I would like to tell you a bit more about God

[philh 0]

"I never said you would. What I did say if you had the exegetical knowledge of a Bible College freshman you most likely wouldn't take Isaiah's proclamation to Cyrus out of context to make an exclusive statement about God. "

I gave you my reasons why I felt I wasnt taking the passage out of context and rather than address them you simply make an assertion of how others interpret the passage. You assume everyone interprets it the way you do. Maybe they did at your bible college but thats a very small sample size. Certainly my rabbis took it to actaully mean what it says. Even if everyone did interpret it your way, its still an argument from authroity and that does not count as evidence or reason.

[jakee 1,593]

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Phil you are one hell of an evangelist. Why do you put so much time and energy into this. If we are so wrong and deluded why do you bother with us. And to those of you who think death is it. How do you come to that conclusion? There is nothing in this universe that can cease to exist. Matter and energy can be changed but is can't cease to exist. As things stand right now, no one has any idea what fuels and drives the self consciousness that defines our being ( Soul) . You may say its a function of the electrical activity along neurons, dendrites, synaspes, involving neurotransmitters, & glial cells, all occurring in the proper physiological environment. I say your degree of faith humbles me in comparison.

You think consciousness isn't developed in the brain? Really?

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[JackC 0]

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Phil you are one hell of an evangelist. Why do you put so much time and energy into this. If we are so wrong and deluded why do you bother with us. And to those of you who think death is it. How do you come to that conclusion? There is nothing in this universe that can cease to exist. Matter and energy can be changed but is can't cease to exist. As things stand right now, no one has any idea what fuels and drives the self consciousness that defines our being ( Soul) . You may say its a function of the electrical activity along neurons, dendrites, synaspes, involving neurotransmitters, & glial cells, all occurring in the proper physiological environment. I say your degree of faith humbles me in comparison.

You think consciousness isn't developed in the brain? Really?

See there's the thing. Science is complicated and by comparison religion is simple. With science you have to understand brain activity and it's relation to neurons, dendrites, synaspes and the like. With religion you have to understand godidit. With science you have to understand evoluionary biology with its relation to DNA and natural selection. With religion you have to understand godidit. With science you have to understand big bang cosmology and dark matter, general relativity and the copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics. With religion you have to understand godidit.

To the theist, religion takes less stuff to learn about ergo it takes less faith to believe in. To them, it takes a monumental amount of faith to believe what has already been proven by thousands of scientists over hundreds of years but it takes comparatively little faith to believe the unfounded assertion that godidit. Maybe because it's easier to spell, I don't know.

[/sarcasm]

[steveorino 7]

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If I’m right in my assumption then it undermines everything about Christianity to a degree, god will understand why I do not believe in him, after all, old Thomas needed to see him in the flesh before he would believe he was risen, so im just that same.. Therefore I can live my life sinning away merrily and at the end if ive got I all wrong and im stood at the pearly gates, god will say “I understand why you were non believer, and in my infinite mercifulness I forgive you, now come in, collect your wings and harp from old Gabriel here and have a great time, glad to have you on board”.

Again, I think you are wrong, but that is what you are betting on.

steveOrino

[steveorino 7]

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"Does that mean the arguments of scientist who disagree on the cause of global warming fall apart? "

That would be a very valid criticism if those who made claims about global warming did so purely on the grounds of authority as you did and not on the grounds of evidence. However people claiming CO2 for example is causing climate change do so on the grounds of evidence, not simply authroity. So your comparison is a straw man.

You don't understand theological debate. Apart from a few whackos those who disagree, such as Calvin vs Arminius did not argue authority, they argued substance.

steveOrino

[steveorino 7]

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"I never said you would. What I did say if you had the exegetical knowledge of a Bible College freshman you most likely wouldn't take Isaiah's proclamation to Cyrus out of context to make an exclusive statement about God. "

I gave you my reasons why I felt I wasnt taking the passage out of context and rather than address them you simply make an assertion of how others interpret the passage. You assume everyone interprets it the way you do. Maybe they did at your bible college but thats a very small sample size. Certainly my rabbis took it to actaully mean what it says. Even if everyone did interpret it your way, its still an argument from authroity and that does not count as evidence or reason.

You and your Rabbis IMHO make a very important mistake. YOu assume the Bible was written to everyone by it's original authors. Basic orthodox Christian exegesis states the biblical writer writes to HIS generation about a current situation using terms and idioms of the writer's own generation. The principles of truth are eternal, but the action of the passage are usually local and apply to that time and place.

Your Rabbis may not make that distinction. Every Christian doesn't either. All my professors didn't. I do. Am I right? It makes sense to me. We will see.

steveOrino

[steveorino 7]

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Sure, I could be wrong, but what evidence will you present to make me change my mind?

