How would you re-write my conclusion? Just to make sure that I am communicating well and clear what I think. Of course I believe that natural tragedies are evil and that God’s greatness is so evident. Repentance is mandatory in order to be acquainted with God.
[/quote]
Pipio,
Your idea is that atheists and evolutionary creationists both blame God for natural disasters, and neglect to blame evolution. Are you sure that is true? Atheists generally only blame God as a way of denying God. I agree that at a visceral level, many atheists reject God more than disbelieve in God, and that’s why they blame God. But generally that’s not what they say… Evolutionary creationists who claim to be Christ followers may or may not blame God for natural disasters, depending on how much they want to maintain God’s daily maintenance and intervention in his creation, and this differs among ECs. Some would attribute natural disasters to nature.
But many Christians who are not EC would also acknowledge God’s intervention in the form of natural disasters: think of the global flood, the opening of the earth for those who opposed Moses, the leprosy of one of the kings of Judah, the three year drought on king Ahab. So while there are many points of commonality between atheists and evolutionists, this one might not be so distinctive.
OK, that’s better than the literal version. But I imagine a literalist would point out that this interpretation puts the blame on the creator who supposedly made us, or caused us to evolve…
No johnZ, “man” did not sin against god, a particular man and woman supposedly sinned, if the story is read literally. If you think god is just, why should those who came later suffer for that original sin?
I see some valid points in ID as well as evolutionary biology although I have only recently been seriously considering macro-evolution as a means by which God has created animal life. From the perspective of philosophy I do not see a problem with surmising that information comes by an Information-Giver. It seems that you have to consider the philosophical implications of information no matter what mechanism it is arrived at. I am much more open to the findings of biology but as a humanities type of guy, it is challenging to follow the flow of information. I still believe we are on the same side so to speak. It does not seem to me that ID is a god-of-the gaps argument and only a staunch atheist would not marvel at the complexity of life.
Most of the Christians never hear “audible” commands from on high. So, no need for that to happen. But of course, faith, faith… there’s simply no way to avoid that.
Puts the blame for what? Bad things existing in God’s good world? Even the literalists have to explain why the snake was in the garden in the first place. The problem of evil never goes away, no matter how literal your approach to Genesis is.
I shouldn’t have said that. But most of what we know about the world tells us that the Christian story cannot be true. Yet many people have faith that it is true, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. That is the kind of faith I meant. Why is that a virtue? And why then is it not a virtue to have faith in the Koran or Scientology?
You “marvel”? You don’t marvel because marvelling is subjective, and you reject subjectivity, as shown by your rejection of faith.
Let’s get into it. How does subjectivity like to “marvel at something” work. How does it work according to the common discourse we all use, and understand?
I am sorry but I really can’t understand why I can’t marvel at something. And I don’t see what my rejection of faith in your particular god has to do with it.
I think it can be a virtue to have faith within other religious systems, it’s just not a Christian virtue. But it is a kind of selflessness to be willing to trust something beyond your understanding. Plenty of virtuous people throughout history have been motivated to do noble and admirable things by their non-Christian faith. However, I think the object of one’s faith matters and faith in some objects are more warranted than others and faith in the wrong objects can have disastrous consequences.
Mindless faith is a not a virtue. But the major truth claims of Christianity do not require unwarranted belief.
… the major truth claims of Christianity do not require unwarranted belief.
Christy, we’ll have to agree to disagree there. Many of the claims of the bible contradict everything we know about the world, and many of the claims aren’t even logically coherent (hence the problem of evil, discussed above). Similar claims have been made by other religions,and no one here has any trouble seeing that faith in those gods is nevertheless unwarranted, given the weak evidential value of motivated human testimony.
You are one of those making a broad statement of rejecting faith altogether. The same argumentation by which faith is rejected, all subjectivity can be rejected just as well.
How subjectivity works is that you reach the conclusion “marvelous”, by expression of emotion with free will, thus choosing the conclusion. The existence of the feeling is a matter of opinion, that way “marvelous” is also an opinion.
It works the same way as belief in God. People reach the conclusion by choosing, and God is referred to in terms of choosing things.
[quote=“Mohammad_Nur_Syamsu, post:105, topic:796, full:true”]
You “marvel”? You don’t marvel because marvelling is subjective, and you reject subjectivity, as shown by your rejection of faith. [/quote]
The arrogance of that statement is breathtaking. How can there be an open exchange of ideas, learning, and growth if you are explicitly claiming to know Lou’s internal emotional states better than Lou does?
[quote]Let’s get into it. How does subjectivity like to “marvel at something” work. How does it work according to the common discourse we all use, and understand?
[/quote]Well, I propose that we look at the empirical products of marvelling: learning new things about the world around us (i.e., the one that God created). Do you choose just make dogmatic, predictable claims about how biology works or do you try to learn new things every day for the rest of your life?