GDR writes:
Sorry. I haven't had a time the last couple of days to respond to all your posts. If it is ok I'll just respond to this one.
You're forcing me to repeat things I said in the posts you're not addressing. I again suggest you take your time and be thorough. I think everyone would prefer that you take your time instead of rushing things or cutting corners.
GDR writes:
Percy writes:
And it's frustrating to have to keep explaining the nature of evidence. Again, what you observe casually as you go about your day is no different in nature than what researchers do while doing science. Everyone makes observations all the time, and scientific procedure is just a more careful and detailed way of making and recording observations. The foundation of science is still nothing more than observation.
We keep going round and round on this.
That's not an accurate characterization of what you've been doing, and you're ignoring the many words I've written explaining this to you. Here's yet another way of describing what you're doing:
- You claim you have evidence for some aspect of your Christian beliefs.
- We explain why you do not have evidence.
- You concede you have no evidence.
- Discussion drifts onto some other aspect of your Christian beliefs and you return to step 1.
Please stop repeating step 1 over and over again. It was already old over a hundred messages ago.
I believe in an external intelligence and the vast majority here don't. As to what you believe is so vague as to be meaningless.
What I believe is completely irrelevant. I'm not a believer or a seeker like you. But since you've brought it up, have I already mentioned in this thread my belief that no religion on Earth has anything remotely right regarding a supernatural being?
We have all the evidence needed to confirm the evolutionary process.
Evolution has nothing to do with religious belief or non-belief.
Then the question is WHY does the evolutionary process exist.
Because replication is imperfect and changes are carried forward to the next generation when they result in production of offspring (or of more numerous offspring) being more likely. Again, nothing to do with religion.
If you reject the idea of an external intelligence...
We're no more rejecting the idea of an "external intelligence" (whatever that is) than we are of the idea of unicorns or oobleck. We're pointing out that you have no evidence that it's real.
If however, you accept the notion of an external intelligence...
Why should we accept "the notion of an external intelligence," when it has just as much evidence as the notion of unicorns or oobleck. This is usually the point where you again claim that you do too have evidence. Please, don't close that loop again. You do not have evidence. You haven't observed a single thing.
...then it makes sense to conclude that the evolutionary process has this intelligence as its first cause.
Holy cow! Had no idea you were going to end up here. I was literally just reading and responding one sentence at a time and this just blew my mind.
No, it does not make sense. I have no idea why this completely off-the-wall idea turns on the "makes sense" light in your brain, but it does not make sense.
Tangle will say that I am setting this up as equivalent possibilities but I'm not. There is no equivalence between the ideas. It all goes back to our starting point. Are we theistic or atheistic?
No, it does not go back to that question. It goes back to whether you have evidence for anything you believe. You don't. That's why it's called faith.
Observational evidence doesn't give us an answer either way, and we can only come to our own subjective conclusions.
Your "subjective conclusions" have no evidence.
We can consider that we have life, we have intelligence we can sense beauty, love, empathy, joy etc. An atheist sees a whole lot of natural processes that have led to the world we experience. A theist is likely to see the hand of an external intelligence in all of this. No equivalence but just different beliefs.
Don't try to frame this as atheism versus theism. It's about whether you have evidence for what you believe, and you don't.
Percy writes:
And this is where religion is lacking. There are no observations. Realizing how important evidence can be to belief there are plenty of claims of observations, but religion seems to take a Machiavellian "The ends justify the means" approach. Too many pastors believe that if something they say increases faith then it is okay, whether it is true or not. What they believe it is okay to claim is all over the Internet.
Sure - like politics. It seems to be part of being human.
There's your answer right there. Your need to believe that your spiritual beliefs are supported by evidence is just you being human.
Frankly I hear what some Christian preachers have to say and see myself with having more in common with many atheists.
I don't think anyone here would agree with this self-assessment. Nothing you've ever said at EvC has ever been remotely like what an atheist might say.
Percy writes:
Even without your arguments for the authenticity of the gospels and the existence of Jesus, you're obviously lobbying for Christianity. You might have titled the thread Choosing a faith, but you're actually exploring what parts of Christianity to accept, not which faith to select.
Good grief Percy. How can you hang that on me. Go back and look at the thread. It is you guys that have taken it off track in order to attack my Christian beliefs.
