Jesus appeared to other people — so why can’t he appear to me?
That’s the question Lee Randolph asks over at Debunking Christianity. And it’s a great question.
The Bible says Jesus appeared to his disciples after his death. Even Thomas wouldn’t believe Jesus was resurrected until he saw him and touched his wounds. Jesus appeared to Paul. And Paul says he appeared to over 500 people that were alive when he was writing.
If those stories are true, they admit people need evidence to believe. We’re no different — if we’re to believe such extraordinary claims, then we have to have extraorindary evidence for it. As Thomas Paine said in The Age of Reason:
Instead of [showing evidence of the resurrection to everyone], a small number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are introduced as proxies for the whole world, to say, they saw it, and all the rest of the world are called upon to believe it.
But it appears Thomas did not believe the resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe, without having occular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I; and my reason is equally as good for me and for every other person, as for Thomas.
The best evidence would be for Jesus to appear to us. Then we would all believe. No one would go to hell, and everyone would worship him.
But he doesn’t. Why not?
There’s only two options:
- Because he doesn’t want us to believe, or
- Because he’s dead.
I’ll go with #2.
Some Xians apparently believe, though, that Jesus is like a jealous lover, secretly testing if you’re not looking at other gods while he’s away.
On the other hand, for many people it’s already sufficient if somebody else, some untrustworthy witness claims to have seen Mary / Jesus / the face of Jesus in a tortilla to get all hyped up.
Mary seems to have appeared a lot. Look at all the different versions of her. She always appears to very young, impressionable children. Maybe Jesus is just having her do the job of appearing now?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=StBYzCFeNjM&NR=1
3. He never existed in the first place, except in some people’s imagination.
Which is also where he would make all his appearances, if he chose to do so.
Don’t you hate it when people that supposedly love you play games that test your love for them?
Sounds like an immature “freshmen in high school” love to me.
Seriously guys last time he appeared we nailed him to a cross for a bit of a laugh and then locked him in a cave for a couple of days before letting him out — it’s going take a long before he forgives people for that little escapade.
Man, if I told you that I saw a guy eat a whole birthday cake in one sitting, you would probably find it hard to believe me.
If I told you I read a book written by a guy who saw another guy eat a whole cake, you would probably say it never happened.
Yet your friends and family tell you that they read a book written two thousand years ago, and translated 3 plus times, whose authors may or may not have seen some guy rise from the freaking dead, and that’s a likely story.
Sheesh.
I’d say the cheap answer would be the last words from the story of Doubting Thomas:
“Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”
Isn’t theology always so profoundly unsatisfying?
That’s the hardest thing about serving the Lord, the lack of back-up. It would be so much easier to be reviled and persecuted and mocked for witnessing to my faith if there was just an occasional word of appreciation, some little message of support and affirmation. But everyday I put myself out there, one of the laborers in the over-ripe fields of this modern iniquitous society. I take the slings and arrows for Christ. But what do I get back–nada! It’s like having a boss that doesn’t know you exist even when you’re cleaning up after him and buying the wedding present for his wife that he would’ve forgot otherwise. And when I pray…it’s like hanging on a help-line that no customer support person ever answers. I don’t want much. Christ doesn’t have to appear and let me stick my fingers in his wounds. I don’t need an Archangel, or even a cherubim. I’d just like something more than a self-satisfied old white guy preaching that he ‘knows’ the Lord’s will. How come the Lord speaks to him and not me? Isn’t my suit sharp enough? All I want is sopmething small and personal–like Jesus sending me an email when my monitor isn’t plugged in to the power socket or connected to my laptop. Or one simple answer to a prayer–a real answer. Lord, I believe you’ve cured terminal illneses and raised people from the dead, this joint I lost on the end of my little finger, Lord, could you grow it back? It isn’t much, won’t take long, but if you could as a little quid pro quo for my lifetime of service, then I’m yours Lord, yours forever. I won’t ask you to bring back the child you took from me in all your wisdom–I’m not that greedy.
I think I’ll go with #3 – he never lived in the first place and is just a myth.
Let’s say Jesus does appear to you.
How would he prove to you beyond reasonable doubt that he is, in fact, Jesus?
I suspect that there is now way in which this could be proven to your satisfaction.
What is the point of appearing then? You wouldn’t believe it anyway…
What, appearances in grilled cheese sandwiches don’t count? or was that Mary? You guys are just too picky with your evidence and all. /sarcasm
If I was alive to witness one of Jesus’ supposed miracles, I would be forced to believe he was who he said he was. Either that or a great illusionist.
Thomas followed him for his entire ministry and witnessed numerous miracles. He still refused to believe Jesus had risen from the dead.
It only confirms that none of Jesus’ miracles actually happened. Either that or Thomas was an idiot.
a good question. see, i don’t think that God is only good to me. i guess it’s a difference in how we see pain and suffering and our expectations of God.
i don’t expect God to take away all my pain and suffering of keep me from ever having pain or suffering. Jesus suffered, everyone who has ever lived has suffered. the difference is that i think God is there through it. giving comfort, strength and some times even understanding that i couldn’t have on my own.
i think a lot of people expect that God should keep everyone safe all the time and i don’t believe that.
so to the questions above. No Mark thats not how it works. but in this realm of hypothetical, what if the baby that person killed was going to grow up to be another Hitler? i don’t know those things but God does and so yes he has let some children die. maybe it’s for the better. i just don’t know why he lets children die i’m sorry i don’t.
remember, my world view includes an afterlife the spans eternity so how long someone lives here is really not that important.
but to the next question would i want it to be my kid who dies? hell no. but the world is a sad and dark place. bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.
for me it comes back to what i understand God’s promises to be free of suffering is not one of them.
Elemenope
We could of course be wrong in our probabilistic assessments, and what we thought was a myth was in fact a fact.
______________________________
Yes, ELEMENOPE…you could indeed be wrong. Now that is an original thought by an atheist if ever I read one.
He is the subject of nearly every thread, every post whether refuted or declared to be.
Blessed are they that believe and have not seen…what does this mean? What and why should we desire this vague “blessing”. Just as He spoke to Abraham (a type & figure of us, non-believers, wayfaring strangers, traveler’s in time) saying “leave your father’s house (your human identity and ancestry) and go to a land (dwelling place, existence, life) that I will show you…and I will be your exceeding great reward”.
Its Him…self, His very presence in us that is the reward. The eternal, uncreated life of Christ, indwelling YOU. This is why Paul calls it the “mystery of the ages…Christ IN you”. Col 1:27. We are containers for His presence, this is the liberating secret.
We are too often as the men on the road to Emmaus…when Christ Himself walked amongst them, with them and they “recognized Him not”. Have you seen Him…in that one? Have you heard Him…through the voice of the one in the garments of flesh? Can you find Him in the poor, the sick, the imprisoned? Where is He now? Where can He be found…really? Where is the dwelling place of God?
Surely He has appeared to us…for “as He is in this world so are we”…what is humanity? What did He mean (speaking of acts of sacrificial mercy, compassion, kindness) when He said “when you’ve done these things to them, you’ve really done them unto…Me”.
Maybe He is…everywhere but we are looking…in the sky?
JC
We have as much evidence for Jesus’ existence as we do the existence of any other single figure in history. The question is, was He who He said He was? Did He come back to life? Why doesn’t He prove His existence now?
If you have ever read the Bible, you can see that the Old Testament is full of people who saw with their own eyes a mighty, God-powered act (be it a plague of locusts, the sun standing still, or a city getting blasted into a royal crispy by fire.) For any of those people, though, it took shockingly little time for them to forget what they had seen and they wandered off to worship a some bovine-shaped Au or whatever else they fancied. If I was an all-powerful god, I might be slightly annoyed with having to constantly prove myself to people. It would be a like a professor having to always bring in his framed PhD and wear his doctoral cap and gown to teach lecture in everyday, just to prove to some snarky freshmen that he actually had to credentials to teach.
btw, VidLord, you made an awesome point! Humans throughout recorded history always seem to need to worship something greater than themselves. Ever wonder where that need came from?
VidLord…
That is not a stretch to imagine at all for me. Why would it be? He had to come through the same “gate” (birth canal) that we all do. Christ came to remind us of our true identies as “son’s (offspring) of God”. Ps 82:6. Therefore now we “recognize no man according to the flesh (our bodies are not us, that’s the first revelation, rather they are just…our bodies) even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet we know Him in this way no longer”. 2 Cor 5:14-16.
We had lost our ability to perceive the divine realities, the original, spiritual aspect of our being had become severely impaired. Christ came to “set at liberty them that were captive”, to our old, false nature and identities and to “open blind eyes” so we can see who we really are, who we were meant to be, our true nature.
We only think we know about this Jesus, this mystery man but truthfully we have not yet received the understanding of His true offer, real message. Its so good, when we do hear it we can hardly imagine such a thing. It sound a lot like a…fairy tale, so many say thats all it is. What do you say VidLord? What are you hearing in your inner man?
Warm regards,
JC
Oh no… over on the Ken Miller forum, I was feeling that Alex had been such a loving Christian, I was.. deeply moved.
The rambling and drive-by hostility and ad hominem attacks and refusal to answer anything direct or say anything direct over there were giving me that gentle nudge toward God’s love…
And now his attacks and hostility are over here too…
All that pure reason and pure love is what I needed… it’s all so clear and pure and simple now… I’m swayed… the love… I can feel it… I’m converted at last… I think I’m turning Christian…
JC – I don’t hear anything – which I find very liberating. I can only imagine the guilt I would be feeling if I actually believed god was watching me and getting sad by my actions. BTW JC/ lucidmystery I highly recommend this article below on how our brain “defaults” to god.
“Boyer points out that people expect their gods’ minds to work very much like human minds” which I find fascinating. No one ever seem to question why an all powerful, all knowing, omnipotent being would get angry or pleased…
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126941.700-born-believers-how-your-brain-creates-god.html?full=true
Default to god
Based on these and other experiments, Bering considers a belief in some form of life apart from that experienced in the body to be the default setting of the human brain. Education and experience teach us to override it, but it never truly leaves us, he says. From there it is only a short step to conceptualising spirits, dead ancestors and, of course, gods, says Pascal Boyer, a psychologist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri. Boyer points out that people expect their gods’ minds to work very much like human minds, suggesting they spring from the same brain system that enables us to think about absent or non-existent people.
Actually…the brain is comprised within the soul’ish realm. The uniting of spirits, His to mine is in the deeper still, spirit although my soul “houses” my spirit and the two can sometimes be referenced together being the (combined, whole) spiritual aspect of our being.
You only know sir…what YOU know…but you can know Truth…Himself.
There is more, there is a life.
JC
When there’s a proof, there’s no need for belief.
If the goal is to check whether people believe or not, coming with proofs defeats the purpose.
Do Alex Guggenheim and John C. ever say anything that doesn’t rise above the nonsensical?
Oy.
Oh, and I’d have a hell of a lot more trust in this alleged “god” of the Christians if it would stop being so damned obfuscatory. Why, it makes me think that the writers who claimed to have experienced this god were just making shit up. And we know that EVERYTHING in the pages of the Holy Bible (hell, I’ll throw in the Quran for good measure) happened just as it was written and TOTALLY makes sense, right?
John C, if you have time, could you explain how 1st Corinthians 2:7-8 fits in an orthodox Christian framework as opposed to a Marcionite Chrestian framework. There, Paul says “But we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom, which God ordained before the world unto our glory: Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.” What “princes” are in view? Pilate, Herod, and Caiphas? Seems unlikely. For if Pilate, Herod and Caiphas knew that Jesus dying on the cross could save their souls, they would all the more have greedily killed him so they can then believe in him and be saved! These princes are against men’s salvation altogether. In Marcionism, they are the angels of the Kosmokrator, the wicked god who created the world as a torture chamber and who clearly would not have had his angels arrange for Pilate, Herod, and Caiphas to crucify Jesus if he had known that Jesus was a more powerful God than he and that Jesus wanted him to kill him, that is was a trap to ensnare him and rob him of his power by making him overstep his bounds. For the Kosmokrator is only ruler of the material world, but Jesus being from the spiritual, was not under his authority, so killing him was taking on himself authority he didn’t have. And once having overstepped his authority, he had to pay a penalty, the penalty of losing control of certain of his subjects and transferring them to Chrestos. But if you say Satan is the prince of this world, it still doesn’t work in orthodoxy, because Satan knew who Jesus was (what’s the temptation in the wilderness all about if Satan didn’t know??) and the demons confessed to know Jesus was the Christ, right? Even so, the earliest Catholic fathers use the whole Jesus tricking Satan into crucifying him to make him overstep his bounds thing to explain the crucifixion. Were they borrowing this from Marcionism? And if so, were they even conscious of this fact?
Yay Teleprompter!! I like your arguments! I promise, no sarcasm; you come up with good questions. Stumpers, but good questions.
“No, that is not true. What we have, are copies of copies.
It’s not solid evidence.”
I wasn’t referring to simply Bibles. If someone doesn’t believe in the Bible, I don’t want use it as proof of a person’s existence. Tracking down one random individual from Jesus’ time period is rough, but not impossible. Academia believes a man named Jesus (ok, well His Hebrew name) lived, but that was more of a religious revolutionary or pot-stirrer rather than a deity.
“And yes, you raise some excellent points about the Old Testament. But what if large portions of it are mythical or allegorical? Have you considered that possibility?”
I have. Even then, though, the allegory explains why God doesn’t keep revealing Himself constantly. (And by the way, that was a case of using the Bible to explain itself, but I think it kind of worked there.)
“If humans have always had an urge to worship something, and that urge comes in the sequence of history long before the origin of your religion, wouldn’t you say that could indicate that the cause or source of that urge may, in fact, predate your religion? What about the Sumerians? What did they do without your religion? What about the Ganghes River cultures? What about cultures in ancient China?”
This gets a little messy, and is also where I get my quack label. So I’m the bane of my biology department, and I believe in a young Earth. (Yes, I understand carbon dating, uranium dating, geological layer formation, etc, etc., but those all give scientists the numbers they want. Try helium and zircon dating, it will give you a whole different age for the earth.) Anyhoo, thats a round about way of saying I don’t think any religion predates mine. I believe the Sumerians were the contemporaries of Abraham, and God was most definitely around then but rejected by some of the people at the time (which was probably why God chose Abraham to be the father of the chosen people.) Jesus was a Jew and came to take Judaism to the next level, so although Christianity is “newer” than Judaism, I think it stemmed from Judaism.
Outside of Jesus and the Patriarchs, even religions from other countries reflect back to the Bible. You mentioned China. Many written Chinese characters are made by combing several characters to make one new character. Look at the Chinese character for the words like “forbidden,” “beginning,” “to create,” “God” and my personal fave “large ship.” They are made up of characters that relate to Bible stories. For example, to write “large ship,” you combine the characters for “eight,” “people,” and “boat.” How many people were on Noah’s large ship? Eight. Could be a random coincidence. But it’s pretty weird.
