Omniscience and quantum mechanics

[Wiccan_Child]

Without an origin; there is nothing else.

Even God?

 

[Chesterton]

A theist is someone who believes God exists. Since you did not fulfil this criterion, you were not a theist.
An atheist is someone who is not a theist (i.e., they do not believe God exists). Since you were not a theist, you must therefore be an atheist.

You were an atheist because you did not believe in God. The fact that you didn't believe God didn't exist is neither here nor there.

An atheist is someone who believes God doesn't exist.

If you're just using "agnostic" as an adjective, then an atheist is still a person who believes there isn't a God, and a theist is still a person who believes there is a God.

I see it as an idea. I don't make a distinction between 'religious' and 'scientific' ideas.

Okay.

No. I don't believe in damnation because I see no reason to. Presumably, you don't believe in Buddhist ideas about the afterlife for the same reason.

As far as I can tell, Buddhist ideas sound like they're describing damnation (or absorption/destruction), but they see it as positive. So I sort of do believe in them.

Everyone preaches. The question is who you listen to. That's why I prefer Dawkins to the pulpit: he advocates logic and reason, self-scrutiny and critical evaluation. Religions, on the other hand, seem only to advocate blind faith, double standards, and inconsistent moralities (this might seem like I'm broad-brushing, but I've yet to see a religion that doesn't do all three).

I think Christianity advocates logic, reason, self-scrutiny and critical evaluation, but of life itself, not just of the mechanics of life. As for blind faith, I think there's less of that required for believing in Christianity than there is for believing in modern materialism. As for double standards and inconsistent moralities I'm not sure what you're referring to.

1) Remove our ability to hate.
2) Remove our ability to do evil.
3) Remove our ability to experience anything but pure bliss.

Any one of those would make the world a better place, don't you think?

If you asked me this while I was suffering, I might agree and say "yes", but while I'm not under the influence of great emotion, I say "no".

I disagree. If a parent gives a child a gun, who do we blame when the gun goes off? The child, for having the moral agency to fire the gun? Or the parent, for being so irresponsible as to hand a child a gun in the first place?

A gun is intended only for killing so it's not a good analogy for human will. You could have used the idea of fire, which can both warm and harm. If you had, I'd say obviously the child is to blame if it uses the fire to harm, and the parent is not to blame for giving the child something good.

Nonetheless, there are more than enough people willing to pray. Is God so petty that he ignores the sick just because someone dares hold a clipboard? Surely it's better to a) demonstrate that prayer works, and b) heal the sick?

Yes there are plenty of people willing to pray, in fact, almost everyone prays when the chips are down. Humans are so petty most will only pray when they are desperate. God may deign to answer them but morality doesn't require it. What you call holding a clipboard is symptomatic of the worst sin - pride - you're treating God as an equal or even less - as some kind of mindless force or principle.

Which begs the question: what about the other 80%? Why did God let them die (or otherwise remain ill)?

I don't know, I don't see that as my question to ask.

Hah, true. But the human mind is very tempted to infer a causal relationship between two events where none exists. That's why we have to be so careful when performing experiments, especially our own.

Some minds seem very tempted not to infer a causal relationship.

So God specifically created the Sun and Moon to have those particular shapes and sizes? It's not just a result of how interstellar dust behaves? I suppose you could say that, since God made the rules, anything that happens is divine providence. But I think you know that's not what I'm talking about...

What God intends, and how things naturally behave, need not be mutually exclusive.

By all means, present your disproof.

If it can be disproven, I don't know how to do it. And I don't know if it's axiomatic, but it certainly appears self-evident to me. Ex nihilo nihil fit.

Bear in mind that "something from nothing" isn't something I advocate, at least not literally.

I can't quite seem to pin you down on that. You seem to say you think it's possible, then you sort of say "well not exactly". I'm not sure what you do or don't advocate, or to what extent you just want to replace old religious ideas with a vague science fiction/fantasy idea.

Agreed. But who makes such a claim?

The claim is usually phrased this way: "We've shown that God isn't needed. Stuff happens on its own." When you say God isn't needed for the material world to operate, all you're really saying is that the world is material, and it operates uniformly. That tells us nothing of whether God exists, or what He did, or what He does.

It could be said that 'God is an intelligent being which poofed all life into being fully formed', in which case evolution does refute God's existence: since life didn't pop into existence, but rather evolved gradually from simple ancestor organisms,

Yes that could be said, but Christianity doesn't necessarily say that. It doesn't really say it at all, even though some modern Christians focus on that.

Agreed. But does Dawkins ever say "It's my scientific opinion that God doesn't exist"?

Does he ever say anything else? Seriously, I don't know if he ever used those exact words, but it's always implied.

That's actually a fallacious way of dealing with critics: "If you understood it more, you wouldn't be criticising it. Since you're criticising it, you obviously don't understand it as well as I do". Could it not simply be that Dawkins understands Christianity as well as you do, if not better?

If that's a fallacious way of dealing with critics, then Creationism must be true, because that's 95% of what I hear - people who criticize evolution don't understand evolution. You would understand the difference between someone criticising quantum theory, and someone criticising a strawman version of quantum theory, wouldn't you?

Can you show me this video?

It was some video I saw within the last year or so, I don't know how to find it. There are a lot of his debates on YouTube and I don't remember who the opponent was. Sorry.

I recall what he said was 1) the scientific way of looking at the world is the right way and 2) since they're obviously wrong, he doesn't approve of the idea that we should respect people's religious views, which to me sounds like he doesn't care for freedom of religion or freedom of conscience.

As I said before, the relativist can argue from two points of view: his own, personal moral code, or from your moral code. He can call your theft 'wrong' because, for whatever reason, you both agree that it is indeed wrong. You have different bases for why you believe what you believe, but you nonetheless believe the same thing.
The dilemma occurs when you believe different things (such as abortion, gay rights, or other deliciously controversial issues). I see objectivists going "A condemns B, so therefore so should we", while relativists say "nothing condemns B, so therefore it should not be condemned".

The relativist doesn't appeal to an objective morality, but nonetheless has her own moral code. Where she got it varies from person to person. Evolution can explain why we have a 'sense of morality', and why certain things are 'just wrong' (such as killing a child), but that's all it can do.

If you agree with me that virtually all people agree that something like theft is wrong, then we agree on that, and that's all I'm saying. I've never exactly understood what the word "objective" means in this context. It seems that if almost all people agree on something, you could, for that reason, say it's not subjective, but I'll leave that for a philosopher. I just make the obvious observation that humanity strongly believes in right and wrong, even when we disagree on the details.

Would you punish a woman for dropping a Qu'ran? What do you say to someone who wants to kill you for committing the grave crime of wearing red on a Thursday? Do you appeal to the Objective Morality, or what?

The idea of blasphemy is profaning what is sacred. My point was just that the idea is still with us, though what is considered sacred varies with time and place as it always has.

So?

My first point was that it seems you're engaging in science fiction or fantasy. It's not even possible to comment on a world so utterly alien. My second point was that virtue couldn't exist in such a world, and as a Christian I believe virtue is important.

Why? Death has nothing to do with pain; I can feel pain without necessarily dying or being mortal, and I can be mortal without necessarily feeling pain. Pain is a result of the world I live in, while death is the inherent limitation to my fragile body. One can be removed without perturbing the other.

Again we're talking at each other from two different worldviews. I think death is where you become what you really are. I guess you think death is where you just stop being.

We never called anyone a person until relatively recently. We also didn't give women the vote and paraded the physically and mentally disabled in circuses.
Luckily, laws are not stagnant.

Well, laws are not stagnant in Christian culture, anyway, which allows for self-reflection and moral progress. You know, some Muslims would like us all to have legal codes copied straight from the 9th or 10th century.

While we may not have considered Gorillas as 'persons' in the past, that doesn't stop us from re-evaluating the concept of personhood and deciding that, in fact, Gorillas are indeed persons.

Okay. Do you think we need to do that? Why does it matter how we label gorillas?

Aye, and we know how man does it. But my point is that in the past you've said that God can influence the world. I don't know how else to ask "what does he do". Does he nudge atoms around? Does he nudge people's thoughts around? How does he influence the world? What, exactly, does he do?

I honestly don't know. Maybe he nudges things, maybe he tells things what to do. If He can produce atoms He can direct them. He's Producer/Director of the show I suppose.

Indeed: it's the fault of the one who bent it, or set it up to be bent. That person is God.

Those are two different things: God made it and gave it to man, and man bent it. The part which God did - the granting of life and freedom - was wholly good.

The problem of evil, mainly.

It's a problem, but not to such a degree that it could make me disbelieve in a good God. There are too many open possibilities, even including good possibilities. Plus, the fact that I possess the concept of evil is evidence to me that the natural world is not all there is. If I'm a purely natural, biological being, events would just be events, I can't see how I would make value judgments about them, since there would be no value. Life itself would be simply an event, neither good nor bad.

 

[Digit]

According to some, God is omniscient: he knows everything.

But, according to quantum mechanics, there are inherent limitations to just how much can be known about a given system. For example, knowing the position of a particle to a given degree of accuracy places insurmountable limitations on how accurate we can know its momentum (namely, ΔxΔp[sub]x[/sub] ≥ ħ/2).

How, then, can God know everything? This uncertainty principle isn't the result of practical limitations to measurements, but is an inherent property of the quantum mechanical nature of the system. Just what does God know about the physical observables of a particle?
Does this relate to the qualifier, "God knows everything knowable"?

Are you just interested in speculative answers, or are you seriously asking us to tell you how the designer of a system knows it's functions flawlessly?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

An atheist is someone who believes God doesn't exist.

If you're just using "agnostic" as an adjective, then an atheist is still a person who believes there isn't a God, and a theist is still a person who believes there is a God.

Not according to my vocabulary, which is what I thought we were discussing.

As far as I can tell, Buddhist ideas sound like they're describing damnation (or absorption/destruction), but they see it as positive. So I sort of do believe in them.

Buddhists believe that one's Karma dictates how much better or worse the next life will be, but also maintain that there is no 'soul' or 'spirit' that is transferred from this life to the next. As a Buddhist on here once said, Buddhists don't believe in reincarnation, because they don't believe in anything that can reincarnate.

In this way, Buddhism couldn't be further from Christianity: the latter posits the eternal, concious existence of the soul, while the former rejects the soul's existence altogether. So, besides vague similarities, I don't see how you share beliefs in the Buddhist afterlife.

Anyway, my original point was that I don't believe in damnation.

I think Christianity advocates logic, reason, self-scrutiny and critical evaluation, but of life itself, not just of the mechanics of life. As for blind faith, I think there's less of that required for believing in Christianity than there is for believing in modern materialism. As for double standards and inconsistent moralities I'm not sure what you're referring to.

Double-standards and inconsistent moralities in that what holds for one doesn't hold for another, condemning something God himself has commanded.

If you asked me this while I was suffering, I might agree and say "yes", but while I'm not under the influence of great emotion, I say "no".

Which bolsters my argument: in your armchair, you see no reason to remove suffering, because you yourself are not suffering. Doesn't Christianity hold compassion and sympathy in great regard? Do you really see suffering as desirable or necessary?

A gun is intended only for killing so it's not a good analogy for human will. You could have used the idea of fire, which can both warm and harm. If you had, I'd say obviously the child is to blame if it uses the fire to harm, and the parent is not to blame for giving the child something good.

Wow, I wouldn't have thought you'd say that.
Say parent turns their fire on, and the child waddles over, sticks its hands in the flame, and suffers third degree burns. You would really blame the child, rather than the parent?

Yes there are plenty of people willing to pray, in fact, almost everyone prays when the chips are down. Humans are so petty most will only pray when they are desperate. God may deign to answer them but morality doesn't require it. What you call holding a clipboard is symptomatic of the worst sin - pride - you're treating God as an equal or even less - as some kind of mindless force or principle.

No, we're treating God as predictable. Or rather, we're testing the claim made by his adherents: a group of people says that, if they pray to God for someone's healing, then God will heal them. That is a scientific claim, even if it involves God.

I don't know, I don't see that as my question to ask.

I'd say it is the most important question we can possibly ask, assuming there is someone to ask: all we have is our existence, so, if God can make it a good one, why doesn't he? By any definition, willingly letting someone suffer is evil, right?

Some minds seem very tempted not to infer a causal relationship.

And those minds are, I'd wager, superior. They don't infer a relationship where none exist, they err on the side of caution, and are more likely to be correct.

If it can be disproven, I don't know how to do it. And I don't know if it's axiomatic, but it certainly appears self-evident to me. Ex nihilo nihil fit.

There's a difference between self-evident and intuitive, the latter of which is routinely violated by scientific discoveries. That's why I cited quantum mechanics all those posts ago: it is a good example of how our intuitive notions about the world are often wrong. Spontaneous generation in the absence of any thing is counter-intuitive, but I don't think it's self-evident.

