This is an interesting debate.

You cannot prove or disprove the existence of God. There are various reason for it:
1. Nobody actually came to an agreeable definition of the term "God".
2. The definitions of the term "God" that do exist, define him in such a way that you cannot prove or disprove his existence. For example, "God is an almighty entity" statement cannot be tested in scientific ways.

The problem is that a lot of people try to apply scientific logic to religious questions. It simply doesn't work this way. The starting points of science and religion are very different, and each has a very different set of axioms.

Science cannot prove God doesn't exist. As far as science considered, God may exist or may not exist - it won't change a thing, because science is about exploring the world we are living it, and as long as there is a set of rules by which the world works, science will remain useful.

Religion and science are not opposing views of the reality. Religion speaks about how people should behave to please God, and it tells us an interesting story regarding the history of humanity.

Religious people are adepts and settling down discrepancies. For example, a religious paleontologist (yes, there might be some religious paleontologists) will tell you that carbon testing sets the age of this fossil to 4 million years ago. When you ask him how can it be, since according to the Bible the world is only 5700 years old, he will tell you that 5700 years ago the fossil was created 4 million years old. The fossil wasn't NEW when it was created, but it was already OLD. You cannot argue with it. It is a viable option if the assumption that there is an almighty entity that can do whatever it pleases, exists.

I used to teach Astronomy for kids a few years ago, and I had a group of religious 11 year old kids. I asked them why does the Moon rotates around Earth and doesn't just fly away into space, wanting to tell them that gravity works even in space. An 11 years old girl shouted out in defiance: "because God wants it to!". You cannot argue with it. This actually might be the reason. God, if he exists, can turn gravity on and off as he pleases.

A while ago, during my B.Sc, I took a course in the philosophy of science. One of the most important things that I learned there is that all forms of science that base themselves on experiments, are not "foolproof". When we say that "gravity always works according to F=const*m1*m2/r^2", we actually mean "so far we haven't seen a single case when gravity didn't work according to the formula". You cannot "prove" gravity, since gravity is a natural phenomena that we study, and we don't prove or disprove it.

The most basic difference between science and religion is that science is about understanding how the world works, while religion is about how people should live to please God. (and allow me a snide remark - way too often if you please your religious leader, God will also be pleased).

@pastoralan, Mr. Newbigin's view is apparently that reason itself is suspect and that blind faith is a way to reach truth... He pits himself against modern thought - not for its seeming immorality or some such usual complaint - but for its rationality (!!).

Here he confirms that in the face of rational thought, that Christianity is in retreat:
"What is striking about the books which were written, especially during the eighteenth century, to defend Christianity against these attacks, is the degree to which they accept the assumptions of their assailants. Christianity is defended as being reasonable. It can be accommodated within these assumptions, which all reasonable people hold. There is little suggestion that the assumptions themselves are to be challenged. The defense is, in fact, a tactical retreat. But, as later history has shown, these tactical retreats can--if repeated often enough--begin to look more like a rout."

Here he says it another way - and suggests that rationality is some kind of subjective cultural thing - a peculiarity of the English or western thought - rather than a more universal approach:
"I began to see. . . [the domestication] in my own Christianity, that I too had been more ready to seek a “reasonable Christianity,” a Christianity that could be defended on the terms of my whole intellectual formation as a twentieth-century Englishman. . ."

Ah - and here is the science is faith argument (faith in a rational and contingent universe, that is):
"The necessary precondition for the birth of science as we know it is, it would seem, the diffusion through society of the belief that the universe is both rational and contingent. Such a belief is the presupposition of modern science and cannot by any conceivable argument be a product of science. One has to ask: Upon what is this belief founded?"
(A sophomoric argument very similar to the one I see here from time to time - the "you cannot prove that everything in the universe isn't a figment of my personal imagination" or some varient of that).

Here he suggests that demonstration of the truth of Christianity cannot be demonstrated or argued - only announced... proclaimed (and I guess blind faith is our only option):
"Those who, through no wit or wisdom or godliness of their own, have been entrusted with this message can in no way demonstrate its truth on the basis of some other alleged certainties: they can only live it and announce it."

This guy's approach to the retreat of Christianity against the tide of reason is to deny reason itself - it is a return to pre-civilized thought.

In response to the idea of "truth as the correspondence between a person’s beliefs and the actual facts" he states:
“I cannot apply this definition of truth to test my own perceptions of truth, since there is no way in which I can stand outside my own perception of the facts.”
Uh... Okay, true enough, I guess... but rather than simply trying to reduce the filter of one's subjectivity and perspective (such as scientists try and do with repeated trials by different researchers and by double blind studies and such)... his answer is to give up in trying to account for his subjective view and instead embrace it as the route to Truth (while denying any value in rationality or argument). He does an odd trick of embracing relativism of perception while also denying that there is any separation between reality and belief:
"Philosophers of science have also shown convincingly that the popular dichotomy between “facts” (as what we know) and “beliefs” (of which we can only say, “this is true for me”) rests on an illusion."
This seems to argue for a kind of "I know because I feel it in my gut" sort of approach to things... and doesn't accept either the correspondence theory of truth nor the coherence theory of truth. In Mr. Newbigin's world, neither physical evidence nor rational thought have any value.

