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Post by captainbryce on Feb 12, 2019 1:24:12 GMT
I'm not going to waste my time asking the obligatory "where is your evidence for God" question because that only ever yields three possible responses (all of which are easily defeated):
A) There IS evidence everywhere (design/order, the gospels, etc), you just choose to ignore it
B) If God gave evidence then there'd be no point in having "faith" and/or it would eliminate "free will"
C) There is only evidence in the form of personal revelation for those who already have the Holy Spirit
So, those are the three possible (contradicting) answers Christians generally give for why atheists (or people of other belief systems) see no evidence for the Christian God. Either we do see the evidence and just ignore it, God doesn't leave evidence because it would take away our choice to believe in him, or we have to already have faith first before personal evidence is given (or some variation in one of those three lines of reasoning).
So with all of that out of the way, let me just direct this towards the crowd who'd give the A answer (since answers B and C can be easily defeated with simple logic). Why would you be willing to take the so-called gospel testimony as "evidence" for any of the things attested to in the gospels, isn't that circular?
For example: If your "evidence" that Jesus was God is the fact that he rose from the dead, and that this somehow proves he was God, how is that evidence when you have no way of knowing whether it actually happened in the first place? You are assuming it actually happened, and using that assumption as your evidence that he was God. But in order for it to be evidence, you'd first have to know that Jesus:
A) existed in the first place
B) was killed
C) was determined to be clinically dead by a doctor
D) was determined to be no longer dead at a later time
There is no physical evidence that can validate ANY of these claims (much less having extraordinary evidence to validate the extraordinary claim), and believing any of them requires depending on the accuracy of stories (that you are trying to validate). So why would you consider this evidence?
And even IF you just decided to believe that all of that actually happened at face value (without even bothering to validate it), how did you reach the conclusion that this in any way proves that Jesus was God? How did you determine that him being God is the only way he could have appeared to rise from the dead?
How did you rule out him ingesting a drug that only simulates death for a short time, or having the ability to control his body responses creating the appearance of death? How did you rule out Pontius Pilate not being in on Jesus's plot and assisting him pull it off? How did you rule out the Roman guards possibly being in on the deception, and merely pronouncing him dead publicly?
Or, what if Jesus was in fact dead, but was a mutant with Wolverine healing powers, or an alien with enhanced abilities? Would it be any more unreasonable to think that a person who you believed walked on water and had healing powers wasn't an alien or a mutant than he was God? I mean, at least those things could be possible within the realm of science, and don't require appeals to the supernatural. He said he was the Son of God; but why are you just accepting this explanation? All of your conclusions are based on assumptions that you already have about Jesus. So how can it be evidence?
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Post by CoolJGS☺ on Feb 12, 2019 1:45:57 GMT
How on [God's Green] Earth is Wolverine within the realms of science lol?
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Post by goz on Feb 12, 2019 3:39:49 GMT
How on [God's Green] Earth is Wolverine within the realms of science lol? I think the point is that logically, it is as good an explanation as that of the Bible stories and hence the 'science' of the day? |
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Post by captainbryce on Feb 12, 2019 4:43:43 GMT
How on [God's Green] Earth is Wolverine within the realms of science lol? Well, mutation is actually a thing in science. God is not! |
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Post by mslo79 on Feb 12, 2019 6:47:40 GMT
Eucharistic Miraclesthat's some evidence but a lot of people will continue to deny anyways as like I have quoted before it seems to boil down to this for some people... so no matter what some people are shown, they simply refuse to believe, or maybe they don't want to because they are not living right and might be living in sin and don't want to change their ways etc. so basically there is some evidence for those who can see, but there might be a little doubt, so faith is still required on some level.
