On a previous post, I ended the article with the folowing…
Now I know that some of my Christian readers believe that Jesus has the power to help people. What I would like to know is why does he help a few and let millions of others die? Do you truly believe that God plays a role in who lives and who dies? I’m truly interested in hearing your thoughts so please contribute them.
One reader by the name of Vayate stepped up to the plate and offered his take on things. I felt the piece was well written and interesting enough to warrant a spot on the front page to be shared with everyone. I offer the piece in its complete and unedited form. In the future, if you feel you have something interesting to contribute to the masses, please contact me.
From Vayate:
gasmonso – If you’re genuinely curious, I suppose that warrants a genuine answer. Let’s look at your question in a broader sense, and perhaps ask “why does anything happen?” After that, we can see how the specific choice of who lives and who dies applies to that.
Christians assume a lot of things about the nature of God, one of which is that He knows anything and everything. God possesses the ultimate, final knowledge; from His knowledge, all of his other “power” is derived — the power to control everything, the power to be everywhere at once (not because He really is everywhere at once, but because He knows what is happening everywhere at once). He possesses this knowledge because, again we assume, He (indirectly, as we will see later) created everything with some specific purpose in mind, and everything that has ever occurred has come about as part of the process of bringing about that purpose. Any Christian who knows what s/he is talking about will tell you that no one has any idea what that purpose is, and I believe that if we were told we probably could not comprehend it — it would either be too complex or too simple for the human mind to rationalize.
So how does this all play out? God (regardless of whomever or whatever God is) began the initial process of creation and set the stage for all of time to begin. How far back this goes is a disputed matter within the Christian faith; some say it was 5,000 years, some (like me) say it was the Big Bang, some may say that it has been occurring for some abstract infinite amount of time. The truth is that we don’t have the faintest idea about when this occurred, or how, or why, or anything of that sort; that’s why it’s faith, and I agree that it’s somewhat disturbing to lack that important information. In any case, God set the stage for everything with his initial creation, to whatever degree things were created, and He set things up so everything is one giant domino effect that will eventually have some result that pleases Him and that, we hope, is ultimately favorable.
Think of it as one gigantic chemical reaction, like the one by which glucose is converted to energy by your cells. The net equation is (C6H12O6 + 6O2 → 6CO2 + 6H2O + Energy), but there are literally hundreds of steps that occur between the initial reactions between glucose and oxygen and the end result of energy, water and carbon dioxide. Think of a human being, then, as a single electron that is part of this whole cycle. Many atoms and ions are brought into the different reactions, many are cast off when they have fulfilled their roles. We see the one or two reactions that take place before our roles are fulfilled and we are cast out of the grand reaction. God sees not only the overall reaction of (C6H12O6 + 6O2 → 6CO2 + 6H2O + Energy), but also each of the smaller reactions that are part of the larger one. He not only placed the glucose and oxygen in such circumstances that they can react, but also provides each of the surrounding components needed to create the smaller reactions that are part of the larger one. Finally, He supplied the energy to cause that initial reaction (we can think of this as the Big Bang), watched as the smaller reactions carried themselves out (the formation of the stars, evolution, the rise of humanity, even the lives and deaths of individuals), and now waits for the time when the reaction will be complete and his purpose will be accomplished.
Note that this is my view of how it works. There are a lot of traditional Christians who will say that God plays an active part in everything every day, and I think it’s utter rubbish. If He was to do that, there would be little scientific evidence for anything in terms of self-sustainability. Granted, there are a lot of things we can’t explain: everything from dark matter to our own sentience. That doesn’t mean that it’s some magical force of God directly intervening in our lives, but that we either don’t have the instruments to measure those things or the capacity to understand them. Note that I’ve always believed that we cannot ever understand anything more complex than ourselves — so don’t take my word for any of this as some kind of definitive answer to everything. My understanding of god is rudimentary and simplistic, because the order of everything in the universe is beyond my capacity of comprehension. I have no hope of understanding the specifics, even though I attempt to do so to the extent that I am able.
So how does this grander scheme apply to your question? It tells us that everything happens for some purpose — God wills that some people live and that some people die, that sickness comes and sickness goes, because all of those things are a small part of a master plan that has been playing out for literally hundreds of billions of years. One’s prayers are ultimately futile – one prays because that is the role God has given the prayer. Granted, the praying person prays earnestly and with the whole of his/her heart, but is unaware that s/he prays for a grander reason, whatever that reason may be. Perhaps the prayer is to be “answered” in order to reaffirm faith. Perhaps it is to be denied to bring suffering for whatever reason. Perhaps one prays not so that the prayer can be answered, but so the effects of that “acceptance” or “rejection” can ripple out like when a stone is thrown into a lake, and so its ripples can interfere with the ripples of other actions, all of which react with the actions previous to them and cause the next set of events to occur, all of which repeats until the final purpose of all events is reaches and the universe becomes still once again. This belief also means that we must accept all evil things as coming from God, just as we accept that all good things come from God, and we must trust that God’s plan will result in something better than the nothingness from which He created everything. That is the faith to which I adhere.
