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lonelyalgorithm
Guest
I want to thank all who offered advice and I will certainly look into all the links and informations that was recommended.
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ray362
Guest
I’ll second that! You may enjoy this narrated animation of one of the chapters in Lewis’ book called “Right and Wrong As a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe” – youtu.be/QmHXYhpEDfM
Blessings to you.
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onenow1
Guest
I would also suggest GK. Chesterton and the Apostle of common sense also.
God Bless
J
jlhargus
Guest
The fact you have a desire to believe is evidence of God’s grace calling you to faith. Acts of faith pleases God. Go before the tabernacle and simply tell the Lord what you posted. Ask Him to give you faith to believe. Say the our Father in the morning and evening and wait on the Lord. If you live in Columbus I would like to give you my e-mail if interested. I will pray for you.
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TarkanAttila
Guest
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valtorta1
Guest
I’m an adult convert to Catholicism 25+ yrs ago. I made a conscious choice based on something I read back then that gave me no doubt that God is real as He spoke to my spirit and I recognized Him, His Spirit, His Goodness, His Mercy, His Perfection, but most of all His Love was evident and overflowing for me throughout this work.
I can think of a couple links for something that might give you hope for evidence of Divinity, but I am not allowed. The rules here apparently do not allow it and I’m totally unclear on how they are defined and implemented, but I do know how God hooked me is something I can’t share here.
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humble_catholic
Guest
Hello Andrew , I think I can answer the part about the wiped out races .
One such race of people were the canannites . If someone were reading those verses in a brief way it could come off looking like God just ordered the extermination of an entire race of people for no reason at all.
The problem here is that this isn’t the whole picture my friend . The canannites were one if the most evil and wicked group of people ever. They even practiced child sacrifice which if done today would warrant the death penalty to say the least. God was actually more patient with the canannites then any modern law system would be today because he gave them 400 years to mend their murderous and wicked ways. They didn’t and even so God in his mercy gave them a chance to leave , but some stayed . And if God allowed the to stay not only would they keep murdering and etc etcetera etc, they would have also infected the Hebrews with their wicked ways and also get in the way of God’s plan for his people and for the eventual coming if the messiah. God was infinitely more merciful on the canannites then any human being ever who’d have been, but it wasn’t an extermination of all the canannites .
How do I know this ? Because if am a descendent of the canannites myself
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humble_catholic
Guest
Also algorithm, and Andrew you might want to look at this fascinating video on God and quantum physics
youtu.be/4C5pq7W5yRM
You might also want to take a look at the most scientifically studied object on earth the shroud of turin . An image no scientist to date has been able to replicate .an image that matches the gospels perfectly .professor Guilio Fanti believes that this imahbeass caused by a. Corona discharge , a blast of great energy , but what kind of energy if this level could have created this image . The only historical event he could think of that reasonably explained this was also the most controversial , the resurrection of Christ. This is a new video documentary on his corona discharge theory and the shroud of turin .
youtu.be/I4c4812XA9A
This is another video by a doctor on the shroud . He is in daily email contact with the sturp team of scientists. The only scientific team that has studied the shroud first hand in 1978
youtu.be/FcKTkjWkqEU
Doctor August Accetta was born and baptized Catholic but fell away from the faith in his twenties when he came to believe that religion was something old people used to deal with and feel comfortable with death , and he became an agnostic .
When he learned about the shroud of turin he initially started studying it to try to prove it was a fake , but as he learned that no scientist could replicate the image , he had a hunch .
He started to experiment with ways of trying to replicate the image . He resorted to ingesting potentially harmful radioactive particles and then passed gamma rays through his body and at that time he can closest to replicating the image on the shroud , but he couldn’t replicate the clarity of the image , and he couldn’t replicate the head.
Doctor Accetta knew that the process that caused this image could not have been done by any technology of ancient times , heck it still can’t be replicated by 21st century science .
When doctor Accetta realized this he started to regain his faith and eventually came back to Catholicism and started reading his bible and early church fathers again.
staycatholic.com/shroud_of_turin.htm
Agnostic lawyer mark Antonacci was a happy go lucky agnostic who had only one problem , the constant argument over religion with his Christian girl friend .he then was sitting in line for lunch one day and saw a magazine with a picture of the shroud in it . He decided to investigate it .