What evidence can I produce? Can I produce evidence that Santa Claus doesn't exist? What about the Loch Ness Monster or Big Foot? It's an easy escape for you to say "prove it" whenever someone says god doesn't exist because you and I both know that it's quite impossible. You do know that it's impossible?

All I can do is to show you the flaws in the evidence you use to prove god does exist. People do that in threads like these ad nauseum and theists always dodge and weasle their way out eventually falling back to that impenetrable barrier of delusion called faith. As long as theists take faith over rationalism, even discussing it is a complete waste of time.

This is where it gets hilarious to me. You guys keep making (or backing up) the statement science will prove there is no God. When I ask for such proof you return to your circular argument, "You can't prove a negative."

Okay, make up your atheistic minds. If God is a negative, then quit stating science will disprove Him. ROFLOL!

steveOrino

[steveorino 7]

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"Yes, but did I ever say faith in God is a science? My love for my wife and kids cannot be measured accurately with science. Does it not exist? "

There is a huge difference here. People who make claims that have relevance to how we all live our lives need to back those claims up with evidence. I'm sure we can all agree on one thing, it does matter whetther the claims of religion are true or false; it matter a lot in fact. Whether or not you love your wife is of little interest to the rest of the world and so it doesnt matter whether you have evidence or not. That is not the same with god, your claims do matter and so yes you do need evidence. Quite frankly Im sure if we really had to find evidenc for the love of your wife, we could probably do so in terms of your behaviour.

You are dodging this comparison with your opinion, but what else is new. It is a valid comparison.

You assert God isn't real because it cannot be scientifically verified. I stated there are very real things that also cannot ve scientifically verified. Not everything can be measured with science.

You are trying to dodge this comparison, by comparing the relevance of my love for my wife versus the relevance of my faith in God. Different issue all together and is simply a sidetrack to my statement. I assume that is all you got?

steveOrino

[Royd 0]

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You miss the point again, whilst you might not be able to "measure" love, you could certainly using "scientific method" prove that it exists..

God is love, therefore God exists.

[JackC 0]

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This is where it gets hilarious to me. You guys keep making (or backing up) the statement science will prove there is no God. When I ask for such proof you return to your circular argument, "You can't prove a negative."

Okay, make up your atheistic minds. If God is a negative, then quit stating science will disprove Him. ROFLOL!

Some people might have but I don't think I ever said science will prove god doesn't exist, if you can show me where I did then I'll admit that it was an incorrect statement. I have asked you what it would take for you to abandon your belief in god but that's not the same thing. I have also said that some gods are logically incoherent and disbelief in them is justified on those grounds. But God is a positive assertion and before anyone believes that positive assertion it needs to backed it up with evidence otherwise you'd have to disprove every absurd assertion ever made that some entity exists or be forced to believe it.

In principle you can prove a negative. For every set S there is a set Not-S, and vice versa, so every negative entails a positive and vice versa. All one has to do to prove a negative is rewrite the statement asserting the negative of set S into the positive of Not-S. If you can show Not-S to be true, you've automatically proved S false and vice versa. If I were to give you the statement "there are no crows in this box" you could restate that as "there are crows in this box", then open the box and find crows or no crows. If you find no crows, you've proved the statement "there are crows in this box" to be false and thereby proved "there are no crows in this box" to be true, thereby proving a negative. Now substitute crows for god and box for universe. The problem being, the universe is a hooking great big box and we can't look everywhere at once. So proving that negative would be devilishly difficult to do and for all practical purposes impossible. Especially when no one can define sufficiently accurately what constitutes a god and he probably isn't confined by the box anyway.

[steveorino 7]

Dang, Jack! A great post!

I don't remember who made the statement, Lately it has been me debating you, the other Jack, Phil, brok3n and beowolf. You guys respond to my response to the other posters so it easily gets confusing. {I looked it up it was brok3n who made the original assertion. I believe others backed him up, but I haven't searched that much}

I'm not sure what you mean by God is a positive assertion and it needs to be backed up with evidence. Is love not a positive assertion? What evidence will you present for it? Don't say flowers, because my wife won't buy that.

steveOrino

[steveorino 7]

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The problem being, the universe is a hooking great big box and we can't look everywhere at once. So proving that negative would be devilishly difficult to do and for all practical purposes impossible. Especially when no one can define sufficiently accurately what constitutes a god and he probably isn't confined by the box anyway.

Not to mention that the creator of this universe might not be something you'd "recognize" as God. I wouldn't look for an old man in a beard. John 4:24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth

steveOrino

[jakee 1,593]

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I'm not sure what you mean by God is a positive assertion and it needs to be backed up with evidence. Is love not a positive assertion? What evidence will you present for it? Don't say flowers, because my wife won't buy that.

