In article <web.475e186d922777ebd8f74b370@news.povray.org>, 
nam### [at] gmailcom says...
> Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote:
> > require, at
> > bare minimum, that even one tiny fragment of evidence could be applied
> > to at least on "god", for the idea that any such god exists, or more to
> > the point, that *their* god exists? lol
> 
> the evidence is out there everytime I open my eyes:  the sky, the stars, 
the
> sea, life...
> 
None of which constitute evidence of your specific god, or any god in 
general, **unless** you first can show positive evidence to suggest that 
a god was needed to make any of them, let alone all of them. You haven't 
done so. All you are doing is making the same stupid, "I don't 
understand how all of it happened without god, therefor it must have 
happened because of god!". The classic, "argument from incredulity". 
That its been used some the days when someone proposed Thor as the cause 
of thunder doesn't phase you in the least. Nor the fact that every 
instance of history, from the first time some shaman told someone that 
spirits made X happen, and someone else later found out that spirits 
where not needed to do it at all, people like you have been wrong in 
100% of all cases where someone figured out how to ask the right 
question, and thus found a non-supernatural explanation for it.

Let me guess, your next moronic comment will be something along the 
lines of, "Without god you can't feel the joy of seeing a sunset!"? 
Logically absurd, in that you would have a damn hard time proving in 
didn't feel something similar to what you do in such case, even if I 
don't feel the need to insert God in as an explanation (which imho 
cheapens the experience, in that it removes a huge part of the wonder 
such things inspire), but it still wouldn't prove a damn thing if you 
meant it in some more nebulous sense. After all, you are asserting that 
the existence of something would be implied by the fact thats its 
existence "causes" something else. But, you still haven't proven that 
the first thing exists, so, until you do, you can't claim that **it** 
caused the result in any way shape or form.

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In article <web.475e24f8922777ebd8f74b370@news.povray.org>, 
nam### [at] gmailcom says...
> Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote:
> > Its almost a sign
> > of fundamental insanity for someone to suggest that this *hasn't*
> > distorted both the interpretation of historical facts that *are* in
> > evidence, and to strongly imply why some people would much rather
> > imagine ones that have *never* been in evidence, rather than admit that
,
> > once again, the churches interpretation is the one that is badly out of
> > sync of reality.
> 
> are all atheists really this boring?  That last sentence was pretty long,
 just
> as the hundreds of them before.  I had to skip and lost track.  sorry...
> 
> you sound like Fox Mulder.  you know:  "I want to believe".  Because you'
re
> obsessed in trying to find physical proofs of Jesus existence.
> 
Man, you just don't get it do you. I have no reason to believe. I see no 
reason to believe. I find god not only a useless and pointless concept, 
but completely redundant. And, even if you proved that Jesus did exist 
in some fashion, that wouldn't automatically prove the rest of the BS 
anyway. Some Christians now a days figure he was kind of like Buddha. 
Not a god, not enlightened, not in any way shape or form divine, but 
just some guy with a lot of interesting and perhaps mostly useful ideas. 
You are the one insisting that he did exist, demanding that such a 
belief be respected and insisting that if he does, he is what *you* 
claim him to be. All I am asking is for you to provide me something 
other than a bunch of stuff written half a century after the fact, and 
your own rhetoric, as evidence. I don't think that is too damn big of a 
thing to ask of someone, anyone, that insists I should believe that 
their stories are based on real events, in any useful sense, especially 
if they insist that all the miracles in it are supposed to be real too.

You would require the same evidence if I claimed to know for *certain* 
that Big Foot existed and I had personally seen it from a distance. Yet, 
you want me to just take you at your word for it, without evidence, and 
believe all of it? You are the one acting like Fox Mulder, wandering 
around and insisting that, every time something slightly odd happens, 
there is some huge conspiracy to subvert the truth, and that *you* 
personally know what the truth really is.

