The final and ultimate proof for the truth of Christianity

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
And SD, yes, so is love. What's your point? I've never been in love either

Just because something can be explained in base terms does not mean it is 'wrong'.

You may have never had the neurochemical/psychological condition of 'love', but does that mean you would not appreciate the happiness of a couple getting married and sharing a life together?

If you disregard faith then you must also disregard love. I would hope that you haven't.

[Japher]

I agree that something not seeming to exist does not necessarily mean that it does not exist.

Yet, what doe love have to do with faith? belief? I fail to see the coorolation.

[quote]to say "There's nothing." or "I don't know what, but there's something." is MUCH MORE logical than saying "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. " and then add hundreds of unprovable and contradictory pages which without any special reason have been declared to be "holy" and "true"...[/quote

yup, yup

It is the arbitrary naming of things to which one can blame the whole of the contradictions and supression of scientific practices that occured so many years ago, and which are still prolific today.

While there is nothing "wrong" with having beliefs one should question this BELIEF in order to maintain their FAITH in it.

I really like who religion threw in that caveat about FAITH, about those who question being evil and non-believers. Maybe that is something that should be looked at a little bit differently by both sides.

[gsmoove23]

Man I was hoping to find some seriously boring debate on this site and this is what I get.

Cool historical quote, even though its a load a bunk.

[OzzyKP]

Originally posted by JohnM2433
As I indicated above, if God openly communicated with us the way we communicate with each other, I think most atheists would probably concede that they are wrong. Thus atheism is indeed empirically falsifiable. But it doesn't matter whether the atheist arguing for it can tell you how it could be falsified, IMO.

Ah, this is the difficulty. If God openly communicated with you today, and you came to us tommarrow to let us know, would any athiests, or even agnostics believe you? I imagine most believers wouldn't believe you either.

So then what do you do? You look God straight in the face and have conversations with him and while you believe, no one takes you seriously. Do you try to tell anyone who will listen? Do you write down your experiences in a book?

I imagine you'd be locked up or medicated if you tried telling everyone about your conversations with God. For all we know there are dozens of real, honest people like you and me who have spoken with God and are locked up for "insanity". But we don't know, and have no way of knowing for sure.

Much of what we accept as fact is passed along person to person. Have I personally ever seen an atom? No. People who have seen atoms tell others and write about it. Science used to be much like Religion is now. Some person would observe some scientific phenomena that contradicted the accepted dogma of the day and he would be labeled crazy and locked away somewhere. The accepted dogma of today is secularism, and any person observing a spiritual or religious phenomena is assumed to be crazy and locked away.

Sometimes we just have to accept things, not blindly, not without skepticism and question, but we simply can't see and experience everything first hand.

[gsmoove23]

Fundamentalist atheists are just awful, thats coming from an atheist. Everyone's beliefs are founded on some amount of faith, however they might like to fool themselves otherwise. What I don't understand is why some atheists feel the need to proselytize as if there was any need for a human to be atheist. I could understand it maybe from a religious point of view, though I still wouldn't condone it, because you would be saving someone's soul supposedly, but I would be horribly depressed if I ever convinced someone to give up their faith in a perfect and good higher being that loved everyone equally.

[Alexander's Horse]

Another thread killer then

WAYS OF COMING TO KNOW GOD

Created in God's image and called to know and love him, the person who seeks God discovers certain ways of coming to know him. These are also called proofs for the existence of God, not in the sense of proofs in the natural sciences, but rather in the sense of "converging and convincing arguments", which allow us to attain certainty about the truth. These "ways" of approaching God from creation have a twofold point of departure: the physical world, and the human person.

The world

Starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world's order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe.

As St. Paul says of the pagans: For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made.

And St. Augustine issues this challenge: Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, question the beauty of the air distending and diffusing itself, question the beauty of the sky. . . question all these realities. All respond: "See, we are beautiful." Their beauty is a profession. These beauties are subject to change. Who made them if not the Beautiful One who is not subject to change?"

The human person

With his openness to truth and beauty, his sense of moral goodness, his freedom and the voice of his conscience, with his longings for the infinite and for happiness, man questions himself about God's existence. In all this he discerns signs of his spiritual soul. The soul, the "seed of eternity we bear in ourselves, irreducible to the merely material", can have its origin only in God.



