[G0atmaster]

Trashman...  Do you give the Bible ANY credence over the way you go about things?  1 Peter 3:5, man...

Let the dissection begin...

 

Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, give to God what is God's.  Note, just before this, Christ asked the person who's image was on the coin being taxed.  Basically he's saying that, not only is the money Caesar's to tax, but the person is God's.

Yeah, he's saying so, but that is again based on the supposition that God indeed made human beings (in his image) with conscious effort and has a claim on us, which is a supposition based on the belief system so it isn't really much more than a self-reference.

 

True.

[quote  author=Herra Tohtori link=topic=56298.msg1138371#msg1138371 date=1221142359]

Take Shadrach, Mishach and Abednigo for example, violating Babylon's decree to bow to a statue of Nebuchadnezzar.  They were thrown in a furnace so hot it killed the guards that threw them in.  Yet they came out unscathed.

While there are many crazies out there that use "God told me to do it!" as a reason they should get away with murder, the Bible tells us Christians to "test the spirits, and make sure they are from God."  As I have said before, it's when "Christians" stray from the Bible that things go horribly wrong, not when they hold to it.

And how exactly does one verify that? The main problem I have with theistic religions is that they feel the need to justify simplest things as commandments from above, when there's no need to do so.

If you for example take the golden rule in whatever form and evaluate it logically, it can be found to be very sound principle of life with no need for it being divine in origin.

But the thing is, you must consider the source.  Otherwise, you are left with the question, "what makes right, right?"  Why do you think everyone on Earth came to the conclusion that the "golden rule" is universally "good" and selfishness is universally "bad?"  We all have a common moral law that we go by, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.  That's why the serial killer got emotional when he was forgiven.  He knew that what he did was wrong, even though he chose to, at the time, ignore the morality of his actions.

To answer your question, the verification comes from Scripture.  God would not ask a person to do something contradictory to the Bible.  The Bible is the word of God (remember, from my perspective), and thus, it is the contents of the mind of God.  God would not go against that, and if a person asks someone to do something that does, it's obviously not God asking.[/quote]

Consider the source... why? I would much rather evaluate the content. The question "what is right" is not an easy one to answer, but I think it would be better if people at least tried to think through it themselves instead of accepting old tenets just because they are from some source that just happens to be elevated above others by the religious authority. Personally I find that categorical imperative just happens to make most sense in a society where people interact each other, so I would say that following categorical imperative is right, and not doing so is wrong. Whether the terms good and bad apply to these respectively, it's a whole different matter...[/quote]

You say you would much rather evaluate the content.  Evaluate it how?  Based on your own moral law.  Where does that come from?  It is not man-made.  It is not nature-born.  Nature is perfectly fine being selfish and prideful, territorial and possessive.  Where did we come up with such things being wrong, primitive?

I'll PM you more about this. I found a book I'd like to excerpt, but the excerpt is a bit too long for this thread that already contains 20-page replies lol.

What I'm saying here is that while Christ's basic message about living with people is a good one (the golden rule), it isn't good because it supposedly came from God; it's a good way of life because it can also be reached through independent thought like Confucius and Immanuel Kant and Buddha did.

But that's the crux of it.  If they were not commonly created, why would they achieve that?  My PM will go into this, too.

That's why I coloured red the parts that are, in function if not in words, similar in these two quotes. If one wants to assume that God is what is "conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings", then it's the same as testing the spirits to make sure they are from God. Unfortunately, a lot of things in Bible and elsewhere suggest that the God we're talking about is not any of these things.

 To argue whether God is Good, you must 1. acknowledge God's existence, 2. Acknowledge His authorship of the Universe, and 3. Acknowledge that God is the measure by which He made everything else.  To argue with God is to be a stream attempting to flow above its source.

Indeed, the question of God's benevolence is pretty nonsensical if one doesn't believe in his existence in the first place, but I'll humour you.

If God exists, and he made the Universe, and everything in existence measures to god, the it could be argued that God, at least in his own opinion, is Good. Whether or not I would agree on it is a different matter - in fact I probably still wouldn't like him very much even if I knew for sure that a being with God-like properties existed.

Why not?  Why does your heart beat?

By common sense I meant that if a message of a religious authority figure can be reached with pure logical conjencture based on ethical model independent of divine origins, why does one assume that the message is divine in origins? Because it says so in a few paragraphs?

Where else would such an ethical model come from?  What sets us apart from "lower" animals?  What gives us the ability to discern the way we do?  I bet your dog doesn't have much common sense...

I mean this: What Siddhartha Gautama wrote about examining things and what Saul said about "testing spirits" is effectively the same thing. The difference is that Saul (or Paul) gives a lot more vague instructions than Buddha. How exactly does one "test the spirits" of a writing that claims to be from God? What are the criteria that are used on this testing process, or is it just an application of Stetson-Harrison method on biblical proportions? Or is it just based on what one would think God would say, and blocking the rest out as something else than God's word?

What Gautama wrote (or said) is easy enough - if you find something to be in benefit of all beings, it's a guideline worth adopting and following. Paul's writing about testing spirits leaves a lot more to imagination. However, if I would be to apply Gautama's method to bible, I would pretty much siphon it to the golden rule and that's about it; rest I would interpret as not being from worthy spirits because they do not apply to my sense of what is good. Whether that worthy spirit would be God or human or superintelligent shade of blue wouldn't matter to me since if the content makes sense, it makes sense regardless of it's origin.

I now wish I'd picked up the book, "How we got the Bible," so I could go into the process of determining what was "Inspired" by God with some degree of knowing what I was talking about...

I'll do some research on the matter.

Anyway, the way I see it, forgiveness does not equal to allowing bad things to happen to you if you can prevent them. It means you shouldn't retaliate, and I interpret the other cheek thing in a similar fashion - it means that people should be given a second chance instead of for example hitting them back, but doesn't really mean that you should literally just stand there taking a beating.

  Then why doesn't it say, "if a man strikes you on one cheek, turn and put your guard up, as he is probably going to strike you again?"  But I, somewhat, agree in a way, which I don't have words to elaborate on at this time.

Putting one's guard up is a sensible thing to do - why would one want to be hit again? It's normal self-preservation and Jesus must have known this on some level, and I have a suspicion that he enjoyed confusing his disciples to certain extent in an attempt to get them to think by themselves instead of following him like sheep... and by the way I consider being called a sheep an insult, not an offer of safekeeping. But the cultural differences from J's days to ours are pretty big... Anyway, about the cheek thing I think he was talking in metaphors (again) and saying that it's better to not respond to violence with violence, and instead walk away or evade or try and defuse the situation in a way that doesn't involve an immediate retaliation. But that's jsut my interpretation talking here.

That's part of what Christianity is all about.  It is not I that live, but Christ in me.  Christ died for me, I live for Him.  That's not to say that there's not a time and a place.  Christ did overturn tables, crack whips and cleared people out of a temple because of how they were desecrating it.  But when someone hits me, they are striking a member of the Body of Christ, and thus, vengeance is Christ's to exact, not mine.  If I were to ever fight someone, it would only be for the purpose of stopping aggression, not for self preservation.  I'd kill someone trying to kill me, but only because, once they're done with me, there's nothing stopping them from moving on to someone else.  That's a whole separate realm of discussion, though.

That's about what he said, but what about what he DID?  Christ has not left your view of him open to us.

The problem with what Jesus did is to me that I consider them to be anecdotes, not historical references. The words credited to him are, to me, a lot more worth inspecting than whatever is claimed of his actions. And that's exactly because of what I said before - I do not base the worth of words on the credibility of the supposed source, but their content.

Then what gives anyone any authority to speak on anything?  Just because it sounds right?  I could have a random person try to explain how energy is released by fusion, and they could be making up complete gibberish, and I would believe every word, because it seems to work.  By your model of verifying information, anyway.  It seems to me like you're putting the cart before the horse, a little bit.

This is one point a lot of Christians debate about.  I believe, as the Bible says, that there are two deaths a person can go through.  Their body returning to the dirt from which it came, and the death of the soul, in the Lake of Fire, otherwise known as Hell.  The first is temporal, the second is eternal.  Both are brought about by sin.  Death entered the world through the sin of Adam.  "For sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all because all have sinned-"  Sin is simply missing the mark.  Because God is perfect, His presence in all His Godliness cannot tolerate imperfection.  Thus, when man first sinned and became imperfect, he was no longer capable of standing in the presence of God and yet live.  God's very nature would not allow this.  That is why Adam was banished from the garden of Eden.  Yet, as I've said before, in Christ, God had designed a way for us to be reconciled to Him.  We cannot climb the ladder to God, so God reaches down to us.

Yesh, another point to note - I'm arguing basically from Lutheran background, you seem to be roman catholic or from some other sect where the concept of Hell is a bit different. Incidentally, ignoring the translations, Hell is originally a norse underworld Hel and the goddess of underworld with same name - being translated from Greek Hades or Tarterus, or the Hebrew Gehenna... which are conceptually rather different, so it's pretty interesting trying to figure out what exactly is what in christian theology. To me it seems that Gehenna was a combination of roman catholic purgatory and the "classic" hell where one spends an eternity, while Hades is just underworld (similar to hebrew Sheol) and Hel is a place where the dead who don't get to go to halls of Valhalla - basically those who died in battle went to Valhalla, those who died on old age or diseases went to Hel (or Hell or Hella) in norse mythology.

lol don't insult me.  I'm just about as Fundie as it gets, minus most of the apparent lunacy that comes from speaking before thinking that a lot of people like me seem to exhibit (comes from practice lol).

My concept of Hell comes out of Revelation.  Now, if you want to get into what the whole Bible says on the afterlife, there's Sheol (Greek Hades, I believe), where the Jews apparently went until Christ's sacrifice, unless they were not reconciled to God, where they would then go to Gehenna.

To my understanding (and I could very well be wrong), Gehenna was a place of suffering, Sheol was a place of waiting.  Things get translated a little oddly at some parts,  In Revelation Sheol becomes "death" rather than "Grave" and Gehenna becomes "Hades."  In Revelation 20:11-15:

11Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. 12And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. 13The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. 14Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

There's obviously a lot more here than I know enough to really get in to.

So it's ethymologically rather interesting, and gives a good hint on how things can be misinterpreted after multiple translations...

 

By multiple, I'm assuming you mean two.  Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic translated into Latin, translated into English is the progression, I believe.  There were various manuscripts that were converted into Greek from Hebrew, but those were, to my knowledge, used more as a reference.

[Re: Pauls's letter to whatsisname the Hebrews] So basically the text says that before Jesus, priests used sacrifices to seemingly clean themselves and others repeatedly again and again, and Christ did it once and for all when he gave his life away?

That's a really strange way to deal with such concepts. Why exactly does Christ's blood wash away the sins of mankind and why do those who believe in this story get to be benefactors? What exactly in this is conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings? Instead of just those who happen to have the right kind of faith?

Because it is a gift offered to all beings.  God, however, does not rape us.  He does not force Himself upon us.  A gift must be accepted to be received.  Upon Christ was laid the sin of us all.  Christ took it all upon Himself, willingly.  It's also interesting to note, that the one instant that this happened is the one instant he could not bear to remain silent.  That's the one time He cried out in anguish.  "Eloi, Eloi..."  Few people realize, that what Christ cried out there was a quote from Psalm 22.  Read that Psalm to know what was on Christ's mind as He died.

If it's a gift, why does receiving it require first of all knowledge of this event, and secondly faith in the people who tell that this all happened?

What happens to all the aliens, pagans and other critters who never even get to choose whether or not to accept this tale as reality or not?

Jesus says, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no one gets to the Father except through me."
John 3:18 says "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son."

