hokowo

so what aould you consider clear signs? and manifest miracles? always depends on what ouy looking for

Hamlet

What do you think you're going to accomplish with this thread? What's your motive for creating it? Not very high and holy is it.

JPD

I would add, however, that the punishment appears to be a tad out of proportion in relation to the crime supposedly being committed.

JPD

Well, if we start from the position that I haven't seen any yet, I might or might not know what one was when it happened. I'm reminded of Arthur C. Clarke here who said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
As things develop I would imagine that performing an actual miracle would become harder. But......a fish that talks Russian to a mouse that can recall the names of all the WWII pilots killed, playing Chopin's Polonaise on a cheese grater whilst submerged in an aquarium full of tea balanced on the back of a hairpin.

In real time, not on a computer screen, ie. an actual, verifiable event.

Have realised ambiguity of miracle - they both play Polonaise on a cheese grater. While they do this they are both submerged - together - in an aquarium full of tea. The aquarium is balanced on the hairpin.

hokowo

and what is it you wish to accomplish by this comment?

Selsaral

Of course not. This may be a shock to you, but most atheists can tell the difference between God telling us something and some guy claiming that God told him to tell us something.

The above is not a warning from God. It's some guy writing in an ancient book that God told him to warn us. I don't believe that you, or that guy, have any special relationship with God, mostly because you can't show that you do. You simply have claims and stories. It appears to be as made up as Scientology or Mormonism is.

If you can get an actual God to give me a warning, I'll change my mind. It's highly suspicious that you can't, you can only claim that God told other people to warn me.

hokowo

you can discuss about existence in your own thread. be my guest

Selsaral

You appear to have missed my point. I was directly addressing your question. Is that fair warning? No, because it's not a warning from God, it's a warning from some guy claiming that God told him to warn us. Care to actually address my post?

ETA:

Perhaps I should elaborate. God is supposed to be a magical floating consciousness with cosmic powers. He can communicate with me in an infinite number of ways. He can appear to me directly, he can beam information directly into my brain...he's God, he can do anything he wants.

Instead he chooses the only method of communication that would be consistent with his status a mythical being (some ancient writings by humans).

If his warning is important, and he wants to communicate it to me, then he should choose a method of communication that is effective. Choosing to communicate in the single method that makes him look mythical is not effective. It's as if the IRS used a barking dog to communicate the tax code. Why didn't they choose that method? Because what they want to communicate is important, a barking dog is inadequate, and they have other methods available.

David B

A fair warning would have to be credible.

Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. And to claim the existence of god(s) and hell, which are not immediately apparent, are extraordinary claims.

If the Qu'ran, or for that matter any other scripture with a warning of hell, were to contain clear prophesies which are unambiguous and couldn't be otherwise known, if the scripture contained a clear account of the formation and age solar system, and the galaxies, which fitted precisely, and unambiguously, what we now know (under any reasonable interpretation of the word) about them, if they contained accounts of the mechanisms behind earthquakes and volcanos that fir modern understanding, then I for one might think that any warnings of the sort you mention would be fair.

Since no scripture, to my knowledge, meets any criteria which would give them that sort of credibility.

Which is something that I find unsurprising.

David B

JPD

And this is the crux of the matter...its the difference, hokowo, between a belief based on the claims of another individual no longer alive (who may or may not have held those beliefs, but probably did hold them), and a belief based on something that can in some way be verified, somehow validated. Do these verses, when held up to scrutiny, enable any of these boxes to be ticked? If the God that you believe in wrote these, and you believe that this God has knowledge of everything, would it not be the case that this God would know the ineffectiveness of using such verses in an attempt to convince skeptics?

Or, is that by design? Particular verses in the Quran suggest so.