If I had to choose which book would be the most challenging to Evangelical Christians, and which might turn them to atheism or agnosticicsm, it would be this book:
Why I Believed: Reflections of a Former Missionary
Foreword by Guy P. Harrison
Kenneth W. Daniels has produced a powerful work that will give Christian readers much to think about. Why I Believed: Reflections of a Former Missionary is an important book that should be widely read. The author’s approach is gentle and honest while still managing to be unflinching and thorough. As a former fundamentalist Christian missionary who devoted far more time and energy than most to serving that religion, he obviously remembers what it feels like to be fully immersed in belief. Fortunately, Daniels has retained plenty of sympathy for those who cannot yet see that the supernatural claims of Christianity cannot stand up to honest scrutiny. This brilliant book is not a vicious attack on Christians. It is a strong but polite plea for them to see and hear new ideas, to consider the possibility that their belief system might be a mistake. Daniels maintains a humble tone throughout the book. He does not blast believers with arrogant claims of intellectual superiority on the question of faith. He simply shares thoughts and questions about his journey through Christianity and escape from it. This is a powerful story and Daniels has many piercing ideas that are likely to carry considerable weight with believers because of his difficult work as a missionary in Africa. Daniels earned his stripes as a committed Christian. He went way beyond the easy life of a casual Christian sitting in a pew on Sunday mornings. He lived his Christianity; he made serious commitments and followed through with sacrifices for his religion. For someone like him to walk away from it, with great reluctance, humility, and no rage says a lot. It gives Daniels tremendous credibility.
Daniels is well read and obviously knowledgeable about Christianity. Most importantly, however, he has retained a sense of respect and compassion for believers. Yes, he thinks they are wrong about their religious claims, but he has not turned his back on them as fellow humans. It is likely that many Christians will struggle to reconcile the wisdom and challenges found within Why I Believed with their own beliefs. The author’s impressive logic and intelligence, combined with a sensitive approach and his top-notch credentials as a Christian missionary, make it impossible for anyone to dismiss him as an angry crank or an irrelevant outsider. Daniels walked the walk, believing and serving with far more sincerity and dedication than most believers do. He writes:
I invite Christian readers to consider the possibility that my apostasy is a result not of divine or diabolical deception but of a simple weighing of the evidence … It might be that I am wrong. It might be that I have not sought God sufficiently or studied the Bible thoroughly enough or listened carefully enough to the many Christians who have admonished me … Maybe. But the knowledge that billions of seekers have lived and died, calling out to God for some definitive revelation without ever receiving it, or receiving revelation that conflicts with the revelation others have found, contributes to my suspicion that there is no personal God who reveals himself to anyone.
This is a book I will give to Christians because it is forceful and devastating to their irrational beliefs without belittling or mocking them. That Daniels is able to make such a powerful case against Christianity is impressive enough; that he is able to do it without drifting into attacks and name- calling makes Why I Believed an important book that should be read and discussed by both believers and nonbelievers.
It is available on kindle for 99 cents! You can download the kindle reader for free at Amazon.
One may wonder why someone like myself, a professing Christian and creationist would love this book. It raises many of the questions that few Evangelical are willing to engage in. Daniels echoed so many of my deepest personal doubts as well. I found a kinship with his questions, though I arrived at completely different answers. There is a good amount of material on Michael Behe and Bill Dembski’s influence on him, and later how he came to reject their claims.
I myself have been critical of some of the things in standard ID literature, but unlike Daniels, I arrived at acceptance of ID via different routes, so when Daniels lost faith in God because he lost faith in ID due to arguments such as those put forward on the internet (by Abby Smith and Andrea Bottaro at PandasThumb), I arrived at opposite conclusions because I did not necessarily take the inferential routes Behe and Dembski took. Daniels even makes reference to the uncommondescent weblog and names of people I’ve interacted with on the net.
This is probably the most well-written anti-Christian book in terms of scholarship and compassionate tone. I don’t agree with the final conclusions, but the questions raised are well-worth considering by anyone serious about these topics.
Love doesn’t come from belief, it comes from the heart.
And belief often comes from the heart as well. For me the only really solid argument for belief in God is the personal experience of the believer. It’s not something you can argue against. I can’t tell someone who loves Jesus (or Muhammad, or [fill in the blank]) that they’re mistaken about how they feel.
