'Seeking' God

[lucent]

Haha. Emotionalism. Anything to write off someone who disagrees with you, eh? As for your experience confirming it, I sincerely doubt it. It may confirm it to someone who wants to think demons are real, but I assure you, nothing you think you saw cannot be explained rationally.

I think jumping right into dead children qualifies as emotionalism.

Every single case of exorcism and possession that I have come across was debunked quite thoroughly.

You're the expert, right?

You seem to think that reading the Bible is believing the bullshit contained within. That is not the case.

I seem to think that part of being a Christian is believing the word of God.

I am shocked that you really believe that everyone who believes differently than you do speaks to demons, yes. It speaks volumes about how you rationalize your beliefs.

Not everyone, but anyone in contact with spiritual entities is speaking to demons.

How do you know that you are not the one being deceived? How do you know that other religions are wrong? How do you know that the devil himself is not behind the Bible? You don't. In fact, I doubt you ever considered it because you came to the conclusion before you started rationalizing it.

You don't think I've heard every atheist meme to come down the pike? This is not an original thought of yours. I don't think Satan is behind the bible because only the word of God has power over demons.

What the fuck does their belief have to do with your claims to have seen demons and your proclamation that billions of people talk to demons?

Almost every Christian knows that every false idol has a demon behind it. You're acting like I am abnormal amoungst Christians, and that isn't the true. It's a mainstream belief.

---

IF any religion is true, yes. It's a fucking big 'if'.

So, bearing in mind that you can't use anecdotal evidence or testimony, or scripture, or any of the things we've listed, because we've established that any religion could come up with just as much of it, how do we know yours is the correct one? Try and do it without that arrogance you hate so much. Your problem is you're completely thick and borderline mentally ill.

I know because I've researched them all and the bible is the only one to match reality, and my personal experience of God.

---

You have not made the argument from fine tuning. When you do and get into probabilities, please make sure you understand the difference between conditional and unconditional probability, the probability that the universe would emerge at all, the probability that it could emerge in a different way. You would need to answer these basic questions before you could even begin to make the argument. At the moment fine tuning is like saying "gee whizz look how improbable the universe is, and it was all done with me/us in mind, therefore goddidit". Yet given the size of the universe improbable things happen all the time. 2 examples:

When you shave away all other considerations, the question remains: was the universe deliberately created? The probability of yes is at least 50/50. When you consider that anything other than an eternal first cause brings you to an infinite regress, that percentage climbs higher. when you take into account the appearance of design it climbs higher. and so on..there are many good arguments to go to from here.

1st the sun. It would not throw out any heat were it not for the vastly improbable event of 2 hydrogen atoms fusing. No one thinks god is fusing those atoms (or maybe you do and if so it will land you in a world of pain), so why does it occur? It is becuase there are so many hydrogen atoms at such great pressure and heat that it is inevitable that it will happen millions of times per second.

Mechanisms are fine, I don't need to invoke God with mechanisms. I invoke God for Agency. A better question is how do you get a star in the first place..hint Star formation is a notorious weakness of big bang cosmology.

2nd you! Your existence is vastly more improbable than the universe, think of all the Billionne chances of the right sperm meeting the right egg for hundreds of generations. Yet here you are! Again no-one is suggesting that you are anything other than the products of normal sexual reproduction without divine intervention.

Everything is equally unlikely when you shave away all other considerations. How do you know that the Universe didn't start five seconds ago with an appearance of age? The Universe, with its 30 or so values which seem tuned for life, is virtually mathematically impossible to arise by itself. You have to call in multiple universes to make it even remotely plausible, and then you have to explain multiple universes, which is even more implausible.

Really, sighs. You are that literate! Well if you know these things, you should publish because you would be heralding a breakthrough in our knowledge (oh no wait its a big conspiracy isnt it scientists wouldn't publish your work because it proves god). The alternative explanation is that you might not understand it at all! Wonder which one is true?

I understand enough to know the evidence isn't there. I started out believing in evolution and was shocked to find out that the entire thing was a shell game. It is also a true fact that anyone who even breathes intelligent design would be ostracized from the scientific community.

Unrpovable no; it’s a mathematical model which offers just that. Untestable yes, at least currently. But you are missing the point that it is a natural explanation with superior explanatory scope and power to that of goddidit. It should therefore be preferred, else you need to invoke a magic man to explain natural phenomena.

If you had any idea of how deficient big bang cosmology really is, you wouldn't say that. Again, why do you think they're looking for dark matter and dark energy? You can make numbers dance, but does it match reality? Not in the slightest.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im30a2qt1TQ

Yep and the same response from me. We have replicated the base chemicals used in synthesizing life. We have seen the evidence but cannot currently bridge the gap between organic chemistry and life. Science is honest enough to call that out. But what gives you the right to posit a creator totally untestable, unprovable and meaningless. Yes we have seen lots of hard evidence emerge from abiogenesis, but not nearly enough to satisfy the rigours needed to meet the standard we set ourselves, but one thing we definatley have not seen is a giant hand descending and zapping life into existence.

Glad you can admit it. Evolution doesn't meet that rigor either. There is plenty of reason to suspect a higher intelligence, especially in regards to DNA. First, there is no naturalistic process for the information in DNA. Second, information only comes from minds:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XexHxgxTbWY

I don’t have to, you have to show why god is a superior explanation…and you haven’t. Your arguments and ignorant and incredulous and are all summed up by “I just don’t see how….such and such could happen naturally”. Its not an argument.

My argument is, the theories that science proposes don't work and don't answer any fundemental question about life, there is an appearance of design in the Universe, the Universe is finely tuned for life, and logic suggests a creator. I am saying a mind is the only plausible explanation for DNA and has more explanatory power.

Disprove what exactly? I’m not following your train of thought.

Even if you could know all there was to know in material reality, you still couldn't rule out a Creator.