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Unfortunately it is a very poor argument to point out that science has not beaten death but only managed to prolong life. We are still learning as a species and scientific progress is slow. Just because we can not prevent or beat death now does not mean we never will. It just means we can not now.
Even if we never do then all this proves is that there are limitations to what we can achieve as a species. I am not sure what those limitations have to do with a discussion about religion.
The quality of this argument is so poor as to be akin to trying to disprove the existence of adults by looking only at kids and saying they have not developed the ability to procreate yet.
Even dogs go to heaven I'm told (by Disney™, but heck; who really checks their sources, eh?)
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Originally Posted by imapro
yeah the appropriate word there is EXTENDED life. Guess who's gonna die next year? that very same person that had extended life... no chit, cherlock.
LOL, lantern actually their excuse to not believe in God is coz they're super mighty logical with mega brain powers. lol.
You got that one right laddie! And now... your credentials, m'boy? Tell us all, puh...leeeeezzzsee???
And now back to our soap opera:
Imapro (or ProC if you like...), having had all his "arguments" dispelled with simple hubris-free logic, but that having been in too long & educational a post for him to really "get it", he has reverted once and yet again to bomb-tossing!
...??? Will he get the girl? Will he get into heaven? Will he even have his contract renewed? Probably not: like Charlie Sheen, he didn't know when to "shut the frickoid up!" (cue" shot of dog licking it's wounds...)
I doubt that entirely. Look at Sathya Sai Baba. Yet another one who claims to be born of a virgin and to perform miracles. There is no reason to think he actually did perform anything of the sort. The videos of him doing "miracles" are actually cheap parlor tricks most illusionists can do.
Yet despite this did he fail to form a following? No. So many people think he was something more than human with magical powers that when a birthday party was thrown for him 1 million people showed up. You can find 100s of contemporary eye witness accounts attesting to his magic.
There is no reason to think miracles have to be true for people to latch on to it and spread the word / religion. People simply are gullible. People in the bronze age where your Jesus characters fairy tale was based even more so.
What was the degree of opposition toward his belief? Was it something readily acceptable to the people around him? In other words, did his sayings constituted anything as blasphemous thoughts? Also, did this following grow significantly outside his home country?
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Originally Posted by Nozzferrahhtoo
So in other words all these miracles also work exactly as if there was no god at all. You just choose to insert a god any way and then engage in a series of excuses as to how his existence does not preclude miracles working exactly as if there was no such entity.
If there are natural explanations for these events... then there is no basis to insert an invisible god... call them all "miracles"... and then faff about explaining how those "miracles" look just like they would if there was no god.
So who would have artificially inseminated Mary 2,000 years ago? Even if we could prove that is what happened to Mary, who would have done the procedure, other than God?
Like I said, God knows all the laws (laws we don't know yet, dark energy alone proves that much, which we say represents over 70% of the entire universe) So it would be a miracle to us, but to God is just working His stuff. Of course, He can even go beyond that, as He is the Creator.
What was the degree of opposition toward his belief? Was it something readily acceptable to the people around him? In other words, did his sayings constituted anything as blasphemous thoughts? Also, did this following grow significantly outside his home country?
None of that is relevant to my point. If you want to know more about him then the internet is abound with references, documentries, blogs and much more about him. Remember this guy only died recently, in the last few years. His following is still growing from what I have read and sometimes these things can explode long after the death of those involved. Even if Christ existed for example, Christianity clearly did not explode until long after his death.
The point I am making is solely that miracles do not have to be "real" in order for people to follow them or be moved by them. We are a gullible species and we fall for these things easily it seems.
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Originally Posted by The Lantern
So who would have artificially inseminated Mary 2,000 years ago?
Huh? I never claimed anyone did. You did. I doubt she was. Assuming she existed then she was likely someone who had sex outside marriage, got pregnant, and sold her husband to be and/or others a crazy story that they bought into. Which is more likely really.... that the whole of biology was put on hold for one person only in an illiterate bronze age village..... or a horny teenager got frisky and then lied about it. Hint: One never appears to have happened while the other is happening all the time.
Again: If you spout a lot of natural explanations for miracles, that stops them being miracles. If you spout a lot of things that happened in such a way as they could have happened in the absence of a god... then why invent a god and wheel it in, Occam's Razor be damned. You are just making things up, and editing that fantasy to fit occurrences (real or imagined) retrospectively.
