The Bible for journalists

Personally I doubt that it would be possible for a true Christian to work happily in the moral cesspit of the modern media.
www.theevangelists.blogspot.com

RevIanHall

While I agree with you to a point about the media, there have been exceptions. Take the cases of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and Jim and Tammy Fae Baker. How else but on television could you get millions of old pensioners and otherwise not so financially well off people to part with some of their money they'd otherwise waste on gas, electricity, rent, food, medication and send it to them to do the Lord's work.

BTW, do you think all dogs go to heaven? I'll bet the ones who lived in Tammy Fae Baker's air conditioned dog house felt they'd already arrived.

Had I been a believer in the heyday of televangalism, I think I might have gone in for that line of work myself. Doing well by doing good :-)

Reverend Ian, as luck would have it, a few days ago I was walking down 86th street in Manhattan and much to my amazement, there was a can of Coca Cola lying on the pavement. I picked it up and took it home with me. It has a slight dent in it. Can you think of any test I could perform on it to find out whether or not it was man made or came into existance spontaneously? There is some printing on the bottom and I figured I might just call up the Coca Cola Company and ask them what it meant but I realized that the printing might have come into existance spontaneously as well. Would the dent be a clue to its origin? Do you think someone dropped it and maybe that's how it got dented or do you think it was formed that way? Do you think it is safe to open it up and taste its contents? I'm sure there is something sloshing around in there when I shake it. If do open it and it turns out to be 1945 Chateau Mouton Rothschild inside, you just might make a believer out of me yet. I'm not big on miracles never having seen one happen myself but that would be convincing.

BTW, I do not like bananas. Since you suggest that bananas were made specifically to be eaten and enjoyed by man, do you think god made a mistake when he made me? But how could that be, if he made mistakes he wouldn't be god now would he? Can man live by bananas alone? Nutritionists I've read don't seem to think so. What do you say?

Ianypops, you are quite right. Indeed Jesus himself was well known for not lowering himself to the common herd, and kept a distinct moral aloofness from people perceived by his Pharisaic buddies to be "sinners". No doubt he would have had a really rubbish blog too, and would be posting here without the merest hint of irony.

-H

Hi Ian (again!)

If you don't mind me saying you're sort of setting yourself up for criticism with comments like 'the moral cesspit of the modern media'.

I mean first of all have you anything to say about the historic media?

But beyond that, and frankly more seriously, your comments about the media here and those about society on the alcohol thread *seem* to be a kind of self-justifying exclusion. Now here's the thing, I thought we were all 'sinners', you know, desperately wicked and deceitful hearts, it's the sick who need a doctor and so on - but maybe I'm wrong.

Rev Hall
I'm sorry I've had to be satirical about the design argument on your site. The sermons there do seem interesting.
The design argument you offer is interesting, but for different reasons. I've had no choice but to distance myself from it.
I've also been much more critical of much better arguments provided by skeptics on this blog. I'm probably being very unfair and biased not giving you a much harder time over the apologetics you used.
As I've said, many of the older sermons you are promoting look very interesting, and maybe some of the bloggers will listen to them. You may get productive conversation on Lloyd Jones for example.
Many of the skeptics on this site debate with the "gloves off", so please don't assume people are being venomous.
Most of the skeptics are actually fond of fundamentalists. They are never really as dismissive as they sound (except about arguments that involve bananas).
I hope you keep posting, and can enjoy the conversation. Take the knocks with good humour, like a true Ulsterman.

Graham

M2
I've replied to the Rev on the alcohol thread.

I'm still dumbfounded.

GV

Rev Ian ....

You say no true Christian could survive in the modern media. What about the other jobs in society? Financial services? Teaching? Even being a minister? Surely the same moral challenges face christians in all jobs.

Augustine_of_Clippo, he might be right. If the internet is the most modern of media, exposure of fraud can be only a few keystrokes away. It took only 15 minutes for bloggers on the internet to expose the fraudulent letter about George Bush's military record after Dan Rather broadcast it on CBS. That was 4 years ago, it might be closer to 15 seconds today. On older media such as radio, you'd have to be unlucky enough for someone who actually knows something to call in and be given a chance to say it or for the moderator to be an expert in the precise chosen field of deceit.

Perhaps it would be good to get back to the subject in hand.

I had a quick flick through the Guide and I was quite impressed. It would be useful for anyone wanting to inform themselves more about the bible. They won't have to believe it - but they would know what Christians think. I was pleasantly surprised by the favourable treatment of Catholic issues which I thought were handled fairly.

My only real gripe is the use of the very PC term CE instead of AD.

I've never seen a thread get so off-topic with such gusto so quickly. I'm lost. :-S

Well, if god REALLY wanted us to understand the bible, he would have included smileys.

:-)

Helio,

SMILE, Jesus loves you.

Oh and didn't you know, he wants you for a sunbeam.


Smasher

I agree, I had a quick look through the online version and for an 'at a glance' publication, it seems pretty fair and balanced. Indeed, never mind non-believers, it might be worth dropping a few copies in the pew!

'We need to take the Bible back from the bigots'

'Rescuing Genesis from the Creationists'

I welcome this guide - so deliberately inoffensive that it will certainly offend. There definitely seems to be a theme emerging - 'the middle of the road strikes back'.

I look forward to: Saving the Apocalypse from the End-timers. This series could run and run...

John
You won't understand the thread until you've been to the Rev Ian's site.

GV

Looks like RevIanHell isn't coming back to answer any of the challenges to his claimed intellectual monopoly on cosmic truth. Could it be that outside his own realm where he is a tin pot god himself, he is nothing more than a coward? I'm caling you out Reverend as we said on the streets of NYC where I grew up. Where are you? Face us and stand up like a man. Or go run home to your mother and hide under the bed for all I care.

M2
You could always go to his site and leave a message. He printed mine, but hasn't answered my questions about liberalism yet.
I also get the impression that it is more of a Church blog than his own. He may want to clarify this.

He should, if he has read the comments from skeptics and Christians, remove the bananas from his blog.

I can't believe I typed that, and wasn't being sarcastic.

GV

gveale

The only way to engage Reverend I AM HELL in anything like a fair debate is on a relatively neutral blog site. This one seems fair enough, especially by normal BBC standards. Fighting him on his own turf is a sure way to look like a fool because he controls what can and can't be published. He has a vested interest in procting his image no matter how foolish he is made to look...especially when he is made to look foolish.

I'd bet he won't be back anytime soon. Perhaps one day he'll make a return appearance, post one or two things and then disappear into the night again.

He Rev, if you are reading this, how about coming back and debating the existance of god....or isn't he worth defending....except when there are only ignorant people to debate with or you are up alone on your soap box and there is money to be made in the audience?

He won't be back. He has all the oranges and bananas he can eat and plenty of coke to wash it down with already.

Sitting here in South Australia looking out from my study at a beautiful view of the sea - I find it highly amusing that a few words from a little fellow like me can provoke such reaction and the accusation that I will disappear into the night. LOL
www.theevangelists.blogspot.com

Dear rev ian hall .......

South Australia? I hope you have settled in well as pastor of Port Lincoln Free Presbyterian Church,
South Australia. Nice website. Probably needs updated, the previous pastor's pic is still there.

Nice to see you back reverend. Now how about some proof god exists that goes beyond Coca Cola cans, bananas, and oranges.

Nice to see you back Rev. We know the web address now, no need to keep repeating it. No need to rub it in that you've got a view of the South Australian Sea, we're already jealous!
It wasn't the few words that provoked the reaction - I think it was the coke cans.
You've got to admit, it was funny mistake to use the argument.


G Veale

gveale, now that we've got his attention, don't drive him away. Let the man make the best case he can for his assertions. I can hardly wait to hear the gist of it. So far in an entire lifetime I haven't heard one good one yet. Perhaps this will be a first.

So far no response. C'mon Reverend, save my soul. Are you going to let me go to hell without even trying to fight the devil in me? :-) Will god's detractors here go unchallenged? What happened to "Onward Christian Soldier, marching as to war?"

Come out, come out wherever you are. Tag, you're it.

Hi Marcus

Whatever Mr. Hall's view of bananas, I doubt very much that he thinks he can save you soul. But if he did then even more of his theology would be in question.

Well Peter, if he isn't willing to even try, that leaves only one reason he came here.....advertising. That would make him.....a troll. Yes just trolling for more customers to visit his store...er, I mean website. Do you always have such a cynical view of your fellow man? Of men of the cloth? Of men of whole cloth? I do.

Marcus

Do I have a cynical view of my fellow man?

Well, my cynicism begins with me! In terms of christianity, and I am a christian believer, it is regrettable, sorry regrettable isn't a strong enough word, contradictory might be better, that so much of the popular christian church (and by popular, I mean that which is noticed) is tied up with making money. Christians could sell sand to Arabia, although they're more often to be found selling miracles to the needy, a cynical exercise if ever there was one. Oh, and we have a music industry, a publishing industry, a TV industry, an after dinner speaker industry and a 'christian celebrity' (yes we have those to) guest appearance industry, which would put many to shame.

Me cynical... nah!

To be fair to Mr Hall though, I didn't notice him selling anything on his website. And he's not the only one around here who uses 'Will and Testament' as a shop window. However I do wish he'd drop the Rev. bit.

I'm rather disappointed he didn't come back to defend god. Maybe deep down he knows he can't. From what I can tell, even among the most lucid of believers, belief in god is not based on any rational thought process and they admit it, you either have faith in the supernatural or you don't. So to try to convince someone using rational arguments to believe in something inherently irrational is a waste of time. This is why the ID Creationist types will always get caught up in their own arguments. What they believe cannot be proven and it could not be inferred even if every alternative theory that could be advanced could be knocked down. There simply is no evidence for it that stands up to examination. This is why it is not science.

Marcus

It would of course be foolish to suggest that it is possible to be a christian without faith, however I'm not so sure that this means that there is no rational thought process. I suppose it all depends on what one means by faith and what one means by rational thought.

From dictionary.com

rational; agreeable to reason, having or exercising reason, being in or characterized by full possession of one's reason, endowed with the faculty of reason, proceeding or derived from reason or based on reasoning: a rational explanation.

reason; to think or argue in a logical manner. to form conclusions, judgments, or inferences from facts or premises

faith; belief that is not based on proof

It seems to me that faith and rational thought are diametrically opposed. One is based on facts and logical conclusions, the other is belief absent facts and logical conclusions. I think many people who have given thought to belief in god in their religion would agree. What's more, by trying to prove their case for god's existance based on rational explanations, they reveal themselves to be without faith. They would like it both ways but they can't have it. If their supposed rational explanation falls apart on close scrutiny, can they simply fall back on faith? I don't think so. That seems dishonest to me.

Marcus

I suppose if we were to continue to discuss this, it might take some time for us to understand each other's point or points of view.

I find it interesting that you opt for the definition of faith which is a 'belief that is not based on proof' and can understand then why you might wish to drive a wedge between faith and reason, and indeed understand this kind of faith to be a form of faith which says, 'just believe'. 'Just believe' however, and there is much 'just believism' in christianity is not how I understand faith.

You will know that there is another definition for faith, indeed there are a number of other definitions, and one of them is to trust in or to have confidence in a person, or a person's ability. Now, if it is this kind of faith which we are interested in, then it seems to me that it is perfectly reasonable to enquire of this person who they are, what their abilities are and why they should be trusted. Or if I wanted to satisfy myself of someone's bona-fides I might enquire of another who knows, or has known them. It is the sort of faith which we exercise all the time; and it is, or at the very least it can be and it should be, reasonable.

Now does this mean that I can 'prove' another's credentials to your (or even to my) complete satisfaction? Does it mean that this old cynic can guarantee for another cynic someone's trustworthiness? No, but it does mean that that the word faith can mean two completely opposite things.

It seems to me it all boils down to the same thing. Having faith in someone else means taking their word for what is true because you have no direct evidence yourself of it and they can't offer it. They don't call it "blind faith" for nothing. So if you have faith, you don't need proof. On the other hand, if you require or promulgate a theory based on facts and reason and then the facts or reasoning falls apart, you can't expect those you tried to persuade to give you credibility when all you have left is "just trust me."

The advantage real science has is that it cannot ignore contradictory facts. If the theory flies in the face of facts which cannot be explained within its context, then the theory has to go and be replaced by a better one which includes the new facts. Religion is not like that. It cannot yield to contradictory facts. It is intellectually rigid and therefore cannot and will not accept intellectual challenge to its monopoly on truth. That is what the Catholic Church understood instinctively when it prosecuted Galileo. It must also have seen the handwriting on the wall. Even in winning that battle, it knew that the war would ultimately be lost. So what we have left boils down to Coca Cola cans, bananas and oranges, and one confused demented man clinging to his badly flawed understanding of the second law of thermodynamics as it applies to chemical reactions. Pathetic. Where is Reverand I Am Hell when you need him. C'mon buddy, one quick line saying here I am in South Australia is not standing up for god. What's the matter Christian Soldier, in full retreat? The only way to get farther away is to flee to Antarctica.

