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Why is religion the quintessential forum topic?
Topic Started: May 21 2008, 03:27 PM (2,767 Views)
Renauda
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HOLY CARP!!!
Dewey
May 23 2008, 11:26 AM
I don't believe that God is acting capriciously at all....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.

When God chooses? I didn't think the imperfections surrounding free will applied to an eternal all-knowing God.

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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.


Oh I did, I don't buy into it any more than I can accept that God might be involved in some sort of cosmic draw poker match or bingo game determining when, where and upon whom grace or merit is bestowed.
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kenny
HOLY CARP!!!
It really makes me roll my eyes how some people are just so sure about so many intricate details about God! :rolleyes2:

Seems like the epitome of arrogance to me.

Oh yeah, slap forehead too. :doh: :doh:
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Dewey
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When God chooses? I didn't think the imperfections surrounding free will applied to an eternal all-knowing God.


More than eternal and all-knowing, God is also sovereign - God will do as God chooses to do, and in times, places, and manners as God sees fit. I don't view the ability to choose as imperfection.

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Oh I did, I don't buy into it any more than I can accept that God might be involved in some sort of cosmic draw poker match or bingo game determining when, where and upon whom grace or merit is bestowed.


This would be troublesome if I were asking you to buy into anything at all. And if "everyone" is an insufficient quantity of "upon whom" God chooses to offer grace, you'll have to take it up with God, not me. Not sure the net can be cast much wider.
"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685.

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Renauda
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HOLY CARP!!!
If there is choice then there is risk of making the wrong choice. It implies decision making between two or more alternatives. But if you are an all knowing and eternal Sovereign what is there to judge in the first place since the die, your die in fact, was cast in the beginning by you alone?
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Moonbat
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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.


Ok so we're accepting it is a being, so then it's evidence for a being that can violate known physical law and/or was around at the beginning of the universe and who specifically links the religious texts and says "I am the creator".

I mean you can still say how did that happen, how did they do it. You can still try and figure it out, it doesn't stop it being evidence for an uber powered cosmic mind there from the beginning.

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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.


Bzzt wrong answer.

Here's two options, either wolves are going to materialise over your head and devour you 30 minutes from now or they are not. Two options, pretty much binary. 50:50? I think not.

For any truth claim the odds of it being correct are infinitely small prior to any empirical evidence. This result can be derived by noting that the number of true statements is an infinitely small fraction of the total number of statements hence an arbitrary statement is of negligible likelyhood.

You're very confused - on the one hand you're invoking probability in baysian sense as if it represents idealised strength of belief but then you're saying it can be really improbable and still happen implying it's still ok to believe it. A combination that is total gibberish.

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I doubt seriously that any such events as skywriting would convince you of God. Nor should it.


Of course it should. The hypothesis explains the occurance and there are no other hypothesis.

If you mean it could be a cosmic creator mind and not be God, then this is just meaningless semantics.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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pianojerome
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kenny
May 23 2008, 02:41 PM
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.

I have no intention of converting anybody, nor even convincing them of anything I say.

I'm just explaining what I think, when asked. And you asked.

Believe what you want.
Sam
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Moonbat
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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.


Name my presupposition then. You say i'm presupposing no cosmic intelligence but i'm not because tomorrow i might believe in a cosmic intelligence. If evidence turns up.

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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.


Arguments are about reason - an irrational argument is a nothing.

And i'm not proposing a special standard of evidence, evidence just means X stuff you can see in the world that suggests Y hypothesis is true.

I'm not saying God is impossible, i'm not apriori eliminating the possibility of anything all i'm saying is that if you want your ideas to be true if you want the world in your head to match the world outside it then you need to base your idea on evidence - stuff you see in the world.

I'm quite happy to accept the possiblity of things that can never be found, maybe there really are invisible immutable flying elephants. Really, maybe there are. I can't rule them out. If there were invisible immutable flying elephants that never left any evidence of their existence then we would never be able find them. We would go through life totally unaware of the elephants.

