I read something the other day that stated the evil is the absence of God just as cold is the absence of heat and dark the absence of light. Man used his own free will to create evil (in the form of disobedience) All God did was create laws and man. We did the rest.
As for God changing from fire and brimstone to love and forgiveness, according to the Bible(if you choose to believe it) The only difference is that Jesus died as our eternal sacrifice, to stand between us and the unforgiving judgment of God. We are therefore living in a time of grace because God in a moment of love sent down his only Son to die and become our Salvation.
It’s a belife that I still hold althoughI don’t feel that the emotionalism of a “Church” is required to recieve this benifit. If it was we wouldn’t need police.
How so?First off how can one “choose” what one believes or does not believe?Can you snap your fingers and “choose” to believe in Santa Claus?I am afraid not.What leads us to accept or reject various existential claims as plausible or implausible are our experiences, observations and the extent of our education or understanding of how the universe works.
For example, stage magicians almost NEVER believe in things like psychics and telelkinetics and such becuase they have personal experience using sleight of hand and cold reading and extensive education about how to fool audiences.A stage magician cannot “choose” to believe I am a powerful sorceror no matter how many coins I pull from thin air, even if he desperately wants to believe this.
How is it more rational to think that a god created adn controls the universe then to simply aknowledge the universe as it is without invoking unecessary entities to explain it?What you are doing here is akin to saying “It is more rational to think that gremlins cause automobiles to breakdown than to think they simply breakdown do to wear adn tear, poor maintainence, and environmental conditions.”
Then God is not omnipresent then?If evil exists and is the absence of God then there must be “areas”(for lack of a better word) where god is impotent or not able to be.I will point you towards the riddle of Epicurus now…
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That not only does not answer the question to my satisfaction but it makes absolutely no sense.First of all, why would an omnipotent God need to use such Rube Goldbergian methods to achieve a desired result?You are telling us that an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving God, creates an imperfect creature like us who he has to KNOW will do what we do(sin etc.) long before he ever embarks on the task, then get’s emotionally riled when we do exactly what he knew we would do!Furthermore upon seeing that we have in fact done as he expected and being so displeased by this non-turn of events, instead of just speaking to us directly in a way which would be unmistakable in it’s message or the author of said message, he decides to impregnate a mortal virgin who eventually has this much prophecised about messiah-child who spends the first 30 years of his life as a rather anonymous carpenter before one day deciding “'right then.Enough’s enough and all that.I’m off to spread the word and perform a bunch of fable-esque miracles and be crucified for sedition just like Appolynus of Tyana but unlike him I won’t be mentioned in any of the historical writings of those meticulous record keeping Romans!”?!?
The question posed here is one that badly strains the potential for meaningful dialogue. I will attempt to give my best grasp of how the belief process works, but an element of paradox will always remain present, simply because language is not up to dealing with concepts with an inherent Janus quality. This is not because the propositions are inherently self-contradictory; a parallel would be the question, “Is a photon really a wave or a particle?” or “What’s the precise location and velocity of this free electron?” To say that the first is mooted by the nature of nuclear physics and the second is unknowable, are not sufficient answers – being properly formulated questions, they must have valid answers. And the answer may be that we are drawing distinctions which do not in fact exist, something like the improper division underlying “Is a euglena really a plant or an animal?”
Faith is, fundamentally, the placing of one’s trust in God, the belief that He is not only a real being but one which can be trusted, one with the believer’s long-term interests at heart. Only in attempting to describe the God in which one places such trust is faith adherence to a series of dogmatic propositions. As such, it is an act of the will.
But for the will to act reasonably, there must be a sense of certitude that the God in whom one places one’s trust is real, valid, and trustworthy. Otherwise, as has been pointed out by numerous skeptics, it differs little from the allegiance given to a nutjob who calls on his followers to poison themselves in hope of a new life with the aliens whose spaceship follows Comet Hale-Bopp. (Or was it Kohoutek?)
We are given to understand in Scripture, and those of us who have experienced it can affirm, that such a sense of certitude is a gift from God. One cannot screw up one’s courage and cast aside all doubts to seize onto a concept one does not feel is borne out by the evidence available to one – or, rather, one can, but such a faith is “sown on rocky ground” and does not survive the first crisis to befall it.
