Free said:
AAA said:
My question is this: given that there is no reliable way to detect the Christian god, why should anybody believe in his existence?
There is at least one obvious problem with your question to begin with. Science, by definition, deals with the physical realm, the material. It follows that a spiritual being and a immaterial reality are outside the realm of science. I believe that this is what Rick was alluding to.
You are basing your whole argument on the presumption that science can provide the answers for everything. But it clearly cannot. Seems rather circular to me.
I'm glad you wrote this because this is really what my question boils down to and what I would like to see discussion about.
I'm not suggesting or presupposing that science can provide the answers for everything. Accordingly, my reasoning is not circular
I am suggesting that science, and I mean science in a broad sense here as the maintenance of intellectual honesty in all endeavors to learn about the world (the scientific method is a strict way of doing this that operates in some circumstances, but doesn't help us to figure out history for example),
is the only way we have for finding answers.
The supernatural, if it exists, is beyond the natural world. And the natural world is simply that which we can reliably detect. We can't know anything more about the supernatural than a hypothetical 2 dimensional ladybug walking on a 2 dimensional sheet of paper can know about us in the third dimension, which is nothing. It is just as pointless for us to consider the existence of a supernatural realm as it is for that ladybug to consider the existence of a third dimension, let alone for us to make claims that we have knowledge about this supernatural realm.
I can say, that there is an undetectable supernatural one-armed dragon named Theo carrying on a "loving, personal relationship with me" that transpires largely in my garage. I can expound on how this relationship brings meaning and fulfillment to my life and how I have now come to believe that the very meaning of my life itself is to foster this wonderful relationship.
Unless I can actually produce some evidence (and let's face it, its going to have to be some pretty extraordinary evidence), or reliably show how it is that I detect Theo, my claim about him ought to be considered irrelevant.
Indeed, all sane people would consider my claim to be irrelevant. My secondary claim that Theo has private reasons for avoiding detection is equally irrelevant, and ought to be considered by reasonable people as nothing more than a convenient ploy on my part to avoid facing up to the reality that
without any evidence, my claim is irrelevant.
If entities from the supernatural realm sometimes enter or "make contact with" our natural world, then these contacts ought to be detectable in the same way that we detect anything and everything else that we detect in the natural world: by science and the intellectually honest conclusions that we can draw from our experience and observations. Otherwise, how can we say that these events happen at all?
For example, if faith healers really can heal, then their ability to heal, or to channel the Christian god's ability to heal, ought to be detectable, just as we can detect the ability of thrombolytic drugs to abort heart attacks (as we do with experiments called randomized trials).
Christians can
claim that the most profound knowledge about the universe that we live in includes the facts that a carpenter named Jesus was born of a virgin (and was in fact his own father), performed miracles and was ritually murdered as a scapegoat for the sins of humanity only to be raised from the dead after an interval of 72 hours when he went to the supernatural world where he awaits the opportunity to re-enter our world by flying out of the clouds so that he can determine who has been unfortunate enough to fail to come to
really believe these words, securing for them eternal hellfire ... but unless there is some strong evidence of these extraordinary claims, why aren't they just as irrelevant as my claim about Theo (or as a Muslim's claims about Allah, or an ancient Greek's claims about Zeus, etc)?
Given that there is no reliable way to detect Jesus or the truth of the outlandish claims of Christianity, why should anybody believe in him or them?
