How Can Anyone Believe in God?

[snex]

you still have said nothing that differentiates your experiences from the experiences of people who assert contradictory stories to your own. not only that, but you have also not provided us with a method of determining who, if anybody, is correct. it seems that all you have to operate on are personal subjective experiences combined with an unwillingness to examine them using a method we know DOES work - science. and in your last post, you demonstrated your willingness to invent further rationalizations (demons, i mean srsly?) to avoid having to deal with the evidence against you. as rational as you may be when discussing evolution, you have gone completely off the deep end in this thread.

anybody can maintain any position if they are willing to invent ever-more silly rationalizations that defy evidence. that does not in any way make the belief in those positions rational. if i were to do it with star trek, you would immediately see how silly the enterprise (pun intended) was.

"I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

 

[Peeze]

SNEX;
Of course jesus taught hell, but not as a place of torment like Tissue said. Remember the bible(most of it anyways)was written in hebrew and greek. The word translated hell was SHEOL in hebrew and HADES in greek. those words literally mean pit, or grave. hades/sheol is a state of nonexistence.
Evidence:
1.In the "old testament" job prayed that god conceal him in hell(literally sheol) for relief. Burning forever certainly isnt relief!
2. Eccl 9:5 says "there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in sheol(hell/the grave)....
If you have evidence proving otherwise please present it.

 

[snex]

SNEX;
Of course jesus taught hell, but not as a place of torment like Tissue said. Remember the bible(most of it anyways)was written in hebrew and greek. The word translated hell was SHEOL in hebrew and HADES in greek. those words literally mean pit, or grave. hades/sheol is a state of nonexistence.
Evidence:
1.In the "old testament" job prayed that god conceal him in hell(literally sheol) for relief. Burning forever certainly isnt relief!
2. Eccl 9:5 says "there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in sheol(hell/the grave)....
If you have evidence proving otherwise please present it.

jesus makes several references to hell, and they paint a consistent picture: a place of "everlasting torment" by "fire" in which there is "wailing and gnashing of teeth."

see matt 13:42 and matt 25:41. of course there are others, still in the NT and by jesus himself, but being a christian you already knew that... right?

 

[Peeze]

aha you found them! good job but lets consider the context:
in Matt13:42 jesus likened people to wheat and weeds. What did jewish farmers do with weeds? vs 42 says they burned them. Did the weeds continue burning forever or where they destroyed? "weed people" are thrown he says "into a fiery furnace" destroyed. In simpler terms if someone wants to really get rid of a private document what do they do? they burn it. to destroy it.
Matt 25:41 christ talks about an "everlasting fire" or a lake of fire and sulfur. But is this literal or symbolic? Death is the punishment for sin, and according to the Bible, dead creatures feel no pain. Moreover, we read later that death itself, along with Hades, is cast into this same lake of fire and sulfur. Surely, death and Hades cannot suffer pain!

Further, the mention of fire and sulfur calls to mind the fate of ancient Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed by God because of their gross wickedness. When their time came, “the lord made it rain sulphur and fire from the heavens, upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah.” (Genesis 19:24) What befell the two cities is called “the judicial punishment of everlasting fire.” (Jude*7) Yet, those two cities did not suffer everlasting torment. Rather, they were blotted out, obliterated for all time, along with their depraved inhabitants. Those cities do not exist today, and no one can say for sure where they were located, but you already knew that...right?

 

[snex]

you should have taken my advice and kept reading. i deliberately did not mention every verse just to see if you would fall into that trap, and you did.

matt 25:46 "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

plain as day it says "eternal punishment," meaning you are punished eternally.

 

[AltF4]

And how is it not? I cannot reproduce it in front of the rest of you, I cannot describe it in such a way that allows it to validate itself, but it is nonetheless an experience, just as walking out on my back deck and seeing a plethora of old pine needles is another experience.

A necessary quality of evidence is repeatability. It must be reproducible.

I am not doubting your "experience" but rather what you attribute the cause of it to. If someone came up to you and swore up and down that they experienced the Invisible Pink Unicorn, would you accept that as evidence of its existence? Certainly not. The most likely cause is that the person saw or felt SOMETHING and then wrongly attributed it to being the IPU.

For example... (This is true)

One of my friend's mother believes in aliens. Not only that, she claims to have been abducted many times by aliens. She says that they come in the night and beam her up to their space ship and do experiments on her. They are little green men in a flying saucer.