“It appears far more likely to me that religions arose independently, partly through psychological factors and partly as social constructs. But no supernatural hypothesis has been able to account for the origins and divergences of human religions. How would you account for it?”
How do I account for it? Well, plain and simple, over time people come up with other ideas, and I think we see that today. Many people, Christians and non-Christians alike, believe that if God is all good, powerful, and omnipotent, then nothing bad should ever happen. Well, it’s pretty much obvious that’s not the case. So when something doesn’t go according to plan, what do some people do when their child dies of cancer, their grandpa slowly deteriorates from Alzheimers, or wars rage across their country? Abandon God and find something else that they can understand better. If you make something up on your own, you will obviously be able to understand it better than Someone who is too big for the human mind to fathom.
I probably have said something similar in an earlier thread cuz me beliefs haven’t changed. Also, I cited Judaism as the world’s oldest religion based on a Biblical time scale, not academic. I make no apologies for that and I don’t deny it. Call me crazy, but don’t call me ignorant.
(And I was silent on African religions because Teleprompter didn’t mention them, and my post was a response to his.)
lucid…
You keep telling us your god is too big for the human mind to fathom, yet everything about him is small and petty. He’s a nasty, bad-tempered petty god of an ignorant desert people. As for Jesus–his ‘sacrifice’ is silly and grotesque, even if it were true I wouldn’t admire such gratuitous sadism on the one hand and masochism on the other.
Your faith impresses me, but I don’t find it admirable, only remarkable that you can understand so much science and still cherry -pick the bits that accord with your limited worldview. You say we make things up because god is too big for our minds. But he’s no Crab Nebula, he’s a small time sex-obsessed conjurer with an evil and capricious disposition who likes to kill, maim and destroy for fun, and I don’t see christ’s wishy-washy message changing the old smiting bastard’s essential disposition.
Your posts are largely made up and wishful–we can all see that you really don’t know half the things you propound with such certainty, you just desperately want them to be true. You can keep deluding yourself, but I don’t think you’re fooling many people (apart from other evident fools like JC and that Alex idiot).
@Jimminy…
I dont, my old self is dead, went to the cross in Christ, now its Him living His life through me. Gal 2:20.
The great exchange. The liberating life is anchored in the eternal realities, the spirit realm is the only…real realm.
Take care..
JC
You want to talk about some real b.s., Jiminy Christmas? I’m about to leave a theological discussion to watch the Oscars, the ultimate in tabloid fodder. If you want to knock me for something, try to break my absolutely redonk habit of admiring the dresses and this years gorgeous host :P
I’ll leave with this. I’m the last person in the world to disagree with anyone who wants data to support a conclusion. You want hard fact to prove God exists? I can’t give it. I’m sorry. But the beauty of religious freedom is I can believe what I believe and you can believe what you believe. I would never slam a Bible in the face of a homosexual and yell “Repent, sinner!” or shun a girl who has had an abortion. That would be some serious Jesus love right there (sorry, holier-than-thou Christians make me mad). People are free to make their own choices, whether right or wrong or neither. In the end, I guess I could be wrong. My faith tells me I’m not, but I’m free to be wrong and you are free to disagree with me! I can’t condemn you for having an opinion, and I hope you don’t condemn me either.
Was Alex born a troll, or did a troll steal him at birth?
@joecool
“Let’s say Jesus does appear to you.
How would he prove to you beyond reasonable doubt that he is, in fact, Jesus?”
I’m pretty sure your mythical god could figure it out for itself.
If it can’t, do you really want to call that god?
“I suspect that there is now way in which this could be proven to your satisfaction.
What is the point of appearing then? You wouldn’t believe it anyway…”
Please tell me more of what your god can’t do.
God does not need to DO anything.
God is…YOU! Realize it now and accept it. Perform miracles. Laugh. Make love. Heal the world.
Ok, taking a break from my vapid love of a shiny statue named Oscar ;) This will be my last comment for this post, though, because I don’t like making people angry. I’ve said it before, that I like debate; but I don’t like genuinely aggravating people. If I’m pissing people off, I’ll back off. I just wanted to address two things real quick.
“Oh yes, your opinion. I forgot that all opinions are equal aren’t they? Except…they’re not. You have deluded, ignorant, and incorrect opinions. We have facts.”
Facts? You mean solid, unchanging information? Ok, like it used to be a fact that sun revolved around the earth? And it was a fact that raw meat could spontaneously create maggots (abiogenesis)? And it was, well, almost fact that proteins were the carriers of hereditary information? And it was a fact that a black man was worth only 2/3 of a white man? In our world, you have to be careful with what you call a fact. “Fact” changes with our increasing knowledge.
Fact is even dependent on your point of view. We say there are seven colors (and their various shades): red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. That’s a fact. Unless you’re an animal that can see a bigger range of the light spectrum. Or (our increased knowledge) you can use technology to use UV or infrared light.
“Continually insisting on substituting and equivocating your deluded and incorrect opinions with demonstrable facts makes you at best a willfully ignorant fool, and at worst an intentionally deceitful liar.”
I have already told you that you can call me crazy or a fool or whatever all you want, but do NOT call me ignorant. Ignorance implies a lack of knowledge. I’m choosing to believe against a standard. Darwin did it. I already mentioned that I know the difference in what the Bible says versus what Bible scholars say (an incredible difference, I might add); I have taken and taught too many biology classes to not know the difference in Orrorin tugenesis, Homo ergaster, Pan paniscus, and Homo sapien and where their fossils were (or for humans, where the extant billions are found); and I am a firm believer in the notion from “To Kill a Mockingbird,” don’t ask a question unless you already know the answer. I know the atheist side and I know my side. I like my side better. Plain and simple. Yeah, maybe that makes me crazy to you. That doesn’t matter to me. So, fool? Sure, whatever. In essence, I’m choosing to put faith in something I can’t see. I can’t ask everyone to understand that.
And this sounds like a good place as any to throw in a quote I picked up from one of my evolutionary bio profs (he was talking about fossils in Darwin’s day): “The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.” hehe, works both ways, doesn’t it?
Well, I have to get back to cheering on “Slumdog Millionaire!”
@JK…
I am not questioning your experience, that you never believed, but since you have now denied Christ, it just means you never really…knew. To “know” is translated in an intimate, even sexual, union kind of way. You did not conceive, the virgin (you) never birthed the Christ child in you.
“UNTIL Christ be formed in…you”. Gal 4:19. You bailed out before the full consummation like many do prematurely.
As far as your new found liberty…how much free’er can one be than…”he whom the Son sets free is free indeed”.
The fact that you continue to relate Christ to the cultural context of “religion” is the exclamation mark.
I am no better…only committed to the whole journey. I appreciate your candor, your sharing.
There (really) is more…
JC
Why don’t the theists who show up here ever answer substantive questions? Daniel has asked a very good question in this post. Why aren’t we seeing christians trying to actually answer it?
For those who believe, why doesn’t jesus show himself to us? Please tell us. I’m genuinely interested.
@Bill…
I answered the question in my first post (look under ShockedIsaid’s post). You did not see it, or didnt care to read it, not sure which.
JC
I’m not sure why He doesn’t appear…but how is believing in Jesus when you’ve never seen Him different from believing science when you’ve never been a scientist yourself, just taking what has been experimented by others as true? I think a relatively small % of people are scientists, yet most of us believe it, evolution and all, even when we can’t prove it. Jesus is a historical figure, I thik that we can agree to a large extent. The majority of us believe the account of those who experienced Him first-hand, similar to how we believe the scientists. Doesn’t make us non-scientific or stupid, just believers in Christ,or Christians.
“Being a historical figure is, of course, not a reliable basis for believing in his diety.”
The to me is always the key question and is where I find the whole â€bun fight’ over whether Jesus even existed as rather irrelevant. If someone is happy to believe the version of Jesus as documented in Bible as true then no amount of evidence as to whether the details of this story are correct or not is capable of changing their mind. I like to think of it as if you truly believe that Shakespeare was an alien life form from the planet Zabbi then whether the historical record is perfectly correct does not make a difference to that one big claim.
I wish lucidmystery would respond to all of LRA’s points and to the other people’s points in this thread. So it goes.
JC wrote:
>I have simply chosen to anchor my life in the unseen, eternal realities…or as maybe you have heard it called…to walk by faith<
What do you mean when you write you “anchor” you life? Is it the same as saying you believe?
I will agree that it’s simple to choose to believe in something unseen, to believe in something by faith.
Children in particular have a simple view of reality, which is why they can believe in fairy tales and, in my culture, Santa Claus.
You have a child-like, i.e. simple, view of the unseen. If you were that way with every aspect of your life, I would call you a simpleton. I’m fairly certain you can operate your life as most other people do. You can use the toilet, maybe drive a car and ride a bike, you can wash dishes, hold down a job, read books.
When it comes to things you don’t understand or want to accept (e.g., the eternal and potentially viewable reality that your body will one day be worn dung), you’re still like a child.
You have what would be a lovely faith in things that adults around you know are not true. Instead, you’re an adult, who thinks like a child, and that’s not so lovely.
After all that debunking of hate-filled flamers, I felt an obligation to answer the original question.
Answering would have to adhere to the Christian premises, not those of other beliefs, not arguing about new-age Christ-consciousness or Jewish Messiahs or any one else’s premises here, because it’s the Christians who are trying – and failing – to convince us.
The serious answer is that the Christian Jesus must be dead. Or doesn’t want us to know beyond a doubt. That means: I don’t know! (I wish Christians would say that ONCE in a while.)
To those who say they have a personal relationship with Jesus, I say: Isn’t he kind of, y’know… silent? Isn’t it kind of, y’know… one-way?
If you insist on telling me that no, it’s two-way:
My “other” answer is that if you can believe without any proof, because you just know in your heart and that’s enough, then:
Grace and Philip and others don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus any more. He told me he’s kind of tired of them, and I’m more interesting, and he likes me better.
@ Val
I guess since i’ve been mentioned i should respond.
“(I wish Christians would say that ONCE in a while.)”
if you look back you’ll note i often say i’m not sure and that i don’t know. i’ve never claimed to know everything.
“My “other” answer is that if you can believe without any proof, because you just know in your heart and that’s enough, then:
Grace and Philip and others don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus any more. He told me he’s kind of tired of them, and I’m more interesting, and he likes me better.”
well if were going to use ‘you know in your heart’ as a fact then i guess i know in my heart that God didn’t tell you that so.
but as i’ve said before to me it’s experiences. i’m convinced i’ve experienced God and that’s where the prof is for me. i am aware that my experience is not prof for you but it does work for me. i trust my experiences and to that end the experiences of the people i love and trust (you may or may not? if your closest friend or brother said they saw a ghost would you believe that they saw it? you may or may not).
if i’ve missed something you want to know i can try but to the original question why he doesn’t show himself perhaps it’s because he said he would one day return so if he showed himself then i guess that would be the end of the world.
How would we recognize him if he did appear? There are plenty of nut jobs out there who already believe 1) he has appeared (in the form of some other nut job) or 2) he is here NOW as this particular nut job!
This just came to me in a dream. Basically the short answer as to why Jesus doesn’t appear to us is this: He’s busy. Why? Well for starters there are about 70 sextillion – or 70 thousand million million million – “observable” stars. It is estimated we may only be able to observe 2% of the universe. That means it is almost a statistical fact that there are millions if not billions of other earth like planets. On many of these planets there are intelligent beings just like us in various stages of development. At some point they too will require a savior!
So at this very moment Jesus is on one of these planets spreading the good word and saving a fellow intelligent race from certain damnation. You may ask ‘if He’s God why can’t he be in all places at once?’ The answer to that is simple: he must pass through the birth canal as a member of the race he’s saving to become one of them. Once he passes through the birth canal HE’S STUCK there for at least 30 years (or until they kill him). Once they kill him he’s free to traverse to another planet and pass once again through their birth canal! He’s already stopped on our planet and saved us so why would he bother coming back? So there you have it- end of story- case closed: Jesus is Busy.
” philip:How does one expereince love or grace or compasion? I’m wondering how to word this because i dont’ know how you would describe experiencing those and i’d like to speak in a way you woudl respect.”
mark: Philip thank you for answering my question. First off I think the definition in the dictionary will be fine for my purposes. Here is a definition I got online which will do for me-
experiencing
“1 : to learn by experience
2 : to have experience of : undergo ” -or I think the definition of the word experience would better suit our purpose
experience
” 1 a: direct observation of or participation in events as a basis of knowledge b: the fact or state of having been affected by or gained knowledge through direct observation or participation
2 a: practical knowledge, skill, or practice derived from direct observation of or participation in events or in a particular activity b: the length of such participation
3 a: the conscious events that make up an individual life b: the events that make up the conscious past of a community or nation or humankind generally
4: something personally encountered, undergone, or lived through
5: the act or process of directly perceiving events or reality”
mark: So using the definition of experience I have posted, I would love to know how can a person who isnt sure of what the exact word of god is know whether to place thier faith in christianity, Islam, hinduism ect. Using your logic if folks have an experience of Osiris then that would be proof that the Egyptian religion of the pharoahs was true.
Once again your personal experience of an unseen, invisible all powerful christian god which you have zero evidence can be used to prove the existence of any god a person may expierence or wants to prove.
Or to put it shortly, the explanation you gave as proof of your god which is subjective can be provided by any follower of any religion that has ever existed.
Philip please explain to me why your personal experience of a christian god is more valid than a non christians personal experience of god?
“philip: i honestly believe he has kept my father alive when he by all medical standards should have died years ago. ”
mark: Phlip Im glad that your father is still alive, but thier are thousands of of non christians who make the exact same claim?
Also please explain this to me if god uses his powers to heal the sick then how come not one single amputee (whos family prayed for him/her) has ever started to grow thier missing limbs back?
Surely if god does heal the sick then he would heal amputees as well, wouldnt he? Or is it that god cannot heal amputees?
@ mark
first i’d like to thank you for your kindly written questions. i do really appreciate that.
“Philip please explain to me why your personal experience of a christian god is more valid than a non christians personal experience of god?”
I can’t. i can’t say that someone else didn’t experience waht they claim so i can’t say that my experience is more valid. i can say that i haven’t experienced others gods when i was looking and searching. and thats really the problem when it comes to religion. you can’t prove one right over the other but you have to test the believes and see what you deam to be truth based on you understanding and experiences. based on my experiences and my understanding the Christian God rings true to me. It fits with my life experiences. the explanations of get from other religions don’t fit with how my life has worked.
so i can’t say they are wrong other than i have never been able to experience the other gods like i have the christian God and have never heard another God speak to me like i have the christian God. that validates it for me but it wont’ work for you or another person. you don’t have my experiences, you need to experience God on you own.
