I liked the 'join us' page where is recommends to say 'god is imaginary' when someone mentions god.
I think when some mentions jesus, we should say 'Jesus was a human sacrifice'. Its undeniable even by a christian. All they can do is equivocate the meaning of Sacrifice and Human. Just quote John 3:16 at them.
Looks to me like the same old "I'm-too-lazy-to- wrestle-intellectually-with-Christian-claims- so-I'll-demonstrate-how-lazy-I-am-by-a-lot of-shallow-arguments" stuff.
As I said before, if one approached quantum physics with the same shallow and lazy "doesn't make sense so it can't be real" approach, then one would not get very far in quantum physics.
I will take one example. Miracles. If we lived in a two-dimensional world and someone drew a circle around us, they would assume we were stuck inside the circle (because they only think in two dimensions). Then along comes a three-dimensional creature and picks us up and places us outside of the circle. Wow! A miracle. The two-dimensional atheists would be saying, "obviously didn't happen because it's impossible." Actually, it was possible and scientifically possible at that, just not in the two dimensions you were assuming. So is it possible that there might be more than three dimensions? (Science says yes). Is it possible that miracles can be perfectly naturally explained in terms of a Being who is not constrained by three dimensions? (Answer: yes, perfectly possible). Would we be able to interact with this Being as creatures limited to three dimensions? (Answer: No, we are limited by our three dimensions), even though that Being is not limited. However, to say that this Being who acts in four or five dimensions is not real because we cannot interact with him is as foolish as saying a three dimensional person is not possible if I live in a two dimensional world. It's perfectly possible, you just refuse to think (mathematically) outside of your own little world. How scientific is that? (Answer: Not very)
I've responded to every proof on that entire website on my blog, if anyone's interested in reading what I have to say. I've also started on Why Won't God Heal Amputees.
john, you are presuming that the only way you know about god, the bible, is really what it says it is. You have no way of verifying that it is has any truth in it besides what you would expect from folklore at all. Whatever criteria you use to verify the bible can be used to verify the Bagavadghita, or the upanishads.
To say that athiests are not very scientific because we exclude the implausible out of hand has some merit, however christians are in the same boat by claiming that miracles are possible with out any proof or evidence except the bible.
If you do your homework in ancient mediterranean religions you will see that there are plenty of parallels and precedents to the bible. Which of them came first? Probably the ones that predate the bible.
Atheists apply the same principles of reasoning to religion that we apply to the rest of our lives. You should do the same. I think it would change your whole outlook on life.
There are also a series of videos at YouTube done by the author of these sites that are interesting to watch. Some have over a million views.
john murphy said: Looks to me like the same old "I'm-too-lazy-to- wrestle-intellectually-with-Christian-claims- so-I'll-demonstrate-how-lazy-I-am-by-a-lot of-shallow-arguments" stuff
Too lazy? Both sites raise interesting and serious questions regarding the apparent behavior of your god.
For example, answer the question 'Why won't God heal amputees'. Seems like s simple enough question to a profound observance. After all, you can find millions of Christian websites and publications discussing how god has healed this persons' cancer, or this persons' ailments, yet god seems to either hate amputees or ignores them. Why is that? Is this a 'lazy' question?
And I'll give you a hint: it has nothing to do with multiple dimensions. Your whole argument is intellectually lazy in the fact that you ignore hundreds of pages of god's interaction with humans in the bible to make your argument that we can't understand the behaviors of a 'multi-dimensional being'. This complicated multi-dimensional being of yours seems to be way too preoccupied with homosexuals and animal sacrifice!
If we lived in a two-dimensional world and someone drew a circle around us, they would assume we were stuck inside the circle (because they only think in two dimensions). Then along comes a three-dimensional creature and picks us up and places us outside of the circle. Wow! A miracle.
