Dear religious anons, please provide me with one argument for the existence of your god. That is, an argument that proves that the god of your religion exists, and not some abstract deistic entity like Aquinas argues for.
If you have no arguments for the existence of your god, why do you believe in him?
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This is bait and very sad.
Yea Forums - Literature
Can someone please explain to me why this literature board is being spammed with religious baiting?
Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?
Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.
Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;
When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?
When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddlingband for it,
And brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors,
And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?
Hast thou commanded the morning since thy days; and caused the dayspring to know his place;
That it might take hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be shaken out of it?
It is turned as clay to the seal; and they stand as a garment.
And from the wicked their light is withholden, and the high arm shall be broken.
Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? or hast thou walked in the search of the depth?
Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?
Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth? declare if thou knowest it all.
Where is the way where light dwelleth? and as for darkness, where is the place thereof,
That thou shouldest take it to the bound thereof, and that thou shouldest know the paths to the house thereof?
Knowest thou it, because thou wast then born? or because the number of thy days is great?
Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail,
Which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war?
By what way is the light parted, which scattereth the east wind upon the earth?
Who hath divided a watercourse for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lightning of thunder;
To cause it to rain on the earth, where no man is; on the wilderness, wherein there is no man;
To satisfy the desolate and waste ground; and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth?
Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew?
Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?
The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen.
Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?
Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons?
Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? canst thou set the dominion thereof in the earth?
Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that abundance of waters may cover thee?
I could go on.
>not some abstract deistic entity
Bait. You are rejecting out of hand the definition of the term you're asking for. Read literally any book on the topic.
Can I use this?
>b-bait !
just give him a proof, retards. surely you aren't just nursing delusions but have an actual understanding of why your god exists and how you know he exists?
religion cannot be proven because by its very nature it is solipsistic
Don't play dumb. He's looking for a justification for the gods worshipped in specific religions, not a generic definition of god. For example, Yaweh and his son in Christianity.
i'm 38, why did you tag me i'm not even religious. i just dont like bait threads
I can't, not within the parameters of his question because his question is badly formed due to ignorance of the topic. God is not "a god," as in the "your god" OP asks for. God is transcendent. This has been settled for 2500 years. OP should either read a book or stop baiting.
Of course, it’s Job
>muh proof
Faith is by definition irrational, and is not something that can be proved empirically nor rationally. Either you have an intuition for the or divine or you don't. Go ahead speak your ad hominems of insanity and solipsism as you list "proofs" against God. It won't make us change nor question our faith.
>they want a justification for Jesus and God the Father
That's a huge fucking ask, I've got homework to do and am supposed to be up early tomorrow.
Suffice to say look up the prophesied messianic requirements in the OT and compare to Jesus. Read the synoptic gospels. There's a lot of bad info out there, in particular about failing to rebuild the Temple. He rebuilt it in the crucifixion and completed it in the resurrection. OP knows full well he is asking for arguments but denying inductive evidence when Jesus himself said you need faith and pretty much every metaphysician and more philosopher from Plotinus to Aquinas bear this out. OP is just a brainlet version of kant.
Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, Daniel 9, and the many prophecies and parallels connecting the OT and NT. And Christianity was the first religion to emphasize faith and not just good works. It was the religion based on a pre-exiting religion, built on Judaism. It was prophesied to come, and came. What mind could have planned it all? And why? To fake such a religion is no easy task. And with the beautiful literature, detailed histories, and clear wisdom, it just makes the Bible stand out even more. It’s just difficult for me to say that it’s faked because I have no idea how it could have been. Too many coincidences have to add up. I would rather have faith for it than against it.
t. hasn't read Aquinas. St Thomas spends an extensive amount of time explaining why the entity identified in his Ways is the Catholic God.
That's why you need to be gassed.
>Christianity was the first religion to emphasize faith and not just good works
Why is that good?
