Épisodes

  • IS THERE A GOD? ANY GOD? part-8 Conclusion
    Dec 31 2020
    The Conclusion Holy Land Man has demonstrated to you, using seven different scientific methods of evidence, the existence of GOD. Holy Land Man has proven the existence of a very intelligent designer of life and of probably this universe. At this stage and for the purpose of this research of "Is There a GOD?" Holy Land Man has not made any further conclusions (and you should therefore not intuitively assume) that: That GOD belongs to any religion. HOLY LAND MAN concluded that GOD is "merely" the one responsible for our existence. HOLY LAND MAN has not aimed to prove here that the Bible is true or that any religion is right.The fact that HOLY LAND MAN's conclusion is that there is a GOD, responsible for our creation, doesn't mean that He/She/It is still responsible for our existence.Concluding that there is a GOD doesn't conclude that GOD is anything that any religion tells usEven if there is a GOD, there is no reason to become religious because HOLY LAND MAN has not concluded that GOD has influence over our daily livesHOLY LAND MAN have merely established that we are part of an intelligence design and that we are not here by coincidenceHOLY LAND MAN is yet to establish what God wants and if we do what God’s wants, will it better our lives As noted at the outset, around each of these evidences was written an entire polemical literature of criticisms, responses to criticism, evidence and counter-evidence. Anyone who is interested in refuting them is invited to be respectful and first of all seriously study the subject, and read the books and articles written about it. Unfortunately many atheist polemics do not bother to do so, but are content to present a "straw man" of the claim in order to reject it with contempt. Jumping Within The Reality Created By GOD Even if none of the evidence is absolute proof, their great power stems from putting them together. In fact, they can be seen as a move that reveals a series of unexpected "jumps" within reality. The first leap is in vain: the very fact that something exists and nothing does, and that something that appeared after it did not exist (the cosmological evidence). The second leap is a chaos to order: the emergence of a permanent law according to which all parts of the universe move (the evidence from the laws of nature). The third leap is inanimate to the living: the emergence of living organisms, which are the most complex works in the universe (evidence from design or complexity). The fourth leap is from life to consciousness: the emergence of consciousnesses in general, and of human consciousness in particular, capable of understanding the universe (the evidence from consciousness). The fifth jump is from consciousness to morality: the existence of moral intuitions that indicate the existence of absolute good and evil (the evidence from morality). The sixth leap is from an ordinary experience to an experience of religious revelation (the evidence from the revelation), and the seventh leap is the leap from ordinary human existence to the unique existence of the people of Israel, as predicted in the Torah (evidence from the history of the people of Israel). Atheists want us to believe that all these jumps happened by chance, that they are the result of inanimate particles of matter and blind natural forces and nothing more. In case the universe appeared, in case it has a permanent legitimacy, in case life appeared out of matter, in case they developed consciousness, in case moral sense appeared and so on. But how likely is it to believe that all this happened by chance? Order or Chaos If we were to ask someone who has no idea about our universe, what he thinks a planned universe should look like and what a randomly created universe would look like - he would probably answer that a planned universe will have laws, complexity, diverse creatures, consciousness and constant progress, while in an unplanned universe - if in general, such a thing is possible - there will probably be chaos that leads nowhere, and if something happens to it, it will soon be destroyed. Certainly there is no reason for it to have things like consciousness, morality or the people of Israel. Then we would remove the "veil of ignorance" and show the same questioner the universe as it is today, about its exact laws of nature, the variety of living beings, and humanity on the whole of its works and achievements in all fields. Which of the two options is more reasonable? Is it not clear that our universe contains too many surprising "jumps'' to assume that it is the product of blind chance? When one considers the arguments expressed in this evidence (and other philosophical evidence, which is not presented here), then the existence of GOD becomes extremely rational and plausible. This is not a blind belief, a "flying spaghetti monster" or an "imaginary friend" as many atheists mock, but a very rational belief, based on mental arguments, held by many good minds, ...
