Method of Madness: post-hoc reasoning and confirmation bias.

What exactly is your point? That faith is lunacy? You have never accepted anything on faith? When you go to the mechanic to have your car fixed and he says you need a new transmission, do you say, I don't believe you unless you take it out and show me how it works and what's wrong with it. Then why do so many people when presented with the gospel for the first time immediately believe? No kidding, that's why I come here. Actually some at my college are far more intellectual than many others my age who only think about sex, gettin' wasted, and b/f g/f drama. see my LOooong discussion with Sleeping Dragon on Laws of Divine Establishment if you want to know what I think about this.

Yes. My conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit. Faith is the substance of things confidently hoped for, the conviction of things unseen.And besides that I have studied a little bit of prophecy and some hidden messages in the Bible and some other numerical anomalies that God has put in there as sort of a security measure.

You do not Know the Bible is true, you believe the Bible is true. Those are two very different things.In several posts you've mentioned Can you help us by pointing to one such prophesy, hidden message or numerical anomaly that can be verified?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

No! Do you think only Christians who become kings are proof of God in their lives??? No, this is what you have seen through the lens of your subjectivity.If you would lay your personal bias aside for a moment and try to understand my arguments from my viewpoint for a moment, you might learn something."I love you." In that sentence I is the subject and you is the object. In personal objective love "you" has all the merit. In impersonal subjective virtue love "I" has all the merit. The only merit we can possess is God's righteousness.God does NOT love everyone personally. His impersonal love DOES motivate him to provide a solution through grace so that all may be recipients of his personal love. THIS is what is so awesome. This the one thing triumphs over all.Christ, our Lord, is the ultimate picture of humility. You cannot say God is vain. God glorifying himself is not vain. Only we, who are nothing, glorifying ourselves is vain. It is only God's power in us that makes us anything.God is immutable and cannot be capricious. To say he is capricious implies he is bound by time, which he is not.You obviously believe God's character is violated because bad things happen even though I have shown you otherwise. Please address my arguments WITH RESPECT TO the information I have provided you on God's character. If you keep ignoring what I am telling you, this argument is dead. I am not making it up. I am relating to you doctrine I have learned over the years as communicated to me through the Holy Spirit by my pastor's teaching and my own study in the Word of God.Perhaps if you would lay your subjectivity aside and try to understand the information I have provided, you would see that the "logical inconsistencies" vanish. 1 Corinthians 1:18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside." Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know God, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God... He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things and the things that are not to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him... as it is written "Let him who boasts boast in the Lord."If a relationship with God depended on our wisdom, then our salvation would not be by grace. Salvation is completely and totally God's work. We have no merit in it. If the wiser a person got, the closer he got to God, this would emphasize human power, not God's and this would not be fair. God designed the plan for salvation so that we can boast in nothing and no one except Him.1 Cor. 2:13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words.Thank you for your replies.

Jar, do you believe Jesus Christ is Lord, God and man in one person, and that he died on the cross as a subsitute for us, and that he was raised again on the third day and now resides at God's right hand in heaven? Please answer this question. Sure. I mentioned in another thread the heptadic features in the geneologies of Christ, the words in the N.T. books, and some other things. Chuck Missler has compiled some research on this and I'm sure other people as well have. Faith IS a way of knowing.

Hangdawg13 asks???? What I believe is belief, not fact. Wrong. Completely wrong. Belief is not knowing.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Science uses mainly empiricism. Rationalism and faith are our other two methods of learning. The guidance of the Holy Spirit and prayer has also been very helpful to me.

So you do not have faith that your beliefs are true? You do not even have enough faith to say "Christ is Lord". Jar, perhaps you should not continue calling yourself a Christian.

Beliefs.Beliefs.What I believe is totally outside the bounds of this thread. This is on Post-hoc reasoning and confirmation bias.If I said something was true simply because I believed it, I would be proving the very point made in this thread.You may gather from my posts what I believe is true. You might even believe that you know what I believe. But that is far different from fact or truth.The fact is, there is almost no evidence that Jesus even lived and there is no evidence for his death or resurection. If you know of some, please produce it. There is a thread at Message 1 asking for that very proof.Any belief in his life and death, his resurrection is simply that. It is a BELIEF.Read the Nicene Creed... It is a statement of belief, not fact. In every instance it says "We Believe", not "We Know".

