blt to go

Thank you, Magus55 for your response to one of my questions. I will look forward to the response to the other (Book of Job and the presence of God with sin.)

Now let’s look at this apologetic of the contradiction of David’s census:

Hmmm. I DID warn you to watch out for the theological implications of this apologetic. We need to dissect what “it� is, and not sugarcoat the word.

“It� is David’s committing the second worst sin by an individual recorded in the bible. And this apologetic claims that God ORDERED it?

Rather than skimming over the three (3) stories, a little digging reveals the serious theological implications of this sin.

1) Joab’s immediate response to David’s plan of a census was, “Don’t do this terrible thing, it is a sin.� Joab was a murderer, conspirator, jealous, proud and human life meant little to him. This is analogous to Charles Manson saying, “Hey, don’t do that. That would be bad.� Joab was so bad that David’s last words to Solomon were, “The first thing to do as a king is to kill Joab!� Even Joab saw what a terrible sin this was going to be.

Compare it in “God’s Justice System:�

2) According to “God’s Justice System� if a person has an affair with a married woman, gets her pregnant, and murders her husband to cover it up, the appropriate punishment for this combination of sins is the capital punishment of one (1) human life. (David/Bathsheba/Uriah)

3) According to “God’s Justice System� the appropriate punishment for David’s sin (“it� in the apologetic) is the capital punishment of 100,000 – 200,000 human lives. This number is derived from the fact that the Angel of Death was to ravage the country for three (3) days. 2 of the 3 stories agree that the Angel was stopped mid-punishment. If stopped on the first day, the rate of killing was 70,000 persons per day, therefore the full punishment would have been 210,000. (And if you think the rate would have decreased, note that the Angel was approaching a major metropolis, where population density increases, not decreases, so arguably the rate of persons per day would have increased!) If the Angel was stopped on the third day, the rate of killing was 35,000 persons per day, and therefore another day would have yielded another 35,000 dead for a total gross of 105,000 dead.

4) I am unaware of any other single individual’s sin recorded in the bible that generated a punishment of 100,000 – 200,000 dead with the exception of Pharaoh’s hardened heart. (And while no number is given, for purposes of this exercise, I will concede there were more than 200,000 first born in Egypt.) (Interesting side note—god had his hand in that one, too! But that is a discussion for another time.)

5) This is worse than Sodom and Gomorrah. (Again no population given, but the cities would have to be larger than 50,000 – 100,000)

6) This is worse than all of individual sins of the kings of Israel, most of the kings of Judah, Saul, Solomon, etc…

And Christians typically, blissfully glance over this tale with nary a thought of the tragedy of this occurrence.

So, if I am reading the apologetic correctly, in order to maintain inerrancy, we must state that God ORDERED David to commit the second worst recorded sin in the bible. Is this not a HUGE theological problem? God ordering people to commit terrible sins?

Yes, I am, thank you for asking. For frankly, if this is a demonstration of the sovereignty of god in that he orders David (a “man after God’s own heart�) to commit such a terrible sin, and then plans to kill off 100,000 – 200,000 OTHER people (who DIDN’T commit the sin) what chance do I have? Give him glory, don’t give him glory, either way it is at his complete whim whether I live or die, atheist, theist, freeman or slave.

That is, if you believe the apologetic of the three (3) contradictory stories.

Asha'man

About to have some lunch, and another though occurred to me about this. Let me demonstrate that what you propose is merely wishful thinking, a pipe dream, a fantasy.

Clearly, you stopped too soon in your hypothesis. Having invented these immaterial entities, you failed to recognize how utterly alien they would most likely be to us, how complex and sophisticated they would be compared to our primitive selves. When our spirits entered their realm, they would probably consider us in the same way we consider mollusks. And the first thought I have when encountering a mollusk? Should I eat it raw or cooked, what sauce should I use, and what side items are appropriate?

That is the difference between a pleasant fantasy and a realistic hypothesis. However, there is precisely the same evidence for your version as for mine: none whatsoever. How do you choose one over the other? Given no evidence at all, the only rational choice is to make no choice, to withhold belief. And withholding belief is exactly what makes you an atheist.

Asha'man

Nice work, blt to go.

Yet another demonstration of how simple apologetics destroy the Bible more thoroughly than the original contradiction.

converted

Fine. I guess you will win in Trivial Pursuit... :notworthy

OK, our current scientific understanding of the universe will work if we find the 30% dark matter and the 65% dark energy. That sounds like it adds up to 95% of the universe is unknown right now. Seems like a fairly big unknown to me.

My hypothesis still is the 65% dark energy is God and Heaven...

converted

There obvioulsy is no way to give you physical evidence unless someone discovers a parallel dimension or God chooses to appear. One possible experiment that could be done would be prayer based. You could possibly set up an experiment in which 1,000 Christians pray for something to happen in their lives (not sure what) and 1,000 atheists just go about their business. Then you could assess what the results of the two groups. My wife and I have had many prayers answered. This seems like the only mechanism that might show a pattern that might start to provide "evidence".

The difficult part would be to pick what to pray about and how to assess the results from the two groups... If anyone has a suggestion, we could get the 1000 atheists right from this site...

Kosh

Won't work. You'll just cop out with the "it's not God's will" escape claus.

David Mills

Many of those who debate creationists overlook one of the most basic fallacies of the entire Bible right at the start, in Genesis 1:1 -- "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth."

We known incontrovertibly that the earth is 8 to 10 billion years younger than other parts of the observable universe (i.e., the heavens), thereby disproving a simultaneous creation of both and providing a contradiction between Scripture and science (if not within Scripture itself).

David Mills

Sven

Nice that you think this - actually I'm quite bad in this game

That's not an hypothesis. An hypothesis is based on some evidence, not on wishful thinking.

BTW, if you want to look it up: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040711.html
(with lots of links)
It's actually 73/23/4 % - I didn't remember how precise WMAP measurements were

Sven

Did you ever think about the theological implications of answered prayers? Especially about prayers to heal a disease, to prevent natural disastets from happening, etc.?
In my opinion, a god who needs prayers before he helps humans is far from being omnibenevolent. But, as usual, Christians just redefine the meaning of "omni" or of "benevolent" and think that have provided a counter argument.

Mageth

How about this...

Infect all 2000 with some nasty, but curable, disease. Have the 1,000 Christians simply pray to be healed, but the 1,000 atheists "go about their business" by seeking medical help. Or perhaps snakebite - give 'em all a dose of cobra venom, let the Christians pray to survive but give the atheists antivenom.

If such a test was performed, if there was some statistically significant difference between results for the two groups in favor of the Christians, what it might indicate is that the act of prayer itself has some beneficial psychological effect, and not necessarily lead one to conclude that there is a God hearing and answering the prayers, esp. not a particular God. It's not too surprising that prayer may indeed have a placebo effect (the placebo effect is a well-documented phenomenon), that praying and expecting a prayer to be answered can favorably dispose one towards realizing the answer.

As far as you personally having "many prayers answered", I would guess that you have also had many, if not most, prayers go unanswered, or at least not answered in the way you expected or desired. We all tend to remember and report on the successes, while forgetting the failures.

In any case, whatever was prayed for, such a test would be very difficult to set up, execute, and control (e.g., how do you keep other people from praying for the atheists? I'm an atheist, and I know for a fact that there are many Christians that pray for me by name daily), so the results would be highly questionable at best. And then, there are other religions than Christianity that pray, believe it or not; for completeness, the efficacy of prayer of these other religions would need to be tested as well.