urge to pray - advice/help

[Epimethean]

"Without God to open your eyes to it, you will be unaware of any deception."

The fact that you say this explains just how deceived you are.

[Ziploc Surprise]

Brotherlylove wrote: Without God to open your eyes to it, you will be unaware of any deception.

My response: This is one of my favorite notions from my fundie days. It's an idea that makes the decieved abandon all methods of debunking something and all truth seeking and makes you soley reliant on god for everything. God unfortunatly is notoriously quiet in so many matters so of course the church steps in to tell you what god is telling you. Now you are reliant on a human who may or may not have your best intentions in mind. This is such a great way to keep people in their deluded state. Congratulations BL you know the routine well. I learned rather quickly not to trust other people's "god given" revelations about me or the people I knew.

Oh wait, you say. What about those times when god showed the truth without using any humans. Well some of those times you may believe that god showed you something but you still relied on other things or people to interpret a portion of what you believe was shown to you. As for the times when only god was speaking or revealing something, ask yourself how much of that can be chalked up to random chance or just you yourself figuring it out -an internal dialog with something or someone that seems like god but really is just you.

I know the way of belief because I lived it for 30 years. It seems real, very, very real. But if you could set your belief aside (which, I recognize might be too difficult for you, no offense) and look at the situation objectively would it stand up to scrutiny?

[genkaus]

Why would he come out portrayed, by all accounts, as a deceiver? If you deceive, that means you have something to hide. If Satan was more powerful than God, or if God didn't exist, Satan would have no reason to deceive or fabricate a Bible. He'd rule the earth with an iron fist, and we'd know about it, and we couldn't do anything about it. What's more, some people might actually view him as a good god and worship him--exactly what he desires.

I came in the middle of this. Do you, genkaus, believe Satan exists? If not, why explain to brotherlylove how he is deceived by Satan? You're basically saying no spirits exist, but if they did only Satan would exist and not God; that, if anyone exists, it is the one in the background of the Bible with no favorable evidence instead of the clearest one. That is the opposite of scientific. It sounds more like you're keeping your bases covered by saying, "If I'm not right, you're not right either."

Did you not read the disclaimer? All arguments here are made under the assumption that god and Satan are real. Any resemblance to my actual beliefs is non-existent.

---

You don't put a potential enemy in charge of your entire power base. The quote "Even you, Brutus?" reveals that Caeser was betrayed unknowingly. Again, you show your desperation; the quote itself is the quintessential illustration of betrayal by your closest friend (an unknown enemy).

You do know that the actual Caesar never said that? That was a part of dramatization by Shakespeare, as was his very close and personal friendship with Brutus. Caesar was a smart and politically savvy dictator, using offers of power and bribes to neutralize any potential enemies, while firmly keeping the people on his side. He did know that he had a lot of potential enemies in the senate, including Brutus, he just underestimated them. Consider the contrasting position of Mark Antony, a truly trusted and loyal friend, whom Caesar gave no great of power since he had no need to buy Antony's loyalty.

The problem here is that you don't actually have an argument because it is built on a false pretense:

And here is the false pretense; that Satan needed to reveal himself to act, which is patently false. Satan is a spirit, he doesn't need to reveal himself to act. He is freest to act when there is no revelation of his existence.

You are deluding yourself if you think that people won't be able to deduce his existence by his actions. People are very good at that - deducing the existence of things that aren't revealed directly. To act while keeping those actions hidden from people would severely limit his range. He would not be able to act in any obvious ways like bringing about global flood, showering cities with meteors or bringing back the dead. But by pretending half of his actions are his own and the other half god's he can act much more freely.

The definition of being deceived is not to know you are deceived.

Like you don't know that you were deceived by Satan into believing in Christianity.

Without God to open your eyes to it, you will be unaware of any deception.

God is not going to open your eyes for you. He gave you a rational mind for a reason - for you to figure stuff like this out for yourself. You have the tools necessary to figure out any deception. If you still can't, you are on your own.

[Undeceived]

But if you could set your belief aside (which, I recognize might be too difficult for you, no offense) and look at the situation objectively would it stand up to scrutiny?

This assumes that knowledge only comes from the hard sciences, which is a faulty definition of the word 'objective.' The real argument is about who gets to decide what we can know. Postmoderns and naturalists believe it can only be gained directly through the senses. But we know there are also personal ways to gain knowledge. Say you punch me in the face. Someone else might say "He is really angry." But suppose I hold out on interpreting your action. Suppose I look for a naturalistic reason for the motion of your hand. Maybe the moon was too close or there is some kind of wave we haven't discovered yet. Using this logic I would never get to the root of the matter--which is, that your motion was intelligently designed with the intent of harming me, maybe because of your dislike of people with a different view than yourself. So, too, should we consider an intelligent designer when a structure looks designed. Irreducibly complex setups like mousetraps have the same scientifically-observed mark of design as we see elsewhere in nature. You don't have to trust what other people tell you about God. Investigate it for yourself. If you don't try to feel God out he won't reveal himself. Naturalistic points of view rule out God automatically, and it's no wonder why people have trouble finding him.

