With agnostics and with people who consider themselves atheists but are in fact open to transcendence, I have found that arguments such as fine-tuning, the resurrection of Jesus, and the nature of consciousness can genuinely resonate.
I even brought my mother back to faith with the historical arguments for Jesus resurrection and now she is deeply in love with God. But yeah… who am I kidding? God did the work, I was just the vessel. Without His grace I would have accomplished nothing.
I remember long ago seeing this on a different forum and was wondering how you guys view this (especially through the lenses of evolution, which requires death as a necessary condition for making better species).
The meme is basically a quick version of the “predation problem”: if God created animals, why create animals that eat other animals?
But the meme simplifies things too much. Predation isn’t moral cruelty—it’s part of how ecosystems function. Animals are not moral agents, and biological systems require processes like predation, decomposition, and population regulation in order to remain stable.
Even apart from evolution, a living world with millions of interacting species would require these kinds of relationships. The meme treats natural biological processes as if they were moral choices, which is really a category mistake.
Okay thank you. This was a bit of a quick one that drudged up deep memories of the stupid stuff I would come across. Thank you for putting this to rest .
Those are the claims I have been addressing. The claims that I quoted. The claims, apparently made by you, that atheists start with an axiomatic dogma that God does not exist.
It’s possible that some-one else has been using your account, and that they, not you, made those claims. But if that is not the case, then you did actually claim (more than once) that atheists start with an axiomatic dogma that God does not exist.
Pretending you didn’t make that claim is dishonest.
It was one of the arguments I made, it was not the main argument, the main argument was that the disciples couldn’t have had hallucinations because they don’t work like that. I cited the 500 but I’ve written that it’s the most important thing because there was no way to verify Paul’s claim.
I have already talked about the resurrection accounts multiple times but I have never delved into the “500 claim” for long. The main and most important argument I appealed to was that the “hallucinations argument” for the disciple was very problematic and weak.
I made that claim, I was referring to mainstream atheism which presupposes philosophical naturalism. Not every atheist is à philosophical naturalists but every philosophical naturalist is and atheist. And philosophical naturalism implies the axiomatic and absolute belief that God and the supernatural are non existent. The fact that you are forced to nitpick minor things to try to undermine everything says a lot.
I don’t n is if you were involved in that thread but that teacher that had said that “simulation is 50/50 odds” mentioned that claim again. With the advice I was given from that thread, I decided to fact check his claim and, sure enough, a good many physicists say that it lies outside of science and more into metaphysics.
There is no such thing (God saying those things in that cartoon) in the Bible any more than there is God saying “Let there be mass murderers” or “Let there be guns.”
So I don’t believe in the Deist micromanaging watchmaker designer creator as if living things were just complex machines. I believe God had the Biblical role of shepherd who participates in the lives of living things as they grow, develop, and make their own choices. In fact I think design is the very difference between living organisms and machines, and as we learn to master the machinery of biology we will create things using this and the result will be machines not living organisms. Life is a process of self-organization, growth, learning, and development, not a magical mojo inserted into things.
I mean think about it logically. If design is really the meaning of God’s creation then God only created the first ones and all the rest of us are measurably the creation of parents and biology not God. And if that, then why insert this bogus designer into the process at all? We are all creations of God because it doesn’t mean design at all. It means God created the conditions for life and raised us in the manner of farmers, shepherd, teachers, and parents – as a participant in our lives as we learn and grow. Because the thing about life is it never does these things is isolation, but in an environment which can include farmers, shepherds, teachers, and/or parents.
I just know that the original argument posited that if such a civilization existed before us to create computer simulations, and made a bunch of these simulations, it is more likely that we are simulated than real. However, I think the argument nowadays revolves around looking for evidence in physics of computer-like structures, such as the information theory or the two-dimensional model of black holes (as information falling into it cannot be destroyed; therefore, a “flat” black hole may not destroy it, which could mean our universe is a “hologram.”)
