Do you believe in God (16 Viewers)

[Roverbhoy]

++ [ originally posted by mikhail ] ++

I don't know if it was ever doctrine. I'm nearly sure they've discarded it at this stage. The Pope couldn't imagine a God with a sense of humour ...planting all that evidence just to make fun of us with the Archangels!

That's it , I now have a mission...to find this out...where is that google button?:cheesy:

This goes back to a debate between Gray and me as to how completely God controls the Universe. I subscribe to the theory that He merely made the whole thing, wound it up and set it going. Gray reckons He controls the trajectory of your urine as it heads for the toilet bowl (or not!).

Ahhh, this reminds me of the joke about writting your name in the snow...in your girlfriends hand writting.:dontcare:
Are you... sorry... Gray... telling me that it was actually God holding my...I mean the guy in the jokes... you know what... and that it's Gods handwriting.....hope God was a she that day:dontcare:

 

Buy on AliExpress.com

[Roverbhoy]

++ [ originally posted by Roverbhoy ] ++



Maybe the Big One tosses a coin to see who will win, just as I do when wondering if Celtic will beat Rangers this season

You know...after reading the posts about God and chance, etc, I was wondering if anyone has read "The Dice Man" by Like Rheinhart, and while we're at it "The Search for The Dice Man".

The Dice Man is one of my all time favourite books, and if you have read it, how would this stand against religious belief?



Good grief...I'm quoting myself...what does this mean?

 

[IncuboRossonero]

To answer your thread:

No .. but I believe in Keyser Soze.

 

[Roverbhoy]

++ [ originally posted by IncuboRossonero ] ++
To answer your thread:

No .. but I believe in Keyser Soze.

Now that's a bad dude if ever there was one

 

[Roverbhoy]

++ [ originally posted by Roverbhoy ] ++

Good grief...I'm quoting myself...what does this mean?

I've just figured it out....all by myself.
Don't get drunk in front of the computer....much better in the nuddy bar




Dooh...I've done it again:dontcare:

 

[gray]

++ [ originally posted by Roverbhoy ] ++
Try "Wrinkles in Time: The Imprint of Creation" by Smoot and Davison....

Thanks, i'll check it out

++ [ originally posted by Roverbhoy ] ++
If I'm not mistaken "celebasy" is a relatively new thing in the Church...a few hundred years old...remember the Borgas and the nepotism exercised by the Pope to his children...one of the reasons it was introduced, as well as the theory of loving God so much that they could love no other fully if "married" to God first....as well as the cost to the Church of supporting reverend fathers wifes and children

I don't understand the reasons for celibacy.

++ [ originally posted by Roverbhoy ] ++
what are fossils?

There's too many hoaxes and too few clear-cut 'fossils' to prove anything.

The most notable hoax was Piltdown Man, ‘discovered’ in England from 1908 to 1912. This comprised a human skullcap plus the lower jaw of an orangutan, the teeth of which had been stained and filed to make them look human and match the size of the teeth in the upper human jaw. Although the hoax was poorly done, it fooled the establishment and was probably the most quoted ‘evidence for evolution’ for around 40 years, until 1953, when the fraud was exposed.

Another huge hoax field has been the way in which scores of deformed humans were exhibited as ‘ape-men’ or ‘ape-women’ in circus sideshows from the early 1800s for over a century, with no known scientific refutation of the frauds so perpetrated.

The desperate need of evolutionists to find a missing link has also contributed to some inexcusably gross scientific boo-boos. The most notable of these was Nebraska Man. A pig’s tooth, found by Harold Cook in 1922, was proclaimed by the eminent evolutionist Dr Henry Fairfield Osborne5 to belong to the first anthropoid (man-like) ape of America, which he named Hesperopithecus (‘western ape’). The Illustrated London News for June 24, 1922, printed an artist’s impression of the tooth’s owner as an upright-standing ape-man, showing the shape of his body, head, nose, ears, hair, etc., together with his wife, domestic animals, and tools.

