Theists, are you immune to being decieved?

[Statler Waldorf]

Every now and then, I need to reset this mega-quote post with you.

No problem!

No, that's not it... could you keep the quote from two posts ago, like I do. Just to keep track of the conversation without having to scroll up to that post... our posts do tend to be huge, so it's a bit of a pain to look through them to find what we want.

You’re asking me to change my style? Well only because I like you.

Let me use your same analogy because I like it. Now what if I told you 100 years ago that the Sun was 5,778K and when you asked me how I knew that I told you that He who made the Sun, knows everything, and cannot lie told everyone that was the answer. Would you still have reason to doubt my answer was correct?

Of course I'd doubt that!
How did you meet this... person?
How do you know "he" knows everything?

How do you know "he" cannot lie?
"He" told everyone? Then why was that information unavailable before you said it?

I have not met him. He has to know everything and cannot be able to lie in order for us to know anything. His revelation is readily available to anyone who wants to read it.

Sure, there are certain things that must be assumed to be true before we can learn anything about our exterior world. A few examples would be: regularity (past, present, and future) in Natural laws, Universal laws of deduction, the reliability of one’s own memory, and the reliability of one’s own senses. In a universe created by the Christian God not only can we assume that all of these things are true but this assumption also makes perfect sense because these things would be true in any such universe. Now, contrast that with a purely material and unguided universe and we have problems. Yes, we have to assume these things are true, but it really is very unlikely that they would be true in such a universe. This is why the act of denying God’s existence actually undermines our ability to know anything for certain.

"unlikely"? are you going for the fine tuning argument?

Not exactly.

You don't know that an "unguided" universe would run into such problems...

It’s not up to me to know this, it’s up to those who espouse such a universe exists to account for how such regularities could exist in such a universe. Thus far, no one has done so.

And "the reliability of one's memory and senses"? really? I've never been under the influence of mind altering chemicals, but I hear they can mess up both those abilities... and then some more... and some people have trouble with them without resorting to such chemicals.

Without living in a Christian universe there really is no reason to assume our senses and memory are reliable.

No, it’s not the same god, they have different attributes. Allah transcends logic and therefore is not required to behave logically, Yahweh behaves logically because it derives from His character and so on.

Well, I've seen christians who claim their god transcends logic, too...
That just makes the god you claim to exist not to be exactly the christian god... it's your christian god.

Asserting that Yahweh transcends logic is not a Biblically supported position so such Christians have adopted an anti-Biblical concept of God (one more akin to Allah). I am aware of no Christian doctrine that argues that God transcends logic.

No, the question about why god chose to use scripture in the first place. The same medium that allah chose... the same medium that shiva chose... the same medium that Ra&co. chose... writing by human hands.
It's almost like they are all equally man-made...

That seems to be a bit of a non-sequitur. What medium would you expect God to use? Gold plates that nobody else ever saw?

So anyone who has written about a god is automatically delusional? That seems rather unfair.

Well, delusional is a bit much... but such wording has been used in the literature...
I'd go with biased, indoctrinated, ignorant... willingly erroneous.

I know some pretty sharp free-thinking Christians; this all seems to be a convenient over simplification.

The first people who came up with the story must have indeed been delusional.. the ones that follow it are just indoctrinated, or "experience" something they ignorantly fail to attribute to brain function... then there are those that build up on the original story... those would also be delusional. There are way too many people who suffer from such pathologies and can, for the most part, lead a completely normal life.

Or they really saw what they said they saw. That seems to be a far more simple explanation than everyone in the world was crazy but only when it came to religion.

I do not see how that is relevant.

The god that requires belief fails to communicate with the majority of the world's population? fully relevant!
Oh... but all other gods also require belief... it's almost like they are all the same thing... the same man-made thing...

Man is incapable of such belief without God giving Him grace, and he does not deserve such grace in the first place so whether or not everyone receives the story is irrelevant. You also seem to be trying to argue against the existence of the genuine by pointing to the existence of the counterfeit.

I think this could all be used to reject any belief that a person did not want to believe. I do not see how that makes such a rejection rational.

All god ever described by man are equally guilty of this, yes...
Sorry Stat, I disbelieve all gods equally, so I tend to lump them all in the same bag.... the bag of man-made myth.

Why would someone make up a god that did not allow him to do the things he so desperately wants to do? That makes no sense at all.

Well knowledge is usually defined as justified belief, and it seems I have justification for those beliefs.

yeah... but your justification is not convincing... perhaps it is to you, but it should be to the nobel prize committee

The merit of an argument is not determined by its ability to convince, people are convinced by poor arguments all the time and not convinced by rational arguments all the time. The same Nobel organization who gave Barack “Drone” Obama the Peace prize?

Then all knowledge would be impossible.

LOL.
I know my nick is pocaracas. I also know quite a lot of other things which don't require me to believe in something prior to knowing them.

That’s like saying, “I do not even believe in air and I live just fine!”

I did not say you have to believe God exists to know anything, I said that He has to exist in order for you to know anything.

It’s hardly a child-friendly story now is it?

Some bits are more like "law of the land"... man-made law. So those bits would be directed at adults... the rest.. meh.

I think it’s the most complex and sophisticated piece of work ever written.

And how do you know that they indeed took those steps? Eventually you’re going to have to just take their word for it.

Yes, I take their word for it... And I'm also fully aware that I too can take those steps and arrive at the same information.

How do you know this? I’ve never sequenced a Human genome before.

Now, your story... many people have taken the same steps and arrived at nothing...
Many people follow a different story and arrive at something that's written in that other book... how does that work?!

People are fallible.

I am unaware of any such fallacy, does it have a name?

Many names... allow me to quote something apo (rasetsu) once posted

Ok…

From Wikipedia, a list of over 150 common mental 'flaws' that you may have as a result of being human.

Where is the one you were describing?

Well for one you never even mentioned regularities so I am not following how it explains those. Secondly, how do you know any of this? What’s your source of revelation? How does this account for future regularity? Lastly, it does not seem like this explanation can explain our moral imperatives.

How do I know any of this, indeed...
What's my source of the information, indeed...

So you are admitting it falls short of the Biblical conceptual scheme?

What ensures that the strings remain regular?

They just do. (that's a period)

So string theories cannot account for natural regularities then. They merely shift the question to something else material behaving regular for no apparent reason.

I am not following that. I also do not believe people reason this way at all.

A: “How did you get to my house?”
B: “I drove.”
A: “I did not see you drive up.”
B: “Well I did.”
A: “Well there are many possible ways you could have gotten here, and yet only one correct way therefore it is far more likely that you did not actually drive here therefore I do not believe you and you are a liar.”
B: “I am driving back to work now and taking the pizza you ordered with me sir.”

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, remember that?

Really? How do you determine if something is extraordinary and what is extraordinary evidence?

Well my old friend, I am going to be MIA for a bit, I have to have surgery next week. Until we meet again! Take care.

-SW