Proof of God’s existence
Or, at least, a guess at what it might consist of.
There’s an interesting debate going on between Jerry Coyne and P. Z. Myers on the provability of God’s existence. The standard atheist position on this matter seems to be disbelief for lack of evidence to the contrary, but that in principle it might be possible to conjure some piece of evidence that might prove, beyond reasonable doubt, that “God” exists. Coyne offers, as an example, a series of highly unlikely events, all perpetrated by a being calling himself Jesus. Myers rightly insists he still would not believe in God or Jesus if these happened.
As many of the commenters on Coyne’s post noted, this feat might easily have been performed by aliens—or indeed by Zeus, or Thor, or any other deity you could care to mention. We might bring in objections based on how likely these deities are to pretend they’re Jesus, but that’s immaterial, for we are told that God moves in mysterious ways.
Although Myers is correct in resisting as evidence a series of unlikely events, he goes one step further and entirely denies the possibility that there could be any evidence of God’s (or possibly just a god’s) existence. He is right to be extremely cautious, because it is pretty difficult to think of something that God might do to prove his existence. Almost oxymoronically, it will not suffice to simply present himself, for the aforementioned reasons: he might simply be a very powerful non-god pretending. One imagines, also, that if God came down to us he would not be able to offer us an a priori proof of his existence, since if it involves self-evidence it is likely already to have been achieved. Of course, it’s not impossible, either.
So I thought about what God might do to prove his existence (if he/she/it existed), and here is what I have. Suppose that a being of some description descended from the sky and announced his presence before the world. Let’s say she convened a press conference. Now suppose that this being made the claim that God exists, and that she can prove it. She then presents a physics paper that answers some previously unanswered scientific mystery with the claim that only God (being constituted of certain parts necessary to call him God) could possibly explain it. The paper is shown to leading physicists, and they all agree that there is no alternative answer. To allay any remaining doubts, she presents for our delectation a video (in some yet-to-be-invented format), actually showing God creating the universe, as well as everything else that followed. It will, of course, be possible to fast-forward. The point of the video is to show certain cosmological phenomena that scientists are not yet aware of, but whose existence can further be proved by a series of unerring physics papers. Again, the scientists will look over these papers and see that they are good.
Of course, none of this necessarily says anything about the nature of God, other than telling us those properties he must have (according to the first paper) in order to create the universe. But the virtue of the scenario, in the context of proving God’s existence, is that it’s not merely unlikely. It is also, as far as I can see, impossible (but not logically impossible) without the existence of a God. Assuming that the scientists who read the papers really are good, it is unlikely they will be fooled by a paper that fraudulently claims to show beyond doubt that God must exist. It is still possible for them all to be put under some spell, but that’s something of an evasion, because as far as we’re concerned, it is science that’s just as valid as any that went before it, and, if we are to be rigorous to a fault, we would have to conclude, in all honesty, that we don’t know whether the world around us exists.
But such proof is almost infinitely unlikely, judging by past experience, ever to appear; so the intellectually honest approach is to go on as though God doesn’t exist.
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History has it’s first demonstrable PROOF for faith!
The accumulating scandals shaking the roman catholic church, most recently in Belgium, and new investigations into the Vatican bank, will look a mere trifle compared to the perfect storm that appears to be on the way. For these growing, worldwide sexual scandals, exposing the endemic institutional corruption of this tradition, while betraying thousands of children and the faithful, only reflect a far greater crime against humanity itself and is setting the stage for the ‘churches’ worst nightmare: the questioning of it’s very origins! And that has already started on the web. But not by any atheist ravings. We may very well come to remember the church as two thousands years of accumulated hubris and theological self deception, retailing a counterfeit copy of revealed truth.
For on the horizon is an approaching religious and cultural furore so contentious, any clash of civilizations may have to wait. On one side, a manuscript titled: The Final Freedoms, against all the gravitas religious tradition can bring to bear.
The first wholly new interpretation for 2000 years of the Gospel/moral teachings of Christ is on the web. Redefining all primary elements including Faith, the Word, Law, Baptism, the Trinity and especially the Resurrection. Questioning the validity and origins of all Christian tradition, and focusing specifically on marriage, love and human sexuality, it overturns all natural law ethics and theory. What history, philosophy, science and theology have agreed was not possible has happened and at stake is the credibility of several thousand years of religious history.
