an early morning post makes for bad coding 
I’m sure you’ll point out I did not answer these questions, so here goes.
First of all I haven’t had a chance to read the link from tracer and would like to wait on that answer. Both to #1 and #2.
I said before God did not mislead anyone, so IMO if there is no concrete evidence, just bits and pieces here and there. It would be of my belief that Satan, the Devil, Lucifer, had something to do with misleading people, after all that’s what his main goal is to do.
I meant to say 10-12 thousand.
I think taking the bible literally puts you in the fundy column. I think the eight thousand years thing puts you in the fundy column, too. So does refusal to accept scientific proof. Just an observation. I could be wrong.
Well you did post this:
‘I hear people say all the time how they wish they had “inner peace.” And those are the very people who don’t understand when I say I have it. Some may laugh at that or just roll their eyes, but wouldn’t it be nice if you could really have it too?’
I certainly didn’t mean you have been preaching at us. You have been very careful not to do that, and I appreciate it. 
From the Concise Oxford dictionary…
Fundamentalist:
-
strict maintenance of traditional Protestant beliefs such as the inerrancy of Scripture and literal acceptance of the creeds as fundamentals of Christianity.
-
strict maintenance of ancient or fundamentalist doctrines of any religion.
So you are a fundamentalist!
OK that’s a clear statement of your position.
Now we have a lot of evidence that the Earth is billions of years old.
So I keep asking you to choose from:
- The evidence doesn’t exist.
- The evidence doesn’t support evolution.
- God (or Satan) planted the evidence to mislead us.
Fair enough, you’re reading the evidence. I am happy to wait. I may add that many fundamentalists refuse to do that, so you have qualities they don’t.
Yes, I admit you’re not. I was really talking about those mentioned above who will not even look at the evidence.
Plus I wanted to bring you back to the debate, because you are interesting to talk to.
Well firstly you are going to answer my multiple-choice above when you’re ready, so that’s fine.
Next I am convinced that the scientific method is correct. This board is stunning evidence of that!
I appreciate that the right way to behave comes under philosophy (and religion may well have good lessons for us).
But no religion has any evidence that it is true. In fact, from each sacred text, there spring a multitude of interpretations.
And every believer tells me that they are right, and every other sect is wrong.
So I turn to science, which has proved itself over and over again.
The evidence is clear, and leads to the following conclusions:
- The Earth is billions of years old.
- Life evolved on Earth, resulting in the species we see today.
Now you politely tell me that science is wrong about this. I accept that you honestly believe that.
But I don’t.
Let me add that I have read the Bible (and even won a school prize in Religious Education!).
I like some of Jesus’ teachings such as ‘Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them’ and ‘Thou shalt do no murder, thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness. Honour thy father and mother and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’
But I do not agree, for example, with some of the Old Testament.
Leviticus prescribes the death penalty for cursing your parents, or committing adultery.
Exodus describes how the firstborn child of everyone in Egypt is killed by the Lord.
So I have considerable doubt that the Bible should be taken literally.
And I hope you will too, when you see how the evidence contradicts Genesis.
dreamer, I too admire your politeness and convictions, especially when you’ve been challenged on your beliefs when your OP was asking others about their beliefs and why they felt that way. You tried to answer the questions as best you could where I would have probably said, “Look, the OP didn’t say let’s debate creationism or free will, I wanted your opinion on why you find it difficult to believe in God.”
I don’t think anyone’s changing their mind based on the discussions here, but I for one have enjoyed the stimulating back and forth. And even if I don’t think it has an effect, if you want to pray for me I would be most honored.
All well and good, Gobear, but I think that you know as well as I that dreamer was averring her certitude in God’s existence. As a man who understands what faith means, your post is 100% accurate in drawing the “know/believe” distinction – but you are, I think, aware of the set of posters here who use “faith” as synonymous with “willful self-delusion,” and IMHO it was to maintain her firm conviction against that misrepresentation of a belief system that dreamer used “know.”
