I've never been an atheist. I really do like God stories. I've just never
seen any evidence than they are anything more than stories.

If you accept the bible as fact without the need for contemporary evidence,
and with a complete disregard for the known laws of physics, then you are
forced to accept every other religious story. Otherwise it is just a
matter of faith.

We can accept historical reports of car accidents, for what they are worth
and subject to the knowledge that even eye-witness testimony is fraught
with error, because we know that car accidents happen and they do kill
people. But if we are given a report that a parked car simply flew to
pieces with no apparent cause, and was crumpled by some unseen force...
well, it's going into the loony files.

We can know that two people are dead. Even if we didn't know them,
sometimes we accept things because there is no apparent reason not to. Can
we know for certain? Nope.

It's nice to think about. But I'll believe it when I see it.

For instance, we know that cancer can go into spontaneous remission.
Jesus's ability to heal cancer will be right in line with the chances of it
happening on its own.

And you know this how?

I know this because it's been demonstrated countless times. Doctors know
that cancer can go into remission. They see it happen now and then. Some
of those patients are Christian who claim it's a miracle. Others are
Buddhists who claim it's a miracle. Others are atheists who say "Thanks
for you help doc!".

Look at it this way. Some lottery winners consider their good fortune to
be a gift from God. Well, that's doubtful. It's also completely
undemonstrable. You may as well believe that it's a gift from Elvis
Presley. Statisticians know it's just plain chance.

But with anything that medical science would label
as "Not a snowballs chance in hell", such as decapitation, and Jesus is
powerless.

You seem to know an awful lot about a guy who, according to you, never
existed. Now who's the author of fiction?

I'm just illustrating the logical progression of the idea. Don't you find
it odd that Jesus is credited with saving people from cancer, or severe
bodily injury, yet he hasn't once saved a person from decapitation?

Let's
face it, Jesus is a slacker. ;) He'll answer prayers, just as long as the
answer can't be distinguished from sheer dumb luck.

I think you missed the point. At any rate, it kind of goes along the lines
of the old saying that there are no atheists in foxholes.

In other words,
you can make a reasonable guess statistically that there were in fact a
certain number of Christians who died in the WTC.

But then that's religion... if they are dead it's just proof that their
faith wasn't strong enough. Faith is never strong enough to do anything
that can't happen by itself.

On Tue, 26 Oct 2004 02:25:53 GMT, Noon Cat Nick
<chatdemidiSPAMBEGONE@catlover.com> wrote:

CyberDroog wrote:

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 23:20:30 GMT, Noon Cat Nick
<chatdemidiSPAMBEGONE@catlover.com> wrote:

CyberDroog wrote:

Do you believe in Joseph Smith and the golden tablets also?..

Are you saying that if I don't accept the veracity of one story, I must
then refuse to accept the veracity of any story you find questionable?

No. I'm saying you must question the veracity of *any* questionable story.
Any story which contradicts any of the well-known physical laws we are all
used to. Such as death for starters.

BTDT. I was an atheist for over a decade.

I've never been an atheist. I really do like God stories. I've just never
seen any evidence than they are anything more than stories.

Generally people look for more than one account to verify a story, and
don't just accept a bunch of "believers" words. Especially when the things
spoken of are "miracles". No serious scholar believes that Herod had every
infant in Judea murdered. There is no contemporary account of it ever
happening.

1. Define what "a serious scholar" is.

Someone who values secular evidence as much as anything else.

2. Explain why you accept the conclusions of those scholars, yet don't
accept those from other biblical scholars--by your own admission.

I can't accept anyone's conclusions really. It's more like a preponderance
of evidence. And I wasn't speaking of biblical scholars per se. I don't
much value the idea of anyone being a scholar on a single work of fiction.

Just because something doesn't match your
personal standard of empirical evidence doesn't necessarily disqualify
it from being acceptable evidence, nor does its disqualification assert
superiority of empiricism in judging the geniune historicity of events.

Well, yes it does.

How so?

If you accept the bible as fact without the need for contemporary evidence,
and with a complete disregard for the known laws of physics, then you are
forced to accept every other religious story. Otherwise it is just a
matter of faith.

Two dead bodies in a mangled car wreck *is* initial proof that two people
were killed in a car wreck. You may never know how exactly the accident
happened, but you know an accident did happen. Or do you?

According to you, if neither you nor a wormhole lens were there at the
time to observe or record the event, then it didn't happen. If you never
see two dead bodies in a mangled car wreck, and no recording of the
event has been made, then there is no mangled car wreck with two dead
bodies. Any other person's report is questionable. That's what you've
been saying.

It's not that I claim an event didn't happen. I am suggesting that some
events *couldn't* happen.

