Hi musicman30mm,
We do not use the same methods. You begin with the supposition that there is god, then work your understanding of the universe around him. I begin with no supposition at all.
If you understood the nature of logical thought and axioms correctly, you would know that what you say, is comprehensively impossible.
All logical thought relies on axioms, on something that we believe is true, yet we cannot prove it.
I would not believe that the Earth is benieth my feet until I felt it there, or that there was atmosphere until I breathed it in.
That is entirely the same as, I would venture, every single human on the planet.
There is clear evidence that "the stars started from a single point" as you put it.
Evidence is only ever
clear when one wishes it to be. At the very best, our view of reality is based on assumptions, and whilst your and others believe that certain elements, masses and speeds remained constant, I do not. The actual
methods we use to form our models of reality, are identical in every way.
You deny them because you must work god into the picture. I find this disconcerting, that a person, nay almost every person that has ever existed, would exchange evident truth for a gut feeling.
At this stage I feel you are on quite rocky ground, because you cover two things both of which I can prove to be false. First and foremost it would be ridiculous to assert that Christians run around ignoring facts and reports from numerous fields in the world, because we wish to hold on to God. We take everything from God, and God Himself says to:
1 Thessalonions 5:21
"Test everything. Hold on to the good."
People rarely, if ever choose what they believe, they instead believe something as they find it to be true. You say we exachange evident truth for a gut feeling, this is false, in many respects the models and beliefs that we have in our world do no conflict with the Biblical account of history - so there is no reason to reject them, it would be silly for God to create us, and then put in the world many things which contradict His Word. But in some respects things do conflict with the Biblical account, and in these situations, I will always look at what methods were devised to reach that conclusion, and test each of them to see if I agree with those methods. In some situations, there are assumptions that I do not agree with. It's not a gut feeling that removes them from consideration, it's the result of lots of research and study.
Why do we assume something, and why are we holding on to those assumptions so ferociously, should we not follow the evidence no matter where it goes?
Why is there only one widely accepted origins model, and why is it accepted despite it's flaws. Why are old version of it, redundant versions of it, taught as fact in schools? Are you familiar with the Dark Matter theory? Essentially what happened was that people realised the fundimental theories and laws that we work to, for our universe, didn't work. So they theorised a balancing factor, Dark matter. There was a single piece of evidence that alluded to the existance of such matter, yet there we have it, all the old theories were back in action again. Now as it happens, there is a substance that people believe to be Dark Matter. That's great, and I have absolutely no issue with why they theorised it and the eventual outcome. What I take issue with, is the finger pointed levelled at theists that claim we presuppose facts to try and work God in, when the secular does the exact same thing. Don't be a hipocrit, open your eyes to reality and follow evidence irrespective of where it may go, don't accept things blindly and don't subscribe to disbelief in the impossible, when every day what was once impossible becomes possible in one field or another.
You are speaking of the account of him in the Bible I assume, if not I will revise the following.
Of course, how would you have a Christian talk of God if not by using the very guidebook that God left us. When in Rome, you do as the Romans do, no?
You cannot remove a Christian from the Bible, that's like me asking you to prove the non-existance of God, by ONLY using the Bible.
The Bible could easily have been written without any devine inspiration.
I find this false. Consider Lord of the Rings trilogy of films. Consider how many hundreds of people worked on it, how many millions it cost and how many years they invested it. Not two hours in and there are continuity errors springing forther, even the unattentive saw them - and that was within an hour of it's release at the first viewing.
Now consider the Bible, thousands of pages, very few authors, written individually and separately and has been exposed to thousands of years of study. It's complete, whole, perfect and flawless. No man, or group of men could ever hope to achieve that, and indeed, why would they when they were persecuted, fed to lions and tortured.
The fact that you revere it is not evidence of god.
No it's not, and I never claimed it was. I can only testify to God as I know Him and I know Him through the Bible.
It is very well documented to be full of inconsistancies, inaccuracies and the like.
I find this wholly false. What I do know, is that through lots of research I too thought it was inaccurate, flawed and incomplete. Yet every time I researched one of those flaws, I found an explanation, I found a reason and I found truth in what I had seen as an error. Non-theists love to say this, that the Bible has, "very well documented flaws, errors and inconsistencies" that I wonder if I asked, could you actually discuss one of them, the Christian perspective of it and why you readily accept the secular explanation, but not the Christian?
It took me a while to fall out of this pattern:
"If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence."
Bertran Russell
Cheers,
Digit