However, that doesn't mean Christ has not appeared, in some way or another, to other people.  I've heard stories of missionaries going deep into parts of South America and Africa where the Bible has never been seen before, only to find the tribes, peoples, villages, whatever there already live by a religion that's, for all intents and purposes, Christianity.  They've believed in one God who has created them, they believe in a point where they fell short of what God wanted them to be, and they believed their God had died to redeem them.

Regardless of what of this you believe, it is a logical fallacy to let this point keep you from believing in Christ.  That's like cutting the arms off of a man who doesn't do enough work.

Anyway, Isaiah 52 and 53 give a grand illustration of how Christ's sacrifice works:

[part edited out for the sake of keeping the message length in control

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
       he was crushed for our iniquities;
       the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
       and by his wounds we are healed.

 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
       each of us has turned to his own way;
       and the LORD has laid on him
       the iniquity of us all.

 7 He was oppressed and afflicted,
       yet he did not open his mouth;
       he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
       and as a sheep before her shearers is silent,
       so he did not open his mouth.

 8 By oppression  and judgment he was taken away.
       And who can speak of his descendants?
       For he was cut off from the land of the living;
       for the transgression of my people he was stricken.

 9 He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
       and with the rich in his death,
       though he had done no violence,
       nor was any deceit in his mouth.

 10 Yet it was the LORD's will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
       and though the LORD makes his life a guilt offering,
       he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
       and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.

 11 After the suffering of his soul,
       he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
       by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
       and he will bear their iniquities.

 12 Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
       and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
       because he poured out his life unto death,
       and was numbered with the transgressors.
       For he bore the sin of many,
       and made intercession for the transgressors.

Let that sink in a bit.  Reread it if you need to.  This was written over 100 years before Christ even lived.

I could respond to digging up some quotes of Michel de Nostre Dame and Pythia and compare them to events in history that have been claimed to have a connection to the "prophecies".

With the book of Isaiah there's also the problem that Jesus most assuredly knew about the book, and that means he could easily have emulated the events described in the prophecy regardless of whether or not the prophecy maker truly knew that would happen. Same applies to later clerics and J's disciples who could have made Jesus a bit more appealing to the public by adding a bit from here and another from there to make Jesus' live look more and more like Isaiah had predicted it. I have no real ways to determine how reliable both the accounts of Jesus' life are, so I'm just going to end that line of thought by saying that I don't have any reason to trust implicitly in things that are written down, no matter who declares them credible.

Except, how could Jesus have manipulated events to ensure His crucifixion?  How could He have manipulated things to where the soldiers "cast lots for his clothing?"  The problem with your view of Christ's fulfilling the prophecies by manipulation is that, the prophecies weren't solely dependent on Christ.  Other people were involved.  People Christ could not have influenced and manipulated the way you seem to think he did.

  That's how we feel exactly.  Only, our source of right and wrong is what the Bible says, not just what is right in our own eyes.  more often than not, we humans tend to be imperfect and wrong, even when we feel we're doing good.  Just look at the book of Judges. (sorry about the example from the Bible, that just flows most readily to MY mind, and you seem to have some knowledge about it, so I figured, why not?)

Sorry, I know sadly little about those "lesser" books of Old Testimony; I know the basic storyline, the most famous stories and most quoted examples, but that's about it. Similarly my knowledge about New Testimony is mostly limited to the gospels, but I can live with that (although it does make it pretty difficult to keep up with a conversation like this).


Anyhow I can't really trust in a divine source of right and wrong in any way, mostly because anyone can claim something to be of divine origin. Saying something repeatedly does not make it so, and the validity of things being right or wrong shouldn't be based on the source but content, yet again. Religious authority as basis for right and wrong can work in a society to a certain degree, but it also makes it too easy to invent divine rules based on rather wild interpretations - Christianity did that in the middle ages by justifying crusades and hunting heretics and blasphemers, Islam is doing it still now with all the fatwas and hadiths and other stuff dictated by the local religious authority as well as centralized supreme authority, and so on. Basing legislation only on supposedly divine origins does not usually bode well, hence the founding fathers of USA for example had the right idea to keep the churches away from government matters...

Heh.  Believe it or not, the Founding Fathers wrote things based on "divine origins" more than you think.  Read the Declaration of Independence.  "Endowed by our Creator."  If you look at the first commonwealth charters, you will see that they are, almost word for word, the charters of the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches at the time.  "Separation of Church and State" did not appear until a supreme court case in the late 1940's.  Before that, the only "wall of separation" statements made were in a letter by Thomas Jefferson to a Baptist community reassuring them that the government would not dabble in their affairs.  But back on topic.

So basically God's perfection and Goodness (earlier on) hang by the same assumptions - that he exists, created universe and the universe compares to God, not God on Universe (if I interpret the formulation correctly)?

I guess it's a matter of definitions then... I'll be waiting for an in-depth answer.

Basically.  Remember, God gave source to the Universe.  Not vice versa.  God is God.  If God gives definition to something, that is its definition.  If God says something, it is.

Silmarillion deals with Middle-Earth, a fictional location, thus, it could very well be a credible fictional depiction of a fictional location.

Actually Middle-Earth is on Earth, but on a previous, fictional mythological era that Tolkien invited, kinda like an alternate past (to known historical facts, that is). Considering that few biblical events (in Old Testimony especially) can be pinned down to historical corresponding events with any semblance of accuracy, and the fact that the Third Age of Middle-Earth interestingly is supposed to have ended about 6000 years ago, I would rate Silmarillion and the Old Testimony about on equal level of credibility as far as historical accuracy goes.

 

To the contrary, the Bible is considered to most historians to be a good source of history.  The wars between the Israelites and the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, etc.

Anyway, I'd never heard that about Tolkien's works.

As far as claims that Christ is God, John made a pretty big one: John 1:1-5: [...]

As far as claims by Christ Himself:

[John 8:48-59]

"Before Abraham was born, I am."  Note the present tense.  God refers to Himself in the Old Testament as "I Am."  Christ is saying that He IS around when Abraham was (wrap your head around THAT), AND that He IS God.

* Herra Tohtori wraps

Hmm... any chance of loose interpretations on that one? I find word plays a bit annoying in these things. What does the original text say? The translation does seem to be saying what I asked; either that he is "I AM" ie. the God of Old Testimony, or a splinter or part of him, or that he as an entity existed at that time already.

That's exactly what it says.

22Then came the Feast of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, 23and Jesus was in the temple area walking in Solomon's Colonnade. 24The Jews gathered around him, saying, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly."

 25Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father's name speak for me, 26but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. 27My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. 29My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. 30I and the Father are one."

 31Again the Jews picked up stones to stone him, 32but Jesus said to them, "I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?"

 33"We are not stoning you for any of these," replied the Jews, "but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God."

 34Jesus answered them, "Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'? 35If he called them 'gods,' to whom the word of God came—and the Scripture cannot be broken— 36what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, 'I am God's Son'? 37Do not believe me unless I do what my Father does. 38But if I do it, even though you do not believe me, believe the miracles, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father." 39Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.

The Jews were ready to kill him because of his claims to be God.  "The Father is in me, and I in the Father."

This is pretty interesting because to me it seems that he's putting himself on equal level as everyone else as Son of God ("Is it not written in your Law, 'I have said you are gods'?" etc.)... unless I have some profound misconception, I can't really see what else that can mean.

It should be noted that anytime in the Bible where "god" is written with a lower case g, it's usually talking about idols and idol worship.

44Then Jesus cried out, "When a man believes in me, he does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. 45When he looks at me, he sees the one who sent me. 46I have come into the world as a light, so that no one who believes in me should stay in darkness.

Once again, a sense of unity between Christ and "The Father."

Ok, there does seem to be a number of occasions where Jesus himself is credited to have said that he is the son of God and God himself, at least by association if not directly. I won't copypaste the other quotes in their entirety because the purpose would be nil...

Exactly.  Demon, Lunatic, or God.  But not a man with the moral high ground. And you just have to look at his actions to see which of the three he is.  "If you do not believe me, at least believe the miracles!"

[John 13:12-17] Christ claims to be Lord.

[John 14:5-14] Here Christ, once again, establishes the link between Himself and "The Father."  Also note the importance Christ places on faith in this passage.  More on that later.

[John 6:32-35]

[John 10:7-15]

I find that quote to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings. Now, why does that require a divine being to speak the words for them to become so?

Because only a divine being can command such a thing.

Why does it need to be commanded? If you view it as a strong suggestion instead, that argument collapses on itself at least on my head.

Because such love is impossible for men, but "through God, all things are possible."  As I said.  Look at how Jesus loved.

There's a book I highly, highly recommend for you to read.  It's called "Miracles," and it's by C.S. Lewis.  It's a very, very well thought-out examination of naturalism vs. supernaturalism, and does not necessarily intend to answer whether miracles exist, as the title might suggest, but rather, to prepare the reader to consider the question in the first place.  Check it out.

I most likely won't have time to do that, so I'll just post my thoughts on miracles briefly: in my view of world, whatever happens is part of the universe, thus natural. Unexplained, possibly, but part of nature nevertheless. Including the hypothesized God-being. If he exists he's part of universe, since universe is everything that is. Assuming that every unexplained thing is a miracle, though, is illogical. It is a possibility that can never be excluded, but the search for understandable explanations beyond "goddidit" should not be stopped just because that possibility can't ever be excluded completely.

  Expect excerpts of this, then.

As a famous example, it is possible that Flying Spaghetti Monster's noodly appendages are manipulating every test result to show a 13.8 billion year old universe when in reality it was made last thursday, starting from mountains, trees and a midget. It's just... rather pointless to consider such possibilities with a positivistically oriented mindset.

HEY!  If I can't cite Kent Hovind, you can't cite the Flying Spaghetti Monster!  You Pastafarian Nutjob!!! (jk)

I'll answer this at some point.

Isn't thing illogical? Doesn't something coming out of nothing violate some of the most basic scientific laws - conservation of energy, action and reaction, etc?

No, because conservation of energy and momentum are established principles in this universe starting from t=0...

  Established how, exactly?  I dare to question the very fundemental principles of what you call "proof."  How are things "proven?"  By being tested.  But, what, pray tell, leads us to believe there is any sort of consistency to the Universe at all?  Who's to say, that because you test something 100 times and it gives you 100 "A" results, the 101st test won't yield a "B" result?

That I can actually answer. It's an assumption that is necessary to be made for physics to make any sense to work with.

In fine terms, basically every theory of nature assumes that the universe is isothropic and homogenous, meaning that universe is roughly similar everywhere as far as laws of nature go.

Test results also seem to tell us that this is indeed the case - everywhere we see things seem to be happening along the same physical principles within error bars of observations.

Exactly.  And that's what I'm getting at.  If you are merely a man who believes in "Proven Fact,"  you can't even believe in matter itself.

So scientists make that assumption that a theory that works here would work similarly on half an universe away as well. This is justifiable because otherwise cosmology would become impossible, and physics would suffer a severe knock on it's back because it would then only apply on a definite area of universe.

Also, no observation has been made yet that would suggest that some parts of universe would act on different fundamental laws of nature. There are hints that things like fine-structure constant might not be a constant throughout time and space, but that's not really an exception from the same basic mechanisms - it just means that the constant is not so constant after all, but depends on some phenomenon yet unknown, and sets a new challenge to science, to find out what's going on.

  Wrong.  There are gravitational deviations towards the outer edge of the Solar System that we cannot account for.  Furthermore, have you heard the new thing about radioactive decay that basically throws all dating systems into question?  Radioactivity was, until a few days ago, thought to be a universal constant.  Now, upon studying it, it fluctuates with how far away the Earth is from the Sun.

