3000 gods but only yours exists

[Wesrock]

Church Father scholar Mike Aquilina essentially said of Origen that he never strived to be outside of Church doctrine, he was just so prolific and so fast that he darted ahead of what the Church had settled. So he wasn’t trying to intentionally go against Church teaching.

 

[Even_So]

Why put me in jail in the first place, i didn’t do anything.

Forget your $200 too.

 

[Arizona_Mike]

Ask him if he wants to apply the same principle to the drugs his doctor prescribes him next time he has a serious ailment - “Thousands of drugs so far, but only the one you prescribe for me will actually work?”

I like that.

 

[rossum]

I like that.

So, where are the tests of your God as published in the medical research journals? Tests like this one: Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer.

CONCLUSIONS: Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery from CABG, but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications.

Many of those drugs have a much better result.

rossum

 

[Peter_Plato]

So, where are the tests of your God as published in the medical research journals? Tests like this one: Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer.

CONCLUSIONS: Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery from CABG, but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications.

Many of those drugs have a much better result.

rossum

Which, I suppose, implies that God does not want human beings to deny the efficacy of medicine. I mean, he created the world as it is so why would he NOT want to have us live in it and rely, generally, on its consistent aspects?

I think you are attempting to create a dichotomy that isn’t there, necessarily. Why would we suppose God is in competition with the way the world works if he created the world to work that way?

Perhaps, the “higher incidence of complications” comes about because individuals, wrongly, assume “God” is meant to replace “medicine.” Again, the same kind of “fundamentalism” that you seem to assume, as well.

 

[Faith1960]

Then prove it.

You’re here because…?

 

[rossum]

Which, I suppose, implies that God does not want human beings to deny the efficacy of medicine. I mean, he created the world as it is so why would he NOT want to have us live in it and rely, generally, on its consistent aspects?

Which implies that it is reasonable to rely on tested medicines to cure diseases, contrary to your #6 in this thread.

I think you are attempting to create a dichotomy that isn’t there, necessarily. Why would we suppose God is in competition with the way the world works if he created the world to work that way?

I am not the one who created the dichotomy, it is there in the Bible: “Furthermore, I tell all of you with certainty that if two of you agree on earth about anything you request, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven,” - Matthew 18:19

rossum

 

[Arizona_Mike]

So, where are the tests of your God as published in the medical research journals? Tests like this one: Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer.

CONCLUSIONS: Intercessory prayer itself had no effect on complication-free recovery from CABG, but certainty of receiving intercessory prayer was associated with a higher incidence of complications.

Many of those drugs have a much better result.

rossum

There are about 1,200 of them, Rossum. It’s a very well-studied effect. Most show a positive correlation between prayer, between belief, and between religiosity and good health outcomes.

Ever wonder why M.D.s are the group of persons with doctorate degrees in the sciences who have the highest rate of belief and religiosity?

Harold Koenig, MD, associate professor of medicine and psychiatry at Duke University, discusses the effects as one of the authors of The Handbook of Religion and Health, a new release that documents nearly 1,200 studies done on the effects of prayer on health.

Per the WebM.D. website, a secular source:

Hospitalized people who never attended church have an average stay of three times longer than people who attended regularly.

Heart patients were 14 times more likely to die following surgery if they did not participate in a religion.

Elderly people who never or rarely attended church had a stroke rate double that of people who attended regularly.

In Israel, religious people had a 40% lower death rate from cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Also, says Koenig, “people who are more religious tend to become depressed less often. And when they do become depressed, they recover more quickly from depression. That has consequences for their physical health and the quality of their lives.”

 

[Peter_Plato]

Which implies that it is reasonable to rely on tested medicines to cure diseases, contrary to your #6 in this thread.

Did I say in #6 that it was unreasonable to rely on tested medicines? I don’t think so.

The argument was a parallel one. Let me reiterate…

It is reasonable to believe that there might exist only one true God despite that 3000 gods have been proposed,** in the same way** that it is reasonable to believe there might only be one medicine that works for a particular ailment even though thousands of different drugs exist.

It isn’t an argument to claim that NO ONE possibility exists to solve a problem or answer a question MERELY because thousands of possible solutions or answers have been proposed. Sometimes there is ONLY ONE despite a plethora of possibilities.

