Subject:
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Re: We're being attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of culture!
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 11 Apr 2005 21:02:06 GMT
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Viewed:
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1558 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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It sort of bugs me when people who are referring to God not capitalize it
in an attempt to somehow disacknowledge His existence,
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Oops! Did I do that? If so, I didn’t mean to--sorry! I usually try to refer
to the Christian deity as capital-G “God,” but I know that I’ve sometimes
included him in the rhetorical group lower-case-g “gods.” I try to use the
latter reference only as a group-designator, or when referring to some god whose
name isn’t “God.”
I can’t figure out whether it should be “He” or “he.” Is there a convention?
Simply in deference to the subject matter, I’d prefer to use the standard
format.
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I think that if a science teacher was teaching about the Big Bang, and a
student asked, “But what happened before the Big Bang?”, his reply wouldn’t
be “science cannot address that question”, but rather offer some “scientific”
explanation.
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I have to admit that you’re probably correct. I think it would serve the
students better if the teacher just fessed up and allowed that some answers
aren’t currently accessible to science. This would have the double effect of
preserving humility (in terms of one’s admitting ignorance FWIW) and preventing
the child from making future accusations that “science claims to know
everything.”
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I should think that any god worth calling God would be able to manifest in
such a way that he would be simultanously the-God-we’ve-all-heard-about
and accessible to scientific inquiry.
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Hmm. Jesus was God incarnate, although He arrived before the study of
science did. One could say that the story of Thomas was a direct statement
to skeptics-- “seeing” is believing, but not necessary for believing.
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Coincidentally, I’ve been rereading Tom Paine’s
Age of Reason, in which he mentions the biblical Thomas’ doubt. Paine argues
(and I agree) that biblical-Thomas’ doubt was reasonable, given the
circumstances, and Paine reserves the right to share that doubt.
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2. People might not trust their perceptions. This kind of skepticism
evokes true humility, in my view, because it recognizes the fallibility of
our finite senses, especially regarding supposedly infinite phenomena.
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But perhaps a bit hypocritical? Why trust certain perceptions more than
other ones? Sounds like there is more of an agenda behind that particular
reason.
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Not sure I follow. I guess I’d say that we trust certain perceptions more than
others because certain perceptions are verified more frequently or more strongly
than others, especially when one’s perceptions are consistent with previous
ones. That weird light I saw in the distance when I was a kid might have
been an alien spaceship, but I don’t trust that perception because it was
isolated and inconsistent with my other perceptions (prior and subsequent).
At the same time, one needs to be careful not to get too dogmatic in one’s
perceptions, because that could clearly lead to unwarranted exclusions, too...
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Without making any claims or accusations, I ask the following: is there
anything that can make a Christian say “Holy moley, I’ve been completely
wrong about God--I now conclude that he really doesn’t exist!” or is
such a statement fundamentally impossible for a Christian?
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I would contend that it happens all the time. In times of tragedy, many
people blame God and loose their faiths. Or even in prosperous times (I’m
doing great and getting along without God just fine!). Of course, times of
tragedy and prosperity also bring people to God as well...
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That’s a good answer, but I have to apologize because I asked the question
poorly. Here’s what I meant:
Is there any empirical evidence that can make a Christian say “Holy moley, I’ve
been completely wrong about God--I now conclude that he really doesn’t
exist!” or is such a statement fundamentally impossible for a Christian?
I agree that tragedy and prosperity can both drive a person to or from faith,
but I don’t think that either of those really qualifies as “evidence” as much as
incentive. Maybe that’s just semantics, though.
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The existence of Thing-A doesn’t really prove the existence of Thing-B,
unless the existence of Thing-A can be proven and can also be proven to be
impossible without the existence of Thing-B. Beyond that, it’s just a leap
of faith to say that Thing-A’s existence prove’s Thing-B’s.
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But certainly I can say that Thing-C originated from Thing-B, or do I need
to show from where Thing-B originated? (Thing-A, ad infinitum). I’m afraid
I’m lost here.
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Well, your proof basically restates the “prime mover” argument, which has
historically been debunked. Also, you’re claiming the existence of Thing-C as
proof of the existence of Thing-B without really illustrating how that proof
follows. And we can only prove that Thing-C came from Thing-B if we can prove
that Thing-B exists (or has existed); otherwise, we’re assuming both the
existence of Thing-B and its role in creating Thing-C.
More specifically, we can prove (presumably) the existence of Thing-B (the
universe), but we can’t prove the existence of Thing-A (God). Therefore, it is
circular to claim that Thing-B created Thing-C until we have proven Thing-B’s
existence (and then we still have to prove that Thing-B created Thing-C)
By the way--I hope you appreciate my choice of Thing-A and Thing-B rather
than a numerical sequence, which would have led to Seuss digressions (and we all
know that Seuss was the head of the Greek pantheon, not Christian).
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Even if I accept the idea that stuff just always WAS, it is still
equivalent to saying that a Creator just always WAS (God = Perpetual
Stuff).
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Aha--pantheism! That only works if one claims that God = the universe,
which seems contrary to the biblical account. Additionally, the term
“always” is tricky here, due to the problems of time/space as it pertains to
the “beginning” of the universe.
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Not at all! The Bible was recorded during a time of pantheism; it’s main
legacy is that there is only ONE God, not many.
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Whoops--I misread you; it’s not pantheism. But if we can verify the
existence of the universe and can’t verify the existence of God, then we’re
better off assuming that the universe (in some form) either always existed or
was generated spontaneously than we are in assuming that the universe exists
and a non-verifiable Creator always existed and created the universe.
That’s Occam’s Razor, again.
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I have no problem with science discussing the
theory of evolution, just not any theories of creation. Science should be
moot (;-)) on the subject of the origin of the universe.
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I see that we’ve already had our agreement on this point in
this post, so I’ll leave it
at that!
Dave!
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