Perhaps he hasn't had his morning toke. He will eventually calm down. Cannabis is his co-pilot.
Ya Mon, we all be brudders. Rastafari!
Rational Faith
- Thread starter Motar
- Start date
Ya Mon, we all be brudders. Rastafari!
Jah bless, my brudder mon.
Above ALL else?Above all else I hate idiots who say that I hate Jews. The Nazis are busy tearing down the Ukraine this morning, and you think they're on the right track. You know where you can stick your cheap little shots, snothead.
PS Weisel is lying about being a Jew.
Sorry, Dark. Didn't mean to put a hitch in yer gitalong.
No, they're human discoveries. If god wanted us to know about modern medicine he could have told us a few crucial things a long time ago. Some hint about the nature of disease-causing organisms written into the Old Testament could have avoided a lot of human misery. He could have explained how to make soap, for instance, it's not beyond the capabilities of a Bronze Age tribe, with the instruction, "wash your hands." If you're going to take that line of argument, attributing everything good to god and everything bad to the consequences of our sins, you explain everything at one stroke while not really explaining anything.
Perhaps, but if he's omnipotent and omniscient as claimed, it would be a trivial matter for him to arrange things so that wouldn't happen.
But that world to come is not this world and that is made very clear many times in the mysteries.
We would do better I think to avoid assigning anthropomorphic characteristics or desires to the force called God. If it (god) did not maintain the polarity between positive and negative life experiences there would be no life. It's the struggle under the sway of matter that produces the creative powers of mankind. If nothing bad happened no good could come of it. I think the perfection we may expect from God is beyond our senses at our stage of development. That is also made perfectly clear in the old mysteries. This earth is hell and we are the dead.
Rational faith is evidence-based belief/practice (living), Dex.
Having examined the evidence for God in the physical world, in the written record (Bible) and in the person of Jesus Christ, I find God to be credible and trustworthy. Having examined the same evidence, you arrive at a different conclusion. This suggests that the difference lies not in the evidence, but in our perceptions of it.
An illustration:
"While a large crowd was gathering and people were coming to Jesus from town after town, he told this parable: 'A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds ate it up. Some fell on rocky ground, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and yielded a crop, a hundred times more than was sown.'
When he said this, he called out, 'Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.” (Luke 8:4-8 NIV)
An explanation:
In this parable, the same seeds (evidence) are distributed in different soils (hearts). Three quarters of the soils reject the seeds for different reasons. One soil embraces the seed and a crop results. The outcomes here are determined by the soils (hearts), not the seeds (evidence).
Does the little smiley mean nothing to you?
It was only a matter of time before one of the illustrious participants in this thread framed a proper investigation of the subject.
Yes I know what you think it means. If what you've examined was real evidence, and all the evidence, our perceptions of it would necessarily be the same. You have not considered all the evidence, you have assessed it with bias, the arguments you make from it are not logically consistent, and what you've examined is not sufficient to establish the correctness of your claims, there are other possible explanations for it. In other words, you've broken four of the six rules I provided for assessing the truth content of claims, and the falsifiability rule is very problematic in this case too.
Dexter, you said, "..No, they're human discoveries. If god wanted us to know about modern medicine he could have told us a few crucial things a long time ago." What if he didn't want to tell us, so then he didn't. I think much unbelief stems from thinking - "if I were God, I would do it this way". And then when we see things are not going the way we think they should, we conclude there is no God.
After having said that, I do not discount your position. I think it is rather "rational". Maybe to an extreme, though. As Motar suggested: "Having examined the evidence for God in the physical world, in the written record (Bible) and in the person of Jesus Christ, I find God to be credible and trustworthy." What perhaps as Christians we can not fully explain, adequately describe, or prove is the working of the Holy Spirit. This working of the Holy Spirit is what confirms our faith.
I do believe God disciplines us - the bible abounds with examples. I don't think he kept the soap from us to discipline us though.
Mr. Beaver, you mentioned: "..it will be reborn in it's newly renovated meat skin." No worries, I hear the new skin is fantastic. Quite different than our current model.
After having said that, I do not discount your position. I think it is rather "rational". Maybe to an extreme, though. As Motar suggested: "Having examined the evidence for God in the physical world, in the written record (Bible) and in the person of Jesus Christ, I find God to be credible and trustworthy." What perhaps as Christians we can not fully explain, adequately describe, or prove is the working of the Holy Spirit. This working of the Holy Spirit is what confirms our faith.
I do believe God disciplines us - the bible abounds with examples. I don't think he kept the soap from us to discipline us though.
How about we come up with a different question?
Mr. Beaver, you mentioned: "..it will be reborn in it's newly renovated meat skin." No worries, I hear the new skin is fantastic. Quite different than our current model.
I think that's a pretty shallow and facile understanding of how and why people arrive at unbelief. Why would god not want to tell us about a simple thing that could alleviate much suffering and misery? Heaven watches human suffering with indifference for 100,000 years, then decides it's time to send us a message, the message goes to a tribe of illiterate nomads, it contains almost no information of any practical utility in their struggles, and is full of internal contradictions, errors of fact, inconsistencies, cruelty, and violence. There's nothing in the message to mark it as anything but a work of men.
Dexter - I don't think it is at all shallow. I think it is a common, natural thought. People want proof. Even with proof there are some that still will not believe.
John 12:37 Even after Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him.
John 12:37 Even after Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him.
Citing the Bible in support of its own claims is not a valid argument for their truth. There is no proof, and no atheists I've ever heard of arrived at the position of unbelief simply by thinking that things were not going as they thought they should and they would do things differently. If that's all it took atheists would be a majority.
I am reminded of the rich man and Lazarus, cj:
"If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead." (Luke 16:31 NIV)
If Peter was the rock upon which Jesus was to build his church, why was the Gospel of Peter left out of the bible?
Nobody has ever risen from the dead. There are lots of stories about it happening, long predating Christianity, but that just doesn't happen.
Actually they have (religion aside) quite often young children who have frozen to death or drowned.