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Why is religion the quintessential forum topic?
Topic Started: May 21 2008, 03:27 PM (2,768 Views)
John D'Oh
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Klaus
May 23 2008, 04:43 AM
Moonbat
May 23 2008, 10:36 AM
There are other ways but a message in the background radiation, or the realignment of all the stars so they spelled out a message frmo the bible when viewed from Earth.

Well, this is actually something that I also often wondered, and I'd like to hear the perspective of the Christians on this:

If god exists, why doesn't he give a crystal-clear proof of this existence, e.g., in the way Moonbat described?

I believe that the traditional answer is because he is testing our faith, and that with proof, faith is meaningless.

Personally, I think it's because enjoys likes being annoying. This explains a lot of other stuff too. Let's face it, if you were all by yourself and had nothing to do but watch shaved monkeys all day, what would you do after a few millenia? I think we're actually getting off pretty lightly.
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Klaus
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John D'Oh
May 23 2008, 12:08 PM
I believe that the traditional answer is because he is testing our faith, and that with proof, faith is meaningless.

But why would he test our faith? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
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Moonbat
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That's correct, but it has nothing to do with my comment. Your statement implies that belief in a God in some way "takes away" anything about the universe, including but not limited to our scientific knowledge about said universe, which it obviously doesn't. My point to you is not that belief in a God changes the raw data or the resulting synthesized knowledge of the universe; rather, that it changes one's understanding of the significance of that data and knowledge. It addresses the "why" of the knowledge. And the "why" is at least as important - in the larger sense, I'd argue it's more important - than the raw knowledge itself.

Every person must, by definition, filter all of his or her knowledge, and their understanding of the ultimate significance of that knowledge, through the primary filter of their understanding of the origin of the cosmos, which is just another way of identifying one's core beliefs about the existence of a God and the implications to humanity of that belief.


I wasn't suggesting that belief in God necessarily takes away anything (though i think an understanding of the universe leads one to see that these myths are inadequate and cartoon like), you claimed everything depended on my "non-God" view and that it somehow formed the centre of my being and everything was evaluated through that lense but that is simply not the case.

This "why" point doesn't work - the only way that these cosmic "whys" are meaningfull questions in the first place i.e. have answers, is if there is actually a God who created things with some specific purpose in mind. This line of argument involves first assuming there is a cosmic purpose and then saying look religion can tell us what it is, but assuming a cosmic is the same as assuming there is some kind of God!

I mean you do get "why" answers in science all the time just not the kind of why answers that you want, the kind that presuppose an ultimate intelligence but there is no reason to presuppose an ultimate intelligence.

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That is the definition of religion at its absolute essence: A person's understanding of the existence or non-existence of a God, and the implications of that belief for the cosmos in general, and humanity in particular.


Well you can define the word that way, but it's not the normal definition of the term and it's certainly not what i mean when i use it.

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Actually, you lack belief because for whatever reason, God has not opened your heart or eyes to have the faith that is necessary to believe in God. There's really nothing that you can do, no telescopes that you can aim, that will cause you to believe. it isn't up to you. It isn't anything that another person can ever convince you of. it isn't something that you arrive at because thus-and-such people believe it, so you probably should as well. It is not anything based in reason. But that is a very different thing than saying that there is no evidence for belief. The only catch to such evidence is that only those who God has already graced with belief, may actually see and understand the evidence.


First believe that there is a giant conspiracy that the world is out to get you and then you will see the evidence for it. You will turn around and see people looking at you, you will suddenly understand that the reason you lost that job or had to wait so long to see the doctor or that the food you were going to eat was out of date, all of it will suddenly become clear. The "evidence" will be overwhelming.

The idea that you have to believe something first before you see the evidence should set off massive alarm bells because you can find such "evidence" for any belief.

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You may listen to someone tell of their own personal experience of God, and because you've never had a comparable communication within yourself, your opinion would be that it's simply anecdotal occurrence that can be explained rather simply, and may have some physiological or psychological explanation, but in any case it is not sufficient scientific or reasonable evidence for belief. And in that, you would be correct.

However, to another believer who has indeed had a similar intimate, personal experience of God in their own lives, the perception is very different, and the evidence is understood as exactly that - not evidence admissable in a court of law, but that is hardly the only form of evidence, and by definition could not be sufficient evidence of a God who is an infinite, transcendent Being (the very definition of such a God making "evidence," as defined in normal human terms, impossible).


When two people who are convinced the government is out to get them refer to the events like their food being out of date that they consider evidence they can understand one another whilst the rest of the world looks on and tries to explain that the observation that their food might have been out of date does not infact constitute evidence for this idea that people are out to get them because there are explanations of this fact, it's expected that people will occasionally buy out of date of food. etc. etc. of course to the people with the delusion it's as if the other's haven't "opened their eyes" if they could all just start believing it then they would see that the people with delusion see i.e. that everything supports the idea that people are out to get them.

These notions of communication with God(s) refers to an experience or set of experiences that you've had. But then you should accept that there may be other explanations for these experiences. This argument from personal experience is the same defense for almost all superstition/paranormal/pseudoscience, from demons to UFOs to psychics. Always it comes down to personal experiences and then a refusal to consider other explanations (like say temporal lobe influences, or subconscious influences or the way memory is not half as reliable as people think it is ,etc. etc.).

