Convince me that God exists

[Jacquemar]

There will be no more "Great" Religions after Christianity. Christianity, especially Catholicism, will never perish or disappear before the appointed time of the 'End' of the World, of which no one knows the day or the time of its coming, except the father in Heaven.

Ummm... I hate to rain on your parade, but people my age and younger are mostly turning to agnostic beliefs once they leave college...

In fact Christian organizations are calling it a "Crisis of Faith."

Why in the world do you think you can predict the future?

 

[altlover85]

It's not so much as being biased, it has much to do with experiencing the Spiritual Realm.

Many people in other religions would say they are experiencing the spiritual realm when they pray or meditate or partake in other activities.

 

[Kulindahr]

Without doubt, anyone with a basic knowledge of Hinduism would recognize that Shiva is worshipped as a divine person. He is often regarded as being simultaneously an explicitly detailed human character -and- the primordial, uncreated ground of the universe.

But Shiva never stands alone, and is referred to also as an "Aspect" of the central/core Triad. An Aspect isn't a person, nor is an aspect of something else a sole creator.

 

[Kulindahr]

You have no proof of what happened to the dead before Christianity, except what's in the Bible which has been altered through the years.

That claim is common, but lame: there has been less change in the Bible over its period of existence than any document until centuries later. Unless you want to go with the conspiracy theories that say Rome somehow managed to get rid of all the authentic copies and propagate their own version, we're more certain of what the original NT documents, anyway, say than we are of the contents of Caesar's Gallic Wars or the stories of Aesop or the poetry of Homer.

Attempts to alter things abound; they make one of the fun aspects of studying the abundant variant readings the Greek comes with.

 

[zoltanspawn]

But Shiva never stands alone, and is referred to also as an "Aspect" of the central/core Triad. An Aspect isn't a person, nor is an aspect of something else a sole creator.

No. You don't know what you are pretending to talk about.

 

[bankside]

Nor has anyone explained why a sole creator is more plausible than a set of creators for the universe. Why one? No reason. Just personal preference.

 

[Kulindahr]

No. You don't know what you are pretending to talk about.

LOL

Shiva is a piece of Trimurti, one of the five primary forms of God. He actually started as a sort of shadow-Rudra, and is still regarded as the same being in many places... which makes him less than creator anyway. If he isn't connected with Rudra, he's actually a recently-introduced deity, relatively speaking. Besides that, he's spoken of as having a mother or mothers, which again makes him mere offspring and not creator. His multiple personalities confuse the issue -- what do you do with him being both an ascetic yogi and at the same time a man with his own family and household?

And there's one of the problems with the whole Hindu thing: it has different traditions which contradict each other even as to the identity of major deities.

 

[Kulindahr]

Nor has anyone explained why a sole creator is more plausible than a set of creators for the universe. Why one? No reason. Just personal preference.

To a physicist the answer is obvious.

 

[zoltanspawn]

LOL

Shiva is a piece of Trimurti, one of the five primary forms of God. He actually started as a sort of shadow-Rudra, and is still regarded as the same being in many places... which makes him less than creator anyway. If he isn't connected with Rudra, he's actually a recently-introduced deity, relatively speaking. Besides that, he's spoken of as having a mother or mothers, which again makes him mere offspring and not creator. His multiple personalities confuse the issue -- what do you do with him being both an ascetic yogi and at the same time a man with his own family and household?

And there's one of the problems with the whole Hindu thing: it has different traditions which contradict each other even as to the identity of major deities.

Ya know, if you don't know what you're talking about at a basic level, pretending to have expertise is shameful. LOL? Your posts on this issue are intellectually bankrupt. Talk about what you know, and don't talk about what you don't know.

 

[altlover85]

LOL
And there's one of the problems with the whole Hindu thing: it has different traditions which contradict each other even as to the identity of major deities.

What about all the denominations in Christianity?

Ya know, if you don't know what you're talking about at a basic level, pretending to have expertise is shameful. LOL? Your posts on this issue are intellectually bankrupt. Talk about what you know, and don't talk about what you don't know.

