h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Frs

No specific society; old fruit, it was merely a comment on Gif's pessimism jibe, which itself had been a response to my contribution to the 'inherent sinfulness of the human heart' banter.

Let's take, as an example, though, the culture of violence amongst a small percentage of teenage male society. A young man in our church became a believer 3 months ago. He had been well involved in that culture of violence and has narrowly (literally millimetres) escaped being knifed since then. He's RECOGNIZED how meaningless and miserable his life was, and has been DRAMATICALLY changed by the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ.

The point I'm making is that he had to ADMIT SOMETHING WAS WRONG. It took an awareness of God's amazing love to work this miracle in his life but, it happened.

mikey2

Hi Mikey,

> I would feel optimistic for a society that recognized its inherent sickness and sought a cure!

Well, you're entitled to your opinions, but to me that's a strange kind of optimism. Almost bordering on self-loathing.

I see that RoyalCrompton over on the Bible verse thread feels much the same way. I have to ask whether this inherently sick society is the same 'society founded on Christian principles' that is mentioned so often in debates on secular morality?

Nice story about the convert, and good for him if it got him out of a life of gangs and knives. (I'm not one of those who claims that religion can never have any good effects.) But are you seriously claiming that there is anything supernatural about someone wanting to get out of that kind of life? If you're claiming it's something specifically to do with Jesus, what about all the young Muslim converts with similar stories? Or do you have different standards for evidence in favour of Christianity and evidence in favour of other religions?

Gif

Hi WG,

> Well, it worked for me. [prayer revealing God]

Ah, but perhaps Shaitan is tricking you. After all, is it not written in the Koran that some people are created to be unbelievers?

Seriously, though, is that really your argument? "I am right and everyone else is wrong"? In the spirit of inquiry, I once tried this myself and got no reply. And I am far from being alone in this. So why do some people get a 'reply' and not others? And how can you distinguish an internal feeling of 'being in contact with something' from genuine contact with an external God?

>>you could claim to believe in the Cottingley Fairies and they would have no more foundation in truth.>>
>They would have less foundation in truth.

But HOW WOULD YOU KNOW? What evidence is there for the existence of God that could not also be used for the existence of fairies? Or do you use different standards?

>Well, God has set forth in the bible how this age is going to end.

Yes, within the lifetime of Jesus' disciples. What of it?

>If you read the bible and look at what's happening in the world in these days, you'll see it getting clearer and clearer that Jesus is returning.

Yes, I read in the paper just the other day that the fourth horseman of the apocalypse had broken the seventh seal, and I couldn't help thinking that it was slightly reminiscent of Biblical prophecy. It's really only my inherent hatred of God that prevents me from accepting that.

>Israel is surrounded by enemies
Correct

>the third temple is being built
Not that I've heard. Judging by your video, you are possibly confused with 'religious extremists want the Temple rebuilt' (which has been true for 2000 years)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Temple
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Temple#Ancient_attempts_at_rebuilding
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Temple#Current_efforts_to_rebuild_the_Temple

>earthquakes and natural disasters are occurring in increasing intensity and frequency.
Or possibly you just find it easier to remember earthquakes that took place within your lifetime to ones in 1755? Do you have any source for the claim that earthquakes are becoming more frequent and more intense?

Gif

<>

Did not Descartes decide the only thing one could be certain of is the fact of one's own existence, hence the famous "I think therefore I am" quotation?

But most people go beyond being sure of their own existence. There are many things people are sure of: that the sun will rise in the morning, that there will be food in the shops for them to buy etc...

We learn to trust through experience. We also learn to trust God this way. My relationship with God gets better and my faith gets stronger as I obey him. Obeying God means doing what is right: do not steal, do not lie, do not give false testimony about others.
It involves going the extra mile, turning the other cheek. I try to live like this because I believe in God and in Jesus.

God promised that you will find him when you seek him with all of your heart. Jesus is the way to the Father, and I have to say I have found this to be true, and it is the most wonderful thing there is.

Hi WG,

He did indeed, and many people consider that to be one of the greatest statements of epistemology ever made. His subsequent attempt to prove that God exists is held in rather lower esteem, and epistemologists have tried other methods. For instance:

People believe that the sun will rise because of a combination of the evidence of their senses and 'inductive reasoning' (i.e. "it always happened in the past, so it will always happen in the future"). Of course, neither of these is infalliable, but they are usually correct. It is precisely this combination of evidence and logic that God does *not* meet.

God more closely falls into the category of a personal feeling, like happiness or being uncomfortably warm. These things can indeed feel nice (or nasty), but they are not generally held to have an external reality outside the head of the person experiencing them. We simply can't make a judgement about whether (say) there's a war going on in Afghanistan simply on the basis of whether I personally felt good when I got out of bed this morning.

