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Pope_Noah_I
Guest
youtube.com/watch?v=zDHJ4ztnldQ&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fgodisimaginary%2Ecom%2Fvideo10%2Ehtm
Can someone refute this stuff?
Can someone refute this stuff?
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Eileen_T
Guest
I couldn’t watch much of it and I don’t think trying to refute it will do much good. It’s futile trying to talk to people who come up with this junk, you’ll never convince them, you just have to pray for them to see the Light.
What if the restoration of the limb led the person into sin? What if the loss of the limb was an opportunity for that person to turn to God, rather than against him.
As Catholics, we are taught to accept our cross and give thanks to God for it.
As Jesus said, Thou shalt not put the Lord, the God to the test.
What if the restoration of the limb led the person into sin? What if the loss of the limb was an opportunity for that person to turn to God, rather than against him.
As Catholics, we are taught to accept our cross and give thanks to God for it.
As Jesus said, Thou shalt not put the Lord, the God to the test.
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Archangel17
Guest
This is your friend. I would pray for him. This was just another bash on christians, trying to get people to turn or question their beliefs. You either are for God or this world apparently he has chosen the world over God. He says that people who believe in any God is delusional but then why is more then three fourths of the world believe in some kind of God. Ask the question, Are all them delusional then. Why do so many athiests devout so much time to trample Gods name if they do not care for him. A lot of non believers i’ve talked to won’t give an inch even when they can’t refute the evedeice. There hearts are hardened, but don’t give up hope. The best thing you can do is pray for them. Hope i could help. The plans we have rests in the hand of our father. Peace always and forever.
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NPC
Guest
I think the crucial point is that ‘Faith’ was never mentioned in this video. It is in fact people such as the narrator of the video who are living in a fantasy world since they are afraid to delve into something beyond the physical - this is where faith comes into it. The narrator must feel very privileged that he is not one of the 5 billion + deluded people in the world who believe in some form of ‘higher being’!
The first question deals with amputees and how they never get miracles from God. This is a debatable point - at least from a faith point-of-view. Firstly, I think there are many amputees who instead of asking God to restore their lost limb are actually thanking Him for saving their life which may otherwise have been lost had the amputation not taken place. Aren’t many amputees (or others with a disability) not thankful for discovering new talents and strengths resulting from their disability? Why do people with such a disability often turn into some of the most strong and determined people? What about the fact that living near an amputee or a disabled person gives others who are perhaps more fortunate to actively live out Christian Values by lending support to these people. These things may not be physically visible, but surely these are the true miracles. God always answers our prayers, but those of faith understand that He sometimes says ‘No’!
Is the Bible anti-scientific? According to the video, it is. The reality is quite different. To me scientific evidence does not contradict my faith. What if day one was actually 10 million years? Does it mean that God did not cause the Earth to develop? Of course not. Genesis does agree with science, however, on the order in which the world was created - ie: Light and Dark first, followed by land and sea, followed by plant life etc. Nor is ‘The Flood’ incompatible with science - there may have been a devastating flood caused for example by the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates and as far as the writers of scripture knew, the whole earth was indeed flooded.
The video asks why there is no evidence of Christ’s miracles. Again, this is really a question of faith. I wonder how many times the Bible tells us that Jesus healed a person saying "Go, your faith has saved you. There will never be enough evidence for a person who won’t even entertain the possibility that the Bible gives a truthful account of Christ’s miracles.
It also asks why Jesus has never appeared to us or to one who has begged Him to appear to them. Jesus appears to us every day since we are the voice of Christ, His hands and His feet - He is among us in the form of all those who speak out against injustices in society, those who help the sick and poor, those who are suffering, and indeed all who live as Christ has commanded. Of course Catholics have the honour of being able to receive Christ in the Eucharist every day.
I think it is interesting that the video in quoting scripture refers constantly to the Old Testament even though the video is aimed at Christians, to whom the New Testament is the main basis of their Christian lives. It ignores the fact that we believe in a merciful God, not a bloodthirsty God, and the video uses this to further portray Christians as irrational and delusional.
