On Tue, 24 May 2005 10:16:23 GMT, "Zadok" <nobler@accesswave.ca> wrote:

What makes an atheist different from someone like you, is that an athiest
will admit miracles happen,

We will?

I don't think so.

We may say that something *seems* miraculous, but that is about as far as it
goes, what, with miracles being the direct intervention of a god, or other
supernatural being.

... You just have to blame human fallibility in determining
God's reasoning, which is always defined as beyond our grasp in order
to tidy it up.

Zadok wrote:

"J Young" <> wrote in message ...

Once again, I'm not thumping any Bible but; how do atheists explain
miracles? These are not myths but rather otherwise unexplained
experiences that cannot be attributed to anything other than a

loving

God.

If you are crediting miracles to a loving God, then it makes it

imperative

that you also credit natural disasters to a hateful God.

Not at all. What you have to do is explain how, out of God's
love, things that appear to us as evil are actually there to provide
experiences from which we can ensure that such things don't recur or,
if we have insight, we may be able to prevent similar yet slightly
different evil-appearing events. It's a tricky angle but, since the
supposed "Loving God's" mind is so far removed from ours coupled with
His omniscience, we tend to misinterpret events.

And, of course, just
to tidy up, any persons' souls lost in such events are perfectly fine.

BTW, I'm not purporting this philosophy to be a representation of
reality but it IS a philosophy in which evil-seeming events stem from a
loving God. You just have to blame human fallibility in determining
God's reasoning, which is always defined as beyond our grasp in order
to tidy it up.

But you don't
mention that do you??

If you read myths of old, miracles were always credited to some

diety,

whether it be Odin, Thor, Zeus, or who ever.

The fact remains, that since the beginning of recorded history,

miracles

and/or disasters were credited to the Gods. Miracles if they were

happy,

disasters if they were mad.

Thus in your bible, you have a flood to destroy mankind, fire and

brimstone

to destroy cities, a nationialistic God telling the children of

Israel to

kill all their enemies, all men, women and children (but of course

keep the

virgins for themselves).

What makes an atheist different from someone like you, is that an

athiest

will admit miracles happen, but also admit they don't have an

explanation.

You rather than be honest, and say you don't know, will ascribe it to

some

loving God, while denying that this same God is responsible for

disasters.

You will do this with no proof at all. You will surround yourself

with a

herd of people with similiar beliefs, to help convince you that it is

so,

and again, none of you have any proof at all.

You will claim that the proof is biblical texts, that you really

don't know

who wrote them, when they were written, or any thing else about them.
While saying this is proof, you will deny similiar texts telling you

of

other Gods.

Your new testament, is based on copies of copies of copies. No

original

exists. Copiests often changed the text to better explain (wink,

wink), or

expand on items, and thus incorporate their own ideas.

Yet, when confronted with an actual clay tablet from Summeria, you

will deny

that those Gods exist/ed.

To any thinking man, your position is undefendable.

Here is something for all the arrogant teenaged geniuses out there. I asked
the same question on another NG that I asked here. Where did the ability to
think and reason come from?

the usual childish name callers. On the other NG, a grownup appeared:
***
Nobody is saying intelligence evolved from a rock ( that I know of).

You ask the question backwards, but first I'll try to capsulate all those
words of the article I just skimmed (not read).

Some people that didn't understand the process that Darwin discovered (not
invented) thought it was all a series of accidents and mutations, most of
which did not survive, but when the mutation was superior to the norm, then
it thrived and reproduced until it became the norm.

That was a superficial and incomplete observation of the process Darwin
discovered, much like thinking an abstract artist accidentally sloshes paint
around to achieve a work of abstract design. That is not what happens.
The intelligence of the artist is brought to bear sloshing and adjusting the
paint as better and better designs present themselves. The intelligent
artist keeps the good stuff and paints over or discards the bad stuff.

Now, think of one intelligence (call that God, or nature, or Great Mystery
or whatever you want to call it) filling the universe with thought. The
"rock" is first a concept...a thought more void than form. As the concept
"rock" "evolves", it is separated from other concepts without form, slowly
or quickly (there is not space relationship between this thought and other
thoughts to complete the movement between objects which is time). from void
to form with more and more defining characteristics which will make it a
rock.

Now let us look at the rock as it appears. It's a rock, appearing to be
rock solid and devoid of intelligence....but when intelligence is applied to
the observation process over many thousands of years....some of that
intelligence (surpassing others) begins to see that the rock is made up of
molecular structures that are tiny bits of mass revolving around other tiny
bits of mass (now times becomes the relationship of where one bit of mass
was to the other and where it is to the other...and where it will be. Upon
more keen observation it becomes clear that there is far more space than
mass. As my 5th grade science teacher put it, make a pencil dot here where
I stand and another at the back of the room. Now draw a circle from the one
across the room 360 degrees until it comes back to where it started. The
huge circle is one atom of rock. Put a bunch of atoms together and you get
the whole rock.

Something holds the bits of mass together. It was once known as electricity
(not electrical current as commonly thought of with the world electricity)
So the rock was a couple of tiny little bits of mass held together by this
huge circle of electricity.

Now we'll apply a few more decades of intelligence and look at the atom that
is mostly electricity with a couple of tiny specs of mass and then we see
that even the specs of mass are broken down into even smaller bits of
something revolving around something else. Eventually we see that there is
no mass as we thought of when we looked at the rock, but just more
electricity broken down into quarks and maybe even further broken down.

So the evolving intelligence realizes the quarks are just energy and the
largest part of the atom, the electricity is also just energy. In fact
there is only energy. Now..........here is where you can see the building
block of the universe.

It is discovered that quarks move at the speed of light, but to see them you
have to know where to look when the quark is there. So they pick a spot and
look hoping to see something and expecting to see it eventually when they
accidentally (Remember Darwin's accidents) pick the right spot.

Whoa! The see a quark! Then they see another! Then they realize that it
exists when they look for it and ceases to exist when they are not looking.
They blink in and out of existence with the awareness of them. In someway
whatever energy that forms them interacts with the energy of the
intelligence that is looking for them. When those two energies converge the
quark is there. Maybe it is two energies or maybe it is all just one
energy.

If there is nothing but energy and the energy thinks, then perhaps nothing
exists except intelligence.

The rock evolved from the intelligence. The rock IS intelligent energy.
Perhaps our bodies are rocks (the dust of minerals and water) combined
together in an evolving vessel which is born and dies becoming dust again,
but inhabited and controlled by spirit which is intelligence which is energy
which is really all that there really is.

Our intelligence hasn't evolved enough to know how it all works, but before
you laugh it off, remember that an entire universe of mass can collapse into
something the size of the head of a pin........called a black hole. That's
a lot of mass in a little space........probably not much intelligence
between the bits of mass therein.

This is a view physics from an armchair philosopher.....not a scientist or
mathematician. They would understand it better, but might not be able to
explain for lesser intelligents like myself.

I accidentally (Darwin style) fill in a few details from time to time and my
understanding is a work in progress, but it is the best I can do to answer
your question.
**

Too bad the kids on tx.politics are so lacking in intellect.