Atheism/Existence of God Debates (Please Read OP)

philologos

Just read my posts and you'll see what my position was very clearly.

J C

marienbad wrote: »

Would you ever stop with the ''poor me'' syndrome , it is pretty hard to defame someone's character on an anonymous forum. It dos'nt matter if I agree with you or not, unless you see yourself on the same pedestal as Paul.

We are listening to what is being said , you just will not give a straight answer.

Paul laid out the correct framework for the master -slave relationship, is that true ?- yes or no please .

Jesus Christ Himself said render unto Caesar the things that are of Caesar ... and as well as money ... slavery was also a thing of Caesar.

Christians are told not to rebel against civil authority ... even when that Authority is grossly corrupt ... as was the case with Pagan Rome.
We are to pray for our enemies and do good to those who hate us ... and vengeance will be enacted by God on these people if they don't repent ... and continue to persecute us.
Look at Pilate's wife, who rightly feared Divine retribution and warned her husband to have nothing to do with condemning Jesus.

Where is Caesar now and his corrupt slave-powered empire ?
... any time you visit Rome have a look at it's crumbling ruins!!!

Where is Jesus Christ and Christianity? ... at the right hand of God ... and several billion strong!!!

marienbad

philologos wrote: »

Just read my posts and you'll see what my position was very clearly.

Yeah you approve of slavery provided it conforms to the guidelines laid out by Paul. You have no other option . I do admire your consistency though .

J C

marienbad wrote: »

Yeah you approve of slavery provided it conforms to the guidelines laid out by Paul. You have no other option . I do admire your consistency though .

Leave poor Phil alone ... he has given you an answer ... but if you want to know why Christians condemn Slavery ... but don't rebel against it, look at my post #6033

It's all about the separation of church and state, actually!!

... something that Atheists seem to like!!!

... only they don't like the bit about rendering to God ... the things that are of God.

Zombrex

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

My original statement went as follows -

Why would we say that there is no empirical evidence for God? For example, if one is of the opinion that the evidence for a particular miracle claim is reliable then that surely qualifies as evidence for an interventionist God.

My slightly amended statement is -

Why would we say that there is no empirical evidence for God? For example, if one is of the opinion that the evidence for a particular miracle claim is reliable - perhaps through observation - then that surely qualifies as evidence that God has intervened.

Awesome. Doesn't change a single thing, that is what I always thought you were saying. What you are claiming is a logical fallacy. You either are ignoring that or simply don't understand it.

Any time you want to respond to the actual point I made, rather than your ridiculous straw men, I'm all ears. But I'm not going to endless explain the point for your amusement while you express bogus claims of misunderstanding.

marienbad

J C wrote: »

Leave poor Phil alone ... he has given you an answer ... but if you want to know why Christians condemn Slavery ... but don't rebel against it, look at my post #6033

It's all about the separation of church and state, actually!!

Ah , we have a new wrinkle - all about church and state is it ? Does that mean that ye will now butt out of civil marriages between consenting adults for instance ?

That would give ye more time to travel to those sweat shops you were on about and advise them on the proper master/slave relaionship as laid down by Paul

J C

marienbad wrote: »

Ah , we have a new wrinkle - all about church and state is it ? Does that mean that ye will now butt out of civil marriages between consenting adults for instance ?

I never butted into this ... in the first place.
When I married ... I married before God and man ... in that order.

What the state allows and anybody else does is their own business.

marienbad wrote: »

That would give ye more time to travel to those sweat shops you were on about and advise them on the proper master/slave relaionship

I'll leave that to the corrupt people who run and benefit from this morally reprehensible activity.
I won't trade with them ... and I'll pray for them ... and if they don't repent, all their ill-gotten gains will be a curse rather than a blessing on them.
... and if everybody did as I do ... slavery and other forms of man's inhumanity to man, would come to an end.

johnny-grunge

J C wrote: »

It's actually quite logical (and to be expected) that a God who Created Mankind would give them instructions on how they might best live their lives.
It would actually be irresponsible of Him to not do so.

What actually overwhelms me is that the God who Created the entire Universe loved a sinner like me so much that He humbled Himself to come down on Earth as a Man ... and died to Save me.
... and the fact that I am indwelt by His Holy Spirit is even more amazing ... but there you go ... our God isn't just omnipotent and omniscient ... He is also amazing!!!