What he thought would take 2 weeks to debunk ended up taking him 25 years and. It only could he not debunk it but he himself came to believe in it and ended up converting to Christianity .
citizenwells.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/shroud-of-turin-jesus-face-the-resurrection-of-the-shroud-mark-antonacci-agnostic-lawyer-becomes-christian-image-from-resurrection-radiation/
Hope this helps a bit guys
youtu.be/4C5pq7W5yRM
You might also want to take a look at the most scientifically studied object on earth the shroud of turin . An image no scientist to date has been able to replicate .an image that matches the gospels perfectly .professor Guilio Fanti believes that this imahbeass caused by a. Corona discharge , a blast of great energy , but what kind of energy if this level could have created this image . The only historical event he could think of that reasonably explained this was also the most controversial , the resurrection of Christ. This is a new video documentary on his corona discharge theory and the shroud of turin .
youtu.be/I4c4812XA9A
This is another video by a doctor on the shroud . He is in daily email contact with the sturp team of scientists. The only scientific team that has studied the shroud first hand in 1978
youtu.be/FcKTkjWkqEU
Doctor August Accetta was born and baptized Catholic but fell away from the faith in his twenties when he came to believe that religion was something old people used to deal with and feel comfortable with death , and he became an agnostic .
When he learned about the shroud of turin he initially started studying it to try to prove it was a fake , but as he learned that no scientist could replicate the image , he had a hunch .
He started to experiment with ways of trying to replicate the image . He resorted to ingesting potentially harmful radioactive particles and then passed gamma rays through his body and at that time he can closest to replicating the image on the shroud , but he couldn’t replicate the clarity of the image , and he couldn’t replicate the head.
Doctor Accetta knew that the process that caused this image could not have been done by any technology of ancient times , heck it still can’t be replicated by 21st century science .
When doctor Accetta realized this he started to regain his faith and eventually came back to Catholicism and started reading his bible and early church fathers again.
staycatholic.com/shroud_of_turin.htm
Agnostic lawyer mark Antonacci was a happy go lucky agnostic who had only one problem , the constant argument over religion with his Christian girl friend .he then was sitting in line for lunch one day and saw a magazine with a picture of the shroud in it . He decided to investigate it .
What he thought would take 2 weeks to debunk ended up taking him 25 years and. It only could he not debunk it but he himself came to believe in it and ended up converting to Christianity .
citizenwells.wordpress.com/2010/04/05/shroud-of-turin-jesus-face-the-resurrection-of-the-shroud-mark-antonacci-agnostic-lawyer-becomes-christian-image-from-resurrection-radiation/
Hope this helps a bit guys
N
neonblue
Guest
To Another Andrew:
I spend 30yrs. reading the Bible and I read some things that seem to contradict and my thoughts on these seemingly contradictions bothered my mind so I decided on the only course of action was to ask God. I said " Lord I’m a bit confused about what I’m reading in your Word and some of it seems to be contradictions but I read in 1 Corinthians Chap. 14 verse 33: For God is not the author of confusion. Lord there must be gifted men in this present day that you gifted with wisdom and knowledge just as you did the Apostles whom you inspired to write the Scriptures. So there must be books in this present day that you inspired gifted men to write to understand the Scriptures. I said to the Lord " Please take this confusion from my mind and show me a book or books in this present day that you inspired gifted men to write about the understanding of the Scriptures.
I went to the Book and Bible store in my hometown and when I step into the store something was telling I would find my answers here(I was led by the Holy Spirit).
I was driven my something(led by the Holy Spirit) to read many books in that store.
I spent hours upon hours never quite satisfied until I laid my hands on this book: THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS by JOHN MURRAY.
The book captivated me I was totally immerse in it (I was on the edge of my seat reading it inspired by the Holy Spirit) and it took a lot of the confusion from my mind.
If you do purchase it you have to read every page in order to put the Bible in perspective.
I spend 30yrs. reading the Bible and I read some things that seem to contradict and my thoughts on these seemingly contradictions bothered my mind so I decided on the only course of action was to ask God. I said " Lord I’m a bit confused about what I’m reading in your Word and some of it seems to be contradictions but I read in 1 Corinthians Chap. 14 verse 33: For God is not the author of confusion. Lord there must be gifted men in this present day that you gifted with wisdom and knowledge just as you did the Apostles whom you inspired to write the Scriptures. So there must be books in this present day that you inspired gifted men to write to understand the Scriptures. I said to the Lord " Please take this confusion from my mind and show me a book or books in this present day that you inspired gifted men to write about the understanding of the Scriptures.
