If you believe in god, you have to believe in leprechauns.

Gladly admitted.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Well, I think over time I've laid out a pretty complete summary of my beliefs. For some reason a few of them seem to have struck nerves here and so are listed in the POTM threads. Feel free to look them over and I'll be glad to discuss any specifics but the answer really is more than what could be covered in a post or even one thread.But to answer the question in your OP, religious and belief systems are not subject to the same logic or analysis we use in science daily. They are, at heart, irrational. Since they are irrational, consistency is simply not something likely or even desirable. That is not all that different than many more prosaic parts of our lives, such as my personal preference for dark beers and BLT sandwiches.Growing up we had a family tradition, that on a child's birthday (and we had a bunch of them) the child could have his favorite food for dinner. I loved tomato sandwiches (with or without bacon). Unfortunately, I was also born in January and way back when I was a child (long time ago. I remember helping Moses first learn how to carve letters in stone), you could not get tomatoes in January, so each year, we would celebrate my birthday dinner in July instead of January.Now there is no logical or scientific reason why I would prefer tomatoes over steak, but I do. It is not reasonable, rational or subject to examination, it is a personal preference. My brother Cecil, fool that he is, always wanted boiled chicken.Why should other personal preferences be different?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

And I know the spell.It only takes one kiss from your Princess Daughter to turn a Prince into a Frog. But back towards the topic, is there some reason that when it comes to believe systems, if they are personal and do not infinge on the rights or beliefs of others, that they should be consistent or rational?Is there some reason I should like the same food as anyone else, love the same people as everyone else, have the same favorite flower, color, scent?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Great question and one that I think goes to the heart of the issue.You ask: If such a thing happened, and if it was repeatable, and if it could be verified independantly, then I would say the whole issue of whether or not the existence of GOD was proovable would have to be reexamined.But the evidence for or against the existence of GOD that is available today is simply not like that. It is not independantly verifiable. It is not repeatable. It is not subject to testing or objective measurement.Science and knowledge move by disagreement and procedure. We advance our knowledge because two or more people disagree, but they have a set of procedures they can agree on that can then be used to sift evidence to arrive at a consensus. GODs existance or non-existance though is not something that can be tested by those agreed procedures. For one thing the very definition of GOD is such that the test can be manipulated by the subject itself to give arbitrary results. If GOD exists and is as most religions concieve such a being, he could have the tests end up anyway he wanted.There are two other things involved. One is that what is seen as evidence of GOD is not repeatable. We have not yet found a way that miracles can be independantly verified, and if we did, it would strike at the very core of our use of the scientific method. If it was possible to violate the rules of physics at will, would they still be rules?Second, so much of the evidence is subjective instead of objective. I look at the universe we live in and see an order, beauty and unity at the most basic levels that I believe implies a creator. Others simply do not see it that way. And for most things, whether or not that order is the result of creation is simply not important. Regardless, gravity still works, the four forces still function, time still moves in one direction, life evolves.

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Very true. And under such a system how could you ever tell if the results you saw were due to the force or GOD?

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion