Lighthouse,
You can't smell God. You can't see God. You can't touch/feel God. You can't taste God. And you can't hear God. Not in the physical.
Okay, so there’s no way to prove he exists, I have you on the record as having said that. Thank you, finally, almost four hundred posts in and I have an answer to my question.
It is in your soul that you can commune with God.
A soul which you cannot prove exists.
If you don't deny the existence of a God, then why don't you seek Him out.
LIKE I SAID BEFORE: I was a Christian for twenty years. I don’t need to seek god out. Anything I have I have received either from my family, friends or myself. They’re the only ones I need to seek out. I don’t feel like denying them for some invisible deity whose own believers admit that his existence cannot be proven.
"'Cause I can sniff, I can see
I can count up pretty high
But these faculties aren't getting me
Any closer to the sky
But my heart of faith keeps poundin'
So I know I'm doin' fine
But sometimes finding You [God]
Is just like trying to
Smell the color nine...
Smell the color nine?
But nine's not a color
And even if it were you can't smell a color
That's my point exactly..."
-Chris Rice
'Smell the Color 9'
Those were some of the lamest lyrics I’ve ever heard.
Nope. Not what I believe at all.
Lighthouse it doesn’t matter what YOU believe, because for every Christian out there who knows what he believes there are a hundred others out there who not only disagree with you, but disagree with each other. What you believe automatically loses credibility simply because your religion has absolutely no authority through unity. Your religion is one of the most scattered, shattered and incoherent religions on the planet, therefore, by default, whatever you believe, the specifics, become moot.
Wrong. Hell was not created for people
Yet by your own admission people go there, and if god really loved all of us, why would he allow anyone to go there in the first place? Why would he allow me to choose to go there when he could just make my pen spin around and save me? Your god is a sadist, you are a puppet, you do dance for him, you do jump through hoops.
If you have free will, reject jesus for five minutes and then accept him back in your heart. Either you’re his puppet or he’s yours.
You will never find any such proof. Becaue it does not exist.
That’s why I put the extra emphasis on the IF. It’s a hypothetical question, LH, it won’t bite you.
I would appreciate a direct answer to this question.
Clete,
Right! This is true of materialism as well as every other non-Christian world view that exists. So why not drop it, if it is illogical, especially if there is a rational alternative?
Maybe I missed it, but what makes any other worldview irrational? Forgive me for making you back track, but where’s your proof that Islam is incoherent, Buddhism, Hinduism, Gnosticism, and every other religion that exists or ever has existed? Clete, by sheer virtue of the fact that your religion is one of the most splintered and disjointed in history, it seems far more plausible to me that yours is the worldview that is logically incoherent.
Do you understand what "logically incoherent" means?
The modern Christian church. Thousands of sects, denominations, millions of members and no two believe the exact same thing. Your religion has no unity, therefore no authority, therefore no coherence.
What is there that is logically incoherent about God (the Creator of the Earth and the universe it is in) having stopped the earth from spinning on its axis for some period of time? What is logically incoherent about God causing a creature that He created to speak, or His having changed the chemical make up of a vat of liquid, or restoring life to someone who would not have had life in the first place had God not given it to him?
What is logically incoherent about belief in stories of things that can be proven to be impossible? Hmmmmmm… Let me think…
You believe in fairy tales Clete. Nothing more, nothing less.
for you to cry foul because you THINK that my world view cannot be validated is about as big a joke as could be told!
Why? None of your answers have been good enough so far Clete. Instead of jumping to the conclusion that no one is smart enough to understand your argument, maybe you should consider the possibility that your argument is just BS?
How can you live with such total uncertainty?
Maybe you're in the Matrix! Want to come into reality?
Clete, you are the one who lives in a fairy tale. You are the one who believes in fantastical after death resting places, you are the one who believes in a zombie messiah, demons, angels, outlandish myths, etc. Not one of the things you believe in makes sense, is possible, or is even possible to prove to the lay man. The only proof you can afford is that it is an explanation of where things came from, thus providing you with a rather immature worldview, but there’s nothing unique about that. There are dozens of ther religions that can explain things just as well, if not better than you, so having a worldview is not proof of anything. All you have is an old book chock full of impossible stories and faith without proof.
To answer directly...
YES! If it could be rationally demonstrated that Christianity cannot be true then that which cannot be true must be false. This is the essence of my argument against your world view.
That’s actually more of a round about answer. I actually want to read the words, “yes, I would reject jesus.”
How would you know that you have found any such "hard, empirical evidence"?
Like I said, it was a hypothetical question, which explains why you’re suddenly getting so excited about it. All of your defenses so far have been hypothetical, or have just skirted the issue entirely, so no doubt you want to continue with this hypothetical examination of the non-existent. Clete, the challenge still remains:
Offer whatever proof you think you have for the existence of anything you believe in and we’ll work from there. You, Hilston, Lighthouse and Aimiel have all said that you have proof. It has to be proof that all men, Christian and non can recognize as true and indisputable. You have all said that you have four aces, but so far you’ve only talked about your four aces, I have yet to see anything. I’ve shown you my cards and all you’ve tried to do is discredit them and avoid showing your own.
I think that such a post proves that you not only do not understand the Bible but do not understand Jim's argument either
Like I said before, maybe the problem isn’t with our understanding of your argument, but Clete, maybe you should accept the possibility that it’s just a really crappy argument.
If prodigal clings to his current world view he has no way of knowing whether or not your post is a figment of his own fertile imagination, and neither do you.
Not true Clete, it’s right here in front of me. I can touch my computer screen and read with my eyes. Lighthouse just admitted that there’s no way to physically test god, so once again, the burden of proof is still on you.
And as for my defining the Christian world view, it is unnecessary to do so, or at least premature at this time. So far you have very clearly demonstrated that you have no grounds upon which to demand such a definition or any evidence to back it up
We are 386 posts in Clete, how can you possibly say that it would be premature to define your worldview now? We’ve been begging you to show your four aces from the beginning, and instead of fearlessly showing them, all you’ve done is avoid the question and talk about how right you are instead of proving it.
You’re a coward. That’s the only conclusion I can come to. You say you have four aces, you talk about them a lot, but you won’t show them. You believe in fantastical stories written in a book by men you don’t know or question and you expect us to believe it all without a lick of truth? In fact you get downright hostile when cornered. When the burden of proof is thrown so heavily in your face you find yourself in a corner and you become insulting and intolerant. You come back at us with some pathetic, hypothetical idea that perhaps what we see MAY NOT BE what we are seeing, despite the fact that we CAN see it, and IT IS there. You claim we don’t understand your arguments, Clete, it’s not that we don’t understand your arguments, it’s that in the face of what can be proven, your arguments are just plain old horrible. They’re bad arguments, and when this is pointed out to you, you simply huff and puff about how we’re “too stupid” to understand them.
Clete you’re as transparent and thin as air. Accept the possibility that you MAY BE wrong. So far you’ve had no problem accepting the possibility of other things that MAY BE, why are you having such a hard time with this?
