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What are the odds?

PDN

Two weeks ago I was taking a few days break in Houston, Texas with my family. We had to be at a conference in San Antonio on the Monday - so we decided to drive across a couple of days early, on the Saturday. I was dealing with some difficult work situations and was praying, "God, I really need you to do something special to show me that you are in control and work things together for good."

Meanwhile, my next door neighbour has been preaching in churches in Florida for the last 2 months. He was also going to the same Conference in San Antonio and, unbeknown to me, also decided to get there a bit early. So on Thursday he started driving from Miami to San Antonio. Unfortunately he had no directions as to how to find the Conference venue - so as he made his way through the Florida Panhandle, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana etc. he prayed for God to help him find directions.

About 40 miles out of Houston I realised that we were low on gas so, on the spur of the moment, I swung into a beat-up old gas station beside the Interstate. My wife was asking, "What on earth are you doing?" as we always call at nice clean gas stations with decent rest rooms etc. I answered, "I don't know. It just seemed like the right thing to do."

As I got out of my car to pump gas I heard a voice saying, "No! I don't bellieve it!" There, on the other side of the same gas pump, was my next door neighbour. At first it took a while to register with me that it was him since I didn't recognise the car he had borrowed for the week.

I was able to give him directions to the Conference venue in San Antonio (I had assumed he would have flown there) and I got my reassurance that God was in control.

For the remainder of the trip to San Antonio (another three hours) I just kept laughing at this 'coincidence' and wondered what are the odds against us both being at the very same gas pump at the same location at the same time.

Oh, and by the way, God sorted out those work problems just fine.

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PDN

Wicknight wrote: »

In speech you don't because you are a human and as such have trouble with details and consider long explanations to be socially awkward. Which is why people say it is quarter to 6 rather than 17 minutes to 6. Both are just as easy to say, but one may land you with a punch in the face for being a swot because some people have trouble with time.

No, it's got nothing to do with social awkwardness and everything to do with effective communication. We don't like pedantic people who go into unnecessary detail because that actually gets in the way of the main points that we want to hear.

Likewise why when writing a passage going into rather a lot of detail about the dimensions of a temple, incorrectly approximate measurements of a structure when you already know the correct lengths?

Why purpose does that serve? Why would you approximate in a written text if you didn't need to?

Because some measure of approximation is necessary for effective communication. For example, if you tried to give the value of pi in decimal points in a book, then the book would need to be longer than the Bible and would still be an approximation. Meanwhile any sensible reader would miss the main point you were trying to make because they would rightly conclude you were an idiot and give up reading after a couple of pages.

We all round things up or down to the nearest inch, second, kilometre, day, year etc. depending on the context. The writers of the biblical books did the same. No reasonable person would have a problem with that. The fact that you and other atheists want to try and make an issue of it just causes people to dismiss you as cranks and to stop listening to anything else you might have to say.

Zombrex

PDN wrote: »

We all use language in a descriptive way without trying to be 100% precise about numbers and measurements.

Yes we do because we are flawed creatures when dealing with numbers particularly in speak. But then most of what we say isn't the infallible word of God.

It is technically as easy to write 5.9 million Jews as it is to write 6 million.

In speech you don't because you are a human and as such have trouble with details and consider long explanations to be socially awkward. Which is why people say it is quarter to 6 rather than 17 minutes to 6. Both are just as easy to say, but one may land you with a punch in the face for being a swot because some people have trouble with time.

Needless to say that doesn't work as an explanation for this case.

Not only is such an approximation unnecessary but it also cause the structure, a metal cast Sea if I remember correctly, to be impossible.

Saying 6 million Jews or 5.9 million Jews is not important to the over all point that there was a Holocaust. But having said that you would still write 5.9 million if you knew that was the number and you were writing it down for a book describing the Holocaust.

Why go to the detail of explaining the lengths of the measurements to only end up getting them wrong and describing a round metal cast that can't exist?

PDN wrote: »

Such approximation of distances may be pointless in the context of a blueprint for an engineer - but in the context of a description of the Jewish Temple they are perfectly reasonable

Define "perfectly reasonable"

Using your example of the Holocaust, why if you knew 5.9 million Jews died would you write 6 million in a chapter of a book about how many Jews died. Is it not just as easy to write that 5.9 million died, and more accurately describes the events?

Likewise why when writing a passage going into rather a lot of detail about the dimensions of a temple, incorrectly approximate measurements of a structure when you already know the correct lengths?

