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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Believing in God
Message-ID: <368@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 21-Feb-85 12:32:27 EST
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.368
Posted: Thu Feb 21 12:32:27 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 26-Feb-85 07:50:03 EST
References: <358@haddock.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 49
Summary: 

In article <358@haddock.UUCP> jimc@haddock.UUCP writes:
> I would also like to know what is meant by "objective evidence" of God's
> existence, anyway.  There cannot be such a thing.   The example of
> the monoliths is a good one;  or, try this:  if you were to see an angel
> appear to you and tell you that there is a God and that He loves you,
> would that convince you that there really is a God?  That angel could
> be anything:  a hallucination or an alien being, for example.

You miss the point.  I am looking for evidence of any sufficiently superior
being to convince me of its existence.  If it is sufficiently superior, and
cares to convince me, then I'll do whatever it asks because I really have
no good alternative.  (There is a book about human/superior_being game
theory-- forgive my oversimplification.)  It need not be the Judeo-Xian
god: merely something able to control my mind.

> You see, the only proof of God's existence is God Himself.  No one
> can produce God in His Infinity to offer as "objective evidence."
> 
> Some people, as is their right, have assumed that God does not exist
> because He is not proven.  That assumption falters seriously when
> one realizes that He cannot be proven.

That doesn't matter.  What matters is what the superior being wants from
you.  Gotta have some evidence of that, or else you won't know what to
do.

> I, too, believe that God wishes us to find Him through our faith.
> It seems there is no other way.

Whatever makes you think a superior being would want you to find him?
Do you want protozoa to find you?

> I suppose one can make the argument
> that God could have planted the certainty of His existence into our
> minds at the moment of birth, so that we would not raise any questions.
> Still, that would prove nothing except that we believed in Him.
> Is it not scientifically reasonable to assume that such a tendency would
> have evolved naturally and with no intervention from a divine force?

Yes, we could have certainty planted within us.  It is the most convincing
proof possible.  But we still wouldn't know anything else about what
convinced us.  Could be god, could be satan, could be Ubizmo.  The certainty
could include a certainty about itself, that it was planted by the
superior being.

Sounds like phenomenology to me....
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh