Precision

[Grega]

I'm sure many of you folks don't buy such nonsense as tea-leaves reading, astrology, etc... on the basis of nothing more than accounts given by practitioners of such. You would want to know how such things can be reliable sources of information, or you would investigate how they couldn't be reliable.
Futhermore for the scientifically inclined amongst you I'm sure you demonstrate a high degree of skeptism for most non-God related claims until they have been demonstrated empirically or theoretically valid, and would demand pretty rigourous definitions of their terms before trying to determine what is and what isn't crackpottery.

Why is it that with respect to God, Pretty much every description of your God (and associated baggage such as heaven/ souls/ sin etc...) for us atheists is all fluffy and ambiguous?
Eg: if I ask what do you mean by your God is timeless?, I'll get replies of the following form:
"he is the alpha and the omega, he is not constrained by time, he is eternal, his holiness is unbounded, it is beyond human understanding, etc..." without actually giving a concrete definition of what it means to be timeless (ie he does not experience any phenomenon reducable to some concept of time such that his existence is constrained to a singularity, or that he exists on a completely seperate timeline to ours, or something else) such that an atheist like as me can consider what may be true and what certainly cannot be true about your God in order to accept (or reject) as feasible the proposition he exists.

Same applies to questions about souls, your Gods goodness, perfection and a myriad of others.

 

[Chesterton]

Why is it that with respect to God, Pretty much every description of your God (and associated baggage such as heaven/ souls/ sin etc...) for us atheists is all fluffy and ambiguous?

Good question. I've wanted to ask atheists that myself.

Eg: if I ask what do you mean by your God is timeless?, I'll get replies of the following form:
"he is the alpha and the omega, he is not constrained by time, he is eternal, his holiness is unbounded, it is beyond human understanding, etc..." without actually giving a concrete definition of what it means to be timeless (ie he does not experience any phenomenon reducable to some concept of time such that his existence is constrained to a singularity, or that he exists on a completely seperate timeline to ours, or something else)

Something else...hmm...how about: Spacetime is metaphorized as a "fabric", right? We, and everything we can observe, is clothed in this fabric. God simply wears a different fabric, or no fabric. (Still fluffy I guess, eh?)

such that an atheist like as me can consider what may be true and what certainly cannot be true about your God in order to accept (or reject) as feasible the proposition he exists.

If having to use metaphors to describe something means that it must be crackpottery, then probably 90% of everything humans can say is crackpottery.

 

[iamjcs]

if I ask what do you mean by your God is timeless?, I'll get replies of the following form:
"he is the alpha and the omega, he is not constrained by time, he is eternal, his holiness is unbounded, it is beyond human understanding, etc..." without actually giving a concrete definition of what it means to be timeless (ie he does not experience any phenomenon reducable to some concept of time such that his existence is constrained to a singularity, or that he exists on a completely seperate timeline to ours, or something else) such that an atheist like as me can consider what may be true and what certainly cannot be true about your God in order to accept (or reject) as feasible the proposition he exists.

Same applies to questions about souls, your Gods goodness, perfection and a myriad of others.

God existed before anything or anyone existed including time
God will exist after everything & everyone have passed away including time.
God & God's works are seperate from time.
God's soon may be 1,000 years because it's being compared to forever.

Ask your other questions & I'll do my best to answer them.

 

[packermann]

I'm sure many of you folks don't buy such nonsense as tea-leaves reading, astrology, etc... on the basis of nothing more than accounts given by practitioners of such. You would want to know how such things can be reliable sources of information, or you would investigate how they couldn't be reliable.

I cannot speak for everyone, but I as a Christian do not actually consider astrology, ouii boards, and paranormal events as nonsense. I am open to there being a supernatural origin to these practices or events. It does not mean theses events have a divine origin. They could have a demonic origin. Since God commanded us in the Bible not to practice these things. It does not make them nonsense. In fact, if they were nonsense, then there would be no reason why God would forbid from practicing them.

Futhermore for the scientifically inclined amongst you I'm sure you demonstrate a high degree of skeptism for most non-God related claims until they have been demonstrated empirically or theoretically valid, and would demand pretty rigourous definitions of their terms before trying to determine what is and what isn't crackpottery.

