From: kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com (Kevin Brown)
Subject: Re: I'm God.
Organization: I can't see any in the immediate vicinity...
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 07:24:47 GMT

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:
>|In article <69367@hydra.gatech.EDU> rpitts@emperor.gatech.edu (Richard Pitts) writes:

[...]

>|>You asked me to prove you godness - Jesus did not.  
>|
>|No.  Rather, "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.  Jesus' followers
>wrote and documented a lot of what Jesus did, so that we could beleive
>and have eternal life.  

Not exactly an unbiased source, is it?

Strange how all the "documentation" for what "Jesus" did was written by
the very people who believed him to be The Savior.

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

Yeah, so?  Without any significant third-party sources for stuff like
this, and given that the very people who made this claim were the very
people who had the most to lose (psychologically) by being wrong about
this, I have little reason to believe that this "Jesus" actually was
"resurrected".

I do not question that the authors of the various passages that mention
this believed in this "resurrection".  I question that the authors'
claims match reality.

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

No contradictions are needed.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  Since none is
forthcoming (I cannot consider a biased source such as the Bible to
be "evidence"), what good reason is there to believe the claims?
None that I can see.

>|*Anyone* can *claim* to be godlike.  Few, if any, can prove themselves up
>|to it.
>|
>|Sorry, but I'll take proof over blind acceptance any day.
>
>Jesus didn't claim to be godlike but to be God.  

In other words, "Jesus" made a *stronger* claim than the claim of being
godlike.  This means that *stronger* evidence is necessary.

>The testimony of what
>he did and what he requires of us (to beleive) has been passed down
>and we have it today.  

No.  What the believers *wrote* is what has been passed down.  That
the things they describe "Jesus" as having done actually happened is
another matter entirely, and one for which there is little, if any,
supporting evidence.

>Jesus KNEW that he was going back to the
>Father and sit at his right hand and so he told Thomas, that he was
>blessed to see and believe, but more blessed are those who don't see
>and do believe.  

Big deal.  I don't care who is "blessed" and who is not.  That your
"God" requires its followers to believe without decent evidence is
good reason for me to believe that your "God" is not worth following,
even if it *does* exist.

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

A *lot*.  In particular, independent accounts from disinterested third
parties would help greatly.  But such accounts seem not to exist with
respect to any of the important claims made by the authors of the Bible.

>|>Much less you 
>|>conviently forgot my final response - TIME WILL TELL - I've made my
>|>decision to follow Christ - you've made yours to not follow Him.
>|
>|Of course, your belief is that you won't know until you're dead, right?
>
>We know today.

Depends on what you mean by "know".

You *believe* that you'll have some sort of afterlife, but you don't
*know* in the same sense that you know that your car won't continue
to run if you don't fill it with gas every once in a while.  The latter
is based on direct experience.  The former is not, for you have (by
definition) not experienced an afterlife, and neither has anyone you
know.

The "sense" of knowing that I'm talking about is closer to the type
associated with your real-world experiences.  It is *not* faith.

>|So, if your beliefs are wrong, then it's entirely possible that time *won't*
>|tell, because you won't have a consciousness with which to evaluate your
>|beliefs post-mortem.
>
>For the sake of the argument, what if we are wrong - what have we lost?

The ability to do things that you are currently forbidden by your
belief system to do.  You can't, for example, have sex until you
are married.

>For we are living fulfilled lives today.  However, if we are right,
>what have you lost??????

The ability to fulfill your life even more than it already is.

>Every one can know - it is a manner of faith and not works.  

Faith and knowledge are *not* the same thing!!

>One's pride can't save them.  Nor is one's desire to hold onto something
>worth losing eternity for.

You "lose eternity" only if you're *right*.

I'm questioning whether or not you're right.  There is little, if any,
evidence that says that you *are* right, and a significant amount of
evidence that says that you're not.

>|Let me get this straight:  you are not well read (by your own admission),
>|and you claim to know very little, yet you somehow decide to believe in
>|all this unnecessary and untested gobbledygook *anyway*?  Whatever for???
>
>For eternal life.  

Except that *this* reason is valid to you only *after* you believe.
Can't you justify your belief without resorting to circular arguments?