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Post by goz on Feb 12, 2019 7:21:16 GMT
Eucharistic Miraclesthat's some evidence but a lot of people will continue to deny anyways as like I have quoted before it seems to boil down to this for some people... so no matter what some people are shown, they simply refuse to believe, or maybe they don't want to because they are not living right and might be living in sin and don't want to change their ways etc. so basically there is some evidence for those who can see, but there might be a little doubt, so faith is still required on some level. There is NO evidence. it is ALL misplaced faith. |
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Post by The Lost One on Feb 12, 2019 9:28:55 GMT
There is NO evidence. it is ALL misplaced faith. I think that's an overstatement. Gospels etc are evidence, they are just not compelling evidence. |
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Post by CoolJGS☺ on Feb 12, 2019 11:37:58 GMT
How on [God's Green] Earth is Wolverine within the realms of science lol? I think the point is that logically, it is as good an explanation as that of the Bible stories and hence the 'science' of the day? I'm not sure why viewing God as an alien with with the power to create would be any odder a scientific concept. It's not like anything God or his son has done is anything beyond the realm of science fiction. |
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Post by CoolJGS☺ on Feb 12, 2019 11:51:15 GMT
How on [God's Green] Earth is Wolverine within the realms of science lol? Well, mutation is actually a think in science. God is not! So is creation. So is the notion that there are things smarter and more powerful than man. So are multiverses. So are unknown energy forms, time travel, and hyperspace...All of which are things that can easily describe God's abilities. Science is simply research and the results of the research. It no more explains the possibility of Wolverine than it does of anything that isn't proven. If it's not proven by experimentation or observation, science cannot concern itself with it beyond guesswork and thus is a horrible method to explain everything. Heck it can't even explain you and your weirdness. In other words, while it may make sense to trust a science regarding things that are known, there is no reason whatsoever to take the opinion of a scientist as sacred. As an aside, science and God can co-exist quite easily together. I know since I love studying both of them. |
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Post by general313 on Feb 12, 2019 16:16:32 GMT
Eucharistic Miraclesthat's some evidence but a lot of people will continue to deny anyways as like I have quoted before it seems to boil down to this for some people... so no matter what some people are shown, they simply refuse to believe, or maybe they don't want to because they are not living right and might be living in sin and don't want to change their ways etc. so basically there is some evidence for those who can see, but there might be a little doubt, so faith is still required on some level. The Thomas Aquinas quote doesn't say hardly anything at all. Someone with a Greek name could have said it to justify belief in Apollo, or someone with an Arabic name to justify Islamic faith. |
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Post by Vegas on Feb 12, 2019 17:17:15 GMT
Here's where I gotta side with the atheists. Aside from looking a sunset and going "Ah.. The beauty of creation is proof of God!"... There really is no proof of God. I've looked for it.... Hell, I'll say that I even want there to be... but, alas, there is none to be found. The only source of evidence is The Bible, itself... and that only if you take the stories at face value. Sure.. There have been OT prophecies that came true in the NT... which could prove God is real... except that anybody writing the NT making up the story to fit the OT prophecies would be have the same exact outcome. Maybe, some "historical" prophecies were proven true.... but that could easily be the same case by history simply naturally unfolding: I make a prophecy about how if America doesn't change it's ways to Hinduism it will suffer destruction... America will collapse at some point in future history... 600 years from now, it could be said that my prophecy came true when America was taken over by The Blorgons in the year 2525. Hinduism is irrelevant to it's destruction... It doesn't really prove anything. Unless... the natural weakness of The Blorgons is incense... and we would have repelled them with our shitty smoke smell..  ... AMERICA TURN TO HINDUISM!!! IT'S OUR ONLY HOPE!!  |
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Post by thefleetsin on Feb 12, 2019 17:22:49 GMT
the proof is in the hooding
as polarizing
as uneducated american rednecks
can be
there are lessons to be learned
from those
who refused to jump out of the trees
and started
to mate with
their like-minded cousins.
sjw 02/12/19 inspired at this very moment in time by a tisket a tasket whose that neanderthal wearing that ridiculous looking basket.
from the 'blitzkrieg series' of poems
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Post by Vegas on Feb 12, 2019 17:28:33 GMT
Of course..
There are the "But I talk to God"/"I died and saw God"/"Aliens abduct me every night for sex experiments" people out there with their own "experience"...
But.. that doesn't really count for shit... and unless they pull out a very big "But, here's the proof"...which hasn't happened, yet... it doesn't prove anything.
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Post by The Herald Erjen on Feb 12, 2019 18:22:00 GMT
Well now, on Coast to Coast last night the guest said that amino acids can twist either to the left or the right, and they always twist to the left, and sugars always twist to the right, and the odds of that would be like flipping a coin trillions of times and having it come up heads every time. Scientists in a laboratory did manage to breed their own amino acids that twisted both left and right (for the achievement I suppose).
Here's the part where you say that's not evidence and put it in file-and forget. It's what you do.
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Post by Vegas on Feb 12, 2019 18:29:21 GMT
on Coast to Coast last night Holy shit!! That show is still on?? Who is hosting? Is he as good as Art Bell? Has it gone Info Wars-ish? |
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Post by The Herald Erjen on Feb 12, 2019 18:36:57 GMT
on Coast to Coast last night Holy shit!! That show is still on?? Who is hosting? Is he as good as Art Bell? Has it gone Info Wars-ish? George Noory is the host now. I think he's good, but I've heard some say he isn't as good as Art Bell. It's a little different from InforWars in they have a mix of conservative and liberal ideologies, whenever politics comes into the discussion. |
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Post by general313 on Feb 12, 2019 19:09:56 GMT
Well now, on Coast to Coast last night the guest said that amino acids can twist either to the left or the right, and they always twist to the left, and sugars always twist to the right, and the odds of that would be like flipping a coin trillions of times and having it come up heads every time. Scientists in a laboratory did manage to breed their own amino acids that twisted both left and right (for the achievement I suppose). Here's the part where you say that's not evidence and put it in file-and forget. It's what you do. What you're saying is like saying that a written language can be written either from right to left or from left to right, but English is always written left to right, and the odds of that would be like flipping a coin trillions of times and having it come up heads every time. |
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Post by The Herald Erjen on Feb 12, 2019 19:17:14 GMT
Well now, on Coast to Coast last night the guest said that amino acids can twist either to the left or the right, and they always twist to the left, and sugars always twist to the right, and the odds of that would be like flipping a coin trillions of times and having it come up heads every time. Scientists in a laboratory did manage to breed their own amino acids that twisted both left and right (for the achievement I suppose). Here's the part where you say that's not evidence and put it in file-and forget. It's what you do. What you're saying is like saying that a written language can be written either from right to left or from left to right, but English is always written left to right, and the odds of that would be like flipping a coin trillions of times and having it come up heads every time. Who made up the language? |
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Post by general313 on Feb 12, 2019 20:03:16 GMT
What you're saying is like saying that a written language can be written either from right to left or from left to right, but English is always written left to right, and the odds of that would be like flipping a coin trillions of times and having it come up heads every time. Who made up the language? You mean English? You may have noticed that there is a lot of arbitrariness in a language. Somebody invents a new word, say "boy". In another language they might come up with "ragazzo". Once these arbitrary words are thought up they get passed on from generation to generation, so after many generations the Italians keep using "ragazzo" and the English "boy". It is erroneous to say that each generation having the same word is like tossing a coin and always getting heads. Sugars are much the same way. A sugar evolved that goes one way (right or left), which has a specific DNA representation different from the other way, and once developed the gene gets passed from generation to generation, like a word in a language. Also erroneous to compare to repeated coin tosses. |
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Post by The Herald Erjen on Feb 12, 2019 20:06:45 GMT
Who made up the language? You mean English? You may have noticed that there is a lot of arbitrariness in a language. Somebody invents a new word, say "boy". In another language they might come up with "ragazzo". Once these arbitrary words are thought up they get passed on from generation to generation, so after many generations the Italians keep using "ragazzo" and the English "boy". It is erroneous to say that each generation having the same word is like tossing a coin and always getting heads. Sugars are much the same way. A sugar evolved that goes one way (right or left), which has a specific DNA representation different from the other way, and once developed the gene gets passed from generation to generation, like a word in a language. Also erroneous to compare to repeated coin tosses. No, I mean the left-hand twist on amino acids, since you're comparing it to a language. It's capable of twisting either way but it always twists left, and "evolution" just doesn't adequately explain it. |
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