MotownMJ

Okay. Forgive me, I'm not very good at clipping portions of quotes to create "conversations."

Wyrdsmyth, we appear to share some common ground, which is nice to be able to do. Let me clarify a point I made, though, which you took as being more Deistic than Christian.

I said "I personally do not rely on unexplained natural phenomena as evidence of the existence of God."

To which you replied:
"Interesting. You don't sound like a Christian, but more like a Deist. Most of Christianity seems to be based on the miracles allegedly performed by Christ -- unexplained natural phenomena which establish Jesus as a god. Particularly the Resurrection."

To clarify:

The statement I made above was more to say that I don't fall back on "Goddidit" as evidence of his existence.

As a Christian, I believe that Christ rose from the dead. I do not use the Resurrection as the evidence I need to believe in God; rather, I believe that the Resurrection is possible BECAUSE I believe in God.

You later wrote: "In some Hume-an way, God could be "behind" the entire natural universe, and leave not a supernatural trace... But I have a real "so what" reaction to this sort of thing. It sounds like deism to me. God fired up the engine, and let it run on it's own... he may have walked away eons ago. How is that more comforting or even significantly different from not assuming the God in the first place?"

This is a departure from my beliefs. While I of course cannot prove it, I believe God desires a relationship with us, his creation, and is more than a watchmaker who subsequently walked away to let the watch run on its own. I take the life of Jesus one example for this belief. Another example is the way I've seen people's lives change as a result of entering a relationship with God (this is what I meant by "experiential").

The beliefs in the above paragraph, I acknowledge, are just beliefs. Based on my faith. It's possible the Gospels are less reliable than I give them credit for (that is another entire issue). It's possible that the life changes I've observed are just a result of the change in social conditions - the new people they're around, the new actions they choose to take in their lives, and that none of it has to do with a God.

Before we get into all of that, though, I want to close with my original point from a couple messages ago, which you agree with -- God's existence is possible, and not disprovable by science. How anyone chooses to respond to this possibility cannot be 100% verified nor 100% disproved.

I am quickly trying to churn this out during a lunch break. I hope it didn't get too cluttered or off-topic.

Wyrdsmyth

Okay... but what is it that establishes belief in God in the first place? Do you see what I'm getting at? Presumably, ancient prophets had some interactions with God, "experiences with God" and passed them down to their descendents in the form of stories. So, it can be taken on faith that these ancient prophets and holy men and whatnot had genuine experiences with God, whether you want to call them miraculous or not. How else do people get to know there's a "god" in the first place? I don't hear any god-voices talking to me, and I presume you don't either... Neither your nor I have any knowledge of any gods until someone tells us about them. The way I see it, people either believe because (a) they are the ones having the direct experiences or (b) they take it on faith that those who claimed to have the experiences were telling the truth. I'm in that camp that hasn't had any direct supernatural experience, and leans towards the idea that the so-called prophets and holy men were either deluded or liars. Does that seem unreasonable to you? It's not so much that I'm saying any conception of god is impossible, just that I'm raising an eyebrow when someone starts preaching about god, and how they "know" he exists -- when usually it's simply taken on authority that some old holy book is true.

In the second paragraph, you've accurately anticipated my response. When people say they believe god is acting in their lives, or helping them, or directing them -- how can we know that? I mean, how can we separate this divine guidance or assistance from just the phenomena of positive thinking, and the power of positive reinforcement from a like-minded group, etc.? I guess what I am saying is... how many of these "life experiences" really qualify as evidence for a god?

Yes, on that we seem to agree. I think the main thing about that intuition I articulated earlier is this. Science can't disprove any religion. But with modern science, we get a "picture" of reality, and how the world works. It is not a perfect picture, but it is built on sound foundations of careful observation and testing. When that picture that we get is so incommensurate with the picture we get, say, from reading the Old Testament, with god's voice booming out of the sky and all of these fantastic things happening: people turning into pillars of salt, angels with flaming swords, Balaam's talking ass, Samson and his "super-strength," and so on... when these two pictures look so different and unreconcilable, what are we to think?

