GDR writes:
Percy writes:
The entire history of human experience of the divine has been one of retreat. God used to be behind everything. Rain, drought, lightning, earthquakes, floods, storms, life, love, death, an endless list, it was all controlled by gods or God, and He was everywhere.
What does God control now, and where is he? The answers seem to be that he controls only that which science hasn't explained yet, and that he's somewhere where science hasn't looked yet or can't look. And he seems to be remarkably averse to scientific equipment.
About whether people who claim experiences of God or Jesus are lying, I wouldn't say. But you asked the question, so let me turn the question back on you and ask whether you believe someone who claims experiences of the sun god or Zeus or Jehovah or Allah or nirvana or Krishna is lying? Or is it perhaps just the nature of religious practice that causes people to have what we would normally call a religious experience?
I don't look for a deity in the physical which is what you seem to be doing.
I'm not looking for a deity at all. In your own search, if you're not looking for a deity in the physical world then where are you looking for him? You exist in the physical world, so unless you're claiming some connection to the spiritual world the only place you can look for a deity is the physical world.
I see God in acts of altruism, empathy love, devotion to others etc. I don't see God in the physical but in the hearts and minds of human and even animal life.
Hearts and minds and expressions of altruism, empathy love, and devotion to others all exist in the physical world. No one has ever observed anything outside the physical world.
I realize that for you that doesn't qualify as evidence, but it rings true with me.
No one has a problem with you believing that these things are expressions of God. But if you want to show that they're actual evidence of God then you have a long ways to go. One place you could start would be by showing how they're evidence of the Christian God but not of Allah or Zeus or Vishnu or Moroni.
Percy writes:
Without looking this up, it seems a pretty safe bet that the psychology field has ways of measuring empathy and love. Just now looked it up anyway. Check out The Toronto Empathy Questionnaire - PMC, for just one example. Or check out Measuring the Capacity to Love: Development of the CTL-Inventory, for another example.
This is you doing what you reject the posts of myself and others by arguing with a link only. Can you put it in your own words?
You're kinda leaving me speechless here with how badly you've lost the plot concerning a simple point. You claimed that empathy and love can't be measured in
Message 1866:
GDR in Message 1866 writes:
You can't measure and examine people's consciousness for empathy or love of neighbour.
But I rebutted this by providing links demonstrating that the field of psychology has questionnaires and inventories that measure empathy and love, thereby showing your claim was incorrect. Proof of existence of methods of measuring these things was all that was required, and the links did that all by themselves. The actual details of the methods was not what we were discussing. You never made any claims about the psychological inventories, didn't even know they existed, so why in the world would you think I should construct arguments about them? How far out into left field are you going to roam?
And does it really never occur to you to look something up before saying something in ignorance?
Percy writes:
But let's say that you're right, that one cannot with confidence judge empathy and love. If scientists cannot gauge it objectively, and if people of the Lord can only have faith in the answer, then doesn't that tell us pretty clearly that no one has any evidence?
And where did you come up with (paraphrasing), "The existence of empathy and love is evidence of God." There are two problems with this. You've just claimed it isn't possible to objectively judge empathy and love, that you can only "believe" it (adding one more to your "I believe" claims). And where is the chain of logic showing that the existence of empathy and love implies that God exists?
There is no chain of logic as such. It is merely the point that it is highly unlikely to rise from lifeless matter without an intelligent root.
Still no chain of logic nor any evidence. You just keep repeating this baseless claim in various ways.
Scientists have and are still developing AI. Who knows how far that will go. However the intelligence in AI came from intelligence. I don't see why you think that we should be different.
How is an analogy evidence? In any case, all the evidence we have says we evolved naturally and were not constructed. Have you considered that maybe evolution was God's means of creation? Stated another way, maybe God didn't create life in a spasm of creation but instead created abiogenesis and evolution.
Percy writes:
You are once again reduced to "I believe." Could you please cut it out with the "I believes." Saying "I believe" carries no weight if that's all you've got. You're preaching, not discussing.
Of course you can say "I believe" in a discussion. It is a statement of fact. It is not a statement of evidence and I agree that it carries no weight. I might then go on to say when I believe something, it is actually another way of saying that I realize that it isn't something that I know.
