Proofs of Evolution: A Mediocre Debate (Faith, robinrohan and their invitees)

Certainly not if you're talking about experiences of God. Believe in Him and set yourself to obey Him, you'll experience His reality.But if you mean like the "psychics" who have visions and get messages, then there is a sort of receptivity involved, but according to Biblical understanding it's really demon activity, and you DON'T want that. Now you can call me a crazy old woman again. I gather you may have experienced it yourself?Actually they were awfully certain of the superiority of their "nonlinear" thinking, and I'm sure some of them had quite a few IQ points on me, so I dunno about that "smart" bit.But it is really really odd that scientist types were always attracted to me. Until I started being a believer, and then the poor things got so worried about me.

That says it. That's the way it is throughout the Bible too.

That makes a certain sense, but I think that based on scripture God regards it as immoral to distrust good evidence to such an extent, or to distrust honest reports by honest people. I'd guess it's a species of lying, bearing false witness.In the case of the wife's denial of the husband's cheating, I feel for the wife and figure she's fighting what she knows to be the truth because what rightly matters to her is being threatened, and trusting her husband is normally a good thing, so it is hard to see it as quite the same situation. Motive is a big determining factor. But I suppose nevertheless it is similar -- to deny the evidence and well-meant revelation is fairly a form of bearing false witness. Preserving truth has high value. I don't think you are characterizing it correctly when you call it "belief in a set of doctrines." What are the doctrines? That God is a personal Being who relates to us, that Jesus is God, that He became incarnate, that He died for sinners and that sort of thing?To call these "doctrines" seems to me to put yourself at a distance from them -- even maybe to do so by a species of bearing false witness. They are historical facts that you are told in much the same way you are told about the existence of Timbuctoo, by the witness of a book written by apparently sincere people, and by the people who trust the book as well, or have had experiences that confirm it. In this case there are also more important consequences to believing or disbelieving than in the case of Timbuctoo. "...that he who believes on Him should have eternal life." I guess you can always say "Well, if I go to Hell for eternity at least I know it was my own choice, and foolish though it might be I can't call it immoral.""The fool" in the Bible is also one who doesn't believe. "The fool has said in his heart 'there is no God.'" So being foolish isn't much better than lying anyway.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-15-2006 10:34 AM

But my point was that in fact all these doctrines are simply statements of facts amply illustrated in the Bible throughout many reported historical events and encounters. The various Creeds merely codify the conclusions and inferences for easy reference.So someone tells you there is this Timbuctoo and there are even pictures, but you don't believe it; and then somebody writes out a list of the main evidences that there is a Timbuctoo and you call that "doctrine" as if it were something else than the same reasons you should believe there is a Timbuctoo. "Doctrine," like "just a belief," separates you from the facts just enough to confirm you in your disbelief. "The fool" in the Bible isn't much like what we normally call a fool. In the Bible the fool is spiritually blind. He follows his impulses, he refuses to apply himself to Wisdom. The fool in the Book of Proverbs gets seduced by a woman for instance, which is going to lead to his death. This is the kind of foolishness that refuses to learn that there are dire consequences to sin. Most of us have this kind of foolishness, all the more so in our modern world that denies God or Spiritual Reality.This isn't about mistakes in judgment about everyday situations. The choice to change jobs that turned out for the worse WAS an innocent mistake just because we can't know everything. It looked like a good move, there were no bad motives.But you've been told by many that the only way to avoid an eternity of misery is to give yourself to Jesus Christ. Refusing that is a different kind of foolishness. It's not based on bad judgment or lack of knowledge. You have the knowledge, you've been told, the people who have told you have your best interests at heart.{abe: to clean up a couple of confusing sentences.}This message has been edited by Faith, 01-15-2006 07:43 PM

I like Parasomnium's "feeling of incorporeality" as a clue to consciousness. I agree that our awareness of our minds is a clue to there being a reality beyond the physical that materialists insist is all there is, and I've appreciated your feeling that physicality couldn't possibly produce mind, but I'm not sure I'd say that mind is "supernatural." Maybe in the sense you mean the word it is. Did Augustine really say that?My first understanding of God was of Universal Mind. I went around for days thinking about how we are all living within a vast spiritual "soup" as it were, all surrounded and interpenetrated by the Mind of God. The entire universe is immersed in this Mind, this invisible immaterial nonphysical active conscious living "soup." Some orthodox/traditional Christian discussions of the nature of God seem to confirm something along these lines too. Immanence. He is separate from His creation but not one atom of it exists without His sustaining presence.The atmosphere seemed to become "electric" as I thought about all this at that time. (As a matter of dull physical fact the biggest electrical storm I've ever seen happened during that period. It made me laugh. The air crackled with nearly nonstop lightning.)I don't even remember Augustine wondering about a corporeal God, and don't see how anybody has such an idea at all. My understanding of God was of complete incorporeality/nonphysicality from the start. Rather, it's evidence for a spiritual reality, as a contrast with the dominant materialistic worldview, but hardly the origin of the idea.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-15-2006 07:50 PM

