Originally posted by KellyJayI understand that you think God has "shown himself to the world", and I also understand that many have in fact come to believe in God's existence. Regardless, the point remains that many do not think God has shown himself to the world, and many never come to believe in God's existence, let alone come to a point where they could actively decide whether or not they will relate with such an entity. So, completely regardless of your own and other believers' belief on the matter, there is still an argument from ignorance to be made here.
I disagree, since God has in my opinion shown himself to the world and quite a few
have indeed come to Hiim. You not accepting God does not mean that the evidence
is not "enough" since for others it has been. Your likes and dislikes are not part of
the process as mine are not, you either go to God on God's terms or you do not. The
theorectial deliberati eaven and Earth, it will be done as God lays it out, not as we
would like it to be.
Kelly
You not accepting God does not mean that the evidence
is not "enough" since for others it has been.
This will not do. I might as well just say, well, your believing in God's existence does not mean that the evidence IS "enough" since for others it HAS NOT been. You're likely to respond that, well, it IS in fact enough, and those that DO NOT find it sufficient are misfiring in their evidential reading. Well, I can just respond that it IS NOT in fact enough, and those that DO find it sufficient are misfiring in their evidential reading. This all gets us precisely nowhere. The right thing to do if we were to continue this line of dialogue would be to actually engage in the give/take of our evidential reasons that we think support our respective positions and then maybe we could try to determine who actually has the best case. But, again, that would all be beside the point here! Even if the fact of the matter were that our objective evidence is actually highly God-indicating, the point remains that many never come to believe He exists, even on the basis of honest reflection and responsible deliberations! Hence the problem of ignorance.
Originally posted by KellyJayIf you don't mind me dragging evolution into this, love flies in the face of that belief/theory?
Why is that, because God is the source our knowledge, our truth, and if it were not
for God we would simply act out at the most basic level of human lust and greed?
If you don't mind me dragging evolution into this, love flies in the face of that
belief/theory? Since the struggle for survival and survival of the fittest does not
go along with laying d ...[text shortened]... ss or some type
of righteous anger that gets portrayed and cheered on for that matter?
Kelly
No it doesn't. I recommend you do some more study on natural selection. Even the most basic principles of the most basic things like kin selection or mutualism or reciprocity easily speak to the expectation that natural selection would bring about many prosocial tendencies in us. Probably the easiest here to understand is kin selection. You don't think your love for your children is understandable in evolutionary terms?
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Originally posted by KellyJay
Why is that, because God is the source our knowledge, our truth, and if it were not for God we would simply act out at the most basic level of human lust and greed?
No I don't think that's it. You proceed from the starting point that there is such a god who has provided the requisite evidence. It logically follows from this that anyone, like myself, who objects that the evidence is poor, must be at fault in their assessment of the evidence. This is how you protect your belief that god is revealed, no matter how lucid and well evidenced the arguments presented against this, you can always respond that since the evidence is clearly there, we must have missed it.
An analogy would be the old Psychiatrist's argument:
Psychiatrist: I think you are in love with your mother and want to kill your father.
Patient: No I don't! I can't detect any sign in myself that this is true.
Psychiatrist: Aha, you are obviously suppressing these things, which is a well known feature of somebody with your condition. This is further evidence that you are in love with your mother and want to kill your father.
Patient I'm really not!
Psychiatrist: See, you're suppressing it again.
I hope you can see that the psychiatrist's hypothesis is unfalsifiable and hence immune to criticism in the sense that any criticism however good, will be counted as evidence in favour of the hypothesis.
Of course those who don't occupy the cognitive black hole of the psychiatrist can criticise the hypothesis on good grounds, but they are unlikely to be persuasive for obvious reasons. I think your god hypothesis is a bit like that.
Originally posted by LemonJelloBottom line, it is all a debate to those that don't want it to be anything other than
I understand that you think God has "shown himself to the world", and I also understand that many have in fact come to believe in God's existence. Regardless, the point remains that many do not think God has shown himself to the world, and many never come to believe in God's existence, let alone come to a point where they could actively decide whether or ...[text shortened]... of honest reflection and responsible deliberations! Hence the problem of ignorance.
that! If indeed if we have enough than guilt will follow when all the excuses are
removed. Excuses now fill the room because we are all in the same boat it is a
matter of faith, you it seems wants something more, not faith, but beyond a doubt
facts that prove God is real. If enough has been shown and rejection still follows
what shall happen to those that deny God no matter what they have seen?
Kelly
Originally posted by LemonJelloI just ask you to tell me how feelings are brought about that DNA coding and how
[b]If you don't mind me dragging evolution into this, love flies in the face of that belief/theory?