In addition, most Christians use the term in the connoitre sense rather than the savoir one – I know Satan (the former poster, not the guy with the horns) as a person, a friend whom I feel I can trust, etc. I’m not making a statement about his existence or metaphysical properties but about a relationship with him. Dreamer and I know God in that same sense.
Last time I saw a shrubbery in flames, there were these knights riding by saying “Ni!” 
Dreamer, I do have to differ with your POV here – for reasons I think you’ll agree with after I explain. Many people – Glee, PLDennison, and Mars Horizon are three examples that come immediately to mind – at one time had a strong and vibrant faith in God and in Christ, and no longer have that. Mean Girl has spent quite a bit of time emphasizing in posts I’ve read, here and on the Pizza Parlor, the importance of recognizing the primariness of God’s reaching out to the individual, and of the nature of faith as one of God’s gifts to the believer. Faith is not something you do, except secondarily; it’s His gift to enable you to do it in the first place that allows you to believe at all. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, {it is} the gift of God…” (Ephesians 2:8). I think it’s important in witnessing to those who do not consider themselves Christians to keep this in mind – those who are ready will welcome His gift, and those whose journey takes them elsewhere in their thought and belief systems will not at present. It’s no failing of yours or mine, much less of theirs, but His ineffable will at work within time. I would not ask Gobear to adhere to a system that is prepared to condemn him for who he is, nor, I think, would you. But God is working His purpose out, in each of us, as I believe.
Glee, I’d beg to differ. If you choose to use the word “proof” instead of “evidence,” I could buy your statement. If one believes in a God who created the Universe, including the laws and basic values (e.g., the fine structure constant) under which it runs, then it does bear evidence of Him. But there is more than a bit of circular reasoning in using that to “prove” Him. Rather, it reinforces belief arrived at through other means.
Yep to the first question. “Adam and Eve” are not handy-dandy names that God dug out of the Deity’s Baby Name Book somewhere – they mean “man” and “mother” in their derivation – as the Bible makes clear. I don’t much care whether there were two people who happened to be Abraham’s great-to-the-seventeenth-grandfather and -grandmother who went through the stories in Genesis 1-3; the point to those stories is in how each man and woman reacts to God and to the world around them (as exemplified by Man and Mother, as those names ought to be translated), and it’s a pretty humbling point.
Squish, though I don’t spend a lot of time perusing Fraser and the other sources, I can see quite clearly the point you think you’re making here, and I particularly find the parallels between Judaism and Christianity on the one hand and Masdaism and Mithraism on the other to be most intriguing. However, your conclusion is not valid – it assumes that because parallels can be drawn, therefore the Christian mythos was in point of fact put together from the dying-god scenarios of Middle Eastern syncretic belief systems. There are a wide variety of other possible scenarios that would explain the parallelism, from God inspiring the corn-king mythologies in order to provide fertile ground for belief in what He had planned as a historical event in Jesus, to evangelists focusing on elements of the Jesus story that would resonate with the previous mythologies. Reasonable hypothesis? Yes. Proven? No way.
Czar * et al.*, re the “Messianic Jew” question, I have to say that Dreamer has the right to classify herself as what she chooses. Her definition, especially considering that she is ethnically a Jew, seems sound to me. I’m quite well aware of the fraudulent SBC-inspired movement, but also know of a few people who retain allegiance to their Jewish roots and believe in a Christian mode. If they choose to call themselves Messianic Jews, to gainsay them on your part or mine would be equivalent to the Religious Right gambit of saying that, e.g., Eve is not “a real woman.” Fair?
Gobear, I subscribe to a reverse-Pascalian wager: Believing in the Father of whom Jesus spoke, and in Him and the Holy Spirit, and endeavoring to live my life according to His teachings, I figure that, if I did happen to choose wrong, my life has been much more happy and fulfilling as a result of the rewards I feel from doing so.
From this, I can conclude that you feel you would be justified in stating that I do not love my wife, despite my avowals to the contrary, since it cannot be proven by physical evidence that I do and there are divorced people who do not love their wives in contradiction to what I claim about mine.
