Originally posted by JS357
I would think that irrefutable evidence could be presented before YouTube existed. Why can it not be presented in words on this forum?
Tell me though JS357 -
Who has the final authority to decide whether something has been refuted or not ?
Since anyone may say - "This is irrefutable evidence"
And anyone else can say "No, that evidence has been refuted"
how are we going to know with infallible authority that any evidence for anything has or has not been refuted?
The way I see it is that whoever really determines that something is true has also to possess the ability to enforce the verdict.
It seems to me that at some point the refutation of reality (one way or the other) has to be terminated. IE. if there is no God, at some point in history further argument will be terminated and the decision enforced. "There will be no more argument."
Conversely if God does exist. at some point the argument is concluded. Claims of refutation of the evidence have run out, been exhausted, and come to an end.
One way or the other, I think it must be a question concluded not only by authority but by enforcing power. Someone, I believe, has to be able to maintain an untruth forever and put down truth forever. Or someone has to be able to uphold truth forever and finally put down untruth forever.
Whoever argues the most forcefully that there is no God will have to virtually take the position of God and enforce an end to the controversy. Something intuitively tells me that no LIE can or will live forever.
The Bible (towards which I am biased) tells me that history of an age concluding with a figure on earth substituting himself for God. I do not see an final argument that there is no God but rather
INSTEAD of God there is this one.
"... the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God or an object of worship, so that he sits in the temple of God, [in Jerusalem apparently] setting himself forth, saying that he is God. " (2 Thess. 2:3c-4)
Now you didn't ask. So I apologize (some) for writing stuff you didn't ask about.
How I see this phase of history concluding is not Atheism verses Theism. But I see Idolatry verses Theism. I see Atheism as only a little landmark on the way to a further destination - a concluding Idolatry substituting someone else for, and
instead of God. This figure is called the Antichrist in prophecy. it means "instead of Christ".
it seems that God allows the world situation to polarize in such a way that a personage is allowed to rise up to be like a reservoir accumulate all who refuse to give up the idea that evidence for God is still refuted. Something else seems to be at work in them.
Paul goes on -
" For it is the mystery of lawlessness that is now operating, but only until the one now restraining goes out of the way.
And then the lawless one will be revealed (whom the Lord Jesus will slay by the breath of His mouth and bring to nothing by the manifestation of His coming).
The coming of whom [Antichrist] is according to Satan's operation in all power and signs and wonders of a lie and all deceit of unrighteousness among those who are perishing,
because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved. And because of this God sends to them an operation or error that they might believe the lie,
So that all who have not believed the truth but have taken pleasure in unrighteousness might be judged." (vs. 7 - 12)
It says that this figure will be revealed
"in his own time". This is the last refuter to any evidence that God is.