Posted on 09/03/2023 10:10:00 AM PDT by daniel1212
All powerful - all good and all knowing...
I think I’ll cede the point, now that I looked again at my post #185. I now see my question might be interpreted as an accusation, which I don’t want to do.
I only hope people will consider their ways.
I understand what you are saying, in your wordy way. You are, in effect, stating the obvious (implying that I didn't already know or give sufficient consideration to these matters?) But the "net-net" (as the late-great Kevin Samuels was wont to say) of your posting is to simply demean the value of evidence / the Scientific Method, itself.
In your initial posting up above in which you questioned the meaning of my tag-line, you began by quibbling about the meaning of "extraordinary" - as though there could be much misunderstanding about that amongst us educated FReepers. You never validated the basic premise: That, as a claim becomes more and more "outrageous" (i.e., in contradiction to commonsense, lived experience, accepted wisdom, etc.), the supporting evidence had better become increasingly firm.
You never acknowledged that!
OF COURSE, misuse can occur amongst researchers, who are only human. But the basic premise is nonetheless true, right?
If you are unable to acknowledge that, then I must cast doubts upon your acting here in Good Faith. Or perhaps you are merely laboring under the Fallacy of the Demand for Perfection.
Regards,
“Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism… In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of bombardment. The crudest sentimentalism (such as Gaius and Titius would wince at) about a flag or a country or a regiment will be of more use. We were told it all long ago by Plato. As the king governs by his executive, so Reason in man must rule the mere appetites by means of the ‘spirited element.’ The head rules the belly through the chest.” — C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man
Always with the side-stepping with you!
Whenever I formulate a concise claim (e.g., "a friend would use every rhetorical tool at his disposal to help another friend; he would marshal the most-compelling evidence available; he would emblazon his Truth across the heavens, if he had the power!"), you never directly address it, but rather launch into a literary digression. Not at all off topic, but not concise, and not in direct answer to my queries. I would prefer that you respond to my questions with a Yes or a No, and with a minimum of quibbling.
QUESTION: Would you or would you not wish to provide the most-compelling evidence at your disposal in order to convince a loved one of some important truth?
If not: WHY not?
Would formulating important truths in as clear a manner as possible somehow degrade your friend's Free Will?!
Regards,
I'll remember those wise words the next time I find myself in a foxhole on a battlefield.
But to quote them here and now, in this austere drawing room environment, where we are attempting to calmly discuss certain differences of opinion and determine truth is... disingenuous, a deflection.
The excellent quote does NOT deny the value of the intellect (and, by extension, intellectual inquiry based upon Logic, hard evidence, etc.) - it merely distracts from it.
Can you now finally accept my tag-line?
Regards,
People are not rational creatures (on the whole).
People are creatures who rationalize.
There’s a difference between dispassionately identifying the a course of action, and actually *doing* it.
And dry logic doesn’t always get the job done.
Which is why there are so many smokers and motorized-scooter fatties anymore.
No it's not. It's to point out that the scientific model isn't followed anymore.
And in its place has come p-value cherry picking, fraud, deliberately poorly crafted studies funded and published to support pre-determined conclusions, and propaganda.
In your initial posting up above in which you questioned the meaning of my tag-line, you began by quibbling about the meaning of "extraordinary" - as though there could be much misunderstanding about that amongst us educated FReepers.
That goes back to the typo over savoir vs connaître .
Savoir is the fact, data knowledge. Connaître is familiarity, or knowing a place or person; for the present uses, God.
The success of physical models has led to the unwarranted philosophical belief that there is no God; that gods were only ignorant attempts to and account for mysterious natural phenomena; and that all of existence can be accounted for by reductionism within a worldview of a closed universe of only mathematically coherent and consistent physical causes.
You never validated the basic premise: That, as a claim becomes more and more "outrageous" (i.e., in contradiction to commonsense, lived experience, accepted wisdom, etc.), the supporting evidence had better become increasingly firm.
That's because that approach only works (with application to Occams' riding lawn mower) to minimize Type 1 category errors. It leaves you wide open to Type 2 Category errors.
