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Is God Real?
Its human nature to seek superiority and its human nature to seek an authoritative entity to take responsibility and control of one's life. So i often wonder if God is just that idea. The idea of a god that is all powerful and all knowing and just superior in everyday than any human being, is the very idea that makes me question the legitimacy of a God. We tend to subscribe to a divine command or an authoritative figure. The creator of the universe gets to set the rules and do anything it likes with its creations like sending them for eternal punishment.
And lastly, everyone that believes in a divine command gets the same satisfaction from believing in something that everyone else gets no matter what they believe in.
I am just interested in the TED community's input on this. I am a student of life, so i take no biases even if it sounds like it sometimes. :)
mary kariuki
James Gillam
One thing that is clear for me is that if you seek, you will find. If you honestly, open-mindedly search then I think God will reveal Himself. Not in a physical way but in a Spiritual way
peter ezzell
start by defining terms.
If one asks is this god real, and as part of the question gives various attributes of the god, it seems to me that it is much easier to answer because how one arrives at claims of specific attributes, and hence their validity, can be rationally challenged.
If one can't assign attributes then one has to wonder what the person is asking. It would seem to equate to - Is this being, which I cannot describe in any way, including whether it is even an intelligent being, real? seems meaningless.
10,000 gods
pick 1
or better yet
none
Charan Singh
Martin Herrigan
Comment deleted
Peter Emer
Obey No1kinobe 50+
Just one of the final sub atomic particles theorized. A type of bosun I believe. The higgs bosun.
It's a figure of speech, or a glorified label, based on a book title I believe and the media loved it.
Sorry to disappoint. Still no compelling evidence of gods even if they do create and detect a Higgs Bosun. Unless you think atoms are evidence for gods.
Agree we can do a better job living on planet earth.
Fritzie Reisner 100+
The editor or promoter encouraged the change of title to something more catchy. As you say, the media loved it and people have been misled by that label ever since.
Etienne Vernier
The idea of God (and gods in general, throughout history) is to answer the questions we don't understand, and to control the populace. What's an earthquake ? What's a lightning storm ? What about northern lights ? Wait, if I don't worship God I'll suffer for eternity ? This king has a divine right to rule under god, I should listen to him! When you have no way of figuring it out, it can be pretty scary. I'd probably be a religious man if I was born in an era of scientific ignorance.
In this day and age, everything that God is has pretty much been disproved and everything now relies on blind faith alone, however the grip of religion weakens with every passing generation.
Obey No1kinobe 50+
"they must have been good in past lives to be born into power and money.
They deserve it
And I must have been bad in a past life, I deserve to be poor.
Different ways to justify inequality.
Pabitra Mukhopadhyay 30+
"Its human nature to seek superiority and its human nature to seek an authoritative entity to take responsibility and control of one's life. So i often wonder if God is just that idea."
It's not human nature to seek superiority, it's human nature to seek camaraderie.
It's not human nature to seek authority, it's human nature to seek authenticity. And it's not for shifting responsibility and control of one's life but it's human nature to love and let go of control with trust so that the self can relax and rest.
God with capital 'G' is the product of the innate human confusion and directionlessness.
The idea of eternal punishment is as anti-human as it can get.
God, by definition, can jolly well mind his business. We need more humanity to mind ours.
Obey No1kinobe 50+
Pabitra Mukhopadhyay 30+
It is next to impossible to live meaningfully without believing and imagining. Our idea of self is in large part imagination. Atheism is arguably another belief system having it's own extremists and fundamentalists. For one who finds it difficult to live without an idea of purpose, spiritual enlightenment and equanimity a personal god is a better choice than a religious god.
The argument that this type of subjective thinking holds us back is questionable. The traditional science, at least a substantial part of it, is the contribution of scholars and scientists deeply religious. There is no clear evidence that atheists are better predisposed towards science.
