posted
It depends. Has he simply stopped believing in Creationism, or has he started believing in Evolution? I would argue that he has discovered knowledge that makes his belief in creationism impossible, and subsequently chooses to believe in evolution (although he has not acquired sufficient evidence to have knowledge of evolution.)
Had he truly not wanted to believe in evolution, as opposed to simply not wanting to stop believing in creationism, he would now believe neither. It's not an either/or proposition, unless he chooses to make it one.
posted
I'm assuming in the example that in his search to disprove evolutionism, he gained enough evidence to convince him that evolutionism is true. He would have to be dishonest with himself to continue believing it is not true.
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
Beverly, the Robinson Cruso argument is flawed, because you are assuming from the start that there is a human to begin with. If instead we begin assuming neither, then it is far more believable that hearing singing, whether it be simple melody or actual words, can be misconstrued in many ways, or simply interpreted by different individuals of different experiences differently.
Since the voice of any god is far less simple than any fictional character on a fictional deserted island, ignoring outside influence of other people would be incredibly ignorant. Our perception as to how we define all of the various messages that we get from many sources throughout life is shaped from the start by those around us. Language alone is a wonderful example of this. We cannot assume that just because a child can learn to speak well with his or her parents that they will be a great orator, or that they will be a great speaker in another language. So, learning does play a part in it, but so does the vagaries of communication that go beyond simple language. Regional dialects in just the English language alone illustrate how language alone sometimes fails as adequate communication.
So, while I may hear a bird and you may hear a person, someone else may hear their imagination or be remembering a symphony recording they heard six years ago.
I think a better example would be to ask what different people here think of ghost stories. Do ghosts exist? If so, based on what we know and how we perceive things, what are these apparitions? Where do they come from, and what do you think their purpose is?
I bet that the answers to that would be far more telling about how people develop their faith than using an example from a book that someone may or may not have read.
Posts: 1170 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
Sorry, wasn't my example. I just figured if I were on a deserted island and I heard singing, I would at least consider that another human being might be on the island--even if the idea seemed unlikely and surprised me greatly. If the singing sounded identifiably human, I might be strongly convinced of it, though I hadn't seen anything. Since I haven't read the book, I am simply imagining myself in the scenario and thinking how I would respond. It is a valid hypothetical.
Your ghost example could work also, and I personally like the big foot example far more than "The Great Pumpkin" or a "Giant Pink Bunny in the Sky" because there is some precident for it to make a case. Someone else may have an experience that convinces them that ghosts (or sasquatches) are real, but I have not. I am going to be far less convinced by their hearsay than they will be of their personal experience.
(To all:) I think coming up with stuff like "The Great Pumpkin" and the like does a great disservice to many believers out there by coming up with something out of the blue (as Dave so aptly pointed out).
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quote: PSI is saying that parents who lose children have to believe something (that they're children are dead) without wanting to at all.
quote: The parents don't believe their children are dead, they know so. Perhaps she meant that they choose to believe that God is good in spite of their not wanting to anymore and in the face of their personal evidence to the contrary?
Whoops, forgot to come back to this thread. I'm awesome like that.
Yes, I was saying what Dag said. I think that as far as knowing your kids are dead versus believing it, it depends on the situation.
What about the call you get from the police station when they find your child's car upside down in the ditch? The policeman sounds so confident on the phone, positive that it was your child in the driver's seat. You believe him, because he has seen the driver's license and can tell you your child's name, address, and SSN, but asks you to come down to identify the body anyway, because that's standard procedure. You believe he knows what he's talking about. You believe you will find your child's body on the table when you get there. But you don't want to believe it, and you don't *know* it because you haven't seen it with your own eyes.
Unless we want to argue that you *know* your child is dead because of the witness of the police officer, but if you said that you'd have to concede that people who believe in God know he exists because of the witness of the people who spoke to him.
I would also submit that it's probably easier to not want to believe something that you believe than it is to not want to believe something that you *know*.
If that made any sense at all.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
"if you said that you'd have to concede that people who believe in God know he exists because of the witness of the people who spoke to him."
There's a matter of credibility and consistency, as well. I doubt that police officers are consistently as wrong about reporting fatal accidents as believers are about their belief.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Are they inconsistent within the same religion, or just across different religions?
I propose this is a good reason for God to call prophets to speak for Him--few in number, but trusted well enough for Him to speak to face to face. He inspires many people, but inspirations are gentle nudges, easily twisted by a person's own filters. Those who have sufficient faith and are sufficiently trustworthy to God, He is able to speak to more directly and have them speak to the people for Him. I believe that their words (coming straight from the source) agree with each other. While they may change slightly to meet the needs of the people at that time, they do not contradict each other.
This is why within one religion the people are encouraged to stay near the scriptures (assuming that religion has scripture). That is the information closest to the source. If personal inspiration is at odds with scripture, the personal inspiration is the one likely to be wrong. I assume religions with out scripture are far more likely to have variance in interpretation from one person to another.
So, if you are comparing individuals receiving these gentle nudgings of information to officers of the law receiving direct evidence, that isn't a good comparison. It would be better to compare them to individuals (within the same religion) called to receive direct communication from God in the form of heavenly visitations.
But I will agree with you that of those you could choose--Catholic Popes, the founding prophet of SDA, LDS prophets, David Karesh, Mohammad, and others, there are large discrepancies. I can understand being skeptical that they all are receiving direct communication from God in the form of heavenly visitation. The prophets of the Old Testament are old enough for the differences to be considered a product of the needs of the people at that time. These later ones overlap more.
I am curious--for agnostics out there, if you were to discover that there is a God, would you be of the opinion that all religions are equally right, some are more right than others, one is right or none are right? Perhaps you have no expectations of the sort because it just makes more sense to you that there is no God/s. Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
Heh. And to think I promised I was done with this thread.
Knowing, beyond any doubt, that a God exists is only half the battle.
After that, we have to establish our relationship with Him/Her/It - some religions will look at this analysis as a "we're right, they were wrong" scenario. I look at it more as a means of "ok, Dad...I just found out you exist and I know nothing about you...wanna get a milkshake and talk?"
Depending on the answers...I don't know. It could be something as simple as, "glad we got that straightened out - you do exist, but I refuse to bend knee" to something infinitely more complex that makes the eternal Father/child relationship somehow more palatable.
-Trevor
Edit: There are so many possible answers, I don't have a stock response for how I would react if I found out God exists. Is he actually a Catholic and everyone else was wrong? Or LDS? Or Buddhist? Or whatever? Or is your belief that he has appeared to varying people in varying forms valid - at which point all religions have, more or less, the same basis in truth and varying degrees of perversion by Mankind.
I don't believe in God because I have no basis for which God to believe in - the Judeo-Christian tradition is as valid as anything the Norse, Vikings or Greeks concocted. And I have yet to have a Divine Experience that would sway me one way or the other.
Farmgirl believes signs have been put forth and I am deliberately ignoring them. That's fair - I don't think I've turned my back on God knowing he was trying to contact me, but I freely admit my interpretation of dumb luck might be God's attempt to hit me over the head with a metaphorical brick.
posted
"Are they inconsistent within the same religion, or just across different religions?"
Yes. I can't think of a major religion on the planet that hasn't suffered from serious internal inconsistency. And, of course, it's pretty much impossible to expect any kind of consistency across different religions.
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