I disagree. Experience is personal. Some will have an experience of God in their lives, some don’t.
Proof needs necessarily to provide evidence for everyone; To satisfy theists and the objections of atheists and provide convincing proof for those who have not taken a definite stance and who generally call themselves agnostics.
Ani99, you make my point as, yes, experience is personal, thus the evidence available is seen thru different personal experiences. Parenthetically, Paul in Romans 1 is very clear that the evidence for God is innate and viable in creation.
Hugh
I don’t like Paul at all. But any way what do his words mean do you think? Thanks.
Paul writes, the reader is free to interpret : …since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
21 For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
Ani99…it seems to “Me,” at least that Paul says we all have some awareness of there being “Someone larger than ourselves” ( and I do not mean in size) out there. This would explain, at very least, why every people group and culture (so far as I know) has some sense of a “Something” or “Someone” — however they may present it. Now some of that may be within us and not simply from “out there.” The thing within us — which makes gods of Olympic champions, rock/rap/ tech (whatever the term now is) musicians, movie and theatre actors (keeps People magazine and the National Enquirer in business…this is from “the thing within us” that must make an idol or “small g” god out of something…the Nazis used it and mimicked known religious rituals to their own purpose…nothing here to do with philosophy, but everything to do with something inside us that “wants something larger than ourselves”…etc etc…
And these would be considered perversions of a very primal instinct…an innate instinct that we cannot get ourselves away from…
As for the “evidence for God” part…that works one way for one person and a different way for others… A nocturnal sky, filled with stars like bits of diamond chips on a black velvet background, in the Mojave Desert (dry air, no city lights) was enough—at one point — to get me to thinking…but other things for other people…But Paul’s words do seem to fit the experience beneath a sky filled with stars…I knew someone once who said a college zoology class in her sophomore year is what did it for her…So anyway, that is what Paul’s words talk about…hope to see what others think here.
I am a theist so I can relate to what you are saying. However if this was enough there would not be any atheists and they are a sizeable minority and growing larger every day. Some of them are even God haters, like Richard Dawkins.
The existence of ethics /morality is the proof of God. These absolutely cannot arise in any other way.
I have read — or tried to read — Dawkins. I am sure that what “works” for one person may not strike another quite the same way. You can make dinner for all three of your kids (just for example), but two of them may decide they are not hungry and turn away from it. That does not mean that there was, therefore, no evidence that their parents were willing to feed them. It means they did not want what was offered to them (for any number of reasons such as a sudden conversion to the vegan lifestyle or a Big Mac attack … in other words, they did not want the “evidence of parents feeding them” that was offered)…
The issue here is “evidence” and the matter of what an individual decides about that evidence, or how to react to it…
As for atheism and its growth…as far as I can see, it exists largely among young men, average age 34, per some Pew Research sites. Pew Research has the percentage of atheists growing from 2% in 2009 to 4% in 2018. The fact that 18 % of that four percent say they believe in a higher power suggests some confusion, I suppose, about the meaning of atheist. But I would also suggest that the general age group that seems most attracted to this is – like in past generations -possibly still searching for their personal place in things…or going along with the thoughts of friends and acquaintances… any number of things.
All right…that’s my two cents worth (adjusting for inflation)
Sam Harris argues, convincingly to me, that ethics and morality do not require theistic belief.
P.S. As to creation, I think it is more accurate to state that God created into nothing than from nothing.
Ethics has nothing to do with theistic belief. It has to do with God having created conscious beings, to whom then God gave a physical existence, a body and all the environment.
It is obvious when we consider why people have ethics and why some have no ethics.
I the physical realm/ creation is born out of information that exists in the Mind of God and which God upholds in the Divine Consciousness for it to come into being and be sustained in existence, then “from nothing” and “into nothing” is only semantics.
I agree. As far as religion goes, what you say is true. A person may believe in God but they may have various experiences which cause them to see God in one form or another. It is not a choice between gods. It is all one God but people have different ways of worship and different beliefs.
I’ve also been influenced by people here and such as Harris (his conversations with Peterson) to come round to seeing that apparent atheism and materialism need not lead to jettisoning of morals, much less nihilism, and we may fairly thank God that this is so, I think.