That sense of assurance underlying a strong faith is at once a free act of the human will and a gift from God. It’s the theological equivalent of a “wavicle” – an inherent contradiction which nonetheless exists, because our language insists on drawing a paradox to define a reality it can apprehend but not grasp totally.
Note too that “free will” is not the ability to make random choices, but the capacity to evaluate the options available and select from among them the one that best conforms to the individual’s personal tastes – which are the product of his or her heredity and environment, and therefore on a theistic view ultimately the result of the actions of God, who created and shapes that heredity and environment.
To suggest that this means that God plays favorites, bestowing faith on some and not on others, is to take a very limited point-in-time viewpoint. His choices seem to be based on criteria that nobody totally comprehends, but including who needs what at what time. There was a point when I did not have faith; there may be a time when Godless Skeptic will be seeking a name change from Tubadiva because his views at that point of time will contradict his chosen nick.
What appears to be the human-originated component to this mélange is the willingness to be open. One cannot receive a gift one actively rejects, just as one cannot receive a gift that has not yet been given. A state of mind that rejects the possibility of faith in God, perhaps because the description of Him given by some believers strikes that person as ridiculous (as for example the naïve literalist approach to Scripture), will serve to block that person from the potential of receiving the ability to believe. Likewise, God knows human life experiences, and will choose to bestow that gift at a point in time when He is aware the person who is to receive it is ready for it.
This may mean, by the way, that some people will “fall away from the faith,” simply because their belief systems were inadequately founded in their own sense of what is real and they perceived an inherent contradiction between what they were told they should believe and the world as they came to know it. I believe that that is well accounted for in His plan, and does not serve to bear a negative judgment on those people. (I am thinking of two dear online friends in that state as I write this.) I suspect his plan is to lead them through the valley of doubt to a point where their own understanding will make them open to a new, better grounded, stronger, and more comprehending faith – and that He loves them all the more for their walk in the darkness.
You are implying then that I could never believe that God does not exist. You are also hinting that less educated people are the only ones who believe in God. I hope this is not what you are implying, but it seems that way. I am sure that we could find some believers who have a stronger grasp on how the universe works than do you.
I said that for ME it is more rational to believe in a universe with a Creator, than it is without. I respect your points of view and I welcome them in any discussion, but please don’t attempt to make the reasoning I use for my personal beliefs subject to sarcasm on your part. I know there are millions of people who believe in God, but not too many who believe in gremlins breaking down cars, so there must be some difference.
Science is yet to explain how everything in the universe works, and scientific principles have changed and been subject to editing throughout history. If science can one day explain how everything in the universe works, perfectly, then maybe my belief system will have to be reworked. I am sure that there were cinics who used science as their argument against God when the Sun was revolving around the Earth too, does that mean they were wrong since many of thier facts were wrong? Maybe 100 years from now people will be laughing at many of the scientific ideas that we hold to be true, no one can say for sure.
From reading many of the posts of Diogenes, badchad, and Ben, I have been forced to rethink my faith, and question many of the things I have always thought to be true. I am still trying to find out exactly what I believe and I am challenging my beliefs for the first time in my life. I want to know why I believe in God, and exactly what I believe about him and the Bible.
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No…you misunderstand.I am saying that whether YOU(or I or anyone else) find a particular existential claim to be sensible/plausible is not a concious decision on your part.Otherwise you could simply “choose” to believe in fire-breathing dragons and they would be real(to you).The reason you likely do not believe in Santa Claus is not simply because you decided you did not want to believe in the claim that he exists but rather because the claim, in all of it’s details does not sound plausible based on your observation, knowledge and experience of the world.
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No I am not and I would ask you please to not mischaracterise me or my position as such.There IS a correlation between education and theism/atheism(statistics show a dramatic rise in atheism as the level of formal education and scientific education in particular increases) but this does not mean that theists are generally ‘stupid’ or that stupidity is required to be a theist.I know several theists who are much better educated and probably a lot smarter in general than I am.
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To be sure.However amongst those with arguably the strongest grasp of universal workings, NAS scientists , not only are theists in the minority but even amongst theists most tend to be deists, fideists, pantheists and the like.In any case I was not implying what you erroneously assumed.
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Okay, I understadn the statement.What I was asking YOU was to explain HOW it is “more rational”.What leads you to the inference that God exists or his existence is necessary to the workings of the universe?If you indeed have found rational justification for this belief then I would like to know of it for my own benefit, not to belittle YOU.
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What sarcasm?!?
