RE: Hello from Nathan
February 26, 2011 at 6:24 am
(This post was last modified: February 26, 2011 at 6:49 am by Nathan.)
(February 25, 2011 at 9:40 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Yes, I know. You got to word #10 before I felt compelled to point out that all religions make claims and most of them are as bizarre and unprovable as anything put forward by xtians. Please try to remember that I do not reject only your god. I reject all gods. In fact, I suspect that the only god we differ on is yours.I find it strange that you choose claim-making to be such a special action of religions - all belief-systems, whether they are theistic or atheistic, make claims about the world. For example, some naturalists claim that all that exists is the physical, material world. Many atheists claim that religious experience is simply a by-product of evolution. Everyone has to make claims in order to make sense of what they observe.
I do not take "bizarreness" to be a particularly enlightening indicator of which claims we should view with suspicion. If we took some of the scientific claims we make about the universe to people in the past I think we would hear plenty of cries of "bizarre". What we consider to be "bizarre" mostly stems from particular views of rationality and metaphysics that have taken hold of the Western academic world.
As for unprovability, there is a certain sense in which nothing is 100% provable. We always have to be open to the possibility that we are wrong, no matter how convinced we are that something is true. But what I argue is that, unless Christianity is true, there is no good ultimate explanation of anything. In sum, if God as described by the Bible exists, then we can make sense of the world, but if He doesn't, we can't. That is a strong claim which can only be evidenced by the ability of Christian explanations to hold up under scrutiny, and the inability of non-Christian explanations to do the same.
Like me, you also have a set of beliefs about the world. In our discussions, if you would like them to continue, you will have to accept that we differ on two counts: your belief-system and my belief-system. I do not just reject your belief-system, I reject all belief-systems other than my own, and so do you.
(February 25, 2011 at 11:27 pm)everythingafter Wrote: One of the laws is the law of gravity. Another is thermodynamics. The law of physics are general rules about the mechanics of the physical world. I'm not a physicist, but I know matter does not, by the will of another person, multiply to feed hundreds, or else world hunger would be solved instantly because if it was possible, I would solve it right now.You seem to think that the laws of physics are not just descriptive but prescriptive, and universally so. You believe that feeding the 5,000 is impossible because the laws of physics say that is impossible. What reason is there to believe that the laws of physics are universally prescriptive? Then there is the epistemological problem of how one could possibly ever establish a law of physics if the conditions for being one are so strong (this is the problem of induction). Finally, if you take the view that laws of physics cannot be broken, you make the implicit assumption that a God with the capacity to temporarily suspend the laws of physics does not exist.
