"You've got to be the DUMBEST smart person I know"

Nobody is moving any goalposts on this side. This thread is about evidence outside of your holy book.

Perhaps this thread should just die because it's clear after 500+ posts that none can be provided.

THIS IS GOLDEN


If anything this is hurting your case, not helping it.

Most of your rebuttal is hot air.

The Case for Christ explains the probability behind the fingerprint evidence. I doubt you ever read it.

I did my best. But have you? I mean it's your neck.

http://www.allabouttruth.org/messianic-prophecy-2.htm

And before you generate any more fairy tale nonsense. The Hebrews of Christ time didn't ever say there was no Christ. Those that didn't follow Christ denied his status but that itself is a confirmation that he lived.

Jesus was 33 upon death. 33 + 30-35 = 63-68 years after the virgin birth it was written down. I even understated it for you.

But why would a 20 year difference even matter? You completely ignored the point of what I was saying in order to nitpick something that you weren't even right about.


I'm not sure what your point is. Many many supernatural claims have been made throughout human history. Lots of them have been debunked. NONE of them have been verified. Here's the important part: Given that information, we should all be very very skeptical of any supernatural claims. Believing the claims that are written down in an old book without having any other evidence for their veracity is silly.

God is hiding from us? All we want is some objective evidence for his existence, and now you're saying he's going out of his way to make sure we can't have it?

Why does Splendour keep pimping the same damn book every post?

And LOL at, "I mean it's your neck."

Great way to spread your message. Congrats.

Why does Splendour keep pimping the same damn book every post?

And LOL at, "I mean it's your neck."

Great way to spread your message. Congrats.

Because I consider it to be an evidentiary book.

And its not possible for everyone here to have read it.

Most are taking second hand opinions on a matter of great personal importance to them.

Faith is an individual decision not a group one.

i have. it's really really weak, actually that book was a major catalyst for my deconversion. i was raised catholic, when i was in high school i started thinking about stuff. my godmother gave me this book and i read it with an open mind. it was terrible, and it's like wow if that's the best they've got that's not very good. the kind of book that is great for empty-headed gullible believers to feel like they

man, saying stuff like that? seriously, kill yourself.

[img]http://www.allabouttruth.org/common/images/messianic-prophecy.jpg[/quote]

BZZZZZZZZz bible stuff NOT PART OF THE THREAD (logically ******ed anyways)

talking snakes, burning bushes and miracles. and unicorns. that's fairy tale stuff

you have no way of knowing that. stuff wasn't written about the guy for 40 years after he died (assuming he existed, there's no way of verifying any of this because there's really no evidence for it aside from its own book and it didn't really get popular anyways for 300 or so years afterwards, which, especially back then is a really really long time.

I'm glad you repeated that. Because it reiterates that you have made this your standard. And I can tell you that I will never satisfy this standard because of its completely arbitrary nature. You know about people who are under self-delusion about their finances or the state of their relationships with other, and how they have the ability to explain away the obvious so that they can maintain their current view of the situation. In fact, nobody but God himself can convince you with the standard you have laid out.

If you really want to know whether God is real, and if you are as open and honest to the possibility as you claim to be, then I have the following advice:

Begin a careful reading of the Bible, starting with the New Testament. Read the stories and get to know the character of Jesus, the things he stands for and the things he stands against. During the process of this reading, pray that God, if he is out there, would begin to reveal himself to you. Find a group of people who are intellectually honest with themselves and each other to pursue this with you. It will help to have a Christian among the group to help clarify points so that you can better understand.

The reason I believe is that I did something like this, and God intervened in my life in a way that I could not describe away. There was no dramatic moment during which I saw the heavens open and heard God speak to me in a voice that sounds a lot like Donald LaFontaine tell me he was out there. Instead, there was an accumulation of ideas and challenges to my understanding of myself and the world around me that culminated in a concession to God that I couldn't get it all figured out, but I have seen enough to trust he's out there looking out for me, and that I accept his call to do what I can to point others toward him. And it all starts with getting to know Jesus.

