Theism

[Andúril]

Whilst reading the thread entitled Relativism VS. Absoulte, I noticed that there were quite a few Christian posters submitting their opinions. In this thread, I would like to afford Christians and other theists the opportunity to divulge the reasons behind their convictions. This in my opinion is a very interesting and complex subject, and I think that valuable insight can be gained from such a discussion.

I now open the floor to the advocates of religion. Anyone?

[Darkhalcyon]

i tend to get myself into trouble when i talk about theology...i think i'll bite my tongue this time.

[Darth Tater]

We've had this thread before and things got ugly. I'll let ya guys give it another try, but PLAY NICE! Give your views, but don't bash others, they have their reasons for their convictions just like you do. There's not a religion on earth that doesn't preach love, just remember that.

[markedel]

He he my ethics class is having this debate its amusing. Essentially the argument goes that through religion one finds godliness. Without it you have a much lower probability of even getting close.

[Darkhalcyon]

markedel, i don't quite understand what you said.

[emplynx]

I am a Conservative, non-denominational Christian. I believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as one but three. I believe that Jesus came to earth and died and rose again. Why I believe this? The primary reason is that I was brought up on it, but I have figured out during my 16 years that there isn't a better way. '
Besides spiritual reasons for believing God, I think that some other reasons prove his existance.
Paley's Watch:
Paley said that if you were walking through a field and came across a watch (which was super-high tech at his time) you would not assume it just appeared, you would know it has a creator. He also said that the human eye is so many times more complex than a watch, it's creator must be much much more powerful than the creator of the watch. I think that this is good evidence. Someone also said, I don't know if it was Paley, that is you put watch parts in a bag and shake it, they are not going to form a watch. But the Universe is so emmence, it couldn't possible be formed without someone to put it together.

I will post more later...

[Nibs]

I don't know... throwing logic in with this doesn't tend to cause change in people... I mean, I don't know that my religion is true because someone threw some evidence at me. They taught me, listened to me, and helped me when I needed it. I can't do that for you. I wish I could, really.

Me? I'm a Mormon. All my life. Well, not quite. I didn't really understand everything until of late, and even now I don't know a whole lot. As much as I'd like everyone to read my post and say "wow, he's right", it's not going to happen.

Do I sound pessimistic? I'm not, really. I'm just pragmatic and logical (or I like to think so).

[Tanoliel]

Hmm....well...I don't really know what I am. My mom was raised Christian (Catholic...wait...no....um, I'm not quite sure), and I think so was my dad, but neither of them are really practicing, and they haven't really raised me on anything. They read some Bible to me as a child but more for "it's something you should know" rather than "this is what we believe and you should too" or something of that ilk. We go to church on Christmas....I respect church and the people who believe (though the freaky preacher-guy at the bus stop downtown is kinda annoying....), but I don't really know exactly what I believe. I have read a ton of fantasy books, many making up a religion (or lots) to go along with their worlds, and thus I like to make up religions/gods/goddesses/spirits/etc, myself. (Sorry if this offends anyone.) I wouldn't say I belive that these dieties I make up exist, no more than other characters I write about in "normal" stories. I have looked at many different religions, but as of yet haven't found one that i can adhere to. I am interested in hearing about other peoples'....now that I've shared my (not?) beliefs.
-tanoliel

[crickhollow]

point taken, Nibs. A person has to already be in a place where they are looking for a change before any argument, weak or strong, will sway them.

However, we all have our reasons for what we believe (after all, if we didn't why bother believing anything?), and I think that Anduril is merely asking what reasons we have for what we believe.
Here are mine:
Scientists have not come up with a better theory to counter creationism than evolution. As it is, everything in me tells me that there is a creator. Since I have accepted that, it seems right to me that this creator would be interested in His creation. By believing these things, I have narrowed down my choices for religion considerably.

At this point I have to stop and confess that logic is not my strong point, and that I need to stop and gather my thoughts before posting them. Boiling one's religion down into a nutshell is more difficult than one would think; mainly, I suppose, because you practice it everyday, but don't give much thought to what goes on behind it. I'll post again

[markedel]

I'm a not particulalry religious Jew. Conservative I suppose.

[Arathorn]

I was raised by catholic parents in a predominantly catholic country (the only one, perhaps in southeast asia--for purely trivia's sake). Both their parents are conservative though they are both a bit liberal in terms of not believing everything that comes out of the bishop's mouth. My dad's more liberal than my mom in terms of religion; and so am I.