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I wasn’t being sarcastic or trying to belittle god-belief OR gremlin belief.You are making an argument ad populi here.It does not matter how many people believe one claim or the other.The quantity of believers does not determine the quality of the existential claim(whether it is true or false).The reason…the SOLE reason you believe in God or gods right now instead of gremlins is the environment you have grown up in.If there were as many people in society who had so fervently believed in gremlins, passed this belief along to their children, somehow tied a promise of eternal reward(to those who act according to the great gremlin’s wishes) and maybe the threat of eternal damnation(for those who act discordingly) then you would be arguing for gremlin belief right now and scolding ME for comparing gremlin belief to the silly god belief that no one takes seriously.
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I think what you mean to say is that science’s answers change as new data becomes available adn new mysteries are revealed.That is not a weakness of science but rather it’s greatest strength.It is self-correcting and not dogmatic.Religion is constrained by it’s scriptures.Fundementalist christians for example cannot get around the scientific, mathematical and historical inaccuracies in the Bible and also cannot simply dismiss the Bible as being a “mere story”.They must back themselves into contradiction after contradiction trying to argue that the Bible is to be taken literally and yet irreconcileable errors must be taken as metaphor.They must employ desperate and bizarre twists of logic and rationality to maintain their strict literalist position.
I am not comparing YOU to these people BTW, I am merely pointing out a fundem,ental difference between science and religion(in general).
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Thois is a sort of variation on the God of the gaps fallacy.Yes there are things we do not know or fully understand yet.In this regard we will always be making progress by learning more and more but we will never likely know all there is to know.
However, “I do not know” is an honest and acceptable answer.“God did it” is merely inserting God in place of “I don’t know”.Imagine if we used such logic in courtrooms…
“We the jury cannot determine who killed Mrs. Peacock in the library with the candlestick therefore the defendent must be responsible.We hereby sentence him to life in prison!”
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I am not sure what you are suggesting here.Too vague.DO you mean like in 100 years we will realize that no one actually has ever had diabetes because the disease does not exist.It was all just another mistake made by science or that maybe gravity does not exist after all and we could have been flying to and from work all this time if not for being duped by the erroneous scientists?
Science is not a body of knowledge it is a METHOD of understanding the universe.The only objective and successful one we KNOW of(in terms of consistency adn reliability).
I am glad for you.I have been where you are at now(not to imply that you will become an atheist like me) and I think that thinking critically about what we believe is the healthiest thing we can do for ourselves.However if you truly want to know “why you believe in God” then why are you so ready to dismiss explanations which do not jive with your a priori conclusion that God exists?The human belief mechanism is frigthteningly powerful and underestimated by most.It can convince thousands of Americans that the earth is being destroyed by martians when no such thing is occuring.It can convince thousands in India that a “monkey-man” is running around devouring their neighbors even though their neighbors are alive and well and no such thing cna be shown to exist.It can convince millions that 8’ tall shaggy hominids are roaming the woodlands of the pacific norethwest sustaining themselves on a diet of nuts, berries and small rodents even though our knowledge of biology/zoology says this is highly implausible and no direct evidence has been presented to substantiate the claim for sasquatch’s existence.
And either way you look at it, the belief mechanism…the pattern-seeking nature of humaity has convinced billions that a non-existent god or gods does/do in fact exist.If YOUR God exists then that means billions of muslims are wrong and believe in a false god for all the same reasons you believe in the “true” god and vice versa and if the Hindus have it right then billions of christians AND muslims are believing in a fasle god.
If the atheists are correct then billions of theists are believing in false gods.
Several people have commented on the “mean” god of the OT and the “nice” god of the NT. I know this is commonly believed, but is it true?
The OT god smote people, but that was it. They were dead. The nice NT god sends them off (or allows them to go) to eternal torment. Which is nicer? The OT god did not particularly care who believed in him, so long as his people followed the rules and others left them alone. The NT god demands that everyone believe in him or else.
Seems to me that Judaism is a much kinder, gentler religion than Christianity. All the years I went to Hebrew School and Temple I never was threatened with eternal torment once.
My comments were a bit defensive and should not have been. I have never put this much thought into my beliefs before.
Do you believe in anything that you don’t have absolute proof of? What caused you to become an atheist? I have thought a lot about this the last two days, and I have a hard time imagining a universe that just is. I can’t seem to bifurcate God and the universe. I don’t what has caused this to be so. Maybe it is the way I was raised, or my belief mechanism. Maybe it is something else entirely. I don’t have a complete answer at this point. Thank you for being patient with me GS.
