Where did God come from?

e:About your urge to believe, or rather the absence of your urge to believe:Human urges, in general, are fairly plastic, as evidenced by addictions, being in love with this one and not that, etc. A sensible, sapienistic (hence, normal?) human would therefore tend to use their mind to adopt (choose) profitable urges. Now, the study of Anthropology has shown that almost all existing or surviving cultures are filled with persons who have, or appear to have, an urge to believe, that has resulted in a variety of religious practises involving belief in some higher powers or beings. That in itself suggests that when persons in the past were born with, or chose not to have, the urge to believe, they were selected out of history.But it gets better. The more focused that urge to believe has become on a father-figure God, the more widespread the religious practise. In ecological terms, the more fit the choice/phenotype of having such an urge. Looking at the "success" of cultures, we have quite a wide rangeing database, from Calvinistic Switzerland with some 500 years now of remarkable peace, prosperity, honor, glory, to, say, atheistic Albania, with a record of gloom and despair broken only by Mother Teresa, the exception that proves the rule.You asked, didn't you, why it might be in your best interests to choose to have an urge to believe?Now, I'll grant you that it's something of a puzzle why you have to choose that urge, why it is not already present. And maybe you are also unaware of how to so choose some urge, so that it actually shows up in your mind or emotions. The mystery of evil again raises its ugly head. We do know that some babies are born addicted, that is, with a mal-adapted urge, because of stuff their mother was doing. Write it off to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.But, lucky you, because you get to look at the urge objectively, and will get only what you choose, you can refine what you choose. You do not need to join those troublesome persons who not only have an urge to believe in a perfect loving father who is a God, but also want to believe in a talking book, or some hypocritical religion. You also, getting your urge by choice, should it lead or energize you into some philosophically untenable position, can later choose to abandon it, to choose the urge to disbelieve.It's only reasonable, at this point. As a person yourself, you tend to stay away from people who have no urge to want you. To court someone, you make it clear to them that you have an honest desire to have them a part of your life. Why not give God that break? Choose to want Him, and when you do want Him, let Him know you want Him, and see if He won't give you a tumble. Won't supply you with whatever philosophic insights or arguments that you need to know that He is an ontologic reality.BTW, I'm new to these discussions, and missed out on contributing to your soul, mind/matter debates. If I had, I would have encouraged your diligence and excellence in attempting to keep the debaters playing by the rules. Maybe I will respond anyway, even though it has been a while.Stephen

:ae:I'm going to reply here, to the question I raised elsewhere. I've still got the same problem, to wit, when you say I still hear you leaving unsaid the implicit assumption that we are not created beings operating under a creator's agenda. Begging, in other words, the evolutionary point of view. There are, of course, concepts of truth and falsity that are human creations. And so, if we are made in the image of some creator, He might also reasonably have some ideas about truth and falsity. In fact, we are told that He does, telling us things like, "you shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free." and "I am the way, the truth, and the life." He also says that He doesn't change, implying that truth as He defines it is absolute, and even knowable, if we play by His rules. We will know when we get there, because what we get will set us free.Now, experientially, this is the way the scientific game can be played, (but, according to Kuhn, rarely is). There is absolute truth "out there." There are rules (God given, whether we recognize that or not) which if we follow them, we get closer to or more of this truth. The closer we get, or the more truth we "know" the freer we become. So, learn the rules, do the science, and, use some measure of your freedom increase to know you haven't wandered off track.It's against the rules, of course to assert dogmatically that this is absolutely true. "If any man thinks that he knows something, he knows nothing as he ought to know it." But it's an idea with an outside or objective measure of reality. Count your choices against your "have tos", and you have some measure of freedom. Watch that change as you attempt to "know the truth." If it increases, you have some more confidence that maybe truth is absolute after all. Because we are operating as created beings, and our creator made what is truth to us absolute.

grace2u,Thank you for the encouragement. In the matter of debating with unbelievers in a productive manner, we are advised in Scriptures that love between and unity of believers is essential for their credibility. This love is defined as keeping the commandments, which means working through disagreements according to His rules for such things, not necessarily being in total agreement. I'll keep my eyes out for your posts, to see if we cannot find a way of working together so that truth-loving doubters won't find either of us incredible or hypocritical because we speak as if we know God, but ignore His commandment to love one another. Hope you'll do the same. Meanwhile, let's keep the question, "Why do you believe that is true?" up before us, so that we can sharpen our presuppositional base, as we explore disagreements. If we are right in our beliefs about the Bible, there could well be static in the communication system we are using.Thank you, again. Glad you understood what I was thinking.Stephen

Willowtree,Re your post #154,Didn't want the astuteness of this post to go unrecognized.So, a practical atheist could do an experiment: If they could somehow properly "accept" Jehovah, temporarily for the sake of testing, they could then experience a confirming new state of mind, one that was different from a control where one tried to talk oneself into believing something non-theistic.To properly accept Jehovah in this experiment, the foundation would be attention to some imperative voice "command" from Him in Scripture. I prefer His command to "Choose Life."Keep up the good work.Stephen[This message has been edited by Stephen ben Yeshua, 01-09-2004]

:ae:You note, I admit it begs the question, which I do to arrive at predictions I can test. I need to have the non-sequitur explained, unless it means that I suppose that it follows that it is more than usually likely that we have absolute truth, because I say that is what God seems to have decided for us.Meanwhile, the idea that we have absolute truth from a creator God is deduced in part because the God is the absolute creator, and can determine absolute truth, by (my) definition of an absolute creator. So, if the creator God is real, and if the deduction that He has created us with at least some absolute truths is valid, we can predict that human behaviors based on the belief that absolute truth exists, will be successful or wise: will get what they set out to accomplish. Now, I was taught that human science is based on the idea that absolute truth existed and, while unattainable, could be approached by repeated iterations of the hypothetico-deductive method. This method is accredited with many, perhaps most scientific successes by some philosophers of science.There are, as I have noted on other threads, many H-D confirmations that this creator God person is an ontological reality. One can even deduce from this hypothesis the existence of atheists in the species Homo sapiens, a species in which the members of the species are supposed to have a fairly accurate ontological view of the world. This creator appears to have made free-will the trump card, overcoming any natural tendency or talent towards intelligence, compassion, or even survival instinct. Such confirmation also improves the estimate of the plausibility that there is absolute truth.But, the only absolute truth I have found so far is that survival, especially eternal survival, depends on hearing the creator God's voice, experienced first as a choice, and then as humbly using any and all available authority (especially the Bible, when available) to learn how to hear that voice.Stephen