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If a believer is really honest, he or she should have absolutely no problem with saying something like, "By standards of human reason, I am indeed a fool; my beliefs are unreasonable and must be so. Despite all your objections, which I myself have fully considered in a form far more terrifying than the formulation that you or anyone else is capable of posing to me, I nevertheless choose the improbable, because of the evidence that I see and that you do not."


If there is evidence then it's not improbable, but simple personal conviction, the experience of certainty that is not evidence.

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The reason that a believer should have no problem with saying such a thing is that he or she is not "convinced" to become a believer by the fact that many others believe (because obviously, many others do not believe), nor even by the fact that others, including those who walked with Christ himself believed. All of this is interesting, but ultimately irrelevant to own's own faith. Faith is always something that is given directly to an individual, without any regard for who does or has, or who doesn't or hasn't, also believed. It is always something that comes (or fails to come) direct from the source, as equally for you and me as it did for the apostles Peter and Paul.

Now, you may - I'll suggest, you do - find so much of what I've just said to be absolute nonsense. But the basis for your rejection of it comes right back to your presupposed rejection of the existence of the kind of God whose actions I've been describing. And that's my point to you. Your beliefs are built upon the presupposition of the annswer to this fundamental underlying issue.


But it's not that i presuppose the "non-existence of God". I don't start off apriori excluding the idea of God or the idea of pink unicorns for that matter. I start off with a blank slate and then i add "beliefs" to that blank slate based on evidence, based on what is supported by empirical observation. I do that because i want my beliefs to be right i want to know what's actually going on. I don't want fantasy.

I don't reject the validity of "believe first and then you will see the 'evidence'" because i presuppose non-God, or non-conspiracies or anything else. I reject it because that isn't evidence, you can do that for anything. Any idea that you first assume you can rationalise, but that doesn't justify believing it in the first place. The reason why i don't consider these personal experiences evidence for the interpretation people give them is because you don't need to posit extra things like cosmic intelligences or demons or psychic powers to explain them, as such they are not evidence for those extra things.

You say that it's impossible that there could be evidence for God(s), but that is simply not the case in principle we could lived in a world like a fantasy novel, we could have lived in a world where the gates of heaven could be seen with telescopes, we could have live in a world where physics and theology stayed superimposed. Tomorrow the world could shift and it could end up that way, or as i said to ivory we could find a message in the background radiation. There are lots of ways that evidence could have and could emerge. But it hasn't. It's not that I don't believe in God(s) because that's a presupposition that i fit everything else to, i don't believe in God(s) because there is no reason to, there is no evidence for such entities.
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John D'Oh
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Klaus
May 23 2008, 06:11 AM
John D'Oh
May 23 2008, 12:08 PM
I believe that the traditional answer is because he is testing our faith, and that with proof, faith is meaningless.

But why would he test our faith? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

The concept of an all-powerful loving God doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. As far as I can tell, and I'm certainly no scholar, a vast and complex theology seems to have been developed as a way of attempting to explain away all the inconsistencies. I'm sure someone will tell me I don't know what I'm talking about, but speaking just for myself, if one starts with the assumption 'There is no loving God' then a whole lot more about the world starts to make sense. As a corollary, if God doesn't love us, his existence or otherwise is irrelevant.

I think I'm having a Moonbat moment.
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I think I'm having a Moonbat moment.


:trumpet:
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ivorythumper
May 23 2008, 08:40 AM
Moonbat
May 23 2008, 01:36 AM
ivorythumper
May 22 2008, 07:59 PM
Moonbat
May 22 2008, 07:45 AM

I can tell you what it would take to change my mind, my religious opponents never can, if i ask them what it would take to convince they were wrong they have no answer.

OK, I'll bite: what would it take to make you change your mind that there really is a God?

(and I have a lot of fun follow up questions, but one thing at a time :wink: )

There are other ways but a message in the background radiation, or the realignment of all the stars so they spelled out a message frmo the bible when viewed from Earth.

How would that prove God exists? Sounds like a parlor trick.

:lol: so much for the fun follow up questions.
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Klaus
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A proof I could accept would be if God could magically transfer 1 billion euros on my bank account. :whistle:
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Dewey
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you claimed everything depended on my "non-God" view and that it somehow formed the centre of my being and everything was evaluated through that lense but that is simply not the case.


But it is very much the case, Moonbat. It's the very filter through which you determine not only your understanding of things, but even the tools which you will accept as useful in reaching those understandings.

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This "why" point doesn't work - the only way that these cosmic "whys" are meaningfull questions in the first place i.e. have answers, is if there is actually a God who created things with some specific purpose in mind. This line of argument involves first assuming there is a cosmic purpose...


You have presupposed that the question is meaningless, and therefore, that there is no God, and have formed your understanding of everything else on this foundation.

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I mean you do get "why" answers in science all the time just not the kind of why answers that you want, the kind that presuppose an ultimate intelligence but there is no reason to presuppose an ultimate intelligence.


Moonbat, the answer to every "why" question in science is actually a "why" question about the work of God, but they're subservient questions to the larger "why" question that I'm referring to. If you see no meaning or purpose in asking that particular "why" question, it would be inconsistent with your reasoned, scientific search for all other knowledge. It is also exactly what I'm talking about when I refer to your presupposition filtering all other knowledge.

