Lack of Divine Intervention

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Are you able to clarify the thought process that lead you to that hypothesis? I accept that it is one possible answer but I'd quite like to understand why YOU think this.

 

And I pity those who, for whatever reason, cannot accept that there really is something to this faith because you can't quantify or replicate or verify it. The very evidence is anecdotal, and only found in the testimony of those who've been there. Darwin's work is also based off his observations after 20 years in the Galapagos Islands. Would his work have the same credibility if he had spent that 20 years in the pub, drinking ale and playing darts?

Granted, but from your posts, I detect Antitheism--the belief that Religion is bull****.

Fact: There are millions of us that actually believe in the teachings of our religion.

Fact: Even though they are not "Scientifically Verifiable or quanitifiable", they are still our beliefs.

The closer you look at them and experiment with them on your own, the more sense they will make. But if you refuse that leap of faith, then you are cutting yourself off from that knowledge so that you can laugh at us. Who is the hypocrite here?

Where would be the need for faith if that evidence was there and incontrovertable? Ont of the key tenets of Christianity is faith...

I think the real isnult is that you really didn't try very hard on that one. It's like the mother joke. Crude and unoriginal...

Actually, Agnosticism, as I understand it, is an acknowledgement that there IS something out there, but we have no blinking clue what it really is, so they won't commit to a religion...

Exactly. Science has its way, faith has its way. On some level, the two will always be separated...

That sounds to me like "How did God do it?" We've discussed that in the Science vs Religion thread. The answer will not be complete until scientific theories are fully reconciled with Religious faith.

It is not the words in the holy books that convince someone to one religion over another, but the Spirit that is with you as you read. There have been links I've seen that when I read them, the Spirit tells me that they are not right (example, the links in the "Gospel of Judas" thread). I have found that when I study the doctrine of my faith that the spirit tells me it is true.

While I have my conception of God, and likely more specific than what NOG is putting forth, it is secondary to the laws He has given us.

Have you looked at the "Conceptions and Misconceptions" thread? that doesn't take much anymore. But truthfully, if you are Christian and actively seek to learn and obey the teachings and doctrine, you are well on your way.

That's the best we can do on our own. But we can suggest that you investigate our claims on your own, with some faith in our honesty, and accept our starting points. We believe that if you truly do this, you too will know that it is true, but you, like us will not be able to prove it. All you will be able to do is add your own anecdotal evidence for this.

We know that God created the universe. We don't know how. Science is filling in some of those blanks, but it's not perfect.

It sounds like it is referring to the practice (from both sides) to place science and Religion at opposite sides in a dispute, when they are simply evaluating the same thing from differring perspectives. Creating conflict tends to polarize the camps, and really doesn't help either side...

 

Oh for God's sake, Gnarff (no pun intended)...

No, we DON'T know that God created the universe, Gnarff. You may BELIEVE he did, but you don't and probably will never KNOW, and you're a fool to think otherwise. Why is it that religious zealots can't grasp (or refuse to admit) that simple destinction? Faith does not equal fact! I believe God created the universe, but can I prove it? Do I know for sure? NO - I, unlike you and Nog, don't claim to know something I couldn't possibly.

What is it with you guys?

 

What a lovely condescending tone. "The poor ignorant pagans refuse to see the truth that's plain as the nose on their face!"

As for the rest of this stuff, .

 

Re Agnosticism:

Somewhat correct, if you get rid about the part that we ackowledge that there is something out there.

There are two forms of Agnosticism, weak and strong. A strong agnostic meets all the criteria of the weak agnostic, but the weak doesn't meet all the criteria of a strong. Basically, weak agnosticism is saying "I do not know if God, god, and/or gods exist." It is a personal statement and makes no assumptions upon others. Strong agnosticsm goes a step further in that it says: "The existence of God, god, and/or gods is unknowable." Therefore strong agnosticism is a universal statement in that NO ONE can know about the existence of the divine. If you refer to agnosticism in general it is usually the weak form of, "I don't have a freaking clue if God exists or not, and I certainly don't have the slightest idea of what He/She/It is like if God does in fact exist."

