Proof that the Abrahamic god exists?

Nihilist Virus said:

I do not know of any applied method of scrutiny whereby one can believe in the resurrection of Jesus and simultaneously reject all alien abduction reports.

Click to expand...

Never thought of it that way. An interesting way to look at it I suppose. I can say that when considering the claim of Christianity, one ought to weigh all the evidence because a singular piece isn't going to be enough for most skeptics. There are good questions to consider when considering the claims of the resurrection. I wouldn't recommend rejecting any investigation into the resurrection just because there are also many reports of alien abductions. But I don't have an immediate answer to that. Ravi Zacharias probably would.

I think you have to weigh all the evidence. And when I say evidence, I mean anything that is presented as an argument for God's existence (God as in the Grand Designer and not necessarily the God of Abraham). In a court of law, a piece of lint can be evidence. What ever is entered into evidence is evidence. It could turn out that the evidence offered is rejected for a variety of reasons. It could be unconvincing or explained away. It could turn out the be fabricated or simply poorly argued. I'm saying this now about evidence to clarify what I mean by evidence. I'm not using the term as synonymous with proof. I could make an argument for God's existence using music as my evidence. I would hope someone would not say, "that's not evidence" because it would be if I presented a case before a court of law. It should also be given a fair hearing in a discussion. It doesn't mean the evidence will be convincing and it may turn out I fall flat and make only sour notes. (puns intended) (BTW I chose music because I'm a musician and have studied and am currently furthering my study of music).

Post some of you music if you get the chance....would love to hear it....

PapaZoom said:

I don't think he said it was childish. He didn't believe in a personal God but he did believe in a Supernatural being of some kind. There's plenty of evidence for that. His great mind recognized that something greater than our puny selves was the ultimate reality. He spoke of God, the divine, and "a spirit vastly superior to that of man” in describing this being.

Click to expand...

Einstein stated; believe in a personal God, was a childish superstition.

throughfireytrial said:

Guessing you as an atheist have strong faith...in evolution...and will not break trust with that faith though your atheist-minded scientist of the top tier have debunked that theory??

I, as a Christian, will say conscience proves our God exists...proof in the science realm anyway. Also, archaeologists say something...something unknown to them...made the walls of Jericho fall quite instantaneously...though it couldn't have been by the power of God, oh no, one must not give up the atheist faith too readily. Not only did the walls of Jericho fall just as described in the Bible, but city/nation after city/nation fell according to the evidence they unearth exactly along the path the Bible describes of the Israelites.

Click to expand...

Nihilist Virus said:

Actually, archaeologists say that Jericho had fallen long before Joshua's gang of maniacs arrived. They settled in an abandoned city. They recorded it as a genocidal conquest because that was like bragging back then.

Click to expand...

Throughfireytrial is correct. The archaeologist in question is Bryant Wood of the University of Toronto and it is published in March-April 1990 Biblical Archaeology Review. Based on ceramics, ash layers, Carbon 14 dating and seismic shifts in the area, the fall of Jericho in the bronze age was 150 years later and thus at an appropriate time for one of the interpretations of the timing of the Exodus (unfortunately, the exodus would have to have been in 1400 BC for this interpretation and the mainstream view is that a date of roughly 1200 BC fits best. Again though, Archaeology has not accepted its historicity entirely however).
However, this is not at all clear cut as mainstream Archaeology has not accepted the Exodus narrative and some colleagues have called his interpretation into question so the research on the question is still on-going. Mainstream Archaeology has not accepted the Biblical narrative, but it is no longer a completely rejected interpretation, just a small minority view.

Its all a matter of interpretation of primary sources though. Many later battles and events are treated as historical based on single sources with no other evidence (such as certain battles in the Peloponnesian War in Thucydides or the "confession of Hatusilli III, which in the latter case has just as much miraculous parts, although omitted in historical interpretations thereof), but the Bible is always treated with a ten foot pole when it comes to historicity. If the fall of Jericho had been in a Canaanite religious hymn, it would have been accepted as history without any debate.

bhsmte said:

Einstein stated; believe in a personal God, was a childish superstition.

Click to expand...

Einstein held to a God not unlike that of Baruch Spinoza. Not a personal God no, but he was also not an atheist.

bhsmte said:

Einstein stated; believe in a personal God, was a childish superstition.

Click to expand...

Do you have a substantiated quote?

Quid est Veritas? said:

Einstein held to a God not unlike that of Baruch Spinoza. Not a personal God no, but he was also not an atheist.

Click to expand...

I didn't say he was an atheist. I simply stated his clear position on personal Gods.