Hi Marcus

First of all you should realise that I am not primarily thinking of faith as a religious exercise at the moment, I am thinking simply of our daily interactions with others.

So when you suggest that faith must be blind faith I'm thinking of the small everyday events and interactions in which we demonstrate some level of confidence, however hesitant and reluctant, in another. These small everyday matters are not usually a 'just trust me' approach to life and therefore do not amount to blind faith. For example, I foolishly fill my car with petrol instead of diesel and am approached on the garage forecourt by an individual who tells me he can 'fix it'. He hands me a telephone number and tells me I can phone him the next day where upon he will tell me where I can collect my car. All I have to do is exercise a little 'faith' in him, hand over my car keys, and he will arrange for it to be towed away later in the day. And yes, you are correct, that would have been the second foolish thing I had done that day, and the 'faith' I had shown in him wouldn't have been faith at all. Just stupidity, like buying a miracle cloth off of a TV salesman.

However, if I had had been approached by an AA mechanic, wearing the uniform, displaying the relevant identify confirmed by a call to AA headquarters, and driving an AA van, who told me that he would tow my car to a nearby workshop where it would be fixed for a fee, and that I could accompany him while the work was being done, then I imagine, that while I had not proved conclusively that he was the genuine article, it would be worth my while to place my confidence in him.

It's not a matter of absolute proof, it's a matter of sufficient relevant information which enables me to make a judgement, and judgments I suggest are ration decisions based on available facts. Indeed if the ones of these examples is called faith, the other should not be called by the same name.

You have said much more regarding what it may or may not mean to trust another, and you have said much regarding the nature of religion and contradictory facts. I'm not exactly sure what you have in mind and I'm not sure if these views have been driven by some personal experience, but maybe we can discuss these issues another time.

Peter:

You have provided a good reason why belief in a god is silly. Your analogy of the AA mechanic does not apply in the case of a divinity because there is no rational evidence for the latter, whereas you have the presence, uniform, van, papers, etc, as evidence of the AA man. You can have reasonable confidence that he will fix the car, based on the fairly certain knowledge that he is a trained mechanic and that you haven’t driven the car with the petrol in it.

God, however, is more like the stranger: look, I can solve your problems (religious people don’t have fewer problems), cure your ills (are just as liable to illness), give your life meaning (have no more idea of the meaning of life), promise you eternal life in paradise etc (if you believe that...). The evidence for all of these things is entirely to the contrary, therefore faith in this case is belief IN SPITE OF reason.


Faith and reason are as Mark defined them. What you have in the AA man is not faith but confidence based on reason. You should also know that the car doesn’t need to be taken away: the petrol can be siphoned out.

M2
Were on earth are you getting your opinions about religious faith? Utterly bizarre, to say the least.

GV

Strange.

I simply do not agree that faith and reason are inherently contradictory.

I think i may have thought that at one stage in my teens.

As i have gained a fuller understanding of Chritianity, i can find nothing substantial that flies in the face of reason.

Rather, reason by its very nature, is finite and fallible.
it can only go so far, beyond which lies a complete mystery.

However, that mystery constantly reaches out to us, both rationally and through love. So, although we cannot rationally understand God, we can rationally understand our own limits, and the reaching out of BEING, through understanding and love, that we can sometimes grasp.

What, precisely, is incompatible with rationality?

Hi Brian

You will note that I wasn't at first commenting on the existence or non-existence of God, but I could. I'm glad though that you accept a definition of faith in terms of confidence in another, and their abilities, based on reason. That is primarily the point I am seeking to establish. At least we might now know what is or can be meant by the term 'faith'.

Whether or not the petrol could be siphoned out, is of course, in the present instance, irrelevant!

And another thought, Brian, what kind of evidence would you expect of, or accept from a god, if one existed? You see, I'm not so sure that the 'Christopher Robin' god you describe is really the one I believe in!!

Bernards_insight

You contradicted yourself and defeated your own argument.

"reason by its very nature, is finite and fallable."

This means that the conclusions drawn from observation and logical deducton are always subject to revision. The earth appears flat until someone travels around it or sees it from a distance. At that point it is simply impossible to continue to believe it is flat. New facts utterly refute the previous conclusion which must be discarded.

"The mystery constantly reaches out to us." ...."we cannot rationally understand god, we can rationally understand our own limits."

Therefore by your logic, we cannot used facts and reason to deduce what god is or if god even exists. In fact, we may be able to deduce that not only is god unknown but unknowable in the sense of logical deduction from observation. Therefore by this argument, god must be taken on faith.

This of course contradicts your origianl statement; "I do not agree that faith and reason are inherently contradictory."

BTW, what science has learned of emotion is that it is the result of chemical processes affecting our brains. It may be possible to induce these states of mind artificially with psychotropic drugs. Our psychotropic pharmacology has just begun to expore what we can do to alter states of mind, the tools such as MRIs having been available to us for only a short time.

This brings us to gveale's statement about my views being bizarre. What is bizarre is what is unfamiliar, especially when you have been surrounded by those who have a different point of view which they indoctrinated you with from early childhood. Of all the gifts my parents gave me, perhaps the most valuable one was that I was never indoctrinated (coerced) to believe in anything. I was allowed to observe the world and draw my own conclusions for myself. They were often at strong odds with the way they saw it and I assure you they didn't like it. At times it made them very angry.

I grew up in a racially and ethnically mixed community. I was never a believer although I had been "exposed" to the rituals and trappings of my "group." One day when I was a teenager and with my neighbor and his father, his father made the comment that it was important to be part of the fold because the outside world would always curse you as an outsider and that only your own would stick with you and be true to you. At that moment I thought, is that the best case he can make for it, his ultimate argument? Is that what it always boils down to, us against them? And then I realized that's how it is with every religion and many ethnic groups. In our so called tolerant, enlightened, liberal societies we have accepted that being "the other" is not in itself any longer justificationi for killing them. Now that is not true everywhere. Certainly it wasn't true recently in the Balkins, Northern Ireland, or many parts of Africa. It's not true among Islamic militants. So what it comes down to for me is that religion is about power over people through fear and hatred of the other who are not favored by god and will only try to corrupt us to the point where we are doomed to hell. If they are not to be killed, then at least they must be shunned. Don't believe it? Then take a hard look at your own religion right this minute. Chance are it is saying exactly this from ordination of women to attitudtes towards homosexuals. Since I not only don't share those views but reject the ultimate premise on which they are based, the assumption that religion has answers, that must surely seem bizarre to those who have spent their entire lives believing otherwise.

Brian
Once again, why do you trust your rational faculties, and why should anyone pay any attention to your moral convictions.

Graham

M2
I think that Bernard should be able to reverse a small truck through the holes in your critique. Until that moment, a few questions.
1) How does matter produce thought?
2) Where exactly are your thoughts? Can I measure them?
3) Do you have a mind - are you in fact a person, or merely the by product of various physical processes in the Brain? Are you in fact a useful fiction?

Graham Veale

"Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough"

Where is everybody?

gveale

How does matter produce thought? The human brain is nothing more than a collection of nerve cells which interact with each other biochemically. We understand the mechanism of how nerve cells fire individually through potassium sodium ion exchange but we do not yet understand how these combine to produce thoughts. The science is still far to primitive. Therefore the prospect of artificial intelligence in the human sense given today's technologies and mathematical models of the thought process is not possible yet. Perhaps one day but not until there is far more insight into how it works.

2. Where exactly are your thoughts, can I measure them? MRI scans can correlate electrical activity of certain areas of the brain when different thought activities are occurring. These not only include conscious thought but dreams as well. But the exact process is not understood at all yet.

3. Do you have a mind-are you in fact a person or merely the bi-product of various physical processes in the Brain?; Are the two mutually exclusive? You may not recall it but I have boiled down all theories of existance to just three possibilities. All the rest are mere details. A; God exists, created man, can do as he pleases, and man has a free will to act in sin or not act in sin insofar as god's commandments are concerned. I have no evidence to support this theory, it does not make one shred of sense to me at all based on a lifetime of experience. B; the universe and all existance exist only in my mind. This is the existential view. During my sleeping hours, you'd find it hard to persuade me that this is not true. But while I'm awake and in possession of my cognitive powers, I'm not quite so sure. C; everything that occurs in the universe is the result of cause and effect, it was determined for all eternity at the instant the universe was created if such a term even has any meaning in the sense we understand it, all things in the universe conform to a system of consistancies we call natural laws, and there is nothing anyone can do about it. There is no such thing as free will, it is merely an illusion and there is no god who can alter the universe even one jot. So far, this theory seems to have stood up quite well for me. I of course share the same delusion as everyone else, that I can decide my own fate to an extent but deep down I know that is not true. If and when I have evidence to the contrary, I will find this theory discredited or should someone propose an alternate theory, I'll certainly give it consideration to see how my experiences stack up against it.

Hi Graham

In answer to your question I, for one, am just back from a conference on 'Hidden Lives and Secret Worlds' - fascinating! However, to the matter in hand, I can offer, if not proof of the miraculous, then at least what appears a miracle to me - I am in complete agreement with Mark2.

Faith does not arise from evidence - it is the evidence. The author of Hebrews said: "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" and I rather think he was right. Human reason cannot bring us anywhere near God and, in my opinion, is much more likely to put stumbling blocks in our path toward true God-consciousness.

My mind cannot even begin to define God but my spirit knows him. I have long ago ceased from asking myself how I might usefully or meaningfully talk rationally about something I cannot define because I know I cannot manage it.

I cannot grasp with my reason something I cannot define. To define something is to limit it. If God is unlimited he is beyond definition therefore he is beyond rational apprehension. What does it mean to say of something, of which, in terms of pure reason, you can have no clear conception, that it exists? To me that means nothing.

There is though a difference between what is reasonable and what is rational. It is reasonable, for example, to think or speak of the sun rising in the East and setting in the West - in terms of finding direction, estimating time of day, composing poetry this conceptualisation works - it is not, however, rational, in the light of general scientific consensus, to assert that the sun orbits the earth.

I firmly believe we can be reasonable about God and there are reasonable things we can say about him - they interest me much more than a rational debate.

Marcus

Am I to presume that you accept that faith can have a meaning which differs to the one which you previously offered?


Portwyne

We're on a slightly different track now!

Hebrews. Yes, I have always been fascinated by these comments made by the writer of the letter to the Hebrew believers. And yes I agree, faith is evidence, evidence of what is hoped for, evidence of what is not seen, faith is (critically) important; but, I have a but, I do not understand this to mean that we put our faith in faith. It is not merely trusting which is important, what is equally important is the one in whom we place our trust. And that one in whom we place our confidence (our faith) is God, and, says the writer, this confidence is in some way a demonstration of the unseen world, a demonstration of God at work. Maybe we could say, where there is faith, God is at work.

Now is it 'proof' of God in the sense Marcus wants proof, I doubt it, but this faith, this trust in God, who He is and what He does, actively affects how we live, and I suggest, was encouraged by the writer as he pointed us to those who had previously lived by faith. Chapters 11 and 12, as I read them, are all about those who placed their confidence in the God who finally made himself known in Jesus. In fact it's hard to read Hebrews and miss Jesus! Of course, there is much to unpack here, and I fear that I have now lost any hope of convincing Marcus of the value of faith!

If, when you say that human reason cannot bring us anywhere near God, you mean that we cannot think our way from scratch to God nor fully comprehended him then I probably agree, but (another but!) if God were to show Himself to us, as Hebrews suggests he has done, then while we might not know God exhaustively what we do know is known accurately and can be spoken of accurately.

You see, for me, Christianity is all about the God who moves towards us, we, who of ourselves, do not and cannot know him, in order than we will know something of him; I suppose it's called revelation. Another way of thinking about it is 'spirit' and 'word' working in harmony.

petermorrow;

There are a lot of definitions of faith but they all boil down to trust. In the sense of a religious belief, IMO it means trust in god's existance without concrete proof that god exists. Now some people claim to have it and some people don't. I happen to be among those who don't. I'm not a particularly trusting individual to begin with and I've seen more than my fair share of scams in my life. So it is hard to sell me anything.

The way I understood the meaning of faith as it relates to belief in god in general and in Christianity in particular, it is just such trust without proof. Therefore when people try to prove god exists by using flawed logic and/or based on a partial statement of facts omitting those critical ones they find inconvenient, not only does it strike me that their belief is unfounded based on this thinking but that they do not have faith either. Everyone who advances their pseudoscience as proof seems to me to fall into this category. That includes Andy McIntosh, Wilder Smith, and this reverend I am hell fellow who proves his point with oranges, bananas and Coca Cola cans.

