From: iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: I'm God.
Date: 4 Oct 92 15:27:24 GMT
Organization: Centre for Cognitive Science, Edinburgh, UK

In article <69739@hydra.gatech.EDU> rpitts@emperor.gatech.edu (Richard Pitts) writes:
>In article <1992Oct2.045921.28374@nuchat.sccsi.com> kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com (Kevin Brown) writes:
>|"Jesus" (or, rather, his followers) as you to accept his
>|godness without proof at all.
>
>No proof?  Well it is proof that you don't accept.

Would you call something proof if you don't accept it as such?

>Jesus' followers wrote and documented a lot of what Jesus did, so
>that we could beleive and have eternal life.

Homer wrote and documented a lot of what the gods did, too.
Yet there are still some who refuse to believe in Zeus.

>Luke wrote in Acts that after His resurrection,
>Jesus for the next forty days gave many convincing proofs that he was alive.

We still haven't discharged a few assumptions, to wit: (1) that what
is written in Acts is true (that is, there was a Jesus who gave proofs
that he was alive); (2) that said Jesus had been dead before that; and
(3) that his being alive after having died has anything to do with godhood.

>I guess your have better sources that contradict all of this.

We have no reason to believe any of this.

>I ask, if this is really the way it happened (which I believe), then
>what more could be done to document it???????????

Do you believe that Mohammed was a prophet from God?  No?  Why?
I think his prophethood is documented about as well as it could be.

>For the sake of the argument, what if we are wrong - what have we lost?
>For we are living fulfilled lives today.

Maybe, but some of use have this slight idea that the lives of all
people on earth would be far more fulfilled if no religions existed.
We would be able to dedicate more resources on more serious things.
That's quite a loss for mankind at large.

>However, if we are right, what have you lost??????

Nothing whatsoever.  If you are right, and your god exists and is what
he appears to be according to the Old and the New Testament, then I
for one have not the slightest desire to ever see him, let alone have
eternal life with him.  So I won't have lost anything.

Or maybe both you and we are wrong, and there is a god who saves
atheists but damns Christians.  It makes sense, too.  If I had created
a being with a brain, I would be pleased if it doubted my existence.

>Satan deceived mankind and so the sin nature
>entered the human race.  <...>  God warned him [_sc._ man]
>not to take part in the 'tree of knowledge of good and evi' - man
>disobeyed, as we continue to do today.

Why did your god create that tree in the first place?  Why did he
create Satan, come to that?

>If we can't really do anything here,

We can do quite a few things here.  Certainly much more than we could
two thousand years ago.  And we'll be able to do more in the future.

>how can we merit the favor of God, who made us - we have all
>come short of the glory of God.

Glory?  Even if, say, he made us, what does that have to do with glory?

>|But I can tell you this: *I* am "lord" of my life.  *I* control what I
>|do and what I do not do.  I place none of the blame and none of the credit
>|for the results of my decisions on anyone but myself (where such decisions
>|do not primarily involve anyone else).
>
>Jesus offers you the opportunity to remove the blame,
>for he has paid the debt.

That's the catch.  I don't want the blame to be removed from where it
belongs, and someone else to pay my debts.  I would lose my sleep and
appetite if I knew that someone has been beaten, let alone crucified,
for my sake.  Fortunately, no one has.

>It is amazing that one can look at the beauty of nature,

What about the ugliness of nature?  It isn't all beautiful, you know.

>for why should there be beauty without a creator,

Why should beauty have a creator?

>and yet not wonder or see the hand of a master designer in it all.

That's because there isn't any such hand.

-- 
 `If ye hiv ears oan yer heid - then use them tae lissen.' (The Glasgow Gospel)
Ivan A Derzhanski   (iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk;  iad@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu)
* Centre for Cognitive Science,  2 Buccleuch Place,  Edinburgh EH8 9LW,  UK
* Cowan House, Pollock Halls, 18 Holyrood Park Road, Edinburgh EH16 5BD, UK