I can't quite seem to pin you down on that. You seem to say you think it's possible, then you sort of say "well not exactly". I'm not sure what you do or don't advocate, or to what extent you just want to replace old religious ideas with a vague science fiction/fantasy idea.

I don't like to use the phrase "something from nothing" because it is inaccurate and can easily be turned into a strawman. That said, I do believe that, even if absolutely nothing exists, some thing can still spontaneously pop into existence. I even think this is how the universe could have come into being, but that's more because it appeals to me than anything scientific.
I don't know what to call this idea, but I dislike the phrase "something from nothing".

I hope that clears it up .

The claim is usually phrased this way: "We've shown that God isn't needed. Stuff happens on its own." When you say God isn't needed for the material world to operate, all you're really saying is that the world is material, and it operates uniformly. That tells us nothing of whether God exists, or what He did, or what He does.

Agreed. But again, that's not what it's about. Darwin didn't formulate his theory because he was hell-bent on removing God from the picture. While it's tempting to jump the gun and say God did nothing, or even that God doesn't exist, but that's rather unscientific. That said, it's telling that, the more we discover, the less there is for God to do. God didn't create the Earth: a dust cloud collapsed under it's own gravity. God didn't create the species: they evolved naturally from a single ancestor species.

Obviously, there is still much that God could have done, but it's quickly becoming 'behind the scenes' stuff.

Yes that could be said, but Christianity doesn't necessarily say that. It doesn't really say it at all, even though some modern Christians focus on that.

Agreed.

Does he ever say anything else? Seriously, I don't know if he ever used those exact words, but it's always implied.

Actually, he's very careful not to say that. He's heavily entrenched in evolution and Creationism, so he knows better than anyone how words can be misconstrued or taken out of context. When I watch him in videos, or read his books, he seems to take great pains to be explicit in what he's saying. Perhaps his experience with Creationists makes him phrase his words so that even a literal interpretation gets it right.

Anyway, it's a little disingenuous to conclude something by reading between the lines. What are you, Hovind's protégée?

If that's a fallacious way of dealing with critics, then Creationism must be true, because that's 95% of what I hear - people who criticize evolution don't understand evolution. You would understand the difference between someone criticising quantum theory, and someone criticising a strawman version of quantum theory, wouldn't you?

I should hope so . I'll go through their argument to see if it really is a strawman (who knows, maybe they really did disprove quantum mechanics...) and reject their idea after that, but I'd never dismiss them soley because I deem them uneducated in the field. Likewise, I doubt you would dismiss a genuine seeker to the faith simply because they didn't understand it properly.

That said, it is entirely possible that their misunderstanding is just that: a lack of understanding. It's possible that, if they did indeed go back and study it further, they'd realise their mistake.

It was some video I saw within the last year or so, I don't know how to find it. There are a lot of his debates on YouTube and I don't remember who the opponent was. Sorry.

I recall what he said was 1) the scientific way of looking at the world is the right way and 2) since they're obviously wrong, he doesn't approve of the idea that we should respect people's religious views, which to me sounds like he doesn't care for freedom of religion or freedom of conscience.

Ah, I see where you might get that idea; I sometimes wish he'd be a little more clear on that myself. He rejects the notion that we should respect religious beliefs, in that criticising someone for such beliefs shouldn't be the taboo that it is (at least, in British society it is).

He doesn't say we shouldn't let people have religious beliefs, just that we shouldn't let beliefs go unscrutinised. We shouldn't be afraid to challenge someone when they say they believe the Vedic texts are divinely inspired (or whatever Hindus believe about the Vedas). In essence, we should treat all claims and ideas as scientific, applying the same merciless scrutiny and demand for substantiation as we do for anything else.

If you agree with me that virtually all people agree that something like theft is wrong, then we agree on that, and that's all I'm saying. I've never exactly understood what the word "objective" means in this context. It seems that if almost all people agree on something, you could, for that reason, say it's not subjective, but I'll leave that for a philosopher. I just make the obvious observation that humanity strongly believes in right and wrong, even when we disagree on the details.

Objective morality is the idea that things are intrinsically right or wrong, that the moral value of something is determined on its own merits. Moral relativism, on the other hand, says that the moral value of something is determined by our own, personal moral codes. "Is murder is wrong because it's inherently wrong, or because we deem it wrong?"

Both sides agree that we have a sense of morality, so that fact doesn't really get us anywhere. The fact that we don't all agree on something's moral worth convinces me that morality is relative, that events don't have an intrinsic (God-given?) value.

Again we're talking at each other from two different worldviews. I think death is where you become what you really are. I guess you think death is where you just stop being.

Indeed. So I guess this is the crux of the issue: we have different priorities, and I doubt either one of us is going to budge.

Well, laws are not stagnant in Christian culture, anyway, which allows for self-reflection and moral progress. You know, some Muslims would like us all to have legal codes copied straight from the 9th or 10th century.

As would some Christians .

Okay. Do you think we need to do that? Why does it matter how we label gorillas?

For the same reason it matters that we label blacks, women, and gays, as persons. If an organism is a person, then we should treat them as such. Before, it never occurred that Gorillas and the like might be persons, but nowadays we're more open to the idea.

But, from a Christian point of view, humans are a 'special' creation, unique and above other animals. It could be argued that one quality which separates us from them is our personhood.

I honestly don't know. Maybe he nudges things, maybe he tells things what to do. If He can produce atoms He can direct them. He's Producer/Director of the show I suppose.

Fair enough.

Those are two different things: God made it and gave it to man, and man bent it. The part which God did - the granting of life and freedom - was wholly good.

True, I was kinda writing my thoughts out as I went along. Humans bent it, but, like the child who scalds himself on his father's coffee (why not), we can hardly be held accountable. I maintain that, literal or allegorical, the cards in Eden were stacked against us.

It's a problem, but not to such a degree that it could make me disbelieve in a good God. There are too many open possibilities, even including good possibilities. Plus, the fact that I possess the concept of evil is evidence to me that the natural world is not all there is. If I'm a purely natural, biological being, events would just be events, I can't see how I would make value judgments about them, since there would be no value. Life itself would be simply an event, neither good nor bad.

True, but like you said, you're a natural, biological being: you don't get things right. You assign value to things because it's beneficial to your survival to do so (pain is bad, sex is good, etc). That doesn't mean such values actually exist in some ethereal, metaphysical sense.

Remember classical mechanics: our brains scream at us that classical mechanics is right, but a careful inspection of reality shows that it's wrong. What we intuitively know or feel is often just instinct and hormone. Common sense is neither common nor sensible.

So when you say that your sense of morality demonstrates something 'more', I have to disagree. I find it morel likely to be a quirk of biology than anything profound.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Are you just interested in speculative answers, or are you seriously asking us to tell you how the designer of a system knows it's functions flawlessly?

I'm asking how God could know everything about everything, when there are fundamental limits on just how much can be known about something. What, exactly, does God know about the speed and momentum of a particle? When you say God is omniscient, what, exactly, are you saying about him?

If you say God is omniscient at all, of course.

And yes, I'm looking for serious answers. I don't make threads just to bait Christians. I much prefer genuine and thought-provoking discussions, like the one I've been having with Chesterton for God knows how long (no pun intended ).

 

[Digit]

I'm asking how God could know everything about everything, when there are fundamental limits on just how much can be known about something. What, exactly, does God know about the speed and momentum of a particle? When you say God is omniscient, what, exactly, are you saying about him?

If you say God is omniscient at all, of course.

And yes, I'm looking for serious answers. I don't make threads just to bait Christians. I much prefer genuine and thought-provoking discussions, like the one I've been having with Chesterton for God knows how long (no pun intended ).

Sorry I wasn't suggesting you were insincere, it just strikes me as an odd question - it's like asking how much a designer knows about his design.

If we believe Big Bang cosmology, we believe at some point space, time and matter didn't exist. If we are talking about the Biblical God, then from the account in the Bible we know that He has always existed - the word used for him means 'uncreated', and we believe that He created all of this, and so is not bound to space, time and matter - the more important being - time. The Bible confirms this in other areas too saying that time for us is not how God experiences is, so it would seem that our naturalistic methods which are constrained by time, space and matter, do not apply to God - ergo - the imperfections in said systems also, do not apply.

As to how much He knows and so on, I think we can speculate on the finer details of that forever - the Bible says something like 'known to God are all His works from the beginning to the end.' and there is a lot of scriptural support to say He knows everything and if we image ourselves looking at human history, we can look at a time-line and see all the events that have transpired, I imagine being outside of time, is a little like that possibly, except being able to see everything from the beginning of time until the end of time as opposed to just a small section.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Sorry I wasn't suggesting you were insincere, it just strikes me as an odd question - it's like asking how much a designer knows about his design.

How much does a designer know about his design?
I once designed a specialised electromagnet, but my knowledge about the device was limited. I knew what all the parts did and how it worked, but I didn't know everything about everything. Could it be that God knows enough about the universe, but not necessarily everything?

If we believe Big Bang cosmology, we believe at some point space, time and matter didn't exist.

To clarify, the Big Bang theory doesn't say that space, time, and matter came into existence at the moment of the Big Bang. Rather, it says that space has been expanding for 13.5 billion years, and that phenomenon is called the Big Bang. What went on before space started to expand is anyone's guess. It's a common misconception that the universe started with the Big Bang; the evidence and our theories simply cannot probe that far back.

Yet .

If we are talking about the Biblical God, then from the account in the Bible we know that He has always existed - the word used for him means 'uncreated', and we believe that He created all of this, and so is not bound to space, time and matter - the more important being - time. The Bible confirms this in other areas too saying that time for us is not how God experiences is, so it would seem that our naturalistic methods which are constrained by time, space and matter, do not apply to God - ergo - the imperfections in said systems also, do not apply.

I find it hard to juxtapose a timeless God with one who can change and enact change. If God exists outside time, then he is static: without time, how can he do anything? Time is required to go from A to B. Without time, you're stuck in state A.

As to how much He knows and so on, I think we can speculate on the finer details of that forever - the Bible says something like 'known to God are all His works from the beginning to the end.' and there is a lot of scriptural support to say He knows everything and if we image ourselves looking at human history, we can look at a time-line and see all the events that have transpired, I imagine being outside of time, is a little like that possibly, except being able to see everything from the beginning of time until the end of time as opposed to just a small section.

I suppose that God could have his own temporal dimension, much as we have ours but can still go back and forth through history. But does the Bible actually say God knows everything? What is the scriptural basis for omniscience?

 

[Digit]

How much does a designer know about his design?
I once designed a specialised electromagnet, but my knowledge about the device was limited. I knew what all the parts did and how it worked, but I didn't know everything about everything. Could it be that God knows enough about the universe, but not necessarily everything?

But your use of design is not the same as the use of design in respects to God. You didn't make the atoms that comprised the elements that were present in the materials, or create the relationships between polar forces - all you did is pick-up some pieces and put them together.

To clarify, the Big Bang theory doesn't say that space, time, and matter came into existence at the moment of the Big Bang. Rather, it says that space has been expanding for 13.5 billion years, and that phenomenon is called the Big Bang. What went on before space started to expand is anyone's guess. It's a common misconception that the universe started with the Big Bang; the evidence and our theories simply cannot probe that far back.

Yet .

Hmm I'm not sure I agree. The last information I read, and indeed some information from Steven Hawking in his book about the Nature of Space and Time seem to confirm this... There was a point in time, where the fabric of time and space did not exist.

I find it hard to juxtapose a timeless God with one who can change and enact change. If God exists outside time, then he is static: without time, how can he do anything? Time is required to go from A to B. Without time, you're stuck in state A.

How do you know that? What evidence do you have to support your knowledge of how things operate outside of time for an entity that is non-naturalistic in nature. It would seem to me, that we are constrained by naturalistic laws as we reside in a naturalistic system - think about a computer game, the player can only do what the laws of the game allow, the designer, who is outside of the game and indeed can control and create within the game, is freed from those constraints.

I suppose that God could have his own temporal dimension, much as we have ours but can still go back and forth through history. But does the Bible actually say God knows everything? What is the scriptural basis for omniscience?

I'm not heavily invested in believing that God knows everything of everything though it seems to say He does, He knows all His works from the beginning to the end and nothing escapes His notice.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

But your use of design is not the same as the use of design in respects to God. You didn't make the atoms that comprised the elements that were present in the materials, or create the relationships between polar forces - all you did is pick-up some pieces and put them together.

How do you know God didn't do the same? Create a generic universe, and then push certain things together as means to an end. He needn't bother himself with absolute knowledge of the system to achieve whatever inscrutable goals he desires. I admit that, if God exists, then he likely knows a great deal. But I even the Creator of the universe doesn't have to know everything. Indeed, perhaps the fundamental unknowable nature of the universe is God's way of being surprised .