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    7 min
  • IS THERE A GOD? ANY GOD? part-7
    Dec 26 2020
    Evidence-Based On The History Of The People Of Israel (People Of The Bible) It is said that the King of France once asked the philosopher Belz Pascal to give him evidence of the existence of GOD. Pascal replied without hesitation: "The Jews, Your Excellency." The existence of the people of Israel, its survival throughout history and above all, its return to the land and the establishment of a renewed state, deviate so much from the laws of history known to other peoples, that they astonished quite a few historians and thinkers from the nations of the world like Mark Twain, Lev Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Ernest Renan, John Adams, Woodrow Wilson and others expressed their amazement at the miraculous existence of the people of Israel and their contribution to humanity beyond all proportion to its size. And all of this, even before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The Torah Of The Bible The unique history of the people of Israel would have been preached even if the Torah (first 5 books of the Bible) had not foreseen it in advance; The very fact that the Torah did foresee it, and described it in a clear and unambiguous and unambiguous prophecy, (at the end of Deuteronomy, chapters 28-21), clearly testifies to the truth of the Torah and that it was given by GOD. Only a supreme power that controls history could have ensured the existence of the people of Israel when it was scattered in exile, under conditions in which every other people was soon assimilated or destroyed; Make sure he always stays small and persecuted and does not find rest in the Diaspora; To keep his country desolate in anticipation of his return despite the attempts of many to conquer and settle it; And ultimately to gather the outcasts of Israel from all corners of the globe, bring them back to their land, and help them establish a prosperous state while overcoming armies stronger than them, absorbing mass immigration and many other problems. A Miracle As A Proof Of GOD Some people claim they would believe in GOD if they saw a miracle. But what greater miracle than the history of the people of Israel? Isn't the return of Zion a much greater and more impressive miracle than a fire descending from the sky or a sea split in two? Whoever does not see the wonders of these events, it is likely that even if he had witnessed the parting of the Red Sea he would have seen only the mud at his feet and the sweaty shoulders of the marcher in front of him. True, the history of the people of Israel was conducted in so-called natural ways, and not in masterpieces that transcend nature, but their anomaly compared to other peoples indicates that divine providence is what accompanied the course of events so that all prophecies appear in the Torah will be fulfilled. This evidence testifies not only to the existence of GOD as some abstract "supreme power", but to the existence of the GOD and GOD of the GODS involved and the providence described in the Bible, and hence the truths of the Torah and the obligation to refer to it a source for GOD's existence. What The Greatest World's Scholars Thought Of The Chosen People Of the Bible Mark Twain About the Jews (Sep 1897) "If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one quarter of one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are also very out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world in all ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it. The Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Persians rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded to dream-stuff and passed away; the Greeks and Romans followed and made a vast noise, and they were gone; other people have sprung up and held their torch high for a time but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, and have vanished. The Jew saw them all, survived them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmaties, of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert but aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jews; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality? " Leo Tolstoy "What Is A Jew?" (1891) This question is not as strange as it may seem at first glance. Let’s examine this free creature that was insulated and oppressed, trampled on and pursued, burned and drowned by all the rulers and the nations, but is nevertheless living and thriving in spite of the whole world. What is a Jew that did not succumb to ...
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    9 min
  • IS THERE A GOD? ANY GOD? Part-6
    Dec 25 2020
    The Evidence of Revelation This argument for the existence of GOD is very simple: we know that GOD exists, because many people have testified that they have met Him. Even if we have not seen it ourselves, the very existence of evidence on the matter is evidence. It may not be the GOD of Moses, Mohamad, or Jesus or a GOD that is affiliated with any religious sect, but "a GOD". Are the testimony of many and the belief of the majority makes it a fact? For a moment, let's not think of GOD as a religious GOD but as an entity which is superior to us. It can even be a particle. Crowds of people throughout history have described experiences of divine revelation they have had, religious or mystical experiences, visions, prophecy, and the like. Some of those experiences occurred in daydreaming, during routine activities, and some were achieved as a result of activities like meditation, or in exceptional situations like near-death experiences. There are many differences between the same experiences, but also many similarities are common, as William James demonstrated in his book "The Religious Experience to the Issue." Professor Yehuda Jerome Gelman, in his book "Experience of GOD and the Rationality of Theistic Belief," presented a philosophical argument that the accumulation of so much evidence constitutes proof of the existence of a GOD, just like any other phenomenon that we accept for its existence based on evidence. The Argument of Hallucination Many find it difficult to accept this argument. They claim that while