My Beliefs- GDR

I don't disagree with that but science deals with what is objectively knowable. Whether or not Tom exists isn't knowable in the scientific sense. Yes and no. Yes I find it much more reasonable to accept an intelligent cause for things being as they are as opposed to a mindless one, but there is more to it than that. There are thousands of years of mankind thinking about this and there is a written history of much of that search for truth. There is my own personal experience which I subjectively believe is God working in my life.To go back to my Christian beliefs I want to talk about the Bible a bit. I think that if we look at the Bible as the history of God reaching out to mankind and written by men inspired to write down their accounts and beliefs complete with all of their human strengths, weaknesses and fallibilities, then we do get a picture of the evolution of our understanding of God. (I use the Bible as it is applicable to my own faith but I am in no way suggesting that God doesn't reach out to everyone and that other religious texts don't have value.)For that matter I contend that when we look at the handiwork of God through the scientific lens we have to be in awe of the beauty of the way that it all fits together. Assuming that there is a genetic component to altruism then it seems reasonable to me that it is there for a purpose and that there is thought behind that purpose. I frankly don't think that the two positions are subjectively or equally valid either but we still come to different conclusions.I guess we can all make up our own mind as to whether or not we exist as we do as the result of intelligent origins or mindless ones.

Sure he is. If Tom interacts with our world he will leave a trace that should be detectable. Eg Prayer would work and we'd be able to show that it did, the brain has Tom receptors that allow it to hear the whispering etc etc.We obviously find no evidence of that but we simultaneously have evidence that the things you say Tom causes to happen supernaturally are occurring perfectly naturally.Of course you can say that Tom intervenes magically and makes it look as though it's all natural but we had all that with evolution and only the absolute weirdos still claim it. (Tom creates fossils so that we are forced to think the earth is old and species evolve.)You're not in a good place here.

Sure, if Tom was the kind of god that is there at our beck and call to give us that BMW when we ask for it you would be right about prayer. I don't see that as the purpose of prayer. Prayer is about changing our hearts to one that ultimately images the heart of Tom.Obviously a whisper is a metaphor and obviously not physical. The easiest way to explain it is as the voice of your conscience even though I think it is more than that. When we have a thought we can see the effect on our brain with a brain scan. Presumably a thought from Tom would produce the same result on a scan but we would have no idea how to tell the difference from any other thought. Not at all. If Tom is responsible for the natural processes, as I believe he is in regards to evolution, then why should this be any different. I'm pretty comfortable actually.

There is no scientific evidence for or against so we will come to our own conclusions, however if Tom does exist then it likely is relevant. The truth is always relevant even if we can't know for sure what the truth is. I don't know if your are implying that I say I know what I believe is true. I agree it is a faith or belief, however I do maintain that my beliefs, which are actually as near as I can tell essentially the same as Miller's, are reasonable.

There is no objective evidence, scientific or any other way. Sure, but you can't jump ahead. You need to start with the evidence for Tom, then go from there. It's the cart before the horse fallacy again. And again. And again. Miller's beliefs about God might be similar to yours, in that you both believe there is a God. But Miller has never said God gave us morality, or altruism. In fact, he never replaces science for belief. Which you have done countless times in this thread.- Oni

We know that life exists. We know that there is a distinction between right and wrong. We know those things objectively. We subjectively come to our conclusion as to what is the motive force behind this. Is there nothing more than an natural processes or is there an intelligent agency. Nobody knows absolutely the answer to that question but we all have an opinion. I have not replaced science with belief. I have given an opinion on some materialistic theories that didn't make sense to me, but that opinion had nothing to do with my theistic beliefs. I am completely open to the idea that morality might be an evolved trait both genetically and socially.What my theistic belief does lead me to conclude is that if our morality is evolutionary in a similar manner to physical evolution then OK, so that is how God did it, whereas you presumably would conclude that the most likely reason is that there are only natural processes at work.Also if morality is an evolved trait that again does not preclude the idea that God is still subtly involved through our hearts, minds and imaginations.I read a very well written account of Miller's book Finding Darwin's God. It is a really interesting account and well worth the read.Here is an excerpt from that synopsis.

