Posts by flamegrilled

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

flamegrilled

you are simply an idiot or a deluded fool

Simon - if I said to this you know very well how you would respond. And it wouldn't be via a reply.

Now, if you don't think we can decide what is and isn't good or bad then Adam and Eve didn't sin and so why aren't we all petting Lions in the Garden of Eden? It also means that part of the bible is a lie ... so your beliefs still die, just a different way.

Like Cofty you make much of what I believe before I've ever said any such thing.

of course this also destroys the notion that god allows free will - he simply wants docile unthinking pets.

How illogical to say so specifically what a being "wants" that you have no belief in. Many Christians do not interpret the Genesis story in this way. I do not believe that Christian theism is dependent on it.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

flamegrilled

Cofty - it's logically impossibly that the deity of a Christian theist exists

Theist - on what basis?

Cofty - because we know that allowing the Asian tsunami could not in any way reflect his supposed quality of love

Theist - are you certain of what the end result will be of allowing the tsunami?

Cofty - mostly. But the most important thing is that people died at the time.

Theist - are you certain of what the end result would be if God were to intervene in natural disasters right now?

Cofty - not really. But the most important thing is that people will be saved from natural disaters.

Theist - how do you know that's the most important thing?

Cofty - ?

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

flamegrilled

No because you totally ignored the second and mmore important part of my reply.

That is dishonest.

I have said repeatedly that you can have a deity that drowns a quarter of a million people. You cannot have the god of christian theism. That is a logical impossibility.

It's true that I ignored the second part of your post. Ignorring something I've previously addressed is not dishonest.

Dishonest is misquoting others, misapplying what they say, and claiming they said things they didn't. All of which you have done.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

flamegrilled

I would love to believe that physical death is not the end of personal existence. However there is no evidence to support belief if continued existence after death nor in the idea of a resurrection. I am 99.9...% convinced this is nothing but wishful thinking and superstition. However if any evidence to the contrary exists then I have an open mind to examine it. Cofty

Fair enough. So we are down to probabilities not certainties. I am 96.7% convinced that abiogenesis of carbon based life is not possible.

There are a bunch of other probabilities that i could bring into the discussion but again this is not about that. You have no more certainty than I do. I completely respect your right to form strong opinions based upon your assessment of those, but your OP depends on certainty. It's not there.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

flamegrilled

P.S. Try to respond without too much bluster to mask the answer.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

flamegrilled

@Cofty

Those who died in the Tsunami - do you KNOW beyond any possibility of error where they (as conscious beings) are now, and/or where they may be in the future?

If so, how do you know?

Remember, we are NOT talking about probability here. We are ONLY talking about what we know for a certainty.

[I will just add that this is in no way a subtle attempt to preach. In fact I don't have a firm opinion of the answer. I just want to see how you logically respond, and whether you allow any room for error in your response. If not, then the "how do you know" portion becomes very important.]

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

flamegrilled

Then forever after I will refer to your alleged god. jgnat

Absolutely you should do that. In fact you will see that I qualified quite a few of my early comments in this thread by "if he exists". I just dropped it after a while when I saw that few were interested in the strict logic of the argument, and more interested in blasting other peoples' world view based upon an incomplete set of information.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

flamegrilled

...if one person appears to be betrayed by God then it raises a question about whether God truly betrays people... [emphasis mine, jg] - flame

You have a bias to maintain your belief in an all-powerful, all-loving God. jgnat

This whole thread has been about what God is alleged to have done if he were to exist.

My whole argument is that there is no logical reason to reach the conclusion that Cofty is promoting based upon appearances. I therefore phrased my reply accordingly.

It's perfectly reasonable when a person's guilt has not been proven to refer to his or her crime as "alleged".

I have also firmly stated my position about turning this into a full discussion of the existence of God. Cofty initially insisted that it wasn't about that. Now he wants it. But only on his terms. I have absolutely no desire to go down that road. Cofty and others may pretend to be indignant about that now, but I engaged in this discussion based upon Cofty's rules. The OP is flawed. I have no need to justify my entire belief system, in order to further that point.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

flamegrilled

Disappointed at FG accusations.

They haven't come out of the blue Cofty. I've pointed out every time you've done it. And it's been with remarkable frequency.

You have spent 50 pages saying "its a mystery" while studiously avoiding the word.

Acknowledging that there are missing pieces to a puzzle does not make the entire thing a mystery. If it did we would have to write-off some very important areas of human knowledge.

2596

The Pastor of my Old Church Tried to Re-Convert Me Yesterday

by cofty in

yesterday evening my wife and i were invited to friends house for new year's eve.

we met them when i was a christian and we have kept in touch.

they had a few other friends there as well, including the new church pastor and his wife.

flamegrilled

So if one person is betrayed by God, we can challenge His existence or His compassion? (If quantity does not matter). jgnat

If zero people are betrayed by God, you can challenge His existence or His compassion. That's up to you.

But if one person appears to be betrayed by God then it raises a question about whether God truly betrays people, the same as if it appears to happen to two or more people.