Do theists sort of think that belieiving in god makes god real?

[bilby]

The issue of evil for me is.... "who is willing not to do evil with their "free will?" generallly speaking.

How does that work for tsunamis, or cancer? Or for the parasitic worm Onchocerca volvulus, which causes river blindness, and which only has sinful human hosts?

FTFY.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Besides there were many church hospitals centuries ago run by nuns and monks, so Jesus seems to me more helpful. Old French term for hospital ... hôtel-Dieu, "hostel of God."

Which STILL doesn't explain why God didn't actually say, 'change the bedsheets in those hospitals or after a woman gives birth on the bed.' Just that alone would have saved the lives of many of the faithful.

AND if the observant had a significantly higher rate of survival in post-birth, rather than just living like everyone else and dying like everyone else, that might have recruited more to His flocks.

But, no. Radio silence. Let man employ science to figure it out... Exactly as if God wasn't even there...

 

[James Brown]

"Wash your hands before eating or practicing healing" would have made a much better Commandment than "Don't boil veal in its own mother's milk."

Not only would it have been the sort of thing an omnipotent God would have known, it would have saved countless lives.

 

[funinspace]

What's your take on that, humbleman?

DEGENERATION.

In all caps, no less, Ruby. That's GOTTA be convincing, huh?

RIDICULOUS

 

[funinspace]

Evidence; not the bate and switch of 'proof'

This is ridiculous.

You can't prove the physical existence of time and you want others to believe the following.



Lets go that reference [1]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/science/hubble-constant-universe-expanding-speed.html

Cosmos Controversy:The Universe Is Expanding, but How Fast?

There is a crisis brewing in the cosmos, or perhaps in the community of cosmologists. The universe seems to be expanding too fast, some astronomers say.

Recent measurements of the distances and velocities of faraway galaxies don’t agree with a hard-won “standard model” of the cosmos that has prevailed for the past two decades.

Well, the idea is a complete idiocy.

Who can establish that the standard model of the cosmos made years ago is correct anyway?

Science isn't dogma. It is an evolving learning process, quite different than, "its true, cuz the Bible says so". And funny thing about that article, nothing within it posits that the universe isn't expanding. Which is a long way off from the geocentric universe from our religiously driven fairy tales...

 

[funinspace]

Since the assumed day of light up to Adam were 6 days, and giving the biblical estimate that a day is about one thousand years (you have that referral in the old and new testament) you have 6,000 years. But plants were growing at "the third day" which give us 3,000 years. From Adam to Noah is another thousand years. You have about 4,000 years from plants growing up to Noah. But, we are talking of BC. So, if you add the centuries from Noah up to today, you are well over another 4,000 years. You have a total of 8,000 years.

Then, yes, those trees with 7,400 rings might be right, and they are in complete agreement with the biblical record.

That is one way to wash, rinse, and spin the OT. Though, if this assembly of writings is supposed to be God-breathed...it should really be no more than about 4,600 years. Of course that has real problems with the already existing Sumerian and Egyptian societies, among other problems with later big miracles that can no longer work.

The Bible seems to be quite clear about the timeline from the Deluge thru the Exodus. FWIW, Genesis provides a similarly clear timeline back to Adam. I am not going into detail on this, as it is not relevant to questions about the claims surrounding the Deluge. Below are portions of the text in question, I include a larger section where it clearly describes the continuum of generations in Ge 11:10-15.

11:10-15 These are the records of the generations of Shem. Shem was one hundred years old, and [j]became the father of Arpachshad two years after the flood; 11 and Shem lived five hundred years after he became the father of Arpachshad, and he had other sons and daughters. 12 Arpachshad lived thirty-five years, and became the father of Shelah; 13 and Arpachshad lived four hundred and three years after he became the father of Shelah, and he had other sons and daughters. 14 Shelah lived thirty years, and became the father of Eber; 15 and Shelah lived four hundred and three years after he became the father of Eber, and he had other sons and daughters.

Ge:
11:10 This is the account of Shem. Shem was one hundred years old when he became the father of Arphaxad, two years after the flood. And after becoming the father of Arphaxad, Shem lived five hundred years and had other sons and daughters. (+2)
12 Arpachshad lived thirty-five years, and became the father of Shelah; (+37)
14 Shelah lived thirty years, and became the father of Eber; (+67)
16 Eber lived thirty-four years, and became the father of Peleg (+101)
18 Peleg lived thirty years, and became the father of Reu; (+131)
20 Reu lived thirty-two years, and became the father of Serug; (+163)
22 Serug lived thirty years, and became the father of Nahor; (+193)
24 Nahor lived twenty-nine years, and became the father of Terah; (+222)
25 and Nahor lived one hundred and nineteen years after he became the father of Terah (+341)
26 Terah lived seventy years, and became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. (+431)


21: 5 Now Abraham was one hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him. (+100)
25: 26 Afterward his brother came forth with his hand holding on to Esau’s heel, so his name was called [r]Jacob; and Isaac was sixty years old when she gave birth to them. (+160)
47: 9 So Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The years of my sojourning are one hundred and [j]thirty; few and [k]unpleasant have been the [l]years of my life, nor have they [m]attained the [n]years [o]that my fathers lived during the days of their sojourning.” 10 And Jacob blessed Pharaoh, and went out from [p]his presence. 11 So Joseph [q]settled his father and his brothers and gave them a possession in the land of Egypt, in the best of the land, in the land of Rameses, as Pharaoh had ordered. 12 Joseph provided his father and his brothers and all his father’s household with [r]food, according to their little ones. (Jacob enters Egypt - +290)


Ex:1240 Now the time [ah]that the sons of Israel lived in Egypt was four hundred and thirty years. 41 And at the end of four hundred and thirty years, [ai]to the very day, all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. (+430)
Nu 32: 13 So the Lord’s anger burned against Israel, and He made them wander in the wilderness forty years, until the entire generation of those who had done evil in the sight of the Lord was destroyed. (+470)

So we have 431 years between the end of the Deluge to the birth of Abram; 290 years between Abram’s birth and Jacob entering Egypt; and the years in Egypt and the wandering at 470. These totals 1,191 years from the Deluge to the invasion of Canaan. One may be able to quibble on a couple decades here or there due to some textual issues, but in the end such quibbling wouldn't really change the timeline issues one iota.


So following the Bible literally, one ends up with the first estimation that's required, when did the 40 years of wandering end and the ‘invasion’ begin. I think it would be fair to say that the vast majority of Christian apologetics place the invasion between 1200 and 1400 BCE. Adding the above 1,191 years would provide a range of 2391 – 2591 BCE for the end of the Deluge.

About the ice core.

That was a fade which was extinguished by a simple discovery.

The idea, fake of course, is that ice cores are formed "every year" one over the another. This is in the pole including Greenland zones. One layer per year.

Then, drilling the ice cores, the counting of layers was by visual means, you can see the layers separated marked one from the another. But, at a certain point, after a few hundreds of layers, it was necessary the use of a computer "to calculate" the numbers of deeper layers. In other words, the number of layers was at the will and imagination of the person who create the software, and not so by detection of layers.

The worst for the theorists who claim hundreds of thousands age for ice cores is an event that happened in Greenland.

In WW2 an airplane had to make an emergency land in Greenland. The pilot was rescued and the event forgotten until the initiative of recovering the airplane became a reality. Finding the airplane was hard because the new layers of snow became ice later on, moved the airplane to a different location. After detecting the airplane under the ice, more than 300 layers of ice had to be removed to remove the airplane.

The "one layer ice core per year was debunked.

Now, we have lots of other airplanes found hundreds of feet under ice.

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/04/u...-found-in-greenland-in-ice-260-feet-deep.html

ATLANTA, Aug. 3— Six American fighter planes and two bombers that crash-landed in Greenland in World War II have been found 46 years later buried under 260 feet of ice, searchers said today.

A group from Atlanta said it found what became known as the ''lost squad-ron'' last month and plans to tunnel into the ice and lside the eight air-planes to the surface.

Richard Taylor, one of the leaders of the successful expedition, said today that he and another leader, Pat Epps, were ''going to fly two of them off the ice.''

The other planes will be dismantled and returned to the United States for restoration, he said. Some will be sold to pay for the expedition.

''We have a meeting tomorrow with a contractor from Seattle who is accustomed to doing Arctic work,'' Mr. Taylor said.

I guess that your input with attempts of "scientific evidence" has been greatly debunked.

I wondered where your silly idea came from, but didn't have time to poke around then...and wow that is quite the hack job, as I dug up a source for this discredited old creationist deep layer of BS.

Funny how you grab onto anything that can attack what discredits your dogma without a bit of concern about having real facts...
http://noanswersingenesis.org.au/kuechmann_cretin_comedy.htm

In the Creation ex nihilo Magazine (Vol 19 #3:10–14, Jun–Aug 1997, an article titled The Lost Squadron by noted Australian creationist, founder and editor of that publication, Dr Carl Wieland, purports to show that, because a group of WWII airplanes were buried under several hundred feet of ice in 50 years, the technique of ice core dating is based on false premises.
<snip>
Suddenly the thickness of 268 feet of glacial ice near the east coast that was melted through by non-scientists to recover the "Glacier Girl" P-38 fighter is being used to date "3000 metres of ice core" extracted deep in the interior of the Greenland ice sheet.[2] Has he already forgotten his "rings of a tree" analogy just a few paragraphs earlier? Has he opted for no more flim-flam about annual layers? -- let's just measure the thickness in two widely-separated locations, compare them, and be done with it. Is Wieland funny, or what?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I just think that ONE VERSE about God sterilizing the site before and after the surgery would have saved COUNTLESS lives over history.

