alphaparticle

I prefer newer translations that are based on the latest scholarship. Since the KJV was written many new textual witnesses have been discovered that are now also used to try to reconstruct the original text by which to make a translation. So for me a lot of times I use the ESV or the NRSV or NASB and feel pretty good about that. I realize the KJV has value as literature above and beyond all this, but to be honest I also find it harder to understand.

Well, what I think alpha, is that handholding leads to hugging, hugging leads to kissing, kissing leads to things I won't go into, and etc. I think for many couples, it is like a gateway drug. I feel certain that there are many couples, who thought they could go so far and then stop right there, only to find that their targeted limit, keeps moving. Although I have kissed and enjoyed it, it is a mystery why anyone would really want to. Think about it, two people putting the germiest part of their body (the mouth), into the mouth of someone they claim to love, yuk, lol. Seems like it would be easy to resist! I am reminded of the story of the natives who said upon seeing two missionaries kiss: "Look, they eat each others' dirt!" You will notice, I did not say it was wrong, I said it was unwise. I really think it depends on the people involved. Sometimes when everything is made verboten like this what happens is that if they do happen to slip in a kiss it becomes a lot more erotically charged than it would have been had it not been taboo. This sort of thing can backfire, which is why I'm not a big fan of hard rules or even declaring some action on the whole unwise unless it's clearly delineated a sin.

That's an interesting question, and I suppose I'm like you in that I don't have a visual in mind. But, I am also used to things being invisible to our eyes being incredibly real.

I just want to make sure I'm understanding this right: So, the idea is, that God is already fairly-well defined, so we can use him as a means of explanation. If I were to posit some other force/entity/object that could conceivably be able to answer all the questions about "why are we here", I have to start making a bunch of stuff up to satisfy all that. Under the current assumptions of God, those questions are already answered. Is that what you are saying? Technically, atheism doesn't make that claim. All it claims is "no" or "I don't know" to the question of "do you believe in any gods?". Anything else is over-defining the term. This is why I brought up point #1. That being said, I have a feeling we've been talking past each other for the past two posts or so. When you say "atheism" in this context, do you mean "atheistic assumptions about the first cause and order in the universe" as opposed to "lack of belief in gods"? If so, this all makes a lot more sense, and I'm sorry about the confusion. Yes, as we define and understand God from other contexts God has the properties necessary to have explanatory power over the relevant body of facts we are discussing (i.e. the existence of physical stuff and its ordering). As far as the second piece goes, no God existing entails a lack of explanation over the facts I mentioned above, unless you want to posit an alternative explanation. Your degree of confidence in 'no God existing' doesn't seem relevant. Yeah I have in mind the following: atheism entails positing that physical stuff and its ordering exists as a matter of brute fact (what you said about assumptions about first cause and order), and that when compared as theism doesn't seem like the most rational option. At least, if ti is the most rational option, it's not prima facie obvious that it is.

I guess what I'm saying is that it seems like you're trying to use #2 to justify making the assumption in #1. If we don't concern ourself with things like the first cause and just try to answer the question "are there any gods?" or "is there a god?" or "does God exist?", I would counter with "is there any evidence of it?" One could just as easily ask "are there any subatomic particles that existed before time and space that created everything?", and that question would have equal explanatory power and the same amount of evidence. There is no baseline evidence that God exists that doesn't rely on assuming he exists in the first place. This is why I'm saying that I think making no assumptions is a better default position to making one. I'm not sure if that made more sense than my last post, or not. Well yeah, because I am implicitly assuming #2 to make any sense out of #1. What good does it do to posit any random thing if it has no explanatory power over 'the existence of physical stuff and laws'? The only way that God makes sense at that juncture is if I implicitly allow that God has the properties necesssary to explain that stuff coming into being, otherwise I am just piling on to the original problem more stuff that needs explaining and not getting anything back. But if we do allow for the possibility of God existing, and I agree with D9 we'd want other motives to think that is the case, then this could be another place where God as a hypothesis has explanatory power. AS a part of a cumulative case, or larger case, for God's existence, this makes sense. The way I've wanted to use these considerations here though is not so much that as to assert that atheism doesn't really make sense at the bottom, metaphysically. Asserting that physical stuff just is, the laws just are, isn't any more rational than saying that God is responsible, precisely because at least in the latter we can collapse many different facts into one. So rather than try to push the case for God explicitly here, I'm wanting to explore why 'we' allow for atheism to be the default rational position, when atheism entails making a rather incredible positive claim, namely, 'boundless physical stuff and laws just exist'.

