I cut out the words you don’t entirely agree with. The rest of my comment is all about our perception of you. That should be important to you if you think God wants you to talk to us and, one assumes, help us learn something. Right? Is that a consideration for you at all?

Sure, and I fully admit I have turned a blind eye to this in the past. I should have been more sensitive to peoples concerns than I have been. I'm sure I've wasted many opportunities with people here as Satan hoped I would. It's been a process of growth and maturity in my walk with Christ, and this will continue until the day I die.

If I decided it was my civic duty to start showing up at a certain church and talk atheism to the parishioners, I would expect resistance, of course. I would pay very strong attention to how people were reacting to me and what topics or phrases or types of argument were setting people against me, and see if I could understand their perspective and adjust the way I spoke to help them understand me more. In that scenario, my goals for being at the church are different from the parishioners' goals, and since their goals for being there could be fulfilled (perhaps better) by ignoring me and by my being quiet, I’m the one who has to make the effort if I want to engage them.

I agree with you here.

That’s what I meant by "uninvited". It doesn’t mean anyone requires an invitation to join the Sift, or that anybody expects you to leave. It means nobody asked you to come and explain the "truth" of things to us. Our goal here is to kill time, follow political stories, discuss topics of interest to us and generally enjoy ourselves. Your goal here, however vague, is different from our goals, and often in conflict with them. I was enjoying thinking about Feynman’s points, then you come in with your arrogant opener, "It's better to know the answer than remain ignorant of it." Read it again to yourself. How would you react? Take @Quboid’s initial comments seriously too. Don’t nitpick phraseology like "pushing people away from your belief." Look past what you disagree with and address the real content. It's respectfully written and a valid question.

Well, the difference here on the sift is that it is not by default a place for atheists to hang out. It's a place for anyone to hang out and share their videos and opinions. It just so happens it has attracted a lot more atheists than theists and so everything done on the sift is bent towards their worldview, including the videos and conversations. You're right that nobody asked me to come, but I didn't need an invitation either. If you look at any video on religion here, people feel free to speak their mind about Christianity and Christians but for some reason they take exception when I do the same. I understand what your argument is about and what you're saying, which I appreciate and recognize as being essentially valid, but your comment about being uninvited doesn't apply. Atheists run the sift but the sift wasn't created for them.

And I'm actually saying this selfishly because I do want to understand what you’re saying.

And FWIW, everyone sees everyone through a funhouse mirror, especially types we don’t have a lot of contact with and don’t understand. For us, yep, that’s you.

Yes, I see people through my presuppositions. My worldview is the biblical worldview. I do understand you because I used to be in your shoes. I'm sure some of you will say the same thing.

I can provide evidence for any claim I make, if you ask for it. Find the body of Jesus? Don't be ridiculous. How could we? And if someone found the body of Jesus, you'd use bogus science to claim we hadn't proven it to be his, just like you still use bogus science to claim the universe is less than 10,000 years old or that macroevolution is a myth. I routinely claim the Bible is falsifiable on its face, but every time someone falsifies it, you change the meaning of the words, claim it's a metaphor, or do some other dodge, like how you handled the discrepancy between an omniscient God and a God who is surprised to discover that Adam and Eve had eaten the forbidden fruit.

Now you're just using fallacious arguments. Why don't you present your very best argument as to what you think falsifies the bible and let's see if it holds any water?

In the example of God being surprised, it is you who are assuming God was surprised. The text doesn't say He was surprised, it only says He asked Adam and Eve what they did. Why do you think that means that God didn't know what they did? How many parents have you heard asking their children whether they did such and such knowing full well that they did do it? That's exactly what God was doing.

OK. Here's the most clear-cut contradiction I’ve come across in the Bible. The topic seems so petty it's almost embarrassing to use it, but compare Matthew 1:8-9 with 1Chronicles 3:10-13. They give incompatible lineages from Joram to Joatham.

The genealogy in Matthew 1:8-9 isn't meant to be a complete record. It is actually a style of writing in Hebrew which is more concerned with symmetry than accuracy. That is why there are 3 groups of exactly 14 generations. Matthew would have assumed that his audience would know the details he left out for the sake of symmetry.

