Posted on 10/31/2010 11:59:22 AM PDT by RnMomof7
In Christ Alone lyrics
Songwriters: Getty, Julian Keith; Townend, Stuart Richard;
In Christ alone my hope is found He is my light, my strength, my song This Cornerstone, this solid ground Firm through the fiercest drought and storm
What heights of love, what depths of peace When fears are stilled, when strivings cease My Comforter, my All in All Here in the love of Christ I stand
In Christ alone, who took on flesh Fullness of God in helpless Babe This gift of love and righteousness Scorned by the ones He came to save
?Til on that cross as Jesus died The wrath of God was satisfied For every sin on Him was laid Here in the death of Christ I live, I live
There in the ground His body lay Light of the world by darkness slain Then bursting forth in glorious Day Up from the grave He rose again
And as He stands in victory Sin?s curse has lost its grip on me For I am His and He is mine Bought with the precious blood of Christ
It could be named, in your honor,"The kosta50 Stove Top Proof for the Existence of God".
You wrote:
Unlike those who claim "spiritual knowledge," I can show you how I know and if you have any doubts you can try it yourself. Such as "don't touch the hot stove top, but if you don't believe me, go ahead!"
As per Hume and the Problem of Induction, you cannot show how you know because you are relying here on the inductive principle, i.e., the assumptions that the past predicts the future. i.e., our past experience with hot stove tops, and two, the belief that nature is uniform - that the future is like the past. But induction is not made by reason. It relies on premises, on which there is no logical basis for affirming on the basis of past experiences that even probability is true of the natural order. The principle of induction is thus left without a foundation and is philosophically arbitrary. The bottom line is that reasoning itself rests upon the presupposition of faith and collapses arbitrary without it.
You stated earlier that
.. it's valid criticism. rejecting claims that cannot be backed with evidence is rational and justifiable.and
Our proofs must be compatible with our nature. We can't presume something exists unless we have evidence of it that is not only in our heads, but clearly demonstrable directly or indirectly.
Your reliance on the inductive principle violates your own standard of evidence and rational justification here because, again, "Induction as a method cannot be justified using induction, nor deduction, or therefore at all by pure reason".
However, the uniformity of nature is perfectly compatible with Christian theism because in the Christian worldview the Sovereign Creator God has revealed to us in Scripture that we can count on regularities in the created world, and because of this God-governed regularity in creation, the scientific enterprise is possible and even fruitful.
Now if the Christian worldview is compared with the atheist world view, which one comports with the inductive principle and thus provides the preconditions for science, language, learning, and any intelligible human experience? It is certainly not atheism. Atheism's view of reality cannot provide a coherent reason for what all your reasoning takes for granted. Consequently, it is reasonable to believe in God and entirely unreasonable not believe in God, for God's existence is the precondition of all reasoning whatsoever.
Cordially,
You don't know that. Refuted here
Cordially,
Just an FYI about the turkey. It was a HIT! It was very moist and juicy and very flavorful. The drippings also made a terrific gravy. Yep, brining is the way to go!
And thereby we can learn from experience not to touch a hot stove and even what a hot stove is.
It is those things that run contrary to that regularity that we term “miracles” and that we cannot count on from past experience.
My statement in post# 3181 "But God can, so he is entitled, no, obligated to hate that which is wrong/evil. Don't you see that is all I'm trying to say here? Scripture says God says he hates certain behaviors. I do not think it is wrong for him to and I do not think it compromises his eternal nature of goodness, holiness, justice and purity. God says he loves certain things us especially, thank God, but also certain behaviors. Because he loves those behaviors it is logical that he would abhor or hate their converse."
When I used the word "obligated" is was simply to convey the idea that God, who alone is perfectly holy and righteous, is the only one who can validly, perfectly and justly reject and hate that which is against his will. He is both entitled to do that and under his own declared nature is obligated (bound legally and morally) to do it. He does not, cannot and will not ignore sin.
The opposite of love is NOT hate, it is indifference, and our creator is not indifferent.
Well,... since it is Thanksgiving Day I will praise him for our families he gives us to see us thru the difficult times of life....that we might gather together on this day, and the abundance of food he blesses us with... and the means to harvest it.. not only for our nation but that we might share with other nations....For the men and woman in arms way who keep us free...and those who have fought for this since our founding. For our standard of living which continues to be above all other nations.
The list of His many provisions while we pass thru this world is truly beyond measure....overflowing says it well.
People believe what they want to believe because it makes them comfortable. That's what faith is all about—a self-derived comfort from a conviction that something is true, like saying "I am saved," or "he is in a better place now," etc. You can't prove it false and you can't prove it true, even if it seems fantastic. You can either accept it or reject as a matter of faith, but never as a matter of fact.
Certainly, you can believe what you want and many people believe things based on feelings. I believe because the evidence points in that direction.
Can you think of any rational reason why disciples who claim to have seen the Risen Jesus happily go to their death with this testimony? Mass dilusion? Fame and fortune? Book rights?
I would have to have much more faith to be an atheist.
LOL, please, I see enough comedy on a daily basis.
As per Hume and the Problem of Induction you cannot show how you know
I can show you how I came to know and how the world, with an occasional exception (for reasons that are perfectly natural), comes to know the same thing.