the people who have experienced divine revelations believe in their truth, it is possible that these are all hallucinations caused by various reasons. The hallucinations can be very tangible and make a great impression on the person who experienced them, and yet they exist only in his head and not in reality. Can we doubt tangible experiences? The problem with this critique is that if we doubt tangible experiences that seem certain to us, and treat them as hallucinations - what can we say is true? Maybe the reality we are experiencing at the moment is also a dream or a hallucination? Although it seems completely tangible to us, so do the religious experiences for those who experience them. If these can be hallucinations, then our perception of reality can also be such. It will not help us to turn to other people and verify with them that they too see what we see, because those same people can be part of our hallucination, like the people we see in a dream ... Is Religion Merely a Drug Feeling Experience? In other words, our default is to assume that what we perceive to be true is indeed true, unless proven otherwise. There are things that seem real to us at the time, like dreams or hallucinations resulting from drug use, but once they pass we recognize that they never really came true. Religious and mystical experiences, on the other hand, are often perceived by those who experience them as real even decades after the experience. Anyone who claims against them "perhaps it is a delusion" can equally direct this claim towards the reality he is experiencing at the moment and question it; But if he does not do so, and does not provide an objective criterion that makes it possible to distinguish between reality and hallucination, then our default is to believe in experiences that seem real to us and treat them as part of reality. Whoever wants to claim otherwise, has the burden of proof. Do The Different Religious Approaches Contradict "a GOD"? I say, they are similar in the experience but different in the interpretation and the methods of what pleases their GOD. I also believe that most religions manipulate "GOD's will" so it will fit their political agenda in the form of "in the name of GOD". For me, only the source matters, the original Word of GOD in the original language of the Bible, Hebrew. Everything else is only human interpretations and self-interest manupulations. Some argue that religious experiences cannot be trusted because they contradict each other: some describe a revelation or encounter with the Jewish GOD, others with the Christian, Muslim or Hindu GOD. Since it is not possible for all of them to be real, at least some of them are hallucinations; And since some of those experiences are hallucinations, it is quite possible that they are all hallucinations and none of them are real. I will answer this critique: First, there are not only differences but also many common similarities between religious experiences, and if the differences are a reason to reject them - then the similarity is a reason to accept them. Secondly, the critique assumes that not all of those experiences are real. But the difficulty in accepting them all as true is that such an understanding raises theological difficulties. But theological difficulties can be discussed in the theological field, and the present discussion concerns the epistemological (cognitive) plane, which should be approached with as ...
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    11 min
  • IS THERE A GOD? ANY GOD? Part-5
    Dec 24 2020
    Evidence Of Human Morality Most mentally healthy human beings have basic and very strong moral intuitions embedded in them. They have intuitions that things like murder, robbery, and harm to innocents are negative. The way in which the same moral intuitions are applied varies, of course, from society to society, as do the definitions to whom moral rules apply, but there is no society in history that has not recognized the existence of morality and justice even at the basic level. Not only do people feel intense moral feelings, but they also lead their lives by them, sometimes with significant concessions to pleasures and satisfaction to the point of self-sacrifice. They even go to war against those they perceive as behaving immorally. We perceive morality as objective and not subjective A careful examination of those moral intuitions leads to the conclusion that we perceive morality not as a subjective emotion but as an objective, absolute, and binding reality. If morality was a purely emotional and subjective matter, there would be no room for moral controversy. Just as taste and smell should not be argued, so there is nothing to argue about personal feelings that reflect only the person's feelings. And if morality is subjective, there is also no room for criticizing people or companies who behave differently from us - for they are not really wrong or bad, but simply have different preferences. Yet although many outwardly claim that morality is indeed relative and not absolute, very few actually believe it. Most people feel deep down that groups like the Nazis and ISIS are utterly wicked people with blatantly corrupt morals, and not just "different from us." Not only do we feel that way, but as mentioned we will be prepared to go to war against such figures and force them to change their behavior. All this because we tend to perceive morality as an objective reality. Of course, it can be argued that the fact that we feel that morality is objective and binding does not prove that it is. It is possible that our moral intuitions are a feeling that has evolved in us for evolutionary reasons, and although they make us feel that morality is absolute, it is only an illusion. There is no objective and absolute morality, but only gut feelings and desires that we project onto reality. This approach is called the moral error theory because all talk of morality or moral laws is wrong because such things do not exist. Is Morality Made Of Merely Molecules? Unsurprisingly, many proponents of error theory are atheists, for, in a world that has nothing but inanimate matter and blind laws of nature, there is no reality that can be a source of objective