Think about it ... every manufacturer of any machine today must, by law, supply an instruction manual on how to safely use and properly maintain the machine ... for much the same reasons that God wrote the Bible on how Mankind should safely and responsibly use their bodies and the Creation over which we have been appointed as Stewards ...
... so it shouldn't be any surprise that God issued a manual on Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth ... AKA the Holy BIBLE.

The modern world is literally 'coming down' with Procedures Manuals and Safety Statements, including many for all kinds of minor issues ... and with ambiguous and self-contrdictory instructions in some cases ...
... and none of them can remotely match the wisdom and the authority of the Bible ...
... and yet they are obeyed and enforced with the greatest zeal by the very people who reject God's right to issue similar Procedures and Safety warnings ... that they blissfully ignore, in many cases.
... a classic example of do as I say ... but don't do what God says.
... so we are expected to unquestioningly obey every 'jot and tittle' of the fallible ideas of Man ... but ignore the infallible wisdom of God.

Awh man. Seriously? Where are the manuals for the goats and herpes virus? You won't find anything about dragons and resurrection in a Philips DVD manual. C'mon now, be serious. And those ambiguities you speak of. There are a lot of straight up errors in the bible.

It is a manual of sorts, but most definitely not one written by a god. It's a book written by some educated charlatans back in a time when the masses were too busy worrying about not dying to come up with anything better to say. The bible was clearly written to control the masses. As was the Koran. You should try read a few versus without the blinkers on.

And your clearly not stupid. I hope you don't use the same sort of critical tools you've used to determine the bible was written by god to conduct the rest of your life.

If you were the only person in the world who believed this nonsense I wonder how strong your conviction would be?

You speak of Stalin and Hitler being pure evil. The atrocities they perpetrated have nothing to do with evil or good. Those men were products of their environment. They made it to a position of power and abused that position to meet their own ends. Simple as. It has nothing to do with religion or atheism.

lazygal

philologos wrote: »

Just read my posts and you'll see what my position was very clearly.

Just read the responses of those who've read them and asked questions. Maybe we could get some clarification of your position because contrary to your assertion things are about as clear as mud.

J C

johnny-grunge wrote: »

Awh man. Seriously? Where are the manuals for the goats and herpes virus? You won't find anything about dragons and resurrection in a Philips DVD manual. C'mon now, be serious. And those ambiguities you speak of. There are a lot of straight up errors in the bible.

It is a manual of sorts, but most definitely not one written by a god. It's a book written by some educated charlatans back in a time when the masses were too busy worrying about not dying to come up with anything better to say. The bible was clearly written to control the masses. As was the Koran. You should try read a few versus without the blinkers on.

And your clearly not stupid. I hope you don't use the same sort of critical tools you've used to determine the bible was written by god to conduct the rest of your life.

If you were the only person in the world who believed this nonsense I wonder how strong your conviction would be?

You're entitled to your opinon on these issues ... and I'm entitled to mine. I'm afraid that we will have to agree to differ on practically every point you have made.

johnny-grunge wrote: »

You speak of Stalin and Hitler being pure evil. The atrocities they perpetrated have nothing to do with evil or good. Those men were products of their environment.

... my grandparents and yours grew up in modern western societies roughly comparable with Germany and Russia at the same time as Hitler and Stalin ... if 'environment' was the reason Hitler and Stalin killed over 20 million people between them to say nothing of the misery they imposed on countless million others ... why did your grandparents or mine not become mass murderers and sadists on a scale never before seen in history ... the defense 'it was my environment that caused me to do it' should result in a detention for life meaning life for murder ... because the person is clearly in denial of their criminality ... and they continue to present an imminent and very great danger to society!!!

johnny-grunge wrote: »

They made it to a position of power and abused that position to meet their own ends. Simple as. It has nothing to do with religion or atheism.

I agree that they may have gained power to meet their own ends ... but only pure evil explains what they did with the power ... and were allowed by others to do with their power.

johnny-grunge

Yea, that's fair. I can agree to disagree on those issues.

My grandfather is a full blown Catholic. He reads his bible every day, goes to church every Sunday and condemns gay people, including close family members. However, we're still pretty close having agreed a few years back to disagree. My grandfather is the way he is because of his environment. He was raised in a country that was ruled by Catholics.