If you put your hand on a red-hot stove top you will feel excruciating pain—unless there is something terribly wrong with your nervous system, and there is no trickery involved, because we are all "wired" the same way. It's not a "guess', "belief", "hope", "revelation", etc., it's a fact.
the assumptions that the past predicts the future
That is only half the story. The principle is based on probabilities, not certainties and that reflects the real world. If you develop dementia, you may forget that hot stove tops are hot, otherwise all things being equal with you mentally you won't. Now, what is a chance of developing dementia, that is also a probability which increases with predisposing factors.
There is no magic in this world. So far, nothing supernatural has ever been discovered.
The bottom line is that reasoning itself rests upon the presupposition of faith and collapses arbitrary without it.
There is a difference between confidence based on evidence and blind faith. Faith that is not based on verifiable, repeatable evidence is based on hope and nothing more. It's a shot in the dark.
Your reliance on the inductive principle violates your own standard of evidence and rational justification here because...
Don't get too hung up on Wikipedia as your source of wisdom, but try to think for yourself. You are telling me that my proposition to touch the hot stove top is bound to fail because it "violates" some philosophical principle? Get real. LOL.
However, the uniformity of nature is perfectly compatible with Christian theism because in the Christian worldview the Sovereign Creator God has revealed to us in Scripture...
Is that a "fact"? Actually it is, by design! Not a divine design, but human design. The world fits the Christian story, like all religions do, because the story was built to fit the world.
It's a remarkable feat of mental retro engineering that doesn't reflect anything actually encountered in nature. It is a 20/20 retrovision, something like the Book of Daniel, the very last Old Testament book written (2nd century BC), "predicting" events as if the author lived 400 years earlier.
The ancient Egyptians would have told you that their religion also fits the world perfectly, provided you a priori accept their their imaginative axiomatic beliefs.
The ancient Greeks had a remarkable story that "explains" how the world came about and everything else, love, life, and even afterlife.
Religion offers a hopeful model that has no backing in fact. Unlike science, which offers a working model without a promise. It's easy to see why people gravitate towards the former.
But that doesn't make any religion true, just more desirable (you know, for "what's in it for me" reasons). But if you remove all the "feel good" packaging (blissful afterlife, for example), religion loses it's appeal.
You don't know that. Refuted here
No it is not. You need to diversify your reading sources.
According to Boatbumbs University Lexicon of Antonyms/s
According to every other dictionary of antonyms it is!
Myth. There is not a single documented martyrdom account of any of the disciples. But you accept the story as a matter of fact, or so it seems form your question.
That's easy to understand: to them everything that happens is God pulling the strings. Be it tsunamis, earthquakes, the Holocaust, you name it, it's all in "God's plan" and for "God's glory" and it's all God's doing. That is about as Muslim of a mindset as it gets! But, it's much easier to deal with theodicy this way then as a loving God "struggling" with evil or for some strange reason "allowing" evil.
Words really do have meaning, bb, so, well, where to start?
"...the only one who can validly, perfectly and justly reject and hate that which is against his will."
I can validly, perfectly and justly reject and hate what is against my will also, bb.
"He is both entitled to do that...."
Says who? Entitled by whom? I assume not us or any of the writers of scripture so is it God Himself who says that he is entitled? I say I am entitled to do the same thing. Does God give Himself permission to do things?
"...under his own declared nature is obligated (bound legally and morally) to do it."
God's "nature" obligates Him to do things? Can God change His nature, bb? Could He, for example, will that He cease to exist?
"... (bound legally and morally) to do it."
Legally bb? By what law, the Western philosophers' Natural Law, the Natural Law of the Church of Rome? Did God create this law or does it exist independent of God? If God created it, can He repeal it or ignore it at His pleasure? If it is independently existing, who or what enforces it against God and what is God's penalty for violation of this Law?
Morally, bb? Whose morality, some notion developed here in America and rising out of the "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" protestant mindset? Or did it develop out of Medieval perversions of Catholic theology which created sin and spiritual terror in order to increase the sale of indulgences out of the "Treasury of Merit"? If God doesn't comport Himself with that morality, does He sin? If so, what's is His penalty? Finally, if God created this morality, can He change it on a divine whim?
bb, like I said, words are important. The wrong words about God lead, ultimately, to heresy and spiritual self-destruction. Most people, the overwhelming majority of us (certainly including me; I am among the worst of sinners), to a greater or lesser extent, use the wrong words when we speak about God. There are people who get it right in this life, the Theotokos, +Mary of Egypt, +Gerasimos of the Jordan, +Symeon the New Theologian +Nektarios of Aegina, +Seraphim of Sarov, for example, but they are very rare. Some of the rest of us do almost the best we can to understand God through prayer and to conform our lives to Christ. We hope our merciful God will give us a pass on the ultimate fate we alone have created for and imposed upon ourselves.
None of this is easy, bb. We live in a fallen world and all Creation, of which we were meant to be the crown jewel, groans under the weight of the sins of mankind. But the Incarnation given to us by God who loves His Creation, has given us the opportunity to fulfill our created destiny and come to a better understanding of Him and our place within the Created Order. We Orthodox know where this comes from, even if we can't say much about Him except that He loves us. As we chant at the end of the Divine Liturgy:
"We have seen the true light, we have received the heavenly Spirit, we have found the true faith worshipping the undivided Trinity Who has saved us."
Myth. There is not a single documented martyrdom account of any of the disciples. But you accept the story as a matter of fact, or so it seems form your question.
So, Peter, Paul, Stephen, John the Baptist and the Apostles were not martyred, like Jesus they faked their deaths and moved to argentina?
I am indebted to you for posting this. Thank you - you are far closer to I w.r.t. getting it right.
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