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Can I ask, if you did hear from God, how would you expect that to happen?
Well I believe I posted a verse that all of creation speaks to the glory and power of God.
Plants, animals, humans, our ecosystem and the solar system are all to intricate to have been created from nothing.
I know people laugh sometimes in those of us who believe in God and the Bible, but to me the non-believers are putting their faith into something much less likely, random chance.
Would you be more specific? This is tiring. Otherwise I'm going.
More than happy to accept the existence of a "life outside the material". All I need is evidence it exists and I'm good to go.
And if you feel your particular religion is the best option in that mysterious non-material world, I'll also need specifics on how to know who is who in that realm.
Can you help me out?
Hi Todd,I was speaking about incoherent answers that lead to the statement "It's not me but the holy spirit that convinces you." It's used as an excuse for faulty reasoning, as in "It doesn't matter if my logic is circular or I'm resorting to an argument from ignorance. I'm not required to make any sense since the holy spirit is the one doing the convincing, not me.".
Hi Todd,
Ok no problem, Christians like all other humans may sometimes sound/be incoherent. But to say, that someone saying that The Holy Spirit is The One who convinces us of God's truth is 'an excuse', is a mean spirited understanding. It is a coherent statement of what Christians believe; In what way is it an excuse? What does it excuse? Certainly not incoherence.
Christians like the rest of the human race have greatly varying levels of communication competency.
Go well
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Hello Cadet -see my latest post to Locutus.I don't refuse to recognize that. I simply ask for evidence. I have yet to see any convincing reason to believe that there is life outside of the material universe. I'm not even sure "outside of the material universe" is even a coherent concept, to be honest. But at the end of the day, it comes down to evidence. I see no reason to believe in life outside of the material universe, therefore I do not believe in life outside of the material universe. Why do you believe in life outside of the material universe?
By not believing they exist.How does one despise something one does not believe exists?
I'll get to this later. I think you are taking a rationalistic approach to life, and that's why God seems hidden. Life is more than living in your head, you need a heart too or you are missing a universe of possibilities.
So... all religious people are just dumber than atheists? Think of the implications of what you are saying here.
You're idolizing science and technological supremacy, and ignoring the universe full of other possibilities, possibilities that can give meaning and vision to your life beyond the technological monstrosities of western culture
(we are destroying the planet... it's not a scientific problem at this point, it's a moral problem, and much of it is due to not subjecting our technology to any kind of moral vision beyond "the bottom line").
For some people, God is present in the birth of their child, or a beautiful sunrise, or holding a loved-ones hand. The other day I was laying getting some much-needed vitamin D, looking up into the clouds that seemed to have so much depth and clarity to them... and I couldn't believe I haven't appreciated something like that before. Allowing yourself to be swept up into something other than the hard-nosed, left-brained scientific worldview is very important if you want to know God.
Christianity isn't a monolith. That's something I've said a lot before. There really is not one "Christianity". There are some commonalities on the surface but even how we interpret what the doctrines mean in practical terms, can be very different.
Mainline Lutherans aren't committed to the concept of Biblical perspicuity or universal applicability. It contains the Word of God, without being identical to it. You'll find that attitude is common in many churches that appreciate textual and historical criticism. The Bible only becomes the Word of God when it's read within the context of a community that confesses the faith, guided by the Holy Spirit. That's why Catholics and mainline Protestants have Synods and Conventions, to listen to God's Word and interpret the Bible collectively, and decide stances on difficult issues.
Really? While some of the humor is indeed quite dark (such as pretty much everything in Mostly Harmless, which was IMO not the strongest entry in the series), I found the deadpan delivery of many of the jokes, particularly the Guide entries, to be absolutely jolly, good-hearted fun. The joke where Beeblebrox steps into the machine that shows his precise relation to the universe and it tells him that he is literally the most important thing in the universe, for example? Hilarious. Shame you didn't like it so much, those books helped me survive middle school better than almost anything else.I've read it. It seemed like black gallows humor to me. Not something I want to feast on.
What's wrong with taking a rationalistic approach to life, though? It consistently produces an internal model of reality most directly correlative to external reality. In almost every aspect of our lives, we are expected (and often suffer greatly for not doing so) to think rationally and skeptically.
I'm not sure what my "heart" has to do with anything; if you mean just going off of "gut feeling" or impulse... Well, that has a notoriously bad track record.
my uncle Jerry is a far smarter man than I am, but when it comes to God, I can't help but shake my head at some of the absurdities that come out of his mouth. It's because he was taught to hold things on faith, so he... really just doesn't think rationally on the subject.
The solution, however, will probably not come by going back to farming techniques that could feed a population one tenth the size of the one we have today.
Jokes aside, though, I think Douglas Adams said it best: "Is it not enough to acknowledge that the garden is beautiful without imagining fairies at the bottom?" I can sit outside and acknowledge the aesthetic beauty of something without any need to invent a reason for why I find it beautiful.
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, either on its own or as a response to my criticism. Again, if this is the book God wants to leave behind as testimony, why is so much of it... Well, garbage? Why muddle the witness with the myths? Why make it contextual on anything? Why bundle the story of Jesus together with false claims about a flood or a creation mythos?
Now is not the time.I have not been presented with convincing evidence that a god exists.
Any omniscient, omnipotent god would know exactly what would be necessary to convince me, and would be easily able to make that happen.
