Sure, it applies to me as well - no dioubt. I am not "stubbornly fixed" in my own personal beliefs. I have evidence and basis.
I have mentioned yesterday, I examined my "Holy Book" - the Bible. I will be stright up honest... NO.. I have never just taken it at what it says and leave it at that. There are certain prophecies that I've studied, like the one about JEsus I mentioned yesterday, and how it was mentioned a few hundred years in advance that he would live and walk the earth and did. The prophecy didn't give every detail, but it was more than enough to connect the dots and make an accurate conclusion. There are others like this as well. So, after examining it, I know that no ordinary man can make such an accurate prediction.
Stuff like this doesn't leave much room for doubt at all.
I don't believe "my" God is the real one, but the God of the Bible is.
THere is a big misconception that believers don't think for themselves, and can't think critically. Some can't, but not all. I for one examined the Bible, and if something didn't make sense to me, I didn't just say "well, it must be true because it's there". I did research, and of course needed some help, but came to satisfactory asnswers.
With this sort of evidence, it doesn't require that I see God to believe he exists.
Of course, you have conspirasy theorists all over the place that will say Jesus intentionally cooberated Isaiah's writings, or that the Gospels were falsified because Jesus really didn't die, but his death was somehow faked to stage a resurrection.
I don't pay attention to stuff like that. Like Newton said, who was critic of ancient writings, that he found the Bible true and more true than any profane secular writing of his day.
That almost completely counters your argument. And too, its very very hard, if not humanly impossible to utter any prophecy and see it come true hundreds and thousands of years later.
Appeal to authority...and the "gods of gaps".
Newton used math to describe gravity.
When he couldn't figure out gravity with more bodies...(ignorance)...he pointed at "god".
Too bad for your argument that Laplace figured out the math Newton couldn't...and brushed aside "god".
Educate yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YotBtibsuh0
Nice own goal!
What about Nostradamus? He wrote hundred's of prophecies which have supposedly come true. Just like anyone who claims they can see the future however all they have to do is make the predictions vague enough that something will match their predictions.
I don't know much about him except, as far as I've read and don't know how true this is, his massive fail on the 1999 doomsday prophecy.
Outside of that, you can sure enlighten me on his "predictions".
Forget prophecies for a moment. Name one piece of knowledge given in the Bible that wasn't known to man at that time - just one thing that was later confirmed by evidence. Certainly, something that was divinely inspired could have at least vaguely mentioned at least one thing that we've discovered in the past 2000 years.
I don't believe "my" God is the real one, but the God of the Bible is.
Naw, it's your god, own it.
I explained my rationale in the very next paragraph.Ok it's my God, I owned it. So?
How does this affect you in any way?
Forget prophecies for a moment. Name one piece of knowledge given in the Bible that wasn't known to man at that time - just one thing that was later confirmed by evidence. Certainly, something that was divinely inspired could have at least vaguely mentioned at least one thing that we've discovered in the past 2000 years.
Forget prophecies for a moment. Name one piece of knowledge given in the Bible that wasn't known to man at that time - just one thing that was later confirmed by evidence. Certainly, something that was divinely inspired could have at least vaguely mentioned at least one thing that we've discovered in the past 2000 years.
LOL. Didn't think so.Edit: you know what, don't bother.
I'm sure that somewhere you could find a statement about "little stone moving great mountains" or something.Forget prophecies for a moment. Name one piece of knowledge given in the Bible that wasn't known to man at that time - just one thing that was later confirmed by evidence. Certainly, something that was divinely inspired could have at least vaguely mentioned at least one thing that we've discovered in the past 2000 years.
Pi = 3!
Oh wait. Ignorant goat herders were ignorant - no god involved.
Forget prophecies for a moment. Name one piece of knowledge given in the Bible that wasn't known to man at that time - just one thing that was later confirmed by evidence. Certainly, something that was divinely inspired could have at least vaguely mentioned at least one thing that we've discovered in the past 2000 years.
There's an elaborate ex post facto cya for that one.
Of course it could have just said "it's close to 3.14159..." and then gone on to explain irrational numbers. But it didn't.
Like how to deal with our own human nature. Still relevant 2,000 years later.
You mean like that?
You mean like predicting money as the downfall of morals? It seems to be a cyclical event in history. The "money at all costs" view today and the downfall in religion that follows is highly linked in my mind.
They are all sources of power: religion, government, money, information, and military.
The military usually doesn't have its own power, it tends to follow whomever is most popular at the time. The crusades were military backing of religion (A time that would make this one look bizarre). The uprisings in Egypt were the military backing the people. The military is more of a follower and not typically a leader.
Money and wall street hold all the power right now. Everything from elections to corporations, its all about the money. It seemed inevitable, right? Like how long could morals and values last when SHTF and people would do anything for it? I think its cyclical of developed civilizations no matter the technology. Rome, Mongolia, etc.
Government right now is even at the mercy of money, which is interesting. Wall street panicked the government into doing what they wanted.
Science/information is edging out religion but isn't as big of a player in human endeavors as people think. There is a reason humans have been around for thousands of years and science never really took off. Facts are almost irrelevant when it comes to power.
Newton rose to the level of his incompetence --> therefore GOD (Peter Principle).Newton used math to describe gravity.
When he couldn't figure out gravity with more bodies...(ignorance)...he pointed at "god".
Science/information is edging out religion but isn't as big of a player in human endeavors as people think. There is a reason humans have been around for thousands of years and science never really took off. Facts are almost irrelevant when it comes to power.
The priesthoods of public religion were held by members of the elite classes. There was no principle analogous to "separation of church and state" in ancient Rome. During the Roman Republic (509 BC–27 BC), the same men who were elected public officials might also serve as augurs and pontiffs.
In the wake of the Republic's collapse, state religion had adapted to support the new regime of the emperors. Augustus, the first Roman emperor, justified the novelty of one-man rule with a vast program of religious revivalism and reform. Public vows formerly made for the security of the republic now were directed at the wellbeing of the emperor. So-called "emperor worship" expanded on a grand scale the traditional Roman veneration of the ancestral dead and of the Genius, the divine tutelary of every individual. Imperial cult became one of the major ways Rome advertised its presence in the provinces and cultivated shared cultural identity and loyalty throughout the Empire. Rejection of the state religion was tantamount to treason. This was the context for Rome's conflict with Christianity, which Romans variously regarded as a form of atheism and novel superstitio.
Pleas for religious tolerance from traditionalists such as the senator Symmachus (d. 402) were rejected, and Christian monotheism became a feature of Imperial domination. Heretics as well as non-Christians were subject to exclusion from public life or persecution, but Rome's original religious hierarchy and many aspects of its ritual influenced Christian forms,[10] and many pre-Christian beliefs and practices survived in Christian festivals and local traditions.
"Because of you we are living, because of you we can travel the seas, because of you we enjoy liberty and wealth." A thanksgiving prayer offered in Naples' harbour to the princeps Augustus, on his return from Alexandria in 14 AD, shortly before his death.
. There is a reason humans have been around for thousands of years and science never really took off. Facts are almost irrelevant when it comes to power.
Appeal to authority...and the "gods of gaps".
Newton used math to describe gravity.
When he couldn't figure out gravity with more bodies...(ignorance)...he pointed at "god".
Too bad for your argument that Laplace figured out the math Newton couldn't...and brushed aside "god".
Educate yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YotBtibsuh0
Nice own goal!
You really expect him to discover everything.