I view ID as pure apologetics. Its purpose is to reassure believers that their belief is not naive or unscientific. But ID’s mistake is that it wants to demonstrate the limitations of purely naturalistic processes. That’s a very tough sell given that the scientific endeavor is to understand these processes. To disprove them implies that you fully understand their limits. So ID is always playing catch up with science, and is ever shrinking into a corner.
Theistic evolution is a far better strategy. Embrace the science, claim that God is behind it all. We all get along. Budda bing budda boom.
Sorry that was a rambling mess…
No need to apologize Norm. If we’ve met before on the net, my apologies. I don’t seem to recall interacting with you before.
That’s ok, it was from the heart, and that’s what matters. 😉
One passage that caught my attention, and it is no surprise when Daniels speaks of the “new wonders” in his life after deconversion. Evolutionary theory figures prominently:
stcordova,
Sal, why do you feel you have to defend a young earth perspective? It’s not only spectacularly indefensible, but not necessary to defend in order to be a believer.
Norm Olsen said:
Tough sell to whom? To dyed in the wool materialists/atheists who happen to be scientists? I don’t think the DI gives a rat’s ass about selling anything to them; what they want to sell something to is the other 85% or so of the population who are highly resistant to the eroding message of nihilistic materialism and are looking for support against that cultural onslaught.
You don’t have to scientifically prove to most people that nature is not capable of building the nanotechnology we find in biology via natural laws and chance – you only have to show them the biotech. You don’t have to prove that the universe is designed – you only have to show them the fine-tuning facts.
Whether via evolution or a creator, most people on the planet have a built-in need to connect to something transcendent. ID, whether scientific or not, is a useful tool for reaching some of those people and providing them with a kind of intellectually satisfying access.
William J. Murray,
Not really William. ID neither asks nor answers questions, it simply asserts ‘design’. Intellectually satisfying to the limited, perhaps.
ID is obviously a poor attempt to get creationism into schools.
I agree with that and that was what I meant when I said “Its purpose is to reassure believers that their belief is not naive or unscientific.”
Agreed.
Just so I can get an idea of where you are coming from, what do you believe? — if it’s not to personal to ask.
I don’t view myself as defending it so much as exploring it, as I do ID — arguments for and against. I’ve come to accept YEC/YLC (Young Life Creation) because I don’t think life has been around that long, at least not human life.
I was an evolutionist (learned the mainstream theory in High School Biology), but after a few years, as I explained here, I began to doubt evolution:
I then became an Old Earth Creationist after considering the Origin of Life problem. Went to school, then after some music stuides, I studied science and engineering, and then had bouts of agnosticism much like Daniels did and around the same time frame at that! Daniels had his crisis of faith in 1999, mine was around 2001.
I then learned of the ID movement and began reading ID materials. I then identified as a Old Earth IDist until around 2004, then I began to be about half convinced YEC was plausible. After some of my own personal investigations which included studying more physics (astrophysics, general relativity, cosmology) I began to think YEC was difficult but plausible. Dr. Sanford’s work made me believe life is young.
There have been good criticisms of my viewpoints here at TSZ. I don’t see why people have to posture and advocate and save face. I’ve stated why I believe in YEC and what the problems are. That may not convince others, and that’s OK.
If I’m wrong, it doesn’t bother me as much as it used to. When I was early in the ID movement I felt very threatened by the idea that God might not exist. Now that I’ve had a chance to think about it, it would be merciful for most of humanity if the YEC scenario of ID were false.
If the Christian God exists, that would entail the majority of humanity is hell bound. So of late, I realized belief in ID entails a lot of tragedy for humanity because the Designer who created life also must have created the plagues that afflict this world — he made the worms that consume flesh in this life, and he creates the “worms which never die” in hell.
So I no longer agonize if ID is false and there is no God. It would mean my friends at TSZ aren’t going to hell. 🙂 But if YEC is true, at least I won’t go to hell.
I pointed out a horrifying aspect of ID:
So of late, I’ve thought, ID and YEC being true is not as desirable an outcome in the way it once was for me 10 ago because of the problem of malicious intelligent design. If the YEC God is real there will be genetic extinction, elimination of the human race by natural selection, Armageddon and Hell for most of humanity.
So at this stage in my life, I accept YEC/YLC because it seems to describe the real evolution of life and is consistent with the facts. There is a part of me that would wish it were false, but that doesn’t seem to be the case from my vantage point.
If I’m wrong and there is no God, so much the better for most of humanity that won’t have to face an angry wrath-filled Jesus Christ on judgment day.
That’s why I feel less driven to see my viewpoint prevail in the way I was driven 10 years ago. If the Designer is real, then he designed the problems and horrors we see in the world.
