which is entirely irrelevant, since the Bible was conceived around the 6th century

I hope you mean BC if you're talking about the old testament, which is still not accurate. Exodus is believed to have been written over a large span of time from 1000-600 BC to the form we have today.

edit: and I can't find any source of your claims outside of jubilees.

If I told you that I had an invisible pink hippo living in my apartment you would think me crazy because it is an outrageous claim. If I showed you strong evidence such as a bag full of invisible hippo poop you would have to accept it as truth. God is a magic man in the sky which is an extremely outrageous claim and should require strong evidence but there is none...

I would have to agree with that. Religions that involve god or gods think of the god as capable of magic. I think there are in fact 2 methods : magic and technology.
If technology is used, then you can understand the mechanism.
If magic is used, you can't understand it and there is no logic behind it.

How did god talk to Jesus or Moses or Mohammed? He had a communicator? Was it magic?
Why would he talk to these 3 people? Why isn't everyone equal? Why should I believe that those people talk to god or gods?

All I know is if I had infinite powers, I would help people. I would educate people. I would make the world a better place. I would not like to punish people if they don't believe in me.

Why the aggression? Both of your comments were addressed further in the rest of my post... not only was there was no cop out (I gave more than feelings and even made a well-known reading suggestion - if you really want to affirm your stance on a purely-logical basis), but also, this wasn't about the placebo effect: If homeopathy worked again and again, then we would start trying to figure out why as opposed to saying it was merely some deception to a small handful of people. Right? Or did I misunderstand what you meant?

I apologize, I was still riled up over another conversation. I didn't realize you were referencing a book, I thought you were saying that the "mere Christianity" was enough of a logical explanation which came across as extremely arrogant.

My point with the placebo was that it can work again and again. The mind is a powerful thing and if you really believe something, it can have an effect on you. I personally believe that religious people who "feel God" are having the same sort of experience as someone who's pain or depression goes away when taking a sugar pill. They want to believe so their mind is able to create that feeling within them.

Even if I go so far as to say these feelings are real and coming from an outside entity, how do you know it's from the Christian version of god, and not the Islamic or Jewish version? Technically they are all the same god, but the tenants of each religion definitely vary. Furthermore, that feeling could be inspired by any of the other many religious figures around the world. I always hear that this is a feeling, and very rarely do people describe it as direct communication... So unless this feeling comes out and says it's baby Jesus, how do you know which deity it belongs to?

Instead of asking other people to prove God's existence, ask God - ultimately if you've asked Him, even though you don't believe in Him, but you have just a shred of enough of belief to at least pray one time, and ask Him (even if you feel foolish), at that point it's His responsibility, no?

OK, so you're proposing prayer as an experiment to determine the existence of God. That's a simple enough methodology. But, it doesn't make a prediction: after I've prayed, what result should I expect? What constitutes a positive result, and what constitutes a negative result? If I don't see some sign immediately, is that evidence that God doesn't exist, or should I wait longer? How will I eliminate external factors - if lightening strikes the moment I finish praying, was that a sign, or is it just stormy today?

Mere Christianity can explain, logically, the existence of God far better than me, for anyone that actually wants to get a fair basis on whether it is logical or not, from a believer's point of view.You mean the book by CS Lewis? Unfortunately his arguments are all based on pretty unsound premises - for example, he assumes that moral laws are intuitive and inborn, rather than learned. He also suffers from a pretty severe case of anthropic bias (e.g. the water argument - if water weren't abundant then we wouldn't have evolved to make such heavy use of it, if we'd have evolved at all).

it seems to me if someone was told homeopathy would help, and they tried it, and the person was better, they would believe in it. If this happened to them again, and again, and again, they would grow in their faith of homeopathy. The reason that homeopathy is generally unaccepted, to my understanding, is that it generally doesn't work.That is one reason, but it's not the important one. The important reason is that it doesn't attempt to explain how it works, beyond some shallow claims about water having memory. Because it doesn't explain how it works, it's impossible to determine which details matter. For example, what is the correct quantity to administer? Is there a limit to how much a person should have, or how frequently they should have it? If two different homeopaths give you conflicting instructions, how do you figure out what to do?

