It crashes kontact as soon as I create a basket or a sub-basket (basket-0.6.0-26 on openSUSE 10.2) and has several problems with the focus of the boxes that contain the information, some text appears twice at the bottom (I'm able to scroll past the window contents, instead of a blank area there appears text from the previous box, which makes things very confusing).
You can use basket of the KDE PIM package. It allows you to organize bookmars, text, images and other data effectively and consistently. It's like a sticky notes program, though with much more functionality and it allows to store and retrieve information very quickly. It also saves automatically and may have a few very disturbing bugs (I think the major one is a Qt bug), yet it's definitely worth enough for me to use it every day.
I know that God exists and is like the descriptions of the New Testament. There is a way to verify some things that Jesus said by following His words regarding these particular cases. This means that there is a hypothesis that may not be scientific, because Jesus intervenes in an inexplicable way, not necessarily via physical means, yet the result can be observed in their spirit by the ones who believe that Christ is the God and follow the instructions He gave. Since, however, the method of reaching these results is analogous to the scientific method, one can naturally extend the scientific method to apply to these metaphysical phenomena and their effects and treat the New Testament as the instructions (or theory) of the experiment and the person as the object, provided that you make sure to obtain the correct interpretation of it.
The question of the existence of God is an open scientific hypothesis. Hence the reference to S. Hawking's "A Brief History of Time".
No it isn't you moron.
The question as to the origin of the universe is an open question. The big bang is a theory that gets close. "God" is a delusion, not a hypothesis.
A scientific hypothesis is a statement, the limited validity of which can be experimentally verified or disproved. I claim that the following expression is a scientific hypothesis: "God, as described in the New Testament, has created the entire universe and everyone will see Him in the Second Coming, which is temporally indeterminate and roughly described in the Apocalypse". The reference to S. Hawking's book would have lead an ordinary person to the conclusion that the hypothesis above is a scientific one, since Hawking is a scientist, who used to deal with scientific hypotheses (that's his job), which he briefly outlines in the first chapter of the book, thus saving the trouble of searching for the definition of the term. Hawking also mentions in the book that the question about God's existence has lead most developments in science; that's a fact, not a belief and indicates that the question about the existence of God (not identical to the hypothesis above) does have merit, something that you inexplicably deny. The argument of authority (logical fallacy) you claimed is irrelevant; I never said that the reference proves that the hypothesis above is a scientific hypothesis, I say that it provides a way to find out that it is. You may notice that belief has nothing to do with what I'm talking about here.
"God" is a delusion, not a hypothesis.
That statement is another scientific hypothesis, you can prove it if no Second Coming ever occurs. Until you have proved or disproved it, it has the same state as the hypothesis above.
Because you did nothing of the sort you lying sack of shit. There is *no* evidence as you know damn well, or would if you weren't brain damaged.
Part of the scientific method is following the route of the performers of an experiment in order to either duplicate the results or declare it as inconclusive with regard to the specific theory it's meant to verify (i.e. not disprove, the term is loosely put). Beliefs and assertions such as yours are useless and should be no part of the process. Whatever suits you, of course, in your beliefs, just don't invoke science in all this. I insist that certain parts of the process I described in the beginning may have no physical cause, yet the effects can be seen in the subject's spirit. This may mean that these procedures don't necessarily lead to exactly reproducible situations that can be objectively observed as far as I know, yet that doesn't mean they don't exist or that they cannot be studied and experienced.
There is no way to reproduce your delusions in a properly functioning brain.
Where's the evidence? You can reproduce what Jesus promised in the New Testament. I'm not aware of a way to make this observation objective though (i.e. measure some physical q
My question: can there be evidence that God exists? Quite obviously yes.
If god existed and was what people say he is then he could quite easily eliminate all religious murder, all conflict between religions and all atheism by merely demonstrating his existence. Yes, you're correct. He can do all that. The problem is He doesn't want to right now, because He set the world in motion, Adam and Eve did their mistakes and this is the consequence of their choice. God loves the humans, He sacrificed His son so now everyone can choose to avoid a major part of this suffering (essentially the sin, which is the initial cause) and in the Second Coming what you're saying will happen, although suffering is not guaranteed to end then for some people.
Faith is a prerequisite. Not much different than the answer of science. So you're just begging the question. All you have to back up your position is a logical fallacy. No surprises there. Agreed, no surprise in that you quickly try to jump to conclusions without having understood what I'm talking about in the slightest. Let me tell you how the scientific method works and we'll see who gives recursive arguments and who doesn't, who's keen on performing logical fallacies and who fails to grasp even the foundations of logic and science themselves.
Science employs the scientific method to reach conclusions, i.e. part of the truth. The scientific method has no intrinsic property of validity or correctness; we treat it as such because that's the best we can hope for. If I rephrase this: We (the scientists) believe that the scientific method is the only one that can give us fragments of truth. There's no possible way to prove this assertion, on which the entire scientific enterprise is based. This is a faith which scientists share when they attempt experimental approval or rejection of a theory, or, if I rephrase this, scientists believe that the scientific method will provide them with the truth before they apply it. I trust that you can draw the conclusions analogous to my position as stated in the previous response.
That if you're capable of constructing a rational argument you have failed utterly to demonstrate that fact. I would have given you the benefit of ignorance, weren't it for your clearly nitpicking, insulting, semi-irrational or superficially rational, scholastic, useless, thought-stifling, mundane, astoundlingly ignorant, typical rehash of the same half-truths or lies that are being propagated throughout the history by people such as you, always failing to comprehend the basis of their claims, still insisting that they are the authorities that decide what is reasonable and what's not, what is science and what is not. All I can offer you is some help and one piece of advice: learn profoundly what you can about the subject or avoid posing as an expert or authority on it. Otherwise you'll soon find out that people don't hold such a high esteem of yourself as you think they do.
I'm sorry but you're clearly logic impaired I take it that you don't like my answer.
