Can I prove there is a God?

Question

Wish me luck.....

First off there's creation, now there may not be a beginning, and therefore no need for a creation, but if there was a beginning, there would be a need for a creator.

Next throughout history many people have believed in a higher power. Has the majority of humanity really fooled itself into feeling this higher energy.

Also, there's too much unexplained, from why are we seemingly in the centre of an infinite universe, why do we get feelings of deja vu, why do we have feelings of previous lives, or experiences?

Then there's the books, many, many different texts with one underlying message (for the most part). Love God.

I think the debate really comes down to, have we built this all up in our heads, or is there really a higher force than us, and if so does it have a consciousness? But really it's hard giving rational evidence for a God, but if you have anything you'd like to add, or any of this you'd like to pick apart, giv'r.

"First, you ASSUME that things have been "intelligently created"."

You're right I was assuming, but matter nor energy can be made from nothing, one from the other maybe, but with a beginning we have to assume that someone made that energy or matter.

"Next, truth isn't a matter of popularity."

Sure, but groups removed through either geography or time have all had some sort of higher being as part of their way of life. (With modern day China, and I guess Buddhists being among the rare exceptions)

"Also, lack of immediate mundane explanation does not necessarily indicate a supernatural explanation."

The rules of science currently do not allow for reincarnation, but is the Dalai Lama a liar? I think there's defenitly something past our comprehension at work, whether it be God or not, you probably have felt it.

"Then they are just books... written by people... very very ignorant people."

To be literate was rarer back then, so authors were actually smart for their time.

Answer 1

God said that of all His creations, it is we humans that have been made in His image. That is interesting when you think about it.
Consider the Sun. It is enormous, powerful, so bright we can not look directly at it. Yet it gives us life, and we see its beauty reflected everywhere. Sounds like the attributes of God doesn't it? And yet he didn't make the sun in His image.

Consider air. Oxygen to be specific. It is invisible. It is present everywhere. It gives us life. Again that reminds me of God, but He didn't;t say he made air in His image

So what is it about you and I that God would say that about us? The sun gives us life but it doesn't care that it does. Air has no feelings or soul either. Humans can love. Humans can forgive. Humans get angry at injustice. Humans can commit to loving our children unconditionally because they came from us.

What I'm getting at is this. If you want proof of Gods existence, look in the mirror. Look into you neighbors eyes. Know that Love is not a higher energy that we are fooled into feeling . It is real. God is real.

Answer 2

"But really it's hard giving rational evidence for a God". Actually, I don't think it's hard at all. , It seems to me that the intelligent design answer to the evolution question is irrefutable. It simply says that design in the universe is undeniable. The law of cause and effect says that wherever you find design you must have a designer somewhere. Since the cause must have everything the effect does and the effect(the universe) has intelligence, the cause(the designer) must also have intelligence. So you need an intelligent designer of this universe. But who could design a universe outside of a God. You call Him whatever you want to call Him. I call Him a God. That refutes evolution since evolution says that everything came about by random chance. The I.D. argument, it seems to me, is irrefutable. It's a simple logical argument:
Premise #1: Wherever you find design, you need a designer.
Premise #2: The universe exhibits design
Conclusion: The universe needs a designer.
The only way around that argument is to deny the second premise. Every atheist has to deny design. If you read Richard Dawkins two latest books('the blind watchmaker' and 'the god delusion') that's exactly what he does. He denies design. He says that there's no design in the universe, just the "appearance of design". But that's insane. You just can't logically and realistically deny that there's design all through the universe. It's all around you. You have to be blind not to see it. There are branches of science that basically just study the design in nature.........scientific disciplines such as nano-technology and bio-mimetrics. These disciplines study the design in nature.......whales,bats,dolphins... have sonar.......and try to create machines that mimic that design. Everywhere you look there's design. Where there's design there's got to be a designer. That's just common sense. Creation is not an unproven theory. It's a common sense fact that we come to by just using a little logic and reason.
Paly's argument of the 1700's still holds today. He said that if you are walking through a forest and you find a watch sitting upon a rock, you have 2 possible explanations: 1)It was designed and built by a watchmaker 2) It came about the same way the rock that it is sitting upon came about.....by random chance. Which explanation makes more sense?
Do you really believe that dumb mud could somehow bootstrap itself into intelligence over billions of years simply by random chance luck?
To Dawkins, belief in God is a projection of human longings and a type of wish-fulfillment. Such an argument works against atheism as well since an atheist wishes there is no God and therefore believes there is no God.

