Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Demigawd · 03-24-2003, 06:34 PM

The tale of Christ's torments is truly a heart-wrinching one, especially if you've got a good imagination. But I've read or seen a thousand truly heart-wrinching stories, and I understand the power of literature and imagination. You would have me believe one book out of the millions produced by my fellow humans is supernaturally inspired by the supposed creator of this entire universe, and depicts his superman son as the savior of all humans post 2000 odd years ago.

As David Spade on SNL used to say: pure balls.

Quote:

Originally posted by Christian
Mike,

Before trivializing Jesus' torture and death, please consider what He went through:

Respectfully,

Christian

Rhea · 03-24-2003, 06:34 PM

I personally believe that mice doing anything is more probable than angels doing anything.

Quote:

"When the Old Testament says that Sennacherib's invasion was stopped by angels (2 Ki 19:35-36), and Herodotus says it was stopped by a lot of mice who came and ate up all the bowstrings of his army (Herodotus, Bk II, Sect 141), an open-minded man will be on the side of the angels. Unless you start by begging the question there is nothing intrinsically unlikely in the existence of angels or in the action ascribed to them. But mice just don't do these things."

There are a LOT of instances of mice eating things. Even bowstrings. There are no instances of angels doing anything. Therefore mice are the more rational explanation.

HOWEVER

CS Lewis and you are dishonest if you think you can manipulate your audience into thinking those two choices are the only ones available. Until seeing this quote I did not know that CS LEwis was intellectually dishonest. I can see from this that he is. Too bad. Well, I still like his fiction.

If you can't recognize a false dichotomy when it bites your bowstring in two, then you have no place arguing for us to consider ANY idea you put forth.

My first thought on seeing this puzzler - manly surrender. Men have been know to spin much wilder tales in attempts to get out of a tight spot. Come on, you MUST know that. A lot of alternatives come to mind that do NOT require considering something that has never been seen as an explanation.

(P.S. hint - don't try this one on your wife

)

alek0 · 03-24-2003, 06:44 PM

About trivializing suffering:

Why are you Christians trivializing suffering of people who suffered far worse than Jesus did by calling it "dirtiest pain and suffering", "most painful death" etc?

Again, I am asking you - how is suffering of the jesus worse than death from cancer with no pain killers available? It may take months to die in agony that way. And it happens to millions around the world.

Rhea · 03-24-2003, 06:47 PM

Quote:

First, in the garden the night before He experienced a great deal of psychological stress. So much psychological stress that it produced hematidrosis �

FROM WHAT?????

Here's a guy who KNOWS what is going to happen, KNOWS how long it will last, KNOWS that he won't be dead at the end of it, KNOWS what good is supposed to come from it...

And he suffers stress from it?

This story has never rung true for me. Not ever. I just cannot buy this one guy knowing that he will be tortured for 3 hours and having him sweat blood because of it.

Not when I know of people, children who have suffered for YEARS with NO hope, NO understanding, NO purpose.

And to have you claim "this was the greatest kind of suffering ever" Faugh. Not by a great long shot. Not even close. Where's that link to the audio tape of the 10 year old girl getting raped and tortured and killed over the course of several days while she cries out to her mommy - and her god?

Sorry Jesus. There's nothing wrong with being a wimp. Many of us are about many things. But don't call evidence of your own fear proof of your suffering. To me all it proves it that he wasn't who he said he was, he didn't have the purpose he said he had and he didn't have the certainty he claimed to have.

Quote:

please consider what He went through

Yeah, I have. And I've compared it to thousands of cases of significantly greater torture on significantly less-equipped individuals. And I'm just plain not impressed.

Christian · 03-24-2003, 06:49 PM

Rimstalker,

Quote:

Think of it this way. If you were driving through a desert and a passenger warned you that you would hit a moose, would you say :There is no evidence that a mosse could walk into a road, and I'm going to act on this assumption." Or would you just cock your eyebrow a bit and say "There aren't any mooses out here!"

Now, it's possible by some anomoly that a moose is wandering the desert and could be hidden behind a rock so you don't see it until it steps onto the road. But just because you, quite rightly, said that there's no mooses around doesn't mean that you completely ruled out the possibility.