morality. All that exists are molecules, and since the laws of morality are not made of molecules, they do not exist. It is possible to adopt such an approach, but the price it charges the person is enormous. Adopting the theory of error will force us to deny some of the most intense existential feelings burning among us, and to treat our greatest and noblest ideals as personal gut feelings altogether - feelings that are neither better nor right than those of the most wicked and corrupt people in our eyes. This means that we will not be able to pass a moral critique on any person or any company, because there is nothing to argue about personal taste, and everyone can act according to their personal preferences. And if we eventually decide to go to war with people or values ​​different from ours, it will be coercion that has no moral justification other than our personal desires. While it is possible to pay these prices, many are not willing to do so. It is not for nothing that many philosophers, including atheists, try to find a basis for the existence of an objective and realistic morality that matches our basic intuitions instead of denying them. However, most of these attempts fail. In a world that is perceived as entirely material and blind, it is difficult to suddenly bring in ad hoc absolute moral facts that go beyond nature. Our Moral Intuitions The only way our moral intuitions can be justified is by acknowledging that in reality there are absolute moral facts, which are not part of the material nature but are beyond it, and whose inner intuitions are a reflection of them. The origin of these facts and of their binding power can derive only from a supreme will, of which the laws of morality are an expression and which created the universe in such a way that the laws of morality would suit it. I conclude here that the supreme power is GOD The same power is also the one that has instilled in us the moral sense that allows us to recognize those moral facts and feel our commitment to them. This supreme power is of course GOD, the Creator of the world, who established both the laws of nature and the laws of morality. This position does raise questions in itself, such as the well-known question of the epitaph - whether GOD set the laws of morality as He ...
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    8 min
  • IS THERE A GOD? ANY GOD? Part-3
    Dec 23 2020
    The Evidence In The Design And Its Complexity While the cosmological argument is based on the very existence of the universe, the argument from design (also called the complexity argument, or the physio-theological argument) is based on certain features of the universe or parts of it, the high level of complexity. According to this argument, there are phenomena in the universe with such a high level of sophistication, chief among them living beings in general and humans in particular. It is inconceivable that they were created by chance. The existence of these phenomena indicates that some intelligent Factor planned and assembled them. Suppose we were to walk in the desert and find on the sand not just a glass ball, but an elaborate and complex clock. Certainly, we would conclude that some intelligent creator designed it. Intuitive Evidence This evidence seems intuitive, so it occupies a central place in discussions about GOD’s existence. It is based not only on our intuitions, which identify the Designer's imprint in complex works but also on experience. In our experience, we have never encountered an intricate work that is clear to us that it was created by chance. We know complex works created in intelligent design (all kinds of artificial works), and we know complex works that are not clear how they were created (living beings and humans), but we do not know any complex work that we know was created unplanned. In any case, we learn from our experience and conclude that living things and humans were also created in an intelligent and planned way. The same intelligent and planning factor is GOD. Where Does The Comparison Come From? There are some reviews on this argument. The philosopher David Day argued that we could not make an analogy between clocks and other familiar works of art and the universe and living beings, since we know from clocks that they are man-made. Still, the universe and living beings have no idea how they were created. We can rely on our experience alone, so we have no justification for concluding that the universe and living beings were designed in a planned way like clocks. But Day's critique is rejected because the design argument did not require an analogy or direct experience to infer the Planner's existence from the complex work. Imagine that whoever finds the watch in the sand will be a primitive tribe member who has never seen how watches are made. Will he, therefore, have to conclude that the clock was created by chance? Certainly not. The very structure of the clock as a complex, precise, and versatile system indicates the underlying design, even if we have no idea who designed it. The Power of Intuition Similarly, suppose any technological object is found on Mars. In that case, it will be immediately apparent that an intelligent entity designed it, even if we have never seen how such items are made. Clear intuition obviates the need for direct experience or analogy to familiar objects. And as stated above, experience teaches us about the rule that every complex object we know is intelligently created, and we have no experience that shows the opposite example. One can doubt this intuition, but as long as there is no particular reason to deny it, it certainly makes sense to trust it and deduce from it the existence of a planner, Just as we rely on intuitions in many other areas. For more information on intuitions and their reliability, see here. Another direction of critique argues that evolution refutes the argument from design because it shows how complex beings can emerge from a simple process of mutations and natural selection without the need for a planner. But even if we assume that all the complexities that exist in nature can be created in this way (which is not clear at all and even seems unreasonable), evolution does not refute the