Polycarp,
Hope you are still checking this thread. Could you answer why you believe in God? Is their an answer to this question? Am I thinking too much about this? Will I always have these questions in my head? Is this o.k.?
While only you can answer your last few questions, moejuck, I’ll be glad to answer the first one.
Here is a partial list of reasons why I believe in God:
[ul][li]Because He has made Himself and His love known to me repetitively, starting when I was questioning the naïve Sunday School concepts I had been taught at age 15, based in part on what I’d been learning in school, and most emphatically 12 years ago when I had a full-blown conversion experience sense of His presence and His call.[/li][li]Because I have a Jamesian “will to believe” and, even after taking this into account and skeptically analyzing the other factors leading me to believe, I still have a very firm sense that His existence and even more His lovingkindness are the foundations of my ongoing existence. (Details follow.)[/li][li]Because He so ordered my small segment of the world that the woman who almost perfectly complements my personality and whose needs I am equipped to fulfill was a recurrent element of my social existence, quite literally before either of us can remember, until we both came to the realization that we were destined to be together. (“Once is chance, twice is coincidence, three times is a conspiracy” – but what if it happens twenty times between 1950 and 1975?!)[/li][li]Because He so ordered the world that the young man I am proud to call son came into my life a month before his 17th birthday, to draw me out of an emotionally sterile existence by a love I had not realized could exist, and so worked out our life experiences that each of us needed what the other had to give, and were ready to give what the other needed – and has continued to manipulate our lives so that we continue to need each other’s support and to remain close twelve years later.[/li][li]Because He saved me, not in some theological sense of granting forgiveness of sins (though that too) but in the quite literal sense of planting in the mind of another young man to whom my wife and I were ministering that he needed to come visit me as I was lying in bed alone dying of a heart attack – and that young man, not himself particularly religious, testifies to having had that conviction that he needed to do so in a way he’s never felt before or since.[/li][li]Because He has demonstrated His lovingkindness through the acts of friends and strangers, some knowingly motivated by Him and some not, at times too numerous to recount, but most notably last December – and there are a hundred witnesses to that last incident here on this board.[/li][li]Because intelligent reading into the Bible and its criticism have convinced me that it is not an inerrant document with no myth or legend in it, but that it nonetheless carries sufficient truth, albeit sometimes in literary styles misunderstood by most people, to persuade me that my experiences are not unique, but that He has been doing this stuff throughout history and to a wide variety of people, from Abraham to Paul to Francis to Libertarian.[/li][li]Because I am convinced that He has called me to a particular ministry for Him – to attempt to bridge the gap between the Bible-believing Christians and the gay community, who both suffer from a lack of understanding of what the other group feels, says, and does.[/ul][/li]
That’s a sample of what comes immediately to mind in answer to your question. I’d be glad to expand on any part of it or to extend the list in response to other questions.
Just curious, GodlessSkeptic, what explanations you consider to discount the existance of God. You seem to have a strong faith in science, so what do you see that “billions” of theists don’t? And how about you; are you ready to dismiss evidence that supports the existance of God?
moejuck,
I think it’s great that you would question your faith, and I commend you for taking steps to know what you believe and why you believe it. After all, to follow a belief blindly is pretty foolhardy in the long run.
I think you believe in the existence of God (please forgive me if I’m projecting) because you see his handywork everywhere you look in his creation.
You can trust the message of the Bible, not just because you gotta have faith, but also because: 1. The manuscript evidence shows that the text has remained largely unchanged over the course of history, that the manuscripts we have today are accurate representations of the original autographs. 2. The archaeological evidence shows the historical reliability of the Bible, including the places, people, and events recorded in the Bible. 3. The prophetic evidence shows the hand of God in human history; within no other religious book has prophecy been fulfilled so accurately as that recorded in the Bible.
Thus, you can trust the words, story, and message of Jesus, whose history is supported by both biblical and extrabiblical sources. So, you can trust Jesus when he says, “I am the way, truth, and life.”
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I am going to re-phrase your first question here so I am not defending a strawman:
“What explanations are there for belief in God, aside from actually seeing evidecne that warrants that inference?”
