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Post by Areopagite on Apr 10, 2005 8:47:51 GMT -5
Proove it. If you can't you're just holding a personal belief rather than an empirical truth. If Christianity is absolutely 100% true - and you believe in the existence of fundamental, 'realist' truths - you should be able to proove it to me so that I'm in no doubt. It's impossible to "prove" to you (how can one prove something that exists yet can't be measured by the god of "science"?) that Christianity is 100% true. Once again, it comes down to faith, something that you have chosen not to place in Christianity in the first place. If you choose to not have faith in something, and choose to oppose it, no one is just going to "prove" it to you. Why does John write that Christ was "full of grace and truth" instead of 'full of grace and a form of truth that worked for Him'? If God didn't exist then a relative truth would exist, for who could determine, much less know, what truth is? If man, being the measure of all things, 'chooses' what truth is, then we're in serious trouble. What Hitler and Stalin did in slaughtering millions is certainly justifiable if there is no moral standard. Nay, it is a transcendent truth that we have been given, thanks to God's grace. No. From your definition, it would seems that these two religions are essentially the same thing. They are not. It would be appreciated for you to research more about Islam before you make such claims. How is this evidence? It's merely conjecture based upon your presuppositions. You assume that every time another religion crops up, they have discovered another truth, and thus, there is a variety of truths in history. Who is to say that the other religions are not simply founded in lies and darkness? You can't "prove" otherwise. If they adopt the garb of Christianity? Either they are lost sheep, or they are merely people who choose to go to 'church' to maintain the appearence of being 'good' people. If they claim to be Christians, though, it goes back to our original discussion about orthodoxy versus heresy, Satori. If they advance some form of heresy, who can say they're wrong? The orthodox church, that's who! How do you even begin to assume they're different? Aquinas believed in the same God as Abraham. Yet, the the Bible clearly lists God's jealousy (is this really a new concept to you? If so, then you're really not to up to date on everything about Christianity). "You shall not worship or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God..." -Exodus 20:5 "A jealous and avenging God is the Lord..." -Nahum 1:2 The Bible lists this several more times, but I thought I'd just use two to let you know.
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Post by Satori on Apr 10, 2005 10:00:19 GMT -5
It's impossible to "prove" to you (how can one prove something that exists yet can't be measured by the god of "science"?) that Christianity is 100% true. Once again, it comes down to faith, something that you have chosen not to place in Christianity in the first place. If you choose to not have faith in something, and choose to oppose it, no one is just going to "prove" it to you. Okay, that's fine. It's that just the likes of Aquinas, Anselm, Descartes and many others thought they could prove God. I have no objection to your definition that it requires 'faith'. Er, religious truth - as you've stated above - is a matter of faith. I have no beef with that and don't wish to argue with it. Only if you have faith is it God's truth. Otherwise it's up to Man to give a meaning to the term truth. No, you've misunderstood. As I said, you've misunderstood what I'm getting at. I'm not talking specifically about Islam or Christianity - I'm talking about the concept of truth and thay way it can relate to religion. I thought I'd made that clear enough, but I apologise if I didn't. Yes it is conjecture on my behalf (I stated as much), and I'm offering reasons for my conjecture in the same way you do for yours. What's wrong with that? What rubbish. Just because these people don't share your indoctrinated view of Christianity you dare to insult them as 'lesser' in some way. That's just about as despicable and arrogant a view as one can form; it shows a total lack of respect and tolerance. You're not simply putting a point of argument against their views here, your language above demonstrates that you actually think of them (or, at least, their views) as somehow less worthy than your own. They belong to orthodox Churches - possibly bigger ones than yours, so perhaps you ought to convert if you value orthodoxy above all else. No, once again my point has floated straight over your head. The God that Aquinas attempts to prove is not an Abrahamic God. I don't deny that Aquinas believed in such a thing, but that's not what his proofs were specifically about. I'll try to say this in plain English. I'm not denying that the Bible claims a jealous God, what I'm trying to do is find out what concept of God we're discussing in the 'absolute' and then how we move from that concept to the Abrahamic God. Until we have a concept of God and truth, we can't even begin to work through the logic of 'God exists' let alone the Abrahamic Yahweh.
