hezekiah jones

Originally posted by Radorth
What is the point of your question HJ?

I did not ask you a question, nor are those my words.

Radorth

A very short break, judging by this:

Returning to some thing distantly related to the issues here:

I didn't say that either. You mean evidence acceptable to you. So you weren't agreeing with me really, but just claiming to so you could assert we are both saying the evidence is "worthless." We disagree on what "evidence" is. When you total up all the NDE or ADE experiences we know about, (and we will discuss only a fraction I'm sure) you have considerable evidence.

Still waiting for those testimonies derived from electric shocks to the brain, hopefully recorded by an unbiased observer.

The fact is, these accounts are inexplicable by other than assertions that all these people were deluded. Yet these come form many atheists, so we have little reason to doubt that they truly believe they saw what they saw. Are they it "proof" as skeptics will define it here? No. But they are hardly "worthless" either. They begs us rather for "proof" there is no after-life.

To the witch hunting skeptic, anything at all is evidence of their most cynical assumptions. Funny how the requirements for "evidence" change from one minute to the next. Slander of Christians requires nothing but spectral evidence for the Gang. Which is of course why I've stopped bothering to defend myself and just hold up mirrors.

Signed

Bumble Bee's Fellow Hypocrite

Mageth

Hiya, Christian. Sorry about the little, uh, diversion there.

I find the 2000-year-old religious text rather compelling.

But since you don’t, I’ll offer a sample of the evidence that Jesus is still alive. What about the fact that His disciples were willing to suffer horrible deaths for their belief that He was resurrected.

FYI, most of the accounts of the "horrible deaths" of Jesus' disciples are church traditions with little or no external evidence to back them, so claiming their "horrible deaths" and martyrdom as absolute fact is not supportable, and thus not much use as an argument around these parts.

The common counter I’ve seen on this board is “yeah, but just about any religion can claim martyrs.” This is true, but it ignores the fact that His original disciples were with Him in His ministry, heard first hand accounts of His death if they did not witness it themselves, and then claimed to have seen Him up and walking around after He was buried.

It is not all that uncommon for someone to be willing to die for something that they believe to be true. But it is unheard of for someone to be willing to die for something they know to be a bald faced lie.

I never claimed any of the disciples thought what they believed in was a lie.

Once again, the accounts of the deaths of most of the disciples are extrabiblical church traditions. Sure, at least some of them probably died as a result of their beliefs, but it is trivially true that people die for all sorts of beliefs.

If Jesus’ resurrection did not really happen, the 12 disciples would have known that it did not happen. If they were lying about having seen Him, they would have known that they were lying.

Note that the gospels were written decades after the supposed events they portrayed, and more than likely not by the purported eyewitnesses to the supposed events. So we can't claim to have verified first-hand eyewitness accounts of Jesus' death and resurrection. We don't even have verified, first-hand non-biblical recordations of the events (e.g. no Roman or Jewish records outside the bible). What we instead appear to have in the Bible is yet another "resurrection" of the resurrected god myth that appears many times in ancient religions.

People don’t lay down their lives for the sake of a falsehood. Not when they know for a fact it is a falsehood. Not when they could save their lives by admitting it was a lie. Human nature just doesn’t operate that way.

I believe the early Xians believed the myths. People die for such beliefs all the time - even those people that originate the myths. Human nature just seems to operate that way. But once again, the accounts of martyrdom appear to have been exaggerated quite a bit.

Even with perfect knowledge, personal experience is different than examining the data of someone else’s experience. The difference between knowledge and experience is more than simply the number of details you have access to. There is also the matter of perspective. Doing something is personal. Having full knowledge of someone else’s personal experience is still not the same as having that personal experience yourself. Just ask a pilot whether he would rather fly a simulator or a real aircraft. There are some awfully good flight simulators these days. But I have worked with aviators before and in my experience they all view simulators as a distant second to flying.

