Faith-killing questions from the trenches, and answers
Top 10 Reasons to Not Be a Christian
Q & A Session Audio
- “There is no scientific evidence whatsoever of any miracles ever actually occurring.”
- “The Jesus story just is an accumulation of myths of legendary people, all rolled into one über nice guy.”
- “Science and faith are incompatible ways of thinking. Separate realms that should be kept separate.”
- “The history of science is the story of one religious superstition after another being eradicated by reason and logic.”
- “The Bible is a translation of a translation of tales cobbled together by Constantine in 300AD.”
- “St. Paul invented Christianity by making a nice rabbi named Jesus into a god.”
- “Evolution disproves God.”
- “In their arrogant superiority, Christians think everybody else is going to burn in hell for all eternity.”
- “The Bible is riddled with contradictions and therefore cannot be the perfect word of God.”
- “More people have been killed in the name of religion than any other cause in the history of the world.”
This story starts with my brother Bryan, a tough-questions seminary student. He got a Masters degree in theology at a very conservative seminary where they work them real good, and he toed the line and he learned all the stuff that he’s supposed to learn, and he moved to China.
He’s in China for a couple of years and he basically turned into an agnostic and came within spitting distance of becoming an atheist, which really shook me up.
Bryan is a very smart guy, and one of the questions that he asked was this.
He goes, “Okay, Perry, I’ve been to seminary. I know Greek, I know Hebrew, I know Aramaic, and when I read the New Testament I do not see any reason whatsoever from the text why we should not have miracles today. So where are they?
1. “There is no scientific evidence whatsoever of any miracles ever actually occurring.”
And I’m like, “Uh…let me ask my sales manager and get back to you.” I hate it when people ask ‘elephant in the room’ questions.
Now, if you’ve been in any strand of Christianity for any length of time, you will encounter miracle stories. For example, “We prayed for my sister Debbie and she had cancer, and all of a sudden she didn’t have cancer anymore.”
Every now and then, I don’t care where you are in Christianity, you will hear those. I’ve heard a few of them, but I was in very short supply of such stories and I hadn’t thought about it much. I had always been taught that those miracles went away and they either don’t exist anymore, or at least never happen “on command.”
And Bryan’s cutting to the chase; he’s like, “Well, I don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t.” And I knew he was right. So what’s the deal? Let’s start in on this.
I went looking and I’ll teII you that one interesting book that I found along the way was by Richard Casdorph, who is a medical doctor. He wrote a book in the 1970s called Real Miracles. This is an older version of the book. It’s called, The Miracles – A Medical Doctor Says Yes to Miracles.
What this guy did was there was this lady back in the 1970s named Catherine Kuhlman and she would do these healing services. He followed her around and he documented what happened to these people. He documented the “before” and the “after” and he did so with X-rays, medical reports, letters from doctors, all of that kind of stuff. This book is 10 case studies. I’ll tell you what some of the chapter names are:
- Malignant Brain Tumor
- Multiple Sclerosis
- Atherosclerotic Heart Disease
- Carcinoma of the Kidney
- Mixed Rheumatoid Arthritis and Osteoarthritis
And he goes through, one by one, with X-rays, doctor’s reports and everything and says, “This guy had this before and it’s gone now. Here’s the X-ray, here’s the letter from the doctor, and there it is.” This is not by any means the only such book, but they exist.
Another example of this is God and The Sun at Fatima. Catholics will know what Fatima is (probably most Protestants won’t) but I think back somewhere around 1913, just before World War I, some children were playing and they had a vision of the Virgin Mary. She said that something really amazing is going to happen here at this certain date and they told everybody. Everybody showed up and they all saw it.
This book is by Stanley Jaki, who is a physicist and a Catholic priest and a science historian. He goes into 360 pages of interviewing people and documenting all this. This is as close as you can get to a scientific investigation of a miracle.
Another book that I ran across that I found real interesting that isn’t really about miracles but is about the metaphysical world is called Margins of Reality, by Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne.
They worked at the Princeton University Engineering Anomalies Research Lab. The lab was closed in 2007, but for almost 30 years there was a lab at Princeton and they would investigate paranormal phenomena. And they proved to five 9’s of statistical confidence (that’s almost six Sigma) that people could deflect falling objects by concentrating. They proved that they could send and receive telepathic messages.
Now, most of the scientific community does not know what to do with this stuff. It freaks them out, but it’s there. This is a fascinating book. So I started investigating this, and I also started looking for personal experiences.
A couple of years ago I was in India with my friend, Jeremy. He has spent a lot of time doing healing and practicing Biblical healing. We were at a little church service and Jeremy goes up to the pastor and says, “Tell these people that if they want healing prayer at the end of the service, I’ll pray for them.” So the pastor tells all the people and everyone was like, “Well, okay, I’ll go over there!”
Jeremy was like, “Perry, Perry, come over here and help me!” I’d never done this before. There was a woman whose whole left arm was paralyzed. She had had brain surgery a year and a half before. She had an indentation in her head from the surgery. She had been having seizures ever since the surgery and she had no feeling in her left arm. She wanted us to pray for her.
So Jeremy’s like, “Okay, Perry, start praising God, start praying for this lady!”
I’m like, “Okay, me Robin, you Batman, I’ll do whatever you tell me to do,” and we started praying. He would poke her on the hand – “Can you feel that?”
“No, can’t feel that.”
He’d pray some more and ask, “Can you feel that?”
“I’m starting to feel something!” So he would pray some more and at the end of 20 minutes, all the feeling was back in her left arm. She was so excited, she didn’t know what to do with herself.
A guy came in with a broken wrist, holding it like that; by the end, he was jumping up and down, he was so excited.
There was another lady who had a severe shoulder injury and she couldn’t move her shoulder past about here. I put my arm on her shoulder and I could feel this crunching going on in her shoulder and we prayed for her for about 30 minutes. The crunching was all gone and she was moving her shoulder and she was all excited.
Then I go home and I’m like, “I wonder if this actually stuck. I wonder if it did.” So I emailed this guy and I asked him, “How are these people doing, anyway?”
He said, “In the glorious name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Mr. Perry Marshall, I am so excited to tell you, they are telling everybody they can’t wait for you to come back!”
I said, “Wow, this is great!”
Now, I’ve got to cover 10 of these things in 50 minutes, which is kind of insane, so I don’t have time to go any more. The church that I attend, a Vineyard Church, we practice this.
I of all people know what it’s like to sit here and pray for someone and go, “I feel really stupid! What if this doesn’t work?” You know, sometimes there’s no obvious result, but sometimes there is. You know what? It’s less risky than going to the emergency room.
I have a few friends who actually go to the emergency room every Tuesday night and they pray for people, and trippy stuff happens sometimes. If you want to read some more of these stories, go here. You can read the whole India story in more detail.
This brings up another thing. You know a lot of the people talk about Christians living by faith. Well, I totally understand and agree with that, but I also think that as you mature as a Christian, you live more and more by experience. That faith leads to results which gives you experience, and there’s kind of an upwards spiral and it’s not just like, “Well, you know, life is miserable, but by and by in the sky, someday God’s going to make the world a better place.”
No, it can be now. I think the Kingdom of God is now. I think a lot of Christians kind of have this, “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach to the higher gifts, and I guess the question that I’d like to raise for people that want to take that approach is, well, if we took the New Testament and took all of the miracle stories out, what would we have left?
I think my brother was right. I don’t see any place in this book that says these miracles are supposed to stop. There’s a little challenge for you on that.
Note: For more information on documented healing events, see my extensive article on miracles which includes videos of live healings taking place, links to mainstream media coverage and recent reports in scientific journals. Read and watch here.
2. “The Jesus story is just an accumulation of myths of a legendary people, all rolled into one über-nice guy.
Let me expand on that a little bit. People say, “The God and the Jesus that Christians worship today are actually amalgams formed out of ancient pagan gods. The idea of a virgin birth, a burial in a rock tomb, a resurrection after three days, eating a body, drinking blood, had nothing to do with Jesus.
“All those things were already in other myths and legends before that, so they just took them all and they kind of rolled them into these Jesus stories. So Christianity is a snowball that rolled over a dozen pagan religions and as the snowball grew, it freely attached pagan rituals in order to be more palatable to converts.”
By the way, I got this verbatim from an email that a guy sent me, so I just went and fished one up, and there you go. This is a very common thing. Well, I would like to reduce this to a question, so let’s look at the logical question behind the question.
I think the question is this:
“If a myth precedes a fact, does that make the fact a myth? Does it logically follow?”
Well, let’s take 9/11 as an example. On 9/11/01, as we all know, two planes flew into the Twin Towers. The Last Jihad by Joel Rosenberg, on the first page puts readers into the cockpit of a hijacked jet, on a kamikaze mission into an American city, but it was written nine months before 9/11.
Does that make 9/11 a myth? Or how about Debt of Honor by Tom Clancy. 1996 – a Japanese 747 crashes into the Capitol, killing most of the top functionaries in the U.S. government.
Or here’s a good one – The Lone Gunman TV series. The pilot episode was about an attempt to crash an airliner into the World Trade Center. It was a government conspiracy to increase defense spending by making it look like a terrorist attack. It aired in March 2001.
So the next time someone tells you that Jesus was a myth, ask them this question: “Name one other resurrection story that stuck. Just one.” I don’t know of any. I think there’s a reason for that.
3. “Science and faith are incompatible ways of thinking. They are separate realms that should be kept separate.”
I’ll tell you a little story. Back in the early 20th century there was a great deal of optimism in the mathematical profession that we were closing in on a theory of everything. What mathematicians were looking for was a set of constructions that made all of the propositions of mathematics form a nice, tidy, complete circle.
Let me explain what I mean by this. How many of you took high school geometry and it was stuff like, “This triangle has three equal sides; therefore, it is an Equilateral triangle.” And then you do all these proofs and you work all this logic from it.
Well, if you take that high school geometry book, there are always four or five things that the book starts with as premises that everybody knows are true but no mathematician has ever been able to prove are true.
For example, “We know this is true, no one has ever been able to prove it. We know it’s true because it works and it’s all consistent, but we can’t prove it.” And they were like, “Someday we’re gonna prove it!”
Well, in 1931 a guy named Kurt Gödel proved that it would never happen. And actually, I think that Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem is just as important as Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Most people have never heard of it, but let me explain what his Incompleteness Theorem says.
This is the kindergarten version. It says, “Anything you can draw a circle around requires something on the outside to explain it, which you cannot prove.” This applies to everything. It applies to a bicycle; if you build a bicycle, the fact that it’s there relies on something outside of the bicycle.
It’s true of a geometry book, a software program, the English language, or the universe. Gödel’s Theorem was a crushing blow to mathematicians. It was as if they realized, “You mean, we’re never going to make everything flow into a perfect circle?” No. Can’t be done.
Actually, the universe is like an MC Escher painting where you climb up the steps and all of a sudden you’re at the bottom again. There’s a book called Gödel Escher Bach, which takes Gödel’s Theorem, Escher’s paintings, and Bach’s music and shows how they’re all basically the same.
For instance, in Bach’s music the notes escalate and they go up and up and somehow all of a sudden it starts with bass notes again and you didn’t even notice. What does this have to do with the question, “Science and faith are incompatible ways of thinking”?
Gödel’s Theorem says that you cannot do science without faith; it’s impossible. You start with a fact – “I know this because of this, and I know this because of this,” you always go back to some fact that you can’t prove.
Now, what does science do? Science says, “If I drop this cup from my hand onto the ground, it’s going to fall every time. Only past experience shows that to be true. I cannot prove that it’s going to fall again. I always have to rely on some assumption that I can’t prove in science.”
One little extra thing I want to throw in here; the statement that, “Science and faith are incompatible ways of thinking, separate ways of thinking that should be kept separate,” is that a scientific statement?
No, it’s a philosophical statement.
Even a statement about keeping science and philosophy separate requires philosophy. And the statement itself presumes that philosophy gets to say something about science.
That’s exactly what Gödel was talking about.
I’ve written a much more thorough treatment of Gödel’s Incompleteness theorem here: http://www.cosmicfingerprints.com/blog/incompleteness/
4. “The history of science is the story of one religious superstition after another being eradicated by reason and logic.”
I want you to think about something:
Where did science come from?
If you study the history of science, you’ll find out that it got started in Greece and didn’t go anywhere. It got started in Rome and it fizzled out and didn’t go anywhere. It got started in ancient Egypt and in China – didn’t really go anywhere there either. It got started in Islam, and every time in those places, it stalled.
Why did it succeed in Europe after failing everywhere else? We all know it launched there and took off like a rocket.
Here’s why I think it happened. In the Apocrypha, the part of the Bible that the Catholics read and the Protestants don’t, Wisdom of Solomon 11:21 says:
“Thou hast ordered all things in weight and number and measure.”
I submit to you that this verse is where science started. That all things are weigh-able, measurable and countable. That there’s a systematic explanation for what goes on in the universe. So far as I know, no one else in the ancient world made a more definite statement about science than Solomon did right here.
Western Christianity believed that the universe was governed by fixed, discoverable laws, and that’s what gave birth to science. The reason that science succeeded in the West and failed in all those other places was that in all those other places, there was no theological basis to believe this.
If you believe that it rained today because Zeus is in a snit with Apollo, how are you going to come up with a systematic explanation that doesn’t invoke some kind of arbitrary, whimsical source?
Christian theology believed that God could create the world and then on the seventh day that He could rest and the universe would continue to do what He told it to do. Therefore, the great scientists viewed the study of science as a way of studying the mind of God.
I would rewrite the question to say this: “The history of science is a story of faith in a harmonious universe being rewarded in weight, number, and measure.”
1,000 years ago you couldn’t take that for granted. Now we all take it for granted, because we figured it out.
5. “The Bible is a translation of a translation of tales cobbled together by Constantine in 300 AD.”
People make a lot out of this. Constantine got everybody together and they hammered out what they agreed was going to be the Bible. “You know, we just don’t buy these books, we’re going to keep them.” A lot of people have this idea that this is when the Bible that we have today came to exist.
I want to show you a book that will correct that notion. This is called Faith of the Early Fathers by Jurgens. I have to mention here that this is another Catholic book. I was raised Protestant. I was a preacher’s kid. We were uber-studious Protestants. We took ourselves real seriously. Some of you know what I’m talking about – “Oh, that kind…starchy!”
We thought that Catholics were bad people. You know, “Go tell them how bad they are!” Well, then I grew up and my brother-in-law, Alan, studies church history. He gets a Ph.D. in church history at Iowa State, not some conservative place.
