"Why won't God heal amputees?"

[Aapex]

Intellect and Faith go hand in hand.
Faith is not a blind leap into a dark chasm. Rather our faith is based on fact. You have danced around the issue using rational thought and human wisdom. However, you have not dealt with the fact that you can't explain creation apart from God.
You also failed to answer the question of your own sin. I asked you if you have ever: lied, cheated, stolen etc.?
Instead of answering the question you gave me an experiment of some scientist. Science is not exact. Science is theory. Just because some scientist says so doesnt make it right or factual. Have you tested the theories yourself. Have you examined his technique? Have you read the reports and looked into the logic and full scope of the study? Man is always trying to rationalize his sin before God. Next you will attempt to explain away your own depravity as nothing more than a disease.

 

[stu]

Quote from Aapex:

Intellect and Faith go hand in hand.

Untrue. The whole point about faith is that intellect need have no part to play in it whatsoever. In essence, religious faith must be blind faith. What is so wrong with blind faith anyway, apart from only some people use conceit to try and pretend faith is something else than what it is

Quote from Aapex:

However, you have not dealt with the fact that you can't explain creation apart from God.

Untrue . You just keep repeating - it has not been explained - when it has. Your choosing not to debate but preferring to repeat an untrue comment, does not mean it has not been explained

Quote from Aapex:

You also failed to answer the question of your own sin. I asked you if you have ever: lied, cheated, stolen etc.?

Not true. Questions of "sin" have been dealt with over and over.. Your sin can be someone else's virtue. Have you ever lied to save a life. Have you ever cheated to protect someone from harm. Have you ever had to steal to feed a starving child?

But you have failed to answer questions about your own depravity , which judges others as sinful because they use their "God given" intellect to question and reject bullshit when they see it . which you put forward in the name of God.

 

[Free Thinker]

Quote from Aapex:

Intellect and Faith go hand in hand.
Faith is not a blind leap into a dark chasm. Rather our faith is based on fact. You have danced around the issue using rational thought and human wisdom.

Beliefs should be a search for truth and understanding, not denying reality so you can have faith in a compendium of books written by unknown authors over hundreds and hundreds of years complied much later by other fallible men, as 100% literally correct. That is a faith that is truly blind.
If “faith” is a prerequisite in a belief in order to see the truth of the belief, being if there were evidence there would be no need for “faith” in any particular belief.
All supernatural beliefs require “faith” in its truth, being there is no evidence proving any particular belief.
So it must be the “faith” itself that dictates what is true.
Therefore every one of the worlds religions are true, being they all rely on the “faith” of the believer to see its truth.

 

[james_bond_3rd]

Quote from Aapex:

Intellect and Faith go hand in hand.
Faith is not a blind leap into a dark chasm. Rather our faith is based on fact. You have danced around the issue using rational thought and human wisdom. However, you have not dealt with the fact that you can't explain creation apart from God.
You also failed to answer the question of your own sin. I asked you if you have ever: lied, cheated, stolen etc.?
Instead of answering the question you gave me an experiment of some scientist. Science is not exact. Science is theory. Just because some scientist says so doesnt make it right or factual. Have you tested the theories yourself. Have you examined his technique? Have you read the reports and looked into the logic and full scope of the study? Man is always trying to rationalize his sin before God. Next you will attempt to explain away your own depravity as nothing more than a disease.

This is silly. It's a sad testimony of the failure of the American science education.

Here is a proper definition of science (from wikipedia):
"Science in the broadest sense refers to any knowledge or trained skill, especially (but not exclusively) when this is attained by verifiable means. The word science also describes any systematic field of study or the knowledge gained from such study. In a more restricted sense, science refers to a system of acquiring knowledge based on empiricism, experimentation, and methodological naturalism, as well as to the organized body of knowledge humans have gained by such research."

Mere theories do not make a science. To become part of science, a theory first has to be verifiable, i.e., it must be allowed to be proven false. Only when there is overwhelming empirical evidence that supports the theory, such theory is accepted as part of science. Therefore, scientific knowledge is empirical knowledge. (In the case of logic and math, whether they are empirical based is still under debate).