I'm sorry I missed all of this, but I'd a busy day. I'll just make a quick answer to Marcus here, as it's late.

"You contradicted yourself and defeated your own argument.

"reason by its very nature, is finite and fallable."

This means that the conclusions drawn from observation and logical deducton are always subject to revision."

Indeed. Agreed

"

"The mystery constantly reaches out to us." ...."we cannot rationally understand god, we can rationally understand our own limits."

Therefore by your logic, we cannot used facts and reason to deduce what god is or if god even exists."

Agreed. I would argue that there are no rational reasons to suppose that God DOES NOT EXIST, and that, pertinently, there is nothing inherently contradictory between faith and science.


" In fact, we may be able to deduce that not only is god unknown but unknowable in the sense of logical deduction from observation. Therefore by this argument, god must be taken on faith.

This of course contradicts your origianl statement; "I do not agree that faith and reason are inherently contradictory." "

Hmmmm....why is that contradictory?

Is your argument "one cannot know God from logical deduction, therefore faith and reason are contradictory"???

If something is not grasped through reason, must it contradict reason? Does your love of your wife, or mother, or a good tune, contradict reason?

That's a strange claim to make. i have argued, and you have agreed, that human reason is finite and fallible, and that it it has limits. I would further argue that a living faith inspired by love completes and expands upon what can be known of creation through rational means.

Where's the contradiction?

(Sorry if you've pointed it out in an intervening post):)

Graham:

In Post 41 you ask me yet again why I should trust my rational faculties. You are in danger of sounding like the child who keeps asking 'why'? to every answer given by the parent. It is a common tactic of creationists, for example, to demand a level of evidence from evolutionists that they would not themselves apply to their own nonsensical belief. Most religious faith displays a degree of certainty that the agnostic/atheist/sceptic would never claim.

You very question: "why should I trust my rational faculties"? itself presupposes a certain level of rational understanding. Otherwise, it would be totally unintelligible or, alternatively, you might really be asking me: "Did you prefer Scarlett Johansson or Jessica Alba (or, to an older generation, Brigitte Bardot or Marilyn Monroe?")

Logic is not accepted on 'faith' but as a necessary, self-evident truth, something that is required to speak or think at all. Reason is the application of logical principles to the available evidence. This doesn't mean that our conclusions are certain, because our underlying assumptions are usually based on induction rather than deduction.

For example, I may say that I have 'confidence' that the plane I am about to board will not fall out of the sky. This 'trust' is rational because commercial planes are made to conform to the laws of aerodynamics and because, with rare exceptions, the existing and previous planes have not just fallen out of the sky.

We may know of some exceptions, but there are always reasons which may (or may not be discovered. Thus in 1972 Trident Papa India leaving Heathrow stalled 2 minutes after take-off because the droops were retracted too soon. The plane crashed, killing all on board. In 1988 the Maid of the Seas crashed over Lockerbie because a bomb exploded on board.

On a more cosmic level, I have 'confidence' that the sun will rise tomorrow because there is good evidence that it has risen every day for the last 4.5 billion years.
The day will almost certainly come when it will not rise but I have confidence that this will not happen in my lifetime and that it will not burn out for another 4.5 billion or so years.

We should, of course, be careful about inducting a belief from insufficient instances. The farmer feeds the chicken every day for months. So when the chicken hears him coming it expects food. But one day the chicken hears him coming and salivates (if chickens do such things) and... he wrings its neck instead.

The use of the word 'confidence' in these examples is based upon evidence: deductive and inductive. Such 'confidence', 'trust', 'belief' etc should be contrasted with faith in a God(s), which has no more justification than the idea of leprechauns or fairies at the bottom of the garden.

Bernard's insight

"I would argue that there are no rational reasons to suppose that God DOES NOT EXIST, and that, pertinently, there is nothing inherently contradictory between faith and science."

While it is usually accepted that it is impossible to prove a negative, generally we do not believe that something exists for which there is no evidence unless we are predisposed to believe in things by blind faith. But science does not work that way, science only holds as tentative truth what it has evidence to support. Not only that, we usually want some way to repeat the process that creates that evidence or at least a well documented record if it cannot be repeated at will. Religion has books but their authenticity as an accurate record of what happened is badly flawed. The events were for one thing observed by primitives who could easily be fooled. How many ways could you think of to show a stone age man what would appear to him to be a burning bush that is not consumed? And of course, many of those records were written by others at a later time, the weren't even first hand accounts. That there are four accounts of Jesus' life does not persuade me either. We have countless testimonials about UFOs that don't hold water.

" In fact, we may be able to deduce that not only is god unknown but unknowable in the sense of logical deduction from observation. Therefore by this argument, god must be taken on faith.

This of course contradicts your origianl statement; "I do not agree that faith and reason are inherently contradictory." "

"Hmmmm....why is that contradictory?"

Because inherent in faith is trust, belief in something for which there is no rational deduction based on evidence. They are inherently opposite notions.

"Is your argument "one cannot know God from logical deduction, therefore faith and reason are contradictory"???"

Yes, that is the gist of it but more than that. If you postulate god by submitting evidence and deduction which later proves flawed, you can't go back and then say that your belief is based on faith. Not when you tried to convince me first using an opposite method which failed.

"If something is not grasped through reason, must it contradict reason? Does your love of your wife, or mother, or a good tune, contradict reason?"

In a sense it does. It is based on emotion which is also a contradiction of reason. Humans are often torn between emotion and reason. We want something that we know is no good for us but we consume it anyway. We spend money we don't have on something because we want it now knowing we will face financial problems because of it later. In general, often emotion wins out over reason. We pass judgement against people who do this saying they are weak. The need to believe in god as a way to assuage the emotion of fear of eternal death and the purposelessnenss and meaninglessness of life may be the emotion for many that drives them to believe in god. Some look for any evidence they can find to persuade themselves that their belief has some way to be justified by more than faith alone. So far, I am unconvinced by any of the testimonial stories of miracles I have heard.

"That's a strange claim to make. i have argued, and you have agreed, that human reason is finite and fallible, and that it it has limits. I would further argue that a living faith inspired by love completes and expands upon what can be known of creation through rational means."

I'm never surprised at what I hear from those who live on the island of dreamers and poets. We had a long discussion here awhile ago about whether there was any truth to be found in metaphors. To someone ruled insofar as I can be by logic, it seemed absurd. But I accept that there are others who are not persuaded by logic. The queston about having both faith and believing in rational proof of God's existance is can you have your cake and eat it too? Is faith the fallback for Andy McIntosh when he finally is persuaded that he didn't know what he was talking about? I say no, it's a little late for that....unless you become a born again Christian. How convenient for criminals like Charles Colson that you can wake up one day and say, "I have found the lord, I have found salvation" when you have been so cynical all of your life. It stretches credibility beyond my endurance. He was not exactly on the road to Damascus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Colson

Marcus;
"
"I would argue that there are no rational reasons to suppose that God DOES NOT EXIST, and that, pertinently, there is nothing inherently contradictory between faith and science."

While it is usually accepted that it is impossible to prove a negative, generally we do not believe that something exists for which there is no evidence unless we are predisposed to believe in things by blind faith. "

I would suggest that God, as source and basis of all existence, and, thus, all intelligibility, is not something for which there can be evidence, but is something presupposed and fundamental.

Take Brian's discussion of logic, above. Now, there is no way that you can PROVE, through EVIDENCE that logic is...well, logical, or, shall we say, an accurate way of describing REALITY.

yet you accept it, because it expresses the most fundamental presumptions neccessary for us to think at all.

But I would suggest that, in order for "logic", or "reason" to cohere throughout all of REALITY, or at least, all of the reality that we can encounter and attempt to describe, that that rational, logical, discoverable REALITY - which, even as you say, is always open to rational revision - must have it's source in something meta-rational, a source of rationality, which gives rationality its meaning, cohesiveness, and ensures that REALITY maintains its cohesiveness and being.

Thus when discussing God, what I and many others claim to be the source of all things, we can hardly use the methods of science, anymore than we can use a logical positivist verfication theory to verify itself.



"But science does not work that way, science only holds as tentative truth what it has evidence to support. Not only that, we usually want some way to repeat the process that creates that evidence or at least a well documented record if it cannot be repeated at will. "

Indeed. But that's physical science. There are other methods of discovery, verification, and judgment. Like logic, for example, which works in a completely different way to science.


"Religion has books but their authenticity as an accurate record of what happened is badly flawed. The events were for one thing observed by primitives who could easily be fooled. "

I agree to an extent, certainly that that is possible. Had the Bible, for example, been written today, no doubt it would have been different in the way it expressed factual occurences. however, the question is whether or not you can see a deeper significance in the stories.

Millenia ago, humans had all sorts of ways of expressing the universe as they saw it. nowadays we have different ways of doing this.

I, however, can see a continuity in humanity's thinking, and can make out the brief outlines of fundamental truths that could be explained and expressed in many different ways, and, in the Bible, are expressed through the concrete occurence of factual things that happened.

I do think historical method is adequate to ujnderstand the Bible, however, neither do i think that historical method DISPROVES the events therein.



"Because inherent in faith is trust, belief in something for which there is no rational deduction based on evidence."

Again, there is no EVIDENCE that logic works...Brian made the point above, and came to radically different conclusions of course, but the way he described logic is analogical to how i might describe FAITH.

There is no internal evidence that reality has its source in God. God, as source, would neccessarily stand outside reality and thus be inaccessible to the rationality which operates within that reality.

However, there are reasons to suppose, given the cohesive, unifying and all-encompassing nature of rational reality, that it has a single, cohesive, unifying source analogous to the human intellect that comprehends the unity of that reality.


"If you postulate god by submitting evidence and deduction which later proves flawed, you can't go back and then say that your belief is based on faith. "

You're using inadequately broad strokes for what is a subtle argument. I postulate God as unifiying source of rationality. As that rationality is that in which we live and act, and which is presupposed in our every thought and argument, it's source cannot be grasped through that rationality. There is no sense of "EVIDENCE that rationality describes reality"...that is the presupposition within which we live and act.
Similarly, there is no sense of "Evidence that rationality has a meta-rational source"...however, i think that it is also a presupposition within which we suppose that rationality has MEANING

Just like the physical sciences cannot provide physical evidence that their methods are correct. That the methods of experiment, insight, theory, verification and revision are the correct way to grasp reality is a philosophical and metaphysical presumption that is not itself proven by those methods. But their use and continued success PRAGMATICALLY suggests that those metaphysical assumptions are correct.

So God, as primal source, unifying force and cohesive "being" underlying all rationality, cannot be proven by rational means, but our continued use of rationality, its extension beyond all that we know, and our use of it as a striving tool towards knowledge that we don't yet have, coupled with its inherence in every argument or statement that we could possibly make, suggests a meta-rational, cohesive and active source.



""If something is not grasped through reason, must it contradict reason? Does your love of your wife, or mother, or a good tune, contradict reason?"

In a sense it does. It is based on emotion which is also a contradiction of reason. Humans are often torn between emotion and reason. "


Even it is is purely based on emotion, which i don't accept, for all the reasons above - but even were that the case, that is still a dud argument.
Reason and emotion are different things, sure, but are they inherently contradictory?

That "humans are OFTEN torn between emotion and reason" proves nothing.

OFTEN, on the other hand, we're not torn between the two.

And finally, for someone who wants to prove everything through physical experiment, you are also
"someone ruled insofar as I can be by logic"...which, of course, can hardly be proven through experiement.

You accept logic in something analogous to the way in which i accept God. A polluted and deriviative analogy, certainly, but one nonetheless.


I have a very busy day ahead of me, again, so please take your time replying, as it may be some time before I can attempt a rejoinder.

Ta.

Of course, somewhere in the middle there i claim that "I do think that historical method is adequate to understand the Bible"

I mean, of course, I DO NOT.