You pulled this out of thin air. Are your answers here divinely inspired?

We can scientifically test for, find and measure the efficacy of self-prayer. It's only prayer for others that consistently has no measurable effect. Science can and does test and prove some prayer effective, so you can't hold that God will not be tested. I've just disproven that.

So I'll ask you again: considering that we can reliably measure the effectiveness of self-prayer, why can't we measure any effects from intercessory prayer on behalf of others?

I didn't pull it out of thin air. Scripture says do not test the Lord thy God. You haven't proven anything. God will not let you test Him with personal prayer any more than He will let you test Him through the prayers of others. Scripture says God doesn't answer prayers that aren't prayed in faith, so when you are praying just to test Him, you aren't going to get proof He is there. Although there is one test I think God will accept. If you prayed this prayer I think He would answer it:

"God....if Jesus is your Son and He really is the way....and if He really is everything the Bible says about Him....then I will follow Him"

>> ^messenger:
stuff

You pulled this out of thin air. Are your answers here divinely inspired?

We can scientifically test for, find and measure the efficacy of self-prayer. It's only prayer for others that consistently has no measurable effect. Science can and does test and prove some prayer effective, so you can't hold that God will not be tested. I've just disproven that.

So I'll ask you again: considering that we can reliably measure the effectiveness of self-prayer, why can't we measure any effects from intercessory prayer on behalf of others?>> ^shinyblurry:
The Lord doesn't perform on camera for skeptics because He isn't a guinea pig subject to our experiments. Those who test the Lord will not get any results.

@shinyblurry

Humour me and try and read this comment in your head in the voice of someone who wants to help you.

[me:]About your perceived arrogance. I'm not judging anybody on the Sift…. I'm telling you how you come off and how it's affecting your goal. Your spamming of what I consider nonsense into the middle of what I consider rational discussions and your indifference to the fact you're irritating people, in my mind, gives me licence to be blunt. You could accept it as honest criticism and go from there.

[you:]I think you, and many other people here, see me through a fun-house mirror made up of your preconceived notions about God and Christians in general. The reasons I am here are not so cut and dry, but I certainly feel that God wants me to talk to people here.

I cut out the words you don’t entirely agree with. The rest of my comment is all about our perception of you. That should be important to you if you think God wants you to talk to us and, one assumes, help us learn something. Right? Is that a consideration for you at all?

If I decided it was my civic duty to start showing up at a certain church and talk atheism to the parishioners, I would expect resistance, of course. I would pay very strong attention to how people were reacting to me and what topics or phrases or types of argument were setting people against me, and see if I could understand their perspective and adjust the way I spoke to help them understand me more. In that scenario, my goals for being at the church are different from the parishioners' goals, and since their goals for being there could be fulfilled (perhaps better) by ignoring me and by my being quiet, I’m the one who has to make the effort if I want to engage them.

That’s what I meant by "uninvited". It doesn’t mean anyone requires an invitation to join the Sift, or that anybody expects you to leave. It means nobody asked you to come and explain the "truth" of things to us. Our goal here is to kill time, follow political stories, discuss topics of interest to us and generally enjoy ourselves. Your goal here, however vague, is different from our goals, and often in conflict with them. I was enjoying thinking about Feynman’s points, then you come in with your arrogant opener, "It's better to know the answer than remain ignorant of it." Read it again to yourself. How would you react? Take @Quboid’s initial comments seriously too. Don’t nitpick phraseology like "pushing people away from your belief." Look past what you disagree with and address the real content. It's respectfully written and a valid question.

And I'm actually saying this selfishly because I do want to understand what you’re saying.

And FWIW, everyone sees everyone through a funhouse mirror, especially types we don’t have a lot of contact with and don’t understand. For us, yep, that’s you.