[genkaus]

But if you could set your belief aside (which, I recognize might be too difficult for you, no offense) and look at the situation objectively would it stand up to scrutiny?

This assumes that knowledge only comes from the hard sciences, which is a faulty definition of the word 'objective.' The real argument is about who gets to decide what we can know. Postmoderns and naturalists believe it can only be gained directly through the senses. But we know there are also personal ways to gain knowledge. Say you punch me in the face. Someone else might say "He is really angry." But suppose I hold out on interpreting your action. Suppose I look for a naturalistic reason for the motion of your hand. Maybe the moon was too close or there is some kind of wave we haven't discovered yet. Using this logic I would never get to the root of the matter--which is, that your motion was intelligently designed with the intent of harming me, maybe because of your dislike of people with a different view than yourself. So, too, should we consider an intelligent designer when a structure looks designed. Irreducibly complex setups like mousetraps have the same scientifically-observed mark of design as we see elsewhere in nature. You don't have to trust what other people tell you about God. Investigate it for yourself. If you don't try to feel God out he won't reveal himself. Naturalistic points of view rule out God automatically, and it's no wonder why people have trouble finding him.

And since this argument has been considered and rejected, i.e. neither any design is irreducibly complex, nor is there a sign of intelligence behind the design, we can safely reject the "god" explanation.

[Ziploc Surprise]

But if you could set your belief aside (which, I recognize might be too difficult for you, no offense) and look at the situation objectively would it stand up to scrutiny?

This assumes that knowledge only comes from the hard sciences, which is a faulty definition of the word 'objective.' The real argument is about who gets to decide what we can know. Postmoderns and naturalists believe it can only be gained directly through the senses. But we know there are also personal ways to gain knowledge. Say you punch me in the face. Someone else might say "He is really angry." But suppose I hold out on interpreting your action. Suppose I look for a naturalistic reason for the motion of your hand. Maybe the moon was too close or there is some kind of wave we haven't discovered yet. Using this logic I would never get to the root of the matter--which is, that your motion was intelligently designed with the intent of harming me, maybe because of your dislike of people with a different view than yourself. So, too, should we consider an intelligent designer when a structure looks designed. Irreducibly complex setups like mousetraps have the same scientifically-observed mark of design as we see elsewhere in nature. You don't have to trust what other people tell you about God. Investigate it for yourself. If you don't try to feel God out he won't reveal himself. Naturalistic points of view rule out God automatically, and it's no wonder why people have trouble finding him.

I know that this is just a matter of semantics but motions of the hand cannot be intelligently designed. Using speech incorrectly like this makes it difficult to understand your intent. I understand that the words "intelligent design" are used frequently enough in fundy circles that you all can play with the words without losing the meaning of the sentence. Here in this forum these words are not commonly used so the play on the words will lead to poor communication. Remember where you are -feel free to insert humorous statement here-.

As for the intent behind the punch: Finding intent is not that difficult, often little interpretation is needed. You can go straight to the facts in this case. You could wipe the blood off your face, and with your rapidly swelling tongue, ask me if I was angry with you. A tooth might fall out in this process but you could still do it. As you stand there bleeding, with your teeth all screwed up, I could tell you I was angry and you could hear it with your own ears and see me say it with your unswollen eye. Furthermore those watching the events could witness, perhaps even electronically record the events.

It is possible that my response might need some interpretation because I might give you a sarcastic or a false reason why I hit you but you could at least ask. Furthermore, if you had enough time, a brain scan could be used. There are other diagnostic devices that could have been used to give objective factual evidence to suggest a reason.

My point in saying this is that my emotion would not have been unproveable. There are ways to objectively find the truth. Your approach is for those who believe that knowledge and understanding of the things around us are far too complicated and vast for humans to understand therefore we need to surrender our brains to something or someone supernatural that does understand these things and can guide us and/or manipulate things in our favor. Note that this something or someone would be something or someone that we don't and can't fully understand (nor prove for that matter). This belief does not stand up to the facts. We can discover, learn, and understand the things around us, and we can do this through the scientific method. Several hundred years of research and discovery has proven this. Your's is a good way to keep people ignorant, poor, unwell, oppressed, and in the stone age.

I will say that I have tried your approach though. I did try to "feel" god and I was successful for 30 years. In the end neither Christian doctrine, experience, or a deep feeling that god existed, stood up to scrutiny. After everything was examined, even after my deep knowing of the existence of god was examined, I discovered that these beliefs had natural explanations. Natural explanations that explained the phenomena better than anything in Christianity could do.

