37 replies to this topic

[Sip]

A prediction is different than a self-fulfilling prophecy!!! "A messiah will come" ... yah you start believing that and one day a messiah will come and you will believe he or she is the messiah

Science tells me, if I kick the ball with a certain force, it is going to go up with a certain height then come back down and hit the ground. Before believing this magical ability to predict the future, I go and kick a ball a few times and after a while I realize, gee, that prediction is awefully close to what I am seeing so I start to suspect maybe there is something to it!

Now of course I can also go and say after what happened to the ball that it was the will of God that caused it to go to that hight and then come back down. But that doesn't tell me anything about what will happen the next time I kick the ball. Who knows what mood God will be in then. Simplistic example, but I hope my point is clear that with "God" anything can be explained AFTER it happened. But that's not necessarily the correct explanation.

With God and bible, for all has been done before we have an explanation for it. It was God who did it. So? First of all I have no way to verify this amazing discovery, second of all, it doesn't do much to explain anything about how things are and will be! So that tells me it's too simplistic, it "overfits" the data, and it thus has no real value.

[Sasun]

I realize we are a little off-topic, but I want to ask this question to everyone who doubts that God exists: if you need proof of God, can you specifically desribe what such proof should look like?

[Arpa]

Aprophesy is not worth the stone tablet or the papyrus it is written on until it comes to pass. Only then we say; "Aha! (that idiot)Nostradamus & Co. had said that the 'yellow beast will rise in the East, or the Tigris will turn red'".

[Sasun]

A prediction is different than a self-fulfilling prophecy!!!  "A messiah will come" ... yah you start believing that and one day a messiah will come and you will believe he or she is the messiah

Actually before and after Jesus there have been many people who have claimed to be a new messiah or Jesus. How come they are not known as the Messiah? There is a big difference between self-fulfilling prophecies and real prophecies. One can tell the difference between a fake prophet and Jesus simply by sincerely understanding what Jesus has said (I don't want to mention miracles which I suppose many will doubt). A fake prophet will be like a selfish person trying to impress or a nuts.(like the guy who kidnapped a girl and claimed to be God in charge of the world). You can also compare their actions. It doesn't take a genius to understand divine actions are different from selfish actions.

As to the ball, if God didn't want you couldn't kick the ball

[Sip]

By the way, for the record, although I may not be a believer in God, I think Jesus was an amazing person. I certainly am a big subscriber to a lot of his teachings and his philosophies on how one should live. There is no doubt he was something special, especially for his times!

But my "belief" in him stops where "God" as we know it today enters the picture.

[DominO]

Sip, predictions of the sort you discribe, does not for example say, why it does this, what you have done, is try to find a mathematical model which will explain what you observed.

All the rest, about the why etc... is just a matter of interpretation, and even the observation in itself and the prediction does not prove that there is just one model to explain what you observe. Maybe your model is just an approximation of reality... and again, the model is supposed to explain what you observe, what we observe, and not what happens... what we observe is not necessarly what happens... the observation is biased just because of the selectivity of the observer. If I were to suppose that something does not exist, I can't detect it, if you build a radiotelescope to study microwave, and have no idea or no conception what so ever, of the existance of Gammas, you won,t detect Gammas, not because Gammas does not exist, but rather because if you could concieve the Gamma, or believe the possibility of its existance, you would build a radiotelescope that could detect it.

The same goes with computers, and scientifical instruments, you can just not detect something, which the existance you deny or don't accept. The believer in a religion, do believe of the possibilities that this religion proposes, this person will have an interpretation different than yours of reality, he will believe, or link things that will permit him to conclude that what he has read, or what he believes in has predicted something.

[Arpa]

By the way tonight at 8 PM (ET) there will be a program on ABC about a book that claims not only Jesus was married but he had children as well. Interesting.
This will not ruffke my feathers at all, on the contrary it will reinforce my afmiration for Jesus a complete man.

[Sasun]

By the way, for the record, although I may not be a believer in God, I think Jesus was an amazing person. I certainly am a big subscriber to a lot of his teachings and his philosophies on how one should live. There is no doubt he was something special, especially for his times!

But my "belief" in him stops where "God" as we know it today enters the picture.

At least you are being honest, that's something (not that it should matter how I feel)

[Sip]

By the way tonight at 8 PM (ET) there will be a program on ABC about a book that claims not only Jesus was married but he had children as well. Interesting.
This will not ruffke my feathers at all, on the contrary it will reinforce my afmiration for Jesus a complete man.

I really liked that program. It was very well done I thought. Quite eye opening for me The part about DaVinci was most excellent... and I fully agree that the figure of John looks like a girl. In any case, their interpretations on how the church has manipulated M. Magdalen was fascinating.