Really. You haven't proved you read it. Name some of the medical chapter info.

What's really ironic is that I have a Ph.D in mathematics, and I am quite certain I understand more about math that you do. And I can tell you that if you take these ideas to a mathematician who is worth his salt, he will tell you that the application of pure probabilistic principles to this type of argument is pretty laughable.

Sorry, I lapsed back to another argument in this thread that I thought you were repeating. You were pointing specifically to the virgin birth and the previous one was talking about the death and resurrection.

What would it take to "verify" a supernatural event? Just stop and think about it for a moment. What would your tools be? What would your standards of measure be? A naturalistic viewpoint makes it impossible to verify the supernatural. If the supernatural is repeatable, we would call it a natural phenomenon.

There is the essential arrogance of mankind to say to God the creator, "Do it my way."

Why should God leave evidence of His presence in creation? After all it requires faith when coming to God of a religion, so why should be we so arrogant and demand evidence when this is the way it was meant to be, in a faith created existence? I am not trying to validate religion, i just think it's pointless to ask for evidence when we're obviously not going to get any, because God intended this existence on faith, not evidence. And if even any religion has any probability of being true, it is best to put our egos aside and to remain humble and respectful(within limits) because religion is not in the realm of science, and of course we have no way of validating any beliefs, so why bother to even worrying about it? People change their own views, based on their own logic and understanding of the world, not by someone trying to debate with them(talking about religious people). All we can do is speculate, and use our own rationale to deduce the validity of religion, but is not our place to denounce or berate religion/God(as long as someone doesn't use it to harm anyone) because because we have no idea either.

Why should God leave evidence of His presence in creation? After all it requires faith when coming to God of a religion, so why should be we so arrogant and demand evidence when this is the way it was meant to be, in a faith created existence? I am not trying to validate religion, i just think it's pointless to ask for evidence when we're obviously not going to get any, because God intended this existence on faith, not evidence. And if even any religion has any probability of being true, it is best to put our egos aside and to remain humble and respectful(within limits) because religion is not in the realm of science, and of course we have no way of validating any beliefs, so why bother to even worrying about it? People change their own views, based on their own logic and understanding of the world, not by someone trying to debate with them(talking about religious people). All we can do is speculate, and use our own rationale to deduce the validity of religion, but is not our place to denounce or berate religion/God(as long as someone doesn't use it to harm anyone) because because we have no idea either.

I think in many ways you are right. Everything starts with a right attitude toward God. He's interested in developing us spiritually and so his emphasis is on the spirit not the flesh/physical. He's trying to get the message across of how to overcome the world not use the world to validate him. He doesn't need our validation we need his.

Attitude towards him is everything. Gotta have the big three: Love, Reverence and Humility to start the ball rolling. After that all the other ones follow: patience, charity, kindness, hope, etc.

I'll bet you could list more. Problem is, every one of these things could also be said about the Koran and the Islamic religion. You can certainly call this evidence if you want. But it's evidence that gets you nowhere closer to the actual truth when objectively compared to the same types of evidence for other religions.

Then employ your Ph.D skills for a second and explain this to me...

There are 100 different religions. Wait... Skip that. Let's just take the 4 major religions. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism. If I put the names of these 4 religions into a hat, and pick one at random, what are the odds that I will have chosen Christianity on my first try?

Ph.D, right? Then I'm sure you realize there's a 25% chance. Now for another tough calculation. Is 25% > than 50%? I'll defer to your Ph.D, but I think I know enough that it isn't, which means I am an underdog to correctly choose Christianity if that's what I'm trying to do.

But I'll bet that you're going to say that choosing your religion is a non-random process, right? It wasn't an accident that you happen to be a Christian right now, instead of a Muslim, Hindu, or Jew. Alright then. This should be easy for you, because you have a Ph.D in mathematics.....

