Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire My Grandaughter Got A New Bible...

. If a criminal with a gun to your kids head tell you to give him you wallet or he will kill him/her, and you comply, do you really believe you exhibited Free Will? A threat of eternal torture for the crime of not believing, or being made by God in such a way that you cannot believe constitutes Free Will in your mind???

If God truly intended to give us Free Will he wouldn't need the coercion, threats, and a infinite punishment for a finite crime.

He tells the Truth. He gives us life. You have been blessed. You can follow the flesh or Him. He gave you freedom. Choose His or your kingdom. If your life isnt a miracle and a blessing worth living, why didnt you do away with it years ago? He gave you s blessing and still you quibble about it. What have you given Him, except greif. You think you are so great He should put up with your stinking sin in His presence? Sin can not coexist with no sin. Clean water can not be mixed with dirty water and still be clean. You are unclean. You have not accepted you are a sinner nor have you asked to be cleansed by the blood of Christ -blood He shed for you and only for the asking, but your pride makes you worse than a stiff necked jew. For the prize of everlasting life you refuse to bow your head and bend your knee because of the pride that leads to you fall.

What dying dove wouldnt bow its head for everlasting life if it had your chance. Instead you point out the Satan given shortcomings you percieved in Him.

Job was more strong in his efforts with Him. You are the walking dead - dust for a little bit while still held together by His spit.

This is the funniest use of a Bible you will ever hear..


http://www.hark.com/clips/ykvjhzrrsr-old-lady-attack-voicemail

As you can see, when we take the time to dissect you long diatribe, it's nothing more then a long series of logical fallacies. It's interesting to me how it appears you were able to complete your medical training without a course in logic.

What ever you say. Evidence is for the physical, not the metaphysical.

So you admit you have no evidence, and therefore no reasonable basis to believe what you believe?

You inhabit a creation. Do you have evidence that something [creation] can come from nothing?

You are surrounded by the "effect", but deny a "cause".

If you admit to the possibility of a "first cause", what evidence do you have that the "cause" ceased to exist at the time of creation?

Logic demands that you admit to a cause. What "logic" demands that the cause cares not for ITS creation?

Bumped for my friend, A.S. to respond.

I have evidence my friend and you know what it is. I gave my daughter a big hug last night after my wife and I spent the evening in her home.

Thanks for the bump my friend. I hope this Sunday morning doesn't' find you under a foot of fresh snow.

You've attempted to do a couple things above, so lets walk through them.

You've essentially moved on to a conversational version of the "Cosmological Argument". You begin by stating "You inhabit a creation". What I know is that I live in a Universe. To say it is a "creation" is a fallacy of presupposition, that presupposes a creator that has not been established by evidence.

Next you ask if I have any evidence this Universe came from nothing. Here, you are attempting to shift the burden of proof. If Science is unable to prove a specific model for the creation of the Universe, it gets you no close to your proposition that "God did it". Regardless, we do have evidence, and at this moment the model it seems to best support is the Lawrence Krauss model of "A Universe from Nothing".

Next you ask about the first cause, which has it's own problems. Your assumption that the infinite regress of cause and effect ends with your God is just a case of "special pleading". One argument for the cosmological argument is that the universe is too complex to create itself. However intelligence is extremely complex, and an intelligence that can create the universe, micromanage it, all the lives of all the beings within it, through listening to and answering their prayer, would be exponentially more complex then the universe itself, and hence, to complex to cause itself, which leads to the question, "Who created God". Again, the only way I've seen this question avoided is through more "special pleading", and this special pleading also avoids the question of "which god".

As for logic "demanding I admit to a cause", it does no such thing, since you statement is a based on a fallacy known as a "hasty generalization", pairs of virtual particles pop in and our of existence all the time. Islamic apologist go even further, and reject Augustine;s argument all together, because in thir words, "Observation, however shows simply that the alleged effect happens alongside the cause rather through it ... and accordingly, such a correlation is not logically necessary but is rather the outcome of a correlation is not logically necessary but is rather the outcome of mere psychological disposition or habit."

As for what logic demands of God, it demands evidence that he exists, and a presupposition is not evidence.

Scott, I hope you daughter is doing well, and you guys are staying out of this weather. I plan to escape for a bit with one or two of mine shortly.

Thank you my friend, we are doing well. Sun is shining with blue sky and almost no wind. It is 43 now. I am enjoying soaking up some vitamin D with my bald head. Maybe you should come out for a fair weather visit.

No new snow. In fact, we're starting to thaw today. Gonna be a big mess.

Please notice that I didn't use "God", or "prayer", in my post. You interjected them in yours.

Science depends on observation. The "start up of the Universe" [since "creation" doesn't suit you] - by it's very nature - could only occur one time, so it doesn't lend itself to observation or experiments in duplication.

Seems like I read something the other day where some scientists argue for a static universe that "just always has been".

The only thing scientist seem to agree on is that it couldn't have been designed by a Higher Power.

Didn't think Science was in the business of proving negatives.

Assuming, for the sake of argument, that a Self Existent Being actually did create "All that is", what sort of evidence could IT provide to YOU, Antelope Sniper, that would convince YOU of ITS existence?

You claim that IF you were created, you were created incapable of believing in a Higher Power.

You are essentially claiming that you were born with a portion of your mind closed. I find that an odd position.