There are well-established standards on what constitutes "empirical evidence." In the medieval days that was indeed personal experiment. But now when scientists around the globe all adhere to the same experimental standards, the "personal" part of it is really unnecessary. So if one scientist at IBM sees an atom using scanning tunneling microscope, do I have to personally verify it before the atom becomes "real?" No. Because I know what a scanning tunneling microscope is. I believe the experiment when two or more groups from other places verify it.

The difference between science and faith, is that any scientific theory can be challenged. Any such theory that cannot stand a challenge is then thrown out and replaced by new theories (e.g, geocentrism, Newton's theory of light, Einstein's static universe, Bohr's old quantum theory). Theories that survive repeated challenges remain as valid scientific theories until one day they fail the challenge.

Faith, OTOH, cannot be challenged.

 

[archimedes]

Quote from Aapex:

Intellect and Faith go hand in hand.
Faith is not a blind leap into a dark chasm. Rather our faith is based on fact. You have danced around the issue using rational thought and human wisdom. However, you have not dealt with the fact that you can't explain creation apart from God.
You also failed to answer the question of your own sin. I asked you if you have ever: lied, cheated, stolen etc.?
Instead of answering the question you gave me an experiment of some scientist. Science is not exact. Science is theory. Just because some scientist says so doesnt make it right or factual. Have you tested the theories yourself. Have you examined his technique? Have you read the reports and looked into the logic and full scope of the study? Man is always trying to rationalize his sin before God. Next you will attempt to explain away your own depravity as nothing more than a disease.

If your faith is based on fact, there is certainly no display of it in that post. Why couldn't a Muslim make the same argument and condemn you for failing to worship Allah? Or a Jehovah's witness, or a Mormon, or...

Heck, Tom Cruise could have written your post almost word for word as a refutation to Scientology critics. Just replace the God and sin stuff with Xenu and Thetans.

One of your big problems, you see, is that the "no other explanation" argument is available to all kinds of folks. And like you, all those other folks supposedly have irrefutable evidence to support their beliefs.

So the only way out of this mess of directly contradictory claims is deus ex machina--special revelation bestowed from on high. But very few religious folk are honest enough to admit that. Instead, it's a never-ending proxy battle of "our scholars are better than their scholars." And meanwhile all these religious scholars happily pooh-pooh the rigor of science.

 

[Aapex]

Quote from archimedes:

Instead, it's a never-ending proxy battle of "our scholars are better than their scholars." And meanwhile all these religious scholars happily pooh-pooh the rigor of science.

What is so scientific about "YOUR" arguments?

 

[lkh]

In God We Trust


In American society we have a number of things that we connect to God. For example, all of our money says, "In God We Trust" on it. In the Pledge of Allegiance we say, "One nation, under God." We sing "God Bless America." And so on.

This is rather amazing when you consider the fact that God does not exist.

It is also amazing when you consider who "the God of the Bible" claims to be. Just look at the dozens of things that you have discovered about God in the course of reading this book. If God were to exist, then why in the world would we trust this appalling monster?

God is an admitted torturer
God is far more heinous and demented than Hitler, having annihilated billions of animals and people in Noah's flood.
God is a pervert who demands genital mutilation.
God is a huge proponent of slavery.
God hates women.
God has happily killed millions of children and brags about it.
God demands animal and human sacrifice.
And so on... (see section 2 for details)
This is God's description of himself, in a book that God (supposedly) wrote. If God wrote this book, then God is a self-described abomination.
Why, then, do we put, "In God We Trust" on the currency? As discussed in the previous chapter, we do it because we use the concept of God as a proxy for Goodness. We overlook all of God's flaws -- we actually completely ignore them as part of the delusion -- and focus on the Good.

Now that we have proven to ourselves that God does not exist, we should stop using a proxy and start being straightforward in what we say. There is no reason to abdicate an idea as important as Goodness to an imaginary being. When we delegate a concept as important as Goodness to a non-existent, imaginary being, Goodness loses much of its power.