:)

Brian
Sorry for being irritating, but sometimes it helps to catch folks attention around here.
I haven't asked anything that Kant would not have asked, so I feel I am in relatively good company.
We cannot provide a non-circular proof for trusting our rational faculties. Now if you have solved the Problem of Induction the philosophical world awaits your publication. But you cannot argue that your inferences are justified by the uniformity of nature as inferences depend on the uniformity of nature. I'd be happy to spell this out in more detail, but I think you already know the arguments.
Even if you could make indubitable inferences from enumerative induction (A always follows B, B therefore A) you have a problem in inferring to unobserved or unobservable entities. Given your view of Science, I am assuming that you believe that the term "quark" refers to some reality, and that Science teaches some truth about that reality.
Not only do you need to assume the unformity of nature, you also need to assume a "fit" between our minds and the order of nature. Otherwise, how do we gain knowledge of unobservables?
Of course all this seems congruent with Theism - that there is a personal ground to the universe - but hardly congruent with the belief that humanities' "number came up in a Monte Carlo game"
(I'll let Bernard push the case a little further, but agree with him in advance that knowledge actually requires something like Theism).
You face another problem, in that you may hold a belief that undermines your faith in rationality; and in fact if you believe that "unguided" Natural Selection in an unplanned universe produced the human brain, you should have serious doubts about your set of beliefs.
Natural Selection aims at survival, not Truth. Our beliefs aim at Fleeing, Fighting, Reproducing and Feeding in the appropriate circumstances. And many beliefs can be practically beneficial (to someone) without being true (take any naturalistic account of Religion or Ethics). On this account it's very difficult to see how disciplines like Theroetical Physics should be granted any truth-telling powers at all. But, worse still, given that our rational faculties were never aimed at producing truth, the probability that our cognitive efforts produce truth is drastically reduced. And given that we all hold a large set of beliefs, the probability that any section tracks the truth is dramatically lowered.
Note that we are not saying that Natural Selection cannot produce minds without any truth-oriented faculties. Simply that minds/brains produced by Natural Selection do not "aim" at truth, so the likelihood that they produce true beliefs is lowered.
That was quite a long argument; and I'd also like to remind you that on "Humanism is not Atheism" I asked some further questions about your grounds for moral belief in a "Physicalist" Universe.
Typing these posts clarifies my own thoughts, and I always find your replies helpful. But given my tendency to think out loud I'm never offended if you don't reply or don't continue the debate.
However there are a few questions I'd like your thoughts on, separate from any debate. I wonder if you wouldn't take a glance at them. It might help me understand my students. I'll post them below, to keep them separate from the faith/reason discussion

Graham Veale

Brian
Reading your posts, and listening to Malachi ODoherty on Sunday, a thought struck me. You both seem to have accepted a set of beliefs that are in conflict with Traditional Religion. You both feel you have some compelling reason to state or advance these beliefs. (I know you don't proselytise, but there does seem to be some conviction behind your beliefs).
Yet many of my students hold exactly the same set of beliefs - and yet are totally apathetic. This seems to be the norm for University students also.
What happened? Have you noticed a decline in conviction over the past few decades? Has this something to do with the experiences of the 1960's (which I missed)? And does the growing apathy apply to Christian Students as well as Atheists?
Or have I misjudged the whole situation? I have only ten years teaching experience to use as my "sample size".

Graham

Bernard, Graham:

To suggest that God is the meta-rational source of all rationality is to rehearse the First Cause argument. Such a creator implies another higher creator, and so on. But I have to say that the religious too often seem to want to have their cake and eat it: the universe is rational, therefore God exists; the universe is mysterious, therefore God exists etc. And what a 'rational' being this God turns out to be! Thus He wants you to pour special water on your baby to avoid it being tortured by Him, the rational creator, after it dies. Again, this rational God has created humans in his own image, yet placed them not at the centre of the universe as was once believed, but on a remote planet in the backwoods of space.

Nowhere did I say that the universe is entirely rational. There are observable regularities, but there is also a lot of 'chaos' out there. The 'laws' of nature are only approximate models of what happens and they are not immutable. We think that the sun will eventually burn out and the earth will die. Is this 'rational'?

To say that 'the universe is rational' is normally to make an epistemological claim, i.e. that it can be understood by reason. However, the religious tend to turn it into an ontological claim, i.e. it is inherently rational. But understanding something by the use of reason does not mean that the phenomenon itself must be rational in its nature. Thus we may be able to understand quarks or black holes but that doesn't make them rational entities. The only things that can properly be described as rational are the rules of logic and mathematics, and they are human constructs. They help us to understand the universe but whether they describe its essential properties is another matter. We await the answer.

One thing is pretty clear: what is certainly irrational is to believe something without any evidence. That, ultimately, is the final riposte to the theist.

quickly

"Such a creator implies another higher creator, and so on"

No, it doesn't. We're talking about the absolute limits of rationality, and what accounts for that. As we are talking about the first cause of rationality per se, this is where rationality, and thus implication, ends.

you misunderstand the notion of an absolute limit, and prefer to engage in some phantasmical infinite regress. I am not engaged in infinite regress, I am merely saying that, at the end of EVERYTHING, there is a cause. you can push back the limits of EVERYTHING as far as you want, God is what transcends those limits, however far away you might wish to set them.

"To say that 'the universe is rational' is normally to make an epistemological claim, i.e. that it can be understood by reason. However, the religious tend to turn it into an ontological claim, i.e. it is inherently rational. But understanding something by the use of reason does not mean that the phenomenon itself must be rational in its nature"

I discussed this before....suffice to say, quickly, that "understanding something by the use of reason" DOES make it inherently rational...it is inherently "capable of being understood by reason", else you wouldn't be able to do so.

"The only things that can properly be described as rational are the rules of logic and mathematics, and they are human constructs."

is the above sentence rational??? If so, it is not a statement of the rules of logic. if not, you are talking nonsense.

"They help us to understand the universe but whether they describe its essential properties is another matter"

I'm not sure if you see the error there.

Do they help us to understand the universe???

if so, then they do describe its essential properties. That's what UNDERSTANDING MEANS. If not, then we can understand nothing about the universe, and both you and I are talking meaningless nonsense.

But we're not though, are we?

As for this;

"the universe is rational, therefore God exists; the universe is mysterious, therefore God exists etc"

Try; The universe is rational, therefore God exists...as God transcends the universe, therefore God is mysterious.

The universe certainly is mysterious, but only in its transcendent source. Internally, from within, the universe is rational. but the source of that rationality, neccessarily, is meta-rational, i.e., mysterious.

I may come back to this later tonight for a fuller reply.

It always surprises me how quick people are to accept an infinite regress, despite the multitude of rational problems this poses.

Positing a "First Cause" does not, as you have suggested, imply previous causes.

Precisely the opposite. Precisley in positing an absolute First cause, one posits the existence of a uniquely self-sufficient entity.

Many atheists attempt to avoid an infinite regress by suggesting, tentatively, that the universe itself may be a self-sufficient entity, with no need for a cause outside of itself.

If there is such a self-sufficient entity, I would suggest that it would be expected to display more of the aspects of what is called "God" than of the universe. The universe consists of a number of finite things, each displaying a causal relation to something else. The very idea of conceptualising a "totality of the universe" brings its own limits. Yet refrainingfrom conceptualising such a totality merely leaves more scope for inquiry, and posits no degree of self-sufficiency

If you accept (as you appear to, Brian) that there can be no self-sufficient entity, and that the universe consists of a infinity of caused causes, you open the door to VAST problems with any notion of actual rationality that grasps reality.

I also don't appreciate this tendency to blithely mouth the title of a chapter from "Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion", as if to suggest that it's a well known philosophical fallacy that has already been solved.

I am, yes, offering a version of a "first cause argument".

however, it's based less on a physical conception of entities "causing" one another, and more on the dependency of rationality, and its ultmate failure to ground itself and its grasp of reality. The fact is that an infinitely dependent rationality, always dependent on some previously grasped intelligible, is, in the last analysis, ultimately groundless, and we have no reason to suspect that it tells us anthing about reality.

With the positing of a rational ground, which is implicit in every act of understanding or judgment, including your own, Brian, rationality can be seen to be an unfolding and outpouring of the very ground and source of being.

I think that rationality must have some meta-rational basis outside of itself, otherwise all of of our reasoning amounts to nothing but circular nonsense, and there is no sense in which we can grasp reality.

But we do grasp reality.

Some of us do, sometimes.

Well at least we've established something - that faith can mean trust in another, rather than merely a leap in the dark - do I detect some progress? Nah, probably not! Why, because the word is still being used in different ways by different people, but we might, at least, have drawn a little attention to what some of the believers are actually saying and not what others think they are saying.

Brian, for example, in post 49 is still insistent that religious faith is not based on any evidence greater than that of fairies, and Marcus in post 47 says it is just trust without proof. However even this in itself is helpful in that it highlights that there is some agreement that this kind of trust/faith/confidence must be based on something.

And so to the lack of evidence. Let's begin with the reasons given why there cannot be, or at least why it is silly to say that there is a God. And, I'm sorry about this but I find that I have to return in part to an earlier question I asked, because I haven't got an answer yet. God we are told does not exist because, he solves our problems, he cures our ills (that's a hymn isn't it?) and bring meaning to life and this is all obviously stupid because believers have no less problems, no less ills and have no more meaning than unbelievers. Well I'm not sure that this is what God actually said he would do. "In this world you will have trouble", springs to mind. (It was God who said that, wasn't it?) Anyway, as I said, most of the above is 'Christopher Robin' theology. "Hush hush, whisper who dares?" If I open my mind just a little bit more, I'll see this theology is rather poor. (apologies A A Milne) It's the concept of God we're talking about not Mr Sandman. Or Santa. Jeezzzze guys. The God bit, if it is to mean anything in a debate, must mean something more than this otherwise we're all wasting our time. So let's just sort of assume that when we say 'God' we mean absolute supreme being, as Colonel Jessop said in A Few Good Men, "Is there any other kind?"

The next issue is certainty, or concrete proof. And well like...we have that about...mmm... anything? Exhaustively? I've never said I'm *certain* God exists. Certain has a kind of God-like quality to it, and there's probably more chance of me being a banana than being God! God has not appeared in all his glory in my garden, strewn roses in my path, or rearranged the stars for me. He hasn't even placed crosses on Mars (didn't somebody ask for that once, it was another thread I think) And the examples of the day the farmer rings the chicken's neck and the day the plane falls out of the sky perfectly illustrate the limits of the kind of certainty any of us can have. Certain is OK if *my* plane doesn't crash, but not so good if Im on bomber target one. But of course we accept logic as necessary, because it works, the general law, generally works. No need to doubt that? Really? No need to question what words are? I mean we're struggling to define and agree the meaning of faith. And that's just one word. God however, can't exist because the particulars we have set for him are not generally evident. But I've already taken issue with the particulars given; God AKA the immediate problem solver. It's all so pitifully egocentric.

So, if God fails the God test because believers don't have any less problems than non believers or because some grasp at any kind of 'evidence' to assuage their fear, then I'm saying you're looking for the wrong kind of evidence. It's not Christopher Robin's God we're talking about and I'm still wondering if this self-defeating 'evidence' is the only kind acceptable? And come on Brian, please, stop churning out the 'nasty God' put-downs, you know those taunts have been dealt with before. **Is your final riposte really that we have belief without evidence**?

Oh and tell me this, in post 55 to Graham are you really saying that our descriptions of the world are constructs which might not relate to what is there? So logic works, but might not be logical, and one and one might not be true, sorry two!

Rather than go round and round in the same worn out track, I'll try something else. If there is a Christian/Jewish god who wants us to obey his laws and has given us free will, why hasn't he made himself known in ways that are unmistakable. Certainly he could not have expected the primitives to deduce even the examples of the oranges and bananas let alone McIntosh's and Wilder Smith's theories about thermodynamics and evolution. The primitives had never heard of them and they didn't know anything about probability theory. What about people who lived in areas of the world where there were no bananas or oranges? Where is his substitute to them for a banana if it is so perfect? So if he wanted them to deduce that he existed, he would have presented unmistakable evidence. It would not be convoluted, arcane, or something that would have required any unusual brain power. After all, nobody ever said membership in MENSA is a qualification for salvation. So that leaves blind faith.

Marcus. OK. Fair question. And on the MENSA point, I agree.

So, if there was a God and he was to make himself know in a way which everyone might recognise, what might he do? Or if I wanted to know who you were, what might you do? Come visit me perhaps? Or write me a letter? I mean, "What if God was one of us?"

Which raises the question, what might be unmistakable for you? "If God had a face, what would it look like"... and would you really want to see...

Bernard:

A beginning to the univese does not imply a "Causer" any more than laws imply a "lawgiver".The first cause argument, like all the traditional ‘proofs’ of a god’s existence, has been blown oput of the water long ago. Applying Occam’s Razor, it is easier to assume that the universe is self-caused than to posit a god who is self-caused. Similarly, it is easier to assume that the universe can be at least partly understood by reason because that is a characteristic (at least to a certain extent) than to assume that it is because a rational god, who was not himself made, made it so.

Please read what I wrote. I don’t know if the universe is entirely rational and the extent to which the rationality in our brain corresponds exactly with the universe. It is probably not ‘rational’ in the sense that it was created by a rational being(s). If the universe spontaneously popped into existence from nothing, as Stephen Hawkings suggests, then it has no inherent rationality. Nor is it entirely logical or mathematical. Rationality is at best only a simulation of the universe. Can the ‘law of gravity’ be reconciled with other forces out there? I would suggest that most of the so-called laws of the universe are transient understandings which are subject to constant revision, not immutable laws drawn from Holy Books. Observed regularities may change through time, e.g. the earth will not always exist.