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Well, I would say that the Holy Spirit existed before the Bible was ever created, so the Holy Spirit was not DERIVED from the Bible, but the Bible from the Holy Spirit. So which came first: the Spirit or the Book? I say the Spirit, but this is unprovable and unfalsifiable.Yes, this is my bias. There are a certain set of my beliefs that I cannot throw out because I am a slave for Christ. (Actually I do throw them out sometimes and argue with myself as with an atheist to try to figure things out, but when I present arguments on here, I never leave out what I know from my beliefs)See what happens when you try to get an evolutionist to set aside evolution, and you will find the same thing, infact they may even snarl spit and get red in the face (I have witnessed this). The difference is that I know what I know based on faith, thereby giving God all the credit. Evolutionists know what they know (or think they know )solely based on their own intelligence and then try to continue their search for other truths with their scientific methods. If knowledge of God were attained by human wisdom as in science, then man would receive the credit. This is why purely scientific attempts by unbelievers always fail: they are relying on their own power to find God. Salvation can attain no human merit or it is not from God.But I guess that is the whole point of this faith and belief forum, to search for God through human wisdom. I agree completely. Partially true, I think. Well, I think there may be evidence, the problem is that evidence and ideas and facts and opinions all get so jumbled up by people's subjective agendas (I think this is Satan's plan) that it is difficult if not impossible to rely on evidence or empiricism for help in these areas. Just like in politics. Polls and studies and graphs and trends and records and all manner of "evidence" exist to support anyone's agenda. Unless one has a phenomenal capacity and time to take it all in and sort it all out and compare it all with history, one cannot make judgements on candidates based on "evidence", one has a certain degree of "faith" in the words of people they trust to do this for them, like Rush Limbaugh. I think you are right. Perhaps one reason why they do conflict is that truth should not be compartmentalized. Perhaps...Thank you for your replies.

To Hangdawg13:I think that you have confused the definition of the words "faith" and "trust" (just like "objective" and "subjective").You have to understand that the Bible contains two types of information: historical records, and spiritual truth.Historical records are physical (such as the existence of Jesus as a person), and can be verified by historical research, archaeological finding, chemical analysis, physics calculations, etc. Any historical records that cannot be verified/confirmed are dismissed until evidence can be found to support it. Faith is entirely unnecessary for the verification of historical records.Spiritual truths are, by necessity, unfalsifiable. No one can prove (or disprove), scientifically or otherwise, that Jesus is God, nor that Satan exists. This is the reason why spiritual truths are accepted on the basis of faith - belief in something that cannot be proven, and exists regardless of physical reality (evidence).Confusion of historical records with spiritual truth (e.g. creationism) results in a faith-based treatment of historical records (which will never be tolerated by the scientific community) or a scientific treatment of spiritual truth (which is interesting but effectively pointless, since beliefs based on faith are never meant to be logical or falsifiable).And here is my point:To say that the Bible is true is misleading because it certainly contains elements of historical truth (history of civilisations and records made by independent historians have confirm the validity of the bible with regards to SOME of its record of historical events in comparable time slots) but also an enormous amount of spiritual truth (Genesis, The Ark, the miracles of God in the OT, Jesus's miracles, etc.) that cannot (and should not) be verified physically.

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"Respect is like money, it can only be earned. When it is given, it becomes pittance"

To Hangdawg13:Thank you for your reply.Reply to your post:Interesting. Your posts now make much more sense because you have acknowledged that there is bias in your thinking. Due to bias, your opinion is subjective as opposed to objective - do you see why Dan Carroll and I (and I'll bet, many others) are confused with your use of the terms "objective" and "subjective"? I don't know which evolutionist you've talked to, but if you can provide scientific (physical) evidence and/or logical arguments against evolution, he/she should accept it, or else he/she would not be an objective scientist. The question is whether your evidence is scientific (e.g. an opinion is NOT evidence) and whether your argument is logical (i.e. free from logic errors). Interesting. In your opinion, where does the physical end and the metaphysical begin (and vice versa)?If God (metaphysical) says "Let there be light!", and there is light (physical), then we are saying that the metaphysical can influence the physical, yes?If our prayers (physical) can influence God's decisions (metaphysical) on what happens in the world , then we are saying that the physical can influence the metaphysical, yes?So if the two levels can interact, what draws the distinction between the two? Power? But...who's looking for God using science (their own power)? As far as I know, only Christians have ever tried to prove God by looking for physical evidence.

