The existence of God and the efficacy of prayer

[fuelair]

Technically, the food one's had real, but unknown to the bible times people, reasons. Trichina for piggies and polluted water filtering (the pollutants into their bodies rather than out) for many marine/riverine crustaceans and the like. They just made god rules out of health problems!!

The other three are crap-headed nonsense!!!!! Probably put in by crabby old rectum eating priests with a big hate on for their own people!!!!! As are old (heads) of many religions and even not religions!!!

Don't forget: if god supposedly said "DON'T" they have to enforce it hard!! As they can't get that any other way!!!!!

 

[Darat]

Busy with other things and a couple of other threads, but back after a quick read.

The statement that God (if he exists) wishes to remain hidden is reasonable.
..snip...

Then it is not the god that any major religion that has a deity follows, so that's Islam, Christianity, Judaism and so on.

 

[Darat]

...snip...

Material:
1 - There was a beginning from "nothing"

...snip...

Then again that is not the case of any of the Abrahamic religions. Their creation story is there is something which their god then transmutes in some fashion as he creates the earth etc from this something. The only thing their god creates from nothing is light.

 

[Darat]

Technically, the food ones had real, but unknown to the bible times people, reasons. Trichina for piggies and polluted water filtering (the pollutants into their bodies rather than out) for many marine/riverine crustaceans and the like. They just made god rules out of health problems!!

...snip...

We have no evidence at all that people 2000 and more years ago could make those health causation and connections. Our understanding of such matters is in terms of human history a very recent understanding. It is hard for us to get our head around how for folks just a few hundred years ago our entire modern understanding of disease, health and hygiene would have been incomprehensible; it seems to us so "obvious" but history shows it was anything but.

 

[Desert Fox]

With Trichinosis, the cause and effect are so distant as to be basically unnoticeable. There were plenty of other tribes in the area which ate pork and did not see any ill effects.

There are two better reasons why it might not have been eaten
1. To be different than the other tribes
2. From a number of sources, pork tastes like human.

 

[I Am The Scum]

There were plenty of other tribes in the area which ate porn

Silly barbarians. That's not how you do it!

 

[Darat]

With Trichinosis, the cause and effect are so distant as to be basically unnoticeable. There were plenty of other tribes in the area which ate porn and did not see any ill effects.

There are two better reasons why it might not have been eaten
1. To be different than the other tribes
2. From a number of sources, pork tastes like human.

Or one leader simply didn't like it.

 

[Desert Fox]

Or one leader simply didn't like it.

I believe he would have to have sold it to the other priests somehow and I suspect "We be different" is as good a selling point as any.

 

[fuelair]

We have no evidence at all that people 2000 and more years ago could make those health causation and connections. Our understanding of such matters is in terms of human history a very recent understanding. It is hard for us to get our head around how for folks just a few hundred years ago our entire modern understanding of disease, health and hygiene would have been incomprehensible; it seems to us so "obvious" but history shows it was anything but.

Did not say they did!!!! But they got sick and frequently died from eating them so they stopped doing so and slowly gave it a religious requirement/bad thing. They didn't know why it made them sick but knew it did. I know (as I am quite sure you do) the why!!!!!!!

 

[Pup]

Did not say they did!!!! But they got sick and frequently died from eating them so they stopped doing so and slowly gave it a religious requirement/bad thing. They didn't know why it made them sick but knew it did. I know (as I am quite sure you do) the why!!!!!!!

But what about other cultures that didn't ban pork or shellfish? Did they not get sick or did they not notice the correlation?

 

[PartSkeptic]

God is omnipotent and all knowing yet humans are responsible for how the world is.

Although I support the religion of Christianity as being one of the better ones, I do not support the concept of all-knowing and omnipotent. I see God as one of the players in the Matrix Mind of the Ultimate Intelligence. For our purposes the Matrix Mind is irrelevant if God exists and plays according to certain rules.

God does not want humanity to die out and yet humanity is extincting itself by overpopulation and lack of restraint.

God may cause a pandemic to "re-direct" matters. There is the "hidden". It just takes a tiny change to an organism which then multiplies explosively. Can anyone prove such intervention? No. The clue is in the warning and the way the warning is delivered.

It may have started. See my post on the 2016 start of the die-out.

Death is not punishment if humans have souls. I believe souls evolve by entering new-borns after a while. Otherwise Heaven and Hell would be rather full, and when would it have started - with the Homo Sapiens? Earlier or later?

And what is a soul? Well, if we are in a Matrix mind, it is the container piece of code, and humans are instantiations of that code. That code evolves.

And does science has an alternative hypothesis for the Universe. Yes. Many, all with critical issues. Cosmology is now in crisis.

 

[PartSkeptic]

Do you mean like Brigham Young? Or Mohammad? Tenskwatawa? There's a long list.

Their experiences indicate that many of their claims about god are wrong, as testified by other prophets. Seems better evidence against a god than for one.

The main ones are:

Abraham. Moses. Jesus. Muhammad. Buddha. Laozi. Confucius.

There are many false prophets.

 

[MikeG]

.......There are many false prophets.

How do you know which ones are false and which ones aren't?

 

[PartSkeptic]

Feelings mean nothing.

Irrelevant; even if science had no answers of any kind at all, that would still not be evidence for the gods. It would just be something unknown.

