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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 12/27/2003 6:39 PM (GMT -6) |   | Laika: My wife is an excellent proof that God exists and that He loves me very much. 
Tom: The former King of Morocco, a Muslim, Hussein the 1st, once said that Virginia Mayo (a beautiful blonde-haired, blude-eyed Hollywood actress) was "tangible proof of the existence of God."
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Matthew Timothy Short
Huh?
Date Joined Apr 2002
Total Posts : 635
| Posted 12/28/2003 2:56 AM (GMT -6) | | http://www-phil.tamu.edu/~gary/intro/paper.paley.html
The Natural Theology, used for many years as a foremost textbook classic, has been superseded on account of the shifting of ground from the mechanical objective to the immanent subjective theory of the universe. Paley advances the teleological argument from design founded on the unity and adaptability of created things. This argument was based on rationalistic grounds; yet did not ultimately prove conclusive to rationalists themselves, and has not been able to survive criticism. His analogical method has run its course; the idea of a complex, perfected organism dropping suddenly amidst foreign surroundings, as illustrated by the finding of a watch, was the dogmatic externalism, the rebound from which gave birth to the subsequent hypotheses of natural selection and adaptation to environment and the theory of evolution as a whole.
I personally find this interesting, considering the subject . . .
Vine's Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words
Conscience: Greek: suneidesis
lit., "a knowing with" (sun, "with," oida, "to know"), i.e., "a co-knowledge (with oneself), the witness borne to one's conduct by conscience, that faculty by which we apprehend the will of God, as that which is designed to govern our lives;" hence (a) the sense of guiltiness before God; Hbr 10:2; (b) that process of thought which distinguishes what it considers morally good or bad, commending the good, condemning the bad, and so prompting to do the former, and avoid the latter; Rom 2:15 (bearing witness with God's law); Hbr 9:1; 2Cr 1:12; acting in a certain way because "conscience" requires it, Rom 13:5; so as not to cause scruples of "conscience" in another, 1Cr 10:28,29; not calling a thing in question unnecessarily, as if conscience demanded it, 1Cr 10:25,27; "commending oneself to every man's conscience," 2Cr 4:2; cp. 2Cr 5:11. There may be a "conscience" not strong enough to distinguish clearly between the lawful and the unlawful, 1Cr 8:7,10,12 (some regard consciousness as the meaning here). The phrase "conscience toward God," in 1Pe 2:19, signifies a "conscience" (or perhaps here, a consciousness) so controlled by the apprehension of God's presence, that the person realizes that grief's are to be borne in accordance with His will. Hbr 9:9 teaches that sacrifices under the Law could not so perfect a person that he could regard himself as free from guilt. For various descriptions of "conscience" see Act 23:1; 24:16; 1Cr 8:7; 1Ti 1:5,19; 3:9; 4:2; 2Ti 1:3; Tts 1:15; Hbr 9:14; 10:22; 13:18; 1Pe 3:16,21.
Easton's Bible Dictionary
Conscience: that faculty of the mind, or inborn sense of right and wrong, by which we judge of the moral character of human conduct. It is common to all men. Like all our other faculties, it has been perverted by the Fall (Jhn 16:2; Act 26:9; Rom 2:15). It is spoken of as "defiled" (Tts 1:15), and "seared" (1Ti 4:2). A "conscience void of offence" is to be sought and cultivated (Act 24:16; Rom 9:1; 2Cr 1:12; 1Ti 1:5,19; 1Pe 3:21).
How can there be 'a knowing with', evolve from nothingness?
Imagination projects unreal images out of the mind and seeks to attach reality to them. Faith creates nothing; it simply reckons upon that which is already there. | | Back to Top | | |
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Laika
Registered Member
Date Joined Mar 2003
Total Posts : 2433
| Posted 12/28/2003 7:36 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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Tom
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2001
Total Posts : 10353
| Posted 12/28/2003 10:27 AM (GMT -6) | | So I guess King Hussein was right. Virginia Mayo IS proof that natural theology is valid. And that's not even a good picture of her.
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wondering04
Registered Member
Date Joined Dec 2003
Total Posts : 45
| Posted 12/28/2003 4:53 PM (GMT -6) | | Dear Rossfadeinout
Romans 1 verse 20 says "For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened."
It goes on to say in Verse 25, ..who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen"
To answer question 1, I think that I came to God first as God the creator. I did not see Him as savior or as having anything to do in my life. But there was more to the earth than random chance, there are too many things that work together in ways that could not be accidental. I was first able to acknowledge God in the creation. I suspect that many other cultures that live close to the earth, first come to an awareness of God through his creation. Where many have missed it today is in the worshipping of the creation (Mother Earth, Gaia, etc), instead of He who created the earth. I fell into that lie for many years, but found that there was little in it of substance.