He went to Iowa State because they had the biggest and best library he could find on church history.
It turned out that most of his professors were atheists. To get a dissertation pushed through these guys was a Herculean task. But he and I would talk about theological stuff, and it was kind of funny because every time I would raise some theological question, he would always say something like, “Well, yeah, the first people to probe that question in detail were the monks in Western Italy in 800 AD and what they said was…” and he’d go off on something.
Anything you could come up with, someone had already thought about it and written about 1,200 books on it. I thought Christianity started all over again with Martin Luther after this burned-out period…oh, come on! Heavens, no.
So this is a Catholic book. I have great respect for Catholics and Catholic theologians and all that. I know somebody will probably want to get in a fist fight about that with me at the end, but I’m telling you anyway.
This book is a collection of all of the earliest writings, and actually there’s three of them. I just brought the first one. It starts at about 80 AD and it’s letters from all these guys that ran churches. Letters from pastors to their congregations, and letters to disciples from their mentors, and it ends somewhere around St. Hilaire of Poitier and St. Cyril of Jerusalem. I don’t know what year this was, probably about 400-500 AD, and it starts at 80.
It goes in order, so you can read 80 AD and then you can read 110 AD and then you can read 125 AD and 300 AD and so forth. In every chapter there are footnotes of the Bible verses they’re quoting. It’s exactly the same.
Pastor Bill Hybels at Willow Creek could use this to preach a sermon out of any page in this book and it would be just fine. It would be scriptural and it would be original Christianity, no different than we have today. Most of these early letters sound an awful lot like the New Testament letters that Paul wrote.
Anyone that tells you that Christianity started in 300 AD is just as ridiculous as saying it started in 1517 when Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door.
6. “St. Paul invented Christianity by making a rabbi named Jesus into God. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were just later fabrications.”
Obviously, the book that I just talked to you about does speak to that, because you can go all the way back to 80 AD and you have a whole body of literature that’s already telling a consistent story.
What’s usually said is that Paul wrote his letters in 40-50 AD and the Gospels were written in 60 – 90 AD and that’s too long. All of these myths would have accrued, so yes, Jesus was probably just this radical guy and he had these radical teachings and then they wanted him to be God and so they made the story about Him being God, and the people were so desperate and oppressed by the Romans that they found it believable – well, let’s do a comparison.
Paul Tibbetts was the pilot of the Enola Gay, which was the plane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. He wrote a book in 1998, shortly before he died, called Return of the Enola Gay. How many years after 1945 is that? Fifty-three years after the bomb was dropped.
I found this book at my father-in-law’s house because he’s into World War II. You go over there and he always has The History Channel on. I started thumbing through this book, and the reason Tibbetts wrote the book was to correct revisionist history.
Revisionist history said, “If we had just been a little nicer to the Japanese, we should have just gone over there and talked to them, and they would’ve…”
Tibbetts is saying, “No! Let’s get this straight.” He goes into extensive detail about the political situation and all this stuff that was going on behind the scenes. He tells what it was like to get in that plane, what it was like to let the bomb loose and go into a 135 degree angle and feel the shock wave from the bomb and the brilliant flash of light and think, “Oh my word, what did I just do?” and all that.
Now, does anybody doubt that his autobiography tells you more or less accurately what happened? Is anybody going to reasonably doubt that he doesn’t remember what happened, 53 years later? I don’t think so!
So if Jesus died in 33, what’s 53 years out from 33 – isn’t that 86? That’s like getting to the outside limit of when they said the Gospels were written.
Is there any reason to think that the Gospels were any less reliable?
Considering there are four of them and considering they don’t all perfectly line up or quote everybody verbatim the same way, they don’t all tell stories the same way – four independent accounts – can anyone reasonably think that the Gospels are any less reliable than his story? I don’t think so.
And if you compare it to other things in history, a lot of those things were written even further after the fact than that. I would like to point to the consistency of early teachings about Jesus and raise the question: Why do substantially different teachings about Jesus only appear after 150-200 years? Isn’t that kind of what you would expect?
I rest my case.
7. “Evolution disproves God.”
That’s a good one. I like that one. I have a question for you. Who knows what that is? DOS – how many of you have used DOS somewhere in your early childhood? This is a screenshot of DOS 3.0, 3.3, which is about 1985. You all remember DOS:
C:> dir
C:> dir /w
C:> format c:
When you tried to format the hard drive, did it say “Are you sure?” I don’t remember. Early versions did.
Now here we have Windows XP with Internet Explorer, which is about 2005. Let me ask you a question: let’s say that DOS never got modified by the guys in Redmond, Washington and it evolved into Windows XP all by itself.
Imagine that DOS adapted, that it had a capability built in to where it would sense that it needed an Internet connection and it needed a web browser and it needed Outlook, and that it needed a mouse and updates and antivirus software. And let’s say that it would rearrange its code and then test different versions with some version of natural selection until the pieces started to work.
Did that happen? No. If DOS had actually evolved all by itself, off without any exterior tampering, tinkering or code writing from any software engineers, and it had just done that, would you be more or less impressed with the person who wrote the first DOS program?
You would go, “How did you do that?” You could go to China and for $2 you can buy a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of Windows. All those versions, especially the ones in China, they don’t have the little 3D thing on them. It’s grey and it has Magic Marker on it ‘Windows XP’.
Now, the copies of copies of copies of copies, they all had mutations, didn’t they? And the marketplace had a chance to select them. Does anyone know of copies of Windows that were better because of the mutations?
No.
Now, I just tried to apply the usual theory of evolution to DOS and everybody got a chuckle out of it. First of all, everything that evolves that we have any experience with, evolves because of some ability to do so or some kind of design or something acting upon it.
At the very least, if we’re going to even imagine that DOS could have evolved into Windows XP, we have to imagine that it has some kind of special program inside that’s ready and willing to rearrange all the pieces.
You know what? I am totally open to the possibility that God planted a cell in the ocean and that cell had some kind of magnificent program that could eventually evolve into everything that’s on Planet Earth. I am open to that.
And if that happened, then God is even more impressive than the version of God that says, “Well, OK, now we need apes, so let’s put an ape there, and now we need people, so let’s put a person there..”
I’m not trying to get into some debate about Genesis 1; this is simply an engineering argument. If evolution is true, then God is even more impressive than they thought God was before anyone thought of evolution!
8. “In their arrogant superiority, Christians think everybody else is going to burn in hell for all eternity.”
Let’s get the most riling questions out on the table. I want to point some scriptures out to you. Little things are kind of tucked in there that are easy to miss.
John 15:22 – Jesus says, “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin.” Hmm, that’s interesting.
Luke 11:30 – Jesus said, “The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon’s wisdom and now one greater than Solomon is here.”
Let’s look at this again. “The Queen of the South will rise at the judgment with the men of this generation and condemn them” – so what does this tell you about judgment? This isn’t like some cowering guy staring at God, getting pounded; this is anybody who has anything to say about what he knew, didn’t know, did and what he did not do, and what they did perhaps in a comparable situation.
Let’s look at this one. Matthew 11:21 – “Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! If the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”
Well? That’s a statement about two people, now, isn’t it? “Tyre and Sidon would have believed if they had Me.” Do you think that gets taken into consideration? I think so.
Acts 17:29 – Paul refers to idol worship and he says, “In the past, God overlooked such ignorance, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent.”
Now, this always comes up, somebody always says, “Well, what about the guy in Africa that never heard about Jesus?” They’re like, “I have to get this guy figured out before I decide if I’m going to go for this Jesus thing. I’m not sure if this is fair. I think this is all a setup. What about all these people?”
Here’s my concern: If you’re that guy, I’m not real worried about him. Not that the missionaries shouldn’t go talk to him and all that. In the Great Commission – “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature” – God told us to do that for a reason.
This is just my opinion, but I suspect that guy in Africa, he has no missionary, Bible, or anything, I think if he looks up in the sky and goes, “Somebody made all this, whoever You are, I’d like to know you,” I think God can respect that prayer.
What I’m concerned about is that guy will rise up in the judgment and testify against the guy who used him as an excuse. If you look at all of these verses, the theme is, “Hey, guys, you knew an awful lot. What did you do with it?”
“If Tyre and Sidon had seen what you have seen, they would have repented in sackcloth and ashes.” The people he was talking to saw a lot. They saw the dead raised, they saw the blind see.
9. “The Bible is riddled with contradictions and therefore cannot be the perfect word of God.”
I’m going to take an interesting approach with this. I brought with me three different versions of the Bible. I’ve got a King James New Testament, a New Living Translation Bible and a New American Standard. I could have brought an NIV, but all you guys probably have one, because that’s kind of the popular Bible translation.
Do they all read the same? No.
I had to sign this thing before I came that I understood that Willow Creek has a doctrinal statement. One of the things in the thing that I had to sign was that I understand that Willow Creek says that the scriptures are inerrant in their original writings. That’s a very common thing that you’ll find in the Protestant church, that scriptures are inerrant in their original writings.
Do we have the originals? No. What we have are thousands of Greek manuscripts and there are slight differences with some of them. You could make a whole little tree of this copying error and that. You could put it all together and we could open all three of these Bibles up to John 5 or Ezekiel 34 or Revelation 12 or any book and we could read them side by side.
And rather than getting 12 decimal places of precision, I think what we get is more like there’s an outer edge on one side or the other on how you can interpret something, and then there’s something sort of in the middle.
Maybe the King James seems to be here and maybe the NIV seems to be here, and maybe the Catholic Bible seems to be here. But they’re all kind of within this range of variation. So there’s some wiggle room, not like 12 decimals of precision, but more like maybe two.
No matter what Bible you read, did Jesus rise from the dead in all of them? Is adultery a sin in all of them? Is it not all right to lie, cheat, and steal in all of them? Is there a debate between predestination and free will in all of them? Yes.
I had this realization one day; “Hey, wait a minute! I don’t have to sit here and nitpick every last verse that some skeptic wants to pick a fight with me about and make me explain everything that doesn’t quite seem to fit together, because you know what? This is like a puzzle that you’re trying to put together and some of the edges are fuzzy and I can’t put it perfectly together. And that’s all right.”
I was emailing back and forth with an atheist and he’s quibbling about the different tomb stories of the Resurrection. I don’t think they contradict each other, but in order to make them fit, you have to make a couple of assumptions before they fit.
He’s trying to duke it out and I said, “I don’t feel like defending the idea that the Bible is infallible. I’ll just say for today that I have four stories that were pretty close! So what do you think?”
He didn’t know what to do.
I said, “Well, Jesus died on the cross, you are a sinner, God created the world, 12 disciples went out and preached. The story’s pretty clear. How many of these little nit picky things from the New Testament that you brought up because you found them on some website do you have to get all straight before you get the big picture here?”
Try this on for size; the Bible is the word of God with a lower case w. But if we’re going to use a capital W, what is the Word of God? Jesus! Jesus is the Word of God. The Bible is the written testimony, inspired by the Holy Spirit, testifying to the Word of God. There’s a verse that says, “No one can confess Jesus Christ is Lord apart from the Holy Spirit.”
Let’s not put the Bible above the Holy Spirit.
You realize if you want to sort out all those puzzle pieces, you need the Holy Spirit to help you do it. And a person who does not have the Holy Spirit is not even going to be willing to do that. That’s why they’re arguing with you.
So when I get in these debates, I say, “Let’s just assume that this is like any other piece of history. Someone wrote it down as best they could, and here we have it. Let’s make a judgment from what’s in front of us. So what do you think?”
Did they just make all this up? Like perhaps, Jesus didn’t really die; they pried him off the cross and he was almost dead and then he was in the tomb, and people in the Middle East had these clever ways of reviving almost dead people and then he popped out. He looked so good, he looked like Superman, and everybody said, “Wow! You’re the Son of God!” Yeah, that’s what happened! Sure, that’s what happened!
Guys that are pulled off crosses when they’re almost dead always inspire people three days later to like change the world! That’s what happened!
Sorry, I’m getting a little sidetracked… here’s a fun one:
10. “More people have been killed in the name of religion than any other cause in the history of the world.”
Let me show you a book, called The Black Book of Communism. How many of you think this is cheery? Oh, yeah, if you’re feeling a little too good today, just read this one. This book documents the genocide of 160 million people in the 20th century alone – mostly by atheist governments.
Remember the Cultural Revolution under Chairman Mao? Well, that was a great period in China’s history, wasn’t it? How about Stalin? Oh boy, Stalin loved children. Yep, that guy just loved puppy dogs and children. He was such a nice man. 160 million people! Do you realize that’s more people than all the religious wars of the whole history of the world put together?
Some people say, “Well, it was just a coincidence that they were atheists.” All right, well, you can believe whatever you want to believe, but there does seem to be a correlation. Let’s recognize the question behind the question.
First of all, I don’t think you can overstate just how dangerous a worldview atheism actually is. I’m sure there are atheists here, and I’m glad that you’re here and you’re welcome.
When my brother slid into his faith crisis, I wanted to argue with him and he wouldn’t; and I’m not sure that would have been the healthiest thing if we had argued. I think it was probably a good idea that he declined, but I was ready to go. In truth, he was dragging me with him. I was scared because he was raising all kinds of questions.
I started going to Willow Creek 15 years ago and I started leading Seeker Small Groups. Those groups are where people who do not necessarily believe the Bible or Christianity get together at a table, and so every other Sunday for a couple of years I got seekers in there pummeling me with questions, and I thought I’d heard everything. Well, when Bryan and the Internet came along, I had no longer seen everything!
It was intense. Bryan was asking all kinds of penetrating questions and I was going to all these websites and it was like walking into machine gun fire. One of the things that I did was decide that I had to duke this out. So I started this website, www.CoffeehouseTheology.com, and it has emails that you can sign up for and see what it’s all about, if you like. If people replied to the emails, the emails came back to me.
The reason I did that was that I wanted to know if enough people came through the website and sent me emails, if Christianity cannot stand up to the test, I was going to find out! I decided that I was going to take everyone on and I was going to see if someone can punch a hole in this thing. And there were some scary moments. I was like, “Oh my goodness, these are big questions!”
I probably answered 10,000 emails during the last 6 years. There have been a LOT of people and a lot of conversations. The first thing I’ll tell you is that nobody’s punched a hole in Christianity. I think it stands up very well. If you have a question, there’s a book or website or something that has a good answer to it.