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Post by bobarian on Apr 10, 2005 18:39:18 GMT -5
Satori -
The reason I cannot accept what you say is because of a tension within your premises. You cannot postulate a relative in the absolute. The two are self-contradictory. All truth claims cannot be relative because that we would be inclusive of the truth claim that all truth claims are relative. At the point you argue from that premise, your argument suffers from unsupportable conclusions.
I agree that people make their own truth much of the time.
I agree that many people don't really seek "truth" when they say they are looking for it.
But the only way I can say both of the above are true is if there is a truth that they don't know. I.e., I can only say something is relative if there are absolute standards by way of knowing what is absolute. If everything is relative, then I can't be sure that everything is relative because that statement is also relative to myself.
Thus, Islam and Hinduism (and any other religions) are wrong if my religion is right. It is of no arrogance of my own - it is merely the nature of reality. The law of non-contradiction. If it were not for logic, then our own conversations would be meaningless. (And would the sentence I just wrote.) The mere fact that Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life" excludes from Himself any other possibilities. Us poor Christians, if we know Christ and desire to worship Him, cannot but live our lives from that premise.
I don't think that people in other religions are wrong in the sense that they are purposefully trying to destroy human civilization or something like that. I think there are people (I don't think, I know) in other religions who are looking for something that their religion doesn't offer - I think you could call it transcendence and immanence (to quote John Stott.) Hinduism has immanence - God is here, available, very close to us - but It is not a standard for us to live by. In Islam God is transcendent - but He is not immanent. He is all-powerful, real, He created the world - but He has no relationships with actual human beings except for Mohammed, Jesus and the other prophets. In Christianity, Jesus is both God (transcendent) and man (immanent.) He combines humanity and deity in an unprecedented fashion - which is a reason for faith. I think the question is, is Jesus worthy of your faith?
I think that He, and He alone, is worthy of that faith. I think any other place to put that faith is less than worthy. Because faith is the most important and precious possesion a human being has - how can we not care where they put it?
(I'll respond to my friend the Electron at a later date. I.e., when I get time.)
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Post by Satori on Apr 11, 2005 2:36:25 GMT -5
Satori - The reason I cannot accept what you say is because of a tension within your premises. You cannot postulate a relative in the absolute. The two are self-contradictory. All truth claims cannot be relative because that we would be inclusive of the truth claim that all truth claims are relative. At the point you argue from that premise, your argument suffers from unsupportable conclusions. Anti-realism is a sound philosophical view Bob and has its roots in how we treat language. Wittgenstein pointed out how much of what we believe to be true is the simple acceptance that certain linguistic labels represent certain properties of the world, and that these 'truths' are particular to the society or culture to which they pertain. Father Gareth Moore wrote an interesting book ( Believing in God - A Philosophical Essay) about this from the Christian perspective. An anti-realist saying 'God exists' means that God exists in every relevant and important sense to the anti-realist and within the community in which he exists. It's similar to saying that the equator exists: in every relevant sense it does, but we can't go to a country through which it runs and expect to see some sort of physical line. It serves its purpose within a scientific or cartographical community as a 'given' truth. Now I'm not generally a fan of 'over-quoting' established philosophies in places like this because I think it's more interesting and educational to try and form our own opinions and philosophies, but it just seems appropriate here. Do I fully believe in an anti-realist stance? Well no, not entirely. I am, without a doubt, more of a relativist than you are, but that doesn't mean that I find it easy to accept, say, that a chair exists only in a sense that's relevant to me or my culture; that seems as ridiculous to me as it does to you. I can however, see that I accept the existence of the chair as an a priori belief; something I've been taught to accept rather than actually prove. Maybe in matters of faith an anti-realist point of view goes some way towards explaining why there are so many diverse - yet passionately held - opinions about what is true and what isn't. Bob, I know what you're saying - and I appreciate that you are saying it with respect - but step outside of the box for a moment; perhaps look at it from my point of view. I see you talking passionately about your literalist, conservative Christian beliefs. I then go and chat to my neighbour (with whom I've had many interesting philosophical debates); he's a Reverend and a school teacher who holds a much more liberal view of Christianity than you do and