What is Faith?

Because we have a sense of justice. In order to have a sense of justice, you need free will. It is unlikely that natural selection would select a sense of justice if we did not have a free will.
Here is yet another claim - I've bolded it above - that you need to establish.

But without a free will there is no such thing as morally bad things.
So you accept that there would be a purpose to criminal justice system even without free will. I say that because you're reply directly above brings up a new issue that has nothing to do with my reasoning given for still having a criminal justice system in the face of no free will.

Furthermore, it makes little sense to me to define "moral" as that which concerns the well-being of sentient beings, in which case there will still be morally bad things without free will.

Since we know animals dont have free wills, then if we didnt have free wills we would not have those things either. . . .
Here is your argument in the form of a syllogism:

Premise 1: Animals do not have free will.
Premise 2: Animals do not have culture, religion, math, etc.
Premise 3: Humans have culture, religion, math, etc.
Conclusion: Humans have free will.

The conclusion does not follow logically from the premises.

I dont remember what you were asking how I knew.
Look it up, it's all there in the previous posts.

Because we are not bound by cause and effect processes like the programmed behaviors above.
How do you know that our refusal to eat when hungry, etc., is not the result of some other programmed behavior?

Because it is not a cause and effect process.
How do you know that?

Correct but learning requires free will.
It is a fact that animals other than humans can learn; so, by your statement above, that would necessitate that animals have free will.
 
Since we can do these things, that is evidence we do have free will.
How does what animals have or don't have or what animals can do or can't do have anything to do with what we have or can do?
Well according to evolutionists we are animals too.
El Cid said:
But that is unjust, to punish someone for something they had no responsibility or control for doing.
We would only incarcerate someone to either protect the rest of society or to re-program them so that society is protected. It's not retributive justice.
If everyone in the society is bound by their preexisting conditions and previous cause and effect events then maybe the society was conditioned for this to happen so that you may not be able to protect the rest of society. Maybe It was not programmed for everyone to be protected. Deciding to protect others in society is a moral choice, without free will you cannot make moral choices.
El Cid said:
All these things require free will, so these abilities are evidence we have free will.
Why do all those things require free will?
Because they are choices, you cant make choices without a free will.
El Cid said:
From my own experience of love, I know that humans can love.
You are not all humans. What allows you to generalize from your experience to conclude something about **all** humans? Some things about you are true for all humans, and some things aren't. How do you tell the difference if all you have is what you know about yourself? You're saying what you know about yourself is the thing that allows you draw a conclusion about all humans, and that is illogical.
No, all things have a nature, human nature includes the ability to love. You cant go against human nature if you are human. Otherwise, you are not human.
El Cid said:
It is evidence that we have free will. All humans have a desire for justice so that is evidence that we have a free will.
Why is a desire for justice evidence for free will? And, are you saying it's sufficient evidence, all by itself, that we have free will?
Because that desire is unlikely to be selected for by natural selection if it was not based on something real.
El Cid said:
Because if we didnt have free will would not be able to refuse to do those things.
Why?
Because cause and effect cannot be stopped, it is like dominoes.
El Cid said:
Learning can be a form of programming, but unlike animals we can choose not to learn,
Whether we can choose not to learn has nothing to do with whether learning is a form or (re-)programming. If learning is a form of programming, then we can sometimes alter our behavior from what is genetically programmed.
Without free will you cant choose anything, you cant make choices.
El Cid said:
animals who dont have a free will cannot.
What animals can or can't do has nothing to do with what we can or can't do.
See above about evolution.
El Cid said:
Not if you dont have free will, you cant really choose to do anything.
Why not? Unless you're defining "choosing" as meaning "exercising free will," in which case your argument is circular.
Not all circular arguments are false.
 
Well according to evolutionists we are animals too.
When you look at animals that biologists say are our nearer relatives, there are an overwhelming number of similarities between them and us. We have a very similar skeletal system, we share a circulatory system that allows blood to be pumped round our bodies by hearts. We share eyes, ears and noses, mouths, tongues with said relatives. We have brains and a nervous system in common. We give birth and we die, as do animals, we are susceptible to disease as are animals, we eat and defecate as do animals, etc, etc. The unique quality we have is a larger brain giving us more self awareness, as a Cheetah has a unique quality that we don't have, both giving survival advantages.

That there is any question we are part of the animal kingdom that your remark implies, is going to need quite the explanation of a sort I've ever seen on this forum.



 
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Well according to evolutionists we are animals too.
Please, this is just a word game. *You* were the one distinguishing "animals" from people.