None of that is relevant to my point. If you want to know more about him then the internet is abound with references, documentries, blogs and much more about him. Remember this guy only died recently, in the last few years. His following is still growing from what I have read and sometimes these things can explode long after the death of those involved. Even if Christ existed for example, Christianity clearly did not explode until long after his death.
The difficulty of belief is revelant, because the more opposition it faces, the less likely it will be in it's spread. Don't you know there have been millions upon millions of religious beliefs in the world. Yet the ones that have the most success of spreading are religious beliefs that came straight from authority (King, Pharaoh, or government), or this belief appealing to knowledge. (Like the Greeks)
I'm willing to bet this guru's belief, didn't have nearly the amount of opposition Christianity had. Christianity was something that was readily objected by Israel, and those outside Israel. (As Paul stated, it is a stumbling to the jews, and pure foolishness to the greeks) So the only way it could have spread at all, is if the miracles were evident. That is the research I'm doing.
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Originally Posted by Nozzferrahhtoo
Huh? I never claimed anyone did. You did. I doubt she was. Assuming she existed then she was likely someone who had sex outside marriage, got pregnant, and sold her husband to be and/or others a crazy story that they bought into. Which is more likely really.... that the whole of biology was put on hold for one person only in an illiterate bronze age village..... or a horny teenager got frisky and then lied about it. Hint: One never appears to have happened while the other is happening all the time.
Again: If you spout a lot of natural explanations for miracles, that stops them being miracles. If you spout a lot of things that happened in such a way as they could have happened in the absence of a god... then why invent a god and wheel it in, Occam's Razor be damned. You are just making things up, and editing that fantasy to fit occurrences (real or imagined) retrospectively.
I said Mary could have become pregnant without sex, with artificial insemination. Science has proven it can happen. You implied that if science could explain things, then it's no longer a miracle and God is not needed. So if Mary could become pregnant by way of artificial insemination knowledge, God is still needed because the knowledge of artificial insemination wasn't known yet. That is what I'm getting at. God knows all the laws.
The good old reverse "Argument from Absurdity" unveiled. Again.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nozzferrahhtoo
Unfortunately it is a very poor argument to point out that science has not beaten death but only managed to prolong life. We are still learning as a species and scientific progress is slow. Just because we can not prevent or beat death now does not mean we never will. It just means we can not now.
Even if we never do then all this proves is that there are limitations to what we can achieve as a species. I am not sure what those limitations have to do with a discussion about religion.
The quality of this argument is so poor as to be akin to trying to disprove the existence of adults by looking only at kids and saying they have not developed the ability to procreate yet.
Quite so, Nozz (btw, hope you enjoy the conference and can perhaps "thread" us afterwards with a brief of the highlights! Do be sure to tell us if god or his son show up and regrow some poor war vet's severed limb, OK?)
Who has EVER claimed that the Evil™ Science Entity will design, invent or uncover literally anything man can imagine? And that it should have ALL been done by now? With nothing left to uncover or improve our technical "resolution" on?
Science per se only proscribes a very reliable step-wise inquiry format to try to answer previously unanswered complex questions, and then possibly, but only possibly, engineers (aka: Applied Science Specialists...) utilizing that new info to advance our abilites or technical capacities. Hypersonic flight, landing on the moon & Mars, advanced medical imaging, disease detection and prevention, and so on.
Interestingly, the inventors of both the computer and the laser, both assured everyone who would listen that there would certainly be no real or widespread use for lasers, and only a few dozen, at most, computers ever made and utilized.
Riiiggghhhttttt...
But it's always in that sticky messy area of testing the various impossibilities and loudly proclaimed events by some ego- and greed-driven people (room temp fusion, for example, or the age of some convenient but faked Chinese fossil find..[turns out it was a good and useful fossil, just not exactly as described. That part of the correction was completely ignored by the ranting Christian denialists...])
The literal believers of the bible, when cornered, defend it solely by saying that the God miracle was only available as "an historical limited time offer!", but then, as soon as we started reliably recording or documenting things, it all reverted to normal time, normal gravity, normal molecular behavior, normal this, normal that.
Any later rational debate that the Chinese and Japanese, so much more advanced and reliable in their early documentation, also preceded the ME Christian events by several centuries, is assiduously avoided and ignored. (As in "no historical record of any large fludds, let alone something that would have entirely inundated them for 18 -24 mo...). These reliable and relatively scientific and logical peoples had worked their way through many of this planet's little inexplicable events, eventually finding perfectly logical explanations for them! Best to send the missionaries in right away, huh?
