Colster, I recognize your aversion to religion, and especially Christianity, but I don't criticize you harshly as you've done twice to me now. Perhaps you could allow as much tolerance for me as I do for you. We're allowed to have differing views here. That's what makes a forum interesting. May I suggest that you and others may freely present your secular world view perspectives here as I present my Biblical world view perspectives - with each showing mutual respect for the other?
Ewomack, you've done a better job at rationally challenging my views, thank-you. I would enjoy defending them but two things stop me. First, we're allowed to express religious views here but we're not allowed to argue. I'm afraid that answering your questions adequately would eventually cross a line that someone would object to. Second, I've learned that arguing about evidence with someone holding a strong secular world view serves no purpose. We can see the same evidence but our differing world views will cause us to interpret the conclusions differently. I've no desire to argue with anyone holding strong opposing views, be it politics or religion, but to you or anyone with an open heart, seeking God and receptive to apologetic evidence supporting Christianity and the Bible, feel free to personally message me.
Now, for anyone else following this thread, Lady Grey has posed a profound question with religious implications. The true atheist cannot believe that the universe has a soul because atheism's foundation relies upon materialism or naturalism - thus rejecting any spirit or supernatural force. So their simple answer should be no - the universe is not sympathetic to our wishes. The theist believes in the supernatural but may have various views on how and where that entity fits into or outside of the universe.
The Biblical view of the universe is best imagined as a sealed, empty box. The scientific Law of Causality and First and Second Laws of Thermodynamics dictate that the space, time, energy, and matter now in this box had to be created by something outside of the box - something supernatural, not subject to the box's physical scientific laws. In the same way, something supernatural outside of the box is required to have established the scientific laws we now observe inside the box. Thus, a supernatural Creator outside of the natural universe is consistent with science - and the Bible. Anyone accepting this premise should then appreciate my previous answer to Lady Grey's question. Wishing on a star might be a fun thing to do on a date or make for a nice song, but praying to the God who made it is bound to be more effective.
I'll avoid any further controversy and say no more on the subject - here in this post.
I do appreciate your response and your subdued tone. And yes, I've had many conversations as you describe and they all tend to lead to nothing. For some reason I still enjoy them, though no one ever leaves the table with their minds changed. I think the reason for the deadlock is that when it comes to such fundamentals no one really has a clue, but we all have our wishes and desires to fulfill. I would love to be able to believe in a loving God who imposes a moral structure on the universe and somehow it all "makes sense," but it all seems like too much of a human construction to me and it's just too rife with inconsistencies and unanswered questions for me to get on board. But don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I
know there is no supernatural being in the universe, I just suspect that there isn't one. And if there is one, I highly suspect that it would not resemble the Biblical God. But ultimately, you can't use arguments to prove or disprove such a thing. So I ultimately think that no one actually knows anything about the supernatural, because how could we? This is all in the realm of belief. And that's fine as long as belief stays in the realm of belief.
On physics and science, if you restate your position that modern science is "consistent" with religion, I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it. Your previous statement was much stronger and, in my opinion, misleading. Quantum mechanics theorizes creation from nothing, an idea that even has me scratching my head, but the most recent theories, such as Hawking's M-theory, don't need anything supernatural to start a universe. Whether there is or is not a supernatural being that put this into motion is something that science can't substantiate, prove or even account for, so that was the source of my previous protest. There is no test for God. There are no tests for the supernatural. You can, of course, say that a supernatural being put it all into motion, but that doesn't really mean at a lot at this point, but it also doesn't imply that modern physics and science dictate one, or even make one necessary. There is no basis for that claim at this time.
Science and modern physics do not dictate the existence of God or the supernatural. Again, that doesn't mean that there isn't some kind of higher power. I'm not arguing that. No one really knows if there is or isn't one in the end. Maybe that will change over time, maybe not. And I'm not going to argue that I
know there is not a God or some equivalent, because I don't, but I also don't think that anyone else knows or doesn't know either. But we're all free to believe, of course.
What I want to believe in more than anything is that people with greatly opposed views can still act towards each other civilly and with respect. You do this pretty well and I do really respect that, person to person. Though people hold views different to my own, I still consider them valuable as human beings. We're all in this big muddled miasma together, after all.
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