Our conversation is over unless you acknowledge this point, or address it in some fashion.
 
It's a bit odd that you support scientific declarations about every animal from common observations of a subset. I mean, I don't disagree, but what do scientists say about dead things reanimating? Given that all of the living things we can test can't do that, can we extrapolate from your support of scientific observation that Christianity is not true?
No, because if the being that created life exists(the Christian God), and there is strong evidence that He does, then He can certainly reanimate a dead formerly living thing.
 
No, because if the being that created life exists(the Christian God), and there is strong evidence that He does, then He can certainly reanimate a dead formerly living thing.
2 points....

1) - If you believe in a god that created life, and that god can reanimate dead flesh as a result of his position as designer and creator, then you cannot hold at the same time, from scientific observation, that animals cannot have god concepts or do calculus. If god wants it, god seems to get it done. You can make no scientific generalities at all as you did.

And 2) - But that's just it... there isn't strong evidence that he exists precisely because we know dead things cannot reanimate as Christianity claims has happened. The very core of their belief, resurrection, is just one specious and unvalidated religious claim among many across many world superstitions that we never witness in nature - ever. The majority of global supernatural religious claims are even denied by Christianity on their face value using the same process that invalidates Christianity as well.

Nature itself is proof the Christian God does not exist.
 
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I am not saying proof is necessary just evidence. Most of the evidence says that reasoning is non-physical. You cant cut a slice of reasoning or take a picture of reasoning or etc.
Most of the evidence shows reasoning depends on the physical. If you Injure the brain, you impair reasoning.
How do you know? Just because the external behavior appears to not reason, that the mind is not still reasoning? Like if several of my keys were broken, you would think that my mind was damaged, but actually it would just be my keyboard.
El Cid said:
Not necessarily. The non-physical mind may causing the neurons to fire when reasoning takes place, it may not be that the neurons are what is doing the reasoning. The mind may actually recognize the face but because of the brain damage they cannot let the outside world know that they know. The wiring may be crossed.
This doesn't make sense. I can't make out any meaning.
See above about me and my keyboard.
El Cid said:
See above how the reasoning may still be occurring just that it does not manifest itself physically if the brain is damaged.
That this might be so is speculation on your part.
Since we cannot see what the mind is doing, it is speculation on your part as well.
 
Absolute nonsense.
That's like saying, there would be no belief in ghosts, if ghosts didn't exist.
You obviously didnt read my post. I said WE would not exist, so prayer would not exist. If no humans existed there would be no prayer. Humans are the only beings that pray.
Or alien abductions.
If aliens didnt exist then neither would alien abductions.
Or Bigfoot.
Bigfoot would probably not exist either if such a thing ever did.
Or any number of other things.
Nothing would probably exist if God didnt exist.
 
You obviously didnt read my post. I said WE would not exist, so prayer would not exist.
I am not satisfied that "if my god did not exist, we would not exist" has been demonstrated.
Nothing would probably exist if God didnt exist.
And now the hedging.

Where is the calculation? What is the exact probability that we would not exist if your god didn't exist?
 
How do you know? Just because the external behavior appears to not reason, that the mind is not still reasoning? Like if several of my keys were broken, you would think that my mind was damaged, but actually it would just be my keyboard.
See above about me and my keyboard.

Since we cannot see what the mind is doing, it is speculation on your part as well.
Since you cannot see what the mind is doing, all this is speculation on your part. Now what? How do we find out who has the truth of it?
 
OK - more specific:

if Nancy Pelosi is so against Donald Trump running for President again, that she prays for him to die tomorrow, and he does, was that Yahweh's doing?
While I cant say for certain, I would doubt it would be a direct answer of prayer. Trump has done nothing that deserves death.
 
While I cant say for certain, I would doubt it would be a direct answer of prayer.
Then you concede that some things that are prayed for, can happen without Yahweh's intervention.

The question then becomes, given this, how do you tell when - or, indeed, whether - Yahweh has intervened, when "thing prayed for, happened" is no longer enough?
 
We cant know it with certainty
So is this an admission that answered prayer is possibly coincidence?
Well since everything happens for a reason, it is not exactly coincidence. But God is not directly involved in every prayer. He allows natural law events to occur most of the time. And sometimes the natural law event is an answer to prayer.
El Cid said:
but the evidence is strong that if God didnt exist, then neither would we. So there would be no praying if God didnt exist.
This changes the subject somewhat from answered prayer being strong evidence for God.
Answered prayer is evidence for God but since we cannot be certain about whether He is always directly involved in answered prayer it may not qualify as strong evidence but combined with all the other evidence, it is an important piece of the puzzle.
 
