johntheapostate

Your logic is weak Micaiah going to Ahab was no more than salt in the wound. Micaia could no more disprove that his prediction could have been a lie as any other prophet and his position can be summed up by this passage 2 Chronicles 18:23 "Then Zedekiah son of Kenaanah went up and slapped Miciah in the face " Which way did the spirit from the Lord go when he went from me to go to you."

In hindsight it is all very good to say that yes the true nature of gods plan had been revealed to Micaiah, But Ahab had no more reason to believe one over the other and at any rate his choice was predestined from god.

God did not suddenly have a change of heart. It was his will that Ahab be killed. If God had changed his mind he would have conspired to have another spirit inform the prophets that Ahab trusted the true nature of the original conspiracy. God was very clear when he said "you will succeed in enticing him"

This is no story about the free will of man, it is a story about the futility of Ahab to make the choice that would have spared him.

And as to the concept of free will which Christians so readily excuse god of all things, I am always happy to discuss that subject with anyone.

When someone is being completly honest about something do they come up with two conflicting stories of events and then have the person choose which story is correct.

There is no getting away from the fact that god conspired to have Ahab killed and I am not going to make the distinction about if he did it directly or through an agent

johntheapostate

According to llamaluvr's logic god would be perfectly honest if his revelation ( the Bible ) was ninty percent falsehood as long as ten percent of it was true. It would simply be a matter of us making a free will choice on what is true

JGL53

And creating giant flying pigs on Jupiter would be easy for an omnipotent being. So? Discussing just what 'might be' can be fun, but let's focus on what is and what can be known beyond a reasonable doubt.

I simply meant that religious beliefs in invisible persons defy the experience of everyday life. It's like you are grabbing at invisible nats flying around your head. Uh, what are you grabbing at?

Sane people, and people not under the influence of LSD, etc. don't talk to invisible people. Atheists have no burden to prove the invisible people you talk to aren't really there. The burden is yours to prove they are.

Invisible, immaterial people existing would defy logic - and if they do exist and interfere with day to day reality, all bets are off. Logic ceases to exist - unless you know the mind exactly of each of them. The burden is on you to prove they exist and then to prove you know what each of them is doing to us and for us, from moment to moment.

There are huge numbers of empirical facts to be examined, and analyzed in light of each other, to produce scientific theory such as evolution, atoms, heliocentricity, etc. In contrast, the only empirical fact you have to offer is a book of myths - an entirely different proposition.

Nothing is proved in an absolute way. Evolution (especially modification through descent by natural selection) fits the facts as no other explanation, ergo it is the accepted scientific explanation. Religion that claims that god magically created complex beings offers no explanation, but just another mystery that requires explanation.

The 'evidence' of your personal experience - which contradicts the evidence of most others in the world - but you're must be correct, because it is yours. Right.

So you believe half of what I aver, and believe the rest to be lies. Ok. OTOH, I believe you to be 100 per cent sincere. That's the sad part.

I am bias toward the only methodology of discernment of the nature of reality that offers a method of correction (science), as opposed to yours which is merely a "just cause I say so" assertion (religion). So sue me.

Again, all have biases, but science offers a method by which an accurate approximation of the truth of things can be established, with a refinement available through future experiment and discovery. Religion offers comfort to infantile minds, and no way to verify its claims, just the threat of hell if one pisses off its imaginary god.

Not so much a mental disorder, but a psychological disorder which potentially may continue on to the former.

Belief in magic is mutually exclusive of science, initially, but you can certainly compartmentalize your mind and have a heaping helping of both, I guess.

Well, yes, for example, science to date has not found a direct cause and effect between a certain chemical or electrochemical change amongst certain synapes in the brain, or whatever, and the production of the exact thought "My, this cocoa is hot." or "Jeez, llamaluvr has really lost it.". So what? (If they do one day, will all religionists convert instantly to atheists? I doubt it. They're hard-headed that way.) Just because an exact mechanistic explanation has not been forthcoming to date doesn't demonstrate a so-called supernatural or spiritual explanation is most likely. It is just that a naturalistic explanation has not been produced to date. Why jump immediately to a magically, other-worldly explanation? Bias, maybe?

