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May 2, 2016 at 4:07 pm (This post was last modified: May 2, 2016 at 4:07 pm by Mister Agenda.)
Testimony is basically saying something is true. I suppose 'testimony of evidence' is someone saying it is true that there is evidence. Testimony is often acceptable because of Boolean logic: For example, I testify that it is true that I tied my shoes this morning. You'd almost have to be contrarian to reject this testimony out of hand because every part of it is plausible given the available information and the triviality of the claim. Unless I'm a very convincing bot, I exist. Most people have shoes, many shoes have laces, most people can tie their laces, and getting up in the morning, putting on your shoes, and tying your laces is a very common activity.
However, if I testified that after I tied my shoes, I went outside and flew over my house once by flapping my arms before returning gently to earth like a bird; you'd be a fool to believe me without a LOT of strong, verifiable evidence.
Thank you all for answering. Now, I see some problems. Let's say evidence is "that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof. "
I still have the question about which kind of evidence would be conclusive for you to believe the christian God is real. The main "problem" we have is the doctrine ex-nihilo, and the main question we have, how do we know God with our reason? (evidence affects reason), “what is the object of our reason?”, in other words, what is it that we are trying to know? In my opinion, the evidence we need is highly influenced by what we need to know, right?
Let’s start out with four objects: a rock, a man, an idea, and, finally, God. The second question is: “What do we mean by reason?” The Fathers, for example, distinguish between the discursive reason, or the theoria, and a more intuitive inelection which they called nous.
Let’s start with the first question and then we will combine it with the second. Obviously, there are significant differences between a rock, a man, an idea, and God.
A rock is a physical object. It takes up space and has certain properties that can be analyzed using scientific equipment. All of which is to say that a rock can be experienced empirically, using the physical senses, and that the experience can be quantified. (I assume the majority find this troubling since they want God to be known exactly as this rock is known).
A man is also a physical object in as much as he is also a physical body. The ancient Greeks disagreed, however, about whether there was anything more to man than his body. The Atomists and the Epicureans insisted that the soul was made out of matter, just like the body. The Platonists, on the other hand, believed that the soul was an immaterial and immortal form imprisoned in the body. The difference of opinion has persisted down to our own day, with the majority now firmly in the materialist camp. Many forms of psychology and all of the so-called social sciences presume that human life can be studied empirically and quantified.
Now to continue. An idea—let’s say the idea of beauty, for example—is quite different from a rock or a man in that it is not a physical thing. It is a mental concept. Plato, of course, believed that ideas are more real than physical things. Nominalists, on the other hand, believed that ideas are merely names, and that the only things that exist are particular things. Many ancient Greeks believed that beauty could be quantified—the Golden Ratio, for example. But this is because they also believed that numbers were real and that the cosmos was a fundamentally rational place.
Some modern psychologists have also argued that beauty can be quantified, but for different reasons. They argue that certain quantifiable, physical features—facial symmetry, for example—register in the brain as being more pleasing than others. There is, however, a disjunction here between all of these theories about what makes something appear beautiful to us and the phenomenal experience of beauty. Understanding the geometry of a beautiful painting or the mathematical complexity of something like Mozart’s Recordare might enhance my intellectual appreciation for the piece. But I seriously doubt that it adds much of anything to the actual experience. To dissect art is to lose the forest for the trees.
Modern man, by and large, believes that he can study and understand man and beauty the same way he studies a rock. That is, the scientific age is predicated upon one, fundamental assumption—that absolutely everything is quantifiable and therefore subject to the discursive reason.
This, of course, brings us to the problem of knowing God. The Orthodox tradition holds and has always held that God is not like a rock. Just as importantly, however, we also believe that God is not a human being at large, a sort of super-celestial ego. Mormons, by the way, believe that God used to be a human being and has a physical body. On the contrary, we believe that God is radically unlike anything else that exists. That is the point behind the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. This also means, however, that God is not an idea or like an idea. For Plato, the Good (that’s “good” with a capital “G”) was to the intelligible world what the sun is to our world—the source of all light and knowledge. For him, God is essentially the form of all forms.
But our God revealed himself to Moses, not as an idea, but as the great “I AM”, the God who delivered Israel from the bondage of Egypt and who was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. If this is the case, then how do we know God? Outside of Orthodoxy, there are four fundamental approaches.
-The first is that of the secular materialist who rejects the existence of an independent creator and, instead, interprets religion through psychology or the social sciences. Feuerbach argued that when we talk about God we are really just talking about ourselves, and most materialists would agree with that appraisal.
-The second approach is that of the pagan materialist who believes in a Higher Power, but one who is, nonetheless, very much a part of the physical cosmos. Mormonism would be an obvious example.
