Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From a random internet guy on a different forum:

"There is no reason to examine the question of whether there's a god or not until there's a reason to postulate one."

Bingo.

Not so sure that helps. While "Universe therefore God" doesn't hold, "Universe; maybe God?" is at least worth thinking about.

Only in the same sense that "Universe; maybe leprechaun behind every tree?" is worth thinking about. At some point, you have to realize there are only so many hours in the day.

.

Whether or not man is strictly material or both material and immaterial defines the meaning of his existence. If he is only material, his end point is death. If he is material and immaterial, his end point is not the death of his material self. If he is only material, he has no intrinsic and inalienable worth. If anything, he is worth more the more useful he is to other creatures undergoing similar physical processes, but he has no value unto himself.

So if any DCUMers believe in human rights, there is every reason to care whether or not there is a Creator, and whether or not man is solely a material being.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bois-Reymond also said :"Though there appears to be something in the phenomena of living beings which cannot be explained by ordinary mechanical, physical or chemical laws, much may be so explained, and we may without fear push these explanations as far as we can, so long as we keep to the solid ground of observation and experiment."

In other words he would not let you dismiss scientific inquiry with a wave of your hand.

.

PP did not say the scientific method is useless. PP said there are some aspects of the human experience which cannot be subjected to the scientific method.

In what sense? Which are those? Because simply saying doesn't make it so.

Anonymous wrote:Bois-Reymond also said :"Though there appears to be something in the phenomena of living beings which cannot be explained by ordinary mechanical, physical or chemical laws, much may be so explained, and we may without fear push these explanations as far as we can, so long as we keep to the solid ground of observation and experiment."

In other words he would not let you dismiss scientific inquiry with a wave of your hand.

.

PP did not say the scientific method is useless. PP said there are some aspects of the human experience which cannot be subjected to the scientific method.

Cancer and genocide? These are the things that are pleasing to God.

Puppies and rainbows? God would get rid of them, but "free will" is necessary to see his plan come to fruition. His ways are strange, and we cannot comprehend his plan.

Makes me glad I'm a non-believer.

Anonymous wrote:If I said I believed in god, but asserted that he was giving everyone cancer, instead of peace and miracles, because I knew that to be the truth, how different is my hypothesis than the Christian one? Certainly, if his impulse control is so bad that he killed off all but one family with a flood, then he could give people cancer out of spite.

But God is defined as "good", so that makes no sense. Of coure, then we have to ask, "Who defines God?" Also, we have to ask, if we define "good" as "What God does", the circularity makes the concept of "good" pretty much meaningless.

I think it's just as likely that "god" is not good as good, and that any positive things that he allows in the universe are just as likely to be because "His ways are strange". Maybe "free will" allows him to maximize the amount of evil in the world.

If I said I believed in god, but asserted that he was giving everyone cancer, instead of peace and miracles, because I knew that to be the truth, how different is my hypothesis than the Christian one? Certainly, if his impulse control is so bad that he killed off all but one family with a flood, then he could give people cancer out of spite.

As the video-rationalist stated, for the doubting Thomases out there, needing that kind of evidence is part of the human condition for some people. Off the top of my head, I can think of the tilma of Guadalupe, the Miracle of the Sun in Portugal, and medical miracles at Lourdes. Maybe one of them would be your "My Lord and my God" moment. Or maybe you would say miracles are not possible.

This is an excellent point. Different people have different standards of evidence. Some people see a face in their toast and have a "My Lord and My God" moment. Others stare at the sun for a long period, screw up their vision for a bit, and call the result evidence of God manifesting himself in the material world (which PP previously claimed to be impossible).

If god exists, he gave us reason. Why would he expect us to accept something that is beyond reason? It is his invention and I would expect that he wants us to use it.

Anonymous wrote:We are finite, physical beings in time and space, while God is an infinite, immaterial being outside of time and space. (Since we have been stuck at the first step, whether God exists at all, we have not moved on to His attributes, but bear with me a moment.) If we could fully comprehend such a being, we would not be human.

This will be an interesting trick, by the way. PP is clinging tightly to their assertion that God is "outside the material world", which is pretty much *the* critical attribute of the god hypothesis. Of course you can't subject god to the rational inquiry, that's because we make no positive claims whatsoever about god's behavior that can be falsified.

So assume the rationalists agree, "Ok, fine! Your God exists. But all you've demonstrated is that he's a God who has no agency in this material universe. He's a completely spiritual force that has no power to do anything other than to, say, tweak folks' "souls", which also have no material manifestation whatsoever."

The next step of the anti-rationalists is to say, "Ok, now that we know God exists, here are all the magical properties he has which extend into the material world."

Getting back to the leprechaun example, it's as if we agreed that leprechauns exist, but are invisible, have no physical presence, and cannot communicate or impact the physical plane in any way whatsoever. Great, so what use are they?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1. The wishful thinking argument was put forth by believers. They contended that a world without absolute justice was intolerable and therefore the atheists must be wrong. It is a bit of wishful thinking on your part to attribute it to the atheists, when they were only rephrasing what the believers said.

2. If God is omnipotent, saying something like "God transcends the universe" is a weak excuse. It is impossible to imagine that God cannot make himself visible. In fact, the Bible has God talking directly to Moses, appearing to the Apostles in the Transfiguration, becoming the Son of Man who rises from the dead, performing miracles, and occasionally showing up to peasants in various places around the world.

Either these things are not true, or your assertion is false.

