Thinking of becoming a creationist...

[True_Blue]

Many of us have done precisely that. However, despite your claims of "4000" verifiably fulfilled predictions, Christianity invariably fails.

Why?

 

[Aeothen]

You make a good point, Physics_guy. Here's why I believe God requires belief. God created us so that we could love Him. In order to love God, we have to be given the freedom to choose to love Him. Otherwise, it would be forced love, and that's not love at all. So God gave us minds and the capacity to reason and time to make a choice. He requires faith because if He revealed Himself to us fully and completely, He would be depriving us of our ability to choose. We're all debating Creation/Evolution because God has frozen over Mr. Ararat, something that really irritates me. But anyway, that's the logical underpinning of God's requirement of faith. He's given you and I the ability to choose to love Him.

I don't know if this has been answered in any detail before (and if someone could point me to a thread/article where it's discussed, I'd really appreciate it.) But in my view, the idea of free will/choice requires a deity who is not onmiscient. Were he all-knowing, he'd know what decision we were going to make between faith or non-faith long before we'd ever made it. So in effect, god created us fully aware of what choice we were going to make; where's the free will there?

To get the thread back on topic, I don't think you need a proper degree to promote creationism. (Just look at Hovind's doctorate.) I think far more important is providing your audience a sense of satidfaction in that they're right, and those educated scientists have got it all wrong, and are going to suffer for it.

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me to ignore academic achievement altogether in your ministry. There's already AiG, ICR, and Hovind covering the 'academics who refute evolution' angle. It might be a good niche to fill being the 'lay pastor who gets all he needs from the bible, and to heck with those in their ivory towers'.

 

[Philosoft]

My point is that a lifetime of believing in atheism has no hope of doing anything for you after you die. If God doesn't exist, you were right all along, but you're still dead... If he exists, He's gonna want to know why you didn't give Him credit for creating you. I'm a Christian and love God, but sometimes He really scares me. I don't want to be put to the question by God.

Why is this relevant to this forum? It's not even relevant to thoughtful Christianity. Unless the God you believe in values faith via fear or pure self-interest.

 

[The Bellman]

Why?

Because it doesn't have 4000 verifiably fulfilled predictions. Its record on prediction is about the same as any other source of 'prophecy' - Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, etc. Great AFTER the event, when actual happenings can be shoe-horned into vague sounding prophecies, but not so good beforehand.

 

[True_Blue]

I don't know if this has been answered in any detail before (and if someone could point me to a thread/article where it's discussed, I'd really appreciate it.) But in my view, the idea of free will/choice requires a deity who is not onmiscient. Were he all-knowing, he'd know what decision we were going to make between faith or non-faith long before we'd ever made it. So in effect, god created us fully aware of what choice we were going to make; where's the free will there?

Here is a cheesy example--I'm not all-knowing, but when it comes to my wife, I come pretty close. Yesterday, I asked my wife if she wanted to go to a restaurant at the top of the Prudential Center in downtown Boston. I knew she'd say YES!!! before I even asked. But I wanted to give her the choice because her choosing to say yes would be an expression of love and an expression of her desire to spend time with me. If I forced her to say yes, I would be losing the enjoyment that her choice of saying yes would give me. It works the same way with us and God. Even though God is all-knowing, He really likes it when we choose Him.

 

[True_Blue]

Why is this relevant to this forum? It's not even relevant to thoughtful Christianity. Unless the God you believe in values faith via fear or pure self-interest.

The Bible says that "God is Love." God values love above everything else. If fear of God eventually induces you to love and obey Him, then so be it. Parents use fear of spanking to convince infants not to stick forks in electrical outlets. They do that because they are willing to use fear to advance and nurture a loving parent/child relationship. It works the same way with us and God.

 

[Physics_guy]

You make a good point, Physics_guy. Here's why I believe God requires belief. God created us so that we could love Him. In order to love God, we have to be given the freedom to choose to love Him. Otherwise, it would be forced love, and that's not love at all. So God gave us minds and the capacity to reason and time to make a choice. He requires faith because if He revealed Himself to us fully and completely, He would be depriving us of our ability to choose. We're all debating Creation/Evolution because God has frozen over Mr. Ararat, something that really irritates me. But anyway, that's the logical underpinning of God's requirement of faith. He's given you and I the ability to choose to love Him.

None of that has been demonstrated. Assuming it has makes using Pascal's Wager superfluous and not assuming it forces one to admit the holes in Pascal's Wager. I accept that you think God exists as described in the Bible - what I do not accept is your assertion that Pascal's Wager is a useful method for making decisions about the existence of God or gods for that matter.

Why have I chosen only two belief systems to compare against? Because I'm a financial analyst and I don't like building incredibily complex models. When I run portfolio optimization models, I usually only compare two stocks against each other, not the entire stock market. And I usually pick my two favorite stocks to run the comparison, not junk stocks.

Ug, this is why I think there should be harder for people to get jobs on Wall Street. Pascal's Wager is very different from your stock selection models because your stock selection models do not use INFINITE returns/losses!