Here’s the other thing; nobody comes out swinging like the new breed of atheist like followers of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and all of those guys. These guys are furious! People talk about Muslims being extreme? Well, I get emails from a lot of Muslims and none of them come out swinging like the atheists do. They’re angry. And Richard Dawkins says things like, “Teaching your children that there is a God who would reward or punish you, people that do that are worse than child molesters.” That’s what he says.
It’s a war. What’s the track record? 160 million dead people. Now, this is not a battle of guns, because the pen is mightier than the sword. This is a battle of the pen. This is a battle of truth and belief systems. I think Christians have a moral obligation to know what’s going on, because if you don’t know what’s going on, you’ll get picked off by a skeptic.
The reason we have science today is because Christianity said there is a logical rational universe that was designed by an intelligent Creator. And the reason we have democracy is because Paul said, “There is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free; all are equal in Christ Jesus.”
The most cherished Western values come from Christianity. Don’t surrender them to someone who has an axe to grind.
Hello Andrew Lobb.
I answer you:
“I am sorry, but I don’t understand; where did you get the idea that pre-knowledge always implies responsibility?”
Consider this: Two assailants enter with violence in your close neighbor house and attack him hardly, leaving him badly wounded. Later, police ask you why you didn’t phone for help. You answer you heard nothing; you didn’t know what was going on. You haven’t a motive to act. You are non responsible of that facts, neither for haven’t call 911.
BUT if you knew what was going on, and you had the power for phoning and you decided not to phone the police, you are responsible for help your neighbor could have received and didn’t receive.
Thus, you can see knowledge implies responsibility (ask an attorney or a lawyer)
The same happen with God. If he knew what was going to happen he was responsible.
“As I understand it, in giving people free will…”
To me, free will doesn’t exist, it is a mere illusion. Our actions, thoughts, desires and our entire psyche are caused. All of them are “states of the brain”. The same happen with a beam of light. You see it as “straight” but it is an illusion because the space-time is curved, something you can’t see but can reason about. Besides, the First Cause argument of theology says “Every thing is caused” thus our will is caused, then not “free”. Then a “free will” doesn’t exist.
“God has chosen to let us take responsibility for our actions so that we can learn”.
To me, God was teaching nothing. Instead, he was simply forbidding something, with a straight and simple threat of capital punishment (“For in what day soever you shall eat of it, you shall die the death”). I can’t think of it as a teaching and less even of God as a loving teacher.
“God, knowing (YOU are saying it) we would sin, could…”
…manage things in a very different and less dramatic way
“stop us, but that would remove the consequences for our actions and make Him a bad father.”
I won’t discuss this. To me, they are mere rationalizations, in order to “save” God’s “prestige”. I only ask you this: Do you teach a child this way (with threat of capital punishment)? Or, do you let a child learn like this: “If you touch this electric wire you will die”, and then you abandon the scene?
“But perhaps you have an answer for this too?”
You decide that.
Greetings.
Carlos
Hi.
“Thus, you can see knowledge implies responsibility.”
In your example, yes. But your example is rather simple. The real world is, I am afraid, more complex. Consider America going to war. Is war a bad thing? Yes, but what are the consequences of not going to war? Are they worse or better? Now imagine I could stop America going to war. Should I? You tell me. Maybe I have both the ability to act and the knowledge of what will happen.
The point you miss is God considers freedom more important than comfort or safety. The evidence I present of this particular point is the fact that so many of the apostles were martyrs. Even Christ’s death is evidence of this. This may not fit with your personal morals, but that might make you a little unusual. So, by your definitions, God could be evil, and by His definitions, you would be evil. I contest that the creator would be right. If you contest there is no creator, then this argument is rather pointless… :)
Consider Gods dilemma: Remove freedom or allow suffering. Which is worse? A benevolent dictator or a corrupt democracy? Now what if you figured a way to fix the democracy and keep the freedom?
For the second part of your message, I will say this; God and Adam walked together in the Garden(for an unspecified period of time). They had a relationship. It seems to me very reasonable to assume Adam was fully aware of the meaning and consequences of his actions. However these things are not recorded in the bible, which (quite understandably) is not a minute by minute account of Adam’s life.
From your other post:
“From First Cause argument, it is said everything exists or happens has a cause. Then, nothing exists or happens without a cause. So, our will has a cause, and then is not free. Then, free will doesn’t exist.”
This argument is unprovable. It is a useful assumption to make within science, but(I contest) not within philosophy, and yes, the Intelligent Design guys will have a go at me for this. I do hold that God caused the universe to be, but if God can cause, I hold that God can give his creation the ability to independently cause as well. Free will to you is an illusion, yes. To me it exists as part of the concept of an eternal soul, which by definition must be outside science. But these are philosophical differences between us, where we must agree to disagree, unless you have another answer? Neither of us has any proof whatsoever(that I have ever seen in any journal, article or logical argument), and there are Christians who believe free will is a heretical concept.. However, it is likely that you will continue to view the world through this assumption. Suspend it, and your view will change radically.
Greetings to you also.
-Andrew
To Andrew Lobb:
You say:
“”Thus, you can see knowledge implies responsibility.””
“In your example, yes. But your example is rather simple. The real world is, I am afraid, more complex. Consider America going to war. Is war a bad thing? Yes, but what are the consequences of not going to war?“
Perhaps to raise opportunity of conversations that fix the problem, making war unnecessary
“Are they worse or better? Now imagine I could stop America going to war. Should I? You tell me. Maybe I have both the ability to act and the knowledge of what will happen.”
Even so, knowledge implies responsibility.
“The point you miss is God considers freedom more important than comfort or safety. The evidence I present of this particular point is the fact that so many of the apostles were martyrs. Even Christ’s death is evidence of this. This may not fit with your personal morals, but that might make you a little unusual. So, by your definitions, God could be evil, and by His definitions, you would be evil. I contest that the creator would be right. If you contest there is no creator, then this argument is rather pointless… :)”
I don’t mind what an hypothetic god considers important. My point is that a being supposedly omniscient is responsible for each succession of events he triggered
“Consider Gods dilemma: Remove freedom or allow suffering. Which is worse? A benevolent dictator or a corrupt democracy? Now what if you figured a way to fix the democracy and keep the freedom? “
Again, my point is not about any god’s dilemmas.
“For the second part of your message, I will say this; God and Adam walked together in the Garden(for an unspecified period of time). They had a relationship. It seems to me very reasonable to assume Adam was fully aware of the meaning and consequences of his actions.”
When I posted my question on march 13, I stated: “In order to be clear and exactly understood, I want say this: I am seriously and exclusively talking and asking about God, in no way about Adam, Eve, the serpent or another. So I expect a serious answer and exclusively centered on God, only”.
So, if Adam was or wasn’t aware, it doesn’t matter.
“However these things are not recorded in the bible, which (quite understandably) is not a minute by minute account of Adam’s life.”
To me, you are guessing and guessing and guessing, aiming to Adam perhaps in order to get a god “Not responsible, then not guilty”
“From your other post:
“From First Cause argument, it is said everything exists or happens has a cause. Then, nothing exists or happens without a cause. So, our will has a cause, and then is not free. Then, free will doesn’t exist.
“This argument is unprovable. It is a useful assumption to make within science, but(I contest) not within philosophy, and yes, the Intelligent Design guys will have a go at me for this. I do hold that God caused the universe to be, but if God can cause, I hold that God can give his creation the ability teo independently cause as well. Free will to you is an illusion, yes. To me it exists as part of the concept of an eternal soul, which by definition must be outside science.”
What definition? Science is a way and a method to obtain knowledge from the existing. In a broad sense, science can investigate every part of reality: stars, dinosaurs, gods, unicorns, dreams, evolution, soul, physics, spirit, biology, ghosts, etc, when it has determinated them really exist. Dual magistery (religion in one side and science in other side) is false. So, science can investigate –and it does- religion, too.
“But these are philosophical differences between us, where we must agree to disagree, unless you have another answer? Neither of us has any proof whatsoever (that I have ever seen in any journal, article or logical argument), and there are Christians who believe free will is a heretical concept. However, it is likely that you will continue to view the world through this assumption. Suspend it, and your view will change radically.”
(The last apply to you too)
In a world where science finds everything is physic and caused (except of course in quantum level) I don’t find even one mere scientific declaration (I reject faith based declarations) -from psychology, psychiatry or psychoanalysis, for instance- stating: “Free will is not physic and uncaused”
Greetings to you, Andrew.
Carlos
Carlos,
“Even so, knowledge implies responsibility.”
So, basically what you are saying is because God has knowledge he is incapable of delegating responsibility? Just to be clear. Because knowledge can imply responsibility if and *only if* the party having the knowledge can act upon it. Do you agree?
Now, while we speculate on an omnipotent God, it follows that in order for God to be an intelligent being, He must have a character. This character implies there are things He will and will not do. Therefore, omnipotency does not imply that if something *can* be done, it *will be done*. And what if it is in God’s character to create beings with freedom? You may argue that God is responsible for creating these creatures, but in that case, since God holds them responsible for their actions it follows that the only “evil”(however we define it) is with the creation.
It is valid in this case for me to talk about Adam, since Adam was delegated responsibility by God. Adam failed, but God did no cause Adam to fail, He merely knew Adam would. I believe the Good gained by creating Adam outweighs the evil.
In all your arguments, you speculate on God, but build on conclusions based on assumptions that there is no God. The contradiction you see can only exist with you, since only you are operating on conflicting assumptions when you speculate on God. For example, you speculate on God, but consider free will an impossibility. This is an artificial contradiction. I hope you can see what I am saying here.
“To me, you are guessing and guessing and guessing, aiming to Adam perhaps in order to get a god “Not responsible, then not guilty””
Perhaps, but remember my fundamental assumptions do differ greatly from yours. The conflict between us is irresolvable and can only be properly defined if we were to both list the chain of assumptions we use from the beginning.
“”To me it exists as part of the concept of an eternal soul, which by definition must be outside science.”
What definition?”
Not subject to cause and effect as we understand it. Science must make the assumption that we live in a rational universe with cause and effect. Otherwise how could we do science? I argue that the soul is not subject to such a simple analysis. Therefore applying the scientific method to it would yield ambiguous results (as if you look into research on such, you’ll find it does.)
” Suspend it, and your view will change radically.”
(The last apply to you too)
In a world where science finds everything is physic and caused (except of course in quantum level) I don’t find even one mere scientific declaration (I reject faith based declarations) -from psychology, psychiatry or psychoanalysis, for instance- stating: “Free will is not physic and uncaused””
The difference between me and you is I can think through your assumptions. I can see your worldview very well already, which is why I do respect you. My problem with what you are saying is that you wish to speculate on God, but will not speculate on free will since in a world where there is no God, there can be no free will. At this point you claim you’ve found a contradiction, but I contest the contradiction only exists when you decide to speculate on God and retain all of your other naturalist assumptions. All of the sciences mentioned above assume cause and effect, naturalism and so forth. They operate on the assumption that there is no soul or God, or if there is such a soul or God is subject to analysis or at the very least not actively interfering. So, I will say, if you wish to speculate on God, perhaps you may wish to start speculating on free will. I can’t prove free will, and I am not trying to. Neither can you disprove it.
Cheers
Carlos, you say that you will not discuss this further, which is a great pity because the issue of “free will” is greatly misunderstood by many people. Throughout my posts on this page, I have contended that everything is an experiment by God, who really does not know everything, but who is trying to discover what will happen under given circumstances. In the case of Mankind, God said: “Let us make man with our mental abilities, but we will not tell him this: he must discover it for himself”. We all have carte blanche to do anything we choose, but some people use their energies to gain power over others. This lust for power resulted in the rise of religions, politics, governments, scientific theories and a multitude of other evils that try to stop people discovering their God-given powers.
These institutions want to control us “for our own good” (so they say), all the while telling us what we may or may not do, believe, understand and think.
I wasted twelve years of my childhood in establishments called “schools”. There my head was filled with much useless nonsense, fully 90% of which has not served me in any way at all. The only “gifts” they gave me were the ability to read and write (the latter more or less coherently). It did not take me long to realise that, far from teaching me to live, my teachers, parents and other “authorities” were trying to pack me into boxes of their design. I rebelled and refused to do as they all suggested.
I was approached by Scientologists (I even worked in their filing room, trying to sort out the mess there. In return I was given a variety of papers written by Ron Hubbard, “audited” and given full exposure to their philosophy), Evangelists, Hare Krishnas, Jehovah’s Witnesses and a few other cults, all wanting me to join their organisations. Sleep deprivation, starvation, sugar spiking, chanting, marching and other mind-numbing techniques had absolutely no effect on me, proving to me that I cannot be swayed, because I have my own, free will that will not be bent by any of the usual methods. I was offered consciousness-altering drugs (which I refused, though I did smoke some marijuana), sex (of the hippie “free love” variety, which I gladly accepted!) and all sorts of other incentives, but I remained resolute: I would find my own way.
There was a time that I buried myself in books, reading more in a day than most of my contemporaries read in a month: some fiction, but mostly technical treatises. I had many jobs, learning skills and discovering hidden talents along the way, never staying for very long as my enquiring mind wanted to know more and discover new things. Mostly though, I observed. I spent time in various cities and also in the bush, watching, listening and investigating everything. I asked many questions and received many answers that simply did not make sense to me.
In the time span between those days as a teenager and now, I have had reason to change my beliefs and understanding of a great many things: I am not the boy I was then, but I still pursue knowledge, as it is more precious than diamonds, gold or oil.
I do not vote, because by voting I send out the message that I want other people to control me with their laws and regulations. Well, in my opinion, I am quite capable of looking after myself and of accepting responsibility for all that I do or say. I do not need their rules, restrictions and taxes: I know what I am doing and I need no-one to shove me around. If I require guidance, I will ask for it, but I will modify it to suit myself.
Google “Emotional Freedom Technique”; “Permaculture”; “Carol Bowman”; “Dr. Ian Stevenson” ; go to burlingtonnews.net and bibliotecapleyades.net (this is a monstrous library of ‘alternative knowledge’, where you will find contributions by Alan Alford; Zecharia Sitchin, David Icke and other so-called mavericks, who will really open up your mind and your eyes) and learn of but a few areas of research that most ‘scientists’ and religionists will not touch with a ten-foot barge pole … because it does not fit in with their sacred doctrines.
Rules, by their very existence, demand to be bent, folded, mangled, spindled and mutilated. You can even break them when nobody is looking. One of my mottoes is this: “The only way to test the limits of the possible is to ignore all the rules and try to accomplish that which is said to be impossible”. People learned to fly when they did this!
