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Jesus Take The Wheel Day
A Facebook group is offering Christians everywhere an opportunity to demonstrate their TRUE FAITH, just before April.
I understand why Christians aren’t supposed to test their Lord, but wouldn’t this be a great demonstration to us non-believers?! It would convert more people than millions of door-knocks.
http://www.facebook.com/events/102311426566161/
h/t Bill
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Nausea.
The one I like is when someone attributes a sick person’s recovery to his god (instead of the medical treatments he received), you ask the question, Why won’t god heal amputees?
Their belief begs the question, if the person doesn’t get healed, does that mean the god doesn’t love him, or that he didn’t rally enough people to pray for him? Imagine the guilt a loved one must feel, that he or she could have saved Grandma is only more people on Facebook had ‘liked’ that prayer post.
Or this quote from last Sunday’s Atheist Experience broadcast in which a Christian caller blamed child rape on the children being evil (which is a core teaching of Christianity, that all of humanity is born evil and in need of saving:
Fwiw, I think the Jesus with Velociraptor pic is hilarious.
So Mitch, did you ever check out St. Padre Pio?
Yeahua,
It’s one thing to bring up the possibility of begging the question.
It’s another thing to bring up the possibility of begging the question, and then present a counter argument that begs the question.
Pesky, you completely misunderstood.
If it helps, there was a quote missing in the original quotation, which was a quote within a quote.
Why let the fun end there? Have all Muslims blindfold their camels and let allah do the driving!!!
Y.,
It still meets the definition of begging the question: presuming what one seeks to prove, namely, that one thing occurring in one instance is proof that it wasnt prevented in a different instance, and then using the observers lack of evidence as proof of an affirmation. (which would be an additional 2 logical fallacies, mistaken reversal and mistaken negation).
There are good arguments to be made by atheists. What you’ve presented isn’t one of them.
If I may propose a brief question for dialog: you have put forward a dichotomus scenario. Is it possible that this is a 3rd (or more) additional scenarios? Dichotomus reasoning is itself often a logical fallacy.
Pesky, whoosh, it went over your head. No begging required.
Yeshua’s point seems clear to me, pesky. Sure, there’s evil in the world, but if God is willing to see to the punishment of child rapists, why doesn’t he do it before rather than after the child is raped?
Can you answer without Latin?
(Oh, I’ve looked at the Wikipedia entry on Padre Pio. Hardly a thorough investigation on my part, but enough to learn that even Popes thought he was a fraud.)
Mitch,
His point may be clear, but it is not logically valid.
If you will permit me to answer your question with another question: is it possible, even just a little bit, for horrible evil to occur, but that greater good comes of it?
As for Padre Pio, skepticism pending investigation is different than believing one to be a fraud. Is it possible, even just a little bit, that he actually bore the stigmata for 50 years?
Mitch, the usual answer is that the god gives humans free will. However, if there is an all-knowing all-powerful god who created the universe, then this god knew the totality of all outcomes in this universe before he created the universe.
And, specifically the Christian god knew who would be saved and who would be tortured for eternity. There is no ‘roll of the dice’ for this god, no randomness, no free will for the humans in his creation. The universe is exactly as he knew/intended it to be because he had this foreknowledge of exactly what every person would do based on the parameters he set in place at the point of creation.. There can be no free will if the Christian god exists, which makes the notion of Hell all the more sadistic.
The only thing more perverse is that this god (as the story goes) created people with ‘original sin,’ (his idea) then subjected himself to blood sacrifice to save us from the sin he originally condemned us to. And if we thoughtfully examine the evidence found all around us and conclude this god doesn’t exist, why, that thought crime is worthy of eternal punishment.
Speaking as a parent, there is no crime my children could commit, or anyone could commit, that would make me wish that person eternal torture. Unending, torture forever. So if such a god does exist, I couldn’t worship it because it is less moral than myself. Such are the fancies of Bronze and Iron Age savages, who for some reason are highly regarded today. Go figure.
“Then Jesus said to the disciples, ‘Have faith in God. I tell you the truth, you can say to this mountain, ‘May you be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and it will happen. But you must really believe it will happen and have no doubt in your heart. I tell you, you can pray for anything, and if you believe that you’ve received it, it will be yours.”
