From: jfb@macsch.com (John Baskette)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: God does exist! (Was Re: Non-Religious Practice)
Date: 3 Oct 92 06:39:58 GMT
Organization: MacNeal-Schwendler Corp.

In article <Oct.2.00.11.04.1992.1456@geneva.rutgers.edu> wity@iastate.edu (Wity Ganda) writes:
>In article <Sep.23.23.58.05.1992.3331@athos.rutgers.edu> jwong@copper.denver.colorado.edu (Jack Wong) writes:

>>     another say their god is the only god.  Since all you religious
>>     believer claim there is a god, why can't you prove that there is
>>     one.  Oh, I know what you all will say, the Bible says there is.
>>     I've heard that line over a million times.  Sorry, but I'm not
>>     used to believing what I don't see or experience.  
>
>Some people keep saying, "Prove to me that God exists!"
>To those people, we can just say, "PROVE TO ME THAT GOD DOES NOT EXIST!"
>It is impossible to prove that God does not exist.

May I ask a question concerning this statement?  What would you say to 
someone who said, "PROVE TO ME THAT MOTHER GOOSE DOES NOT EXIST!"

One might answer this by saying that there is no evidence that Mother Goose
exists.  No one has seen Mother Goose.  All we have are a set of fairy tales
that talk about Mother Goose.  Mother Goose does not make sense to our
modern scientific world view.  There is no good reason to believe in Mother
Goose.  The problem is that none of these statements actually proves that
Mother Goose does not exist.  Perhaps she does and is hiding somewhere, but
she has revealed truths about herself through the fairy tales.  How would
you convince the Goosian that faith in the existence of Mother Goose is 
unwararnted and not reasonable?

The problem is that trying to prove the universal non-existence of some 
particular is not possible for us finite humans.  The reason is that to
actually prove the non-existence of some particular requires the ability
to examine all places in the universe at the same time.  If you can't then
it is always possible that the particular thing that you are trying to 
find exists in one of the places you can't see right now.

>- The existence of God is not a result of human's discussion,
>  but the existence of God is the cause, is the reason that human
>  discuss about His existence.

Is this a proof that God exists?  We talk about Him, therefore he must
exist?  Maybe.

>In article <Sep.23.23.58.05.1992.3331@athos.rutgers.edu> jwong@copper.denver.co
lorado.edu (Jack Wong) writes:

>>     another say their god is the only god.  Since all you religious
>>     believer claim there is a god, why can't you prove that there is
>>     one.  Oh, I know what you all will say, the Bible says there is.
>>     I've heard that line over a million times.  Sorry, but I'm not
>>     used to believing what I don't see or experience.
>

Have you seen or experienced the first president of the United States 
George Washington?  I'm sure that you have read about George Washington
and that you see a picture of someone who people claim is George
Washington on the dollar bill, but have you seen or experienced him?
Did George Washington exist?

Have you seen or experienced the Mandlebrot set?  I am not talking now
about the pretty contour plots showing beautiful looking spirals and what
not.  I am talking about the set itself.  Have you seen or experienced it? 
Does the Mandelbrot set exist?

Do you believe that there are other earth-like worlds around other stars?
Do you think that it is reasonable to believe that other earth-like worlds
exist?  Have you seen or experienced any other earth-like worlds?

Also, what do you mean by proof?  For example, do you believe in the
existence of other minds?  If so, how would you prove that other minds
exist?

There are different kinds of knowledge.  Different methods of evidence
and proof are used for different kinds of knowledge.  What kind of proof
or evidence for God's existence is acceptable to you?

My approach to "proof" or evidence for truthfulness of Christianity 
centers around the statement, "He is there and He is Not Silent".  The 
first part of this kind of defense centers around showing that it is 
very reasonable to believe in the existence of God.  The arguments take
some time to develop.  I will end this post with a quote from Albert 
Einstein that shows one reason why belief in God is at least reasonable.
This is taken from "The Road of Science and the Ways to God" by Stanley
Jaki, pp. 192-193.

    "You find it surprising," he wrote to Solovine on March 30, 1952,
    "that I think of the comprehensibility of the world (insofar as we
    are entitled to speak of such world) as a miracle or an eternal
    mystery.  But surely, a priori, one should expect the world to be
    chaotic, not to be grasped by thought in any way.  One might 
    (indeed one should) expect that the world evidenced itself as 
    lawful only so far as we grasp it in an orderly fashion.  This 
    would be a sort of order like the alphabetical order of words.
    On the other hand, the kind of order created, for example, by
    Newton's gravitational theory is of a very different character.
    Even if the axioms of the theory are posited by man, the success
    of such a procedure supposed in the objective world a high degree
    of order, which we are in no way entitled to expect a priori.
    Therein lies the 'miracle' which becomes more and more evident as
    our knowledge develops."  To this Einstein added the even more
    revealing remark: "And here is the weak point of positivists and
    of professional atheists, who feel happy because they think that
    they have preempted not only the world of the divine but also of
    the miraculous."

You might want to get the book, "The God Who Would Be Known: Revelations
of the Divine in contemporary Science" by John M. Templeton and Robert
L. Herrmann.  

John