Notice how, in the Christian worldview, circular reasoning can be employed to defend the authority of the bible, but this doesn't work for other religious traditions and their sacred texts. The fallacy is conveniently relabeled as "faith" and becomes a virtue. Despite protestations to the contrary, that is an astute observation.
You guys are funny. I merely copy and paste a verse in the bible and y'all are discussing circular reasoning, biblical reliability, and how angry or annoyed I must be. Who's protesting too much?
There are a couple of other isues that can be talked about in my mind in light of this article. It is interesting to be sure. 1) Maybe the reason we seem so hard wired to believe in some type of God/god is because there really is a God, and our existence is pointing to the reality of that even if science can not prove nor disprove God. 2) The biggest issue to me today in religion is not IF there is a God, but which God/god do you believe in. We hvae people saying Jews/Christians/Muslims all believe in the same God. False. There are massive theological differences about who these groups say God is; about their God's character.
We're afraid to die and we don't relish the idea that when we die it's all over, that we're just another animal species that comes and goes and is ultimately annihilated in a disinterested universe. It offends our anthropocentric vanity to think that we're not special, that the 13 billion or so years of our planet's history wasn't specifically directed toward this one poorly-evolved primate that is at once brilliant enough to mathematically describe the laws of the universe and yet stupid enough to still be waging wars over dusty old books and superstitions. We want to live forever, so we create stories about a supernatural entity that makes this not only possible but actually better than the current gig: eternal party time, y'all, and everybody's invited, except of course a few billion of those poor fucks who don't read the same holy book or recognize the same deity as me. Suck it, Allah! Take that, Krishna! Desire for eternal life requires a god theory to mitigate the fear of what all evidence suggests is a simple fact of human existence: we live a while, we die, game over.
Coel, people could say God is coy because He does not bodily or audibly reveal Himself frequently. However, the point I want to make is that when you read Genesis you see that God in fact did show up frequently until Adam sinned. Then gradually you see God fully manifested to men less and less frequently due to the sin of the world. So the answer is sin keeps God away... for now. He is coming and He will be here in a physical way. There will be no coyness, but until then.
Monahorns already told you why god could accurately be portrayed as being coy: "Coel, people could say God is coy because He does not bodily or audibly reveal Himself frequently. " Being "coy" could be described as being shy. god could accurately be described as being shy in the sense that he does not bodily or audibly reveal himself frequently. Seems fairly simple to me. Now whether or not that meets your own personal benchmark of coyness is irrelevant. You asked what someone meant by god being coy and you were given an answer that seems to fit the definition.
I think we might make some headway if we left behind the passive tense and stopped worrying about what "could be considered" by some obscure "someone". Let's worry instead about what we actually think, or know, or believe to be true. Do you think that God, according to the Christian world view, is shy? And if so, why?
It is my understanding that Jews, Christians and Muslims DO believe in the same one universal God. What they disagree about is how He has manifested Himself on Earth and to whom He has given communication with man. Jews believe He has not yet sent His messiah. Christians believe He sent His son Jesus to communicate with us. Muslims believe that Ismael was the true first born of Abraham, instead of Issaac, and that God communicated through him. They still all believe in one true God. Now, as far as the study, I read a very badly written piece of fiction once that happened to have in it what I thought was a wonderful look at faith. A scientist was having trouble believing in the miaculous nature of Christ. He ended up deciding that he would conduct an experiment. He would live as Christ had directed, loving others and trying not to do anything that would seperate him from a relationship with God (trying not to sin) in an effort to test whether the experiment would fail and prove the hypothesis that God exists and loves us false. What this fictional character found was that if he lived as if God existed, his life was positive enough that it didn't prove God didn't exist. That sounds a little like what this study found. So, try it. Live as if God exists and loves us, no matter who you believe His eathly spokespersons to be, and see if your life proves He doesn't exist. I dare you.
I just have to say that while Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all the main monotheistic religions their explanation of God is much much different. The Christian God and Judaisms God are very similar but different in some basic and key ways. The difference between the Judeo-Christian God and Allah is much much greater in their character, nature, will, and commands.