There are also multiple theories that Mars and Earth switched positions somewhere around 1600 BC (oddly enough, when Joshua asked God to make the world stand still so he could have 36 hours of fighting without darkness).  Suddenly, Young Earth theories aren't looking so nutty.

It's basically a matter of whether something has existed forever, or if time has a beginning point. Of the two possibilities, the empirical data seems to point towards an universe with definite age, time starting about (13.73 +- 0.120) billion years ago.

Now, it isn't impossible that this incident was caused by some being, but at the same time there's no definite proof of such a thing and moreover it appears that such a claim would be unfalsifiable, which means you just either believe it or not. I choose not to believe in it because of Ockham's razor - adding a divine being to the equations just adds complexity logically (one more unknown factor) and doesn't really explain anything. Besides it would just take you back to the question of origins of world - either something has existed for infinite time (illogical) or something came out of nothing.

Complexity, how?  Maybe our debate is not with the starting point of the Universe, as we both believe it has a beginning.  Perhaps our argument is in the complexity of God.  I find the God argument to be the most simplistic there is.  It takes WAY more faith to believe in cosmic accidentalism than it does to believe in a purposeful creator.  I know.  I've been on both sides of that fence.

[emphazis mine]

Not if you include a multiverse theory that basically states that every possibility happens, we just happen to experience this kind of universe. That basically removes the accidentalism from the picture, without removing the element of chance since future is never set on single path but instead it branches into N amount of probabilities that all are basically equal realities - we being in one of them.

And a belief in an infinite number of universes is more simplistic than a belief in God... how, exactly?

However, what if that something, that conscious mind had nothing to come out of?  What if there was NEVER nothing?  That is what I believe.  While the Universe has a starting point, God does not.  God was, and is, and will be.

You say that God created universe, which either means that God has existed forever (which doesn't even compute since time is a property of the universe...) or that God become from nothingness and then created universe.

The former DOES compute, because, while Time is a property of the Universe, God predates the Universe, and thus predates time.  Wrap your head around THAT one lol.

Mmm, well, time as we know is a propery of universe so it isn't really relevant to speak of time before universe. It would be something so alien to us since we don't even have a dimension to describe it. It's worse than trying to make sense of 4-dimensional hypercube. Hell, it's worse than trying to make sense of Timecube and that's perhaps the most nonsensical thing I've ever seen in my life.

Also it could be asked that assuming time has existed for eternity, and God has existed for eternity, why did he decide to make something happen when he did? Would that mean that before that he wasn't doing anything, which to me would translate as nothingness since nothing happens... or was he doing test runs? OR are we a test run?

  Time has not existed for an eternity, though.  God exists outside of time.  That's the only way He could be omni-present.

The question is, why does universe need some conscious being to create or bring it to existence, when that conscious being was able to originate itself from nothingness? Inserting a conscious being to fill the voids in our knowledge of nature is a very old practice (perhaps that's why God is called Holy...), but as our information of world grows, the voids have been reduced to very small things. For example I could say that dragons make things fall. We don't know why gravity exists (for now - General Relativity doesn't really explain why mass curves space-time, and quantum gravitation is finicky for now) so saying that dragons make it happen is a perfectly valid opinion (not). The theory of Intelligent Falling is a close relative to my dragon hypothesis. Of course, none of these hypotheses explain anything about the nature of mass and gravity itself.

my above statement invalidates this.

More like dismisses. The problem with introducing divine explanation for every unknown thing - including birth of universe or gravity - is a logical nightmare since it would be the exact same thing to just say "it just happens" and be done with it. While in everyday life and interaction with people that definitely works to great extent, it doesn't cut it when dealing with people with a thirst of knowledge (blame the snake on that one if you wish, I blame simian characteristic curiosity...).

I understand that.  However, remember, it was a belief in God that motivated the first scientific experiments.

These post lengths and nested quotes are getting absolutely out of control....

Agreed.  Feel free to start snipping the top layer where it's not necessary for a reference anymore. That's what I'm doing.

[Herra Tohtori]

What I'm saying here is that while Christ's basic message about living with people is a good one (the golden rule), it isn't good because it supposedly came from God; it's a good way of life because it can also be reached through independent thought like Confucius and Immanuel Kant and Buddha did.

You can come to a LOT of different conclusions trough independant thought.

Why, yes. And each one I consider better than believing something just for the belief's sake. The fact of the matter is that if your ethic system considers human beings to have intrinsic value, the most acceptable conclusion from that principle is some form of category imperative, or the GoldenRule, if you want to call it that.

I have mostly nothing against Jesus' teachings, but for Christ's sake give it a little thought to verify that you aren't being deceived by ages old disicples or scribes that wanted to claim that he said something for their benefit. Even if you assume Jesus' words and message to be truthful (and real, wherein lies another difference btw), there is still the very distinct possibility of the authors giving the story more than average amount of extra "oomph", for marketing reasons. A guy who speaks common sense based instructions is boring. A son of God is not, whether you believe it or not, so it's bound to attract attention and cause discussion, and meanwhile the actual message is left with less attention than it should, and the people concentrate on arguing about the source of the message, ignoring the intrinsic value of the content of the message which is in fact unchanged by whatever it's origin was.

If God exists, and he made the Universe, and everything in existence measures to god, the it could be argued that God, at least in his own opinion, is Good. Whether or not I would agree on it is a different matter - in fact I probably still wouldn't like him very much even if I knew for sure that a being with God-like properties existed.

Well, if a God exists as you say and you acknowledge He created the universe, then in order to do so His power and knowledge must be infinite. If you acknowledge he has ultimate knowledge, then how can his opinion be wrong, since it's based on that knowledge?

First of all, all the three assumptions are something I don't especially see very probable. But humoring you, even if they did, if this God was anything like he's described in monotheistic religions, I would definitely not like him. Why? Personal dislike, based on the claims on how he selects people for eternal life in bliss or loss or damnation in hell depending of your particular sect. Personal dislike based on the claims that he's ignorant and conceited asshole as far as personality goes. That is, when one's talking about the God of Christianity, Judaism and Islam (which are supposedly the same entity - gives again a little more fuel to the fires of doubt as to which opinion of him is the correct one.

I would not want to send an eternity with the God of Christianity. Even less with Allah or Jahve. If those are the options I'm offered, I would rather take nonexistence. And I'm willing to take the risk of eternal damnation as well.

Luckily, I kinda agree that if God exists, he has better things to do than jump along the ropes that Christianity assumes he would. For example he would hardly base the criteria for access to afterlife on terms as shady as believing in something in a right way, or acting the right way even, since there's no way to know which particular religion is true. So I kinda ignore all religions, try to find my own way of life and live along it the best I can, and just accept that whether or not there's some superpowerful being with ability to grant or deny an eternal life (or define it's contents), I can't really know of it, and neither can I know about the criteria that he uses to define the fates of beings. And since all information about religions is relayed to me by humans, I'm gonna just assume that they can't know things either, regardless of whether they believe in the things they say or not. It's impossible to know which religion is correct, so choosing one should not be a matter of just sticking to the one thaught to you as a kid is logically unsound decision, however surefire stairway to heaven it may seem like.

Unless there are numerous gods and afterlives, of course. That would be a hoot.

In a nutshell - if there is not God and no afterlife, at least I know at my death that I tried to live my life as best as I could. Since there's no afterlife, nothing matters after death and I can accept that - we come from nothing, are reduced to nothing, and lose nothing in the process. It's all gain anyways.

If there against all reasonable probability is a God and some form of afterlife, he does what he wants regardless of what assumptions humans have of him and his criteria of selecting people to be sent to blissful or damned afterlife (or nonexistence depending on interpretation of Hell).

It would be like a caveman disagreeing with the astrophysicists about what the Moon is made of and how far away is it....only 10000000000 times worse.

Not, because terms like good and bad are subjective, whereas the distance to Moon is relatively easy to prove with experimentation.

More than anything it would be like if physics were taught in a thousand different fashion, each based on the theory concocted by someone Famous sometime in the Past and thus making just that theory the Correct One, and some just branching because of different interpretations of the text of the Wise Man... Each sect of physics would have a different opinion of the distance to Moon based on how distanced from reality they were. A caveman would have no methods whatsoever to see which one has the actually correct theory that can measure the distance to Moon correctly (or even if any of the thousand theories is correct), so the only logical conclusion for the caveman to reach would be this: "OK, since there are so many theories with seemingly identical credibility, I cannot make any decision about how far the Moon is, not that it matters in my everyday life in the slightest. It seems I cannot at the moment know how far the Moon is."

Most cavemen would unfortunately take the local opinion for granted seeing as it was drilled onto their heads at impressionable age.

The smart-ass people actually tend to not have to assert themselves becuse they generally have valid, reasonable evidince. And you've seemed to contradict yourself when you stated that you've "used logic" by posting here.

Why do you feel the need to defend them? Because you are one the them or because you feel the cumpulsion that you simply MUST prove me wrong? (which would again put you in that group). As for the valid, reasonable evidence - they don't have it mostly. Even if they did the crusade to correct everyone still puts them in the "slightly crazy" category - that is, if they choose a INTERNET debate over hanging out with real friends.
And sizzler, even if I only used logic one in my entire life, it would still be more than you.

Don't be so condescending, you're only insulting yourself.

Logic is usually incompatible with religions, since all religions are based on inherently illogical premises and thus logic doesn't really ever get into the root of religions. Doesn't stop me from trying, though. And the reason I tend to get into these arguments is that when properly done, it's fun. Feint, Parry, Riposte. Some would get into the arguments for the same reason people climb on top of high mountains - because they're there.

Doing stuff in IRL is usually more fun, but not always.

But you're assuming that given the same information, everone would have the same opinions about everything. Why do you think there is a difference between the left and right political viewpoints?

Well, using "true" logic, that should happen in theory. However it doesn't. You can guess why.[/quote]

With same logic you could argue that if there were a "true" religion, it should be adopted by everyone by now since it's true... Obviously, there is no such thing as "true" logic. There's just one logic, but people come to different conclusions because of their different values, opinions and interpretations of facts. And because they make errors of argumentation.

Similarly there is no such thing as "true" religion. There's thousands of them in the world; how is one supposed to know which one is the "correct" one? Logically the only conclusion is that religions are on equal line as far as claims of their divine origins are concerned. Each have basically same claims that they are the one and only right religion. If you really want to choose a religion to belong to, you should IMHO do the selection based on content and not on the birthplace and the dominant religion of your society. Or like I do, ignore the religious part of religions, and evaluate their messages instead.

God does not appear to each of us in person and say so. The infalliable being is not the only link in the process (assuming he exists), there are numerous humans in the way who could easily **** it up.

I'm talking in general terms. If God exists are His "oppinions" far more correct that your could ever be or not?

Probably, but the thing is, it's by definition impossible to *know* what the supposed God's opinions would be. Each religion claims they have knowledge of them, with great deal of variance even when talking about the same God. And there's still the big if of whether God exists or not, but you know what?

That question does not really have any difference to us during our lifetime. We cannot affect it in any way, we cannot believe God to be the thing we expect or want or need him to be. If he exists, so be it, I can't really get any sure information of him so I might as well ignore it as far as this life (the only one I know for sure I'm getting) goes, and live as I see fit. I'll see what happens after death. Or not, in the most probable case that there is no afterlife, in which case it would hardly matter because there wouldn't be "I" any more...

Also it could be asked that assuming time has existed for eternity, and God has existed for eternity, why did he decide to make something happen when he did? Would that mean that before that he wasn't doing anything, which to me would translate as nothingness since nothing happens... or was he doing test runs? OR are we a test run?