She is absolutely convinced that these events happened. Completely, 100% certain. This is also not the kind of event that one can easily mistake for another. Swamp gas and a weather balloon may resemble a UFO, but nothing can mistake being anally probed by little green men.

I honestly believe that she is not lying. She clearly did "experience" what she claims to. But that doesn't mean she was actually abducted by aliens! I find it much more likely that she just dreamed the whole thing.

Spoiler

Or is just bat **** insane

So just that I reject her account, which she claims to be clear as day, so do I reject yours. Because neither can support your claims with any kind of REAL evidence.

 

[Peeze]

oh no u tricked me! jerk! Check this out though:

El Evangelio de Mateo notes: “Eternal life is definitive life; its opposite is definitive punishment. The Greek adjective aionios does not primarily denote duration, but quality. The definitive punishment is death forever.”—Retired professor Juan Mateos (Pontifical Biblical Institute, Rome)


I wiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnnn!

 

[snex]

alt she probably is having episodes of sleep paralysis. i had it once, it was pretty darn cool. unfortunately i didnt get any neat hallucinations of aliens or demons or other stuff that people get. just the waking paralysis.

peeze thats just an argument from authority, and not a very good one. if your authority were correct, then bibles would be translated that way, dontcha think? strong's concordance gives the translations of "aionios":

"1) without beginning and end, that which always has been and always will be
2) without beginning
3) without end, never to cease, everlasting"

the very same word is used in several other places in the NT, and from the context we can see that it does indeed mean eternal in duration. see john 10:28 and romans 2:7 for example.

 

[Peeze]

Aionos has more than one meaning, the primary being quality, then duration. We can argue whether he meant quality of death or duration of death, but he certainly couldn't have meant burning people in hell forever.(burning people contradicts the "god is love" principle in the bible if you woudn't burn a disobedient child why would God?)
Remember jude 7 i mentioned earlier also spoke of an eternal fire. The fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah ceased burning thousands of years ago. But the effect of that fire has been lasting; the cities have not been rebuilt.

Not to sound creepy but i like debating with you, it keeps my mind sharp. Lets continue this later i have to work now.

 

[snex]

Aionos has more than one meaning, the primary being quality, then duration. We can argue whether he meant quality of death or duration of death, but he certainly couldn't have meant burning people in hell forever.(burning people contradicts the "god is love" principle in the bible if you woudn't burn a disobedient child why would God?)
Remember jude 7 i mentioned earlier also spoke of an eternal fire. The fire that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah ceased burning thousands of years ago. But the effect of that fire has been lasting; the cities have not been rebuilt.

Not to sound creepy but i like debating with you, it keeps my mind sharp. Lets continue this later i have to work now.

there is no indication in strong's concordance (considered to be THE authoritative work on the matter) that aionos can be translated that way.

in any case, if contradicting the "god is love" principle worries you, eternal ****ation is merely the tip of the iceburg. you can find examples of god's cruelty in pretty much every single book of the bible. ive even developed a game based on this and all you need is a random number generator:

pick a random number between 1 and 66 (or 72 if you are catholic), go to the book represented by that number.
pick a random number between 1 and the number of chapters in that book.
pick a random number between 1 and the number of verses in that chapter.

if the verse that comes up talks about god being nice or about his love, score a point in column A.
if the verse that comes up talks about god being cruel, angry, vengeful, etc etc, score a point in column B.
if neither, just try again.

do this hundreds of times and see which column has more points.

 

[tissue]

you still have said nothing that differentiates your experiences from the experiences of people who assert contradictory stories to your own. not only that, but you have also not provided us with a method of determining who, if anybody, is correct.

You're assuming that's my intent. I never came in here to do all that. My job is to show that my believe in God is rational, warranted, and justified, and you've yet to attack that. All you've done is critique my particular method of expression of that belief; that is, Christianity, but I never intended that to be the battleground, nor do I particularly care to argue over it. It is a tangent.

it seems that all you have to operate on are personal subjective experiences combined with an unwillingness to examine them using a method we know DOES work - science.

Science clearly cannot be used. That does not diminish the value of the experience in any way to myself. It simply means it doesn't do you a bit of good. But since the topic in question is my rationality in this situation, that hardly matters.

and in your last post, you demonstrated your willingness to invent further rationalizations (demons, i mean srsly?) to avoid having to deal with the evidence against you.

It's a possibility. It deals with the issue. It does not lead to a logical contradiction.

as rational as you may be when discussing evolution, you have gone completely off the deep end in this thread.

On the contrary. I have shown time and again where my beliefs are epistemologically consistent. You may summarize and marginalize my beliefs as you wish, and there's not much I can do about it, but here, you are incorrect.

