(January 18, 2010 at 1:48 pm)theVOID Wrote: How are they remotely similar? You presuppose the existence of the biblical God and then base your world view around that with absolutely no way of being able to verify it as true where as i base my world view on repeatable, verifiable, testable observation and change my opinion if the observed evidence changes whilst withholding judgement on the things that are outside of my current scope of knowledge. I work from the ground up piecing together the puzzle along the way where as you already know what picture you are trying to make and select the pieces that support your preconception.
You presuppose that matter and energy are all that exists and build your world view around that with absolutely no way of being able to verify it as true.
Do you get it now?
I am not trying to make the picture. God has already done that through the Bible which indicates some of the things that happened in the past, e.g., God created the universe, man sinned and the consequence was a fallen man and universe, there was a global flood, Jesus came into the world to live a perfect life and then to take the punishment that man deserved because of his (man’s) sin, and then rose from the dead. There is no need to reinterpret that which God has already interpreted for me. The fact is, you want to test God by your standards instead of subjecting yourself to His standards. You think you are a higher authority in the universe than the creator of it. You can do that but in the end, you will still be subject to His standards and you will be without excuse. See Romans 1:18-32. You see, this passage of the Bible indicates pretty clearly that everything in the universe points to God and that while everyone knows this (it is self-evident), some, like yourself, suppress this knowledge (hence no excuse).
(January 18, 2010 at 1:48 pm)theVOID Wrote: When you discover what this standard of evidence is that allows you to separate multiple contradictory supernatural claims of origin from each other please do present it, but until that point in time you have demonstrated nothing more than picking one amongst a myriad of carte blanche explanations for no rational reason.
I’ll trust the God who came to the earth, died for my sins, and rose from the dead. I don’t think any others have done that in history.
(January 18, 2010 at 1:48 pm)theVOID Wrote: Evidence of the global flood? Sure, God flooded the world in such a way that all of the fossils would represent apparent geological time. He also modified the topology of the radioactive elements in the strata so their would be more heavily decayed radioactive isotopes the further back in the strata you reach. The strata would also be layered into distinct geological regions descending into the earth in an extremely uniform way to give the illusion that the layers of strata themselves formed over time from different materials in different atmospheric conditions.
If this is the case then God is the ultimate swindler, liar and fraud. If he did not want to make it seem as if these events happened in such a uniform and predictable manner over time then he would have simply have left the usual chaotic flood to disperse and fossilise the animals as you would expect from a flood scenario, by weight, surface area any buoyancy rather than tampering with his own natural laws. It would have made the existence of a global flood being responsible for such formations likely and expectable rather than his expecting that people believe other people who wrote a book that they claimed without proof was inspired by God outlining the details of the flood....
Just a repeat of what I said earlier in this thread:
God creates the universe and all that is in it and tells us (reveals to us) that He did it and provides enough specifics in history to determine approximately when this happened.
Man rejects what God says and determines that he can discover how the universe came to be without God's help.
Man comes up with an answer that contradicts what God says.
Man determines that he is correct and God is wrong.
Based on man's determination, man accuses God of dishonesty by deceiving us with His creation.
Isn't man brilliant...in his own mind?
(January 18, 2010 at 1:48 pm)theVOID Wrote: If your God manifested himself in nature in any way, such as answering prayers for example, then we would be able to measure a statistically significant correlation between praying to a particular god and positive outcome when compared to the control groups of an equal number of people praying to a different god as well as a group that did not pray at all.
Every single double blind clinical trial involving prayer ever conducted has shown absolutely no positive statistical trends compared to the control group.
This means either:
1) Your God does not answer prayers
2) You were praying to the wrong God
3) God chose not to answer the prayers
or
4) There is no God
This method could easily be used to establish the positive effect of prayer compared to the control groups, but thus far no results.
I thought truth claims in you world view were analyzed through the scientific method? So how did you come to the conclusion through the scientific method that your initial premise is true? (If your God manifested himself in nature in any way, such as answering prayers for example, then we would be able to measure a statistically significant correlation between praying to a particular god and positive outcome when compared to the control groups of an equal number of people praying to a different god as well as a group that did not pray at all.) The fact is, I reject you premise altogether and you have not provided the scientific evidence to support the premise from within your own world view.
(January 18, 2010 at 1:48 pm)theVOID Wrote: He is talking about the logical absolutes:
1) The law of identity : P = P, P ≠ ¬P (A car is a car, it is not a fish)
2) The law of non contradiction: ¬(P ^ ¬P) (A car is not not a car)
3) The law of excluded middle: P ∨ ¬P ("I am alive" is either true or false)
There is not a single instance of any imaginable reality anywhere, natural or supernatural, in which these laws will not be true.
I understood which laws Adrian was talking about. I just did not get the proof and you have not helped. You have merely made a statement that is unsupported in and of itself. So that is your alleged proof? That is no proof. Remember, this whole line of argumentation began when I said that all proofs go back to some unprovable premises. Adrian said I was wrong and cited the proof of the laws of logic. I have yet to see any proof or argumentation showing that I was wrong. Note, I am not trying to say that they are not true. I am merely saying that we take them as self-evident without any proof.
(January 18, 2010 at 1:48 pm)theVOID Wrote: It is logical proof, you cannot get around it, but i would love to see you try.
For example:
Green and Purple spotted comets exist.
It does not matter whether or not Green and purple spotted comets actually exist physically or not because we have defined them into existence as a concept, and since Concepts exist, Green and Purple spotted comets exist conceptually, the attributes being that of a comet that is coloured in green and purple spots.
I challenge you to find a single thing that does not meet these conditions (Hint, you can't, as soon as you think of it then it will at the very least exist as a concept).
Logical proof???? I thought all truth claims in your world view needed to be established with the scientific method. Even at that, you have not proven that “anything with an attribute exists in some form”…you merely take this as self-evident or definitional. This is not a proof.
Furthermore, I entirely reject your view that something exists just because you think about it. In other words, I think your conditions are ridiculous. You are equating the concept of something with that something. I do not think that is valid. There is quite a difference between the “concept of a perpetual motion machine” and “a perpetual motion machine”. The concept certainly exists (in someone’s mind) but the machine does not. Can you imagine what would happen if people talked like that? I say to man A, “A pool in my back yard exists.” He come over to visit and asks about the pool because he does not see one in my back yard. I say, “It does exist…as a concept in my mind.” You see, saying “A pool in my back yard exists.” is clearly saying something different than and more than “The concept of a pool in my back yard exists.” The former implies an actual pool whereas the latter implies just a concept.
(January 19, 2010 at 1:45 am)Xyster Wrote: One of the problems with the great flood that alot of people tend to over look.. Other than the lack of evidence or evidence to the contrary (fossil) you couldent possibly get thousands of years of sea bed fossils (in the case of the US midwest) due to a flood that supposidly lasted a year. But dont take my word for it do some real research and read up on articles from REAL geologist. But one of the big problems would be that if there was a huge flood all the water on this planet would be 1 large body of water.... Think about that for a second..........nothing comming to mind..... go buy an assortment of fresh water fish from any pet store ... now get a second tank fill it full of 90% sea water and about 10% fresh water.... now transfer the fish over to the second tank.. oh and pray real hard that they will live ...... granted the 10% fresh water would be a stretch but even with that NONE of the fresh water fish would survive.... So other than maybe salmon, nothing of fresh water speices would survive..
Fallacies:
True Scotsman Fallacy: “REAL geologists”
Argument from ignorance and/or argument from personal incredulity: The rest of your post.
Salt water is also denser than fresh water so that might be a key to the issue you raised. One large body of water does not necessarily mean that it is homogenous.
