I’m still an atheist, but that is neither here nor there . . .
The first thing that comes to mind after reading statements like yours is “Where does embryonic development fit in?” We all start out as a single cell that is as unaware as any other single celled organism. Through the apparent natural process of embryonic development we become aware. Perhaps this another example of the interface between theistic and naturalistic understanding.
I am not sure why you leave a post in another thread untouched, take one sentence of it and post it here.
As for Scripture, Jesus (notable on the cross at the point of dying) said :
Luke 23:43 And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”
Paul - And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—
Rev 2:7 He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.’
Yes.
And for my brain it is both, God created a natural world.
I understand your argument, but how do you know that they knew?
As in, do I believe that a deity would not be subject to natural law? The answer is yes, it seems it would have to be transcendent of natural law it was going to do anything. Or are you asking if I believe in anything beyond the observable universe? The answer to that is no, I have absolutely no idea what is beyond our universe, and I do not think I could have any real ones, because our language/reasoning is developed for speaking of things within our system (the observable universe), and it seems slightly absurd to apply our language/reasoning to things outside of our system, if there are any things.
Let me show you what I mean:
Argument from morality:
Argument from design
Argument from first cause
Explain Mormonism, then.
Perhaps. I think Occam’s razor should be applied here.
Answer, because I am biased.
I am biased because my faith is based on an experience I could not deny. Without that experience I would be an agnostic at best.
The post of mine you quote there is in response to this statement.
“we haven’t any way to know what God is capable of doing, as he is directly unobservable. It may indeed be the case that he has no other way of accomplishing his ends”
The bible dissagrees with it and so do I…hence my response. A simple example that falsifies the statement…Christs ministry, miracles and his own claim, “if you have seen me, you have seen the father”. (John 14.9)
take a look at the following image…do these look like my cross references? I mean I’m not a professor in language or literature, however, as far as i can see, this is an image of a published document with published cross referencing for Genesis Chapter 1:2 (I just randomly picked this…no specific reason for choosing it).
I would have to criticise the claim, these are Adams cross references. Its clearly obvious they are not…I didn’t write them, however, they are obviously attributable to the scholarly study of the bible such that they are published for all to see and access in the first place. Isnt that the point of Bible concordances?
The silly part about all of this, if you cannot take written language at face value with a normal reading of said language, how can you believe anything you read at all…it falsifies your own belief that the genre argument is relevant to your theology because it prevents you from proving the genre argument is true using any referencing! therefore its a circular argument that is self destructive according to your own logic there!
So you do believe there is category in reality of transcendent things.
Things that transcended logical comprehension yet are real. Things that are irrational yet real. The value of PI for example. The circle is a infinitely sided polygon? The number of sides is beyond comprehension yet the object is real. would you agree?
That’s a nerfed form of the argument; the fuller form notes that human morality is roughly the same even though moral systems arose independently around the world. The flaw in the argument is that it assumes that morals must come from outside rather than from natural forces, e.g. what is practical for the species.
The next one is also nerfed, though the common forms used these days aren’t much better.
This one isn’t even the actual argument from first cause, which boils down to the observation that all things have causes, and therefore there must be a first cause that started it all. The failure of the argument is that it cannot demonstrate that the first cause was personal. But the above form also fails because it depends on a certain interpretation of cosmology, one in fact that is being called into doubt.
Totally different case – they weren’t facing a government or a religious culture out to exterminate them, in fact they were protected by law. On top of that, a number of those there at the start admitted it was a hoax.
Occam’s is inconclusive because our universe as it is cannot have always been here; at the very least it originated in a phase change from an earlier situation, and there is no way to know the nature of that earlier/prior situation, so whether it was personal/intelligent or not is a logical coin toss.
But my point was that Dawkins’ argument is fallacious since he shows that one hypothesis could/should result in what we observe while ignoring that at least one other hypothesis leads to the same result.
In my case several experiences, and I would probably be a deist.
Though there’s also the “Bloom County Argument”:
Then again, that only points to deism, not more.
"“since x is a very mysterious phenomenon, and God is very mysterious, he must be responsible for it.”
That is not an accurate characterization. Rather, it is the idea that the deity/deities in question are powerful or knowledgeable, etc. enough to account for the phenomenon that means that the deity provides an answer, not that both are mysterious. Of course, the idea that the deity/deities in question do have the ability to cause the phenomenon should be examined. But making a straw man argument should raise questions about how logical a position is. There are plenty of difficult questions that challenge Christianity, but pop pseudoscientific atheism like what Dawkins peddles is not an intellectually satisfying answer.
To be fair, the Mormons were persecuted. Mobs literally kicked them out of town. This is the main reason they trekked across the US to establish Deseret which was later trimmed down the state of Utah. This is also why you still see higher concentrations of Mormons around the perimeter of Utah, because they used to be within the original unofficial Mormon state.
Persecuted, but why? I’m no expert on Mormon history, but the Wikipedia article suggests Smith was arrested and jailed many times for criminal charges related to economic fraud, and things like inciting riots, attempted assassination of governmental officials, and attempts to overthrow local authorities (treason). Of course, the Mormon church tries to spin this as “the religious persecution of an innocent prophet”, but the optics are of a person and rather sketchy political involvement quite unlike Jesus or the early church.
And then there’s the whole polygamy thing. Obviously (for males at least), and for Joseph Smith, there was strong personal incentive and personal payoff to create and promote such a religion, unlike with Christianity.
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