Human beings are pattern-seeking animals.We will ALWAYS be able to find evidence(of the sort that believers in supernatural phenomenae cite) to support our convictions adn it matters not at all whether the things we believe are true or actually have evidence to support them.A hard-core ufologist will find evidence that a ufo crashed in Roswell over 50 years ago and the subsequent government cover-up, regardless of whether such a thing actually happened.
The way our belief mechanism works is analogous to gambling.We aknowledge apparent “hits”(winning hands, jackpots)a dn ignore or downplay the “misses”(losing hands, 2 lemons and a cherry on the slots etc.).John Edward’s advocates will consistently ignore the fact that, even after rigorous editing of his taped shows, he gets far more “misses”(totally off the mark assertions) than he does “hits” and the hits he does get tend to be vague generalities(“Your grandfather died suddenly”, “I am sensing a pain in the chest area” etc.) that are pretty safe offerings adn staples of cold-reading.The believers will also ignore how often the readees themselves offer mounds of information which Edward will pass off as having been divined through his mediumship.They will nearly always say something like “I didn’t tell him anything!How could he know that?” when in fact they told him or othertwise revealed to him all that he need to know(a middle-aged woman with a wedding ring is highly likely to have a child of around “college age” for example).
Belief in gods/God can be, and IMO usually if not always IS, rooted in this same pattern-seeking belief mechanism.To a believer, the very universe itself is evidence of an all-powerful God(even though nothing in the universe or it’s orgins points toward God anymore than it points toward genies).An objective observer knows that the universe as we understand it did not need any gods do form and operate the way it does.Helium, hydrogen and lithium were formed during the big bang and these basic building blocks are combined and cooked in the cores of red dwarf stars to form ever more complex elements(helium+helium = berylium, helium + Berylium = carbon etc.) and these elements combine in super novae to form the rest of the elements.
Over-zealous fundementalist believers will go so far as to deny factual, observed phenomenae when it seems to contradict their own a priori conclusions(geocentrists deny the findings of Galileo adn Copernicus, creationists deny evolution etc.), but theists in general do not go to such extremes nor do they need to.Since no claim can be empirically disproven, most evidence can be rationalized to support ANY theological position.
Also, I do not have “faith” in ANYTHING(including science).I never touch the stuff and before you go playing any semantic games, redefining “faith” and such let me warn you that I have been through this more times than I could ever count.My expectations about reality are based on repeated observation adn experiment, not faith.I do not have “faith” that the sun will appear in the sky tomorrow.It has always done so adn I know if it ever does NOT appear then I will not be around to discuss the matter.
I will not dismiss ANY evidence which points to God’s likelihood.If the inference is ever warranted I will cease being an atheist.
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The thing is, objectively there is nothing to indicate that the universe was “created”(in the sense that some guiding intellect was involved) in the first place but if you have presupposed such a thing then everything that exists, every observation and discovery may well support this conviction.This works for ANY theistic claim whether you believe that an evil abomniable deity is the supreme ruler/creator of the universe or the God of judaeism or even if you honestly believe that God is a giant hampster named “Myrtle”(Sorry Badger fans).
Which manuscripts?There are half a dozen versions of the Bible that I am personally quainted with and they all have signifigant differences.NONE of them so much as mention the non-cannonized gospels(Thomas etc.).The dead sea scrolls themselves are only a fraction of the scriptures.
In any case this tells us nothing in regards to the veracity of the Bible.If God had a message that he wanted us all to hear then I think he could have done better than a few rotting scroll-fragments stored in ceramic jars in the Dead sea region(like having his scriptures permanently inscribed into the side of a mountain or on the very canopy of the universe(proverbially speaking)!
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We also know that the Bible is very inaccurate historically, scientifically, mathematically but this is beside the point.Even if it DID get all of the facts right historically then it would still be no more “true” then a Stephen King novel whcih is set in New England and gets all of the details about that area(places, dialects, culture etc.) right.
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The nature of so-called prophecy is that it is postdictive, not predictive.You caqn take any allegedly prophetic writings and make them “fit” historical events.Nostradameus’ advoctaes do it every bit as easily as the bible-thumping christians.
According to the Bible, Jesus said he would come back within the next generation of the people who allegedly witnessed his first coming.Here we are two thousand years later…
I am certainly not knocking anyone for doing so.I am juts pointing out that such belief is, by it’s nature subjective adn not objectively verified by evidence.
moejuck, do you have any comments or qustions on my response? I had expected you would, and tried to craft it carefully if based on initial thoughts to provide what motivates me personally.