argument from planning at all but only takes the question one step back: what explains the existence of the universe? Life, and of the processes leading to them? This is similar to someone who claims that the watch was not built by a human watchmaker but was created on an automatic production line in a factory without human hand contact. Of course, the conclusion is not that the clock was not designed, but that the factory and the production line were designed to lead to clocks. Scientifically, the conditions necessary for the appearance of life are so precise that the entire universe must be tuned with unimaginable precision from the most basic level of the laws of nature to have the potential for the appearance of life (the so-called "fine-tuning"). This is, therefore, strong evidence that it was indeed intelligently designed for this purpose. Refuting Atheists The prevailing atheistic response to this argument is that even in our universe, there is nothing special, since there may be an infinity of other universes in which life did not appear, and from which our universe was also created by chance since it is suitable for the...
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    11 min
  • IS THERE A GOD? ANY GOD? Part-4
    Dec 23 2020
    The Evidence Of Human Consciousness The human consciousness is an absolute wonder. It is the thing through which we think, understand, and perceive reality, create, feel, experience, and feel. It is in fact the only thing we experience directly, in the first person, with absolute certainty. And yet, the essence of consciousness itself is a mystery. Its very existence is an appeal to the materialist worldview, which holds that the only thing that exists is a matter, and an acknowledgment of a mystery that opens up the possibility of a more spiritual worldview, which may include GOD as well. Materialistic claim brain excretes consciousness Materialists claim that consciousness is nothing but a product of matter, something that appears in some way from brain activity, just as the kidneys excrete urine, so the brain excretes consciousness. Not only does such a claim sound very strange on the face of it, but it also has no end to the explanation of how it happens. Of course, it is clear that there is a correlation between brain processes and mental processes, and that influence on one leads to influence on the other. This has been known since the first man struck his friend's head and caused him to lose consciousness, and the neurosciences have not renewed anything essential here except for the refinement of the subtleties of that correlation. But where does the very consciousness in which those mental processes take place come from? We assume that simple chemicals have no consciousness, and if so how can a certain complex organization of theirs lead to the appearance of something so different from them? It would be similar to the claim that if a sufficiently complex card tower is built, at some point the cards will be able to speak and play on their own. Consciousness Is Fundamentally Different From Matter While there are features of complex things that are not in the details that make them up, So-called emergencies (like the moisture of the water, which does not exist in the individual molecules but exists in the whole). But in these cases, the transition from the individual to the whole is clear and scientifically understandable to us. Consciousness, on the other hand, is so fundamentally different from matter that there is no explanation for how it supposedly "grows" out of it. The materialist claim that matter is capable of producing consciousness expresses only a blind belief and provides no explanation or justification for its claims. Existence of consciousness a miracle? Would it understand the universe? Not only is the very existence of consciousness a miracle that is not understood in a materialistic world, but also its ability to understand the universe. Through our minds, we are able to understand the universe, the laws of nature, and the way they operate, from the subatomic level to cosmic processes. The same laws require mathematical understanding and high abstraction ability, and it takes many years to learn and understand them, while scientific knowledge itself is advancing. Is it obvious that the human mind will even have a chance to understand the universe? After all, according to the atheist worldview, consciousness is something that evolved evolutionarily only because it had some survival benefit. But it is clear that there is no need for consciousness to survive, and certainly not all the secrets of the universe need to be understood to do so. Let's compare to ants Countless species on earth, such as insects, do not have real awareness as far as we know, and yet they survive and thrive for much longer than human existence in the world. Think of an ant for example it has no mental capacity to understand even the tip of the iceberg of the universe in which it lives. For her, it is a foreign and clearly incomprehensible place, And it amounts to a few inches that she is able to feel and pursue food. It does not prevent it from surviving and reproducing successfully. Compared to the whole universe, our size and our brain size are no different from those of the ant. Where then did we get the ability to understand the universe? How is it that we do not experience it as inconceivable chaos, but as an orderly system that obeys the equations we are able to understand? In other words, what is the source of the match between human consciousness and the universe? Is Mathematics The Key? One of the great mysteries is the meaning of the miraculous correspondence between mathematical concepts and the structure of the universe and the laws of nature, as the physicist James Jeans put it: "The universe seems to have been shaped by a pure mathematician". Mathematics is used in all areas of life, from the natural sciences and physics to economics, social statistics, computer science, and sociology. How is it possible that mathematics, seemingly created by human thought, fits so perfectly into physical reality? Is mathematics a human creation, or a discovery of an existing reality that underlies ...
