OT: What do you believe and why?

[BBS_Agonistes1]

I think I've given several detailed explanations of the "why" I believe from a logical/philosophical/theological standpoint, but are you looking for more personal narratives at this point? I will be happy to write regarding whatever--I'm still enjoying the conversation!

 

[pharphis]

I think I've given several detailed explanations of the "why" I believe from a logical/philosophical/theological standpoint, but are you looking for more personal narratives at this point? I will be happy to write regarding whatever--I'm still enjoying the conversation!

Maybe I misinterpreted your previous posts. Perhaps you could just quote your previous reasons for me or super briefly summarize them?

 

[BBS_Agonistes1]

Maybe I misinterpreted your previous posts. Perhaps you could just quote your previous reasons for me or super briefly summarize them?

No problem, many of those posts were directed at Gripphon or others, while you were more involved in the cosmology/Genesis/evolution discussions.

Basically, I named three strong impressions that are basic qualities of human experience in the earlier post directed toward Gripphon.
I-1. The material world exists and operates according to universal, observable principles. (The study of this phenomena by human agents we call science.)
I-2. I have free will; I can make choices.
I-3. Some choices should be made and some shouldn't. (The study of this by human agents on a large scale is covered by studies such as morality, ethics, and epistemology.)

Even though I-1 can't be incontrovertibly proven (we've known this since the 18th c.) since all sensory experience is subjective, you seem to accept it as truth, just as I do. We are in agreement there.
If we accept I-1, we could just stop there and say that was all: there is nothing beyond the material world. Yet we can't quite do this, because by science (the area of study that becomes possible as a result of I-1) we can prove the truth of I-2. To declare that I-1 is the only of these impressions that is valid, and that there is nothing beyond the material world, we deny free will. Yet the existence of free will can be be proven through experimentation. As a result, we have proved the existence of the metaphysical world through scientific observation, which is actually fairly amazing. As such, for any individual who wishes to be logical, we must accept I-1 and I-2. (Note that we don't have to be logical. Many religions and systems of thought reject logic. But I think we are also on the same page here).

Once one has affirmed I-1 and I-2, one may reject I-3. Yet we find that this entire process so far has been governed by I-3: we have made certain choices and not made others. We have found these choices appropriate because of governing principles, which we have assumed beforehand: truth is privileged above non-truth (we don't seek lies, but truth), reason above non-reason. We could be total skeptics and not even accept I-1, and thus reject the natural sciences. Yet we see value in making some assumptions, because we see that no fact can be incontrovertibly proven. So, we've also implicitly affirmed the idea that even when something can't be proven, if it inductively seems plausible, it is desirable to accept it as truth and proceed on that basis.

So, if I've accepted I-1, I-2, and I-3, it therefore follows that I find the pursuit of external truth valuable in both the material world and the metaphysical world. The study of science is available to me, as is morality. Because morality and free will reside outside the material world, in the metaphysical/supernatural world, then it also makes sense to assent to a governing force, a God, and the God and morality that seem to coincide most with I-3 is certainly that of Christianity. If any of that seems unclear, I've spelled it out in a little more detail in previous posts, but I was trying to be concise here--always a difficult line to straddle.

Now, all of that is the product of inductive reasoning, and I'm not claiming that I accepted Christianity because I began some sort of Cartesian line of inquiry and it led me there. I can give my own personal account of what experiences in life led me there, but I'll leave the above for now.

Given your interest in cosmology, are you familiar with Robert Jastrow (d. 2008)? You inspired me to research cosmology a bit, so I’ve been reading a lot of it, and Jastrow is quite interesting to me, for what will be obvious reasons. He was a smart guy: he was the first chairman of NASA’s Lunar Exploration Committee, the chief of NASA’s theoretical division, and the founding director of NASA’s Goddard Institute. He went on to be a professor at Dartmouth and Columbia, among an entire host of other accomplishments.

He’s a cosmologist who is an agnostic. He begins his book God and the Astronomers thus:

When a scientist writes about God, his colleagues assume he is either over the hill or going bonkers. In my case it should be understood from the start that I am an agnostic in religious matters.” (pg. 9).

This is where it gets interesting. He summarizes recent discoveries regarding the Big Bang, and concludes:

Now we see how the astronomical evidence supports the biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy (19).

As a result, he later concludes:

For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries (116).

Your thoughts?

EDIT:
He essentially concludes by stating that science can't really give an ultimate answer in the search for the origins of the universe, and it does seem that the Big Bang indicates some sort of God or Prime Mover. This is all pretty obvious to me, and many other people throughout history, but I think it's significant coming from a guy like him who is coming from an entirely 21st c. scientific, agnostic approach.