I expect that all that can be done in this case is for those who are priveleged enough to have faith to pray for the maker of this video and like-minded people,since while they lack faith they will not be able to understand the beauty of faith and the blessings and strength on can draw from it.
With best wishes.
The first question deals with amputees and how they never get miracles from God. This is a debatable point - at least from a faith point-of-view. Firstly, I think there are many amputees who instead of asking God to restore their lost limb are actually thanking Him for saving their life which may otherwise have been lost had the amputation not taken place. Aren’t many amputees (or others with a disability) not thankful for discovering new talents and strengths resulting from their disability? Why do people with such a disability often turn into some of the most strong and determined people? What about the fact that living near an amputee or a disabled person gives others who are perhaps more fortunate to actively live out Christian Values by lending support to these people. These things may not be physically visible, but surely these are the true miracles. God always answers our prayers, but those of faith understand that He sometimes says ‘No’!
Is the Bible anti-scientific? According to the video, it is. The reality is quite different. To me scientific evidence does not contradict my faith. What if day one was actually 10 million years? Does it mean that God did not cause the Earth to develop? Of course not. Genesis does agree with science, however, on the order in which the world was created - ie: Light and Dark first, followed by land and sea, followed by plant life etc. Nor is ‘The Flood’ incompatible with science - there may have been a devastating flood caused for example by the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates and as far as the writers of scripture knew, the whole earth was indeed flooded.
The video asks why there is no evidence of Christ’s miracles. Again, this is really a question of faith. I wonder how many times the Bible tells us that Jesus healed a person saying "Go, your faith has saved you. There will never be enough evidence for a person who won’t even entertain the possibility that the Bible gives a truthful account of Christ’s miracles.
It also asks why Jesus has never appeared to us or to one who has begged Him to appear to them. Jesus appears to us every day since we are the voice of Christ, His hands and His feet - He is among us in the form of all those who speak out against injustices in society, those who help the sick and poor, those who are suffering, and indeed all who live as Christ has commanded. Of course Catholics have the honour of being able to receive Christ in the Eucharist every day.
I think it is interesting that the video in quoting scripture refers constantly to the Old Testament even though the video is aimed at Christians, to whom the New Testament is the main basis of their Christian lives. It ignores the fact that we believe in a merciful God, not a bloodthirsty God, and the video uses this to further portray Christians as irrational and delusional.
I expect that all that can be done in this case is for those who are priveleged enough to have faith to pray for the maker of this video and like-minded people,since while they lack faith they will not be able to understand the beauty of faith and the blessings and strength on can draw from it.
With best wishes.
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VociMike
Guest
The narrator was too condescending for me to watch the whole thing, but I wasn’t impressed by the ones I did watch. These people seem to revel in their own doom (for if there is no God then we are all doomed). Not just accept it, but revel in it. Strange.
Tell your friend to pick one issue to discuss, not ten. Or get him here on the forums for a while. Make that your reply: I watched your video, now you come on Catholic Answers for a week.
Tell your friend to pick one issue to discuss, not ten. Or get him here on the forums for a while. Make that your reply: I watched your video, now you come on Catholic Answers for a week.
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antimon
Guest
it could be easily refuted, on one condition: producers of the video would have to listen to your arguments. But guess what… they even made up YOUR arguments for you and put them in your mouth (and then mocked them, lol).
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Kitty_Chan
Guest
I loved the **propaganda **of
“if you are a intellegent person”
repeat about a hundred times, to psyche one out.
Also, a other view:
meet the amazing God, He can perform miracles at a whim, whip up waves, heal people, turn wine to water! Step right up and see and be amazed!
and if He doesnt perform just like we want Him to and turn over and sit on command. Well then, we will just claim Hes a unreasonable jerk that was the one actually causing the misery and withholding the cure!
