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

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Baah! OK, I don't know what you are referencing, a new trait in HIV, but it is still HIV, it has not evolved into Ebola, or some other new form altogether.

It's the VPU gene that is found in HIV-1 but not HIV-2, it is thought to alter the way HIV infects T-cells and IIRC has to do with which animal species HIV can infect.

The Intelligent Design crowd completely ignores the amount of time that we've had to analyze these things, when statements like that are put forward. Yes, if we had been sequencing the genes of every virus and bacterial strain for the last few centuries, we'd have more conclusive proof, but this technology has only been available to us for useful experimentation for 20 years. It's quite short sighted to say that 20 years of research (really more like 10, as those early years were slow going and more directed toward developing the technology than using it) is insufficient gounds to assume plausibility when promising results are being discovered all the time.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Baah! OK, I don't know what you are referencing, a new trait in HIV, but it is still HIV, it has not evolved into Ebola, or some other new form altogether. Yes, through natural selection change occurs. That can be observed. If you want to extrapolate the change seen within a species and then say over great periods of time one thing must have lead to another...well, that's all fine and good, but it's not any more proof than my saying that many people have had experiences of God, X, Y, Z.....and thus....

Speciation HAS been directly observed.
Observed Instances of Speciation
Slashdot | Prions Observed Jumping Species Barrier

Speciation really isn't debatable anymore. What Russel is trying to say, I think, is not so much that evolution is a 100% perfect theory, cause it's not, but rather that the church has been consistently wrong for millenia on end when it comes to explaining science via deities. (for instance, Pope Zachary threatening Vergilius of Salzburg for saying the Earth wasn't flat.)

right back at ya!

"...assumes no weight to plausibility"?

Hold on a minute, isn't that the crux of the whole issue? Plausibility is not fact. Whether it be scientific or theological. Just because the plausibility in this case is related to the field of science does not lend it any more credence.

Is it plausible that life began from primordial soup, and some sort of mumble, mumble, something or other? Sure, that's plausible.

Is it plausible that God created life? Sure that's plausible too. And it is also perhaps a simpler, more reasonable explaination of what happened.

And I base my experience of God not on hearsay or upbringing, but on my own investigation and observations. I didn't just read the Bible or show up at Church. listen to the crazy guy on the corner and say "hey that sounds nice, sign me up!", Quite the contrary, I was quite a cynical skeptic until shown for myself an experience of God. Again, I wholeheartedly agree that to have faith based on accounts given by others (hearsay) is probably not the best idea.

Are you not also basing your understanding of evolution/big band theory/what have you on "hearsay" based on what some scientist published in a journal of science somewhere? How did YOU determine it to be the truth for yourself?

If we would just go out to a museum, find a bunch of coincidental fossils and spout any random theory about their interconnectedness, sure, your analogy would work.

Scientists do look at coincedental fossils and draw their own conclusions from them. I look at coincedental events in my very own life and draw conclusions from them as well. Some/both/either/neither of us may be right/wrong in the conclusions we are reaching because of lack of "hard" evidence.

How do you reconcile a track record that shows religion to be, not just wrong, but embarrassingly so on every occassion that it has butted heads with the scientific community?

Probably the same way the scientific community itself thought that it was right, until later scientists proved them wrong

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

You guys are totally right, religious establishments have additional problems, mostly rooted in human greed and egotism.

But I do feel that it's important to make clear the issue that belief in the supernatural, and any subsequent knowledge gleaned from it, is invariably colored by the personal biases of the individual in question.

It certainly seems that way often. Often it doesn't though. This is something that would cause me to question God's existence if he hadn't proved himself to me, but like you have already mentioned, it would not disprove his existence, just call it into question and further investigation. I think it's important to ask any believer in God why his or her belief is colored by their own individual personal biases. I don't think that personal bias can be a substitute for real faith

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

I would think that there'd be more consistency betwixt believers and much less animosity, if indeed these people (who sound equally genuine in their convictions) are communicating (or sensing or what-have-you) the same deity (the one true God).

I would think so too. But isn't it a human quality to be inconsistent and disagree with each other regardless of belief in God? Or is man without God a truly peaceful and harmonious creature? Although I agree with you that ideally a common belief should unite any large number of people who hold it, I don't think I can recall any such examples in human history

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

Or are there sundry Gods in a hierarchy from True to Frivolous, or maybe, just maybe, it's the intangible processes in the brain occurring just below the surface of the rational mind.

