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Re: Who's god's god? (kudos to phemox)
[Re: jcl]
#76307
07/17/06 03:26
07/17/06 03:26
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Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 718
Wisconsin
Irish_Farmer
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Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 718
Wisconsin
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about 1000 years before jesus was born this method was used to punish slaves and people who did something "anti-religious".
Excuse me. What I should have said was that the writer of that particular book wouldn't have known about crucifixion as a means of execution. I hadn't looked up information on this that recently. But either way, the writer wouldn't have known.
Even if the writer did now, to predict that specific means of death when there's a multitude of ways to kill a person (perhaps more popular being stoning or beheading), is still pretty astonishing. Especially when you combine it with the multitude of other prophecies that were made about Jesus.
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2.) even more important is the fact that jesus was just one jesus in a big row of them.
You mean prophets? Yes, the most widely known one would be John 'the Baptist' who was beheaded during Jesus' lifetime. I don't see how that affects anything.
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here the problems of all prophets and martyrers start: with their death their ideas will die as well
jesus from nazareth though had the brilliant idea to come back from the dead and this made him way more popular then the other ones. allowing to establish a religion on his interpretation of the current religion.
Yes, he decided to rise from the dead, not to claim victory over our sin, but because he wanted to be rememberd. If I had the power to raise myself from the dead, I don't think I would use that power just so that I would be 'famous'.
If you want to imply that this was some kind of 'conspiracy', I would wonder why the followers would risk their lives, and indeed I believe pretty much every one of the disciples was killed (one was thrown off a cliff and then after surviving the fall, beaten to death).
And they would do all of this for a guy who even said that very view people would be His true followers? Matthew 7:13
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hope you dont take this personal. because its not ment that way. I think its ok to be religious i just dont like the idea that one HAS to eliminate or replace the other.
This is about the only thing really worth responding to. I agree, which is why I disagree with the whole humanist notion of science that anything involving God is immediately trash. According to them, its ok to believe in God, just don't claim He has any influence on anything...
That would be using science to elimanate God.
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Yes, that might be, but 70 years is a long time and you can't proof wether the originals were 'much younger than Jesus', this is a statement based upon pure faith and faith only. I was looking at what we do can tell for sure, more or less (besides, a copy of what? another copy? or a copy from the original?).
......Seriously.....people devote their lives to studying the history of the bible. They use methods like, corroboration between other ancient (non-biblical) texts, corroboration to actual places and events, comparing the age of the authors, so on and so forth. Its not that difficult to figure out. I highly doubt Jews would go for a religion, where all of the texts were written shortly after Jesus' death. There would need to be a historical background there first.
I'd recommend looking into a few sources before you go making claims without anything to back it up.
http://www.carm.org/seek/Bible.htm
http://www.carm.org/seek/reliable.htm
http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/tough/tough5.html
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It's not about knowing all the evidences at all. It's about making claims that make sense.
Regardless. It doesn't make sense to claim creation has no proof. Besides that it does, you would never be able to know whether or not their are any proofs. Even the best of scientists can't completely know all evidences in existence past and future. Its a 'stupid' claim to make.
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Invisible or unknown evidence is no evidence. period. Considered the topic it's highly unlikely that there ever will be evidence about a creator, let alone creation.
You guys need to get this fixation out of your head. Number one, the evidence would be for creation, not the Creator. Furthermore, if we could scientifically corroborate everything the bible says, that would be pretty good proof of that specific Creator.
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Again, it's not about exact amounts at all. The bible also stated 'more stars than sand on the beach', have any idea ho w many sand grains there are on the beach? Which beach? It doesn't say 'all beaches' and doesn't indicate how big the beach is. Eventhough our view is basically 2D when looking at the stars, we can distiquish a gradient and 3D-ish movement of stars when looking at the sky at different times. It's perfectly possible to estimate a enormous amount of stars to be out there by just looking at the sky. Infact the 'more stars than sand on the beach' statement is rather vague compared to what can really be seen!