he's had 40 years to form and analyse those beliefs. I then go and talk to a Bangladeshi Muslim I know who simply cannot understand why the world isn't entirely Islam, such is her conviction and belief in the matter. I see a plethora of agnostic and athiest viewpoints and then, of course, I've got my own beliefs. If it was just one person arguing against another then it might be easy to assume that the other person is simply wrong or has misunderstood or needs to 'see the light', but it's not; it's a multitude of people crossing social, political and geographical boundaries and containing believers with equivalent ranges of intelligence, philosophical and theological understanding, experiences and lifestyles. Now that still doesn't mean that maybe - in reality - one of the sets of belief is right and the others are wrong, but that's evidently unprovable or we'd have seen society polarize on one belief system by now (possibly), so it's got to contain large, unprovable elements of faith. So from my point of view, faith is not absolute, it's relative, yet as a result of my discussions with others I know how unshakeable their faiths are and how 'true' their faith is according to them. Hence the appeal of an anti-realist point of view to me in matters of religious belief.
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Post by Electron on Apr 11, 2005 14:42:16 GMT -5
No need for me to add anything to what Satori has said here, he's done a good job in providing a reality-check for those that feel their own particular faith has to be the only one based on truth. Instead, I want to examine one particular example of this sort of truth... just because we understand how a rainbow works does not mean it was not a sign of covenant. there were no rainbows before the flood. im not saying that the light spectrum could not be seen before that time, just that there was no huge arch across the sky. This is where your understanding of the subject falls short along with those that thought it 'safe' to write such a thing a long time ago. The properties of electromagnetic radiation (light) are not derived by some abrbitrary system independant from the rest of the physical laws, they are unified with the strong and weak nuclear forces and the charges of all the fundamental particles. Photons are the 'messenger particle' that mediates between electrons so determinig the interactions between atomic structures. To change a single property of the macroscopic world such as refraction would have a colossal and unavoidable knock-on effect in the microscopic. In other words, If the sun ever shined onto rainfall before the flood, there would have to have been a rainbow otherwise the the physical properties of all materials would have to have been different as well. We're not talking about some optional, alternative world here, we're talking about an impossible world where chemistry is very different (you certainly wouldn't be alive - but if you were, you'd probably fall through the rocks you stood on and the air would be like solid metal... darn, my imagination just isn't crazy enough to do the sort of transformation justice). Quantum Electro Dynaimcs (QED for short) accurately describes the mechanism by which everything (with the exception of gravity) is held together (quite literally) and nobody can mess with it and keep things as they are.
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Post by theditchmagnet on Apr 11, 2005 16:17:49 GMT -5
No need for me to add anything to what Satori has said here, he's done a good job in providing a reality-check for those that feel their own particular faith has to be the only one based on truth. Instead, I want to examine one particular example of this sort of truth... This is where your understanding of the subject falls short along with those that thought it 'safe' to write such a thing a long time ago. The properties of electromagnetic radiation (light) are not derived by some abrbitrary system independant from the rest of the physical laws, they are unified with the strong and weak nuclear forces and the charges of all the fundamental particles. Photons are the 'messenger particle' that mediates between electrons so determinig the interactions between atomic structures. To change a single property of the macroscopic world such as refraction would have a colossal and unavoidable knock-on effect in the microscopic. In other words, If the sun ever shined onto rainfall before the flood, there would have to have been a rainbow otherwise the the physical properties of all materials would have to have been different as well. We're not talking about some optional, alternative world here, we're talking about an impossible world where chemistry is very different (you certainly wouldn't be alive - but if you were, you'd probably fall through the rocks you stood on and the air would be like solid metal... darn, my imagination just isn't crazy enough to do the sort of transformation justice). Quantum Electro Dynaimcs (QED for short) accurately describes the mechanism by which everything (with the exception of gravity) is held together (quite literally) and nobody can mess with it and keep things as they are. im not saying that physical properties were different before the flood. yes, if the sun shined onto rainfall, it would have made a rainbow, BUT, there was no rainfall before the flood. that is why they hadn't seen one before, and is why it was a sign of covenant.