Well since everything happens for a reason, it is not exactly coincidence. But God is not directly involved in every prayer. He allows natural law events to occur most of the time. And sometimes the natural law event is an answer to prayer.
How can you tell the difference between an advantageous natural law event and answered prayer?
Answered prayer is evidence for God but since we cannot be certain about whether He is always directly involved in answered prayer it may not qualify as strong evidence but combined with all the other evidence, it is an important piece of the puzzle.
This is how I see most of the key evidences for God, they never rise above might be, may be.
 
If you run the BB backwards you come to a point with no dimensions, ie nothing, so no there are no laws of physics if there is no matter or energy.
We just don't know. There have been scientific articles recently about the BB not being an absolute beginning.
Nevertheless most of the evidence points to it having a beginning. Stephen Hawking tried to get around a beginning by proposing imaginary time, but there is no evidence for imaginary time.
El Cid said:
It has not been proven but nevertheless it is evidence. Many NDEs have not been explained. And it is not just my assumption, other scientists agree.
Right. There is a phenomenon, NDE's, that has no full explanation as yet as there was once no full explanation for lightning, and you think them evidence for God. That's only an inference on your part because there is no evidence that follows from them that there is an afterlife. The best you can hope for so far is that they might be evidence for God. They certainly don't confirm God.
No, lightning can be explained by natural law, NDEs cannot, in fact they violate all known natural law.
El Cid said:
True, but it is a side with evidence too.
See above.
See above.
El Cid said:
Dr. Larry Cahill, His Brain, Her Brain, Scientific American. October 1, 2012.
The point here is that you said …
If you are a man, every brain cell in your brain can be identified as male and they secrete chemicals associated with maleness. And yet some men claim that they are mentally female. If this is real, it is strong evidence that the mind is not totally dependent on the brain, otherwise such a thing would not be possible.
In reply to me asking for evidence for this, you pointed me to a Scientific American article called "His Brain, Her Brain". I read the article. Nowhere did it do as you claimed. If I missed it, please quote where it says as you claim.
He says in part of the article, that research has produced "a surge of findings that highlight the influence of sex on many areas of cognition and behavior, including memory, emotion, vision, hearing, the processing of faces, and the brains response to stress hormones." All of these things are the result of chemical reactions in the brain.
 
Nevertheless most of the evidence points to it having a beginning. Stephen Hawking tried to get around a beginning by proposing imaginary time, but there is no evidence for imaginary time.
So Hawking didn't agree with you that there was an absolute beginning. Again though, you're making statements about how things must be, in an area that we don't have all the information yet.
No, lightning can be explained by natural law, NDEs cannot, in fact they violate all known natural law.
You miss the point, at one time lightening couldn't be explained, but it can be now. NDE's fall into the same category that lightening was in before it's explanation. That NDE's violate all natural law is an unevidenced claim.
He says in part of the article, that research has produced "a surge of findings that highlight the influence of sex on many areas of cognition and behavior, including memory, emotion, vision, hearing, the processing of faces, and the brains response to stress hormones." All of these things are the result of chemical reactions in the brain.
I accept the above, but it's still not about what you claimed earlier, being, "If you are a man, every brain cell in your brain can be identified as male and they secrete chemicals associated with maleness".

I'm still waiting for evidence of this.
 
My definition of faith:

Faith is accepting as truth that for which there is no sufficiently compelling evidence
Faith is accepting as fact that for which there is no ultimate proof
Faith is believing without seeing
Faith is trusting without good reason

Whenever I share my definition of faith with a Christian it is automatically, and with a high haughtiness, dismissed
And in it's place, the Christian asserts that faith is:

"confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see"

Can somebody please explain to me how my definition of faith differs from the biblical definition?

How does having 'confidence in what one hopes for'
differ from
'accepting as truth that for which there is no sufficient evidence'?

How does an 'assurance about what we do not see'
differ from
an 'acceptance as fact minus ultimate proof'?

Can you see?

Do you want to not see, but to walk by faith, to not see.

Walking by faith not by sight ......

And they like blind men have gone astray.

Never to see ....... only to not be.
 
Can you see?

Do you want to not see, but to walk by faith, to not see.

Walking by faith not by sight ......

And they like blind men have gone astray.

Never to see ....... only to not be.
The funny thing is atheists walk by their own faith and still can't see it.
 
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