Best argument FOR God that you've heard....

1- Eyewitnesses to his assorted miracles ranged from just one or two people to literally thousands at a time.
For example when the wine ran out at a wedding reception his mam said "Hey JC the caterers have fouled up, so will you be a good boy and pull some of that miracle stuff?"

2- JC said he was an alien visitor and demonstrated awesome powers to prove it-
"I know where I came from and where I am going, but you have no idea where I come from or where I am going....you are of this world, I am not of this world...though you do not believe me, believe the miracles...I'll tell you things hidden since the creation of the world" (John 8:14/ 8:23/10:38/Matt 13:35)
And here comes my standard joke-
Hey Spock will you listen to alien visitor Jesus?

"Affirmative, I'm all ears"

 

Saved from the future the God threatens you with should you choose not to believe in it.

 

The human component of Jesus can and was tempted, yes. This isn't special knowledge. It's basic doctrine that Jesus was human and divine. You cannot tempt God, I agree. But you can tempt man. It's the wishy washy realm of how a being can be human and God. I don't pretend to know how, exactly. I am telling you what is basic Christian beliefs. You seem to want an answer I cannot give you. I, in turn, am trying to simply state what the vast majority of Christians believe about the nature of Jesus and God.

 

You make a good point. I believe Hitchens called it, "A la carte Christianity."

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examples of his psychopathy? was it the healing of the sick? or the casting out of demons? or maybe making the lame walk again? or feeding thousands? which one? this is a very fringe idea. explain yourself.

 

I've heard that, but haven't investigated what it actually means.

Does Hitchens see "a la carte" christians as still going to heaven?

It seems to me that the definition reflects a lack of serious commitment to Christ and more of a commitment to keeping a socially acceptable appearance.

The new testament is fairly clear about the rock bottom requirement for salvation, but I've seen no statement in the Bible that suggests what it takes to REMAIN "saved". And, it seems odd to me that a god would accept a one time commitment, possibly at a point of significant feelings of mortality, as covering all possible futures.

 

Of course, the other two major forks of religions based on the Bible (Islam and Judaism) don't have this problem.

 

Of course they don't. And Christianity and Islam are 2 of the 3 Abrahamic religions. Judaism being the first.

 

Whoa, not all Christians believe Jesus was God!
We know he WASN'T God because he said so himself often enough, for example-

"I am going to the Father, for my Father is greater than I" (John 14:28 )
"Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone" (Luke 18:19)
"Only God knows when Judgement Day will be, I don't know myself" (Mark 13:32)
High Priest asks - "Are you the Son of God?" Jesus replies - "I am" (Mark 14:61)
"I say nothing of my own accord, i only say what my father tells me to say.." (John 12:49)
"My teaching is not my own. It comes from him who sent me" (John 7:17)
And of course,God himself said - "This is my beloved son, listen to him" (Matt 17:5)

 

I suspect Hitchens didn't believe anyone was going to heaven, a la carte or not. And I think your definition of it is spot on. There is definitely a powerful drive to pick those socially acceptable precepts from Christianity. Nobody truly lives "by the Word"...if you like. I believe this is what Paul meant when he claimed that "none are righteous, no, not one." in Romans 3:10

I think God did accept a one time commitment in the form of Christ at Calvary. But you raise an interesting question about the bible and what it says about remaining "saved". Maybe living a life of repentance? But repentance implies you know you've done something wrong and stop doing it based on the strong conviction of sin. Repentance is not forgiveness or forgetfulness for that matter. And I agree the NT is clear about the rock bottom requirement for salvation. It's we humans with our human minds that muddy and make things complex...or at least overly-complex. Then again Catholics and Protestants can't agree on exactly what it takes to be "saved". Again.....humans.

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The overwhelming majority of Christians believe Jesus was God. That's not debatable. My sister is a Jehovas Witness...she doesn't believe Jesus was God(see translation differences in bibles). But these numbers are very small in the grand scheme of things. I should note that I can find many many examples in the bible that say or suggest that Jesus and God the Father are two different entities...I don't disagree with you on that point.

 

I tried googling to get some hard figures but couldn't find any. As I said, Jesus himself made it clear he wasn't God, so I honestly don't see how anybody can disagree with him as it's tantamount to calling him a fibber..
Here's another important verse-
"When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus replied, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by flesh and blood, but by my Father in heaven" (Matt 16:13-17)

We could therefore conclude that people who believe he was God haven't yet had it revealed to them that he wasn't..

 

No doubt it's child's play for the shallow of mind to buy into such drivel.

How very amusing.

I didn't ask whether the "human component of Jesus" can be tempted, I asked if He is both temptable and untemptable. So is that a yes or a no?

