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Insight
Guest
Wikipedia has a great audio clip of Haffert at the bottom under “Media”:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Haffert
God Bless
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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Haffert
God Bless
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AntiTheist
Guest
I’m the author of the quote you cite:
I submit that there’s not a shred of sufficient evidence for the existence of any of those beings – let alone for the claim that one of those beings created the universe. And if your best argument is an argument from ignorance (“I don’t know how the universe came to be, so therefore, my god did it! I mean, I can’t accept that the universe just runs on completely blind and purposeless laws, so therefore, my god did it!”) you’re just proving my point for me.
No, I agree that various gods have existed in various heads throughout history. The question before us now is whether or not there’s any good reason to think that any of those gods are real (outside of those heads).
I agree that most people who believe in a god – various people believing in various different gods, of course – think that their particular god is the most likely source of the universe. The question before us now is whether or not there’s any good reason to think that any of those gods are the source of the universe.
I submit that there’s not a shred of sufficient evidence for the existence of any of those beings – let alone for the claim that one of those beings created the universe. And if your best argument is an argument from ignorance (“I don’t know how the universe came to be, so therefore, my god did it! I mean, I can’t accept that the universe just runs on completely blind and purposeless laws, so therefore, my god did it!”) you’re just proving my point for me.
I don’t think that someone who’s on record as a believer in ghosts should be lecturing the rest of us about “the rational capacity of humanity.”Or maybe I’m just being optimistic (for once) about the rational capacity of humanity…
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Mystic_Banana
Guest
Kind of similar, a lot of them, though, aren’t they? I know atheists like to think “oh, everyone’s got a silly superstitious idea about what there is, probably based on some paternalistic thang”, but… not quite true, really, is it?
You know, I watched a show not long ago where even the hindu guy as explaining an apparent polytheism as a monotheism (although since many misinterpret Christianity as a polytheism, maybe I’m the ignorant one here…). Reading the Bible, as I’ve occasionally been in the habit of doing, I seem to remember that the interpretation of other Gods differing from that of, er, God as conceived of by Abrahamic faiths is considered creation of pseudoGods based on misunderstanding. That “all Gods as distinctly seperate experiences from one another” would be, then, just one more distortion of common understanding by antitheists in an attempt to make their own irrationality seem more sensible…antitheists? Making deliberate misrepresentations of historical cultures?.. would that be… possible!
Well, considering the myth of native Amercians being pantheistic, when apparently most are panentheistic, shows that your fave quoted atheist fella of today… DOES JUST THAT!
Why accept something that seems absurdly unlikely? Compared to something which, er, doesn’t?
And you’ve proven any number of my points a million times!
Well, any number of pithy psychological hypotheses/excuses don’t wash to explain them away. So why deny such a ubiquitous aspect of human experience so easily? Unless you’re irrationally dogmatic enough…
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Mystic_Banana
Guest
- no, I’m not, so it doesn’t. I’m saying it’s more than a concept within my head. Pay attention!!! :tsktsk:
Pay attention!!!:hypno:
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Mystic_Banana
Guest
Haha I explained WHY I think your posts are STUPID and why you seem to be a TROLL. Now I am starting to wonder about your ability to READ.
God Bless
Oh, come on, guys…
:grouphug:
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StrawberryJam
Guest
I am paying attention.
My reply stands. We are not addressing your personal opinions here. You are not even supporting an idea that your personal opinions mean anything. So, of course as you say:
“it’s more than a concept within my head”
My reply is clear. I deny that truth can be found simply by finding a lot of others that agree with each other. If I thought that was a reason to believe- I would be consulting a homeopath now. Am I?
As for your Number 2.
I challenge you to put up or be silent. Who is rational in your view that is non theist?
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Mystic_Banana
Guest
The second part of the email went further - you’re picking up on a pithy reply to a pithy putdown… stop slidng round in the butter and go for the meat!
