Proof That the Bible Isn't the Word of God

[ronedee]

Demonstrate him first, please. Don't just assume. Because from my perspective, I have nobody to be thankful to.

There is no assuming on my part. MY THINKING HAS NO BOUNDS. Because God is boundless!

Your small-minded thinking assumes there is no greater purpose to life than ones own existance and gratification thereof. And ironically you think [a] God would create boundaries in your short, selfish life.

CONTINGENCY

1. Nothing that once did not exist can be the cause of its own existence. When it did not exist, how could it call itself into being? Thus, all contingent things depend upon something outside themselves for their existence. If any contingent thing exists in the world rather than nothing, then a necessary being must also exist.

ORDER

2. Why does the human day-dream of mathematics fit the world hand in glove -- just as if God were a mathematician? Mathematics works, not from observation, but from the opposite direction, from deduction. Its objects are not even objects in the world; no material thing is the triangle of the geometricians, only a feeble caricature thereof. Yet in the end mathematics is found an apt model of the universe. How could that be, unless the mind that made the world thinks along the same lines? Likewise, the world obeys law, just as if it trembled in fear of judgment. Law implies a law-giver...

If natural constants were set slightly off their present values, life would not be possible. The universe is a vast machine for producing life; life is good, yet the universe, being unthinking, cannot know that life is good. Thus it works to achieve an end of which it can have no cognizance. Some mind, capable of apprehending the good, must therefore have moved it so.

DESIGN

3. "Should a man see a house carefully constructed with a gateway, colonnades, men's quarters, women's quarters, and the other buildings, he will get an idea of the artificier, for he will be of opinion that the house never reached that completeness without the skill of the craftsman; and in like manner in the case of a city and a ship and every smaller or greater construction. Just so anyone entering this world, as it were some vast house or city, and beholding the sky circling round and embracing within it all things, and planets and fixed stars without any variation moving in rhythmical harmony and with advantage to the whole, and earth with the central space assigned to it, water and air flowing in set order as its boundary, and over and above these, living creatures, mortal and immortal beings, plants and fruits in great variety, he will surely argue that these have not been wrought without consummate art, but that the Maker of this whole universe was and is God. Those, who thus base their reasoning on what is before their eyes, apprehend God by means of a shadow cast, discerning the Artificier by means of His works." (Philo Judaeus, Allegorical Interpretation, III, XXXII, 98-102)... [

This is great! Atheists can appreciate an artist who builds a model wooden ship in a bottle! But the Grand Canyon? The Earth and its Wonders? The Universe and its Vastness? "No artist there xtian...it just willed itself into existance! The Poof there it was theory!!" And Chirstians are the supposed idiots?!

Is it begging the question to define 'God' prior to investigating His existence...or lack thereof? It's never been so held with other non-existent things, like phlogiston or the luminferous aether. How can one investigate whether a thing exists in the world, without knowing what the thing sought is? How to differentiate it from whatever other things might be brought in by our drag-net, so as to say, 'No, that's not it'?

When physicists go looking in the world for 'dark matter' or 'black holes', they must first define what they understand these looked-for things to be. How else to know what is looked for? Definitions of words need not be understood so as to imply existence; for instance, 'A griffin' is an animal represented in ancient art with the fore part of an eagle and the hinder parts of a lion. Anyone who knows what a griffin is, out for a stroll spotting one, could instantaneously say, 'that's a griffin!' -- its definition is every bit as solid and clear as a rufous-headed towhee. Yet no one expects to see one.

So when the physicists define 'dark matter' without having yet found it, their definition should not be understood to imply, 'Dark matter exists, and has the following characteristics'; but rather, 'If dark matter exists, it has the following distinct characteristics.' How else could one know what to look for, or whether it had been found? Likewise we understand that, if God exists, He is omniscient, omnipotent, exists necessarily, is omnipresent, etc.; it's not begging the question to find out what you're looking for, before going out in the world to see whether it's there!

....oh! You can at least be "thankful" to a soldier for the freedom to argue any and all points with fellow Americans!