petrapark3r and ScruffyMutt debate God's existance

[pe7erpark3r]

@ScruffyMutt said in petrapark3r and ScruffyMutt debate God's existance:

Yet for some reason, despite all the cosmic collisions,

I don't see how cosmic collisions, super novas or world's being sucked into black holes would speak against God's existence. I cannot even see why that might be called a bad thing, for as far as we know they are long dead.

crazy politicians, American idol, upset stomachs,

Lets exclude a few things (these ↑ things) from your list please, which nobody could consider a strong argument.

China rounding up Chinese Muslims into concentration camps

Let me add to the strength of this argument, that there are no muslim-only concentration camps: The most persecuted religion in china (just like in most places) is christianity.

However in this is also hidden another piece of evidence for God being real. Christianity is the only religion that gains followers through conversion in our day and age (excepting the occasional oddball of course). Buddhists are born. Hinduists are born. Muslims have in the past mostly gained followers through conquest, and now they grow through reproduction. Shinto followers are also born. Jews are also born. Christians have always gained followers through conversion (sadly also through conquest, many of which however were ineffectual as seen in south america).

And this is even more astonishing as Christianity grows the fastest were it is persecutest the heaviest. There are tens of thousands of babtisms everyday in china. Today we have the heaviest persecution of christians ever in human history (in total numbers), and yet it has never grown so fast.

This might be the strongest evidence for God's action in the world that there is. Since people convert despite the fact that they are told quite an unbelievable story about a guy killed on a cross by his own people, resurrected in the flesh, gone to heaven, being the Son of God even... and for believing this they gain a high chance of loosing everything they have, including their life!

[pe7erpark3r]

@ScruffyMutt said in petrapark3r and ScruffyMutt debate God's existance:

Yet for some reason, despite all the cosmic collisions, car crashes, unsolved murders, global warming, crazy politicians, viral outbreaks, super novas, American idol, North Korean people starving, Russian power grabbing, child rapes, kidnappings, upset stomachs, wrong way freeway drivers, police brutalities, credit card hacks, world's being sucked onto black holes, China rounding up Chinese Muslims into concentration camps, imigrant children being separated from their parents, Mexican Cartel mafia killings, Rwanda genocide, and so on....

This is a good piece of evidence against the existence of God. I was wondering when you would add it into the discussion. Of course I acknowledge the facts, and I'll even give you this: there is no rational answer to the question of why God lets bad things happen.

I will give you a theological answer, but, in the context of this discussion, this cannot be called a rational argument ofc. Therefore I'll begin with a

Disclaimer: The following is not a rational argument so don't take it as such.

Here goes:

Despite all of this, these "Rational Believers" have faith that they are part of a master plan by a loving and forgiving supreme being that takes special interest in their lives because because they are somehow so important. The alternative terrifies them.
And all of this will roll off the believers' shoulders as they find a new way to rationalize it into fitting their chosen narrative.

Christ is the prime victim.

And he is the victim of all our evil doings. He is the victim of

unsolved murders, global warming [petra: if caused by humans], North Korean people starving, Russian power grabbing, child rapes, kidnappings, police brutalities, credit card hacks, imigrant children being separated from their parents, Mexican Cartel mafia killings, Rwanda genocide, and so on....

He is the one carrying all those sins on His back. And they are our sins. They happen because people do evil.

And we, the members of christianity (and those who live in God through their loving actions), can share in His sacrifice. Our pain is not in vain. For the meaning of existence is love, and there is no such thing as love without sacrifice. Thus the fact that there is so much suffering in the world means that we can love God and each other through atoning for our sins and the sins of our neighbors. We can help people reach heaven, through our suffering. This is what being christian is about: Take up your cross, help your neigbour carry theirs, and follow Christ on the stony way to heaven.

Disclaimer: This reply contains the heart of christian theology and is not a rational argument!

[wet teri]

We will never be able to understand the reasoning of God because we are human. Therefore lacking knowledge of the infinite aspects of God.
There really isn't a good comparison but compare the life of a human to that of a star or even that of the earth.
Such is our knowledge and understanding of God.
Hence faith.
Nice debate sort of. It's definitely good reading

[pe7erpark3r]

@wet-teri said in petrapark3r and ScruffyMutt debate God's existance:

We will never be able to understand the reasoning of God because we are human. Therefore lacking knowledge of the infinite aspects of God.
There really isn't a good comparison but compare the life of a human to that of a star or even that of the earth.
Such is our knowledge and understanding of God.
Hence faith.