Don't mistake my point; when I talk about such a "primary filter," I'm not saying that the filter alters a scientific finding. Rather, it simply forms a different understanding of the finding itself. As an example, I'm not talking about a person of faith saying, "I know that scentific evidence suports human evolution, but I'm a person of faith, so I reject that evidence and hold that evolution is untrue." If a scientist is a believer and therefore has a theistic filter, s/he might say, "Scientific evidence points to human evolution. This gives me a wonderful insight into the manner in which God has worked the creation of life on this planet, and gives me an increased understanding of God's own Being and nature. It also opens up new ways for me to read the Scriptures, and to draw even deeper understanding and meaning from them."

You once got frustrated with me when I told you that I rejoiced over every scientific advance, because it moved the yard-markers, as it were, on humans' understanding of God. By contrast, you saw every scientific advance as another nail in God's coffin. You seem to want to battle against a view of God that was formed in the year 500, or 1200, or 1850, or even 2003. It doesn't work that way, any more than to claim that science is meaningless or obsolete because scientists today don't believe the same thing today as did scientists in those same years.

My presupposition is that God exists; God has given us brains, and reason, and the ability and desire to study our existence; and that all of this study will increase our knowledge of God - that every scientific advancement makes my God larger. My presupposition of the existence of God, however, does not found itself within reason, or the scientific method of determining God's existence. My presupposition is based on the idea that there are other ways of obtaining knowledge, in this case a knowledge of God. Your presupposition holds reason and scientific method as the only reliable method of obtaining knowledge, and as such, refuses to accept the possibility of a God who is revealed in ways other than that. You have pre-determined that the "why" question is meaningless by establishing your assessment criteria. In the sense of that particular issue, science has adopted a doctrine of Predestination far more so than any Calvinist.

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Well you can define the word that way, but it's not the normal definition of the term and it's certainly not what i mean when i use it.


I haven't checked a dictionary, but I'd suspect that my definition is pretty accurate.

EDIT: I couldn't help myself. Me:

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"That is the definition of religion at its absolute essence: A person's understanding of the existence or non-existence of a God, and the implications of that belief for the cosmos in general, and humanity in particular. "


The #1 definition of "religion" from dictionary.com:

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"a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs. "


While using slightly different, and fewer, words, I'm comfortable saying that my definition and theirs are pretty much identical.

My reason for sharing that definition is to ask you to give me your definition of religion, because it most of your arguments against religious faith seem to be aimed at rather secondary matters - the husk around the kernel of what religious faith really is. If you're going to go to battle against something, you'd better have a pretty accurate understanding of what it is, and isn't.

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First believe that there is a giant conspiracy that the world is out to get you and then you will see the evidence for it. You will turn around and see people looking at you, you will suddenly understand that the reason you lost that job or had to wait so long to see the doctor or that the food you were going to eat was out of date, all of it will suddenly become clear. The "evidence" will be overwhelming.

The idea that you have to believe something first before you see the evidence should set off massive alarm bells because you can find such "evidence" for any belief.


You're confusing two related but different points. My comment referred to someone who is already a believer understanding the experisnce of another believer, in a way that a non-believer can't.

I did not say that a believer himself has to believe first, in order to then experience God. In fact, I believe the exact opposite - that God imposes God's self into our lives first, before we have, or even can have, any faith. Put another way, people don't want to come to a knowledge of God until God has given them the desire and faith to seek God. This is why I find your current attitudes about God wrong, but entirely reasonable and understandable from where you stand at the moment. In fact, as I've said, your beliefs are far more reasonable than are mine - I simply do not see reason as the ultimately sufficient vehicle to all real knowledge.

Before I was a believer, I was a non-believer. I didn't want to believe, and I thought that religious faith was quaint, and generally a positive influence on society, but on the whole, rather foolish and unintelligent. My own coming to have faith had nothing - absolutely nothing - to do with the experiences of other people, or the scientific, or even quasi-scientific, sorting through "evidence that demands a verdict," as the name of a popular Christian book challenges.

What makes a person believe is the fact that they are, in some internal way, changed from what they were before, whether that process takes place in a minute or a decade. whatever the manner, something inside them has opened them to a different way of seeing the question of God's existence, and the understanding of the significance of that issue to them, and to all people. When it happens, it's very often not even something the person was really searching for. It's something that happens, bidden or unbidden. It is based on an initial understanding that either "transcends reason" or "is unreasonable," depending on what sort of spin you want to put on the experience, but after stepping over the initial "unreasonableness," the believer finds a very reasonable understanding of God, creation, humanity, and our inter-relatedness.

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But it's not that i presuppose the "non-existence of God". I don't start off apriori excluding the idea of God or the idea of pink unicorns for that matter. I start off with a blank slate and then i add "beliefs" to that blank slate based on evidence, based on what is supported by empirical observation.


and now we're back to the presuppostion issue. This is the most concise statement of yours in the post that self-identifies your presupposition. You say that you start with a "blank slate" - which itself is an assumption that the slate is, in fact blank, which I would suggest is a mistake. You go on to say then that you add chalkmarks to the slate based only on evidence, supported by empirical observation - which is, of course, your key presupposition: that only such evidence supported by empirical observation is "real" knowledge. This assumption is nothing other than a presupposition regarding the existence, or at very least the nature, of God.