 

@DMC, whoever called me Noggie-boy, and anyone else that wants to read it:
I didn't really think of that as name-calling, not in the derogatory sense, anyway. More like a distinctly unoriginal nick-name from someone who wasn't really trying that hard. No big deal, really.

@Drew:
So what are you, Drew? You've probably told us all before, but I don't remember.
As for God, well, why does everyone expect God to be totally infinite and completely incomprehensable? If there is a God, then He probably made Man. If God made man, why not make him capable of understanding Him? Also, nothing can be infinite in all ways. That is a contradiction.
Drew is also not the most logically sound person on this board, so his logical trains of thought may not make sense to all of us.

@DR:
And I'm telling you it isn't my job to prove it to you, just to tell you what I've seen and heard. Let me ask you something. If Darwin had studied the Galapagos Islands for 20 years and claimed to find a new species of dove there that had adapted itself to the islands by growing an oily cover on itself like a duck, but the islands had been destroyed by a volcanic eruption shortly after he left, would you ridicule him? Would you pester him for proof? All he has is his personal experience and maybe some drawings, which could have just been made up. There's no way to prove it to you, but it is still a matter of fact.
I have never let my intelectual curriosity fall to the wayside. I love astro-physicsm seeing all the wonders and tricks of the universe and finding out how they work. The difference between you and me is that I know the beginning of it all, and yes I mean I KNOW it. You may not, you may not believe me, but I do, and just like I can't prove I do, you can't prove I don't, so don't think you're any better than me. You're claiming as absolute truth something just as impossible to prove. When I say God did it, I mean that I may not no the exact processes that did it, but God was at the beginning of it all.

Just because you don't know something doesn't mean it can't be known. This is the kind of intelectual arrogance that drives me nuts. "Just because you can't prove it to me must mean that it is total bunk and nonsense." Are you really so arrogant as to believe that you know teh absolute fact on the matter? And if you aren't, then how can you say that I can't possibly know something?

@NonSequitur:
The last bit of that goes to you as well. How can you say it is impossible to know something? You don't know it, so you don't know if it is possible or not. If God revealed himself in all glory to one man, that man would know ABSOLUTELY that God was real, but couldn't prove it and no one else would. That doesn't change the fact that God is real and it doesn't mean that God is unknowable.

@HB:
Thank you for a rational question. Unfortunately I can't give you a scientific answer. I din't perform any experiments and I haven't taken any samples, but I can tell you that Christ has changed me. I have seen and felt His power and His Spirit. That is how I know, and that is all I can say on the matter. I hope that satisfies you.

@Gnarff:
Agnosticism, or maybe weak agnosticism as Aldeth calls it, is kind of the 'none-of-the-above' category for religious beliefs. If you don't know, then that's you. If you don't care, then that's you. If you have never thought about it, then that's you. If you just aren't sure which, then that's still you.

@DR again:
You missed it. I think what gnarff meant was WE know. You may not, but we do. Why do so many atheists/agnostics/anti-religionists refuse to admit that it is possible we know things you don't?

@Susipaisti:
That was only one possibility, and there are plenty of people that fall into that category. I would bet that most people who are actually agnostic are so because they have never given religion, any religion, a first thought, much less a second one. They are too busy, too bored, or too whatever to bother with it. That's the 'don't want to know' category.

 

The simple answer to that question is to us, you BELIEVE. Yes, to you, belief equates to knowledge. You say you have felt the touch of God in your lives. To you, the truth of God's existence is incontrovertible. To the non-believers of the world, however, this is not a fact.

You say that you KNOW. We say that you BELIEVE. We feel that if you did KNOW, then the truth would be plainly obvious to all of us. It isn't. I don't doubt your belief. I don't doubt that you have complete confidence that this belief is rooted in fact. It's just very difficult for someone who does not believe as you do to see it that way. I'm not trying to start an arguement with this, I'm just hoping it makes a little more sense to you now.