[mirrille]

My parents were both brought up in Catholic tradition. My father was educated by Jesuit brothers. My mother was educated by nuns. Neither of them ended up growing religious. My parents sent me to Catholic school. I think that that is very odd in itself. Everything was fine for the first 6 or 7 years or so. I believed what my teachers told me (all the major beliefs in the Catholic canon) because I was too young to think that my teachers could be wrong. By Grade 7, I was having serious doubts that any of this was true. At the time, I thought something was wrong with me because I didn't have faith and everyone else did. In Grade 8, I asked myself the question "If I had been born into a different situation, and wasn't taught this as fact at an early and vulnerable age, would I really believe in it?" And I decided the answer was "No". The truth was, I had no reason to believe it anymore than because authority figures told me to. This, I decided, was the problem. And until I can find a faith that convinces ME that I should believe it for what it is, I will be looking, but not becoming a follower.
I think out of all the religions I've seen, I like Buddhism the most. However, many cultures have distorted the beliefs and added what I consider extraneous rituals, which is one thing I don't like. The good thing about real Buddhism is that it neither denies or insists on the existence of gods, which is why most people I know tend to combine it with other religions.

[Twilight]

I am a practicing Christian. My parents and older brother also it, but I never really picked up on that. I was a rebelious kid and kind of wanted to stay away from what my parents believed, but I later picked it up on my own.

I am a scientist. My whole family is. There is just so much evidence of intelegent design, leading me to believe in creation. I think that the biggest things is that deep down in my heart, I know it to be true that there exists a God that loves me, and that he sent his Son to die for me.

[emplynx]

Nibs, I agree with you. I don't think that my logic is going to sway anyone, but I is something that helps me, and if they help anyone else, God bless them!

Everyone - I am liking this thread, but let us not make it an argument! I am really interested in hearing about other people's beliefs and I don't want to start yelling.

[Arathorn]

I agree as well. To continue with what I've already said, so far; I do not strictly adhere to all the tenets and canons set forth by the tradition I was raised to follow. I am also not very good at being a christian although I do make some effort.
My best hope and bet is that I will be going into some state of purgatory after I die.

[Andúril]

One of the problems that I have with Christianity, is the basis of it - the bible. I have had many discussions with practising Christians, who all unwittingly subscribe to a certain circular reasoning, which goes something like:

Why do you believe in the Bible?
Because it is the inspired word of God, so it must be true.
How do you know that?
Because the Bible says so.
Why do you believe what the Bible says about itself?
Because God inspired it; it is inerrant.
How do you know?
Because it says so in the Bible.
But...... ahh nevermind.

Someone might say : I believe it because I have faith.
To which I would ask : Why do you have faith in the bible?
Because it says I must.
Righto.......

That reasoning, however humourous, is not very important. Lets assume the bible in its original form was inerrant - after all, that is one of the most important claims involved in Christianity. The justification for this assumption lies in the claim that it is innerrant as a direct and neccesary result of God's involvement (God is to be understood as the Judeo-Christian God) . So from this of course if we find some kind of errancy, it will follow either that the Bible was clearly not inspired by a divine being, or that the claims are incompatible with said being.

But even that is not necessary. It is just taking the long way to the same conclusion. We can far more easily analyze the very attributes that define the Christian God, and if those are incompatible, or incoherent, or contradictory, we can conclude that the divine being claimed to exist by the bible, in fact does not exist.

===============

So what are the characteristics of God?

Not all of them are necessary for this argument, and in fact the more we analyze together, the higher the probability of problems occuring. Let us take only the following:

Omniscient
Omnipotent
Omnibenevolent

Obviously it is necessary for me to adequately define these terms before I can proceed:

Omniscient: All-knowing. There is absolutely nothing that an omniscient being does not know.

Omnipotent: All-powerful. But this one is interesting. We would first say that there is absolutely nothing that an omnipotent being can not do. But now, what about logical impossibilities? Here we are reminded of the rock-that-was-too-heavy scenario. Clearly this paradox arises from logical impossibility, and for those who are unfamiliar :

God can do anything (omnipotent)
God wants to create a rock so heavy that not even God can lift it.
Now either : (1) God creates the rock, but can not lift it ... thus non-omnipotent.
/or/ (2) God can not create the rock ... thus non-omnipotent.

This leads me to the conlusion that an omnipotent being has its abilities constrained to human logic, and of course constraints aren't exactly an omnipotent being's best friend.

Omnibenevolent: God is all-loving, he loves everything and every personality equally and perfectly. He is prefectly just.

======================

Now let us reconcile this with our environment. Lets look at pointless suffering.

