Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

I'm not sure one should dismiss God anymore

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Originally posted by Ben Kenobi View Post
    Attestations by near witnesses is a pretty good indicator. Only one nt canonical book isn't really known, and that's Hebrews which was probably written by Peter which is why no one really bothered to say so.
    Hebrews 11:1 is one of my favorite verses.
    Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
    Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.
    "Hating America is something best left to Mobius. He is an expert Yank hater.
    He also hates Texans and Australians, he does diversify." ~ Braindead

    Comment


    • Faith isn't evidence of anything, unless you also mean that Santa Claus exists because kids believe he does.
      Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/DaveDaDouche
      Read my seldom updated blog where I talk to myself: http://davedadouche.blogspot.com/

      Comment


      • Faith in Christ lasts longer than faith in Santa Claus. Believe what you want, but realize that I have the same right.
        Like I've said, if you're correct, I'll never know it. If I'm right, God have mercy on you, and I'll see you in Paradise.
        Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.
        "Hating America is something best left to Mobius. He is an expert Yank hater.
        He also hates Texans and Australians, he does diversify." ~ Braindead

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Kidicious View Post
          Having fear is a part of being humble. The Bibles tells us of people who became pridefull and stopped fearing God. They also stopped believing in justice. God is just. That means that injustices are punished. That's the way God disciplines us. He keeps us humble.

          The good news is that you can repent and humble yourself and God will forget your sins without punishment.
          No. Humility has nothing to do with fear.
          ...people like to cry a lot... - Pekka
          ...we just argue without evidence, secure in our own superiority. - Snotty

          Comment


          • Faith in Christ lasts longer than faith in Santa Claus. Believe what you want, but realize that I have the same right.
            You're acting like faith is something tangible, or that there are different kinds of faith. Most people stop believing in Santa Claus because they realize how silly that belief is. Why is it silly? Well, because it's physically impossible for Santa Claus to exist, and it doesn't make any sense, anyway.

            Hmm, actually, substitute Santa Claus was God and you sorta have the same argument, don't you?
            Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/DaveDaDouche
            Read my seldom updated blog where I talk to myself: http://davedadouche.blogspot.com/

            Comment


            • Originally posted by Caligastia View Post
              No. Humility has nothing to do with fear.
              I don't think you even know the definition of fear:

              http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fear

              JM
              Jon Miller-
              I AM.CANADIAN
              GENERATION 35: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.

              Comment


              • Why are you trying so hard to shake people's faith, David? Why does it mean so much to you?
                Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.
                "Hating America is something best left to Mobius. He is an expert Yank hater.
                He also hates Texans and Australians, he does diversify." ~ Braindead

                Comment


                • You're acting like faith is something tangible, or that there are different kinds of faith. Most people stop believing in Santa Claus because they realize how silly that belief is. Why is it silly? Well, because it's physically impossible for Santa Claus to exist, and it doesn't make any sense, anyway.
                  Funny thing, back before when I was an atheist I argued in favour of Santa Claus. It all revolves around two questions. One, what do you mean by Santa Claus?

                  If you mean St. Nicholas, he existed. He still exists, in a sense, up in heaven with the other saints. So your argument can't be that a St. Nicholas didn't exist. You have to admit that a St. Nick did exist. So that leaves you with what? The story of a fat man in a red suit who flies around the world delivering gifts and presents to everyone.

                  Now as for that argument, is it true that those who believe in Santa Claus claim this is so? Or is it something else?

                  "All minds, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge."

                  Is the first preposition. Can man know the universe to the extent where he can grapple with the true reality, or it is more like a small boat adrift on the ocean of knowledge, where we merely float along the surface?

                  "The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see."

                  This is the second preposition. This argues that ideas, thoughts are in a fact, not concrete, but they are real, and more real that the things which are concrete. This addresses your argument here. Is faith real? I would argue yes. Is it concrete in the way that you can bang a table? No.

