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Do You Believe In God, Why? Don't You Believe In God, Why?

S

Skywalker

Well-Known Member
Subduction Zone said:
You just contradicted yourself again. If God was just he would not punish people for false crimes. And the punishment would meet the level of the crimes and no more. Your version of God is evil and unjust. The judge example fails terribly. Nor can a judge allow another to serve the sentence of another if he is a just. Contradictions upon contradictions. You just believe it because you were brought up to believe it. Not because it is logical. Your version of God fails all sorts of logical tests.
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How are sins false crimes? Sins hurt ourselves and God.

The amount of time a crime takes is doesn't determine the punishment.

Jesus chose to serve our sentence on the cross.
 
S

Skywalker

Well-Known Member
Subduction Zone said:
LOL!! The end of the world has been predicted to be soon every since Jesus's death. You have forgotten his worst failed prophesy again.
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The verse about they won't die until they see the kingdom of Jesus is a reference to the spiritual kingdom of Jesus. Judaism believes that there will be two Messiahs or a Messiah who fulfills all the prophecies in one coming. The Bib'es interpretation is more consistent and likely, and therefore, before the second coming of Jesus, there will be things like his kingdom being established spiritually.
 
S

Skywalker

Well-Known Member
Subduction Zone said:
Even before the crusades. Changes in religion are usually done through political force. That was largely how Christianity spread to Europe and from there to the rest of the world. It began soon after the Roman emperor became a Christian. Don't believe the stories that apologists tell you. They lie far more often than they tell the truth:

Interview — Converting By the Sword | Christian History Magazine

By the way, the above is a rare somewhat honest Christian source.
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Christians have apologized for the Crusades. They were actions done by human beings. Crusades: Christians Apologize for Ancient Wrongs

Lynn Green entered with apprehension a Muslim gathering at a Turkish mosque in Cologne, Germany, on Easter.

In one of the cities where the medieval Crusades began in 1096, the veteran Youth with a Mission staffer was accompanied by other Christians determined to retrace the steps of the eleventh-century Crusaders and to apologize to Muslims and Jews for the atrocities committed against their forebears.

The Muslim imam's public response startled Green and the others. "When I heard the nature of your message, I was astonished and filled with hope," he told the crowd. "I thought to myself, 'Whoever had this idea must have had an epiphany.'" In further conversation, the imam told Green that many Muslims had begun examining their sins against Christians and Jews but have been unclear about what they should do. The repentance offered by Christians because of the Crusades has set an example of apologizing for Muslims to follow, the imam said.

The effort is being called the "Reconciliation Walk." And the 2,000-mile, three-year walk across Europe, through the Balkans and Turkey, then south to Jerusalem, seeks to build bridges of understanding and to reverse a legacy of animosity among three of the world's most prominent religions.

In Cologne, loud, sustained applause followed as 125 Christians formally presented the Reconciliation Walk declaration of apology in Turkish, German, and English to about 200 Muslim disciples. The imam, the most senior Muslim teacher in Europe, sent copies of the statement to the 600 mosques throughout the continent. With this achievement, the walk had a promising beginning in April.


REMOVING ENMITY: Green says the purpose of the walk, an independent initiative involving many Christian groups, is to remove enmity ...
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Subduction Zone

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Skywalker said:
If a lawyer or a judge took the place of a criminal, in a sense they would be saving them from the laws of their system but it doesn't take away from what they did.
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And we have gone over this failed analogy time and time again. Try to find a new argument. You lost this one.
 
janesix

janesix

Active Member
Polymath257 said:
OK, that gets us started. An octave is 2:1, a fifth 3:2, and a fourth 4:3, for ratios

2, 1.5, and 1.33333.

The square roots of 2,3, and 5 are 1.41421, 1.73205, and 2.23607, all to 5 decimal places. The combined list is, in order,

1.33333, 1.41421, 1.5, 1.73205, 2.00000, and 2.23607

The distances from the sun to the nearest stars are

Proxima Centauri: 4.24 light years
Alpha Centauri: 4.36 light years
Barnard's star: 5.96 light years
Luhman 16: 6.50 light years
WISE-0855: 7.26 light years
Wolf 359: 7.56 light years
Lalande 21185: 8.31 light years
Sirius A: 8.31 light years
Sirius B: 8.66 light years
Ross 154: 9.70 light years
Ross 248: 10.29 light years
Epsilon Eridani: 10.45 light years

I can continue, but the ratios of the distances are pretty scattered already and don't get any better for your case. In essence, they are pretty much what we expect for a random distribution of distances.

Care to comment?
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Not yet. I still have to compare the stars to each other, and I need to get that information.
 
janesix

janesix

Active Member
Valjean said:
Mutation was not the 1ry driver of the changes, nor were they coincidental.
You don't seem to know how natural selection works. It's not coincidence. It's selection.
Of course the animals adapted to their environments. How would they not? Sexual animals reproduce with natural variation. The offspring differ from each other -- just look at a litter of puppies.

The variation is caused by gene mixing at fertilization, not mutation, and natural proliferation of the better adapted variants, over generations, is what causes the adaptations you noted.

No God is needed, just natural selection -- one of the mechanisms of evolution.

Out of curiosity, how do you think the animals "got the mutations they needed?"
And note -- I ask "how," not "who." Goddidit is not how.
What mechanism do you think accounts for the changes?
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I don't know. Since everything, every system, including organisms, is connected, then it has to be something like the fabric of the universe. Which is itself an organism, a thinking and moving being. The Universe gives other organisms information. I know this from experience.
 
