A Concordist Rossian View

Spesking of magic and probability, this was ironic…

Last year around the time of the total eclipse of the sun, I read where one secular astronomer called the fact that the disc of the moon in the sky matches the disc of the sun “magic”.

The universe was designed to be discovered – from here, with our special moon. Huge amounts of knowledge about how stars work has been discovered – and more is still being discovered – during total solar eclipses. And that is not to mention all of the other details about why so much of the cosmos is visable, unobstructed, from here.

What you say is fortunate timing really isn’t. All natural processes including cancer have their own time constants. Your actions (including prayer) do not alter these time constants. For your friend with kidney cancer, it started long before detection. Medial science ability to detect earlier helps to save lives. Your praying does nothing. The best that you can do for someone is to encourage them to get checked regularly and to curtail behaviors that are known to lead to cancer. But in reality, if you live long enough you will get cancer. Hopefully detected early so that it can be treated. Being alive in 2019 is the best time to be alive. I wish you and your family a healthy and happy 2019.

Here is a sweet example, one among a boatload, of God’s sovereign, immanent, personal and interventionist activity into my life:

docs.google.com/file/d/0B5k4bRhd7XlpanNKTmJDQXhuUkU/edit?filetype=msword

Certainly for me!

And I you and yours, as well!

Here’s one – actually at least two, counting the Sunday School lesson – that was just fun. :slightly_smiling_face: My Co-instants Log entry for the date shown:

11/17/13 On my way east to Wood River for church this morning, as I was coming up to Cabela’s on Highway 30, there was a very large wooden outbuilding being moved. It was wider than both of the two eastbound lanes, blocking them and the shoulder, and really crawling. I’m guessing it could not have been moving more than 1 or 2 miles an hour, 3 max. (And I am never early!)

But as the Lord of time and space would have it, the timing and spacing was such that, as I came up on it, after having to wait momentarily for someone ahead of me to turn into Cabela’s west entrance, I turned into the west entrance as well – then, driving east through their front parking lot, I exited out the east entrance, passing the building that was obstructing the highway as it was slowly moving along. I came out behind the county patrol car that was leading the slow-moving parade, but in front of the building being moved. Passing the patrol car, I went merrily on my way.

There were, of course, alternate, longer routes by several miles on county roads by turning around and turning back, but it was cool the way it happened.

The Sunday School lesson (David C Cook Adult Student Book Comprehensive Bible Study September-November 2013 Vol. 130, No.1) for that morning(!) was on Moses and Israelites crossing the Red Sea. One statement was “The God of the Bible is not an abstract deity. He does not stand aloof from our lives uninvolved in them.” One of the questions (9.) was, “When has God been there to help you even before you knew he was there?”(!!)

The actual location:

(Not the actual building involved, but just one from online to give the approximate size for perspective, and for those who may not know about buildings being moved…):

That little voice in your head that talks to you and analyses everything in your world is just your brain thinking.

You equate the moving of a modern house using a massive piece of equipment with a 3000 year old ancient fairy tale about Moses and Isrealites crossing the Red Sea. Wow!

Hug? Never? I never had a deity in my life. I did have an imaginary friend when I was a child - a blonde hair little girl named Susan, but she wasn’t real and I stop looking for her and talking to her at about age 6.

Your confirmation bias and fallacies of incredulity are speaking loudly. :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes

And in case you think all this is entirely irrational, there is actually biblical support for why this is happening to me. (Yeah, I know, many of you think the Bible is entirely irrational – but that would be your confirmation biases and fallacies of incredulity speaking.)

Check out John 14:21: “…and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”* I maintain that the way he primarily manifests himself to me is as Sovereign Lord over time and space, time and place, and, again, as Lord of timing and spacing and timing and placing.

Another factor is delight. I delight in him and he delights in me and my delighting in him. (Hmm. That sounds like a good Father-child relationship.) Not that I’m perfect, as I have already more than adequately demonstrated in my less than gracious remarks elsewhere and my returning insult for insult. And he does not condone that behavior.

*http://biblehub.com/john/14-21.htm

1 Like

But about delight, there is scriptural support for its bidirectionally. Check out the references in the Psalms: Bible Search: delight

And here, again especially in the Psalms: Bible Search: delights

And I even have a reason why I think I am privileged to have so many co-instants given to me (besides the fact of mutual delighting where I think my heavenly Father tosses them to his child and in effect says, “Here, catch! :slightly_smiling_face:”), and that reason should not be too surprising, given that I have already cited John 14:21. Again, I submit my unnecessary disclaimer about my obedience, since it has obviously been imperfect in this forum, not to mention plenty of elsewheres.

It has to do with another issue within Christianity besides the antiquity of the universe, and that would be the adherence to a particular one of the Ten Commandments, namely, the commandment to rest.

In a not entirely scholarly essay, that obedience and reward is developed some (you might want to read the little epilogue first, on page 5):

The Lord’s Day of Rest
https://docs.google.com/file/d/1fh1BzHWZyUISpc0mJCcXaIxIpzILlAm_/edit?usp=docslist_api&filetype=msword

I’m missing your ‘hug’ reference (in comment #87).