Y.,
It wouldn’t be so weaksauce if the Church hadn’t explicitly addressed matters of pre-destination in great deal some 400 years ago. Your argument is 400 years behind the times and incorrectly employs/defines key terms.
If you will permit me to work through it in reverse, you are misunderstanding/misusing the term hell. Arriving at an accurate definition of the term will help you start fixing the logical fallacies you seem to have internalized regarding free will.
Hell is defined primarily by it’s self-selective nature, and that it’s chief torture consists of eternal separation from God, as per the wish of the individual. Judgement consists of giving a person what they desired in life for all of eternity.
If you arent one of those closed minded types (that sadly are convinced the fully understand things they have not read or studied, merely by assumption or acclamation from another who has not read or studied then), perhaps you would be open minded enough to read the segment of the Catechism dealing with precisely this?
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p123a12.htm
Your arguments would be more persuasive if you used the words in them correctly.
If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. Luke 14:26
Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. For I have come to ‘set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law and ‘a man’s enemies will be those of his own household.Matthew 10:34-36
He said to another man, “Follow me.” But the man replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God. Luke 9:59-60
Jesus hates families [fact]
Jesus is not worthy of following, do away with the God of Lies, Destruction and hatred.
don’t even get me started on the rest of the garbage in that book
Jesus is no more worthy of following then YHWH, do away with the God of Lies, Destruction and hatred.
pesky,
You ask “is it possible, even just a little bit, for horrible evil to occur, but that greater good comes of it?”
Sure, pesky, though that’s usually called “the end justifies the means,” and that phrase is usually used by someone for doing great evil where the ends are by no means certain. But since you’ve responded to my question with a question, let me do the same. What is the possible greater good that comes from the Lord not preventing a child’s rape?
“The Lord works in mysterious ways” is probably your safest bet for an answer, but let’s see if you can do better than that.
that man,
Sure, all your biblical quotes are accurate. But Jesus also preached love and a great deal of wisdom. The story of Siddharta (later the Buddha) leaving his wife and young child in order to find “what it’s all about” is similar to the biblical assertion that you have to abandon everything to follow Jesus.
There are two approaches to both of these fables.
One is to state that they are not to be taken literally but as psychological guidance, regarding the importance of “letting go” when you are in search of enlightenment or God.
The other (and both may well be appropriate) is to recognize that if you’re building a religion for the long term, it really helps to have its founder supposedly instructing people to abandon everything else to stick with co-religionists. The founder will — usually — be long dead before anything gets written down, so he or she won’t be around to tell you that what you’re doing is completely against everything he or she stood for.
And pesky, regarding Padre Pio’s having borne stigmata for 50 years, you ask is it possible, even a little. Sure, it’s possible.
But my admittedly-limited-to-one-Wikipedia-article investigation suggests that he miraculously lost his stigmata shortly before his death, and that he wore mittens because his stigmata embarrassed him. It also says:
So, yes, it’s possible his stigmata were signs of his connection to God. It’s also possible the sun will not come up tomorrow, and we haven’t yet discovered that every gazillion years the universe skips a day so God can take inventory. What’s possible isn’t the same thing as what’s credible. Is his story credible? Not to me.
Regarding Padre Pio, what would you consider to be a fair look into him? Surely a case as significant as his warrants perhaps reading a book on the topic? It seems that Fr. Gemelli was able to sure determine in a lot in only a few minutes without examination. Hardly sounds like a scientific conclusion was reached by him. Pio underwent repeated, significant, lengthy medical exams and observations, which most good books on him explore in
detail.
One significant miracle worth considering from St Pio is that of a young woman born without pupils. Padre Pio restored her eyesight… Though she remained without pupils. On another occasion his intercession was credited with the complete physical regeneration of a destroyed eye — observed under medical conditions at a hospital by an atheist doctor.
The all-seeing google turned this article up:
http://catholicism.org/challenge-padre-pio.html
I skimmed it and it seems pretty solid. Willing to give it a read, Mitch? What’s 10 minutes, plus a few minutes of reflection? Surely a case as utterly extraordinary as that of St Pio is worth a few minutes of consideration?
