What are the odds?

wolfsbane wrote: »

Christians differ on non-essentials, without damaging our mutual connection to our Lord. None of us understand all things perfectly, but have to grow in the grace and knowledge of our God.

that's very handy that you can all be right with completely different opinions on who and what god is and how you should worship him, otherwise you'd all be totally screwed.

BUT you would think that if you're all talking to him and he's talking to all of you, he'd have told everyone the same things. unfortunately mass hysteria is often a little vague like that and it's sometimes difficult to agree on the details.

wolfsbane wrote: »

We share Adam's sinful nature, so share in his punishment. Being forgiven doesn't mean you escape all the consequences of your action - just the eternal ones. In His mercy, God does spare us many temporal ones too, but that is not essential to the meaning of forgiveness.

here's the thing though. god created Adan, from the gound up, molecule by molecule and in his infinite infinitiveness to infinity knew exactly what to expect of Adam given that he is all knowing, all seeing and all dancing all of the time so nothing Adam could do would ever be any kind of a surprise to god, yet he leaves Adam to muck around with his favourite tree and when Adam makes a hames of it (which god must have known he would do) he punishes Adam and the rest of humanity for the rest of eternity. you know that in legal terms that's called entrapment.

wolfsbane wrote: »

My prayer, and any answer to it, forms part of God's secret will. (Remember God's two wills - His secret will, that determines all that is to happen, and His revealed will, which tells us what he wants us to do.)

as I said earlier, wouldn't it be handier if his 'revealed will' had you all singing from the same hymn book so to speak?

all these different faiths, calvinists, hobbesists etc.

every day I live, 'the life of brian' makes more and more sense to me. :rolleyes:

oh, and I'm not an atheist I'm a Pastafarian thanks very much.

vibe666 wrote: »

fortunately for the religious masses, any time this is brought up they can always use the 'well, that wasn't due to my own particular faith'

Funny that isn't it. Would you like to think of 'my' faith as being responsible for the troubles in the North maybe?

Faith is a 'personal' thing. Its about a relationship with God. Its not about organisations, or buildings etc. I see many, many instances where people calling themselves christians do things which I see are completely out of line with Christ.

line which has always been a stalwart get out of jail free card whenever anyone criticises them and has indeed already been used several times just in this one thread.

Is that your way of saying, 'but we know the truth'?
You, like so many others on this planet, like to have convenient labels for people. It makes you comfortable in saying 'they're the bad guys' etc. The fact is, you can't do it with peoples faith, as much as you obviously desire it.
So rather than there being any 'get out of jail card', many weren't in jail in the first place. Unfortunately, people like yourself wish we were (still figuratively speaking of course). Its obviously too complicated when you must factor in the fact that everyone must be treated individually.

Luckily there is plenty of evidence to prove the existence of cliffs so a-cliffists are rare these days.

I'm wondering, as I read the latter part of this thread:

I think God is a personal God. Ie. that it's all about the relationship with humans and reconciliation of man with him in order to have this relationship (yes, where we worship him)

I don't know whether God is a 'Global' entity, where he deals with nations all at once, eg. he doesn't wipe out the Aids virus by some miracle, but instead tries to work in each person (hopefully a Christian will be responsible and won't spread the virus). That's a bad example, I know, but hopefully it communicates my viewpoint.

To this end, for those who disagree, in what instance did God intervene with mankind on a mass scale?

JimiTime wrote: »

Funny that isn't it. Would you like to think of 'my' faith as being responsible for the troubles in the North maybe?

why, are you a protestant or a catholic?

JimiTime wrote: »

Is that your way of saying, 'but we know the truth'?

no, not at all. that's the whole point. nobody know's the truth, but given a complete lack of any empirical evidence there is a very high probability that I'm on the right track.

you are following a book written 2000 years ago by simple people who didn't have a clue how the physical world works so made things up the best they could and convinced other people it was the truth.

if the bible had been put together today instead of back then it would be alongside the lord of the rings and the chronicals of narnia but because it was written back when nobody had any better explanations for what was happening it built up a good head of steam and has been going ever since but it looks like finally a lot more people are figuring it out for themselves and not just taking someone's word for it that what's written is true.

give it another couple of generations of born skeptics and the rest of humanity will too and we'll all be a loit better off for it.