If it is false, one has to ask why God does not appear in a way that is unambiguously clear in the modern world. But these things really weren't true, then what exactly are you worshipping in the first place?

A child sidetracked me, so my other points will need to wait until tomorrow, but a quick response to these points:

Before skipping ahead a few steps to the claims of Christianity, just think about the idea of God, the Creator, directly addressing His creation.

We are finite, physical beings in time and space, while God is an infinite, immaterial being outside of time and space. (Since we have been stuck at the first step, whether God exists at all, we have not moved on to His attributes, but bear with me a moment.) If we could fully comprehend such a being, we would not be human.

(Then there is the separate issue of honoring free will, but that gets involved, and has been debated earlier in the thread.)

As to unambiguous revelation in the modern world...again, you are demanding evidence of God as a being of your possible complete comprehension, which is impossible. But if you are looking for instances of phenomena that defy scientific explanation, even after being subjected to scientific inquiry, there are several which could be subject to your consideration. As the video-rationalist stated, for the doubting Thomases out there, needing that kind of evidence is part of the human condition for some people. Off the top of my head, I can think of the tilma of Guadalupe, the Miracle of the Sun in Portugal, and medical miracles at Lourdes. Maybe one of them would be your "My Lord and my God" moment. Or maybe you would say miracles are not possible.

In any case, I will have to work on my next point, which is the problem of morality in a materialist universe.

Just want to point out that "God is outside of the material world, and so beyond the reach of empiricism" is a dry hole. Either the actions of gods have some concrete bearing on our material world, or they don't. If so, those claims are subject to rational analysis. If not, gods are completely irrelevant. You might just as well claim that there's a heavy police presence in rural Mexico because there are a lot of cops in Beverly Hills. God either has a presence on earth, in the support of which case you should be able to make positive claims. Which you have: "Miracle of the Sun", medical "miracles" at Lourdes, etc, etc...

It's indicative that whereas rationalists see these "miracles" as claims about the physical world, which can be subject to the scientific method, PP sees them as some sort of shotgun approach at evangelizing: What about the miracles at Lourdes? Which one? *All* of them! Statistically there's no benefit to going to Lourdes. Fine! What about the "Portuguese Miracle of the Sun"!?! There are literally dozens of "miracles of the sun", and various simple explanations have been given that explain it.

That's the way that miracles "work": you elevate 100 thousand isolated phenomena to the status of "miracle". Of course, individually they can be explained pretty simply, but then non-rationalists get to say, "Sure! But what about the other 99,999 'miracles'?!?" Of course, new "miracles" are proposed faster than they can be disposed by rational inquiry. They're like zombies. You can't kill 'em fast enough.

[Disclaimer: The fact that non-rationalists can come up with this stuff faster than rationalists can shoot it down is *not* evidence that the 'miracle' camp is "right". Nor is it some sort of miracle in itself, and evidence of gods.]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1. The wishful thinking argument was put forth by believers. They contended that a world without absolute justice was intolerable and therefore the atheists must be wrong. It is a bit of wishful thinking on your part to attribute it to the atheists, when they were only rephrasing what the believers said.

2. If God is omnipotent, saying something like "God transcends the universe" is a weak excuse. It is impossible to imagine that God cannot make himself visible. In fact, the Bible has God talking directly to Moses, appearing to the Apostles in the Transfiguration, becoming the Son of Man who rises from the dead, performing miracles, and occasionally showing up to peasants in various places around the world.

Either these things are not true, or your assertion is false.

If it is false, one has to ask why God does not appear in a way that is unambiguously clear in the modern world. But these things really weren't true, then what exactly are you worshipping in the first place?

A child sidetracked me, so my other points will need to wait until tomorrow, but a quick response to these points:

Before skipping ahead a few steps to the claims of Christianity, just think about the idea of God, the Creator, directly addressing His creation.

We are finite, physical beings in time and space, while God is an infinite, immaterial being outside of time and space. (Since we have been stuck at the first step, whether God exists at all, we have not moved on to His attributes, but bear with me a moment.) If we could fully comprehend such a being, we would not be human.

(Then there is the separate issue of honoring free will, but that gets involved, and has been debated earlier in the thread.)

As to unambiguous revelation in the modern world...again, you are demanding evidence of God as a being of your possible complete comprehension, which is impossible. But if you are looking for instances of phenomena that defy scientific explanation, even after being subjected to scientific inquiry, there are several which could be subject to your consideration. As the video-rationalist stated, for the doubting Thomases out there, needing that kind of evidence is part of the human condition for some people. Off the top of my head, I can think of the tilma of Guadalupe, the Miracle of the Sun in Portugal, and medical miracles at Lourdes. Maybe one of them would be your "My Lord and my God" moment. Or maybe you would say miracles are not possible.

In any case, I will have to work on my next point, which is the problem of morality in a materialist universe.

How can you say it is impossible. This is an assumption that you have made or something that you have been told. We do not need to completely comprehend God, just to have evidence that he exists. He is all-powerful. He can control natural phenomena. He can speak. He can appear in the form of Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and the Burning Bush. There are any number of ways that he could convince scientists that he is real and unfortunately we have a really meager historical record to go by on these events. If God were willing to make the moon spin the other way on a set date and time, I am sure that most physicists would be throughly convinced.

There is this other subject of free will. The argument that proof of God's existence does not take away free will. We still need to choose to follow him, and the bible tells us that others who had proof did not. What is the virtue in the expectation that we have to believe in something without proof?