No it doesn't. I recommend you do some more study on natural selection. Even the most basic principles of the most basic things like kin selection or mutualism or reciprocity easily speak to the expectation that natural selection would bring about ...[text shortened]... ection. You don't think your love for your children is understandable in evolutionary terms?[/b]
that would be something that was once not there in any living creature than
it appears, let a lone good feelings towards another?
Kelly
Originally posted by KellyJayCertainly there are those that willingly obfuscate points, ignore countervailing evidence, or simply will not be budged from their immodest certainty. But many of us non-believers are not like that. You have admitted in this thread that the evidence you have at your disposal is not sufficient to show conclusively that God exists. How could it? So, you make up the lack of epistemic warrant with faith. We don't want proof beyond doubt. By now we should have made it clear to you that we don't think any propositions, or at least very few, admit of proof unto certainty. What we are after are reasons that make more likely the proposition that God exists. Your ilk claim that the existence of the universe, or life, or moral sentiment or law provide such reasons. But earnest seekers, scientists and philosophers have studied those topics and come to the conclusion that they do not justify belief in God. Yet you seem prepared to characterize these folks as bad-faith inquirers. If God were sincerely interested in our salvation, then He presumably could convince us with rational argument, or signs, or experiences that would overcome our incredulity. "Look at life, order, goodness", you say. But God could do much, much better. He could perform a giant miracle right now outside my window. Perhaps a column of fire, with banner-clutching angels, proclaiming His existence and love in easy-to-read text, while making all my plants bloom cross-shaped flowers, and my cats singing psalms, etc. etc.
Bottom line, it is all a debate to those that don't want it to be anything other than
that! If indeed if we have enough than guilt will follow when all the excuses are
removed. Excuses now fill the room because we are all in the same boat it is a
matter of faith, you it seems wants something more, not faith, but beyond a doubt
facts that prove God is re ...[text shortened]... n still follows
what shall happen to those that deny God no matter what they have seen?
Kelly
Originally posted by KellyJayYou keep insisting on the point that perhaps there is enough evidence and unbelievers like myself are just "making excuses". But I can respond, hey, perhaps there is not enough evidence and you believers are just deluding yourselves. And, again, that gets us nowhere. Regardless of the actual evidence, do you not think there are active atheists who have been responsible in their deliberations and who genuinely and honestly have come to the conclusion that God does not exist? Even if they were wrong and God actually does exist, it wouldn't change the fact that these persons honestly do not believe God exists. So what would you make of their ignorance in that event?
Bottom line, it is all a debate to those that don't want it to be anything other than
that! If indeed if we have enough than guilt will follow when all the excuses are
removed. Excuses now fill the room because we are all in the same boat it is a
matter of faith, you it seems wants something more, not faith, but beyond a doubt
facts that prove God is re ...[text shortened]... n still follows
what shall happen to those that deny God no matter what they have seen?
Kelly
Originally posted by KellyJayDoes that mean you do not think love for one's children is understandable in evolutionary terms?
I just ask you to tell me how feelings are brought about that DNA coding and how
that would be something that was once not there in any living creature than
it appears, let a lone good feelings towards another?
Kelly
Kelly, I'd like to come back to your discussion with TWhitehead following a post from AvalancheTheCat because I think he asked a very important and telling question that I don't think you have answered.
Here's the conversation extracted from the thread.
Originally posted by avalanchethecat:
It's just down to who you are. We are each of us the product of our genes and our upbringing - for you, that equals wholehearted belief in christianity, for me, not so much. I guess some people will be borderline, and I expect for these lucky folk there may be an element of choice.
Kelly:
I was not brought up a Christian, my family wasn't a Christian family, I got saved
when I was 25 and my life before that wasn't what I'd call Chistian so I do
disagree with you here.
TWhitehead:
So do you believe that at 17, you knew God existed but were denying it?
Kelly:
At 17 no one I knew talked about God had anything to do with God, I was more
into UriahHeep, Supertramp, Eagles, partying, girls, sports, partying, and girls.
TWhitehead:
So you were a true atheist?
So it is only those who know someone who talks about God who is denying the evidence?
Does this mean that the evidence you talked about earlier is specifically what those who talk about God say?
Kelly:
If He is real, if He is calling all of us to Him and we refuse to come we are denying
God. The universe is His handy work, so evidence for God would everywhere, not
seeing it would be harder were it not for our ablity to decieve ourselves. Again
going back to those that find God, it is only those really looking for Him, not those
that are not looking with pure hearts.
So TWhitehead is pointing out that you only started looking for God after you had heard about him from your friends. So this seems to contradict your assertion that God reveals himself to us all the time but we refuse to see. If you had been hit by a bus or contracted a fatal disease before you were 25, would you have gone to hell? And if so, would you consider that to be 'fair'? What about if you had never met the people who told you about God? How about all the millions (or quite possibly billions) of people who never meet anyone who could tell them about God, let alone be convincing enough to persuade them of the 'Truth'. Is it fair that they will not be 'saved'?