EDIT: One more thing:

I need help with this. I can see why you would say we would expect god to be infinitely sinful. But to say something is conditionally infinite, or limitedly infinite seems like an oxymoron to say the least.

[ April 18, 2006, 21:39: Message edited by: Aldeth the Foppish Idiot ]

 

Sorry, that is not something I can understand. I wish I did, but I can't relate to what you are saying.

 

You mean you've been spoon-fed religious rubbish and invented delusions to back this kind of thing up?
Religious people say non-believers need 'saving', but it's the other way round IMO. I actually find hardcore religious folk rather frightening .

 

Now now. Besides, delusions can be quite useful. I myself was meek as a mouse until I deliberately developed the delusion that I was confident. Being totally within the realm of my own mind, it became self-fulfilling, and now...well, judge for yourself. Of course, you could argue that I was merely deluding myself thinking I had the ability to control delusions, but again, look at the results. If it works, use it. The same goes for "delusions" of contact with the Spirit: if it has the same effect, what does it matter if it was real or not?

Ye bloddy hoo-mans always fear tha which ye d'not unnerstan'! 'Tis amazin' ye d'not still spook at yer own shadow.

EDIT:

'Tis not fer me ta decide, Oprah. Better ye be askin' Thalantyr than meself.

[ April 18, 2006, 22:23: Message edited by: Felinoid ]

 

If Christians are allowed to say that some old guy with a beard who wore stupid sandals, created the world and the universe, then kicked his feet up for the next so many thousand years, I think we non-believers should be able to say what we like .

Don't you reckon, Fel?

 

It's not intellectual arrogance, it's a desire to seek out truth for oneself. More power to you if you found it in a book; some of us won't settle for that. There's some good ideas in that book, certainly, but it's a work of humans, handed down and adapted by humans. I don't have enough faith in humanity's basic goodness to accept it as the whole and complete explanation.

This quote speaks more eloquently than I ever could.

Am I (and others) so arrogant that we believe you couldn't possibly be right? Of course not. I said as much, and in as many words - I don't know, and neither does anybody else. What that quote states plainly is that knowledge needs more than conception in order to be credible to others. Applying it to your statements, you're claiming something that is impossible to know or demonstrate to be true. If anyone is guilty of arrogance here, it's not the ones saying that nobody knows for certain.

As I have said earlier - you BELIEVE something to be true. If you want to claim that you KNOW it to be true, you need to be able to substantiate it somehow. Simply saying "I know I'm right" while labelling others as arrogant is one of the reasons why I find it difficult to engage in any sort of meaningful debate with you on this matter, NOG.

In closing - have your beliefs, have your experiences, and preach them to all who'll listen, certainly - but don't expect others to simply accept your word as proof. I'm not calling you a liar or a fool, NOG; I'm simply saying that you offer no proof. No measurables. Nothing except "I believe" and "I've seen" and "I know". While I'm sure it gives you great peace of mind to believe as you do, surely you can see why some find such exhortations objectionable when presented as undeniable knowledge and proof of an unassailable truth?

 

@NOG: if you can comprehend the infinite, you would be God. Regarding my religion.....I don't have one. The reason being that I refuse to "check my brain in at the door" to embrace a belief system that doesn't match my own. About my weak grasp of logic.....my minor in philosophy disagrees with you on that subject, kid.

 

Until it is experienced, it cannot be understood.

What is the problem here? You assume that if we believe something and have conviction in something other than science, that we've been spoonfed rather than experiencing things for ourselves. Your assumption is flawed. When you assume (ass/u/me), you make an ass out of u and me--and I don't need any help making an ass out of myself. I do that well enough whenever a pretty girl walks by...