When we say, "One nation, under God," what we mean is "One nation, devoted to Goodness." That is what America is all about. America is a nation of good people, honest people, friendly people, helpful people. We want to help others have what we have. We should state it as clearly as that -- we, as a nation, are people who are dedicated to Goodness.

We should then make a clear statement that contains our definition of goodness. The commandments listed in the previous chapter are the right way to do that. They act as the concise summary of our legal system. We can call them commandments, or we can call them our "code of conduct" or our "national statement of Goodness" or whatever term we decide to use. What we are stating is that we have a definition of Goodness, in the form of the commandments that we have settled on as a nation. We are willing to uphold those standards in our country and help other countries to achieve them.

Instead of "In God We Trust," our money should say, "In Goodness We Trust" or "We are Dedicated to Goodness." We should then clearly state and uphold our self-evident standard of Goodness. Print the statement of Goodness, in the form of our commandments, right on the bills. "Do not murder" is a good thing for people to see every day.

In taking this step -- in actually defining and controlling the commandments ourselves rather than abdicating them to an irrelevant book or an imaginary being -- it is important to recognize something. The dictionary defines morality in this way:

The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct.
We are now setting these standards ourselves in an open process that includes everyone.
In doing that, there will be a small minority of people who will say, "Who are you to impose your standards of morality upon ME!" The important thing to understand is that we can ignore these people. The standards are self-evident. No one wants to be murdered. Therefore murder is fundamentally and objectively wrong. The 99% of us who understand and believe this self-evident truth have the right to impose our "morality" on the 1% of the population who feels the need to kill people. "Do not murder" is a universal truth that every sane person can agree on. We need to weed out the 1% who disagree and restrain them so they do not ruin life for the rest of us.

America is built on a foundation of Goodness and moral character. These concepts are important because a strong society depends on honesty, integrity and trust. Accepting that God does not exist does not change those values -- they are essential to any functioning society. It simply changes the focus of those ideas. The focus moves from an imaginary being onto us, where it belongs.

 

[james_bond_3rd]

Quote from Aapex:

What is so scientific about "YOUR" arguments?

You just keep missing the point completely.

He was arguing that there is NO scientific way to prove that God exists. So it just boils down who has the loudest voice. In that case, why would the Christian God be the One instead of, say, the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

If I had to pick a God to believe in, I'd rather have the Flying Spaghetti Monster:
http://www.venganza.org/
At least you get the free beer when you go to Heaven.

 

[Aapex]

Quote from james_bond_3rd:

You just keep missing the point completely.

He was arguing that there is NO scientific way to prove that God exists. So it just boils down who has the loudest voice. In that case, why would the Christian God be the One instead of, say, the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

If I had to pick a God to believe in, I'd rather have the Flying Spaghetti Monster:
http://www.venganza.org/
At least you get the free beer when you go to Heaven.

First, in the absence of evidence for God’s existence, agnosticism, not atheism, is the logical presumption. Even if arguments for God’s existence do not persuade, atheism should not be presumed because atheism is not neutral; pure agnosticism is. Atheism is justified only if there is sufficient evidence against God’s existence.

Second, to place belief in Santa Claus or mermaids or Speghetti Monster and belief in God on the same level is mistaken. The issue is not that we have no good evidence for these mythical entities; rather, we have strong evidence that they do not exist. Absence of evidence is not at all the same as evidence of absence, which you obviously fail to see.

 

[Aapex]

Quote from lkh:


America is built on a foundation of Goodness and moral character. These concepts are important because a strong society depends on honesty, integrity and trust. Accepting that God does not exist does not change those values -- they are essential to any functioning society. It simply changes the focus of those ideas. The focus moves from an imaginary being onto us, where it belongs.

You have just contradicted yourself.
How can you list the atrocities of God and deem him to be evil when America is guilty of the very atrocities you have condemned God for?

America is guilty of Slavery, Segregation, Killing the Native American Indians and stealing their land, Hiroshima & Nagasaki - (I'm sure my spelling is wrong but you get the point), 9/11 (according to some conspiracy theorist), etc etc etc.

You get the picture.