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Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Technology, not faith!

 Thanks to technology, the Chilean miners are still living! This "answered prayer"  is just post hoc- coincidental! What about those  West Virginia miners thought alive and so many thanked their God for that, but then learned that they were all dead? Ah, the believers reckoned that was just one of his mysterious ways- the unknown defence argument,but that rests on the argument from ignorance!
  Or they prattle about the best for the greatest number. As a utilitarian, no, that violates ancillary principles. What is that greater good that Israel emerged after the Shoah? That strife still exists betwixt the Arabs and the Israelis?
  All defences and theodicies make rationalizations for the exoneration of God. The Court of Reason finds Him non-existent if goodness is part of His definition.
  How could He allow religions in His name commit egregious wrongs?
 Yes, people in the name of religion can do great good, but they can do that from other motives- for goodness sake itself!
 Again, let us not permit people to do in the name of religion what I covered  and other matters! The religious themselves must help lead the way!
 What are your suggestions for making religion acting better? How can the faithful urge their leaders to lead the way to do that?
 Viewers, what do you suggest?
 

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Miracles and Revelations

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In his vigorous defense of his corollary to the presumption of naturalism on miracles, David Hume does not beg the question, but rather notes that people have to rigorously obtain evidence for miracles as :trick of hand might be involved or people just  misperceive what they see misheard a diagnosis,  someone was in remission and so fort or some natural cause for tears on statues.. When as stated before, we skeptics investigate matters, we invariably find natural causes. Illnesses can of themselves disappear but people give credence to prayer for that. Studies show no effects for prayers unless that makes people feel better or-worse.
  Answered prayers are just post hoc- coincidental, and for unanswered ones people rationalize that God has his mysterious ways.We don't find any difference with asking for His help with medical matters adds to them.Faith cannot help whatsoever!
   Revelations are merely the imaginations of mere people. No God tells anyone anything to write down. No revelation existed for much of the Qu'ran , the Christian Testament and the Tanakh. Indeed, we skeptics think that Muhammad and Paul had epileptic fits for their " revelations." People take those metaphorically or literally revelations without any evidence of their truth.No stay in Egypt nor any Exodus happened such that mere men  merely made those two accounts up! Why should we skeptics or anyone else accept the Resurrection as science reveals no such thing can happen. Again, Hume comes to the fore: Christians would have to produce evidence rather than mere hearsay replayed as in the telephone game- changed from one account to the other- contradictory.No account exists otherwise for the walking zombies after the putative Resurrection nor any rending of any thing.
    The miracle is that people accepts the miracles and the revelations as fact as Hume notes. [ See John Leslie Mackie's " The Miracle of Theism."
     The religious might have doubts, but even if as Alister Earl McGrath, for the sake of argument, is right that faith rests on evidence and embraces ones whole being, that embracing acts as a boomerang in that it causes people to have blind faith after all, even if they modify their opinions.Some become errantists- non-fundamentalists- in finding faults within their Scriptures.Some like Bishop John Shelby Spong and John Hick give up much of the credence that they had but in the end they,too, have blind faith, reinterpreting matters or finding them irrelevant. They just cannot go further.
      Faith doth that to people!
     Viewers, and what part of  this  might you agree with or disagree with?