Are you religious/ superstitious?

[doodab]

aye. Anyone who spouts more about deferential integrity than referential integrity is one to be avoided in my book

Are you suggesting that all this time the bible has been telling us to worship Codd?

[Mich the Tester]

aye. Anyone who spouts more about deferential integrity than referential integrity is one to be avoided in my book

"...and the prophet did say ye shall go forth and normalise your data structures to the third normal form, lest the Lord let loose thunder and pestilence upon your sys admins"

[Zippy]

Are you suggesting that all this time the bible has been telling us to worship Codd?

Taxi for Mr Doodab!
<---- you'll need this too.

[Zippy]

"...and the prophet did say ye shall go forth and normalise your data structures to the third normal form, lest the Lord let loose thunder and pestilence upon your sys admins"

And there shall be a wailing and a hashing of teeth.

I know my way out.

[doodab]

And there shall be a wailing and a hashing of teeth.

I know my way out.

Wanna share that cab?

[d000hg]

Please can you point me to a book by a reputable historian that documents the supernatural events you insist have happened.

I never said such a thing existed. I said books which examine the historical evidence which is recorded, and analyse it against the claims if the bible. I already mentioned a well-known book on the subject.

I agree that would be a remarkable supernatural event since it would reverse the laws of biology and hence physics. Please can you point to one reputably documented occasion this has happened. Thanks.

How does it get to be reputably documented? I turn up to the hospital and say "I'm not blind anymore", what do you think happens? Atheists will simply refuse to document it officially as "prayer induced healing" so no records exist.

FWIW, I know one person quite well who was blind in one eye. She was in our college chapel praying and opened her eyes to discover she could see. I got a very excited text message from her, and she subsequently went to the doctor about it.

I know a lady who was in a very serious car accident, it was a while back so I don't remember her injuries but very severe, along the lines of never walking, or certain brain damage, I don't recall. She is now totally fine. Her doctors were baffled, and one even came in to address our church, showing X-rays and uncomfortably saying "I don't know how this is possible".

It's actually well documented that many times, people get better against all medical expectations. I thought everyone knew that.

Let me make myself clear. If you prayed for every outcome you wanted, the fact that some outcomes were favourable would be better ascribed to simple statistical probability, rather than the efficacy of prayer. If this is not obvious to you I'm afraid the level of your argument is now bumping along the bottom with Chico's.

You do realise I made the same point myself in the other thread? Of course some prayers can be explained/attributed to simple chance, especially if you pray for stuff like getting a job you apply for. You cannot simply say "it's all statistics" without working out the expected success first. But, you've shown your ability to talk about statistics is far beyond your ability to understand what they imply in the past.



Anyway sas, since you seem to think you're so smart... in an atheistic/secular society where people generally don't believe in the supernatural how DO you report on something supernatural in a way it can later be referenced as solid evidence by someone like you asking the same questions in a few years? Specificically:

1. Please outline a sequence of events from some hypothetical miracle happening in church, which ends up with it being included in historical texts and public records?
2. Please explain if some hypothetical miracle happened to you and you were convinced it was for real, how you would convince people of this?

[d000hg]

Is it not possible and reasonable to hold the teachings of Jesus Christ, and by extension, Jesus himself in considerable reverence while not believing in a supernatural being? Could a person who often looks at Christ's teachings for moral guidance, while not believing in God, possibly be seen as a 'christian'?

C.S. Lewis says:

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."

More here: mad, bad, or God

PS: someone was asking for decent apologetics authors the other day. C.S. Lewis is probably a good call (same guy who wrote Narnia). As well as serious tomes, he is well-known for the Screwtape stories.

[doodab]

C.S. Lewis says...

This only holds if it's correct to assert that neither a liar or a lunatic can be moral, and I don't think either are strictly true.

[xoggoth]

I never said such a thing existed. I said books which examine the historical evidence which is recorded, and analyse it against the claims if the bible. I already mentioned a well-known book on the subject.

Reading one at the moment "Legend. The genesis of civilisation", the location of the Garden of Eden and so on and it's fairly believable. However, as I said earlier, even if much the bible is based on real people, places and events, it does not prove that anything of the supernatural parts are true, anymore than the reality of Transylvania or Vlad Tepes proves that there are vampires. Anyone who wants to make a story ring true will use as many real facts as possible.

Claims by real people may also be repeated uncritically. A lot of intelligent people believe Ron Hubbard's tall tales of how he travelled the Far East dispensing his wisdom to gurus. Perhaps Moses was a similar character.

[xoggoth]

That comment by C S Lewis makes not an ounce of sense. Words said by one person are great moral teachings, the same words said by someone else are the mouthings of a lunatic?