Go back and look at the thread yourself. We could care less about your religious beliefs. If you want to believe in a Sky Daddy that's your business. But if you want to claim you have evidence for your Sky Daddy then naturally you'll be challenged on it.
When challenged you start getting specific about your evidence, like by citing the gospels and Polycarp and Tacitus and so forth, and so we tell you you're wrong that they're evidence. That doesn't mean we're telling you your religious beliefs are wrong. We're telling you that your belief that your religious beliefs have evidence is wrong. Get it straight and stop falsely whining that we're attacking your sacred religious beliefs because we're not. We respect your right to hold whatever religious beliefs you want, but you have no right to expect that we must respect your claim that your religious beliefs have evidence.
What's really going on here isn't complicated. You have a need to believe your faith is supported by evidence, and oh, by incredible coincidence it's the same faith you were raised in. You can see that not everything you were taught in Sunday School could be true, but you still feel there are some things that are true, and you're trying to figure out which ones.
But you've driven some stakes in the ground, like that Jesus was real and there's evidence for it. There isn't.
My point was in response to something I read in another thread that essentially mocked theism as there have been so many gods over the centuries so which one are you going to choose. My point was simply that it isn't the name or doctrine of the god that you choose but the nature of the god you choose.
Without seeing the post there's not much I can say, but I've said things similar to this myself, for example, that you're an atheist about all gods like Thor and Zeus and Allah except for the Christian God. This isn't mockery but a fact. If you feel mocked then it's because you're sensing the absurdity of your position but prefer to blame us instead of the person who's really responsible: you.
Percy writes:
That's one of things that people find frustrating, that you keep forcing them to say the same things again and again. You claim to accept it, but not really. You just seek other words to make the same claim. But the words you use don't matter if you're just repeating the wrong thing you said earlier. No matter what words you use, it's still wrong.
Exactly, you keep asking questions and then when you don't like the answer I give...
No, we're not asking questions. We're telling you you have no evidence. And you agree. And then you change your mind and claim you have evidence again.
...and the reasons for it which is the rejected again. Then you repeat the same question with an explanation of why you believe that and I am back to answering the same question again. Then of course as other than Phat there is a dearth of theists of any variety on this forum, and so it seems everyone else wants to have a go at me or whoever else it might be. It is frustrating.
You're having a discussion in your own mind that no one else here is having.
Percy writes:
Believing that there's evidence for an "external intelligence" might make the "makes sense" light go on in your brain, but belief isn't evidence. Stop seeking a wording that allows you to claim there's evidence for what you believe. There isn't any evidence, and no amount of weasel words will change that.
I see a new born baby and I see God. An atheist sees a new born baby and see natural processes. It is all belief.
The only one you're fooling with this gobbledygook is yourself. There is evidence for natural processes. There is no evidence of God. You see as much evidence of God in a new born baby as you do in a rock.
Percy writes:
Ancient peoples writing down what they believed is not evidence of anything, particularly when it comes to religion where there are so many different beliefs that contain fantastical impossible content and not only aren't consistent with each other, but aren't even internally consistent.
Now you're back to claiming the Bible is evidence again. When will the flip-flopping end?
It does seem to me that to claim that what a variety of authors wrote about an event 2000 years ago, that was intended to be believed and then saying it isn't evidence is bizarre.
With the exception of the Christian canon, you believe the same as me about the canon of all religions.
We can discuss the idea that it is a mistake or historically accurate. We can even conclude that it is weak evidence or even an outright lie, but it is evidence.
You can't claim that any words a writer sets to paper are evidence because then you have to do that for everything, not just all the world's religions but even all the world's myths and fantasies.
Sure you can look at the accounts of Zeus, or any other god that you like and read what has been said about them and that is evidence as well.
No, it isn't.
We all make our own judgements of what we are going to conclude about the evidence.
You're actually calling evidence something that isn't, then choosing to believe it's true.
However, the point is that there is zero scientific evidence for any theistic belief.
Again, there is no difference in nature between everyday evidence and scientific evidence. It's all just observations. Science is just more detailed, instrumented, structured and controlled in gathering its evidence, sort of like the difference between "It got hot" and "It reached a temperature of 147.3°C."
--Percy
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