itchy said:
lawyerguy said:
I'm not sure I understand your biker analogy. If I can see into the future, and if I had the ability to predict whether a person will make a left or a right turn at a particular intersection, then the person on the bike cannot do other than what I predict he would do.
yea, I see your point, but I think maybe you're looking at it back to front...if you see the future first, then go back to the biker, it will seem like he has no choice, but if you begin from the bikers perspective and use this to determine what you'll see when you look into the future, I think free will is still there....i.e. if I choose to turn left, thats what you'll see when you look into my future, but if I turn right, it'll be THAT that you'll see...I still have the freedom of choice, you just happen to have the ability to foresee my choice...does that make sense? it's a complicated one.
lawyerguy said:
God didn't create evil? I thought God was the creator of all things? If he didn't create evil then who did? satan? If you admit that God didn't create evil then you admit something else has the power of creation. So the power of creation is not exclusive to god. That would be a violation of one your other tenets.
no, I don't believe evil exists...that may sounds mental and I might be wrong but let me explain. Currently, the way I see evil is like darkness...darkness doesn't exist, its just the word we've given to what it looks like when there's no light. i.e. light can be measured for speed, intensity, etc...but you can't measure darkness, because it doesn't exist..it is only the absence of light. It's the same with heat and cold. you can measure heat. there's no limit, you can get hotter and hotter to super-heat, mega-heat, but going the other way you get to -273 degrees and you can't get any colder...because this point is the point of total absence of heat
lawyerguy said:
The main reason I don't believe in God is because there is no emperical evidence for his existence.
I think analysing the prophecies may be the closest thing to proof of god you'll find. Consider this for example;
*“Stoner says that by using the modern science of probability in reference to eight
prophecies, ‘we find that the chance that any man might have lived down to the present
time and fulfilled all eight prophecies is 1 in 10 to the 17th.’ That would be 1 in
100,000,000,000,000,000. In order to help us comprehend this staggering probability,
Stoner illustrates it by supposing that ‘we take 10 to the 17th silver dollars and lay them
on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of
these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a
man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver
dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right
one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight
prophecies and having them all come true in any one man.’”Peter Stoner, Science Speaks
For anyone who's geniunely seeking the truth I'd really encourage you to look further into this cause this seems pretty blatant to me. If you're wondering about the validity of this statement you can read the book yourself here -
http://www.geocities.com/stonerdon/science_speaks.html - the foreword says this -
"The manuscript for Science Speaks has been carefully reviewed by a committee of the American Scientific Affiliation members and by the Executive Council of the same group and has been found, in general, to be dependable and accurate in regard to the scientific material presented. The mathematical analysis included is based upon principles of probability which are thoroughly sound and Professor Stoner has applied these principles in a proper and convincing way."
HI,
I've tried to resist responding to your post but I can't.
In the biker analogy, we are dealing with two perspectives. THe subjective perspective of the biker, and objective reality. If I truly have the power to see into the future, THe biker might subjectively perceive that he has the free will to make a left or a right turn at any point before the intersection, but he really doesn't. Let's say I make a prediction, five feet from the intersection, that Biker would make a left at the intersection. At that point, if there the biker did have the OBJECTIVE ability to make a right, instead of a left, my prediction would not be certain. Like I said before, the injection of any uncertainty into the equation would void my powers of prediction of any validity.
As far as evil is the absence of God argument, that implies that there is a space or a plane of existence that is devoid of God. God, being all powerful, could chooes to fill that void with himself, if he so chose. The fact that he doesn't, signifies that god intended the void to be there. So either way, god intends evil, or the "void" or whatever to be present. Renaming evil, as "void" or the absence of God, doesn't change the fact that it is a part of the human condition. The analogies you made with heat and light are not valid because heat and light are physical properties. Heat and light can be measured because of their physical nature. ( Light is made up of wave particles. Heat is the energy created by the motion of atoms) God is suppose to be a metaphysical being, not made up of any regular physical properties, neither atoms, nor particles. Therefore the analogy is not correct.
As far as your "prophets" example goes, I would like to know what prophecies have come true. I am sure I can point to prophecies of other religions who'll say that their prophecies have come true as well. Its usually a matter of interpretation.
Usually these prophet predictions sound a lot like astrology readings.
A prophet will say "I sense that in the future, people will have have bad times".
Then some unemployed dude in the future reading this prophecy will say, "yeah he was right! People are having bad times. that prophecy must be correct!" . . . not realizing that anyone can make vague predictions about the future using vague languages that can be interpreted to fit any event.
Unless you give me an example of a prophecy that made a specific prediction that could not have been foreseen at the time it was made, and was made with specific language related to a specific time, place, and thing, you will not have presented me with strong evidence.
If for example some prophet said in 05 B.C. "In the future, people will be posting messages on a website, called Social phobia world, using instruments called computers!" then I would be impressed!
The website containing the data you gave me was reviewed by the "american scientific affiliation". I just googled it, and I have discovered that it is a christian organization. Letting a christian organization review the validity of christian claims is like letting the players of Manchester United referee their own match. (I chose manchester united because it is a british football club and a lot of people here seem to be from the UK). Wouldn't you say there is some danger of bias? To say the least? Until you give me a study or empirical claim from a neutral, respected scientiffic journal, you will not have provided me with any decent scientific evidence.
Marcp
Your comment about opting out by letting the robber shoots you doesn't make sense. By letting the robber shoot you, you are selecting one of the two choices the robber forces upon you (i.e. your money or your life). You would, in effect, be playing his game. When I said, "opting out of the game" I meant in that situation, you should have the option of picking a third option (i.e. not giving the robber the money or your life).
Under christian, muslim, jewish theology you can't opt out of the damnation/salvation dichotomy. Even if you jump off a cliff you will either go to hell or heaven. You'd still be stuck in the game. You can't get out of it.
Your comment that God "can't be disproven" was addressed with my post about the hierachy of probabilities. I won't repeat it here, but in short, nothing can be absolutely proven or disproven. But some things are more probable than others. The thing that makes something more probable than another is emperical evidence. God, santa clause, the easter bunny do not have any empirical evidence. Therefore the probability that they exist are small.
If someone comes into your room and claims "there are aliens on planet ju ju out there that fly around at night with with moth balls on their heads", would it be up to you to disprove what he said? Or would it be up to him to prove it? Obviously, the burden is on him, the person making the positive assertion, to prove his claims. It is not your burden to disprove it.
There are a billion things i can imagine, or come up with, that can't be disproven. By your logic, we would accept the existence of super bunnies, from another planet, because we can't disprove that either. No one has been to every planet in the universe to prove or disprove that assertion. Fortunately for us, logic and reason provides a remedy for this. Its called the burden of proof. Like the person advocating the existence of bunnies from space, the burden is upon the theist to prove there is a god.
When I said that I need evidence of God I said emperical evidence. Empirical means Like the sea parting. I suppose I am getting a bad reputation on SPW as the evil resident atheist so this will be my last post.
My parting thought is this,
There may be a god. Or there may not be a God. I am open to the any possibility. If you were to present scientific evidence, peer reviewed by a neutral, scientiffic journal, respected by the worldwide scientific community, (not just the christian ones) that there is a God, I would believe it. Examples of such journals would include "Nature", "Science". Examples of such organizations would be "the american Association for the Advancement of Science". If the scientiffic evidence pointed to the existence of Zeus, I would believe it. I am open to the possibility of God's existence. My mind is open. However, I suspect that no amount of lack of evidence will convince the christian, muslim, jew, that their god is an imaginary creature. Their mind is closed to the possibility that there is no God, and faith makes it impossible that I could ever convince them.
