Need a miracle? Go look in the mirror. If that is not enough then go look in your on baby's eyes the first time. If you see no soul in either, then you are indeed missing something very precious.

Amen to that. I have asked this question before and I will ask it again. If science can prove or disprove anything then answer this question.

Do you love your children, wife, parents, etc? Whether your answer is yes or no prove it, scientifically.

Why do emotions always seem to get brought up when discussing the proof of God? I think this argument is very weak when trying to prove the existence of anything. I believe that you believe in god. I believe that you love your children. So what? Is the point that I can't prove that you have had this experience really supposed to convince me of a much more complex theory?

BTW Science can't disprove or prove everything.


[This message has been edited by BizAg01 (edited 4/15/2005 2:00p).]

BizAg, why do I bring up emotions such as love when discussing God? Well the answer can be found here.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:13

Love is a gift from God. The truly sad thing is that he gives unconditionally and you deny him unequivocally and yet he will not turn his back on you even in your last breath.

I am sure that you think this argument is very weak. Most people who can’t see the truth or refuse to do so fall back on methods such as the ones you are using. I really wonder what you would do if God himself walked up to you and asked you to believe if you would still deny him. Maybe before you arbitrarily write him off you should spend some significant time trying to get to know him. You can start with Genesis and Sunday church.

Love is a God given emotion(so to speak).

[This message has been edited by HaveGoodGetGive (edited 4/15/2005 2:39p).]

TAMU@EDS

Wow thanks for the enlightment. I was sooo blind before. I "can't" see the "truth". Now I know what you really think of everyone else. It seems as though you got it all figured out.

BizAg1

quote:

---

was sooo blind before. I "can't" see the "truth".

---

Your obvious attempt at sarcasm makes me wonder if I hit a nerve. Maybe you can see the truth but refuse to accept it.

I don't agree with seeing the truth I admit I don't know. I am just shocked at how much you know. Please, keep enlightening me with your truths.

Tell me how you found the "truth".

BTW If you understood it as sarcasm how was it only an attempt? Oh wait! Do you know more about me than I do myself too? You really are amazing. Please keep going.

[This message has been edited by BizAg01 (edited 4/15/2005 2:55p).]

How somebody finds it is not relevant. It is only relevant that they find it. Ask any parent that looks into their newborn eyes if the existence of God can be refuted.

Back to the other point I am assuming that by commiting to the existence of love is also a commitment to the existence of God because he gave me those powers. Is that why they are linked?

All parents who can see their infants eyes are no longer non-believers.

Got it.

Keep going.

We are created in his image and endowed with gifts that he gave us. He gave us love because it was needed for us to understand and love our creator unconditionally much like a child does with his or her parents.

To answer your question yes they are linked because he gave them to us. If you can't love God you can't love anybody or anything. You may think you do but it is a false feeling.

I don't have a relationship with God so I don't really love my wife.

Got it.

Keep going.

[This message has been edited by BizAg01 (edited 4/15/2005 3:05p).]

We could go back and forth all day but it is unlikely that either will relent. I truly feel sorry for you because you will never experience a fuller life, that is unless you change your ways.

[This message has been edited by TAMU@EDS (edited 4/15/2005 3:10p).]

My point is this. You are soo confident in yourself that you have this arrogant aura around you.

How can you really make a claim that anyone who dosen't have a relationship with God can't experience true love. I love my wife. Can you prove that I don't? I know I do.

Based upon your earlier statement the relationship with love is a direct attribute given from him, but if I feel love it is a false feeling. Well, I believe it is true and you believe I could be having a false feeling, then can you show me how your love is more "real" than mine? Maybe I have been given the "true" love from another being and you are merely having a "false feeling".

I’m fine with listening to you objectively until to start talking about your superior enlightenment over me and discrediting my feeling of love.

Can you see the arrogance you display?


[This message has been edited by BizAg01 (edited 4/15/2005 3:14p).]