I know, many theists think we atheists are putting so much "faith" in this scientific picture of the world, while theists are merely putting faith in their own picture... And it has often been argued that, since we each "presuppose" these pictures, and have them as our foundations, we automatically rule out anything that is antithetical to them, or doesn't fit. But I don't think we "presuppose" these pictures of reality at all. I think we have to learn them. I had to learn science, and learn religion. And, as I grew up, I saw they weren't just two epistemically equal but competing worldviews, but that they were two entirely different kinds of processes.

At this point, when I open a physics textbook, it is complicated but it makes sense to me. But anymore, when I open the Bible or any other old world holy book, I feel like I'm just reading ancient, primitive myths... which can be very entertaining, but it just looks so obvious to me that they're fabricated myths. Talking serpents, garden of paradise, fiery rain destroying cities for their immorality, the sea splitting in half so a tribe of slaves could escape from Egypt...

Why isn't it obvious to everyone that this stuff is made up?

[ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: Wyrdsmyth ]</p>

Mageth

As a Christian, I believe that Christ rose from the dead. I do not use the Resurrection as the evidence I need to believe in God; rather, I believe that the Resurrection is possible BECAUSE I believe in God.

Hmm, interesting. This seems contrary to some of the writings in the NT (for example, Jesus's speaking of the "sign of Jonah"), IMO, where the ressurection is typically held as the proof of christ's deity.

Before we get into all of that, though, I want to close with my original point from a couple messages ago, which you agree with -- God's existence is possible, and not disprovable by science. How anyone chooses to respond to this possibility cannot be 100% verified nor 100% disproved.

IMO, it may be possible to disprove certain conceptions of god. For example, there are serious logical incosistencies in the typical xian definition of an omnipotent/omnipresent/omniscient god.

MotownMJ

Most people believed in God (or gods in many cases) long before the Resurrection. Was this because they all experienced first-hand encounters with God, or knew people who did? Of course not. Is it just that everyone in the world believed a handful of these lying prophets? I doubt it. Why, then? Adults grow up and realize that Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy don't exist. Why doesn't this natural maturation process include a realization that God is in the same category (except to you enlightened folks, that is)?

Like I said, I do not hold up the resurrection as evidence of God's existence. However, once the existence of a God (or at least that possibility) is accepted, the Resurrection could more accurately be used as evidence that Jesus was God incarnate. But again, that's a different issue.

I believe that God reveals himself to people in a myriad of ways. I'm not arrogant enough to assert that the only reason you don't see it is that you are so closed to the idea that you ignore the signs you're given. I'm certain he reveals himself more clearly to some than others; I wish everyday he would reveal himself more clearly to me.

What of the miraculous tales of the old testament? Fire from the heavens, the sea splitting, etc.? I'd say it's a combination of allegory and mythical exaggeration (there are possible natural explanations for many of those "Acts of God.") I am not a Creationist; I don't take the Genesis creation story literally. The same goes for a lot of the stories in the Old Testament. I know that opens up a can of worms regarding which to treat as literal history, which not to, and what does all of this do to the reliability of the Bible as a whole.

To that question, I would answer "I don't know." I'm not a Bible scholar. Just like the man in your example wasn't a meteorologist.

I am not afraid to admit that I don't understand everything in the Bible. Nor do I claim to have worked out my theological beliefs into a nicely wrapped package without any loose ends. Theology is not as neatly wrap-able as science tends to be (chaos theory notwithstanding).

Let me go even further. I have doubts. Lots of them. I read around here 100 times more than I write, and I understand and often agree with many points about the difficulties of believing in God. So, then, am I just holding on to beliefs that were ingrained in my head to the point I can't let go? Many of you would say yes. But I don't think so. I believe God exists. I wish he would provide me a sign from the heavens, or that random 30-digit number to match the one from a computer. But as of today at 6:00, he hasn't.

If I die and am wrong, oh, well (that is not an appeal to Occam's Razor, by the way). I would not feel that I'd been cheated out of a fun, shackle-less, God-free life. Of course, I wouldn't feel ANYTHING, but you get my point.

[ February 14, 2002: Message edited by: MotownMJ ]</p>

Wyrdsmyth

What makes you doubt that? As a Christian, you must think that is the case with Mohammed and the Muslims. From your point of view, the entire faith of Islam is built primarily upon a massive amount of people believing in one lying prophet. All I am saying is -- why is that not possible for Judaism and Christianity as well? You believe in your prophets because they are yours. But do you have any other reasons for believing the Bible is true?