Your insistence on only empirically gained knowledge is correct and admirable in scientific pursuit. But it leaves you with an entirely empty toolbox if you want to discuss questions related to a God who claims to work in ways different from those to which you've limited yourself.
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Moonbat
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You have presupposed that the question is meaningless, and therefore, that there is no God, and have formed your understanding of everything else on this foundation.


But I'm not presupposing anything. If there is an intelligent creator or creators then then asking what purpose x,y or z has, means something, if there isn't an intelligent creator or creators it doesn't.

I'm not presupposing there is no intelligent creator, i'm building up a view of reality based on evidence and since there is no evidence for an intelligent creator there is no evidence that is a cosmic purpose. Asking what is the cosmic purpose jumps the gun, first you must have a reason to believe there is such a thing.

Like wise asking the question "where are the pink unicorns on Mars?" jumps the gun before asking such a question you need to evidence for the existence of pink unicorns on Mars and you certainly can;t present the question as if it somehow an argument for the pink unicorns.

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Moonbat, the answer to every "why" question in science is actually a "why" question about the work of God, but they're subservient questions to the larger "why" question that I'm referring to. If you see no meaning or purpose in asking that particular "why" question, it would be inconsistent with your reasoned, scientific search for all other knowledge. It is also exactly what I'm talking about when I refer to your presupposition filtering all other knowledge.


When i say there are "why" answers in science i mean there are questions like "why does water freeze at a lower temperature if you add salt to it?" you can give answers to such questions. But those aren't the kinds of "why" questions or answers that you mean. You mean purpose, you mean what an intelligent creator intended. But this assumes that involves presupposing an intelligent creator and you should no more presuppose an intelligent creator than should presuppose pink unicorns (or atoms or cars or anything else).

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Don't mistake my point; when I talk about such a "primary filter," I'm not saying that the filter alters a scientific finding. Rather, it simply forms a different understanding of the finding itself. As an example, I'm not talking about a person of faith saying, "I know that scentific evidence suports human evolution, but I'm a person of faith, so I reject that evidence and hold that evolution is untrue." If a scientist is a believer and therefore has a theistic filter, s/he might say, "Scientific evidence points to human evolution. This gives me a wonderful insight into the manner in which God has worked the creation of life on this planet, and gives me an increased understanding of God's own Being and nature. It also opens up new ways for me to read the Scriptures, and to draw even deeper understanding and meaning from them."

You once got frustrated with me when I told you that I rejoiced over every scientific advance, because it moved the yard-markers, as it were, on humans' understanding of God. By contrast, you saw every scientific advance as another nail in God's coffin. You seem to want to battle against a view of God that was formed in the year 500, or 1200, or 1850, or even 2003. It doesn't work that way, any more than to claim that science is meaningless or obsolete because scientists today don't believe the same thing today as did scientists in those same years.

My presupposition is that God exists; God has given us brains, and reason, and the ability and desire to study our existence; and that all of this study will increase our knowledge of God - that every scientific advancement makes my God larger. My presupposition of the existence of God, however, does not found itself within reason, or the scientific method of determining God's existence. My presupposition is based on the idea that there are other ways of obtaining knowledge, in this case a knowledge of God. Your presupposition holds reason and scientific method as the only reliable method of obtaining knowledge, and as such, refuses to accept the possibility of a God who is revealed in ways other than that. You have pre-determined that the "why" question is meaningless by establishing your assessment criteria. In the sense of that particular issue, science has adopted a doctrine of Predestination far more so than any Calvinist.


You see you really do do this filtering thing, you assume God exists, gave us brains etc. etc. and then examine the world through that lense. But this is a terrible terrible idea - suppose a child learns his parents deliver his presents and instead of thinking "oh i guess Santa doesn't exist" he thinks "oh Santa must have sent my parents" and then when people go to the poles he thinks "oh Santa must be magically sealed from the world untill Chrismas eve" etc. etc. and he goes on like this accounting for every observeable phenomena. Everything he sees or hears is translated through his presupposition that Santa exists and is behind his Chrismas presents.

Absolutely any conclusion can be presupposed and everything made to fit it. You can presuppose that the world is flat and then you can say ah wellthe picture must be forgeries, the people who claim to flown the world must be lieing or hallucinating, etc.

If you want the truth you must never ever do this, you must never presuppose anything, you must never filter anything like this. Now you seem to think i'm doing the same thing you think i'm filter things through my "non-God" hypothesis.

But you are wrong - if i were filtering like this nothing in principle could change my mind, just as nothing in principle can change the mind of someone who presupposes Santa or God or flat Earth or Newtonian mechanics or anything else. But here i can play my ace. My views are falsifiable. The world can change my mind, i am open to evidence, i can tell you what kinds of things would change my mind and why. You must never filter, you must never have these invincible beliefs that can never be changed, you must not presuppose things not if you want to avoid fantasy, not if you want truth.

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You're confusing two related but different points. My comment referred to someone who is already a believer understanding the experisnce of another believer, in a way that a non-believer can't.

I did not say that a believer himself has to believe first, in order to then experience God. In fact, I believe the exact opposite - that God imposes God's self into our lives first, before we have, or even can have, any faith. Put another way, people don't want to come to a knowledge of God until God has given them the desire and faith to seek God. This is why I find your current attitudes about God wrong, but entirely reasonable and understandable from where you stand at the moment. In fact, as I've said, your beliefs are far more reasonable than are mine - I simply do not see reason as the ultimately sufficient vehicle to all real knowledge.

