seebs

To the best of my knowledge, pz has not invoked his formal position in this thread; I think it would be a travesty to claim that, simply because he is a staff member with duties on the site, he's no longer allowed to debate - especially in a forum of which he's not a moderator!

I appreciate that you're sticking up for me, but I don't think pz abusing his position, or anything like that, and I don't think any rational user would conclude that pz's moderator title lends extra authority to his actions when he doesn't put on the mod hat.

pz

In some cases, yes. In others, no. Compare these two claims:

• There is an omnipotent, all-seeing supernatural being who has manifested himself to Seebs a few times by doing such things as making guitar picks appear in a friend's house.
• An example you used: Seebs is married.

Do you really think that determining which of those is an extraordinary claim is a subjective matter?
There you go again, accusing someone who disagrees with you of being dogmatic, while claiming that you are the open-minded one here. Is this really the only tactic you have for defending your ideas?

seebs

Sure. To someone who holds different premises than you, the former might seem perfectly reasonable, because he has many friends who have similar experiences, and use the same explanation, while he might think that it is very unusual for a computer geek to be married.

Similarly, "cats and humans have a common ancestor" is not an extraordinary claim to me, but it is to most YEC's.

Well, let's do a spot check. What do you think the criteria are by which I identify people as being "dogmatic"? Agreement? That's a poor fit; I don't seem to think most of the people here are dogmatic, but I think many Christians are dogmatic, even on points we agree on.

I merely observe that there is not much point in trying to "defend" ideas to people who have already decided what they think, and have a firm committment to a worldview in which they can disregard any evidence I find relevance.

I don't argue with YEC's based on scientific results anymore; it doesn't *do* anything, because their worldview allows them to reject any scientific evidence. This doesn't mean *I* shouldn't accept it; it means that I should recognize that arguments from it will not persuade them.

I don't argue with some metaphysical naturalists based on my subjective experiences, because I know they will reject them, or use standard dismissals.

The truth or accuracy of a claim is secondary, in debate, to whether or not the other party will accept it. If he won't, it doesn't matter whether it's true or not.

I also think you're vastly overfocusing on the guitar picks, and not on the interesting part of the story, which is a guy walking up to a stranger and handing him a fairly expensive guitar based on something that, so far as I can tell, you consider a shared delusion. Why do you think he did this? Is it typical for people you know to announce that supernatural beings are telling them to give away expensive things to people they don't know, and if so, what's the level of correlation between their decision to do this, and previous requests by the strangers directed to the same supernatural being?

I have to say, I don't see it happen much. It's unusual enough that I would like an explanation for it. As it happens, I had one lying around that fit.

In the end, my belief in God comes down to primary experience. It is, of course, possible that my experiences do not accurately describe the world I live in - but what of it? That's true of all my other experiences. I decided, at one point, to generally trust my senses, and it works for me.

pz

This is irrational dreck. You are playing evasive word games, feebly. I can see you aren't really interested in evaluating the logic of your claims if you are willing to equate the commonplace with the extraordinary so blithely.

It's rather disingenuous, if not outright dishonest of you, actually.
Oh, that's just the funniest part of the story. I find it very amusing to imagine The Most Powerful Being In The Universe sitting around, idly popping guitar picks into existence to bewilder this poor guy. Do you think he did it ex nihilo, or was it by transforming existing substance (like, say, one sock out of every pair)?
Oh, and this part is simply the most offensive part of the story.

Why do religious people so often appropriate common human values, like generosity and kindness, and label them as religiously motivated, or consider that the only way someone would do something nice for someone else is if a god were prodding them along? Why are you so mystified that someone would do such a thing?

I mean, the other day I shipped a rather expensive textbook off to someone who had mentioned they needed to figure out some of this biology stuff. A few weeks ago, I overheard a friend of my son's mentioning that he was struggling to get his home network working, so I gave him a spare router I happened to have. I did not spout silly religious slogans at them when I did so, so it's not exactly the same as your example, but so what? People do this all the time. It's called empathy, or sympathy, or friendliness, or just getting along. No gods are involved.

Ockhamite

Seebs....

Whether or not a claim is 'extraordinary' ,is, how it relates to the consensus of scientific knowledge, not the limited knowledge residing in a few close friends with similar experiences and similar explanations. If natural laws in the natural world can explain a found guitar pick, then positing a god to explain it represents an extraordinary claim.

seebs

The alternative is arrogance, IMHO. I can either accept that my idea of "extraordinary" is entirely rooted in my personal beliefs and experiences, or assert that I am somehow magically the one person who truly knows which claims are "extraordinary". The more people I meet, the more amazed I am at which claims different people will accept without much fuss, or will deny to the last breath. Seems to me to be purely personal.

I dunno. For all I know, He has teams of trained ninjas who break into houses, leave objects, or take objects. Why should I care?

See, it's ludicrous if you start with the assumption that this is not useful... But that's a big assumption. We don't know what the long-term effects are. Maybe my friend will get into music, and write a song which changes someone's life. I don't know.