That is what free will is all about: accepting that which makes sense and rejecting all that does not; doing your own thing within given societal conventions, if only to stay out of trouble with the authorities, but thinking your own thoughts, analysing everything and every situation and finding your own way out of sticky circumstances.
Bow to no man, because each man has his own beliefs and agendas. Your life is your own and you should be able to invite to share in it those people who will enhance it. Unfortunately, government and society force you to pay lip service to many who would not otherwise deserve your consideration.
Just be yourself, but strive to be the best you that you possibly can.
I will stop learning only when they hammer the last nail into my coffin … and maybe not even then!
Hello, Keith Taylor:
I can see your life is intense. It is clear you are seeking for answers. That explains your comings and goings and your critics for many organizations. I agree in part with you, mainly in what has to do with your own
thoughts.
I can see also how circumstances had motivated your changes of direction. Circumstances and the thing you name “free will” -and I name “common sense”, sense of reality or intelligence- too.
Let me explain what “free will” means to me.
1) A man sees his home in fire. What will he do? Let us suppose he throws water on the fire, or calls the firemen
2) Another man is fired from his job. What he does? He reduces his spends and looks for a new job.
We can see each of their responses (thoughts + behavior) is related to a previous situation, is caused. In 1) the actions aim to avoid damages to his home. In 2) they are oriented to solve an economic problem.
Now, let us suppose in 1) that while his home is burning the man decides instead start dancing, or to invite his friends to drink beer in a bar. Do these actions have any connection with fire in his home? I say no. Been so, I could say these actions are, regarding the fire, free. I say they represent his free will, and at same time I have to admit they are absolutely stupid, unreal and unprofitable.
From this, how do we recognize free will is in action? Answer: when facts are strange, weird, hard to explain, crazy, and having absolutely no connection (when they are “free”) with anything past, present or future that can be understood as a cause, reason or motive.
For free will to exist and to be really free, it has to be based on nothing, not motivated, not reasoned, not connected, unexpected, capricious, not caused, and absolutely “coming from nothing”. If not, it is not free.
If homeostasis, structures, systems, organization, life, societies, civilizations are incompatible with those characteristics of free will, we can conclude that free will doesn’t exist, and our thoughts and behavior are caused.
Greetings
Carlos
Carlos,
“For free will to exist and to be really free, it has to be based on nothing, not motivated, not reasoned, not connected, unexpected, capricious, not caused, and absolutely “coming from nothing”. If not, it is not free.”
What you have described is randomness. Free will does not imply the lack of the ability to reason. It implies the ability to discard reason. If your man seeing a fire in his house chooses of his own free will not to deal with it, whose fault is it if the house burns down? Free will means that you are free to take any path you like. Reason means that you can know the consequences of the paths you take. It is not excluded by free will, and free will can exist without it. Reason can provide the information/consequences, but it is *you* who makes the choice. The fact that you have chosen to reason does not mean that you had to do so.
Cheers
Your perception about being controlled by authorities is correct: it does rob us of our free will. It is most unfortunate that there is no more “free”, that is, unclaimed and unsettled, land on Earth. If there were, I would be out there establishing my own society. There would be only one, single law: “No person or group may interfere in any way that may be detrimental to the health, life, lifestyle, limb or privacy of any other person or group or with the larger environment”.
The man with the burning house is nothing more than an exercise in protecting assets. If he could put in an insurance claim that would leave him in a better financial and social position than he is at present, he may be tempted to let the house burn down. However, if he has loved ones who are in danger of burning to death in the flames, he may be driven to try to save them. If he hates his wife and kids, he may leave them to perish and think “good riddance”. His free will is ruled by his situation and whatever benefits he will derive by his actions or inactions.
In the case of the man who loses his job, he is governed by the provisions he has made for such an eventuality. If he is deeply in debt, then he may well look for another job and keep an eagle eye on his budget, but if he has been canny and has established a ‘safety net’ (if you like, I can tell you how to do this), then he may simply retire and enjoy the fruits of his forethought.
My life is intense? I seek answers? Carlos, you have no idea! My life is extremely sedentary: I sit at my computer from as early as two in the morning and may not leave it for up to forty eight hours. I design innovative, energy-saving systems and machines, only a very few of which I have taken beyond the design stage. The ones that I have taken to the prototype stage have worked as well as I expected and I am currently busy with a water heating system (tested this very afternoon and working like a charm!), which I may be tempted to put onto the market at a much lower price than anything currently available. The rest of the time I scour the Internet in search of truth and have discovered that many of the “established truths” deserve to be taken with a very large dose of salts.
I exercise my free will: I never vote, as this action is self-defeating, sending out the message that you want other people to make the rules for you. I make my own rules and permit no-one to take that away from me. As I live in the bush, I am not subject to building restrictions. I grow my own food as far as is possible and do very much as I please (much to the chagrin of family members who are caught up in the rat race).
Really? You think people would be fooled by this? I thought you guys had something about lying (misprepresenting perhaps?), but I could be wrong…
I am certain that Perry and a number of other contributors to this site will approve of this: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net\ciencia\ciencia_genoma04.htm It is written in English, and it supports Perry’s contention that DNA is composed of a language and not of a random code. Evolutionists of the world, recant!
Perry: your statement number 2 ends with:
“So the next time someone tells you that Jesus was a myth, ask them this question: “Name one other resurrection story that stuck. Just one.” I don’t know of any. I think there’s a reason for that.”
There IS a reason that the other resurrection stories did not stick. It is called the Roman Catholic Church. This institution spent centuries killing, torturing and wiping out people who did not adhere to the Roman Catholic religion. Have you not heard of the Inquisitions, the witch-hunts and other such deliberate, methodical genocides? The reason that the other stories did not linger is because the precursor to all Christian religions stamped them out, just as surely as Catholic zealots wiped out the Aztec civilisation!
I mean, just because a lot of people follow it, doesn’t mean it’s true…so, although I’m a believer, the argument “Name one other resurrection story that stuck. Just one.” I don’t know of any. I think there’s a reason for that.” is plain wrong…and I might agree on what Keith says, the old Church blinded by it’s stupid HUMAN members (not all fo them) created wars and division to make their point stand…which is also wrong.
Keith: It wasn’t the Catholic who wiped Aztecs out, the cuplrits were just a COUPLE of spaniards with TONS of other indigenous cultures’ members that were enemies to the Aztecs…and by the way, they didn’t kill them all, they mixed (unlike the US, Australia and other cases)
Wolfgang, please note that I did not accuse the Catholics of wiping out the Aztec nation, but commented on certain Catholic zealots destroying their CIVILISATION.
Oh but it wasn’t the zealots, it was the greed for gold and territory, that’s what they came here for at first, not specifically for evangelization, that was afterwards, when they had settled and the Aztecs were long gone (or mixed) let me expand:
The Aztecs, while powerful and dominating warriors, had a belief that a big feathered serpent would return to see them (Quetzalcóatl, their God…note the irony) and all they found was these different men, spaniards, white skin, different technology and big ships that DAZZLED them, so they welcomed them as deities…along with their diseases.
Hernán Cortés and his crew were probably as illiterate as you can be, maybe professed a belief, but I assume (not a verified opinion) that he chased fame and fortune more than spreading the Word of God..whe you become a “god” in a foreign land, I wonder who will you serve, a bigger being or money and fame? my two cents.
Hey I was reading thet you go by the maxim: treat others like you’d like to be treated, it sounds kinda Catholic..good for you! no, just kidding, as I have said before, I respect the fact that you trust your abilities to learn adn act, you face resposibility and live by the biggest and most important maxim of them all, if we all lived like that I bet many wars would’ve never happened..
Wolfgang, I concede your point. However, we are not addressing the main issue, that being Perry’s question as to why no other ressurectio story has stuck around as long as that of Jesus. I now modify my reply to read as follows: “There IS a reason that the other resurrection stories did not stick. It is called the Roman Catholic Church. This institution spent centuries killing, torturing and wiping out people who did not adhere to the Roman Catholic religion. Have you not heard of the Inquisitions, the witch-hunts and other such deliberate, methodical genocides? The reason that the other stories did not linger is because the precursor to all Christian religions stamped them out.”
Does this meet with your approval?
In my candid opinion, Jesus made one, big mistake: He DIED for mankind’s sins, was ‘resurrected’ and then went away. Now, if only He had done that ten times in a row, thus proving to all and sundry that He was truly divine and had then remained on Earth, invulnerable and immortal, personally spreading His own version of the Hebrew religion (never forget that Jesus lived and died a “Jew”!), Christianity as we know it would never have arisen.
Wolf, I concede your point. However, you have drifted away from the main issue, that being Perry’s question as to why no other resurrection story has stuck around for so long. You may question my rather incomplete knowledge regarding the destruction of the Aztec civilisation, but you have yet to assail my reasoning and answer to Perry’s question.
It is an unfortunate fact of life that wars are necessary: they are one of the few (and might I add, ineffective) ways of keeping down the human population. What is even more lamentable than the human suffering is the damage the wars cause to the natural environment. Had there been no wars, mankind and the rest of the animal kingdom might long ago have become extinct, with mankind having overpopulated the planet to such an extent that there would have been no more space for anything to live.
Oh but I do agree on that, it’s partly because of stupid members in the church that were greedy to seed their faith and ONLY their faith and by this they prosectued people and were intolerant, but this story sounds familiar, Jews condemn inter-religion marriages for the same reason (as many religions do as well, including Catholics), I mean, it’s natural that we want our kids to be like us, almost organic. Even a lawyer disowning his son for studying photography instead of his profession could fit in this description, same behavior, to a lesser extent.
All I said regarding Perry’s comment is that while I agree that no other story has stuck for so long (and yes, also by the reasons you describe as well, note that it could also be because people have genuinely felt good abiding the Catholic law and way of life) the fact that it has lingered and many people believe in it, is not enough for me to believe in it yourself (although I’m a believer, not because the club has many members, but because I like the club)
The difference is that Catholicism was spread by a funky group of people called latins (roman, spanish, mexican, and so on) they are usually very open with people (as in copulating around and accepting strangers) and have evangelized both by communicating the word and by having lots of descendants as well, and while Jews may have lots of kids too, they can’t spread the word around, it’s against their laws, and have always been very seggregating of gentiles, so they’ve kept their numbers down and the result is that there are 20 million Jews vs 1,000 million Catholics.
Now to your other point, is Jesus hadn’t died, then it’d be easy to believe, taking away the merit of believing without seeing, which has a personal reward, not in heaven, but in Earth, helps you get through your life in a more adequate manner.
That’s when free will enters the equation, you choose, and nothing in life is free, bad choices will make you have a miserable life (not money-wise, but mentally-speaking) and God is there to help you correct your way, he laid down the bases and is there (not phisically) to cheer you up, it’s up to you to do it. His intention has never been to be known around a la superstar(even when he was alive he asked explicitly to his apprentices not to make a lot of noise)
Also, for Catholics, death is just a mere step, we’re supposed to be ok with it, actually not afraid at all, for death is only of the body (which eventually you’ll lose anyways) I belive he came to show the way, that it is ok to be poor but ahrdworking, it’s ok to suffer with a meaning, it’s ok to die for somebody, and he laid the foundations, he doesn’t need to be here answering phone calls like Dr. Phil, he already hgave us all the necessary answers and example, no need to be here as a counselor, that’s why he died, and he resurrected (in case you believe in it) to show that death is just a step, not to be afraid of it.
Ok..hope I got my point across, I really enjoy this site, many comments you guys make have interesting points and make people think, make me think too…and I believe even more, you guys believe in God too, so I guess we’re on the same page, the difference is I follow the spanish manual and you guys have your own cheat-sheet in english (get it?)
Hello,people:
I read sometimes that many of you believers have difficulties to understand Theory of Evolution. I invite you go to Youtube videos and type “cdk007” (without “”). This user have produced lots of excellent scientific and debunking videos about origin of life, origin of universe, origin of brain, how evolution really works, religion, etc.
I hope you enjoy them.
Greetings
Carlos
My question is simple: why did it take over 160 million years of Dinosaurs before some higher being decided Oops I made a mistake? And, if you believe in the “Big Bang” theory then you must believe in infinite universe’s before the big bang? And if so how many big bangs were there. The premise for this last question is that you need space for a big bang to occur.
The sooner Christians, Muslims, Jews, and any other religion, admit that their faith is just that and stop mixing and confusing it with science the more, I just may, have some sympathy with. But as long as religious people try to camouflage their belief with manufactured evidence and intelligent design the more they will continue to create a division between science and religious belief. Reading the comments above is evidence that we need to all come together, those who are religious, agnostic, and those who are atheists. It’s time to move on to the next level of our human existence – its time to detach yourself from old dogmas, traditions, intolerance, and reproach our ego. I am not for surveys or percentages; I am for freedom of thought, stillness in action, oneness with yourself, and the development of Peace. Whether or not your God exists is irrelevant to your conduct and moral beliefs – we must stop using our belief systems as a crutch for moral servitude. Believers and non-believers are equally moral or immoral there is no difference between them. Unfortunately, the schools of philosophy were mostly dismantled when Constantine made the edict for monotheism. Philosophy practiced freethinking and the beginnings of anatomical discussions – this was seen as a threat to the new religion Christianity. The argument that Atheist have no meaning in life and are therefore immoral is as absurd as saying Christian’s are immoral because they practice Christianity. I’m not going to be drawn into the argument with regards to proving or disproving Christianity – if we maintain this kind of thinking we will continue to have wars, we will continue to allow our egos to darken our oneness, our SELF. I don’t want to provide the reader here with ammunition so I’m not going to say what I believe in, all I’m going to say on that subject is “IT DOESN’T MATTER”. What matters is how you treat all sentient beings and the planet you call home, because it is this that truly determines your happiness and self worth. How is perfection defined? My answer to this is very simple and not complicated either by science or religion – Perfection is simply “unconditional love”. And, unconditional love is found ONLY in “The Moment”, “The NOW” – when it drifts from this state it no longer is perfect. It’s like Plato’s dissertation on “Forms”, the same really applies. In a secular world where the child’s future is not arrived at by any singular teaching but by being holistic in nature and allowing all aspects of social, religious, and political discourse. I believe the greatest of all miracles is finding yourself, and if this is achieved by being religious, agnostic or an atheist, so be it. I do find the argument of chaos in the universe interesting as it is the order within the universe that provides life. If there was no order then we would not be here. Yes, the Milky Way will collide with Andromeda some time in the future (I may not be here when it happens), but that doesn’t negate order – when cars crash into each other it doesn’t mean society has no order. I love the Cole Porter bit “even the monkeys swinging in the trees do it” my favorite rendition of this is by Noel Coward in Las Vegas). I think I’ll be cremated (after reading above), even though it may burn a bit at least it will be fast. Did you know that’s where these expressions came from “dead ringer” “saved by the bell” and “graveyard shift”. People were buried with strings attached to their hand and at the other end was a bell so if they came back to life the person doing the graveyard shift would hear it ringing and quickly dig up the lucky recipient. My friends are religious, atheists, communists, republicans, gay, straight, democrats, green party, and progressive liberals (sorry if I missed out anyone), BUT, if they demonstrate intolerance against any of these subjects they no-longer are my friends (I’m intolerant of intolerance), – now if we all did that just think what a change it would make. We can argue without getting our knickers in a twist. Have a great weekend, Robert
P.s. Enlightenment is a state of non-attachment and peace while connected to all things. RBE
Try not to cling to any thought, idea, philosophy, belief, or even love. All this is already there, all of it, just allow it to enter a clear mind one that is un-cluttered with what you think should be and or shouldn’t be.
hello perry
how are about you?
i loved this article,very nice one.
i should like that you if you can of corse
would be sending me more informations about
atheism.i trouble with my young son.
he has 14 years old ,if you send more details
i would thank you
blessings
laercio
“I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
…Stephen F Roberts
Greetings.