God gave you a brain, use it.
"sand which is on the seashore"
"As the host of heaven cannot be numbered, nor the sand of the sea measured"
That implies a greater number than what one understands just by looking up at the sky. It does say what beach; it says a seashore. A seashore is pretty large. That would easily be on the order of thousands of trillions. Easily. I won't even bother calculating the percentages on that one.
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When it falls down, it's drops, in theory only about a drop is required for a succes. This is more a language issue than something else by the way.
That's why I said I wouldn't dwell on the 'drop' issue.
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'Between the backbone and the ribs' is said, and yes I expected you to come with those arguments, however just to show you how silly your bible and most of it's socalled literal explanations are, maybe those words were methaphorical for 'from the inside of the body'?
What does the Quran have to do with the bible? Furthermore, between the backbone and the ribs is inside the body, except its between the backbone and the ribs. I'm not going to keep drawing this one out, because anyone who isn't biased towards Islam and against Christianity would see that this is a ridiculous statement. Enough said. You don't agree, I'll let anyone else following this discussion decide for themselves.
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Besides, this is what the dictionary says about it;
Provide a source. I want to scrutinize it, because I'd like to know why they would add 'between the backbone and the ribcage' when it doesn't even mention any of those things.
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They have a similar construction of strategy to be able to defend against almost anything. JUST LIKE CHRISTIANITY HAS, and they are making the same kind of nonsense claims based upon some vague statements.
Christianity doesn't have to defend against anything except for people misinterpreting the bible based on their atheistic worldview. There's nothing scientifically inaccurate or falsified about it.
The only exception I can think of is the 'old age'. But now that RATE (peer reviewed) has thrown a wrench in that one, it'll be interesting to see how this all plays out.
But I really don't want to get into that here. If you want to discuss the age of the earth (and why RATE suggests a mere 6000 years of age), we can do that somewhere else. I will ignore anything you say here.
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What exactly do you mean with this? Just because you fail to understand the Quran doesn't mean it's indefensible. You see, same pointless argument made that christianity always uses in it's defense.
Christianity doesn't make any scientifically embarrassing claims. At least any testable ones. We can physically test whether or not semen comes from between the spine and the ribs.
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How could you even know, you are not God. Oww wait, the bible must have said so, right? Now I only wonder why it said these specific things that really can't be known ... not that it would ring any bells for you though.
I'm not specifically aware of any verse on this. But on the other hand, it only takes a little bit of common sense, some mild knowledge of history.
I'm not going to play this game. If you're going to say the bible makes unknowable claims, you need to back it up. Apparently it does make knowable claims. People spend their lives studying these knowable claims. On the other hand, you've spent maybe ten minutes rationalizing in your own mind the reason why no one could possibly know for sure anything about God. Which you either can't share with anyone else, or you won't for some reason (perhaps fear of scrutiny).
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Yes, I just wanted to point out how illogical your assumption was. You do not need to count up from minus infinity to reach zero.
How does one skip time?
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In the same way you do not need to wait an infinite amount of time for existing at the present moment, just as you do not weed to walk an infinite long distance for being at your present location. Yet, infinite numbers can exist as well as infinite time and infinite space. You can not reach a point in an infinite distance, but things can very well exist at that point.
I hope the difference is understandable.
I agree with the distance asessment, but not the time asessment. I guess it might be the way I visualize time. I see the 'present' as a point on a line. The only way the rest of the line even exists is if the present 'reaches' it. Give me some think on this, because this is an interesting way of looking at it. 
Thanks for the other info too. I only skimmed over it now, but it should make an interesting read tomorrow.
"The task force finds that...the unborn child is a whole human being from the moment of fertilization, that all abortions terminate the life of a human being, and that the unborn child is a separate human patient under the care of modern medicine."
