You are still thinking in material terms.
My free will is adequately demonstrated by the fact that I have used my gift of free will in the way God intended - to freely accept Jesus as my Saviour and Redeemer. Can you seriously believe that this could all be done by my subconscious brain activity? Seriously?
If there weren't loads of witnesses who could verify the story, the church would have fizzled out, surely. There must have been an effort made to verify it, as there was with the Hillsborough disaster. The Jews seemed so intent on eradicating Christianity that it was 300 ad before it was formally accepted as the truth.
Did the Holy Ghost or God come upon Mary?
The argument you present in itself does not and cannot define the truths and power of God. Nor can it contain an answer
to the actual events which come to pass. Need new arguments the one you bring to the table outdated.
Circular reasoning cannot raise the dead. Circular reasoning cannot heal the sick... Are you sure you are not brain washed
and hiding behind words because you don't understand the persons God, Christ and the Holy Spirit? Circular reasoning in no way
can explain who they are individually or the works men have done because of them. Circular reasoning is redundant you are wearing the altogether as far as the kings new clothes.
You see above the circular reasoning is man made and did not exist till after God, Christ and the Holy Spirit. You explain God,
Christ and the Holy Spirit without using someone elses reasoning or words. The truth is you cannot which means you are not in a
position to make judgements about things you cannot reason for yourself.
You don't have a reasoning... You cannot even explain who God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, are. You cannot even reason for yourself
you use stupid and unintelligent words like 'circular arguments' because you are ignorant of the truth
about the subjects at hand.
Your last paragraph is just stupid. The rest of your post is you just trying to reflect your own beliefs about subjects (you know
absolutely nothings about) on to them. You use 'man-made' arguments without any real understanding of them and think somehow it proves your disbelief. Nothing really blinding there.
The end and beginning is God. The only circular argument which is a circular argument that begins and ends on a truth. The greatest proof that God exists and always will whatever you believe that existence to be, is that no one has managed to do away with the belief.
The reason for that, is no science and no man can disprove his existence. It isn't a fallacy and therefore it exists because it is
the only circular reasoning which is based on truth. A truth your writing about him acknowledges he will always exist.
Being clever is not about what you think you know. It is about what knowing what you know about whom you know. @ Sassy.
It is explained using the considerable God given intelligence of human beings like Dawkins et al to think up imaginary scenarios and computer generated simulations which assume that this tiny speck of the universe can supply an apparently limitless amount of randomly generated beneficial mutations to drive the evolutionary process.
The verifiable evidence can only confirm evolution as a fine tuning method for facilitating the survival of already complex living entities.
Modify message
('argument' for why a soul exists)
My argument is based upon the fact that if the soul does exist as a spiritual entity which enables conscious awareness of the information held within our brain, no amount of neuroscientific investigation will discover it.
The good reason I have to believe in the power of the soul to invoke my conscious choice lies in the reality perceived by 100% of the human population that they have the freedom to choose.
Souls are completely compatible with determinism, but not with the deterministic nature in the reactive properties of material based entities over which there can be no control - just inevitable uncontrolled reaction. The question is in what determines your conscious will. In your scenario, there can be no entity within you which can exert conscious control or choice - all is just inevitable reaction. You seem to be unable to grasp the concept of your thoughts being deliberately directed by conscious willpower. The entity within you which exerts control is not random, neither is it uncontrollable reaction. It is not shackled by the uncontrollable nature of physical cause and effect, but driven by the spiritual interaction of the human soul - which is you. We all have the freedom to choose our own destiny.
I read once of someone claiming that photons from the sun could be responsible for many of the mutations in DNA which are needed to drive the process of evolution. If this is correct, then I must assume that God can aim these photons with a precision beyond our understanding.
Like many replies I get, there is an attempt to invalidate my reasoning on a particular point by trying to ridicule it using some arbitrary fictitious subject, but the points I make can be compared to individual pieces of the jigsaw which, when put together, make sense of the whole reality of our existence. It is comparatively easy to pick on a piece of this jigsaw and claim that on its own it makes no sense. But putting them all together they fit well enough to offer substantial evidence for the spiritual nature of human beings and the existence of God. We have the existence of human free will, conscience, self awareness, miracles, witness stories, answers to prayer, four independently written gospels, highly improbable sequences of events to create life, the human tendency to search for God, incredibly precise conditions needed for the creation of stars an galaxies. Each of these points (and more) can be argued with individually, but putting them all together shows how they can validate the Christian faith in a way which is more difficult to ridicule as a whole.