Before I was a believer, I was a non-believer. I didn't want to believe, and I thought that religious faith was quaint, and generally a positive influence on society, but on the whole, rather foolish and unintelligent. My own coming to have faith had nothing - absolutely nothing - to do with the experiences of other people, or the scientific, or even quasi-scientific, sorting through "evidence that demands a verdict," as the name of a popular Christian book challenges.

What makes a person believe is the fact that they are, in some internal way, changed from what they were before, whether that process takes place in a minute or a decade. whatever the manner, something inside them has opened them to a different way of seeing the question of God's existence, and the understanding of the significance of that issue to them, and to all people. When it happens, it's very often not even something the person was really searching for. It's something that happens, bidden or unbidden. It is based on an initial understanding that either "transcends reason" or "is unreasonable," depending on what sort of spin you want to put on the experience, but after stepping over the initial "unreasonableness," the believer finds a very reasonable understanding of God, creation, humanity, and our inter-relatedness.


Reason is just coherent thought, a defense mounted on something transcending reason aside from not actually meaning anything can be mounted for any and every concept from flat Earths to psychics. It's not a defense.

You have this central idea that God opens people's heads but this is just part of this unfalsifiable God-exists filter that you apply to everything. Once one accepts the filter then every starts to fit, but you must not accept the filter. Not if you want real answer not fiction.

Also you talk about wanting to believe or not wanting to believe but that is absolutely disasterously irrelevent. We need to push aside what we want to be true or what we don't want to be true. They totally irrelevent, all they do is serve to bias us one way or another. I want it to be true that i'm a multi millionaire but that doesn't make true, not only does it not make it true it has absolutely no relevence whatsoever with regards to the truth of the statement.

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and now we're back to the presuppostion issue. This is the most concise statement of yours in the post that self-identifies your presupposition. You say that you start with a "blank slate" - which itself is an assumption that the slate is, in fact blank, which I would suggest is a mistake. You go on to say then that you add chalkmarks to the slate based only on evidence, supported by empirical observation - which is, of course, your key presupposition: that only such evidence supported by empirical observation is "real" knowledge. This assumption is nothing other than a presupposition regarding the existence, or at very least the nature, of God.

Your insistence on only empirically gained knowledge is correct and admirable in scientific pursuit. But it leaves you with an entirely empty toolbox if you want to discuss questions related to a God who claims to work in ways different from those to which you've limited yourself.


When i say i start with a blank slate i don't mean a blank slate with respect to God, i mean blank slate with respect to everything, i'm not starting assuming there are cars and that gravity exists, i'm not assuming there are horses or that i have 2 legs, i start assuming nothing and then i look at the world. The slate is what i think about the world.

I could start off assuming God exists, or assuming pink unicorns exist, or assuming the world is flat, or anything of an infinite number of logically possible descriptions. But which ones? And why? And as soon as you answer why then you realise you're back to the blank slate followed adding stuff that there is reason to believe in.

If I found myself in a world where pink unicorns were found all over the place, i would believe in them, if i found myself in a world where God or God(s) were like kings who ruled over populations and had magic powers then i would believe in them, if i found myself in a world where there was a message the background radiation proclaiming the existence of a God then i would believe in it.

Tomorrow i may find myself in one of those worlds, what i think is falsifiable, my mind can be changed. That's important because i want my mind to match the world, i want my brain to be correlated as much as possible with the universe. That is what i mean by knowledge. (and by universe i mean everything including God if indeed there is a God)

This doesn't involve presupposition because i'm using everything i have, all we can do is have experiences and analyse those experience and build up a picture of the world based on them. Our picture must always be tentative we must never do this filtering thing and we must let the world teach us what is true and what is not. I'm not presupposing there is no God, i'm not even presupposing there is no implicitly unfindable God. Maybe there is an implicitly unfindable God, just as maybe there really are floating invisible immutable elephants. But the possibility does not justify claiming these things have a high probability (which essentially what one is doing when one says one believes something).

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While using slightly different, and fewer, words, I'm comfortable saying that my definition and theirs are pretty much identical.

My reason for sharing that definition is to ask you to give me your definition of religion, because it most of your arguments against religious faith seem to be aimed at rather secondary matters - the husk around the kernel of what religious faith really is. If you're going to go to battle against something, you'd better have a pretty accurate understanding of what it is, and isn't.


It was the "understanding of non-existence" that i don't agree with. By your definition everyone is religious but that's not the commonly accepted way of using the term.

In any case in general by religion i mean a set of beliefs in a supernatural entity or entities that impacts people's philosophy on life.

But the definition is of no consequence i'm mean Buddism is called a religion and yet does not involve Gods. In these discussion i'm taking issue with the idea of a magic mind who made the observeable universe nd talks to people, and wants us to do certain things and not others. Whether you call that religion or not is of no consequence to me. It is the idea not the word that i think is false.
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pianojerome
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Klaus
May 23 2008, 07:41 AM
A proof I could accept would be if God could magically transfer 1 billion euros on my bank account. :whistle:

But then would you attribute it to a banking error, because God doesn't exist so how could he be responsible?

If the stars aligned in a certain way, would you just attribute it to coincidence and people seeking meaning, because after all God doesn't exist so how could he be responsible?

