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(September 11, 2015 at 11:30 am)Godschild Wrote: I have evidence God is real, undeniable evidence, thus you can produce nothing to the contrary, if you could it would have already been presented, yet not one iota of evidence has ever been given against God's existence. People have had thousands of years to find the evidence God does not exist and nothing, not one little tiny bit. I have my evidence, where's your evidence. The end is getting closer every day and soon enough Christ will come and those who have excepted Him as their savior will be perfect beings, so the future looks quite bright.
Almost clipped this older clip out, but just wanted to throw this out there: the word is accepted, not excepted. To except Him as their savior would mean they are atheists, having excluded him from the role. Just a thought.
(September 14, 2015 at 5:47 pm)Godschild Wrote:
TRS Wrote:What evidence could possibly exist that "there is no God"? You tell us, so we can go find it. It can't be done. Why, you ask?
You're right there's no evidence God doesn't exist, ever wonder why, here's a hint, He does. This being so means there can never be evidence. Very illogical of you to think otherwise.
Are you being willfully dense? I asked you what evidence could possibly exist to prove a negative. It cannot exist because no negative can be proved... that's just a basic problem of logic. You've heard of logic, no?
That's what my "invisible pink dragons" metaphor was about. But you're right, it's unfair to use a clearly-nonexistent imaginary being, so I'll stick to ones that a whole bunch of people really think is real.
If you visited Saudi Arabia and told them that you did not believe Allah was God or that Mohammed was the Final Prophet of Allah... or if you visited India and tried to explain to a billion Hindus that Ganesha was not real, you would be really pissed off if they demanded you that "produce evidence that Ganesha doesn't exist", and then said, "Ha! You can't prove Ganesha doesn't exist... that's because, here's a hint, he does!"
(September 14, 2015 at 5:47 pm)Godschild Wrote:
TRS Wrote:It's called "proving a negative", and it's one of the most basic mistakes of logic. If you want us to take you even remotely seriously, you're going to have to at least understand how logic works.
I made no mistake, the God I know is real, so there can be know negative, you want to stand behind a ridiculous term because you think it keeps you safe, to the contrary it puts you in eternal jeopardy.
Yes, you made a mistake. It actually is possible to "prove a negative" under certain conditions, but not this particular one, and your statement that the onus is on me to prove an imaginary (as far as I can tell) being you read out of a book and "know is real" is acually not real is silly, and you should not find it so difficult to grasp why that is. Seriously, try to imagine yourself in the conversation with that hypothetical Hindu, above, and you'll understand the problem.
(September 14, 2015 at 5:47 pm)Godschild Wrote:
TRS Wrote:Our position is quite simple, and summed up by Stephen F. Roberts on one of the first internet atheism forums in 1996:
"I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."
I've heard this so many times it's getting to be ridiculous. Atheist say they have no belief, yet the statement you used says you do, seems to me you guys need to get your story straight.
Sigh. I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt on IQ score, here, so I'll go ahead and answer you. Atheists have lots of beliefs, we just don't think any of the gods we've heard described to us are real. You don't think any of the gods you've had described to you are real, either, just exactly like us, except for one. You are an atheist, as am I, toward all of the gods in this list:
You disbelieve all those gods, and I disbelieve all those gods. Plus yours.
(September 14, 2015 at 5:47 pm)Godschild Wrote:
(September 12, 2015 at 10:21 am)Godschild Wrote: Thousands did when Christ walked the earth and I see the actions of God on a daily bases. I've never seen air but I breath it all the time, I see it's actions when it moves. Your evidence is no evidence at all, just your weak opinion.
GC
TRS Wrote:That's funny. "Thousands did"? Thousands of people saw God on earth, and nobody bothered to write to their cousins in Rome or Alexandria about it? None of the Jewish or Roman historians living in Judea at the time noticed any of these amazing events that the early Christians would later write, half a century or more later, as having occurred?
Most people could not read or write during those times and you very well know that, that was something for the wealthy. As for those you mentioned they would not get involved with a single preacher spreading something contrary to what they believed God was saying in the OT.