I don't think you have a grasp on this argument at all, to be honest. You keep speaking as though I should match up to some evidential standard. But why? Because you, or others, have set that standard? On what basis have they set that standard? What, exactly, is the issue with disobeying that standard? Certainly not irrationality; I have already shown how my beliefs do not lead to a contradiction, and direct experience certainly is a proper basis for belief.

In fact, I have been nothing but logical. You, on the other hand, fault me for not being scientific, but you cannot place an experience in a beaker. I would recommend a good course in philosophy, more particularly epistemology, if you wish to better understand the nature of belief.

anybody can maintain any position if they are willing to invent ever-more silly rationalizations that defy evidence. that does not in any way make the belief in those positions rational. if i were to do it with star trek, you would immediately see how silly the enterprise (pun intended) was.

Surely. If their experience is valid.

I have no reason to believe my experience was not valid (in other words, I recognize the faults and limitations of science). It would be irrational for me to consider it invalid, if I found no reason to.

Of course, anyone could invent an experience, and then claim rationality on that point. While we could not argue with them (after all, how could we really know they did not experience that), it would not change the fact that they were ultimately irrational. Yet, we could not argue such a point with them. We are limited in our scope.

A necessary quality of evidence is repeatability. It must be reproducible.

I'm not in the business of providing evidence on theological matters. I'm pretty much against all forms of modern apologetics.

 

[AltF4]

I'm not in the business of providing evidence on theological matters. I'm pretty much against all forms of modern apologetics.

Then your beliefs are in the same category as believers of the Invisible Pink Unicorn and alien abductions. You make wild claims and provide nothing to substantiate them other than your insistence that it is true.

 

[tissue]

I like to think Christianity has more of a reputation going for it than something you made up to show how silly religious belief is. There are over a billion people who believe something resembling Christianity. There might be one or two people who believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

Sheer numbers, of course, does not determine what is right, but it does mean something is, at least, worth looking in to.

 

[Chaco]

Then your beliefs are in the same category as believers of the Invisible Pink Unicorn and alien abductions. You make wild claims and provide nothing to substantiate them other than your insistence that it is true.

God works in many mysterious ways, and is good at covering his tracks. Technically there can be no physical proof. But there is proof, but it is on human word. Such as glimpses of Guardian
Angels, in car wrecks. You can choose not to believe them but guess what, they saw it. They may not have saw it, but their mind is conditioned into believing that they did see it. Such as atheistic cases, in which they are in denial so long they will not by any means even on sight believe that it is true. Their mind will create an illusion or alternate event to cover up what actually happened in order negate a massive event that could alter their views so much that it causes brain problems. Or so I've heard...not 100% sure about the scientific info there but O'm about 80% on it.

 

[snex]

You're assuming that's my intent. I never came in here to do all that. My job is to show that my believe in God is rational, warranted, and justified, and you've yet to attack that. All you've done is critique my particular method of expression of that belief; that is, Christianity, but I never intended that to be the battleground, nor do I particularly care to argue over it. It is a tangent.

you still dont seem to understand what "rational, warranted, and justified" mean. if you cant present us with the method you used to arrive at your belief, and you cannot even show us why your belief is more rational than a belief in santa claus (which i hope we all agree is IRrational), then your belief is NOT "rational, warranted, and justified." merely asserting that it is does not make it so.

Science clearly cannot be used. That does not diminish the value of the experience in any way to myself. It simply means it doesn't do you a bit of good. But since the topic in question is my rationality in this situation, that hardly matters.

science absolutely CAN be used, just as it has always been used to explain things that people once attributed to supernatural causes. neurology is a new science, but already it has dispensed with the idea that hallucinogenic drugs enable us to experience the divine.

It's a possibility. It deals with the issue. It does not lead to a logical contradiction.

it does not deal with the issue unless you can demonstrate that demons are real beings. if your defenses of holes in your original unevidenced claims are just as unevidenced themselves, then you are building a fantasy, not a coherent concept of the world.

what you are doing is exactly the same thing as carl sagan points out in his book "the demon-haunted world." excerpt here. we both agree that there is probably not a dragon in anybody's garage, regardless of the rationalizations that are presented. why do you think those same rationalizations should be given any more weight just because YOU use them?

