I…am…HE-GOD!!!
Garbage. It’s the job of the believer to demonstrate that something exists. Or that it can exist, or that it might exist. It’s not the job of the skeptic to disprove something that is claimed to violate facts, logic and physical law. “Agnostic” is just a means of sucking up to religion, of giving it a special status we accord nothing else; people are not agnostic about goblins or Sauron. It’s not “faith” to point out that the evidence is that there is no God; it’s pointing out the obvious. It’s pointing out something that nearly everyone would agree with, except that the “God” label is slapped onto it.
No matter how much you pretend that both sides are equal in plausibility and logic and factual support, they are not. Atheism is not faith; it’s the denial of faith. Pretending otherwise is a lie of the beleivers; an attempt to pretend that their beliefs are of equal worth.
By the powers of Greyskull?
While i’m partially in agreement with you on your words in this thread in general, I disagree with you on this particular point. You can’t prove a negative, but you can prove a positive, and in doing so disprove alternate positives. All you need is to find a single piece of evidence that contradicts God’s existence - against which, oddly enough, no mountain of evidence for would outweigh it (presupposing such evidence, of course ;)), since a single point against a universal standard renders it non-universal.
Really, at no point at all should we consider a positive concept to be objectively proven, since we never know when a contradicition will come along; however, once a negative point is evidenced, we can freely accept it as the oppositely-stated objective point (assuming, of course, that it’s right).
So to the contrary, it could lead to an objective determination that God doesn’t exist; but it couldn’t lead to an objective determination that he does.
Sorry, friend, but you’re suggesting rubbish.
Do vampires not exist?
You can’t tell me they don’t objectively, but if someone came to you and said they were being chased by a vampire what would you say?
Would you foolishly say, “I’m agnostic on the existence of vampires.”?
You can safely say that vampires don’t exist because there is no evidence for them, and furthermore they defy the evidence we do have. It isn’t being dogmatic to say that there are no vampires. It’s being rational.
You know what? Vampires are about as likely as the Christian God. At least we have seen dead bodies and know they can exist. We have no evidence for spirit forms that can create universes.
As I said, I can’t *know *there isn’t a Christian God. I can however know that there is no evidence for it. So God, unicorns, Santa, vampires and can be safely said not to exist.
The trouble is you’re getting bogged down with objective / subjective to the point of timidity. You don’t know objectively that you’re sitting at a computer.
Thank you for your kind response, however my statement of faith in Jesus Christ is the very reason I posted this.
I did check out the link, his beliefs are somewhat troubling to me.
The event he related is another example of how God is in control.
I can give another example of how God is in control.
3 year ago my daughter and her husband were wanting another child. Their son was 7 and there were some complications with his birth and some other issues. They were working with specialists and after several years were told the only way they could conceive would be through invetro fertilization. They could not afford this procedure and she told me that they would not be having any more children.
I told her that it was not the doctors call, that its the lords call. Well in under 9 months we have another wonderful gift from the Lord.
The 7year old brother wanted nothing to do with a brother and even told his mom & Dad that they needed to build a porch for the baby so he could have someplace to live.
This is the day of birth.
and he couldn’t get him moved into his room soon enough.
Praise the Lord!!
Clearly the doctors were wrong. I’m not sure what connection that has to God, however.
Say I’m walking down the street and I meet a man who tells me that the bridge is out ahead. However, when I arrive at the bridge, I discover that it’s actually still open. Which is the more likely explanation?
- The man was mistaken about the bridge being out.
- The bridge was out, but God miraculously repaired it before I reached it.
Hey I did forget to mention that the Sunday prior to the transplant my brother and his wife came to Church with me and we were all prayed for there in the service. Then our associate pastor and friend Rabbi Fred traveled the 200 miles to the hospital to lead our family’s in prayer and during my brothers recovery we had 24 hour prayer for 13 days in our prayer room for the 13 youth (2 were my Grandsons) 
on a short term mission to Mexico. many prayed for my brothers recovery (100 % recovery)
We Prayed hard for this recovery. Today in church I told this same story, well I generalized a lot of details of course as almost all the parishioners know the story from prayer requests already.
Praise the Lord!
Yes the doctors were wrong.
Was that man a bridge building Engineer?, or was he just a taxi driver taking a walk??
For what reason would the bridge need to be there for you? Did you have any reason to need that bridge there and Pray that when you got to that point there would be a functioning bridge for you???
You are a sinner just like me and my brother, have you come to grips with that and asked Jesus into your life so that you can lay those sins down at the foot of the Cross and become a new man/woman in Christ?
We have and I give thanks and Praise to My Savior.
Can’t structural engineers be wrong too? There have been plenty of cases where buildings that were thought to be structurally sound have suddenly collapsed. When that sort of thing happens, is it because God decided that the building should fall down and kill people, or because the structural engineers made a mistake?
You seem to believe that doctors and engineers have special powers that make them infalliable. So if they turn out to have been mistaken about something, the only possible explanation must be divine intervention. But doctors and engineers are merely falliable human beings. They make mistakes, just like everyone else.
I think, maybe, you need to put a little less faith in the abilities of doctors.