The internet can be, and is used, to undermine the power of states. The internet can be used to spread the gospel as much as allow for access to porn. I don't think you could label the internet a tool of evil or good per se, it all depends on the users and people who throw stuff up. In that sense it's a neutral medium.

the #1 consideration is the one I wanted to challenge via the parsimony consideration because that is a parsimony consideration. It is *really* simpler? I don't think that is entirely so clear when you dig beneath the surface. Besides which, I find the use of the term 'gods' to try to emphasize the silliness of it telling, when it's clear we are talking about a God which could at least potentially have explanatory power over the existence of physical stuff altogether. It's clear that Zeus, as typically understood, has nothing to do with the discussion. #2, whatever it is that could explain the physical stuff and laws would at least have the power to do that, and if a being, the motivation to do that. D9 is right to point out we'd need more information to make any sort of strongish claim here, other reasons to suspect that God existed and that we know some things about God's properties.

I think I understand your argument, I'm just not convinced. I see the explanatory power of God as superficial, which makes parsimony a tough sell. If we start with philosophical nothingness (which may or may not be a valid starting assumption), I'll grant that naturalism forces you to scratch your head, but we are also dealing with a starting assumption without God's existence as well. So how do we account for God's existence, God's power (energy), God's complexity/order, and any laws of the supernatural realm? It appears that, fundamentally, I am asking the same questions about God as you are about nature. I'm not seeing a nice, clean, single assumption regarding God that simplifies the equation to one unknown. So I don't see any greater explanatory power by asserting God, just all the questions get pushed backed away from physical reality into the supernatural. Which is the opposite of parsimony. It is conceivable that the God hypothesis makes more sense given that you can show God exists in the first place. After all if you could unequivocally show that God and the supernatural exists, and even more specific theistic claims like God intervening in human affairs and supernatural miracles, it becomes much easier to assert that God created the universe as 1) we know that such an entity actually exists, and 2) we have some inkling that this entity's power is beyond the physical and can possibly create universes even if we don't understand it. But as you know demonstrating God's existence is no easy feat. Without the axiom that God exists I don't see how any additional explaining power is available by asserting God as the designer. D9, Nice reply. And I am with you, I would not actually be convinced by this argument at all. What I am aiming to do, and will probably retry several times before getting it correctly, is to undermine the assertion that atheism is the rational default position. There are reasons that would apply to a question, like I put forth about nothingness, which would make theism at least as rational a choice as atheism. But i do want to make clear that I agree with you, in that, I can't imagine anybody actually switching sides based on this consideration. Onto your objections, Krauss et al aside I see no problem with considering the problem of nothingness.The simplicity of God has to be that God is one Being. I don't think this is too crazy, insofar as we accept explanations in terms of persons without demanding further interrogation. "Who organized my bookshelves?" "Bill did it." So if I am asserting that Mind actually is primarily existent rather than the boundless amounts of physical stuff together with physical laws, well, I am only have to point at one Person at the very least. It's not clear to me, that is, which is rationally superior on the face of it as a foundational choice.

I don't see what's wrong with expressing physical intimacy in relationships as things move along such as kissing. That's a part of the deal and I don't see what's wrong with enjoying that. I suppose the question is where, for each couple, that can reasonably begin and end without ending up in sin and that is on them.

Right, as Jdavis pointed out, it clearly specifies they die that same day. They didn't, so it's a safe assumption that physical death of the body was not intended. They were cast out of the garden and out of God's direct presence though, so it further seems reasonable to assume that some kind of spiritual death was meant.

I agree. Also, it would seem that once you deem the cause of something to be "God" and not "I don't know yet. Let's find out!", you stop looking to explain the universe. For example: if we know that A caused B, and B caused C, we understand C, and we claim God caused A, the furthest back we could really look at understanding would be B. So, if someone said "why does C work the way it does?", we could study B and attempt to understand it. We could study A to learn why B works the way it does, but as soon as someone asks about A, the answer would be "I don't know. God did it." There's no possible naturalistic explanation for the stuff I'm talking about... in principle. This isn't wondering why there is lightening and positing that Zeus 'does it'. The only way that science has of offering explanations is in terms of physical causation, and I want to extend that concept to probabilistic ensembles as well (and if you don't like the term 'causation' that is fine, we can put anything there, my argument doesn't depend on it). The reason we can do this is because we presuppose that there is order in the world, and that makes sense explanations possible. My question is, why is there the stuff to investigate, at all, and why is there the order there that makes such naturalistic explanations possible in the first place? You can't use naturalistic explanations to tell me why naturalistic explanations are possible.

What I was getting at with the physicist's sense of nothing, is that in theory you don't need anything but nature to create universes in the absence of universes (I am too ignorant to speculate what effect that has on causality when you remove space-time), so the real question (for me) is why there is an underlying fabric of existence which makes space-time possible. I'm not arguing that a quantum vacuum is absolutely 'nothing', but the nothingness being something indicates to me (as a layman) that something larger is at work, which I call the foundation of existence. As for God being a superior explanatory hypothesis, sure it is one thing, but like ID, it has no real explanatory power IMO. On the surface it sounds good, and it can certainly make sense if you presuppose the existence of such a being. But as far as explaining power, I don't see how it is better than a placeholder shouldering all the unanswered questions under one banner. For instance, if we take the order and complexity of the universe as evidence there must be a God who had the intelligence and capability to create all of this, yes we explain why there is an ordered something rather than nothing. However this God is surely also complex and 'ordered' too, not some aimlessly wandering goo of supernaturalism. So by the criteria you have for determining that the universe requires a creator, I feel I can use the same criteria to establish that God requires a creator. Doesn't that put us exactly where we started but with different names; why is there a God (with all his properties) instead of no God? Right, I am not talking about a vacuum state. I am talking about literal nothingness-- no spacetime, no fields, no zero point energy and, no physical laws whatsoever... nothing nothing. A vacuum state is clearly not Nothing, and arguing that it answers the philosophical metaphysical question here is just flimflam. I am not accusing you of that, as I've seen these sorts of responses before, and I always scratch my head and wonder if they are doing this on purpose or if they are just being bizarrely stupid about this question (from otherwise intelligent people!). The reason God has explanatory power in this case in the simple argument I ran earlier is because God is only one thing that you'd have to assert existing, vs, many many things including physical laws that you'd have to assert with no basis otherwise. What it is a consideration from parsimony, because you can explain so many things by positing God and it costs you positing the existence of only one thing, God has explanatory power. The less you just have to assume without explanation, the better. Having to merely assert that an infinite amount of stuff exists, and its laws, as a brute fact is a worse situation than having to posit merely the existence of God as a matter of brute fact. I have other arguments I could run at this point, but this simple consideration from parsimony, honestly, captures a lot of what I want to say about 'rational' considerations. I am not even out to demonstrate that God exists here, I am merely questioning that atheism is all that rational a position to take as the default position, as it includes so *many* things you have to shrug your shoulders about, whereas on theism there's just one. If this is still unclear I will work on formalizing this (though depending on when I see responses today I will be gone for several days!).

Ah, but it does because you have death as a creative process to produce evolutionary man. The bible says that death resulted because of sin entering into the world through mans disobedience. So you have man fully created then death entering into the world. How about 'death' = spirit separation here? It's clear from the Genesis account that Adam and Eve did not immediately die after partaking of the forbidden fruit, so a non physical death sentence has to be assumed.

