What evidence is there for a personal God?

[Viewscreen]

Originally Posted by JDaniel

would you allow for "some" characteristics?

God bless,
jd

No, not if by "some characteristics" you mean not all the necessary and sufficient conditions for personhood. I am willing to grant that there could be a disembodied person (a spirit) but that spirit would still require a will, a personality, preferences, a mind, a cohesive self-narrative, self-awareness, and so on.

If God has only "some" of these absolutely crucial qualities, he cannot properly be said to be a person, hence not be personal.

[Viewscreen]

Originally Posted by tonyrey

I have pointed out that it is impossible to sit on the fence indefinitely. .

It is absolutely possible to sit on the fence indefinitely with regard to the uncertainty of a proposition, any chicanery to the contrary notwithstanding. Tell me, do you know how many Jews exactly died in the Holocaust? If not, better to pass over in silence.

The same goes with the God-concept.

Originally Posted by tonyrey

Your logic exists in a vacuum!

1. If we didn't have a mind we wouldn't know matter exists.

2. The only fact of which we are absolutely certain is the fact that we are thinking.

3. We infer the existence from our perceptions.

4. Our mental activity is the basis of all our knowledge..

All very obvious-seeming and confidence-inducing auxiliary assumptions!

Originally Posted by tonyrey

5. A supremely rational Being is the most economical and the most adequate explanation one that corresponds to the way we live - as if life is not an accident but valuable and purposeful.

Wait, what?.... Okay, you have just now devolved to nonsense.

Why believe 5? Why not just pass over it in silence, as with the Holocaust figure?

[Viewscreen]

Originally Posted by shoe

Some worldviews automatically deny the existence of God, such as atheism, and are therefore antagonistic toward any evidence that may prove God's existence. I think for people holding that kind of worldview no amount of evidence for the existence of God would make sense to them basically because their worldview prevents them from properly interpreting the evidence.

Therefore, I believe that those people who say they "do not have any evidence to know that there is a God" indicate that either they haven't yet seen all the evidence for the existence of God or perhaps they've seen some evidence but have refused to acknowledge it, which actually indicates that the evidence for God's existence is there but they are simply not looking for it.

On one level: there is no evidence. I do not see anything which qualifies as evidence for the God proposition. Zero that I can see. And I can swear to you I am not trying to deny any of it. On the contrary, I would dearly invite it.

On the other hand, perhaps we have different standards of evidence. In which case, the metaphysical assumption 'God' is not nearly on par with the assumption 'world', for me at least. It is not as obvious.

[Viewscreen]

Originally Posted by cc42

Viewscreen:

My argument was not for the beginning of the universe, but rather that all changes ultimately must extend from a changeless cause. .

Then your argument refutes itself because a changeless cause then has no capacity whatever to enact change (since it then must itself change). That is self-evident.

Furthermore, why couldn't there be simply change upon change? Or perhaps something has the capacity to change itself? Taking the universe as an example, say that at first it existed in a quiescent state and then, when the time was ripe, opted for change?

Originally Posted by cc42

So that would include your blood cells as well. This changeless cause can only be a theistic God, that doesn't prove Christianity to be true necessarily but it does prove theism to be true..

Actually, you have proven nothing of the kind.

Originally Posted by cc42

Imagine a sack being pulled by a rope. Could the rope go on forever? No obviously it owuld have to eventually be pulled by someone. Causes in the universe work likewise, they all must ultimately lead back to God.

They could all lead back to the Universe (or the primordial singularity) which may be self-impelled to change. There is no reason to invoke God, much less a personal one.

[Viewscreen]

Originally Posted by underacloud

The key difference...which is entirely compelling for me, but obviously not for some...is that the apostles were either witness to Christ's resurrection as claimed, or they were not. If Christ did not rise from the dead, the movement would never have started. They would never had died for such a cause. .

That is simply your assumption. How do you know they would never have died for a cause. Say the resurrection did not play itself out in such physical terms but was more in the form of a vision? Or, minus that even, couldn't their loyalty to the Jesus figure, their devotion so immense, that his message still trumped any earthly concern? It is quite senseless to say they would have only died had he undoubtedly risen from the grave.

[Viewscreen]

Originally Posted by stevekehl

Look at all the things people try in an attempt to feel whole. Drugs, money, popularity, sex, parties, work possessions in an attempt to right some failing they have inside them. If these things could complete you then rock stars would be the happiest people alive. But how many end up in rehab after becoming successful? Earthly things never satisfy.
In addition, your definition of God can not be personal. When your view of God is the omniscient, omnipotent,omnipresent creator of the everything then He can be close to you, not only that, He pursues you. You ask for evidence of a personal God, who do you think put that thought in your head? You say you are partial to the view of God being pure energy or consciousness, yet you want to know what we, as Christians, experience from a personal God. Quite simply, only a personal God satisfies our desire for completeness.

Again, arguments from emotion. There has to be some panacea for our ills, some final fulfillment, therefore GOD must be the answer. Well, what if I desired a lady with the perfect body, does that mean she must exactly fit my request.