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Re: Who's god's god? (kudos to phemox)
[Re: Irish_Farmer]
#76308
07/17/06 05:40
07/17/06 05:40
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Joined: Feb 2004
Posts: 718
Wisconsin
Irish_Farmer
User
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Joined: Feb 2004
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Wisconsin
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Ok. Let's take another look at time. And ignore for a moment what any author has to say about it. We can do a thought experiment that I think might elaborate my position better.
-If space was infinite, things could exist that were infinitely far away. I can agree on that.
-The number line has nothing to do with infinite time, because we're dealing with an infinite regress of cause and effect.
The number line is basically a hypothetical construct. And furthermore, 1 doesn't cause 2 and so on, so it really isn't a very good metaphor.
In order for my thought experiment to work, I think you'll have to throw away the notion that we do exist. Let's imagine away our present reality, and go to a time (assuming the big bang a priori) before the big bang.
In this 'pre-universe' state, we have an infinite regress of causes, but we don't know the final outcome yet because we can't assume our universe a priori or the experiment is contaminated (as well as illogical).
Let's call this infinite cause series ICS for a moment. In this ICS scenario, we have no initial cause, because whatever caused any given cause is preceded by an infinite amount of causes.
Furthermore, to simplify things, let's say that this series of infinite causes is just the same cause and effect leading to the same event over and over again. We'll call it event X. Event X1 leads to event X2 and so on and so forth.
Now, let's pick an arbitrary point on this series and call it event Xa. Event Xa is preceded by an infinite amount of causes. So we know that, no matter what, this event is preceded by an infinite amount of causes by nature. But something else we can assume by this Cause X is that it leads to an infinite number of Cause Xs. Event Xa will continue to cause an infinite set of Event X's for all eternity. We go a trillion years into the future and we run into an Event X again. We go a trillion trillion years into the future, and still more event Xs. Once again, we go an infinite trillion years into the future and we still run into yet another Event X.
You say that if the universe is eventually caused, then that solves the problem because even if there's infinite time, we don't have to wait for an eternity to exist. But if there is an infinite regress of causes, there will never be the effect of the universe. Therefore, we won't even get the chance to wait for an eternity. What I'm saying is that, if there is an infinite amount of causes for an effect, they'll never reach the desired effect.
If Event X were truly infinitely recurring, then it would never cease to 'recurr', and nothing except an event X will ever exist. This goes for any infinitely regressive pre-universe. If it were truly infinite, it will never cease to be anything except a pre-universe. If at any point it ceased to be a pre-universe, then in fact we would know it wasn't infinite.
If each step progressively leads closer to the universe from a 'lower' event, then it will have acheived the universe an infinite amount of time ago. Which means our universe would be dead right now because it would have existed an infinity ago. Any ascension in steps, since such ascension has no beginning, will have occurred so long ago that we would never even be able to go that far back in time. In fact, it would seem almost impossible to have occured at all.
Regardless of what's counterintuitive, I don't think there's any two ways around the problem. If you want to quote a devistating critique of this claim from that book, then please do. In the meantime, I see no reason to believe this is illogical.
Certainly, from your viewpoint, it makes sense. If we already exist, and there's an infinite regress of events/time, then we wouldn't have to wait an eternity. But if there were an infinite regress of events/time, we wouldn't even be here to consider the point.
Last edited by Irish_Farmer; 07/17/06 05:41.
"The task force finds that...the unborn child is a whole human being from the moment of fertilization, that all abortions terminate the life of a human being, and that the unborn child is a separate human patient under the care of modern medicine."
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Re: Who's god's god? (kudos to phemox)
[Re: Irish_Farmer]
#76309
07/17/06 05:44
07/17/06 05:44
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Joined: Jul 2002
Posts: 5,181
Austria
Blattsalat
Senior Expert
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Senior Expert
Joined: Jul 2002
Posts: 5,181
Austria
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i am sorry but i dont think you got my points right.
the cross was the standard punishment method for slaves and low level criminals (stoning and beheading where absolutely not popular public punishments for the romans).
also this was used against blasphemic people (usualy bound but in hard cases nailed to the cross).