So God doesn’t help people who don’t pray to him? That doesn’t seem very nice.
If you saw someone who was in trouble and you could easily help them, you probably would. And I’d imagine you’d do it unconditionally. If someone really needs help, it’s wrong to put conditions on offering it. You wouldn’t say “I’ll help you, but only if you do X. If you don’t do X, tough, you’re on your own.”
Then why does God put conditions on His kindness? Why is He nicer to those who pray to Him?
As a Paramedic I have been able to help people in seemingly impossible situations. I have also been unable to help people in other situations. My overall impression of god even after bringing some people back from the dead is that he / she is just not a nice person.
I’m still happy to hear about the good news you have received and hope your fortune stays that way.
Why would your false god do such a thing? Does he just like fucking with people, like a bully who pretends he won’t give some kid’s ball back?
None of which remotely covers any of the questions I raised in my original or extended post. It just informs me that you, and others, prayed a lot. It doesn’t explain the logical and theological difficulties with God either controlling doctors or our biology, and allowing us free will, and avoiding predestination, and the arbitrary nature of ‘his’ intervention. If God is ultimately able to control everything, why did you not have faith without the assistance of medicine? Or are you for a moment able to conceive that self-deception is involved in your ‘unquestioning’ belief in someone you should have ultimate faith in.
Hey you are starting to GET IT!
They have special gifts(not powers), Now not all of them are using their gifts with the humility that maybe they should.
I think, maybe, you need to put a little less faith in the abilities of doctors.
Haven’t I done that when I told her that its not the doctors call??
Not at all, We pray for people in all walks of life. We pray.
Who am I to judge?
However just this past Sunday there was a new face in church and after when asked by several others it was leaned that he was there looking for a hand-out. He was invited to attend the service and welcomed back, however the church policy was for him to meet with some Elders and they would asses him before handing over something for his needs. Then funds are given as fuel receipts of food receipts, as the Lords money isn’t given for sinful use.
Read the Bible and those questions can be answered much better than I am able to explain.
OUT, foul spirits! The power of Greyskull commands you!
I never get this when it comes from atheists. Your argument might make sense if you’re dealing with an absolute dichotomy. But you aren’t dealing with belief/no belief.
You’re dealing with people who are asking merely “show me evidence before I believe” versus a near infinite number of religious explanations. You’re talking about the Christian God in isolation, but, Mithras aside, you need to add into your argument the pantheon of Hindu deities, Zoroastrianism, Lao Cai, Shinto, Mongolian animism, Bön, South Sea cargo cults, Shintō, Polynesian mythologies, etc. etc.
I do not believe it is religious-like “faith” to demand evidence for any and all of the current and often contradictory belief systems above before believing in them, and nor should you: why should arguments against Christianity be any different?
You treated the doctors’ original diagnosis as though it were FACT, not opinion. So when it turned out not to have been true, you interpreted it as a case where God had performed a miracle. Instead of just accepting that the initial diagnosis had been a mistake.
But if you didn’t pray, what would happen? Would God stop helping you?
Obviously if you’re considering performing an act of charity you want to make sure that you’re really helping someone, not just helping them to dig themselves into a deeper hole. And as human beings we have limited resources and abilities. Even if my next door neighbor BADLY needs a million dollars, I can’t give it to him.
But God has no limitations. He never runs out of resources and He always knows what people’s motivations are. So why does it matter if people pray to him or not? If someone needs His help, shouldn’t He help them? Even if they’ve never prayed to Him and no one has ever prayed on their behalf?
I’ve read the Bible. It doesn’t really address this issue. I thought you might be able to shed some light.
By the power of Numbskull!
I’ve got another story about how god is control. I had a friend who got cancer in high school. It was a rare kind of blood cancer. The doctors spent more than a year trying to help her, and what they did helped to some extent. She was getting better, and things were looking good finally. And then a blood vessel burst in her head and she died on her living room floor in horrible agony.
And then there was the time some friends of my parents got into a car accident. They were struck by a drunk driver. The two parents suffered some injuries, but their twin daughters were at death’s door when they got to the hospital. The doctors did everything they could, but both girls, barely a year old, died from their injuries within a day. The parents lived.
Praise the Lord!
At the very best, you’re cherry picking. For every event you can name where you think your god helped someone, another event can be found where he didn’t. You’re ignoring the negatives and only picking the things you think are positive, even though you have no evidence of it whatsoever.
I notice you didn’t answer my questions from earlier in this thread. I wonder why.
I’ve always wondered about how Christians reconcile that. God is sitting on his cloud, nudging a few molecules here and there to give a child horrifically painful blood cancer. Then he waits until the family finds out about it and carefully measures how much they grovel before he thinks about helping.
Only when they are on their knees with the gnashing of teeth and wailing does he get his deific money shot and then he lets the medical treatment work.
I’m not sure how that’s any different from a king riding off to a peasant’s field ordering his men to rape one of the peasant’s daughters and only stopping them when the peasant has put his face in the mud, begging for the king’s mercy.
I think Christians have battered-wife syndrome. "God gave my daughter cancer, but it was my fault, he really loves me…