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dkdempsey
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Yes, probably. Seems to make sense, gives the universe some order I suppose. Of course there is no objective proof for nor against. But don’t let that stop you from believing.
Would you accept the letters of Paul as being contemporaneous?You’ve misunderstood – I mean “contemporary” in the sense of “contemporary with Jesus.” In other words, I’m looking for eyewitness accounts that were from that same time period – an account that dates from 1-33 CE, rather than the 65-110 CE period in which the synoptic gospels were written. Or accounts of people from around 1-33 CE writing about Jesus and his miracles.
MegaTherion, don’t you think you might be overstating the case for almost near certitude of science “fact” just a bit???You have to be careful – apologists like to play games with words. They’ll convince you that “everything takes faith, even science” so that all of a sudden, all beliefs become equally likely to be true. Or, as MindOverMatter did, they’ll try to convince you that atheists “want” there to be no god and that’s the one and only reason that they’re atheists.
Do we know all of this 100% for sure? No, of course not. There’s still a lot more to learn. But just because we probably can’t know everything 100% for sure **doesn’t mean that we can’t know anything at all about reality **-- just because there are some limits to our knowledge doesn’t mean that every argument is equally valid.
Arguments with lots and lots of evidence are very likely to be true; it doesn’t take faith to accept them.
Arguments without evidence (taken on faith) might be true or false – but we have no way of confirming their veracity or distinguishing such beliefs from fantasy.
Hmmm, I think you’re overstating it.So, in short, it’s not an “act of faith” to accept evolution, even if we’re only 99% sure. Some new evidence could change the way we think about evolution tomorrow – but we would have to adjust to new evidence. There would be nothing that would require us to have “faith.”
Hume completely undermines the scientific method. :doh2:MegaTherion, don’t you think you might be overstating the case for almost near certitude of science “fact” just a bit???
If you study the secular philosopher David Hume’s study of causality, Hume says one can observe a something in nature occurring over and over, but one cannot prove that x causes y.
(Hume also said there is no observational evidence for God).
Typical scientific laws are unrestrictedly general statements, which also assert causal statements like “if you heat a body of water at sea-level atmospheric pressure it will boil when the temperature reaches 100 degrees Celsius.”
It may be that every time in history that water has been heated it has boiled at a temperature of 100 degrees Celsius, but that does not prove that the heating causes the boiling, and it certainly does not prove that the next time I heat water it will boil at 100 degrees Celsius.
Perhaps, next time, things will be different.
However many Xs I observe and find to have the property of Y, that is no proof that the next X I see will be Y.
It may not be.
I may come to expect that it will be, but that is a psychological effect, and is something quite different from a logical proof: it is mere association of ideas.
We shall certainly go on expecting water to boil at 100 degrees Celsius, but we have nothing that can seriously be called proof that it will; and therefore we cannont, strictly speaking, say we know that it will.
According to Hume, we do not realy know anything; we have our expectations, but that is not the same thing as knowledge.
Hume believed people should hold their opinions diffidently, knowing them to be fallible, and should respect those of others.
So, even scientific “facts” cannot be known for certain.
Hmmm, I think you’re overstating it.
I think a fair answer to the question about whether God exists is we don’t know for sure one way or the other; that there is no direct observational evidence for God.
However, that doesn’t mean necessarily that there is no God.
I trust and believe there is a God, the God of Christianity, and as a human being I’m free to make that make that choice for myself.
Yes, the belief is not based on direct observational evidence, but that doesn’t bother me at all.
So the account must date from 1-33 CE, rather than 65-100 CE. But Mathew and John were among His contemporaries and they put into document what they personally knew about Him.Hi, agangbern,
You’ve misunderstood – I mean “contemporary” in the sense of “contemporary with Jesus.” In other words, I’m looking for eyewitness accounts that were from that same time period – an account that dates from 1-33 CE, rather than the 65-110 CE period in which the synoptic gospels were written. Or accounts of people from around 1-33 CE writing about Jesus and his miracles.
The thing is, the accounts themselves have to be from that time period – they can’t be accounts claiming to be about that time period.
You certainly seemed to be saying that the way I took it.Well, I agree that we probably can’t prove anything to 100% degree certainty, but I’m talking not talking about 100% certainty when I say “facts.”
