GOD EXISTS

If God does exist, I will survive that too.

Check with the Author. Survival isn't the key thing.

And there´s your problem. You assume that if there is a god, it will conform to what you believe. That´s very arrogant even before taking into account the history of religions.

Perhaps what we need is something like the United Church of Alan Dean Fosters Humanx Confederation, where you can get first class spiritual help without a belief in God at all.

The basic question of all is why there is anything instead of nothing.

The next basic question is whether ultimate reality is personal or impersonal.

One man said he became a believer because he found the New Testament answered all the philosophy questions he knew, not by shooting them down one at a time, but by providing a framework that made sense.

My insistence on looking at evidence whenever possible comes from the assumption that the universe is reasonable. Guess what was the source of that one

So note that the buried planation formations do not show either the gully and valley erosion we see now, nor exhibit more erosion of soft rocks than hard rocks which also occurs now. The present physical laws are the keys to the past. However, the same laws can produce a gentle breeze, or a tornado. We need to check the evidence to see what did occur.


http://tune.pk/video/5262169/exodus-of- ... in-red-sea


Just found this one. I prefer written - speed reading was learned a long time ago. But this is worth the time. Especially since it is possible to run it in the background and only look at it when the audio sounds interesting

PS, articles with bibliographies are still better.

http://www.truebiblecode.com/understanding249.html

Looks better. Checking on the names of the people provides context. Still no bibliography This discusses the two possible places, and summarizes. It would be a good idea to do more archeology here, including checking the inside of the coral

As I wrote in the Journal, “Today there are more than 200 known parameters necessary for a planet to support life—every single one of which must be perfectly met,” or our existence would be utterly impossible.

Unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal doesn't have bibliographies. I know of a few parameters needed, but it would be nice to know more of them. Biochemistry is progressing at a rapid pace

Imaginos1892 wrote: . . ..
That we require real, verifiable physical evidence before we accept that arguments based on those stories have any validity whatsoever?

Nor does it profit you to continue belaboring the low probability of the chain of events that led to life on this planet.

I think I see your problem on that one. You are still unconsciously proceeding from a feeling that the Earth is the center of the universe. It is not.

The probability of the sequence of events that led to life occurring in any particular place is very low, but after billions of years in hundreds of billions of galaxies containing quintillions of stars, the probability of it happening SOMEwhere by sheer random chance is damn near unity, and we are here because this is where it happened. Indeed, it has probably happened many, many times in other places too. They may be so far away that it would take millions or billions of years to reach them, but the odds are pretty good that they’re out there.
. . ..

Imaginos, have you done the math? The calculated odds on even a small (300+ units) biological molecule with constant chirality occurring anywhere we can reach with our current best telescopes assuming every nucleon was a molecule transforming at the speed limited by the Plank constant for 20 billion years has been calculated. This is the kind of probability being talked about, not just that in the oceans of Earth. Many such molecules are much larger - hemoglobin has 574 units. I wonder how many units a strand of DNA has Even worse, they need to be molecules that actually function to replicate the organism. A mess of tar is not functional, no matter what chemicals are in it.

The assumption that the non-personal universe is infinite is an unproven assumption.

The assumption that the non-personal universe was designed and created by a Person is also an assumption.

IIRC Goedel is the mathematician who showed a proof that any symbolic system cannot be completely descriptive. Language is certainly such a system, as is mathematics.

However, it is often possible to work out some of the logical results, and compare them with reality. Personally, my most interesting such pattern is comparing Biblical prophecies with subsequent history, and estimating the odds on someone by accident, getting that much correct. The odds are not as great as the odds on life, only about 1 in 10^150 power. You can, if you want to, postulate a time machine coming back from the future to explain this, or you can choose to be ignorant of both evidence from creation and from the Bible.

As always, reality gets the last say.

ANY theory is not reality, and must be tested against it.

