10 Questions For Every Christian

[Anomaly]

[quote name='-L-' date='27 June 2010 - 11:55 PM' timestamp='1277693729' post='2135199']
Well, first off we should respond in a spirit of charity unlike the manner in which this person made their video which was obviously meant to shame and embarrass Christians and those that believe in God.

1- Why won't God heal amputees?

Well lets start of by saying we don't know if he hasn't.

But I think we first need to examine the purpose of miracles. Jesus didn't perform miracles for performing miracles' sake. He performed miracles so that people would BELIEVE in Him, and believe in the one who had sent Him. If we are essentially able to scientifically prove that divine intervention reproduced a limb then what room is there for faith or belief? It is merely acknowledging the fact that a person who previous was missing a limb now has acquired one again, and a logical answer to this would be that a divine power restored it, a power that works supernaturally. So, in my view, God performs miracles to increase our faith and the faith of others by the testimony of those who witnessed it. One could pose this sort of question to a variety of scenarios. Why doesn't God talk to us directly rather than speak through prophets etc? Well first off He has talked to us directly as Jesus Christ, but God works in mysterious ways. Ways that truly don't make sense to many people, but in the end I think we will be satisfied knowing why things happened the way they did.
[/quote]It's probably not just your hand that was tired...

If Jesus thought it was necessary to perform miracles so people would BELIEVE in Him, and in God, then why not perform miracles now? Why multiple miracles and not just one to prove to some? It's sophistry to escape logical thought for "god's mysterious ways".

Humanity can deny the obvious, including miracles. The Apostles sure were able to do so. So either the miracles were pointless, or non-existent, or God is witholding miracles for some reason.

[SaintOfVirtue]

[quote name='penguin31' date='27 June 2010 - 10:48 PM' timestamp='1277704118' post='2135240']
The reason for the public gaining the perception that "All Christians believe the Earth was created in 6 days, a few thousand years ago" has a LOT to do with a rather vocal wing of evangelical Protestantism, particularly here in the United States, that decided that the Bible, cover to cover and top to bottom, was a literal history of humanity, choosing to ignore the history OF the Bible all the way until the printing of the King James version. Because that sect, while small, is easily among the most vocal - they begin to shape people's perception of Christianity as a whole.
[/quote]
My first thought while viewing the video was actually, "Protestant propaganda...<about minute and a half later>...not protestant...Atheist...interesting."


[quote name='Hassan' date='27 June 2010 - 11:39 PM' timestamp='1277707190' post='2135248']
Secular history most certainly does not back the Bible's account of Exodus. As I recall, it doesn't even support the idea that the Jews were enslaved in Egypt. It certainly doesn't support the idea of a mass escape. Neither do ancient Egyptian records.
[/quote]
False!

The successor of Pepi II, Merenre II, was Pharaoh for just over a year according to the Turin King List. His reign was marked by plague, death, destruction, and misfortune, as described in Exodus and backed by french historian, Nicolas Grimal's work. The plague supposedly only affected the Nile Valley, and took place at around the time of Exodus (depending on which biblical chronology theory you prescribe to).

[quote name='Gregorius' date='28 June 2010 - 10:51 AM' timestamp='1277747487' post='2135364']
The implication made by the man in the video suggests that people of faith are either willfully ignorant or delusional. Empirical evidence simply does not support that, that's all.
[/quote]
I concur.


Apparently it is possible to educate yourself into imbecility. Some people think the have educated themselves to surpass God their maker. It is no longer the Apple that causes men to fall into pride, it is books.

[quote name='Anomaly' date='28 June 2010 - 06:35 PM' timestamp='1277775339' post='2135599']
It's probably not just your hand that was tired...

If Jesus thought it was necessary to perform miracles so people would BELIEVE in Him, and in God, then why not perform miracles now? Why multiple miracles and not just one to prove to some? It's sophistry to escape logical thought for "god's mysterious ways".

Humanity can deny the obvious, including miracles. The Apostles sure were able to do so. So either the miracles were pointless, or non-existent, or God is witholding miracles for some reason.
[/quote]
Jesus did heal amputees! Remember the guard in the garden whose ear Peter severed, but Jesus healed?

Perhaps the reason no miracles have been preformed recently is that it would do no good. Every-time God lifts his finger and touches some suffering individual, modern society praises the advancements in technology or some other scientific break through, instead of God. And when they can't directly point to a specific explanation for the phenomena they ignore it or discredit as a joke. How often have you heard of the incorruptible bodies of several saints well over fifty and in some case a hundred years old still intact without embalming? In addition to these reasons, perhaps the main reason skeptics don't witness miracles is that in their heart of hearts they have already convinced themselves of God's nonexistence, so a miracle would not sway them anyways. After all, science has all the answers, but if it can't explain it today perhaps it can explain it tomorrow.

