If evidence for god is in abundance, why is faith necessary?

[pocaracas]

Strong?... nah! Just accurate.
I have come to learn to use words accurately, as much as possible.
Certainly, I'm still to this day guilty of using them inaccurately, when I use them colloquially, but there are some terms in theological discussions that need to be very well defined and agreed upon by both parties, before any discussion can happen.
And I know believers will often employ words with a colloquial meaning... and then twist them to their accurate meaning... and, because of that, I prefer to make things clear at the get go.


Just today, on some other thread, I was telling a guy about this.
Look at the words you used.
"God always existed"  - This means that god exists within time. Since the beginning of time.
"God created time"  - This means that god performed the action of creation in the absence of time. Think about this. How can any action be carried out in the absence of time?
"God exists outside of time" - How would you know this? All you offered me were some words from a book written by people... and none of those words even address this. Where did this information come from? How can I trust it?



What?! what?! impossible?!
Where did you hear that lie?
It is proving to be very difficult to replicate abiogenesis in the lab, but from that to being shown that it's impossible is a big step in misinformation. You should check your sources.


Your premise is wrong, so I don't expect the rest to follow through.
And do look up on actual biologists for this, instead of some astronomer.
"Sir Fred Hoyle FRS (24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001)[1] was an English astronomer who formulated the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis. He also held controversial stances on other scientific matters—in particular his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory, a term coined by him on BBC radio, and his promotion of panspermia as the origin of life on Earth."

Again, check your sources.
Be careful with the terms you use.
Try to find things with the minimal bias possible.

1) Agreed, making terms clear from the get-go seems to be best. I appreciate your take on this.
2) You're right, believers can really twist things around, but so do atheists. This is not a believer vs. non-believer issue, this is a human issue, and I try not to be guilty of this, but I fall short, as we all do. So, I'm going to try and encourage question-asking and avoiding finger-pointing. 

True, true.... however, on this forum, I see that behavior more from believers than the non-believers...

3) Look up "Bible verses God omniscient" because that answers your questions on Bible verses that get at the idea that God has to exist out of time. If God is sovereign over everything (you can look up verses on this too), then He must be sovereign over time, and if time is a creation, God created time and created from there within time. God exists in AND out of time all at once. A very odd concept in a lot of ways for us because of how we know our universe and how we experience things. I'm not posting the links here because I don't have enough posts to put up links. 

I don't remember asking for bible verses... but there you go:
https://www.allaboutgod.com/god-is-omniscient-faq.htm

I don't particularly care what people from 2~2.5 k-years ago wrote about a god. It doesn't make it any more true than you writing about it.
True, as in accurately representing reality.
Reality, as in what is actually there.


How can a creative act happen in the absence of time?
How would you know that god is "outside of time"? Is this a term coined roughly when science posited that time and space both started at the big bang? I noticed you didn't say that there are bible verses about this detail... how could there be? those ancient people didn't know of the big bang.

4) Science is defined as that which we can KNOW based on observation and experimentation. I can't find any research that shows that abiogensis has been observed in nature, and the current research in terms of trying to recreate it in labs hasn't allowed it to happen (look up the experiments on this that Hoyle cited to get his number - even though I admit this was an erroneous number, I still see no way that we could've had a simple organism formed from nothing based on those experiments by even being liberal based on the current realm of possibility). Yes, in theory you could say that it may have happened in ways we don't know about it, but really think about this: you still believe in something that you can't currently prove happened. I do, too, and even though we have different beliefs, we're still not that different, and are equally human. We can both learn from each other and shouldn't be dismissive of each other as such, so I'd love to hear more from you on this.

The observation is:
1 - very very very old rock looks like just rock.
2 - Not so very very very old rock shows patterns similar to those left by present day bacteria.
3 - Only very very old rock shows what we describe as fossilized animals with hard shells
4 - animals with skeletons
5 - rock with very very very ancient people
etc

Something happened between 1 and 2. We can assume magic happened and be done with it. Or we can NOT assume magic and look for the conditions that would yield 2.
Sadly, those have been elusive to re-create.
But much has been done: Self-assembly of proteins from amino-acids, generation of amino acid chains from basic organic compounds, based on abundant molecules on the Earth's crust: Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon and Hydrogen... have been demonstrated to be possible and replicable.
I don't know why you insist on bringing Hoyle to the table... Why don't you peek into what was actually done?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%...ed_studies

So, given that much progress has been made towards the demonstration of a mechanism by which life can be achieved without magic, why do you pretend that none of that matters and decide that magic did it? Why do you hold that opinion in so high regard that a natural mechanism for the appearance of life on Earth has about equal probability of being true, in your mind?

What happened in your life that made you consider magic as equally probable as nature?

5) See the parenthetical comment in number 4 to address the Fred Hoyle part - nothing I read about him seemed particularly biased on his part. Granted, I think his numbers were wrong and oversimplifed by miles, so I did my own calculation, if you're interested in hearing more about that. 

Honestly, I never read anything by the man.
Just going by the description on the wiki... if he's an astronomer by training, that doesn't give him any authority on biology.
And, if his conclusions are what you say, then very likely something went terribly wrong in his "calculations"... and he saw what he wanted to see... god. That's bias, right there!

Feel free to enlighten me on the matter, though.... after hearing about how the moon's precession proves that the Earth can't be older than 1 billion years, you can tell I'm all for hearing about pseudo-science!

6) Hey, thanks for giving me a lot to work with. I appreciate your time on here and hope we can continue to have these discussions. I have a busy week-and-a-half to two weeks coming up, but I'll try and sneak some time here to answer your questions and engage in more discussion with you on this.

Cheers and come again soon!
Best of luck with all your endeavors!