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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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See, if I chose to I could go there, and verify it's existance. Same goes for what's going on over there... I could, if I chose, go verify it for myself.
Exactly what Christians claim about their first-hand experiences. "Go over there" and experience it. Otherwise, don't complain about the "plane fare" or other hurdles.
I have just as much right to assert to you that Myanmar doesn't exist as you have to assert that God doesn't. Both are accessible to experience in principle.
If you're going to throw a radical skepticism in my face about my first-hand experiences, then I respond in kind. You have no reason to think that your "first hand" experience of Myanmar is veridical. You have no reason to think that even your own inner experiences, such as of your own pains or mental states, are veridical. If we're going to play the skepticism game about first-hand experience, we can all play at that game.
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rrrADAM
climber
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I was once a born again Xian, just as confident as you are now, so you argument that you know somehting I don;t doesn't hold water.
You aren't going to address the numerous items I have raised, are you?
Fair enough... Just remember, Denial is NOT a river in Egypt.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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Pure and utter bullsh#t, whether you believe it or not. If that happened, it would be documented in medical journals all over the world, as well as trumpeted by every appologist the world over.
Bull shit!
So, you are either calling me a bold-faced liar, which is itself BS because I am not, or you simply don't understand the experience.
The healing did not take place in a doctor's office, so of course there's nothing for a doctor to publish. As I noted earlier, miracles are no laboratory events. They are rips in the normal causal fabric. And we DID take my sister to the doctor immediately afterward just to have her checked out. He found a small, round scar in the back of her throat, where the tip of the yucca leaf had punctured it after almost severing her tongue in half. He said it looked to him like an "old puncture wound." When we told him what had just happened, he said that the scar was consistent with the story, and my sister still has the scar back in her throat. Her tongue, however, was completely healed.
Call BS all you want. It happened. I saw it. My whole family saw it. When we returned from the doctor, they were still trying to get all the blood out of the carpet.
Say what you will, but you can't change my mind because I was there. End of story.
If your world view cannot even accept the POSSIBILITY of such events, then you have a pathetically limited world view.
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rrrADAM
climber
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The healing did not take place in a doctor's office...
When we returned from the doctor... Yea, that's not a contradiction.
Yes, I am calling you a bold faced liar (or a TROLL), simply because I cannot believe that someone can be so deluded, and because of your own words.
So... If I told you that Odin came to me on his flying 8 legged warhorse, while I was on 3rd Pillar of Dana Mountain, and told me that there was no such thing as Jesus being the son of God, since his son is named Thor, would you believe me? Or would you call me a bold faced liar?
If your world view cannot even accept the POSSIBILITY of such events, then you have a pathetically limited world view. You got me there... My world view is based in reality, thus it is limited to reality. No fantasy here. You, however, believe in "magic".
You really should stop...
You're embarrassing yourself and him.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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Fairytales, nothing more.
You all suffer from the same delusion: If there is ever error, then every "similar" person must also be in error.
Comparing me to Mormons is a huge laugh, and I do.
Comparing a life-flight rescue with what I saw is pathetic and reveals your determination to believe your own lies.
I saw, with my own eyes, my sister's tongue severed virtually in half. I personally dragged her back off of the yucca leaf she was skewered on. I personally helped her into the house, as she spilled massive amounts of blood all over the carpet. And I personally saw the horrible wound with my own eyes. I also personally saw the tongue perfectly whole minutes later.
No fairytale. Plain and simple. Lie to YOURSELF any way you want to in order to dismiss something that would be troubling to your limited and pitiful world view. But I saw what I saw.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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Yea, that's not a contradiction.
Yes, I am calling you a bold faced liar (or a TROLL), simply because I cannot believe that someone can be so deluded, and because of your own words.
Uhhh... strange one... let me try to make this very...
very....
very....
simple for you.
My sister's tongue was healed at my grandmother's house, in her bathroom, with the family gathered around. After that we went to the doctor to have her checked out, because she had lost a LOT of blood.
Now I see for myself the sort of "looking for contradictions" that seems to find so many of them in the Bible. You are determined to believe a lie, but there is a truth staring you flat in the face.
