Prove God Exists - Act Three

[FearlessLeader2]

Ok, use it to prove the ToE. That's absurd enough for me.

 

[CurtSibling]

I say creation is grounded in fable completely - silly stories about a garden and an apple?

It might impress some awestruck dark-age peasants, buy not the modern man.

At least evolution theory is an attempt to explain things as they are on Earth.

There is no evidence whatsoever for the creation theory, save what men have fabricated in a book.

 

[CurtSibling]

That said, I should mention that a theory is a theory.

Creation and Evolution are in different spheres.

 

[Plotinus]

Read it again. God did not lie, one of his angels put a lying spirit in the mouths of Ahab's favored prophets. God sent the truth, of His strong disfavor of Ahab, to Ahab via Micaiah. Ahab ignored the prophet he hated, the one who told him the uncomfortable truth, and listened instead to the lying prophets God's angel deceived to deliver Ahab into death in battle. Had he listened to Micaiah, and hearing of God's disfavor, changed his ways, his rule might have been longer and happier.

As it stood, everything God warned Ahab about happened precisely as He warned Ahab it would.

Once again, people who skim fail to heed the context, and end up confused.

According to the story, God asked one of his spirits to be "a lying spirit" in the mouths of all of King Ahab's prophets, so that they would tell him that he would win the forthcoming battle when in fact he would lose. A spirit stepped forward and did exactly that.

You are going to have show why asking your minions to mislead someone is not as morally dubious as lying. Hitler didn't personally murder anyone but we still hold him largely accountable for the Holocaust. If God instructs his angels to lie, I think that the blame for the lie falls largely on God.

The story states that the prophet Micaiah, however, received a truthful spirit who told him what had happened. Micaiah therefore stands before Ahab and reveals the deception. Ahab is not happy and orders Micaiah to be put in prison until he, Ahab, returns from the battle; Micaiah comments that this is unlikely. Ahab then goes off to the battle and duly perishes.

So the point is this. First, God attempts to mislead Ahab. However, he inexplicably permits a prophet to reveal to Ahab that he had been deceiving him. But Ahab ignores this revelation and does what God had planned anyway. The story is very peculiar. If God wanted Ahab to believe that he would win the battle, why did he permit Micaiah to see the truth and to tell it to Ahab? Ahab did not believe Micaiah. So what was the point of having Micaiah deliver his prophecy? Moreover, if Ahab wasn't going to believe anyone who told him that he would lose the battle, why go through with the deception in the first place? God might as well not have arranged any prophecy at all, truthful or otherwise, and Ahab would have done what he wanted anyway.

God does not come out this story in a very good light. Most Christians of even a vaguely liberal hue would be quite happy to regard it simply as a bit of old myth from a time when the Hebrews didn't, as yet, have a very developed understanding of God's ethical character. Only fundamentalists have to twist around to try to interpret it in a way that excuses God from misleading people unnecessarily. I repeat: only fundamentalists read the Bible in this way. Those who oppose religious people on this forum ought to understand that and not tar them all with the same brush.

Oh, and start an Origen fan club? No need. It's called the Orthodox Church - even if they don't know it!

 

[onejayhawk]

Some things never change. Perfection and Fearless are still at it, with neither ceding any validity to anything. :tipshat: Carry on gentlemen.

My opinion is that there are valid parallels between the scientific theory and The Genesis account. I further believe that this is because someone in the pre-written period had a vision of what actually happened, and set it down in story form, which passed largely intact from patriarch to patriarch til Moses or a scribe of that period set it down on vellum. We could discuss the veracity of storytelling in a nonwriting culture, but there are enough PhD Thesis for that.

God made the world, and showed how he did it, after a fashion. Our understanding is imperfect, but then so is everything else. After all Kipling's 6 blind men could not describe the elephant they all inspected.

J

 

[CurtSibling]

Some things never change.

Indeed.
Some people never give any proof of a god, but expect the human race to bow regardless.

Amusing.

God made the world, and showed how he did it, after a fashion. Our understanding is imperfect, but then so is everything else. After all Kipling's 6 blind men could not describe the elephant they all inspected.

I could say there is no god and the world was created by natural cosmic forces?
After all, how do we really know at our primitve level of space exploration?
I have no evidence to back my ideas about the universe - So I make no arrogant claims about the universe.

But what justifies the creationist, religious stance?
Perhaps some sermon delivered by a...gasp!...human?

Well!
At least science is firmly rooted in the real, solid world - Flawed as it may be at times.