Instead of just refuting him, can you share your knowledge with us? I, for one, would be interested in knowing more about Hinduism.

 

[altlover85]

That claim is common, but lame: there has been less change in the Bible over its period of existence than any document until centuries later. Unless you want to go with the conspiracy theories that say Rome somehow managed to get rid of all the authentic copies and propagate their own version, we're more certain of what the original NT documents, anyway, say than we are of the contents of Caesar's Gallic Wars or the stories of Aesop or the poetry of Homer.

Attempts to alter things abound; they make one of the fun aspects of studying the abundant variant readings the Greek comes with.

Can you give us examples of other documents?

Aren't Aesops stories fables, and thus not real?

Can you tell us more about why Homer's poetry is disputed?

I didn't predict the future nor do I claim the ability to do so. God never breaks his promises. There's a Crisis of Faith in every age.

Again you are using your faith as a justification in a fact based argument. I don't understand why you even refute these things. Your faith is not fact.

Even if you aren't predicting the future, you are believing a document that tells the future, but you have no reason to believe the document tells the truth other than your own experience.

 

[bankside]

To a physicist the answer is obvious.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and hypothesize that you are not a physicist nor is the answer obvious to you, or you would have simply explained it.

 

[altlover85]

Actually, that's a modern idea of "faith." The word translated as "faith" from the original Greek is pistis which is a noun form of "believe" pisteuo. But it doesn't translate completely as belief because some think that it implies an action of sorts. It has the idea of trust and confidence. So the idea is that there is reason for that trust. Evidence, experience, what have you. It was later translated to the Latin fidis and ultimately became "faith." But faith as it is used in modern vernacular isn't what the average person in the first century would necessarily attribute to pristis.

Today we say things like "your faith" or "blind faith." But we all have faith when we put trust into someone. A good illustration might be a soldier's trust and confidence in a leader. That trust or faithfulness isn't what we would refer to as "faith in that which cannot be seen or proven" though it could be in the sense that the blanket term could encompass that notion.

What the word used to mean doesn't necessarily have any bearing on how it is used now.

When I used faith I assumed MikeyLove and others would understand the modern usage of the word and the modern usage of the word is what we would be discussing.

I'm not sure what your point is.

 

[Kulindahr]

Ya know, if you don't know what you're talking about at a basic level, pretending to have expertise is shameful. LOL? Your posts on this issue are intellectually bankrupt. Talk about what you know, and don't talk about what you don't know.

I don't know your motive here, but to check my memory, I looked at some references, to be sure. The only thing I got wrong is that the traditions where Shiva is part of Trimurti and those where he is one of the five major forms of God seem to be rather mutually exclusive. So either Wiki, Britannica, and my comparative religions notes are wrong though in agreement, or..... ???

 

[Kulindahr]

What about all the denominations in Christianity?

Reasonable question. The difference is one of direction: the Hindu traditions start out divergent and become less so; the Christian situation begins with unity and diverges (though once things reach the U.S. of A., "divergence" is no longer adequate).

Instead of just refuting him, can you share your knowledge with us? I, for one, would be interested in knowing more about Hinduism.

I wouldn't mind seeing sources that show what he's talking about, because what I have are in agreement.

 

[altlover85]

Jubhug has it right on the mark concerning past and present usage of the word. I prefer the old usage far better. Thank you jubhug!

Which usage were you using originally? Did you know about the old usage beforehand?

 

[Kulindahr]

Can you give us examples of other documents?

Aren't Aesops stories fables, and thus not real?

Can you tell us more about why Homer's poetry is disputed?

Other documents -- pick anything before 1200, and many before 1500. The copies we have are too late and too few to give certainty in what the original was.

The point isn't the 'reality' of the story, but the confidence of what's in the document. We know there has been little change in the NT documents because we have numerous independent copies/portions/fragments; what we have of Aesop is centuries later and in fact nothing claiming to be an actual copy from an original (unless something has been found in the last decade since I studied the matter). So it's like evaluating evidence in court, and confidence in what Aesop really told is low (in fact there's no way of knowing whether all of the hundreds of tales ascribed to him were actually his; some or possibly many may have been attached to the famous name to get them circulated).

As for Homer, there's serious doubt he even existed; even the oldest sources disagree on when he lived, by a matter not just of decades but centuries! Beyond that, even in the Greek golden age, there wasn't any agreement on just what he wrote; some claimed all he penned was the Iliad, others just the Odyssey, others included a few other poems. These days, there's a joke that sort of covers the uncertainty, the statement that "These poems weren't written by Homer, just by someone of the same name".
That brings to mind another dispute, namely that even among people who hold that there really was a Homer, there isn't agreement that he actually wrote; there are definite signs of oral composition and transmission in the verses, which suggest that Homer may have composed orally and people memorized his work (this is one reason some claim that his verses were among the first items of literature set down after an alphabet was invented).
Wiki actually has a good article on Homer, though from my view it leans a bit toward the skeptical; OTOH, I presume that the people who worked on it have actually read all of Homer in the original, while I've only struggled through a few dozen stanzas.

 

[Kulindahr]

Actually, that's a modern idea of "faith." The word translated as "faith" from the original Greek is pistis which is a noun form of "believe" pisteuo. But it doesn't translate completely as belief because some think that it implies an action of sorts. It has the idea of trust and confidence. So the idea is that there is reason for that trust. Evidence, experience, what have you. It was later translated to the Latin fidis and ultimately became "faith." But faith as it is used in modern vernacular isn't what the average person in the first century would necessarily attribute to pristis.

Today we say things like "your faith" or "blind faith." But we all have faith when we put trust into someone. A good illustration might be a soldier's trust and confidence in a leader. That trust or faithfulness isn't what we would refer to as "faith in that which cannot be seen or proven" though it could be in the sense that the blanket term could encompass that notion.

Well put!

An example of faith from the older meaning, which I got from a Greek Orthodox priest, is a wailing child: picked up by a stranger, he continues to wail; picked up by a nurse, he continues to wail -- but picked up by his mother, he at once relaxes and begins to smile. What happened? He knew his mother, and had faith, i.e. trusted her.

I've seen that in my dog; when a puppy, he would sometimes get frightened, and no one could calm him -- but all I had to do was speak his name, and he would settle down.

From my skydiving days, here's another illustration: blind faith would be picking up a parachute without asking who packed it or if the job was done well, just trusting that since it was a the drop zone it was fine; the Greek word from the first century, though, is far closer to the jumper who asks, "Who packed this?", and when the packer identifies himself, asks, "Is it done right?" -- and the packer replies, "I'd jump it." That faith isn't blind, because it depends on two things: confidence that the packer knows his stuff, and confidence that the packer would commit himself to his work.
(Just in passing, I gave that response more than once, since I got good at packing chutes and it paid for jumps; once, the chute got tossed at me and the gal grabbed another -- she said "Show me"... and then she jumped at the same moment I did and watched my chute deploy. After that, if anyone asked if I'd packed a chute right, if she was there, she answered for me, "He'll jump it". And others had faith in her word.)

 

[Kulindahr]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and hypothesize that you are not a physicist nor is the answer obvious to you, or you would have simply explained it.

Actually the answer is obvious to me, though I balked at thermodynamics courses (due to an anal professor who flunked 3/5 of his classes on "principle") and thus can't claim to be a physicist: elegance.

 

[Kulindahr]

Jubhug has it right on the mark concerning past and present usage of the word. I prefer the old usage far better. Thank you jubhug!

And he did well to bring it up: most Christians in the denominations where scholarship is appreciated and especially in those where the sacraments are honored still use the word in the old sense; the same is true of many in other denominations as well. So there's a communications disconnect which often causes otherwise educated people to look like fools (e.g. Dawkins) because they're actually not using the same word, though it looks and sounds like it (this occurs in other fields; my favorite example is the use by biologists of the word "adapt" WRT evolution; the biologists' meaning and the common meaning are sufficiently at variance that when the common person hears the common meaning in a biologist's statement, the biologist appears very foolish -- something that contributes to disbelief in evolution).