The co-existence of pointless suffering and a being with the attributes mentioned above is incompatible. An example of pointless suffering? Take for instance the rape and murder of babies. Yes, we know that as "horrible" a scenario as this is, it has nevertheless occured in our society. Clearly the baby is too young to have a belief in anything, let alone the mental faculties needed for decisions regarding perceived spirituality. But as young as the baby is, it is still able to experience pain and suffering, as in this case beginning from the rape and culminating with the termination. Now what possible reason could there be to justify this experience? If God is omniscient, he knows about it. If God is omnipotent, he can stop it from occuring. If God is omnibenevolent, he wants to stop it from occuring. The fact that this scenario has occured implies that one or more of these attributes are untrue, thus God by definition does not exist. It is pointless bringing up the "unknown motive" defence, because there is clearly a case of unequal treatment in play here.

The only worthy objection in my opinion in this scenario is that of "free-will" - the main point being that God created people with free-will, so control of either individual actions or interaction between people is voluntarily given up by God, creating the basis for, in essence, an ungoverned state.

However, now we can take another scenario : Pointless suffering brought about by natural disasters.

Here the ungoverned aspect of one four year old boy has no significance when he is killed by a mudslide. In this scenario, the boy is sleeping when the full force of the mudslide hits the house and partially collapses it. His parents die, but the boy is alive, concious and seriously injured. The extent of the mudslide results in medical help only arriving two days after the slide. The boy dies on the way to the hospital. Here we can see that the boy suffered, but we can not come up with a reason to justify his suffering.

Apart from this, it is all too clear the absence of God's equal love. This is shown in the fact that some people experience suffering in their lives as a result of natural disasters, but others don't; and in the group that do, the measure of suffering is variable.

What about the necessary existence of natural disasters? Was it logically impossible to create a world whereby rejuventive processes did not involve suffering on the human part? I think not. Was it logically impossible to create a world in which just one person more survived any of these natural disasters? I think not. We can sit here for hours examining the shortfalls of the physical environment we find ourselves in, but no more than one is necessary for my argument.

There are many other things that are problematic with Christianity. One of them is God's intervention in society with regards to the Bible. Since God has created all people with free-will, thus uncontrolled, how do we look at the "inspiration" of the Bible? Not only did God "implant" thoughts into the authors of religious texts, he also ensured their innerrancy in transferal from thought to written word. This to me is not an example of free-will. Apart from this, why did God only "help" those specific authors, and not the following scribes and translators, thus ensuring a continuous state of perfect accuracy? Assuming God is omniscient, he would have known that society would grow to communicate in more than just a few languages. God's intervention with humans regarding their belief/non-belief in him is also documented in the bible, where on occasion God "hardened the hearts" of someone to further his own purpose.

And this brings me to an interesting subject - God's free-will. Let me express my thoughts in the following way :

1) God is omniscient
2) God knows his "future" actions.
3) God can not perform different actions to those already known to him.
4) God has no free-will.

This essentialy shows that God is forced by logic and definition to perform actions which are part of one sequence of events. One possible refutation is that I have assumed that God is constrained by time. However, according to religious scholars, God is meant to be taken as everlasting throughout time, thus existing within it. He may not be constrained by the directional flow of time, but the bible has never shown any evidence of "time-travel" abilities. Of course one could take the stance that God created time with the universe, time being a property of his creation. We can then say that the property of time in our universe does not apply to God. However, if we assume that Heaven is existent outside of our universe, and we have passages in the bible relating scenes in heaven which show a property of time, then we are justified in assuming that God is operating in time wherever he is. We can also assume that God is constrained to his own timeline. Here is an example of the lack of free-will :

(1) God arrives at a street corner.
(2) There are many directional possibilities.
(3) These possibilites are not available to God.
(4) God goes off in one direction.

What I mean by (3) is that God, as a result of his omniscience, already knows what he will be doing for his entire infinite existence. When he arrives at the street corner, there are many directions that one can take from that point, but for God there is only one, because the direction taken at that point was known to him prior to his arrival. When he goes off in one direction, he is fulfilling his 100% acurate knowledge of the future. If he did not do so, his knowledge would have been incorrect, and thus he would be non-omniscient. Essentialy this means that God is not in a position to choose, and therefore has no free-will.

Alternatively, God can be given the characteristic of free-will, but then omniscience is given up. But enough of this topic.

====================

I am aware that these boards do not normally see such copious amounts of text, and if my post is inappropriately long, I apologize. I could comment further on these topics, and introduce more, but I think that this is sufficient for now. I hope to receive comments and criticism from all those inclined, and in doing so, hopefully in the end we will have achieved a civil and meaningful debate.

[Andúril]

I would like to comment on some of the posts here. Please do not interpret my "harsh" sounding criticisms as verbal warfare.