>> ^Throbbin:

As one who studies and will one day practice Political Science, I'm offended. I can tell you about the conditions and prerequesites for the development of democratic institutions with the same certainty that a biologist can tell you about the conditions and prerequesites for bacterial growth to take place.


i studied political science and practiced law.
one is not a science, and the other has nothing to do with justice

Just saw this comment. Awesome.
In reply to this comment by snoozedoctor:
Surely you're joking, Mr. Feynman.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'neil degrasse tyson, lawrence krauss, richard feynman, melodysheep' to 'neil degrasse tyson, lawrence krauss, richard feynman, melodysheep, autotune' - edited by RhesusMonk

Similarly, we can instantiate in enough physical rules to get the "chance" universe you describe going, and its rules could get it to the current state either determinalistically or with some element of randomness. I guess I understand how you're using "chance" here... but I don't know that it's terribly useful. Why should "what humans can predict" be of any relevance philosophically? And if we're using it that way, couldn't we similarly describe God's actions as chance? I mean, surely humans (or angels) can't predict everything he's going to do. Chance seems like a pejorative when applied to God.. and to me it seems like a pejorative when applied to the operations of the universe (except where, again, that operation is actually random).

However, again, I don't think this difference is terribly important. I think I understand what you're getting at, I just see things very differently.

The difference between chance and design is the most important distinction there is. If you don't like the word chance, I will use the word "unplanned", or "mindless". An unplanned Universe has no actual purpose; it is just happenstance. Meaning, your life is just a product of mindless processes, and concepts like morality, justice, and truth have no essential meaning. It means you are just some blip on a grid and there is no rhyme or reason to anything. It also means you will never find out what happened or why it happened because no one knows what is going on or ever will. This will *always* lead you to nihilism.

A designed Universe, on the other hand, does have a purpose. A purposeful Universe means that life was created for a reason. It means that there is a truth, a truth that only the Creator knows. Which means that all lines of inquiry will lead to the Creators doorstep, and that trying to understand the Universe without the Creator is completely futile. It is like looking at a painting with three marks on it..you could endlessly speculate on what the painter was thinking when he painted it. However, no matter how clever you were, you don't have enough information to be sure about anything. To refuse to seek the Creator would be to stare at that painting your whole life trying to figure it out when you have the painters business card with his phone number on it in your pocket.

I don't think you're phrasing this in a terribly fair way. Yes, many people assume there's a natural explanation for abiogenesis. This is partly because having another explanation introduces arbitrariness into the system. Say I'm a geologist and I discover Devil's Tower. It's really weird, but my inclination from the very start is that it was formed by similar processes to ones that have explained weird things in the past. Even if I can't postulate even a guess as to why it has those weird columns, I'm not crazy to guess that eventually we'll figure out an explanation that doesn't involve, say, new physical laws or aliens. (And it's certainly not helpful to say "maybe it was made in the flood").

The whole thing is arbitrary to begin with. Naturalistic explanations are assumed apriori, and then the evidence is interpreted through the conclusion. That isn't how science works. You come to the conclusion because of the evidence, not the other way around. I would also note that you would never accept this kind of reasoning from a creationist. Neither does a mountain of circumstantial evidence prove anything.

Abiogenesis is a bigger problem and it's also one that's "lost to time" a bit. It almost certainly requires a mechanism we have yet to identify (or a mechanism someone has guessed at, but hasn't provided good details or evidence for). But, like Devil's Tower, there's no reason to expect that mechanism won't be identified - or that it will require significant changes to our understanding of the rest of science. Again, there's plausible ideas already floating around, and I think we'll probably recreate the process (though likely not with the same actual process) within the next 30 years or so.

Anything sounds plausible, apparently, when you have billions of years to play with. As the earlier quote said, time itself performs the miracles for you. How do you know that the mechanism hasn't already been identified but you have rejected it?

http://creation.com/devils-tower-explained

No... that, I think, is probably our strongest point of disagreement. I'm very much OK with "I don't know", and literally everything I believe has a bit of "I don't know" attached (kind of similar to how everything you believe in has a bit of God attached).

I'm not worshipping ignorance or something - knowing IS better than not knowing. But I'm also not scared of not knowing things - and I'm certainly not just going to pick something and believe in it because I don't like having some of my answer pages blank.

For you, is Scientology better than "I don't know"?