I’ll tell you what, if he had just mocked it, I’d say my faith would be shaken in him at that point, wouldn’ you? Remember, I didn’t say I had faith in evolution, I said I had faith in Darwin.Nobody who actually knows anything about the subject has (or needs to have) “faith” in Darwin. That notion is very silly. …
If we found out tomorrow that Darwin had just fabricated The Origin of the Species to mock scientists, it wouldn’t make a shred of difference… “Faith” in Darwin (of all people!) has nothing to do with accepting evolution.
Wait, faith and act of faith are two different things. I know you have faith in things, I can see it in your writing. But I know you don’t have an act of faith. That too, I looked up on dictionary.com just to make sure I didn’t make an oops. Which of course, I’m quite cabable of… especially since I haven’t had any sleep since yesterday afternoon at 3pm. I’m pretty exhausted right now.On the other hand, it is an act of faith to believe in something like a god or spirits or the thousands of other supernatural things people have believed in since the dawn of time.
And some were not, and didn’t even expect God to “hit 'em with a spiritual 2 x 4”. They were pretty happy in their unbelief as well. But they’re happier now.Some of these people were at one time believers, and they are disappointed that there is no evidence at all for the existence of god.
Jesus Christ is the objective proof of the fact that God exists! We simply have to know Him and follow Him in order to realize this truth ourselves. "When perfected, a disciple will be like his Teacher".Yes, probably. Seems to make sense, gives the universe some order I suppose. Of course there is no objective proof for nor against. But don’t let that stop you from believing.
As far as I know, the letters of Paul date from several decades after Jesus’ supposed death, and Paul, by his own admission, never met Jesus (at least not in physical form – he claimed to have met his spirit on the road to Damascus).Would you accept the letters of Paul as being contemporaneous?
As far as we know, the universe began to assume its current form at the moment of the Big Bang. No one knows what happened before the Big Bang (and in fact “before the Big Bang,” before time, is technically a contradiction in terms). Among many possibilities, it is possible that the universe existed in a quantum state. There’s a good chance that this state (something completely natural) was the “purely actual” or “purely potential” or whatever you’re calling it.
- Changing things exist.
- Everything that changes is composed of act and potency.
- No potency can actualize itself.
- Therefore, there must be something purely actual.
Well, Hume is technically right that we can’t “prove” causality. We could obtain evidence tomorrow that would totally upset our knowledge of cause and effect.Hume
I think a fair answer to the question about whether God exists is we don’t know for sure one way or the other; that there is no direct observational evidence for God.
I agree. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.However, that doesn’t mean necessarily that there is no God.
It’s important to have accounts that are contemporary – these help confirm that the person in question existed.So the account must date from 1-33 CE, rather than 65-100 CE. But Mathew and John were among His contemporaries and they put into document what they personally knew about Him.
Huh?By the way, would you please explain to me what you understand by 1-33 CE?
I don’t think that belief is an act of will.Becoming an Atheist is an act of will, it’s a denial of a belief in God.
My point is that belief in evolution does not stand on faith in Darwin (which I think you pretty clearly implied in your other post). If we discredit Darwin tomorrow, it won’t change the evidence we’ve gathered since he lived, evidence that points to a clear conclusion.I’ll tell you what, if he had just mocked it, I’d say my faith would be shaken in him at that point, wouldn’ you? Remember, I didn’t say I had faith in evolution, I said I had faith in Darwin.
Having faith in things in the sense of “confidence,” based on evidence, is not the same as having faith in things in the sense of “choosing to believe,” without evidence.Wait, faith and act of faith are two different things. I know you have faith in things, I can see it in your writing. But I know you don’t have an act of faith.
We know only that he has been a fantastic intercessor – stories of his miracles, both during and subsequent to his death, are absolutely legion – and after his canonization, that intercession will grow. Of all Padre Pio’s healings, one of the most remarkable may have been a blind girl from the Palermo area named Gemma DiGiorgio. “I had no pupils in my eyes,” said Gemma in 1971, several years after Padre Pio’s death. “I had no sight at all. When I was three months old, my mother took me to a very famous eye doctor in Palermo. He told her that, without pupils, I would never be able to see.”