And I really would like to know how you would calculate the probabilities for the double sets of nested and concatenated co-instants in Timely RVs. (That’s ‘concatenineded’ for you, @Dan_Eastwood. :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes: And since you’re a statistician, give us your input, too. :slightly_smiling_face:). Can you factor in the particular person aspect?:

I don’t want to derail this thread, so I’ll just say that I have some logic problems with that paragraph. My hunch is that @Patrick does also.

You might want to make this post its own thread topic—if that is of interest to you.

I like some of Matt Slick’s writings but he gets himself into deep doodoo at times when he pontificates on science and philosophy topics for which he has insufficient training. This “Naturalism is self-refuting.” article is a good example. I’ll just mention a few problems:

"Naturalism is the position that nature is all there is, and there is no supernatural realm. It says that all of human experience can be described and understood through natural laws, science, and human reason. It asserts that biological evolution is true and that there are no supernatural realities."1

I wondered how his footnoted source could be so amateurish and flawed—but then I quickly discovered that he is citing the CARM dictionary of terms, which Slick himself wrote!

Among other problems: No, naturalism does NOT assert that “biological evolution is true.” The methodological naturalism of science (or whatever alternative term someone may prefer for that) provides compelling evidence and analysis which leads us to assert that the Theory of Evolution is currently the best explanation for changes in allele frequencies in populations over time. Moreover, one doesn’t have to be a strict materialist to affirm that biological evolution theory is valid science and has valuable explanatory powers. (It sounds like Slick couldn’t resist adding an anti-evolution jab to his amateur definition of naturalism.)

It asserts that biological evolution is true and that there are no supernatural realities.

That sentence also implies a false linkage: that biological evolution and “no supernatural realities” are somehow bound together.

I’ll cut my tangent short and not try to catalog all of the logic fallacies of the CARM article but I wonder if Slick has ever run it by a Christian philosophy professor at one of the leading evangelical graduate schools.

Nevertheless, I do appreciate that Dale brought that CARM article to my attention.


POSTSCRIPT: @DaleCutler , your “Timely RV” essay misrepresents the differences between Endura™ and Restasis™. The latter is not simply a high-priced substitution. Endura is a traditional OTC lubricating eye drop, little different from countless other brands. Restasis is a prescription medication which uses Cyclosporine to encourage the body to produce more tears. (Yes, Cyclosporine sounds familiar because that is the very expensive drug which is used to prevent organ rejection in transplant patients.) To claim that Endura and Restasis are at all comparable is factually incorrect. Ask your pharmacist if this is unclear.

3 Likes

Why thank you. :sunglasses:

1 Like

About the same probability of meeting two people on the street named Bill. I guess it would be in what part of the country you live in. Around here most people don’t have RV (and don’t name them) But many have boats.
For a while naming your boat - Stugots was very popular.

You’re welcome. :slightly_smiling_face: Just a statement of fact, as is your missing the ‘Y’ in your citation. I’m sure it was accidental because if had been intentional, you would surely have editorialized ‘bias’ as ‘bias[es]’. :slightly_smiling_face:

As much as I am willing to say that God can and does bring about important events in our lives, I must concur with what Patrick is saying here when comparing the “timely RV” to “meeting two people on the street named Bill.” Both sound like examples of what logic textbooks call “The Birthday Paradox.” (Rather than explain it from scratch, I’ll leave it to readers to look up that famous paradox on any of the hundreds of logic websites which deal with such terms.)

Also, I found the loooooong strrrrrrrrrrrretch from “timely RV” to the scripture passages mentioned in the final paragraph of that essay to be beyond a Bible hermeneutic which I would support.

2 Likes

You’re thinking of the wrong probabilities. What’s the chance that you will see or experience something, some time in your life, that you will think is remarkable? That chance is probably greater for you since you are primed to notice such things. If you think of all the myriad things that could fit that description, the overwhelmng majority of which will not happen, the probability is high that you will see many of them. Are you acquainted with the Texas sharpshooter fallacy? That’s how your intuitive probability calculations are working.

Yes, you are indulging in magical thinking, and I can’t suppose it’s healthy. It certainly makes you sound crazy on a forum like this. Please don’t share any more co-instants.

I think you have truncated your evaluation considerably, gratuitously ignoring that there were two complete sets of parallel factors, and in sequence, not just two names or just two birthdays.

And what is it with critical atheists and their affinity for evil Italians? :slightly_smiling_face:

Anyone that believes that a man rose from the dead sounds crazy to everyone else that believes that ‘nature’ is all there is. There have been more than a few of us over a couple of millenia, and there will be more… and even crazy enough to be willing to die rather than deny the truth of their Father and Elder Brother, the Lord of all Creation.

As were Patrick’s, your incredulity fallacy and confirmation bias are both shouting loud and clear.