XPost: sci.psychology.psychotherapy, alt.consciousness, talk.origins
From: mightymartianca@hotmail.com
On Sun, 12 Sep 2004 19:31:38 +0000 (UTC),
Uncle Davey wrote:
>
> Użytkownik "AC" napisał w wiadomości
> news:2qjb5iFvsu5rU1@uni-berlin.de...
>> bckwrds wrote:
>> > "AC" wrote in message
>> > news:2qhm0cFvqiumU1@uni-berlin.de...
>> >
>> > [major snippage to get to the point]
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >>>Atheism would not exist in any cultures where it not for the free-will,
>> >>>faith-based way
>> >>>That Christ has chosen to redeem us.
>> >>
>> >>Atheism exists because some people don't believe in God. Hinduism
>> >>exists because some people believe in at least some members of the Hindu
>> >>pantheon, etc. ad nauseum.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>>There are no atheist angels, and no atheist demons.
>> >>
>> >>CAn you provide me with any emperical evidence that any of these beings
>> >>exist, Davey? Perhaps you missed one of the key p
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > 1) should have died in a head on car crash...only room for two cars on
> this
>> > road and I was the third....my car got a cratch in the point. It was
>> > unbelieveable.
>> > I got out and looked my car over and over again....nothing was wrong.
>> >
>> > 2) was caught in the riptide with my sister as a young child. We both
>> > screamed to our mom on the shore that we couldn't get in....that we were
>> > both being pushed further and further into the ocean. I could only
> barely
>> > touch the bottom with my tippy toes when I went under.
>> > I said "God, help me!" God told me to take my sisters hand and walk in.
>> > I did just that and walked right in.
>> >
>> > 3) Playing at my aunts home. Some cousins grapped a hold of an electric
>> > fence that my uncle had rigged so that the power never went off and had
>> > it at some super power level to keep his cows in. This cousin found
> himself
>> > stuck to the line. His brother grapped him to help pull him off only to
>> > find himself stuck....another person grapped onto him to help with the
>> > same result. Three kids now being electrocuted in front of us all. I
> asked
>> > God "what should I do???" God told me to grap by cousins hand and
>> > to leaned back. I did just that and we all came tumbling free. Note
> that
>> > God didn't tell me to put my head down and plow into the first cousin
>> > to knock them all free....but to grap hold of a hand and pull them
> off...
>> > exactly what had caused them all to be stuck. I not only listened, but
>> > obeyed.
>> >
>> > It's called angels.
>> >
>> > It's called God.
>> >
>> > It's called the love of my Father.
>> >
>> > It's called faith.
>> >
>> > many many stories are on the news day after day after year after year.
>> >
>> > Mystics? HA
>>
>> It's called ancedotal evidence. Thousands of people die horrible deaths
>> every day, so why should angel's care about you? Now if everyone was
>> mysteriously saved from nasty ends, then I might be more motivated to
>> look into it.
>
> How many interventions would you need before you believed it, and then what
> would the value of that faith be?
Considering the extraordinary things people have survived (try Rasputin, and
I have a hard time believing God was intervening there), I see no reason to
assume there are any interventions, without some actual evidence that there
were interventions. What mechanisms were used in these interventions? What
forces were brought to bear? What was the purpose of the interventions?
Why would God intervene in this fellow's life, but not in the lives of six
million Jews that were methodically murdered by the Nazis? Why would God
intervene in the lives of a few of the people that managed to escape the
higher levels of the Trade Towers on 9-11, but not others? Is there any
predictability to these interventions? Is it completely arbitrary? Can we
determine what is an intervention and what is not an intervention? What
about the claims of peoples of other faiths (particulary those of non-Hebrew
origin), who say their deity intervened on their behalf?
When I see some guy survive a burning house where others died, and he claims
that God saved him, I have to ask what's so damn special about him that God
would leave others to die horribly. I have an alternate explanation. The
guy was just plain lucky. With five billion plus people on this planet
we're bound to hear extraordinary tales like people surviving multi-thousand
foot falls when there parachute fails to open, or the person who survives
unscathed with a bullet lodged in his brain, etc. This has the benefit of
being able to explore possible reasons why the individual survived (trees
and cross currents slowed the unlucky parachuter, the bullet never hit any
vital areas of the brain, etc.), without resorting to what is essentially a
magical claim.
Now I know Christians have spent one helluva lot of energy trying to explain
why suffering exists, why some suffer more than others, but to an atheist,
this all smacks of apologism. I feel much more comfortable saying "I don't
know why that person survived." rather than wandering over to magical
explanations.
--
Aaron Clausen
mightymartianca@hotmail.com
"My illness is due to my doctor's insistence that I drink milk, a whitish
fluid they force down helpless babies." - WC Fields
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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