Went to Church for the First Time in a Long Time

[MagnusTheBrewer]

If you want to evade your burden to give meaning to your invented terms, that is your prerogative. Your refusal to do so only justifies my bafflement.

What burden? It is my pleasure to inform you about what God can do for you. Would you like to learn more?

 

[Retro Rob]

The difference is that intelligent people take things on faith based on evidence that the faith has something solid backing it up.

No, intelligence isn't measured by what someone believes/lacks belief in...it's measured by the ability to learn and manipulate your environment.

When that definition includes someone's religious leanings (or lack thereof) be sure to check back and update us on that.

 

[ThinClient]

More like, "at the most basic of levels, nobody knows or has the capability of knowing, ergo, god."

What if "god" was a technological marvel that is fully consistent with science? Yet we are too ignorant now to understand it?

That's no more valid than making the supernatural claim.

Why make any claim at all when "I don't know" will suffice?

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Well back to OP's post I find my Congregational Church fairly mixed race & age. A bit short in the twenty something's. I do like the community focus and I feel its more tolerant of gays and such. There us even coffee time after the service which is a great time to meet people. They also have regular charity meals. $5 admission if you can't afford it the meal is free. Proceeds go to the operating expenses or local charities.
The way it operates just feels right.

 

[ThinClient]

What burden? It is my pleasure to inform you about what God can do for you. Would you like to learn more?

On what authority do you speak for god? How do we even know that god exists?

Your statement is based on the premise that god exists. You must first prove that god exists before your statement about whether or not he can do anything for you is valid.

Please provide objective peer-reviewed evidence for the existence of god.

Then tell us which god you're referring to.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

What burden?

I asked you a plain question in post #223 that remains unanswered. In refusing to answer it and now even denying its existence, I think you even managed to answer your own question in post #224.

It is my pleasure to inform you about what God can do for you. Would you like to learn more?

I don't think there's anything you know on that subject that I do not.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

On what authority do you speak for god? How do we even know that god exists?

Your statement is based on the premise that god exists. You must first prove that god exists before your statement about whether or not he can do anything for you is valid.

Please provide objective peer-reviewed evidence for the existence of god.

Then tell us which god you're referring to.

I speak of my belief. Your opinion of my belief does not influence me. There is only one God. Would you like to know what God can do for you?

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

I asked you a plain question in post #223 that remains unanswered. In refusing to answer it and now even denying its existence, I think you even managed to answer your own question in post #224.
It saddens me you place more credence in sophistry than in what you can gain by believing in God.
I don't think there's anything you know on that subject that I do not.

You don't know until you ask.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Guys belief doesn't need to be debated. Personally I see no harm in taking what you want from the Bible and leaving the rest provided you're doing no harm to someone else.

 

[ThinClient]

I speak of my belief. Your opinion of my belief does not influence me. There is only one God. Would you like to know what God can do for you?

You're completely ignoring my questions.

Is that because you cannot answer them or that you have no evidence for the existence of god?

You can't even answer which god, specifically, you're referring to.

 

[ThinClient]

You don't know until you ask.

I'm asking. You're deflecting.

 

[ThinClient]

Guys belief doesn't need to be debated. Personally I see no harm in taking what you want and leaving the rest provided you're doing no harm to someone else.

Teaching others, especially children, that it's okay to believe in bullshit is incredibly dangerous.

 

[Cerpin Taxt]

It saddens me you place more credence in sophistry than in what you can gain by believing in God.

That's great but it isn't my problem that you made up a term and can't even tell me what it means. That isn't "sophistry," that's just you being a disingenuous jackass.

BTW do you even know what "sophistry" means? I ask because you haven't used it correctly here at all. I asked you to tell me what your terms mean. That's a question. Period. Legitimate questions cannot be "sophistry."

You don't know until you ask.

You don't know that I don't know until you ask.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

You're completely ignoring my questions.

Is that because you cannot answer them or that you have no evidence for the existence of god?