The list below is from the bottom of http://www.wholesomewords.org/missions/greatc.html and gives the world population, divided by religion.
Christian 2,199,817,400
- Roman Catholics 1,121,516,000
- Independents* 433,096,000
- Protestants 381,811,000
- Orthodox 233,146,000
- Anglicans 82,586,000
Muslims 1,387,454,500
Hindus 875,726,000
Chinese universists 385,621,500
Buddhists 385,609,000
Sikhs 22,927,500
Jews 14,956,000
*This term denotes members of Christian churches and networks that regard themselves as postdenominationalist and neo-apostolic and thus independent of historic, mainstream, organized, institutionalized, confessional, denominationalist Christianity.
There are also pie charts on various pages showing that Christianity is practiced by at most 1/3 of the world. Assuming all of those people are saved by their belief, at least 2/3 of the current world population are dammed to an eternity of suffering. All because God has not revealed himself unambiguously.
This does not seem to me to be in line with the concept of an all-powerful, loving, God
--- Penguin.
Originally posted by Penguin[/i]I don't hold to denominations as being some way to look to see who is and is not
Kelly, I'd like to come back to your discussion with TWhitehead following a post from AvalancheTheCat because I think he asked a very important and telling question that I don't think you have answered.
Here's the conversation extracted from the thread.
[i]
[b]Originally posted by avalanchethecat:
It's just down to who you are. We are each of us th o me to be in line with the concept of an all-powerful, loving, God
--- Penguin.[/b]
saved, because denominations are man made. I imagine the number right with God
could be less. I have belonged to denominations in the past, don't mind them they
have purpose, but each person needs a right relationship with God and being a
part of a denomination good or bad does not make that happen all by itself.
I'll get to the rest later, seems like I have a lot of posts I need to write.
Kelly
Originally posted by KellyJayIt's the rest of the post that I am most interested in your answers to. It's interesting though that you think denominations are man-made (and presumably so are the other 'wrong' religions) but Christianity in general is not.
[/i]I don't hold to denominations as being some way to look to see who is and is not
saved, because denominations are man made. I imagine the number right with God
could be less. I have belonged to denominations in the past, don't mind them they
have purpose, but each person needs a right relationship with God and being a
part of a denomination good or ...[text shortened]... .
... I'll get to the rest later, seems like I have a lot of posts I need to write.
Kelly
But please concentrate on the rest of my previous post ahead of this.
--- Penguin.
Originally posted by LemonJelloExactly!
Does that mean you do not think love for one's children is understandable in evolutionary terms?
if we had no love for our children then, obviously, you would do a lot less ( or maybe even nothing? ) for them and thus they would be much less chance for them to survive and pass on YOUR genes.
There are also less obvious but, never a less, good evolutionary reasons for us to evolve altruistic feelings towards adults ( such as because of the principle “if you will scratch my back then I will scratch yours” )
[offtopic] I am back on the net after nearly a whole year! My computer had broken down and I could not afford to have it fixed so I just had to go without. I am currently borrowing somebodies else’s computer so I may not be able to respond to a question you put to me on this forum but I will try to respond later if I get the opportunity [/offtopic]
Originally posted by Andrew HamiltonNice to hear from you. I remember you fondly through our verbal stouches🙂
Exactly!
if we had no love for our children then, obviously, you would do a lot less ( or maybe even nothing? ) for them and thus they would be much less chance for them to survive and pass on YOUR genes.
There are also less obvious but, never a less, good evolutionary reasons for us to evolve altruistic feelings towards adults ( such as beca ...[text shortened]... you put to me on this forum but I will try to respond later if I get the opportunity [/offtopic]
Originally posted by LemonJelloWhere would any feeling of love or hate come from if all that is here is some DNA
Does that mean you do not think love for one's children is understandable in evolutionary terms?
coding that develops material into forms that we call life? How would you code DNA
to produce something that would produce love the first time? Why would it ever
become a reality?
Kelly
Originally posted by PenguinChristianity was applied to those that were acting like Christ, the reality is there
It's the rest of the post that I am most interested in your answers to. It's interesting though that you think denominations are man-made (and presumably so are the other 'wrong' religions) but Christianity in general is not.
But please concentrate on the rest of my previous post ahead of this.
--- Penguin.
when someone gets right with God through Jesus Christ in a right relationship. All
else is just us trying to put words to X whatever we think X is that divides us, what
is it that makes me not a Y? Jesus Christ is our one Lord, we have one God, and
the Holy Spirit is also just one Spirit who teaches us about God. When we apply
labels to our brand of "Christian" we are in affect cutting ourselves off from other
parts of the body of Christ in our minds. The truth is there is only one body of
Christ and that is only made up of people who are right with God through Jesus
Christ, they may be in denominations or not, but as long as they are in Christ that
and that alone is all that matters.
Kelly