That leaves only Truth. The nature of Truth is, IMO, not absolute and it's philosophical basis has been debated time and again. The god of books makes use of this human confusion. A personal god, I think, is a safety release against that pressure.
Obey No1kinobe 50+
I get your point about atheism being a belief system. I would suggest atheism may be part of belief system but perhaps is not as broad or dogmatic as deserving to be called a belief system compared to a particular religious belief system. Perhaps even more narrow than an individualistic spiritual belief system.
After all its only not being a theist.. Everything else is open from ghosts, afterlife, reincarnation, karma to views on abortion etc. Some may use this as a linchpin on which to hitch additional views or reflect a similar skeptical outlook, but there is no dogma, no necessarily shared world view.
Personally I consider myself a reasonably open minded skeptic, left leaning on many social issues and somewhere in the middle economically. I would identify myself as an atheist only when it is relevant to a particular topic such as this.
Whether a tendency to subjective, intuitive thinking in general is net negative to human development is an open question for me. I haven't considered it deeply. But it has no role in confirming scientific hypothesis. Perhaps with coming up with ideas and hypothesis but science is empirically validated rather than left to the subjective. Many spiritual or religious folk can still apply the scientific method and accept the outcomes, I agree.
I would point out in the US, one of the most religious developed nations, more than 30% (from memory) deny evolution and believe the world is about 6,000 years old. Dogmatic religious views also have negative social and health impacts e.g .Taleban, caste system. So I would suggest there is a case that these kinds religious views based on subjective experience can hold us back. Not all spiritual views but many.
Pabitra Mukhopadhyay 30+
I make a clear distinction between God with a capital 'G' and god that I am proposing to be personal and private. I am not religious at all and the simple reason is that I can go about in life and make a meaning of it without the necessity of a God, a super natural intervention, a creator or a keeper of morality as religious texts dictate. But I am certainly spiritual and I make a distinction between religion and that.
I believe that over time our societies have acquired reasoned, secular, liberal and democratic value sets such that dispensation of social issues on the basis of religious texts that were written thousands of years ago create conflict and negative impacts on our values.
However, if someone internalizes the apparent conflicts of life in the form of a core source of peace, joy and happiness with no conflict with the outside world or somebody else has same core source as a pleasurable quest with reason, curiosity and awe with no conflict with the outside world, I'd call both a personal god (I have no apathy towards that name). And it's very real to me. Just like love or poetry.
Sure all belief systems are not equal. But honestly, I am not sure if only one of two contradicting beliefs has to be true. For life as a biological process, I sometimes wonder if we are living or dying on a daily basis. What do you think?
Kieran Preissler
Obey No1kinobe 50+
I just find there is a lot of stuff to avoid in Abrahamic books as well.
But a discerning person can separate the good from the barbaric.
Yahweh or Jesus as the role model? Yahweh seems a nasty character. Jesus, more of a reformer and apocalyptic preacher. At least according to what was written about him decades after he died.
I lived in a Buddhist country for some years and investigated some of their beliefs. Some of it is very insightful into the human condition. Some less so from a 21st century perspective.
Judaism - seems to be about the covenant with their tribal god
Christianity seems to be about salvation from a fallen nature
Islam - Submission
Some good insights in all I guess.
Daryl Roche
Peter Emer
No I haven't but if you recommend it I will definitely get myself a copy as soon as I can. Thanks for that(:
Obey No1kinobe 50+
Daryl Roche
Obey No1kinobe 50+
Daryl Roche
George QT
I almost forget a very important point, if you don't include "omnipresent" in your definition of God, that necessarily and automatically excludes omniscient, and omnipotent, which leaves you with a God who is not everywhere, does not know all and is not all mighty.
So, Is God Real ?... that depends on you definition of "God", and on your definition of "Real".
Peter Emer
Thanks for the comment, when i say God, i mean an omnipotent being that as religion puts it, takes care of our needs not our wants. And by real i mean visibly and tangibly real as a separate entity from your conscious. As in its not a creation of the mind and it consciously exists in space and time.
