Deism

thanks for the input GMan.....I think I wore the other guys out......

 

what does the flood matter for anything? why do i care? maybe there was a big flood, maybe there wasnt. does a flood prove god exists?

of course there are big floods in every culture's history! old cultures always live near water and they didnt have levees, so they have massive floods all the time, like baton rouge would have if it wasnt for the levees.

if there was a worldwide flood, and the story of the bible is true, why was god drowning everyone? god sucks. why is god always slaughtering people with famines and plagues. if people are terrible, then it is his fault, he made them. god is a miserable bastard.

 

No, a flood doesn't prove God exists. It does lend additional credibility to the information in the Bible though. I think it is also very telling how many people will actively try to produce research/articles trying to disprove the flood theory. They are very reluctant to agree with anything in Bible. If you read some older, less sophisticated atheistic writings, etc. you will find they used to try and dismiss Christianity as some sort of myth; as stories about people and things that never existed or happened. More and more evidence has been produced that would have to convince all but the most skeptical people that a man named Jesus did exist and walked the earth in Palestine. Also that he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. Naturally, the part about the miracles is something that I don't expect you to accept, but you have to admit that the man was born and did die on a cross.

How about this, Martin: would you agree that there are basically two schools of thought in regard to a lot of these issues? In my opinion they line up across lines something like this:

Group 1:
belief in evolution
generally agnostic/atheistic (sometimes they fit into a Buddhist/Taoist thing)
pro-choice/pro stem cell and cloning
generally liberal (past cultures ideas, concepts are easily dismissed. Progress and the future are going to be better and mankind beliefs in the past dont' carry a lot of weight)
tend to be skeptical of the idea of absolute truth
believe man is the ultimate judge of good and evil
people can do whatever they want as long as it's consensual (pro gay marriage, homosexual rights for example)
dismiss the idea of a personalized evil (the Devil) out of hand as an antiquated superstition


Group 2:
tend to believe in creation
belief in God(organized religion or not)
generally anti-abortion/anti-cloning
generally conservative(past cultures ideas/beliefs are important and should not be dismissed simply because they are handed down from people who were not as advanced, scientifically speaking......to put it another way, change is not always good, changes have an equal chance of being good or bad)

-An interesting example of the last point is the twentieth century. We definitely made progress but we slaughtered human beings on a scale never seen before. Communism and Nazism sure were advances for mankind, weren't they? I'm not saying you would have supported them or anything. I'm just saying that new ideas can go bad just as easily as they can produce good.

believe in absolute truth

believe that God is the ultimate judge of good and evil. To say it another way there is a third party involved in every interaction between people. If I hit you and you don't like you are offended. Everybody agrees that is wrong. But what if I hit you (not you personally, you know what I mean) and you like it; then most people get confused. It seems wrong but its consensual. That's were a belief in God brings clarity and order into things. God (the third party) would be offended as our actions are not properly "ordered". That's why Christianity is against manipulating embryos for research, etc. It's not that the embryo is really so offended, it's that God is.

the majority accept the idea of the forces of evil (whether they refer to it as the Devil tends to vary quite a bit)




Obviously, I fall into the second group. I think there is plenty of evidence to support the case:

-evolution or creation: the people who support evolution would like you to believe that dust and grit coalesced and became more and more ordered until bang one day it could think and eventually come up with soaring ideas like the Trinity or calculus. I have had no experience in my life where this has happened or any example of it. Forests do not suddently produce bridges and beaches do not produce port cities. Throw in an intelligent creature like a human being and it can happen though. But that operates in the complete opposite of evolution. An intelligence bringing order on a less orderly situation.

-if you believe in creation then the Creator is a must. The rest of the conclusions flow directly from that. If a Creator exists then the third party is there and watching. It's a no brainer from there. No abortion, cloning, homosexual marriage, etc. There is an absolute truth because He exists and is the truth.