If that's all you think of when Christianity is discussed, then you really don't understand what we've gone through. You presume that we accept this because we are too lazy to think for ourselves. That is, of course, a load of bull. You discount the fact that some of us just might have experience of being happier because we've obeyed the tenets of our faith.

Then why not look into the book and try it out for yourself? This way you get your own answers, and no longer have to rely on mine...

Perhaps you don't close your mind, but there are others that not only do that, but ridicule us for our faith.

But the fact that it is not quantifiable does not negate the reports of those that have a firm conviction in what they believe.

I have challenged my detractors to seriously look at what I am advocating and try to follow the teachings as an experiment. I haven't seen any takers, so don't complain about a lack of evidence until you have experimented as such.

But our evidence won't prove quat to anyone else. They need to find their own proof. The evidence is there, but it is only perceivable to the subject. Until you've seen it yourself, you won't understand...

 

Religon comes down to "Faith." I would much rather believe in something spiritual in my life than to spend it with the thought that when i perish all I wll do is rot in the ground into nothingness. If you can go through life like that then be my guest. To me God has always been like a pair of comfortable shoes. I love to wear them and they fit me but you wont find me trying to nail a pair on someone else.

 

Been there, done that once already. Might give it another look. It has a lot of good ideas about how to be a good person, certainly - but I don't trust it as an absolute authority. It doesn't meet the standard and burden of proof I need (and yes, that's "need", not "want").

But it DOES negate any claim of proof or known certainty (divorced from entirely subjective interpretations). That isn't to say it's worthless, only that you can't prove it, and therefore, that you can't know it for a fact - only for a belief.

Which, sadly, is what draws me back to something I've said at least twice already - people will read God into or out of anything if they want to. Proof, as I define and understand it, has no need for subjectivity or experience. That's why religion is based on faith and belief, not verifiable knowledge. That doesn't make it useless, as I've said, but it cuts the ground out from under anyone who claims the origins of the universe as a known fact.

On a side note, I think I do understand - to a point. I've experienced some truly beautiful moments (of revelation, of happiness and of sorrow) in my life. As wonderful as those have been, they do not prove anything to me except that there are points in life that stand out, and those ones were significant to me on a personal level. Where I see a significant moment, someone else might see deus ex machina.

[ April 19, 2006, 08:32: Message edited by: NonSequitur ]

 

The basic difference between a Christian and a Religous Fanatic is that a Christian may bore you to death trying to prove they are right but a Religous Fanatic will kill as many people as they can to prove they are right.

 

I never said your beliefs are total bunk and nonsense, as I share them to a degree. Your certainty that you KNOW this and your refusal to distinguish between faith and fact is what's bunk and nonsense. You keep bringing up "demons" as a possible explanation for how what you interpret as the supernatural could happen to a non-christian. Let me ignore how nutty that makes you sound for a sec and pose this question: what makes you so sure that it is has been God all this time - and not some demon - giving you these warm fuzzy feelings of confirmation of your faith? Wait wait, don't tell me...you KNOW. Right?

...says the kid who's spent the last 5 pages of this thread espousing on the incontrovertable FACT that God is behind everything.

Does anyone here know what the protocol is for submitting nominations for the most ironically hypocritical sentence of the year? Cuz' I think I got a winner over here.

My thanks go out to Aldeth and Nonseq for their eloquent responses - very well-worded and thoughtful. This in particular:

That's the crux of it right there. It's the whole telling people that they're wrong and then following up with "I'm right because I KNOW I'm right, and it's not my job to prove to you why" crap that makes agnostics/anti-religionists/whomever hostile towards people like Gnarff and Nog, because it insults our intelligence. It's along the same lines of a kid asking his parents why he can't do something, and his parents replying with "because I said so." It was frustrating as hell to hear that as a kid, imagine how it makes a grown man feel to be patronized like that by an equal. Again, if you could humble yourself enough to distinguish between fact and faith, and include that distinction when discussing your beliefs, no one would have a problem with you. Because what you're essentially saying is "Before we get started, let's make one thing clear: I'm already certain that your beliefs are wrong, and that I'm right. Now then, let's begin. The bible says..."

