cpickett

LOL... Believe me it goes the other way around also .

You are expecting God to "write" something you think of on a peice of paper, in an envelope that gets magically put into your pocket, and you claim that is not a trick?

Wyz_sub10

Well, I wouldn't get too frustrated, because it's not necessarily aimed solely at you. Many theists on this board claim god speaks to them at tells them things.

The point is valid - how do you dtermine if the source is reliable? If you say that it must be consistent with the bible, I would challenge that you are, in effect, speaking for god and limiting his discretion.

After all, god endorses killing in the bible (I think killing is used because it is an extreme act, and one that appears in the bible frequently). So how could one be sure that god's message to kill doesn't come from god?

I do not see how such a message would contradict the bible, and if it did, who's to question god? It seems that this stance, in effect, limits his power.

Mageth

I resent you atheists in here calling into question the FACT that I would not just blindly obey some voice claiming to be GOD without being CERTAIN that voice was from God.

Which I haven't done. I have no reason to believe you would not indeed do so.

then you have the audacity to equate my criteria of having faith that God exists and created the universe as being equal to believing some voice speaking to me was from GOD HIMSELF

Which I haven't done.

man, i KNOW you people are smarter than this

Well, I would hope you were "smarter that this" as well, in the sense that I think you're totally misrepresenting my comments/position on this thread.

xian

i listed my criteria for determining if the source is reliable.

my criteria for believing that God exists has been met.

my criteria for believing that God is commanding me to kill someone, which goes explicitly against the word of God until his second coming, and in conformity to the warning jesus gave that said "Many will come saying I am He. Do not believe them"....

Given those facts, my criteria for believing God is commanding me to kill someone has not been met.

xian

sorry i got a bit heated there. I had a feeling for a few minutes that people were thinking that as a Christian i should be willing to just believe any voice saying I AM GOD GO KILL

that really struck a bad note. I require evidence to believe things...just like anyone else.

Hawkingfan

I've seen magicians make things appear from what seems to be thin air. It happens all the time. But it is not supernatural. And as far as Randi doing a classic mind reading trick, here is an anecdote from the Randi library www.randi.org/library (Randi is speaking here):

I'll give you one example of something I did when I was performing as a mentalist in Toronto, my home town, at the age of 18. (I hasten to add here that I would ALWAYS thoroughly disclaim any genuine powers, before and after my show.) They had a huge auditorium filled with reserved seats, just about every one of them occupied by eager subjects. It was some sort of a charity affair, and seats were expensive. After I got rolling with the various moving objects and blindfolded duplication-of-handwriting stunts (spoonbending was not yet a popular miracle!) I stopped abruptly and pointed to a lady in the third-row aisle seat. "I'm led to say to you that I get a middle name of 'Rose' for you, madame!" I cried. Her gasp verified that I was right." And that name is more than significant to you." She leaned forward. "I see a clock, a very old clock, and on the dial three pink roses?" She started to speak, and I silenced her by raising my hand. "But this is a strange clock. It can't tell the time!" By now, the poor woman was about to pass out in excitement. "Why is it useless? I see two arrows, or darts…They're metal, and they're broken…Ah! I see! These are the hands of that clock, and they've come off the clock face, and are lying together behind the glass cover of the clock dial! Is that right?" The woman was standing, mouth open, nodding vigorously. She was awe-struck, and the applause was vigorous indeed. How was it done? A lucky guess? No. Planning.

The above "miracle" has nothing to do with microphones or "bugs", yet has a logical explanation (see the website for the way it was done).

xian

well i have seen david copperifield live twice and i can assure you he preforms unbelievable apparent acts of "magic".

many people believe they are indeed real.


however, every illusion contains distractions or contact with the subject, or planning as you said.

there is no trick that can duplicate what i described above.

i did see david copperfield once do a "mind reading"trick where he would uncover a large paper board that contained the writing of what a woman would write down on her peice of paper.

but nothing of the sort that would replicate your THOUGHTS.

such a trick could ONLY be proven to the one who experienced his thoughts being predicted. to anyone watching...they would disbelieve. (fascinating)

Hawkingfan

There are tricks designed to APPEAR to replicate your thoughts. David Blain does them all the time. But it is not proof at all. The one who experienced it would be fooled. Not everyone watching, disbelieves. Only the ones who know better (including the magician).

BadBadBad

The first time I quoted you, I prefaced that I might be quoting out of context. So please just bear with me.

How is this out of context? My context is with respect to identifying God and his revelation. Your post is trying to help me with that. God reveals himself to you in a way of his own choosing, not yours. How does God asking you to kill change the context of identity? You have a list of attributes for God. If you read the Bible, you must add mass murderer to that list. You go down your list and compare to God's actual revelation. Omnipotent, check, Omniscient, check, mass murderer, yeah he wants me to kill somebody, check again.

You said his revelation might be unexpected and that it might well still require faith. The murdering part would be unexpected. Now, what happened to your faith? All of the sudden, you sound like an atheist wanting all that extraordinary proof. You challened Baloo with your unexected revelation and faith statement. Now I'm challenging you. What happened to faith and why is that not in your God identity checklist?

BadBadBad

Look we're just asking you to define the criteria you would use to become CERTAIN. Certain it's god not IPU, Allah, the devil or some other willy nilly god. Sounds like murder is a problem for you. I can understand that. You didn't list that as an attribute on your GPB list, and it kind of contradicts a couple of other items on your list like morality. God did ask people to brutally and sadistically murder. I don't see why that would seem to shake your faith. Your phase I and phase II list seems like what an atheist would require to believe in God, and it seems that even you agree that faith is still required even with a direct revelation from God himself. Where is that in your list?