That's a good question. The exact same sources that gave children their belief in the first place (parents) are the ones who confirm that Santa and the Tooth Fairy are indeed, after all, not real. Also, there isn't much invested in the Santa or Tooth Fairy myths, they don't have all of our great fears and hopes all wrapped up with them. There is nothing particulary traumatic or scary in giving up belief in Santa and the Tooth Fairy... But giving up god is also giving up the belief in an afterlife, heaven, a higher power to supplicate when things go wrong in life (and they always do), and the list just goes on and on. I think it has more to do with the emotional ramifications than the plausibility of the myth. If parents and adults maintained a steadfast, straight-faced assertion that Santa was real, and explained away the seeming inconsistencies with highly developed arguments, then children might continue to believe in such a thing well into adulthood.

Right... but I was trying to get at the reason you believe in god in the first place. As I said, your beliefs have to come from some source, and what I said was they either come from (a) your personal, direct experience of divinity or (b) someone else's. If it's someone else's experience that you're banking on, then that is putting an awful lot of faith in another human being, don't you think?

I used to think the exact same thing when I was a Christian. I was raised a Christian, and was told that God had subtle ways of communicating to us. But I always had a hard time with that. I thought -- what's wrong with being direct? Of course, I thought the fault was with me in questioning god, not with god. But that all goes along with the whole worldview, where there is a way to explain away everything and divert unpleasant questions. It wasn't until I got older and allowed myself to consider maybe it wasn't my thinking which was at fault, but the whole god-belief-structure which I had been raised into. Now, I see the reason for why "god works in mysterious ways," -- it's because he's not really there. This belief allows people to read into coincidences or events in their lives, and claim that is how god is talking to them. Like, when you turn the radio on and hear a certain song, and think god made you turn the radio on right then to hear that song, so that you'd get a message from Him. I kid you not, I've heard many, many people claim god is communicating with them in this kind of way, and offer this sort of thing as proof or evidence... God, the cosmic disc jockey. Somehow, I'm supposed to bite my tongue and not make fun of that.

I was, like you, a non-literalist. I thought god was real, but I thought it was obvious that the Bible couldn't be taken literally. But I had a hard time deciding what was true and what wasn't. What are the criteria for saying this really happened, and this was just allegory? Generally, I adhered to the idea that the New Testament was literal and the Old Testament, as you went back further in time, got more mythical and less literally true. So, I thought Adam and Eve, Noah, the Tower of Babel, Job, Balaam's talking ass and a few other things were just really old stories -- that may have been true on "some level" but not necessarily literally true. But I had a lot of problems with that, too. I thought: if the Bible is the Word of God, and Perfect and True, and so on, why would it appear as if it is just a lot of early Hebrew myths. Why wouldn't the Bible say things that early men couldn't possibly know, unless dictated to them by a higher power? Why doesn't the Bible stress a heliocentric solar system, an earth that is billions of years old, and so on? Even if the people God was dictating to wouldn't understand it, so what? If God interspersed his moral commandments and holy words with incredibly accurate facts about the world, that would help people to believe it is indeed the Word of God. If the Bible is the Word of God, each scientific discovery should reinforce how accurate it is -- not make it look increasingly primitive and silly. But of course, there are answers for this, too, aren't there?

I, on the other hand, feel I understand the Bible quite well. Consider that I write a book, and the first two sentences in it are:

1. Everything in this book is true.
2. God dictated it all to me.

Does that make it true? If I take some events of the past, and mix them up with stories of deities and angels and prophets... does that make the fantastic elements any more plausible?

I sympathize with you, I really do. I used to want the same "hard sign," something I could take to the bank. But it never came. And I don't think it ever will. But, the difference now is I don't think I was wrong for asking because God is inherently mysterious or doesn't like "being tested" by his worshippers or any of those other lame excuses. Now I think the reason God is defined as mysterious and enigmatic that provides an out to followers when things don't turn out the way they're supposed to.

Funny, how most theists imagine atheists as free of shackles, free of constraints, because of a lack of belief in deities. As if somehow we atheists are having a better time in this mortal life, a life of full abandonment and many carnal pleasures. It's always funny to me, because I'm about as Protestant as one can be, in every way except the belief in deities. I got rid of gods, but I can't get rid of my rather Puritan habits and sensibilities.