Hmm I'm not sure I agree. The last information I read, and indeed some information from Steven Hawking in his book about the Nature of Space and Time seem to confirm this... There was a point in time, where the fabric of time and space did not exist.

I read an article by Hawking that said that, because anything that happened before the Big Bang left absolutely no trace, we may as well act as if the start of the Big Bang was the start of the universe.

How do you know that? What evidence do you have to support your knowledge of how things operate outside of time for an entity that is non-naturalistic in nature. It would seem to me, that we are constrained by naturalistic laws as we reside in a naturalistic system - think about a computer game, the player can only do what the laws of the game allow, the designer, who is outside of the game and indeed can control and create within the game, is freed from those constraints.

But the designer is nonetheless in a temporal dimension of his own. I know that a timeless God is static and unable to enact change because that's the very definition of time. It's not that God isn't above our timeline, but if God is to be able to do anything, he needs to have some personal timeline in which he is able to go from 'going to do this' to 'doing this' to 'have done this'.

I'm not heavily invested in believing that God knows everything of everything though it seems to say He does, He knows all His works from the beginning to the end and nothing escapes His notice.

Which means what, exactly? What verse are you referring to?

 

[Chesterton]

Not according to my vocabulary, which is what I thought we were discussing.

Well I have my vocabulary. We'll have trouble playing a game with two sets of rules, eh?

Double-standards and inconsistent moralities in that what holds for one doesn't hold for another, condemning something God himself has commanded.

I still don't know what you mean.

Which bolsters my argument: in your armchair, you see no reason to remove suffering, because you yourself are not suffering. Doesn't Christianity hold compassion and sympathy in great regard? Do you really see suffering as desirable or necessary?

If suffering exists, I must see it as necessary. I think you as an atheistic evolutionist must say the same - if it exists, it's necessary for existence, because it's part of existence. Just as giraffe's long neck is necessary. It's necessary for the giraffe to exist, because it's part of what a giraffe is. Just as, the experience of suffering is part of what a human is. So if it's necessary, I have to say it's desirable in general (from my armchair), even though I don't desire it specifically.

Yes, compassion and pity and mercy and sympathy are held in great regard by Christianity, perhaps in higher regard than anything else. And if there were no suffering, those virtues would not exist. Which is to say Christianity is not reactionary; it doesn't offer a remedy to a problem which is separate from reality. The Christian understanding of reality is interwoven with that same reality. As space and time seem to be separate things to the human mind, but are actually parts of the same whole fabric, suffering and compassion are both parts of being human, and both are necessary (and therefore desirable).

From the sci-fi novel Dune: "There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles." Looking back, I know the times of suffering in my life were the only times I really learned anything or gained insight into what the human condition was about. Though I have to admit, there were times of suffering which I still have not learned anything from; and which still seem senseless and random. That doesn't mean they are senseless and random. It may just mean, as with science itself, there are some things I haven't figured out yet.

Wow, I wouldn't have thought you'd say that.
Say parent turns their fire on, and the child waddles over, sticks its hands in the flame, and suffers third degree burns. You would really blame the child, rather than the parent?

If the parent instructed the child not to touch the flame, and the child was competent to understand the instruction, then yes, the child is to blame.

No, we're treating God as predictable. Or rather, we're testing the claim made by his adherents: a group of people says that, if they pray to God for someone's healing, then God will heal them. That is a scientific claim, even if it involves God.

I think I may have misunderstood before. Now I think you're talking about Christians who ardently claim that "faith healing" works? I hate resorting to the same excuse as I do with creationism, but I have to say that's not traditional, orthodox Christian thinking. Like creationism, that attitude about prayer and healing (and I'd include the new "prosperity gospel" alongside it) is very recent and, I'm afraid, largely American. I really don't think you find that "name it and claim it" attitude in earlier European or Eastern Christianity. So, I agree with you; that type of scenario would be predictable, and since it's not, those ideas are wrong.

I'd say it is the most important question we can possibly ask, assuming there is someone to ask: all we have is our existence, so, if God can make it a good one, why doesn't he? By any definition, willingly letting someone suffer is evil, right?

It would be evil only if it were purposeless and/or avoidable. If suffering has some purpose, and if it's an inherently necessary part of the overall scheme of things that God wants, then it can't be said to be evil.

And those minds are, I'd wager, superior. They don't infer a relationship where none exist, they err on the side of caution, and are more likely to be correct.

They don't infer a relationship where they believe none exists. They don't know if they're correct.

There's a difference between self-evident and intuitive, the latter of which is routinely violated by scientific discoveries. That's why I cited quantum mechanics all those posts ago: it is a good example of how our intuitive notions about the world are often wrong. Spontaneous generation in the absence of any thing is counter-intuitive, but I don't think it's self-evident.

I don't like to use the phrase "something from nothing" because it is inaccurate and can easily be turned into a strawman. That said, I do believe that, even if absolutely nothing exists, some thing can still spontaneously pop into existence. I even think this is how the universe could have come into being, but that's more because it appeals to me than anything scientific.
I don't know what to call this idea, but I dislike the phrase "something from nothing".

I hope that clears it up .

But I don't think it's merely counter-intuitive, I think it defies logic. I really don't know how to respond to what you said. It's like saying you believe in magic, but even a quantum )) leap above that; it's uncaused magic.

I'm reminded of something Augustine said: "O faithless ones, you are not actually disbelievers; indeed, you are the most gullible of all. You accept the most improbable things, and the most irrational, the most contradictory, in order to deny the miracle!"

Agreed. But again, that's not what it's about. Darwin didn't formulate his theory because he was hell-bent on removing God from the picture. While it's tempting to jump the gun and say God did nothing, or even that God doesn't exist, but that's rather unscientific. That said, it's telling that, the more we discover, the less there is for God to do. God didn't create the Earth: a dust cloud collapsed under it's own gravity. God didn't create the species: they evolved naturally from a single ancestor species.

Obviously, there is still much that God could have done, but it's quickly becoming 'behind the scenes' stuff.

If God created the Earth by causing a dust cloud to collapse under its own gravity, then that's how God created the Earth. You say "behind the scenes stuff" as if stuff like matter/energy, the fundamental forces, and life, were not very impressive; as if they're just expected to be.

If I could prove YEC tomorrow, that the Earth was poofed into existence 6,000 years ago, science could still come up with a theory which attributed the poofing to natural causes. Isn't that the case with the universe? Lots of evidence points to an instant poofing, the type of occurrence you'd could expect from a Being who could simply say "Let there be..." and it happens. But do scientists or anyone else use that as evidence for God? Only if they decide they want to believe that.

Actually, he's very careful not to say that. He's heavily entrenched in evolution and Creationism, so he knows better than anyone how words can be misconstrued or taken out of context. When I watch him in videos, or read his books, he seems to take great pains to be explicit in what he's saying. Perhaps his experience with Creationists makes him phrase his words so that even a literal interpretation gets it right.

Anyway, it's a little disingenuous to conclude something by reading between the lines. What are you, Hovind's protégée?

I don't really think I'm reading much between the lines. I mean, he's not a chimneysweep or a plumber. He's a scientist telling me there is no God, and much of his reasoning for that conclusion is based on his interpretation of what science knows about reality. So make of it what you will.

I should hope so . I'll go through their argument to see if it really is a strawman (who knows, maybe they really did disprove quantum mechanics...) and reject their idea after that, but I'd never dismiss them soley because I deem them uneducated in the field. Likewise, I doubt you would dismiss a genuine seeker to the faith simply because they didn't understand it properly.

That said, it is entirely possible that their misunderstanding is just that: a lack of understanding. It's possible that, if they did indeed go back and study it further, they'd realise their mistake.

Well no, I didn't say I dismiss him because he's uneducated in the field; I dismiss because I think he's wrong, but being uneducated in the field could be a cause of his wrongness. But I've come across others who understood Christianity much better than him and who still rejected Christianity, so knowledge is not the deciding factor since belief is a matter of, well, belief.

Ah, I see where you might get that idea; I sometimes wish he'd be a little more clear on that myself. He rejects the notion that we should respect religious beliefs, in that criticising someone for such beliefs shouldn't be the taboo that it is (at least, in British society it is).

Criticising religious beliefs is taboo there? Oh please...you're further post-Christian than we are, and it's not even remotely taboo here.

He doesn't say we shouldn't let people have religious beliefs, just that we shouldn't let beliefs go unscrutinised. We shouldn't be afraid to challenge someone when they say they believe the Vedic texts are divinely inspired (or whatever Hindus believe about the Vedas). In essence, we should treat all claims and ideas as scientific, applying the same merciless scrutiny and demand for substantiation as we do for anything else.

Okay. So when I personally challenged everything everyone said, and treated all claims as scientific, and came to the conclusion that Christianity was the truth, what would Dawkins say of me? Am I stupid, or are my beliefs to be respected?

Objective morality is the idea that things are intrinsically right or wrong, that the moral value of something is determined on its own merits. Moral relativism, on the other hand, says that the moral value of something is determined by our own, personal moral codes. "Is murder is wrong because it's inherently wrong, or because we deem it wrong?"

Both sides agree that we have a sense of morality, so that fact doesn't really get us anywhere. The fact that we don't all agree on something's moral worth convinces me that morality is relative, that events don't have an intrinsic (God-given?) value.

Think more basically: fairness. Can anyone claim that fair play is wrong, or that unfairness is right?

For the same reason it matters that we label blacks, women, and gays, as persons.

So that gorillas can vote and get married?

If an organism is a person, then we should treat them as such. Before, it never occurred that Gorillas and the like might be persons, but nowadays we're more open to the idea.

But, from a Christian point of view, humans are a 'special' creation, unique and above other animals. It could be argued that one quality which separates us from them is our personhood.

Humans are special and unique from any view, not just Christian. I'm not sure what you mean by "treat them as such". Persons can treat other persons pretty poorly. And whether a lower animal is called a person or not doesn't affect how I'd treat them.

True, I was kinda writing my thoughts out as I went along. Humans bent it, but, like the child who scalds himself on his father's coffee (why not), we can hardly be held accountable. I maintain that, literal or allegorical, the cards in Eden were stacked against us.

Is giving a man a choice stacking the cards against him? Here's the conundrum: if you don't give the being a choice, he's not free, therefore he's a puppet, he's not real. So to make him real, you must make him free, which includes making him free to use his freedom the wrong way. We had a choice, there were two ways open to us, and we went wrong. But if it seems like the cards were stacked against us, we can always speculate a bit and think, maybe God created 100 worlds. Maybe 99 of them are paradise, and we are the 1 which went bad. You can screw up even when things are stacked in your favor. Maybe we're the black sheep of the universe.

True, but like you said, you're a natural, biological being: you don't get things right. You assign value to things because it's beneficial to your survival to do so (pain is bad, sex is good, etc). That doesn't mean such values actually exist in some ethereal, metaphysical sense.

Remember classical mechanics: our brains scream at us that classical mechanics is right, but a careful inspection of reality shows that it's wrong. What we intuitively know or feel is often just instinct and hormone. Common sense is neither common nor sensible.

So when you say that your sense of morality demonstrates something 'more', I have to disagree. I find it morel likely to be a quirk of biology than anything profound.

If I only assigned values to things I'd be able to see that, and there'd be no problem. The problem arises, and is existential, in that I perceive that my values are very, very real. Unfairness is so fundamental it's at the core of my being; in fact, it's bigger than me.

Wouldn't you agree that it's similar to mathematics? If there were no sentient beings in the universe, there'd be no math, yet 2 + 2 would still equal 4. And if there were no sentient beings, there would be no values, but can't we see that fairness, or even something like the Golden Rule, would still have to exist in principle? Morality is not a function of our biology, or of any possible biology; it's independent of it. In that light, I say common sense is utterly common and utterly sensible, even independent of human beings.

 

[Chesterton]

Are you just interested in speculative answers, or are you seriously asking us to tell you how the designer of a system knows it's functions flawlessly?

And yes, I'm looking for serious answers. I don't make threads just to bait Christians. I much prefer genuine and thought-provoking discussions, like the one I've been having with Chesterton for God knows how long (no pun intended ).

He he, my first post here was was a bit like his, but snarkier. And look where your question led. I apologize for the original snark.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Well I have my vocabulary. We'll have trouble playing a game with two sets of rules, eh?

It's like playing Chinese checkers on a Russian chessboard, with the rules to Scrabble.

If suffering exists, I must see it as necessary. I think you as an atheistic evolutionist must say the same - if it exists, it's necessary for existence, because it's part of existence. Just as giraffe's long neck is necessary.