The world, and man, attest that they contain within themselves neither their first principle nor their final end, but rather that they participate in Being itself, which alone is without origin or end. Thus, in different ways, man can come to know that there exists a reality which is the first cause and final end of all things, a reality "that everyone calls God".

Man's faculties make him capable of coming to a knowledge of the existence of a personal God. But for man to be able to enter into real intimacy with him, God willed both to reveal himself to man, and to give him the grace of being able to welcome this revelation in faith.(so) The proofs of God's existence, however, can predispose one to faith and help one to see that faith is not opposed to reason.

Starting from movement, becoming, contingency, and the world's order and beauty, one can come to a knowledge of God as the origin and the end of the universe. And faith is not opposed to reason

[Urban Ranger]

Faith is not opposed to reason?

But which one is in control when there's a conflict?

[Richelieu]

[SPAM]

I thought this was appropriate.

If you're looking for something to believe in...
From Bull Durham:

"I believe in the soul, the ****, the *****, the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, long foreplay, show tunes, and that the novels of Thomas Pynchon are self-indulgent, overrated crap.
(beat)
I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, I believe that there oughtta be a constitutional amendment outlawing astro-turf and the designated hitter, I believe in the "sweet spot", voting every election, soft core pornography, chocolate chip cookies, opening your presents on Christmas morning rather than Christmas eve, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last for 7 days."

[/SPAM]

[Japher]

Faith is not opposed to reason?

But which one is in control when there's a conflict?

That is a serious debate, and is all a matter of perspective.

One could might be able to give a logical explination for the control of the conflict and how it should be reacted to, etc..

One could also say that it (the means to the solution) is a act of devine intervention, or some prophecy, or some crap like that...

To me, either way is just as plausible.

Take into account those cases were people are dying from cancer or some disease. The doctor says that they are going to die. Yet, that person for some reason or another recovers and goes on to live out the rest of their days. There are plenty cases were doctors just don't know what happened. Is this devine intervention, was it the prayers of their loved ones? Or, was it some chemical reaction that occured on some undectable level from their positive attitudes?

I prefer the divinity thing, even though I am a scientist. It is a comfortable feeling to believe we are not alone.

[JohnM2433]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Ah, this is the difficulty. If God openly communicated with you today, and you came to us tommarrow to let us know, would any athiests, or even agnostics believe you? I imagine most believers wouldn't believe you either.

Ah, yes... "When you talk to God, they call it prayer. But when God talks to you, they call it schizophrenia." Or, as Clarence said in It's a Wonderful Life (IIRC), "Don't people here believe in angels? ... Then why should they be surprised if they happen to see one?"

While many people claim to believe in God, angels, miracles, etc., I suspect that many of those same people would not hesitate to dismiss out of hand claims of people actually witnessing these things, despite the fact that their own religions are based on such claims. In a similar vein, I think that the loss most feel upon the death of a loved one is due in part to a feeling that the individual really is gone, i.e., there is no afterlife, even if the grieving person purportedly believes in one. There's a great deal of doublethink going on here.

But even if all people's minds have some unconscious materialistic part, that doesn't prove that it's right, nor am I suggesting that it is. Personally, I think there's enough anecdotal evidence for the supernatural for claims about it to be taken seriously. And in a manner similar to this implicit atheism, one can have an understanding of statistical probability and still behave as if the odds don't apply to one's decisions and their consequences. It would appear that there's a difference between believing something on an abstract level and integrating it into your everyday thinking, much less your unconscious thought processes. (The human mind's capacity for irrationality never ceases to amaze me.)

So anyway, if someone told me that God had spoken to him, I would be skeptical, but I wouldn't automatically dismiss him either. My feeling is that it's a weird universe out there, and I'm going to try to avoid making any potentially reckless assumptions. Ya never know. Certainly, I wouldn't just assume such an individual to be insane, although I would consider that possibility. I share your thoughts on the "dogma of secularism." (I go too far in the opposite direction from many people, in fact. I'm not skeptical enough when faced with new ideas; I can be downright gullible. No doubt this is due in part to watching old episodes of "The X-Files" and other shows wherein the "crazy" person (e.g., Mulder) is invariably right. Indeed, this is a recurring theme in fictional works.)