Suppose my grandfather was born in Pakistan in 1949 instead of Ireland. Do you still think he'd be a catholic? Most probably not. Now imagine my grandfather and Hitler swapped lives. Do I think my grandfather would be responsible for the slaughter of millions of Jews and a world war. Probably not, but by the same token, I imagine Hitler, born and raised in Dublin in a catholic family, would not be a sadistic cold blooded mass murderer. To say Hitler and Stalin were products of their environment is probably not the correct wording. They are products of their environment to some degree but I suppose circumstance coupled with environment is a better description. Perhaps it also has something to do with genes. I really don't know. But pure evil is simply not a good enough explanation.

In my mind there is absolutely no excuse to kill another person. I've come to that conclusion without needing religion as a framework to live by. In saying that, you can find many reasons to kill someone in the Bible or the Koran for that matter. Maybe next time I see someone out doing a bit of work on a Sunday I should put them to death. Or perhaps stone a few women who've decided to have sex outside of marriage. Do you think a man who has intercourse with another man should be put to death?

J C

johnny-grunge wrote: »

Yea, that's fair. I can agree to disagree on those issues.

My grandfather is a full blown Catholic. He reads his bible every day, goes to church every Sunday and condemns gay people, including close family members. However, we're still pretty close having agreed a few years back to disagree. My grandfather is the way he is because of his environment. He was raised in a country that was ruled by Catholics.

Suppose my grandfather was born in Pakistan in 1949 instead of Ireland. Do you still think he'd be a catholic? Most probably not. Now imagine my grandfather and Hitler swapped lives. Do I think my grandfather would be responsible for the slaughter of millions of Jews and a world war. Probably not, but by the same token, I imagine Hitler, born and raised in Dublin in a catholic family, would not be a sadistic cold blooded mass murderer. To say Hitler and Stalin were products of their environment is probably not the correct wording. They are products of their environment to some degree but I suppose circumstance coupled with environment is a better description. Perhaps it also has something to do with genes. I really don't know. But pure evil is simply not a good enough explanation.

In my mind there is absolutely no excuse to kill another person. I've come to that conclusion without needing religion as a framework to live by. In saying that, you can find many reasons to kill someone in the Bible or the Koran for that matter. Maybe next time I see someone out doing a bit of work on a Sunday I should put them to death. Or perhaps stone a few women who've decided to have sex outside of marriage. Do you think a man who has intercourse with another man should be put to death?

I think that there is only one evil that is greater than killing and that is killing in the name of religion or indeed irreligion.
As for your grandfather ... and mine ... and all people ...
... they are all capable of infinite good - or infinite evil ... mostly they 'go with the flow' ... like you have said ... but when the 'flow' becomes infested by evil and/or they lose respect for Human Life ... they can do horrific things.

johnny-grunge

We're finding some common ground here JC. I guess I'll never understand your side of the argument and you probably won't understand mine. Anyways... Cheers!

Morbert

nagirrac wrote: »

This is way off topic for the thread but one final comment /question. Does decoherence not imply that there is no actual wave function collapse in QM and we just observe it as such in the classical world? Is MWI not the only logical interpretation at that point?

I have been reading Scott Aaronson's blog and lectures and while it is relatively easy to follow, it is really hard to wrap your head around the implications of MWI.

It does imply that there is no actual collapse, but what I wouldn't necessarily like about the MWI is it also sounds like an attempt to conceptualise the wave function in terms of classical ideas. It should also be emphasised that this is very distinct from the "multiverse" conjecture of cosmologists.

But with all that said, it certainly does imply a strange global ontology.

J C

johnny-grunge wrote: »

We're finding some common ground here JC. I guess I'll never understand your side of the argument and you probably won't understand mine. Anyways... Cheers!

I understand your argument ... I just don't agree with some of it.
... but like the BT ad used to say 'its good to talk'!!!:)
Cheers!!

Fanny Cradock

Zombrex wrote: »

Awesome. Doesn't change a single thing, that is what I always thought you were saying. What you are claiming is a logical fallacy. You either are ignoring that or simply don't understand it.

Any time you want to respond to the actual point I made, rather than your ridiculous straw men, I'm all ears. But I'm not going to endless explain the point for your amusement while you express bogus claims of misunderstanding.

