sigh… I haven’t posted in a few months and this thread is still the same, it isn’t “ask a Christian” anymore. Now it’s “fight with Christians and never reach a conclusion because both sides refuse to give up” :meh:
Or you could think of it as communication among people with differing points of view.
Argument and fighting are two different things, and no one here is going to come to any conclusions about anything.
Personally, I don’t have ‘conclusions’. I don’t think that my perspective won’t be changed or altered with new experiences or by the perspectives of others. There’s much more to be understood here than ‘God exists’ or 'God doesn’t exist"
I like Assassin -he grows on you - like a fungus. And he’s from a unique and unfamiliar culture. I don’t know any Georgians, so IMO he has the most valuable perspective in the thread. He’s a good sport to continue to participate.
I don’t think he expects to convert anyone, and personally I wouldn’t want to convince anyone to abandon their faith. To expect that anyone participating in a thread on a gaming forum would be converted or would lose their faith is … unrealistic.
It’s an exchange of perspectives.
yeah, you are right but I still hope to change someones mind.
no if someone wants to be rich and asks it to god why religion has to do anything with his wishes?
Good Luck.
I would really like for you to change my mind, but what you have provided so far serves only to reinforce my point of view. Namely: That God is a fictional construct created by man to explain the unexplainable. Like Ra, the Sun God for the ancient Egyptians, “God” is a simple explanation for things we don’t know.
What do you think about that?
Sup Daniel. Holy fuck I have a lot to catch up on.
partly. most of them were but there are lot of different theories about those gods (like, in egypt they where aliens or they were Pharaons). Christianity doesn’t consider that the miracles that happen can’t be explained by science. it can’t be explained just for now and I think that there is no actual need of those explanations.
I think what he was implying is that religion itself exists to explain things that were or are not understood.
AND -
Christianity historically has, and still does, explain events in it’s own context, in accordance to religious texts or beliefs. It has historically rejected science and views science as incorrect and heretical - as well as any other explanation that isn’t Christianity.
Many Christians reject and ignore facts and provable theories, either because they aren’t taught or endorsed by their church or because they conflict with the texts or theology.
But facts and provable theories are not the only things rejected or ignored. Conflicts, inconsistencies, and inaccuracies in the religious texts themselves are also ignored.
And again, Christianity not only explains the unknown through the texts, but it often actively rejects and denies the KNOWN, because those things conflict with the texts or theology. And that’s delusion.
You do this yourself in your fallacious answers to rhetorical questions and your insistence that certain events are miracles without any valid evidence that the ‘miracles’ are real occurrences, or that they could have no explanation other than they are ‘miracles’.
In terms of explaining the natural universe, the Abrahamic religions aren’t much different from religions that came before them, or religions that were contemporary to them - except that they survived the others through military and cultural conquest, and of course, an historically forced compliance.
It’s much easier for a religion to survive if you force compliance through the threat of death or torture, without which, Christianity would not have survived or would have at best been just another minor religion practiced by a few people in certain mountainous or rural regions.
Christianity adopted the Old Testament books from the Ancient Jews, which were written by and for Bronze Age mentalities. This explanation of the natural universe is essentially the same as the other Bronze Age cultures of that region. You can say that the Babylonians and Sumerians worshiped false gods and that their false religion’s explanation of the natural universe was simply myth - but their beliefs were essentially the same as that of the Old Testament. In fact, it seems as if much of the Judaic myth was adopted from the older Babylonian myth - the creation story and the flood story certainly. It seems as if the Judaic tradition was developed from older religious and cultural traditions rather than handed to the Ancient Jews from god, which is the assumption.
that was fault of people and religious hierarchy. people love to make their own interpretation of rules and very very often those interpretations are mistaken. the science is not against religion, at least in Georgia it is so.
that doesn’t make religion wrong.
since you have not explained them either they are still miracles
Like the rising of the sun in the sky?
|
no, like the uncorrupting “paint”
So, It’s possible for the bible to be mistaken. And if this is so, then who’s interpretation is correct and whose is mistaken? And since some interpretations are mistaken, then it must be possible that ALL interpretations are mistaken.
YES - yes it does. If it ignores or rejects something proven to be true to teach something proven to be false, then it’s wrong. That’s the definition of ‘wrong’.
This is argumentum ad ignorantiam.