Naturalism, as I understand it, is just taking this to its logical conclusion. It's possible that things like gods and demons and magic exist, but we haven't seen any examples of it, and every time someone thought they had an example in the past, it turned out to be somethign else that was missunderstood. I don't doubt that we will come across things that are unexplained, but that's a porr excuse, given the historical record, to jump to magical thinking.

But defining a position which addresses ultimate questions seems to call for a higher degree of accuracy than the Moose scenario.

A follow-on question arising in my mind - Do naturalists ever make truth claims? If the definitional statements for their position are unspokenly understood to be only assumptions, then does a naturalist ever make a statement and believe that the statement is true in an ultimate sense?

If a naturalist were to say �my name is Bob� would he really only mean �I assume my name is Bob in the absence of any evidence to the contrary?� If not, then at what level do statements of fact cease to be intended as truth and become merely intended as a working assumption?

I hope you don�t think I�m trying to be insulting here ... it�s an honest question.

Quote:

Earlier, you defined the supernatural as an "exception to natural law." I have argued that such exceptions have occured in the past, and that they were caused by an incomplete understanding of the natural laws: the were phenomena which were unexplained by the understanding of nature at the time. We still have an incomplete understanding of how the Universe really works, so if something occurs which we can't explain in terms of our understanding of the Universe, wouldn't calling it "supernatural" be an example of the attitude you claimed to be against?

Despite the word you left out (�an actual exception to a natural law�) I can see your point. My position as I�ve defined it on this thread so far is open to the accusation of labeling anything scientifically unexplainable as supernatural. I need to adjust and/or clarify my definitions or live with that.

I actually do think it�s necessary to distinguish between the merely unexplained and the supernatural. But I need to come up with a better way to express that. Thanks for your observations.

Respectfully,

Christian

Christian · 03-24-2003, 07:14 PM

As much fun as this is

, I'm not going to have much free time at all over the next couple of days. The pesky real world is interfering with my Internet habit.

I'll reply to everyone on this thread, though. If I seem to be ignoring you ... it's temporary.

Thanks.

Respectfully,

Christian

Biff the unclean · 03-24-2003, 08:55 PM

"When the Old Testament says that Sennacherib's invasion was stopped by angels (2 Ki 19:35-36), and Herodotus says it was stopped by a lot of mice who came and ate up all the bowstrings of his army (Herodotus, Bk II, Sect 141), an open-minded man will be on the side of the angels. Unless you start by begging the question there is nothing intrinsically unlikely in the existence of angels or in the action ascribed to them. But mice just don't do these things."

If you read this piece all by itself you would wonder if Lewis was sane or not. Bowstrings of the period were either made of linen cord sealed with tallow (animal fat) or antelope sinew. Either would make a fine snack for any rodent. Shredded linen would make a perfect nest.
On the other hand Angels are mythological creatures. They do not exist (feel free to prove me wrong by producing a specimen for examination) To dismiss Angels as being a ridiculous answer to the question is no less open minded than if you dismissed Unicorns, manticores or sphinxes as the culprits.
An open minded man would not be on the side of the Angels. An open minded man would study the facts. Only a man who was made closed minded by superstitions imposed on him by a religion would ignore all of human learning to cling to a fairy tale.

lpetrich · 03-24-2003, 09:12 PM

(Rhea on how Jesus Christ had not really suffered...)

I agree. He was supposedly God, and therefore supposedly omnipotent. Meaning that all his "tormentors" would have had as much effect on him as a spitball would have on a tank.

And I mean by that a little wad of paper shot from the end of a straw; did any of you people ever make spitballs when you were little kids?

Also, he could have jumped off that cross -- that would have made quite a spectacular miracle.

alek0 · 03-24-2003, 10:44 PM

Volker,

I still don't see anything spiritual about the color. What creatures see can be easily characterized and expressed in numbers. Nothing mysterious about it. No spirits involved.

You claimed that color cannot be expressed in units and has no physical dimension. This is wrong.