(In answer to a request to prove their statement that Jesus was both God and Man)
1: Experience of myself and others.
1a: Failure of antitheists to get the medical profession to endorse their ''Oi Nutter'' approach to religion.
2: A wealth of evidence of God Dodging abroad in society.
3: The elephant in the room of wrong doing.
4: The failure of moral irrealism to arbitrate in moral issues see point 2.
5: The failure of honest philosophical naturalism and the unfeasible efforts to support it see point 2.
6: The stubborn refusal of any portrayal of God by antutheists other than something along the lines of an old man with a white beard in robes see point 2.
7: The necessity of an ultimate actual rather than a world of the derived.
You are discounting linguistic imperialism. Which is naïve (because of Krauss IMHO) and a little hypocritical vis the conflict definition of marriage. Where a new definition seeks destruction of an old definition.
Dawkins, Krauss and Dennett to me seek to impose their definitions and destroy all other ideas and definition.IMHO. Memetics is a case in point since it is an exercise in the subduction of other sociological ideas in the interest of the New Atheist portfolio.
(justifying his god's actions as regards Adam and Eve)
I disagree. Since the consequences of evil effectively destroy paradise in any case the post paradisal state is instigated by human decision. It is demonstrated that if humans establish themselves as the ultimate authority paradise ceases to exist. what you are therefore proposing is the abolition of consequence.
That said God wishes eventual restoration hence the eventual return to heaven where humanity walks once again with God. If that is what we want.
God's only punishment then need only constitute endorsing the consequence of human decision and action.
Enhanced punishment, if we cannot discount it, serves the purpose of deterrence.
I could go into orbital patterns with you BeRational but I'm not sure you would grasp my point there anymore than you grasp my point here. All the planets are currently showing gravitational distress, according to many researchers...none more so than planet Earth.
Now, to fit into my understanding there are 3 aspects to orbital motion.
i....pulled to the sun by gravity.
2...then slipping into weightlessness.
3...then expelled away from the sun by centrifugal force.
4...then leaving the sun, creating an elliptical orbit before slipping into weightlessness again so that gravity can take control yet again...pulling the planet back.
So, you see the problem isn't so easy to resolve as you seem to think...but there is no guessing when Wormwood will be at its most dangerous, so I reckon that's just as long as we have to repent effectively.
Someone here want to ridicule Adam and Eve??...because, if you do you are ridiculing Almighty God first...as well as every Christian, every Jew and of course, Jesus Christ, himself. We all struggle with this Biblical account but it seems to me that science and Biblical teaching can come together on this point if we have an open mind...and the beauty of an open mind is that it is very healthy indeed, which causes concern when you realise just how closed-minded people can be. The innocent child has an open mind and in their innocence they become a little like Adam and Eve. They obey what their parents tell them and Adam and Eve should have too. Our genetic sciences are still very new to us scientifically, but not to an all knowing God.
He, apparently took a lifeless, void planet, and resurrected it. We know this because the planet was tidally locked although the evidence suggest it had all the life supporting mechanics already on board because there was darkness on the face of the watery deep....It was probably knocked out of kilter when visited by Wormwood, previously, but Almighty God had it surveyed and decided to resurrect it...hence Adam and Eve.
The whole process of preparation wouldn't take more than a week because it was all a question of spinning the planet out of its tidal lock and thereby its life supporting mechanics restarted and we are told about this, step by step, as it happened.
So...Adam and Eve were genetically perfect as Jesus was, but they decided to be persuaded to alter their genetics from pure to deformed...all by trying to scam God. This tells us how our genetic health starts to deform when we turn away from being childlike and start lying and deceiving...scamming and listening to evil...but it isn't the end of the world because Jesus taught us to use his righteous mechanics to recover by...so only the foolish will ignore him.