The changes that happened in me were not changes I would have brought about on my own. I know myself well enough to know this... you know?

I don't accept the concept of 'knowing oneself well enough' to be certain about that kind of thing. On average, we're wrong about ourselves in much more significant ways than we're wrong about the world around us.

Thought exercise - you live in the country and one night an alien spaceship lands in your yard, and an alien emerges and engages in telepathy with you. The ship departs, leaving evidence of its landing - dents in the ground, scorch marks, etc. Maybe your family even see it too. But it wasn't tracked conveniently by satellites.

Explain how you prove it happened.

In this case you saw the aliens and you know that it has happened. You don't need to prove it.
There is no need to believe in aliens either. Believing in something doesn't make it true or false.

You can explain your story to others. Perhaps people who are very interested in such matters. They will build instruments, better instruments, more instruments to detect alien vessels.
You can hope that they will come back and the instruments will detect them.
The story and photos will get printed. The information will be passed along. Other countries will join in on the effort of detecting them. etc etc.

'tstrimple' said:

Yes, the timeless being is so very patient and of the thousands of ways that the situation could be resolved, God of course responds with the slaughter of innocents. Oh, sorry.. that wasn't god, it was the "angel of death". I'm sure God didn't want all those people to suffer right?

It really comes down to the fact that God of the old testament is a terrorist. Killing the innocent population in order to change the policy of the government. The difference is, if terrorists could simply kill the president, they would. God had that power and STILL decided to target the innocent instead. That really makes the God of the old testament WORSE than a simple terrorist.

wow. I'm surprised you came up with this load after saying this earlier:

And this is why you can't have intelligent conversations about religion with zealots. Irrational defense of every facet of their religion.

So explain to me how the god of the old testament is not a terrorist. Terrorism is often defined as the systematic use of terror as a form of coercion. God threw plague after plague and the Egyptians, even slaughtering innocent people in order to get what he wanted from the established government. I'm sure you can come up with justifications for why God did what he did, but you cannot argue that there was not a non-violent solution for an omnipotent entity. He could have simply teleported the Israelites out of Egypt... he could have turned their bonds into flowers or something like that. There are millions of ways of displaying power without killing innocent people, and any of them would have been less than trivial for an omnipotent god. As I said before, he could even have killed the person directly challenging him... Instead he turns his wrath to the innocents.

Edit: Are you also the type of person who only believes the earth is 6,000 years old and fossils are just there as a test of Man's faith?

I'm sure you can come up with justifications for why God did what he did, but you cannot argue that there was not a non-violent solution for an omnipotent entity. He could have simply teleported the Israelites out of Egypt... he could have turned their bonds into flowers or something like that. There are millions of ways of displaying power without killing innocent people, and any of them would have been less than trivial for an omnipotent god. As I said before, he could even have killed the person directly challenging him... Instead he turns his wrath to the innocents.

You are asking me, as a human--a member of a species whose total understanding comprises a small fraction of a small fraction of a small fraction of what there is to know, whose capabilities struggle to do anything on the scale of a city let alone a planetary scale--to try to explain why a being who knows everything and has the power to create the universe took some action.

Do you think God perceives death the way we do? For all we know after they were "slaughtered" they were visited with the most pure and limitless love, joy, and fulfillment imaginable.

Edit: Are you also the type of person who only believes the earth is 6,000 years old and fossils are just there as a test of Man's faith?


no. I am not an idiot.

Are you the type of person who believes that everyone who thinks there may be a God has no understanding of anything scientific?

OK, so you're proposing prayer as an experiment to determine the existence of God. That's a simple enough methodology. But, it doesn't make a prediction: after I've prayed, what result should I expect? What constitutes a positive result, and what constitutes a negative result? If I don't see some sign immediately, is that evidence that God doesn't exist, or should I wait longer? How will I eliminate external factors - if lightening strikes the moment I finish praying, was that a sign, or is it just stormy today?