:banghead: ya ya ya whatever
*But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
1 Corinthians 2:14*
“if you are a intellegent person”
repeat about a hundred times, to psyche one out.
Also, a other view:
meet the amazing God, He can perform miracles at a whim, whip up waves, heal people, turn wine to water! Step right up and see and be amazed!
and if He doesnt perform just like we want Him to and turn over and sit on command. Well then, we will just claim Hes a unreasonable jerk that was the one actually causing the misery and withholding the cure!
:banghead: ya ya ya whatever
*But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
1 Corinthians 2:14*
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Hubriss
Guest
-Eileen T
-Irrational convoluted answer which contradicts itself. If it is futile to convince people like us, why pray? Are we supposed to magically drop our views in light of yours without any evidence or rational argument to the contrary because people pray?
-Archangel
Arguments based on irrational assumptions.
-Archangel
Uh… what evedeice?
-NPC
Faith is inherently irrational.
-NPC
Question avoided, but instead asked a series of questions based on positive assumptions and insignificant statistics. Excuses invented on God’s behalf.
-NPC
Again question avoided and excuses are invented on God’s behalf, irrational excuses for total nonsense from a scientific perspective.
-VociMike
Strange assumption based on nothing. You call the narrator condescending, not watch the whole video, then say you’re unimpressed. You are either ignorant and condescending, or uneducated, or these questions make you uncomfortable.
-antimon
Easily refuted eh? Refute them to me then.
-Kitty Chan
Have you ever met this god? Have you ever seen his miracles?
By the way, I’m not the OP’s friend, but likely similar, and I probably wouldn’t mind meeting him.
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NPC
Guest
Hubris picks up on my point that ‘faith’ is not mentioned in the video by saying that ‘faith is inherently irrational’. It is certainly no more irrational than one completely disregarding something just because scientific evidence may be lacking. Faith allows us - not irrationally- to think beyond the physical, material and scientific world; and not only that, but it does not conflict with scientific discovery. Have non-believers come to the conclusion that faith is irrational by scientific discovery? No - and they never will, this conclusion has actually been drawn from closed-mindedness and fear among certain people that they may not be the centre of the universe. It is no more irrational for one of faith to say that God may exist because there is no proof to the contrary than it is for a non-believer to say conclusively that God cannot exist as there is no solid evidence for it. The argument for faith is at very least (actually more, in my view!) as logical as the argument against it.
Hubris also suggests that I have avoided the question regarding amputees. On the contrary, I have answered it with many possibilities. The question was ‘why doesn’t God grant miracles to amputees?’. Without faith the answer is gloomy - no God, misfortune happens, get on with your life… Faith actually gives a multitude of answers, without assuming that we know better than God Himself what is best for us. Why is it assumed that miracles have to be physical - the miracle doesn’t have to be the physical re-growing of the limb - the person’s life can be enriched again through faith in God for reasons I have mentioned before.
On the question of the Bible being anti-scientific, I am accused by Hubris of avoiding the question. How, pray tell, have I done so? My point was that while the Scripture descriptions may be rather simplistic they are in no way whatsoever in conflict with scientific evidence. I do not make excuses for God - rather it is you, Hubris, making the excuses against Him because you won’t dare to ‘think outside the box’ and even entertain the possibility that Science and the physical isn’t the be-all and end-all of this universe.
Finally, don’t forget that many of the most famous scientists this world has ever seen were people of great faith, whom I presume you would brand as irrational because of this…Gregor Mendel (an Augustinian and ‘father of modern genetics’), William Buckland (Geologist), Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal…etc. What if science had disregarded these clearly rational and great minds because they treasured their faith - the world of of science would have done itself a great disservice!