I would like to see your responses to GS’s positions in his last post. What do you think about ontological proofs of God’s existence? GS, feel free to comment on this as well.
Doesn’t having faith in something suggest that you won’t be able to explain it completely? Do you believe that all Hindus, Muslims, and so on are damned?
GS,
I know that you don’t believe in anything, but for a believer couldn’t what you refer to as a belief mechanism be thought of as God’s gift of faith? This faith, if that is what it is, then has just been misplaced by those ufologists and so on?
Ontological proofs of god do nothing more than demonstrate that if you chose the right axioms and use the right definition of god, you can write a logical syllogism that proves that your axioms imply your definition. They do not imply anything about the Universe as we know it nor about the God who is alleged to have created it and with Whom we are supposed to enter into a relationship of faith and love.
GS is quite correct about pattern-seeking, and I’d extend that to purpose-seeking. We require to know why kindly old Aunt Tillie died of an agonzing cancer, and why Heather, full of youth and promise, vivacious and loving, was killed by a drunken driver. We want to know whether the people sinned, or their parents, who were killed by the volcanic eruption in Colombia or Indonesia. And William James posited a “will to believe” that affects some people, me among them.
I believe it is possible to weigh the evidence, reasonably objectively, taking into account psychological urges of this sourt and how they may influence one’s conclusions.
Personal experience is not a part of what GS evaluates. But there are literally thousands of examples of people who aver that they have had a direct experience of God. Such claims need to be evaluated with strong skepticism – my own included. But people with the capacity to logically and skeptically evaluate such experiences who nonetheless claim to have had them, and that their self-examination leads then to believe that the experience was a “valid” one – i.e., not self-delusion, deserve to have that claim taken seriously. It will not be “proof” to anyone except the experiencer – but it nonetheless constitutes a form of evidence.
The fallacious “law of the excluded middle” is nowhere more evident than in discussions of the Bible. From King Arthur to Alexander the Great to Charlemagne to the Trojan War, there are dozens of historical topics known largely from legend but nonetheless with a firm historical core underlying them. The excesses of the legends do not discredit the historical substructure.
With the cardinal exception of Thomas, the rejected books not included in the Bible are rightly rejected as pious frauds having little or nothing to do with the facts known to the First and Second Century scholars who rejected them. While no Biblical book is a masterpoiece of objective reportage – and was never intended to be – they stand on relatively firmer ground. But all Scripture is polemic – intended to induce and strengthen faith, and uses literary genre and tropes to make its point. To discount them for not being objective history is to reject Desirée or Hawaii because they are not non-fiction history, rather than learning about Napoleonic France and Sweden and the Hawaiian Islands from their reasonably well-targeted depictions of the times.
People talking about “prophecy” perpetually miss the point to prophecy itself. It was never intended as soothsaying; what it was, was men claiming to proclaim the word and will of God to their fellow men. Implicit in this was often the extrapolation of a trend and its consequences – “If you keep pointing fingers like that, sooner or later somebody’s eye is gonna get poked out! ;))” More closely, “repent and turn back to the Lord, lest these dire consequences befall you.” Only in that sense, and in the occasional actual predictive prophecy (such as the actual Emmanuel story), intended to validate the message to doubters, was it a foretelling of the future.
Faith is trust. If I have faith in you, I know you as a person whose word I can trust. If I have faith in God, I know that I can trust in Him. “Dogmas of faith” are something of a misnomer – they’re attempts to describe the God in whom one can have faith (trust).
I addressed the salvation of non-Christians in the “the Only Way to Heaven?” thread, and would rather not repeat my complex statement here.
You could refer to our pattern seeking nature as God’s gift of faith but ultimately you will be insulting most of the “faithful” because this belief mechanism is rooted in irrationality.Convictions rooted in our ability to find meaningful patterns/connections to support our presuppositions are erroneous on many levels.
Also, for God to grant such a gift that can just as easily lead us to believing a falsehood as it is to convince us of a truth, is nonsensical.Like handing a someone a shield which acts as a “bullet magnet” and is only 50% likely to stop a bullet.
Remember that, objectively, the ufologists adn conspiracy theorists are no more likely to be wrong in their convictions that the theists who believe in God.The only thing that can increase or decrease the likelihood of an existential claim would be rational justification(according to rules of inference and such) which negates the need for “faith”.
