The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (SPECIAL ACCESS) KGB Political Debate Central Make JetStar a believer... A Challenge

It comes down to this: If we have free will, then God has a better than even chance of existing. Even Chaos is technically just systems too complex for our current understanding. So, if free will exists - it must be due to interface with forces that exist outside of understood physics. Otherwise, we have predestination.

While this in of itself does not prove that God exists, we can prove that, if we have free will - God CAN exist. If free will exists, we can also make a good case that there is some form of life after death - because for all we know whatever is pulling the strings on our meat puppet still exists after the puppet. In fact, lacking a co-dependant energy relationship, it is highly likely what whatever it is that pulls the strings on our meat puppet still exists after the puppet is gone.

If there is an interface between the unknown and our meat puppet , then it also stands to reason that historical cases of divine knowledge and precognition etc have a high possibility of being legit - at least in some instances. But the fact that a 2-way communication with the unknown is a requirement for free will opens all sorts of logical doors. At least if you believe in free will. If you don't believe in free will, it does not matter anyhow, because you are basically as dead as you will ever be from the moment you are born. Just more bits of matter traveling in a predetermined path, in which case nothing really matters anyway because there is nothing you can do about anything.

So, if we work from the basis of free will I posit that God is not only possible but likely.

Working from the basis of free will, you have your answer to why there are ills in the world and bad things happen to good people.

As far as evolution, and things like that go - I would say that the Old Testament is certainly not intended to be literal. Early man, and probably even modern man would not comprehend the details of something like the creation of the universe. There would also have been little point in God sharing those details.

In fact if we look at the etymology of the word "Day", we realise that God's use of the word day in the Old Testament by necessity must have been an abstraction. First of all, the concept of a day as humans understand it did not exist until after the Earth and the Sun were created.

Secondly and even more telling - the exact time it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun is NOT static. It changes. Therefore it is self-evident that God was not being literal in the Old Testament when explaining how things were made. It had to have been made so the people at the time could understand it.

From that, it is logical to conclude that science as we understand it does not conflict at all with what our historical perception of God should be. The world was obviously not created in seven days as humans know them, but since it is easily proven that God was not being literal there is no conflict between religion and science.

Also, Got created the universe in several stages, and then rested. This means that he is not literally omnipotent in the strictest sense, though could be considered so for practical purposes.

There is plenty of anecdotal evident throughout history to support the existence of a higher power. Once you take a few minutes and logically sort out early religious works, it is also evident that they were not intended to be literal, it was intended as metaphor so God did not fry puny cave-people brain with concepts they could not understand, and would have no immediate use if they did.

Now, as for evolution. It is pretty obvious that God could predict the end result of creating a particular environment. God used the Big Bang ( or however our current universe got started ) as the initial condition, with a predicted path of motion that led to the development of life and of humans. Seems pretty simple to me, though actually doing it was certainly very complex. Difficult enough than an omnipotent being/force has to rest afterwords even.

A good analogy would be the break in a game of pool. A good player can position the balls off the break. God can apparently take a glob of super compressed reality and position stars, planets, etc and load them with the stuff of life. Neat trick.

The idea that God would, or would need to go outside his own laws of physics to accomplish his will was always a mystery to me. So many people think that if it does not break the apparent laws of physics that it is not mystical or divine. What horseshit. The universe only exists as a constant because the laws are constant. If the laws were not constant, there would not be a universe. There would have been no reason God would need to go outside the established means of accomplishing change in his own universe to work his will. The idea that he would need to is silly.

Proving without doubt that God exists may not be possible. Proving that the commonly held objections to either God or Science not existing is a trivial matter. Making a case that God is very likely to exist is pretty simple. At least if free will exists. And if it doesn't, then it doesn't matter anyway.