This highlights the fact that fossils of so-called ‘hominids’ are often only fragments of bones which, when combined with a huge dose of imagination, are transformed into ape-men. Another factor is that ‘hominid’ fossils are sufficiently rare that many researchers have never actually handled one, so that many scientific papers on human evolution are based on only casts or published photos, measurements and descriptions.

++ [ originally posted by Roverbhoy ] ++

Perhaps the fact that there is a King James Bible and a Douay Bible could explain this.

Aren't they two independent translations with wording and spelling being different. Also differences such as Revelation and Apocalypse and the number of books and parts in each being different

Yes, they're independent translations, but I continually find myself mentioning the fact that the original Hebrew and Greek versions remain consistent and unchanged. The translations are merely for people who don't know Hebrew or Greek, but they don't undermine the validity of the original documents.

++ [ originally posted by Roverbhoy ] ++
Uh?
Hmm... if God was proven to exist then there would be no need for Faith, just acceptance...this would defeat the need to believe without proof of existance which is one of the prerequisites for entry into Heaven is it not?

I pretty much said something similar; that God can't be proven empirically.

++ [ originally posted by Roverbhoy ] ++
will a non-believer such as I be allowed in, even after an exempliary life ( I wish), albeit without God?

An exempliary life? Yes, if you've lived a perfect life, then you will go to Heaven. Unfortunately, nobody can possibly live a perfect life, so we need to be redeemed.

++ [ originally posted by mikhail ] ++
Gray reckons He controls the trajectory of your urine as it heads for the toilet bowl (or not!).

I never said that. I was saying that God doesn't leave the world completely to his own devices. God is consistent, so he set in place the laws of physics that control the trajectory of your urine, but I never said that he's not watching all that happens. Perhaps God said "Okay, I'm gonna control the trajectory of all things that move, but I'll do them in a set way so that you weak-minded humans won't get confused".

++ [ originally posted by mikhail ] ++

So how does all that explain the black, white and oriental strains of humanity without evolution? Sometimes old stories are just that - old stories.

Black, white, yellow people are all the same. The genetics between the average Swede and the average Korean differ by a single percent or less, most of which has to do with appearance.

Ask a surgeon who's looked inside dozens of people from different nationalities, he'll tell you that humans are all the same. People's skin from different places on Earth looks different...so what?

++ [ originally posted by mikhail ] ++
I agree. God is not human-like, and so the "God made man in his image" story is just wishful thinking. Gender is an animal thing, a physical thing. God is neither.

I think God is referred to as He, and the Father, because His character alludes closely to that of a human father.

++ [ originally posted by mikhail ] ++
Now, AFAIK, anyone who means well can get into Heaven.

Not true.

++ [ originally posted by mikhail ] ++
Did God build free will (or as I see it, uncertainty) into the universe?

Yes, God did give us free will. Why would God want to make clockwork toys that bow down to Him 24/7 ? He wants us to love and worship out of our own free will, but with free will comes the consequences, of which we are all well aware.

 

[Roverbhoy]

++ [ originally posted by gray ] ++

I don't understand the reasons for celibacy.

Snap

There's too many hoaxes and too few clear-cut 'fossils' to prove anything.

The most notable hoax was Piltdown Man, ‘discovered’ in England from 1908 to 1912.

Yeah Piltdown man was a cracker, but you don't judge the Church by peodophiles or financial crisis's...you judge it on your own experiences, or on the patent evidence of what it is attempting to do, or represent....not the human aspects which are indemicaly flawed...these are not the true Word.
I myself have unearthed fossils from rocks...they look pretty good to me although I can't, without doubt, say that they are millions of years old, only that I hit the rock with my hammer and there, inside, was a fossil

The desperate need of evolutionists to find a missing link has also contributed to some inexcusably gross scientific boo-boos. The most notable of these was Nebraska Man. A pig’s tooth, found by Harold Cook in 1922, was proclaimed by the eminent evolutionist Dr Henry Fairfield Osborne5 to belong to the first anthropoid (man-like) ape of America, which he named Hesperopithecus (‘western ape’). The Illustrated London News for June 24, 1922, printed an artist’s impression of the tooth’s owner as an upright-standing ape-man, showing the shape of his body, head, nose, ears, hair, etc., together with his wife, domestic animals, and tools.

