Belrix:
“Well, by definition, the universe is all encompassing so there is no universe next door. Unless you were trying to be cute.”
Yes, trying to be cute and shine light on the fact that we have no way to judge “how” complex the universe is as its the only one we know.
“I just see too much to not see a designer”
How do you imagine a universe without a designer would look?
This line in your jury analogy “The evidence from both inside me and outside me has lead me to God & Jesus.” invalidates it(just the analogy, not the existence of god). A jury is unable to draw evidence from within, only internally analyze outside evidence. But God is meant to be a part of my very existence, when I look inside I should be looking at a part of God. If you find god inside yourself you are more of an archeologist than a juror in my view.
Any juror is going to measure the motivations, attitude, actions, etc. of the accused against their own experiences. If they didn’t then juror selection wouldn’t be as important as it is. A man who kills his wife is going to have his motivations questioned and the justice handed out is going to be based on the jurors interpretation of that evidence. Did he kill in the heat of passion, did he kill for money, or was it something else. Measuring external evidence against an internal yardstick is normal.
The evidence that supports God that I find within me is the hard to define. No - I don’t think I’m actually, directly looking at God when I look inside. It’s more of a Yoda “search your feelings” kind of experience. I’m looking at shadows and footprints. I’m looking at indirect evidence.
The sense that I’m more than the sum of my biology - that I posses a life force that transcends my brain function. If you could clone my brain into another body right now, that new body wouldn’t be me - he’d be more like my twin brother.
I have a sense that right and wrong transcend simply human societal norms. That it is right to love and wrong to murder are universal truths. I believe in absolutes in right and wrong.
From my sense of “life force” - call it my soul - I deduce that the supernatural is possible. From my sense of absolutes I deduce a set of master rules and, necessarily, the force behind them.
I use this evidence as part of the foundation on which I build my faith. So when the bible tells me that I have a soul, I take that statement, look inside me, and agree.
And to answer you question, “How do you imagine a universe without a designer would look?”, the answer is, “Non-existant”.
I think some other Christians might disagree with the not directly seeing God inside you part, but I’ll leave that to the believers to hash out.
“And to answer you question, “How do you imagine a universe without a designer would look?”, the answer is, “Non-existant”.”
Well then you really shouldn’t say “I’ve seen too much” for there not to be a designer when you are saying that seeing anything at all is evidence enough.
I agree. Just because something is written down somewhere, that doesn’t make it true.
Have you investigated the truth of your claims? Have you noticed all the glaring contradictions in the anthology known as the “Christian Bible”? How about the cruelties? Does Yahweh get a free pass to commit atrocities just because he’s the biggest and baddest show in town? What about the blatant inconsistencies with the known physical world? Is that book a perfect record of a communication from an omniscient all powerful superbeing? Or does it more closely resemble the collected writings of ancient peoples trying to figure out the world around them with limited understanding of how it really works?
Close. You are proof that you believe he exists. If I believe with all my heart that I talk nightly to the little orange potato people of Saturn, does that mean that I actually talk to these beings? Or is it a construct of my mind?
I do appreciate what I know to be sincere concern on your part for other’s welfare. I would suggest however that what has been “revealed” to you and countless others is that childhood indoctrination is a great way to keep a belief system alive.
So what you are saying is that no proof will ever be good enough to dissuade you from your beliefs. Well, I can’t argue with that. No one can. But consider this: What would you (or anyone else for that matter) say about me if I said that I firmly believe that the Earth is flat, and that no amount of evidence to the contrary could ever change my mind? What would that say about my state of mind and my thought processes?
Surely the whole mechanics of life and the food chain is one cruel system?
The universe seems to me a very over complicated, not particularly efficient machine. It’s hard to put this in words, so I’m guessing this one’s a matter of opinion. I can’t expres it better than be original words - the universe just isn’t simple and perfect enough (somehow ).
Dear Mr.Thompson,
These are all very important questions. People of faith have struggled with these questions for millennia, and churches have unfortunately fought over their answers. After 9/11, it is more important than ever that we understand our own religion and the religions of other.