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Miller and Kushner do seem to agree that God can and does strengthen and guide the spirit within a receptive human being, thereby affecting human consciousness and behavior in ways that have no better explanation (so far! we have to be careful to acknowledge). In so doing God’s will, we can act as God’s agents in the material world — a form of divine intervention in the traditional sense favored by Miller. Like a parent watching over an adult child, God may love and care desperately for each of us and seek to guide us when the opportunity arises, knowing full well (and sadly) that however much we mess things up, He cannot live our lives for us.

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My views are absolutely consistent with all I’ve been able to find on Miller.

Like I keep saying, you've put your god in an unassailable place. Absolutely nothing that we discover about the world can touch your personal beliefs - the discoveries just push your God further away from your religion.A some time in the future, we'll have a pretty thorough understanding of how the brain creates consciousness and we won't find Tom there either. But it won't matter because you'll have invented some other mystical way he can influence us that can't be measured.Why bother with all this nonsense? Why not just believe it and call it miraculous? What Miller and Kushner and CS Lewis and anybody else says about 'the spirit' is utterly irrelevant. Until something puts a spirit in a bottle and shows it us, it's just preaching.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

How do you know that? If it's not knowable "in a scientific sense" in what sense is it knowable?Why would anyone who wants to draw accurate and reliable conclusions give any credence at all to this "sense" of knowing you allude to? ALL of the evidence tells us that intelligence is something which develops as a consequence of matter.

God isn't being pushed anywhere. Our understanding of Him continues to evolve, as we gain new information and you seem to think that's not a good thing. I'm glad that scientists don't hold your attitude.Actually when you consider the complexity of our existence I would call it miraculous.

It isn't known, it is believable. Because we all base our world view on something. I choose to largely to base my views on what I know of the what Jesus taught. I believe that the NT writers got it right when they wrote about the resurrection which is a confirmation by God that what Jesus taught was the message of God for us. Aside from that Jesus' message of love, peace, forgiveness, mercy etc rings true to me.In an empirical sense I can't know if those conclusions are accurate or reliable but I have faith in them anyway. We all have to base our world view on something and this has been my choice. Intelligence is one aspect of our consciousness so I'll deal with that. One of the things that our consciousness allows us to do is to experience change, with what we call time.As we know, in a macro sense we all experience time at the same rate, but in a micro sense it isn't that simple. At a micro level time passes at at a rate that is unique to each individual. Does that really make sense if our consciousness is nothing more than matter that evolved in a material universe?Shortly before Einstein died a friend of his, Michael Besso passed away. Einstein wrote a consoling letter to Besso's family and said this:

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Now he has departed this strange world ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

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Absolutely not - completely arse about face.Science increases our knowledge of reality; your knowledge of God stays exactly where it was - that is no-where - and our knowledge that religions are wrong about the facts of reality increases. We gain new information about reality - neither science nor you learn anything about God by it (except that what you thought about him before science came along was wrong.) Of course you do.

I don't quite know what you are asserting here. You state your god cannot be known by science but can be known in a 'believable' sense? Aren't you in essence committing the logical fallacy of 'Argument from Ignorance' here?P.S. Not calling you 'ignorant' per se, just calling out the fallacy in question.

You are confusing God and religion. Religions are human’s fallible attempts at understanding God. That sounds like learning to me.

No, WE don't. I use whatever objective evidence there is available to determine how these things came to be. There is nothing subjective about my conclusion. There could be a god, sure. Who works using all the natural forces. But you need to establish the existence, the actual existence of god, BEFORE you can skip ahead to what god did. It is the only logical way without committing any fallacies. Still confused about our opinion.I would conclude no such thing, per se. The objective evidence supports natural processes and there remains no objective evidence for god. So, before I can say 'this is how god did it' I need evidence for the existence of god.So my conclusion is, given the objective evidence we have it seems as though there is only natural processes at work. However, if ever there is any objective evidence supporting a god, I would GLADLY change that conclusion to include god.But I have no issue with you looking at all the objective evidence and saying god did it naturally. It's when you deny the evolutionary history of things like altruism for 100's of posts, when there is plenty of evidence to support it, that it becomes a bother. Something Ken Miller would never do. Cool, I glanced at it. But I did read Miller's book so I understand his position very well. When it comes to belief, yes. But not when it comes to accepting science.- Oni

You believe in Jesus. You can't separate your god from religions when your concept of god is the basis for the entire Christian religion.- Oni