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Post by Satori on Apr 11, 2005 17:00:55 GMT -5
I think it's been raining for about 3 billion years. Not constantly, of course ... although it feels like it England sometimes. I think this is an interesting Christian take on the timespans in Genesis (which are relavant to our flood and rainfall issue here): www.faithreason.org/farmsc4.htmHe does tend to take The Theory of Evolution as a bit too much 'absolute fact', which I think is a little bit presumptuous (I mean, I think it's a reasonable working model, but there are still holes in it and more hard proof is required before I'd be prepared to take it as the definite model of life's emergence).
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Post by theditchmagnet on Apr 12, 2005 0:00:03 GMT -5
to be honest, i wasnt impressed with that guy at all. i agree with you, he is presumptuous, and he does take it as absolute fact. i know this isnt a creation vs evolution thread, but i think we can both agree evolution has not been proved, (nor the true age of the earth either, but maybe you dont agree with that part). anyways, if you actually believe in the story of noah, then you would also need to believe that there was no rain before that, and thats where im coming from. then this disscusion of the rainbow being a sign of covenant is a mute point now. but if you dont believe in the story of noah, then the rainbow isnt a sign of covenant, and agian its a mute point. the evedence of the earth does support the flood however, from what i have seen, but that cant be, cause the earth is billions of years old, and we know how everything came to be, even though we have had nobody to observe any of it, we just know it. (i dont mean to rant, sorry.)
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Post by Satori on Apr 12, 2005 3:37:39 GMT -5
to be honest, i wasnt impressed with that guy at all. Well it's his beliefs - he probably wouldn't be impressed with ours! Not conclusively, no. It seems like a good working model, but there are some holes in it. I think the biggest problem is that we readily accept the Theory of Evolution as an absolute truth and if we're to be cautious about accepting religious beliefs in that manner, then the Theory of Evolution should be given the same caution. I wouldn't be at all surprised, though, if it turns out to be something very similar to the Theory of Evolution in the end. I'm afraid I don't agree there. The 'age of the Earth' part of the Biblical literalist view is the one that I think is least appealing. I'd be prepared to believe virtually everything else about the literalist viewpoint before I'd believe the Earth is mere thousands of years old. There is a mountain of empirical evidence to support a universe that's about 12 billion years old and an earth that's about 4.5 billion years old. Such evidence comes from astronomy, physics, geology, chemistry and so many other areas that I find it hard to doubt. The only way I can see that the Earth is 6,000 years old is if there is a God who planted a load of evidence to make it seem 4.5 billion years old and I can't see why any God would want to do such a thing. It is allegedly impossible for God to lie (which is an interesting negation of his totally omnipotent nature, but that's an aside) so - assuming God exists in the Abrahamic sense etc. - He wouldn't be deliberately tricking us into believing the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, so either the literalist Biblical interpretation is wrong or the science is. It's up to us personally to decide which way we want to go on that one. Well, as you probably know, I think the Bible's a mixture of fact and fable, so I have no reason to disbelieve that there was a flood of some sorts and I have no reason to disbelieve that somebody may have survived said flood by building an ark. I simply don't know for certain. Well perhaps a rainbow could be a sign of the covenant; I just think that it rained - and thus there were rainbows - before the Biblical flood. There can be a flood in the time of Noah and the Earth can be 4.5 billion years old. There is no contradiction for me in that, but I can see why there might be a contradiction for the Biblical literalist.
