Dear Christians: why doesn't god DO something?

Good, insightful answer.

We're all poker players here, so I assume LOGIC is a big deal.

[David Sklansky]

"If you are a believer, and God doesn't exist, what do you lose?
If you are a non-believer, and God DOES exist, now what do you lose?"

Since you can't control what you believe why does it matter?

[andyfox]

Well, we should concentrate on one "miracle" at a time. But since you bring this one up, a photographer from the local newspaper was sent to photograph the event. Only part of the crowd, which could have been as large as 70,000 people saw the famous solar miracle and there were few written reports about it and no two people saw the same thing. Hysteria and tricks of the light, which are inevitable if one stares at the sun, and outright lies to abet the campaign against the anticlerical government explain everything.

Anyway, since visions are optional for belief what right would the real Virgin Mary have to ask people to risk eye-damage by looking at the sun?

[andyfox]

The visions at Fatima, Portugal, in 1917 were reported by three shepherd children, only one of whom talked with the Virgin. She was ten-year-old Lucia de Jesus dos Santos, an obviously fantasy-prone personality who frequently claimed to see angels and other apparitions and whose own mother described her as "nothing but a fake who is leading half the world astray." The events culminated on a rainy October 13 with an estimated seventy thousand pilgrims in attendance. Suddenly, Lucia directed everyone's gaze upward as the sun appeared from behind clouds whereupon many experienced what is known in the terminology of Marian apparitions as a "sun miracle." The effects are varyingly described but many say the sun performed strange gyrations none of which actually occurred, as astronomers know. The effects were surely optical ones. For example, because one cannot focus on an object so bright, the eyes may dart back and forth, thus creating, by the effect of image and after-image, the appearance that the sun is "dancing," or the eyes may attempt to focus, retreat, again attempt, and so on, thereby giving the illusion that the sun was "pulsating." This explains why different people said they saw different things, why some said they saw nothing, and why there is no photographic evidence of the alleged phenomenon, despite there being photographs of the people looking skyward.

Who said anything about not being able to control what you believe?

[Lestat]

Do you believe you can control your beliefs?

[Zeno]

[ QUOTE ]
Do you believe you can control your beliefs?

[/ QUOTE ]


I believe in beer. And I can control my beer drinking. QED.

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-Zeno

It is a tenet (and an important one) of any major deity-based religion that you not accept "just in case" therefore, no, I don't think that you can affect what you believe, as this comes from a "conviction" which all boils down to a culmination of your life experiences.

[flatline]

[ QUOTE ]
I haven't read more than the first page of this thread, nor do I plan to. It's not close-minded, I've just heard both sides of the argument x1000000.

My question is this:

If you are a believer, and God doesn't exist, what do you lose?
If you are a non-believer, and God DOES exist, now what do you lose?

[/ QUOTE ]

What if God doesn't like believers and sends them to hell? Then it would be best to be a non-believer.

What if (as a believer) you choose the wrong God? Maybe God sends those who believe in the wrong God to hell, but puts those will don't choose a God in some kind of purgatory. Given the number of Gods you can choose from, suspending judgment would be a safe bet.

Final answer: you don't know what you would lose and you are making a nonsense argument.

[Zeno]

[ QUOTE ]
Besides, everybody experiencing the miracle was absorbed by an invisible force that put them prostrate on the ground.

[/ QUOTE ]

Was this before or after they were all looking directly into the sun? What's this 'invisible force' that was 'adsorbed'. From webster: absorbed: to transform (radiant energy) into a different form usually with a resulting rise in temperature.

So 70,000 people looked directly into the sun, saw the Virgin Mary, I assume she was clothed, then they absorbed an invisible force that put them all on the ground where they lay in mud and water and then 10 minutes later they all arose, dry and clean, and then went home satisfied. The gound was also all dry after this phenomena.

I now believe. I am now saved. I am going to heaven and there is nothing that you can do about it.

-Zeno