BibleForums Christian Message Board
Other Categories => Controversial Issues => Non Christian Perspective => Topic started by: Oscar_Kipling on June 04, 2022, 04:44:17 PM
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So, I'm under no illusions that my personality isn't very off-putting, It is something I've struggled with my entire life. I'm also aware that the part of the human brain that causes people to limit sentence length or edit for succinctness or stop writing before they begin repeating themselves is severely damaged in me. These things I know about and when I fail to account for them that is on me, my fault. However I do sometimes feel that being an irritating person isn't at the heart of why I seem to get the hackles of Christians up.
So the question is simple, under what conditions is it useful, purposeful, interesting and or maybe even enjoyable to discuss, argue, debate , agree and or disagree about Christianity with a non-christian? Do these conditions change with different types of Non-believers ie atheist's vs former christians vs persons of other faiths? Is there an ideal or acceptable way for a non-believer to express criticisms of Christianity and or Christians? Can you name a Non-believer that you think generally gets it right, and why?
Do you believe that Non-Believers should respect the Christian faith and beliefs and in this context what does respect mean? Do you believe that Christians should respect the the non-belief of non-believers, and in this context what does respect mean?
Do you believe that your approach to potentially controversial discussions with non-believers could be improved and if so how so?
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So the question is simple, under what conditions is it useful, purposeful, interesting and or maybe even enjoyable to discuss, argue, debate , agree and or disagree about Christianity with a non-christian?
When the exchange is a genuine discussion/argument/debate of views and understandings of the world, and neither side is trying to win, put down the other, etc.
Do these conditions change with different types of Non-believers ie atheist's vs former christians vs persons of other faiths?
I don't see why they would.
Is there an ideal or acceptable way for a non-believer to express criticisms of Christianity and or Christians? Can you name a Non-believer that you think generally gets it right, and why?
See above. I think it's easier to name people who get it wrong, but I think J.L Mackie is an example of someone who got it right.
Do you believe that Non-Believers should respect the Christian faith and beliefs and in this context what does respect mean? Do you believe that Christians should respect the the non-belief of non-believers, and in this context what does respect mean?
Not necessarily, no. It depends on the belief, and toleration is probably the starting point, and not all beliefs are tolerable and certainly, not all beliefs are respectable. Respect would mean something like, the belief was admirable.
Do you believe that your approach to potentially controversial discussions with non-believers could be improved and if so how so?
Yes, I weaponise my intellect. I'm growing some emotions to work on that. ;)
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As opposed to most Christians and non-Christians who weaponize their emotions and should try to grow some intellect to go with them!!!
😂😂😂
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I represent that!😒
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As opposed to most Christians and non-Christians who weaponize their emotions and should try to grow some intellect to go with them!!!
😂😂😂
I had a writing coach suggest to me that since I'm able to see problems in systems, am intuitively analytic, and can think through complex things at a high level, etc., I should try to be less direct with the things I say (at work) and try to frame what I want to say in the form of questions so as to allow those around me to come to the conclusions I want them to come to. This was because I was coming off too directly, and it could be offputting to others who might come away thinking I had a sense of superiority about myself.
After a month we met again and I showed her examples of the questions I had come up with, and then she suggested we try a different, different direction. It turns out that my questions were very good questions that spoke to the heart of the issue or thing I was commenting on but did so in such a way that the respondent would have to admit some failing on their part, or write as if they were conceding something.
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However I do sometimes feel that being an irritating person isn't at the heart of why I seem to get the hackles of Christians up.
Already found an answer on the why?
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However I do sometimes feel that being an irritating person isn't at the heart of why I seem to get the hackles of Christians up.
Already found an answer on the why?
I've always had my thoughts on it, but i'm interested in what you think
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However I do sometimes feel that being an irritating person isn't at the heart of why I seem to get the hackles of Christians up.
A big part of the problem is the antipathy toward Christianity frequently manifested in your verbiage. The problem is compounded because the animus is coming from a former believer. I'm not sure if is due to a bitterness from your disillusionment with the faith, an innate resentment of believers for enjoying what you feel deprived of, or something else. But the contempt underlying the content of your posts alienates people. A humble believer who walks away from his relationship with God due to doubts or sincere nagging questions about things, yet has an inner desire to be restored, will find empathy and compassion. But a prodigal son who diminishes the validity of God, Christ, and the faith cannot realistically expect Christians to respond in a positive way. Do you have an eye toward reconciliation and restoration as you work things through?
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However I do sometimes feel that being an irritating person isn't at the heart of why I seem to get the hackles of Christians up.
A big part of the problem is the antipathy toward Christianity frequently manifested in your verbiage. The problem is compounded because the animus is coming from a former believer. I'm not sure if is due to a bitterness from your disillusionment with the faith, an innate resentment of believers for enjoying what you feel deprived of, or something else. But the contempt underlying the content of your posts alienates people. A humble believer who walks away from his relationship with God due to doubts or sincere nagging questions about things, yet has an inner desire to be restored, will find empathy and compassion. But a prodigal son who diminishes the validity of God, Christ, and the faith cannot realistically expect Christians to respond in a positive way. Do you have an eye toward reconciliation and restoration as you work things through?
I'm not certain that you realize that the semantic content of an "inner desire to be restored" when juxtaposed against "a prodigal son who diminishes the validity of God" is identical to "a person that believes in the Christian God that I believe in". If your compassion and empathy is predicated on whether or not I'm going to claim to want to be restored into a kingdom of heaven that I do not believe in then I must say that I am not impressed with what it means to be a new creature in Christ, because I can throw a rock and hit 100 people that predicate their compassion and empathy on arbitrary conditions before it hits the ground. I don't have any interest in being held hostage to your conditional empathy and compassion, you can either have empathy & compassion for me or not, but I can tell you flat out that I am an atheist and I do not believe that there is anything for me to be restored to. it's mind boggling that you even think that it's possible that you are displaying the enjoyment of something that I long for because all I see is a person with some glaring flaws, and I have plenty of glaring flaws all by myself...You look at me and see antipathy, bitterness and venom directed at you who is on the side of love,truth and Christ, and because all you see when you look at yourself is this, I doubt you can even begin to conceive of the idea that you might be dishing it out much better than you can take it.
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However I do sometimes feel that being an irritating person isn't at the heart of why I seem to get the hackles of Christians up.
