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RE: I will bite
In all seriousness, it is easy to defend religious faith. Faith is a belief in things to come, what has yet to proven. Scientists use it all the time when they form hypotheses. They experiment to see if they were right (a luxury which we don’t get with religious faith).
Scientists base their hypotheses on observation of the world. Theists do not and moreover most theists I encounter would not agree their belief in a deity was hypothetical. Religious faith does not appear to admit of tentative hypotheses.
I find it telling, for instance, that the miraculous is commonplace in holy texts, but not in the world outside of them. Miracles would be literal proof of the divine. Why is it that miraculous events that are in the various scriptures publicly verifiable events non-existent in this modern age of widespread and almost constant public scrutiny? Why is it that the devolution of miracles from glowing figures in the sky and talking shrubbery to burn marks on tacos varies in direct proportion with the ability to publicly verify said events?
Right now I believe that Jacksonville will win the Superbowl this year. I have no solid evidence to prove it, but that is what I have gathered by what I have personally felt and experienced while watching them.
In other words, you speculate based on prior experience. Your context of knowledge is limited so your guess is highly speculative; that context of knowledge can grow however.
Likewise, I believe a God rules this universe, as living in it has convinced me of it. It is not a scientific argument- it doesn't have to be.
You are making a scientific argument. However, unlike your football predictions, I don't believe you have any valid evidence that leads you to that particular guess. And if you derive any ethical conclusions from your belief in a deity, you really should have some solid grounding for that belief.
What leads you to the belief that:
There is at least one god.
There is only 1 god.
Only 1 god rules the universe.
I am going to *guess* that you have a much more pertinent set of experiences leading you to your conclusions about Jacksonville than any of the 3 premises above, if you hold any of them to be true or even to be good guesses about the case.
This is my hypothesis of what sits outside of the realm of physics (if God created matter, he created time and relativity, and thus sits outside of it all). Thus, there is only one way to test the hypothesis - with the final question every human gets to ask.
Why do you need a deity who creates matter? If the deity can eternally exist, why not matter? If existence implies creation, does your deity not exist or was it created? My point is that you appear to hold a number of hidden premises that you have not explicated here that I am guessing are probably internally contradictory. I base that guess upon your claims and my prior experience of the explications of other people who have claimed similarly.
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RE: I will bite
And here I thought my presentation was so complete that no dispute was possible.
This is called the Bill O'Riely complex.
In all seriousness, it is easy to defend religious faith. Faith is a belief in things to come, what has yet to proven. Scientists use it all the time when they form hypotheses. They experiment to see if they were right (a luxury which we don’t get with religious faith).
Right now I believe that Jacksonville will win the Superbowl this year. I have no solid evidence to prove it, but that is what I have gathered by what I have personally felt and experienced while watching them.
Likewise, I believe a God rules this universe, as living in it has convinced me of it. It is not a scientific argument- it doesn't have to be. This is my hypothesis of what sits outside of the realm of physics (if God created matter, he created time and relativity, and thus sits outside of it all). Thus, there is only one way to test the hypothesis - with the final question every human gets to ask.
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