Non-physical what? There's the physical and the effects produced by the physical. You have a theory there is some other 'thing' somewhere somehow? What are you talking about?

If only you can access it, it's only real to you and only useful to you. Why even mention it to me? If it's not part of the public arena, even in theory, ...

So scientists are obligated to produce tools or devices to detect the 'non-physical' things you believe to exist? Well, that's rich.

"spiritual sniffing tools"? Sorry, but I'm biased against nonsense. Again, sue me.

So, we compare the "evidence" of personal experiences, and what do we get? Well, a whole lot of contradictory personal experiences. Which prove what - other than the imagination has no limits?

So, Muslims, et. al., have true visions of the true god, yet only christinsanity is the true religion, and only your take on christinsanity is the correct view.

Well, yes, llamaluvr, you paint us all quite a picture - reminds me of the famous one by Munch.

MonkeyMan

Well, the OP was "Why did Jesus die for our sins?" or somesuch.

The 'why' presumes Jesus actually did. I beg to differ.

There's an eerily quaint scene in Matrix, when Neo is in the Oracle's living room, waiting to meet her. There's kids levitating alphabet cubes and a buddhist-robed baldy kid bending spoons. As Buddha Kid hands a spoon over to Neo he says: "Try not to bend the spoon. Try instead to see The Truth." Neo:"What is the Truth?" BK:"THERE IS NO SPOON. In trying to bend it, we are just bending ourselves."

So here we are bending over backwards arguing about the why, whereas the simple truth is: he didn't die for our sins.

Matthew 15 (grabbed off skepticsannotatedbible.com):
"15:22 And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. (15:22-26) Jesus refuses to heal the Canaanite (Mk.7:26 says she was Greek) woman's possessed daughter, saying "it is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to the dogs."
15:23 But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.
15:24 But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Jesus says that his mission is only for the Israelites, contrary to many verses that say it is for everyone.
15:25 Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.
15:26 But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs."

Jesus was a Jew. All his intentions were geared towards them, including salvation. Gentiles are just dogs that go to hell.

Later evangelists of course reversed that premise, but it's beside the point: Jesus didn't die for OUR sins, making the why question superfluous.

Remember: there is no spoon! :wave:

jonesg

I can identify with some of that.
I look at 2000 yrs ago like this, most people were insane because they had a half baked idea of a God who was going to punish them for the inevitable wrongs we all commit. Anyone walking around with permanent guilt will tend to become severely depressed, they wrote "posessed by demons" , if you've ever suffered severe depression , that description is apt.
The crime of Jesus was the forgiving of sin, in the temple no less.
Most of the miracles, I see Jesus restoring sanity to people with no hope.
Much of what Christianity teaches makes no sense to me, its just their interpretation and I can't understand what they mean.

Somehow the connection between man and God was broken or never existed, we could not fix it, only God could make that connection, so he came to us in human form.

Thats the theology of it, in real life terms though it looks more like Jesus had to be sacrificed to distinguish himself from all the other faith healers knokin around that area in his day., thats why we read his words.
He left us with instructions and if those directions are followed a new life will manifest by the Grace of God.
Much of what he said he re-worded the OT, "what does it profit a man..." is almost a direct cobble from Isaiah's "do not take money from a strange man, in doing so you will increase your poverty..." , so he certainly read Isaiah and knew of the prophesy.

I KNOW when people become completely spiritually dead they have either gone insane permanently or they die by their own hand, selfishness can be fatal. Atheists can be very spiritual too.

llamaluvr

Um, why didn't you include verses 27 and 28? Those contain the conclusion of the story, no?

In 28, Jesus commends the woman for her faith and heals her daughter. The story ends a lot differently than you insinuated.

No part of that story demonstrates that salvation was only for the Jews. Verse 24 does not say that salvation wasn't for gentiles, it only says that he was sent to the Jews, which is obvious, because he was born in Israel.