My reasoning makes it more than credible...but you are all in denial. You even deny what millions have already told you that ufos are constantly passing through our air-space who must have and have proven to your highest scientists and governmental authorities that their sciences far overwhelms ours. They have even established a fascinating way of communication through crop circles, which, if nothing else, tells many innocent bystanders...they, the ufo people, or at least many of them, are here to be helpful, through this very distressing period, where the planet is being overwhelmed by other, secret, and distressing tribulations recorded in the Holy Bible leading up to that last trumpet...I apologise for wanting to spare you from the full force of Wormwood, and other associated Biblically based tribulations...Try Revelation 21:8.
Hi SweetPea...nice to hear from you again. Yes...its all very concerning...especially as the weather anomalies and die-offs of multiple animals are so frequent. I sympathise with those who suffer from asthma and bronchitis but it all makes Almighty God's impending Judgment all the more urgent.
Nicholas, I'm with you on the chemtrailing. Something is definitely going on in our skies, I've been monitoring it for 2 years. To ignore the grid patterns and trails that billow out into clouds would be denial. September 23rd is doing the rounds again because of the planetary alignment on that day but remember there were similar signs in the sky in AD70.
The science is simple...it's following it where it gets difficult...especially when you have divorced yourselves from Jesus Christ's accurate teaching.
You see...there are 3 key elements that make this science work. The most important is an indestructible, dynamic energy that is so abundant that if you rolled every galaxy out into this raw material there would be enough of it to make all all those atoms and their component parts in the style, shape and form that modern science analyses and tries to interpret.
Then we need 2 dimensions of the universe which are best described as the static...pre-big bang universe...where nothing moved very fast...and also our own, high-speed, expanding dimension, which sprung into action when all that 'dynamic energy' erupted.
Link these two dimensions with black-holes, both on the macro-scale, and the micro-scale, and we finish up with of a rush of this electric plasma, or dynamic energy, building galaxies, stars and atoms at a phenomenal rate and all the Biblical clues suggest Almighty God created this universe by giving this scientific understanding, life, and righteous meaning...and because it all happened millions of light-years ago we know that Almighty God is well versed in the 'word' that Jesus Christ made flesh, and this is why we should pay heed when they talk of serious, impending dangers...which they announced to us well over 2000 years ago.
My 'if' is a politeness saying, well, I've worked it out but I don't want to make a big thing of it..because I know you haven't...It's Biblically called, meekness...You see, bluehillside, I want to inherit a share in this new heavens and new Earth.
Oh dear Seb, have you been continually sleeping over the past few years and missed all the flyovers of high altitude planes spreading thick dark and light trails which accumulate into artificial clouds, sometimes as many as ten of these toxic air-planes in the sky at one time going round and round emptying their poisonous payloads then coming back to discharge more. There has been an uproar on the net but the authorities are keeping quiet about it, as are the media, which tells its own tale. Still, observers from all around the world have been complaining about it...mainly to each other because no one is listening...that includes observations made by serious scientific studies which condemn it.
The sun's uv levels are going very high and current researchers are saying that it is in a state of great distress with huge coronal holes forming and spitting out nasty high energy projections, cme's (coronal mass ejections) and threatening our magnetosphere with high levels of powerful radiation. Still...if you prefer to sleep then these things which are creeping up on us and which only the Holy Bible gives us prior warning of, and which indicate that that rogue star system, directly implied by Revelation, is closer than we might think, which leads us to the conclusion that those who are alert and looking out for these things will have a better chance of survival...especially if armed with the righteous teaching of Jesus Christ that repentance urges us to take on board.
Thankyou Floo, though highlighting the facts that most of your scientists are sitting on and which many governments are preparing for, in front of your very eyes, without you having any comprehension of, doesn't really count as light relief.
You see Seb...everything that is happening in the world today equates down to a rogue solar system that is entering our own solar space, and along with frantic measures for survival of the (un)fittest it seems that we, ourselves, will be preoccupied with wars and rumours of wars...still, each to their own...especially if a spiritual eternity within one of these rogue, planetary bodies, turns you on...so be it.
You must remember torri that carbon is made from a wonderful electric plasma wrapped around a tiny black-hole, and as such, will dissolve back to its plasma state, along with all the other elements that aren't secured to the earth...which is a good job because the fiery lake of sulphur will then rid us of distressed electric plasma patterns including nuclear waste and those who refuse to repent.