“Also please explain this to me if god uses his powers to heal the sick then how come not one single amputee (whos family prayed for him/her) has ever started to grow thier missing limbs back?”
this is something i struggle with a lot. if God loves us and does still heal then why not my father or an amputee if you like? I have some thoughts but they are just that, my thoughts on it.
From my understanding miracles are done to show people that God is there and his power. if a miracle were to happen and people did not attribute it to God but rather science or a fluke of genetics or something, then the purpose of the miracle is lost. in our western society i wonder how many if any non believers would attribute it to God? if that isn’t going to happen then maybe he’s holding back knowing the purpose wont be served.
or maybe there is a purpose in the disability. everyone looks for reason in the world so that could be all i’m doing but perhaps there is one. take my father, maybe his disability but continued faith encourages so many others that even when it’s hard God walks with us and so their faith is bettered.
or maybe it has to do with the believers them selves. some sort of lack on our side. maybe i need to fast more and to pray more. or it could just be God’s timming. knowing that if he is going to heal someone, when it happens matters and the time has not come.
in the end i don’t knwo why. i’ve prayed and pondered but im’ not sure.
@ Daniel
sorry ran out of thread space.
if i’m reading correctly what you need is to remove the element of faith? is that an accurate representation of your belief?
@Philip:
Yeah, I think that’s got it, for me.
Give me a little convincing evidence of the existence of the specific god you want me to believe in, and I’ll consider it. But no-one has any.
So why, in the absence of any convincing reason to believe in a) an afterlife, b) a deity, should I choose anything other than the default position? The universe requires no gods. Living in it demands the minimum of explanation. And mine makes more sense.
Instead we get “He works in mysterious ways,” and “It’s not for us to know His plans.” Which means he plays some nasty damn games with His chosen people.
As to Hell and suffering. It might not be physical pain, but I have seen advanced the theory that knowing of the existence of the perfect, divine being, and being separated from Him would be the worst spiritual agony ever. To say nothing of the Lake O’ Fire of which the fundies are so fond.
So yes, he really should make Himself known, and quickly. Thousands are already dead and in Hell because he wasn’t convincing! Why doesn’t He hurry up? The stakes are infinite!
My god, my god, why hast thou forsaken us? Especially all those brown folks who don’t wear many clothes …
Oh … sorry. I turned on the light. And now I see that it was just my reflection all along.
Not quite done:
Philip, if I seem mocking above, let me assure you that in the face of convincing evidence I will flop onto my knees and glorify whichever god is responsible. And on that, I’m deadly serious.
So where’s the evidence?
U R doin’ it rong.
Believe first, evidence later.
Ah, so the problem is the sequencing?
Also, if you don’t find enough evidence, believe harder.
“because i think that’s how God has acted towards me. i think he has been loving and good and just. ”
mark: So using your definition of just, a drug dealer could turn every mother in my neighborhood into an addict but if he was nice to me and helped me when I really needed help that would make him good using the “thats how god has acted torwards me argument.
“can i justify why God has done the things he has. no i can’t. i don’t know why he did but i do trust him. ”
mark: Exactly why do you trust him, is it because the bible says you must believe that he (god) is good.
“where is the justice in killing a child? i don’t know. ”
mark: Yet inspite of this you are willing to claim that god is good, just and loving. So according to you the only reason why you think god is good is because god/the bible says he is good. So basically because god is stronger than man he can kill as many people as he chooses and if I dont believe he is good and loving I will burn in hell for eternity.
“my interactions with God have been that he is loving, just, and full of grace. to my point before. if God is who he says then he has knowledge i don’t and understanding i don’t. so he is able to judge justly when i’m not. ”
mark: Maybe that is true but your interactions with god are something you have zero evidence for. Exactly where do you get your definition of just and loving from. If you (and all other humans) are limited in your ability to judge justly that is because your perfect all loving god has created us without the ability judge justly.
@ mark
i trust God because he has never given me a reason to not. instead he has consistently be trust worthy and gracious with me. I have a relationship with God built on two way communication. in that i know better who he is and what he is about. that is where the trust comes from.
and yes i am limited, i’m only human, i’m not God.
no i don’t think that would be following the teachings of the bible appropriately.
@ philip
“i trust God because he has never given me a reason to not. instead he has consistently be trust worthy and gracious with me.”
mark: So if someone where to murder a baby on monday but was really, really nice to you personally on wednsday that would make that person a just, good and loving person? Is that how it works.
markbey – if there was a god he already knew that she was going to be raped and forced to watch as the dogs ate her helpless child. He would have already known this barbaric thing was going to happen before he created the universe. You assume he’s like a human being, watching this happen with an uncaring mind. He would not be like a human being.
If there was a god he made the universe and knew ahead of time how it would all pan out. If he decided to ACT or Intervene in our world then that would mean he didn’t know ahead of time what was going to happen and needed to tweak things a little. That’s why prayer is pointless. If there was a god he would not ACT in any way, shape or form.
The real question is, if there is a god, why would he act to begin with? Why bother? Nothing is a challenge, nothing is entertaining. The entire lifespan of a trillion intelligent civilizations like ours would hold no meaning.
There just doesn’t seem to a motive for god to do anything at all!!! Which I think is a strong case for reasoning that there is no god.
Guys, I don’t know. But, I have to honestly say there was a time in my life when no matter what, I just would not have believed. I think I would have sooner accepted the existence of aliens.
It seems to me that for many people faith is a process which happens in God’s good time.
My evolution, and that of many of the posters here, is exactly the opposite. We started out believing, and would sooner have accepted the existence of aliens than NOT believe.
Then we stopped.
It seems to me that for many people losing their faith is a process which happens in rationality’s good time.
Ty, what do you feel led you to become a believer in the beginning? I would be interested to learn of people’s spiritual journey here, if that’s ok.
Were most of you reared in the Christian church, or did you initially come to faith later in life? And, then what happened to cause such a complete change of mind?
I’m a Jewish sympathizer, only a bit knowledgeable about Judaism. I admire their search for wisdom and their ceremony and culture. They are not bible-pounders.
Does this lay to waste the slavery behind their Passover celebration?
Most myths I’ve read have what my mythology teacher called a “flood myth”: shorthand for that mythology’s story of destruction of most of the world and almost all people. Any cause – dragons, fire, gods eating the people, I don’t remember now.
Long time ago, high school mostly, myths from all over the world and past history. Do you suppose they are referring to natural disasters in which most of humanity in their part of the world does get destroyed?
I’m certain it will have been said a hundred times but I would like to add my own voice to the support:
#3: To preserve Freewill
It has it’s own issues as an argument (does the Bible preserve Freewill?) but it is the soundest answer and I believe a fair one.
Plus there’s always the “Do not test the Lord your God” clause…
lets go back for a second, my question was generated by this statement you made -
philip:“i trust God because he has never given me a reason to not. instead he has consistently be trust worthy and gracious with me.”
- to which I replied -
mark:” So if someone where to murder a baby on monday but was really, really nice to you personally on wednsday that would make that person a just, good and loving person? Is that how it works.”
philip:” so to the questions above. No Mark thats not how it works. but in this realm of hypothetical, what if the baby that person killed was going to grow up to be another Hitler?”
mark bey: If the baby was going to grow up to be hitler of course your all powerful, all knowing , perfect and just god would know this.
Also if your god is in the business of using his magical powers to kill potential hitlers while they are still babies to prevent future hitlers then exactly what is the excuse for allowing that clown (hitler) to actually exist/grow up in the first place. Especially since this all powerful and great god knew full well exactly what hitler would do.
Also Im not asking for a world free from suffering or pain, Im not even asking for equality. Christians are the ones claims god greatness and goodness, at lot of times based on what christians feel god has personally done for them. You (christians) claim that god intervenes in your life in a positive way and even claim this is part of the reason you believe that god is god, just ect.
So if you are going to claim god is god for what he personally does for you, how come I cant place the blame for the sufferintg of innocents on god for not intervening? Which brings me to the question of.
Why do you give god credit for his actions when you think that he has helped you, but not give god the blame for his innaction in the face of the countless tragedies that have caused millions of people to die painful deaths over the centuries.
So one more time and please answer this question, exactly what makes your god good? Is it because you think god has been good to you? Also how come when your god does something you like you claim he is good but when god allows innocent children to suffer painful deaths or when the god of the bible kills scores of people or give instructions on how to sell ones daughter into slavery god is not evil?
“for me it comes back to what i understand God’s promises to be free of suffering is not one of them.”
mark: What exactly is god’s promises as you understand them?
I understand suffering I just dont understand things such as a women bieng brutally raped to the point of bieng physically disabled, not bieng able to walk or move properly then during the process of that women trying to get away she falls on the ground unable to get up and actually watches dogs eat her baby alive because she cannot move. This is a true story, so please stop trying to imply that Im asking for a perfect world Im not, just a little more from that just, loving and perfect god you claim exist.
@ mark
i don’t know mark. you don’t like my answers so i’ll just leave it.
@ philip
“i don’t know mark. you don’t like my answers so i’ll just leave it.”
mark: Philip you made the statement of god bieng good, I just responded to your statement. The question is simple and you didnt answer it. If your going to claim that god is just and loving then should at least address my questions about such a statement since you make such statements. YOUR ARE NOT PLAYING THE GAME FAIRLY. But its all good no hard feelings at all.
What bases or reason do you have for saying god is good, because if the only reason why you say god is good is because the bible/god has said so. Then my next question is this.
If I drown a baby like your god did, I would not be looked at as a good person. In fact I kinda think that if the posters on this blog knew that I had, had the power to stop a baby from drowning with no threat to my own existence and I didnt I doubt if they would think of me as a good person.
In fact at the very least I suspect that if Dainiel knew this info he would probably ban me from posting on this blog for bieng a rotten individual.
But I dont if I could allow babies to drown and be consider a decent human bieng by the posters of this blog.
So since you refuse to answer simple questions about claims that you make please answer this question.
If the bible is gods word and gods word is a perfect guide to model ones behavior after.
Then would you consider me a decent person if you just happen to walk by me giving my brother instructions on how to salel his daughter into slavery?
How come god gets to give instructions on how to sale ones daugher into slavery and still be consider good and just but I couldnt do the same and still be considered good just.
P.S Its not that I dont like your answer, its just that using your own logic YOUR ANSWERS dont add up. It has nothing to do with what I dont like or like its about what makes logical sense and your reasons for believing dont make any sense as either.
Every answer you gave as proof for the existence of god was an emotional response. Please do not accuse me of not accepting your answers because I dont like them it is dishonest.
Wow, Ty, you have some pretty strong feelings.
Have you ever had opportunity to talk with intelligent, thinking Christian people who have wrestled with some of these issues, but have come to very different conclusions about at least some of what you’re sharing?
I honestly don’t think there is truly a scholarly consensus relating to, say, the Exodus. But, suppose it could be absolutely shown that there are historical errors in the Scripture, does this necessarily equate to “there is no God?”
Val, I’m wondering how you first became a Christian, and then what happened to change your thinking?
“Have you ever had opportunity to talk with intelligent, thinking Christian people who have wrestled with some of these issues, but have come to very different conclusions about at least some of what you’re sharing?”
Yep. One of my good friends is finishing up her Doctor of Divinity degree. We’ve talked about this stuff at length. She agrees that the bible is riddled with inconsistencies and flat out falsehoods. She chooses to believe because she likes the Christ story and she dislikes the idea of a universe empty of meaning. That’s fine, at least she’s honest and doesn’t try to claim it’s because of the evidence.
It’s Christians who try and claim they believe because they have so much evidence that get a derisive laugh from me.
“I honestly don’t think there is truly a scholarly consensus relating to, say, the Exodus. But, suppose it could be absolutely shown that there are historical errors in the Scripture, does this necessarily equate to “there is no God?”
Outside of biblical apologists, you’d have a tough time finding a historian who views the Exodus account as anything other than mythology.
And no, biblical errors don’t equal ‘there is no god.’
Complete lack of evidence for his existence equals ‘there is no god.’
Biblical errors just mean that using that particular book as a means to find truth is like reading Watership Down to study rabbits. It’s a nice story, but it has little or nothing to do with reality.
Ty…
Not so fast my friend. You are searching for “evidence” in the realm of appearances…you wont find the spiritual with natural eyes. Truth is anchored in the eternal realm.
I know how much you love scripture so…”that which is visible is temporal, but that which is invisible is eternal” 2 Cor 4:18
When we “lay hold of eternal life” we anchor our (true, eternal selves) in the spirit realm and begin to live out of those truths. Truth is always liberating, free’ing.
Guess what? There is this tiney world, this unseen, microscopic, atomic world with all these strange physical properties and reactions…its called quantum physics…you cant see it…unless you have a very powerful lens (a spiritual lens) but its really there…do you believe me? Oh…yea it was there BEFORE we had microscopes, etc. It was ALWAYS there…and so is the ETERNAL REALM.
Blessed is he that believes and yet has not seen.
There (really) is more. Just because you were raised “religious” and now dont believe…He still…is.
Its about a spiritual (internal) journey, not a religious (external) mandate.
Love….Lives
JC
Blessed are those that believe and have not seen. I
Ty, what about archaeological, and historical finds that do tend to confirm the validity of portions of Scripture, though? Also, what type of evidence are you looking for to confirm the existence of the almighty? :)
What do you think might just convince you?
Be back later. I’m off to work.
Wintermute,
I think it does put some of those claims in a context which is rooted in history rather than out, and out myth. But, I certainly would agree with you that even if Scripture was found accurate in every historical, archaeological detail, this is not proof positive of all it’s supernatural claims.
I’ve been a Christian believer for many years, but when I was an agnostic, and struggling with alot of these issues, and questions, the thing that brought me most to an awareness of God, was really the whole natural world.
In the end, I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that life could come from non-life, or that the incredible complexity of the universe down to a single cell could have come about by blind chance, and a roll of the dice, out of pure chaos, and nothingness.
Then later on when I learned of the prevalence of the big bang theory among the cosmologists, it seemed reasonable to me that if the universe was not eternal, and began at a certain point in time, that nature did not simply form itself.
Of course, this is still all a long way from the God of Christianity, but it all seemed more reasonable to me to suppose that some intelligent purpose had a real hand in all this.
And, then the first thought came to my mind, “Who made God?” I could go on, and on here…But, I guess the point I’m trying to make is that there are intelligent, thinking people on both sides of the theism fence. I know that I came to faith out of a sincere search for truth. I was not feeling insecure, or especially troubled in my life, desperate for something to hold on to..
Even to this very day, I’ve never felt the need to check my mind at the church door. :)
I think there is another factor which causes some people to come to a conviction of God, and to Christian faith that I personally think is outside of ourselves that I’m not able to fully explain.
VidLord,
Thanks for your response, but I’m just not able to see how simply a huge amount of time could make such a significant difference. It still seems impossible to me. I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree for now.