Michael Everett - As you can see, if there is a GOD, then either we are all doomed to Hell (since many of the main religions claim that all other paths lead to Hell, so since all religions are covered by that, there is therefore no path to Heaven) or GOD has innumerable facets, meaning that whichever facet you choose to believe in, it is only a tiny aspect of GOD and is just as valid as all the other aspects, therefore no religion should seek to place itself above any other religion.

Modify "doomed to Hell" to "doomed to Hell without God's intervention." The Bible claims to be a historical record of that intervention.

Michael, the assumption given is that God has not spoken or cannot tell us anything about Himself. Any writing that has historical descriptions can be tested, and any writing that has physical evidence can be tested. The weak spot is that people strongly tend to test against their own accepted ideas, instead of against facts.

Example: Even though the Bible states the mountain where Moses was met by God is in Midian, the accepted idea has been the mountain in the Sinai peninsula. For tests on the Midian hypothesis, search on (Aqaba "chariot wheel" found). Even so there are two likely places, one based on the location of the evidence, and the other pointing out that given wooden chariot parts the tidal flows could have moved the items for a large distance. More archeological work is needed, which is hard in that area - one man was imprisoned for 58 days on the basis that he must be a spy

It is interesting to compare the number of examples given even just a century ago where men stated the Bible had its facts wrong, with the number given today. Almost all of the old ones did not survive solid research. The few others I know about are based on theory, rather than solid evidence.

Annachie - Have you ever perused the Book of Mormon or the Koran?

Book of Mormon, yes. The lack of archeological evidence means I cannot be a Mormon and be true to myself.

TN4994 -We hear:
"The bible is inspired by God."

But how much of it is hearsay?
We know modifications to the tales started with the first tellings.

All arguments are circular IMHO. Therefore evidence can debunk an argument, but not prove it - see Goedel IIRC. The statement that the Bible (in the original writings) is inspired is not our idea, but from the Bible. This circular argument can and should be tested. Since we do not have access to the original writings, we should use the SAME tests we use for Homer, Virgil, Julius Caesar, etc. My objection is to when people insist the Bible cannot be tested. It has passed many tests, but using evidence, not theories.

The writers claimed to be witnesses, not tale tellers. Of the twelve apostles, copies of contemporary writings tell us eleven died rather than deny Jesus as the risen Lord. Any group that claims to be witnesses and backs the truthfulness of their claim with their lives has my attention. Which doesn't prevent me from looking for other evidence.

Presumption is allowable. Prejudice is not. Failure to test wherever possible is not.

Zacharra -It's kind of hard to take a book like the Bible seriously when it has been changed down through the millennium, through translations/mistranslations of several different languages, language drift and alterations by governments at the time.

Zacharra - If I do not believe in the god of those religions, then the rewards or punishments of those gods means absolutely nothing to me.

Assuming they are all imaginary, of course.

In the case of the New Testament, translations done in early days are witness to the fundamental accuracy of it. So are the quotations from it by the early church fathers. It has been said it could almost completely be reconstructed by combining those quotations. You would need to ignore spelling and other minor variations, of course.
And you still need honest translators

The E wrote:

cthia wrote:Cthia is indeed working on a formal proof.

That, in no way, discredits what smr said. Even if I am successful at a formal proof that God absolutely exists, he still will not exist for some people. Even if GOD himself comes to Earth and introduces himself. Even if HIS SON visits us, we, some of us, will never believe. There are still certain things that one must do. Because in THE END it won't matter if we know GOD, it will only matter if GOD knows us. Lest he will tell us to depart from him for HE never knew us.

Even if GOD exists, because of freedom to choose, GOD may not exist for you.

I'm curious, what definition are you using for "formal proof"? Isn't one of the hallmarks of a formal proof that it doesn't require the person evaluating it to be a believer?

To me, it sounds like what you are working on is less a proof and more an affirmation of your beliefs. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but claiming it to be a proof of anything besides your personal beliefs, or to claim it to be valid beyond your own mind (which is implied by your usage of the term formal proof) is a questionable piece of rhetoric.