I think the "time existing for eternity" aspect is where the problem arises from that viewpoint.  In the strictly scientific sense, the singularity that was the Big Bang contained within it everything that is the universe as we know it.  Since time is seemingly an inherent dimensional property of this universe, one would assume that the start of its axis would have to be pegged at that moment of universal creation.  (One could bear this out by noting that modern physics as we know it isn't sufficient to describe what happened during the Big Bang before the Planck time; that becomes the closest point we're able to get to "zero time," as it were.) If you're referencing a force or entity or being that gave rise to the universe as we know it, including time as we know it, then the normal human concepts of time wouldn't apply to it at all.  Terms like "before" or "after" wouldn't have any meaning at all when applied to God.  One could say that, in the "time before time," the state of existence of God was...God.  You can extend that out to our concept of "eternity," or contract it down to the microsecond "before" the Big Bang took place; it would really be one and the same to a being of that nature.

That's exactly what I meant by saying that time before time doesn't compute in the terms that we know time as.

And, like I wrote earlier, a lot of things get a lot easier to handle if one assumes that the Universe is God but without a concentrated conscious controlling entity.

(Also, I find it interesting that the Silmarillion came up earlier, since Tolkien used both Judeo-Christian ideas of creation and elements of the Greek/Norse pantheons in crafting Middle-Earth's creation.  I think it becomes a bit difficult to hold a fictional work up as an equal comparison to the spiritual text that it's referencing in the first place.)

Seeing how the Bible does the same thing with Epic of Gilgamesh and other myths and legends*, I would say they are even. Let's have a thought experiment: If you have no earlier knowledge of either Middle-Earth or Christianity, and didn't know the date of writing and the author's notes about Silmarillion, and you were given the Bible and the Silmarillion, would you have bigger than 50:50 chance of defining accurately which one is actually used as a holy book of a big religion? Or, if you introduce some other mythos like Kalevala alongside those two, what would happen?

It might be a really interesting social experience to form a sunday school that would teach Silmarillion to kids...


*The Messiah myth is a pretty interesting one by the way. You might find this link worth exploring, and after reading that you might consider how much the life of Jesus as it's told to us is what actually happened, and how much is attempts by Jesus himself to emulate legends from book of Isaiah as well as stuff from ancient Egypt, and how much is just added stuff by disciples and clerics to make Jesus appear as the legendary Messiah figure (or, like the term in Greek goes, Christ).

[Polpolion]

The smart-ass people actually tend to not have to assert themselves becuse they generally have valid, reasonable evidince. And you've seemed to contradict yourself when you stated that you've "used logic" by posting here.

Why do you feel the need to defend them? Because you are one the them or because you feel the cumpulsion that you simply MUST prove me wrong? (which would again put you in that group). As for the valid, reasonable evidence - they don't have it mostly. Even if they did the crusade to correct everyone still puts them in the "slightly crazy" category - that is, if they choose a INTERNET debate over hanging out with real friends.
And sizzler, even if I only used logic one in my entire life, it would still be more than you.

A) I wasn't defending them. I was merely pointing out an error in your reasoning in the previous statement.

B) So you're saying smart-asses have a compulsion to prove you wrong? Or are you saying that you hate the smart people who see the fallacies in your arguments and point them out to you? I also find it ironic that the one who is accusing people of asserting viewpoints neither knows what asserting means nor knows that he is actually asserting the fact that the other people are asserting their viewpoints.

C) ad hominem

D) ad hominem, flaming

But you're assuming that given the same information, everone would have the same opinions about everything. Why do you think there is a difference between the left and right political viewpoints?

Well, using "true" logic, that should happen in theory. However it doesn't. You can guess why.

Yes I can guess why. Because you have no idea what you're talking about. The only way the described thing would happen is if for some reason humans had no human nature. People's personalities are varied, thus their likes and dislikes are varied. Do you really think it's logical for someone to like chocolate while illogical for someone to not like chocolate? Logic doesn't dictate opinion.

On top of that, it's no where near like what you stated because the moon's composition not an opinion.

The caveman doesn't know that...or he might not care.

Which is partially why it's an invalid analogy.

God does not appear to each of us in person and say so. The infalliable being is not the only link in the process (assuming he exists), there are numerous humans in the way who could easily **** it up.

I'm talking in general terms. If God exists are His "oppinions" far more correct that your could ever be or not?

Opinions can't be correct or incorrect. Fact can be correct or incorrect.

[Herra Tohtori]

Consider the source... why? I would much rather evaluate the content. The question "what is right" is not an easy one to answer, but I think it would be better if people at least tried to think through it themselves instead of accepting old tenets just because they are from some source that just happens to be elevated above others by the religious authority. Personally I find that categorical imperative just happens to make most sense in a society where people interact each other, so I would say that following categorical imperative is right, and not doing so is wrong. Whether the terms good and bad apply to these respectively, it's a whole different matter...

You say you would much rather evaluate the content.  Evaluate it how?  Based on your own moral law.  Where does that come from?  It is not man-made.  It is not nature-born.  Nature is perfectly fine being selfish and prideful, territorial and possessive.  Where did we come up with such things being wrong, primitive?

Empathy. Ability to project one's actions and consider what effect they have on others. We should consider the consequences of our actions regarding others, because we can. And yes, I consider that a feature that has been proven beneficial to group dynamic through evolution, not something that needed to be implanted on us by creator. It makes sense for the survival of the group.

Note that it doesn't mean that being selfish, territorial and possessive would be particularly wrong if one does not have ability to empathy (which I think arises from consciousness inherently since once a being realizes his existence, it most likely also realizes others' existence and starts to consider things not only from his point of view...). But humans do have ability to empathy, and it should be used as often as possible.

I'll PM you more about this. I found a book I'd like to excerpt, but the excerpt is a bit too long for this thread that already contains 20-page replies lol.

You're welcome.

What I'm saying here is that while Christ's basic message about living with people is a good one (the golden rule), it isn't good because it supposedly came from God; it's a good way of life because it can also be reached through independent thought like Confucius and Immanuel Kant and Buddha did.

But that's the crux of it.  If they were not commonly created, why would they achieve that?  My PM will go into this, too.

Because they had similar values about humanity? That can happen.

Of course, yet again the question of whether or not man was made by God becomes null and void if one considers Universe to be God; doing this equalization, universe really did make man through evolutionary algorithms and laws of nature. Whether any of it was by design is not a relevant question to physics.

If God exists, and he made the Universe, and everything in existence measures to god, the it could be argued that God, at least in his own opinion, is Good. Whether or not I would agree on it is a different matter - in fact I probably still wouldn't like him very much even if I knew for sure that a being with God-like properties existed.

Why not?  Why does your heart beat?

Because the universe is built in a way that chemical and physical interactions can cause life and conscious thought to emerge.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad it happened and that I exist, but I credit it to chance and properties of universe, not God per ce. And like I wrote earlier, perhaps an elaboration is in order - if the God is anything like he's described to be by major religions, I would probably not like him. Whether or not he's like that, I would not know, and I could not know. And neither can anyone else. They can believe in things, but knowledge of God is inherently impossible to aquire. We'll find out soon enough anyway.

Where else would such an ethical model come from?  What sets us apart from "lower" animals?  What gives us the ability to discern the way we do?  I bet your dog doesn't have much common sense...

No, but common sense is just a method of dissecting ethics and morals. The dog is a pack animal as well, and is receptive to a lot of signals, but it's actions are most likely not governed by self-conscious thought, and therefore it cannot consciously take others' feelings into account. Wolves do it to some extent in the natural environment, since again it's beneficial to the survival of the group. Although it isn't as prominent as with primates, and can often be missed amongst more animalistic qualities of canine behaviour. Chimpanzees do it even more, they console each other, have sex with each other, trade favours etc. etc. Close contact relieves stress levels. They steal from each other and feel guilty about it, which means they have an ability to empathy and they know it causes harm. The do politics.

The wall that separates humans from animals isn't made of stone, but if I had to make the distinction I would say that self-recognition is only a step away from recognizing others as beings, which leads to empathy, which I think is a pretty good base for a moral compass, giving a premise that a human being has inherent value. From that, the golden rule is relatively easy to derive.

I now wish I'd picked up the book, "How we got the Bible," so I could go into the process of determining what was "Inspired" by God with some degree of knowing what I was talking about...

I'll do some research on the matter.

My point still stands. Without worthy content, I would probably dismiss any message regardless of it's origins. With worthy content (and I'm pretty much using Gautama's criteria to define that in most cases), I would hardly care about who said it.

That's part of what Christianity is all about.  It is not I that live, but Christ in me.  Christ died for me, I live for Him.  That's not to say that there's not a time and a place.  Christ did overturn tables, crack whips and cleared people out of a temple because of how they were desecrating it.  But when someone hits me, they are striking a member of the Body of Christ, and thus, vengeance is Christ's to exact, not mine.  If I were to ever fight someone, it would only be for the purpose of stopping aggression, not for self preservation.  I'd kill someone trying to kill me, but only because, once they're done with me, there's nothing stopping them from moving on to someone else.  That's a whole separate realm of discussion, though.

Agreed on the counts that I would fight someone in order to prevent them from hurting others, and that I might kill someone if it was the only way to prevent them from hurting others, and that it's a separate discussion...

Then what gives anyone any authority to speak on anything?  Just because it sounds right?

Essentially, yes, in a matters where one is in a position to evaluate the contents of the message in any way. Things like human interaction and how it should be done, almost everyone is automatically able to evaluate claims about how it should be done.

I could have a random person try to explain how energy is released by fusion, and they could be making up complete gibberish, and I would believe every word, because it seems to work.  By your model of verifying information, anyway.  It seems to me like you're putting the cart before the horse, a little bit.

Specific aspects of science are a bit different than an ethical argumentation. But regardless, scientific method does offer means to evaluate the gibberish - mainly, does it predict what will happen in experiments?How accurately does it do it? These two things are basically the only things that matter in positivistic science (a bit simplified but that's the basic idea).

lol don't insult me.  I'm just about as Fundie as it gets, minus most of the apparent lunacy that comes from speaking before thinking that a lot of people like me seem to exhibit (comes from practice lol).

My concept of Hell comes out of Revelation.  Now, if you want to get into what the whole Bible says on the afterlife, there's Sheol (Greek Hades, I believe), where the Jews apparently went until Christ's sacrifice, unless they were not reconciled to God, where they would then go to Gehenna.

To my understanding (and I could very well be wrong), Gehenna was a place of suffering, Sheol was a place of waiting.  Things get translated a little oddly at some parts,  In Revelation Sheol becomes "death" rather than "Grave" and Gehenna becomes "Hades."  In Revelation 20:11-15:

11Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. 12And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. 13The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done. 14Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

There's obviously a lot more here than I know enough to really get in to.

Mmm, yeah. I'm not really willing either to get into a theological argument about what is Hell's nature based on what is written about it.

By multiple, I'm assuming you mean two.  Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic translated into Latin, translated into English is the progression, I believe.  There were various manuscripts that were converted into Greek from Hebrew, but those were, to my knowledge, used more as a reference.

More than one, yes. How many stages of re-writings and translations there actualyl were, I don't have exact idea.

If it's a gift, why does receiving it require first of all knowledge of this event, and secondly faith in the people who tell that this all happened?

What happens to all the aliens, pagans and other critters who never even get to choose whether or not to accept this tale as reality or not?

Jesus says, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; no one gets to the Father except through me."
John 3:18 says "Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son."