“It still seems impossible to me. ”
I’ve been entertaining out of town company, and I only post when I’m bored at work, so I’ve been out of touch for a bit, but the above quote requires a response, and this is it:
The universe doesn’t care what you think.
You’re inability to wrap your head around something is meaningless as a method of determining truth. I know people who can’t comprehend differential equations, but that doesn’t invalidate math.
The simple fact remains that we have extremely useful models for how complexity arose through perfectly natural processes, no super beings required. That fact that you don’t like them doesn’t change anything.
You like the idea of god, therefore god. But god doesn’t actually add anything to the equation. God doesn’t simplify the model, he makes it infinitely more complex. God grants no predictive power. God is, frankly, useless an an explanatory device.
If you need him, you can keep him. I don’t care. But I don’t agree that you’ve really come to him out of some thoughtful exploration of truth.
Other people answered your questions regarding the historicity of the bible already, but I have one thing to add: The fact that the bible names a few actual historical places and people doesn’t really mean much other than that it was written by people who lived in those places and knew of those people. That proves nothing other than that. But its failures are damning. No exodus means the entire basis of Hebrew faith, upon which the early Christians built, is a falsehood. That’s not a minor quibble. No murder of two year olds by Herod means that the people who are supposedly writing the literal history of Jesus didn’t even realize Herod was already dead by the time of the event they were supposedly chronicling. The Roman census issue is even more damning. The bible writers needed Jesus to be in Bethlehem to fulfill some earlier prophecies, so they just wrote him there. But they also needed him to be from Nazareth. Conundrum, that. Oh, hey, let’s just make up this Roman census thing to explain why he’s both a Nazarite AND born in Bethlehem. Yay!
I mean, come on. Any real study of the bible and history shows it to be a complete failure as a history book. And if the writers can’t even get minor details like that correct, I’m supposed to believe that they are dead accurate about conversations that happened fifty years before, and about miracles no one else reports having seen?
Naw. Sorry. Fail.
I agree with VJACK…#3: He’s a myth constructed by leaders to control the population. If he is up there, then he would not condemn those who didn’t believe in him. Think of all the people who’ve lived on our planet that have never heard of or studied Jesus! It wouldn’t make sense.
***BAP*** Ouch! I believe I heard that one half way across the world. Superior point.
The disciples believed it, doubting Thomas believed it, Saul of Tarsus believed it.
So who are you to say that if Jesus is real he couldn’t convince any one of us of the veracity of his existence? I don’t believe in the the image of Jesus on a piece of toast–but if he turns up and demonstrates his divinity, then count me in. Skeptics have always said that a simple miracle of the sort the divine father and son and holy ghost seem to have trotted out all the time would suffice. Part the Red Sea again, set up a pillar of fire, raise another Lazarus, cause an eclipse when one isn’t due.
No Christian has been able to prove to me beyond reasonable doubt that Jesus exists. They always dodge the question. All you seem to be implying with this comment is that some people are more suggestible than others.
Oh please. You don’t think Jesus, if he was God, could show himself to be real? You don’t think he could convince me if he wanted to? It doesn’t sound like you have a very high view of your deity.
He could do any number of things to show that he had supernatural powers. He could tell me things only he would know about my life, for instance. He could predict what was going to happen 5 minutes in the future and then I could look on the news in 5 minutes and verify it. He could, on command, recite any passage from any book I owned without looking at it. Another person would have to be there to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. Etc. And that’s just with my puny brain thinking for 10 seconds — I’m sure the smartest being in the world would come up with better ideas.
If he did a couple of those things and you bet I’d believe. Why wouldn’t I?
If a dude materialized out of thin air in front of me, pulled other reality-bending tricks in front of my eyes (hey, could use some more bread to go with my fish…), and called himself Jesus, I think I’d go ahead and give him the benefit of the doubt. No use arguing with a guy when he shows you he can break the rules of the universe (and make a mean bottle of wine to boot).
The word proof gets tossed around haphazardly in these discussions. If you listen carefully, many Atheists would be fairly satisfied by there being *some* empirical evidence, and *some* decent reason to believe it, not evidence leading to practical certainty or impregnable reasons to believe in the apodicity of that certainty.
Please Tell me more of what your god can’t do.
Onomatopoeia does not an argument make.
Because you have already decided he is a myth. Only a fool would believe a myth…you’re not saying you are such a fool are you? You know, like us believers?
Jesus is not my deity. I am an atheist.
Furthermore, I am a scientist. This means that the concept of “proof” is quite a serious one to me. An example (or even several examples) of something for which I do not immediately have an explanation does not constitute proof by any definition of the word.
You are assuming that the only explanation for something you do not understand is the existence of some supernatural power. I.e. you are thinking like a believer…
A myth is no longer a myth at the moment it knocks on your door.
So you believe myths can knock at doors? This is getting entertaining now.
@Guggenheim
So you believe myths can knock at doors? This is getting entertaining now.
A person assigns probabilities to the truth of different stories. A person we trust tells us a story about an event within their general experience, we are likely to accord it with a high liklihood of being true.
A story written down haphazardly over two millenia in a different language or two by people we don’t know does not lend the same assumption to the story as the trustworthy friend’s story. Since the claims in the story are rather spectacular, the anterior probability of that story being true is low, and unless it is corroborated by a more trustworthy source we are justified in calling it ‘mythical’.
We could of course be wrong in our probabilistic assessments, and what we thought was a myth was in fact a fact. If something were to happen, like for example Jesus knocking on your front door and performing miracles, to reassess the probabilistic truth status of the story, then we would be justified at that time in reassigning it to a different category.
Hence, a myth that knocks at a door is no longer a myth, because it provides independent corroboration.
“so you believe myths can knock at doors?”
So now you’re admitting that Jesus is a myth?
Wow.
Oh wait, you’re just being inconsistent.
Look, if you really believe in him, you shouldn’t put these types of things past him.
It only confirms that none of Jesus’ miracles actually happened. Either that or Thomas was an idiot.
Since power over some natural laws doesn’t imply power over all natural laws. The ability to fry a fig tree with your mind doesn’t imply the ability to return from death.
Even if the account is true, Thomas doesn’t have to be an idiot to think what he thought.
Lol, Alex Guggenheim. Since when have *you* admitted that you could be wrong…about evolution, for example.
I have yet to see you admit that you could be wrong about anything.
You are arrogant and a liar. I am tired of listening to your crap. I am calling you out on your double standards.
Of course most atheists admit that they could be wrong….we’ve done it hundreds of times over these threads…and yet you only pay attention to the evidence that fits smugly in your pre-conceived and mostly unchallenged worldview. Typical.
Yet when have you taken such a bold step?
For example, when you said that there is a chance the Bible isn’t divinely inspired, or that there is a chance that evolution (micro and macro) has occurred?
Are you infallible?
You accuse others of the exact behaviors which you yourself exemplify. I have seen you do this again and again and again.
Isn’t there a Bible verse somewhere about removing the log from your own eye first?
Ironic.
I’ve been enjoying this blog for a while and have finally decided to join in for a little of the fun.
What we’re dealing here with Alex is dishonesty and/or projection.
Atheists and agnostics readily will provide a list of occurrences which would convince them of a deity’s existence. Several people have already done so in this thread.
Religionists, however, refuse to do so. Alex takes the astonishingly arrogant position that he absolutely knows the details of how the universe works and then projects that arrogance onto others.
So, Alex, then: What type of evidence would cause you to doubt the truthfulness of the bible and its stories?
Please, no semantic games, just an honest answer.
@Teleprompter
I’m so glad someone called out that hypocrite. Well said.
Yes there is, so while you are busy removing the log from my eye maybe you can catch a moment for your own…
It is amusing how similar your gravatars are…
I just noticed that. [Shudders.]
Interesting discussion. JC you say “We are containers for His presence, this is the liberating secret.” I know plenty of people that have “felt” Jesus to the core of their being. Evidence is meaningless when you physically and emotionally “feel” Jesus. I once saw a preacher put his hands on a troubled boy’s forehead and said close your eyes and repeat after me…he slowly began saying “Jesus”, “Jesus”, “Jesus” repeatedly. And together they said the name of Jesus over and over until both of them were actually crying – sobbing actually. The boy was changed. This is where religion has complete dominance over weak minds – emotion and our powerful need to “feel” a presence greater than ourselves. If you put 20 children in a room and let them grow without any adult interference or mention of god whatsoever they will eventually create a god to worship.
I’m curious what you think Jesus was doing from the ages of 12 to 30. Can you imagine Jesus as a 16 year old boy in puberty? Hard to comprehend that thought when you already have a clearly defined image of him isn’t it?
My own? Where?
I have never said that there is no god; in fact, I have said that there can never be proven that there are no gods, especially of the deist variety. It would be very hard to establish that that sort of god did not exist.
I have said measuredly that there is not enough evidence to confirm that any particular sort of god exists, or that the supernatural is necessary to explain our world, and I have further added that the “evidence” of specific gods and supernatural patterns is so flawed that it is difficult to believe it…such as the Bible and other scriptures.
I have repeatedly given specific, precise, detailed explanations of my positions. I have done this repeatedly in post, after post, after post. The other commenters are my witnesses.
Yet what have you done? You repeatedly give ad hominems, irrelevancies, lack of specific details and concerns, etc.
We both know the verse. We both know its meaning. And while I admit that neither of us fully embodies its promise, the context is definitely different for both our cases.
Dear Class:
We will review SCHLOCKS charges and see where the real dishonesty rests:
_____________________________
ShockedISaid
I’ve been enjoying this blog for a while and have finally decided to join in for a little of the fun.
What we’re dealing here with Alex is dishonesty and/or projection.
Atheists and agnostics readily will provide a list of occurrences which would convince them of a deity’s existence. Several people have already done so in this thread.
Religionists, however, refuse to do so. Alex takes the astonishingly arrogant position that he absolutely knows the details of how the universe works and then projects that arrogance onto others.
So, Alex, then: What type of evidence would cause you to doubt the truthfulness of the bible and its stories?
Please, no semantic games, just an honest answer.
___________________________
Ok, let’s see. First show me where I have ever claimed to “absolutely” know “the details of how the universe works”. Please show me one quote. ……………
…..tick…tock….tick…tock.
Right class this person can’t. You know why? That’s right, because he is dishonest and makes a charge against me for which he cannot provide any documentation. Yawn.
So now you see who is dishonest.
Now on to this list of demands to believe in a deity that you claim atheists or non-believers has given that if met they would believe. Do you actually believe this kind of silliness?
They have already determined a deity does not and cannot exist yet claim they would believe if certain things happened? Either they are dishonest in their resolution or a piece of milk toast masquerading as something with integrity.
Are they not absolute in their certainty about no deity? If not then friend they are no atheist and if they are absolute then nothing would convince them so any such list is a mockery of the rational mind.
Did you even stop to review your thoughts before vomiting them out?
Then you ask me what I need to disbelieve the Bible as if by my producing some arbitrary list (you know like the magic list of the atheist to believe in a deity you mentioned) you could actually meet its criteria. I have to give you credit at least for the good laugh.
Why guilt? Is that your image of Father? We wont hear that, because that is not His (true) nature…love is.
Now you’re hallucinating a whole classroom full of people? Not for nothing, but this does not bode well for your credibility.
On an entirely different note, I have to ask, do you believe that your rhetorical tactics and tone here are consonant with those that Jesus exalted? Do you think that if Jesus were to read this thread He’d say to Himself some version of “Wow, I am proud to have such a follower in Alex Guggenheim!”?
Aside from Alex’s ad hominem attacks, we see his projection.
The entire thrust of his reply is that atheists must be total in their disbelief of deities, or their beliefs are somehow lacking in integrity. Either Alex does not know what an atheist is or he is lying. You chose.
Alex argues that I have been dishonest in saying that he knows “the details of how the universe works.” In case my reference is too opaque for Alex to understand, I am referring here to his belief in God and all of the things claimed in the bible. The details I’m referring to are things like the creation myths included in the bible and that God is omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent. Having read a few of Alex’s posts, I’m pretty confident he utterly believes these things — the details of how the universe works. You do believe in these stories, don’t you? You do claim knowledge of how the universe works, as in the stories of how the world came into existence in Genesis and God’s awesome powers to control everything in the universe?
“Now on to this list of demands to believe in a deity that you claim atheists or non-believers has given that if met they would believe. Do you actually believe this kind of silliness?”
I’m not at all sure what you mean here. Do I actually believe what kind of silliness? I have no doubt that an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent entity could convince me of its existence. There are all sorts of stories from the bible that God could replay for me that would convince me.
“They have already determined a deity does not and cannot exist yet claim they would believe if certain things happened? Either they are dishonest in their resolution or a piece of milk toast masquerading as something with integrity.”
Alex, you have some serious projection going on here. You think that God must exist, so you project onto atheists that idea that God cannot exist. You simply don’t seem to understand what atheists think. I have never met an atheist who says that no possibility exists that a creator of the universe ever existed. All of the atheists I have met agree with this premise: The likelihood of an all-powerful entity is so remote that it’s not worth believing. Change the likelihood of God’s existence and atheists will reconsider. It’s as simple as that. Since no one has ever come up with any good reason to reconsider, atheists continue to disbelieve.
“Then you ask me what I need to disbelieve the Bible as if by my producing some arbitrary list (you know like the magic list of the atheist to believe in a deity you mentioned) you could actually meet its criteria. I have to give you credit at least for the good laugh.”
Thank you for crediting me for the laugh, but that’s not what I said. I asked you what evidence might make you doubt the truth of the bible. I did not ask you what would make you disbelieve.
Then you leap onto your projection-mobile again. Since Christians often attempt to proselytize, you think I’m trying to turn you into an atheist. You are mistaken. I am just trying to expose the dishonesty/projection of your argument.
You probably cannot imagine any evidence that would make you doubt your God-beliefs and that’s why you think everyone else rejects all evidence also.
@ lucidmystery
No, that is not true. What we have, are copies of copies.
It’s not solid evidence.
Let’s look at the stakes: our eternal fates.
We’d better have more evidence than Plato or Shakespeare because it’s a wildly different context.
You’d want good information if you went to a mechanic. Wouldn’t you want solid information for something much more important and meaningful?
And yes, you raise some excellent points about the Old Testament. But what if large portions of it are mythical or allegorical? Have you considered that possibility?
“btw, VidLord, you made an awesome point! Humans throughout recorded history always seem to need to worship something greater than themselves. Ever wonder where that need came from?”
Yes, many of us have wondered that, and instead of pinning it on a supernatural explanation, we try to learn about psychology and anthropology and other subjects to try and find a good explanation for how it may have occurred instead of relying on badly compiled ancient texts.
If humans have always had an urge to worship something, and that urge comes in the sequence of history long before the origin of your religion, wouldn’t you say that could indicate that the cause or source of that urge may, in fact, predate your religion?
What about the Sumerians? What did they do without your religion? What about the Ganghes River cultures? What about cultures in ancient China?