Your implicit interpretation conflicts the explicit declarations of the text in other places, including Matthew 28:19. Therefore, you have not demonstrated that salvation is only for the Jews, and even if you did, you would have demonstrated a logical inconsistency in the Bible, which leaves me wondering why you didn't just point that out instead.

llamaluvr

Verses 6 and 7 demonstrate that Ahab did know better. We don't know how he knew better, but that doesn't matter to my point. Somehow, Ahab knew that his other prophets were lying and that Micaiah was legit. Note that my contention wasn't that he knew Micaiah was right; he only knew that Micaiah was a real, trustworthy prophet. Comparatively, he knew the others weren't. The decision should have been easy.

What part of that passage actually demonstrates that God was lying to Ahab, or anybody else?

johntheapostate

Ahab was suspicious he was not convinced of anything. Those 400 prophets of his could not have been wrong all the time. The fact of the matter is god did not send Micaiah to Ahab. It was at the insistence of the king of Judea that Micaiah was sent for. This account was written by the Jews of Judea to slander the prophets of Israel. Did you notice how they portray Jehoshaphat in a more flattering light and how they have god rescuing him in the battle.


I have written on how I have observed Christians go to absurd lengths in interpreting information in such a way that they are able to maintain the integrity of there world view. This is no exception


It is critical to most Christians that their god is not a deceiver. What point would there be in putting your faith in a liar.

We have the text showing god instigating a conspiracy to have Ahab killed. Yet he is not responsible because he personally did not go and whisper lies into the 400 prophets ears. Furthermore he is absolved of all responsibility by the fact that one prophet, who may have overstepped his authority to divulge information and whom god himself did not send informed Ahab of the true nature of the conspiracy.


I would be leary of having such persons on a jury in a mob boss trial. By there logic the boss could not be held accountable in a death resulting from a direct order from that boss, on the technicality that the boss did not pull the trigger personally.

In my opinion, to make such a distinction would be infantile.

llamaluvr

Then we shouldn't ever focus on something like macroevolution, right? It would fail the "beyond a reasonable doubt" qualification of a court of law by a landslide.

There's not a whole lot we know "beyond a reasonable doubt". That doesn't mean those things are not worth talking about. If something isn't logically inconsistent, and it hasn't been yet shown to be logically unsound, depending on the evidence available, it should be considered.

If it is being considered simply whether or not something is possible, dismissing it as not being so is not just a matter of making a comment about it- you need to actually give reasons. For instance, I could argue that the likelihood of aliens visiting us is extremely remote, because, from what we can see of space, there exist no other habitats capable of sustaining complex life, and anything we can't see is so far away that distance would be prohibitive to travel.

You said "defy logic" before, but ok. If you appear to be experiencing the supernatural on an everyday, or otherwise frequent, basis, isn't it defying your experience of everyday life to outright deny it? That's the conundrum faced by billions of religious/ spiritual all over the world. What you're saying doesn't fit their everyday experience.

I guess you could just keep saying what you're saying and insist that they all have a problem, but that seems an awful lot like hand-waving to me. Have you actually done the tests to show that there are no sane people that believe in God? If not believing in God is a requirement for your sanity test, how do you establish that that requirement is reasonable?

Also, if visibility is our qualification for declaring something to be existent, then I'd love to hear your reaction to wind ;-). Seriously, if we can't see, hear, taste, touch, or smell something, but it's still affecting us, then, crap, it's still affecting us!!! There is no law which states that all which exists we can physically sense. Just because a bat is blind, it does not mean that the realm of the visible does not exist.


This means that nonphysical beings are logically inconsistent with some observable fact. What is it??? If you tell me, then I can stop believing in God and live like all the enlightened ones like yourself!

You have made a truth-claim (that nonphysical beings are logically inconsistent with something), so I would think that that would be your burden to prove. You're teasing me, really. Don't you know how much it would change my life if you could back up the claim you just made??? I'm dead serious that I won't believe anything logically inconsistent, and you've just said that what I believe is logically consistent, so PLEASE tell me!!! I'll tell my friends, too. You're likely to dechristianize a rather large group of people.

Seriously. It's useful information. This is when there's a "burden" to explain or prove something- when you make a statement, it only makes sense to actually back it up, rather than to just say it, not back it up, and claim that I need to back up the opposite.

It sounds like you have plenty of empirical facts about it, if you can actually establish that it is a "book of myths".

There's plenty of evidence to look up. There's archeological evidence, linguistic evidence, external accounts, etc.