[ardillacid]

[quote name='Hassan' date='28 June 2010 - 01:59 PM' timestamp='1277747988' post='2135371']
Yes and no. On the aggregate there is a correlation between dogmatic religious belief and lower intelligence or lack of religious faith and higher intelligence.
[/quote]
I'm sure you wouldn't mind linking to the study that you forgot to cite

[Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam]

[quote name='Anomaly' date='28 June 2010 - 10:35 PM' timestamp='1277775339' post='2135599']
Humanity can deny the obvious, including miracles. The Apostles sure were able to do so. So either the miracles were pointless, or non-existent, or God is witholding miracles for some reason.
[/quote]

I would agree that humanity can deny the obvious and convince themselves that things are when they are not or vice versa. However, I disagree with your three fold possible implication on the topic of miracles. I think there is another possibility (I explain why at the bottom). But first let me state that I believe that miracles are instantiations of God's Grace/mercy.

This may get a bit technical so hold on, but this is the background for where I am coming from (this paragraph may be skipped if you want but it allows for a deeper understanding of my point). Ok so Grace uplifts and fulfills Creation. It is not simply some plane of existence that is laid on top of Nature and does not penetrate every facet of it. Rather, Grace permeates all things in Creation (without destroying them or destroying the fact that it is uniquely distinct from Nature even though it is united to Nature and is Nature's fulfillment). Grace is God's gratuitous gift of Himself and as such is infinite. However, we being finite, created beings would only experience such infiniteness finitely or in a way that is in accord with our finite natures (since we are the limiting factor). That being said grace takes on a component of the Natural insofar as Grace uplifts the Natural and thus can direct it and move it; however, its goal and its origin (and that which is responsible for its continued subsistance) can be seen to have no Natural cause and must have a Formal or Divine Cause. In this way, one can convince himself that natural events are in no way significant, uplifted, or permeated with an absolute term (the result of a supernatural action that can be seen to have no Cause in Nature. ex. Abstract/Universal beauty- we see that statues participate in beauty but that we, ourselves, did not create that beauty in that statue but can only reflect it or allow it to move through us and impress it on that statue or on other things we create so that such things participate in beauty in a similar manner that we do since we have literally impressed a form into an object.) One can deny that there is Beauty (which is obviously an absolute term and has no cause in Creation); however, the fact remains that once one encounters the True, the Good, or the Beautiful one is changed, whether one acknowledges it or not and pretends such an absolute cause does not exist. One necessarily has to reject it or accept it and is changed by the encounter. Thus even those who have not heard the Gospel and don't know of God's self-revelation to the world but still seek the True, the Good, and the Beautiful can in some anonymous way accept grace, though they obviously do not know who such an abstract cause is but rather that He is. Now that all that is out of the way....

[quote name='SaintOfVirtue' date='29 June 2010 - 01:28 AM' timestamp='1277785718' post='2135686']
And when they can't directly point to a specific explanation for the phenomena they ignore it or discredit as a joke. How often have you heard of the incorruptible bodies of several saints well over fifty and in some case a hundred years old still intact without embalming? In addition to these reasons, perhaps the main reason skeptics don't witness miracles is that in their heart of hearts they have already convinced themselves of God's nonexistence, so a miracle would not sway them anyways. After all, science has all the answers, but if it can't explain it today perhaps it can explain it tomorrow.
[/quote]

One can deny that things are when in fact they are. I used the example of Beauty before. One can deny that there is Truth, there is Good, or that there is a Beauty which is reflected in creation and which we do not create. The reason I have gone into this long explanation is because it is my belief that ultimately, graces are pure mercies, pure graces. They are not necessarily for conversion nor is their purpose to have God be acknowledged and (as some have suggested in other topics) thus have creation praise God for eternity. Miracles almost seem to necessitate a faith in order to acknowledge them. If one does not believe that miracles can happen then when one smacks him in the face he will use every excuse and reason not to believe it because his world is small. He does not permit himself to believe such things. It is not the dogmatist who believes in miracles; rather it is the dogmatist who does not since he has declared that they do not exist. The who one has not made such a declaration is truly free to believe or not to believe and to ponder whether a miracle has occured in a specific instance. Just as one would believe and old woman if she said she saw a burglar break into her neighbor's house, he should believe her if she said she has seen an angel. (That is unless one is undemocratic and and elitist and as such writes off the opinions of little old women or again has locked himself in as the dogmatist who has declared that miracles do not exist.) However, should something unexplainable happen, such as during communion a priest is running out of hosts and there are many people left in line and so he starts breaking the hosts in half but there still aren't enough but somehow he does not run out or a group of people go out to give food to the homeless and end up giving out more food than they initially brought with them. Such things can be written off as misjudgments or miscounting. One can write off a miracle as a shadow or a trick of the light, but it seems to me that they are pure mercies that do not need to be acknowledged. If more food is given out than is brought, then one can see love or a miscount. It is a choice, but either way a tremendous mercy/grace has been granted. Miracles happen. Miracles are not pointless. Miracles are pure mercies and grace given out of love and happen and change the world whether one chooses to admit they happened or not (Dogmatist vs. Miss Virginia across the street).

