Well, George Bush says God talks to him all the time - I’m sure someone in the secret service musta caught him on tape :rolleyes:
No, not at all. As I said in my earlier post, Angels (as conceived by Catholics) are not interested in altering the paths of speeding bullets or making my numbers come up in the lottery. The fact that speeding bullets are not diverted and my numbers are never drawn therefore tells us nothing about whether angels, as so conceived, exist or not.
You may as well argue that I would like Bill Gates to send me a cheque for a million dollars, and the fact that that he has so far failed to do so makes his existence less likely. It’s not an argument that stands up to much critical scrutiny.
On only one occasion did they immediately and directly respond to all my questions. That night I did ask why they were speaking to me. and what I was told was (paraphrasing) they speak to nearly everyone at one time or another, but most people do not listen.
Is this the part where you tell us to “listen with our hearts”? 'cause mine’s weird that way – although I can’t live without it, it sucks as listening device.
And how do you know that angels are not interested in diverting bullets? :dubious: And if that’s true, then what are they for? They won’t talk to us and they won’t help us? 
That’s true, the fake argument that you used to represent my position does not stand up to much scrutiny. Geez, you’re making fake me look bad here.
Do they speak english? If so, does God really speak with an english accent, as he does in those old movies? [Sorry, but I couldn’t resist this question - I’m a ‘Babylon 5’ fan 
]
lol, no.
I listen with my ears. I suggest you do the same.
I agree that results are usually better when body parts are used for their intended purpose, lol.
I think they meant something more along the lines of many people having an attitude of personal superiority so who needs God or Angels type of thing. Another way of putting it would be that sometimes people have greater faith in themselves than in God.
And on the other end of the spectrum, I think they also meant people who use “faith” as an excuse to do absolutely nothing to help themselves or others, and ignore anything and everything that would require some sort of action or participation beyond “faith” and lip service.
Lord save us, do I have to spell it out in words of one syllable?
In post #6, I said:
“In Catholic thinking, as in Jewish, angels execute the will of God. They do not, however, do this by snatching us from the paths of runaway locomotives, diverting bullets or the like. Rather they act upon our senses, our imagination, and our intellects. They guide us towards salvation. Thus the fact that you lose your money in an unwise speculation, or are killed in a car crash, does not disprove the existence of angels any more than it disproves the existence of God.”
And in post #39, you replied:
*“Disprove it? Nope.
Move it a good chunk down the likelihood scale? Yup.”*
My point was that, if preventing car crashes is not among the functions of angels, the fact that car crashes occur tells us nothing about the existence or otherwise of angels. Similarly, sending me large amounts of money is not among Bill Gates’s pastimes, so the fact that he hasn’t sent me money doesn’t allow me to draw any useful conclusions about his existence. In post #46 you describe this as a “fake argument”.
You didn’t trouble to explain why car crashes and the like make the existence of angels less likely and, sticking to form, you haven’t troubled to explain why you think my Bill Gates argument is “fake”.
Unless you’re willing to argue that preventing car crashes is a necessary attribute of angels, I don’t see
(a) how the occurrence of car crashes tell us anything about the existence of angels, or
(b) why you think my Bill Gates argument is not analogous.
So, let me ask you, is preventing car crashes and unwise stock market speculation a necessary attribute of angels? If so, why? If not, what conclusions can we draw from the occurrence of car crashes and unwise speculations, and why?
Of course they’ll help us in drawing closer to God, if we desire and take advantage of that help. They’re not magic genies, but the messengers of God and the instruments of His will.
So, you’re invisible friend helps you get closer to your other invisible friend, who will still won’t change the path of bullets, but might find a way to help you not go to Detroit, as long as you believe he exists despite the total lack of scientific evidence?
Well, I try never to judge people’s spelling ability based on the soundness of their arguments, but since you asked – probably yes.