The general scholarly concensus is that between 1.5% and 10% (depending on how you interpret certain figures, and including the fact that women would generally not have been literate) of the population of Jerusalem was literate. Even taking the low figure, out of 80,000 people that is 1200 people who would have been able to record these events, as high as 8000, not counting the Romans and others mentioned. You don't get to "wave off" 1200 literate people living in the city as if they were nothing! Further, a MUCH higher number had at least "functional" literacy, based on Ezra's institution of learning centers in the 5th century BCE.
(September 14, 2015 at 5:47 pm)Godschild Wrote:
TRS Wrote:Heck, there were 80,000 people living in Jerusalem at the time of the events described, including the historians who wrote about all kinds of events during that time period in that city, yet fail to mention the darkness, the earthquake, the rending of the veil in the Holy of Holies, or the raising of the dead that walked around.
Many of those saw Christ, most couldn't write and the ones who could weren't going to say anything about Him, they wanted Him dead. How would the historians have know about those raised from the dead, they would have looked like regular people, people couldn't tell that Christ was once dead and raised from the dead. Many earthquakes were not recorded in the past and a darkened day could have and probably was like a very stormy sky, I've seen many myself. The veil well that was more of an observation the priest would see and would have told only a few people.
From Matthew chapter 27: 45Now from the sixth hour darkness fell upon all the land until the ninth hour. 46 About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" that is, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" 47 And some of those who were standing there, when they heard it, began saying, "This man is calling for Elijah." 48 Immediately one of them ran, and taking a sponge, he filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed, and gave Him a drink. 49 But the rest of them said, "Let us see whether Elijah will come to save Him." 50 And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. 51 And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split. 52 The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised; 53 and coming out of the tombs after His resurrection they entered the holy city and appeared to many.
So, yeah. Your explanation makes no sense. But nice ad hoc explanation attempt. I'm pretty sure they would have noticed an earthquake big enough to split rocks, darkness that fell upon "all the land until the ninth hour", and "many bodies" that "appeared to many". Try again.
(September 14, 2015 at 5:47 pm)Godschild Wrote:
TRS Wrote:If the veil was torn, how did the priests keep doing services before the Holy of Holies such that the Romans were able to "defile" it with a symbol of the emperor in the 60s, leading to the revolt and destruction of that temple? It wouldn't be necessary if it was already shut down due to the traumatic effect of a destroyed veil. Yet it's not even mentioned. The silence speaks volumes; everyone who wrote about that time period just goes on speaking of mundane things.
The veil was torn and like I said the priest weren't going out and announce something they probably believe would cause them more problems than they already had. They simply replaced the veil, then carried on as usual until the Romans destroyed the temple. Yes the silence from the priest does speak volumes, they still felt it necessary to hide the existence of Christ from the world, they must have known Christ had risen and continued with a cover-up.
If your claim is that the priests conspired to keep the thing a secret from those who worshiped in the Temple... then how did the Christians know about it?
Do I have to do all the thinking, here?
(September 14, 2015 at 5:47 pm)Godschild Wrote:
TRS Wrote:Where are the historians, outside of Christian tradition? We know of a couple of dozen of them living in Jerusalem at the time, both Jewish and Roman (and others). He is claimed to have done many things that would have been worthy of widespread note, and yet the first historians to mention him are Josephus and Tacitus, neither of whom were even alive when Jesus died, and both of whom seem to refer to the followers of Jesus and their stories of him (usually at their execution trials, which is what Josephus was writing about), rather than directly to (nonexistent) records of TheManHimself™.
That's a question you should be asking yourself, why didn't they write about Jesus. We know the Jewish elite wouldn't, it would have destroyed their authority and their wealth. The Romans were not going to write about what they had heard others doing before Jesus, and they wouldn't chance putting another God before Caesar, they weren't willing to go to the cross for the truth.