If something showed up in radiation background, as people have thought images showed up in smoke, toast, windows, etc, would you just attribute it to coincidence and people seeking meaning?

If you ask me, I think that's why God wouldn't give a clear sign -- nobody would believe it, and those who would believe it would be criticized as crazy religious nuts. Maybe he has already given numerous signs -- but who believes it's God, and not just a natural coincidence? The crazies? If you start off believing that there's no such thing as God and everything has a natural explanation, then you will find a natural explanation, even when there is none. As I said, people seek meaning -- whether that meaning is in God or in science -- even if that meaning is just an illusion.
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Moonbat
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If the stars aligned in a certain way, would you just attribute it to coincidence and people seeking meaning, because after all God doesn't exist so how could he be responsible?


If the stars all moved into a position such that a perfectly aligned message in Times New Roman font appeared when you looked up at the sky. Then that would be pretty good evidence of a cosmic intelligence, the reason it would be such evidence is because the odds of it being coincidence would be so fantastically small.

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If something showed up in radiation background, as people have thought images showed up in smoke, toast, windows, etc, would you just attribute it to coincidence and people seeking meaning?


The reason that these "images" that show in smoke or toast or windows are not at all believeable is because 1) There are lots and lots and lots of examples of smoke and toast and windows without message so simply by random variation you would expect some to have some patterns that we recognise in and 2) They easily fakeable by humans.

Likewise in most accounts the people give where coincidence is acceptable it's because there is this issue there are million and millions and millions of instances where such occasions don't occur that get ignored. I.e. it's because given the kind of variation in natural processes that we know exist and people's habit for remembering hits and forgetting misses you expect the kinds of anecdotes that people come up with. However you wouldn't expect a clear cut message in the background radiation or appearing from realigned stars.
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Klaus
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pianojerome
May 23 2008, 03:49 PM
Klaus
May 23 2008, 07:41 AM
A proof I could accept would be if God could magically transfer 1 billion euros on my bank account.  :whistle:

But then would you attribute it to a banking error, because God doesn't exist so how could he be responsible?

Well, in this case I'd just force myself to believe that it was God :tomato:

Belief is a choice :thumb:
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Mikhailoh
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Klaus
May 23 2008, 07:41 AM
A proof I could accept would be if God could magically transfer 1 billion euros on my bank account.  :whistle:

Without IRS involvement. THAT would be a miracle.
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May 23 2008, 03:14 PM
Belief is a choice  :thumb:


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Dewey
May 23 2008, 05:06 AM

In fact, I believe the exact opposite - that God imposes God's self into our lives first, before we have, or even can have, any faith. Put another way, people don't want to come to a knowledge of God until God has given them the desire and faith to seek God.

That runs contrary to the notion that humans are by nature programmed towards a belief system (religion). Likewise, it really makes no sense in light of what IT wrote a couple of pages back that:

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"It is up to the individual to open oneself and to avail oneself of the grace. All one needs to do is ask (but this requires a loss of ego, which a lot of people are unwilling to do)."


Once again, you are assuming that there is a God out there that whimsically picks winners and losers. If indeed there is a God and is in fact the Christian God, I have serious doubts that the entity would be that capricious.
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Klaus
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And even if choice is not allowed, belief can still be superimposed. We have a lot of experience with Cuius regio, eius religio over here :lol:
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Indeed Klaus, but show me where God was signatory to the Peace of Westphalia.
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Dewey
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Dewey
May 23 2008, 05:06 AM

In fact, I believe the exact opposite - that God imposes God's self into our lives first, before we have, or even can have, any faith. Put another way, people don't want to come to a knowledge of God until God has given them the desire and faith to seek God.

That runs contrary to the notion that humans are by nature programmed towards a belief system (religion). Likewise, it really makes no sense in light of what IT wrote a couple of pages back that...


Being followers of two different traditions of the faith, IT and I will certainly have differences in our theological beliefs. Before addressing that though: I believe that humans are - or more accurately, were originally - designed or programmed to have a faith in God. However, that innate programming has been frustrated as a result of sin/imperfection entering our existence. It is for this reason that we cannot even wish for what is best for us, let alone do anything meaningful to achieve it.

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...what IT wrote a couple of pages back that:

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"It is up to the individual to open oneself and to avail oneself of the grace. All one needs to do is ask (but this requires a loss of ego, which a lot of people are unwilling to do)."


Once again, you are assuming that there is a God out there that whimsically picks winners and losers. If indeed there is a God and is in fact the Christian God, I have serious doubts that the entity would be that capricious.


I don't believe that God is acting capriciously at all. While I disagree with IT on any number of theological points (including extensions of this very comment), I don't disagree with the basic statement he's made here. God grants a person the ability to believe, to have faith. The person must, however, choose to accept or reject that offering of grace from God. Free choice is retained, but only within the context of when and where God chooses to enable us to accept, or reject, the understanding and faith being offered. You've also not picked up on my comment that I don't believe that God picks some to offer this faith to, and not to offer it to others. As I said earlier, I believe that God offers this faith to every person at various times within their lives - but that, for God's own reasons, God chooses the when and where of the offer of grace. On this particular point, my theology is closer to IT's than that of the Synod of Dort.
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Moonbat
May 23 2008, 04:18 AM
ivorythumper
May 23 2008, 08:40 AM
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May 23 2008, 01:36 AM
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May 22 2008, 07:59 PM
Moonbat
May 22 2008, 07:45 AM

I can tell you what it would take to change my mind, my religious opponents never can, if i ask them what it would take to convince they were wrong they have no answer.

