RE: Christians. Could you be wrong?
September 16, 2014 at 3:57 pm
(This post was last modified: September 16, 2014 at 4:04 pm by FatAndFaithless.)
(September 16, 2014 at 3:54 pm)C4RM5 Wrote:(September 16, 2014 at 3:52 pm)FatAndFaithless Wrote: That is the defintion of a condition. Salvation is not unconditional if I have to do something to warrant it first.
If salvation were unconditional, there would no such thing as Hell, and everyone would go to Heaven if if they were atheist, muslim, zoroastrian, or christian.
All you have to do is say you want forgiveness. If you didn't have to do this forgiveness would be forced on tnose who don't want it.
Do you understand what unconditional means? Saying that I have to do something in order to achieve salvation is conditional.
(September 16, 2014 at 3:56 pm)Huggy74 Wrote:(September 16, 2014 at 3:07 pm)FatAndFaithless Wrote: Well, first off, linking dictionary definitions isn't worth shit here, different dictionaries have different definitions and words can have different definitions in different circumstances. So, ignoring that part of your post...
I'm not certain. I literally said it's unkown. Could it be a miracle? I dunno, but seeing as we don't know how the mechanism does work, it would be intellectually dishonest to say you know how it works and that it's a miracle.
Also, if your definition of a miracle is just 'that which can't be explained by science', then every phenomena in history would've been considered a miracle up until the point that science could explain it. Gravity? Miraculous, until Newton described and understood it. Lightning? Well, couldn't be explained by science for a looong time, was it a miracle until then? Science has a centuries-long resume of pushing the definition of 'miracle' back and back into smaller and smaller realms, as we gain more and more understanding about the world and how it works. You're clinging to one of the last areas that science hasn't been able to penetrate and define, and calling it miracle with about as much justification as the Greek pointing to a lightning bolt and calling it Zeus.
You're saying "since I can't see a scientific explanation for it, therefore miracle". That is the crystallization of the argument from ignorance, and it's one of theism's most prevalent fallacies.
Those definitions were from dictionary.com.
It's very simple, if something cannot be explained by natural laws, then it falls under the definition of supernatural.
I believe ancient peoples knew the concept of naturally occurring phenomena the Bible, for instance, never describes lightning as being supernatural, and the torah (first five books of the bible) is far older than the ancient Greek civilization. I don't believe anyone could explain how fire worked, but it wasn't considered miraculous either. Take the burning bush for example, the supernatural part was not the fire, it was the fire not burning the bush.
I don't care what the Torah calls a miracle and what it doesn't. I'm highlighting the fact that ancient societies from all stripes called just about anything unknown as a 'miracle'. Once science came to understand those phenomena, they stopped being miraculous. There's no reason to jump the shark and apply the miracle label to anything now, seeing how many times that's been proven foolish and inaccurate.
And don't bother trying to pull miracles from the Bible as if they have any merit at all in any way. They're all either demonstrably untrue or unable to be verified at best.
Oh and one last thing, the Torah is not older than ancient Greece. If anything, early ancient Greece is about 200 years older than the Torah. Get your shit straight.
In every country and every age, the priest had been hostile to Liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
- Thomas Jefferson