Sceptics have said that faith (even though they live by faith as much as any Christian) is believing something in the absence of evidence.
Fools!
I’ve said before that agnostics are the ones who could call themselves the most scientifically minded. Agnostics are the ones who only go as far as the evidence will take them. Christians and atheists, on the other hand, use inductive reasoning to take them part way, and then bring about a deductive conclusion based upon the evidence in combination with their pre-set world-view.
The Bible defines faith as, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, it’s the evidence of what we do not yet see.” Hebrews 11:1
In that sense Christian faith can be described as “Choosing to believe the conclusion regarding the evidence that God has placed before us.” Atheists of course say that the existence of the universe isn’t evidence of anything. It just is and it’s always been. Pfft!
On a behavioural level faith is living as though you actually believe what God says to you in His Word. There are many many people in every congregation who say they follow Jesus but they refuse to obey Him. What He says doesn’t make sense to them (eg. Love your enemies) so they do their own thing.
Faith is taking what Jesus says He will do and letting those words change the way we respond to Him and to others. Simply knowing what God says doesn’t do anything. Most atheists know what God says. satan knows what God says. True faith is shown by trusting God enough to do what He says.
“Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.” (James 2:17).
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Sceptics have said that faith (even though they live by faith as much as any Christian) is believing something in the absence of evidence.
ReplyDeleteOne version of faith is this yes, and that's the version I don't live by.
So you are lying again...
I’ve said before that agnostics are the ones who could call themselves the most scientifically minded. Agnostics are the ones who only go as far as the evidence will take them.
You are lying about agnostic vs atheist again? I am starting to think you do it on purpose, but that does not make sense, why would you lie on purpose?
Christians and atheists, on the other hand, use inductive reasoning to take them part way, and then bring about a deductive conclusion based upon the evidence in combination with their pre-set world-view.
Pre-set? The only things that are "pre-set" in my worldviews are things like the 10 questions I asked you. Beliefs such as "The Christian God certainly does not exist" or "As far as I know, the material, in a strict sense, is all that exists" are consequences of my other beliefs. They are, in and of themselves, almost completely meaningless.
They are just some conclusions of philosophical reasoning that I don't use to go through life. They don't influence my moral judgement, they don't influence the way I accept or refuse other claims; they are just simple ideas that make sense to me right now because of the knowledge I acquired through life; most of it while I was still a believer by the way...
Why do I need to repeat this? Because you lie of course...
You lie about my beliefs and refuse to concede that yours work in a very different ways. Your acceptance of Intelligent Design versus Evolution is based on your faith in God. You morality system is based on your faith in God. Your life choices are based on your faith in God. Almost everything single thing you write about on this blog is actually based on your faith in God...
It baffles me that you compare our thought systems in such a way. Again, you are purposely lying, simply incapable of comprehending what's going on, but probably a bit of both...
The Bible defines faith as, “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for, it’s the evidence of what we do not yet see.” Hebrews 11:1
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting quote because it mentions two different types of faith.
Being sure of what we hope for is the kind of faith that I have, like anybody else. I have faith that my friends will help me in hard times, that my girlfriend will not cheat on me, that my co-workers won't backstab me for their own greed, and so on...
I could be wrong, but I hope I am not and live as if I was right. I have faith in them.
However, the faith in the evidence of what we do not yet see is completely different and essentially meaningless when it comes from the Bible. The authors of the Bibles had no idea what things "not seen" could be, and their writings speak for themselves. They believed in all sort of magical things that were invisible and none of them turned out to be real
But modern Christians like you have faith that at least some of that is real. You use your own logic and reason to dismiss silly stories like Noah's flood or Jonah living inside the belly of a whale for a few days, but you will still accept, on faith, that what these people claim to see regarding Jesus' miracles, for example, is true. It's odd from my point of view but completely justified by your 'pre-set' faith in God, supported by personal experience yielding a strong emotional response to the divine. You need these miracle answers. You need these facts to be true for your dogmas to be supported by each other.
Atheists of course say that the existence of the universe isn’t evidence of anything. It just is and it’s always been. Pfft!
Mocking... and still lying. The universe is evidence of almost an infinite number of things. Actually, from our tiny human perspective, it is literally infinite in the sense that we won't ever be able to comprehend it all. The universe will always teach us things.
On a behavioural level faith is living as though you actually believe what God says to you in His Word [...]
At least we can agree on that!
Don't you see the irony in your descriptions of "others"? You claim that to follow God implies to submit to his commands, yet one of the most important commandments is to not lie, which is what you keep doing on your blog.
I'm not sure how being unconvinced of the Christian god makes one a member of a faith. It requires no belief to be unconvinced.
ReplyDeleteBret: “I'm not sure how being unconvinced of the Christian god makes one a member of a faith."
ReplyDeleteCertainly not "member" in a formal sense. You’re only a “member” of a faith-group in the sense that the faith that a Creator doesn’t exist, especially when evidence points directly to the fact that a Creator does exist, is held in common with others of the same faith.
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“It requires no belief to be unconvinced.”
Are you also unconvinced that a materialist world-view is correct?
What evidence?
ReplyDelete"What evidence?"
ReplyDeletehttp://thesauros-store.blogspot.com/2011/01/why-im-not-atheist.html
When copy/pasted in Word, your "evidence" is 14 pages long. Yet, there is almost no content at all. Let's go over it once more...
ReplyDeleteBecause of clear scientific (observable, repeatable, verifiable) evidence, we know that:
Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
That statement is broken. It implies your conclusion that God did not begin to exist and that he is thus uncaused. To be honest, you would need to rephrase this statement like this:
Everything has a cause except God.
[...]The material universe began to exist out of literally nothing.
Prove it.
...and then go claim your Nobel prize.
Because those premises are true and coherent we can know that the following conclusion is also true: The beginning of the universe has a cause.
Fail; the premises are NOT true. We can thus skip a lot of what you wrote based on this...
Then, you reach a point where you start to define the "currently unknown cause of the universe":
Existing outside of time, the Cause is infinite or Eternal
- Outside of time, i.e. timeless, boundless, NOT in time
- Infinite, Eternal i.e. NOT finite
Existing outside of matter (which is finite), the Cause is immaterial or Spiritual
- Immaterial, i.e. NOT material
- Spiritual is related to... spirituality; something humans experience because of their beliefs. What an incredible shift of scope, proving once again that you have your conclusion in mind and do anything you can to prove it.
Existing as the Cause of time and energy, space, matter and the laws of physics, the Cause is immeasurably more powerful than...
- NOT measured
The Cause cannot be “scientific”
- NOT scientific
...because neither matter / energy existed prior to the Singularity
Oh ya the famous Singularity with a big 'S', showing once again a bias toward a pre-conceived conclusion. On top of that, it shows, AGAIN, that you don't understand what a singularity means.
You never answered one question I had: what was the last level of math you did?
Therefore the Cause of the beginning of the universe is not scientific but Personal
Not scientific means personal, with a big 'P'? Biased again.
But more importantly, if it's not scientific, then the WHOLE evidence presented here fails since it starts with the idea that 'Because of clear scientific (observable, repeatable, verifiable) evidence, we know that'...
So you see, I don't need to go further than that. Your premises don't hold water, your reasoning is flawed and dependant on your acceptance of the conclusion a priori.
Your whole argument can be boiled down to this:
I believe God exists. God is the cause of the universe, no matter what the universe is, or no matter how we describe the universe.