So what should we do? Should we believe in these invisible immutable elephants on the grounds that if they did exist we wouldn't be able to find and low and behold we can't find them? The answer is no. Because from our perspective the odds of them being true is negligible. (i mean as well as the fact if their genuinely is no possibility of evidence then that means there is genuinely no interaction with us, which means they can't affect in any way whatsover and so really it's not really that interesting)

If we look down on this universe with these invisible elephants and we also look at man in this universe. Now even though the elephants exists the man shouldn't believe in them. Because the man has no reason to believe it. If he goes around believing in things that no reaosn he'll end beleiving fantasy since the odds of picking stuff to believe that there is no basis and getting it right is effectively infinitely small. If we look down on the world with these invisible elephants and we see a man who believes in invisible immutable elephants we looking down on a gargantuan fluke, and in all proability this man will also all kinds of crazy things. And will actually have far less of truth than someone who is only basing their ideas on the evidence around them.

If you want the truth you have to base your beliefs on evidence. It's not a guarantee of getting the right answers, it's just there is no better alternative.

The special pleading that always comes from superstions, the special standard of "evidence" such that ther term evidence no longer means anything is just an attempt to pass wishful thinking off as if it's likely to give you the truth, but it's not.

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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.


If you have evidence you aren't presupposing anything, your basing an idea on evidence which is fine. If something else can account for that evidence with less assumptions, if it becomes clear that one does not need to invoke your additional hypothesis to explain it then you should change your mind - If you're interested in the truth.

Oh and what presuppositions?

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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.


You had an experience which you interpret as God. But then you should be open to other intepretations, other possibilities. From your perspective it could have been God, but perhaps it was something else.

Never accept any filters, never accept any 100% certainties as soon as you accept a filter you abandon the search for truth.

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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.


Well presuppose something "might exist" is not presupposing anything at all. That's fine. Any logically consistent description might exist, unicorns, elephants, etc. Accepting that is not presupposing anything.

It's also fine to tentatively think your experience was God as long as it's not dogmatic but the problem is that your reasoning doesn't work. If you've already realised that the experience could be accounted for without invoking God then you are not justified in invoking him.

You treat words like "reason" and "science" in a way that makes them meaningless. You're not justified in invoking God because it is unnecessary. It's like the children and Santa Klaus they aren't justified in believing Santa is dictating their parents bring their presents to them because the Santa part is unnecessary. If you realise that this experience could be accounted in terms of prior knowns without invoking God that means the experience is not evidence for God. If i realise that i can account for the ball falling off the table with ideas we already have then that that means the ball falling off the table is not evidence for some additional idea e.g. the presence of invisible kangaroos. If you can explain someone getting better on the basis that they are taking antibiotics for a bacterial infection then the observation that they are getting better is not evidence that someone has cast a healing spell on them.

This is Occam's razor, and it is absolutely key if you want to know the real world.

You want to place science and reason in a special box, but there is no special box, there is just experiencing and thinking - trying to work out the world that lies beneath the experiences as best one can.

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


I think it is possible for there to be unfalsifiable true statements. i.e. It's not impossible for there to be unfalsifiable invisible immutable elephants. It's not impossible for there to be an unfalsifiable immutable God. It's not impossible that the girl who think Santa is directing her parents is right, and then when she sees that he can't be found at the poles and concludes he must be magically shielded from the world, that she is also right, and all the conclusions she draws based on this idea that Santa is behind her Christmas presents are true conclusions. That is possible.

BUT the question is this: if you want the truth, if want the world in your mind to match the world outside as closely as possible - what should you do?

If we just guess that X unfalisifiable statement is true then the odds of us being right are almost zero, so that's a waste of time, if you want the truth we should not do that. We need to base our ideas on the world, and never fix them into filters. Any idea based on the world is implicitly falsifiable (in that you can think about what made you think that idea and if other explanations come up you can think about them) you should not allow an idea to become unfalsifiable because you are fallible you might have made a mistake and so you must always make sure that you are willing to reevaluate your ideas in light of new information. That's what it means to have falsifiable ideas. It's not a mandate on what is in the world, it's not an apriori rejection of the possibility of certain ideas, it simply the only strategy that you can take if you want the truth. If you have a better strategy then i am all ears.

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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.


Experience covers all input. If there are true statement in the world that cannot even in principle be discovered, that there is no footprint of in the world. Then there is no strategy we can use to find them.

