But no leap that a mega-mind just came into existence by itself?
Well you can make predictions about the properties of quarks and measure them using things like cyclotrons. Are there are properties of God that you can test?
Do you know the difference between blind faith, and faith based on evidence and experience?
So, to be consistent, you have an equal belief in the following two?
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I have an invisible dragon in my garage.
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Nuclear fusion is going on inside the sun.
This was precisely my reaction to the OP. What do you want this thread to be about? However, I’ll take a stab at both, very briefly.
If you’re looking for someone to try to defend this particular belief, you’ve come to the wrong place.
What do you mean by “If God is magic”?
But the best response here is, "Why should God have made the universe a cartoon? The complex, intricate, scientifically explainable universe we do have is both far superior on aesthetic, artistic grounds, and presumably better suited to the purpose for which the Creator created a universe.
As for the thread title’s question, I readily admit that any of my beliefs—not just religious beliefs, but beliefs about anything—could very well be wrong. Or partly right, or inadequate, or true in a metaphorical sense, or a rough approximation to the way things really are. And that’s okay; I don’t have to be certain about everything.
My religious beliefs are (or should be) not just a set of intellectual propositions to assent to, but a relationship I have (with God) and a way of life I follow (or try to). If you asked “Why are you so sure the Pythagorean theorem is true?” or “Why are you so sure that E = mc[sup]2[/sup]?” it would be appropriate to respond with a mathematical proof or scientific evidence. But if you asked “Why are you so sure that you’re in the right career?” or “Why are you so sure you ought to be married to your spouse/fiancee?” that’s a different kind of question, to which a different kind of answer is appropriate.
See also Last Thursdayism.
Something exists. Therefore I am certain that God exists. Weird, perhaps, but works for me.
Can’t assail that logic.
OK, my last post was snippy. But le’s assume for the moment that the fact that we are here shows that God exists. What does that tell us? Does it mean that God is directing the universe, that the natural laws don’t always apply. that he is benevolent, that we know what his purpose is? Exactly what do you get from your belief?
Couldn’t your logic just as easily (more really) lead to the idea that there is a nasty God that created the universe for his own amusement as he watches us suffer from disease and fight amongst ourselves over which religion is best? Isn’t it just as likely that there is a God perverse enough that he will make your life worse if you believe in him, or in the wrong version of him?
In my mind, if there is “something” that created the Universe but we have no way of finding out anything about it, and the world works exactly the same way with or without it, and it has no influence on our lives, then it is functionally the same as it not existing.
Because lately it seems like, “blah blah blah, religion is evil, people who are religious are stupid and deluded and crazy, blah blah.” It’s getting old. :rolleyes:
Actually, the thread has taken a turn upward & even before I made that post, in retrospect, there were only two posts that I considered to be pissing in the pool.
So this is becoming a good thread after all!
I’ve touched on this in other similar threads before, but I view science and religion (or perhaps generalized to philosophy so as to include atheists) as essentially orthogonal disciplines in a way of examining our reality the different aspects of our reality. Science answers questions like how, what, and when, and answers them with direct observation, experimentation, etc. These are the sorts of questions that, whether we can actually know them or not, have a definite provable answer. The other discipline answers questions like why, and is answered through thought, reasoning, experience, tradition, etc. In many cases, the kinds of questions answered here don’t have a demonstratable single answer.
To give an example of what I mean, whether the Big Bang is correct or not, there is only one explanation for how we got here. This is something that is observable and can be discovered through scientific method. And a very closely related question is WHY we are here. There isn’t any way to observe the universe to determine why, and any countless number of reasons are all, more or less, equally consistent with our universe as it is. The interesting observation here, though, is that any answer to why other than essentially “there is no reason” or “it’s an accident” more or less necessitates some form of god or gods.
So, the way I look at it, there’s a number of very basic questions that everyone needs to have some sort of answer to. Sometimes you get people who have answers that are ultimately self-contradictory, like the example in the OP, but that’s only because they never had need to resolve that conflict.
So, as for why I believe, it basically boils down to that, my answers to those very basic questions necessitates the existence of God, and my personal observences and ponderings are all completely consistent with that belief, at least within all the work I’ve put into that end.
In either case, that second discipline, whatever you want to call it, is something we all undertake because we need some way of defining ourselves, whether it be because we’re such an infintesimal part of such a huge universe that ultimately has no real meaning or because it’s a part of us that God put in place as a way of guiding our journeys.
I prefer to use the word “trust” rather than “faith” for the second, it helps prevent confusion.
You know, people like your friend don’t post here very long. They don’t like the fact that even the boards deists and theists think they’re nutters too. I’ll hazard a guess that your friend would think most of us who are believers have weak faith because we (for the most part) believe science too. There aren’t any young earthists here, nor too many people who won’t even conceed that animals evolve within their own species.
Anyway, as for the question posed in the thread title, I’m not completely secure in my faith, but nothing has tested it so much that I’ve put it aside, either. Ask me again in fifty years and I’ll give you an update.
I’m wondering whether the OP is ever going to come back to this thread.
I’m wanting to ask him whether it’s the COW or the COW PIE that’s evil.
Omphalos and variants like Last Thursdayism are perfectly acceptable hypotheses whether or not you believe in God, as long as you don’t care that they can’t be measured, tested, or verified in any way.
For people who believe in God, and rely on these hypotheses to explain the nature of the universe, it’s a simple way of accepting the nature of the universe as it is measured by science, but still maintaining faith. If they don’t believe that God interferes in the working of the universe, then there is an insignificant difference between their belief, and that of atheists who also accept the nature of the universe as measured by science.
I suppose we could all be like Gumby, if you disregard the fact that we are not.
I have never seen a cyclotrons, but I believe they exist. Certainly we can predict the behavior of both God and quarks and test our predictions with observations.
When we measure a quark doing something they ‘ought not’ to do, we change the quark rulebook. When discoveries are made that shows God doing something God ‘ought not’ to do, we take the same liberty of finding an explanation that matches the facts we observe.
Discoveries such as what?
The trouble is, there’s never been a discovery that ever showed any god doing anything, outside of a believer’s mind. Quark measurements, yes. God measurements, no.
Really?
Can you show us an example where we ever came across evidence that God did something that he ought not do, causing a religion to change it’s view on God?
Sure.
Acts 10. The relevant passage is verses 28-29 -
Evolution too, of course, but I would have thought that was too obvious to mention.
Regards,
Shodan