And then, when you move to the supernatural, you have to change the rules a bit, because you're not dealing with the same field of research. You can gather accounts from others, check for congruencies, plot the data, and get a good idea of, if this God is acting in such a manner, what he is doing.

Nobody seems to ever do this. They just say that anybody who believes in a higher power is automatically wrong. Is that really scientific? Where is this magic rule that says we can only consider what can be empirically measured?

If nothing is proved in an absolute way, what do we make of the proofs for parallel lines and congruent triangles, or proving that an effect has a cause (which is analytically true)?

Special creation is just as valid of an explaination as evolution, because there is no evidence known that actually contradicts creation. Just because you cannot provide a scientific model for how a creator actually arranged the matter as so, it does not mean that the model's explaining power is lessened.

Evolution, at this point, cannot describe the method by which one organism evolved into another, either. Saying "modification through descent by natural selection" is how Australopithecine afarensis eventually evolved into Homo ergaster is no less hand-waving than saying "God did it". We have no way of knowing if such a transformation is even possible, let alone if it occured.

How has my experience contradicted the experience of anyone else? You don't even know my experiences, so that seems like an odd thing to say.

The only time it might "contradict" is if there are two different sources, and they're not actually identified as being different. For instance, somebody claiming to be hearing from God when they're really hearing from Satan.

Really, the spiritual claims of non-Christians contribute to the validity mine more than fellow Christians do. Satanists often are some of the most spiritually aware people out there, for instance.

I don't think you're lying- I believe you fully believe that you're a non-biased source. I just also think that you're fooling yourself by thinking that you're some paragon of objectivity. Most would interpret this as cockiness, at best. And I'm not talking about a healthy dose of Barry Bonds-esque cockiness.

Since you believe that science has corrected this bias, how has it done so? How has it eliminated my beliefs and confirmed yours?

I have not found this claim in any textbook or other scientific resource. Could you please substantiate it?

Even if a particular emotion can be completely explained in physical terms, we will still have the abstract description of it, which is non-physical.

That's a contradiction, because the latter means that it cannot ever be totally explained in terms of the physical, making the first part of the sentence an impossibility.

If we're really 100% physical beings, then we should not have non-physical inputs and outputs. We should only respond to sound and light waves and chemical reactions, and we should only respond in those things.


The "non-physical" is that which is not physical. It does not take up space, has no mass, no electrical charge, no energy. The supernatural are included in this category. The only difference between the two terms is that "supernatural" implies some sort of precedence between the physical and non-physical.


You can compare notes in this field, it's just that only you can access your "laboratory".

Not necessarily scientists, but those who want to examine the claims before dismissing them.


What do we get when we hear about somebody's experience? We don't get the experience itself, but an interpretation of it. A miraculous healing might be interpretted by the recipient as a work of Allah, but what evidence in the event actually served to confirm it was Allah? Probably nothing- the person's only evidence might be the memory of the deathly body, and the fact that it is now healed. But, if one already worships Allah, and that happens to him, then he might say Allah did it.

Taking individual events are lone occurances, it is easy to ascribe them to almost any being, just as it is easy to form a ridiculous teaching by taking one verse of the Bible out of context. My contention is that, if you were able to put all the dots together, you could very well find that the being most likely to be the culprit to be Yahweh. I can't put everybody's dots together, but I can say my dots match the character of the God described in the Bible. I've taken an extra step that many haven't, in that I've actually considered how the dots connect.

However, we don't even need to do much, if any of the elimination work this way. We can go a really long way with logic.

First, start with any of the successful arguments for the existence of a being with particular God-like qualities. Kalam and the popular ontological arguments are a good place to start. From these, you get qualities such as omnipresence, omnipotence, timelessness, perfection for such a being. From there, it can be logically proven that each of these arguments speaks of the same being. Then, use Occam's Razor to eliminate explainations that unnecessarily multiply the number of such beings (that takes down at least a few polytheistic religions). Eliminate all the religions that demonstrate an imperfect God, such as those that have his spoken word contradicting itself, or have him making a demonstrably less-than-perfect choice. These can also include religions that claim him to have a perfect sense of justice, yet have him taking cheap bribes to get people off the hook (there goes a lot of religions).