An omnipotent and omniscient FULLY KNOWS the consequences of what he creates. I know the laws of gravitation, uncertainty, relativity etc. Does that make me responsible for anything that happens around the world? Is Newton responsible if someone decides to jump of a cliff to commit suicide?
Therefore, there's no such thing as going against his will, since if he creates something which will behave in some way, it's automatically his will... I repeat this again. God is omnipotent, He decided that people are able to decide against His will. Why is this so hard to understand?
I don't think you fully grasp what these terms mean Let's see...
If god is omniscient, he has to fully know what the humans would choose to do. OK.
If god is omnipotent, and combining that with the fact that he's omniscient, you have to accept the fact that when he created the universe, he did it in such a way which would make all of the things we did his fault, effectively. Are you aware that free will means that a human can decide against God's will? This means that God doesn't intervene with human's will, human will may have nothing to do with what God wants (He does try to affect it, the decision lies entirely on the human, some times they match). This also means that God cannot be held responsible for the choice of the humans. The fact that He knows what they'll choose does not make Him responsible for that choice, I hope you acknowledge that! You effectively try to show that free will is incompatible with the existence of the God, the problem with your reasoning is that free will of the human doesn't affect God's omnipotence (He gave it to them along with a restrained field to apply it; notice that a human's will doesn't necessarily become the reality, a human may want to become god, however this doesn't mean much) or His omniscience (He knows what they'll choose).
As a result, your explanation isn't irrefutable as you don't fully grasp what free will means, not that I do, it's just that you made some trivial mistakes.
If a human can go against God's will, God is not omnipotent. This is something many people are confused with. God can do anything He wants, this means that His will and His action are the same thing. God wants the human to have free will to choose between good and evil and this is so.
God could have set up a universe where every human freely chose to do his will. God could have set up a universe where no evil existed. Yes.
The fact that evil exists means that either God is not all powerful, not omniscient, or not omni-benevolent. If you mean what brought evil to existence, I cannot answer this question. The existence of evil wouldn't affect us if it weren't for human's disobedience. If you regard evil as a possibility that is allowed by God (freedom to go against His will), what you say doesn't follow, because of the following: The chain "God gives power to control the world to the human --- human gives some of that power to evil" does not infer that God gives this power to evil, as freedom of will mediates (the human could choose otherwise and God gave the human anything he needed in order to avoid the wrong choice; yet human did the wrong choice). God gives evil only enough power for it to exist in the form of the devil (I'm not certain about some details here). The human gave it the power to affect his will. The reason He didn't intervene is that before the Fall, the evil couldn't harm the creation in any way, as the world was made so and nowadays human suffers this consequence of the disobedience. You probably know how the sacrifice of Jesus fits in the picture.
Maybe the difficulty lies in this: God wants His will and human's will to be possible to be different. This is not a weakness, because He wants it. It doesn't reduce His omniscience, as He knows what the human will decide in advance. It doesn't negate His omni-benevolence, because the human knew the rules, had all the qualifications to choose correctly and because God decided even after his Fall to enable the human to return to his original state.
Maybe this will make the freedom of will problem clear: Imagine that there's a person that sees every temptation in the world and denies it. He later decides that he wants to commit sin, even though he has no reason to do so. He commits it. Where's God's responsibility in this? In that the human has free will? But he could have free will and obey God's will at the same time.
Most likely it is a combination of fraud, gullibility and wishful thinking.
It must be such a unique combination that has lasted so long. You could be right, of course.
if you change "any of the viewers" to "any significant number of viewers"...sure.
If I assume that some viewers found out the falseness of the claims, why wouldn't they document their findings so as to help the entire world avoid such misguided beliefs, while the entire population at the time was actively hostile to such beliefs? Jesus was one of the few persons that did miracles all over the place. They could just document one single instance of false belief and everything would collapse. Where is it? Or is it just that they didn't pay attention to Him? Then why did they crucify Him? Why do they claim that He was an impostor?
The had an agenda.
You may be aware that Jewish faith states that Jesus was an impostor. What's simpler than preserving the evidence that proves that? Why hasn't it happened? Did even foreign dogmas conspire to spread a lie that would undermine them?
Let me put this a different way: A big part of the civilized world has been tricked by those 13 people for 2000 years?
Today there is no lack of such evidence.
What evidence? Has there ever existed before a conspiracy that lasts for over 2000 years, with the only purpose of spreading "love each other"? This doesn't mean that it cannot exist, it just makes it extremely unlikely and stupid.
Not the entire world. They tricked enough for long enough, then arms, thumbscrews and human gullibility did the rest.
Why did the early Christians sacrifice their lives for this faith? They were gullible or forced by arms? Does this mean that Christians were the most stupid people ever to appear on earth so as to give their lives for the tricks of a magician, for whom there must have been rumours that he was a fake god? What made them ignore everything despite the fact that he was crucified? Do their writings reflect such an opinion of them?
Desire to make people nice to each other? Wouldn't you lie if it would make men stop raping women? Would you lie for world peace?
Even when Jesus himself says that He hasn't come on earth to bring peace but conflict? Or does that contradict himself? Do you also think that a lie is enough to make every human capable of loving? So Christianity started because of the good will of 13 people (fishermen were most of them) to make others love each other, added some "miracles" and bizarre theory to make it convincing and spread this to the world, sacrificing their lives for a lie. So they basically used auto-suggestion to make themselves believe the lie and die. So now that people know that the world isn't a much better place than the apostles' era, people start abandoning this faith (it's a lie afterall). Now my question: what makes these assumptions not applicable to any view of the world? What restricts them from being applied to human knowledge, science, art, politics, economics, engineering etc. ? I could claim that the world as we know it is the result of a bunch of liars that simply tried to make the world a better place and started spreading lies about what is known, what can be proved, what is nice, what keeps people in order, what keeps people fed, what makes them build things etc. What prevents me from doing so, provided that I'm not irrational?
You can, but a wall would still hurt you if you walk into it
So the senses are the means that differentiates truth and lie? Can you elaborate that?