The point I'm trying to make is, I don't know isn't a theory. What most atheists mean when they say "I don't know" is "I know it isn't the Christian God, but otherwise I don't know". The next thing they say is, you believe in God because you're afraid. That I "chose" God because I am scared of death, or because the Universe is too big and scary for my mind to handle the uncertainty of not knowing.

I have to say that this idea of a bunch of hokey. The Christians I know believe in God because they have a personal relationship with Him. It has nothing to do with making a choice..God chose us. He would chose you too, if you were open to Him.

Neither was I afraid of death when I was an agnostic, and I wasn't afraid of saying I don't know (that's why I was an agnostic, because I didn't know). I believe in God because He revealed Himself to me, and that is the only reason. If He hadn't, I would still be an agnostic.

It is credible to believe that the Universe was designed and created by God. We can see that whomever made the Universe is unimaginably powerful, intelligent, exists outside of space and time, etc. Scientology isn't credible and explains nothing. God can explain everything.

Also, thanks for using the big boy version of the Bible. I quite like the Bible artistically, but I can't stand some of the new translations (despite whatever benefits some parts may have in terms of clarity).

Most of the new translations butcher the scriptures. They remove entire verses, words, water down meanings, or just flat out mislead. I can't stand them either. The KJV is the best word for word translation that we have, and although the language is archaic, it is comprehensible with a little research.

>> ^jmzero

About your perceived arrogance. I'm not judging anybody on the Sift. You alone are the one who came here with a single-purpose account to try and convert people to your faith. I'm telling you how you come off and how it's affecting your goal. Your spamming of what I consider nonsense into the middle of what I consider rational discussions and your indifference to the fact you're irritating people, in my mind, gives me licence to be blunt. You could accept it as honest criticism and go from there.

I think you, and many other people here, see me through a fun-house mirror made up of your preconceived notions about God and Christians in general. The reasons I am here are not so cut and dry, but I certainly feel that God wants me to talk to people here.

About evidence. You and your religion are the ones showing up uninvited and making incredible claims. If you're making the claim, it's to you to provide a way to prove it. The only way a claim has any meaning is if there's some way to falsify it. But your claim is designed in such a way that it is literally impossible to falsify it. That's the weakness that inspired the spoof deities like FSM and the Invisible Pink Unicorn, and Bertrand Russell's Teapot: in practice, one is exactly as falsifiable as the other. In theory, your faith has seemingly falsifiable statements, but in practice, every time one of them is falsified, theologians and apologists work endlessly to somehow "make" it still hold true, sometimes by changing the meaning of words retroactively, or claiming retroactively it was just a metaphor or whatever. Sometimes it's a legitimate save, but usually it's intellectually dishonest. When someone points that out, you come up with some other intellectually dishonest way of getting out of that too.

This website is open to the public, is it not? If so, then in what sense am I uninvited?

My claim isn't "designed", it is simply the fact of what I believe. I don't modify it to escape someones inquiry. You like to make some bold claims about what it is, or isn't, but you never happen to back them up with evidence. As I told you earlier, it is falsifiable. You could prove it to be logically inconsistent. You could find the body of Jesus. You could disprove the major facts of the bible. You cannot claim it is unfalsifiable. The problem with your spoof deities is that they have no explanatory power. A flying teapot explains exactly nothing..

Here's an example of what I mean: You make the claim that God is all-loving. To me, if words have meaning, "all-loving" that means God will only do loving things. But he commits mass murder several times. Now, any human that even once had ever beat somebody up, even in the heat of passion, would be disqualified from the category of "all-loving". But for God, there's always an apologist loophole because you'd decided beforehand that God was all-loving and will stop at nothing to make sure that label sticks.

What the scripture says is that God is love. Not that He is loving, but that He is love itself. Yes, it is true that God took the lives of thousands of people in the Old Testament because of disobedience. That is indisputable. What you're claiming is that this was "mass murder". The fundamental question being posed here is, does God have the right to take a life? If He does, then there is nothing unjust about what He did, and therefore it is not inconsistent with His love.

