Evidence for God from Science

Kureiuo wrote:So this means the commandments were derived from an independ[e]nt standard of good. They aren't foundational in and of themselves. The values we recognise within us as good I'd say are foundational, and such values are rooted in God's character.

Can you clear up what you mean here: the independent standard of good: merely revealed to us by God, or created by God?

If created by God, then in what way is it independent?

If merely revealed by God, then who created it, and what special status does Christianity have in accessing, propagating and adjudicating this moral code?

Ray

Blind Electric Ray wrote:

Kureiuo wrote:So this means the commandments were derived from an independ[e]nt standard of good. They aren't foundational in and of themselves. The values we recognise within us as good I'd say are foundational, and such values are rooted in God's character.

Can you clear up what you mean here: the independent standard of good: merely revealed to us by God, or created by God?

If created by God, then in what way is it independent?

If merely revealed by God, then who created it, and what special status does Christianity have in accessing, propagating and adjudicating this moral code?

Ray

To aid explaining allow me to explain what I think "good" is. Firstly, I do not think "good" is created by anyone including God. I think "good" is a property of who God is, therefore it can be said that God "is good" not simply because He would do good, but because He literally is good.

So I would argue that the ten commandments are derived from the standard of good that exists within God. This good that exists within God's nature, is independent from anything else and uncreated. The ten commandments are derived from this standard of good, and so are secondary developments. What I believe to be objective, would be the good that exists within God, not the secondary developments of moral laws which can be relative to certain people or given situation.

Now this objective good does not necessarily have to be drawn from the Bible (for how could people without a Bible therefore be found guilty of wrongs if they don't know what good is?). I believe, as Genesis says, that we were created in God's image. Thus, I believe God imparted to us a sense of His own standard of good. I also find it a significant point that animals coincidentally lack a sense of good and bad. That is not to say animals can't learn good behaviour from humans, but whether or not they actually understand something is good apart from what they've been taught by us humans is perhaps something we can't ask them. As everyone acknowledges a standard of good in their every day living, I think it appropriate to deduct that "good" is an objective standard rooted in God.

Kurieuo.

Hey BEC,

Reading through this post, I think the answers so far have been very adequate. Still, (perhaps I simply missed it?), I think we need to focus just a bit more on the character of God.

God is, first and foremost, Holy. In other words, He is totally and completely without sin, so much so, in fact, that sin is defined as that which goes against the nature of God. As K pointed out, when we say "God is good," we often do not realize the depth of that statement. I have often thought that it is better said, "Good is what God is." I hope that subtle difference is clear enough.

Now, under this idea, then we see, along with Lewis, that God is either "the great safety net" or "the great terror." Try to imagine perfect goodness. Before it, you would be completely and utterly exposed. For the first time, perhaps, you would see just how "now good" you really are!

The problem here is that God cannot permanently associate Himself with sin. Again, this has been pointed out--in doing so He would be, in a true sense, going against Himself. He would no longer be separate from sin (being, now, in everlasting relationship to it), and as such, He would render Himself unholy. However, an unholy God is not God, so we have a problem on our hands: above us is a perfect God, and precisely because of that perfection, we cannot be in relationship with Him.

Enter salvation: the obvious result of the above situation is separation from God. If, then, there is any hope to be in any kind of positive relationship with Him, then we must be perfected. We cannot do it ourselves. He must. At this point, it gets complicated, but it can be condensed as follows:

1) God is life.
2) Death is separation from life.
3) Thus, death is separation from God.
4) Imperfection (sin) must be separated from God.
5) Thus, sin must suffer death.
6) Jesus Christ died, though He never sinned.
7) Thus, God may consider sin dead in Christ.
Thus, God may consider our sins dead in Christ.
9) Jesus Christ was resurrected from the dead.
10) Thus, for those whose sins are dead in Christ (that is, they "die in Christ"), they may rise with Him eternally glorified.
11) In this perfection, they may be in perfect, eternal relationship with God.

There is a lot going on in the above, and each statement could support pages of explanation, but I hope that each is simple enough that you can see the procession of thought. Someone has to die for your sins. The question is, who will it be? If you die, then, you pay your own penalty. You are separated from God. God, because He loves you, allowed His Son to be separated from Him. In this way, God may choose to consider your sin dead in His Son, so that in His Son's death you die, but also in His Son's resurrection you live.

Anyway, that's my two cents worth. If you are interested in the subject enough to continue persuing it, I'd recommend going to any good library or Christian bookstore and either picking up a book specifically on the doctrine of salvtion ("soteriology," to use the technical term), or a basic work on systematic theology. Charles Ryrie has a good one entitles Basic Theology. In all such books there are sections pertaining to the saving work of Christ.

