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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> In general use, for **virtually**
> everyone, the term "proven" implies that you have the right answer, and
> its impossible for further evidence, discussion or data to change the
> result.
Funny thing is, this isn't even true in math. All I have to do is point
out where your proof has a mistake in it, and something that was proven
is no longer proven.
> That said, I bloody well hope Darren isn't looking for "proof", just
> evidence.
To me, "convincing evidence with no other explanation" and "proof" are
pretty much the same. It's only people trying to win an argument who
say things like evolution isn't proven because it *might* be wrong, and
there *might* be another explanation. Otherwise, the word "proof" loses
all meaning.
Of course, that's really difficult for something like God. :-)
Especially when you wonder "hey, could someone with a time machine have
accomplished the same thing?"
> ***Any*** evidence, that doesn't add unneeded complications,
> isn't arbitrarily central to the person making the claim, instead of the
> claim itself, can't be better explained by far more well known things,
> or isn't so vague and unspecific that its impossible to discount 10,000
> other possibilities in favor of the one some believer insists has to be
> the answer.
Yep. Basically.
> Put simply, the evidence has to meet *at least* the standards used to
> imply that Big Foot exists, which despite how unlikely, unbelievable and
> probably hoax based, never the less contains enough points of
> contention, enough unknowns and enough uncertainty that it *might* be
> true, unlike pretty much **every** claim made about miracles, or other
> 'evidence' ascribed to the God hypothesis. And if you can't even beat
> out Big Foot, with respect to the evidence available and likelihood of
> your existence, there is a serious problem. lol
There is that. Or, alternately, what evidence have you that JHVH is more
likely that Zeus? The greeks have plenty of stories about their gods
producing miracles. I'd be happy to hear why a Madonna statue speaking
to someone 1000 years ago is more likely than a Dioneses statue doing
the same thing.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
It's not feature creep if you put it
at the end and adjust the release date.
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Darren New wrote:
> "Reestablish"? (Just as an aside, I find that so presumptuous as to be
> mildly offensive. I used to be much more offended by such things, until
> I realized how many religious people are )
... people are so convinced that they're right and that you must be
willfully ignoring the evidence that the idea that God *doesn't* speak
to me personally on a daily basis is inconceivable to them.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
It's not feature creep if you put it
at the end and adjust the release date.
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There are 11 kinds of people in the world:
those who utterly fail to comprehend the essentially binary nature of theology,
those who do comprehend this, but argue the subject because, for them, bickering
constitutes a source of amusement,
and the sentient.
Namaste(),
-Mike C.
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> It was both enlightening,
My epiphany happened in university, with that roommate I spoke of,
realizing thru careful questioning that in matters of faith, modus
ponens just doesn't hold. It took me about 45 minutes of questioning.
"So you believe A?"
"Yes"
"And you believe that A always leads to B?"
"Yes"
"And that when A always leads to B, and A happens, then B
inevitably happens?"
"Sure."
"And you said you believe A?"
"Yep."
"Then you believe B?"
"Uh, no, why would you say that?"
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
It's not feature creep if you put it
at the end and adjust the release date.
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nemesis wrote:
> Now, don't you think it's too egoistical of your part, like a stubborn child, to
> demand that God provides a particular show for your own enjoyment to restabilish
> your faith?
Or, to look at it another way:
I have faith that the chair you're sitting in right now doesn't really
exist. What evidence would convince you I'm right?
Don't you think you're rather egotistical to ask for the non-existence
of your chair to be *proven* beyond a *doubt*? Do you think it's
unreasonable to expect something rather miraculous and unexplainable to
give evidence that the chair you're sitting in doesn't exist?
If you *start* with the premise that I *don't* believe, then no, it's
not egotistical at all. Any more than it's unreasonable for you to
demand extraordinary proof that the chair you're sitting in doesn't
actually exist.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
It's not feature creep if you put it
at the end and adjust the release date.
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>> Oh, it's just that Jesus did talk about the commandments and the law
>> quite a bit. It's legitimate to say that's clarification instead of
>> historical context.
