Getting back to Origins of belief

Greetings, fellow earthlings. This post stems from my original theory of two basic origins of thought and belief.CATEGORY#1: God exists. From Him originates all creation. All knowledge. All truth, and all that we know.CATEGORY#2: God or other unexplained entities may or may not be real, but the truth is internal to the person. In other words, human wisdom is the origin of all ideas, beliefs, and thought concepts. We made god up because we needed an explanation.For the sake of this argument, it must be allowed that category #1 is a possibility.
I can see some questions coming at me. Such as:
Even if Category#1 is possible, who defines the category? Well..a #2
minded believer would assert that human wisdom defines category #1. A#1 minded believer would define category #1 with their own internal wisdom.So...for the sake of this argument, lets assume that by some miracle, any category #1 believer is somehow endowed with wisdom from an external source, defined as God.To make this argument more realistic, lets eliminate the Bible and ALL wisdom and knowledge from ALL books and human sources. We are left with two categories of believers....those who are aware of and or connected to an external source which by common definition is God,
(even aliens, if you must)
and those who are quite happy with human rationale and deductive reasoning as a trustworthy method for proving and believing everything.Now lets observe what happens when a #1,(source:Creator or SC is debating a #2(source: Biology or SB)
SC: "X is true because source#1 is true".
SB: "Prove to me that #1 is true"! (Implication: Use #2 source to prove #1 concept.)
SC: (defiantly) Your source is fallible! My source is perfect!
SB: (smugly) Our source is the same...our own minds! You need a shrink!
SC: (desperately) And you need a church! You need God! You need my source!
SB: (patiently) I have my sources, and I trust them more than I trust you! Good day.See how our arguments diverge? Brian suggests that some people should seek professional help. Does this mean that the source of the wisdom of the education came primarily from possibility #2?In other words, I will give the credit that in all rational probability, an educated mind and/or opinion is entirely rational, provable, and valid in comparison to an untested and unprovable belief.
What if the premise of possibility #1 IS True,however? I also will concede that from a rational point of view, the original sin story is most likely not an absolute reality. I will argue that, for possibility#1 to be given credit, original sin as a reality must be placed under catagory 1.edited by making paragraph spacingsThis message has been edited by Phat, 04-25-2006 01:32 AM

Phatboy Question. What is the source of the knowledge these two possess in order to debate?

Good point, sidelined! I guess that we have to include the written stuff. For the SC, the Bible could be the written impartation.
For the SB, the entire scientific pool of knowledge throughout History will qualify. This is shaping up more complicated already!

PhatboyIf I am not mistaken then we have here two possibilities.One,that the bible actually is talking about a God and that God performs miracles in order to accomplish the things attributed to Him.
Second we have a universe that came into existence without any help and that science is what we use to determine the properties of that universe.The quandry that occurs between participants in disagreement on these possibilities is that one invokes the supernatural and the other cannot.Now,in what is only my personal opinion, a stance that depends upon supernatural explanations cannot show how those supernatural forces work.Science can show ,through careful reasoning and always tentatively,physical and mathematical models that use the world they are studying to explain that world.I have asked many times on this website for some explanation of the way in which a God may be expected to manipulate the matter in this world that,it is claimed, God created.Curiously,I have yet to recieve a response.

The reason that I cannot respond to you is that I cannot define how God does things. In most instances, I cannot explain how He works, and, as a matter of fact, I cannot document or verify that it is even Him!Using the Bible, much can be inferred that is attributable to God, but as far as proof positive, perhaps only if you personally were somehow involved would your own observations document the proof. Even then, according to rigourous rules of evidence, you may be unable to verify what you experienced. Thus, from a strictly scientific experimental framework Faith and God are unprovable.It would be the same if someone had a UFO close encounter. They may point to the flattened bushes, the weird marks on their arm, or be able to reconstruct the scene in minute detail. The skeptics would probably not be convinced. I am sure that you have heard the biblical explanation on human nature saying that people not only are unable to discern the truth because they love wickedness( free will) they are also unwilling. Critics say that using the Bible to prove itself is not valid. So there we are.I will recount a time where I had a personal episode that proved more than coincidance to me. I attended a church and also attended a morning prayer every Friday. The topics discussed and prayed about were always based on the Bible, yet we never knew what the weekly topic would be. "Spirit led", the Pastor said. Well...one week I bought a new Bible on a thursday. That evening, totally randomly, I flipped the book open and read perhaps a half of a page...say in Nehemiah or Proverbs, I don't remember where.Anyway, I read this "random" selection and said my prayers and went to sleep. The next morning, I arrived at prayer. Perhaps 20 of us attended. The person next to me nudged me before prayer began and said that he had a verse to share with me. Nodding, I watched him turn to the exact page and read what I had read the night before! Mildly impressed,I then observed the Pastor come in, and we opened in prayer. Next, the Pastor began his daily study...on the exact same page and topic! This was more than a coincidence, I thought.edited and made paragraph spacings only.This message has been edited by Phat, 04-25-2006 01:19 AM