All formal proofs rely on one or more axioms. Geometry, with its two non-Euclidian branches shows that a formal proof may not show the existence of the thing "proven." IIRC, the mathematician, Goedel, produced a formal proof that any formal symbol system cannot cover everything. My math isn't at that level, but the popularization I studied makes it clear that it is always possible to produce something that system cannot describe.

This is why evidence, rather than theory, must rule.

I cannot provide logical proof for God, any more than for quantum mechanics. It is possible to look at the results. I have not been able to find any place where archeological fact has proven the Bible wrong, although there have been many contradictions with theories. Ditto with the relation between the experimental sciences and the Bible.

Take a look at Job 40:15-24 some time. Many commentaries say it is an elephant; no, a rhinoceros; no, a hippopotamus. It looks more like a description of some of the larger vegetarian dinosaurs to me.

TN4994 -Maybe they practiced Egyptian medicine?

Some decades back I found "None of These Diseases," by S. I. McMillen, MD. Among other things, this discusses some of what we know about the state of Egyptian medicine in Moses' day, in the light of more modern medicine.

BTW, do you really think today's medicine is correct in all?

Michael Everett wrote:The prophecy apparently used the word shut, but that can translate as both a gate being closed and a gate being blocked?
You can close a door (and re-open it) or block a door (which means that it is no longer a door).
Gates are created to be shut (closed) and opened. It is what they are there for. . . ..

Blocked isn't shut? IIRC they rebuilt the gate (less the door) and then bricked it up. Later in Ezekiel, it describes a situation which has not yet happened where the gate will be unblocked (opened) again. However, it will still not be used for major traffic, only the prince of that day will use it, and will enter and exit thru that gate.

If you want to check the word out, look in Strong's exhaustive concordance (copyright 1890) Hebrew dictionary, word #5462.

DDHvi wrote:snip

In the case of the New Testament, translations done in early days are witness to the fundamental accuracy of it. So are the quotations from it by the early church fathers. It has been said it could almost completely be reconstructed by combining those quotations. You would need to ignore spelling and other minor variations, of course.
And you still need honest translators

What early translations of the New Testament. There has never been anything found earlier that the 4th or 5th century CE, and those of copies of copies we don't know how many times. And from internal evidence, most of the New Testament wasn't written until the start of the 2nd century CE (100 AD)

That's incorrect. It was alleged in the late 1800s that the New Testament was written late, but that school of thought had to back off its claims as more manuscripts were found. The dates I'm listing below are from the scholars associated with the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, which publishes the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament. They're from mainline denominations; nobody considers any of these folks to be fundamentalists.

Papyrus 45 – one of the Chester Beatty papyri, contains sections of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, dated to the early 200s.

Papyrus 46 – another Chester Beatty papyri, contains nine of the Pauline letters, about AD 200

Papyrus 47 – another Chester Beatty papyri, sections of Revelation, late 200s

Papyrus 52 – a very small fragment containing five verses from John, AD 100-150

P66 – one of the Bodmer papyri, John, about AD 200

P72 – 1 Peter, 2 Peter, Jude, 200s

P75 – Luke & John, AD 175-225

Codex Sinaiticus – complete New Testament, 300s

Codex Alexandrinus – most of the New Testament, 400s

Codex Sinaiticus – mid-300s, breaks off in Hebrews 9, subsequent pages have been lost

I'm pretty sure I could find more than these ten. There are also Old Latin, Syriac, and Coptic manuscripts before 500. And literally thousands of quotations in various theologians' works, beginning in the early 100s.

Actually the internal evidence strongly supports composition in the first century AD, particularly the way Acts describes the names of political offices and which provinces certain cities were in (as opposed to which provinces they were in after a later reorganization).

What early translations of the New Testament. There has never been anything found earlier that the 4th or 5th century CE, and those of copies of copies we don't know how many times. And from internal evidence, most of the New Testament wasn't written until the start of the 2nd century CE (100 AD)

That's incorrect. It was alleged in the late 1800s that the New Testament was written late, but that school of thought had to back off its claims as more manuscripts were found. The dates I'm listing below are from the scholars associated with the Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, which publishes the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament. They're from mainline denominations; nobody considers any of these folks to be fundamentalists.