You posit a god who is both rational and mysterious. So his rationality is so rational that our reason cannot comprehend it. Confusion reigns. Of course, if you believe in the Fall, then man sinned and corrupted the whole universe, so that if there was a divine lawgiver, the laws as they are cannot be the result of Him. On the other hand, if God performed miracles, then he intervened and suspended the ‘laws’ of the universe.

It is curious that scientists and secularists are happy with an acceptance of a certain mystery about the laws of the universe and uncertainty about whether they are entirely ‘rational’, whereas believers insist on clarity and certainty, despite the fact that their god is even more unclear and mysterious.

Einstein wrote: "A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms—it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man”. I can live with that.

Peter:

When you wrote: “As to the lack of evidence...”, my eyes momentarily lit up as I was anticipating that some suggested evidence was forthcoming. Alas, it’s the usual supercilious put-downs of arguments against your particular elusive Pimpernel (or, if you prefer, Mr Sophisticated Sandman).

PeterM

I always prefer to speak of knowing God rather than believing in him - no one would naturally say "I believe in my father", certainly not if they knew him. In terms of my own understanding I accept faith as a useful term for a particular mode of motivational dependence on God.

I often agree with a lot of what you say, Peter, and suspect that, while we may differ in some matters which are possibly more fundamental to you than they are to me, we are united in feeling that the imperative of an encounter with the divine is a life transformed by love.

You say "where there is faith, God is at work"; this echoes and complements what is in effect my creed, the first line of the Maundy Thursday antiphon, Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est. I would translate or paraphrase this to say that 'where we find love worked out with emotional engagement, there we see God'. The change in our own lives and the light we see in the lives of others is, I believe, the only evidence we are ever likely to find for the reality of God.

MA2

In your post #50 you say that the "need to believe in god as a way to assuage the emotion of fear of eternal death and the purposelessness and meaninglessness of life may be the emotion for many that drives them" and suggest that such people are generally judged weak. The Bible, ironically, would probably agree with you: St Paul writing in 1 Corinthians says that God chooses the foolish, the weak, the lowly, and the despised. I myself see nothing wrong with admitting emotional need and finding an answer to that need in God - it is in fact emotionally intelligent to do so and a valid coping mechanism for addressing the vicissitudes of life.

On Monday I visited a 90 year old widow mourning the tragic death of her only child - she told me it was her faith and hope bolstered by the love and support of the church which alone was sustaining her. I understand that for the rationalist that is no proof of the existence of God but for the pragmatist, like me, it is a powerful endorsement of the utility of engagement with the divine in daily life.

MA2 - your post # 59

"After all, nobody ever said membership in MENSA is a qualification for salvation."

You obviously have not read the sermons of one J Enoch Powell or you would not have said 'nobody'. They are available in book form and are well worth a perusal both for their curiosity value and occasional idiosyncratic insights. I seem to recollect reading in one of them an understanding of salvation which required intellectual understanding of the principles involved. Those unequipped for the task were to have no place in the presumably white intellectual heaven of the late member for South Down.

portwyne #62

I don't think that is exactly what I said. I said that people who are ruled by emotion over intellect are judged as weak, that is people who cannot restrain themselves from doing things they know are not good for them....like me going out to the kitchen right now to find a container of Hagen Daz ice cream, some Hershey's chocolate syrup, and a can of Reddi Whip when I should probably find an apple instead.

petermorrow, how would god make himself known to me? Well if he made me, is all knowing, and can do anything he wants to, I'm sure he'd think of a way that would convince me beyond a shadow of a doubt. I must admit I had a couple of near misses with lightening last spring but not so close that I gave it more than a second thought. Hey god, close but no cigar those times.

Brian;

"A beginning to the univese does not imply a "Causer" any more than laws imply a "lawgiver"."

Hmm, don't they? Think carefully about the word "law", and how it came to be applied analogically to observable patterns of phenomena...

Judicial laws, of course, DO imply a "lawgiver". I would suggest that "natural laws", rational and observable patterns of phenomena, DO imply a "lawgiver", albeit in an analogical sense. I don't know on what basis you claim CONCLUSIVELY, that they don't. It's certainly not an argument.


"The first cause argument, like all the traditional ?proofs? of a god?s existence, has been blown oput of the water long ago."

I'm not so sure about that. Certainly there are still many books published every year giving versions of just such an argument. There is certainly no sense of a "scholarly consensus" on the issue.

I'm wary of people who may have read a History of Philosophy book and decided that, as there are criticisms, an argument has been blown out of the water. Again, many scholarly books are published on the subject, offering many variations of the "type of argument" - it's by no means a uniform argument.


"Applying Occam?s Razor, it is easier to assume that the universe is self-caused than to posit a god who is self-caused."

Is it?

Absolutely nothing in the universe displays the features of being self-caused. The universe is in constant state of flux and change, and every aspect of it displays a level of dependency.

Further, all rationality is limited, constantly striving, and every aspect of IT displays a level of dependency.

Is it really easier to assume that the universe is self-caused, despite all of its obvious signs of dependency, than to assume that there is something outside of the universe which is self-caused, and which sustains the universe, that universe every aspect of which displays signs of causality?

I really do think that's a flagrant misuse of Occam's Razor.

"Similarly, it is easier to assume that the universe can be at least partly understood by reason because that is a characteristic (at least to a certain extent) than to assume that it is because a rational god, who was not himself made, made it so."

I'm not altogether sure what you mean by "because that is a characteristic"??

The universe can be understood by reason because reason is a characteristic of the universe?

Yes, but why is it a characteristic? How is it a characteristic? If the universe is just a randomly self-sufficient entity, how can rationality be a characteristic of it?

Have you ever thought about what it means for something to MEAN something? It implies an intelligence. Now, if rationality is a characteristic of the universe, it is certainly not a rationality IMPOSED by us. Were that the case we wouldn't be constantly revising it, striving to grasp the universe as it actually is.

Or perhaps, as I read on, you don't think that rationality is a characteristic of the universe at all...

"I don?t know if the universe is entirely rational and the extent to which the rationality in our brain corresponds exactly with the universe. It is probably not ?rational?"

The universe is probably not rational??
What are you talking about then...something other than the universe? When you speak, are you attempting to accurately understand the universe as it actually is?
Have you ever managed it, even just a wee bit?


"If the universe spontaneously popped into existence from nothing, as Stephen Hawkings suggests, then it has no inherent rationality."

And yet we're able to talk and communicate, and sometimes even understand one another. Is that not rational, or perhaps it is not part of the universe?
For some reason you have some kind of notion that there may be rationality in the universe, but it is not "inherent".
Do you understand what "rationality" means? It involves not just observable patterns and laws, but patterns and laws that are ACTUAL, that actually inhere in and apply to things, whether you wish to call things phenomena, or entities, or even ideas. We can invent all the laws and pattersn we want, but rationality demands that they actually apply to things.

"Rationality is at best only a simulation of the universe."

No, that's not how understanding works. Understanding GRASPS patterns of observable phenomena, it doesn't just make them up. It even goes back to check the phenomena again, to see if the pattern actually fits.
Rationality doesn't SIMULATE the universe; to state that is to posit that the entire universe is unknowable, and that's just a step away from claiming that the universe is nothing, and that reality is non-existent.

You're falling into the Kantian position, for which Hegel simply has to be wheeled out. Try some transcendental realism before inventing your transcendental idealism.

All of these problems arise from an inadequate realisation of how we understand the universe.

"I would suggest that most of the so-called laws of the universe are transient understandings which are subject to constant revision,"

I agree. those laws are subject to constant revision through a constant checking and rechecking of the evidence, to make sure that the formulated pattern of phenomena is ACTUAL, and accurately describes reality. It is constantly subject to revision because there is a reality against which we can check.

"Observed regularities may change through time, e.g. the earth will not always exist."

Indeed.

"You posit a god who is both rational and mysterious. So his rationality is so rational that our reason cannot comprehend it."

The SOURCE of rationality cannot be fully comprehended by reason, any more than the methods of science cannot prove themselves. This is not a difficult or confusing concept.

To assert that scientific method works to accurately describe reality one must presume a metaphysics and an epistemology.

I am suggesting that, to assert that rationality in general works to accurately describe reality, one must have recourse to an intelligent grounding of rationality, just as scientific methods have an intelligent grounding in metaphysics and epistemology.

The difference is, that, although we can move beyond simply using the scientifc methods in order to grasp their philosophical grounds and basis, we cannot move beyond rationality in order to grasp its ground and basis.

That ground and basis is therefore something totally Other - a theological consideration.

That is not confusion, but recognition and demarcation of limits.

On the other hand, of course, it is possible to use rationality without a full understanding of it's basis and rational source, just as it is possible to be a practical scientist with no understanding of the philosophical presumptions involved.

One can pragmatically work purely within rational inquiry. however, if one wishes to understand the basis of that rational inquiry, why is it rational, how does it reach out in an attempt to grasp reality, one must have recourse to something transcendent.


"Of course, if you believe in the Fall, then man sinned and corrupted the whole universe, so that if there was a divine lawgiver, the laws as they are cannot be the result of Him. On the other hand, if God performed miracles, then he intervened and suspended the ?laws? of the universe."

these are quite trifling points, and based upon, if I may use someone else's term, which I quite like, a "Christopher Robin" theology.

Especially granted all that I have just said about the source of rationality lying beyond that rationality, to bring up such obviously anthropomorphic points is to entirely miss the point.

God's plan for humanity, or grace to humanity, or freedom-giving to humanity, or anything thing else that God may have wished to do, which we, as I have outlined, cannot understand, is neither here nor there with respect to this argument.

"It is curious that scientists and secularists are happy with an acceptance of a certain mystery about the laws of the universe and uncertainty about whether they are entirely ?rational?, whereas believers insist on clarity and certainty, despite the fact that their god is even more unclear and mysterious."

It is curious, especially as you often accuse believers of the opposite, and claim the certainty and clarity for yourself.

There is a certain sense in which clarity and understanding can only arise from within an immense depth of mystery.
:)

"Einstein wrote: "A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms?it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man?. I can live with that."

Brian, I'm not sure if that is all quotation, or even why you bring it up, as it seems to completely accept the view that I have just outlined!!!

Aren't you the one who DOESN'T accept the existence of such a thing?

What a strange way to end your post.

Bernard:

I am sorry but I find it difficult to make coherent sense of much of the above. You seem to make a lot of assumptions.
A descriptive mode does not imply prescription. A 'law' which describes aspects of reality does NOT imply a prescriptive lawmaker in ANY sense. Prescriptive laws, like those issued states, are about how we OUGHT to behave, or at least about the LEGALITY of behaviour. Descriptive 'laws are about how things DO behave. One does not imply the other. Ask Hume. You cannot derive an ought logically from an is.

I should say that for a scientist the word 'law' is misleading; models might be a better word, because they are only approximations and subject to modification or rebuttal by new evidence.

You say: "I'm wary of people who may have read a History of Philosophy book and decided that, as there are criticisms, an argument has been blown out of the water". Which book? Russell's? Flew's? Scruton's? Coplestone's? Hirschberger and Hay's? I have them all and they are all critical of the cosmological argument. So are most philosophers since Kant.

At the end of your post you say that I don't accept the existence of something. What, exactly, are you talking about?

Brian,

I'm confused by your points here.


"A descriptive mode does not imply prescription. A 'law' which describes aspects of reality does NOT imply a prescriptive lawmaker in ANY sense."

I made no mention of prescriptive laws. I was making the broad point that you are making a supposition that descriptive laws, which describe patterns of phenomena, do not imply a source of those laws (or RATIONAL PATTERNS).


A rational pattern, open to discovery by human intelligence, does, i am suggesting, imply a source of that rationality. that is all.

"Prescriptive laws, like those issued states, are about how we OUGHT to behave, or at least about the LEGALITY of behaviour. Descriptive 'laws are about how things DO behave. One does not imply the other. Ask Hume. You cannot derive an ought logically from an is."

Again, an introduction to philosophy. Do you accept a Humean analysis of the universe? if so, you are a lone voice, and, furthermore, can make no claims about the universe whatsoever.

"I should say that for a scientist the word 'law' is misleading; models might be a better word, because they are only approximations and subject to modification or rebuttal by new evidence."

Indeed, I agree with you there. Models which grasp and express an inherent rationality.

That they are subject to modification and rebuttal in no way suggests that there is no such rationality. indeed, any rebuttals or modifications would themselves have to be made on a rational basis.