Agreed, but you're talking about people and their limitiations, not God. How can you claim to know anything about "perfect knowledge" and its relation to personal experience in terms of a god? You'd have to have perfect knowledge yourself to know what the extent or limit of god's knowledge is. By definition, if God has perfect knowledge, then he knows perfectly what "personal experience" feels like, as it falls within the realm of "knowledge".

Ever seen the movie “The Matrix?” Even though everything seemed real in the matrix, once people realized it was all in their mind they were willing to sacrifice a lot for a chance at experiencing reality (some people anyway). Why is that? Because a part of us instinctively desires reality over a simulation.

Umm, that's a movie. Fiction. As is the claim that there's a part of us that "instinctively desires reality over a simulation." If there's anything that religion has taught us, it's that many people desire something beyond reality.

With perfect knowledge God could basically enjoy any simulation He cared to. But it would not be the same thing on a personal level as becoming a real person.

But Jesus, if he existed and was what the bible claims he was (or what the interpreters of the bible claim he was) ,was not a "real" person, unless you claim he was identical in flesh and spirit to every man. In the flesh, perhaps; Jesus knew what it was to be hungry, to eat, and to defecate. But when you get to the "spirit", the god component and the "sinless" aspect separate Christ from each and every other human. Christ is described as never having sinned; how then could he know the experience of sinning?

The difference in getting personal can also be seen in the result. God is able to relate to us as a fellow human now, something that would have been impossible before precisely because of His omnipotence.

God never became a "true" human, as explained above. God's incarnation as the man-god Christ separates him from our human experience. If god was able to relate to me, he would know what it was like to personally "sin", to fail, to not know something, to be uncertian, to be powerless, to seek truth, to hate, to see evil within myself, to do what I know is wrong.

To identify with another person’s weakness requires having experienced weakness yourself. Because He is all powerful God does not experience weakness from a personal perspective. But by incorporating a fully human nature into the divine nature God increased His ability to sympathize and comfort us in that specific way we know as “relating.”

Christ's "weakness" was not much of a weakness, if through his god-nature he was always able to overcome it, an advantage I know I don't have. To experience what I've experiences, Christ would have needed to fail in at least some of the tests he faced. According to the way I interpret the bible, and to most Xians I've encountered, he never did. So there is a huge gulf between what Christ reportedly experienced and what I've experienced.

So there is a huge, and central, part of human experience to which Christ cannot relate.

Similarly, because of the incarnation God has demonstrated the positive character trait of courage. Courage requires facing danger. An all-powerful God is not threatened by anyone; He never faces danger. But the God-man was threatened, and did demonstrate courage. This is an advantage of experience over knowledge.

Why would an all-powerful god need, or need to demonstrate, the positive character trait of courage? Who would such a being need to prove anything to?

If I knew I was god incarnate, and couldn't really be killed, I'd no doubt be the first "man" out of the foxhole every time. "Courage" comes from knowing you're mortal and may die. According to the bible, Jesus wasn't working with that disadvantage.

Perhaps the difference I’m trying to describe – “perspective” for lack of a better term - qualifies as a type of “knowledge.” If so then yes, there is a specific sense in which God’s “knowledge” is limited by His experience. The personal sense. And this is not because of any lack of power or lack of might on His part … it is because He cannot self contradict.

He wouldn't have to self-contradict. Knowledge is knowledge. If god has perfect knowledge, is omniscient, then he already knows all these things.

But as I said above, even if it was necessary for god to become a human to gain knowledge of human experience, he went only partway in gaining such experience. God didn't learn what it's like to sin, to fail. I guess that's because, as you put it, "He cannot self contradict." And that limitation keeps god from understanding true human experience.

Ah, but He would like to. And He has enabled such a thing. One day you will meet Him. That will either be a very good day or a very bad day for you.

As I said to Radorth earlier, I spent the first 45 years of my life as a Xian. Been there, done that. Never really met the man-god.