I have certainly taken images of strange planet type objects around our sun over a period, and I have also noticed the strange aspect of our sun as well...I have also seen the intense chemtrails that are being spewed out above us and timed to block the sun at sunrise and sunset, and, it seems, all over the world, without any explanation and with, what seems to be, a complete lack of health concern. So...I reckon, unless we find the health content written into the Holy Bible...one or other of these many threats, (great tribulations) are going to get us, one way or another...well before the ultimate Biblical threat gets here.
Time to repent don't you think, Seb. That's much more important than knowing the time or the date that no man knoweth except the father...who is in Heaven.
There has been some arguments about faith being true.
So why don't those arguing against it prove Christ to be false complete with actual evidence and show God has lied in his promises
in the OT.
So I guess that is an end to the matter. We can know faith is true and God is real and atheists just have to accept that what they cannot
disprove means it can be accepted as existing.
And yet we have three parallel accounts of the healing, each of which give details not mentioned by the others; eg Luke says that this was the man's only child. Three eyewitnesses behind the account, so we can trust it
In terms of humanity Jesus is the ultimate software specialist and a 2017 neurologist is more of a hardwear specialist.
You must distinguish between inanimate and animate matter, though. In no sense can inanimate matter be thought of as part of a being.
The universe is structured I'm a way that points to God. We think of prayers as going 'upwards' as if God was above us, for example. For me that's either a sign that we and the universe are designed, or its a giant coincidence. Or another example is the moon appearing to be exactly the same size as the sun - an eclipse can move us to examine our thoughts and actions, etc.
(In answer to the question of what evidence there is of God)
.... research the fibonacci sequence
I have already pointed out that intelligent design does exist as demonstrated by numerous man made designs. As the Christian bible says we are made in God's image, so it is feasible that we inherited this attribute of intelligent design from God.
And does it matter what method God used to produce a DNA molecule containing all the data and mechanisms needed to create and maintain a complete human being? The specific complexity of the end result far exceeds the Goo which would be produced by two billion years of totally random events acting on life's basic ingredients.
I think you'll find the idea is that we are animals but not genetically related to the other animals.
(in answer to the origin of animal sacrifice)
Genesis says it arose from the need to cover our nakedness. Leaves being insufficient, an animal had to shed blood so it's skin could be used.
Re Jesus: imagine someone is in debt and can't pay. Another person who is in debt to the same lender cannot help the first person. But someone who has no debt of his own is able to bail the first person out.
(in 'answer' to a poster asking how Christians how they saw their god acting in the Charlie Gard case
A couple, whose firstborn died at 3 months, wrote on his gravestone:
Who plucked this bud?
I, said the Master, and the gardener was silent.
If you say that Jesus wasn't dead, then the claim that on Easter Sunday he was fully recovered (He couldn't have walked to Emmaus with two of them having been flogged and crucified three days earlier) must be false. However, lies have been dismissed due to (1) the honesty displayed in the New Testament accounts and (2) their refusal under torture to deny their claims.
Incredulity among those converted can be dismissed. They included doctors, religious leaders, Roman officials and tax officers, ie people with brains.
1. No one knows what God really is. Different cultures around the world have had their own image and concept of God.
2. As we pray and develop our faith in God (any God), we begin to realize that we are experiencing something that is very close to us and not something from a distant supernatural place.
3. By and by, we realize that the God who we are praying to seems to connect to us from within ourselves. This is something I myself have felt as far back as 45 years ago. I am sure many others have felt so too.
4. Every major spiritual philosophy and religious literature has spoken of the 'God within'. Most prophets and religious leaders have always spoken of Knowing Oneself, regardless of the culture and the deity they prayed to.
5. The doubt naturally arises that if God is an individual being, how can he speak and connect from within every human being? Then we realize that God is not an individual person but a level of Consciousness that is within us.
6. If this higher level of Consciousness is within all humans it must also be within all animals and all other objects. Maybe it is this 'God' that transforms itself into the world.
7. Then why are only some people able to connect to this higher level of consciousness and not everyone? Why is it hidden from most people? This must be because it is covered by lower levels of consciousness.