2. Arguing the existence of God? One person put it strongly to me one day by saying that if God chose, all he had to do was to stop making our hearts to beat. There is very little in our lives that is really under our conscious control. We do not make our hearts beat, we do not spend 24 hours a day focusing on our breathing, our body functions without our conscious awareness. We are dependent on God for the air we breath, the water we drink, for everything in our lives. The myriad of creation, all individual and different, and how each thing fits together into the puzzle of the earth, begs one to realize that there is an intelligent creator. Even the scientists in their labs have not been able to bring one thing to life according to their evolutionary model. Those amino acids do not produce life randomly.
3. Having explored all possibilities from atheism, to the occult, to new age theory, and other religions, I can honestly say that the only one that holds together is Christianity. And it took a long time for me to see that. It actually took three readings of the Bible from cover to cover before I could see how well things hold together. You may want to check out The Case for Christ, and the Case for Faith by Stoebel (I think that is how you spell his name), he was an atheist lawyer who started researching the Bible to prove it wrong, and ended up a Christian. His arguments are far more compelling than any I could offer.
Heather
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Alan Rhoda
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 12/29/2003 7:51 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
1. Do you think that natural theology is a valid way to know that God exists?
Yes. Biblically, Romans 1:20 and Psalm 19:1-4 affirm the possibility of natural theology. Philosophically, it seems to me that there are several cogent theistic arguments.
quote:
2. Does anyone have a particular argument for the existence of God that they find convincing?
The best arguments, in my opinion, are the Kalam cosmological argument, the design argument based on cosmic fine-tuning and Behe's "irreducible" or Dembski's "specified" complexity, and the moral argument.
quote:
3. Do you believe that the arguments for God's existence are convincing, or do they merely make Theism more rational than atheism?
I think they are very strong. Atheists have their objections, of course, but I don't think they even come close to knocking down the best arguments that natural theology has to offer, and I don't think atheists have any plausible alternative explanations to offer.
Alan | | Back to Top | | |
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Alan Rhoda
Registered Member
Date Joined May 2002
Total Posts : 680
| Posted 12/30/2003 7:11 AM (GMT -6) | | Ross: Plantinga has developed an epistemology that works with the idea that belief in God is properly basic. But it seems like his system does NOT argue for the truth of Theism, but merely works out a coherent system if Theism is true.
Alan: I think Plantinga is correct that belief in God is properly basic in some doxastic contexts, but not in all. For example, Plantinga's 14-year-old theist who has grown up in a Christian setting, has what seems to him to be a personal relationship with God, and has never been exposed to serious objections to theism may have, it seems to me, a properly basic belief that God exists. But now take that same theist and confront him with several seemingly cogent defeaters for Christian theism, e.g., the problem of evil, arguments that theism is incoherent, etc. I think in this second case that his belief in God while still basic, is no longer properly basic. That is, the belief is no longer epistemically justified. The fact that he now has undefeated defeaters for Christian theism gives rise, I think, to an intellectual obligation to either find a defeater for those defeaters, to find arguments for Christian theism that counterbalance the objections, or to give up Christian theism. In the first two cases, his belief in Christian theism again becomes "proper" for him but is no longer (purely) basic.
Ross: Alan, ... I wanted to ask you how you think that current thoughts on epistemology have led to the change in the viability of Natural Theology. I could be way off here, but it seems like the reformed epistemologists rejection of strong foundationalism (Wolterstorff's Reason Within the Bounds of Religion comes to mind) has rendered the task of proving the existence of God impossible. So their focus has shifted to working with the coherence of the theistic worldview (an important task) at the expense of Natural Theology.
Alan: I agree with reformed epistemologists that one cannot, strictly speaking, "prove" the existence of God, just as one cannot "prove", strictly speaking, that there is an external world or that other minds exist. What we can do, I think, is give cogent arguments for Christian theism that suffice to show that it is true beyond a reasonable doubt. There are many people, of course, who when confronted with such arguments will continue to doubt, but I don't think doubt is, in such a case, reasonable. Rather, it reflects the hardness of a heart that will embrace any hypothesis, however implausible, rather than submit to the truth.
As far as the contemporary critique of "classical foundationalism" goes, I do not think it seriously undermines the prospects for a positive natural theology. What the critique shows, first, is that we cannot "prove", strictly speaking, that God exists, which requires only that natural theology be somewhat modest in its pretensions. Second, the critique gives us good reason to reject the strong evidentialist thesis espoused by W.K. Clifford, that it is always irrational to believe in anything beyond what is directly warranted by the evidence. The rejection of this thesis allows that belief in God can, in some cases, be properly basic. But it does not mean that belief in God just is, irrespective of context, properly basic. In some contexts, such as where undefeated defeaters are on the table, natural theology has an important role both negatively, in defeating those defeaters, and positively, in providing countervailing evidence for Christian theism.
God bless,
Alan | | Back to Top | | |
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