Why does God exist?

[Someguy20]

Forgive me for not reading all four pages of posts and responding where everyone last left off, but to answer the initial question. Why does God exist? The Bible explains that God defines his own existence. When he met with Moses on Mt. Sinai, he said my name is "I am." His very nature is to exist. God exists because He is God.

I've heard a philosophical argument that goes something like, a perfect being would have have every perfect attribute. Existence is a perfection. God is a perfect being. Therefore, God must exist.

He doesn't exist to serve us, and there isn't a prior purpose to his existence. His existence defines his nature. In being God, he exists and always has.

[ghasan]

Gravity exists? We don't see it but we feel its effects
Big bang happened? Most scientists believe it did. And they believe that the universe with its mighty size was once upon a time smaller than an atom!
Black holes exist? Scientists say it does. Even they can't see it by definition.
Dark matter exists? Until now most likely scientists say yes. Why because they need to explain some phenomena
Dark energy exists? Until now most likely scientists say yes. Why because they need to explain some phenomena
Will why scientists don't assume that 'Dark God' exist to explain some phenomena.
So if a scientist can imagine and believe that the universe was smaller than an atom, isn't easer to imagine that 'dark god' (or intelligent being) had caused that explosion to happen.
So to finish the argument I like to say that once upon a time there was a monkey who was playing with a typewriter for thousand years and guess what on one of the pages I found a poem just by accident he did. What would you say about me .BIG liar I think. So why scientists believe that life came to be by accident.

[Gman]

Whatever dude..

[Gabrielman]

So to finish the argument I like to say that once upon a time there was a monkey who was playing with a typewriter for thousand years and guess what on one of the pages I found a poem just by accident he did. What would you say about me .BIG liar I think. So why scientists believe that life came to be by accident.

Not only has that never happened, there is no way to prove it would. You are using the "law" of large numbers I presume? Well the fact is that it isn't much of a law. Someone comes up with the idea that if we did some hypothetical scenario with a monkey and a type writer that we would get something out of it. There is no way to prove, test, or even support such an idea as the the "law" of large numbers. I could then say that if I had a monkey in a room with a type writer that given an infinite amount of time, he would eventually write something that would disprove such an assertion. But I am not sure I understand your post. Are you asking if that is why scientists believe that life just happened, or are you arguing for that? Either way I just wanted to say, I do not like the law of large numbers at all, it just doesn't work.

[ChrisB]

I don't see what's so damning about this question...

God could easily have an answer to the question of why He exists, an answer that humanity, under the Curse, is simply incapable of imagining, let alone understanding...

There's my two cents.

[kmr]

This is impossible to answer. Why does concept exist? Why isn't there any absolute nothingness? I do not mean simply the lack of matter, I mean the lack of time, space, and concept. I mean nothingness as in even the color black does not exist. For, surely, the universe should be not a universe, it shouldn't exist at all. But it does. And we may never understand why. For a moment, just pause, breath a deep breathe, and think about existence, about space and time. It shouldn't be here. Your own thought shouldn't be here. Why is it? Why is God here? We cannot know.

[smiley]

This topic reminded me of this:

http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-conten ... othing.png

[kmr]

It occurred to me a while back that, sure, perhaps the most likely thing is nothing. However, there is something, right? So, on the other hand, perhaps something is more likely than nothing. It's either one or the other. So, concept, if looked at this way, doesn't seem quite so impossible. But, again, this is only speculation, and we may never know!

[Yrreg]

[quote=Harry]

[ by Harry » Sun Sep 02, 2007 11:59 pm ]


Why does God exist? I mean, surely, He doesn't actually need to...? There's no reason He should exist, if you think about it.

You could say: 'He is the absolute cause of everything' but that doesn't explain why He exists; there doesn't need to be 'anything' at all. Besides, to claim He exists because He is the supreme cause is to imply that He exists for the sake of us, and we know that's not true...

Anyway, if you couldn't answer the above question, so here's another big one:

Does God Himself know the answer to this question?

If 'no', He wouldn't be omniscient, would he?

If 'yes', that would mean there was something beyond God...

If 'there isn't an answer'

--------------------

If you're born once, you die twice; but if you're born twice, you die once.

[/quote]


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I have not read any answers to this thread, but I think the author of this thread is into a ruse in words, of no substance at all for contributing to the advancement of understanding and clarity of thinking.


First, God is not asking why He exists, you Harry are the one asking why He exists.

But if God were asking Himself why He exists then He is not God, and you have got the wrong God or the wrong concept of God.

