Touchstone
If you tell me there’s a pink unicorn standing in my garage, I would require a visit to the garage to verify it, and see it myself, or some other means of verification before I would consider that more than folly to accept. If you told me “no pink unicorns are in your garage”, I wouldn’t have to think any more about.
Read a science book now and then. Get yourself educated on the Big Bang and Intelligent Design. There are considerably more pointers to the existence of a Deity than to no Deity at all.
There are? What’s a “pointer”, then? I’m quite familiar with the ideology of ID, and I’m up on the science. For all the papers and journal articles I read, I
never encounter anything that is described as a “pointer to the existence of a Deity”. There are a lot of papers out there in the literature though, and it’s impossible to keep up with it all. If you have an example of a science book or journal article that connects the Big Bang as evidence for God, or some god, I’d be interested in reading that. That would be exceptional, in my experience.
When Democritus conceived the atom as something so small no one could see it, Aristotle laughed and said words to the effect that Democritus would have to show the atom to him before he could believe in a pink unicorn.
And well he should. Democritus’ intuition was remarkable, but as a matter of empirical knowledge, the atom at that time was no more justified
as knowledge than a belief in pink unicorns. Indeed, atoms weren’t excepted by the skeptical minds in the sceince community until atoms
could be shown, through the instrumentation made available through technology innovations.
But the intuition of Democritus was right all along, and in that sense Democritus was more into the truth than Aristotle.
Sure, and that’s a very powerful point – intuition isn’t wrong just because it’s intuition. It can be right, and sometimes is proven correct – in remarkable fashion, as in the case of Democritus.
But that really is beside the point, in terms of epsitemology, and knowledge building. Intuition may be correct, or it may be incorrect, but it’s just intuition. Intelligent Design is a good example of intuition that’s extremely self-confident, but right or wrong, is intuitive in nature, and not scientific/rationalist.
There is more scientific evidence today of a Deity than there is of a pink unicorn. Please stop making these tedious analogies.
There is? I’m not aware that there is any evidence of a deity at all, except if you count intuition as evidence. In which case, there’s evidence for all sorts of fantastic things… people have intuitions attesting to all sorts of fanciful (and contradictory) things.
Apart from intuition, I think you have to start equivocating on “evidence” to support your claim here. I think if you scan the evidence that science and objective investigators report, you will find that “God” and “pink unicorns” score the same. If not, maybe link me to the article or evidence you are thinking of.
You’re another Aristotle with your “show me” notion that a Deity must be showable in the flesh before you can believe. Well, actually He *was *shown in the flesh, and you still do not believe. Are you waiting for your own command performance?
I think that could convince me, yes, and I would be interested to know that such a being was more than a fantasy. I described elsewhere here (forget which thread) a scenario in which science would have no problem admitting the existence of “god”, and going further, documenting and systematically decribing his/her amazing feats. If a being showed up that was able to transport the earth across the solar system to the opposite point on its orbit around the sun in the blink of an eye, or make the sun blink on and off in Morse code, or according to the Fibonacci sequence, or rearrange the stars on demand to spell people’s names with newly fashioned constellations…
That kind of stuff would be compelling in terms of evidence. That would be
real pointers to the reality of something that makes sense of our term “deity”.
I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.
OK, not holding my breath on that.
Nowadays He only appears to those who are ready to receive Him … and you clearly have not sent the invitation … or if you did, He knew you didn’t really mean it.
The problem is that that explanation is very hard to differentiate from the competing idea that it’s all just in the imaginations/desires of those who
do receive him. If it’s a kind of corporate delusion, you’d expect to see what we see, conflicting and variegated
other kinds of delusions, and a complete lack of objective substantiation of the claims. Given that, what you say can’t be ruled out, but it’s also quite interchangeable with the delusion/desire hypothesis.
It’s not a matter of getting your head on straight. It’s a matter of getting your heart in gear.
This is a nagging problem for some atheists. They are stuck in the cerebral lane. Even the deists have that problem.
If so, it’s a high class problem!
-TS