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"Respect is like money, it can only be earned. When it is given, it becomes pittance"

As I said before, bias is necessary. We objectively evaluate the physical realm and find physical truth. We assimilate these truths and store them in our minds and they become our bias outlook. When we see a thunderstorm rising we pull out our scientific bias and think of the principles involved in it. This is not subjective because we are relying on truth that exists outside ourselves. Our understanding of how thunderstorms work is not self-made, but self-discovered.If the Bible is truth regardless of what anyone thinks of it, and I accept it as truth and store it in my mind, I can then objectively evaluate reality by it because it is not self-made. If my opinions are not motivated by selfishness and are not self-made or adopted from others who self-made them, but come from God who is the author of truth, then they are not MY subjective opinions, but objective truth.Haha.. I KNOW you will not see this my way because your bias is that the Bible is probably not truth since you have no verifable proof the Bible is truth. But you cannot falsify it either. So technically, my pending subjectivity is unfalsifiable. The 4th dimension Oh, and the Bible of course. I'm not quite sure what you mean. Well, it is the atheists and Jar on here that are always requiring verifiable proof in order to know something. Didn't someone just start up a post asking for proof of Jesus or that He is God?Patiently awaiting to discover the flaws in my logic.This message has been edited by Hangdawg13, 06-29-2004 01:01 AM

To Hangdawg13: Firstly, science doesn't ever find "truth", as I've said before. It is assumed that the ultimate "truth" that defines the universe will never be found.Secondly, "a biased outlook" is one that exists regardless of evidence to the contrary. If scientific theories are formulated such that it can best (relatively) explain the evidence available (that is, it minimises/explains conflicting evidence), I suppose we would say that it is a decidedly unbiased (objective) outlook, regardless of who holds it. The "If" that preceded your paragraph is where the bulk of your bias lie. The fact that evidence does not support this position makes the statement "If the bible is true..." as worthwhile as "If Santa Claus exists...". Well, the reason why physically verifiable proofs are valued is because it changes "There are super magical fairies" to "I have phyically verifiable evidence of the existence of super magical fairies". Wow! The difference it makes!And no, I don't need to disprove the existence of super magical fairies in order to dismiss the claim that they exist, and I would be very surprised if you disagree. So yes, your subjectivity is very much unfalsifiable (like King Arthur, Santa Claus, and super magical fairies!)And again, biased opinions are those that exist regardless of conflicting evidence. The lack of evidence FOR Biblical truth means that the null hypothesis (Bible is not true) has NO conflicting evidence. No idea what you're on about, but not an important point, so forget it. Well, I'm questioning the difference between the physical and the metaphysical. If God can influence us, and we can influence God, what's the difference between the physical realm and the metaphysical? I'm not contesting that they are looking for evidence and proof of Jesus, but are you sure they are doing so to "prove God"? (That was my point - see my quote)As Lam has stated, he started the thread in an attempt to examine the "physical evidence" proposed by theists in proving (scientifically or otherwise) the existence of God, because he/she is sick and tired of having those (apparently) unsupported arguments shoved in his face along with the assertion that the biblical God exists. You seem to have misunderstood the purpose of Lam's thread.Patiently awaiting your reply.

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"Respect is like money, it can only be earned. When it is given, it becomes pittance"

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Yes.

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That is circular reasoning.Just because you believe something is true, and just because you "feel" something is true, doesn't allow you to know it is true.A disinterested observer cannot use your faith as evidence to determine if the bible is true or not. He or she must have confiming evidence out side of the Bible itself that anyone can view and examine.

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My conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit.

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That's a nice personal faith, but faith is not the same as knowledge.

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Faith is the substance of things confidently hoped for, the conviction of things unseen.

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Right, that's why you cannot know the Bible is true, you can only have faith that it is.

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And besides that I have studied a little bit of prophecy and some hidden messages in the Bible and some other numerical anomalies that God has put in there as sort of a security measure.

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Like what?Please be specific.