As a practicing Catholic, I couldn’t care less about proof of God. More to the point, I couldn’t care less if God really exists. Daksims actually raises a valid issue. If it were irrefutably proven tomorrow that Joseph Campbell never existed, would that change your mind about the cross-cultural mythology? Tell me Shakespeare never existed. So fucking what. The Prince of Denmark still shows what happens when you place your mama on a tilted pedestal. Memory is narrative. We construe meaning through narrative threads. Narrative is inherently fictitious. Fiction is great, fiction is good, let us thank you for our food. The mistake in the argument for or against religion is that everybody bases their stance on the extent to which god can be their close buddy. If you can talk to him and share your neuroses with him and grind your hapless little ego against him at night, then you believe in him in exchange for 10% of an annual income. If not, you go to a whore for the exact same deal. I believe in God’s Jesus. I also believe in Balzac’s Rastignac, Dostoevski’s Ivan Karamazov, Shakespeare’s Henry V, and Tony Hillerman’s Jim Chee. A few months ago, I went to the Navajo reservation looking for Jim Chee. I didn’t find him or his trailer or even a birth certificate, but every indian there knew who I was asking about. That was enough for me.
Since you may not have understood spejic's post, I'll put his point in contrete terms. Let's you and I get together. I'll grab a rock. You "choose to believe" as hard as you can that the rock doesn't exist while I hit you on the head with it. How's that? You see, the good and the bad thing about science is that it limits our beliefs to what is possible, at least in real life. You can disbelieve in gravity all you want. You still can't fly like a bird or float in the air without some kind of external mechanical assistance. Get it? Good.
Well, Saul of Tarsus said the if Jesus didn't rise from the dead then the belief system goes into the toilet. Now, you can say that if it was proved somehow that Jesus never existed that someone could still read the Gospels and say "This Jesus character really said some shit what made sense. I think I'll try to live like that." But the divine ultimate sanction his words would carry as the Son of God would go "poof". And many monotheistic believers are attracted by the psychological comfort of the seeming certainty of having divine sanction to put them in the clear black-n-white "right". My insertion is not trivial. The Buddhists, for example, get on swimmingly without a personal, anthropomorphized "God" and the neuroses that belief in "Him" often brings.
And Bernard Shaw said Shakespeare laid a lousy ground for Western literature. Both are interesting tidbits. That's what it basically comes down to. I'm not an evangelical, and thus not concerned about sanction. To hell with psychological comfort. But of course I believe in the bible as a black-and-white proposition. What belief system not based in black-n-white can escape any kind of moral idiocy? No, but Buddhists build their temples in black-n-white, too. Based on Buddhist narratives I know, good and evil are laid out in very easily discernable dichotomies.
No one has an open mind. Data does not interpret itself; rather, everyone views the world through a belief framework. Unfortunately, as humans we never have all the information. So, when we start from the evidence, we can never be sure our conclusions are right — like in a classic murder mystery, just one piece of information can change the whole picture. Scientists use their own beliefs, unconscious or otherwise, to interpret data. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. -Professor Richard Lewontin, a geneticist and author of a number of books on Darwinian theory Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit in this one complaint. . . the literalists [i.e., creationists] are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today. -Michael Ruse, professor of history and philosophy and author of The Darwinian Revolution (1979), Darwinism Defended (1982), and Taking Darwin Seriously (1986) Tree rings http://answersingenesis.org/docs/546.asp One of the scientists working on the project has issued a statement on electronic mail saying that they had only said it was plausible that these trees might turn out to be part of a much older tree that was now underground, but that this was definitely not a foregone conclusion. He said the media 'decided to run with the story that scientists working in Tasmania have definitely found the oldest living organism in the world. We have made no such claim'. Ice layers http://answersingenesis.org/docs/233.asp Radiometric dating 1. ALL dating methods (including ones that point to thousands, not billions of years, are based on assumptions—beliefs, no matter how reasonable-sounding, that you can’t prove, but must accept by faith. For example: Assuming how much of a particular chemical was originally present; Assuming that there has been no leaching by water of the chemicals in or out of the rock; Assuming that radioactive decay rates have stayed the same for billions of years, and more. 2. Radiometric ‘dating’ labs do not measure age—they measure amounts of chemicals, then from this they infer age, based on the underlying assumptions. 