DrAwkward wrote:

clocker bob wrote:Again, I ask you: what drives your compulsion to make God be both an object of faith and a subject of science?

I'm going to keep pointing out how Matthew keeps avoiding this question until it's addressed.

Natural theology is not a matter of faith and revelation, but merely a matter of reasoning about reality itself taken AS itself, and I addressed this from the outset of this discussion when I said that directly bring matters of faith and revelation into a discussion such as this is not pertinent. Thus the question here is nugatory. Natural theology (AKA metaphysics AKA the existence of God) is an inherent part of ID theory, but in the contemporary world natural theology is in disrepute and disrepair. Thus it is only fitting that a case be made for natural theology before any attempt to discuss ID is even made.

n.b.: As of this post I'm going to link the beginning of this discussion in my signature so that others can read the entire discussion from its outset and thus we can avoid redundancy. I highly recommend if you're just jumping in here to start at the beginning.

matthew wrote:

DrAwkward wrote:

clocker bob wrote:Again, I ask you: what drives your compulsion to make God be both an object of faith and a subject of science?

I'm going to keep pointing out how Matthew keeps avoiding this question until it's addressed.

The question has already been addressed. Natural theology (AKA metaphysics AKA the existence of God) is an inherent part of ID theory, but in the contemporary world natural theology is in disrepute and disrepair. Thus it is only fitting that a case be made for natural theology before any attempt to discuss ID is even made.

That's not addressing it at all. People have continually pointed out that faith should require no proof of the existence of God, yet you keep maintaining that you want to establish a case for that proof existing. Why is your faith so shaky that it needs concrete proof?

I believe pretty devoutly in the existence of a God (or existence, or Brahman, or The Force, or something), and i have no need or desire to see it proven for me.

matthew wrote:

DrAwkward wrote:

clocker bob wrote:Again, I ask you: what drives your compulsion to make God be both an object of faith and a subject of science?

I'm going to keep pointing out how Matthew keeps avoiding this question until it's addressed.

The question has already been addressed. Natural theology (AKA metaphysics AKA the existence of God) is an inherent part of ID theory, but in the contemporary world natural theology is in disrepute and disrepair. Thus it is only fitting that a case be made for natural theology before any attempt to discuss ID is even made.

We follow that. My question is: why do you need to argue that God has a role in the scientific world? Scientists don't argue that science must have a role in the religious world. I'm interested in the psychology of ID advocates.

Does it make your faith feel stronger if you can force feed religion into science? I thought faith was supposed to be an absolute concept- if you have total faith in a supreme being, then do you not also believe that the supreme being has total faith in you? If I was God and I was observing you from on high as you proselytize beyond the boundaries of religion, I would feel hurt. If I am God and my word guides you, then your efforts to bend atheists to the flock with these far-fetched word games of yours would strike me as revealing evidence of your own doubts about Me, the Big Guy In The Sky.

Simple question: what makes you think that God wants you to make science accept Him?

DrAwkward wrote:

matthew wrote:

DrAwkward wrote:

clocker bob wrote:Again, I ask you: what drives your compulsion to make God be both an object of faith and a subject of science?

I'm going to keep pointing out how Matthew keeps avoiding this question until it's addressed.

The question has already been addressed. Natural theology (AKA metaphysics AKA the existence of God) is an inherent part of ID theory, but in the contemporary world natural theology is in disrepute and disrepair. Thus it is only fitting that a case be made for natural theology before any attempt to discuss ID is even made.

That's not addressing it at all. People have continually pointed out that faith should require no proof of the existence of God, yet you keep maintaining that you want to establish a case for that proof existing. Why is your faith so shaky that it needs concrete proof?

I believe pretty devoutly in the existence of a God (or existence, or Brahman, or The Force, or something), and i have no need or desire to see it proven for me.

I've revised my reply.

DrAwkward wrote:if you have total faith in a supreme being, then do you not also believe that the supreme being has total faith in you?

A few remarks here are needed:

I LIKE agnosticism, in a qualified sense.

You heard me right. I find that when grappling with the question "Does God exist?", agnosticism is the only honest point of departure because it is not initially evident to us that God exists. Agnosticism frees the mind from prior conceptualizing about God or no-God. Therefore I don't base my argument for the existence of "IS" (God) on "faith" in the religious sense pertaining to belief in the Christian God.

