Comments by Vulcan

Comment #158691 by Vulcan on April 11, 2008 at 12:49 am

In reply to:
Comment #155845 by Quetzalcoatl (although I believe it was directed at someone else's post)
and
Comment #155911 by Christopher Davis
As regards the definition of Religion since apparently some aspects have escaped you.
1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe
6. something one believes in and follows devotedly
"Religion." Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. 09 Apr. 2008. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Religion>.
Also I note that neither of you addressed the point that was made in your rush to defend your status as non-religious.
That is the Illogical belief in a Universal Negative that is the basis of Atheism.

In reply to:
Steve Zara Comment #155847:

Hmm, didn't we meet several years ago on GameSpy or Mplayer in one of the Starfleet Command game lobbies? I ask because someone posited the exact same hypothesis then with the exact same wording (like it was cut and pasted), but with at least some link to my statement at the time. Your posting is meaningless as an argument against my post. I have to assume your post here is based on the assumption on your part that I do not believe in any gods besides YHWH. Shall I take the matches out now?
1. As a human (lacking both Omnipresence and Omniscience) I could not prove that your yhwh 2.0 does not exist. (Interestingly exactly what I said in my post that you replied to.)
2. I would therefore have to include your yhwh 2.0 into the list of gods & religions that I investigated once I realized the Illogic (and dare I say Irrationality) of my earlier Atheistic beliefs. And would have had to investigate the claims and/or writings associated with your yhwh 2.0 in the same way that I investigated the other religions of the world to decide if I could believe in your yhwh 2.0. Even if I found I could not believe in yhwh 2.0, I still could not claim with anything approaching certainty that he did not exist (see 1 above or original post).
3. Having said that, since I do believe that YHWH is the one true GOD based on a preponderance of the evidence and that he is truthful (based again on evidence) I am forced to dismiss your yhwh 2.0 from godhood because YHWH has said through the prophet Isaiah when explaining why the people of Israel need not fear the gods/idols of the peoples surrounding them:

6 "This is what YHWH says�"
Israel's King and Redeemer, YHWH Tsebaoth:
I am the first and I am the last;
apart from me there is no God.
7 Who then is like me? Let him proclaim it.
Let him declare and lay out before me
what has happened since I established my ancient people,
and what is yet to come�"
yes, let him foretell what will come.
8 Do not tremble, do not be afraid.
Did I not proclaim this and foretell it long ago?
You are my witnesses. Is there any God besides me?
No, there is no other Rock; I know not one."

In reply to:
Comment #155849 by Quetzalcoatl:
Perhaps you need to go take a class in Logic again. While you can not logically KNOW a Universal Negative (i.e. There is no God. There is no little green man. or There is no left-handed, redheaded, female midget named Alice.) without being omnipresent or omniscient, you can logically KNOW something exists or is true (i.e. George Washington. The Second Law of Thermodynamics. The sum of the angles of a triangle on a normal plane is always 180 degrees. or There are human beings who don't look or believe as I do.) without being either. As far as proving to you that YHWH exists or is the one true God or that Yeshua (Jesus) is the messiah (YHWH incarnate) that is between you and the Holy Spirit all I can do is give you my testimony and point you to the evidence. It is up to you to set your ego aside and examine the evidence both for and against as impartially as possible. Short synopsis of my testimony: I started as an Atheist until I came to understand logic and became an investigator (as distinguished from many Agnostics who relish their ignorance) and began using the Scientific Method and logic in general on the issue of God/gods/religions. Through this process I came to understand that YHWH of the Judeo-Christian writings is the only one that fulfilled all the criterion and fit all the evidence, but with no way to prove the matter using the Scientific Method (as I am only a human) I came to what I believed to be an impasse. Finally YHWH directed someone into my acquaintance who was able to help me understand that the Scientific Method is not the only way to prove the truthfulness of something but there is also the Legal/Historical Method(s). Applying the rules of evidence and testimony from the Legal/Historical Method(s) of proof lead to my acceptance of YHWH as the one true God and Yeshua (YHWH saves, Jesus) as YHWH incarnate the redeemer of the World. I have since found it interesting to learn two things (Consistently when someone sets out to honestly disprove the Bible they end up accepting Yeshua and defending the Bible, and when man's current understanding of the universe or how things work in it contradicts what the Bible actually says about it later discoveries show man's understanding to be wrong and the Bible correct after all.)

In reply to:
Comment #157054 by Jon_Sociologist
Don't cut yourself on that razor. Perhaps you should have scrolled down to "Applications �" Science and the scientific method in your linked page. By the way, Faith in an unprovable assumption with no evidence is Blind Faith. As to your statement "…suggest that the 'causes of it all' are natural" fails upon the rocks that the currently "accepted" naturalistic explanations require a violation of the agreed upon Natural Laws of Thermodynamics, and the fact that evidence doesn't suggest any thing only interpretation of evidence does [The evolutionists (all variations), the Intelligent Designers (all variations), and the Biblical Creationists all have the same evidence and all have different interpretations of it.]. The Scientific Method requires that you conduct tests to attempt to disprove your Hypotheses and Theories unable to devise any tests to do that himself Darwin proposed that if you could find an irreducibly complex mechanism within a living thing or not find millions of transitional forms in the fossil record his theory would be disproved and that would be the tests.

In reply to a comment or two that I could not find again which were not directed at my post but caught my eye:
Someone stated that the Sumerian Civilization pre-dated the Biblical account and that Bible believers should call themselves Anti-Sumerian (or some such). Perhaps that person should check again a little deeper because less than 200 years ago the "Scientific Community" believed that Sumeria was a fictitious empire since the only references to it were in the Biblical text, and the believed time span of Sumer fits within the time span of the Biblical account of History.

Someone posted that it was "typical" of Bible believers when confronted with something in the Bible that contradicts "Science" to say that it is Metaphorical and run away. I would ask that if someone who claims to believe the Bible (be they Jew or Christian) does that and the passage doesn't contain the usual literary clues that something is a metaphor (i.e. …like… As… …as… etc.) then you ask them to do a few things for me. Go brush up on the Scientific Method (and science in general); read and contemplate Job 38 (if not 38 to the end); find, read, and contemplate the shortest chapter in the Bible, the longest chapter in the Bible, and verses 8-9 of the chapter between them; then go back and re-read all the passages that they believe to be Metaphorical with the question "what if it is meant to be a factual account of real events?"

Due to the large volume of insults and counter insults (most with no real substance in both directions) that have bogged down this thread and the fact that this discussion has actually drifted way off of the topic of this thread, I ask that anyone who seriously wishes to continue any of the discussions in this post with me do so by e-mailing me. Or you can look for me between 1000 and 1300 UTC most days of the week on the following Ventrilo Server (if I'm not on most likely someone will be who can get me on).
Host: carbon.typefrag.com
Port: 16031
Password: KLOZ1

2. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #155758 by Vulcan on April 5, 2008 at 3:51 pm

Socrates,

You post two contradictory statements side by side and still can't see the contradiction?
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"Organized complexity cannot just spontaneously happen" and that "design can never be an ULTIMATE explanation for organized complexity"
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Interesting the delusions that "Faith" in something can allow us to have.

Can anyone prove a Universal Negative who is not YHWH? My understanding of Logic is that you can not, for in order to KNOW that something doesn't exist anywhere or anywhen you would have to be everywhere and everywhen simultaniously which is one of the attributes of YHWH. Based on Logic, I submit that Athiesm is a "RELIGION" that relies on an adherance to "BLIND FAITH."

Here's hoping for your sake that you are right,
Vulcan