- You either love bacon or you’re wrong.
Proving yet again that it is almost entirely impossible for a human being to say much of anything in regards to human beings that is entirely true for all, uh, applications.
Posted on 01/06/2015 5:13:00 AM PST by metmom
Go ahead and indulge and show everyone up by answering the question better than they could as you seem to feel you can.
Now you want help from the knuckle dragging neanderthal public school teacher. No I will pass on doing your legwork for you, but thanks for asking so politely.
Someone's soul could be on the line and you consider it ENTERTAINMENT?
And the starship Enterprise could come down and blow us all into oblivion. Do you know for a fact his/ her soul is in danger?
What's wrong with you?
I think I answered this before. I am overweight, balding, and have an astigmatism.
Kind of a personal question don't you think?
No. I don't want or need your help and I wasn't asking for it.
But like every other person who's great at criticizing others for the job they're doing, until they're challenged to do it themselves if they think everyone else is doing a rotten job, you backed off.
Not unexpected.
Do you know for a fact his/ her soul is in danger?
I forgot. Catholics believe that atheists can be saved if they *do good*.
I think I answered this before. I am overweight, balding, and have an astigmatism.
So you're a part of the human race after all. Fancy that.
Kind of a personal question don't you think?
No.
Or trying to justify his own unbelief.
Or entrench my belief that even those who think there is one can't prove it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, call my cynical. Or just testing the spirits. :-)
Proving yet again that it is almost entirely impossible for a human being to say much of anything in regards to human beings that is entirely true for all, uh, applications.
And in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith, By hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand; and seeing ye shall see, and shall not perceive: For this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.
But blessed are your eyes, for they see: and your ears, for they hear. - Matt 13:13-16
To God be the glory, not man, never man.
Oops, apologies. I should have pinged you to my 86 above, dear brother in Christ!
You have given me something’s to think about. I will come back when I have m ore questions.
Fair enough.
Those are NOT my offspring!
So judgmental.
How about sins of ADDITION?
Like all the Mary stuff your chosen religion has added?
Aren't we all?
bump
Speak for yourself.
Are you suggesting, Thales Miletus, that "signals" and "thoughts" are the same thing? May I suggest what a severe reduction is involved in this understanding?
You wrote, "Actually using EEGs and MRI's it is possible to see that a person is thinking." No surprises there. But these devices cannot tell you what a person is thinking.
I find it interesting that you have faith in a body of research based on the zebra finch, alleged to have some sort of applicability (or adequation) to the human brain (questions regarding mind having been methodologically forbidden); but evidently find faith in God "unreasonable."
“So the answer is yes you can see thoughts.” No, you can see that the mind is thinking, but you cannot see the thing which is being generated for the reality of that generation is not in the same spacetime coordinate system of the electromagnetic traces being measured.
In which sense do you seek this ‘rock solid proof’? Do you want a Physics answer, a behavioral answer, or an spiritual answer? I ask because fashioning the answer depends upon the framework perspective you now hold to.
“I ask a question and am attacked.” No, initially you were not attacked, your spurious methodology was attacked. I suspect you are not new to FR, being a retread who scoffs at those who are Christians by choice. And that is the only way to become a Christian, for God will not force you nor grant to you family-hood based upon whom is your Mother and Father in the flesh.
I know of no Christian who believes that God entirely "reduces" to the Bible. Only a moron would believe that. And Alamo-Girl is no moron. Thus your charge of circular logic is misplaced.
Metmom asked you to “Tell me how to validate His love for me and work in me in a way that is tangible to you.” The operative word here is “tangible.” I doubt this is possible. For God, eternal divine Being, at once transcendent and immanent, is utterly, ineffably intangible. God is utterly irreducible to the categories of human thought; God cannot be subjected to human “metrics,” in principle.
But this doesn’t mean that God is utterly unknowable, according to reason. Christianity is far more “reasonable” than you suppose. As evidence, I refer you to the ontological proofs developed by St. Thomas Aquinas. Yet my personal favorite “proof” of “the existence of God” is St. Anselm’s. It is not syllogistic in form; rather it is an invocative prayer or meditation of God considered under the aspect of a divine Name: “That than which nothing greater can be thought.” Anselm’s argument is laid out in Chapter 2 of the Proslogion. Jacob Holsinger Sherman (Partakers of the Divine, 2014) outlines Anselm’s argument as follows:
(1) God is something than which nothing greater can be thought.Sherman explains what is going on with this encounter of Anselm with God in apperceptive contemplation:
(2) The thought that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought can be understood.
(3) What is understood exists in the understanding.
(4) There is a difference between existing in the understanding and understanding something to exist in reality.
(5) What exists in the understanding may be understood to exist in reality.
(6) To exist in reality is greater than to exist in the understanding alone.
(7) That-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought cannot be thought to exist in the understanding alone.
(8) Therefore, that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought exists both in the understanding and in reality.
…God is by no means an object of our experience as other beings are — one thing among others in the furniture of the universe — but is in fact the mystery in whom we live, move, and have our being…. To understand this involves wrenching us free from our most characteristic habit of thought, which is the inclination to relate to reality according to the logic of solid bodies…. [T]here is an essential homology between such objectifying and the egological exercise of the will to power. Both moves define knowledge in terms of comprehension, utility, and predictability. But the contemplative Christian ascent involves the reshaping, by grace, of the human soul away from egoic manipulation to the wide-open space of abandonment to the Divine.This is the sort of thing that Alamo-Girl and metmom are testifying to from their own experience. Likewise, I so testify….
But I suspect that you do not regard witness testimony as qualified evidence of anything. Just as you seem to disparage the entire history of mankind which, everywhere at every time, has placed man’s relations with God and the Universe at the very forefront of human concern. I gather that sort of thing doesn’t qualify as any kind of evidence of "the existence of God" that you would find acceptable either.
At this point, I’ll spare you the “lecture” on the nabal — “the man who says in his heart, ‘there is no God’” — and simply close for now.
Thank you for writing, Thales Miletus.
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