I pretty much think that the modern anthropologist has rejected the concept of the missing link...modern science is much more sophisticated and credable in discovering fakes....although it still happens....National Geographical's article on the Chinese flying lizard is a perfect example...although it was "found out". I'm sure Mickhail would have something to say about this aspect of your post

Yes, they're independent translations, but I continually find myself mentioning the fact that the original Hebrew and Greek versions remain consistent and unchanged. The translations are merely for people who don't know Hebrew or Greek, but they don't undermine the validity of the original documents.

I think I'll challenge this statement...but tomorrow...I'm afraid the Carlsberg is getting the better of me (5% proof...I'm a sad sad person)...I'm thinking of the scrolls of the Bible found in North Africa which predate those used to copy the Bible in Greece...which contained differences....you know when someone interupts you when you are, say, typing something, and when you return to your work you look for the word you stopped at....but when it's proof read, it's the wrong word you started back at and you've missed out three sentences...this was found.....but that's for another day[/QUOTE]

An exempliary life? Yes, if you've lived a perfect life, then you will go to Heaven. Unfortunately, nobody can possibly live a perfect life, so we need to be redeemed.

I'm scr*wed then:down:



I'm sure our Irish friend will comment on the other items....see ya guy

 

[Majed]

++ [ originally posted by mikhail ] ++

I have to say about the Adam and Eve story, consider that it suggests we're all decended from two people. Consider the British royal family - inbred as you please, and completely barmey. Consider that Noah took some 6 (ish?) people into the ark, culled from this already inbred population, and then these six people decended to every person on Earth.

So how does all that explain the black, white and oriental strains of humanity without evolution? Sometimes old stories are just that - old stories.

There's a limit to evolution i belive. you can't compare the differences between human races with differences between a human and an ape!

In The Quran, it's mentioned several times that disobediant humans were turned into Apes and Pigs!

I suspect that we are in fact subject to fate - the clockwork model of the universe I mentioned earlier comes into play again. I may well be wrong. Did God build free will (or as I see it, uncertainty) into the universe?

The way I see it goes like this: If I make a decision, and am then placed in exactly the same position again, will I make the same decision? I think I would - I am what I am.

He did, but everything that we do is already written and known by God.
yeah, he also gave us a brain to use to try and make the better choises. There are also distractions.. all these are tests. you have to decide.

what do you mean by placed exactly in the same place....there would be personal experiences after the first time. you could change. but if you mean, hypotheticaly, in the exact same position and nothing has changed, then "yes" i believe you would make the same one.

 

[mikhail]

++ [ originally posted by IncuboRossonero ] ++
No .. but I believe in Keyser Soze.

:LOL:

 

[mikhail]

++ [ originally posted by gray ] ++
There's too many hoaxes and too few clear-cut 'fossils' to prove anything.
...Another factor is that ‘hominid’ fossils are sufficiently rare that many researchers have never actually handled one, so that many scientific papers on human evolution are based on only casts or published photos, measurements and descriptions.

Casts are quite respectable evidence, and many people at the forefront of paleontology are actually involved in the excavations, and people check theories against the fossils in museums - that's why we keep them!

Modern scientists are far better equiped to deal with hoaxes, with a huge number of dating techniques (no, not that kind of dating - paleoanthropologists are usually quite clueless when it comes to this ) and genetic tools helping us discern real from fake, mistakes from real fossils.

++ [ originally posted by gray ] ++

++ [ originally posted by gray ] ++
God is consistent, and his character is consistent, so perhaps the 'laws' of gravity and physics are just our analysis of the perfectly consistent way that he controls things.

I never said that. I was saying that God doesn't leave the world completely to his own devices. God is consistent, so he set in place the laws of physics that control the trajectory of your urine, but I never said that he's not watching all that happens. Perhaps God said "Okay, I'm gonna control the trajectory of all things that move, but I'll do them in a set way so that you weak-minded humans won't get confused".