It’s called faith because you have to believe it despite evidence to the contrary
Because it makes sense. No one can rely on good works alone or we would all be condemned by our sins. How could we approach God, perfection, holiness, perfect peace, etc. unless we are made perfect? We cannot make ourselves perfect. That is why Jesus’ sacrifice was necessary. It is through the acceptance of the sacrifice that your sins are paid for, and your sins will be totally washed away. If it were not so, and we had to depend on works, then who could confide in himself? Who could approach his death with ease and contentment? It’s not as if we can simply forget our sins and mistakes. How would we know if we’d done enough?
CRISTAFUH
I unironically have figured out that the Christian God (or something very close, but still a personal God) exists, yet I still coom and do all sorts of degenerate stuff because it feels good. It's not my fault He baits me into cooming.
Fuck off, my sins are my own and I never asked for some douchebag 2.000 years ago to take credit for them. I’ll find my own redemption and if God wants to send me to hell anyways, he can throw me down with the rest.
The bait worked.
Technically your sins are an offense to God's creation, and you don't actually own anything
If I don’t own my own decisions, why am I here? If our decisions are fatalistic, why would God give us an illusion of free will? Why wouldn’t he just make everyone good?
If we do have free will, then I’m going to make my decisions based on my own values rather than His.
You can make decisions, but your decisions are interactions with God's creation. You can either choose to do the will of God, or you can choose to sin
Sins don't exist. Stop being spooked friend. Morals are not real.
Sounds like a really dumb concept. God is a very poor game designer.
And nothing he presents is actually testable, or falsifiable. It's the definition of meaningless sophistry
>muh empiricism! n-nothing exists outside of matter bro! everyone knows that! all these non-materialists are just dumb!
Fuck off positivist scum. Reason and observation are enough to "verify" Aquinas' arguments.
>Reason and observation are enough to "verify" Aquinas' arguments.
No, they aren't. All they will test is whether an idea is consistent with itself, not with reality. The latter has yet to be done by you.
god is beyond any reason so you can't really argue about his existence. but some people still did, here's one argument:
Definition of God is that of which no one or nothing is greater
To exist is greater than to not exist
The God that doesn't exist is not as great as that which exists
Therefore God exists
Existence is not a predicate, but a condition for having real predicates
Question your presupositons, and see the transedental argument.
That's it, it prove God and a personal one at that.
It's a long critique and a complicated argument so Google it. It's not something you can contain in a 4chin post.
Do you like gifts? If you get a gift you don't like then do you return it?
Identity.
>your god
>why this literature board is being spammed with religious baiting
A certain racial supremist tribe uses identifiable ideological turns of phrase consistently; "your god" [emphasis on Lower Case] is a tell. Every other tribe in this schema has its own 'god', as opposed to their own Lord of Lords, king of kings, ect.
Just read Pascal and move on, OP.
This is a literature board, not an athiests vs christians board.
Then embrace rabbinic Judaism, unironically.
Indeed, atonement theory is a Pauline invention.
God doesn't exist. The holy spirit does though.
I don't think you understood Aquinas very well. Come back when you know what beatification is.
My god is an abstract deistic entity though.
This. Nothing will convince OP short of God literally coming down to Earth.
This argument presupposes that there is a God that we can know. If you feel that needs to be argued for then let me know, otherwise I'll give you what you asked for. that is, a reason to believe Christianity is true. As a small aside, Aquinas isn't arguing for some abstract deistic God, but one with a will or personality that we can know, and one that is constantly interacting with the universe in sustaining all of existence. If you only look at step one of his reasoning then his god may look deistic, but that's only because you're looking at step one. Turn the page.
Now to begin, there are certain facts which almost all historians agree on, whether they're secular or religious. I point this out because I know a lot of critics will be tempted to reject them on impulse, but I think this is a wrongheaded approach. I believe they should be focused on finding alternative explanations which also account for the facts rather than go against the majority and take a silly position like rejecting the existence of Jesus. With that said, here's the facts although I freely admit to presenting them in a biased way:
Jesus was a real person and was crucified, multiple people claimed to have encountered an alive Jesus after his crucifixion, and this belief was genuine (regardless of whether it's true or not) because many of them went on to become martyrs for that belief.
