Does God exist? Or, is there a God?

TO ALL Atheists and Agnostics - DISPROVE GOD by disproving this argument, if you don't; therefore God Exists!

Thomas Aquinas:
1 of 5 arguments for the existence of God.
(my summary, forgive any errors, they are my own)

As a proof the God exists, God is the first mover or "The unmoved mover"

Summary:
The argument of the unmoved mover, argues that God must be the first cause of motion in the universe.
1) Some things are in motion.
2) A thing cannot, in the same respect and in the same way, move itself: it requires a mover.
3) An infinite regress of movers is impossible.
4) Therefore, there is an unmoved mover from whom all motion proceeds.
Conclusion: This mover, everyone calls God.

Can you disprove it or break this logic?

God exists not out there, but in my heart. God is the fuel that drives my value system. God is the reason I survived death to this point.

I was raised Roman Catholic, hated it as a kid. Wasn't friendly, wasn't warm and welcoming. I checked out mentally throughout my teen years.

Then Parris Island happened, and like many others, I found God. He was there, in boot camp, when I needed him/her/it. I graduated boot camp, kinda forgot about God for awhile, and then ended up in the Gulf War in harm's way.

"God", or the idea of God, was there waiting for me again. It felt good, familiar, and it really helped many of us.

Then the war was over, and God kinda dropped off my radar again.

I got married, and eventually, my wife became pregnant. During the birth of my son, and daughter, I again thought about God and all the wonders that are in this lifetime. He was there.

My daughter and son BOTH had medical things wrong with them throughout the years. My daughter was an infant with a malformation in her 'soft spot' on her head. I prayed, hard. Our family did. Surgery was scheduled. Prior to the surgery, she had an exam and an MRI or whatever it was, and the malformation resolved itself. It was gone, completely. God? Maybe. Probably. Or maybe just luck.

As a teenager, my son had a sudden growth appear on his neck. It was bad, large enough that it pushed his adam's apple to the side. We went through the tests, doctor visits, jumping from one specialist to another, second and third and fourth opinions. He was in pain, it was complicated, and surgeons were afraid to touch it. We were scared, in a dark place, and as parents we felt HELPLESS. I hated it.

We prayed. Our church and family and friends prayed.

We found a surgeon in NYC who was the first to perform the surgery needed for this condition. He teaches people all over the world. Within 5 minutes of seeing our son, he smiled and looked at us and said, "I know what this is. I've seen this hundreds of times, and successfully removed these for years. He will be ok."

Like others, I can go on and on with situations that made me wonder about the big guy/gal upstairs.

I will say this...

How could all of this - everything in the entire universe - be an accident? It had to originate somewhere? Sometime? Right? There is NO definitive explanation for how this all came to be. Every answer presented only opens up a dozen more questions. Our minds cannot wrap itself around the WHO, HOW, WHAT, WHY, WHEN.

Do I believe in God, the way it is portrayed in the bible, as Christianity sees it? I don't think so.

Do I believe in God, the creator of all things? Yes, I do believe in an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, omnibenevolent Supreme Being (or entity).

But then again... if he/she/it exists... what create him/her/it?

There are eye witness accounts of what Jesus did and there absolutely is an empty tomb in Jerusalem today. I am His witness and He lives in me. If you or anyone who comes across this message want to hear my testimony of who I was before and what I am in Christ Jesus today inbox me please. Seek Him out while He still maybe found

Nothin' plus nuthin' equals EVERYTHING is just too much for me to swallow, warriors. I can observe creation. I see order in many things I see (birds, bees, trees, family, etc). I see friendship and love and family and also feel that sense of family when i'm with other vets. I've got a great life. While I observe creation and take part in it, I have that sense that there MUST be a Creator. That's just a ground-pounder/GED type opinion tho. Cool topic and enjoy many of your comments. Hope you are all having a great week. -Kemp

I just see no reason for us to be here if there is no higher power, no hope of life after death. And regardless of what Richard Dawkins says, I just don't see how we came here by accident. Some say natural selection. The equivalent of chance, in my mind. To me, there just seems to be too much order and design in the world for there not to be a God. All the chaos and evil that happens...I believe God has a reason for allowing it.

God does truly exist. I believe in his power, and that he watches us and hears our prayers. God isn't a state of mind, God is a real divinity.

I have to ask one question . If you have been shot and stabbed and run over by a truck left for dead and poisoned and run over again . Do you really think God did not have a hand in keeping you alive? How many times do you think that God has to prove to you of his existence ?

