Summations Only

Together, they are inconsistent with the way that Faith has described the Bible as being inspired. Yes, they are different types of "inspiration". Faith seems to be saying that all inspiration is the same, e.g. Jesus wrote it. I'm pretty sure that is simply unacceptable to a literalist, and I don't see how it would further the discussion.I'm just curious if there's an answer within the framework, I don't care to challenge the framework, itself.

I believe in God and I have an idea of what I think he is like.But I'm not convinced I am right. And honestly, I'm probably not.Regarding the Bible, it is obviously the words of men.Too, it is not inerrant. The word of God? I suppose, but its hard to tell.But I don't proclaim that as being true.

Yes, I have had amazing spiritual experiences.One thing I always wonder though: How do you know that it isn't the devil tricking you?Like, speaking in tongues. I've seen it, I've heard it: Its bullshit.Why should I not believe that the people who speak in tongues are either deluding themselves or being tricked by the devil? lol - what was all that you were saying about the writer knowing the pragmatics of their statements and how others shouldn't equivocate them?I'm not an atheist and I don't think this God-business is just a bit of fluff in your head.Well, the stuff about knowing the truth, sure, that's self-delusion, but not all of it. But I'm not an atheist. And who would I be praying to? Why would I claim something that you made up? Human reasoning is the only reasoning I am capable of. I do both. Before? Nah, they're tangential. Science alludes God's creation. Well this is what the actual topic is...As I said, I suppose that the Bible is the word of God but it is hard to tell. I have no evidence that it is.You seem to be saying that you do know it is the word of God and you know this by some kind of "magic", or something.Is that all, then? Or do you have any evidence?

Ya know, that's actually kind of insulting.You have a tacit assumption in there that if I don't follow your particular brand of Christianity, then I don't believe in a God at all.That's hubris, Mike. Don't be a jerk.

lol - what was all that you were saying about the writer knowing the pragmatics of their statements and how others shouldn't equivocate them?Where did I say that I have not experienced it? I said that I have experienced it.You are very bad a paraphrasing other's arguments. The people who were doing it were just as convinced as you are that they were being moved by the Holy Spirit.Yet it was clearly bullshit. And if I saw you speaking in tongues, I'd probably call bullshit on that too. People who think that they "know God" are deluding themselves or being tricked by the devil.Seriously, how could you tell the difference?Now, I'll grant that God would have the power to do that. But that's just the "magic" defence.How could you really know? It is incredibly easy to self-delude yourself.I mean, I could have came back here and replied: Mike! Last night I prayed to God about this and he answered. He explained how you were right and the Holy Spirit really did make you speak in tongues. I was so moved that I was born-again and am now an evangelical Christian. Praise the Lord! Thank you Mike! Hooray!If you believed me, you would probably get excited by that. And then we could feed off each others emotions and get all kinds of warm and fuzzy as we share our experiences in knowing God.You'd be convinced that you saved another soul, and you'd have that much more evidence for the fact that you know God.And yet, it would all be bullshit. Incredibly easy. But bullshit nonetheless. You reap what you sow.Anyways, do you have anything to say about the topic?How do you know that the Bible is the inerrant word of God? Do you have any reason at all that couldn't be referred to as "magic"?For example: "I know God and he told me so" counts as magic.So what do you got?

Now all you have to do is read it and believe it.If only you could find all of the napkin writers to be honest and of course believe that God inspired the writing and oversaw its preservation...

Hubris!

Still hubris.But Satan would be on your team, you've driven more people away from Christianity and the Bible than Satan ever has.

Its your falsehoods that drive people away from Christianity.

Are you off your meds again?

Doesn't the term "fiction" imply that they author is knowingly inventing unreal stories?If the author thinks they are right, but they turn out to be wrong, then I don't think we should be calling that fiction, including Hoyle's work.And for the Bible, I wouldn't call all of that fiction either. Some parts for sure, like allegories n'stuff, but other parts the authors seem to think they were describing real events. Is there a term for something that isn't fiction, but also isn't true?Some kind of erroneous non-fiction?

Its not as bad of a claim as you're making it out to be.In a deterministic universe, even dice rolls are not random.If you could measure every single force that was acting on the die, then you could predict which side it would land on every time.Its just looks random to us because the we don't know those forces.

Forget god, I'm talking about the laws of physics. No, that's not what I'm talking about. Hell, have a robot do it.There are forces that act on the die that cause it to roll about and eventually land on one of its sides. If you could measure all those forces, then you could calculate which side it would land on. If the Universe is deterministic, then there is no such thing as randomness.Then, randomness only comes about with respect to something.Like, with respect to our knowledge, a dice roll is random.With respect to the laws of physics, it is not.Its easier to imaging with a coin flip as there's only two sides. But when you flip the coin, you exert forces on that coin that cause it to rise into the air and flip over some number of times.If you could measure all those forces, you could calculate which side it would land on.Like, if you applied a vertical force of 0.1 newtons to the coin at 20 mm from the center from a height of 1 meter, it will flip over 19 times before it lands in the sand. It started with the head facing upwards so therefore it will land with the tails side facing upwards.That coin flip would not be random but if you didn't know the above information then it would look random to you. Or, it would be random with respect to your knowledge.Even with evolution, random mutations are not truly random. They have actual causes. What they are, is random with respect to fitness.

I explicitly stated that we could predict the die roll.If you know the forces beforehand, you can calculate how the die will behave.That makes it non-random.The only thing that makes the die roll look random, is our ignorance of the forces that make us unable to predict it.Unpredictability is not randomness.In reality, its not actually random. The die will follow the laws of physics and land how the forces tell it to. There is no random element to it at all.This isn't some nonsense that I'm making up, how familiar are you with determinism?

quote:

---

Randomness, as opposed to unpredictability, is an objective property. Determinists believe it is an objective fact that randomness does not in fact exist. Also, what appears random to one observer may not appear random to another. Consider two observers of a sequence of bits, when only one of whom has the cryptographic key needed to turn the sequence of bits into a readable message. For that observer the message is not random, but it is unpredictable for the other.

​

One of the intriguing aspects of random processes is that it is hard to know whether a process is truly random. An observer may suspect that there is some "key" that unlocks the message. This is one of the foundations of superstition, but also a motivation for discovery in science and mathematics.

​

Under the cosmological hypothesis of determinism, there is no randomness in the universe, only unpredictability, since there is only one possible outcome to all events in the universe. A follower of the narrow frequency interpretation of probability could assert that no event can be said to have probability, since there is only one universal outcome. Under the rival Bayesian interpretation of probability, there is no objection to using probabilities to represent a lack of complete knowledge of outcomes.

---

Randomness - Wikipedia That doesn't make any sense at all. Can you expound on that?

I do. Apparently Golffly's never heard it.