luvluv

wdog, have you ever taken a philosophy class, or read any books on argument?

Your disproof is unsound. Don't take my word for it. Take it over to the philosophy board and try it out over there. The atheists will tell you the same thing I'm telling you.

This is an old, OLD argument, and if it was sound then the philosophical debate about the existence of God would be over.

(The Plantinga argument is about 10 typed pages long. Go to the library if you want to check it out; I'm really not about to type it out here)

I am not declaring victory, I am merely telling you that you have failed to achieve it. The disproof fails as an argument. Again, DO NOT TAKE MY WORD FOR IT. Take it to the philosphy forum, and ask them SPECIFICALLY if that argument is valid. An argument is valid only if all it's premises ARE KNOWN to be true. You stating that you don't have evidence for it is fine for determining your own beliefs, but not for determining the soundness of an argument.

For the record I am perfectly content having two arguments in my head because I realize that I do not and cannot know everything. There is no way for me to know with 100 percent accuracy whether or not there is a God, whether He exists out of time, or whether he knows or travels through the future. But because I have no way of knowing I withhold judgement. You're allowed to do that.

But again, take your argument over to the philosophy forum and ask the atheists over there if that disproof is sound.

luvluv

Last question, and this is not meant to be smart-alecky and I apologize if it comes across that way.

If time travel to the past is so impossible, why have great minds like Hawking failed to acknowledge that fact? If a mind like Hawking thought that time travel could be possible, would that give you any pause at all at declaring it impossible?

luvluv

It's actually retarted late where I am so I will deal with more of your specific arguments tommorow, but this struck my fancy.

God would not be travelling back in his own time in this scenario, but in ours, and he wouldn't therefore be disturbing anything. He'd only be observing our universe from "his universe".

wdog

hey luv,

good to see you back.

no, and that is a weakness of mine. I can generally understand when someone presents me with a sound argument if they care to explain it. I am able to plow through heavy philosophy when I put myself to the task, but who has that kind of time? It is part of the fun in here to get such a good education along the way.

I am not intimidated by operating outside my own area of expertise or by someone who claims the intellectual high ground (argument from authority fallacy). This is a post board, not a journal, so I have a lot of license to be wrong here and I am not afraid of it. Mostly I am here to learn, the best way is to stick your neck out and test your thoughts. I will likewise test your thoughts to the limits as I see them. Some folks don't like that style I guess. here i am sitting in my pjs, unshowered, unshaven and drinking my morning joe- and shooting the crap about philosophy. You think I really care if maybe I am in contradiction to hawking? (I do however care about finding the answer)

well first of all I never claimed it was an hoinest to goodness proof. it really is a simple contradiction that I was asking you to resolve. I would think that a proof would have more global arguments and completeness than that. my point would be this, if you can't resolve the simple contradictions presented, then what hope is there that you are correct?

if my contradiction is unsound, then I kindly ask you to explain it, or provide me with a link to a resolution. I am really curious now, but why do I need to ask others? you seem to know (please show me how the premise is unsound). Maybe there is a past thread I can read?

also please give a link to the work of plantinga that you are referring to. To go to the library would be half a day.

I don't agree with you that this one simple point would prove/disprove god. we are talking about an assigned property of god, not the totally of the god concept. Here is my take on omniscience: that term is of human invention and you should recognize it as such. absolutes were thrown out of physics long ago as meaningless. why would you theists and philosophers still use it? If I were a theist, I would just drop the term omniscience.


here we diverge luvluv, I have rejected my past theism since I cannot see the logic of a loving god not giving me 100% proof of his existence. Do you doubt the existence of anyone else in your life that loves you? the very fact that you have to go through all this physics/philosophy just to intellectually justify your belief in this being that supposedly loves you is illogical.

that was my conclusion based upon my analysis. if hawking can show it incorrect (guess I would have to research) then fine, I'll change my mind. My beliefs are open minded, justified but not 100% accurate, and not subject to over-influence of authority. I just don't see how a worldline can remain unperturbed by the sudden introduction of a human into it, seems physically impossible. Also my point of view removes paradox

if you can give me proof of the christian god, then i'll believe.

luvluv, now listen carefully. 1) an atemporal being does not need to travel in time (see the spatially analogy) and 2) If you make god into just an observer, you have changed his nature. The judeo-christian god interacts with us temporal beings and that is where the probelms lie. You must consider interaction, not just observation.

luvluv

I only asked you if you had any knowledge of philosophy so I could explain to you what I mean when I say your argument fails. (I have no formal training in logic either but I have picked up the basics from books and hanging around on this website.)