Explanations that do not require faith, exist.

[Undeceived]

As for the intent behind the punch: Finding intent is not that difficult, often little interpretation is needed. You can go straight to the facts in this case. You could wipe the blood off your face, and with your rapidly swelling tongue, ask me if I was angry with you. A tooth might fall out in this process but you could still do it. As you stand there bleeding, with your teeth all screwed up, I could tell you I was angry and you could hear it with your own ears and see me say it with your unswollen eye. Furthermore those watching the events could witness, perhaps even electronically record the events.

Exactly. You have to go to the person themselves to find out if they were angry, just as we would have to go to God to find out if he made the earth. We can't go to him, but that doesn't mean he didn't make it. Say the person is invisible and has no voice. Would you then be unable to conclude their emotion? Not at all. But so that we would know, God sent Jesus to earth as a physical human being. And there were witnesses, just as you say there should be. And they recorded his life in the Bible. What if four of my friends wrote in four separate diaries about this instance when I was punched in the nose-- would someone reading them in 2000 years suppose it was all made up, that I was never actually punched? Then they look at each account and notice Billy writes about the blood dripping off my chin, while Tom does not. Tom added a line of what the assailant said. "They contradict!" the people 2000 years in the future cry. "And they don't make sense! A right hook would not hit that part of the nose at all, but the cheek!" Who's right, you and I who got in the fistfight, or them?

But bleeding and broken teeth are not evidence of the puncher's intent, just that the victim was hurt. In the same way, we look at the earth and see that it came to exist. Isn't it logical to go a step further and discover the intent of its existence?

[Ziploc Surprise]

As for the intent behind the punch: Finding intent is not that difficult, often little interpretation is needed. You can go straight to the facts in this case. You could wipe the blood off your face, and with your rapidly swelling tongue, ask me if I was angry with you. A tooth might fall out in this process but you could still do it. As you stand there bleeding, with your teeth all screwed up, I could tell you I was angry and you could hear it with your own ears and see me say it with your unswollen eye. Furthermore those watching the events could witness, perhaps even electronically record the events.

Exactly. You have to go to the person themselves to find out if they were angry, just as we would have to go to God to find out if he made the earth. We can't go to him, but that doesn't mean he didn't make it. Say the person is invisible and has no voice. Would you then be unable to conclude their emotion? Not at all. But so that we would know, God sent Jesus to earth as a physical human being. And there were witnesses, just as you say there should be. And they recorded his life in the Bible. What if four of my friends wrote in four separate diaries about this instance when I was punched in the nose-- would someone reading them in 2000 years suppose it was all made up, that I was never actually punched? Then they look at each account and notice Billy writes about the blood dripping off my chin, while Tom does not. Tom added a line of what the assailant said. "They contradict!" the people 2000 years in the future cry. "And they don't make sense! A right hook would not hit that part of the nose at all, but the cheek!" Who's right, you and I who got in the fistfight, or them?

But bleeding and broken teeth are not evidence of the puncher's intent, just that the victim was hurt. In the same way, we look at the earth and see that it came to exist. Isn't it logical to go a step further and discover the intent of its existence?

Your illogic is dizzying.

A real visable and tangable person punching you is different. Invisible people who punch people exist in comic books. If you believed an invisible person punched you the approach to proving this would include a few psychological tests to see if you were crazy because the belief in invisible people follows the pattern of beliefs that insane people have. It is not common for people to get punched by invisible people, in fact I've only seen this in comic books. As for witnesses; if witnesses saw an invisible person punch you a psyche exam for everyone might still be a good idea.

If someone's face was damaged by something they could not see and they were not able to detect any sort of physical presence then that person would not automatically conclude that the cause for the damage was a person punching them. They don't have enough clues in the environment to make this conclusion. All they know is that something hit them. You've been looking at too may comic books. In comic books an invisible person is usually depicted as a faint outline or something like that.

As for the New Testament, this has been debunked. The authors probably were not the disciples that Jesus supposedly had. The gospels have also been edited over the centuries. Anyone in our century who knows this treats the gospels as fanciful stories. There is little evidence to suggest that Jesus ever existed. From what I understand even the "evidence" from Josephus has been highly edited. All of the witnesses have been proven to be unreliable.

As for the "creation" of the earth it is more logical and reasonable to discover it's history through a provable, replicatable and peer reviewed approach -aspects of the scientific method. These things provide proof or at least substantial evidence to support theories. Your method involves more unprovable things. I now have to go to something unproven and unprovable, and then believe, without proof, that this thing is telling the truth. Why should try to get my information from an unreliable source like that when there are more reliable methods available. Furthermore if I believe that an unprovable thing is talking to me what proof do I have that this thing is actually talking to me and not a delusion?

