Is it possible to prove the non-existence of God?

[jim barlow]

Look friends. You have eyes, ears thoughts and similar devices at your disposal. The not-so-good news is that you cannot see it all only parts of it. Fortunately the patterns that you do see aren't all that unique. They change and twist but repeat and resemble. In other words there isn't anything whick is all that much different from everyday patterns. Like in the proverbial grain of sand you can see the universe.
That may be a slight overkill but you get the idea. Accordingly there is no creature or power that you couldn't imagine walking around, floating, burping, creating etc out there. There may be so much of this mystical, superior, magical crap out there it can make you throw up your hand and say enough I can't handle any more.
One thing is unlikely: that there is only one thing out there who looks like you who's got everything by the throat etc. It is projected tribal madness. Does not fit any pattern except tribal. That is the other end. Man made. Special. No cosmic pattern. Pattern is all.

[austintorn@aol.com]

My interviews with the God of Intelligent Design and with all the other Gods, in the thread The Randomness of Evolution:

http://www.toequest.com/forum/league...ions#post57223

[Mikal]

Well i was brought up in an Islamic country where i was taught about God and Islam in school. I started to believe in it all but as time moved on i started to think for myself (mostly due to the freedom i had at home-i wasn't bombarded with religion or God which is a good thing.As Robert Green Ingersoll said "Our environment is a sculpture") Then i move to a Christian country and figure out that religion is a lie. But then again religion and God are two separate entities. It's really an on/off thing for me. I've come to realize a God, then I come to realize his non-existence. There's always something bringing me back to God but then something else telling me it's not right. I have experienced being Monotheist, experienced being Agnostic and Atheistic. Right now it's just very confusing. I again have always been neutral. I can't say that i know for sure God doesn't exist. But i just have to for some weird reason try and prove it. If i fail I'll know then that it can't be proved and can move on.

Polybius....I can certainly get empathically present with your emotional turmoil within, concerning being torn in your commiserations concerning our odd inclinations to need a sense of deeper meaning in and with life. I have truly walked this rutted path before you and found it entangled with endless crossroads that held serious considerations on my part.

It was a long journey from outer belief to inner knowing. That inner knowing I attained through experiencing myself experiencing myself in my life. My knowing presently is a state I live from, it is a center of peace within me. I have no need to preach it, I only have a need to live life right in the fullest sense and the struggle it entails because I am human, fragile and sensitive.

You will find your way....all seekers do....


Peace Mikal

[jim barlow]

Greetings friend from the Islamic country. The thought I would add to the quandary is the importance vs the unimportance of this question, i.e. is there or isn't there this marvelous mechanism of deity. Suppose we don't care.
(If there was it should be painfully obvious...why would it play hide and seek?)
If I cheat on the wife who cares? She does. If she doesn't know? Suppose I don't cheat and she thinks I do?
The problem is in language too. If we bring anything to language we immediately ring the bell for its funeral.
As I said there could be all kinds of (un)friendly monsters out there with all kinds of powers. If humanity survives we will be like that too: moderate sized Allahs. Maybe then we stop wishing for more.

[Mikal]

Jim...although I respect your thoughts and comments here especially in the forum of free speech which I highly value, its possible that some of us are here to entangle ourselves with this search for a deeper meaning in and with life. That afterall would be essentially the search for higher understanding.
Perhaps the deity you speak of is just intelligence and the hide and seek game might be nothing more than life itself somewhat teasing us to seek, question, examine, wonder, ponder and eventually find answers one can live with....


Mikal

[jim barlow]

Mikal

thank you for stating the "riddle" so clearly. - I see so much abuse flowing in the streets and the dogs are barking night and day in the kennels.

Perhaps the reason I am not looking for it is that somehow I feel it to be part of me like lungs and as long as they don't hurt I'm not interested...

Then there is poetry. The spaces of Rilke. One is now empty because "somebody" gracefully departed and left it to us to use.