Why purpose does that serve? Why would you approximate in a written text if you didn't need to?

Again this is the type of thing I'm talking about. One can say that any crazy excuse explaining away a mistake is "perfectly reasonable" if one is setting out with the idea of explaining away an excuse. What is perfectly reasonable is entirely subjective, and if the person has an agenda to find an explanation, not matter what it is, the explanation they find will always be perfectly reasonable.

PDN

Wicknight wrote: »

To me and most engineers and mathematicians such an approximation is pointless to the point of nonsense.

Now you're just being silly.

We all use language in a descriptive way without trying to be 100% precise about numbers and measurements.

So, for example, we might say that 6,000,000 Jews died in the Holocaust. If it was actually calculated that only 5.9 million Jews died then that would hardly be justification for causing the 6 million an 'error' or a 'contradiction'.

Similarly, I know a guy who is 6 feet 8 inches tall. Now, no doubt he is actually a fraction of an inch shorter or taller - but that does not mean I am in error.

An American visitor asked me how far it is to drive from Dublin to Belfast. I told him it was 100 miles. However, I now see that the Irish Tourist Board calculates the distance as 102 miles. Does this mean that my figure of 100 miles was "pointless to the point of nonsense"? Is the Tourist Board figure pointless nonsense as well, since I'm sure it is not exactly 102 miles but rather a few yards more or less?

Such approximation of distances may be pointless in the context of a blueprint for an engineer - but in the context of a description of the Jewish Temple they are perfectly reasonable - irrespective of whether you are a farmer or a mathematician. The only kind of person who would find such approximation to be "pointless to the point of nonsense" in such a context would be the same kind of person who falsely states that the Bible gives a value for pi.

Zombrex

PDN wrote: »

That is a blatant untruth.

The Bible does not pretend to give a value of pi at all - something I have copnsistently stated.

It is "blatantly untruth" to represent my post as claiming that the Bible gives a value for Pi :rolleyes: It doesn't, "Pi" isn't even mentioned in the Bible as far as I know.

Considering you were involved in the earlier mentioned debate you should really know better PDN

What the Bible describes is a structure that could not exist because of Pi. It gets Pi wrong (Pi is after all simple a ratio), not in stating it but in describing the dimensions of a structure that should match Pi to actually exist.

It would be like the Bible describing a triangle building built with 3 corners each at an angle of 50 degrees. The Bible doesn't have to explicitly state that an equilateral triangle has 3 corners of 50 degrees for this structure to be wrong and impossible.

The excuse is that it doesn't matter, it was just an acceptable approximation of the dimensions. Therefore it is not an error.

My original point is that such an assessment is entirely subjective. To me and most engineers and mathematicians such an approximation is pointless to the point of nonsense. But it allows someone who refuses to entertain the idea of error in the Bible the wiggle room to reconcile this with their beliefs.

And at the end of the day you can do this with pretty much anything. A person can find a viable alternative to any apparent contradiction or error if they are prepared to search hard enough.

PDN

Wicknight wrote: »

I guess that depends on how one defines "viable"

Your explanation reminded me of the debate a while back about how 3 was a perfectly acceptable approximation of Pi.

It isn't, but then since "perfectly acceptable" is not something that can be properly defined or tested this remains a subjective assessment and as such people who are looking for an excuse for the inaccuracy of the geometry in the Bible can always fall back on this.

That is a blatant untruth.

The Bible does not pretend to give a value of pi at all - something I have copnsistently stated.

Tim Robbins

PDN wrote: »

Logic and reason, you should try it some time.

You're beginning to sound like Dawkins, PDN.

Zombrex

PDN wrote: »

All I have to is demonstrate that a perfectly viable explanation exists that would not involve a contradiction.

I guess that depends on how one defines "viable"

Your explanation reminded me of the debate a while back about how 3 was a perfectly acceptable approximation of Pi.

It isn't, but then since "perfectly acceptable" is not something that can be properly defined or tested this remains a subjective assessment and as such people who are looking for an excuse for the inaccuracy of the geometry in the Bible can always fall back on this.

PDN

vibe666 wrote: »

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.

We'll try a little logic and reason.

You present an argument that claims you have come up with a doozy, or slam dunk, proof of a contradiction in the Bible.

In order to burst that particular bubble I do not need to present anything as fact. All I have to is demonstrate that a perfectly viable explanation exists that would not involve a contradiction. I did that, and no twisting was required at all.

Logic and reason, you should try it some time.

vibe666

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.