You can't even answer which god, specifically, you're referring to.

Your inability to comprehend does not alter my reply. I have already stated my beliefs are outside the rules of logic or scientific principles. There is only one God but, he has multiple aspects, I believe that is to make it easier for man to comprehend but, I do not have direct knowledge.

Since you asked, God can lend strength when there is none. He can provide hope when there is none. He can provide purpose when there is none. He can provide courage when there is only fear. He can lead when there is no direction. The benefits are endless.

 

[ThinClient]

Your inability to comprehend does not alter my reply. I have already stated my beliefs are outside the rules of logic or scientific principles. There is only one God but, he has multiple aspects, I believe that is to make it easier for man to comprehend but, I do not have direct knowledge.

So you admit that you are irrational, illogical, and unreasonable?

Welp, at least you're being honest about something.

Since you asked, God can lend strength when there is none. He can provide hope when there is none. He can provide purpose when there is none. He can provide courage when there is only fear. He can lead when there is no direction. The benefits are endless.

None of that is true because you have no basis in reality to support the claim. It seems like the only power your god has is to delude you.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

So you admit that you are irrational, illogical, and unreasonable?
I'm entirely logical within the context of my belief. Why would your constraints of logic be applicable here?
Welp, at least you're being honest about something.



None of that is true because you have no basis in reality to support the claim. It seems like the only power your god has is to delude you.

Of course it's true. I have my personal experience to support my claim. My God gives me the strength to deny all who seek to dissuade me.

 

[doubledeluxe]

My imaginary friend did too. Then I turned 4 and grew up.

 

[Jeff7]

Yes, jehovah's witnesses believe that, although technically not that those people will 'go to heaven', but rather that they will rule over the faithful as spirit beings on paradise earth. And, just like the 6000 year old earth guys, they have it wrong (not based on reality, simply what is said in the Bible).


Jeff, I didn't ask you to refrain from google because I thought you didn't have any answers, but rather to hear what your specific issues were.
A few books of the Bible aren't called poetic in a reactionary way, it's based on their content and literary devices that separate them from books considered historical in nature, as well as content.
With regards to God simply misunderstanding units and words, again this is simply a limitation imposed by the old fashioned refusing to accept modern science (the world is round, the universe isn't geocentric) and given the limitation of ancient hebrew's 7000 word vocabulary, the word used for 'day', (yom), literally means 24 hours, the day light hours, or a long period of time, to break the creation events down into 6 epochs would look exactly the same as breaking it into 6 24 hour periods. Yay for homonyms.
A lot of the misconceptions people have about Biblical content, such as the age if the earth, are easily clarified without much trouble. Anyway, thanks for replying.

We don't have words for various specific concepts, but we can always smash words together, or use combinations of existing words to refer to different things.
"Day" and "epoch" are pretty different things. I'd think you'd want to be fairly specific when speaking about something in such a text. But as we've seen, there's a great deal of room for interpretation. You yourself just said "And, just like the 6000 year old earth guys, they have it wrong (not based on reality, simply what is said in the Bible)." They have it wrong. So there's room for interpretation. Day means epoch. Day is nonspecific. Earth is 6000 years old. Only a specific number of people will go to Heaven. Literalists on one side saying that everything in the Bible means exactly what it says. Others try to be adaptive and adjust the meaning of the book to match current scientific knowledge. The video linked in this thread talks about that - the God of the gaps. Gods of long ago had specific things they did, such as making the Sun move across the sky, causing the tides, making rain, causing earthquakes, and so on. Our expanding knowledge has found no such gods, leaving fewer things for a god to do, and the need for fewer gods in the first place.

Some of the more long-lived deities worked around this by simply saying "this god is everywhere and knows everything." That smacks of a child play-fighting and conjuring up an "everything-proof shield." By definition it's entirely immune to attack, so the game's over, right?