Hubris also suggests that I have avoided the question regarding amputees. On the contrary, I have answered it with many possibilities. The question was ‘why doesn’t God grant miracles to amputees?’. Without faith the answer is gloomy - no God, misfortune happens, get on with your life… Faith actually gives a multitude of answers, without assuming that we know better than God Himself what is best for us. Why is it assumed that miracles have to be physical - the miracle doesn’t have to be the physical re-growing of the limb - the person’s life can be enriched again through faith in God for reasons I have mentioned before.
On the question of the Bible being anti-scientific, I am accused by Hubris of avoiding the question. How, pray tell, have I done so? My point was that while the Scripture descriptions may be rather simplistic they are in no way whatsoever in conflict with scientific evidence. I do not make excuses for God - rather it is you, Hubris, making the excuses against Him because you won’t dare to ‘think outside the box’ and even entertain the possibility that Science and the physical isn’t the be-all and end-all of this universe.
Finally, don’t forget that many of the most famous scientists this world has ever seen were people of great faith, whom I presume you would brand as irrational because of this…Gregor Mendel (an Augustinian and ‘father of modern genetics’), William Buckland (Geologist), Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal…etc. What if science had disregarded these clearly rational and great minds because they treasured their faith - the world of of science would have done itself a great disservice!
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VociMike
Guest
Hubriss, you who accuse us of making assumptions are guilty of making assumptions yourself. You assume that these questions make us uncomfortable. Why do you assume that? Why should a question for which we have no exact answer automatically make us uncomfortable? Does it automatically make you uncomfortable because you can’t explain why or how the universe came into being?
We are not uncomfortable just because we don’t fully understand the mind of God, any more than you are uncomfortable because you don’t fully understand the “mind” of the mindless universe you profess.
We are not uncomfortable just because we don’t fully understand the mind of God, any more than you are uncomfortable because you don’t fully understand the “mind” of the mindless universe you profess.
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Freshman88
Guest
This video seems to be attacking a Protestant or Sola Scriptura conception of Christianity, because several of these arguements are easily refuted by Catholic beliefs.
For example, the question concering science specifically attacks a literalist interpretation of the bible. We don’t interpret the bible literally, but instead interpret the bible in the context of Tradition and the Church. We recognize many of those “scientific problems” for what they are, passages using figuritive language and ancient concepts.
Another concept that can refute several of the claims is that of free will. People suffer at the hands of other humans, not of God directly. When a mass famine is occuring, it is too simplestic to look at the situation and claim that their is no God. How do we know what God has done? Perhaps God has been working hard to change the wicked hearts of those responsible for the famine. Perhaps God has personally intervened in many individual situations, making sure that food reached a particular individual or aiding one in their quest to leave that area. The simple answer to this question is that something like a famine is too complex.
On the other hand, what are we to make of free will if God is always intervening. How much free will do I have, if I cannot commit sin? What if God jumped in, everytime I was about commit a horrible act? … It is true - God has left us to the enormity of Free Will - but there is much to understand about it. Although free will allows us to do horrible acts, Free will also allows us to do acts of great good.
I could continue to look at the situation for a long time. My point isn’t to explain this particular question - but to highlight something more important. It was brought up when a poster said that faith is inherently irrational - perhaps that author thinks so, I strongly disagree. But if faith were “irrational”, does that mean that we cannot use reason when it comes to the sphere of religion?
The thing that strikes me about the author is that he is calling us to use our reason. Yet what is so ironic is that whenever we use that reason to support our religious views, he calls it an “excuse”. Likewise, to use our reason to disprove our faith seems to be the only valid use of our reason for the author. Therefore the author has entered into the discussion with a preconceived notion of reason. The author believes that reason need not apply to faith, and that is why he claims that any act of reason in the area of faith is simply an “excuse”.
Essentially, what the author of this video has done, is limit the scope of our reason. This is exactly what the Pope was addressing with the Regensburg address.