Jim

[Mikal]

Hi Jim....nice to chat with you! Also good to see you have a notion that life holds a "riddle." I heard a dog barking one day and if I had not been interested and gone and checked that out poor thing would have strangled himself to death on a too short leash. I also see lots of abuse in the streets, am intelligent enough to know that I who am one person cannot stop it but I am empathically connected to life so if there is any chance I can help in any moment I always choose action over passivity with life. Now I am not saying that you are passive because of course your mention of "lungs" tells me you breathe it in...you might be an exceptionally sensitive person who has difficulty remaining stable with your own state of sensitivity. I at one time turned my face away and chose detached moments but it eventually caught up to me. Life is like that...this hide and seek thing can just get worse when I do not acknowledge it holds a mysterious presence in and with life....that would be the riddle dear....


smiles Mikal

[jim barlow]

The desire for for G, for ID, for magic uncle is understandable. Without it we face annihilation, meaninglessness, a short brutish life signifying nothing with a reproductive cycle leading to same. There is a strong presumption that all this should amount to something a little more meaningful.
Science does not address this problem. The god delusion may create a euphoria but its social consequences are misery. The medicine is worse than the disease.

So are there any REASONABLE suggestions avoiding the hocus pocus of the priests and the madmen, the witch burning and the end of world mass murder on the one hand and giving a little ¨meaning” (we all know what I mean) to this vacuous crass boredom called purposeless existence?
Before I make my modest suggestion I must warn you that it is not the euphoric kind of solution. Euphoria is a natural device to guide the organism in a desired direction. It loses its reason d’etre when pursued for its own sake. (But that’s probably for a different discussion.)
Instead of euphoria I am talking about something akin to power which somehow washes out the problem of meaninglessness. It is the lifting of a thin psychic construct which causes the misery and the euphoria and ultimate emptiness of existence.
It is the ’’I’’ viewed as a separate entity. It is a thin layer that peels away at the first hint of change. It is an effective fiction. (I step on your foot I feel no pain.)

Can’t get rid of it. It makes the world what it is. It will lift though for you too and you will not be alone anymore and become whole. (But it does have its reason for being too. I don’t see eye to eye with the Buddhists on that.)

Fortunately I am a lazy man. However I had to write this because of all that god problem that has been sweeping the US. Tried to put in my bit.

[Mikal]

Jim....I am not into religion, a nun who taught me at 7 beat the living bejezzus out of me until I knew every inch of the strap she utilized to discipline me. I had beautiful parents who loved me but of course from their own time they explained that nuns and priests are kind of like holy representations in life. I looked at the situation as very conflictionary in nature! How could anyone claiming holiness teach and exemplify hatred. A young insight I would have to tell you from a painfully inflicted lesson.

I had my journey to wholeness, in it I had to become empathically present with my life and empathically present with life. I now understand what I am doing here on this earth and in my life. Bonding with understanding makes life more meaningful where my engagement with life holds more purpose and intention to live life as right as I can. Its a struggle but a struggle well worth undertaking.

Thanks for your thoughts....

Mikal

[leskey]

Evolution states that whatever walks the earth has evolved by small steps. Each creature, no matter how "developed" is a kaleidoscope of miniature trials and errors, their successes and failures. If we could find a creature for whom this is not true, so the IDs argue, then we can deduce some kind of "manufacturer" who made this creature which exhibits this "jump" in its evolution.

If we could find a creature sporting a set of wheels, they continue, that would be proof of ID. A nice set of wheels or some kind of rollers would come very handy but don't exist because it cannot evolve in smaller steps where every trial out shoot makes some evolutionary sense. A wheel is an all or nothing proposition.

Our good friends at ID did actually manage to find a bacterium with wheels which turned out not to be but this is not what I want to mention now.

What I want to say is that the WHEEL is here. If you don't believe it look around and you'll see quite a few in a hurry. Is that proof of an intelligent designer of wheels?

Well yes and no. From strictly the wheel's point of view its evolution too had to be like that of rabbits, cockroaches and all other creatures. (This will be clearer in robotics.)

So what are those small increments where every step had to make sense? Well, to start with, the mental conception. This seems to be the continuation of the road from nature's laboratory. Therefore even if we could prove an "intelligent designer" it wouldn't help the superstitious because it wouldn't give them the kind of trump they're dreaming about.

Hi, Jim.

In one breath you castigate those, who you claim purport a "manufacturer," then in the next, you're happily claiming the virtues of "nature's laboratory" - hmmm...do you even see the hypocrisy?

Intelligent Design does not necessarily purport an Intelligent Designer. It is simply the acknowledgement that "we" don't know everything. It leaves the door open for enquiry...Though I suppose, for those afraid of the notion of something greater than "us," this is a threatening concept. Hence, it has been declared that evolution is the new state "religion."

Welcome to "1984."