lördag 10 augusti 2013

Reasons for believing or not in God

In this post I will try to list the reasons for believing in God, and the reasons for not. The matter is quite interesting, and I would love to hear comments about the list and other reasons for or against you might find worth mentioning. The post is sort of ongoing, so I guess the list will expand in time. The arguments are sort of semi-formal. I'm trying to keep a fairly formal reasoning tone, but of course; I'm dealing with one of the worst defined concepts there is, so there have to be some hand waving.

By the way, I will also make a list with reasons I have come across that I find are not proper arguments for either.

Pros

  • Classical mechanics is much simpler that quantum mechanics. This could be an indication that the creator of this world chosed to make it as comprehend-able as possible by creating it such that the emerging mechanics is simpler than the basis. This is otherwise counter-intuitive, one would spontaneously guess that the emergence is more complex, eg. as the popular theory of life.
  • We are trapped between the extremely small and the extremely large. This idea is related to the above argument. I am for sure no expert in cosmology or quantum field theory. But as I understand it, science seem to suggest that there are limits to what we can explore scientifically. And this holds both for the very small and the very large. Thus "we" (humans, intelligent beings...) are trapped, we are really enclosed in a world where our reasoning can not escape. To me this looks like "someone" has put these bounds there to keep us in place.

Cons

  • The Theodicy problem. This is to me a really hard one to crack if one wants to believe in a God that wants good. However of course, it is no argument against the usual guy with power.
  • If God exists, why can't we communicate with it/detect its presence? To me this is quite problematic. If there exists a creator of the world, and this creator did have the intention to create humans, why is there no interaction with us?
  • What created God? This is a crucial problem with the idea of a God as I see it. If we put in the concept of God "the creator of the Universe" (everything in some sense), what created God? Over-God? Not helping, what created Over-God?

Non adequate

  • It gives comfort to believe in God. This is not an argument for or against God, it is simply a way to still a psychological need.
  • There are so much in the world that we are not able to explain, someone have to have designed it. Just because we are not able to explain it, there is no reason to believe it unexplainable - look at all the thing that once were unexplained that we understand today.
  • Intelligent design, the state of the marvelous humans and the animals must have been created by an intelligent being. These kind of arguments, hinting that someone must have designed us, or the world to yield us via e.g. evolution, since we have appeared so great is not an argument at all. For all we know, the processes of the world might have created us the way we are. And the processes of the world seem quite self-contained, not requiring any God for its existence. On the other hand, it might well be that the world actually was designed. We seem not to find any strong indications saying it absolutely can not have been designed. Thus, The argument indicate either pro nor con.

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