Faith and belief - The Almighty God revealed through his grandness

Who cares? Logical fallacy: Appeal to Authority (look it up). Many scientists were religious throughout history. Just because one is an expert in there field in one endeavor i.e. science does not make them a source of undisputed authority in another i.e. religion.Your argument fails here anyways. There was really no choice at the time but to be a Christian and a "creationist" in light of the mergence of Church and State at the time. If anyone wanted to have any type of significant occupation they had to be a Christian and if they disagreed with the Church than they were in danger of being branded a heritic and killed. BTW, Newton was a mystic and a closet Arian believing the trinity to be a fraud perpetrated by the Catholic Church. He also conducted many occultic studies i.e. alchamy, spiritualism (talking to spirits) and was a member of Rosicrucianism and possible a freemason. Does that fit your description of a modern day Christian?

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

And many intelligent people do not believe in God. What is your point?So by arguing that intelligent people believe in God you are implying that stupid people do not believe in God, right?So are you calling Einstein stupid?Einstein believed in the god of Spinoza, that is Einstein religious beliefs mostly paralled pantheism (all of nature and the universe is God). Einstein did not believe in a personal God of the Jews or the Christians and he certainly did not believe in Jesus being the son of God.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

Sorry had to dig down, I did not see this statement. You have to be careful what you write because it seemed you were implying that anyone who did not believe in God was unintelligent, which not even the brunt of religious people believe. Hmmm, are mentally handicapped people intelligent? You have to define terms here, specifically, what are you qualifying as intelligent? True, no one is debating this. Your point?Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

You mean these parts: I could go on. The Bible is a poor example of morality, though I do admire some of Jesus teachings. However, even the Golden Rule is found in over 10 other major world religions and altruism is systemic of human society with or without religion.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

So you are only moral because God commands you to be? This question has been rehashed over and over and was actually originally brought up by Plato over 2300 years ago as the Euthyphro dilemma: Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods? Is what God dictates as moral because it is moral, or is behavior moral because God commands it. That is is morality independent of God. If so then God himself is subject to a higher law, that of morality. If not, than God can call murder or anyother attrocity "good" and we would could not question his intentions and thus in essense subject and commanded to perform cruel, brutal vicious actions in the name of morality.Do you see the dilemna here, Cedre?Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

So you blindly accept that God commanded the murder of innocent children in the Bible with no reservations. What needs to be understood about commanding the murder of innocent children and babies? Do you need to "understand" someone who murders a 6-month old little girl in her crib with a hunting knife before holding him morally repsonsible for his actions? Why is God any different? I would actually hold him/her/it more morally culpible for such an action considering he/she/it is supposed to have infinite intelligence and power. Actually I am trying to understand it from a moral perspective more than anything. So God's morality is relative not absolute? Why is it that Christians call any moral system that doesn't jive with there's moral relativism when they cannot even agree what scripture in the Bible are still morally relavent today? Problem is, you don't even ask questions. You blindly accept what ever you read and disregard and ignore any of the tough questions that need to be asked about what modern humans would consider being morally inscrupulous in today's society. Been there, done that, have the t-shirt (yes, I have said this before, but it seems we have the ever revolving wheel of religious, close-minded, blinded people on EvC). I understand your mindset thoroughly. I was once closed-minded like you. I preached on street corners, handed out tracks, attended church religiously, invited people to church, baptised friends, and believed every single thing that was preached, taught and indoctrinated to me for nearly 28 years (I was baptised at 8 years old and again at 22). Who is devastating it. All I did was quote your own scripture back to you. That's it. If you don't like it, than have a chat with God.I have studied Christianity (and many other religions) exhaustively for 20+ years and found it wanting both ethically and scientifically.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

It does? Can you elaborate? Where does it show this?And what is your definition of "living material"?

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

Circular reasoning much? God's standards are moral because God is moral. God is moral because his standards are moral. The problem is there is no independent way of determining if God is moral or not.Furthermore how have you determined he is excellent and moral? In other words it is only through God himself (or rather scripture which describes God) that you have determined this. So how do you know that God is not evil rather than good? Hypothetically, what if God told you to kill your child, would that be considered good or evil? However, Jesus does not obey all the laws originally given by his himself, the Father and the Holy Spirit (as part of the Trinity he was present at the beginning of the universe and during the presentation of the Law to Moses) and in facts blatantly violates several of them, so he himself is morally inconsistent with the commands given by God in the Torah.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

How about this one for a start:1. The law in Deuteronomy 22:20-21 states: In John 8:3-11 Jesus blatantly ignores these previous COMMANDS BY GOD given to Moses stating that adultery will be punished by stoning and tells the Pharasees and Scribes "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." and they all leave.BTW, I applaud Jesus for violating these rules as a man since I consider many of these rules inane, ignorant and morally bankrupt in the first place. But as a divine being and one of the ones who supposedly disseminated the rules in the first place, this would by considered "do as I say, not as I do" i.e. hypocricy by anyone intelligent person's rational standards.There are several more examples but i.e. breaking the Sabbath, prescriptions on hygiene, etc. but will not go into them for sake of brevity.Again, I have no problem with this on a human level, but as God why would he disobey his own laws in the first place. Why not set clear cut humane laws that would not cause modern humans to have to rationalize away or cherry pick verses to make them fit our more humane and fair moral systems that we live by today.To me it is speaks volumes of the moral inconsistency between the OT and the NT and the desire for religious fundamentalists to try to hold onto what ever scraps of there religion they have left.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

Nice to hear from you again as well Bertot, my old arch-nemesis or should I say Barfolomew. I didn't cite Matthew 12:1-21 because I don't think this was a clear cut case in which Jesus disobeyed the Sabbath. But I will entertain your comments. This seems to be the mainline Catholic and Protestant view of the trinity i.e. support the Nicene Creed. However, you are in stark disagreement with Peg and ICANT then, who seem to be anti-Trinitarian in there faith: I am not belittling any of you, I just brought it up to show that even Christians on this board do not even agree in there doctrine even of something as fundamentally important as the nature of God and Jesus. But that is besides the point back to the topic at hand. Than why wait 2000+ years to amend his original commands, why did he not incorporate this philosophy of desiring mercy rather than sacrifice in his original commandments in the Pentateuch. This is hypocritical.It is like telling your child, "If someone throws a punch at you, you must fight back and kick there ass". Then when you get a call from the principle saying your child was in a fight you tell your child in the presence of the teachers and principle, "Haven't I always told you to turn the other check and walk away from fights" and then punishing them for there actions. This is the epitome of hypocrisy and inconsistent moral behavior.In my opinion, all this "God can change his mind or amend or end the OT law" crap is an attempt by early Church fathers i.e. Jerome, Augustine and the like to try to rectify the obvious moral inconsistencies between the OT and the NT resulting from merging two worldviews together, the Semitic worldview of the OT and the Hellenized worldview of the NT. You explaining that God has the right to do this does not make it less of an inconsistent. You saying it is so does not necessarily make it so. This is an a priori statement which has no method of being validated or falsified. It is also circular reasoning:a. God is non-contradictory in nature
b. Therefore God's laws are non-contradictory
c. If we examine God's laws they are non-contradictory in nature
d. Therefore God is non-contradictory in nature A person's will/testament does not kill people for being adulterers, blasphemers, talking back to your parents. It does not enslave people and make rules for this enslavement. Someone's will & testament does not condemn people to eternity in hell. Besides a will and testament is the determination of disposition of someone's personal property after his/her death, this has nothing to do with God commanding a select group of people on social morality in the OT and NT. Your analogy falls apart here. So why did God not make Jesus teachings the Law from the beginning? Why change horses midstream. Why cause all this confusion? It is a bit too contrived. But he was disobeying his own law(s) in John 8. Did Jesus/God not COMMAND people to stone adulterers. Yes or No?Did Jesus/God not follow his own command. Yes or No? Why give the Jews over 700 laws and expect them not to follow it to the T? If the most powerful entity in the Universe came down and handed one of your ancestors over 700 rules and regulations and told you to follow them OR DIE (or at least this is what was told by your ancestors). Would they not in all their human power attempt to follow them no matter what. Now let's say they pass these laws to their progeny generation after generation for a good 1000+ years. Do you not think that following these laws would become mechanical and automatic, and that they would be folded into the very nature of there culture? It is inevitable. Therefore, God with foreknowledge perpetuated this behavior of hypocrisy and mechanical adherence to the law in the first place.Either God is the most ignorant entity on matters of human psychologically and sociology or he is a mere fabrication of human religious fanatics. I would go with the latter. Why wait 2000 years to correct his first fuck up? Why not instill these principles/philosophies in the first place? Just because you say so, does not make it so. Keep justifying ethnocide and the murder of children and babies. You explained nothing I didn't already know you were going to bring up? Why, because I used to teach the same thing. You only opened up whole new cans of worms and a whole slew of inconsistencies and questions. You have no clue what I do or do not understand. Stop pretending you do. I understand, I just don't agree with your justification of your religious book or of your god. Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