Different assertions in different disciplines require different forms of proof. If you want a description of God in the discipline of physics, consider taking the Lorenz transfer equations and determining what the values of the variables approach as v tends to infinity. The limits IMHO do a fairly good job of describing God as an entity vis-a-vis the physical universe.
Amen.
It seems like some of the posts, including the OP, confuse belief with knowing.
According to Merriam Webster, “belief” may or may not imply certitude in the believer.
The OP claims to know God exists, and many responses have questioned that, and many of which make good points.
On the other hand, some responses have seemed to make knowing or the existence of sufficient proof a prerequisite for belief.
Others have mentioned logic, reason and knowledge in this discussion, and have stated that God cannot be conclusively proven to exist, nor proven conclusively not to exist, yet there seem to be many posters here that are atheists, and atheism seems to me an assertion that “God does not exist.” It seems as bold an assertion as “God exists”, as opposed to “I believe that God exists,” which acknowledges that God’s existence is not something the speaker can prove.
I would think that if anything there would be many agnostics and those who believe in some sort of God, as opposed to those who proclaim that God exists and those who deny the existence of God.
For all the great thinkers over the millennia, many questions persist. What is existence? Does a higher being exist? Is there a soul? What is the right way to live? And so on.
Isn’t faith and belief where reason and logic fail? We don’t have the answers to these question firmly in hand, as they continue to be debated. Does that mean that we maintain a perpetual disbelief? Or do we continue the debate but with our beliefs? Can a debate continue when each side “knows” the answer, yet the answers are contrary? If so, is this debate already covered ground and merely a matter of trying to convince others of one’s own “knowledge” and not trying to find a truth that has for a long time not made itself apparent to all?
I believe in many things, but I also doubt those beliefs. It is a necessary characteristic of my beliefs that I do not know them. I continue looking for answers because of, and despite, those beliefs.
From my reading, thinking, discussing with others, I do not think I can conclusively prove or disprove the existence of a higher being. But I believe. Why? Perhaps because it comforts me. Perhaps because where reason and knowledge fail me instinct has dictated the belief. I don’t know.
Now what I believe… that’s another question altogether;)
I should have expanded on this in my last post, as it would help to clarify one of my statements.
I read many of the posts from those asserting atheism to deny a belief, and not to assert a belief in something else.
Perhaps the discussion, beginning with the Christian god of fundamentalists, restricted the responses, but as this matter was responded to by many atheists, it made me wonder about how belief factors into atheism. Many of the responses I read made it seem like it doesn’t, and that for many it is not a matter of belief. That is why I brought up the references to sufficient proof and knowledge.
Atheism, as indicated in my last post, is a denial of the existence of God (or a god or gods, etc.), but it can also mean a belief that God does not exist.
I guess it just seemed to me that the depiction of atheism on this thread, did not account for belief, hence my adoption of that depiction in my discussion, and my focus not so much on the Christian God or some other specific god or gods, but in belief itself.
With respect, Polycarp, what I hear you saying is perfectly valid: if x and y display the same patterns, it does not mean that x caused y. I accept that. Your other possible scenarios, though, require the same assumption.
Because I believe that anything that can be conceived of is, in however remote a way, possible, then I accept that you and Dreamer may be right and that the Day of Judgement will come, and I’ll be one of the goats. So be it. (As a friend of mine once put it: “you go to heaven and spend eternity worshipping God, or you go to hell and spend eternity being tortured–either way, you’re bored shitless.” ) However, the following scenario is more plausible to me:
- Certain people in the Roman province of Judea wish to overthrow the Romans. As the Jewish religious leaders do not seem inclined to revolt, they take one of the prophets/holy men, one who has a following, and
- in order to draw in the Jews, declare that he is the Messiah,
- in hopes of subverting portions of the Roman army, draw parallels between Jesus and Mithras, and
- knowing that Greece has a long history of mystery religions and that the Roman people have been busily importing mystery religions from all over the place,
- form a mystery religion around him.
