What have you read by Jason Lisle?

So if it's not "observable, repeatable and testable", it's not really reliable? I agree. What about god is observable, repeatable and testable?

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Bill.

i don't see it as "redefining" terms, but a matter of just trying to figure out what the term originally meant. The Hebrew word "yom" (translated "day" in most English translations) apparently can have multiple meanings.

Same difference. Call it redefinition, or call it finding the correct divine meaning, your exercise still requires modifying common usage to make the Bible compatible with observation. No common usage of "yom" has meant "millions of years," though you can of course claim that in scripture it must have meant that.

Nothing. Your statement that he believes in a young earth clinches that he is faith-based.

I do not see why you would want to try and make scripture and science consistent. Just pick faith and be done with it.

That isn't really an answer, you're merely repeating your position.

And men who has argued like you has used it to justify anything from never raising a hand in violence to committing genocide. You might be convinced the Bible is infallible, but from the outside it seems like God agrees with his believers more than the other way around.

I don't know. God was also pretty harsh to the Jews at times. Most of the Old Testament prophets are God yelling at his chosen people to shape up. And then he let them become a conquered people because they didn't listen.

You found Jason Lisle's scientific or textual arguments more convincing?

This is too blithe. The evangelical church's friendliness towards YEC is a major stumbling block in its witness towards especially young people. Many people who grow up in the church end up rejecting evangelicalism because of its perceived anti-scientific attitude when they go to college, etc.

Hi, Bill. Thanks for your response.

1. In the example I gave, there is no "modifying common usage" that I can see, because Hebrew language experts say that "yom" has a variety of meanings, which most English translators have chosen to translate as "day."

2. If you read Jason Lisle's book, "The Ultimate Proof of Creation", part of his defense of a (relatively) young earth involves looking at specific evidences in favor of that view. I would advise reading an author before presuming what their arguments are or are not.

3. I'm not sure what you mean by "pick faith", because the word "faith" has about ten different definitions I think.

Anyway, thank you for sharing your thoughts and have a blessed day.

1. I don't remember the whole debate which I watched quite a while ago, but the part I remember were textual arguments.

2. "Growing up in the church" doesn't mean anything. Someone once said that sitting in a church every Sunday doesn't make you a Christian any more than sitting in garage every Sunday makes you a car.

In my view, a Christian ought to believe the Bible when the Bible and their professors disagree. If some atheist/humanist professor can shake the faith of a young person, then their faith wasn't much to begin with if it wasn't grounded in the Bible.

Have a blessed day.

Perhaps you missed this so I'm posting it again because I'd really like to explore this.

So if it's not "observable, repeatable and testable", it's not really reliable? I agree. What about god is observable, repeatable and testable?

Why does it have to be an "atheist" or a "humanist?" That sounds mostly like paranoid conspiracy theory.

The original physicist behind two seminal cosmological theories, the big bang theory and the expanding the universe, was (among other things) a priest.

If only Christianity is correct and anyone who disagrees with your specific version of Christianity is not a true Christian, and your belief is infallible (which is what you are in essence arguing, the thing about the bible being infallible is after all argued by groups that can completely disagree), then you're in essence merely saying very loudly "I'm right no matter what!"

Which isn't the most interesting of intellectual standpoints. Perhaps you don't intend it to be, but to me there is also a very dangerous implicit claim: That our understanding of the world is complete.

As a point of reference to MB's philosophy of science (aside from the problem of the arbitrary list of criteria that he uses):

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...&postcount=155

He basically assuming himself out of the conversation. His understanding is literally nonsense.

The "God Hypothesis" is isn't rooted in observation, repeatability, or testability. God cannot be discovered by science.

A Christian philosopher friend of mine once summed it up this way (I'm paraphrasing): "While there is no rational argument for theism, there is no non-theistic argument for rationality." Rationality, as an intentional activity, cannot be the result of an accidental cosmos. That is to say, intentionality doesn't flow from accident. The fact that we are having a debate at all proves theism. (Although by itself this doesn't prove that Christianity is true.) If the cosmos is a mere accident, then there is no reason to trust our cognitive faculties. If the universe as a whole is an accident, then everything in it is an accident, too. (If you don't like the word "accident", then we can use "unintentional.")

Thank you for this conversation, and have a blessed day.