I would like to consider myself to be part of the scientifically inclined. I would not believe every non-God related claim nor God related claim that I hear of. For instance, if someone sees the face of Jesus in his mashed potatoes, I would be hugely skeptical of this.

Being a Christian does not mean that I have accept everything as being supernatural. I am open to it being supernatural. I am also open to it being a fraud, or explained by some other way besides a supernatural explanation. In this way, I feel I am being more open than you are. Because of you anti-supernatural bias, you automatically rule any possibility of the supernatural even before you look at the evidence.

So of course I would rule out anything that is crackpottery. But that is the point. I look at the evidence itself to determine whether it is crackpottery. You would assume apriori that it is crackpottery because you believe the supernatural is impossible. So that means your position is less scientific. You made your judgement without even looking at the evidence.

Why is it that with respect to God, Pretty much every description of your God (and associated baggage such as heaven/ souls/ sin etc...) for us atheists is all fluffy and ambiguous?
Eg: if I ask what do you mean by your God is timeless?, I'll get replies of the following form:
"he is the alpha and the omega, he is not constrained by time, he is eternal, his holiness is unbounded, it is beyond human understanding, etc..." without actually giving a concrete definition of what it means to be timeless (ie he does not experience any phenomenon reducable to some concept of time such that his existence is constrained to a singularity, or that he exists on a completely seperate timeline to ours, or something else) such that an atheist like as me can consider what may be true and what certainly cannot be true about your God in order to accept (or reject) as feasible the proposition he exists.

Same applies to questions about souls, your Gods goodness, perfection and a myriad of others.

About fluff - this is very subjective. One man’s fluff is another man’s meat. Also, there are many things in Christianity that are anything but fluffy. Hell is not fluffy. The wrath of God is not exactly fluffy. The crucifixion of Christ is not fluffy. I heard a lot of things from enemies of Christianity about hell, God's wrath, and the crucifixion. But I never heard them accused of being fluffy.

Abut it being ambiguous – I agree, but that is the nature of the beast. One would expect that, if there is a God, that things pertaining to God would be ambiguous. If there was no ambiguity in our describing God, then it would not be God. If our religion had no ambiguity, I would be the first to abandon it. Because any religion that had no ambiguity could not possibly be true.

Atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel once wrote an article “What is it Like to Be a Bat?". In this article, Nagel argued that the bat’s sense of “seeing” is totally different from our way of seeing, that we could not possibly know what it is like to see the way a bat sees. Now, if that can be said of a little bat, imagine how much more this can be said of God, assuming that God exists! How God we hope to imagines how God sees, or even how God thinks, or do anything else? How can we ever imagine what it is like to be God? Can a small ant comprehend a human being? Well, the difference between God and man is far greater than the difference between a man and an ant. Since an ant cannot comprehend a human, then how can it be possible for us to fully comprehend God? It is like trying to explain the sunset to a man born blind. How do describe to him the color yellow in the sunset?

No matter what words we use, we can never be satisfied with our description of God and things pertaining to God. Our mere words can never fully explain God. At least Christianity is one of the few religions that admit this. The Bible says that God’s ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. This is one of the reasons that Christianity is true. Christianity realizes that God is so much higher than us that no mere can do Him justice. This does not mean that we still not try, but we admit that these meager attempts do not fully glorify Him as He deserves.

 

[ebia]

I'm sure many of you folks don't buy such nonsense as tea-leaves reading, astrology, etc... on the basis of nothing more than accounts given by practitioners of such. You would want to know how such things can be reliable sources of information, or you would investigate how they couldn't be reliable.
Futhermore for the scientifically inclined amongst you I'm sure you demonstrate a high degree of skeptism for most non-God related claims until they have been demonstrated empirically or theoretically valid, and would demand pretty rigourous definitions of their terms before trying to determine what is and what isn't crackpottery.