The natural question then is why then do some people see miracles and others who suffer not experience miracles and recover limbs and what not? I reply with read Job. This is another question entirely and would require much more typing. The importance and acceptance of suffering is one of my favorite topics but I have been too wordy as it is.

[Gregorius]

The Mass is a miracle.

Yeah, I went there.

[Winchester]

Play [i]his[/i] game. Ask him if he supports eugenics. If he doesn't, he's either an idiot or he's not an atheist.

[Hassan]

[quote name='notardillacid' date='30 June 2010 - 02:15 AM' timestamp='1277878523' post='2136088']
I'm sure you wouldn't mind linking to the study that you forgot to cite
[/quote]
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W4M-4TFV93D-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=db2ee09bae0195cc1ecbd026da77245c

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W4M-4SD1KNR-1&_user=10&_coverDate=04%2F29%2F2008&_alid=759868596&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_cdi=6546&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=1&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=bdb3ca48b21fdb2959f6f8ce4b6001de

[Hassan]

[quote name='Winchester' date='30 June 2010 - 11:42 AM' timestamp='1277912558' post='2136185']
Play [i]his[/i] game. Ask him if he supports eugenics. If he doesn't, he's either an idiot or he's not an atheist.
[/quote]


Why?

[SaintOfVirtue]

If he doesn't support eugenics then it means he must have some view of what is good and evil.

[Archaeology cat]

[quote name='SaintOfVirtue' date='29 June 2010 - 05:28 AM' timestamp='1277785718' post='2135686']
False!

The successor of Pepi II, Merenre II, was Pharaoh for just over a year according to the Turin King List. His reign was marked by plague, death, destruction, and misfortune, as described in Exodus and backed by french historian, Nicolas Grimal's work. The plague supposedly only affected the Nile Valley, and took place at around the time of Exodus (depending on which biblical chronology theory you prescribe to).
[/quote]
I can't say I've heard of a chronology for Moses and the Exodus that puts those events during the end of the Old Kingdom/beginning of the First Intermediate Period. Though I fully admit that the First Intermediate Period is not my area of expertise, and I've been out of the field for a couple of years now. I can't remember if I've read Grimal's work or not (I probably have). I'll have to give it a look and look at his sources, too. Wonder what the translator thinks of it. . . I'd thought most work about the Exodus had focused on the New Kingdom, so it would be interesting to see this perspective.

[Winchester]

[quote name='Hassan' date='30 June 2010 - 02:38 PM' timestamp='1277923125' post='2136260']
Why?
[/quote]
Without an eternal being of some kind, there is no innate dignity of mankind. A reason for not supporting eugenics (among other things) must be complex. No atheist can refer to good or evil as real standards. To have morality, one must, at least, have a philosopher's god. I believe there are practical reasons to oppose eugenics. In my experience, those who claim and champion atheism aren't willing to take their supposed beliefs to the logical conclusions. These types are usually anti-theist. Anomaly's a great example. They have some axe to grind and they think the term "atheist" will upset people. They're stuck in angry adolescence as regards religion--they don't know poo, but they've found a cool term to bandy about and make people angry with it. Evangelical atheists are idiots and cowards. A true atheist would support human intellect in making survival of the fittest even more effective. Killing off (or at least sterilizing) those with serious genetic defects, would minimize those defects. We couldn't do this helter skelter, of course. We'd have to figure out the cost/benefit to mankind. The same with diseases like HIV. Would it be better to quarantine or kill? We'd probably keep a Magic Johnson type for celebrity purposes, but the average infected would need to be put down. The same with Stephen Hawking. Anyone with a problem would need to have their worth to society outweigh the expense of keeping them around. Any nonsense about "Beethoven had half a brain and his mother had webbed feet--what if we had killed him?" can be pushed aside. There is nothing but chemical reaction moving us--someone else would have written Beethoven's croutons. We might have to wait a while, but it will happen.

Slavery: acceptable to an atheist unless practical reasons are brought out. Or emotional ones. Emotions can rule the atheist life just fine. But if there's to be the supposed rationality, then it's going to be hard and cold. Most just don't have the guts.