Now, let us assume that you got the right concept of God, namely:

• The necessary being creator of everything with a beginning.

If you don't accept that concept of God, then you don't have the right concept of God, at least for Christians that is the definition of God in His essence, insofar as we humans can make out any definition of God in relation to man, and any discourse about God by man is always in relation to man and the universe known to man by man's conscious intelligence.


Okay, now we have two kinds of beings:

• Class 1. the God being Who is the necessary being creator of everything with a beginning,
  Class 2. the creature being, for example man, that is created by God.

When we humans ask the question why something or someone exists, we want to know:

• Question A. Who or what brought about its or his existence, and/or
  Question B. For what purpose the maker brought about its or his existence.

Now, the first axiom of intelligent thinking is that the Question A cannot be applied to the Class 1 being, unless you want to engage in unproductive thinking which is not intelligent thinking.


Think intelligently about that.



Yrreg

[derrick09]

Why does God exist?

TO ROCK OUR WORLD, BABY!

So, how was that?

[Seraph]

Here is a question I think about a lot, which I think is slightly different than what has been addressed already:

How is there a God from the very beginning as opposed to no God? I know that God by nature is self-existent, timeless, and eternal but just how and/or why is He there in the first place? When people ask the question why is there a universe as opposed to no universe the answer is often that the universe started with something inconcievably simple like a singularity of space which turned into a bath of radiation which over time combined and evolved into atoms and eventually more complicated things over time but God is different. God has complex characteristics like conciousness, goodness, and omnipotent power and always had those characteristics for pre-eternity. There was no evolution of God, there just always was God. Why/How is that?

[jlay]

So to finish the argument I like to say that once upon a time there was a monkey who was playing with a typewriter for thousand years and guess what on one of the pages I found a poem just by accident he did. What would you say about me .BIG liar I think. So why scientists believe that life came to be by accident.

Old thread, but this is worth responding to. This is not a valid objection. Even if a monkey was able to type a poem by random chance, it still wouldn't be a poem. It would be meaningless letters just like all the one's before. Why? Because a poem has value because of the MIND behind it. The poem is an act of creation, an intentional product of a mind. The letters the mind uses are just tokens that represent an abstract concept produced by the mind. Let me give an example. Let's say we sit Bobo down at the keyboard, and after years of typing, we see the letters form the word "hungry" mixed in with all the other mess. Would anyone assume that for this brief period of six clicks that Bobo suddenly understood the English language and then was able to communicate his feelings onto the keyboard? No. They would attribute this to an accident. Bobo didn't actually spell the word hungry.

This is why science is not being honest when it refuses to consider a mind, when it recognizes information in nature. No one would ever postulate that any work of literature, or anything we consider information to have come about by random chance. It is always presupposed that a mind was the agent behind the information.

So even if nature could get lucky like Bobo, and put a few letters together, it wouldn't mean anything. Because all those letters, when rightly assembled, have a pre-determined outcome that produces life. I can't randomly type letters into a computer and create a program. Even if I get lucky, it was only becuase an intelligent mind created the code, and the tech platform for me to work from. In other words, the stage was set.

[whynot]

So to finish the argument I like to say that once upon a time there was a monkey who was playing with a typewriter for thousand years and guess what on one of the pages I found a poem just by accident he did. What would you say about me .BIG liar I think. So why scientists believe that life came to be by accident.

Old thread, but this is worth responding to. This is not a valid objection. Even if a monkey was able to type a poem by random chance, it still wouldn't be a poem. It would be meaningless letters just like all the one's before. Why? Because a poem has value because of the MIND behind it. The poem is an act of creation, an intentional product of a mind. The letters the mind uses are just tokens that represent an abstract concept produced by the mind. Let me give an example. Let's say we sit Bobo down at the keyboard, and after years of typing, we see the letters form the word "hungry" mixed in with all the other mess. Would anyone assume that for this brief period of six clicks that Bobo suddenly understood the English language and then was able to communicate his feelings onto the keyboard? No. They would attribute this to an accident. Bobo didn't actually spell the word hungry.

This is why science is not being honest when it refuses to consider a mind, when it recognizes information in nature. No one would ever postulate that any work of literature, or anything we consider information to have come about by random chance. It is always presupposed that a mind was the agent behind the information.

So even if nature could get lucky like Bobo, and put a few letters together, it wouldn't mean anything. Because all those letters, when rightly assembled, have a pre-determined outcome that produces life. I can't randomly type letters into a computer and create a program. Even if I get lucky, it was only becuase an intelligent mind created the code, and the tech platform for me to work from. In other words, the stage was set.

