“I’m an engineer. I apply science to create things. I build a machine, set it in motion, and from that starting point & rules behavior emerges. I do not build the machine “mid-flight”...”
You are an engineer. Maybe God is an AUTHOR.
“There is nothing wrong with looking at the consequences of something happening and deducing the history thereof. Of course science can investigate history: we can look at how things are, look at how things behave now, and conclude the same rules governing behavior now would, given sensible starting conditions, produce things the way they are now.”
You seem utterly oblivious to the point. You ASSUME a mechanical process that involves no input from God, and then make deductions based on your assumption. But the assumption that God is an engineer who built a machine and then let it run mechanically without any input from him is YOUR assumption.
You can make that assumption and proceed from there if you wish, but you cannot complain that God is a liar because He doesn’t submit to your rules.
It’s not about “my rules”. I’m not asserting “my rules” at all. I never said God doesn’t interact with his creation.
If you’re going to accuse me of such, you’d better start quoting my posts.
I’m asserting there is a truth of what the universe is and how it functions, and that what it is & how it works speaks much of its creator - a wonderous story indeed.
I’m asserting that the act of creating the starting point of the universe was absolutely and totally a matter of input from God. To initiate such a wondrous creation was absolutely a work of divine brilliance.
I _will_ call God a liar if His creation was designed to look like something it isn’t, for the purpose of deceiving me of the truth, and punishing me for accepting as real what I perceive.
Does the Moon exist? you’ve never been there, you’ve never touched it. Is it just a painting on a backdrop? Can you praise God for the brilliant creation of the Moon when you have no reason to believe it exists other than Moon-indicating photons happen to strike you eyes when you look in a certain direction? What grandeur do the stars proclaim if the light seemingly from them was set in motion without them?
Does God create fiction? or fact? Are we living in a divine _Truman_Show_, all things faked to see how we react?
Tell me: what is real? how can you trust God if nothing is?