You claimed that you need a being with spiritual consciousness to perceive colour. This is wrong as well. All you need is either a luminance meter with CIE calculations included, or you need a monochromator and a detector covering visible range and a bit of software. And you will actually get more accurate information on the color characterized than through the eyes of a conscious creature

Color can be identified accurately without any creatures involved in color detection. Photometry is based on electromagnetic spectra and human eye response curve. Nothing spiritual about it.
If earth's atmosphere were different and the "vision" developed in another part of the spectrum, of course definitions would be different. But in any case, they would be based on physical world, not some spiritual perceptions. What you perceive visually is determined by what your eyes can detect. Purely physical phenomenon.

wade-w · 03-24-2003, 10:49 PM

I have split the earlier discussion of color perception to this thread in S&S. I think this is an interesting topic which would benefit from a seperate thread. It is also off-topic for this thread. I hope you will repost your last to this thread, Alek0.

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

03-24-2003, 06:44 PM	#143
alek0 Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Hong Kong Posts: 640	About trivializing suffering: Why are you Christians trivializing suffering of people who suffered far worse than Jesus did by calling it "dirtiest pain and suffering", "most painful death" etc? Again, I am asking you - how is suffering of the jesus worse than death from cancer with no pain killers available? It may take months to die in agony that way. And it happens to millions around the world.

03-24-2003, 07:14 PM	#146
Christian Regular Member Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Iraq Posts: 313	As much fun as this is , I'm not going to have much free time at all over the next couple of days. The pesky real world is interfering with my Internet habit. I'll reply to everyone on this thread, though. If I seem to be ignoring you ... it's temporary. Thanks. Respectfully, Christian

03-24-2003, 08:55 PM	#147
Biff the unclean Banned Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: an inaccessible island fortress Posts: 10,638	"When the Old Testament says that Sennacherib's invasion was stopped by angels (2 Ki 19:35-36), and Herodotus says it was stopped by a lot of mice who came and ate up all the bowstrings of his army (Herodotus, Bk II, Sect 141), an open-minded man will be on the side of the angels. Unless you start by begging the question there is nothing intrinsically unlikely in the existence of angels or in the action ascribed to them. But mice just don't do these things." If you read this piece all by itself you would wonder if Lewis was sane or not. Bowstrings of the period were either made of linen cord sealed with tallow (animal fat) or antelope sinew. Either would make a fine snack for any rodent. Shredded linen would make a perfect nest. On the other hand Angels are mythological creatures. They do not exist (feel free to prove me wrong by producing a specimen for examination) To dismiss Angels as being a ridiculous answer to the question is no less open minded than if you dismissed Unicorns, manticores or sphinxes as the culprits. An open minded man would not be on the side of the Angels. An open minded man would study the facts. Only a man who was made closed minded by superstitions imposed on him by a religion would ignore all of human learning to cling to a fairy tale.

03-24-2003, 09:12 PM	#148
lpetrich Contributor Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: Lebanon, OR, USA Posts: 16,829	(Rhea on how Jesus Christ had not really suffered...) I agree. He was supposedly God, and therefore supposedly omnipotent. Meaning that all his "tormentors" would have had as much effect on him as a spitball would have on a tank. And I mean by that a little wad of paper shot from the end of a straw; did any of you people ever make spitballs when you were little kids? Also, he could have jumped off that cross -- that would have made quite a spectacular miracle.

03-24-2003, 10:44 PM	#149
alek0 Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Hong Kong Posts: 640	Volker, I still don't see anything spiritual about the color. What creatures see can be easily characterized and expressed in numbers. Nothing mysterious about it. No spirits involved. You claimed that color cannot be expressed in units and has no physical dimension. This is wrong. You claimed that you need a being with spiritual consciousness to perceive colour. This is wrong as well. All you need is either a luminance meter with CIE calculations included, or you need a monochromator and a detector covering visible range and a bit of software. And you will actually get more accurate information on the color characterized than through the eyes of a conscious creature Color can be identified accurately without any creatures involved in color detection. Photometry is based on electromagnetic spectra and human eye response curve. Nothing spiritual about it. If earth's atmosphere were different and the "vision" developed in another part of the spectrum, of course definitions would be different. But in any case, they would be based on physical world, not some spiritual perceptions. What you perceive visually is determined by what your eyes can detect. Purely physical phenomenon.

03-24-2003, 10:49 PM	#150
wade-w Veteran Member Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: Silver City, New Mexico Posts: 1,872	I have split the earlier discussion of color perception to this thread in S&S. I think this is an interesting topic which would benefit from a seperate thread. It is also off-topic for this thread. I hope you will repost your last to this thread, Alek0.

Freethought & Rationalism Archive

The archives are read only.