baking

backing I meant...

I would like to believe in a God, but logic and experience teaches me otherwise. I think the concept of a loving all-powerful omnipotent being who looks after us is a nice idea. I like the idea that there's life after death and that potentially there's a better existence awaiting us beyond this world.

I don't deny spirituality, and some of the things I have experienced in my life lead me to believe that there is more beyond that which I can sense in any conventional manner. However, I'm not about to devote the time I have in this life to the worship or fear of a being which has had no discernable influence on my life, and who makes no effort to advertise his existence to me. I'd much rather use the short time I have in as productive and fulfilling a way as possible and only worry about the afterlife when I am in a position to experience it.

I'd much rather use the short time I have in as productive and fulfilling a way as possible and only worry about the afterlife when I am in a position to experience it.

That is the same thing we Christians do...we just do it differently!

I never claimed that Creation isn't one of the possibilities, but I do maintain that it is only one of the possibilities.

By your rationale, Rated PG, a believer of God would also need to have knowledge or experience of the sphere of existence which contains God, and would therefore need to be a God themselves. A believer therefore also cannot claim to know beyond all doubt that there is a God, unless they are God themselves. Therefore, believers in God are also self-defeating.

true...choice was made by free will based on evidence on both sides of the fence.

Most people have the wrong idea of what this creation/evolution question is all about. They don't understand the real issues involved and think that evolution is a scientific theory, and creationism is just a bunch of fables.

Evolution, however, is not a scientific theory; it is a belief system about the past. We don't have the past; we only have the present! All the fossils, all the living animals and plants, the world, the universe -everything exists in the present. We cannot test the past using the scientific method (which involves repeating things and watching them happen), since all evidence we have is in the present. Evolution is a belief about the past which describes the way some people think the evidence came to be here in its present state.

It is important to understand that by definition, creation is also a belief about the past which describes the way in which the evidence in the present came to be. The difference is that we base our understanding of creation upon a book which claims to be the Word of One who knows everything there is to know about everything-who was there and who is able to tell us what happened. On the other hand, evolution comes from the words of men who were not there. This whole issue revolves around whether we believe the words of God who was there, or the words of men (no matter how qualified) who were not there.

Many think of scientists as people in white lab coats objectively searching for the truth. But scientists come in two basic forms, male and female, and they are just like you and me-they have beliefs and biases. Bias determines what you do with the evidence; the way in which you think certain evidence is more relevant or important than other evidence. Scientists, then, cannot be objectively searching for the truth in this matter. They are therefore not neutral. They all start with beliefs which determine what they do with the evidence.

#437 by Citizen grayhaze - 9/18/2003 4:41:02 PM I would like to believe in a God, but logic and experience teaches me otherwise

what are some of these experiences and logics?

if kona is wrong he dies losing nothing. if grayhaze is wrong he dies losing everything forever. this doesn't seem like an even bet!

people who evidence such faith in God that it appears to be total or "blind" generally did not become that way by leaping blindly off a cliff. they applied faith in ever larger increments in reponse to ever larger challenges over time, and saw for themselves the incredible results.

kona - if you find as i have that your faith is greatly rewarded, then don't be perturbed in regards to anyone else's opinion.

Kona don't get upset and don't let other ppl break "your" faith, (that is possible when you speak to unbelievers)
I think it could be a double edged sword you can share faith and they can get cut by it and or it could also cut you if you're not careful...

besides it's not your responsibility to make anyone believe in God when you share your faith that's all it is, is sharing (you cannot force ppl to take a gift they don't want)

??? was I on the wrong page or typed in slow motion? hehe
by the time I posted that I seen 50 more post I'll never get used to this paged thread thing...

people who evidence such faith in God that it appears to be total or "blind" generally did not become that way by leaping blindly off a cliff. they applied faith in ever larger increments in reponse to ever larger challenges over time, and saw for themselves the incredible results.

EXACTLY! my faith has grown as life has presented various challeges!

kona - if you find as i have that your faith is greatly rewarded, then don't be perturbed in regards to anyone else's opinion.

I am not really mad it is just funny that someone does not choose to believe in God or at least a higher spirit of some kind.

No matter what Grayhaze says he ain't gonna ruin my day or my faith! God has rewarded my faith too many times so I can not even fathom dening God.

TheRatedPG,

You might have gleaned from my previous posts that I *do* believe in God. I do not engage in a dogmatic acceptance of any fundamentalist orthodoxy, however.

In an attempt to avoid writing the next great novel on this board (), I won't respond to the details of your long post, except to say that being a scientist and engineer myself, I disagree with the conclusions of Dr Werner Gitt. I'll just say that one cannot prove a negative. To say that no mechanism exists whereby matter can encapsulate information without intelligent intervention is an unprovable assumption.

As I've stated before, my position is not that God had no hand in creation, but that there is no conflict between the ideals of scientific investigation and the idea that God is responsible for the existence of the universe.

God gave us rational, intelligent, and inquisitive minds, and He gave us a universe that exists according to a coterie of natural rules that can be examined and understood by our minds. I have no cognitive dissonance about the concept that God created the universe, from the beginning, in the manner that we're discovering through scientific examination. I have no problem with the idea that evolution (as we have identified the evidence) is the manner in which God provided that we come into existence.

It is my firm belief that our purpose is specifically to use our minds and our abilities to learn about, and ultimately, fully understand the mechanisms and underlying structure of life and the universe. And to use that knowledge to advance ourselves, both ethically and mentally.

bangkokboy,

If you believe 'just in case' or as a matter of hedging your odds, what honor do you give God by such a position?

I agree about faith, as my own belief is a matter of faith. My faith does not stem from what I fear God will do if I don't have that faith, it comes from an honest awareness of His existence and love.

TheRatedPG,

Evolution IS a scientific theory. It meets the requirements of such by all standards. It may not be fully correct, but it is fully part of the scientific method.

You state only a partial view of what the scientific method is. While observation is part of it, the scientific method is much more than that. It is the process of examination of evidence, postulating a process that can account for that evidence, making predictions based on that hypothesis, thus supporting or not supporting the theory, followed by altering the theory if needed (with more observations, usually), lather, rinse, repeat.

Evolution meets these requirements. We have observational evidence of a linear increasing time to complexity relationship in the fossil record, and in other observed evidence. We have postulated a theory that attempts to explain the evidence (natural selection), and we predict certain behaviour or results from that theory (for example, the fact that, say, a few flies in a population are resistant to a given toxin, and as the population is exposed to that toxin, the population becomes more resistant to the toxin as a whole), and observe that the results confirm that prediction, thus strengthening the hypothesis.

This doesn't mean it won't be supplanted by future evidence, but it most definitely is a proper scientific theory.

Those therioes are based on recipes designed by MAN not GOD. i think that is the whole point.

A fact is only something you can convince another person it is true. Therefore some facts are not facts.

Creationists and evolutionists, Christians and non-Christians all have the same evidence—the same facts. Think about it: we all have the same earth, the same fossil layers, the same animals and plants, the same stars—the facts are all the same.

The difference is in the way we all interpret the facts. And why do we interpret facts differently? Because we start with different presuppositions. These are things that are assumed to be true, without being able to prove them. These then become the basis for other conclusions. All reasoning is based on presuppositions (also called axioms). This becomes especially relevant when dealing with past events.

Past and present
We all exist in the present—and the facts all exist in the present. When one is trying to understand how the evidence came about (Where did the animals come from? How did the fossil layers form? etc.), what we are actually trying to do is to connect the past to the present.

However, if we weren’t there in the past to observe events, how can we know what happened so we can explain the present? It would be great to have a time machine so we could know for sure about past events.

Christians of course claim they do, in a sense, have a ‘time machine’. They have a book called the Bible which claims to be the Word of God who has always been there, and has revealed to us the major events of the past about which we need to know.

On the basis of these events (Creation, Fall, Flood, Babel, etc.), we have a set of presuppositions to build a way of thinking which enables us to interpret the evidence of the present.

Evolutionists have certain beliefs about the past/present that they presuppose, e.g. no God (or at least none who performed acts of special creation), so they build a different way of thinking to interpret the evidence of the present.

Thus, when Christians and non-Christians argue about the evidence, in reality they are arguing about their interpretations based on their presuppositions.