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NOT-SO-GREAT DEBATE THREAD ** NOT-SO-GREAT DEBATE THREAD **
==================================================================Hi Sidelined, this IS a Great Debate thread but I'm not going to complain about your crashing it since Robin and I long ago wandered off the debate. It's become more of a chitchat thread -- or a whatever-comes-up thread -- and nobody's complaining for some reason, which is all right with me. If he wants to complain we'll continue to keep it to ourselves, but meanwhile I will treat you as an Invitee.Anyway: There is ALWAYS a physical explanation, there is never a shortage of those.But you remind me that I didn't feel quite right about the word "feeling" in "feeling of incorporeality" as that implies a subjectivity. I think the incorporeality isn't a mere feeling but something we all *know* about the mind. Even if it were true that mind is a product of the brain, in itself it is incorporeal just as the words I'm writing are incorporeal in themselves. The meaning or thought that passes from me to you and you to me is incorporeal. And speaking of the body, sensations in the body, while produced by the physical body, and trackable along neuronal pathways, are also incorporeal in themselves. My own explanation for this is that the brain is a tool of the mind for functioning in the physical world, and we can't do without it for those functions. If it breaks down we are handicapped in those functions. But the mind or soul is something else, and it goes on living.==================================================================
NOT-SO-GREAT DEBATE THREAD ** NOT-SO-GREAT DEBATE THREAD **
=================================================================={abe: for clarity's sake I hope}This message has been edited by Faith, 01-15-2006 07:54 PM

Soul is often presented as including {abe: or made up of} intellect, emotion and will.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-15-2006 08:46 PM

Which part, my conceptualization of the Universal Mind as a soupy yet incorporeal omnipresence, or the idea of immanence?This message has been edited by Faith, 01-15-2006 08:45 PM

Drat, I hoped it would be easily grasped. That will do. Chicken noodle maybe. Anyway, just my way at the time of picturing the omnipresence of Universal Mind in relation to the physical universe. Although there is apparently nothing at all in between all the bits of stuff in the chicken soup, all those galaxies, all those atoms, yet God is present everywhere, between the electrons and positrons and everywhere else.And "within" it all too, that should be said, but that starts to get into pantheism, which I'm trying to avoid, the idea that God is IN everything and animates everything, and therefore that physical objects deserve worship, or that nothing really has an independent existence from God. Partly I'm too lazy to research it too. "Immanence" has all the same pitfalls. This whole train of thought gets heretical if not carefully defined and I'm way too tired right now to want to pin it down. My first conceptualization of God left something to be desired. I just thought it would be easy to picture. If not then not.More anecdotal information out of my tiring brain (I'm going to have to take a break soon): serious Zen Buddhist friend during those days who had much meditative experience, commented in the context of discussing that experience that "science doesn't know anything." (Her brother was/is a nuclear physicist and coming from her that was startling).I, out of my own brand-new experience of the Far Out, responded, "Oh but it's not wrong, it's just that what science studies is something different, something smaller."She, Zen style, without words, put her two outstretched index fingers side by side half an inch apart.She doesn't believe in God.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-15-2006 10:01 PM

The Spiritual Soup concept also expressed my sense of spiritual cause and effect between us all and all aspects of life.By the way, while I think that original notion has something going for it, I don't think of God in those terms any more. That picture was eventually replaced by the Biblical YAHWEH, who is a personal God. I didn't understand evil in those days either, and that changed the picture somehow too. Learning about the Fall and the devil came later.I'm probably just running on now because I didn't really get what you didn't really get.By the way, I probably won't be able to post much in the next few days.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-16-2006 04:38 AM

it always comes back to thought, mind, etc., doesn't it. That's the "stuff" God is "made of."I'm getting his first problem too, I think. A diffused "substance" maybe sort of like soup. Except I could think of the "soup" as completely invisible Mind that extends everywhere without exactly extending. But I'm getting what his problem was. And it's common. It explains why people so easily believe in nothing but materiality. I think you're right.Do keep writing down your thoughts.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-16-2006 11:20 AM

Theologically we're not. That's the problem with models like my soup model. They can imply things that aren't true.I'm just stopping by briefly. Will ponder later.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-16-2006 03:37 PM

So I get an "A" teach? Thanks. One thing I've discovered is that it's hard for me to write anything unless I'm goaded, such as in a debate or dialogue -- answering something. I also sometimes hear other people's stories and think I should ghost-write them because I know they won't, but I never get that done either. Well, but you do have a history, and you have an ear for character. If not autobiography then a novel -- or play -- could come out of that.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-16-2006 07:12 PM

Quick answer: It isn't a "where."The "something incorporeal" exists despite all those physical actions you describe. {abe: They are merely the physical vehicles that move it along).If we were talking face to face, which would pare down those actions basically to brain activity and mouth muscles, it would be the same situation. The thought itself is incorporeal. But you aren't convinced?Thank you for the compliment.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-16-2006 07:21 PM

I really don't know when you are joking.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-17-2006 02:32 AM