Then please explain it again because I don't understand your point. But this time dumb it right down. I get that you are accusing me of circular reasoning, but I can't see how this can be applied to my point.

Also, it would be appreciated if you could -
a) Park the attitude. I'm not trying to be rude to you, Zombrex. I'd appreciate if you would show me the same respect. If you can't do this then just say "let's leave it there" or some such.
b) Refrain from accusing me of playing games. I am not feigning misunderstanding.

nagirrac

johnny-grunge wrote: »

You speak of Stalin and Hitler being pure evil. The atrocities they perpetrated have nothing to do with evil or good. Those men were products of their environment. They made it to a position of power and abused that position to meet their own ends. Simple as. It has nothing to do with religion or atheism.

Whether you are aware of it or not you have defined a key distiction between the worldview of a materialist reductionist atheist and someone who holds a spiritual worldview. If everything about being human, including our self awareness, can be broken down into interactions between chemicals in our brain that we have no control over, then we have no free will and your position is correct. This is the position held by many philosophers, including Dawkins, raising questions such as the morality of punishing criminals when they have no free will. According to this philosophy, we are all robots, everything we do is based on pre-determined wiring in our brain and our environment.

The other side of the spectrum are people who believe we have free will, that life is at its core is spiritual based on a humility coming from belief in a higher power that created and sustains our universe, that life is purposeful and we largely have control over our outcomes. This is actually backed up scientifically as we now know that the brain is extremely pliable and can be physically and permanently modified by pursuing particular thought patterns. You are what you think. Following this worldview we have the ability to choose to be unjudgmental, loving, forgiving, respectful, humble, respectful, tolerant and charitable, or the opposite.

To suggest that Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc. were not driven by evil is to ignore reality. They define evil. Evil in the sense of a malevlolent philosophy that can be embedded into the minds of large populations, and then used to convince these populations to carry out your evil intentions. Someone with a spiritual worldview who mindfully lives their life in accordance with their worldview could not submit to this philosophy, let alone come up with it. This applies to all atrocities, whether perpetrated by religious or atheists.

In the history of mankind we have had several thousand years where the predominant philosophy was spiritual. Regardless of the individual religion, all shared belief in a higher power. The 20th century is the first example we have where this belief was replaced in large populations by putting man as the higher power in the place of God; Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pol became God to their followers. I would urge you to study the history of the 20th century and reflect on the fact that regimes that denied God were responsible for slaughtering >100M of their own people (not in wars against other countries, their own people). It wasn't Stalin and Mao doing the killing, it was their followers doing the killing.

You then have to decide for yourself whether these acts were committed by people who had no free will and were thus not ultimately responsible for them, or whether in the words of Solzhenitsyn in reference to the 60M who were slaughtered in his own country; "man has forgotten God, that's why all this has happened".

Morbert

Regarding the exchange between Fanny Cradock and Zombrex:

On a fundamental level, it is possible for miracles to be empirical evidence (though not scientific insofar as they are not repeatable) for an interventionist God, provided we are willing to accept that, because it is empirical evidence, it is a tentative conclusion that could be refuted further down the line.

On a more realistic level, atheists would have major issues with what are currently tendered as possible miracles. Mother Teresa, for example, supposedly cured an Indian woman of a tumour. It later emerged that the woman was receiving conventional medical treatment, and that her doctor identified the tumour as a tuberculosis induced cyst. Thomas Aquinas had some sardines turn into herring. Those who travel to Lourdes to be healed show the same frequency of recovery as those who don't.

It is often said atheists contrive alternative explanations to miracles. I think it is perfectly reasonable to remain unconvinced by the current evidence. Even by theological standards they are incredibly dubious. Like aliens who travel millions of light years to vandalise crops and abduct lonely truckers, it would be strange for God to give up His only begotten son for our salvation, and then be content to alter the flavour of sardines, or administer statistically negligible cures.

lazygal

nagirrac wrote: »

Whether you are aware of it or not you have defined a key distiction between the worldview of a materialist reductionist atheist and someone who holds a spiritual worldview. If everything about being human, including our self awareness, can be broken down into interactions between chemicals in our brain that we have no control over, then we have no free will and your position is correct. This is the position held by many philosophers, including Dawkins, raising questions such as the morality of punishing criminals when they have no free will. According to this philosophy, we are all robots, everything we do is based on pre-determined wiring in our brain and our environment.