 

[ZappaFan]

God created evolution!

Not a statement of what I believe per se, but this is a phrase that I coined (or so I thought) back in the late 70's and is now available to purchase in several mediums, t-shirts, etc. Of course I'm not seeing any of those royalties...

I now return you to your regularly scheduled debate...

 

[Pb_pal1]

EDIT:
He essentially concludes by stating that science can't really give an ultimate answer in the search for the origins of the universe, and it does seem that the Big Bang indicates some sort of God or Prime Mover. This is all pretty obvious to me, and many other people throughout history, but I think it's significant coming from a guy like him who is coming from an entirely 21st c. scientific, agnostic approach.

There are piles of physicists and cosmologists working on this problem right now. Just because the Universe may have started at a sharp and definite point does not necessarily mean there is an outside God turning the key in the ignition.

There is evidence that points towards quantum fluctuations as the guilty party that started everything. Here is a brief article explaining it quickly, and here is the paper with the mathematical proof if you feel like melting your brain.

Quantum mechanics has shown that what we think of as "nothing" is actually a kind of soup of particle-antiparticle pairs which can pop in and out of existence. The theory leads that there can also be these kind of "bubbles" of space-time that pop in and out of existence, and if one of these bubbles expands to a certain size before disappearing back into the "nothing-ness", it will take hold and continue expanding onwards in a quantum inflation. We have strong evidence that this inflationary period happened, the Cosmic Background Radiation.

I don't do the evidence justice, and I'll never be able to. Quantum mechanics is terribly confusing, and requires you to rework what you think is logical by intuition, but there is very strong evidence that it is real. In fact, many of our electronic devices nowadays use the principles (basically anything with a transistor or semi-conductor in it).

So no, the Big Bang does not necessarily indicate that it was created on purpose by an external force. Do we know all of the intricaces of how it was started? Of course not. We are, however, working towards it, and have made tremendous strides in understanding the most fundamental forces that permeate the world we live in. As I said, I don't understand all of these concepts fully (or even much at all at times), but to me they make way more sense than saying the universe was created by a divine creator, just because.


EDIT:

Just saw your post @kestegs. I appreciate that you believe what you do, and your reasons for it. I'm not trying to change your mind, it's interesting for me to see other peoples' stances on these issues and why they stand where they do. Also, as @pharphis said earlier - seeds of doubt and whatnot. It's always good to get people talking about these things, even if it's just to re-affirm their beliefs, whatever those may be.

As for that ark that they are building, I would like to see it when it's finished. If they can do it, it will be a cool engineering feat. My problems with the global flood run much deeper than just whether or not they technically had the ship available, but I've already stated my opinion on that.

Evolution I might get to another day. It's a massive subject, and I just don't know if I've got the time or energy right now. If the discussion trends that way, I'll pop in my two cents.

 

[BBS_Agonistes1]

No, of course I wasn't saying that it was a logical necessity that there be a creator. I was merely pointing out that even an agnostic who is an expert on the subject essentially concludes that there is a remarkable resemblance between the biblical account and what scientists believed happened. Many of you in this thread seem to have a vested interest in distancing the biblical account from the scientific one, when actually even an expert in the field can't help remarking how similar they are.

Quantum mechanics is great and all, but ultimately these cosmologists are using inductive reasoning to reconstruct a plausible account of what might have happened. Whatever they conclude, it won't ever be demonstrable through scientific experimentation. This is why there are such radical paradigm shifts in cosmology. Like I've stated before, I'll be quite surprised if our cosmology hasn't done another 180 in a few decades! At any rate, what they are describing seems remarkably similar to how I imagine the process of creation would be described in scientific terms.

 

[Pb_pal1]

No, of course I wasn't saying that it was a logical necessity that there be a creator. I was merely pointing out that even an agnostic who is an expert on the subject essentially concludes that there is a remarkable resemblance between the biblical account and what scientists believed happened. Many of you in this thread seem to have a vested interest in distancing the biblical account from the scientific one, when actually even an expert in the field can't help remarking how similar they are.

Quantum mechanics is great and all, but ultimately these cosmologists are using inductive reasoning to reconstruct a plausible account of what might have happened. Whatever they conclude, it won't ever be demonstrable through scientific experimentation. This is why there are such radical paradigm shifts in cosmology. Like I've stated before, I'll be quite surprised if our cosmology hasn't done another 180 in a few decades!