Hi, tame_deuces. Thank you for sharing you thoughts.

I certainly don't think that my "understanding of the world is complete", and I don't know from what I've ever said that one could infer that's my position.

My understanding of the world of quite limited. For that matter, my understanding of much of the Bible is quite limited. I believe what the Bible says as best as I understand it. There is a lot I don't understand in the Bible.

The fact that there are differences of opinion regarding the meaning of many passages of Scripture (known as "interpretive pluralism"), is not an argument against the infallibility of Scripture. (But it probably is a good argument against the perspicuity of Scripture. )

Anyway, have a blessed day!

First of all, it's at heart just a hidden tautology. "Everything is accidental or it is not ".

Secondly of all most would argue that intent is a result of rationality, not an accidental cosmos. This is glossed over by using the term "flow", which is purposefully ambiguous.

Thirdly, it's air. It isn't never stated exactly what accidental means or implies. Why can't an accidental universe look exactly like this one. If not answered you have no explanation beyond an assumption.

Fourthly, the jump from "not accidental" to "theism" is either a non sequitur or it is begging the question. It is a non sequitur is "not accidental" is taken to mean "by chance", it is begging the question if taken to mean "designed".

It's really just rehashed intelligent design, meant to make people who already agree nod in agreement. It's also arrogant to think 30 seconds of pseudo-philosophical musing can adequately explain the origins of the universe. Is a little "I'm not sure, it looks complex" really that bad?

1) What has caused you to believe this?
1a) In what way is that different from the people who believe in holy texts that contradict the bible?

2) Is there any thing or event that could dissuade you from this believe?

3) I have found that this is a crutch people cling to, in order to dismiss anything that is difficult to recreate, such as the big bang or the origin of life. One thing you didn't mention is predictiveness. In layman's terms "If this were true, we'd expect to find..." Do you accept that predictiveness and the subsequent finding of what was predicted, is a good way to get theories to be evaluated as likely correct?

An example of the so-called "scientific method":

P1 ) If evolution is true, then we'd expect to observe phenomena X

P2) We observe phenomena X

C) Evolution is true.

The above argument commits an elementary formal fallacy known as "Affirming the Consequent."

Your're attacking a syllogism that hasn't been built.

For starters, Q from P1 is not the same as what you think is Q from P2.

Affirming the consequent would be either:
P1 ) If evolution is true, then we'd expect to observe phenomena X

P2) We expect to observe phenomena X

C) Evolution is true.

or

P1 ) If evolution is true, then we would observe phenomena X

P2) We observe phenomena X

C) Evolution is true.

People arguing for evolution do not make either of those arguments


Moreover, darksideofthewal was talking about the predictiveness of theories, and asking if you thought that should be an argument in favor of (not proof of) the theory.

Three points.

1) There are non-theistic arguments for rationality. Platonic philosophy is a prominent example. There are also naturalistic accounts, such as Ruth Millikan's theory of biosemantics. Your philosopher friend should have better said that he thinks these theories fail, which fine, but so do theistic accounts then....

2) Reason can be a brute fact in an atheistic philosophy, similarly to how God is a brute fact in your friend's theistic philosophy.

3) Think about the actual practice of reasoning. We notice that we think about the world, and that some ways of doing so produce better results than others. People think this has to do with some kind of relation between their thoughts and the world, or because of specific patterns characteristic of these thoughts.

Now, philosophers come along and wonder, why does that system work at all though? What is the explanation? Sure, God is one way of explaining it. So are Platonic Ideas. So are some claims about the functional characteristics of natural selection. But ultimately we don't have a good way of knowing which of these is the answer as any attempt at an explanation fairly quickly devolves into circular reasoning. Instead, you get the failed attempts at transcendental argumentation, which try to show that there is only one possible explanation, and so it must be true. Good luck with that. But at the end of the day, our lack of a satisfactory answer to this philosophy question doesn't imply that we should then reject reason and thinking because we don't understand their basis. Not having a good understanding of gravity is not a good reason for walking off cliffs.

This is not an example of the scientific method.

EDIT: If you want a better sense of how scientific reasoning is modeled in philosophical terms, I would suggest starting with the Deductive-Nomological account as explained in detail here or here.

Hi, darksideofthewal.

