Thought Map

i guess i've been working this thought map up for awhile but waking up this morning it all came together at once like an electric circuit linking together.

[why do i reference an electric circuit instead of a light bulb and switch like everyone else? whatev.]

so. my point.

many nonbelievers tend to hold the notion that God can not exist because nothing exists that are absolutely intangible to us. we could argue the wind, or atoms, but they say that you can feel the wind. and scientists have proven atoms. yeah, well scientists have "proven" the big bang theory but we still don't know where those molecules that caused it came from...
they also discredit the Bible based on its extensive use of miracles to prove God's existence. they say that if God existed...or if he still existed, there would be miracles today. its so easy to see miracles in today's world, we just call them coincidence or irony.

i guess it comes down to this.

C.D. Broad, a philosopher in the early part of the 20th century, wrote an essay in 1939 called "Arguments for the Existence of God." In his essay, Broad recognizes that the people we stand in awe of, arguing about the nonexistence of God, are the people who have never seen God's power. This is like listening to someone who grew up in the city, who has never seen a cow, say that cows do not exist. AND BELIEVING HIM. Broad relates it to music very well.

"If a man who had no ear for music were to give himself airs on that account, and were to talk de haut en bas about those who can appreciate music and think it highly important, we should regard him, not as an advanced thinker, but as a self-satisfied Philistine."

How can you immediately discredit someone who has countless religious experiences while citing someone who has never felt the presence of God in his life? He also tells us that just because someone has had many experiences with God does not mean that man isn't crazy. There are some cuckoos out there that claim God told them to do pretty rash things. Like blow up a building. But then again...we have the story of Abraham. Separating fact from fiction is NOT an easy task. But Broad argues that we can think of this information in one of three ways.

We can accept what we hear about God like we accept what trained biologists tell us. Sure, they can tell us about atoms and electrons and photons and dark matter. But we can't see that. We can't prove that with our own eyes. They can't even see it. They can "prove" it based on equations and experiments, but when it all boils down, it's still just a theory. Yet we still learn about it in school.

Or, we can think of the information about God the way we think about drug users' hallucinations. They all seem to have similar hallucinations so they may be real, just a perception of things we, as sober individuals, haven't the open mind to see, right? Well the difference is that there is no physical evidence to suggest that spiders and rats are crawling all over someone.

The third way, is an imaginary scenario. I related this to the story in "The Giver" by Lois Lowry, if you've ever read that. Great book. Anyway, imagine a race of sightless beings. Not one member of this race has the ability of sight. Now imagine that suddenly, select individuals gain the ability to see. Kinda like the new movie, Blindness, but backwards. These new superior beings can tell the average being about things they might feel. They can describe to them the shape and height, the location or direction, and the average being will be able to believe them. Eventually, they will run into the object the Sight-Being described and will be able to take his words for fact. How then, will the Sight-Being be able to describe COLOR to the Blind-Being? It is impossible. No matter what words they attempt to use, the Sight-Beings will never be able to describe color, an intangible property, to beings who have never experienced such a thing. Until the Blind-Beings also gain sight, they will have to take the Sight-Beings descriptions of hue and saturation and tone and darkness as opposed to lightness as fact based on FAITH.

I could continue into countless realizations that hold as much concrete evidence for the existence of God but I don't want to bore you. I'll save those for another discussion. Besides, I've already explained that this blog is mainly meant to get the things in my head out. This is just a thought map. Is that already a thing? I hope I made it up.

P.S. I guess there's this new movie coming out, "Religulous," that sounds like its going to anger me to no end. I'll still probably see it...probably not in theatres...I just don't like seeing things that think they are so quick-witted to easily discredit things like religion when I can't immediately point out to them the fallacies in their arguments that their interviewees so conveniently couldn't answer. Ugh.