Thread: Who do you "pray" to?

I don't remember saying the invisible pink unicorn didn't exist.. I'm open minded!

I was just pointing out that for those who believe in God, if you believe He is omnipotent, then He cannot be disproven.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

This is the whiole argument for the invisible pink unicorn though. And Russel's teapot.

At this point can I interject something?

When I was a Philosophy major there was a theory put forth called "infinite regress".

The theory IN GENERAL stated that if there is a g(G)od and he is powerful enough to make the earth, then he must have been created or come from somewhere. So therefore there is someone/thing more powerful than him and so on back the line.

It is a circular argument. I just wanted to throw that out there.

Originally Posted by singlewedge

At this point can I interject something?

When I was a Philosophy major there was a theory put forth called "infinite regress".

The theory IN GENERAL stated that if there is a g(G)od and he is powerful enough to make the earth, then he must have been created or come from somewhere. So therefore there is someone/thing more powerful than him and so on back the line.

It is a circular argument. I just wanted to throw that out there.

That's why that was in philosophy class, and not logic. How does that IF/Then statement come to be?

Why IF there is a g(G)od and he is powerful enough to make the earth, THEN he must have been created or come from somewhere.

There is no connection, is is just a postulation to start a discussion. If there is is God, powerful enough to create the earth, perhaps he is eternal and infinite?

It's a circular argument because the underlying foundation is setup to be that way.

Originally Posted by bbshriver

Interestingly, I was reading a "brief history of time" by Stephen Hawking a few years ago, and one of the more interesting points I found was when he was discussing his "proof" of the big-bang theory (his doctoral work). The problem was that as you said earlier everything after the big-bang followed scientific/natural patterns, but in order for the big bang to occur all the laws of physics had to be broken, thus "proving" the existence of God. According to Hawking the Catholic church immediately adopted his information. At the time of the book writing, Hawking was trying to DISPROVE his own proof of the Big Bang, because it resulted in a singularity.

Also, a clear point is that no matter what evidence one can find, there can be no disproof of God, because the very nature of omnipotence is that even if you can scientifically prove that everything has followed a natural sequence of events, you cannot prove that the natural sequence was created by God.

My quabble with "science" is that no matter what the evidence it is a predetermined assumption that there is no God so any evidence that points toward a God is automatically rejected in search of something else. For instance Hawking working to disprove his own work because it indicated the work of an omnipotent being. I can understand the purpose of science is to investigate all possibilities, but if there is even *some* evidence for God (or the flying spaghetti monster or anything) then it should remain on the table as an option?

I read that book a long time ago, and I don't remember anything in it which would count as a proof of god. He does outline unknowns, such as what happened in the very early stages after the Big Bang, and how it happened. Unknowns however, are not proof of god. There are many things known now which were unknown before. Does that mean that they were proofs of god at one time, but have ceased to be so now? An unknown by itself isn't proof of anything.

I'm not surprised that any church would jump on an unknown and say it is proof of god. I doubt very much that Hawking is trying to disprove anything just because of what a church might say. I'd like to see a source for this, it sounds like an urban myth.

About your point about disproving an omnipotent being: you are absoloutely right. But then, most scientists will tell you that "science is agnostic to the question of god". It's simply not a question science can answer. Nobody writes a paper called "Proof god doesn't exist". What they do however, is point out the bad science when it is used to prove that "god does exist".

Originally Posted by singlewedge

At this point can I interject something?

When I was a Philosophy major there was a theory put forth called "infinite regress".

The theory IN GENERAL stated that if there is a g(G)od and he is powerful enough to make the earth, then he must have been created or come from somewhere. So therefore there is someone/thing more powerful than him and so on back the line.

It is a circular argument. I just wanted to throw that out there.

The idea that in infinity you must keep moving past god to what created him, and past that to what created that, and past that .... and on and on. That idea is linear, and its awful for philosophy, its the philosophical equivalent of chasing your own tail for infinity in one direction always moving to try and meet it but being stressed becuase you cant.
Anxiety and stress have no place in truth/spirit/god etc etc..
To understand what exists outside you need to be thinking in cyclical terms, Not the anxiety of chasing your tail but the comfort that comes from catching that tail.
Linear systems are bad and do not allow for explaination of truth, they are unhealthy systems.
Cyclical systems are good and do allow for explaination of truth and promote health. So that could be health in the body, or helahty philosophy for the mind.
I will give examples of these to show how linear relates to real world problems not just "philosophy"... it shows the unsustainability of linear systems, and I would say that linear philosophy is also unsustainable....

THE WORLD IS FLAT


THE WORLD IS NOT FLAT


Both of those pictures were captured from a video at The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard which shows more about how cycles on earth work.

The idea that you would keep searching beyond god who is infinity once you reached the spiritual world which is also infifnity, god/spirit/infinity/spiritworld ... these are all the same stuff.
Anyway that idea that you would need to keep searching/moving in infinity is where this is explained. If you are in infinity or just you are infinity then you dont need to search/move because everything would be everywhere, and so would you.
So the idea that you would need to search/move for things in spiritual world would not make sense. This is what is meant by the infinite regress in linear terms, but in cyclical terms infinite regress is moot, as moot as searching for something when both you and that thing are everywhere.


Note that all the positives in this post point towards god, I dont think thats because im biased towards god, I think thats just the way reality is structured. This place isnt fully real, its full of negativity which decreases its real value.

V/R
Best Regards,
Greg

I voted the Old Ones/Indiginous/Nature. I have studied a lot of faith systems old and new as part of my training, for those who don't know I am a practising Pagan.

I don't think there is a right or wrong deity who we turn to when needed, we are all individual and entitled to worship who we wish. The key is to be open minded and accept that ok, so I don't talk to the same gods as you do but that doesn't make me a bad person.

IMHO it is not who you believe in that matters, it's that you have faith in something that is important.

A quibble with that ...

YouTube - The faith cake