It seems to me, rather, that those willing to espouse morality as if it were absolute (ie. a objective obligation to us) are making healthy use of something beyond - and deeper than - the science that some of them would claim they are limiting themselves to. And they need not be appealing to Christianity or even general theism to do this. But I argue they are appealing to a philosophical basis that (if they claim to be strict empiricists) is wholly unacknowledged and therefore unexamined by themselves - lying outside the very science that they choose to see as circumscribing all reality.
Being ignorant of (or in denial of) philosophy just means that one is especially vulnerable prey to it (and not always for the worst - but sometimes for better too). Some of the more publicly militant atheists like Krauss or PZ Myers have illustrated this quite well. Just because they reject philosophy, thereby choosing to approach some of the most interesting and ultimately most practical questions of life with their eyes squeezed tightly shut doesn’t mean they aren’t being run by all manner of the same (again … for better as well as for worse). It only means they are willfully ignorant about it. The more inquisitive among us are happy to approach these same matters keeping our eyes wide open.
Ethics and morality always—always – have something backing them, if people are ever to follow them, or attempt to adhere to them…Without it, we get Lord of the Flies. There are, and have been within the last century or so, political systems that made a certain attempt at a non-theistic morality and tens of millions (maybe more than that) died. I will agree with Sam Harris re ethics and morality to the extent that we humans do at least to have some sense that certain basic things are wrong. But on our own we twist them into interesting shapes. That such a “thing” exists for us to discuss — like morality or ethics – probably defies the logic of nontheism–since the whole concept (morality) implies a belief in something unseen and immaterial and outside of ourselves…That is, morality and ethics HAVE to be outside of ourselves lest we lose control of ourselves…and we “have” lost control of ourselves in many ways over the course of human history — even of our own lives, if we are to be honest about it.
Creating “into nothing rather than from nothing” is an interesting thought. But a universe created “by Someone using nothing that was pre-existent in order to create existence from nothing” is generally the thought —although I suppose one could meander down the trail endlessly on the semantics of that. . And we have been given the ability to realize that just such an event happened at some point!! I just read a blog by Michael G Strauss that touched on that issue. Happy Sunday.
Thank you Robin. My understanding of the Biblical texts: God spoke the universe into existence. The word “nothing” in means absolutely nothing, if nothing is pre-existent it is something.
Materialistic evolutionists postulate that if we had all the information of the universe we’d have the answer to the origin of ethics, which they see as necessary, at this point in tike, as necessary for the survival of man.
The trichotomy: science, philosophy, faith exposes the impossibility to hold to a strictly materialistic explanation of ethics and morality at this point in time, i.e. for Harris to affirm with exhaustive knowledge we be able to account for everything is philosophy, further it is based on his “faith” presuppositions. His argument is circular, as is everyones.
As Christians we proclaim / preach / declare / “argue” the Gospel of Jesus The Christ. Only The Holy Spirit can transform the intellect - mind, heart - beliefs, will - acts by giving the gift of faith that leads to confession of Jesus as Lord. Urging people to read the Bible is because of our faith / belief that it is always accompanied by The Holy Spirt to convict or to harden in conformity with God’s will.
Blessed Sunday to you as well
Somehow I doubt Jesus would have been as jealous of his trademark as his followers seem to be. The transformation is the thing, not the branding rights. Tongue only somewhat in cheek.
Actually Mark D, the “thing”" is both…branding rights and transformation. The second does not occur entirely in this life for anyone (“all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”…“there is none who is righteous, no not one”…Jesus saying “no one is good except God” etc…). The first thing, however, can only happen in this life (see John 3:3), unless you believe in reincarnation which is another religious philosophy (not a biblical one) entirely… I do appreciate your comments on this issue (esp the “What do you say when…?” comments), though.
I would have said “impossible to hold a materialistic explanation of ethics and morality”. If we had no spiritual nature and no love, which is a spiritual connection between souls, then we would have no ethics. Our conscience didn’t evolve. Our conscience is the result of spiritual connectivity and thus to be able to take others into account in making decisions and taking actions. The only people that don’t do this are those who have deadened their conscience, i.e., broken the spiritual connectivity.
It does begin here, though, as you allow. It begins with a changed heart, meaning that there is a radical change in what our hearts desire, and then more and more externally, as well. (The repentant thief didn’t have much time for the latter.)
True, and that is what I meant…
Yeah, I was sure so, but I just wanted to articulate that we are saved from ourselves and provided for now, not just in the future, pie in the sky bye and bye.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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