When infinite returns are considered, probabilities in game theory are meaningless. Therefore, in your analogy to "junk stocks" - your matrix wouldn't be able to tell the difference between INTC or CRMC - their outcome adjusted values would be identical (i.e. infinite).

BTW - I was a financial analyst on Wall Street myself for a major bulge bracket firm. Now I am a portfolio manager at a hedge fund. If I made a call to an analyst and he used logic as poor as yours for helping me make a decision on a stock, that analyst wouldn't be getting any II votes for quite some time!

It's like polls measuring the race for president. I only care about how President Bush and Senator Kerry are doing against each other. I don't care about how the libertarian candidate is doing. I may look at Ralph Nader on occasion, just like I'll consider Islam on occasion, but in the end, it's the Kerry-Bush comparison that really matters.

I think you need to go back to school to learn a little about game theory. With non-infinite values attached to outcomes, probabilities matter so you can safely discount third party candidates or junk stocks. But when you add infinite values, as Pascal's Wager does, probabilities are meaningless.

 

[Philosoft]

Here is a cheesy example--I'm not all-knowing, but when it comes to my wife, I come pretty close. Yesterday, I asked my wife if she wanted to go to a restaurant at the top of the Prudential Center in downtown Boston. I knew she'd say YES!!! before I even asked. But I wanted to give her the choice because her choosing to say yes would be an expression of love and an expression of her desire to spend time with me. If I forced her to say yes, I would be losing the enjoyment that her choice of saying yes would give me. It works the same way with us and God. Even though God is all-knowing, He really likes it when we choose Him.

I've never quite understood the rationale behind this apologetic via analogy. What is it supposed to tell us? That God can do whatever He likes? That some things humans like God also likes?

 

[Philosoft]

The Bible says that "God is Love." God values love above everything else. If fear of God eventually induces you to love and obey Him, then so be it. Parents use fear of spanking to convince infants not to stick forks in electrical outlets. They do that because they are willing to use fear to advance and nurture a loving parent/child relationship. It works the same way with us and God.

And yet another apologetic analogy that renders omnipotence impotent.

 

[Aeothen]

Here is a cheesy example--I'm not all-knowing, but when it comes to my wife, I come pretty close. Yesterday, I asked my wife if she wanted to go to a restaurant at the top of the Prudential Center in downtown Boston. I knew she'd say YES!!! before I even asked. But I wanted to give her the choice because her choosing to say yes would be an expression of love and an expression of her desire to spend time with me. If I forced her to say yes, I would be losing the enjoyment that her choice of saying yes would give me. It works the same way with us and God. Even though God is all-knowing, He really likes it when we choose Him.

The problem I see with this is that when you ask your wife something, there's the possibility she might say no, instead. Maybe she isn't feeling well, or has something else she wants to do... I don't know. The point is, you asking her is by no means an assured positive answer.

God, on the other hand, has no such difficulties. He knows, for a fact, what our answer will be. If he's all knowledgable, that means he doesn't have 'blind spots' in his understanding about us. If being chosen does bring him happyness, as you say, why would he create beings who are going to reject him? After all, he knows that will be the end result.

 

[True_Blue]

Because it doesn't have 4000 verifiably fulfilled predictions. Its record on prediction is about the same as any other source of 'prophecy' - Nostradamus, Edgar Cayce, etc. Great AFTER the event, when actual happenings can be shoe-horned into vague sounding prophecies, but not so good beforehand.

In 1945, five million Jews had just been exterminated. Two years later, a Jewish state was reborn after they fought off attacks from six surrounding Middle Eastern countries. That's a freakin' miracle if I ever saw one. Almost every end times prophecy requires a Jewish state to have a prayer of being accurate. Well, now we've got one. I would agree with you that unfulfilled prophecies are very, very vague. But prophecies that have been fulfilled are crystal clear.

 

[Tomk80]

In 1945, five million Jews had just been exterminated. Two years later, a Jewish state was reborn after they fought off attacks from six surrounding Middle Eastern countries. That's a freakin' miracle if I ever saw one. Almost every end times prophecy requires a Jewish state to have a prayer of being accurate. Well, now we've got one. I would agree with you that unfulfilled prophecies are very, very vague. But prophecies that have been fulfilled are crystal clear.

You have two problems here. First, you don't know whether we are in the end times. Christians have been predicting the end of times being coming already for 2000 years, but still nothing has happened. So your prophesy might still turn out to be wrong. We're not there yet.

Second, this can be a self-fullfilling prophesy. Because the jews think Israel was given to them by God, they did everything to get a state there. So the prediction in itself might have no great truth in it, but might be the cause of the desire for the jews to have their own state. To be a real prediction (in my book), prediction and predicted should be independent from each other. Whether this is the case here is questionable.

