Posted on 11/24/2008 12:56:31 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
If some Sunday-School teacher had invented "pedagogical fairy tales" to chide and guide her kiddies, she would not have invented anything so quirky and strange as a draconian king who would let none buy nor sell on all the earth unless they had his number inscribed on their and and forehead, nor a nameless "I AM" who cares to set the Pharaonic slave-class free.
She would be more likely, I think, spin tales of dragons who are innocent but different, and need only to be understood; and an evolving Little Eukaryote that Could.
Damn typsos...
If you believe that is an opinion, you don't understand the idea of faith.
If one were operating purely on rational thinking, one couldn't believe in a God for which the only evidence IS faith.
The whole point of faith is belief in something for which you have no empirical evidence--if you had PROOF that God existed, you wouldn't NEED faith. What is the value of faith if there is evidence?
You're talking about the makeup of the two belief systems, which isn't what we're talking about. I said I didn't see a difference between the partisans on both sides claiming they had The Truth and who thought they were in the right to try to convince others of The Truth.
Compared to the number of actual believers to the number of atheists, the believers are way, WAY ahead in the self-righteous department.
“Non-believers take philosophy very seriously, and are perfectly fine with concepts that they cannot empirically see and touch, they just don’t need an invisible authoritarian to make them exist.”
Philosophy...love...morality...good and evil.....
They may not need an invisible authoritarian to make these intangibles exist, but they better done some heavy ‘philosophising’ to have these come from nowhere too.
It is quite clear many of these individuals are very intelligent. But none of them can ‘explain away’ where the knowledge of good and evil came from.
Instead, they’d rather spend their lifetime playing chess with God - and he will play with you (except that life is not a game) - but your final move is your choice.
They would rather listen all day to their own human intelligence (self imposed gods) than to accept the more reasonable faith with a very comforting eternal promise.
Philosophy? What value is it - in the end? Read in Job where God answers Job - and be humbled......
Looking up at the brilliant pinpoints of light, sparkling in the high plains air, I thought of how they came to be.
Einstien's formula - E=Mc2 floated up from memory...
Knowing that the equation can be turned around to M=E/c2 I thought, "Yeah! All that MASS up there now shining down - it appeared after the tremendous energy burst of the Big Bang! The rest is history."
Almost back at the gate, confident that I'd figgered it out, an almost audible thought(?) came to me...
"Where did the ENERGY come from?"
At that time; I had no answer.
Here's my question; what exactly is virtuous about faith?
Why does the belief in something for which you have no evidence constitute a positive?
The book of Job is not humbling. In fact if I had to list 10 reasons why I'm no longer a believer, the book of Job would be up near the top of the list.
If the god of Job did exist, I would rebel against him and call for regime change. It is a sick, sick story.
Well, that's a matter of opinion.
Your comment in post 70 was I like the Old Testament better, at least when it comes to concept of hell, which is absent.
The concept of hell (punishment) is not absent from the OT. The OT may not contain the vivid descriptions that the NT does, but it's clearly mentioned.
Where is eternal damnation for the dead mentioned in the NT? Please cite an example.
Sheol does not represent eternal damnation and was a place for righteous and unrighteous alike, like Hades; it doesn't count.
Typo, meant OT.
It is a question that can never be answered by science - it is answered by faith. I may not be able to prove God's existence or the possibility of life after death, but Jesus Christ told us he exists, and life does continue on - all we have to do is believe in him.
If I choose to follow God's Commandments, live a good life and put my faith in him, then I have hope from his promises that I will live on past my physical end. If I choose not to believe, then death is the final stop for me, with no hope beyond that. Now which is the smarter choice?
Again - none of THESE....along with morality can exist for those who think they have to see or touch in order to believe in God.
They do exist, although they are chemical reactions in your brain rather than physical manifestations.
Those qualities are NOT chemical reactions in the brain. That's working on the assumption that the chemical reactions CAUSE the emotions or characteristics. It's more likely that those intangibles cause the chemical reactions.
Science cannot even begin to touch so much of human reality. It fails woefully.
Neither of those verses describe a place where you go when you die and face unending torture as punishment for your sins for all of eternity.
To quote Douglas Adams, "Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?" Why do love, joy, peace, and kindness have to have supernatural qualities?
When I look at a beautiful painting, its nothing but a collection of brush strokes on canvass. Moonlight Sonata is nothing but strings vibrating inside a piano, but its still beautiful. Emotions are nothing but chemical and electrical reactions in your brain, but that doesn't make them any less real or important.
We don't need an omnipotent interdimensional Big Brother ruling over us to make it real, at least I don't anyway.
Bookmark.
I agree KosmicKitty. The more I learn about the universe the more divine it becomes. And by “divine” I mean that literally.
Impeccable logic.
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