As for your (A) and (B), you chose to only argue against the silly things that people have asked about, not the actual substance behind the point. If angels, and god, are letting thousands of children die of starvation, diarrhea, brutal slaughter, simple neglect, and other causes too horrible and numerous to list; if angels, and god, are letting children be raped; if they are allowing concentration camps and the slums of Calcutta; if they are letting good, strong decent people die slow lingering painful deaths – all while they can, but won’t, prevent this, then I see three possible hypotheses:
- There is a god, and he’s incompetent.
- There is a god, and he really couldn’t give a crap (oh, sorry, I mean “He works in mysterious ways”).
- There is no god.
As a model for understanding the world, the first two are severely lacking both on the Occam’s Razor front, and on the ability to predict front. Thus #3.
In other words:
Disprove it? Nope.
Move it a good chunk down the likelihood scale? Yup.
The OP asks about angels. There are scores of thread about the existence of God. I mentioned it by way of analogy, but I don’t think this thread should be diverted into a “does God exist” thread.
Obviously, if you don’t think God exists then you’re unlikely to think that angels exist – at least as theists conceive of angels. Nevertheless it’s perfectly possible to think that God exists but angels don’t, so it is possible and useful to discuss the existence of angels separately from the existence of God.
There’s a number of possible responses to your argument in so far as it relates to God’s existence, and I’m sure you’ll have seen them in other threads. I’m also sure they don’t satisfy you, and I’m not going to reheat them here.
But if applied directly to angels, your argument falls down because it presupposes that angels are omnipotent. Angels are unlikely to exist because, if they do, all these ghastly things happen “while they can, but won’t, prevent this”, and Occam’s razor suggests a more likely explanation is that they don’t exist. You are presupposing that they can prevent these things. But I’m not aware of any religious tradition which asserts the omnipotence of angels, and Christian tradition in fact denies it.
Your argument, I think, comes down to this; God is unlikely to exist and, if God does not exist, then angels certainly do not exist. But you don’t have any indendent argument that angels, as such, are unlikely to exist even if God does. Have I got it right?
Well if you’re going to be reasonable it’s just going to suck all the fun out of being a wiseass. You’re harshing my mellow, man.
It is true that if we set aside the god issue, and assume that angels have limited powers, the argument for angels gains a little logical respectability, in a thought-experiment kind of way.
But surely the angels would have to have some measurable effect, otherwise why propose the theory in the first place? Frankly, I see no evidence of this effect. Not in the big things I mentioned above, and not in any day-to-day life kind of way where bad things are just as likely to happen to good people as they are to bad people.
It has ever been my constant study to avoid mellow-harshing.
Well, you have a point. But you still seem to be assuming not only that we should expect a “measurable effect” but also that it must take the form of averting external disasters, whether big or small. Couple of thoughts:
First, we have no experimental control. The only data we have relates to this universe, in which lots of nasty things happen to lots of people. But for all we know the strenuous efforts of a large number of angels (whose capacities, while they exceed ours, are nevertheless finite) may be averting the a larger number of catastrophes which would occur in an angel-free universe. The fact that good and bad people suffer equally from random misfortunes proves nothing, except perhaps that any protection which angels do afford is not a reward for evident virtue.
There’s no evidence that matters would be worse if there were no angels, I agree, but there’s equally no evidence that the current level of disaster represents an angel-free state.
Slightly more seriously, you may be looking in the wrong corner. Angels could have quite different effects, which do not take the form of averting big or small bad things, effects which may be internal rather than external, and which may not be easily measurable, or even easily identified. My point earlier was that Catholics (and, I think, other Christians, and Jews) do consider the effects of angels to be of this kind.
You’re also assuming that the only good reason for accepting the existence of angels is that we have observed some effect which is best explained by the hypothesis that angels have caused it. While these may be a useful way to analyse the material universe, I suggest that as a basis for considering the transcendant, much of which is beyond our observation, it is too limited. If nothing else, will it not lead us to false conclusions about matters which are beyond our observation?