Such topics are evasively avoided, but with the add-on appropriate insults to the questioner bomb-tossed in to hopefully level the playing field. Unlikey. We're too persistent, as they have found out.
All this documentation occurred contemporaneously as those dehydrated, 'shroom gobbling...
And so... we arrive at today. And yet, in this 21st century, to my utter amazement, we still have those who honestly believe in a literal Noah's Ark, in Noah's wives & sons etc. procreating 1.5 Trillion people, with at least 30 different race genomes, in a mere 2500 years... (), in a 6 day Genesis event, in non-evolutionary species diversification (also called, mockingly, "kinds", as if a giraffe "kind" is to a lion "kind" as a [i]Dalmatian "kind"[/] is to a Pointer "kind"...), of co-existing tame and still existing dinosaurs (huh?), of your prayers being actually answered on a personal level, of the Fludd creating, in a mere few hours, the Grand Canyon, the Amazon river and it's oceanic delta, and so on. Amazing what a little draining fludd water can do to glass-hard basalt in a few hours, ain't it, geologists out there?
(Now, of course yeah, I don't account for a total revision in the godly-rate-of-time adjustment... silly me, huh?)
Sp: it's ether Selectively Convenient or Conveniently Selective! Decisions decisions.
You betcha, and also: all of it; utter toad droppings! Demonstrably so.
What was the degree of opposition toward his belief? Was it something readily acceptable to the people around him? In other words, did his sayings constituted anything as blasphemous thoughts? Also, did this following grow significantly outside his home country?
So who would have artificially inseminated Mary 2,000 years ago? Even if we could prove that is what happened to Mary, who would have done the procedure, other than God?
Like I said, God knows all the laws (laws we don't know yet, dark energy alone proves that much, which we say represents over 70% of the entire universe) So it would be a miracle to us, but to God is just working His stuff. Of course, He can even go beyond that, as He is the Creator.
As to dark energy, I'm surprised, Lantern! You are now officially (oh, and Selectively“... ) utilizing some recent findings of astrophysics and astronomy (true sciences in action) to try to atf* prove God.
Interesting. Btw; When you going to give us the scope and objectives of your upcoming dramatic proof(s) of God?
As to your point, he being the omniscient, omnipotent Creator, I'll ask you again, why does he not EVER come on down, in the form of, say, a talking horse ("I am Mr. Ed, better known to you disbelievers as...God!!")...
...or returning, for just a few hours, my now-deceased but much-beloved father? Or OK: his semi-mortal son, Jesus? Answer: he can't because {obviously...} 1) he doesn't exist, and/or 2) he just plain can't do it! Damn! Too hard to manipulate all them durned pesky subatomic particles, and time as well...
I also hope that when you do, you'll also have to compare and contrast the level of proofy-ness you generate with all of our findings over literally decades of independent reserch. If you choose to totally ignore our logic but promote yours all on it's own, you can anticipate, I'll surely hope, the reasoned responses you'll get from the collectively intelligent cohort, right? One can only be so selective, after all..)
________________________________________
atf* = after the fact. Not "Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms"!
“ = "Selective" in the sense that you usually denounce literally everything that us Ebil™ Sy-Yuhn-Teestás do as regards Evolution, genetics, geology and astronomy.....
All of it: "Impossible and unprovable!" Yup. Just so!
The difficulty of belief is revelant, because the more opposition it faces, the less likely it will be in it's spread.
Again this has nothing at all to do with my point. My point is simply that miracles do not have to be real in order for a belief to spread. It just requires that people THINK the miracles are real.
Given there is no evidence that any actual miracle has occurred this scuppers your thesis instantly. Clearly faith has been spreading for many 100s of years without any actual miracle being performed. If one was, then by all means present the evidence one was.
Again making people think a miracle has happened is more than enough. The miracle does not actually have to have happened. It is like the old Indian rope trick which was never actually performed. Yet many people thought it was. The reason was that the whole trick to the Indian rope trick was to make people think the trick had been done even when it never was. What was found is people would swear they saw it performed. And they would convince others so easily that even people who were not even there were found to be swearing they saw it performed.
We are a gullible species to the point that not only will people believe something that never saw happen, they will actually believe they did see it happen even when they themselves know they were not even there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Lantern
Christianity was something that was readily objected by Israel, and those outside Israel. So the only way it could have spread at all, is if the miracles were evident. That is the research I'm doing.