Not exactly. Evolution throws up a lot of unnecessary things. And as an atheist, I don't see anything as necessary, unless we arbitrarily call 'life' as something which is desirable. Which I do .

It's necessary for the giraffe to exist, because it's part of what a giraffe is. Just as, the experience of suffering is part of what a human is. So if it's necessary, I have to say it's desirable in general (from my armchair), even though I don't desire it specifically.

Yes, compassion and pity and mercy and sympathy are held in great regard by Christianity, perhaps in higher regard than anything else. And if there were no suffering, those virtues would not exist. Which is to say Christianity is not reactionary; it doesn't offer a remedy to a problem which is separate from reality. The Christian understanding of reality is interwoven with that same reality. As space and time seem to be separate things to the human mind, but are actually parts of the same whole fabric, suffering and compassion are both parts of being human, and both are necessary (and therefore desirable).

Fair enough, I can understand that. The problem I have, though, is that I can't see how compassion and suffering are interwoven. I can't see why we can't have compassion without suffering.

From the sci-fi novel Dune: "There should be a science of discontent. People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles." Looking back, I know the times of suffering in my life were the only times I really learned anything or gained insight into what the human condition was about. Though I have to admit, there were times of suffering which I still have not learned anything from; and which still seem senseless and random. That doesn't mean they are senseless and random. It may just mean, as with science itself, there are some things I haven't figured out yet.

But that's a presumption on your part. As you said, you must view it as necessary, otherwise God is capricious and uncaring. But if it's necessary, then God isn't God: he could, if he so wished, achieve his goals in a non-suffering way. As far as I can see, the only reason an omnipotent being would allow suffering is if suffering were its end goal; if it weren't, then it could use any number of alternate means.

If the parent instructed the child not to touch the flame, and the child was competent to understand the instruction, then yes, the child is to blame.

So I suppose the next question concerns competence. Were Adam and Eve competent enough to understand the instruction? Where they given sufficient information to make a genuine decision? Did God ever tell them the repercussions of disobedience?

It becomes more dire when we take Eden as an allegory for human disobedience: where did God say that, if a single human disobeys any command by God, then sin would be introduced into the world, roses would grow thorns, etc?

My point is that the reason we do prosecute the parent in the previous hypothetical, is because the child isn't competent enough. They are called 'minors' for that very reason.

I think I may have misunderstood before. Now I think you're talking about Christians who ardently claim that "faith healing" works? I hate resorting to the same excuse as I do with creationism, but I have to say that's not traditional, orthodox Christian thinking. Like creationism, that attitude about prayer and healing (and I'd include the new "prosperity gospel" alongside it) is very recent and, I'm afraid, largely American. I really don't think you find that "name it and claim it" attitude in earlier European or Eastern Christianity. So, I agree with you; that type of scenario would be predictable, and since it's not, those ideas are wrong.

Well, at least we agree on something.

It would be evil only if it were purposeless and/or avoidable. If suffering has some purpose, and if it's an inherently necessary part of the overall scheme of things that God wants, then it can't be said to be evil.

Agreed. But such a scenario would require God to be limited in power and ability: if it is a necessary means to an end, then God must be unable to use any other means to achieve that end.

They don't infer a relationship where they believe none exists. They don't know if they're correct.

No one knows if they're correct. One part of science is investigating to see whether there really is a causal relationship (more of a medicinal and forensic exercise, but still). But the point is they withhold judgement until convinced otherwise. As someone once said, you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. You should always have rationale to back up your beliefs.

And, from that, it follows to err on the side of caution. Acknowledge the possibility, but don't presume it.

But I don't think it's merely counter-intuitive, I think it defies logic. I really don't know how to respond to what you said. It's like saying you believe in magic, but even a quantum )) leap above that; it's uncaused magic.

I daresay Shakespeare would say the same thing about TV, or printers.

If God created the Earth by causing a dust cloud to collapse under its own gravity, then that's how God created the Earth. You say "behind the scenes stuff" as if stuff like matter/energy, the fundamental forces, and life, were not very impressive; as if they're just expected to be.

Indeed. We'd expect a much different universe than the one we see around us. If this universe was created to harbour life, it's doing a very poor job: the vast, vast majority is empty space, and we can only live on certain parts of the thin skin of this small rock.

When I talk about God doing something, I don't mean sitting back and watching it happen under natural laws. I mean actually, actively poofing it into existence. I mean pushing the atoms in the right place. Not collapsing under gravity.

I don't really think I'm reading much between the lines. I mean, he's not a chimneysweep or a plumber. He's a scientist telling me there is no God, and much of his reasoning for that conclusion is based on his interpretation of what science knows about reality. So make of it what you will.

But does he actually say that? Even in The God Delusion, he doesn't explicitly state that there categorically is no God. He argues that it's supremely unlikely that God exists, but not that it's been proven that he doesn't.

Criticising religious beliefs is taboo there? Oh please...you're further post-Christian than we are, and it's not even remotely taboo here.

The mass media would beg to differ. Besides, we're generally a very polite country (not that you aren't ). What might pass as idle dinner conversation over there would be awkward and inappropriate over here.

Then again, you did get in a flurry over a certain wardrobe malfunction...

Okay. So when I personally challenged everything everyone said, and treated all claims as scientific, and came to the conclusion that Christianity was the truth, what would Dawkins say of me? Am I stupid, or are my beliefs to be respected?

Neither. You aren't stupid, because you scrutinised your beliefs and subjected them to testing as you would any other scientific claim, and that's as good as Dawkins could ask for. But your beliefs aren't to be respected either: just because they passed testing now, doesn't mean they always will. We respect your right to hold whatever belief you want, and we respect you for being thorough, but the point Dawkins is trying to make is that the belief itself is never to be respected.

Think more basically: fairness. Can anyone claim that fair play is wrong, or that unfairness is right?

I can think of many examples where bias and uneven preference would be beneficial. In other words, unfairness is right, and fairness for the sake of fairness is morally wrong. For example, we do not treat children fairly: we withhold rights from them that are afforded to adults.

So that gorillas can vote and get married?

So that they can have the three most basic rights: the right to life, the protection of liberty, and the prohibition of torture. Naturally, they have no concepts of voting or marriage, so even if they had such rights, they wouldn't exercise them.
No, the basic rights accompanying personhood are, I think, more fundamental than that.

Humans are special and unique from any view, not just Christian. I'm not sure what you mean by "treat them as such". Persons can treat other persons pretty poorly. And whether a lower animal is called a person or not doesn't affect how I'd treat them.

No, but it changes what rights and privileges are afforded to them under international law (specifically, the Great Ape project endorses the three outlined above). When I say we should treat them as such, I mean we should give them the legal status afforded to all other persons (which hitherto was restricted to humans, and even then there were limitations).

Is giving a man a choice stacking the cards against him? Here's the conundrum: if you don't give the being a choice, he's not free, therefore he's a puppet, he's not real. So to make him real, you must make him free, which includes making him free to use his freedom the wrong way. We had a choice, there were two ways open to us, and we went wrong. But if it seems like the cards were stacked against us, we can always speculate a bit and think, maybe God created 100 worlds. Maybe 99 of them are paradise, and we are the 1 which went bad. You can screw up even when things are stacked in your favor. Maybe we're the black sheep of the universe.

That's a statistical argument I can appreciate. The odds may not be stacked against us, but we just happen to live in one of the few worlds that went awry.
Of course, this supposes a vast number of good worlds...

If I only assigned values to things I'd be able to see that, and there'd be no problem. The problem arises, and is existential, in that I perceive that my values are very, very real. Unfairness is so fundamental it's at the core of my being; in fact, it's bigger than me.

Which is a testament to the power of biology. Someone high on acid might say, with absolute conviction, that God is speaking to them through that there dog. It may feel real, but, if science has taught us anything, it's that reality rarely conforms to our perception of it.

Wouldn't you agree that it's similar to mathematics? If there were no sentient beings in the universe, there'd be no math, yet 2 + 2 would still equal 4.

Agreed.

And if there were no sentient beings, there would be no values, but can't we see that fairness, or even something like the Golden Rule, would still have to exist in principle? Morality is not a function of our biology, or of any possible biology; it's independent of it. In that light, I say common sense is utterly common and utterly sensible, even independent of human beings.

It's possible, sure. It's possible that there exist moral rules as fundamentally true as those in mathematics. But what makes you so sure they exist? And even if they did, how would you distinguish between biological impulses, and a genuine 'sense' of this Moral Code?

It sounds a lot like Plato's Forms. Are you familiar with the concept?

 

[Chesterton]

Not exactly. Evolution throws up a lot of unnecessary things. And as an atheist, I don't see anything as necessary, unless we arbitrarily call 'life' as something which is desirable. Which I do .

Isn't every part, whether physical or psychological, of every living thing, a reaction to one or more environmental pressures? Isn't that a way you could describe what survival of the fittest actually means - things which made the necessary adaptations survived? In that sense, whatever currently exists is (or recently was) necessary, no?

Fair enough, I can understand that. The problem I have, though, is that I can't see how compassion and suffering are interwoven. I can't see why we can't have compassion without suffering.

I can't see it either, honestly, but I have to wonder, without misfortune, what would there be to have compassion about? Compassion, like all the virtues, is rooted in love, and love is rooted in the Trinity. But then I remember we probably don't view love the same way.

But that's a presumption on your part. As you said, you must view it as necessary, otherwise God is capricious and uncaring. But if it's necessary, then God isn't God: he could, if he so wished, achieve his goals in a non-suffering way. As far as I can see, the only reason an omnipotent being would allow suffering is if suffering were its end goal; if it weren't, then it could use any number of alternate means.

Well you're right that I must view it as necessary because of my larger worldview, but only in the same way I view gravity as necessary. Suffering is bad, and gravity is good (unless I'm falling off a roof) That doesn't mean I have to try and excuse it, just that I accept that it is, and if it is, it must be.

We don't know if omniscience could use any number of alternate means, because again, we don't know what might be contradictory and what's not. It's like asking if God could produce the force of gravity in some other way than He does. Maybe, maybe not. Omniscience does not possess the ability to do what is self-contradictory or nonsensical. I can't say your idea of achieving some goals in a non-suffering way is impossible; I'm just saying we have no way of knowing whether it is.

So I suppose the next question concerns competence.

[snip for brevity]

Well, the story of the Garden assumes competence. The Creator gave the creature instructions, so it has to be assumed He wouldn't do so if they were incompetent to understand or follow them.

Did they have all the information? You could be Adam and Eve's lawyer: "Mr. God, please tell the jury exactly what information you relayed to my clients on the day in question."

But whatever happened, or if none of it happened, I endorse the idea contained in the myth: that man is sinful; that we are supposed to be a certain way which we're not. The more I've come to understand a little of evolutionary biology, the more convinced I am of the idea of sin. I asked you before why there are criminals, and you said you didn't know. We should be hardwired for utilitarian performance. Instead, what we seem to be hardwired for is a feeling that we should be utilitarian.

Agreed. But such a scenario would require God to be limited in power and ability: if it is a necessary means to an end, then God must be unable to use any other means to achieve that end.

Yes, omnipotence is limited by things like contradiction and nonsense. By definition, contradiction and nonsense cannot be parts of a perfect power and intelligence. And it may be that "any other means" are not possible.

No one knows if they're correct. One part of science is investigating to see whether there really is a causal relationship (more of a medicinal and forensic exercise, but still). But the point is they withhold judgement until convinced otherwise. As someone once said, you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into. You should always have rationale to back up your beliefs.

And, from that, it follows to err on the side of caution. Acknowledge the possibility, but don't presume it.

That sounds good and agreeable, but existence is a unique question. The problem is, something happened - we're here, and what caused the universe to be here can very likely never be subject to investigation. I'm unsure what withholding judgement can mean except for being agnostic. If you wait for natural science to find the supernatural God, I believe you wait in vain. I know you and Dawkins think God is a theoretically testable scientific hypothesis, and maybe the god in your mind is, but the God described by Christianity isn't. Christ is the Alpha and Omega, and our telescopes cannot see the beginning or the end of reality.

The idea of withholding judgement, for certain types of ideas, could be a two-fold mistake. The first is the assumption that you could ever prove or explain the idea, e.g., Dawkins' mistake of considering God a hypothesis. Second, you can find an explanation for an idea which is true, yet which is not the actual, or full explanation. (I think there's a term for this fallacy in philosophy or logic but the name escapes me.) An example would be, "primitive man invented gods to explain phenomena they didn't understand". This could very well be true, but it would be fallacious to jump from that to concluding that God (or gods) is only an invention of man.

I daresay Shakespeare would say the same thing about TV, or printers.

I don't think he would. If one encounters something they don't understand and can't figure out, an acceptable response is "I can't figure it out". An unacceptable response would be "it magically came from nothing".