But what I was really talking about was God speaking to the human race en masse. If an omnipotent being really wanted everyone to believe something, he could easily tell it to everyone in the world, and provide whatever evidence they required to believe in it. But God hasn't done that, so it seems fair to conclude that He doesn't want everyone to follow the same religion, which would also explain why we have so many. Either that, or He's not omnipotet, which would also explain why He didn't make a better universe. Indeed, the monotheistic theology I've encountered seems to me inconsistent with the observable world, but only just slightly so, such that removing any one of several assumptions would suffice to repair it.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Japher
Take into account those cases were people are dying from cancer or some disease. The doctor says that they are going to die. Yet, that person for some reason or another recovers and goes on to live out the rest of their days. There are plenty cases were doctors just don't know what happened. Is this devine intervention, was it the prayers of their loved ones? Or, was it some chemical reaction that occured on some undectable level from their positive attitudes?

Maybe it is spontaneous remission. That does happen naturally even if rarely.

Originally posted by Japher
I prefer the divinity thing, even though I am a scientist. It is a comfortable feeling to believe we are not alone.

This raises two points:

1. I think humans as a whole has come a long way in the last several thousand years. It is about time to lose this mental crutch and stand on our own.

2. Suppose that there is a deity or a group of deities, what makes it that Christianity is the correct religion? Nothing whatsoever. As I raised the point earlier in this thread, Christianity is no different from other religions fudamentally. Why can't it be Zeus, Odin, Ra, the Celestial Emperor, Ralph the Snake God, Umguf the Invisble Unicorn, the Ten Foot Hare, the Gigantic Banana, etc., etc.?

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by OzzyKP
Ah, this is the difficulty. If God openly communicated with you today, and you came to us tommarrow to let us know, would any athiests, or even agnostics believe you? I imagine most believers wouldn't believe you either.

There is no such difficulty.

Since the Christian God is omnipotent - or so it goes - he can always do something that can be universally recognised as a message from Him.

Rearranging the stars to spell out "YHWH Lives!" is a good starter.

[Jack the Bodiless]

Originally posted by Japher
Take into account those cases were people are dying from cancer or some disease. The doctor says that they are going to die. Yet, that person for some reason or another recovers and goes on to live out the rest of their days. There are plenty cases were doctors just don't know what happened. Is this devine intervention, was it the prayers of their loved ones? Or, was it some chemical reaction that occured on some undectable level from their positive attitudes?

And do those who "take into account" these cases, also take into account cases where people are dying, their loved ones pray for them, and they die anyhow?

Or cases where people with trivial ailments, or no known ailment at all, just die?

[Jack the Bodiless]

Originally posted by Rogan Josh
Cybershy: just ignore them - they are only trolling. The don't want a rational debate - they have already been brainwashed into their closed-mind attitudes and you won't shift them by posting here. Just them them have their merry atheist jerk-off session uninterupted. (SD seems to be the only non-christian here with any scientific integrity and no mindless prejudices.)

I find it rather ironic that you said this to CyberShy after he posted this:

I hate to break it to you, but there's no difference between Christianity and other religions.

by saying that you just showed how ignorant you are about christianity. It's truly hilarious to say something like that. And yes, there are christians who actually act like there is no difference. That's true.

...Now, if that's not trolling, then what is?

Why do some Christians think it's "hilarious" that anyone is so "ignorant" as to believe that Christianity is just another religion?

Isn't it?

If not, WHY not?

When pressed on this issue, they can't give a satisfactory answer.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless

And do those who "take into account" these cases, also take into account cases where people are dying, their loved ones pray for them, and they die anyhow?

Or cases where people with trivial ailments, or no known ailment at all, just die?

Ah - now we may be getting somewhere here. Did someone close to you die? Possibly suddenly or inexplicably? Did you feel that your prayers were not answered?

Is this why you are so angry at God?

[Jack the Bodiless]

Nice fishing attempt there, AH...

However, I became an atheist long before anyone died that I cared about. There have since been deaths of relatives, yes (some of them quite young: two deaths of relatives from brain tumors, one aged 35, the other 41). But it never occurred to me to "blame God" for them.

Nonexistent mythological beings can't affect me. Those who believe in nonexistent mythological beings, however, CAN.

I own a timeshare in Bali.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless
Nice fishing attempt there, AH...

However, I became an atheist long before anyone died that I cared about.