The Jews eventually did revolt, although not due to these efforts, and were crushed. However, the budding Christian religion has gained converts, and the goal next becomes to undermine and perhaps overthrow the Roman Empire itself. Hundreds of years later the Roman Emperor converts to Christianity.
I know the thread is winding down, and I know tracer has already provided the requisite link with detailed information, but I still want to address this – albeit from a somewhat different point of view.
Because as I see it, this type of question says more about the way our brains are wired to think about the world than it does about the fossil record. The talkorigins page references this angle briefly, but as it’s intended more as a catalog to emphatically demolish the “no transitional forms” argument, it doesn’t give it the weight I think it deserves. And the fact that the “no transitional forms” argument lives on, despite being wholly inaccurate, is suggestive that our thought patterns are, in many ways, more powerful than the available evidence.
The thing is, our brains naturally compartmentalize and categorize as they evaluate the world. Things fit into this box, or that box, and we determine worth and make predictions based on those classifications. That’s an extremely useful skill, of course; our ability to recognize certain substances as elements, for example, and other substances as compounds of those elements, has been of enormously practical value in our industrial and technological development.
However, it can also be a limitation, as we have a tendency to apply it more broadly than is appropriate. Sometimes the world doesn’t work that way, and we get ourselves into intellectual trouble by attempting to delineate categories where they don’t strictly exist. This is true about defining species, but I’ll come back to that. Instead, let’s look at a couple of other examples.
First and foremost is the nature of light. You may or may not be familiar with this idea, depending on how much reading of physics you’ve done, but there’s an apparent paradox in how light behaves and is defined. We know it’s made up of photons, which are discrete particles, and at times light seems “corpuscular” (to use an early term). But at other times, it behaves as an energy wave, as though it isn’t made up of particles. (Here’s a previous discussion of the topic on these boards.)
Now, physicists know this, and don’t worry about it; it’s basically a matter of definition. But laypeople, looking at the issue, say, “Well, which one is it? Is it a particle or a wave?” The answer, of course, is that it’s both, depending on what you’re doing. This strikes most people as ridiculous; they dismiss (or don’t even really acknowledge) the truth, and go back to the original question: “Yeah, fine, whatever – but really, is it a particle or a wave?” Obviously, in this case, our natural (that is to say, unexamined) thought processes lead us toward erroneous and/or misleading conclusions.
For another example, look at global politics. We tend to divide the world’s countries into two groups: our friends and our enemies. Consider the famous saying, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” A given nation either supports us, in which case we define that nation as an ally, or it opposes us, in which case we position spy satellites over its territory and watch it very carefully and create terms like “axis of evil.”
But how useful is this, really? What about China? We engage in extensive trade relations, we have embassies and diplomats inside one another’s borders, we meet for summits, we express condolences when bad things happen to one another, and so on. But at the same time, we don’t really trust one another: We spy on each other, we actively meddle in one another’s politics, we look for opportunities to criticize each other. China, then, is both a friend and an enemy, depending on the circumstances, and despite the best efforts of ideologues of various stripes to convince the population one way or another.
This kind of thinking is found everywhere. There was a dust-up a couple of months ago in Great Debates when a poster named Sweet Willy tried to get people to answer the question, “Am I or am I not a Jew?” He thought he had stumbled onto a racist conspiracy; in reality, he was simply demonstrating that he couldn’t conceive of the fact that he simultaneously was and was not a Jew. Or look at how we think about musical artists; how many times have you heard someone denigrate a performer because s/he didn’t fall into a comfortable niche? Further, every year, many excellent non-English-speaking movies are cheated out of a Best Foreign Language Oscar nomination because their production cannot conclusively be pinned down to a single country. An even more pedestrian example can be found in the age-old question about whether or not Y is a vowel. And, of course, the whole agonizing debate over human races is rooted in this meta-intellectual conflict.
This issue applies to the evolution debate because our brains have trouble understanding that there are no hard and fast divisions between species. Life is constantly in flux. Small mutations are constantly being introduced and tested, and usually “rejected” as not providing an advantage. This is confirmed. We absolutely know this. And yet, it’s fundamentally counterintuitive to think that a given type of animal is not a static organism.
