This will be my final post for the night, though I will return tomorrow. I am grateful for the replies.
Think of it this way.....if there are two possibilities and you know its not going to be A then it has to be B. If you flip a coin and if it's not going to be heads then its going to be tails.
As long as one knows for sure that there are only two possibilities, then I agree with you here.
The entire universe being created out of nothing, matter created from no matter, something created from nothing, is not logical for many people. So if they know its not the big bang that created the universe then they know it was God.
You make a big leap here. You assume that the universe being created out of nothing is illogical, yet seem to assume that it is logical for a god to have always existed.
There are more than two possibilities here.
1) The universe has always existed, there are no such things as gods. It is illogical for many people to comprehend that something has
always existed.
2) The universe has not always existed, it sprung into being out of nonexistence at some point. This, as you pointed out, seems illogical to many.
3) God has always existed, the universe has not always existed, and god made this universe. Again, it is illogical for most people to comprehend that something has always existed.
4) Neither god nor the universe has always existed. God sprung into being out of nonexistence, and then made the universe. Again, it seems logical to many that something could spring out of nothing.
5) There are more possibilities, this is non-exhaustive.
So let's say we look at the first four there. All four are illogical to most human minds. Something has either always existed, ie had no beginning whatsoever, or something sprung out of nothingness. All four seem illogical. What then?
That alone is convincing enough for many people to believe what God has said in the Bible (the statements about spirtiual beings or ideas). The lack of evidence for one thing proves the other.
You make a second large leap here. Your first leap is that god made the universe, and your second leap here is that this god was the Bible's description of god, but that wasn't justified in your post.
Maybe a deity created the universe, and he is described in the Qur'an?
Maybe a deity created the universe, and he is described in the Bhagavad Gita?
Maybe a deity created the universe, and he is described in the Christian Bible?
Back to the original question- how does one discern the truth here?
Yes, I meant on the sovereignty of God.
As to scriptural error, I am not concerned about the text one reads, because it is not by chance. Reason does not eminate from the text, it eminates from the reader.
So let's narrow in on examples then.
If god leads a person to read two scriptures, and one of them says that each person is born once, dies once, and is judged, whereas the other scripture says people are reborn many, many times in a cycle of reincarnation and are subject to the Law of Karma, how can this person discern which one is correct, if either?
If a god leads a person to read two scriptures, and one of them says that Jesus is the son of God, and the other one says that Jesus is not the son of God, how can this person discern whether Jesus is the son of god or not? What if the first scripture tells him that he will go to hell if he doesn't believe Jesus is the son of god, and the second scripture tells him that he will go to hell if he believes that Jesus is the son of god?
If a man walks up and tells me that God exists, and another man walks up to me and tells me that God doesn't exist, what should be my method of discerning whether God exists, and what his or her attributes are?
I would be glad to expand on that. It is rare that one should be asked to do so.
It is rare, but it is wonderful.
If I say that, a triangle is round, the object of my statement is not reducible to the subject of my statement. My statement is not reasonable.
Ok. So you're saying that we take the triangle and check to see if it is indeed round? I'm still wrestling with what you mean by "not reducible", but I think that's what you mean.
A triangle is something we can check. We can indeed see if it is round, and then determine whether the statement about it was reasonable or not. Now, let's say there is something we cannot inherently check.
For instance, if someone makes the statement:
"Reincarnation is true. You have had many past lives and will have many future lives."
How can I discern whether the object is reducible to the subject?
-Lyn