The post this whole argument started on staked a claim: It stated that omniscience and free will were logically incompatible. The original author (dangin I think) then proceeded to form a logical argument for his case. That is, he sought to prove his case based simply on the rules of logic (the law of non-contradiction, the law of the excluded middle, etc.)

When constructing philosophical arguments of this type, one must use premises that are absolutely air tight. Premises in a proof or disproof must be NECESSARILY TRUE for the proof to be sound. That is to say, all a person needs to point out that the argument fails is to show that one of it's premises COULD LOGICALY be true. When a person (such as myself) is not making a counterclaim, but is solely seeking to defeat the disproof that has been presented, he is only obliged to show that one of the premises is not necessarily true. He does not need to provide emprical evidence for showing that it is untrue, he needs only show that a certain premise is false does not constitute a logical absurdity. In other words, he just has to show that the premise could be false according to the RULES OF LOGIC not that it definitely is false according to the RULES OF EVIDENCE.

What you have continually done is to intermingle the rules of logic with the rules of evidence and to re-shuffle the burden of proof.

Let's make it clear: I have made no claim. I believe that omniscience and free will can co-exist, but I doubt I could provide you with a sound argument establishing that fact.

Therefore, I am free to offer up any speculations as to God's nature that I like so long as they coincide with the rules of logic. You deny the possibility of atemporality, and when I try to accomodate you and show how the eternal view is still possible simply with time travel, you try to reassert God's atemporality to deny my claim.

You have claimed that omniscience and free will are incompatible, not that the Christian God and free will are incompatible.

Therefore, if I can establish a means by which an entity could be effectively omniscient while maintaining our free will, your argument is defeated (unsound) because such an entity is LOGICALLY POSSIBLE even if it does not appear to coincide with some aspects of my personal beliefs (remember that not all Christians believe God is atemporal). So it is illegitimate of you to try to pigeonhole me into only discussing an atemporal God. I need only establish that ANY OBSERVER can be omniscient and have that omniscience not contradict free will, and your argument will be unsound. Perhaps that will simply mean that my personal theology is not quite up to snuff, but you let me worry about that .

If we are clear on that, then we can proceed.

For the sake of argument , I identify God as an entity which is not atemporal, only as a being who operates on a time-line totally seperated from ours. As I explained above, I do not have to incorporate any of my personal theological beliefs into this discussion. It could be that several of my theolgical beliefs are false but God's eternal nature is true. It could be that an atemporal being can interact effortlessly and simeltaneously at all times. But that doesn't matter in terms of showing this disproof to be unsound.

Given an observer who is not at all bound by the time flow in our universe, and can observe our universe at any time it wishes, your objection to the time travel scenario fails. An observer in a seperate universe who can time travel backwards relative to our time (not His own) can have complete knowledge of all of our actions without our free will being compromised.

Your reactions to my then/now statements basically amounted to indignance. I'd ask you to spell out more clearly what is wrong with them.

You stated that I would have to, in some sense, exist "now" in the future for a time traveler to see me in the future. I contended that where you are "at present" does not matter to a time traveller because he is not trying to obseve you "at present" but next Tuesday. If you "will" exist next Tuesday (God willing and the creek don't rise) then the time traveller will be able to observe you next Tuesday. (I'm not going to get into it, but the same would hold true of an atemporal being). You seem to have a vehement disagreement with this proposition, but I'd appreciate it if you spelled out your problem with it. It is not necessary for you to exist at more than one time for a time traveller to observe you in a certain time, it only matters if you WERE EVER going to exist at that time. In other words, it wouldn't be a problem unless he went to a time before you were born or after you were dead. Otherwise, if you are/were/will be alive at the time, you'll be there somewhere. What's the problem with that exactly?

Well, it's unsound because it is not necessarily true that if someone has future knowledge of your actions that your actions are not free. But it also fails to be a disproof of omniscience because of the open theism view. You could solve the later problem by re-wording your argument to state that knowledge of the future and free will are incompatible, since, if the open theism view is correct, omniscience does not include the ability to see into the future. I don't see any sound way you can effectively clean up the former. You have to provide, essentially, a causal link between my knowledge and your action, you have to concot a way in which my knowledge MAKES YOUR ACTION HAPPEN.