Let's face the cold facts.
The genesis fable carries no proof or anchor in the real world -
But so many still would die for it - That is beyond the pale!
To me, that represents and infantile rejection of adulthood and the real world.
Like a person who refuses to disbelieve in santa, beacause he wants an Xmas present.

Creationism?
Only those who seek more than a mundane life offers would believe what are obviously methaphoric stories at best.

PS
The anecdotal Kipling statement carries no relevance, so no comment on that.

 

[Perfection]

Ok, use it to prove the ToE. That's absurd enough for me.

Woah, Woah, Woah, I never said I could "prove" anything with it, I said I can find correspondances between them as much as you can with whatever idea you have.

God symbolizes two things, conscienceness and nature

Anywho, take your accounting for it which you posted awhile ago, when it says god did something nature did it by standard laws O' Physics when god made a guy do something or talked to a guy its thier concienceness. Standard laws of physics includes evolution. That's it in a nutshell.

 

[FredLC]

God made the world, and showed how he did it, after a fashion. Our understanding is imperfect, but then so is everything else. After all Kipling's 6 blind men could not describe the elephant they all inspected.

Jay, "God did it" is exactly what blind men would say about the elephant. An easy explanation for a problem that they could not crack very well.

Regards .

 

[Birdjaguar]

...what blind men would say about the elephant. An easy explanation for a problem that they could not crack very well.

IMHO God does not have a place in the blind men and the elephant story, but it is a very apt analogy for most of Curt's threads. The atheists are wrapped around the very solid legs, the theists struggle with a squirming trunk, and the agnostics dangle from the tail hoping not to get **** on. In spite of all their ranting, or perhaps because of it, none of them can even conceive of a single beast, let alone see the elephant.

 

[Quentin]

I think it would be more like this: The theists are holding on to a squirming thing which after some thought they all conclude to be some sort of trunk. The atheists and agnostics however either do not feel any squirming thing or can't find any reason to hold onto it and therefore ask the theists to give them proof of the squirming thing and that it indeed is a trunk.

 

[CurtSibling]

Clever analogy, Birdjaguar!

But it assumes that a god exists.
Hence the atheists would deny there were a pachyderm there at all!

 

[Birdjaguar]

No, it only assumes that an elephant exists and none of the parties involved can see the "big picture". You are right, the atheists say there is no elephant, it's only a stump as tall as I can reach; it can't be taller (bigger) because I cannot reach higher until I build a ladder.

The situation is not unlike the scientists who are trying to link quantum mechanics to gravity in a unified theory. Only they cooperate more than atheists and theists do. They all however, do assume that the elephant (a unified theory) does actually exist.

 

[FredLC]

BJ, what if there is truly only the stump? If we can see no larger than it, why assume that it is an elephant at all?

Unless, as I said, we act like the blind man - we fill what we don't know with our imagination without having good reason to do it except that we wish things were that way.

Regards .

 

[Birdjaguar]

BJ, what if there is truly only the stump? If we can see no larger than it, why assume that it is an elephant at all?

To carry the analogy one step further, The blind men are limited in their "tools", and without sight, so touch, taste, smell, hearing are all they have to work with. They assume that there is no more, because "I cannot touch taste smell or hear beyond my reach". Terribly unscientific. Obviously new tools are needed. Science has never let itself be hamstrung by limiting itself to a static toolkit. How did we get past atoms into the subatomic world? To say that the stump is all there is is like saying the atom is the smallest particle or our solar system the only solar system.

Each of our groups of blind wise men are asking the wrong questions. The theists are asking "How does this confirm my belief?" The agnostics are asking "Does this sway the evidence towards the theists or the atheists?" and the atheists are asking "Show me the proof."

Nobody is even looking for the elephant. To find an elephant would destroy all their neatly constructed tightly controled worlds.

The phyicists know the elephant is there (somewhere) and they are the only ones building the tools to describe it. Some theists believe there is an elephant, but their tools are personal and not readily transferable to others.

 

[FredLC]

To carry the analogy one step further, The blind men are limited in their "tools", and without sight, so touch, taste, smell, hearing are all they have to work with. They assume that there is no more, because "I cannot touch taste smell or hear beyond my reach". Terribly unscientific. Obviously new tools are needed. Science has never let itself be hamstrung by limiting itself to a static toolkit. How did we get past atoms into the subatomic world? To say that the stump is all there is is like saying the atom is the smallest particle or our solar system the only solar system.

Hehehehe. And here lies the error in your argument. While it certainly is horribly unscientific to state that "the stumb is all that it is", even more unscientific is to say that there is something there, and even worse, to claim even the slightest bit of knowledge about it - specially evoking some supernatural nature to it.

