Posted on 12/29/2011 1:01:09 PM PST by daletoons
Atheist militant Richard Dawkins has produced a children's book entitled "The Magic of Reality" and in doing so has joined the Millstone Swim and Dive Club. Spreading his venom for God to kids under the guise of Scientism is about as putrid as it gets. Children using simple God-given logic conclude the existence of a creator. It requires an abandonment of logic to attain self omniscience and declare there is no God. The materialist's faith in the escape hatch of "there just wasn't enough evidence for me" won't wash on judgement day. Here's a book idea: The ghost of Christopher Hitchens, Jacob Marley style, appears to Richard Dawkins and sets him straight. Dickey would probably make a hash of it, too bad Hitchens isn't still around to write it.
Great analysis of the situation.
Cheers!
Life, the birth of a child. The system of life on earth, It has order. All would be chaos if not for the creator that created order ... the seed is in the fruit, all produce after their own kind. Man messes with all this.
We have eyes to see, the heavens, day, night, the cycles of the moon, the sun, and the stars. There is good. There is evil. Man has ever allowed evil to tempt him and separate him from good.
The evil one captures those that fail to see, with false deceit, he has started many copy religions and influences man to believe he(man) is right to do whatever is right in his own eyes.
To those that truly seek to know truth and are wanting to not be deceived, ... there are thousands of books written about God. Some pro, some con.
Read the book that God inspired himself to be written and learn of the way he instructs, guides us to live, and it is the good life! The HOLY BIBLE. God will come and be with you there, if you want to know truth and know Him.
You believe the apostles because they’re in the Bible, and you believe the Bible because it tells you about the apostles. Circular. The fact that a handful of people claim their buddy was magic doesn’t mean he was.
The fact that a handful of people claim that everything was made out of nothing and 4.7 trillion years doesn't mean that it was.
I don't have enough faith to believe in evolution.
The odds of fulfillment of so many Old Testament prophecies and their ramifications in the life of one man at any point in historical time are the same statistically as if you filled the state of Texas two feet deep in golf balls... marked only one with a cross... stirred up the whole state.. and let a blindfolded child pick out the correct marked ball on the first selection.
The difference between "everything" and "God" is that I can see the "everything" all around me.
Of course, now some believer will chime in to say that they see God all around them. Then I'll say I don't see it. Then they'll say you have to believe in order to see it. Again, circular. They believe it because they see it and they see it because they believe it.
Going to your link, I remebered reding that thread, back then. I also noticed that I had forgotten a most astute observational quip you offered: “... just naked arrogance trying to use science as a fig leaf.” Seems to apply on this thread quite appropriately for one or two posters.
I can’t tell if your post is addressed to me or not, but the fact is, most of the prophecies do not fit Jesus. He wasn’t called Emmanuel, his parents were married, he didn’t come to set Israel free, and I doubt the born-in-Bethlehem story too. It reminds me of Obama’s born-in-Hawaii story: suspect.
Thanks Dale! Wonderful work as usual.
I’m putting this one on FB right away.
His forever... Jo
Some musings on this subject, courtesy of Gagdad Bob's Christmas Day blog article:
... the Creator is a person. Thus, he has principles. But unlike leftists, his principles are not just convenient fig leaves to obscure or lend legitimacy to a tawdry snakedown operation.I don't know why people have such a problem with miracles. That they happen at all only tells me that "miraculous" events occur as effects of a non-local cause that is not "in" the same spacetime frame as its effects.
Remember, although the Jesus is "Word made flesh," this does not mean that the eternal Word was nowhere to be heard in this vale of ears prior to the Incarnation. Rather, we would say (with Augustine) that the Word and Wisdom of the Christic principle were (and are) always here, and couldn't not be here; again, where there is Truth there is God, and vice versa....
We would go so lo as to see that the affirmation of anything is the affirmation of God, and therefore the negation of "nothing" (nothing being the absurd affirmation of a blind nihilism that can affirm nothing at all, not even itself). Otherwise there is no firm ground for any of your flimsy affirmations.
If, as Eckhart suggests, God ex-ists (for us) because he under-stands, it means that the poor toolish trolls who don't understand these truths don't even properly exist. Or, alternatively, they only exist. And existence without Truth is.... well, first of all it's an absurdity, but more to the point, it is hell. Which is why they refuse to put us out of their misery. The bad word must be shared, for it is lonely at the bottom.
Had our friend a_perfect_lady not read the Holy Scriptures as "flatly" and "literally" as possible — as if it were some kind of instruction manual or "user guide" — perhaps she could have sensed that there, she was dealing, not with "information," but with divinely revealed Truth about the divinely created Great Hierarchy of Being — God–Man–World–Society — of which she, like all of us humans, is firmly a part and participant....