Note that this is still a somewhat simplistic view of things. This essay assumes that existence is not itself the end to which God aspires, which is perfectly plausible in any respect. Remember that this is theorizing and philosophizing about –faith-, and faith is what we use to rationalize things about which we have no knowledge or facts. Many people are content to simply say “we don’t know and that’s all there is to it,” and that’s perfectly fine, but some people either aren’t able to live with that uncertainty or, like me, just enjoy speculating about what might be. Yes, religion does have its nutjobs – just like the scientific community, and just like any other group of people that has ever been established. What I want you to really get from this, aside from some understanding about the hows and whys of faith, is the understanding that religion plays a different role for everyone who is part of it — that some people need religion and, for the most part, that’s an okay thing. Also understand that every group has both extremist and moderates, and that some people are just crazy – don’t let the extremists, who often get the most attention, corrupt your view of the whole. Finally, real Christians aren’t here to force their beliefs on anyone; they’re here to be supportive to everyone and provide everyone the strength that the world sometimes cannot — that is the duty with which they are charged by their holy texts, their leaders, and their God. Where humans fail, God succeeds – regardless of whether He literally exists or if He is just some abstract idea. Because of that, you should look to religious people as your friends who can support you when you need help, and not as enemies who will try to exploit that weakness and “convert” you against your will.
No related posts.

You imply that you’re a Christian, so I assume you believe that those who don’t accept Jesus Christ are damned for eternity.
If God has the degree of control and knowledge of the universe that you claimed, he knew that I was going to be an atheist and thus be eternally damned from the beginning of time… the big bang, in your stated beliefs.
So, if God created the circumstances of my being and knew that I’d be destined for hell, he must not really care that that’s where I’m going. Use the phrase “free will” to rationalize away this argument… I dare you.
Fanciful ideas of an all powerful, all knowing, all loving creator are logically flawed in many more ways than the simple way I demonstrated above.
The fact that most religious people can’t even wrap their minds around these paradoxes isn’t a demonstration of their stupidity, but rather a demonstration of the mentally corruptive power that religion has over human beings.
Once the mind is corrupted by the displacement of logic in favor of religious zealotry, all bets are off. Terms that you use such as “real Christians” are meaningless. What is “real” when simple rules of logic are discarded with impunity? Religious people are at least a little insane, and I deal with them accordingly.
The term “faith” is not compatible with your usage of it. Faith is not a source of knowledge, but a conviction with no basis in reality–the very opposite of knowledge. There is no valid source of knowledge aside from observation and reasoning, both of which activities inform themselves from reality, and together are known as “science”.
Also, if you’re only “speculating,” about this, then you do not affirm the existence of god, and you are not a christian, but an agnostic.
(And an agnostic is only an atheist who doesn’t grasp the fact that the absence of something does not constitute a potential of its existence.)
“You imply that you’re a Christian, so I assume you believe that those who don’t accept Jesus Christ are damned for eternity.”
My religion is based in Judeo-Christian mythology; I believe that God presents Himself to everyone in the way that is best for each person. Therefore Christianity is just as valid as, say, Hinduism or Voodoo. A God with many faces, as the Buddists and Hindus say. I do find the Judeo-Christian system to be particularly interesting, since they’re all supposedly of the same lineage and it’s fun to compare them. That said, I do think the Christians overstate whatever Jesus did do; I see him as a very important Rasool, as the Mulsims would call him. I don’t think that accepting him as a personal savior is requisite for a positive afterlife though; indeed, I think God would be offended if we looked to his Rasool as we should look to Him for acceptance and forgiveness, what with the whole “thou shalt not have any gods before me” commandment and such.
“If God has the degree of control and knowledge of the universe that you claimed, he knew that I was going to be an atheist and thus be eternally damned from the beginning of time… the big bang, in your stated beliefs. So, if God created the circumstances of my being and knew that I’d be destined for hell, he must not really care that that’s where I’m going. Use the phrase “free will†to rationalize away this argument… I dare you.”
First, yes, this is an extremely fatalistic view of the universe. If you’re damned to hell, you have always been so. The whole heaven-hell thing stops making sense in the context of this system, though the implications of that are beyond the scope of this discussion right now. Free will is an interesting question in this context. We do technically have free will, but our lives are shaped as such that our free will is controlled by God. Ironically, it’s what makes us controllable; we are enslaved by free will, and even in rebellion or rejection of God we do His will. Quite the quagmire we’re in, eh? :)
“Once the mind is corrupted by the displacement of logic in favor of religious zealotry, all bets are off. Terms that you use such as ‘real Christians’ are meaningless. What is ‘real’ when simple rules of logic are discarded with impunity?”
Extremism is bad no matter what it’s applied to. That fact is the most evident and most ignored legacy of the 5,000 years of human history. To answer your question, to me a “real” Christian is a person who truly understands his or her faith, and does so in a rational way. It is important to understand, for instance, the general concepts of our holy texts (more general than specific, since the Bible is a somewhat rough translation), but it is also important to understand how that text has changed over time — what parts were added later, such as the fable where Jesus says “let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” for instance — and what parts may have had their meanings lost in translation. Religious study requires a great deal of time and effort, but anyone who tries to understand his or her faith not only as a believer but also as a scholar, then applies that knowledge with whatever degree of logic can be applied to faith is someone who I would consider to be a “real” follower of faith.
“The term ‘faith’ is not compatible with your usage of it. Faith is not a source of knowledge, but a conviction with no basis in reality–the very opposite of knowledge. There is no valid source of knowledge aside from observation and reasoning, both of which activities inform themselves from reality, and together are known as ‘science.’”
