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 .
philologos wrote: » Just read my posts and you'll see what my position was very clearly.
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 .
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.
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!!
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 ?
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
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
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".
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.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » Park the attitude
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.
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?
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.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » For example, it is argued that logic and mathematical concepts are innate and rational intuitions.
Fanny Cradock wrote: » I don't understand what you are saying.
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.
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.
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.
tommy2bad wrote: » Sometimes it's all we have to go on till we find the proof, Higgs boson for example!
DEFTLEFTHAND wrote: » I'm very open to others. I just become frustrated when people mock and deride the church.
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.
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.
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?
