RE: Natural Selection Seems Insufficient
Yesterday at 12:58 pm
(This post was last modified: Yesterday at 1:14 pm by Jal.)
(Yesterday at 8:31 am)Angrboda Wrote:You're faulting a guy for something he cannot change. Unacceptable.(Yesterday at 1:03 am)Jal Wrote: Nope. Whether God exists is irrelevant to my point. Unlike blind faith, a belief is justifiable/ warranted if you cannot relinquish it.
In fact that is virtually the ONLY scenario where a belief is fully justified.
You can't relinquish that belief. That doesn't mean it is justified as there are reasons besides justification why you might be unable to relinquish it.
Your belief that being unable to relinquish it makes it justified/warranted is false.
When I was younger I believed that I was from another universe. I was unable to relinquish this belief. That did not make it justified/warranted.
Justification and inability to relinquish operate on different planes. They aren't directly reciprocal.
Secondly, you underestimate the primacy of conscience. Allow me to explain.
Epistemically, the heavenly Father's role is like a human father. You, my friend, seem to want absolute epistemic justification/warrant for a belief but that's not how it works even with a human father. Does a toddler possess laboratory proof that his father isn't an impostor? No, right? Yet the human father expects/demands his chilren obey him. Why? Because from birth, the human father has nurtured a relationship with the child that eventually instilled a kind of invincible conviction of his father's parenthood. Therefore the child finds it difficult to disobey his father in good conscience. Knowing this, the father rightly demands obedience and punishes the child accordingly.
If you don't like this kind of dynamic, if you consider it stupid, silly, unwarranted, and unjustified, what you are really saying is that children should shrug off their parents in bad conscience. (I've already argued on this thread that conscience is God's only law for both Himself and His children)
With the heavenly Father, the only difference is that He can INSTANTLY instill this invincible conviction in our conscience. We call it "The Inward Witness of the Holy Spirit."