“Science is not simply a collection of true facts about the world, but is the body of assertions and theories about the world made by people who are called scientists” – R.C.Lewontin
Challenges, eh? :knight2: Are you after a list of celebrities? I do think theism makes more sense than anything, because I’m yet to encounter an argument that effectively challenges it… Most people are rational to some degree, including many (but sadly, a suddenly decreasing number of) atheists…but it’s the fundamentalist, scientismic types that strike me as the least rational of all, simply because I’m horrified by the towering pretension behind it all
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seekerz
Guest
He does write in the sky, everyday. The sun says: here I am to warm you and make your crops grow and to mark the gift of a new day. The clouds say: here we are to water your fields and to give you respite from the heat and to beautify the sky. The blue sky says: I seem to be endless to remind you of God’s infinite goodness and love. The moon and stars say: I’m here to remind you that God is there even in your darkest hour.
God does write in the sky - problem is man has trouble reading…
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Mystic_Banana
Guest
Beautiful!
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StrawberryJam
Guest
So. You are all talk about rational non theists, and can not name a single one. Sort of like, I have a lot of friends that are …The second part of the email went further - you’re picking up on a pithy reply to a pithy putdown… stop slidng round in the butter and go for the meat!
“Science is not simply a collection of true facts about the world, but is the body of assertions and theories about the world made by people who are called scientists” – R.C.Lewontin
Challenges, eh? :knight2: Are you after a list of celebrities? I do think theism makes more sense than anything, because I’m yet to encounter an argument that effectively challenges it… Most people are rational to some degree, including many (but sadly, a suddenly decreasing number of) atheists…but it’s the fundamentalist, scientismic types that strike me as the least rational of all, simply because I’m horrified by the towering pretension behind it all
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StrawberryJam
Guest
Really? Why do you attribute these natural happenings with your specific Christian God?
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Spirithound
Guest
Contradiction…
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NaturalEnquirer
Guest
There is an old saying: “Miracles don’t make faith, faith makes miracles.”
No human experience can overcome humanity’s tendency to doubt. Look at the Exodus. The Jews had just witnessed a series of extraordinary, undeniable miracles and yet they immediately turn to idolatry. Look at Judas. One of Jesus’s hand picked Twelve. How many miracles did he witness? Heck, he may very we’ll have performed miracles himself. But he was able to talk himself into denial. Same for Peter. Same for Thomas.
Miracles and other personal experiences aren’t enough. What matters is how we choose to respond to the experience.
No human experience can overcome humanity’s tendency to doubt. Look at the Exodus. The Jews had just witnessed a series of extraordinary, undeniable miracles and yet they immediately turn to idolatry. Look at Judas. One of Jesus’s hand picked Twelve. How many miracles did he witness? Heck, he may very we’ll have performed miracles himself. But he was able to talk himself into denial. Same for Peter. Same for Thomas.
Miracles and other personal experiences aren’t enough. What matters is how we choose to respond to the experience.
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Mystic_Banana
Guest
Oh! You actually do want me to just name some random rational famous non-theists
…er, okay! Borges. Charles Fort. I’ve even got him on my profile, don’t I?!? How rational is rational before I name them rational, though?!?
And actually, several of my best friends are reasonably rational non-theists, to some degree or other… moreso in several cases than some of my theist chums…
Oh,dear. Strawberry, you are so presumptuous, sir! :yup:
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Insight
Guest
How would you explain the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima that was witnessed by over 75,000 people?
How is it that the Old Testament (written over 5,000 years ago) holds that God created everything from nothing agree so well with what most scientists consider even today? “The most widely accepted scientific creation scenario is the Big Bang theory, which holds that everything in the Universe was created from nothing. Coincidentally, the Christian Bible likewise asserts that God created everything from nothing (Genesis 1:1) (Hebrews 11:3). Pope John Paul II felt that the Big Bang theory was the Creation scenario closest to that portrayed in the Bible. The Universe is currently expanding. The inevitable conclusion to the Big Bang scenario is the Big Crunch, when gravitational forces overcome and halt the expansion, causing the Universe to collapse in on itself. The unfathomable gravity eventually creates one enormous massive super black hole containing all matter in the Universe, collapsing in on itself with such great gravitational force as to approach zero in size. The properties of matter falter as this super black hole reaches critical mass and explodes into pure energy, triggering another Big Bang, forming a new Universe (a cycling recreation). In both the Old and New Testament, God creates a new Heaven and a new Earth, as the old Heaven and Earth pass away (Isaiah 65:17, Revelations 21:01).”