It appears far more likely to me that religions arose independently, partly through psychological factors and partly as social constructs.
But no supernatural hypothesis has been able to account for the origins and divergences of human religions.
How would you account for it?
I don’t attribute emotions to a divine being, if one should exist. To assume that God is actually annoyed when his creations does what he knew they would do in response to his actions (omnipotence) is just ridiculous, IMO. If you know everything, there’s no room for surprise or shock or boredom. If you are interacting with the world in 3000 BC, there’s no reason why you wouldn’t be doing so in 2000 AD. Especially since you’re a timeless being.
I do have another question, though off topic.
Why the HELL were the OT Jews so quick to worship a golden cow!? Seriously! “God has done this, and leads us here, and protected us and hey, let’s spit in his eye and worship a golden calf!”
This was a time when God was ACTIVELY influencing the world, and in spite of ALL REASON, his followers strayed more then than they do now.
God is THERE. He is DOING SOMETHING. It’s all out in the open. Why the hell are you worshiping a golden calf that you just built? Why? That makes no freaking sense at all. Are we expected to believe that so many years ago, God’s miracles weren’t impressive at all? That the strength God displayed was so common place that a man-made statue of a golden calf was -more- worthy of devotion and praise?
I just don’t understand it. Unless, of course, that section of the Bible was just to drive home the moral of the second and third commandment, and none of that stuff ever happened. That makes sense to me.
Boo hoo, poor Val. Poor wittle Val. He beliefs are determined by her social experiences and because she is having an unpleasant social experience…boo hoo…she isn’t gonna believe in God. How old are you again?
Good grief some of you are worse 2nd graders pouting on their birthday because they didn’t get what they wanted.
Oh the morally superior tactic, not surprising but lame and disappointing actually, for a moment I thought better of your skills. And yes, I consider all my readers my students. It is a shame you can’t elevate your own beliefs enough to be certain you can enlighten.
Tell me, is Jesus proud of your disbelief, your rejection of him? Maybe it isn’t me you need to be worried about regarding whether Jesus is proud or not…but then he is a myth to you and here you are arguing from the position of a being you believe is a myth.
Who again is hallucinating? Right.
Alex, you’re making another straw man argument.
@ Mr. Guggenheim
I would imagine that if there is a deity, it would be more pleased with my unbelief, duly considered after much existential and academic struggle, than with your cheap and reflexive snideness. Jesus never did say “blessed are the jackasses”, but rather “blessed are the meek”. If there is a deity who is responsible for my cognitive capacities, I would hope it would want me to use them wherever they happen to lead, and I sincerely doubt, given what is written that even the God you believe in would be much pleased with your behavior here.
Oh, and go refresh yourself on subjunctive conditionals. That would suggest to you exactly how an unbeliever could form sensible sentences about a theoretical entity without “hallucinating”.
I can guarantee your “image of Father” is entirely different from let’s say your preacher’s. What you have constructed of Father is all in your brain and unique to you. I’m sure you’re convinced he loves deeply – but let me assure you it is an emotional idea in your brain.
Your argument is a straw man.
Haha, Sock. Didn’t Alex just accuse someone else of only using straw man arguments?
It just keeps getting better (or worse, depending on your perspective.)
Plus, Alex can’t show that anything Val said was inaccurate, which makes it even better. Can you show that what Val said was inaccurate?
Can you show that what Sock said was inaccurate?
Why the HELL were the OT Jews so quick to worship a golden cow!? Seriously! “God has done this, and leads us here, and protected us and hey, let’s spit in his eye and worship a golden calf!”
From what I understand, their actual crime was idolatry, not blasphemy. It is thought that YHWH the eventual winner of the monotheistic lottery was originally conceived as a male fertility God which took the form of an ox or calf. Hence, the Hebrews that pulled the calf stunt were still worshiping the same God, just in a proscribed (old) way.
Sock – the bull is just symbolism for Taurus the Bull zodiac sign. Watch part 1 to 3 of this vid for more info on the history of Taurus and the Moses story. It’s interesting stuff.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNkthC-yWYU&feature=related
Thomas knew Jesus and saw his miracles. He still did not believe.
God parted a sea, rained bread from the sky and gave them water from a rock. The Israelites still didn’t believe.
We are told to believe without seeing any proof of god’s existence. And “happy are we” to do it?
And neither should anyone else.
Your statement should be on billboards and buses.
I (and others, I notice) are aware of man creating a god in his own image. But we sometimes miss the specifics.
Emotions. Jealousy, anger, to name specific emotions. The need for an English landed-gentry title and governmental positions.
You think I’m kidding? What the hell do you think “Lord” and “King” are? Government is a man-made institution.
As are rank, position, power, authority, hierarchies, laws, and punishment. Imperfect, antisocial, ladder-climbing people need those! Any decent God wouldn’t find them in the least relevant.
God created in man’s image. And how!
We perceive through our own filters so much that we don’t even challenge our own ASSumptions. We’re not even aware of them. It’s just “the way it is”. And that’s one tiny step to “the way God ordained it to be”.
The God we created to create it, to create us, to create it.
That seems to match up with what I was saying, in that I perceive the accounts as allegorical, even if they are loosely alligned with the historical narrative of that culture.
“brain is comprised within the soul’ish realm”
These wonderfully incoherent sentences continue to make me laugh. Do you have to work at being completely ambiguous and riddled with supposed mystery or does it just come naturally after so long of doing it? You put words together but that doesn’t mean they make anysense or that you have any evidence for the outlandish claims you continue to bombard us with.
@Guilty…
Since He is Creator…He would know.
Btw…what is that pic?? A sky-fairy?? lol.
I’m pickin’ on ya guilty. Oh…you dont have to be “guilty” any more, Christ took our shame & guilt.
Its true…Tele is not known to be short on words…errh uhh…short on text. lol
But I like it Tele…you are a true seeker…and the journey…continues, its not over…there’s another unexpected bend or two in the road up ahead for you, for sure.
Journey well my friend…
JC
But what if he makes an inferior Pinot Noir when you wanted a Sangiovese? Or worse, just shows up at your door with a bottle of Alize’?
It is just plain embarrassing to read your hideously ignorant posts.
Try reading a book on neurology, neuroscience, or cognitive psychology. Just search for those words on amazon.com, or in Google. There are a lot of good genuine science books out there on these subjects for the layman, and they all have the benefit of being TRUE. Unlike your ignorant made-up little magical fantasies about how the human body works.
Hey Jimminy…
Good to hear from you again, hope you are doing well. This is a big improvement from the last time you wrote to me…thx.
All the best,
JC
John C.
What an embarrassment you are. How can you live with yourself?
lucid, you’re the bane of the biology department probably because you insist on proffering utterly incomprehensible theories that are based on ancient mythology. Further, you are absolutely ignorant concerning the development of world religions–I do believe you’ve parroted some such nonsense in an earlier thread. There are *several* religions that predate Christianity. Also, Hinduism predates Judaism, so your argument concerning Judaism being the world’s oldest religion is wrong. Also, you pay zero attention to polytheistic religions (your silence concerning the religions of the African continent is noted).
lucidmystery,
As I said down-thread, I respect your rights to your beliefs, though I do not agree with your interpretations.
That being said, I think this is more than a difference between interpretations — this is a difference between ignoring evidence that fits a particular worldview and being open to all the possible outcomes.
Now, I admit that I may be wrong about a lot of things. There could be a god; there could be several gods; there could’ve been panspermia, but that just pushes us back even further. In short, there’s just a lot that I don’t know.
However, fossil evidence and many other indicators inform us that we do not inhabit a young earth.
And yes, Hinduism is older than Judaism. And I think you are only thinking about the Chinese characters that go with your preconceived notions. It seems like a case of confirmation bias: what about Sanskrit? Are there Sanskrit characters that do the same thing? What about the other Chinese characters which don’t do that? And on and on…I didn’t even mention the African religious traditions.
Honestly, I think you are making a lot of rationalizations so you can keep supporting your mindset about the world.
If Jesus was an “improvement” of Judaism, then wasn’t the Devotional form of the Hindu religion expressed in the Bhagavad-Gita an “improvement” of older types of Hinduism? Wasn’t Sikhism an “improvement” of Hinduism and Islam? Wasn’t Ba’hai (sic?) an “improvement”?
Naturalism works quite well here, but this territory is where supernatural explanations start to break down, and maybe you realize this.
Lastly, it would be easy to abandon God if humans even had a decent understanding of “god”, which they do not. Which understanding is being abandoned…even if Christianity were the primary religion, there are still thousands or more interpretations of it?
Protestantism, Calvinism, the non-denominational churches…more and more “improvements” all the time. Religion(s) keep evolving, just as it has been (as they have been) for thousands of years.
Do you think this is divinely inspired? Or of human origin?
Perhaps I’m mistaken here, but…
How is HELIUM dating radioactive (you see, we need decay to get the dates)?
Don’t we need atoms that have some radioactivity?
Only if you’re as incompetent (or dishonest?) as Woodmorappe. Everyone else who’s ever tried these dating sequences finds them to be in perfect accord with all the others.
It’s amazing how people who want to use this as evidence of something can’t even agree on what they’re looking at. It has something to do with “boat” and “eight” in Chinese, but what, exactly? Is it as you say, or is it that the Chinese word for “boat” literally means “eight mouths“?
Of course, you don’t need to know much about Chinese orthography (and I don’t!) to know that these characters don’t have any relationship to what they’d mean if they were isolated…
Marcion…
I appreciate your questions and interest. And while I do not (personally) subscribe to Marcionsistic views, that is a verse of particular interest to me. I believe the best translation reads “we speak the hidden, mystical (mysterious to us) wisdom of God”.
I believe the Adamic race (of this world) are “the princes” of “this world”. The emphasis being on “this (fallen) world”. See the story of Jacob…wrestling with the “angel of the Lord” and being called “the prince of Israel”. The called out (ecclesia) are Israel. Now contrast that with …princes of THIS world.
Also…you have to ask who was it that demanded Christ’s crucifixion…literally…contextually? It was the common people (us) stirred up by “religious” fervor. Religion and Christ will always be at odds as light & darkness.
Thanks…all the best.
JC
Also, I cited Judaism as the world’s oldest religion based on a Biblical time scale, not academic.
So basically, you’re just spouting off total bullshit then, eh?
I make no apologies for that and I don’t deny it. Call me crazy, but don’t call me ignorant.
How about I call you crazy and ignorant? Lose the ancient fairy tales and get an education, nit-wit.
And I’m not calling you closed-minded. I’m just sensing it really loud.
You ever change it? Do you have a functional one capable of change?
Sorry, but given your point on helium and zircon dating, I’m gonna have to call you ignorant!
Sorry!
Seriously JC, the longer you post her the less rational you seem. Is everything all right?
Which in turn begs the obvious question, why would a deity want to test people in such a way?
@JK…
What exactly…is the message of Christ JK? I’m not meaning that rudely, but sincerely asking of you know.
I have not found one (after 8 wks here) that truly knows…are you the…one?
Just askin…
JC
“But he’s no Crab Nebula, he’s a small time sex-obsessed conjurer with an evil and capricious disposition who likes to kill, maim and destroy for fun, and I don’t see christ’s wishy-washy message changing the old smiting bastard’s essential disposition.”
Ha-ha! (Nelson style!)
JK…
Things are awesome…I have simply chosen to anchor my life in the unseen, eternal realities…or as maybe you have heard it called…to walk by faith, not by sight.
Its so liberating…cuz truth is always liberating.
JC
Since when has Christ Jesus seemed…rational? At least not to the natural man anyway. The things of the spirit realm make no sense to our physical senses.
Thats why I say things like…there IS more, there is a life.
JC
I’ve read your posts JC–unless you think you’ve expressed yourself badly I know who or what you believe Christ is. I also spent thirty years as a christian being told about Christ’s message. It hasn’t improved in believability over time
Now, how about explaining to me how your ‘truth’ (jump in here too lucid) explains this:
“Researchers have sequenced 3.7 billion base pairs of Neanderthal DNA. …. even with a rough draft, scientists can begin to isolate the genetic variations that are uniquely, irreducibly human.
Neanderthals are our closest relatives on the hominid family tree. We split from them about 500,000 years ago and for the next 475,000 years or so, modern humans and Neanderthals coexisted on the planet and sometimes even in the same region. … Recently scientists have speculated that Neanderthals and humans in Europe could have interbred, while others have speculated that humans killed off the Neanderthals.”
Did your god create these? Are they mentioned in any of the half-way plausible bible books? How do you account for the ancient DNA–did god plant it as a joke to test us? Are there Neanderthals in heaven? I can’t wait to read all your contortions. It’s discoveries like this that assure me I’m on the right track. Now–if your god bought neanderthals back to life–that would be a miracle worth talking about. Wait! I know! I’ll bet they drowned in the flood. Of course! Eight people in a boat! And I’ll bet there’s a Chinese character that means “But no neanderthals’. PTL!
Oh yes, your opinion. I forgot that all opinions are equal aren’t they? Except…they’re not. You have deluded, ignorant, and incorrect opinions. We have facts.
Continually insisting on substituting and equivocating your deluded and incorrect opinions with demonstrable facts makes you at best a willfully ignorant fool, and at worst an intentionally deceitful liar.
The things of the spirit realm make no sense to our physical senses.
Indeed. Primarily because there is no such thing as a “spirit realm”.
What an embarrassment you are.
Sooo…you’ve chosen to live your life in a fantasy world of make-believe gods and devils? And people thought Dungeons and Dragons was bad for kids!
Well put!
If the Biblical timescale conflicts with the archeological evidence, and you choose the Bible, I can’t stop you.
But that doesn’t mean I respect your position; though I do respect your right to your beliefs, dogmatic they may be. I will reply to the rest of your comment up-thread.
Just because you spent some 30 years being religious doesnt mean you really understand JK. In fact, it portends toward the polar opposite.
As far as Neanderthals, or any past thing, nothing is remotely concerning to me…they can not part Christ from my spirit??
I am not an anthropologist or expert in the science by any means. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it is my understanding that the DNA of Neanderthal’s is only a partial DNA (currently)?
Either way, all of this is in the physical, animal, beastly, flesh realm. What does this have to do with our origins in God? God is spirit and the real you and me is spiritual, of eternal substance. The flesh is only temporal.
We are so sensitized to the physical, we lost our divine (spiritual) sensitivities in the fall. Or did you not know that spirit has substance?
Go deeper JK…there is more…than our (natural) eyes can see.
JC
lucid – your “faith” tell you you’re not wrong? Faith can do amazing things but I’m of the opinion that without evidence, faith is just superstition. But I don’t doubt that you believe it completely and are happy to do so, evidence or not. It can have a powerful affect on a person – as evident by this photo:
http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/7550/wailingwallo.jpg
That’s called Humanism.
