Hua, "why should YOU believe..."
mer...@rex.dec
read about many others of SPECIFIC answers to needs prayed about with no
objective reason to expect any answer without "intervention". I have had
to learn patience (answers are not normally instantaneous) and reasonableness
(if you ask your father for a rock, isn't even a human father going to give
bread?).
Rick Merrill (617)-493-3751
Professor Wagstaff
I'd like to analyze this statement in terms of the concepts I've been
referring to, the idea that belief in god stems from an assumption of
the existence of god first and analysis after. The above is a prime
example. It is equivalent to saying "I believe in the Tooth Fairy because
the Tooth Fairy brings me money when I leave teeth under my pillow."
If you already believe that the Tooth Fairy exists, then it is "clear"
that the Tooth Fairy is the cause of the appearance of the money. Money
appeared under my pillow, I *believe* that a Tooth Fairy exists who performs
this function, therefore the Tooth Fairy did it.
This analysis can be applied similarly to belief in god. Prayers are
"answered", god (according to my beliefs) answers prayers, therefore god
exists. Statistically, one can look at the soldiers who nearly died in
combat whose "prayers were answered", and we can hear their testimonies.
Unfortunately, we can never hear testimony from those soldiers whose prayers
were NOT answered, and some may not even consider it when evaluating the
large number of positive testimonies, thus concluding "See? There is a god."
--
Now I've lost my train of thought. I'll have to catch the bus of thought.
Rich Rosen pyuxd!rlr
Ken Arnold%CGL
>read about many others of SPECIFIC answers to needs prayed about with no
>objective reason to expect any answer without "intervention".
Some examples here would be useful. The Oracle at Delphi (and other
oracles as well) have a long history of proper predictions and
recommendations which proved out, a record of about one thousand years.
Since I'm sure you don't believe this proves the existence of Apollo
or any other Greek or Roman God, you must mean something different
than this kind of thing. So figuring out what you DO mean would be
helped greatly by some examples.
--
Ken Arnold
=================================================================
Of COURSE we can implement your algorithm. We've got this Turing
machine emulator...
Larry Gardner
Well, since everyone is answering this question publicly I will too.
I already sent my answer in via mail.
There is only one reason and ONE REASON ONLY to believe in Jesus.
I have met Him and talked to Him and experienced HIM in my life.
Each person must have this experience for themselves to become a
christian and to believe. Now obviously I had to have some amount
of faith to seek to meet Him.
Just like one would if you have heard about President Reagan or
Jeff Sargeant or Rich Rosen. I would set off on my journey to meet
them based on faith. When I would finally meet them (if they really
existed) then I would KNOW them.
Everything else outside of experiential knowledge is falling short
of a true relationship with God and obviously will not stand up to
attack.
Do you assume that your mother exists therefore her existance is
based on your assumption? No, she exists, period. How do you
know that?
karen
Mikki Barry
Did he give you the Massachusetts Megabucks number?
Mikki Barry
Mike Huybensz
> There is only one reason and ONE REASON ONLY to believe in Jesus.
>
> I have met Him and talked to Him and experienced HIM in my life.
This is one of the dishonest aspects of born-agains that I revile.
Because inevitably they are talking either allegory or fantasy. Not
real life "here's my friend JC, shake hands with him" like we would
introduce anyone else we know. They are talking more like
we would dream of meeting the Wizard of Oz, or a giant invisible rabbit
named Harvey. Or they are speaking of day to day occurrences we all
already have: they just interpret them differently.
> Each person must have this experience for themselves to become a
> christian and to believe. Now obviously I had to have some amount
> of faith to seek to meet Him.
Not obvious to me at all. Why is it obvious to you? Because its a dogma?
> Just like one would if you have heard about President Reagan or
> Jeff Sargeant or Rich Rosen. I would set off on my journey to meet
> them based on faith. When I would finally meet them (if they really
> existed) then I would KNOW them.
If any one of them (or anyone else) sought me out, or if I happened to
introduce myself to them by accident (sitting next to them on a bus...)
then I would get to know them just as well as if I hunted them down.
