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Rick

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17 hours ago, Ssnake said:

If one applies the standard logic of Christians to attribute every fortunate change of events as a confirmation of their faith (and every negative turn as a test of it), the answer is "everything".

It's fine that you believe what you do, but I find the standard sophistry indistinguishable from those who think it's some Elephant god who's pulling the strings with his merry band of colleagues.

Curious as to why you find Christianity fallacious?

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6 minutes ago, Rick said:

Disagree? Why?

Rick, you are preaching here, and I suspect you aren't going to get any converts. Can you demostrate why other religions are wrong without reference to the Bible (which you will agree is biased towards one religion?)

I don't think so,

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32 minutes ago, Rick said:

Disagree? Why?

Circular logic. Christianity is the true religion because Christianity says so. Sorry, you're not going to win me over that way.

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27 minutes ago, Rick said:

Curious as to why you find Christianity fallacious?

It's not limited to Christianity, don't get me wrong. It's the one religion with which I'm most familiar, hence I'm referring to it more often. But the argument is always the same.

Adversity: It's a test of faith. 

Good fortunes: It's a confirmation of faith.

 

Religion has nothing to do with facts or reason. That's nothing I'm holding against it. But the attempts of spiritual people to argue with science or logic why their religion is true simply can't work. If you could prove the existence of god, it wouldn't be a matter of faith. That's also not to say that religion is useless. Like other ideologies it can be applied in productive and destructive ways. But there's no innate reason to recognize any particular religion as true/superior to any other except the teachings of said religion. And don't get me started about the clergy.

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14 minutes ago, RETAC21 said:

Rick, you are preaching here, and I suspect you aren't going to get any converts. Can you demostrate why other religions are wrong without reference to the Bible (which you will agree is biased towards one religion?)

I don't think so,

Can you demonstrate why other religions are wrong without reference to the Bible

I'll try.  Worldwide, past and present people have, for want of a better description, a void wanting to be filled with answers to serious questions. From the past to present this has, again for want of a better term, evolved into people being theist, agnostic, or atheist. Basically what we have now to fill this void is theism (God made all) which is represented by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Second is pantheism. Pantheism (God is all) which is Hinduism, Buddhism, and some of the "New Age" beliefs. Then there is Atheism (no God at all) represented by Humanism.

Will finish later in the day, thank you.

 

 

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On 1/15/2021 at 6:47 PM, sunday said:

That is only an unproved hypotheses. We know there is intelligent life in the Universe, ours, but we do not know how life or intelligence appeared.

The better question: Is life on earth really intelligent or do the creatures there simply believe to be intelligent? 

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https://catholicism.org/faith-and-miracles.html
 

Quote

The New Catechism places much weight on the testimony of miracles: “So ‘that the submission of our faith might nevertheless be in accordance with reason, God willed that external proofs of his Revelation should be joined to the internal helps of the Holy Spirit.’ Thus, the miracles of Christ and the saints, prophecies, the Church’s growth and holiness, and her fruitfulness and stability ‘are the most certain signs of divine Revelation, adapted to the intelligence of all’; they are ‘motives of credibility,’ which show that the assent of faith is ‘by no means a blind impulse of the mind.’” (#156, excerpts from Constitution of the Church,Vatican I, Dei Filius)

 

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Just now, seahawk said:

The better question: Is life on earth really intelligent or do the creatures there simply believe to be intelligent? 

That is not a better question. That is at least a dumb question, or, at worst, a fallacious one. E.g.: Is intelligence needed to compose a Mozart's symphony?

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8 minutes ago, sunday said:

That is not a better question. That is at least a dumb question, or, at worst, a fallacious one. E.g.: Is intelligence needed to compose a Mozart's symphony?

That would depend on what you call intelligent. Animals also use sounds and vary them to communicate or to attract the attention of a possible partner. Sure Mozart is a step up from our perspective but might still be ridiculously primal for a way more advanced being like a god. Intelligence is relative. In a hamlet in the middle ages the guy who could count to 10 was probably the most intelligent person they knew, but that was defined by the limited sample size.

Imho humans depend on the guidance of God and that can only be found through studying the bible and through Jesus. And by studying I do not mean like a school book, but studying with your heart and your soul, so that the enlightment of God can touch your soul and transform your primal state into a becoming a true human being and a child of God, the only creator. Those who reject his spirit are nothing but animals.

 

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Refusal to recognize obvious things is a clear problem of idealist/sophist philosophy.

There is no substantial difference between a genius of Mozart's magnitude, and a normal human being. Composing symphonies is only one of human abilities, and not the most extended. But every one of us could abstract, going from the particular to the general.