To quote Father Brown, I am much more willing to believe in the impossible than the merely improbable, because the improbable is at least subject to my experience and knowledge. If someone says he saw a ghost, I am purely agnostic, because I have no idea what rules, if any, ghosts follow. If someone tells me that my wife didn't smoke a cigarette during an entire three-day period, I can be pretty confident it's nonsense.

I'm not talking about generosity. If someone *asked* me for a guitar, I might decide to give it to him.

But, generous or not, people don't, as a rule, spontaneously walk up to strangers and give them very specific gifts, without having some reason to believe the stranger will want the gift.

That's the part that struck me as strange.

And yet, in each case, you had been *told* about it by an identifiable mortal agency. That's perfectly normal. What's weird about my friend's case is that he never mentioned his desire for a guitar to anyone.

I thought this was clear in my original telling, but I guess not.

seebs

Er. That's if you assume that consensus of scientific knowledge is a complete model. I don't.

All you're doing here is saying "but my circle of friends with similar beliefs is very very large".

Note that I'm arguing, as I often do, in a purely pragmatic sense; the things for which a given person will require "extraordinary evidence" are clearly purely subjective. I am not at this time convinced that there is any meaningful standard of convincing that isn't a per-person deal.

Sabine Grant

Hello Seebs... I have experienced this interaction of circumstances which leads me as a theist to attribute it to God's intervention two days ago. It did not involve anything material but one of those urges to be at one specific place with one specific person at the right time. The urge was to add to my schedule at the last minute one of my patients on Wednesday.

There was no rational reason for me to schedule her for another visit on that day. I left her with good vital signs and her usual health condition on Tuesday and was not to reappear until Thursday. It was simply an urge to do so. As I arrived to her home, a poor folks' trailer, her daughter was in panic describing to me her mother's symptoms. Her vitals signs were alarming... she went into respiratory distress. Those folks are on Medicaid. They have no nursing services and depend on the home visits physician for medical care. A DNR order and Living Will perclude the intervention of 911 or any hospitalization. The patient can only be made comfortable as she experience distress. That is all we can do. I took the necessary steps to make her more comfortable. To her daughter , it was a God's sent. She could take a break, gather her thoughts, calm her emotions, and say good bye to her mother without being a "wreck". I am a Home Health Aide and I am limited and restricted by law to provide skilled nursing care. Fortunatly, my old lady does not require those skills anylonger. She only needs to be comforted, prepared to die peacefuly, maintained clean and as comfortable as possible. I was indeed the right person at the right time at the right place.

Those urges which seem to send me to the right person have happened in my profession too often for me to rationalize them. I do not believe in coincidences. I believe there is a purpose which results in something positive It may not be obviously positive at first. It may engender hardship and pain. It may be the necessary step to personal growth. I do not know for sure.

I can only relate to your reply as you were asked how God relates to you.

emur

Seebs, you mentioned the free will issue. This seems to be the fall back position for many Christians when faced with the problem of suffering or wrongs committed by believers. God could prod, convict, show by way of a life lesson, etc these closed people like Fred Phelps, but in my experience of dealing with them, he doesn't. They show no sign of such activities on the part of God.

The free will argument is fine with me if you are talking about God using us like robots. However, there is nothing interfering with free will if God intervenes to show someone they are wrong. Upon being shown, the person would at least some of the time do the right thing. Yet, I have not observed such.

You mention the salvation of an individual soul being more important than the temporal suffering of many. But this assumes you know more about God than you can know through the kinds of interventions you have mentioned. As I said before, from your illustrations all you can know (assuming the illustrations are true) is that God is an interventionist. You cannot know whether he saves, or who he saves. The Muslim God saves only Muslims. The Christian God saves only Christians. But God may be very different. He may save everyone. He may save no one. If so, the illustrations have no eternal significance.

Look, Seebs, I have seen so much hurt perpetrated at the hands of Christians who are supposedly right with God that it would take a hell of a lot more than illustrations such as yours or Sabine's to lift me over that hurdle. I cannot poo poo human suffering, especially that done at the hands of "God's people"! Eternal significance or no, people have to get through their lives here on earth, and if God will not work with his people to treat others better, then he is totally unworthy of my affection.

God may help someone by creating guitar picks out of nothing, but he is hurting others by his pathetic inaction toward his hurtful saints. He may gain some with seemingly miraculous events, but he has lost many others due to his inaction in their lives.

Mel

seebs

I'm not sure He could without pushing the boundaries a lot.

Oh, I see people do the right thing *sometimes*.

True. However, I have come to believe, for various reasons, that the Christian God is pretty close - except that I don't believe He "saves only Christians"; I think that's an attempt by people to make it sell better.

I think He does, but perhaps not as much as you or I might like - but I guess I trust Him.

I sometimes wonder about this too. However, when I've talked to these people, the impression I've gotten is that they are not going to change their minds until they're good and ready; I honestly don't know that *any* sign would be enough to make them rethink their positions.

This, I think, is probably a bit of a sore spot for God.