After becoming an Evolutionary Creationist, I noticed this as well. God didn’t just create the nation of Israel; over several generations he forged this society from a single person to then twelve, then tribes, and then an entire nation wanting a desert.
Amen. God is the God of Truth, no matter what the source.
This reminds me of something Kierkegaard said about “the crowd” and untruth,
Do you dare to claim that human beings, in a crowd, are just as quick to reach for truth, which is not always palatable, as for untruth, which is always deliciously prepared, when in addition this must be combined with an admission that one has let oneself be deceived! Or do you dare to claim that “the truth” is just as quick to let itself be understood as is untruth, which requires no previous knowledge, no schooling, no discipline, no abstinence, no self-denial, no honest self-concern, no patient labor! No, “the truth,” which detests this untruth, the only goal of which is to desire its increase, is not so quick on its feet.
Kierkegaard continues, and this part always brings me to tears considering where we are now:
The truth can neither be communicated nor be received without being as it were before the eyes of God, nor without God’s help, nor without God being involved as the middle term, since he is the truth. It can therefore only be communicated by and received by “the single individual,” which, for that matter, every single human being who lives could be: this is the determination of the truth in contrast to the abstract, the fantastical, impersonal, “the crowd” - “the public,” which excludes God as the middle term (for the personal God cannot be the middle term in an impersonal relation), and also thereby the truth, for God is the truth and its middle term.
And to honor every individual human being, unconditionally every human being, that is the truth and fear of God and love of "the neighbor"; but ethico-religiously viewed, to recognize “the crowd” as the court of last resort in relation to “the truth,” that is to deny God and cannot possibly be to love “the neighbor.” And “the neighbor” is the absolutely true expression for human equality; if everyone in truth loved the neighbor as himself, then would perfect human equality be unconditionally attained; every one who in truth loves the neighbor, expresses unconditional human equality; every one who is really aware (even if he admits, like I, that his effort is weak and imperfect) that the task is to love the neighbor, he is also aware of what human equality is. But never have I read in the Holy Scriptures this command: You shall love the crowd; even less: You shall, ethico-religiously, recognize in the crowd the court of last resort in relation to “the truth.”
It is clear that to love the neighbor is self-denial, that to love the crowd or to act as if one loved it, to make it the court of last resort for “the truth,” that is the way to truly gain power, the way to all sorts of temporal and worldly advantage - yet it is untruth; for the crowd is untruth.
So you did make the claim that you twice denied making and complained about being attributed to you - but you’re not admitting to any change of position or to any wrongdoing.
Then atheism does not presuppose philosophical naturalism. Nor does what you refer to as ‘mainstream atheism’. You simply don’t know enough about atheist perspectives to make that assessment.
Pointing out that you don’t understand the position you are arguing against is not a ‘minor thing’.
And nothing I have written is anywhere near as undermining as denying your own words.
Roy, isn’t it correct to affirm that the vast majority of atheists are philosophical naturalists? I had already admitted in the past that not all of them are, but the vast majority clearly are. And philosophical naturalism clearly seems to imply the axiomatic belief in the inexistence of the supernatural. Do you disagree with this? And if so why?
Again: isn’t the vast majority of atheists formed by people who are philosophical naturalists?
I have no idea what fraction of atheists believe in supernatural phenomena, but a quick search turned up this article which suggests that most atheists are not philosophical naturalists.
So no, it doesn’t appear to be correct. Not even close.
You could, and should, have checked this yourself. It would have taken less time than writing your post. But you didn’t, preferring instead to diminish your credibility even further.
I have been influenced by my own experience, as most atheists I have known (and I have known quite a few of them) are indeed philosophical naturalists. I myself was à philosophical naturalist when I was an atheist.
And philosophical naturalism is definitely dogmatically closed to the supernatural.
It’s been a mistake on my part to generalize my experience but it certainly shows that I am using my own thoughts, no matter how faulty sometimes they may be, contrary to what I have been accused of doing, namely generating ideas and texts with AI because what I was writing wasn’t easy to refute and needed to be attacked in other ways.
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