You have demonstrated quite vigorously and quite often that you do not dare–and hence don’t even entertain, and hence a priori impose personal scientistic limitations upon reality–to “imagine” (and can’t even get straight the difference between and image and a concept!) a world without God. Your first paragraph is an ignorant and ludicrous straw man vision of faith.

Oh, and by the way, PRAYER DOES WORK IN ANY AND EVERY SPECIFIC CASE. But it “works” like a personal relationship between the Creator and beloved creature, not like a scientific experiment. If you want a physical efficient causality to understand God, then your god is Hume–not the Lord your God.

Actually, I sense that Holopupenko is not one of the superstitious folk who believe prayer works in any specific case, but he can correct me if he is.

there is for me a sense of groping toward reality, especially in prayer.

I’m sure it seems that way. How do you check that you’re not guilty of wishful thinking? What are your controls?

May I give you another possible take on your experience. Obviously I can’t dispute what you said for your own experience but sometimes we need to analyze our own experiences. Often when we do we come to the realization that things were going on in our mental process that we didn’t realize. You said

“Well, all in all, I have to concede that their assertion that my beliefs were based on faith, not science”

Is that really true? Were you oblivious to the world around you when you came to faith? Beauty, order, meaning and the human experience had nothing to do with you coming to the conclusion that God existed?

I’d say that’s pretty impossible. None of us make any kind of decision in a vacuum. You didn’t when it came to faith.

I think what happens is we buy into a particular definition of science in our generation that the founders of science never did. Thats where the real war is being raged.

When I observe order in the universe and the environment I live, When I observe human behaviour and capabilities, that is not separate from science. When I think about beginnings and the consistencies of physical law again those observations ARE scientific.

Observation is the hall mark of science. Deriving rational conclusions from those observations are again part of science.

What we have now are people claiming that though design is intuitive to the rational mind we must instead accept that it only “appears” to be. By applying some alleged higher intelligence (as in the emperor with the new clothes) we must brush aside that normally intuitive and yes scientific approach in favor of the imaginary. We don’t need to be confined by improbability we can just climb over it.

At the core of science is a search to find out what makes things tick. Today the anti-religious rail that “God did it” is unscientific because allegedly ( and utterly false) it stops us from going further and discovering more. They however have no qualms with invoking “it just happened” when they wish to. As I have commented before they have no problem invoking the supernatural either. They write books about universes outside of our own when trying to brush aside the fine tuning of our universe and invoke unprovable concepts such a infinity.

So what exactly is unscientific about faith? Simple. We’ve allowed them and aided them in redefining that as well. Faith was never blind and was never supposed to be based on the lack of evidence (in the only definition we get of it in Hebrews it says this explicitly) . In the Bible the word means trust and is frequently used with the word “in”. It is almost always relational. As a trust you put in a friend – not a stranger you’ve never met. In other words someone who have PROVED themselves.

What now stands against the intuition based on observation that law controls almost everything in the universe and inevitably the very moment of its creation? Forget the argument about how the lego blocks were arranged (evolution). That comes after the big moments in this universe. Instead ask what evidence stands against life being the specific product of law. Nothing on the books with abiogenesis contradicts the rational intuitive conclusion that people have had in God based on the observable evidence for many centuries.

To put it simply all we have is a guy that visited an island, figured out that one life form might have led to another life form and then people have extrapolated that to the non existence of any ordering power anywhere in the universe. When I follow the evidence it is inevitable that the universe came from a place or a moment very different from what is reality in the now. Needing to define all of reality by this sliver of existence is irrational.

Finally (too long winded I know)
Think for a second about flat earthers. The real ones. How long would a person hang around a flat earth blog disputing the earth being round? It would be good for a laugh in a day and it would be boring. they would move on. Then why do they hang around intelligent design sites and argue for days on end? Its simple.

Emotional investment – not purely rational motivation. I have never been or seen a debate particularly online where BOTH sides were not extremely emotionally invested. Only one side however pretends that is not the case. We don’t get anywhere in these debates because the discussion isn’t even being held on honest ground.

Just recently I was on a similar website that expounds evolution and was having to reply to 8 or more evolutionists. I was the Daniel in the den with the evolutionist lions. They called me all sorts of names and accused me of lying and being a fraud and being there to cause a fight. Even accused me of being there to tell them they were going to hell, though I never said anything in the least. I thought I was going to be able to have a rational discussion, but there were only a few that it seemed were willing to rationally discuss the matter with me, but only if I discussed it on their terms. I won’t go into all what their terms were, but for the most part it was that I come up with arguments for creation that do not rely upon any refuting of evolution. Sorry to say, God didn’t close their mouths. There was nothing that I said to them that caused them to pause and think, only to ridicule.

Well, all in all, I have to concede that their assertion that my beliefs were based on faith, not science. Given thought I conclude that it is true. For me at least, I didn’t give any thought or time to consider creation science until I had accepted creation based on faith. It took God to give me the faith to believe, and with that faith came the openness to study and understand creation.