There isn’t an argument to be had that just because 3000 gods have been proposed that there must not or cannot, therefore, only be one true God. It is a non sequitur.

I think you misunderstood the point.

I am not the one who created the dichotomy, it is there in the Bible: “Furthermore, I tell all of you with certainty that if two of you agree on earth about anything you request, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven,” - Matthew 18:19
rossum

Yes, but let’s not leave out WHO Jesus was speaking to in that passage. He was speaking directly to the Apostles. That much is clear from verse 1 (At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked…) and from the verse immediately preceding the one you cited. Read the red text.

18 "Truly I tell you, whatever YOU bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever YOU loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. 19 Again, truly I tell YOU, if two of YOU agree on earth about anything YOU ask, it will be done for YOU by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

Clearly, the Church does not claim anyone on earth who happens to read the passage has been granted the power to bind and loose in heaven whatever anyone on a whim chooses to bind and loose on earth. This was authority granted to those to whom such authority was given – the Apostles and their successors. Jesus was speaking directly to them in this passage. It was not intended to be understood as a carte blanche directive to whomever would subsequently read the passage.

This is one of the problems with a “personal interpretation” approach to Scripture – which is where this false dichotomy comes from. Thinking the Bible speaks to the reader “personally" in every passage or instance is why this mistaken impression (and false dichotomy) arose.

 

[Abu]

Peter Plato # 295
QUOTE

18 "Truly I tell you, whatever YOU bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever YOU loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. 19 Again, truly I tell YOU, if two of YOU agree on earth about anything YOU ask, it will be done for YOU by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

Clearly, the Church does not claim anyone on earth who happens to read the passage has been granted the power to bind and loose in heaven whatever anyone on a whim chooses to bind and loose on earth. This was authority granted to those to whom such authority was given – the Apostles and their successors. Jesus was speaking directly to them in this passage. It was not intended to be understood as a carte blanche directive to whomever would subsequently read the passage.

This is one of the problems with a “personal interpretation” approach to Scripture – which is where this false dichotomy comes from. Thinking the Bible speaks to the reader “personally" in every passage or instance is why this mistaken impression (and false dichotomy) arose.

Excellent response. Great truths!

 

[Arizona_Mike]

An atheist friend of mine posted this

“there have been 3000 gods so far but only yours actually exists. The others are silly made up nonsense, but yours, yours is real”

Of course hes speaking sarcastically. What are good arguments to make against this. The idea that because many gods have been proven false over the years therefore God is false as well

There actually is another good answer to this. Christians rarely use it, but it’s founded deeply in the teachings of St. Paul and the other early Fathers of the Church.

The argument your atheist friend makes is based on both a false understanding of the historical beliefs of the Church, and the difference between a “deity” and God.

The historic view of the Church has been that the thousands of gods the pagans around them and by extension, in the rest of the pre-Christian world) worshipped were false gods, but not in the sense that they don’t exist. The early Fathers of the Church believed implicitly that there were spiritual beings that were worshipped in the temples of the pagans, and that they were fallen spirits, or as we term them, demons. Malign spiritual beings of great power, but nothing like the powers of the one true God, and mere caricatures of God’s nature and essence.

As Paul said, “What the heathen offer, they offer to evil spirits.” (1 Corinthians 10:20).

I would say that the test for whether such a deity was an evil spirit would be to look at their teachings and their demands. It’s not hard to say that the cult of Thor that demanded the sacrifice of young men under an oak tree, or the cult of Moloch that demanded the sacrifice of infants, or the Aztec gods that demanded the hearts to be torn out of captured prisoners, or countless other pagan idols, represent demonic powers at work.

The modern deities we worship - money, power, prestige, nationalism, and so forth could be considered the teachings of the old deities in new guises, and they demand their own blood sacrifices of a sort.

Other, more gentle, non-Christian religions could be simply the inventions of men who were trying to work their way towards an understanding of God, however imperfectly. But they are the teachings of men, not God.

So the answer to your friend is that Christians have historically believed not that the other pagan gods that men have worshipped are “silly, made-up nonsense”, but that they are real entities, who exist in enimity towards us. Most of them have lost their holds on men, or adapted to fit the temples of the modern era.

We believe there is only one spiritual entity worthy of the name God, and that all other deities are false gods that do not compare to Him in nature.

If nothing else, it may be an argument that he hasn’t heard before.