-The third is that of the religious Platonist who believes that, while God is not knowable through the physical senses, he is knowable through the use of human reason. This view is popular among some Catholics and Reformed thinkers.
-The fourth is that of the Pietist who believes that God can only be approached via some sort of personal experience which is usually emotionally charged. God is not so much known as felt. Most Charismatics would fall in this category.
The Orthodox approach to this issue is quite different, however, and this is because we not only insist on the absolute difference between creature and Creator, but also because we differentiate between different types of human intellection. The Greek word nous is usually translated as either “mind” or “intellect”. During the Patristic Period, however, the Fathers began to use the term in a specialized way, and they distinguished it from another word—theonia. They used theonia to refer specifically to what we would call the discursive reason. This is pretty much what we mean when we use the word “reason” or the verb “to think”. To put it as simply as possible, whenever we think in language, i.e., sentences, we are using the discursive reason or theonia.
Now some modern philosophers have argued that we cannot think at all except in some kind of language. In other words, all reason is discursive reason. Most of the ancients would not have agreed with that, however, and certainly the Fathers would not agree. They used the word nous to refer to the faculty of intuitive apperception.
In one sense, nous can be thought of as the faculty of attention. But when you are writing a check or reading a book, you are not simply doing the activity, you are aware of yourself doing the activity. Now sometimes we get so wrapped up in what we are doing, so focused, that we tune out everything around us.
In those rare cases, our nous is focused completely on the task at hand. At other times we find ourselves distracted. I have, for example, went miles at car while thinking about something else. And I’m sure you have driven somewhere only to arrive and not remember a thing about your journey. This scattering of attention is a product of the Fall. Not only is the nous scattered, however, it is also disjoined from the core of our very self which the Fathers call “the heart”.
I must stress at this point that in biblical anthropology the “heart” is not the seat of the emotions. Those are located in the “bowels”. The “heart”, rather, is the psychosomatic center of man. When moderns talk about heart and head, they usually mean the emotions and the intellect. But when the Fathers talk about the separation of the heart from the mind, they mean that the nous has somehow become stuck in the discursive reason, i.e., the brain.
This is why the Fathers talk about the nous descending into the heart. They do not mean that we need to get in touch with our emotions. They mean that our attention needs to be drawn back inward to the core of our being where Christ dwells through the Holy Spirit.
God is not a rock. We cannot put him in a test tube. Nor is God an idea like an isosceles triangle. We cannot figure him out. God is not like a human being either, and yet God created us in his own image that we might know him. More to the point, he has revealed himself to us most fully as a man, the God-man Jesus Christ. The discursive reason is all very fine. God gave it to us after all. But it has its limits. The road to Zion is in our hearts, and if we are to find that road, we must cultivate the nous and direct it inward. That is what the ascetical life of the Church is all about. In this regard, by the way, I highly recommend the works of Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos.
Nice wall of word salad. Something you missed however. If your gawd, no matter how far outside reality you wish to attempt to place it, can interact with our reality, there will be evidence of that interaction. No one has ever been able to present any.
Thief and assassin for hire. Member in good standing of the Rogues Guild.
(May 2, 2016 at 5:00 am)Wryetui Wrote: I still have the question about which kind of evidence would be conclusive for you to believe the christian God is real. The main "problem" we have is the doctrine ex-nihilo, and the main question we have, how do we know God with our reason? (evidence affects reason), “what is the object of our reason?”, in other words, what is it that we are trying to know? In my opinion, the evidence we need is highly influenced by what we need to know, right?
The point of evidence is to distinguish between those ideas which represent objective reality and those which do not.
This is the most foundational principle of evidence: that it must prove to disbelievers that they are wrong, and that they should therefore change their ideas about reality.
Your feelings or philosophical arguments do NOT do that. The religious evidence we have available is that there are many religions, and that their proponents also have special feelings, faith, and philosophical explanations. The common denominator therefore is not God, but human feelings. Your tendency to use reports of special feeling as proof of God therefore fails in a pretty fundamental way.
Quote:God is not a rock. We cannot put him in a test tube. Nor is God an idea like an isosceles triangle. We cannot figure him out. God is not like a human being either, and yet God created us in his own image that we might know him. More to the point, he has revealed himself to us most fully as a man, the God-man Jesus Christ. The discursive reason is all very fine. God gave it to us after all. But it has its limits. The road to Zion is in our hearts, and if we are to find that road, we must cultivate the nous and direct it inward. That is what the ascetical life of the Church is all about. In this regard, by the way, I highly recommend the works of Metropolitan Hierotheos Vlachos.
Sounds like Buddhism or Hinduism to me, but with a different fairy tale to think about while preparing and endeavoring to do nothing with life.