Nihilist Virus said:

I do not know of any applied method of scrutiny whereby one can believe in the resurrection of Jesus and simultaneously reject all alien abduction reports.

Click to expand...

By the Historical-critical approach. Multiple Gospels and individual Christian sources attest to Jesus' resurrection, with a similar narrative even though there is no evidence they are related beyond there descent from a common group of disciples. Also, there is little to no documents denying it until 2 centuries have elapsed, so no counter-argument of the equivalent epoch.
Alien abduction reports have no common basis except popular culture, follow movie depictions of aliens (they tend to mirror the recent movies) and can usually be better explained on the basis of sleep-paralyses or psychological phenomena.

Based thereon, while this is insufficient to confirm the Resurrection historically, it has a higher probability than alien abduction reports. Now, modern science does not function by proving anything (see my previous post in this forum for an explanation thereof), so works on probability mostly and therefore the Resurrection is more likely 'scientifically' than alien abductions.

civilwarbuff said:

Do you have a substantiated quote?

Click to expand...

No problem:

In the letter, he states: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2008/may/12/peopleinscience.religion

bhsmte said:

Einstein stated; believe in a personal God, was a childish superstition.

Click to expand...

Fine. Can you show a source for that? Not doubting you I just haven't seen that.

bhsmte said:

Einstein stated; believe in a personal God, was a childish superstition.

Click to expand...

Not his exact quote. It was a personal letter he had written an in it contained the following:

“The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”

“For me the Jewish religion like all other religions is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions,” the letter continues. “And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are also no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”

Click to expand...

But taken in light of the many other references to a super spirit and the divine, while Einstein may not have thought of God as a personal entity, he nevertheless recognized the possibility of a Divine Spirit behind the "incomprehensible" universe. How far one can go with that I don't know but he said what he said. Your quote is a bit misleading because it doesn't tell the story accurately.

The relevance of Einstein's beliefs or Hawking's or any other scientist's to this thread is non-existent.
It validates no one's argument because someone famous happened to agree or disagree.
They aren't experts on theology or knowledge, only in their own narrow fields.

Quid est Veritas? said:

By the Historical-critical approach. Multiple Gospels and individual Christian sources attest to Jesus' resurrection, with a similar narrative even though there is no evidence they are related beyond there descent from a common group of disciples. Also, there is little to no documents denying it until 2 centuries have elapsed, so no counter-argument of the equivalent epoch.
Alien abduction reports have no common basis except popular culture, follow movie depictions of aliens (they tend to mirror the recent movies) and can usually be better explained on the basis of sleep-paralyses or psychological phenomena.

Based thereon, while this is insufficient to confirm the Resurrection historically, it has a higher probability than alien abduction reports. Now, modern science does not function by proving anything (see my previous post in this forum for an explanation thereof), so works on probability mostly and therefore the Resurrection is more likely 'scientifically' than alien abductions.

Click to expand...

You have clearly not looked into alien abduction reports. I have done so specifically so I can use the argument that I did. Their claims are numerous, independent, and corroborating. Even the parts where they answer "I don't know" are consistent. They have been subjected to professionals, they have been hypnotized. They have given detailed accounts which were tape recorded.

None of this can be said for the disciples.

Nihilist Virus said:

You have clearly not looked into alien abduction reports. I have done so specifically so I can use the argument that I did. Their claims are numerous, independent, and corroborating. Even the parts where they answer "I don't know" are consistent. They have been subjected to professionals, they have been hypnotized. They have given detailed accounts which were tape recorded.

None of this can be said for the disciples.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I didn't explain my position properly. The historical-critical approach is to ascertain whether a historical event happened.

The abduction reports are each for a separate abduction, so there is only one source for each. Not multiple sources for one event as with the Resurrection.
Secondly, hypnosis is a very poor way to validate information as it is prone to exaggeration and distortion under the subconscious mind.
Thirdly, whether they firmly hold to their accounts even under interogation is irrelevant to the argument. Whether they believed it happened is different from whether it actually did happen. I can assure you the apostles held firmly to their beliefs under interogation etc. by the Jewish authorities as well.

So based on multiple corrobarating sources for a single historical event, my ascertion stands.
You could argue that the agreements between different abduction accounts makes each individually more likely, but this is rejected by historical method as this may just arise from shared cultural mileau. If this was not the case, then we would have to argue that the blood libel against the Jews and Jewish human sacrifice in the middle ages was historic fact, which no serious historian or individual for that matter, would agree to.