The single biggest, glaring contradiction within Christianity is the belief in the existence of Hell. (Jews do not believe in Hell, per say.) Christians believe that there exists a being who has total omniscience (knows everything) and total omnipotence (can do anything) and creates the universe which we know and love, then creates people to populate it with. It is claimed over and over that this God loves us as his children. For those of us who have children, what do you want for them? Do you want them to live their entire lives groveling at your feet, thanking you for giving them life, or do you want them to strike out on their own, be good people and find their own way? All of the evidence in the Bible points to God being an abusive parent. He is petty, jealous, vindictive and insecure. He states under no uncertain terms that if we do not obey his every word and give our lives to him in service, he will condemn our immortal souls to eternal suffering.

If you're to believe most Christians, God does not want us to grow as individuals. He does not want us to explore His creation and find meaning and understanding in the wonder if the universe. He wants us to point to everything we do not understand and say "God did it!"

I am not an atheist. I can't stand hard atheists who claim that God definitely does not exist at all. There is no statement that is more un-scientific. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Deity is an unknown... the ultimate unknown. Any one who says with certainty that God does or does not exist subscribes to a dangerous form of fundamentalism.

I am a weak agnostic... or a weak theist, depending on the day. If a divine being did create the universe, he left it at that and left no specific instructions that were not filtered through layers of human ego. I have no problem believing in a creator deity, but it is NOT the God of Abraham. That God is not a true God... it is an evil, selfish, prideful demon that has caused immense amounts of human death and suffering by way of willful ignorance.

(Edited for clarity)

Man, you are busting open a can of worms with this one. Not what I initially expected to see on a military networking site, but I'm quickly realizing everything is free game here.

I'm an atheist, which means the best arguments I have found are atheist ones. If the best arguments I'd found were theist, then I wouldn't be an atheist, naturally. For context's sake, I was raised Catholic and believed in its doctrine till my mid-teens. A period of irreligious theism followed until I was 21, when I converted to Islam. After two years I discarded those beliefs and have been an atheist ever since: the result of insatiable curiosity and constant questioning throughout my life.

I don't want to type too much, but the best (and most polite?) arguments I've found against the existence of a deity are from Bertrand Russell's book, "Why I am not a Christian". It is very interesting regardless of one's opinion, and he wrote it at a level that should be easily understood by anyone who's graduated high school. I mention that last bit because I've tried reading some really dense, unbearable stuff which could have absolutely been "dumbed down" without losing any meaning.

As for some arguments off the top of my head, I'll at least put forth my favorite argument for why the very concept of omnipotence is an oxymoron: Can an all-powerful being create an object which it cannot move/manipulate/insert-verb-of-choice-here? If it can create an object that it cannot move, then the being is not all-powerful because it does not have the ability to move the object. If it cannot create such an object, then it is not all-powerful because there is something which it cannot create. Therefore, omnipotence is self-contradictory, and there can be no such thing as an omnipotent being. I would extend that to argue that any person or group proclaiming the existence of an explicitly omnipotent god has just admitted the falsehood of their particular faith.

I'm going on longer than intended....oh well, I'm deployed and therefore bored stupid.

Regarding an omniscient being: If an omniscient being exists, that means it knows everything: past, present, future...your thoughts, thoughts you haven't had yet, the position of a comet that will slam into Earth and when...everything. If something can know everything, then there is no free will, no chance, no coincidences: everything is predetermined. Every wonderful thing that has and will happen, and every disgusting evil thing is predetermined. If it's somehow not predetermined, then it cannot be known. Knowledge can only be of reality, otherwise it wouldn't be knowledge. If there's an omniscient being, then we all have a fate, and nothing is within our control. To have control would require free will and the ability to do something not predetermined, impossible with an omniscient being. If nothing is within in our control, which naturally includes our beliefs: there is no point in believing one thing vs another thing. It doesn't matter whether I'm an atheist and so-and-so is a Buddhist and this other person is an evangelical, because we all have our fates, whatever they are. There may or may not be a heaven and hell in this hypothetical scenario of an omniscient being, and this being may or may not be an eternal creator. And if it IS an eternal creator, it already knew if/when it would create our universe, and our fates, and everything. And therefore, this supreme being/eternal creator ALSO HAS NO FREE WILL OR CONTROL, because by the nature of knowledge, it too has a fate. With an omniscient being EVERYTHING is pre-determined, INFINITELY predetermined, with no exceptions. If there's an omniscient being, it's just as much a pawn as we are. And given no evidence of predetermination, and in light of evidence that there is no such thing as predetermination (e.g. it's impossible to know where a quantum particle is or will be at any given time, one can only calculate the probability it will be in a given area), I would argue that there is no omniscient being in existence.