I'm sure that everyone in this thread has felt love. We know that love is an emotion that we as humans are capable of generating - therefore it is perfectly reasonable to believe you when you say that you are in love with you wife
However, if you were then to go on to say that love has a tangible existence independent of the workings of your brain, then we might start to have a problem

Do you want to have an ideagasm?

[steveorino 7]

touche!

steveOrino

[beowulf 1]

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This is where it gets hilarious to me. You guys keep making (or backing up) the statement science will prove there is no God. When I ask for such proof you return to your circular argument, "You can't prove a negative."

Okay, make up your atheistic minds. If God is a negative, then quit stating science will disprove Him. ROFLOL!

Some people might have but I don't think I ever said science will prove god doesn't exist, if you can show me where I did then I'll admit that it was an incorrect statement. I have asked you what it would take for you to abandon your belief in god but that's not the same thing. I have also said that some gods are logically incoherent and disbelief in them is justified on those grounds. But God is a positive assertion and before anyone believes that positive assertion it needs to backed it up with evidence otherwise you'd have to disprove every absurd assertion ever made that some entity exists or be forced to believe it.

In principle you can prove a negative. For every set S there is a set Not-S, and vice versa, so every negative entails a positive and vice versa. All one has to do to prove a negative is rewrite the statement asserting the negative of set S into the positive of Not-S. If you can show Not-S to be true, you've automatically proved S false and vice versa. If I were to give you the statement "there are no crows in this box" you could restate that as "there are crows in this box", then open the box and find crows or no crows. If you find no crows, you've proved the statement "there are crows in this box" to be false and thereby proved "there are no crows in this box" to be true, thereby proving a negative. Now substitute crows for god and box for universe. The problem being, the universe is a hooking great big box and we can't look everywhere at once. So proving that negative would be devilishly difficult to do and for all practical purposes impossible. Especially when no one can define sufficiently accurately what constitutes a god and he probably isn't confined by the box anyway.

It makes it even tougher since crows are not invisible and god is. But really with god we are not asking the same question that you used. With God we are asking "Does God exist?" With the crows example you used you were asking the question "Are there any crows in the box?" assuming that crows exist. We know that crows exist somewhere so we can easily look into a box and see if there are or are not crows in it. This you can not do with god even if you could just as easily search the entire universe all at once. How do you prove something doesn't exist when by definition there is no way to physically see it or even test for it's presence? As you can see crows are much easier to prove to exist. God on the other hand has no evidence and can not be seen therefore the logical conclusion is he doesn't exist. Now proving a crow to exist it pretty easy you just have to search the world for a crow, catch it and bring it back.

[rehmwa 2]

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you believes in things without any evidence at all. I think you need to reconsider your definition at faith.

Er - I believe that IS the definition of faith (belief defined by lack of evidence).

Which is why the trend of this entire thread is really, really, really, stupid.

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[steveorino 7]

I was reveiwing the recent "GOD" thread and noticed your post. I didn't want to bring something up from page 1, but I wonder why you challenge her as a christian about recycling and other stuff .. or as you put it... why are others allowed to destroy the livelihoods of others, why do christians pollute the earth?

Do you recycle, do you refrain from buying products that are unecessarily packaged in plastic, do you drive a vehicle that is overpowered...?


I find any skydiver who slams others about their cars, etc. then uses fossil fuel in an airplane to simply jump out of it as being very hypocritical. Then to direct it at someone's belief system is ridiculous IMHO

steveOrino

[billvon 3,107]

Good editorial by Shermer:

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RATIONAL ATHEISM

Since the turn of the millennium, a new militancy has arisen among religious skeptics in response to three threats to science and freedom: (1) attacks against evolution education and stem cell research; (2) breaks in the barrier separating church and state leading to political preferences for some faiths over others; and (3) fundamentalist terrorism here and abroad. Among many metrics available to track this skeptical movement is the ascension of four books to the august heights of the New York Times best-seller list—Sam Harris’s Letter to a Christian Nation (Knopf, 2006), Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell (Viking, 2006), Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great (Hachette Book Group, 2007) and Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin, 2006)—that together, in Dawkins’s always poignant prose, “raise consciousness to the fact that to be an atheist is a realistic aspiration, and a brave and splendid one. You can be an atheist who is happy, balanced, moral and intellectually fulfilled.”

Whenever religious beliefs conflict with scientific facts or violate principles of political liberty, we must respond with appropriate aplomb. Nevertheless, we should be cautious about irrational exuberance. I suggest that we raise our consciousness one tier higher for the following reasons.

1. Anti-something movements by themselves will fail. Atheists cannot simply define themselves by what they do not believe. As Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises warned his anti-Communist colleagues in the 1950s: “An anti-something movement displays a purely negative attitude. It has no chance whatever to succeed. Its passionate diatribes virtually advertise the program they attack. People must fight for something that they want to achieve, not simply reject an evil, however bad it may be.”

