From: rpitts@emperor.gatech.edu (Richard Pitts)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: I'm God.
Date: 5 Oct 92 15:20:35 GMT
Organization: CERL-EE, Georgia Institue of Technology

In article <1992Oct3.072447.8844@nuchat.sccsi.com> kevin@nuchat.sccsi.com (Kevin Brown) writes:
|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?

Who else is going to write about what Jesus did in those times, execpt
the ones that were with him.  There was no CCN network nor was there
any real good way for people to travel around and see what he was doing.
The disciple did not say EVERYONE believed.  They gave good reports
and bad reports.  One day practically everyone left Jesus.  

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

Again, who else at that time would have written it?  There are others
who comment on what he did.  Josephus tells of a righteous man who
was the Christ that was crucified and that people were following him,
for they said he rose from the dead.

Josephus was a Jews historian, but incase you want to say he was biased
you may look and see that he only wrote a small amount about Jesus, but
what he wrote agreed with the Biblical accounts - if he was a Christian,
I'm sure there would more either in his Antiquites or in some other
writings of his.

|>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".

These men say Jesus - they say the nail scares in his hands - they
say the hole in his side.  Is it that they were too bold in their
proclamation of Jesus' resurrection????  Would you not have been?

|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.

How so?

|>I guess your have better sources that contradict all of this.
|
|No contradictions are needed.

Have you assumed that a Jesus could not have risen from the dead and
so that is why these letters of the Bible are not good enough?  
Again, others mention the events.

|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.

The Bible was written by several different men not by one man.  The
recorded events from multiple sources should give you some hint that
these writings have some weight.  That is unless you have assumed 
before hand that miracles cannot happen.

|>|*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.

It is.  He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven.  He did not
die again.  He is alive today.

|>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.

Only if you know the writings of the Bible to be false or assume them to
be false.

|>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.

The evidence is there.  

|>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.

Which specific events would you like to see documented?  Is Josephus'
account invalid?

|>|>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.

True I don't have direct experience of an afterlife, but the people
that saw the death of Jesus and his appearances after his resurrection
and his ascension wrote us to encourage us that we could know (that we 
could have faith.)

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

Jesus came back from the dead and never died again.  He told us of
the life to come.

|>|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.

Oh, I see.  Premarital sex is the great missing element in Christianity.
Do you think sex is the thing that keeps people together?  Do you think
it totally fulfills your life?

|>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.

In what way?

|>Every one can know - it is a manner of faith and not works.  
|
|Faith and knowledge are *not* the same thing!!

Clarification:  Every one can know if they have eternal life.  Eternal
life comes by faith and not by man's works.  It is a gift of God.

|>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.

Give the evidence that says Christianity is not right.

|>|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?

For I know I am not perfect.  I know I do wrong.  Jesus came from God
to tell us that we can related to the one that made us, even though
we are not able to attain perfection, which is what God requires.  
Though Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, we are able to relate to
the Father.  The Father sees us through the gift of his Son's merits
and not on our own merits.  Jesus died and rose from the dead.  He
gained the victory over the grave, for he did not remain dead nor did
he die again.  He is with the Father.  We have this witnessed to us
by Jesus' follower and by the Holy Spirit functioning in the world today.

|>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.

Again I forgot about sex being everything. :-)

Have you ever thought that his inclination to do anything for 'the benefit'
of others maybe is not really for the others benefit, but for someone's
own personal pleasure, regardless of the others real needs.  Intercourse 
is not the thing a woman needs - they need affection all day long not
just the sex act.  Sex is the culmination of many events.  

|>|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 don't quite follow this.

|>|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.

How long do you think it took for this man to become know in the fashion
he is know 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.

I don't quite follow this.

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

What do you understand love to be?

|>|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.

Is my belief system large and complex because it is written down or
because it affects every area of my life?  You have hit on a pretty
good point.  The one to whom one submits or to whom one attributes
the good one might have received or done is very important (i.e., either
man is the highest level or God is?)

|Since there seems to be so little objective evidence supporting your
|belief system, I have no good reason to believe that your belief system

Again, give some objective evidence denying the 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.

Do you personally know any Christians?  Do you interact with any on
a regular basis?   I'm not referring to someone that just goes to church
on Sunday or Christmas and Easter.  I'm referring to someone that
is actively seeking to become more like Jesus - living their life for
God and not themselves.

|>|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.

Did you greive?  (Is this what 'weathered' means?)  Christians have the
hope of seeing our loved ones again.  We are told not to greive like those
who have no hope (i.e., no hope of eternal life or the afterlife).

|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?

Not only does God help in the tough situations he helps in the day to
day ones.  All of the 'complex' system of beliefs we have can be summed
up in one phrase 'love your neighbor as yourself', for love does no
harm to another.  Yes, God does help in my daily activities.

|>|>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).

He rose from the dead and IS victorious over death, for he did not die again.

Again, the point was that Jesus was telling us that we can't really
do anything about this physically life, so what can we ourselves do
about our spiritual life.

|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 exist today, correct?  What do you think happens to your essence
when you die?  Is there more to life than the body and chemical reactions?

|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.

I see Christian society has not advanced beyond that of Hindus, correct?

|>|>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.

Heh.  It grows?  Can you control the wind?  Can man even model it
very well?  Can man predict the weather?

|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.

Ok.

|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

Oh,  I guess you think God didn't intend for to advance in our
understanding and use of this world in which we live.  God said
to Adam and Eve, to multiply (have children) and fill the earth AND
to subdue the earth and to rule over the animals.  Which other
societes has advanced more then those in which Christian is predominant.
Don't most of the other religion, especially the eastern religions, 
teach that this world is more of an illusion than real.

|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).

Oh, I remember everyone dying off along time ago, because of the
lack of gardening techniques.  Even in the first few chapters of the
Bible, God put Adam in the GARDEN OF EDEN and told him to CARE FOR
IT AND TO WORK IT.

|>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?).

If we had no free will, then you'd have a point.  We do and mankind,
throught he first man Adam, chose to disobey God.  Do you think we
would chose differently?

|>|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.

Again, the point was we have so little knowledge of this physical world,
how can we even do anything in the spiritual.  Jesus told the people that
the birds of the air don't even worry about where they will get their
food, for God has provided it for them.  He even compares a flower (a lily)
to the most arrayed king of the world (King Solomon) - Jesus said Solomon
in all of his splendor was not as beautiful as the lily.

|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".

Oh.  Jesus rose from the dead a little before technology has achieved
it.  In fact he overcame death - for he never died again.  Has technology
done this?  Who is first in the area of knowledge and understanding?

|>|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.

Oh.

|>|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?

You don't think a picture or building just plopped into being, but you
know that someone designed and built it.

|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".

Name something.

|Most people regard living as a more or less pleasant experience,
|though.  If you are asking why *this* is, consider that someone

True.

|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.

Oh.

|>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.

You've NEVER even thought there could have been a Creator?  Not even
after someone suggested it?

|>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.

How did man get this ability to recognize beauty.  What survial purpose
does it have?????????

I think this quote is attributed to a football coach, but I missed
his name, when I heard it:

                    Talent is from God
                        be humble,
                    Fame if from man
                        be thankful,
                    Conceit is from self
                        be careful.

For Christ and His Kingdom,
Richard Pitts


-- 
rpitts@cerl.gatech.edu       |    
Atlanta, GA                --|-- 
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