"You say: "I'm wary of people who may have read a History of Philosophy book and decided that, as there are criticisms, an argument has been blown out of the water". Which book? Russell's? Flew's? Scruton's? Coplestone's? Hirschberger and Hay's? I have them all and they are all critical of the cosmological argument."

If you have read a number of introductions to philosophy, should i accept your assertion, given on authority, with absolutely no argument?

I have also read all of those books, and many more detailed and fuller accounts of such arguments, as well as many other types of argument. Let's not argue about who's read the most books.

There is no "The Cosmological Argument", except in Introduction to Philosophy books. "there are a wide wide range of arguments which are based on the dependency and finitude of the universe and thus can be named "cosmological". such arguments are extremely disparate, and cannot be dismissed by a brief read of an introductory account of one variation of an argument.

Particularly the argument I am offering, which is based not an a physical conception of causality, but on the limits, finitude and dependency of human rationality in its attempts to understand reality.

That criticisms have been offered against a number of variations, in a number of introductory philosophy books, simply is not an adequate argument against the one that I am proposing.


"At the end of your post you say that I don't accept the existence of something. What, exactly, are you talking"

You quoted Einstein;

"A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms?it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man?. I can live with that."

I agree with that, you seem not to.

I am saying precisely that there is "the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty, which are only accessible to our reason in their most elementary forms"

I thought you were arguing against that.

Perhaps I'm wrong.

So, in sum, your arguments above are that

1;
you don't understand what I am talking about
2;
You have read a number of introductory philosophy books which criticise "The Cosmological Argument", whichever particular one you might be talking about. It's certainly not the argument I'm making.
3;
Hume, a 17th Century sceptic, a full acceptance of whose views leads to complete irrationality and ignorance of the universe, says that we cannot derive an ought from an is.

Have you any other rejoinders?

I'm not attempting to change your worldview through correspondence on an internet forum.

You'd need a full couple of terms, and a comprehensive reading list.

:)

However, I cannot accept this prejudice that religious thinking precludes rationality.

The problems arise when you presuppose that rationality contains its own grounding, its own proof, and that "MEANING has its own meaning".
In the last analysis, that MEANS nothing, and has no grounds for being accepted with reference to reality

Brian post 61

A short reply will have to suffice for now...

Supercilious? Perhaps, I've been called a few things on this blog. I also reread my last post and I suppose it was a bit bolshy. But please understand, none of this is a personal attack on anyone.

Please also understand that challenging a much repeated and stereotypical view of God is important. If we're going to discuss what evidence there may be (or what evidence many christians look to) then it is important that we make sure we know what may or may not count as evidence. I'll get back to this later in more detail, but perhaps in the meantime you might like to offer some examples of the kind of evidence you would find acceptable.

Brian,
1) I cannot think of anything more irrational than a self-caused being. Actually, I can. A self caused being which caused itself to begin to exist.
2) If the Universe is not entirely rational, then you can have precisely NO faith in the Laws of Nature, as you cannot predict if a when they will fail, or if they have failed in the past. Of course our Scientific models are approximations. But they are still approximations, not useful fictions. You confuse the two.
3) Given (1) and (2) your demand for evidence seems absurd.
4) Are you trying to escape this trap by taking an anti-realist view of rationality? If you hold that our universe can be interpeted by human rationality, but is not in itself ontologically rational you have to abandon dogmatic calims about evidence and reason. Neither is shaped by what is ontologically real.
5) Once again, to distract us from the weakness of your Atheism, you rant about the absurdities of Religion. Fine. Let's assume that you are correct. Show me Theism is irrational as a result.
6) A transcendental argument is not an a posteriori argument to a First Cause. You missed that.
7) SOME of the articles accepted in peer reviews journals defending the Cosmological Argument.

“Ex Nihilo Nihil Fit: Arguments new and old for the Principle of Sufficient Reason”,

“A restricted Principle of Sufficient Reason and the Cosmological Argument”, Religious Studies 40 (2004)

“A new cosmological argument”, Religious Studies 35 (1999) 461–476;

“The Hume-Edwards Principle and the Cosmological Argument”, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 1998


"A New Look at the Cosmological Argument," American Philosophical Quarterly 34 (April, 1997)

Not including the work of John Haldane, Richard Taylor, Brian Davies, Stephen T Davis, William Lane Craig, Richard Swinburne and Bruce Reichenbach.

Not that this proves they're correct. But it does prove that if the Cosmological Argument (First Cause) has been thrown out, someone really ought to tell the referees for these articles and the editors for the academic press.
Good luck with that.

Graham

Hume's 18th century, of course, just to clear that up.

:)

Bernard
Most of the standard criticisms in introductory philosophy texts have been "thrown out" or revised.
In any case, Brian is far beyond an introductory level. His taste for the classic texts has not helped here - but on other occasions I'd like half his knowledge of Hume or Bacon.

Graham

Ha, fair enough, didn't wish to sound patronising there.

I just don't appreciate, having given a version of a cosmological argument, to be given the reply "sure no one accepts that anymore, it say in Betrand blood Russel.

I wish he would engage with the argument.

Nice list of contemporary defenders of cosomological arguments, by the way.
Given a wider definition of such arguments, I could add a hundred more.

Oh, I know you weren't being patronising Bernard. I just wanted to make sure that Brian knows that I appreciate his knowledge and opinions.
Alexander Pruss has done some admirable work on the Principle of Sufficient Reason. His site is worth a look.

GV

M2
Knowledge can be direct, mediate or inferential. I could have seen Lee Harvey Oswald shoot JFK, accepted his testimony that he shot JFK, or infer from the evidence that he shot JFK (I know he didn't confess, I'm being hypothetical).
At the moment we are discussing inferential knowledge of God; that does not rule out the first two types of knowledge, but if someone lacks the first and denies the second, what else can the Theist do?
I was startled to learn that electrical charges and chemical properties can experience pain, be "about" states of affairs and entities they are not in contact with and also be blue, red and green. Amazing what shows up on a MRI!

Graham

gveale, I do not know what you are talking about. I can't conceive that chemicals and electrical charges can experience pain, that makes no sense. Pain is a neurological manifestation of extreme stress in living organisms with nervous systems. Electrical charges and chemicals do not fall into that category. As for the colors, they are arbitrary representations on a computer screen, they could be anything and represent anything the engineer who designs the machine wants them to be.

Has it ever occurred to anyone that the term "creation of the universe" may not make any sense in the way we experience a beginning and end of fininte things? When scientists talk about the big bang which is supposedly an explosion that occurred between 12 and 13 billion years ago, they are extrapolating backwards to the furthest point they have evidence for but have no way to project beyond it. Given the curved nature we believe our time space continuum has, it is entirely possible that if it curves around on itself, the cycles of explosion and implosion go on forever and there was no beginning and will be no end in any sense we can understand. Perhaps the ultimate origin of the universe is unknowable. But if it is, that does not demonstrate any kind of supernatural intelligence.

Bernards_insight

When taking Einstein as a mathematician and physicist, most of his theories have proven iron clad so far. As a philosopher speculating about the ultimate nature of the universe, I don't see that he has any more insight into ultimate truth than anyone else. His equations like that of nearly all science tell us what will happen but he has little insight into how and none into why. In fact what I am saying is that the question of why may be an absurd one. That is why I give philosophers little credence when it comes to the value of what they tell us about the meaning and truth of ultimate existance. Each has an explanation that is different from the others. The question I think is that since all of them can't be right, are any of them right? They are the first to sell their wares by telling you that you must study philosophy because the unexamined life is not worth living. I think Socrates said it first. How self serving. Then the question should arise, is the examined life any more worth living and if it is, why? And if you study philosophy and see fifty different conclusions each giving no indication that it is more correct than the others, isn't it just a waste of time to study them as there is no way to make any sense of it all?

Marcus:

"When taking Einstein as a mathematician and physicist, most of his theories have proven iron clad so far. As a philosopher speculating about the ultimate nature of the universe, I don't see that he has any more insight into ultimate truth than anyone else."

I am not entirely familiar with the extent of Einstein's philosophical speculations. I was a little confused by Brian's quote at the end of one of his posts which seemed to defy the rest of his post. Other than that, I'm not interested in arguing Einstein's philosophical credibility.


"Each (philosoper) has an explanation that is different from the others. The question I think is that since all of them can't be right, are any of them right?"

Your supposition is that, as all philosophers attempt to grasp the nature of reality, but come to different conclusions, there is no rational nature there to be grasped??

That is a strange supposition. Were there nothing to inquire into, no one would ever have bothered. Were there no pertinent questions raised, and partial answers given, no philosopher would ever read the works of his predeccessors.

"They are the first to sell their wares by telling you that you must study philosophy because the unexamined life is not worth living. I think Socrates said it first. How self serving."

Oh, I don't know. Attempting to cultivate an attitude of inquiry is self-serving?
Do you think that living your life without inquiring into the hows and whys is the right thing to do? Is it even possible?


"Then the question should arise, is the examined life any more worth living and if it is, why?"

It depends whether or not you wish to engage with, and attempt to understand, reality.

If you don't, lie down and be quiet. If you do, you will have to attempt to answer some of the questions posed by philosophers.

"And if you study philosophy and see fifty different conclusions each giving no indication that it is more correct than the others, isn't it just a waste of time to study them as there is no way to make any sense of it all?"

There are many different conclusions.

From that, however, you are attempting to suggest that therefore there is no REAL conclusion.

Philosophers attempt to study the nature of rational reality. That some of them come to different conclusions proves, nor suggests, nothing. In fact, the conclusions are not as disparate as you make out. The history of philosophy consists of attempts to elaborate previously grasped, but only partially understood, conclusions.

Incidentally, many of them also come to very very similar conclusions, even though they may begin from entirely different premises.

I'm not sure what you're getting at by attempting to devalue philosophical inquiry. You fail to advert to the many many implicit philosophical assumptions operative in logic, in scientific method, and, indeed, in communicating or thinking at all.

None of which has anything to do with the salient points that we're discussing. If philosophy is so useless, what method would you prefer to objectively and groundedly come to an understanding of reality? I have already explained that neither science nor logic can adequately explain their own validity.
What makes the rules of logic "logical"?
What ensures that the scientific method adequately represents reality?

Or are both these things just self-constructed strawmen....if so, they seem to weild a huge amount of power over our very ability to think or speak, and over every aspect of observable reality you might care to mention.

Is there a REAL reality, outside of these things? If so, you can certainly say nothing about it, nor even posit that there may be such a thing.

Hi theists all:

Not only the cosmological argument but all the main so-called proofs of a god's existence have been chucked out the window by most reputable philosophers/thinkers. That hasn't stopped some theists clutching at straws (or Plantingas or Craigs) or trying to reinvent them in different guises.

The fact is that there is no 'proof' of a god's existence, any more than that there is proof of anything. I cannot prove that the sun will rise tomorrow. The point is that prior to Kant, Hume, et al, it was widely believed that a god's existence COULD be proved. They were wrong. Whether you think the arguments are weak or strong is different. But the first thing you have to accept is that none one can say any longer that a God's existence can be proved, as Aquinas and others did. This is the first thing that theists have to accept.

The second thing is that modern defenders of these arguments are almost invariably biased in favour of a god and are trying to persuade others of their own belief. Sceptics, agnostics, atheists etc are more critical because they do not have that bias. They may not have ANY belief on this issue one way or another. It is up to you lot to give them some convincing arguments FOR your beliefs rather than trying to catch them out on their inadequate understanding of your
biased conception of the discipline.

Bernard, if you had followed my posts (and Graham, Peter etc, bothered to read and digest them rather than make assumptions on what you think I said or think), you would know that I am agnostic on the question of the beginning of the universe. I do not know how it began if at all. It is a 'mystery', as Einstein says. It may have always existed, perhaps as part of a multiverse. The point is: how on earth can you theists claim you know the answer to this question when even scientists don't know (although there is a consensus about a Big Bang 14 billion years ago).

As to the God of the major religions, I am pretty convinced that He does not and could not exist, but as to something else: who knows? Is the universe rational? Who knows for sure? Do I trust reason? As best as I can. But when you have to deal with statements like: "If the Universe is not entirely rational, then you can have precisely NO faith in the Laws of Nature", you feel like going away and leaving you to it. What on earth does this mean? I haven't a notion. What absolutes! 'not entirely', 'no faith'. Not even a little? Dear, oh dear!

You theists think that a 'rational' universe must have a 'rational' creator (who is also of course mysterious). Nowhere have any of you bothered to define your terms: 'god', 'rational', 'creator'. oh no; you leave that up to doubters and then try to pick holes in their statements.

It seems to me that instead of jumping in to score points and display your 'superior' knowledge of philosophy, theology, ethics, or whatever, you go away and have a proper think about what you actually believe and then try to enlighten us 'doubters'. I am afraid you are not doing a good job of 'conversion'.