2. Positive assertions are necessary. Champion science and reason, as Charles Darwin suggested: “It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity & theism produce hardly any effect on the public; & freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, & I have confined myself to science.”

3. Rational is as rational does. If it is our goal to raise people’s consciousness to the wonders of science and the power of reason, then we must apply science and reason to our own actions. It is irrational to take a hostile or condescending attitude toward religion because by doing so we virtually guarantee that religious people will respond in kind. As Carl Sagan cautioned in “The Burden of Skepticism,” a 1987 lecture, “You can get into a habit of thought in which you enjoy making fun of all those other people who don’t see things as clearly as you do. We have to guard carefully against it.”

4. The golden rule is symmetrical. In the words of the greatest conscious­ness raiser of the 20th century, Mart­in Luther King, Jr., in his epic “I Have a Dream” speech: “In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrong­ful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline.” If atheists do not want theists to prejudge them in a negative light, then they must not do unto theists the same.

5. Promote freedom of belief and disbelief. A higher moral principle that encompasses both science and religion is the freedom to think, believe and act as we choose, so long as our thoughts, beliefs and actions do not infringe on the equal freedom of others. As long as religion does not threaten science and freedom, we should be respectful and tolerant because our freedom to disbelieve is inextricably bound to the freedom of others to believe.

As King, in addition, noted: “The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.”

Rational atheism values the truths of science and the power of reason, but the principle of freedom stands above both science and religion.
------------------------------

[beowulf 1]

Very nice editorial. It makes a lot of sense.

[rehmwa 2]

I can see about 5 points in that article where I rarely see someone 'walk the talk'

but that's all. just 5 of them

...
Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[NCclimber 0]

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Very nice editorial. It makes a lot of sense.

I agree.

Seems like the same principles could apply to civil debate, as well.

Or life in general.

[georgerussia 0]

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In principle you can prove a negative. For every set S there is a set Not-S, and vice versa, so every negative entails a positive and vice versa. All one has to do to prove a negative is rewrite the statement asserting the negative of set S into the positive of Not-S. If you can show Not-S to be true, you've automatically proved S false and vice versa. If I were to give you the statement "there are no crows in this box" you could restate that as "there are crows in this box"

The problem with your example is that everyone knows from personal experience that a) crows exist and b) how the crows look like. This makes the statement "find crows" or "find no crows" possible to prove for both parties. Just replace crows in your example with "invisible memejamba", and you'll see that you cannot prove Not-S anymore. How could you prove there is memejamba in this box, or there is no memejamba? You have no idea how memejamba should look like. Which is the case with God.

* Don't pray for me if you wanna help - just send me a check. *

[JackC 0]

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How do you prove something doesn't exist when by definition there is no way to physically see it or even test for it's presence? As you can see crows are much easier to prove to exist. God on the other hand has no evidence and can not be seen therefore the logical conclusion is he doesn't exist.

I completely agree which is why my last sentence in the post you quoted was "no one can define sufficiently accurately what constitutes a god and he probably isn't confined by the box anyway."

Whenever an atheist tries to search the universe for a god (metaphorically speaking), the theist is always at an advantage because he can move the goal posts by changing what is meant by "God".

My point wasn't to prove that god can or cannot (in principle) be proven one way or the other, my point was simply to show that you can prove a negative. Now in the case of god, it's impossible for all practical purposes because
1) you can't define what you mean by "god"
2) god might not even be confined by the box anyway but we definately are
3) it's a fooking great big box (and that's the understatement of the year)

[Nightingale 0]

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....If I were to give you the statement "there are no crows in this box" you could restate that as "there are crows in this box", then open the box and find crows or no crows. If you find no crows, you've proved the statement "there are crows in this box" to be false and thereby proved "there are no crows in this box" to be true, thereby proving a negative.

But there could be an invisible, but omni-present, omicient, omnipotent Crow in the box who chooses to remain invisible so you have to take his existence solely on faith and on the Word of the holy writings of Dropzone.com (which, of course, are self-authenticating because they are the works of many authors in many locations over many years and are brought together to spread the Word)....couldn't there?

[JackC 0]

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How could you prove there is memejamba in this box, or there is no memejamba? You have no idea how memejamba should look like. Which is the case with God.

True enough. If you have no idea what properties a memejamba has you can't do anything about proving anything. However, if someone lets slip that a memejamba is red, you've got a lead. If they let slip that a memejamba is hairy, you've got another lead. If there are no red hairy things in the box, then there are no memejamba's in the box.

So the deists god (a god who lit the fuse for the big bang then buggered off never to be seen again) you can't do squat with. You know nothing so you can prove nothing. But the christian god didn't just bugger off. He stuck around and wrote books. So instead of searching for a memejamba, we're searching for red hairy memejamba's.