But extraordinary claims requires extraordinary proofs, and it is not my job to dig that up for every mad claim out there
What differentiates an extraordinary claim from an ordinary one? I agree about the latter part.
Thanks, but I'll leave that to others. I am only one man, and I have no time for th
The fact that god is supposed to be omnipotent and omniscient should effectively render any so-called "freedom" that we have moot The human has the freedom to choose between God's will and otherwise.
A god-like being would transcend our very understanding of reality, and as a creator can be assumed to have set in motion each and every event that has ever and will ever happen. I agree. He still won't affect your will, that's what the whole dogma is about.
As such, we must assume (under Christian theology, at least) that god personally set into motion the fall. You would be wrong. God allowed the events to take place, the decision was purely human.
Thus, god is ultimately responsible for original sin No, He wasn't. He did allow it to happen though. That may sound like He's responsible for it. I cannot answer this to you right now, however I know that evil is not part of God's will, which means that He cannot be responsible for it. I don't really know what responsibility or being a person in this context may mean, I'm afraid I cannot help you there. If you find out, please let me know.
This whole god thing doesn't work out too well, when you think about it. No one ever claimed that the existence of God solved all problems on earth, or that people know everything about God. I claim that it's a good starting point. No one ever claimed that science has solved all the problems of mankind either. It also is a good starting point. I guess, it all is just a matter of personal preference.
Nothing about god, religion or faith is scientific, so you're really not making any sense.
The question of the existence of God is an open scientific hypothesis. Hence the reference to S. Hawking's "A Brief History of Time".
By which you mean that you have no evidence whatsoever.
I've given you the evidence and a way to reproduce them. Why is this different to the scientific method?
Just because you had a delusion, a hallucination, or are so desperate to believe something so silly, that you'll convince yourself it's god is not evidence of any sort.
I've never had delusions in my entire life, I don't do drugs, drink etc. I can read scientific literature and solve problems, exercises etc. In fact, I tried to disprove some people's false faith on a subject related to Christianity once and I did. If I'm desperate to convince myself, what are you?
You did: "What makes you think you know more than him about this issue? "
I refer to the fact (you cannot deny this, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself to the contrary) that the question of the existence of God is an open scientific hypothesis . For me it's actually more than just a hypothesis.
Another appeal to authority. So. Fucking. What?
I'm giving references to support my statement that (again) the existence of God is an open scientific hypothesis. You suggest that the only authority in the world is you. Something's wrong here.
You just made clear why it's ludicrous.
Which is?
But god can't.
What does an observation of God mean to you? If He is as powerful as the New Testament says, you'll burn the moment He appears in His full glory. I just know that God exists, just like I know that I exist (where's the evidence?!).
Perhaps you missed the question, so here it is again:
What are the high(!) standards that allow a hypothesis to be considered by you?
That's how it was spread and those who didn't accept it were burned alive among many other gruesome tortures for the "crime" of not buying into your bullshit.
How are you so certain about that? It certainly wasn't spread that way near where I live! History shows me otherwise, Christians were the ones getting slaughtered in Roman stadiums in the beginning just for stating their belief, something that was repeated recently in the communist regime and elsewhere and may happen again in the future. I'm not forgetting the crimes that have happened in the name of Christ by several misguided people; I just cannot let emotions cover up the truth.
Perhaps you missed the question, so here it is again:
If I give you a cross to hold, should you be considered a Christian?
you're going to have a really hard time naming 10 Christians in the history of the world
I can name several hundreds (not at the moment) and refer to the hundreds of thousands that were martyrs. I also know several people around me that are true Christians, just like Jesus said and they all see what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about raving lunatics, I'm talking about scientists and university professors.
I mean, that's assuming there ever was such a person for which there is likewise no evidence whatsoever.
What's the definition of evidence?
Regardless, blind faith even in the face of massive evidence to the contrary is a religion.
Agreed, that's what people have been talking about when referring to atheism. Where's the evidence?
Really it's your parent's fault for being so abusive to you before you were old enough to think rationally.
Please avoid ad hominem attacks, they don't convey your message clearly and are considered generally useless as far as their argumentative value is concerned, not to mention unethical (whatever that means to you). You also reveal many things about yours
For the first 15-17 or so years of my life I followed the procedure to find out as proscribed by the roman catholic church. Check the history of Christianity during the early centuries and you'll find out what's the problem. Check what the early (before St. Augustine) Fathers were saying; you'll be surprised.
Also, the definition of faith is to have a belief in something without any evidence I have faith that God exists (I just cannot accept the alternative, it doesn't make any sense to me) and I was trying to find out whether the New Testament describes Him correctly. That's what I was referring to above. The scientific method dictates that people who believe in it and learn how to think that way will be able to reproduce the experimental results. Does it seem familiar?
you do realize the New Testament was written at least one and in some cases two or three generations after JC's death You're wrong, the earliest papyrus that has been found is the Madgalen papyrus that dates back to earlier than 66 A.D. and the first full text of the New Testament dates back to circa 100 A.D. Christ is asserted to have been crucified in circa 30 A.D..
You cannot *know* anything about the truth of what JC was saying Of course I can. That's how I found out parts of some faith related to Christianity that people claimed were true to be false. You just need to know how to look for them and have the right qualification available. Even a priest I know insisted otherwise; now he's slowly finding out the truth.
How are we to prove to ourselves what you believe is truth? By which procedures? Is it repeatable? I claim that what is written in the New Testament is the truth. I also claim that if you apply the teaching of Jesus to your life along with some faith, you'll reproduce the results He mentions. The reason many people don't see the results are, in my opinion, that they don't know much about the subject, that they don't have much faith and that their priests do not succeed the Apostles. If you check the history of Christianity in the early centuries, you'll be able to find out why I think so. By the way, Jesus Christ said that the one who eats His flesh and drinks His blood will stay with Him and He will stay with that person. Was this a symbolic expression? I have found out that it wasn't. I have also found out what Jesus meant when He said He would stay with me. I'm not talking about self-persuasion, auto-suggestion and other mentally ill practices, I'm talking about the truth, that I found out having faith, yet keeping my mind alert to spot any inconsistencies and reasons to doubt not the essence of faith, but some details that people have misunderstood over the centuries, the details that matter most.