So the irony is that at the time in my life I have the most faith ID and YEC are true, it is most apparent to me this would be dreadful thing, because this means the Designer is the God of the Old Testament and “the One who holds the keys to death and Hell” (Rev 1:18).
Daniels reflects something I said:
See! Daniels understands, it’s not the most delightful thing for humanity if the God of the Bible is real.
stcordova,
You should also consider the possibility that your interpretation of what the bible means is entirely incorrect, not only because of in accurate translations, but also because of poor interpretations of those translations. Some preachers words about what God meant or didn’t mean, is not a very good foundation for basing one’s own belief. There can be a Christian God and still not have anything to do with your straw man argument of that God being mean.
Heck, if you accept that you are given free will, then you pretty much HAVE to accept that this entails allowing people to do bad things if that is their choice. You want free will, and ALSO to prevent people from being able to do what you judge as bad? That is impossible. If I have a choice to be nice or not nice to someone, then this means being not nice is a choice. If there is no choice, and I only can be nice to someone, then that is not free will, that is determinism.
I don’t think the problem is a God, I think the problem is people not accepting what free will means. You prefer a world where you have no choice? I think that exists, its the world of fish. They just do, they don’t chose. Maybe in another life you get to be a fish, with no free will.
I think anyone who blames a God for evil in the world, should also hate the concept of choice. If you don’t want a world where bad things can happen, then you also don’t want a world where you can chose. Rocks have a world where no evil can happen to them. They also don’t get t make choices. Which world do you want, the one where evil is a possibility, or the one where you get no choices about anything that can happen Which is your preference, its impossible to have both.
“Wait, stop, you see that girl that wants to break up with that guy and break his heart, please take away her choice, I don’t want her to be able to give him unhappiness. You see that person about to rob that bank and shot the security guard, I don’t want him to have free will, please strap him to a chair and don’t let him make decisions about life. Oh, and take away all my decisions too, because I can’t accept free will. Make me a robot void of choices”
Daniels:
I remember that sense of relief from my own process of deconversion.
It’s a wonderful feeling when you decide to let the truth be the truth, come what may. A feeling of finally being honest with yourself.
What choice does a child born into starvation have? A choice of what position to die in?
Excellent summary by the author himself. I have, as attested by what I’ve posted on the net, raised discussions to that effect. Some will disagree with my solutions, but I noticed how reluctant my side wanted to deal with these subjects!
How do Christians know what God’s gonna base his judgement of people on? For all we know many of the fundies could be head on to hell for harassing and attacking atheists instead of doing their best to convert them.
Just a silly example there to illustrate one of the things I find ridiculous of religious thinking. There are so many different christian denominations, and there’s pretty much an interpretation of god, the bible, the precepts for every christian out there, but all of them believe *they* are saved and their faith and actions are keeping them from going to hell.
OMagain,
If a child does, why do you feel that is bad? By what standard?
You want a world where no one dies? Maybe next life you can have?
dazz,
So the problem is you can’t decide which sect to believe?
Sounds like its religion that is your problem, not God.
How do you know what the truth is?
None of those are problems of mine because I’m a happy atheist. My point is that somehow, every believer seems to know for a fact that whatever they take on faith must be true, they are convinced to know god and what goes on in his mind. They all *know* they’re gonna be saved. They also *know* who’s not. They also know there’s free will, others know there’s not because it conflicts with God’s omniscience, others try to rationalize the problem to explain away the paradox and call themselves compatibilists, as if that made the slightest difference about what’s actually true…
Many theists attack atheists claiming that “we want to be our own gods” which is of course absurd, and then go on with their pretending to be themselves talking in the name of that god, knowing what he wants, how he thinks, who he saves and who will be damned. I find it highly ironic because that’s as close to playing god as it gets, but not so surprising when one considers christians believe to be made in the image of god, specially created and that the whole universe was made for us.
The bible is another great example. Some think it must be taken literally, some relativize certain passages, some ignore them completely. Some think it’s metaphoric, some think it’s a moral code, some others… whatever… but they agree for the most part that it’s the inerrant word of god. There’s only one possible conclusion: they can’t all be right, and most christians (maybe all of them) got it all wrong.
dazz,
I think you’re being a little fast and loose with the terms “Christian” and “theist”. Christianity is a kind of theism. You’re also generalizing Christianity and – like many atheists here – presenting even that particular kind of Christianity through a pretty narrow lens.