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Post by Electron on Apr 12, 2005 5:26:09 GMT -5
anyways, if you actually believe in the story of noah, then you would also need to believe that there was no rain before that Is this because of the problem I have raised witht he rainbow, or is it actually written that there was no rain (or clouds) before the flood? I find it impossible to give credit to the latter. Just stop to think about this for a moment, is it reasonable to postulate a pre-flood world, inhabited by men women and other animals, in which the water cycle did not operate? Were the oceans not formed? Did the sun not shine? Would water not freeze or boil?
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Post by Shiggy on Apr 12, 2005 22:41:15 GMT -5
The Bible says that it rained for a long time before the flood (40 days and 40 nights) in order to build up the flood waters for the flood. The rainbow came after the flood.
So there you go; literalist interpretations of the Bible are wrong.
Might I also add that it would have been impossible for freshwater fish to have survived such a flood, as the weight of the fresh water required to keep them alive would have sunk the ark. There are endless problems with believing this event of mythical proportions to have really happened; it's simply just not possible.
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Post by Areopagite on Apr 13, 2005 0:13:37 GMT -5
The Bible says that it rained for a long time before the flood (40 days and 40 nights) in order to build up the flood waters for the flood. The rainbow came after the flood. Hearing you say this makes me wonder, once more, as to how bad someone's exegetical skills can be. Did you even read the text?
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Post by theditchmagnet on Apr 13, 2005 0:38:31 GMT -5
Yes, it is actually written in the Bible that it did not rain (Genesis). It also speaks of the firmament, which I’m sure you are familiar with. The water canopy created a greenhouse effect. So how did things get watered if there was no rain? Well the Bible also speaks of a mist that rose up from the ground to do this. You asked: “Were the oceans not formed?” well there was an ocean or oceans, but not in today’s form, the flood changed geography. So we have water above the earth and below the earth, and when a catastrophic event occurred, these two huge forces began to fall onto the earth, and burst up from the ground creating rain for 40 days and nights. No, there weren’t freshwater fish on the ark, the bible doesn’t say that. I should write more, but its late, and I’m tired, and I have class tomorrow.
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Post by Shiggy on Apr 13, 2005 21:41:52 GMT -5
Yes, it is actually written in the Bible that it did not rain (Genesis). Are you talking here about before the flood? Where does it say this? My bible says that it DID rain beforehand. It also speaks of the firmament, which I’m sure you are familiar with. The water canopy created a greenhouse effect. So how did things get watered if there was no rain? Well the Bible also speaks of a mist that rose up from the ground to do this. You asked: “Were the oceans not formed?” well there was an ocean or oceans, but not in today’s form, the flood changed geography. So we have water above the earth and below the earth, and when a catastrophic event occurred, these two huge forces began to fall onto the earth, and burst up from the ground creating rain for 40 days and nights. Exactly; rain. That's the whole point. You just contradicted yourself; are you saying that there was or wasn't rain before the flood? No, there weren’t freshwater fish on the ark, the bible doesn’t say that. The bible says that 2 of every animal was able to survive the flood, but since it is impossible for freshwater fish to have survived in the salty OCEAN during the flood, or on the ark due to the weight of the fresh water needed, this is impossible. Arepagite-- Please elaborate; what, in your opinion, is wrong with these points I am making?
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Post by Areopagite on Apr 14, 2005 0:49:59 GMT -5
The Bible says that it rained for a long time before the flood (40 days and 40 nights) in order to build up the flood waters for the flood. This is what I'm pointing to Shiggy. I'm not discussing the points that you're trying to make. I want to know where you get this from. Where does the Bible say that?
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