To Christians (not an attack, but an honest query)

[spaminator101]

God doesn't need to use math to decide what he does because in essence he created math and probability

[NotReady]

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Can anybody translate that? Perhaps Pair The Board. It looks like one of his posts


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Given the obscurity of the question that was as clear as I could respond.

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Think about it though. Even if every scientist who ever lived asserted that he was 100% certain that genuine randomness exists we could discount that. Such a statement requires omniscience because there is no way we can know that what we observe as randomness isn't actually occuring due to the design and/or influence of God.

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Personaly I prefer this belief to be expressed in a limerick.

There was once a man who said ‘God
Must think it exceedingly odd
If he finds that this tree
Continues to be
When there’s no one about in the quad.’

And the reply:

Dear Sir, Your astonishment’s odd:
I am always about in the quad.
And that’s why the tree
Will continue to be,
Since observed by Yours faithfully, God.

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"If we had the ability to know positions of particles without using photons then again there would be no randomness, so again we conveniently use the term "randomness" to describe something which is beyond our abilities to detect."

Physicists out there. Is that true?

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I aint no physicist but it sounds like hes describing some hidden variable theory which most physicists do not agree with.

[jester710]

I am by no means a devout or evangelical Christian. I don't believe that every word in the Bible is indisputable fact, I don't know if I believe in Hell, and I'm not sure that God and the devil aren't two sides of the same coin. If pressed, I will still admit to believing the basic tenets of Christianity, even if my lifestyle doesn't reflect this. However, I grew up in a Christian household and have spent a goodly amount of time in church, so I think I can offer some alternate viewpoints to the ones offered here. None of this is an attempt to convert anybody, it's just something else to think about.

-As far as Lot's wife goes, the Bible doesn't say that God turned her into a pillar of salt. It simply says she turned into a pillar of salt. Given that there are several instances in the Bible in which God makes it clear that no human can view his face and live, this could have been a natural reaction to what she saw when she looked at the city being destroyed. If I tell you not to play with a toaster in the bathtub, but you do anyway, I didn't kill you.

-Re: Sklansky's point about Manson and Ghandi being equally undeserving of life: just because Ghandi used his life for far more admirable purposes doesn't mean he deserved it in the first place. If I give you a hundred bucks to play poker with and you turn it into $1000, that doesn't mean you deserved the 100 I gave you.

However, in the parable of the talents, Jesus made it quite clear that we will be judged based on how we use our gift of life. So, even though Ghandi might not have "deserved" the gift of life in the first place, he would no doubt be rewarded for his noble usage of that gift.

-As far as the idea that some people get an unfair advantage from witnessing miracles, the Bible seems to indicate that the opposite is true. I am referring primarily to the passage in which the apostle Thomas says that he wouldn't believe in the resurrected Jesus until he saw Him himself, and Jesus says that he believes because has seen, but "blessed are those who have not seen and believe."

Also, the apostle Paul was converted by a pretty undeniable miracle, and went on to have one of the most grueling lives on record. Advantage: blind faith.

-From what I can gather from Cooker's original post, this idea of faith without proof is his major problem (at least, it's the only one he mentions here). I'm sure he's well aware that God proving Himself to everyone individually would defeat the whole purpose of faith. However, his statement that he has never experienced anything that could not be explained by physics makes me wonder if a miracle could sway him, or if he has a blind faith in physics instead. If something happened to you that physics could not explain, would you consider it a miracle, or just an event beyond our current limited knowledge of physics? If you saw God, would you believe in Him, or consult a shrink?

Apologies for the length of this post. I suspect it would've been a lot shorter if I could figure out how to use the "quote" feature.

[baggins]

without reading past the second post:

we don't get to judge God. he is bigger than us. any grounds for judging God come from a moral code which does not have meaning apart from God.

there is much more to it than this. if you read the WHOLE book of Job, and not just the first 3 or 4 chapters, you see the powerful and majestic and frightening and mysterious and loving and funny and quirky and unexplainable nature of God.

I think that God DOES reveal himself to us, in a lot of ways that we are ALL privy to.

[spaminator101]

i agree
however this post makes it sound like all receive an inward call
this is not true
we all do receive the outward call of God bowever only the elect receive the inward call of God

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we all do receive the outward call of God bowever only the elect receive the inward call of God

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Please elaborate.

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"If we had the ability to know positions of particles without using photons then again there would be no randomness, so again we conveniently use the term "randomness" to describe something which is beyond our abilities to detect."

Physicists out there. Is that true?

[/ QUOTE ]

I aint no physicist but it sounds like hes describing some hidden variable theory which most physicists do not agree with.

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no, he's describing the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, one of the most counterintuitive yet least disputed theories in physics. For a more complete description, try here

[PairTheBoard]

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NotReady --
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Think about it though. Even if every scientist who ever lived asserted that he was 100% certain that genuine randomness exists we could discount that. Such a statement requires omniscience because there is no way we can know that what we observe as randomness isn't actually occuring due to the design and/or influence of God.


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DS --
Can anybody translate that? Perhaps Pair The Board. It looks like one of his posts.

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-P(1)log[P(1)] - P(2)log[P(2)] - ... - P(n)log[P(n)]

where the log is base 2.

PairTheBoard