>Again, for the sake of the argument, what do I lose, since I live to my 
>understanding a fulfilled life?  What do you risk losing?

The opportunity to do anything that, were it not for your belief
system, you would be inclined to do for the benefit it brings you
and others.  Sex before marriage is one such thing.

>|Interesting that you equate lack of belief in "Jesus" with belief in one's
>|own understanding of everything.
>|
>|Sorry, but the two are not equivalent.
>
>Agreed.  But belief in _one's only merits over those of Christ_ is
>the _rejection of Christ the selection of oneself_ as the guiding force 
>for your life - both for now and eternity.

I cannot believe myself to have merit over something/someone whose
current existence I do not even know, except in hypothetical terms.

>|I have no belief in this "Jesus" you believe so strongly in.  At the same
>|time, I do not believe myself to be all-knowing.  Indeed, it is precisely
>|*because* I do not know everything that I have no belief in this "Jesus".
>
>You do believe there was a historical Jesus, correct?

I cannot say for sure.  I understand that there is good historical
reason to believe that *someone* during the period in question
travelled around preaching some of the things attributed to Jesus
of the Bible, and that this person eventually became known, in a
fashion, as the Jesus portrayed in the Bible.

>|Specifically, I do not know enough to evaluate the truth (or falsehood) of
>|the claims about "Jesus" (e.g., the afterlife benefits of belief in this
>|figure), and thus reserve final judgement on such issues until the data are
>|in.  However, I *can* say that I find it unlikely that such an internally
>|inconsistent belief set (one which, in the same breath, says that God is
>|omnibenevolent, omniscient, and omnipotent, and that God *also* created
>|the universe in such a way as to enable, if not encourage, human suffering)
>|is correct.
>
>The plan for man was that of good - God said that he saw all the he
>had created and it was good.  Satan deceived mankind and so the sin nature
>entered the human race.  The human suffering is a result of that.  Man
>had to have a free will or else he would be just a robot.  God warned
>him not to take part in the 'tree of knowledge of good and evi' - man
>disobeyed, as we continue to do today.  Man by nature became seperated
>from God.  God through Jesus the Christ has provided a way for us to
>relate to himself through faith - not by man ability but by God's gift.


Yawn.  This does nothing to address my point.  If you believe your "God"
to be all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving, *and* you believe your
"God" to have set up the initial conditions of the universe, then your
belief is internally inconsistent, because the logical conclusions that
can be drawn from each assumption contradict one another.

To say otherwise is to make a mockery of the concept we know as "love".

>|In any case, if your knowledge is so limited, and you are not very well-read,
>|then on what do you base the notion that belief in "Jesus" is better than
>|belief in one's own ability to cope with the real world?
>
>I know how weak and insufficient I am, but I know what a difference 
>Jesus has made - He has changed my life.

Perhaps.  I cannot say.

You attribute the changes in your life to this "Jesus" character, and
you subscribe to a large and complex belief system as a result of this.
But whether or not this has anything to do with reality is another
question entirely.

Since there seems to be so little objective evidence supporting your
belief system, I have no good reason to believe that your belief system
has much connection with reality (it certainly has no connection with
the reality *I* have experienced).  Thus, I have no good reason to
believe in this "God" of yours, or that this "Jesus" is my "savior",
or any of the other things you believe in that sound like so much
bogosity to me.

>|Perhaps *your* ability to cope with the real world is severely limited.
>|I don't seem to have that much of a problem with it, myself.
>
>What do you call 'much of a problem'?

Oh, things like being unable to deal with the death of loved ones, or the
experience of severe personal danger.  These things are things I have
weathered without the help of any supernatural entity.

Can you say the same?  If so, then what do you need this supernatural
entity for?  If not, then how does this make you any better off than I
am?

>|>What can you
>|>do about your the extension of your own life 
>|
>|Quite a bit, as it turns out.  For instance, you can exercise.  You can
>|eat in a healthy fashion.  You can get sufficient sleep at night.  You
>|can avoid taking stupid chances.
>|
>|There's a *lot* you can do to extend your lifespan.
>
>See how much one can do, when it come time for one to die?

Look, even your beloved "Jesus" was unable to do a damned thing when
it was *his* time to die, because in the end he *did* die, at least
in a physical sense (and that is basically what you're talking about
here.  "Lifespan" isn't a meaningful term in any other sense).

