On 7/13/05 8:45 AM, Mark Janzen's electrons arrived as:

> 
> Of course, that physical reality has nothing whatsoever to do with the
> faith itself, which can not be assailed logically.

Mark, I agree we cannot, for example, disprove the existence of God.  But
while logic may not neutralize the persistence of faith, it can be applied
to its practice.  For example, it seems to me that faith is rarely tested in
any consequential way, except in cases so extreme that believers and
non-believers alike will agree on the diminished mental status of those
professing such faith -- as in the Jim Jones mass suicides, the Heaven's
Gate cult, or terrorist suicide bombings, or in cases where parents deprive
their children of critical medical attention in lieu of God's intervention.

But in normal (and even abnormal) social dynamics faith pretty much gets a
free ride with little required of it that cannot also be credited to other
laudable human attributes such as patience, courage, confidence, hope,
determinism, assurance, etc.  Where it seems to truly matter our faith in
the physical world appears to trump faith in the non-physical -- people
generally do not pit their faith in God's ability to intervene in the laws
of physics over their faith in the effects of gravity, by stepping off the
edges of cliffs as convenient shortcuts to the bottom of mountains.


> The real trick comes when the assumption of free will is made. In that
> case, the universe can not be fully predetermined. Assuming God exists,
> then prayer could actually have some substantive effect. At that point your
> logic applies, and calls into question the omniscience of the being. There
> are a great many websites discussing the issue. Perhaps God simply chooses
> not to know everything all the time, preferring to allow the universe to
> run itself according to His design, and freeing Him up to watch His
> creation unfold and to answer the occasional prayer. Please forgive me if
> anyone out there believes God should be referred to in the feminine.


I'm always baffled by discussions of free will, and it seems to me that one
need look no further than the fact of the discussion itself for an answer.
If only two or three people out of a couple of thousand (as in the case of
museum-l) are entering into this particular discussion thread then what is
it, if not free will, that the non-participants are exercising?  So, it
seems to me that free will is a given, and to your point there can therefore
be no omniscient God.  But even in the case of a non-omniscient God, we
would expect supreme wisdom, compassion, and an ability to reason far beyond
the capability of mortal beings.  To question the behavior of such a God
would be insolent, to say the least, and any attempt to persuade that God
to affect the course of human events -- to succumb to mortal pleas and
reasoning -- is tantamount to saying that such a God's wisdom in all matters
is not supreme, i.e., "dear God, we mortals have a better idea about how
things should play out than you might already be contemplating."  That is
essentially what a prayer, for example, to keep a loved-one safe on a trip
is presuming of God.  And that believers gang-up on their prayers, as if the
sheer volume of many people asking over and over for the same thing would be
more persuasive than a single prayer, is even more insulting.  Prayer is
blasphemous.


> The main thing going through my mind at the moment is why we are trying to
> apply logic to the notion of God anyway. Other than that it is interesting,
> of course.


At the teeming surface of supernaturalism, logic is used by believers all
the time to justify their belief -- what is Intelligent Design, if not just
such an attempt.  I think belief is all about logic and how it builds from
assumptions.  Beneath the surface of supernaturalism, at the level of basic
assumptions, is where logic fails and faith is invoked.   In any discussion
of God, it is only logic and reason that can expose those deep assumptions
to continued scrutiny, which I think is an important thing for humans,
believers and non-believers alike, to attempt.

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