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- Go to DOES GOD EXIST?? - CAN IT BE PROVEN???
If I told you
that I have seen God with my own eyes, it wouldn't prove a thing to you because my experience is not within your experience. So, even though I've seen God, you may call me a liar, or you may say Uh-huh, and not really believe me because I can't give you any proof that I've seen God.
posted by
JasonScyte
on April 24, 2006 at 9:57 AM
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I am sufficiently persuaded by ...
Thomas Aquinas's arguments (which I won't restate here) for the existence of God.
Much less intellectually defensible is the belief in the Christian concept of God, the Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
That belief is really a leap of faith. I wrote a short essay on the subject -- from the perspective of someone who does believe in the Christian concept of God -- that builds what I consider to be a formidable case for Christianity, but no, I don't think there is any scientific or logical proof.
There is the question of revelation. Some people have visions of God in which they receive messages. We could speculate that they are hallucinating, but if their experience really had objective validity, then revelation would be sufficient proof of God's existence. (Although perhaps the proof not accessible to those not receiving the revelation.)
Part of my argument is that if those who say they saw Jesus after his crucifixion were making up a fiction, they were taking a stunningly huge risk in doing so, for there was the danger of meeting the same fate Jesus did at the political authorities' hands. So, in my view, they would not be willing to testify for the event unless they really believed it happened. (Only for a sincere belief would they be willing to risk their lives.)
Addressing the possibility of hallucination, in the essay I wrote, "Perhaps, indeed, a major world religion lasting for a thousand years is based on the schizophrenia of a small group of Middle Easterners, but I am not prepared to stake my life on the assumption that this is true." (Obviously, employing sarcasm, but only to refute the notion that Christianity is absurd. I hold that it might not be objectively proveable, but it is surely not absurd.)
posted by
Dyl_Pickle
on April 23, 2006 at 5:49 PM
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And as we live the experience
We should let others live their own unique experiences . . . .
posted by
archiew
on April 23, 2006 at 1:55 AM
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