Should a Deist pray? Response to jar's idea of God.

Dorkness is thinking a human being can actually knowingly believe in a fantasy -- worse, ACTUALLY knowingly believing in one -- no, that's worse than dorkness.{Edited to add "knowingly" for the sake of clarity.}This message has been edited by Faith, 12-23-2005 10:21 PM

OK, so are you saying it's OK to have inconsistent beliefs? Be real here man. The whole thread is about beliefs. This is the belief forum, and you claim any belief that God created/designed mankind is essentially wrong since you say there is no evidence.Well, that means you think beliefs must have evidence. So where is your evidence of God in the first place?

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hy? Leaving aside the point that the evidence does indicate design and not strictly evolution as you claim, certainly we have no real substantive evidence for the first life form sponteneously generating from inanimate matter, do we?

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WHile we don't have evidnec on exactly what happened, we DO have an increasing amount of evidence of how it could have happened. And, aside from the logical fallacy of personal incredibility, there is no evdience for 'design'. I don't think that an algorthem has been made to tell 'design' from natural occurances.Here are some older examples, but I think it will get the point accross we are not totally ignorant about the process.Josep M. Rib, Joaquim Crusats, Francesc Sagués, Josep Claret, Raimon Rubires. 2001. Chiral Sign Induction by Vortices During the Formation of Mesophases in Stirred Solutions. Science Volume 292, Number 5524, Issue of 15 Jun 2001, pp. 2063-2066Rubires R, Farrera JA, Ribo JM. 2001. Stirring effects on the spontaneous formation of chirality in the homoassociation of diprotonated meso-tetraphenylsulfonato porphyrins. Chemistry 2001 Jan 19;7(2):436-46 (PubMed)
Robert M. Hazen, Timothy R. Filley, and Glenn A. Goodfriend. 2001. Selective adsorption of L- and D-amino acids on calcite: Implications for biochemical homochirality. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 98, Issue 10, 5631-5636, May 8, 2001Jason P. Dworkin, David W. Deamer, Scott A. Sandford, and Louis J. Allamandola 2001. Self-assembling amphiphilic molecules: Synthesis in simulated interstellar/precometary ices. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 98, Issue 3, 815-819, January 30, 2001Stephen J. Sowerby, Corey A. Cohn, Wolfgang M. Heckl, and Nils G. Holm 2001. Differential adsorption of nucleic acid bases: Relevance to the origin of life. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 98, Issue 3, 820-822, January 30, 2001 (link)
Keefe, A. D. & Szostak, J. W. "Functional proteins from a random-sequence library". Nature 410, 715-718 (2001)

Well, rand, I asked you earlier to explain why it is inconsistent to believe that God's interest might increase once sentient, spiritual beings appeared on the scene and said hello, but you didn't respond.You have said it is inconsistent, but you haven't said why.

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The concept of God's interest peaking is a fine one. Clearly laying that out as a reason is at least an explanation.I referred to inconsistency for claiming God does not intervene in creating life but does in people's personal lives.But let's move on. Do you think God created evolution as His mechanism for life, and if so, does that mean God designed imperfection on purpose?

That is very poor logic and reason

Again insults to people that disagree with him.

I am not aware that jar has ever suggested God is not omnipotent. I will simply note that you evaded the issue and resorted to an ad hominem.

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Impeach Bush.

I am agnostic on the question of God, rand. My point was that there is no inherent contradiction between believing God did create the intitial state then stood back to allow the universe and life to emerge, and believing that this same God hears and answers prayers. It seems to me that one can only insist on a contradiction by holding God to an individual notion of consistency.I know that some Christians believe that free will is a necessity. It does not seem qualitatively different to believe in something similar for the emergence of order, sentient life, and spirit: free emergence, perhaps, or free striving in the case of life.If one argues that God created humankind as they are, then He created imperfect creatures. If She created a process to allow the emergence of humankind, or other sentient life (not in a creationist sense), then She may have created a perfect process for doing so while preserving the freedom to emerge, struggle, and have independent will.This message has been edited by Omnivorous, 12-24-2005 04:50 PM

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How the blazes can me saying be interpreted as trying to read God's mind? I'm commenting on the omnipotence of God, it's got bugger all to do with reading God's mind and everything to do with what the Bible seems to describe God as. Since you seem to have a deep-seated problem with the beliefs of anyone who doesn't believe as you do and you think everyone is out of step but you, don't you think Heaven is going to be mighty empty when you get there?That's the difference between you and I randman, I believe certain things, but I don't declare that my beliefs are the only true way. I accept that my beliefs might be wrong because, by definition, beliefs have no supporting evidence. You, on the other hand, along with your sidekick, Faith, seem to declare everyone else not proper Christians who'll never get to Heaven. Tell me, has God told you all of this personally or are you just doing the best you can like the rest of us?

yawn...

Is this type of response called for? Does it advance the discussion?

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It's a whole lot better than Trixie's posts, and much nicer too. Would you rather I tell her what I think of her post?This message has been edited by randman, 12-24-2005 05:52 PM

Was it necessary to bring me into this? Randman and I agree on many things and are frequently on the same side on this board, but calling me his "sidekick" is a bit out of order. Not having followed this discussion I won't comment on Randman's response, whatever it was, but would like to answer this common complaint with the usual creationist answer, which I believe Randman and I do share: What we see is not what God made, but a distorted remnant of what God made, because of the Fall. That is, I'm sure we WERE made with a functioning Vitamin C gene, but it is one of our no doubt millions {ABE: OK, tens of thousands} of genetic casualties of the Fall over the last few millennia. It would be REALLY REALLY nice if those who keep up this constant complaint about God's supposedly inferior Creation would just remember that this point has been made over and over and over again by some of us creos, and whether you agree with it or not, pretending it hasn't been made is very bad debate form. I expect there to be "uncountable multitudes" in heaven, who all share a common understanding of the gospel of Christ, and it's too bad we just happen to be encountering many who dispute that gospel here at EvC. Is it all right with you if some of us disagree with you about this no-supporting-evidence bit? Do you think you could make room for a dissenting view here? I mean, I for one have said over and over that I base my belief on evidence. If you don't see it as I do, that doesn't make me wrong, and it would be good of you to acknowledge that your opponents don't all see things the way you do on this point. That is, it is a perfectly valid position to take that some understandings are right and some wrong, and this insistence that a belief must be respected because it's, well, just a belief, is really a recipe for dementia. I don't remember enough about your beliefs to comment on this, but everybody is invited, and quite welcome, but as long as they dispute the basic tenets of the faith, there's nothing anyone can do about it except pray for them.This message has been edited by Faith, 12-24-2005 05:57 PMThis message has been edited by Faith, 12-24-2005 06:01 PM

Thank you Faith....now if the evos are honest and have integrity, they will never pretend again this has not been answered...but fat chance of that!