Some claimed that she may have had pupils, but that her birth defect was so severe they were not recognized as such. Whatever the case, in 1946, when the girl was seven, a nun took it upon herself to write Padre Pio on her behalf and received a note saying that the girl should be brought to Padre Pio in San Giovanni Rotundo. That’s exactly what Gemma’s grandmother did: brought the girl to see the famous monk, who heard the child’s first Confession and gave her first Communion – then made the sign of the Cross on her eyes.
After the blessing, Gemma was able to see. It’s a fact that is beyond question, confirmed by amazed doctors. Did she really lack pupils? Or was her entire eye one large pupil (making it seem that way)? We know only that there was a severe defect and that although the physical defect remained unchanged, afterward Gemma was able to see normally.
More astounding still may be the thoroughly-documented cure of a construction worker named Giovanni Savino, who was severely injured on February 15, 1949, in a dynamie mishap. When Dr. Guglielmo Sanguinetti, a physician, and Padre Raffaele, another Capuchin, and Father Dominic Meyer rushed to the injured man’s side, "all three men noted that among Savino’s numerous injuries, his right eye was gone entirely. They agreed that “the socket was empty” reports biographer Bernard Ruffin in Padre Pio: The True Story.
Other doctors confirmed that they eye was completely annihilated and the other one badly damaged.
It looked like Savino was also going to be totally blind.
For three days the worker lay on a hospital bed with his head and face bandaged. When a surgeon entered the room three days later, Savino reported that Padre Pio had visited him – something Savino recognized because he had detected the beautiful aroma so often reported around the priest.
A week later, at about one a.m. on February 25, 1949, Savino feld a slap on the right side of his face – the side where the eye was completely gone.
“I asked, 'Who touched me?” testified Savino. “There was nobody. Again I smelled the aroma of Padre Pio. It was beautiful.”
When later the opthalmologist – an atheist – came to examine the remaining eye, there was shock. “To their amazement,” writes Ruffin, “the doctors found that his shattered face was fully healed and covered with new skin. Savino, however, was most delighted at the fact that he could see. ‘I can see you!’ he said excitedly to the eye specialist.”
As indeed, as is medically documented, the doctor saw to his ‘utter astonishment’ that Savino had his right eye back. Somehow the eye had materialized. (“Now I believe too,” exclaimed the doctor, “because of what my own hands have touched!”)
spiritdaily.net/AmazingPio_cures.htmAs Ruffin notes, it’s one thing when diseases disappear, this is exciting. It’s tremendous to hear of diabetes or arthritis or even cancer leaving a person. “For a missing part of the body to be restored; however, is another matter,” noted the expert biographer.
While there is considerable evidence for the biological evolution process, evidence for Darwin’s explanation of the process is dubious.… there is more evidence for evolution than almost any other scientific theory (including gravity).
To the best of my knowledge, Darwinian theory has yet to predict the evolution of a single critter. You’ll kindly pass along any contrary information, yes?Nobody who actually knows anything about the subject has (or needs to have) “faith” in Darwin. That notion is very silly. The evidence is clear as day: the fossil record alone would be sufficient, but we also have comparative biology and overwhelming DNA evidence (which, when we discovered it, happened to confirm everything that evolution predicted). On top of that, evolution makes predictions that have been confirmed and proven useful across a wide variety of other sciences.
Indeed evolution is both fact and theory, like gravity.While there is considerable evidence for the biological evolution process, evidence for Darwin’s explanation of the process is dubious.
Sure. And if biological life was created by pixies in such a manner, with pixies manipulating DNA, etc. – the evidence of evolution would be exactly what we observe.If biological life was created in such a manner, with God manipulating DNA exactly like a computer programmer enhances his code sequences, the evidence of evolution would be exactly what we observe.
Would it help if I said that you have so completely missed the point?Indeed evolution is both fact and theory, like gravity.
:ehh: There is a “law of gravity” but no “law of evolution.” Your scientism is tiresome.Indeed evolution is both fact and theory, like gravity.
Yes! I am serious in my curiosity about your personal understanding of “1-33 CE”. You used it here and I don’t want to be guessing of what you personally mean by that.Quote:
By the way, would you please explain to me what you understand by 1-33 CE?
Huh?