Xalith said:

Or how about the fact that the only two verses in the Bible that start with "In the Beginning", you can find pi and E (the mathematical constant) encoded (Genesis 1 for Pi, John 1 for E) to a large number of digits, using the exact same formula in both verses (despite the fact Genesis and John were written by the Jews and Christians respectively)? That's... pretty strange, considering Genesis was written long before Pi came about, and John 1 was written before E was discovered, and if any single letter in those verses would have been different, the whole thing wouldn't work. Not to mention, the math required to figure these out (much less how to encode them like that and still come up with a writing that makes sense!) did not exist during the time the Old Testament was written.

http://www.khouse.org/articles/2003/482/ <---if you want to read up on that.

The chances of this happening unintentionally are... probably more astronomical than you winning the lottery every single day for the rest of your life.

Click to expand...

Finally had some time to look into it.

Firstly, they are not coded to a large number of digits. They are coded to four decimal places, each of them.

Secondly, the actual approximations of pi and e are not being encoded. It's their approximation times ten to some huge power, which is a vastly different number. It's like saying your lottery number was 734, but 7,345,228 came up and you claim victory.

Thirdly, the text itself does not actually encode these huge numbers, but rather Missler has devised an arbitrary code key which produces them.

Fourthly, Missler even admits that the actual significance of this is non-existent.

Now, what is the probability we're talking about?

I cannot determine this because I do not know what "product of the words" means. Number of letters, number of words, I get that. Product of the letters I get, because he assigns each letter a numerical value. What is a product of a word though?

I'll venture a guess.

Let's say we assign numerical values to the English alphabet:



I got that off a Bible code website.

Now let's look at the sentence, "The ball is red."

I would assume by "product of the words" he would mean that "the" has the value 200+8+5=213, "ball" has value 2+1+30+30=63, "is" has value 9+100=109, and "red" has value 90+5+4=99, so the product of the words would be (213)(63)(109)(99)=144,804,429.

Assuming this is correct, the Bible code of this sentence is:

(3+4+2+3)(200)(8)(5)(2)(1)(30)(30)(9)(100)(90)(5)(4)÷(4)(144,804,429)=
279,936,000,000,000÷579,217,716=483,300.13441784...

So now what is the probability that we get what we have in these two verses?

As you can see, we are free to just look at the first few digits of the large number and just disregard the rest. So essentially we have this:

__ . __ __ __ __

The probability of randomly selecting those digits correctly is one chance in 10^5, or one chance in 10,000. Since this has to be done twice, we double it to 20,000.

One chance in 20,000.


The chances of this happening unintentionally are... probably more astronomical than you winning the lottery every single day for the rest of your life.


Hmm well, if my chances of winning the lottery even once was 1/20,000 then I'd sell all my assets and buy a ton of lottery tickets.

One chance in 20,000 is much, much larger than you thought, but perhaps you still think it's a fairly small number. Well, I've proced RNGs in RPGs with probabilities much lower. And the Bible is quite a huge book. Granted, these are the only two "In the beginning" quotes combining with the first four decimal places of the two most famous transcendental numbers in math, but the code was derived via an arbitrary code key (why multiply and divide like such?) and the Bible is so large that we expect coincidences like this to occur.

I'll admit it's an interesting coincidence, but I haven't heard your response to those coincidences in the Koran yet.

And let's not forget that I haven't actually even checked this for myself. Missler is a known deceiver.


Also I'm kind of tickled by this quip of yours:

using the exact same formula in both verses

You realize that this is a requirement, not a triumph, right? You can't go switching your measuring stick in the middle of a test.

Quid est Veritas? said:

Sorry, I didn't explain my position properly. The historical-critical approach is to ascertain whether a historical event happened.

Click to expand...

And that approach can never conclude that Jesus rose from the dead any more than the scientific method can conclude that God exists.

The abduction reports are each for a separate abduction, so there is only one source for each. Not multiple sources for one event as with the Resurrection.

Click to expand...

They are all the same phenomenon. It is multiple and consistent accounts of the same phenomenon. Please don't try to pull that on me.

Secondly, hypnosis is a very poor way to validate information as it is prone to exaggeration and distortion under the subconscious mind.

Click to expand...

So... writing down a story decades later in a different language is not prone to exaggeration, distortion, and embellishment?

Thirdly, whether they firmly hold to their accounts even under interogation is irrelevant to the argument. Whether they
believed it happened is different from whether it actually did happen.

Click to expand...

Exactly.

I can assure you the apostles held firmly to their beliefs under interogation etc. by the Jewish authorities as well.

Click to expand...

You can assure me of this? Really?

So based on multiple corrobarating sources for a single historical event, my ascertion stands.

Click to expand...

Again, you haven't looked into alien abduction accounts. There are accounts of several people being abducted at once. So there's your several accounts of a single event.