George QT
Obey No1kinobe 50+
To me all knowing is just a human construct, a concept, and very hard for a human mind to really comprehend. Probably impossible in reality.
What that means in regards where the entity is located is pure speculation.
I don't have to be everywhere to see a lot, hear a lot, etc outside my body. You could invent a god concept that knows everything via a super god sense, while it sits on my coffee table.
I suggest you can not prove its existence, because there is no emprical proof and most likely its just an idea humans made up.
If there is an entity somewhat like this then we still have no reliable way of knowing whether it exists or anything about it. It might as well not exist because it is outside our senses, outside our capability to detect.
You can not disprove it because it is constructed in a way that is impossible to disprove.
But is the same way you can not prove much of anything about its nature or intentions because there is no information other than the concepts some humans latch onto.
Did you there is a transcendent invisible immaterial toaster. You can not prove or disprove these sorts of human constructs, but you can assign as much meaning or dogma as you like via subjective so called "spiritual" experience and revelations of your own or recorded through history or philosophised into existence.
Actually you could assume this being has 3 different aspects, is triune in nature or 7, or 113 if you like.
Sometimes the attributes tagged onto god concepts are a bit contradictory. Not sure how you can be all merciful and all just.
And defining something as all good is like defining circles as the perfect shape. Or that the universe is perfect. It's just a definition that leads to circular thinking and contradictions with conflicting all good god concepts. It seems like nonsense.
Obey No1kinobe 50+
Obey No1kinobe 50+
The processes by which people develop gods and experience these seem unreliable.
For me personally, I have not come across any compelling evidence for any gods, so far.
Agree psychology and science in general helps us understand religious experience. We do seem primed to assume agency, and even today religious belief has a strong correlation to where you are born.
Peter Emer
Obey No1kinobe 50+
Helly Lucaa
Daryl Roche
Obey No1kinobe 50+
Funny, many say you can know god if you open yourself to it.
But then everyone comes up with different gods depending on their experience.
Ed Schulte 50+
The answer to your question "Is God Real?" is dependent on your responce to... "Is Life "real"?"
because the answer to both questions can ONLY be relavent to how "Alive" and aware you are....not to anyone elses answer.
By the Bye this is the second "most asked question" that keeps coming up at TED
Mathew Naismith 10+
Do you exist & are you real? There's your answer. To me God isn't of man but consciousness itself.
I found the creator through science, I was on this science site & I asked the science minded people where did the matter & antimatter come from? The answer I got was it was just there, pretty lame so this sealed it for me.
Love
Mathew
Obey No1kinobe 50+
It seems a common argument.
After 300 years of modern science the best of our super monkey brains haven't got it all figured out, therefore magic is a reasonable hypothesis. While I understand some aspects of the universe and its origins do our heads I just don't get that resorting to a supernatural explanation is intellectually fulfilling. It's like a magic plug for our ignorance not to different from blaming weather, earthquakes and disease on invisible agents or magic before understood things a bit better.
Seems like an argument from ignorance. Possibly special pleading and doesn't actually explain how it happened. Answering a question with a larger unfounded mystery. And is not actually evidence of a god, just evidence of our ignorance and being content to resort to the supernatural to plug gaps in our understanding with magic.
Glad we can agree to disagree.
Peter Law 30+
Of course God exists; He's my best mate!
:-)
Amirpouya Ghaemiyan 50+
Cool opinion.
In my philosophy, it is called "Reverse Engineering God". You need something, you just make it. Demand and supply.
Obey No1kinobe 50+
Is it rationale to think your particular theistic interpretation is the right one when there are so many others.
The more we understand about the human mind/brain, group dynamics, history and anthropology the more we see how we can be mistaken. Cognitive bias. The assumption of agency. Cultural programming.
About half of human children have imaginary friends. It's not surprising adults can also build a belief system and interpret psychological experiences as evidence for their version of gods or spirits.