No one would "go to the cross" for saying that "there's a man named Jesus, with a bunch of followers, who claims to be the Messiah, and the following events were recorded while I watched" (e.g. the Palm Sunday entrance parade, the trial of Jesus and Barabbas, or any of the above events such as the darkness and rock-splitting earthquake).
You don't need to say "Jesus is Lord, down with the Emperor!" to record that a guy was preaching to crowds of 5000+ men (according to the Loaves and Fishes story, not counting women and children; keep in mind that this is at a time when even the capital city only had 80,000 total people). As I said, the historians would have recorded all noteworthy events, especially given that Jerusalem was newly-conquered, and major clashes and/or alliance between the new Roman rulership and the Sadducee council would have been relevant information to document in a neutral fashion. And yet, the first we really see of any such documentation of first century events comes from the second century, when Josephus began writing about the actions of previous Roman emperors, in a way that seemed to justify their brutality toward the religious "cults" the emperors were oppressing-- this is where we first see, a century later, the first mentions outside of the Bible of the tales the Christians told, as part of their mythology, of the Messiah and of John the Baptist.
(September 14, 2015 at 5:47 pm)Godschild Wrote:
TRS Wrote:You cannot prove that Marduk doesn't exist. Or Allah. Or Ganesha. You can't prove that Cthulhu isn't reading this conversation. And neither can I. When you truly understand why you have dismissed all the other possible gods, you will see why I dismiss yours. Not BS excuses about "I accepted the Biblical evidence", but why/how you can so clearly see that the thousands of years the Greeks spent wasting their time on Zeus just made them silly and having "personal experiences" and prayers to nothing, yet you cannot look at your own beliefs and see that we can't tell a difference between the two.
What I see is someone afraid to find the truth about God, which you are. If you were to find out that God does exist you would have to change your life and apologize for all the things you've said to Christians, not to us but to God.
I do not need to disprove those other gods, seems history has eliminated them. God says He is the only God and because I know Him personally I do not need bother myself with false gods.
Care to seriously address my comments about proving Marduk, Allah, and Ganesha don't exist? Or is it just a matter of saying "I made my choice, so I'm not really going to think about those other gods I can't prove don't exist"?
If "history has eliminated them", in the sense that you mean, then why are there 190,000 Zoroastrians, 1,600,000,000 Muslims, and 850,000,000 Hindus?
And why do they all say that your God is the false one?
I always liked this meme, on the subject:
I think it sums it up nicely.
(September 14, 2015 at 5:47 pm)Godschild Wrote:
TRS Wrote:Addendum: By the way, I've seen air. I've shot light beams through it and tested its spectral composition. I can tell you the Ideal Gas Equation that lets me calculate exactly how much air there is, what pressure it's under per volume and temperature, and what it will mass. Your asserted deity isn't just invisible, he's untestable. Why? Simple: he's not real. Your entire "evidence for" consists of "But I feel it, really really feel it!"
I do not do anything with just by feeling, especially when it come so God. You can't see air, the results yes, just as I see the results of God, why, because I'm looking and you're denying.
GC
You're imagining, and I stopped imagining when I realized that's what I was doing. Yes, I'm an ex-Christian. I was as die-hard in my beliefs as anyone, except I was never so intellectually dishonest as you seem to be about considering why people of other faiths have "totally wrong answers" yet believe as devoutly as any Christian does. (Because they are "looking", of course... which is why I call it imagination and not reality.) The only thing being denied here is Reality. And it's not me doing it.
A Christian told me: if you were saved you cant lose your salvation. you're sealed with the Holy Ghost I replied: Can I refuse? Because I find the entire concept of vicarious blood sacrifice atonement to be morally abhorrent, the concept of holding flawed creatures permanently accountable for social misbehaviors and thought crimes to be morally abhorrent, and the concept of calling something "free" when it comes with the strings of subjugation and obedience perhaps the most morally abhorrent of all... and that's without even going into the history of justifying genocide, slavery, rape, misogyny, religious intolerance, and suppression of free speech which has been attributed by your own scriptures to your deity. I want a refund. I would burn happily rather than serve the monster you profess to love.
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