A big part of the problem is the antipathy toward Christianity frequently manifested in your verbiage. The problem is compounded because the animus is coming from a former believer. I'm not sure if is due to a bitterness from your disillusionment with the faith, an innate resentment of believers for enjoying what you feel deprived of, or something else. But the contempt underlying the content of your posts alienates people. A humble believer who walks away from his relationship with God due to doubts or sincere nagging questions about things, yet has an inner desire to be restored, will find empathy and compassion. But a prodigal son who diminishes the validity of God, Christ, and the faith cannot realistically expect Christians to respond in a positive way. Do you have an eye toward reconciliation and restoration as you work things through?
I'm not certain that you realize that the semantic content of an "inner desire to be restored" when juxtaposed against "a prodigal son who diminishes the validity of God" is identical to "a person that believes in the Christian God that I believe in". If your compassion and empathy is predicated on whether or not I'm going to claim to want to be restored into a kingdom of heaven that I do not believe in then I must say that I am not impressed with what it means to be a new creature in Christ, because I can throw a rock and hit 100 people that predicate their compassion and empathy on arbitrary conditions before it hits the ground. I don't have any interest in being held hostage to your conditional empathy and compassion, you can either have empathy & compassion for me or not, but I can tell you flat out that I am an atheist and I do not believe that there is anything for me to be restored to. it's mind boggling that you even think that it's possible that you are displaying the enjoyment of something that I long for because all I see is a person with some glaring flaws, and I have plenty of glaring flaws all by myself...You look at me and see antipathy, bitterness and venom directed at you who is on the side of love,truth and Christ, and because all you see when you look at yourself is this, I doubt you can even begin to conceive of the idea that you might be dishing it out much better than you can take it.
I'm not sure that Sojourner is limiting his empathy and compassion to only those who have an "inner desire to be restored", only that the one who "diminishes the validity of God, Christ and the faith" shouldn't expect a positive response. Sojourner will have to clarify what he means by that, but by "positive response I understand you won't be met with rounds of applause for the things that you write -- not that I'm seeing how this relates to what you've said here or elsewhere.
Or, you could have hit the nail on the head. But, it would seem strange to lack compassion for a prodigal son given the parable. Maybe Sojourner sees the situation at hand as less 'prodigal son' and more, the son who rebels, is obstinant, etc.
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I've never understood animus toward people of Christian faith.
Christians believe that they have found truth in the person of Jesus Christ, and wish to share what they have found with joy to those that haven't had a similar determination. How could anyone think evil of a person that is wishing them only what subjectively is understood as good. Granted, a lot of Christians are absolute asses in the way in which they express their faith, but that is not to denigrate true faith.
I cannot, philosophically, find any reason why a non-believer or atheist would have any objection to someone else's faith.
If you don't share my faith, then why attempt to denigrate and degrade and oppose it?
That's the part I don't understand.
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I cannot, philosophically, find any reason why a non-believer or atheist would have any objection to someone else's faith.
If you don't share my faith, then why attempt to denigrate and degrade and oppose it?
That's the part I don't understand.
This might depend somewhat on what you consider to be denigration, could you be more specific about some of the things you consider to be denigrating, if it is something i said that would be great because i'd love to talk about it.
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However I do sometimes feel that being an irritating person isn't at the heart of why I seem to get the hackles of Christians up.
A big part of the problem is the antipathy toward Christianity frequently manifested in your verbiage. The problem is compounded because the animus is coming from a former believer. I'm not sure if is due to a bitterness from your disillusionment with the faith, an innate resentment of believers for enjoying what you feel deprived of, or something else. But the contempt underlying the content of your posts alienates people. A humble believer who walks away from his relationship with God due to doubts or sincere nagging questions about things, yet has an inner desire to be restored, will find empathy and compassion. But a prodigal son who diminishes the validity of God, Christ, and the faith cannot realistically expect Christians to respond in a positive way. Do you have an eye toward reconciliation and restoration as you work things through?
I'm not certain that you realize that the semantic content of an "inner desire to be restored" when juxtaposed against "a prodigal son who diminishes the validity of God" is identical to "a person that believes in the Christian God that I believe in". If your compassion and empathy is predicated on whether or not I'm going to claim to want to be restored into a kingdom of heaven that I do not believe in then I must say that I am not impressed with what it means to be a new creature in Christ, because I can throw a rock and hit 100 people that predicate their compassion and empathy on arbitrary conditions before it hits the ground. I don't have any interest in being held hostage to your conditional empathy and compassion, you can either have empathy & compassion for me or not, but I can tell you flat out that I am an atheist and I do not believe that there is anything for me to be restored to. it's mind boggling that you even think that it's possible that you are displaying the enjoyment of something that I long for because all I see is a person with some glaring flaws, and I have plenty of glaring flaws all by myself...You look at me and see antipathy, bitterness and venom directed at you who is on the side of love,truth and Christ, and because all you see when you look at yourself is this, I doubt you can even begin to conceive of the idea that you might be dishing it out much better than you can take it.
I'm not sure that Sojourner is limiting his empathy and compassion to only those who have an "inner desire to be restored", only that the one who "diminishes the validity of God, Christ and the faith" shouldn't expect a positive response. Sojourner will have to clarify what he means by that, but by "positive response I understand you won't be met with rounds of applause for the things that you write -- not that I'm seeing how this relates to what you've said here or elsewhere.
Or, you could have hit the nail on the head. But, it would seem strange to lack compassion for a prodigal son given the parable. Maybe Sojourner sees the situation at hand as less 'prodigal son' and more, the son who rebels, is obstinant, etc.
yeah I guess it could be, I hope Sojourner will clarify either way. thanks for your post btw I wanted to read up on J.L. mackie before I respond, not that I really have much to add to what you said.
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Oscar, at the beginning of this thread, you suggested that your being an irritating person was not at the heart of why you get the hackles of Christians up. I was simply giving you my assessment of the main problem as I see it: you consistently denounce what we hold as sacred. You claim to be a former Christian, yet are now an atheist who renounces God, Christ, and the Christian faith. I made the mistake of thinking you were frequenting a Christian board because we have something you either miss or desire. But I suppose the storehouse of contempt you harbor leaves little room for such trite sentiment.
It was not my intent to hold out empathy, compassion and fellowship like a carrot on a stick. I was simply asking what your long term goal was, hoping it was restoration. Well, you put me in my place, and set me straight. You've made it clear you're only here to find fault, poke, prod, and otherwise amuse yourself. If you choose to be an enemy of the cross instead of being saved by it, that's your decision to make. But not believing in God won't not change the reality of the day of Judgment that awaits us all.
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However I do sometimes feel that being an irritating person isn't at the heart of why I seem to get the hackles of Christians up.
Already found an answer on the why?