Changing our story, eh? I'm the one championing God setting the laws of physics in place here! I don't see the need for God to make everything move, when he could creat this beautifully complex system. Have I convinced you?

++ [ originally posted by gray ] ++
Black, white, yellow people are all the same. The genetics between the average Swede and the average Korean differ by a single percent or less, most of which has to do with appearance.

Ask a surgeon who's looked inside dozens of people from different nationalities, he'll tell you that humans are all the same. People's skin from different places on Earth looks different...so what?

Modern man is thought to have emerged between 100,000 and 150,000 years ago. That's according to genetic tests. Wow, Asians are only 1% differant from us genetically? Chimpanzees are a whisper over 2% differant. That's not that much, IMHO.

++ [ originally posted by gray ] ++
I think God is referred to as He, and the Father, because His character alludes closely to that of a human father.

I agree. The question then is whether we have projected this charactor on Him or is it a good approximation.

++ [ originally posted by gray ] ++

++ [ originally posted by mikhail ] ++
Now, AFAIK, anyone who means well can get into Heaven.

Not true.

I stand corrected. I understood Purgatory as the intermediate step for the sinner, but perhaps being brough up as a follower of Islam has condemned Majed to an eternity of pain in the fire and brimstone environ that is Hell.

I know that's kind of stepping over the line of not mocking each-others beliefs, but I think sarcasm is suited here: it does pose a difficult question for Gray - what happens to Majed (for example) if he doesn't get converted to Christianity before he kicks his last bucket?

 

[mikhail]

++ [ originally posted by Majed ] ++
There's a limit to evolution i belive. you can't compare the differences between human races with differences between a human and an ape!

In The Quran, it's mentioned several times that disobediant humans were turned into Apes and Pigs!

Is that compatable with what you see today? Does Allah turn the disobedient into apes or pigs?

The differances between modern humans is thought to be the result of a few tens of thousands of years of evolution. We're though to have diverged from the species that became the modern ape at least five million years ago. That's a lot of time by comparison.

++ [ originally posted by Roverbhoy ] ++
Yeah Piltdown man was a cracker, but you don't judge the Church by peodophiles or financial crisis's...you judge it on your own experiences, or on the patent evidence of what it is attempting to do, or represent....not the human aspects which are indemicaly flawed...these are not the true Word.

Well put.

++ [ originally posted by Roverbhoy ] ++
You know...after reading the posts about God and chance, etc, I was wondering if anyone has read "The Dice Man" by Like Rheinhart...

...Good grief...I'm quoting myself...what does this mean?

It means that you have an uncontrollable ego.

I haven't read "The Dice Man". What's it about?

++ [ originally posted by gray ] ++
Yes, God did give us free will. Why would God want to make clockwork toys that bow down to Him 24/7 ? He wants us to love and worship out of our own free will, but with free will comes the consequences, of which we are all well aware.

++ [ originally posted by Majed ] ++
He did, but everything that we do is already written and known by God.
yeah, he also gave us a brain to use to try and make the better choises. There are also distractions.. all these are tests. you have to decide.

what do you mean by placed exactly in the same place....there would be personal experiences after the first time. you could change. but if you mean, hypotheticaly, in the exact same position and nothing has changed, then "yes" i believe you would make the same one.

Divergant views here guys. How can God know what we'll do if we can't be predicted exactly. And if we can be predicted exactly, we don't exactly have free will in the sense that I think Gray is talking about. We have, as I said earlier, already made a choice, because we are what we are. Free will is not compromised totally by that.

 

[sallyinzaghi]

why cant god predict us exactly? hes GOD for god's sake
after reading all the posts I came to one conclusion : I need to improve my english.

 

[sallyinzaghi]

Gray (or other Christians), being a seriously forgetful person that I am, I hate to ask again but I just forgot the answer you gave me :embarass:

um, if the whole purpose of Jesus coming down to this earth is for him to die for all of you, and the only way to heaven was through him, what was the purpose of Noah and Abraham etc? What was their message to their people who didn't know Jesus then?

sorry for the same question as I remember having asking this before but I seriously forgot!