@Rob…
Not quite…you are on the right track…but have left out some significant qualifiers my friend. However, your post is certainly preferrable to so many others declaring that we are in fact basically monkey-poo.
All the best…
JC
I agree entirely with this statement.
God is supposed to be this awesome and powerful force, right?
I’m confident that if God were to present himself to me, -I would know-. That his presence would be so incredible that I would know. As an atheist, I require proof that God is real. That doesn’t mean that I am opposed to the idea of God, or that I hate him, or that I would actively deny it. It means that I need proof, and the current “proof” and “evidence” for his existence is not adequate.
Please read my response to Daniel somewhere above…
It seems all he did was another drive-by hostility tantrum and then left.
His attack descriptions on others match his own tactics. I’ve seen some excellent arguments on this site, but nothing of value or sensible points from him.
And, of course, he completely missed the point about himself and his behavior: that his nastiness was as far from, and as opposite to, “Christian love” as anyone sees outside of the Inquisition.
It will take reasoning, evidence, clear thought processes, respect to sway people to “his side”, Christianity, or anyone’s side, and a little love probably doesn’t hurt.
His viciousness and hatred – far from swaying someone to “his side” – have repulsed people on this site alone.
What part of that doesn’t he understand? His thinking capacity is absent.
And even if he kept them to himself – yes! please God! that would be great if he kept them to himself! – they are still nastiness, hatred, and viciousness.
I must have exorcised him!
After spitting and gibbering out his hatred, he spat, gibbered, and went away!
I’m assuming you’re using “we” in the sense of all of humanity, as opposed to “we” as in religious people.
Please read up on evolution before you make comments about it. :)
I’ve been doing a lot of reading about religion lately (right now, focusing on Judaism and Christianity), and thus I am more qualified to have my own opinion on these matters than someone who knows nothing of the subjects in question.
Unless, of course, you were making a straw man argument. In which case, don’t mimic Alex.
@Sock…
Just so you know, Christ and religion have nothing in common but I dont think they tell you that in those books.
JC
I’ve been bothered before by him saying “we”. It’s tempting, I know.
But only valid if you’re speaking as head of an agency, or got tapeworms or a mouse in your pocket.
“Just because you spent some 30 years being religious doesnt mean you really understand JK. In fact, it portends toward the polar opposite.”
Ha! All the cherries in a row. Most everyone here could have said that’s what you’d say.
Newsflash John…I believed, wholly and sincerely just like you did. Then one day it was like I woke up. It was like the scales fell from my eyes. It was like I’d been blind but now I could see etc etc. Doubt the reality of my experience all you like, convince yourself my Christianity wasn’t real…but I have no doubts that what I felt was real. Just that I have no doubt now that it was socially and culturally constructed … completely man made, like all religions.
You don’t get a pass from me when it comes to superior knowledge, greater faith and a more real experience. Deconversion is the great TRUTH and the great eye-opener. It’s frightening and liberating to have to put away the things of Christianity and discover reality without a safety blanket.
Squeek, squeek
he he he!
One of the books I’m reading is the Bible. So, yeah, it kinda does. ;)
As far as I could tell, helium still requires uranium/ thorium…
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/260195/helium-dating
(but some one please correct me if I’m wrong!)
Also, not exactly the most reliable source, but zircon dating is actually uranium-lead dating:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-lead_dating
So, what, exactly, are lucidmystery’s points on this matter?
They both seem incorrect. Is there a geologist in the house?
Ok-
So here is the religious hub-bub this person (lucid mystery) is talking about:
http://www.rae.org/zircondating.html
Apparently the earth is still at least a billion years old as per this guy’s quote:
“Analyzing a zircon made up partly of material from the [allegedly] 3.5-billion-year-old core and partly from the billion-year-old overgrowth would give a meaningless age”
Hardly 6000 years old.
Again, any geologists in the house?
This point has been debunked over and over again, see e.g. http://www.noanswersingenesis.org.au/flaws_in_dating.htm
Note also how lucidmystery writes:
Now that’s a fine example of projection… Who is here using the numbers he wants because they fit his old-earth denialism?
lucid mystery-
You make some good points, but referring to old science isn’t helping you. As evidence grows, old theories like abiogenisis get thrown out. What about old religious ideas?
Yeah, not so much thrown out because they are taken on faith.
Can you please provide some EVIDENCE (as Darwin and subsequent scientists did) to support your beliefs?
Simply choosing sides is not enough. Certainly not intellectually satisfying for me (and shouldn’t be for you either given your *supposed* education).
“I’m not sure why He doesn’t appear…but how is believing in Jesus when you’ve never seen Him different from believing science when you’ve never been a scientist yourself, just taking what has been experimented by others as true?”
If science was â€untrue’, however you wish to define the exact meaning of that, how would you expect the world to be different to how it currently is? If Jesus is not as described in the Bible how would you expect the world to be different to how it currently is? For the former we would have no modern medicine, no technology, no landing of the moon, no skyscrapers, no planes to name but a few yet these do clearly exist – what is you theory as to why this is the situation. For the latter it’s difficult to see what difference it would really make to the world in which we exist. It not even possible to claim that Christianity would not exists. So the â€truth’ of science is readily available to us the truth of Jesus is not.
“I think a relatively small % of people are scientists, yet most of us believe it, evolution and all, even when we can’t prove it.”
So what do we base are belief on; what do you base your belief on? You use you belief in science everyday; if you watch TV, make a phone call, type on your computer that is science in action. For those areas that are not clearly demonstrated what is your belief system based on? Taking evolution – have countless scientists managed to get it consistently wrong; is there a conspiracy theory to hide the truth; is the creation story with zero evidence actually correct? When you answer these questions it is obvious as to why people believe in evolution, amongst other theories, even if they don’t understand the complex details. So if you don’t believe in evolution why is that – it contradicts what is written was written thousands of years ago; there is clear evidence that it is not true; it is difficult to understand? When you can answer these questions you will realise why people do not believe in evolution.
“Jesus is a historical figure, I thik that we can agree to a large extent. The majority of us believe the account of those who experienced Him first-hand, similar to how we believe the scientists.”
I think that it’s clear that this is not the case. You believe in science because your day to day life tells provides evidence to you that it works and this evidence is consistent whoever you are. Does this mean that science is always right – of course not but belief in science cannot in anyway be compared to the belief in Jesus as described in the Bible.
Didn’t you pay attention in elementary school? That’s where we learned much about the scientific process. It explained how, in the most basic terms, it works.
Further, I have read the arguments for Jesus and for the Bible. I am reading the Bible. I have been to Church and I’ve had deeply religious friends.
I have also read books on Greek Mythology, and I’ve had deep conversations with people about Zeus and Hera and everything around that. I’ve seen pictures of the Pantheon and I’ve watched Clash of the Titans.
It is obvious, to me, that in time, Christianity and the Abrahamic God will be another page in ancient world mythology.
As for science… I paid attention in elementary -> high school. Science was one of my better subjects (math being the best). I understand the scientific method. It is not a dogma, it is not a religion. It is our -CURRENT- understanding of the world as observed and tested. As our theories change and adapt and evolve and fail and are replaced and rejected… that understanding will grow.
Also, there is a significant difference in science and religion.
I can go to college, and become a scientist. I can be there, making the theories and testing and researching and learning more. That is a VERY real possibility.
On the other hand, it is EXTREMELY UNLIKELY (to the point that you can round it down to impossible), for me to have a two way conversation with Jesus/God/Zues/Baal/Plato/Aristotle/Leonardo DaVinci/Gandalf or anyone else who is dead or never existed in the first place.
Science is something that can be -experienced-. God (probably) cannot be.
The majority of us believe the account of those who experienced Him first-hand
You are believing the accounts of second hand writers writing some 35 or so years after the supposed events. Futher, even calling these writers “second hand” may be too generous. What evidence do you have that these writers actually had second hand evidence instead of access to hand me down stories?
Jesus is a historical figure, I thik that we can agree to a large extent.
If you want a large consensus putting the word ‘probably’ in there somewhere might be more correct. The two concurrent possible references to Jesus of which I am aware:
1. A group of Jewish rabbis refer to a ‘Jesus the rabbi’ but there is no contextual evidence as to which Jesus they are referring; and,
2. Josephus refers to the claims made by Christians – and there is some controversy about this being redacted.
Being a historical figure is, of course, not a reliable basis for believing in his diety.
Maybe God is flirting with us.
I’ll repeat if for Bill,
“Why don’t the theists who show up here ever answer substantive questions? Daniel has asked a very good question in this post. Why aren’t we seeing christians trying to actually answer it?
For those who believe, why doesn’t jesus show himself to us? Please tell us. I’m genuinely interested.”
Sign at the zoo:
“Anyone caught feeding the troll will be asked to leave.
No Exceptions”
I admire the questions Bill puts to it, however.
It just never answers them.
Feeding?
If Thomas wasn’t convinced even “by seeing” Jesus, why are you?
Has god ever talked to you? Have you seen god? Does god answer your prayers? Does god protect you from evil people?
I was an extremely dedicated Christian that believed deeply in the promises of Jesus for 33 years. But at some point god needs to actually show up.
Its Him…self, His very presence in us that is the reward. The eternal, uncreated life of Christ, indwelling YOU.
I used to attribute the warm fuzzy feeling I would get during spiritual moments to the holy spirit dwelling within me. Unfortuneately it is the same feeling I get when watching a dramatic scene in a movie. It’s chemicals being released into your bloodstream, not a ghost spirit within you.
I’m curious what you think Jesus was doing from the ages of 12 to 30.
This is something Christians never talk about. We only know what Jesus did for a few years of his life. He apparently spent his first thirty years being super sinless.
Or maybe he spent the years deeply studying Old Testimant prophesy so he knew exactly how to fullfill a few of them.
i think a lot of christians use it as a start place. if they can prove that Jesus was a historical figure it’s the beginning of them trying to historical prove what he did. Small steps of getting an non-believe to believe somthing.
i don’t think it’s worth doing but hey to each his own.
Lol. I love it.
Adults abdicating responsibility by being childlike are not so lovely. It’s kinda ugly. The rest of the world has to take up their responsibility-slack.
Daniel made a good point that if the person is God (all powerful, omnipotent, etc by christian definition) then he could prove it.
I hope I’m not feeding! It’s hard to figure out around here if I’m feeding or not though. So many of the comments by theists’ appear to be nothing more than an attempt to get a reaction, and have nothing to do with the substance of the discussion.
As I mentioned above, I am genuinely interested in hearing how theists think about topics discussed here. (The problem is that there is so little substance to so many of their posts.) When I was a believer, I just didn’t think about things like evidence or consistenccy, but once I did start thinking about it my journey to atheism was pretty quick. I’m intrigued by the question of whether believers have considered these questions and found the evidence etc… sufficient.
On the issue of JC’s claim that he answered my questions (and here I probably am feeding the troll, but I can’t resist this time), I will repost his entire comment below. I leave it to each of you to decide if he actually answered my question.
I submit that he didn’t even get close to an answer. In fact, I don’t think he got close to coherent sentences. He could have made as much sense by posting the following: “Dog flying under aardvark by pool of LOVE. Eating pine cones – judging lemon hair – please don’t over simplify card sharks.”
________________________________________________
“He is the subject of nearly every thread, every post whether refuted or declared to be.
Blessed are they that believe and have not seen…what does this mean? What and why should we desire this vague “blessing”. Just as He spoke to Abraham (a type & figure of us, non-believers, wayfaring strangers, traveler’s in time) saying “leave your father’s house (your human identity and ancestry) and go to a land (dwelling place, existence, life) that I will show you…and I will be your exceeding great reward”.
Its Him…self, His very presence in us that is the reward. The eternal, uncreated life of Christ, indwelling YOU. This is why Paul calls it the “mystery of the ages…Christ IN you”. Col 1:27. We are containers for His presence, this is the liberating secret.
We are too often as the men on the road to Emmaus…when Christ Himself walked amongst them, with them and they “recognized Him not”. Have you seen Him…in that one? Have you heard Him…through the voice of the one in the garments of flesh? Can you find Him in the poor, the sick, the imprisoned? Where is He now? Where can He be found…really? Where is the dwelling place of God?
Surely He has appeared to us…for “as He is in this world so are we”…what is humanity? What did He mean (speaking of acts of sacrificial mercy, compassion, kindness) when He said “when you’ve done these things to them, you’ve really done them unto…Me”.
Maybe He is…everywhere but we are looking…in the sky?
JC”
Yep, I just feel it and know it in my heart that he likes me best!
Listen to yourself!
I could say that if you’re going to use ‘you know it in your heart’ as a fact that you know in your heart that God didn’t tell me that so, that I know it in my heart that God didn’t tell you that he didn’t tell me so.
There lies the very heart – the very self-contradictory, inconsistent, unverifiable, subjective heart – of the matter!
I am open to the possibility of powerful, wonderful experiences. Surprised? I would call them “intuitive experience”.
What gets me is that people make them into “religious experiences”. The problem isn’t with calling them by different words; the problem is that YOU interpret it, YOU ASSume that it is “from” an external source, and YOU CHOOSE and DECIDE what that external source is, and what its intent and meaning are.
Just for a moment going with the ASSumption that it must “come from” an external source: how did YOU pick which god, goddess, genie, houri, dryad, demiurge, elf, angel, new-age-spiritual guide, or fairy caused it? How the heck do YOU know? How DO you pick one?
The god you pick for your causation happens to be the god most prevalent in our culture, the Christian “God”.
Funny how that works.
If I have intuitive experiences, which of course can’t be proven to others, I want to be less Pavlov-conditioned and narrow about their cause and source.
I have problems with people jumping to the ASSumption that it’s the Christian “God”, and THIS is what he means and intends by it.
People have mentioned specific cases of God telling Hitler, the Inquisitors, suicide bombers, and all the other great ones what to do, and they went and did their great works based on God’s inspiration.
I think the overall concept they were trying to present, by naming specific examples, is the one I posited above.
who said anything about likes me best or that i just feel it and know it in my heart? i just said i’ve experienced God.
Agreed; an omnipotent God could force me to believe, if he so chose, right?
And an omniscient God would know what he could do that would make me freely choose to believe in him.
He’s done neither of those things, so I can only assume that he doesn’t want me to believe in him, right?
Philip — you have no idea how much this comment encouraged me. A Christian saying I made a good point? Seriously, thank you!
“i’m convinced i’ve experienced God and that’s where the prof is for me. i am aware that my experience is not prof for you but it does work for me.”
mark: Philip please explain exactly what convinced you that you expierenced god, if you will.
Once again my problem with statements like this from religious folks is, any person of any religion, denomination or interpretation of the Holy spirit/scriptures can make this statement and there is no way of testing whether this statement is true or not.
I know you didn’t say that.
But then,when it comes to something as subjective as “knowing God” and just “knowing it in your heart”, one assertion is as good (and meaningless) as another.
