This makes my head hurt...

Re: About last night, uh...

I like that one... the "bullshit-o-meter"....... mine goes off almost everytime I hear anyone tell me to pray to god and he will help, blah, blah, blah...... reminds me of the story I read of this ancient civilization that just KNEW, everytime the sun would dissappear during the day, that a dragon had swallows the sun up, and they had to go out into the street banging all the stones and sticks they had to make enough noise to scare the dragon away and get the sun back.... when in reality, it was just a solar exlipse..... moral of the story is that shit happens all the time, we may not have an explination for the shit happening and we may do, but the unexplained shit is not an "act of god" it is just something we can't explain..... all those bullshitters were just tired of not being able to explain stuff so they figured they would make a god up and blame everything on him, good and bad.......

 

Did you ever notice that "miracles" and "acts of God" have fallen in inverse proportion to our knowledge of science? Lightning and thunder used to be considered the voice of God; now we know it's simple static electricity.

Buddhism about the only modern religion I can stomach, mainly because they believe that if there is a god or gods, he doesn't give a shit about us and therefore we don't need to waste time genuflecting to him. At least that's a very rough paraphrase of the interview with the Dalai Lama I saw.

I'd like to party with that guy sometime.

 

Recently while going through an airport during one of his many trips,
>President Bush encountered a man with long hair, wearing a white robe and
>sandals, holding a staff. President Bush went up to the man and said,
>"Aren't you Moses? " The man never answered but just kept staring ahead.
>
>Again the President said, "Moses! " in a loud voice. The man just kept
>staring ahead, never answering the president. Soon a secret service agent
>came along and President Bush grabbed him and said, "Doesn't this man look
>like Moses to you? " The secret service agent agreed with the President.
>
>"Well," said the President, "Every time I say his name, he just keeps
>staring ahead and refuses to speak. Watch!" Again, the President yelled,
>"Moses! " and again the man stared ahead.
>
>The secret service man went up to the man in the white robe and whispered,
>"You look just like Moses. Are you Moses?"
>
>The man leaned over and whispered, "Yes, I am Moses. But the last time I
>talked to a bush, I spent 40 years wandering in the desert!"
>

 

Actually, anyone that pays attention to these kinds of things through credible sources (not the self worshipping media) knows that miracles and "acts of God" have not decreased but increased, and are scientifically verifiable. Ask any hospital type doctor.
I've seen and experienced it myself.

We have got to remember this: If God does a "miracle", He is not always looking for good press coverage. God's motivation is love and compassion, not fame or the approval of man.

These kind of things remind me of hiking the Appalachian Trail: Everyone wants to see a bear. There are bears in the woods. Everyone does NOT see bears. The more you're out there, the smaller the crowd, and the more you you keep quiet and pay attention, the more likely you'll see one. Hang around noisy mobs and you can forget it.

 

YA, OOKKK....... in other words, miracles exist everyday, but not in the big media, or crowds that can spread the word of this miracle??? Maybe the smaller the crowd, the more isolated the region, the more uneducated (to science, not like a dumb person) the people, and the more likely they are to call it a miracle because they can't explain it....... so you're in the woods, by yourself, you've never seen a bear (not just in person, but on TV, or anywhere) and a big animal comes out, how do you know it's a bear? Maybe it's a deer, and you don't know what a bear looks like.... so you go tell everyone you saw the most beautiful bear, they then tell all their friends, and their friends tell their friends... sooner or later, everyone thinks that there was a beautiful bear in there, and nothing to disprove it........ oh well, back to work...

 

We're are having a semantical problem here. What are we callling a miracle? A surgeon can operate, there can be therapy and drugs and rest and the sick/injured person is well. 400 years ago this would be a "miracle". Penecillin, etc.

That's not what I'm calling a miracle. I call it the results of hard work, science and all that. What I mean is sick/injured today, healthy later today, no symptoms. That's a miracle.

I've been there, seen it. Scepticism is fine, welcomed in fact. Information and understanding cures scepticism.

What's the cure for cynicism? A changed heart is the only cure I know. You see, the sceptic doesn't believe, but the cynic doesn't WANT to believe. It's not a matter of information, just of pride and fear.

 

No, that is the human body healing itself, it does that ya know! Someone has pnumonia (sp?) today, is one the verge of dying, and a week later they are fine... is that a miracle? No, it's the body doing it's work... sometimes the disease/illness is too much and the body can't handle it, is that god "calling somone up"? No, it means it was more than the body could handle... I'm not a surgeon, or nurse, or doctor so I can't recite what the body can and can't do, I just know that illnesses have death rates, and if you're on the lucky side of the rate, you haven't been handed a miracle, you were just lucky enough to be on the good side of the statistic... and if you die, it's not because you've been a bad person and god is killing you, it's because you were on the unlucky side of the statistic......

 

I agree with all of that; it's just isn't what I was talking about.

I was talking about a instantaneous occurance, thus "later today".

I've seen injuries healed in seconds, sickness gone in two minutes. Believe me, I've been busted up enough to know how long normal healing takes.

 

Moses, when Da Man dictated the 10 commandments. And look what happened to him...

What is cool about the Old Testiment, is how it still makes sense if you try to interpret it as an explanation of the origins of the universe to a bunch of people who didn't even know they were on a small planet in the outskirts of mediocre galaxy...

I personally subscribe to the "Divine Evolution" idea. We are just now getting a grasp on how this universe actually works. If He came down today and said, "Ok this is how things are." We would probably still go, "Duhhhh...."
Could you imagine trying to explain astro-physics and biochemistry to a bunch of bumkins living in mud huts?

 

How come none of these events have ever been documented? And no, I don't mean by Billy Bob the healing evangelist, because those are staged.

 

DING, DING, DING, WE HAVE A WINNER!!! Let's go a little farther back.... there are accurate recordings of MANY events even before Jesus "walked the earth" so how come the only witnesses to his "healings" and "miracles" were the BIlly Bob evangelists of the time??? Cause it was all a hoax!

 

And your proof would be...

 

I consider myself skeptical about the possible existence of a god, and cynical about anything that has to do with organized religion. I was injured in a racing accident 17 months ago and I'm a quadriplegic with more health problems than you can process. If I understand your statement (which I am pretty sure I don't, so please help me understand) are you telling me that I don't want a miracle to happen, and that I fear being proven wrong if it did? Thank you.

 

Documented. You mean like written down? You mean like in a book or something? Hey! How about a big group of people who have all experienced stuff like that get together and all contribute their stories! Over hundreds of years even; no thousands! Maybe then some king or something could like, check out which ones are credible, and then put all the consistant reliable ones in a BIG book.

Nah- no one would ever read it, much less believe it...










Sorry dude. I'm really trying to be serious about this, but you asked for that one.

There are plenty of documented ones, in the present day. Don't expect nonbelievers to report accurately. They don't even report stuff they believe in accurately.

Check it out for yourself, first hand. Not the people, the God of the people.