There is a difference between "laws" that people create and the "laws" of physics. The first is an artificial construct created by people. The second is a term we give to something that is observable and behaves the exact same every time we observe it. There is nothing explicit about the second type of "law" that demands intelligent design. I agree with this insofar as you can't make a direct analogy between laws some state imposes on citizens, say, and the physical laws of nature, and then declare if one requires a creator so does the other. You'd certainly need more argument than that. But, and perhaps this is what MG had in mind (?), on atheism you are left asserting that everything ultimately exists with no explanation, and that includes the order by which all the stuff interacts also. What interests me in particular about that is the order is a prerequisite to thinking in terms of physical causation and physical explanations at all. The ultimate upshot of the thread is that I don't think atheism, when you take that into consideration, should be considered the default position, as it is at least no simpler than your basic theism, which posits God as the explanation for not only the exist of all the physical stuff, but its ordering as well. Yes, you are required to posit God's existence on theism, but what you get back is a lot of explanatory power over a lot of stuff we are forced to accept about the world that we'd otherwise be forced to merely posit as brute fact.

Is theistic evolution really an option for Christians? I think not. You have to rewrite the whole purpose of God and man to support it. An entire universe … wasted on us? No, that does not follow. Just because God would create us via evolution rather than some other method has nothing to do with goals, intentions or purpose.

I don't mean nothing in a physicist's sense here, I mean it in an existential sense. Equating nothingness with a quantum vacuum is cheating, at least, we aren't going to be talking about the same thing. I mean the totality of physical stuff-- including fields, including spacetime. I also mean the order by which that stuff operates and allows us to posit natural causes to explain any phenomena at all. That is why it's not 'from ignorance', in principle you can't explain how you can do explanation by natural causation by using explanation by natural causation. And as I said, as far as explaining God goes, there are two routes. One, I could show that God is a necessary being. Or two, show why God is a superior explanatory hypothesis by arguing that at least with God we have mere *one* unexplained thing, rather than...an infinite number, including some rather nice laws by which all that stuff operates.

Just a simple question - Did God give you permission to think this way in His Word? Love, Steven I haven't gotten a sense from the Holy Spirit that I'm doing wrong here, if that is what you mean. If I am hopefully He will let me know sooner than later.

thanks for sharing this candice and I find it incredibly refreshing that not only you are a part of the site, but you are a moderator as well. This should help demonstrate to people that there are diversity of opinions about this matter, even on a relatively conservative type Christian forum. What I dislike about Comfort's portrayal, aside from being inaccurate, is that it puts a false dichotomy out there, evolution *or* God. I don't see it that way and it's sad that he'd put people in that rhetorical position to choose between what seems to them to be the best supported scientific theory and belief in God as ultimate Creator. In that sense, I think he positively harms the faith and the spreading of the gospel.

A vote for atheism is a vote for naturalistic explanation at the *foundation*. I don't just mean to posit God as an explanation for why anything instead of nothing, but why a *very ordered* anything instead of nothing. Why is there a * a bunch of ordered stuff* instead of nothing. There are two ways of dealing with Sagan's knee jerk reaction to positing God as an explanatory hypothesis at this level. One is to run an argument from contingency and establish God as necessary, thus defusing him entirely. But rather than do that, as I've done that so much here already, what about this consideration. God is 1 thing, so in positing God 'at the bottom' I am having to assume one thing existing. The universe, the multiverse the totality of the physical stuff is an innumerable amount of stuff-- possibly literally so! Not only is there a ton of it, but it obeys these fantastic relations, so we have to posit that those exist also. God's explanatory power then, in this specific angle, is that He explains an innumerable amount of ordered things, and at our expense we need only posit that God Himself exists. The second comment I'd like to make is that I am not sure my entire point was responded to. Not only am I asking why there is an ordered something rather than nothing,but also asserting that the fact that the things are ordered is a prerequisite to having naturalistic explanations at all, to posit any natural causation... at all. So you are presuming the supremacy of naturalistic explanations even though the existence of ordered stuff is a prerequisite to making sense of the notion of naturalistic causation at all. It's hardly the most intuitively appealing, it's not the simplest, ... I am not sure what explanatory superiority you get from this. There is *in principle* no naturalistic explanation possible here, because naturalistic explanations must assume it to run at all. This is precisely what a God of the gaps argument is not.