Carlos
Hi Martin Largerwey. Thank you for the links. There are many forms of mimicry and it’s a fascinating subject on which you are obviously well versed. However I disagree with your suggestion that the details are not so relevant. The details are the essence of any debate on the design/naturalism question. ‘The devil is in the details’ as they say. The detail in this problem is at the molecular level or more specifically the DNA level. All changes such as colouration, shape and other morphological changes come about by changes in DNA. Could one or maybe just a few changes in DNA (random accidental changes in duplication) result in a Viceroy butterfly looking just like a Monarch butterfly thereby avoiding its predators? I think most evolution biologists agree that complex and multi-faceted multi-component changes would be mathematically impossible, similarly the orchid pistil example. I don’t think this example is synonymous with the white moths which evolved into dark coloured moths during industrial pollution. I dare say colouration of that nature could have occurred by a minimal number of mutations but the complex colouring of the Monarch butterfly would have been coincidental and unimaginably lucky so it’s more realistic to imagine it occurred from a very large number of mutations each moving irrevocably towards the finale facsimile. But again, isn’t that unimaginably lucky? The idea that these changes were programmed into the DNA doesn’t sound too improbable but I agree that is a philosophical view bearing in mind the lack of tangible and irrevocable evidence from both the anti and pro naturalism camps.
I also disagree with the view that Intelligent Design and Darwin scepticism is anti-science or anti-evolution. Evolution can’t be denied, it’s the mechanism of evolution proposed by the Darwinian paradigm that is questionable. And I could never understand the example of dog breeding to demonstrate changes by evolutionary processes. All that proves is that the application of intelligence can bring about these changes and more fundamentally they are still dogs. It would take more than human intelligence to breed a dog into another higher species of mammal.
Martin Ward
Yes, of course the details are important but I suspect that most debates are driven by prior prejudices or assumptions such as naturalism (mine). They can cloud the data.
So our question is this. Can DNA alone explain mimicry complexes? The British peppered moth turning black is easily explained, as you recognize by one gene turning on the protein switch for a melanin pigment. The viceroy mimics the monarch’s complex pattern but is this by random mutations filtered by natural selection or is some intelligent input required? Some cousins of the viceroy (other Limenitis spp) have orange pigment, black along wing veins and white dots. All these genes present but may be dormant in this genus. If in the Viceroy they are being expressed as “needed” and fine tuned over time, mimicry is feasible. All Limenitis spp are small, the viceroy is the largest but still smaller than the model monarch and with more fine tuning they may get larger over time. Other groups of butterflies without all these pre-existing genes couldn’t and didn’t mimic the monarch.
I realize that my explanation is overly simplified but you get the idea. If intelligent design was involved it would look to a naturalist like a miracle (no explanation possible). I would expect to see more unlikely patterns such as a Papilio sp mimicking a monarch – that would be harder to explain. Still science would look for a natural explaination.
To dogs; say, 50 000 years ago, it is believed that wolves were the common ancestor to all dogs. If in 50,000 more years great danes and pekineses change further and cannot interbreed, they become different species, by definition. Maybe they already are. Cats are already further speciated and while all are still cats, tigers are not lions and different species can and do evolve. Human selective breeding is not intelligent design but only a form of natural selection – long fur can be selected for by cold winters or humanly selected preferences giving the same outcome by different selection mechanisms. No human (yet) made the DNA.
Hi Robert Edwards. I believe you are guided by the Buddha’s suggestion not to waste time contemplating metaphysical questions to which we will never find an answer, rather to concentrate on his teaching that will help us overcome our suffering in the present. But an enquiring mind, Buddhist or otherwise cannot help to recognize mind-boggling things in nature that defy mindless evolution in the Darwinian context. It’s whether you have an enquiring mind.
Metta.
Hi Metta, the beauty and magnificence of the universe and science is so over powering that there is little room for myths – my inquiring mind is such that I need not explain its depths, suffice to say suffering is man-made – I have often wondered how can there be so much belief in a faith that has so much suffering.
If your faith is in men, then of course you’ll be disappointed…if your faith is in something bigger (not geometrically bigger, but exponentially bigger) that created that beauty that you’ve explained (and no man could ever create) then I’m sure you’ll find peace within.
Suffering could be taken in two ways, one is, let it be a cancer and destroy you, or (faithfully) let it be a way of making yourself better through it. Both things have the same circunstances and have the same origin, but a different end to it, having faith won’t make the suffering go away (either ways you’ll suffer the same amount) but through faith, that taking the pain and letting it go, you will have a different vision of it and feel differently about it.
Suffering doesn’t have to be somebody getting shot in the leg, abstinence is also suffering, not hurting somebody back if he hurt you first, etc. THAT’s what makes you better if you let it go. If we all had this way of life, I’m sure less muggings, bombings, killings, etc etc would happen.
” And the reason we have democracy is because Paul said, “There is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free; all are equal in Christ Jesus.” ”
Are you serious?
Hello, Andrew Lobb:
“Author: Andrew Lobb 4-5-10
Comment:
Carlos,
“”Even so, knowledge implies responsibility.””
“So, basically what you are saying is because God has knowledge he is incapable of delegating responsibility?(1). Just to be clear. Because knowledge can imply responsibility if and *only if* the party having the knowledge can act upon it. Do you agree? (2).
(1) It is you who is talking about “delegation”. In the Garden, God explicitly didn’t delegate a thing to somebody. He simply forbade eating from a tree. (Besides, what for the trees in the garden, if forbidden?)
(2) Are you serious? We are talking about an omnipotent being. You have to demonstrate God –an omnipotent being- was “impotent” to do anything.
“Now, while we speculate on an omnipotent God, it follows that in order for God to be an intelligent being, He must have a character. This character implies there are things He will and will not do. Therefore, omnipotence does not imply that if something *can* be done, it *will be done*. And what if it is in God’s character to create beings with freedom? (3). You may argue that God is responsible for creating these creatures (4), but in that case, since God holds them responsible for their actions it follows that the only “evil”(however we define it) is with the creation(5).
(3) No matter what he creates because of his omnipotence. He is always responsible because he never ceased being omniscient.
(4) Yes.
(5) Not for me. Let’s suppose a person can see future events. He foresees a friend of him will ask him his car an later the friend will trespasses a red light and kill a man. Even so, the man lends his car to his friend. Then, the foreseer is responsible (guilty) of events because of his pre-knowledge of them and his friend is responsible (guilty) too, because of their knowledge of transit regulations. But to me, in no way driver fault implies an exemption of responsibility of car owner
“It is valid in this case for me to talk about Adam, since Adam was delegated responsibility by God. Adam failed, but God did no cause Adam to fail, He merely knew Adam would. I believe the Good gained by creating Adam outweighs the evil”(6).
(6)Once again, as I stated long before, I don’t want to discuss about Adam. I am focused only on God.
“In all your arguments, you speculate on God, but build on conclusions based on assumptions that there is no God. The contradiction you see can only exist with you, since only you are operating on conflicting assumptions when you speculate on God. For example, you speculate on God, (7) but consider free will impossibility(8). This is an artificial contradiction. I hope you can see what I am saying here.
(7) I am reasoning and speculating about “properties” and implications of “standard model” of God
(8) To me, contradiction is to hold simultaneously God’s omniscience and free will, meaning God’s omniscience can’t “foresee” free will “doings”.
“”To me, you are guessing and guessing and guessing, aiming to Adam perhaps in order to get God “Not responsible, then not guilty””
“Perhaps, but remember my fundamental assumptions do differ greatly from yours. The conflict between us is irresolvable and can only be properly defined if we were to both list the chain of assumptions we use from the beginning(9).
(9) OK. My first assumption is: because of lacking of proofs and evidences, there is no God. And: free will is illusion; the “self” or ego is a “by product” of evolution; well over quantum level our universe is deterministic; there is no afterlife; there is no “spiritual” soul; there are not supernatural things; good and evil don’t exist, they are mere ideas: the only important is if you are able to get some things you like happen or if you are able to avoid some other you dislike to happen; faith is not knowledge, it is wishes and feelings; any creed or theory must be analyzed in terms of its truth or falsehood; and so on…
“”To me it exists as part of the concept of an eternal soul, which by definition must be outside science.”
“What definition?””
“Not subject to cause and effect as we understand it(10). Science must make the assumption that we live in a rational universe with cause and effect. Otherwise how could we do science? I argue that the soul is not subject to such a simple analysis(11). Therefore applying the scientific method to it would yield ambiguous results (as if you look into research on such, you’ll find it does.)”(12).
(10) If soul exists and is not subject to causal laws you can’t talk of it or explain it using “because” neither “then” nor “therefore”, which are “causal” words.
(11)That is a faith based claim I don’t accept.
(12) Rational and scientific analysis gives no basis to say soul exists.
“Suspend it, and your view will change radically.”
““(The last apply to you too)
In a world where science finds everything is physic and caused (except of course in quantum level) I don’t find even one mere scientific declaration (I reject faith based declarations) -from psychology, psychiatry or psychoanalysis, for instance- stating: “Free will is not physic and uncaused””
“The difference between me and you is I can think through your assumptions. I can see your worldview very well already, which is why I do respect you. My problem with what you are saying is that you wish to speculate on God, but will not speculate on free will since in a world where there is no God there can be no free will. At this point you claim you’ve found a contradiction, but I contest the contradiction only exists when you decide to speculate on God and retain all of your other naturalist assumptions. All of the sciences mentioned above assume cause and effect, naturalism and so forth. They operate on the assumption that there is no soul or God, or if there is such a soul or God is subject to analysis or at the very least not actively interfering. So, I will say, if you wish to speculate on God, perhaps you may wish to start speculating on free will. I can’t prove free will, and I am not trying to. Neither can you disprove it”(13).
(13) I can’t reason about omniscience and a free will which is “out of reach” of omniscience, being free will in gross contradiction with definition of omniscience.
Even if God “shut his eyes” in order not to know what is going on in the garden (making “room” to free will to operate), he remains responsible of events because he decides to ignore them.
The idea of “scientia media” is to me a muddle from which instead of omni-science we finally obtain “half-science”.
All this issue of “free” will comes from people unable to accept our mind, feelings, emotions and thoughts –our psyche- are deeply caused and not “free”, not “coming from thin air”.
Religion is a “cosmovision” which finds explanations for existing things from a being completely out of reality, magic, weird, anthropomorphic and inexplicable. The idea of a god is consistent with evolution of human groups in early development. When those groups evolve and became wiser, their need of gods became lesser. From animism to polytheism, monotheism and atheism, religion goes gradually missing importance, as statistics today show.
God represents a complex and contorted explanation. Very best, easier and satisfactory for our intellect, rationalist explanations become increasingly understood and accepted.
Author: Andrew Lobb 4-5-10
Comment:
Carlos,
“For free will to exist and to be really free, it has to be based on nothing, not motivated, not reasoned, not connected, unexpected, capricious, not caused, and absolutely “coming from nothing”. If not, it is not free.”
“What you have described is randomness. Free will does not imply the lack of the ability to reason. It implies the ability to discard reason. If your man seeing a fire in his house chooses of his own free will not to deal with it, whose fault is it if the house burns down? Free will means that you are free to take any path you like(14). Reason means that you can know the consequences of the paths you take. It is not excluded by free will, and free will can exist without it. Reason can provide the information/consequences, but it is *you* who makes the choice(15). The fact that you have chosen to reason does not mean that you had to do so(16).
(14) No. I say that is illusion. You feel free but you aren’t.
(15) And, who is “you”? I say “you” is a gradually evolved sum of “mechanism”, systems, structures, causes, biologic “software”, etc. Somebody said: “We all are mere DNA containers. From the very beginning all we do in our life points to DNA replication. That is “purpose” of sex, for instance”.
(16) No matter your choice. Very deep in your being, certain facts determine what you do.
I have explained my thoughts many times. I hope I have been clear enough. Anybody can disagree with me and it is OK. But I don’t want to be repetitive. So, I want to stop discussing “omniscience” and “free will” for a while.
Cheers
Carlos
Carlos,
“(1) It is you who is talking about “delegation”. In the Garden, God explicitly didn’t delegate a thing to somebody. He simply forbade eating from a tree. (Besides, what for the trees in the garden, if forbidden?)”
Indeed, I am. And this is relevant. The tree is there to provide Adam a fair choice.
“(2) Are you serious? We are talking about an omnipotent being. You have to demonstrate God –an omnipotent being- was “impotent” to do anything.”
I believe have demonstrated that character implies and unwillingness to do something. Therefore it is not done. This is not inability but unwillingness which are different.
“(5) Not for me. Let’s suppose a person can see future events. He foresees a friend of him will ask him his car an later the friend will trespasses a red light and kill a man. Even so, the man lends his car to his friend. Then, the foreseer is responsible (guilty) of events because of his pre-knowledge of them and his friend is responsible (guilty) too, because of their knowledge of transit regulations. But to me, in no way driver fault implies an exemption of responsibility of car owner”
OK, who is more responsible? The owner or the driver? What if the owner warned the driver? The decision now rests entirely on a completely informed driver, thus it is the driver’s responsibility, is it not? If the driver were in a condition that he could not understand (e.g. he was drunk), then the owner would be responsible. However, I argue the that this is *not the case*.
“(6)Once again, as I stated long before, I don’t want to discuss about Adam. I am focused only on God.”
And yet if you want to talk about responsibility and God, it is illogical and incomplete not to mention Adam. Religions that have no “Adam”(or for that matter Satan) may not be able to respond to your arguments. Ones that do, have no problem with your arguments, because Adam is responsible. Your running away from discussing Adam is merely you running away from a losing argument. I’m sorry if that is blunt, but I call I see it.
“(7) I am reasoning and speculating about “properties” and implications of “standard model” of God
(8) To me, contradiction is to hold simultaneously God’s omniscience and free will, meaning God’s omniscience can’t “foresee” free will “doings”.”
(7) How to you plan to model an infinite God? “standard model” of God is a ridiculous concept. If God were able to fit into any model, he would not be God, by definition of God. All you do is prove my point, the contradiction is artificial and exists not in reality, but only in your mind.
“(9) OK. My first assumption is: because of lacking of proofs and evidences, there is no God. And: free will is illusion; the “self” or ego is a “by product” of evolution; well over quantum level our universe is deterministic; there is no afterlife; there is no “spiritual” soul; there are not supernatural things; good and evil don’t exist, they are mere ideas: the only important is if you are able to get some things you like happen or if you are able to avoid some other you dislike to happen; faith is not knowledge, it is wishes and feelings; any creed or theory must be analyzed in terms of its truth or falsehood; and so on…”
Which is nice, but to speculate legitimately on God, you must drop most of this. My chain of assumptions starts with the fact of God. Thus I view the world and evidence from this point of view. As such evidence of God abounds. Because you start with the assumption of “no God”, it is only natural you will find no evidence. Can’t you see this? If as a believer I can, why can’t you as a rationalist?
“(10) If soul exists and is not subject to causal laws you can’t talk of it or explain it using “because” neither “then” nor “therefore”, which are “causal” words.”
Naturally.
“(12) Rational and scientific analysis gives no basis to say soul exists.”
from the point of view starting that there is no God. However, we are still a long way from understanding ourselves fully. In other words, you just pulled that statement out of thin air. It is misleading. In truth, rational and scientific analysis doesn’t say much either way. In order to “prove or disprove” the soul you have to prove a negative. Thus “soul” is as unprovable or un-disprovable as God, but **must be assumed when speculating on God***.
“All this issue of “free” will comes from people unable to accept our mind, feelings, emotions and thoughts –our psyche- are deeply caused and not “free”, not “coming from thin air”.
Religion is a “cosmovision” which finds explanations for existing things from a being completely out of reality, magic, weird, anthropomorphic and inexplicable. The idea of a god is consistent with evolution of human groups in early development. When those groups evolve and became wiser, their need of gods became lesser. From animism to polytheism, monotheism and atheism, religion goes gradually missing importance, as statistics today show.
God represents a complex and contorted explanation. Very best, easier and satisfactory for our intellect, rationalist explanations become increasingly understood and accepted.”
This is an opinion (which you are welcome to), but has no very solid basis. Your inability to drop(or even recognize) your assumptions when reasoning about God is not my fault.
“I have explained my thoughts many times. I hope I have been clear enough. Anybody can disagree with me and it is OK. But I don’t want to be repetitive. So, I want to stop discussing “omniscience” and “free will” for a while.”
You are free to. But I have answered all of the points I felt needed to be answered.
Cheers
-Andrew
To Andrew Lobb:
De Andrew Lobb 29-6-10
Comment:
Carlos,
“(1) It is you who is talking about “delegation”. In the Garden, God explicitly didn’t delegate a thing to somebody. He simply forbade eating from a tree. (Besides, what for the trees in the garden, if forbidden?)”
Indeed, I am. And this is relevant. The tree is there to provide Adam a fair choice. (Oh, yes: choice 1; “Obey”; choice 2: “Die”. Choosing between life and death? WHY? Why DEATH? There wasn’t another alternative punishment: a headache, an indigestion, a diarrhea, etc? Oh, please, WHAT A LAMENTABLE LACK OF IMAGINATION from the god of love!! Didn’t God know Adam was a bit stupid? When teaching, human teachers offer choices to their pupils as part of learning process. Learning process DOES assume and accept pupil’s faults and errors. But when pupils choose the wrong, teachers correct them and give them another opportunity. TEACHERS NEVER PUT THEIR PUPILS TO DEATH BECAUSE OF WRONG ANSWERS. Oh, come on!! This is a joke!! To me, you are maneuvering and doing aerobatics, in order to “rescue” your god from his notorious limitations, scarce creativity and short temperance. And, if not a joke but a research, an omniscient entity doesn’t conduct experiments or tries, because as omniscient he already knows the experiments result. From this, to say “God is probing us” is plain nonsense)
“(2) Are you serious? We are talking about an omnipotent being. You have to demonstrate God –an omnipotent being- was “impotent” to do anything.”
I believe have demonstrated that character implies and unwillingness to do something. Therefore it is not done. This is not inability but unwillingness which is different. (Again and even so, he is responsible of his acts, willing or unwilling, because of the Super- AAA- Ultra Gold Premium Class-Infinite being religion says he is. In no time he stopped being a super-creator, super-conscious and omniscient being that punishes his creatures. Wow!! What an omni-super-benevolent being isn’t it?)
“(5) Not for me. Let’s suppose a person can see future events. He foresees a friend of him will ask him his car an later the friend will trespasses a red light and kill a man. Even so, the man lends his car to his friend. Then, the foreseer is responsible (guilty) of events because of his pre-knowledge of them and his friend is responsible (guilty) too, because of their knowledge of transit regulations. But to me, in no way driver fault implies an exemption of responsibility of car owner”
OK, who is more responsible? The owner or the driver? What if the owner warned the driver? The decision now rests entirely on a completely informed driver, thus it is the driver’s responsibility, is it not? If the driver were in a condition that he could not understand (e.g. he was drunk), then the owner would be responsible. However, I argue that this is *not the case*. (It doesn’t matter to me who is more or less responsible because I AM FOCUSED EXCLUSIVELY ON GOD’S RESPONSIBILITY, as many times before I said. He is my only object of analysis, even you disagree)
“(6) Once again, as I stated long before, I don’t want to discuss about Adam. I am focused only on God.”
And yet if you want to talk about responsibility and God, it is illogical and incomplete not to mention Adam (It is not incomplete to me). Religions that have no “Adam”(or for that matter Satan) may not be able to respond to your arguments (They may not be able if they are shut to the logic answer: God) Ones that do, have no problem with your arguments, because Adam is responsible. Your running away from discussing Adam is merely you running away from a losing argument. I’m sorry if that is blunt, but I call I see it. (Nope. It is you who are running away in a speed of light rocket because you are afraid of logic answer, pulling Adam in scene again and again, being Adam only a contingent being. God is not conditioned by Adam existence. God is absolutely autonomous, therefore responsible. I’m sorry, too)
“(7) I am reasoning and speculating about “properties” and implications of “standard model” of God
(8) To me, contradiction is to hold simultaneously God’s omniscience and free will, meaning God’s omniscience can’t “foresee” free will “doings”.”
(7) How to you plan to model an infinite God? “standard model” of God is a ridiculous concept. If God were able to fit into any model, he would not be God, by definition of God. All you do is proving my point; the contradiction is artificial and exists not in reality, but only in your mind.
(OK. Check this “ridiculous” concept please:
“Who is this being that billions of people believe in? Who is God? If you consult the dictionary, here is the first definition of God that you will find:
“A being conceived as the perfect, omnipotent, omniscient originator and ruler of the universe, the principal object of faith and worship in monotheistic religions.” [ref]
Most believers would agree with this definition because they share a remarkably clear and consistent view of God. Yes, there are thousands of minor quibbles about religion. Believers express those quibbles in dozens of denominations — Presbyterians, Lutherans, Catholics, Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists and such. But at the heart of it all, the belief in God aligns on a set of core ideas that everyone accepts.
If you were to make a list of the fundamental beliefs, it would look like this:
People believe that God is the almighty ruler of the universe. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, eternal, timeless, omnipresent and perfect.
People believe that God is the creator of everything. He created the universe and the earth.
People believe that God is the creator of life and human beings. Many people believe that God created the first man (Adam) and woman (Eve) in his own image, and we are all Adam and Eve’s descendents. Others are not that literal, and believe that God played a central role in the creation of the human species and our consciousness.
People believe that God instills in each of us a unique and everlasting soul.
People believe that we have eternal life after death. When we die, people believe that our souls return to God in Heaven for eternity if we have accepted Jesus as our savior.
People believe that God wrote or inspired the Bible. The Bible is God’s word. There is a sentence that summarizes the Bible for many people: The Bible is infallible, inspired and inerrant. [ref] Others are not that literal, but do believe that God played a central role in the Bible’s creation.
People believe that God sent Jesus to earth as God incarnate. Jesus performed many miracles while he was alive, and after his death Jesus was resurrected, appeared to hundreds of people, and then ascended into heaven, proving that he is God.
People believe that God is a benevolent and loving ruler. God is good and God is love.
People believe that God is a living being who knows and loves each one of us. Each of us can speak to God and have a personal relationship with him. The way that we speak to God is through prayer.
People believe that God has a plan for each of us. We each have a distinct and unique purpose in God’s universe. (For details on God’s plan, see Ch8)
We can call this the Standard Model of God. If you ask any believer about any of these ten core concepts, you will get confirmation. There might be a quibble (for example, some do not believe in a literal Adam and Eve, some are not certain that God wrote everything in the Bible, etc.), but billions of people believe in the Standard Model. These core beliefs are solid across the denominations. Approximately two billion human beings believe in these fundamentals.”” Taken from “Why Won’t God Heal Amputees”.
The Standard Model of God analyses him in terms of inputs to god and outcomes from god in order to detect if he “works” as Bible-religion-believers claims. The Standard Model of God shows he doesn’t and it is attributed to god’s inexistence)
“(9) OK. My first assumption is: because of lacking of proofs and evidences, there is no God. And: free will is illusion; the “self” or ego is a “by product” of evolution; well over quantum level our universe is deterministic; there is no afterlife; there is no “spiritual” soul; there are not supernatural things; good and evil don’t exist, they are mere ideas: the only important is if you are able to get some things you like happen or if you are able to avoid some other you dislike to happen; faith is not knowledge, it is wishes and feelings; any creed or theory must be analyzed in terms of its truth or falsehood; and so on…”
Which is nice, but to speculate legitimately on God, you must drop most of this. (Exactly the opposite. These are my starting points for analysis. From that I look if that model works and I find it does)
My chain of assumptions starts with the fact of God. (And my chain of assumptions starts from the lack of evidence of such a god).
Thus I view the world and evidence from this point of view. (And me, from mine)
As such evidence of God abounds. I can see them. (Then, show me please, but taking away every faith based affirmation).
Because you start with the assumption of “no God”, it is only natural you will find no evidence. (Saying that, you are postulating a weird way to connect with reality: first, assume there is god; second: find evidence of god. If god really exists he can evidence to me however my rejection of him, the same as many things become evident to me, independently of my attitude. A last, I find a total absence of clear evidence of a god, that to me implies no god. (“The invisible-undetectable-absent looks the same as the inexistent”)) Can’t you see this? (Yes) If as a believer I can, (BECAUSE you are a believer with preconceived –assumed- opinions) why can’t you as a rationalist? (BECAUSE I am a rationalist without preconceptions, open to evidence)
“(10) If soul exists and is not subject to causal laws you can’t talk of it or explain it using “because” neither “then” nor “therefore”, which are “causal” words.”
Naturally. (If you accept that, that “free” will is not an element of the set of sensate, rational, coherent, analyzed, programmed, adapted, directed, consistent, caused, evolved, and motivated things, facts or behaviors. On the contrary, it is an element of the set of weird, capricious, crazy, unmotivated, at random, gratuity and uncaused things. So, not very useful for sustain life in this planet)
“(12) Rational and scientific analysis gives no basis to say soul exists.”
from the point of view starting that there is no God. However, we are still a long way from understanding ourselves fully. In other words, you just pulled that statement out of thin air. (Not from thin air but from a great, widespread and thousand years old lack of reasons to believe. I disbelieve in your god (among thousand of others), the soul, spirits (holy or not) and other inventions. Even if I am wrong and god exists, I have to affirm that up to now, all around suggests he doesn’t exist) It is misleading. In truth, rational and scientific analysis doesn’t say much either way. In order to “prove or disprove” the soul you have to prove a negative. (In the same way science hadn’t proved the (true) existence of unicorns or Mickey Mouse, neither had it disproved (proved the negative) them. And then, perhaps do you believe in unicorns, Mickey Mouse, Zeus or Wotan?) Thus “soul” is as unprovable or un-disprovable as God, but **must be assumed when speculating on God***. (OK. You assumed that. Now, please, demonstrate or validate your assumption. But if you can’t, please stop talking to me about gods and souls because they are nebulous conjectures without a value of truth. In fact, I don’t talk of them to you because I can’t prove them)
“All this issue of “free” will comes from people unable to accept our mind, feelings, emotions and thoughts –our psyche- are deeply caused and not “free”, not “coming from thin air”.
“Religion is a “cosmovision” which finds explanations for existing things from a being completely out of reality, magic, weird, anthropomorphic and inexplicable. The idea of a god is consistent with evolution of human groups in early development. When those groups evolve and became wiser, their need of gods became lesser. From animism to polytheism, monotheism and atheism, religion goes gradually missing importance, as statistics today show.”
(You can read the following:
“Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies”. Journal of Religion and Society.;
“American Religious Identification Survey 2008”;
“Most religious groups in USA have lost ground; survey finds”- Usa Today-3-17-2009.;
“Young adults less devoted to faith” – UsaToday- 4-27-2010.;
“Continuing Decline of the Church in America: Why?” by Anthony Horvath. -The Christian Post.;
“Shifting religious identities” – UsaToday – 3-9-2009;
“See how U.S. religious landscape has changed in nearly 2 decades”- Usa Todady 3-9-2009.)
“God represents a complex and contorted explanation. Very best, easier and satisfactory for our intellect, rationalist explanations become increasingly understood and accepted.”
This is an opinion (which you are welcome to), but has no very solid basis.
“Religion is a “cosmovision”, because it explains how ALL reality is, with gods, angels, souls, etc. Very best, easier and satisfactory for our intellect, rationalist explanations become increasingly understood and accepted.” (OK. Read, please, “The Uncaused Beginning of the Universe”, by Quentin Smith (1988), and compare religious and materialistic explanations)
(Now, do you still call this and previous “opinions”?)
Your inability to drop (or even recognize) your assumptions when reasoning about God is not my fault. (As isn’t my fault the inability of believers in not demonstrated assumptions to rationally analyze their “certainties” or faith).
“I have explained my thoughts many times. I hope I have been clear enough. Anybody can disagree with me and it is OK. But I don’t want to be repetitive. So, I want to stop discussing “omniscience” and “free will” for a while.”
You are free to. But I have answered all of the points I felt needed to be answered. (The same I do).
Greetings
Carlos
To Andrew Lobb:
From The Times
September 27, 2005
Societies worse off ‘when they have God on their side’
By Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent
RELIGIOUS belief can cause damage to a society, contributing towards high murder rates, abortion, sexual promiscuity and suicide, according to research published today.
According to the study, belief in and worship of God are not only unnecessary for a healthy society but may actually contribute to social problems.
The study counters the view of believers that religion is necessary to provide the moral and ethical foundations of a healthy society.
It compares the social peformance of relatively secular countries, such as Britain, with the US, where the majority believes in a creator rather than the theory of evolution. Many conservative evangelicals in the US consider Darwinism to be a social evil, believing that it inspires atheism and amorality.
Many liberal Christians and believers of other faiths hold that religious belief is socially beneficial, believing that it helps to lower rates of violent crime, murder, suicide, sexual promiscuity and abortion. The benefits of religious belief to a society have been described as its “spiritual capital”. But the study claims that the devotion of many in the US may actually contribute to its ills.
The paper, published in the Journal of Religion and Society, a US academic journal, reports: “Many Americans agree that their churchgoing nation is an exceptional, God-blessed, shining city on the hill that stands as an impressive example for an increasingly sceptical world.
“In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies.
“The United States is almost always the most dysfunctional of the developing democracies, sometimes spectacularly so.”
Gregory Paul, the author of the study and a social scientist, used data from the International Social Survey Programme, Gallup and other research bodies to reach his conclusions.
He compared social indicators such as murder rates, abortion, suicide and teenage pregnancy.
The study concluded that the US was the world’s only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. Mr Paul said that rates of gonorrhoea in adolescents in the US were up to 300 times higher than in less devout democratic countries. The US also suffered from “ uniquely high” adolescent and adult syphilis infection rates, and adolescent abortion rates, the study suggested.
Mr Paul said: “The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America.”
He said that the disparity was even greater when the US was compared with other countries, including France, Japan and the Scandinavian countries. These nations had been the most successful in reducing murder rates, early mortality, sexually transmitted diseases and abortion, he added.
Mr Paul delayed releasing the study until now because of Hurricane Katrina. He said that the evidence accumulated by a number of different studies suggested that religion might actually contribute to social ills. “I suspect that Europeans are increasingly repelled by the poor societal performance of the Christian states,” he added.
He said that most Western nations would become more religious only if the theory of evolution could be overturned and the existence of God scientifically proven. Likewise, the theory of evolution would not enjoy majority support in the US unless there was a marked decline in religious belief, Mr Paul said.
“The non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator.
“The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.”
Greetings
Carlos
..and since when is a newspaper a source of any truth…?
Hello, Andrew:
If that is your only answer, I guess you are in serious trouble.
But OK. Lets suppose all of them are liars.
Would you dare to read the “real” thing, right from its author? You can find it in the Web as:
Evolutionary Psychology
“The Chronic Dependence of Popular Religiosity upon Dysfunctional Psycho sociological Conditions”
By Gregory Paul.(2009)
Greetings
Carlos
Fair enough, let me put it another way.
1. You can make statistics say anything you want it to.
2. I do not agree with the logic behind this article.
and finally and most damning for you:
3. http://arxiv.org/abs/1008.4324v1
and http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/43691
No news on when that one will be peer reviewed… :)
Have fun
-Andrew
Carlos,
Clearly I can not convince you, because you can’t see the illogic in your own view. You will not convince me because I have met this God I talk about.
I will answer your points if you request me to, but we will be going around in circles.
Agree to disagree?
Cheers
Hello, Andrew.
I offer you this: Starting from MY positivist-materialistic-atheistic starting points and points of view, develop your reasoning and let us see if your god appears in scene.
Cheers.
Carlos
Carlos:
But this is my point exactly! Finally you get it. Starting from your assumptions and world view, anyone will reach the same conclusion, because _you have excluded the possibility of God **before** you started_.
It is not your logic I find faulty it is your assumptions. And I submit reasoning based on false assumptions is faulty. If you read back through my comments, you will find I have said many a time, I have a lot of respect for atheists. You have a logical argument. You are in no way stupid. The problem is, since we do not share the same basic assumptions about the nature of reality, you are surprised when I disagree with you. But you shouldn’t be. I am not surprised when you disagree with me, because I _understand_ your POV very very well. I just reject it. I even know atheists with more convincing arguments then you.
I have said it before and I will say it again. You have _no_ reason to believe in God unless you meet him. But you can’t meet him unless you look for him, and unfortunately, you cant look for him if your mind is pre-closed and can’t accept the idea, because, even if you did find Him, you would be unable to see Him *no matter* what God does. If I stood before you and commanded a mountain to move, and it did. Would you believe? Think very carefully about that before you answer. I have met plenty of atheists and not one has ever answered “yes” without coming back to me a day later and saying “well, actually, honestly no.” And that is the most dramatic (and least useful) miracle we can dream up. My point is for you the existence of God is dependent not on science or logic, but your assumptions. And no atheist I have ever met has been comfortable questioning those.
Perhaps this will help you understand better, and maybe you can live in peace with people of other beliefs even if you still disagree now? I still respect you and your view.
Cheers
-Andrew
Hello, Andrew:
I am afraid you misinterpreted me. You hope I firstly assume “God exists” and then I peer the world looking for evidences.
I was raised Catholic and that was already done. And GOD NEVER APPEARED CLEAR, EVIDENT AND UNDOUBTEDLY.
Every divine fact or miracle I heard about when I was a believer almost always had a scientific-materialistic explanation-interpretation-counterpart. As much I learned about science, as little and replaceable God become.
I hadn’t seen a miracle neither God intervened in my worst times. Never something miraculous happened to me
Taken “visions”-“ghostly”-“mysterious”-“spiritual” things and believing away from my life I base it in concrete and evident facts. And my life works without “mysteries”. All that strange things and events only appear in an old “holy” book, as many other “holy” books, with its strange stories every one
As a method of knowledge your proposal is a biased one. You try rope strength by pulling it very hard. You say it is strong enough and good for use, when it passed the try, not by being faithful and not verifying your assumptions. Your god was my rope and it didn’t pass my try. If by not believing he doesn’t appear, obviously he doesnt exist.
“Starting from MY positivist-materialistic-atheistic starting points and points of view, develop your reasoning and let us see if your god appears in scene” means YOU show me your god by rational means. Doing so, you have to show me something whose answer undoubtedly couldn’t be a materialistic one.
I am contrary to religion. I think it is a bad thing, and “faith” is not a virtue. Sometimes, from my window I see people marching with their cross and idols and clergymen and feel sorrow and impatience, as if we were still in the middle Ages. I don’t like it. I don’t like them. I don’t respect them. But I tolerate them and their rituals.
Thanks for your friendly words.
Greetings
Carlos
Hi
No, I don’t misinterpret you. I don’t ask you to “assume God exists.” I merely object when your “positivist-materialistic-atheistic” assumptions (which include what amounts to the assumption that God does not exist) are used to derive a case for God not existing(I call this a circular argument…) This is the basis for all my objections. When looking for the truth, you can’t really start having already closed your mind can you? Thus I find your arguments invalid from any other point of view *except yours*. The correctness of your (or my) assumptions is a philosophical matter and has nothing to do with mainstream experimental or theoretical science as we know it. From my POV, I have ample evidence for God, and from yours, you have ample evidence against. Because we all view the world through our assumptions.
I maintain that in your view God is invisible as a result of your view, not his existence (or nonexistence). There is no proof that can be dreamed up of God that you would accept that would not reduce God into a predictable force of nature and not an intelligence or creator. Perhaps provide a counter-example if you can? You see all along, you’re asking for proof. So I say, “what would you accept as proof? Give me something, anything.” and I am yet to receive an answer. Heck, I even offered a moving mountain. Go ahead, dream up anything you would consider proof of God. And even if you can’t disassemble it, then using your own system I will dismantle that proof. I do understand your POV that well.
My object here is not to “convert” you, but to demonstrate to you why neither you nor I can be converted to the other’s view. Then perhaps you can gain some respect for the other side of the fence? We’re not all illogical foam at the mouth fundamentalists, just as atheists aren’t all snobbish “I’m so superior” self-centered individualists who are intolerant of everyone who disagrees.
Your concept of faith and mine are very different. Faith for me is something built up over time by me relying on God (sometimes for things as fundamental as my next meal) and when he comes through (as he always has for me) I can trust him for something bigger(Biblical example: David). I can not answer why the “rope” did not hold for you. The only thing I can say for sure is that the rope can only hold if you actually know Jesus, and it has always held for me, and based on that experience, I say will always hold. And it is irrelevant that any miracle has or has no natural explanation to me. My God is God of both natural and supernatural. Wherever the line between the two falls.
As for those drowned is ceremony and images and (as you say) idols, do they really know Jesus? I can not say – I am not their judge, but like you I also pity them. My God is about life not ceremony.
Cheers
-Andrew
Hello, Andrew:
“No, I don’t misinterpret you. I don’t ask you to “assume God exists.” I merely object when your “positivist-materialistic-atheistic” assumptions (which include what amounts to the assumption that God does not exist) are used to derive a case for God not existing (I call this a circular argument…) This is the basis for all my objections. ((Remember I was a believer long time ago. God is a hypothesis I put aside because it’s lacking of value. I was raised catholic and gradually I made a decision. God had his chance with me and he missed it)) When looking for the truth, you can’t really start having already closed your mind can you? ((Oh. No! I have my eyes well open but God is not seen. If he exists it is HIS responsibility –not mine- to show himself, to be worshipped and feared)) Thus I find your arguments invalid from any other point of view *except yours*. The correctness of your (or my) assumptions (Don’t call them “assumptions”, but “conclusions”)) is a philosophical matter and has nothing to do with mainstream experimental or theoretical science as we know it. ((It HAS TO DO WITH IT because it feed my idea of reality)) From my POV, I have ample evidence for God, and from yours, you have ample evidence against. ((Not against “him” but for “his” inexistence)) Because we all view the world through our assumptions. ((I say one of us is right, but I am not interested in a busy work of elucidation))
“I maintain that in your view God is invisible as a result of your view, not his existence (or nonexistence) ((Prove, please)). There is no proof that can be dreamed up of God that you would accept that would not reduce God into a predictable force of nature and not an intelligence or creator ((Prove, please. But if you are right, bad luck for you, because it will demonstrate that your god is a bare idea people have or haven’t in their head, and not an objective entity)). Perhaps provide a counter-example if you can? You see all along, you’re asking for proof. ((Correction: asking YOU, pressing YOU as a believer.)) So I say, “What would you accept as proof? Give me something, anything.” and I am yet to receive an answer. ((This: He, saying “Hello, Carlos. How are you? Look at me. I am God. I do exist”)) Heck, I even offered a moving mountain. ((OK. Move it! Show me or else be silent!!)) Go ahead, dream up anything you would consider proof of God. And even if you can’t disassemble it, then using your own system I will dismantle that proof. I ((“believe that I”)) do understand your POV that well. ((If that proof is a “God Quality Proof”, even disassembled, it will yet remain as a proof))
“My object here is not to “convert” you, but to demonstrate to you why neither you nor I can be converted to the other’s view ((I don’t believe that)). Then perhaps you can gain some respect for the other side of the fence? ((If I find something REALLY respectable, yes. If not, perhaps some polite tolerance, but not more)). We’re not all illogical foam at the mouth fundamentalists, just as atheists aren’t all snobbish “I’m so superior” self-centered individualists who are intolerant of everyone who disagrees. ((Thanks for that))
“Your concept ((Not my concept but my valuation)) of faith and mine are very different. Faith for me is something built up over time by me relying on God (sometimes for things as fundamental as my next meal) and when he comes through (as he always has for me) I can trust him for something bigger (Biblical example: David). I can not answer why the “rope” did not hold for you. ((But I can. It was because god, religion, faith, rites, prayers, blessings, bible and blabbing didn’t work “as in the ad”)) The only thing I can say for sure is that the rope can only hold if you actually know Jesus, and it has always held for me, and based on that experience, I say will always hold. ((Good for you)) And it is irrelevant that any miracle has or has no natural explanation to me. My God is God of both natural and supernatural. Wherever the line between the two falls.
“As for those drowned is ceremony and images and (as you say) idols, do they really know Jesus? I can not say – I am not their judge, but like you I also pity them. My God is about life not ceremony.
((Are we already done? This is a bit boring))
“Cheers
-Andrew”
Cheers for you too
Carlos
Hi Carlos.
“((Are we already done? This is a bit boring))”
No. We are not done. And yes, this is boring. Because you make the same logical fallacy repeatedly. As I said before, we can agree to disagree or keep going around in circles. Your choice. My point still stands. Your conclusions about the existence of God are based *only* on your assumptions. You want proof? Just look at your world view. “positivist-materialistic-atheistic” In other words, your world view includes the idea: “there is nothing supernatural”. This means that if you see something supernatural, then you will interpret as natural. QED. So, either you are lying about your world view, or your argument is circular. Which is it?
“Remember I was a believer long time ago.”
Were you? Really? Because I will state here, if you have ever actually met and experienced God, it may be easy to reject Him, but it is *impossible* to deny his existence. There is too much to explain away.
“Don’t call them “assumptions”, but “conclusions””
Based on what? They are and remain assumptions. Sorry.
“((Correction: asking YOU, pressing YOU as a believer.))”
And you are confused when it doesn’t worry me. It doesn’t worry me because I *have* proof. Which is invisible to you because of your world view.
You don’t believe we can’t convert each other because you don’t understand my POV. I understand yours very very well. Not I *believe* I understand. I *do* understand it. Your arguments are nothing new. There are many people like you and I know many.
“I can not answer why the “rope” did not hold for you. ((But I can. It was because god, religion, faith, rites, prayers, blessings, bible and blabbing didn’t work “as in the ad”))”
Or perhaps it is because you expect God to be nice and predictable at your beck and call? Why do you insist on painting a picture of God and then knocking it down as illogical. Thats a straw man argument. Your picture of God is illogical because it is not an accurate picture of God.