Now because Jesus was crucified, it's reasonable to believe he really died. He was placed in a guarded tomb because it was in the best interest of the Jewish and Roman authorities to make sure that the body didn't disappear or any other funny business took place because the Romans were putting down a rebellion and the Jews were squashing a heresy. We know the body truly disappeared because the Jews accused the Christians of stealing the body.
I'm only aware of a few possible explanations but I think only one of them is truly plausible. There's the hallucination hypothesis which accuses the followers of hallucinating the post crucifixion appearance but this doesn't make any sense because multiple people at multiple times and places claimed to have experienced the risen Christ and real world hallucinations don't work like that. This also fails to explain the radical conversion of Paul who was one of the greatest prosecutors of the early Christians and overnight became the most devoted follower after Jesus is said to have met him on the road.
There's also the "greed hypothesis" which accuses the followers of making it all up in play for political power but that doesn't seem like a very convincing incentive since many of the apostles and followers of Christ were tortured and martyred. They were never very rich and as a group and they never really gained much power until hundreds of years later.
To me the most reasonable explanation is that Jesus is who he said and was and demonstrated it by dying and resurrecting. If he was who he said he was then Christianity is true.
What does sophistry or "testableness" matter to something like God?
Surely you have more wisdom than your creator
>a very poor game designer
Vidyabrain spotted
BS
So basically Luke 16:31
There is no logical proof that is empirically testable or falsifiable.
As much as I love the book of Job, this doesn't prove anything. And frankly Yahweh was being an asshole destroying a man's life and justifying it by saying "look how much more powerful I am than you, you weren't even there when I made all this cool shit." Might does not make right.
>I can't, not within the parameters of his question because his question is badly formed due to ignorance of the topic. God is not "a god," as in the "your god" OP asks for. God is transcendent. This has been settled for 2500 years.
The question doesn't imply that your god is "a god". Your god, under your definition, could be the transcendental being you describe, or he could be a pagan god among many. No definition of god is presupposed in the question. You have to fill in the variable "your god" and make an argument for it.
How is this different from a schizophrenic believing the radio is talking to him? Religious people elevate the "Truth" yet make statements like this.
>Isaiah 53
This passage can be applied to almost any person who sacrifices himself for the good of others. It's a beautiful passage, but I don't think it's enough to conclude that Christianity is true any more than Nostradamus's "prophesies" are proof of astrology.
>Psalm 22
A huge stretch. The casting lots and the eloi eloi lama sabachthani cry were likely embellishments by the gospel writers to make the crucifixion narrative look like Psalm 22. There are many places where the gospel writers take liberties with their OT references and even blatantly misuse them, as with the Hosea quote.
I think it's a lot more likely that all of these passages were describing something pertinent to the time they were writing in and due to their abstract character and also the historical unscrupulousness of the gospel writers, they only appear as if they apply to Jesus. In fact Jesus is not the only person to have sacrificed himself for the greater good of others nor is he the only one to have been excoriated and had his hands pierced.
>Daniel 9
Numerology tier.
Care to elaborate?
1/2
>multiple people claimed to have encountered an alive Jesus after his crucifixion, and this belief was genuine (regardless of whether it's true or not) because many of them went on to become martyrs for that belief.
Many of them were indeed martyred, but I have doubts as to whether this is a testament to the sincerity of their belief in the resurrection. First of all, and I could be wrong, in all of my readings I have never encountered the idea that (A) the early Christians were targeted primarily for their belief in the resurrection and (B) that denying the resurrection would have saved their lives. It seems more likely that Christians were targeted for their moral, philosophical, and theological teachings and that renouncing the resurrection wasn't even given as an option. You have also to consider the fact that Nero used the Christians as a scapegoat, blaming them for the Great Fire of Rome, and that it is likely they were involved in "menacing the firemen", as per Tacitus, since they believed it was a sign of the final judgement. This would also have led to their persecution.
>He was placed in a guarded tomb...