Most Christians and Jews who accept the existence of angels do so, directly or indirectly, at least in part on scriptural evidence. And, obviously, if you reject scripture as a basis for reflecting upon the transcendant – as many do – you’re hardly likely to make an exception for angels.
But the selection of tools which you regard as valid or useful for considering the transcendant is essentially a subjective choice. You’re perfectly entitled to reject the existence of angels on the Occam’s razor/lack of measurable effects basis, while others are equally entitled to accept their existence on the basis of enlightenment/reflection/revalation/personal experience. Each finds his own position satisfying, and the position of the other unsatisfactory. But I don’t see that your position, based on what looks to me like an essentially materialist approach to the transcendant, has any fundamental validity which others lack.
Well that seems to be the standard answer but I hope you will understand if it seems insufficient to me. The presumption behind the explanation is that skeptics cannot hear angels because of their skepticism, and if they would only open their (metaphorical) hearts all would be revealed. But this ignores the fact that many more people in believe in angels than are skeptical of them. Are these folks not listening? And what does it mean to listen to something that you cannot hear? It’s really just a backhanded way of asserting that you possess a sense (listening to angels) that others lack. I assure you that even the most hardened skeptic, if presented with the phenomena that you experienced, would listen. If an angel will reveal to you life saving information about a third party (your boyfriend’s mother) why withold it from, for example, my girlfriend’s mother, simply because I will not listen? That seems awfully arbitrary and mean spirited.
Not quite – I don’t care what form the effect takes – but if they don’t have any effect at all then they are an unnecessary hypothesis.
So we now have a hypothesis where they have nothing to do with god, have too limited power to help solve either my or the world’s problems, and do not act as a force for good. This is sounding an awful lot like non-existance to me. Sure, angels could exist that don’t make a difference, but that doesn’t elevate them from the inifinite number of other hypotheses that don’t make a difference – like magic healing crystals, wood nymphs, mummification for the afterlife, alien mind control, and so on.
Nope. You are misrepresenting my position again. I am saying that without any observed effect it becomes much less likely that angels exist. I put it in very simple terms and you didn’t like that, so I added more words, but perhaps we should revisit it again in simple terms:
Disprove it? Nope.
Move it a good chunk down the likelihood scale? Yup.
We are not talking about what people are entitled to believe – they’re entitled to believe any fool thing they want to. But if you want to convince others that it is a rational belief, then you are going to have to use the tools of rational thought.
Not a materialist position – a rationalist one. As for fundamental validity – well, transcendance had untold thousands to cure polio, to heal cataracts, to eradicate smallpox, to extend the human lifespan, and failed completely. The rational approach did it in a few centuries. We’ve got results – this sounds like a pretty good argument for fundamental validity.
Damn, I wish they let you edit posts here (actually, I’m not so much concerned about you – I wish they’d let me edit my posts).
The last paragraph in my previous post should say :
…transcendance had untold thousands of years to cure …"
(new text highlighted with bold)
[QUOTE=Grundlepuck]
Not intentionally, believe me.
Actually, no, I think you’ve changed your position slightly. When you posted your “simple terms” first off, you were fairly clearly saying that, without the observed effect of averting misfortune it becomes much less likely that angels exist – you were, you will recall, responding to my post to the effect that, if it was not the function of angels to avert misfortune, we could draw no conclusions from their failure to do so.
Why do you assume that it is the function or object of transcendence to cure polio, heal cataracts, or extend the human lifespan? Something like, oh, say, poetry has done none of these things. Do you conclude from this that poetry is less likely to exist?
As an approach to curing polio, healing cataracts and extending the human lifespan, yes. Do you argue that that makes it universally valid for considering all questions that may be framed?
This seems like a debate moving into obfuscation rather than clarification. My view of this is simple: If no reproducible, measurable evidence exists for something, then it doesn’t meet the basic criteria for rational acceptance. Thus, no angels. Which would explain the difficulty in contacting one, which is the question posed by this thread.