For the same reason you can't admit that your beliefs are just that - beliefs - and not facts.

Also, both Gnarff and Nog keep bringing up the arguement that if we just read the "book" and gave God a chance, all would be understood and ample proof provided. What you two fail to grasp is, many of us have done precisely that. Do you think that your detractors have all just stepped off the boat from Atheism-land or something, where religion has never touched them?

I went to Church every sunday from birth on up to the age of 13. I was in a bible study with members of my ward. I was in a cub and boy scouts troup that was run by my church. I'm a direct descendant of one of the original founding members of the mormon church, and more than half of the guys I knew growing up went on Mormon missions. I've read the bible and the book of Mormon. I attended two years of Morman seminary in high school. Since 13 I've attended mass MANY MANY times in Catholic, Baptist, and Episcopalian churches. I've even devoted time to look into Judaism and Buddhism (devil worshipers, I know). So I've given it ample chance, and guess what - nothing in my experience has proven either Gnarff or Nog correct. I found most organized religions - particularly the Christian ones - to be so contradictory and hypocritical that I'd rather keep a safe distance from all of them than - as Drew nicely put it - "check my brain at the door."

For people like Gnarff and Nog, their faith seems to be a perfect fit. It feels natural and right to both of you, and I'm happy for both of you that you've found fulfillment in the Bible's teachings. But what you fail to understand is, your faith is not a perfect fit for everyone and never will be. What fits like a glove to you will give carpal tunnel to someone else, and no amount of shoe-horning one's self into that glove is going to make it comfortable if it isn't the right fit to begin with. That's why your pleas for us to "just give it a try" are so hollow.

How you can be so confident that a 2000 year-old book that was interpreted, written and re-written by non-perfect human beings many times over the last two millenia (hence, who's to know how accurate it is) holds the answers to all the universe is completely beyond me. And answering that question with "I know because I KNOW" is a slap in the face, and it just makes people like me want to take that book and shove it somewhere the good Lord can't see it. Because you're arrogance is causing you to miss a grand opportunity to possibly convert somebody. We're all in this discussion because we're interested - not because we hate religion. Do you honestly think we don't WANT to see what you see? Do you really believe WE are the ones being closed minded?

[ April 19, 2006, 17:26: Message edited by: Death Rabbit ]

 

Wow DR - those are some really good points. Too bad we won't get a clear response from NOG or Gnarff though. I would like to echo DR's statement that not everyone from the non-religious camp were always godless people. My upbringing is different from DR's, but as far as the basics, the only real difference is he was raised Mormon and I was raised Catholic. I was an altar boy for about 10 years, meaning that yes, I went to mass every weekend (usually I served the 6:15 Saturday evening mass). I even continued to be involved in the Church to a lesser degree until I went to college.

Speaking of college I went to a Jesuit University. For God's sake (no pun intended) the philosophy and religious studies classes are taught by Catholic priests. One of the requirements that every student has to take (regardless of what their major is) is Religion I and Religion II, which are semester-long classes on the Old and New Testament, respectively. So it's not like I don't know anything about the Bible. Between my studies and 10 years as an altar boy, there probably aren't too many passages I haven't read or haven't had read to me. Moreover, I've studied the Bible enough that I've written papers on it. I'd argue that my knowledge of the Bible is probably more than the average weekly church goer, be he Catholic, Mormon, Baptist, Evangelical, whatever - pretty much anything in Christianity, because the basic tenets are the same regardless of what sub-set you happen to belong to. The point is, my failure to see things your way has nothing to do with my own ignorance.

 

I'll join the club of Well-Versed Religious Folk Who Disagree With Gnarff and NOG On This Issue, so long as I don't have to risk CTS by trying to make them realize that viewpoints other than their own are valid. I've given up on that a while ago.