On the contrary. I have shown time and again where my beliefs are epistemologically consistent. You may summarize and marginalize my beliefs as you wish, and there's not much I can do about it, but here, you are incorrect.

internal consistently is entirely irrelevant. the belief in carl sagan's dragon is internally consistent. the belief in russel's teapot is internally consistent. the belief in hinduism is internally consistent. yet, again, you reject ALL of these beliefs. if internal consistency is all you need to maintain a belief, then you are being irrational by rejecting these other beliefs.

I don't think you have a grasp on this argument at all, to be honest. You keep speaking as though I should match up to some evidential standard. But why? Because you, or others, have set that standard? On what basis have they set that standard? What, exactly, is the issue with disobeying that standard? Certainly not irrationality; I have already shown how my beliefs do not lead to a contradiction, and direct experience certainly is a proper basis for belief.

the reason you should hold your beliefs up to an evidential standard is the same exact reason you should hold up your doctor's beliefs up to an evidential standard when he tries to inject a foreign substance into your arm, which is the same reason you should hold your car mechanic's beliefs up to an evidential standard when he starts taking your car apart, which is the same reason you should hold an airplane engineer's beliefs up to an evidential standard when you want to travel to europe.

that reason is because evidential standards are the ONLY known way to ensure we arent fooling ourselves. i have asked you to present some other way we can know that, but you have utterly failed to give one. you havent even tried to make an attempt!

In fact, I have been nothing but logical. You, on the other hand, fault me for not being scientific, but you cannot place an experience in a beaker. I would recommend a good course in philosophy, more particularly epistemology, if you wish to better understand the nature of belief.

a good course on philosophy sounds like a good idea, but im afraid that you are the one that is sorely in need of one. your approach to epistemology amounts to little more than "i assert X, therefore X." this may be internally consistent, and it may fly in philosophy departments, but no sane person uses this reasoning when deciding whether or not to step off of a ten story building. why do you suppose this is?

I have no reason to believe my experience was not valid (in other words, I recognize the faults and limitations of science). It would be irrational for me to consider it invalid, if I found no reason to.

you have 6 billion reasons to believe your experience was not valid. that is, 6 billion other human beings all claiming to have had experiences just as powerful as yours but mutually exclusive to yours.

would you agree that a schizophrenic, if he could apply rational thought, would have a good reason to believe the voices he hears are not real voices? the fact that everybody else is telling him that there arent any voices is more than enough reason to at least put his belief to the test. you clearly fear testing. you fear it so much that you assert it isnt even possible.

Of course, anyone could invent an experience, and then claim rationality on that point. While we could not argue with them (after all, how could we really know they did not experience that), it would not change the fact that they were ultimately irrational. Yet, we could not argue such a point with them. We are limited in our scope.

and again you show your arrogance. you are perfectly happy to admit everybody else could falsely experience something, but never you. you are immune to it. you plead with me to not call you arrogant, but that is exactly what you are.

I'm not in the business of providing evidence on theological matters. I'm pretty much against all forms of modern apologetics.

if you have no evidence, then show us how you tell the difference between truth and delusion. ive been asking theists for this method for YEARS, and not a single one of you can ever supply a way to do it. but that never stops you from continuing to assert your absurd claims. its arrogance all the way.

 

[snex]

God works in many mysterious ways, and is good at covering his tracks. Technically there can be no physical proof. But there is proof, but it is on human word. Such as glimpses of Guardian
Angels, in car wrecks. You can choose not to believe them but guess what, they saw it. They may not have saw it, but their mind is conditioned into believing that they did see it. Such as atheistic cases, in which they are in denial so long they will not by any means even on sight believe that it is true. Their mind will create an illusion or alternate event to cover up what actually happened in order negate a massive event that could alter their views so much that it causes brain problems. Or so I've heard...not 100% sure about the scientific info there but O'm about 80% on it.

what this sounds like is 100% bull****.

why is it that only christians see guardian angels, and only muslims see visions of allah, and only catholics see the virgin mary? maybe its not the atheists' minds who are blocking out visual images, but the theists' minds that are inventing them. ever think of that one?

its testable with science btw. all you do is force the brain into a similar state using drugs and see what happens. ill leave it to you to go read the studies and find out.

 

[Chaco]

what this sounds like is 100% bull****.

why is it that only christians see guardian angels, and only muslims see visions of allah, and only catholics see the virgin mary? maybe its not the atheists' minds who are blocking out visual images, but the theists' minds that are inventing them. ever think of that one?

its testable with science btw. all you do is force the brain into a similar state using drugs and see what happens. ill leave it to you to go read the studies and find out.

I agree, I believe that they think they see the angles. Although it is merely an illusion, of light.