Free will. Your choice.[/quote]

. If a criminal with a gun to your kids head tell you to give him you wallet or he will kill him/her, and you comply, do you really believe you exhibited Free Will? A threat of eternal torture for the crime of not believing, or being made by God in such a way that you cannot believe constitutes Free Will in your mind???

If God truly intended to give us Free Will he wouldn't need the coercion, threats, and a infinite punishment for a finite crime. [/quote]

A.S.
Even many who profess to be Christians really don't have a correct concept of God. They see God as a punisher and one to be appeased.Even well meaning Christians try to earn salvation by good deeds and regular church attendance.That's not the nature of God or salvation at all.

The correct way to see the situation is that by your own deeds and free will you are already Hell bound.No one is good enough on their own for Heaven. One small lie or even lack of doing the right thing disqualifies you. God's standard is so high that none can earn it. It is so high in fact that only God himself qualifies. Because of that God became a man and suffered the punishment of Hell that men deserve. Because he didn't suffer for his wrong he can grant substitution for anyone who asks. Jesus grants the gift of having suffered in place of any person who seeks salvation from him.

It's even more than just a price paid in the stead of the sinner. Being born again means a union with Christ to the point that the man or woman shares not only in the price paid but in the heart of the redeemer.That born again person has their very nature changed to desire good rather than evil.

It's not about a God who seeks to punish anyone who won't cow down. It's about a God who seeks to rescue those already lost and headed for destruction.

Free will...

We have it here, will we have it there?

What tasks, responsibilities, challenges, choices will we face?

Can we screw up and fail?

Most folks think... if I can just finish school, get this job, marry that girl, buy that house, have some kids, get that boat, get the kids out of diapers, get that truck, get that promotion, get that better house, get that grill, change jobs, get the kids out of the house, retire... die and go to heaven... my life will be complete.

Yet life wasn't complete after each stage, the challenges grew and were harder instead of easier.

Welcome to heaven.

Kent

Keep blowing smoke! The "arguments" you are using to not believe in a deity with knowable attributes is philosophical baloney. You're going to have to do better than that, as the stuff you're trotting out here isn't even held by philosophical atheists anymore.

Here's some good books for you that quite well demonstrate the probability of theism, if you're willing to actually deal with the philosophy:

Douglas Groothius "Christian Apologetics"
Richard Swinburne "The Coherence of Theism" (to be read vis-a-vis JL Mackie "The Miracle of Theism")
Anthony Flew "There is a God"

Yes, my friend, I may have added a few things. There are many flavors of Theist here on The Fire, so please just consider those comments as directed toward them and not yourself.

As for your statements about science and observation, yes science requires observation, but it does not require direct observation. As an example, we can know the orbital period of Pluto of 247.68 years, but we've only know about since 1930. Another example is dark matter. We've never directly observed dark matter, but we've observed it's effects through measuring the rotational velocity of solar systems, and it gravitational lensing, i.e. the effect of dark matter curving light as it moves through space. Gravitational lensing was first predicted, based on the hypothesis that dark matter existed, and then later observed. It is this, that science requires. That a hypothesis can make predictions that can be confirmed with observation, and those observations are repeatable, not a specific event in the past.

As for a static Universe, that went out the window with Edwin Hubble in 1923, and if you think the new mathematical model proposed by Sauyra Das of the University of Lethbridge in Cananda, supports a static universe, well, that's not quite right either. His idea is for a universe that is in effect eternal, due to time dilation, when everything was together before the universe began to expand. This leads to a universe filled with a super fluid of hypothetical partials. Because this is science, they are considering ways to test this hypothesis with real world, ahh, universe, observations, such as whether or not the observed distribution of dark matter in the universe matches with these mathematical predictions or not. Of course these would be indirect observations, since we cannot directly observe dark matter. Of course disproving this hypothesis would not help your case. Regardless if science disproves the Das Model, the Krauss Model, or M theory, it moves us no closer to your position that (the Christian) "God did it", or any other supernatural claim whether it be Zeus, Vishnu, birds fluttering their wings over a primordial ocean, or Leprechauns.

As for your last statement, once again, you just misunderstand science, and the burden of proof. Since the Christian God is constructed in a way that is is an unfalsifiable claim, the burden of proof is upon the person making the claim, not the person who disbelieves it. The classical example of this is "Russell's Teapot", where Bertram Russel proposed it would be non-nonsensical for other to believe his proposal there was a tea pot orbiting the sun between the earth and Mars on the basis that is could not be disproven. Perhaps the only thing more nonsensical would be for scientist to spend a couple hundred million dollars on satellites to go look for it.

Spending a little time with my proof again today.

"Yes, my friend, I may have added a few things. There are many flavors of Theist here on The Fire, so please just consider those comments as directed toward them and not yourself."

O K..... Thanks for clearing that up.

You know, the earliest Church Fathers figured out that the Christian God could not be described except in the negative:

"THIS is not THOU, neither art THOU... THIS."

But I'm a looong way from arguing FOR the Christian God in discussions with you.

My eighth grade formal education left me a little shy in the math dep't, but I've learned a little about it thru reading and working with it.

So...... I'm asking you what type of evidence, mathematical or otherwise could convince YOU that there is a Creative Force which rules the Universe?

IF this All Powerful Force exists, what could IT/HE/SHE do that would convince you of it's existence?

Surely you have considered this question.