Zombrex

Schuhart wrote: »

Well, don't keep them to yourself. Give us one good reason.

Well of the top of my head, raping someone is an act of violence that hurts the person.

I do not wish to be physically hurt by others, and through the emotional system of empathy I assume that others share this fear and therefore it is important to me that I do not want others to be hurt. It hurts me to see others hurt.

This over rides an pleasure that the rapist may take from raping their victim. There pleasure is less important than the hurt of the victim because they are in a worse of position than the rapist if the rapist doesn't get to rape his victim.

Therefore I say that I will not allow you to rape someone, and I will use all of my power to stop you from doing that.

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

Zombrex

wolfsbane wrote: »

Wicknight said:

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.

That doesn't answer the question (as I said)

It is a conclusion you reach after first establishing that God cannot or would not do evil. The fact that, according to you, he allows and facilitates evil to take place calls into question that establishment.

You can't therefore use the conclusion to justify establishing that he cannot or would not do evil.

The question remains. Is it not evil to facilitate evil to take place?

wolfsbane wrote: »

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

Whether or not it is his prerogative is irrelevant to if it is evil or not. You can claim that it is his prerogative to do evil with us if he so wishes, but it still remains evil.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Not when the probability is so low.

But that is the point.

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

wolfsbane wrote: »

We are talking repeated events, not one-offs.

No, you are talking about once offs connected by repeated events. If a person spends their life praying to God the odds are very high that they will be praying at a series of points in their life when conicendences happen. It is natural human pattern matching to assign significance to the fact that they were praying at the moment the coincidence takes place, but when you look at the odds it is far far more unlikely that this would never happen that that it would.

Its like saying "Wow, its really weird that I'm always in a car when I have a car accidence", or "wow, how pecular that I'm always walking when I stand on an upturned plug"

PDN

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

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.

vibe666 wrote: »

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

I would suggest you take that over to the Creationism forum.

You could even debate it with the atheist geniuses there who ask what the carnivores ate after they got out of the ark. :pac:

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

Scripture doesn't give a date for the flood - unless of course you are a Young Earth creationist or accept their interpretations of genealogies.

As for an argument from silence - do you really want to go there?

vibe666

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

vibe666 wrote: »

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.

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

The Hebrew word nephal means to fall upon, or to overthrow. Therefore the nephilim means 'those who attack' or 'those who overthrow' - in other words violent men. It could therefore be equivalent to us calling someone a hooligan or a vandal.

So there were violent men who lived on the earth before the Flood, and there were violent men living in canaan during the Israelite conquest.

If you think that represents a contradiction then that is more dozy than doozy.

vibe666

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)

Schuhart

Wicknight wrote: »

Schuhart wrote: »

and can see no reason, from an atheist viewpoint, for saying his outlook was wrong.

Really??

I can see tons of reasons.

Well, don't keep them to yourself. Give us one good reason.

While I’m genuinely interested in this kind of thing, can I say I do have much the same feeling that I have when someone says they’ve a convincing proof that God exists. But I’m open to being surprised.

robindch wrote: »

Making oneself believe stuff can be quite easy. And having "turned around" one's life, one is naturally inclined to think that belief might actually be true. Which, of course, it doesn't have to be. It's just the motivating factor, and it can be as much an illusion as the cliff that was never there.

Indeed, isn’t this basically Feuerbach’s idea of alienation. God is seen as sort of projection of thoughts and ambitions we might have. A person wants change in their life, and yearns for a wise guardian to show them how. That ambition is 'alienated' onto an image of an external God. As you say, when this projection turns out to be an effective mechanism for creating change it also seems like a confirmation that the projection is, in fact, real.

David Hume has a not dissimilar thought in his Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. He points out that its not possible to derive features from present reality and retrofit them on to a God figure. For the sake of argument, you cannot derive an omnipotent, infinitely good God as creator of the universe just because that might be nice. What you can derive is a ‘God’ that had just enough power to create the universe we see, and is good enough to make it as good as it is – no more or less.

However, Hume does point out that a person who believes the universe to be created by an omnipotent, infinitely good God will very likely behave differently to one who does not.

I think its intuitively clear that, while the motivating factor might be an illusion, that does not mean that the same result could be obtained or obtained as easily with a different motivating factor.

robindch

PDN wrote: »

And if you are an a-cliffist, not believing that a cliff exists, then you lack the motivation to turn youself around.

Er, that's not the point I was making -- rather the opposite really.