I just read about the life of Joseph Lister. How doctors were using knives, saws, aprons and tables that were encrusted with blood and bits from other patient. How doctors resisted the theory of 'germs' for various reasons, and refused to wash their hands before treatment, because they took it personally, the suggestion that they were the cause of harm to the very people they were trying to help.

One verse of scripture made available from the beginning, even if proper TECHNIQUES weren't applied, some effort to make the theory acceptable...

But, no. Pray, sacrifice a lark, anoint with oil, lay on hands... Nothing about boiling tools or even changing the bedsheets.

Ignaz Semmelweis helped more people than magic jesus and all the magic jesus minions.

If only they would have remembered "cleansiness is next to Godliness",

Besides there were many church hospitals centuries ago run by nuns and monks, so Jesus seems to me more helpful. Old French term for hospital ... hôtel-Dieu, "hostel of God."

And they probably abused children when they weren't too busy burning witches and heretics, and waging war on their neighbors across the river. Gotta love how belief in different gods never changes people.

More to the point, child mortality was 50% in the good old jesus days.

ETA: I have never met a christian - though I'm certain at least one is out there - who knew that their religion's most important day, Easter, is named for a pagan goddess. Nor have I come across that lonely christian who knows that his holiest day, Good Friday, is also named in honor of a pagan goddess. Same goes for Holy Thursday.

It's not important that language has sculpted these names, I admit, but I find it a convincing rebuttal to lame arguments that certain words, because they have roots that are somehow religious, are important to the way i think about a magic spaceman and the world generally. If this was as important as I'm sometimes reminded, religious people would each have their own vocabulary and language. But they don't, they just adopt and use what works, like everyone else.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Old French term for hospital ... hôtel-Dieu, "hostel of God."

Language IS fun.
But it has to be taken in the proper context, right?

For most of our history, without proper sanitation, hospitals were just places poor people went to die. Even as late as Victorian times, the almost certainty of infection made getting better after a stay something of a miracle.
They didn't sterilize instruments or even wash hands between patients. There wasn't much separation, so once someone became infected, the entire ward did. Several times, people quite rationally suggested that hospitals should be temporary structures. Once the rot set in, burn it down and build another one somewhere else. There was no other way to deal with 'hospitalism,' the eventual affliction of all wards.

Not to mention the lack of anesthetics. The solution to many ailments was to hold the patient down and cut off the threatening limb... While he screamed and begged.

One has to wonder if 'hostel of God' was not really a compliment. Because if you went there, likely you'd be seeing Him before long...

 

[Learner]

More to the point, child mortality was 50% in the good old jesus days.

Quite possibly at one time but which particular era are you refering to and by what method man or God?

And they probably abused children when they weren't too busy burning witches and heretics, and waging war on their neighbors across the river. Gotta love how belief in different gods never changes people.

ETA: I have never met a christian - though I'm certain at least one is out there - who knew that their religion's most important day, Easter, is named for a pagan goddess. Nor have I come across that lonely christian who knows that his holiest day, Good Friday, is also named in honor of a pagan goddess. Same goes for Holy Thursday.

It's not important that language has sculpted these names, I admit, but I find it a convincing rebuttal to lame arguments that certain words, because they have roots that are somehow religious, are important to the way i think about a magic spaceman and the world generally. If this was as important as I'm sometimes reminded, religious people would each have their own vocabulary and language. But they don't, they just adopt and use what works, like everyone else.

Well its important to highlight ...as you rightly have about all the "distortions" of Christianity shall we say, in your above description. There are Christians out there that know of the pagan associations you mention. Unfortunately there are those who don't realise in which I am in agreement here.

 

[ruby sparks]

More to the point, child mortality was 50% in the good old jesus days.

Quite possibly at one time but which particular era are you refering to and by what method man or God?

Or elves.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Old French term for hospital ... hôtel-Dieu, "hostel of God."

Language IS fun.
But it has to be taken in the proper context, right?

For most of our history, without proper sanitation, hospitals were just places poor people went to die. Even as late as Victorian times, the almost certainty of infection made getting better after a stay something of a miracle.
They didn't sterilize instruments or even wash hands between patients. There wasn't much separation, so once someone became infected, the entire ward did. Several times, people quite rationally suggested that hospitals should be temporary structures. Once the rot set in, burn it down and build another one somewhere else. There was no other way to deal with 'hospitalism,' the eventual affliction of all wards.