The guard at the tomb was most likely a fabrication by Matthew as an attempt to discredit the theft accusations. This seems likely when we consider that Matthew was writing for a Jewish audience and that the story doesn't appear in any other gospel nor in acts. Moreover, Matthew reports a conversation between the priests and Pilate talking about assigning a guard to the tomb which would probably not have been known to him (Matthew 27:62–66), and another, secret, conversation about the Jews' plot to make it seem like a theft that would definitely not have been known to him (Matthew 28:11-15), which indicates that he was making it up.
>the Jews accused the Christians of stealing the body
This doesn't prove anything. I've no doubt that such an accusation was circulating among the Jews but this most likely occurred during the apostles' ministry. It's not hard to imagine one of them preaching to a crowd of Jews that Jesus's body is resurrected and an onlooker shouting out, "You stole it!" I think the idea that it goes up to high-ranking Pharisees comes from Matthew.
>Few possible explanations...
The explanation is this: All of the gospels were written decades after Jesus's crucifixion by people who were most likely not eyewitnesses. They got their information from stories which had been circulating, orally, for around 40 years, among a group of uneducated superstitious Jewish peasants who believed that at any minute the world was going to end. As to the genesis of the resurrection narrative, it could have arisen from one person who hallucinated, or lied, and then caught on until it burgeoned into this whole ideology. I don't think the resurrection is the most likely explanation.
Can anyone even rationally explain where there is something rather than nothing?
do you believe the story of the boy who cried wolf is true?
To be a Christian is to believe in the resurrection, so if somebody was martyred for being a Christian they were martyred for believing in the resurrection. They were typically given a chance to apostatize by the Romans before being executed and because they didn't apostatize it's reasonable to think they actually believed what they said they did.
The problem with supposing the tomb wasn't guarded is that even Jews don't dispute it, either then or now. Both the Romans and Jews had their own independent incentives to have the tomb guarded since they were putting down a rebellion and heresy and they were aware of the expectations. They were guarding the tomb for three days so they can then open the tomb and show Jesus' followers and prove he was just a man, that his body can be corrupted.
The fact that the Jews accused the Christians of stealing the body does prove that body went missing. It doesn't in itself prove the resurrection, but I'm not making that claim. I'm claiming the body went missing and I'm using the Jews testimony as evidence. The timing of the accusation is key, because it happened right after the discovery of the empty tomb. The Jews who were on the scene and recognized that the body was missing immediately accused the Christians of stealing it. I'm not talking about modern day Jews who believe Christians stole it because they're irrelevant.
The fact that the gospels were written after the fact is irrelevant because most historians are on eyewitnesses. It's not in itself a mark against their veracity. When you assume that ancient people are stupid and will believe anything for no reason, that's just a fallacy. There is multiple and consistent witness to the facts of the resurrection even outside of the four gospels so it's not something that can be rationally dismissed prima facie.
I've already talked about this hallucination stuff but I'll say it again, that's just not how it works. Psychiatry has never witnessed the sort of hallucination required make sense of the resurrection narrative. It doesn't account for multiple crowds at multiple places and times witnessing the resurrected Jesus and neither does it explain the more radical conversion of Paul who was doing very well for himself as a tax collector but threw it all away.
Quickly, because I don't want this to turn into a book length discussion and there are scholars far more erudite and distinguished than both of us who have written extensively on the subject.
>Christians were martyred for belief in the resurrection
I gave reasons why this is not the case, and you didn't respond. The early christians were essentially a doomsday cult who were seen as strange and seditious, preaching against the established religions, and they were persecuted by Nero for the Great Fire of Rome. These sociopolitical reasons were why they were martyred, not the belief in the resurrection.
>They were typically given a chance to apostatize by the Romans before being executed and because they didn't apostatize it's reasonable to think they actually believed what they said they did.
Care to cite a source? As I said, I've never encountered this in any of my readings. If the Romans were trying to suppress Christianity, I don't see why they would simply let the main leaders off the hook so easily.
>The fact that the Jews accused the Christians of stealing the body does prove that body went missing. It doesn't in itself prove the resurrection, but I'm not making that claim.
No, it doesn't. And I never said you did.
