malookiemaloo

Cool.


m

DoubleDutchy

These are two points, neither of which hold water.
1A 'If God exists () and He is greater than us, then He can only be perceived by faith.'
Why? Einstein,Leonardo, the Ming dynasty and the galaxy are all considerably greater then I am. No faith required to perceive at least part of them. I will not be able to grasp them completely, but even for that purpose faith would be of no help.

1B 'He brought creation by simply speaking. How He did it, I will never be able to understand. By faith I know it's true.'
By faith my brother in law happens to know that this is not true.
I you both abstain from reasoning about your faith then the two of you have pretty little to discuss.
'Worüber man nicht reden kann, darüber soll man schweigen'
(What you can't talk/reason* about, you should keep silent about . Wittgenstein.) That actually might be an idea.

*('reden' has a nice double meaning in German)

Rhea

Correction.
If it doesn't make sense there is no reason to follow it.
If it is IMMORAL there is good reason to NOT follow it.
If it can't be predicted, understood or counted on, it is madness to follow it.
If evidence shows that nothing changes whether you count on it or not, it is foolish to follow it.


All separate observations not relying on each other but combining to result in derision for the concept of faith, perhaps?

Correction.
I do not understand everything about the universe, but the evidence shows no reason to act as if I know what God is.
I can allow for the possibility while acting as an atheist.
Misconception: an atheist will never change their minds. Sorry, that's the Christian claim to fame. Atheists are all about observation and evidence. The evidence changes, the conclusion changes. No cognitive dissonance at all.

Magus55

What evidence? Your evidence isn't a gaurantee, you just assume it because thats the only thing you can grasp. The Big Bang hasn't been proven, its only speculation and hypothesis and scientists still have no clue where it originally came from in the first place.

Second, just because we know stars are very far away doesn't mean they are actually 15 billion years old. When we are discussing God creating the universe, anything is possible. God most likely created stars 15 billion light years away to show how incredible his creation is. He told us in the bible that all of this was for us because he loves us, the universe and its incomprehensible expanse is probably the most beautiful thing in existence. Its very plausible God created the Stars and sped up the light so Adam and Even could see it right away and not have to wait billions of years. It is a recurring theme throughout Genesis that God created everything already aged. Adam and Eve were full grown, as were animals and plants. So, going along with that Theme, he created an already aged universe for us to study, but sped up the light for us to see it.

Until you can create a time machine and go back to the beginning of the Universe, its all speculation and opinion and neither one of us can prove it.

Robert G. Ingersoll

That's the problem. If there's a god, the fucker can do what he wants to do, when he wants to do it, and fuck us humans 'cause we have zero chance of understanding god's motivations.

god could have created the Universe five seconds ago. There's no rule of logic that prohibits this, assuming the Universe is god-created.

For me, this means the god-concept is completely useless for explaining anything whatsoever. We're just debating or arguing about a fairy tale here. So many people prefer to believe in the 'literal' reality of some particular fairy tale. So what? What's being presented here that should impress the disinterested?

I prefer to deal with reality without conjuring up invisible, immaterial persons who manipulate everything behind the scenes. This makes me a bad person? Fuck that shit.

Treacle Worshipper

Magus, I asked you this about 2 pages ago, and it seems to have got lost in the rush. Please will you respond? Thanks.

Originally posted by Treacle Worshipper
Hindley repented and converted to Xianity. Therefore, according to Xianity, it is possible that Hindley is in heaven, but some of her victims are not.
Please will you answer this, Magus? It seems to me that a god who can permit a murderer to live in bliss while her unfortunate victims continue to be tortured is not exactly a loving god.
TW

Treacle Worshipper

Originally posted by malookiemaloo
Small example. When my one year old son sticks his finger in an electricity point I do not try to reason about electric currents etcw and wait 'till sparks fly down his nose. I discipline him not to touch the plug point. Dead simple. Then when he is older, he understands but not at the time.

But, mm. that's not what god did, according to Genesis. Sure, he said once, "don't eat that fruit". Then he let A&E get on with it. Are you just going to say once to your son, "don't touch that electric point" and then let him get on with sticking metal rods in it? After all, you already told him once not to touch it, so it's his fault if he goes ahead and kills himself, right? That seems to be god's logic. It seems to me that A&E were in the same position as children who are too young to understand the dangers of the world. Children have to be protected until they are capable of understanding those dangers. A&E were not.
TW

Rhea

Chuckle. That's some major league assuming you're doing there, friend. I think you have a notion in your head of what I think. I think maybe you are pretty unknowledgable about what I think. What made you jump to the conclusion you did about what I meant by "evidence"? You sure narrowed it down to something I never said. Interesting.

The _evidence_ that I mention is the evidence for the existence of the Christian God. There isn't any. So I have no reason to act as if I have a clue about what a god would be, is, does, thinks or plans. You think you know there is a god, who it is, what it thinks and how it acts. I don't think there is any evidence to support your claim. So there is no point in acting as if I know these things, when I don't.

Who said I accepted the big bang theory? It's certainly not the only theory around. This is not some shoot-out between the Christian God Theory and the Big Bang Theory. The Brane theory has some merit, as do others. Other religious theories are exactly as likely as the Christian God theory.
No. Although the evidence of the behavior of the rest of the universe suggests this is a possibility. "God most likely" ?????
(pauses, pulls eyebrows off of ceiling. Considers the implications of conversing with someone who "most likely" knows God's Plan.)
How does putting something very far away show incredibleness? How do those two things connect? God's big. Universe is big. Isn't that to be expected from a God?



This train of thought requires assuming that the universe that we see today has only recently become predicatable. Why on earth would one choose that assumption over the more readily demonstrated assumption that physics, chemistry and optics are predictable.

Please note that there are a LOT of christians who think it is wrong to call their god "tricky" - a being who would make the evidence appear to be something it's not. They think a Young Earth is an artifact of ignorant goatherders. But they still believe in the CHristian God. They just don't do flips and twists to come up with a "very plausible" story when a _demonstrable_ story is right there in front of them.

(note: the expanse of the universe is NOT incomprehensible. It's quite cool when you think about it.)

Since we weren't talking about the origin of the universe, this doesn't make much sense. However, assuming you are right for the sake of discussion, trying to make my decision about god's nature based only on the origin of the universe which I can't know either way still leaves me with having no reason to "believe" that I know a god did it any more than knowing a god didn't. Back to having no evidence whatsoever which has a reason to lead to behaving as if I did. You, on the other hand, seem comfortable with behaving as if you knew what caused to origin of the universe when you have no more evidence than I do. But then again you know "most likely" what God thinks and does.

Debbie T

Better yet remove the danger in the first place until the young one is old enough to understand the danger. IOW put safety plugs in the sockets instead of punishing a curious toddler who has no concept (at this stage of developement) of right or wrong or danger.

Which is what a god as a good parent should have done with his children Adam and Eve. Protect them he did not, he put the temptation right in front of them and then punishes them for it. The one who should be punished is this god. If this was a true story, he owes the human race a huge apology for his negligence that resulted in his punishing the rest of the human race for two people's mistake.

If I was CPS I would have removed these children from this harmful parent.

Rhea

There is a child development author who advocates this. His name is Pearl (do a web search). He recommends putting something breakable on the table and spanking your child when she reaches for it. This helps teach the child about not touching.

Most parents nowadays consider this beastly. Although Pearl still has many adherents. Christians. (It's Godly, after all)