"Not only the cosmological argument but all the main so-called proofs of a god's existence have been chucked out the window by most reputable philosophers/thinkers."

Completely unjustified assumption there. I could show you, on one shelf of my bookcase, many many contemporary philosophers who are theists, and who provide many different arguments and theories of a theistic type, many of which are quite rational. Some of which even take account of evolution!:)

Perhaps the word proofs was carefully chosen. However, many many philosophers accept that there can be a limited grasp of an outside transcendent source.


"The fact is that there is no 'proof' of a god's existence, any more than that there is proof of anything."

Fair enough. Accepting God is certainly no less rational then, than accepting ANYTHING. I would be happy were you to admit that small point.

"But the first thing you have to accept is that none one can say any longer that a God's existence can be proved, as Aquinas and others did."

Aquinas never used any word of equivalence with PROVED. His five "ways" were thoughtfully entitled. Lonergan has a concept, the formally unconditioned. If NOTHING can be proved to the exacting standards that you set, then I'm willing to accept that the existence of God cannot be proved.


"The second thing is that modern defenders of these arguments are almost invariably biased in favour of a god and are trying to persuade others of their own belief. Sceptics, agnostics, atheists etc are more critical because they do not have that bias. They may not have ANY belief on this issue one way or another."

That is not my experience at all. In my experience, and I think its fairly clear from a cursory glance at this forum, many of the above named do have such a bias. you can't take a critical stand from nowhere...there must be something of which you are critical.

"It is up to you lot to give them some convincing arguments FOR your beliefs"

Of the extremely long-winded argument I've provided here, you have offered not one adequate reply.

I'm trying, Brian. I'm trying.


"Bernard, if you had followed my posts (and Graham, Peter etc, bothered to read and digest them rather than make assumptions on what you think I said or think), you would know that I am agnostic on the question of the beginning of the universe. I do not know how it began if at all."

I have followed your posts. My confusion stems from the fact, because you don't know, you vehemently assert that a POSSIBLE explanation offered by theists is TOTALLY CONTRARY TO REASON. Strange claim to be made by a self-confessed agnostic. I have just tried to show that such an explanation IS NOT contrary to reason.

I respect a healthy agnosticism. If you really "just don't know", what possible argument can you make?


"how on earth can you theists claim you know the answer to this question when even scientists don't know"


The pointed "EVEN scientists" obviously displays a scientific bias, as if science is the self-evidently best way of dealing with such questions. I have attempted to show that science cannot even account for its own assumptions, never mind the assumption of rationality within which all of our thinking operates.

Theists can legitimately claim to have a view which appears to be true, as we actually deal with the relevant questions.

I think I might have some basic, though entirely inadequate, conception of metaphysical grounding. If you don't agree with it, tell me why you don't agree, don't just reply with "sure even scientists cant answer that". Science presupposes certain philosophical and metaphysical views...you must accept that.

When discussing detailed and subtle metaphysical and epistemological issues, is it really adequate to say "Sure, EVEN SCIENTISTS can't answer those questions"?

If you reduce everything to science, you will not be able to even comprehend the questions, never mind answer them.

"As to the God of the major religions, I am pretty convinced that He does not and could not exist"

But you've yet to provide any grounds for your conviction, other than that "Even Science can't answer it". and what happened to your agnosticism?

"but as to something else: who knows?"

Indeed, who knows? Yet you seem to know about the above, previous sentence?


"Is the universe rational? Who knows for sure?"

Is there rationality in the universe? Quite obviously, for we're rationally discussing it, and we're in the universe.


"Do I trust reason? As best as I can."

Why? Perhaps it does not refer to reality at all...although, of course, then it wouldn't be rational, would it.

"But when you have to deal with statements like: "If the Universe is not entirely rational, then you can have precisely NO faith in the Laws of Nature", you feel like going away and leaving you to it".

If you can't accept that, then perhaps the best option is to say nothing. the point is that anything you say, think, understand or inquire into must be rational, otherwise it's nonsense.

the rational is the real, as rationality neccessarily penetrates to "what is actually the case", otherwise it simply isn't rational.

"What on earth does this mean? "

It means that, if the universe is not rational, then all of our rational discussion refers to absolutely nothing, and we may as well say nothing.

But do we say nothing, or do we attempt to grasp what is obviousy open to understanding? you have already decided that saying nothing is not adequate.

"You theists think that a 'rational' universe must have a 'rational' creator (who is also of course mysterious)."

No No No. the creator is not rational. Everything within the universe is rational.

"Nowhere have any of you bothered to define your terms: 'god', 'rational', 'creator'."

God - creator and source of the universe.

Rational - containing features which can be grasped intelligently by the intellect.

Creator - God (see above)

mmkaay?


"It seems to me that instead of jumping in to score points and display your 'superior' knowledge of philosophy, theology, ethics, or whatever, you go away and have a proper think about what you actually believe and then try to enlighten us 'doubters'. I am afraid you are not doing a good job of 'conversion'."

I have to accept this. I do not suspect for one minute that your life will be changed by something you have read on an internet forum. My responses are more for my own benefit than yours. With a degree of human one-upman-ship, of which I am slightly embarrased, but of which we are all completely guilty, least of all yourself.

Brian, I don't wish to sound nasty, but all of your previous post smecks of abandoning the argument and shouting "you people all have your own rules of argument, and I don't accept it, so arguing is pointless"

If you think so, try arguing with those rules. Try engaging with the argument, even on your own terms. I really am genuinely reading what you have to say, and appreciate your insights into many things. I just happen to think you are wrong on this occassion, for the myriad of reasons that I have repreatedly explained and enhanced.

Don't be leaving us, Brian!

:)

Brian
Wow. That was an unexpexcted response. I'll respond as best as I'm able to your points as they arise.

1) "Proof" in the sense of rationally inescapable is no longer the aim of most philosophical arguments. That does not mean that they cannot be convincing to a rational person.

2) "Clutching at straws" is mere assertion.

3) Aquinas did not think like an Enlightenment foudationalist, but we'll put that to the side.

4) I do not like the accusation that I do not read and digest your posts. (If you are referring to the fact/value debate then I must point out that if I attributed a view to you it was the only one that would give your arguments any force.) I have always appreciated and learned from your posts.

5) IF the universe began to exist THEN it had a cause. If you are prepared to reject that principle, if you are prepared to argue that the universe may not be wholly rational, then no amount of evidence can persuade you that there is a God.

6) If irrational events can occur, and you do not know where, why, how or when, then you may accept a pragmatic view of truth. I cannot see how you can accept a realistic view of truth. I NEVER said anti-realism wasn't a respectable philosophical position. And anti-realism allows that we may have some grasp of reality, we just don't know how much.

7) Isn't it closed minded to argue that Theistic arguments can be ignored because their proponents have ulterior motives, whereas those who are not convinced are, by definition closed minded?

8) I'm NOT trying to display a superior knowledge of philosophy. I more or less conceded that you have a superior knowledge of the topic. You know the Primary texts. I don't. I'll directly concede that now. But, just as you have often pointed out gaps in my reading, I was trying to point out a gap in yours.

9) If I was trying to convert you I would be talking about sin, atonement, God's love, hell, heaven, free-will and the New Heaven and the New Earth. I've assumed that you know the Gospel according to Evangelicals, and I would not presume to preach at you. I'm not even trying to argue you into Theism. (a) I'm arguing that Theism is a rational position. Some individuals might even find it convincing. (b) As I have said before (I'll search out the exact quote if you want) I always enjoy debating with you as I always learn something new.

10) I AM advancing arguments. In the past I've admitted that Christian Theism does not have all the answers. I am convinced that there are deeper flaws in other systems of thought. That's what I'm arguing here.

11) I did not intend to be insulting. I cannot understand how you found my posts insulting. For goodness sake Brian, look at the comments I've exchanged with Heliopolitan. Insulting each other has almost become a competition sport at times (and he's still ahead on points I think).
But if I have unintentionally disrespected you at any stage I apologise. Of all the posters, I hold you in highest regard. I would have thought that was reasonably clear to onlookers.

Graham Veale

Bernard:

I want to cut through all the contorted verbiage to a few points, mostly relating to definitions.

1. Proof.

You accept that there is no proof of a God's existence. Good. At last! Yes, sure, Aquinas used the word 'ways', but he did think they were proofs. He wrote: "God's effects ... are enough to prove that God exists" (Summa Theologica). It is progress that even theists now accept that a God's existence cannot be proved.

2. God

You define a god as a creator and source of the universe. The problem is that that is much too vague: God = the ultimate creator. Even I could agree with that, if you are saying that God doesn't have any more attributes than simply the creator of the universe. Of course, 'God' could be plural - 'Gods'. Indeed, since the universe is complex, a plurality of gods seems more 'rational' (next point). Is this God(s) good, bad, indifferent?

2. Rational

You define this as "containing features which can be grasped intelligently by the intellect". If you are applying this to the universe, do you mean that it contains only these features and no others? Does it also contain features that cannot be so grasped? And if it does, is it still entirely rational? Or is it partly irrational?

3. The Bible

As this thread is about the Bible, can I ask what has the above got to do with the God depicted therein?

Sorry, I can't count. There are 4 points!

I think he was suggesting merely that I hadn't read his posts.

Although i have.

I agree with you, though, Graham. i am not trying to convince someone of the indubitability of the theist view. I've pointed that out many times.

I am merely arguing against the notion that it runs contrary to reason.

It is interesting that that is how this argument began, yet those who claim that religion is irrational have very quickly slipped into a deep irrationalism, even so far as to assert that we can probably never know the universe as it really is.

If you accept that level of irrationalism, then all arguments to the contrary are pointless. however, the argument was originally about whether religoius thought could be rational. Those who think that it can't have appealed to irrationality to make the point.

Which is just madness!

Brian, I'm just about to leave for home, but if you hang about for an hour or so, I will give you a full reply.

I genuinely do enjoy your discussions, and look forward to tackling that seemingly concise post above.

Now, however, i have a bus to catch.

Bernard_Insight

Why is science the only way to get to the real truth if such a thing exists? Because it tries to find consistancies in observations so that it can generalize them in a coherent theory we call natural law. Then it tests the theory to see if it is still consistant with the facts of new observations. If it isn't, it has to change. All other methods including philosophies rely at some point on suppositions which are taken as unshakable truths which cannot be challenged. The only challenge to the rational universe science cannot answer is whether or not the universe exists outside my mind as the existentialists postulate. I have no way to prove this. Do you?

I am not looking for proof of god's existance, I know I won't find that anytime soon. I'm merely looking for evidence to suggest that god exists at all, evidence that I can trust and verify for myself. So far in a lifetime, I have not found any. Do I believe in witches, ghosts, goblins, vampires, warewolves, or any other tales I have no evidence for? No. Then why should I believe in a god I have no evidence for? One of the stupidest arguments I've heard for the existance of god is from people who have no scientific knowledge at all. They say that since they can't understand how anything can exist or have come into existance through natural law, then the only answer is that god created it. Another comes from those who try to twist scientific knowledge to their own ends the way McIntosh does. Were I not well trained, with almost enough course credits to have become a chemical engineer, I might have been fooled by his blunder about the second law of thermodynamics but I'm sure many who aren't are fooled. Yet another comes from those who have "a spiritual feeling." I take none of this seriously nor the people who say them.

I don't put much stock in what other people say that I can't verify for myself. I don't care who said it. Once everyone said the earth was flat. That didn't make it any less round.

Brian:

"1. Proof.

You accept that there is no proof of a God's existence. Good. At last!"

In the sense of "irrevocable proof", not open to further analysis or exploration, then yes, I accept that.

In that sense, there is no absolute proof of anything, and our entire understanding of the universe is based on a type of faith.

Given that, do you accept that a theistic view is no more incompatible with reason than a scientific view? In fact, I think that it is more compatible, given all the reasons I've banged on about.

"It is progress that even theists now accept that a God's existence cannot be proved."

Only in the sense of absolute certainty. Indeed, it is part of my view regarding humanity that we can never achieve full certainty. That is why we are not God.
Do you accept that, were there a being with complete certainty in the way in which you mean, that being would be God?

I think it is incompatible with rationalty to claim that such complete certainty is impossible. If you were to hold firmly to that view, no view of any kind could hold any validity, including that view itself.

"2. God

You define a god as a creator and source of the universe. The problem is that that is much too vague: God = the ultimate creator. Even I could agree with that,"

Good...it's certainly not irrational

"if you are saying that God doesn't have any more attributes than simply the creator of the universe."

If you accept that God is the creator of the universe, lots of implications flow from that with respect to God's attitude to the universe.

