Mageth

Originally posted by Normal
What I should of said was: God can't force you to choose what is and what is not sufficient evidence (doing so is an act of free will), but god, knowing what you view as sufficient evidence, and proving himself by those means, would be infringing on your choice not to believe.

How can you reconcile that with your earlier statement "My argument is that every belief of yours is an exercise of your free will"? You appear to be contradicting yourself.

And I ask you again, what is the difference between "sufficient evidence for a belief" and "knowledge"?

Sufficient evidence for belief does not have to meet the bar of sufficient evidence for knowledge. From the evidence I have so far, I believe you're a nice person, but do not know you're a nice person. To know you're a nice person would require much more evidence (I think I'd have to "know" you personally to reach that knowledge).

The original statement you think is not paradoxical:

"I believe it is raining, when it is not".

The revised statement you think is paradoxical:

"It is not raining, though I believe it is".

There is no difference in meaning between the two. I've been trying to explain how both are indeed paradoxical.

The fact that you've had to make that effort illustrates my point that the first statement was not worded correctly to be considered paradoxical. It was ambiguously paradoxical (if there is such a thing), at best. The way I interpreted it when first read, it did not present a paradox to me at all.

A person claiming "It is not raining, though I believe it is" is presumably not going to switch his definition mid-sentence to confuse everyone.

That's not relevant in determining whether the statement is necessarily paradoxical. The fact that there may be multiple definitions for "raining" would be sufficient to make the statement "It is not raining, though I believe it is [raining]" not necessarily paradoxical. (I believe that would make it more of a riddle, actually .)

Anyway, that is absolutely the last thing I'm going to say about the rain on this thread, I promise.

In other words "All evidence outside of god's word is not sufficient to disprove god's word". All the evidence in the universe is not sufficient, to him, to disprove creationalism.

You're misconstruing what he said. He's saying that if there was sufficient evidence to disprove creation (all the evidence in the universe should be more than sufficient to disprove creationism, I would assume), he would still not "believe" what that "sufficient evidence" indicated. Read it again:

if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate.

It appears that he would be the "first to admit" that if all the evidence in the universe indicated creationism wasn't true (in other words, he would admit that there was more than "sufficient" evidence to disprove creationism), but would still, in full knowledge of this sufficient evidence, choose to believe what the Bible seems to indicate, and not believe what the sufficient evidence indicates. In other words, directly contradicting your claim that sufficient evidence necessarily forces one to believe what it is that the evidence supports.

Mageth

Originally posted by Normal
The problem, as has been for a while now, is god forcing everyone to be convinced that such a god exists.

And, once again, your statement "My argument is that every belief of yours is an exercise of your free will" comes to mind.

And that "problem" seems to be yours (as in you see it as "forcing"), and not one for many of the people on this thread, including me.

DMB

Thank you BGic for your long reply to me. I don't at the moment have the ability to give a proper answer to your long post, but will come back to you when I can. It struck me when I read it, however, that the most important thing is your belief in the resurrection of Jesus and its key role in convincing you of the validity of xianity. You claim to have found satisfactory evidence of it.

I would therefore suggest that you post some of the (non-biblical) evidence. It would probably be better to do it in the Biblical Criticism and History forum, whose habitués know a lot more about this than most other members here. I am not an expert in that field, but I would certainly be a very interested onlooker.

DMB

When you first brought up this firewalking point, you seemed to have been deceived about the nature of what goes on. A lot of people are relieved of their money by charlatans who pretend that the ability to walk barefoot on glowing embers is a matter of faith or spiritual development, rather than physics. People don’t actually walk on blazing coals. They normally walk on hot pieces of wood that have been on fire and are smouldering. I don’t like to see people being deceived by this sort of thing. That’s all.
Well, I would say that if man is created, it is to a pattern. This makes us human and not whales, spiders or trees. I know you are big on free will, but I suggest that the parameters of human nature allow us only limited choice in the first place, regardless of whether or not choice is an illusion. Our brains work in a certain way that is largely dependent on our genetic makeup and our life experiences. Certain kinds of education train us to think in certain ways, and although no two people with that education are bound to come to identical conclusions, there will be a similarity in the way in which they tackle problems or argue.
We all believe that round squares are impossible in ordinary geometry. But where is the evidence on which you base the claim that your god’s “holiness” is incompatible with the presence of sin? After all, your god is claimed to have been incarnate as Jesus, who according to the bible, was well known as consorting with publicans and sinners. He also apparently broke the sabbath rules, which, according to the beliefs of the time, was a sin.
You replied to my comment
by quoting from the bible: But Bgic, I am quite familiar with this stuff. It just doesn’t constitute evidence for me that the god of the bible is just or merciful. It doesn’t seem just to create people to be the way they are and then effectively to blame them and punish them for it. The gift of eternal life is supposed to come from faith in Jesus. But a lot of people are unsure that Jesus ever existed. You can only have faith in those circumstances if you give up most of the faculties that make you human. I have to say that I find great similarities between the ideas behind this and those expressed in the koran, where Allah is constantly described as “merciful”, while appearing to be mean-minded and vengeful.
Well then, this is the nub of the argument about justice and mercy. Since there are several current threads on the subject of free will, I will not argue about this here, but I think you have something to prove, and not solely by biblical quotations. My point about free will not always being seen as the ultimate good is that there are situations where most people will at least temporarily give it up. If you face starvation and the only way to be fed is to surrender to tyranny, then probably a majority will choose food and subjection over free will and starvation.
[color=dark blue=]Well, as I have already suggested in my short post yesterday, the resurrection of Jesus seems to be your key belief and I would therefore like you to post the evidence that has satisfied you to such an extent that you are willing to risk the Islamic hell because of it. It would seem to be more appropriate in the Biblical Criticism and History forum than here. Presumably your evidence is not just based on the bible. [/color]

You so rightly recognise that you are waving Pascal’s Wager around, but Pascal was living in a society where xianity was the only religion realistically on offer. The difficulty for both of us is that we have to accept or reject thousands of religions, not just xianity or islam. So Pascal’s Wager doesn’t help you a lot.
I am a bit stunned that you quote Napoleon as an authority on anything. I know many French people still admire him, just as some Germans still admire Hitler. I can only think it a good thing that he lost in the end.
I can’t agree with you on this. Islam is spreading to traditionally xian countries at this moment. Most children born in muslim countries receive a great deal of effective brainwashing from an early age. I doubt very much that even if you came to reject islam, you would then embrace xianity. The most likely scenario is that you would be a koranic scholar convivnced that the koran represents the word of god.
In this context, a belief would be superior to another for me if it were closer to the truth.
I have enormous difficulty in understanding what “resurrection” or “raising form the dead” mean. Perhaps at some point you could address this. Without knowing what is meant, I find it hard to judge the deduction that if Jesus really did this he is the creator god you believe him to be.

You say that you did not start out as a xian. I am interested to know what sort of beliefs you encountered as a child and how much xianity you were exposed to. It may be ignoble of me, but from your chosen alias I suspect that you believe that the only True Christian(TM) is one who is “born again”.
I am very surprised that you are prepared to dismiss Buddhism in these terms. I don’t know as much as I ought about hinduism, but from friends who are hindus I gather that it is a very rich religion with many strands of thought.
How came the evil into the world if not from the creator?

Thank you for all the biographical information. I was really only after the story of your beliefs. I am 63 with children and grandchildren. Our youngest child is just 2 years younger than you. So it is probably inevitable that I should see the world differently from you. But I would not claim that my greater experience of life makes me right about everything, so perhaps it’s not really relevant.

Good luck with your MBA, and I hope the birth of your child goes smoothly.

Normal

I don't know how we got side tracked on this (it was probably my fault), but I think it's irrelevent to the point of sufficient evidence forcing someone to believe.

In other words indeed. He doesn't say all the evidence in the universe is at all sufficient. You are extrapolating all the evidence in the universe to be sufficient because that is what you, as a rational person, would conclude. He, on the other hand, does not think that all the evidence in the world is sufficient, because he would still believe in creationalism.

Instead of approaching this from that perspective, look at the flip side.

From his perspective, what is sufficient evidence to believe in a theory?

Obviously, "god's word" is sufficient to believe in something, and something that contradicts god's word, will necessiarly have insufficient evidence, from his perspective.

Ok, let me lay it out in different words.

1. Every belief of yours is an exercise of free will, insomuch as you decide what is and what is not "sufficient evidence to believe".
2. Your beliefs are based off of you having "sufficient evidence to believe".
3. Anything that does not give you "sufficient evidence to believe" you will necessarily not believe in.
4. Anything that does give you "sufficient evidence to believe" you will necessarily believe in.
5. God knows what would you decide to be "sufficient evidence to believe", and if god gave you "sufficient evidence to believe", you would necessarily believe in god.
Therefore,
6. If god gave you "sufficient evidence to believe", you would not have the choice to not believe in god because you would necessarily believe in god.

DMB

Normal: I find all these ideas about "sufficient evidence" a bit surreal. Can you please explain what is the merit of believing something on insufficient evidence?

After all, there are enormous numbers of ideas floating around for which there is insufficient evidence. How does one choose which ones matter?

Normal

Someone chooses what is and what is not sufficient evidence for themselves. For something that has "sufficient evidence for belief", they will believe in it.

Edited to add: If something has "insufficient evidence for belief", they will necessarily not believe in it.

DMB

You haven't answered my question:
"What is the merit of believing something on insufficient evidence?"

The problem most of us have is why should a putative god punish people for unbelief if it is unwilling to provide what it knows would be sufficient evidence for that person?

If the answer is something to do with preserving free will, then you have to explain why free will is a greater good than anything else.

Enigma

Also including a point which has been implied throughout this discussion:

7. God either chooses to or has to preserve Free Will and subsequently choice.

So stipulating that all of the above is true:

Premise 1: God knows what would you decide to be "sufficient evidence to believe", and if god gave you "sufficient evidence to believe", you would necessarily believe in god.

Premise 2: God either chooses to or has to preserve Free Will and subsequently choice.

Conclusion: God cannot/does not give you "sufficient evidence to believe", since that would violate Free Will.

Now here comes the interesting part:

Premise 1: God cannot/does not give you "sufficient evidence to believe", since that would violate Free Will.

Premise 2: Anything that does not give you "sufficient evidence to believe" you will necessarily not believe in.

Conclusion: You (Referring to any given person) will necessarily not believe in God.


So, since there are people who believe in God.....

One or more of the used premises must be false. (For scorekeeping purposes those would be: 3, 5, and 7 from the original list)

Choose.

Normal

That only applies if you ignore premise 1:

1. Every belief of yours is an exercise of free will, insomuch as you decide what is and what is not "sufficient evidence to believe".