Subject: nice web sites
I do believe in God, but am embarrassed by a lot of religious "thinking". If pressed, I would say that I do believe in God, but couldn't prove it. It's a gut feeling.
The origins of such "gut feelings" are worth exploring. What do you suppose the chances are that it stems from cultural background and upbringing? That isn't a great basis for theism. If the "gut feeling" is due to one's awe of the universe - what sorts of conclusions could that allow us? What sort of "god" could you possibly conclude from "wow, the universe is really magnificent"? Don't take that as an effort to belittle the feelings of awe - I'm just trying to point out how difficult it would be to reliably move from "awesome" to, well, anything at all.
There's nothing wrong with gut feelings - but there is something wrong with trying to base much on them. They are a fine reason for launching into a line of inquiry ("I have gut feeling that he's lying..."), but if in the end you find that you don't have anything but that gut feeling, then it's time to look at letting that feeling go and moving on to other things. Hey, people have a "gut feeling" that certain races are inferior, but do they therefore have much of a basis for acting on that alleged inferiority?
I will grant you that to call what ever has been always god does invite interpatations for those not informed enought to understand ambiguity. Creamy cheese frosting is ok by me for the sake of discussion, as log as it has been properly definded. This is why I stipulated assigning no value to creamy cheese frosting beyond existance. I had also qualified my questions by stating that the concepts were limited by the wisdom of man, which may prove to be the true limiting factor for these types of discussions.
But to "exist" is to "exist as something rather than something else." Existence cannot be separated from having certain qualities rather than others. Now, if we cannot identify any such qualities, then it seems that we cannot say what the difference is between "X exists" and "X does not exist." And, if that is the case, what reason do we have for asserting the former over the latter? If we have no qualities to speak of, then we have nothing to speak of. So what are we really talking about?
Your agrument ... about something always existed was seems circular.
If there was no point at time where we can say "Here, at this time, the universe did not exist," then there is a sense in which the universe (and, hence, matter) has "always existed." It seems odd, but the point is to bring home the fact that time is a function of the universe. There is no time "outside" the universe (indeed, since space is a function of the universe, the concept of "outside" the universe isn't valid).
There was no "before" the universe. There is no "to the south of" the universe. There is no "above" the universe. There was, in a sense, no "cause" of the universe. These concepts (before, outside, south of, cause) rely upon things that only exist as part of the universe: space, time, physical laws. To apply them to the origin of the universe is a "stolen concept" fallacy: it's taking a concept that only appears later in an argument and applying it earlier than is allowed.
it would seem to me that it is clear that at some point, something came from nothing. To me, that event is what I would at least call the god event.
Why not just a random quantum fluctuation? What does the label "god event" add to the discussion?
Maybe I need a clearer understanding of what you mean when you say that you do not believe in god.
Either the things that people believe in and they call god I find no good reasons to think really exist (Odin, Allah), or when someone applies the label "god" to something (a tree, the universe) I can find no good reasons to use that label. There is no one "god" definition - just lots of different gods, none of which seem to "really" exist.
On the other hand, I am sure that you are aware of the area of the brain that when stimulated produces a "god" experience.
I am aware that mystical experiences can be induced at will if you have the right electronic equipment. This tells me not that "god" exists but, rather, that mystical experiences are a natural, biological event - dependent, it seems, up the state of the magnetic fields in/around your brain and/or perhaps certain chemical reactions.
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