OK, I'll bite: what would it take to make you change your mind that there really is a God?

(and I have a lot of fun follow up questions, but one thing at a time :wink: )

There are other ways but a message in the background radiation, or the realignment of all the stars so they spelled out a message frmo the bible when viewed from Earth.

How would that prove God exists? Sounds like a parlor trick.

:lol: so much for the fun follow up questions.

I'll repeat again, how would that prove God exists? How would you know it was not something else making it happen?

You can laugh all you want, but the fact that you don't answer shows the hollowness of your original point.
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kenny
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Thanks for the demo guys. :thumb:

Religion the quintessential forum topic because there are two kids of people in the world.
People who go for religion, and people who don't.
They don't get each other.

By definition they can't understand and accept each other - each is a challenge and a threat to the other.
So they work to convert each other.

Carry on now.
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kenny
May 23 2008, 11:41 AM
Thanks for the demo guys. :thumb:

Religion the quintessential forum topic because there are two kids of people in the world.
People who go for religion, and people who don't.
They don't get each other.

By definition they can't understand and accept each other - each is a challenge and a threat to the other.
So they work to convert each other.

Carry on now.

Not at all. I fully understand those who don't "go for religion". I used to be one of them. The atheists don't threaten me or scare me or challenge me, and I don't try to convert them.
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I'll repeat again, how would that prove God exists? How would you know it was not something else making it happen?

You can laugh all you want, but the fact that you don't answer shows the hollowness of your original point.


Something else like what?

If it's a message then by definition it's from a mind/minds, if it involves altering the physical constants of nature or arranging circumstances at the big bang. I.e. doing things that appear to be beyond what we think is possible for organisms that have evolved to ever be able to do, then that suggests something that didn't evolve, something that could influence things on the most fundamental scale - i.e. a cosmic kind of intelligence. I mean one ask further questions about what such a cosmic mind would be like, but if the message referred to the biblle or the Koran or some holy text that would connect it to the normal religious ideas and lead credence to them.

So then the question is how do you know it's a message to which the answer is that you can ask what is the probability that such an event happened by known statistical variation and you will get an impossibly small figure. Or alternatively you can think about prediction, if you start looking at the message you immedialte form a hypothesis about what will follow (i.e. that it's message and so there will be letters arranged into words making up sentences etc.) and then if those predictions turn out to be correct the correct predictions constitute evidence for your hypothesis that it was a message i.e. from a mind or minds.
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Moonbat
May 23 2008, 12:07 PM
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I'll repeat again, how would that prove God exists? How would you know it was not something else making it happen?

You can laugh all you want, but the fact that you don't answer shows the hollowness of your original point.


Something else like what?

If it's a message then by definition it's from a mind/minds, if it involves altering the physical constants of nature or arranging circumstances at the big bang. I.e. doing things that appear to be beyond what we think is possible for organisms that have evolved to ever be able to do, then that suggests something that didn't evolve, something that could influence things on the most fundamental scale - i.e. a cosmic kind of intelligence. I mean one ask further questions about what such a cosmic mind would be like, but if the message referred to the biblle or the Koran or some holy text that would connect it to the normal religious ideas and lead credence to them.

So then the question is how do you know it's a message to which the answer is that you can ask what is the probability that such an event happened by known statistical variation and you will get an impossibly small figure. Or alternatively you can think about prediction, if you start looking at the message you immedialte form a hypothesis about what will follow (i.e. that it's message and so there will be letters arranged into words making up sentences etc.) and then if those predictions turn out to be correct the correct predictions constitute evidence for your hypothesis that it was a message i.e. from a mind or minds.

It could be any other contingent being that just has more power than we do, and learned how to move masses that are impossible for us to do.

Such events would in no way point to God, and I suspect that you would not suddenly believe in God even if that happened -- more likely you would simply say "gosh, how did that happen? who did that? how did they do that?". And you would try to figure it out as a physical phenomenon though your physical science.

As far as your statistically probability, that only show that you are not even being honest here. The odds that God is the cause of all material existence and of a knowable universe by knowing being is 50:50. It is pretty much binary. Either He Is or he isn't. Given what we know about matter, the odds of life forming and coming to the present state of development is also impossibly small, but here we are.

I doubt seriously that any such events as skywriting would convince you of God. Nor should it.
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Dewey
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But I'm not presupposing anything.


As several others have already pointed out, of course you are. You are simply exhibiting a breathtaking inability or refusal to see it, despite everyone else seeing it as big as a barn, because it cuts at the root of your flawed claim of imparitality and reason.

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I'm not presupposing there is no intelligent creator, i'm building up a view of reality based on evidence...


The very first presupposition is in determining what you will allow as "evidence." And by your transferral of what is acceptable evidence within science, or within an argument controlled by reason alone, to the completely different discussion of the existence and/or nature of God, you have a priori eliminated the possibility of the existence of any God who claims to exist beyond those forms of evidence. By limiting what is acceptable evidence to you, you have guranteed a negative answer to the question. Your methods are fine, left in the smaller arena that they are intended for. But you're out of your realm when you bring those insufficient tools to the issue of God.