Further qualifications can be made that are less set in stone- you can eliminate personal religons, because it would be unreasonable to expect others to be able to adhere to them. You can also eliminate religions that outright eliminate certain people from salvation based on inherent traits, particularly if it claims that God is all-loving.

At this point, you're not left with very much.

rlogan

OK, I'll take the bait.


Says you. This is an assertion with zero evidence. All claims about an entity that cannot be observed or tested in any way are equally valid and thus any competing claim is of equal validity.

Still, just baseless assertion. No more valid than any other claim.


Says a bunch of bronze-age goat herders. Not reliable experts in much of anything but making bricks out of dung and such.

Bring forth God and let's see about this. Otherwise any competing claim is equally valid. God looks like goat poop.


I agree that humans have free will by observation and not by silly religious theory.

BZZZT. This is a definition and you will be held to it if you really want a logical discussion. Buying the wrong grocery item is a sin, etc.

We "established" nothing of the kind. Where is your evidence of "the deal"? Do you mean the ridiculous story of Adam and God? What - did they leave us a contract to review? Personally, I'm pretty well convinced by the evolutionary evidence that the notion of "Adam" is bankrupt. The textual evidence is that it is just re-worked material from other cultures.


This is a tautology in one sense, ("wrong" means "negative") but also the fallacy of drawing the wrong conclusion. That you are "wrong" does not mean you owe the invisible sky-daddy a damned thing.

No, this does not follow. Any more than that the legislature has to enforce the laws it passes. It's just you making assertions.

No we don't. Not even if we accept all of the baseless assertions to this point. If god creates imperfect beings then punishing them for being imperfect is the logical inconsistency.

You mean an asshole who creates imperfect beings and then tortures them for doing exactly as they were created to do.

No - you have just now smuggled in a definition. "unjust" = failure to punish people created by God who acted as they were created to do.

That is a sick definition of "unjust". I reject it.

Good idea. Explain that one.

I see. So you are a creationist. There isn't any hope for logical discussion with you to begin with. Evolution has blown this out of the water for centuries now.

Good God. fricking fantasyland. Try reading some science literature instead of Bronze-age superstition.

says who? For Christ's sake - every line of your "resoning" is just rote recitation of dogma without any logical basis whatever.

Even if we give you Adam and Eve - how does it follow that innocent offspring are punished for the sins of their parents?

Talk about injustice! Your god is an asshole.

Some perfect God. Creates beings that are not perfect. Don't you remember - he can't make mistakes and etc.? BZZZZT. Logical inconsistency.

What is with this loose language of "free ride back to square one"? Pretty pathetic hand-waving here instead of logical development. How does this follow logically from anything you have said thus far?

I say ice cream! And yummy fuzzes on my doggies tummy!


Revelation says a lot of really stupid things. A couple hits of blotter would be a better way to meet "God".

No, it doesn't. The most "reasonable" thing is not to have death, life, or anything else but whatever heaven is to begin with. Unless God is imperfect, which violates your basic premise.

right. perfect God fucks up and needs to "reinstate".

Woof! woof! gobble! Gobble! A-> X @ Z -> ~ = #. Q.E.D.

Christianity is a form of mental illness. That you can actually say this with sincerity.

I say eating worms is how man intakes the love of the earth.


People make decisions for reasons? OK.

What?! Nonsequitor.


?!

In every stream of gibberish, there is the occasional true statement.

says you. Still just empty assertion.

What is the purpose of this tautology?

Fuck your deity. He's an asshole without morality.


you know what? Your deity has no jurisdiction over me.

A "perfect" God creating imperfect things and having this convoluted "recovery" plan is contradictory and just plain stupid.


A->B->C does not demonstrate A to be true.

Who needs salvation? What a load of bunk.


[quote]Well, you'll need to establish that there is an absolute morality which opposes Christian doctine to do the latter. I don't think you can, although I'll be mighty impressed if you succeed. [quote]

Christian doctrine is disproved in innumerable ways, but convincing those in its grip is nigh impossible, yes.

Don't see you on BC&H or C&E pages. Most of what you seem to rely on is regularly destroyed there.

Come visit!