For you left-coasters, I highly recommend it ... 10pm tonight on ABC.

[Sasun]

For you left-coasters, I highly recommend it ... 10pm tonight on ABC.

Sip, are you facing south or north?

[Sasun]

Oh I just checked the guide, i missed it. They will show again on Thursday 10pm EST.

[Arpa]

Actually before and after Jesus there have been many people who have claimed to be a new messiah or Jesus. How come they are not known as the Messiah? There is a big difference between self-fulfilling prophecies and real prophecies. One can tell the difference between a fake prophet and Jesus
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selfish actions.
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As to the ball, if God didn't want you couldn't kick the ball

That is tantamount to locking the door and throwing the key away.
In fact I call the Genghis Khan syndrome.
A long time ago I read a poem that ran something like this; "Hivand er Genghis Khan@, mahamerts hivand.... "etc. The story goes, Genghiz Khan was in his death bed, he summons his vizir and orders him to poison all the waters so that everybody would die at the very moment he does. The angel of death witnesses all this and he finally speaks saying that it was his privilege to decide who dies and who doesn't, that now it was the kings turn so ... get lost!
We all have that trait, the reason why people are so deathly afraid of death, we cannot stand the fact that people will keep living after we are gone.
False prophets?
It is tantamount to saying; "I am the last of the prophets and after I am gone no one is supposed to live, let alone take my place".
Very human and selfish weakness, not divine generosity.

[Sasun]

What does this have to do with Jesus?

[Arpa]

What does this have to do with Jesus?

Sasun, by now you should know that I don't give .... about the whole subject, and thatyou should know that I know the scripture quite well. Here it is for your benefit.

False prophets, Chapter and verse;

http://www.hti.umich...&size=First 100

Let me say again, I don't give a damn. I live the life, to me words are just that. Words.
I am still waiting for someone to tell me how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. To me theology is an exercise in futility. In civil circles it is called "onanism".

[Sasun]

So why are you replying to my post? I have told you that I don't care about your opinions.

[Armen]

The main difference is, in the world of science you get to test those assumptions. In the case of religion and the "God" model, you can't test anything. Any model you build based on assumptions is only as good as how well it can predict things.

If you have a simple model that can predict outcomes of events on a consistent basis, then that's a strong argument for the potential validity of the initial assumptions that were used to build that model.

That's what makes science VERY different from religion.

Well, you can't use one model for everything. You can test and predict things only in material world using material models and material thinking. If that model answers all your questions, that's fine.
I'm not saying that the church-religion model is right, that's even more impotent than science. But still, in sceince model all the discussion come down only to material results of this or that action, which is important only for making the life of human being more easy.
There are the mental world of emotions and the spiritual world (for some people) where science is helpless, because it uses materia to test something that is not material. From my point, science is good, but it's not enough to feel OK about everything that's going on around us. And most importantly the tools and the knowledge that were used by some outstanding representatives of the humankind to advance our type was not material sceince (testing, predicting) alone.

[hagopn]

If the idea of the "spirit" is false and "unmeasurable," then by what "quantum measrument" can we look at positive/constructive character traits versus destructive?

Do you agree, for example, that positive and negative character traits exist?

Does science teach their value?

Who teaches humility, for example? Can science prove or disprove humility? Generosity? Altruism? Greed? Can they trace the "reasons" that these emotions leave their respective toll on the conscience, and can they their effects on society in their presence or absence? Can they not "predict" that a man of righteousness and of humility (all spiritual attributes) will have a more positive effect on humanity than the man with greed an lust at his core? And what is positive and negative? Is mass bloodletting positive? Perhaps the answers to these questions are more simple, and perhaps we are told that they are not by not so positive people...

Of course science can, if "science" is honest. Sociology is a science, after all. Is it not?

Alexander Solzhenytsin's feeling on that matter was clear. I will paraphrase (since I don't have his quote handy): "Societies affluent in the material but deficient in the spiritual will eventually collapse on their own weight." IMHO, his message is that if your sole belief is in the "Cartesean empirical," then, my friend, you will sink with it to its "empirical depths."

Is religion, therefore, "not valid" since it cannot "measure an outcome in its own hypothesis?"

As to the constant query on the possibility of the existence of God, my father gave me perhaps the most empowering answer to that: "If you are arrogant enough to think that the Universe is not conscious while you are, then you are a pitiful creature destined to live in loneliness."

It hit me pretty hard at age 14, when I was a "Carl Sagan" fanatic, all into the "empirical quantification" of the (of course, "unconscious") Cosmos, and I was buying the propaganda about "all is mechanical."

Edited by hagopn, 27 November 2003 - 03:31 AM.

[joseph parikian]

Sip, are you facing south or north?

Only Jesus knows