"The quandry that occurs between participants in disagreement on these possibilities is that one invokes the supernatural and the other cannot."--This observation corresponds somewhat to what I perceive as the diametric opposition that takes place, not only between debators but also within each debator's psyche (i.e., as cognitive dissonance).Now,in what is only my personal opinion, a stance that depends upon supernatural explanations cannot show how those supernatural forces work.Science can show ,through careful reasoning and always tentatively,physical and mathematical models that use the world they are studying to explain that world.
--Many theologens might state "His (G_d's) ways are past finding out". What you state is your "personal opinion" seems fair enough. But science itself too often gives us mere speculations, hypotheses (tenable or untenable), etc. that also amount to mere personal opinion, methinks.I have asked many times on this website for some explanation of the way in which a God may be expected to manipulate the matter in this world that,it is claimed, God created.
--I will try to address your question a little on several levels; (I am certain my responses will be crushed by the empiricists) here goes. (This is my personal opinion):
1) God, by definition, would be all-just, all-good, all-knowing, omnipresent, omnipotent, infinite, the beginning source of pure-love/beneficience (if there be such a thing), restoration, redemption, etc. etc. (Please forgive the shoddy grammar)2) As such, might not such a God be expected to manipulate various forms and/or formlessness of matter unto some infinitely huge beneficient end? The explanation would be: "for His glory" (I know that may seem like circular reasoning/beneficience; I personally think of it as incremental beneficience though). Now "glory" might be defined as something like eternal excellence (i.e., harmony symmetry, balance, and/or proportion of things and events)3) What does "His glory" have to do with explaining effects upon matter? Peculiar complex effects upon matter might perhaps be percieved in the periodic table of elements:Observe the Seven(7) quantum levels or rows, each one contains columns or diagonals of properties that are peculiar and suggestive of orderliness via ID. Systematic Arrangements of Noble gases, R.E. metals, and semiconductors, for example might be hypothesised as having been produced by ID alone (vs. say, dying stars).4) Organic Chemistry and BioChemistry both seem to me to require much more than primoridial soup in order to conjure such sophisticated molecules. Granted, sparse nucleotides and amino acids might be discovered on other planets but there formation(s) and corruption by peroxides suggests (to me) APRIORI designed chemical algorhyms. Thus ID might be hypothesised as the mechanism.Time would fail for me to speculate enzymes as ICs requiring ID, cells as ICs requiring ID, animal physiologies as ICs requiring ID, etc.5) On the sub-atomic level: protons must be held together by highly speculative forces that may defy theoretical attributes.Of course, such speculations as these are not grossly empirical theories of how a Creator would precisely manipulate matter. So I may have side-stepped your question thus. If so, I apologize.

What "sophisticated molecules" are those? If we don't know what the first replicators where why should we think they are sophisticated? What does this mean? I'm not the one to give details but quantum theory gives very good results in this area (I'm told). I don't think they are all that speculative whatever that means.