>The timing of the accusation is key, because it happened right after the discovery of the empty tomb.
Absolutely 0 evidence for that assertion, apart from Matthew's gospel, which, as I have explained, is not reliable on this point.
>I'm not talking about modern day Jews who believe Christians stole it because they're irrelevant.
Again, I never said you were making these absurd claims, lmao.
>The fact that the gospels were written after the fact is irrelevant because most historians are on eyewitnesses. It's not in itself a mark against their veracity. When you assume that ancient people are stupid and will believe anything for no reason, that's just a fallacy. There is multiple and consistent witness to the facts of the resurrection even outside of the four gospels so it's not something that can be rationally dismissed prima facie.
It's very easy for me to visualise how these events could have unfolded. A couple people may have seen something, or lied, and started telling others who told others who told others and so on until the story became widespread. And I'm not saying "ancients r just dumb lol" because that's retarded; there are countless modern examples of fake stories being accepted as fact because they were disseminated orally. Nelson Mandela's death, for example.
>Paul who was doing very well for himself as a tax collector but threw it all away.
Paul was not an eyewitness. He's just a guy who saw a vision from heaven, no different to the countless examples of religious experiences throughout history.
>truth is, OP never had the makings of a varsity athlete
I really don't want to have to read my own post 5 or 6 times just to figure out what the hell you're saying, but that's essentially what you're doing when you use that crutch of quoting and responding to individual sentences. It's a mess to read, let alone respond to. Not only that, you say you don't want to have a "book length discussion" but at the same time you're asking me to give multiple textual citations. As far as I'm concerned you can piss off.
What evidence is sufficient? I doubt you will respond
>evidence
They can't.
>why believe
They surrender themselves emotionally to the concept to escape nihilism, to not be alone and have to attempt at making sense of all of this, it is easier than confronting it all alone. You gain community in an increasingly atomized world, you are able to ignore the relentless questions surrounding existence, death, consciousness, etc. I am not attempting to shit on anyone by saying this but religion, belief, God/gods/etc. are emotional, as no answer is sufficient to explain our lives, you inevitably arrive at some logical problem with whichever "solution" thrown at all of this, it is nothing but questions, and all of religion grants its followers a script, a code, a language, a community, a belief to follow, I understand why they remain or become believers, I understand why they must be apologists of their respective faith, I understand why they would fight every doubt and hold onto whatever it is they believe in because the alternative is to walk alone, the path leads the weak to nihilism but the strong to complete transcendence of the self. The vast majority, myself included (currently) are weak, only a tiny minority fulfill the requirements of those heroic ideals. You find the same in other fields like politics, they must belong to some "team" because the natural way of life has been replaced by the artificial, all that is left for most people to express that sense of brotherhood/sisterhood now that the respective homogeneous tribes are gone, is the acceptable "sport teams" like global salvation-based religions, literal sport teams, political groups—civil of course, atomized and individualized economically minded garbage ideologies/"teams".
No one will admit it because it isn't rational, it is emotional, once you are aware you lose it all and find yourself outside of the shelter/refuge of religion and comfort of other teams…
this is the outfit adriana wore when she sucked off tony...oof madon i wish that were me
This argument is not watertight, but something I find poetic. Ultimately, I think the only convincing argument to believe in God is personal experience.
>If we believe that creation extends back into time infinitely, then everything that is logically or ontologically possible must have existed at one point.
>Angels are ontologically possible.
>Thus, if we believe that creation extends back into time infinitely, then angels must have existed at one point.
>But it would be absurd to suppose that angels, who exist to serve the will of the Creator, existed without the Creator.
>Thus, the Creator must have existed at one point.
>Thus, since the Creator is eternal, the Creator must still exist today.
Again, I'm aware there are a few controversial premises in here, but it's interesting to me nonetheless. More fascinating (and less controversial, given a set of religious beliefs) is how to reconcile the problem of evil with a triple-O God.
Read Kierkegaard
The Bible never says anything about omnibenevolence
>implying that there is anything that can be proven
read a little Popper
cringe
