Science Increasingly Makes the Case for God

I don't think I've ever claimed it to be scientific.

 

Like Timothy McVeigh, science is the god of many here.

 

Which one of the 350 fulfilled by Jesus really weren't?

 

Your comments here indicate that you are projecting here. People who cannot think for themselves, need an "Uncle Albert" to tell them what to think......I don't!

 

I've never heard of 500 people being 'tricked' into something they believed enough to give their lives for. As far as the hallucination theory, 500 people don't have the same 'hallucination' over a 40 day period. Generally, only certain kinds of people have hallucinations, people who are high-strung, highly imaginative or very nervous. The appearances that Christ made weren't restricted to people of any particular psychological make-up. And the hallucination theory further breaks down on the fact that on three separate occasions this 'hallucination' wasn't immediately recognized as Jesus.

 

It was partially fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, that was also predicted in the Olivet Discourse. This is a reasonable explanation of 'generation', taken in context:

"The Spiritual Generation Interpretation

This view has been recently expressed by Dr.Gerardus D. Bouw.2 In this view, Jesus was speaking of the generation of God's children. God does not have grandchildren - he only has sons and daughters. They are made His sons and daughters by virtue of the new birth. Therefore, there is only one generation of the spiritual children of God. There are in fact many Bible verses which refer, both directly and indirectly, to this generation of Jesus Christ. One of the most notable of these may be Matthew 1:1.

Mat 1:1 The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Since the genealogy of Christ does not constitute the entire book of Matthew, Dr. Bouw suggests that this term refers to the complete book of Matthew, and perhaps even prophetically to the entire New Testament, as the record of the sons of the new Adam, Jesus Christ. Dr. Bouw has traced this view of Matthew 1:1 to translators as far back as the time of Jerome.

Although some might dispute this interpretation of Matthew 1:1, there are many other verses that refer to this generation of Jesus Christ.

Ps 14:5 There were they in great fear: for God is in the generation of the righteous.

Ps 24:6 This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face, O Jacob. Selah.

Ps 73:15 If I say, I will speak thus; behold, I should offend against the generation of thy children.

1Pe 2:9 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light:

Ps 22:30 A seed shall serve him; it shall be accounted to the Lord for a generation.

Isa 8:18 Behold, I and the children whom the LORD hath given me are for signs and for wonders in Israel from the LORD of hosts, which dwelleth in mount Zion.

Isa 53:10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.

Ga 4:6 And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

Php 2:15 That ye may be blameless and harmless, the sons of God, without rebuke, in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation, among whom ye shine as lights in the world;

Heb 2:13 And again, I will put my trust in him. And again, Behold I and the children which God hath given me.

Jo 3:1 Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.

According to this view, the disciples whom Jesus was talking to were a part the very generation of God's children He was speaking of. By "this generation," Jesus had in mind his own spiritual offspring, some of whom were immediately before him. The sense of Jesus in Matthew 24:34, therefore, was that despite the intense persecution described earlier in the Olivet Discourse, the generation of His children will not pass away from the earth until all of the things spoken of in the Olivet Discourse are fulfilled. This would fit in with the words of Jesus in verses 21 and 22:

Matthew 24:21 For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be.
22 And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened."

 

no it wasn't

 

You can't be serious.

 

OK, tell me all the times that happened, for something they claimed they saw. While you're at it show me where 500 random people have had the same 'hallucination'.

 

Yes it was. Luke 13:1-2 As he was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, "Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!" "Do you see all these great buildings?" replied Jesus. "Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down."

That is exactly what happened in 70 AD. History tells us when the Romans burned the massive, 10-story temple, the melted silver and gold ran down the cracks in the stones, causing the Romans to pry apart every stone in their effort to retrieve it.

BTW, three of the Gospels were most likely written BEFORE 70 AD. More on these fulfilled prophecies: http://www.bibleresearch.org/articles/a11pws.htm

As far as the 'generation' question:

"The fourth-century church father John Chrysostom held this interpretation:

After this, that they might not straightway return to it again, and say, “When?” he brings to their remembrance the things that had been said, saying, “Verily I say unto you, This generation shall not pass, till all these things be fulfilled!” All these things. What things? I pray thee. Those about Jerusalem, those about the wars, about the famines, about the pestilences, about the earthquakes, about the false Christs, about the false prophets, about the sowing of the gospel everywhere, the seditions, the tumults, all the other things, which we said were to occur until His coming. How then, one may ask, did He say, “This generation?” Speaking not of the generation then living, but of that of the believers. For He is wont to distinguish a generation not by times only, but also by the mode of religious service, and practice; as when He saith, “This is the generation of them that seek the Lord. ”

—John Chrysostom[18]"

That use of 'generation' is used elsewhere in the Bible.

 

Your original statement didn't include that quallification.

 

Obviously you don't know my views.

He was fond of Spinoza's idea of god, and I don't even go that far. You really should know what a poster believes or thinks before you go out on a limb. Pay attention. It helps make the discussion coherent.

Some of the brightest minds, Newton, Einstein, Bohr, Planck, and even Bohm, had open minds, whereas yours is closed, and that creates stagnancy. A stagnant mind isn't an intelligent mind. Stagnant minds yield the absurdity of certainty.

 

Sorry if that wasn't clear. Obviously many have unknowingly died for a lie, such as today's jihadists. They aren't claiming they personally saw those original cave events of the 'prophet'.

 

No harm, no foul.

 

I don't believe in a Christian God. No single religion defines God though, as a system of philosophic morals and just principles, I prefer the Christian religion itself.