Ah okay fair enough, I misunderstood your point. I agree that the biblical view of how the universe started and the view we have based on scientific evidence do appear similar, but they have major differences in the implications of believing one or the other. I am no expert on the bible, but the similarities seem to stop pretty much immediately after the fact that "something" was created from "nothing".

It seems strange to me to discount cosmology due to inductive reasoning, and suggesting that unless we physically see another universe form from quantum fluctuations we can't believe it could be how our universe formed, when the bible tells us that we have to believe God created the universe simply because it says he did.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point again, it just makes more sense to me to take the evidence of what we do know and try to apply it to further understand our origins than to say "We can't recreate it, so God did it".

 

[twillight]

...

I see HUGH LOGICAL FALLACIES in your logic.

First take a look at I-2:
Free will does NOT simply mean "I can make choices". Although I accept we can make choices, but these choices have consequences, thus the decision process is not entirely free.

Second, and more serious problem at I-3: it is entirely FALSE that "some choices should, others shouldn't be made".
Why should? Why shouldn't?
Evidently you'll end up at "exterial source", because you invented it in your "truth", which we strongly disagree upon.

Morality, ethics etc. deal not with what "should or shouldn't" be made, but with what people as community benefit from or face as difficulty.

Logical fallacies continue: science can NOT prove free will, or even you can make choices. Science did not exclude decisions are predetermined by the original state of the Universe. Even though we observe (but not prove!) choices, that doesn't mean they are really choices. The Universe can be absolutely mechanical, but because of its complexity we likely won't be able to prove that in any way.

----------

As we all see you based your argument on a serious logical fallacy: that some things creatures should or should not do, because an outside source says so.
Than you do a circular reasoning telling "because an outside source says so, that outside source exists", while the original premiss, that outside source would exist is an unproven and unnecessary statement.

 

[twillight]

No, of course I wasn't saying that it was a logical necessity that there be a creator. I was merely pointing out that even an agnostic who is an expert on the subject essentially concludes that there is a remarkable resemblance between the biblical account and what scientists believed happened. Many of you in this thread seem to have a vested interest in distancing the biblical account from the scientific one, when actually even an expert in the field can't help remarking how similar they are.

Quantum mechanics is great and all, but ultimately these cosmologists are using inductive reasoning to reconstruct a plausible account of what might have happened. Whatever they conclude, it won't ever be demonstrable through scientific experimentation. This is why there are such radical paradigm shifts in cosmology. Like I've stated before, I'll be quite surprised if our cosmology hasn't done another 180 in a few decades! At any rate, what they are describing seems remarkably similar to how I imagine the process of creation would be described in scientific terms.

Uhm, come back again when you can prove the Earth is flat - as stands in the Bible -, does not move (the Sun orbits the Earth etc.), that dragons and unicorns are real, that the Universe is 6,000 years old only, and there is the undying jew who listened Jesus' speech back around 30 CE to still be around and observe the return of Jesus.

Ultimately: xianity has nothing to do with the observable facts.

 

[BBS_Agonistes1]

Reread my post twilight! You may need some background in philosophy to understand the argument.

ALL of the impressions are just that: impressions. The first one is also an assumption--this is common knowledge, and we've already covered it in the thread. I claimed that they were assumptions from the beginning: NONE of them can be taken as incontrovertible fact.

My explanation explains the three strongest impressions for my human experience satisfactorily. The naturalist account (which you implicitly affirm) entirely disregards 2 and 3, while still making the huge assumption of 1. So it is ultimately just as much an assumption, but doesn't satisfactorily account for the other fundamental aspects of human experience.

 

[BBS_Agonistes1]

PB, you are getting the basic direction of my posts, I think you are just interpreting me as saying a little bit more than I am.
I wasn't claiming that we can reject all of cosmology because of inductive reasoning, but rather that both biblical and cosmological accounts seem to point toward something quite similar. Both are inductive, so it seems appropriate that both can work together.

 

[BBS_Agonistes1]

Uhm, come back again when you can prove the Earth is flat - as stands in the Bible -, does not move (the Sun orbits the Earth etc.), that dragons and unicorns are real, that the Universe is 6,000 years old only, and there is the undying *** who listened Jesus' speech back around 30 CE to still be around and observe the return of Jesus.

Ultimately: xianity has nothing to do with the observable facts.

I'm not trying to be insulting, but you are raising a pretty standard straw man arguments and claims based on ignorance (.e.g Jesus' speech) that you would know have been addressed many, many times over the past centuries if you had done even a little bit of research.

 

[Pb_pal1]

PB, you are getting the basic direction of my posts, I think you are just interpreting me as saying a little bit more than I am.
I wasn't claiming that we can reject all of cosmology because of inductive reasoning, but rather that both biblical and cosmological accounts seem to point toward something quite similar. Both are inductive, so it seems appropriate that both can work together.