There are many forms of theism that are nothing like how you are characterizing “theism” and “theists”.
dazz,
They could all be partly right.
Do you have a problem with someone like keiths saying he has accepted the truth? How does he know the truth?
dazz said:
There are ridiculous aspects to virtually any ideology, including materialism and atheism. So? Because some or most people have ridiculous aspects to their thinking about certain kinds of metaphysics or religion doesn’t mean there aren’t many valuable, useful, and even necessary aspects of those metaphysics or religion.
Just because Richard Dawkins says ridiculous or uninformed things under the umbrella of “atheism” or “evolution” doesn’t mean one should throw those concepts out as “ridiculous”.
dazz,
Indeed. That’s one reason of many why I find Sal’s acceptance of Pascal’s Wager bemusing.
Exactly how I felt when I gave up my rather adolescent view of Christianity. And exactly what I felt when I gave up Sant Mat. And exactly what I felt when I gave up atheism, realizing at last I don’t have to defend a damn thing, I can believe whatever I wish and I don’t have to justify it to anyone.
It’s amazing how people think they have given up “defending the indefensible”, and then think they are doing something else when they attempt to argue that there is no free will, no objective moral grounding, and that intelligence/intention is subsumed by natural law + chance.
No, they can’t be partly right when they believe contradictory stuff. I have mentioned some examples. Can you link me to Keiths’ relevant post about him “accepting the truth”? I have no idea what that is all about
You’re missing the point entirely. It’s about defining truth. It’s about tentative truth vs purportedly absolute truth taken on faith.
When one has a view that truth can only be know tentatively, and that contradictions must be resolved by reason and evidence, no such issues arise. The illusion of certainty that faith provides is gone, sure it is, but that’s a great thing if you ask me.
All you can do based on faith is to keep pontificating your particular view and convince yourself that you’re right and the rest are wrong, that your faith is better than others’ faith or lackthereof.
Dawkins can say whatever he wants, and many atheists may disagree with him sometimes, or most of the times, or everytime, but none will assume his/her position is set in stone as some cosmic truth that will send everyone else to some atheist hell.
Why is it that all you christians seem to have to counter these sort of arguments is “tu-quoque” style responses?
FWIW,
A slight aside. I don’t know if people have perceived it or not, I’m not hostile to atheists and agnostics for merely being atheists/agnostics. I’ve gone on record as saying atheism/agnosticism is my 2nd choice after Christianity. I consider the atheist/ agnostic viewpoint superior to 99.9999% of the religious views that have existed throughout history.
I’ve gotten into hot water for not following the UD party line and demonizing someone who doesn’t believe in God — would Arrington somehow prefer ISIS, Al-Queda theists to someone like RDFish or Elizabeth Liddle?
To the atheists and agnostics here, do I strike them as someone on a crusade against them personally like Arrington? As if you guys are criminals or terrorists just for being non-believers? I like critical thinkers.
Arrington? You set the bar pretty low once again. But no, certainly not
But I must say, attacks on evolution and the science involved in the age of humanity still puts you in a crusader category of sorts
So?
Want to join my movement to keep the government from legalizing abortion? Oh, wait, it’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?
No one is going to teach creationism in the schools. That battle has already been fought and the creationists lost. Do you really think that if all the religious people in the US wanted creationism taught in the schools that you could stop it?
But then a Christian comes along who doesn’t believe in a literal Hell, and the world of keiths gets turned on its head. Maybe truth and honesty would reflect on the proper way to interpret scripture rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
“And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.”
Rev. 20:14
They don’t know, they can only accept things as a matter of faith like a little child.
Daniel’s book spends time criticizing Pascal’s Wager, he says the wager is not a good basis of faith. I’d counter by saying it is a good basis for how one lives their lives and their further search for truth in the face of uncertainties and incomplete knowledge.
I should point out Daniels was heavily indoctrinated from youth up. He was chastised by his father for whenever he didn’t believe. I find that really off-putting.
In contrast, Rosaria Champagne Butterfield, former lesbian activist, atheist, tenured English professor at Syracuse became an Evangelical Christian, after reading the Bible intensely for about a year as part of research into finding ways to dismantle the religious right articulates Pascal’s wager in an indirect way:
Rosaria simply played out Pascal’s wager by continuing her reading of the Bible. That was a start. I played the wager out in my life by critically examining the claims for and against ID. Oddly my time mingling with people like the Holy Rollers reinforced my personal enthusiasm for the Pascal’s Wager.