Repeating myself for the umpteenth time, no one has any problem with what you believe. The problem is that you respond to requests for evidence you claim exists with expressions of belief. It is when you do that that I complain about all the "I believes."
You do that over and over again. When called out for it you respond as if you don't really understand the complaint, somehow interpreting protests as if they were objections to your beliefs. This could not be further from the truth, and I don't understand why you don't get it because our complaints about this have not been vague or ambiguous. On the contrary, they've been specific and persistent, but you keep doing it anyway. If you're trying to be annoying then you are succeeding. And if you're sincere then I am thoroughly perplexed by your lack of self-awareness of what you are doing.
Can we somehow break you out of this loop you're in of, "I believe this, but I have no evidence, but what I really mean is that I have no evidence that you guys accept, but I believe it is evidence, but you guys don't accept it so I can only say that this is something I believe." You don't say it all at once as I do here but string it out over a couple or few messages and then repeat it
ad infinitum.
I don't understand why you are so bothered by this.
I'll say it again just to try to increase the probability that the point gets across. No one cares what you believe. It's that you claim to have evidence for what you believe, and then when asked for that evidence you instead respond with a statement of belief. And you do it again and again.
I just went through with Stile my train of thought for what I believe. For you and others it won't constitute evidence. It certainly isn't evidence that can be tested scientifically or mathematically.
As I explained previously in the thread, except in one case that I'll get to, there is no essential difference between ordinary evidence and scientific evidence. What is different is how it is studied. You look out the window and say, "I see it is raining." That's ordinary evidence. Your neighbor has a rain gauge, so his observations can be a bit more scientific.
The exception is that some evidence can only be scientific, never ordinary. Rain is ordinary evidence that can be studied scientifically, but evidence of the Higgs boson can only be scientific. There is no ordinary way to obtain such evidence.
Is this clear, or will I find myself having to say this again within another hundred messages?
Actually I have changed and continue to change my theological views.
Does what you believe is evidence change, too?
I have no doubt that I made statements on this forum when I first started that I would refute now. So yes, views can change. You guys like to use the example of finding the natural cause for lightning. When that happened it didn't disprove the concept concerning a deity but simply that our view of the role of the deity had to change.
Apparently you understand that science has changed how people perceive gods and God. God used to move mountains, now he just moves emotions. God has retreated to realms where he can never be seen but only emoted and never evidenced.
I agree that the only evidence is written evidence which can be accepted as completely accurate. partly accurate and completely wrong. It is belief.
Well, concerning God and Jesus, which is it, evidence or faith? You can't have it both ways.
I have laid out what I consider as evidence for you several times. I don't see the need to do it again.
We don't want you to do it again. We want you to move the discussion forward by responding to our rebuttals of your claims of evidence. But you won't do that. You seem to think that what you've said is all that need be said and refuse to say more, instead retreating into "I believe this," implying that you believe it on faith. But that's not true. You're not being forthright with your "I believes" because what you believe isn't based upon faith but upon a belief that there is evidence behind your beliefs.
I recognise that you don't see the evidence in the same light that I do and you even reject that it constitutes evidence at all.
If your evidence is so great then use it to convince devout Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and Jews that the Christian God is the one, right and true God. These devout believers have the same standards for evidence that you do, so it should be easy, right? No problem, right?
Percy writes:
Because of tentativity there is nothing in science that we know absolutely, so when you say that things can be true without absolutely knowing that they're true, realize that there is nothing that we absolutely know. Consider it an ideal that can never be achieved.
Evidence never tells us that something is absolutely true. It only tells us what is likely true about the real world. And, of course, unsupported belief tells us nothing.
If God is part of the real world, we have no evidence of that. That doesn't mean he doesn't exist, but it does put him in the realm of all other things that have no evidence, like unicorns, elves, fairies, and the flying spaghetti monster.
That is true if you only consider material or scientific evidence and totally reject philosophical and theological evidence.