I'm not aware of any link. The book is called "God, Freedom, and Evil" and it should be at any university library which offers philosophy. If you live in a big city, you might find it in your public library. Essentially the same argument is restated, I THINK, in Plantinga's book "God and Other Minds" which you might have an easier time finding at your local library. Really, though wdog, with all due respect it would be hard for God to give you 100% proof of anything if you are unwilling to spend a day in the library!

I don't believe I ever said that. I agree that it would not, and I was simply inquiring as to whether or not you knew that was the case.

Well, I'd debate whether absolutes where thrown out of physics (many theoretical physicists, for example, are still trying to come up with a way for the universe to have oscillated, essentially, forever, and forever is an absolute), but at any rate I don't see why philosophers and theists should be beholden to what physicists use. Physicists study the universe in which, by definition, there can be no absolutes (no infinities). But to assume that this therefore applies to an entity outside of the universe seems to be straining to absurdity the explanatory power of physics. The entire point of philosophy is to use it to explore dimensions of which we have no means for direct investigation.

Total digression here but while I am thinking about it I wanted to ask you something. You said that a VCR tape is not an actual reality but a recording/presentation of a reality. Are not all of our observances not in precisely the same dilema? Could we not say that what you see is not what actually is but what the little camera in your head records? Can you really prove to me that your current observations of the words on this screen represent "reality" any more than the signal on a video-cassette? They could both simply be recordings/observations. Our senses meet the same dilema that the VCR tape does.

Well, to be blunt, I don't have to go through all this physics philosophy to justify MY belief, but I do occasionally have to go through it to show a particular atheist that his disbelief is on those grounds at least as unjustified. I'm not trying to justify my beliefs here, in fact, it seems to me that you are the one trying to justify your disbelief.

I can name you plenty of reasons for God to not provide 100% proof of His existence. The principle one, so far as I can see, is it's interference with free will. If you were aware of God and all his power and of all the consequences of your wrong actions, you would obey Him out of a simple sense of self-preservation and not out of free choice. Even if you, for a time, choose to still disobey Him despite the fact that He existed, His existence would prove a constant frustration and anxiety to you as you tried to go about your daily life. It would amount to coercion eventually.

Beyond that, you don't have 100% proof of the existence of much of anything. You don't have 100% proof that the sun will not exploed tommorow or that the second law of thermodynamics will not reverse itself in the next 48 hours, but you do not stay in the house until someone gives you 100% proof that these things will not occur. How about you just give God, say, an even, ongoing chance? Honestly, 100% proof is a little steep, and as I have mentioned, would be problematic for God to provide. I promise you, however, that if you are sincerely trying to establish a relationship with Him if he exists, as opposed to simply satisfying your intellectual curiousity, you will be provided with ENOUGH evidence to believe.

[ October 31, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

wdog

ok, I understand now. But I maintain that when you say that all you have to do is
I don't think you have made your case, in the weak sense as you have noted. In your own words..
this is what fails me, and i think we should seek an outside opinion (attention philosphers out there!). If you cannot establish a sound argument, then what rule of logic allows you to make the conclusion divorced from the argument? Billy Craig himself called that metaphor, and not useful for establishing the true nature of god.


in regards to atemporality and time travel, what i attempted to establish is that BOTH pictures are flawed. I realize that they are seperate s. In the time traveler case you have robbed god of his omniprescence and made him a temporal being. In Billy Craig's own words, god cannot be a temporal since

which is incompatible with omniscience. So neither the atemporal being case OR the time traveler case is satisfactory.

but luvluv, as i understand logic, one MUST have an argument to establish a conclusion. So I am going to see if your argument is sound, right?

when you say that god has his own time line seperate from ours, here is what you are saying physically. The topology of that case will only allow such a being to intersect our time line at most a countably infinite number of times if even that makes sense. That is the only way for a creature inhabiting another timeline to 'see' our whole timeline is for the timelines to be the same. Only atemporality would allow a seperate non-tensed dimension that ability. Also then by making god tensed, you have run into the objection of Craig by making god not omnipresent. And very importantly luv, you have NOT addressed the problem of interaction, god is not merely an observer.