God bless

note: my browser is blocking pop-ups, so at the moment, I can't run the spell check. Sorry in advance for anything missed.

Team
Thanks for your answers. I'm afraid the impression I get it that you guys aren't really sure either, and a ton of sophistries have grown up to explain it in convincingly grave tones so that the faithful take it as read and don't question it any further.

All this "god is love" business totally misses the point:

Say you stole five bucks from me. You want to be forgiven. So I say I'll forgive you, by throwing a rock through my own window.

How on earth (er... as opposed to heaven) does that work?

Note that I don't - for now - subscribe to what seems to be the gating premise to your arguments, on the whole, that there's a Christian God and the Bible is his divine word, so intricately circular arguments based on the scriptures aren't going to help answer my question.

I think I will have to remain perplexed about this.

Blind Electric Ray wrote:Thanks for your answers. I'm afraid the impression I get it that you guys aren't really sure either, and a ton of sophistries have grown up to explain it in convincingly grave tones so that the faithful take it as read and don't question it any further.

I'm not sure I really understand what you mean about not being really sure. I'm as sure of my answers as can be, yet if I weren't how does this make a difference to what was said? I'm not really sure I understand what it is you think has been dodged or whatever....

Ray wrote:Say you stole five bucks from me. You want to be forgiven. So I say I'll forgive you, by throwing a rock through my own window.

How on earth (er... as opposed to heaven) does that work?

Well if I didn't want to be forgiven, then there is a gap in our relationship right? So it makes sense to me that you would set a payment you'd find satisfying seeing as you were the one wronged, and so its up to you to do the forgiving if you want to. Even if it be something seemingly foolish as throwing a rock through your window which you want as payment. Infact I think 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 is perhaps appropriate here, which basically says people will find the cross foolish, but God still chose the foolishness of the cross as a way to save those who believe.

Yet, I don't think your analogy is at all equivilant to Christ's dying for us. Perhaps if in some sense you tweaked it so that it is "impossible" for you to be with a person who has stolen unless they become a new person. Since we damaged the relationship, if we want to have a relationship with you, then the fix has to come from you. You might say we should go into a rehab for compulsive thiefs, after which you might accept us as a new person upon approval by the coordinator that we successfully completed the program. This analogy though is being quite stretched out. Within Christianity, we say that Christ is a mediator in our relationship with God. Without Christ, God would always see us as our old sinful self, but with Christ we are seen as spotless. Why that way? Why rehab, why throw a rock? What makes there any obligation to forgive anyway? "Why" questions can be infinitely asked can't they. Yet at some point a line is drawn and we say, I can't explain this any further, but here I stand. Perhaps we aren't going back far enough with your why questions, even if all your questions have been answered as I believe. But here I stand and I am ultimately satisfied with all the previous responses.

Ray wrote:Note that I don't - for now - subscribe to what seems to be the gating premise to your arguments, on the whole, that there's a Christian God and the Bible is his divine word, so intricately circular arguments based on the scriptures aren't going to help answer my question.

Actually, I thought our responses weren't necessarily based on Scripture, but more on Christianity. Even if we involved Scripture in our responses; if you're going to ask a question such as you're asking about Christianity, then you're going to get a Christian response. What else could be expected? So I'm inclined to see your claims of circularity either as a setup, or you simply do not know how to respond to what has been written. In either case, I'll leave it up to the readers to make their own decisions on whether or not our explanations are satisfying.

Ray wrote:I think I will have to remain perplexed about this.

I think you may. You may find our reponses unsatisfying, but it seems to make total sense to me... Perhaps this is like how I see design everywhere in the world, whereas you see randomness and chance. Maybe it is prejudices towards our own particular worldview which makes us see things in such opposite ways? Unless of course, you claim to have total clarity absent of any influences... in which case maybe we should all be depending upon you as an enlightened one?

Kurieuo.

K wrote:people will find the cross foolish, but God still chose the foolishness of the cross as a way to save those who believe

That's the nub of it. To you, that's a reason to believe. To me, that's the oldest confidence trick in the book.

I'm not sure what this has to do with why I believe in Christ... I only see that you put up some sort of objections enveloped as questions seeking a Christian response. Perhaps this is something of an issue for you that hinges you towards disbelief, but I fail to see how it can provide any real reason for belief or non-belief.

Kurieuo.

PS. To be more clear about something, I do not find the cross foolish... I simply meant that some people would, particularly those antithetical towards Christianity. And this is perhaps part of your problem here. You think it foolish and so you think it a reason not to believe, whereas we don't think it foolish and I don't think anything really of it when it comes towards belief.