Regarding omnipresence: I honestly don't know what to do with that concept. I don't even know what would constitute evidence for the existence of an omnipresent being. To me, existence and space-time are more or less interchangeable, and we are very confident that space-time is not infinite. So I think someone would be hard-pressed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that there exists something which transcends space-time. And if it transcends it, could it ever be observed? To those who say they know there's something because they "experience" it or feel it or whatever, I must remind you that the human brain is a remarkable and powerful organ. The voices and sensations of presence that a schizophrenic experiences are very real to him/her, but that does not mean they exist outside the space between his/her ears. I'm not saying people that have "felt god's presence" are schizophrenic, but I am saying that the biological mechanism for such experiences is very real and does not serve as evidence of an omnipresent being. And if there is an omnipresent being, we've already demonstrated that it cannot be omnipotent, so who knows if such a being would have any power over us anyway? Or whether or not it created us? Or whether or not it does anything but simply exist without interacting with the universe? It's a pointless pursuit in my opinion.

Regarding an omnibenevolent being: If such a being exists, then why is there suffering? If you wanna add the heaven/hell thing into the mix, then an omnibenevolent being means you'll never go to hell forever! Some apologists I've read and spoken to use the "parent argument" to claim their god can be both all-loving and yet condemn you to eternal, unrelenting, incomprehensible, pure suffering. It essentially boils down to this: just because your parents punish you for your wrong-doings does not mean they don't love you (unconditionally). They do it because it's what's best for you. How does eternal damnation to incomprehensible suffering qualify as being in one's best interest, in any circumstance? It's not like you're going to learn a lesson and move one, because it's eternal. The purpose is not rehab, it's retributive punishment. I could see how a scenario with an omnibenevolent god who sends people to either heaven or hell would be plausible if people were only sent to hell temporarily, commensurate with their deeds. But then it still doesn't matter what you do or believe, because ultimately, with an all-loving god and a heaven and hell, everyone goes to heaven. And need there exist a heaven and hell along with this omnibenevolent being? No. Just because I exist, doesn't mean some other arbitrary construct has to. So if we have an omnibenevolent being, does that even make for anything? It doesn't necessarily have power over us, since it can't be omnipotent. But back to my very first point: if there's an omnibenevolent being, why is there suffering? If it has the power to eliminate our suffering and it doesn't, then it's cruel and not omnibenevolent. And if it doesn't have that power, then what's the point of it existing? To send us to heaven (which need not exist either)? If it can't cure our suffering now, then does it even have that ability, if heaven exists? It's pointless.

And finally, I noticed your inclusion of "necessarily extant Creator" in your description of a deity. I'm going to assume that you're referring to the "first cause" or "uncaused cause" argument? This argument is very thoroughly refuted in the book I recommended at the beginning. My attempts to recall and transcribe the refutation accurately would not be futile, but they would be poor. I'll put forth a little something anyway. If a theist posits that a god created the universe, that begs the question of who/what created that god? The theist may reply that god was uncaused, it just always was. But that argument is so easily applied to the universe (multiverse?) itself. I can posit that the universe and or existence was uncaused, it just is what it is. (Lawrence Krauss actually demonstrates how this is mathematically/physically possible in his book, "A Universe from Nothing", but we'll keep it strictly hypothetical/philosophical here). It is arbitrary for the theist to dismiss any causes prior to their creator god. Why not go back 3 stages from the creator god? Why not 100? By that extension, why even bring a creator god into the mix? Why can't the universe itself be that uncaused cause? Any attempt to argue that the universe can't be that uncaused cause is to rely upon a cause arbitrarily prior to the universe's existence. To bring science into the mix now, given our understanding that it is physically possible for the universe to have arose from "nothing" (Krauss demonstrates that it is actually impossible for true nothingness to exist, suggesting existence may be infinite, in one form or another), it is redundant and unnecessary to add a previous cause (i.e. a creator god). So if an eternal creator god is unnecessary and redundant, and there is no evidence for such a being, what's the point of believing in one? And regarding my mention of the possibility of existence being eternal, a creator god then makes even less sense. Existence already exists and always has in that scenario, therefore it was not created. A god is not necessary for that scenario, and so there is still no point believing in one.

I will conclude with this, because I saw some posts about faith and how it's a good concept. I think it is an utterly evil concept. It is antithetical to knowledge and reason. By definition, it is the belief in something without evidence. How is this a good thing? One can say that faith in some things is good, while faith in other things is bad, and that faith is not the problem, the things are the problem. No. It does not matter what it is used for, the underlying principal is the same. Faith in a kind god that will send everyone to heaven is in the same intellectual ballpark as faith that killing a group of people will get you into heaven. Reason is our mechanism of survival, and faith is abandonment and/or rejection of that mechanism. It has demonstrated itself to be a slippery slope to violence countless times over human history. To those that argue you have faith in your friends, or that I have faith that my country will come try to save me if I am shot down over hostile terrain: it's not faith, it's trust. Trust is based on evidence, and on promises and contracts between people. It's based on reasons based in reality. I trust my friends because they are reliable. I trust the gov't to come get me if I get shot down because they've done it before when feasible. I trust that I can walk down the street and not get mugged because it's statistically unlikely (and because I carry concealed, look out robbers), etc. Faith is irrational and therefore evil. Trust is based in reality.