Indeed. We'd expect a much different universe than the one we see around us. If this universe was created to harbour life, it's doing a very poor job: the vast, vast majority is empty space, and we can only live on certain parts of the thin skin of this small rock.

If the universe was created to harbour life, it is harbouring life, possibly even after some cataclysmic so-called extinction events, so it's doing a fine job. If your other two points are objections about God, you'll have to elaborate, because I don't see what the size of the universe and the amount of land on Earth have to say about the possible existence of a Creator.

When I talk about God doing something, I don't mean sitting back and watching it happen under natural laws. I mean actually, actively poofing it into existence. I mean pushing the atoms in the right place. Not collapsing under gravity.

Well then the idea that science has relegated God to behind-the-scenes stuff is sort of a red herring, because (Creationism notwithstanding) that's never been an outright Christian claim that he does much direct "poofing". I say outright, because I leave open the possibility that He actually does at some times or in some ways. The Old Testament miracles were just that - miracles. The idea of a miracle assumes there is a natural law to manipulate. So when Christ said He "clothes the lillies of the field", I don't have to believe that God arranges all the atoms in every flower in the world, I only have to believe that there is a God somehow ultimately responsible for the workings of reality.

But does he actually say that? Even in The God Delusion, he doesn't explicitly state that there categorically is no God. He argues that it's supremely unlikely that God exists, but not that it's been proven that he doesn't.

Of course he's smart enough to know he can't say "there is no God", but don't split hairs. Did he write The God Delusion because he firmly believes the idea of God is a delusion, or not? Besides, if a man says "there is no God", it's automatically recognizable that the man is expressing a belief. So Dawkins tries his best to frame the question in terms of probability; I've read Christians who do the same thing trying to prove God, and I think the approach is a bit silly whichever side is doing it.

Then again, he does tell us he's very close to knowing there's no God. I recall his "probability" scale. He says something like "I'm a 6, leaning toward 7". With agnosticism in the middle of the scale, that would seem to mean, by your definitions, "I strongly believe that we cannot know if there's a God, and I'm leaning towards knowing there's no God". He's leaning towards knowing? Maybe that means he's very near a scientific breakthrough and will give us a disproof of God in his next book?

The mass media would beg to differ. Besides, we're generally a very polite country (not that you aren't ). What might pass as idle dinner conversation over there would be awkward and inappropriate over here.

Then again, you did get in a flurry over a certain wardrobe malfunction...

Heh, well I recall when my childhood heroes the Sex Pistols said a couple of rude words on the Bill Grundy TV show, and from the reaction you'd have thought they declared war on England. But that's probably ancient history to you.

Neither. You aren't stupid, because you scrutinised your beliefs and subjected them to testing as you would any other scientific claim, and that's as good as Dawkins could ask for. But your beliefs aren't to be respected either: just because they passed testing now, doesn't mean they always will. We respect your right to hold whatever belief you want, and we respect you for being thorough, but the point Dawkins is trying to make is that the belief itself is never to be respected.

Am I to respect his belief that belief is not to be respected? His moral ideas are based on [unproven] beliefs just as yours and mine and everyone else's. And if you write a book telling people what not to believe, you're explicitly or implicitly telling people what they should believe.

I can think of many examples where bias and uneven preference would be beneficial. In other words, unfairness is right, and fairness for the sake of fairness is morally wrong. For example, we do not treat children fairly: we withhold rights from them that are afforded to adults.

I think you're confusing "fairly" with "evenly" or "equally". We don't treat children as equals; that doesn't mean we're treating them unfairly. It would be unfair to allow a child to play in traffic because he wanted to. A parent who did so could probably be prosecuted.

So that they can have the three most basic rights: the right to life, the protection of liberty, and the prohibition of torture. Naturally, they have no concepts of voting or marriage, so even if they had such rights, they wouldn't exercise them.
No, the basic rights accompanying personhood are, I think, more fundamental than that.

I mean this seriously, not flippantly, but I don't know what the issues are with these apes; I didn't know that people were especially hunting or mistreating them, if that's the concern. Maybe I should withhold judgement until I educate myself. But I do have a problem with blurring the line between people and animals, a dangerous slippery slope at the very least.

But what does "rights" mean to you? The etymology seems pretty obvious here; the word "right" is the same as the word "right". And you say there's no objective right, so I'm guessing your idea of a right is a means to an arbitrary end?

No, but it changes what rights and privileges are afforded to them under international law (specifically, the Great Ape project endorses the three outlined above). When I say we should treat them as such, I mean we should give them the legal status afforded to all other persons (which hitherto was restricted to humans, and even then there were limitations).

I pretty much agree with you about how Great Apes should be treated, and I'm for treating all animals as kindly as possible, but I'd prefer to treat them kindly as animals, as I think it's just perverting language to call them persons.

Which is a testament to the power of biology. Someone high on acid might say, with absolute conviction, that God is speaking to them through that there dog. It may feel real, but, if science has taught us anything, it's that reality rarely conforms to our perception of it.

True to an extent, but we can't throw out our basic perceptions because by some fluke they may not be true. We'd have to throw out thinking itself, because I wouldn't bother thinking if I didn't perceive that my thinking was true.

It's possible, sure. It's possible that there exist moral rules as fundamentally true as those in mathematics. But what makes you so sure they exist? And even if they did, how would you distinguish between biological impulses, and a genuine 'sense' of this Moral Code?

How are we sure that math is fundamentally true? If I attribute perceptions to biological impulses, then why not attribute the perception that logic is logical to biological impulses? Again we have the naturalist's dilemma: if I discount my perceptions by attributing them solely to biology/chemistry/physics, then I discount the very powers of attribution which allow me to do so. I render myself and reality nonsensical so that I can't really say anything about anything. I think Buddhists and atheists are big on the idea that important human things are illusions. I can't operate my existence based on that, because if I did, I might as well assume I'm a product of Descarte's demon.

It sounds a lot like Plato's Forms. Are you familiar with the concept?

I'm familiar, yes; whether I understand it correctly is another question. From what I think I understand, I agree with the idea. It's Christian in nature, and the world of ideal forms would be God's world, what we call Heaven. That's why when Christ says "love your enemies" and "turn the other cheek", it at once sounds both sublime and bizarre. We can discern the beauty and perfection of that Christ-ian Form even though we live in the corrupted shadowlands of that Form.

In the NCR forum awhile back, one of the Muslims said something like "why should you love your enemies, that's crazy". Living in the imperfect world, where we can't make a perfect cube, I can agree; it's crazy. But if I could imagine myself as a perfect human, "love your enemies" would be perfectly in line with being perfect.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Isn't every part, whether physical or psychological, of every living thing, a reaction to one or more environmental pressures? Isn't that a way you could describe what survival of the fittest actually means - things which made the necessary adaptations survived? In that sense, whatever currently exists is (or recently was) necessary, no?

No, actually. Not every environmental pressure elicits an adaption, nor does every trait have a pressure that caused it. Albinism is a trait, but it's a random mutation with no pressure to make it useful. Decreased melanin production is also a random mutation, but, depending on where you live, there could be a pressure to make it useful.
So it depends.

More generally, most traits are just useful, not necessary. The giraffe's neck is very useful, but its ancestors could survive perfectly with a short neck.

I can't see it either, honestly, but I have to wonder, without misfortune, what would there be to have compassion about? Compassion, like all the virtues, is rooted in love, and love is rooted in the Trinity. But then I remember we probably don't view love the same way.

We probably don't. I like the psychological explanation that all actions are inherently selfish. We give to the poor to a) make ourselves feel good, and b) help propagate a social trend that will help us if we become poor.

Well you're right that I must view it as necessary because of my larger worldview, but only in the same way I view gravity as necessary. Suffering is bad, and gravity is good (unless I'm falling off a roof) That doesn't mean I have to try and excuse it, just that I accept that it is, and if it is, it must be.

We don't know if omniscience could use any number of alternate means, because again, we don't know what might be contradictory and what's not. It's like asking if God could produce the force of gravity in some other way than He does. Maybe, maybe not. Omniscience does not possess the ability to do what is self-contradictory or nonsensical. I can't say your idea of achieving some goals in a non-suffering way is impossible; I'm just saying we have no way of knowing whether it is.

True, but you, as a Christian, must believe that this is the best of all possible worlds. Why would God create unnecessary evil? While I disagree that evil is necessary, I accept that, if it is necessary, the problem of evil goes away.

[snip for brevity]

Well, the story of the Garden assumes competence. The Creator gave the creature instructions, so it has to be assumed He wouldn't do so if they were incompetent to understand or follow them.

Indeed, otherwise God is at least as bad as an abusive parent.

[snip] Instead, what we seem to be hardwired for is a feeling that we should be utilitarian.

Aye. I can explain why we feel what we do, but I can't explain why we go against that feeling. Criminal psychology is not my forte, and that annoys me .

Yes, omnipotence is limited by things like contradiction and nonsense. By definition, contradiction and nonsense cannot be parts of a perfect power and intelligence. And it may be that "any other means" are not possible.

Its possible, but my personal opinion is that there are other means. If we can imagine them, are they not alternate scenarios?

That sounds good and agreeable, but existence is a unique question. The problem is, something happened - we're here, and what caused the universe to be here can very likely never be subject to investigation. I'm unsure what withholding judgement can mean except for being agnostic. If you wait for natural science to find the supernatural God, I believe you wait in vain. I know you and Dawkins think God is a theoretically testable scientific hypothesis, and maybe the god in your mind is, but the God described by Christianity isn't. Christ is the Alpha and Omega, and our telescopes cannot see the beginning or the end of reality.

I disagree. As a Christian, you believe that, in some way, shape, or form, God interacted with the world and started Christianity. If so, God's existence can be subject to scientific scrutiny. Perhaps not today, but there is nonetheless the possibility of an experiment.

The idea of withholding judgement, for certain types of ideas, could be a two-fold mistake. The first is the assumption that you could ever prove or explain the idea, e.g., Dawkins' mistake of considering God a hypothesis. Second, you can find an explanation for an idea which is true, yet which is not the actual, or full explanation. (I think there's a term for this fallacy in philosophy or logic but the name escapes me.) An example would be, "primitive man invented gods to explain phenomena they didn't understand". This could very well be true, but it would be fallacious to jump from that to concluding that God (or gods) is only an invention of man.

And we acknowledge that possibility. But, until your can substantiate that possibility, why should we treat it any more seriously than, say, the Santa Claus myth? That's the point of evidence: to lift the probable from the sea of possibilities. The evidence supports the idea that gods are manmade, but not that gods are real (but neither does it support the idea that the gods are non-existent, either).

I don't think he would. If one encounters something they don't understand and can't figure out, an acceptable response is "I can't figure it out". An unacceptable response would be "it magically came from nothing".

It could be argued that religion is such a response. Not knowing where else the world could have come from, they invoked gods and spirits.

If the universe was created to harbour life, it is harbouring life, possibly even after some cataclysmic so-called extinction events, so it's doing a fine job. If your other two points are objections about God, you'll have to elaborate, because I don't see what the size of the universe and the amount of land on Earth have to say about the possible existence of a Creator.

Not the existence, but the intention.

Well then the idea that science has relegated God to behind-the-scenes stuff is sort of a red herring, because (Creationism notwithstanding) that's never been an outright Christian claim that he does much direct "poofing". I say outright, because I leave open the possibility that He actually does at some times or in some ways. The Old Testament miracles were just that - miracles. The idea of a miracle assumes there is a natural law to manipulate. So when Christ said He "clothes the lillies of the field", I don't have to believe that God arranges all the atoms in every flower in the world, I only have to believe that there is a God somehow ultimately responsible for the workings of reality.

Fair enough. But the 'God of the gaps' idea does have some merit: while most people see God as a sort of man-behind-the-curtain figure anyway, we have still removed any possibility that God had an active role, poofing species into existence.
Unless he covered his tracks as well.

Of course he's smart enough to know he can't say "there is no God", but don't split hairs. Did he write The God Delusion because he firmly believes the idea of God is a delusion, or not?

The former, but that isn't an affirmation of God's non-existence.

Besides, if a man says "there is no God", it's automatically recognizable that the man is expressing a belief. So Dawkins tries his best to frame the question in terms of probability; I've read Christians who do the same thing trying to prove God, and I think the approach is a bit silly whichever side is doing it.

Do you think he's lying? Do you think he secretly affirms that God does not exist, but puts on a façade for posterity's sake?

Then again, he does tell us he's very close to knowing there's no God. I recall his "probability" scale. He says something like "I'm a 6, leaning toward 7". With agnosticism in the middle of the scale, that would seem to mean, by your definitions, "I strongly believe that we cannot know if there's a God, and I'm leaning towards knowing there's no God". He's leaning towards knowing? Maybe that means he's very near a scientific breakthrough and will give us a disproof of God in his next book?