The idea of multiple Gods is an absurdity as, as an all powerful being, multiple Gods would be pointless.

Maybe we do know the answer (God) and you are emotionally and psychologically incapable of accepting that answer.

God necessarily is not confined by
the rules that define our existence.

So you have no principles or intellectual investment in agnosticism...you just want to be on the "right" side of any argument? No comment needed.

 

Different jobs for different gods, just because you think it is absurd doesn't make it so.

Maybe, maybe not. Either way there is no proof positive on either belief.

And maybe we don't know all the rules and the universe creation could be without a god.

Your personal attack is noted and rejected. Just because I don't believe as you and other religious fundies do, does not mean I don't have principles.

It's not about being on the right side, it is about proof. However, I'm not going to shove my belief down someone's throat and say you have to follow it either like some religious fundamentalists and atheists do.

 

What disqualifies it?

It is the cause of gravity the science validated just as the cause of the universe is the subject of this thread.

- - - Updated - - -

What don't we understand? We just don't believe in spirits, supernatural beings since there is no evidence of their existence. With gravity we had evidence it existed before Newton didn't we, so it was quite plausible to believe in gravity. There is no empirical evidence that shows an existence of supernatural beings. Even the so-called "science believes more and more" is just conjecture and supposition, not evidence.

 

What was the observable evidence the earth was flat?

"Myth of the Flat Earth
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the modern myth that medieval Europeans believed the Earth was flat. For mythologies involving the belief in a Flat Earth, see Flat Earth.

The famous "Flat Earth" Flammarion engraving originates with Flammarion's 1888 L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire (p. 163)

Illustration of the spherical Earth in a 14th-century copy of L'Image du monde (ca. 1246).
The myth of the Flat Earth is the modern misconception that the prevailing cosmological view during the Middle Ages saw the Earth as flat, instead of spherical.[1]

During the early Middle Ages, virtually all scholars maintained the spherical viewpoint first expressed by the Ancient Greeks. From at least the 14th century, belief in a flat Earth among the educated was almost nonexistent, despite fanciful depictions in art, such as the exterior of Hieronymus Bosch's famous triptych The Garden of Earthly Delights, in which a disc-shaped Earth is shown floating inside a transparent sphere.[2]

According to Stephen Jay Gould, "there never was a period of 'flat earth darkness' among scholars (regardless of how the public at large may have conceptualized our planet both then and now). Greek knowledge of sphericity never faded, and all major medieval scholars accepted the Earth's roundness as an established fact of cosmology."[3] Historians of science David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers point out that "there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [Earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference".[4]

Historian Jeffrey Burton Russell says the flat-earth error flourished most between 1870 and 1920, and had to do with the ideological setting created by struggles over evolution.[5] Russell claims "with extraordinary [sic] few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat", and credits histories by John William Draper, Andrew Dickson White, and Washington Irving for popularizing the flat-earth myth.[6]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth

 

Consider, oh we consider it for discussion sake. To devote our lives to it proclaiming a belief in supernatural beings without any empirical evidence to support it, now that is an entirely different matter. Do you ever consider unicorns created the universe? Geez some people even refuse to consider all alternatives.

 

A simple public appearance would suffice. An explanation of why he lets his children suffer so and why he allows evil to exist. That would be a good start.

 

Actually it IS absurd if you accept God as an all powerful being.

There is no need for division of labor as if He belongs to a God labor union.

Atheists and agnostics ask for proof as if we were looking for the location of Wrigley Field in Chicago.
Or the German word for crooked (schief).

Denying God is easy because it requires no thought or work at all...just a reactionary
rejection of the possibility that a deity may actually exist.
A true belief in God (not just an uninformed acceptance of religious dogma) requires a bit of reasoning and
intellectual heavy lifting. That's why atheist's portrayal of believers as ignorant buffoons is always so amusing, and wrong.

Creation without a cause? I know of no such thing.

There is no attack in using your own words to
summarize your agnostic stance. But it's telling you would think otherwise.

You are the one that said you can tailor your agnostic views to fit the situation. Not me.
Are those principles, or opportunism in action?

I agree. Religious fundamentalists and atheists form a circular line in the continuum of spiritual thought.
They are both dogmatic, reactionary and inflexible.

 

All of this to say you have nothing factual.

 

I believe the universe itself, and it's workings, are empirical evidence indeed of God and men like Newton, Einstein and Planck feel that way too.

Have you ever considered that nothing created the universe? Your arguments would
all seem to confirm that, speaking of absurdities.

 

I think free will is the answer to your question.

Evil flourishes and children suffer because people allow it to happen. I feed and help children in Armenia. What do you do to make a difference?

 

And we have advanced quite a bit since them haven't we? But again your "belief in the universe" which I assume you to mean it is SO complicated therefore an intellegent being MUST have created it is conjecture not based on empirical evidence. Even Einstien never claimed the evidence proved an intelligent design and in fact in his final days spoke of the Bible and it's "legends" and myths as childish

"Einstein’s final opinions on the matter were shared in a letter he wrote one year before his death, in 1954. According to Letters of Note, Albert Einstein wrote to the philosopher Erik Gutkind after having just read Gutkind’s book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt. In this letter, Einstein made his views on God as clear as possible, including the following quote.

“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weakness, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still purely primitive, legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can change this for me.”
Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/1538169/wa...d-his-final-words-on-god/#7x0vAkIMFx5j3gHZ.99

I consider what prevailing evidence points to, the big bang.