Ah - there it is again - another clue. You "became" an atheist. This suggests you were once a believer?

So the question remains - why are you so angry at God?

You seem very hurt. Like God disappointed you somehow.

[Jack the Bodiless]

Ah - there it is again - another clue. You "became" an atheist. This suggests you were once a believer?

Until I was about ten years old, yes. I was raised as a Christian.

So the question remains - why are you so angry at God?

The God of the Old Testament is a comic-book villain. I'm not angry at him, just as I'm not angry at Fu Manchu or Ming the Merciless. However, I am rather disturbed by the fact that some think he's a "good guy".

And then there are the creationists...

You seem very hurt. Like God disappointed you somehow.

I lost faith in God a few years after I lost faith in Santa (the parallel seemed obvious). You think God should have given me presents?

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless

I lost faith in God a few years after I lost faith in Santa (the parallel seemed obvious). You think God should have given me presents?

You think God should be like Santa? There is a rather revealing note of disappointment in that analogy

Yes, we are getting somewhere I think

[Jack the Bodiless]

If everything I have consists of "presents" from God (as the Christians claim), then he should have labeled them better.

[Alexander's Horse]

You see underneath all your scoffing and intellectualising there is a kind of spiritual pain. That last remark is a perfect example.

I'm not even sure if you ever stopped believing in God. You say you did, but did you really? I wonder..........

[Jack the Bodiless]

Actually, I miss Santa more than I miss God.

God was a distant authoritarian figure, like "the government". Santa was a magical being who gave out gifts and doesn't appear to have carried out any acts of genocide at all.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless
Actually, I miss Santa more than I miss God.

God was a distant authoritarian figure, like "the government". Santa was a magical being who gave out gifts and doesn't appear to have carried out any acts of genocide at all.

The other breakthrough here is that you say you lost your faith when you were 10 and your ideas of God are, well, pretty childish, much like those of a 10 year old

[Jack the Bodiless]

Even as a child, I remember thinking that Noah's Ark was a story for very young children. I was amazed when I found out that some "grown-ups" believed it.

I think God is basically a childish concept: an exaggerated cartoon of a "father-figure". And I think a lot of adults might see that also if they really think about what they believe and why they believe it.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless

I think God is basically a childish concept: an exaggerated cartoon of a "father-figure". And I think a lot of adults might see that also if they really think about what they believe and why they believe it.

Or your idea of God is very childish and you don't have the feintest idea of what an adult or mature understanding of God might be like

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by JohnM2433
In a similar vein, I think that the loss most feel upon the death of a loved one is due in part to a feeling that the individual really is gone, i.e., there is no afterlife, even if the grieving person purportedly believes in one. There's a great deal of doublethink going on here.

I disagree with that conclusion. People feel very upset if a loved one is travelling half way across the globe and will not return for many years. They aren't thinking they are gone forever though.

[OneFootInTheGrave]

As when the thread started... the idea is that without personal benefit/experience/relationship with a deity, there is no reason to believe in one, as the stories that were written in a book thousands of years ago can hardly be relevant to people today, unless the people today do see/find that God in their lives today. ~and that is what all the religions claim anyway (that you should have - if you don't have - experience with God today)

If you have found Zeus in your life you might just as well go and worship him, if you think that Jesus is the one that you have the connection with than worship him, if you have noone well than be an atheist.

To religious people: Who are you to convince the "uneducated" masses that there is some devine being/beings that is/are and will save you if the people you are speaking to have nothing of him/them in their lives.

Action: Instead of forcing the others to pray/live like that God wanted - you live that way, and pray for them, and if the God/s is real pray for the thing you can't and it/they can do... if one of your goals is to prove that God existst - well pray for that, and maybe your prayer will be answerd like Elijah (at least I thought he is spelled that way). Who says that you are any worse that he was.

To atheists: Who are you to call on reason to disapprove God or Gods to people who have some contact with them in their own lives whether trough prayer or thinking that it/they cured them or whatever, when you cannot reasonably disapprove Gods existance.

To do: try praying once and than you can say that there was no response and that whatever God the others claim exists - you can be positivley sure that he does not exist, as you had no response, and therfore no reason to believe in one. As an (in christian case) omnipotent/omnipresent God should certainly hear you.

