Originally posted by SaburoS
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Now those arguments of faith fall apart under scrutiny.
Creationism (uh-oh, another 1000 post thread right there only to get locked in the end).
Evolution (see above).
Offspring mutation (I mean if we all come from the same relatives)?
Flooding all of Earth killing off all life outside of Noah's Ark by raining constantly for 40 days/nights. Really?
How old is the Earth?
Our solar system?
Our Universe?
Parting of the Red Sea?
That's a start.
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Saburo, just a thought, hopefully directed to an open mind.
it seems to me that you are trying to disprove something by at first assuming it does not exist; That in essence claims of supernatural activity cannot be true because there can't be anything that transcends the natural world we observe.
Here's what I mean.
I'd like to do a thought experiment...and lets leave the word "god" out. Instead, purely for the sake of the thought experiment, lets imagine a transdimensional entity that exists in a hgher dimensional state than our own. This entity would seem "god-like" to us, being a couple orders of magnitude more advanced than the first european explorers appeared to stone age new worlders.
Take that being that exists in the 6th dimension or something, and allow it to interact with our 3 dimensional world. Its very presence would strain the 3D universe we live in; and if it acted on this universe, IT WOULD APPEAR INEXPLICABLE BY ANY NATURAL LAW of our existance - -almost by definition. And those explicable, but extradimensional, interactions would look every bit like miracles.
So if you posit that such a being existed, would miracles be any big deal at all???
Now, a step further. Imagine how incomprehensible our world would seem to something truly 2 dimensional, that has no framework to understand the concept of "depth". Or, closer to home, imagine describing a sunset to a man born blind? How could you even start? Even if you did an OK job, could it even appraoch the reality?
Take that idea and apply it to our 6th Dimensional visitor. Would you really expect everything that entity told us about itself and the dimensional existance beyond our own, to be completely straightforward and direct? In fact, I'd argue that any such explanation for what's beyond our universe had BETTER stretch our minds some, because if it doesnt it begins to sound suspiciously like an invention from within this framework.
Now I'm not going to claim that this makes any proof of anything I believe, because of course it doesn't. But your implication, that people of faith must in essence turn their minds off to reality, does not bear scrutiny.
There are certainly those who never get past "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it for me." Some figuratively plug their ears and hum to drown out what doesnt fit what they want to believe.
But the fact that many you see do not operate on the same cognitive plane as you DOES NOT mean that faith itself is ignorance. I'd challenge you to honestly wrestle with the deep thought of C.S. Lewis'
Mere Christianity, or G.K. Chesterton's
Orthodoxy. If you're up to it, dive into the philosophical works of Augustine of Hippo -- though his intellect so far exceeds my capacity that I needed support materials (like a Augustinian philosophy lecture series -- from a secular college, btw) to grasp the depth of what he was saying.