Ah well, I don't think the percentage of people being 'dumbed down' is any different than it was before. First it was TVs making us all stupid, then computers in general, now smartphones. The truth is, only a limited percentage of people in any generation is inclined to certain interests, and people will do on their own what they really like to do.Honestly, I think a case can be made that smartphone use is superior to lots of TV watching, insofar as the latter is passive and at least the smartphone requires some interaction (so long as people aren't texting and crashing their cars etc). I suppose my main concern is that people not immediately judge others just because they are seen to use a smartphone. I think you're misunderstanding, alpha. It's not about USING a smartphone. It's about being ADDICTED to them. Like having it in your hand all day, every day. Like being on the thing all day at work or school. Like not even hearing someone talking to you when you're being spoken to. Like refusing to even look up when being spoken to. Yes, I had this experience today. That's what the article is about. Alright, I was specifically addressing some of the responses in the thread, not the OP per se.

I definitely agree with you, that if they were eye witnesses, that they would know it's not a lie. I suppose you could try and make the case that they might give their lives for a lie if they thought there was a good reason, but I'm not going to try and make that case. That being said, this works if you assume the Bible is true in this regard. Certainly, if we are operating under the assumption that what the Bible says is true, then it would automatically point to a resurrected Christ. I'm not sure whether or not those assumptions count as treating the Bible as a "supernatural authority", something Alpha wanted to avoid for his arguments. Alpha, What parts of the New Testament are you accepting as fact for purposes of this thread, and which parts are you trying to find support for? I may be hugely misunderstanding your approach, here. Mcgyver said what I would have said initially, so I won't respond to your previous point (nicely put Mcgyver). So here's what I want to do. I want to use sources in the Bible as NT historians do. It may be easiest to look at one example so you see what I'm getting at. The first source I want to look at includes Paul's writings, in part because they are understood by NT scholars to be the earliest, so at the very least we can get a glimpse at what the earliest Christians thought about things. Actually Paul quotes a tradition even earlier than himself in his letter to the Corinthians, here: 1 corinthians 15:3-8 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles; and last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also. So we can gather from this that the early community of Christians, by the time that Paul wrote this letter, believed that Jesus died, was buried, and raised on the third day (very specific) and they believed that Jesus *appeared* to Cephas/Peter, and then to the 12 apostles. They also believe that He appeared to a large group-- many who are still alive at the time of Paul's writings. Then Paul talks about Jesus appearing to him. Now all I can say is this is what the early Christian community believed. But, they believed rather strong claims, and in fact, Paul goes on in other letters to talk about Paul himself has met Peter and other disciples of Jesus, the very ones he is saying here have known Jesus to die, be buried and then *appear* to them. Now these people belonged to a rather unpopular group, and did so presumably based on these experiences. So here is one historical witness to Jesus' life, and the early beliefs of Christians about Him-- Christians who were alive during the ministry of Jesus.

I think Alpha is attempting to provide reasoning material for people who don't accept the Bible record of Jesus as historical fact. Right, precisely. Thanks. I think I need to work on presentation here.

Ah well, I don't think the percentage of people being 'dumbed down' is any different than it was before. First it was TVs making us all stupid, then computers in general, now smartphones. The truth is, only a limited percentage of people in any generation is inclined to certain interests, and people will do on their own what they really like to do.Honestly, I think a case can be made that smartphone use is superior to lots of TV watching, insofar as the latter is passive and at least the smartphone requires some interaction (so long as people aren't texting and crashing their cars etc). I suppose my main concern is that people not immediately judge others just because they are seen to use a smartphone.

I would put forward Prophecy as evidence that the Scriptures are reliable. The Dead Sea scrolls contain copies of prophecy that can be dated prior to Christ. You could talk about prophecies, sure, but that isn't the tactic I'm taking here. That the DSS contain copies that predate Christ doesn't seem directly relevant to me. What is it you're looking for? My assertion is this, it's possible to build a case for the resurrection of Jesus without first assuming that the Bible has supernatural authority, or without believing in God at all. It's basically a development of the "if the disciples didn't really see and talk to the resurrected Jesus, why would they sacrifice their lives to the cause?" type of consideration. Hopefully that provides a bit of clarification.

I would put forward Prophecy as evidence that the Scriptures are reliable. The Dead Sea scrolls contain copies of prophecy that can be dated prior to Christ. You could talk about prophecies, sure, but that isn't the tactic I'm taking here. That the DSS contain copies that predate Christ doesn't seem directly relevant to me.