miata

Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. (John 6:53-55)

Primitive religious cults ate their gods. I guess this is a symbol and not a real cannibal thing but it does look as primitive in it's symbolism that of animals or humans beings given up in sacrifice to any god.

Abraham may have been stopped by God from killing his son but Abraham was willing. Think of all the people who kill their children claiming God told them to and they are declared insane. If Abraham tied a child to an alter today and decided later not to kill him and his excuse was God changed his mind would he be given another chance? What happened to all this thou shall not kill when the plan of salvation could not have happened if Christ had not been murdered for the cause. Well if God destroys unborn and new born innocent chrildren in a flood or a pass over are these children any less dead?

Was Abraham insane in this fable and is this not an example of how God shows he will test his subjects. Now if satan says kill your child it seems worse; or does it? Insane ideas are given through out the Bible but act on these and you will be locked up in a rubber room.

Why do Christians say that was the OT? When did God make a 180, and why is that not evidence that the Bible should not be taken as fact?

Non Christians can use the Bible to show it is flawed over and over and not just use ideas but the reported words of God and his actions; breaking all the laws he made? He lied to Moses, Job, he lied to King David. Who did he tell the truth to?

If the Bible is true then we are all subject to insanity for the cause.

All religious people are not insane but they have the master plan in a very large book.

dado

you are arguing outside the historical flow. the reason we regard such an action with revulsion today is precisely because Abraham (or G-d, however you choose to interpret it) said - Stop! This is Madness! - and Isaac wasn't sacrificed.

miata

I wonder who told Abraham to tie and un-tie Isaac. I don't think this happened and I don't have proof of either. But some things in the Bible in the hands of some people with delusions are often dangerous, at the same time so is a credit card.

I ask but can't argue either way. I don't believe the Bible is true but I don't suggest that anyone follow me as I am not sure who is right. It's easy for me to have idea but where is proof of any of the debates on either side.

How did Noah walk the Earth to collect all the animals, plants and insects? The answer by some is with God all things are possible but I have not seen proof of that either.

Mageth

What exactly would qualify as intangible experietial evidence?

Which arise from the evidence of tangible experiences, correct? Do you really trust, or even have, feelings or emotions that arise out of the blue, not based on any tangible evidence or experience?

Being married to (tangible experiential evidence) a faithful spouse (tangible experiential evidence) allows me to feel secure with my spouse. I would hardly feel that way if we were no longer married or if she was unfaithful.

Where is this person, and how do they know that they have personally experienced (either seen or spoken to) God? And are you talking about seeing with your eyes and hearing with your ears, or simply experiencing something (a "revelation") in your mind?

BTW, people that have such "revelations" tend to identify them with "God" or whatever for which they have prior "tangible experience", e.g. the Bible or the teachings of their parents or church.

The Bible makes it quite clear that no one sees God without being annihilated, doesn't it? So I'd be suspicious right off the bat if someone claimed to have seen God with their eyes. (There are a couple of exceptions early on in the Bible, I suppose). Of course, I'm rightly skeptical of people that claim to have heard voices, as well.

One would still have to have "faith" that what one experienced was really God. How would you determine that what you experienced was really God, BTW, and especially a particular God?

To me, this sort of reverses what you've said above - one turns an intangible feeling (feeling that you've heard or seen God) into a perceived tangible experience (that you have heard or seen God, a particular God). God is not something physical/tangible that can be so experienced with the senses, is he?

miata

Just think a human being with unlimited power who might get upset and flood the whole Earth.

Irishbrutha

Yahzi and Mageth, gotta make it short. No one knows what will happen if I hit my head with a bat a bunch of times. You believe that I will die. You do not know it will happen. You specifically do not know if I exist. You don't know the bat exists. I don't know that the hand that holds the bat exists. We don't "know" anything. At all. We believe that we do.

Mageth, I wasn't using reason to validate my belief in empiricism. I was saying that my belief is necessary for my functionality. That's not necessarily justifying my belief, it describes my motivation. Like I said belief or faith is not irrational, it's just non-rational. It can be described by reason.

-Shaun

Starboy

If the outcome is in such great doubt then why don't you take the bat and smash someone else in the head several times just to see what will happen. Do it in front of the police so that they can corroborate the outcome. That is if they will let you continue with the bashing.

Starboy

Faith

Okay, so experiential evidence must be concrete, even if the emotions or feelings that arise from such experiences are not. In what way do feelings of security and love in relation to marriage differ from those of security and love related to having faith in God? Especially if someone feels being a part of (tangible experiential evidence) a "faithful" family (tangible experiential evidence) has made them feel more secure with their faith in God. Or has enriched their life in a positive, measurable way?