> forget it:  he came as a humble man, too insignificant for the ones in po
wer,
> but sufficiently of an agitator to receive death penalty... nothing too s
habby
> to figure in official records...
> 
> though I find it funny you don't mention the James Cameron documentary ab
out
> Jesus tomb...
> 
Why the hell would I mention that idiotic nonsense. I watched it. Its 
about as credible as everything else the moron does and calls 
archeology. It didn't take a genius, given his past failures and gung ho 
charge into shear gibberish, that what he found would turn out to be 
complete bunk. We where calling it, "Jesus' vault", and joking about how 
it should have been hosted by Gheraldo Revera instead before it even 
aired, because we know the guy doing it was a credulous nimrod that made 
archeology look like a three ring circus.


But, it would have been interesting if he had actually found something 
for once, given that such a tomb would have been damn hard to explain 
within the framework of the whole resurrection story.

If I was going to talk about anything like that, I might mention some 
vague speculation about certain forms of epilepsy that, instead of 
causing physical seizures, cause people to hallucinate and think god is 
talking to them, and the well documented state of near death coma, and 
slow nuero degeneration, until death, which certain chemicals where 
found to cause. Chemicals present in the herbs often mixed into water, 
as a means to stop bleeding from wounds in Roman times. Or, the studies 
done that indicate that wrists, no matter "how" you secure the legs, are 
not strong enough to support someone's body on a nail, without the nail 
being ripped straight up through the hands and out. Or any number of 
other questions that arise when trying to explain how "anything" in it 
could have either happened as described, but not as believed, or simply 
couldn't have happened at all.

And while I find quite a few of those things interesting, they are 
meaningless until you first establish that such an event took place. 
Then you have to establish if the claims where accurate, with respect to 
any of it, if, in the case of the drugs, they where actually used, and a 
whole host of other things.

No, truth is, other than her belief in religion, I have far more in 
common with Scully than Mulder. You on the other hand...

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void main () {

    if version = "Vista" {
      call slow_by_half();
      call DRM_everything();
    }
    call functional_code();
  }
  else
    call crash_windows();
}

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On Wed, 05 Dec 2007 18:36:05 -0800, Darren New wrote:
> I mean, how the heck does Joel know what God is thinking better than I do?

My point was that none of does. My interpretation abilities aren't
significantly different from yours. However, I do believe in what
the Bible tells us about God, and this makes me believe that God's
reasoning abilities are significantly higher than that of any of us.


> How come when Joel tells me that I don't understand, I don't get to 
> point out the parts of the Bible where God says yes, I *do* understand. 
> Isn't that logical?

If I understand correctly, you are referring to the "tree of good and evil"
and interpreting that the tree gave the human powers of understanding good
and evil equalling that of God.

Genesis 3:22 (KJV) says:
"And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good
and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of
life, and eat, and live for ever".

This does not unambiguously imply that we now understand everything
(or even good and evil) as God does. It only says that we've got some
understanding.

Let's assume you don't know computer programming. If you now study computer
programming, go through a basic course, I may say that you are now like me,
you know programming. But that doesn't make you as proficient as I am with
it; you may have no idea about most of the things I consider when developing
programs. You would have *some* understanding only.

-- 
Joel Yliluoma - http://iki.fi/bisqwit/

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And lo on Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:07:09 -0000, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom>  
did spake, saying:

> FangleMork, the god of blue tomatoes

I couldn't resist  
http://flipc.blogspot.com/2007/12/fanglemork-god-of-blue-tomatoes.html

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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nemesis nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2007/12/11 00:49:
> Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] rraznet> wrote:
>> Its almost a sign
>> of fundamental insanity for someone to suggest that this *hasn't*
>> distorted both the interpretation of historical facts that *are* in
>> evidence, and to strongly imply why some people would much rather
>> imagine ones that have *never* been in evidence, rather than admit that,
>> once again, the churches interpretation is the one that is badly out of
>> sync of reality.
> 
> are all atheists really this boring?  That last sentence was pretty long, just
> as the hundreds of them before.  I had to skip and lost track.  sorry...
> 
> you sound like Fox Mulder.  you know:  "I want to believe".  Because you're
> obsessed in trying to find physical proofs of Jesus existence.
> 
> forget it:  he came as a humble man, too insignificant for the ones in power,
> but sufficiently of an agitator to receive death penalty... nothing too shabby
> to figure in official records...
> 
> though I find it funny you don't mention the James Cameron documentary about
> Jesus tomb...
> 
> 
Put it simply:
Humans are curious.
Humans want to know why and how things appens.
When humans don't know, he's unconfortable.
When humans don't know, he seeks answers.
When he can't find an answer, he ultimately make one: Spirits, Gods and Religions.

