My God, My God, why have you forsaken me ?

[mfewell]

Words from the cross by Christ. Can I add a tilt to them. They are supposed to be a fulfillment of the OT, but what if, when Christ uttered them from the cross, that they were more than that and utterly true, i.e. God the Father had momentarily forsaken his son ? Imagine for a moment that Christ in hanging there did indeed take all the badness of all time on his shoulders ? Can you imagine a pain any worse and a love any higher ? Just a thought, but by heck it sticks with me.

[mibn2cweus]

The rational approach to truth is not to disprove another�s assertion, this is a trap.  It is their  obligation to prove their claim.

[astaff]

True, but the search for truth implies that there IS truth and that anything which is not truth must be false. In order for something to be true, there must be a basis for that truth whether one agrees with the viewpoint of that basis or not. To say that truth is relative cannot be a true statement in that it contradicts itself. Truth is true regardless of what comes against it. All is else false. Although this may smack of intolerance or bigotry to those who hold to a different view than the truth (whatever that truth may be), the truth still stands true. To quote Ravi Zacharias, "Truth by its very nature, excludes."

[loudickson71]

There is a possibility that this is not correct, and that something can be true/false at the same time.

Also, in Schroedinger's Cat thought experiment, the cat is alive before I open the box. True or false?

btw, Christianity is total fable. The world realized this about 1600. Those that still cling to it are desperately deluded. Jesus came to save our souls. What on earth does that mean? Most Christians don't even know what a soul is, but are willing to stake their whole lives on something that 'saves them'. Go figure. Poor chappies. My boyfriend used to be a christian, but saw the light when some priest made a pass at him.

[Clanad]

loudickson71, may I ask, respectfully, on what you base your conclusion that Christianity was shown to be a fable about 1600?  There must be a body of evidence that has escaped inspection by many well  credentialed scholars that have written in-depth, well reasoned and well attributed theses since then... (Maybe an explanation as to what bearing Schrodinger's Cat has on the question, since it is an  illustration of the principle in quantum theory of superposition)...Thanks!

[blinkyblinky]

Clanad, Clanad, why have you forsaken me?

[Monypenny]

lol, wow what a discussion :-) not going to add much to it just wanted to say that I am C of E and my OH is an atheist ... we can all get along you know, just because he doesn't believe that there is a god and I do, we respect each other's beliefs .... oh and btw still my favourite thing of all time is that god is actually dog .... I think that the choice of his name says a lot ;-)

[Jude123]

Even though I  retired from  contributing to this thread a little time ago I have kept reading it and I must say thankyou to Monypenny for adding a little humour into the proceedings.

[Typhoid]

thanks Jude123 (changed my name sorry!!) my pleasure ;-) (still think it is true though   ;-D )

[loudickson71]

Schroedinger's cat ref relates directly to the question of absolute truth.

1600 onwards kicked off the enlightenment, when people finally got fed up with the rich princes of christiananity telling them what was what on a whim. They also realized that there were questions of subjective perspective that had to be addressed to be overcome, which the church in its eternal stupidity had totally overlooked.

<enter, stageleft, clutching books the forerunners of modern science>With their not imperfect but oh so much better than religious drivel, means of accountability and repeatability applied to experiment and musing about man, the universe and everything. Natural outcome of rigorous process is assemblage of hard facts about humans, evolution, the shape of the universe and the order of human society.

NOT SURPRISINGLY most of which shows christianity, based on hearsay, a few guesses, and an epoch of ignorance, to be a load of pants, not just in fact but in principle.

BEGINNINGS: Adam and Eve. Rubbish. We came from lower life forms

MIDDLES: Spend your life doing as I say and worshiping God. Says who?

ENDINGS: Do as I say or your eternal soul will be damned for eternity. Erm....the 'soul' bit worked for the peeps who knew nothing about how the mind/brain interact. All processes relating to 'soul' previously, are now subscribed to brain function. So..Jesus is gonna save my Hippocampus?

The very funny thing is, that some torags still present the stuff from way back then as truth now, god knows why.

<enter Peter, Paul, Jesus, Moses, and Aquinas via time machine> Trust me, they are laughing their heads of at modern christians. 'We had an excuse, we had no means of knowing better. You have had Leibniz, Kant, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Descartes, Hume, Locke, Russell. We had none of these. And yet you still subscribe to the same old crap that we did. And you are a total disgrace.'

[loudickson71]

And don't get me wrong: if they got it wrong about the basics of the BEGINNING, MIDDLE, ENDs of human existence, then the WHOLE OF CHRISTIANITY must be thrown out.

[blinkyblinky]

Loud

Of course it's possible that there is in fact an entity (God) that sent some kind of physical manifestation of itself (Jesus) to Earth to try to guide humanity towards some objective...

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a Christian, but I think it's important to always consider the possibility that our most deeply cherished opinions might be false.

PS Can you keep the noise down?

[loudickson71]

oh sure, and it's possible that there's a bit guy with a beard that shifts a sleigh around every christmas.

I am perfectly aware of the possibilities. But that's the POINT of science and what's MISSING in religious faith. Science can show MORE than 'this could just as well be wrong' by showing the EVIDENCE on which it bases its claims and why in many cases the route to the answer is REPEATABLE. Religions, especially Christianity, can offer no such claim. It's 'faith, a gift from god'. Yeah right. It's NOT. It's your total guess, you misguided peoples. They deserve all they get.

[Dark Angel]

Its simple -

God wanted his son to suffer and die to attone for the sins of the world, because God loved his people. Jesus was willing to die for the sins of this world, but he was only human after all, so on the cross in a moment of human weakness, he uttered those words. The spirit was willing but the flesh was weak.

