Predict the 1st Banning for uncivil behavior in the new Religious Threads...

[BehindBlueI's]

II prefer to focus on something more recent, something that WAS observed and verbally recorded - Jesus. Was he who he claimed to be? It not, it's a sham and I'll agree with Paul (not our mod) that Xtians are pathetic. But if he was who he claimed, it changes everything. From there you can start to make the connections and the evidence becomes overwhelming.

I'm going to paint a hypothetical for you, with the clear understanding it is a hypothetical.

Let's say I hated you. I just absolutely despised you because a Jetta ran over my dog once. Just seeing your name made me want to shake you and weep about my poor lost doggy. However, I decide that despite my hatred for you I'm going to treat you like a friend. I am nice to you. I send you cookies on your birthday. I tell people what an awesome person JettaKnight is and encourage them to be your friend to. Then I die still hating you to the very core of my being but never breaking the mask.

Is the fact I hated you relevant? No one but me knew. I did not allow my hatred to change the world. In fact I overcompensated and probably made the place a bit better. The "truth" may be I hated you. The "truth" is also I treated you like my friend. Which matters?

Now, I say that to say this:

It doesn't even really matter if he was who he claimed to be. He was a pretty awesome guy, by all accounts, and he taught a better way to live with each other. Even if I had some incredible time machine and universal truth detector, if he was or he was not...his lessons are the same and his effect on us should be the same. They have the same punch. They have the same ability to make us better people should we be able to implement them. His example and his guidance are the same, no matter who he was.

So I will disagree with you. Even if it were proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was not who he claimed to be, your faith is not a sham.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Welcome to the modern liberal church. You've summarize the watered down christianity (case intended) that's pervasive in the Western world. We've taken all the happy and non-confrontational bits of Xty out of it and focused on the bits that align with every other religion - be good, think happy thoughts, pray to a higher power, etc.



The 'you' I speak of now is the liberal / mainline denominations, not any one person, here or otherwise.

The problem is you've created you own god. You've hidden your eyes from the full being of God and what he claims to be and what he demands of you. You've bent His truth to match yours. You've changed His laws to match the laws of the broken society in which you live. You've replaced His joy with the world's joy. And in the end, you'll go to your heaven, not His. And since you don't actually have your own heaven...

Theology is tough stuff, but the reward is deeper understand of ALL of God's characteristics, not just "God is love".

Well, I'm not Christian so I'm not concerned with that in the slightest.

If an omnipotent is able to be captured by a human mind, it is no longer omnipotent. Nor must an omnipotent be limited to one thing, else it is no longer omnipotent.

 

[BugI02]

No, I'm pretty sure it's Pig Latin for Boner Drone.

Still living up to that sigline, I see

 

[JettaKnight]

I'm going to paint a hypothetical for you, with the clear understanding it is a hypothetical.

Let's say I hated you. I just absolutely despised you because a Jetta ran over my dog once. Just seeing your name made me want to shake you and weep about my poor lost doggy. However, I decide that despite my hatred for you I'm going to treat you like a friend. I am nice to you. I send you cookies on your birthday. I tell people what an awesome person JettaKnight is and encourage them to be your friend to. Then I die still hating you to the very core of my being but never breaking the mask.

Is the fact I hated you relevant? No one but me knew. I did not allow my hatred to change the world. In fact I overcompensated and probably made the place a bit better. The "truth" may be I hated you. The "truth" is also I treated you like my friend. Which matters?

God knew you hated me. Re-read the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus goes beyond our actions and attacks our motives and state of mind.

Now, I say that to say this:

It doesn't even really matter if he was who he claimed to be. He was a pretty awesome guy, by all accounts, and he taught a better way to live with each other. Even if I had some incredible time machine and universal truth detector, if he was or he was not...his lessons are the same and his effect on us should be the same. They have the same punch. They have the same ability to make us better people should we be able to implement them. His example and his guidance are the same, no matter who he was.