3. When the assumptions are tested by measuring rocks of known age—e.g. recent lava flows—they often fail miserably.8 4. Objects of the same age, tested by different methods, have been shown to give ‘dates’ varying by a factor of a thousand.9 5. Does modern radiometric dating prove billions of years? See why the answer is a definite NO! The fact that there is some consistency to radiometric dates is explained in part by the tendency to publish only data consistent with the ‘evolutionary age’ already ‘established’ by fossils. Most radioactive dating laboratories prefer you to tell them what age you expect. It is hard to see why this would be necessary if these were ‘absolute’ methods. The entire geological ‘millions of years’ system was largely in place, based on the philosophical assumptions of men like Charles Lyell and James Hutton, before radioactivity was even discovered. Where a radioactive date contradicts the ‘system’, it is invariably discarded. 6. If a ‘radiometric’ date and a ‘fossil’ (evolutionary) date conflict, the radiometric date is always discarded. There are many other solid reasons for not accepting fallible man-made methods, such as radioactive ‘dating’, as an authority in opposition to the clear testimony of God’s infallible Word. Give me a list of "scientific evidence" that would dispute the Flood and I will look into it. How do you know what the "Christians" were looking for? The same story goes the other way as well. Some of the strongest proponents of creation science were once evolutionists.
Gravity is a theory to explain the phenomenon of things falling. If you choose to disbelieve this theory that doesn't mean you stop believing things will fall. God is a theory to explain the creation of the universe etc. Someone who doesn't belive in god doesn't believe the universe doesn't exist. I agree that there are flaws with the accuracy of carbon dating, but even the most wildly inaccurate tests put that gap between the existence of the universe and the arrival of man at a tad more than about a week.
My point was that there are some things even a complete solipsist can't choose to believe or disbelieve. They can PRETEND to believe or disbelieve whatever they want, but they will then be indistinguishable from a raving delusional psychotic.
Huh? Well, the western monotheisms force you into a black-n-white dualistic view of the world. Without Manichaen dualism they couldn't exist or have moral force. That's also why they're so dangerous and tend to get all warlike and shit and go around slaughtering the unbelievers when they're strong enough to get away with it. Which brings me to... This quote tells me everything I need to know about how much you have NOT studied Buddhism. Even the most untutored beginner knows precisely that Buddhism is all about breaking through duality. Every other teaching (about devas and hells and precepts and vinayas and all that stuff) comes under the heading of "skillfull means", which is simply the common-sense observation that not all people are at the same spiritual level and, therefore, some need more simple, concrete teachings while others can handle the more advanced and/or abstract stuff. But there's always the common core of striving for non-duality that underlies it all. Buddhism will even make use of some Christian teachings as skillfull means if the teacher is well-versed enough in Christian doctrine to do so rather than lazily assign all Christians to "hell" simply because they don't believe exactly as the Buddhist does. Ultimately, though, the Buddhist seeks to transcend "good and evil" because both concepts are ultimately empty as is everything else. As an aside, the English term "empty" is only an approximation of the Sanskrit word "sunyata" and is NOT synonymous with non-existent in the Western philosophical sense but refers to the fact that nothing exists independently in and of itself with no connection to any other thing. I refer to you to Conze's book "Buddhist Thought In India" if you wish to correct your basic misunderstandings regarding Buddhism. Zen Buddhism is even more emphatic thean most Buddhist schools on the emptiness of precepts. The records of the Zen masters are replete with the masters doing shockingly "unBuddhist" things to drive home to their students that duality is an empty snare of delusion.
I've alerted the local law enforcement near you to keep you away from tall buildings and Superman comic books.