Okay, that's what I thought. I guess where I was getting held up is that even though they look the same superficially at the "starting point", everything else about them is completely different. But yes, they do look rather similar at that starting point, I can agree with that.

Now I'm going to go hide while this ethics/morality debate happens, I am in no way qualified to dip my toes in there. Have fun!

 

[BBS_Agonistes1]

I edited my previous post because I felt my response might be taken as insulting. Just beginning with "I'm not trying to be insulting" doesn't mean that I can then say anything I want.

But just to get back to your point @Twilight. You are coming in at the tail end of what is a long argument. We've already agreed that science is based on assumptions, and that we have to make assumptions to arrive at truth. So, I wasn't claiming my argument was not based on assumptions, but merely that all accounts of human experience are, and I was demonstrating why I feel mine is a more satisfactory account of human experience.

I just finished a Ph.D. in Literature and Culture, and my dissertation was specifically on theology in literature. My undergrad degree was a double major in Literature and History, with a focus area in the history of philosophy, and I took all my electives in informal logical and philosophy! I'm not saying this to somehow make an argument from authority and say, "Oh, I have a degree so everyone has to believe me!" There are many people more qualified than I to speak on the subject, and many of them are atheists and agnostics, so I'm not meaning it that way. Basically, I just include this information to let you know that I've spent many, many years studying all this, so I'm quite familiar with the points you're bringing up! I've read all the titans of atheist, agnostic, and Christian thought. I received all my degrees from a secular university, and one of my most central mentors had done all his work on disproving the authorship of the NT and the work of classical philosophers, and we duked it out constantly. I love reading that sort of thing. I just don't ultimately find atheism/agnosticism persuasive.

So, I have seen all the typical atheist prooftexts from scripture that cherrypick verses one by one and try to ask Christians to explain it. I have addressed them for my own sake, one by one, as have countless theologians. Even in the middle ages, these simple "contradictions" that atheists think they are so ingenious for coming up with had been addressed! I don't really have any interest in redoing the work of Aquinas and others one verse at a time for an internet forum, because quite simply, it's already been done. I've done the reading for myself, but I'm not going to do others' reading for them if they ultimately have no interest in Christianity. For anyone genuinely interested in how these contradictions, etc., are resolved, I'd be glad to direct them to the most fundamental works on the subject, but I suspect most aren't really genuinely interested.

Just to point out some of the assumptions you must make from your point of view:
1. You we should think logically. Why? Because you find it self evident. Yet huge amounts of humans reject logic. It is not universal, nor can you develop a proof for why thinking should be logical. This has been common knowledge for quite a while--it's basically the entire theme of postmodern/poststructuralist thought! For the record, I agree that we should think logically, but I'm also aware this is ultimately an assumption.
2. You believe the natural world exists and functions according to universal principles. Again, this is a huge assumption that you can't prove. See any of the work that I've cited by philosophers countless times above! Again, I agree with you here, but I'm also aware this is an assumption that we can't ultimately prove. (See, for example, the work of 20th c. philosophy Hilary Putnam.)

We have to make some assumptions to discuss anything. Your limited naturalism has some huge problems in the moral realm!

 

[BBS_Agonistes1]

Morality, ethics etc. deal not with what "should or shouldn't" be made, but with what people as community benefit from or face as difficulty.

Again, your claim shows you need to do a little more research. You clearly aren't familiar with the different systems of normative ethics, instead only understanding one system--one that began in the 18th century called "utilitarianism".

At any rate, even the system you pose still has to do with choices--benefit vs. hardship.

 

[pharphis]

Ah okay fair enough, I misunderstood your point. I agree that the biblical view of how the universe started and the view we have based on scientific evidence do appear similar, but they have major differences in the implications of believing one or the other. I am no expert on the bible, but the similarities seem to stop pretty much immediately after the fact that "something" was created from "nothing".

It seems strange to me to discount cosmology due to inductive reasoning, and suggesting that unless we physically see another universe form from quantum fluctuations we can't believe it could be how our universe formed, when the bible tells us that we have to believe God created the universe simply because it says he did.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point again, it just makes more sense to me to take the evidence of what we do know and try to apply it to further understand our origins than to say "We can't recreate it, so God did it".

Exactly, and that's the point I made earlier. It seems silly to me to take one aspect of the genesis account and say "this seems to match up!" while ignoring all of the other details.

