Subjective Evidence of Gods

Yes and no. The Qr'ran or Koran if you like does recognize Jesus as Messiah and as a prophet. It doesn't recognize Jesus as part of the Trinity but it certainly goes far enough that we have a great deal of common ground if we want to look at what we have in common instead of focusing on the differences.The Qu'ran recognizes Jesus as prophet and messiah in Surah 3 — 45 to 47

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And remember when the angels said: O Mary! Lo! Allah giveth thee glad tidings of a word from Him, whose name is the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary, illustrious in the world and the Hereafter, and one of those brought near (unto Allah)
He will speak unto mankind in his cradle and in his manhood, and he is of the righteous.
She said: My Lord! How can I have a child when no mortal hath touched me? He said: So (it will be). Allah createth what he will. If He decreeth a thing, He saith unto it only: Be! And it is.

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Also both the Bible and the Koran are narratives that tell the story of our evolving understanding of God. The question then is, where the narratives differ which is more accurate. As a Christian I believe that the Bible does a more accurate job of revealing God to His creation than the Qu'ran does, and particularly as revealed to us through Jesus Christ.I don't see the Bible as a book of rules and regulations. Nor do I see it as a something that is to be believed so that all of our questions can be answered. I see it as a story of the mankind and of how God through human imagination and wisdom revealed and continues to reveal His nature and desires for His creation. He has done this through inspired mythologies of creation, through Moses and the prophets and climaxing in Jesus and the resurrection. I believe that the authors of the Biblical stories were inspired to tell their own stories in their own words. Thus when they say that God told them to go into some town and commit genocide we can use our subjective wisdom, (as well as looking at the story through the lens of the gospels), and see that although they believed that is what God wanted they had in actuality got it wrong.In others word we have to use our subjective wisdom, whether divinely inspired or not, to understand the message that we should act on in our holy books. I also think that the message, as delivered by Jesus in the Gospels, is that the Muslims are not our enemies. They are part of God’s good creation, they are loved by God and they are our neighbour. This is not to say that when anyone uses their faith to commit atrocities that we shouldn’t respond, but one thing we should not do is tar everyone of that faith with the same brush.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

We exist as sentient beings in a world that appears to be made ready for us. No. An idea is real but can't, at least as I understand it, be empirically detected. Using human wisdom we can pick what seems most likely which is subjective, but just the same there is considerable subjective evidence, in my view, to guide us. Yes. We have inquiring minds and I suggest that isn't by accident.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Sure, but all you are describing is how things happened which we can find objective evidence for. What you describe looks to me subjectively like something that was extremely well thought out ahead of time. I agree that subjectively you can also make the case that we are the beneficiaries of very fortuitous non-intelligent natural forces. We can look at the same evidence and subjectively come to different conclusions which goes back to the question in the OP.Edited by GDR, : messed up the quote

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Just the same the vast majority of us aren't wanting to check out either. Have you got a better room on offer? At any rate, the Christian answer is that it isn't finished yet.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Ya, but we struggle on. Nobody said it was going to be easy.

When you are coming to conclusions based on subjective views, it is again a subjective view as to whether these views are on an equal footing or not. I'm certainly not trying to give traction to the creationist (at least as it is understood around here), position. In my view allowing one's reading of the Bible to influence their views on science is a gross misunderstanding of how we are to understand the Bible. What empirical evidence do you have for a non-intelligent first cause, or more simply why is there something instead of nothing?Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Thank heavens I was a child of the late fifities and early sixties and didn't have to deal with that. I could get in enough trouble drivin' out on the prairies with a couple a guys and a case of beer. What would be the most obvious one of those decent working ideas?