Still many people today claim to have such experiences, and many more don't, as it is such a lose/lose case - it is a perfect place for good old debates with no end

[Jack the Bodiless]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
Or your idea of God is very childish and you don't have the feintest idea of what an adult or mature understanding of God might be like

Well, given that the Bible is a book of fairy stories written by a primitive tribe of Bronze Age goat-herders who thought the Earth was flat: why do these mature, sophisticated adults keep referring to it?

I generally respect those who choose to believe in an undefined "higher power". It's not a belief that I share, and I also have issues with those who claim that such a higher power is necessary (because I've investigated many such claims). But we can generally "agree to disgree".

The problem is with those who wave "holy books" about, and quote passages to justify whatever their favorite form of bigotry, logical fallacy, or scientific falsehood is.

[Alexander's Horse]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless

Well, given that the Bible is a book of fairy stories written by a primitive tribe of Bronze Age goat-herders who thought the Earth was flat

There it is again - the simplistic childlike view of a 10 year old.

I'm not sure you can squeeze the whole bible into a pidgeon hole quite that small Jack

[JohnM2433]

Alexander's Horse responded to Jack the Bodiless by saying

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
So the question remains - why are you so angry at God?

You seem very hurt. Like God disappointed you somehow.

Are you suggested that Jack doesn't believe in God because he's mad at Him? Personally, I've never stopped believing in someone because I was mad at that person. In fact, I can't believe or disbelieve anything at will. Yet I notice that people invariably talk about religion as if faith were voluntary. Is it for you? Maybe I am actually the strange one in this regard(!).

You can't seem to accept that someone would stop believing in God except as the result of some sort of emotional trauma. Personally, I think that atheism may, ironically, be embraced more easily by those with a background of strict religious teachings. Once you're old enough to realize that, taken together, all those dogmas just don't make sense (this happens around 10 or 12 or so, and finding out that something else you unquestioningly believed in (Santa Claus) is fake really does help), it's a lot easier to question religion in general; if you were able to believe a bunch of nonsense, and a bunch of apparently intelligent people who taught it to you could too, what reason is there to believe that that's not the case with all religions? Whereas a rational individual schooled in less narrow religious teachings may never need to question his/her childhood faith, as those teachings may be sufficiently broad not to be directly contradicted by each other or the real world.

I think that this could explain the tendancy of some atheists and agnostics to lump Christians in general together with Creationists and similar wackos. They take it for granted that almost all religion is equally irrational, but that ain't necessarily so.

Originally posted by Sagacious Dolphin
I disagree with that conclusion. People feel very upset if a loved one is travelling half way across the globe and will not return for many years. They aren't thinking they are gone forever though.

Yes, I've thought of that. But I still don't think that the grief that even those who believe in an afterlife feel upon a loved one's parting with them in the physical world equals that which they feel upon a loved one's parting into the spirit world. I don't have any actual evidence to back up that claim; it's just a gut feeling, and I'll freely admit that it could be quite wrong.

Similarly, I think that almost everyone fears their own death, and not because it will separate them from their loved ones or because they might go to hell. If I'm right about that, it's either because their faith is less than 100% certain, or because an abstract belief in the afterlife doesn't translate itself into the appropriate emotion(s). Although no doubt some people have faith genuine and deep-rooted enough that the prospect of death doesn't trouble them at all.

What term, if any, is there for "people who believe in an afterlife"? I find it tiresome to repeat that phrase over and over.

You know, I just thought of something, and I'm going to relate it, because it seems so relevant to what I'm discussing: I never got over my childhood fear of darkness. I still imagine monsters lurking in it, and pull the covers up over my head. I know they're not there, but that doesn't keep me from being afraid of them. I imagine that that sounds absolutely absurd and childish to a lot of you; yet I bet that most of you still find books and movies scary, despite the fact that you know they're not real. It's as if there's an emotional part of the brain that has "beliefs" of its own, and doesn't care what we rationally decide is and is not true. As the above example demonstrates, these "emotinal beliefs" may be irrational ones, so if we react emotionally as if death = oblivion, that doesn't indicate that the subconscious part of us that believes that is that smarter part, and I certainly don't mean to suggest that. I only wished to point out that this internal division, as it were, does indeed exist.

"I have a healthy respect for many forms of danger, but only one truly irrational fear."
-Scott Adams, on his fear of water, in The Dilbert Future