Kant did not prove God existed, on the contrary, he wanted to prove we could not prove, nor disprove, God exists. He wanted to clear out reason to make room for faith.
Agnostic's Corner (Is God real?)
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Kant did not prove God existed, on the contrary, he wanted to prove we could not prove, nor disprove, God exists. He wanted to clear out reason to make room for faith.
I've pointed towards the basics, which at a minimum all point to God, regardless of what one calls "proof". The interesting thing about the word proof in English and the verb to prove is that the former can mean both support and hard evidence that leads to the verb. That verb has been taken to mean it is beyond denying. I still say that that is true; the problem with the situation is that, as others have said, people don't want to deal with the implications of admitting there is a God, mostly. It necessitates, obviously, responsibility and implies a judgment. Beyond that, if you can admit to yourself that God is real, then you have a lot of work to do in order to then figure the details out (Which religion/revelation is true?), which is too much for most people, for better or worse. That's what is really going on.
Shaquilleoatmeal
Protestant
Did God want humans to be in a perfect state of free will?
Of course, otherwise it wouldn't be. But by perfect free will I mean the choice to believe or not, and obey or not, God did not give us absolute will in the form of command over our biological and physical limitations.
Shaquilleoatmeal
Protestant
So he wanted Adam and Eve to sin and the Garden of Eden was imperfect.
No, He didn't want them to sin, but He knew they would.
Shaquilleoatmeal
Protestant
“By design” seems like he created the Garden in a way which caused them to sin in order for this “perfect free will” to exist.
It was by design that Adam and Eve would freely choose to sin so that perfect free will could exist.
The above sentence seems like a contradiction, because it is: how could we be designed to freely choose something? Isn't that predetermination? However we must remember God is unintelligible to us since God exists outside of contradictions. He is in two places or more at the same time, which is literally the definition of a contradiction.
Thus we must put aside reason and accept that God has ordered everything, and yet also gave us perfect free will. He knows how we will choose in the future. In this way we are predestined, and yet we totally have the ability to choose.
Shaquilleoatmeal
Protestant
I understand they had a choice. I’m saying God designed it this way because he desired for them to sin in order to gain a “perfect free will”, otherwise he would have designed them differently. God also did not give them a warning them about the deception the serpent would pull on them.
Doesn’t seem like a contradiction since God is an immaterial being.
To be clear I’m not some atheist nor do I even watch House but “put aside reason” seems like some cop out. It’s not just “faith”, it seems more like mental gymnastics.
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Watch it. It's a great show
Shaquilleoatmeal
Protestant
To be more clear when someone goes to the gym their desire is to build more muscle and are willing to go through pain, they do not enjoy pain per se but they need it to happen and intend for it to happen.
It's not a cop out, it's called knowing your limitations as a weak human. Reason isn't capable of much.
Shaquilleoatmeal
Protestant
The world is based on reason.
The house you live in was built using reason.
The car you drive to work was made using reason.
The internet this forum uses to exchange info runs because of reason.
The device you’re using to access this forum was created using reason.
Religious websites such as the ones listed below answer questions using reason:
www.Catholic.com
www.Gotquestions.org
When most of the world is based on reason, suggesting for an agnostic to “put aside reason” will do little to turn them towards Christ, and instead provide opportunities for anti-theists to make memes.
As Pascal says, the most reasonable thing you can do is know when to suspend reason in favor of faith.
There is no a priori justification to assume that reason can explain everything. We cannot understand everything God does, because to do that we would have to be God. Reason can get you to recognize God to a point, but that final leap is made by faith.
Iakobos
Orthodox
You say the world is based on reason, I say the world is based on unfathomable miracles and we humans make castles in the sand with our reason.
The Agnostic worldview itself is not reasonable. In order for any kind of reason to exist, there must be faith, or axioms that are believed a priori. So reason is not opposed to faith but faith precedes reason.
You believe so that you may understand.
Reason cannot explain why we are here, how our minds work, or what this universe is. It completely fails at the most essential questions. Pretty much everything we do is based on instinct and guesswork, which is why humans haven't changed in 6000 years. Animals aren't reasonable, they just do what they do because that's all they do.
As others have already pointed out extreme suffering tends to push people to seek god and is even the story of how many luke warm Christians or even atheists eventually became saints. There is a reason for the old saying "there are no atheists in a fox hole". Perhaps if I had more suffering in my life I would have the motivation to seek god (or at least answers) but I just do not feel the motivation to do so.
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As an agnostic who fence sits on the existence of god I cannot see how we got to where we are today without a creator because even if you assume the big bang was the starting point (leaving aside for a minute the infinite regression paradox) all the other occurrences after that still don't make sense.
Scientists now believe that even the first single celled organisms that they can trace back to had hugely complex DNA with a vast amount of information programmed into it. That is the equivalent of saying that the first painting a child ever painted the first time they picked up a brush was copying perfectly the Mona Lisa. My understanding of science is pretty basic but to me it just doesn't compute that the starting point is already so complex in an organic system that wasn't designed by a creator. The counter argument to this is that there were even simpler organisms before "LUCA".
www.quantamagazine.org
But my guess is even those "simple" organisms which preceded "LUCA" were surprisingly complex. Unless in the future scientists can provide evidence of some preceding organism which could have actually functioned while being extremely basic (i.e. not containing a vast amount of DNA and thousands of proteins, etc) then the whole story does not make sense.
Scientists now believe that even the first single celled organisms that they can trace back to had hugely complex DNA with a vast amount of information programmed into it. That is the equivalent of saying that the first painting a child ever painted the first time they picked up a brush was copying perfectly the Mona Lisa. My understanding of science is pretty basic but to me it just doesn't compute that the starting point is already so complex in an organic system that wasn't designed by a creator. The counter argument to this is that there were even simpler organisms before "LUCA".
All Life on Earth Today Descended From a Single Cell. Meet LUCA. | Quanta Magazine
The clearest picture yet of our “last universal common ancestor” suggests it was a relatively complex organism living 4.2 billion years ago, a time long considered too harsh for life to flourish.
www.quantamagazine.org
But my guess is even those "simple" organisms which preceded "LUCA" were surprisingly complex. Unless in the future scientists can provide evidence of some preceding organism which could have actually functioned while being extremely basic (i.e. not containing a vast amount of DNA and thousands of proteins, etc) then the whole story does not make sense.