Now you are just being stupid ICANT. The Pharisees themselves knew that the laws in the Torah only applied to the descendents of Abraham. Even the Samaritians, considered half-breeds by the Jews of Judea, considered themselves under the laws of Moses in the Torah. If this woman was a gentile i.e. a Roman or a Greek or anything other than Jewish than they would not have even talked to her much less attempt to prosecute God's law against her.Don't play these stupid little rationalizing away games ICANT. You are a preacher, you know this was not the case. You aren't fooling anyone.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

Just to clarify: Yes according to the Bible the laws given to Moses in the OT, only applied to the descendents of Abraham not to the gentiles (non-Jews). All gentiles were considered lost already and thus not subject to the laws of Moses since they already broke the law. BTW, the Jewish leaders of Jesus day had no jurisdiction over non-Jews. None. Only the Roman prefects in Palestine could judge and preside over non-Jews in Palestine and for any serious infractions by Jews the Sanhedrin had to forward these judgments for capitol punishment to the Roman prefect. The Sanhedrin (Jewish council) had no legal jurisdiction for capitol punishment. Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

This is where ICANT and I part ways so to speak. I understand the historical significance of the law to the Jewish people in the OT and in fact my brother-in-law is Jewish so I have a pretty good understanding of the OT law from both the Christian and Jewish mindset.However, where I disagree with most Christians and Jews is that I do not equate the law as being given from a supernatural being rather I see it as a Semitic religious and societal set of laws that evolved over the history of the Jewish state and later adopted and modified by the Christian religious leaders.Further, modern Jews still do not hold that there laws directly apply to the rest of mankind. Rather they hold that the Jewish religion is to be an example or role model for the rest of humanity to follow. Jews do no hold gentiles to there standard of the law, only other Jews. In Jewish thinking, a gentile just has to believe in the one true God and be obedient (though they don't have to be obedient to all the Halakah-Jewish laws) in order to recieve divine favor.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

Yes. Let me ammend what I said before, the law of adultery does apply to gentiles as well as Jews. It is part of the 7 fundamental laws (the laws of Noah) which applies to both Jews and non-Jews according to Jewish tradition (though not explicitly stated in the OT as being for both Jews and non-Jews). These laws which apply to all mankind are as follows:1) idolatry
2) blasphemy
3) homicide
4) incest and adultery
5) robbery
6) eating the flesh of a live creature
7) establishing a system of justiceThat's it for the non-Jews. The Jews have 613 other commandments/laws of God they have to abide by. Yes and no. What do you mean by sinful for all in the Bible? Problem is that the OT Bible is not the all-inclusive moral code for even orthodox Jews. They have a lot of extra-biblical rabbanic literature they use to interpret and expand upon the Jewish Bible. Modern Judaism has a lot more shades of grey than modern Christianity. Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

Intelligence is a relative term. Yes, humans are more intillegent than animals though there are some extreme cases i.e. severly mentally handicapped humans who have very little to no cognitive abilities and are on par or worse than higher animal intelligence. Children are less intelligent than adults on average due to the fact that a childs brain is still in development and a child has very little life experience. No, it is more like our intelligence affects our beliefs. Many children (though not all) have less intelligence than many adults just for the sheer lack of life experience, they also are more prone to believe in things that most adults have stopped believing in i.e. Santa Claus. Such as?

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan