We know there's a God because...

I know you are quick to anger and I suppose I should have expected this kind of BS.The question is what design do you see that could only have been from your god? I’ll take that as “None.” Observation is the sensory discernment of physical objective reality. Something of which you seem incapable.Science uses observation to verify, not prove or infer, the efficacy of an hypothesis and the predictions it makes. When all present observations verify the mechanisms of biological variation as predicted by evolution then we must accept where the evidence points. I realize this is one element those with limited intellectual ability cannot understand. If you are asking what observations verify biological variation in nature then, oh, there are so many of them . where to begin?I don’t want to get too far off-topic but since you asked, take a look at Australopithecine to Homo Sapiens, or Archaeopteryx to Turdus migratorius.Maybe you would care to explain the existence of Deinococcus radiodurans without some evolutionary mechanism. I can’t taste it. You seem to have swallowed the whole lot.

absence of God world: you live in a big part of that today. but the absence is a choice to not acknowledge God and proclaim "self". a man i met via my uncle, being close to the truth of God told me: the name of God is "me". which actually is what Satan believes, but the name of God is "we" (as relevant to itself)the truth by observation:the science of God is the science of existing. few take time from the distraction's of this step of existing, which is just a path to a door with one of two potentials. to be, or not to be.the big bang and science of cosmology is also evidence, because T=0 is inevitable. the alternate dimensional theories have come from the lack of this current universe as we know it when T=0 is found mathematically. but black holes also are a science of T=0 and also a basis for dimensional theory.explaining them both: true T=0 is inevitable. because as long as 2 things are, "before that" is a relevant question. to find true genesis, you must find true T=0. you can understand this by the science of the true "big bang". and the science of existing. both together you find the truth:take a sheet of paper, label it "existence" and in the center draw a circle. the circle is the known universe. now shrink that circle to nothing. "existence" around it filled in the gap.how is this possible? space folds. but it folds back into its foundation, which we call "existence" or "genesis energy" or "singularity" which is juts the universe in the original state,, a pure energy, with no outside energies, with a timeless make up, that just "was". the question to understand the truth of what that means about God is by asking: ordered? chaotic? intelligent? not intelligent?the fold explained: could this energy have folded multiple times? yes. thats dimensional theory. so where is true T=0? from this point of view, it is impossible to discern. (so there's outside universe's?) not really. outside this point of view still mean inside the "existence" energy. here is the big bang:at one time there was existence. and nothing was, but existence. and existence folded itself, and conserved some of its form in a new form of matter. the matter production created a vacuum, and also an "apparent" space in the body, and the area between the matter existed in the body, and is sustained by it, for without it, nothing can be. as the matter production grew, as with the "apparent space" the matter was pulled between several other parts by the vacuum and became other matter, and pulled directionally back towards itself , itself being the energy of the fold, but a barrier was made, that the energy could not return to its Genesis state unless the matter was to be disassembled. this dis-assembly happens when enough matter i in one spot, and the atoms cease to be matter, and then the barrier is gone, and the energy returns to the existence foundation. this return is normally called a "rip" or a "fold" in space time.take a balloon, which exists in a body of air, and the balloon is expanded by pressure, blowing up the balloon, inside the balloon is pressure equal or greater than the body outside it. by changing pressure, the balloon changes size. a better analogy is filing the balloon with water, and then dropping the balloon in the body of water, the balloon will float in the body of water where the pressure is equal to it inside and out. when you change the water pressure and the balloon has no place to go, the balloon will either expand, or shrink, from the outside pressure.explaining how we know this "existence" is God:nothing exists nor could exist, until something WAS. the WAS is existence, the noun described to all things that have "being" and are "real". real, is to be a part of "reality" which is the description of what all things are that are a part of "existence".the question of intelligence or not intelligence: T=0 is impossible. at some time., the "always was was in its original pure state (because evolution is evident) the question that would be greater is : why did it decide to evolve? i don't know. but it did, and we are evidence. if it had never evolved from a pure state, i could say it wasn't intelligent, or that it was chaos, and no order could be established, because the chaotic parts would break apart any order, and there would not be nothing ordered, but because order took its hold and conquered disorder, there is the evidence of intelligence. because order would not be maintained otherwise.instead of growing only its own body though, with a mass that would not reject it, but with perfection, it then created messengers to maintain different aspects of its body. humans were created to be rulers over the earth, a part of the body, that existence loves deeply. (because of our freedom to choose having discovered the ability to deny God? [knowledge of good and evil])by denying that God was, yet being a part of the body, this would be fine contained if not for the truth of the singularity: in a timeless state the always was made ALL by faith. (faith is action, based on belief, with NO DOUBT to the outcome. the consciousness is real, therefore any doubt is poison to faith, and if existence doubted, existence would cease to be.after realizing this, i thought about the religions i had studied. and the bible held true to its laws and was in perfect harmony with these observations. even with space folding. and then did i know i had found the truth, not by believing past believers, but by believing science and observation and the truth of existing and reality as it can only be.if you understand what i have said; then God be with you, because the evil will find you when you realize the truth. and it is dangerous.God be with you always, and Gods will be done. so be it.

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keep your mind from this way of enquiry, for never will you show that not-being is
~parmenides

He is saying that if there were no Bible, Iano...or that you never read it. How would you interact with God then?

I understood what he said which is not what you say he said. My response (in the post you quoted from) indicated that a religious 'text' of some description will automatically be referred to. If not one of the 'established' ones then a-god-in-own-image-and-likeness-one.Percy wasn't asking how one would interact with God. He was asking how would one approach things in such a way so as to conclude God/no God from the world around - without reference to religious texts. If you cannot escape referring to a religous text of some description, then your approach cannot be said to be one that doesn't refer to a religious text - obviously.

But isn't this the intellectual exercise Percy is asking us to take on? In the same way as the ancients did without reference to religious texts (since there were none) yet with the benefits of modern knowledge?

quote:

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Say there were no Bible, no Qur'an, no Bhagavad Gita, no religious texts of any sort. How would we know just by examining the world around us that there is a God?

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I know that this is possible because a missionary friend of my family's met an old woman in Russia who figured it out. Her father was a staunch atheist, and there were no bibles available.I never met this woman, and it's interesting to try to tackle this problem; although different people might take different approaches. Odds are slim that I could replicate her reasoning on the first try, and the approach I have in mind isn't a likely candidate. But I know the problem's been solved before.

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For myself, I would approach this question by asking what differences might exist between a world created by God and another world that came about in the absence of a God. Which would be expected to have more wars, more prejudice, more disease, more disasters? Certainly we seem to have enough of these to suspect the possibility of an absence of God in this world.

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I'm interested in how others might approach this question, and what answers they think are suggested.

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It seems correct to look for things that should or should not be present depending on whether or not God exists. You mention some bad things, which at first thought might seem fitting to be evidence against the existence of God, or evidence for a bad entity being in charge. You also need to account for the good.Others have mentioned design, and complexity. I expect you either don't acknowledge design, or you accept simple crystal structures as sufficient evidence that complexity can arise on its own. So I don't expect to make much progress beating that dead horse in this thread.A more entertaining example is available. Look at how robots and androids used to be portrayed in the '50s and '60s, and then became emotionless. As more was learned about computers & programming, it became common knowledge that they're confined to logic. So how is it that emotions came to exist?Even if one imagines molecules evolving into men, those men would be like Data before he got his "emotion chip". If you want to employ "natural selection", you need to demonstrate that emotional behaviour trumps logical behaviour so consistently that it matches our observations. (We could go off into complexity here too, since emotions don't work right without a system of mood control glands & receptors, but that's not important to my point.)Last I knew, nobody'd solved the problem of programming a meaningful sense of "self" into a machine. I wouldn't be surprised to find a claim that it'd been done, but from what I've seen of AI claims vs. reality they'd have to show me the real deal. So don't nobody bother with links on this just to be argumentative.My point is that all the known laws of nature are logical. Any system built by nature would have no source of anything other than logic. Errors could creep in, but bugs in a program don't make it emotional.I can think of a few more things, but this will do for now. Why doth the heathen rage?

I think iano means that, in the absence of an actual religious text to define "god," an individual will be foreced to come up with their own definition of "god." He's confusing becasue he's saying that this amounts to a "religious text," but I think his point is correct.In the absence of a pre-existing religious text, any search for a deity will be a search for a deity of the individual's description. Such a deity will not have been described based on observation or objective evidence, but rather on whatever the individual "feels" like. It literally becomes a search for each person's imaginary friend.In any case, of course, we're still violating parsimony. Even if someone describes a deity whose personality traits lead to a world like ours (both war and peace, hate and love, natural diasters, etc, or multiple deities each responsible for a facet of existence), there is still no reason at all to assume a deity is responsible. You can test the question, "is there a god of hiccups" by observing whether hiccups exist in the world...but since hiccups have a perfectly natural explanation, there is no need for a deity to be responsible.The alternative to adding extraneous deities or testing infinite imaginary ones against reality is to pigeon-hole "god(s)" into anything we do not yet understand, like ancient peoples did. "God of the gaps" works very well when you have virtually no understanding of the world around you or the processes by which it works (Prometheus clearly is responsible for fire, and obviously Apollo drives the chariot of the Sun). Once you start to study reality objectively, however, and start to fill in those gaps with testable mechanisms, the "god(s)" position and responsibility slowly shrink away to nothing. Modern understanding has progressed to the point where assuming "god" is responsible for anything and everything that we don't currently understand is regarded as silly, and rightfully so.

Rahvin, I agree with everything you said but my read of the OP is that Percy is asking if we wanted to show evidence of god without recourse to spiritual texts what might that evidence entail.Right now just about all religionists point to their texts as the major body of evidence for their god. Without this, what other evidence might be used?Teleology might be evidence in that direction but hardly conclusive. A hierarchy structure of biology that is not nested might be another, but, again, not conclusive, and since we already know this does not exist this is a really bad example on my part.In the old days the villagers could see the face of their god in the billowing clouds erupting from the local volcano without need of some text.(Then again, consider myth and legend story-telling as “spiritual text”? I can see that.)These days, however, we know better. That “gap” has closed.So many of the “gaps” have closed in light of modern knowledge. You are correct. Due to this phenomenon the use of “god of the gaps” is now ludicrous. Trying to hide god in abiogenesis or in a singularity won't work.So what, if anything, is left for the religionist to point to other than their texts? How might we go about finding evidence of a god in the absence of a 4000 to 1700 year old set of books to keep him in, or in the myths and legends of an ancient oral tradition?I don’t think anyone can point to any such evidence but I may not be creative enough, thus the OP.

We have observed numerous such human cultures throughout human history. To my knowledge, without exception all human cultures have concluded the existence of the supernatural.I believe all pagan religions have emerged from conceptions in the human mind as to what the explanation is. Many have devised and created their own concept of a god. Some have progressed to produce literature relative to their religions after having conceived of their version of a god.Many recorded and observable pagan cultures experience miracle in their religions. Voodoo, witchcraft, spiritism and other such manifestations have been experienced among pagan cultures. Many have what they consider to be holy men or women who have seer capabilities.That all cultures in history have been religious may be the answer to your questions.Evidently humans simply observe the wonders of nature and conclude that beings of a higher realm exist. Perhaps part of this lies in the mental properties of the brain, human DNA, etc which have a religious propensity to seek out who/what god is.My personal thinking is that the fact that only humans have this capacity is explained in Genesis where we read that man was created in the image of God.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

Buzsaw, Why doesn't different cultures coming to different supernatural conclusions simply speak for humanity's desire to come to a conclusion?It is in no way necessarily true that a creator would create his creations this way. Given that this is the case, it can't be evidence. That is, we can't make a prediction about what the creator would have done because we simply don't know how they would have done it.Mark

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There are 10 kinds of people in this world; those that understand binary, & those that don't

And without exception, these supernatural entities are created to fill in gaps in knowledge. From Apollo's chariot of the Sun, to a Hawaiian volcano god, to Christian 6-day Creationism, every single religious myth is created as a way to explain natural phenomenon that the populace is completely unable to comprehend at the time.An analasys with modern knowledge will acknowledge that there is no "volcano god" demanding a sacrifice to stave off an eruption, and that there is no chariot of the Sun.And that the Earth was not created in 6 days.It's simply a matter of human nature and our nearly universal curiosity and desire for understanding, combined with our sometimes-wonderful ability to detect patterns...even when no such pattern exists. Or that humanity as a whole posesses a desire to understand and control their environment, to fight off the fear of the unknown and uncontrollable natural disasters.Or that some individuals realize they can control those around them by claiming to be the emissary of a deity, appealing to that same fear and ignorance to gain personal power. Personal incredulity, a personal sense of awe and wonder, and perceived patterns are not proof or indeed even evidence of a deity. One can look on a showflake with awe and wonder, but it is demonstrably proven that snowflakes form by purely natural processes.When one looks at a flower and says "wow, that's pretty...clearly there must have been some great designer who made it that way," this is a demonstration of a giant leap in logic. We have no idea whether we are the only creatures with the capacity for recognizing nonexistent patterns or a sense of awe - the creatures closest to us in intelligence are incapable of communicating with us, and there isn't really a way to detect a sense of awe and wonder without expression through language.And once again - you're using mythology to explain something you personally do not understand.Any conclusion that the supernatural exists that is derived from personal incredulity, ignorance, or other such logical fallacies is also fallacious.

Mark24 and Rahvin, you both appear to stray from Percy's question and the point made in my answer. Percy's postulation:No existing texts (and the knowledge contained therein) Otherwise the world is as we see it today.Percy's question:Would observable miracles and/or prophecies supportive to a god arise?My answer was to the effect that since acclaimed miracle and prophecy have in the past been observed among primitive pagan cultures which had no texts it is likely that they would arise.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

Actually, the nation is a laughing stock of the world because men with an expressly religious bent ran a black box voting coup and decided to start blowing up civilians of other countries who are a different color and religion from themselves, bankrupting their own economy and alienating their own people in the process.Other than that though, you basically concede Percy's point. God as he exists in the Bible is only knowable via the Bible. Not that there is any problem with that though. I think the problem only arises when funamentalist Christians start to say silly stuff like God can be proven or that articles of faith can be expressed with science.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Hi Jazzns, Jazzns the problem is not with Christians defined this way Christ Like.The problem is with a bunch of so called christians who know not God or His Son who are of their father the devil and the works of their father they are doing.Then everybody else is their own God so they do as they please and many do a lot better than those so called christians.BTW I don't claim to be a Christian.
I do claim to be a Born Again Child of the King.God Bless,

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"John 5:39 (KJS) Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me."

Darwin and Wallace also came up with the same idea independently: does that mean evolution by natural selection is true?No. It just means that two people can come up with the same idea independantly. Or, as bluegenes puts it here: This essentially supports what iano is saying: people can make their own gods. However, you've also helped us see that two people's gods formed in this fashion can be very similar, or even the same. The problem I'm seeing in this line of reasoning is that it looks at the system (i.e. nature) as a whole, and not at the individual parts, as if nature were undertaking a major project in producing life. This is inherently the same as first assuming God to see if God exists: you have already assumed everything is a coherent, goal-oriented process.The theory of evolution by natural selection states that the various parts of the system are in competition with one another, not working together toward a specified goal. Thus, each organism (and some would take this down to the level of each cell or each gene) can be thought of as selfish. If something else outcompetes you, you generally die off. Thus, nature favors the animal that is more aggressive, not the animal that is more thoughtful. Animals that crave sex do better at reproducing than animals that stop to try to understand why they should have sex.That's where emotions come from.

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Signed,
Nobody Important (just Bluejay)