Just because this writer is ready to dispense with all Enlightenment (and Greek) thought and happily trot off in the opposite direction doesn't mean that he has anything real as an alternative. How can his view be a debatable point (as you posit) when he denies the very concept of rationality and the ability to demonstrate or debate something in the first place?? If one is to accept his premises (a leap of faith in itself) I do believe that it would leave you on an island wherein, yes you would be fortified from rational attack from outside corrupting influences - but you also would be left without the tools of rationality themselves... those tools that Mr. Newbigin encourages us to leave behind. This way lies madness (or lobotomy)... and I suggest, no closer to the truth itself.

@ Obi "I suppose I still think that to be a Christian minister you have to already be pre-disposed to accept Christ and God as the answer to certain questions"

I'd like to challenge again the pre-disposed assumption here. As I stated in my post back on page 3 near the bottom, that at some point, a good number of these people didn't have an opinion and investigated (to varying degrees) before coming to their "pre-disposition". Is the fact that they searched for an answer and have made a choice (rather than remaining perpetually objective) something that disqualifies what they have to say in your view? To be sure there are many who have chosen their "dogmatic" views for reasons hardly worth considering (e.g. my dad was a minister/rabbi, etc.) but consider what you do in blanket rejecting anyone who has made up their mind in such a way as to have formed a bias on the subject.

@Obi - then you'll likely not find a religious scholar. You might fins a scholar of philosphy which happens to include religions, but you aren't likely to find someone who studies religions so exclusively without them having a preference towards one and a focus on that one. Why? Well, it would be like being an expert on absolutely everything in the animal kingdom. People specialize, especially experts. else they become a jack of all trades and master of none. And this specialization follows their interests. Each religion has soo much depth to it that no one person is going to be an expert on all of them, not even all the major ones. The person will focus on one or two and those one or two will be because he has a predisposition to that belief system. But that doesn't make that person any less open to ideas, even if they are a minister/priest/pastor/preacher/rabbi/cleric. And, in their studies they have probably been exposed to far more information about their counterparts' religions than you or I. I know that my current minister, for instance, has a solid knowledge far exceeding my own regarding Judaism as she went and studied in Israel for several years to understand the differences between our religions and seek the common aspects beyong the simple "Torah = OT". As a result, we get together with a nearby synagogue several times a year and break bread. Both groups enjoy it and learn something about each other do to the cooperative efforts of the synagogue's rabbi and our church's pastor.

So I guess we should only listen to somebody with doctorates in both Systematic Theology and New Testament studies.

@manganese - Huh? No one suggested you should only listen to certain people (except Obi, maybe). We were telling Obi not to be so exclusionary in his studies as to eliminate people who have focused their studies into a specific religion. That doesn't mean you should only talk to someone who has focused and then only talk to a specific focus. Epic fucking fail, dude!

Well, I probably should have put "@obi" before my comment, but I forgot that the world revolves around Draugnar.

You should also talk to majors in tooth fairy studies about the tooth fairy.

@manganese - Sorry. The post appeared right after my admonishment to him, so I naturally misunderstood to whom you referred.

Seriously. I find it seriously amusing that people get up in arms about their particular superstition, yet they're able to realize that other religions are batshit.

I mean, nobody is suggesting that Obi go find somebody who studies and believes in Odin to discuss his non-belief in Norse superstition.

You're raising the bar constantly when its your own flavor of superstition. I mean, I'm not going to lie... I consider somebody who has a doctorate in "divinity" roughly equivalent of somebody who has a doctorate in "medical administration" (and yes, I've know somebody with a degree, and yes, they insist on being called 'doctor'). Its a thing you can do, but its not something that really commands much respect from me. Somebody who has a doctorate in belief in a nonexistent God just isn't in the same category as a doctor of physics or chemistry.

sorry, first paragraph "able" should be "unable". My apologies.

I mean, nobody is suggesting that Obi go find somebody who studies and believes in Odin to discuss his non-belief in Norse superstition.

perhaps if Obi considered himself Norse that would make sense...

You're missing the point.

Nobody would do that, because they find the entire idea of believing in Odin ridiculous. But they fail to apply the same to their own superstitions. They're all equally batshit, friend.

The entire idea that you have to speak to a specialist in a nonsense belief is just absurd.