There are a near infinite number of such statements each one insanely unlikely. So simply to believe one (like God) or pink unicorns is madness. Even if by some insane fluke it was true, in that scenario it would still be madness to believe it. If in the insanely unlikely event that we do actually find pink unicorns on Mars that would not mean that before the event it was a smart idea for human beings to believe there were pink unicorns on Mars. it was a terrible idea, if you're interested in the truth then you shouldn't be believing in pink unicorns, a fluke that means you luck out and happen to get right answer doesn't alter the fact that your strategy is junk.

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


Nope, no presuppositions at all.

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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.


What i'm attacking is the idea of an intelligent creator, i don't care what you want to call it. It's the idea not the words that interests me.
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Moonbat
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Thanks for the demo guys.

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.


Oh i don't know there are probably a lot of people inbetween with various shades of "meh".
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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ivorythumper
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Moonbat
May 23 2008, 01:27 PM
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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.


Ok so we're accepting it is a being, so then it's evidence for a being that can violate known physical law and/or was around at the beginning of the universe and who specifically links the religious texts and says "I am the creator".

Nope. All it says that you are ignorant of the actual physical laws, and you have no way of knowing if it were around at the beginning of the universe, or if it is actually connected with those texts or just copied them to trick you.

You have gotten nowhere.


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I mean you can still say how did that happen, how did they do it. You can still try and figure it out, it doesn't stop it being evidence for an uber powered cosmic mind there from the beginning.



Why should it have been there from the beginning? No reason. You are just assuming that.

Why should it have been the cause of material things? No reason. You are just assuming that.

But what you are getting to is the reason one can be a theist and a scientist. It just doesn't take skywriting for that to happen, there is plenty of other evidence around us in the sense of a a functioning and ordered material existence in lieu of unknowable chaos.


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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.


Bzzt wrong answer.

Here's two options, either wolves are going to materialise over your head and devour you 30 minutes from now or they are not. Two options, pretty much binary. 50:50? I think not.
Once again all you are demonstrating is the imaginative mind. You have never gotten anywhere with the nature of being itself or existence. Those wolves mean nothing to the discussion of the probability of how things have happened since they in no way speak to any specifically and intrinsically binary set of possibilities.

You are confusing the question of past probability with future predictability. The question of God (as defined by Christianity) is not even comparable to Zeus or the Titans or nordic mythology or aztec or aboriginal mythologies, since what is being discussed theologically is not even the same type of data. Regardless of your disregard of metaphysics, no one to my knowledge has ever presented a plausible or coherent metaphysic of Ba'al or Isis or Huitzilopochtli. And you have never presented one for pink unicorns or FSM. Nor can you.
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For any truth claim the odds of it being correct are infinitely small prior to any empirical evidence. This result can be derived by noting that the number of true statements is an infinitely small fraction of the total number of statements hence an arbitrary statement is of negligible likelyhood.

Since NO ONE has ever even claimed that wolves have ever materialized over their head, but millions of people claim that they have had experiences with God, your point gets you nowhere.

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You're very confused - on the one hand you're invoking probability in baysian sense as if it represents idealised strength of belief but then you're saying it can be really improbable and still happen which therefore it's ok to believe it. A combination that is total gibberish.


That is not what is going on, which is obvious since I don't think that God's existence is really improbable. You can't assume that your position is your opponent's, and then hope to convince them that they are wrong when they don't accept the terms.

You claim that the probabilty of God is infinitely small. What is that number? How did you reach that number? Is that statement falsifiable? Is that just a SWAG?

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I doubt seriously that any such events as skywriting would convince you of God. Nor should it.


Of course it should. The hypothesis explains the occurance and there are no other hypothesise.

Cosmic mind if you mean it could be a cosmic creator mind and not be God, then this is just meaningless semantics.

Not meaningless semantics, since you have not gotten to the notion of "creator" with your BIG MIND that can rearrange BIG THINGS. You can believe in God based on that, but there is no reason to do so.

Really, you are begging the question. You are assuming that any being that can arrange the stars with an intelligible message is God/ cosmic creator mind but you have not established that other great beings that are made by God/ cosmic creator mind cannot do the same thing. You could wind up being an idolater and really just some wierdo modernistic materialist astrologer at that.
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Moonbat
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Nope. All it says that you are ignorant of the actual physical laws, and you have no way of knowing if it were around at the beginning of the universe, or if it is actually connected with those texts or just copied them to trick you.

You have gotten nowhere.