-Well then why are things so screwed up on planet earth? -The devil. I won't bore you with any more except this. There is plenty of evidence for the devil. Read a book on exorcisms and try to explain how some guy in twentieth century New York can curse in Latin or Aramaic that people haven't spoken in thousands of years or be aware of what's happening in other rooms in the house, etc. The devil exists and so does God and the angels.

 

i duno about your two groups. my two groups look like this:

1. people who believe science and accept thing we do not understand.

2, people who believe wizards and explain questions they do not understand with magic.

you make such obscene logical leaps:

haha, you figure since the uiverse exixsts, then god hates gays.

i will be honest with you. i think you think these things for two reason. 1. you are branwashed. 2. you are a coward and cannot accept reality.

and you are not alone, millions of people think like you, and have no use for rational thinking. and there isnt much i can do about it. when we discuss it, you just list one unsupported idea after the other, stringing them all together into total nonsense. god exists, god is all powerful, god is independent of time, things you somehow just know but cannot explain. it is lunacy, and i think on some level you must realize it.

disclaimer: for the billionth time, i like christians and they are intelligent people, many of them far superior to me, please excuse my honesty in regard to their ideas..

 

also there is a difference between respecting the ideas of the past in regard to science and other fields. give me a 200 year old book on politics or sociology, and it might be very very good. but a 200 year old book on science or the origins of the universe would be terrible relative to information today. even a crappy scientist today knows more about the world than the grandest genius 80 years ago. and christians, they stick with the ideas of an enlightened man of a thousand years ago... well, its worse than that. its caveman stuff.

so in that sense i do dismiss the ideas of the past, but only in some fields.

 

-Nobody believing in magic over here. I believe in miracles, not magic. The difference is that miracles take place through the power of God. Once again, you seem confused about the idea of God. If there is a God then he has the power to do miracles. If you don't believe in God, fine. But stop with the absurd contention that God doesn't have the power to do miracles, or should have a beginning, or is a material being or some other such nonsense. I mean just the hypothetical idea of God has all of th0se attributes. It's like your telling me I don't know how many sides a square or triangle has. It's just meaningless for you to continue with that. If there is a God then he would have the power to do miracles. He might choose not to but he would have that power.

-Brainwashed, huh? Well, I guess we'll just have to disagree on that one. Unless you considered it brainwashing to teach kids that 2 plus 2 is four. And that triangles have three sides. And that men and women (after having sexual relations) can produce children. Not the men, mind you. The women, they are the ones that bear the children. Still waiting for the first man to give birth. What the hell am I talking about? I'm talking about the truth damit. There is such a thing as absolute truth. The problem is you can't handle the truth...(read with the Nicholson voice) :hihi: Seriously, though, you must be some kind of nihilist or something.

-God hating gays? No, not them personally. I think he would prefer that they would stop doing harm to themselves. Can you honestly tell me that homosexuality is any kind of solution to life's problems? You might as well defend people for being alcoholics and gamblers. I don't condemn them for it and I hope they get better, but you can't tell me it's not harmful.

-I'm a coward? In what way? I don't claim to be a hero but particularly a coward seems an odd assertion. I wasn't aware I had run away from anything but I'll admit that I don't like heights. You weren't around on that skiing trip, were you?

-Unsupported ideas? What unsupported ideas? The one about God being all-powerful? Come on, it's really getting to the point I think you're just being evasive. If you're going to argue this type of thing in the future you should try bringing up some more powerful arguments, like how do I know I'm not just a brain in a vat.......and to get back to the unsupported ideas thing.....this forum is not really condusive to producing term-papers or a doctoral thesis. I'm not going to list my sources after each post. To ask me to do so is really just playing the role of spoiler.

-Martin, try this again......you did not exist before you were born. There was no Martin but now you are here. How did that happen? What was the mechanism? Sexual intercourse between a man and a women, that's how. You were created by your parents, just like they were by their's, and so on and so on. Demanding proof of that is ridiculous. I don't have to have it on film to prove it. I don't even have to have your birth certificate. It's true, you know it, I know it, and any poor soul bored enough to read this post to the finish knows it.

