Well, would an English book on quantum physics be a better analogy? There are things in the Bible that I don't understand, but my understanding may come easier to me than it would to you because I do believe in God and because I am objective not subjective about what I am reading. I, like you, grew up reading the Bible, knowing what it said, and as a kid, I was very knowledgeable in it, but I clung to my parents faith and used it as my own. As long as I did what they said and read what they read, I thought I was okay. It wasn't until much later that I began to see the way the American church has been misrepresenting the word of God and its intents and purposes that I had to choose for myself what the Bible means when it says certain things. I felt that through this and other instances, God had shown himself to me. I never used to question what preachers said. Now I do. I think most people are turned off (like I am) by what they see on TV and in church services. This very thing called 'church' is completely different than the way the New Testement church was. So this misunderstanding of what church is, is in the American church itself! Because many Christians themselves can't keep each other accountable, the world, or non-believers, will (i.e., Swaggert, Haggard, James Baker, etc.). With this being said, I see it being harder for people who are curious about God to become more interested, and that is totally and completely understandable. I, myself, am dissappointed with what has happened to Christianity, so I am a skeptic myself. (This previous stuff may be a totally different topic. ) The bottom line is that if you are close-minded or seared toward the things of the Bible, you probably will not be convinced of anything until God moves on your heart. And yes, I know that sounds pretty corny, but it's how I believe. This argument is somewhat pointless if neither of us budge on our stances.
Assuming I could understand all the vocabulary found in the book, that would be a better analogy. But, I'm still not sure that I completely agree with it. You are trying to compare a lack of faith to a lack of understanding, and they are 2 different things. I understand why people have (or do not have) faith & understand what the bible is, therefore I see no reason to think that I cannot understand stand it the same as you do. Once again, I think this is something that you would just like to believe so as to give reasoning behind your acceptance & my denial. I mentioned that when I read the bible I was a christian, just the same way you apparently were. Furthermore, my seperation from the bible would only increase my objectivity, and does not have an effect on subjectivity. Ask yourself this, where did these flaws come from? They came because people are involved, people that have their own personal agendas & etc. When you realize that the church is messed up because of people, and then consider that the bible was written by these same type of people, what makes you able to continue to have such faith in a book? I'm a pretty open minded guy. I'm a deist, not an atheist like martin. Who says it has to be an argument? I think we're all capable of intelligent debate.
I just typed out this HUGE post, and when I submitted it, I was logged out and enerything was lost. Oh well...
what is the deity you believe in like? what evidence do you have for his existence? to refresh my memory i looked it up: "The belief, based solely on reason, in a God who created the universe and then abandoned it, assuming no control over life, exerting no influence on natural phenomena, and giving no supernatural revelation." based on reason? there must be some science i havent heard of yet. i am gonna guess there will be a syllogism similar to the following involved: the universe exists; universes dont pop up out of nothing; something exists that made the universe premise 2 is of undetermined truth value and the syllogism is not valid.
I don't know what the deity I believe in is & I absolutely do not have any proof in his existence - as of course I couldn't, except to try & say it was a logical conclusion based on the idea that something had to create the universe. Logical conclusion does not imply that it is based on facts, but rather on personal reasoning. Undetermined truth value does not mean that it is not valid to believe in, just that it is not valid to be accepted as fact, which of course I'm not trying to say it is. I'm really more of an agnostic deist, because I do not believe absolutely that there is a god, only that there may be, but if there is indeed one then I believe it would be the one deists believe in.
or any reason to believe it whatsoever. which isnt necessarily true at all. how is that logical? i honestly do not understand the value of this "personal reasoning". seems like another way of saying "i made something up because it was fun". which one is that? what is he/she/it like?
I specifically said that it was not based on fact or science. You have trouble believing anything that is not based on these, I don't have quite the same hard time. It is not like I have a lot of faith in the belief, but as long as we are making wild ass guesses, this is mine. I see no practical difference between a deist & an agnostic, except I admit more of a chance of there being a god. It is fun. I don't care because it doesn't matter. That is the beauty of deism - God is uninteracting, so there's no need for praise or even to know anything about them.
i understand. what you are doing is like making a statement "ketchup is better than mustard". it has no empirical value, and is impossible to analyze. once you leave reason and empiricism behind, you can say anything, and it you really arent saying anything. a logical positivist would call this a "cognitively meaningless" statement. so you are saying you may or may not believe in something that effectively has no attributes. the one attribute you give your god (being uninteractive) is totally made up. this is all another way of saying "i hate reason".
Does everything have to be based on scientific evidence? There is no evidence any which way - not for or against a god. I understand why you are an atheist, this lack of evidence to you means that there is a slim chance there is a god but you have no reason to believe there is. Humans aren't built to think based purely on facts. We have feelings & intuition. These can be bad when we listen to them despite evidence to the contrary, but when no evidence exist then it is all that we have. Well, not the only attribute... Obviously he would also have the power to create universes as well. Both attributes are based on completely non-scientific reasoning. The universe is here & may have been created by a diety, I chose to believe that it was. From there, I have not witnessed anything to make me believe that said diety interacts with Earth & as such I'm left to believe that it is up to using reasoning to figure out things.
of course. any proposition or theory about the universe made without evidence is no different than random strings of noise. if we had one person listen to your theory, and another listened to the random static between radio stations, both have learned the same amount about the universe. which is not to say that it is equally likely that god does or does not exist. and we can use this "feelings and intuition" to make meaningless statements because it is fun. i think dolphins cant speak human, they just choose not to. now that i have made it clear what i think about that, where does that leave us? nowhere. without reason we are just babbling. which is to say we have exactly nothing, no matter how fun it is to think otherwise. translation: made up and of no value. that is called self-delusion. fun, but again, as literally useless to a discussion of reality. in sane people, belief should not be volitional. what is true and real should be apparent and constant, not a matter of whim.