We can state, for example, that God is not only capable of creating the universe, but that he DID so. There is a sense in which cthat could analogically be described as Love. note the word "analogically" - a device to partly understand something by comparing its proportions with another, known thing, whilefully recognising that there must be differences.
We still cannot know God with respect to Himself, but we can know him analogically with respect to his attitude towards creation. He took the attitude That the universe was worth creating.

"Of course, 'God' could be plural - 'Gods'. Indeed, since the universe is complex, a plurality of gods seems more 'rational'"

It doesn't. You are thinking of a plethora of Gods responsible for many different things. But we are talking about the totality of being, the very fact of existence of any kind.
There are very compelling philosophical (Rational) reasons to assert that, if there is something that transcends the universe of plurality, essence and rational intelligibilities, that that entity must be One, and unique.

Plato knew this, Aquinas knew it, and the scientific attempt to find a unified theory is an implicit assumption of it.

"Is this God(s) good, bad, indifferent?"

The creation of the world precludes "indifferent". The problem of evil aside (which will take some unfolding), the act of creation also implies good, as all acts aim towards a particular good. Whether it is a "good" that I want to achieve at any particular time is irrelevant. this is not about me.


"2. Rational

You define this as "containing features which can be grasped intelligently by the intellect". If you are applying this to the universe, do you mean that it contains only these features and no others?"

Yes.
Are there features of the universe that are, in principle, unintelligible? If so, I would like you to intimate what they are. If you don't know of any, why posit such things? What happened to your Occam's razor again?

"3. The Bible

As this thread is about the Bible, can I ask what has the above got to do with the God depicted therein?"


It has nothing to do with the problem as you have stated it.

It has a lot to do with the act of creation (in whatever way this occured - I accept the use of metaphor in Genesis - as I have discussed above.
It has a lot to do with the attitude towards creation displayed in the very act of creation.

There is also reason to think that the outpouring of a loving attitude which constitutes creation could also be fundamentally fulfilled in a concrete way, in the life of Christ.

Now; if you really claim that the religious view is inherently irrational, why, in your arguments, have you had recourse to claim that the universe itself may be irrational?? Were that the case, the religious view would be infinitely more rational than any other

This have moved pretty fast on this thread and it's impossible to respond to everything, but the following, I think, are important. However where to begin?

It is interesting, as Bernard has pointed out, that this debate began with the suggestion that faith was irrational, now we're talking about proof. Now earlier on, on this thread, I was accused of being arrogant, haughty, condescending and possibly even sneering for putting down arguments against God, based on 'evidence' which I didn't think was particularly good or appropriate 'evidence'. Now I find that some of us (Bernard, Graham and myself) are being told that we're not bothered enough to read the posts, think them through, or define the words we're using. Odd. What I've been trying to do all along is determine what any or all of us mean by 'faith' and what any or all of us mean by 'God'

God - absolute supreme being
Faith - something which can mean trust in another, rather than merely a leap in the dark.

I also see that we're being accused of trying to convert, so maybe I'll offer an explanation of why I bother posting here at all; after all, everyone knows how much time it can take to read and respond.

First, I find the exchanges interesting, stimulating and I've learned a lot. Brian, I do read what you write (I've read the magazine you edit too) and I've learned a lot from you. Second, I found it frustrating to read criticisms of God, faith, christianity and so on which were based on caricatures, which did not, and do not, reflect the Christianity I know and which is much much broader than popular evangelicalism/fundamentalism. (Although I've been called a fundamentalist here too!) Hence the regular critiques of the arguments against God. Many of them are not the reason I still believe. Finally, and Brian you may find this surprising, the debate offers me an opportunity to test my own beliefs, to stretch them, assess them and reflect on them. My faith is not fixed, I have much to learn, but I have yet to read anything which has broken it. Maybe it is also worth noting that there has been, in recent years, a militant sort of atheism, which has gone out of it's way to attack and lampoon 'faith', I have no gripe with that, but neither ought we who believe remain silent.

And so with that preamble let's go on.

Proof. I was never under the impression that anyone here was claiming that they could prove God. I use the word in the sense of being absolutely certain. I most certainly can't, and as I have pointed out, certainty of this kind is a 'God-like' quality. So proof is not the issue here. As Brian has said, "There is no 'proof' of God's existence, any more than there is proof of anything." Bernard has pretty much dealt with the rest of that response.

Faith. I'm defining this as a reasonable response to a person or set of circumstances based on what is known to us. So what might be known to us. Bernard and Graham have discussed issues of the existence of the universe, rational human beings and so on. To that one might add personality, ethics/conscience, emotions (human characteristics etc.) and conclude that maybe there was a personal beginning to all things. That, I strongly suggest, is not an irrational leap. And it is most certainly not the same as shouting, "leprechaun". Everyone has to explain that the universe and he/she does exist - something personal is here and that that something personal makes meaning. This comment of course is limited to a description of God as the ultimate creator, which Brian has said he can agree with; and I agree with him, it is a sort of vague description, or at least not full enough, and as I am a Christian have a fuller (rational) description of God to offer. However as some of that conversation has been had before I will finish for now with the suggestion that maybe just maybe after all the heat, maybe we can agree that faith need not be irrational and that there may be other reasons why some exercise faith and others do not. Of course the question, "In whom shall we put our faith," is an entirely different one!


Marcus

In the middle of all this I recall you asking, "How would God make himself known to me?", and you cite examples of near misses with lightning. Part of my answer, following the comments above, and relating to how I might know you, is that, God, if he existed, might make himself known to everyone in basically the same way. You see Marcus I'm not particularly looking for 'miracles'. A lot of christians say that God made himself known in Jesus, but of course, I can't 'prove' it!!

Bernard:

You ask: "Is a theistic view no more incompatible with reason than a scientific one"? I would say 'yes' because it does not merely posit a creator(s) of the universe, but it also generally attributes certain characteristics and actions to this creator which are unreasonable: goodness, mercy, creating immortal humans, creating the earth in 7 days, drowning nearly everyone in a flood, turning people into pillars of salt, turning water into blood, sending plagues of boils, engineering the mass-murder of Egyptian first-born sons, creating virgin births, turning water into wiine, engineering resurrections etc. etc.

Secondly, you ask: "are there things in the universe that are, in principle, unintelligible"? I DON’T KNOW! Perhaps there are, perhaps there aren't. Perhaps what we don't know now will be known in the future. Perhaps one day we will be able to cope with 11 dimensions.

Let me stress that the only rational answer to the question "is the universe rational"? is: we don't know. There are parts of it which seem rational, and our mind has developed the power of reason so that we can understand some current aspects. However, a version of the second law of thermodynamics states that the total amount of disorder increases with time. The order in one body can increase, provided that the amount of disorder in its surroundings increases by a greater amount. Thus our planetary sysyem may be ordered now, but in 5 billion years or so it will probably become chaotic.

This doesn't mean that we abandon reason. It is an indispensable tool of thought and without it we are lost. The ancient Greeks used the word 'logos' to describe what was perceived to be a ordered structure. The Romans translated it into 'ratio' or reason. And of course the early Christians adopted the term: "In the beginning was the logos...".

But does this mean that the universe or its creator(s) thinks like a rational human being? WE DO NOT KNOW. That is the heart of the mystery. To posit an omnipotent, omniscient, loving god is to attempt to end the real mystery and substitute an absurd and unnecessary one without any evidence other than fairy tales.

What a long, LONG way to say we just don't know!

Again I find myself agreeing with Mark2 - philosophy has nothing of either interest or use to say about God and I often question whether indeed it has much worth saying about anything of any real importance. I find it rather like economics - full of wonderfully incestuous argument but devoid of just about everything else.

Yeats, I think, was spot on when he said:

"We pieced our thoughts into philosophy,
And planned to bring the world under a rule,
Who are but weasels fighting in a hole."

When the real insights into the human condition are to be found in literature, illuminated too by beauty, who in their right mind would read philosophy?

Excellent post Peter.

I also find it challenging to face the weaknesses of my own vew, particularly when flagged up by such obviously intelligent, deep thinkers. There are not man forums on the internet where such debates could take place.

I particularly liked your reference to the universe of personality, ethics and conscience

Having re-read my last post, I found it too dry and arid an expression of what I really feel. However, As you rightly point out, I'm concerned here with countering the assertion, often no more than a blind presumption, that religious belief is inherently irrational.

However, having accepted that, there is so much more that goes beyond rationality. But, "beyond rationality" is far from the same as irrational...indeed, the acceptance of an irrational, infinite source of rationality can fulfil and ground rationality....left to its own devices it goes around in circles and comes to nothing

Brian

My post was prepared without knowledge of your post #89 and does not specifically relate to it but to the whole discussion which precedes it.

Portwyne:

Having dismissed History (we learn nothing from it) and classical music (too elitist) on another thread, you now tear into philosophy and economics.

You want a culture of pot-smoking theists sitting round the camp fire praising your Hippy God, reading Yeats (the poet, not the horse) and listening to Bob Dylan blowing in the mind and Edith Piaf 'regretting rien'.

People think, hence philosophy; people earn a living; hence economics, people organise societies for the future, hence education AND history. Live with it, man.

Hallelujah (the Leonard Cohen take via Jeff Buckley et al).

Marcus2

Further to Peter's suggestion of ways in which God might make himself known to you (or indeed anyone) might I add another couple of possibilities:

Through the life of a person whose living incarnates the transformational energy of the divine - I am afraid these are quite thin on the ground though once or twice I have met good examples.

By engaging actively and sacrificially with the poor, the desolate, the marginalised, the ill, the dying, and the dysfunctional - Gustavo Gutierrez said: to do so is to "experience an encounter with the Lord who is simultaneously revealed and hidden in the faces of the poor"

Bob Dylan, of course, blew in the wind, though some of his songs might also 'blow in your mind', like:

"William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll, with a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger..."

Brian

I take all the rest on the chin but I absolutely reject the notion that I am in any sense of the word a Theist!!

Portwyne:

Apologies for the insult. I agree: who really wants to be a theist?
Life is too short to waste on trying to acquire knowledge of the unknowable, the frozen thoughts of men, out of which they build temples.

Portwyne post 93

Here I go agreeing with you again. I was driving to work this morning thinking, how else might we know/encounter God, and I thought of the two examples you gave. I then reflected on my own life and realised that I don't measure up and so decided not to mention them.

I do however think you are correct and am reminded of the words in Luke 4. "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour."

Portwyne, if god exists, made me as Christians and Jews say he did, and wants me to believe in him and obey his laws, he should have no difficulty in presenting me with proof that I will find impossible to refute or deny. Since he hasn't done that, I have to conclude he either doesn't want to or he doesn't exist. If he doesn't want to, he is playing games with me. In that case "We are not amused."

Brian, re your post #88.

You list a lot of things that seem irrational to you, with the prelude that I am not just positing a creator of the universe, but also positing all of those seemingly irrational things.

Let me ask you; do you accept that it is entirely rational to posit a creator?

I believe that it is.

Having posited that creator, experience of a loving faith tells me that that creator reaches out to me in a spirit of love.

I accept that this is no longer rational.....anymore than it is entirely rational to have loving faith in your wife. But many of us do.

The point is, I accept that, at this stage, we are no longer talking about rationality. However, what we are speaking about is not irrational. Loving your wife is not irrational, but neither is it governed or expressed by rationality.

Having rationally accepted the rational need to posit A CREATOR, of any kind, something entriely vague enough for you to accept, as you did somewhere above, there are other things which can then be "understood" (in a broad sense - not rationally).

To labour the wife metaphor - you may rationally accept the existence of your wife - you cannot RATIONALLY accept that she loves you. But accept it you do, for lots of other, non rational reasons.

You may rationally accept the existence of "some kind of creator" - the vague kind that you accepted on an earlier post.

You cannot RATIONALLY accept that IT displays a personal loving attitude towards you. But accept it you can, just like your wife.

Hope that clears it up.

The only thing that can be RATIONALLY accepted is the existence of A CREATOR. However, given that, and given that such a creator would stand outside of all known rational laws, IF such a creator were to act, it may seem irrational.

And, given a spirit of faith and love, such things are not just possibilities, but can actually be accepted.
They cannot be proven or illustrated or explained rationally, but given a creator outside of rationality, "Which is a rational thing to posit", such things no longer need be "irrational"

Bernard:

You say: "Let me ask you; do you accept that it is entirely rational to posit a creator?"

No it is not: read what I said: the only position is agnosticism. WE DO NOT KNOW. The universe may have been created; it may not. End of story. Even scientists who are sure that this universe began with a 'Big Bang' are not sure whether there was nothing beforehand. Was our Bang in a universe among universes which extend infinitely in space and time? No one knows, yet a theist claims to know the answer.

And not only that: he believes in a loving creator in the face of suffering, misery, pain, hardship, cruelty, injustice, poverty, unhappiness, and all the rest. This is definitely IRRATIONAL.