Enough, Thane. If you want to take shots at me, sack up and do it directly instead of using passive aggressive generalities under the pretext of carrying on a conversation with someone else. But, I doubt I'll respond. My general interest in discussing things philisophical with you has fallen off sharply of late.

This is one of my fundamental points on the subject. People who seek to "prove" God using science or logic seem to be searching for a reason that faith is unecessary. Either you have faith in God and accept that science/logic are not going to provide the answers, or you don't.

Well, I'll leave the speculation as to what motivates a creature beyond my understanding to others, but this is pretty consistent with my personal belief in God.

It's in the Bible.

True. But to accept that the Bible is the word of God, you must do so a priori. It's begging the question:

Person A: I know that God exists.
Person B: How?
Person A: Well, it says so in the Bible!
Person B: So what?
Person A: Well, God wrote the Bible (or at least did so by "Divine Inspiration")!

The inherent problem here is that in order to prove that the Bible is to be taken literally, you must prove that God exists and that He wrote the Bible. And, for that we have only the word of the Bible. It's a classic instance of circular reasoning.

Mind you, I have no issue with the idea of faith in either of those assumptions - such is the basis of most organized religions. However, presenting what's said in the Bible as evidence to a neutral observer proves exactly nothing. It only has value when you're talking to someone with the same faith that you have.

Someone has to screw with you a bit. As much as I appreciate your intellectual abilities (and shortcomings) it seems worthwhile to me to "bug" you a bit at times.



It is what it is at this time. I'll move on to address your response to another:


Originally Posted by superbug
That's just it, there is no use for faith if you have someone prove anything.



Well said. A little surprising to me, but well said.


Quote superbug:
God wants you to come to Him through your faith, that's why He doesn't rearrange stars, or write His name on the Moon.



Good idea :-)



This, of course surprises me coming from someone that will compare a belief in God to a belief in dragons or hobbits using the "you can't prove a negative" argument:



(1) You can't "disprove" the existence of dragons (or any other silly creature) in the technical sense of the word. Logically, proving a negative isn't possible. Obviously, we can state, for all practical purposes that dragons do not exist, but we can't prove it.


(2) You are correct that the existence of God cannot be proven or disproven, but the exact same logic could be applied to the existence of dragons.


You state (or any other silly creature). Doesn't this application of logic categorize God WITH dragons and Hobbits and the 23 hot, horny RICH bisexual supermodels wanting to "do me" in the center of the moon ? Hey, I saw the opportunity to improve the fantasy LOL


You say you have a personal beleif in a God while on the other hand using logical analysis to categorize him along side silly, fantasy creatures. I'll leave out the accusations of poor judgement on your part :-) Maybe it's a misunderstanding on MY part. I'm not sure.

This apparent disconnect can be generally summed up by the idea that logical proof is much more rigorous than faith or belief. From a proof standpoint, God and dragons might as well be the same thing until we have some kind of proof for one and not the other. From a personal belief standpoint (superstition, "feeling", whatever), I find the idea of God to be comforting and I see no reason that it couldn't exist (though who is to say that dragons don't exist on some distant planet somewhere).

But, my personal faith that God exists is not born out of logic, and any attempt to logically justify the existence of God will fail.

But, the difference is that dragons are well known to be a fantasy creation by storywriters and tellers for fable/entertainment purposes. As are hobbits etc.


The concept of a being we call God, has to do with a question that humanity has been asking in one way or another since we developed better powers of thinking (or since we were created). The question(s) "Why ?", "Why am I here ?", "Why is this PLACE here ?" or now "Why does the universe exist ?", "It just IS ? That doesn't make sense. Why IS it ?"


This is what separates these into very different things that it seems to ME to be bad judgement to compare in the way you're comparing them.




Yes, perhaps. Can we logically justify the existence of the universe beyond saying it just IS ? Why IS it ? We know that it IS because we're here IN it but ...


Boiled down, I think this is where faith in a God comes from. Perfectly understandable. It doesn't make sense to us that everything is just "random" and we just happened "by chance and luck".

Well, it didn't make sense to ancient peoples that infections were caused by animals too tiny to see living inside your body. What made sense to them was that they had pissed off various Gods. That doesn't mean it's what happened.

What you're describing is "God of the Gaps". "Well, there's a lot we don't fully understand.... so... God!" Over the course of man's history, this sort of thinking has thrown up all sorts of red herrings.

God has given us many "signs". God created the world, and it is evidenced in its nonrandom complexity. If you did not understand what I was saying about Einstein, it was that he started out as an atheist, but was forced to believe in God due to his study of physics.

Isn't that interesting ? What is even MORE interesting is how many are ignorant of this fact and how this isn't often mentioned in school when he is being discussed. This is usually omitted.

Interesting isn't it ?

I didn't learn of this until I studied about the omissions and re-writes taught by our education "establishment".