Why is it people find resurrection such a hard idea to accept?

Didn't Star Trek copy God when it came up with it's idea of a transporter machine?

Isn't a transporter machine a bit like a resurrection?

How come we can imagine and do everything now but God couldn't do anything in the past?

Don't you have to imagine doing something before you can do it?

Show me a working transporter that can transport me from the earths surface to a spaceship and you will have an atheist converted.

Is misé Tompakee™

I can't show you one except possibly in scripture. You could consider Paul's transport to the 3d heaven or John's Revelation as a type of transportation.

But isn't beaming someone just an advanced manipulation or regathering of matter?

We could be working towards imagining and doing the things that God has already done.

You could also show me one in Harry Potter books where they use the "flue network" to go to Diagon alley. Does not mean that it is true...it's just a book....just a story...just like the bible.

Is misé Tompakee™

In several 100 years time, with new technology, scientists may be able to bring people back from the dead.

If God existed, he could do whatever he liked, so he could resurrect someone if he wanted. That doesn't mean that he would or has. Hes probably got far more important things to do than waste his time doing fancy miracles, which could be easily faked by magicians. If he wanted people to believe I'm sure he could come up with something only God can do, after all he knows everything.

I wouldn't want a man to bring me back from the dead.

Read 1 Corinthians 15. God does better than merely bringing people back from the dead into the same old same old.

Why would God bring people back from the dead different from what they first where. Wouldn't it be less effort to create them the better way in the first place.

I don't know. But isn't it like a promotion?

The evil angels left their ranks didn't they?

And they tried to lure people into leaving their's through a lie.

Maybe the people who get back into their ranks (God's line/order) get a promotion.

Study the sky some time. You can't see it every day but there are days when you see funnels or beams of light from heaven.

An interesting perspective though it doesn't prove anything:
http://www.helium.com/items/1883887-...ven-looks-like

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You don't have to make up your mind immediately on some things like that just think about it.

I'm a big sky watcher and I think there's a connection. It doesn't mean I can prove it at this time. Rather like science. They have a lot of hunchs that they can't prove today. It doesn't stop them from mentioning them though.

Yes, splendour, biblical resurrection and human teleportation are quite similar. They are both fictional man made ideas which violate the laws of science.

Notice how nobody actually prays to captain spock to be beamed up, and if they did, you would consider them a bit nutty.

Yet, there is the same amount of evidence that there is a real captain spock waiting to beam you up as there is for a god waiting to resurrect you.

So final?

I don't think we have the whole book on the laws of science. IOW our laws of science are incomplete.

Science isn't finished is it?

I think Rodenberry stole a subliminal idea from God. He might have read the bible on resurrection and turned it into the Enterprises' transporter machine.

Captain Kirk and Spock and Bones and Sulu and O'Hura didn't think twice about entrusting themselves to a man operated machine and I suspect if a new machine came out today nobody would have any trouble today. We already entrust ourselves to airplanes. We believe what people say about their trips but nobody wants to believe Paul or John. Instead we make up excuses like they were hallucinating or never lived, etc., instead of believing them.

of course not. it will never be complete. but we know how teleportation would theoretically work. the person would be torn apart (killed) and sent as a stream of a trillion trillion atoms to another location to be re-assembled with incomprehensible precision, all of this done at the speed of light. and then somehow, the person is reanimated. there are lots of things that might be theoretically possible that we will never do, another example, tearing a hole in space/time itself and passing through it to somewhere else in the universe and some-when else in time.

maybe! fiction inspiring fiction is quite common.

wow...

if you see someone tomorrow who told you they rode an airplane, you can believe them, because there is a staggering amount of evidence that airplanes are real, including the fact that you can see them flying around and ride one yourself. there is no need to examine this further.

if you see someone tomorrow who told you they witnessed a resurrection, or any other event that defies the laws of nature, you must first ask the question, "which is more likely, that this person has witnessed a suspension of the laws of nature in their favor, or that they are mistaken."

then, you must also consider that eyewitness testimony is the lowest form of evidence, and that's from a direct witness. the "eyewitness" evidence for resurrection is in the form of a 2000 year old game of textual 'telephone' which is considered the absolute lowest form of evidence that could ever be conceived.

of course god could provide the same evidence for resurrection as we have for airplanes, as he did in biblical times when resurrection was a banality, but i guess god got bored of showing us his miracles.

anyone who believes in biblical resurrection shows the propensity to believe absolutely anything they are told. you should be ashamed of yourself for making this airplane argument in earnest.