Not to mention the lack of anesthetics. The solution to many ailments was to hold the patient down and cut off the threatening limb... While he screamed and begged.

One has to wonder if 'hostel of God' was not really a compliment. Because if you went there, likely you'd be seeing Him before long...

Case in point:

Amtrak Train Crash

"Any time you have anything that happens like that, you expect more fatalities. But God blessed us, and we only had the two," Fisher said, her voice choked with emotion.

God certainly blessed everyone according to this selfish, emotional, ignorant, thoughtless, religious bitch. People died but her magic spaceman named god still blessed everyone, even the hundred plus evacuated to hospital. She must feel so good about that.

What an asshole. She'd be praying to her special spaceman god at the foot of the heretic being burned alive. Again, what an asshole.

 

[Learner]

Oh yes and elves

 

[Keith&Co.]

Oh yes and elves

You mean OR elves?

 

[Learner]

The issue of evil for me is.... "who is willing not to do evil with their "free will?" generallly speaking.

How does that work for tsunamis, or cancer? Or for the parasitic worm Onchocerca volvulus, which causes river blindness, and which only has human hosts?

Tsunami's I would think is accepted and acknowledged as part of the eco-system for both religious and non-religious. Then again there is concern that climate-change influenced by man maybe causing current tsunami's more frequently IIRC . People are pointing fingers and shaking their heads at other people or companies producing gas-like toxins .. doing what is considered by the finger pointing movements ; a naughty selfish thing.

Living on coasts would need some cautionary prevention or quick escapes similar to the thought : not to build tall buildings or badly supported constructions near fault lines.


Prevention to cancers has quite a few measures, from dieting correctly to cease smoking. "Eat your Greens" but of course there's tons of influencing cancer agents out there: Microwaves,chemicals,plastics and metals to name a few. Hard to prevent and avoid in the modern technical world I suppose.


Don't know much about the Onchocerca volvulus but so you say it is only humans that can HOST this worm. Well it certainly wasn't there during creation or for that matter ; there before man was on the earth if by evolution theory. I gather this is only in one place in the world and there are people that "still" see in that area. Have they lived there for generations? Not sure the details to comment more further.

 

[ruby sparks]

The issue of evil for me is.... "who is willing not to do evil with their "free will?" generallly speaking.

How does that work for tsunamis, or cancer? Or for the parasitic worm Onchocerca volvulus, which causes river blindness, and which only has human hosts?

Tsunami's I would think is accepted and acknowledged as part of the eco-system for both religious and non-religious. Then again there is concern that climate-change influenced by man maybe causing current tsunami's more frequently IIRC . People are pointing fingers and shaking their heads at other people or companies producing toxins .. doing what is considered a naughty selfish thing.

Living on coasts would need some caution ,or quick escapes similar to the thought : not to build tall buildings or badly supported constructions near fault lines.


Prevention to cancers has quite a few measures, from dieting correctly to cease smoking. "Eat your Greens" but of course there's tons of influencing cancer agents out there: Microwaves,chemicals,plastics and metals to name a few. Hard to prevent and avoid in the modern world I suppose.


Don't know much about the Onchocerca volvulus but so you say it is only humans that can HOST this worm. Well it certainly wasn't there during creation or for that matter ; there before man was on the earth if by evolution theory. I gather this is only in one place in the world and there are people that still see in that area. Not sure the details to coment more further.

God possibly didn't realise at creation what would happen through evolution I suppose. Or something.

Well it certainly wasn't there during creation..

I couldn't comment, because I wasn't there at the time.

 

[Learner]

God possibly didn't realise at creation what would happen through evolution I suppose. Or something.

He knew as "fragile" and "so delicate" as we seem to be - against all the odds and hazards. We are still here!

I couldn't comment, because I wasn't there at the time.

Neither of us was... no human hosts.

 

[ruby sparks]

He knew as fragile as we seem to be -against the odds . We are still here!

Yes and some little babies have river blindness or cancer! Who's responsible for that?

 

[Learner]

Yes and some little babies have river blindness or cancer! Who's responsible for that?

You'd have to see why not everyone else in that area - what made some get it and others not?
How long has it been going on for? Shouldn't they ALL be blind from generations back?

 

[ruby sparks]

Yes and some little babies have river blindness or cancer! Who's responsible for that?

You'd have to see why not everyone else in that area - what made some get it and others not?

Why would you have to see that?

 

[Learner]

Why would you have to see that?

I'm saying if others were able to avoid it then by what ever means they did, should somehow be known or applied to everyone. I'm just going on the little I know of that particular topic.