>
> Huh? The 10 Commandments needed clarification? I thought God was
> supposed to be infallible? Omnipotent, Omniscient, and all that?
>
> (Not trying to pick a fight here, I *really* don't understand what you're
> saying here)
Jesus Christ, being a third part of the Trintity of God,
commented on the Ten Commandments. So contrary to
Darren's suggestion, Jesus's statements help provide a
context for forming a modern understanding of the
Ten Commandments. That's really all I meant.
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On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 14:07:38 -0500, nemesis wrote:
> Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospam com> wrote:
>> Huh? The 10 Commandments needed clarification? I thought God was
>> supposed to be infallible? Omnipotent, Omniscient, and all that?
>
> they need to be clarified for stupid humans who, even then, may not get
> it.
You'd think God would've taken that into consideration, what with him
being all-knowing. ;-)
Jim
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On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 16:35:40 -0800, Tim Attwood wrote:
>>> Oh, it's just that Jesus did talk about the commandments and the law
>>> quite a bit. It's legitimate to say that's clarification instead of
>>> historical context.
>>
>> Huh? The 10 Commandments needed clarification? I thought God was
>> supposed to be infallible? Omnipotent, Omniscient, and all that?
>>
>> (Not trying to pick a fight here, I *really* don't understand what
>> you're saying here)
>
> Jesus Christ, being a third part of the Trintity of God, commented on
> the Ten Commandments. So contrary to Darren's suggestion, Jesus's
> statements help provide a context for forming a modern understanding of
> the Ten Commandments. That's really all I meant.
But as I wrote to Nemesis, surely God could've/would've forseen that need
and written them clearly enough that such a clarification wouldn't be
necessary, no?
Jim
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Jim Henderson wrote:
> But as I wrote to Nemesis, surely God could've/would've forseen that need
> and written them clearly enough that such a clarification wouldn't be
> necessary, no?
Not necessarily. Peoples' ability to understand may change over time. So
maybe it only needed clarification in modern times, not in Moses' time.
On the other hand, I'm not sure how you get clarification of what JHVH
did in the garden of eden, given as I said the context was the only two
people in the whole world. Either God's lying, or he doesn't understand
the context of the two people he himself created.
--
Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
It's not feature creep if you put it
at the end and adjust the release date.
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Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote:
> So it influenced human history. So what. So did a lot of things. That
> doesn't mean it didn't influence it *wrongly*, or that its prevalence,
> mostly via violence, war, subversion, threats, torture and assassination
> (directly or via its acceptance by those that both believed it and used
> such tactics), makes it somehow better than other alternatives that
> *could* have happened.
war, assassination, threats and torture are not the teachings of Jesus or any
other religious leaders AFAIK. They have nothing to do with religion except
some men in power will make other men (not them!) die in the name of God to
justify their needs.
> By your logic, had a
> few key moments in history been different, you would now be sitting here
> arguing that our Emperor really is a God, and that he is a direct
> descendant of dragons, because it can't be otherwise and there still be
> a Chinese empire.
Except it wasn't different. There must be a good reason for that.
> Its even worse, given the fact that you can trace virtually **every**
> story in the Bible back to some prior religion, and that not one of
> those religions believed in the same God that the Jews eventually
> insisted was the real one, and many of them believed in ***multiple***
> gods.
I believe Adam and Eve and even Noah's times were much farther off than in the
Biblical accounts. Oral tradition existed for far longer than recorded History
counts. Many people through the ages were aware of these histories passed
along, it's not really surprising that many cultures recorded their versions of
the distant events.
now why did God made a covenant with the Hebrews and not with other people, say,
the Greeks, the Chinese, the Africans? It could be said Moses and his people
are direct descendants of Abraham and Noah and they were the righteous men that
God spared from the Flood, but I really don't know God's intentions. I know
eventually the covenant was far broadened via Jesus salvation and thus
available to all people in the world. It's a mere question of faith.
other than that, the divine is felt differently by people of different cultures.
You don't see, nor hear God with your physical senses and thus it's all left to
personal interpretation...
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