Yes yes it might be trying to trick me, and the fossils might not actually be old but been put their by a God to look old, etc. etc. one can always do this for any evidence for any conclusion. The point is to rule out influences that reside within prior bodies of knowledge that have some weight based on empirical success. (i.e. stuff we have good reason to think is actually going on). In this case we can do that.

Positing tricks is not a problem, Occam's razor slices away the "tricks" hypothesis unless other information comes to light. I mean it would be a falsifiable hypothesis since one might imagine finding there were more absolute laws that were being obeyed or the trixie uber aliens who had gone to so much trouble to trick us might come clean but prior to any additional data such a message would constitute evidence for an uber creator mind. Since that would be the simplest explantion (or at the very least one of the simplest explanations). The hypothesis would go from being of negligible probability to being pretty significant probability.

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Why should it have been there from the beginning? No reason. You are just assuming that.

Why should it have been the cause of material things? No reason. You are just assuming that.

But what you are getting to is the reason one can be a theist and a scientist. It just doesn't take skywriting for that to happen, there is plenty of other evidence around us in the sense of a a functioning and ordered material existence in lieu of unknowable chaos.


The background radiation comes from the beginning, and the message claimed to be the creator.

It does take skywriting, because there is no evidence around us - the structure of the universe in no sense, absolutely in no sense constitutes evidence for a cosmic creator.

There is a reason why the uber scientists don't believe in God and it's beacause the opposite is true. The universe does not look designed. It looks self-assembled - from simple relationships emerges the structure and complexity of the world. Now one can ask why there are simple relationships or where it all came from but one cannot assert this is somehow evidence for a cosmic mind because one is left with precisely the same set of problems (actually one is left with a much bigger problems) when considering the cosmic mind itself.

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Once again all you are demonstrating is the imaginative mind. You have never gotten anywhere with the nature of being itself or existence. Those wolves mean nothing to the discussion of the probability of how things have happened since they in no way speak to any specifically and intrinsically binary set of possibilities.

You are confusing the question of past probability with future predictability. The question of God (as defined by Christianity) is not even comparable to Zeus or the Titans or nordic mythology or aztec or aboriginal mythologies, since what is being discussed theologically is not even the same type of data. Regardless of your disregard of metaphysics, no one to my knowledge has ever presented a plausible or coherent metaphysic of Ba'al or Isis or Huitzilopochtli. And you have never presented one for pink unicorns or FSM. Nor can you.


What on Earth are you talking about? Getting eaten by materialising wolves or not getting eaten by materialising wolves - that's as binary as a universe being made by a creator mind or not being made by a creator mind.

When binary is A or not A, then 50:50 is not guaranteed at all, it depends on what A and not A are. In the case of an arbitrary truth claim it's not 50:50, it's as far away from 50:50 as you can get.

It's true i can't really present a coherent metaphysics for pink unicorns but then since coherent metaphysics is an oxymoron it's an impossible task. Oh and you're quite right i am indeed confusing past probability with future predictability :lol:

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Since NO ONE has ever eve claimed that wolves have ever materialized over their head, but millions of people claim that they have had experiences with God, your point gets you nowhere


What's that got to do with anything?

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That is not what is going on, which is obvious since I don't think that God's existence is really improbable. You can't assume that your position is your opponent's, and then hope to convince them that they are wrong when they don't accept the terms.

You claim that the probabilty of God is infinitely small. What is that number? How did you reach that number? Is that statement falsifiable? Is that just a SWAG?


Nothing is obvious with you Ivory, since so much of what you say has no meaning and you contradict yourself and suddenly invoke previous unstated criterea like "number of people believeing something" - What were you trying to imply when you said the probability of life was low?

The reason for claiming the probability of God is infinitely small is because it is an arbitrary truth claim. I.e. a truth claim with no evidence supporting it.

An arbitrary truth claim is of negligible probability because the number of true statements is an infinitely small fraction of the number of total statements. You can prove that notion to yourself by considering say a true description of the room you are in and now consider how many descriptions of the room you in are which are false.

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Not meaningless semantics, since you have not gotten to the notion of "creator" with your BIG MIND that can rearrange BIG THINGS. You can believe in God based on that, but there is no reason to do so.