So you are making a claim about physical reality - that God exists - but the evidence you are using to support it comes from your own feelings, which do not tell us anything about physical reality.

You would not accept that as evidence for a religion other than your own. Why, then, are you asking us to accept evidence that you yourself reject?

>God promised that you will find him when you seek him with all of your heart.

Then he lied, since (as I mentioned before) I have tried this in the past.

Gif

Obeying God also means not wearing mixed-fabric clothing, and various other anecdotic stuff, doesn't it?

>Then he lied, since (as I mentioned before) I have tried this in the past.

Maybe you didn't use the whole of your heart?

http://tinyurl.com/49n6pz

Hi TB,

I was just waiting for someone to say that - the link wasn't quite what I was expecting though

Perhaps someone can explain whether this is literal or metaphorical?

Gif

anhaga,
"If sin is a reality, in any meaningful sense of the word reality, is it possible, in principal, to construct a physical device which would detect -- oh, never mind."

mmmm... so beauty is not a reality?
love(parental)?
love (romantic)?
pain?

your confusion of 'reality' with 'physical' is a purely western scientific parochialism.

That's why I tinyurl'd it

'your confusion of 'reality' with 'physical' is a purely western scientific parochialism.'


No, your confusion of 'reality' with 'whatever I damn well please' is tiresome religious lazy-mindedness.

I just can't make any sort of meaningful sense of your posts mikey. It is true to say there is one thing - the human population, but within that there things which can be described as different societies. They are structured in all sorts of different ways. They are often based on very different traditions from one another. One sort that I gave as an example are the few remaining tribal hunter/gatherer style societies in remote forested regions of the world. I believe there may still be some left in the mountainous interior of Papua Guinea as well as the Amazon examples. These are societies that are about as different to our own as we can imagine. And they are lucky enough, as I said, not to have had cultural murder inflicted on their value system, not to mention the physical diseases such people bring with them, for which isolated human beings have no defences. They are certainly to be considered, to be 'lucky', IMO, to be free of the christian message.

What will happen to the 'souls' of these people, mikey, who are never going to get the chance to hear the Jesus story? They will continue to have their gods which spring from their own cultural traditions. I have seen for myself the full horror of what happened to Australian Aboriginal culture, with the 'murder' of their traditional belief systems, once the Lord was introduced to them

I notice you are doing your usual thing of completely ignoring rational points put to you about what you say. Do you really think such behaviour is a good advert for your faith. It leads to irritation and frustration on the part of people who come to discussion threads like this on h2g2, for interesting discussions and debate. It is expected that in such debate people should show a modicum of courtesy and respect for their fellow debaters, other wise conflict and sniping, and snidiness begins to break out.

Do you really wish to cause that? Because with your refusal give people the simple respect of addressing their points, simply ignoring points which inconvenient to the line you are selling, and just endlessly repeating yourself, I find myself getting really annoyed and feeling rather contemptuous. I don't enjoy that feeling. I'd prefer the feeling I get from proper discussion where my points are not simply ignored.

I sometimes think *some* Christians only come here to stir up trouble and discord by the refusal to adhere to civilised standards of debate, as we come to expect in places like this in *this* society.

(*Some* of you Christians really do seem to get off on it. <shudder at the thought&gt

If you continue with this deliberate refusal to debate properly, I can only assume you enjoy stirring up trouble. I am someone who values high quality discussion, and to see it repeatedly sabotaged, just gets me quite angry and fed up. Just so you know the results of your actions. Could you please just STOP it.

What seems to happen, Effers, is that there are some persons of faith who somehow attach themselves to ideas for which there is no evidence and sometimes counter-evidence (Garden of Eden, the soul, etc.) and name those ideas 'Truth' while they adamantly deny the truth of ideas for which there is overwhelming evidence (T. Rex didn't eat coconuts, evolution happens by natural selection, this planet is really, really old, etc.). They construct a worldview which we can't help but see as fiction while they seem to see the real world as fiction itself. As I've said many times, many ways, there can't be real communication here.

Yes I know anhaga. But I think its important for mikey to know the results of his actions. I do at least have enough respect really for mikey to feel I could make the effort to really spell it out to him, as to how it makes me feel. And also what it brings out in me as a *feeling* when he does that.

There are other Christians here, where I have so little respect for them, that I won't even bother.

I was pretty horrified to read the depth of the depravity of thought on the Bible verse thread. At least I suppose the full horror of their thought processes was spelt out. It's good to be reminded of the reality; It certainly sent a shiver down my spine. But with some of them I already knew this. And as I have mentioned in the past on this thread have experienced in real life, just what misery, unhappiness and destructiveness such thinking can result in, which is of an altogether higher order of magnitude than the frustration I feel here, which I have referred to in my post to mikey.