His next book is geared towards children, so I hope not!

Am I to respect his belief that belief is not to be respected?

If you respect his belief that beliefs aren't to be respected, he'll look at you with disgust, or implode with the linguistic recursion of it all.

His moral ideas are based on [unproven] beliefs just as yours and mine and everyone else's. And if you write a book telling people what not to believe, you're explicitly or implicitly telling people what they should believe.

He's presenting an argument, espousing his beliefs. He firmly believes this and that, and he is trying to convince us of his view. I don't want to use the word 'should' because it carries unwanted overtones. He believes that, if we stop treating beliefs (religious and otherwise) with undue respect, then the world will be a better place. Extremism and fundamentalism can never form, because they fester in the midst of moderate, but unquestioned, religions and politics and science.

I think you're confusing "fairly" with "evenly" or "equally". We don't treat children as equals; that doesn't mean we're treating them unfairly. It would be unfair to allow a child to play in traffic because he wanted to. A parent who did so could probably be prosecuted.

I guess this is another instance of where our vocabularies differ.

I mean this seriously, not flippantly, but I don't know what the issues are with these apes; I didn't know that people were especially hunting or mistreating them, if that's the concern. Maybe I should withhold judgement until I educate myself. But I do have a problem with blurring the line between people and animals, a dangerous slippery slope at the very least.

Once upon a time, the same thing was said about the Negro, or the poor. No one's suggesting that we integrate gorillas into our society, but the argument is that they are mentally superior to other animals, to the point that they deserve our protection from (say) torture. We're not blurring the line between humans and other animals, since there's an insurmountable, objective barrier. Rather, we're re-evaluating just who constitutes a 'person', and what that means.

But what does "rights" mean to you? The etymology seems pretty obvious here; the word "right" is the same as the word "right". And you say there's no objective right, so I'm guessing your idea of a right is a means to an arbitrary end?

Aye. The arbitrary end being fairness and equality, I suppose.

I pretty much agree with you about how Great Apes should be treated, and I'm for treating all animals as kindly as possible, but I'd prefer to treat them kindly as animals, as I think it's just perverting language to call them persons.

Then call them something else. But the same logic that exempts humans from torture should also be used to exempt similar organisms from torture. While I can see an objective difference between humans and gorillas, I can't see an objective reason why basic rights should end there.

True to an extent, but we can't throw out our basic perceptions because by some fluke they may not be true. We'd have to throw out thinking itself, because I wouldn't bother thinking if I didn't perceive that my thinking was true.

Which is the common solution to the epistemological dilemma: we can't know for certain whether what we see is true, but we may as well act as if it is, because what's the alternative?

... well, I can think of a few actually, but they're so unlikely as to be negligible.

How are we sure that math is fundamentally true? If I attribute perceptions to biological impulses, then why not attribute the perception that logic is logical to biological impulses?

Because logic is verifiable.

Or, use the above argument: we may as well assume it's true, because, if it's not, kshfncjksgnfklaushflkahsldfcas.

Again we have the naturalist's dilemma: if I discount my perceptions by attributing them solely to biology/chemistry/physics, then I discount the very powers of attribution which allow me to do so. I render myself and reality nonsensical so that I can't really say anything about anything. I think Buddhists and atheists are big on the idea that important human things are illusions. I can't operate my existence based on that, because if I did, I might as well assume I'm a product of Descarte's demon.

Ah, but the whole point is that you assume you're not. We acknowledge the possibility (obviously, everything could be an illusion, even the people who present the dilemma to me in the first place), but we act as if it's not.

I'm familiar, yes; whether I understand it correctly is another question. From what I think I understand, I agree with the idea. It's Christian in nature, and the world of ideal forms would be God's world, what we call Heaven. That's why when Christ says "love your enemies" and "turn the other cheek", it at once sounds both sublime and bizarre. We can discern the beauty and perfection of that Christ-ian Form even though we live in the corrupted shadowlands of that Form.

In the NCR forum awhile back, one of the Muslims said something like "why should you love your enemies, that's crazy". Living in the imperfect world, where we can't make a perfect cube, I can agree; it's crazy. But if I could imagine myself as a perfect human, "love your enemies" would be perfectly in line with being perfect.

Is it wise to try to live up to unreachable heights? "Love your enemies" might be ideal, but it's unworkable. Surely a more practical idiom would be better?

 

[Chesterton]

Note: Something weird was going on with the site or something. Your post was loaded with HTML tags, and I couldn't insert smilies. So wherever my comments are so silly you'd hope I must be smiling or winking, please assume I'm smiling or winking.Yeah, after previewing, it's not handling tags correctly. Paragraphs and quotes are messed up; sorry for the sloppiness.

No, actually. Not every environmental pressure elicits an adaption, nor does every trait have a pressure that caused it. Albinism is a trait, but it's a random mutation with no pressure to make it useful. Decreased melanin production is also a random mutation, but, depending on where you live, there could be a pressure to make it useful.So it depends.More generally, most traits are just useful, not necessary. The giraffe's neck is very useful, but its ancestors could survive perfectly with a short neck.

How do we know whether something was an adaptation or a random mutation? (If you can explain in simple terms for me.)

We probably don't. I like the psychological explanation that all actions are inherently selfish. We give to the poor to a) make ourselves feel good, and b) help propagate a social trend that will help us if we become poor.

Again, important semantics. By traditional understanding, if it's selfish, it's not love. The more selfish an act is, the less it is love. By your understanding, the more selfish you are, the more you love, so that the more selfish you are, the more you'd want to feel good, so the more you'd give to the poor. I think that's a contradiction in terms.Christ said the greatest love was dying for another. Obviously, dying for another is the ultimate selflessness, so how can we define a thing as its opposite?

True, but you, as a Christian, must believe that this is the best of all possible worlds. Why would God create unnecessary evil? While I disagree that evil is necessary, I accept that, if it is necessary, the problem of evil goes away.

Why must I believe that? I'm free to speculate, as I did in a previous post, that this could be the worst of all possible worlds. In fact, if there are other worlds, I should hope that mine is the worst possible.

Its possible, but my personal opinion is that there are other means. If we can imagine them, are they not alternate scenarios?

If you can describe a complete schema for what you're imagining, then it might be an altenate scenario. But you'd have to be complete; the math, so to speak, would have to be perfect as it is in our world. You can't just imagine individual events like "why doesn't God cover manholes before we walk over them?" and leave those events hanging seperate from an overall physics of this imaginary world. Does that make sense?

I disagree. As a Christian, you believe that, in some way, shape, or form, God interacted with the world and started Christianity. If so, God's existence can be subject to scientific scrutiny. Perhaps not today, but there is nonetheless the possibility of an experiment.

Is the study of history a science? I think there's debate on that, but regardless, Christianity is a historical claim. What type of experimentation is possible?

And we acknowledge that possibility. But, until your can substantiate that possibility, why should we treat it any more seriously than, say, the Santa Claus myth? That's the point of evidence: to lift the probable from the sea of possibilities. The evidence supports the idea that gods are manmade, but not that gods are real (but neither does it support the idea that the gods are non-existent, either).

Why should I take seriously your unsubstantiated possibility of an uncaused quantum poofing of the universe? How does it differ in essence from the primitive man's story of the universe sitting atop an uncaused turtle?

It could be argued that religion is such a response. Not knowing where else the world could have come from, they invoked gods and spirits.

Which raises the question "why did any man ever come to care about where the world came from"? I don't know if Great Apes care, but there's no evidence that they do. We could certainly have become good at eating and procreating and defending against tigers without needing to entertain the awful question of God. If the idea of religion is a useless and even harmful by-product of natural selection, then why have the best and brightest minds of humanity recognized that the question religion attempts to address is the most important question there is, or even the only important question?

Not the existence, but the intention.

What does the amount of land have to say about intention? Ask a climatologist, oceanographer, meterologist and a geologist. If it weren't for the seas, Earth would basically be Mars. The amount of outer space? Ask a physicist. I'll ask you: how could a three dimensional being in a three dimensional space not perceive the space around it as infinite in all directions? You know better than I why we have the term "obervable universe" opposed to the word "universe". If we could could see a physical boundary (and I can't imagine how it could be) beyond the farthest galaxy, we'd still ponder, "what's beyond the boundary?" And well, I have to correct myself, because light and vision are physical, and the distance light can travel to our telescopes is a physical boundary, but you get the point: either way, we ask the same question - what, if anything, is beyond space and time? These facts don't provide a basis for speculating on intention.Alternate answer 1: God's intention is to make us to feel small and vulnerable. Why? Because we are, and we need Him.Alternate answer 2: I say the universe is very small. Prove me wrong.

Fair enough. But the 'God of the gaps' idea does have some merit: while most people see God as a sort of man-behind-the-curtain figure anyway, we have still removed any possibility that God had an active role, poofing species into existence.Unless he covered his tracks as well.

If that's true, that's fine. Nothing in my beliefs requires me to believe that God is active in that sense. Having said that, I don't agree that we've removed that possibility. A peacock is a historical fact; no one has observed a peacock coming into being. We don't know that God didn't declare "Let the process of natural selection make a peacock". But even if I grant that every natural process in the universe acts completely of its own accord, that still doesn't address the more fundamental question of how those natural processes came to be.

The former, but that isn't an affirmation of God's non-existence.

Agreed. His personal beliefs are not science, if by "affirmation" you mean proof.

Do you think he's lying? Do you think he secretly affirms that God does not exist, but puts on a façade for posterity's sake?

No I don't think he's lying. I know what he believes but I don't know what he affirms. And again, I don't know that the word "affirm" is the right word to use for belief. I can affirm what I positively know; I can affirm that my shirt is green (setting aside epistemology for the moment). But, there's a chapter he titled "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God". It's a little humorous, you know - why the timid language? Because bolder language would be unscientific, and rationally unsupportable. And his whole position is based on the idea that he is scientific and reasonable. So no, he's not lying, but he's constrained from saying what he's actually doing - he's believing there is no God. He can't say it because the logical response would be "But wait, you said unprovable beliefs are of no merit, and holding them is even a kind of mind virus. Are you feeling okay? You'd better see a doctor, Richard.But, I said he was shallow, and now you ask me if I think he's lying, and I allow that there could be some of both, and maybe he's lying to himself. A profound difference I see between the old atheism and the "New Atheism" is philosophic understanding and/or honesty. When the 18-20th century atheists looked out into a godless universe, they understood, and were honest about, what they were looking at. It was gloomy, ugly and maddening, and they said so. Some came up with alternatives, but it was obvious they were alternatives meant to mitigate or work around their gloomy truth.Thanks to Darwinian "consciousness raising", the new atheists don't see (or ignore) the gloom. Existentialism is not a problem, because they consider man to be merely a machine. The "inner fuzz" which humans generally hold dearer than anything else, and which results in existentialism, is dismissed (with little or no evidence) as a mere by-product of the functioning of the machine. The end goal of existing is to just keep existing, as smoothly and efficiently as possible, as you'd like your car to do. They've removed the existential problem of "why" by just declaring the question itself a meaningless illusion.The old atheists thought man was okay, but there was something wrong with the cosmos (they'd have to think their thinking was okay, otherwise their thinking is discredited). The new atheists think the cosmos is okay, but there's something wrong with the way man thinks about it (and unless they are some kind of gnostics, they undercut their own argument). I respect the old atheism for its honesty and clarity, more than the new.

If you respect his belief that beliefs aren't to be respected, he'll look at you with disgust, or implode with the linguistic recursion of it all.

One should be wary of ideas which result in disgust or implosion.

He's presenting an argument, espousing his beliefs. He firmly believes this and that, and he is trying to convince us of his view. I don't want to use the word 'should' because it carries unwanted overtones. He believes that, if we stop treating beliefs (religious and otherwise) with undue respect, then the world will be a better place. Extremism and fundamentalism can never form, because they fester in the midst of moderate, but unquestioned, religions and politics and science.

I disagree with his beliefs and think they're wrong, but I respect his right to hold them. The belief that the beliefs of others should be respected could be seen as a somewhat new idea historically, and I believe in it, and I cherish that belief. I think to attack it is outrageous. At the same time, I have to consider that you don't earn the nickname "Rottweiler" for nothing. If Dawkins didn't say outrageous things, he'd sell a lot less books. Maybe I'm off-base in criticizing his philosophy; perhaps I should be praising his excellent marketing savvy.As far as extremism, as I mentioned earlier, there are contemporary atheists who advocate things such as infanticide, so extreme beliefs certainly do not require religion.

I guess this is another instance of where our vocabularies differ.

