Does God Really Exist or is the Notion of a God a figment of our Imagination

[Robert F. Smith]

4 hours ago, Gray said:

Your points are well made. But to be fair, couldn't it be said that Mormonism is, in one sense, common sense realism mingled with scripture? There is no getting away from the philosophies of men. Scripture is, after all, full of those. And of course scripture does not interpret itself.

Yes, in Humean analysis, we are prisoners of our senses.  So, even if we interpret Scripture via the Holy Spirit, we are still subjective creatures and cannot obtain immediate apprehension of objective reality.  An existential dilemma.  So, we do the best we can with what we have.  That does not mean that we should revel in the least effective, and least practical methods for understanding reality -- though we be in Plato's cave.

[Robert F. Smith]

53 minutes ago, Johnnie Cake said:

I appreciate your engagement in this thread Robert, but again you're attributing to a god things that happen naturally through nature

Actually, the quote I gave portrays an even-handed god, who does not usually intervene.  The rain comes to both good and bad because that is the natural order of things, and god is also subject to nature.

If I did that wasn't my intention.  I've lost god, I don't see any god anywhere,  I just wanted to hear from members of this believers board how they explain the lack of any evidence of a god figure in the world.  I appreciate that anyone can attribute any random event to a god figure but there really is nothing there from my perspective...its just humans attaching God to random events. if a blessing of healing is given and the person dies, it was god will, if the blessed recovers its a miracle...god wins irrespective when in reality that person would have had the same exact result with or without the blessing (I understand that you don't see it that way).

You clearly do not understand how I see it, but you might want to reflect on the nature of the universe -- which seemed so well-ordered and fine-tuned that Einstein insisted that God does not play with dice.  Where you see only randomness, many scientists see a well-planned system.

  Oaks assertion that the Mormon God saved the 4 missionaries was offensive and insensitive to the families and memories of those that died.  Why would a god save them and not others. Just because they're missionaries?  And yet the very next week this same God chose NOT to intervene in saving a missionary in Taiwan?  Really?  Who would want to worship such a capricious being?

Your definition is that of caprice.  Why would you think that of a god who is an integral part of nature, just as you are?

 

[thesometimesaint]

We can agree that a person named Yeshua bar Yosef did exist some 2000 years ago in Palestine. Whether he was Yeshua bar El is a matter of faith.

[Ahab]

13 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

My OP point being that the Mormon God intervenes in the lives of human beings. Saves Mormon missionaries while allowing others to die.  Helps Mormons find car keys yet allows others to die in wars and from starvation.  It just seems too random to be the actions of some invisible being

Think of someone who is more like you are or who you would like to be like, then. 

The word God is generally understood to refer to the most supreme kind of being in all of existence so you should use the word God to whichever kind of being that is.

[Ahab]

2 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

I appreciate your engagement in this thread Robert, but again you're attributing to a god things that happen naturally through nature

If I did that wasn't my intention.  I've lost god, I don't see any god anywhere,  I just wanted to hear from members of this believers board how they explain the lack of any evidence of a god figure in the world.  I appreciate that anyone can attribute any random event to a god figure but there really is nothing there from my perspective...its just humans attaching God to random events. if a blessing of healing is given and the person dies, it was god will, if the blessed recovers its a miracle...god wins irrespective when in reality that person would have had the same exact result with or without the blessing (I understand that you don't see it that way).  Oaks assertion that the Mormon God saved the 4 missionaries was offensive and insensitive to the families and memories of those that died.  Why would a god save them and not others. Just because they're missionaries?  And yet the very next week this same God chose NOT to intervene in saving a missionary in Taiwan?  Really?  Who would want to worship such a capricious being?

Think of God trying to communicate with everyone on this planet through ESP while some people don't pay much attention to the thoughts they get from him, at least sometimes, for some reason.