That is why Jesus didn't click his fingers and get angels to save him - its as simple as that!!

[blinkyblinky]

hmmm

If there was an entity (God?) that manifested itself 2000 years ago in the form of a human being (Jesus) what science could we now carry out to prove or disprove it? I don't think science can have much to say about this one way or the other. It would be different if you had some fresh claims that science could carry out some experiments on and declare in favour of one theory or the other based on evidence.

It's the same with Buddhism. Maybe 2500 years ago a guy really did become enlightened. There is no place for science in deciding if he did or not.

Also, if you're just pitting science against religion, and declaring science the winner because it bases its conclusions on testable evidence, you are comparing science with non-science - it's a bad comparison. Of course, if science is going to write the rules, science will always be the winner. But you might as well declare science the winner in a contest between science and poetry.

Also, the Santa thing - why not go all the way: fairies, the Loch Ness Monster, Cinderella...? Does citing these things somehow disprove the divinity of Jesus?

Coming back to science v religion, sure, the existence of dinosaur bones disproves a lot in the bible. But a lot of historical evidence points to the existence of a guy called Jesus. It's difficult to deny that this man did exist. And what's in the bible isn't completely what christianity is. Christianity is fundamentally the belief that Jesus was the son of God. This is a bit outside science's field of enquiry.

[blinkyblinky]

I'm being a bit of a devil's advocate here because I'm not a christian. But it's so easy to hold (or dismiss) beliefs as a result of our own prejudices and need to feel confident and comfortable and right, so I like to tread carefully. Some people read what Jesus is supposed to have said and done, and come to the conclusion that nobody could have possibly said and done these things without being an entity sent by God. What can science say to that? Only that it doesn't have any evidence for it - hardly a knockout blow.

[El D]

Blinky, as long as xstians admit their belief is irrational and illogical, I have no problem with it. As I have pointed out on other threads, why does noone believe in these other mystical beings? Surely having faith in Jesus would enable the same leap of faith beyond rational evidence to be made for fairies etc. Anyway, you are falling into the trap that is so often set in that there is little to be done to disprove god except point to the many, varied, obvious logical contradictions and shortcomings which litter the organisational and personal beliefs of all who follow it. There is no reason to suppose a god unless you believe the bible, in which case your analysis is not objective and is based on the subconscious hope that you will be saved i.e. a presuppositional belief derived through fear and inadequacy.

[mibn2cweus]

A pattern quickly emerges in these god/science debates.  To apply reason to proving the validity of faith is classic contradiction.  Reason relies on proven facts, (please excuse the redundancies), to draw valid conclusions.  Faith is belief without proof and apart from proof is totally unnecessary, (not that it�s ever necessary anyway).  So let�s not pretend for an instant that there�s any point in suggesting that reason and faith are in any way related, or that there�s any way to persuade rational people armed with the truth to believe any of this . . . ______________________fill in the blankity blank!
 
It is interesting that �God� would create a being with the capacity to choose, (which presupposes a faculty of reason), then damn it for all eternity, for choosing �incorrectly�, to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, (which �He� planted in the midst of the garden, in which �He� placed �His� creature, along with a clever snake).  There�s no way to put this less bluntly, this story and the premise of original sin is as completely absurd as any �idea� of which I have ever heard!  And to propose that rational people should bow down and worship this �Creator�?  Come on now!

[mibn2cweus]

It�s easier to believe this is all a �cosmic joke� played on us all by �the creator� but even this makes no sense.  One just can�t prepossess intelligence without the prerequisite world to become intelligent in.
The time line (cause & effect) is all wrong.  Are we to believe that this universe, (which we discover for ourselves through observation and the application of reason), has turned itself inside out?

And you �people� who sit at your computer keyboards and type out that �We have no way to grasp reality�, than send it over the world-wide-web, what are you thinking?  Not that I really want to know!

These kinds of �thinking� may have been excusable in some distant past but people are supposed to be getting educated.  When are schools going to begin teaching some basic critical thinking skills?

[blinkyblinky]

I have to work soon so I don't have much time to address all your points El D and Mib. But just for now...

Actually, we are not purely rational creatures. Faith plays a part in our everyday lives, whether we're religious or not. Take reason itself. Can you prove rationally the validity of reason? The validity of logical inference? It's impossible to think outside this structure, so we just accept it without question. Yes, it works, it's very useful, it enables us to do so much, but is logic logical? Is it somehow true? Does reason really enable us to build up a true picture of reality? We have no way of knowing - our brains are constructed in a certain way which entails that we operate within these logical boundaries. To say that these boundaries demark the limits of the whole of reality, that this is a complete picture - isn't that a leap of faith? Maybe in fact there is a whole load of stuff that we don't know. Maybe we don't know 99.9% and all the knowledge that we have is only .1%. maybe the picture we do have is more a result of the way our brains are constructed than the way reality really is.

[blinkyblinky]

Just one often quoted example. We (sighted people) have a picture of a world which is coloured. Green grass, yellow banana, orange erm orange etc. But actually colour does not exist in the world. The world has energy whizzing about at different wavelengthts, and our understanding of a coloured world is a result of the signals being sent to our brains from our eyes (which are really just devices for measuring wavelengths) creating these sensations of colour. A banana isn't yellow, but the wavelengths that we receive when we direct our eyes towards a banana we convert into the perceptual experience of yellow. What a banana is, beyond the way our brains depict it, we really haven't got a clue, but we can be sure that it doesn't have any objective yellowness about it. It's the way our brains are constructed that give it this yellowness. And the same goes for the rest of the world.

That's why, when people tell me they know this and they know that, I always have the instict to doubt and question. I don't think this is falling into a trap. On the contrary...