Logically, what would come next? You can certainly make a prediction... but since Christianity is based on faith, your predication must account for that - it can still be logical.
1) You would continue to sway on the doesn't-exist side - I mean why wouldn't you?
2) You don't know what would prove to you without a doubt that He exists, so you can't predict what might happen.
3) You can however predict that either
3a) He doesn't prove it to you, so, well, nothing as far as you're concerned.
3b) He proves it to you. And since you don't know what to look for/eliminate, you already have faith it will be in a way that is unexpected. It should be fairly obvious that while you don't need logic to have faith, and you don't need faith to be logical, logic and faith are not mutually exclusive...

You mean the book by CS Lewis? Unfortunately his arguments are all based on pretty unsound premises - for example, he assumes that moral laws are intuitive and inborn, rather than learned. He also suffers from a pretty severe case of anthropic bias (e.g. the water argument - if water weren't abundant then we wouldn't have evolved to make such heavy use of it, if we'd have evolved at all).

I'm sorry I meant Basic Christianity.

That is one reason, but it's not the important one. The important reason is that it doesn't attempt to explain how it works, beyond some shallow claims about water having memory. Because it doesn't explain how it works, it's impossible to determine which details matter. For example, what is the correct quantity to administer? Is there a limit to how much a person should have, or how frequently they should have it? If two different homeopaths give you conflicting instructions, how do you figure out what to do?

If it worked, we would almost certainly put more effort into figuring out how and why it works. Chances are we'd still be wrong - in school I learned there are 5 definitive areas of taste on the tongue and now they say that's not true (or you can just try it yourself). On the other hand, if you believe in Christ, you tend to believe God tells us how and why it works. And again proving something becomes essentially irrelevant... we (should) move on to the next logical step... living it. No?

I don't accept the concept of 'knowing oneself well enough' to be certain about that kind of thing. On average, we're wrong about ourselves in much more significant ways than we're wrong about the world around us.

Ok fair enough, but if everything inside you changed ie. your desires, your convictions (call it what you want), and even stuff that once seemed illogical seems logical now as if a veil was lifted, you don't really miss that kind of thing, or get it wrong. Same goes with people around you. Ie if heroin addict Joe goes through the best programs, relapses every time, goes to jail multiple times, and always goes back to heroin, and then one day stops forever including other sensual substitutes, and claims it was God, there's slightly more evidence. When this happens in a variety of situations, with a variety of people that you do "know quite well", with dramatic changes about them which most would consider good changes... the evidence stacks up more and more. Each case can be explained in and of itself, sure, but when it happens to you, they start to become pretty credible... this is where I'm coming from and it's rather hard to show that aspect without you actually experiencing it I suppose.

no. I am not an idiot.

Ok so you seem to believe in God. Out of the whole Bible, we have, if we're generous, maybe 11 chapters on creation? He left out nearly every medium and fine level of detail on the matter... so I'm sort of on the "Only God knows how old the earth is" point of view. I'm also pretty familiar with both sides of the 6,000ish years old argument. There are valid reasons for both points of view. Smart people (at least much smarter than me) have logically concluded that it is 6,000ish years old. And smart people (at least much smarter than me) have logically concluded that it is way older. But why would you call those who believe it actually is 6,000 years old idiots?

You are asking me, as a human--a member of a species whose total understanding comprises a small fraction of a small fraction of a small fraction of what there is to know, whose capabilities struggle to do anything on the scale of a city let alone a planetary scale--to try to explain why a being who knows everything and has the power to create the universe took some action.

So you have nothing other than the unknowable God defense. Got it. As i said, it's impossible to have rational discussions with people like you on religion. You always fall back on the same old circular arguments.

[size=2]no. I am not an idiot.</blockquote><br /> <br /> <br /> Ok then. Is the bible infallible?