It sounds like you're saying that people with limited knowledge will interpret strange, inexplicable phenomena as "miracles". I think this is a good insight. Arthur C. Clark formulated something like this notion in his famous "third law" of prediction: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
This notion dovetails pretty cleanly with most atheist philosophy: we think that many old superstitions and "miracles" were the result of people just not having a sufficient understanding of what was going on in the world. In attempt to learn from this history, and not make the same mistakes twice, we've adopted an intellectual position that says it's OK not to have all the answers. Nowadays, instead of making up baseless myths to explain the inexplicable, we reserve judgment, we test, we investigate... and we wait for a Darwin or an Einstein to come along and discover that crucial insight that makes sense of everything.
Imagine a "flat" Einstein in your two-dimensional world. He observes something seemingly miraculous: a tiny circle appears out of no-where. The circle grows larger and larger, then stops growing, then shrinks and shrinks down to nothing, disappearing. This flat genius notices something about the growth and shrinkage: it wasn't smooth and steady, rather the rate of change was fast when the circle was small and very slow when the circle was large. He does some calculations and realizes in a flash that this growth/shrink curve actually traces a circle. Whoa! He's a flat person who's just discovered something called a "sphere". He can't quite wrap his flat brain around the concept, but he can describe it mathematically and use his Sphere Theory to predict the actions of other spheres that cross through his 2-dimensional universe.
(Of course, I've read Flatland by Edwin Abbott, and I assume you have, too.)
Is it possible that miracles can be perfectly naturally explained in terms of a Being who is not constrained by three dimensions? (Answer: yes, perfectly possible).
Well, no, not really. Miracles are, by definition, things that are not naturally explained. They are suspensions of the natural order. In fact, as soon as you say that some phenomenon can be "perfectly naturally explained", even if this explanation requires an extra dimension (or seven extra dimensions), it's not a miracle any more. It's just a natural phenomenon.
Would we be able to interact with this Being as creatures limited to three dimensions? (Answer: No, we are limited by our three dimensions)
Why not? In your own example above, you indicate that the 3-dimensional can interact with the 2-dimensional. In my example, I show that one can attempt to make sense of the extra-dimensional in a naturalistic way, without throwing up the hands and simply declaring, "It's a miracle!"
I do not care what you Atheists think, no matter how much logic and reasoning you use. I will continue to believe every word of the Bible because my mommy and daddy said it was all true.
And that Qur'an is all full of lies, because the Bible was the first book that I was exposed to because I was born in this Christian Nation called, America.
You Atheists cannot take away my Bible beliefs, no matter what you say, because I can inject multi-demensional quantum physics that cannot be proved to either way, therefore you Atheists are at a stopping point and my multi-demensional god belief has out-stamped your theory of no god.
Please..please do not pull my god belief out from under my feet, I cannot imagine living my life without a belief in a god, I'm a totally useless human being without my Bible god.
Apparently miracles have a habit of showing up just every 4000 years or so.
I wonder how people would live without ever hearing of a god?
How does a deaf and blind person find out about our invented gods?
Did any of you know that a serpent once could talk and a burning bush could talk and a rod can turn into a snake and back into a rod, so thats how quantum physics works, it uses our material things as a tool for it (god) to speak to us...ha...ha..ha mommy...mommy please tell me more about god.
What the site does with christianity is the same thing as is done with quantum mechanics. It tests testable claims. Understand, many people thought quantum mechanics was ridiculous. But -- it made predictions that could be tested through experiment. Those predictions turned out to be accurate. Interestingly, christiany avoids making any testable predictions. But there is one slip. It says believers will be given whatever they pray for. This prediction fails.
An interesting question to which I have two comments: 1. This question can simply be rephrased as, "why won't God be the genie I want him to be?" Answer: Because he is God and we are not (even though we want to be).
2. Second, this question illustrates how illogical we are in asking it. We want to on the one hand be perfectly free beings who make our own choices (which oh by the way is impossible if you approach evolution logically - which most evolutionists do not because they can't handle the intellectual conclusions), but on the other hand when we suffer the consequences of our own free choices (I accidentally cut off my hand with a chain saw), I am now mad at God because he won't save me from my own free choices. Sorry, we can't have it both ways.
