The world is only 6 thousand years old ...

[bankside]

BTW, "reasonable" isn't really some sort of personal value judgement.

To reason in this sense is to "find an answer to a problem by considering possible options." per Oxford.

 

[TX-Beau]

Which pretty much makes the term fraught with personal assumptions of what are possible options. If you believe in God, there is no option that he doesn't exist, does that make one reasonable?

 

[TX-Beau]

The reason I'm belaboring this point, is because this discussion always always always turns into semantic wrangling. Whether or not there is a "reason" in creation (why must it be "creation" that term itself implies volition), the discussion of whether or not there is God depends on finding a definition of God. Which the religious are not capable of providing, not even all Christians agree - they definitely don't agree with anyone else.

I really see no point in crediting the myriad assertions of divinity with "reason" until we can decide what the hell it is in first place.

 

[zoltanspawn]

The reason I'm belaboring this point, is because this discussion always always always turns into semantic wrangling.

Um...I mean...why, yes it does.

 

[bankside]

The reason I'm belaboring this point, is because this discussion always always always turns into semantic wrangling. Whether or not there is a "reason" in creation (why must it be "creation" that term itself implies volition), the discussion of whether or not there is God depends on finding a definition of God. Which the religious are not capable of providing, not even all Christians agree - they definitely don't agree with anyone else.

I really see no point in crediting the myriad assertions of divinity with "reason" until we can decide what the hell it is in first place.

I take a more heuristic approach and then work down as when using limits to define the area of something.

I'd hope we can agree that reason is not to be confused with intuition, or guessing, or picking an answer out of a hat. Reason isn't those things, even in people's quirky and particular definitions as furnished to bolster their own arguments.

 

[TX-Beau]

No, I don't want to imply that "reason" is intuition or randomness (yet - on the randomness.) Reason does have process, one must consider, and that would be fine if we all dealt in fact, and were open minded. But we are not, especially on the subject of God. The great majority of the truly religious (and a lot of times even the casually religious out of sheer laziness) do not deliberate on any possibility that challenges their personal investment, and ignore facts (and their implications) that contradict their dogma or mythology. It seems they randomly (there it is) cherry-pick the parameters within which they apply "reason."

They spend huge amounts of time being reasonable about the Trinity, the nature of Grace, Rapture, etc.

They definitely applied a cognitive process in which they've considered their options, and their "facts," and consider themselves reasonable people.

I'm not looking to apply limits to religion, nor am I attempting to define divinity myself, heuristically or by process of specific instruction, I just find it an exercise in futility when one talks to religious people who operate with fuzzy "reason" and chameleon vocabulary, about the very nature of their claims, and then expect the rest of us to participate and move onward without question.

Example - Creationism, or the Big Bang? O.K. WHY do we consider Creationism as a credible alternative when the people pushing it can't even decide who's Creationism is "real" within the limits of their own self defined "reason?"

The discussion can't really start until we all know what the other is really saying.

 

[Kulindahr]

Example - Creationism, or the Big Bang?

Just want to point out that this is a false dichotomy.

 

[TX-Beau]

Yeah, not really. Obviously I'm not saying only one(creationism) or the other(big bang - which has its own problems), I'm saying why consider a(Creationism) at all? When the religious can explain who is right perhaps we can talk. There OBVIOUSLY can be a million NON-RELIGIOUS origins for the fucking universe.

No God required.

 

[Kulindahr]

Yeah, not really. Obviously I'm not saying only one(creationism) or the other(big bang - which has its own problems), I'm saying why consider a(Creationism) at all? When the religious can explain who is right perhaps we can talk. There OBVIOUSLY can be a million NON-RELIGIOUS origins for the fucking universe.

No God required.

There can be only one -- the one that actually happened.

And it's not a matter of "No God required", it's a matter of whether God is there.

I plant trees. I put them in places where they can survive. Anyone coming across them will say, "Oh, a seed got carried here by the wind and a tree grew". With that natural explanation, they can say, "No planter required" -- but their conclusion would be false.

 

[TX-Beau]

There can be only one -- the one that actually happened.

And it's not a matter of "No God required", it's a matter of whether God is there.

I plant trees. I put them in places where they can survive. Anyone coming across them will say, "Oh, a seed got carried here by the wind and a tree grew". With that natural explanation, they can say, "No planter required" -- but their conclusion would be false.