If the flood wiped out mankind then it would have to have flooded the entire globe. a) there is not enough water to flood the entire globe, even if both ice caps melted. b) if there was somehow enough water to flood the globe, then where would that water recede to after the flood, what with the earth's surface now being purely sea? c) how were land animals from countries separated from the ark by sea able to get there to get into the ark? If there were only two of each species what did the carnivorous animals eat during their 40 day voyage? What did the plant eating animals eat? What did they eat after the voyage as virtually all plant life would have died after 40 days under water.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Prove to me God doesn't exist The basis of Christianity is not sending people to hell. The basis is, that God sent his only Son to die for all of us. It was a completely selfless act on his part. His Son chose to die, despite agonizing over whether he could actualy go through with it. After three days he arose and our slavation was secure. The basis of Christianity is LOVE. But people must choose to believe in Him and accept what He did. Only by rejecting HIm is one condemned. Secondly, He does have a better idea for His creation. To love Him and live with Him forever. Finally, the Bible (which I realize many of you do not believe) says that merely viewing Creation is enough to condemn a person for their unbelief. No random chain of events could ever have created the world. Only God could do it.
> No one has an open mind. There are degrees of openness. You are only using this to avoid having to look critically at your own worldview. > We take the side of science in spite of the > patent absurdity of some of its constructs, Like what? > in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its > extravagant promises of health and life, He has to be joking. I couldn't see the computer screen without corrective lenses. It wasn't prayer that did that, it was the science of optics. We are maybe hundreds of miles apart. We could not be having this conversation without computers. Prayer couldn't do it. In the Bible, it was a sign of Satan's power that he had the ability to show Jesus the whole world. I have that power now - it is called TV. In fact, the Bible itself is proof that technology is more powerful than God. In Judges 1:19, God was unable to defeat an army using iron chariots. Well, I have an iron chariot. It is made by the General Motors iron chariot company. It does not even need horses. > It is not that the methods and institutions of > science somehow compel us to accept a material > explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the > contrary, that we are forced by our a priori > adherence to material causes to create an > apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts > that produce material explanations, no matter > how counter-intuitive We use science because it works. If it is counter-intuitive (and things like quantum mechanics certainly are) then it is our intuition that is at fault. Science is a tool for creating predictions of the future. When you have such a tool, you can change the present - you can make a book telling people how to make eyeglasses because you know through the science of optics that grinding glass a certain way will always fix problems of a certain type. Progress is a result of science. Religion always results in static worlds or, if dynamic, dynamic in the downward direction (that is, losing the "knowledge of the past"). > tree rings This isn't the example I was thinking of. We have records of many trees, both living and dead. We can match rings of different trees together by looking for things like thickness (indicating weather conditions) or marks by things like forest fires. > Ice layers > http://answersingenesis.org/docs/233.asp The place in Greenland where the planes landed has an average yearly snow fall in the range of 6.5 feet per year. The depth at which they were buried was expected. Because of this, this location would be a bad place to look for ice cores. When ice is under enough pressure, as from being under the weight of thousands of years of snow above it, it turns liquid. You may only get a core of a couple thousand years at that Greenland location. But if you go somewhere where snowfall is very very low, like many places in Antarctica, you can get cores containing layers of beyond a hundred thousand years. And particulate matter in the bottom ice layers have been independently dated using many different dating techniques and they all match. > Radiometric dating > Assuming how much of a particular chemical was > originally present; > Assuming that there has been no leaching by > water of the chemicals in or out of the rock; > Assuming that radioactive decay rates have > stayed the same for billions of years, and more. There are ways you can get pretty good guesses as to the original composition of the rock when it was created. There are also ways you can account for adulteration of rocks. But if you really don't want to deal with these, you can always use isochron dating which does not have either of these problems. Isochron radiometric dating is a system where the ratio of the radiogenic element and non-radiogenic isotope of the same element are compared. The neat thing is that any adulteration in the sample is automatically known, and if it is found you can look for another sample. By the way - all the various radiometric dating systems match each other. If they were randomized by corruption or unknown processes, why do they do that? > 2. Radiometric ‘dating’ labs do not measure age > —they measure amounts of chemicals, then from > this they infer age, based on the underlying > assumptions. I don't even know what this means. I guess I don't really measure anything either - I just count little black lines drawn on a piece of metal. It does not stop me from saying an object is 14 millimeters long. We do not directly observe