Luskin: Judge Wrong To Rule Against ID's Theology


VoiceOfReason wrote:
snex wrote:
<snip>







personally persuasive of what? that the mythological characters
currently espoused by the person's current culture are really real?
...


I suggested that you closely examine your definition of "real", but for
some
reason, you didn't bother.

perhaps you should suggest that theists do so, since they are the ones
who think faith can determine reality.


If you have a case in question, please let us know. But you have repeatedly
used the word. And here you avoid telling us what you mean by it.

"But if evolution is true, there is no 'need' for a deity to create,
organize, and shape the world. What we see around us is explicable in
exclusively natural terms. That is actually a knife in the heart of
Christian belief.

VoiceOfUnreason replies: Only for those with very weak faith.

the implication here is that VoU has strong faith,

No, the implication is that people with weak faith feel threatened by
evolution.

and you are not threatened by evolution and have faith, therefore you
have strong faith. duh.

Yes, that would seem to be rather obvious, wouldn't it?

and that the science
of evolution does not affect his belief that *reality* coincides with
his own personal version of christianity.

And that the majority of the world's Christians are capable of
reconciling science with Christianity.

really? how do they reconcile the fact that science says that people
dont rise from the dead after 3 days?

I don't reconcile it. Several possibilities exist: he rose from the
dead after 3 days by way of some miracle; he wasn't actually dead, but
was comatose and/or unconscious for 3 days; etc. I'm don't know exactly
what happened, but I'm not all that concerned about it.

"some miracle?" i thought you said christians are capable of
reconciling science with christianity.

your other possibility would be considered heresy by pretty much every
christian denomination out there.


VoU, being a christian,
presumably thinks that the jesus of the bible *really* lived, *really*
healed people, and *really* died and rose from the dead. he thinks that
the god described in the christian bible *really* exists and that there
is *really* a heaven he goes to when he dies.

Close enough.

he thinks that his "faith" in these ideas is ample justification to
believe in their actuality, and presumably he will act in an according
manner. he does not care if none of these ideas have evidence,

I do not expect to find evidence for the existence of God.

and yet you claim that god has produced observable effects on the
natural world.

I have not made that claim. I know of no criteria to determine for
certain that an observable effect was produced by a deity or not. God
may have produced observable effects, but I am not aware of them.

the gospels clearly state that god made observable effects happen. if
you deny that they can be trusted on those matters, why trust them on
*any* matters?


he does
not care that all known evidence is against these ideas.

I have not seen evidence for the non-existence of God or Jesus. All
I've heard of is a lack of contemporary written evidence, which isn't
surprising.

maybe you should look into other mystery cults that predate jesus, like
osiris and mithras. their stories are amazingly similar to the jesus
one. do you take the opinion of the early church fathers that satan
seeded these cults with just the right ideas centuries before jesus was
born just so people would think that the jesus story was ripping them
off?

No, I don't take that opinion.

then why is the jesus story so similar to other stories that long
predate it?


how do you deal with the fact that the gospels obviously contradict
each other in basic facts that should have been known by anybody
familiar with actual events they were writing about, like the death of
judas?

Humans communicated the gospels verbally, wrote them, transcribed them,
and possibly made mistakes or embellished them while doing so at
numerous points in time. IIRC, scholars have discovered that the
"final" versions of gospels have minor differences from earlier
versions.

the contradictions in events surrounding the death of judas described
in matthew and acts of the apostles are *not* minor.


he does not
care if these ideas are false, he will believe them anyway.

Wrong.

if you admit that no possible evidence can ever sway you (because no
evidence is possible), then it is correct to say that you dont care if
your ideas are false.

I don't say that no possible evidence can ever sway me.

and yet your position is arrived at through a lack of any evidence
whatsoever. if you are prepared to hold positions without evidence,
then evidence is irrelevant to you.


i see no difference between that attitude and the attitude of a
creationist.

Creationists disbelieve and/or deny scientific evidence that conflicts
with their literal interpretation of Genesis. Most Christians do not.

you deny the scientific evidence that states that men cannot rise from
the dead after 3 days.

No, I don't. I acknowledge the possibility that Jesus rose from the
dead after three days.

what possibility? scientific evidence denies such a possibility.

.

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