You have offered two unsound arguments, out of time (atemporality), and the time travelling observer. So i ask again, how can you make any conclusions?

sorry, no disrespect intended. I just didn't think they really said anything.

the problem with the atemporal observer as i spelled out earlier, is that I think we exist locally in time. I do not think we exist along our entire worldline as that denies free will, unless of course you want to claim that we have many simultaneous worldlines. Also then if we exist locally in time, then the time traveller would simply be a being like us, that is temporal. I have stated above the problems of making god temporal. We ARE time travellers ourselves luv, I am travelling to next tuesday right now. I just don't have a choice as to speed and direction.

Again the interaction problem rears its ugly head unless you address it.

That is why I said that time travel is not impossible, but travelling to your own past is. I think your past is fixed, and if you went to a universe with the exact same configuration as on your 3rd birthday then the sudden intorduction of yourself means that it is really not your past but a whole new worldline with two of you in it.

when you introduce the open theism view, you are completely removing the issue of contention by saying what I am saying. The future is unknowable. I guess you can maintain two opposing views at once, but I can't. I did provide a causual link between knowledge and actions with my one simple example i gave you. See the conversation between you and yourself in the future.

lol, I have spent a lot of time on this already. i think the ball is in god's court, if he wants me to know he's there then he should have a giftwrapped copy of the book zapped to my kitchen table. Seriously, Craig wrote his article in July 2002. If plantigna had resolved this issue, then don't you think Craig would have said something?

again the link is

<a href="http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/stump-kretzmann.html" target="_blank">http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/stump-kretzmann.html</a>

I encourage you to read it, it is a rare case of an apologist saying "i give up"


You are confusing infinities with absolutes here, not the same animal.

Remember that PhD stands for doctorate of natural philosophy. Why should philosphers use physics?, same reason physicists should use physics. It gives us a touchstone with reality to use in our thinking. I believe that the most productive thinking comes from people capable in science, mathematics, and philosophy combined. Physical theory divorced from reality is useless (maybe interesting), why should philosophy be any different? When Einstein threw absolutes out, it really was a point of philosphy.

VCR record sight and sound only, but most importantly you cannot interact with a movie. Sure it is a good observation, but god supposedly does a lot more than observe.

I thought I put the 100% proof thing to rest, I said that I will only have justified beliefs. I don't even know what is meant by 100% proof. I have a justified belief, not faith, that the sun will rise tomorrow. If it doesn't that would be very interesting. My justified beliefs are based on all I have learned and observed. I did honestry try and find god, I was a christian for the first 25 years of my life. My very last prayer was something like "ok, if you are there then you need to come show me since my honest inpection has turned up no evidence here"

facing the world honestly is really very refreshing luv, far from being empty or frightening. what caused me anxiety in my past was the cognitive dissonance between the christian beliefs and my intellectual drive for truth. if god wanted to provide me with proof of his existence, I fail to see how that would interfere with my free will. Free will is part of our existence, we cannot change that. As far as obedience, what authority figure would want to distance themselves from their subjects if the goal was obedience? makes no sense.

good day

luvluv

wdog:

I am not drawing a conclusion, what I am trying to tell you is that on the basis of your arguments NO CONCLUSION CAN BE DRAWN.

The claim in the other thread was that God's omniscience and free will were incompatible. I have said that such is not necessarily the case, therefore that disproof is not sound.

All I have been attempting to establish here is that free will and omniscience COULD be compatible or they COULD NOT be compatible, but your argument fails to fully establish that they definitely could not be compatible.

You have made a claim and I have presented scenarios which are logically possible which would invalidate that claim. I have not presented you with a counter argument, I've simply questioned yours. I don't need to question your argument with sound arguments of my own, only counter-scenarios that are possible.

What I'm trying to get you to realize is that in attempting to logically prove that a certain thing is IMPOSSIBLE, you've set the bar, philosophically speaking, INCREDIBLY high, and you will need totally sound philosophical arguments to back that up. I, on the other hand, in challenging your claim have a far less lofty burden of proof. I only have to show that certain alternatives to your premise are POSSIBLE, and then your argument fails.

That absolutely does not mean that I have established God's omniscience and the free will of persons actually co-exist. It simply means that you have failed in your attempt to prove that they CANNOT co-exist.

This is what your argument was, not that you don't believe they co-exist, but that they CANNOT co-exist. When you put that CANNOT on there you set the bar extremely high for yourself.

Well, why not? Again, your claim was that omniscience and free will cannot exist. What does omnipresence have to do with this?

