Do you believe in God?

[D-ECHO]

Now?

[KL-666]

Fine enough

[D-ECHO]

Oh, already two votes for it, nice!

[jwocky]

Hummm, that's kind of a double interesting question, isn't it?

First of all, to prove the non-existence of a supernatural being by just claiming, it wouldn't be able to do such things, we, with lack of knowledge would regard as miracles, is a wild ride on the logic, isn't it? See, I smoke, I use those cheap one-way lighters. Of course, lets say in 15th century, a plastic BIC would be technically impossible, so using one thne would have been a miracle. But we know today, it is actually possible to build cheap one-way lighters. Are we performing miracles by being so? That depends on your level of knowledge and education. If you are uneducated enough and your level of knowledge is low enough, you may argue, this is a miracle and miracles are impossible.

The other thing is, what makes you think, those miracles were actually inexplainable. Only your lack of knowledge. So, if lack of knowledge is prove, then you did it, you proved ... errr ... something? I am not sure what.
Example: The healing of a blind ... Jesus basically sees the blind guy, spits on the ground, makes a paste, smears it on his eyes and tells him to go after a certain time to a specific lake, wash it off ... and oh miracle, the guy can see ..
Totally, a miracle, right?
See, here is the rub, Jesus grew up in Egypt and, even the Bible doesn't give specifics, probably in Alexandria. We can conclude that, because we have several stories in the Bible telling he was back and visited the Passover celebrations (he discusses for example with people in the temple as child). So it had to be a place with a regular traffic connection to what we call Israel today. We know,m from archaeological findings, Alex had a regular connection (it seems in Jesus young years about three times weekly, later four times), to Tyre in Syria-Phoenicia, from there, it was by boat along the coast two days more, with good winds one. Given the times, quite convenient. Even traveling on foot along the coast would be a six days trip, with horses even less, which would still make a visit in Jerusalem once a year possible.
Alexandria is notable for two things: The biggest Jewish community outside of Israel and the library, of course. And there was a lot in it, in this library. Did you ever hear of a guy named "Imuthes" also spelled sometimes "Imhotep"? He was a vizier, scholar, inventor of a simplified hieroglyphic system (which we consider today as THE hieroglyphs), founder of the first university in history, the Per Ankh, and he was THE healer. THE with all capitalized T - H - E.
Now, he worked empiric. He didn't call a virus a virus and a bacteria a bacteria. He apostulated only that there would be "little worms" (actually, you could translate the hieroglyph he used als as "buggers") too small to see them with the human eye, who caused certain diseases. Actually, his theory went so far that he assumed, not the worms directly but something produced by those worms. So, he worked on poisoning those worms without poisoning his patients. He was very personally involved, because his lover had "ophtalmica militarica", the most common couse of blindness in his days in ancient Egypt and surrounding countries.
Long story short, he found a way ... spit on a cow patty ... make a paste, smear it on the eyes and bangage them ... wash it off with clear water after three days ... if needed, rinse and repeat. And it worked. Now, people in his days considered that a miracle too and his days were roughly 2500 years before Jesus days. Today, we know of course why it worked. He basically grew a relative of the penicillin fungus on those cow patties. That killed the bacteria causing the eye disease.
This and lots of other cures invented by Imuthes and those who followed in his steps were all written down and stored away to be studied by other scholars for the next millenia. We know, because they were found, copies were stored in the temple at Bubastis and we know that Alexandria had copies in the library because scholars wrote they studied them there long after the days of Jesus.
We know also, that Jesus or at least whoever wrote parts of the Bible, had studied in Alexandria because the gospels are full of hints on recipes from there.
So ... Jesus had probably access to a recipe to heal the most common cause of blindness in the Holy Lands in his days and this recipe started with spitting on a cow patty ... well, what do you think was on the main road, the one at the gate where people drove their cows out and in on a daily base ...
So, only your lack of knowledge makes you think, it is totally unexplainable, and no offence, but I am always a little bit hesitant to accept lack of knowledge as valid argument.
Hey, want to go to the healing of a paralyzed? Or one of my favourites (because the story contains so much human behaviour as well), destruction of an olive tree?

[oscar6662]

I belive in karma, no priest, no rubbish only you and your actions.

[KL-666]

I find the whole concept of calling people a-something a bit awkward.

Take a man minding his own business, totally unaware of any concept of deity. Then someone believing in god comes along and asks: do you believe in god? No, sorry i do not know him, the man answers. Now the believer goes: Aha, so you are an atheist! Prove that god does not exist. Err, sorry, prove that who does not exist? the man askes.

I think the man should not be forced in the position of having any burden of proof by calling him atheist. The burden of proof lies with the asserter, the believer.

And just think of the sustainability of calling someone a-something when many people like the believer come along. Believers in elves, flying elephants etc... Do you expect the man to have time to disprove all of that? No, leave the man to BE. Call him human or whatever, but not a-your-belief.

Kind regards, Vincent

[D-ECHO]

+1

[jwocky]

Vincent, if you hate that concept of calling people something, then you may want to stop making up stories to call people something?
I didn't say, Lydiot is an Atheist, he said, he is one. I uttered several times doubts, that he is even qualified to be one not knowing from where the idea of Atheism actually comes.
You may also want to stop to invent twisted versions of what was said. Lydiot said explicitly he is an Atheist and got upset, when I said Atheism is just another belief, or given it's tendency to mission others, a religion because like any other religion

- Atheists believe, they are the only ones who got it all right

- based on an unproven assumption, that God or any other form of metaphysical being doesn't exist

and to prove his claim, and it wasn't more than a claim, that Atheism isn't a religion, he produced one big fas mathematical error because he stumbled over the theorem of tertium non datur ... that's in terms of Boolean algebra like a division by zero error.
So, you may want to stop trying to ride invented attacks on people who don't share your belief but call on your fellow Atheist for the embarrassing show he delivered.
But then, you played this now twice with me, one time in the other thread with "pot smoking free-loving liberals" a line, you said, Lester jumped me for it and you never saw any need to clear up that misunderstanding (that it was nothing I said but just one of your invented accusations) and that I was innocent. I had already taken the stand agaisnt actually exactly this line.

[KL-666]

Man, Jwocky, you behave like a woman, implicating everything on yourself. This was a general thought i already live all my life with. Nothing to do with you. Nor with any feud you may have with somebody, which i do not even follow. This is the "Do you believe in God?" thread, is it not? Where people can speak out their thoughts on the subject.

Kind regards, Vincent

[jwocky]

oh ... I said, you did exactly what you accused others of ... including calling people things ... you you come back and yell, I behave like a woman? I mean seriously, since I have been target for that kind of trick for four days now, I think, I se my right of free speech to point out, that I wasn't the attacker there, I was the target. The attacks failed in a most embarrassing way and now we are back to the usual problem: Instead of talking facts and logic, liberals and Atheists got all riled up and try their luck with baseless twists and accusations.

And well, D-ECHO brought up the subject "of things in contradiction with laws of nature". But they are not necessarily in contradiction with laws of nature, only lack of knowledge leads to this impression. So, the non-neliever claims, the non-beiever got contradicted, the other non-believer jumps in and says "bad believer", how can you come with facts and logic, why don't you let the non-believer just believe ... errrr duh?