[ I was listed in the credits of the Holy Roller Documentary:
http://holyrollersthemovie.com/ ]
Of the ex-missionaries (like Ken Daniels), ex-pastors (like Dan Barker, Bruce Gerencser, and others), ex qausi-evangelists (like Michael Shermer) — evolutionary theory was significant to their deconversion.
It means no such thing.
Mung,
I wish that were true, but it’s not. Many public schools allow the teaching of creationism. Even where it isn’t allowed, many teachers violate the law.
Creationists, including the intelligent design variant, have lost in terms of science, but they keep trying in the political arena.
😀
He searched high and low for empirical evidence of Hell and didn’t find any. What more does he need?
To the extent people were willing to get me expelled from engineering grad school (the Whiting School of Engineering!) for being a YEC, I do take that personally, and I crusade against that sort of cultural prejudice. What the heck should my YEC views have to do with my engineering studies?
I take it personally when I perceive my personal friends like biology professor Caroline Crocker (when we were at GMU and I was associated with the Volgenau School) — and personal friends like David Coppedge — I do take that personally. I accept the label of crusader in that regard.
People have the right to be mistaken to some extent without it costing them their jobs and livelihoods. The way some act it’s as if someone should be subject to dismissal from opportunities to become an excellent doctor if they are creationists. I find that prejudicial attitude harmful to society.
stcordova,
How do you address the issue dazz raised of betting on the wrong god? There’s no evidence for any of them, after all.
Dazz said:
Unless you are making a case for pointing out the obvious, I don’t see what your point matters. People of all stripes – including atheists and materialists – operate on some sort of faith and have truths they consider to be absolute. So? Why attack theists in particular for what is basically a universal human commodity?
I guess that depends on what you are referring to as “reason” and “evidence”, how you define those things and what they mean to you. Do you mean logic and consensus scientific evidence, or something else? Do you understand the problem you have inserted into your “tentative truth” position by saying that “contrdictions must be resolved” by those things, as if they represent an absolute means of arbiting “truth”?
When you say the above, what I see is a means of convincing oneself that they have acquired a better means of determining truths, but the question is, by what standard of “what is true” are they comparing the results of their efforts against? Where did they establish that their methodology results in a closer proximity to what is actually true?
Do you equate better practical results (pragmatism) with a more truthful result/method? If so, then how is it that you came to the conclusion that pragmatic = truthful? Or effective = truthful? Or consensus = truthful?
Yet the illusion persists in your view, betrayed by the term “must”.
Certainly not. One can certain test their faith, just as you test your faith, your faith in those things which you think “must” be accepted, and your faith in the values you believe reflect “truth”.
But that’s exactly what Dawkins proselytizes – his own version of set-in-stone cosmic truth, where there is no god, no afterlife, no objective morality, no necessary moral consequences, where raising your children in your religion is child abuse and punishing people for their crimes is barbaric because people are programmed by biology to do what they do. In Dawkins’ metaphysical truth, none of us go to any hell – we are simply snuffed out of existence, inconsequential microbes leading ultimately inconsequential lives. For a lot of people, that cosmologcal, set-in-stone view is just as bad as “hell”.
I’m not a Christian. I didn’t realize we were having an argument; what I was pointing out, and still am, is you seem to think your view is somehow fundamentally better or superior to that of theists. Unless you have some form of absolute arbiter of truths, you have nothing meaningful to compare the two against in order to make such a case.
You only have that which you have faith in vs what anyone else has faith in.
YEC Christianity is in fact Christianity for little children. But growing up doesn’t mean you have to abandon Christianity.
If you know Croker and Coppedge personally you probably know a lot more than me about what happened, but for all I know Croker was teaching creationist falsehoods in her biology classes and deserved the boot.
I’ve read Coppedge was pestering everyone at work and wasn’t fired because of his religious beliefs anyway.
But it doesn’t really matter, one doesn’t fight perceived injustice by forfeiting truth. No amounts of injustice or justice will change the age of the earth or humanity, so an honest approach to truth should be to go where the evidence leads you, not what you perceive as the just outcome
Patrick,
Unlike evolutionism at least ID has a methodology. As Dr Behe exposed no one knows how to test the claim that any bacterial flagellum evolved via natural selection, drift and neutral changes. Your position doesn’t have any science
[OK I’M NOT DOING THE LATEX THING RIGHT NOW. MAYBE LATER.
E+ means E superscript +
E- means E supercript –
Maybe when I flesh this out I’ll formalize it with the right symbology.]