I don't care if it's "basic doctrine", I care if it's true.

IOW, you don't know it to be true, only widely believed.

On the contrary, the question is perfectly straightforward, and you can easily affirm, deny or claim ignorance; so if you don't answer, it can only be because you don't want to.

Maybe that has something to do with the increasing impotence of Christianity over the last century or so.

 

How many different ways can I tell you I don't know if it's true. I only know what orthodoxy says. Why so thick?

Sent from my SM-T350 using Tapatalk

 

I get to cast the first stone every time.

 

If God represents Himself as both tempable and untemptable, how can He be anything but an author of confusion?

 

Preacher Brady speaks. All must listen, take heart and believe as I do! (At least according to Brady's expectations)

 

Did you even read the argument we're talking about?

The argument is logically valid, meaning that the conclusion is logically inescapable given the premises.

Special pleading is a form of fallacious argument that involves an attempt to cite something as an exception to a generally accepted rule, principle, etc. without justifying the exception.

A proof of an exception is justification of that exception.

A sound deductive argument is a proof.

The only way to undermine the soundness of a valid deductive argument is to impugn at least one of its premises.

 

of course.

no it isn't, as it's based on an assumption.

The deductive argument presented isn't sound, as I've pointed out. It's premise is an assumption. It's special pleading to exempt it from the requirements of everything else in order to avoid infinite regression, as I've pointed out.

 

Yes

That's a prediction of yours. I don't think it'll really turn out that way.

In principle, any finite span can be subdivided ad infinitum, which is to say that potential infinitude is logically coherent.

Trying to reason from actual infinities can lead to logical contradictions.

If any particle really did consist of an infinite number of non-arbitrary subdivisions, it would be physically possible for two mutually exclusive propositions to both be true, but that's just too much to swallow.

The way I see it, an actually infinite set of discrete units is just as coherent as a square circle. We can say the words, but they have no referent in reality. When someone refers to the set of "all natural numbers", for example, he may say that he's talking about an actually infinite set, but he can't possibly have compiled such a set. If a set is complete, then all its elements can be accounted for. If he really had accounted for every possible natural number, he would be talking about a complete, and therefore finite, set. As we know, the number of natural numbers is potentially infinite(IOW, you could count ad infinitum), which literally means that they cannot all be counted, accounted for, or compiled into a set. So "actually infinite set" is a meaningless arrangement of words.

 

There are legitimate objections to that argument, but nothing you've said in this thread even resembles a coherent objection.

What you have said looks like statements that would be made by someone who, not only has not understood the argument in question, but is also oblivious to the meanings of logical consequence, the rules of inference(inductive, deductive, and the difference between them), logical validity and logical soundness(and the difference between them); in short, someone who has no idea what he's talking about.

Had you read the links in my last response to you, you could have made a more intelligent response. Instead, you made this one, betraying that you still don't know the difference between validity and soundness, that you still don't know the meaning of special pleading, and(when you say "It's premise is an assumption." as if it were a problem) that you still haven't understood the argument.

I don't know what else to say to you other than: Throw away your list of "logical fallacies", and take a course in logic.

 

Each of those examples is a man made response to something they actually have little knowledge of, or to allow them to compute problems in a "language" they can understand, and use. Without it they would be lost, and it will serve its purpose until something better comes along as has the "language" of many scientific queries. Now, whether the actual number of particles in any given element is infinite we will probably never know unless our abilities greatly improve.

 

Well, if you have a response that isn't man-made, it might be interesting. If you have superior languages to introduce, some would probably be interested in that too.

In the meantime, I think putting a bit more effort into using the languages we already have would be a huge step forward.

 

If time is a property of the universe as modern theories of physics tell us, then there was never a time when the universe didn't exist, even if it did have a beginning.

 

That's true. Since the crux of the argument hinges on contingency and necessity, and not necessarily on time, one could write a variant of it immune to that objection, but yeah, as Thomas wrote it, pointing that out definitely shoots it down.

 

I enjoy reading what you write...even the items with which I disagree.

I want to say this about the arguments of Aquinas:

He ended his arguments with variations on: "This all men speak of as god" or "This everyone understands to be god."

Without regard to whether he reasonably arrived at the initial conclusions he did (I think not)...he clearly was wrong on the conclusion he derived from the conclusions.

Everyone (or all men) do not understand it to be "god"...or speak of it as "god."

Many of us understand it to be something unknown.

Said another way: The writings of Aquinas are NOT the best arguments for the existence of any gods.

 

If you believe in the "wrong god" you can still lose or if god doesn't give a damn whether you believe or not then you can't lose. Only a vindictive and cruel god would care whether people believed or not and if that's what people want to believe in then that's their choice.