Bookman

My guess is:

27182818284590452353602874713526

IPU be praised!

WWSD

I would think that we had equal chances of being correct. Unless of course you think there is a god, then Tercel would have had the better chance since god wouldn't want to speak to you through a dirty hell bound atheist.
On that note, what if I had been right? My church, as it stands, includes going to happy hour at least once a week, drinking beer, and eating hot wings.
Sort of like communioon I guess. Also, you'd be expected to donate to the universal happy hour fund by sending me all of your spare change every week for the rest of your life. This would have helped out with our humanitarian beer education and hotwing distribution efforts a well as helping to advance our church into the 25 cent chicken taquito night spot. And, for all your worship and donations, you would recieve a spot in happy hour heaven, where you get beer and hot wings, or taquitos, or really any sort of happy hour food for free for all of eternity. But since I see that you will not be converting, you'll be spending all of eternity in nightclub hell. That's five dollar drafts, severe overcrowding, 10 dollar cover at the door, a sucky band, and some of the beer is skunky, not to mention no food.
Well, see you there, from heaven of course, cuz that's where I'll be.

Baloo

"I would think that we had equal chances of being correct..." Yep, I just made that comment in case anyone felt that strings like 12345678901234567890123456789012 were somehow less likely than 12532791668420019204673555148415, when they are, of course, equally likely.


Oops, almost forgot. Bookman, an IPU-fearin' man if there ever was, has let the IPU down. On a positive note, he was the first of all attempts to get the first digit correct! IPUians, keep those heads high!

Kenny

(10^31)*e?

[ February 05, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

Kenny

In light of the fact that God has provided sufficient evidence of His existence to all people and has impressed knowledge of His existence within you, you are without excuse for your unbelief. In many respects, to propose a test such as this, I believe, is a slap in His face, on the order of asking one’s spouse to submit to specially designed empirical tests of her (or his) fidelity when she (or he) has demonstrated nothing but faithfulness over the years. However, the Bible is full of examples of God, in an act of grace, condescending to demonstrate His faithfulness to those who struggled with unbelief. God is not obligated to do so, and, in this case, I doubt that He will. Nevertheless, if He does, it will be an act of grace.

25792902721689890267891567896789

God Bless,
Kenny

Apikorus

In the Gideon pericope in Judges 6-8, YHWH first instructs Gideon to deliver Israel from Midian (Judges 6:14). Apparently Gideon is not convinced, so he requests a sign (Jud 6:17). Indeed he even requests a second sign in Jud 6:36-37. YHWH accedes in both cases.

Doesn't YHWH do requests anymore?

Incidentally, if we slap God in the face, will he offer the other cheek?

[ February 05, 2002: Message edited by: Apikorus ]</p>

xoc

Apikorus, every Biblical story of God doing some "sign" is used as a signature of "God wanting to do something", that is it is initiated first by God and not by Gideon. The "angel of the Lord" came to Gideon with a specific mission, the sign was to signify that the "man" had indeed come from God.

There is no Bible story of somebody saying "God if you do this I'll believe in you"; in fact the model proves the contrary of this. The Pharisees demanded that Jesus give them a "sign"; Herod demanded signs and received none; the Roman soldiers demanded that Jesus "come off the cross so we can believe." Nobody could "demand a sign from God" to prove the existence of God, signs were given only to prove the authenticity of a messenger of God, angel or apostle, or prophets(in the OT).

Coleman Smith

This is a question that is so often posted by theist on various boards that over the years I have developed a standard canned response as follows.

I would accept that the existence of a deity is more probable than not if the theist could present the same evidence for the existence of the deity that would be required by the food and drug administration for the licensing of a new cough drop.

First the new entity would have be defined with the same scientific precision as the definitions used by the bureau of standards to define the metric system.

The components of the deity would have to be defined using the standard formulations published in the USP.

Standardized test would have to be performed for the existence of the deity and the results would have to be submitted to adversarial peer review and published in the usual scientific journals.

The claim that a deity exists is an extraordinary claim and should require extraordinary evidence.

I would be satisfied with the advocate producing the same evidence required to license a new cough syrup.

Coleman Smith
************************************************
From Allah to Zeus, they are all imaginary.

Apikorus

YHWH explicitly instructs Gideon, who nonetheless requires not one but two signs. Why did Gideon require such signs, and why did YHWH accede to his repeated requests?

[ February 05, 2002: Message edited by: Apikorus ]</p>

sotzo

This whole challenge is misguided in that:

1. It attempts to force an omnipotent God to reveal Himself in a way prescribed by someone other than Himself. It's the "God doesn't exist..but if He did, here is how he should respond to proving his existence" game. If a being is nonexistent, then how does one know what such a being would or would not do if in fact it existed - especially when the being in question is God?!?

2. It presupposes that the question of God's existence can be answered using an empirical epistemology alone.

3. It betrays the challengers professed confidence in his own worldview. For if he/she sincerely believed that he/she has come to the conclusion that God does not exist and that he/she should not "piss away time worrying about the afterlife", he/she would not be concerned with challenging theists to reveal this nonexistent Being.