John Murphy, please be more specific. Please define what you mean by free will. Your attempt to claim that evolution precludes free will is confusing to me, at best. While you're at it, it might be best to define "self", since that is going to come up no matter what.
The problem with your first statement (in the last comment you made before this one) is a lot clearer. Your ridiculous bible makes the claim that anything you pray for is yours. There is no, "I will not give them what they want" from god - he is unequivocally giving you anything you want, as long as you ask for it. Hence, if you pray and ask for something and do not get it, then your bible is wrong, or your god is wrong. Either way, you lose.
"why won't God be the genie I want him to be?" This is a classic textbook straw man. This is the only way that Christians can deal with a good atheistic argument. Misrepresent it and attack the misrepresentation.
I am now mad at God because he won't save me from my own free choices. Another straw man. Look, if suicide is not a sin why don't Christians kill themselves and get on up to heaven? So for arguments sake, lets say suicide is a sin. Now on 9/11 2001 many people were faced with the decision to commit suicide by jumping to their death or being burned alive or suffocated.
what would you have done John M.? hmmmmmm?
Wouldn't it have been merciful to have just taken those people before they had to make the decision? Using my reasoning, there should not have been anyone jumping out of the towers that day unless they were not a real Christian. And if god treats non-Christians that way, why don't you? What would jesus do? evidently he'll make people decide to burn to death or jump to their death.
We want to on the one hand be perfectly free beings who make our own choices (which oh by the way is impossible if you approach evolution logically - which most evolutionists do not because they can't handle the intellectual conclusions)
As Kyle P. says, can you be more specific about what you mean? We could assume what you mean, but I'd rather have you state it, or better yet, make an argument for it.
If you're pointing out the Problem of Free Will then I agree with you: there's a problem there. But it's not merely a problem for atheists. It's also a major problem for Christians -- at least for Christians who assert an omniscient creator god, who has complete knowledge of both the past and the future.
Personally, I'm attracted to the Compatibilist position on Free Will. It seems to avoid the pitfall of contra-causal free will while still acknowledging our experience of weighing options and choosing "freely". The compatibilist position seems to resolve the dichotomy by synthesizing the two extremes of Determinism and Libertarian Free Will.
I've gathered from some of the comments by regulars to this site that the Free Will topic was recently beaten to death here, before my time. Perhaps it's a can of worms that we shouldn't open...
you want to talk about freewill? I can't get enough. In a little while I'll post links to the freewill dead horse so you all can read through it then we can thrash on it some more!
MURHPY 'I am now mad at God because he won't save me from my own free choices...'
CARR We are no more mad at God for passing by on the other side than we are mad at the people in the Parable of the Good Samaritan who passed by on the other side.
As Scary Jesus pointed out: Matthew 7:7 – Ask, and it shall be given you.
Matthew 21:22 – And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.
James 5:15 – The prayer of faith will heal the sick.
John 14:14 (quoting Christ) – If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.
John 15:7 (quoting Christ) – If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
John 16:23 (quoting Christ) – Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.
1st John 3:22 – And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him…
All these are promises are DIRECT from Jesus and NONE work as promised. Yet, for salvation, one verse from Jesus alone, John 3:16, is held up as proof that sinners can be forgiven by a loving God who sent his only son. This coming from the late Gospel of John while most anything else about salvation is taken from Paul’s letter to the Romans. If the direct speech of Jesus promising over and over again in the verses above have no meaning today and must be rationalized away, WHY IN HELL SHOULD ANY “SINNER” ACCEPT THE PROMISE OF SALVATION!!!! Lets see, one verse coming from Jesus (John 3:16) while a man (Paul) who NEVER saw or heard the earthly Jesus is quoted extensively to prove God via Jesus can save “sinners” from Hell and give them eternal life of bliss in Heaven. Now that makes total sense John Murphy!