atoms, yet we use atomic theory in creating devices all the time. > The entire geological ‘millions of years’ system > was largely in place, based on the philosophical > assumptions of men like Charles Lyell and James > Hutton, before radioactivity was even > discovered. Do you know who these people are? Charles Lyell was a Christian who was also a geologist. By observing geologic strata, he was forced to the inevitable conclusion that the earth was old. (No, you don't need radiometric dating to tell you that.) For a long time, he was against Darwin't theories, instead proposing his own, where the fossil evidence was proof of many separate Creations. Hutton also was a devout Christian, who saw in his discoveries proof of God, not disproof. And it isn't like these people wrote some holy work that cannot be questioned - Lyell is commonly criticized now for being far too uniformitarian and no one buys Hutton's idea of a perpetual earth without beginning or end and with unlimited resources. > Where a radioactive date contradicts > the ‘system’, it is invariably discarded. You shouldn't be copying other people's articles if you don't understand what they mean. Radiometric dating and knowing when to apply it is a science all its own. There are plenty of times when using a dating scheme in the wrong place will give you confusing results, but by looking at all the evidence at the scientists disposal the results of the radiometric test can be interpreted. It is not the case that these guys are dating everything and then tossing anything that isn't 4.5 billion years. > There are many other solid reasons for not > accepting fallible man-made methods, such as > radioactive ‘dating’, as an authority in opposition > to the clear testimony of God’s infallible Word. How do you know that God's word is infallible? How can you test it? What predictions does it make that we can show his word is infallible or not? > Give me a list of "scientific evidence" that would > dispute the Flood and I will look into it. The Ark is too small to hold all the animals. It is too big to actually float. It is too big to be made by the engineering of the time. It cannot stand up to the rain that was falling. The animals cannot be fed and kept sanitary for the length of time described. There was no place for the water to go after the flood ended. It is a rather overly-dramatic way for an all-powerful being to get rid of human corruption. As an attempt to get rid of human corruption, it failed, which is unfitting for an all-knowledgeable being. Of all the men on earth, God picked a guy that liked to get so drunk he danced around naked (ok, that one isn't scientific). The geologic strata show no sign of a flood. They do show signs of glacier activity before and during when the flood was supposed to happen. Ice caps show no sign of a flood. Trees show no sign of a flood. There are civilizations older than the flood that lived beyond when the flood was supposed to happen. There are fossils of animals that no longer exist, and the fossils are organized in the strata with a clear pattern of the development of each type. And I'm surprised that you didn't find a web page on the Judas contradiction. Maybe you shouldn't depend on the tools of fallible man, like Google. Just pray for the knowledge to enter my head. I'll be waiting.
And what if an actual documented and credible case of human levitation were proven to your satisfaction? Would you seek a natural or supernatural explanation? Now, I'm not suggesting that you start attending the sleep-over parties of teenage girls ... Maybe you could start your investigation with that tourist trap in the Appalachians where you can see water running uphill!!?!? Off of I-75 somewhere in Kentucky or Tennessee, I believe.
You seek a natural explanatuion first. Then, if none is to be found and there is no positive evidence of supernatural intervention (as opposed to mere lack of no such evidence), you say "I don't know" and shelve the problem for later when more evidence or a better theory is available. Only if you have some kind of positive evidence of supernatural intervention do you introduce the supernatural.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Prove to me God doesn't exist For a lot of sects, hell is the basis of Christianity. For even more, including, I would guess, nearly all the mainstream denominations, hell is at least a tenet of church teaching. It's a stick that balances out the carrot of eternal life. Yes, but this cancels out the importance of the Christian ethic - however you choose to define it. It's not about living in such and such a way, loving thy neighbor, doing unto others and all that. It's fulfilling your part of a contract. And, it's not about the rewards inherent in actually living according to the Christian faith. An ideal faith would bring spiritual rewards and fulfillment even in the absence of heaven and hell. Virtue should be its own reward. Now, I realize there is a significant strain of Christian thought - probably in most religious thought - where the mortal life is seen as some form of ordeal or punishment, and the reward is on the other side. I find a conception of life on Earth that negative to be, well, unpersuasive. Even accepting the Bible as a source - which, well, I don't. I doubt you'd be too impressed with citations from the Koran to back up an argument. (I know I wouldn't be.) Anyway, I'm not familiar with the phrase of the Bible that condemns the viewing of Creation, although I assume it's some variation of original sin. Just because the Bible is crammed full of generations being punished for the transgressions of distant ancestors, doesn't make it philosophically, morally or legally valid. Yes, it's possible for the Bible to have immoral teachings - I'm sure the Amalekites were surprised when the Israelites renewed a 400 year old grudge, for example. I don't think physics qualifies as "random." Nor does evolution - the whole point of natural selection is that it isn't random.