 

[Arikay]

It may be a "miracle" because it fits with vague predictions that the bible makes, but luck is not uncommon. Did you know that Japan was attacked twice by the Mongols. Both times Japan would have been beaten because the Mongols had better armor, weapons and were better fighters. And both times a huge storm came up and blew their ships away, destroying many of them. Saving Japan.

Did God save Japan (an island of heathens) or did they just get lucky?

 

[True_Blue]

Did God save Japan (an island of heathens) or did they just get lucky?

I would say the answer to your question is yes.

 

[True_Blue]

Second, this can be a self-fullfilling prophesy. Because the jews think Israel was given to them by God, they did everything to get a state there. So the prediction in itself might have no great truth in it, but might be the cause of the desire for the jews to have their own state. To be a real prediction (in my book), prediction and predicted should be independent from each other. Whether this is the case here is questionable.

Some things are pretty hard to self-fulfill. In the case of the Jews, they somehow survived as a culture for 2000 years and somehow managed to stave off about 30-40 attempted genocides. You could make the argument that Israel's rebirth was self-fulfilled, but that doesn't make sense given the reality of Ezekiel 38:8: "After many days you will be called to arms. In future years you will invade a land that has recovered from war, whose people were gathered from the many nations to the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate." Tomk80, I think you are a reasonable person with the ability to think critically. What is this verse telling you?

 

[Tomk80]

Some things are pretty hard to self-fulfill. In the case of the Jews, they somehow survived as a culture for 2000 years and somehow managed to stave off about 30-40 attempted genocides. You could make the argument that Israel's rebirth was self-fulfilled, but that doesn't make sense given the reality of Ezekiel 38:8: "After many days you will be called to arms. In future years you will invade a land that has recovered from war, whose people were gathered from the many nations to the mountains of Israel, which had long been desolate." Tomk80, I think you are a reasonable person with the ability to think critically. What is this verse telling you?

I'll look at the text. Going to bed now (it's 2:42 AM here) and will try to give a reply tomorrow.

Good night all y'all

 

[Arikay]

The point was, when is something a real prophecy fullfilment or just luck?
Does your prophecy have constraints? Does it say, "In the future" or does it say, "in the 20th century."?

 

[True_Blue]

The point was, when is something a real prophecy fullfilment or just luck?
Does your prophecy have constraints? Does it say, "In the future" or does it say, "in the 20th century."?

Very good points--you bring up a fundamental problem with using prophecies as evidence. It's hard to know whether luck can be reasonably attributed to the fulfillment of the prophecy. That's why I brought up the thousands of fulfilled prophecies--chances are astronomically small that luck was the contributing factor in all of them. If you like Colin Farrell (I don't particularly like him), go see the movie Alexander, which is coming out soon. Alexander the Great fulfilled Exekiel 26: "I will scrape away her (Tyre's) rubble and make her a bare rock. Out in the sea she will become a place to spread fishnets." The book of Ezekiel was completed in 570 BC. It took 50 years to fulfill Ezekiel 26:3, but it took another 238 years for Ezekiel 26:4-5 to be fulfilled.

The only prophecy in the Bible with a precise time limit that I have found is Daniel 9:20-27, in which a prime minister of the Persian Empire nails down the crucifixion of Jesus to within seven years (the appropriate significant digit). If you want to talk about this in more detail, email me. More prophesies with time limits would of course be very useful, but the lack of set time limits doesn't lessen the awe I feel when the prophesy comes true.

 

[Arikay]

I would recomend doing some searches in the Gen Apologetics section, you will find many posts about the "thousands of fullfilled prophecies." Winace had a couple detailed posts about it.
Of course, if these prophecies are very open ended, then even fullfilling a million isn't amazing.

 

[Intrepid99]

Your post really doesn't do much to contribute to the debate. But I thought your quote at the bottom was very, very interesting. In a nutshell, Creationism's goal is to get people closer to God and provide hope, not to win a scientific debate (though I really like the debate).

If you are an atheist debating a Christian, there are two possibilities being considered--that you will die and nothing will hapen to you, or you will die and go to Hell for eternity. Let's assume you are almost certainly right, and the probability that hell being real is 1/1,000,000. The probability of an empty void is 999,999/1,000,000. The outcome (cost or benefit) of Hell and Heaven is infinite pain as you are burned alive for the rest of eternity, or experiencing the infinite pleasure of living in Heaven. Now 0.000001 times infinity = infinity (either infinitely bad in the case of Hell, or infinitely good in the case of Heaven). That's the economic payoff a Christian can expect from the first possibility, and the corresponding economic loss to the atheist. The second possibility is that when you die, nothing results. The probability of nothing happening when you die is assumed to be 0.999999. Now 0.999999 times nothing = 0. So the economic result an athiest can expect from his/her beliefs of the second outcome = zero.

(In previous posts, people have said this argument is flawed because there are other possibilities. True, but if there are other possibilities, then feel free to do the math and stack Christianity against those other possibilities. The fact that other situations might exist does not change the argument vis a vis Christianity and atheism.
Good job. I like the argument.