Mitch,
What can come of such horrible things indeed?
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Goretti
The Christian claim is a radical one. That Heaven is real, and is open to all, that it is the pearl of great price. It is unmerrited and freely given out of love.
Christians competing for Darwin awards? Those who crash are just faith deficient.
pesky,
I believe the Christian claim, as you describe it, is very real. Several times now, I’ve mentioned here a Buddhist story that I find very moving. I was going to retell it, but I tried to pull it up on Wikipedia and discovered, to my delight, that it is very close to a parable attributed to Rabbi Heim of Romshishok, CS Lewis, and others.
I think a difference between our ways of understanding is that, while I believe Rabbi Heim was telling the absolute truth, I don’t believe for a moment that he “ascended to the firmaments.” I don’t think he intended for me to believe that; he just wanted to explain what heaven was.
To my ears, at least, heaven and hell are here on earth, and no God need be involved.
From Wikipedia:
But did their elbows being splinted on wooden slats prevent them from reaching their bootstraps?
Dog help us all!
Here is a wonderful sermon from Rev. Nancy Taylor of the First Congregational Church of Sonoma. When she speaks of God, she speaks of the Spirit of Love Eternal. Remove the capitals, and this is a god I believe in.
Nowhere in this sermon is there anything that insists I accept any particular brand, or believe in anything supernatural. (The spirit of love is, to me at least, self-evident and does not require belief in the supernatural.) This is what speaks to me. What truly repels me is the idea of a God who is rooting for one team or another.
It strikes me as tragic that these two versions of God are so often mixed up, so that people who are rightfully suspicious of those who insist on a particular version of the former God — the sky God who does or does not become incarnated and perform miracles — become unwilling to hear the wisdom universally offered by those who speak of the latter — the spirit of love.
G. Gilbert Yule,
I didn’t realize that dog was separate from us. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
Falling down is inevitable, staying down is optional.
If dog was not separate from us, it would mean that BarryO had comitted canibalism. Woof.
Suppose it depends on your definition of ‘canibalism.’ Thinking in your terms of canibalism – yes, I would agree, Barry Soetoro, a/k/a Obomb bomb, chews us up and spits us out – just as he’s been told to do.
In case anyone hasn’t noticed, I’ve abandoned the experiment at keeping the comments section relatively sane. Carry on and enjoy.
“Relatively sane”? As in, let’s continue thinking/believing/acting in slave-speak? We all know where that path leads to.
I’m not sure you got it Queenie. If you recall, while growing up, BarryO admitted that he actually ate dog meat.
What I love about the Jewish version of the parable at #21 is how authentically Jewish it sounds. I can just hear a yiddishe accent huffing “Him?! I’d rather staaave.” There’s the old joke about the very orthodox guy who gets shipwrecked. The first thing he does, being very religious, is build two synagogues. Why two? One, he attends. The other, he “wouldn’t set foot in!”
Mitch,
We are now speaking and articulating clear differences between the physical and metaphysical, acknowledging that truth is outside us as opposed to subject to us, and that some of these truths are self-evident.
We are making great progress in dialog indeed.
As an aside, reaching the understanding that the phrase “we hold these truths to be self-evident” is not merely a rhetorical flourish (but rather a concise philosophical statement of commonly held belief) is often a major breakthrough for many Americans these days. (Not implying such for you, just an interesting general observation).
pesky,
I’ll list a few of the things that you appear to believe in and that I definitely do not:
1) Padre Pio having God-given stigmata
2) A virgin birth involving a holy spirit (as opposed to parthenogenesis)
3) Papal infallibility
4) Human infallibility of any kind (which includes, IMO, #3)
5) The physical resurrection of any animal
6) The acceptability of civil rule by a religious authority (which necessarily follows from 3)
7) The idea that any institution has a view of truth elevated above all other institutions (ditto)
8) Suspension of the physical laws of the universe (as opposed to the existence of laws and effects we do not yet understand)
It’s #8 that causes me to reject what I would call Catholic (and Jewish, and you name it) superstition, as well as all literalism in connection with religious texts.
