₦airaland Forum

I think posting steps 1 -6 again will really help so here they are:

Step 1: Prove that God exists.

My belief in the existence of God rests on the following pillars

1. The fact that we are discussing about the existence of God means we are real.
2. If we are real then we came from somewhere. Either we were created by another being or we somehow materialized from nothing.
3. I believe we were created by another being because as far as I know no human being has ever proved that something can come out of nothing at least not in the known universe.
4. If we were created by another being then that being is who I refer to as God.




Step 2: Establish that God is a God that thinks and is aware of His creation

1. A being can only create another being of at most equal order to it.

2. Human beings can think, they are aware of their surroundings, and they can create

3 If 1 and 2 are true and God created Human beings then God can think and is aware of His creation.

4. Therefore God is not "Nature" or a set of natural laws. God is a being of the same or a higher order than Human beings which are of the highest order that we are aware of physically.



Step 3: Establish that God is of a higher order than Humans.

Humans do not understand everything about themselves. We don't have the cure to all diseases.
We have very little knowledge
Therefore if God created all the things that we know and the things that we don't know then God must be of an order higher than we are.




Step 4: Establish that God is Just / Morally Upright

1. Human beings have a sense of a morality and since there has always been a sense of morality in all recorded history we can conclude that humans were created with a sense of morality.

2. If we were created with a sense of morality then our creator must be moral as a moral law requires a moral lawgiver.

3. Therefore God is Just and Morally Upright.

Furthermore the universe would collapse without justice at its most basic form (Cause and effect or Newtons 3rd law)




step 5: Establish the existence of evil

1. Humans of all tribes have a sense that something is not quite right.
2. Humans of all tribes have a word for bad or evil and there is a general agreement that people do evil things
3. There are jails all around the world for the punishment of people that commit crimes.
4. Crimes that are considered inhuman have been recorded throughout history
5. We have examples of hitler, stalin, mussollini et cetera
6. Therefore Evil is a reality that cannot be explained away.



step 6: Establish that evil could not have come from God therefore humans were not created evil

1. We have established in step 4 that God is Just / Morally upright.
2. A just and morally upright God cannot create evil
3. If God did not create evil and God created humans then it means that when God created Humans, humans were not evil.
4. Therefore Humans were not created evil.

Step 6a: The fact that God created the being that created evil does not mean that God created evil.
1. God decided to create a being with free will
2. That being (having free will - not manipulated by God) created evil
3. The being could have created without God's intervention because the being had free will
4. Since the created being created evil independent of God then God did not create evil and is not responsible for it.

thehomer:
Do I really need to quote passages? I ask because the entire Bible is based on "revelation" of God to humans. Unless you're willing to claim that these revelations are false or questionable.

The bible contains the revelations of God to humans but that does not stop you from quoting it if you think I am contradicting it.

You have to know the exact passage ( a part of the bible) I am contradicting to know that I am contradicting the bible.

thehomer:
Whether or not the reasons are logical becomes irrelevant if the premise is false or unknown.

The reasons become irrelevant if the premise is false.

An unknown premise does not make a logical case irrelevant.

Every theory of creation (including atheistic ones) is based on an unknown premise.

We don't know how life can be formed from inorganic matter yet that is the premise on which the entire atheistic worldview rests on.

thehomer:
But, I have enough information to rule out certain Gods as described in their books.

yes you can have enough information to rule out certain creation theories (if they have irreconcilable contradictions)

thehomer:
And you somehow feel you have enough information to stick with your God? Which you have also demonstrated in your own way to be unknown and maybe unknowable?

I do not have 100% information, but I believe I have enough information to stick with God. It is the information I have that I'm in the process of sharing.

thehomer:
I have said they may be logical only if one makes certain assumptions. It's these assumptions that I'm questioning. I was also wondering why illogical statements were welcome.

It's not illogical statements that are welcome, I meant that if you notice any illogical statements you should point them out.

Continuing from where I stopped:

I will repeat step 6.

Jenwitemi:
100% knowledge? I don't think anybody does have it, and definitely not religions like christianity and . . . you. So we are all in the same boat in this regard, see. So, why don't we all just shut up about the origin of the universe and it's maker being our daddy or something, eh?

Yes nobody has 100% knowledge but the reason why we can't just "shut up" is that the origin of the universe, life and humans is at the foundation of any kind of worldview.

If one does not have a worldview then one will not be able to interpret most of the phenomena common to human life or at best one will have conflicting and unsatisfying explanations.

thehomer:
Ok. But, this statement is in direct contradiction to the Bible so one of you must be wrong.

I do not think any of my statements contradict the bible.

If you think they do please post the bible passages you think are affected.

thehomer:
So it too is categorical. i.e 2 is true therefore 3 is true.

Ok. In that case, that statement is not complete since it does not consider what happens if the converse were true unless of course you already assume the converse cannot be true.