The sun rising in the sky was as unexplainable as the supposedly “uncorrupted blood”. Both have natural reasonings behind them and they were both attributed to a deity.
Sodium citrate is not a miracle.
By ‘incorrupt’, they mean not coagulated. Blood coagulates after it leaves the body. You can see this in blood on clothing, skin, or surfaces - we call it ‘dried blood’.
But we can preserve blood. We add anticoagulants. ‘Incorrupt’ blood is extremely common. You can find it in any hospital or blood bank. There’s absolutely no miracle in ‘incorrupt’ blood.
BTW - concerning the entire superstition of ‘incorrupt’ bodies signifying some ‘miracle’: in former centuries, Christians referred to bodies that hadn’t decomposed to skeletal forms as ‘incorrupt’ and assumed this strange phenomenon to be a sign from God. Today we have a different name for it - mummification - also not a miracle. Coating bodies in wax, adding them to chambers in which the air is removed, or embalming them - are the causes of ‘incorruptibility’, not supernatural acts of god.
As these causes are well-known and explainable, the Catholic Church no longer considers incorruptibility a miracle … the Eastern Church still does apparently.
In any event, uncoagulated blood is extremely common, and nothing miraculous.
the frozen blood with some aditions and blood that doesn’t corrupt are different things.
as I understand you are referring the King Mirrians miracle. in legend it is said that “solar eclipse” appeared only for king(and while hunting he wasn’t alone). please read carefully.
Do you have evidence that the “uncorrupted blood” is simply blood?
me? no. but there is, I can show it with Internet. the blood sample was taken for analyze by doctor and it didn’t started corrupting. it can be checked by anyone who wishes. maybe there is some proof in Internet but I haven’t seen it.
We don’t freeze blood - we add anticoagulants like sodium citrate. The anti-coagulant keeos it from clotting - or ‘drying’.
Blood doesn’t decompose like tissues as in ‘incorrupt’ bodies - blood clots and dries. These people are saying “Look! His blood has not dried! It’s still liquid! It is incorruptible!”
There’s nothing unusual or miraculous about a vial of blood.
But that’s without mentioning that you don’t know if that’s even blood in the vial, who’s blood it is, what’s been added to it, or even where or when the photo was taken.
EDIT:
AHAHAHAAHAHA - I’ve never even heard of “King Mirrians Miracle” - I just wrote that thing about solar eclipses as an extreme example (or so I thought) of something that ignorant and superstitious people might have thought was a miracle in the Middle Ages. I had no idea that this really happened. Wow - too funny.
BIG EDIT: Silly post is silly. My Bad.
I’ll leave this link up here, as it is quite an interesting read, yet it is overly biased towards pro-incorruptibles.
Also, the story at the end on Emile Zola is a complete fabrication. Google searching his name and Marie Lemarcheand reveals the above site, one other that quotes it, and 2 others that are biographical accounts of Emile’s writing career.
Burden of proof always rests on the claimant - there’s only one side that needs to prove anything.
BTW - the link is to a religious site.
I don’t see that there’s any debate about incorruptibility. It’s quite clear that retarded decomposition is not a miracle - the Catholic Church no longer regards it as a miracle - and those guys are totally into miracles n such - and by that I mean they’re not exactly atheists.
If you’ve seen an incorruptible, you can clearly see that the bodies are mummified, in many cases wax covered. Mummification isn’t a miracle. It’s common and natural. If s person died in an arid region, or close to salty air, the body would mummify. If you enclose a body in a sealed container and remove the air, the body will mummify.
EDIT: You can do a google image search. The image you’ll find the most is of St Bernadette, who looks like she’s sleeping. She’s one of the incorruptibles that’s been covered in wax. Under the wax, is a mummy. That’s not her face or hands. It’s fake. Many incorruptibles are covered in wax, others are not. Just browsing the image search you should be able to see the unadulterated bodies - they’re quite clearly mummified.
Most of the sites dealing with incorruptibles seem to be religious. Here’s one that’s not. I’m sure that there are others, this is just the first one I came across. I haven’t actually read it yet myself, so it may be crap -
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4126
EDIT: I read the skeptoid article - it’s OK. It’s details a few case studies of incorruptibles, including St Bernadette. It’s a quick and easy read. Interestingly enough, the article states how the church defines ‘incorrupt’, and apparently mummified remains don’t qualify. The article also claims that there ARE NO examples of an incorrupt body.