charity wrote:I find the continuity of the doctrine to be of supreme importance. In much of religious theology in other religions, God is alone in an immensitv that extends beyond the universe. His actions are always seen as random, often capricious.
Knowing God is a part of an ordelry universe (and beyond) makes intuitive sense.
Charity,
The problem with your dialogue is that you continually return to the same claim for which you offer no evidence, let alone compelling evidence.
In virtually every post, you make some reference to
God as if that entity or notion were an established fact.
It’s not an established fact.
Now as you accuse some of being singular in challenge, we are challenging
you to produce that
compelling evidence for those
extraordinary claims.
You can’t do it. So long as you set forward the
same claims, we who challenge you will ask the same questions.
What you have is
religious mythology. You’re not presenting evidence or fact. It’s a willy nilly, loose nonsense absent intellectual rigor.
While you may dislike questions repeated, your only escape from that in any academic discussion is to move beyond ancient myth which claims
truth by assertion. It’s 2008, and the intelligence and information and education now available is going to challenge ancient myth as reliable explanation.
The evidence for “the universe” as “orderly” is not as you suppose. I’ll provide you with a couple of links. It would not be possible to write here details of a chaotic universe. Our own weather patterns demonstrate that with droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, etc.
Amid the Universe’s Chaos
Chaos Frees Universe
Essentially, there is apparent
chaos in the universe. It took 14.7 billion years for this planet to become what it is today with its
beginning some 4.7 billion years
ago.
Millions of species have come and gone (scientific documentation can be provided). We humans as a species are
late arrivals to life forms here. And the dinosaur (multiple species) occupied the planet for 165 million years before becoming
extinct 65 million years ago. (I only mention the dinosaur because the species is so well documented and yet is one of millions of smaller even single-celled life forms.)
There is every evidence that we humans will become extinct. We know (science) that the sun which provides environment for life is terminal. That is, it will not “burn” indefinitely. However, it is far more likely that the human species will be terminated long before the sun no longer supports
life forms on the earth.
Lest you ask how all this is relevant, it’s relevant in this way. All the events of the universe, all the billions and billions of suns (stars) much like our sun have no relevance to the human
inventions of gods.
The myths which grew out of superstitions demonstrate no
need for
gods of any sort. And
science ignores god myths as it pursues information, evidence, and tiny detail as well as large views of the universe (Hubble Telescope).
So while you find religious myth “extremely important,” science does not.
God myths emerged and developed in ancient cultures/civilizations as an attempt to explain. Of course they didn’t explain and don’t explain today. But they are
a remnant from earlier human civilizations and cultures.
While apparently beyond
your grasp, the dynamic discoveries made in just the past hundred years place ancient myths as
residue from primitive speculation.
I understand that those
indoctrinated in some myth or other find it difficult if not impossible to shed their child-rearing. Modern politicians (particularly in the US) capitalize on snippets of religious myths and
use them for political purposes, the taking of power. That fact does not give the fundamentalists like Huckabee (for example) credible
God platforms. But, if we can recognize anything in humans, it is that they tend to be gullible.
JAK