I agree fully with this, I just prefer the view that the problem is on the personal level and not on the society, because it's not well defined in the latter case (at least for me). I believe that if people would just change the way they treat others and themselves to the better, the world would have been a much better place to live in.
God knew what we were going to do when He created us. I don't think that what we do is His fault, as we have freedom to choose between good and evil. His punishment is about us making the wrong choice, I view it as the fact that if you choose to stay near light, you can see around you, if you choose to stay in the darkness, light does not reach you and there's not much you can do other than stay there and long for the light, until you change your choice again. Do you wish that we didn't have that freedom in the first place? Even if you do, you cannot change that now, you can only try to fix some things by not making mistakes again.
The earliest papyrus of the New Testament (125 pages, papyrus of Magdalene ) dates before 66 A.D. There also exist some parts with a date around 50 A.D. Christ is asserted to have been crucified at about 33 A.D.
The accounts are full of borrowings from each other. Four people wrote about the time they lived, I think it would be anticipated if all of them were describing the most important facts they lived together, don't you?
They're all a bit suspicously fluent for fishermen. Yes, they are. Why didn't they claim that they weren't fishermen in order to cover that up? Where's the simple evidence that would support that they were lying and why don't the Jews see the inconsistency you mention so as to preserve that evidence? The New Testament includes the reason why they were so fluent.
and the texts are disputed. Yes, they sustained heavy criticism in the past. Nowadays most historians support that Josephus indeed wrote about Jesus, as Alice Whealy (a Berkeley university professor) has written (check the section near the bottom of the article). The rest of what you say about Josephus is simply arbitrary or irrelevant, as long as you can learn first-hand the opinion of the historians, which one would assume are better fit for the job of deciding what is authentic and what is not. Are you interested in the truth or in only what can support the claim that Jesus didn't exist?
The whole new testament is spin and jive; a hotch-potch of mis-translations, propelled by the most successful organisation in human history. The NT is as about a reliable a document as a drunk faced with a bottle of whisky. Do you have any facts to support these claims? Any opinion by scholars that deal with such matters supporting yours? Any reason that can stand scrutiny at all?
Full of assertion yes, about "fail", what does the scientific method, that is generally approved, say that differs substantially than what I claim? The only difference, as far as I know, is that in science the experimental results in general are visible and tangible to others. That cannot be said about all scientific branches though.
My point is that there is one religion that can have reproducible effects on human lives. It's not Catholicism though, it's Christianity and I speak from personal experience. If you learn some things about its history beginning with Jesus onwards, you'll find out what went wrong and why some things don't fit together today. I'm fully aware of the crimes that have been committed in the name of Christ, yet I cannot reject Christianity because of them. It's just so much valuable.
Geology: what makes you think that the Genesis temporal definitions should match ours? When it says that the world was created in one day and the sun later, how do you define the word day without the existence of the sun?
Darwin: the church attacked Darwin's theory for fear that it wasn't in accordance with the Bible. The fact is that the core of the theory of evolution doesn't contradict the Bible description of the creation of life, as it's just a symbolic description as above. You should be aware that none of the Eastern Christian Church Fathers (I don't know about the Western ones) ever said that the Bible narration can be used as a scientific basis, which is what the Roman-Catholic Church also says at the moment. I do have some doubts about some parts of the theory that are not supported by discoveries (many of the characteristics of a human are unique), yet I agree that it is a plausible theory in general.
Cosmology: I assume you mean that the universe is 13.7 billion years old (WMAP data if I remember correctly). The answer is that the description of Genesis is symbolic, as above. Cosmology also verifies that the universe did have a beginning long ago, which is in accordance with the Genesis description.
One more thing I just noticed:
The "reason" god doesn't exist is nonsensical.
Perhaps you should actually think rather than repeating bullshit that nutjob liars tell you to keep you buying their bullshit in the face of all evidence? My question: can there be evidence that God exists? Possible answers are yes, no, I cannot know, I do not know.
My answer: yes, there is some procedure you need to follow to find out. Faith is a prerequisite. Not much different than the answer of science.
Your answer is what?
It's a fallacy from the start. What is this supposed to mean?
Every scientific hypothesis can be either proved, disproved or be inconclusive for the time being. If a theory predicts that a certain type of particles exist and this is experimentally proved, the theory is accepted as a possible interpretation of physical phenomena. If its prediction isn't proven, then the theory remains just that and not many people bother themselves with it if it stays that way for a long time.
If a theory predicts that a certain type of particle cannot exist and it does, the theory is regarded as disproved and needs modifications. If a theory predicts that a certain type of particle cannot exist and it hasn't been found yet, the theory remains as a possible interpretation of the universe, waiting to be disproved in the future (there is no theory that can be proved to be true everywhere and always; all we can say about it is that to the best of our knowledge a certain theory predicts with some accuracy a physical phenomenon, nothing more nothing less). What does "you can't prove a negative" mean? Are you aware that Pauli's exclusion principle asserts that two identical fermions cannot be in the same state at the same time? Or, if I rephrase it, two identical fermions in the same state at the same time cannot exist? Where do you people get these crazy notions about how science works?
That he doesn't exist is just the only reasonable assertion given the complete and total lack of any evidence. You cannot base a scientific theory entirely on assertions.
you're presuming that there is some merit to the very idea without ever offering any justification for it. My evidence is personal, not the type that you can call scientific, unless you're willing to reproduce them according to what the New Testament says.
The reference to S. Hawking was to prove that science has nothing to do with your claims about the existence of God. Who said Hawking is an authority? Why are you in such a rush to jump to conclusions?