If you're asking about what one can do about an "afterlife", then I
have no answer at all, because I don't even know that an "afterlife"
even exists, much less what form such a thing would take if it did
exist.

You have certain beliefs regarding that last, but I've seen nothing
to compell me to treat it any more seriously than the beliefs of the
Hindus, for example.

>|>or can you even make yourself grow taller.  
>|
>|Beats me.  Why is it relevent?
>
>It is a teaching from Jesus to show how little control we have over
>this physcial world in which we live.  

Heh.  Give it time.  Our control over the physical world grows with
each passing day.

You ask for the ability to grow taller on command?  Give us a few
centuries, and I wouldn't be surprised if we were able to comply.
Technology has the potential to do *a lot* for us (indeed, it has
*already* done a lot for us).  That technology comes directly from
what we learn about the real world, and I dare say that your "God"
has been of *zero* help to us in this regard.  None of the
information we base our technology on comes from your beloved Bible,
and yet I dare say that your very existence depends much more on
that technology than on the words in your Bible (for you would have
no food to eat were it not for agricultural technology).

>If we can't really do anything
>here, how can we merit the favor of God, who made us - we have all
>come short of the glory of God.

This is ridiculous.  Look, if your ideas about God are right, then
God *created* us.  Whether what we are today is the direct result of
that creation or the indirect result of that creation is *irrelevent*
if this God is all-knowing and all-powerful (such a being *never*
fails to get its way).  It is *God's* doing if we fail to meet the
standards of God (who do you think decided upon the standards,
anyway?).

>|Let me put it this way: you *have* this belief in "Jesus", and I'll bet
>|that *you* can't make yourself grow taller, either.
>
>No I can't.  That's the point.

If you can't do this *with* this belief, and I can't do it *without* this
belief, then with respect to our power over the physical world, your
belief is *irrelevent*, and thus your point is *also* irrelevent.

However, I strongly believe that if the ability to grow taller at will
ever comes about, it will come about through our growing understanding
of the universe around us, i.e. through technology, and *not* through
some hocus-pocus belief in "Jesus".

>|I can't speak for Jim.
>|
>|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.

Paid *what* debt?  Debt to whom?  Aside from the various monetary loans
I have, I owe nothing.

>|I make no assumptions about "divine" help.  I rely primarily on myself to
>|get through life.  If such "divine" help exists and decides to intervene,
>|I will accept it (provided that it is advantageous for me to do so).  So
>|far, I've seen no sign of such assistance, so I have no reason to believe
>|it exists.
>
>It is amazing that one can look at the beauty of nature, for why should
>there be beauty without a creator, 

Why *shouldn't* there be beauty without a creator?

Beauty is a subjective thing, and is something whose definition varies
from individual to individual.  Some regard nature as "beautiful",
and some don't.  Few regard *everything* in nature as "beautiful",
and few regard nothing in nature as "beautiful".

Most people regard living as a more or less pleasant experience,
though.  If you are asking why *this* is, consider that someone
who considers life to be pleasant will be more motivated to
survive than someone who doesn't, and will thus be more likely to
reproduce.  Someone with a genetic disposition towards enjoying
life will have kids who are so predisposed, and that disposition
will eventually dominate the population.

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

I wonder about how the universe works all the time.  Again, there is
good reason for this:  curiosity about the world stimulates learning
about the world, which yields an advantage in dealing with the world.
That translates to a survival advantage.

One needn't believe in or see a "master designer" to wonder about the
universe.  I'm living proof of that.

>We look at trival things (paintings
>and buildings) and say man he did a good job, but look how insignificant
>and small man's works are and how big and beautiful the universe is.

Right.  So?  Just because man is small and the universe is big doesn't
mean that the universe was created.  That the universe is beautiful is
a subjective interpretation, not an objective assessment.  It takes a
human being (or perhaps a chimpanzee, if they're capable of this) to
consider the universe beautiful.  This sounds to me more like an argument
for the importance of humans, if anything, than an argument for the
existence of some master designer of the universe.

>For Christ and His Kingdom,
>Richard Pitts


-- 
Kevin Brown					kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com
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