Brian37 vs manofmanynames
Posted on: April 20, 2009 - 11:52am
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Brian37 vs manofmanynames
manofmanynames,
You say you are unafraid of confrontation. GREAT! I wish more theists would take your attitude insted of falsely equating blasphemy and criticism to hate.
NOW, lets get on with it.
1. Define your god.
Then we will start from there.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
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Oh my.
Jesus Christ.
If we are all the children of god, then what is so effing special about Jesus Christ?
*Puts on helmet and flak vest and ducks behind desk*
"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."
VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"
If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?
Ok, so you believe that disembodied beings with no penis or DNA knock up girls? You believe that magically human flesh survives rigor mortis? And I am sure you have AMA peer reviewed material showing the mechanisms of HOW these things are possible.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
That's a renaming, not a definition
I'm not Brian but I'll pick on you until you give a definition..
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
no, I don't
I believe that the early followers of Jesus after witnessing his Crucifixion, rather than abandoning his vision, or loyalty to him in a cross that should have been the ultimate failure of his messiahship, didn't find the death of their faith but the reviving of it, in a sense of Hope as vivid and real to them as touching wounded flesh.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSm7YPMQOSo
"Very funny Scotty; now beam down our clothes."
VEGETARIAN: Ancient Hindu word for "lousy hunter"
If man was formed from dirt, why is there still dirt?
I should have said, "Name your god", my fault. But you make a good point.
The end point is that a god can be defined anyway because there is no emperical standard, and the "omni" atributes even without a name are not only scientifically absurd, but morally bankrupt.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
I hope you have more luck with this theist than you did with me. hehe!
The only thing you should be laughing at is your own credulity. Did it ever occur to you I got board with you. Chewtoys loose their luster and pet isle smell, just like the newness of a new car smell.
Don't take it personally, you might be the nicest person in the world, but you are not the only person in the world.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Brian and MoMN,
Let me know if you want to make this a one on one and I'll stay out of it.
Well, there isn't an empirical standard to define many things we believe in, like love, we can empirically define it at biological and psychological level, just as we can with God beliefs, but not empirically define it in terms of what in means for each respective individual.
"Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, (love) is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth."
Is not an scientific hypothesis, though believers and unbeliever may just as well accept this defining of love as true.
I got "board" as well, hehe. Dont take it personally.
LOL pet isle smell? Who likes the smell of a pet isle? weird.
ciarin.com
You don't believe in the virgin birth or claimed physical reserection of Jesus?
Can you backpeddle on a unicycle too?
So if Jesus is not magical, why call him a god?
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
You don't believe in the virgin birth?
Is that a yes or a no?
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, | As I foretold you, were all spirits, and | Are melted into air, into thin air; | And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, | The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, | The solemn temples, the great globe itself, - Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, | And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, | Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff | As dreams are made on, and our little life | Is rounded with a sleep. - Shakespeare
I don't care if you jump in.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Love" has many shades, but they are emotions and emotions are a electro chemical neurological process due to stimuli that modern brain scans can measure. "Love" is a word people confuse for a thing when the reality is that it is a word that describes our reaction to different stimuli.
We know what endorphins are. We know what estrogen and testosterone are. We can see different parts of the brain light up on the scan when the subject is shown different stimuli.
BUT, this quote:
Nice dodge cop out.
We are talking about YOUR GOD. Define your god.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Sounds like he doesn't believe Jesus isn't all that special. That or he doesn't read his Bible.
What of it, MoMN? Does your God match his book?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
I don't think you even know what a cop out is.
I answered your equally vague question, with an equally vague response.
If you're wife, or significant other ask you to define your love for her, and if u told her it's a chemical neurological process yada yada, she'd probably slap you.
It's vague question, because you haven't told me how you desire for me to define it, do you desire that I define God along the lines of what it means to me? Do you want me to define it along a scientific, on a psychoanalytic level?