You could argue that the agreements between different abduction accounts makes each individually more likely, but this is rejected by historical method as this may just arise from shared cultural mileau. If this was not the case, then we would have to argue that the blood libel against the Jews and Jewish human sacrifice in the middle ages was historic fact, which no serious historian or individual for that matter, would agree to.

Click to expand...

I think you need to do research into alien abduction claims and apply the same methodology to them.

PapaZoom said:

Never thought of it that way. An interesting way to look at it I suppose. I can say that when considering the claim of Christianity, one ought to weigh all the evidence because a singular piece isn't going to be enough for most skeptics. There are good questions to consider when considering the claims of the resurrection. I wouldn't recommend rejecting any investigation into the resurrection just because there are also many reports of alien abductions. But I don't have an immediate answer to that. Ravi Zacharias probably would.

I think you have to weigh all the evidence. And when I say evidence, I mean anything that is presented as an argument for God's existence (God as in the Grand Designer and not necessarily the God of Abraham). In a court of law, a piece of lint can be evidence. What ever is entered into evidence is evidence. It could turn out that the evidence offered is rejected for a variety of reasons. It could be unconvincing or explained away. It could turn out the be fabricated or simply poorly argued. I'm saying this now about evidence to clarify what I mean by evidence. I'm not using the term as synonymous with proof. I could make an argument for God's existence using music as my evidence. I would hope someone would not say, "that's not evidence" because it would be if I presented a case before a court of law. It should also be given a fair hearing in a discussion. It doesn't mean the evidence will be convincing and it may turn out I fall flat and make only sour notes. (puns intended) (BTW I chose music because I'm a musician and have studied and am currently furthering my study of music).

Click to expand...

When I weigh the evidence, I see that God is either unable or unwilling to keep his holy book perfect, and I find neither to be acceptable.

Nihilist Virus said:

And that approach can never conclude that Jesus rose from the dead any more than the scientific method can conclude that God exists.



They are all the same phenomenon. It is multiple and consistent accounts of the same phenomenon. Please don't try to pull that on me.



So... writing down a story decades later in a different language is not prone to exaggeration, distortion, and embellishment?



Exactly.



You can assure me of this? Really?




Again, you haven't looked into alien abduction accounts. There are accounts of several people being abducted at once. So there's your several accounts of a single event.



I think you need to do research into alien abduction claims and apply the same methodology to them.

Click to expand...

Please read my post again. The last assertion shows why multiple abduction accounts even when consistent, does not make it valid. All the Blood libel claims were also consistent, also the same phenomenon, so if this true, the Jews murdered countless children in the middle-ages. It is nonsense my friend. Multiple dubious accounts even if they agree, does not suddenly make any of them more likely. 0 + 0 never equals one.

All the accounts I am referring to are in one language, Koine Greek, and from the same epoch. Exagerrations etc. are not at play here, as it is about what these different accounts have in common, not their entirety.

Yes, the historical critical approach cannot prove the Resurrection. I never made that claim. Read my first post and you would see that by using its methodology, it is just more probable than alien abductions, scientifically speaking.

Quid est Veritas? said:

Please read my post again. The last assertion shows why multiple abduction accounts even when consistent, does not make it valid. All the Blood libel claims were also consistent, also the same phenomenon, so if this true, the Jews murdered countless children in the middle-ages. It is nonsense my friend. Multiple dubious accounts even if they agree, does not suddenly make any of them more likely. 0 + 0 never equals one.

Click to expand...

You realize that you are proving my point for me, right?

All the accounts I am referring to are in one language, Koine Greek, and from the same epoch. Exagerrations etc. are not at play here, as it is about what these different accounts have in common, not their entirety.

Click to expand...

If I were to delete Koine Greek, one would not be able to tell if you are discussing alien abductions or the blood libel claims.

Yes, the historical critical approach cannot prove the Resurrection. I never made that claim. Read my first post and you would see that by using its methodology, it is just more probable than alien abductions, scientifically speaking.

Click to expand...

Scientifically speaking, it is more likely that another species has located earth and visited it than that a man rose from the dead, walked through walls, disappeared whimsically, and then ascended off of earth.

Nihilist Virus said:

Actually no.

Click to expand...

Noted your signature..."from stardust thou art, and unto stardust shalt thou return."

It *may* interest you to know (but probably won't even phase you...you being atheist and all) that all the space quest of the human race is quite prophesied in the Scriptures...

Obadiah 3:4:
Though you soar like the eagle
and make your nest among the stars,
from there I will bring you down,”
declares the Lord.

See, haven't given up on you entirely.