@Jack - Obi was talking of discovering his own superstition and talking to others who study those superstitions to formulate what his will be (to use your perjorative which I find offensive as fuck you follower of random chance). And yes, I would tell him to find a Greek Mythology Scholar and a Roman Mythology Scholar and a Norse Mythology Scholar to talk about his questions with regards to the Greek, Roman, and Norse religious practices. If there were still a priest or priestess who worshipped Athena, Mars, or Thor, I would encourage him to talk to said holy person.

So in that you are mistaken, Jack. And your disrespect for the clergy of all religions of the world sickens me and makes me want to come kick your fucking ass!

Religious belief does not = cultural heritage. I'm sure 99% of Norse people today don't believe in Odin. They're not obligated to go research their own myths and be fully literate on them in order to be sufficiently Norse. They're not obligated to discuss these myths with venerated Odinists and Odin specialists before concluding that the myths aren't factually true, they're myths.

The threats of violence for mild disagreement on this board are ridiculous. Get control of yourself and stop acting like a thug.

@Putin - I hate to disagree with you (not really, but trying to be polite), but what you refer to is a racial heritage - like being Irish doesn't mean having to know everything about leprechan lore and being Greek doesn't mean making pilgrimages to the Parthenon.

The Jews don't have a racial heritage per se (their leaders will even tell you there is no Jewish race), therefore their cultural heritage is oriented around their religion and the practices and observances thereof.

No threat of violence. I merely said it makes me *want* to come kick his ass. I didn't say I was going to. For a grad student, you sure as fuck need to learn to read.

Anyway Obi's point was that religious specialists aren't going to look at the issue objectively. It's like talking to a used car salesman about the quality of a used car. Don't expect an honest answer. Sorry if that hurts the feelings of the defenders of the priestly class.

And our point was that he asked a question about why the various faiths praise Jesus/Jehovah/Allah/Rama/whoever when they succeed at various things. Only a practitioner of that particular faith can truly and properly answer that question.

The fact that a simple post on a forum makes you *want* to go inflict physical violence on someone is sad.

"The Jews don't have a racial heritage per se (their leaders will even tell you there is no Jewish race), therefore their cultural heritage is oriented around their religion and the practices and observances thereof."

Then please explain why Zionism was a perfectly secular movement. The whole notion of Jewish nationalism was a perfectly secular idea. The Orthodox opposed Jewish nationalism. The Orthodox insisted that Judaism was nothing but a religion and nobody bought their claims. There's a secular Jewish culture and secular Jewish heritage. That much seems obvious. Hard to create a nationalist movement out of nothing.

Yes, there is, but it isn't racial but cultural. And that culture, whether the secular Jews want to admit it or not, includes certain religious celebrations. They just cloak them as "historical". Take Hanukkah, for instance. It's a minor holiday that every Jew I know, religious or not, celebrates. Yet it's origin is the rededication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Now, a truly secular person would not celebrate the rededication of a *Temple*, a place of worship.

"Only a practitioner of that particular faith can truly and properly answer that question."

No kidding which is why he asked Christians that question here, to get their response. Why does he have to consult a rabbi or a priest about it?

And since you brought it up, this is from wikipedia on Zionism. Please note the references to religion throughout.

Zionism does not have a uniform ideology, but has evolved in a dialogue among a plethora of ideologies: General Zionism, Religious Zionism, Labor Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, Green Zionism, etc. However, the common denominator among all Zionists is the claim to Eretz Israel as the national homeland of the Jews and as the legitimate focus for the Jewish national self-determination (as shown, among others, by Gideon Shimoni).[2] It is based on historical ties and religious traditions linking the Jewish people to the Land of Israel.[3]

Its a superstition, sir. No different than a superstition that Zeus make lightning. If that offends you, get over yourself... you're no different in my mind than somebody who guts chickens and believes they can predict the future.

And calling my "beliefs" random chance just shows how silly you are.

But Draugnar, its not like you haven't literally gone off your meds before.

My username is my actual name. If you want to come have a physical discussion, put your money where your mouth is. Otherwise, stop making stupid threats... it makes you look like a tool.

He doesn't, but he will get a more precise response of the foundation behind the practice if he does. And I believe he actually has consulted soem Christian Ministers as I believe there is at least one on here who has responded to him (and I don't mean Father Snitch :-) ).

Everyone knows Hanukkah was only made into a big deal as a way to cope with the monstrosity of Christmas in America. If not for Christmas nobody would give much of a damn about it. I doubt it has much secular significance, although I'd like to hear Baskineli or the other Israelis to speak to that if he feels like it.

Hmmm. Takes a tool to know a tool, Jack-ass-Klein.

Well, good to know you've just conceded that its pointless to try to have a discussion with you.

I wish I was shocked.