If the Jesus statements were used by a marketing company today (without the protection to religion clause), they would be sued for libel and false advertising!
1. This question can simply be rephrased as, "why won't God be the genie I want him to be?" Answer: Because he is God and we are not (even though we want to be).
We're simply noting that if God really does occasionally heal other illnesses or medical problems, as claimed by theists, they must retreat to a position that God's impact is so rare that it is indistinguishable from random chance. However, even this fails because we have no record of an amputee having been healed. This is far lower that statistical healing that God supposedly performs.
This seems particularly troublesome as we know of other living things, such salamanders, that do re-grow limbs by natural means. So when theists say that God works though nature to answer prayers for the sick, why doesn't he use this same natural mechanism to heal human amputees?
(I accidentally cut off my hand with a chain saw), I am now mad at God because he won't save me from my own free choices. Sorry, we can't have it both ways.
I guess people who loose limbs after being hit by drunk drivers or in airplane crashes lost them of their free choice. They should have known better than to drive on the street or fly at that time and date?
Here are those freewill links I promised. Like I said I love free will because it is one of the 'big guns' against god in my view. Especially since congnitive science is advancing to the point that we can un-intrusively and non-destructively study the brain.
This may not be all or the best but its the best I could do with the time I had.
22 comments:
i'm trying to think of a typical christian response. "it doesn't work that way?"
"the bible shouldn't be taken literally. yes, earth is 6000 years old."
compelling if you're open to critically analyzing christianity.
This is a great site. Another good one is:
http://whywontgodhealamputees.com/
Hi John,
I think that is a very well done site and worthy of sound linking in the right panel under "Skeptical Links/Blogs".
I liked the 'join us' page where is recommends to say 'god is imaginary' when someone mentions god.
I think when some mentions jesus, we should say 'Jesus was a human sacrifice'. Its undeniable even by a christian. All they can do is equivocate the meaning of Sacrifice and Human.
Just quote John 3:16 at them.
Thanks Lee.
Done.
Looks to me like the same old "I'm-too-lazy-to-
wrestle-intellectually-with-Christian-claims-
so-I'll-demonstrate-how-lazy-I-am-by-a-lot
of-shallow-arguments" stuff.
As I said before, if one approached quantum physics with the same shallow and lazy "doesn't make sense so it can't be real" approach, then one would not get very far in quantum physics.
I will take one example. Miracles. If we lived in a two-dimensional world and someone drew a circle around us, they would assume we were stuck inside the circle (because they only think in two dimensions). Then along comes a three-dimensional creature and picks us up and places us outside of the circle. Wow! A miracle. The two-dimensional atheists would be saying, "obviously didn't happen because it's impossible." Actually, it was possible and scientifically possible at that, just not in the two dimensions you were assuming. So is it possible that there might be more than three dimensions? (Science says yes). Is it possible that miracles can be perfectly naturally explained in terms of a Being who is not constrained by three dimensions? (Answer: yes, perfectly possible).
Would we be able to interact with this Being as creatures limited to three dimensions? (Answer: No, we are limited by our three dimensions), even though that Being is not limited. However, to say that this Being who acts in four or five dimensions is not real because we cannot interact with him is as foolish as saying a three dimensional person is not possible if I live in a two dimensional world. It's perfectly possible, you just refuse to think (mathematically) outside of your own little world. How scientific is that? (Answer: Not very)
I've responded to every proof on that entire website on my blog, if anyone's interested in reading what I have to say. I've also started on Why Won't God Heal Amputees.
http://brainisignorant.blogspot.com
john,
you are presuming that the only way you know about god, the bible, is really what it says it is.
You have no way of verifying that it is has any truth in it besides what you would expect from folklore at all. Whatever criteria you use to verify the bible can be used to verify the Bagavadghita, or the upanishads.
To say that athiests are not very scientific because we exclude the implausible out of hand has some merit, however christians are in the same boat by claiming that miracles are possible with out any proof or evidence except the bible.