Until *you* can provide any evidence for your insane assertion that there's an invisible fairy in the sky I don't need any evidence to reject something so ludicrous out of hand. There are lots of scientists that think otherwise; I'm studying to be one of them. You still fail to state the reason that such a belief is "ludicrous", as no sane person believes in fairies, fairies don't have the ability to affect your life and not much in the fairy belief can be observed and reproduced. The universe can be observed. Please don't start the nonsense about flying monsters and teacups.
before your idiotic idea will even be considered by me. What are the high(!) standards that allow a hypothesis to be considered by you? Are they higher than the standards of all the scientists in the world?!
You're talking about two regimes over part of one century. So what? You're talking about the entire human history, I suppose. What's worse, the largest number of fatalities in a century (circa 70M deaths, probably largest than all other conflicts combined) or some large number (circa 10M, Crusades, which wasn't really due to religion, and the 30 year war, with which religion was related in the beginning, yet later saving the authority of the church became the priority) throughout history?
Further, the Nazis were explicitly and aggressively Christian. If I give you a cross to hold, should you be considered a Christian? How can their actions be compatible with the teaching of Jesus? See below for a wikipedia link and some facts about the Nazi ideological system.
Communism replaced "God" with "The State". It's no less of a religion and an "idiotic belief system". Nevertheless, the ideology has its roots in atheism. What have you replaced God with? Does the "idiocy" of communism stem from its origins? Why not?
sorry that you thought that you had a point. I'm responsible for my actions and thoughts, so are you. There's no need for both of us to be sorry for each others thoughts.
Perhaps you should actually think rather than repeating bullshit that nutjob liars tell you to keep you buying their bullshit in the face of all evidence? Where is the evidence? Do you know what the word evidence means? If all this means that you're able to think, well, I suppose you can, though I'm not thoroughly convinced.
5 minutes of research would have let you know the Nazis were extremist Christians yet you couldn't even be bothered with that before lying. Wikipedia to the rescue! Who can seriously claim that social darwinism and atheism are compatible with Christianity? Can you? I don't think that I'm lying. I'm not hiding anything, you know. All of a sudden you start sounding like an extremist yourself.
You might want to address that serious deep seated issue you have with integrity. Do you copy and paste answers from a database of possible responses to criticism? Are you able to articulate arguments that support your opinion? Where are they? Why do you have to resort to name-calling if you believe that your arguments support your opinion so strongly?
I consider science anything that can be reproducibly observed and scientific theory the logical results deduced by such observation.
I mostly agree with what you say, still I cannot say that non-intelligent people are more prone to cause harm. It's not always intelligence that liberates a human's mind, otherwise how could you explain that the majority of the German scientists co-operated with the Nazis during the WW2?
I agree with you, the fact is that at least 5 people's account of Jesus' life match and that Josephus is acknowledged by historians as an independent and reliable source that Jesus did exist. Check the wikipedia article .
Can you seriously support that Jesus Christ and His students staged all the events known as "miracles"? Can you seriously support that today 13 people can stage everything mentioned in the New Testament in public view without any of the viewers ever finding out the truth, all these in a actively hostile to the performers environment and outside a TV studio? You basically claim that they were the best magicians of all time, yet no one ever learned their tricks so as to reproduce them today? Why didn't the Jewish scribes and priests preserve the evidence that proves the falseness of the New Testament? A big part of the civilized world has been tricked by those 13 people? Why did the entire world for 2000 years conspire to hide the evidence to the contrary? Does your belief assume that Roman guards, some Jews, Jesus and a dozen of fishermen (among other professions) where able to conspire in order to trick the entire world for 2000 years? What was the motive of their performance? Does their writings' spirit and line of thought match this expectation? They were the people to advocate "love each other" for the first time in history, yet they were trying to manipulate everyone else that Jesus is the God? Why? Why cannot I apply your logic to physical phenomena and treat everything as staged by a very clever magician?
If they appear to do the impossible, most likely the appearances are deceiving That's not how science works. Science needs evidence and nothing is impossible, provided that it can be observed and reproduced.
the J-myth are backed by very dubious evidence. Have you tried to see whether what Jesus was claiming is true? That's the essence of His teaching, that's the only way to prove that He was wrong. I know that He was right; so do lots of people around the world. I know it's not of much use to you, that's why I'm offering a way to check my facts.
He was either non-existing, a charlatan or a tool. What's the evidence that supports that He wasn't who He said He was? What makes that evidence more worthy than mine?
Then people are delusional What makes them delusional and not you? Why don't you prove to yourself that what Jesus said was false, as far as the reproducible part of the New Testament is concerned? Is it because you think it's a waste of time? Because of prejudice?
There is no garden gnomes, no fairies, no flying ufos or any other wishful thinking Why has belief in these ceased nowadays, yet belief in Christ hasn't? How does the existence of gnomes etc. affect your life? What does the theory about them provide as a way to reproduce phenomena that cannot be explained otherwise?
There is just you, me and everyone and everything else. Is this because you can see, talk to and react with other people?
Slashdot Mirror
It crashes kontact as soon as I create a basket or a sub-basket (basket-0.6.0-26 on openSUSE 10.2) and has several problems with the focus of the boxes that contain the information, some text appears twice at the bottom (I'm able to scroll past the window contents, instead of a blank area there appears text from the previous box, which makes things very confusing).
You can use basket of the KDE PIM package. It allows you to organize bookmars, text, images and other data effectively and consistently. It's like a sticky notes program, though with much more functionality and it allows to store and retrieve information very quickly. It also saves automatically and may have a few very disturbing bugs (I think the major one is a Qt bug), yet it's definitely worth enough for me to use it every day.
Yes, you're correct, this doesn't negate the fact that the general consensus among scholars is that Josephus did in fact write about Jesus.
The question of the existence of God is an open scientific hypothesis. Hence the reference to S. Hawking's "A Brief History of Time".
No it isn't you moron. The question as to the origin of the universe is an open question. The big bang is a theory that gets close. "God" is a delusion, not a hypothesis.
