Consciously or unconsciously forming a world-view and choosing to believe or not to believe in God

2019-01-09 ~ Guestspeaker

A mechanical engineer, a science and philosophy nerd, exploring the beliefs that he holds, has set himself a goal to conform his beliefs to what he calls the truth, and to share that truth with others, which is a beautiful and valuable aspiration.

He has written a whole long series trying to proof the existence of God, though sometimes we get more the impression he wanted to proof the existence of the son of God, a totally different character (but that aside). He writes

In order to explain and organize all our disparate experiences of the world we live in, everyone goes through the process, consciously or unconsciously, of forming a worldview. A worldview is an overarching framework for understanding and interpreting reality. And what someone believes about God is, almost certainly, their worldview’s most defining characteristic. {The Existence of God}

The question if God exists has been on the lips of millions of people, for centuries. The above mentioned husband and a father to a 1 year old son also recognises the importance of such question.

Does God exist? Who is he? What is our relationship to him?

These are incredibly important questions, impacting what we believe about what is right and wrong, about why we are here, about where we came from and where are ultimately going. This is not a matter of indifference. All meaning, value, and purpose is on the line. What we believe about God influences every aspect of our lives. {The Existence of God}

Problem of Divine Hiddenness

The knowledge about the existence of God should be at our heart and is the essence on which we have to build our Emunah or Faith. Because God can not be seen by any man that acceptance of such an Unseen Eternal Spirit and Most High Supreme Divine Being is very difficult for us human beings. that god is a non-seen Unit does not have to mean He hides Himself. He provided enough material to “see” His presence and to become aware of His existence.

In “Existence and difficult recognition of the Supreme Deity Being” were mentioned the Biblical, Ontological, Teleological, Cosmological and Moral arguments, whilst in the previous post we could find a deeper look at the cosmological argument which maintains that God is needed as the Creator and sustainer of the material universe. There too could be mentioned that we have an intuition, an in-breath feeling of some higher existence.

Our rational intuitions support the principle of sufficient reason, which says that every contingent truth has an explanation. Applied to the existence of the universe, the principle leads to a necessarily existing being – God – as the best explanation for how the universe began, or why there is something rather than nothing. {The Existence of God}

Facing the Problem of Divine hiding or “Hiddenness”, Him being an Unseen identity, makes it very difficult to proof His existence. For someone who is seen, like Christ Jesus (an other character many do not want to believe he existed), it is much easier to give proof of his existence.

If God really does exist, where is all the evidence? For all the arguments that theists present for their belief, the existence of God is not nearly as evident as it could be. Why doesn’t God make his presence obvious, when he supposedly wants people to know him? Perhaps it is because he isn’t there at all. {The Existence of God}

Many oversee the fact that the Elohim really made His presence obvious in many things. In everything He created can be seen the Hand of God. He also on several occasions interfered with mankind and showed His power by several miraculous or strange events, like the ten plagues of Egypt. Several times He provide for man, like giving them bread in the dessert (the Manna) or giving them water when they needed water.

Epistemological Argument

A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God can be categorized as metaphysical, logical, empirical, or subjective. In philosophical terms, the question of the existence of God involves also the disciplines of epistemology (the nature and scope of knowledge) and, as we have seen earlier, ontology (study of the nature of being, existence, or reality) and the theory of value (since some definitions of God include “perfection”).

According to the principle of critical trust, the beliefs that we naturally form in the context of our experiences have some inherent justification. These basic beliefs are the foundation of all our other beliefs, and it is through them that we believe, for example, in the physical world around us. Belief in God is often like this – justified via our own direct experiences of God or via the common features of religious experiences that millions of people have had all over the world and throughout history. {The Existence of God}

Noetic Argument.

There are many philosophical arguments that asserts an inconsistency between the existence of God and a world in which people fail to recognize Him. Every human being is originally created in the tzelem Elohim or in the image of God, Jehovah the Divine Creator. As such we all received a brain to bring us consciousness.

The existence of consciousness points to a reality beyond the physical universe, as it is extremely difficult to conceive of a natural mechanism that could produce the kind of conscious experiences and mind-body interaction that we observe. The existence of a supernatural Mind as the source of all reality is the best explanation of the existence of our own minds, and their embodiment. {The Existence of God}

Without The Being who does the being to everything, there can be no being and furthermore no consciousness. It is by the High consciousness that we get consciousness. There can only be an active intellect when in the material form there is a living thing enabling to think and to form ideas, analysations and conclusions. Becoming a being at work is made possible by that Being (the I Am) Who is (I am that I am) Who declared His Name to be Jehovah, the God of Israel. By His breath man became a nefesh chayah or living soul, able to think and to act. Without nefesh universe and we are nothing.