The fracture point (returning to French verbs) is that the materialist skeptic says, "Prove to me to my satisfaction that God exists (and which 'god' anyway?), based on observation of natural phenomena, subject to methodological constraints on hat data is admissible and how it was gathered, to include everything down to chain of custody." In doing so, the atheist likes to project smugness rays at people in that "well, miracles are impossible, because ECREE" and they are secure in their knowledge that they can always hand wave a superior materialistic explanation for what is set before them, than any putative, known-in-advance-to-be-inferior, outmoded "religious" reason. And, if anything sufficiently out of the ordinary shows up, it can be handwaved away by "it violates the laws of nature; it *must* be false; and besides, the anecdotes underlying it can be dismissed as myth, legend, hysteria, fanaticism, wishful thinking, and besides, "not controlled conditions so we don't know it even happened in the first place."
The theists (and more specifically, the Jews and Christians, who have academic traditions, as opposed to say Muslims who account for everything by Inshallah, or the Eastern religions who approach things in an entirely different way (we *were* a dream, say the Hindus), have an entirely different set of questions. Insofar as they hold to the rationality of God, they are all for systematic study (originally to get to know God better, then for application and improved lifestyle, which has now degenerated into grifting and money grubbing), but they are also interested in *who* God is, and how he acts. And Christianity and Judaism both are originally concerned in how God acts in the world, interfering, as it were, in the realm of men (Abraham leaving his home at the direction of God, the Jews and the Passover and the plagues and death of the firstborn of Egypt; Christians with Jesus saying "If you do not believe me because of what I say, at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves" and of course the Resurrection.
But there is one other point. Yes, a literary reference. This is from Chesterton's Orthodoxy:
The question of whether miracles ever occur is a question of common sense and of ordinary historical imagination: not of any final physical experiment. One may here surely dismiss that quite brainless piece of pedantry which talks about the need for "scientific conditions" in connection with alleged spiritual phenomena. If we are asking whether a dead soul can communicate with a living it is ludicrous to insist that it shall be under conditions in which no two living souls in their senses would seriously communicate with each other. The fact that ghosts prefer darkness no more disproves the existence of ghosts than the fact that lovers prefer darkness disproves the existence of love. If you choose to say, "I will believe that Miss Brown called her fiance a periwinkle or, any other endearing term, if she will repeat the word before seventeen psychologists," then I shall reply, "Very well, if those are your conditions, you will never get the truth, for she certainly will not say it."
Recall the passage from Scripture about Jesus: "And he could do no mighty works there because of their unbelief." Miracles are not regular; by definition. One cannot compel them by setting up the initial conditions in a reproducible state, as the materialist has taught himself to do by dealing with the physical world. First, it is asserted that we are dealing with a sentient being: one who has "Free Will"; and if He says "you have to Trust Me first" then holding your breath until you turn blue won't do a thing, no matter how much you want to complain about irreproducibility.
Which goes back to the other point, about the skeptic being secure in the knowledge that "if it violates the laws of nature, it MUST be false." Never mind the obvious, that correlation is not causation, and that the Laws of Nature are generalizations based on observation under controlled conditions; science (properly performed) is still dependent on the data (the famous Feynman quote, "If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's WRONG"). But step back and look at it (for the sake of argument) from God's point of view, as it were. If God, or a prophet, were to declare "Behold my power! The Sun will rise in the East tomorrow!" -- people would either yawn, or laugh. Because the Sun always rises in the East "anyway": the skeptic uses the regularity as a proof God is not necessary to explain; the believer says it is evidence of how He created and sustains the world (which shades into metaphysics / theology). So what is God supposed to do? The only way to get our attention, is to do something which CAN'T be explained by ordinary means.
The skeptic would reply, "Well, there you go. That proves it's in bad faith, God should just do it out in the open, fairly." But the reason there is a mismatch there, is that God does not exist merely for the sake of satisfying the intellectual curiosity of a subset of highly-trained, run-into-a-ditch natural philosophers, for the sake of scoring dorm-room debating points. He has other plans and purposes. Which common sense ought to tell you is fairly obvious, since He is, well, you know, *GOD*. Secondly, the skeptic adds, how do you distinguish between WHICH gods? There are many miraculous accounts. if you accept one, you have to accept them all. ("So there!"). But this isn't true. That line of thought comes as a result of the skeptic having been trained in the rudiments of experimentation, the requirement of neutrality, and the assumption of equal a priori probabilities. And such is necessary, if one wants to make sure to conduct experiments as accurately as possible, without one's personal hunches affecting how the experiment is measured.
