"Eric Miller" wrote in message et...
"Corrie" wrote
Just what exactly does Christianity explain and predict that's useful?

Human behavior, mostly.

You don't need belief in a higher power to predict human behavoir.
Heck, just assume people (and I'm a people too) will do the dumbest thing
possible at any given point and you'll be right 90% of the time

Yup. The NT writers called it "sark" - literally, flesh. Nowadays we
call it "sinful human nature." The point is that as a worldview,
Christianity explains and predicts human behavior. Given a choice to
screw up, we will.

And if it's falsifiable, what evidence would be accepted which could prove it false?

Easy: Show me the body of Jesus of Nazareth.

Since it apparently wasn't available historically, either due to the hand of
god, the hand of man, or because of Romans with really bad maps and even
worse short term memories, that's a pretty tall order to fill today.

Remember, extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence!
It takes more than empty tomb to conclude a return from the grave.

No, no, Fluffy. That's a cop-out. See the next post - I wrote it
first. Also provided some details in my email. You might also see
http://www.itasca.net/~corrie/rantgod.htm#sense

But the point is, as a worldview, Christianity is falsifiable. Just
like a good scientific hypothesis - that's my point.


I have to reject, a priori, any god that rules, rewards and punishes on
anything except results.

Judging God, are we? :-) I did that, once upon a time. Then I
realized how silly it was of me.

That means no sending unbaptized babies to Purgatory.

If I remember my Catholic upbringing properly, unbaptized babies went
to Limbo, not Purgatory. But I think they did away with Limbo a few
years ago and promoted the babies to heaven.

No last minute jailhouse conversions.

Jesus would disagree with you. He forgave the repentant thief hanging
next to him, remember? But hey, if you know more about how God should
work than Jesus, go for it.

People that don't practice what they preach get sent straight to
H-E-double-hockeysticks.

Well, that pretty much takes care of all of us, then. No human being
is perfect. We all screw up, large or small.

And that goes double for faith healers that line their pockets by taking
advantage of religion and selling false hope to people that can't afford it.
(Faith healers really need to be tormented on Earth as well as in the
hypothetical afterlife.)

See Matthew 7, ibid....

Further, no differentiation between good people that believe (like you) and
good people that don't (like me).

Define "good person." Seriously. I mean, what's "good" mean? It's
really "good enough, right?" There's a whole spectrum of
goodness/badness between Charles Manson and Mother Theresa. Where's
the cutoff?

Any supreme being that requires subservience from us po' mortals has a
serious insecurity complex

He doesn't REQUIRE subservience from us. It's just that it's all we
have to offer. He's God, we're not. *shrug* But you raise an
interesting point - does God need us? The answer is no. He needs
nothing. He's supremely happy just being himself.

And in his boundless joy, he does stuff that only he can do, just to
revel in the pleasure of being himself. (Is that narcissistic? It
would be, in a lesser being. But for God, well, we WANT him to value
himself more than anything else. I mean, what good is a Supreme Being
who looks up to somethng else as being more important? John Piper has
written extensively on this topic, btw. Not easy reading, but worth
the mental chewing.)

It's kind of like this: Bob Hoover takes (took?) great delight in
shutting down the engines of his Turbo Commander and then flying his
"Energy Management Sequence." It's a VERY Bob Hoover thing to do. No
one else does it. You have to believe that he gets a serious charge
out of it. He's such a nice man, though, that no one would ever
accuse him of being narcissistic in flying. (Hot-shot fighter-pilot
wannabe, OTOH...) On a much larger scale, God gets a kick out of
creating and running the universe. It's a very God thing to do.

Corrie