical god COMMANDED the killing of the unborn when stealing the land of others. Etc.
Read your bible.
@@canwelook God is the author of life and what He gives He takes away.After all we all have to die.
To understand the real nature of God you have to read it in light of the New Testament (see revelation Chapter V)
The culture of the Old Testament was a violent and brutal place and the people had limited revelation and insight into the true nature of God which is revealed only fully in the New Testament. God does not change but his people do so that in our culture today at least in some parts of the world where the Christian message is heard and received the Love of God is able to raise the human being to the point of growing into union with God`s Love allevating him far above his animal nature. God does not murder otherwise He would not be God but a human being. He gives life ,sustains it and takes it away : That is the nature of the Uncreated to the created. To understand the bible properly you have to begin with Chist and his Love for us. The bible is best
understood as man`s struggle with sin.The fith commandment states: Thou shalt not kill meaning of course murder and the taking of the life of the unborn fits into that category.
@@diggingshovelle9669 I understand that is what you have been taught. And it makes no sense to me. The ten commandments are in the old testament. Do they get dumped? Jesus said he came to fulfill the old testament laws and practices and not one jot or tittle of it would cease to be supported by him until all is accomplished. And he repeatedly responded to questions with 'what do the scriptures say' indicating he 100% supported them. If Jesus did not support the killing of men, women, children, babies and the unborn in the scriptures he would have explicitly said so... repeatedly, unambiguously and forcefully. He did not. If he did not support the slavery practices set down by God in the old testament he would have done the same. He did not. He said nothing specifically about homosexuality yet Christians right now claim it is a sin against god... based on the old testament. Is it a sin or is it not? Why is your god such a horrendously poor communicator? If he wants you to have 'the truth', why does he not appear right now and sort all the confusion out? And if you are dismissing everything in the old testament as misunderstandings by primitive men, why should the new testament be any different?
The bible says that this life is meaningless, that the real life comes after death. And this life is full of pain and suffering. What is your objection to a bunch of fertilised cells being aborted before all this pain and suffering begins? Why do you have the right to impose your opinions on women minding their own business?
".. form light and create darkness; I bring prosperity and create calamity(natural evil). I, the LORD, do all these things." - Isaiah 45:7
This actually makes more sense, when we observe the natural world.
This might be seen as heresy for most Christians, but I wonder if Christianity simply went wrong at some point. Those concepts of omnipotence, omniscience, all-lovingness are very abstract and philosophical and maybe they simply don't describe God's nature. I'm not sure if we have to accept every catholic dogma about God, as well as the work of every famous Christian philosopher.
I can give two compelling arguments for the existence of God. 1. The Kalam Cosmological argument. 1) Everything that begins to exist, had a cause. 2) The universe began to exist. 3) Ergo, the universe had a cause.
2. My version of the Transcendental argument. 1)Logic are laws of thought, it is abstractions. 2) These laws are universal, immutable and transcendental. 3) Laws of thought and abstractions require a mind to exist. 4) This mind, must also be universal, immutable and transcendental for these abstractions to have these same properties. 5) Only the Triune God of Christianity as revealed in Scripture reveals such a mind to us, Himself. 6) Logic exists and reality is intelligible therefore God is necessary.
Interesting arguments.
On the Kalam argument, I think some would disagree with 2.
If something begins to exist, there is a time before it existed. But there was no time before the universe existed, since time is within the fabric of the universe.
A further objection to 2...
While "everything" that begins to exist has a cause, we might think that the universe is not a thing. It's a collection of things, or a set. And collections of things may not have a cause, and might not begin to exist.
E.g. the set of prime numbers doesn't seem to have a cause, and didn't begin to exist.
@@BraininaVat Agreed, time is part of the fabric of space. It had to begin to exist otherwise we sit with a infinite universe onto the past which would make the present impossible. One can postulate that the logical priority of time has president on chronological time before the universe.
@@BraininaVat Thanks for the interaction. By everything, we might mean the collection of everything and call it the universe. If it did not began to exist, it simply would not be. Referring to the infinite regress problem above. Prime numbers are abstractions, and abstractions require a mind to exist. Referring to the transcendental argument above. Thanks for the great channel and content.
Nice replies!
On your first:
It seems possible that something could exist indefinitely. If you think that's impossible, then you've undermined your conclusion, since God is supposed to have existed forever?
On your second:
Numbers don't seem to require a mind to exist. Minds don't invent numbers - minds discover them.
@@BraininaVat Thanks for the chat. Very good. If you can show me one abstraction without requiring a mind, that would be great. :) They require a mind, not to invent them, but to interact/know them. Back to the Kalam; Yes, some things can exist infinitely, Things that had no cause. Like God. But not in the universe. The universe is finite. If the universe existed indefinitely, into the past, we would not be able to reach this current moment. This is the infinite regress problem, there is no starting point.