I've always had my thoughts on it, but i'm interested in what you think
I reversed the question and asked myself why I (as a Christian) would visit an ex-Christian or atheist forum, I can think of 4 reasons -
1. As Jesus said preach the Gospel, but He also said don't cast your pearls before the swines, experience learned me to follow His advice, meaning it's pointless, exceptions excluded.
2. To test my faith, is my faith (still) strong enough to survive? Opposition is strong over there.
3. In the hypothetical case my faith would be on the slippery slope (it isn't) I can imagine people would go there in search for a final answer.
4. To meet old friends.
And so I was wondering why you are here and perhaps option [2] and [4] are matches?
IOW, as an ex-Christian I am sure you have done your research thoroughly, like I did with my faith. And in the Christian life there are sometimes moments of doubt and I assume this is not different with agnostics, ex-Christians and even the most staunch atheists. With option [2] you can test if your beliefs are (still) strong enough to take away doubts you might have.
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but I can tell you flat out that I am an atheist and I do not believe that there is anything for me to be restored to.
On a scale from 0% to 100%, how sure are you that there is no Creator?
100% ?
Note, I deliberately use the word Creator, someone Who set the Universe in motion. It's not about religion. Quite a difference.
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I'm also aware that the part of the human brain that causes people to limit sentence length or edit for succinctness
I read your posts and then hear the voice of my high school typing teacher telling the class to find the carriage return ;D
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Oscar, at the beginning of this thread, you suggested that your being an irritating person was not at the heart of why you get the hackles of Christians up. I was simply giving you my assessment of the main problem as I see it: you consistently denounce what we hold as sacred. You claim to be a former Christian, yet are now an atheist who renounces God, Christ, and the Christian faith. I made the mistake of thinking you were frequenting a Christian board because we have something you either miss or desire. But I suppose the storehouse of contempt you harbor leaves little room for such trite sentiment.
It was not my intent to hold out empathy, compassion and fellowship like a carrot on a stick. I was simply asking what your long term goal was, hoping it was restoration. Well, you put me in my place, and set me straight. You've made it clear you're only here to find fault, poke, prod, and otherwise amuse yourself. If you choose to be an enemy of the cross instead of being saved by it, that's your decision to make. But not believing in God won't not change the reality of the day of Judgment that awaits us all.
teddyV , Vhayes, Athanasius, firefighter....surely i'm forgetting folks (heck you might be one of them what with all the name changes over the years), but those are people that immediately stick out in my mind as Christians on the old forum who surprised me with their "walk" as it were. I admire(d) them and frequently think about our interactions even after all these years. I think about the wackos, the jerks and the folks with persecution complexes too (heck I still follow Keck on twitter, because everybody loves a good bonfire from time to time right?). My point, there is room for Christians to leave impressions on me, good ones & bad ones alike. There is room for me to see and admire things in christians that I do not see in myself. IOW I wasn't generalizing about seeing nothing desirable in any christians, I was speaking about you specifically and how you've shown me nothing that I wish to emulate, though you may surprise me one day. You seem to obligate yourself to believing that I have a low opinion of all Christians because it has to be about me against Christianity and good and righteousness because you cannot allow for our contentiousness to be about us as individuals and our attitudes, behavior, immaturity and fragile egos...you refuse to take any meaningful credit for how you've contributed to the atmosphere of enmity between us.
I don't have a long term goal, I'm just talking about Christianity and Christians because it interests me and because its important...but of course for you if I'm not here to become a Christian then my motives must be base and pernicious and directed at hurting you & God and all things righteous...The enemy. You cannot see what you are smuggling in, either I look at you and find myself so enamored by the reflected glow of the love of Jesus Christ that you are clearly convinced is coming off of you like a shining beacon of hope, or I'm here seeking to trash the place...there is no room for you to consider that maybe you aren't being some great example, you can't imagine that you might not be drawing people into the faith by standing in stark contrast to "the world"...surely it's me who is full of pain and contempt so I am blind to the tough but fair Christ-love that you are absolutely overflowing with.
It never ceases to amaze me that Christians living in a majority Christian country wielding a great deal of power and influence and far reaching platforms cannot see why Christianity and Christians would be important and interesting to a non-believer outside of either wanting to join up or wanting to wreak havoc...like maybe I have to live in a country where what Many Christians want and are actively attempting (and often succeeding) to make happen or prevent through laws, in public places, in social infrastructure, in education, in entertainment, in business, in medicine, in reproduction & our personal sex lives and even in how we dress/present in public all does or has the potential to personally affect me, I have skin in this game...but that doesn't seem to occur to a person like you because you are so completely enamored with the idea that you are a brilliant example of the greatest choices a person can make or some kind of warrior fighting folks like me that push back against Christianity just for fun or out of bitterness and not because you are having an impact on my actual life. But w/e dollars to donuts all you will get out of this post is that I'm an angry ex-christian hell bent or demeaning glorious perfection and holiness for absolutely no discernable reason.
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However I do sometimes feel that being an irritating person isn't at the heart of why I seem to get the hackles of Christians up.
Already found an answer on the why?
I've always had my thoughts on it, but i'm interested in what you think
I reversed the question and asked myself why I (as a Christian) would visit an ex-Christian or atheist forum, I can think of 4 reasons -
1. As Jesus said preach the Gospel, but He also said don't cast your pearls before the swines, experience learned me to follow His advice, meaning it's pointless, exceptions excluded.
2. To test my faith, is my faith (still) strong enough to survive? Opposition is strong over there.
3. In the hypothetical case my faith would be on the slippery slope (it isn't) I can imagine people would go there in search for a final answer.
4. To meet old friends.
And so I was wondering why you are here and perhaps option [2] and [4] are matches?
IOW, as an ex-Christian I am sure you have done your research thoroughly, like I did with my faith. And in the Christian life there are sometimes moments of doubt and I assume this is not different with agnostics, ex-Christians and even the most staunch atheists. With option [2] you can test if your beliefs are (still) strong enough to take away doubts you might have.
I'd bet you could think up more if you really tried. Anyway, yes, surely some part of it is interrogating my own beliefs and there are folks that I legitimately enjoy talking to. I also think it's an interesting topic, and an important one that has real effects in my society and life. Sometimes I check in just to see what Christians are saying about this or that current event or to see what is percolating through the community, a barometer or thermometer of sorts. I've always preferred forums to getting into potentially difficult conversations with people that are close to me irl because If I am frank in the way I am here with my family I run the risk of hurting feelings or damaging those relationships, here I can be open and honest about what I think and the stakes are much lower in this regard. Additionally I wasn't especially surrounded by deep thinkers (or they weren't open about it) so the forums have generally been a place to find people that could more often get into things on more than a superficial level. It would also be fair to say that debates/discussions/arguments scratch an itch for me, and there is the creative writing aspect too. I work in a technical field so nearly all of the writing I do is very dry technical procedural stuff so stretching out with humor and imagination is nice....so you could say fun is part of it even though some people can't seem to separate the fact that I often enjoy it or derive satisfaction from it means that I'm trolling though having some fun with this and doing it just to make fun are not the same imo.