If your stigmata can’t be shown to the guy from Catholic University, if you cover them with mittens, and if they magically disappear on your death, when you can no longer prevent people from looking at your hands, I don’t think they exist.
Mitch,
Re: #6, papal infallibility extends only to matters of faith and morals, and is unrelated to the exercising of governmental power.
Not trying to nitpick. An equally important part of dialog is persons understanding what, where, why, and how their views diverge.
Did you read the article I linked yesterday on Padre Pio?
Additionally, he underwent numerous lengthy detailed medical examinations. It is unreasonable to have expected him to submit to examination by any doctor that presented themselves. As for the mittens, what would you do if you were leaking blood out your hands all day?
To dismiss Padre Pio on the grounds that a single doctor reached an unscientific conclusion in an unscientific short timeframe based on an unscientific examination (all these by his own admission) is… Unscientific.
“In case anyone hasn’t noticed, I’ve abandoned the experiment at keeping the comments section relatively sane. Carry on and enjoy.”
First the goal was “restore civility”, then it was to remove “meta” comments, finally “relatively sane”. It isn’t easy to create a sterile imaginary world, Disney tried, and the Republicans still try. Yet, the “real world” with all its warts and blemishes, is far better than any illusions, no matter how well intended.
The word most educated people would use in that situation is… reasonable. I can’t believe you really believe what you just wrote. You must be trolling yourself. You admit you have bad, unreliable evidence, but then want us to accept the bad evidence at face value. That, sir, is unscientific. You are drawing faith-based conclusions.
pesky,
Yes, I did read the article you suggested regarding Padre Pio. Perhaps you feel that, on balance, the evidence supports his having stigmata. We’ll have to disagree on that. In the spirit of dialog, I’ll say that most of the evidence in your article was what many people I know would call “anecdotal,” and, for better or worse, we don’t value it as much as we value the report from the doctor at Catholic University. The reaction to “anecdotal” evidence is one of the things that often separates scientists from “people of faith.”
#35,
I can’t disagree. The problem remains… an unknown number of people are sufficiently repelled by the comments that they may stop participating. I understand that others are repelled by attempts at moderating, censoring, or editing. There’s no good solution. You may be right about Disneyland. I’ve given up mainly because I’d hoped a single shock to the system would change its path. I’m not about to keep banging the side of the radio in hopes the signal gets better.
and pesky,
On the idea that the Pope’s infallibility “extends only to matters of faith and morals, and is unrelated to the exercising of governmental power,” I’ve never understood how if someone is infallible with regard to morals, that person should not automatically be world president.
The explanation for the Papal shyness, I suspect, is that the Church has long since reconciled itself to the Protestant reformation, and to the Vatican’s difficulty in exercising civil power outside of, perhaps, Italy and possibly some parts of Africa.
The big complaint much of the West has about Islam is precisely that Islam grew in an environment where it hadn’t lost civil control. As a result, it is much more honest about the importance of ITS beliefs in creating a moral government, and much more consistent in admitting that its mullahs, supposedly being in communication with Yahweh, should run all of society. That’s the danger of Islam, not its particular set of beliefs.
Papal infallibility was only defined in the 1870s. Ironically, Vatican I, where it occurred, was brought to a close by the military action that also brought an end to the Papal States.
The infallibility in matters of morals could also be explained in English as, “in matter of moral principles”. The actual implementation of moral principles is a matter of “policy”, which differs from time to time and place to place, and which the Pope does not have infallibility in.
Example: it is a moral principle that all persons should receive a living wage. How this is put into practice is called a “prudential judgement” of which reasonable persons can and do disagree.
In short, it’s about the gap between principle and practice. I hope this clarifies a bit.
Come on, pesky. Don’t you think that an organization that tortures heretics is pretty convinced its leader is infallible? Do you really think the IDEA of papal infallibility was introduced only in the late 19th century?