On a meaning level, it's what I already answered, "Jesus Christ", in his sovereignty, vision, and all that they represent. You asked me to define my God, and my God is Jesus Christ, if you have particular problem with that response, you should let me know what that is, rather than repeating the same question again.
On a scientific level, in analysis of the thought process itself, God is as psychoanalyst Erich Fromm would put it, is an object of deviation, to orient our instinctual nature, and our capacity for selfawarness, imagination, and reason, the centering point of a worldview.
As a disclaimer, when a person asks me casual, and hardly reflective question, i tend to give lazy responses. Non-reflective questions, smell to me of an individual not looking for something to chew on or think about, to feed their intellectual curiosity, but rather an individual looking for the sightings of a tail they can pounce on, kind of like trolls who care little to reflect on whatever the response may be.
So now you can redefine your question, and ask what sort of context are you seeking that I define my god.
I hope you are getting my sense of humor, all be it serious. I don't know you, I have never met you. You might be the nicest person in the world. BUT if I am solely basing my responses on your claims, all I can do is be honest about the words you present me.
I do hope you get me. I put your claims in the same category as Minerva and Thor and Jesus and Allah and Harry Potter.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Don't use that bullshit.
Admitting that I am human and have emotions does not default to Jesus being the one true god over Thor or Allah or Osirus.
Emotions are observable and can be studied. Name me one claimed super natural being claimed in human history willing to subject itself to a brain scan.
You are falling for the "apeal to emotion" fallacy that all diety believers of all labels fall for. It is a non-sequitor to equate gaps in knowledge to defaulting to your own position.
"LOVE" is not the issue and I never claimed to be a robot.
YOU claim that your god is real. Fine, prove it and despense with the distractions.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Um....'Son of god', surely, according to the great work of fiction.
Even so, boring deity. Didn't do half the stuff that the Japanese or Indian deities can do.
How can not believing in something that is backed up with no empirical evidence be less scientific than believing in something that not only has no empirical evidence but actually goes against the laws of the universe and in many cases actually contradicts itself? - Ricky Gervais
Your God is Jesus Christ but you don't believe in the basic tenets of the faith named for him (the virgin birth and the resurrection)?
So, do you hold to Paul's construction? It would make more sense - Paul's version came first.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
Hum, let see what the assumption here is. If i encountered an individual who had the ability to commit supernatural acts, that attribute alone wouldn't lead me to call him God. In the Gospels, particularly in John, the Gospels the most explicit of the four in claiming Jesus is God, is not the supernatural feats that render to him this association, but rather Jesus as divine logos, as the truth/wisdom incarnate. Or to put more pragmatically it's the teaching, and the expression of the teaching in his own life, that led to the belief in his divinity.
Divinity being rendering to Jesus ultimate sovereignty, and ones very loyalty, to see him as the ideal, the image of what we are to live up to, as the way, the truth, and the life.
So Jesus wasn't God until divinity was given to him?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
Hum...what do you think the term "Son of God" means, both biblically and historically for the time in which the title was given to Jesus Christ?
David was called Son of God, so was Ceaser, and meaning of term in all three cases is not all that different. But I'm curious to here what you think it means, and why you believe it means that.
I do hold to Paul's construction, I don't hold to the poor exegetical interpretation of Paul promoted by fundamentalist, but I do hold to what I believe to be an accurate and faithful construction of his ideas. And I do wholeheartedly believe in the resurrection, and I have already expressed what that means.
Jesus is God for an individual when we perceive a sort of divinity in him, something deeply profound and moving in his character. When we perceive in him one's own ultimate purpose and meaning in life. When he becomes the object we center our lives around, the Sovereign of one's own loyalty and devotion
This is such a bizarre response, as if you were responding to another poster all together. I'm not sure what sort of sense I am to make of this post, relative to anything I said in my previous reply. Gaps in knowledge? Wtf? Where did I squeeze God into a gap in our knowledge? Appeal to emotion fallacy?