8. So...all our religious rituals and prayers must be helping us to eliminate these lower levels of consciousness and helping us to connect this higher consciousness.
9. It is also observed that as people eliminate their lower levels of consciousness through prayer, they automatically become less animal like and more loving and tolerant and selfless. They become more empathetic.
10. With more involved experiences and analysis, people arrive at other aspects such as Karma, reincarnation, Liberation and so on.
11. It is then realized that it is about individual development rather than about an external God and helpless humans.
12. Modern ideas such as the String Theory help in reinforcing the idea of a pantheistic philosophy.
Hope this helps.
Cheers.
Sriram
(in answer to the question 'what specific steps have you taken to assess the risks of mistakes or lies in the NT accounts of both miracles and the words attributed to Jesus?')
Well firstly there is the diagnosis and prescription of the human condition in general and personally.
The prescription is Love of the personal God. The diagnosis is failure of love in general and alienation in general and personally.
How do we check that for mistake or lies? Well one can run the diagnosis past alternative prescriptions to sorting out the general impression that things aren't ''fully the ticket.''...after all what are laws for?
which we can categorise as 1) techniques 2) Commandment following 3) moral irrealism.
The first are not comprehensive since at the very least they don't recognise the depth of the diagnosis Christianity makes in fact to rely on them is to discount totally the prescription. Techniques may help but only at the periphery of needs.
Secondly, commandment following.... recognised need for improvement but commandment following could just mean bodily animation to effect ritual. While that may be of help it is only peripheral.
Finally Moral irrealism. This automatically refutes that anything is amiss and has no actual prescription.
As far as I can see such comparisons are the only way to gauge mistake and lie level in the NT.
No to the rest of the text does it read like reportage. Well yes. That has been analysed by people like former atheist CS Lewis.
we can only again hold these up to other interpretations many of which date much longer after the evnt than the last written part of the NT.
Did Jesus exist Yes.
Can we pick out the miracles from the non miraculous? Difficult given the existence of believing communities so quickly afterwards and then only if one uses a certain philosophy which is a different thing. Then we are into comparison of philosophies.
All in all then. The important focus is on Jesus diagnosis and prescription that he himself and his acts at the end are that prescription.
(a 'retraction of earlier comment that witches were burnt to fulfil his god's plan)
Sincere apologies. I confused Leviticus 20:27
'A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads.'
with Leviticus 20:14
'If there is a man who marries a woman and her mother, it is immorality; both he and they shall be burned with fire, so that there will be no immorality in your midst.'
The latter verse demonstrates the reason I gave for the OT capital punishment laws, whose purpose was to preserve a faithful remnant through which the Saviour, promised in Genesis 3, was born.
Burning a witch was part of the system put in place by God to ensure that the promise of a Saviour was fulfilled.
I'm wondering if people choose philosophical materialism or forms of moral irrealism because under it they are completely vindicated and such philosophies provide salvation for the ego.
This of course would be impossible in world views and religions which cause for repentance, trust, or at least a start from moral need or need of enlightenment since these call for a recognition of deficit.
Selection bias works both ways.
If you want to demonstrate that prayer does not work, you ignore the miracles and quote what you believe to be examples of unanswered prayer.
(in reply to a post mentioning the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. https://www.damninteresting.com/the-baader-meinhof-phenomenon/)
My own experience of this:
One morning I read this article extract which had been published in an old magazine:
Turks expanded their empire westward on land, and asserted their naval power in the Mediterranean. In 1565 they attacked Malta, envisioning an eventual invasion of Rome. Though repelled at Malta, the Turks captured Cyprus in the fall of 1570.
The next year, three Catholic powers on the continent – Genoa, Spain, and the Papal States - formed an alliance called the Holy League, to defend their Christian civilization against Turkish invasion. Its fleets sailed to confront the Turks near the west coast of Greece on October 7, 1571.
Crew members on more than 200 ships prayed the Rosary in preparation for the battle - as did Christians throughout Europe, encouraged by the Pope to gather in their churches to invoke the Virgin Mary against the daunting Turkish forces.