 

[mikhail]

++ [ originally posted by sallyinzaghi ] ++
why cant god predict us exactly? hes GOD for god's sake
after reading all the posts I came to one conclusion : I need to improve my english.

If you allow a few possibilities, like the spontaneous and instantaneous movement of particles around black holes, the future seen as every possible branch is truely infinite. The clockwork system is finite (in fact, it has only one line of possibility), and so it can be followed by God despite the enormous complexity of the Universe. Maybe God could follow a truely infinite series of branches of an already near-infinite system, but that's a staggering possibility. Can anything, even God, be greater than infinity?

 

[Majed]

++ [ originally posted by mikhail ] ++

Is that compatable with what you see today? Does Allah turn the disobedient into apes or pigs?

Nope.... Nor does he flood the earth anymore,...etc.

 

[mikhail]

++ [ originally posted by sallyinzaghi ] ++
um, if the whole purpose of Jesus coming down to this earth is for him to die for all of you, and the only way to heaven was through him, what was the purpose of Noah and Abraham etc? What was their message to their people who didn't know Jesus then?

The Old Testiment.

Their message?

• Honour God
• Don't swear.
• Honour the Sabbath.
• Honour your parents.
• Don't steal.
• Don't kill.
• Don't commit adultery.
• Don't lie.
• Don't covet thing you don't have.
• Don't lust after a married person.

Remove the first and third, and you have the basics of a very good moral code. The only crime that I can immediately think of not explicitly covered is assault, and it's implied in some of the others.
Include them, and you get the basis of a religious person's moral code.

 

[mikhail]

++ [ originally posted by Majed ] ++
Nope.... Nor does he flood the earth anymore,...etc.

To quote myself,

++ [ originally posted by mikhail ] ++
...about the Adam and Eve story, consider that it suggests we're all decended from two people...Consider that Noah took some 6 (ish?) people into the ark, culled from this already inbred population, and then these six people decended to every person on Earth.

...Sometimes old stories are just that - old stories.

 

[sallyinzaghi]

mikhail did the previous prophets told their people that the way to heaven is through jesus?

um, that is the way to heaven according christianity right?

 

[sallyinzaghi]

as i understand it (correct me if im wrong)

the people during the time of jesus could not get to god but through him because the only way to heaven was through following what god revealed to him. so none of the people of israel could make up their own religion or turn away from jesus and think they could go to heaven, they had to go through jesus, by obeying and worshipping god as jesus showed them.

right?

 

[gray]

++ [ originally posted by mikhail ] ++

The Old Testiment.

Their message?

• Honour God
• Don't swear.
• Honour the Sabbath.
• Honour your parents.
• Don't steal.
• Don't kill.
• Don't commit adultery.
• Don't lie.
• Don't covet thing you don't have.
• Don't lust after a married person.

Remove the first and third, and you have the basics of a very good moral code. The only crime that I can immediately think of not explicitly covered is assault, and it's implied in some of the others.
Include them, and you get the basis of a religious person's moral code.

See, that's the point. We were created in God's image, so we naturally know that the other 8 are wrong, it's hard-wired into our brains. That's why we'd be inclined to think that it's a "very good moral code". Morality and conscience were built into us by God, so He knows what's good for a health moral code.

The problem is, though, man has fallen away from God to such an extent that they think they can just exclude God and the Sabbath.

These commandments were guidelines for living a life pleasing to God, they're not there because God is a tyrant who just puts rules in place for the fun of it.

btw you're a bit off on the commandments (e.g. don't swear), but i'll let that one slide

++ [ originally posted by mikhail ] ++

Can anything, even God, be greater than infinity?

Yes.

"I am the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the Ending, says the Lord, who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." Revelation 1:7-8

God made the concept of time and physical dimensions, hence he's not limited by those rules. We may think infinity is such a big thing, but think about the being that created infinity :strong: