Rolling Dice and the Providence of God

  • 2007 AAR League

    I also can’t prove that leprechauns exist. But not believing in leprechauns doesn’t make me an empty person, does it?

  • 2007 AAR League

    no, but leprachauns rock anyways.  i would wish their existence just to get gold.

    but back to God, leprechauns wouldnt have created you, and they dont exist.  so therefore, if leprachausns didnt create us, how could they force us to believe in them.  show themselves?  if god created us, how do you want him to show himself, or prove himself.  then that changes the entire world, no-ones free anymore b/c they know that there is a guy who will judge their deeds and their ethos of life.  they are forced to become good, which makes them slaves.

    and if i come across a leprechaun, i know someone who isnt getting any of my gold.  yeah, thats right, no gold.

    you can not believe in god, because he allows you to, because thats freedom.  continue to do whatever you like.


  • Doesn’t proof deny faith?


  • @The:

    Dont “trust” me,trust your senses. Do you see God? No.  Do you see things ( animals,sunsets,lightning that strikes and kills people) in nature ? Yes. Thats real.  Why should I believe fables told by ignorant sheep herders from three thousand years ago? They were utterly,literally dumb about how nature works. A seven year old child today knows more about the world than all of these story tellers combined. Do you think they could explain what caused the wind to blow? No.They would says angels did it or God was blowing the air from his huge,mighty,invisible lungs. Most humans just dont want to let go of their fear that life is random and meaningless and its all about sex and death really. If mankind is the ultimate achievement of God,what a sad showing for God.  First he makes angels and then one of them rebels. He then makes people and they eat an apple he told them not to eat. He makes a devil that has powers just like himself. Instead of just making Lucifer non-existent after having a war :-o in heaven of all places,he lets him traipse around in his Paradise.  This is one confused creator who cant seem to get it right. Its such a fairy tale that it is actually funny

    You miss my point, which is simply that you do not know what you debunking.  I mean that respectfully.  In any debate or discussion, it is helpful to define terms.  When you talk about “faith,” you ought to know how your opponents use that term.  The dictionary and encyclopedias may be helpful, but not always.  You need to know how a term is being used in a given context.  You have to know your enemies better than your friends in argument.  Try playing Axis and Allies with no knowledge of the opposition, their economies or military capabilities.  You would not do well.  Let’s look at what you said:

    “If this biologist ( I cant remember his name but I saw him promoting his book about faith and science on BookTV) is so smart,why doesnt he see the paradox of ID? Because of his “faith”,thats why. He knows that ID contradicts itself,so he goes the “faith” route and throws logic into the wind. I have no respect for that.”

    You are equivocating on the word "faith."  In your first and second usage you use the word as a noun, or at least it appears so.  Faith here, in the sentence, seems to point to a codified set of doctrines.  So someone can hold to the religious faith of Islam, for example.  In your second example, you point to “faith” as a verb where the scientist, whoever he or she is, no throws all reason away and simply has, or exercises, faith.

    When I asked you should I trust you, I was simply saying, should I have faith in you.  Why?  Because that’s all faith means.  It means trust in the context of believing.  While I agree there are nuances surround the word and its use in given missive, at its base it simply means believe, trust.  So again, should I trust you?  Your answer does not matter.  It proves my point; namely, that you do not understand what the word means to those who use it intelligently.  To you it always means blind faith, blind trust, no mind.

    Taking that a little further.  Do you trust your senses?  Yes, up to a point you do.  Do you trust your car will get you to where you are going and do you put faith in the designers and engineers who created the car (as well as the line staff workers)?  If a parent says, "I’ll be there at six o’clock to pick you up."  Do they have faith in that person?  Probably.  And I bet if that person wants a ride home. They’ll be there.  One more example is an airplane.  I believe that airplanes can fly and I believe people can fly them well, but when I get on the airplane I am really trusting this is all true and putting my faith in a pilot.

    These examples illustrate what faith is.  It is not some blind, unreasonable thing that just the dummies have, people that can’t reason properly.  Faith can be reasonable and reasonably applied.  A reasonable faith not unheard of.  You do it every single day.  Incidentally, this is not even touching on God, the Bible, dumb nomadic sheep herders or anything religious.  It is simply defining a term, even though I admit it certainly has religious connotations.

    What you ought to debate is the object of someone’s faith, and the reasons for that faith, not faith itself.


  • @frimmel:

    Doesn’t proof deny faith?

    On the contrary, proof necessitates faith, unless one wants to deny reality.

    If something is proven to be true, why would I not believe it?  If airplanes really can fly, and pilots can fly them, why would I not place my trust in them both, and instead of travelling in a Conestoga from Miami to New York, I take the best round-trip deal I can find?


  • Well I believe in diamonds. I might even believe in a diamond the size of a stove. I might even believe that there is a diamond the size of a stove buried somewhere in my back yard.  Of coarse, there is no proof of a diamond the size of a stove ever exsisting, but I have faith that one does and it is buried in my back yard. Every Sunday my family and I like to dig for this diamond and I certainly would not want to live in a world where a diamond this big did not exsist and believing in this diamond gives my life meaning.

    I saw a post like this somwhere but I don’t remember where


  • @Mr:

    Well I believe in diamonds. I might even believe in a diamond the size of a stove. I might even believe that there is a diamond the size of a stove buried somewhere in my back yard.  Of coarse, there is no proof of a diamond the size of a stove ever exsisting, but I have faith that one does and it is buried in my back yard. Every Sunday my family and I like to dig for this diamond and I certainly would not want to live in a world where a diamond this big did not exsist and believing in this diamond gives my life meaning.

    I saw a post like this somwhere but I don’t remember where

    It is a play on the Ontological argument for God’s existence.  I do not share it as a proof, but rather as a description of what must be given that God exists.  It relies upon other arguments for its footing, such as Cosmological argumentation.