Answer 3

Is there a beginning. We have found the start of the universe with the big bang theory, but we also have the thought that everything will contract into itself and then provide another big bang. But where did the matter in this reoccuring reaction come from. Well we cant got back endlessly through time to figure that out it is just there. If something created it who created the something to create the matter. God would have to have a god and then you are once again in the same endless loop.
From the beginning of history we have tried to explain things we couldnt understand by placing them in the control of a higher power. That has been passed through our entire generations fom the stone age. There is a controlling force that makes things happen that we cant explain. That through science is now falling apart. We know why bright lights travel across the sky(comets). Why the earth rumbles and shakes (earthquakes) and why the ground erupts throwing fire and flame (eruptions). These have been studied and we now understand the processes nature uses to provide them. But through time thay have been the work of a higher power. When you are supplied with the facts and no science to explain them you would believe in a higher power.
The Love God message is part of the mind-control religions use to make the followers do what the leaders say. You now have religous groups saying god loves you so go and blow yourself up and kill hundreds and you will be welcomed by god in the after life. Yet in the religous books of that god it says thought shall not kill.
So yes it is all built up in our heads and is an insanity passed from generation to generation. It can only be stopped by the non teaching of religion to mionors. Let people grow up and experience life before trying to explain to them everything happens because god wants it to.

Answer 4

Can you prove that you exist? Yes, of course you can. You merely use your senses to determine that you can see, hear, feel, smell, taste and you have emotions as well. All of this is a part of your existence. But this is not how we perceive God in Islam. We can look to the things that He has created and the way that He cares for things and sustains us, to know that there is no doubt of His existence.

Think about this the next time that you are looking up at the moon or the stars on a clear night; could you drop a drinking glass on the sidewalk and expect that it would hit the ground and on impact it would not shatter, but it would divide up into little small drinking glasses, with iced tea in them? Of course not.

And then consider if a tornado came through a junkyard and tore through the old cars; would it leave behind a nice new Mercedes with the engine running and no parts left around? Naturally not.

Can a fast food restaurant operate itself without any people there? That's crazy for anyone to even think about.

After considering all of the above, how could we look to the universe above us through a telescope or observe the molecules in a microscope and then think that all of this came about as a result of a "big bang" or some "accident?"

Answer 5

The great Catholic thinker, philosopher and theologian St. Thomas Aquinas summarized his cosmological argument in the Summa Theologia. In this theological masterpiece, St. Thomas writes five "ways" that we can know God exists. His first three ways deal with the cosmological argument:

St. Aquinas argues that there are things in the world in motion (this simply means that things are changing) and that whatever is in motion must have been put in motion by another thing in motion. Aquinas holds that, "whatever is in motion must be put in motion by another," and that, "this cannot go on to infinity, because then there would be no first mover." Hence St. Thomas argues that in order to eliminate the infinite chain of motions, there must be a first mover and source of all motion, God.
The second way is very similar to the first. It argues that," In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible." By this he means that any thing, circumstance or event cannot change itself, but can only change something else (concept of efficient cause). Since there is a string of causes in which the string cannot be infinite (see premise #1), then all causes must attribute themselves to a first cause: God.
The third way also argues using the notion of a chain of causes. St. Thomas notes that things in our world owe their existence to something else in the world. Aquinas calls this the way of "possibility and necessity," meaning that all things made possible, necessarily attribute their existence to some pre-existing thing. Only God can be the source of all things since he is a being having its own necessity and does not need a pre-existing thing to cause him to exist. All things existing can trace themselves in a chain back to God.
A second shorter version of the cosmological argument can be formulated as:

