(August 11, 2010 at 11:03 pm)RAD Wrote: Yes, if Armageddon doesn't come first as a study of history or the Bible would indicate to be our default end.Personally, I'm reasonably certain that if there'll be an apocalypse, we'll damn well do it to ourselves. If the human race has to end, I'd either pick super-intelligent machines or gamma ray burst.
(August 11, 2010 at 11:03 pm)RAD Wrote: I get his point. I'm just pointing out (in a roundabout way) how silly it is to test God much like the Pharisees and the devil did with Jesus. Whether he works some sort of amazing miracle or not here won't matter to anyone when we all receive spiritual sight.I don't think asking the creator to make an appearance once every few millenia is too much to ask. Making a portrait of Jesus, Mary, and Elvis in tortillas and grilled cheese sammiches just isn't cutting it.
Right now, I'm reasonably certain that no "creator" has ever made an appearance.
(August 11, 2010 at 11:03 pm)RAD Wrote: Ask almost any atheist if s/he will belive in and follow Jesus if he came back and gave sight to 88% of blind people. They won't, because that's not the real problem they have. They would just demand he do something more, which is of course a good reason for him NOT to do more.That's not true and you know it. I think the one best thing that could ever happen to a particular church is for Jesus (preferably God or the whole trinity) to make an appearance, do a miracle that's been proof positive of being true (and tested as such) as had happened and doing a wink and nudge to the actual 'true' religion or even one that hasn't existed for millenia or even one that has never existed. You'll never see a greater flock of atheists to faith than if and when that event happens because the reason atheists are atheists is because things like that don't happen and have never happened in the past.
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools and next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the newspapers...
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
Ignorance and fanaticism are ever busy and need feeding. Always feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the public school teachers; tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and the lecturers, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, Your Honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages of the sixteenth centry when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind. ~Clarence Darrow, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, 1925
Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. ~Ronald Reagan