However, that doesn't mean Christ has not appeared, in some way or another, to other people.  I've heard stories of missionaries going deep into parts of South America and Africa where the Bible has never been seen before, only to find the tribes, peoples, villages, whatever there already live by a religion that's, for all intents and purposes, Christianity.  They've believed in one God who has created them, they believe in a point where they fell short of what God wanted them to be, and they believed their God had died to redeem them.

Mmm, indeed. Parallel myths are pretty common in history of mankind. Almost every culture has a some form of dragon in their mythology, does that mean that dragons are or were real?

I do not see it impossible that a monotheistic religion where salvation is based on sacrifice made by god could develope in multiple places independently. Neither do I see it inconceivable that there could have been some form of contact between the peoples to influence the developement of culture, including religion.

Again pointing to the link I posted in last message, about the parallels between Jesus and Horus, that argument can be used both ways.

With the book of Isaiah there's also the problem that Jesus most assuredly knew about the book, and that means he could easily have emulated the events described in the prophecy regardless of whether or not the prophecy maker truly knew that would happen. Same applies to later clerics and J's disciples who could have made Jesus a bit more appealing to the public by adding a bit from here and another from there to make Jesus' live look more and more like Isaiah had predicted it. I have no real ways to determine how reliable both the accounts of Jesus' life are, so I'm just going to end that line of thought by saying that I don't have any reason to trust implicitly in things that are written down, no matter who declares them credible.

Except, how could Jesus have manipulated events to ensure His crucifixion?  How could He have manipulated things to where the soldiers "cast lots for his clothing?"  The problem with your view of Christ's fulfilling the prophecies by manipulation is that, the prophecies weren't solely dependent on Christ.  Other people were involved.  People Christ could not have influenced and manipulated the way you seem to think he did.

Getting crucified at that time would've probably been pretty easy. But if we ignore the possibility that Jesus might've emulated some parts of Isaiah's predictions himself, there's still a distinct possibility of disciples and/or scribes adding or manipulating the story so that it would seem to draw more connections between Jesus and what Isaiah predicted, in order to make Jesus really look like the one who was predicted. I have no way of evaluating the trustworthiness of these sources in a way that I could accept without any semblance of doubt. But I can still look at what Jesus was trying to say, and evaluate that, because the content value stays the same regardless of source.

Heh.  Believe it or not, the Founding Fathers wrote things based on "divine origins" more than you think.  Read the Declaration of Independence.  "Endowed by our Creator."  If you look at the first commonwealth charters, you will see that they are, almost word for word, the charters of the Presbyterian and Episcopal churches at the time.  "Separation of Church and State" did not appear until a supreme court case in the late 1940's.  Before that, the only "wall of separation" statements made were in a letter by Thomas Jefferson to a Baptist community reassuring them that the government would not dabble in their affairs.  But back on topic.

K, thanks for correction on that part, but what I meant was mainly that they kept all and every religious authorities away from the loop of secular power division. That's what I meant with separation of church and state.

Basically.  Remember, God gave source to the Universe.  Not vice versa.  God is God.  If God gives definition to something, that is its definition.  If God says something, it is.

God gave source to the Universe... what if not? And do you mean God is incapable of lying?

Actually Middle-Earth is on Earth, but on a previous, fictional mythological era that Tolkien invited, kinda like an alternate past (to known historical facts, that is). Considering that few biblical events (in Old Testimony especially) can be pinned down to historical corresponding events with any semblance of accuracy, and the fact that the Third Age of Middle-Earth interestingly is supposed to have ended about 6000 years ago, I would rate Silmarillion and the Old Testimony about on equal level of credibility as far as historical accuracy goes.

 

To the contrary, the Bible is considered to most historians to be a good source of history.  The wars between the Israelites and the Canaanites, the Philistines, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, etc.

Anyway, I'd never heard that about Tolkien's works.

Yeah, it is a bit obscure detail about his books, but one that he himself said.

Also, Silmarillion could be considered a good source of history as well, if we had sufficiently little information of that timeframe.

* Herra Tohtori runs

What I mean is that as faras I know, there are very little connections that would allow historians to place events in Old Testimony accurately to history of Middle-East. For example, on which pharao's reign the Exodus happened? When did the Israelites actually go to Egypt? Were they really slaves or second class citizens or what? When did this and this king live and die?

How long was a year if Metusaleh lived for 969 years?!?

Ok, there does seem to be a number of occasions where Jesus himself is credited to have said that he is the son of God and God himself, at least by association if not directly. I won't copypaste the other quotes in their entirety because the purpose would be nil...

Exactly.  Demon, Lunatic, or God.  But not a man with the moral high ground. And you just have to look at his actions to see which of the three he is.  "If you do not believe me, at least believe the miracles!"

Well, there are degrees to lunacy. He could have believed that he was the Son of God with a mission and still retain normal social abilities. Delusional would be better term in this case than Lunatic, but then there is a fourth possibility - a Liar. Not necessarily Jesus himself, but it is possible that after his death his disciples noticed some similarities between Isaiah's predictions and decided to raise Jesus from dead and make him the Messiah to use his memory and followers to base a cult and retain their position of authority amongst lesser followers...

Of course, this is the ultimately cynical view on what could have happened, but it is a possibility.

Why does it need to be commanded? If you view it as a strong suggestion instead, that argument collapses on itself at least on my head.

Because such love is impossible for men, but "through God, all things are possible."  As I said.  Look at how Jesus loved.

Why is such love impossible for men?

HEY!  If I can't cite Kent Hovind, you can't cite the Flying Spaghetti Monster!  You Pastafarian Nutjob!!! (jk)

 

If you are merely a man who believes in "Proven Fact,"  you can't even believe in matter itself.

True in a sense. But I can always invoke Descartes and say that since the feeling of self exists, something obviously exists, and it's the simplest explanation to just assume that what we see, feel and can experiment on is, in fact, the reality. It *could* be a simulation, a dream, or an illusion, but since we have no way of determining if that is in fact the case, it doesn't matter much at all.

Moreover, science doesn't actually answer to questions of the nature of reality; it researches how the apparent reality works and tries to build models based on the observations that are possible to make.

So scientists make that assumption that a theory that works here would work similarly on half an universe away as well. This is justifiable because otherwise cosmology would become impossible, and physics would suffer a severe knock on it's back because it would then only apply on a definite area of universe.

Also, no observation has been made yet that would suggest that some parts of universe would act on different fundamental laws of nature. There are hints that things like fine-structure constant might not be a constant throughout time and space, but that's not really an exception from the same basic mechanisms - it just means that the constant is not so constant after all, but depends on some phenomenon yet unknown, and sets a new challenge to science, to find out what's going on.

  Wrong.  There are gravitational deviations towards the outer edge of the Solar System that we cannot account for.  Furthermore, have you heard the new thing about radioactive decay that basically throws all dating systems into question?  Radioactivity was, until a few days ago, thought to be a universal constant.  Now, upon studying it, it fluctuates with how far away the Earth is from the Sun.

I believe you are referring to the so called Pioneer anomaly. The speed of radioactive decay thing is news to me, do you have a link? I suspect it might be related to either time dilatation due to gravitational potential or fine-structure constant that I mentioned, but neither of these things are what I meant by different fundamental laws of nature. They are hints that our current models could be inaccurate and that some thinsg assumed to be constant would not be so, but they do not mean that things would work fundamentally differently in different places in universe.

There are also multiple theories that Mars and Earth switched positions somewhere around 1600 BC (oddly enough, when Joshua asked God to make the world stand still so he could have 36 hours of fighting without darkness).  Suddenly, Young Earth theories aren't looking so nutty.

In comparision I don't think there's much that would look so nutty next that that hypothesis... The ancient astronomical records considering motions of planets would probably disprove that claim. I think an event like that would've been noticed by people like the Chinese and the Mayans.

And a belief in an infinite number of universes is more simplistic than a belief in God... how, exactly?

In the sense that it does not involve an extra variable (a conscious being) necessary to explain the degree of self-organization. If all possible universes happen, then it is a given fact that this kind of universe happens as well.

Also, an universe (or multiverse) working on relatively simple rules is to me a lot more simple than a conscious being, but then again my thinking is bound to matter and energy and what kind of complexity is required for consciousness to emerge from mass and energy and their interactions. And my concept of time does not really offer room for time before time, so we area at an impasse here.

Time has not existed for an eternity, though.  God exists outside of time.  That's the only way He could be omni-present.

Universe is omnipresent... and it doesn't even need consciousness to affect every single thing in Universe.

(...) it was a belief in God that motivated the first scientific experiments.

Somehow I doubt that, considering that for example natural philosophers of ancient Greek for example measured the circumference of Earth, and did a number of other essentially scientific experiments. By the way, are you familiar with the Greek philosophical concept of cosmos? It basically means order, orderly arrangement, ornaments, and is the antithesis of chaos... The Greeks, despite their beliefs in Gods, believed that the universe worked itself according to a set of rules independent of their deities. The deities lived in the cosmos just as humans did, albeit with more power but they were beings in cosmos as well.

Feel free to start snipping the top layer where it's not necessary for a reference anymore. That's what I'm doing.

Yeah, I've been trying, but keeping posts in a form where they still make sense still require a few levels of quotes... Oh well, it works out anyway.

[Hazaanko]

*The Messiah myth is a pretty interesting one by the way. You might find this link worth exploring, and after reading that you might consider how much the life of Jesus as it's told to us is what actually happened, and how much is attempts by Jesus himself to emulate legends from book of Isaiah as well as stuff from ancient Egypt, and how much is just added stuff by disciples and clerics to make Jesus appear as the legendary Messiah figure (or, like the term in Greek goes, Christ).

Don't really feel like getting too deep into this, but just thought I'd share some of my knowledge on the matter.  According to the Bible (and other non-canonical writings), God frequently and repeatedly used "types and shadows" (or symbolism) to teach about Christ's Atonement well before it ever happened.  A very blatant example would be Abraham and his son Isaac (if you don't know what I'm talking about, just look up "Abraham Sacrifice," or something similar).  Look back through the Old Testament and there are literally hundreds of examples of this, some more obvious than others.

Now, all of this thread is certainly an interesting argument, but I sincerely doubt it will go anywhere.  To actually come to know something, or to be convinced, a part of you has to be at least willing to believe it.  I'm not talking about religious stuff here.  You have to be willing to believe before you can believe.  If you don't want to accept something, it doesn't matter how much evidence (valid or not) is shoved in front of your face - its not going to convince you.  Angels could freaking out of the sky and tell you to repent.  You might get confused for a while, sure.  But unless you yourself have even a grain of willingness or belief, nothing in this universe can make you change your mind.  Again, I'm not just talking about religion.  Same rule applies to anything else.

So its all fine and good and entertaining, but throwing insults around isn't going to help convince anyone of your point.  If that is actually what you are trying to do, and not just prove you can win an argument on the internet.

[Mika]

My eyes, too much text!

I would like to remind the participants about talking universal truths as in yes or no (logicals); these are mathematical abstractions that have nothing to do with real life. Yes, you can actually prove something true as false (or vice-versa) if you just shout loud and long enough. Or, to be precise, for an amount of time that usually tends to be just enough. PROOF: Scientists avoid getting committed in an argument in real life situations, since wrestling with a pig gets both dirty but the pig enjoys it, from which the above follows. QED.

If you ask me, you cannot deal with normal scientific or mathematical analysis with this subject.

The biggest question I have about Christianity has been this:
If you are aiming for a better life in Heaven and living the difficult path in your life, aren't you just being selfish and trying to make your chances to get to Heaven?
Then the other big one: Isn't it unfair that the people before the advent of Christianity are predestined to Hell, since it hasn't been possible they would have known of J.C.'s teachings?
Or any people who have never heard of Christianity?