Bull. As I said above one need only make people think miracles were evident. They do not actually have to be. Even then miracles are not required to make people act and/or believe in the face of opposition. People rebel against oppression and they will believe what they see fit despite of, or even in spite of, any attempts to stop them. Often the very act of being oppressed will make people only believe or act stronger.
But good look with your research. Let us know when it is published. I hope the results are not as vague as your magic experiments on the other thread that you ran out of.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Lantern
I said Mary could have become pregnant without sex, with artificial insemination. Science has proven it can happen.
You are just stating the obvious now, however as I said to you a few times there is a chasm of difference between saying "X COULD happen" and "X DID happen". My active imagination can come up with a wealth of other ways it could have happened too. Does not mean any of them did.
This line of "reasoning" of yours essentially boils down to "It COULD have happened by method X, therefore it DID happen by method X, therefore god did it". This does not even warrant the word "reasoning". It's just nonsense.
You have not even shown there was such a person, or that such a person did become pregnant without sex, so your "reasoning" is flawed even before you get to the insemination nonsense. You are basically fantasising explanations for an event you have not even established ever actually occurred.
As I said though there are plenty of explanations why a randy teen girl would get pregnant and the lie about it in a time and a place where girls were stoned to death for such things.
(God bless the inerrant internet, huh? It's so danged efficient at demolishing old hard-held ideas... Not to mention them danged mammalian biologists, always lurking about and destroying our ancient treasured myths...)
It does not necessarily close off the necessary "duct-work" after all... It's only slightly in the way. Partial male insertion, if you get my drift, with subsequent premature but very forceful ejaculation is responsible for quite a few "miraculous" pregnancies these days!
A common refrain from the girl...("I thought you promised to pull out early! Oh God; what'll I tell my friends???"), were she was indeed gullible to let him even near her with that thing!)
So, yes; if Mary had been a bit frisky before or with Joseph, or had a brief fling with a cute stable boy, even though she was married... (never happens, I know, I know..):
...but thought "What could possibly go wrong?" {NOTE: this was a famous New York City refrain until 9/'11...} but then BINGO: she's preggers with no good excuse except: "It's a miracle!"
Oh and btw, did they even have doctors who even knew about hymen tissue and how to properly diagnostically check for it's intact-ness on Mary? Or were they all relying on the poor girls' frantic and twitchy-eyed statement ("I never did it with anyone else! I swear!")
As in: what's the basis for the intact virginal birth claim? Anyone?
So in fact, this is yet another possible and very plausible crack in the Jesus Armor, generally held to be inviolate simply because "It is Written!"
Unless you guys have some more compelling evidence of her obstetric validity... Yes?
As well, it's been thoroughly documented that conception has often occurred when the hymen was not damaged at all, or is not completely closed-over
True. Interestingly also there is also a documented case of impregnation by oral sex too. The girl in question had oral sex and then suffered a stabbing. The stabbing managed to open a passage way between usually disparate areas of her body and conception occurred.
I have never been 100% sure if that story is true though, but even if it is not it certainly opens up ones mind to how many possibilities are out there.
I also would not be too gone on the baseless claim by Lantern that people at the time had no concept of artificial insemination either. It is not actually a difficult thing to achieve by crude methods and there is no reason to think that people at the time had no concept of what caused pregnancies or what sperm was for.
I see no reason to engage in any of these musings however. A girl who had sex, got pregnant, and then claimed she never had sex.... in a time when some girls who had sex would be painfully put to death.... does not really need much imagination to explain... nor does those who love her going along with the story.
The biggest hole in this guys "reasoning" however is that he is trying to make up explanations for an event he has not even established ever actually occurred outside his fairy tale. We might as well be thinking up explanations for how three pigs were able to construct houses out of straw, mud and brick.
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Even dogs go to heaven I'm told (by Disney™, but heck; who really checks their sources, eh?)
), in a 6 day Genesis event, in non-evolutionary species diversification (also called, mockingly, "kinds", as if a giraffe "kind" is to a lion "kind" as a [i]Dalmatian "kind"[/] is to a Pointer "kind"...), of co-existing tame and still existing dinosaurs (huh?), of your prayers being actually answered on a personal level, of the Fludd creating, in a mere few hours, the Grand Canyon, the Amazon river and it's oceanic delta, and so on. Amazing what a little draining fludd water can do to glass-hard basalt in a few hours, ain't it, geologists out there?