Not exactly; faith is incompatable with deductive reasoning. We cannot take evidence from the observable world and use it to (objectively) come to the conclusions that faith provides; that’s what makes it “faith” and not “science.” The previous essay is an exercise in inductive reasoning, where I take the assumed articles of faith and try to rationalize them with the observable world. Inductive reasoning used in comparative political science, where one might take a general principle about a region of the world, then examine how that general principle affects a specific country, or even a specific part of a country; it’s not something that’s specific to faith or that’s unscientific in any way. That said, my musings are largely an exercise in inductive reasoning; they explain a lot of things, but I’m no prophet and I hold these beliefs somewhat loosely. It’s not only possible — it’s probable that I’m way off-base and the true answer to life, the universe and everything is something that my feeble human mind cannot comprehend. As I said, it’s an exercise in inductive reasoning, and while I do hold these beliefs, the dynamic nature by which I formulated means I can only hold them loosely. The point of publishing them is to illustrate that faith can be applied in a relatively logical manner through inductive reasoning, and gasmonso provided an excellent opportunity to make that illustration using a specific example.
“Also, if you’re only ‘speculating,’ about this, then you do not affirm the existence of god, and you are not a christian, but an agnostic.”
I believe wholeheartedly that God exists, for a number of reasons. For instance, the probability of the process of macroevolution — let alone the formation of the entire universe in the way we think it happened — seems to be much lower than th probability of the existence of some creator being. That judgment is purely subjective, and I acknowledge that fact. I also choose to believe in God because, hey, I’d be terribly disappointed if this world is all my brief moment of existence has to offer… and if I find out that this is all there is, that vain hope will still have made life more pleasurable for me and would have provided me guidance that I could not find elsewhere, and therefore faith will have had a positive purpose in my life. Basically, when used responsibly, a little faith never hurts. :) If nothing else, it gives me incentive to keep my nose clean, and that makes everyone happy.
If anyone has any other questions, feel free to post them. I really enjoy answering them, since they povide the intellectual stimulation that traditional academic systems do not.
p.s, thanks to gasmonso for publishing this. :)
Just a few comments, since taking everything you said point-by-point would cost me too much time. The logical fallacies are abundant for those who wish to take on the task, though:
*sigh* You actually tried to pretend that we have “free will” while also asserting that God created the universe and knew the way that everything would turn out. The two ideas are logically incompatible. God cannot both create you knowing what you would do, then blame you for acting on your own. It’s a poor musician who blames his instrument and a poor software developer who blames the programs he writes. Likewise, what kind of sad God is it that you believe in who creates mistakes without blaming himself?
You said with a presumably straight face: “the probability of the process of macroevolution — let alone the formation of the entire universe in the way we think it happened — seems to be much lower than th probability of the existence of some creator being.”
Lovely. So given that the more complicated something is, the less likely it is to just spring into being; you’re saying that the universe is more complicated than God is. This universe *is* complicated and seems unlikely from our tiny 4-dimensional human perspective… but you’re saying that a powerful being that can create this universe and know everything about it is *MORE* likely to exist. Do religious people have even half a clue as to how backwards that thinking is? “Occam’s Razor” Fucking look it up, because I just quit drinking coffee today and I have no patience for dealing with morons.
Vayate, I applaud you for your well thought out words, and general acceptance of religion for how each sees fit. I think we really need more people like you in the world.
But I guess the only problem I have with religion (western ones anyway), is that any “real” ie zealot Christian, would condemn you to hell for your words. Because they think that Jesus is all but the most important figure in the whole world, and to think otherwise in any way is blasphemy. Plus I think every pastor I have ever heard, looks at the King James version as THE holy word of God. There are constant fights about religious texts that were thrown out in whatever year by the Catholic church. New texts like the gosple according to Judas lately. But most modern day preachers refuse to beleive that there might be discrepencies. They simply tell you not to question the lord your god, and refer to a verse in the version of bible that they are most comfortable in.
Just my two cents.
Inductive and deductive reasoning are both informed from reality, not theological texts. This is assuming of course we wish our conclusions to bear some relevance to our existence. Applications of reason to non-facts and anti-knowledge result in just the same.
You’ve stated over and over again that your puny, useless, only-human mind could not possibly apprehend the truths of existence and that you’re certainly wrong about everything you’ve said. Agnostic. Atheist.
In fact there are very simple scientific explanations for nearly everything in existence. Your attribution of them to an incomprehensible god serves only to complicate and obfuscate the universe. Your ultra-contradictory belief system renders you a pawn of unknowable forces caught an the indeterminate flux that is your world. I see it as a psychological mechanism, the purpose of which is to permit yourself the abnegation FACT-BASED morality and personal responsibility.
To construct such a belief system predicated on the facts of reality is a task an order of a magnitude more difficult than to do so from the pliable fiction of religion. The latter approach results in a subjective, whim-based set of arbitrary and contradictory rules, inspired by whatever nonsense happens to pervade your subconscious, and justified by god.
“*sigh* You actually tried to pretend that we have ‘free will’ while also asserting that God created the universe and knew the way that everything would turn out. The two ideas are logically incompatible. God cannot both create you knowing what you would do, then blame you for acting on your own. It’s a poor musician who blames his instrument and a poor software developer who blames the programs he writes. Likewise, what kind of sad God is it that you believe in who creates mistakes without blaming himself?”
A good question; to answer that, it’s important to ask what effects the “intervention” of God and the threat of damnation have played on history. The answer is that they create the religious ethical system, and that ethical system is an important tool that has been used throughout history, especially during the imperialist era if Western Europe. As for how God can blame us for mistakes we ultimately make, perhaps the threat of that acts to prevent certain decisions and encourage others. It’s not necessarily that God blames us, but rather that He says he does in order use guilt to reach an end. Then again, maybe God is just corrupt, immoral and evil. I don’t believe that, but it’s entirely possible.
