Thread: Is it possible for us as men to have a discussion on God

Originally Posted by Seraphim

OK, so why are things that pertain to God classified as supernatural?

If God truly does exist, then everything is part of his creation, and all He does is "natural".


I don't expect you to BELIEVE in God because of the story I related to you. You are free to do as you choose.

I was just adding a true life story to the discussion, as the discussion had been focussing on philosophical fencing matches about the issues.

I will also add this about myself: I used to be completely in the "other camp". I thought religion, and Christianity in particular was a load of baloney at best. So, pretty much all you guys have said are things that I myself used to hold as my reality as well.

1. because he/she/it is unobservable. the natural world is observable.
2. adding anecdotal evidence is only adding anecdotal evidence. handwaving at best. Uri Geller had anecdotal evidence, too
3. there is a certain dichotomy here. I used to be an evangelical, charismatic Christian. so pretty much everything you are saying is something that I believed... as a child. I was even happier to outgrow that phase than I was outgrowing asthma or acne! if you'd like to know more, you are free to PM me and we can certainly have a dialogue, but I won't waste space with it here.

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

My post you replied to is a very poor argument against God. I played the materialist's advocate for a moment. Russell was so excited, too

Aha, the sarcasm escaped me with your original post

Originally Posted by jockeys

1. because he/she/it is unobservable. the natural world is observable.
2. adding anecdotal evidence is only adding anecdotal evidence. handwaving at best. Uri Geller had anecdotal evidence, too
3. there is a certain dichotomy here. I used to be an evangelical, charismatic Christian. so pretty much everything you are saying is something that I believed... as a child. I was even happier to outgrow that phase than I was outgrowing asthma or acne! if you'd like to know more, you are free to PM me and we can certainly have a dialogue, but I won't waste space with it here.

Thanks for sharing where you're coming from as well. I'm certainly not out trying to prosyletize anyone here, just sharing for the sake of the discussion.

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

Russell was so excited, too

Just hoping, that's all. I knew you were being sarcastic, but maybe there was a lick of truth to it.

Seriously, if something happened involving natural entities (people, etc.), then there is a natural event that has taken place (in Craig's story, the person's body was restored to a functioning condition), so any number of things could be causing the positive effects, placebo isn't impossible, doctor incompetency isn't either.

The answer is most likely an anticlimactic "we'll never know".

Originally Posted by Seraphim

OK, so why are things that pertain to God classified as supernatural?

If God truly does exist, then everything is part of his creation, and all He does is "natural".

The supernatural is anything not bound by the laws of the Universe. As far as we know, the notions of omnipotence and omnipresence are impossible for natural entities (humans, dogs, trees, rocks, etc), so if your god is the kind that cares about you, can communicate with his creations at all times, and created the entire Universe by willing it to be so, then he is supernatural.

If your god can never be detected by our senses (and thus instruments) in a concrete manner, repeatedly, he is supernatural.

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

The supernatural is anything not bound by the laws of the Universe. As far as we know, the notions of omnipotence and omnipresence are impossible for natural entities (humans, dogs, trees, rocks, etc), so if your god is the kind that cares about you, can communicate with his creations at all times, and created the entire Universe by willing it to be so, then he is supernatural.

If your god can never be detected by our senses (and thus instruments) in a concrete manner, repeatedly, he is supernatural.

Problem with this is that we don't know all the laws of the universe......

And nobody said that the universe was created by Him simply by willing it. I personally think it took Him more work than that...otherwise He wouldn't really care for it would He?

The point is that nearly every god that has ever been proposed works outside of the laws that we do know.

And for the magnitude of the things that are attributed to the divine, the limitations of natural entities would just not be suitable.

Maybe it took him some work, maybe not, that's the beauty of the whole thing isn't it? Anything you could possibly want God to have done is possible.

Originally Posted by jockeys

1. because he/she/it is unobservable. the natural world is observable.

And just like the blind man who cannot observe light directly but yet can still be taught about what it is and what it does, why is it so difficult to think to that a supernatural God could be indirectly observed by the nature he created? I can't expect to wrap my natural mind and natural observations around a supernatural form, but how does that prove that the supernatural cannot create or influence the natural?

You cannot directly observe many things. Can you observe love itself? Or courage itself? They're only ideas, and they aren't natural materials or forces that can be scientifically tested and yet I can't deny their existence. But I can observe the results those ideas have. I can't touch, see, hear, smell, or taste God through natural means, and yet I see what he does and what he has done all around me. Is that really so difficult to understand? And if he answers prayer, why must be assume that there was no supernatural influence?

I've thought about it this way: I don't have to know where I came from in order to study myself. I can explain by natural processes and laws why this action results in this reaction and why trees have leaves, why the sun is hot, any physical observation can be explained by a physical law even if I don't know yet what that law is. But are all events scientifically predictable? We rely on what has already happened in order to make predictions about what will happen next. What has already been set into motion is the reference by which we study what can be observed. And who set those laws into place and into motion? I still fail to understand why man's limitations prevent the existence of God

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

...for the magnitude of the things that are attributed to the divine, the limitations of natural entities would just not be suitable...

why not? do you secretly know what suits God while arguing against his existence on the internet? lol. I can scale a cliff, swim underwater, build an engine, see and design things invisible to the unaided human eye and yet I have been found making faces and blowing bubbles with my baby daughter. If God can create everything that is natural, surely he can choose to operate within it from time to time. I don't know why you would create something and then completely abandon it for all eternity just because you're greater than what you created, but I guess that's a possibility one could consider

Originally Posted by hoglahoo

You cannot directly observe many things. Can you observe love itself? Or courage itself? They're only ideas, and they aren't natural materials or forces that can be scientifically tested and yet I can't deny their existence. But I can observe the results those ideas have. I can't touch, see, hear, smell, or taste God through natural means, and yet I see what he does and what he has done all around me. Is that really so difficult to understand? And if he answers prayer, why must be assume that there was no supernatural influence?

love and courage are human constructs used to abstract more complex concepts... a lot like the idea of a deity. besides, you CAN prove the existence of certain emotions... via CATscan.

additionally, there is no way to objectively observe god(s) at work, anymore than there is to observe directly. what one man attributes to a deity, another attributes to chance. two people can look at the exact same happenstance, and see different forces at work. without objectivity and observable, repeatable circumstances, there is no reliable way to know which forces caused it.

Originally Posted by jockeys

love and courage are human constructs used to abstract more complex concepts... a lot like the idea of a deity. besides, you CAN prove the existence of certain emotions... via CATscan.

additionally, there is no way to objectively observe god(s) at work, anymore than there is to observe directly. what one man attributes to a deity, another attributes to chance. two people can look at the exact same happenstance, and see different forces at work. without objectivity and observable, repeatable circumstances, there is no reliable way to know which forces caused it.

So, instead of saying to your beloved: "Honey, I love you"

Try this: "Attention female, my neo-cortex frontal lobe is experiencing synaptic response"

And then when she slaps you and makes you sleep on the couch, you can find comfort in the fact that it was simply the females overactive hormonal imbalance that caused her to respond in such a way...

Next time run her through the CAT scanner first before attempting mating...