Yes, of course, but when using drugs the ability to think clearly is lost, compared to the semi-lost thinking of a crisis state.

 

[snex]

I agree, I believe that they think they see the angles. Although it is merely an illusion, of light.

Yes, of course, but when using drugs the ability to think clearly is lost, compared to the semi-lost thinking of a crisis state.

they are not seeing an illusion of light at all. there is no light entering their eyes. what they are seeing is entirely generated within their own brain. and if you have ever actually been in a near-fatal car accident, im pretty sure youd agree that your thinking is a little more than "semi-lost."

 

[Chaco]

they are not seeing an illusion of light at all. there is no light entering their eyes. what they are seeing is entirely generated within their own brain. and if you have ever actually been in a near-fatal car accident, im pretty sure youd agree that your thinking is a little more than "semi-lost."

Well, fatal is a different story. Good point.

 

[AltF4]

I like to think Christianity has more of a reputation going for it than something you made up to show how silly religious belief is. There are over a billion people who believe something resembling Christianity. There might be one or two people who believe in the Invisible Pink Unicorn.

Sheer numbers, of course, does not determine what is right, but it does mean something is, at least, worth looking in to.

Clearly it is "worthy looking in to". "Looking in to" it is exactly what we're doing right now. Do not avoid the point.

You are asserting to me that there is an invisible man in the sky, who is sometimes vengeful and angry, and sometimes loving and graceful. You are telling me that there is an elaborate system of angels and demons (all of which are invisible) and rituals that must be done to appease them.

What reason can you give me to think that any of this is true? You have yet to produce one. All you're doing is trying to defend your beliefs (poorly) against being contradictory. Being consistent is not sufficient, all this nonsense must also be true.

Obviously, you believe it to be true. I do not take you to be an idiot, so there must be some reason you believe in all of these outlandish tales. What might they be?

 

[pockyD]

Clearly it is "worthy looking in to". "Looking in to" it is exactly what we're doing right now. Do not avoid the point.

He meant that the "sheer numbers" popularity of Christianity was worth looking into as opposed to discarding it as 'the masses are idiots'

What reason can you give me to think that any of this is true? You have yet to produce one. All you're doing is trying to defend your beliefs (poorly) against being contradictory. Being consistent is not sufficient, all this nonsense must also be true.

Given the title of the topic, I would find that having a "consistent" viewpoint is enough to understand how someone could believe in God, whether or not God actually exists.

 

[snex]

Given the title of the topic, I would find that having a "consistent" viewpoint is enough to understand how someone could believe in God, whether or not God actually exists.

you do realize that there are infinitely many "consistent" viewpoints that not only do you disbelieve, you would call anybody that believed them an idiot, dont you?

 

[pockyD]

To me, the validity of your beliefs can only be determined by the sum of your own experiences

I wouldn't blame a 8-year old for believing in santa or the tooth fairy if his/her parents worked hard to keep up the illusion

edit: to clarify, "valid" from their own perspective (such that they "could" believe)

the fact that the 8-year old genuinely believes in santa wouldn't change my belief that he clearly doesn't exist

 

[snex]

To me, the validity of your beliefs can only be determined by the sum of your own experiences

so its solipsism then, is it? the last line of defense for a defeated theist.

 

[pockyD]

Perhaps the Christian isn't conscious of it, but they only hold their set of beliefs based on what they know, and I don't understand why the fact that plenty of people in the world don't have the desire or resources to look deeper into matters such like this affects the possibility that they hold such beliefs

It's true that it's much easier to just believe in God and hand-wave/ignore all the "difficult" questions, but taking the "easy way out" comes pretty naturally for humanity

 

[snex]

It's true that it's much easier to just believe in God and hand-wave/ignore all the "difficult" questions, but taking the "easy way out" comes pretty naturally for humanity

and thats exactly the problem we are trying to fix. taking the easy way out is what caused the islamic and roman golden ages to fall. if we dont fix it, we are next.

 

[Chaco]

That's where the difficult questions bring you closer to your religion.

EDIT: Snex, I just remembered a history altering event in the christian favor. Have you ever heard of "The Battle of Milvian Bridge" ? Well, if you haven't, it is called the Vision of Constantine and here is the Wiki article, if you want another one I will definitely get it for you. This goes back to what we were recently talking about, the vision of angels.

"It is commonly stated that on the evening of October 27, with the armies preparing for battle, Constantine had a vision which lead him to fight under the protection of the Christian God. The details of that vision, however, differ between the sources reporting it. It is believed that the sign of the cross appeared and Constantine heard "In this sign, you shall conquer" in Greek.