So, you too, are refuted.

[tonyrey]

Originally Posted by Viewscreen

It is absolutely possible to sit on the fence indefinitely with regard to the uncertainty of a proposition, any chicanery to the contrary notwithstanding.

Not when it comes to real life - as Sartre pointed out. To do nothing is a form of commitment.

Tell me, do you know how many Jews exactly died in the Holocaust? If not, better to pass over in silence.

The same goes with the God-concept.

Non sequitur.

All very obvious-seeming and confidence-inducing auxiliary assumptions!

Argumentum ad hominem which reveals ignorance of elementary fallacies and fails to refute the propositions.
[quote]

Wait, what?.... Okay, you have just now devolved to nonsense.

Another argumentum ad hominem.

Why believe 5? Why not just pass over it in silence, as with the Holocaust figure?

Numbers are worthless unless they are linked with reasons.

NB This is a philosophy forum, not a guessing game.

[cc42]

Viewscreen:

Something is not required to change in order to cause changes.

The universe could not change itself because it is not concsious, every change that takes place in the universe would be subject to something else to cause that change. That would lead to infinite regress and no changes could take place. Therefore the uchanges in the universe are dependent upon something outside the universe that does not change.

[Charlemagne II]

When I hear someone say there appears to be a Supreme Substance, but no Supreme Person, I ask myself why this person does not see evidence of a personal God. I can't come up with a reason. Just the fact that humans everywhere since the dawn of human history have reached out to God(s) not as a Being, but as a Personal Being, suggests very strongly that the Supreme Substance who created us also created us to reach out to a Person, not a Thing. Remove from us all our need for love and truth and we become mere things. Are we to believe that a mere unconscious Thing unconsciously created us to want a personal relationship with It? That would put us in a position of possessing attributes the Thing could not possess. It also puts us in the position of assuming that the Thing created us without knowing what It had created, whereas the created things knew they had been created. Why does a mindless impersonal Thing appeal to anybody as their idea of a Supreme Being?

[Gaber]

Originally Posted by Charlemagne II

When I hear someone say there appears to be a Supreme Substance, but no Supreme Person, I ask myself why this person does not see evidence of a personal God. I can't come up with a reason. Just the fact that humans everywhere since the dawn of human history have reached out to God(s) not as a Being, but as a Personal Being, suggests very strongly that the Supreme Substance who created us also created us to reach out to a Person, not a Thing.....

I'm not an atheist, and I see no evidence of a personal God. I can't come up with a reason someone would believe such, other than anthropomorphization of the Unknown. Why would an atheist? If there is a "Supreme Person," all due respects to it, that "Person" is not yet and cannot be God, though to us that might certainly seem to be the case.

And you are right. In the ordinary mode of awareness that we use, the subject/object mode, it would be natural and normal to reach out to something like us, but bigger and better, infinite even but still thinkable as a person. That is necessary for the feeliing of hope and the possibility of communication with something essentially so radicallly different from us as to be incomprehensible. But that perception goes with the ordinary state that most people live their lives in.

Some people get past that. We call them mystics and Sages and in our tradition, Saints. Some of them, anyway. We have another word for them, but to avoid undue controversy, I won't use it here.(I assure you it is a highly complimentary word, only controversial) So we have a scenario where we have even the highest in our tradition getting to what might be called the eighth level of awareness, as distinct from about the fourth or fifth of us more common mortals.

At that august level of awarenss, the eighth, God is yet seen as an object, an object of worship. It cannot be otherwise. But then, there is, for some few, a radical discovery about the Nature of Being itself. After that point it is no longer, for that individual referring to their own insight, to think of God as personal. But even from that condition they might very well write and sing or pray or lecture about God as a person, knowing that for the vast majority of us, that is what we can do at our best. And that is best.

So while it is good, reasonable, and useful for the masses to make use of the idea of a personal God, ultimately, given work and grace, that will pass and THAT which is Real will be known as it IS. So there is no need for argument, only a discernment of where one is in that journey and an acknowledgement of whatever stage of relationship one might be in.

.....Remove from us all our need for love and truth and we become mere things. Are we to believe that a mere unconscious Thing unconsciously created us to want a personal relationship with It? That would put us in a position of possessing attributes the Thing could not possess. It also puts us in the position of assuming that the Thing created us without knowing what It had created, whereas the created things knew they had been created. Why does a mindless impersonal Thing appeal to anybody as their idea of a Supreme Being?

What you say may seem to be the case from the subject/object position. But THAT is not only not unconscious, it is Consciousness Itself as Love, and Mind, and a few other synonyms. So while to the human mind THAT appears to be "nothing," the "nothing" from which all was "created," that Nothing is the fullness of ALL, the very same "ALL" whatever we attribute from our divided state as attributes of God because in our usual state we cannot imagine what ALLness is. If we saw it, we would cease to exist as humans in the ordinary sense and be that word I din't include earlier.