You can call me a liar if you want. If that's what it takes for you to maintain your world view, then I say you are pathetic and not even approaching intellectual honesty. How dare you ever refer to ANY Christian as stupid or ignorant? YOU intentionally choose ignorance rather than grapple with the truth.
For shame!
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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My world view is based in reality, thus it is limited to reality.
Your world view is based on lies, as you are now lying to yourself in order to escape the facts.
Think about this. You don't know me at all. You have no reason to call me a liar. What you could have done instead is to say to yourself, "If there is the slightest possibility of this being the case, I should really check it out. I'll email this guy and get to know him a bit. Maybe there's more to this story than should be instantly dismissed. After all, he CLAIMS to be an eyewitness to something amazing. Let's see if there's anything to it."
But, no, you call truth "fantasy" because you have a DEEP bias.
Honestly, I am sorry for you. I'm sure you feel the same way about me. The difference is that I know what I saw, while you actually KNOW nothing about it at all.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Walla Walla, WA
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Actually, your attempt to paint me into a contradiction was so lame that you should be embarrassed. ANYBODY with a shred of reason could look at the last half-dozen posts and clearly see that I was not contradicting myself in anything LIKE the way you cast it.
Your determination to build false cases for yourself is really tragic, and you're doing it in public.
At least be intellectually honest and fair in your discussions.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Here's one issue:
"If God is omniscient and therefore knows beforehand as an eternal truth each choice (action) that each human will decide upon. If this is the case, then humans cannot "freely" choose (act) otherwise than the way in which God knows they will. (And if the do act contrary to God's knowledge, then God cannot be omniscient.) If God knows humans' sins before they commit them, and they must occur according to God's knowledge, then how can humans avoid those sins, and how can humans be said to have free will."
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Gary
climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Oh, oh.
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cintune
climber
the Moon and Antarctica
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So I guess there's no chance that in all the excitement you saw a lot of blood (even tiny mouth wounds bleed like crazy) and imagined the whole "half-severed" thing? I mean, that would be the most likely explanation. Got a picture, or do we just have to take your word for it? Adrenaline plus an irrational belief system equals affirmation of said belief system, happens all the time. And how old were you? Your compatriot in faith 777 had a similar traumatic life-changing event at an early age, seems to be a pattern for the Jesus intoxicated.
But go ahead and believe whatever you want, dude. Just stop with the condescending defensiveness, because no one cares. People who make their living thinking about these kinds of things are also known as charlatans, and worse.
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Trad climber
Will know soon
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Wes, I like how you and some others ask straight forward questions and the same with yo comments.
I have a question for any and all.....why is it so important how old the earth is. I've read the Bible a ton and it's not really an issue at all. Jesus never talks about it. Who cares, really ? Jesus said that the whole of everything is summed up in these two things.
1) Love God
2) Love your neighbor as yourself.....and obtw....everyone is yo neighbor. :D That's It.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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So, if there isn't flinstones reality, we're not automatically going to hell? It's okay that things happened at different times?
Yabba-dabba-DO!
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Here's another one:
"If God has complete foreknowledge of everything that will happen, and is also omnipotent, then He must have organized with His power all things to happen the way in which He has foreknowledge of them happening. If this is the case then how can it be maintained that humans have free will?"
Well...?
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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i wish you youngsters would lay off the senseless bickering.
i wonder if lynne is gobee's mommy.
climbera5: you are up against an age-old christian dilemma--attempting to reason out something which is essentially a mystical experience. my advice: don't even try. saint augie, thomas the q, neither of them, by thinking, increased their stature one jot. jesus told them they wouldn't, and they should have listened to him. i love the legend about augustine, walking along the beach, encountering what proved to be an angel trying to pour the ocean, bucket by bucket, into the hole he had dug in the sand. a zazen angel, i'm, sure.