If, however, you mean that I have faith in the sense that I begin with an assumption- namely that "things exist", well yes I guess that is a matter of faith in a different sense in that one cannot demonstrate that existing things do not exist. After all, knowledge is impossible without at least a few assumptions.

Does it make your faith feel stronger if you can force feed religion into science? I thought faith was supposed to be an absolute concept- if you have total faith in a supreme being, then do you not also believe that the supreme being has total faith in you? If I was God and I was observing you from on high as you proselytize beyond the boundaries of religion, I would feel hurt. If I am God and my word guides you, then your efforts to bend atheists to the flock with these far-fetched word games of yours would strike me as revealing evidence of your own doubts about Me, the Big Guy In The Sky.

You're....among other things......making vain, naive assumptions based on some dubious notions about religion and thus attempting to draw me into a discussion which involves religion and revealed truth. This discussion is neither about psychology nor divine revelation. It is an attempt to examine the validity of natural theology and thus revealed theology/religion has no place in it.

This post if anything is revealing about your psychology in that you implicitly demand that God be as evident as the four walls which surround you. It is clear that this is not the case and we must using reasoning to determine if God exists or not and what the characteristics of this God are. In the end then, you're thus placing a limitation on "IS" in your mind and thus attempting to pin down "IS" into either as a concept or "IS AS anything besides existence as existence" instead of an utterly simple, infinite, pure really existing existence itself. I don't know what then you are talking about when you refer to this "Big Guy in the Sky", but it certainly isn't God.

matthew wrote:

Does it make your faith feel stronger if you can force feed religion into science? I thought faith was supposed to be an absolute concept- if you have total faith in a supreme being, then do you not also believe that the supreme being has total faith in you? If I was God and I was observing you from on high as you proselytize beyond the boundaries of religion, I would feel hurt. If I am God and my word guides you, then your efforts to bend atheists to the flock with these far-fetched word games of yours would strike me as revealing evidence of your own doubts about Me, the Big Guy In The Sky.

You're....among other things......making vain, naive assumptions based on some dubious notions about religion and thus attempting to draw me into a discussion which involves religion and revealed truth. This discussion is neither about psychology nor divine revelation. It is an attempt to examine the validity of natural theology and thus revealed theology/religion has no place in it.

This post if anything is revealing about your psychology in that you demand that God to be as evident as the four walls which surround you. You're thus placing a limitation on "IS" in your mind and thus attempting to pin down "IS" into either as a concept or "IS AS anything besides existence as existence" instead of an utterly simple, infinite, pure really existing existence itself. I don't know what then you are talking about when you refer to this "Big Guy in the Sky", but it certainly isn't God.

Now you probably pissed him off,matthew.

matthew wrote:

clocker bob wrote:if you have total faith in a supreme being, then do you not also believe that the supreme being has total faith in you?

A few remarks here are needed:

Those words are mine, not Dr. A's. I fixed them here.

matthew wrote: After all, knowledge is impossible without at least a few assumptions.

Not true. Knowledge remains conjecture until it is purged of assumptions. Knowledge is reproducible verifiable information.

matthew wrote:This post if anything is revealing about your psychology in that you implicitly demand that God be as evident as the four walls which surround you.

That is not my position. Did you read my spat with Gramsci? The atheists are mad at me, too. I disagree with both these statements:

I am convinced of the existence of God.

I am convinced of the absence of God.

I choose to say that God could be everywhere or nowhere, and I don't know or need to know which is right to live my life. "I don't know if there is a God."- Clocker Bob

matthew wrote:It is clear that this is not the case and we must using reasoning to determine if God exists.

And your failure to admit that your 'reasoning' has to take a sharp left turn into conjecture as soon as it leaves the starting gate is what leads me to question the psychology of ID advocates.

matthew wrote:In the end then, you're thus placing a limitation on "IS" in your mind and thus attempting to pin down "IS" into either as a concept or "IS AS anything besides existence as existence" instead of an utterly simple, infinite, pure really existing existence itself. I don't know what then you are talking about when you refer to this "Big Guy in the Sky", but it certainly isn't God.

How do you know what God isn't if you have failed abysmally to define what God is, in terms free of supernatural leaps of faith?