Why is it that with respect to God, Pretty much every description of your God (and associated baggage such as heaven/ souls/ sin etc...) for us atheists is all fluffy and ambiguous?
Eg: if I ask what do you mean by your God is timeless?, I'll get replies of the following form:
"he is the alpha and the omega, he is not constrained by time, he is eternal, his holiness is unbounded, it is beyond human understanding, etc..." without actually giving a concrete definition of what it means to be timeless (ie he does not experience any phenomenon reducable to some concept of time such that his existence is constrained to a singularity, or that he exists on a completely seperate timeline to ours, or something else) such that an atheist like as me can consider what may be true and what certainly cannot be true about your God in order to accept (or reject) as feasible the proposition he exists.

Same applies to questions about souls, your Gods goodness, perfection and a myriad of others.

Why would I start by assuming that scientific language and thinking is the appropriate form for thinking about every type of question? It isn't how anybody thinks about art, about beauty, about love, about vocation, about ... and it isn't how anybody forms their fundamental philosophical lens through which they will see everybody else. For that matter it's not how anybody thinks about very much on a day-to-day basis, even scientists.

Stories, heard and experienced, and trying to make sense of those stories is the fundamental level on which all of us think and build our basic world-view. A post-enlightenment modernist worldview sits on top of that just as a Christian, Islamic or post-modernist one does. You can't do a philosophy of science in hard pseudo-scientific terms anymore than you can do theology in hard pseudo-scientific terms.

 

[chosenpath]

I'm sure many of you folks don't buy such nonsense as tea-leaves reading, astrology, etc... on the basis of nothing more than accounts given by practitioners of such. You would want to know how such things can be reliable sources of information, or you would investigate how they couldn't be reliable.
Futhermore for the scientifically inclined amongst you I'm sure you demonstrate a high degree of skeptism for most non-God related claims until they have been demonstrated empirically or theoretically valid, and would demand pretty rigourous definitions of their terms before trying to determine what is and what isn't crackpottery.

I grew up around this stuff and from personal experience I can say it is very destructive and can destroy peoples lives. After learning the word of God I understood why he instructs to stay away from any practices of divination.

Why is it that with respect to God, Pretty much every description of your God (and associated baggage such as heaven/ souls/ sin etc...) for us atheists is all fluffy and ambiguous?
Eg: if I ask what do you mean by your God is timeless?, I'll get replies of the following form:
"he is the alpha and the omega, he is not constrained by time, he is eternal, his holiness is unbounded, it is beyond human understanding, etc..." without actually giving a concrete definition of what it means to be timeless (ie he does not experience any phenomenon reducable to some concept of time such that his existence is constrained to a singularity, or that he exists on a completely seperate timeline to ours, or something else) such that an atheist like as me can consider what may be true and what certainly cannot be true about your God in order to accept (or reject) as feasible the proposition he exists.

God is timeless because he doesn't wear a watch. He is the creator of time and we are on his sundial!

 

[ephraimanesti]

Why is it that with respect to God, Pretty much every description of your God (and associated baggage such as heaven/ souls/ sin etc...) for us atheists is all fluffy and ambiguous?

When one actually meets and experiences the Indescribable One, words fail. What appears "all fluffy and ambiguous" to an atheist is pregnant with meaning for one who has experienced He who is being--inadequately to be sure--described. For example: "It is meet and right to hymn Thee, to bless Thee, to give thanks to Thee, and to worship Thee in every place of Thy dominion: for Thou art God, ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, ever-existing and eternally the same. Thou and Thine only-begotten Son and Thy Holy Spirit. . . ." means/pictures/represents/designates nothing to an atheist--"just more mumbo-jumbo"--but everything to a believer.

This ties in with the fact that the existence of God can never be proven to an atheist's satisfaction because God must be experienced to be believed and one can not experience something they deny even exists.

A BOND-SLAVE/FRIEND/BROTHER OF OUR LORD/GOD/SAVIOR JESUS CHRIST,
ephraim

 

[angiekay0027]

This does not really apply to what you are asking, but I just feel like I should share this with you. God is the only one that can give you peace and joy. There is nothing like feeling the presence of the Lord. When storms come my way, I just sit back because I know my God is going to take care of everything. I had gotten laid off from my job in December, I live by myself and unemployment was not going to be enough to pay my bills, put food on the table, and gas in my car. I prayed about it and had faith that the Lord was going to help me. I do not know how He does it, but my bills are paid on time. I still have money to go with my friends. The only help I am getting is Him. I have so much joy and peace!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!