I went to the Book and Bible store in my hometown and when I step into the store something was telling I would find my answers here(I was led by the Holy Spirit).
I was driven my something(led by the Holy Spirit) to read many books in that store.
I spent hours upon hours never quite satisfied until I laid my hands on this book: THE EPISTLE TO THE ROMANS by JOHN MURRAY.
The book captivated me I was totally immerse in it (I was on the edge of my seat reading it inspired by the Holy Spirit) and it took a lot of the confusion from my mind.
If you do purchase it you have to read every page in order to put the Bible in perspective.
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Ignatius
Guest
If you’re of a scientific bend, New Proofs for the Existence of God from Contemporary Physics and Science by Dr. Robert J. Sptizer gives some detailed scientific evidence.
You can get it here: shop.catholic.com/new-proofs-for-the-existence-of-god-contributions-of-contemporary-physics-and-philosophy.html
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jbp
Guest
Like you, I became an atheist when I was in college and 6 years after that. It helped that my professors were communists lol.
Anyway, I asked myself why should there be a God. Who is He? What’s the point?
The first question I had to deal with and settle for myself is: Does God exist? It helped that I studied symbolic logic, mathematics and computer science and programming. Ontology. Logic. The foundations of mathematics. The Peano Axioms. Goedel’s theorems and Church-Turing thesis. With these, you might come to the realization that the existence of God cannot be proven and it cannot be disproven; it can only be accepted or rejected on faith - it is axiomatic. In the same way that you accept on faith (although you don’t realize it) that zero is a number, or 1+1 = 2, … (the Peano Axioms). Or perhaps the Parallel Postulate of Euclidean geometry - that’s not provable either. Mathematics is built up on faith - every axiom, postulate or definition, you accept on faith that it is true. The point is: the existence of God is axiomatic - which is good because if it was provable/disprovable it means the existence of God is dependent and deducible from something more fundamental. Which means there is something greater than God because otherwise he is derivable from something else.
You say there is no evidence; I say there is. There is order in the laws of the universe or even the multiverse. They are all very much dependent on the good graces of the logical structure of mathematics. String theory you might say, yeah sure. But even that is bound up in logic and mathematics. If it cannot be expressed in mathematics, it cannot exist at all. Period. But assume you are God, the programmer. And you are going to program the universe on a UTM. First, you need to build a UTM! Next, You need to write the program to bring the multiverse simulating inside the UTM! The creatures inside the multiverses that happen to have the the chance to pop into existence and evolve would undoubtedly use the same logic or run within the rules you provided and exist happily within the confines of the UTM. But think about it, if they were thinking beings inside the machine, they can plunder the depths of logic and only have a glimpse of the mind of God, you, in this example. You get it?
They will only know you if you reveal yourself to your creation. If you only decide to make it known, otherwise, they will only have the puzzlement of why their universe is so orderly, or that other universes come and go in the blink of an eye because the math says so. The math and logic that you programmed is just so that all consciousness can exist inside the machine that just happens to evolve consciousness and becomes aware of creation - your creation.
This is your first hurdle: to accept that there is a God. If you accept and believe that there is a God, all creation makes sense. If you don’t, you are left in awe, wonder and bewilderment. You have to make this choice.
As Morpheus asked Neo, in the Matrix: "This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. "
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AnimalSpirits
Guest
I wouldn’t equate axiomatic belief in a higher power with mathematical axioms. The two have something in common (they can’t be proven or shown to false, as far as we know), but they’re still fundamentally different. At the end of the day, your god is either real or he isn’t. We can’t discern that, but one of us is right or wrong. This isn’t really the case with mathematical axioms. I accept the axiom of the successor function, but that’s not a faith based position. I don’t think that thefunction “exists” in the real world the way a god might. Math is a thing we construct to explain some pieces of the universe, and succession seems to be a fundamental property. Thus, or constructed system needs to capture that.
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Natural_Numbers
Guest
Hello, my name is Natural Numbers, and I don’t think my life has any objective meaning.
I do think my life has subjective meaning, to myself and others, perhaps even to a god, if one exists, but I don’t think that is the same as objective meaning, which I don’t think is a meaningful concept.
The definition of objective is “not influenced by personal feelings or opinions.” I don’t see how people say that their life has objective meaning on the grounds that some powerful spiritual person has a personal plan for them, or personally cares for them.
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HelenRose
Guest
Faith, Hope and Love.