So why should I have to look for JC to get to know him? Unlike we mortals,
he's supposed to multitask sufficiently that opportunity is no problem
for him.
> Everything else outside of experiential knowledge is falling short
> of a true relationship with God and obviously will not stand up to
> attack.
Fine by me. But it has to be an experience that anyone can share. Don't
give me any BS about having to be equally deluded to see your giant rabbit.
Sure, other believers can share it with you. Let's see if you truely
experience the same thing. You can both dictate what JC is saying at the
same time. Or ask him to carry a message between the two of you. I'll
pick the message. By the way, if you wish to rebut this, keep in mind
my first paragraph above.
> Do you assume that your mother exists therefore her existance is
> based on your assumption? No, she exists, period. How do you
> know that?
I "know" who my mother is because I was told so at an early age. So
do many adoptees. So do may religious believers "know" their god.
--
Mike Huybensz ...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh
Tim Maroney
> There is only one reason and ONE REASON ONLY to believe in Jesus.
>
> I have met Him and talked to Him and experienced HIM in my life.
> Each person must have this experience for themselves to become a
> christian and to believe.
Aargh! I cannot possibly express how frustrated I get when I see people
spouting nonsense that I had already seen through at age 12.
Karen, as Charles Stanley is so fond of saying, listen to me now: A Hindu
would say exactly the same thing about Krishna. Members of all religions
have fundamentally similar mystical experiences, and among the most common
is that of presence or companionship of a deity. When I was a Christian, I
"knew Christ personally", conversed with him, prayed to him, enjoyed his
splendour. However, because I was not totally uncritical of mystical
experience, I came to realize that I would have similar experiences in most
any other religion, but I would call it by the name "Krishna" if I were
Hindu, or attribute it to the spirit of some prophet if I were Jewish, or
call it a direct experience of Buddha-nature if I were Buddhist, etc.
Subsequent experience in other religions has shown that I was correct.
Mystical experience of the sort you describe is no sort of proof of any
literal interpretation of any religion. All it does is show the potency of
the symbols employed, and all religions are full of potent symbols. Even
silly religions like Mormonism usually have some. However, perhaps we can
come to agreement at least on this: Anyone who does not believe that Jesus
exists as a potent symbol is wrong.
-=-
Tim Maroney, Carnegie-Mellon University Computation Center
ARPA: Tim.Maroney@CMU-CS-K uucp: seismo!cmu-cs-k!tim
CompuServe: 74176,1360 audio: shout "Hey, Tim!"
"Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are
but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains."
Liber AL, II:9.
Professor Wagstaff
> I have met Him and talked to Him and experienced HIM in my life.
> Each person must have this experience for themselves to become a
> christian and to believe. Now obviously I had to have some amount
It's somewhat ironic that "Karen alias larryg" chose to respond to *my*
article on Merrill's answer to the original question. Especially since
she fails to address (and, in fact, deliberately ignores) every point I
made in my article. Where I analyze Merrill's statement in terms of
belief stemming from assumption of the existence of god first and
analysis later, Karen not only fails to address this but also deliberately
does exactly what I claim that religious believers are doing without
reference to my own statements. Where I mention the problems of
subjective human experience and the inaccuracies therein, she literally
revels in it, claiming such subjectivity as the very source of her "evidence".
This is what I mean by the round robin argument technique. Any number of
people join in in a discussion. Those on the non-religion side of the
discussion make a number of points showing the fallacies in subjective
"evidence", assumption before analysis, etc. As if to say "I don't care
about anything any of you have said", someone out of the blue retorts with
a response (usually either a lengthy "rigorous proof" or a short and sweet
note) that simply re-asserts the claims that had already been overdiscussed
(and shown to be quite non-evidential) as the reasons for their belief.
It's like you spend a week discussing something with another person who claims
some unusual mathematical principle based on his reasoning that 2 + 2 = 5,
you describe why 2 + 2 *isn't* 5, only to hear at the end of the week "Wait,
as long as you believe 2 + 2 = 5, then I'm right...".