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21 hours ago, Rick said:

Can you demonstrate why other religions are wrong without reference to the Bible

I'll try.  Worldwide, past and present people have, for want of a better description, a void wanting to be filled with answers to serious questions. From the past to present this has, again for want of a better term, evolved into people being theist, agnostic, or atheist. Basically what we have now to fill this void is theism (God made all) which is represented by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Second is pantheism. Pantheism (God is all) which is Hinduism, Buddhism, and some of the "New Age" beliefs. Then there is Atheism (no God at all) represented by Humanism.

Will finish later in the day, thank you.

 

 

Part two. One fact we can all agree on is when you have people, you have problems. Which of the three groups above does the best job of solving this?

Of the three groups of believers above, which group has done the most good in establishing/influencing: hope, individual rights, compassion and education? 

Of the three groups above, which has the most world-wide positive influence on creating a positive economy?

Of the three groups above, which is more hated by people? Persecuted by more countries?

In reverse order, you can see that Atheism, aka secular, is the worst. Using U.S. terms: Communists, Nazis, Fascists, et all, have done the most wrong on this earth. When people are risking their children's lives to leave such hell-holes in order to get out, one has to be willfully deceitful not to see that Atheism is truly evil. 

Pantheism-- mostly Asian -- is not much better than Atheism. Broadly speaking it is self-centered and "heaven" is obtained, if at all, via various re-incarnations. Some of the most poverty stricken areas of the world are a result of Pantheism. Many Pantheist believe in order to obtain "heaven" must must achieve many various processes. For example Zen has many "rules" to follow, more than in The Old Testament.  A good example of the failure of Pantheism is the success of Mother Teresa. 

This leaves us with theism as the best humanly possible choice to bring peace on earth and good will to men. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Which one. This may sound like taking a short-cut, but for this discussion I'm going to include Judaism with being the "forefather" of Christianity. Choice is Christianity or Islam. History, past and especially present, make this an obvious choice. 

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23 hours ago, Ssnake said:

It's not limited to Christianity, don't get me wrong. It's the one religion with which I'm most familiar, hence I'm referring to it more often. But the argument is always the same.

Makes sense. 

Adversity: It's a test of faith. 

Good fortunes: It's a confirmation of faith.

Replace "faith" with "choices." Same results? 

Religion has nothing to do with facts or reason. That's nothing I'm holding against it. But the attempts of spiritual people to argue with science or logic why their religion is true simply can't work.

Let's narrow this to Christianity. What facts/reason does Christianity fail in? Define the verb "fail."

Science. Define "science"  as this gets tossed around alot. In many ways, I agree with you, just not for the reason why.

Science doesn’t really explain anything. It describes things as they are  -- as we have experienced them so far -- but it doesn’t explain them. To explain something is to answer the “why” question about it, and the “why” question has two kinds of answers: the cause of it and/or the purpose of it. And in all truth, science is not able to give us either kind of answer. The so-called “laws of science” do not really explain anything — they only describe what has happened so far, in our experience, and therefore what we expect to continue to happen in the future. And when something else does happen instead, we rewrite those laws to account for that happening.

As a side note, I believe Genesis 2:20 can be taken as the first scientific works of man. 

If you could prove the existence of god, it wouldn't be a matter of faith. That's also not to say that religion is useless. Like other ideologies it can be applied in productive and destructive ways. But there's no innate reason to recognize any particular religion as true/superior to any other except the teachings of said religion. And don't get me started about the clergy.

There are people who can explain this better than me. A very small sample is:

Are you able to listen to Moody radio, especially Janet Parshall? She is on Twitter also.

Billy Graham and Ravi Zacharias. 

Mitsuo Fuchida and Jacob DeShazer.

John Wesly, Dr. Martin L. King, Charles (Chuck) Colson.

Were/are now, any people guided science who did more good than those above who were influenced by Jesus?

 

 

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1 hour ago, Rick said:

Which of the three groups above does the best job of solving this?

You have demonstrated that Theism has the highest utility value (and I'd like to point out, for the record, that only a small minority of atheists or agnosticists have turned murderous sociopath; the ideology which they followed however was an enabler, as was their societies' deformations as a result of pathological and pervasive lying at every level).

 

The question was, however, which religion is the "true" one.

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3 minutes ago, Ssnake said:

You have demonstrated that Theism has the highest utility value (and I'd like to point out, for the record, that only a small minority of atheists or agnosticists have turned murderous sociopath; the ideology which they followed however was an enabler, as was their societies' deformations as a result of pathological and pervasive lying at every level).