You don't know whether or not that missionary who died in Taiwan got a thought from God that could have saved his life if he had heeded that message.  You do not know anything about that.  You are passing judgment on God without any clue of what went on in that regard. And maybe it was better for that missionary to die because of what God had in mind for him in the spirit world.  Who knows?  Not you.  At least I have enough fairh in God to know that all things work together for the good of everyone who loves him.

[thesometimesaint]

21 hours ago, Jim Stiles said:

I agree.  I see no evidence for the existence of the Mormon God and the Mormon Jesus either.

You're a troll.

[Guest]

4 hours ago, Atheist Mormon said:

It's fine to insult God, (I won't do it here out of respect  to you all though). However there's absolutely no consequence insulting God, since it is an imaginary entity. Besides it can't be our God; you have your God, Christians, Moslems, Jews have their own God.....So you are basically one God away becoming atheist.

Your comment not meant to insult suggest myself and all who believe are somehow deceived or crazy. I would say you either missed or hit the intended mark. Congrats, depending on which.  

[stemelbow]

19 hours ago, Gray said:

Yes.

That's what I was thinking.  Too bad you beat me to it. 

[Johnnie Cake]

1 hour ago, thesometimesaint said:

We can agree that a person named Yeshua bar Yosef did exist some 2000 years ago in Palestine. Whether he was Yeshua bar El is a matter of faith.

Yes I believe a Yeshua bar Yosef existed

[Johnnie Cake]

11 hours ago, mfbukowski said:

That's unknowable and therefore irrelevant

If your body wants to believe it, why argue with your body?  

The point is not arguing about metaphysics that is unknowable either way- the point is going with what gives you purpose in life and happiness.

Think of the logic behind "save the whales"  Why "should" we save whales?  What is the logical basis of any morality whatsoever?  What evidence do you have that it is wrong to kill babies for fun?

None whatsoever

You feel it in your gut.

Don't argue with your gut.  It is unhealthy.  Logic has nothing to do with morality.

Hume proved that way back in the 17th century.  You can occam's razor your self all day if you want and not prove it.    No evidence for any morals at all - period, end of story

Here- refute this.  If you are feeling smart, here is one way: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-moral/

If you are feeling dumb, this will do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

The point is, knowing God is exactly like knowing what is morally right.  It's in your gut and no where else

God is the ideal human- if you can only get yourself to believe in the best possible human- go for it.  He exists like an ideal like "Freedom" or what is morally good.  I believe more, but that will do for a start.

Thank you I always enjoy your perspective...it is going with my gut that caused me to lose a belief in God

[Johnnie Cake]

31 minutes ago, Ahab said:

Think of God trying to communicate with everyone on this planet through ESP while some people don't pay much attention to the thoughts they get from him, at least sometimes, for some reason.

You don't know whether or not that missionary who died in Taiwan got a thought from God that could have saved his life if he had heeded that message.  You do not know anything about that.  You are passing judgment on God without any clue of what went on in that regard. And maybe it was better for that missionary to die because of what God had in mind for him in the spirit world.  Who knows?  Not you.  At least I have enough fairh in God to know that all things work together for the good of everyone who loves him.

What you interpret as God speaking to you via ESP I see as my inner mind speaking and me choosing or not choosing to interpret as a god figure...I choose to view it as my inner thoughts

[mfbukowski]

28 minutes ago, Johnnie Cake said:

Thank you I always enjoy your perspective...it is going with my gut that caused me to lose a belief in God

Fair enough, my gut told me the same thing for a period in my life.

We will have a good discussion on the other side, I am sure, but if we don't, best wishes.  Keep on going with your gut and know that it might change.  Maybe not.

The bottom line is keep on growing.

Edited April 29, 2016 by mfbukowski

[Gray]

41 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

That's what I was thinking.  Too bad you beat me to it. 

I'm willing to share credit!

[Jim Stiles]

12 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I can give you some recommendations for serious Bible study, if you are open to them, Jim.

