Pros and Cons of Proving God Exists?

[Robert]

Plomp,

The context of those quotes is very important. Paul indeed talked alot about not asking gentiles to follow hard rules that weren't part of their culture like adult circumcision. That's what he's saying about be guided by the Spirit not the Law. But you indeed have to follow the Law unless you sin.

Sounds like a home made theological doctrine.
You're free to believe anything you want but it's not possible to back your words up from the Bible.

For the record, the quote from Hebrews is not written by Paul.
2nd: Acts is written by Lucas, he talks about a general agreement by all apostles.
3rd: Romans is a huge doctrinal explanation of how christianity works. Not something that only fits within one context.

Your response only could be applied to the Galatians letter which is indeed quite circumstantial and quite a mood-based letter.

But read the Romans letter, the entire chapter 7 to start with. Paul's reason for not teaching the law lies not within cultural pitty. There are very important reasons for that. Not in the last place that the law can't be used to live a holy life.

Now I'm not saying that it's black and white and there's no circumstance where you should do what you feel is right regardless of what the Bible says but personally I've never been in such a situation and I don't expect the Lord to put me in one.

1. are you allowed to watch porn? What does the Bible say?
2. Can you shelter jews during the holocaust? Or do you have to obey the government?
3. Can you watch movies in which the antoganists visually sin?
4. Can you eat a sandwich of cheese and meat?
5. How much do you have to give to charity? Especially if you're living in a country where the government already uses a part of your tax money to feed the needy?

Just a few ones. Don't answer them lightly but answer them from Biblical sources. And as soon as you need strong interpertation, you're in fact proving my point.

[Kidlicious]

It's not a theological doctrine. It's not a philosophy eithee. It doesn't fit into your system. It's between me and God. If you prefer theological doctrine that's your business. But you can't tell me that I can't back up my interpretation by the Bible especially when your interpretation makes little sense to me when looking at the Bible in it's entirety. I suggest you reread it from an existentialist POV then make a comment instead of just insisting that your doctrine is the only correct one. Consider the idea that the prophets and apostles were existentialist thi.kers. In the end I'm responsible for my own interpretation.

I believe I mentioned that there may be cases where you have to make tough decisions. Those decisions are tougg precisely because we all know that God will discipline a rebel.

[Elok]

An existentialist POV? Seriously? You think the Bible was meant to be interpreted from an existentialist point of view?

EDIT: You're talking about an philosophy with its roots in nineteenth-century Europe (mostly western, aside from Dostoevsky), formed in reaction to a perceived modern moral crisis resulting from the collapse of old values. And claiming that this philosophy played a significant part in the thought of first-century Hebrew writers establishing the Christian church.

Also, how do you reconcile the Bible being eternally existing, by your interpretation, with the idea of its values being shaped by the philosophy of a bunch of largely secular Europeans?

[molly bloom]

(yes I eat pork. That rule was for the jews only.)

Naughty. Not all Christians think so. And Jesus was a Jew, and he didn't think so.

[Robert]

That's what I said: "You're free to believe anything you want"

But you can't tell me that I can't back up my interpretation by the Bible

Why not? So far you've not come with with any biblical backup.
And the fact that you cross over to philosophical and existentialistic arguments (instead of Biblical ones) says enough.

Like I said: you're free to believe and do anything you want. That's indeed between God an you.
All I conclude is that your believes aren't based on the Bible but on personal ideas on how christianity should work.
If I'm wrong, show me, instead of whining that I am not allowed to say that you can't.

[Robert]

Bottom line is that people believe (or do not believe) what they do want to believe.
Facts, scriptures, laws, prophecies, visions, dreams, time traveling.... it doesn't matter.
People will bend anything towards their own desires.

I'm fine with that. Apparently that's how our minds work.
It's a pitty, because it makes communication very very hard (we hear what we want others to say, not what others want to say)

I take it for granted that everybody has his own interpertation.
The nice thing is that we can discuss our interpertations. And of course one interpertation is wrong if both interpertations exclude eachother. (taking the assumption that we both seek to find the message the autor (of the words we try to interpertate) wanted to spread)

Then why can someone not say: "Your interpertation is wrong"
What kind of a political correct way of debating is that.
You're wrong :P If not, then show me! That's the spirit of a debate

[kentonio]

An existentialist POV? Seriously? You think the Bible was meant to be interpreted from an existentialist point of view?