“So given that the more complicated something is, the less likely it is to just spring into being; you’re saying that the universe is more complicated than God is.”
I believe it’s more likely for something to occur as a result of a plan than to happen by chance, especially something as complicated as human sentience. As I’ve stated previously, it’s a subjective judgment; plus, everything happening by chance makes the world a pretty bleak place and some hope, however vain, is often beneficial to my life. As for Occam’s Razor, traditional science assumes a lot of things too. It assumes that we can understand the universe — which is the first assumption I throw out when examining anything. It assumes that the forces of the universe are quantifiable, and tends to assume that everything is quantifiable with currently-existing technology. Again, I throw that out. However, it is not necessarily true that science throws a divine being out of the equation — indeed, even many evolutionary scientists examine evolution as the processes of God’s creation at work. Theology can coexist with science in a scientific environment as a factor, assuming that theology isn’t applied to deductive science. The point of this is not to say that science makes more assumptions than religion, but rather to point out that science is hardly as infallible as you seem to think it is. You can’t hold science as being some sort of absolute truth and completely correct all the time; scientists observe the world, test their hypotheses and make the best guess about what the data they get from testing means. People of faith also observe the world, test it against their beliefs and make their best guess about what the resulting data means. The two are not as different as you might think.
“But I guess the only problem I have with religion (western ones anyway), is that any ‘real’ ie zealot Christian, would condemn you to hell for your words. Because they think that Jesus is all but the most important figure in the whole world, and to think otherwise in any way is blasphemy.”
Quite true, and this is a major problem I see with western religions — they assume Jesus is God incarnate. Even the Apostle’s Creed states that Jesus was “fully human, yet fully divine.” The problem comes when you start examining the texts, ie: Jesus praying and asking God to prevent him from having to carry out his crucifixion. Why would God implore Himself? If Jesus was God and he didn’t want to be crucified, he would make it so he didn’t have to be. This example of the powerlessness of what is supposedly an all-powerful being completely destroys the argument that Jesus was somehow God incarnate. There are quite a number of inconsistencies like that, which is why I got away from slightly more hardline Christian theology in the first place.
“Plus I think every pastor I have ever heard, looks at the King James version as THE holy word of God. There are constant fights about religious texts that were thrown out in whatever year by the Catholic church. New texts like the gosple according to Judas lately. But most modern day preachers refuse to beleive that there might be discrepencies. They simply tell you not to question the lord your god, and refer to a verse in the version of bible that they are most comfortable in.”
That’s yet another reason I got away from literal Christian belief; The Bible is a text that has been in existence for hundreds of years, since way back before we had a consistent method of reproducing printed material (ie: the movable type printing press). In the Middle Ages, the bible was reproduced by hand; monks and priests copied each page word-for-word, but also wrote notes in the margins, clarified and edited where they thought it was needed. Often those changes in the margins would be read by another monk who was copying the Bible, and that second monk would assume that the change was actually part of the text. So just by the nature of how it was copies, the Bible has grown and evolved over the years, and because of that we cannot accept them as being word-for-word holy texts. Furthermore, many of the Gospel books were written by the Apostles some twenty or thirty years after the events they describe; the words were supposedly inspired by God, but the human memory is prone to error. Again, we have reason not to accept the modern Bible as the original holy text. That said, according to my theology, those little additions and, in come cases, removal of holy texts play a part on the grand scheme of the development of Christianity; they were the result of divine intervention. From that, one can imply that a) all changes were divinely inspired, or more likely b) God has chosen to make those changes in order to shape Christianity so that it can best perform its function (in the case of b, human fallibility still plays a role because God would use it as a tool to cause those changes to come about, while the case of a would result in God more or less directly editing the text; either is possible, but I think a is inconsistent with the remainder of the theology while b is not, and therefore b is more likely assuming the remainder is true).
Also, I do appreciate your first comments. Thank you.
“Inductive and deductive reasoning are both informed from reality, not theological texts. This is assuming of course we wish our conclusions to bear some relevance to our existence.”
The generalizations we make with normal inductive reasoning are a result of using deductive reasoning to establish a pattern. Faith does not use deductive reasoning to make the initial generalization, but rather begins with that generalization; that’s why we don’t call it “science.” It’s true that you could do that with a lot of things, like taking the assetion “some races are inferior to others” and applying that to studying the history of subjugation. The trouble with doing that is that there are a lot of counterpoints — enough to easily disprove, both by science and by history, the initial assertion. Faith is different because we can neither prove nor disprove God; God is an abstract concept to which traditional science cannot be applied (regardless of whether it’s inductive or deductive). That does not mean that inductive reasoning cannot be applied; it does mean that faith is not science. Science and faith can reflect on each other to expand our view of the world through faith if one chooses to do so, but the two are by nature separate (though not mutually exclusive).
“You’ve stated over and over again that your puny, useless, only-human mind could not possibly apprehend the truths of existence and that you’re certainly wrong about everything you’ve said. Agnostic. Atheist.”