Really, you are begging the question. You are assuming that any being that can arrange the stars with an intelligible message is God/ cosmic creator mind but you have not established that other great beings that are made by God/ cosmic creator mind cannot do the same thing. You could wind up being an idolater and really just some wierdo modernistic materialist astrologer at that.


Sure other magic minds could be doing it, but that's still positing trickery and like I said absent other information Occam favours the creator mind hypthesis.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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Renauda
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HOLY CARP!!!
kenny
May 23 2008, 11:41 AM
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.


Then why did you ask in the first place? We all know you already came to this, yet another erroneous Kenny conclusion, long before you launched the thread. You see Kenny, we're all omniscient. Moonbat included although he's not aware of it yet but he's damn close.
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Free Rider
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Renauda
May 23 2008, 04:50 PM
kenny
May 23 2008, 11:41 AM
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.


Then why did you ask in the first place? We all know you already came to this, yet another erroneous Kenny conclusion, long before you launched the thread. You see Kenny, we're all omniscient. Moonbat included although he's not aware of it yet but he's damn close.

:lol:

I prefer "omnipotent"

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Dewey
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HOLY CARP!!!
Moonbat, you just keep saying the same thing, over and over. You simply refuse to see, or admit, that your view of things is based on the very presuppositions that you spout within your very posts.

My position boils down to the fact that I believe based on what I am convinced is self-revelation by God. I realize that this revelation comes about through non-rational means of evidence, and as such, may have other explanations. However, after considering all the possible explanations, I'm convinced that the experience being the self-revelation of God is the most likely explanation - particularly in light of subsequent experiences which further validate the initial experience.

In short, my position acknowleges the possibility that I'm wrong, and the non-rational nature of my belief.

On the other hand, while claiming that you have no presuppositions, you exclude, and consider "nothing," any form of evidence that does not conform with scientific standards or human reason. Your presupposition of what constitutes acceptable evidence in this realm is invalid, and guarantees the negative outcome of your consideration of the question of God.

The methodology, arising from your exclusive presuppostions, has disqualified you from any meaningful consideration of this question. You're trying to drive a nail with a screwdriver, while claiming that hammers don't exist simply because you don't have one in your toolbox.
"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685.

"Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous

"Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011

I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14
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Dewey
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Renauda
May 23 2008, 03:26 PM
If there is choice then there is risk of making the wrong choice. It implies decision making between two or more alternatives. But if you are an all knowing and eternal Sovereign what is there to judge in the first place since the die, your die in fact, was cast in the beginning by you alone?

If you or I are doing the choosing, we might make the wrong choice. I don't believe that God is working within the same limitations as us. I think that God's choosing is a matter of determining the optimum time and place to achieve a goal. The "choosing" is far more a function of working within and around the outcomes of matters of free choice granted to humans as part of their design (control of which, therefore, has voluntarily been ceeded by God, while maintaining ultimate sovereignty), than it is a function of God trying to determine between "good" and "bad" possibilities, and possibly getting it wrong.
"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685.

"Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous

"Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011

I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14
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Renauda
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I think that God's choosing is a matter of determining the optimum time and place to achieve a goal.


Does not God transcend both time and place?
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Dewey
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Yes, but we do not.
"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685.

"Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous

"Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011

I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14
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ivorythumper
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Dewey
May 23 2008, 09:06 PM
Renauda
May 23 2008, 03:26 PM
If there is choice then there is risk of making the wrong choice. It implies decision making between two or more alternatives. But if you are an all knowing and eternal Sovereign what is there to judge in the first place since the die, your die in fact,  was cast in the beginning by you alone?

If you or I are doing the choosing, we might make the wrong choice. I don't believe that God is working within the same limitations as us. I think that God's choosing is a matter of determining the optimum time and place to achieve a goal. The "choosing" is far more a function of working within and around the outcomes of matters of free choice granted to humans as part of their design (control of which, therefore, has voluntarily been ceeded by God, while maintaining ultimate sovereignty), than it is a function of God trying to determine between "good" and "bad" possibilities, and possibly getting it wrong.

Why would you not think that the movement of grace is a constant, continuous and consistent action of God toward all persons? It seems much more in keeping with God's nature, and in general the nature of love, to be such. (It seems that is not the Presbyterian position, but please correct me if I am wrong).
The dogma lives loudly within me.
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Dewey
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Why would you not think that the movement of grace is a constant, continuous and consistent action of God toward all persons? It seems much more in keeping with God's nature, and in general the nature of love, to be such. (It seems that is not the Presbyterian position, but please correct me if I am wrong).


