Originally posted by dubeJust because we have assurance of matters plainly taught to us by the Gospel does not mean that we have no more sense of the awes and mysteries of life.
IMHO both materialists and religionists fail to grasp and appreciate the mysterious and unknowable qualities of existence. I think the feeling of awe in the presence of all that is can be enough to satisfy us and set us on the path to truth.
When I witnessed the birth of my first child it seemed to me a wonderful mystery. I am still in awe. The creation itself leaves me in beautiful wonderment.
But Jesus is still Lord of all. This I know.
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Originally posted by jaywillJesus is still lord. That is something you do not know. You THINK you know. There is a big difference. You have been duped into believing what the elders of the church wants you to believe. That is the bottom line.
Just because we have assurance of matters plainly taught to us by the Gospel does not mean that we have no more sense of the awes and mysteries of life.
When I witnessed the birth of my first child it seemed to me a wonderful mystery. I am still in awe. The creation itself leaves me in beautiful wonderment.
But Jesus is still Lord of all. This I know.
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Originally posted by sonhouse===============================
Jesus is still lord. That is something you do not know. You THINK you know. There is a big difference. You have been duped into believing what the elders of the church wants you to believe. That is the bottom line.
Jesus is still lord. That is something you do not know. You THINK you know. There is a big difference. You have been duped into believing what the elders of the church wants you to believe. That is the bottom line.
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No. I KNOW that Jesus is Lord. And I know that I know.
I know that with more clarity then I know who I myself am.
You see, this knowledge comes when TOUCHING God in the deepest part of man's being. Even in the deepest sleep when I had deep nightmares and hardly could tell what was real and what was not, by calling on the name of Jesus I conquered.
I did not know even who I was. But I knew that deliverane was in the mighty name of Jesus.
So I know of the lordship of Jesus Christ in a realm so very deeply. Instead of doubt this you should ask God to experience this.
"He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit" (1 Cor. 6:17)
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Originally posted by sonhouse==============================
What final judgement was there for the dinosaurs? Why do you think there is a 'final judgement'? Why WOULD there be a judgement at all? Why do you think any being in the universe would think us so valuable on the cosmic scale of things that we would be worth having some kind of judgement? The entire concept is so far beyond my ken it goes beyond reason and less of course your god is by any measure you could name, insane. That would explain a lot.
What final judgement was there for the dinosaurs? Why do you think there is a 'final judgement'? Why WOULD there be a judgement at all? Why do you think any being in the universe would think us so valuable on the cosmic scale of things that we would be worth having some kind of judgement? The entire concept is so far beyond my ken it goes beyond reason and into fairyland.
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When you rescued that man in the truck, you evidently thought he was worth a great deal.
Why did you not consider him just a insignificant speck in the vast cosmos, and stand there curiosly watching his pains like the others ?
Evidently, you followed some sense of the worth of that human life in the vast cosmos. It was not a "fairyland" to you. That worth of man was put there by a Divine Life greater than man. And that sense of man's worth God created in your heart.
History has a man named Jesus Christ. He is an extraordinary man. Look at His words. Lood at His deeds. He cared absolutely nothing for Himself. Everything He cared about was for the salvation of men and women.
Look at Him in the Garden of Gethseneme asking the Father that if it were His will to remove "the cup" from Him - Yet He said Not as I will, but as You will.
This Son of God also saw a great worth in sinners. This Son of God also left the crowd and did something no one else could do. That is bear the divine Justice on His cross that was due to you and I.
As you saw the worth of that truck driver, so the Son of God saw the worth of every sinner in the world and poured out His blood as an atoning offering on our behalf.
Man is so important to the Creator or God would not have come as a man - Christ. And man is so important to God or God would not cause man to receive His living Holy Spirit to be His sons.
The whole big cosmos He has made for His sons. So we need forgiveness. So we need regeneration, sanctification, conformation, transformation, resurrection, glorification and deification.
Man is so important to God that He sent Jesus Christ to be the "Firstborn among many brothers".
If you want to understand man's place in the vastness of the universe you have to study Jesus Christ the Firstborn Son of God.
Originally posted by jaywill🙂
Just because we have assurance of matters plainly taught to us by the Gospel does not mean that we have no more sense of the awes and mysteries of life.
When I witnessed the birth of my first child it seemed to me a wonderful mystery. I am still in awe. The creation itself leaves me in beautiful wonderment.
But Jesus is still Lord of all. This I know.
Originally posted by robbie carrobieThere is no doubt in anyone's mind the birth of a child is miraculous but that alone does not prove godhood or the presence of a god. Birth has happened literally quadrillions of times on Earth and I believe on millions of other planets in our universe and in trillions of other universes.