Lactantius states that, in the night before the battle, Constantine was commanded in a dream to "delineate the heavenly sign on the shields of his soldiers" (de mort. pers. 44,5). He obeyed and marked the shields with a sign "denoting Christ". Lactantius describes that sign as a "staurogram", or a Latin cross with its upper end rounded in a P-like fashion. There is no certain evidence that Constantine ever used that sign, opposed to the better known chi-rho sign described by Eusebius.

From Eusebius, two accounts of the battle survive. The first, shorter one in the Ecclesiastical History leaves no doubt that God helped Constantine but doesn't mention any vision. In his later Life of Constantine, Eusebius gives a detailed account of a vision and stresses that he had heard the story from the emperor himself. According to this version, Constantine with his army was marching somewhere (Eusebius doesn't specify the actual location of the event, but it clearly isn't in the camp at Rome), when he looked up to the sun and saw a cross of light above it, and with it the Greek words "Εν Τούτωι Νίκα". The Latin translation is in hoc signo vinces — "In this (sign), conquer". At first he was unsure of the meaning of the apparition, but in the following night he had a dream in which Christ explained to him that he should use the sign against his enemies. Eusebius then continues to describe the labarum, the military standard used by Constantine in his later wars against Licinius, showing the chi-rho sign.

Those two accounts can hardly be reconciled with each other, though they have been merged in popular notion into Constantine seeing the Chi-Rho sign at the evening before battle. Both authors agree that the sign wasn't readily understandable to denote Christ, which corresponds to the fact that there is no certain evidence of the use of chi-rho as a Christian sign before Constantine. Its first appearance is on a Constantinian silver coin from c. 315, which proves that Constantine did use the sign at that time, though not very prominently. He made extensive use of the Chi-Rho and the Labarum only later in the conflict with Licinius.

As the god Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun, featured prominently on Constantinian coins and monuments in the years before and after the battle, the vision has been interpreted in a solar context (e.g. as a halo phenomenon), which would have been reshaped to fit with the Christian beliefs of the later Constantine."

 

[GhostAnime]

or rather further away since religions don't answer all the questions logically and you're just told with circular logic.

 

[snex]

That's where the difficult questions bring you closer to your religion.

anybody who is brought closer to a belief by making up answers to difficult questions about it is simply not being honest with himself. when a difficult question plagues a scientist, he doesnt simply make up answers, he TESTS THOSE ANSWERS for validity.

you seem to have the first half down, but you refuse to do the testing part. why? if your answers are correct, no test can knock them down. what are you afraid of?

 

[Chaco]

anybody who is brought closer to a belief by making up answers to difficult questions about it is simply not being honest with himself. when a difficult question plagues a scientist, he doesnt simply make up answers, he TESTS THOSE ANSWERS for validity.

you seem to have the first half down, but you refuse to do the testing part. why? if your answers are correct, no test can knock them down. what are you afraid of?

I hate to break it to you, I'm 15 years old. I can not run of by some whim and perform tests.

And also, view my last post, I edited it.

 

[snex]

I hate to break it to you, I'm 15 years old. I can not run of by some whim and perform tests.

And also, view my last post, I edited it.

testing theistic beliefs is trivially easy. you dont have to do any experiments whatsoever. all you have to do is take any given belief, write down every logical implication it entails, and find the absurdities.

belief: god knows the future

implication: god knows whether or not snex will go to hell
implication: god had this knowledge even prior to creating snex or the universe
implication: god chose to create the universe with snex in it anyway
implication: if "snex will go to hell" is a part of god's knowledge, there is nothing snex can ever do to avoid hell

and at this point, there is a clear conflict. you simply cannot reconcile these logical implications with the rest of christianity.

your post about constantine no more supports christianity than stories about other sects winning battles after praying supports the existence of those gods.

 

[tissue]

you still dont seem to understand what "rational, warranted, and justified" mean. if you cant present us with the method you used to arrive at your belief, and you cannot even show us why your belief is more rational than a belief in santa claus (which i hope we all agree is IRrational), then your belief is NOT "rational, warranted, and justified." merely asserting that it is does not make it so.

Snex, I'm not sure what else you want from me. I've already argued that my belief of God is derived from my "divine sense" as outlined by Calvin, through which I have direct and basic experience of who God is, and from this experience, my belief in God is cemented. This is perfectly rational.