EDIT: You're talking about an philosophy with its roots in nineteenth-century Europe (mostly western, aside from Dostoevsky), formed in reaction to a perceived modern moral crisis resulting from the collapse of old values. And claiming that this philosophy played a significant part in the thought of first-century Hebrew writers establishing the Christian church.

Also, how do you reconcile the Bible being eternally existing, by your interpretation, with the idea of its values being shaped by the philosophy of a bunch of largely secular Europeans?

Much as I don't want to end up on the other side of this argument, you could actually reconcile that with a God for whom time is basically meaningless. Is it so much more ridiculous to imagine a book meant to be read using a philosophy that wasn't theorized under nearly two millenia later, than to think that he decided to bring salvation to man millenia after man started walking the earth?

I think an evangelical would say you do have freedom, you just suffer horribly for the wrong choice. That does sound pretty twisted to you (and me, I must admit) but I guess they'd respond by saying that consequences have actions and simply because you'd, say, go to jail for stealing doesn't mean you lacked true free will to decide not to steal.

I guess that's combining two things - freedom of the will and whether the punishment fits the crime (so to speak - not I believe it is a crime to think differently).

Before posting I actually spent about half an hour thinking about the crime/punishment thing, but I ended up discarding it because the list of 'crimes' in the christian sense is just so broad that I think its too easy a comparison, plus we don't think in normal terms about the freedom to commit crimes. I think it could work as an example though if it was a child living in poverty with the barest of food and no toys being made to walk past piles of shiny games and huge tables of food every day.

What fun stuff does God not let you do? I wish I knew a way to explai to you that it's fun to be a christian. Alot of things that I used to think were fun weren't really fun looking at the big picture. Now that I don't do them I understand that. But first you have to have faith that there is a higher power that knows better.

How about boys entering maturity as young teenagers but being told that masturbation or pre-marital sexual activity is sin? That's pretty ****ed up, because its asking children to resist hardwired hormonal impulses.

[Mojotronica]

If it's a serious point, then please explain your question. I don't get it. (well, in relation to this topic)

Faith in your wife isn't the same as faith in God and you know it. But the question was intended as a jumping off point into a discussion of the different ways we we use word "faith." It's easy to say I don't understand the meaning of the word, since it's meaning changes in different contexts. But that's a cop-out, intended to dismiss whatever I have to say about it, without even attempting to determine what I meant by it. I ignored it when Jon Miller said it, but opted to not ignore it when you repeated it.

But honestly I don't know that it's worth getting into it, since the thread has moved far from my original, simple premise. So I retract the snarky retort and disclaimer.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Let me try to help you Imran. In post 8 you said that God is not a rule maker.

Monitronica is saying that if we prove God's existence we will no longer have the existential dilemma because we will objectively know the correct way to live. This means that we know which rules to follow. One of those rules, assuming you would be a christian would be to be "guided by the Spirit." The question is what does that mean exactly. What it clearl does not mean is that you no longer have to follow the rules.

To life by the Spirit means to exist as a self. It means that you don't follow the rules of man, but you follow your own rules, and for a christian the more you follow God's rules the more you become a Self.

With all due respect, you sound more like a Jew for Jesus than a Christian. To assert that being guided by the Holy Spirit means to exist as self is utterly ridiculous. As Robert has shown, we are called to be guided by the Spirit rather than by the Law. And Jesus speaks on many parables that assert the same - remember your Good Samaritan, who does what those who are under STRICT adherence to the Law would not do (the Levite and Priest could not touch the man lying there for fear of being unclean under the Law).

[Mojotronica]

The original premise was:

We take it as a given that fundamentalist Christians have an interest in proving God exists and that the Bible should be read as a literal history/rulebook of/for life.

But is that really in the best interest of Christianity? It's sort of a fool's errand to begin with, since it can never be proven or completely disproven. It limits the appeal of the entire religion to the kind of people who are willing to suspend disbelief sufficiently literal-minded to insist on it's literal truth. Who does that benefit? I think it mostly benefits churches that cater to that niche. A human being can make a living -- sometimes a very comfortable living -- selling it, at the expense of potentially reaching more people. People who aren't comfortable with a strictly literal, "proof" version of the religion.