Now, God is the author and sustainer of life. Meaning, that life is a gift and a privilege for human beings. There is no fundamental right to be alive. Neither is there anything we can do to continue our life a second longer than God ordains. When we are born and when we die is entirely in His hands. He is the one who is causing our lungs to receive breathe, who is maintaining the coherence in our atomic structure. So what life we do have is a tender mercy from God, especially considering the fact that all of us abuse His creation and spit in His face on a constant basis.

Further, God has ordained that the punishment for sin is death. The people you speak of in scripture were all sinners, and most of them grievous sinners at that. Why is God unjust for enforcing His law? What is wrong with God enforcing His law at His prerogative?

Considering that we live because of God, and that it is a gift which can be revoked at any time because of sin, why is it unjust for God to do so? If you're going to say I am being intellectually dishonest, then prove it and explain why. Where is the flaw in my reasoning here?

Or the claim of intercessory prayer. Of the rigorous studies that have been done, all have said there is no correlation between prayer and positive health effects, even when religious groups sponsor the study. To anybody using reason, this proves that prayer doesn't work. But you need so badly for it to be true that you ignore the statistical evidence, and rely instead on anecdotes or the studies (however rigorous) that showed a positive effect, or you dismiss all the studies because they are science, and science is a false religion, or whatever. Regardless, as the result, "Prayer doesn't work" is unacceptable, any results by any method you will invent fault with, even if you agreed to the method beforehand.

Some Christians may feel that way, but only because they don't understand scripture:

Luke 4:12

And Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

The Lord doesn't perform on camera for skeptics because He isn't a guinea pig subject to our experiments. Those who test the Lord will not get any results.

Hebrews 11:6

But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

>> ^messenger

Fair enough - it sounds like you're certain in every practical sense, but you don't believe you have "absolute knowledge". That was really the main distinction I was trying to make. Certainly I agree that you can't reason in any meaningful way without writing off certain kinds of extreme possibilities.

I think absolute knowledge is possible even from our subjective standpoint. For instance, it is absolutely true that "something" exists. Any argument against this is actually proof that it is true.

In any case, I am making a claim to absolute knowledge, because divine revelation could only ever be absolute knowledge. A person receiving such revelation would have a justified true belief in God. That's my claim. It's not something I could prove..only God could prove it, but neither am I unjustified in believing it.

I understand the contrast here, and I think I understand now what you're trying to get at better - I just don't think this contrast is fundamental to the question I'm interested in (which is different, I think, than the one you're interested in). To me the intermediary steps are fungible - it's the start states that are interesting to me, and to me they all require arbitrary stuff that I don't like, but that seem necessary.

Well, originally you were responding to this question:

"I'll ask you the same question I ask messenger..how would you tell the difference between a random chance Universe and one that God designed? What test could you conduct to find out which one you were in? When you can come up with a test to determine that, then you can tell me that there is no evidence. Logically, if there is a God, the entire Universe is evidence."

If we can boil all of the possibilities down to design and chance, how could you tell which Universe you were in? What test could you conduct that would tell you the difference? Atheists often demand some kind of empirical proof of God, yet they are never forthcoming on the details of what that proof would consist of. That is really the impetus behind this question..

I think this difference in focus may come down to our varying perceptions of those intermediary steps. For me, the general big bang model, ideas of how stars and planets coalesced, natural abiogenesis, and evolution are reasonably credible as they stand and I expect those theories to develop and become more credible. You see those things very differently. I think that naturally leads to a different focus.

The reason I don't see them as credible is because of a lack of evidence. For instance, there is absolutely no evidence of abiogenesis, at all. In fact, louis pasteur proved that it is most likely impossible. Life has never once been observed coming from non-life. Yet, it is assumed to be true because "there must be a naturalistic origin to life". It's a just-so story and it isn't at all credible. I've heard the odds of it happening are far greater than the number of atoms in the Universe.

People tell me that Creation sounds like a fairy tale, but then they tell me their own story that begins with "once upon a time a frog became a prince", and this somehow sounds plausible when you throw in billions of years.

time is in fact the hero of the plot. the impossible becomes possible..time itself performs the miracles.