Ergo, assuming that God exists, God necessarily has no interest in whether or not I am convinced of his existence.
Now, if we assume a literal hell, wouldn't this be a horrific moral oversight on God's end?
But it is an excuse. It's always used at the end of a conversation when the theist has been shown to have employed faulty logic when trying to argue for their beliefs. Instead of owning up to their logical mistakes, they throw out that particular phrase, which amounts to "So what if I can't argue logically? I don't have to."
The bottom line is that if you're going to present arguments for your theistic beliefs, especially in the Philosophy forum, you better know what you're doing, or no one is going to take you seriously.
I think you are just living in an atheist bubble of self-confirmation bias. In many areas of life, people are expected to be emotionally competent, not cold and calculating.
So I guess you don't believe in intuition at all?
Jerry is otherwise a smart man but on the subject of religion you assume he suddenly becomes stupid and that his beliefs are worthless. And you don't understand how that couldn't seem a bit... bigoted?
In the discusion around global warming, invariably certain people grab technological fixes as the solution, and they put their hopes in that. I see that as inadequate. There are ,for lack of a better term, wrongs being committed here that need to be accounted for. And that requires being able to admit "we are wrong, the way we were doing things is not good". It will require sacrifice and unprecedented international cooperation. Something that even secular humanists admit is hard to deal with in their worldview (Australian philosopher Peter Singer even admits that global warming is a great challenge to secularists, because of the inability to justify moral absolutes).
Of course, but you believe when you die that beauty is going to be gone... forever, for all purposes that matter to you.
My Christian faith gives me hope that will not be the case. When I see something beautiful or aesthetically pleasing, I'm looking into a glimpse of eternity seen through a glass darkly. One day I will see that beauty face to face. And it means, the cloud, the tree me, everything else, is part of something greater that was meant to resonate with that intuition of beauty. I'm not some random accident of nature, and neither are you.
Because that's the way God has chosen to reveal himself. And it's the scandal of particularity that Judaism and Christianity both share, that has been a stumbling block for the pagan world ever since.
Again, most human beings, regardless of their religion, don't share your hangups, and seem to grasp a transcendent being doesn't have to fit inside the box or cage of their own desiring...
What is the thread topic?
God cannot be discussed using logic for those who do not know Him.
Hello Cadet -see my latest post to Locutus.
There's nothing about rational thought that excludes emotion. Just because the first tool I reach to is rationality doesn't mean my emotions and the emotions of others don't factor into that. There's no dichotomy here - empathy is often best achieved by first reasoning about how best to achieve it.
. Particularly science, philosophy, and mathematics are riddled with cases where our intuition has failed us in outright famous ways
But here's my favorite example: it's intuitive that making punishments for crime more draconic will reduce crime,
but this intuition has led to a lot of destroyed lives.
This guy is one smart cookie, knows his way around boats and knots better than anyone, and is extremely well-cultured and well-read. He also believes that HIV doesn't cause AIDS. I've tried to point him to the evidence, and he has no interest in it.
He is clearly completely incapable of seeing this issue rationally, as smart as he is otherwise. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about here.
I... Don't really get why Peter Singer would say that. Modern secular ethics as described by people like Harris or Dillahunty does not seem ill-equipped to deal with global warming.
And it's not typically the atheists who are unworried about global warming. If any affiliation seems unworried, it's the evangelicals.
I disagree. Even from a biological perspective, empathy is much more complicated than simply thinking deeply about things, and it's possible to be highly intelligent but also have little or no empathy. I've known some highly intelligent people that were quite uncaring, even sadistic.
Have you heard of Stephen Jay Goulds concept of mutually non-overlapping magisterial? I believe the rules of science are different from other human undertakings, like art or philosophy, or religion. You are trying to apply the rules of science to an area where it simply isn't as useful.
It doesn't sound like he's smart so much as he has expertise in a narrow area, or possibly he's a schizotypal personality and attracted to odd thinking.
Is this the same Sam Harris we are talking about? He's not a serious philosopher. He seems to just be stirring up a moral panic about religion without giving much respect to the depth or complexity of his subject. And his argument that we can have morality based purely on scientific data seems to be confusing is with ought.
There's no reason a scientific worldview couldn't support a dysptoian society (think of Nazis or Aldous Huxley's Brave New World- the Nazi's had some very good scientists, but horrible human beings), as well as it would support his own political philosophy.
I never said atheists are unworried by it, but atheists ethicists like Singer have seen problems in articulating why anybody should ultimately care about it. The problem is so huge it's beyond the individual and her immediate concerns, and secular humanism is profoundly individualistic in its moral scope.
I'm having an enlightening and intellectually stimulating conversation with FireDragon76. I'm not bored. I'd call those good reasons to be here.Hi Cadet. Why bother with chatting to a bunch of delusional people on a forum site? Shouldn't you be out living your life to the full not worrying about God or those who believe in Him? If there really is no God, then how do you justify your time on this forum?
Okay man. I just sometimes wonder why some people who don't believe in God spend so much time debating with those who do. I understand that it is intellectually stimulating, but aren't we just delusional from the atheistic perspective? I wouldn't find myself very enlightened talking with delusional people, maybe irritated, but not enlightened. But then again, from an atheistic perspective nothing really matters since we are all just random organisms that are here for no reason and will one day die out, so do whatever you will.I'm having an enlightening and intellectually stimulating conversation with FireDragon76. I'm not bored. I'd call those good reasons to be here.
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