Think about it: We don’t really question the idea that lions and tigers are different creatures. They don’t look the same, their behaviors are different, they live in different places. But – they can mate and reproduce, under the right conditions. (Do a web search for ligers and tions.) What does this mean? Biologically, there is some overlap between them. They’re still different animals, but they share enough characteristics that they’re physiologically capable of reproducing with one another.
Even better, consider the marine iguana, of the Galapagos Islands. This iguana lives on the rocky coastline, eating algae (mostly) and spending a fair amount of time in the water. It’s an air-breather, though, and it climbs up onto the rocks to sun itself and conduct other iguana business.
Further into the island, though, there’s a different kind of iguana, one that doesn’t spend much time in the water. Physically, it strongly resembles the marine iguana, and, at times, it does venture down to the shore where it displays many marine-iguana behaviors. Not every individual animal does this, but enough do, from time to time, to underline the fact that this is an extremely close relative of the marine iguana. And, indeed, the land and marine iguanas mate without trouble, when they meet under certain conditions.
The land iguana is a living transitional form. It’s basically the same species as the marine iguana, but the animal is adaptable enough that some of them have successfully made a niche for themselves away from the water. Over time, it’s likely that they’ll go to the ocean less and less frequently, and will have less and less contact with the marine iguanas. The more time they spend exclusively inland, the more selection pressures will alter their forms – perhaps modifying their claws so they’re better for digging than for clinging to rocks amid crashing breakers, perhaps enhancing their sense of smell, or whatever. And in five or fifty thousand years, odds are that they’ll be separate species.
The point is: What are they now? They’re not really marine iguanas, but neither have they yet fully become land iguanas. They’re both, and that seems to violate something fundamental about how we perceive the world.
Our dividing the natural world into separate species is, at root, an artificial intellectual construct that has proved useful for thinking about things and creating predictive models but that doesn’t really capture the actual reality of how everything works. Asking about transitional forms, therefore, misses the point – but it’s a totally understandable error, given its basis in our hardwired analytical tools.
To conclude: Our task as thinking, self-aware beings is to recognize and transcend this limitation, and to refuse to be trapped into mistaken notions because our brains are insisting on improperly applying a nonexistent structure. If you find yourself wrestling with one of these sorts of questions, and resisting the conclusions of the debate, stop and ask yourself whether it’s not that the conclusions are wrong but that perhaps you’re unthinkingly applying a habitual but invalid means of analysis.
That is all. I hope this provides some context and perspective on the topic.
Following up: In re-reading the above, I see that I wrote the bit on iguanas rather quickly, leaving lots of room for nitpicking (there’s a major question about whether the land iguana or the marine iguana came to Galapagos first, for example, which informs the direction of speciation). The larger point, however, is still perfectly valid.
It strikes me that the unwritten question underlying the OP is this: "What would it take to make you believe in God?"
And, for me at least, the answer is: “I don’t know - but God ought to.”
dreamer: Where do you get the 10-12,000 as the Earth’s age?
AlaItalia, you know I could never pass up that request :). Anything specific you would like prayer for?
Also thank you for your comments
This may be another thread.
I would still stand by gobear’s statement. Perhaps we need to come at the situation from this direction:
- if God existed, and wanted us to believe in him especially by how the world works, what would he do?
Now I can’t be positive on this. But I certainly would expect at least:
- pleasing symmetry
- the Earth to be the centre of the Universe
- no natural disasters killing innocent people
- no meteorites crashing onto the planet
I think the Universe (and the tendency towards entropy) does not bear signs of design by a Creator.
Yes, if you already believe in God, it may seem natural to admire the Universe. But I can’t accept things like children dying as being part of some obvious plan.
Well love certainly is difficult to prove. I suppose you could say that wanting to get married and living together and raising a family was evidence.
But the situation with the Bible is that, from exactly the same starting point, different sects claim different things.