But it is precisely because the "created" individual feels that their origin is from something greater that they seek. Soa as an infant grows and goes through the various grades of school, so does the belief, and then, hopefully, understanding, of what God IS. In the mean time there is faith, teleology, contemplation as its tool, and the sense of a personal God until met face to Face. And them who is there to witness?

[davidv]

Originally Posted by Gaber

I'm not an atheist, and I see no evidence of a personal God. I can't come up with a reason someone would believe such, other than anthropomorphization of the Unknown. {snip}

Why should anyone accept your inability to come up with a reason, be accepted as an indication the valid reasons don't exist?

[Gaber]

Originally Posted by davidv

Why should anyone accept your inability to come up with a reason, be accepted as an indication the valid reasons don't exist?

I guess that works if you conflate valid and true. And no one should accept my reason, (I didn't not come up with one, I stated one clearly) without looking into it. That;s the whole point. People accept, innocently and sincerely as a matter of infant-child inculcation, beliefs about the world and God that are just parochialisms, not universals. I'm advocating some serious research outside what one takes for granted as being so without much owned introspection, research, and experience.

[sw85]

Originally Posted by Viewscreen

I don't see why a God who is impersonal and mysterious needs to be unlimited with respect to knowledge, necessarily.

I also see no evidence to believe in this claim.

You don't understand it because you don't understand why we believe God must be "unlimited being." For this, you need a crash course in theology, not an Internet forum. Edward Feser's Aquinas is an excellent place to begin understanding why we believe God is what we've always believed God is.

Again, if God is unlimited being, He must be unlimited with respect to every possible constraint on His being. This includes knowledge. I don't know why you think God must be "impersonal." Personality is an aspect of being so God very much has a personality. In fact, He has three of them.

[Viewscreen]

Originally Posted by tonyrey

“Not when it comes to real life - as Sartre pointed out. To do nothing is a form of commitment.”.

I am talking about an intellectual/doxastic position. Not an existential/life position. It is true none of us are completely “neutral” when it comes to actions. And yes, our beliefs: theism, atheism and agnosticism can and do inform our actions (“doing nothing”). I am arguing for the validity of agnosticism, not whether I can be “neutral” in some unrealistic way.

Put another way, beliefs do inform actions. But actions themselves shed no light on beliefs.

Originally Posted by tonyrey

“Non sequitur.”

Redirect!

Again, I am arguing for agnosticism, not the results of agnosticism, which may include a change in worldview and all the implications that extend therefrom….

Originally Posted by tonyrey

“Argumentum ad hominem which reveals ignorance of elementary fallacies and fails to refute the propositions.”

I was supposed to refute the propositions? Why if I think they are correct? Also, how in the whole wide world is this supposed to be an ad hominem assault? You are not making any sense to me.

Originally Posted by tonyrey

“Another argumentum ad hominem.”

Don’t worry…. I was lampooning your “reasoning”, not you.

Originally Posted by tonyrey

“Numbers are worthless unless they are linked with reasons.
NB This is a philosophy forum, not a guessing game.”

Indeed. You should take your own advice, I think, and quit manipulating people who are actually interested in intellectual debate, not sophistry and empty accusations... or redirecting the conversation altogether...

[Viewscreen]

Originally Posted by cc42

Viewscreen:

Something is not required to change in order to cause changes..

Yes it is. Name one mundane example in which this is not the case. A cue ball has to roll and forcefully act (thus entaling change) in order to exert causation on another object. A fire is in a constant state of energetic flux, and therefore causes heat. Even sub-atomic particles, to my knowledge, are as it were waves of probability in the form of packets of energy that continuously phase in and out of existence.

Without change causation has no meaning. Perhaps the only idea I can think of in which this would be the case is the gravitational pull of an object, or a heavy weight pressing down on a pillowcase (barring for a moment what I have stated about the micro-level being all change). But then, if that is the case, then it follows your God and the world are co-eternal, and time is itself an illusion with regard to the creation of the universe. This scenario begs the question of when God acted or initiated the world into existence (barring for a moment that an action is a change!). Had he always done so, then this would mean the world is just as necessary as your first cause is, which I don't think you would admit. This would therefore mean that nothing is being "changed" in the regular sense of the world ever having to "become" because, the world has always been. Or, put another way, nothing never was in place of the world.

Originally Posted by cc42

The universe could not change itself because it is not concsious, every change that takes place in the universe would be subject to something else to cause that change. That would lead to infinite regress and no changes could take place. Therefore the uchanges in the universe are dependent upon something outside the universe that does not change.

No, the universe does not have to be conscious in order to change itself (it would be a non-sequitur anyway should it have consciousness). If the universe is itself the locus of its own change than that change could extend indefinitely, beyond time. You are trapped in the notion of one thing causing another thing, as in a game of telephone tag. But this needn't apply to the universe as a whole.

Imagine a possible world in which only a paper airplane existed eternally in motion. When did it *begin*? Even more so, when speaking of the origins of the universe beyond time, who is to say there wasn't a locus of infinitesimal change then?