Kind of off topis (and controversial) but I have spent years thinking/agonizing over this question, and I would say there almost certainly isnt.

why?

Well think of how people say do you not have a soul well actually no one has a soul cause it isn't physical and only excists in theory so a god can be the same as for myself I'm borderline

Define God. Do you mean on omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc. being, or do you simply mean a creator? I don't think that there's anything to support belief in the first, but the second is a possibility.

I mean the former. I'm begining to lean towards there not being one. Because there is no evidence for it. And when people do present "evidence" it's always circumstantial and experience related.

My 12 year old nephew asked me something once. He said "if there is a God, why doesnt he just show up in the sky and tell everyone he exists?"

Thats a pretty damn good question if you ask me. Some will say that "well, its because God wants us to have faith, or test our faith". But why would an all powerful God provide us with reason and logic, and then expect us to ignore both in order to believe in something for which there has never been any tangible evidence or proof?

I think the prevalence of religion, be it Hinduism, Monotheism, Scientology - whatever, is because people just want to believe, even if there is no proof. People just want to believe that there is some greater meaning out there, even if there is no reason to believe there is.

Remember, even the earliest human civilizations had belief systems which explained the great unexplainable (i.e. death). We now scoff at these "pagan" beliefs, but really, what makes the belief in Zeus or Amon Ra, any less plausible than a belief in Allah or God?

Wanting/needing to believe in something seems to be a human imperative, because the alternate -essentially, meaninglessness - is something humans cant come to terms with.

Well, think about this one for a second. There is also no evidence to refute the existence
of a higher being and anyone who says there is is lying.

Zman Is right when you ask for evidence of there being a god it is always well I was a bad person and one day god came to me told me to go on a different path in live or I was limp and could barely walk and god came to me and told me to walk
yes amazing stories if true but was this god or was the first just out of rehab and the latter on physical therepy for months

thosse are exactly my thoughts, denis. Are the "supernatural healings" and such simply parts of nature we haven't discovered yet? When people say they felt God, is their brain just creating it's own emotional high to support the belief that one exists? It all seems very shady at best to me.

People thank Gods when they really ought to be thanking Doctors.

Who gave the Doctor the talent and the desire?

perhaps, they just had a desire towards it because of the way their minds formed.

So their minds just formed... No influence. No one created the intellect in humans so their minds COULD form? No one created life so intellect could form? It all comes back to finding the root source of anything and those all join at one point in space and time I'll call God. Now, the original question about an omni-everything benevolent God as defined in the Bible, Torah, Koran, and other faiths holy books... I don't know. But thanking God is a simple act of thanking whatever created us and put intellect in us and gave us a desire to do whatever we do.

jman777,

I forsee a very long thread ahead....

good. It's what I wanted. The people here are very good at presenting their viewpoints, and making logical arguments against others.

steven...normally these threads switch over to the concepts of predetermination and free will and how they cant possibly coexist. Therefore the only reason they turn out to be long and drawn out is because they become repetitive.

.the thing many people overlook when having these discussions is that you can argue opinions all day long but you cant prove someone else's opinion wrong. You can only persuade them to change their opinion

Draugnar,

Actually, there is a generally accepted theory out there about how intellect developed - its called evolution. Its new, but its growing in its acceptance in the scientific community.

What science cant explain is how that first molecule or whatever it was, first came into being. But that just means they cant explain it now. They eventually will be able to. To point to the fact that life actually did originate coupled with science's inability to currently explain how, and say it is evidence of God is hopelessly flawed.

Thousands of years ago, when we didnt know what caused famines, or benificial rainfall, or a solar eclipse, we would chalk this up to proof of God's wrath, or that God is pleased, or of his existence in general. We no longer do this because science has shown what really causes these events. So, in this day and age, to still point to stuff that science cannot explain and say "God!" is just as silly as those ancient people who would sacrifce virgins hoping to please God to get some rain (or the gods or whatever - as Zman says, religious belief has been around for as long as we know).

Personally I believe so, but I'm not here to defend my beliefs or attempt to change someone else's, so I won't bother justifying my faith.

Yes, God exists. I give four "clues" here:

http://bartshadle.blogspot.com/2009/05/clues-for-god-1.html
http://bartshadle.blogspot.com/2009/05/clues-for-god-2.html
http://bartshadle.blogspot.com/2009/05/clues-for-god-3.html
http://bartshadle.blogspot.com/2009/05/clues-for-god-4.html

Why Christianity?

http://bartshadle.blogspot.com/2009/05/clues-for-christianity.html

@Muni - I see the hand of a higher power in evolution. Evolution is caused (although Darwin didn't know this) through genetics. As genes alter so do the higher creatures made of them. But, what causes a particular mutation to happen? Darwin never intended evolution to replace God, but to be an explanation of how God works.

