My belief in God is at the same level as my belief in a multiverse of which we are just one universe amongst infinite.
- It would be great if this were true (Yay afterlife/alternate worlds!)
- No one can provide any convincing evidence for existence.
- It is impossible to prove nonexistence.
- The truth of this matter has absolutely no influence on my life. i.e. focus on other things should take priority before focus on this, although it is always fun to read about and debate existence.
I fluctuate constantly between being an agnostic and being a believer in God.
Truth of the matter is, when misfortune/tragedy strikes (like the loved ones having health problems) it really helps to believe in God.
My wife just gave birth to a premature child. He's a boy and he's in very good health, but he was born at 30 weeks (now he's at 32). Her water broke at 27 weeks.
We were on the cutting-edge with this pregnancy ever since the start ... she had 2 embryonic bags (most likely twins) and lost one, causing her an ugly hemorrhage and a detachment of the other bag. This detachment was nullified by the child growing, and her water breaking was totally unrelated to that (urinary infection).
After the water broke, the child stayed in her for another 3 weeks, because at 27 weeks children are not viable. This was a dangerous and highly unlikely outcome ... when water breaks most women go into labor immediately. And if not ... it is dangerous because the amniotic fluid was mostly gone and both mother and child could have suffered (even death) from a uterus infection.
And I could say that this was just our luck or that we had some kind of a divine intervention ... I prefer the later, and I would probably go mad if it was the former.
I also noticed another thing ... I have several friends that are now doctors, and I also made lots of friends in the hospital since my wife was hospitalized. People working in health-care have an easier time believing in God than in any other profession I know. Probably because they witness highly unlikely events a lot (miracles do happen).
> People working in health-care have an easier time believing in God
I know a great many doctors, nurses and other health-care workers and I don't know a single one who believes in any gods. Maybe it's just a UK thing, but watching good people die painfully and slowly is fairly destructive to blind faith in an allegedly benevolent god.
1. I'm not sure why forcing yourself to believe in god (if that is even possible—I don't think it is) helps in times of tragedy. One, you know you're just telling yourself stuff to make yourself feel better. This, in itself, can't feel good. Two, it is not comforting to know that there's this benevolent god up there who exists but is doing nothing to stop your tragic situation.
2. I know of no documented miracles. In fact, such a proposition is unproveable, as is the claim that "miracles do happen".
> 2. I know of no documented miracles. In fact, such a proposition is unproveable, as is the claim that "miracles do happen".
Thing is, anything can happen ... it's just a matter of probability. Think of any impossible event (like an angel, i.e. a shiny humanoid with wings, integrating in front of your eyes) and that's possible. It's just highly unlikely.
In that light I consider miracles to be very unlikely events. Life on earth is such an event, especially since we haven't found proof that life exists on other planets yet, although we have found the proper conditions (like water).
And if life exists on such a planet, did it manage to evolve like us? This is even more unlikely since we may not have the means to observe bacteria from a distance, but we could observe artificial lights and non-random radio signals coming from other planets.
And then ... if we manage to build interstellar ships and expand to other planets, that will be prof in itself that no other intelligent beings managed to do that ... simply because aliens had a lot of time to expand to earth before we appeared (after all, if you have enough room to expand, the growth rate is exponential).
You can say that life happened by chance, but currently intuition suggests otherwise.
Not only that ... but the miracles you witness everyday stop being miracles. Babies being born are a miracle, simply because this probably doesn't happen in any other of the billions of galaxies. And you being able to transcend your original condition and reason about such things is another.
On the matter of proving nonexistence, this is possible.
The problem lies with the definition of a god.
Whenever you try to proof anything, you assume the world is causal/deterministic. An omnipotent influence is therefore also deterministic. This makes any god equal to a law of nature. Define your 'law that is a god' and it can be proven to exist/not-exist in theory.
My thoughts are that religion and God is about, or at least originates from a desire for, the afterlife. Hence, deathbed conversions, the focus on heaven, hell, and eternal damnation. Thus God -> Afterlife, and the converse is not really focused on.
- It would be great if this were true (Yay afterlife/alternate worlds!)
- No one can provide any convincing evidence for existence.
- It is impossible to prove nonexistence.
- The truth of this matter has absolutely no influence on my life. i.e. focus on other things should take priority before focus on this, although it is always fun to read about and debate existence.