Searching for GOD...

[SusanDoris]

Wishful, thinking on your part. If so secure in your beliefs, then there would be no invisible trap maybe your mind fighting the truth that you never had a satisfactory answer in the first instance.

No! It is because having finally erased the last vestiges of a God belief from my brain many years ago, I have known since then the feeling of absolute completeness and wholeness of me as a human being. I always knew that no God did  anything anyway, so why imagine it is there at all?! The thought of being even minimally trapped in even the lightest, weakest belief in a non-existent God/god/s is something I would not tolerate.

[Alan Burns]

No! It is because having finally erased the last vestiges of a God belief from my brain many years ago, I have known since then the feeling of absolute completeness and wholeness of me as a human being. I always knew that no God did  anything anyway, so why imagine it is there at all?! The thought of being even minimally trapped in even the lightest, weakest belief in a non-existent God/god/s is something I would not tolerate.

Susan, just out of interest, if you are so set in your beliefs, what drives you to participate on this Christian topic?  Could God be pointing you here?

[Alan Burns]

By the way, as you still seem to have missed it:

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE TERM “LOGICAL FALLACY” MEANS AND, IF YOU DO, DOES YOUR RELIANCE ON THEM IMPLY THAT YOU THINK THAT A FALSE ARGUMENT SOMEHOW BECOMES A GOOD ONE WHEN YOU HAPPEN TO LIKE ITS OUTCOME?

Is this begging the question?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Susan, just out of interest, if you are so set in your beliefs, what drives you to participate on this Christian topic?

It's become a wide-ranging discussion about Christianity, that's why.

Could God be pointing you here?

Anything could be, but given the incoherence of the claim it's not a possibility that need concern a rationalist.

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Is this begging the question?

No.

First, it's begins with a question.

Second, your attempts at argument consist almost entirely of logical fallacies. So far as I recall you've never even attempted to deny that, nor to explain why you think that's a good approach. The closest you've come to addressing the problem is to dismiss logic a "man-made" (while at the same time relying on a broken version of it).

Here it is again then:

DO YOU KNOW WHAT THE TERM “LOGICAL FALLACY” MEANS AND, IF YOU DO, DOES YOUR RELIANCE ON THEM IMPLY THAT YOU THINK THAT A FALSE ARGUMENT SOMEHOW BECOMES A GOOD ONE WHEN YOU HAPPEN TO LIKE ITS OUTCOME?

[SusanDoris]

Susan, just out of interest, if you are so set in your beliefs, what drives you to participate on this Christian topic?

(a) I am not 'driven'. I spend time on discussion boards because they are one of the things that I can do  which provide a constantly varied interest.
(b)I am interested in politics but not enough to get involved in discussion about it.
(c)I have been out for a walk this morning, since it is not swimming this afternoon, but if I could find an interesting hobby to take the place of message boards, I would not be here!

  Could God be pointing you here?

No, A B, 100% not!! 'Why is that?' you might ask! Simple, no God/god/s exists/s.

[floo]

God be a total cretin if it pointed people this board to learn about it! 

[Gordon]

Is this begging the question?

No, which further confirms you really don't understand fallacies.

[Alan Burns]

If God took special measures to facilitate life on this planet how come he forgot to institute a protective shield to protect the planet from bombardment by asteroids and comets ?  As it is, life evolves slowly, then bang, an asteroid impact resets everything back to zero almost with a mass extinction event.  Surely a protective shield would be high on a would be creator's to-do list ?

Without the asteroids, we would probably not be here and dinosaurs would still rule the earth!

[floo]

Without the asteroids, we would probably not be here and dinosaurs would still rule the earth!

So are you saying god in its 'wisdom' sent asteroids to kill off the dinosaurs so humans could populate the planet?

[BeRational]

Without the asteroids, we would probably not be here and dinosaurs would still rule the earth!

Why not just start with us?

[floo]

Why not just start with us?

The Natural History Museum would be disappointed if that were the case!