If you do your homework in ancient mediterranean religions you will see that there are plenty of parallels and precedents to the bible. Which of them came first? Probably the ones that predate the bible.
Atheists apply the same principles of reasoning to religion that we apply to the rest of our lives. You should do the same. I think it would change your whole outlook on life.
There are also a series of videos at YouTube done by the author of these sites that are interesting to watch. Some have over a million views.
john murphy said: Looks to me like the same old "I'm-too-lazy-to-
wrestle-intellectually-with-Christian-claims-
so-I'll-demonstrate-how-lazy-I-am-by-a-lot
of-shallow-arguments" stuff
Too lazy? Both sites raise interesting and serious questions regarding the apparent behavior of your god.
For example, answer the question 'Why won't God heal amputees'. Seems like s simple enough question to a profound observance. After all, you can find millions of Christian websites and publications discussing how god has healed this persons' cancer, or this persons' ailments, yet god seems to either hate amputees or ignores them. Why is that? Is this a 'lazy' question?
And I'll give you a hint: it has nothing to do with multiple dimensions. Your whole argument is intellectually lazy in the fact that you ignore hundreds of pages of god's interaction with humans in the bible to make your argument that we can't understand the behaviors of a 'multi-dimensional being'. This complicated multi-dimensional being of yours seems to be way too preoccupied with homosexuals and animal sacrifice!
John Murphy,
If we lived in a two-dimensional world and someone drew a circle around us, they would assume we were stuck inside the circle (because they only think in two dimensions). Then along comes a three-dimensional creature and picks us up and places us outside of the circle. Wow! A miracle.
It sounds like you're saying that people with limited knowledge will interpret strange, inexplicable phenomena as "miracles". I think this is a good insight. Arthur C. Clark formulated something like this notion in his famous "third law" of prediction: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
This notion dovetails pretty cleanly with most atheist philosophy: we think that many old superstitions and "miracles" were the result of people just not having a sufficient understanding of what was going on in the world. In attempt to learn from this history, and not make the same mistakes twice, we've adopted an intellectual position that says it's OK not to have all the answers. Nowadays, instead of making up baseless myths to explain the inexplicable, we reserve judgment, we test, we investigate... and we wait for a Darwin or an Einstein to come along and discover that crucial insight that makes sense of everything.
Imagine a "flat" Einstein in your two-dimensional world. He observes something seemingly miraculous: a tiny circle appears out of no-where. The circle grows larger and larger, then stops growing, then shrinks and shrinks down to nothing, disappearing. This flat genius notices something about the growth and shrinkage: it wasn't smooth and steady, rather the rate of change was fast when the circle was small and very slow when the circle was large. He does some calculations and realizes in a flash that this growth/shrink curve actually traces a circle. Whoa! He's a flat person who's just discovered something called a "sphere". He can't quite wrap his flat brain around the concept, but he can describe it mathematically and use his Sphere Theory to predict the actions of other spheres that cross through his 2-dimensional universe.
(Of course, I've read Flatland by Edwin Abbott, and I assume you have, too.)
Is it possible that miracles can be perfectly naturally explained in terms of a Being who is not constrained by three dimensions? (Answer: yes, perfectly possible).
Well, no, not really. Miracles are, by definition, things that are not naturally explained. They are suspensions of the natural order. In fact, as soon as you say that some phenomenon can be "perfectly naturally explained", even if this explanation requires an extra dimension (or seven extra dimensions), it's not a miracle any more. It's just a natural phenomenon.
Would we be able to interact with this Being as creatures limited to three dimensions? (Answer: No, we are limited by our three dimensions)
Why not? In your own example above, you indicate that the 3-dimensional can interact with the 2-dimensional. In my example, I show that one can attempt to make sense of the extra-dimensional in a naturalistic way, without throwing up the hands and simply declaring, "It's a miracle!"