Besides, I already said I just know it in my heart that he like me best.
“He’s done neither of those things, so I can only assume that he doesn’t want me to believe in him, right?”
mark: Not only has the all powerful and knowing god not done what it takes to convince all of his beloved children of his word.
While some humans (christians/muslims,hindus,ect) are agonizing over what exactly is gods word and while god will punish all non believers with eternal torment for not believing in him he still allows other religions(lies) to exist even though the result of believing them is eternal torment.
Just one of the various reasons why I can accept any religion as bieng true.
A brief moment as devil’s advocate, but…
God couldn’t -force- you to believe in him. That’d be against Free Will.
Poor choice of words, but I do agree with what you’re saying. He would be able to display himself in such a way that would convince.
All he would have to do is something that he’s done before, as per the Bible. Make it rain frogs on command, turn water to wine on command, or part any body of water on command.
Me either, sometimes.
We both need to go work out at the gym
Some days the only exercise we get is the exercise in futility of asking John C questions.
“Persistence is Futile!”
Bill…
I posted that prior to you specifically asking the question. I then merely directed my prior post as a reference for you.
Had I been responding to you directly you are correct, I may have worded things differently, included or excluded things. I was merely offering a “differential diagnosis” from the common, faulty (imho) beliefs about where we can find Him.
Christ is in humanity, behind the veil of the flesh.
I would be happy to share more with you along these lines if you are sincerely interested.
Thx JC
Yea…the good life is always lived from the realm of the heart. Its one of those little secrets, those jewels we mine from within over time.
So true Val…
that’s why i’ve never said ‘i know in my hear’ as a reason for God to exist
Sloppy way to run a universe.
We can also use this to calculate how long it’ll be before the Second Coming.
Assume that 0.0001 percent of stars have sentient races. Equally, assume that we were visited approximately in the middle of the sequence. That means that Jesus needs to visit 3.5×10^18 planets after us before he can start on the whole End of the Universe thing.
Again, let’s assume that Earth is entirely ordinary, and Jesus spends 35 years on each planet; without knowing anything about alien gestation and maturation rates, we can’t really make a better guess than this. Which means it’ll take him somewhere around 10^20 years to get through them all.
Obviously, the margins for error on this are (literally) astronomical, but setting a lower bound of 10^10 years seems reasonable.
your very right. testing someones experiences whatever they are is hard.
I’m going to guess he told me doesn’t work so perhaps somethign else. How does one expereince love or grace or compasion? I’m wondering how to word this because i dont’ know how you would describe experiencing those and i’d like to speak in a way you woudl respect. so if you could describe how you experience those from other people i may be able to better articulte my experience.
but beyond that i think God has provided for me when i didn’t have what i needed. i honestly believe he has kept my father alive when he by all medical standards should have died years ago. i don’t know how you would test my experiences in a scientific way and so there is not way to prove God exists in a scientific manor that i’ve thought of yet. so i’m not sure my sharing my experiences with God will help here but if you think it will i can share more.
yes all experiences are subjective. if you are the only one to see of hear something then there is no way to verify that it was there other than your own experience. if you see a cardinal in your backyard and are the only one to see it there is no way to ‘prove’ it was there if it just flew by. no feathers, no droppings, just you getting to experience it’s beauty. even if you can’t prove it happened do you then say it didn’t?
I’ve never understood the “free will” argument from believers. If god is the creator of everything, he must also be the creator of free will. He’s not bound by the parameters of it, he could make it disappear in a nano-second if he wanted to. So he could force me to believe if he wanted to, but he chooses not to. He leave me to decide for myself about his existence, and offers scant evidence of it. Then, if I find the evidence lacking he punishes me for eternity? That’s pretty evil.
Of course option B is that god is constricted by laws of the universe, and has no choice but to allow free will to exist. That means he is not the creator of everything though, and calls in to questions what he did and didn’t create.
Free will seems to be a bit of a double edged sword for believers.
bill,
I have wondered for years if the “free will” Christians are the same ones as the “predestination” Christians.
That would be contradictory (duh).
But if they are different ones, I want to know how the “predestiny” ones would answer to the question, “How do you know that YOU are not predestined for hell, and all your church going and believing can’t change what was predestined for you?”
Even when I believed Christianity, I couldn’t hack predestination. (I couldn’t hack more than three years of Christianity – another story!) I met a few of them though.
Wonder how they deal with those contradictions?
No, he could force me to believe. He could choose not to do that, as it would impinge on my free will, but if he’s simply incapable of sticking his hand in my head and directly changing what I believe then he is not omnipotent.
I deliberately put forward two different options: He could force me to believe, or he could act more indirectly, and do what would be necessary for me freely choose to believe. Though one could ask how free that choice can be, if god knows I’m going to make it…
Actually, it occurs to me that we must have been near the beginning of the sequence, as nothing even close to 10^20 years has passed since the beginning of the universe, let alone the earliest reasonable point for intelligent life to exist.
So either the time for Jesus to visit the rest of the universe is far longer than predicted, or he really dragged his feet on Earth, and the average time he spends per planet is more like a tenth of a second…
“From my understanding miracles are done to show people that God is there and his power. if a miracle were to happen and people did not attribute it to God but rather science or a fluke of genetics or something, then the purpose of the miracle is lost.”
My belief is that if God does exist, and if he does perform a real miracle, there would be no confusing it.
One person surviving a plane crash that kills two hundred isn’t a miracle, it’s a horrible accident and a horrible loss of life.
One person living longer than expected under terminal conditions isn’t a miracle, it’s a rare and lucky occurrence. Treasure it for what it is, and don’t cheapen it by thanking God (unless you also intend to blame God for not going the extra mile and curing your father).
In the end, the problem with religion is that (as I see it), religious people constantly have to rationalize and flat out make stuff up for God.
I finally got around to reading this. You should too, and then question why it is you -want- to believe in God. For me, I want to believe because it would be nice to be in Heaven someday. However, it’d also be nice if I could fly or breathe underwater. No matter how nice something would be, that doesn’t make it anything more than a fantasy.
http://godisimaginary.com/i1.htm
@ philip
“you can’t prove one right over the other but you have to test the believes and see what you deam to be truth based on you understanding and experiences. based on my experiences and my understanding the Christian God rings true to me. It fits with my life experiences. the explanations of get from other religions don’t fit with how my life has worked. ”
mark: Why would an all knowing and powerful god leave his believers in this situation, especially when the price for picking the wrong god (which you yourself said couldnt be proven) is to suffer pain and agony forever?
When you (christians) tell me that god is loving, just and merciful yet he forces me to make a choice under threat of excruciating eternal pain with no evididence other than FEELINGS and faith of his existence. I really find that hard to believe.
“My belief is that if God does exist, and if he does perform a real miracle, there would be no confusing it.”
if you saw it with your own eyes or would the account of someone else be enough?
An account from someone else is not enough (see the Paine quote in the post).
Revelation is only to a person — after that, it is only hearsay. That doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, but we have no compelling reason to believe it simply based on one person’s word. Otherwise, we’d have to believe all the stories people tell that are supposedly true, in all religions.
I wouldn’t need to see a miracle. I would much prefer to speak to the devil. Lucifer himself would be awesome. That would be enough for me. A goth ex-girlfriend of mine told me she conjured lucifer up using a wee gee board. I begged her to conjure him up for me – what a gift that would have been – to see the devil himself then I would know for sure it was all true!!! She was also on several psychotic drugs at the time so I think that played a factor in her experience…
@mark
“to suffer pain and agony forever”
depends on your understanding of hell.
“When you (christians) tell me that god is loving, just and merciful yet he forces me to make a choice under threat of excruciating eternal pain with no evididence other than FEELINGS and faith of his existence. I really find that hard to believe.”
fair enough. i can understand that.
i guess i would say that since i do think God is just he would make his decision on the right criteria. Assuming that God is all the things christians say he is (omnipotent, holy, just,etc) then he would make his decision on the best knowledge out there. the most perfect knowledge. now we at our current place in time may not agree with it or understand it but if he is who he says he is he should know best.
does that make sense? i may not have articulated it properly.
fair enough. so if i’m understanding what most here are saying if THEY saw a miracle of some kind with their own eyes they would then believe? or would they need to see it a few times to test it’s validity? i’m not trying to be argumentative but i am honestly wondering. i’m trying to think like you think.
If I saw a miracle, and then could verify it with someone else to confirm I’m not crazy, and make sure it could never be explained through natural means, then I would believe.
I’m not using the last point as a cop-out — I just know humans are pathetically easy to deceive, even today. Remember the sundog video I posted a week or so back? If I saw something like that, and was surrounded by panicking people, I might think I was seeing a miracle until my reason caught up with my emotions.
Let’s say an angel appeared right now in my living room. First I’d talk to it, and if it replied, I would say that’s amazing. But I could be crazy.
So I’d bring my wife in. And if she could talk to it, and we heard the same answers, then that would be pretty damn good evidence.
But it could still be a trick in some way, so I’d need to test the angel. So I’d ask him to turn my loveseat into a large cake. That’s not possible in the real world. If he did that, I’d be a believer.
If he wanted to predict the future on video for me as well as some tricks like the above, then I think everyone would believe.
In summary, I’d need to see and test. Because humans are just too easy to trick.
now that i think about it i would settle for one of the lesser helper devils. You know, the ones that run around tempting everyone. Because if you think about it, without hell then religion doesn’t have a leg to stand on does it? Religions need hell just as much as they need a loving personal god. I’ve heard stories of devils throwing people around rooms, appearing black and burnt and whispering ‘come with me’ etc. Throw me around the room please! Slap me silly, break some bones just for good measure or make my head spin around and possess my body and make me talk in an ancient evil language… then I would believe. Far more convincing than an angel turning a chair into cake I would say.
“i guess i would say that since i do think God is just he would make his decision on the right criteria. Assuming that God is all the things christians say he is (omnipotent, holy, just,etc) then he would make his decision on the best knowledge out there. the most perfect knowledge. ”
mark: IF god is just what is your definition of just. Because drowning babies during the flood and giving instructions on how to sale ones daughter into slavery isnt just.
Are you claiming god is just because the bible says so, are you claiming that god is loving because the bible says so or because you think god says so.
If your answer to my last question is yes then, isnt the only reason that you claim positive things about god is because the bible says those positive things?
Give me some reasons why you think god is loving, good and just.
because i think that’s how God has acted towards me. i think he has been loving and good and just.
can i justify why God has done the things he has. no i can’t. i don’t know why he did but i do trust him. like a child trusts a parent. often parents do things that to the child make little sense but are in the end for the best. do i know how it is for the best no. do i knwo the criteria God is using? no.
where is the justice in killing a child? i don’t know.
my interactions with God have been that he is loving, just, and full of grace. to my point before. if God is who he says then he has knowledge i don’t and understanding i don’t. so he is able to judge justly when i’m not.
but i don’t know why he did or lets the things happen that do.
“can i justify why God has done the things he has. no i can’t. i don’t know why he did but i do trust him. like a child trusts a parent. often parents do things that to the child make little sense but are in the end for the best. do i know how it is for the best no. do i knwo the criteria God is using? no.
where is the justice in killing a child? i don’t know.”
But here’s the thing Phillip, often parents do things that make little sense and are cruel and abusive. The child – being a child – doesn’t know those things are outside the norm though. They lack the capacity to understand fully what’s right and wrong because of immaturity and reliance on the abusive parent.
Making yourself childlike and trusting when it comes to the existence of god seems to me a dangerous path. It takes control out of your hands, it puts it in the hands of those who stand to benefit from the perpetuation of the god myth.
Depends on how you define faith — but if your definition is belief in something extraordinary without evidence, then yes, I would need that removed.
Someone can tell me they ate an apple yesterday, and I can take that on faith — I don’t need evidence, because it’s certainly possible they did and I don’t really care one way or another.
But if they told me they turned an apple into an elephant, I’m not going to take that on faith, because I think it’s impossible. I would definitely need evidence — and extraordinary evidence — to believe that person.
So, this is how I apply that to Jesus:
That a rabbi lived and taught some controversial teachings sometime around 0 – 30AD is something I have no problem believing. Now, there’s no good evidence for it, but it’s certainly possible and I don’t really care one way or another.
But that said rabbi was born of a virgin, did miracles, and rose from the dead? I need some pretty good evidence in order to believe that, because I think it’s impossible — just like the person who claims they turned an apple into an elephant.
i’ve said it before, i can’t use science to prove he’s there. all i have are my experiences and it’s been made very clear that they are of no value.
so for you i dont’ have the evidence that you seak.
fair enough
sorry one more question. would God speaking to you be enough or is it not measurable/testable so no?
Is the schizophrenics ironclad belief that a black dog sent by the devil is following him around and ordering him to kill people enough evidence for you to believe in a demonic and murderous talking black dog?
Subjective experience is usually not considered good evidence. Our brains are delicate cocktails of chemicals and electrical impulses, and are all too easy to fool.
Having said that, if I had an experience that made me think a god was actually speaking to me, I would definitely explore both possibilities: mental illness and genuine religious experience.
Speaking alone — no. That is a mental disorder.
But if that voice claimed to be God (or a ghost or fairy or demon or whatever) and could do something to prove itself that others can verify — foretell the future repeatedly, make naturally impossible things happen, etc — then I would have no reason to doubt it. If others couldn’t verify it, then I’d be checking into a mental hospital for help with schizophrenia.
If the voice is only heard by me. Probably not enough. I would assume I’ve gone insane.
Voice heard by all manakind in all languages delivering the same message – now that would get me there.
Shouldn’t be too hard for an all powerful god right?
@Ty
“Is the schizophrenics ironclad belief that a black dog sent by the devil is following him around and ordering him to kill people enough evidence for you to believe in a demonic and murderous talking black dog?”
no it’s not and i don’t expect my experience to be enough for you. never have.
“I would definitely explore both possibilities: mental illness and genuine religious experience.”
i do find that encouraging that if you experienced what i’ve experienced we’d do the same things. to that end if your interested in experiencing God i could give you a few things to try. if not no worries.
@Phillip
“to that end if your interested in experiencing God i could give you a few things to try. if not no worries.”
Nope, done that dance.
That is the perfect “short version” of my Christian faith.
*Grunt* *strain* I’m not supposed to just believe; I’m supposed to *know*… Unnnngggh… *errrrchhh*… *whew*
Nope! Didn’t work.
“i trust God because he has never given me a reason to not. instead he has consistently be trust worthy and gracious with me. I have a relationship with God built on two way communication. in that i know better who he is and what he is about. that is where the trust comes from.”
I’d bet that pretty much all imaginary friends are trustworthy. I mean, who goes to the trouble of creating an imaginary friend who’s a jerk?
And I know you are giving us your testimony, here. I know that’s what it is. But really, these constant assertions of communication with god are intended to do what, exactly? You know we won’t buy it. So I have to wonder if this is for your benefit. Shoring up your own faith by declaring it to the heathen. If that’s what it is, then groovy. But if that isn’t it, then what exactly are you doing?