George Wald
Harvard
Nobel laureate

I agree with this as well - to an extent. Having a unique God makes for a simple explanation in general (although it gets a bit complicated in practice for how we ended up precisely "here"). For the general problem of "how did this all get here", your recipe is very simple if it starts with God. On the flip side, God is a very big thing to assume. I think a case can be made for belief in a general God on something like this basis. Though I don't personally find it a convincing case at this time, that could change.

I think you'll have to admit that God is a much better theory than "I don't know". Yet, people bandy about "I don't know" as if this is the superior position. You have to wonder why to even think that the Universe was designed is subject to so much ridicule and derision, when it is actually a perfectly reasonable theory that is supported by evidence. As far as assuming God goes, you don't need to explain God to postulate Him as a possibility. What matters is whether the idea has explanatory power. The question always is, is God a better explanation for the evidence?

It isn't always an evidential argument, either. There many logical arguments to assume there is a God:

http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/first-cause.htm

Perhaps another question: for you personally, would you describe your situation as more like "God provided me with special evidence, and I reason that He must exist because of this evidence" or more like "God produced a change in me directly, such that I now believe (unmediated by your own reason)"? (Or, obviously, something in between or different altogether). I think this would clarify your situation for me.

I received evidence in a number of different ways. One, is that God fundamentally changed me. In the blink of an eye, where I was broken, I was now healed. Where there was addiction, there was self-control. Where there was hate, there was now love and forgiveness. Where there was darkness, there was now light. It was instantaneous and it certainty had nothing to do with me. I would have stayed the way I was, left to my own devices. It was a supernatural transformation of my inner being.

Another thing is that God has demonstrated to me, beyond all reasonable doubt, that He is in absolute control of everything. To the extent that I no longer include the word coincidence in my vocabulary. In short, He has used my internal and external experiences to give me evidence of His existence, and this is ongoing. I always experience the presence of God because His Spirit lives within me.

There are other ways that I cannot quite put into words. The peace of God transcends all understanding. His love surpasses all expectation and every height; it is a deep and wondrous mystery. He is my Father, and I am his (adopted) son. My relationship with God is a personal one that has changed my entire life in every conceivable way, beyond anything I could ever imagine or hope for.

>> ^jmzero

About your perceived arrogance. I'm not judging anybody on the Sift. You alone are the one who came here with a single-purpose account to try and convert people to your faith. I'm telling you how you come off and how it's affecting your goal. Your spamming of what I consider nonsense into the middle of what I consider rational discussions and your indifference to the fact you're irritating people, in my mind, gives me licence to be blunt. You could accept it as honest criticism and go from there.

About evidence. You and your religion are the ones showing up uninvited and making incredible claims. If you're making the claim, it's to you to provide a way to prove it. The only way a claim has any meaning is if there's some way to falsify it. But your claim is designed in such a way that it is literally impossible to falsify it. That's the weakness that inspired the spoof deities like FSM and the Invisible Pink Unicorn, and Bertrand Russell's Teapot: in practice, one is exactly as falsifiable as the other. In theory, your faith has seemingly falsifiable statements, but in practice, every time one of them is falsified, theologians and apologists work endlessly to somehow "make" it still hold true, sometimes by changing the meaning of words retroactively, or claiming retroactively it was just a metaphor or whatever. Sometimes it's a legitimate save, but usually it's intellectually dishonest. When someone points that out, you come up with some other intellectually dishonest way of getting out of that too.

Here's an example of what I mean: You make the claim that God is all-loving. To me, if words have meaning, "all-loving" that means God will only do loving things. But he commits mass murder several times. Now, any human that even once had ever beat somebody up, even in the heat of passion, would be disqualified from the category of "all-loving". But for God, there's always an apologist loophole because you'd decided beforehand that God was all-loving and will stop at nothing to make sure that label sticks.

Or the claim of intercessory prayer. Of the rigorous studies that have been done, all have said there is no correlation between prayer and positive health effects, even when religious groups sponsor the study. To anybody using reason, this proves that prayer doesn't work. But you need so badly for it to be true that you ignore the statistical evidence, and rely instead on anecdotes or the studies (however rigorous) that showed a positive effect, or you dismiss all the studies because they are science, and science is a false religion, or whatever. Regardless, as the result, "Prayer doesn't work" is unacceptable, any results by any method you will invent fault with, even if you agreed to the method beforehand.