Not sure I agree with all of your statements (e.g., creating life from non-life by consuming food), but I think the gist of your argument is that scientific theories support the long-term evolution of complex life from inorganic and organic compounds. I get that, and by and large I agree with it.

I'm made of a great deal of atoms that are not alive. Most of them aren't even carbon. Most of me is inorganic water. There's a skeleton that contains a great deal of calcium, also nonliving and inorganic.
The proper conglomeration of atoms and molecules though, with the ability to maintain itself for a period of time against a harsh environment coupled with the ability to make more of itself, does meet our definition of "life." At some point, the nonliving components that make up a person transition from "nonliving" to "living."

But there are many questions science cannot answer to my satisfaction. But before getting into them lets lay a framework based on abiogenesis. That framework is essentially based on assertions that before there was complex life, there was relatively simple life. Before simple life there were non-living organic compounds and inorganic compounds. And before there were organic and inorganic compounds there were elements. And before their were elements there were subatomic particles floating around.

The NDT video nicely answers this. God of the gaps. There's going to be stuff we don't know. A lot of it. The Universe is absolutely absurdly huge. We happen to be in it, and are capable of both retaining information and analyzing it, and are also capable of analyzing that fact itself. So we can look around and wonder why things are the way they are. (That of course assumes that a "why" is even necessary in the first place, which is a rather lofty assumption.)

Question 1 - where did the subatomic particles come from? If from smaller particles, what is the origin of those particles?

Question 2 - where did "space" come from?

In other words, how did the universe come to be?

An even greater question (for all religious folks to ponder) is - "where did your god come from?" Who or what created it?

At some point, you'll keep breaking matter down until we can't observe it anymore. But you can venture toward god-of-the-gaps then. At one time, breaking anything smaller than a sand grain was impossible, and therefore unknowable. A grain of sand contains an enormous number of atoms. We have progressed to being able to split those atoms into their constituents. Many things that were once unknown became known.
How does the Sun make us warm? Fusion releases energy which heats up the Sun, and electromagnetic radiation carries the energy here.
(Another video, one that I really like: Richard Feynman talking about magnets. Eventually, you'll reach a point that is the limit of our knowledge at that time. That doesn't mean that something else is making it do that. It just means that we don't know that information yet.)

In my view the answers to those questions are unknowable. At least by a mere human mind. I therefore believe in something greater than humanity, which I call god. The fact that I may not understand what god is or how god acts upon me and the rest of the universe is no surprise, because I do not have the capability of understanding. But I am intelligent enough to wonder about these fundamental questions. . . and to realize that at some point scientific and/or rationale explanations just do not hold up.

There's nothing saying that the human mind is the end-all be-all of intelligence. We just happen to be the most intelligent things on this one insignificant planet.

"I therefore believe in something greater than humanity..."
Why does lack of knowledge necessitate the existence of a higher life form or force? If that force does indeed exist, would that not then mean that there'd have to be another still-higher force beyond it? Is it turtles all the way up?

A cat doesn't understand how a lithium ion battery works, or why it always is stuck on the ground and is unable to fly. That doesn't mean it's a god responsible for things that are beyond its ability to understand. It just means that its brain is not capable of holding and processing those ideas, nothing more.

We may differ in that we could potentially build machines which can also process, store, and analyze information. It may come to pass that we manage to build a machine that is capable of being more intelligent that we are, and maybe it will be able to understand things we don't understand. It's still not a god either, it's just more intelligent and capable than a human.

 

[ThinClient]

Of course it's true. I have my personal experience to support my claim. My God gives me the strength to deny all who seek to dissuade me.

Personal experience is insufficient for rational evidence.

By your own logic, the Son of Sam was telling the truth about a dog speaking English to him to convince him to kill people.

By your own logic, the Beatles music really does contain messages specifically for Charles Manson that convinced him to kill Sharon Tate and that the race riots are coming.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

Personal experience is insufficient for rational evidence. We've already agreed the belief in God is outside the realm of scientific knowledge multiple times

By your own logic, the Son of Sam was telling the truth about a dog speaking English to him to convince him to kill people.
No, my beliefs can lead to enlightenment and harm no one,
By your own logic, the Beatles music really does contain messages specifically for Charles Manson that convinced him to kill Sharon Tate and that the race riots are coming.