Again, your argument (unless you want to reframe it) states that omniscience and free will cannot co-exist. If you want to reframe your argument to state that a "God having all of the attributes of the Christian Deity, including omnipresence and omniscience cannot exist with free will" then you have a valid point. But that was not your argument as it was stated.


How is that, exactly?

No, what I am doing here is simply saying that your attempt (or dangin's I guess) to disprove something doesn't work. The conclusion I'm drawing is simply that your disproof doesn't actually disprove anything. God may be omniscient or not, we may be free or not, but no one can draw any conclusions from your disproof.

Again, I don't have to, because you have not formed your argument to be specific to the Christian God. However, I actually did state in my previous response that I don't see why an atemporal being could not be in a state of action at all times every where.

Key words are "I think". It's fine for you to hold that as a belief, but if you are going to use that to uphold your argument then it isn't going to work. It doesn't mean you are intellectually justified in having this belief, it just means no one is obligated to also believe it and therfore it fails to support your premise. I don't know exactly what you mean by worldlines, maybe you could explain it?

It seem to me like your describing the old Back to the Future 2 scenario, whereby an alternate universe is created when a person goes back in time. But A) a being in another universe who is observing could go back RELATIVE TO OUR time without "creating another worldline" and B) you have not established that a person going back to his own past would establish another worldline. That's purely speculative on your part.

Also, I see no problems with a being with God like attributes interacting with our universe and still not being affected by the flow of our time. Why would that be a problem? So long as he is not confined to our universe he could interact with it all He wanted. I don't see the problem here, spell it out for me.

I'm not holding two opposing views at once, I'm maintaining one consistent view: I don't know. At present, that's the only honest view one can have of the situation. Now a person who doesn't know can legitimately believe in one view or the other, but what he can't do is declare one view or the other to be impossible AND THIS IS WHAT YOU HAVE DONE. Therefore, you must have knowledge of the incompatibility of omniscience and free will and you must establish that in an air tight argument or you must admit that you simply don't believe in it, not that you have proven it to be impossible.

Between me and myself in my future. Not between an observer and an observed who reside in two different time lines. That is what you need to establish is impossible.

Well, emprical proofs for some ideas would be impossible and ludicrous. For example, should we wait for empirical verfication before we decide an actual infinite cannot exist? We'd be waiting for a while, wouldn't you think? Yet this is an argument that has been established purely philosophically because it won't admit itself to direct experiment. Many ideas and concepts are llike that. For instance, there is no way for us to ever know if there are other universes out there besides ours. Therefore math, science, and all of the rest of it are useless: other universes are not observable to us by any means. Doesn't mean they don't exist and it doesn't mean that they do.

You should read a thread on the Existence of God forum entitled "Question for Atheists". I don't think the key in whether or not God will reveal Himself is the honesty with which you search for his existence, but what you will do with that existence if you find it. I don't see God giving evidence of His existence to people who will not want a relationship with Him if they find Him to exist.

I live my life VERY honestly my friend. I really do not doubt God's existence, with the kinds of things He's done with me in my life the MOST dishonest thing I could POSSIBLY do would be to deny His existnce. You are talking with one thoroughly convinced Christian, my friend. No cognitive dissonance here.

Well, I was more saying that knowledge of God's existence and of his commands on your life would put coercive pressure on you to obey Him. If you knew He existed, and you knew He wanted you to behave in a certain way, and you knew there were good consequences for doing so and bad consequences for failing to do so, there would be a lot of pressure on your actions. Just imagine if God were to materialize in physical form and follow you around all day. Would it be hard to live? Would it be hard to "freely" do certain things?

Well, He hasn't distanced Himself from me and other Christians, because we sincerely want to serve Him. But it does make perfect sense for Him to distance Himself from people who want nothing to do with Him, whether He exists or not. Why would He want to force knowledge of His existence on such a person? Wouldn't it be cruel?

[ November 02, 2002: Message edited by: luvluv ]</p>

wdog

luvluv,

let's please contain this discussion to our exchange. it's too long already without going back to what dangin said and all that followed.

I think it would just be easier to restate the problem.

Take the two ideas omniscience and free will, as best we understand them anyway. In mathematics, all it takes is one example of inconsistency to make an idea logically invalid. I am assuming that the same holds true here (if not then please explain). So we have the initial supposition that free will and omniscience exist, but if they contain contradictory implications, then we must discard or modify the initial claim. Demanding consistency is not 'setting the bar high' as you put it, and consistency can be destroyed by one counterexample.