Ironically it is you that I believe to be arrogant with your caviler attitude on the non-existence of God. You believe any such belief borders on lunacy while you have no evidence to substantiate your claims. I certainly never meant to offend you but I do stand my be beliefs, which are founded in the Bible, that to love is to believe in God.

Look we are as wide apart on this issue as the east is from the west. Let's agree on this issue and put the rest to bed.

Can you at least agree with me that we will beat the ever livin hell outta t.u. this year?

I have openly admitted that I don't have the answers. I have accused no one of lunacy on this board and I fully understand why people have their religious beliefs. For me the burdern of proof isn't upon me to prove the non-existence but for the existence to be proven.

Who really cares about what dosen't exist? That is like asking for you to prove that a 12 leafed clover dosen't exist. It is stupid to even attempt. The simpler task is to prove what does exist using agreed upon principles.

The original argument was the relational aspect of love being an emotion provided by God and you mentioned that by believing in him you had this emotion and were fully aware that you were insinuating that I was incapable of this. Yes. I see that as quite arrogant and insulting. And also the key to discrediting your argument.

If it possible to have a false emotion then it is also possible to have a false relationship with God.

[This message has been edited by BizAg01 (edited 4/15/2005 3:34p).]

I agree on beating t.u..

Whoop to that.

Let's step back again and forget the last few posts.

I'll toss this out to anyone. Is the existence of an emotion such as love as described above a cornerstone to the belief in God? I have shared why I don't think it is, but I think there are better arguments to be made.

BizAg1, this is why being an Aggie is so great. Because we are all one big family we can have our disagreements and still unite when needed.

Yeah. There is nothing that a cold beer and Aggie Football can't mend.

Unless drinking beer is percieved as "wrong".

J/K

Biz - God created man, love is given to us from birth. Everyone is capable of it, regardless if you are a believer or not.

OK.

That I can rationalze a little more. But is the existence of love a good argument to the existence of God? I have always thought not.

[This message has been edited by BizAg01 (edited 4/15/2005 3:58p).]

quote:

---

Is the existence of an emotion such as love as described above a cornerstone to the belief in God?

---

I don't think so. Jesus is the cornerstone of belief in God. Human emotions are too fickle. That's why people wake up one day and decide they don't love their wife/husband anymore. It also happens with our emotions towards God. One day we love God, the next we don't feel like talking to Him. Humans are fickle, God is faithful.

Matthew 21:42
Jesus said to them, "Did you never read in the Scriptures, `THE STONE WHICH THE BUILDERS REJECTED, THIS BECAME THE CHIEF CORNER stone; THIS CAME ABOUT FROM THE LORD, AND IT IS MARVELOUS IN OUR EYES'?

Ephesians 2:19-22
So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints, and are of God's household, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus Himself being the corner stone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, is growing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit.

That would depend no who you ask. If you asked me, yes it is one of the 'proofs' that God does exist. Made in His image we have the same emotions..love, anger, happines, jealousy, etc.

You disagree. So it really depends on whose opinion you take.

To your proving thing...if every religion had to 'prove' their faith, ie Jesus standing in front of you and performing a mirace, then it would not be faith, it would be absolute/relative truth(depending on how many people saw it). That is why it is called faith. To me the things(ie love as proof of existance of God) that you say need to be 'proved' are truths, for you they are not.

Yeah. Faith is obviously absent to me in this regard. Faith can be very tricky since that follows exposure to the teachings of a religion.

Somewhere in another country there is someone just like you with heavy convictions and arguments for a different religion based heavily on faith.

Which of you do I choose to believe?

I have a better question. If you were me and you only had "faith" to rely upon for the existence of God, how would you choose between religions?

[This message has been edited by BizAg01 (edited 4/15/2005 4:19p).]

quote:

---

Which of you do I choose to believe?

I have a better question. If you were me and you only had "faith" to rely upon for the existence of God, how would you choose between religions?

