Board index ‹ God

[Jake the Snake]

If you were wrong about true existence of God, would you want to know?

If yes: what would it take, what would you have to see or learn, that would cause or allow you to lower your confidence?

If no: how important do you think it is for people to believe things that are true? How would an unwillingness to assess different possibilities help or inhibit people's ability to believe true things?

[jimwalton]

Yep. Absolutely. I want to know the truth. Seeking after truth is what this is all about. I want to know the truth about science, about history, about life and about religion.

> If yes: what would it take, what would you have to see or learn, that would cause or allow you to lower your confidence?

Undeniable evidence that I'm wrong. I'm very solidly convinced because of the evidence for theism, so it would take undeniable evidence to dissuade me.

[Jake the Snake]

Would you be willing to share the evidence that is most convincing to you?

[jimwalton]

Sure.

1. Everything that exhibits curious adaptation of means to ends and is such that we know whether or not it was the product of intelligent design, in fact was the product of intelligent design.

2. The universe exhibits curious adaptation of means to ends.

3. Therefore the universe is probably the product of intelligent design.

While this argument isn't airtight, in combination with about 7 other arguments it successfully shows that belief in God is by no means irrational, that the combined arguments for theism are stronger than the arguments for naturalism, and that if we truly want to infer the most reasonable conclusion, the existence of God is the strongest of the possibilities for how we came to be and why we are like what we are.