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but I can tell you flat out that I am an atheist and I do not believe that there is anything for me to be restored to.
On a scale from 0% to 100%, how sure are you that there is no Creator?
100% ?
Note, I deliberately use the word Creator, someone Who set the Universe in motion. It's not about religion. Quite a difference.
I'm genuinely not trying to overcomplicate this, but it really does depend on the characteristics of the creator that is being conceived, some seem more likely than others or at the very least some are impervious to falsification. Generally speaking though I'm as sure that there aren't any gods as I am that there are no psychics, telekinetics, reincarnated people or kung fu masters that can remotely knock you out using Qi...so idk 93.67221%
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I'm also aware that the part of the human brain that causes people to limit sentence length or edit for succinctness
I read your posts and then hear the voice of my high school typing teacher telling the class to find the carriage return ;D
lol I know, I know I only have 2 modes either i'm writing SOP's or i'm writing one long run on sentence with idiosyncratic punctuation that only makes sense to me and people that write letters to the editor in green ink and filled margins about how they have discovered a new type of multi-dimensional math that proves Einstein wrong once and for all! haha my writing style is rambling lunatic.
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yeah I guess it could be, I hope Sojourner will clarify either way. thanks for your post btw I wanted to read up on J.L. mackie before I respond, not that I really have much to add to what you said.
He has fun take on Anselm's ontological argument that Plantinga goes after, and somewhere in there is the mention of nubile young women, or something to that effect. Oh no wait, that was Plantinga commenting on Gaunilo.
J.L. Mackie and Plantinga were the problem of evil, is what I should be thinking of. Vallicella discussed Mackie in brief on a blog post a few - err seven - years ago https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2015/11/the-problem-of-evil-and-the-argument-from-evil.html. Mackie's The Miracle of Theism is probably a good book to look into.
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teddyV , Vhayes, Athanasius, firefighter....surely i'm forgetting folks (heck you might be one of them what with all the name changes over the years), but those are people that immediately stick out in my mind as Christians on the old forum who surprised me with their "walk" as it were. I admire(d) them and frequently think about our interactions even after all these years...
Huh, I'm usually worried I come across as a know-it-all with a superiority complex.
I don't know, I haven't left the faith but I know what a fall from grace is like, but even before that I had a sense of "there but for the grace of God". I mean, anxiety before God in the Kierkegaardian sense of the word. I know what it's like to fake relationships with everyone, and what it means to be honest only to then be looked down on with suspicion, to be regarded with a lack of empathy and understanding, or to have Christians wonder if maybe I'm less mental struggle and more open rebellion (all for a choice of new necklines, obviously). I think that at the end of the day Jesus is going to care if I loved him and my neighbours and that's going to matter more than the propositions I assented to or the beliefs I held or the mistakes I made. You know, as long as I'm not currently persisting in an egregious sin in rebellion against God. Is it possible to be in such a state, not intend it, and not know it?
Anyway, writing this made me think of one of my favourite Christian songs that isn't:
When I was younger I used to pray that I would see people as God saw them, and I don't know if that one was answered but, well, here's me.
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teddyV , Vhayes, Athanasius, firefighter....surely i'm forgetting folks (heck you might be one of them what with all the name changes over the years), but those are people that immediately stick out in my mind as Christians on the old forum who surprised me with their "walk" as it were. I admire(d) them and frequently think about our interactions even after all these years. I think about the wackos, the jerks and the folks with persecution complexes too (heck I still follow Keck on twitter, because everybody loves a good bonfire from time to time right?). My point, there is room for Christians to leave impressions on me, good ones & bad ones alike. There is room for me to see and admire things in christians that I do not see in myself. IOW I wasn't generalizing about seeing nothing desirable in any christians, I was speaking about you specifically and how you've shown me nothing that I wish to emulate, though you may surprise me one day. You seem to obligate yourself to believing that I have a low opinion of all Christians because it has to be about me against Christianity and good and righteousness because you cannot allow for our contentiousness to be about us as individuals and our attitudes, behavior, immaturity and fragile egos...you refuse to take any meaningful credit for how you've contributed to the atmosphere of enmity between us.
I don't have a long term goal, I'm just talking about Christianity and Christians because it interests me and because its important...but of course for you if I'm not here to become a Christian then my motives must be base and pernicious and directed at hurting you & God and all things righteous...The enemy. You cannot see what you are smuggling in, either I look at you and find myself so enamored by the reflected glow of the love of Jesus Christ that you are clearly convinced is coming off of you like a shining beacon of hope, or I'm here seeking to trash the place...there is no room for you to consider that maybe you aren't being some great example, you can't imagine that you might not be drawing people into the faith by standing in stark contrast to "the world"...surely it's me who is full of pain and contempt so I am blind to the tough but fair Christ-love that you are absolutely overflowing with.
It never ceases to amaze me that Christians living in a majority Christian country wielding a great deal of power and influence and far reaching platforms cannot see why Christianity and Christians would be important and interesting to a non-believer outside of either wanting to join up or wanting to wreak havoc...like maybe I have to live in a country where what Many Christians want and are actively attempting (and often succeeding) to make happen or prevent through laws, in public places, in social infrastructure, in education, in entertainment, in business, in medicine, in reproduction & our personal sex lives and even in how we dress/present in public all does or has the potential to personally affect me, I have skin in this game...but that doesn't seem to occur to a person like you because you are so completely enamored with the idea that you are a brilliant example of the greatest choices a person can make or some kind of warrior fighting folks like me that push back against Christianity just for fun or out of bitterness and not because you are having an impact on my actual life. But w/e dollars to donuts all you will get out of this post is that I'm an angry ex-christian hell bent or demeaning glorious perfection and holiness for absolutely no discernable reason.
I get that you don't like me, and that's fine. (I can't say you're my favorite, either). What I don't understand is the basis for your contention that I hold myself up as an extraordinary, exemplary Christian. I am acutely aware of my faults and failures, and hardly represent myself to be a shining example. But I'll spare you the insufferable pomposity you perceive in me by avoiding any further communication with you.