Why is it so that Christianity, according to my observations, is so keen in betting on good afterlife, unfortunately, the side effect seems to be neglecting the life believers themselves are living. My philosophy is that if you don't have your bases covered, there is no point in going to tell other people how to live their lives.

Mika

Should I add sarcasm tags here? No-o... detect it yourselves.
Oh, yeah, if anyone bothers to answer to this post I'm not particularly interested in reading a 4 page text. So shortening the text improves your chances of getting read.

[Polpolion]

Should I add sarcasm tags here? No-o... detect it yourselves.

If you want to be responded to seriously (at least by me) in this discussion, I'd suggest removing the sarcasm. Not quite a good thing to have in debates...

[Hellstryker]

This needs to go into the classics for having the biggest posts on HLP. Ever. 

[Ghostavo]

This needs to go into the classics for having the biggest posts on HLP. Ever. 

You haven't been here for very long, have you? 

[Mars]

Honestly folks, you can believe in something without arguing endlessly about it without any evidence worth squat... and none of it is.

God is untouchable, you can't prove or disprove him. This would damn him as a scientific theory... BUT HE/SHE/THEY/IT's not.

[WMCoolmon]

I have to admit that I haven't read the whole thread, I mostly skimmed over it and read a few different parts. But I did want to respond to this -

But the thing is, you must consider the source.  Otherwise, you are left with the question, "what makes right, right?"  Why do you think everyone on Earth came to the conclusion that the "golden rule" is universally "good" and selfishness is universally "bad?"  We all have a common moral law that we go by, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.  That's why the serial killer got emotional when he was forgiven.  He knew that what he did was wrong, even though he chose to, at the time, ignore the morality of his actions.

I disagree strongly with this statement. For starters, there's clear and obvious evidence that not everybody goes by the "golden rule". Hardly so. Our entire social structure goes against the golden rule - there's no way that you could ever treat everyone the same way that you would expect them to treat you. Other people will scam you or take advantage of you or talk about you behind your back. I doubt they'd be happy if you did that to them. Yet it still goes on, and I'm sure if you took the time to sit down and look at everything you did for a day, you'd find that you didn't treat everyone like yourself. Maybe you got annoyed at somebody but, on further consideration, you'd realize that you were annoyed out of ignorance of what was actually going on, and you'd find that you'd been in that situation before and you didn't like it.

Or you might find that you treat somebody differently because they like it. Maybe you'd hate it if somebody interrupted you while you were talking, but one of your friends absolutely enjoys animated discussion and downright expects people to interrupt him to keep the conversation going.

Your moral intuition might be in tune with the golden rule - 'fair enough. There's enough moral dispute in this country that I don't think that would be true for everyone. One person might be fine with having an abortion, another person would find it immoral for anybody to have an abortion. How can either of those two people have the same moral system based on the golden rule?

But finally what irks me about your statement is that you assume you can speak for everybody better than they can speak for themselves. Speaking of the golden rule here - how would you like it if I objected to your argument with "It's only your self-interest to be seen as a moral Christian which drives you to do selfless acts for others, whether you admit it or not"? I don't have any evidence to back that point up but it's more or less what you're doing to everybody who disagrees with the Golden Rule.

[Polpolion]

WMCoolmon raises an interesting point, IMHO. But in most of the situations where it applies are either impractical to daily life or negligible. I'm not trying to downtrodden on the importance of Abortion and similar things, but AFAIK the golden rule was synthesized not under the assumption that everyone was of the same religious belief, and meant to be applied to one's life in a manner that allowed him/her to treat others with dignity and respect, and a helping hand. Rather than talking to people about their morals or something like that, the golden rule means more "Be nice to people" rather than what it literally states.

[Mars]

There's nothing wrong with discussing morals; in fact, we all have morals we won't let others compromise. Otherwise there would be no law, which are often morals that a government requires people to have in order to live with each other. Fully realitive morals would make a society fall apart.

There are obviously morals that shouldn't be forced on people, but a Jehova's Witness politely trying to convert you is a perfectly reasonable thing. Conversion is part of religion, and philosophy in general IIRC.

[Mongoose]

(Also, I find it interesting that the Silmarillion came up earlier, since Tolkien used both Judeo-Christian ideas of creation and elements of the Greek/Norse pantheons in crafting Middle-Earth's creation.  I think it becomes a bit difficult to hold a fictional work up as an equal comparison to the spiritual text that it's referencing in the first place.)

Seeing how the Bible does the same thing with Epic of Gilgamesh and other myths and legends*, I would say they are even. Let's have a thought experiment: If you have no earlier knowledge of either Middle-Earth or Christianity, and didn't know the date of writing and the author's notes about Silmarillion, and you were given the Bible and the Silmarillion, would you have bigger than 50:50 chance of defining accurately which one is actually used as a holy book of a big religion? Or, if you introduce some other mythos like Kalevala alongside those two, what would happen?

It might be a really interesting social experience to form a sunday school that would teach Silmarillion to kids...

I'd still have to argue that the analogy doesn't hold water, because you're operating in a situation where one side is a concrete fact, while the other is a matter of what you yourself believe in.  You and certain researchers might view large portions of the Bible as an amalgam of older mythos...es (seriously, no idea what that plural would be) from other cultures; I myself and a number of other researchers would not.  (To be perfectly honest, I've never heard that touted as a widespread opinion, though that of course doesn't mean that it isn't.)  In contrast, we know for a fact the exact dates that Tolkien wrote what he did, and we also know (or are at least almost entirely positive) that he used specific older works as, if not a full reference, then at least a framework to build upon.  I understand the point that you're trying to make, and I think it makes for a cute turn of phrase, but I also feel like it does a disservice to the actual topic at hand.  

*The Messiah myth is a pretty interesting one by the way. You might find this link worth exploring, and after reading that you might consider how much the life of Jesus as it's told to us is what actually happened, and how much is attempts by Jesus himself to emulate legends from book of Isaiah as well as stuff from ancient Egypt, and how much is just added stuff by disciples and clerics to make Jesus appear as the legendary Messiah figure (or, like the term in Greek goes, Christ).

To be perfectly honest, I don't put a whole lot of stock in that link you directed me to.  Several of the references listed at the bottom of that page jump out and trip my "I'm biased!" alarm rather severely.  I know at least a smattering of Egyptian mythology, but I've never heard of anyone trying to draw parallels like that in an academic sense (and from what I know of controversial statements about popular religions, that's the sort of thing you'd expect to be more widespread).  

The question about Christ being knowledgeable of the prophecies of Isaiah is an interesting one, I think, since as a scholar of Hebrew scripture, he would have had an intimate knowledge of those writings (and he tells his disciples as much on several occasions throughout the Gospels).  But when you're considering the wider definition of "prophecy," does having knowledge of the fact that you're fulfilling one make it any less of a prophecy?  At least one of the Gospels (Matthew, I think), does in fact state that Jesus performed certain acts "so that the prophecies might be fulfilled;" this only makes sense, seeing as how the focus of that particular Gospel is on Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish messianic teaching.  Of course, there are other aspects of Jesus' life, such as being born in the city of Bethlehem, that he would have had no control over, so you can take those as you will.

As for writers embellishing on Jesus' life after the fact, I've sometimes pondered something related to that, though it doesn't entirely pertain to this topic.  Thinking about those early Church leaders, those who would have known Jesus personally and heard him speak, who were executed by the Romans, I've often considered if a person in that sort of situation would have any motive to continue to profess to believe an embellishment or outright fabrication.  Certainly someone like Peter, purportedly crucified upside-down, would have been extremely close to Jesus while he was alive.  If so much of what he had taught about Jesus' true role and acts was an exaggeration or flat-out lie, why would he be willing to continue perpetuating this lie to the point of being killed for it?  Surely he wouldn't go that far unless he absolutely believed that what he was saying was true.  Whether you believe that could only be the case if he was delusional, or whether you yourself believe the same statements, it's some food for thought.

And as an almost completely unrelated side-note, I find myself wondering from your statements about not wanting to spend eternity with a being like the Christian God how much you really know about what Christians generally believe from God's nature.  I can only speak from my own perspective as a lifelong Roman Catholic, but I've never once believed that someone who'd never heard of this Jesus guy or why he was supposedly so great couldn't make it to heaven some day.  In fact, according to what my Church teaches, to say that everyone besides Christians automatically goes to hell/nothingness/insert-your-preference-here is blatantly wrong.  To declare so would be placing a fixed limit on the power of God's salvation, which isn't exactly an intelligent statement when considering an omnipotent Creator.  There's nothing in Catholic teaching that would preclude even atheists from heaven, even if there's nothing specifically stating how that would take place.  I'm not trying to change any minds with this, but I figure it's worth letting different viewpoints on the topic we heard.

(With tongue firmly in cheek, I tend to look on the denominations that preach what you believe as "those troublemakers that followed that crazy German monk who wanted to make his own rules," anyway. )

[Herra Tohtori]

A good point WMC... Yeah, it is a fallacy to assume that everyone would end up into a form of golden rule as their moral compass. I suspect that even with independent thought, many many people would end up with "treat others like they treat you" rather than "treat others like you would want to be treated". And, in some cases, even "treat others as you suspect they would treat you", or "treat others as you wish and can".

Environment also dictates a lot of how morality evolves. In a more hazardous and difficult environment, people with less moral inhibitions tend to thrive, and I'm not talking about criminal activity here but everyday interactions - if you let someone get your wood or food or water, you'll be left without. In a peaceful, rich western industrialized country it's very easy to judge this kind of behaviour as unethical or immoral, while sitting on top of high horse spouting the golden rule as universal banner of light and goodness.

It's annoying to notice living in an ivory tower...

Golden rule just doesn't work if everyone is not willing to commit to it, so people live their lives with 6 billion+ sets of morals and just try to get by with each other, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing. But I still stand by my argument that an authority to enforce rules should not be claimed to be divine in origins of any kind, because... look,  strange men claiming to speak words of God and other people writing them down, that's no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some invisible man speaking to people. Like Winston reminded, democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

[Herra Tohtori]

I'd still have to argue that the analogy doesn't hold water, because you're operating in a situation where one side is a concrete fact, while the other is a matter of what you yourself believe in.  You and certain researchers might view large portions of the Bible as an amalgam of older mythos...es (seriously, no idea what that plural would be) from other cultures; I myself and a number of other researchers would not.  (To be perfectly honest, I've never heard that touted as a widespread opinion, though that of course doesn't mean that it isn't.)  In contrast, we know for a fact the exact dates that Tolkien wrote what he did, and we also know (or are at least almost entirely positive) that he used specific older works as, if not a full reference, then at least a framework to build upon.  I understand the point that you're trying to make, and I think it makes for a cute turn of phrase, but I also feel like it does a disservice to the actual topic at hand.

Similarly, I'm quite sure at some point someone knew exactly when the books of Bible were written, how truthful they were, and who wrote them. Add a couple thousand years, a nuclear apocalypse and loss of author notes, and the future theologists who find Silmarillion are going to have a field day, seeing as a lot of stuff in it is connected to a lot of other mythologies which would probably live on in some form or another.

So considering the credibility of Bible and Silmarillion as divine information, the only way to distinguish between them is that we know Silmarillion is not claimed to be divine in origins (or so Tolkien says), while the Bible (or most of it) is claimed to be divine in origins by others than the authors. If there was no one to claim that Silmarillion is definitely not a holy book, and enough people would believe so... it would be indistinguishable from the Bible. You could probably even find historical events to match up with it if you wanted. Like the sinking of Númenor corresponding with the myth of Atlantis. Or even the great Flood, though the connection there would be a bit far-fetched.

