theophilus

I'm afraid you missed my point (my fault). Your confidence in "credibility (which, incidentally, which comes from the root meaning "truth), must be seen as part of your material existence - unless you're positing an immaterial quality to truth which creates another problem for you.
In a naturalistic world, credibility (reason) alone cannot explain anything and cannot serve as the foundaiton for confidence since it is part of the order which it seeks to explain.

Theli

This reasoning of yours makes no sense at all. Wich order does credibility explain?
And what exactly has that to do with confidence?


And what is a "naturalistic world"?

Jamie_L

OK. I've been away from this thread because I got what I wanted out of it and it seemed to be drifting off topic.

On re-examining it, I was struck by the tangential sub-thread that resulted in theophilus' post above.

My question is this: where does the Bible actually state that the nature of its creator is orderly and predictable? I'm not a Bibilical scholar, so I don't mean this as an insult or attack. Seriously, what about the Bible tells you that God is orderly and predictable?

If the Bible only implies God's predictability, then you are subject to your own argument. You have no direct revelation that every act of God is orderly and predictable, since all his actions for all time are not recorded in the Bible. And this assumes the acts in the Bible all imply an orderly, predictable God, which I would argue against (although that's a whole different thread).

If there are passages that say that God is orderly and predictable, then your arguement holds more water. But:

In the example about the fire - maybe we don't have experience that tells us fire will burn us again. However, we DO have experience that the physical laws of the world (as we perceive them) behave in a predictable and orderly manner. Concluding that this predictability, as experienced in specific instances, extends to the rest of the world is not presupposition. It is a theory - a hypothesis for which we have gotten much evidence supporting it (our experience) and no evidence against it.

Jamie