A post for Soul Winner

ColmDawson wrote: »

Dawkins, one of your so-called new atheists, does not deny the possibility of a deity existing. I would very surprised if Harris, Hitchens or Dennett did either.

They certainly maintain that there is no good evidence for god, but that's a different thing.

But there is good evidence that this world and this universe were created by a supernatural (outside nature) force, and that this force (we call it God) as a supernatural being expressed Himself on the stage of history in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. There are many millions of people around the world who accept these things as good evidence for the existence of a supernatural being who created all things. What other way is a supernatural being supposed to show us that He indeed exists if He doesn't demonstrate it in a supernatural way as in the case of Jesus? I'm not sure what evidence Harris et al will accept if they won't accept what has already been revealed to us. If God has decisively revealed Himself through Jesus then you can't blame Him for doing little else to convince people if they won't accept what He has already done. People who will not accept any kind of God who demonstrates His power in the way that the God of the Bible did in the life and ministry of Jesus, will never accept any evidence which supports the existence of such being by virtue of the fact that the evidence itself would have to be be supernatural in essence, thus untestable by the scientific method and as such rejected out of hand.

We find that our universe is fine tuned for life and that this fine tuning was in place as far back as we can go into the initial conditions of the big bang. The conditions that complex life's formation rests on are a knife edge compared to the many many other possible conditions that this universe could have taken. Out of the number of possible universes that could have emerged from these initial conditions the chances that a simple-life permitting universe would emerge are vanishingly small and smaller still are the chances of a universe that would permit complex life forms from developing and even smaller still one that would permit technologically advanced life forms like us from developing.

And that's just having a life permitting universe in the first place. We then move onto the chances of life itself emerging from random chemical interactions in an unguided process on an ancient earth with no positive or negative feedback system in place in order to bring about the most advantageous benefits to any possible self replicating living system. The shear number of things which have to be in place in order for this to come about is staggering and the chances that this would happen in a strictly unguided process which had no desired outcome to bring about (i.e. it was blind and uncaring) and given all the other possible life inhibiting outcomes that could just as easily have come about to prevent life as we know it from emerging I think it is safe to say that other forces must have been at work for these first self replicating systems to possibly have come about in the first place. That force could be one of two things, Aliens or God but definitely intelligent agents because blind processes acting on basic chemicals with no desired outcome to bring about do not produce self replicating molecules to eventually form the basic building blocks for advanced creatures like us to evolve and to evolve in such a way as to debate these things millions of years later. It simply cannot happen by any stretch of the imagination and anyone who holds to the position that it could is acting in faith because their is no evidence whatsoever that such a unguided process can produce these effects.

The reason why Dawkins and the others don't accept God is because He cannot be explained in purely naturalist terms, terms which they will accept. But if God exists then we must accept Him on His terms or not at all. If God exists then He knows that He exists and doesn't need to prove that to Himself nor does He need His creatures telling Him that they will not believe in Him on His terms unless He demonstrates Himself to them on their terms. They will be left waiting. God doesn't need to demonstrate His existence to them. But He did do it, and in a supernatural way. If He had just done it a natural way then we would have no basis to believe that He is also capable of performing supernatural things, and as such it would not give us a basis for a faith in His ability to save us from the curse of death, which requires supernatural abilities, and without the faith to believe that God can deliver us from death we would have no hope at all, hence the reason that He did it the way He did, to give us a basis for faith in His supernatural power to save us from our fallen state.

Soul Winner wrote: »

But there is good evidence that this world and this universe were created by a supernatural (outside nature) force [...]

This isn't the place for a creationism debate, but I have to point out: just because the chances of all of this coming about were tiny, doesn't mean there was a supernatural cause. Very, very, very unlikely does not mean impossible.

Soul Winner wrote: »

I never said it did. Not believing that there is a bear under your bed is the same as believing that there is no bear under you bed.

I don't believe that there is such a being as Santa so it logically follows that I believe that Santa doesn't exist.

This 'atheism is a belief' thing comes up so bloody often. It's really not complicated and I can only assume that people wilfully misunderstand in order to try and back up weak arguments.

This post from Sam Vimes ought to be sufficient for you to understand the distinction.

Sam Vimes wrote: »

[...]
My position is the same as it would be if someone told me that he knew what next week's lotto numbers are going to be. If I told him he was wrong I would be telling him that I know that those numbers are not going to come up next week, I would also be claiming to know something I cannot possibly know.

What I would say is that I don't believe that he knows what the numbers are going to be and, while the numbers he predicts may well come up, he has given me no reason to suggest that those numbers are actually going to come up. I don't believe his claim but that is different to believing that his claim is false.
[...]

Read it carefully. There is a distinct difference. These are relatively simple concepts and I dare say you would understand them if they didn't impinge on your convictions.

Soul Winner wrote: »

The thing is that its not very very very unlikely, it is nigh on impossible. So if the unguided process is impossible, then a guided processes is what must have happened. So the debate shifts from there to what was the guiding influence? I believe it was God but that is neither here nor there, I could just as easily believe it was aliens, neither of which I can prove, but what can be certain is that it was guided and guided by an intelligence that knew what it was doing.

Nigh on impossible is not the same as impossible. Nigh on impossible is possible.

Soul Winner wrote: »

Where Sam's analogy to belief in God breaks down is in the fact that he is talking about a chance happening in the future and comparing differing beliefs about that to what we can discern about the possible causes for what we know actually happened in the past. Read it carefully. There is a distinct difference. These are relatively simple concepts and I dare say you would understand them if they didn't impinge on your convictions. :pac:

The analogy is still appropriate, regardless of whether you use lottery numbers or the existence of a deity. The point is that when you cannot (yet) prove/disprove the existence of god, you reserve belief. Lacking this belief is atheism.

There are people who will tell you that they believe there is no god. That's an unreasonable position to take, because they aren't able to know.

There are people (most posters here) who will tell you that they simply lack belief in god and therefore live their lives as such. Just like we all carry on with our lives without believing in any number of ridiculous beings you could care to invent.

Can you not see that these are different positions?

And if it were an intelligence, how do you know it's the one that allows you to eat pork?

Soul Winner wrote: »

Where Sam's analogy to belief in God breaks down is in the fact that he is talking about a chance happening in the future and comparing differing beliefs about that to what we can discern about the possible causes for what we know actually happened in the past. Read it carefully. There is a distinct difference. These are relatively simple concepts and I dare say you would understand them if they didn't impinge on your convictions. :pac:

It really doesn't fall down there tbh. The point of using a future event is to make it clear that the person cannot possibly know what they claim to know. A claim doesn't have to be about a future event for it to be clear that the person cannot know what they claim to know. Anyone who tells me about what they believe exists outside our universe is really in a much worse position in terms of credibility than someone telling me next week's lotto numbers. It could be rigged after all