JimiTime wrote: »

So rather than there being any 'get out of jail card', many weren't in jail in the first place. Unfortunately, people like yourself wish we were (still figuratively speaking of course). Its obviously too complicated when you must factor in the fact that everyone must be treated individually.

what faith do you follow exactly?

assuming it's a christian faith then what about the crusades or the spanish inquisition to name a couple of particuarly good ones? both sanctioned by the highest levels of the church and responsible for the deaths of many thousands of innocent people just because they wouldn't tow the line.

if you take wolfsbane's view that we are all sinners and must share adams punishment for his sins, what about the many sins of the church itself?

Wicknight said:

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
He has appointed a time in which all wrongs will be punished and all rewards given. As sinners we are to patiently bear all His providences for us, waiting on His ultimate deliverance.
That didn't answer the question, though it was a bit telling since you once again explained to me how everyone is going to get punished.

You have ommited in the quotation the part that did answer your question:
But God is not just one of us - He is our Creator, and it is His perogative to appoint our times and all that happens to us.

God has the power to stop evil. Yet he allows it to happen and then punishes those who do it. You seem to take great satisfaction that those who are allowed to do evil will eventually be punished, while largely dismissing unquestioningly the fact that God is facilitating the evil in the first place.

Isn't what God is doing not just as evil as what those he allows.

No, for it is prerogative as Creator to say what we will face or not face.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
In the big picture we are not the innocent victim. So what ever God permits to come our way, we can humbly call on Him for mercy and deliverance, rather than demand justice. If we got justice, we would perish with the perpetrators.
It isn't about punishment or justice. It is about the evil not happening in the first place.

As above - it is God, not man. The same rights are not held by both.

Quote:
Originally Posted by wolfsbane
When one sees repeated 'coincidences' but insists they are never an intervention, I think one is in what the counsellors call 'denial'. Not if the counscellor understands about probability and the tendency for humans to seek pattern where none exists and sigificance from the random.

Not when the probability is so low. We are talking repeated events, not one-offs.

wolfsbane wrote: »

The Flood would be the big example.

and by far my favourite example.

so he asks tells noah to build a big boat and bring two of everything because he's going to flood the world and kill everyone because he doesn't like the way things are going (you'd think he'd have known from the start, being our all knowing, all singing & dancing creator but meh) kind of like gods own etch-a-sketch. sure, bring your kids but apart from that only animals etc.

I'll totally ignore the fact that it is not physically possible to biuld a boat of that size and not have it collapse entirely under it's own weight in the water and we'll just assume that god came down and fitted it with a containment field of some sort to keep everything together.

so, anyway two of every animal (except for anything that can float/swim).

hmm, slight logistical problem there then. for a start, we should be being ruled by ducks or otters by now considering the massive head start in numbers they would have over us, but even overlooking that, what about feeding 2 of every single animal in the world for 6 months?

just take the elephant for example. a quick google says that your average elephant can eat anything from 200-400lb of vegetation per day and drinks well over 200L of water so at a bare minimum it's going to need >70,000lb of food and >35,000L of water just to survive it's little 6 month boat ride (x2 inc. the missus). all that rainwater they're sitting on would be no good mixed with all the salty oceans, it might be diluted a tiny bit, but would certainly not be potable by even the lowest standards.

but then we're not really sure how long it lasted are we, even from reading the book? In Gen. 8:6 it says that the flood lasted for forty days, but in Gen. 8:3 it lasted for one hundred and fifty days. now I'm just getting more confused.

times all that by the amount of food required by all the animals onboard and consider all the varied diets, inc. the carnivores etc. and it's a receipe that just isn't going to work no matter how you slice it.

even after the waters recede you're left with 2 of everything, that's great repopulate the worldand all that (under our new duck overlords obviously) but once all the animals have all had babies and they grow up, who do they shag?

come to think of it, who do noah's grandchildren shag for that matter? not content with being an accessory to peadophilia god seems to be actively encouraging incest too.

what about the other ivilisations that were around before & after this great flood that consumed the entire world?

neither the egyptians nor mayans make any mention of great floods killing them all and both were around before and after the flood was supposed to have happened. did they make it all up that they happily existed during this supposed flood?

nor is there any geological evidence of any global flooding in the world around that time other than some localised flooding in certain parts of the middle east (specifically, around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers) in the distant past, but rather conspicuously not a thing in isreal. funny that. :rolleyes:

I'm not one for quoting bible stuff (for obvious reasons) but this one is a doozy and one which I'd love to see wolfsbane (or any other flood-myth believers for that matter) wriggle out of.

