Prove to me that God exists (page 11)

Terry

PROVE TO ME THAT GOD EXISTS

I'd think GOD would have little difficulty confirming His existence if He filled any actual place in space, time or actuality.

But, no.

We have to imagine all sorts of awkward excuses to explain this ____blank spot____at the table where the food served goes cold and the flies buzz around his now tepid ice tea glass.

It's almost tragically funny that all our information (if you can even call it "information") about God is hearsay. All the EYE-WITNESS testimony has taken place offstage. We hear the cannons roar but, don't even smell the smoke.

I think of a very nice Mormon fellow who came to my house once who showed me the list of names of eyewitnesses who saw the Golden Plates brought by the angel Moroni to Joseph Smith to translate from weird heiroglyphs into ersatz King James english.

I looked at those names in long rows which this fellow was so proud of. I blinked at them again and again. This was HIS ironclad "proof" that those plates existed. This was his trump card.

I wasn't very nice to him; I'm sad to say.

I excused myself and went into the house and fetched one of my kid's storybooks.

I brought it outside and showed him the list of names:

Dopey

Bashfull

Sleepy

Doc

Grumpy

Happy

Sneezy

I pointed to the names and glanced up at this "Elder's" blank face.

I said to him, "Anybody can write out a list of names, can't they?"

I'm ashamed of this behavior now. But, I thought I was making a point at the time.

One man's "proof positive" is another man's seven dwarfs.

We only have men. We have people. We have humans....all INSISTING at the top of their voice that all this talk of GOD is true.

We have nothing else.

What an enormous expenditure of effort for nothing!!

Terry

GetBusyLiving

Terry if you had been looking "with eyes of faith" as the Bible says... then you would see.

GBL

Terry

Terry if you had been looking "with eyes of faith" as the Bible says... then you would see.
GBL

I am highly interest in language. Its use and abuse.

I've become aware that concrete objects often switch uses in language and become metaphorical by intention.

For example:

When we think of "looking" we think of using our focused attention and our organs of sight (eyes) to capture the photons of light bouncing off of an acutally existing object which we would then interpret from the signal received in our optic nerve leading to our organic brain.

In your statement above we have this everday activity hi-jacked (if I may metaphorically do the same with a vivid verb) and replaced with an evocative fantasy.

The "looking" you describe and the poetic "eyes of faith" piggy back off our actual resonant knowledge of ordinary looking (described above) and "seeing".

This is a switcheroo!

This is like the story of the Changeling.

You've substituted my actual seeing with a metaphoric "seeing" leaving a holagram image of a non-reality standing where an actual reality might ordinarily stand.

This is how the elastic language of religion works.

It is a virus.

It invades our mental software and duplicates itself.

It hijacks our cognitive understanding and warps it into a meta-language that disguises itself as an actual language of reality.

There is NO SUCH THING as "seeing" with "eyes of faith". It is poetic nonsense.

Just as the object of this "seeing" is nonsense because there is nothing there to see.

That is why the hijack language and the metaphor must be employed to support this changeling agenda.

It took me years to figure out why religious language of faith was so strongly rooted in people.

It is a VIRAL INFECTION of our mind.

Thanks, but, no thanks.

Terry

trevor

GetBusyLiving

Going by your other posts - I think you were using satire and actually agreeing with Terry?

GetBusyLiving

I thought Terry might have read some of my other stuff! I was just trying to show up how stupid the whole "eyes of faith" argument is, devils advocate style. Actually I don't believe in God at all.

For a brief moment there I contemplated winding him up.. but I dont think I want to bear the brunt of his nuclear bomb-like text dissections!

GBL

Qcmbr

Had an interesting discussion with a work colleague - apologies if this is a little off topic but I thought it worth sharing - He is a hindu by birth and isn't religious except in a cultural way (just the same way many people celebrate Christmas with nativities but no real religious observance.) Anyhow, he was in India at the time of the 'milk drinking' Ghanesh(?) episode which I remember seeing on TV (7 years ago?). In a nutshell some woman had a dream that this God wanted to drink milk ...(shrugs) so that morning she 'fed' the statue milk and it was sucked up. She passed this message onto her family and it spread from there on to the world. The point of this is that my colleague said he was there watching the crowds line up with pails of milk outside the temples and he decided he would put aside his doubts and just give it ago. He said that sure enough all the little Ghanesh statues in his house appeared to drink the milk. He was a little tken aback and decided to try it on a picture of this God on a calendar and this calendar 'drank' a glass of milk with no soggy patches or drips (he was tipping the glass slowly over the picture) - he said it really freaked him out because he isn't a believer. He said it was one of those moments when all the things you take for granted - the solid material world - took a bit of an intellectual shake and he said he know thinks that their is something happening out there but he hasn't got a clue what. Just to follow up he said it only happended that once - the next day there was no milk drinking by any of his Ghanesh statues etc..

I just sat their a bit stunned and he asked what it all meant because he didn't have a clue but he knows that a load of milk dissappeared into little statues and the calendar on that day. Oh and while I remember he said it was happening on any images of this god everywhere - he said he went outside and tried it on a little gold relief and the milk disappeared.

Weird huh? My work colleague is pretty sane and normal and isn't claiming conversion or anything from this.

doogie

In a nutshell some woman had a dream that this God wanted to drink milk ...(shrugs) so that morning she 'fed' the statue milk and it was sucked up.

i heard about this and i think it's pretty well been thrashed by that dern rascal "science".

http://www.mindspring.com/~anson/randi-hotline/1995/0027.html

What's really happening is that teaspoons of milk are being absorbed; it's called capillary action. A small amount of milk touched to the mouth of a plaster figure, according to the press, just "disappeared." I think not. The milk didn't "disappear"; it was simply soaked up by the plaster.
Note that, as Reuters reported, the whole thing started as a "rumor" -- the media is now gleefully promoting it, and now
that the Canadian media are snapping it up, I'm sure that every statue in the Dominion will be trotted out to the wonderment of the naive.
I believe that a plaster statue of Lyndon Johnson will do exactly the same thing, perhaps with a pint of beer -- now, is that, too, a miracle? Maybe in Texas....
I'm a very practical soul, so I propose a test of this wondrous curiosity: offer the statue a teaspoonful of ink. If that, too, is "slurped up," Hindu gods are either incredibly stupid, or have poorly-developed taste buds. No one will do such a test, of course, because we have here a perfectly good and attractive farce going full-steam, and enough naive people to meet our most ambitious needs.

this doesn't touch on any incident's of paper pictures enjoying milk, but i've never heard that before. but seeing as it was one person experiencing a non-repeatable event under the assumption that he had just previously witnessed a miracle...i don't know. sounds just a bit fishy.

Terry

For a brief moment there I contemplated winding him up.. but I dont think I want to bear the brunt of his nuclear bomb-like text dissections!
GBL

WHOOOOOOOM!!!!!

Qcmbr

Actually Doogie I said the same thing and he said that at first he agreed but when he saw pails of milk disappearing he began to think that maybe capillary action wasn't enough to remove gallons of milk (the queues were large.) He says it would be easy to pass it off as wishful thinking if it wasn't for the sheer quantity of milk involved and also the fact that it didn't happen the next day even with little teaspoons of milk. I know its cr*p to pass on reported stories since they are now once removed from the person who saw it but I can assure you my colleague is not particullarly religious , is very logical and very very well educated. He said he wouldn't believe it at all expect for the fact he saw it.

Terry

I just sat their a bit stunned and he asked what it all meant because he didn't have a clue but he knows that a load of milk dissappeared into little statues and the calendar on that day. Oh and while I remember he said it was happening on any images of this god everywhere - he said he went outside and tried it on a little gold relief and the milk disappeared.

Weird huh? My work colleague is pretty sane and normal and isn't claiming conversion or anything from this.

I once saw a magician stuff razorblades into his mouth and eat a lightbulb.

In conjunction, however, with the above testimony I would ask that you consider the subject (a very large one going back decades and decades into bleakest distant pasts) of PIOUS FRAUD.

Rather than list examples of this I just urge you to do a Google search on PIOUS FRAUD and read as many pages as you have a stomach for reading.

I have to admit that I, myself, participated in this when I was a JW. I told stories about demons that were exaggerations of events which were quite explicable by adding details that were not accurate. Why did I do this? I enjoyed the reaction it provoked and it reinforced my own beliefs.

I'm feeling shabby about it now because I drove the lie deeper into other people's belief system.

That's the only point I wished to raise at this time.

Thanks,

T.

Prove to me that God exists

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