Posted on 12/25/2008 7:55:05 PM PST by Soliton
After 10 years and many thousands of replies, I am leaving FR.
I don't really care, and I don't know why anyone else would.
I am leaving before I am banned (again). Truth doesn't seem to matter on FR. I don't know if it is donations or sympathetic opinions that do, but I have been suspended twice when I followed the rules and the people who complained to the moderators didn't, yet the moderators sided with them.
For the record, evolution is a fact and the Shroud of Turin is a fraud. I would prove it if the admin moderators would let me, but they won't. Your resident "expert", Swordmaker won't debate me because he can't.
I will work to build a forum where members have rights and truth matters.
Merry Christmas
Lazarus, pick up the white courtesy phone (John 12:10-12).
Cheers!
...oh, and Merry Christmas.
[[I’m certain that nearly everyone that has lost their teeth, vision, or an appendage have prayed their butts off for a miracle. Yet, their prayers seem to go unanswered. Hm]]
You know htis how? God DOES answer prayer- and in quite a few cases- however, not every whim and wish of man is naswered- but many are- Have you done research on this yet? Or are you comfortable just htrowing out some nonsense claim? Have you been to church and WITNESSED specific prayers beign answertedc by God>? Have you been at hte bedside of every sick person to verify that their prayers went unanswered or not?
You have a FReepmail response to your response.
BTW, any clues as to the meaning of your username? I tried converting it from hex then looking at results to see if there was anything of significance, but after considering everything from phone numbers to ip addresses, I gave up, as there was nothing I could tie to you. Maybe it’s some sort of professional license number or something. Anyway, had a blast trying to figure it out, and I’ll try some more later. Hopefully it’s not something entirely random or I’ll feel really dumb.
Anyone who doesn’t believe in healing needs to spend a few days at Bethel church in Redding, California.
You’ll spend the rest of your unbelieving, lying life trying to explain it.
It’s not the normal body fixing itself as it was designed to do sort of thing, as in cuts, burns, colds, etc. It’s healings of conditions that are debilitating and often terminal, even with treatment. Healing of diabetes and asthma does not fall into the same category are healing of a cut or burn. If they did, then there wouldn’t be the need for treatment to manage what is generally considered a lifelong condition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_remission
“In medicine, spontaneous remission is recovery without known reason or cause.”
Without known reason or cause. So, you believe that the human body can just out of the blue, for no reason, up and heal itself from a debilitating or life threatening condition, against all odds and everything that is known about the human body? And you accept that diagnosis of spontaneous remission but won’t accept that it could be a direct answer to prayer?
I guess for someone who believes that life could just up and form itself out of some primordial chemical soup, having the body decide to fix itself from normally debilitating conditions for no known reason, isn’t too much of a stretch.
To me it seems more reasonable that God could heal someone than for something to happen for no reason in total violation of all current knowledge and experience.
If these sorts of things are happening and God isn’t doing it, then it’s part of the natural process and science should be strenuously investigating every instance of spontaneous remission to find out why it happened because it is no longer out of their area of study. So why aren’t they? Why are they so remiss in their obligation to the betterment of mankind?
If this stuff is natural, wouldn’t it be better to pursue that instead of simply looking at treatments so that people can be more than merely treated but cured?
I’ve seen it in my own family and friends. Way too much to be a coincidence.
Actually, there were some studies done concerning prayer and healing for the sick. It was must mentioned within the last month of so on FR. I don’t recall when or where, however.
Anything but God.
The mere presence of the study, however, does not answer how one "controls" for God's will.
Whether because He has some unknown purpose, or "do not put the Lord your God to the test", or any other mechanism including placebo effects and/or chain yanking, remains to be seen.
Cheers!
Without Gods breath of life, the human body is a corpse
God is not a sugar daddy or some sock puppet to be used when someone feels the need.
I never gave my kids everything they wanted. Sometimes it was because I knew that it wasn’t good for them. Sometimes it was that we had other (and better) plans.
