From: pk5297@cehpx2 (Peter Kin-Yim Kwok)
Subject: Re: Existence of God
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 08:26:58 GMT
Keywords: Existence of God

belal@cochin.engin.umich.edu (Belal) writes:



>      		      ********************	
>		      *	EXISTENCE OF GOD *
>		      ********************

>1. All RELIGIONS BELIEVE IN GOD
> [...] In the ancient times people were not linked together through any
> means of communication or transport, then how is it possible that people 
>living in isolation thousands of mile away from each other, held the common 
>view about the existence of God? [...]
>All these facts lead us to the only possible conclusion that not only there 
>is a living God but also that God has always manifested Himself through some 
>means to his men to make them believe in Him. Historians agree that if there 
>is such universal unanimity about any issue then there is no reason to 
>disagree with it. Another fact worth noting is that there have been a small
>number of athiests all the times, this proves that the 'existence of God'
>is not related to any psychological need of human beings. In this world, one
>can lead ones life without acknowledging the existence of God, though he will 
>be attempting to close his eyes to the very obvious and clear truth.

	I would like to make a bold attempt to respond to this posting.
	The universality of religion together with the universality of
	atheism proves only that human beings have a universal need for
	answers for their lives.  The belief that God calls on some believers
	but not on the rest must be taken on faith.  I can still argue
	that God is one of the most conceivable solution for life, universe
	and everything by the standard of humans' intelligence.


>2. WHO ARE THOSE WHO CALL PEOPLE TOWARDS GOD?
>If we look at the life of all those men, who have called other people towards 
>God, we find a surprising common thing about all of them, that they 
>were very pious and righteous men. [...]
>[...]  It is inconceivable that those who did 
>not lie about men, began suddenly to lie about God. They were the people 
>whose lives were exemplary for others. Whether it is Indian Krishna, or Irani 
>zoroster or Egyption Moses, or Israelite Christ or Punjabi Babananak, or 
>Leader of the righteous Muhammad (SAW) who was given the title of TRUTHWORTHY 
>by his nation from his very youth and who challenged his nation that he had 
>led all of his life among them and Could they point out to any single lie or 
>felony in his life? So all these righteous persons who came to this world at 
>different times and places, all of them say one thing in common... "There is 
>a GOD.... There is a GOD...." Not only they claimed that there is a God but 
>also they claimed that He talked to them. 

	Only the "righteous people" are remembered.  Those malicious
	believers are abandoned by history.  You didn't mention the 
	"righteous" disbelievers and "non-righteous" disbelievers.  To the
	best of my knowledge, I don't see any correlation between the
	number of righteous people and the number of believers, nor do I
	see any causal relationships between character and religion.

>One may find great philosophers or scholors in the world who have done great 
>works, but their work cannot be compared to the work of those righteous 
>persons. Actually if we study the lives of those philosphers we find that 
>no great deeds compared to their lofty sayings. Why is it that
>these great philosphers were not able to exhibit that righteousness which was 
>shown by people from GOD? The people whose names I have mentioned above, all 
>of them faced great hardships in the life due to their teachings but nothing 
>could lead them astray from the true path. Their killings were planned, they 
>were exiled from their homes and they were bycotted, but they never gave 
>up their beliefs. Why did not they tell lie and relieve themselves from those 
>hardships that were imposed on them just because of their true belief in God. 
>Their lack of interest in material desires proves it that they were selfless 
>people. When such truthfull and trustworthy people are saying it in unisonon, 
>that they have met with God, they have listened His voice and they have 
>experienced his manifestations, then it really leaves us with no doubte. Even 
>in this material world the people whom we know that they are habitual liars, 
>when they go to a court and speak something under an oath, they are believed,
>then why don't we believe in those righteous persons? 

	You assumed that (1) all philosophers "were" not able to exihibit
	righteousness; (2) we should not doubt whoever says that he or she
	meets God in prison; and (3) righteousness is the most prefered 
	standard of measuring truth, i.e. the existence of God.

	Since you spent 50 lines or something to keep repeating those 
	assumptions, I believe that I am not able to convince you your
	arguments are false and invalid.  Boy, it takes a lot of courage to
	claim all the philosophers who disbelieve in God are not
	righteous; and it takes even more courage to use "righteousness"
	as a measurement of truth, doesn't it.

>3. EVEN DISBELIEVERS IN THEIR HEART ARE AFRAID OF GOD
>Human nature in itself provides us with a strong inclination towards a belief 
>in God. There are certain sins which human nature does'nt like to get 
>involved in. [...]
>[...] What are the reasons that keep them away from these evils? If they 
                                                                  ^^^^^^^
>do not feel the power of some unseen, then they should do whatever pleases 
 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>them. Then truth and lie and justice and opression should be all the same for 
 ^^^^^
>them. Its only God's fear that is ruling on their hearts. Although their mind 
>does not acknowledge the existence of God but the human nature created by 
>God cannot defy it. So even an athiest at heart holds some view about God and 
>judgement day. While in distress, everybody pray to a super-Being for relief. 
>Why so, if they do'nt believe in that super-being, whom we call God?
>

	You assumed that God is the only justification for behaving morally.