Blind Electric Ray wrote:

K wrote:people will find the cross foolish, but God still chose the foolishness of the cross as a way to save those who believe

That's the nub of it. To you, that's a reason to believe. To me, that's the oldest confidence trick in the book.

Sometimes building confidence is the point of the "trick" and so is better regarded more of a tool than a trick.
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Bavarian Wheels wrote:building confidence is the point of the "trick" and so is better regarded more of a tool than a trick.

That depends from whose perspective you look. Engendering confidence is a tool of the trickster. Having (misplaced) confidence is the folly of the tricked. The argument Kurieuo (Kurieuo, why is your handle so damn hard to spell, by the way?) refers to from Corinthians is one which engenders misplaced confidence. It's a have, and a pretty obvious one at that.

Compare these two statements:

Only those who believe in God will see the kingdom of heaven; those who do "find the cross foolish" will not see it at all.

Only those who are intelligent and tasteful will appreciate the quality of this cloth; those who are too stupid and incompetent to appreciate its quality will not see it at all.

I hope you recognise the first statement as a paraphrase of the argument from Corinthians; the second is of course a paraphrase of the Emperor's New Clothes (by Hans Christian Andersen)

Their logical content is identical. Why since one is clearly a con, why are you not suspicious of the other?

Kurieuo wrote:I do not find the cross foolish... I simply meant that some people would, particularly those antithetical towards Christianity. And this is perhaps part of your problem here."

I didn't mean to imply that belief in the cross was foolish, and I apologise if I induced that inference from you. I think I may have been too epimagrammatic by half. My point went to the logic of the statement, not its content.

Kurieuo wrote:Perhaps this is like how I see design everywhere in the world, whereas you see randomness and chance.

If you equate the observations I've made about algorithmic development as being allegations of randomness and chance, I'm afraid you've seriously misunderstood a lot of my posts. I don't think I have ever used either expression, as a matter of fact. I have an extant post on the subject which hasn't been responded to for a couple of weeks. To the extent this is an attack on evolutionary theory (which I have been at pains not to bring up myself, by the way), there is a fascinating and entirely compelling discussion in Dan Dennett's terrific book "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" of how evolution proceeds through design space which explains the limited role of chance and randomness in evolution: it's too complicated to go into here, but suffice to say that Evolution tends to operate against random chance. It's survival of the fittest, not the survival of the flukiest. The more a reproduction deviates from the (ipso facto fit) parent, the less chance it has itself of being fit for survival.

Anyhow, I don't want to get into Evolution, since I have promised only to query Christian views, not pose counter views, but in this case you did start it.

Ray

Actually, BER, if I may comment on the "circular reasoning" again . . .

John Frame differentiates between two types of circular arguments: those that are narrowly circular and those that are broadly circular (see Apologetics for the Glory of God or The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God). When we accuse someone of having a circular argument, we usually mean it in the first sense, for example:

1) The Bible is God's word to man.
2) The Bible says God exists.
3) Therefore, God exists.

This, of course, is ridiculously circular. This would be a narrowly circular argument. However, a broadly circular argument is one that assumes the truths of its "gating premises," as you put it. The Christian assumes Christianity as true, and therefore, he views the world that way. The philosophical materialist assumes that there is nothing "supernatural," and thus, he views the world that way. The empiricist must trust the presupposition that his logic and mind actually work like he thinks they do and that his senses aren't lying to him. Assuming this, he rightly proves they are (via testing and confirmation of later theories). Even the skeptic must be skeptical of his own skepticism!

Now, in this sense, we see that all arguments are, in some way, circular, but broadly so. You come at the world with a set of presuppositions . . . I exist, the world exists something like I perceive it does, God does or doesn't exist, my memory usually tells the truth, etc. Using these assumptions, we shape our world view. Naturally, if you change any of these underlying assumptions, your world view will be drastically changed as well! So, the "truth" of your world view (which certainly seeks to support or defend such positions as the existence of God, the self, the rationale of the human mind, etc.), is actually, in some way, based on your own assumptions. Thus, all positions are broadly circular.

Here's the thing, though. There is nothing wrong with that. It is the way we communicate. If every single person agreed on every single presupposition they could, then everyone would inevitably come to the same conclusions about everything. As we don't all come to the same conclusions, it is obvious that we disagree on some presuppositions. So, what do we do? We test our world views to see if they are coherent and match up with "reality," but how? As we ourselves see it. And THERE is the rub. Somewhere, if anyone is to get anywhere, someone must admit that a basic presupposition of theirs is wrong, which people rarely do. That, of course, doesn't make communication impossible. It's the way we've been doing things for thousands of years. Some things are easy to decide on--the lesser issues of life, so to speak. Some, though, are much harder . . . those "larger than life" questions that we can't get directly at.