I guess a Muslim or believers in other gods has similar experiences to you and assumes they have some sort of contact or relationship with god.
Do you see your best mate god regularly. Are there two way conversations like we have with human mates? Or is it a bit more one sided and obscure. Did you get him on film or record his voice, or is it possible this is just going on in your head?
Peter Law 30+
What you are looking for is a god in a box. Neatly labeled & packaged. If I was to ask you to prove to me that your wife loved you, you couldn't do it. You would present a list of circumstantial evidence, which convinces you, but I could easily dismiss. God is not a one night stand. He takes time & effort to build a relationship with. That relationship is unique & sacred. In your present state of mind, you just won't get it.
Good to hear from you again.
:-)
Obey No1kinobe 50+
Concepts are not physical but they do exist within our minds. Just like your god concept exists in your mind. The missing ingredient is any proof that it exists independently of your mind. I'm not claiming love is a person that exists independent of our thoughts.
We might argue whether the evidence that my wife loves me is sufficient, but I guess there would be sufficient evidence my wife exists independent of my mind. Not so your god.
My point is really there is evidence my best friends exist independently of my mind, but not your personal god buddy. And the process you used to get to your god belief is the same process and similar type of subjective experiences others use for completely different gods.
If you spend years reinforcing a god pattern in your mind and interpreting life through a religious lens, reinforced by subjective experiences, its not a surprise that construct becomes unique and profound.
we know humans have the cognitive machinery to create imaginary friends, so it is highly plausible your god concept, just like all the other different ones other people hold is just a personal mental construct. I can not tell if your god concept, or a child’s imaginary friend exists independent of your mind. But neither can you I guess.
Any way you are free to belief in your god. Doesn't seem to harm others significantly and seems to bring joy to your life and relationships. Fair enough.
I just suggest there is not much evidence your best buddy god exists independently of your mind, and as a cultural construct more generally.
Peter Law 30+
We've been through this before elsewhere.
To me the whole universe cries out of design & intelligent manufacture. I am totally unconvinced by just-so stories of chance over millions of years. The bible is way too complex to have been written by man. Among other things it relates human history over the whole lifespan of the universe.
That keeps me happy, plus I get to experience God in my daily life
We both have faith, just depends where you put it.
:-)
Obey No1kinobe 50+
Now if god made a giant floating crystal of some indestructible material that magically answered all questions or carved the words on the moon, now that would give me pause.
Even with all the codes etc its fairly mundane.
I suggest we both have beliefs. I might just have less speculative ones in the supernatural department.
To me life cries out the evolutionary tree of life, where animals survive by eating and killing other living things, And the natural universe is complex beyond human comprehension, but it totally does not look designed.
If you roll the dice 10 times you will get a series that has a probability of 1/1024 of occurring, but one of those 1024 possibilities had to occur. What is the chance of your parents and their parents and their parents etc meeting. Pretty low. But it happened and its not magic.
Any way I agree deja vu. All the best.
Random Chance 30+
If you don't believe, just say, "for me, there isn't."
Knowing is the only way to be sure. If one feels or thinks they know, then fine, know, but keep it.......
to yourself. You cannot prove it and since that is the key for either side, let it stay that way and stop talking about it.
Proof of "knowing" can only come one way.
Do you trust it no matter what, and no longer worry about anything?
Because if you worry, you don't trust it and if you don't trust it,
you don't know it. You only believe it. There's a difference.
A good guide is this: do you ever become afraid?
Muhammad Aizat Zainal Alam 30+
However, my question would be : Why does it matter so much that it becomes a subject of vigorous debates, wars even.Can't we just get along? extremists are everywhere, I won't deny that.Why don't we all just stop discussing unnecessary topics and start to cooperate to build a more peaceful world.
Trust me, my experiences tell me that discussing this topic wouldn't give us a solution that would satisfy all.