	History and anthropology tell us that there exist a large number of
	people in the past and present all over the world can live without
	God.  I argue that people behave morally not necessarily because
	they are afraid of punishment from God, but because they want to
	persue the reward from the society.


>4. EVERY THING IN THIS UNIVERSE HAS A CREATOR
[...]
>If we look at different stages of human birth and growth, we see that as we 
>go backward, we find we are moving towards weaker and weaker stage. Eventually
>we shall find that the growth starts from a clot of clinging substance.[...] 
>[...]  We see that if we start studying the birth process 
>minutely, ultimately we will find ourselves at the limit of human knowledge. 
>At that stage, all the worldly knowledges will reach their limit and will be 
>totally exhausted about what had actually happened? So that is a stage where 
>divine hand is working. Every scientist have to believe that all the processes
>of this universe ultimately reaches a point where their knowledge becomes 
>inadequate or insufficient to describe them. Once somebody asked a bedouin 
>that what proof does he has about the existence of God. He replied that if he 
>saw shit of a camel in the middle of a jungle, he could tell that a camel had 
>passed through that jungle. Then after seeing so many different creatures in 
>this universe, could'nt he tell that there is some creator of them?


	Nobody knows if we can, at least in theory, know what happens
	before the birth of the universe or what caused the birth of the
	universe, if the universe had a birth.  So you have a very strong
	argument against the unlimitness of human's knowledge.

	What would you say if I claim the Universe evolve itself?  In that
	case I don't need God to be my creator, nor does the Universe.

	BTW, what is the camel deal here?  :(  ????

>5. IS THIS UNIVERSE CREATED JUST BY CHANCE?

[...]

>Even in this world we can easily judge the power and wisdom of a creator of 
>anything by closely examining his creation. [...]
>[...]  Looking at the orderliness of any things tells us that how 
>intellegent its creator is. God has given to every being an appropriate body 
>and shape, so that it can sustain itself. [...]
>[...] Such an enormous and perfect order could never 
>have been created just by chance? Only a super-being could do it.

	We did not observe any alternate universe.  We did not deduce the
	existence of any alternate universe.  All we know is the universe
	which we are living in.  We did not know how many attempts had the
	universe try to materialize but failed.  We are not sure if the
	universe must exist. 

	If we simply blindly assume that the total number of  
	possible universe is an arbitrary large number, we can surely get
	an absurd result that the possibility of existence of universe is
	zero. ( An counterexample would be our own universe.)  But we can't
	make that assumption.  ( If the Universe is eternal, then the
	Universe must exist and is not born by chance.)

	The conclusion is that we simply don't know and didn't prove
	whether the universe exists by chance or not.
 
>6. TRUE BELIEVERS ARE ALWAYS EXALTED ON OTHERS
>God said that he would always exalt His true believers on others. True 
>believers are always triumphant on nonbelievers, they always overcome them. 
>If there is no God then how are they successful.All the founders of different
>religions were men of weak means. [...]
>[...] Yet it is inconceivable that an innocent person of ordinary 
>accomplishments, as soon as he begins to lie about God, should come to have 
>such tremendous powers that his teachings dominate all other teachings 
>current in his time. Such a development is impossible without the help of 
>a powerful God. Why were their prophecies and their promises fulfilled?
[...]

	Maybe you think it is cool for a believer to be harmed by the
	disbelievers so that the believer has an opportunity to sacarfy
	himself or herself; however, I think it is sick.

	All I can say is "only the sucessful leaders are remembered" and
	"only the fulfilled prophercies are remembered".  When you take
	all the failed examples into account, you would find nothing
	amazing.

>7. GOD LISTENS TO THE PRAYERS
>God has always listened to the prayers of the righteous people of all the 
>times. A nonbeliever may say that it might have been by chance that those 
>incidents happened that were prayed for. But the accepted prayers are 
>different from the other ones. God not only listens to the prayers of 
>his chosen one, but also He informs them about their acceptance. Many 
>prophets have claimed about a number of things, and all those claims had been
>fulfilled, e.g their ultimate success is always foretold when apparantly 
>they were very weak and opressed, but all of them succeeded ultimately. 

	Communication between God and prayer cannot be observed or recorded.
	It is a personal experience.  No comment on this one.