Anyway the church in the USA is controlled by literalists who benefit personally, materially, from their pitch. At the expense of the mass appeal that a more abstract version that would have a broader audience. That's why the intelligentsia and scientific rationalists have rejected the church in favor of atheism or consumerist/Victorian Christmas traditionalism or agnosticism.

[loinburger]

I always got the impression that people who tried to prove the existence of God were engaged in a purely intellectual (i.e. non-spiritual) exercise, either in a benign "what can be 'known' about God" sense or else in a self-aggrandizing "everybody who disagrees with me is an evil idiot" sense.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Much as I don't want to end up on the other side of this argument, you could actually reconcile that with a God for whom time is basically meaningless. Is it so much more ridiculous to imagine a book meant to be read using a philosophy that wasn't theorized under nearly two millenia later, than to think that he decided to bring salvation to man millenia after man started walking the earth?

Fair point. But the early authors of the Biblical texts, while inspired by God, still lived in their Jewish contexts. And their 1st-2nd century Jewish contexts wouldn't have let them be as individualistic as Existential philosophers, at least IMO.

Before posting I actually spent about half an hour thinking about the crime/punishment thing, but I ended up discarding it because the list of 'crimes' in the christian sense is just so broad that I think its too easy a comparison, plus we don't think in normal terms about the freedom to commit crimes. I think it could work as an example though if it was a child living in poverty with the barest of food and no toys being made to walk past piles of shiny games and huge tables of food every day.

I think this argument though is going to hit a wall because we don't have a fire & brimestone type of poster here. It'll basically be a big circle jerk... and speaking of circle jerk..

How about boys entering maturity as young teenagers but being told that masturbation or pre-marital sexual activity is sin? That's pretty ****ed up, because its asking children to resist hardwired hormonal impulses.

I don't think God necessarily cares so much about masturbation (the story of Onan is, IMO, about listening to God rather than masturbation). As for pre-marital sex, I believe that it is God's ideal, but he won't all full of rage if you don't approach that ideal. We all sin and fall short of the will of God. I think it is best outcome to avoid pre-marital sex simply on the basis that, scientifically speaking orgasms tend to tie people together emotionally (not joking, studies have shown there are physiological results due to orgasms which tend to result in greater emotional ties), and if you jump around doing such things, invariably some people are going to get hurt. I don't think God wants people to get hurt so much. But God forgives, especially if we don't mean to be hurtful.

[Mojotronica]

I always got the impression that people who tried to prove the existence of God were engaged in a purely intellectual (i.e. non-spiritual) exercise, either in a benign "what can be 'known' about God" sense or else in a self-aggrandizing "everybody who disagrees with me is an evil idiot" sense.

It's the reason that the fundamentalists are so weird about scientific consensus regarding evolution. The idea is that since God is all-powerful, anything God says must be manifest. And the Bible is the Actual Word Of God, so anything in it must have happened, literally, exactly as it says. If you're a literalist/fundamentalist.

Proving God exists would be a powerful recruitment tool, many would shrug their shoulders and sign on because what choice do you have once it's proven? So in my experience a lot of time is spent by literalist/fundamentalists working on the proofs.

Some examples:

1. Finding Noah's Ark or Biblical artifacts.
2. Breeding a red cow in Israel.
3. Disproving evolution or any origin concept that can bypass the "God waved his hand" concept of Creation.*

*Maybe God waves his hand but we, as subjects of the Creation, observe the process as evolution, would be a way to reconcile the text of the Bible with scientific consensus. But only God twitched his nose or waved his hand sorcery version work for the literalists/fundamentalists.

[Mojotronica]

My 2-cents or addition to the conversation is the idea that we actually want uncertainty about God's existence, because my understanding of faith is that there's always an unknown aspect of it. If you know, than it's not faith. So the TOE or any concept of creation that removes the need for a God/Creator is good for the religion because it forces the faithful to have faith, rather than be certain about it based on a theological proof. Once you have certainty, faith is gone. "Without faith, I am nothing," said God.

So fundamentalism/literalism is essentially at odds with my own worldview, which is more existentialist and uncertain. But if you can maintain faith IN SPITE OF existentialist options and uncertainty, that's more profound, deeper, real, better. Because it's been tested, is being tested, all the time.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Faith is not merely for the existence of God, but for what God is going to do.