Ok. But, this statement is in direct contradiction to the Bible so one of you must be wrong.

Yes I meant 10.
In that case, your case is not complete because you have not made any definite conclusion.

I have made a conclusion and yes I cannot be 100% certain that it is true. I only believe it is true and have given reasons why I believe it is true. Since those reasons are not illogical then my conclusions are logically consistent.

thehomer:
One doesn't always have to know the right answer to be able to identify wrong a wrong answer.

Why only theistic alternatives? References to illogical statements are welcome? If a statement is illogical why would you accept it?

No I really don't see why I have to do that. If the premise of your argument is false, then whatever the logic, it is still considered false.

If you find my statements illogical please point them out.

The reasons why I'm accepting only theistic alternatives is because we have concluded that I have taken the atheistic worldview into consideration by saying I cannot prove that it is incorrect as I do not have enough information to do do that and that the best way is to trace out the logical conclusion of the theistic and atheistic worldviews and see which one best explains our experience today.

Once again you cannot you cannot determine that the theistic worldview is false as you do not have enough information therefore I can build arguments on the theistic worldview as the premise of my arguments have not been determined to be false.

toba:
im sure u are able to the task, judging by your performance so far.It shows u re very informed about your stance which u ve defended so well. l must confess, i ve learnt from your posts so far on this thread&quite sure others too have.im one of them which is why i wouldnt intrude with my questions until u ve extensively dealt with the issue at hand. just sustain the tempo. later, i may role out some of my questions for u. well done

Thank you very much.
I hope you saw my reply to the question you posted earlier.

Jenwitemi:
The beauty of my own personal position is, i do not need to know - "for certain" - how it came about. It is not that relevant to my own evolution in this reality that i am in.

If what you believe in cannot explain how you came to be don't you think the probability of it being true is extremely remote?

If you do not have 100% knowledge of the history of the universe, life and mankind then you are in no position to say any theory of creation is a myth except (as I mentioned before) the theory has internal inconsistencies.

thehomer:
Your statements 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 12 were categorical but I only agreed with 1.

statement 2 is categorical up to a certain point and with good reasons which have been explained.
statement 3 is based on 2

statement 5 is not categorical. The word "could" was used.
statement 8 is not categorical. the hypothesis 1-7 was included in the statement
there was no statement 12.
If you meant statement 10:
Statement 10 is not categorical as the word "can" was used.

If your views are that the universe came forth as the result of the big bang and that life just materialized when carbon reacted with some other elements to form the first DNA strands which then replicated and replicated till we had the first cell and then evolution took over until we had human beings then my answer is as follows

1. You are not 100% certain that this happened
2. you do not know how it could have happened

so my conclusion is you are also making assumptions (informed guesses)

If you are assuming and I am assuming and neither of us knows enough to know which of us is right then the only way to make an informed conclusion is to trace our assumptions to their logical conclusions and find out which of the assumptions best describes humanity as we know it today.

To do that, you will have to allow me to finish my line of argument without interjecting me by bringing up evolutionary alternatives.

Any other theistic alternative is allowed and references to illogical statements are welcome.

In other words, you would have to limit your interjections to those bordering on the logic of my arguments.

thehomer:
My views on what?

Your views on how the universe came into existence and how life began.

I assume you believe in evolution so that would explain your views on how humans came to be from the lowest biological life form.

thehomer:
That's right. No conclusions yet.

What I meant to say is No one is 100% sure of his/her conclusions not that one cannot conclude in the sense of being able to have an informed opinion.

We have to conclude to take a position. For example if someone says he is an atheist, he/she has concluded that God does not exist.

statement 2: We are locked into the universe we exist in and we know nothing of the operations outside our universe.

It should be rephrased as follows:

We are currently locked into the universe we exist in and we know nothing of the operations outside our universe

This is what I actually meant. I believe it may be possible for us to know something of the operations outside our universe one day.
When we finally grasp the operations outside our universe we will be in a better position to explain how our universe came into being.

We know our universe was not always in existence. It has been calculated that our universe came into existence some 14 billion years ago.
Our universe was either created or just materialized (or burst into existence after the big bang).

So yes statement 2 is somewhat categorical and can be justified.

@thehomer

Please give me a summary of your views so I can address them directly.

A lot of viewers would like me to continue on the line of my argument but I want to carry everyone along as much as is possible.

thehomer:
My point is that we cannot even start calculating the probabilities involved.

We cannot conclude either way.

Yes we cannot conclude.

We cannot conclude on most matters that involve the history of the universe.

I said I am not 100% sure. Science says it's not 100% sure. No one concludes.

thehomer:
How can you have proof of actions of a particular being and not know that the being exists? You're contradicting yourself.

Sure. But what you claim is that you are in cahoots with a being who actually knows all.

I hope you are not ignoring all the "IFs" in my statements.
I almost always say IF this then that.