If you disagree that you're being intellectually dishonest, find a definition of the term that you agree with, and I'll show you what I mean.>> ^shinyblurry:

You have said to me that you attempt to give me the benefit of the doubt, which I appreciate, however most of those here tell me I am wrong, so is that somehow less arrogant in your eyes? In any case, it is both falsifiable and provable. You could find Jesus' grave for instance. It is also provable in that God does reveal Himself, as billions of people today, and billions more throughout history have found out. Whether you believe that or not is beside the point. The point is, if you demand evidence, tell me how we should find it. How would you test for God? If God exists, the entire Universe is evidence for God. How would you tell if you were in a Universe created by God or one created by random chance?>> ^messenger:
"The answer"? Not sure what part of Feynman's interview response you're alluding to or what exactly "the question" was, but the best you personally can say is that you have "an answer", and one which may or may not be true, and which is both unfalsifiable and unprovable. Commenting all over the Sift like you know "the answer" and as if the rest of us are too stupid to just accept it is why people call you arrogant, FYI.>> ^shinyblurry:
It's better to know the answer than remain ignorant of it.

And to be doubly clear, there is no fundamental dichotomy between "chance" and "design". Chance needn't exist for a God or Godless universe, and "design" (as a vague concept, not specific theory) seems to exist either way too (though it could be illusory). I believe that I design things - so as an explanation for "how things are", most people are going to invoke design as a mechanism either way.

Of course there is a fundamental dichotomy between chance and design. Let's look at the definitions:

Chance

: something that happens unpredictably without discernible human intention or observable cause
b : the assumed impersonal purposeless determiner of unaccountable happenings : luck -an outcome decided by chance-

c : the fortuitous or incalculable element in existence

1
: to create, fashion, execute, or construct according to plan : devise, contrive
2
a : to conceive and plan out in the mind -he designed the perfect crime- b : to have as a purpose : intend -she designed to excel in her studies- c : to devise for a specific function or end -a book designed primarily as a college textbook-

A design was deliberately caused by a mind, whereas chance just happens. Either existence as we know it was deliberately caused by a mind, or it wasn't. Whether the Universe is deterministic and things had to happen this way has no bearing, because that says nothing for the reason of the original configuration, or how it got that way. Either there is no particular reason and it just happened to be that way, or it was set into motion by an intelligence. Design is planned and chance is unplanned, and that is the dichotomy.

If you want to speak about what is arbitrary, then you have to consider that everything is equally unlikely from the standpoint of one who is unsure about everything. You may suspect there is a truth, because things appear to happen for a reason, but be unable to grasp it. This is like a black hole for the mind, and there is no escape from uncertainty.

You have to make a couple of assumptions to even begin to reason. The first is that you are real. The second is that the Universe is not inherently deceptive. The first, because you cannot reason without assuming you exist, and so assuming the contrary will only lead to absurdity. The second, because again, if you cannot trust anything then you cannot trust your own thoughts either. Therefore, you have no route to reason and again it leads to absurdity.

This isn't to say you couldn't be deceived about the Universe. It is to say that there is always some route to the truth. Therefore, the truth is something tangible and can be grasped. However, you are still in the quandary of being a subjective being with limited knowledge. There may be a route to the truth, but it requires you to be omnipotent. This is where most people stop and say, well, we just can't ever know what the truth is, but this isn't true. Even if you are not omnipotent, an omnipotent being could tell you what the truth is. That's my claim.

God is also the simplest explanation for everything, which can account for absolutely everything we see, feel, or experience, and that is precisely why some people don't like it. They don't want an ultimate answer like God because He interferes with their personal autonomy. They want to be free to imagine that it could be any number of things, so therefore they have the ultimate freedom to live however they please. To say there is any particular answer, especially a personal one, restricts their personal freedom and makes them accountable to specific outcomes.