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I get that you don't like me, and that's fine. (I can't say you're my favorite, either). What I don't understand is the basis for your contention that I hold myself up as an extraordinary, exemplary Christian. I am acutely aware of my faults and failures, and hardly represent myself to be a shining example. But I'll spare you the insufferable pomposity you perceive in me by avoiding any further communication with you.
avoid me if you like, but don't pretend its my choice, this is all you buddy. I do think you are pompous, I also think i'm pompous, so it's not as if I can't suffer it in you. You are so ready for me to want to throw you away as unworthy of my intellect or intolerable or a waste of time that this is the 3rd or 4th time you've threatened that you would remove yourself before I have the chance. It almost seems like you are afraid to find out what I'd really think of what you have to say, so you take any opportunity to accuse me of pushing you away when I can tolerate you just fine....even though you are pompous, overly sensitive, casually critical and humorless I would still listen and discuss your thoughts on God if you'd stop finding reasons why I won't or can't.
Given that this is what I see in you it should come as no surprise that
I find it the idea that it would make sense for me to look at you and feel that you are enjoying a relationship with Christ that I would be desirous of to be implausible. If you didn't think that you had this relationship on display then I do not see how you expect that I might take notice of it. The thing is , when I look at you I don't see a person that is in intimate contact with the greatest being that could possibly exist, I see a person very much like myself right down to the fragile ego and tendency to see direct personal attacks, belittlement and criticism where there is none. I'm not better than you, i'm very much like you and if the impact that Christ has had in your life is to leave you basically like me then once again i'm not impressed at all, i'm already me. Now, lets see if you can try and not take this post as an invitation from me to fling yourself into a bottomless pit and maybe try having a back and forth about the content of your beliefs for a change, can you do that slugger?
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teddyV , Vhayes, Athanasius, firefighter....surely i'm forgetting folks (heck you might be one of them what with all the name changes over the years), but those are people that immediately stick out in my mind as Christians on the old forum who surprised me with their "walk" as it were. I admire(d) them and frequently think about our interactions even after all these years...
Huh, I'm usually worried I come across as a know-it-all with a superiority complex.
I don't know, I haven't left the faith but I know what a fall from grace is like, but even before that I had a sense of "there but for the grace of God". I mean, anxiety before God in the Kierkegaardian sense of the word. I know what it's like to fake relationships with everyone, and what it means to be honest only to then be looked down on with suspicion, to be regarded with a lack of empathy and understanding, or to have Christians wonder if maybe I'm less mental struggle and more open rebellion (all for a choice of new necklines, obviously). I think that at the end of the day Jesus is going to care if I loved him and my neighbours and that's going to matter more than the propositions I assented to or the beliefs I held or the mistakes I made. You know, as long as I'm not currently persisting in an egregious sin in rebellion against God. Is it possible to be in such a state, not intend it, and not know it?
Anyway, writing this made me think of one of my favourite Christian songs that isn't:
When I was younger I used to pray that I would see people as God saw them, and I don't know if that one was answered but, well, here's me.
Haha, A few people have accused me of being a condescending know-it-all once or twice even though clearly my humbleness is only exceeded by my tact & sensitivity to the feelings and beliefs of others. Honestly, you do come off as a know it all sometimes and back when you went by Xel it used to chap me something fierce as a person who used to think of himself as the smartest guy in the room. Ultimately though you actually do know a lot of stuff, and a person can learn a great deal from you if they can get over not being the absolute sharpest knife in the knife holding thing. More importantly you're a genuine and earnest thinker, I don't always agree with where you end up, but the legitimacy of the journey is beyond question. All that to say lots of what you've said has stuck with me.
Yeah, I imagine there are plenty of parallels in our experiences, though I must admit that it has never been clear to me how or why you managed to remain in the faith, I mean we did discuss it once, but it just doesn't make intuitive sense to me I guess. This song sounds like if Incubus was Christian, not bad but i'm more of a tiny southern baptist church singing old Negro spirituals kind of guy. I grew up with lots of that and if a sweaty 60 year old woman isn't doing some gravelly glossolalia infused ad-libs about how Jesus came late in the midnight hour over a crescendo of organs, rhythmic claps and tambourines it just doesn't feel like church to me lol.
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Haha, A few people have accused me of being a condescending know-it-all once or twice even though clearly my humbleness is only exceeded by my tact & sensitivity to the feelings and beliefs of others. Honestly, you do come off as a know it all sometimes and back when you went by Xel it used to chap me something fierce as a person who used to think of himself as the smartest guy in the room. Ultimately though you actually do know a lot of stuff, and a person can learn a great deal from you if they can get over not being the absolute sharpest knife in the knife holding thing. More importantly you're a genuine and earnest thinker, I don't always agree with where you end up, but the legitimacy of the journey is beyond question. All that to say lots of what you've said has stuck with me.
Oh yeah, Xel'Naga was a long time ago now, and that's a little disturbing to think about. But that's exactly why I have the concern. I'm anything but a know-it-all with a superiority complex, but I do know a lot, and I like to learn, and I have an insight a lot of people don't, and I'm usually clever, and I write exceptionally directly and as if I have an idea of what I'm talking about. That's always been a struggle and I know more know than I did back then about why I do those things or come across like that (hello, autism), but here's to hoping becoming a woman solves all that. :cheers:
...it's a joke. Well not really, but I made it a joke because I have to cope with it somehow.
Yeah, I imagine there are plenty of parallels in our experiences, though I must admit that it has never been clear to me how or why you managed to remain in the faith, I mean we did discuss it once, but it just doesn't make intuitive sense to me I guess.
This song sounds like if Incubus was Christian, not bad but i'm more of a tiny southern baptist church singing old Negro spirituals kind of guy.
I can't hear "Incubus" without "Talk Shows on Mute" playing in my head.
I guess at its most basic, I haven't left the faith because I see myself as having a task in a Kierkegaardian sense, and I exist in relation to God, and God as the object of my faith is not impacted by the people who surround me and the good or bad examples they set. At the end of the day I see myself before God, and if I'm to give an account of how I lived my life I don't think God is going to accept, "well I didn't do this or that because the people around me were awful and I thought that because they were awful the whole thing was bollocks". To me that is met with something like, "yeah but that was them and we're talking about you and me".
This song sounds like if Incubus was Christian, not bad but i'm more of a tiny southern baptist church singing old Negro spirituals kind of guy. I grew up with lots of that and if a sweaty 60 year old woman isn't doing some gravelly glossolalia infused ad-libs about how Jesus came late in the midnight hour over a crescendo of organs, rhythmic claps and tambourines it just doesn't feel like church to me lol.