God's grace is indeed constant toward all persons, but I don't believe that all forms of God's grace are being offered constantly to all people at all times. I believe that this would actually be a denial of God's sovereignty and ability to choose work as God wills.

While I believe that the particular grace of God granting a person the ability to exercise faith is granted at various times throughout a person's life, I do not believe that the bestowing of this particular grace is necessarily continuous. Consistent with God's sovereignty, God must have the freedom to do as God wills, whether in God's eternal existence (forgive the improper temporal antecedent here, but "before" or "after" time/space) or as God acts within temporal history. We are not privy to comprehension of the fullness of God's will, but we can apprehend a portion of it - and that portion indicates that God does indeed choose among options within history, with no contradiction to God's nature. I'd imagine the most significant example of God's temporal choosing might be in God's choice to not "let this cup pass" from Jesus, as he prayed for on the eve of his crucifixion - or even, more essentially, God's choice to create a cosmos in which pain, suffering, and injustice were possibilities.

I think that this idea - that the particular grace of beig able to exercise faith is not continuous - is extremely obvious within human existence. Two people of equal intelligence can be presented with the exact same message of the gospel, and one will accept it and one will reject it - while both will be unable to understand how the other could possibly not agree with their own response.

There is a rather well-established strand of Protestant theology, seen within Methodism and especially in the writings and influence of Nathaniel William Taylor, originally a Calvinist preacher during the "Second Great Awakening" of Protestantism in the U.S., in the years around 1800-1830 or so, that took a different approach. In this strand of belief, a person could always choose to follow God or not, to sin or not. The ability to "choose for God" was always present, to every person at every time - and if a person didn't "choose for God," then they just weren't trying hard enough.

As you're obviously aware, this was simply a repackaging of Arminianism & Pelagianism rolled together. That's a position that, due to the historical sweep of Methodism during the years of westward expansion and the democratic appeal of Taylorist (also known as "New Haven School") theology, continues to have great sway within American Evangelical Protestantism to this day. But it isn't a position consistent with Reformed theology, and it isn't a position that I share.
"By nature, i prefer brevity." - John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, p. 685.

"Never waste your time trying to explain yourself to people who are committed to misunderstanding you." - Anonymous

"Oh sure, every once in a while a turd floated by, but other than that it was just fine." - Joe A., 2011

I'll answer your other comments later, but my primary priority for the rest of the evening is to get drunk." - Klaus, 12/31/14
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Moonbat
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Moonbat, you just keep saying the same thing, over and over. You simply refuse to see, or admit, that your view of things is based on the very presuppositions that you spout within your very posts.


You can't name any presuppositions.

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My position boils down to the fact that I believe based on what I am convinced is self-revelation by God. I realize that this revelation comes about through non-rational means of evidence, and as such, may have other explanations. However, after considering all the possible explanations, I'm convinced that the experience being the self-revelation of God is the most likely explanation - particularly in light of subsequent experiences which further validate the initial experience.


Well you have not defended why you reject non-God explanations of this experience you've had. You even go so far as to accept it might not be God before falling back on saying you're just "convinced" it is.

If i said i accept that the object that fell of the table might not be because of invisible rabbits but i'm just convinced it is, then i'm not being rational i.e. i'm not maximising my chance of being right. An irrational belief is a nonsense because by definitions beliefs are held to be right. If you accept your belief is irrational then you accept it's not likely true but then you don't actually believe it anymore. Unless you're confused and mixed up.

That your interpretation grows stronger with time is exactly what you'd expect. That's exactly what happens, the guy who thinks he's psychic sees more and more "evidence" that he's psychic, the guy who thinks the gvoernment's out to get him sees more and more "evidence" that the government is out to get him. Human's suffer confirmation bias.

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In short, my position acknowleges the possibility that I'm wrong, and the non-rational nature of my belief.


Well that's good i mean better than before, before you used to say that you were 100% convinced and nothing in principle could change your mind. So this is progress you are now no longer 100% convinced but you should ask yourself what would change your mind. So what would happen if you learned about these experiences and saw lots of evidence that they could occur through purely everyday meanss e.g. random excitations in the temporal lobe, if you learned that that the intepretation people give to these inner experiences is massively correlated with their cultural environment i.e. people interpret their expereincesin terms of familiar cultural ideas.

