Remember when "atheist" had a negative connotation?

thejeff wrote:

Of course.

lol, I am waiting for you to use my words against me :-) Go ahead, I am ready :-)

(but, I will have to check back later... back to work for me :-) ttys)

Then you agree that there's no basis for crediting this thing or that thing to divine intervention.

thejeff wrote:

Phil Collins wrote:

How would you be sure? You've never met Him or had Him speak to you.

No, I would actually not do that. That's crazy.

How would I be sure? If there were ANY doubt, then I certainly wouldn't act. We aren't talking about a voice in my head. We aren't talking about a dream. We are talking about God PHYSICALLY REVEALING HIMSELF to you, in a radiance and splendor that you couldn't bear to look at it, that would bring you to your knees and confess every sinful thought you had ever had, in a way that would make you realize how incredible He is and how relatively insignificant we are. You would know, my friend :-)

If you can't bear to look how the heck could you see? You make no sense. AT ALL.

I already know how insignificant we are. That's an Atheist tenet.

thejeff wrote:

How would I be sure? If there were ANY doubt, then I certainly wouldn't act. We aren't talking about a voice in my head. We aren't talking about a dream. We are talking about God PHYSICALLY REVEALING HIMSELF to you, in a radiance and splendor that you couldn't bear to look at it, that would bring you to your knees and confess every sinful thought you had ever had, in a way that would make you realize how incredible He is and how relatively insignificant we are. You would know, my friend :-)

All possible to happen within your mind and you feel that it really is happening when it's completely in your mind. The way Paul describes his vision on the way to Damascus has many of the hallmarks of a seizure. But they didn't know anything about seizures in the 1st century so Paul thought it was a divine intervention.

jeff, I thought we'd already covered the friend and brother thing?

thejeff wrote:

Phil Collins wrote:

How would you be sure? You've never met Him or had Him speak to you.

No, I would actually not do that. That's crazy.

How would I be sure? If there were ANY doubt, then I certainly wouldn't act. We aren't talking about a voice in my head. We aren't talking about a dream. We are talking about God PHYSICALLY REVEALING HIMSELF to you, in a radiance and splendor that you couldn't bear to look at it, that would bring you to your knees and confess every sinful thought you had ever had, in a way that would make you realize how incredible He is and how relatively insignificant we are. You would know, my friend :-)

How did so many people back in the day manage to not believe despite Him showing up on numerous occasions?

How did Satan manage?

I don't think anyone back in the day believed. If you got in a time machine and went back to the first century and asked, "Where is Jesus? I'd like to meet him." I think they would laugh in your face. These stories were just that-stories. Everyone knew that. They were obvious parables and fairy stories. They were just like the stories of the Greek gods. Read the Iliad sometime. It's the same dialogue. In the 4th century, these stories were cherry picked by men to form the Bible. Yes, the Bible is disgusting if taken literally but it does open a window into the culture of the time. For instance, if you study it you can learn why they made up the stories that they did. Most were for political reasons, not too different from the way Fox News makes up stories today.

Phil Collins wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Yes. That being said, I would make darn skippy sure I was clear that it was God. (Don't let that freak you out; there is no need for you to call DHR on me...If God showed Himself to you in all of His glory, so would you. Make sure you understand what you are asking!)

Yes, I believe that it happened to Abraham.

How would you be sure? You've never met Him or had Him speak to you.

No, I would actually not do that. That's crazy.

Why is it crazy? It is certainly within the realm of possibility that God *could* ask you to sacrifice your son. He did ask Abraham to, after all. Perhaps you could use that as a defense in court.

I know you are going to say that Abraham didn't have to *actually* go through with it. But: it doesn't seem manipulative to you at all that God would do put Abraham (and Isaac) through this anguish to test their loyalty? It seems like a twisted ploy to me.

Agreed on a lot of that. With human nature being universal, I don't understand why anyone would suppose that religion couldn't be used to further political agendas 2,000 years ago just like it is today. Those in power have always used to priestly class and its threats to keep people in line.

The power has shifted today, and the state is the new priestly class. If you want to know who really has the power, just look at a)who gets exemptions from the moral code, and b)who you aren't allowed to criticize in society.

thejeff wrote:

Let me reiterate: if God revealed Himself to you in all of His glory, you would do exactly what He asked, too :-)

Except that the entire concept of original sin is that god revealed himself to Adam and Adam did exactly what god told him not to do.

thejeff wrote:

Phil Collins wrote:

Jeff, if God told you to sacrifice your son would you? Do you believe that happened to Abraham?

Yes or no please.