How about the universe? It had a beginning. All material things had a beginning. How do we know? Because material things do not exist on there own. They are here because of something before them. Take a look at anything you can see. It's here because of something before it. You, the car in the driveway, the trees outside, the planet, the sun, all of it is the result of something that came before it. The problem is you can't have a universe full of contingent things. Something has to exist in its own right. Something has to exist that is not dependent on something before. Why? Because you can't get something out of nothing, that's why. That thing that exists independently is called God. Now you can claim that that whole rant was illogical and I'm a coward and brainwashed but I think most people would disagree. I enjoy the debate though, so feel free to fire away again. I'm stuck in front of the computer in the golf shop and it's raining so there is not much going on......

 

Okay, I guess your really going to force me to go find the stuff. It'll probably take me a day or two... I'll see if I can't get something posted by tonight. Really though, the problem I have with this type of thing is that after I come up with the research/documentation and cite the sources, etc. then your next move is to produce some other article saying the opposite. In the end, they end up cancelling each other out. Like the expert witnesses in a court room often do.

Let's try and set some ground rules. My claims are the following:
-independent evidence of the existence of Pontius Piliate (independent of the Bible and Christian writings)
-independent evidence of the existence of characters in the new testament
-independent evidence of Roman control of Palestine, the Jews and the political problems they had with the Jews

-powerful circumstantial evidence for the existence of Jesus and his crucifixtion. I cannot say independent evidence because most of the evidence is from early Christian writing which I'm sure you would dismiss as biased.

I've run into this before and it's an interesting point. The idea that there is this archetypal figure in ancient myths...a dying and living God figure, etc. This just adds to the importance of the historical account of Jesus. The whole point is that the story of Jesus is not a myth but an actual account of a human being who was a certain weight, height, etc. and died in Palestine. He was not a figment of ancient myths like Beowulf or King Arthur. That's the point really, that Excaliber and Merlin, etc (feel free to insert an older myth here, I'm just not readily familiar with the characters in them) were interesting characters or embellishment but that there wasn't really a sword stuck in the stone, pulled out by only one man, etc. I completely concede that if Jesus did not exist and was only a myth then Chrisitainity is a complete hoax. Obviously, I do believe he existed. I'll try and collect some info on it for you. I don't have that type of info under the coffee table though, so you'll have to be patient.

 

you continue to assert made up things as true, for no real reason. thats basically all you do, over and over.

red and i disagree on lots of things. for example, i could argue that lower taxes is almost always better, and he can disagree, and we can both give examples or studies of why we are right. and then we talk about the merits of the information we provided or whatever, all the time dealing with the real world. and red sees the information differently, but everything we are arguing about is reality. red is not a lunatic, he just disagrees with me. thats not the case with christians.

you are different. you make wild statement and want me to accept it based on nothing. we cant even argue it because you give no reason for it. you say god exists is not material and has no beginning. and this is based completely on lies. you have no idea if god exists, or what he is like, or if he has a beginning.

then you pretend you are speaking theoretically and i have to accept the god as you define him, but that is useless. i can make up any scenario and ask you to agree that the thing i defined is as i defined it. but who cares, we are talking about reality!

like you will define triangles as having three sides. but that is not true merely because you defined it that way! it is true because of the objective reality of that statement. you cant suppose that god is an all powerful creator in the same sense that you can suppose that a triangle has 3 sides.

just hurry and admit that you have "faith" so this discussion can end in a sensible way.

 

Ok, you guys ask for sources so here goes......(does anyone here actually believe now that I have listed a source it is going to make a difference? Anyway, I'll play your game for the fun of it.......this is the definition I found on the internet (dictionary.com):

Now, let's try one more:

Now, my last question is whether or not we are communicating in english here? I'll also say I think it's really ridiculous that you made me go to the trouble of doing that. What do you gain by disputing every word in the english language? It would be much more reasonable for you to accept the definition of God shared by the rest of the english speaking world and move on to the issue of whether he exists or not.