I looked through some of the responses, and the recommended books can be hard-going, even for adults. I remember when I had similar questions, and my ignorant pastor recommended a book that I found unhelpful; I tried reading it again when I went to seminary and it was STILL hard to get through. It did not address my concerns. If you try a book and it doesn’t help in the first few pages, don’t make yourself read it; try another one.
The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris is a book on tape that might be easy for you to listen to. I sure enjoyed it. The atheist who is our church organist found it very helpful for understanding Christianity. It is also in paperback, and may be at your public library.
Plenty of other people have addressed your questions in particular, so I will keep my answer brief. We have different biblical traditions about Jesus; scholars argue about whether or not Jesus knew he would be resurrected. You can be a Christian without taking the Bible literally; you don’t have to believe in the virgin birth, bodily resurrection, or eternal damnation. The God of the Hebrew Bible (old testament) is not as judgmental and punitive as we think. When I carefully read the old testament, I found God is much more inclusive than I expected. Much of what gets attributed to the Lord is just the writers’ ways of saying “this happened.”
I just baptized a woman who asked me “What if Christianity is the biggest practical joke ever played on the universe?” I asked her, “Who would have played it?” Just because you have questions and doubts doesn’t make you unChristian. It means you are thinking, and ready to wrestle with God (a fine Biblical tradition).
I hope you can find a live person to talk with you, after you sort through all your e-mail responses. I would recommend an educated pastor from a liberal church. You might try the United Church of Christ, Presbyterian Church (USA), ELCA Lutheran Church, a United Methodist Church, or Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). They all have their conservative elements, but one near you should be open to hearing you.
May the Spirit of Wisdom surround you with reassurance, hope, and confidence as you grow in grace.
MrThompson, I’d said earlier that I’d resume our conversation if you were interested once I had more time–are you, for whatever reason, interested in continuing, or would you just as soon leave things as they stand?
I would like to continue, but I’m afraid I can’t post in any more detail right at the moment due to my computer crashing every five seconds. Just posting this so you know I read your message.
(I’m beginning to see why you had a break from here - this place sucks time up. Badly)
Incorrect. By definition there is no way to test which supernatural explanation, if any, are correct. It’s therefore more useless as an explanation, given the data, to say “God did this” than “I don’t really know what did this”.
When you leave the realm of testability and verification, you enter a bizarro fantasy world where each answer is as good as the next.
You might think Jesus was resurrected by God. I might think the whole thing was a hoax pulled off by playful spirits. Or time-travelling teen pranksters from the future.
In fact, I might have visions, realistic dreams or mystical experiences that are as powerful as those which bring people to Christianity ‘confirming’ my own version of events. I can pray to the spirits and see the result of fulfilled prayer even where there’s no result. I can be 100% bona fide deluded, willing to die for my beliefs, yet never even know how crazy that would be.
The human mind is a wonderful assortment of irrational quirks, most of which make it susceptive to extremely strange beliefs from astrology to magnetic bracelets to claims made by cults, is it not?
How do you show I’m wrong without using the scientific method, given that at least one of us must be wrong?
To summarize, supernatural explanations can never be proven wrong, removing the bad ones by process of elimination and leaving only those that stand up to careful scrutiny–and that is the largest nail in their coffin.
Merely postulating an extra, unknowable layer of the unknown to “explain” the as-yet unexplained is no answer at all, either.
Hence, they’re self-defeating and totally, completely and ludicrously useless for anything except providing a quick, easy, spoon-fed answer to people content with such cookie-cutter explanations.
MrThompson is seeking the truth and appears to be unsatisfied with the contrived apologetics designed in an attempt to awkwardly reconcile reality with the existence of the Christian God. I commend him on his honesty and curiosity and wish him well on his search.
Here is one very difficult question which nevertheless naturally flows from common conceptions of God and hell:
Do you think people who never even hear of Jesus, such as third-world tribesmen, are granted amnesty if they led a “good” life? It’s only fair, after all…
If you answered “yes”, why is Christianity evangelized at all? It appears the only thing it would do is lead those tribesmen to be eternally condemned should they reject it, where they’re in no danger previously.
I once took the time to compile the entire series of such doubts which were central to my own deconversion, as well as many others, into a lengthy document entitled “Thought-Provoking Questions for Christians and Other Theists”. Since my purpose here is not to advertise, however, but to seriously discuss, the URL is only available upon request.
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