Is maybe strong enough for you to conclude that there is no God at all? For me it is just another reason to ask more questions and look for more answers

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

Man's ego is very much like another entity, it is said that one can come to know it through meditation or introspective thought and that it often reveals things that would have otherwise gone unknown about the manifest actions we readily undertake, both positive and negative. Analyzing it tends to instill a sense of calm amidst mental anguish; peace of mind in discovering what the brains unconscious processing makes of our day-to-day experiences. And interestingly enough is experienced in different ways for different individuals.

Ah, you have noticed that correlation, and so have I! If God did indeed create man after his own image, wouldn't this be an expected correlation? The difference is that we should never expect that ego to extend beyond itself while we should expect an all powerful God to make his presence known outside of the construct of the ego, although accepting such proof of God will still be left up to the individual.

Isn't it also interesting that man's ego has a tendency to question its surroundings and discover and ask questions? It is said that it is the glory of God to conceal something and the honor of men to search it out. Don't different people study the same things and then arrive at different conclusions? And we say some are right and some are wrong until someone else comes along and says "look what I discovered" and we trust what they say because we can build on it and make it work in our own experiences. And what's wrong with that?

It is still the same with God except that we cannot force God's hand as we can nature's. We can recreate natural reactions and situations in order to confirm theories, but if God is his own person, how can we test him by our own methods? To set up our own frameworks and expectations for God is to invite confusion and doubt about him. And I don't think that's wrong, I just think it's futile. It's that presupposing that God should be who we think he should be (the ego effect again? Funny that part of your argument against God's existence is the same as other's argument for it: that God's existence or non existence is dependent on what you or I expect him to be.) If he is God then he is who he says he is and does what he says he'll do. What I say about him is of little consequence for you unless you put more faith in me than in yourself - I took up my questions and doubts with him and he answered me according to himself, not according to what I or anyone else wanted.

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

I have no problem with "believers" giving whatever name they want to similar phenomena, but it's quite a different course of action to claim that an actual entity exists who accomplishes the above goals for them, and can be cited as an adviser when the reality is that their own judgment is at work more than anything, if there is anything else to speak of.

If supernatural judgment has ever been given, surely there is historical and current evidences of it. But that would be difficult to prove, wouldn't it, even if true? If God is a person dispensing such judgment, how could an experiment be set up to show that it is him? Maybe he has addressed that issue somewhere already? Or how can you prove in every case that someone's judgment was not borrowed from anyone else?

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

No, there has been no supporting proof "that could apply to anyone other than the believer, for whom it was obvious", which is unacceptable in any other type of discourse. There has yet to be an instance when God provided his children with any form of knowledge that wasn't already being championed by secularists. And there has yet to be a connection between the billions of "believers" and the particular deity that they have come to know (most of which are at serious odds with the rest of their companions).

The difference knowing God and believing God exists could quite possibly separate the billions from mere handfuls, couldn't it? As we both know, proof is more than just claims, which is why each person has to be convinced himself. You are right that there has been nothing that has ever proven God to you, and I have accepted that throughout the course of the conversation. That you say there has been no proof is exactly what I expect, and I agree that there have been many such proofs that God has provided people with forms of knowledge that were not already being championed by secularists. In fact, I daresay that for every believer that claims to have heard from God, you can find someone who doesn't make such claim who knew it before him. And then you can keep digging and find a believer who knew it before him. And so on and so forth. God's creation has been around for a long time subject to analysis, scrutiny, discovery, etc. And yet still we don't know everything about it. Someone specializes in mathematics and another in medicine, and yet nobody knows the sum total of it all. Why is it strange that God would tell somebody something even though someone else already knows it? I don't know how your lack of being convinced in this matter should prove to anyone other than yourself that God doesn't exist. And that's fine, because I know it cuts both ways.

Originally Posted by Russel Baldridge

So I contend, whole heartedly, that the notion of the supernatural is mankind's abstract terminology for that which is within his own mystically complex mind. The similarities are too many to ignore. The history and claims of religious and spiritual conventions are often strikingly opposed to the actions of it's constituents. And there has yet to be a reconciling of any of this amongst "God's children" no matter how much they all claim to strive toward that end.

Call it what you will, but please realize that there are other explanations.

I don't ignore those similarities either, and yet I know God lives. The history of claims and convictions contradict each other often and the believers of God range just as widely in actions as the nonbelievers. Believers can make claims such as I make that contradict another and it is most easy and natural to say, "look, you can't all be right about God, therefore what you're all calling God must not exist. It is just not possible that you're all right about him!" And yet he remains. Before we were here and after we are gone, he will remain and even though we can argue about whether or not we are satisfied with the evidence or lack thereof, our conclusion really can't change the truth of the matter. As I think we both know, either he is or he isn't.