Then I'll try and put it in math terms: it would be unfair (wrong) to treat a child as if it were equal to something it's not (an adult).

Once upon a time, the same thing was said about the Negro, or the poor. No one's suggesting that we integrate gorillas into our society, but the argument is that they are mentally superior to other animals, to the point that they deserve our protection from (say) torture. We're not blurring the line between humans and other animals, since there's an insurmountable, objective barrier. Rather, we're re-evaluating just who constitutes a 'person', and what that means.

I'm happy we agree that there's a barrier. I'm a little disturbed though to see you say that mental ability might be determinative of how a creature should be treated. The logical implication seems to be that the less intelligent a thing is, the less regard we should have for it. I'm sure you'd agree that even the dumbest of living creatures shouldn't be mistreated?

Aye. The arbitrary end being fairness and equality, I suppose.

You're not saying fairness and equality are arbitrary, are you?

Then call them something else.

From past experience I know that when the world gives something a new name, I and use the old name, I'm seen as a politically incorrect bigot. For better or worse, sometimes you have to go along to get along.

Because logic is verifiable.

But verifiable only through logic; a proof that there are proofs.

Or, use the above argument: we may as well assume it's true, because, if it's not, kshfncjksgnfklaushflkahsldfcas.

I agree, we have to assume it's true.

Ah, but the whole point is that you assume you're not. We acknowledge the possibility (obviously, everything could be an illusion, even the people who present the dilemma to me in the first place), but we act as if it's not.

Right, we both assume we're not. The difference I see, as we discussed before, is that I as a theist have a workable hypothesis (the impartation of Divine Reason) which allows for my assumption to be true. As an atheist, what's your hypothesis? The modern naturalistic scientific consensus would be that we are in a sense under the control of a demon: Darwin's demon - the irrational processes of natural selection.

Is it wise to try to live up to unreachable heights?

Yes. Don't even scientists do that in their work? Solving the Great Puzzle of life is an unreachable height (for our lifetimes anyway), but every scientist works on his own little piece of the puzzle, every scientist strives towards what's beyond his grasp. There's a kind of glory even in just striving. As you note in your sig line, there's even glory in failure, you'll learn more of what's right and what's wrong. Falling short and failing will lead to progress, if one is wise.But a note: Christ may not have always been teaching, in the sense of telling us how to be, but teaching in the sense of professing, or explaining what God's reality was like, even while allowing that it may be unreachable for us.

"Love your enemies" might be ideal, but it's unworkable. Surely a more practical idiom would be better?

Which demonstrates to me that Jesus Christ was not a human ethicist or moralist. Would you expect God to espouse the ideal, or espouse the workable, as politicians do?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

How do we know whether something was an adaptation or a random mutation? (If you can explain in simple terms for me.)

Well, new information comes about either by mixing up the parent's genes (e.g., my chromosome #4 is half my mum's, and half my dad's), and by random mutation (e.g., a copying error in the sperm's DNA changes a nucleotide from A to G).
Adaptation is the long-term evolution of a population in response to a selection pressure. For example, if the climate gets colder and colder, a population will evolve traits that compensate (e.g., thicker fur, slower metabolism, excess fat). That's called adaptation.

Again, important semantics. By traditional understanding, if it's selfish, it's not love. The more selfish an act is, the less it is love. By your understanding, the more selfish you are, the more you love, so that the more selfish you are, the more you'd want to feel good, so the more you'd give to the poor.

If giving to the poor was followed by ecstasy on par with an [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse], I dare say you'd see a lot more people giving to charity.

I think that's a contradiction in terms.Christ said the greatest love was dying for another. Obviously, dying for another is the ultimate selflessness, so how can we define a thing as its opposite?

Well, I guess it depends on why Christ died for our sins. It's all very well and good positing a wholly selfless action, but did it actually occur? Is it possible? Did Christ not get some satisfaction out of the whole affair? Indeed, by saving us, God now has worshippers, and isn't the whole point of humanity to worship and love God? Selfish, right there .

If you can describe a complete schema for what you're imagining, then it might be an altenate scenario. But you'd have to be complete; the math, so to speak, would have to be perfect as it is in our world. You can't just imagine individual events like "why doesn't God cover manholes before we walk over them?" and leave those events hanging seperate from an overall physics of this imaginary world. Does that make sense?

It does, actually. I've often wondered about how much leeway we have when imagining alternate worlds. It's one thing to say "What if the butterfly landed here?", but could that ever happen? Does the butterfly have any choice, or is it all pre-determined right from the beginning? Is there no possible 'start' to the universe that would create a 'now' that fits what we want?

Is the study of history a science? I think there's debate on that, but regardless, Christianity is a historical claim. What type of experimentation is possible?

The same used for evaluating any other historical claim. Archaeological digs, poring through old documents, analysing the veracity of anything that seems to corroborate the claim (hoaxes and forgeries were common in ye olden days, no least because it was an honour to have your hand forged).

Why should I take seriously your unsubstantiated possibility of an uncaused quantum poofing of the universe? How does it differ in essence from the primitive man's story of the universe sitting atop an uncaused turtle?

How indeed. I admit that this is just a personal belief of mine, with no real evidence or logic behind it. But, that said, it does avoid the age-old problem of "But where did that cause come from?". So, in that regard, at least, it's superior.

Which raises the question "why did any man ever come to care about where the world came from"? I don't know if Great Apes care, but there's no evidence that they do. We could certainly have become good at eating and procreating and defending against tigers without needing to entertain the awful question of God. If the idea of religion is a useless and even harmful by-product of natural selection, then why have the best and brightest minds of humanity recognized that the question religion attempts to address is the most important question there is, or even the only important question?

It's certainly the biggest question. But, if you were starving in the desert, I daresay you would consider the most important question to be, "Where's my next dinner coming from?". That's why such... big, thoughts only arise in cultures that have solved that problem. Once you've eliminated the brain's tireless search for food, water, mates, territory, safety, and shelter, its energies are focussed on more esoteric tasks. For example, the origin of this and that.

As Newton said, he could only see so far because he stood on the shoulders of giants. So, we can only make such large intellectual strides once there are lots of little steps being built up. The development of language and writing gave way to a primitive form of societal intelligence: what one person discovered, the rest of the society knew for all time.

The 'big' questions didn't pop into people's heads one morning. They were developed, as one person spotted a pattern here, and someone else realised a link there. 'God' is just an amalgamation (or even promotion) of the previous 'gods', and the ancient pantheons are again just extravagent versions of even more ancient animism: there are spirits everywhere. In ancient China, they had one, more fundamental, step: their ancestors.

The point is that it's all built upon what came before it, and it's all little steps. Man asks the big questions because a) he's answered the little ones, and b) the little ones lead inexorably to the big ones. And here we are, struggling with the biggest questions we've worked our way to.

[snip]

It talks about intentions because, unlike us finite mortals, an omnipotent being gets exactly what it wants. That the universe is decidedly void of life (or near enough) tells us that the all-powerful Creator, if one exists, wanted it that way.

If that's true, that's fine. Nothing in my beliefs requires me to believe that God is active in that sense. Having said that, I don't agree that we've removed that possibility. A peacock is a historical fact; no one has observed a peacock coming into being. We don't know that God didn't declare "Let the process of natural selection make a peacock". But even if I grant that every natural process in the universe acts completely of its own accord, that still doesn't address the more fundamental question of how those natural processes came to be.

True, but I think that's a different question altogether.

Agreed. His personal beliefs are not science, if by "affirmation" you mean proof.

No, actually. By 'affirm', I mean he believes it. If I affirm the existence of God, then I'm saying "I believe God exists".

[snip]
So no, he's not lying, but he's constrained from saying what he's actually doing - he's believing there is no God.

But that is just your own opinion. You have no more reason to believe he secretly believes God doesn't exist any more than I do that you secretly believe God doesn't exist. Dawkins, better than anyone, knows the danger of a sloppy vocabulary. Yes, it would be irrational and illogical for him to assert that God actually does not exist, and Dawkins does indeed know this. Which is why he doesn't believe that God doesn't exist: it's an irrational, illogical, and unsubstantiated claim, as much a faith statement as that of any theist.

On the other hand, you could be right all along, and he secretly does believe that God actually doesn't exist (in the same way you believe he does). But in lieu of telepathy, we have only his word to go by. Shouldn't we give him the benefit of the doubt?

[snip]
I respect the old atheism for its honesty and clarity, more than the new.

I consider new atheism to be a refinement of the old atheism, rather than any major shift in attitude.

I disagree with his beliefs and think they're wrong, but I respect his right to hold them. The belief that the beliefs of others should be respected could be seen as a somewhat new idea historically, and I believe in it, and I cherish that belief. I think to attack it is outrageous. At the same time, I have to consider that you don't earn the nickname "Rottweiler" for nothing. If Dawkins didn't say outrageous things, he'd sell a lot less books. Maybe I'm off-base in criticizing his philosophy; perhaps I should be praising his excellent marketing savvy.As far as extremism, as I mentioned earlier, there are contemporary atheists who advocate things such as infanticide, so extreme beliefs certainly do not require religion.

Nor is Dawkins' argument restricted to religion, for the very reason you point out. We should criticise all ideas, even Dawkins'. But I think we've reached another crossroads: you think we should cherish and respect people's beliefs, while I (and Dawkins) think we should criticise them as we would a scientific hypothesis.
I think it is important that we believe what is true, not what makes us feel good. If someone believes in the afterlife, we should ask them why they believe in it. As their beliefs crumble, what remains is the truth: that which withstands scrutiny and criticism is all the better for it, and that which doesn't was never worth having in the first place.

Now, this doesn't mean we shouldn't respect people's right to hold whatever beliefs they want. They are, of course, free to do so, or at least they should be.

I'm happy we agree that there's a barrier. I'm a little disturbed though to see you say that mental ability might be determinative of how a creature should be treated. The logical implication seems to be that the less intelligent a thing is, the less regard we should have for it. I'm sure you'd agree that even the dumbest of living creatures shouldn't be mistreated?

You'd be surprised. The 'dumbest' creature would be something like a plant: void of conciousness, it has zero IQ. We don't seem to have much trouble yanking them from their homes and eating them alive, do we?

You're not saying fairness and equality are arbitrary, are you?

Indeed I am. Why should we treat others fairly and equally? Not that I'm saying we shouldn't, but can you justify this mindset?
It's worth pointing out that it's a relatively new idea that all humans are equal and deserving of the same treatment.

From past experience I know that when the world gives something a new name, I and use the old name, I'm seen as a politically incorrect bigot. For better or worse, sometimes you have to go along to get along.

Eh, I'm not overly bothered about being politically correct. So long as I'm unambiguous and clearly understood, I don't mind.

But verifiable only through logic; a proof that there are proofs.

It's more the fact that we've yet to see logic fail us. Consider it evidence that proves it beyond all reasonable doubt (though such a conclusion rests on logic as well; without logic, how could we deduce anything?).

Right, we both assume we're not. The difference I see, as we discussed before, is that I as a theist have a workable hypothesis (the impartation of Divine Reason) which allows for my assumption to be true. As an atheist, what's your hypothesis? The modern naturalistic scientific consensus would be that we are in a sense under the control of a demon: Darwin's demon - the irrational processes of natural selection.

I don't think it's 'irrational', it's just... there. Anyway.

Our perception of reality is indeed controlled by evolution: how the brain processes information is very important, as any drug addict will tell you. But that doesn't mean said perception is wrong, or even unreliable. It's just a more tangible manifestation of the old epistemological dilemma.

Yes. Don't even scientists do that in their work? Solving the Great Puzzle of life is an unreachable height (for our lifetimes anyway), but every scientist works on his own little piece of the puzzle, every scientist strives towards what's beyond his grasp. There's a kind of glory even in just striving. As you note in your sig line, there's even glory in failure, you'll learn more of what's right and what's wrong. Falling short and failing will lead to progress, if one is wise.But a note: Christ may not have always been teaching, in the sense of telling us how to be, but teaching in the sense of professing, or explaining what God's reality was like, even while allowing that it may be unreachable for us.

That makes sense.

Which demonstrates to me that Jesus Christ was not a human ethicist or moralist. Would you expect God to espouse the ideal, or espouse the workable, as politicians do?

The latter, to be honest, though it depends on what his intention was.

 

[Chesterton]

Well, new information comes about either by mixing up the parent's genes (e.g., my chromosome #4 is half my mum's, and half my dad's), and by random mutation (e.g., a copying error in the sperm's DNA changes a nucleotide from A to G).

[snip]

Well, we have suffering for some reason, and I guess it's useful? (I apologize, but I looked back a few posts, and I'm not exactly sure where I was going with this.)

If giving to the poor was followed by ecstasy on par with an [bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse], I dare say you'd see a lot more people giving to charity.

Yes, but we wouldn't consider them unselfish people. It would not be good if it were done for themselves.

Well, I guess it depends on why Christ died for our sins. It's all very well and good positing a wholly selfless action, but did it actually occur? Is it possible? Did Christ not get some satisfaction out of the whole affair? Indeed, by saving us, God now has worshippers, and isn't the whole point of humanity to worship and love God? Selfish, right there.

I didn't say there was no satisfaction in love. Mutual satisfaction is the idea, really. I'm just saying that self-satisfaction cannot be the aim. It's a paradoxical thread which runs throughout Christianity: the first will be last and vice versa, the least will be greatest and vice versa, "He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal." The only way to find and keep your self, is to lose your self.

The Trinity is love eternally, before creation. God sent the son to us as a gift of love, not because we had anything God needed. Christ is the God who washes the feet of His creatures (John 13). And this is why God does not compel himself upon men's minds - love does not insist on its own way; "love is not self-seeking" (1 Corinthians 13:5).

It does, actually. I've often wondered about how much leeway we have when imagining alternate worlds. It's one thing to say "What if the butterfly landed here?", but could that ever happen? Does the butterfly have any choice, or is it all pre-determined right from the beginning?

If the universe is all there is, and there's nothing outside it to influence it, then every action has to attributable to the laws inside it, right? Everything would have to be pre-determined. The laws of physics and chemistry cannot be broken, and they would have to account for everything. No scientist could ever say "I just had a thought which was a true insight or inference about reality" because every thought would be a mere accidental product of the mindless reality itself.

The idea which science depends on, is the same idea which undermines science. Science depends on an orderly universe, but if it is truly orderly, then it is "ordered" in every sense of the word; it is dictated from the beginning. Every landing of every butterfly, and every thought of every man, is a result of a previous movement of atoms, which in turn was caused by a previous movement of atoms, right back to the beginning. Only if there is an external God can science be true. If not, science is like a dog chasing its tail; science will never arrive at any truth because there is no truth.

Is there no possible 'start' to the universe that would create a 'now' that fits what we want?

What do we want? Happiness? Freedom? Both simultaneously?

The same used for evaluating any other historical claim.

[snip]

Work like that does go on, and some people, like Simon Greenleaf, famously, look into the evidence and decide the evidence is sound. But I doubt you could ever get a scientific consensus that Christ is Lord.

How indeed. I admit that this is just a personal belief of mine, with no real evidence or logic behind it. But, that said, it does avoid the age-old problem of "But where did that cause come from?". So, in that regard, at least, it's superior.

It does avoid the regression problem, but only because it sidesteps the problem. I don't think that makes it superior.

It's certainly the biggest question. But, if you were starving in the desert, I daresay you would consider the most important question to be, "Where's my next dinner coming from?". That's why such... big, thoughts only arise in cultures that have solved that problem.

[snip]

I'm not sure all animals' lives are as hard a work as you describe. Plenty of animals seem to have lots of leisure time. Some mammals hibernate almost half a year. If leisure time leads to philosophy, bears should have been the first philosophers!

As Newton said, he could only see so far because he stood on the shoulders of giants. So, we can only make such large intellectual strides once there are lots of little steps being built up. The development of language and writing gave way to a primitive form of societal intelligence: what one person discovered, the rest of the society knew for all time.

The 'big' questions didn't pop into people's heads one morning. They were developed, as one person spotted a pattern here, and someone else realised a link there. 'God' is just an amalgamation (or even promotion) of the previous 'gods', and the ancient pantheons are again just extravagent versions of even more ancient animism: there are spirits everywhere. In ancient China, they had one, more fundamental, step: their ancestors.

The point is that it's all built upon what came before it, and it's all little steps. Man asks the big questions because a) he's answered the little ones, and b) the little ones lead inexorably to the big ones. And here we are, struggling with the biggest questions we've worked our way to.

You're right about ancient animism, and you may be right about God being an amalgamation. In fact, Paul may have expressed the same idea in Athens, when he said he was declaring the "unknown God"; he could have been to talking to all of the ancient peoples that came before him. But still, it's beside the point. Animism itself needs explanation before you can use it to explain something else. You push the question back a step, but still beg the question: why did man invent spirits?

Plus, you could say modern scientific theories are amalgamations of all previous scientific thought about the world, but that doesn't discredit the theories; actually it strengthens them.

It talks about intentions because, unlike us finite mortals, an omnipotent being gets exactly what it wants. That the universe is decidedly void of life (or near enough) tells us that the all-powerful Creator, if one exists, wanted it that way.

Okay, say the universe is void of life, and God wanted it that way...so what...what can we infer from that?

Here's a thought, and I'm not asserting it as fact, it's just a thought, but cosmic rays and things like neutrinos are interacting with Earth at every moment, in ways we don't fully understand. A lot of this stuff emanates from outside our solar system. It could be that, even the most distant bodies such as pulsars, quasars and such, or the entire interactive universe, might be working for the support of our little Goldilocks speck. Who knows? I mean atoms are a lot of empty space, and they do a fine job of "doing" reality, so how do I know the big empty universe isn't performing the job of "doing" reality for us humans?

No, actually. By 'affirm', I mean he believes it. If I affirm the existence of God, then I'm saying "I believe God exists".

But that is just your own opinion. You have no more reason to believe he secretly believes God doesn't exist any more than I do that you secretly believe God doesn't exist. Dawkins, better than anyone, knows the danger of a sloppy vocabulary. Yes, it would be irrational and illogical for him to assert that God actually does not exist, and Dawkins does indeed know this. Which is why he doesn't believe that God doesn't exist: it's an irrational, illogical, and unsubstantiated claim, as much a faith statement as that of any theist.

On the other hand, you could be right all along, and he secretly does believe that God actually doesn't exist (in the same way you believe he does). But in lieu of telepathy, we have only his word to go by. Shouldn't we give him the benefit of the doubt?

Obviously, he's considered theistic claims, and he's formed a belief about them - he believes the claims are wrong. I don't see any doubt to give him the benefit of. Everyone knows what Richard Dawkins believes (or affirms, or thinks, or feels, or supposes, or whatever other word you might substitute).

Nor is Dawkins' argument restricted to religion, for the very reason you point out. We should criticise all ideas, even Dawkins'. But I think we've reached another crossroads: you think we should cherish and respect people's beliefs, while I (and Dawkins) think we should criticise them as we would a scientific hypothesis. I think it is important that we believe what is true, not what makes us feel good.
[snip]
Now, this doesn't mean we shouldn't respect people's right to hold whatever beliefs they want. They are, of course, free to do so, or at least they should be.

You're right about that. I did misspeak. I meant to say we should respect people's right to believe what they believe. I hope Dawkins agrees with you and I on this, but I really don't know. When he talks about how children should be raised (children other than his own) he comes pretty close to going over the line I think.

I think it is important that we believe what is true, not what makes us feel good.

Why is that? Coming from an atheist, that seems to bring up a conundrum: if there is no Truth with a capital "T", why not believe whatever makes you feel good? Kind of like masturbation, there'd be no effect, it wouldn't matter, but the net result is, you'd feel good. Why does an atheist want to be an atheist? Most of us think it's okay to lie to children about Santa Claus and such because it adds happiness to childhood. So why not lie to yourself, and make your life happier?

Consider the Douglas Adams quote: "Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" But remove the fairies, and a thoughtful, honest person will not see any beauty. An honest person will see a transitory accident which natural selection has programmed the vision interpreter in his brain to attach the arbitrary emotional response "this is beautiful". Humans instinctively know that beauty is only beautiful because we perceive that there is meaning underlying it. We want truth, and there is no truth in beauty apart from meaning, because if the natural course of evolution had tweaked the course of events slightly differently, we would see some ugly things as beautiful, and vice versa. If our brains were wired slightly differently, we could perceive clanging metal pots dropped on the floor as music.

You'd be surprised. The 'dumbest' creature would be something like a plant: void of conciousness, it has zero IQ. We don't seem to have much trouble yanking them from their homes and eating them alive, do we?

If a plant is a creature, I guess I should have said the dumbest of sentient creatures.

Indeed I am. Why should we treat others fairly and equally? Not that I'm saying we shouldn't, but can you justify this mindset?
It's worth pointing out that it's a relatively new idea that all humans are equal and deserving of the same treatment.

Apart from religion (specifically the idea that there actually exists a Way, or Tao), no I can't justify the idea. Neither philosophy nor biological science are capable of telling me why what I know is true, even though I and everyone else knows it's true.

Every atheist on CF is eager to tell me that they are a good person without God. Why? Why are they so eager to have it known that they obey some meaningless biological conditioning which is actually an abstract concept, and which does not even benefit themselves, if and when they can get away with disobeying it? It's almost as if they were walking in the woods and came upon a tree that had fallen over, and said "I'll walk in the direction this tree is pointing" as if there were some meaning or intention behind the tree's position. The tree fell the way it did naturally, and the same goes for the selection of genes which result in human consciousness, human morality and human societies.

Without an external basis of morality, none of us are under any obligation to obey any emotional impulse, neither for society nor posterity. In fact I'd say that one would be foolish to obey anything other than one's own will.

It's more the fact that we've yet to see logic fail us. Consider it evidence that proves it beyond all reasonable doubt (though such a conclusion rests on logic as well; without logic, how could we deduce anything?).

I agree, that's right that we trust logic because it's never failed, but we do have the separate idea that logic cannot fail (and I think you extend that to include in any possible world, which I don't necessarily).

A few days ago in your other thread, you told me a thing cannot be both illogical and true. But the idea in quantum mechanics that a single thing can physically be in two places at once is fundamentally illogical, isn't it? How can that illogical observation be true then?

I don't think it's 'irrational', it's just... there. Anyway.

Our perception of reality is indeed controlled by evolution: how the brain processes information is very important, as any drug addict will tell you. But that doesn't mean said perception is wrong, or even unreliable. It's just a more tangible manifestation of the old epistemological dilemma.

If our perception of reality is fully controlled by evolution, it can't be right or wrong since there is no right or wrong. It's absolutely unreliable because whatever you think is right is merely a perception. If you tell me, as a Christian, that my perception that there exists a real morality is mere illusion, I can in turn say the same thing of your perception that there exists a real logic.

The latter, to be honest, though it depends on what his intention was.

Yeah, actually I shouldn't have opposed those two things. The ideal is workable, it's just hard. As GKC put it: "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."

 

[Quasicentennial]

Logic has rules and breaking those rules means that you are following someone else who has broken them. Heads or Tails? If it's heads, you win. If it's tails, I win. Creation or Evolution? If it's creation, the Christian wins. If it's evolution, the athiest wins. The outcome of God's promise for Christians in the afterlife outweigh the athiestic view of nothing-after-death of human death. Living forever, learning the wonders of supernatural power of science that is beyond the English language, and meeting past celebrity mathematicians and physicists who have accepted Christ in heaven - can be more exciting than experiencing the nothingness of death which is a dark view shared by athiests. God's promise for the minor crime committed by Adam and Eve is extremely generous.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Logic has rules and breaking those rules means that you are following someone else who has broken them. Heads or Tails? If it's heads, you win. If it's tails, I win. Creation or Evolution? If it's creation, the Christian wins.

Unless you're a Muslim Creationism, or a Hindu Creationism, or a X-ist Creationist. Christianity doesn't hold the monopoly on Creationism.

If it's evolution, the athiest wins.

The veracity of evolution doesn't lend itself to any religion or theological philosophy. Whether it's true or not doesn't say anything about whether God exists. At most, it refutes Creationism, but even then only at a stretch. I don't think you can see the forest for the trees.

The outcome of God's promise for Christians in the afterlife outweigh the athiestic view of nothing-after-death of human death. Living forever, learning the wonders of supernatural power of science that is beyond the English language, and meeting past celebrity mathematicians and physicists who have accepted Christ in heaven - can be more exciting than experiencing the nothingness of death which is a dark view shared by athiests.

I'm sure it is. But the appeal of an idea doesn't make it true. The promise of eternal happiness doesn't mean that you actually will get eternal happiness.

God's promise for the minor crime committed by Adam and Eve is extremely generous.

I should think so, given the brutal punishment that befell them.

 

[Quasicentennial]

God's healing might sound irrelevant but it has brought Christians closer to him with stronger faith. Witnessing and meeting these saved Christians can make athiests change their minds about evolution. Actually seeing and hearing these saved Christians should be enough decide the outcome. I think God is cheating a bit with his healing method to encourage the right decision to choose Christianity. I believe God can see through people's hearts, and if you remain an athiest on the outside and a believer on the inside to avoid embarassing your reputation then God understands your fear. You might find that your athiest friends might be pretending to be athiestic because of fear of losing friendship. You can't judge a book by it's cover.