I do think mikey is not so utterly beyond the pale in his thinking, as some of what I saw written on that 'Bible verse' thread. I mean yes, he thinks things that can result in deep unhappiness for other human beings, but I feel with him, that is probably due to his genuine unawareness of just what can result from thinking such as his. I don't know though that he is capable of facing full in the face, the full horror of its results.

Some others of them though, I do think, do fully face it, but believe so much in the concept of divine retribution for sinners that they are perfectly happy to stand by and see the Lord's sword smiting his enemies, via hurricanes or whatever.

There are some people I know to be Christian, who would be as horrified as me to think of the Lord as a blood thirsty fiend. I in no way include them in my deepest anger, at their joy in the sadism of the Lord.

I think there may still be some hope for mikey. As for *some* others, here, no.

>>Did not Descartes decide the only thing one could be certain of is the fact of one's own existence, hence the famous "I think therefore I am" quotation?<<

This was Descartes' most egregious error of circular reasoning.

Begging the question seems quite popular with religionists

>>But most people go beyond being sure of their own existence. <<

And let us not forget either that, whatever we may think of Descartes philosophy or reasoning and religiosity , that the above quote is the precise negation of what Descartes was was setting out, which is odd, since KZWG cited him. The *only* thing Descartes thought he could not doubt away was his own mind. Now the idea that you have perfect knowledge and surety of your own mind has been undermined and queried ever since but it was a pretty radical idea for the time.

He also, famously, puts forward a version of the ontological argument for proving god's existence, which we should by know now is a terrible proof for god for all the reasons set out by Hume and Kant in particular, and many more besides.

It's related to The Cottingham Fairies of earlier: 'God is real because I have an idea of god, so he must be'

It's this tussle between apriori reasoning and empiricism that characterises the progress of philosophical discourse for centuries before empiricism gets it's act together and starts gong using long words like evidence-based-reasoning: the oppositie of a priori knowledge aposteriori.

God-bothers always use a priori logic in their meagre defences: it's true becuase I know it to be true. Ask for the evidence - the objective evidence - and it's always lacking. Strange that.

No, the evidence is not lacking.
It's there if you are able or willing to see it.
You learn to trust God in steps. The bible compares it to a baby growing and developing. At first you can cope only with milk, but later on you advance to meat. And your relationship with God grows, and you know he exists because you have a relationship with him and you know him. That's why Jesus came to die for us: to remove the sin so that we can know God. When you have a relationship with God, the idea of wondering whether he exists is absurd.

"but let him who boasts boast about this:
that he understands and knows me,
that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness,
justice and righteousness on earth,
for in these I delight,"
declares the LORD.


http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=30&chapter=9&verse=24&version=31&context=verse

I could swear I'm using English... Spraechen ze Deutch? Parlez vous Fracais? Quack? quack, quack? (from an old Far Side cartoon)

Let's try again...

I said:
God-bothers always use a priori logic in their meagre defences: it's true because (they) know it to be true. Ask for the evidence - the objective evidence - and it's always lacking. Strange that.

KZWG said:
evidence is not lacking. It's there if you are able or willing to see it.


Why would objective evidence require 'will' ? The evidence for or against something isn't a matter of wanting it to be true. Y'know you've said recently that you think natural disasters like Earthquakes are the result of bad behaviour. We have a complete explanation for earthquakes based on evidence - not gut feeling. You may want natural disasters to be part of some cosmic penance system but that doesn't make it so.

Giford asked you (13563)
HOW WOULD YOU KNOW? (a belief in fairies was less real than an belief in god) What evidence is there for the existence of God that could not also be used for the existence of fairies? Or do you use different standards?

I think we have our answer.

'No, the evidence is not lacking.
It's there if you are able or willing to see it.
You learn to trust God in steps. The bible compares it to a baby growing and developing. At first you can cope only with milk, but later on you advance to meat. And your relationship with God grows, and you know he exists because you have a relationship with him and you know him. That's why Jesus came to die for us: to remove the sin so that we can know God. When you have a relationship with God, the idea of wondering whether he exists is absurd.'

I'm afraid, KZWG, that I have trouble coping with the pap offered up as nourishment by many persons of faith.


Believe and then you'll find that your belief is all the evidence you need to believe.

I'm sorry. Your religion makes testable claims about the real world and when many of them are tested, they are proven to be untrue claims. Plus, in your case, you claim that your god is a foul, malicious creature. Why would anyone be interested in having a relationship with a malicious liar (who is scared of iron chariots)?