I hold that it is perfectly reasonable to be willing to discard circumstantial evidence when greater evidence is presented. When I think about everything you presented in your last post, all I can find is that you are not satisfied to believe in God because what you see in this world is not what you would expect if God were true. You say there should be more agreement between believers but more disagreement between who men say God is and who men really are (in their egos.) Not only does some of this seem contradictory to me (though it doesn't matter at all) but I think such contradiction between what we initially expect and what we later discover to be true is constant in the physical material and natural world around us as well. As man's knowledge increases and builds upon past generations, we discard previously-solid notions and move forward with models and theories that more closely mirror new observations that we never had the ability to make before. It seems perfectly logical to me that if creation is the work of a creator, that we would often find ourselves at initial odds with it over disagreements between claims of observations of him and between those who study him.

Of course I realize there are other explanations. They just fall far short of convincing me that God does not exist. For me to deny his existence because of doubts and maybes that half the world has and half the world doesn't have is silly. I have to examine it for myself. Who would you really trust to tell you the truth about a creator? You'd have to get it straight from the creator wouldn't you? And I have, and it would be completely unreasonable for me to pretend he doesn't exist even in the face of others' doubts and misgivings.

Originally Posted by jockeys

Speciation HAS been directly observed.
Observed Instances of Speciation
Slashdot | Prions Observed Jumping Species Barrier

Speciation really isn't debatable anymore. What Russel is trying to say, I think, is not so much that evolution is a 100% perfect theory, cause it's not, but rather that the church has been consistently wrong for millenia on end when it comes to explaining science via deities. (for instance, Pope Zachary threatening Vergilius of Salzburg for saying the Earth wasn't flat.)

So someone being wrong about a subject outside of their area of expertise renders their knowledge of their area of expertise invalid?

(Not that I hold any of the popes' opinions in particularly high regard, but that's a different story)

Originally Posted by Seraphim

So someone being wrong about a subject outside of their area of expertise renders their knowledge of their area of expertise invalid?

clarify, don't know what you mean by this.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Is it plausible that God created life? Sure that's plausible too. And it is also perhaps a simpler, more reasonable explaination of what happened.

No, it is illogical to invoke higher complexity as an explanation of lower complexity.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

And I base my experience of God not on hearsay or upbringing, but on my own investigation and observations. I didn't just read the Bible or show up at Church.

That's fine for you, but your experiences and observations are not repeatable or testable by outside persons. The evidence that you found is whatever you make it for yourself, but it is hearsay for everyone else. Scientific evidence is repeatable, if you take issue with how the VPU gene was sequenced and analyzed, you can reproduce the test and see what happens. Not so with religion.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Scientists do look at coincedental fossils and draw their own conclusions from them.

Yes, along with radioactive decay dating methods, geological depth comparisons, geographic location differences, and now DNA sequencing. If one of the methods gives contradictory results they revise their theory. Not so with religion.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

Probably the same way the scientific community itself thought that it was right, until later scientists proved them wrong

Yes, but upon discovering the new information they didn't disavow it, cling to the old ways and only change their views upon discovering that the new methods were correct and were proving them to be ignorant for rejecting factual evidence on the basis of a literary work.

Originally Posted by jockeys

Speciation HAS been directly observed.
Observed Instances of Speciation
Slashdot | Prions Observed Jumping Species Barrier

Speciation really isn't debatable anymore. What Russel is trying to say, I think, is not so much that evolution is a 100% perfect theory, cause it's not, but rather that the church has been consistently wrong for millenia on end when it comes to explaining science via deities. (for instance, Pope Zachary threatening Vergilius of Salzburg for saying the Earth wasn't flat.)

On "Observed Instances of Speciation", the paper begins with an overview of the fact that scientists have had a hard time actually coming to a conclusion on how to actually define "species".

It goes on to list examples of speciation that were caused by scientists mucking around with plants/fruit flies, what have you. The title of the paper should be perhaps at best "Induced Instances of Speciation"

Originally Posted by jockeys

clarify, don't know what you mean by this.

You had referenced that Pope So and So had said "Blah de blah" about science, and he was flat out wrong. That shows that the guy knows nothing about science.

It does not show that he may know nothing about religion or God.

Originally Posted by Seraphim

You had referenced that Pope So and So had said "Blah de blah" about science, and he was flat out wrong. That shows that the guy knows nothing about science.

It does not show that he may know nothing about religion or God.

but he's never wrong about anything, right?
Papal infallibility - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia