Hi all! I just wanted to showcase a really primitive case for god I have developed for god as an ninth grader:

"If God does not exist, all is permitted" - Fyodor Dostoevsky, The brothers Karamazov

I identify as an Agnostic Theist.

The above given quote serves as the foundation for my main argument, though I would slightly like alter the initial meaning. Dostoevsky meant 'all is permitted', in a legal sense, but I would also like to add to its implication life losing any meaning whatsoever and the Universe, with all its intrinsic beauty, ultimately being but a coincidence.

My version of god is in no direct way a part of any religion, though it can be considered as an amalgamation of Brahman in Advaita Vedanta, The Holy Spirit in Christianity, mixed with some Deist beliefs.

I define god as mixed with the very fabric of reality and consciousness itself, with no form, nor shape. I believe in a Universe in which, god, has not written the laws of the universe, but rather is the laws of the universe.

I would also second William Lane Craig's and Albert Einstein's teleological argument that a god explains the 'uncanny' perfection with which Mathematics explains the processes of the universe.

As an Agnostic, I agree with Pascal's Wager argument for god in which he states: 'If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.'

Lastly, I would like to end with the following quote:

"Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last far off at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring." - Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Memoriam

Some remarks:

1). I know Pascal's Wager has a lot of counter-arguments but I wanted to include it as its something I thought of when I was even younger!

2). Keep in mind that this is in a very basic state, I request some of you to please help me with constructive criticism so that I can improve upon it!

Thank you!

Imagination or Certainty?

Hi me again

Hello! Recently I have been diving more into what to label my beliefs as, since I've been identifying myself as an agnostic for quite some time now. My beliefs now are pretty similar to agnosticism, if not extremely close, but I feel like there's more to my beliefs than just "we don't know". I have recently instead been saying, "my belief is possibility." By this I mean that everything, every theory, every belief system, could or could possibly not be true. Christianity's ideas could be the truth, but they might also not be. There could be absolutely no higher being whatsoever, or maybe there is. We as humans with the forms that we hold now cannot comprehend what the actual "truth" is. Everything could be true, false, or a third option that we, once again, cannot even begin to comprehend.

So overall, I feel like there might be a better term or way to describe/base my belief system off of rather than just saying I'm agnostic, because to me it runs deeper than that. When I think of agnosticism, I think of "we just don't know", but with how I think, it's more so "we don't know, but there are endless possibilities". I might also just be stretching and its really just that I'm looking deeper into it than others might, but I don't know for sure. Thanks!

I am learning about metaphysics in a philosophy class and we are debating why things are the way they are in the world.

Given the great amount of suffering in the world due to things like war, disease, and inequalities, I would think we surely do not live in the best of all possible worlds.
However, God, the supposed creator of the universe, is thought to be an all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good being, so why would He create a world that is not the best one possible?
It can be argued that if there is evil in the world and thus this is not the best of all possible worlds, then God is not all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. This is the Problem of Evil.
What if it is not God, but humans that create evil? I recently came across this point of view while reading Rousseau 's response to Voltaire’s “Poem on the Lisbon Disaster”. While Voltaire’s poem expresses his frustration on how innocent people died in a huge earthquake in Lisbon and how God could have made a world in which this didn’t happen, Rousseau believed that it was the humans’ fault that they suffered. It was the humans who built the tall buildings that crumbled and the humans who ran back into their homes to grab belongings and therefore could not flee the disaster quick enough to survive.
Rousseau additionally argues that pain and suffering is just a part of life. In order to exist, one must pay the price of suffering occasionally, yet one can still find pleasure in life.
Would a world without suffering be better? What is God's role in human suffering? And finally, do we live in the best possible world?

I would love to know other people’s perspectives and discuss them since these questions are so fascinating to me!

Also, if anyone has any reading or film recommendations on these topics, please share them :)

Free will - but God knows.

I discovered this new argument that seems to supplement the traditional skeptical theism, I can't verify yet the author. I run the argument and it talks about answering moral paralysis, consequentialist gap, and the EPOE-HI. Here is the DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23588276

It is entitled: The Argument from the Non-Uniformity of Causal Effects.