” i dont’ have the evidence that you seak.”
Phillip – thanks for your honesty.
@ philip
“i trust God because he has never given me a reason to not. instead he has consistently be trust worthy and gracious with me.”
Along the same line, this is hypothetical, but I’m curious if your mind would change if say, as an example, you had a 3 year old boy. On his birthday your wife took him to baskin robbins for ice cream. While sitting in the baskin robbins eating ice cream a drunk illegal alien runs a red light at high speed, crashes into a power pole then the baskin robbins. Your son gets snagged around the neck by a cable and dragged through the shattered glass onto the sidewalk. There, amongst the debri a wound in his severed neck spurts his blood a foot or more into the air as his mother watches in horror. He dies a horrific and painful death holding her hand.
This is a true story – the details from an eye witness that was there. Both parents were devout Christians. His dad was shown on TV wailing ‘why Jesus!, why Jesus! he was a good boy!’ Just curious if you would still think god would be ‘trust worthy and gracious’ with you then? Chalk it up to His almighty plan maybe?
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/photos/2009/feb/12/125365/
I grew up in a very religious household. I studied the bible diligently, prayed often, and built my life around the ministry.
My change of mind occurred because I read a lot of history and science, and was after a while unable to maintain the cognitive dissonance created by trying to hold two completely contradictory ideas in my head.
On one side, I was praying to a god that was the the mighty god of the Hebrews, who sent his son to die for our sins and intercede for us on his behalf.
On the other side, I knew that the Hebrew god was not in fact the monotheistic uber deity my bible classes taught, but was rather one of a number of gods from the region the proto-Hebrews developed in. He had brothers. The Philistine Baal he was always ordering the hebrews to shun was one of those brothers. The tribal war god who later came to be monotheistically worshiped by the Hebrews actually started out as the god of storms and rivers.
I made the mistake of knowing too much about the actual history the bible claims it is reporting. I knew that the Hebrews were never actually slaves in Egypt, that Herod never murdered every two year old child in a mad attempt to kill the infant Jesus, and that the Romans never took a census that required the Jews to return to their home cities.
I also made the mistake of learning enough science to know that the Genesis story is laughable, that there was never a global flood, and that humans are just clever primates not too long removed from the trees. Not any special creation of god, but rather 98% chimp with a few kludged modifications thrown in.
And when I went looking for the ‘evidence’ of god that all my peers swore was there, what I actually found was a universe that precisely matches what we would expect from blind naturalism. Not wondrous design, just things falling in a rough order based around very well understood principles.
God isn’t there. His book is a long fabrication, and not even particularly good philosophy when you really dig into it. The universe doesn’t need him to explain anything. He adds no value to the equation, no new data, no predictions can be made with him as a hypothesis.
You can cling to the idea if you like, but I can’t help but thing of it as a security blanket you forget to outgrow.
Since the first time I had someone going on to me about how good God had been to her – saved her life when a ship she was on when other people died – I have always wanted to ask:
“So what’s so special about YOU? And why was God so nasty to all those other people? IF what you think is true, I mean? How is God good? How does singling you out make him good?”
“Does this lay to waste the slavery behind their Passover celebration?”
Well, either this or the fact that at no point in history did every first born of Egypt die all in a single night. I’m not anti-Jew by any means. But their religion is still based on a bunch of mythology.
“Do you suppose they are referring to natural disasters in which most of humanity in their part of the world does get destroyed?”
There are many theories on where flood myths come from. They predate any Hebrew or Christian writing by quite a bit, even showing up in oral traditions like the Gilgamesh stories.
Floods are a common occurrence, and are terrifying. There’s a fair bit of evidence that the fertile crescent was one a fertile valley until the ocean came crashing in formed the Mediterranean. If that’s true, it might account for flood mythology being so widespread. Most early civilizations grew up around rivers that regularly flooded (the Nile). There are lots of reasons why this particular mythology is so widespread that do not include a thoroughly geologically debunked global flood.
lets go back for a second, my question was generated by this statement you made -
philip:“i trust God because he has never given me a reason to not. instead he has consistently be trust worthy and gracious with me.”
- to which I replied -
mark:” So if someone where to murder a baby on monday but was really, really nice to you personally on wednsday that would make that person a just, good and loving person? Is that how it works.”
philip:” so to the questions above. No Mark thats not how it works. but in this realm of hypothetical, what if the baby that person killed was going to grow up to be another Hitler?”
mark bey: If the baby was going to grow up to be hitler of course your all powerful, all knowing , perfect and just god would know this.
Also if your god is in the business of using his magical powers to kill potential hitlers while they are still babies to prevent future hitlers then exactly what is the excuse for allowing that clown (hitler) to actually exist/grow up in the first place. Especially since this all powerful and great god knew full well exactly what hitler would do.
Also Im not asking for a world free from suffering or pain, Im not even asking for equality. Christians are the ones claims god greatness and goodness, at lot of times based on what christians feel god has personally done for them. You (christians) claim that god intervenes in your life in a positive way and even claim this is part of the reason you believe that god is god, just ect.
So if you are going to claim god is god for what he personally does for you, how come I cant place the blame for the sufferintg of innocents on god for not intervening? Which brings me to the question of.
Why do you give god credit for his actions when you think that he has helped you, but not give god the blame for his innaction in the face of the countless tragedies that have caused millions of people to die painful deaths over the centuries.
So one more time and please answer this question, exactly what makes your god good? Is it because you think god has been good to you? Also how come when your god does something you like you claim he is good but when god allows innocent children to suffer painful deaths or when the god of the bible kills scores of people or give instructions on how to sell ones daughter into slavery god is not evil?
“for me it comes back to what i understand God’s promises to be free of suffering is not one of them.”
mark: What exactly is god’s promises as you understand them?
I understand suffering I just dont understand things such as a women bieng brutally raped to the point of bieng physically disabled, not bieng able to walk or move properly then during the process of that women trying to get away she falls on the ground unable to get up and actually watches dogs eat her baby alive because she cannot move. This is a true story, so please stop trying to imply that Im asking for a perfect world Im not, just a little more from that just, loving and perfect god you claim exist.
I posted the wrong comment
@ philip
“i don’t know mark. you don’t like my answers so i’ll just leave it.”
mark: Philip you made the statement of god bieng good, I just responded to your statement. The question is simple and you didnt answer it. If your going to claim that god is just and loving then should at least address my questions about such a statement since you make such statements. YOUR ARE NOT PLAYING THE GAME FAIRLY. But its all good no hard feelings at all.
What bases or reason do you have for saying god is good, because if the only reason why you say god is good is because the bible/god has said so. Then my next question is this.
If I drown a baby like your god did, I would not be looked at as a good person. In fact I kinda think that if the posters on this blog knew that I had, had the power to stop a baby from drowning with no threat to my own existence and I didnt I doubt if they would think of me as a good person.
In fact at the very least I suspect that if Dainiel knew this info he would probably ban me from posting on this blog for bieng a rotten individual.
But I dont if I could allow babies to drown and be consider a decent human bieng by the posters of this blog.
So since you refuse to answer simple questions about claims that you make please answer this question.
If the bible is gods word and gods word is a perfect guide to model ones behavior after.
Then would you consider me a decent person if you just happen to walk by me giving my brother instructions on how to salel his daughter into slavery?
How come god gets to give instructions on how to sale ones daugher into slavery and still be consider good and just but I couldnt do the same and still be considered good just.
P.S Its not that I dont like your answer, its just that using your own logic YOUR ANSWERS dont add up. It has nothing to do with what I dont like or like its about what makes logical sense and your reasons for believing dont make any sense as either.
Every answer you gave as proof for the existence of god was an emotional response. Please do not accuse me of not accepting your answers because I dont like them it is dishonest.
Sorry for posting this comment more than once philip please respond if you can.
@ mark
i didn’t say it “you don’t like them” as an emotional response so much as a “you don’t accept the system that i will use to make my personal choices” i can’t use evidence that you accept to explain some of the claims because the reason i make the decisions i do come from things you don’t believe happen. see my problem? part of my belief comes from the fact that i think i personally speak with God. you don’ think that happens so it’s hard for me to frame an answer that requires me to take out the element of faith.
As i see it, it’s not as simple as God should just stop all bad things from happening or he is bad (that could be a misrepresentation if so i do apologize). You have to consider the that in the christian world view there is also the devil who has (for reasons i don’t understand) been given power in this world and as such can cause bad things to happen (and yes i understand that means that God lets it happen). the other thing that we need to consider is the need to leave our free will intact. God gave us free will and chooses to let us make our own choice and decisions even if they are terrible.
But to try my best to answer you question i need some info. what situation are you talking about? the flood i assume? if so i’ll do my best to speak to that but i think i need to know the situation.
as far as slavery goes i don’t know why he gave instructions on how to do it. from what i’ve read of the bible we are called to a higher standard. to love everyone as you love yourself. Jesus took what was the standard and increased it. why it wasnt’ at that point ot start i dont’ know. but now it’s not just don’t commit adultry but don’t think about how you would if you could sleep with another because thats just as bad.
so what does it all mean? it means that the standards i have learned from the bible teach me to respect everyone, love everyone unconditionally, and to be a blessing to all. to me slavery doesn’t fit into those commands and so the rules have been changed. slavery is not ok and i think that the bible, specificaly Jesus, shows that its not.
philip.. i can’t use evidence that you accept to explain some of the claims because the reason i make the decisions i do come from things you don’t believe happen. see my problem? part of my belief comes from the fact that i think i personally speak with God. you don’ think that happens so it’s hard for me to frame an answer that requires me to take out the element of faith. …
mark…this is my problem your answer is incoherent and you evade direct questions. you are making a claim upon which my eternal sould rest on. there is nothing that is distinctive about your argument. a bhudist could claim the same thing and tell me my eternal soul rest on bhudism.
you claim that you believe in god because he is good and just. but when i ask you why you believe god is good you try to evade or wont answer my question, that is dishonest. when i ask you if you believe god is good because the bible/god says so you refuse to answer.
philip i i were to allow 20 babies to drown when i could have saved them or gave my brother advice on how to sale his daughters into slavery would i be good, just moral.
would i be following the teachings of god and in the progress of living up to his standards.
if you do believe that
philip…As i see it, it’s not as simple as God should just stop all bad things from happening or he is bad (that could be a misrepresentation if so i do apologize). …..
mark….i get that but would you consider me moral if i were to have the ability to stop dogs from eating a womens baby as she watched. if she couldnt get up and help her baby herself because of being raped multiple rapist. couldnt your god at least have made the dogs wait until night time, drag the baby away into some bushes instead allowing the mother to witness this helpless and powerless to act.
i were to walk by a drowning child and didnt try to help would i be following the teachings of god. i aint asking for everyone to be good looking, rich and live as long as noah. but if you really want to convince that your god is good, just, loving and merciful then at the very least you could have
im not asking for a perfect world but perhaps your just, loving and good god could have used his unlimited powers to command the dogs to drag the baby into the bushes. like dogs sometimes naturally do when other animals are around and they are tyring protect or hide thier meal/kill in this the baby whos mother watched it bieng eaten alive.
if i could stop such things from happening with no harm or bother to myself and didnt would you consider me moral. would i be following gods teachings if i were to give my brother advice on how to better sale my niece into slavery. is this what you consider moral.
do you believe god is moral because the says so.
at philip
philip…But to try my best to answer you question i need some info. what situation are you talking about? the flood i assume? if so i’ll do my best to speak to that but i think i need to know the situation. ..
mark…yes im talking about the flood.
at vid
vid…There just doesn’t seem to a motive for god to do anything at all!!! Which I think is a strong case for reasoning that there is no god. ….
mark…i agree but sometime if christians say god is love i have to question what exactly they mean. i find these line of quetioning rewarding as the intellectual tap dancing christians do is unbelievable.
how would you like work for a supervisor, who claims to be the best supervisor ever.
but will only take credit for the god things but never ever for the bad. even though that supervisor has full control of everything in his department.
i chrisians call god just i have to question what exactly do they mean by just.
Oops…TYpo…that last line was not supposed to be in there….feel free to do some free-hand editing for me there Daniel! lol
Also…I mispelled “tiny”…added an “e”.
Please forgiveth the error of my ways!
It’s [use apostrophe here] a sign of the dumbing down of a culture when its [do NOT use apostrophe here] stop even caring about being literate.
no i don’t think it’s moral to kill or allow babies to die or to sell your daughter or anyone for that matter into slavery. and i think the bible is clear that those things are not ok. there is a new covenant between God and man and in that those things are not ok.
The Bible was written by people who lived in a particular place, in a particular time. It can be reasonably assumed that they wrote about the cities and places that they knew. But when it makes historical claims, those claims tend to be wrong. King David, if he existed, ruled over a single village, and as much of the countryside as a horse could get to in a few hours. There were many such Hill-Kings in the area in the time he was supposed to live. When the Hebrews ran away from Egypt, they settled in (and murdered the residents of) Canaan, a town that (at any reasonable time for the Exodus to have happened) was inside Egypt’s borders.
Does mentioning places known to exist make the supernatural claims of the Bible more likely? Ask yourself this:
The city of Troy was, for centuries, thought to be a poetic invention, appearing in The Illiad and nowhere else, and with no archaeological evidence to support its existence. And then, in 1870, the ruins of Troy were uncovered, and it turned out that, of what could be reconstructed, The Illiad was a good description of the actual destruction of the city.
Now, does this archaeological evidence mean that what The Illiad says of gods and half-gods should be given more credence than before Troy was found? Does it make you believe that the war started Hera, Aphrodite and Athena couldn’t decide which of them was the most beautiful?
Maybe… there is an even newer covenant whereby Christianity is no longer a valid way.
So if it isn’t moral, then why did God command those kinds of things in the OT? Was it moral in the “old covenant”? And where does it say these things are wrong in the “new covenant” now?
Grace – “I couldn’t wrap my mind around the idea that life could come from non-life”
Interesting thought. Just because you can’t “wrap your mind” around this idea, does that make it impossible? Could it be your mind, your brain, and all of ours for that matter, cannot comprehend what’s possible over the course of hundreds upon hundreds of millions of years? Try to imagine what 100 million years would be like – you would probably find it hard to imagine just 1 million.
Atoms tend to group together. Do you not think it possible that over the course of many hundreds of millions of years that at some point, some atoms clumped together in a highly improbable and unique way, due to ideal conditions at the time, that allowed them to clump with other atoms and make copies of themselves?
Living cells are the ultimate replicators. It’s fascinating to watch under a microscope. I don’t think it that far fetched to imagine a very primitive replicator of a few atoms that made copies of itself, and over time flaws or mutations in the copies were passed down to subsequent copies.
Check out the Mimi Virus! It is virus, but it is also a primitive cell! Very cool!