Whynot: Food for thought: Are you sure our only two options are random chance or intelligent design?

[Katabole]

Are you sure our only two options are random chance or intelligent design?

I'm sure Jlay can answer for himself and not to intrude on his rebuttal but I do believe that there are are only two options as well.

Richard Dawkins, writer of the 'God Delusion' would say that human beings are strictly the result of mindless, random processes. The universe we observe is precisely the type of universe you'd expect to find if there is no design. There is no purpose, no love, no hate, no good, no evil and no justice. Just blind pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows no cares. DNA just is and we dance to its music.

In his debate with John Lennox back in 2009 at Oxford, Lennox in answer to one of Dawkin's questions, brought up Dawkin's wife. Dawkin's immediately interrupted Lennox and said, "Leave my wife out of this." I believe Dawkins did not want to face the question that Lennox would inevitably ask, that is, the naturalistic reason for romantic love, because Dawkins can't accept the answer that inevitably results when you eliminate a creator God from the equation, without refuting the reason he wrote the 'God Delusion'. If romantic love is solely based on biology, then romantic love is simply a series of pheromones excreted by the pituatary gland of one individual and received by receptors in the brain of another individual. Any other explanation, according to naturalism, is completely unacceptable.

Hard atheists like Neitzsche and Sarte would probably ask the 'new atheists', how they can rationally justify their absolute commitment to timeless values, without implicitly invoking God, because they will tell you straight (if you have read their works), that you cannot have absolute values without God. And if we are simply dancing to our DNA as terrorists, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot or you or I do, no one can blame us for anything and anyone who would is stupid, intolerant and prejudiced.

Richard Dawkins admits this; that is exremely hard to defend morals and values other than on religious grounds. Mikhail Gorbachev, the former leader of the Soviet Union, when asked about communism and atheism said, "We thought we could remove God and keep a value for man. We found we couldn't. We destroyed man as well." According to Sarte's philosophy, if God does not exist everything is permissable. If we add to that the new atheist maxim, if science is true, God does not exist, then we get the chilling result best said by the author and professor David Berlinski, if science is true, everything is permitted. And this is beginning to be worked out in society. Peter Singer has grasped the logical implications of atheism, when he claims a new born baby has no more value than a pig, a dog or a rat.

Of course, if we decide to do anything we want, we would probably get arrested. And why is that? Because the foundation of Western law is based entirely on British Common law. British common law originates at its heart, from the Christian Bible. That is its source.

I would suggest that you read John Lennox's book, "God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God." The first chapter of the book deals with worldviews and Lennox claims there are two: matter and energy on one side and God on the other.

[whynot]

Assuming there were an answer to "why" God exists, what reason is there to assume that we as finite human beings, made by an infinite God possess the capacity to understand that question?

There are mysteries in life for which there is not a satisfactory answer.

You have hit upon one of them. At some point, we have only the answer that God has given to many when they have sought to know His nature, His name or His complete scopes of attributes. He says to them and to us, "I am that I am" ; nothing more.

Whynot: Yabut...that doesn't really respond to the "why", does it? I mean, "I am that I am" goes more towards a "who".
Perhaps God has no choice but to exist...thus the question becomes non sequitur. OTOH, if God does exist...then a possible clue to the "why" would be to ask if it were possible for God not to exist? If it were impossible for him not to exist then the "why" he exists would be because he "HAS" to exist. Anything beyond that...any additional reasoning would be up to God to determine "why" he exists. In this respect, it would be no different than asking me "why" I exist. The "why" is basically asking for a reason or justification for existence. Ultimately one is left asking "why something as opposed to nothing?" In that case one must again cogitate on whether "nothing" is even a logical possibility. In which case one could surmise that there's never been a time when "nothing" existed. The existence of nothing is itself a logical contradiction due to the ontologics of existence itself. For anything to exist it absolutely necessitates both a time and place to do so. Thus, if time and space/place has to exist for "nothing" to exist, and since time and place are something, as opposed to nothing, again we arrive at the logical conclusion that there has never been a time when "nothing" existed. Thus, "something" has always existed and our next logical question must be "what"? Existence is a huge container whose containment parameters are space and time. So if you attach the attribute of existence to the "why" question in relation to God, you automatically place some possible responses out of logical reach. Ontologically, the question of existence is phrased as "being qua being". "Being" in this instance implies transitional "becoming" as in in-complete. So is it the case that God is in the process of completion? Thus we have a possible clue to an additional enhancement to the "why does God exist" question. The answer would be something along the lines of "He exists so that his being qua being is fulfilled."