The scared fundy apologist answer:
I do not care what you Atheists think, no matter how much logic and reasoning you use. I will continue to believe every word of the Bible because my mommy and daddy said it was all true.
And that Qur'an is all full of lies, because the Bible was the first book that I was exposed to because I was born in this Christian Nation called, America.
You Atheists cannot take away my Bible beliefs, no matter what you say, because I can inject multi-demensional quantum physics that cannot be proved to either way, therefore you Atheists are at a stopping point and my multi-demensional god belief has out-stamped your theory of no god.
Please..please do not pull my god belief out from under my feet, I cannot imagine living my life without a belief in a god, I'm a totally useless human being without my Bible god.
Apparently miracles have a habit of showing up just every 4000 years or so.
I wonder how people would live without ever hearing of a god?
How does a deaf and blind person find out about our invented gods?
Did any of you know that a serpent once could talk and a burning bush could talk and a rod can turn into a snake and back into a rod, so thats how quantum physics works, it uses our material things as a tool for it (god) to speak to us...ha...ha..ha mommy...mommy please tell me more about god.
John Murphy:
What the site does with christianity is the same thing as is done with quantum mechanics. It tests testable claims. Understand, many people thought quantum mechanics was ridiculous. But -- it made predictions that could be tested through experiment. Those predictions turned out to be accurate. Interestingly, christiany avoids making any testable predictions. But there is one slip. It says believers will be given whatever they pray for. This prediction fails.
"Why won't God heal amputees?"
An interesting question to which I have two comments:
1. This question can simply be rephrased as, "why won't God be the genie I want him to be?" Answer: Because he is God and we are not (even though we want to be).
2. Second, this question illustrates how illogical we are in asking it. We want to on the one hand be perfectly free beings who make our own choices (which oh by the way is impossible if you approach evolution logically - which most evolutionists do not because they can't handle the intellectual conclusions), but on the other hand when we suffer the consequences of our own free choices (I accidentally cut off my hand with a chain saw), I am now mad at God because he won't save me from my own free choices. Sorry, we can't have it both ways.
John Murphy, please be more specific. Please define what you mean by free will. Your attempt to claim that evolution precludes free will is confusing to me, at best. While you're at it, it might be best to define "self", since that is going to come up no matter what.
The problem with your first statement (in the last comment you made before this one) is a lot clearer. Your ridiculous bible makes the claim that anything you pray for is yours. There is no, "I will not give them what they want" from god - he is unequivocally giving you anything you want, as long as you ask for it. Hence, if you pray and ask for something and do not get it, then your bible is wrong, or your god is wrong. Either way, you lose.
"why won't God be the genie I want him to be?"
This is a classic textbook straw man. This is the only way that Christians can deal with a good atheistic argument. Misrepresent it and attack the misrepresentation.
I am now mad at God because he won't save me from my own free choices.
Another straw man. Look, if suicide is not a sin why don't Christians kill themselves and get on up to heaven? So for arguments sake, lets say suicide is a sin. Now on 9/11 2001 many people were faced with the decision to commit suicide by jumping to their death or being burned alive or suffocated.
what would you have done John M.? hmmmmmm?
Wouldn't it have been merciful to have just taken those people before they had to make the decision? Using my reasoning, there should not have been anyone jumping out of the towers that day unless they were not a real Christian. And if god treats non-Christians that way, why don't you? What would jesus do? evidently he'll make people decide to burn to death or jump to their death.
Matthew 7:7 – Ask, and it shall be given you.
Matthew 21:22 – And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.
James 5:15 – The prayer of faith will heal the sick.
John 14:14 (quoting Christ) – If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.
John 15:7 (quoting Christ) – If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
John 16:23 (quoting Christ) – Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.
1st John 3:22 – And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him…
Yet not one amputee healed, ever.
John Murphy,
We want to on the one hand be perfectly free beings who make our own choices (which oh by the way is impossible if you approach evolution logically - which most evolutionists do not because they can't handle the intellectual conclusions)
As Kyle P. says, can you be more specific about what you mean? We could assume what you mean, but I'd rather have you state it, or better yet, make an argument for it.