As I stated before, modern scientific knowledge is the result of humans making their best guess about the implications of observable data; often, those best guesses apply to things that we cannot see or directly prove. How do we know atoms exist? We don’t; the existence of atoms and their proposed behavior is consistent with what we can observe about the world, therefore we say that atoms exist because that’s what makes the most sense. We certainly don’t know everything about quantum mechanics, a lot of it is self-contradictory (wave-particle duality), and the facts of the physical world often prevent us from getting measurements that would help us understand how atoms work (uncertainty principle), -assuming- that atoms do indeed exist and science isn’t way off-base. Thus, it is important for any scientist to assume that some new piece of evidence may appear and completely discredit his or her theory, and that scientist must be willing to accept that possibility and its implications. That does not, however, make the scientist’s work pseudoscientific, nor does it discredit the work of that scientist immediately. Likewise, acknowledging the fallibility of the human intellect and the possibility that I am wrong does not make me an agnostic. What it means is that my core assertion is that I believe in a single God. You can equate this to the scientist’s assertion that the forces of the universe are quantifiable and possible to understand. All other beliefs are the result of reason being applied to observable evidence from the world in relation to that core assertion. The scientist asks “how does the universe work?” I ask “how does God work?” The two are very similar in that sense, and the acknowledgment that our reason may result in the wrong conclusions due to things about which we are unaware or the possibility that the universe is unknowable does not invalidate either; rather, it allows both the flexibility and adaptability that is necessary to keep both consistent with whatever facts we can glean from the world. This is not to imply that religion is science, but rather to emphasize that the two can be similar and are not mutually exclusive or contradictory.
“In fact there are very simple scientific explanations for nearly everything in existence. Your attribution of them to an incomprehensible god serves only to complicate and obfuscate the universe.”
Untrue. My religious beliefs reinforce the idea that everything in the universe is explainable by other factors within the universe. It implies that the universe is more or less self-sustaining and does not require outside intervention in order to continue to exist. In that way, it removes doubt and uncertainty, making the world a more secure, less strange place. It does not complicate, but simplifies because it asserts that divine intervention has occurred only once in the history of all of the universe, and that how that intervention happened (ie: the physics of the Big Bang) are explainable and understandable in the same terms as the physics of the rest of the universe. As a result, the world is a much less turbulent and uncertain place – and that is one of the reasons that faith is important in my life.
“I see it as a psychological mechanism, the purpose of which is to permit yourself the abnegation FACT-BASED morality and personal responsibility.â€
“Fact-based morality†is something of an oxymoron; ethics are by nature difficult to quantify. The closest you can get to quantifying ethics is the standard of Utilitarianism (see Utilitarianism by john Stewart Mill, available in full here: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/m/mill/john_stuart/m645u/) and its greatest happiness principle. Even since the time of Aristotle, it has been acknowledged that ethics is subjective and not the result of science; it takes certain assumptions about the world and human beings, and then applies inductive reasoning and examples to them. In that sense, it is more like faith than science (though, again, it is entirely separate from faith and illustrating similarities between them does not imply that they are the same). As for denial of personal responsibility, no, I do not believe that has anything to do with it. I’m actually a big fan of accepting responsibility for and bearing the backlash for one’s mistakes. If I were to make a bad judgment call and many people died as a result, it would be true that God willed that those people died and used my fallibility to bring about His will as a step to achieving some greater purpose. That said, the fact of my failure is what I am accountable for in this world; the fact that we are capable of learning from our mistakes makes it clear that God does not will that whatever it was that happened should happen again by my hand (assuming I do indeed learn from my mistake and don’t make the mistake again). Furthermore, personal responsibility and faith are not mutually exclusive, though they can be difficult to rationalize. Accepting responsibility has positive effects regardless of the truth or falsehood of religion – it prevents people from being emotionally destroyed at the prospect of failure (something that’s evident in many of high school and college students these days) and helps us be understanding when others fail as well. It takes us off our high horse, so to speak, and forces us to come to terms with the fact that no one is always right, that it’s a good idea to collaborate with others to prevent poor judgment from occurring, etc, etc. Acceptance of personal responsibility and learning from our mistakes is one of those important ripple effects of the divine plan, whatever it may be, so we absolutely must do both of those things.
It’s your assertion that theological texts are based on …. generalizations? Generalizations of what? Faith is not a source of information. You’ve intentionally ignored this fact several times. What is the source of your religious beliefs? If it’s not reality, it’s not a valid source of knowledge. If you say it is reality, this is an error of fact, as there is no evidence of the existence of god (with the understanding that attempts to chalk up complexity in nature to a higher being simply because you demand an immediate explanation are logically fallacious and downright primitive).
Knowledge is only useful in application, in life. To go on flights of fancy about the possibility of whatever thing you can imagine existing is to take knowledge out of context, to divorce it from its purpose. The imagined notion for which there is no evidence does not confer any efficacy over the world in which we live, does not teach us anything real, is anti-knowledge.
The universe exists independently of our knowledge of it. Regardless of the state of our knowledge, whether it’s right or wrong, reality is what it is. Human knowledge and reality are two entirely separate realms; one is the universe, the other is a body of mental concepts we’ve developed in order to comprehend it.
Information added to our body of knowledge has no bearing on the universe, only on us– our means of survival, our ability to overcome the obstacles of reality.
For this reason, within the context of knowledge, that which cannot be proven is false. The non-existence of something does not constitute a possibility of its existence. We do not add non-facts to our knowledge, because doing so be pointless and even detrimental to our ability to live.
(It would take far, far more text to address each and every contradiction in your answers, which themselves are threads of logical fallacies interwoven into a fine cloth of un-thought. I do not have the patients.)
Some might think I took the time to argue with you to try to help you out. Personally, I think that someone holding on to ignorance as tightly as you do is beyond hope.
Instead, I’d like to help out that person on the fence who was probably indoctrinated into some religious institution like most of us were. That person is smart enough to be able to follow a logical argument; and despite being afraid that he’ll lose hope of an eternal-life security blanket provided by his magical friend in the sky, would rather be more in tune with reality. That person wants the truth more than he wants false hope.