Three beautiful words. When I do not have Faith, I can have Hope, if Hope fails, me I can Love. Love never fails and always leads me back to Hope which leads me back to Faith.
Love your fellow human beings. Do what you know to be honorable, kind, honest and true. Hope that you can find the Faith you are seeking.
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Natural_Numbers
Guest
Greetings fellow Math Geek!
Yours is probably the way I would go if I wanted to try to convince myself that gods exist. However, I think you make a major leap in going from “there is structure in the universe” to “therefore a person made that structure”. In that case, who made the structure of god? God, or most gods proposed by people who believe in them, behaves in a definite way, has a distinct personality, has specific desires and wishes - why does he have those? Instead of a universe which has an ultimately unexplainable or axiomatic structure, you have a universe created by a god which has an ultimately unexplainable or axiomatic structure.
I have believed in God, and I have not believed in God. The only sense that the universe made more sense when I believed in God was in the sense that I was not as interested in how things work as I am now, or dismissed most mysteries as unexplainable acts of God.
For example, to the question of “Why does gravity exist?” the atheist says “I don’t know”. The Christian says “Because God made it that way”, and if you ask “Why did God make it that way”, the Christian (if honest) says “I don’t know.” But many will not ask themselves the second question and will be satisfied with “Because God made it that way”, and having that answer will believe themselves to have knowledge.
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Natural_Numbers
Guest
As someone who is practically an atheist in that I do not believe gods exist, I must say this is a bizarre statement. I don’t know what you mean by “reason”, but life is certainly navigable without assuming there is a person controlling the universe. If you’re brought up on promises of glory and immortality beyond the grave, it might seem depressing to think that you might actually die one day, but all it takes is a bit of maturity to come to terms with that.
It’s also weird to assert that the belief that the universe can be understood is an assumption not based on evidence. I believe that the universe can be understood, to a very high degree, practically speaking, based on the observed fact that I understand a lot of what goes on in my life.
It does not take a leap of faith to say I can understand how to open a door. I have lots of evidence that I can understand how to open a door based on the number of doors I open every day.
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AnimalSpirits
Guest
My name is AnimalSpirits and I think the same (about my life. Well, yours too, but mine in particular). Irreligion among math nerds seems to be the hot thing.
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AnimalSpirits
Guest
Put another way, either the universe can be understood or I’m just really, really lucky. Maybe I’m way off about cause and effect, but I put my framework to use every single time I do anything. There are, of course, somethings I get wrong (I remember putting my shoes in the closet last week, shoes don’t teleport, yet the shoes aren’t in the closet). My framework is imperfect and I apply it imperfectly. But at the very least, I get pretty close almost all of the time.
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jbp
Guest
“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.”
My argument was meant as an analogy. But it is pretty clear that the origin has to be pre-existent, that’s ontology - (e.g. Bill Gates had to write MSDOS first for it to exist or Brin/Page had to write the Google search engine to make it exist in the first place). And for creation/the universe/multiverse to exist, as in my example, you have to create the environment itself first, the UTM, then the rules of whatever you want to create and then let the environment let creation run by itself according to the program. Then you step back and say, “Isn’t that beautiful!”
Creation/the universe/multiverse, as defined by the program running in the environment of the UTM that you built to run the program will be unaware of it’s creator because it’s creator exists beyond it’s environment - unless you allow your creation to eventually discern or discover you or else explicitly reveal yourself to your created. You are for all intents and purposes transcendent, but knowable to a certain degree, to your created multiverses and creatures fortunate enough to exist/produced by the parameters and global values you might have encoded.
What else? It means that the natural numbers that you have in your head both have objective and subjective meaning and is universal beyond creation. They simply exist because you made them exist. The Platonic objects therefore were made to exist in your (since in this analogy you are standing in for God) head first and their existence is not dependent on the existence or non-existence of the UTM or the creation program. Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems also guarantee that there is practically no limit to the number of axioms you can add to explain a set of foundational rules. Unfortunately, I cannot explain it more fundamentally as an analogy than that. I rest my case.
Are you required to build the UTM in the first place? Or the creation program? Absolutely not! God (you) could have been playing darts and drinking beer for all He cares!
Like I said, a person is free to believe in the existence of God or free to deny the existence of God. If you believe, you will find beauty and meaning and purpose. If you deny, you will find bewilderment and wonder. Isn’t free will great?
Your (the programmer) existence (God) doesn’t prevent you (Him) from having a will or a mind or a soul or emotion - or having a beer.
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Pax
Guest
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