The Great Debate, PTB vs A. Fox Starts Here

[David Sklansky]

To get the ball rolling I propose the following question which Pair The Board should assume is coming from Andy. After he answers, its just the two of them please.

Hi PTB,

I hear you are a nice guy and that Sklansky thinks us two are the most eligible of all the forumites to go to heaven. I am also impressed by the fact that many of your posts contain the rarely used word around here "maybe".

What I can't understand though is why you seem to feel a personal God and a divine Jesus are so likely (and necessary) to exist, especially given your stance on natural occurrences and a non literal interpretation of the bible. Do you think it is impossible for an atheist to be as good a person (by your standards) as some sort of believer? And if if is possible do you think it is less likely? I personally believe that atheists are at least as likely if not more likely to be good people. Do you disagree?

Secondly why does your suspicions that God and/or Jesus use only natural, within the laws of physics means to accomplish anything, not force you into facing the fact that both these entities are very possibly not really real? At least not in any way similar to the bible desciptions. Given your apparant theories, where's the flaw in taking it one step further and saying that the bible was simply primitive man's way of making sense of the myriad of apparantly astounding things they saw. Things that in those days did not appear to all be controlled by a few scientific and logical precepts. So they not surprisingly invented a supernatural God and Jesus.

You have already conceded that the God and Jesus of the bible was filtered through ancients man's prejuudices. So why couldn't those prejudices have caused them to make them up out of whole cloth? I'm not suggesting you give up the idea of God completely. Maybe he caused the Big Bang. But you seem to believe in a lot more than that. Why?