the reason is simple: its an visual long term icon punishment everybody can see
all of this has happened years and years before jesus was born. a lot of prophets or messias where killed on the cross before him and a lot after him.
predicting that he would die by the cross is like predicting today that somone who robbs a bank will get punished by arresting.
the resurrection point is not somthing to argue about subernatural things or the bible its simply the observation that the only way to keep your "religion" alive (usualy religions die after the messias and his prophets died) is to make something subernatural that is big enough to leave a mark.
knowing the standard punishment leaves only two options: not to die by the cross or to get resurrected. only these two icons will show the people that you are god sent.
the scientific approach to this is not accepting that jesus is the son of god and to find evidence for that but to see who jesus from nazareth was. the end result can range from a smart man with some magic fake tricks to the son of god.
i am amazed what people like copperfield can do. and you will agree with me that he is probably not the son of god but a good magician.
if you keep the same distance to the supernatural when talking about jesus as you would do when you think about david copperfield you can investigate how much of the written is true.
keeping an emotional distance to the topic can help a lot
i have heared a lot about predictions so far but either they are so vague that you can interprete god and the world into every sentence or they simply need to be bent so much to fit that they lose all context.
also speaking about the true and proofable parts of the bible.
all of the things we know are true (to a certain point) are unimportant when you ask the question about the existence of god.
having some people march for 40 years to find a new home can be true without a problem, but it doesnt proof god nor is it important for it.
on the other hand we cant proof a burning and speaking bush.
someone coming down a mountain with 10 rules from god could have happened. again its unimportant because the vital part, the speaking god who gave him this instruction, cant be profen.
and all religious book go on and on this way.
combining true facts with fiction (or not fiction, who knows) is a usual way to write.
bram stokers dracula is good, j.verne..great ones, stories about arthur or camelot are fascinating, atlantis or the amazons,... all of them contain some truth.
the question is just how much of it.
and if we are sceptical with all the stories above, why cant we be as sceptical and questioning when it comes to religion.
do we have to accept everything said or written just because its said or written?!
the bottom line of religion is that you want to believe. for e variety of reasons and nothing said could change that.
but again, not understanding something is not reason engough to say its supernatural.
where did the universe come from? how did it come from nothing? what is "nothing"?
good questions, but because you fail to have an answer isnt profing god in any way.
science needs proof and evidence to be true, religion needs believers to be true.
we do not understand the terms infinite or nothing.
whenever i hear the word nothing i remember the beatles and how they where soaked up into the "nothing".
the funny thing was it was white. so how can it be nothing if its white? or black?
the thing we dont understand is that mater needs mater to be created. its something we asolutely cant understand that maybe just a little "white" or "black" and the infinite ammount of time are enough to "create" something.
because if the universe was created supernatural who created the time before that? and how can there be something if there is no time?
and if god can exist without time, how come that nothing else can?
did god created "white"?
cheers
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Re: Who's god's god? (kudos to phemox)
[Re: Irish_Farmer]
#76310
07/17/06 06:17
07/17/06 06:17
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,986
Frankfurt
jcl
Chief Engineer
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Chief Engineer
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,986
Frankfurt
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In this 'pre-universe' state, we have an infinite regress of causes, but we don't know the final outcome yet because we can't assume our universe a priori or the experiment is contaminated (as well as illogical).
You're assuming that all events are preceded by a sequence of causes. This, however, is not the case in nature. We've already discussed this some weeks ago -> Bell's theorem.
Under the assumption of infinite time you can also safely assume that there are infinite many events (if there is an event at all). But you can not assume that all these events are necessarily connected by cause-effect relations.
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If each step progressively leads closer to the universe from a 'lower' event, then it will have acheived the universe an infinite amount of time ago. Which means our universe would be dead right now because it would have existed an infinity ago.
No. It would only mean that many (in fact infinite many) universes would be dead right now.
Your thinking seems still restricted to the assumption that our universe, and/or our time, is in some way unique or privileged. However there is no logical reason to assume that.