So the equivalent might be your parents (I’m just making up an example, obviously) might say you have a completely loving marriage, whereas her parents say you clearly don’t.
But this really shows your parallel is not comparing like to like.
P.S. In your usual courteous way, you suggested I used to have a strong and vibrant faith.
I wouldn’t say that. I was taken regularly to a Congregational Church (Church of England Protestant) till I was 14 or so. I listened carefully to the sermons and Sunday School teaching.
Then I asked my Sunday School teacher if God existed. He replied that there was no proof, but that it was up to each individual to have faith.
I gave it a lot of thought and decided I didn’t.
I still discuss religion regularly and admire people (like yourself) who represent virtues. Unfortunately, we both know of some religious folk who behave badly (as of course some atheists / agnostics do).
I strongly prefer good social behaviour to belief in religion (or non-belief).
Let’s just say for a second that everything “fundamentalist Christians” believe is true - then God telling you he loves you no matter what you do, but asking you to trust him that he knows all, isn’t good enough? If he created this Earth and the people he chose to populate it, he has to know what we are capable of and what we can do to ourselves (good and bad).
We are his children. We all have our own children. We love our children no matter what they do. If we are a good parent, we teach them right from wrong and expect them to trust us that what we are teaching them is right and in turn they love us back. When they do wrong we punish them or allow them to do what’s wrong and learn from their mistakes without getting in the way. We don’t keep all things bad from them, things that could harm them or hurt them, though we wish we could. But we have to let them go, no matter how much we love them, so they can learn and grow and become good human beings. Of course there are other circumstances, but the bottom line is God is the Father and we are his kids. He created the Earth and (taking literally) Genesis - he created Adam and Eve and through the whole serpent, apple story Eve gave into temptation (like any of us would), and allowed sin to enter the world. Now of course God knew that would happen, he knew Satan would tempt us all our lives, try to come up with any reason God isn’t real or doesn’t care and do whatever he can to keep God out of the “world”, which is his for now, that being a completely different topic. But he knew he could not make each person choose him. He knew there would be people who question him, and that is what his intention was. Why would he create a population of people that did everything he wanted them to do without question? He wants to be loved, not have robots that he has “all control” over running around.
So in the end it’s all a choice we have to make. Choose God or don’t choose him.
So Satan–God’s employee–is acting under God’s order to do these things. Why? Whenever I asked my parents “Why?” about something, they gave me the best explanation they could. What is God’s explanation?
Then why did he not want us to have free will? Why did he not want man to eat of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?
There’s no more reason for me to choose the JC god than there is for me to choose Cthulhu or the Endless.
Speaking as a parent, no.
When my child does something wrong, I don’t simply discipline him, I also explain why what he did was wrong, and try to explain things from my adult perspective. Even though he may not understand (he’s only two-and-a-half), I make the effort because he deserves to know the motives for my directives, that I am not merely punishing him because of a random whim on my part.
Last I looked, God offers no such explainations, and does not even consider that I should be treated with enough respect to get one. And when I realize that – according to the teachings of “fundamentalist Christians” – a man of peace and goodwill like Mahatma Ghandi is condemned to spend eternity in Hell merely because he didn’t accept the Judeo-Christian God, I don’t feel that God deserves my respect, either.
Rjung said, “Last I looked, God offers no such explainations, and does not even consider that I should be treated with enough respect to get one. And when I realize that – according to the teachings of “fundamentalist Christians” – a man of peace and goodwill like Mahatma Ghandi is condemned to spend eternity in Hell merely because he didn’t accept the Judeo-Christian God, I don’t feel that God deserves my respect, either.”
That’s exactly how I feel. Why does everything have to be a big mystery with Christianity (and most religions). If there is a controlling factor in the universe, why doesn’t he just tell us? If he doesn’t want to “force” us to love and accept him, it must not make that big a difference to him. It doesn’t seem to bother him at all when he condemns people to eternal damnation. He could have proven his existence and saved everyone a lot of pain and suffering (not to mention the Hell thing!).