Theists, are you immune to being decieved?

[Statler Waldorf]

You need a life.

…says the guy who has spent nearly 16 times as much time on this forum as I have. I hope you were being ironic.

Or typewriting lessons.

I am a great typist. I just have numerous posts to respond to and I always take the time to get my information correct. Some people could take a few lessons from that on here; there are some very sloppy posters on here.

Let's clock it: start clock at 23:38

Got it!

Must be because you answer a lot of people!

No, that can’t be it! Apparently it’s because I do not have a life and am a slow typist…*shakes head*

We may never know...

What’s your basis for rejecting the Biblical explanation? If you do not know the answer how can you know that a particular answer is incorrect?

Just because the description you find on the bible fits with your perceived view of reality?

It’s not that it fits with simply my perceived view of reality but more importantly it fits with everyone’s necessary view of reality. There are certain things that must be true in order for us to learn about the exterior world, the Bible makes sense of all of these things unlike anything else can.

The description you find in the qur'an also fits with many people's perceived view of reality... how do you account for that? Are they all wrong?

The existence of Allah does not make sense of the preconditions I mentioned above. Allah does not account for immaterial laws of deduction, the regularities we see in Nature, future regularities and so on. He’s a completely different god with completely different attributes and many of those attributes are insufficient for what must be true about reality.

What sort of god relies on people's writing abilities to pass on the message? yours and theirs!

I wouldn’t trade the Christian manuscript tradition for the Islamic one ever though.

If there is a god that is in fact responsible for the regularity in Nature, then I want to know about it. I refuse to believe in the story written down thousands of years ago... nor any other of the countless similar stories.

Why do you refuse to?

And it doesn't need to be seen... I've never seen an electron, but I've seen its effects... and they are predictable and... well... regular.

Yet you do not know why they are predictable and regular.

Now, this god thing... any effect you claim for it, we can attribute it to something else. The regularity detail, the cause of the big bang and a few other gaps in our knowledge are... under investigation. Until then, it does no good to assume that a thousands year old story has the correct answer.

The age of a story is irrelevant to whether it is correct or not. Science itself presupposes that such regularities exist, have existed, and will continue to exist so it is incapable by nature of ever finding a solution to that particular question. I still see no reason to reject the Biblical explanation for it.

necessary attributes?

Yes, the qualities He must possess in order for us to know what we know.

Talk to a muslim... talk to Rayaan... I wish you both luck, as you'll be claiming the same things for each other's god.

I have talked to Muslims before; they do not take this approach because it does not work for their god. However, I am talking to you right now so I’d prefer we stuck to what we both actually believed.

It does behave in a coherent and predictable fashion, does it not?

Yes, thanks to He who governs in a coherent and predictable manner. I also know that it is going to do so until the end of days.

Like electrons and all other elementary particles that have been cataloged.

Exactly.

Now, your god.... only shows up in the story...

Not at all, you were just describing His governing acts above.

Well, it doesn't make so much sense to me...
You see... how did the person who wrote that know about it? If that person could come to know it, then we can all come by this information, coherently and consistently... Sadly, reality shows the opposite... you yourself rely on the story to describe the god thing... you yourself have failed to find the real evidence... you just trust that whoever wrote the book had it.

Well that’d be Moses; but the words were not merely his. You see, when the one who knows everything, who made everything, and who cannot lie reveals something to us we can know that it is true.

And if there was ever a person who knew about it, then I want to arrive at that knowledge, in an unbiased way... you see... the human brain is way too vulnerable to biases... and pre-acquired beliefs don't help a thing.

This seems to be an unreasonable standard. You mean to tell me that when you read about the DNA structure in a journal you demand to see the sequences for yourself and not just take their word for it? When you read about what it was like to walk on the Moon you demand to walk on the Moon yourself before you will believe any of it? Most of what we learn is learned from the experiences of others.

Perhaps...
Perhaps it's not the one you think.
Just because it makes sense, doesn't mean it's the right answer.

Then give me the right answer so I have a reason to doubt the veracity of my own.

I have no faith in string theory...
There are hundreds of string theories... all untreatable... all lacking in testability.

I used string theory as an alternate hypothesis, which requires no god and explains everything... in a coherent and consistent fashion.

How does it explain everything in a coherent and consistent fashion? I do not believe string theory is used to explain the regularities we observe in Nature at all.

I doesn't explain how to arrive at those answers, making it useless.

How does that make it useless? It gives us the answers. That seems very useful to me.

It's no better than saying that the Flying Spaghetti monster explains all the wrong things with pasta.

The FSM? You’re so much better than that tired fallacious analogy. Yahweh is not analogous to any such entity.

End clock at 00:08---- 30 minutes!

Mine took 32 minutes. I guess we were both being accurate. I am enjoying the discussion.