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    9 min
  • IS THERE A GOD? ANY GOD? Part-1
    Dec 22 2020
    The Cosmological Evidence Philosophical evidence for the existence of GOD is a relatively late phenomenon. Belief in GOD is essentially an intuitive sense of persuasion, sometimes accompanied by religious and spiritual experiences. In the ancient world, people believed in GOD or the gods naturally without any logical proof. The very fact that this belief appeared in all ancient cultures without exception testifies to its intuitiveness. It was only at a later stage, around the sixth century BCE, that philosophers began to appear in Greece, China, and India. They formulated logical and intellectual arguments about the existence of GOD. This question became one of the most central and debated philosophical issues of all time after this era. The prophecy and the inspiration of the Divine departed, creating a distance between humans and GOD. Infinite philosophical literature has been written around the evidence for the existence of GOD. These words are binding, and these words are deceiving; these words are claiming, and these words are rejecting. This article will not touch even the edge of all that literature on its many twists and turns. Our purpose here is to present an overview of the main arguments in favor of GOD’s existence. Why readers should go deeper It is essential to make clear in advance that around each of these arguments, many pens have been broken. The best philosophical minds in the world have devoted themselves to establishing or criticizing them. Therefore, one should take them seriously and not think that any argument is "unfounded," just because it has been criticized. As in any field of expertise, here too, a long and in-depth study is required to understand concepts about ignorance. Quoting sentences from the Wikipedia page that deal with logical failures is not a "refutation" or a substitute for such a study. We invite anyone wishing to give a serious opinion for or against these arguments to study the issues in-depth and thoroughly. Does Absolute Proof Exist? It is also essential to understand that "absolute proofs" do not exist, neither here nor in any subject in the world. Every proof, including the logic itself, derives from assumptions, which in themselves are not provable or reasonable, but simply seem logical and intuitive. In any case, the rational approach is not to insist on demanding evidence but instead to examine the arguments and accept those that seem more reasonable and convincing. After all, this is how people decide the most critical issues in their lives - not based on evidence but reasonableness and common sense. There is no reason to raise the bar when it comes to believing in GOD. Why Do We Exist? The cosmological argument begins with a simple question: Why does the universe even exist? When we see an object, we assume that there must be some reason for its existence. If, for example, we walk in the desert and find a ball made of glass on the sand, we ask ourselves how it was formed and how it got there. An answer such as, "He is just there for no reason," will sound absurd to us. If so, as Richard Taylor argues in his book Metaphysics, “Suppose the whole universe is the same glass sphere: does not itself require a reason to explain its existence?” We, therefore, assume that everything that exists does so for a reason. It is also clear that nothing can be the cause itself. The glass ball could not have created itself for the simple reason that it did not exist before it was created. There must be another reason that made the sphere, and the same is true of the universe. The problem is that whatever that cause of the universe is, it also needs a reason for its existence. That reason needs a reason for existing as well. As a result, we may find ourselves in an undesirable state of infinite regression, that is, an endless chain of causes that does not begin anywhere. But if the chain of reasons has no beginning, it is not clear how something could have been created at all. Consequently, philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas have concluded that there must be a first cause of its own. This cause cannot have a cause. The chain of causes that led to the universe’s existence and all that is in it begins from this cause. This first reason, the philosopher Ibn Sina stated, can not only be possible in reality (i.e., something that exists but could also not exist), but must be committed to reality (i.e., live substantively and necessarily, and not accidental). If that first cause were only possible in reality, the question would arise as to what then caused it to exist in practice, and again we would need the cause preceding it, and so on to infinity. Therefore the same first cause, which is the cause of causes, is committed to reality: it necessarily exists and does not depend on any other factor for its existence. This first reason is GOD. Faulty Arguments Against GOD’s Existence A common erroneous critique says that if everything has a reason, then GOD...