This makes a lot of sense...

Nice debate sort of. It's definitely good reading

Thanks bud :blush:

[pe7erpark3r]

Sadly @ScruffyMutt left the debate prematurely, after mistaking my personal faith (and my personal experiences) for an argument (my fault though for not pointing that out properly). Of course my feelings, my personal believe, my trust in God are not an argument, and they are also not the reason for why I call certain things evidence. My personal believe is only relevant for this discussion as it gives me reason to assume that God's action in the world might be indeed in the realm of the possible.

So for everyone who found this discussion interesting I'll continue with my list of evidence. You can tune out scruffy, I won't blame you.

[pe7erpark3r]

Another interesting type of miracle are the eucharistic miracles. They even give us something that might be called forensic evidence of God's actions in the world. They happened hundreds of times in the history of the church. Specifically I'm talking about all the instances where during holy mass the bread turned supposedly into real flesh and the wine into real blood. Whenever this (supposedly) happened, people would put them into some kind of glass container, and display them in the church where they happened.

So, as of today, we have many of pieces of flesh and pieces of clotted blood in churches all around the globe. This is a fact. Even the current pope, when he was still a bishop in argentina, had to examine one of those that had recently happened.

Now you might think, that this is an instance of desparate priests trying to get people into their churches or – since they were full anyways in the past centuries – to get some money into town. I would also suspect that. In fact I too do suspect that some of those "miracles" were actually that. Many of those false miracles were certainly excluded when the church examined them. But now you'll ask me, why I don't believe that they are all just because of a clerical conspiracy. Here is why:

First of all they don't rot. They are centuries old and a bit dry, but they don't seem to rot away. But maybe the church has a secret of how to preserve flesh and blood for centuries? Its possible.

Second of all, those that have been forensically examined – at least those I know of – have the following in common:

The flesh:

• is human heart fiber
• was taken from a heart that was still alive
• appears to be from a man who was dying
• appears to have been taken from that heart a short time ago (like a few hours, not decades or even centuries!)

The blood

• always has the same bloodtype: AB negative (the rarest bloodtype there is, only 0.6 percent of people have it)

Incidently this is also the bloodtype of the blood found on the shroud of turin and the cloth of manopello. We can talk about the shroud of turin later, its another interesting piece of forensic history (since it was dated not into Jesus time).

So, even if this was some kind of crazy conspiracy of the church's genius elite, they did a pretty good job of using only the blood of AB negative people before anybody had ever even heard the word "bloodtype", don't you think?

@ scruffy in case you read this: This isn't just some unexplicable healing that occured for unknown reasons. This is evidence for one thing and one thing only: Jesus being quite literal about: "this is My Flesh" and "this is My Blood". (as long as it isn't false evidence ofc)

[pe7erpark3r]

Another piece of evidence are predictions of the future. The problem with those however is that they are scarce and often cryptical and hard to interpret.

Especially the predictions in the bible tend to be very cryptic. Lets take the following:

Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons,
through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared,
who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. (1 Timothy 4:1)

You could say, we are living in this time right now. People are no longer believing. Those who where christians in the west are now following many esoteric believes (New Age) and other things, or even science which some people revere like a religion (I also think science allows us to find the truth about the natural world, but like any truly rational thinker I know its limits) and not to mention genderism. There is an immense fight going on in the whole world against traditional values such as marriage between men and women, and vegans want us to stop eating meat alltogether.

But the problem with all this, is that there are many other ways in which this could be interpreted. Hong Xiuquan for example who was a cruel warlord that almost subjugated all of china in the 1800rds and who believed to be the second son of God forbid sex between married people.

So how about we go to some less cryptic prophecies: Lets take the secrets of Fatima for example.

The second secret of fatima was written down in 1941 and has supposedly been given in 1917 by the Virgin Mary. This is it:

You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go. To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to my Immaculate Heart. If what I say to you is done, many souls will be saved and there will be peace. The war is going to end: but if people do not cease offending God, a worse one will break out during the Pontificate of Pope Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that he is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions of the Church and of the Holy Father. To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the Consecration of Russia to my Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted, and there will be peace; if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions of the Church. The good will be martyred; the Holy Father will have much to suffer; various nations will be annihilated. In the end, my Immaculate Heart will triumph. The Holy Father will consecrate Russia to me, and she shall be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.

So, world war II had already started when the profecy was written, but it wasn't clear yet, that it would be a worse war than the first world war. The pope did indeed consecrate russia to the Immaculate heart and an unbelievable five years later the Soviet Union was no more and since then we've had a time of relative peace, at least no world war level conflict happened. Also the pope who did the consecration, John Paul II was shot, so he did indeed suffer a lot until he died.

But is this enough? It would have been better if Lucia had written this down before the second world war began, but still that is a set of things that could indeed be called the fullfillment of the profecy. But: it isn't fully conclusive.

Lets look at another prediction. The private revelation "True Life in God" (TLIG) predicts the fall of the world trade center: http://tlig.org/en/messages/654/ . I have a printed version of this from 1993 in german, so please don't say it was written after the fact. I am sure, that if you want to verify this you'll be able to find an old copy in a language you know.

Is it conclusive however?

It was written on September 11th 1991, exactly 10 years before the tragedy of the world trade center to the day. It says "evil built into Towers will collapse into a heap of rubble and be buried in the dust of sin!". There is no other message in TLIG that fits what happened so closely and I mean the date is very very peculiar.

I think we can call this evidence by the crimial definition of the term. However we cannot give it an 8 or a 9 on the convincing scale.

[pe7erpark3r]

As promised lets talk about the shroud of turin. Actually I think I don't have to write much. I'll do a short summary and simply refer you to the (english) wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiocarbon_dating_of_the_Shroud_of_Turin), which goes into detail about everything.

The shroud of turin is supposedly the shroud in which Jesus' dead body lay in the grave when he resurrected.

It appears, that the image is a negative (as in non-digital photography) and seemingly was burned into the shroud by an immensly strong light (said in layman terms). Nobody was able to reproduce this, since the energy required for a modern laser far surpasses what any reasonable lab would be able to use. And the results are far from what the shroud is.

There was a big media hype around 1986 when the shroud was carbon dated for the first time to around the year 1350. However afterwards the scientific debate continued because the samples taken do not actually allow for a conclusive dating since they are from the outer range of the shroud which was propably repaired in the middle ages... So basically everything (most of the other forensic results) except the carbon dating in 1986 speaks for the shroud being indeed old enough to be the very shroud Jesus was buried in.

And lets not forget that the blood type of the stains on the shroud was also found on the cloth of Manopello and in many of the eucharistic miracles (and is the rarest bloodtype there is: AB. No resus factor could be tested.)

So, it can definitely count as evidence. For further reading I simply refer you to wikipedia.

[pe7erpark3r]

Now we'll come to a rather tricky piece of evidence: the fact that the body of some saints didn't rot away. It is tricky, because its not conclusive at all. Here's why: Not only the bodies of saints have been found to not rot sometimes, Also John and Jane Does, and Mr. Smith of course (e.g. normal people). I heard that in china there is even such a dead guy who is revered as a God. It seems to happen a lot more often with saints though...

So, you might ask me: then why do you even mention it?

There are 2 very curious cases I know of, that actually seem more conclusive.

St. Nepomuk was – according to legend – the priest to whom the queen went to confess. He was killed by the king, supposedly because he did not tell the king about the contents his wife's confession. When he was exhumed in 1719, 300 years after his death, all of his body had rotted away. Except for his tongue. And this is definitely not something that just happens naturally. However the only thing we have are the exhuming party's accounts. Can we trust them?

With St. Anthony of Padua again the tongue did not rot in 30 years until he was exhumed. But this too was before scientific times. However what was found when his grave was opened for the second time in 1981, suggests that the accounts of the first opening might indeed be true.

So, even though one can call this evidence, it is certainly weak. And as such it is not part of the evidence that the church uses to beatify people. It is curious. But should not be overrated.

[pe7erpark3r]

Throughout history quite a few people (for example Saint Pio of Pietrelcina) have had stigmata, which are wounds on the body, that inexplicably appear in one or all of the following places: The hands, the feet, on the upper body around the height of the heart, and sometimes little wounds on the head. They are commonly associated with Christ's crucifixion, e.g. the wounds of the nails and of the crown of thorns.

These wounds tend to stay open for many years. In the case of Saint Pio they closed a few hours before his death. Most of them also have visions, but as we have seen, visions in and of themselves do not qualify as evidence.

Skeptics say, that they might associate so strongly with Christ that it shows on their bodies. But then again: do people who believe they are bulls grow horns?

But it gets even more curious with these people. Some of them, for example Therese Neumann, seem to be able to live without eating or drinking anything other than one piece of the eucharist each day for years! Well that is what they say. However it is really fun to read the accounts of debunkers who go to live with them, observe what they do for months, and then finally give up after realizing, that they cannot find any evidence of them eating.

What could be the natural cause of something like this? Did these people develop the ability to photosynthesize? :joy:

[wet teri]

@pe7erpark3r said in petrapark3r and ScruffyMutt debate God's existance:

What could be the natural cause of something like this? Did these people develop the ability to photosynthesize? :joy:

Now you have me humming Simon and Garfunkel's Kodachrome.
"Mama don't take my Kodachrome away-ay"

[pe7erpark3r]

@wet-teri said in petrapark3r and ScruffyMutt debate God's existance:

@pe7erpark3r said in petrapark3r and ScruffyMutt debate God's existance:

What could be the natural cause of something like this? Did these people develop the ability to photosynthesize? :joy:

Now you have me humming Simon and Garfunkel's Kodachrome.
"Mama don't take my Kodachrome away-ay"

Just listening to this track the first time! Beautiful music :heart_eyes:

[pe7erpark3r]

@ ScruffyMutt said in petrapark3r and ScruffyMutt debate God's existance:

because with no miracles then there would be no "evidence of God".

What other things would a supernatural entity do but miracles?

As shown there are different kinds of miracles, some with forensic properties, but of course all things that God does are supernatural, duh...

[wet teri]

@pe7erpark3r I don't think I would have called that particular song beautiful myself. However they do harmonize with each other really well. As for beautiful I would suggest the sound of silence and Scarborough fair.

[unholyshrine]

Me, as a human, which couldn't know what is happening on the transcedental realm, i just better to assume that God or "other highest entities that believed to be exist by the believers" is totally unknown and unknowable. I respect the believers, i love bible, bc there is lot of simple lifehacks, but i still in a state of agnostic, just appreciating people what believes.

[unholyshrine]

We are a human, it is better to just accept that we have an unbreakable absolute limit of knowing the total universe. (unless if you are an entity that could be transcedent and immanent paradoxically in the same time, therefore you are more than human, or maybe you aren't human). sorry 4 bad grammar,

[pe7erpark3r]

@wet-teri said in petrapark3r and ScruffyMutt debate God's existance:

@pe7erpark3r I don't think I would have called that particular song beautiful myself. However they do harmonize with each other really well. As for beautiful I would suggest the sound of silence and Scarborough fair.

Yeah, well those are definitely beautiful :smile:

[pe7erpark3r]

@unholyshrine said in petrapark3r and ScruffyMutt debate God's existance:

We are a human, it is better to just accept that we have an unbreakable absolute limit of knowing the total universe. (unless if you are an entity that could be transcedent and immanent paradoxically in the same time, therefore you are more than human, or maybe you aren't human). sorry 4 bad grammar,

Incidentelly christians believe that the soul is of transcendent nature, that it can indeed be close to God. However since knowing God in a rational sense is indeed not possible I do not disagree with you about accepting that there are things that cannot be known.

This is a part of my personal believe even. I believe that the fact, that God does not reveal Himself in a way that we could directly see him is due to free will. He believes in us, to make the right decision, He does not take our freedom from us. And thus he also wants to be believed in, trusted in. He doesn't show Himself in the most direct way, because then He would take our freedom away.

Christians also believe, that sin makes us blind. In other words it is not simply that God does not show Himself, it is rather that the evil we do makes us not see Him. And I have made that experience countless times in my life, that I did something that I knew to be bad, and almost immediatly I fell blind to it, and repeated many times, until I "woke up" again.

I think this is a deeply psychological thing too. I mean every Mafia Boss rationalizes what he does by saying that he's doing something good for the community by organizing crime, instead of a disorganized set of thieves and rivaling groups. Evil is a really fascinating thing in the end.

[wet teri]

Glad that you enjoyed them. It's always nice to know that you were able to give someone something that they didn't know they were missing.