Ha. :) I was always accused of lacking the indwelling of the Spirit because I didn't speak in tongues. Well, if those people saw me today they would surely feel vindicated! But yeah, there's a certain draw to that kind of church and having hung around Presbyterians the last little while, it's almost as if the Sunday mornings are dead in comparison.
Actually, I haven't attended a church in person since 2020. I'll have to try again at some point, but the anxiety...
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Well, for certain, you'll be the best dressed man there, even if the congregation doesn't know it.
:o :-X 8)
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Well, for certain, you'll be the best dressed man there, even if the congregation doesn't know it.
:o :-X 8)
What's this, I have clothes in a colour other than black?!
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Ha!
I look like an Anglican priest today
Black shoes
Houndstooth pants
Black long sleeve button up button collar shirt!
Very stylish…
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There is that old standard of posting where users relentlessly demand further inqury from each other as a means of diminishing counter arguments by sheer exhaustion and hair-splitting - the debate never actually settled.
This I found frustrating from the get-go, as the notions of edification and fellowship are redefined as endless argument and the champions of debate dominate, regardless their mannerisms and frequently seeming high-mindedness.
Traditions I have also, alas, followed at times.
Now, they are mostly gone or silent.
The local church, of course, remains the corpus of our responsibility, imo.
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There is that old standard of posting where users relentlessly demand further inqury from each other as a means of diminishing counter arguments by sheer exhaustion and hair-splitting - the debate never actually settled.
This I found frustrating from the get-go, as the notions of edification and fellowship are redefined as endless argument and the champions of debate dominate, regardless their mannerisms and frequently seeming high-mindedness.
Traditions I have also, alas, followed at times.
Now, they are mostly gone or silent.
The local church, of course, remains the corpus of our responsibility, imo.
With the words of Clint Eastwood, There's two kinds of people: Those who want to learn and those who want to win.
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but I can tell you flat out that I am an atheist and I do not believe that there is anything for me to be restored to.
On a scale from 0% to 100%, how sure are you that there is no Creator?
100% ?
Note, I deliberately use the word Creator, someone Who set the Universe in motion. It's not about religion. Quite a difference.
I'm genuinely not trying to overcomplicate this, but it really does depend on the characteristics of the creator that is being conceived, some seem more likely than others or at the very least some are impervious to falsification. Generally speaking though I'm as sure that there aren't any gods as I am that there are no psychics, telekinetics, reincarnated people or kung fu masters that can remotely knock you out using Qi...so idk 93.67221%
That's a quite high number, but fortunately you did not say 100%. Mine is based on pure intellectual reasoning and thus without religious argumentation and is about 0% based on what science is telling me.
1. Big Bang... so first there was nothing and then the nothingness exploded. As an atheist you must have a big faith to believe that, I say faith because it is impossible to proof. For people who believe in a Creator no problem at all, Creation ex nihilo is widely accepted in Judaism, Christianity, Islam.
2. Bangs don't create anything, they destroy. So this begs the question what's so special on the Big Bang that it created? Up to the point it created life from dead material. And all those poor scientists in their labs who have tried for decades to do the same, create life from dead material and failed. But a mysterious bang, unaware of itself (so we are told) by randomness did the job. Heck, that bang even created life that is aware of itself!
3. Complexity, the first cell, the 43 universal constants, I could go on. Natural selection -> mind blowing. Science and what it is doing is nothing more than the study how the Creator created.
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but I can tell you flat out that I am an atheist and I do not believe that there is anything for me to be restored to.
On a scale from 0% to 100%, how sure are you that there is no Creator?
100% ?
Note, I deliberately use the word Creator, someone Who set the Universe in motion. It's not about religion. Quite a difference.
I'm genuinely not trying to overcomplicate this, but it really does depend on the characteristics of the creator that is being conceived, some seem more likely than others or at the very least some are impervious to falsification. Generally speaking though I'm as sure that there aren't any gods as I am that there are no psychics, telekinetics, reincarnated people or kung fu masters that can remotely knock you out using Qi...so idk 93.67221%
That's a quite high number, but fortunately you did not say 100%. Mine is based on pure intellectual reasoning and thus without religious argumentation and is about 0% based on what science is telling me.
1. Big Bang... so first there was nothing and then the nothingness exploded. As an atheist you must have a big faith to believe that, I say faith because it is impossible to proof. For people who believe in a Creator no problem at all, Creation ex nihilo is widely accepted in Judaism, Christianity, Islam.
2. Bangs don't create anything, they destroy. So this begs the question what's so special on the Big Bang that it created? Up to the point it created life from dead material. And all those poor scientists in their labs who have tried for decades to do the same, create life from dead material and failed. But a mysterious bang, unaware of itself (so we are told) by randomness did the job. Heck, that bang even created life that is aware of itself!
3. Complexity, the first cell, the 43 universal constants, I could go on. Natural selection -> mind blowing. Science and what it is doing is nothing more than the study how the Creator created.
first, thank you this is the kind of thing I like to talk about.
You're right, I'm not at 100%, as a person i'm not 100% on much if anything, so if you also want to make an argument for remote kung fu powers there is room for that too lol ( just a joke not making fun of you).
1. As an atheist I don't believe that first there was nothing and then the nothingness exploded, as far as the science goes they can really only wind the physics clock back as far as there were some physics (at least the kind that we understand pretty well) to talk about, prior to that is unknown. What I believe is that I do not know and have no solid basis to have any sort of confidence about why there is stuff instead of no stuff, and that isn't anything like the only unanswered question/mystery in physics/cosmology (what happened to all the antimatter? what is dark matter yada yada yada). Physics and cosmology is super fun, and if you follow it you will find that for every discovery like the higgs boson scientist find something surprising or that lets us know that we don't quite know, like the recent discrepancies in the predicted and measured hubble constant. As an atheist I'm faced with accepting that there are things that I don't know and that the things that I do know are tentative and may be changed or updated with new information....While I love to speculate for fun and profit "i don't know" has to be the ultimate answer I land on when I in fact do not know.
I sometimes think that its possible that "the answer" to where did all of this come from might be one that doesn't have a satisfying answer to a thing that lives in the universe. God, for me doesn't stop the questions, ie nearly everything ended up as matter instead of antimatter of equal matter and antimatter that annihilated because God can do anything is of course a thing one could say, but its not really an answer to the anisotropy problem more than anything else posed without evidence or even internally coherent mathematics. Or to put it another way you could say that the precession of the parhelion of mercury is caused by God, but what does that really tell you....I'd argue nothing of any consequence.