To be perfectly honest, I don't put a whole lot of stock in that link you directed me to.  Several of the references listed at the bottom of that page jump out and trip my "I'm biased!" alarm rather severely.  I know at least a smattering of Egyptian mythology, but I've never heard of anyone trying to draw parallels like that in an academic sense (and from what I know of controversial statements about popular religions, that's the sort of thing you'd expect to be more widespread).  

I have my doubts of that page as well, but it's nice and thought-provoking and doesn't change the fact that more than one cultures have a myth of a saviour, hero born from a victim, and being connected to the creator god. Quetzalcoatl has some similar attributes, so does the King of Karelia in Kalevala (her mother Marjatta became pregnant form eating a lingonberry and the boy later became king of Karelia, name not specified, and made the ancient demigod Väinämöinen give up his power...) although the poes that this story is based more likely than not are influenced by christianity, so it isn't really a valid example but interesting nonetheless.

The question about Christ being knowledgeable of the prophecies of Isaiah is an interesting one, I think, since as a scholar of Hebrew scripture, he would have had an intimate knowledge of those writings (and he tells his disciples as much on several occasions throughout the Gospels).  But when you're considering the wider definition of "prophecy," does having knowledge of the fact that you're fulfilling one make it any less of a prophecy?  At least one of the Gospels (Matthew, I think), does in fact state that Jesus performed certain acts "so that the prophecies might be fulfilled;" this only makes sense, seeing as how the focus of that particular Gospel is on Jesus as the fulfillment of Jewish messianic teaching.  Of course, there are other aspects of Jesus' life, such as being born in the city of Bethlehem, that he would have had no control over, so you can take those as you will.

As for writers embellishing on Jesus' life after the fact, I've sometimes pondered something related to that, though it doesn't entirely pertain to this topic.  Thinking about those early Church leaders, those who would have known Jesus personally and heard him speak, who were executed by the Romans, I've often considered if a person in that sort of situation would have any motive to continue to profess to believe an embellishment or outright fabrication.  Certainly someone like Peter, purportedly crucified upside-down, would have been extremely close to Jesus while he was alive.  If so much of what he had taught about Jesus' true role and acts was an exaggeration or flat-out lie, why would he be willing to continue perpetuating this lie to the point of being killed for it?  Surely he wouldn't go that far unless he absolutely believed that what he was saying was true.  Whether you believe that could only be the case if he was delusional, or whether you yourself believe the same statements, it's some food for thought.

Well there's three possibilities - either Jesus thought he really was the prophezied annointed one and acted accordingly, or he fell victim to a series of events that by chance ended up a lot like what Isaiah wrote and the disciples either believed in the prophecy or just wanted to make sure Jesus ended up as Messiah - heck, one of them even betrayed him to make sure he was crucified while the poor guy tried to spend an easter holiday. And the betrayer ended up dead soon after, what a coincidence, clearly it was a suicide... my CSI-senses are tingling...

The disciples themselves are an interesting topic. Sure, they might've genuinely believed that what happened was in fact that Jesus was the prophecized annointed one. Regardless of that they ended up as athoritarian figures in the starting days of christianity, but we will never know what their motivation really was. Or, in fact, what words really belong to Jesus' mouth and which don't. Giving them a benefit of doubt, it isn't inconceivable that they were just trying to spread their teacher's words, but later on when hierarchy was established I am more than sure there have been opportunistic people fine-tuning things to better fit together, culminating at councils of Nicea that established the Bible as a collection of books we now know it.

How moch "fine-tuning" has happened is similarly probably going to be left to dark forever, and that's one more reason not to simply believe what is written down in that book, at least without consideration that it might not have happened exactly like described...

And as an almost completely unrelated side-note, I find myself wondering from your statements about not wanting to spend eternity with a being like the Christian God how much you really know about what Christians generally believe from God's nature.  I can only speak from my own perspective as a lifelong Roman Catholic, but I've never once believed that someone who'd never heard of this Jesus guy or why he was supposedly so great couldn't make it to heaven some day.  In fact, according to what my Church teaches, to say that everyone besides Christians automatically goes to hell/nothingness/insert-your-preference-here is blatantly wrong.  To declare so would be placing a fixed limit on the power of God's salvation, which isn't exactly an intelligent statement when considering an omnipotent Creator.  There's nothing in Catholic teaching that would preclude even atheists from heaven, even if there's nothing specifically stating how that would take place.  I'm not trying to change any minds with this, but I figure it's worth letting different viewpoints on the topic we heard.

Well what's the point in the whole thing then? If non-believers can get to beneficial version of afterlife as well, why is believing in Jesus as a Messiah so critical in the first place?!

(With tongue firmly in cheek, I tend to look on the denominations that preach what you believe as "those troublemakers that followed that crazy German monk who wanted to make his own rules," anyway. )

Heh, yeah, that does unavoidable colour my basic assumptions of christian theology...

[Mongoose]

Well what's the point in the whole thing then? If non-believers can get to beneficial version of afterlife as well, why is believing in Jesus as a Messiah so critical in the first place?!

Essentially, as I understand it (and I may be doing it wrong somewhat in a theological stance, so bear with me if you please), it's critical because faith in Jesus as the Messiah and application of that faith are the guaranteed path toward the "good end."  If you believe in Jesus as the Son of God, if you follow his commandments (which, as have been pointed out many times in this thread, can be summed up neatly by that Golden Rule), if you participate in the sacraments, and if you keep yourself free of serious sin, you're essentially earning the reward of heaven.  (Note that that's all from the Catholic perspective; Protestant mileage may vary with one or two of the details.)  That's the reward that Jesus' sacrifice on the cross and subsequent resurrection won for humanity, a pathway toward salvation and total union with God. 

Now, as I said before, I don't believe that those who don't believe in Jesus' divinity automatically get a "bad end," but there is some level of inherent risk, since you don't have that guarantee hanging over you.  Jesus said, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life," and he meant it, but I don't believe that that Way can't also involve his reaching out to those who don't believe in him in another manner.  I'd say that a lot of it has to do with a person's intentions and actions.  If you're an atheist and live your life by standards that even any legitimate Christian observer would consider "good," I have to believe that you're on God's good side (and I know that's a gross oversimplification of the whole concept, but it's the best I could come up with at the moment).  Likewise, someone who pays lip service to Christianity yet lives a life of atrocities without an ounce of remorse probably isn't winning himself any favors.  Like I said above, saying that God couldn't bring you to heaven just because you don't believe in him would be a human restricting whom God sees as being worthy of salvation (though by the general definition, we all start out as being equally unworthy, as a result of our imperfect human nature).

I think a decent analogy to make would be walking across a pitch-dark room filled with all sorts of clutter with a pair of night vision goggles, versus walking across the same room with nothing but your two hands held out in front of you.  With the goggles, you're guaranteed to make it through the room and out the other side without stubbing your toe or bashing your shin against something.  Without the goggles, there's that chance that you'll manage to blindly weave your way through safely to the other side, but you're infinitely more likely to pick up a few bruises along the way, and there's even a decent chance that you'll trip headlong over a chair and break some bones.  If you want to ensure getting to the other side without injury, you'll go with the method that's sure to let you do so.

Again, as I said, I'm no theologian, and it's been a very long time since any of my relevant classes in high school would have lent me an assist on this topic, so I'm going by my faith as I understand it.  I may have said something that doesn't hold up completely, but the gist of it should be correct.

[TrashMan]

You can come to a LOT of different conclusions trough independant thought.

Why, yes. And each one I consider better than believing something just for the belief's sake. The fact of the matter is that if your ethic system considers human beings to have intrinsic value, the most acceptable conclusion from that principle is some form of category imperative, or the GoldenRule, if you want to call it that.

What I meant to say is that you can come to very negative conclusions as well.
You consider them better too?

Altough to say "belief for belief sake" is not entirely accurate either.

I have mostly nothing against Jesus' teachings, but for Christ's sake give it a little thought to verify that you aren't being deceived by ages old disicples or scribes that wanted to claim that he said something for their benefit.

I realise you come from the standpoint that I am being decieved and that I haven't given things though, since (according to  you), if I have I should have come to the same conclusions as you.
I'm sorry to dissapoint you, but I have given it a lot of though. I have questioned my beliefs. and they stand. I wouldn't call it pure faith either. I have enough evidence to satisfy me, but it's not the kind of evidence you would accept, even if I could present it to you. And frankly, that doesn't bother me at all.

First of all, all the three assumptions are something I don't especially see very probable. But humoring you, even if they did, if this God was anything like he's described in monotheistic religions, I would definitely not like him. Why? Personal dislike, based on the claims on how he selects people for eternal life in bliss or loss or damnation in hell depending of your particular sect. Personal dislike based on the claims that he's ignorant and conceited asshole as far as personality goes. That is, when one's talking about the God of Christianity, Judaism and Islam (which are supposedly the same entity - gives again a little more fuel to the fires of doubt as to which opinion of him is the correct one.

You're avoiding the question. I asked that in order to create the universe God has to have knowledge that surpasses yours by FAR. It only makes sense then, then any decisions God makes are based on far more accurate and complete information, and therefore far more likely correct than yours.

Personal dislike aside, you're painting the wrong picture of God. "Ignorant and conceited asshole" is the worst description, ever.

I would not want to send an eternity with the God of Christianity. Even less with Allah or Jahve. If those are the options I'm offered, I would rather take nonexistence. And I'm willing to take the risk of eternal damnation as well.

Your loss

It would be like a caveman disagreeing with the astrophysicists about what the Moon is made of and how far away is it....only 10000000000 times worse.

Not, because terms like good and bad are subjective, whereas the distance to Moon is relatively easy to prove with experimentation.

Wrong..you THINK terms like good and bad are subjective.
Just like a caveman that doesn't know how to mesure the distance to the moon, so he assumes it's subjective, so can a man assume good and evil are subjective too, since they know of no way to mesure it.
It doesn't matter if we ever are able to mesure it. That still doesn't mean it is subjective.
As someone else said - the truth is the truth, regarldess of our knowledge and oppinions on the matter.

With same logic you could argue that if there were a "true" religion, it should be adopted by everyone by now since it's true... Obviously, there is no such thing as "true" logic. There's just one logic, but people come to different conclusions because of their different values, opinions and interpretations of facts. And because they make errors of argumentation.

And everyone assumes everyone else made errors when the conclusions don't match. It's the old "in order for me to be right, you must be wrong" mentality.

Similarly there is no such thing as "true" religion. There's thousands of them in the world; how is one supposed to know which one is the "correct" one? Logically the only conclusion is that religions are on equal line as far as claims of their divine origins are concerned. Each have basically same claims that they are the one and only right religion. If you really want to choose a religion to belong to, you should IMHO do the selection based on content and not on the birthplace and the dominant religion of your society. Or like I do, ignore the religious part of religions, and evaluate their messages instead.

I find it funny how you marked the word logic. As if you're unsure yourself what the conclusion should be.
My conclusions is that my beliefs are correct (naturally) and the conclusions to me looks perfectly logical. You might argue against that, but what do I care.

I'm talking in general terms. If God exists are His "oppinions" far more correct that your could ever be or not?

Probably, but the thing is, it's by definition impossible to *know* what the supposed God's opinions would be. Each religion claims they have knowledge of them, with great deal of variance even when talking about the same God. And there's still the big if of whether God exists or not, but you know what?

Since I was talking in general terms, thus only about God, not the bible, not us, then that's the answer I wanted to hear (that he is always more correct that you could ever be).
As far as religions go, most religions do all agree in the core points, and even most of the "lesser points" - and that's exactly where one focuses in life anyway.
IMHO, I think God, Jahova and Alah are one and the same, but appeared in different times, places to different people - thus the differences.