It was purely hypothetical. But I was referring to someone who might have had a visual or auditory revelation. Something experiential.


If love and security (or any other emotion) can be intangible and yet experienced, why can't God be too?

Mageth

I know it would hurt.

Actually, I'd believe that you might die.

No, I do not know that you will die if you whack yourself upside the head a few times, but so what? I've never claimed we can know everything. But that doesn't mean we can't know some things.

For example, if your head were to be cut off by a guillotine or some such instrument, I sure as hell would know that you would die. And science would consider it a fact that people that get their heads cut clean off die.

"What happens if someone's head gets cut off?"

"They die."

"How do you know that? Science can only say that they would probably die."

"Yeah, right."

If I were to be hit upside the head with a bat, I gol-danged guarantee you I would know the bat exists. Kick a rock; you know it exists because it kicks back.

So science only believes the earth orbits the sun and not the other way around? Wrong; it is a fact that the earth orbits the sun and not the other way around.

So your functionality is the reason you need belief?

Did I say belief or faith are irrational?

Yahzi

As usual, your analogies are tortured beyond all vitality.

I won't bother to challenge any of the facts in this particular case, since facts just seem to confuse you. I will simply point out that even if slavery was an ESS, that does not excuse its moral criminality. Slavery induced other moral crimes. Human moral considerations do not revolve solely around ESS.

You insist on equating slavery of humans with the keeping of pets. I am sorry, but at this point facts must be introduced: animals are not people, and they do not respond as people do, nor do they need or even desire the same things people do. My dog is part of my family structure: he feels fine in it, because it mirrors the family structure he would naturally create in the wild. He does not mind that he cannot vote. He doesn't like the fact that I won't let him chase cars, but he accepts it (because I am the alpha role), and I do it for his own good.

Do you know what the word "threshold" means? If we extend your idiotic analogy on its sliding scale to the extreme end, then you cannot indulge in anti-biotics.

1. What has shooting animals for sport, cock fights, and bull fights have to do with pets? What does cattle and rainforest have to do with keeping pets? Can we assume that your abandonment of the pet issue implies that you recognize you are wrong?

2. All of your examples revolve around not caring about animals suffering (except the rain-forest beef one, which I just can't make any sense out of at all. Do the cows object to eating the rainforest?). Having pets invariably revolves around their not suffering. Do you realize they make plastic hip replacements for dogs? $5,000 so your dog can walk a little for the last two or three years of its life.

3. You seem totally unable to grasp the concept: moral responsibility depends on ability. We owe no moral duty to individual plants, since individual plants cannot owe a moral duty to us. They can't even feel pain. Now, when you get a more developed nervous system, then we get more duties. Mammals can all feel pain, and furthermore, most of them can communicate their pain in ways we can understand. This makes it our moral duty not to inflict or ignore their pain unnecessarily.

4. Morality is not an infinitely divisible scale: like everything else in the universe, it comes in discrete steps. Human beings are moral agents: bacteria are not. Animals are variously moral agents, depending on the species. Killing a bacteria is not the same crime as killing a dog.

5. The point of my ESS article was that the freedom you seem to think dogs want is an illusion. Again, your anthromorphizing has gotten out of control. You seem to think that dogs can't be truly happy unless they are free, autonomous beings with equal political rights, including the right to starve to death, die young from disease, and be eaten by wolves. It is true that humans would choose freedom despite those costs: it is not true that dogs would, because dogs are not people. They want different things. In fact, dogs seemed to have evolved to occupy precisely the niche they do occupy. If dog-dom as a whole can be said to want anything, one would have to say they got what they wanted.

6. In case you didn't get it, dogs are not people.

7. The fact that I keep my dog from running in the street even though he can't understand why I do does not excuse God from compelling me to obey idiot laws even though I can't understand why I should. The reason is because I can understand why I should. Not only does common sense tell you that a rational moral agent can comprehend moral arguments, but the Bible tells us we have the same moral sense as God. Ergo, all of your arguments are void at the very start, since God is not our moral superior. Even if your sliding scale made sense (which it does not), God is not above us on the scale. According to the Bible, there are only two positions on the scale: moral and not. Science has revealed there is a continuum from moral to amoral, but that does not mean science has necessarily revealed that the continuum goes up from moral, or down from absolute lack of morality (such as into negative). God has no more moral capacity than we do: or to put it another way, we are capable of understanding God's moral explanations. Dogs are not. That difference is rather signficant.