I did not say I am in cahoots with God. I have not even said I have talked to God.
The logic of an argument has to be followed step by step.

thehomer:
But, you made some categorical statements before those lines.
Besides, if you made no categorical statements, how were you able to come to a conclusion?

This is logic 419.

Nice pun. please mention the categorical statements I made.

You can come to a conclusion from hypothesis as long as the hypothesis is still reflected inside the conclusion in other words the conclusion from a hypothesis cannot be categorical.

This is the same reason why the theory of evolution is not yet fact.

thehomer:
We are not quite sure of this because it may be a balancing act. i.e If one constant were lower and another higher, life may still be possible.

We don't really know this because we simply do not know if these constants interact at some as yet unknown level.

Even if 1 and 2 were true, 3 really doesn't follow from them because, we really don't have a way of calculating such probabilities because we don't know if the values of the fundamental constants can be different.

Yeah so?
At this level of our knowledge, the multiverse is still currently an untestable hypothesis.

Check physics very well and you'll realise that the probability of our universe having those constants is extremely small balancing act or no balancing act.
at any rate, with this level of ignorance, we really cannot conclude that our universe is the only universe so my hypothesis and the conclusions from the hypothesis are logically probable.

thehomer:
That was why I asked if you're saying the Bible was wrong. If you claim non-believers are not fools, then the Bible is wrong at least on that point.

I did not say the bible is wrong.
What I did was to explain that people misquote the bible to say atheists are fools.

Conclusion (from the bible)
Fools are not always atheists and atheists are not always fools.

The phrase translated "no God" could also be translated "God is gone" not God does not exist which is how the message bible translates it.

The context of the verse does not even suggest atheism.

Jenwitemi:
Logic1, that Christianity "is the only way" does absolutely nothing to explain how the universe came into being, how life was formed and how human beings came to being. Christianity is based on a creation myth just like all the other religions and there are many of those creation myths flying around. Take your pick. I just want to point that out.

Do you know for certain how the universe came into being, how life was formed and how human beings came to be?

If you do not know all the above then you do not have enough information to be able to conclude that creation as described by the bible is a myth except if creation as described by the bible contains irreconcilable contradictions such that it is rendered untrue by the law of non-contradiction.

For further clarification.

I did not say I am 100% sure God exists.
I said I believe that God exists even though I cannot produce incontestible proof.

It is interesting to note that we cannot produce incontestible proof for many of the things we believe.
Even if God were to come down we wouldn't be 100% certain that it was God. For all we know, it could just be a more advanced being from another planet.

You can only have 100% proof of the existence of laws or phenomena not beings in existence (as opposed to dead beings). We can have 100% proof of the actions of a being and therefore infer it's existence but not 100% proof of the existence of that being because for all we care those actions could have been carried out by another being or could have resulted from another yet unknown process.

Note that I am not talking about proving the presence of a well known being. I am talking about proving the existence of an unknown being aside from ourselves (obviously)

All my arguments are from a "MAY" perspective. I do not claim to know it all.

The main point of my argument is that Science also argues from a "MAY" perspective as science is not complete. Science does not claim to know it all.

thehomer:
And if it wasn't created? It would not exist? But it's already here.

A huge assumption without basis.

I have not made any categorical statements yet.
The only time proof is needed is when one takes an assumption outside its ramifications.

For example if I say "If God exists He must be just" I do not have to explain that God exists because the statement still alludes to assumption.
If I say "God exists and He is just" then I have to explain that God exists because the statement does not allude to any assumptions.

This is logic 101.

@thehomer.

Proof that there most likely exist more than one universe
1. The six constants of the universe had to be exactly what they were to support life on earth.
2. The probability if the constants having their exact value is extremely small
3. Therefore the statistical probability of our universe being the only universe and having those constants at their exact values is almost zero.

Respected physicists and biologists including Richard Dawkins have expounded the multiverse theory.
Many physicists have used the multiverse theory in different ways to explain some of the bizarre observations of quantum physics

@thehomer

Please read the post again.
The conclusion of the "aside" was that atheists are NOT fools yet you still quoted it to mean I was insulting atheists.

@mazaje

Please exercise patience. Let's follow the argument step by step. We will get to the point where we'll show whether God is really the the God of the bible or not.

As an aside,
It just ocurred to me that the bible says "The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God".
This would mean that we had established that the person in question was a fool before we noticed him saying there is no God.
In other words an atheistic stance is just one of the characteristics of fools and the above verse did not say an atheistic stance is a necessary or a sufficient condition for foolishness.

Having established that, I would say it is an insult to one's own level of intellect to call someone like Richard Dawkins a fool because he is an atheist.
I think informed atheists have done more intellectual work than many non-informed theists. People known for intellectual hard work with visible results are generally not fools. They may not be correct, but they are generally not fools.

I will wait for one day to entertain questions about the summary my theistic stance before proceeding with my argument as to why Christianity is the true way.