2. Hopefully we won't get bogged down in what creation is, but bangs create all sorts of stuff, Some of the stuff that you are made of most likely is only created in big ole star explosions. Undoubtedly the big bang appears to have been a very special kind of inconceivably low entropy & high energy bang, but the idea that bangs and crashes and such don't result in anything new is very very wrong and if you gave it a go I'd bet you could think of several kinds of explosions that you use everyday for locomotion or energy or movie snacks. I don't usually associate big bang with life, that is to say that no one that I'd take seriously would say photosynthesis is explained by big bang full stop as other fields speak more specifically about that phenomena.....without going into it too much I don't believe that there is evidence that what living things are ultimately made of is anything but stuff that is itself not alive and that's not any more of a problem for me to accept than that birds aren't made up of flying humors or that the sun isn't made of phlogiston or hotness. If you aren't proposing that life has some non material spark, that is grass and ducks and humans alike all have some supernatural quintessence that animates them outside of the mechanics of their rare arrangements of material stuff then I can't imagine how my view of life is significantly different than yours. I don't know how life got started and neither do you, but again merely invoking God doesn't answer a single question and so far in the ways that science has found the mechanism behind this or that thing it has yet to require God, I don't think you get to say well science discovered that the sun is fusion powered therefore they now know how God makes stars hot because the addition of God does nothing to add to the scientific explanation it just swoops in to take some indistinct credit.
3. I mean would it make any sense to say that because you don't know how the translation lookaside bus works that the only conclusion left to draw is that God makes it work? For me when I don't know , I just don't know, I mean again I enjoy speculation perhaps more than the next guy, but the reason why God and Qi and gremlins don't move me is because they don't explain anything they are placeholders for explanations, but I already have a placeholder it's called not knowing a thing.
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Indeed, we don't know, what is left is imagination and as a number guy I am deeply impressed with probability calculation. A few quotes from my notes,
Sir Fred Hoyle
The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.
Hoyle compared the random emergence of even the simplest cell to the likelihood that "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein." Hoyle also compared the chance of obtaining even a single functioning protein by chance combination of amino acids to a solar system full of blind men solving Rubik's Cube simultaneously. [1]
A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing-747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there?
The human genome is made up of DNA, which has four different chemical building blocks. These are called bases and abbreviated A, T, C, and G. In the human genome, about 3 billion bases are arranged along the chromosomes in a particular order for each unique individual. To get an idea of the size of the human genome present in each of our cells, consider the following analogy: If the DNA sequence of the human genome were compiled in books, the equivalent of 200 volumes the size of a Manhattan telephone book (at 1000 pages each) would be needed to hold it all.
It would take about 9.5 years to read out loud (without stopping) the 3 billion bases in a person's genome sequence. This is calculated on a reading rate of 10 bases per second, equaling 600 bases/minute, 36,000 bases/hour, 864,000 bases/day, 315,360,000 bases/year.
Storing all this information is a great challenge to computer experts known as bioinformatics specialists. One million bases (called a megabase and abbreviated Mb) of DNA sequence data is roughly equivalent to 1 megabyte of computer data storage space. Since the human genome is 3 billion base pairs long, 3 gigabytes of computer data storage space are needed to store the entire genome. This includes nucleotide sequence data only and does not include data annotations and other information that can be associated with sequence data.
Source: http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/faq/faqs1.shtml
At least it was there once.
Carl Sagan estimated that the chance of life evolving on any given single planet, like the Earth, is one chance in 1x102,000,000,000 [that is one chance out of 1 followed by 2 billion zeroes] (1973, p. 46). This figure is so large that it would take 6,000 books of 300 pages each just to write the number.
Etc.
For me the question is not if there is a Creator, there is, but what the Creator had in mind when He set our self maintaining Universe in motion and let it run. We can't know, except by revelation.
A lighthearted joke to conclude.
One day a group of Darwinian scientists got together and decided that man had
come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one Darwinian to go and
tell Him that they were done with Him.
The Darwinian walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no longer
need you. We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous
things, so why don't you just go on and get lost."
God listened very patiently and kindly to the man. After the Darwinian was done
talking, God said, "Very well, how about this? Let's say we have a man-making
contest." To which the Darwinian happily agreed.
God added, "Now, we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days
with Adam."
The Darwinian said, "Sure, no problem" and bent down and grabbed himself a
handful of dirt.
God looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt!!!!"
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Indeed, we don't know, what is left is imagination and as a number guy I am deeply impressed with probability calculation. A few quotes from my notes,
Sir Fred Hoyle
The notion that not only the biopolymer but the operating program of a living cell could be arrived at by chance in a primordial organic soup here on the Earth is evidently nonsense of a high order.
Hoyle compared the random emergence of even the simplest cell to the likelihood that "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein." Hoyle also compared the chance of obtaining even a single functioning protein by chance combination of amino acids to a solar system full of blind men solving Rubik's Cube simultaneously. [1]
A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing-747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there?
The human genome is made up of DNA, which has four different chemical building blocks. These are called bases and abbreviated A, T, C, and G. In the human genome, about 3 billion bases are arranged along the chromosomes in a particular order for each unique individual. To get an idea of the size of the human genome present in each of our cells, consider the following analogy: If the DNA sequence of the human genome were compiled in books, the equivalent of 200 volumes the size of a Manhattan telephone book (at 1000 pages each) would be needed to hold it all.
It would take about 9.5 years to read out loud (without stopping) the 3 billion bases in a person's genome sequence. This is calculated on a reading rate of 10 bases per second, equaling 600 bases/minute, 36,000 bases/hour, 864,000 bases/day, 315,360,000 bases/year.
Storing all this information is a great challenge to computer experts known as bioinformatics specialists. One million bases (called a megabase and abbreviated Mb) of DNA sequence data is roughly equivalent to 1 megabyte of computer data storage space. Since the human genome is 3 billion base pairs long, 3 gigabytes of computer data storage space are needed to store the entire genome. This includes nucleotide sequence data only and does not include data annotations and other information that can be associated with sequence data.
Source: http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/faq/faqs1.shtml
At least it was there once.
Carl Sagan estimated that the chance of life evolving on any given single planet, like the Earth, is one chance in 1x102,000,000,000 [that is one chance out of 1 followed by 2 billion zeroes] (1973, p. 46). This figure is so large that it would take 6,000 books of 300 pages each just to write the number.
