I've read many of the books of apologetics they've recommended to me, and although there I have found some challenging arguments therein, in the end I remain one of those who in Pascal's words "are so made that I cannot believe"...I find the concept of a universe ruled by supernatural powers as alien as a universe in which 2+3 does not equal 3+2.
You, on the other hand, just don't ever seem to be the type of person with whom a thoughtful and informative conversation can ever take place. For all I know, you may be very different in person, but your posts (intentionally or not) come across as the electronic equivalent of Jack Chick tracts.
Frankly, I think that the denizens of the Religion Forum have grown so accustomed to talking past each other that they fear directly answering a question, thinking it is a set-up. The result is that a good portion of the following comments become neither thoughtful nor informative.
And yet I am the with the thoughtful conversation impasse.
AMAZING!
I hear you about the supernatural.
The successes of modern science and technology do make it very tempting to feel that we have a complete picture of all reality in the world that is their domain. Hey, we’ve even seen the inherently invisible, and we know some of it as radio waves, and it quite conveniently obeys fixed laws and they perform at our beck and call. And if that’s too mundane, now we hear about dark matter, which COULD in principle be encountered and put into a test tube, but it has some inconvenient addresses in this universe.
But, in the same way that our scientists know even their picture of the universe isn’t complete without the invisible, I cannot logically conclude that there is no larger picture that has its own invisible. A universe in which we try to explain all perceptions of supernatural as the illusory fruits of some cosmic self-throwing dice, seems to put the cart before the horse. You don’t believe I exist because you happened to stuff me into a giant Erlenmeyer flask. You believe I exist for other reasons.
Notey, I’ve seen Jack Chick tracts; these aren’t Jack Chick tracts.