“(This: He, saying “Hello, Carlos. How are you? Look at me. I am God. I do exist”)) Heck, I even offered a moving mountain. ((OK. Move it! Show me or else be silent!!))”
I have not the faith to move a mountain, but I want you to at this point remember your statement. You would accept God speaking to you as proof? That is what you said and you will be held to it. Most other “positivist-materialistic-atheistic” people won’t. They’ll call it a hallucination. Read up on the “miracle of the sun”. In fact even if I did move a mountain for you, what is to stop you from crying “coincidence?” And if I started moving mountains left right and center, is that really God? After all, if it is a repeatable experiment, does that not make it in the realms of the natural, and not supernatural? Think about it before you reply.
Have fun
-Andrew
Hello people.
I present you some interesting quotes:
“Religion is an illusion and it derives its strength from the fact that it falls in with our instinctual desires.” –Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis,1933.
“Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis.” –Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, 1927
“Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. […] If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man’s evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity.” –Sigmund Freud, Moses and Monotheism, 1939.
Greetings.
Carlos
Come on, Freud’s perfect god would’ve probably been a battery-powered, honey-flavored phallic figurine made of gold…to a man so devoted to sensorial stimuli, of course religion (that has laws stating self-control) posed a threat…his writings have validity…but his fixations make me wonder if he was neurotic himself and if his own sexuality-obession overpowered him.
Hello, Wolfgang:
I dont mind if Freud needed a battery-powered phalloid and golden god or if he was a fetish-zoo-homo-electro-sexual.
To me, as you said, “his writings have validity” and that is all that counts.
Greetngs.
Carlos
Martin Lagerwey.
It’s very true that many debates are driven by personal preferences as you say. Those of the Intelligent Design camp who are seen as practising Christians get most of the publicity and accordingly the brunt of atheist’s cricism and frequently abuse. However there are many ID advocates who present a simple argument that intelligence is inferred from the mega-complexity of biological systems especially multi component co-dependant systems which of course includes most biochemical scenarios. Prima facie that is not an unreasonable inference bearing in mind the kind of complexity we are talking about. But Darwinists sweep this aside and with great faith claim the Darwin paradigm did it all. They offer huge generalizations similar to your comments.
<> And –
<> Now you can’t get more of a generalization than that. These are sweeping generalizations and totally non-scientific, in fact bordering on merely an ‘idea’ and not a theory. The statement that science would look for a natural explanation is really saying that a supernatural explanation is totally beyond the imagination and lies within the realm of fantasy so there just has to be a natural explanation. Surely science is the method by which we discover the truth about nature. What prohibits science eventually discovering a supernatural explanation? As far as DNA is concerned there is absolutely no ‘scientific’ explanation as to how a complex code could have arisen naturally in spite of our unprecedented knowledge. This is what makes me question naturalism. Pie in the sky generalizations don’t convince ID advocates and shouldn’t convince open minded atheist scientists.
It’s a riveting subject. Thank you for your exchanges.
Martin Ward
The argument that complexity infers design is logical. The argument that inference is not evidence is also logical. Natural complexity is common in snowflakes or crystals and can be explained by natural mathematical laws but information such as the DNA code is more tricky. Perry would say that this information infers intelligence.
I have just read Paul Davies “The Origin of Life” Penguin 2003. He is a scientist and philosopher and open enough to admit the weak points in evolution and scientific dogma.
He suggests models for information (coded in DNA) gathering by natural processes and selected by the environment. DNA makes proteins and the environment allows the more useful protein (and its DNA code) to survive. Information is a special type of complexity. His problem (and mine) of invoking a Designer as the agent of information is that it just begs the question. Where did that Designer get the information from. How does information start?
Naturalism in my view is just the set of laws that define how the world works. In that sense I am not an atheist. I don’t disbelieve but I do seriously doubt. I seek and follow the natural laws that explain the world. If supernatural means there are miracles without laws, then my suspicion is aroused. If supernatural means the laws that we are yet to discover, then our worldview may be looking more similar.
It seems my quotations from Martin Lagerwey’s post didn’t reproduce. Here they are:-
‘All these genes present but may be dormant in this genus. If in the Viceroy they are being expressed as “needed” and fine tuned over time, mimicry is feasible’ And:
‘All Limenitis spp are small, the viceroy is the largest but still smaller than the model monarch and with more fine tuning they may get larger over time’.
Top 10 Reasons To Be A Christian
1. There are no scientific evidence whatsoever that miracles exist because even the mightiest of scientist and science itself DON’T HAVE THE POWER to explain how these phenomena happen. (They may have different theories on how the world came into existence, how life came into existence, but they have no profound explanations WHY the world came into existence, WHY life came into existence, WHY on Earth are we here for? Only the Bible has the answer to these.)
2. The story of Jesus is an accumulation of true-to-life stories told by REAL WITNESSES (prophets, apostles) and passed down from one generation to another through the greatest book of all– the BIBLE. (People kept ranting on how the story of Jesus came to be, staying stuff like they were “stories of different people compiled to create an uber nice guy”. I’ve got a question about this: If the Jesus story is IN FACT compiled stories of different myths and legendary people, why can’t you name a single story or a single person who performed such things that Jesus had done to support your theory?)
3. RELIGION and SCIENCE are compatible ways of thinking: Separate realms that should NEVER be separated. RELIGION itself is a science – (a science that gives us thorough knowledge on how we can live a life full of meaning and purpose. A science that explains all the what’s and the why’s that science alone can’t prove.)
4. The Bible is a LIVING and EXISTING proof written by REAL WITNESSES. It came into existence because people WHO EXIST created it and wrote REAL things which definitely existed. (Scientists are known for this cliché: “to see is to believe”, maybe that’s why they don’t believe that God exist because they don’t see Him, but I bet my soul they believe in “AIR” even though I know for a fact that there’s no way for air to be seen. Why do they believe that air exist—because they can feel it, they may not see it but they can see what it can do, and they BELIEVE it exist. Why do CHRISTIANS believe in GOD although we don’t see Him physically? Because we can FEEL HIM, we can see His wonderful creations all around us, we witness what He can do every day, and we BELIEVE and we HAVE FAITH in His existence.
5. Science has NO history. It is an ever-growing systematized body of knowledge based on observation and experiments so basically, there’s no way to actually “tract” its history since it is entirely broad that, just like miracles, NOT the brightest of Scientist can dig its roots.
6. St. Paul is a servant of Christ who’s account of travels and deeds were even written in Historical books. He DID NOT invent Christianity because it Religion is not invented – it exists—its existence is all because of those who believe.
7. Evolution proves that THERE is GOD because God knew beforehand that Evolution would come into existence (and would slowly destroy mankind) long before people concluded that evolution disproves (or would disprove Him) http://www.creationists.org/warnings-from-God-about-evolution-myth.html
8. In their meekness and humility, Christians do everything in their power to help the helpless and the poor (in spirit) to be aware of God’s existence so he/she would inherit the kingdom of heaven. That way they can save them from burning in the lakes of fire. They don’t believe that EVERYONE will burn in hell because logically, EVERYONE includes them (Christians).
9. The Bible is a reliable source of the TRUTH and SALVATION. In fact, God’s words are so perfect that non-believers try really hard just to find flaws (Just like how other people try to soil something that is good just to bring it down.)
10. MANY people have been killed in the name of GOD because it was their choice to lay down their own lives for Him (Just like how He laid down His life for them). Their noble choice will not be in vain for the kingdom of heaven is open for them. Millions and billions and trillions of people have been killed in the name of money, power and Satan—they died because they don’t have God in their lives.
Martin Lagerwey.
It would be helpful if you could post some of Paul Davies’ ideas on how a chemical code which codes for the synthesis of complex proteins could occur naturally. I would then hope that Perry would offer his comments. Bearing in mind those complex proteins are highly specific and ‘earmarked’ for specific biochemical tasks in the grand scheme not just a pool of useless proteins. That by itself suggests design. When you say:
“He suggests models for information (coded in DNA) gathering by natural processes and selected by the environment. DNA makes proteins and the environment allows the more useful protein (and its DNA code) to survive”. You are merely reiterating the Darwinists mantra. A massive sweeping generalization which doesn’t convince. Any inference that a supernatural designer is at work might beg the question as you suggest but that doesn’t destroy the inference. I understand a principle of philosophy is that you can argue for the cause of a phenomenon but that doesn’t require you to argue for the cause of that cause. In fact if God exists I suggest it would be impossible to argue for what caused that entity. The scientists of the Intelligent Design movement argue very rationally for intelligence as a motivator but usually go no further. They rely purely on the empirical evidence before them. ‘You go where the evidence takes you’ is often quoted. Since these debates always end up as a stalemate I often take a purely detached position and ask myself whether it is more reasonable to suppose life arose purely by fortuitous accidents e.g. incalculable number of accidental mutations in DNA starting with the first progenitor DNA whatever that was, through the elementary life forms to ourselves, or is there an intelligent plan involved. Bearing in mind it has been said that constructive mutations are extremely rare, some say they are never constructive. Somehow intelligence seems more reasonable, in a pragmatic sense not emotional.
The important detail in my reiteration of the Darwinist’s mantra is that information is acquired somehow. Either by divine intelligence or a natural mechanism. My massive sweeping generalization does provide an agent of intelligent input and that external source is the environment. There is a feedback loop that selects winning patterns in DNA and this becomes the code.
You suggested that;
As far as DNA is concerned there is absolutely no ’scientific’ explanation as to how a complex code could have arisen naturally in spite of our unprecedented knowledge.
Primordial cells can hardly be well known today because they make no fossils and leave no original chemistry. Therefore there are only suggestions and sweeping statements, but a scientific explanation does exist. (But I don’t think that the origin of life, or DNA is well explained at all.)
This reminds me of the allegation that Michael Behe made for irreducible complexity that no scientist has ever offered an explanation as to how the bacterial flagellum could arise naturally. Of course some mechanisms have readily been explained as any google search will show. He told Magistrate Judge Jones (2005) that he would correct this error in his book but we’re still waiting.
Perry was once asked (something like) what was the weakness in his own theory and this is a question that we could each ask of ourselves. His reply by my crude memory (Apology to Perry) “once a scientist accepts God/miracles then he will look for a way to explain it”
If intelligent design is ultimately shown to be required to explain life and the universe, then the ‘how’ question is still there to be asked. The question “where did God come from?” remains and will be addressed sooner or later. If the agent of the DNA code was divine intelligence, then surely that can be understood, like we have come to understand evolution, and the human body and atomic structure and the life cycles of stars.
But my argument doesn’t convince many on this forum. Nor does ID look like much more than religious thinking to me. I suspect that some minds work differently, like seeing in words or pictures, or thinking intuitively or pragmatically.
Otherwise how can this same world result in (mainly)two hugely different world views?
One Jehovah’s Witness who I allow inside and has stopped trying to convert me has listened to my reasons for non belief said ‘I hear what you say and I cant explain but… I still kinda think that God does exist”
Finding faults with present day christanity does not defy God.
Scientific prove? the theory of universe has changed many courses just in present life time, so is the ‘modern’ science credible enough that if we prove God with that, we’ll beleive Him?
Islam has answer to all your quetions.
1. Miracles. Just see your own birth, has this science even made an ant yet?
2. The Jesus story. Refer to Quran
3. Science and faith are not incompatible ways of thinking. Quran repeatedly tell to belivers to think about the world and things around us.
4. The history of science.
5. The Bible is a translation. That’s why Quran is preserved and absolutely unchaged in its original text and script. Try reading it.
6.“rabbi named Jesus into a god. Jesus was a prophet and messanger of God, just a human being.
7.“Evolution disproves God.” Have you proved evolution, scientificly? Its only the ‘adoptation with environment’ that is all observed.
8. Eternity? Was there time before big bang? science says time did not exist before big bang. And time will cease to exist if universe collapses back into singularity.
9.“The Bible is riddled with contradictions , but Quran is not.
10.“More people have been killed in the name of religion than any other cause in the history of the world.” Heroshima and Nagasaki were in the name of religion? or in the name of scince
I’m not going into a long diatribe why I am an Atheist but provide instead a few of my favorite quotes:
A man without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.
Vique’s Law
The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. Oscar Wilde
Religious people live not in this world but in the thought of another – no one has come back to tell us of the other world pass the grave. They live in a bubble that protects from reality without seeing the beauty and true mystery of the Universe. Bertrand Russell’s book “Why I am not a Christian” basically reiterates my own point of view; so do hundreds of other brilliant Scientists and writers. I am always amazed how Christian have an explanation for everything especially when science proves a point – it reminds me of the Mormon Church whose profit usually has a vision just before the Federal Government intervenes with one of their beliefs – like they did with blacks and polygamy. I’m sorry but there is so much contradiction in the Bible that a third rate lawyer would tear to shreds.
Hello, Robert:
I offer you this quotations.
I hope you enjoy them.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. – Steven Weinberg
The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality. – George Bernard Shaw
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful. Seneca the Younger 4 b.c.- 65 a.d.
Religion has actually convinced people that there`s an invisible man — living in the sky — who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever `til the end of time! …But He loves you. George Carlin
All thinking men are atheists. Ernest Hemmingway
Not only is there no god, but try getting a plumber on weekends. – Woody Allen
Greetings.
Carlos
z mehedi.
I would like to comment on a couple of things you said.
Re. 5 and 9. It’s hardly surprising there are contradictions in the Bible because it was written over a long period of time by a number of writers. Presumably that wouldn’t occur if a document was written by one person only like the Quran.
Re. 10. Regrettably you are right and unfortunately the vast number of killings have been perpetrated by muslims. Even worse, innocent woman and children have been the victims. Fresh in our minds here in the UK are the London bombings. Ordinary people, non-combatants, family people on their way to work, slaughtered by muslims in pursuance of their warped ideology. Then there is Pakistan and Iraq. Thousands of muslims slaughtered by their muslim brethren. Sure is a wonderful religion.
.
Remember that there is no actual proof that the London Underground bombings were actually done by “terrorists”. The policies of the world and hows its governed is a mix of both the consequences of decisions made -not by their “elected” governments but by powerful individuals who pull all the strings in this game of life. Just as America was fooled into the war with Iraq for 9/11 which was a deliberate inside job, so are the “great nations” of today. The Taj Mumbai incident was no exception. At a time when India is ruminating over a defence contract called to be one of the largest multi-billion contract ever floated in the international defence market, who wants the biggest share of the pie? The answer stares you in the face.