So I will disagree with you. Even if it were proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was not who he claimed to be, your faith is not a sham.

OK, now we get to disagree.

If he wasn't who he claimed to be (God), then he was either delusional or a liar. Today we either lockup, marginalize or raid the Texas compound of those types.

Sure, he said some cool things, a bunch of hippy stuff. He also made lots and lots of claims about Hell, expectations of suffering, demands on lifestyle and finances. He was incredibly intolerant when he stated that all other religions were worthless and he was the only true way. I mean, what kind of ego do you have to own to justify that? He claimed he could raise others from the dead as well as himself. He swore he'd come back with sword in hand to cut down those who stood against him. What's that do for the long haired, sandal wearing hippie image? The guy tricked his followers into dying for him. About the only nutso thing he didn't do is accuse chestnuts of being lazy.

And what about those miracles? Stories added by his followers (many who were brutally murdered for following that crackpot) to make him seem better than he was and try to whitewash the crazy claims he made?

Take divinity out of the equation and things don't look too rosy for Jesus. I'd feel like a real chump if I found out he was phony and gave my life to him and then persuaded others to do likewise. Add to the that all the time I wasted on INGO this week because I placed my faith in the wrong place...

 

[JettaKnight]

If an omnipotent is able to be captured by a human mind, it is no longer omnipotent. Nor must an omnipotent be limited to one thing, else it is no longer omnipotent.

Bugs and other animals can seem many more colors than I can - a flower to them is far more rich in color. Ergo, there's more to the flower than I can see and comprehend. Just because I cannot observe the full depth of the flower does not mean I cannot study it's shape and form and try to fully capture what I can observe and understand.

 

[BugI02]

Is it frustrating to know that the Big Bang can never be scientifically proven? Observable? Measurable? Repeatable? Oh sure you can make theories based on how things operate right this very second, but they're just that: theories.

You really put too much faith in this being a significant idea/problem. Science takes place at the edge of whats know. We stand at the edge of consensus scientific knowledge and try to extend that knowledge area a little further using things we observe and inferences we can make from the accepted knowledge base. We deal with unproven suppositions all the time. It doesn't bother us nearly as much as it does you. CIB has said it before, the theory of the big bang allows many testable predictions and as those are tested and found correct the theory they are based on becomes more accepted and more people work from that jumping off point. It was decades after Einstein postulated general and special relativity that some of the more subtle tests of its veracity could be performed. If a major 'tenet' of this 'orthodoxy' is found to be suspect, there is little gnashing of teeth. Science looks into what the new inferences might be drawn from the amended body of knowledge and begins to extend our knowledge by testing those inferences. ​Is it this very willingness to accept changes to orthodoxy that upsets you so?

I know that you know science can't prove history. You've said so yourself. It just amazes me that you can be so sure when you're fully aware it's impossible to prove. The faith is strong in this one.

Edit: I also completely agree with the division part of your above post.Your Corrupted religion always divides. My God unites.

FIFY

 

[BugI02]

Based on my understanding of current science, including the planck length, I must assert that at most 6.022 x 10E23 angels can dance on the head of a pin 1mm in diameter.

 

[T.Lex]

Based on my understanding of current science, including the planck length, I must assert that at most 6.022 x 10E23 angels can dance on the head of a pin 1mm in diameter.

So, roughly a host of angels?

 

[PistolBob]

Based on my understanding of current science, including the planck length, I must assert that at most 6.022 x 10E23 angels can dance on the head of a pin 1mm in diameter.

Even these Angels?

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Bugs and other animals can seem many more colors than I can - a flower to them is far more rich in color. Ergo, there's more to the flower than I can see and comprehend. Just because I cannot observe the full depth of the flower does not mean I cannot study it's shape and form and try to fully capture what I can observe and understand.

Flowers, as far as I know, are finite. If we can only touch the edges there...