God and spirit are the "science" of the human mind and soul. Feelings are anything but irrelevant. Among the evidence of God is the communications God had with the prophets.

Also among the evidence are predictions which eventuate. Such things are not explainable by science. According to science, predictions are impossible. Those who do not believe explain these by "lucky guesses" that mean nothing.

And because they cannot download the persons mind and check the intensity and accuracy of the "feeling" at the time of prediction, they dismiss it.

Non-believers use their own "feelings" to dismiss such "communications" based on their core conviction that God does not exist.

It goes. God does not exist - hence it follows the only explanation is that the communication is false.

And we all know how unreliable the human minds is. This is irrelevant. So what. Focus on the prediction.

Millions of predictions are made, and do not eventuate. The laws of large numbers make a few possible. Again, God hides in "noise".

Example; A recent (therefore reasonable documentation) is Joan of Arc's prediction.

 

[PartSkeptic]

How do you know which ones are false and which ones aren't?

You mean you cannot do a bit of evaluation?

The falsehood is usually in the founding story. Do they spread a message that might lead to successful community and good living? Seems like it.

 

[MikeG]

.....God does not want humanity to die out.....

How do you know what god wants?

.....and yet humanity is extincting itself by overpopulation and lack of restraint.

I'm pretty sure that "extincting" isn't a word. Have you any evidence that humanity is on the verge of extinction?

.....God may cause a pandemic to "re-direct" matters.

How do you know? You have no idea what the causes are of any pandemic, and you haven't established that you know anything about what your god can and can't do.

......It may have started. See my post on the 2016 start of the die-out.

No, that was one of the silliest OPs on the forum for a long time. You obviously didn't absorb any of the answers, either. I suggest you re-read them, this time trying to intellectualise the process rather than relying on emotion.

......Death is not punishment if humans have souls.

Have you any evidence that humans have souls? No. And neither has anyone else.

...... I believe souls evolve by entering new-borns after a while.

There's your problem, and the reason why you aren't a sceptic.

You have no evidence of souls.

...... Otherwise Heaven and Hell would be rather full, and when would it have started - with the Homo Sapiens? Earlier or later?

Have you any evidence that heaven or hell are anything other than the fabrication of human imagination? No, you haven't, so a sceptic would assume that they don't exist until provided with evidence to the contrary.

......And what is a soul?

A figment of the human imagination, and propagated by the extremely gullible.

......Well, if we are in a Matrix mind

We're not. We're an animal with a highly developed brain, whose only purpose is to ensure the survival of its DNA through to the next generation.

......And does science has an alternative hypothesis for the Universe. Yes. Many, all with critical issues.......

So, we should toss the whole lot in the bin and go back to the musings of some illiterate bronze-age Arab tribesmen? Or should we carry on gathering information, doing experiments, testing hypotheses, and trying to work out the answers based on evidence.

...... Cosmology is now in crisis.

What, just because you declare it so? Cosmology doesn't have all the answers, but knows more than it has ever done, and more than any alternative system ever could. That doesn't look like a crisis to me.

I ask again: which part of you is sceptical? Is it your little toe? I haven't seen a single sceptical thought from you since you joined the forum, and wonder how you settled upon your misnomer of a forum name.

 

[MikeG]

You mean you cannot do a bit of evaluation?

Yep, I can, but I asked about you. My evaluation is that they are all tosh.

The falsehood is usually in the founding story. Do they spread a message that might lead to successful community and good living? Seems like it.

No, the falsehood is ALWAYS in the founding story. It doesn't matter if it is a good or evil, positive or negative, successful or unsuccessful, or whatever, founding story.........all of them bar none are fabrications of the human imagination, and all, therefore, should be dismissed equally.

 

[PartSkeptic]

Some general notes.

Lawrence Krauss - A universe from nothing. Then he says there must have been something, but states it cannot be God because physics has no driving intelligence.

The flagellum motor has a rotor, bearings, commutator, brushes, and a speed control mechanism. And is self-assembling. Unremarkable - really? It just happens to resemble a modern technology item of engineering?

What forces of natural selection cause this happen? Just the law of big numbers? So one could expect a self-assembling Boeing if we wait long enough? And unicorns in the closet?

 

[Darat]

Did not say they did!!!! But they got sick and frequently died from eating them so they stopped doing so and slowly gave it a religious requirement/bad thing. They didn't know why it made them sick but knew it did. I know (as I am quite sure you do) the why!!!!!!!

That's the bit that there is no evidence for - that they could and did link the two in such a manner. We can do this because we project our knowledge today onto past situations. This isn't about our ancestors being stupid, it is just that to make such a link took a vast accumulation of evidence and work by many people over a long time to arrive at such an understanding of disease.

 

[Darat]

Although I support the religion of Christianity as being one of the better ones, I do not support the concept of all-knowing and omnipotent. I see God as one of the players in the Matrix Mind of the Ultimate Intelligence. For our purposes the Matrix Mind is irrelevant if God exists and plays according to certain rules.

God does not want humanity to die out ...snip...

How do you know this? How do you even know that humanity is the focus of your god? Perhaps his focus is spiders and humanity is simply a tool he uses to help spiders spread over the face of the earth?

...snip...
And does science has an alternative hypothesis for the Universe. Yes. Many, all with critical issues. Cosmology is now in crisis.

"Don't know" is not a crisis for science!