I think atheists won't go the course so they don't get the evidence.

I believe a lot of theists have the evidence personally through their own experiences and testify about it but experience isn't easily transferable.

The Word of God is called a seed. A seed takes time to grow and metamorphosizes and could merge into different types for different purposes.

You want some type of lab proof but God's way is faith and staying the course because it's a growth course.

God imo is not interested in worldly proofs. He's interested in working very specifically with people.

It takes time to make the grade from being "religious" to a personal relationship with God.

Finding God
http://www.mysteryofgod.net/html/finding_god.html

I agree with tompakee, and would like to add:

wtflolsplendourcrazyments

false. i was a christian before i was an atheist. i got plenty of evidence, that now, as someone who has progressed beyond a juvenile view of the world, i know to not be evidence at all, but mere coincidence.

an unemployed christian prays to god for a job and after a few weeks they find one. "god answers prayers, he gave me a job!"

a christian prays to god for their friend with cancer to be cured. the chemotherapy works and the friend recovers. "god answers prayers, he healed my friend!"

i have one story from my youth that was particularly striking to me at the time. in high school i was on the golf team. during tryouts one year, i was having a tough time on the course, and just before facing a particularly long putt i started praying. i made the improbable putt!

i had never forgotten about this moment, and about a year later, i was on a retreat with my youth group out in the woods. we were instructed by our youth leader to go out in the woods and find something that shows us god's presence. most of the kids brought back sticks and rocks and things like that, and gave half-baked correspondence with god.

my find was much better. on my trip out in the woods i prayed for god to navigate me. after a short time of walking, i bent down to tie my shoe, and right before my eyes, miraculously, there was a golf ball lying there, practically shouting to me. needless to say, i was incredibly moved by this, as were the rest of my youth group, who said the retelling of my story gave them chills.

ever since freeing myself from the shackles of religion, i still run into these coincidences and examples of things 'magically' working out. i've meditated and stargazed and felt the same overwhelming spirituality that i felt when praying with my youth group. one difference between then and now is that i've rejected god and laugh at the idea of his existence.

the experiences and testimony of believers are essentially real; tying them to a supernatural deity is an invention of the mind. we are pattern seeking creatures and if we go out and look for evidence of god, we will find it, but lurking behind your supernatural explanation is the real explanation.

Isn't it a miracle we are pattern seeking creatures?

If we didn't seek patterns then we couldn't use our environment to survive.

no, it's not a miracle. it's an artifact of our brain's evolution from the reptilian brain to the human brain.

our pattern seeking helped us survive on the plains of africa. now, it helps people like you find the image of jesus burned into a piece of toast.

isn't my golf ball story good, though? ranks right up there with any evidence that a theist could ever present.

Rly? I've never studied pieces of toast before.

But you just might have shown God's foreknowledge.

He knew human brains were evolving so He communicated concepts to people through symbolism. Understanding symbolism is an attribute of one of our earlier brain systems. The limbic system iirc.

if God wanted to communicate with humans, he could of done it in a way which was obviously God, rather than make fancy shapes on toast.

You're guaranteed to find patterns in anything if you look close enough, it doesn't mean that someones communicating with you

here's some symbolism



congrats splendour, you win. i will never engage your unlettered ideas again, for i need to save this small vestige of sanity that i've got left.

Your story makes no sense to me.

The youth counselor directing people to go out and find something sounds immature to me.

Did you do this when you were ten?

That wasn't my point.

I couldn't care less about toast pictures.

The fact that your mind is orderly enough to recognize patterns is not something I think can evolve from random physical forces. This is the point I am making.

....umm, prove it?