No, not naturalistic. People had a huge hand in it. And odds were involved.
The people kept a positive outlook thanks to their beliefs. That had quite a bit to do with it And people were able to use their intelligently designed ability to solve the problem.
No, good timing.
The supernatural was called upon by virtually all parties involved at the scene. It is a trivialization of their faith and a form of metaphysical and cultural arrogance to simply dismiss that, from where I sit. Hereâs a behind the scenes look from an Australian angle.
Yes, that is part of their faith. It served to give them hope. The supernatural was not required.
Athletes credit God for Home Runs, timely hits, touchdowns, great catches, goals, etc. Doesnât make it so.
So, this got interestingâŚ
So you donât think God was involved because a ânaturalistic + human intelligence + randomnessâ story can be constructed? Wow.
Now I understand. @JoeG you are one of those deists that the ID movement keeps warning me about. That explains why you like Newton, he was a deist too. You believe God created everything, and then basically stepped away. As long as you can imagine some story to explains things, you are certain God was not there.
I suppose many of the rest of us here are more orthodox Christians. We think that God can be acting in the world, even when it seems like it is just random chance. In fact, I believe that God providentially governs all things, including the random chance in this story. So tell us more about your religious background @JoeG. It is not often here we come across a deist Christian like Newton. Tell us more.
Calumny! Actually Newton was an Arian (which isnât any better, really), but clearly a theist, as his dispute with the Deist Leibniz about direct divine intervention in planetaruy motion proves.
Joe might be more secular than that, from his remarks here and at UD.
Is that true @JoeG?
Wow, indeed. I do not see any reason to invoke God when it is not required. It isnât that I can imagine some story explains things. It is that an Intelligent Designer was not necessary to solve the problem beyond giving us the ability to do so.
I am not a Christian. Jesus is not God. If Jesus is God then there wasnât any sacrifice at his crucifixion.
You are free to believe God is acting even when it seems like randomness. Me, I am more of an evidence person.
What evidence do you have that Jesus is not divine? Have you ever examined the voluminous evidence available for the resurrection?
There isnât any evidence that Jesus was/is divine. The Trinity is contrived and being resurrected doesnât make Jesus God.
What is Christadelphian?
???- FYI, Newton was a Unitarian
But what are you?
I am human. I do not belong to any religion. I was brought up Catholic and went to Catholic schools for a few years but I grew out of it. To me there isnât any one religion that has it right
And you are an ardent IDist that lives on the UnCommon Descent forums. Interesting. Tell us more.
Why do you believe there is a God? Are you a deist or theist? What are committed to ID? Is it the anti-establishment ethos or something more?
As the name suggests, they consider all Christians to be âbrothersâ. They are indeed unitarians.
Hereâs their doctrinal statement:
I donât live at UD, but yes ID is the best explanation for our existence. And ID is not anti-evolution. Being intelligently designed to evolve and evolving by means of intelligent design is still evolution.
I say the evidence points to a higher intelligence. Be that God or some other intentional agency. Just the fact of the Earth is evidence enough- its rotational speed; its just-so climate; the large Moon to stabilize its rotation and provide us with information gathering eclipses- add us an the evidence is overwhelming.
If the âestablishmentâ had the science and a method to test their claims that would be something. But I am not holding my breath
I think Dr Joshua was playing âJeopardyâ with me. He was guessing that I may be a Christadelphian.
OK, so the reason I go with and site Newtonâs four rules is because they allow us to investigate telic processes without falling into some black hole of the supernatural. Telic vs non-telic; natural vs artificial- we use our knowledge of cause and effect relationships to help us with the inference. If the design inference is warranted we still search for possible non-telic processes until that itch is scratched.