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Common sense isn't

Phatboy Well it is fotunate that scepticism exists and not just in science circles.I often feel sorry for those who believe they have had a true experience but cannot seemingly get anyone to believe them. Science has to take these steps to winnow out the tendencies of humnans to hallucinate,exaggerate,lie to themselves and others and these are the easy ones. There are hundreds of errors that are possible in the study of science.In medicine there is a generalization that is used so that people do not bog themselves down with uneccesary distraction, "When you hear the sound of hooves, think horses before zebras."Please do not think I am in anyway downplaying the event that you bring up here. I am merely going to offer you an alternate way of looking at the phenomena.As always you are the one who must decide what to make of it.The power of coincidence is this. The human being is a pattern seeking animal.Have you ever seen those pictures that at first do not look like anything but a jumbled mess but after awhile of viewing it resolves into a picture that makes you wonder why you did not notice it immediately? This is similar to that.And here is what you can do to clarify it.Think of all the times you have opened a bible to a random page and read a chapter or so and the next day or in church that week you did not have a friend or pastor go to the same page exactly. Now how many times did that occur in relation to the one event you mentioned here. I am sure you have once or twice{at least}in your life been thinking of someone and the person shows up or phones you.
Because these events stand out in contrast to the day to day background of our lives they are kind of like those hidden pictures.We have a tendency to also count the hits and ignore the misses.As for the idea of evidence there are many things in science that we have no direct access to but through the application of a little imagination and a lot of plain hard work we can work out how something we cannot directly access evidence of operates. We do this by supposing if the item exists at all and using knowledge we already fairly sure of then we guess at what properties it has. THEN we experiment to see if the item acts according to our impression of it.If so we press on into further experiment and conjecture. If not, we recognize the error of continuing to follw that model and form a new model. In building a case for the existance of one item we often get hints of other phenomena.As Isaac Asimov said {paraphrasing hereThe way discovery is made in science is not when we yell eureka! but when we say to ourselves"That's funny..."Anyhow I must be off to bed as my holidays are over and it is time to catch up on the Christmas bills.[This message has been edited by sidelined, 01-05-2004]

Sidelined patiently explains to me that one of my personal experiences which I deduced to be more than random chance was caused by: ="an alternate way of looking at the phenomena.As always you are the one who must decide what to make of it.The power of coincidence is this. The human being is a pattern seeking animal.Have you ever seen those pictures that at first do not look like anything but a jumbled mess but after awhile of viewing it resolves into a picture that makes you wonder why you did not notice it immediately"?
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OK. The only problem that I have with a Universe without a superior mind behind it is that if nature is so gosh darned amazing, why do human beings still have wars in civilized societies? Why do we still want what others have? Why do we seek to diminish the rights/freedoms of others to secure our own?
Another possible way to view the question of origins of wisdom is this: Would anyone have a problem with the probability of a vastly superior alien life form that would be at least as advanced over us as we are over.. say..primates? Or even bacteria?? If we as a people encountered such a being, would we trust their motives? Would we submit to their superior position, or would we attempt equal status as pertains to the basic customs and morals that we embrace. How would or how should we approach such a superior creature?(should one exist)

Phatboy I would venture to say that war is the utmost in evidence in support of the idea that,perhaps we are not civilized. As for wanting what others have could be due to what evolution shows us. It is a truth that in most of man's history basic needs were not often met on a regular basis and want of what others have grew out of the want of basics.As a society we crave the ability to have freedoms but,paradoxically we wish to secure those freedoms.In the securing of our level of abundance we do so at the expense of others.I feel that it is because we do not understand our sciences that the wonders of nature are not given more credit than they are. Allow me to post this bit of understanding from a scientist. What most people find as drudgery "the two week half-life for radioactive phosphorous" give incredible insights when you are privy to how it all fits together. We have not yet entered a scientific worldview for the most part yet.I think that is a shame.

