prove to me god exists?

Answer 1

Well, rationally, you have two choices: either you can believe in god or you can not believe in god. Regardless of which choice you choose, either you will be right, or you will be wrong. This give four possible outcomes. Let us weigh the consequences of each:

You believe in God and are right: you are admitted to the kingdom of heaven and are awarded everlasting bliss. Value: +∞.

You believe in God and are wrong: you die incorrect, and experience nothing thereafter. You may also have wasted some small fraction of your life on religious activities. Value: some finite negative number

You don't believe in God, and are right: you die correct and experience nothing thereafter. Value: some finite positive number.

You don't believe in God, and are wrong: you are cast into the lake of fire to receive everlasting torment. Value: -∞

Now, let us compute the expected value of each bet:

E(believe in God) = P(god exists) * ∞ + P(god does not exist) * (finite negative number) = ∞

E(do not believe in God) = P(god exists) * -∞ + P(god does not exist) * (finite positive number) = -∞

Therefore, your best bet, regardless of the evidence, is to believe in God. Therefore, God exists.

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Breaking character for a moment, that is of course an absolutely preposterous argument. First, it is not an argument for the existence of God, since the proper conclusion is that you will, on average, experience greater rewards if you believe in God (given the same set of evidence) than if you do not, not that you will be more likely to be right. And then there's the minor issue that I implicitly assumed three things in the argument which are not true:

Bad assumption #1: the prior probability that god exists, in light of the existing evidence, is nonzero. Now, this _might_ actually be true, but since we can't make a probability calculation in the absence of rules governing what can and cannot happen (such as, say, that the event in question be physically possible, a restriction usually not assumed to apply to gods), it is not safe to assume this.

Bad assumption #2: that belief necessarily leads to reward and disbelief necessarily leads to punishment. In fact, aside from the fact that the Christian religion says that god rewards belief and punishes disbelief, there's no reason whatsoever to assume this would be the case if God existed, and the Christian religion appears to be based entirely in mythology. If it makes any correct claims about the nature of God, they are right by accident, not because they are founded on verifiable observations of any kind. Therefore, if we consider the reactions of all possible gods, then we have gods that reward belief and punish disbelief, and also gods that do the exact opposite. If the probabilities of each such god are nonzero, then the expected value of either belief or disbelief is effectively ∞-∞, which is not defined. (And of course, considering the extraordinary unlikeness of a random being being in any way interested in humanity, combined with the complete lack of evidence to suggest that this unlikely event has happened, and presence of such things as destructive viruses to suggest that it has not, it might be very reasonable to conclude that P(god exists) is zero, in which case you are left with a net positive value for disbelief.

Bad assumption #3: That your "best bet" is the one with the greatest expected value, not the one likely to be right. This carries with it an implicit utilitarian approach to truth that would inevitably conclude that "if the party says it, then two plus two make five". Needless to say, this is a very dubious approach to belief, and not the one taken by anyone who has not deluded himself that allegiance to his own personal Big Brother is more important than anything else.

Anyway, I figure that as long as I'm going to answer a question about God while carrying this name, I have a duty to present this argument and debunk it.

Answer 2

The difficulty in such a proof lies in the fact that only things which we construct can be proven. We can prove interesting results only after establishing the axioms and definitions, but in the real world humans do not have the benefit of establishing the axioms (rules). The natural world already has its own rules, and using experiment we can only determine if a given theory is consistent or inconsistent with those rules within the margin of error of that experiment. Thus, so far as we know, we cannot be completely certain that we know the rules of the natural world. Therefore, any "proof" about things in the universe will be based on the assumptions we make in a given theory, not necessarily on the true rules of the universe, so the "proof" will really only be an argument. Thus, I believe that anyone who claims they can prove the existence or nonexistence of a god is mistaken. I would just use Ockham's razor to judge competing notions if they produce the same predictions, but this is a personal choice that you can make or not make. The problem I see with religious explanations of the universe is that they produce no testable predictions, so Ockham's razor doesn't even apply because the purpose of scientific theory is to produce testable predictions to determine if something may be true. Religion is about believing something in the absence of evidence, at least the way I see it. Thus, you really need to make the choice for yourself; do you prefer to believe only what evidence suggests and not form beliefs on other things, or do you choose to believe what evidence suggests and some things for which there is no evidence (I wouldn't recommend the other alternatives, in which you don't believe what evidence suggests). Hopefully I said something relevant in here.

Answer 3

Can you think spiritually instead of intellectually? I am referring to that part of the human intellect that allows you to understand things that are not readily made obvious or explicitly stated. It is the same skill involved in interpreting poetry.Think about the following examples and how they apply to the concept of God. What do you see here?
http://puzzles.about.com/od/opticalillusions/ig/OpticalIllusions/WomanWitch.htm

A beautiful young woman or a witch?
There is no change in information yet the information can be interpreted in two ways. Neither interpretation can logically be proven to be more correct.

How about those 3-D hidden picture posters from the 90's? Remember those? Check this out: http://www.eyetricks.com/3dstereo111.htm
At first glance, the eye detects only patterns of scribble. If you look at this picture long enough, you may imagine seeing a dog in it, but if you only look directly at the picture. If you aren't familiar with this type of artwork, and if you haven't experienced seeing one of these hidden three dimensional images pop into view, you may think that I am a liar or a lunatic when I tell you that this picture contains a definitive image of a dog. I am telling you that something exists based on my own visual perception and, until you see it for yourself, you won't have any reason to believe me.

Answer 4

"Proofs" is one of those words. "Proof" in math isn't the same as proof in history or in interpersonal relationships or in biology or in any one of a host of other disciplines.