We are Catholics, and as Catholics we don’t check-out our brain at the door. We are not like some sola scripturists or Islamic-fanatics who claim that using reason to understand God is a way of reducing God. At the same time we are not like most atheists and agnostics, who also claim that reason has no place in faith - although for a much different reason. Rather, we believe that reason should be used in everything we experience. Reason is a tool, and a tool that should never be reduced. Every encounter we have should be put to the test. We should gladly inquire into the ways of God - for by doing so we hope to increase our understanding of God and our faith.
So i ask the authour - are our answers merely excuses? or are they an exercise of reason - an exercise of reason that somehow makes the author “uncomfortable”.
For example, the question concering science specifically attacks a literalist interpretation of the bible. We don’t interpret the bible literally, but instead interpret the bible in the context of Tradition and the Church. We recognize many of those “scientific problems” for what they are, passages using figuritive language and ancient concepts.
Another concept that can refute several of the claims is that of free will. People suffer at the hands of other humans, not of God directly. When a mass famine is occuring, it is too simplestic to look at the situation and claim that their is no God. How do we know what God has done? Perhaps God has been working hard to change the wicked hearts of those responsible for the famine. Perhaps God has personally intervened in many individual situations, making sure that food reached a particular individual or aiding one in their quest to leave that area. The simple answer to this question is that something like a famine is too complex.
On the other hand, what are we to make of free will if God is always intervening. How much free will do I have, if I cannot commit sin? What if God jumped in, everytime I was about commit a horrible act? … It is true - God has left us to the enormity of Free Will - but there is much to understand about it. Although free will allows us to do horrible acts, Free will also allows us to do acts of great good.
I could continue to look at the situation for a long time. My point isn’t to explain this particular question - but to highlight something more important. It was brought up when a poster said that faith is inherently irrational - perhaps that author thinks so, I strongly disagree. But if faith were “irrational”, does that mean that we cannot use reason when it comes to the sphere of religion?
The thing that strikes me about the author is that he is calling us to use our reason. Yet what is so ironic is that whenever we use that reason to support our religious views, he calls it an “excuse”. Likewise, to use our reason to disprove our faith seems to be the only valid use of our reason for the author. Therefore the author has entered into the discussion with a preconceived notion of reason. The author believes that reason need not apply to faith, and that is why he claims that any act of reason in the area of faith is simply an “excuse”.
Essentially, what the author of this video has done, is limit the scope of our reason. This is exactly what the Pope was addressing with the Regensburg address.
We are Catholics, and as Catholics we don’t check-out our brain at the door. We are not like some sola scripturists or Islamic-fanatics who claim that using reason to understand God is a way of reducing God. At the same time we are not like most atheists and agnostics, who also claim that reason has no place in faith - although for a much different reason. Rather, we believe that reason should be used in everything we experience. Reason is a tool, and a tool that should never be reduced. Every encounter we have should be put to the test. We should gladly inquire into the ways of God - for by doing so we hope to increase our understanding of God and our faith.
So i ask the authour - are our answers merely excuses? or are they an exercise of reason - an exercise of reason that somehow makes the author “uncomfortable”.
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Kitty_Chan
Guest
God could literally write in the sky Hello Im Here, Love God. and this guy would come up with oh it was atmosphere something or other.
He could be shown a field suddenly growing wheat in a drought and he will say oh nature just kicked in thats all. Whatever example he sees he will deny he saw it.
Why do I say that ? because when Jesus was here, He performed miracles in front of the public and still some even seeing it still said oh it didnt happen.
When Moses came down from the mountain and found them worshipping the golden calf after seeing God do all He had done for them, they still didnt believe.
Proof is never enough and seeing isnt always believing. This guy is nothing new he has existed for yrs.
Jesus is not David Blaine, performing tricks and wonders to please us. You ask if I met God, acutally yes, thats why I know what His nature is like, I know what He thinks about things. I know Jesus said to “test all things” and when I test that video guy I find he knows nothing about Jesus.
He does however, know how to spin a good psyche op propanganda bit.
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R2D2
Guest
Is this thread still “live”?
…coz I think I could refute it…
…coz I think I could refute it…
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