[SaintOfVirtue]

+1

[Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam]

[quote name='Winchester' date='01 July 2010 - 10:36 AM' timestamp='1277991391' post='2136538']
Without an eternal being of some kind, there is no innate dignity of mankind. A reason for not supporting eugenics (among other things) must be complex. No atheist can refer to good or evil as real standards. To have morality, one must, at least, have a philosopher's god. I believe there are practical reasons to oppose eugenics. In my experience, those who claim and champion atheism aren't willing to take their supposed beliefs to the logical conclusions. These types are usually anti-theist. Anomaly's a great example. They have some axe to grind and they think the term "atheist" will upset people. They're stuck in angry adolescence as regards religion--they don't know poo, but they've found a cool term to bandy about and make people angry with it. Evangelical atheists are idiots and cowards. A true atheist would support human intellect in making survival of the fittest even more effective. Killing off (or at least sterilizing) those with serious genetic defects, would minimize those defects. We couldn't do this helter skelter, of course. We'd have to figure out the cost/benefit to mankind. The same with diseases like HIV. Would it be better to quarantine or kill? We'd probably keep a Magic Johnson type for celebrity purposes, but the average infected would need to be put down. The same with Stephen Hawking. Anyone with a problem would need to have their worth to society outweigh the expense of keeping them around. Any nonsense about "Beethoven had half a brain and his mother had webbed feet--what if we had killed him?" can be pushed aside. There is nothing but chemical reaction moving us--someone else would have written Beethoven's croutons. We might have to wait a while, but it will happen.
[/quote]

Dostoevsky noted that with atheism all things are permissible, including patricide.

[SaintOfVirtue]

Atheism is the epitome of short-sighted, illogical reasoning. It is a position that intellectually defenseless from any moderate amount of introspection and consideration. Atheism should be added to the list of theological fallacies as #1.

[Hassan]

[quote name='Winchester' date='01 July 2010 - 09:36 AM' timestamp='1277991391' post='2136538']
Without an eternal being of some kind, there is no innate dignity of mankind. A reason for not supporting eugenics (among other things) must be complex. No atheist can refer to good or evil as real standards. To have morality, one must, at least, have a philosopher's god. I believe there are practical reasons to oppose eugenics. In my experience, those who claim and champion atheism aren't willing to take their supposed beliefs to the logical conclusions. These types are usually anti-theist. Anomaly's a great example. They have some axe to grind and they think the term "atheist" will upset people. They're stuck in angry adolescence as regards religion--they don't know poo, but they've found a cool term to bandy about and make people angry with it. Evangelical atheists are idiots and cowards. A true atheist would support human intellect in making survival of the fittest even more effective. Killing off (or at least sterilizing) those with serious genetic defects, would minimize those defects. We couldn't do this helter skelter, of course. We'd have to figure out the cost/benefit to mankind. The same with diseases like HIV. Would it be better to quarantine or kill? We'd probably keep a Magic Johnson type for celebrity purposes, but the average infected would need to be put down. The same with Stephen Hawking. Anyone with a problem would need to have their worth to society outweigh the expense of keeping them around. Any nonsense about "Beethoven had half a brain and his mother had webbed feet--what if we had killed him?" can be pushed aside. There is nothing but chemical reaction moving us--someone else would have written Beethoven's croutons. We might have to wait a while, but it will happen.

Slavery: acceptable to an atheist unless practical reasons are brought out. Or emotional ones. Emotions can rule the atheist life just fine. But if there's to be the supposed rationality, then it's going to be hard and cold. Most just don't have the guts.
[/quote]

Yes, there are a lot of intellectually cowardly atheists. Christopher Hitchens is an excellent example. I am welcome amongst a pretty diverse group of people on my campus, from the Asian Christian fraternity to the Muslims, but one group I'm persona non grata with is the local Secular Students Association. That's for a number of reasons but one if them is because at a school sponsored religion forum I criticized the 'new atheist' movement for being 'as obstinate and dogmatic as most religious fundamentalists'. I used Chrittopher Hitchens as an example. He constantly asserts that he is not a relativist. That he believes in objective standards of right and wrong, but never explains how this is possible.

Nevertheless, I don't agree with your conclusions. Survival of the fittest is a mechanism that helps ensure the 'progress' of the species. It isn't anything that is necessarily of any value in itself. But even if it were, it is difficult to say for sure what constitutes the 'most fit'. There isn't some static, objective standard because our environment is constantly changing. Would you propose killing off everyone with the Sickle-Cell gene? Carrying that gene may be seen as a genetic defect. Unless, of course, Malaria became a worldwide problem a few centuries down the line. Then it's a pretty beaver dam helpful genetic benefit.

A pure rationalist can oppose slavery. As the Soviets found out when they tried to use Gulag slave labor to usurp the West, slavery is economically inefficient.

I don't believe in God and I'd oppose everything you recommend here. And it has nothing to do with right or wrong. It's because your proposing drastic, and possibly irreversible, changes to very complex systems (like the gene pool) that we still really don't understand. Humanity is complex and I'd have serious doubt about our ability to do any cost-benefit analysis on the scale you are proposing that is really at all meaningful or helpful.