                  But look at it from this perspective. Have you read Ozymandias? "Look on my works ye mighty and despair"? Works fade. Even the most solid things weather, erode and decay. But faith, hope, charity, and joy, they last forever. Take a moment of time and it is preserved, forever, in your head. A joy that will never fade. One man may remember what one did for another, and pay it forward, and continue the story. How many aeons ago, did 300 men stand at Thermopylae? And do we not recall their deeds even to this day?

                  This is what I do with my life, take the stories, the thoughts, the ideas and carry them on. So yes, is there a Santa Claus? Yes, I would argue there is a Santa Claus, just as there was a Jesus Christ, who suffered and died for our sins. The faith, though real is not concrete, but his deeds, his death his resurrection, all happened, just as 300 men suffered and died at Thermopylae. They did so for democracy, for freedom, as Christ did for men's souls.
                  Scouse Git (2) La Fayette Adam Smith Solomwi and Loinburger will not be forgotten.
                  "Remember the night we broke the windows in this old house? This is what I wished for..."
                  2015 APOLYTON FANTASY FOOTBALL CHAMPION!

                  Comment


                  • atheists = theists + a

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by Jon Miller View Post
                      Have I, or the Bible, ever presented the point that you must believe in a 7000 year old earth in order to be saved? That you will be punished if you don't? In fact, I argue that the story is about something completely different then the facts of how the universe began. That those were just incidental for the time, as they couldn't understand then (and we probably can't understand now). 100 years ago, if I started talking about quarks, everyone would think I was insane. What do you expect of 4000 years ago?
                      Way to totally misunderstand the point. I'll break it down simply: Hypothetical deity creates universe 7000-10,000 years ago but makes it look like it's 14 billion years old, even with things that are completely unnecessary to fake (like fossils) to add to the appearance of great age. He then creates beings, but via divine revelation written down in his officially-sanctioned holy book, he gives them a fictional account of how he created everything that if read plainly says the universe and the Earth was created in 6 days some 7-10,000 years ago. He also says later that only people who have faith in him and believe he exists get saved. Now, these beings grow in knowledge and they discover all the abundant evidence that the universe is 14 billion years old, the earth is 4.5 billion years old, that life evolved over billions of years, that there was no worldwide great flood as described in the holy book, etc. So all the evidence shows that what the holy book says (if taken at face value) is not real. Ergo, lots of the beings (the ones who engage in critical thinking) make the perfectly logical conclusion that the deity described in the holy book doesn't exist, because the attributes and actions ascribed to it in that very book aren't factual. Then, by that deity's own rules, those people don't get saved, because they trust that the evidence the deity planted is true. Doesn't that seem pretty, I don't know, unfair? Deceptive?

                      I will admit that there are Christians who think you must believe in a 7000 year old earth. But these are a rarity, even among denominations (like my own) which hold to creationism.
                      You're starting to make up "facts" like BK does, Jon. This is pretty disappointing.

                      http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2680/nearly-half-the-u-s-population-believes-the-earth-is-less-than-10-000-years-old

                      That is not a "rare" belief.

                      I don't see anything inconsistent with a creation happening 1, 100, or 7000 years ago. For us to be us today, we need the natural history. It is as much a part of the universe as the speed of light or the fine structure constant. And if you assume that the part of creation that God cares about is humanity, then what is wrong with creating a universe at a certain state? How is that startling? We have science projects because we want to observe things in a certain state (have things in a certain state). God obviously would too, many theologies have Him mostly interested in sentients with social structure. This started ~7000 years ago. So there is a reason, a requirement, and if you believe in God an ability. I fail to see your problem.
                      Are you ****ing serious?! As a Christian, you'd be perfectly okay if the Jesus story never actually happened? That the Biblical covenants are faked, and God just planted all that information for the purposes of some sort of "experiment" a couple of years ago? Is there any other Christian here that would be okay upon learning this? I mean, despite your protests that I just "don't understand" Christianity, I'm pretty confident that I understand the importance of the covenants and the blood sacrifice that Jesus supposedly made. If that's all a lie, fictional information planted, I'd say that has a *huge* theological impact. Faith in God is about trust, and how can you trust a God that fakes the most critical aspects of his divine revelation to his beings? What if he's deceiving you about other things, such as being saved at all? Che posited a while back, what if god is actually evil and all the hope that is brought about by faith is just a trick, but when we die everyone is damned, regardless of faith? If you suggest god can deceive his creations at will like you are saying, you can't discount that possibility at all.

                      And you're still ignoring the point that a lot of the things that we have that indicate an old age to us would not be necessary for us to exist as we do today. We don't need fossils to live. We don't need to see supernova remnants from billions of years ago. Those would be fakery for fakery sake.

                      Hell, you can't discount the possibility that we're all just brains floating in a jar, and everything is an illusion for us entirely. What you're engaging in is nothing but trying to rationalize solipsism.

                      And I fail to see your problem with it being symbolic. Which is definitely the focus. No one claims the focus is about fruit eating.
                      How do we know what's purely symbolic and what really happened? If you discount the reality of something described in the Bible and say it's symbolic because it doesn't mesh with established science, then you've got to discount all the miracles. Would you say the Biblical miracles are unimportant for Christian theology?

                      Your claims and reasoning is nonsensical. What else do I have to say? And you keep implying that things that are symbolic have less meaning/value then those that are not.

                      You are continually attacking strawmen, and attacking me when I try to point this out. Unless we can discuss the same thing, it isn't valuable to have a conversation.

                      JM
                      No, Jon, my arguments are rational. You're the one justifying solipsism, not me. And I did not say symbolic things were meaningless, that's YOUR strawman. You can repeat all you want "you're not making sense!" and "you just don't understand!" but that doesn't make the idiocy you're spouting any better.
                      Tutto nel mondo è burla

                      Comment


                      • The Biblical miracles have symbolic meaning. That does not mean that they are discounted. That does not mean they are not literal. Are you capable of understanding this?

                        You seem to lack basic reasoning ability in this discussion, and the ability to engage in separate discussions at the same time.

                        Obviously I was not talking about creation in the Christian context, but rather what the Christian God could do in some other context, when I stated that I don't see anything inconsistent (from a scientific perspective, assuming a Christian-like God) with creation happening 1, 100, or 7000 years ago (or any other amount of time ago).

                        When you are willing to think I will be willing to talk to you again.

                        JM
                        Jon Miller-
                        I AM.CANADIAN
                        GENERATION 35: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.

                        Comment


                        • I doubt ben was ever really an atheist and merely claims he was once such for narrative convenience.
                          If there is no sound in space, how come you can hear the lasers?
                          ){ :|:& };:

                          Comment


                          • Saying "I don't believe in God" or "I'm an atheist" doesn't make sense IMO. If you didn't desire that God exists you wouldn't say those things. And if you say Bible is crap, would you also say that Shakespeare's plays, for example, are crap?

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Aivo½so View Post
                              Saying "I don't believe in God" or "I'm an atheist" doesn't make sense IMO. If you didn't desire that God exists you wouldn't say those things. And if you say Bible is crap, would you also say that Shakespeare's plays, for example, are crap?
                              What? I'm a believer, but...what?

                              I love Shakespeare, but even I don't hold his canon to be scripture. I don't think people are commenting on the Bible as literature, but as scripture. As for the rest...what? Please elaborate.
                              1011 1100
                              Pyrebound--a free online serial fantasy novel

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Aivo½so View Post
                                Saying "I don't believe in God" or "I'm an atheist" doesn't make sense IMO. If you didn't desire that God exists you wouldn't say those things.
                                Why not?

                                And if you say Bible is crap, would you also say that Shakespeare's plays, for example, are crap?
                                No, I don't think it's crap, but if someone said they believe Hamlet was a real person I wouldn't take that claim seriously.

                                Comment

                                Working...
                                X