My first point comes up from a Facebook post a friend of mine had made.
So what is my argument here? It's rather simple really. Neither of these are proofs but yet people use them as such. Both tell the tales of someone, but neither one is really the proof of such an entity, just a recounting of their tales.
To be more specific, the Bible as a whole can be seen as more of like a text book.
A bible = Proof of God
Same as
A Physics Text Book = Proof of Physics
Same as
A History Text Book = Proof of Historical Events
Why?
The Bible, same as a text book, is only a collected work of the accumulated knowledge on a subject. Can you prove that because a history text book says that Abe Lincoln was assassinated that this is true? Can you prove that Hamlet is a real spoken word tale because it was simply written?
In a similar fashion, the Bible is not a proof of God. It can be taken instead as the collected works and writings of those faithful to a specific deity, but that's about it.
Now for proof of something, you need more, if we were to prove that spiderman exists we would need
1)Physical evidence
2)Eye Witness Accounts
3)Philosophical premise that has solid logical foundation.
- Now how many people have found physical proof of Spider Man? Have there been web droppings left behind or criminals strung up against a wall? What about a calling card that says "Spider Man" on it?
- How many people have attested to seeing Spider Man save the day or stop some form of treachery.
- Can the theory of there being a man who is imbued with the powers of a spider be possible and sound?
Unfortunately, the only one that has any merit is the last one, and that's only the last one, and that's only if genetic engineering has advanced that far. Even then, it wouldn't be very stable because last I checked, spiders don't shoot webbing from their legs.
Now as for proof of God. There is very little that one can argue is a physical proof of God. There are historical findings for events in the Bible having some plausibility, but as for physical proofs of God, there is very little there.
As for eye witness accounts on the existence of God. These can come by the baker's dozen every hour on the hour on a daily basis. The question however being, what does that add up to though? Can the eye witness account of a single person or even a hundred give any more credibility to an event occurring? What about when you start to add time to that eye witness account, and hell, let's say that the measure of time is a few hundred years. Is it still a valid account then?
Unfortunately the eye witness accounts of others is at best questionable solely because we as humans lack the ability to share our thoughts so that they are mutually 100% accepted and understood and witnessed. No until we can develop telepathy can we be 100% certain that what one person perceived is exactly what they are recounting.
As for logical proofs of God. Well, this one I throw over to Saint Thomas Aquinas.
- First Mover - A body at rest stays at rest until a body in motion puts it into motion. But if we have all these bodys that are in motion, what set them into motion One can say the big bang, and there are theories about that, but effectively Aquinas argues that the first motion was that very devine being.
- First Cause - Everything comes from something. And although there is evidence of things appearing out of nothing and then disappearing immediately, we don't just have the existence of objects out of nothing. So there has to be an initial cause, this said cause Aquinas argues is God.
- Contingent Being - Everything exists because something is making it exists at this moment. Without that something, it would all just go poof. Think of like a domino effect, except that the dominos are stacked up against one another. In order for them to move something must always be pushing or pulling on them, otherwise, there would be no current movement. Be that the force of a finger or the pull of Gravity, something is acting upon that thing to make it move. Aquinas argues that this is entity known as God is what moves existence forward.
- Greatest Being - So some argue that if there is a God, then why not multiple gods? Why aren't there pantheons? The argument here however is that there would be a hierarchy for where there would be a single entity at the very top of the heap. In the world there is also almost always a hierarchy system put into place. Be it food chains, be it orders of magnitude, be it the corporate ladder, or just that totem pole you came across as a child. One way or another the concept of a hierarchy exists and because it exists there is the concept that over everything, there can be something that is greater than everything else. But we will eventually run out of things to tally and rank, so at the very end of it all Aquinas argues that the single greatest being at the top of that heap is what we would refer to as God.
Now why am I not running through the disproval of God? Because this article is about the "proof of", not the "disproval of" a deity. So does the Bible "Prove God Exists?" Does a comic book "Prove SpiderMan Exists?" Honestly my friends, no, they don't. They tell you about these figures, but they do little to prove these things. Whether you believe it to be true is a different story, but the burden of proof of these entities lies in other places or in other perspectives and not purely in the works themselves.