However, the most devastating problem facing believers in the flood myth surfaces in Numbers 13:33. Here the Israelites encounter the sons of Anak. The Anakites came from the Nephilim (giants) who, according to Genesis 6:2-4, originated in pre-flood times as a result of the sexual union of male angels (sons of God) and the daughters of men. Therefore the presence in post-flood Canaan of Anakites, the descendants of the Nephilim, would mean that not all who lived on earth, other than Noah and his immediate family, were killed in the flood. This stands as a direct contradiction of Genesis 6:17 where God vows to, . . . bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; every thing that is in the earth shall die. (apart from ducks)

seems like that one is in your own book, oops.

anyone? (before our secret duck overlords come to smite us)

i love the way you just floated over that whole post and picked out a little bit you thought you could win.

seems like there's quite a few options on what and who they were though, so you can pick whichever one suits your needs (as I have I suppose).

I'd always taken the nephilim to be the half breed children of angels and humans, but you can blame hollywood for that I guess. seems like there might be several options though on reading further.

The Hebrew of nephilim is נפלים, which may mean "those causing others to fall". Abraham ibn Ezra proposes that they were called this because men's hearts would fail at the sight of them. Some (e.g. Jean Leclerc and Peter of Aquila) suggest that it is derived from the warlike nature of the Nephilim, comparing the usage of Naphal in Job 1:15 "And the Sabeans fell upon them" where Naphal means "to take in battle". Alternatively, Shadal understands nephilim as deriving from the Hebrew word פלא Pela which means wondrous.

The Targum Yonathan states that they were given this name because they were descended from fallen angels.

The Nephilim come from a union between Sons of God (בני האלהים "b’nei ha-'elohim" Lit. "Sons of the powers") and "daughters of man".

In Aramaic culture, the term Nephila specifically referred to the constellation of Orion, and thus Nephilim to Orion's semi-divine descendants (cf. Anakim from Anak); the implication being that this also is the origin of the Biblical Nephilim. Some commentators have suggested that the Nephilim were believed to have been fathered by members of a proto-Hebrew pantheon and are a brief glimpse of early Hebrew religion, most of the details of which were later edited out from the Torah (or at least would have been edited out when, as some claim, it was redacted together), and that this passage may have offered monotheistic Hebrews a way to fit semi-divine pagan heroes into their cosmogony.

so anyway, how come we're not being ruled over by millions of ducks who would have floated during this great flood?

or the total lack of any evidence that it ever happened in the first place or that several civilisations are known to have lived before, during and after the flood was supposed to have taken place and have no record of it ever happening?

PDN wrote: »

No, I picked out the bit that you said was a 'doozy'. Since you seemed so overexcited by it I thought you might feel it more worthy of a response. Sorry to burst your bubble.

don't worry, you didn't. the fact remains that you have taken one of several possible meanings for the word nephilim and presented it as fact to backup your side of the story, when in fact nobody seems to be able to say for sure what was meant.

it's very easy to twist things to your requirements when you don't need to rely on logic or reason.

And now that you mention it, what did the carnivores eat after the flood? maybe they ate all the ducks.

Wicknight wrote: »

The probability isn't actually low when you look at these seemingly random events. We just believe it is low because most people don't understand probability very well, as demonstrated by something like the Birthday Problem

thanks for that, I've been trying to convince people of the birthday problem ever since someone told me years ago, but I didn't understand it enough to be able to explain it properly. that's my day sorted anyway, thanks.

Wicknight wrote: »

This is an extension of the golden rule, that was some what hijacked by Christianity and taken as their own.

indeed. good Christian values were around long before Christianity was born and still exist outside of people of that inclination.

you don't have to be Christian to be a good person any more than you need to grow up with good parents.