>8. REVELATION
>It has always been God's practice to communicate to people of every age. Not 
>only He talks to the choosen ones (Prophets) but also to other righeous 
>people and sometime even to very mean and filthy people, just to show his 
>manifestations. Sometimes, God foretells people news about future and 
>sometimes also about next world. Many times He has revealed news about the 
>events, that are to happen hundreds of year later. God told in Quran 
>some fourteen hundred years ago about the great progress of Christians, which
> was to occur sometimes later. It was fortold that a time will come when 
>camels would be no longer used. Even it was told that the transportation that 
>will be used in future would work with fire. It was foretold that a time 
>will come when people would die in large numbers by earthquackes, storms 
>and rains, and wars would also bring large number of fatalities. And such 
>large scale destruction would have never happened before on this earth. Islam 
>is a religion, about which God has said, that there will be people in every 
>century, with whom God would communicate, and this has come true. How it can 
>all happen by chance?

	I question the validity of those writings.

	Moreover, I did not cut the above section because I want to leave
	other readers to judge your arguements.  I was totally amazed by
	your faith in personal experiences with God.

	Based upon the tune in your posting, I think you are not ready
	to evaluate any argument from disbelievers.

>9. UNIVERSE IS NOT FROM EVER
>Some athiests claim that this universe is in existence from ever and it will
>last for ever. If this universe is in existence from ever, then it must have 
>infinite source of power and energy, but we see that no material thing is 
>infinite in this universe. The temperature of Sun is falling down, even the 
>earth is cooling off. All the sources of energy in this universe are being 
>consumed up and exhausting. So the world is approaching to its end as was 
>prophecied by all the religions. It proves that the universe came into being 
>a finite time ago and it also has a definite end. We know from our whole
>life's experience, that if we consider any process, there are only two
>possibilites, that a process is either started by some human beings, or
>it might be a result of some other process. If we move back in this tree
>of processes which are a result of some other process, ultimately we shall
>come across a process, which could not be attributed to any other process.
>At that place, we are left with no other argument, except to believe
>that it was started by some Super being. We refer to that superbeing
>as 'GOD', some athiests  call this SuperBeing by the name of 'nature'.
>Actually just giving a different name to this SuperBeing really does not
>make much difference, they believe in GOD, and all they need is just a little
>fine tuning.

	The "Heat Death Paradox" can be avoided if intergalatic gravitation
	is taken into account.  Gravity can pull mass and, hence, energy
	together.  New star can therefore be born.

	If you equate "nature" with God, you are not talking about all
	those religions you just mentioned.  A God who cares to reveal 
	Himself to human is a personified being.  Nature is not a 
	personified being.

	It is a bold attempt to claim all gods are actually the same God
	and all the believers need is "just a little fine tuning".

>10. PRAYER FOR GOD's MANIFESTATION
>All the nonbelievers should think that if there is a God then they will be in
>deep trouble on the day of Reckoning and in the next world. So if anybody is 
>interested in geting the true knowlege about God, then he should pray 
>earnestly that if there is a God with infinite powers as the people claim 
>then may GOD manifest Himself on him. May God show him the right path. If 
>anybody does such prayes earnestly for 40 days, then we believe, whatever his
>origin, religion and country is, God will show him the true path and he will
>have no doubt about the existence of God.

	Are you saying that we should not question about the existence of
	God just because we may be punished in the future just because of
	that?  It is nothing wrong to believe in afterlive and "the
	Reckoning" and all that.   Disbelievers can't disprove those.
	However, it is a shame to commit one's own precious belief in some
	religion just because he or she is afraid of punishment of the god.

>I realize that it's been a bit lengthy article, and I appologize for that,
>but I hope this will help some truth-seekers to find the right path to 
>follow in this world.

	Define "truth path".

	I am not fooling around.  I really want you to define the term
	"truth path".

	People are using big words like "truth path" all the time; and I
	never understand what they mean.  I suspect even the person who
	used those big words don't even understand what they are talking
	about.

>Belal

	It is always good to share something I value very high with
	someone.  You are that someone.  I hope you take my response
	seriously and ask for a different opinion.  You seems like a 
	die-hard fundamentalist and you simply deny yourself from
	any possible alternative to the equestion about God's existence.
	You first assume God existed, then you listed some vague examples,
	such as the testimony of some "righteous" believers.  Based
	upon those biased evident, you claim that you verify the existence
	of God.

	Your approach is just logically invalid.

	I believe religion is not a set of rules and/or stories.  Religion
	is an attitude-- as science is an attitude.  A truly regious
	person would re-evaluate his own belief constantly.  Look for
	alternatives.  So, by my definitions, there is no different between
	scientific method and religious method.  I hope my arguments sound
	scientific, if not religious, to you and make you think about God
	more.


					Peter, UIUC

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