free12thinker

Can anyone actually justify this as a reason to believe in God's existence. I was listening to Sean Hannity (as I often do for good laughs), and an Atheist called in to object to Hannity's classification of America as a Christian-based country (yeah right). Anyway, Hannity was questioning the Atheists lack of belief in God, and when the Atheist asked why Hannity believed in God, Hannity replied, "I don't see how anyone could look at the world around us and not see that there had to be a Creator behind it all". The Atheist asked Hannity if there were any other factors in his belief and he stated "faith", but nothing else.

I have had six thousand dozen people give me the "BEAUTY OF THE EARTH" explanation, or the "COMPLEXITIES OF OUR BODY" explanation. Do they completely shun the scientific findings and methods and cures and blah blah blah that we have discovered over all of these years? I want to pull my hair out sometimes. Even if we throw in faith, no one can justify having faith (blind trust) in something with no prior credibility. Where did the trust come from?

But anyway, back to the topic. The beauty of the earth should lend no weight to the argument that God exists.

Hans

My own disagreement with this type argument is that it is impossible to deduce between our world the way it is without the existence of their god and with the existance of their god. Both would seem to be identical.

Abacus

And what's more, assuming that there was a Creator (which is quite debatable), how does this then imply that the Creator is the Christian god? The creator could just as easily be Zeus, The Great Spirit, Bob the Raingod, or something else. I find the concept that the universe can be attributed to the creative act of a specific, manmade deity, out of a whole plethora of manmade deities to be dubious. If there is a Creator, I'd bet money that it isn't among those that mankind has imagined.

Methos

I was talking to a Xian a couple weeks ago and he gave me the same thing when I said "How do you know there is a god?" And when he said that, I responded by saying that he wasn't giving the universe and nature enough credit for what it is able to do. He responded by saying "I'm not giving it any credit because God created the universe, so only he deserves the credit." I just rolled my eyes. <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Eric

Veil of Fire

Nature IS god!

Grumpy

VoF... Funny you should mention that. There was a recent flame-war in the Letters to the Editor of the local paper. A prominent Russian Orthodox clergyman had written an essay on the spiritual roots of environmentalism. Protestant Christians complained that his equation of nature with God was pagan and not Christian at all.

As much as I might admire the clergyman's gumption, I gotta say that the Protestants have a point. Nature=God is not supported by Christian theology, except in the most liberal interpretation. By the time one gets to that interpretation, there is a legitimate risk of not being considered Christian anymore.

[ May 14, 2002: Message edited by: Grumpy ]</p>

Ojuice5001

I think this argument makes sense. It's not rationally coercive by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a completely legitimate reason.

Basically, this observation is intended to provoke the question "Why do humans see the universe as beautiful?" One possible answer is that it is beautiful in an objective sense. This answer, though compatible with atheism, is not compatible with naturalism. Most (maybe all) nontheistic versions wind up being some sort of pantheism like that of Plato or Theradava Buddhism. It is just too hard to think of a good definition of "beauty" that is a natural fact about the beautiful objects of nature. The argument is aimed at a naturalist, so it does clash with the position it is intended to. I don't for one minute agree with Random Number Generator's idea that it's supposed to prove the Christian God. Some other factor is supposed to do that after naturalism has been abanoned. (And I'm not a Christian, so of course I'm not arguing that it has to be the Xian god. Nor am I saying it clearly points to the Roman gods, which I do believe in.)

So the target of the argument is a naturalist, and his response, it seems to me, must take the form of claiming that the beauty of nature is subjective. (Unless I'm wrong in saying that there can't be a definition of beauty that makes it an objective, natural fact.) So there must be a natural explanation for the fact that humans that makes them find something like the Rocky Mountains or the sky to be beautiful. Trouble is, I don't know what it would be. There's no real survival advantage to an appreciation of natural beauty. It appears at an early age and is culturally universal; this argues strongly against its being culturally determined.

Bottom line is, human appreciation of natural beauty can be explained much better by supernaturalism than by naturalism. This is so because beauty is not a natural property. So I think this argument does make sense, and deserves a lot more respect than the original post gives it. It's neither very strong nor very weak.

[ May 13, 2002: Message edited by: Ojuice5001 ]</p>

Veil of Fire

Grumpy: Which is probably one of the reasons I'm not Christian.

Dank

Were the aborigines singing 'Rocky Mountain High?' Or did they consider mountains forboding places where the gods lived and man should not tread? I think what you consider beautiful would be frightening to the primitives....you're imposing modern definitions of beauty on them

Veil of Fire

"Were the aborigines singing 'Rocky Mountain High?'"

*lol* *lol* *lol*