Sorry, perhaps someone else can attempt to make sense of your response for me, or you can try and articulate yourself better.
Now we assign Jesus/God divinity? Seems like an unnecessary step.
On your post on Paul - Do you hold as he does that Jesus/God was never a physical being? I may have missed you taking a position.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
I have heard love used as an analogy for God in similar context before. The problem I see with this explanation is love itself is limited to the human mind, it's simply an attribute of mans emotional being. At no point does love exist in the absence of man, it's not some mystical force floating around us, that has sentience. Any supernatural characteristics for love, beyond what I stated, would need to be supported with evidence.
God as the creator would have to exist in the absence of man, something love can't possibly do. God is supernatural, love is not.
Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. - William S. Burroughs
haha.
Yes I'm well aware that there are some people who are clueless as to why Paul and many theist devote themselves in developing Christologies, who are fairly ignorant when it comes to interpreting the gospel, that they tend to draw very weird conclusion based on them such as Paul didn't believe in a historical Jesus.
I mean, did you forget to wear your tinfoil hat?
But to answer your question more directly. No i do not believe that Jesus was never a physical being, nor did Paul.
Well, my use of the term love here wasn't to draw an analogy between God and Love, but for the sake of specifying that in asking someone to define certain terms and concepts, we would have to specify how exactly they desire for them to be specified.
If I asked you define love, you probably be confused as to how I am asking you to define it, in the context of our biology, or to be defined as a meaning expression, such as you'd explain love to your wife, or in expressing what we believe true love is.
There's a multitude of ways we can define God, such as in biological terms, the biological basis of belief, or in psychological terms, or the meaning of God in one's own life.
My use of love, in the question of defining God, was solely for the purpose of saying that without specifying what sort of definition a person is looking for, the question of defining a term can be quite vague.
Well anyone can hold a cockamamie and non-cockamie belief, but they're not required to present evidence for these beliefs to every tom, dick and harry. The only time that "evidence" is required to be brought to the table is when a person requires others to accept that claim as well. Imagine if I asked a person in this forum what their sex is, and they told me female, and I said "I don't believe you prove it, send me a naked picture of yourself." They're not required to do such a thing. If they care little if I accept that they're female or not, then there's no need for them to prove it to me.
I have no desire to prove the existence of God to you, or anyone else for that matter, or to present to you a sort of scientific hypothesis about God's existence, as if it's here there, and god is supposed to be some sort of divine UFO. But I'll freely answer questions asking why I myself believe, and the basis and underpinning of this.
Before we rush headlong into the Paul issue...and btw, there is more than ample reason to conclude that Paul did not seem to believe in a "physical christ" by merely reading the specific words he wrote and taking note of the glaring omissions from someone who we should conclude was writing about an actual historical figure and does not appear to be doing so at all.
I just wanted to point out how remarkably un-self aware one appears when they use "tinfoil hat" references as humor while simutaneously touting an ideology that includes talking snakes and donkeys, hovering flaming swords, such mythological creatures as "dragons", "satyrs", "unicorns", creation and shockingly implausible flood accounts (which anyone versed in ancient history, could so clearly see were "ripped off" from earlier mythological lore), etc. etc. etc.
That tinfoil hat remark not only seems ridiculously unwarrranted, it pretty much pales horrribly in comparison to your own ideology.
Tell the truth. Are you Bill O'Reilly ?
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
George Orwell
Love is an abstraction, not an entity or something with objective reality. Unless you're saying that god is an abstraction and not an entity then by using the example of love you're equivocating. So are you claiming that god is an abstraction like "love" or "justice", or are you claiming that it is a thing with separate and distinct existence?
There are twists of time and space, of vision and reality, which only a dreamer can divine
H.P. Lovecraft
And creationist claim there's ample reasons to doubt evolution. 9/11 truthers claim there's ample reasons to believe that 9/11 was an inside job, and the creators of Obama Deception, claim there are ample reasons to believe in a global banking conspiracy.