No, the question ISN'T is there "God," the question is what happened?

We don't know what happened, one can literately postulate a thousand answers, but it remains that some are more "reasonable" than others, if you want to consider God, why is that reasonable? What do you have that might back up that answer?

 

[TX-Beau]

Who's god are we talking about? Who's divine creationism are we talking about? Which one is true (since they are pretty much all mutually exclusive) and what caused you to choose the one divinity over the other?

- - - Updated - - -

There are plenty of questions to be answered BEFORE we ever get to "did god do it?"

 

[bankside]

There can be only one -- the one that actually happened.

And it's not a matter of "No God required", it's a matter of whether God is there.

I plant trees. I put them in places where they can survive. Anyone coming across them will say, "Oh, a seed got carried here by the wind and a tree grew". With that natural explanation, they can say, "No planter required" -- but their conclusion would be false.

On the other hand, if they came across these trees, observed no plant tag written in your hand to indicate the species, neither stake nor tie bracing the tree, no difference or disturbance in the composition of the rootball's soil vs. in the land immediately adjacent that would suggest a transplant, no footprints leading away from the tree to your house or any house, and no other information to distinguish this tree from another you had not planted, they can say "Clearly Kulindahr planted this tree" - but their conclusion would be equally false, despite you having actually done it.

 

[mightbe]

There can be only one -- the one that actually happened.

And it's not a matter of "No God required", it's a matter of whether God is there.

I plant trees. I put them in places where they can survive. Anyone coming across them will say, "Oh, a seed got carried here by the wind and a tree grew". With that natural explanation, they can say, "No planter required" -- but their conclusion would be false.

But a small insect living in the tree years after it was planted will never know the difference. It is wrong to pin one answer down in spite of a lack of evidence. You can't walk up to an indistinguishable tree and immediately decide that it was planted by human hands. It doesn't work that way. "It can" doesn't mean "it was", and even if "it was" doesn't mean you can automatically say so without evidence.

 

[zoltanspawn]

And it's not a matter of "No God required", it's a matter of whether God is there.

I assume you accept the notion of parsimony. And that your version of god/creation is as parsimonious as a naturalist's.

 

[Kulindahr]

No, the question ISN'T is there "God," the question is what happened?

We don't know what happened, one can literately postulate a thousand answers, but it remains that some are more "reasonable" than others, if you want to consider God, why is that reasonable? What do you have that might back up that answer?

This is a great demonstration of a worldview that refuses to consider the existence of any other.

 

[Kulindahr]

On the other hand, if they came across these trees, observed no plant tag written in your hand to indicate the species, neither stake nor tie bracing the tree, no difference or disturbance in the composition of the rootball's soil vs. in the land immediately adjacent that would suggest a transplant, no footprints leading away from the tree to your house or any house, and no other information to distinguish this tree from another you had not planted, they can say "Clearly Kulindahr planted this tree" - but their conclusion would be equally false, despite you having actually done it.

Their conclusion would be correct. The issue would be with how they reached it.

 

[Kulindahr]

But a small insect living in the tree years after it was planted will never know the difference. It is wrong to pin one answer down in spite of a lack of evidence. You can't walk up to an indistinguishable tree and immediately decide that it was planted by human hands. It doesn't work that way. "It can" doesn't mean "it was", and even if "it was" doesn't mean you can automatically say so without evidence.

This completely misses the point. The claim is that because they can't prove there was a planter, then there was none.

 

[TX-Beau]

This is a great demonstration of a worldview that refuses to consider the existence of any other.

This is a worldview that requires you to justify why anyone should take YOUR mythology seriously.

 

[TX-Beau]

Honestly why should anyone take your insistence on God seriously?

Pony up and show us what you find so compelling.

 

[Kulindahr]

This is a worldview that requires you to justify why anyone should take YOUR mythology seriously.

No, it's a worldview that wants to set the terms for everything and everyone else. As you've demonstrated quite regularly in the past, you aren't interested in reason or anything else but a narrow insistence that anything that can be known has to be known through science.

- - - Updated - - -

Honestly why should anyone take your insistence on God seriously?

Pony up and show us what you find so compelling.

Been there, done that, and taken note that you aren't actually interested -- in fact, that you aren't even capable of listening, because you have such blinders on.