The other side of the spectrum are people who believe we have free will, that life is at its core is spiritual based on a humility coming from belief in a higher power that created and sustains our universe, that life is purposeful and we largely have control over our outcomes. This is actually backed up scientifically as we now know that the brain is extremely pliable and can be physically and permanently modified by pursuing particular thought patterns. You are what you think. Following this worldview we have the ability to choose to be unjudgmental, loving, forgiving, respectful, humble, respectful, tolerant and charitable, or the opposite.

To suggest that Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc. were not driven by evil is to ignore reality. They define evil. Evil in the sense of a malevlolent philosophy that can be embedded into the minds of large populations, and then used to convince these populations to carry out your evil intentions. Someone with a spiritual worldview who mindfully lives their life in accordance with their worldview could not submit to this philosophy, let alone come up with it. This applies to all atrocities, whether perpetrated by religious or atheists.

In the history of mankind we have had several thousand years where the predominant philosophy was spiritual. Regardless of the individual religion, all shared belief in a higher power. The 20th century is the first example we have where this belief was replaced in large populations by putting man as the higher power in the place of God; Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pol became God to their followers. I would urge you to study the history of the 20th century and reflect on the fact that regimes that denied God were responsible for slaughtering >100M of their own people (not in wars against other countries, their own people). It wasn't Stalin and Mao doing the killing, it was their followers doing the killing.

You then have to decide for yourself whether these acts were committed by people who had no free will and were thus not ultimately responsible for them, or whether in the words of Solzhenitsyn in reference to the 60M who were slaughtered in his own country; "man has forgotten God, that's why all this has happened".

How do you account for wars, killing and destruction done by those who haven't forgotten god? According to the bible, god himself was responsible for some awful stuff, like flooding the world and ordering parents to kill their children. Doesn't sound like something I'd be living my life by.

nagirrac

lazygal wrote: »

How do you account for wars, killing and destruction done by those who haven't forgotten god? According to the bible, god himself was responsible for some awful stuff, like flooding the world and ordering parents to kill their children. Doesn't sound like something I'd be living my life by.

You may have missed it but I clearly stated "this applies to all atrocities whether by religious or atheists". How could a Christian who actually believes what is written in the gospels carry out what was done in Christ's name? They couldn't is the answer.

As I don't believe in an interventionist God, I can't defend what's written in the Old Testament and will let others interpret it for you. Clearly people of that era
(3,000 - 5,000 years ago) believed in a judgmental God who dished out punishment for not following his rules.

Zombrex

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

Park the attitude

Apologies, it can get very frustrating on this forum where posters go out of their way to avoid addressing the point that is being made, but I should not assume that our misunderstandings was such a ploy.

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

Then please explain it again because I don't understand your point. But this time dumb it right down. I get that you are accusing me of circular reasoning, but I can't see how this can be applied to my point.

You are saying that surely the fact that miracles happen is evidence for an interventionist God. We can observe and witness miracles, and miracles cannot happen with God so surely the fact that they happen must be evidence for God.

Note this accepts that miracles happen, and are caused by God. And thus it accepts that God exists, since you cannot have miracles without God.

Even if there was some way to objective and empirically measure an event and conclude that it was an act of God, thus a miracle, that wouldn't matter to the point though. Once you have done that, once you have concluded it was an act of God, you cannot then use that conclusion as evidence for God, because you couldn't have reached that conclusion in the first place without already asserting, for what ever reason, that God exists and did something.

You cannot say miracles happen unless you have already concluded that God has intervened at some point. As you said a miracle is itself by definition an act of God. Without that classification it is just an unexplained event with an unknown cause. You must conclude God has done something in order to say it is a miracle, at which point you cannot then use that conclusion as evidence that God has done something because that was already the conclusion you arrived at.

A miracle is a conclusion, an end point. It is what you determine happened after you determined God exists and did something. It thus cannot be evidence for God or God's intervention.

Using a non religious example. Say Billy has been arrested. By arrested we mean the police have come and formally put him under arrest, and taken him away. That is the conclusion, that Billy is arrested. We might reach that conclusion from observing the police doing something that looks like Billy has been put under arrest. But imagine now that some was to say that the fact that Billy was arrested is evidence the police arrested Billy. That is a non-runner, because you cannot say Billy was arrested in the first place without asserting that the men that turned up and took him away were police. If they weren't police then he wasn't arrested, he was kidnapped. So the fact that he was arrested is only a fact if those men were police, and thus this fact cannot be used in support of the idea that he was taken away by police.

I missed a post of yours which, to save space, I'll add to the bottom

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

I actually still don't see an answer to my question. And it is a question, not a "gotcha". So, again, and asked in honest curiosity, how do you demonstrate empirically that the only type of evidence is empirical evidence?

You empirically study the times empirical evidence provided the correct, or logically satisfying answer, verse the times other non-empirical evidence did.

Non-empirical evidence loses in this regard, by a large margin. How can non-emprical evidence be as good as empirical evidence if it fails so many times to either provide the right answer or provide an answer that can be distinguished from all the other possible answers?

After all, is that the point, to provide evidence that can reliably support claims about nature (God exists, that bridge is going to stay up, electrons orbit nucli)

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

I'm happy to rely on empirical measurement (why are we talking about measurement now?) when it comes to aeroplanes and bridges. I never said otherwise. But empirical measurement is not in the same ballpark as your claim that empirical evidence is the only type of evidence.

I didn't actually make that claim (I'm not even sure I understand it), but I imagine what you mean is that I claimed that empirical evidence is the only type of evidence that consistently can be relied upon to give accurate results.

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

For example, it is argued that logic and mathematical concepts are innate and rational intuitions.

They are not though evidence used to support claims of nature (God exists, electrons exist, spacetime exists etc).

Fanny Cradock wrote: »

I don't understand what you are saying.

I'm saying that if you don't rely on empirical evidence and build a bridge most likely the bridge will fall over, because humans are very poor at judging reality based purely on personal assessment.

Most people recognize this in relation to things like bridges and aeroplanes. Neither you nor me want the guy who designed the 747 I'm flying to have been figuring it out based on his best intuition and what felt right and made sense to him. That is because those notions often, if not always, have nothing to do with reality.

But for some reason when it comes to particular questions about the accurate nature of reality, such as whether God exists or not, some people are perfectly happy to rely on these sort of things. God makes sense to me. It feels right that God exists. I can't imagine a world without God. I can't explain the world without God etc (insert what ever reason you believe in God here).

Why are some perfectly happy with that type of thinking when it comes to God, but would be horrified if someone then when in the same mindset and build a bridge that children went over.

Fanny Cradock

Morbert wrote: »

Regarding the exchange between Fanny Cradock and Zombrex:

On a fundamental level, it is possible for miracles to be empirical evidence (though not scientific insofar as they are not repeatable) for an interventionist God, provided we are willing to accept that, because it is empirical evidence, it is a tentative conclusion that could be refuted further down the line.

On a more realistic level, atheists would have major issues with what are currently tendered as possible miracles. Mother Teresa, for example, supposedly cured an Indian woman of a tumour. It later emerged that the woman was receiving conventional medical treatment, and that her doctor identified the tumour as a tuberculosis induced cyst. Thomas Aquinas had some sardines turn into herring. Those who travel to Lourdes to be healed show the same frequency of recovery as those who don't.

It is often said atheists contrive alternative explanations to miracles. I think it is perfectly reasonable to remain unconvinced by the current evidence. Even by theological standards they are incredibly dubious. Like aliens who travel millions of light years to vandalise crops and abduct lonely truckers, it would be strange for God to give up His only begotten son for our salvation, and then be content to alter the flavour of sardines, or administer statistically negligible cures.

All very true. But I would hope that no Christians is saying that all miraculous claims are equally valid just because the word "miracle" is mentioned. Equally I would hope that no sceptic dismisses miracles for the same reason. Some claims are highly dubious (I remember hearing something bizarre about God apparently making gold fillings appear in people's mouths a while back) and I think it is fair to say, "Nahhhhh!". Others deserve a little more investigation because they have, at least on the face of it, more reliable attestation and might be though of as the type of thing God would do. Gold fillings appearing in your gob - not so much! It's the latter, seemingly more robust claim, that Keener, who I've mentioned a number of times now, spends the best part of two volumes investigating. (On a side issue, I think that Hume's "Of Miracles" has been found to be a thoroughly unsound attack on the very notion of miracles.)

I realise that a firm philosophical naturalist isn't likely to be swayed by miraculous accounts, even the good ones! It was no different in the time of Jesus. But in my defence it was never my intention to engage with such folks.

Fanny Cradock

Zombrex wrote: »

Apologies, it can get very frustrating on this forum where posters go out of their way to avoid addressing the point that is being made, but I should not assume that our misunderstandings was such a ploy.

OK, thanks. I'll respond to your post another time if you don't mind.

Brian Shanahan

philologos wrote: »

What God has declared, if it has been declared in any way at all is evident in reality. Psalm 19 amongst other Scriptures advocate and encourage us to see God's word at work in the world.

So you believe the bible is the word of god because the bible says it is the word of god?

Do you understand circular logic, and why it should never be used when trying to convince others? You cannot go around using a book to convince us of the truth of the details contained within it. You have to show external evidence, and regarding god there is exactly none.

Brian Shanahan

tommy2bad wrote: »

Sometimes it's all we have to go on till we find the proof, Higgs boson for example!

And the Higg's boson example shows exactly what religion does wrong wrt evidence. You see, the scientists didn't just propose the Higgs' boson and leave it at that because it explained the gap of mass, they investigated, they tried to destroy the assumptions upon which the boson was thought up, they tried to figure out alternatives which would solve the problem as neatly without recourse to inventing a new sub-atomic particle. And even when they ended up finding the Higg's boson, this investigation did not stop, they are still testing their models for flaws and improvments.

In theistic theology you've the idea of an omnipotent god, and there is no deviation from that idea no matter what the evidence says.

Brian Shanahan

DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: »

I'm very open to others. I just become frustrated when people mock and deride the church.

Kick out the bishops, cardinals, popes and a signifcant number of priests, nuns and monks then.

It is they who mock and deride the church, not us.

Brian Shanahan

johnny-grunge wrote: »

Probably not, but by the same token, I imagine Hitler, born and raised in Dublin in a catholic family, would not be a sadistic cold blooded mass murderer.

Hitler was born into a catholic family in Salzburg, Austria, and was in communion with the catholic church his whole life. He was never censured, never refused communion, never excommunicated.

Whether he would have had the means to carry out his anti-semitic holocaust in suburban Dublin is a different matter.

evangelist

Who would like for me to really convince you that God exists,
and through believing in His Messiah-Redeemer-Savior (Jesus Christ)
it is possible to spend eternity with God in Heaven when you die?

If there are any takers, I will post my personal spiritual testimony ... amazing!

FISMA

Brian Shanahan wrote: »

And the Higg's boson example shows exactly what religion does wrong wrt evidence. ...
In theistic theology you've the idea of an omnipotent god, and there is no deviation from that idea no matter what the evidence says.

Brian,
In a few other threads you have offered up some quasi sounding scientific arguments, but points I find totally lacking itself science, and have specifically challenged. In particular, refer to post #533, here.

Now you're on to the Higg's Boson? :rolleyes:

Just one question for you. What is your scientific test to demonstrate that your memory works properly.

Concisely, science fails to offer a test by which we may prove that our memory works properly.

If science fails to offer us a test by which we may prove our memory works properly, why then do you believe it is an appropriate tool for proving or disproving the existence of God?

If you disagree and believe that science does offer us a test by which we may prove our memory works properly, please outline, and post.

Pushtrak

FISMA wrote: »

Just one question for you. What is your scientific test to demonstrate that your memory works properly.

Concisely, science fails to offer a test by which we may prove that our memory works properly.

If science fails to offer us a test by which we may prove our memory works properly, why then do you believe it is an appropriate tool for proving or disproving the existence of God?

Maybe I missed where Brian posted it, but I haven't seen him post anything to suggest the veracity of memory at all, let alone on the point of it as a tool to disprove the existence of a deity. I may very well be wrong, and if so would welcome being shown so, but from how I see it, it looks like your own invention.

I went back to the post you link here, too and I see you bring up the point that science isn't going to examine/is unable to examine supernaturalism. It came across that you have a respect for the scientific method, but think it isn't going to work here. Fine. What, then, do you use as a substitute? Presumably faith, but would be interesting if it were something else.