So, I'd argue that our answers are NOT circular in the narrow sense, but are circular in the broad sense--just as circular as your own arguments are/would be. That is, we base our arguments on how we currently understand things. That is why it is so important for you to accept, for the time being, our presuppositions so that you can adequately judge our conclusions as right or wrong. If you take our arguments on their own terms and find them to satisfactorily answer a question that your own arguments on their own terms cannot, then it is a possibility you may want to consider changing your own presuppositions. If, though, our arguments ON OUR OWN TERMS do not adequately deal with a given problem, you can certainly move on. In any case, it is of the utmost importance that you don't try our arguments on your presuppositions. They simply will come out to be, rightly so, faulty.

God bless

Blind Electric Ray wrote:

Bavarian Wheels wrote:building confidence is the point of the "trick" and so is better regarded more of a tool than a trick.

That depends from whose perspective you look. Engendering confidence is a tool of the trickster. Having (misplaced) confidence is the folly of the tricked. The argument Kurieuo (Kurieuo, why is your handle so damn hard to spell, by the way?) refers to from Corinthians is one which engenders misplaced confidence. It's a have, and a pretty obvious one at that.

Now I'm not sure what to make of this. If you're going to imply I'm being deceptive and using tricks for an argument I don't even think is relevant towards belief or non-belief (although it seems you do think is relevent as stated in my previous message), then please explain how I'm employing a trick and what the purpose of such a trick would be? I am just totally at a loss for what you're going on about.

Ray wrote:Compare these two statements:

Only those who believe in God will see the kingdom of heaven; those who do "find the cross foolish" will not see it at all.

Only those who are intelligent and tasteful will appreciate the quality of this cloth; those who are too stupid and incompetent to appreciate its quality will not see it at all.

I hope you recognise the first statement as a paraphrase of the argument from Corinthians; the second is of course a paraphrase of the Emperor's New Clothes (by Hans Christian Andersen)

Their logical content is identical. Why since one is clearly a con, why are you not suspicious of the other?

This doesn't help matters in working out where a trick lies, nor explain what the purpose of such a trick would be (usually tricks have purposes I'd think). To go over the beginnings of this thread you simply wanted an explanation for how Jesus' dying for our sins, would be required and absolve our sins. And multiple explanations were provided, but an explanation does not equal an argument. As for your above cases, I see that both consist of two statements side-by-side; however, the later is a lot more loaded with implications and appears to be an ad hominem (i.e., makes use of insults which have bearing on the claim).

Ray wrote:

Kurieuo wrote:I do not find the cross foolish... I simply meant that some people would, particularly those antithetical towards Christianity. And this is perhaps part of your problem here."

I didn't mean to imply that belief in the cross was foolish, and I apologise if I induced that inference from you. I think I may have been too epimagrammatic by half. My point went to the logic of the statement, not its content.

Maybe not "belief" in the cross as foolish, but surely you do think the cross foolish? Otherwise what were you driving at in your posts until now. I did not take insult to this however, as Paul even expects it in his Corinthians. The logic of my words quoted above for me appear to be stating the obvious which stated in other words: Some find the cross foolishness, others find in such foolishness hope with God. Surely you can't disagree with this statement? If there's some trick about it, then I think the tricks on me as I can't see anything tricky about it.

Ray wrote:

Kurieuo wrote:Perhaps this is like how I see design everywhere in the world, whereas you see randomness and chance.

If you equate the observations I've made about algorithmic development as being allegations of randomness and chance, I'm afraid you've seriously misunderstood a lot of my posts.

If one looks up the word "design", one will see it implies a mind. If one takes a physicalist approach to creation, such as through evolutionary forces, then all you can have is randomness and chance. You may believe some sort of structure developed, but the one thing you certainly can't say is that we are designed. Design is a word associated with a personal rational being. You can't have your cake (i.e., that there is no designer), then eat it too. Either physicalism brought about things, or there is a designer who did.

Ray wrote:To the extent this is an attack on evolutionary theory (which I have been at pains not to bring up myself, by the way),

I was simply making a statement, not trying to devise an attack--I think you really do analyse my words too much.

Ray wrote:there is a fascinating and entirely compelling discussion in Dan Dennett's terrific book "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" of how evolution proceeds through design space which explains the limited role of chance and randomness in evolution: it's too complicated to go into here, but suffice to say that Evolution tends to operate against random chance. It's survival of the fittest, not the survival of the flukiest. The more a reproduction deviates from the (ipso facto fit) parent, the less chance it has itself of being fit for survival.