A scientific hypothesis is a statement, the limited validity of which can be experimentally verified or disproved. I claim that the following expression is a scientific hypothesis: "God, as described in the New Testament, has created the entire universe and everyone will see Him in the Second Coming, which is temporally indeterminate and roughly described in the Apocalypse". The reference to S. Hawking's book would have lead an ordinary person to the conclusion that the hypothesis above is a scientific one, since Hawking is a scientist, who used to deal with scientific hypotheses (that's his job), which he briefly outlines in the first chapter of the book, thus saving the trouble of searching for the definition of the term. Hawking also mentions in the book that the question about God's existence has lead most developments in science; that's a fact, not a belief and indicates that the question about the existence of God (not identical to the hypothesis above) does have merit, something that you inexplicably deny. The argument of authority (logical fallacy) you claimed is irrelevant; I never said that the reference proves that the hypothesis above is a scientific hypothesis, I say that it provides a way to find out that it is. You may notice that belief has nothing to do with what I'm talking about here.
"God" is a delusion, not a hypothesis.
That statement is another scientific hypothesis, you can prove it if no Second Coming ever occurs. Until you have proved or disproved it, it has the same state as the hypothesis above.
Because you did nothing of the sort you lying sack of shit. There is *no* evidence as you know damn well, or would if you weren't brain damaged.
Part of the scientific method is following the route of the performers of an experiment in order to either duplicate the results or declare it as inconclusive with regard to the specific theory it's meant to verify (i.e. not disprove, the term is loosely put). Beliefs and assertions such as yours are useless and should be no part of the process. Whatever suits you, of course, in your beliefs, just don't invoke science in all this. I insist that certain parts of the process I described in the beginning may have no physical cause, yet the effects can be seen in the subject's spirit. This may mean that these procedures don't necessarily lead to exactly reproducible situations that can be objectively observed as far as I know, yet that doesn't mean they don't exist or that they cannot be studied and experienced.
There is no way to reproduce your delusions in a properly functioning brain.
Where's the evidence? You can reproduce what Jesus promised in the New Testament. I'm not aware of a way to make this observation objective though (i.e. measure some physical q
Science employs the scientific method to reach conclusions, i.e. part of the truth. The scientific method has no intrinsic property of validity or correctness; we treat it as such because that's the best we can hope for. If I rephrase this: We (the scientists) believe that the scientific method is the only one that can give us fragments of truth. There's no possible way to prove this assertion, on which the entire scientific enterprise is based. This is a faith which scientists share when they attempt experimental approval or rejection of a theory, or, if I rephrase this, scientists believe that the scientific method will provide them with the truth before they apply it. I trust that you can draw the conclusions analogous to my position as stated in the previous response. That if you're capable of constructing a rational argument you have failed utterly to demonstrate that fact. I would have given you the benefit of ignorance, weren't it for your clearly nitpicking, insulting, semi-irrational or superficially rational, scholastic, useless, thought-stifling, mundane, astoundlingly ignorant, typical rehash of the same half-truths or lies that are being propagated throughout the history by people such as you, always failing to comprehend the basis of their claims, still insisting that they are the authorities that decide what is reasonable and what's not, what is science and what is not. All I can offer you is some help and one piece of advice: learn profoundly what you can about the subject or avoid posing as an expert or authority on it. Otherwise you'll soon find out that people don't hold such a high esteem of yourself as you think they do.
An omnipotent and omniscient FULLY KNOWS the consequences of what he creates. I know the laws of gravitation, uncertainty, relativity etc. Does that make me responsible for anything that happens around the world? Is Newton responsible if someone decides to jump of a cliff to commit suicide? Therefore, there's no such thing as going against his will, since if he creates something which will behave in some way, it's automatically his will... I repeat this again. God is omnipotent, He decided that people are able to decide against His will. Why is this so hard to understand?
As a result, your explanation isn't irrefutable as you don't fully grasp what free will means, not that I do, it's just that you made some trivial mistakes.
Maybe the difficulty lies in this: God wants His will and human's will to be possible to be different. This is not a weakness, because He wants it. It doesn't reduce His omniscience, as He knows what the human will decide in advance. It doesn't negate His omni-benevolence, because the human knew the rules, had all the qualifications to choose correctly and because God decided even after his Fall to enable the human to return to his original state.
Maybe this will make the freedom of will problem clear: Imagine that there's a person that sees every temptation in the world and denies it. He later decides that he wants to commit sin, even though he has no reason to do so. He commits it. Where's God's responsibility in this? In that the human has free will? But he could have free will and obey God's will at the same time.
I hope this helps a bit.
Could you be more specific? What's wrong with what I claim? What do I reject without sufficient reasoning?
Most likely it is a combination of fraud, gullibility and wishful thinking.
It must be such a unique combination that has lasted so long. You could be right, of course.
if you change "any of the viewers" to "any significant number of viewers"...sure.
If I assume that some viewers found out the falseness of the claims, why wouldn't they document their findings so as to help the entire world avoid such misguided beliefs, while the entire population at the time was actively hostile to such beliefs? Jesus was one of the few persons that did miracles all over the place. They could just document one single instance of false belief and everything would collapse. Where is it? Or is it just that they didn't pay attention to Him? Then why did they crucify Him? Why do they claim that He was an impostor?
The had an agenda.
You may be aware that Jewish faith states that Jesus was an impostor. What's simpler than preserving the evidence that proves that? Why hasn't it happened? Did even foreign dogmas conspire to spread a lie that would undermine them?
Let me put this a different way: A big part of the civilized world has been tricked by those 13 people for 2000 years?
Today there is no lack of such evidence.
What evidence? Has there ever existed before a conspiracy that lasts for over 2000 years, with the only purpose of spreading "love each other"? This doesn't mean that it cannot exist, it just makes it extremely unlikely and stupid.
Not the entire world. They tricked enough for long enough, then arms, thumbscrews and human gullibility did the rest.
Why did the early Christians sacrifice their lives for this faith? They were gullible or forced by arms? Does this mean that Christians were the most stupid people ever to appear on earth so as to give their lives for the tricks of a magician, for whom there must have been rumours that he was a fake god? What made them ignore everything despite the fact that he was crucified? Do their writings reflect such an opinion of them?