What you view as non-evidence, I don’t view as non-evidence, so I compute things differently.
I pointed out elsewhere at TSZ, your insistence on repeatability (though understandable) would prevent you from recognizing God as a matter of principle even if he existed. Hence, your “no evidence” insistence is flawed as a matter of methodology if God actually exists. Hence I regard my approach as epistemologically superior. 🙂
Basic implementation of Pascal’s wagering ideas as they would be done in a casino-type context:
let P be probability
let X+ be payoff on eternal timescales
let X- be costs on eternal timescales
let E be the net Expected Value on eternal timescales
let E+ be the postive component of net Expected Value on eternal timescales
let E-(i,j) be the negative component of net Expected Value on eternal timescales for one religion against another, where i and j are indexes for the various religions.
let E- be the total negative component of the Expected Value on eternal timescales
further I define
E- = summation E-(i,j)
and
E = (E+) + (E-)
Examples:
E+(Christianity True) =
P(Christianity True) * X(Christianity True)
E+(Atheism True) = P(Atheism True) * X(Atheism True) = 0
E+(Ghost Shirt Theology True) = P(Ghost Shirt Theology True) * X(Ghost Shirt Theology True) = 0
etc.
These are the positive EV calculations only but not the net EV calculations. That is to say:
The negative EVs are harder to calculate since one has to sum all the hypothetical costs of the other religions on a probability weighted basis and then subtract it from the positive EV calculations. To see the difficulty, we have to consider the weighted values of atheism against other religions, like say atheism vs. Christianity:
E-(Atheism, Christianity) = P(Christianity true) * X-(Christianity true) = -infinity
E-(Atheism, Jehovah’s Witness) = P(Jehovah’s Witness true) * X-(Jehovah’s Witness true) = 0
….. etc.
E-(Atheism) = Summation E-(Athisism, j) = -infinity
After some gyrations here are my estimates:
E(Atheism) = -infinite
E(Christianity) = + infinity
E(Christianity) > E(Judaism) >E(Islam) > E(Mormonism) > E(Jehovah’s Witness) > E(Scientiology) ……
Well there are some formalities like the indeterminate form of infinity multiplied by some positive non-zero number. But I think that can be worked around without recourse to things L’hopital’s rule (which wouldn’t be appropriate anyway in these cases).
Apparently it wasn’t so obvious when you missed my main point. Tentative truth is pretty much the opposite to absolute truth. No faith is needed to operate as a materialist or an atheist. Is it really that hard to grasp? It’s not about “believing” there’s no supernatural, it’s just the position that while there’s no evidence for it, only the natural world is assumed, tentatively, to exist.
Another point a failed to get across, it seems. When I said “contradictions must be resolved by reason and evidence” I didn’t mean to say that all arguments must be sorted. In the absence of evidence, “don’t know” is the honest position.
Let me draw a comparison with your position here. As already mentioned, you guys take your position on faith. It doesn’t matter what anyone else believes, as long as you believe X, X is true enough for you. Not only that, faith based truths are perceived as absolute truths.
OTOH, scientific consensus, repeatability of results, peer review take the opposite approach. It must works everywhere and for everyone and it must work the same.
It’s naive in my opinion, to ask why science and rationalism is a better approach to truth. First off, it defines truth as something attainable, as opposed to absolute truth. Second, well, it works pretty well to explain the natural world if you ask me.
The rest of your post you keep going on about how “must” means something different to what I meant. That’s clarified already so no further comments are needed
No one knows how to test the claim that the Rings of Saturn formed by accretion but apparently creationists are fine with gravity, maybe they run out of arguments from ignorance with evolution
stcordova,
Then please present your objective, empirical evidence for a god or gods.
Why? You have no evidence for any of them.
You also have the problem that even if you consider only two alternatives, both may cause you infinite pain for believing in the other. Like most ID endeavors, you can’t actually calculate the metrics you want to use.
Agreed, but evolutionists can’t be the final arbiters of what is historically true since they themselves admit they are dealing with inferences rather than direct observation of events in the past.
I’m afraid you’re equating evolutionary claims about the history of the physical universe with real-time direct observations in the present. If that equality were real you’d have much more force to your argument, but because that equality doesn’t hold, it is improper to necessarily label creationists as holding to falsehoods. There is a formal possibility the creationists could be right and evolutionists wrong especially if this inference by physicist Richard Conn Henry about the existence of God based on physics alone is correct:
Stupid question, I know, but:
What’s an eternal timescale?