CrashFrog vs. Juhrahnimo: A friendly discussion

Well, yes. All those things are possible; and moreover, they're considerably more likely than me actually being in the presence of an infinite God.Presumably God, however, would find a way to put it immediately beyond all question who he is; hence what I said - the way I would know it was God would be the fact that I wouldn't have to be convinced in the first place. Again, all those things are much more likely than being faced with the actual God. No finite display of ability can substantiate infinite power.So the question isn't "why are Crash's standards so impossibly high"; the question is why your standards are apparently so low that a drug in your drink could convince you God was talking to you. Oh, that. That's a slightly different question; to convince me that God exists, all that would have to happen would be for God to unequivocably act in the world.As it is, if God acts in the world, he does so in a way industinguishable from random chance. So he might as well not be acting at all. In fact it's impossible to say that he is acting, for that reason.It's not necessary for God to show himself to me; I don't care about seeing him. I care about what God does; what good is a deity who does nothing? What would convince me that God existed would be God acting like God, instead of acting like he doesn't exist.

"Myth" doesn't mean "lie", you know. Although we use it that way, myths aren't lies.They're just frameworks.

Huh? I think I've made it pretty clear what I expect God to do in the world. I don't see in what way I've backed off. The only way to appear would be to act.

Oh, I get it. You're convinced you're the very definition of "spiritual maturity", but it doesn't apparently occur to you that you spent the first 40 posts of this thread ignoring your own topic and instead trying to defend yourself against imagined slights.They call that "pride", you know.We have seen the very spiritual mature; one of them posts here under the name "Truthlover." I'm sure I'm embarassing him but believe me when I tell you that a person at all concerned with spiritual truth, and not their own pride, would count themselves lucky if he chose to share his thoughts on this subject. Remember when you failed to establish that you had any eyewitness testimony whatsoever? That's still the case. Oh? You might want to reference your own "liberal journalist reporting methods" in that regard; Strobel was a journalist for the Chicago Tribune. Why? It's not like they were writing scriptures; they were writing letters to early churches. They had no expectation these letters would be bound in a Bible. Pride, pride, pride. I don't know why I thought I could learn anything from you; all you offer is the same recycled, discredited nonsense that passes for "apologetics" these days. I've read better from C.S. Lewis, for christ's sake, and he's widely regarded as one of the worst apologeticists in the Christian faith. You know, except to the people who lack enough discernment to see through his rhetorical nonsense and informal fallacies.

I think I did already. Look, if you can't imagine what it would be like if gods took an active role in the physical world, then there's nothing I can do to help you overcome this deficiency in your imagination.

Yeah I guess it's the bits he deleted.

If God doesn't exist, then the Christ stuff can't be true either.I'm sure Jesus was a great guy, and I'm sure that most of what happens in the Bible didn't actually happen. There's much in that life of Christ that informs my worldview to this day; there's much in his life worth emulating, like the humble self-sacrifice of the cross.And even better yet it doesn't have to have happened for it to be meaninful, and to be worth emulating. If these sound like contradictions to you, it's because you're not mature enough. As I said; the divinity of Christ relies on the existence of God. You should have started by trying to prove that God exists; but apparently you didn't fully understand my views or what atheism is.

Look I don't understand how I can answer it any better. And it all rather depends on which God we're talking about, now wouldn't it? If you propose that God always acts undetectably, then there's no possible evidence that God exists, by definition. Absolutely no backpeddaling occured. Acting and appearing are the same thing. Says you, but remember that I became an atheist while I still believed in God. I didn't choose to be an atheist. I had no choice because there's no evidence God exists. I'd love for there to be the God of the Christian Bible - an infinite, interested power for good in the world.But, for all intents and purposes, there isn't. Hence, atheism. Go fuck yourself. You insult me with your arrogant presumption that I'm too stupid and spineless to make up my own mind about what I believe.