And, I'll say if you were even vaguely familiar with the history of Christian thought you'd understand how bogus this argument from silence is. Paul is developing a Christology, a sort of development that's been continually done, and very much so in our modern age. One of the more fascinating works, at least for theist is Dietrich Bonhoeffer's "Christ and the Center", a work that reads as a modern day Epistles. One of the commonalities between such works is that they are not written for unbelievers, to address the concern of those outside the Christian community, but rather written to address one of the fundamental concerns of Christians, especially for the early followers, who had a whole lot to make sense of, concerning the nature of this Jesus Christ, the unexpected and recently crucified messiah. It's kind of no shit that this is a crucial question, and an immensely important one in the development of early Christianity.
I apologize if I come off as a bit condescending, but it comes off as fairly apparent, particularly to an individual such as myself who has a fairly learned perspective and understanding of the epistles, that both you and gadfly don't have a clue as to what you are taking about, and it's no less face palm inducing than someone well versed in science hearing a creationist attempt to expound on it.
haha.
Well, I'm sure if my ideology consisted of believing in literal talking snakes, that the world is only a few thousand years old, and etc., a tin-foil hat remark might have been warranted. I mean, if you're going to make a comparison of my silly beliefs to anothers, at least have something factual rather than pulled out your ass to go off of. It might save you a bit of embarrassment, when attributing beliefs to me that I clearly do not hold.
"Loyalty?" you mean like the Nazis had for Hitler? He convinced them that they were the chosen people. He had ideas of what an ideal person should be and live up to as well.
Again, defining your God with abstractions is a cop out.
And if your focus is not in the magical claims but in the teachings, you can find morals in "Plato's Apology", The Cat In the Hat, Harry Potter, and Star wars, without litterally believing those fictional stories as being real.
I can find morals in the Superman movies, but just because I see the City of New York in them, does not mean a man can literally fly like that.
The common definition of the "omni" meaning "all" attributes means that for your God to be consistent to that definition, it can only lead to illogical absurdities.
If God is all powerful then according to that claim this claimed being can manipulate at will every atom and quark in our bodies, on the planet, and in the universe all at once. Including manipulating the neurons in our brains.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
No tinfoil needed - just a careful reading of Scripture. How else do you think I came to a lack of belief?
Paul never saw him and never wrote of a physical Christ (note I never said anything about a historical Jesus who claimed to be Messiah as I have no problem with that. My sticking point is with one being made out to be the son of God). You don't believe in the basic tenets of Christianity and believe that God is assigned divinity by humans.
Awfully strange version of Christ worship you have there.
I also have no problem with Paul creating a Christology. He created Christ. Why not create a means to study his invention?
You should really spend more time worshipping the creator than the creation.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
Well, there is no requisite for having a careful reading of Scripture to be an atheist, cockamamie readings of scripture may just in fact lead an individual to disbelief as well.
Uhm..yea and when Paul does speak of a physical Christ, crucified by earthly rulers, suffered humiliation and abuse, who was physically buried, that Jewish authorities were involved in his death, and yada yada, then we get the silly claim that oh no, these events were believed by Paul to take place in another dimension, another world similar to our own, that also erected a roman form of capital punishment. Uhm...yea buddy. And you wonder why I suggest that tin foil hats are needed.
Uhm, Paul didn't create Christ, he expounds on what he believes Christ means.
And here's were your clueless shows, in your contradictory position of having no problem with Jesus claiming to be the Messiah, but having trouble with Son of God title, judging that the Son of God title, is a term used for the expected messiah in the Jewish tradition, denoting God's anointed king, the ultimate heir of the Davidian throne. Claiming Jesus was the Son of God, is a claim that he the messiah, Lord, the true King.