I understand what you mean, and I haven't ignored natural selection, yet you can't call this design, unless you personalise Natural Selection. In addition, how did the laws that be come about? According to a physicalist approach, wouldn't it have been in random fluctations during the very beginning point our world? What you appear to be saying is that some things happen out of necessity due to the structure that randomly developed (i.e., it's still random chance). Surely if our world began in random fluctuations, then everything could have been otherwise?

I also don't intend to generate an argument, but you did bring up tricks previously, and it think you should at least be aware of the circularity associated with "survival of the fittest"? This is no trick of my own mind--many recognise it as such.

Anyway this is way off-topic, so perhaps we should try to stick with it a bit more.

Kurieuo.

Guys - I've done you a disservice in that I've tried (poorly) to summarise your arguments and reject them in one fell swoop, and they clearly need more attention than that.

I'm busy at the moment, but will try to reply in a more considered fashion to the points you've raised at the weekend.

Kureiuo - I agree we're getting somewhat off topic - all though there is fertile ground for discussion in the areas we've moved to. Should I start another thread on that?

Ray

Blind Electric Ray wrote:Kureiuo - I agree we're getting somewhat off topic - all though there is fertile ground for discussion in the areas we've moved to. Should I start another thread on that?

I'm not really interested in discussing or debating this off-topic topic further, but if you want to PM me to pick my brains on any things I stated feel free to do so. I don't mean that in a nasty or rejecting way, the topic really just doesn't do it for me as something to discuss beyond passing comments.

Kurieuo.

let's call it quits. This isn't getting anyone anywhere. I get the sense you're all getting sick of it, and to be honest I am too. You'll all probably be be relived to hear I think I'm pretty much done with this board.

Here's a parting thought for you - and it's not a religious one, but a psychological one, but I think the correspondence over the past few weeks bears it out:

There are some sets of beliefs that aren't susceptible to change by argument - typically political and religious ones. They're susceptible to change, but not persuasion. End of the day, it's as plain to me that there isn't a God as it is to you guys that there is, I know I'll never be convinced by any religious argument (even though I tell myself if the right one came along I would), and I dare say the same is true of you lot.

Likewise, I could argue with my socialist mate Steve until the cows come home (and we frequently do) and we'd never convince each other of anything.

So why do we bother? And what does that tell us about the nature of religious and political truths?

Just a thought.

Be careful out there, mean time. I sure hope you all find the heaven you're looking for.

Ray

Blind Electric Ray wrote:let's call it quits. This isn't getting anyone anywhere. I get the sense you're all getting sick of it, and to be honest I am too. You'll all probably be be relived to hear I think I'm pretty much done with this board.

It was good having someone here to help get a few discussions rolling, even if towards the end it became more as though you were already pretty set in your own beliefs which you were trying to get across.

Ray wrote:There are some sets of beliefs that aren't susceptible to change by argument - typically political and religious ones. They're susceptible to change, but not persuasion. End of the day, it's as plain to me that there isn't a God as it is to you guys that there is, I know I'll never be convinced by any religious argument (even though I tell myself if the right one came along I would), and I dare say the same is true of you lot.

What you say above is one reason why this board has gone from a Christian vs. Atheist argumentative-style board, to what is now hoped for, which is a Christian board that is community-oriented in providing a defense and persuasive case for Christianity as well as encouragement and instruction for Christian people. Seekers of course are more than welcome, yet seekers often have questions they'd like an answer to and it just seemed to be the case that you were already very satisfied with your own answers which excluded Christian positions. The new purpose was made as clear as possible at the start of this new board, so I think some of what you have come to realise now shouldn't really have come as too much of a surprise. Yet if I could add something to your words, there may come a day when you really do move on from your current beliefs. However, I believe such transformations will be through your own life experiences, which are perhaps far more powerful than words will ever be. Only then would it be that words you've heard may begin to be seen in a different light, and it may not necessarily be words at this board. It could be pantheism, or a thoroughly post-modernist thought you begin to embrace, although I do pray you end up at Christianity (and hope you'll repay us a visit here if you do).

The reason why these boards continue are as described in the purpose which is suppose to be devoid of non-Christian's arguing and reasoning for their own beliefs. Your observation of the unfruitfulness to debating is one reason we chose to opt for this new change and orient these forums entirely towards Christianity.

Anyway, I do wish you all the best and thank you for posting here. You have been one of the more thoughtful Christian opponents I've had discussions with even if we didn't see eye to eye.

Kurieuo.