Theists, are you immune to being decieved?

[pocaracas]

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.

Read it?... you mean the bible?
How can we know that this book is "his revelation", instead of just one more man-made myth?

"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.

So, then... god of the gaps.
1000 years ago, people didn't have a clue about lightning.
"How do you account for lightning?" - viking-Stat would ask, knowing all too well I couldn't account for it, so viking-Stat would say - "Thor makes it with his mighty hammer... thunder too!"

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.

There were humans before your christ boy came along... you know? Did they need to believe in christ to rely on their senses?
But this is not what you're saying, is it?
My senses are reliable, because their inner workings are reliable and all electrons work in the same way, regularly.... am I right? And this regularity comes from.... tadaaaaa..... thor... ooops, sorry, god.... the christian god and none other of those man-made myths can account for it, am I right?
I can say it... but it makes as much sense as thor being responsible for lightning.

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.

I think I recall a thread on this forum where that was argued by some member...

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?

Errr.... immortal person imparting his immortal wisdom on mankind, continuously?...
That's one way... Doesn't seem impossible for magic-boy...

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.

Of course... it's a generalization. Each individual has his or her own history, his or her own reason to believe. Most do fall on the categories I listed.

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.

Then I'd have to accept other similar accounts, the vedas, the torah, the qur'an, etc...
That seems unreasonable, then it's because it is.

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.

When the genuine hasn't been attested to be genuine, it must be bundled with the counterfeit.
Is there any genuine item at all in here?

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.

Control over the (gullible) people, duh!

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?

pot, kettle, black... you know this story, don't you?

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.

You still haven't supplied the reasoning behind that...
Yes, I know "regularity" in the observed universe... you claim it must come from god. But how does that work?

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.

Muslims say the same thing about the qur'an...
I say the same thing about the Lusíadas...
Some people say the same about the Lord of the Rings collection...

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.

Try reading the paper.

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.

Apply that to yourself

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

Ok…

Where is the one you were describing?

I wasn't describing just one...
Any one person suffers from, at least, a few of these.
And I was talking about fallacies that arise in the human brain. Everyone has them, but not everyone has the same ones, so the best method to arrive at some honest result is by trying to remove all of them from the methodology.
Your version, however, relies on some of them being there...

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?

No, I was hoping you'd get the hint to ask the same questions regarding your story.

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.

And your answer merely shifts the burden to a god... how do you account for the regularity of this god?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, remember that?

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

Extraordinary account/claim: an account of an event which is not ordinary, normal, common, or otherwise easily explained using the known physical processes.

Extraordinary evidence: evidence which is not accounted for by known physical processes.

Shall I provide an example from elsewhere in this reply?
Immortal person imparting his immortal wisdom on mankind.

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

Surgery is always a tricky thing. I hope all goes well and you're back on your feet as soon as possible!