Well, I consider myself a fairly orthodox Christian. And to elaborate on the second part. No one is anything just by claiming it. Jesus isn't God just because he claims to be God, it's only by us believing that he is God, that he can ever be God to us. Put it this way, it doesn't make any sense, to say that Jesus is god, but I don't believe him to be God. To say Jesus is God, is to believe him to be God, to say Jesus is divine, is to say that I accept his divinity. Such notions only have meaning if we ourselves accept them to be true. If I don't accept them to be true, the terms have no real sense of meaning at all.
God and divinity are both human concepts, in that they're both expressive terms, that connote certain ideals, the supremacy of certain characteristics over others. When the Jewish tradition developed in the narrative the notion of the Ten Commandments, a sense of morality paved in stone, it's not to say that morality is merely a set of words and rules that comes from the sky, but rather it speaks of a stage in human history where we denote a sacredity to moral actions, and begin to speak of the supremacy of love. Many of us hold such views of sacridety, that are far from scientific conclusions, such as the belief that human life is sacred, that human life is ultimately precious, they are in fact a form of religious expression, denoting a belief in a poetic nature to life.
God and religion at the root are only the language and narrative we used to convey these expressions that we hold as the most dear to us, what we perceive as ultimately good, what we feel the real order and meaning of human existence is to be.
In fact in a recent article posted here, reveals with the use of functional magnetic resonance imaging, scientist have found that God beliefs operate in the same areas of the brain our empathy and understanding does. And it's why most explicitly in the Christian Gospels, the relationship with God is so central, and that it's conceived in our relationship with others. The idea of loving god, and loving others are united, the what we do for the least is what we do for God, in that it's only in forgiving others can we be forgiven, that God himself is denoted as the highest of all attributes, as Love itself, and Jesus Christ is claimed to be "love brought to perfection among us."
My point was utilizing "Love" as a concept that is beyond empirical analysis is in fact a proclamation. You are allocating supernatural attributes to it and expecting us to just go along with this example. Simply moving the goal post from "God" to "Love" in regards to this, does not in any way shift the burden of proof. I don't see love as a supernatural force, if you do and you want to use it as an example, then you will need to prove the supernatural concept of "Love".
Utilizing a magical concept to define yet another magical concept, probably won't work with most atheist. As an Ex-atheist this should be obvious...
Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. - William S. Burroughs
Cockamamie meaning "not reading it your way"? Cockamamie meaning "reading it without adding in what a preacher told me"?
I'm not a mythicist - the gospel writers probably had a rabbi that they built Jesus around. A Jesus probably existed
None of what Paul states necessarily leads to a physical Jesus. That only comes when you add the backstory when the gospels built around Paul's work. The events surrounding the death of the Jesus character had to be sufficiently nasty and exciting or no one would read the story.
Paul's writings came first - was there a Jesus Christ concept beforehand? I know there was a christ concept because messiah claimants were around for years.
There were hundreds of men named Jesus (Yeshua/Joshua) - it was a very common name. There were probably a few of those that claimed to be Messiah - Messiah claimants came up all the time.
They had to build one to be the miracle working son of God. That's the one I have problems with.
That must be why the Jesus character never actually claimed to be the son of God, only the son of man (which is the messianic title you're conflating). "Son of God" was borrowed to show that he was of the Davidic line, I agree. If his father was God himself, then he couldn't possibly be of the line of David. Joseph was just daddy on paper, remember? Or did David claim divinity as well? Did Yahweh nail David's mom?
So we agree - the act of the humans writing the Bible assigned God divinity. When the characters of God and Jesus claim divinity for themselves (as you assert), that's just the writers assigning it to them.
As for the fMRI - it sounds like you equate divinity with warm fuzzy feelings or stirring rhetoric.
These explain it better than I:
http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/17079
http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/17426
If God gives me the same feelings as my friends, political rhetoric that resonates with me and chocolate, I don't see much of a need for him. Why do you?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
It is not bizzar at all. I was responding to you. I was simply cutting through the bullshit and cutting to the chase. You are not used to people seeing through long winded needless apologetics.