Is the right of a woman to abort a growing fetus a “moral principle” or a “policy?” Or is the “moral principle” or “policy” that every blastula has a right to be carried to term? If it’s a moral principle, it seems like the Church, to be consistent, should be willing to go just as far as Islam to impose its principles on the world. So the distinction between policy and moral principle seems purely semantic to me.
It seems straightforward to me — religious institutions with hierarchies want people to do what they say. The only reason they don’t force people to do what they say is they lack power. That’s fortunate for those of us who believe in individual liberty, and who don’t think of Iran as the ultimate moral state.
I agree Mitch and I feel your pain. Will the idiots discourage the folks using their brains? The struggle continues; at school, at work, in traffic, at the HH, et al.
Mitch, I have trouble differentiating between those in the Vatican who want to tell me (a non-Catholic) what I can and can’t do and those in Teheran who want to tell me (a non-Muslim) what to do and those in Tel-Aviv who want to tell me (a non-Jew) what to do. Or for that matter what those in Washington who want to tell me (a practicing Human) what to do. Each says “Gott mit uns” to rationalize the control they want to have over others. Really, that’s all you need to know about politics or religion.
Mitch,
This is where specifics start becoming important.
There are 2 key differences that need addressing first. What you think papal infallibility means (and how it applies), and what it actually means and how it actually applies. I skimmed the wiki on it and it seems a very good overview.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility
In addition, there is a fundamental difference between what some persons may (or may not have) believed about the Church in the past, and what the Church itself teaches/taught In addition, the Church has never taught that the members of the Church, nor it’s representatives are infallible in their actions. Just the opposite, rather, that the Church is filled with sinners all in need of salvation and forgiveness.
Infallibility prevents formal teaching of error. It doesnt prevent/guarantee good decision making.
I hope I’ve been able to clearly illustrate the difference.
walt,
Well, one difference is that you get to vote on who ends up in Washington. If you don’t think your right to vote matters, or has any effect on who ends up in Washington, I understand why you don’t see any difference.
I don’t think Islam is “worse” than Judaism or Catholicism or Mormonism or Scientology. I just think it’s got more civil power than any of the others, and that makes it more harmful to the populations under its control. I doubt Islam could be much worse than Christian Capitalism, the dominant religion in the North American continent. Christian Capitalism split off from Christianity long ago, but it maintains Christian trappings and ritual, just as Christianity maintains ritual from pagan days.
pesky,
I gotta go. Nothing personal.
Mitch, I don’t think the Church’s willingness to torture was due to their belief in their infallibility at all, rather their lack of belief in the teachings they were forcing on the people – for power.
#45,
I have a really difficult time believing that the torturers didn’t believe they were acting in their supposed God’s name. It’s when people have a real or imaginary end that is MAGNIFICENT that they sometimes become willing to use deplorable means. God has served that end throughout our bloody history. Today, national security will serve.
A marathon of an education that weaves a solid quilt of history:
Not sure why, but I listened to the first couple of minutes, long enough to hear the first allegation (about insider trading based on pre-event knowledge of 9/11). Here’s what snopes.com has to say:
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/putcall.asp
And: http://911myths.com/html/put_options.html
Wikipedia, of course, has information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9/11_conspiracy_theories#Suspected_insider_trading
The question I would pose is this: if you were doing a documentary attempting to shed light on 9/11, and chose to mention the increase in puts on airlines, why wouldn’t you mention things like American Airlines’ warning to analysts that major losses would be coming?
But seriously, if there were conspirators, do you really think they’d have left a trail as obvious as that? Never mind. Don’t answer that.
Here’s a good read: http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/06-09-11/
Except a great many of those accused of heresy, tortured and murdered were only guilty of having wealth desired by the Church, Mitch. Millions were murdered, not counting Jews and Muslims. It is and has always been an organization to consolidate power and control and if not restrained by secular law would be every bit as oppressive as Islam.
Mitch,
“Not sure why, but I listened to a couple of minutes . . .” Not sure why?
Perhaps you could get past your ooooh! conspiracy phobia and watch the other five hours that aren’t a documentary of 9-1-1.
If you won’t watch the full 5 hours of a documentary just because it begins with 30 minutes of pure hysterical nonsense, you’re just not open-minded enough.