Then I was thinking if I could talk a creationist scientist into joining me in that evolutionist lions den, that the scientist could answer the evolutionist questions without all the sarcasm, accusations, etc.
But, as I read the discourse on here, I realized some of the best creationist scientist in the world could join me on that website, but the evolutionist would throw the same insults at them as they did me a layperson. On top they would accuse the creation scientist of not practicing “real” science and whoever or whatever authorities the creation scientist would use to support his argument would never be considered as good as the whoever and whatever authorities the evolutionist used.

Make sense what I am saying? They, evolutionists, will never accept the arguments put forth from creationists because the evolutionist will never accept them as good or scientific enough, they will always quote the evolutionist whose opinion contradicts that of the creation scientist. In their minds there is no creation scientist out there worthy of his education, worthy of being listened to.

So, in my opinion, a former believer in evolution myself, there is no swaying them, no reasoning with them until God gives them the miracle to believe in the one and only true God so that they will be open to seeing creation through a new set of eyes or as God states, a new heart.

That is my personal opinion. Not sure if anyone out here has ever been able to convert an evolutionist to being a creationist, but I know I have given up. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for teaching creation and arguing it’s points, but for me, now on I will leave the arguing of it’s points to those who are actual believers in God who are skeptical/confused about evolution vs. creation.

So, it seems that your assertion is that the soul has no energy. Am I interpreting your comments correctly?

Yep. That’s what non-physical means. Is it your assertion that it does? Where did you learn this?

the brain IS the rational mind. There is only biochemistry.

Let’s put that assertion to the test using the law of identity. If they are exactly the same thing then they will have identical properties in every way. Does the physical brain have the property of being false when it is compared to some external object? No. Does the physical brain have the property of being pointed to, directed at, or about some external object? No again.

Thus, your claim is false lacks the necessary entropy levels in the brain.

You are entirely cluelesss as to the meaning of redundancy and the subject of the soul. How could someone possible even begin to address the issue without knowing that the soul by definition has no energy, no mass and is not physical? and yet here you are after diatribes asking the question you should have known before you even started.

You have done nothing but present your own assertions hence you do not define intellectualism and opposing your viewpoints can not be considered anti-intellectual.

The well known fact is that the greater part of society does not accept the Bible as an error riddled book (you just hang out at talk origins too much and think they represent reality). I’ve yet to see an error validated in the Bible but if I had a nickel for everyone that claimed it without substance I’d be a rich man.

At the end of the day you are merely anti supernatural but scientists embraces the supernatural constantly when they comtemplate multiverses, the beginning of time and even infinity. They are all Super (beyond) nature ( our universe). So you are stuck.

I’ve always tried to avoid thinking about free will, realizing that that way lies madness.

….

Nevertheless, like all humans I prefer to think that I can make my own decisions. I decided to adopt an uneasy compromise, believing that there’s no such thing as free will but acting as if there were. And I decided to stop thinking about the issue, deliberately avoiding the huge philosophical literature on free will.

…

… solidspin stands refuted, and even more so with every rebuttal he makes…

A masterful example of understatement.

If you can’t understand why claiming to prove a non physical entity is not physical is redundant then what more needs to be said? As Tom indicated with every rebuttal you dig yourself in a deeper hole while revealing pretty clearly your own attachment to your own dogma.

incidentally E=mc^2 would be totally applicable if anyone ever held the position that the soul had energy or mass.

Another example – 121Antimony is a quadrupole – this has no physical representation whatsoever – only the truly awesome effects it has on the electron densities surrounding the nucleus. We can only infer this from the interaction.

Sounds reasonable. Just as reasonable is the inference to the soul based on the interaction between the brain and the rational mind.

it would be really tough, but energy usage, mean energy usage, caloric values for the mass, back trace the actual usage. Forensic analysis of what was purchased, etc. etc.

I have my doubts, but since you don’t have all of this information, would you still know something about dinner that night? Could be didactic fiction.

The resurrection is didactic fiction

Maybe so. Reasoning as you did on the other question it seems this is subject to forensic analysis. It would be really tough, but energy usage, mean energy usage, back trace the actual events, etc. etc. If you can do it for dinner last month, with a little more work you can do it for the resurrection event. Now, you said it was fiction. Since this work hasn’t been done, what do you base your conclusion on?

Since we all have to live together here in the U.S., don’t you think it’s reasonable (just like the Constitution spells out) that it would be better NOT to foist one’s religious beliefs on another person?

No non-Christian dogma, huh? You are advocating Constitutional dogma here. Since we have to live together here wouldn’t it be best to NOT foist this on others?

Ss, your responses are not strengthening your position. The more you say, the less need I feel to answer. You’re making my point for me quite effectively enough.

Really? You think E=mc^2 is redundant? That’s how it was proven.

Secondly, do you realize the error you again made in the second statement? NO scientist would make that statement. You apparently didn’t read my previous entries either. As I’ve said repeatedly, I make no comment EITHER way on something which I cannot measure…so if I cannot measure a universe outside this one, why would I simply dismiss it?