"if i really wanted to get rich, i'd found a religion."--l. ron hubbard to a convention of fellow science fiction writers in the early 50s. the remark would haunt him all his life.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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with his anecdote about his forgotten, stillborn brother, i think largo did a good job of outlining what is naturally ours as human beings. his use of the word "background" perhaps echoes, whether intentionally or not, the astrophysical discovery of detectable "background" radiation--everywhere--supposedly left over from the big bang. i don't mean to confuse things, but it's a good metaphor, as long as we keep it metaphorical.
so, we have this "background" connection to our loved ones, to each other, to all of usually struggling, sometimes triumphant, life. in a way, it offers a connection, not a real cheerful one for most tastes, but a real and natural one. the dead are with us. i know this too from personal experience. all is not lost, snuffed out, extinct. i like to use the word "adumbrate"--it casts a shadow forward to us. in a way, it's a kind of peanut gallery. whatever the situation there, it does seem to pay some attention to life here in the present.
if you look at nonchristian cultures, you'll see plenty of it. what westerners call "chinese ancestor worship" is just an awareness and reverence for this adumbrating peanut gallery. the ancient romans had a terrific word for departed souls. they were "shades". the traditions of mesoamerica deliver their ancient awareness of these things--influenced certainly by their frightening preoccupation with human sacrifice--in the emotionally rich day of the dead. if largo's family had set a place for tommy every year, perhaps things would have been more comforting.
as i said, i think this is public property, but like the forest service, they're telling us we have to buy an adventure pass. that comes with christianity, where we forget our natural heritage, beat our breasts in guilt over a mythic original sin, and then enter the trumped-up scenario of sugary heaven versus the eternal pain of hell, either/or, nothing inbetween. not just that kinda lonely, kinda sad, but in its way kinda comforting awareness of a common mystery, but a compulsory, and IMO, sick and insane substitute. i think we should forget the substitute and pay more attention to that real background. i think we might find ourselves making a bit more progress on it than we have in 2000 years of letting george (jesus) do it.
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Trad climber
Will know soon
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Cheap shot Tony B. ...... what do you gain by that ? Doesn't even relate to what I said. Jess askin'. It's about Love Dude. It's the only thing that will last......even beyond the rock.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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don't think it's that cheap, lynne. you don't seem to have even the idlest curiosity over anything that can't be found in the bible, and the words beauty and truth were mysteries to you, although you claim to love words.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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this thread has been going in such a strange direction...
madbolter1 is in a quest for truth, and since truth is essentially a philosophical concept he has settled in on a course of thought along which he would establish what the truth is...
...I think, somewhat unfortunately, no philosophical approach is unique, that is, there are many ways to define truth, and to establish the validity of those definitions. It is the problem with philosophy, that it is essentially unprovable. In the end we have a set of logical propositions whose axioms we choose to suit our proofs.
The construction of the concept of God, take the christian construct, essentially makes it impossible for us to objectively experience God. The nature of miracles, as madbolter1 described above, are transient and depend on the experiences of the witness to testify as to their truth. There are few miracles that would pass a rigorous examination on the basis of anything physical. But part of the very nature of the construction of a miracle is that they are unique acts of God, not reproducible, and probably not documentable, except through witness.
Similarly, God has a number of very interesting attributes that prevent us from directly sensing him. Instead, we have all learned that our experience of God is subjective, something that we learn to identify within ourselves. Various institutions of christian religious practice allow varying degrees of freedom in interpreting those personal experiences, the Catholic church deals with this very differently then, say the Congregationalists, etc...
The Catholic church has probably thought about these issues the longest, I am intrigued by there stance on evolution, that the "body" is subject to natural laws, but that there is something "ineffible" introduced in the body at the moment of conception that makes us "human."
Finally, we all learn that we cannot understand God, ultimately.
In the end we are left with an idea... and a God that can only be experienced subjectively. God can no more be put under a microscope for examination than to be logically dissected. In the end we have faith and belief.
It seems absurd beyond imagination that madbolter1 or anyone else could make a serious philosophical argument regarding the existence of God. The OP title is not about a philosophical argument because that is not "why so many people believe in God."
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Trad climber
Will know soon
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Tony Bird, How in the ...... (yo fill in the blank) would you know what I think Dude ? Have we ever had a discussion, shared ideas and thoughts ?
As to your beauty and truth comment. Go back and read your post. It was Vague writing. lynnie knows a bit about beauty, truth, life, death, love, peace, joy, patience, people, the beauties of this planet, the foibles of the humanoide, the spectacular feeling of being alive and climbing.....I rest my case :D
Edit: beautifully penned Ed Hartouni.
I do have a bonafide miracle I'll share later. Then yo all can figure it out and tell me why it ain't ....:D
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