But let me give you one of the many arguments for God's existence (based on evidence): The Cosmological Argument. The argument is simply this: The cosmos is here and must be explained as to how it got here. This argument is using the law of cause and effect, which states: Every effect must have a preceding and adequate cause. What does it mean by "adequate"? Well, the building didn’t collapse because a mosquito landed on it. The tsunami didn’t hit because someone threw a pebble into the ocean.

Now, when it comes to explaining the existence of the universe, you only get three possibilities: (1) the universe is eternal (it has always been here), (2) the universe created itself, or (3) something created the universe. There is no other possibility except to claim that the universe is simply an illusion and does not exist. So let’s examine these three possibilities to see which is the most reasonable.

First, is the universe eternal? Absolutely not. We know this is true because of the universally recognized second law of Thermodynamics (the law of energy decay or entropy). This law states that everything goes downhill from order to disorder, more usable energy to less. This law is the reason why heat flows from hot to cold and why this building will fall apart if it is not kept up with. If someone doesn’t believe in the second law of thermodynamics, just challenge them to live forever; even with this awesome machinery we have in our bodies, you will eventually wear out and die. We can see that the universe is running down and wearing out; the stars are burning up, the radioactive atoms are decaying, etc. As Psalm 102:26 says, the heavens “will wear out like a garment.” Given enough time, the universe will experience what some call a “heat death” where there is no more energy available for work (maximum entropy); every part of the universe will be the same temperature, and no further work will be possible (speaking of energy transfer); all energy will be evenly distributed. Eternal things obviously do not wear out because they would have had an infinite amount of time to come to their end. Since you cannot have an end without a beginning, the universe must have had a beginning. Evolutionary astronomer Dr. Robert Jastrow said, “Now three lines of evidence—the motions of the galaxies, the laws of thermodynamics, the life story of the stars—pointed to one conclusion; all indicated that the Universe had a beginning.” And everything that has a beginning has a cause. This building had a beginning, you had a beginning, therefore there must have been a preceding and adequate cause. The evolutionists know this and so they came up with the “big bang” theory from that “cosmic egg” (the universe exploded into existence). But there is still a major problem—you have to explain where that “cosmic egg” came from. As it has been said, “There must be a cosmic chicken.” Some scientists like Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov proposed the oscillating universe theory to avoid a beginning. This theory states that the universe acts like a yo-yo; it explodes and then gravity pulls it back in, and then the process repeats itself over and over. But the second law of Thermodynamics still refutes that idea, since each cycle would exhaust more and more usable energy. The universe is not eternal!

Ok, that brings us to the second possibility: Did the universe create itself? I think Heb. 3:4 answers that pretty well, “...every house is built by someone...” Let’s say I walk into my livingroom and see a crayon drawing of our family on the wall. When I ask my daughter where it came from, will I accept her answer of, “It just appeared there; it came from nothing”? Her grandparents might, but I won’t. It is pretty clear that something cannot bring itself into existence. As R.C. Sproul has said, “It is impossible for something to create itself. The concept of self-creation is a contradiction in terms, a nonsense statement . . . It would have to have the causal power of being before it was. It would have to have the power of being before it had any being with which to exercise that power.” As it has been said, “Nothing scratched its head one day and decided to become something.” I’m sorry to have to drop this bombshell on you, but from nothing, comes nothing. Besides, the First Law of Thermodynamics (the law of energy conservation) argues against it. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that in a closed system (without a God, this Universe would have to be a closed system) the amount of energy present in that system is constant (it cannot be created or destroyed), it can only be converted from one form to another. So, if the Universe initially contained no energy, and then it spontaneously generated all of the energy in the Universe, the First Law would be violated. Without intervention from an outside force, the amount of energy in the Universe would have remained constant and unchanged at zero.

And now the third possibility: Did something create the universe? If the universe is not eternal and could not have created itself, then the only remaining alternative is that the universe was created by something or Someone. This would have to be a transcendent, eternal, self-existing being. I can find only one satisfactory explanation to our conundrum, and that is found in Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”

Someone may argue, “If the universe needs a cause, then why doesn’t God need a cause; who created God?” The answer is, everything that has a beginning has a cause; God, unlike the universe, did not have a beginning. Time is linked to matter and space (as we can see from Einstein’s general relativity). If God created the universe, then He created time along with matter and space. If God created time, then He is outside of time and doesn’t need a beginning.

What is more absurd, to believe that God Created everything out of nothing or that nothing turned itself into everything? The fact is, we live in a Universe that is an effect. There must be a preceding and adequate cause for it. The only thing that makes sense is a Creator who is more powerful than anything we can imagine.

Lord Kelvin (the Father of Thermodynamics) said, “Do not be afraid of being free thinkers! If you think strongly enough you will be forced by science to the belief in God, which is the foundation of all religion. You will find science not antagonistic but helpful to religion.”

Answer 5

There is a "mathematical proof" for the existence of God in Wonders of Numbers by Clifford A Pickover. It is a really good book, check it out.

Answer 6

The proof of god's existance is not possible. The belief in god is faith. If you don't have faith then you can't believe in god.

If you accept F C's answer (above) then you don't believe in free will. If everything is pre-determined, then there can be no chance.

Doesn't this question belong in philosophy or religion?

Answer 7

The probability of you existing is so low, because of all the odds against all the jillions of events that need to occur to bring you to the point of being human. The probability is so low because the total events is so high, and the number of events to occur is higher than all the events of space and time that have already occurred, which is another way of saying that your existence is an impossibility. Therefore, there must have been an outside set of events an intelligence to overcome the statistical impossibility of your being.

Answer 8

Look around......now prove to me that God doesn't exist

Answer 9

You obviously have faith that mathematics exists and is evolving. I have faith in that and GOD

Answer 10

5 seconds after you visit hell, and you will have all the proof that you need, it may only take 2 sec. You will remember this question and you will have your answer.