Super natural, is merely anything made up, be it vampires, oiji boards , voodoo dolls, or deities.
"Paul said this" Moses said that" is irrelivent to the fantastic claims of the bible, not to mention the alledged so called "God" character itself.
"Paul" said this, so therefore invisable beings exist. THAT IS A GAP ANSWER!
"Mohamed said this, so therefore Allah is the one true God and does pick the sex of the baby". I've heard a Muslim claim that, so because he quoted the Koran, it must be true by default, and magical disembodied being named Allah manipulated the XY chromesomes(sp)
And even if I, for argument's sake only, ceded to Paul existing as a real human being. BUT, he most certainly was NOT a contemporary of the alleged Jesus character, and it still wouldn't constitution beings with no neurons or brain matter floating around in the "heavens".
Where is you evidence that a being with no brian, no DNA and no neurons lives in the space of absolute zero?
So since we can prove Tut was a real king, does that mean the sun is a thinking being?
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
hum, let me see if I understand you correctly, are you saying that speaking of love, or anything beyond the means of empirical analysis and validation we are speaking of something supernatural?
More like trying to cut to the chase, and forgetting where the track is.
Well, Brian buddy I've been on such forums long enough to be used to all sorts of things, there's nothing expectational here little buddy, there's not much new under the sun.
Actually, it's not. God of the Gaps, is when the role of God is confined in the gaps in scientific explanations for nature. An example would be "we don't know how the brain evolved, therefore God did it." My mother says that Santa Claus exists, therefore Santa clause exists is not a gap answer.
But I'm not exactly sure why this has to do with anything I've said or claimed so far? The only time I mentioned something about "Paul said", was to counter a claim by gadfly proclaiming that Paul didn't reference a historical Jesus? Is this what you are referring to? If so, can you try and do a better job of articulating what your point is?
What the who? We were debating if Paul existed as a human being?
Brian you responses have started to become utterly weird to me, as if you're like talking to yourself, inventing imaginary claims you try and associate with me, and then spend time at length arguing them. The responses are highly sporadic, and barely coherent.
Are you okay?
And I don't mean to ask you this to be rude or demeaning, but do you suffer from any sort of mental illness? ADD or something along those lines?
We have already explained emotions and we have alread explained that they have nothing to do with the god you claim is real. You have yet to define your god and provide evidence for it.
Stop dodging. You are not dealing with lightweights here. We have seen this dance before and we are not fooled by it.
Provide evidence for the god you claim is real.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
If I am referring to theists as "Chew toys" then that would make me the dog, just like a person froths at the mouth over the thought of a brand new car and it's smell, only to get used to it and get board with it.
I have have a short attention span. So take my sense of humor for what it is, just that. I am only serious in that I like to verbaly smack people into thinking for themselves, but I would never leave you or anyone else bleeding on the street from a car accident.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Love is one of those concepts that people like to elevate by applying supernatural characteristics to it. I believe this is why you chose it as an example. Your point was Love is a vague concept and differs at the individual level or some such. My point is that is only true, when those individuals choose to elevate it's meaning to supernatural proportions.
I understand what you were trying to achieve, all I'm saying is that this example of love will face the same challenges as the example of god. Both require some measure of faith to allow for a belief beyond a natural explanation.
Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer. - William S. Burroughs
Actually i wasn't trying to set you up, or achieve something by my question, I was just trying to understand what your getting at. When you say elevate the meaning of love, do you mean elevate it beyond it's scientific meaning? If I were to say Jesus Christ is an exemplar of perfect love, does that in and of it self mean that i am attributing a supernatural quality to him?
How do you define "perfect" love ? What, according to you, makes love perfect ?
Is this perfect love something that can only originate with a divine being ?
How in heck do you think Jesus was the perfect embodiment of love? I think there are much better people than that! Like Hannah Montana!
Love is observable and as far as I know is not considered objective, God isn't and is.