Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Question for the holy guys

No it's not but you can continue to be wrong if you like.

The very fact that we are having an intelligible conversation (the pursuit of "truth") presupposes the existence of God. It certainly isn't possible on materialist/naturalistic premises.

I'll just Pray, thank You Lord for Your Presious Gift of Salvation.

Materialism/Naturalism is based on faith too. Just like other religions.

No it doesn't, and yes it is.

You guys have been collectively wrong for the past couple of thousands of years or so, so I'm not expecting the factual truth to dawn on you guys anytime soon - that would be a miracle.

There is hope when someone will say "I don't know or I don't understand". If a Stephen Hawking tells you with a certainty that this universe began when all this matter collapsed into a particle smaller than an atom and created an explosion that turned loose all the matter and has sent it at incredible velocity out into space which in turn produced our finely tuned rhythmic rotating and orbiting universe and that is all there is to it. Well, there isn't any hope of bringing that person back to thinking there is a supernatural first cause.

[/quote] mauserand9mm--just prove your god.[/quote]

You seem to concerned with proofs, yet you have offered no supporting proofs for your assertions. Using the science of history, one can quickly demonstrate that Jesus existed. At the very least this includes highly credible eye-witnesses. Secondly, as I have said to you before in earlier threads, the origin of all matter, and therefore space, time and energy, coincided with the Big Bang Creation Event. Whether I have proven anything to you “absolutly” or even absolutely is irrelevant. Christians accept evidence for things we take as fact every day despite the lack of “absolute” proof.....that is what I believe.

There are unsubstantiated assertions in what you wrote and descriptions that go beyond our current best scientific understandings, but putting those aside, science doesn't claim to know everything and that drives the research and exploration - science doesn't know everything and is open to falsification. Supernatural comes from superstition and a falsehood of pretending to know the unknown ie the fuel of religions. Faith systems are a substitute for skepticism and critical thinking, and are against it for their self-preservation, and had thrived on unfalsifiability - unfortunately some had been way too specific about the accounts of some things that have since been falsified (the bible is a good example).

Seems the catholics are willing to update in order to try and maintain some sort of relevant presence in the changing world, but they seem to have a different christian god to others.

Lets sort some of this out:

1. Jesus may have existed but there is no evidence of the fantastic events around his life.

2. There are no first hand accounts from alleged eye-witnesses to the alleged resurrection, and the alleged eye-witnesses are all anonymous.

3. The truth is we don't know what happened at the instant of the big bang or prior to it. Pretending to know otherwise is also called speculation. Pretending to know and asserting it as truth is called lying.

Believing that there is a supernatural cause is an assumption, an illusion of knowledge where no knowledge exists.

''I don't know how the universe came to be'' is the honest position.

Faith doesn't provide the answers, it just gives believers the illusion of answers.

If there is a God, whatever that may be, God appears to have no interest in dealing with us openly.

Instead we have self appointed representatives assuming to speak on behalf of whatever God they are spruiking.

Fanatical atheism can clearly be just as ugly as religious fanaticism can be. Some atheists are clearly frustrated and bothered by the theist beliefs of others, and often come across just as patronizing and condescending as they accuse those theists of being.

That's a sad lament you have going. Are there violins playing in the background?

Sure, there are hard atheists who make an ideology of it...many, if not most atheists don't do that.

Basically it's a simple thing; a lack of conviction based on a lack of convincing evidence.

As for here and now, there are theists arguing for Christianity (their own theology) and there are others (you know who) that argue against faith for the given reasons.

It doesn't matter to me what you believe, it's just a discussion. I come online and make a few comments. That's not fanatical, you are doing the same.

Most scientist do know how the universe came to be...despite some materialists proposing “time before the Big Bang”, there is no evidence for it all. Despite Physicists such as Victor Stenger postulating “Pre-Big Bang time”, or what Stephen Hawking calls, “Imaginary Time” there is no proof for it, whereas, there is much proof for there being a beginning. This is why it is rejected by most Cosmologists because the evidence points to a "singularity" of the beginning of space, time, energy and matter. Far from time being meaningless in the moments of the Big Bang, the timing of the expansion rate from the moment of the Big Bang was critical.

And....

Believing that there is a materialist/naturalistic cause is an assumption, an illusion of knowledge where no knowledge exists.

'I don't know how the universe came to be'' is the honest position.

Faith in materialism/naturalism doesn't provide the answers, it just gives believers the illusion of answers.

The assertion that God has no interest in dealing with us openly is a statement purporting to know the mind/will/purpose of God. On what basis?

His word. The best anyone can do is give you their word. It takes faith to believe it and act on it

Hope?
What does this mean?
Hope for what? Hope that I may eventually be fooled, or bullied, or coerced into proclaiming I believe the same mythology as you?

No, I do not proclaim to know what happened before the "big bang". Nor even if the umiverse is eternal. I had long assumed the universe was cyclic and eternal. But evidence is growing that such may not be true.

As to the organization of the heavans? The laws of Physics dictate such. It is the only way it can be. The astroid belt shows what happens when planetary orbits become destabilized.

The Chicxulub Crater is evidence of the meteor which killed all the dinosaurs, and caused the extinction of 3/4 of the plant and animal species on Earth at the time. Which goes to show that all those heavenly bodies are not really in such perfect, synchronous, or rythmic balance after all.

All we need is one more similar meteor impact and all this discussion will be moot for about the 66 million years it will take for the next dominant species to rise to the level of sentience that they may invent the next generation of gods.

Again, to me, Christianity…at least the original version of Christianity…is not a text-based movement; it’s an event-based movement. And the real issue is: is the Gospel of Matthew, or the Gospel of Mark, or the Gospel of Luke, or the Gospel of John…any one of the four…a reliable account
of actual events…?

Because if any one of these four Gospels is a reliable account of actual events, then what it says about Jesus is true. And if what it says about Jesus is true, does it make sense that we should lean in…?

The narrative of Jesus is not a Bible story; the narrative of Jesus is why there is the Bible. Jesus is the reason there is the Bible. If there’d been no resurrection, there wouldn’t have been a Jesus movement. And if there’d been no Jesus movement, there wouldn’t have been anyone to document the event of the resurrection.

And if there’d been no resurrection, there’d be no ‘the Bible’. Jesus’ earliest followers found all four of them to be reliable accounts of actual events, and that’s why they were included in the collection of documents that came to be known as the Bible. So if even one of these accounts of Jesus’ life is a reliable account of actual events, does it make sense that we should we lean in…?

Maybe as an aside, when I Pray, I always find myself saying, Thank You Lord. I have a lot to be thankful for.

I have always admitted that there are questions that science cannot answer. At least not yet. "I don't know" is an answer I am perfectly comfortable with when it's the truth. Scientists may speculate or offer an hypothesis as a potential explanation for something but they are careful to separate speculation from fact. And anyone is welcome to question the current thinking on a particular subject. In fact it's expected and encouraged. Just be prepared to show your research.

Religion on the other hand makes up a story to bridge our gaps in knowledge and then defies it's members to question the story. Truth shouldn't fear a close skeptical examination and I have no interest in "Pretending" I know something.

I always love when people say to me, "There must be something to Christianity or it wouldn't have lasted this long". Well not really. If you spend hundreds of years tying non Christians to a pole and setting them on fire then you are going to motivate a lot of people to be a Christian, at least in the lands under your control. Besides you could say the same thing about Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, etc. Hell where I live in Alabama there are still negative repercussions for being openly agnostic in 2022. You could never run for any office here and have a chance to win. There are people who would not be your friend. People who would not let their kids play with your kids. Wouldn't do business with any store or company you owned. Meanwhile I have many Christian friends. I vote for people who at least claim to be Christians in every election. Most of the small stores I patronize here are owned by Christians. Yet we agnostics and atheists are always painted as the nasty ones.

I have also never understood why the gods of all these religions have to be so hands off. If it's so important to god that I follow a certain set of rules then why do I have to get that word from the Jimmy Swaggarts of the world. Why can't god tell me himself? Isn't he omnipotent? Seems to me that he could settle all this tomorrow if he really wanted to.