So, all religions are attempts to explain a world that humans still don't 
understand. He don't understand because he don't, yet, have the tools he need to 
understand.

Now, make a distinction betwee dogma and theory:
A dogma proclaim something as "The Truth".
A theory propose something as an explanation of observable things and facts.

If you don't accept, or question, a dogma, then you are wrong by definition.
Iy you don't accept, or question, a theory, you are welcome do discus why you 
disagree or question it.

You are not allowed to try to disprove a dogma, you are only allowed to prove it.
You are ASKED to try to disprove a theory, as well as prove it.

When you propose a theory, you tell peoples:
I've made some observations, or conducted some experiments, or performed some 
studies. Here are my results, and how I got them. Now, here is my attempt at 
explaning my results. I invite you to evaluate my results and explanation. I 
invite you to remake my work and see if I made any mistake. Try to prove or 
disprove it with every tools at your disposal. If you disprove it, to bad, but 
please show me, and everybody, where I erred. If you prove it, tell that you 
did, and how you did it.

When you proclaim a dogma, you tell peoples:
This IS The TRUTH! That Truth is absolute and immuable. Nobody can question The 
Truth. If you don't agree with The Truth, you are an heretic, or just plain 
wrong in the best of cases.

-- 
Alain
-------------------------------------------------
HAMMER:  Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as 
a kind of divining rod to locate expensive bike parts not far from the object we 
are trying to hit.

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Phil Cook wrote:
> And lo on Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:07:09 -0000, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> 
> did spake, saying:
> 
>> FangleMork, the god of blue tomatoes
> 
> I couldn't resist 
> http://flipc.blogspot.com/2007/12/fanglemork-god-of-blue-tomatoes.html

(Covering face with hands) What have I done?!

-- 
   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:
> forget it:  he came as a humble man, too insignificant for the ones in power,
> but sufficiently of an agitator to receive death penalty... nothing too shabby
> to figure in official records...

Yet, oddly, there were no records of his miracles, either.

> though I find it funny you don't mention the James Cameron documentary about
> Jesus tomb...

That's still up in the air as to whether it was the same Jesus, ya know. 
Note that James Cameron is a movie producer, not a historian.

-- 
   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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Nekar Xenos wrote:
> "Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message 
> news:475e18c4$1@news.povray.org...
>> nemesis wrote:
>>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>>> You know, number 11, accept Jesus as your Personal Savior? Didn't that
>>>> get slipped in there a bit back?
>>> Jesus is God in flesh.  Rule number 1.
>> Then what are the other 9? I thought you were talking about Moses' laws.
>>
> 
> Accepting Jesus as your Saviour is the only thing that will get you into 
> heaven.

I was asking nemesis, actually, as he was the one that listed 10 rules.

> No good deed can get you into heaven because we are all sinfull. If 
> you accept Jesus as your saviour you won't want to do the wrong things.

And this is not evil? To drag off two thirds of the human population and 
burn them forever? Damn, I must have missed my bit of original sin.

-- 
   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 wrote:
> You haven't the first clue what anyone believes beyond yourself, 

But that's OK, because they're all WRONG!

-- 
   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:
> Well, would it be OK for me to say it's the work of Satan?

Sure thing.  But Satan traditionally is an opposing force to 'God', so 
at the very least you've implicitly acknowledged *existence*.  XD

-- 
Tim Cook
http://home.bellsouth.net/p/PWP-empyrean

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