Follow up Alright, All You Dashing, Swaggering Bush Pilots

This is off the subject of evolution which is already off-topic for RAH
(especially since none of us here have evolved; we're all either flying
chimps, wrench monkeys or both ) but...

Corrie wrote:
I invite you to do your own investigation into the Empty Tomb. That's
what it all comes down to as far as I'm concerned. If the
resurrection can be proven false, the whole Christian worldview comes
tumbling down.

Again, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Nothing could be more extraordinary, so it doesn't have to be proven false,
it's assumed to be false.
Claimants have to prove it's true beyond a shadow a doubt.
Something like 71% of the world population is non-Christian; I'd say that
constitutes some doubt

It's a bit like the difference between assuming guilt or innocence in a
court of law.

Eric

onloser wimpered:
Thanks, I choose to remain so at this time. Not so I can snipe or gripe, I
just prefer to do it this way. Heck, it's not like you're just the picture of
honesty and openness yourself. You wanna prang me about anonymity you really
oughta sign your posts yourself. Mturner ain't gonna get the mail delivered.
I've posted under my own name for years. And it was verifiable. And some on
this board have actually met me in person.

No you haven't. I did a search on your "name." You have never posted
anything anywhere up until now. The only person in this NG who's met
you in the flesh is Rosie Palm. Your problem is simple: You have no
testical fortitude, and I predict; you never will. You are an
anoymous coward, and I bet you are this way in life as well as
on-line.


You really are a spineless common loser
aren't you?

Whoa big boy! To quote John Belushi in the Blues Bros, "Well what did I do to
**** you off this time, baaaaby?" Do you read some threat or slight in my
asking a simple question? Which, by the way, I think your response answers.
But spineless? Me? Hehe, you don't know what you're writing. If anything I
push the envelope a little too hard at times. And no, I am not a loser, and by
no stretch of the imagination common. I just found it to be a humorous
anti-spam device. I actually tried common winner first, but there aren't
enough fields in the AOL spam block.


You are a liar and a dickhead. (and a really bad liar)

Adios, half-man.

pacplyer

"Eric Miller" wrote in message et...
This is off the subject of evolution which is already off-topic for RAH
(especially since none of us here have evolved; we're all either flying
chimps, wrench monkeys or both ) but...

Actually, the discussion started on religion. Somehow got hijacked to
biology.

Corrie wrote:
I invite you to do your own investigation into the Empty Tomb. That's
what it all comes down to as far as I'm concerned. If the
resurrection can be proven false, the whole Christian worldview comes
tumbling down.

Again, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Nothing could be more extraordinary, so it doesn't have to be proven false,
it's assumed to be false.
Claimants have to prove it's true beyond a shadow a doubt.

Sorry, Eric, that's simply a cop-out. I don't have to prove it beyond
a shadow of a doubt, because then there would be no room for faith,
and faith is important. There *will* come a time when there is no
more doubt - when every knee will bow and every mouth confess that
Jesus is Lord. But at that point it'll be too late.

But back to the investigation, you're going at things backwards again.
Explain the empty tomb. That's not an extraordinary claim. It's a
puzzling phenomenon. What are the possible explanations? I've heard
four.

1. The resurrection was a Mithras story grafted on in the second
century. But that doesn't explain why Paul - writing in the mid-50's
- preached Christ crucified and risen. It also doesn't explain the
earliest copies of Mark ending with the discovery of the empty tomb.
The textual evidence eliminates this hypothesis.

2. Jesus just fainted on the cross and spontaneously revived over the
weekend. Utter rubbish. Apart from the idiocy of claiming that a
person could undergo so much trauma as to appear dead and then revive
enough to roll back a large stone, Jesus was certified dead by a
professional executioner. What we know of medicine eliminates this
hypothesis.

3. There was a conspiracy to steal the body. Doesn't match the
evidence OR what we know about human nature. The arrest and execution
of Jesus caught the disciples by surprise. They were in shock and
disarray, hiding in fear for their lives. This is a cabal that can
pull off the greatest heist in history and not get caught? Plus, a
conspiracy does not explain the documented sightings of Jesus by
dozens of eyewitnesses. Skeptics usually claim those were mass
hysteria. Unfortunately for them, modern psychological studies of
mass hysteria don't match the reported sightings. Psychology
dismisses this hypothesis.

4. Jesus rose from the dead. Really, historically, factually. It
seems a fantastic impossibility, but it's the only explanation left
standing. As Holmes said to Watson, when you have exhausted all other
possibilities, that which remains, no matter how implausible, must be
the truth.



Something like 71% of the world population is non-Christian; I'd say that
constitutes some doubt

We haven't reached everyone yet. :-D

It's a bit like the difference between assuming guilt or innocence in a
court of law.