[torridon]

Without the asteroids, we would probably not be here and dinosaurs would still rule the earth!

Ah, so allowing evolution to follow its natural course, creating megafauna of the Jurassic and then allowing them to be wiped out by cosmic bombardment to give mammals a chance, this is case study in divine planning and intervention.  I'm not sure this god would survive a job interview with my local authority planning department.

[Nearly Sane]

Ah, so allowing evolution to follow its natural course, creating megafauna of the Jurassic and then allowing them to be wiped out by cosmic bombardment to give mammals a chance, this is case study in divine planning and intervention.  I'm not sure this god would survive a job interview with my local authority planning department.

Time for the hoary old joke, what sort of planner would put a sewage pipe outlet in the middle of a play park?

[ippy]

Without the asteroids, we would probably not be here and dinosaurs would still rule the earth!

I didn't think you could get any more bizarre than you have been conveying in most of your posts Alan and then you posted 18360 on this thread.

Now I'm sure if you were to contact David Ike, the pair of you might be able to share ideas with each other.

ippy

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Without the asteroids, we would probably not be here and dinosaurs would still rule the earth!

"Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for."

Douglas Adams

Any news yet by the way on the logical fallacies questions you keep avoiding? I can post them again if you like - maybe in pink this time?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

No! It is because having finally erased the last vestiges of a God belief from my brain many years ago, I have known since then the feeling of absolute completeness and wholeness of me as a human being.

One wonders from whence the axegrinding cometh from.

[bluehillside Retd.]

Vlad,

One wonders from whence the axegrinding cometh from.

Only if "one" doesn't know the meaning of "axegrinding" (and has a fondness for the superfluous use of "from").

[Alan Burns]

Ah, so allowing evolution to follow its natural course, creating megafauna of the Jurassic and then allowing them to be wiped out by cosmic bombardment to give mammals a chance, this is case study in divine planning and intervention.  I'm not sure this god would survive a job interview with my local authority planning department.

Are you suggesting that humans could have done a better job in nurturing present day life forms into existence from the debris of an exploding star?

[bluehillside Retd.]

AB,

Are you suggesting that humans could have done a better job in nurturing present day life forms into existence from the debris of an exploding star?

He's suggesting no such thing of course. What he's actually pointing out is that, for a supposed god who could anything he liked at the click of his fingers, he sure picked a Byzantine way to end up with us.

[torridon]

Are you suggesting that humans could have done a better job in nurturing present day life forms into existence from the debris of an exploding star?

No, I don't think our tech is up to that currently, but a god with supposedly limitless know-how who has to then fiddle with his own creation is an oxymoron.  Why would such a creator institute a system wherein all life is subject to constant risk of annihilation ?  If you had small children would you choose to set them up with a play area in the middle of a busy dual carriageway ?

[Gordon]

Are you suggesting that humans could have done a better job in nurturing present day life forms into existence from the debris of an exploding star?

Don't be silly.

By the way, just to play along with this daft notion of yours for a moment, why would your god bother creating 'life forms' in considerable numbers and over countless millions of years only  to allow them to be become extinct? That these extinctions happened at all is surely an issue if you think, again to play along with this, that a 'better job' couldn't have been done.

Why its almost as if there was no forward planning at all!

[SusanDoris]

Vlad,

Only if "one" doesn't know the meaning of "axegrinding" (and has a fondness for the superfluous use of "from").

[ekim]

AB,

"Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for."

Douglas Adams

.... and in that moment of surprise it realises it is not a puddle but is the water temporarily in puddle form, as it ascends up to the heavens. 

[Alan Burns]

Don't be silly.

By the way, just to play along with this daft notion of yours for a moment, why would your god bother creating 'life forms' in considerable numbers and over countless millions of years only  to allow them to be become extinct? That these extinctions happened at all is surely an issue if you think, again to play along with this, that a 'better job' couldn't have been done.

Why its almost as if there was no forward planning at all!

I do not pretend to know what purpose God intended for past life forms, but They all contributed in some way to the life as we know it today.