Besides, "Created" is a loaded term implying causation (as far as we know before space-time even existed - so the language doesn't even make sense) and as you pointed out "nothing" is very different from how most people use the term, but my knowledge on this is limited.
It's the same reason that phrasing a question like "what happened before the big bang" is meaningless. There is no "before" time afaik.

Besides, it's not even a consensus that the universe HAD a beginning. There is consensus on the inflationary period but cosmologists are pretty split on an eternal universe vs a finite one. Cosmologists propose eternal universe models all the time, and they wouldn't do so if they thought it couldn't possibly represent our own.

 

[BBS_Agonistes1]

Actually, Christianity doesn't necessarily affirm creation from nothing. There are three common doctrines: creatio ex nihilo, creatio ex materia, and creatio ex deo--so, some believe in creation from nothing, some from preexisting matter, others from God.

 

[BBS_Agonistes1]

Besides, it's not even a consensus that the universe HAD a beginning. There is consensus on the inflationary period but cosmologists are pretty split on an eternal universe vs a finite one. Cosmologists propose eternal universe models all the time, and they wouldn't do so if they thought it couldn't possibly represent our own.

I forgot to address this, which again seems the root of the problem.

Atheists and agnostics often demand that Christians explain every problematic verse in the Bible, as though we have to prove it to be 100% true and sensible, and demand we reject it if we can't complete this feat. That seems silly to me. I would never claim that there aren't puzzling verses, but rather that the Bible overall does a fantastic job of explaining how to live one's life.

At the same time however, their own cosmological accounts are messy, change from decade to decade (Steady State to Big Bang), and they can't even agree on some of the most fundamental aspects of this account.

So, those who demand that I reject scripture because it doesn't seem to line up with a particular scientific account in an area where there is little consensus synchronically and diachronically seems a bit ludicrous.

 

[pharphis]

I forgot to address this, which again seems the root of the problem.

Atheists and agnostics often demand that Christians explain every problematic verse in the Bible, as though we have to prove it to be 100% true and sensible, and demand we reject it if we can't complete this feat. That seems silly to me. I would never claim that there aren't puzzling verses, but rather that the Bible overall does a fantastic job of explaining 99% of things.

At the same time however, their own cosmological accounts are messy, change from decade to decade (Steady State to Big Bang), and they can't even agree on some of the most fundamental aspects of this account.

So, those who demand that I reject scripture because it doesn't seem to line up with a particular scientific account in an area where there is little consensus synchronically and diachronically seems a bit ludicrous.

It depends on the certainty of things. We are scientifically certain that stars come before planets, and therefore sunlight existed before plants, for example. We know that the age of these things differ by extraordinary amounts of time, and that any changes we make in our understanding of say the age of the earth vs. the age of the sun will only by minor changes. We know the ORDER won't change. Or, at least, we're 99.9% certain the order won't change because it would involve some gigantic fundamental changes in our understanding of the universe.

I understand that some things are vague (like the three different creation types you mentioned a moment ago) but some things are not, and are demonstrably false. This is why I brought up the plants vs sunlight issue (and there are more ofc.). You might consider this inconsequential to the rest of the bible and that's fine (I might disagree here but *shrug*) but not everyone does including kestegs who has said that the bible is true (taking into account translation issues etc.) and so ultimately the science must be wrong or god 'tricked' us by making everything appear to contradict the bible by making things appear older than they are, etc.

Besides, I only wanted to point out that if you're going to claim that the genesis account matches up with cosmology that it's only with respect to ONE aspect (at best - as you had shown it's vague what the bible states) and therefore that it's not really a fair statement to make.

I don't know why you think our current cosmological accounts are messy. They've changed to become less messy with respect to the available evidence.

 

[BBS_Agonistes1]

Well, maybe they are less messy, maybe they are more messy--that's up to debate. I don't at all agree with the idea of scientific progression as linear--that's pretty much been universally rejected ever since Kuhn's monumental work on the subject, which I've mentioned several times.

The use of the pejorative term "tricked", as though God had some imperative to create the world in a certain way seems silly to me. The thing that so many naturalists fail to recognize is that God as he is represented in scripture (and in almost any tradition) is entirely in control of the material world and its variables. This means that creation could take any form he would like, and could quite easily have the impression of age. Almost everything humans create bears the impression of age: all literature, film, art that operates in a fictional world. This isn't trickery, but rather a fundamental aspect of human creation. I don't see why God's creation has to be so different.

My main point is that the big points of contention with science are points that are clearly entering the realm of possibly metaphorical speech and lack of scientific consensus, respectively. As such, it doesn't really seem like a valid enough reason for rejecting scripture. Again, I'm not pretending to have backed you into a corner here--I know we'll have to agree to disagree.