Etc.
back before we knew that the sun was fusion powered its temperature and longevity was absolutely nonsensical. When we started measuring the neutrino flux from the sun it seemed like our sun might be much older than possible, until we learned something neat about kinds of neutrinos ( I know I use the sun as an example alot but the story of how we learned about the sun is a pretty mind blowing epic tale imo). The point is we still don't know how life began, but we do know a whole heck of alot more about things like self organizing systems than we did in hoyle's time. I don't exactly now how hoyle arrived at his stats, but he could not have been factoring in any knowledge we have gained since his time. Regardless of that I would be extremely skeptical of such a broad conclusion by a modern day biologist because we still don't know enough to properly put margins around biogenesis to arrive at anything so broad with a high degree of confidence. All that to say that however Hoyle arrived at his conclusion even if he reasonably and meticulously factored in the state of the art biology of his day he had a whole heck of alot of missing pieces, and we still do.
EDIT: I guess I didn't directly address your 747 junkyard analogy, so I will because you thought it was good enough to take the time to post it so I should take the time to respond. It must be asked ,what evolutionary/biological process is this tornado supposed to be analogous to? Is it the very first cell? the very first self strand of RNA? If i'm remembering correctly the oldest fossils are stromatolites, which are thought to be the leavings of fully formed single celled organisms, but I do not know that there are many if any biologists that are suggesting that they just burst forth one dy fully formed and that was the beginning of life because we don't actually know. I would go as far as to say that the most common hypotheses suggest that it was probably a process that began with simpler things that developed over time into the first organisms not a single abrupt tornado-like event, so in that way the analogy doesn't describe the sort of thing that is hypothesised. The other issue is that 747's aren't like organisms, there is no self organizing chemistry involved in a 747. That is unlike many organic chemicals there are not components of a 747 that would organize into structures or molecules or anything but a pile of nuts and bolts if you brought them in proximity with each other, but there are many organic compounds that do behave in that way, this begins to put some margins around the randomness. Maybe to put it another way if the components of the 747 were naturally magnetized such that their poles biased them toward certain configurations over others it would change the likelihood of certain configurations given random turbulence/agitation/mixing. Additionally when speaking of randomness in the physical world sometimes it matters what the random forces are that are acting upon our target, that is for our purposes here a tornado is a random agitator and an earthquake is a random agitator but the configurations of the material affected by these 2 phenomena will be biased by the kinds of things that tornadoes do as opposed to the kinds of things earthquakes do. For instance you might be surprised if after an earthquake you find directional or swirl patterns in your corn field and likewise you might be surprised if after a tornado you find that the main road is perfectly split and shifted 5 feet to the west. When I see arguments like yours I cannot help but wonder how you can fully recognize that our universe and the forces within them are bounded, that there are laws if you want to argue for God, but when you begin to talk about say biology or cosmology you don't seem to be able to recognize that underlying and interacting laws also provide bounds in scientific propositions ...that even complex and intricate patterns should be expected in random events especially as you increase the sample size. I just get the impression that you may not be appreciating some of the implications of randomness and large numbers in the context of the physical world....but maybe you are, i'd be interested in some more specific examples of impossibilities as you see them regarding biology and cosmology.
With Sagan i'd like to check out the math just to see how he got there, but I can't imagine how it would be less speculative than the drake equation. I'm not sure that as stated it even works because I doubt he was just counting earthlike planets which might change that calculus up a bit. but thats all sort of beside the point though because there are probably a 100 billion or so planets just in our galaxy which itself is probably 1 of trillions of galaxies so that's plenty of chances for life even given those long odds. I don't think there is anything wrong with being awed by these numbers and scales that we use to describe facets of our reality, but Just because there are numbers it does not mean that a calculation is not speculation, it may be a useful kind of speculation that allows us to more precisely speculate but its still speculation.
For me the question is not if there is a Creator, there is, but what the Creator had in mind when He set our self maintaining Universe in motion and let it run. We can't know, except by revelation.
A lighthearted joke to conclude.
One day a group of Darwinian scientists got together and decided that man had
come a long way and no longer needed God. So they picked one Darwinian to go and
tell Him that they were done with Him.
The Darwinian walked up to God and said, "God, we've decided that we no longer
need you. We're to the point that we can clone people and do many miraculous
things, so why don't you just go on and get lost."
God listened very patiently and kindly to the man. After the Darwinian was done
talking, God said, "Very well, how about this? Let's say we have a man-making
contest." To which the Darwinian happily agreed.
God added, "Now, we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days
with Adam."
The Darwinian said, "Sure, no problem" and bent down and grabbed himself a
handful of dirt.
God looked at him and said, "No, no, no. You go get your own dirt!!!!"
well, yes that is amusing. You seem to understand that we don't know enough about how life works much less how it started to answer the biogenesis question, but you find arguments that would require such knowledge to be accurate compelling. In my book this is bad reasoning, or at the very least mistaking interesting speculation for proof. You say you are a numbers man, but are you also a falsification and evidence man....I am, and short of that i'm an "I don't know" man. Newton's gravitation math worked, heck he created (or also created) some of the most powerful mathematical tools of all time, but observation, that is evidence is what allowed us to say with confidence that he was describing reality reasonably well, but it also told us that he didn't have the whole picture. Do we need to go into detail about the observations that we do or do not have for you to concede that Hoyle and Sagan face the same issue? As a bit of a challenge can you tell me anything falsifiable about DNA by invoking God? Again I doubt it, and that is a problem for me, God doesn't provide any useful explanation or information .
Question, do you believe that there is any randomness in the universe or is it all determined by God? If there is some randomness then how and where does that come into play. like how noise tolerant did God make the universe? How do you determine when something is inexplicable due to a lack of information as opposed to it being simply explained by invoking God?
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I think the great cosmic joke is man thinking he has some moral right to know everything.
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I think the great cosmic joke is man thinking he has some moral right to know everything.
Perhaps many people do feel that way, but I think its extremely difficult to study the history and development of human knowledge and have any confidence that everything can even be known let alone that we have some right to it . I suppose i'm partial to the 20th century being born when I was, but when I first began to understand the work of folks like Goedel's and Schrodinger it struck me that perhaps the un-knowableness and mystery that had been asserted or prophesied in the past had been codified and mathematically proven,the limitations of the tool popped out of the tool itself. It allowed us to peek behind the curtain of intuition at human scale and learn deep truths about the mechanics of the universe and possibly let us see the limits of what can be known...which I guess makes sense as a ruler is useful in part precisely because it tells you exactly what its limits are...Idk man just saying that the entitlement you are describing isn't an inevitable condition and i'd argue that if a person pays attention to what we believe we know and how we came to know it then there is little reason to believe that knowing everything is even possible in principle.