I'm not saying this universe is in any way likely or that it should compete with your current understanding of the world. So to clarify: my question to you is "do you agree it's not absolutely impossible that is the case". If you're leaving your answer to this clarified question as "no", what possible evidence could you have to rule this situation out? What evidence or experience couldn't be falsified by a devious supernatural agent? What if they could mess with your very process of reason (and I see no reason why they couldn't - again just as hypothetical)?

Well, you've agreed with me that God could reveal Himself to someone in such a way as they could be absolutely certain about it. Such a person could justifiably consider all other outcomes to be absolutely impossible, and be absolutely certain about that. That's my claim. Can I prove that I am that person, even to myself? Not entirely, but I have faith that it is true. This is not a blind faith, it is faith based on my personal relationship with God, which is experiential. Faith is the *substance* of things hoped for, because although I do not see God with my eyes, His Spirit dwells within me.

I do believe there is another supernatural power in this world, a kingdom of darkness which is a lesser power, but powerful enough to deceive human beings. Satan does want you to believe in God; the wrong God. Satan actually doesn't care what you believe, so long as it isn't in the Lord Jesus Christ. Another reason is that I have personal experience with demons; I have been around demon possessed people, and I have spoken to them when they manifested themselves in those people. They are professional liars (actors), the like you have not imagined.

It comes back to the Universe being inherently deceptive. You can't reason that way; you have to believe there is a route to truth. Neither can Satan completely deceive you; God gives everyone the opportunity to know the truth and to break free of their slavery to sin.


>> ^jmzero

>> ^messenger:

The researcher says about sheep: "They have a reputation for being extremely dim and their flock behaviour backs that up as they are very silly animals when in a group – if there is a hole they will fall into it, if there is something to knock over, then they will knock it over."
Amen sistah! Testify!
I wouldn't ordinarily take an animal analogy to such lengths, but you brought it up twice as if it means something.
@ChaosEngine too>> ^shinyblurry:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/s
cience-news/8335465/Sheep-are-far-smarter-than-previously-thought.html



Sheep need a good shepherd.

The researcher says about sheep: "They have a reputation for being extremely dim and their flock behaviour backs that up as they are very silly animals when in a group – if there is a hole they will fall into it, if there is something to knock over, then they will knock it over."

Amen sistah! Testify!

I wouldn't ordinarily take an animal analogy to such lengths, but you brought it up twice as if it means something.

@ChaosEngine too>> ^shinyblurry:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/s
cience-news/8335465/Sheep-are-far-smarter-than-previously-thought.html

>> ^ChaosEngine:

"Only a mile away from the shepherd and his flock was a goatherd and his herd. The merest accident of microgeography had meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different.
For sheep are stupid, and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent, and need to be led."
-- Terry Pratchett
For once, shiny, we are in total agreement.
>> ^shinyblurry:
His sheep hear His voice.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8335465/Sheep-are-far-smarter-than-previously-thought.html

Besides intelligent design and random chance, what other alternatives are there?

That is a very odd question - it doesn't take a great imagination to come up with possibilities, once we depart the realm of "seems to be likely". Time could be an illusion - the universe could be completely static, arbitrarily existing in its current form throughout all eternity. Ahead of you (none of us exist... oops!) is a soap bubble that looks like whatever you're seeing right now - behind you is an endless velvet Elvis painting. To be very clear: I don't know this isn't the case (and even if God or mescaline made me 100% convinced that this was or wasn't the case, I still would have no actual way of knowing - I'd just have a brain that's been messed with and thought it knew things it didn't).

You can make it as convoluted as you like..in the end, it is all either the product of design or chance. If you disagree, come up with an alternative.

Anyways - I'll repeat my previous question. Do you accept it's possible that you're being deceived by a demon who can mess with your thoughts? This is a fairly simple question; I've answered your questions, and I don't think it's unfair for me to expect a yes or no answer.

No, because God has given me sufficient evidence that I can be certain of it. A person receiving absolute confirmation of Gods existence has a justified true belief in God, regardless of what someone who has no such revelation perceives as reasonable. Indeed, a person on the outside of this revelation is irrational and incapable of determining what truth is.

>> ^jmzero