Desire to make people nice to each other? Wouldn't you lie if it would make men stop raping women? Would you lie for world peace?
Even when Jesus himself says that He hasn't come on earth to bring peace but conflict? Or does that contradict himself? Do you also think that a lie is enough to make every human capable of loving? So Christianity started because of the good will of 13 people (fishermen were most of them) to make others love each other, added some "miracles" and bizarre theory to make it convincing and spread this to the world, sacrificing their lives for a lie. So they basically used auto-suggestion to make themselves believe the lie and die. So now that people know that the world isn't a much better place than the apostles' era, people start abandoning this faith (it's a lie afterall). Now my question: what makes these assumptions not applicable to any view of the world? What restricts them from being applied to human knowledge, science, art, politics, economics, engineering etc. ? I could claim that the world as we know it is the result of a bunch of liars that simply tried to make the world a better place and started spreading lies about what is known, what can be proved, what is nice, what keeps people in order, what keeps people fed, what makes them build things etc. What prevents me from doing so, provided that I'm not irrational?
You can, but a wall would still hurt you if you walk into it
So the senses are the means that differentiates truth and lie? Can you elaborate that?
But extraordinary claims requires extraordinary proofs, and it is not my job to dig that up for every mad claim out there
What differentiates an extraordinary claim from an ordinary one? I agree about the latter part.
Thanks, but I'll leave that to others. I am only one man, and I have no time for th
Nothing about god, religion or faith is scientific, so you're really not making any sense.
The question of the existence of God is an open scientific hypothesis. Hence the reference to S. Hawking's "A Brief History of Time".
By which you mean that you have no evidence whatsoever.
I've given you the evidence and a way to reproduce them. Why is this different to the scientific method?
Just because you had a delusion, a hallucination, or are so desperate to believe something so silly, that you'll convince yourself it's god is not evidence of any sort.
I've never had delusions in my entire life, I don't do drugs, drink etc. I can read scientific literature and solve problems, exercises etc. In fact, I tried to disprove some people's false faith on a subject related to Christianity once and I did. If I'm desperate to convince myself, what are you?
You did: "What makes you think you know more than him about this issue? "
I refer to the fact (you cannot deny this, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself to the contrary) that the question of the existence of God is an open scientific hypothesis . For me it's actually more than just a hypothesis.
Another appeal to authority. So. Fucking. What?
I'm giving references to support my statement that (again) the existence of God is an open scientific hypothesis. You suggest that the only authority in the world is you. Something's wrong here.
You just made clear why it's ludicrous.
Which is?
But god can't.
What does an observation of God mean to you? If He is as powerful as the New Testament says, you'll burn the moment He appears in His full glory. I just know that God exists, just like I know that I exist (where's the evidence?!). Perhaps you missed the question, so here it is again: What are the high(!) standards that allow a hypothesis to be considered by you?
That's how it was spread and those who didn't accept it were burned alive among many other gruesome tortures for the "crime" of not buying into your bullshit.
How are you so certain about that? It certainly wasn't spread that way near where I live! History shows me otherwise, Christians were the ones getting slaughtered in Roman stadiums in the beginning just for stating their belief, something that was repeated recently in the communist regime and elsewhere and may happen again in the future. I'm not forgetting the crimes that have happened in the name of Christ by several misguided people; I just cannot let emotions cover up the truth. Perhaps you missed the question, so here it is again: If I give you a cross to hold, should you be considered a Christian?
you're going to have a really hard time naming 10 Christians in the history of the world
I can name several hundreds (not at the moment) and refer to the hundreds of thousands that were martyrs. I also know several people around me that are true Christians, just like Jesus said and they all see what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about raving lunatics, I'm talking about scientists and university professors.
I mean, that's assuming there ever was such a person for which there is likewise no evidence whatsoever.
What's the definition of evidence?
Regardless, blind faith even in the face of massive evidence to the contrary is a religion.
Agreed, that's what people have been talking about when referring to atheism. Where's the evidence?
Really it's your parent's fault for being so abusive to you before you were old enough to think rationally.
Please avoid ad hominem attacks, they don't convey your message clearly and are considered generally useless as far as their argumentative value is concerned, not to mention unethical (whatever that means to you). You also reveal many things about yours
You cannot *know* anything about the truth of what JC was saying Of course I can. That's how I found out parts of some faith related to Christianity that people claimed were true to be false. You just need to know how to look for them and have the right qualification available. Even a priest I know insisted otherwise; now he's slowly finding out the truth.
How are we to prove to ourselves what you believe is truth? By which procedures? Is it repeatable? I claim that what is written in the New Testament is the truth. I also claim that if you apply the teaching of Jesus to your life along with some faith, you'll reproduce the results He mentions. The reason many people don't see the results are, in my opinion, that they don't know much about the subject, that they don't have much faith and that their priests do not succeed the Apostles. If you check the history of Christianity in the early centuries, you'll be able to find out why I think so. By the way, Jesus Christ said that the one who eats His flesh and drinks His blood will stay with Him and He will stay with that person. Was this a symbolic expression? I have found out that it wasn't. I have also found out what Jesus meant when He said He would stay with me. I'm not talking about self-persuasion, auto-suggestion and other mentally ill practices, I'm talking about the truth, that I found out having faith, yet keeping my mind alert to spot any inconsistencies and reasons to doubt not the essence of faith, but some details that people have misunderstood over the centuries, the details that matter most.
I agree fully with this, I just prefer the view that the problem is on the personal level and not on the society, because it's not well defined in the latter case (at least for me). I believe that if people would just change the way they treat others and themselves to the better, the world would have been a much better place to live in.
God knew what we were going to do when He created us. I don't think that what we do is His fault, as we have freedom to choose between good and evil. His punishment is about us making the wrong choice, I view it as the fact that if you choose to stay near light, you can see around you, if you choose to stay in the darkness, light does not reach you and there's not much you can do other than stay there and long for the light, until you change your choice again. Do you wish that we didn't have that freedom in the first place? Even if you do, you cannot change that now, you can only try to fix some things by not making mistakes again.