 

The question was, however, which religion is the "true" one.

The answer to your question is Christianity. It is the greatest expression of love -- freewill -- that allows you to believe so or not. 

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1 hour ago, Rick said:

Part two. One fact we can all agree on is when you have people, you have problems. Which of the three groups above does the best job of solving this?

Of the three groups of believers above, which group has done the most good in establishing/influencing: hope, individual rights, compassion and education? 

Of the three groups above, which has the most world-wide positive influence on creating a positive economy?

Of the three groups above, which is more hated by people? Persecuted by more countries?

In reverse order, you can see that Atheism, aka secular, is the worst. Using U.S. terms: Communists, Nazis, Fascists, et all, have done the most wrong on this earth. When people are risking their children's lives to leave such hell-holes in order to get out, one has to be willfully deceitful not to see that Atheism is truly evil. 

Pantheism-- mostly Asian -- is not much better than Atheism. Broadly speaking it is self-centered and "heaven" is obtained, if at all, via various re-incarnations. Some of the most poverty stricken areas of the world are a result of Pantheism. Many Pantheist believe in order to obtain "heaven" must must achieve many various processes. For example Zen has many "rules" to follow, more than in The Old Testament.  A good example of the failure of Pantheism is the success of Mother Teresa. 

This leaves us with theism as the best humanly possible choice to bring peace on earth and good will to men. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Which one. This may sound like taking a short-cut, but for this discussion I'm going to include Judaism with being the "forefather" of Christianity. Choice is Christianity or Islam. History, past and especially present, make this an obvious choice. 

Well, this is all great unless you look at history. The European wars of religion were as devastating as the world wars and it was all between Christians. Crusades amyone? particularly those in the Baltic. Belgian Congo - all done by Christians, etc. in contrast, the multi-god Romans were tolerant and inclusive. It should be noted that enlightement in the West only happened after Church and State were separated, and not by a choice of the Church.

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1 hour ago, RETAC21 said:

Well, this is all great unless you look at history. The European wars of religion were as devastating as the world wars and it was all between Christians. Crusades amyone? particularly those in the Baltic. Belgian Congo - all done by Christians, etc. in contrast, the multi-god Romans were tolerant and inclusive. It should be noted that enlightement in the West only happened after Church and State were separated, and not by a choice of the Church.

"The European wars of religion were as devastating as the world wars..."

Using cold-blooded results, I do not believe this is true. Both World Wars  in their ten years killed more people world-wide and caused more social unrest world-wide than the 300 years of European Christian wars. (for the purposes of European wars I'm using the early 1400's to the early 1700's) To be fair however, to the recipient of said violence, it doesn't matter which time it is or reason therefore. 

How many wars, how much death, and how much social malaise has been caused by wars that was not Christian in nature?  The Mid-East before Christ, the Mid-East after Christ, the Mongols, civil wars, colonial wars, and the largest of all, the wars began by secularists as I mentioned previous. 

 Will continue later.

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56 minutes ago, Adam Peter said:

Of course not, it is not the survival of the fittest, but the survival of the scripted:

 

 

This is the end product of the digestive particles of the adult male bovine. 

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16 minutes ago, Rick said:

"The European wars of religion were as devastating as the world wars..."

Using cold-blooded results, I do not believe this is true. Both World Wars  in their ten years killed more people world-wide and caused more social unrest world-wide than the 300 years of European Christian wars. (for the purposes of European wars I'm using the early 1400's to the early 1700's) To be fair however, to the recipient of said violence, it doesn't matter which time it is or reason therefore. 

How many wars, how much death, and how much social malaise has been caused by wars that was not Christian in nature?  The Mid-East before Christ, the Mid-East after Christ, the Mongols, civil wars, colonial wars, and the largest of all, the wars began by secularists as I mentioned previous. 

 Will continue later.

Overall, the World Wars were more devastating because they were global and weapons more advanced, but in terms of savagery, the wars of religion were much worse. See for example, reduction of populationin the Thirty Years war (just one of them)

Bev%C3%B6lkerkungsr%C3%BCckgang_im_HRRDN_nach_dem_Drei%C3%9Figj%C3%A4hrigen_Krieg.PNG

That 1 of every 3 and 2 of every 3 people.

Shows that being Christian doesn't make a war less savage, specially when that war is about what kind of Christian you are (and indeed religion is just an excuse, but if we apply that to christendom, we apply it to all other religions).

Here you have a religion of peace: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism

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