I really don't know how to make this more basic or clear. This is elementary epistemology.

science absolutely CAN be used, just as it has always been used to explain things that people once attributed to supernatural causes. neurology is a new science, but already it has dispensed with the idea that hallucinogenic drugs enable us to experience the divine.

I can tell you right now that using the scientific method on my religious experience would be a waste of time.

it does not deal with the issue unless you can demonstrate that demons are real beings. if your defenses of holes in your original unevidenced claims are just as unevidenced themselves, then you are building a fantasy, not a coherent concept of the world.

My point is not to create a system that correctly describes the world. My purpose is to show that such a system could be created. I have just presented a possibility that is not illogical.

I am tired, and need more sleep. When I have more time, I shall address the rest of your points.

 

[snex]

Snex, I'm not sure what else you want from me. I've already argued that my belief of God is derived from my "divine sense" as outlined by Calvin, through which I have direct and basic experience of who God is, and from this experience, my belief in God is cemented. This is perfectly rational.

this is mere assertion, not an argument. take a look at the room you are in. it is the "debate hall." we debate things here. and to debate things, you need to follow the proper debate format. "assert, assert, assert" is NOT debating. it is you being arrogant.

I really don't know how to make this more basic or clear. This is elementary epistemology.

this must be a joke. asserting that X is true because you say so is NOT elementary epistemology, its elementary SCHOOL. this is how a child behaves, not a rational adult.

I can tell you right now that using the scientific method on my religious experience would be a waste of time.

that is why you should stop believing it. the scientific method is the only known way to verify beliefs.

My point is not to create a system that correctly describes the world. My purpose is to show that such a system could be created. I have just presented a possibility that is not illogical.

all due respect, nobody gives a flying **** if you can create a consistent but wrong picture of the world. as already stated, anybody can do this using any mythology they like. this does NOT make you a rational person. it does not even make you a SANE person. it just makes you a deluded person who is willing to abandon all intellectual honesty just to maintain the delusion.

remember, this is the DEBATE hall, not "my god's **** is bigger than your god's ****." if you have a DEBATE, then bring it. i am not interested in your mental masturbation.

 

[Chaco]

EDIT: Snex, I just remembered a history altering event in the christian favor. Have you ever heard of "The Battle of Milvian Bridge" ? Well, if you haven't, it is called the Vision of Constantine and here is the Wiki article, if you want another one I will definitely get it for you. This goes back to what we were recently talking about, the vision of angels.

"It is commonly stated that on the evening of October 27, with the armies preparing for battle, Constantine had a vision which lead him to fight under the protection of the Christian God. The details of that vision, however, differ between the sources reporting it. It is believed that the sign of the cross appeared and Constantine heard "In this sign, you shall conquer" in Greek.

Lactantius states that, in the night before the battle, Constantine was commanded in a dream to "delineate the heavenly sign on the shields of his soldiers" (de mort. pers. 44,5). He obeyed and marked the shields with a sign "denoting Christ". Lactantius describes that sign as a "staurogram", or a Latin cross with its upper end rounded in a P-like fashion. There is no certain evidence that Constantine ever used that sign, opposed to the better known chi-rho sign described by Eusebius.

From Eusebius, two accounts of the battle survive. The first, shorter one in the Ecclesiastical History leaves no doubt that God helped Constantine but doesn't mention any vision. In his later Life of Constantine, Eusebius gives a detailed account of a vision and stresses that he had heard the story from the emperor himself. According to this version, Constantine with his army was marching somewhere (Eusebius doesn't specify the actual location of the event, but it clearly isn't in the camp at Rome), when he looked up to the sun and saw a cross of light above it, and with it the Greek words "Εν Τούτωι Νίκα". The Latin translation is in hoc signo vinces — "In this (sign), conquer". At first he was unsure of the meaning of the apparition, but in the following night he had a dream in which Christ explained to him that he should use the sign against his enemies. Eusebius then continues to describe the labarum, the military standard used by Constantine in his later wars against Licinius, showing the chi-rho sign.

Those two accounts can hardly be reconciled with each other, though they have been merged in popular notion into Constantine seeing the Chi-Rho sign at the evening before battle. Both authors agree that the sign wasn't readily understandable to denote Christ, which corresponds to the fact that there is no certain evidence of the use of chi-rho as a Christian sign before Constantine. Its first appearance is on a Constantinian silver coin from c. 315, which proves that Constantine did use the sign at that time, though not very prominently. He made extensive use of the Chi-Rho and the Labarum only later in the conflict with Licinius.

As the god Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun, featured prominently on Constantinian coins and monuments in the years before and after the battle, the vision has been interpreted in a solar context (e.g. as a halo phenomenon), which would have been reshaped to fit with the Christian beliefs of the later Constantine."

Quoting for you to see, or you ignored it.;

 

[Peeze]

testing theistic beliefs is trivially easy. you dont have to do any experiments whatsoever. all you have to do is take any given belief, write down every logical implication it entails, and find the absurdities.

belief: god knows the future

implication: god knows whether or not snex will go to hell
implication: god had this knowledge even prior to creating snex or the universe
implication: god chose to create the universe with snex in it anyway
implication: if "snex will go to hell" is a part of god's knowledge, there is nothing snex can ever do to avoid hell

and at this point, there is a clear conflict. you simply cannot reconcile these logical implications with the rest of christianity.

your post about constantine no more supports christianity than stories about other sects winning battles after praying supports the existence of those gods.

Your confusing foreknowledge with foreordaining.
If i see somebody i know is a former con with a bad attitude and i tell you "snex he'll beat you up if you call him mexican", and you chose to call him mexican and he beats you up, did i cause it? I knew what would come if you didnt avoid it, but i certainly didnt cause it. i gave you a choice to avoid danger and you didnt.

It wouldnt be loving to set you up for failure. Gods foreknowledge must therefore be selective. (I reach this conclusion because Prov 27:11 says humans by their choices can make God happy. If it was all predetermined we couldnt make knowledgeable deliberate deciscions to please god could we?) but eh thats my reasoning.

So revise your belief/implication system

belief:god has the ability to see the future

implication:god can choose to see if your obedient or not
implication:snex chooses to listen to god(lol)
implication:snex is rewarded god is happy

 

[snex]

Your confusing foreknowledge with foreordaining.
If i see somebody i know is a former con with a bad attitude and i tell you "snex he'll beat you up if you call him mexican", and you chose to call him mexican and he beats you up, did i cause it? I knew what would come if you didnt avoid it, but i certainly didnt cause it. i gave you a choice to avoid danger and you didnt.

It wouldnt be loving to set you up for failure. Gods foreknowledge must therefore be selective. (I reach this conclusion because Prov 27:11 says humans by their choices can make God happy. If it was all predetermined we couldnt make knowledgeable deliberate deciscions to please god could we?) but eh thats my reasoning.

So revise your belief/implication system

belief:god has the ability to see the future

implication:god can choose to see if your obedient or not
implication:snex chooses to listen to god(lol)
implication:snex is rewarded god is happy

your response shows that you didnt even read my post. read it again. god CHOSE to CREATE THE UNIVERSE in which i CANNOT POSSIBLY avoid hell. your analogy is just garbage.

a better analogy is this:

you write a program, lets call it "the $ims" - and this program is based on having little guys walk around in circles. all you program the guys to do is walk in circles, and nothing else. then you type in "HEY YOU GUYS, STOP WALKING IN CIRCLES, IT ANGERS ME!"

but YOU programmed them to do it. they are deterministic pieces of code that cannot POSSIBLY do anything else. they walk in circles because YOU created the universe in which you KNEW they would do so.

 

[Peeze]

YOU didnt read my post. You have no evidence proving god "programmed" you to act a certain way.
Until you do your analogy is garbage.

 

[snex]

YOU didnt read my post. You have no evidence proving god "programmed" you to act a certain way.
Until you do your analogy is garbage.

once again, you demonstrate your refusal to read.

god existed before he created the universe, correct?

so before god created the universe, he could imagine all the various universes he could possibly create.

in some of those universes, i would go to heaven, and in some of those universes, i would go to hell - and god KNEW which ones were which.

god chose to create a universe in which i would go to hell, and there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING i can do about it.

the analogy still holds. before you sat down at your computer, you could imagine all the ways you could write your program. you could write a program in which the guys would walk in circles, squares, triangles, or do something else entirely. yet once you sat down, YOU made the decision to make them go in circles.

 

[EC_Joey]

YOU didnt read my post. You have no evidence proving god "programmed" you to act a certain way.
Until you do your analogy is garbage.

You have no evidence proving God gave us free will. Of course, this is assuming that God exists, for which there is no evidence, either.

 

[RDK]

YOU didnt read my post. You have no evidence proving god "programmed" you to act a certain way.
Until you do your analogy is garbage.

Don't be an idiot.

You assumed God created us, so by definition he must have "programmed" virtually all the possible actions we could do, including sin. In creating us, God supposedly gave us the capacity to sin.