We can accept historical reports of car accidents, for what they are worth
and subject to the knowledge that even eye-witness testimony is fraught
with error, because we know that car accidents happen and they do kill
people. But if we are given a report that a parked car simply flew to
pieces with no apparent cause, and was crumpled by some unseen force...
well, it's going into the loony files.

We can know that two people are dead. Even if we didn't know them,
sometimes we accept things because there is no apparent reason not to. Can
we know for certain? Nope.

Do you know for certain that Jim Morrison is dead? Neither do I. But then
there is no reason not to think he is, conspiracy reports notwithstanding.
There is also no reason to believe that Charles Manson flew a school bus up
into the hills of Southern California, even though the story has been
confirmed with many of his followers.

Crippled hell. Let's go with decapitated. Find me one single person who
has been decapitated and then rescued by Jesus. You can't. Jesus can only
work miracles that have a statistical likelihood of happening by chance.

Like resuscitating the corpses of person who had been died? How high of
a statistical likelihood is there of that happening by chance?...Oh,
wait, Christians wrote those accounts, so they must be dirty filthy lies.

No dead person has ever been resuscitated. That is quite simple to prove -
if they are alive now than they were never actually dead. Medical science
has produced an uncomfortable knowledge that death is not a single, instant
thing. It is a process. Science has learned to interrupt that process at
a later point than primitive man ever could have believed was possible.
That doesn't mean that a doctor has ever brought someone back to life.
It's never happened. Doctors simply prevent people from dying. They have
pulled people back from the *edge* of death, not yanked them back through
the Pearly Gates.

You didn't answer the decapitation problem. Even to the best doctor,
decapitation is death, period, no chance of recovery. (Of course it has
been reported that some decapitated heads may be conscious for up to a
minute. As I said, death is a process.)

Well, let's go even further. Bring back a person who was standing at
ground zero in Hiroshima or Nagasaki. (That is fraught with problems of
proof also. How do *we* know that the person "brought back" was actually
there? Well, overlook that for now.) I'd actually not give up on any
idea. I'm not saying anything is impossible. I'm just saying we have no
good evidence for some things.

Oddly enough, the wormhole camera I spoke of (From Arthur C. Clarke's and
Stephen Baxter's novel The Light of Other Days) actually could lead to
resurrection. All atoms of the same element are identical, so you don't
need to retrieve the body that was converted to vapor. All you need is the
exact quantum blueprint of the body at a point immediately before the
explosion. Add all the necessary mass of various elements, put them
together following the quantum blueprint, and you have resurrected that
person. (Why stop there... maybe the person was very old, infirm, or
didn't like their body. You could build them a better body, and just
restore their mind. As far as they would know, they would have blinked
their eyes and suddenly find themselves in a new body.)

It's nice to think about. But I'll believe it when I see it. (Which would
probably be billions of years from now, with me having blinked and suddenly
found myself in an unfamiliar place with an unfamiliar, yet perfectly
functioning, body.)

For instance, we know that cancer can go into spontaneous remission.
Jesus's ability to heal cancer will be right in line with the chances of it
happening on its own.

And you know this how?

I know this because it's been demonstrated countless times. Doctors know
that cancer can go into remission. They see it happen now and then. Some
of those patients are Christian who claim it's a miracle. Others are
Buddhists who claim it's a miracle. Others are atheists who say "Thanks
for you help doc!".

Look at it this way. Some lottery winners consider their good fortune to
be a gift from God. Well, that's doubtful. It's also completely
undemonstrable. You may as well believe that it's a gift from Elvis
Presley. Statisticians know it's just plain chance.

But with anything that medical science would label
as "Not a snowballs chance in hell", such as decapitation, and Jesus is
powerless.

You seem to know an awful lot about a guy who, according to you, never
existed. Now who's the author of fiction?

I'm just illustrating the logical progression of the idea. Don't you find
it odd that Jesus is credited with saving people from cancer, or severe
bodily injury, yet he hasn't once saved a person from decapitation? Let's
face it, Jesus is a slacker. ;) He'll answer prayers, just as long as the
answer can't be distinguished from sheer dumb luck.

Or another example I've used before. Of all the people praying in the WTC
when it was hit, God only answered the prayers of those *below* where the
planes hit. Not a single person above the level where the planes hit got
out alive. Geez, what are the odds that all the people at the higher
levels that day were on God's ***** list?

Are there any accounts (other than scholarly) that any persons in the
WTC were praying at that time? And if so, ought we to take them
seriously? After all, if no videorecording exists, and you yourself
didn't witness it, you have no empirical evidence of it happening, and
so no ground for making that claim.

I think you missed the point. At any rate, it kind of goes along the lines
of the old saying that there are no atheists in foxholes. In other words,
you can make a reasonable guess statistically that there were in fact a
certain number of Christians who died in the WTC.

But then that's religion... if they are dead it's just proof that their
faith wasn't strong enough. Faith is never strong enough to do anything
that can't happen by itself.