Context can be our friend. My argument is that you cannot definitively answer the question. There cannot be a cogent answer that would satisfy you because the full measure of God is immeasurable. I constantly seek more revelation about Him, but you are trying to “seek a source for some definitive” to quote Indigo Girls.
This is a fool’s errand. Indeed, as I have perused the thread all I find is anti-Christian venom and secular humanist haughtiness. The original question was the proofs of God. There are common proofs in all of creation…the glory of nature, the perfection of mathematics, the sheer magnitude of the universe, the transcendant truth of our eternal nature. I am willing to join in a conversation that talks about the attributes of God and the too numerous proofs of His existence. However, as I state in another thread, we have to speak the same lanquage. I was a secular humanist for thirty years…I speak that lanquage. But if you don’t want to believe what is already evident around you, I could walk God up to you and have Him shake your hand and you wouldn’t believe. This is called common revelation and common grace.
That old “I could do such and such, but you would only…” response is very tiring and adds absolutely nothing to the conversation. I don’t know whether to classify it as mind reading or predicting the future, but it bores me.
Your response is fallacious in a number of important points which if you will allow me, I will enumerate.
The first and probably most important is that the presumption that you couldn’t or wouldn’t have interaction with God. God is relational. You would never consider a friend a philosophical concept. I don’t want to serve the conversation up in Christianese which I despise, but there is truth in the statement that believing in God is a relationship. It’s axiomatic. You don’t know anything about a perfect stranger without being in relationship with him. In like manner, you cannot intelligently speak about a supernatural being and try to explain or know him in a natural way. I also don’t want to go into the tomes of apologetics that exist. The fact of the matter is, to quote a character in atheist Carl Sagan’s book Contact, that 98% of the population of the world believes in a Supreme Being of some sort. That’s relevant circumstantial evidence. It is an incoherent logic to assume that the other 2% are under some sort of needy neurosis.
Second, your argument which you call hearsay is flawed because almost all of the history that you **do accept as truth was also passed down as “hearsay”. This is the same arguments used to try to overthrow the authenticity of Scripture.
All of our knowledge about what we know about the passed; that which we accept and that which we reject comes from the same passed down stories.
Your reverse arguments about gap evidence and paticularly your statement about ignorance is like Homeland Security saying terrorist and it automatically being accepted truth. The fact is that Evolution is a stark point of ignorance, one that is finally starting to be chipped away…as Ben Stein’s movie recently spoke about. This is an irrefutable fact…there has never been any…repeat…any…transitional fossil between species that verifies evolution. Adaptation is not evolution.
Special revelation…this is the one I give you the most lenience on. However, when a perfect, infinite, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient God gives special revelation to a broken, imperfect human the interpretation of what he hears doesn’t always get translated correctly. You can’t judge God by His willful imperfect creations who he lovingly allows to stray with the gift of free will.
These responses are exercises of logic and not hard apologetics which for the willing heart would hold the reader in the steely grip of reason.
Dude, I stood where you are standing right now. I got my picture on the front page of the Gainesville Sun, heckling Christians and arguing the same points that you are right now. You insult and say that I am contributing nothing to the conversation. My viewpoint as an Evangelical and a secular humanist for 30 years before are valid and relevant. 98% of the population of the earth believe in God in some form or another. That is relevant annecdotal evidence. The 2% who don’t are the ones who should be suspect.
I don’t say that to be contentious. I appreciate your position. Just don’t try to invalidate what I am saying. I say it from a vast well of experience and from almost 400 years of historical secular resistance. Atheism is a relatively new concept in grand scope of history, brought to us courtesy of the age of “Enlightment” which erroeously told us that science and God were mutually exclusive. Before that, even the heathen nations were religious in one way or another.
I enjoy discourse with you…and I would never tell you that what you were saying was irrelevant or marginalize you. I would love to believe that we can talk intelligently without liberal haughtiness saying that every Conservative or Evangelical is an uneducated, irrelevant person with nothing to contribute to the conversation.
Quoting a fictional character in a book of fiction is evidence of two things-you have no understanding of the word “evidence”, and Carl Sagan can write. I don’t believe this is the first time you’ve tried to use this piece of fiction as evidence of something or another, but it helps to determine whether your posts are worth reading or not.