In answer to your questions:

1)The first step was my recognizing many attributes that the Bible possess convinced me that it was of divine origin. (Maybe some day I'll start of thread itemizing those reasons, but doing that here would derail this thread considerably.)

The second step was recognizing that if the Bible is indeed of divine origin, and the Bible itself says that God cannot lie, then it logically followed that the Bible (at least in the original autographs, which of course no longer exist) was infallible.

1a) I am not personally aware of any other book that has divine attributes in kind or number as much as the Holy Bible. Point me in the direction of one, and I'll give it a look.

2)If I go insane or become senile (My grey hair, facial wrinkles, and many years of taking psychotropics are all telling me that senility might be just around the corner ) then I might change my beliefs.

I could have answered your questions in far more detail, but like I suggested above, the title of this thread isn't "Is the Bible Infallible?", so perhaps it is my bad for even bringing it up in the first place, but I think the only reason I brought it up was in response to a specific question from someone.

I hope my answers were at least somewhat informative. Have a blessed day!

Can you walk us through this logic?

Why do you think a divine being could not lie? (I hope you're not going to define an inability to lie into the meaning of divine.) Why could a divine being not lie about whether it could lie? How would you ever know?

The Bible says in a number of places that God deceives people, including his worshipers. Is the Bible lying about not lying?

So you agree that something that is not "observable, repeatable and testable" is not reliable, and you agree that the god of the god hypothesis is not "observable, repeatable and testable", so it follows then that you agree that the god hypothesis is not reliable.

Well, that was easy.

This is full of flaws. Firstly, there are rational arguments for theism, thus disproving your own argument. Second, we've already dispensed with the fallacious argument that rational thinking cannot exist in an 'accidental' universe. Clearly it can. By abandoning the 'rational' in your effort to prove god, you are undermining any argument you can muster since any deductive argument relies on logic which requires rationality. That argument is really bad, you should stop using it, it's really not doing the work you think it is.

This is begging the question unless you can show how you're not using any biblical claims to know that god exists. Presumably then, your knowledge of god existing is external to the bible. OK, where is ti coming from?

At best the conclusion should be 'Evolution has not been falsified'.

Hi, Original Position. Thank you for your thoughtful response.

1')I wasn't clear about what my friend meant. As a student of philosophy, my friend is obviously aware that there exist non-theistic accounts of rationality; my friend's position is that there are no SATISFACTORY non-theistic accounts of rationality.

2')I think that you make a good point here. Ultimately, the "grounding" of one's epistemology is itself non-demonstrable, else it would be impossible to avoid an infinite regress, e. g.

"Why do you believe 'A'?"
"Because 'B'?"
"Why do you believe 'B'?"
"Because 'C'?"
etc.

At some point, there has to be an ultimate standard that is itself unjustified.

The Christian philosopher Gordon Clark asserted that worldviews are all based on some fundamental axiom. By definition, one doesn't "prove" an axiom; the axiom(s) is(are) assumed and deductions are made from it(them).

Clark's axiom was, "The Bible is the written word of God." The "theorems" were the propositional content of the Bible itself.

An obvious question would be, for example, "How would a Christian debate a Muslim whose axiom was 'The Koran is the written word of God?'"

A Clarkian would probably at this point try to demonstrate that the Koran is internally inconsistent and that it's "theorems" fail to account for the preconditions of intelligibility. He or she might also point out that, historically, the "Bible Axiom" has produced far sweeter fruit than the bitter fruit produced by the "Koran Axiom."

Thanks for reading. I'm going to take a break, and will respond more later.

Have a blessed day, and thanks again for your thoughtful response to my post.

Hi, Mightyboosh. Thanks for your thoughtful response to my post. (And I'm glad it was easy )

I don't have much time right now, so I'll just respond to the above for now.

I don't think I said in this thread that "something that is not 'observable, repeatable and testable' is not reliable." What I DID say is that something that is not observable, repeatable and testable is not SCIENCE (or, at least does not employ the so-called scientific method).

I believe that the laws of logic and that mathematics are all reliable, but these things are not proven scientifically.

So, I do believe that the God Hypothesis is "reliable", but I do not believe that the God Hypothesis is "scientific."

(As an aside, Mightyboosh, do you personally hold to scientism?)

Anyway, that's all I have time for at the moment. I'll continue my response later today.

See you in the funny papers. (Probably nobody under 55 has ever heard that one. )