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On the other hand, while claiming that you have no presuppositions, you exclude, and consider "nothing," any form of evidence that does not conform with scientific standards or human reason. Your presupposition of what constitutes acceptable evidence in this realm is invalid, and guarantees the negative outcome of your consideration of the question of God.


If there is no reason to suspect pink unicorns or God or atoms or any idea is right, then there is no reason to suspect they are right. A belief in them is irrational, a contradiction because one is accepting they are likely to be wrong on the basis there is no reason to think they are right and then implictly claiming they are likely to be right.

This mystical scientific standard is just the avoidance of error. The reason you think it's presupposition is because you fundamentally don't grasp why scientists use these standards they do in the first place. Why do we bother doing controlled trials? Because we have to rule out known effects like random variation i.e. we want to see if something other than normal variation is going on. Why do we bother with placebo controlled trials, because we have to rule out known effects like the placebo effect i.e. we want to see if there is something other than placebo effect going on. Why do we bother doing double-blind placebo controlled trials, because we have to rule out known effects like people's own subconscious influence over methods they use to generate results, because we want to see if there is something other than simple unconscious bias going on.

If you get rid all of that then the "evidence" is no longer of any use because it's accountable with previously known ideas. These scientific methods are essentially error correcting machinary, they protect us from making mistakes. You want to get rid of this machinary because your conclusion is a mistake and the only way you can get that conclusion is by considering "evidence" that is not evidence at all. By pointing to stuff that does not actually support the conclusion as if it does support the conclusion. But you don't want to see that so you place "reason" and "science" in these arbitrary boxes that imply you don't really understand what those words mean, and why they involve what they do.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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Horace
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Moonbat
May 24 2008, 10:00 AM
Quote:
 

My position boils down to the fact that I believe based on what I am convinced is self-revelation by God. I realize that this revelation comes about through non-rational means of evidence, and as such, may have other explanations. However, after considering all the possible explanations, I'm convinced that the experience being the self-revelation of God is the most likely explanation - particularly in light of subsequent experiences which further validate the initial experience.


Well you have not defended why you reject non-God explanations of this experience you've had. You even go so far as to accept it might not be God before falling back on saying you're just "convinced" it is.

Weird, not long ago he was saying his experience was perfect knowledge of God rather than "likely evidence of God".
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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John D'Oh
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If God stopped talking to everybody - and I mean everybody, including the blow-up-your-children brigade out East, I wonder whether things would deteriorate or improve. I mean to say, as far as I know he's not talking to me, and I'm doing OK. I do occasionally hear voices when I'm shopping telling me to buy fatty foods and alcohol, buy I try and ignore them.
What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
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kenny
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John D'Oh
May 24 2008, 11:10 AM
If God stopped talking to everybody - and I mean everybody, including the blow-up-your-children brigade out East, I wonder whether things would deteriorate or improve.

Religious people would say things would deteriorate.

Non-religious people would say things would improve.

Everyone feels they are right.
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John D'Oh
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kenny
May 24 2008, 03:14 PM
John D'Oh
May 24 2008, 11:10 AM
If God stopped talking to everybody - and I mean everybody, including the blow-up-your-children brigade out East, I wonder whether things would deteriorate or improve.

Religious people would say things would deteriorate.

Non-religious people would say things would improve.

I'm not religious and I'm not at all sure of the answer. I know a number of people personally who would be in a real mess without religion. If religion were taken away, would the suicide bombers disappear? Some would, some wouldn't - let's face it there's a lot of politics behind the islamic extremists, and that wouldn't go away. I think it's an interesting question.
What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
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Moonbat
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Religious people would say things would deteriorate.

Non-religious people would say things would improve.

Everyone feels they are right.


With respect to what is true people feel far too much and think far too little.
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John D'Oh
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Moonbat
May 24 2008, 03:29 PM
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Religious people would say things would deteriorate.

Non-religious people would say things would improve.

Everyone feels they are right.


With respect to what is true people feel far too much and think far too little.

Moonbat is Borg.

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What do you mean "we", have you got a mouse in your pocket?
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