Religion-Psychology?

[NotReady]

How rational is it to believe God did all that and never communicated with His creatures?

[sexypanda]

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Do you really believe that women conceive because the first woman was tricked by a snake to eat an apple??


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Chapter and verse please. This is new Scripture for me.

Right about what? Do what too? You seemed to indicate Hawking was right. I was just asking for clarification.

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I honestly don't have a Bible in front of me, but after having gone to a Catholic school for 4 years, though it was a while ago, I was under the impression that was the Adam and Eve story in Genesis. Please enlighten me...


Edit: I may very well have my fairy tales mixed up. Though I don't think I do.

[PuertoKid]

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You've just reduced one of the great minds of the 20th century to comic book level. This was C.S. Lewis' argument. I've never heard it answered. Maybe you can.

The correct formulation is, assuming that Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, the following 3 choices -
1. Jesus was as crazy as someone who thinks he's a fried egg.
2. He was evil.
3. He was the Son of God.

Your move.

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I'm not sure what gives C.S. Lewis status as one of the great minds of the 20th century. Regardless, assuming the hypothesis (Jesus lived and claimed to be the son of God), I don't think the 3 alternative explanations complete the set of possible explanations. For example, it is possible that Jesus was simply wrong. Wasn't crazy, wasn't evil. Just wrong.

Additionally, the statement as made by C.S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, and others includes a whole bunch of unstated assumptions (e.g. Jesus claimed exculsiveness about his status as Son of God, the nature of being the Son of God, etc).

[NotReady]

If you mean this:
Genesis 3:
16 To the woman He said,
"I will greatly multiply
Your pain in childbirth,
In pain you will bring forth children;"

it's pretty clear the punishment on the woman was the great pain of childbirth, not the birth itself. Genesis 2 talks about how plants and animals were to bring forth after their kind, so the fact of birth was established before Adam and Eve sinned.

[sexypanda]

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If you mean this:
Genesis 3:
16 To the woman He said,
"I will greatly multiply
Your pain in childbirth,
In pain you will bring forth children;"

it's pretty clear the punishment on the woman was the great pain of childbirth, not the birth itself. Genesis 2 talks about how plants and animals were to bring forth after their kind, so the fact of birth was established before Adam and Eve sinned.

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Ok fine, do you believe women's pain in childbirth was greatly multiplied because she was tricked by a snake to eat an apple?

Happy now?

[PuertoKid]

While it may be an interesting question (personally, I've given up on it--but then again I've given up on epistimology and many areas of philosophy), I doubt you'll get much insight from poker players frequenting your web site. The psychology of religion is an academic field unto itself as you'll find if you plug "Psychology of Religion" into google.

[David Sklansky]

"How rational is it to believe God did all that and never communicated with His creatures?"

It is quite rational for quite a few reasons. He might not have the power to. Or the inclination to. Or as I once stated, he might not be interested in being fawned over but instead wants his brilliance to be discovered and admired. Also if he did feel like communicating why would he do it during such a tiny sliver of human existence? Finally even if he did communicate, various religions believe he did it in different ways. The bottom line is that believing God "did all that" is a far cry from believing he sent someone to burn on a cross.

PS If you take out my ponderings about the creation ofconsciousness and leave only quantum theory and big bang issues, it is even less likely that such a god communicates with us. And this issue will in fact probably be resolved when we get computers powerful enough to meet the requirements artificial intelligence advocates say that is all that is needed for computers to know they exist.

[NotReady]

She didn't just "eat an apple". Actually, there's nothing in the Bible about the fruit being an apple.

The point is she disobeyed God. Her and Adam's temporal punishment were actually less than what God promised, i.e., death, though that was imposed later.

At any rate, this was supposed to be about you showing all the things that are "clearly" erroneous. Next case, please.

[NotReady]

Lewis was undeniably brilliant. People differ on how brilliant. Interestingly, PBS recently had a 2 parter on "The Question of God" and approached it from the viewpoint of Freud and Lewis. So there's one vote, however dubious their authority might be.

As I explained in other posts, Lewis was responding to those who said they were willing to accept the accuracy of Scripture as to what Jesus said, they just denied his divinity. The point Lewis made is logically irrefutable. Jesus could not be a Great Moral Teacher unless He was the Son of God. This takes what Jesus said as a given, it is not offered to prove He existed or actually did say what the Bible says. In logic, it's called a premise. You can attack the premise. Fine. Lewis wasn't dealing with that. He talked about that in other contexts. But GIVEN the premise, the rest follows logically.

[sexypanda]

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At any rate, this was supposed to be about you showing all the things that are "clearly" erroneous. Next case, please.

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I never said I was going to show you that all things are clearly erroneous. Aspects of it are clearly erroneous, and holding it as the "Word of God" and saying that it's infallable is a "neurological disorder". I do believe that it's an interesting story with a moral, but I think it's ridiculous to believe that it's historically accurate.