The eminently reasonable stance is to acknowledge the high probability that there is something more out there, and extrapolate that "it" is something that resemble the dynamics of what is known.

Anything that differ from that scenario is dependent of a rather convincing amount of evidence to achieve credibility - what is, by the way, exactly what this thread is about.

Each of our groups of blind wise men are asking the wrong questions. The theists are asking "How does this confirm my belief?" The agnostics are asking "Does this sway the evidence towards the theists or the atheists?" and the atheists are asking "Show me the proof."

As you can see, atheists are asking no questions. And they do that exactly because unreasonable elocubrations don't really excite a critical mind.

Nobody is even looking for the elephant. To find an elephant would destroy all their neatly constructed tightly controled worlds.

As I said, assuming that there is an elephant there is a wrong approach. We first have to collect data that suggests an elephant; only than it can be considered a possibility.

The phyicists know the elephant is there (somewhere) and they are the only ones building the tools to describe it. Some theists believe there is an elephant, but their tools are personal and not readily transferable to others.

Yeah, they can't see it, taste it, smell it, intelectualize it, nor excrutinate it in any sort of way, yet they know its there. Looks like the given groups aren't looking impartially for knowledge - they just look for confirmations, wheter they are right or not in their knowledge.

Finish your tools first, than show the world what you can build. A much more efficient approach.

Regards .

 

[King Alexander]

Nobody is even looking for the elephant. To find an elephant would destroy all their neatly constructed tightly controled worlds.

Even if I'd find an elephant(the elepahant's name is god), I woulnd't worship him. Only a very selfish and stupid god would want from "unworthy/unperfect" creatures(humans) to worship him.

 

[Blasphemous]

Though I do agree with you KA, I think most believers worship their deity because they believe this is the way to let the deity know what they want/feel/think/need, and not because they think the deity actually wants them to worship it.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Hehehehe. And here lies the error in your argument. While it certainly is horribly unscientific to state that "the stumb is all that it is", even more unscientific is to say that there is something there, and even worse, to claim even the slightest bit of knowledge about it - specially evoking some supernatural nature to it.

I would not and have not characterized our elephant friend as god or supernatural. Its nature is yet to be discovered. Is there a contradiction between your above statement and the quote that follows? The above states that it is more unscientific to say that there is something there and even worse to claim the slightest knowedge of it, and below you say it is OK to acknowledge the high probablility that something does exist and to extrapolate it from what we currently know?

The eminently reasonable stance is to acknowledge the high probability that there is something more out there, and extrapolate that "it" is something that resemble the dynamics of what is known.

I don't disagree, but past discoveries tend to prove our logical extrapolations woefully indequate.
The world looks flat and isn't.
The earth appears to be the center of the universe and isn't
Matter appears solid, but is mostly empty space
At the quantum level, nothing may be real
We think we are in charge when our genes may have the upper hand

To extrapolate only from what we know, limits our vision and makes us the blind "unwise" men. It's like palning the next war based on the last one. We all know how well that works.

As you can see, atheists are asking no questions. And they do that exactly because unreasonable elocubrations don't really excite a critical mind.

Your lawyering is showing through. Scientific progress is all about asking questions. Not just any question, but the questions that push further into the frontier, into the unknown. In fact, the inability of all the extremist positions to ask critical questions is the reason they are dead ends in the search for knowledge and truth. The have found it already, end of story. pretty silly if you ask me.

As I said, assuming that there is an elephant there is a wrong approach. We first have to collect data that suggests an elephant; only than it can be considered a possibility.

A book learning approach. The edge of knowledge is a chaotic place and it's those who dare to venture into it without "adequate" preparation that make the discoveries that set the direction for the future.

Yeah, they can't see it, taste it, smell it, intelectualize it, nor excrutinate it in any sort of way, yet they know its there. Looks like the given groups aren't looking impartially for knowledge - they just look for confirmations, wheter they are right or not in their knowledge.

I agree.

Finish your tools first, than show the world what you can build. A much more efficient approach.

You'll never get there. Like Cortez, you have to burn your ships before you leave the beach.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Even if I'd find an elephant(the elepahant's name is god), I woulnd't worship him. Only a very selfish and stupid god would want from "unworthy/unperfect" creatures(humans) to worship him.

If we find the elephant, what we do with him/it is a whole other question. Some will want to worship him. So what?

 

[Birdjaguar]

Oh, and start an Origen fan club? No need. It's called the Orthodox Church - even if they don't know it!

Thanks, I know little about the orthodox church and will explore it now.