"Maybe? Is this admission;)"
I never said I was an atheist, I'm agnostic and despite the claims of some here on both sides, there is a big difference. Both Atheists and theists accept on "faith" that their absolute position is true, despite the fact that the subject at hand (God, god, gods, goddess, whatever) is at least at the present unknowable. By unknowable I don't mean a wishy washy sense of "the guiding hand of God", I mean measurable, testable.
On one hand, you have theists claiming the existence of something that can not be seen (though some claim to) and on the other, you have atheists claiming that lack evidence proves its nonexistence. Both are untenable positions.
I accept what I can examine, and the rest I shrug off and have another cup of coffee.
"His creation and science in your mind can not coexist is an issue for you and others to face and deal with."
Yes, there are incompatibilities between God (big G) and science. Many of those on the evolution side of the debate are themselves Christians of one type or another and claim otherwise, however unless you take a very liberal (classic definition not political) interpretation of the Bible, there are glaring inconsistencies between what we see and what the Bible says happened.
What you refer to as the "Watchmaker God" is not inconsistent with science, sitting comfortably outside of the reach of scientific measurement, that type of god would not come into the argument one way or another.
An active god, the type that stops the movement of the heavens, floods the world and creates man from dirt, would leave his fingerprints on everything he touched, and this trace evidence could be gathered and examined. That evidence is not there, despite cries to the contrary, the world is exactly as we would expect it to be given the natural processes we know about.
That leaves only two options:
- That God, after each miracle, took steps to erase his tracks and leave the world looking like its current state was the result of natural processes. For example, after creating everything in 7 days, God scattered fossils of invertebrates that never really existed in the strata of mountain rocks and set the current level of atomic decay to make them appear to be billions of years old (what a trickster).
- The world is the way it is due to natural processes.
"I know, you may well reject such a thing is possible yet you have enough faith in the amazing chance of just the right things happening out of billions and billions of chance possibilities because of the knowledge you do know."
If you have a billion sided dice, and throw it one time, the odds of getting a 1 are 1 in a billion, if you have a billion dice, and they are all thrown, there is a really good chance that one of them will hit the magic number. If you have 4x10^79 dice, the odds of NOT getting a 1 are astronomical. Its a big universe and the "against the odds" argument is only valid if you are limiting it to a very small local region of the universe. If the universe is big enough, then just about anything that is possible, no matter how probable, will likely occur.
"Have any faith in the Bible at all? Not a set up, I am asking seriously. Why or why not?"
No, not in the way I think you're asking. Faith in this sense is to believe in something without logical proof. An unwaivering faith in a world that can not be seen, touched, tasted or measured is quite literally a divorce from reality.
I accept what I can examine, and the rest I shrug off and have another cup of coffee. Fabulous! This has to be one of the best lines on this thread, and no, I am not mocking you or joking, its refreshing, especially since I am sipping my own brew which I take rather seriously :)
Yes, there are incompatibilities between God (big G) and science. Many of those on the evolution side of the debate are themselves Christians of one type or another and claim otherwise, however unless you take a very liberal (classic definition not political) interpretation of the Bible, there are glaring inconsistencies between what we see and what the Bible says happened.
I say there is not. If you don't choose to believe in God then its easier for the atheist or agnostic. If you do believe then you have the crisis of belief. You will have to acknowledge that the God Who created it all also created the physics laws that govern it but He Himself was not constricted or restrained by them. This is where we get the futile argument from the non-believe that He cant be God because He can not create a rock bigger than He can lift. The endless circle debate. The arena of Christian apologetics is vast and requires quite a bit of reading and a fair amount of discussion. Years for some, less for others. In the end the conclusion was one I could not escape. The Bible is real and verifiable. It is the only document to exist in its purist form in greater numbers than any other work the next being Homers Iliad (900 copies). On one hand, you have theists claiming the existence of something that can not be seen (though some claim to) and on the other, you have atheists claiming that lack evidence proves its nonexistence. Both are untenable positions.
I will have to assume you know my starting point. Its again believing in God or not. If so you then would believe His word to be true and there you will see that He made clear He reveals Himself in nature and in all of creation. This is not accepted by the non-believer, after all he or she will claim biblical inconsistencies.
An active god, the type that stops the movement of the heavens, floods the world and creates man from dirt, would leave his fingerprints on everything he touched, and this trace evidence could be gathered and examined. That evidence is not there, despite cries to the contrary, the world is exactly as we would expect it to be given the natural processes we know about.
This, of course, would be the way you demand to see Him. He is supposed to conform to your way of seeing the world, thus denying the supernatural characteristics of God. He is not bound by mine or your constructs.
No, not in the way I think you're asking. Faith in this sense is to believe in something without logical proof. An unwaivering faith in a world that can not be seen, touched, tasted or measured is quite literally a divorce from reality.
I appreciate your honesty.