Prayer is useless?

[Green_Manelishi]

...just as many of us find ourselves chuckling at the inability of certain believers to logically debate the subject.

We are debating and arguing; you are contradicting. As many of us have written ... oh wait .. did you SEE me write it? Then maybe I did not and someone else is writing and claiming to be me?

Anyway, the evidence for God, Jesus Christ, Creation, etc. is there. The Bible contradicts nothing seen in the natural world and very nicely explains it; nothing in the natural world contradicts what the Bible says.

 

[Soggy]

That's fascinating Soggy. The writer claims to be Peter but some scholars question whether or not it was actually Peter. Some say it was 'x' and other scholars say "no, it was Q". Why not simply assume the writer correctly identified himself. Perhaps we should call into question every other book ever written unless we personally witnessed the alleged author actually pen the text? Well that would be absurd; we accept that it was written by the alleged author unless there is a reason we don't want to accept it. Then we search for, or invent, a reason to question its validity.

You've got to be kidding, right? We should just accept that the author is who he says he is? A book that has influenced so many? We should just say, "oh, sure, it must be him...he said so" even though history may indicate otherwise?! Shouldn't you investigate the text that you *live your life by*? I choose to believe what history can teach us and while everyone cannot agree on who *did* write it, there is a lot of concensus on who *didn't.* Almost every account of the history of the bible indicates that it was written down decades, if not over a century after Jesus died. As I said before...ever play the game of telephone?

 

[H2Andy]

Do you think it's reasonable to think that a creator who created the universe for his own purpose rather than ours might be a bit put off by the folks who repeatedly turn their noses up at him and insist on having everything their own way?

this is a-priori reasoning: it assumes the existance of a creator who created
the universe for his own purposes

Mike, the latest biblical scholarship is that none of the writers of the gospels
knew Jesus. read the gospels. none of them claim to.

don't you think that would be a great selling point? "Brothers as sisters, I spoke
with Jesus personally, and he said to me "xyz""

not there.

why not?

John has some hints, but everybody agrees that John was the last gospel to
be written, and JOhn would have been close to 90 by the time it was written,
a very unlikely age in that time period. also, internal stylistic shifts
are pretty clear that John was written by two separate authors, and then
combined later (or perhaps re-written later, with passages added, the
most famous of which is chapter 21, which almost everyone agrees
is a much later addition)

as to the claims of being "Peter," this was a common device at the time,
meant not to deceive, but to add authority to the text. it's hard for us
to understand, but that's the way it was back then.

basically, we have NO EYEWITNESS account of Jesus's life, even in
the New Testament.

this isn't fatal. what the authors did was gather the various events of
Jesus' life they knew, plus whatever written materials they had, and
recorded it for a specific audience. there must have been quite a few
of these Gospels around.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_ntb1.htm

 

[MaxBottomtime]

This thread proves that prayer is useless. I've been praying for it to end for days! :

 

[TheYellowSubmarine]

Anyway, the evidence for God, Jesus Christ, Creation, etc. is there. The Bible contradicts nothing seen in the natural world and very nicely explains it; nothing in the natural world contradicts what the Bible says.

Hahaha...

Anyway, I... hahaha!... sorry, I meant... hahaha!
I have to stop reading this thread so I can breath... hahaha! :lol:

Ok, one quick comment:

In a well ordered universe, complete with astounding complexity, many subjects including Christianity and creationism can be discussed and argued logically. Logic is ordered; complex systems are ordered. It all "just happened" is not logical because it "just happening" is a statistical improbability.

Given enough chance anything that is even REMOTELY possible becomes overwhelmingly PROBABLE. For example your chance at winning the lottery is unbelievably small, but if you bought millions of tickets, it becomes almost impossible *NOT* to have a winning ticket. The universe is far big enough for life to have evolved somewhere based purely on physics principles. There are somewhere between 10^22 and 10^24 stars in the universe.
I see the argument that "god just existed and always has" just as valid as "the universe just began"

 

[Green_Manelishi]

You've got to be kidding, right? ... Shouldn't you investigate the text that you *live your life by*? ... Almost every account of the history of the bible indicates that it was written down decades, if not over a century after Jesus died. As I said before...ever play the game of telephone?

No, I am not kidding.

I have investigated just as you claim to have. So called 'inconsistancies' etc fail when fully examined.

The Bible covers much more ground than the life of Jesus Christ so your statement about decades, etc. is irrelevant. None of the text of the Bible can be disproven via secular history or science; and a not insignificant portion of secular history (and science) has been mentioned in the bible long before such 'superstituous' men would have had any knowledge about what they were writing. Additionally, considering the time frame over which the Bible was written, and the wide range of authors, it is statistically improbable that so much writing could have remained in agreement unless it was indeed what it is claimed to be.

The single biggest reason there is such a desire to invalidate the bible is because it is viewed as a major threat to human pride and arrogance.

 

[H2Andy]

The single biggest reason there is such a desire to invalidate the bible is because it is viewed as a major threat to human pride and arrogance.

only if you believe what the Bible says is true.

otherwise, the Bible is meaningless.

the Bible is not a threat to me because I do not believe it is the word of God.
it is like any other mythological work of antiquity.

some parts of the Bible, however, are historical, and i am very interested
in those, particulalry, the life and teachings of Jesus, whom i consider
a radical thinker who would be HORRIFIED at what Christianity has become.

how do you think the man who kicked over the stalls on the Temple would
react when he comes into your church and sees the collection platters
being passed around?

i don't think he'd approve.

 

[dherbman]

Hahaha...
Given enough chance anything that is even REMOTELY possible becomes overwhelmingly PROBABLE. For example your chance at winning the lottery is unbelievably small, but if you bought millions of tickets, it becomes almost impossible *NOT* to have a winning ticket. The universe is far big enough for life to have evolved somewhere based purely on physics principles. There are somewhere between 10^22 and 10^24 stars in the universe.
I see the argument that "god just existed and always has" just as valid as "the universe just began"

It works both ways. The known 'universe' is but a drop in the ocean of infinity. As you argue that this lends weight to evolution, I argue that it backs up the probability that there is a God.

 

[Green_Manelishi]

Given enough chance anything that is even REMOTELY possible becomes overwhelmingly PROBABLE.

Yes, somewhere millions of monkeys are working on shakespeare.

Please point out a single observable example of evolution. Do not tell me about the fossil record; it contains no interim lifeforms. And a wastefull process like evolution would have left a trail of failed lifeforms a mile wide. Yet, no interim have been found. Oh, still looking? Do not tell me about spotted moths; adaptation within a species is not evidence that one animal can morph over time into a completely different lifeform. Don't tell me "it must have" despite the evidence that it did not (look at the fossil record).

 

[H2Andy]

It works both ways. The known 'universe' is but a drop in the ocean of infinity. As you argue that this lends weight to evolution, I argue that it backs up the probability that there is a God.

the bottom line is, we don't really know

prior to the Big Bang, there is no observable phenomena to tell us what
the universe was like

and if there is a universe outside our own, we have no way of knowing
(at least yet) what that is like

so basically, there's two answers to how the universe came to being:

1. we don't really know; and

2. God created it

i take 1, being the more honest one, and also since 2 can neither be
proven nor disproven.