I have given one example of contradiction, I'll repost:

I'll also post your comment on this example and adress it. You said about this,

The scenario above is logically permitted as i descibed. Your god could perform the task of acting like a telephone between you and yourself. I didn't even try to establish the possibility of the communication, I am showing that such communication brings about logical contradictions. If the existence of this time traveller brings about these possible logical inconsistencies, then we should regard the notion as invalid.

Also if the observer starts to communicate, he is no longer an observer, but a temporal participant. So logically your sentence doesn't even hold up, you can't be an observer and communicate at the same time.

You have presented two flawed models (temporal and atemporal god), and claimed to have addressed the above. Flawed models represent no logical possibilities as you claim to have shown.


The atemporal god is even worse, he can perform the above function but then he brings in the logical contradiction of an atemporal being coming into relation with temporal events. totally self-contradictory.

I know you can't see that, because you said

The problem is this, when such a being acts temporally in this universe (take the creation event), then that being has come into relation with that temporal event. Unless there is some very perverse way that you can divorce a being from his actions, then such an event marks and localizes the being's actions in our time line. Using the creation event, at the moment of creation god had to stand in a new relation with the universe which did not exist before. This was a temporal event and god had to experience the temporality of it since he created it. Or another way of looking at it, the creation was an event that we mark in our timeline as having happened at an instant of time t0. God must certainly agree with that, therefore his action was a temporal event. If his actions are temporal in our time, then he is also experiencing our time.


as a last note, you said,

I have posted there, read them if you can. You don't think I honestly searched? Well guess again. How can a being who supposedly loves me to pieces ignore my search? I don't get it, it is not like any kind of love I know. What kind of loving authority figure sits back and says "i don't care if you believe or not"? As I said earlier, a mature love seeks out the object of its affection. As a parent I can't imagine saying to my son "I don't care if you want a relationship with me, it is totally up to you".

why did thomas get evidence and not me?

why would god be so aloof if the risk is hell for his 'children'?

why do so many people of so many theologies and beliefs all see god? either he is there and christianity holds no lock on truth, or it is simply something hard wired into our brains.

luv, but that is exactly how xtains live. i can't remember how many times the pastor would say the life of a christian is difficult. The pressure is coercive since you don't want to go to hell, I have been there. Haven't you ever heard of the expression 'put the fear of god in him'? fear is part of the game, I know you say that you do it since you want to, but the fear motivation is always there.

So if he revealed himself to me, it would just mean that i might live like xtians do now anyway.

wdog

sorry forgot...

omnipresence must follow from omniscience. if you use your observer analogy, then god must be everywhere all the time if he has perfect observational knowledge of the universe, or omniscience. They are really the same and tied into omnipotentence. A time traveller is not omnipresent but temporal, and it flys into the face of craigs objection "that God would not possess His life all at once...". You asked to explain that, but it looks self explainatory to me.

wdog

isn't that who we are talking about? after all a being who can nothing but observe doesn't have much power at all.

a little double standard there luv? I have at least supported my assumption with plausability arguments. you have offered up nothing similar yet you criticize me for making an assumption? You have repeatedly said that you just don't know what the reality is, and you can give no real justification for your models, yet you point out that I have no intellectual justification for my beliefs?

apply the same amount of logical rigor to your own beliefs.

A worldline is just our unique path through a 3N dimensional minkowski space. or the evolution through time of the exact state of the universe. Again I speculate but I give a reason. Your past at time t1 is represented by a very specific state of the universe. If you suddenly introduce a new mass (you), quite obviously the state of the universe has changed. Simple logic luvluv. I speculate, but justify.


you said that I have raised the bar very high here. well belief in a deity is something that should have overwhelming proof. given all the past versions of the xtian god, and all the other gods humans have believed in, I am justified in wanting objective, or irrefutable, evidence. The potential for self-delusion is quite high here. You and that satan oscillates guy have some weird standards like 1)You must believe first before you can get evidence to believe 2) your all loving god frankly doesn't give a damn if we find that evidence or not

reverse the roles for a minute here for the sake of excercise. imagine I am a mormon and you are trying to convince me of the foolishness of all the joe smith baloney. what if I said to you the following: " well luvluv, obviously you are not sincere since god would reveal the truth of mormonism to you if you simply will believe"

you see the problem there?

[ November 04, 2002: Message edited by: wdog ]</p>