Your unyielding desire to be ignorant is quite evident when you say:
“I believe it’s more likely for something to occur as a result of a plan than to happen by chance,”
Anyone of even slightly above average intelligence should be able to see that you’re ignoring the fact that you need a PLANNER to be able to plan; and a planner introduces into your comfy world view the exact same problem that a random chance universe does… WHAT MECHANISM CAUSED THE PLANNER TO BE?
Think about it… think about it… keep thinking…
“Life (and the universe as well…) is so complicated that there must have been a God to create it, and evolution just doesn’t stand a chance because randomness could not generate something that is so complicated and that works so perfectly.â€
The chances that, starting with a planet that has nothing on it but some clouds of gas and maybe simple bacteria, we get Earth after 4 billion years of evolution with humans, horses and frogs, are indeed very very very slim. But this is not the point; we should rather consider the chances that such a planet would eventually generate an intelligent life form – the fact that this life form has a pair of arms and legs and eyes, and is humanoid, is no issue. People should stop considering themselves as marvels of somebody’s creation a posteriori… It’s like taking a hundred of dices, throwing them, and then just gasping as there were only one out of billions of billions of chances that we get two for the first dice, four for the second, and so on, and concluding that there must be a God somewhere. I used to have discussions with a Jehova’s witness who compared the evolution with a hurricane rambling over a dumpster over and over again trying to create a Boeing 737. Well probably the hurricane will never achieve this particular model, but what about just something that flies ? And, oh, don’t forget that life is not just randomness – we have selection, and generations share their working genes.
Same thing about the universe – it is complex indeed (well we say complex actually only because we don’t really know what it’s made of, considering the fact that we can basically only guess), but is it the only possible form of universe ? I heard an argument about constellations that “could not be just created by random movements of starsâ€. Duh… thanks for creative interpretation, but I personally never managed to figure out how those nine stars of whom I see only four, can stand for a guy on a chariot shooting with his bow at something.
And about the perfection… I personally only suffer from myopia, as half the humans on this planet do I guess, but just try to understand how many people are handicapped and unable to go out, or suffer some horrible diseases…
whatever, I know you’re probably not interested in any part of Christiainity, but for an interesting view, not all Christians believe in an eternal hell for all non-believers, check out the theory of universalism, you can google the word “universalism” or “aionian” to take a look…it makes more sense to some people that God would eventually allow all of his creation to profit from his creating force, and not just those who are fortunate enough to hear and believe a certain bible or religious leader.
Heylo all!
I’ve just read through all the comments on this page, and there are a lot of interesting ones.
But I was just wondering where people stand miracle wise. There are a lot of things that happen on Earth, where people get healed and the only conceivable way to conclude is by saying that ‘God healed them’.
Many of you would probably argue with that statement, and say that the medication etc the person was on healed them.
I would like to ask what you think of healings where someone has watched someone else being healed, and the someone who was healed had no medication. For example, (and I was there so it hasn’t been a tall tale, fulled with gossip and changed from the original happening) say someone couldn’t bend their knees without wincing from pain, because they’d hurt them. They wouldn’t necessarily be on medication. Say they got prayed for, and their knees were healed. Healing naturally takes time, but this is instantaneous. How can that be explained?
I am a Christian, so appreciate that the postings I make are going to relate to God and why He is there, or why He is here. I don’t understand how any person can deny that He exists. Well, I do, but after weighing up things for a long time I can only conclude that He exists.
I remember some text mentioned earlier, about the Bible and ancient texts not being reliable enough to count on. There are texts, outside of religious ones, that support what the religious ones say.
I can’t 100% prove what I’m trying to say, as there are many things I haven’t read and many things I don’t know about. However, what person alone can really count everything, and be able to weigh everything up? There are increasingly more things to be taken into account.
I would also like to say that media generally focuses on extremes, as people just aren’t interested otherwise. So the views that the world around us can sometimes give aren’t showing us the full picture.
I forgot to say this!
Although we often debate subjects (such as religion) in depth, maybe we can’t ever perceive the full picture, as our brains are not that big relative to the depth of such subjects. I believe that what we understand we are blessed for understanding, but things we don’t understand we shouldn’t dwell on, for surely there is a reason why God doesn’t give us understanding. Think of this in context of free will.
It is easy to see holes in an unfinished puzzle, but maybe when the whole puzzle is put together the holes get fulled out?
Jo, the “healing” you witnessed where someone couldn’t bend his knees was most likely:
1. Mental, in that he could bend his knees but had some kind of mental block that made him think it was painful or at least more painful than it actually was. I went through the same thing a couple of years ago after knee surgery. I got into the habit (for months) of limping up and down stairs because of the pain that I at first felt. One day, I tried to walk normally without the limp. I was thoroughly surprised that the pain was gone even though mentally I had been anticipating it and avoiding the motions that had caused me pain. It was all in my mind!
2. Mental, in that the placebo effect can allow you to ignore pain because you think that you’re healed or that the pain has been treated in some way. This is a heavily documented psychological effect that has been shown to be more powerful than morphine in reducing pain.
3. A scam. I have no way of knowing why someone would want to fool you, but usually the motivation is financial. There are lots of other reasons to trick people besides money, though.
Why is it that with “miraculous healings”, it’s never something impressive like the regrowing of a lost arm or something? You’d think that if God were doing it that a healed pain would be no more difficult for him than restoring an arm. Instead of something truly miraculous and impressive, we get ‘no pain’ type miracles that have other easy explanations.
You ever wonder about that?
You should really go to http://randi.org and read everything you can handle there. James Randi is a magician who uncovers charlatans. His foundation has a million dollar challenge that’s been available for years to anyone who can prove something supernatural. All you’d have to do is show medical proof that someone had some type of injury or disease, then have a bunch of people pray for that person to heal him. It has to be something verifiable, mind you, like a massive tumor or a lost limb or something. After God healed that person through the power of prayer, your church could collect the money, winning a two-fold victory: You’d get the million dollars AND you’d get the notoriety of proving Randi and his organization wrong! Imagine the prestige.
That wasn’t the only type of healing though. A blind man can now see. Tell me that was made up, I dare you! Someone who hasn’t seen all their life who can suddenly see can’t make it up, it’s inceivable. Also I know of times where a leg has been shorter than the other, and it has been healed so that both are the same length, and people have watched the leg grow, and I know of someone who had a broken collarbone who got healed, and of a bandaged wrist that got healed…People don’t lie, and pain is real.
I wouldn’t call healings such as where a blind man can see, or where people have witnessed a leg grow out, easily explanable.
You can say what you want, but I was there, and I saw things happen, where people have prayed that God will show them things, and then these things have come true. You may say it’s a conincidence, once or twice-but when the numbers of such situations start multiplying it’s not possible that people would lie.
And also, the Bible says ‘do not put the Lord your God to the test’, which is what you would be doing with the randi thing. And who wants money, aside from that, when it is a material possession-and they’re not important.
Oh, and the person whose knees got healed was a female!
You say, “People don’t lie”… that pretty much sums up your problem. People DO lie. They lie outrageously all the time and in unexpected ways for unexpected reasons.
In college, I had a couple of dorm friends who would play around with a Ouija board. One time — when I was sitting in the room watching the proceedings — a guy, John, walked into the room and no one sitting at the board saw him come in. The puck moved around or over the “J”. John immediately jumped to the conclusion that it was spelling out “John”. It did no such thing. He told everyone that the board spelled out “John”. I heard the lie repeated to me by others in the dorm. Some people just want to believe some things so badly that they see what they want to see. When confronted with the facts later by those of us who witnessed the event, John swore up and down that he had seen his entire name spelled out… amazing. I think he actually believed his own fantasy.
As to the healing of blindness, psychosomatic blindness is a well documented psychological condition. It could be the cause of what you saw. Or it could be someone just trying to fool you for his or her own reasons.
Limb length changing? Bullshit. David Blaine convinces people standing RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM that he can levitate. I fool my kids all the time with little tricks of making it look like a limb is growing or that I’m shoving a pencil in my ear. They’re just simple tricks that anyone can learn. You *want* to believe that a miracle is happening, so you don’t question anything that reinforces that belief.
You should *really* look at Randi’s site where some journalists uncovered some of the tactics that Benny Hinn uses to fool the gullible. http://randi.org/jr/2006-05/051206benny.html#i1
If there is evil in the world, it’s these people who prey on the sick and the weak minded, fooling them into thinking that they’re “healers” — all to get rich.
Don’t be a gullible sheep. Learn to tell when someone is trying to deceive you. Help others by keeping them from falling for the same tricks.
Of course the Bible says that you shouldn’t test God. No religion wants its God or gods tested. No religion wants its claims put to any kind of intellectual scrutiny. They ALL fall apart when that happens.
Oh, and you never mentioned the sex of the person who was “healed” previously. Rather than make the grammatical mistake you made of using “their” when you should have been using a singular possessive pronoun, I thought I’d just take a chance and use “he”. The sex of the alleged victim wasn’t really relevant… but it’s curious how you use an exclamation point like it’s some sort of victory in the conversation. Stop trying to win an argument for a few minutes and open your mind to the fact that you’ve been fooled. I can see that you’re trying to think critically about what I’m saying. Instead, turn that around and think critically about what you already believe. Think critically about the Bible, “faith healers”, and some of the things that you have thought of as already proven in your life.
What I meant when I said that people “don’t lie” wasn’t that people don’t actually lie, but that all the people asked wouldn’t lie. So some people may lie and think in their minds they’ve been healed, but not everyone would say that-to say that everybody suffers from the same psychological problems is impossiable, as everyone is different.
You say that I am believing things because I want to. This could be just as easily applicable with you-you come up with all sorts of ‘logical’ reasons why such things could happen, because you don’t want to believe they happened. When I watch a miracle happen, i do not just believe it. I like everything I believe to be backed up, as what is a belief based on nothing? I also would like to know, how some stranger in the street who you go up to knows these ‘tricks’ you talk about? There are lots of times where a limb has grown etc, and it’s been where a limb has grown out. How can absolutely every person know such ‘tricks’?
I never claimed to be a healer. I said that God healed people through me. The definition of a healer is “a person skilled in a particular type of therapy”. This isn’t anything to do with skill. It’s to do with listening to God.
Actually, although the Bible says “do not put the Lord your God to the test”, it’s because there’s no need to, in a sense. God has already shown us people rising from the dead, and Jesus came (most importantly). You say under ‘intelectual scrutiny’. We aren’t that clever, and, like you said, we can make results appear to be as we want them to be.
I think it’s curious how you rely on a point about grammar to finish up you argument, almost as if you need that to help you support it. This argument isn’t about English grammar. It’s about God.
If you are curious why I put an exclamation mark there, it’s because I dislike how people usually assume things are male only. The Bible says “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28).
You say I should analyse my religion. Maybe you should analyse your lack of one?
Also, even if we both analyse our beliefs, I know I’m not going to change mine because I have found them to be true. If you agree with yours, there is nothing I can do about that-as your life isn’t mine. I know what I believe and I fully believe it to be true. Everything I learn supports it.
About the blind man: he had been blind all his life, and was a very well known blind man. Someone who has been blind all their life can’t pretend to be blind. A person is either blind, or they’re not blind. This man was blind. At the time this healing happened, I wasn’t even sure if I did believe in God anymore. I was wrong.
If the only reason you reply is to “win” this “argument” then why bother? I’m not discussing this topic to “win”. It would achieve nothing, but a momentary victory. A victory of that kind is nothing, it’s a material feeling.
With regards to this ‘randi’ website, you are not listening to what I have said before. We are noly humans, and by no means perfect. We aren’t the ones to look to, but Jesus is if you want to look at our faith.
If Randi has such issues with Hinn, then maybe they should meet up and talk sometime. It seems to me all his assumptions are not based on any fact, just what he thinks.
Like you said, we can make things appear as we want them to.
Actually, my experiences and resulting attitudes regarding religion are the opposite of what I would want. I grew up Christian. I’m a good rule-follower, I pay my taxes, am a faithful husband, enjoyed going to church (sang with the choir), blah, blah, blah… all the stuff that would lead to a comfy reasonably-sinless-life (yes, I know we’re all sinners) devoted to Christ. There’s nothing I would like more than to think that I am secure with ever-lasting life, that there’s more to this life when my loved ones and I die, that evil will be judged by God in the end.
I disbelieve in the tenets of Christianity and other religions that I’ve studied IN SPITE OF my wish that there were more to life.
So, I’m not coming at you from some perspective of ignorance of the Bible or Christianity. I’ve been where you are. I’ve witnessed “healing” and “speaking in tongues”. I know how easy it is to get caught up in the moment and how easy it is to believe that miracles are happening. Unfortunately for me, I guess, I’m also the kind of person to ask questions. When you ask questions and really look into the facts of these occurrences, they always fall apart.
Don’t you think it’s curious that you claim that people are regrowing limbs, but medical journals aren’t brimming with documented evidence? Point me to a documented case of a limb being regrown. It should be easy. There should be pictures of the person without the limb, maybe medical records of the injury or deformity, then pictures of the person with the limb. Don’t you think it’s curious that when Randi’s team looks into faith healers that he finds deceptive tricks used to deceive the viewers that he has documented with live video footage?
I’ve visited religious discussion boards for years. I’ve studied the Bible with other Christians. I’ve seen things from both sides.
Maybe after this explanation, you might see how I can confidently tell you that your inability to even go to Randi’s site and spend a little time reading is a sure sign that you want to remain blind to anything that might damage your faith.
I did visit Randi’s site, and I don’t agree with the viepoints it shows.
The only way I can see to conclude this is to agree to disagree. Nothing ever will change what I believe. I have recently been going though a major period of time where I was seriously doubting what I believe, and questioning things in great depth.
I have come out of that time, despite everything that happened then, believing in God. If possible, I believe in Him even more now.
To deceive myself would be stupid; a lie. You and I weigh things up differently. I see things as evidence for God. You don’t. That is that.
I do have a problem with this:
Finally, real Christians aren’t here to force their beliefs on anyone; they’re here to be supportive …. and not as enemies who will try to exploit that weakness and “convert†you against your will.
I’ll believe this when laws are not created to hold everyone to someone elses religious ideals. I can’t buy a vehicle or alcohol on sunday either because it’ll save my soul or it removes a temptation for the religious types. If people are that shaky about temptation what does that say about them? And why does everyone else have to pay for it?
Bob, I don’t really understand what you’re getting at. The people who set down out laws aren’t all followers of a religion, so how can they give us religious ideals? Laws are as they are because the people who set them want to try to create harmony for as many people as possible, they don’t want to offend people by placing down laws so try to statisfy everyone. I guess. I don’t really know.
Also, to Jo and whatever, neither of you actually have access (from what I can gather) to medical records, to be able to argue accurately.
You had mentioned “Therefore Christianity is just as valid as, say, Hinduism or Voodoo.”
I beg to differ in the comparison with Hinduism. As far as I researched, hinduism was never a religion till the Christians in the form Colonial british came to India. I was a way of life. How a person lived his lifes, his occupation, his economical level, placed him is soceity of classes.
Khatriya – King, ruling class
Brahman – Learned class
Shudras – Working class
The vedas which date back to 4000 yrs (1500BC) do not mention GOD, but mentions a lot about how these 3 classes of ppl should live their life, how to do good, what should a person follow in his daily life, and most of all science was in every sentence of it. The Church condemned Galileo for sayign Earth revolves around the Sun, when I was in the Hindu (am using the word not as in religion, but as in saying its from the Indian sub-continent) scpritures.
Sex was given as much importance in everyday life (Everyone know Kamasutra came from India).
And then the british came brought is so many Christian ideas (including making sex as a taboo issue) ..
Hello Vayate,
I just read your essay for the first time and I very much enjoyed it. I haven’t had time to read the rebuttals and your responses yet but I did want to mention something. You seem to be a thoughtful person who enjoys philosophy. Your beliefs align fairly well with those of Leibniz. If you haven’t done so, I would highly suggest reading some of his philosophical works. In particular I think you would like his ‘principle of sufficient reason’ which is a principle that is similar to a God-created, purpose-driven determinism.