arguingwithatheists.com/Pages/Bible_References.htm
God Bless
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Soulewolf
Guest
I would agree both with the sentiment that “he already does” and your question, strawberry. Though if you find truth in the first idea, then you merely have to seek out a relationship with whatever it is writing in the sky. If seekerz has done so, then it is a personal relationship with an infinite being and can not really be judged by mortal standards.
If you find truth in the statement that “he already does” perhaps you should seek to understand the entity through whatever belief system has the most truth for you, be it christianity, islam, judaism, buddhism, taoism, or just basic theism.
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hugh_miller
Guest
Genesis of the Judaic-Christian Bible is thought to have been written by Moses. Genesis 1-11 describes how the universe and all life forms including mankind were spoken into existence within six days and that is when time began. Thus there is a written record for how we all got here which is attributed to God.
Within both the theistic and scientific communities you have those that believe that those six days were literal six 24 hour days and those that believe in the current paradigm of origins that used evolution over 100’s of million of years to bring us to where we are [The Big Bang hypothesis I think is currently at 13 billion years – correct me if it has changed]. To the theistic evolutionist, God or some pre-existing Intelligent Designer guided those billions of years; to the agnostic, atheist, or non-theists or whatever, nature did it. In either case - mud changed into people by unknown processes over millions and billions of years.
Since scientific discoveries, observations and their interpretations are used to support one or the other of the many theories as to when time started, there is a new scientific tool developed in the past 70 years [God gave it to us through Physicist Dr. W. Libby?] which might help at least those who are theists keep the faith and that is C-14 dating.
Specifically by radiocarbon (RC) dating dinosaur bones, coal and diamonds it has been discovered that there is sufficient C-14 in each fossil [diamond is a rock with ~99.9% carbon] to reduce their ages 2000 to 30,000 times down to roughly 20,000 to 30,000 RC years before the present (BP) for dinosaur bones, 45,000 to 53,000 RC years BP for coal and amber and 55,000 to 80,000 RC years BP for diamond. www.earthage.org and www.dinosaurc14age.com Diamonds are most interesting as current theory requires diamonds to be up to 3 billion years old. I wonder what might be the RC age for chondritic meteorites might be? They contain up to 1 % carbon with one group in Russia at 4% carbon.
And what is even more fascinating is that there are several good scientific reasons why the above RC ages may be way too old. Because RC dating has now become highly developed over the past thirty years we now have the Accelerated Mass Spectrometer which can RC date minute quantities down to one mg or less of carbon. Contamination or the careless choice of samples as with the Shroud of Turin can give wrong RC ages but most of the 150 World-wide labs have highly trained scientists who know how to pretreat the specimens to eliminate possible old or young carbon.
Based on C-14 dating and many other supporting evidences learned in the past few years I would say right now that: The God of Moses Sizzles while the God of Darwin Fizzles
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Insight
Guest
There is a good site that explains what went wrong with the Shroud dating. The samples were apparently taken from an outside edge that was repaired via a re-weaving process in the 1400’s.
AdvancedChristianity.com/DatingTheShroud/DatingTheShroud.htm
God Bless
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Resonet
Guest
Uh… Dunno why this question reminds me of the moment people began asking Jesus for a clear sign of Him being the Messiah. Remember what His reply was?
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Mystic_Banana
Guest
The Turin Shroud controversy is incredible. Funny, but the first I heard of it was when the age was ‘disproved’, from someone who thought that would be a good argument against being Christian!
And, of course, the Catholic Church has sensibly not made any dogmatic statements regarding it’s authenticity at all…
Isn’t there something about the weaving method used being completely unknown during the middle ages as well?
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