Bunch of invincibles

Saturday, July 21, 2007

God! Does such a person really exists? :-By Stoned Imaculate

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction" -Blaise Pascal

Definition of God's existence

Today in the West, the term "God" typically refers to a monotheistic concept of a Supreme Being that is unlike any other being. Classical theism asserts that God possesses every possible perfection, including such qualities as omniscience, omnipotence, and perfect benevolence. Of course this definition is not the only possible definition of "God". Other philosophical approaches take a logically simple definition of God such as "the Prime Mover" or "the Uncaused Cause", or "the Ultimate Creator" or "a being greater than which nothing can be conceived" from which the classical properties may be deduced.By contrast Pantheists do not believe in a personal God. For example, Spinoza and his philosophical followers (such as Einstein) use the term 'God' in a particular philosophical sense, to mean (roughly) the essential
substance/principles of Nature.

 The 18th-century French author Baron d'Holbach
was one of the first self-described atheists.

In the Advaita Vedanta school of Hinduism, reality is ultimately seen as being a single, qualityless, changeless being called nirguna Brahman. However, nirguna Brahman is understood to be beyond "ordinary" human comprehension.What we ordinarily perceive - that is, a world of many things - is brought on by consequences of our actions.[citation needed] Thus, Advaitin philosophy introduces the concept of saguna Brahman or Ishvara as a way of talking about Brahman to people. Ishvara, in turn, is ascribed such qualities as omniscience, omnipotence, and benevolence.

Polytheistic religions use the word "god" for multiple beings with varying degrees of power and abilities. Some stories such as those of Homer and Ovid portray gods arguing with, tricking and fighting with one another.


The problem of the supernatural~
One problem posed by the question of the existence of a God is that traditional beliefs usually ascribe to God various supernatural powers. Supernatural beings may be able to conceal and reveal themselves for their own purposes, as for example in the tale of Baucis and Philemon. In addition, according to most concepts of God, God is not part of the natural order, but the ultimate creator of nature and of the scientific laws.

Religious apologists offer the supernatural nature of God as one explanation of the inability of empirical methods to decide the question of God's existence. In Karl Popper's philosophy of science, the assertion of the existence of a supernatural God would be a non-falsifiable hypothesis, not in the domain of scientific investigation. The Non-overlapping Magisteria view proposed by Stephen Jay Gould also holds that the existence (or otherwise) of God is beyond the domain of Science.

Proponents of intelligent design (I.D.) believe there is empirical evidence for Irreducible complexity pointing to the existence of an intelligent creator, though their claims are challenged by most in the scientific community. Even some scientifically literate theists appear to have been impressed by the observation that certain natural laws and universal constants seem "fine-tuned" to favor the development of life (see Anthropic principle). However, reliance on phenomena which have not yet been resolved by natural explanations may be equated to the pejorative God of the gaps.

Logical positivists, such as Rudolph Carnap and A. J. Ayer viewed any talk of gods as literally nonsense. For the logical positivists and adherents of similar schools of thought, statements about religious or other transcendent experiences could not have a truth value, and were deemed to be without meaning.


Strong atheism~
Strong atheism is the position that a god or gods do not exist. The strong atheist explicitly asserts god's non-existence. Some strong atheists further assert that the existence of some or all gods is logically impossible, for example claiming that the combination of attributes which God may be asserted to have (For example: omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, transcendence, omnibenevolence) is logically contradictory, incomprehensible, or absurd, and therefore that the non-existence of such a God is a priori true. It needs to be noted that believing the qualities of a particular God to be contradictory is not the sole basis of strong atheist; many strong atheists would assert that, owing to the lack of evidence, even a God described in a manner that was not contradictory is still unlikely to exist. It should also be noted that many religions credit human achievements to God, many strong atheists consider this to be outrageous, and that human achievements are the result of millions of years of inspiration and innovation.

Weak atheism~
The term weak atheism is used of those who do not believe that a god or gods exists. This is different from agnosticism which states that the existence of God is either unknown or unknowable. There is some controversy in the use of this term. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion uses the term "strong atheist" but not "weak atheist"




In short, i'm still confused as to the fact that there is indeed a God? I believe that there exists a certain supernatural power or watever you may call that.. But wheter that can be termed as God is a big question ?
posted by close to my heart at 8:17 AM

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