Yes. That being said, I would make darn skippy sure I was clear that it was God. (Don't let that freak you out; there is no need for you to call DHR on me...

This happens all the time. The mentally ill murder their families every day because they were darn skippy sure that it was God telling them to.

Sloetry in Motion wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Let me reiterate: if God revealed Himself to you in all of His glory, you would do exactly what He asked, too :-)

Except that the entire concept of original sin is that god revealed himself to Adam and Adam did exactly what god told him not to do.

An interesting twist in the original sin story is that the serpent told Eve the truth whereas God lied to them. The serpent said they would not die from eating of the fruit, but God said they would. Why is God keeping knowledge from humans anyway? Seems a little manipulative and controlling to me.

Jeff Wigand wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Of course.

lol, I am waiting for you to use my words against me :-) Go ahead, I am ready :-)

(but, I will have to check back later... back to work for me :-) ttys)

Then you agree that there's no basis for crediting this thing or that thing to divine intervention.

I will tell you a story someone told me:

A hurricane is coming. The police come in a car and tell a man to evacuate. The man says, "nope, God is gonna save me."

Rain starts; flooding starts. Police come in a boat to get the man out. The mans says, "nope, God is gonna save me."

It starts getting really bad. Police come in a helicopter to get the man out. The mans says, "nope, God is gonna save me."

The house washes away and the man drowns.

The man goes to heaven and meets God. The man says, "God, I had faith in you! Why did you let me die?"

God says, "Well, I send you a police car, a boat, and a helicopter..."

Kind of a fun story, but my point is that "divine intervention" can take a lot of forms :-) So, to say that disease can be cured my natural means is not to say that there is "no basis" for giving God credit for observable actions.

Isaac WTF Dad? wrote:

thejeff wrote:

We have read the story together many times. And, I don't mind my sons being mentioned in a hypothetical sense, but let's leave family members out of this in a realistic sense :-)

So you wouldn't really. That's better.

You misunderstand me.

I would. But please don't tell me to go and tell my son something :-)

If he claimed to have been taught by another human, that is one thing. If he HONESTLY believed that he had a vision from God, there probably wouldn't be a whole lot you could do.

As a point of comparison, the apostles were tortured and claimed that they actually witnessed Christ's return from death. Not that they were taught by another human, but that they witnessed it themselves. This obviously doesn't rule out a hallucination (although, I am not aware that people ever have the SAME hallucination, lol), but it DOES seem to rule out that they were consciously LYING. I suppose if we tortured ABalB, we might find out at least if he honestly believed he had a vision from God or if he made it up, but it would take a lot of psychological exams (I imagine; I am WAY out of my expertise here) to find out if he was prone to schizophrenia or something...

Flagpole is a brother wrote:

jeff, I thought we'd already covered the friend and brother thing?

1. I never agreed with your sentiment,

2. I didn't use either word in the post you replied to, so I am not sure why you bring it up now?

So, your stance is that Jesus historically did not even actually exist?

This "story" has always baffled me.

How did God send the police car, boat, and helicopter? Did God get inside the brain of the police officers and direct him to this guy's house? Seems like the police officers wouldn't have free will in that case. Or is God saying that because the police car, boat, and helicopter are part of his creation that, in a very broad sense, he sent them?

I know it's a little story for kids to show that "God works on mysterious ways" but when you sit and think about it, it's just as bollocks as everything else in the bible.

Excellent questions in what sense? You actually evaded them. Again, fascinating that you would.

And of all the candidates for serious doubt among the bible's claims, you would choose Jesus' parables? Not one doubter on this thread, or in general, would have a problem with the suggestion that Jesus wasn't referring to real events in his teachings. But the Flood and Genesis? That you actually need to believe these to be literally true in order to sustain your faith in the god of the bible is astounding. That you can so willingly suspend your critical faculties (god given?) in order to sustain your faith suggests to me that there is part of you that knows it (your faith) is a kind of self-help, pop-psychology trick, like the "power of positive thinking". It (your faith) doesn't appear to actually challenge you all that much to have it. It all seems a bit like plugging one's ears and humming in the face of unpleasant news. I would expect an intelligent believer to be a little more tortured than you seem to be, because he/she would have to find a way to believe without facility of the bible's 100% historical/factual accuracy. Your faith comes across as a creepily Ned Flanders-esque (creepy because you can say things like "skippy sure" while claiming to contemplate sacrificing your son to demonstrate your faith, and because you can describe the horrors of slavery, genocide, Ebola, etc, as glibly as you do-- as god's children's "scraped knees" and whatnot). I find this kind of mindset just as chilling at that of the any other fundamentalism, and I understand why it is so apparently easy to deploy it in the worst ways.