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Re: Who's god's god? (kudos to phemox)
[Re: Irish_Farmer]
#76311
07/17/06 13:58
07/17/06 13:58
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Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,177
Netherlands
PHeMoX
Senior Expert
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Senior Expert
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,177
Netherlands
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Excuse me. What I should have said was that the writer of that particular book wouldn't have known about crucifixion as a means of execution. I hadn't looked up information on this that recently. But either way, the writer wouldn't have known.
Even if the writer did now, to predict that specific means of death when there's a multitude of ways to kill a person (perhaps more popular being stoning or beheading), is still pretty astonishing. Especially when you combine it with the multitude of other prophecies that were made about Jesus.
What do you mean the writer wouldn't know about this? It was a common thing to do, you can hardly miss a cross with a mourning person on it, now can ya... Anyways, yes, it might be a coincident that he predicted the 'right' way of execution, yet he could have meant another 'jesus' too. 
Besides, I could predict that the weather will be exactly 35' degrees celcius tomorrow, if I turn out to be right, that still would mean exactly nothing ... There's no way to rule out chance in such a prediction. Well, I know you might believe in angels and the like, or maybe not, but at least in those predictions by these persons with a certain power to predict. What makes you so sure it's not purely chance? I think you will reply that there are so many predictions that according to you came true, that chance is unlikely, however unless you trully believe in magic so to speak, this 'lack of chance' can only mean they have been cheating it.  It's like in a casino, if a guy get's a bit too lucky and wins too much, he becomes suspicious and they will observe and investigate it. Now explain to me why this doesn't or shouldn't apply to the biblical predictions ...
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You mean prophets? Yes, the most widely known one would be John 'the Baptist' who was beheaded during Jesus' lifetime. I don't see how that affects anything.
Well off course this matters a lot, especially for how people must have thought about prophets, but it doesn't say much about jesus being trully able to perform miracles though.
Even today there are quite some 'prophet'-like people, claiming to be able to perform all sorts of holy miracle stuff, from talking to dead people's ghosts to healing others by performing some sort of ritual. Well, not one of them has been proven to be something other than a simple fraud, still large amounts of people believe them.
In my opinion, if there really was a jesus like in the bible stated, then he most likely must have been a fraud to, we have no logical reason to believe a human to be able to perform the miracles claimed. Can't remember the name, but a very smart person once said: "There's no such thing as a 'super hero with special powers',yet it's one of mankinds most fascinating ideas to speculate about."
Cheers
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Re: Who's god's god? (kudos to phemox)
[Re: PHeMoX]
#76312
07/17/06 14:16
07/17/06 14:16
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Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,986
Frankfurt
jcl
Chief Engineer
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Chief Engineer
Joined: Jul 2000
Posts: 27,986
Frankfurt
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Quote:
In my opinion, if there really was a jesus like in the bible stated, then he most likely must have been a fraud to, we have no logical reason to believe a human to be able to perform the miracles claimed. Can't remember the name, but a very smart person once said: "There's no such thing as a 'super hero with special powers',yet it's one of mankinds most fascinating ideas to speculate about."
Jesus was most likely not a fraud. He probably didn't perform any magic tricks. He was just doing what was expected from a rabbi at his time - walking through the country and teaching people. All the magic tricks were invented hundred years later by the evangelists for propaganda reasons.
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Re: Who's god's god? (kudos to phemox)
[Re: Matt_Aufderheide]
#76316
07/18/06 16:38
07/18/06 16:38
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Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,177
Netherlands
PHeMoX
Senior Expert
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Senior Expert
Joined: Sep 2002
Posts: 8,177
Netherlands
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But people are forgetting that there is no evidence anyone like Jesus actually existed.
Yes, but there are two problems with that, a. we also can't know for sure he didn't existed and b. it would make more sense if a true story, like Blattsalat described, got exagerated and twisted and made a person look like some halfgod ...
However the thing is, it doesn't really matter because without any evidence you could off course go claim anything, so basically your point is very valid ...
Cheers
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