What is "philosophical and theological evidence?" You're making up red herrings. There is only evidence. Evidence enters our brains through the senses. There are only five of them: sight, hearing, touch, smell, taste. There is no special category of evidence labeled "philosophical and theological." If it can't be seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted then it isn't evidence.
However, I agree that we can't know anything absolutely except for maybe Descartes point that "I think, therefore I am".
And even that cannot be known absolutely. Consider the "brain in a beaker" and "life as a simulation" scenarios.
Percy writes:
Evidence of natural origins for anything, such as morality, is not evidence against God. It is evidence of a natural origin that contradicts your claims of divine origins that lack all evidence. You're completely misconstruing what Stile is saying.
Being able to make claims of the rise of moral understanding is not the same as explaining morality's origin.
You're misstating this. Having evidence of how behaviors evolve is far superior to having no evidence of a behavior's divine origin. Evidence is always superior to no evidence.
Percy writes:
Let me try another tack. Say there's someone who is absolutely convinced that unicorns exist, or at least that unicorns once existed. He searches for evidence for decades but never finds any. How should this failure to find any evidence affect his belief in unicorns?
Now consider someone who is absolutely convinced that God exists. He searches for evidence for decades but never finds any. How should this failure to find any evidence affect his belief in God?
Shouldn't the failure to find evidence affect his assessment of the probability that his hypothesis is correct, whether it's about the existence of unicorns or God?
That is the same argument that a Russian astronaut made, when he said that he knew there was no god because he was up in space and didn't see him.
One guy looking from one vantage point for a few days is not comparable to a decades long investigation, but your avoiding the question. Shouldn't the failure to find evidence of something you think exists affect your assessment of the likelihood that it actually exists? An answer of no means you believe evidence doesn't matter.
Nobody is suggesting that you can go out behind the barn and find God or evidence of Him.
Instead of answering my question you're posing your own and answering that instead. I said nothing about looking for God behind the barn. I describe a decades long quest for evidence.
And the reality is far more profound than that. The reality is that millions and millions of people are seeking God everywhere all their lives and never turning up a single shred of evidence.
Well it is a fact that the Gospels were written with the idea that they be read as a non-fictional account. There accuracy isn't verifiable.
You keep repeating this as if it hasn't been repeatedly rebutted. Doesn't honesty demand that you follow this statement with, "Now I know you've argued that...etc...", and then describe your objections to my argument. It's called moving the discussion forward. You seemed determined to keep the discussion stuck on it's initial phases.
Conscious life exists but it is not verifiable that it is a result of pre-existing intelligence.
You don't even have evidence of a "pre-existing intelligence," let alone that it was responsible for "conscious life," or even unconscious life for that matter (e.g., algae).
However, you won't find God in a test tube, behind the barn or even in a set of mathematical equations.
Well, as I said, God is remarkably averse to scientific apparatus. But more importantly, you won't find God in church, either.
No, morality is a heart thing.
Morality is a behavior, and all behavior is driven by the brain. The heart pumps blood. Morality is not a "heart thing."
In different times and different cultures the same action might be moral in one case and immoral in another. It is what motivates what we do that makes it moral or immoral.
How is this any different than "Morality is hopelessly relative?"
Percy writes:
Morality isn't defined as a thought. It's a behavior, just like animals marking their territory is a behavior. They're both inherent behaviors. Instinctual.
I contend that it is more than that.
But that's all you ever do is contend or believe. You never evidence.
An animal marking its territory is instinctive and about its survival. Morality is not instinctive,...
Morality and marking territory are both instinctive behaviors driven by the brain.
...and I contend...
You're about to contend without evidence again.
...that although co-operative behaviour can be personally beneficial, that does not mean that actually caring about others by putting them ahead of ourselves is instinctive. It is a learned and then accepted behaviour that hopefully becomes who we are.
You are correct that there is a learning aspect to morality, but the basics are instinctual. Without being taught we know from a very young age that hurting others is wrong, stealing is wrong, lying is wrong. But aspects of morality are also cultural, temporal, geographical and so can be learned.
Percy writes:
I have only one question for theism: Where's the evidence?
I have answered that numerous times.
And been rebutted numerous times. Your response is always just a statement of belief. There's never any evidence.
--Percy
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