If you're pointing out the Problem of Free Will then I agree with you: there's a problem there. But it's not merely a problem for atheists. It's also a major problem for Christians -- at least for Christians who assert an omniscient creator god, who has complete knowledge of both the past and the future.
Personally, I'm attracted to the Compatibilist position on Free Will. It seems to avoid the pitfall of contra-causal free will while still acknowledging our experience of weighing options and choosing "freely". The compatibilist position seems to resolve the dichotomy by synthesizing the two extremes of Determinism and Libertarian Free Will.
I've gathered from some of the comments by regulars to this site that the Free Will topic was recently beaten to death here, before my time. Perhaps it's a can of worms that we shouldn't open...
you want to talk about freewill? I can't get enough. In a little while I'll post links to the freewill dead horse so you all can read through it then we can thrash on it some more!
MURHPY
'I am now mad at God because he won't save me from my own free choices...'
CARR
We are no more mad at God for passing by on the other side than we are mad at the people in the Parable of the Good Samaritan who passed by on the other side.
Nobody thinks those people really existed.
As Scary Jesus pointed out:
Matthew 7:7 – Ask, and it shall be given you.
Matthew 21:22 – And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.
James 5:15 – The prayer of faith will heal the sick.
John 14:14 (quoting Christ) – If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.
John 15:7 (quoting Christ) – If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
John 16:23 (quoting Christ) – Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.
1st John 3:22 – And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him…
All these are promises are DIRECT from Jesus and NONE work as promised. Yet, for salvation, one verse from Jesus alone, John 3:16, is held up as proof that sinners can be forgiven by a loving God who sent his only son. This coming from the late Gospel of John while most anything else about salvation is taken from Paul’s letter to the Romans. If the direct speech of Jesus promising over and over again in the verses above have no meaning today and must be rationalized away, WHY IN HELL SHOULD ANY “SINNER” ACCEPT THE PROMISE OF SALVATION!!!! Lets see, one verse coming from Jesus (John 3:16) while a man (Paul) who NEVER saw or heard the earthly Jesus is quoted extensively to prove God via Jesus can save “sinners” from Hell and give them eternal life of bliss in Heaven. Now that makes total sense John Murphy!
If the Jesus statements were used by a marketing company today (without the protection to religion clause), they would be sued for libel and false advertising!
1. This question can simply be rephrased as, "why won't God be the genie I want him to be?" Answer: Because he is God and we are not (even though we want to be).
We're simply noting that if God really does occasionally heal other illnesses or medical problems, as claimed by theists, they must retreat to a position that God's impact is so rare that it is indistinguishable from random chance. However, even this fails because we have no record of an amputee having been healed. This is far lower that statistical healing that God supposedly performs.
This seems particularly troublesome as we know of other living things, such salamanders, that do re-grow limbs by natural means. So when theists say that God works though nature to answer prayers for the sick, why doesn't he use this same natural mechanism to heal human amputees?
(I accidentally cut off my hand with a chain saw), I am now mad at God because he won't save me from my own free choices. Sorry, we can't have it both ways.
I guess people who loose limbs after being hit by drunk drivers or in airplane crashes lost them of their free choice. They should have known better than to drive on the street or fly at that time and date?
Here are those freewill links I promised. Like I said I love free will because it is one of the 'big guns' against god in my view. Especially since congnitive science is advancing to the point that we can un-intrusively and non-destructively study the brain.
This may not be all or the best but its the best I could do with the time I had.
In this one here, Scott and Jason outlast the rest of us and I think Scott deserves a medal.
Resolved! God Caused The Problem of Evil/Needless Suffering.
This is a bit like part two of the above conversation.
People Can't Choose to Believe....
This is Joes Offering.
Gods Gift of Freewill
And this is the link to DC's free will tag where all articles labeled with free will will appear.
LInks tagged with "Free will"
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