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When i say there are "why" answers in science i mean there are questions like "why does water freeze at a lower temperature if you add salt to it?" you can give answers to such questions. But those aren't the kinds of "why" questions or answers that you mean.


Of course, that's what I just told you. the smaller "why" questions are important, and tell us something about the physical world (regardless of the origin of the physical world). They belong to the realm and methodology of scientific study.

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But this assumes that involves presupposing an intelligent creator and you should no more presuppose an intelligent creator than should presuppose pink unicorns (or atoms or cars or anything else).


While such was not always the case, I do, in fact, presuppose a Creator at this point in my life, based on my having experienced this creator personally, via evidence whose form you erroneously reject, as if we were discussing another scientific experiment, which of course we aren't. The great, gaping problem in this conversation, which we keep returning to, is your own inability or refusal to acknowledge your own presupposition. You may as well, everyone else sees it quite clearly. And frankly, I'm beginning to think that you may have some strange, unnatural attraction to pink unicorns, based on the number of times they show up in your posts. You've obviously got the requisite grey matter; at the very least, man, come up with new analogies to use in your arguments once in a while.

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You see you really do do this filtering thing, you assume God exists, gave us brains etc. etc. and then examine the world through that lense. ...


As referenced above, I did not first assume that God exists, and then go out and find evidence for God. Rather, because I first experienced God's presence, I now see the world through that filter.

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Absolutely any conclusion can be presupposed and everything made to fit it. ... If you want the truth you must never ever do this, you must never presuppose anything, you must never filter anything like this. Now you seem to think i'm doing the same thing you think i'm filter things through my "non-God" hypothesis. But you are wrong ...


Actually, on this point I'm quite correct.

Certainly, humans can, and have, presupposed, many erroneous things and hammered facts to fit those presuppositions. This has happened within every single human endeavor, individual or corporate; personal, governmental, religious, scientific, etc.

But you see, for me to have belief in God requires no initial presupposition that God exists, only the presupposition that God may exist.

The issue of "If" enables me to allow for the possibility that God - in this case, a God who both transcends materiality and is simultaneously present within the lives of humans. Therefore, if I have an experience that I am convinced is a direct revelation of, and from, God, I may look at the matter and say, "Hmm, this could be what I think it is; or it may be a random firing of neurons and other biomechanical processes, which only seem to me to be God's presence." I might then go one to ponder, "If" there is such a God, if this biomechanical process is precisely the manner which such a God has designed in order to break into my consciousness. I might also take this experience and, along with other, equally non-rational inputs, determine that based on all information available to me, while it is indeed not "reasonable" or rational - and it certainly doesn't fit within the deliberate limitations of scientific pursuit - it is indeed the most likely and believable thing that this is, indeed, an encounter with exactly such a God.

By contrast, reason, and especially science, cannot address the issue of "If," (at least, that is, the question of "if" such a God exists) because in both cases, these two related methods of learning exclude any inputs that do not meet scientific standards of repeatablilty, falsifiablity, etc.; or that have any supernatural explanation; or which counter finite rules of human reason. In essence, these human disciplines have put themselves on the bench before the game began, when considering questions of God. This is all well and good, since both disciplines are wonderfully designed to accomplish their intended goals. But those goals are not up to discussing the existence of a God whose definition is outside the allowable bounds of the disciplines. Not only have these two disiplines benched themselves before the game begins, but they've gone so far as to be wearing basketball and hockey uniforms while sitting on the sidelines of a football field.

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You have this central idea that God opens people's heads but this is just part of this unfalsifiable God-exists filter that you apply to everything.


Moonbat, it is part of your filter that all knowledge that is real or truthful must be falsifiable.

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Tomorrow i may find myself in one of those worlds, what i think is falsifiable, my mind can be changed.


Another illustration of your presupposition - your filter - that only knowledge that is falsifiable is real or true. Your methodolgy cannot address the "If" of a God whose nature is revealed via other means of input.

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This doesn't involve presupposition because i'm using everything i have, ...


I agree with you that you're using everything that you have, but it is still a presupposition, nonetheless.

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By your definition everyone is religious but that's not the commonly accepted way of using the term.


No, by my definition everyone has beliefs about the questions that religion addresses, and that informs all of their subsequent understanding of life. That's very different from saying that "everyone is religious."

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But the definition is of no consequence


Actually, it is of very high consequence, because, as I've pointed out earlier, if you're going to attack something, you'd better have a very clear understanding of what it is you're attacking. Much of what I've seen you postulate about religion in the past, that makes you consider it unlikely to be true, have been attacks on its secondary expression, its periphery, and not on the real thing itself.
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Horace
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Dewey
May 23 2008, 10:26 AM
You've also not picked up on my comment that I don't believe that God picks some to offer this faith to, and not to offer it to others. As I said earlier, I believe that God offers this faith to every person at various times within their lives - but that, for God's own reasons, God chooses the when and where of the offer of grace. On this particular point, my theology is closer to IT's than that of the Synod of Dort.

Then you must think that people like me, who would genuinely like to live in a reality where there is an all loving uber father and an all joyful eternal afterlife, are deluded or lying when we say we want to believe that.
As a good person, I implore you to do as I, a good person, do. Be good. Do NOT be bad. If you see bad, end bad. End it in yourself, and end it in others. By any means necessary, the good must conquer the bad. Good people know this. Do you know this? Are you good?
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