Some accounts say that Pope Pius V was granted a miraculous vision of the Holy League's stunning victory. Without a doubt, the Pope understood the significance of the day's events, when he was eventually informed that all but 13 of the nearly 300 Turkish ships had been captured or sunk. He was moved to institute the feast now celebrated universally as Our Lady of the Rosary.
“Turkish victory at Lepanto would have been a catastrophe of the first magnitude for Christendom,” wrote military historian John F. Guilmartin, Jr., “and Europe would have followed a historical trajectory strikingly different from that which obtained.”
I had never heard of the battle of Lepanto before, and that same day I attended Mass where the priest gave a sermon about the battle of Lepanto and the power of the Holy Rosary. And yes, I do believe that this was a divine reminder to me that I should pray more often, because we all underestimate the power of prayer.
I do not need to prop up the blindingly obvious truth that our conscious self awareness is not an accidental unintended by product of unguided molecular activity from the debris of an exploded star. Just trying to share the truth of our God given spiritual nature.
What if white was black and black was white?
Why is there no natural explanation for why we call white, white and black, black?
It does not require a supernatural explanation in the light or lack of a natural explanation.
Something are just what they are.
But if you are applying the term to the earth and the atmosphere around the earth.
What explanation is there for it to exist in a space which is devoid of all life that we can see?
Truth is man does not hold on to the truths which matter. As man procreated he forgot to remember.
My wife and I prayed for a government which would return to traditional Christian values, but with no idea how this could be brought about with all the main parties all drifting away from such values. So we now have the possibility of a coalition with the DUP which is very pro life and anti gay marriage. So thank you God! :)
I feel I must refute the idea that these are incoherent:He created beings with their own free will - to follow Him or to reject Him.
The Devil is a consequence of this God given freedom.
He did not create us as puppets or robots.Human science can't yet define how the soul interacts with our physical brain, but that does not mean that the interaction is not there.I do not presume to make judgements about Heaven until I get there!No - just free of the unavoidable consequences of material reactions, which allows us the freedom to choose rather than just react.I do not think you understand how thoughts are initiated, driven and perceived by our spiritual soul. I do not understand this myself, but it is just the way it is (not just the way it seems!).God has made Himself known to all mankind in the form of Jesus Christ.I see it as man rejecting God rather than the other way round.
The world's numerous religions are evidence for the spiritual source of our conscious human awareness.
If you can produce an animal capable of contemplating the case for the existence or non existence of God I will concede that there is evidence for their conscious awareness.
If you a mock a believer you mock the God who made him and the saviour (in this case) who died for him.
Why do you believe that it is written:-
King James Bible
Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.
It isn't a personality contest of whether I like Donald Trump or Not. I believe in higher powers and that all powers are their by the will of God. Do I know why God put Donald Trump in power? Guessing and looking at facts in the world it could be because of the lack of the last president to help secure Israel the nation and the City of Jerusalem where they need to be. It could also, (which I do believe) be about end times coming into force and the powers that be finally being brought to book.
What I do know is that God is no ones fool he has told the end from the beginning.
My personal beliefs about Donald Trump as a man or business man has no bearing on the fact he is in power because God allowed it, and it will eventually serve the greater plans of God for the good and future of mankind.
You mention you have a faith Robinson. Well, so do I, but it is not based or founded in what others call the 'rights' and 'wrongs' of the world. It is based on belief in God and that he has everything worked out to the last detail.
If Trump is in power you need to know God has real good reasons for it.
While reincarnation into robots is meaningless because of what I said above....it is possible that some ghosts could occupy robots. This could be potentially dangerous. A real 'ghost in the machine' situation! Ghosts are said to be astral bodies of dead people.
Magic is not always about sleight of hand, trap doors, hidden compartments, smoke and mirrors or something up the sleeve. I have seen some amazing street magic in India.
Today's trend to show magic right in the middle of a crown, on a personal one to one basis and without elaborate costumes, is great and shows us that there are many things that we don't understand. Maybe even the magicians themselves don't fully understand what they are doing......
We may choose to dismiss these events as 'tricks', illusions or a con. But fact is that they clearly defy our understanding of normal life and normal laws of nature.
Yeah...I've heard of James Randi and his 1 million prize....but regardless of that, magic goes on merrily, growing every day!