Every being (that exists or ever did exist) is either a dependent being or a self-existent being.
Not every being can be a dependent being.
So there exists a self-existent being.
Finally, a third rendition of the cosmological argument (extracted from the book Philosophy for Dummies by Dr. Tom Morris):

1. The existence of something is intelligible only if it has an explanation.
2. The existence of the universe is thus either:
a. unintelligible or
b. has an explanation
3. No rational person should accept premise (2a) by definition of rationality
4. A rational person should accept (2b), that the universe has some explanation for its being.
5. There are only three kinds of explanations:
a. Scientific: physical conditions plus relevant laws yield the Event explained.
b. Personal: Explanations that cite desires, beliefs, powers and intentions of some personal agent.
c. Essential: The essence of the thing to be explained necessitates its existence or qualities (for example, if you ask why a triangle has 3 sides, I would respond that it is the essence and necessity for a triangle to have 3 sides by its definition.
6. The explanation for the existence of the whole universe can’t be scientific because there can’t be initial physical conditions and laws independent of what is to be explained. Event the Big Bang theory fails to explain the existence of the universe because modern science cannot explain where the original Big Bang singularity came from. The universe as a sum total of all natural conditions and laws cannot be explained unless we have an Archimidean reference point outside the system.
7. The explanation for the existence of the universe can’t be essential because the universe cannot exist necessarily. This is because, it could have been possible for the universe not to have existed (if the Big Bang had been slightly different it is possible for large-scale structures to not have existed). Thus the universe is not something the must necessarily or essentially exists.
8. Thus a rational person should believe that the universe has a personal explanation.
9. No personal agent but God could create the entire universe.
10. A rational person should believe that there is a God.

Answer 6

It is beyond the shadow of a doubt the built up mental picture of thousands of years of humanities work. We haven't, for one, been thinking of the same god since the dawn of mankind, our early pantheons were filled with wrathful god's who forced you to not love them, but respect them, and today we revere the opposite.

As for what we do not know, that has never been a problem, early peoples did not know what caused thunder or volcanic eruptions and looked to gods, following this same pattern I would guess most mysteries today have a far less superstitious origin then a god.

And lastly, I do not think humanity ever felt "energy" of a higher power, but instead a gaping hole of missing facts and the quick solution were gods. These gods came from dreams and vision and they grew to what they are today.

Answer 7

I think you should believe what you believe in. I think we'll never know because there are some points to prove that he exsists and that he doesn't. For example they found the remains of an ark in Turkey and it looked like it was carrying hundreds of animals in it. However, who wrote the bible on paper? People! and even if there was a god, why do we need a church? and how come the bishop and can only talk to god and we can't?

Answer 8

Could I please make a suggestion for next time? As those we are trying to convince invariably dispute the Bible, have a look into the science of textual criticism (if you're familiar with the Alpha course, Rev Nicky Gumbel teaches beautifully on it). It proved beyond a shadow of a doubt to me that the Bible was, in fact, what it is supposed to be!

Answer 9

Listen to the giggle of a child at play, the thunder of a great storm, the song of a spring bird. Look at the sunset on the Pacific Ocean, the sparkle in a lover's eyes, the perfection of interstellar movement. Smell the first rain in spring, a field of freshly cut grass, the wind blowing over a rose garden. Feel the hug of your mother, the sun after the rain, the cool breeze of a summers night.
Yes there is a God.

Answer 10

If I understand your question correctly, you're looking for a rational argument for the existence of God. Space is too limited to give you the "full meal deal" here, but the links below will prove invaluable and are very effective for anybody who doesn't hate theism.