I have read some good material from some pro gospel people as well as the usual drivel. Some good points are these:
The question is not so much when the Gospels were written, but how reliable are the sources upon which the writers draw and what do they do with their sources? It is one thing to say that the Gospel writers selected and adapted their material to promote certain themes. It is another thing altogether to argue that they drew upon unreliable sources or felt free to contrive material because it suited their purpose.
1. The writer of Luke's Gospel says specifically that what he and others have written is based upon eyewitness testimony (Luke 1:1-3). He says that he has investigated everything 'carefully' (NIV - the Greek word means 'exactly,' 'diligently' or 'perfectly') from the beginning. Obviously, he had had contact with eyewitnesses or was at least able to draw upon a tradition of eyewitness testimony. Unless we suppose the eyewitness testimony to be fraudulent or significantly distorted, we have grounds for thinking that Luke's account is substantially historical.
2. The writings of Luke are characterised by great precision in historical detail. They are filled with a multiplicity of details that provide a means of testing their truth. Luke's references to titles (e.g. of Rornan officials), and his details regarding life and government under Roman rule are exact. His accuracy has been demonstrated again and again.
3. There is a lot of material in the Gospels which is difficult to account for if the Gospels are substantially unhistorical. The material is counter-productive. It is not what we would expect to have been invented or to develop as myth. A creative community would have had no reason to invent it. And if the material was already there, it would have had every reason to exclude it.
4. There is a lot of material in the Gospels which is quite irrelevant and which is difficult to account for if the Gospels are substantially unhistorical. Jesus' use of the phrases 'kingdom of God' and 'Son of Man' are clear examples. If these expressions were used by the early Christians and placed in Jesus' mouth by a developing tradition, why do these expressions hardly appear at all in the New Testament letters?
5. There were many issues faced by the early Christians which are not reflected in the Gospels but which would have been very relevant to the situations in which the readers found themselves. The omission of these issues is very difficult to account for if the Gospels are largely unhistorical and instead reflect the developing theology of the early Christian communities. Any attempt to show that in selecting or adapting their material, the Gospel writers also felt free to create or distort this material is, therefore, unconvincing.The Gospels, for instance, do not depict Jesus addressing many of the issues that faced the early Christians. There were plenty of controversies which Paul would doubtless have liked to have settled by means of an authoritative teaching of Jesus but he did not - circumcision, the relationship of Jew and Gentile, baptism, the problem of meat offered to idols, the correct use of spiritual gifts, the rules governing church meetings and so on. It would have been easy for Paul and the Gospel writers, to have placed in Jesus' mouth some ruling regarding circumcision, for instance. Apparently, the church knew of no Jesus-traditions regarding these topics. Neither the writers of the New Testament letters nor the Gospel writers were able to draw upon such traditions and the early Christian communities did not feel free to invent them.
I could say more, but my reply is too long already! Sorry, guys.
It seems valid to disagree with the entire Bible as inerrent, but to merely dismiss Jesus as just another historical anomaly is the height of arrogance for human creatures who are not yet fully civilized. On an individual level, many of the arguments including some by members of this posting board are intellectually sound. On a societal level, however, it appears to me anyway that my assertion of the belief paradigms coupled with the possibility of the reality of original sin cannot be dismissed so easily.

By the way, sidelined I agree that a scientific worldview is something that has not been allowed to be fully tested. It is a good idea to be deductive and rational, but my point is that human nature and the possibility of a spiritual flaw in our programming...plus the hypothesis of a Creator...need not be dismissed in totality either.

No, it need not be. We frequently put forward hypothoses for consideration that don't get a lot of attention. One reason is that we realize that, interesting that they might be, there is no way of testing them. So they are put aside untill we understand more or have different technology. Others work on the ramifications of the hypothosis to see if it does have some testable predictions.The Creator hypothosis, by the standards of the majority of Christians, is totally outside of the natural world and totally untestable. They like it that way. Science has nothing to say about that. It also can make no use of such a hypothosis.If you, in the minority, want to construct a Creator hypothosis that is testable then it may well be an interesting subject to some part of science. It may also fail the test. That is your risk. The other Christians get to keep their faith.It is astonishing that some who post here are willing to hook the test of their Creator hypothosis to something like the literal interpretation of Genesis and the age of the earth. They gradually get painted into a more and more tight corner. We've had a number of ex-believers post their personal stories of what happens then you construct such a tiny, little, weak Creator as your hypothosis. It is as if those who believed in the anthropomorphic Gods of Mt. Olympus were still with us. Weak, human sort of Gods. Not a God who could, or would construct a universe like ours and allow it to unfold according to His laws. Nor a God who can allow humans real free will. Rather a God like Zeus, who likes to mess with human women, gets really pissed off, zaps those who he disagrees with and generally acts like one of us given too much power. (maybe not named Zeus, maybe named Bruce )That God is not the one that the majority (and call themselves real) Christians believe in. He is the God of the literal Genesis. The God of the primitive tribes. The God of the uneducated. The God of the bible belt.

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Common sense isn't

Great post, Ned! Im not gonna flatter ya too much, but I will say that it is refreshing to hear scientific minds such as yourself, sidelined, and Stephen among others who don't trash the Christian hypothesis....you merely put it on the shelf until it passes inspection as a viable theorem one day!

I'm not all the gol darned open minded you know. The majority of real Christians believe in a God that isn't subject to testing. That's really all I'm saying. They believe in a God that at least sounds like a God that could create the universe.This God, to me, has nothing to do with what we study with science. It is also a somewhat coherent belief system.However, it doesn't sound like an hypothosis that will ever be able to be taken off the shelf. It is always outside of the natural realm.

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Common sense isn't