Okay,... If God isn't real because you can't see him, how do we know love is real.For that matter, how do we know the breeze we feel or movement of leaves outside is the wind? We can't see it! ++ plus, if God isn't real because there is no proof, how do we prove we love? What about homosexuality? We don't have any way of detecting or making someone homosexual. We have no real proof someone is homosexual, i mean really, it's just what they tell you and nothing more can be said. With that, can't God be caratcerized in the same category as love, wind, and sexuality?
2007-10-23 13:10:44 · 13 answers · asked by mustard 4 in Arts & Humanities ➔ Philosophy
What the flip! Carrie F, i believe in God but, my belief is different from others, I don't use God to make an answer for something!
2007-10-23 14:00:38 · update #1
When i use homosexuality, i mean, you can only go by what someone says. If george Bush for instance says," I am not gay", but dreams about sexual relations with men, that would make him gay.But since we can only go by what he says, no he is not gay.
2007-10-23 14:07:04 · update #2
What really ties these things together is, they are all word of man. If someone says they are in love, they may not feel it inside. If someone says they are gay, there is no way to really prove it. If someone says the wind is blowing there is no way of really proving it, because i could say a magical leopard blew air. That is what ties it together with God. People deny God all the time but, things around them are so much more from the truth.
2007-10-23 14:14:20 · update #3
a belief/faith in something is a bit different from an emotion.
God cannot be categorized with feeling/emotion or even sexuality.
a belief/faith in something is a bit different from seeing something that is explainable by physics or science. we cannot explain God with either one of those.
a belief/faith is something personal. God is really unprovable BUT don't let that sadden you. God in my opinion does not need to be proved. God is bigger than our explanations and will exist, in my opinion, outside our thoughts and feelings. our part is to have belief and faith... not proof.
2007-10-23 13:25:45 · answer #1 · answered by Knight83 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Not everyone believes in love. Not everyone believes in homosexuality. I'm sure there's someone out there who doesn't believe in the wind.
Also... not all atheists don't believe in God simply because they can't see "him".
Love is something that people feel, that's shared, etc... And isn't someone saying they're homosexual enough proof? If they're attracted to the same sex, that's the definition of homosexual. It isn't terribly complex. The wind... actually, you can kinda see the wind... if something's blowing in it, etc... It's also weather, and directly related to other weather patterns.
"God" is more of an abstract concept. God doesn't exist on his own, only through his creation and actions. Therefore, God IS love, and homosexuality, and the wind, etc... God can't exist outside of those, but all of those can exist outside of God. Love is part of who you are, and how you relate with others... God isn't, except as facilitated through love. But why can't love just be love? Why can't it be a special thing shared between individuals? By bringing God into the equation, it can become more impersonal, and it takes the significance of the individuals away.
Basically, God was "created" to explain phenomena... but those phenomena still exist, even without an explanation. God doesn't. God and science both explain the same things (and are the same things, essentially), and neither exist outside of those explanations. Therefore, in and of themselves, they're insignificant
That's not to say I don't believe in God, or that I don't think love is more *divine* than just a measurement of receptors going off in your brain. I also don't think love and God being related makes either less important... it's all about connection. But I don't think believing in God is necessary by any means, and I think everything can exist and have the same meaning outside of "God".
Also... I'm assuming you mean the Judeo-Christian God, right? You realise there are many religions, most with completely different gods. How do you know Krishna isn't real? Apollo? Amon? Chaac? Just because you haven't seen them and there's no proof of them means nothing, right? So if you don't believe in them... why?
2007-10-23 20:45:05 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Nobody bases their unbelief on not being able to see God. Nobody has seen the center of the earth, but we obviously think it exists. No, there are lot better reasons to not believe in God. To start with the enormous amount of suffering in the world, the existence of other religions, and lack of any real reason to believe.
That being said your examples of love and wind are not good ones. We know that love exists because love is a feeling that we feel. I know love exists because I have felt it, and having felt it is enough evidence that it exists as a feeling. We know the breeze is real for a whole bunch of reasons, not the least is that we feel it. We can make observations about the world other than just what we see. What we hear, feel, smell, and taste all can count as sensory impressions.
Since God can not be touched, God's existence can't be subject to the same kind of proof as things we can feel (like the wind). Since the experience of an emotion is sufficient proof for the existence of that emotion, God's existence is different than your example of love. As for the sexuality thing, that is just weird. Do you really not believe homosexuality exists? If you do believe it exists, is this an act of faith on your part, or is there evidence for homosexuality? Whatever evidence you cite as your reason for believing homosexuality exists is going to be empirical evidence and so not applicable to God, which both theists and atheists agree is not empirical.
I hate to put somebody down, but the arguments you make are really not very good. This is more the type of rhetoric I would expect in a Christian Middle School than as a serious question. If you are looking for good arguments for God's existence, please check out some of the works of Christian philosophers. Ultimately their arguments fail, I think, but they're at least worth studying and you will be able to make a better case for what you seem to believe.
2007-10-23 20:29:48 · answer #3 · answered by student_of_life 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Love is an emotion. An emotion by definition requires feeling, thus that argument makes no sense whatsoever. If you have no feeling, no love. Love is not always their. God is supposed to be and if it were I would be able to feel him. I am not currently in love, so no love. I have been in love and felt it. God, never felt him. Sight is one sense, touch, being what we feel the breeze with, is another, thus, again making your argument ridiculous. We don't need to prove love, but we choose to for a variety of self-benefiting reasons...for again self-benefiting reason we need to prove god exists. Love is essentially as made up a thing as God. We have an emotion, something we feel, and we call it love, an arbitrary name. We have a need to explain things and keep people in line and donating money and we call that arbitrarily god. If a man is a butt pirate he is a homo, no more proof is needed. You cannot characterize, (notice the spelling) god in all your suggested categories any more than you can categorize any of the three examples together because they are all from different categories.
In short god cannot exist because the only people who believe in him are people like you who cannot spell or make a logical argument. It is hardly what I would call compelling evidence.
2007-10-23 20:28:14 · answer #4 · answered by shroomtune 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Nobody says god isn't real simply b/c we can't see him. it is far more complicated than that.
The reason god isn't as real as an emotion is b/c god was invented by early man in an attempt to explain the unexplainable. We can show emotions with brain scanners, blood tests for hormones, by the way people act, etc... God is not falsifiable. It's the same as the invisible pink unicorn.
if I tell you there is an invisible pink unicorn standing next to you but you will never be able to sense her with your 5 senses or any scientific instrument unless she wants u to, now what? Can u disprove that? No. But you can sure choose to find it farcical. As do I with god.
I have to say i find it fascinating that you are equating proving god with proving homosexuality, lol. Pretty original there. For someone to fake homosexuality (or hetero) for their entire lives would be a neat trick.
Nothing that happens to anyone needs any explanation outside of science and/or random probability. There is nothing that I or other atheists need god in order to have an explanation for.
EDIT: U seem to be undercutting your own point. I f you can say that the breeze is caused by a magical leopard, why should someone else be able to point to an angry old man in the sky as the root of it all? I'm not really clear on what you're geting at with that point.
2007-10-23 20:13:56 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 4⤊ 1⤋
apparently even our emotions can be scientifically proven
It's like this- there is proof all over the world that God exists, because God made everything there is to see, touch, etc. It's just whether a person believes that God made it, or if something else did (usually science).
In a way, God can be characterized in the same category as those things, but mainly no. God is not the same as any of those, except for love, but even then, his love is greater than our biggest moments to the darkest of nights
2007-10-23 20:30:43 · answer #6 · answered by ? 5 · 0⤊ 1⤋
That's actually five questions, although I'm not sure what some of them mean.
If you think that I don't believe in God just because I can't see him with my eyes, that's just silly. No atheist believes that.
God is not love. I have felt love for people, and I love my wife and my little girl in particular, but have never felt or experienced anything that might lead me to believe in the existence of a supreme being who created the universe.
I don't need my eyes to tell me that the wind is blowing - I can feel it on my skin. Likewise, I believe in the existence of plutonium, although I've never seen any. I have come across way more solid evidence for the existence of plutonium than I have for the existence of god.
'Homosexuality' is not the same kind of thing as 'wind' or 'love' or 'God. It's a name given to a phenomenon that is believed by some people to underly a certain pattern of behaviour. 'Homosexual' is a label given to people who like to have sex with people of the same sex. 'Homosexuality' is a sociological category, and in that sense it does exist.
Your argument is trivial.
2007-10-23 20:28:18 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
How can you compare God to love, wind and sexuality? You are over-simplifying the matter, probably because you are a religious person who isn't really trying to understand the other side.
Love is an emotion. God is not an emotion.
Wind is a natural phenomenon. God is not a natural phenomenon.
Sexuality is a characteristic of human beings. God is not a characteristic of human beings.
Why are you trying to compare things that aren't even alike? This question fails, try again!
2007-10-23 20:21:29 · answer #8 · answered by SMS 5 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Well no, not really. We see the effects of the wind when they blow the trees, we see the effects of homosexuality when two men have sex etc etc.
There are a lot of good arguments for the existance of God -- but this is not one of them.
You should watch "What the Bleep do we know?" on youtube - Quantum physics. That's some proof of god right there.
...although it IS fraught with inaccuracies and overdrawn conclusions
2007-10-23 20:17:16 · answer #9 · answered by Mr Anon 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Love is a human emotion explained by psychology. Breezes are caused by variances in air pressure. Leaves are moved by the winds caused by the air pressure variance. Sexuatlity is again based on biology and, in some cases, psychology. An unknown supernatual presence has no rational explanation....sorry.
2007-10-23 21:04:45 · answer #10 · answered by Its not me Its u 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