So then, your answer to my question is… evolution?
…or any non-theological position.
There are already to many semantic games going on in Great Debates.
Now I’m curious: who has observed macro evolution?
If nature produces randomness, why is there so much order in the universe? If natural selection prefers the practical, why is there so much non-practical beauty in the universe? How can something that doesn’t exist paradoxically create itself, violating the law of non-contratiction? How can the universe create itself, so completely violating a basic law of physics, the law of energy conservation? How can the universe come to exist without being acted upon by an external force, in direct violation of Newton’s law of motion? How can life spring up out of the lifeless ooze in direct violation of the law of biogenesis? How does the universe, order, beauty, and life come to exist in spite of the basic truth of the principle of causality?
This is a bit beyond the scope of my question; however, I am willing to discuss this with you, if you wish.
I’m talking about thousands of partial and complete copies from antiquity; transmission tends to introduce errors. The Bible has fewer errors than any other ancient document. Of what is in doubt for the New Testament (less than one percent), no doctrinal or historical truth is left in question.
even extrabiblical evidence supports it’s accuracy
When did Stephen King ever claim that his novel was truth.
Very specific Biblical prophecies have been fulfilled very accurately. Even Deuteronomy 13:1-5, 18:20-22 issues strong decrees concerning the use and misuse of prophecy and the identification of true and false prophets.
Within context, Jesus was clearly speaking of the end of the age (the end of the old testament covenant), which occurred in 70 a.d. with the destruction of Jerusalem. Within context the Lord’s coming was in judgement, just as God came in judgement throughout the old testament. Is taking something in context “fitting” historical events?
Belief that is not objectively supported by evidence is not worth believing, whether that belief is in the existance of God, or not.
Because your question, as it was phrased did not apply to me.It was a strawman(see www.datanation.com/fallacies).An attempt to caricature or outright misrepresent your idealogical opponent’s position and then beat the stuffing out of that strawman, rather than addressing the actual position/argument.
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I do not have reason to think the universe was “created” at all.I do not know what happened prior to t=0(the Big bang).I do not know if the big bang is cyclical, if the universe has always existed in some way or if we are merely one universe in an ever expanding mutiverse full of such quantum foam fluctuations.
“I do not know yet” is an honest answer.
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Evolution has absolutely nothing to do with the orgins of the universe.Evolution is as much a fact as gravity is and is explained by the theory of natural selection just as gravity is explained by it’s theory.If you want to learn about the orgins of the universe then read up on astronomy, cosmology, astrophysics etc…
If you want to learn about what evolution is adn is not(as opposed to what certain creationist web sites will tell you it is) then then check out the Talk-orgins site(will provide some links for you shortly).
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Oh dear.You’ve been visiting the Kent Hovind or ICR web sites haven’t you?The term ‘macroevolution’ HAS appeared in textbooks on the subject of evolutionary biology but it is used therein more or less as a convenience when discussing the sorts of mutiple instances of adaption that occur over a period of millions of years and result in transition from one distinct species to a similar yet distinctly different species.
Really though there is absolutely no difference between so-called microevolution and macroevolution.The “macroevolution” we generally observe (because we do not live for millions of years as individuals) are what you would call “microevolution”…tiny adaptions that individuals of a species develope and pass long with the genes to their offspring.When this goes on for a few(or several) million years we end up with long necked giraffes(the shorter necked ancestors, being unable to feed were at a disadvantage and died out) and such.
Not all occurances of of natural selection take millions of years(see the Heiki crab), but for the really dramatic changes to occur(developement of new limbs and fine manipulators and such) usually takes quite a long time.
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I have no idea why you think that nature should produce ‘randomness’(this is another strawman which I nor anyone knowledgable about evolutionary theory can defend) but I can tell you that your perception of “so much order” is nothing more than a subjective bias(akin to “Why is she so beautiful?There MUST be a God for HER to exist!”).The universe is largely chaotic with small knots of order(such as our planet) but even within these places of apparent order, there exists wildly chaotic and hostile forces/conditions(storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions etc.).If there is so much “order” in the universe then why is over 99% of it so incredibly hostile to our species that we cannot explore it other than to send unmanned artificial probes to gather data and such?