SHOW YOUR WORK!.

We obviously can't say if he should or should not, but if there is no evidence, then not believing in him makes sense.

How is it arrogant to only believe in that which is evidenced?


How do you know this?

If your answer is "faith" (it is) and you thusly base your belief that 'God intended his existence to be based on faith' on faith, then that's quite a statement.

I've often thought I should get a Ph.D. in something just so that I can bring down the hammer like this during arguments.

I don't know what it would take to verify a supernatural event. Let's just assume for a moment that there is no way it can be done. This would still not be evidence that any supernatural events have actually happened! Furthermore, claims of the supernatural are still overwhelming favorites to be false.


But I'm not telling God anything, I just don't believe he exists. Logically, if he does exist and he is benevolent, then he would want to provide evidence of that existence, especially since belief is a necessary condition for entry into heaven.


Btw thanks for continuing on so civilly in these discussions, I've rather enjoyed them.

No it can't. The bible writing predated the Koran so many of the Koran ideas can only be a copy and some ideas are contrary to Christianity. Mohammed lived in the Middle East where all the Christian/Judaic ideas already floated around.

The "fingerprint evidence" are prophecies predicting Jesus. I don't think the Muslims had prophecies for Mohammed.

The Koran was also not written through 40 people over 1500 years. It was written by Mohammed alone. The bible is a chain authenticating God's concern for human affairs over and over again.

Here is a comparison between the books. You can scroll down to the conclusions if it gets to be too long.

http://www.geocities.com/worldview_3/quranvbible.html

Just lock the thread

THE ANSWER IS NO

There is no evidence for any religion outside its own holy book.

*Yawn* You're missing the point completely. There's chance involved in every aspect of my life, but the application of probabilistic principles in this setting is clearly erroneous.

The particular belief system I hold does *NOT* have an impact on the validity of the belief system (supposing for the moment that there is an objective reality against which to measure the belief systems). So that *I* am a Christian and someone else is not does not make one system more valid than the other.

Exactly my point. You cannot produce evidence for things which you are not equipped to measure. If you want to look for some sort of quantitative measure for something, then you are limiting yourself to only discovering those things which can be quantitatively measured.

I agree. But "overwhelming favorite" is not a proof against because we're working inductively (conclusions based on patterns), not deductively (conclusions based on strict logical inference).

The position is that he has already provided evidence of his existence, but that mankind has turned a blind eye to it. There are many things that can be taken as evidence of God:

1) Our sentience and existence
2) Our (vague) sense of morals and understanding of moral failings
3) Natural laws and phenomena
4) Universally understood logical systems such as mathematics

On the other hand, you can also reject these things as evidence for God. One of the reasons (I believe) God cannot be reduced to a strict set of logical claims and proofs is because God Himself is a relational being. As I put forth before, how do you *prove* that someone loves you?

Thanks. I also enjoy a reasonable discussion. There aren't many outlets in my life where I can have prolonged discussions on some of these topics, especially with those with positions other than my own. It's far different talking about these things in a group of Christians compared to a group of non-Christians.

Why? Please explain. There are x number of religions from which to choose from. Unless you can provide some type of evidence (wow, funny how we're back to the original OP), then you have no compelling reason to think you happen to belong to the right religion. And I certainly don't have any compelling reason to believe you, until you show some evidence!

Saying "You can't prove I belong to the wrong religion, therefore, it is equally likely that I belong to the right religion.", is ridiculous! This is from someone with a Ph.D in math? Where did you go to school? 'Degrees R Us'?

Sorry Aaron, I'm trying really hard not to be insulting. But when you profess to have a Ph.D in mathematics I think such ridiculous comments are fair game. However, the fact remains....

You WOULD be right if you can provide me with some EVIDENCE!!. I'm not asking for much. Anything that objectively shows Christianity to be more likely correct than any of the world's other religions. For some reason, you haven't gotten around to that yet. ???