Beyond astronomical probabilities, orchestrated from outside of time and space and miraculous – I’m okay with that and so was Maggie. They didn’t happen when she didn’t need it, either!
So the question is, do you want to find God? I take it that’s a no.
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who approaches Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him. Hebrews 11:6
Or do you want him to find you, recognizing your lostness? Sometimes that’s what it takes, being desperate, as we have just seen. Here is another – being found by God:
During a dark time in her life, a woman in my congregation complained that she had prayed over and over, “God, help me find you,” but had gotten nowhere. A Christian friend suggested to her that she might change her prayer to, “God, come and find me. After all, you are the Good Shepherd who goes looking for the lost sheep.” She concluded when she was recounting this to me, “The only reason I can tell you this story is – he did.”
While I haven’t asked it this question, I did ask it if an infinite series is possible through sequential steps. The answer was quite fascinating. If you are interested, I can find ChatGPT’s response which I copy and pasted here a few weeks ago.
To defer implies recognition as a skeptic that I might be wrong; not to defer to recognizes that you might be wrong.
Desperation leave any of us hoping for a saviour, but desperately wanting for something to be true doesn’t make it so. And lostness, confusion or uncertainty can point to an entirely different motivation: curiosity. Scientists eat confusion for a living!
In any case, the Amazon blurb for the book you quote says “Keller explains how the belief in a Christian God is, in fact, a sound and rational one.” Which brings us, again, to the question: what constitutes evidence?
No, that brings you again to the question. My take on God’s providence is quite clear, in my own life, you may have read, and in multitudes before and after Jesus’ time here in person (or Person). And there are other evidences that have long been written about.
…may be more about epistemic and presuppositional humility than it is about evidence, plus maybe one other question, what constitutes gullibility as opposed to reasonable belief and faith.
I agree whole-heartedly! Have you any comments on how to distinguish between the two? If you and I differ on what constitutes evidence, where do the differences lie?
Do you agree with Christy (item 24) that “my definition of ‘this world’ is not equivalent to ‘the physical world.’ It is based on my experience of other dimensions of reality. It’s not scientific evidence, and it is subjective, but as I have said, empiricism is not the only path to knowledge”?
If so, fine — people can believe what they want. But the question remains: is the process of scientific empiricism proper and sufficient to this physical world? Is it compatible with “other-dimension alternatives”? And if not, which approach is most appropriate for guiding moral choices having real physical consequences in this physical world?
My apologies if I don’t read your response til tomorrow. My head hurts.
I don’t think I am going to succeed in arguing that the co-instants (one of my substitute words for ‘coincidences’ meaning not a chance!) that they are legitimate and objective evidence, especially if you cannot allow for them in Maggie’s case, an incredible interrelated set of five discrete and otherwise unrelated ones in 48 hours. Of course, I don’t mean ‘incredible’ literally, but just as an emphatic adjective, because they are objective facts that are credible and meaningful (remember ChatGPT’s conclusion), especially since I have had similar sets of providential ‘life path changing’ co-instants in my own life, only not five in two days!
The first was also actually a set of five (I hadn’t made that correlation before now), but they were spread over four years (more if you start looking at the necessary precursors that had to be orchestrated) and included were some fun incidental ones that did not affect the end result. It started almost sixty years ago. (I’m an old man in my early to mid-geezerhood. ; - )
Another major set of twelve(!) life path changing ones concluded exactly thirty years ago tomorrow (in my time zone, 3/1, about 15 minutes from now ; - ), which fact is ‘coincidental’ but not very significant, at least from my perspective and what I know right now. That dozen occurred over a period of only about one year. Both sets are fun stories.
After a little back and forth due to a mistake I keep making with how series are defined, I made this statement (in bold) and ChatGPT’s response follows:
In a situation where the number of steps can proceed to infinity, it would then be impossible for the number of steps to become actually infinite
Yes, that is correct. In a situation where the number of steps can proceed to infinity, it is still not possible for the number of steps to become actually infinite. This is because infinity is not a number that can be reached or attained through a finite process.
Instead, when we talk about an infinite process or an infinite sequence of steps, we are referring to a process or sequence that can be continued indefinitely without ever reaching a final state or end point.
For example, some iterative algorithms involve a process that repeats a certain set of steps over and over again, potentially an infinite number of times. However, even if this process continues indefinitely, it still does not reach an actual infinite number of steps. Instead, it simply continues without ever reaching a final result.
In summary, even if a process or sequence of steps can proceed to infinity, it never actually reaches infinity, but rather continues indefinitely.
And then I asked it if it would be fair to say infinity is not a numerical value:
Yes, it would be fair to say that infinity is not a numerical value. Infinity is a concept that represents a quantity or a property of being unbounded, endless, or without limit. It is often used in mathematics to describe certain processes, functions, or sets that can continue indefinitely without ever reaching a final state or limit.
In mathematics, infinity is often treated as an idealized concept that represents the limit of certain processes or the behavior of certain functions as they approach infinity. However, infinity itself is not a real number that can be used in calculations or arithmetic operations.
Instead, infinity is often treated as a symbol or a concept that is used to describe certain mathematical properties or behaviors, but it is not a numerical value that can be manipulated like other numbers.
Yeah, pretty much. I’m not sure what she means by ‘other dimensions’, although she’s probably said somewhere and I’ve forgotten (a definite likelihood, sadly). Awe and wonder are a little difficult to dissect with logical positivism, for instance. I don’t think of God’s providential interventions on behalf of his children as ‘other dimensional’, but maybe that’s because they have been such a significant influence of how I’ve experienced physical reality for so long. I certainly do not limit all of reality to the merely material – God is a more solid reality to me than much of what the physical world has to offer.
It can process some realities better than some realities (real persons) can.