Specifically, I recall one instance where we have planned a trip to FL but never told them. When they asked to do something during that time period, like go to the zoo, for example, we told them, No. Of course, they were disappointed and upset and could not understand WHY we weren’t doing something for them that we normally would have said yes to in a heartbeat. They liked it less when I wouldn’t give them any good reason.
But they sure did like it when they finally found out, the day before we left.
As a parent, I do what’s best for them, not what they want or even think that they want. And I owe them no explanations either. I’m the parent and I’m responsible for them. It’s my job to do what is best for them whether they like it or not.
God is not compared to our father for no reason. All we need to do is trust Him just like we trust our human parents.
If you look at my original post of this specimen you will note its classification includes three names:
Homo ergaster
Homo erectus
Homo erectus ergaster
This is because there is disagreement over the exact classification of the specimen.
Rightmire suggests that this specimen should be classified as an early Homo erectus. Others disagree and place it as a separate species.
Neither of these classifications change that it has a position ancestral or closely ancestral to the bulk of Homo erectus. The disagreement is on exactly where to place it.
You have read Rightmire's opinion. Here is another:
By 1.9 million years ago, another lineage of the genus Homo emerged in Africa. This species was Homo ergaster. Traditionally, scientists have referred to this species as Homo erectus and linked this species name with a proliferation of populations across Africa, Europe, and Asia. Yet, since the first discoveries of Homo erectus, it had been noted that there were differences between the early populations of "Homo erectus" in Africa, and the later populations of Europe, Africa and Asia. Many researchers now separate the two into distinct species Homo ergaster for early African "Homo erectus", and Homo erectus for later populations mainly in Asia. Since modern humans share the same differences as H. ergaster with the Asian H. erectus, scientist consider H. ergaster as the probable ancestor of later Homo populations. Source
Some consider H. ergaster as a strictly African erectus species, while the majority of H. erectus is seen as primarily Asian; in this view modern humans are descended from H. ergaster in Africa.
None of this disqualifies as a transitional. In fact, the more disagreement over where a specimen should be classified the more likely it is a transitional.
No more tutorials tonight; I've other things to do.
Without known reason or cause.
You’ll spend the rest of your unbelieving, lying life trying to explain it.
Explain what?
"God of the Gaps" would apply if the people hadn't prayed, had experienced spontaneous remission, and, lacking any naturalistic explanation, had then ex post facto attributed the change in health to "God", as an attempt to have *something* to account for it.
In the cases in question, people knew all about the condition, were told that it was "hopeless" (i.e. there *is no* naturalistic way this will go away, as opposed to "we don't happen to know how or why"), and then prayed.
And following the prayers, saw what they had been told was impossible, happen anyway.
Nice try, though.
Incidentally, the point raised above still stands. If you do maintain that these phenomena remain natuaralistic in essence then, since these recoveries by definition seem to overcome "terminal" conditions and/or "hopeless" cases, shouldn't we be focusing a disproportionate research effort into investigating them in order to uncover the natural mechanisms at work, the better to make use of them?
"Science exists to predict and to control nature".
Cheers!
...oh, and Merry Christmas.
I guess I’m slow, and this has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but I just realized the incredible number of vanities you’ve authored.
Why, *THANK YOU*.
Please read them -- most are on socio-economic topics and would not be thought particularly controversial within the FR community.
Cheers!
Thanks for the ping, valkyry1. “I am the source of all knowledge, remembrance and forgetfulness”.
If someone doesn’t want to see Him or know Him, He will veil that person’s heart and inner eye and mind so that person will be absolutely convinced beyond a doubt that God does not exist. He will have such “faith” in the non-existence of God that nothing and no one can shake it.
Unless and until he comes to some very low point and realizes his helplessness, or his mortality, and asks - Why? - really wanting to know.
It is said that the question “Why am I suffering?” is the beginning of the path of the spirit to God.
Regrown missing limbs, eyes. Tumors falling off of bodies, scoliosis instantly cured. Something almost every day.
You're the first person, that I can remember, that has asked.
It't the CRC for my first name.
Hopefully it’s not something entirely random or I’ll feel really dumb.
Don't. It isn't. :)
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