jayfox said:
How many times have you genuinely asked God for miraculous intervention and truly believed that He was capable of it? If the answer is none, then it is no surprise that you haven't seen it.
I wasn't referring to myself! I was referring to miracles in general. The "Why does God hate amputees?" principle.
Do you read my posts? I have said twice in this thread now -
"I think that Christians need to be very, very careful saying that they know God's will with 100% certainty. We can think we know His will but then something else happens and we end up realizing that His will was something different altogether. Instead, I think Christians should 100% seek His will."
Yet you know the nature of God himself? You certainly claim to know many details that contradict other religions' definitions. Citing the Bible in this circumstance is begging the question.
You can generally get an idea of what God's will is from reading His word and getting to know Him and you can certainly pray that he would show you and lead you towards doing His will but you can't 100% know what it is ahead of time.
Again, this is assuming that your god exists. Of course if you go into it with the presupposition (the theist's prism that I have been referring to) than you can interpret anything in that context. In the same way that I can read a horoscope and apply it to my own life, any happenings in your own life, good or bad, can be ascribe to God's will. What I am asking is that you question the basic premise, without using that premise in your explanation (the begging the question fallacy that evo was referring to).
I think believing in a infinitely complex creator actually makes things less complex but that's just me. The Bible hasn't messed anything up. Some beliefs by religious people may have been found to be incorrect (i.e. flat earth etc.) but you will find that those kind of theories get no support from the Bible. There is nothing that science has found today that disproves that the Bible is a correct account of Human history.
[cough] Global flood [cough]. [cough] man living inside a whale [cough]. I could go on.
I disagree. "Bronze age" explanations as you call them tell us a great deal of where we have come from and many recent archaeological findings support the claims made in the Bible. The Hitites are a good example of a people that science thought was fictitious until their remains were discovered recently.
This has been discussed before. Just because an ancient text has historically accurate statements (as much fiction does) says nothing about the supernatural claims made therein. Science responds to evidence. Thus, it is skeptical of claims made in the absence of evidence. If evidence is unearthed, the scientific consensus will adjust accordingly.
Hasn't science learnt over the years that 'unlikely' does not mean 'impossible' or 'disproven'?
I don't know how to explain it any clearer. Re-read my previous paragraph. Science can only work with falsifiable propositions. Faith-based notions are not open to such evaluation. However, specific claims made by adherents of faiths are subject to scientific scrutiny and have come up short.
That explains what you are doing, not why.
It was coming in the following paragraph.
Now that is a load of utter rubbish. As misguided a post as I have read since I've been posting on this site. Djevv has posted many times, including in this thread, that the Bible clearly states that God has made us in charge of caring for this planet and it's creatures. I don't know a single Christian who thinks "stuff the planet, Jesus is coming back soon". That would be foolishness in the extreme for several reasons including - 1. It is disrespectful to God in that He has not only given us a great place to live but instructed us to look after it. 2. No man knows the date of Christs return and whilst we may speculate that we think it could happen soon, we may also be completely wrong and it may not be for another 1000 years! 3. You are making a worse world for our children to live in which is not in anyone's interests.
I also listed a while back many of the Christian charities and included in that were many that were set up to look after the planet and it's creatures.
I didn't say that Christians think "stuff the planet", it is the mindset that I am interested in. The anthropomorphic viewpoint that the earth was specially created for humans by a benevolent creator. Such a view would suggest that the Earth was made with us in mind and this is intimately connected with our views on what can happen on this planet. The Earth was most certainly not created with humans in mind. We are already seeing the consequences of our actions and the possibility that we are making the Earth far less hospitable for our species. That is how species go extinct. I am pretty sure from your POV that is not a really pressing concern. That couldn't happen with a benevolent God. What about the 99.9% of species that have gone extinct on this planet? Where was their benevolent creator? We are no different.
Funny, I feel the same way in reverse about people coming to know God.
Yet you haven't presented evidence to support that position. You try to defend your position but rarely present strong evidence to dispute my point.
Yes but what about before natural selection had a chance to get started? You can't deny that, from Science's point of view, the absolute original origins of our universe, planet and life happened by chance?
I certainly can dispute it!
We have no idea how likely or unlikely life is in this universe. We are working with a sample size of 1! Pretty hard to draw any statistical conclusions on the likelihood of life emerging from such a sample. Same for the universe.
Your explanation has no basis and is no different from the countless other creation myths that humans have put forth throughout history.
The Bible speaks a lot of heritage and we have done to death the fact that you can have never heard the name of Jesus and still go to heaven.
That is irrelevant to the point I was making. My point was in response to your argument that the ubiquity of religious belief amongst humans is some sort of evidence for your Christian belief system. I was pointing out that the array of contradictory religions would suggest that it has something more to do with the human condition than the presence of your Christian god.
I disagree. I think it is far easier to truly believe in something that you can see with your own eyes. Your lack of belief is great evidence to this fact. If God presented himself before you in all His glory you would believe would you not?
I could make up any ridiculous proposition and ask you to believe it. Take the beliefs of the Mormons, or the ancient Greeks. Do you believe them? Why not? There is nothing hard about saying that you believe something for which there is no foundation. You just do it. Proving a proposition takes real work.
I'll ask you again. Why would your creator provide you with critical faculties and ask you to disregard them if you want to earn eternal paradise?
True but I believe that I have all the evidence I need to believe in God.
Self-fulfilling evidence that begs the question or is easily explainable by other, non-supernatural phenomena. If that is sufficient for you, good luck to you. The seduction of religion in action.