🙂
I believe we are living in a sea of life in the cosmos. Of course not every planet can sustain life, for instance Venus is a pretty good analog for christian hell with it's thousand degree surface temp but even an apparently barren place like Mars has a good chance of life appearing there in the past and maybe today buried in ice floe's.
Life may exist on the moons of Jupiter or Saturn where tidal forces stir up heat inside internal 40 mile deep oceans where some of those moons are said to have more water in them than all the water on Earth.
So to me the fact we have what passes for intelligent life here on Earth does not make us in any way unique except we happen to life on a jewel of a planet compared to every one so far deduced or seen with telescopes or landed on.
So what if Earthlike jewel planets are only one in a million, big deal. There have to be trillions of quadrillions of planets in our little universe and its looking more and more like there are quadrillions of trillions of other universes outside ours so even if we are the lucky ones in our galaxy at least at this point in time to be living on our jewel planet, maybe the universe only spins the dice to allow one jewel planet per galaxy.
At that rate at least we won't be set upon by nasty aliens who want to suck our blood like all those stupid sci fi anti science movies portray. We may be all alone and have this entire galaxy to ourselves.
The next galaxy over, the Magellenic cloud at 180,000 light years away may have one jewel planet, maybe there is another in Andromeda galaxy a couple million light years away. That would pretty much ensure we would never have discourse with aliens leaving us really alone here on Earth.
That said, there are trillions of galaxies and therefore trillions of jewel planets in our universe and probably trillions of quadrillions of other universes outside our bubble universe so we would just be one of many many life experiments going on simultaneously.
The result of that line of thought leads me to conclude there will be no magic finger from heaven coming down to save our sorry assses from ourselves if we screw up the planet so bad we get thrown back to caveman status or even driven extinct.
Where was your lord when the last Neandertal died? You know, genetic analysis has shown even the human race was driven near extinction a hundred thousand years ago, the entire human race down to around 100 people or so on the entire planet.
Neantertals were not so lucky. So your assumption would be your god decided Neandertals and australipithicus and all their kin had to go because they weren't god fearing enough or something?
Homo sapiens can easily go the route of the Neandertal even though at the present time approaching 10 billion humans on the planet would make us look immortal as a race, we live in an uncaring universe where one big asteroid can take us out in one hour or those monster volcanoes of a few million years ago blanket the Earth with so much pollution and deadly gasses as to drive us all extinct. The fact that it has happened at regular intervals in the deep past is pretty indicative of the fact that those kind of non manmade disasters can and will happen again.
No god came around to save Neandertals, and they had brains bigger than modern humans and no doubt had a spiritual side as well, but all that neandertal spirituality did them squat when push came to shove. Modern Humans didn't kill them, there was too much room on the planet at the time when at our respective ancient peaks of population, there were at most a few million of them and us.
So it was bad circumstances that did in the Neandertal and we could follow just as easily and there will be no hand from heaven to save the faithful if or when that day comes.
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Originally posted by sonhouseyou claim Irish lineage, even as I myself do, my great grandfather having come to Scotland because of a mixed marriage and the stigma attached to it, and i honour you as kin, but this is pure materialism, there is no evidence of life on other planets except a probability, we are unique, our consciousness makes us unique, our sense of past , present and future, or speech makes us unique, our art and literature makes us unique, in essence our spirituality makes us unique.
There is no doubt in anyone's mind the birth of a child is miraculous but that alone does not prove godhood or the presence of a god. Birth has happened literally quadrillions of times on Earth and I believe on millions of other planets in our universe and in trillions of other universes.
I believe we are living in a sea of life in the cosmos. Of course sily and there will be no hand from heaven to save the faithful if or when that day comes.
Originally posted by robbie carrobie“...there is no evidence of life on other planets except a probability ...”
you claim Irish lineage, even as I myself do, my great grandfather having come to Scotland because of a mixed marriage and the stigma attached to it, and i honour you as kin, but this is pure materialism, there is no evidence of life on other planets except a probability, we are unique, our consciousness makes us unique, our sense of past , present a ...[text shortened]... us unique, our art and literature makes us unique, in essence our spirituality makes us unique.
agreed. So there may or may not be intelligent life similar to us elsewhere.
“....we are unique, our consciousness makes us unique, our sense of past , present and future, or speech makes us unique, our art and literature makes us unique, in essence our spirituality makes us unique. ...”
Grant you I think we can pretty much rationally conclude that there is only a very small possibility of intelligent technologically advanced alien life with similar characteristics (such as art etc) to us within our side of the milky way because else I think that they would have surely spread by now and either communicated or shown obvious good evidence of their existence to us by now. But what about in, say, other galaxies? I am not saying we are definitely not unique (for all I know, our intellect really is an extraordinary and extremely unlikely freak outcome of evolution that is almost impossible to be repeated anywhere else even within our vast universe) but I would claim we cannot rationally be anywhere near certain at the present time with our current limited knowledge that we are unique in the universe.