Q

QuestioningMind

Well-Known Member
thomas t said:
confirmation bias is ok, so long as the evidence presented is valid, I think. Evidence counts, I think.
Not the method of arriving at it.
The evidence itself is independent of the method of how it was achieved, i think.
Great inventions often were a byproduct of some other process, for instance X-Ray.
They wantd to explore something else, initially, if I'm well informed.
... if the principle of parsimony applies, yes I do.


Lets put it the other way round:
there is no reason to assume that the love should be restricted to acting in one particular way only.
In contrast, chemicals are often restricted to affect in one part of the body and not the other, as far as I know. Should I present an example?

Chemicals are known for being active on particular parts of the body only, as far as I know.

As far as I know, there is no evidence at all that chemicals that affect our body inone way, are likely to do so in another way, too.
If you claim otherwise, present the evidence please.

In contrast, we know that loving persons who show their love in one way... are likely to show it in another, too.
This is at least the way I see things here.

Long story short, there is a difference between chemicals and persons in the way they are reported to act.
Initially, I wrote "higher force"... so let's take "person" in the broadest sense, please.,

It's a good discussion I think, thank you.
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confirmation bias is ok, so long as the evidence presented is valid, I think. Evidence counts, I think.
Not the method of arriving at it.

No, confirmation bias is NOT okay... IF your goal is to find the actual truth. Since the 'evidence' for your loving being is the EXACT same as the evidence for my chemical, as soon as you decide to accept one and discard the other you've demonstrated that you are MORE interested in confirming what you WANT to believe than you are in determining the actual truth.

Chemicals are known for being active on particular parts of the body only, as far as I know.
As far as I know, there is no evidence at all that chemicals that affect our body inone way, are likely to do so in another way, too.
If you claim otherwise, present the evidence please.

Are you aware that certain medications (chemicals) can have something called 'side effects'? For instance my wife takes a chemical that helps with a heart condition she has. That is to say, one of the ways this chemical affects her is that it helps keep her arteries free of buildup. However, while this chemicals helps to clear her arteries, it ALSO affects her in other ways... like the fact that it can cause her fingers and toes to feel numb. This is an example of a single chemical affecting the human body in MORE than just one way.

Acetylsalicylic acid, which is the active chemical in what we call aspirin, can affect the body by alleviating headaches. And this EXACT SAME chemical can ALSO cause certain people stomach issues. Here again we have an example of a SINGLE chemical affecting the human body in TWO different ways.

... if the principle of parsimony applies, yes I do.

But clearly the principle of parsimony does NOT apply, since BOTH your loving force AND my proposed chemical CAN affect the human body in more than one way.
 
S

Skywalker

Well-Known Member
Valjean said:
Come on now. You can Google " biblical contradictions" and get lists of hundreds.
You know that.
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The death of Osiris cannot be com[pared to this. Osiris was not like a root in dry ground. He didn't come from a town like Bethlehem. I believe God died for every single person. Osiris did not love us like that. Osiris did not resurrect. Jesus seeing a long life and what was accomplished by his anguish shows that he is God and he resurrected. The Messiah is described as an interceder and him taking our iniquities made it possible for many to be counted righteous.

The Evidence is Plain: Thoughts and Musings on Christianity : The Dying and Rising God: Jesus or Osiris?

"Who has believed our message?
To whom has the Lord revealed his powerful arm?
My servant grew up in the Lord’s presence like a tender green shoot,
like a root in dry ground.
There was nothing beautiful or majestic about his appearance,
nothing to attract us to him.
He was despised and rejected—
a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.
We turned our backs on him and looked the other way.
He was despised, and we did not care.
"Yet it was our weaknesses he carried;
it was our sorrows that weighed him down.
And we thought his troubles were a punishment from God,
a punishment for his own sins!
But he was pierced for our rebellion,
crushed for our sins.
He was beaten so we could be whole.
He was whipped so we could be healed.
All of us, like sheep, have strayed away.
We have left God’s paths to follow our own.
Yet the Lord laid on him
the sins of us all.
"He was oppressed and treated harshly,
yet he never said a word.
He was led like a lamb to the slaughter.
And as a sheep is silent before the shearers,
he did not open his mouth.
Unjustly condemned,he was led away.
No one cared that he died without descendants,
that his life was cut short in midstream.
But he was struck down
for the rebellion of my people.
He had done no wrong
and had never deceived anyone.
But he was buried like a criminal;
he was put in a rich man’s grave.
"But it was the Lord’s good plan to crush him
and cause him grief.
Yet when his life is made an offering for sin,
he will have many descendants.
He will enjoy a long life,
and the Lord’s good plan will prosper in his hands.
When he sees all that is accomplished by his anguish,
he will be satisfied.
And because of his experience,
my righteous servant will make it possible
for many to be counted righteous,
for he will bear all their sins.
I will give him the honors of a victorious soldier,
because he exposed himself to death.
He was counted among the rebels.
He bore the sins of many and interceded for rebels."
~Isiah 53 New Living Translation (NLT)
Jesus was not murdered. Nor was he tricked. Even when he was being arrested and tried, Jesus was still in complete control of the situation. (Matthew 26:47-54, John 19:6-11)
But according to Old Testament Prophecy and Jesus’ own words, his death would not be the end of the story. Genesis 3 had predicted the coming of a virgin born man (the seed of the woman) who be wounded by the serpent (Satan) but who would ultimately crush Satan's head. A wound is not fatal, but a crushed head is. This is the oldest Messianic prophecy in the Bible, and it clearly shows that Jesus would not remain dead.
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Subduction Zone

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Skywalker said:
Failed predictions have nothing to do with having a relationship with God and making God a part of our life.
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":A relationship with God" appears to be wishful thinking. Muslims claims the same thing. So do Hindus. How would you test your beliefs? A test that only confirms at best is not worth anything. A proper test could possibly refute your beliefs. Testing is important if one wants to claim that one's beliefs are rational.
 
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