That could be a long wait. Pharaoh was given the most explicit proof (as were the priests of Baal) and continued to harden his heart. This is why the intellectual search for God is foolish - it is self-reliant and prideful, attributes that are at the heart of man's sinfullness. I find it interesting that, for all the ranting against Christians hereabouts, no one has set out to attack Jesus directly. His self-sacrifice, humility, love for others, and complete reliance on God the Father rather than his own merits are obviously qualities that resonate. If you will excuse a bit of evangelism, sufficient evidence is there my friend, you only need to open the door to it.
It was a long wait for flying machines. Eventually, despite many failures and much mockery of those who dared try, it happened. It's hard to attack someone when nobody is sure exactly what he said or what he did. The portrait given in the Gospels is that of a generally good-hearted if rather self-righteous person who believed he was the "Son of Man" or the "Son of God" and whose central ethical teaching doesn't really differ from that of most of the manistream ethics (if not practice) of his age. The ideas in the Sermon on the Mount are hardly controversial compared with, say, Buddha's ethics. The "evidence" is usually best explained otherwise and therefore "sufficient" only to those who already wish to believe.
How very post-modern. Of course, literalist and inerrantist points of view do not allow any pieces of information that contradict their interpretation. That's the difference. How ironic that you choose to quote Lewontin, who creationists tend to misquote to support the theory of a Supreme Design. Here are some more quotes from Ruse: "Creation-science is not like physics, which exists as part of humanity's common cultural heritage and domain. It exists solely in the imaginations and writing of a relatively small group of people. Their publications (and stated intentions) show that, for example, there is no way they will relinquish belief in the Flood, whatever the evidence. In this sense, their doctrines are truly unfalsifiable." But Is It Science? "It is difficult to imagine evolutionists signing a comparable statement, that they will never deviate from the literal text of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species. The non-scientific nature of creation-science is evident for all to see, as is also its religious nature." But Is It Science? "There are degrees of being wrong. The Creationists are at the bottom of the scale. They pull every trick in the book to justify their position. Indeed, at times, they verge right over into the downright dishonest ... Their arguments are rotten, through and through." Darwinism Defended: A Guide to the Evolution Controversies So they say.
That door is one of those cartoon doors on the 35th floor that leads out to nothing and if you go through you float for a second like Wiley Coyote before plunging into the street below.
And yet, though gravity caused his fall, he quite supernaturally lived to suffer the same fate over and over. see y'all tomorrow (just like the Warners Bros. sheepdog and coyote) - I'm clocking out.
> Pharaoh was given the most explicit proof and > continued to harden his heart. Hmm, maybe you should read the Bible. It wasn't Pharoah that hardend his own heart. It was God that did it. Ok, 1 Samuel, Chapter 6 says it was Pharaoh, but that is just contradicts 10 seperate descriptions of God hardening the Pharaoh's heart in Exodus. Besides, the proof was rather lame. It was just tricks and circumstances until every first son was killed. And when that happened, he set them free. > His self-sacrifice, He knew he would be risen from the dead. As the song goes, "Jesus Christ/ Jesus Christ/ Who are you? What have you sacrificed?" Don't you think a sacrifice by a person who was not sure of the afterlife is greater? I'm sure there are people who suffered more than Jesus on the sands of Iwo Jima. > humility, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him." Wow, pretty humble. > love for others, "For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. [..] He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me" > and complete reliance on God the Father "Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me"