Do recall though that there´s a difference between written, and not edited ever since.

Many/most of those you mention probably does not exist in original form, but only in the edited versions from later.



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It is interesting to compare the number of examples given even just a century ago where men stated the Bible had its facts wrong, with the number given today. Almost all of the old ones did not survive solid research.

And that is a complete garbage and rubbish claim.
The bible has a vague basis in reality for sure, but there are freaky huge disconnects once you start looking at it.

In the case of the New Testament, translations done in early days are witness to the fundamental accuracy of it. So are the quotations from it by the early church fathers.

Only if you get seriously drunk and allow a crapload of wishful thinking neatly coloured by your belieftinted glasses.

However, it is often possible to work out some of the logical results, and compare them with reality. Personally, my most interesting such pattern is comparing Biblical prophecies with subsequent history, and estimating the odds on someone by accident, getting that much correct. The odds are not as great as the odds on life, only about 1 in 10^150 power. You can, if you want to, postulate a time machine coming back from the future to explain this, or you can choose to be ignorant of both evidence from creation and from the Bible.

There are dozens of people who through history have made far better predictions about the future than the bible, does that make them gods or what?

Tenshinai wrote:snip

There are dozens of people who through history have made far better predictions about the future than the bible, does that make them gods or what?

Most of the "accurate" predictions made by both the Bible and others are post event interpretations. By analyzing what happened, and then going back and searching the reference, something comes up that looks like the event, and (almost) everyone says "See, here is a successful prediction of this event". This is particularly true of the prophecies of Nostradamus. They are sufficiently vague, that if you twist things around, you can make almost any major event appear to have been predicted. Of course you have to read Hister as Hitler (and that is one of the closer correlations). There was a show on Nostradamus recently about a lost boot of his predictions
on the History Channel. It was originally produced in 2007, and claimed that his predictions called for doomsday in 2012 as confirmed by the Mayan calendar. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't this 2015, and we didn't have a doomsday in 2012 (unless of course you are a Republican and considered Romney's loss to be doomsday).

To be truly valid, the prediction was be specific. This in fact is what most scientific theories are. A way of saying, "This has never been done but if you do this, this is what you will see", and then someone goes out and does whatever, and looks to see it the predicted result occurred. It so, it is evidence (not proof) that the theory is valid. The more predictions the theory makes that are confirmed, the more solid the ground under the theory. If in fact the theory makes a prediction that is not seen, then the theory must be modified or scrapped, and a new theory constructed that includes all of the observed data to date, and make s new predictions to be verified.

The fundamental accuracy of the text to the original, or the fundamental accuracy of the text overall. Because bits of it, especially the Gospels, just didn't happen that way.

There was a show on Nostradamus recently about a lost boot of his predictions
on the History Channel. It was originally produced in 2007, and claimed that his predictions called for doomsday in 2012 as confirmed by the Mayan calendar. Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't this 2015, and we didn't have a doomsday in 2012 (unless of course you are a Republican and considered Romney's loss to be doomsday).

And anyone who truly believed in that rubbish was a complete moron, because anyone who actually looked even a little would know that what happened to the Mayan calendar in 2012 was simply just roughly equivalent to what happened to the common calendar in 999 and a bit less so in 1999.

The very basic difference between the Mayan short count calendar, like we might say its -15 now and was -99 16 years ago, and the long count calendar which most definitely does not "end".

Especially idiotic due to how there are some Mayan predictions about the future as well, and some of those go TENS of thousands of years into future from now.

This is particularly true of the prophecies of Nostradamus. They are sufficiently vague, that if you twist things around, you can make almost any major event appear to have been predicted. Of course you have to read Hister as Hitler (and that is one of the closer correlations).

And those are still some of the ones with best correlations you can find.
The bible isn´t capable of even playing in the same league.

Which kinda says a bit on the overall level.

Of course, Nostradamus was brigth enough to include a caution about how any of his predictions could be "avoided", effectively making any failures into "oh they were just avoided, obviously not MY fault".