P.S. You can substitue Nature for God for all I care. As I said, I'm not prescribing to the God of any holy book from any religion. I'm saying there is a higher power that is the source of creation and made the laws of physics, the rules that control, unerringly, the way the universe is formed in both the macro and microcosmic universes.

Bart,

Sigh*, I read the first "clue" and just dont know how to respond to you man. The "clue" essentially says that, well we dont know what caused the Big Bang, and so it must have been God. Please see my last post which addresses this specious course of reasoning.

But the fact that we need "clues" to God's existence (assuming that these are actually clues) simply leads back to the question posed by Zman's 12 year old nephew. Why do we need these psyeudo clues? Why doesnt the omnipotent God just provide us with proof? I mean, if ure God, and you wanted all humans to know of your existence and worship you and live in their lives in the manner you prescribe, why do it through a handful of prophets, all of which contradict each other on some pretty key issues? (and oddly, all showed up in a relatively small section of the ancient world - where was the prophet for the sub-saharan Africans, or the Australian aborigines?)

And then why allow these contradictory messages to co-exist and cause millions upon millions of deaths in religious wars and persecution? For God not to show up in the sky and say, "hey guys, I do exist, and religion x is the true religion", just seems mean and petty. Is that the kind of being you want to worship?

So Draugnar, you are really a Deist. Some one who believes God created the Universe, set it in motion, but didnt do much after that. That may well be true - its certainly impossible to disprove. But if that is the case, if God set things up like a super complicated time-piece, and then just le such time piece do its business, what difference does it make whether he exists or not? Meaning, he doesnt play a hand in our daily lives, so who cares?

re: Muni

With regards to your "sigh." It's ridiculous and snobbish; if you wish to continue in any type of intellectual discussion (here or anywhere for that matter) remove the superiority and elitism you're already approaching the conversation. You're not talking to some 6 year old kid hacking at daddy's computer. Let's not assume all theists are unintelligent apes.

Regarding your first paragraph: Boy it's convenient to attack theists because they actually fathom a hypothesis for what created the Big Bang. Your theory seems to be, "I worship at the altar of science and we just haven't found out what caused the Big Bang yet. but we will! Have faith! But NOT God!"

Regarding your 2nd paragraph: God grants creatures free-will. He would deny that should He reveal himself; we would be forced to worship Him because His being demands it.

Great, another God thread. Anybody interested in an over-under on how long this'll last?

Did I say it made a difference? Did I say ANTHING about God being an active participant in our everyday lives? No, I didn't. But I also didn't say he wasn't. I suggest you reread what I said. All I did was chime in when someone attacked the idea of thanking God and instead we should thank the doctors. I thank the doctors, the nurses, and the Creator who set the universe in motion and guides it like you and I do our own bodies. The God of my view is more like an intergalactic zookeeper and life on earth and any other planets he seeded with it, are his charges. Not individual organisms, but life as a whole. So, he seeds the desire and ability into the gene pool of one species on each planet to be the dominate species and to care for it in his stead. Does the scientist growing a bacteria colony care for each individual bacterium? Or is he more interested in seeing it grow and seeing what makes it grow and what makes it die as part of his experimentation?

We live an impossible life. Life, when you think about it, is impossible.

Scientific view: World was filled with gases, they came together, and out came life and all that jazz.

Spiritual view: God was there. He made life.

The question we must ask ourselves now is....What created the gases? What created God? Nothing in itself can be made out of nothing. Nothing can just be without having a cause. Neither the gases nor God can exist. But one of them does. We are living an impossible life.

Scientific view: Since you believe in science and no divine intervention your theory is wrong. Gases can't just be there. From a scientific viewpoint we don't exist which of course we do. You contradict yourself.

Spiritual view: God exist. Impossible? Yes. More believable than the Scientific view? Definitely.

Yes, I believe in God. More exact: I believe in Jesus Christ and that he died on the cross for our sins.

God grants creatures free-will...and then tells them that if they dont believe in him and his hand-picked prophets, they will fry in everlasting damnation. Yeah Bart, that will foster lots of free-thinking and exercise of free-will, especially in the minds of an illiterate peasant living 2000 years ago. The assertion that religion somehow nurtures free-will is laughable. What it says in its essence is "believe what we tell you to believe, or else."

And your "hypothesis" about the Big Bang is not a hypothesis at all. A hypothesis is an explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation. Your hypothesis can never be tested, and thus it is no hypothesis at all. It like me saying that in fact, a master race of aliens living in an alternate Universe actually caused the Big Bang, and touting it as a "hypothesis".

And in any case, where was the mention of the Big Bang in the Bible or the Quran? The fact that we are not debating whether God created the heavan and the earth in 6 days, but rather, what caused the Big Bang, is proof in and of itself of religion's inexorable retreat in the face of science.

so in short it's all a paradox. The best explanation I've heard pertaining to how God can simply exist is that he's just outside or reality. Which, according to Draugner, wouldn't be to unusual.