---

bizag, you ask good questions.

you have to look into them yourself, and try to find out. nobody on this board will convince you of anything. why? because you don't know any of us (at least i think so, maybe we had a class together once). we're just letters on your computer screen.

if we were friends in real life, you would be able to observe my faith by how i live my life. since we don't know each other, i hope you have some christian/muslem/jewish or other friends that you can spend time with and see what their faith stands for. words of caution, this is not a short term observation but a long time relationship with people (anyone can have a bad week or month where they are struggling with issues). for example, if somebody saw me on a bad day where i'm having a short fuse (like after suffering through a bad night cause my baby son was sick), people could just conclude after a few observations that i do not have the peace of God. you can't judge people on a short term basis. Christians are not perfect but works in progress, and after a while you should be able to see fruits of the spirit evident in their life.

but i got off track a bit. anyway, look into different religions and see what you find out. i know that God of the Bible invites you to search for Him, and maybe you will discover that He is waiting for you.

Matthew 7:7 "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

John 13:34
“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another."

Pretty simple, huh?

At least in theory-I have to admit my patience was dearly tried today with someone insulting my Aggie loyalty.

When this big miracle occurs that convinces me, will the God label it as "this Miracle brought to you by God. The real God. The God that the United Methodists pray too accurately."

Because it it's not laid out clearly like that, how do I know it's not Allah, Vishnu, Ahura Mazda or maybe even the Jesusless Jewish God?

Because if it's not clear, I might believe that a God exists, but I'll probably think he's a jerk for being so damned vague and contradictory for all these thousands of years.

"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."-
Albert Einstein

DamnGood'88,

quote:

---

When this big miracle occurs that convinces me

---

Don’t worry about it. When you are convinced, it will be by His opening your heart to believe (Acts 16:14), and teaching you (John 6:45), so that you know the truth of it (John 14:17), and who He is (Heb 8:1).

The following argument is where I boldly claim the superior domain of my atheism vis-vis your belief in God.

I ask you believers, is there anything that could convince you there is no God. Anything at all that would make you say, "Gee, I'm wrong because this particular piece of evidence overides what I have previously been taught about God, and it is now clear and convincing to me that God does not exist," I don't believe that for 99%+ of believers in God that could ever be possible; hence, I frequently point out that your belief is unfalsifiable which makes it not a belief at all. But for my side the evidence or ocuurences are numerous...it just needs to be reproducible and verifiable.

But I submit that if I could see 1 person verifiably walk on water or see a fractured bone spontaneously heal (interesting how faith healers nevere fix anything that can be objectively documented with an image, x-ray or lab test....its always vague, subjective ilnesses), I would reconsider if a supernatural deity could exist and be understood in our physical universe.

Can any of you believers in God say the same thing?

If you claim belief in something that to you is inherently or necessarily true, that is a tautology, and I think that makes the discussion of God or abscence of a God truly apples and oranges.

quote:

---

I frequently point out that your belief is unfalsifiable which makes it not a belief at all.

---

You have faith confused with scientific theory. Falsifiability is a useless concept when you something is validated by subjective evidence.

quote:

---

If you claim belief in something that to you is inherently or necessarily true, that is a tautology, and I think that makes the discussion of God or abscence of a God truly apples and oranges.

---

I really agree with you here except for the circular reasoning part. Nothing you can do will convince me that I am not breathing, because it is necessarily true. That does not make my statement of breathing circular reasoning. This discussion involves the intersection of two different worldviews and ways of thinking. Therefore, many things from each side seem absurd to the other.

That was sort of the point of the original post. That post sounds really absurd to anyone with faith, but is perfectly rational to empiricists. I know empiricists think people of faith sound absurd often. It really goes both ways.

quote:

---

Can you at least agree with me that we will beat the ever livin hell outta t.u. this year?

---

What is the obsession from this generation on seeing miracles?

Every single emotion we have in our head can be recreated in a lab under the right conditions since our emotions are nothing more than electrical signals in our brain. Does that make them any less genuine? No it doesn't but it doesn't mean that there isn't a supernatural aura to them.