  • Posted by: froodster

    Quote from: johnny on January 24, 2007, 05:40:19 PM
    “By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks” Hebrews 11:4 - Abel - victim of Godless philosophy (see above above quote for details.)

    It is funny how Abel’s “philosophy which rejects them” not only can hope to stand, but has stood for a very long time.  I doubt Bertrand Russell’s words will be around as long as Abel’s.

    Maybe not, but neither will be around after the sun gets blowed up. Which will prove Bertrand’s point quite nicely, only none of us will be there to know it…

    if your right, maybe so.  if i’m right, maybe no :wink:


  • @critmonster:

    Posted by: froodsterÂ

    Quote from: johnny on January 24, 2007, 05:40:19 PM
    “By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks” Hebrews 11:4 - Abel - victim of Godless philosophy (see above above quote for details.)

    It is funny how Abel’s “philosophy which rejects them” not only can hope to stand, but has stood for a very long time.  I doubt Bertrand Russell’s words will be around as long as Abel’s.

    Maybe not, but neither will be around after the sun gets blowed up. Which will prove Bertrand’s point quite nicely, only none of us will be there to know it…  Â

    if your right, maybe so.  if i’m right, maybe no :wink:

    What that poster may not realize is that It’s not like Bertrand Russell came up with something new.  All he did was express in his language what Solomon did a long time ago in Ecclesiastes:  “All is vanity.”

    “There is nothing new under the sun.”


  • well johnny, i guess your sylable count chased them away  :lol:

    its a pitty, because i was looking froward to some more stories :mrgreen:


  • @critmonster:

    well johnny, i guess your sylable count chased them away  :lol:

    its a pitty, because i was looking froward to some more stories :mrgreen:

    I can say that I never intended to start a fuss.  I really just thought it and typed it.  Thought maybe it was thought provoking enough the get someone to consider what those dice really represent, even though A&A is more abstract.


  • God can be a touchy subject for sure, but as they say “there are no atheists in a foxhole”

    but He is the one who will reach them in their own time (hopefully) and show them what they need to know :mrgreen:


  • The argument over god or whatever exsisting has been done over and over here. So, any poster who has been here for any length of time has seen this before. There is no convincing  one side or the other, so people stop posting about it. Been there, done that. It’s still kind of fun once in a while to get into it though.

    but He is the one who will reach them in their own time (hopefully) and show them what they need to know

    But Odin is the one who will reach them in their own time (hopefully) and show them what they need to know.

  • 2007 AAR League

    I forget who it was that said in response to Christianity something like “We are all atheists. For the same reasons you disbelieve in other gods, I disbelieve in your God. I just believe in one less god than you do.”

  • 2007 AAR League

    our god forgives, others punish…  you can be a terrible person your entire life and still go to heaven.  its your choice at the end, but heavan and god himself might not agree with your views.  would you accept the entire way you lived was wrong, just say sorry, and enjoy eternal life in paradise, you can do infinite things at infinite times, your own little slice of omnipresecne.  or would you just say, if that is what you are all about God, i disagree and would rather spend eternity with my own ways rather than yours.  its your own choice at the very end. doesnt matter what you’ve done.

    thats the God of christianity, spoken through christ, and accepted by the faithful.  what other god, by any other religion is so forgiving? i dont know of one.  i like the forgiving god rather than the angry wrathful mean SOB style God that other religions endorse. or plural gods for some.

    that seems like the best


  • balungaloaf;

    when you talk of God and Christ your tone and clarity improve dramatically  :mrgreen:

    remember you are an ambassador of Christ when posting elsewhere as well.  for this reason alone others will seek to provoke us into responding in ways that validate themselves and their positions.  we canot allow them to draw us into such behavior by reciprocating.  they are mislead, they are POW’s if you will, they will be given another chance (and another, and another and…)


  • @balungaloaf:

    what other god, by any other religion is so forgiving?

    THe jewish God. But wait the muslim God and the christian God are the same as the Jewish one. But jews are dammned to hell beacuse they do not belive in christ thats why you have to convert them. that seems like a forgiving God. so how can God be forgiving to christians and not jews if they belive in him. thats the basic prinicple of christianity. right?


  • God is God, we try and define him in human terms (and always have) or in terms of the physical properties of nature (always have even longer) and we continually grasp at concepts beyond our physical universe and fail to fully comprehend them.  God exists outside of the physical universe otherwise creation (big bang, et al) would not be possible.  so please forgive me if i come up short in my attempts to describe Him in language that does not enable me to do so :|


  • @cyan:

    so how can God be forgiving to christians and not jews if they belive in him. thats the basic prinicple of christianity. right?

    but why is this so from a forgiving God? this is what i asked not how the universe was created and how big God is.  8-)

  • 2007 AAR League

    he is forgiving of jews, and muslims, and hindu’s, and budhists, and taoists,…. hell he even forgives those unitarians.(silly buch those guys) :-P

    just because other people say god will damn someone doesnt make it so.  all you gotta do is say sorry one final time and accept that you may have been wrong on this earth.  doesnt sound tough to do.  i do believe that jesus is the redeemer and i cant fathom the people who demand that you be of one faith to get to heavan.  even the pope said thats BS.

    but muslims and jews on the other hand, same with hindu’s(a god of war or something)  love it when you kill the “others”  god is happy, thats what he wants you to do.  kill the “others” thats crap.  if you think about it, so that would mean god made all of us non thems just to be killed by them.  and god is happy.  and people still consider judaism, islam and christianity equal.  i dont.

    jesus never instructed people to kill others.  he might be down for protecting others though. thats why we have a “just war theory” very good stuff. this god talk.

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