 

[BugI02]

Bugs and other animals can seem many more colors than I can - a flower to them is far more rich in color. Ergo, there's more to the Universe than I can see and comprehend. Just because I cannot observe the full depth of the Universe does not mean I cannot study it's shape and form and try to fully capture what I can observe and understand.

Getting dangerously close to my viewpoint

 

[JettaKnight]

Flowers, as far as I know, are finite. If we can only touch the edges there...

Would astrophysics be a better metaphor?

To my understanding everything physical is finite, so any metaphor I offer will fail at some point.

Getting dangerously close to my viewpoint

Ah-ha, we see where the study of the natural superimposes with the study of the supernatural.

 

[BugI02]

I'm still trying to explain why belief in science doesn't preclude belief in God to peeps who cant get past the 'belief in science' part without heating the tar and plucking the feathers

 

[ChristianPatriot]

FIFY

Again, I'm talking about pre big bang. All the things that made up big bang. Where is the test to see if something has existed forever past? It is impossible.

Here's how the conversation goes:
Scientist: Science is the pursuit of provable facts. If we can prove it, it's fact. Big Bang is fact.
Me: There is no test that could ever be conceived to prove how all the particles that made up big bang came into existence/always existed. It is an unprovable fact.
Scientist: That's not important.
Me: Lolz!! Wut?!?

 

[T.Lex]

Would astrophysics be a better metaphor?

To my understanding everything physical is finite, so any metaphor I offer will fail at some point.


Ah-ha, we see where the study of the natural superimposes with the study of the supernatural.

Yeah, astrophysics might not be the best analogy. Competing theories on whether the universe is finite or not, and assuming it is finite, what the shape is.

 

[T.Lex]

Again, I'm talking about pre big bang. All the things that made up big bang. Where is the test to see if something has existed forever past? It is impossible.

But has been theorized.
Cyclic model - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Einstein even thought about it.

 

[D-Ric902]

Einstein liked the steady state theory

politics and religion divide people in the sharpest and most venomous ways. Why?
because they both are distinctly human

you our can argue them ad nauseum (and do still) without changing a thing.
so many here seem to have not gotten past Sunday School before being offended, I'll drop back and punt.

Jesus loves me, this I know........

 

[T.Lex]

... I'll drop back and punt.

If you have to drop back to punt, you're probably doing it wrong.

BTW, I'll put this here:
Big Bang, Deflated? Universe May Have Had No Beginning

"So when we say that the universe begins with a big bang, we really have no right to say that," Brandenberger told Live Science.
There are other problems brewing in physics — namely, that the two most dominant theories, quantum mechanics and general relativity, can't be reconciled.

 

[Fenway]

May - Aug are usually the slowest months on INGO. Not so in this thread!

 

[BugI02]

Again, I'm talking about pre big bang. All the things that made up big bang. Where is the test to see if something has existed forever past? It is impossible.

Here's how the conversation goes:
Scientist: Science is the pursuit of provable facts. If we can prove it, it's fact. Big Bang is fact.
Me: There is no test that could ever be conceived to prove how all the particles that made up big bang came into existence/always existed. It is an unprovable fact.
Scientist: That's not important.
Me: Lolz!! Wut?!?

The scientist is right. There is no test now that can prove how all the 'particles that made up the big bang' (poetic license granted. big bang thought to be energy from which paricles 'condensed' as things cooled off) came into existence but it just doesn't interfere with my forming testable hypotheses from accepted science, testing them and acting on the results. Its truly not important. But if you want to assert that all the particles have always been here and always will be, as I've said before you are being proven wrong daily in labs all over the world. You keep thinking that experimental uncertainty is some kind of sword through the heart of a hypothesis, slaying the beast; but it just isn't so. And your assertion that 'There is no test that could ever be conceived to prove how all the particles that made up big bang came into existence/always existed.' is a falacy, unless you can scan the entire set of tests for the theory of the big bang that humans might possibly conceive. Can you?