He didn't show himself in 45 years. I grew tired of searching, of praying for revelation. Always I found only emptiness, or echoes from within my own consciousness. So I came to the point where I decided to critically examine Xianity to see what was really there. That's when I started discovering Xianity for the house of cards that it is, that things I had taken for granted were not necessarily true, that there were good reasons to doubt. My examination started knocking cards out of the bottom row of the house, until finally the whole thing collapsed.

Christianity is a myth, an elaborate, sometimes beautiful myth, that does express some fundamental truths about our human experience. But it's by no means unique in the expression of any of those truths. Much good has come from the myth, but unfortunately just as much bad.

I've learned the myth of xianity is not necessary for me. Indeed, shedding it has freed me to "experience the human experience" without doing so through the fog of religion.

Some of Christ’s enemies will not be saved.

As I said, Christ did not die to save his enemies.

Yes, He would have known. But before we are His friends we are His enemies. Christ takes the initiative, not us. Christ died for His enemies, and some of those enemies become friends as a result. (Rom 5:6-8)

So, Christ died to save some of his enemies. An important clarification, that, and one that throws a monkey wrench into the omnibenevolent bit.

I return to my statement in bold above. I was not arguing value from how many times the incarnation occurred. I was arguing value from who He was. The infinite became finite. That is more intrinsically valuable than the finite being finite.

You can add your statement here to my criticism above about your claim that Christ was a "real" person. There would be no such distinction in value if Christ indeed had a "real person" experience.

Poor analogy, I now think. Best not to try to illustrate intrinsic value with commerce.

I must admit, it's refreshing to have a discussion with a believer who's as well-mannered as you and will even admit to having made a poor analogy!

Stay around, Christian. Your "side" needs more like you to counter certain other types around here!

Respectfully,

Mageth

Radorth

You win "Gratuitous and Patronizing Statement of the Month."

Nice going.

Rad

Muad'Dib

Hi Radorth,

Thanks for your reply. I misspoke when I said you promised anything. I'll take a look at the link when I get the chance, but I was wondering primarily about the that you mentioned on page four. If you have any documentation on that many NDE/ADEs and their corresponding durations, that would be a valuable resource to consider, and one that I would gratefully accept not as a fulfillment of a promise but as an act of courtesy.

I'll reserve judgment until I've read the link, but I was actually more interested in sources for the earlier mention of thousands of NDEs/ADEs, together with their durations, than in the several-days-dead fellow. I apologize if I was unclear, I should have made that specific the first time I responded to you.

Take care,
Muad'Dib

Radorth

Yes Christian reminds me of Bill Sneddin and Kirby for some reason. I find Muad'Dib quite refreshing as well.

(mirror off)

Rad

Radorth

I will try to oblige you later to some extent. I no longer have all the links I once had, but I will see what I can find. Actually you can find them rather easily yourself, and they link to each other. I hope I still have the one in which a well-known skeptical researcher named Janssen seems to have changed his mind about whether Ketamine experiments really can reproduce the same effect.

I'm thankful you and Christian are posting here, I must say. I might decide I'm living in a civilized world.

Rad

hezekiah jones

Radorth, before you continue replying to every other post on this page, make the necessary corrections wherein you incorrectly attributed someone else's statements to me. Thank you.

Yellum Notnef

Since Radorth has decided to credit HJ for my post,I guess I won't bother responding to it.

Just thought I'd add a little link about the recent experiments using magnetic fields to bring about "God experiences" in test subjects.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scite...t_feature.html

I saw an amazing show about this last year on The Learning Channel. There are probably much better links out there about this,but I don't have time to peruse the internet right now.

Cthulhu

Once again, Rad, thank you for putting your hypocrisy out there for all to see. When asked to provide documentation, you throw your hands in the air and say "I can't be bothered" and "I never promised anything", and then you turn right around and demand the skeptics to provide you with documentation. Par for the course with you. But I'll try and track down some links anyway.

In the meantime, I strongly suggest we start a separate thread for all of this, whether here or in Science & Skepticism. (And I'm sure you're probably already aware that there have been quite a few threads on this subject already there, if you bother to go and look.)