Obey No1kinobe 50+
Rustam Eynaliyev
That reason is children. Namely indoctrination. I don't care what an adult believes or why s/he believes it as long as that choice is consciously made. Religions have figured out a way to make people think that it's the default state to be a believer if they're born in some place rather than another. I was born and raised as a muslim. I would've probably stayed that way if it wasn't for my travelling and seeing different cultures. I don't mind a person being muslim or anything else as long as they chose it...not because someone said it or they were brought up that way because of societal norms. If religions were treated the same way as everything else - treated is disbelief and required a reason to believe in them, then I bet they'd be far less popular. Religious organizations have huge impact on societies and disregarding them or keeping quiet about them is just making it easier for them to do whatever they want. We've had enough of that (Crusades, wars, indulgence, tax exemption and many more). No more.
Obey No1kinobe 50+
But I can understand if you believe in hell or there are social expectations its a big ask to expect a theist not to indoctrinate the child. Its a bit sad but I don't think you can make it illegal to teach whatever values or religion parents want. But you can keep religion out of government, public schools etc.
Muhammad Aizat Zainal Alam 30+
Rustam Eynaliyev
Obey No1kinobe 50+
I agree broadening experiences is generally positive. Let people come up with their own conclusions, but let human rights and secular government take precedent and not force people to believe or indoctrinate, keep religion out of schools and other state institutions.
I agree with your last two sentences.
Ken brown 30+
We can't physically get out of our heads and float around and see then jump back in and neither will you find the answer anywhere while stuck in this biological form.
pat gilbert 50+
Scot Wilcox 10+
I can't logically prove or disprove to you the existence of a God. I can't scientifically prove or disprove it. I can't philosophically prove or disprove it. That's the point. Nobody can. That's why the debate has raged on for thousands of years. But the people who really want to know, know.
Obey No1kinobe 50+
I wonder if they might be just psychological experiences, profound but mundane in the sense that there is no real evidence for supernatural interpretations.
I note sincere people searching for the truth about gods might end up believing in very different concepts or not believe in any.
It's a bit like saying if you try to be a Christian, learn the framework and interpret life within that framework, spend years cognitively reinforcing those beliefs you might end up seeming real. Same for Islam or Zoroastrianism etc or whatever new age beliefs.
I suggest the experiences are real, but the interpretations are an open question, although perhaps we know enough that the natural explanations are probably the lead candidates.
I suggest the gods and natural spirits of others feel just as real as your God. But it is highly unlikely they all exist and impossible for conflicting interpretations to be correct.
I admire your honesty that in the end it comes down to how you interpret your personal psychological experiences.
I wonder what makes you think your interpretation is any better than the 6 billion other supernatural interpretations and others people held in the past?
Scot Wilcox 10+
Rustam Eynaliyev
edward long 100+
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Rustam Eynaliyev
edward long 100+
Obey No1kinobe 50+
It is impossible to test or disprove any invisible immaterial concept does not exist.
I'm not even sure people know what they mean when they say gods are transcendent, outside time and space. Our experience is only within time and space.
What we do know is that every time we apply the scientific method to reliably come up with a testable and repeatable explanation there are no gods or spirits necessary. This is not proof that there are no gods or goddesses, just that we find no evidence for them by the most reliable method we have developed for understanding reality.
As for atheism being a religion, I won't bite other than its a bit like saying not playing tennis is a sport.
Rustam Eynaliyev
Obey No1kinobe 50+
Suggest just as much evidence for them as almighty all knowing ones. This monotheistic construct is awfully convenient and without any compelling evidence.
Rustam Eynaliyev
edward long 100+
Obey No1kinobe 50+
looking around at the universe where 99.9999% of it would kill us instantly, and where most animals on earth survive by eating or killing other living things, there doesn't seem to be much evidence for an all loving all knowing god.
The problem of evil does not disprove that creator gods exist, just that if they were human you might not respect them.
Hi Edward, with due respect it is possible to engage in hypotheticals and study the subject of religion and gods and know a lot without believing in it.
And some atheists have previously been theists so have the personal experience as well.
I suggest the argument that there is no empirical evidence for any gods is pretty sound not to believe. Theists just have their subjective personal experiences that can reasonably be explained as cognitive and psychological phenomena and our ignorance in understanding the cosmos.
Modern science has had a few hundred years in 13 billion. Reverting to gods to fill the remaining gaps seems questionable.
Rustam Eynaliyev
1st reason - I don't care much for
2nd reason - I've stated my opinion on the God's morality and I don't think God is a good story to tell thus this is out of the way for me.
3rd - there could be a reason to be afraid of going to hell and we could use Pascal's wager as an argument but here's my take on it: 1) Scientific evidence (which is the best guess we have) disproves ideas stated in holy books (existence of life, and other so called "facts") which should put a doubt into minds of believers, if that part is false...even though some say that scriptures were changed and not preserved in original form - then which part of it isn't? Who's to say that all of it isn't. Pascal's wager-like arguments are completely useless because of one simple question: which God to believe in? Sure he tried investigating various religions but thousands of arguments can be made against his logic as well as methods. It could be any of the thousands of Gods or something completely different. The God itself could be wrong. Let's take an example. Let's say some ridiculously, to us unimaginable advanced race decides for whatever their advanced purposes are, to create another creature which's also unimaginably advanced to us, but still is far beyond their power. Now they implant ideas in its head that and make their existence unknown to that creature. It assumes it's the only one, and only and the master of everything
Rustam Eynaliyev
After this lengthy post, I think you see my argument is quite simple: I don't see any reason to believe in God. The default for me just as everybody else is disbelief. When you choose to believe something you must have a reason. It could be something like it makes you feel good, or it interferes with your life or it's backed by evidence, thus you need to incorporate it in your belief system to function better (e.g. gravity will pull you down whether you believe in it or not, thus resisting would be futile). I do not think there's a good reason to believe in God, thus I go to my default set of disbelief. Simple
Rustam Eynaliyev
edward long 100+
Obey No1kinobe 50+
Shall we believe in everything without evidence, Allah, reincarnation, that each planet has its own Mormon god, that there a a billion invisible gods sitting on my sofa.
Rustam Eynaliyev
The point is, you think I have to prove nonexistence of God. I disagree. Proving nonexistence is indeed trying to prove a negative which is usually impossible. I am not trying to prove nonexistence of god, rather I'm trying to give my reason for not believing in it.
It's very simple.
It's the same reason why I don't believe in a spaghetti monster or Santa Claus. I don't have a reason to.
As I said earlier the default state of a person is disbelief. Once there is a reason to change it, we change it. Meaning it's not me who needs to give a reason for my disbelief in God, it's religious people or god itself that has to give me a reason to believe in it. Or I must find a reason. I don't have a reason and haven't seen or heard good enough of a reason to make me believe in god.
I do not make a claim to knowing that god does or doesn't exist - rather my belief that it doesn't due to absence of a reason to believe otherwise.
edward long 100+
Nicholas Lukowiak 50+
Linda Taylor 50+
Daryl Roche
edward long 100+
Linda Taylor 50+
For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," and again, "The Lord will judge his people."
When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
Allah's Vengeance upon the Enemies of His Messenger will surely come to pass
Allah further says:
(And even if We take you away, We shall indeed take vengeance on them.) means, `We will inevitably wreak vengeance upon them and punish them, even if you pass away.'
(Or (if) We show you that wherewith We threaten them, then verily, We have perfect command over them.) means, `We are able to do both,' but Allah will not take His Messenger (in death) until He gives him the joy of seeing his enemies brought low and gives him power and authority over them and their wealth. This was the view of As-Suddi and was the opinion favored by Ibn Jarir.
That guy.
Peter Emer
Amirpouya Ghaemiyan 50+
If you need something, don't assume it exists, dude. If you have other reasons, I respect. But they are millions of atheists who defeat their needs. Don't reverse-engineering your God.