Knowledge (epistēmē), in its being-at-work, is the same as the thing it knows, and while knowledge in potency comes first in time in any one knower, in the whole of things it does not take precedence even in time.

Before there was time and knowledge It was the Initiator of everything Which or Who made everything to come to existence or to being. Without The Causer God there could not be any cause and no effect. When we are alive we can think, but once death our thinking stops and we are nothing again, but the Omnipotent Provider of everything never stops thinking and never stops being.

Axiological Argument

Looking at our possibility to think and to reason, we can argue about lots of things, but also have some inner feeling which is there from our birth, our instinct or innate behaviour. Our Creator gave us an inner feeling which we can call our moral sense.

We intuitively feel the force of objective moral values and find ourselves bound by objective moral duties, yet in an atheistic worldview the most plausible reality is that these are nothing more than illusions, and that there is no right or wrong, or good or evil. {The Existence of God}

People should wonder where such moral sense or inborn values come from. Somehow we could think that at the source of our being there must be a morally perfect, necessarily existing Being, Whose Own character is the standard of goodness.

The at the beginning of this article mentioned writer also considers that

the best explanation for our moral experiences, and the only plausible ground for objective moral values and duties. {The Existence of God}

He writes

The axiological argument can actually be multiplied six ways, by permuting to rational and aesthetic values and duties as well as moral ones, and by seeking to explain our ability to know these aspects of reality as well as their ground of existence. Thus it is a rather fruitful source of justification for belief in God. {The Existence of God}

Presumption of Atheism

It may be strange that man is so willing to ignore his inner feeling of a Superior Being. That is why we could argue

Do we really even need a reason to believe that God does not exist? Isn’t it the default position? This is what a number of atheists claim, often alongside related objections: that theism isn’t even worth considering, either because it’s too improbable, or it doesn’t actually explain anything. {The Existence of God}

When we do know that God, by definition, is the uncaused Cause, the maximally great Being, we should remember that any other definition for God is not concerning what we would call The God.
There are many gods, i.e. highly placed persons, like Moses, Pharaoh, Apollo, Baal, Beelzebub, Jesus and many others are called to be “a god” in the bible, but clearly all listeners of the Word of God and at the time the texts were written knew that by saying “god” it did not meant the “God”.

Preceding

Existence and difficult recognition of the Supreme Deity Being

High recognitions . . . . All of the Light of the Universe

About the Cosmological argument for proving that there is a Creative Deity

The Most Important Point to be a Jeshuaist

Additional reading

+++

Doubt
Are we Seriously doubting God?
Are Science and Religion Opposed?
Who Created the Creator?
Michio Kaku Clears up God Discovery
Does God exist? It’s an important question – perhaps the most important question. Yet there is a huge number of people in the world who regard it as an open question, or simply deny the possibility.
Does God Exist? You and I create things every day. I use my hands to take basic foods and create meals. I use my brain to think about how I want my day to go and then create a plan.
Does God Exist? A debate by Trent Horn and Raphael Lataster
Why does God exist?
Does God Even Exist?
Convince Me There’s A God: Lessons From Classical and Evidential Apologetics
Proofs That Show Existence of Allah The existence of Allaah (God), the Most High, is proven by: (i) the natural disposition,(ii) the intellect,(iii) the Revelation, and, (iv) what is experienced and perceived.
Most persuasive Theistic arguments for the existence of God
Small Probabilities, Big Decisions: Richard Dawkins and Empirical Evidence for God’s Existence
Why It Is Illogical To Debate The Assertion Of Atheism: “There Is No Evidence For God”
God as infinite regress: Darwinian evolution and the “designer God” argument
Rejecting the Right God
Debating the existence of God in school
Thirty proofs that god exists
Responding to Atheists: The God I know
Convince Me There’s A God – Archaeology 36
Existence of the non-existence
Amazing Facts Support the Existence of God, Says Scientist
God, the Maximally Great Being
Why don’t people believe in God?
When Arguments Fail

Gepubliceerd door Guestspeaker

A joint effort of several authors who do find that nobody can keep standing at the side and that “Everyone" must care about what is going on in today’s world. We are a bunch of people who do not mind that somebody has a totally different idea but is willing to share the ideas with others and to be Active and willing to let others understand how "today’s decisions will influence the future”. Therefore we would love to see many others to "Act today". Alle berichten van Guestspeaker weergeven