It never occurs to the skeptic, that choosing between true and false gods is not merely a lab experiment, with the requisite white coat and notebook. Still less that there is any guarantee, implicit or explicit, that all supernatural forces are equal, or equally to be trusted: that is a habit of thought brought in by dealing exclusively with natural phenomena which are impersonal. Most of the underlying assumptions from SCIENCE™! go out the window when transitioning from the physical sciences ("natural philosophy") to Theology. Not because (as is fondly imagined) because religion is too weak and incompetent to hold up under rigorous scrutiny; rather, because the tools of the scientist are too coarse-grained, and inapt, for dealing with subjects that have will, intention, and power; and are not only free from the "requirement" that they act the same way every time from initial conditions -- but they aren't even required to tell you if they're playing in your experiment at all.
It's not that it denigrates the Free Will; it's that it's not enough to necessarily overcome either bad habits, physiological addiction, insecurity, or sheer cussedness.
I can tell that the Christian god is not to your liking.
Is there ANY that you would accept as being the correct one? (or 2 or 3...)
Possibly; but it appears more an itch that cannot be scratched.
NOTHING seems to satisfy, and frustration seems to be growing.
Not finding an answer by their own effort; they demand those who HAVE found an Answer to give them a foolproof method of doing so.
Thomas Edison on the electric light bulb:
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Don't worry.
HE's going to.
Not to worry, because it would only be one of many in this thread.
GW did this TOO?
Quite possible.
Others seem to be as well.
You ARE kinda wordy!
Actually to be analogous you need to be bringing the person to want to believe in you, as in a covenanted relationship rather then not doing a particular things due to the motive of of self-preservation compelled by evidence he may not want. While appeal to the latter motive can initially have its place, even them the call is to believe as to enter into a relationship that will result in more than simply not doing something harmful to self.
And unless there is a deeper change in the heart of your hypothetical smoker, then he will likely go back to smoking despite the most compelling logic and forensic-level evidence against it, which he can even resent, and you for presenting it.
As said, the Bible shows that belief in God in the light of compelling evidence did not translate into willingly obedient faith, and your boot-camp world of instant punishment for every wrong choice as the means of solving the problem of evil would not either. Even old Pharoah was compelled to finally relent and heed Moses, but he quickly went back to his old ways when more space was given him.
A man like Dawkins can admit that there it is unlikely that evidence could convince him that there is a god, postulating he likely could explain such away, and the implicit faith of atheists, that of the universe will one day be found explainable by purely natural laws, goes alone with this, typically excluding a Creator even as a hypothesis. As does their wholesale rejection of changes in peoples heart and lives - from innumerable hymns to profound documentaries - as at least testifying to the supernatural.
Meanwhile, plenty more have a belief in God but which is not that of a relational life. But as history past and present shows, multitudes of conversions of spiritually seeking souls find enough evidence needed for persuasion in this spiritual realm, which extends beyond what the surgeon general says.
And as in marriage, a truly meaningful choice is one that is chosen above stiff competition. Truth in this realm is like a veiled women, not a cheap bare all, but with enough revelation to elicit further investigation of heart, and warranting, yet only those who enter into covenant will receive the fullest revelation. (Psalms 25:14; Exodus 33:18; John 14:21; Revelation 22:4)
With that I will leave you, this having taken enough precious time and energy with my stiff old fingers. And in which you have been unable to sustain a compelling moral argument against the God of the Bible without degrading him as one who is not omniscient and omnipotent, and who thus acts in the light of all that can be known. And your alternatives to what God could have done in the light of the problem of evil, that of a world in which mankind is like a cloud or a robot (OP option #1), or world of instant punishment for every wrong choice (akin to option #4) simply warrants some expansion to one my non-viable alternatives to what God could have.
May God grant you “repentance to the acknowledging of the truth.” (2 Timothy 2:25)
These are more complex topics than appear at first blush.
Try explaining Fermi’s Golden Rule in 25 words or less, without assuming prior knowledge of general physical concepts or atomic theory...
The double irony here is that God *is* perfect.
It is the world which is fallen and imperfect.
Somehow atheists never count the crucifixion/Resurrection as having anything to do with fixing it; usually on the grounds of insufficiency or irrelevancy.
But that’s begging the question of what is really broken. The artist as is their won’t, focuses their attention on contemporary society (and the occasional natural disaster).
The Christians point out that the spiritual — separation from God — predated these others, and is more severe.
And even if a person wants to understand the case for God, God--being the embodiment of Love--must be perceived with the heart, not the head.
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