I'm hardly angry. I was a little peeved when seeing your first comment, since I don't usually expect to see such takes here, but angry is hardly my current emotion. And I didn't mean to insinuate that you think these things. That's why I said "as an example". To try to indicate that I wasn't saying you specifically believe that, just that it's something I'd heard that I don't consider plausible, as well as show an example of the kinds of alternatives I wouldn't find reasonable.
I suppose I'm simply a little blunt when it comes to these kinds of debates.
Now, with all that said, you are describing a belief. You have no evidence to make the positive claim that our current understanding of reality is inherently flawed.
And the entire basis of human progress is shared knowledge. Throw it out at your own peril, but I'd argue that's a bit narcissistic. You must believe that you're more capable or intelligent than all these great minds of the past to simply throw out their shared conclusions based on the evidence and reason.
I don't care what the communist fags who run the dictionaries say today. Give me one from a dictionary that existed pre-Marx if you want to play the "official definition" game. Preferably pre-enlightenment to see how people who had the strongest faith in God viewed the concept.
Ultimately, though, faith and reason are intrinsically linked. For example, you have faith that tomorrow you won't get hit by a meteor. You have this faith because of your ability to reason about how likely this is. But ultimately, it's possible that you could simply get wiped out by a meteor that everybody missed.
You also have faith in the fact that reality exists, and you aren't just a brain in a jar imagining everything. Or maybe you don't, but then I'd simply question your ability to reason.
Ultimately, you have faith in your philosophical presuppositions that suggest that God isn't required for the universe to exist.
We are made for faith. If you didn't have faith in anything, you wouldn't have faith that the very ground beneath your feet really exists and you would be terrified every step you took of simply falling through the Earth until you reached the center. But you don't fear that because you have faith based on evidence that the ground is solid.
The modern inversion of reality is that our senses are untrustworthy and that our mind is all we can trust. This is delusional. When you see light bending in water, your eyes are lying to you, they are showing you exactly what happens. It's your brain that is limited and unable to comprehend refraction. And our limited brain requires us to have faith because we don't have perfect knowledge and can't know things for certain based on "evidence".
I'm perfectly open to an alternative, but I've as of yet seen none that make any sense and aren't just total speculation themselves.
And I find it absolutely asinine to make up some fanciful story of the 4th dimensional aliens that seeded us on Earth when the obvious answer is God did it. The aliens shit, as an example, is just cope to explain away God because you really don't want it to be God.
Like, sure, I could make up some really great movie plot line too, but how the fuck is that better than the explanation that theologians, scientists, philosopher, etc. have been pondering for thousands of years? Many of whom conclude that, yes, God did do it.
And it is, as far as I currently know, 100% correct. Whenever this question about evolution is fielded, it is dodged, in spite of the fact that it is the single most important part of the theory.
Notice the "secular sources" part.
Try again.
Truly, truly, anything but God.
Just as futile as coming in to an explicitly religious thread and trying to poo poo on what all the believers think with lazy fallacies.
The birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the best sourced pieces of ancient history we have. From both secular and non-secular sources.
And that sounds like right now. Plenty of people believe a bunch of Pagan nonsense while being supposed Christians. And plenty of people struggle with compassion because of our fallen nature. Curious how the Bible is completely correct on that and knows the human condition perfectly. And also curious how this supposed problem was quickly corrected as Christianity was finding its feet. I mean, what would you expect from a bunch of Pagan converts? That they instantly understand the depth of their new religion?
You're the one assuming that they ARE a fairy tale without evidence that would suggest the historical accounts are false. That the apostles were killed for their beliefs is well sourced. Certainly better sourced than most of the other shit people take as fact.
You're the one who brought up evidence to someone else when it came to God.
But as you say, you only are operating on faith in your experiences and not evidence to conclusively prove them.
This is the thing, we all operate on faith, as we are faith based creatures.
Democrats choose Trump, the most unlikely of guesses, and then the whole timeline implodes and we all wake up groggy as we see the curtains fall and everyone take a bow.
Sure he can.
Unfit for office is true whether or not he's currently president, and he can withdraw from the race or resign his position as president. Both are quitting.
This dude seems more like a True Believer than an active agent.
So if all the priests who are supposed to lead the laity agree with YOUR position, they can be Christian?
You worship yourself like I used to before my eyes were opened and the scales melted away.
Sounds like proof of God to me.
Maybe you don't see it that way, but why do you discount people who might have similar experiences lead them to God as being unreasonable?
We are how He does this.
My point is that, if the Church isn't being cleaned out, maybe it's because your definition of dirty is incorrect. Maybe what you’re being convinced of is an intentional deceit by the devil to get you to forsake God's one, holy, Catholic Church.
Maybe, God realizes that His Church isn't as dirty as you think it is because He has perfect knowledge and you don't.
The thing is, from the Catholic perspective they aren't minor differences.
They matter significantly and if you don't agree on certain doctrines you are at risk for Hell.
To assert that these are minor differences is to presuppose a Protestant theology.
On the other hand, Christ tells us not to squabble over opinions, and that if someone is not against us, they are with us.
Then again, if I think Christ instituted the office of Pope, and you are against the Pope, and I additionally believe "us" to refer to Catholicism which I see as the fullness of the faith, are you really not against us?
In the end, and like you say, if people aren't militant about it, I'm happy to simply have faith that God will lead all of us who believe in Him to what is right.
So, Amen indeed.
Prove that everything can come from nothing.
If you can't, the only option is God.
I reconcile it by recognizing that Q is not God.
You seem to treat him as such, with your seeming insinuation that he can't be wrong about anything.
A story which has actual evidence, by the way.
Not that you've looked.
To be brief:
Evolution is stupid and missing the one crucial piece of evidence that proves it can even theoretically happen; spontaneous generation of new genetic information through genetic mutation, as opposed to a reshuffling of the already present information through the genetic mutation.
What is left when thing one is out the window?
We've left the realm of "evidence" awfully quickly here.
It's God's power that moves the mountain.
Go ahead and move a mountain through your own power. You can't.
The point of the verse is that God does great things, and without Him these things are impossible. We can't move mountains on our own.
The point of the verse is to establish that we can do nothing great without God.
You ignore all the people who noticed and conveniently enough declare them to be biased.
It's fully retarded to think that these people made up these claims only to be fucking executed for them. People don't die for lies that they just make up on a whim.
Atheism is a philosophically destitute laughingstock.
There is no basis for the existence of anything on a philosophical or scientific level other than God.
If you think that faith and reason aren't compatible, it's because you don't know what faith means.
And the absolute irony of you saying that free thought means people should not believe in God. This thought doesn't feel very free, it feels more like I'm being railroaded into agreeing with your totally unproven philosophical presuppositions about reality.
Indeed. The kind that would fight to their last while the instigators are scurrying away likes rats when they realize the jig is up.