You sound like someone who has been homeschooled. You have no grasp of the scientific method. You also can not carry on a logical point by point argument. furthermore, and more importantly, you have difficulty distinguishing reality from fantasy.

[Cinjin]

If you really must pray - do feel free to pray to me.
I can't hear you, but there's extremely good odds that your god can't hear you either.
I can't help you, but I can't recall when anyone's god showed up and lifted a finger.
I can't guide you, but if I did you can know that I wouldn't direct you to kill anyone like your god does.
I can't see you, but unlike your god, I could actually meet you some day and offer you a hand and a kind word.

Do feel free to pray to me, because the odds that I might help you may be 1 in a million ... but that's better than the odds you'll get from your god.

[Undeceived]

As for the New Testament, this has been debunked.

‘Debunked’? Last I read, debunked meant one actually has evidence against the claims. There is none. In all the historical writings around the time of Christ, no contradictions have been found. Not only that, but a high percentage of the people in the Bible have been confirmed elsewhere. Here are just a couple archaeological finds: http://www.facingthechallenge.org/arch2.php Web search "archaeological evidence for the bible" for more.

You’d expect a fabricated document to weaken over time, but that is not true with the Bible. Every year archeologists and historians uncover more to back up Biblical records. We have no more contradictory evidence now than we had fifty years ago—that is to say, none. One might suppose the Bible is made up because they believe miraculous events cannot happen, but opinions do not debunk.

The authors probably were not the disciples that Jesus supposedly had.

What evidence do you have to back this up? All the gospels were written during the time the disciples were still alive, or should have been alive. Are you suggesting someone stole their identities? Many of the epistles confirm other writers and disciples as well. Paul mentioned Peter and Peter mentioned Paul, each recommending the other. Another good source:

http://carm.org/when-were-gospels-written-and-whom

The gospels have also been edited over the centuries.

Not true. We have portions of each all dated in the 1st century, and early church leaders quoting them as early as 40AD, meaning they must have been in circulation before that. They all match word for word, except for when meanings of words changed, which is about .01%.

There is little evidence to suggest that Jesus ever existed.

This link [http://www.sowhataboutjesus.com/existed.php] lists a couple documents that mention Jesus. Remember, science is about acknowledging positive evidence, not holding out in hopes of it being disproved. Jesus has more mentions of his existence than any other non-Roman in his time period. You would not accuse any other person so often referenced as not existing!
Most secular historians agree Jesus lived and was known as a polarizing figure, whether he actually is divine or not.

Also examine the motives. There was no power or wealth to be gained from fabricating a religion in tension with Judaism. All but one disciple became a martyr. And how can one explain the explosion of converts shortly after Jesus’ life? What moved his followers from mourning to boldly proclaiming him God? There wasn’t enough time to develop a convincing myth. Compare the Bible to other ancient documents. The earliest histories of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than four hundred years after his death. Yet they are still considered to be generally trustworthy, as are all of Plato's works. In fact, you’d be hard-pressed to find any originals of historical documents. The fact that we have physical examples of extended Gospel quotes as early as the 40s AD is remarkable. Other examples, first date is time written and second is earliest copy:

Herodotus (History) 480 - 425 BC 900 AD
Thucydides (History) 460 - 400 BC 900 AD
Aristotle (Philosopher) 384 - 322 BC 1,100 AD
Caesar (History) 100 - 44 BC 900 AD
Pliny (History) 61 - 113 AD 850 AD
Suetonius (Roman History) 70 - 140 AD 950 AD
Tacitus (Greek History) 100 AD 1,100 AD

Paul also includes creeds in his writings. In 1 Corinthians 15 he describes the beliefs he received upon his conversion. If the crucifixion is 30 A.D., then his conversion would be 32 A.D. and his first official meeting with the Apostles in Jerusalem would be 35 A.D.—far too soon for any legendary additions. “A.N. Sherwin-White of Oxford did a study of the rate at which legend accrued in the ancient world and concluded that not even two full generations was enough time for legend to develop and to wipe out a solid core of historical truth” (http://www.millennialstar.org/the-case-f...-scripture).

As for the "creation" of the earth it is more logical and reasonable to discover it's history through a provable, replicatable and peer reviewed approach -aspects of the scientific method.

I'll let J.P. Moreland explain it for me:
"Intelligent design theory really is science because (1) it generates positive and negative test results; (2) it actually explains facts in scientifically standard ways; (3) it can be confirmed by the facts; and (4) it solves internal conceptual problems that evolution doesn’t solve. These are four things that a scientific theory ought to do, and ID does all four. Thus, ID exhibits what a scientific theory ought to exhibit and should be counted as scientific theory and not simply a religious belief."