John Polkinghorne - Diverse Arguments for God?

Arguments about God, whether based on science, philosophy, theology or personal experience are always fascinating. Those arguments should push and be pushed in order to consider the possible existence of a Creator. We must also consider defeaters of God. For all arguments for and against God, we should explore their assumptions, logic and boundaries.

The Rev. John Charlton Polkinghorne was an English theoretical physicist, theologian, writer, and Anglican priest. He was professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge for 11 years, after which he resigned his chair to study for the priesthood, becoming an ordained Anglican priest. He served as the president of Queens’ College, Cambridge for eight years

Closer to Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[frtomsrambles]

In blessed memory of Rev'd Dr. John Polkinghorne. My fiance is an ordinand and was on placement at his parish church in Cambridge

[mosaicmind]

Just my own personal philosophy here, but I think the problem lies with the word "God" because it carries such heavy religious connotations. I lean more toward "Source" which is basically the same essence but a bit more neutral in sound. There is a source for all things. It all started somehow, someway. To me, that's the Source, and I'd like to think I'll become a part of it again. I am not a body, I am a being. I am a being having a human experience. Being is consciousness. I think it transcends. This is the philosophy that gets me thru the day.

[JasonLee-xomg]

To Mr. Kuhn, I feel for you. I can see you seeking but not finding. As someone who sought and found, I wanted share with you the the thought that helped me go over. The thought was this: even though it might not seem like it, atheism is also a religion, just like any other religion. One's religion is what one believes is the ultimate reality. "No god exists" is the ultimate reality that atheists have chosen to believe and, it takes as just much faith as any other religion since know one knows the truth. By the way, agnostics are also members of the Church of Atheism. They are just not as devout. Richard Dawkins saying that he has no religion is like the color white saying to other colors that he doesn't have a color (I'm not talking about technical definition of a color of course). Once it dawns on you that being a member of a religion is not optional, the next all important question is: which religion should I choose to believe? That is the million dollar question for you and you alone with (possibly) an infinite degree of importance. You don't have to follow my route, but my method to answering that question was...

[remrem]

When you disprove the friend in my head I'll disprove the friend in your head.

[TimBitts]

My best argument against atheism is Sam Harris.

[gordonquimby]

Dr. Polkinghorne does make two excellent “counter punches.” 1) NO scientific PROOF that other universes exist. 2) The multiverse argument to explain away fine tuning cannot explain the origin of ethical knowledge. I would add, it cannot explain consciousness, which is one of Kuhn’s greatest goals.

[EldhoseJoseph]

Main points of the video:
1. Natural Theology
- marvelous order and tuned universe which can't be random scientifically

2. Self disclosure /revelation /systematic theology
-we can't put God into test.
-we can only evaluate systematically the divine interventions.


Ps: I'm pro - God argument.

[LuisSantiago-owmu]

Old and widely contested arguments for the existence of god. Five minutes down the drain.

[sam.kendrick]

My takeaway: Mr. Kuhn is about one Roman collar away from looking like a Roman Catholic priest.

[browngreen]

Actually mumbling Brit you're making things more unintelligible, not less. What is this God that both exists and doesn't exist at the same time? If he exists what is the substance that comprises him? Elements like us? If not a substance then what? Fairy dust?

[pesilaratnayake]

"Believing in the existence of a creator ... explains God's good and perfect world." What standard of "perfect" are you using? Many Christians, Jews, and Muslims believe in the Fall, which is used to account for the appearance of imperfections in the world. Most people intuitively believe that events such as the earthquake that has left thousands dead in Turkey and Syria and many others currently crying out for help from under the rubble as incredibly tragic. To say such events are part of perfection is very much against most people's intuition. Many people believe in an afterlife where such events do not happen, and consider that to be perfect. "Perfect by definition" has no meaning as far as I can tell, but I think that's how many theistic proponents use the word.

In short, I don't know how he is using the word "perfect, " but I think most people would disagree with his definition unless he does some serious explaining.

[waerlogauk]

We have had the god of the gaps and the argument from incredulity we now move on to "wow; therefore god".

[TheTroofSayer]

I'm a god-skeptic. Not a god-denier, but I am grounded in the assumption that investing in the god question won't yield anything useful. Worse, it tends to human exceptionalism, man made in God's image & all that, which is detrimental to good science. I'm more intrigued by the role of kindness coming from animals. How do parents, of so many species, know to love & feed their children? Where does that come from? Does that prove God? Or does it suggest the opposite direction, something about the void, the distinction between the known and the unknown?

[Dion_Mustard]

Consciousness is the key to existence - the key to "god" and the key to infinity. I believe the universe(s) has ALWAYS existed. no beginning, no end - just infinite.

[adamwest]

So, it's ok to theorize and believe in a "multiverse" that you cannot prove, see or witness, but it's not ok to believe in God whom you cannot "prove, " see or witness? This is mankind picking a choosing his own realities again. Bottom line is, believing in God would require you as an egotistical person to believe that there is a power greater than you and to take responsibility for your actions and mankind is not having that.

[itsjusttoolate]

All I know is IF there's a God than he has already closed himself out from us and threw us here in prison hell earth for eternity through eternal incarnation.

[electricmanist]

While some do their best to ridicule any suggestion of a supreme creator (God), no one has been able to explain just why anything (even consciousness) exists at all.

[wendyg]

God is not a logical construct.. it is an experiential connection

[dongshengdi]

The multiverse problem.
By Paul Davies, a cosmologist not bound by any tradition.

"I usually say two cheers for the multiverse because there are good reasons of physics and cosmology for supposing that what we see may not be all you get. That there may be other regions of space and time that could be different. So it's not an unreasonable speculation. However, it falls far short of being a complete theory of existence, which is often presented as. That as if there's a multiverse, then we can forget about all the mysteries of the universe because it's all explained. Everything is out there somewhere. End of story.

Well, it's simply not true, because to get a multiverse, you need a universe-generating mechanism. Something has got to make all those big bangs go bang. So you're going to need some laws of physics to do that. And you can say, well, where do they all come from? So all you've done is shift the problem of existence up from the level of universe to the level of multiverse, but you haven't explained it.

I suppose, for me, the main problem is that what we're trying to do is explain why the universe is as it is by appealing to something outside of it. In this case an infinite number of universes outside of it. That, to me, is no better than traditional religion that appeals to an unseen unexplained God that is outside of the universe.

I'm prepared to accept that what we see isn't the totality, that there may be regions of space and time, other universes, if you like, that could be rather different from what we observe. But I certainly don't believe that all possible universes are out there, and that the explanation for the universe that we see is because everything imaginable exists, and that this particular one we see, just because it happens to be one that we live in. I think that falls far short of a proper explanation. Indeed, I think it's contradictory and absurd."

[Dismythed]

"Taste and see that Jehovah is good."—Psalm 34:8.

"'test me out, please, in this regard, ' Jehovah of armies says, 'to see whether I will not open to you the floodgates of the heavens and pour out on you a blessing until there is nothing lacking.'"—Malachi 3:10.