I have listened and witnessed that, when debating about God, the main questions that is present within the atheist party is that they do not believe in God because there is no evidence for Him. I am interested but also confused, because I need to understand what "evidence" really means, certainly what for some people is enough "evidence" for others is not even close to that, so, my questions are:
1. What does the word "evidence" mean?
2. What kind of said evidence would be necessary for you to actually believe there is a God?
1. Evidence is a demonstrable observation or fact that leads to a particular conclusion.
2. That's going to vary quite a bit from person to person. The right word from the right individual might do it for some. 'I am real--God' spelled out in galaxies would probably do the trick for most skeptics. Probably most of us fall somewhere in between. For me, one supernatural thing would be enough to send me back to the drawing board, it wouldn't prove God, but it would prove that something supernatural is possible.
Fact = There is a world in which I live. I live in this world and I have relations with this world and its other creatures. I see them and I see that they are ordered. Their behavior is ordered, no matter if they are animal or plants, this is facts, right? I conclude that this order has to come from somewhere, and since order can only bee seen by intelligent minds, there has to be a superior intelligent mind that put this order where it is now, this is my conclusion. Why is it wrong?
"Let us commit ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ, our God"
- Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom
(May 2, 2016 at 8:06 am)Wryetui Wrote: Why they contradict everything we know about nature? In order for me to believe you, you cannot just make an empty statement.
By "everything we know about nature," I mean, we have a general and even detailed understanding of physics to know that many of the miracles in the Bible, if they actually occurred, would be a violation of the natural order that is both well documented and available to anyone for subsequent observation.
Furthermore, there is no shortage of examples involving human beings making incredible, unbelievable claims, and countless others who are willing to believe them. As these often appeal to mutually exclusive occult powers, they can't all be true. As some are quite clearly false, and not a single one in the Bible is able to distinguish itself as categorically superior in rationale or evidence as the most fanciful, it's more likely that they all share a similar, less extravagant, and less "mysterious" explanation: people are ignorant of true causes, or dishonest.
I am glad someone actually tries to debate with me, instead of doing just pure unbased mockery.
"Would be a violation of the natural order". I do not find this correct. Miracles are supernatural works from God. By stating that miracles cannot exist because they "would be a violation of the natural order" you are stating that God is subject to the very nature He created, and this is incorrect. God is the Creator of nature and is not subject to it because the nature was created ex-nihilo, and God can do everything He wants with His creation. What we today call "natural order" is the behavior we observed that occurs in nature, and nature is subject to nature. It would be a contradiction if in the Bible were stated that a man worked miracles by His own powers alone, which is not possible, because all miracles came from God, either directly or with intermedieris that were mere "tools". After all, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." (Matthew 19:26)
"Let us commit ourselves and one another and our whole life to Christ, our God"
- Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom
Mister Agenda Wrote:1. Evidence is a demonstrable observation or fact that leads to a particular conclusion.
2. That's going to vary quite a bit from person to person. The right word from the right individual might do it for some. 'I am real--God' spelled out in galaxies would probably do the trick for most skeptics. Probably most of us fall somewhere in between. For me, one supernatural thing would be enough to send me back to the drawing board, it wouldn't prove God, but it would prove that something supernatural is possible.
Fact = There is a world in which I live. I live in this world and I have relations with this world and its other creatures. I see them and I see that they are ordered. Their behavior is ordered, no matter if they are animal or plants, this is facts, right? I conclude that this order has to come from somewhere, and since order can only bee seen by intelligent minds, there has to be a superior intelligent mind that put this order where it is now, this is my conclusion. Why is it wrong?
Those are facts, correct. Nothing that you said after that are justified conclusions deriving from those facts.
The only way a completely orderless universe could exist would be by the intervention of an immensely powerful entity, because complete lack of order is an order in itself; truly chaotic systems always contain some degree of order. Order observably comes from chaos. And I will point out that there seems to be a LOT of disorder mixed in with the order you observe; why would there be any disorder at all in a handcrafted world?
It does take a mind to recognize that 'order is orderly'. It does not follow that a mind is required for order to exist; though I think one could make a case that a mind would be necessary for no order at all to exist. If there were no humans to observe how orderly their world is, it would still be orderly. A tree that falls in the woods with no one to hear still causes vibrations in the air.
To me, your reasoning seems to be going:
A. Facts.
B. I feel like order has to come from somewhere and the only kind of somewhere it can come from is a superior mind.
C. Therefore, Superior mind.
B is your feelings and intuitions. Your feelings are not evidence of anything outside your head. Reality is under no obligation to conform to your expectations. Even if it was sound to base your conclusion off B, the set of possible minds that could be proposed that satisfy C is potentially infinite, and all but one of those possibilities must be wrong. If you're trying to get to God, you would still need to show why your choice is the true one. The odds of you being right by chance approach zero very closely.
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