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

As you don't have any objective thoughts on these "decent working ideas", I assume that you subjectively believe that these ideas exist.In the end, even if scientists could come up with some combination of materials that could cause life it still won't answer the question of why that combination occured in the first place.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I think we are going off topic as this is supposed to be about subjective evidence. The subjective evidence is that we continue to survive, and even thrive, so in spite of the fact that you perceive what you consider mistakes, the positive obviously far outweigh the negatives.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Not at all. I said that it "appears to be made ready for us" which is saying that the observation itself is subjective.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

The same can be said for any belief including atheism. However, I contend that it is possible for subjective evidence to be the basis of our deep personal beliefs.None of us came into this world holding deep personal beliefs. It had to start somewhere. I want from agnosticism to theism based largely on the subjective belief that there is an underlying moral code that is basic to our existence after reading CS Lewis.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I actually have never laid claim to being the brightest light in the chandelier, but I personally did find Lewis' argument compelling enough to at the very least be open minded about it. Actually the more I have read various religious, and non religious writers over the years, the more convinced I have become. Frankly, in my subjective view, nothing makes as much sense of my life and the world I live in as Christianity. (That of course raises the question of which Christianity I'm referring to, but that is another question.)As far as the link CS Lewis is an idiot you included I suggest the title says it all. Not something you’d take that seriously. He makes the argument that there is no fundamental truth about morality as animals are capable of altruism. Frankly, as I believe in a God who created all life that is exactly what I would expect to see.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Hi Straggler But what constitutes "a firmer evidential basis than others" is again a subjective conclusion. I know we disagree but it is my belief that the evidence for an external intelligence as the root cause for this world is on much firmer ground than a non-intelligent cause. Here is the quote from your OP on that thread.

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The only known source of supernatural concepts is the human imagination. Scientific inductive reasoning thus leads to the tentative theory that ALL supernatural concepts are derived from human imagination. This theory can be falsified by presenting another source of such concepts. Either the existence of such an entity or a supernatural concept derived from a non-human source. This theory predicts that where the source of any specific supernatural concept becomes known that source will turn out to be human imagination. This theory is not weakened by assertions that unevidenced sources might exist (anymore than evolutionary theory is weakened by Last Thursdayism)

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I'm prepared to accept that a great deal of what I subjectively believe I know about God has come from human imagination.CS Lewis writes:

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My present view--which is tentative and liable to any amount of correction--would be that just as, on the factual side, a long preparation culminates in God's becoming incarnate as Man, so, on the documentary side, the truth first appears in mythical form and then by a long process of condensing or focusing finally becomes incarnate as History. This involves the belief that Myth in general is not merely misunderstood history ... nor diabolical illusion ... nor priestly lying ... but, at its best, a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination

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I recently read a book entitled The Evolution of God by Robert Wright. Wright describes himself as a agnostic materialist. I very much enjoyed and respected his point of view. It was his view that our concept of god has evolved over time. I would agree with him although I would argue that God does continue to reach out through human imagination so that our knowledge of Him as well as His desires for us continues to evolve. Absolutely. Essentially, both of us have looked at the world subjectively and come to very different decisions. We both have strong beliefs and one of us is very wrong. Actually, I only said that argument led me to Theism. How to get to Christianity from there is another discussion entirely.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I wondered what his point was. Edited by GDR, : I read Theo's post

But predicting eclipses is nothing like the sort of knowledge I'm talking about. Seriously though it isn't. An eclipse is something that is repeatable, predictable and verifiable. I can hold theistic or atheistic views and still find that the sun comes up in the morning and life goes on.We would both agree that there are natural laws such as gravity etc that allow for our existence.We both agree that there appears to be a moral code and that the more that moral code is followed in any particular society the better off that society is.The question is only about the basis for the natural laws and moral code. Whether we conclude that they are formed by an intelligent law/code giver or whether they came about by chance, (or whatever other word you want to use), we can still have conclusions that can be trusted.There is something of a double standard here in that we have both come to conclusions about why we exist. We both exist and we ask why. The fact that we exist is evidence of something No matter how much science answers as to how we exist it can't answer the question of whether or not there is a prime mover.Let's say that a scientist some day is able from base elements able to create life in a petri dish. That wouldn’t prove anything about a prime mover. I would say, great so that is how God did it. You presumable would say, so that is how it just happened. I agree, but that isn't what we are talking about. The title is "The Subjective Evidence of Gods" and not any particular theology.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.