Meantime, just imagine that you are in the large retinue of Abraham when those three "men" come to him encamped in the Plain at Mamre.  What does the Bible say of them, and what does Abraham do?  Yeh, he makes a great feast.  Afterward, he bargains with the LORD while the other two (angels) go off to destroy Sodom.  There is no room for your Greek philosophical interpretations.

Creation ex-nihilo is not a Greek philosophical idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge

Quote

Plato, as the speaker Timaeus, refers to the Demiurge frequently in the Socratic dialogue Timaeus, c. 360 BC. The main character refers to the Demiurge as the entity who "fashioned and shaped" the material world. Timaeus describes the Demiurge as unreservedly benevolent, and hence desirous of a world as good as possible. The world remains imperfect, however, because the Demiurge created the world out of a chaotic, indeterminate non-being. Plato's work Timaeus is a philosophical reconciliation of Hesiod's cosmology in his Theogony, syncretically reconciling Hesiod to Homer.

This is not creation ex-nihilo.

 

[Ahab]

1 hour ago, Johnnie Cake said:

What you interpret as God speaking to you via ESP I see as my inner mind speaking and me choosing or not choosing to interpret as a god figure...I choose to view it as my inner thoughts

I once thought about it that way too until I learned how to tell the difference between my own thoughts and thoughts I get from other people.

I do understand that it is kinda hard to tell the difference when it's all in there pretty much at once in your mind.  You've usually got somebody giving you a good idea and somebody else giving you a bad idea and then in addition to that you are there trying to make a decision.

To make it easier for you to sort everything out I recommend that you use the term God to refer to the source of any good idea that you get, the term Satan as the source of your bad ideas, with you as the one who is trying to figure out which of those 2 to listen to.

That's pretty much what we religious types are doing anyway and it's pretty much what is going on in all of our minds.

[Jim Stiles]

2 hours ago, thesometimesaint said:

You're a troll.

Pay the toll or else you don't get to use the bridge.

[Ahab]

3 minutes ago, Jim Stiles said:

Pay the toll or else you don't get to use the bridge.

I would rather just get rid of the troll.

[mfbukowski]

49 minutes ago, Jim Stiles said:

Creation ex-nihilo is not a Greek philosophical idea.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge

This is not creation ex-nihilo.

 

No, but Aristotles unmoved mover is.

That is creation ex nihilo- at its originshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover

Quote

 

The unmoved mover (Ancient Greek: ὃ οὐ κινούμενος κινεῖ,[1] ho ou kinoúmenos kineî, "that which moves without being moved") orprime mover (Latin: primum movens) is a monotheistic concept advanced by Aristotle, a polytheist,[2][3] as a primary cause or "mover" of all the motion in the universe.[4] As is implicit in the name, the "unmoved mover" moves other things, but is not itself moved by any prior action. In Book 12 (Greek "Λ") of his Metaphysics, Aristotle describes the unmoved mover as being perfectly beautiful, indivisible, and contemplating only the perfect contemplation: itself contemplating. He equates this concept also with the Active Intellect. This Aristotelian concept had its roots in cosmological speculations of the earliest Greek "Pre-Socratic" philosophers and became highly influential and widely drawn upon in medieval philosophy and theology. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, elaborated on the Unmoved Mover in the Quinque viae.

 

Doesn't exactly spund like "Heavenly Father does it?

Aquinas comes along and tries to Christianize it.  Didn't work

So between Plato's Form of Good and the Demi-urge, mixed with Aristotle's unmoved mover, we have a theology which Evangelicals still accept.

Very strange.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_of_the_Good

Quote

 

Plato's writings on the meaning of virtue and justice permeate through the Western philosophical tradition.[8] Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism, had principles that were heavily influenced by the Good. His concept of 'the One' is equivalent to 'the Good' because it describes an ultimate ontological truth. 'The One' is both ‘self-caused’ and the cause of being for everything else in the universe. Plotinus compared his principle of 'the One' to an illuminating light, as Plato did with the Form of the Good. As a result of Plotinus' school of Neoplatonism, the bulk of understanding of Platonic philosophy until the 19th Century came through Plotinus' interpretation of it. The early theologies of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism looked to the ideas of Platonism through the lens of Plotinus.[9]

The concept of the Good is interpreted by Alfarabi, an early Islamic philosopher in his writing, Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Alfarabi writes,

Then [the inquirer] should investigate all the things by which man achieves this perfection, or that are useful to him in achieving it. These are the good virtues and noble things. He should distinguish them from things that obstruct his achieving this perfection. These are the evils, the vices and the base things. He should make known what and how every one of them is and from what and for what it is, until all of them become known, intelligible and distinguished from each other.[10]

Amphis, a comic playwright of Athens, has one of his characters say: "And as for the good that you are likely to get on her account, I know no more about it, master, than I do of the good of Plato."[11] There is an ancient anecdotal tradition that Plato gave a public lecture entitled "On the Good" which so confused the audience that most walked out.[12]

 

And of course Plotinus was directly influential in Christianity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonism_and_Christianity

Edited April 29, 2016 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

Aquinas was influenced by Aristotle, Augustine was influenced by Plato

Essentially early Christian theology is a re-hash of these two Greek philosophers

[Jim Stiles]

1 hour ago, mfbukowski said:

No, but Aristotles unmoved mover is.

That is creation ex nihilo- at its originshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover

Doesn't exactly spund like "Heavenly Father does it?

Aquinas comes along and tries to Christianize it.  Didn't work

So between Plato's Form of Good and the Demi-urge, mixed with Aristotle's unmoved mover, we have a theology which Evangelicals still accept.

Very strange.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Form_of_the_Good

And of course Plotinus was directly influential in Christianity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoplatonism_and_Christianity

No, what is not Christian is the rantings and ravings of a 19th century man.

[Ahab]

28 minutes ago, Jim Stiles said:

No, what is not Christian is the rantings and ravings of a 19th century man.

Alexander Campbell?  True but he was called Christian back then and even today many still believe he was.

[Hamba Tuhan]

8 hours ago, Johnnie Cake said:

I just wanted to hear from members of this believers board how they explain the lack of any evidence of a god figure in the world.  I appreciate that anyone can attribute any random event to a god figure but there really is nothing there from my perspective...

So you want people to explain to you a 'lack of any evidence' that you simultaneously admit is really just your perspective? You don't ask for much, do you?

[cdowis]

I have a certain knowledge that God lives.

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, Jim Stiles said:

No, what is not Christian is the rantings and ravings of a 19th century man.

I was hoping for a reasoned argument

 

[Atheist Mormon]

On 4/28/2016 at 0:58 PM, Johnnie Cake said:

While once a firm believer in God I now tend to fall on the agnostic side of this question.  I see absolutely no evidence that a god exists.  Despite Elder Oaks recent comments that the LDS version of God saved the 3 Mormon Missionaries from the most sever impacts of the bomb blast in Brussels, I merely see it as the lucky consequences of a random event.  Being in the right place to withstand the impact while others were not so lucky.  How exactly did the LDS God impact the results of this blast.  And if He did somehow save the missionaries...what an *** for not saving the 35 who where killed.  How do you worship such a being who puts the needs of 3 above the lives of the 35.  To me it is just an example of Oaks confirmation bias.  He believes in a God so he sees this random event as the consequences of God.

I could go on with example after example...but just being honest...other than the human induced chemical endorphins in the human mind that create warm tingling feelings un-unique to Mormon's, what evidence is there of the kind of God Mormon worship? I can't see any.

I like your thoughts, however when you say; "I see absolutely no evidence that a god exists" That's pretty much it, you are an atheist. I don't think anybody should go there and say "God saved the 3 Mormon Missionaries", I find that a little inconsiderate in light of other innocent people who died there....If that were the case how unjust & cruel God he would be to save some and let others die.....