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    9 min
  • IS THERE A GOD? ANY GOD? Part-2
    Dec 22 2020
    Laws of Nature as Evidence We live in a universe made up entirely of moving particles of matter, from electrons’ rotation to galaxies’ motion. We are not surprised when we see living things moving and moving, but we would be surprised if we suddenly saw inanimate objects starting to carry on their own. If the table in our living room were suddenly hovering in the air, or ping pong balls were beginning to surround each other in circles, we would look for an explanation. But in our universe, matter is constantly moving. Not only do inanimate objects move, but they also do so according to a fixed and precise regularity represented in the equations of physics. This phenomenon begs the question: how can inanimate objects move, and how is it possible that they all move precisely according to the same rules? If asked, most people will simply answer that the laws of nature drive matter in the universe. For example, apples fall from the tree because of the force of gravity. But this answer is not an explanation at all. The laws of nature describe the way objects move but do not explain the movement. Let's consider this example Suppose the table in our living room were to begin to rise in the air at regular intervals, once every half hour, for example, making a few turns around its axis and descending back down. Of course, we would very much like to find an explanation for this phenomenon. If someone were to announce: ‘What's the problem? The table is moving because of a special and new law of nature that can be formulated, according to which your table rises every half hour, does a few rounds, and goes back down. Let's give it a scientific name and put it in the list of laws of physics …’ Would we be satisfied with that? Certainly not, since this law only describes the movement of the table and allows it to be anticipated, but does not explain at all what moves the table. The same is true of the motions of matter throughout the universe, which the laws of physics only describe but do not explain how they are possible.”How, then, can the motion of matter be presented? Human Willpower As A Force We know that there is a power capable of moving material things: desire. Humans, and other living things, can move their bodies through their will. According to which willpower moves the objects in the universe, an explanation would be a legitimate explanation of the "position on the seller" - using a familiar phenomenon to explain an unfamiliar sensation. But what desire can move the universe? The Greek Philosophy Aristotle thought that every object in the universe has its own will that drives it. Thus, for example, the stone falls because it wants to return to the earth’s element to which it belongs, while air bubbles rise from the water upwards because they aspire to the essence of air from which it originates. Even the stars and celestial bodies move because of the desire that causes them to do so. This perception is possible, even if it sounds strange today. Still, it raises various questions, such as what explains the exact motion of objects throughout the universe - how do the atoms and molecules on planets and other galaxies behave, as far as we know, just like those on Earth? Does everyone want the same things? Do they know the equations they should follow? Therefore, a more straightforward explanation would be that which drives the universe is not the personal will of each particle and object in itself, but a supreme will that coordinates the whole universe in a coordinated way. It is the will of GOD. GOD has determined the equations of the laws of nature, according to which the universe will be governed, and He moves it at all times following these equations. This explanation answers how inanimate matter can transfer and how it is possible that matter in the whole universe behaves exactly according to the same equations. Matter can move because GOD's will motivates Him, just as man can voluntarily move his body and the objects around him; And he behaves precisely according to the equations of the laws of nature, because these equations are the way GOD wants to move matter. The Will of GOD In fact, the presentation of GOD and His will as an explanation for motion in the universe is not fundamentally different from the way physicists presented the laws of nature as an explanation for phenomena arising from observations. After all, no one has ever seen gravity, for example, or one of the other physical forces; Newton simply asked himself what the explanation was for objects falling and the like, and when he did not find an explanation for this in the context of the known phenomena, he concluded that there was an unknown force that caused it - he called the force of gravity. The Electromagnetic Force Similarly, the existence of the electromagnetic force, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force, as well as of particles that cannot be directly observed, were also determined. When ...
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    9 min