What first appears a counter intuitive challenge to the religious status quo is worth closer examination; it carries within its pages a wisdom which the theological history of religion either ignored, were unable to imagine or dismissed. An error of presumption which could now leave ‘tradition’ staring into the abyss and humble all secular, atheist speculation.
Using a synthesis of scriptural material drawn from the Old and New Testaments, the Apocrypha , The Dead Sea Scrolls, The Nag Hammadi Library, and some of the world’s great poetry, as in the beginning, it describes and teaches a single moral Law, a single moral principle, a single test of faith, and delivers on the Promise of its own proof; one in which the reality and will of God responds directly to an act of perfect faith with a demonstration of his omnipotence, an individual intervention into the natural world, ‘raising’ up the man, correcting human nature by a change in natural law, altering biology, consciousness and human ethical perception beyond all natural evolutionary boundaries. Intended to be understood metaphorically, where ‘death’ and darkness are ignorance and ‘Life’ and light are knowledge, this personal experience of omnipotent transcendent power and moral purpose is our ‘Resurrection’, and justification for faith. From here, on a perfectly objective foundation of moral principle, conduct and virtue, true morality and ‘Life’ begins.
The first ever viable religious conception capable of leading reason, by faith, to observable consequences which can be tested and judged is now a reality. A teaching that delivers the first ever religious claim of insight into the human condition, that meets the Enlightenment criteria of verifiable, direct cause and effect, evidence based truth embodied in experience. For the first time in history, however unexpected, the world must contend with a claim to new revealed truth, a moral wisdom not of human intellectual origin, offering access by faith, to absolute proof, an objective basis for moral principle and a fully rational and justifiable belief!
This is ‘religion’ without any of the conventional embellished trappings of tradition. An individual, spiritual, virtue-ethical conception, independent of all cultural perception; contained within a single moral command and single Law that finds it’s expression of obedience within a new covenant of marriage. It requires no institutional framework or hierarchy, churches or priest craft, no scholastic theological rational, dogma or doctrine, no ones permission and stripped of all theological myth, ‘worship’ requires only conviction, faith and the necessary measure of self discipline to accomplish a new, single, moral imperative and the integrity and fidelity to the new Divinely created reality.
If confirmed and there appears both the means and an ongoing and growing concerted effort to test and authenticate this material, this will represent a paradigm change in both faith and in the moral and intellectual potential of human nature itself; untangling the greatest questions of human existence: consciousness, meaning, suffering, free will and evil. And at the same time addressing the most profound problems of our age.
While every day, from every television screen, newspaper, radio and web, the limitations of mankind are becoming both obvious and ominous by the failure to successfully address and resolve the most pressing problems facing the modern world, threatening humanity and the earth itself, this revelation offers a way to cut the Gordian knot.
Providing the ‘means to ends’ this new teaching is asking humanity, choose the future you prefer? The status quo, where existing religious traditions, mired in their own contradictions, corruption, hypocrisy and hocus-pocus, offer little but pretensions and divisiveness, and where existing political process can only feebly respond to the growing chaos of more war, terrorism, economic turmoil, environmental degradation, injustice, spin and whitewash, natural disaster, plague and pandemic; or learn to comprehend that human nature, prisoner to its evolutionary root, exists within fixed limits of understanding, and by taking new personal and moral responsibility, in a single change of mind, heart and conduct, by faith, transcend those limits and blow the status quo strait to oblivion.
Trials of this new teaching are open to all and under way in many countries, colloquial evidence already suggest confirmations are taking place. For those individuals who can shake off their existing prejudices, imagine outside the cultural box of history, stand against the stream of fashionable thought and spin, who have the moral courage to learn something new and will TEST this revelation for themselves, an intellectual and moral revolution is already under way, where the ‘impossible’ becomes inevitable, with the most potent, political, Non Violent Direct Action any human being can take to advance peace, justice, change and progress.
Published [at the moment] only on the web, a typeset manuscript of this new teaching is available as a free [1.4meg] PDF download from an increasing number of links including:
http://www.energon.org.uk
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