No, once again, my beliefs can lead to enlightenment and harm no one. Do you think the short list of benefits I previously listed might be worth a leap of faith or, have you never experienced a need for strength, hope, courage or, direction? If not, perhaps your experience is lacking as, only through adversity can true character be known.

 

[ThinClient]

No, once again, my beliefs can lead to enlightenment and harm no one. Do you think the short list of benefits I previously listed might be worth a leap of faith or, have you never experienced a need for strength, hope, courage or, direction? If not, perhaps your experience is lacking as, only through adversity can true character be known.

It's not what you think that I'm questioning. It's how you reached your conclusion that I challenge.

If you fix your flawed method of thinking, the bogus conclusions will take care of themselves.

You're claiming that your own personal experience that is not falsifiable or even measurable is valid, rational evidence for establishing the validity of the supernatural.

By that logic, the Son of Sam and Charles Manson were telling the truth and you cannot argue otherwise without undermining your own bullshit argument.

 

[MagnusTheBrewer]

It's not what you think that I'm questioning. It's how you reached your conclusion that I challenge.

If you fix your flawed method of thinking, the bogus conclusions will take care of themselves.

You're claiming that your own personal experience is valid, rational evidence for establishing the validity of the supernatural.

By that logic, the Son of Sam and Charles Manson were telling the truth and you cannot argue otherwise without undermining your own bullshit argument.

Of course I can, as already stated multiple times, my beliefs harm no one which can not be stated about the examples you mentioned. Logic is a set of rules which infer nothing about the validity of facts they operate on. Logic is a tool which can neither create new knowledge nor, provide greater understanding of the facts in question. You choose to inhabit the realm of two dimensional facts while I seek to describe the dimension of God. Is it really any surprise you lack the references, language or, understanding to comprehend? Take a leap of faith, the rewards are boundless.

 

[ThinClient]

Of course I can, as already stated multiple times, my beliefs harm no one which can not be stated about the examples you mentioned. Logic is a set of rules which infer nothing about the validity of facts they operate on. Logic is a tool which can neither create new knowledge nor, provide greater understanding of the facts in question. You choose to inhabit the realm of two dimensional facts while I seek to describe the dimension of God. Is it really any surprise you lack the references, language or, understanding to comprehend? Take a leap of faith, the rewards are boundless.

It doesn't matter whether your belief harms anyone or not.

You can't both defend your own belief and attack the SoS or CM claims because they're both based on the same bullshit foundation that personal experience is a valid and rational form of evidence upon which to form a conclusion.

I don't lack anything. I used to be a pastor before many caring individuals helped me break out of the mind-forged manacle that is religion and spirituality.

Now, you can pretend to know me all you want. You can project whatever kind of flaw you want onto me if it helps you continue to rationalize why I reject your methodology. That doesn't make it true, but you're more than welcome to do it if it helps you sleep at night.

 

[db]

To whomever feels this: Making it your job to convert people is another marketing tactic of organized religion. And it makes you so arrogant and offensive. Please STFU b/c nobody wants to hear you.

If you are happy, fine. Live your life, leave the rest of us alone. But if you feel the need to pass laws designed to punish non-adherents or to establish a religious-based government and laws based on the Old Testemont, please f*ck off -- you are an extremist, an American version of Al-Qaeda/Taliban. That's right: no difference between extremist right Christianity and those extremist religious assholes in the Middle East who are punishing and killing people in the name of religion, thinking they are God's proxy. They, and you, are not God's proxy.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Teaching others, especially children, that it's okay to believe in bullshit is incredibly dangerous.

It's belief TC, you missed the do no harm to others.

Thank you for the mini review of 7 days to die. Been having fun with it.