No, this is a civil matter - preponderance of evidence prevails. We
start with no preconceptions either way and see where the evidence
leads. Inductive reasoning.

"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

On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 07:50:13 -0700, "wmbjk" wrote:

Give them a couple thousand years (or even
another decade), compile all of their websites into a contradictory
book, translate it back and forth a few times from different languages,
and what will we have? ;-)

RAH? :-)

Ron Wanttaja

Give them a couple thousand years (or even
another decade), compile all of their websites into a contradictory
book, translate it back and forth a few times from different languages,
and what will we have? ;-)

RAH? :-)

Ron Wanttaja
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Yep......
With me rising from the dead at the RAH fly-in.

Lotsa' eye witnesses.


MUZZLELOADED BOb --

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

I'd suggest that's is "conveniently falsifiable" if the only opposing
evidence you'll accept cannot be provided.
(Which is not the same thing as saying it couldn't have been provided at one
time.)

No difference between that and me asking you to prove the ejection from Eden
by producing the (supposedly long decayed) core of the forbidden fruit.

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.

Oh I definitely sit in judgment! After all, having created him in our image,
complete with temper, jealousy and a vengeful nature, we're free, nay
*obligated*, to judge him.

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.

Yeah, I'd be repentant too if I was hanging from a tree suspended by nails
hammered through my body; I'd repent things I never even did!
Oh sure, stealing and killing was fun at the time, but he never would'dve
done it if he knew he'd get caught.
Or maybe it was worth it to him at the time and he still would've, he's just
unhappy with his current situation.
Does that mean he should be seated at God's right hand? I don't think so.

"Do what though wilt, but repent before you die" is a morally corrupt
philosophy.

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

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....

Are you suggesting I shouldn't judge slimy, conniving, sellers of false hope
to the downtrodden lest I be judged myself? Haven't sold any false hope
today, I think I'm safe

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.

Tell that to Noah's neighbors and the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Does God need us? Absolutely! Since he's a figment of our creation, if we
go, so does he.
Supremely happy? It'd be nice if every time he threw a temper tantrum,
millions of people didn't suffer and die as a result.
And maybe destroying Job's whole family just to win a bet wasn't such a
great idea.
Supremely happy? I wouldn't even say he's supremely mature.

Eric

"Ron Wanttaja" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 07:50:13 -0700, "wmbjk" wrote:

Give them a couple thousand years (or even
another decade), compile all of their websites into a contradictory
book, translate it back and forth a few times from different languages,
and what will we have? ;-)

RAH? :-)

Ron Wanttaja

The holy trinity (circa 4000 AD): Recreation, Aviation and Homebuilding!

Too funny, Ron :-)

Eric

Building The Perfect Beast) wrote:

much snipped for brevity.

I flew one of my planes to Pinckneyville two years ago. Met quite a few folks
from Usenet there. Bob U. has been to my shop before. He and I went to lunch.
I'm afraid I wasn't much of a host as just after inviting him I was informed
of a potentially devastating problem involving my business. But I knew that I
had done nothing wrong and the investigation proved me right. Unfortunately
just the impending hassle left me distracted and not very attentive.
If any person desires to know who I am, if it's that important to them, then
all they have to do is send me a private email and I'll gladly verify my ID as
long as the person requesting does the same. I just ask that the particulars
not be posted here.

Lots snipped from here as well

And I have to take all this abuse and defend myself just because I asked if you
were a Traveling Man. Sheesh.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Well...
I'll be dipped.
Glad to see you landed right side up.

I've been keeping my mouth shut about
anonymity, etcetera in this thread.
Wonder how I got so lucky? g


BOb U. - My lips are sealed

Well...
I'll be dipped.
Glad to see you landed right side up.


Yup, tis I. I did land right side up and I think that my vigorous defense has
gone a long way towards preventing something like that from happening again. I
know my insurance company was very appreciative of my insistence of innocence
even though in the beginning they had pretty much decided I was at fault. In
the end I saved them several hundred thousand dollars and some nasty civil
litigation. Hopefully there won't be a next time, but if there is, I know
insurance will believe what I tell them. I got a lot of brownie points to cash
in if necessary.

I've been keeping my mouth shut about
anonymity, etcetera in this thread.
Wonder how I got so lucky? g


Hey, we are from the same background. Luck is obviously with us or we would
have cashed in long ago. Hehe, personally, I give a lot of credit to a
Guardian Angel and a Higher Power. But I'll keep it to myself in light of this
thread. :^)


BOb U. - My lips are sealed

Well, it's really not a big deal. Or at least I didn't expect it to be. But
you never can tell can you? :^)

Anyway I've got another thread started you may be able to help with. It's the
reason for the new addy anyway.