I appreciate your quotation but your are misinterpreting the Scripture. First off this is where the Mormons went off the rail, believing that they were or would be gods. In Psalm 82, the term you were gods, those words were spoken by the Psalmist, not God. The word is lower case and translated literally from the Hebrew it is not the word elohim which designates God in the sense you are saying. It is closer to the reference of the Sons of God made in Genesis six. The reference is to the angelic hosts or to the judges who will judge the angels…(us).
Even in Jesus’ reference he was chastiseing the Pharasees. English is a difficult language to interpolate Hebrew and Greek. However, the context with which Jesus was speaking related almost sarcastically to the religious leaders the point he was arguing. It also speaks to the immutable attributes of God that are resident in all of us.
It is worthless evidence. You are making an appeal to popularity. Also, your number, if it is correct, includes a great number massively ignorant and uneducated people. Since religion is much more likely to take hold in an ignorant person’s mind.
People who aren’t religious are those (at least in that particular instance) making the rational choice. With no evidence, disbelief is the smart thing to do. Believing without evidence is an innately irrational action. Smart people can do stupid things, but that doesn’t make stupid things smart.
So? People used to think the sun went round the Earth. We learn as we progress, and kicking off the burden of religion is natural as we improve the education, welfare and scientific understanding of humanity.
Every religious person has made an irrational decision. That doesn’t make them overall irrational or stupid.
Do you dispute that 98 percent of the population believe in some form of diety? I just thought that it was nice that an atheist pointed it out. Why are you so mean?
Interacting with God would be perfectly possible, assuming God exists. But we’d need to see some evidence that this actually happened. People think they chat with aliens, dogs, and large white rabbits all the time. The revelations people report are not much different from what you find in the self-help section of your local bookstore.
As for god belief, it seems to decline with increasing education, which is interesting.
No they don’t. They look for multiple sources of historical information, quite well area that some ancient historians had no trouble distorting the truth to support their position or to exalt a revered figure.
Please start a thread about evolution, so you can be shown the error of your ways. It appears you don’t understand what a transitional fossil is, since nearly all fossils are transitional in a way. Judging from you expectation of transitions between species, and not common ancestors, it sounds like you don’t have a clue about what evolution actually says. Ben Stein’s movie is of course a joke. And, it also appears that you don’t understand what the gap argument actually says either, since your example has nothing to do with it.
I understand your position. However, there is a cohesive argument of probability that starts to play in here. Over the landscape of history, the belief systems of supernatural dieties have overwhelmingly dominated. How is it that in only a few hundred years of science we suddenly dismiss the supernatural when science has done nothing to refute it. Carbon 14 dating is flawed, Evolution is unprovable and science continues to scream the immensity of God’s creation and the impeccable perfection and detail of His handiwork. So the question stands…is anecdotal data simply dismissed because of the age of Enlightenment?
Do you have a better cite than a work of fiction? In some parts of the world being an atheist is a capital offense. The level of atheism is much higher in the US and in Europe, and it can be argued that many Buddhists are at the heart atheists, though they also believe in the supernatural. Then there is China. So I don’t buy your 98% number.
That should be quite well aware. Kick in, coffee, damn it.
Gentlemen,
Please evangelize me to your righteous religion of humanism, secularism and self worship. Adieu.
Wow, I missed that. You are uneducated and proud of it? Look at the masthead of the page you’re on. This site is about reducing ignorance.
To put it bluntly, you are being lied to. Anyone who tells you that evolution is unsupported is either ignorant, a liar or delusional. Evolution is as supported as anything else in science.
Please stop believe the liars or madmen that are filling your head with such nonsense.
You might want to knock this off too, if you want more people to believe you. This line has been used by so many amateur and professional evangelists that it has become a joke, and it is obvious by the way you tried to establish your “creds” as a secular humanist that you have no idea what one is. As a general rule, they don’t go around shouting in the faces of Christians to get their faces in the local rag. You sound about as authentic as that overweight white-haired southern gentleman I saw on local access television the other night, wearing a skullcap with little crosses on it and promoting Jews For Jesus.
*A fictional character pointed it out.*If attempting to point out the difference between fiction and reality is mean, so be it.
Life ain’t a Chick Tract. Toodles.
I really feel sorry for you. And not because you’re an atheist.
Because he doesn’t believe in things that have no evidence for them?
I feel sorry for you because you don’t believe in Smurfs. 
In my experience:
This is only a meaningful statement for people who are concerned with the evidence, which most people of faith are not.
Also, the statement is also false. There is plenty of “evidence” for the existence of God, just never any reproducible evidence. So people are capable of rationalizing the existence of a god just fine even though they are unable to demonstrate it.