Full of assertion yes, about "fail", what does the scientific method, that is generally approved, say that differs substantially than what I claim? The only difference, as far as I know, is that in science the experimental results in general are visible and tangible to others. That cannot be said about all scientific branches though.
My point is that there is one religion that can have reproducible effects on human lives. It's not Catholicism though, it's Christianity and I speak from personal experience. If you learn some things about its history beginning with Jesus onwards, you'll find out what went wrong and why some things don't fit together today. I'm fully aware of the crimes that have been committed in the name of Christ, yet I cannot reject Christianity because of them. It's just so much valuable.
My answer: yes, there is some procedure you need to follow to find out. Faith is a prerequisite. Not much different than the answer of science.
Your answer is what?
Every scientific hypothesis can be either proved, disproved or be inconclusive for the time being. If a theory predicts that a certain type of particles exist and this is experimentally proved, the theory is accepted as a possible interpretation of physical phenomena. If its prediction isn't proven, then the theory remains just that and not many people bother themselves with it if it stays that way for a long time.
If a theory predicts that a certain type of particle cannot exist and it does, the theory is regarded as disproved and needs modifications. If a theory predicts that a certain type of particle cannot exist and it hasn't been found yet, the theory remains as a possible interpretation of the universe, waiting to be disproved in the future (there is no theory that can be proved to be true everywhere and always; all we can say about it is that to the best of our knowledge a certain theory predicts with some accuracy a physical phenomenon, nothing more nothing less). What does "you can't prove a negative" mean? Are you aware that Pauli's exclusion principle asserts that two identical fermions cannot be in the same state at the same time? Or, if I rephrase it, two identical fermions in the same state at the same time cannot exist? Where do you people get these crazy notions about how science works?
The reference to S. Hawking was to prove that science has nothing to do with your claims about the existence of God. Who said Hawking is an authority? Why are you in such a rush to jump to conclusions? Until *you* can provide any evidence for your insane assertion that there's an invisible fairy in the sky I don't need any evidence to reject something so ludicrous out of hand. There are lots of scientists that think otherwise; I'm studying to be one of them. You still fail to state the reason that such a belief is "ludicrous", as no sane person believes in fairies, fairies don't have the ability to affect your life and not much in the fairy belief can be observed and reproduced. The universe can be observed. Please don't start the nonsense about flying monsters and teacups. before your idiotic idea will even be considered by me. What are the high(!) standards that allow a hypothesis to be considered by you? Are they higher than the standards of all the scientists in the world?! You're talking about two regimes over part of one century. So what? You're talking about the entire human history, I suppose. What's worse, the largest number of fatalities in a century (circa 70M deaths, probably largest than all other conflicts combined) or some large number (circa 10M, Crusades, which wasn't really due to religion, and the 30 year war, with which religion was related in the beginning, yet later saving the authority of the church became the priority) throughout history? Further, the Nazis were explicitly and aggressively Christian. If I give you a cross to hold, should you be considered a Christian? How can their actions be compatible with the teaching of Jesus? See below for a wikipedia link and some facts about the Nazi ideological system. Communism replaced "God" with "The State". It's no less of a religion and an "idiotic belief system". Nevertheless, the ideology has its roots in atheism. What have you replaced God with? Does the "idiocy" of communism stem from its origins? Why not? sorry that you thought that you had a point. I'm responsible for my actions and thoughts, so are you. There's no need for both of us to be sorry for each others thoughts. Perhaps you should actually think rather than repeating bullshit that nutjob liars tell you to keep you buying their bullshit in the face of all evidence? Where is the evidence? Do you know what the word evidence means? If all this means that you're able to think, well, I suppose you can, though I'm not thoroughly convinced. 5 minutes of research would have let you know the Nazis were extremist Christians yet you couldn't even be bothered with that before lying. Wikipedia to the rescue! Who can seriously claim that social darwinism and atheism are compatible with Christianity? Can you? I don't think that I'm lying. I'm not hiding anything, you know. All of a sudden you start sounding like an extremist yourself. You might want to address that serious deep seated issue you have with integrity. Do you copy and paste answers from a database of possible responses to criticism? Are you able to articulate arguments that support your opinion? Where are they? Why do you have to resort to name-calling if you believe that your arguments support your opinion so strongly?
I consider science anything that can be reproducibly observed and scientific theory the logical results deduced by such observation.
I mostly agree with what you say, still I cannot say that non-intelligent people are more prone to cause harm. It's not always intelligence that liberates a human's mind, otherwise how could you explain that the majority of the German scientists co-operated with the Nazis during the WW2?
I agree with you, the fact is that at least 5 people's account of Jesus' life match and that Josephus is acknowledged by historians as an independent and reliable source that Jesus did exist. Check the wikipedia article .
If they appear to do the impossible, most likely the appearances are deceiving That's not how science works. Science needs evidence and nothing is impossible, provided that it can be observed and reproduced. the J-myth are backed by very dubious evidence. Have you tried to see whether what Jesus was claiming is true? That's the essence of His teaching, that's the only way to prove that He was wrong. I know that He was right; so do lots of people around the world. I know it's not of much use to you, that's why I'm offering a way to check my facts. He was either non-existing, a charlatan or a tool. What's the evidence that supports that He wasn't who He said He was? What makes that evidence more worthy than mine? Then people are delusional What makes them delusional and not you? Why don't you prove to yourself that what Jesus said was false, as far as the reproducible part of the New Testament is concerned? Is it because you think it's a waste of time? Because of prejudice? There is no garden gnomes, no fairies, no flying ufos or any other wishful thinking Why has belief in these ceased nowadays, yet belief in Christ hasn't? How does the existence of gnomes etc. affect your life? What does the theory about them provide as a way to reproduce phenomena that cannot be explained otherwise? There is just you, me and everyone and everything else. Is this because you can see, talk to and react with other people?