That's exactly what I meant by saying that time before time doesn't compute in the terms that we know time as.

Well, here lies an interesting problem. What IS time? How do we mesure it. Well, by change...things happen. They constantly happen. Atoms degrade, objects move. We can see that, we can mesure that and we calculate time from it. Time itself is not tangible - we need other things to grasp it's "passing".
However, if before the Big Bang there was no matter in the universe, then there was no change. Nothing to mesure time WITH.

Basicely, it's like watching a video camera of a empty room. If there's nothing going on in the room, to us it will look like it's a static image - like no time passes. We have no frame of reference to mesure time. No changes.

Thus, it's quite possible there was time before the Big Bang, but no way of actually mesuring it.

[TrashMan]

So you're saying smart-asses have a compulsion to prove you wrong? Or are you saying that you hate the smart people who see the fallacies in your arguments and point them out to you? I also find it ironic that the one who is accusing people of asserting viewpoints neither knows what asserting means nor knows that he is actually asserting the fact that the other people are asserting their viewpoints.

Not me specificly, but everyone.
The type of people I'm referring too place an insane amount of time and energy into proving other people wrong. It's almost like an addiction. I know a guy or two like that. The debate hangs in their heads the whole day, they plan the "perfect" response in their sleep and winning discussion is like winning the olympics for them.

Well, using "true" logic, that should happen in theory. However it doesn't. You can guess why.

Yes I can guess why. Because you have no idea what you're talking about. The only way the described thing would happen is if for some reason humans had no human nature. People's personalities are varied, thus their likes and dislikes are varied. Do you really think it's logical for someone to like chocolate while illogical for someone to not like chocolate? Logic doesn't dictate opinion.

I wanted you to guess yourself, but you kinda missed the mark a bit. Human nature and different experiences are the answer, you got that right. However,  I wasn't talking about tastes.

On top of that, it's no where near like what you stated because the moon's composition not an opinion.

The caveman doesn't know that...or he might not care.

Which is partially why it's an invalid analogy.

No, it's precisely why it's a perfect analogy.

Opinions can't be correct or incorrect.

Really? I haven't noticed. So my opinnion that the elements are mede out of atoms is incorrect I guess.

[Herra Tohtori]

What I meant to say is that you can come to very negative conclusions as well.
You consider them better too?

I guess I was ambiguous.

Any conclusion that is reached though independent thought is better than simply assuming that conclusion to be the right one because someone says you should believe it.

Comparision of conclusions themselves isn't really what I meant; I meant it is better to for example figure out why the Golden Rule for example is a good ethical advice, instead of accepting it simply because an authority figure says so, which misses the whole point. Obviously in this particular case, the consequences are not very different, but application of independent thought makes brainwashing and force-feeding of those negative conclusions much easier, because the hapless people accept them just as readily without thought on the matter as they would accept positive ideas, since the main thing that seems to matter to a lot of people is that the opinions are endorsed by the correct authority figures.

Not saying that every people do so; many do evaluate independently what they are being told, but cults like Scientology pretty much prove that it is possibly to drill rather negative conclusions into people's mind and make them believe in them just as well as positive conclusions... and without independent evaluation, anything seems to be accepted as long as it comes from the right mouth or book.

Altough to say "belief for belief sake" is not entirely accurate either.

In many cases, it is...

I have mostly nothing against Jesus' teachings, but for Christ's sake give it a little thought to verify that you aren't being deceived by ages old disicples or scribes that wanted to claim that he said something for their benefit.

I realise you come from the standpoint that I am being decieved and that I haven't given things though, since (according to  you), if I have I should have come to the same conclusions as you.
I'm sorry to dissapoint you, but I have given it a lot of though. I have questioned my beliefs. and they stand. I wouldn't call it pure faith either. I have enough evidence to satisfy me, but it's not the kind of evidence you would accept, even if I could present it to you. And frankly, that doesn't bother me at all.

I am not saying that you are being deceived, I am saying that you should acknowledge the possibility and instead of accepting whatever is written in a source you consider credible just because the source and authority figures tell you it's credible. I'm talking about considering the content without automatic assumption of it's divine origins and instead evaluating what the texts say and whether or not you find that you can agree with them.

You're avoiding the question. I asked that in order to create the universe God has to have knowledge that surpasses yours by FAR. It only makes sense then, then any decisions God makes are based on far more accurate and complete information, and therefore far more likely correct than yours.

Then I would probably respect the knowledge and ability, but not necessarily personality.

Personal dislike aside, you're painting the wrong picture of God. "Ignorant and conceited asshole" is the worst description, ever.

Most likely. I agree wholeheartedly and to me it means that if God really exists, he would probably be rather unlike the image I have of the God of Christianity. Because that God, or the image I have of him, does not inspire any positive feelings in me for some reason.

I would not want to send an eternity with the God of Christianity. Even less with Allah or Jahve. If those are the options I'm offered, I would rather take nonexistence. And I'm willing to take the risk of eternal damnation as well.

Your loss

Not a loss in my point of view...

...terms like good and bad are subjective, whereas the distance to Moon is relatively easy to prove with experimentation.

Wrong..you THINK terms like good and bad are subjective.

Wrong... you THINK terms like good and bad are objective. Hey, that's a game two can play.

Seriously though, good and bad only have set values if you assume that there is some highest authority that can define those things (and that they have the interest to do so, which I actually doubt even more than the existence of such an authority figure in the first place). If the assumption of the existence of that authority is questioned, good and bad are subjective things that can only be objective in one person's reference frame at a time and even then they are ambiguous at best; right and wrong are marginally easier case but not by much.

Just like a caveman that doesn't know how to mesure the distance to the moon, so he assumes it's subjective, so can a man assume good and evil are subjective too, since they know of no way to mesure it.

And because he assumes it's subjective to opinion because of lack of proof, he shouldn't accept any given value to Moon's distance as a fact until someone can prove that it is, in fact, objective and experimentally easy to define distance. Similarly we shouldn't assume any objective good and bad to exist before there's a proof that such things exist.

It doesn't matter if we ever are able to mesure it. That still doesn't mean it is subjective.

There's a rather fundamental difference between abstract concepts like good and bad and natural phenomena that can be measured, so the comparision is not a very good one. In case of moon, even a caveman can roughly determine that it is damn far because you can't grasp it out of sky, you can't hit it with a spear or stone, birds and clouds are lower than it, and even the furthest mountain is always closer than the Moon, so it isn't nearly as subjective to cavemen as you seem to think. Cavemen weren't stupid. They probably would've understood trigonometric or laser based measurements of Moon's distance just fine if they were explained to them... if they could handle the paradigm shift between their way of life that relied on practical knowledge of nature, and our way of life that leans heavily on other people's theoretical knowledge of nature that makes it possible for us not to need practical knowledge of nature.

The interpretation of measurements doesn't leave much room for subjective opinions and expectations, while concepts like good and evil are inherently based on subjective opinions and can never be anything else. I would even go as far as saying that even God's opinion would be subjective in principle, but de facto it would possibly be considered an objective source of information, but that again leans on the supposition that he exists and bothers to have opinions of good and evil considering us people.

Like I said, right and wrong are a marginally easier case to evaluate than good and bad.

As someone else said - the truth is the truth, regarldess of our knowledge and oppinions on the matter.

Indeed. Except on matters of opinion, where there is no truth...

With same logic you could argue that if there were a "true" religion, it should be adopted by everyone by now since it's true... Obviously, there is no such thing as "true" logic. There's just one logic, but people come to different conclusions because of their different values, opinions and interpretations of facts. And because they make errors of argumentation.

And everyone assumes everyone else made errors when the conclusions don't match. It's the old "in order for me to be right, you must be wrong" mentality.

Partially. I'm willing to accept other people coming to different conclusions as I because our values and starting premises don't match, that in itself doesn't need to be erraneous logic; instead it becomes rather interesting to try and define what kind of assumptions those starting premises would be.

For example, I find it impossibe for me to seriously consider an argument that is based on the assumption that bible is truth, or that God exists, or combinations of these in various forms. It makes the whole following logical conjencture very non-convincing because there is no way to actually define if bible is truth or if God exists.

Similarly there is no such thing as "true" religion. There's thousands of them in the world; how is one supposed to know which one is the "correct" one? Logically the only conclusion is that religions are on equal line as far as claims of their divine origins are concerned. Each have basically same claims that they are the one and only right religion. If you really want to choose a religion to belong to, you should IMHO do the selection based on content and not on the birthplace and the dominant religion of your society. Or like I do, ignore the religious part of religions, and evaluate their messages instead.

I find it funny how you marked the word logic. As if you're unsure yourself what the conclusion should be.
My conclusions is that my beliefs are correct (naturally) and the conclusions to me looks perfectly logical. You might argue against that, but what do I care.

I find you funny.

If you have indeed evaluated the content of your belief system and came to conclusion that it offers an acceptable and good way of living, that's great. Many people just stay in the model they've been molded to based on what religion they were born into, because they are too lazy to question things or have otherwise no will to do it.

Since I was talking in general terms, thus only about God, not the bible, not us, then that's the answer I wanted to hear (that he is always more correct that you could ever be).
As far as religions go, most religions do all agree in the core points, and even most of the "lesser points" - and that's exactly where one focuses in life anyway.
IMHO, I think God, Jahova and Alah are one and the same, but appeared in different times, places to different people - thus the differences.

And how exactly do you make the difference between what is those people's concept of God and what this supposed God really is?

It's impossible. That's what I meant by saying that it's impossibly to define which religion is the correct one. They are on the same level of credibility, and thus one should just look at the message and keep the divine origins out of arguments. It would make it so much easier if one could just argue about the content instead of origins, but as it is most religious people just fall back into the "this is true because I believe in it" argument to end all arguments, which is rather frustrating and doesn't usually lead anywhere.

Well, here lies an interesting problem. What IS time?

Frames. A lot of consequential frames of space, next one defined by the state of affairs in the latest one.

How do we mesure it. Well, by change...things happen. They constantly happen. Atoms degrade, objects move. We can see that, we can mesure that and we calculate time from it.

Actually we measure time inamount of frames, but to keep the numbers meaningful we resort to use cyclic phenomena like sub-atomic vibrations of cesium atoms to define a sensible amount of frames.

Each frame seems to be one Planck time apart from each other, or rather the quantum theory predicts Planck time to be the smallest measurable unit of time; whether or not this is actually correct or not remains to be seen. As it is, one Planck time equals to 5.391255 (+- 0.000015) × 10^−44 seconds, which means universe is, according to currently most accurate models, running at about 1.85485569 × 10^43 frames per second, which is very much enough to make time appear continuous even if it might not truly be.

Time itself is not tangible - we need other things to grasp it's "passing".

Certainly, but time itself only becomes relevant when something happens like you said... and in the context of universe, only thermal death of universe will essentially stop time. Also without an universe for things to happen there is no time, so the argument still stands - without universe there is no time as we understand it.

However, if before the Big Bang there was no matter in the universe, then there was no change. Nothing to mesure time WITH.

Basicely, it's like watching a video camera of a empty room. If there's nothing going on in the room, to us it will look like it's a static image - like no time passes. We have no frame of reference to mesure time. No changes.

Thus, it's quite possible there was time before the Big Bang, but no way of actually mesuring it.

Except that without measurements (basically harmonic phenomena) the concept of time is rendered null. If nothing happened before the big bang, then there was no time. It is actually that simple. What makes things difficult is when an assumption of a God needs to be crammed into the logics...