Happy New Year!!!
Because the supernatural elements are what believers hold up as proof of the truth of their beliefs. "It's true, the magic proves it." And if someone points out that the magic is usually a lie, they say "It can't be, my religious text assures me it's true."
Again, in the end, it's all circular: You believe because you see, you see because you believe. The miracles prove the magic, the magic explains the miracles. The Bible is true because of what is in it, what is in it is true because it's the Bible. God speaks to you if you believe in Him, you believe in him because he speaks to you. Circles. It's circles all the way down.
He wasn’t called Emmanuel,
by whom?
his parents were married,
So what? Is this a prophecy?
he didn’t come to set Israel free,
Jesus Himself thought differently: see Luke 4:21 and Matthew 23:37.
and I doubt the born-in-Bethlehem story too.
Why do you have any credibility whatsoever? You live thousands of miles away, thousands of years later, in an entirely different culture, and speak a vastly different language.
So -- if you yourself take your own earlier arguments against the historicity of the Gospel accounts seriously -- because the authors were too far removed -- they you have even LESS credibility as a judge of these same accounts, for you are even more removed.
You're not doing very well with fifth-hand pseudo-skeptical snarky pablum, dear.
It reminds me of Obama’s born-in-Hawaii story: suspect.
*gasp*
I'm reporting you to ATTACKWATCH!!!
Cheers!
To be consistent in you worldview, then you must of necessity reject most of what you read and believe since I’d hazard a guess that the vast majority of what you know is not a result of your direct observation and experimentation. To do otherwise would be to be intellectually dishonest.
Any historical accounts of anything are then by default suspect, as is any information you’ve read in scientific journals. There’s simply know way to verify that they’re telling you the truth either, any more than the recorded events in Scripture.
As far as cosmology, if you apply the same standards of skepticism to the prevailing scientific theory as you do to religion, then you must also reject the concepts of singularity and (for lack of a better term) the Big Bang theory.
I mean really, in the beginning there was something somewhere but since there was no time or space it couldn’t have been anywhere. So this massive blob of substance called singularity was just hanging around somewhere, or rather no where because there wasn’t any somewhere for it to be yet, for an indefinite period of time, which no one could measure because there was no time yet. And there is was containing all the mass of the entire known universe, the mother of all black holes.
Now we know that black holes have such a strong gravitational force that is sucks everything in around it, light included and that’s just from one massive star.
So scientists are telling us with a straight face that the entire matter of the known universe was just hanging out which had to have a far more massive gravitational pull than any black hole and for some unknown reason, just decided one day to let go and expand.
And, pray tell, what was the impetus to initiate the expansion against the incredible gravitational attraction that this singularity had on itself?
So this singularity expanded in a trillion trillionth of a second to the size of all know space and set up its own laws by which to govern itself.
And atheists think the creation account of the Bible is unrealistic?
What are these scientists smoking that they think this is a plausible scenario for the formation of the universe? Or a better explanation than that God created it?
It falls out of the math, but in such a way that:
1) Direct experimental evidence (with controls and all, natch) is hard to come by
2) Most of the classical framework in which lay people ask questions is "meaningless" -- by analogy to some problems in translating from other languages to English.
What is *really* interesting is the recent experiment claiming to show FTL travel by neutrinos: since the neutrinos themselves were originally posited as a way to avoid violation of conservation laws.
Complimentarity principle to the rescue!
Cheers!
It’s pretty easy to understand that the ‘what created God’ argument is irrelevant if there are more than 4 dimensions to reality. The implied constraint of God ‘requiring’ a creator only applies if the god they imagine is limited to 4-dimensional space-time.
Of course, the whole notion of a super-natural being necessarily requires more than a 4-dimensional reality. So people who use that ‘argument’ have actually rejected the implication of more than 4 dimensions ‘a priori’ and then argue within a definition of reality that they have defined to be true under their own ‘a priori’ assumption.
This is no different logically from the believer who accepts the implication and the ‘superiority’ of the unbeliever’s ‘argument’ is illusory.
Bwahahahahahahaha ... you are on a roll, Sir!
Unlike Christianity, where Jesus told his followers that he would return in their lifetime. He didn't... but you'd better keep believing. You'd just better, boy... oh boy oh boy you better keep that faith, baby, or you're gonna burn.
You don't really get scientists saying that. (Well, the global warmers tried it, but I don't think they're going to be able to carry it off much longer.)
BTW, you *do* know the semantic difference between "belief" and "knowledge" don't you?
Because you sure don't act like it.
Cheers!
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