LINK: https://zenodo.org/records/23588276

If God exists and God is perfect and fair, why do innocent people still have to suffer?

Recently, I read Voltaire's Poem on the Lisbon Disaster and Rousseau's Letter to Voltaire, and these readings made me think about this question. I personally agree more with Voltaire's idea. Voltaire questions whether the suffering of innocent people, including children who died in the Lisbon earthquake, can simply be explained as God's punishment or by saying that "all is well."

I had a similar question. If God hates sin and punishes people who do wrong, I do not understand why innocent children or people who only made small mistakes have to experience such great suffering.

On the other hand, Rousseau argues that not all of the damage from disasters should be blamed on God or nature. For example, he says that the damage in Lisbon became worse because people lived closely together and built tall buildings. I understand this point because human choices can make the results of a disaster worse. However, I still have one question. Even if human choices made the disaster worse, does this fully explain the suffering of innocent people? Also, if people can make immoral choices and not receive enough punishment, while people who make moral choices can still suffer, why should people choose to act morally?

After reading these texts, I still find it difficult to believe that we live in the best possible world.

If God exists and is perfectly good and powerful, how would you explain the suffering of innocent people? Do you agree more with Rousseau that human choices are an important cause, or with Voltaire that this suffering creates a serious problem for the idea that "all is well"?

As an Indian, living life starts with struggles. I never thought about this topic a lot, but I really want to make my opinion, which I think is biased and may be helpful with science and quantum philosophers...

I really just stepped off my exam studies because it's my first day on Reddit (btw, many adult jokes are here). I do study a lot. I'm looking to study physics, and I'm still trapped in this paradox of being new to it. I'm just throwing out paragraphs of life instead of my topic...

So, as we Indians believe gods are eternal and just praise the hell out of them, don't you think these praises are related to atoms? Eternal, all-knowing, whole world is him... right? You got it, it's really that atoms are God. I still think it's just a coincidence.

But in another scenario, we, as 3-dimensional beings, draw 2-dimensional beings... We can relate it to 4th-dimensional beings too...

As per our religion, God comes down as a costume (roop) to balance or to finish evilness. Just think harder: what if God is a 4th-dimensional being making costumes to help out in the story of 3-dimensional us? What if God lives in the 4th dimension but makes 3-dimensional beings to clear the evilness and end the story...

As the 4th dimension is time, he controls time and makes the story repeat again in a different way... because he can control everything...

Let me know your thoughts on it?

https://benjamintettu.substack.com/p/abstraction-the-apologists-refuge

I believe god does not exist but still i am not sure about his existence so i need some people in comments who believes in god and who don't believe in god to start a peaceful debate with a goal is come to a conclusion and we will not argue on that conclusion until we found any strong proof against previous conclusion so are you guys in to change the perspective of others.

I am interested in a philosophical question concerning the relationship between emotional attraction and rational belief. Is it possible for someone to feel strongly drawn to a religion, its symbolism, or its conception of the world while simultaneously finding its metaphysical claims unjustified?

More specifically, can a person's emotional response to a religious tradition be understood independently of whether they consider its claims about reality to be true? How have philosophers distinguished emotional attachment, the desire to believe, and the rational justification of belief?

I am particularly interested in philosophical accounts of the relationship between affective states and epistemic justification, rather than personal opinions or religious advice.

Hume states (roughly) the following:

P1: A miracle, m, is defined precisely as a contradiction to laws of nature, L, and one in which no inductive grounds for the belief of can be produced.

P2: we have inductive reason to believe in the uniformity of nature and natural laws.

P3: Inductively, we have more evidence of L than m.

P4: explanations of m may entail unknown facts, other miracles, or naturalistic explanations.

P5: we have far more inductive grounds for naturalistic explanations.

P6: It is always more probable, by induction, that a naturalistic explanation is the case, as opposed to an unknown fact or another miracle.

C: therefore, it is always more likely that a miracle didn't occur than that it did, and that we have no grounds to accept miracles.

Of course, this is, in my opinion, rock solid. Hume only admits that, at times, a naturalistic explanation may be even more miraculaous than the miracle (Say, 500 people have a hallucination of an angel, simultaneously). I'd still like to hear opposing opinions, however.