> Just like one would if you have heard about President Reagan or
> Jeff Sargeant or Rich Rosen. I would set off on my journey to meet
> them based on faith. When I would finally meet them (if they really
> existed) then I would KNOW them.
> Everything else outside of _ e_ x_ p_ e_ r_ i_ e_ n_ t_ i_ a_ l _ k_ n_ o_ w_ l_ e_ d_ g_ e is falling short
> of a true relationship with God and obviously will not stand up to attack.
There's a very big difference between subjective experience and actual
knowledge, and simply juxtaposing the two words to form something that
for the circumstances you describe approaches oxymoron-hood does not work.
> Do you assume that your mother exists therefore her existance is
> based on your assumption? No, she exists, period. How do you know that?
Since one isn't capable of observation and analysis at birth (at least not
enough so to retain and catalog observational information), one is simply
told that it is so. In fact, as Mike Huybensz (?) mentioned, adopted
children may accept this information on faith where it actually isn't true.
The woman that they are told is their mother is not. More importantly,
human beings all have mothers, so one is not making an assumption when one
seeks one's mother---you should (under normal circumstances) have a mother.
*Should* "we" have a god? Why? Because all human beings have a mother?
It doesn't follow. In contrast to saying "she exists, period" based on
verifiable observation, one can only say "it exists, period" (in reference
to a deity) based on presumption, since there's no evidential reason to do so.
I had mentioned to someone in net.religion.jewish, after Karen went on some
sort of evangelistic mini-crusade there, that I recalled that she mentioned
that she was a Jew who converted to Christianity, and that *she* was convinced,
and thus was trying to convince others. This person responded that she in fact
sounded quite UNconvinced, and perhaps that her attempt to convince others was
also an attempt to convince herself. It's beginning to sound that way.
--
Life is complex. It has real and imaginary parts.
Rich Rosen ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr
te...@aecom.uucp
> would say exactly the same thing about Krishna. Members of all religions
> have fundamentally similar mystical experiences, and among the most common
> is that of presence or companionship of a deity. When I was a Christian, I
> "knew Christ personally", conversed with him, prayed to him, enjoyed his
> splendour. However, because I was not totally uncritical of mystical
> experience, I came to realize that I would have similar experiences in most
> any other religion, but I would call it by the name "Krishna" if I were
> Hindu, or attribute it to the spirit of some prophet if I were Jewish, or
> call it a direct experience of Buddha-nature if I were Buddhist, etc.
> Subsequent experience in other religions has shown that I was correct.
One question. Which Jewish prophet would I be talking to? I've
been Jewish a long time and never spoken to anyone ( except humans ).
Eliyahu Teitz.
Larry Gardner
First of all, I am not and have never claimed to be jewish. I
wont discuss net.religion.jewish because it is simply complicated
and everyone else already has formed their opinion.
Well, I guess it is convenient to call what I say subjective. Isn't
then everything in life subjective. All our senses are subjective
then. Each person experiences life subjectively.
I do not understand your point. I believe in trees, dogs, whatever because
I have experienced them. Some things I believe in because I was told about
them or have seen pictures, i.e. France, Hitler, whatever.
All I was saying was that to really know someone you must experience them
yourself. I guess if that's subjective than so be it.
karen
Ken Montgomery
>I believe in God because he answers prayers. I have seen personally and
>read about many others of SPECIFIC answers to needs prayed about with no
>objective reason to expect any answer without "intervention".
I quit believing in "God" because he didn't answer prayers, nor did I
sense any sort of communication taking place.
> I have had
>to learn patience (answers are not normally instantaneous) and reasonableness
I never got *any* answers, regardless of the request.
>(if you ask your father for a rock, isn't even a human father going to give
>bread?).
That depends on whether you're eating supper or building a wall. :-)
> Rick Merrill
--
The above viewpoints are mine. They are unrelated to
those of anyone else, including my cats and my employer.
Ken Montgomery "Shredder-of-hapless-smurfs"
...!{ihnp4,allegra,seismo!ut-sally}!ut-ngp!kjm [Usenet, when working]
k...@ut-ngp.ARPA [for Arpanauts only]