1. How does God know there's nothing [he] doesn't know [he] doesn't know?
2. How does God know [he] didn't spontaneously spring into existence. fully formed with memories and all, with the rest of the universe last Thursday?
3. How does God know [he]'s not just a dream in the brain of a human?
1. What is a soul?
2. Who (and/or what) has a soul?
3. Why would a soul want a body?
4. What does a soul actually do?
5. If the soul is "immaterial", how does it communicate with the material brain?
6. If you had no soul, how would you be different?
In a year not remarkable for goodwill, an outpouring of goodwill is a great way to end it.
Thanks to the mods and the backroom crew.
Thanks to all you posters, especially the ones who've started good arguments.
MERRY FESTIVE SEASON!
Nyee ha!
What real thing is denoted by the word "God"?
Qualities like
omniscient,
omnipotent,
omnipresent,
perfect,
eternal,
infinite,
spiritual,
supernatural,
immaterial
aren't qualities of real things, only of imaginary things.
So given a God who's found in reality ─ by which I mean the world...
What was the death of Jesus about?
Jesus, according to the gospels, sets out, not on a suicide mission (meaning a very dangerous mission), but on a mission to die, a seeking of death, a literal suicide.
In Mark he puts it on the table right near the start:
Mark 2:20 The days will come, when...
In the Garden story, God creates Adam, puts him in the Garden, points to “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” [the ‘Tree’], and says to Adam “of the [Tree] you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (Genesis 2:17).
A bit later God takes a rib from Adam and “made...
Judaism, Christianity and Islam are referred to, often enough, as the Abrahamic religions, which many take to be an assertion that they worship the one God.
But neither the Jews nor the Muslims worship the Trinitarian God of the Christians.
And the Jewish God never made a covenant with either...
This Pew Reseach Center report is titled "In US, Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace". I've added the emphases in the quote below.
"The religious landscape of the United States continues to change at a rapid clip. In Pew Research Center telephone surveys conducted in 2018 and 2019...
Science Today reports:
In a study published in the chemistry journal Angewandte Chemie, [chemists at Scripps Research] demonstrated that a simple compound called diamidophosphate (DAP), which was plausibly present on Earth before life arose, could have chemically knitted together tiny DNA...
As reported >here<, Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper and notorious mass murderer has died.
He was insane in a manner which didn't spare him the weight of the law.
And he was reported to have heard Jesus saying he approved of what Sutcliffe did. If you read what Sutcliffe is actually...
James Randi (1928─2020) has left the building.
One of the great skeptics, and a sworn enemy of frauds and deceivers.
No one ever collected the prize he offered for a satisfactory demonstration of paranormal powers, contact with spirits, existence of ghosts, and so on (the terms of the test to...
The bible attributes a formidable number of atrocities to God. As a small sample –
Genesis 22:9 – God orders a human sacrifice and Abraham takes him seriously (though it’s called off).
God’s rules for buying, owning, disciplining, bonking, selling &c slaves are set out in Exodus 20-21...
Cosmologists observing galaxies have been aware of apparent aberrations with standard theories of gravity since at least the 1930s, and in this century exploration of the "dark matter" hypothesis has got most attention in the science press ─ if the explanation is extra mass that we can't see...
I find the expression "God's will" is used very commonly in Christian conversation.
So I ask ─
Does Jesus have a will independent of and distinguishable from the Father's will?
Does the Ghost?
If so, which of those does 'God's will' mean?
If not, in what sense are there 'three persons'...
Up till now, the science I'd read supported the conclusion that there was never a time in earth's history when all of the land was submerged.
This report in Science Daily presents evidence that in fact the whole earth was submerged some 3.2 billion years ago. The question can't be regarded as...
"... mysteries give an air of pleasurable profundity, whereas explanations always smack of the banal."
─ Robert Sheckley, Minotaur Maze, 14
Your views?
"Cornell professor of biological and environmental engineering Dan Luo and research associate Shogo Hamada have created a DNA material capable of metabolism, in addition to self-assembly and organization."
The Science Daily report is >here<.
And the potential is boundless.
X is about to die.
At the moment of death, his soul will depart from his body.
Since the soul is real, his body will lose weight as a result.
Therefore the mass of his soul can be determined by comparing his just-before-death weight with his just-after weight.
So reasoned Dr Duncan...
If we ever encounter a particularly powerful being who can do things we can’t – create universes, destroy worlds, read thoughts, restore the dead to life, convert water to wine, become invisible, act remotely, grant wishes &c – what test will tell us whether that being is God (or, a god) or not...
What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.
─ Francis Bacon, 'On Truth'
Dear Creationists
My own view is that truth is conformity with reality. This, often called the 'correspondence' view, means that if you want to know whether a particular statement is true or not...