Here's what I wrote again, just for clarity:

me wrote:

My actions do not need a cliff to exist, just for me to really, really believe that there's one there.

Making oneself believe stuff can be quite easy. And having "turned around" one's life, one is naturally inclined to think that belief might actually be true. Which, of course, it doesn't have to be. It's just the motivating factor, and it can be as much an illusion as the cliff that was never there.

wolfsbane

TravelJunkie wrote: »

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?

The Flood would be the big example.

Others would be national rather than international:
The judgements on Egypt at the Exodus; on the Canaanites; on Israel and Judah and the surrounding nations; on Assyria; Babylon; etc. On the Jewish nation in AD70; in the downfall on many nations since, or their internal chastisement (see my signature).

God still requires of nations the blood and tears they unjustly cause - and even the unempowered citizen who would not have done what his State did may have to suffer with it.

wolfsbane

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

vibe666 said:

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.

No, who and what god is would be essentials of the faith, not open to dispute. How we worship Him - the forms of our services, etc. - is a non-essential.

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.

He has. It is called the Bible. It is our understanding of it that varies. Thankfully, God ensures we understand all the essentials - but leaves us to labour in study and prayer to gain the rest.

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.

It's really called Freedom of the Will. There was no encouragement from God for Adam to sin - in fact, a specific command and threat to discourage him. Never heard of that being regarded as entrapment.

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.

Yes, it would seem happier if we all had total understanding of God's word. Even better, that we became incapabile of sin. But in His wisdom God has reserved both those things for after we leave this life. So, I could trust my reasoning powers, or trust the God who made the universe and all in it. I go with the latter.

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

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

I take it that is an off-shoot of Epicureanism.

vibe666

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?

Zombrex

PDN wrote: »

And if you are an a-cliffist, not believing that a cliff exists, then you lack the motivation to turn youself around.

That is the point. The cliff isn't important, it is the turning around that is important. Why you turn around is largely arbitrary. Ask 20 people you will get 20 answers as to why they turned around (and with religion a lot of mutually exclusive answers).

The common denominator is them. The human mind, the human will.

One of my lesser pet peeves with your religion is that it largely relegates the power of humanity to something that will fail without influence from the external deity. Humans are wicked and evil and sinful and we need God to rise above that.

The reality is different, at least in my view.

We can be wicked, we can be evil.

But we can also rise above that.

TravelJunkie

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

Gaviscon wrote: »

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

Yes, but Robin was talking about a specific cliff, that didn't exist.;)

Galvasean

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

PDN

robindch wrote: »

The "power" of christianity to change certain aspects of the lives of certain people, many of them vulnerable, derives largely, and it seems entirely in many cases, from the person's belief that what they are being told is true.

If I'm out driving and decide to believe that there's a cliff dead ahead, I'll turn myself around too.

My actions do not need a cliff to exist, just for me to really, really believe that there's one there.

And if you are an a-cliffist, not believing that a cliff exists, then you lack the motivation to turn youself around.

robindch

PDN wrote: »

Ah yes, the power of atheism to turn around the lives of alcoholics etc. And the evidence for this happening is ... what exactly?

The "power" of christianity to change certain aspects of the lives of certain people, many of them vulnerable, derives largely, and it seems entirely in many cases, from the person's belief that what they are being told is true.

If I'm out driving and decide to believe that there's a cliff dead ahead, I'll turn myself around too.

My actions do not need a cliff to exist, just for me to really, really believe that there's one there.

Zombrex

Schuhart wrote: »

and can see no reason, from an atheist viewpoint, for saying his outlook was wrong.

Really??

I can see tons of reasons.

Zombrex

wolfsbane wrote: »

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.

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.

wolfsbane wrote: »

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.

wolfsbane wrote: »

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.

Zombrex

PDN wrote: »

Ah yes, the power of atheism to turn around the lives of alcoholics etc. And the evidence for this happening is ... what exactly?

Well, no it has nothing to do with "atheism" (atheism isnt a religion nor even a belief system)

It is to do with being human, the power of humans, humans who may face incredible personal adversity, to turn their lives around and improve them.

As for evidence that you don't need the Christian God to do this, well anyone who has ever done this without faith in the Christian God obviously. That includes atheists (I know two recovering alcoholics neither of who are religious and one was never Christian to begin with), or anyone from a non-Abrahamic religion.

The idea that you seem to be putting forward that you need God to be real to do this isn't true. Belief that God was helping you may have provided some support for you, but it wasn't necessary. You could have done it otherwise.