Emplynx :

Paley's Watch:
Paley said that if you were walking through a field and came across a watch (which was super-high tech at his time) you would not assume it just appeared, you would know it has a creator. He also said that the human eye is so many times more complex than a watch, it's creator must be much much more powerful than the creator of the watch. I think that this is good evidence. Someone also said, I don't know if it was Paley, that is you put watch parts in a bag and shake it, they are not going to form a watch. But the Universe is so emmence, it couldn't possible be formed without someone to put it together.

....and how do you conclude from this that the divine being involved is the Christian God, and not some other undocumented divine being?

Crickhollow :

A person has to already be in a place where they are looking for a change before any argument, weak or strong, will sway them.

What do you base this assumption on? Is it not possible (or probable) that someone might hold tremendous convictions, but on hearing ideas which they deem "better" they could be swayed? Are you perhaps referring to ignorant narrow-mindedness as a "block" against dissimilar thoughts? Please explain.

As it is, everything in me tells me that there is a creator.

Are your inner convictions to be relied upon? Can the origin of these convictions be limited to you, and not part of the external world?

Since I have accepted that, it seems right to me that this creator would be interested in His creation.

Why? How are those two beliefs connected?

Twilight :

I think that the biggest things is that deep down in my heart, I know it to be true that there exists a God that loves me, and that he sent his Son to die for me.

How does it logicaly follow that if indeed there is a creator, that it is the Christian God? And if so, why do you take the "sacrifice" so seriously? God, in his omniscience, knew that his son would be back in Heaven soon enough, so the concept of sacrifice does not really apply here - he did not lose anything. Also, how does the doctrine of "Jesus being God in flesh" apply to the "sacrifice"?

[Radagast]

Fascinating.
I was, well I am still being raised (as I'm actually only a thirteen year old male), by Catholic parents. Neither of them are really practicing and encourage me to believe whatever I want.
Now, I am a logical, scientific kind of person. I am not inclined to believe anything at its face value, blind faith is not my quality. I am therefore an agnostic. Note, that I'm not atheistic, I believe that a god/goddess/spirit/Higher Being etc. may exist, however I haven't come across anything to convince me.
I respect people for whatever they believe in, I don't think it really matters at all. I am not religious at all.
This is just my humble opinion.
Hope this gives some insight into me. Heh, not that I'm all that interesting, I'm actually a nerd or (science geek,dork etc etc) insert what you prefer.

[Earniel]

Please don't get angry at me for asking. But something you said, Crickhollow, just caught my attention.

Originally posted by crickhollow
Scientists have not come up with a better theory to counter creationism than evolution. As it is, everything in me tells me that there is a creator. Since I have accepted that, it seems right to me that this creator would be interested in His creation. By believing these things, I have narrowed down my choices for religion considerably.

Is it because you find evolution-theories irrelevant regardless whatever true or wrong arguments they give, or is because the feeling inside you that tells you there is a creator is stronger?

[crickhollow]

I'm beginning to see that perhaps a thread where we could share our beliefs without arguments was not your original intention. If your conclusion is that there is no God, or that the God of the bible does not exist, perhaps your lengthy post belongs on the anti-theist thread. Please keep in mind Tater's warning at the beginning of the thread, and the consensus that everyone else has reach in regards to picking fights.

In spite of this, I'll do my best to answer your questions. As I mentioned before, logic is not my strong point.
1) Now that's just nitpicky. What I meant was that religious (or non-religious, if you prefer) beliefs are the core of who we are as humans. There is nothing more sacred. Therefore, there is nothing more difficult to change. I have tried to argue people to Christ, and it doesn't work, because no matter how much evidence I provide, evidence does not necessarily equal proof. At some point the Christian needs to push aside all arguments and believe on faith. In the same way, at some point the Atheist needs to step out on faith and believe that there is no God. (*haha* The atheist needs to step out in faith...I just mad a funny!) The Christian cannot beyond a shadow of all doubt prove that there is a God, and the atheist cannot beyond a shadow of a doubt prove that there is no God.

2) My intention was merely to keep from repeating Emplynx's argument, which I thought was a very good argument for there being a Creator.

3) Well, let's look at the other option: God created the world in the same way that a child would set a top spinning. Once it is spinning there is nothing to do but sit back and watch the show, or wander off in search of new amusements. I cannot believe that, because I see God's hand in more than just the creation of the world. If you like, you can use the word "miracle".
Miracles: Three years ago I was on a mission trip to the Dominican Republic. While I was there, I saw with my own eyes that God is indeed powerful beyond what we as humans can understand. I saw a boy healed through prayer of facial disfigurement caused by a cleft palate. I spoke with a woman who showed me her scarred and disfigured legs. She told me that she could walk because of Jesus. Our team of 20 people collectively led over 600 people to Christ in nine days. God is mighty, my friend, and He is good. I believe it because I have seen it.