Who speaks for god?
There’s really no predicting how you are going to change the topic next. Could we go back to your understanding of atheists?
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Atheists are a real world example of a system (an individual) that sees their own thoughts as being orderly.
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Doesn’t everyone see his/her thoughts as orderly? Again, you’re saying ‘atheists do this’ when everybody does it.
The Metatron, of course.
Actually, I’m glad I’ve started posting on SDMB, I’ve found out a lot about atheists that I didn’t know before.
But I still believe that the scientific method has limitations. Going back to the metaphor, can you imagine the grain of sand experimenting and testing to see whether they are going to grow into a crystal? With that approach they would never get the big picture that God sees.
I prefer the Autobots, myself.
Let’s stick with this just a bit more, o.k.? What exactly have you learned about atheists, and could you please give us your updated definition of “atheism”?
In regards to the ‘atheists mad at God’ angle, I’ll redirect the OP to my question in post 162:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=15929519&postcount=162
I’d be interested in the answer.
I don’t think this metaphor makes sense, so I am not going to argue about it. Whatever flaws our brains may have, there’s no inherent reason we can’t use them to understand the universe. I also don’t have any doubt that methodical testing and observation is a more reliable way to understand the universe than received wisdom and ancient traditions and guesswork. Those things also come from human brains and they don’t have a method to keep our flaws in check.
Apparently atheists believe that they have insufficient information to conclude that God exists.
No-that’s agnosticism.
Read this thread and try again, please.
God speaks for Himself, through the Bible, miracles, and by answering prayers.
God speaks for himself through texts written by people?
Yes. The Bible was written by people inspired by the Holy Spirit. To me the Holy Spirit is man’s link to God.
That’s not speaking for yourself. It’s speaking through other people - doubly so if the text is divinely inspired as opposed to divinely dictated.
Unless you are an incredibly gifted linguist, the version of the Bible you are currently reading (and any other version you read growing up, if it’s different) is a translation of several texts written hundreds of years apart in several different languages. What’s worse, it’s not the only translation. While the general gist of different translations are the same, there are significant differences in detail. Worse yet, there are translations into other modern languages and, by inherent difficulties in any translation, none can fully capture the intent of the original writers.
So, even if we posit the existence of some kind of divinely inspired ‘prototypical’ Bible, we have several different manifestations of the Bible in any given modern language, each of which is flawed in a human way, meaning if God IS speaking through the Bible, the message is guaranteed to be partially garbled in translation.
Also, it looks like you don’t have a good handle on atheism vs agnosticism, yet.
How do I know this?
Nope. The Holy Spirit wrote the Bhagavad Gita. You’re hitching your wagon to the wrong star.
I always thought Santa Claus was just for fun. That’s also how I present it to my nephews and nieces.
The existence of God has been a serious issue for thousands of years and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.
Luckily for us, the scientific method is well aware of its limitations. It doesn’t try to explain what happened before the Big Bang, it doesn’t try to tell people they shouldn’t love someone of their own gender, and it constantly tests itself against the sum of human knowledge.
And your updated definition of “atheism” is…?