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Again, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and what specifically do you consider to be “impractical beauty”?Also, natural selection does not “prefer” anything.You have a misconception of what NS is.Allow me to give you an example of NS in action:
Centuries ago, japanese samurai fought a bloody battle where many samurai fought bravely against overwhelming odds and were slaughtered.Years later Japanese fishermen would occasionally catch a heiki crab with strange black markings on it’s shell that, to the superstitious fisherment resembled the sillouette of a samurai warrior.They would immediately toss such unusual crabs back into the sea fearing spirits of reprisal.Other crabs did not enjoy such treatment and were caught, kept and eaten as any other crab.
Today virtually ALL Heiki crabs have strange black markings on their shells.It is not a case of a species developing a mutation that will help it survive but rather individuals having specific traits(minor differences from the bulk of their species) that by chance prove beneficial(i.e. the markings on the Heiki crab or an odd big toe on each of the forfeet of some primate that enables it to better grasp and manipulate things)and since they are more likely to be passed along to their offspring(since the adaption by chance happens to make survival a bit easier) these changes eventually result in speciation.
Not all adaptions are beneficial.In fact MOST are not.Evolution means “change”, not progress.But to my knowledge non-benefical mutations rarely if ever result in speciation for the simple fact that the harder it is for a creature to survive, the less likely it is that it will pass along it’s genes.
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Shouldn’t I be asking YOU this?What created God?Or is it “turtles all the way down”?If you answer that God did not need a cause or creator then you conced that the universe could also be uncreated or causeless.
My answer to “what caused the universe to form as it has?” is a simple:“I do not know”.
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You misunderstand the law of energy conservation and for me(unqualified as I am) to attempt to explain all of the science relevent to this misconception you have would require a seperate post(and me bringing down several books from the shelf to reaquaint myself with the subject matter).If no one here beats me to it I will post a detailed reply concerning this oft refuted argument.
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Again, you are asking me to tell you what no one in 2,000+ years of observation and experiemnt have been able to determine yet.There are various workable theories and hypotheses(re:inflationary cosmology) but you are merely restating the “God of the gaps” fallacy over and over.
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Life did not spring from any ooze.The basic elements(helium, hydrogen and lithium) were formed in the big bang.These elements combined in the cores of red dwarf stars to form more complex elements(Beryllium,carbon etc.) and still more complex elements are formed from these basic elements in super novae.Elements such as carbon, nickel, copper, zinc etc. are distributed throughout the galaxy through the energetic reactions that occur as these stars expand, collapse and explode.
We are quite literally made of stars.
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This is untrue and goes right to what I am talking about when I mention our ‘pattern-seeking nature’.To a believer who has already concluded that the Bible is without error or contradiction adn is the inspired word of God, the apparent evidence of this assertion is abundant.
To someone like me however, this is not so.If all translations agree then why do we have different versions of the Bible in the first palce?There is the NSIV, the KJV, the RSV etc…These revisions of the Bible were created when discreopancies adn errors became numerous and apparent.The Bible was originally translated into Aramaic and Greek and even in these first translations there were a plethora of errors!In each subsequent translation and revision, new contraictions and errors have arisen.
How do you come up with that?!?I probably doubt over 90% of it as being factual and there are countless people better educated than I who doubt at least as much of it as I!
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You are either visiting the fundie sites or you are an author of such a site.Much of the Bible(New Testament or Old) is historically inaccurate.There are some general accuracies(Nebuchadnezzer etc.) but even then dates and quantifications are often grossly inaccurate or inflated.
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He didn’t, which makes him more honest than the various Biblical authors(assuming they intented the Bible to be taken as literal truth as you have done).What does this have to do with the fact that inclusion of historical or factual details does not transform a work of fiction to a work of non-fiction?
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Again, prophecy is postdictive.It always involves someone looking at the alleged prophecy AFTER the fact and ‘connecting the dots’(so to speak) to make it align with historical events.Just because you interpret a part of the Bible as saying people should not do this, does not mean that they do not.Using the Bible to prove the Bible’s veracity is circular reasoning.
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To YOU this is clear.There are millions of christians who interpret things differently than you and since God does not appear to be in any hurry to set the record straight, I must conclude that your interpretation is no better than anyone else’s interpretation.
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I have no idea what you are trying to say here.
You pay lip service to such ideals but your own posts contradict this.
Godless Skeptic, while I’m reading with interest your exchange with HeWhoIsNotAngry2, might I interest you in commenting on my last post before this one to this thread, which was in reaction to your comments to Moejuck, at his request?