Originally posted by Andrew Hamiltonthere is NO evidence Mr Hamilton, it therefore remains an unsubstantiated belief with no rationale other than what we don't know.
“...there is no evidence of life on other planets except a probability ...”
agreed. So there may or may not be intelligent life similar to us elsewhere.
“....we are unique, our consciousness makes us unique, our sense of past , present and future, or speech makes us unique, our art and literature makes us unique, in essence our spirituality mak ...[text shortened]... rtain at the present time with our current limited knowledge that we are unique in the universe.
Originally posted by robbie carrobieThe same can be said about the belief that there exists a supernatural and for the same reason.
there is NO evidence Mr Hamilton, it therefore remains an unsubstantiated belief with no rationale other than what we don't know.
But at least with the hypothesis that there exists intelligent aliens (and I thought I made it perfectly clear in my post that I do NOT 'believe' that such alien life exists but, rather, I simply don't know. So I don't understand why you say that) and UNLIKE with the hypothesis that there exists a supernatural, it may be possible to asses the probability of them existing through indirect evidence (such as a scientific assessment of how likely it is that life will emerge under the right conditions etc)
Originally posted by Andrew Hamiltonyes exactly the point that i have consistently argued on these forums, materialism is a belief and no Mr Hamilton until it remains proven, it remains within the realms of pure belief, like any other religious belief despite your protestations to the contrary. Indeed there is more evidence for the existence of Christ than there is for alien lifeforms, not of course that you are claiming that there is not, but then again, you do not accept the validity of those teachings, but you are of course willing to accept what you don't yet know, on the basis of a probability, hardly logical nor rationale nor even reasonable.
The same can be said about the belief that there exists a supernatural and for the same reason.
But at least with the hypothesis that there exists intelligent aliens (and I thought I made it perfectly clear in my post that I do NOT 'believe' that such alien life exists but, rather, I simply don't know. So I don't understand why you say that) and U ...[text shortened]... entific assessment of how likely it is that life will emerge under the right conditions etc)
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Originally posted by robbie carrobie“...materialism is a belief ..”
yes exactly the point that i have consistently argued on these forums, materialism is a belief and no Mr Hamilton until it remains proven, it remains within the realms of pure belief, like any other religious belief despite your protestations to the contrary. Indeed there is more evidence for the existence of Christ than there is for alien lifeform ...[text shortened]... on't yet know, on the basis of a probability, hardly logical nor rationale nor even reasonable.
yes, and it is also a rational belief. Although, strictly speaking, it is not so much a “belief” but the absence of a “belief”; specifically, he absence of the belief that there exists a supernatural. Would you 'dismiss' the disbelief that there exists a tooth fairy as being “just a pure belief”?
“...like any other religious belief ...”
no, by definition, it isn't a religion. And it is not like a religion because it is the absence of religion and the rational reason for rejecting any religion or superstition is Occam's razor :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor
“...The Razor generally recommends selecting the competing hypothesis that makes the fewest new assumptions (also known as postulates, entities) when the hypotheses be equal in other respects. ...”
it is this rational fundamental principle of basic reasoning that is the bases of virtually all atheism.
Also note: “..In the philosophy of religion, Occam's razor is sometimes applied to the existence of God; if the concept of God does not help to explain the universe, it is argued, God is irrelevant and should be cut away (Schmitt 2005). It is argued to imply that, in the absence of compelling reasons to believe in God, disbelief should be preferred. Such arguments are based on the assertion that belief in God requires more complex assumptions to explain the universe than non-belief. ...”
“...but you are of course willing to accept what you don't yet know, on the basis of a probability, hardly logical nor rationale nor even reasonable....”
suppose there is calculated to be a 90% probability of a hypothesis H being true. Then how is it “ hardly logical nor rationale nor even reasonable” to be 90% certain that H is true and 10% certain that it is false?
I may not “know” that H is true in the absolute sense, but how would that change the fact that I can rationally be 90% certain of H?
Originally posted by robbie carrobieSo what would your reaction be if life was found on other planets? Are you saying there is no possibility of life anywhere else in the universe?
you claim Irish lineage, even as I myself do, my great grandfather having come to Scotland because of a mixed marriage and the stigma attached to it, and i honour you as kin, but this is pure materialism, there is no evidence of life on other planets except a probability, we are unique, our consciousness makes us unique, our sense of past , present a ...[text shortened]... us unique, our art and literature makes us unique, in essence our spirituality makes us unique.