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From: doublePlusPaleo on 5 Apr 2010 20:38 On 2010-04-05 07:38:36 +1000, John Wolf <jwolf6589(a)THUNDERBIRDgmail.com> said: > On 4/4/10 5:34 PM, The Doctor wrote: >> The Jewish Celebration commemorating the liberation of the Jews >> from Pharoah. > > I see. To you who is Jesus? If you were to die today where would you > go, and if you met Jesus on the other side, as well as every major > religious figure, who would you believe and why? > > > John What about this virgin birth business - do you believe it? Do you think that Mary accidentally picked up some semen from a toilet seat?
From: Jamie Kahn Genet on 5 Apr 2010 22:32 John Wolf <jwolf6589(a)THUNDERBIRDgmail.com> wrote: > On 4/4/10 5:34 PM, The Doctor wrote: > > The Jewish Celebration commemorating the liberation of the Jews > > from Pharoah. > > I see. To you who is Jesus? If you were to die today where would you go, > and if you met Jesus on the other side, as well as every major religious > figure, who would you believe and why? > > > John How on Earth is this appropriate for comp.sys.mac newsgroups? -- If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
From: Kurt Ullman on 5 Apr 2010 23:55 In article <4bba7562$0$14772$c3e8da3(a)news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei <jfmezei.spamnot(a)vaxination.ca> wrote: > Once you die, you cannot do any more actions to change your legacy so it > stays that way for eternity. I doubt it. History is always subject to being rewritten or at least reinterpreted. Some may be forever, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc., but many will be rehabed later on. -- I get off on '57 Chevys I get off on screamin' guitars --Eric Clapton
From: Kurt Ullman on 5 Apr 2010 23:57 In article <1jgj9so.3ajba71umb2ptN%jamiekg(a)wizardling.geek.nz>, jamiekg(a)wizardling.geek.nz (Jamie Kahn Genet) wrote: > John Wolf <jwolf6589(a)THUNDERBIRDgmail.com> wrote: > > > On 4/4/10 5:34 PM, The Doctor wrote: > > > The Jewish Celebration commemorating the liberation of the Jews > > > from Pharoah. > > > > I see. To you who is Jesus? If you were to die today where would you go, > > and if you met Jesus on the other side, as well as every major religious > > figure, who would you believe and why? > > > > > > John > > How on Earth is this appropriate for comp.sys.mac newsgroups? God obviously owns Macs. I mean talk about self-evident (G&D&R) -- I get off on '57 Chevys I get off on screamin' guitars --Eric Clapton
From: Jeffrey Goldberg on 6 Apr 2010 00:57
Michelle Steiner wrote: > In article <m2hbnp6gbe.fsf(a)shermpendley.com>, > Sherm Pendley <spamtrap(a)shermpendley.com> wrote: > >>> There is no "other side", a fact which >> >> ... is a belief, not a fact. Absence of proof is not proof of absence. > > The fact is that in all of recorded and oral histories, there has been no > evidence of an other side. This issue is best illustrated by Russell's teapot. Bertrand Russell when confronted with this argument described a teapot orbiting the Sun between Earth and Mars. Given the technology of the day (and today) there is no way to prove that there is no such teapot. (And at the time there were no known made made objects that had left Earth.) Yet all reasonable people would agree that -- despite the fact that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence -- we would be perfectly justified in believing that no such teapot exists. More modern analysis has formalized this notion and question, and what underlies it is Bayesian reasoning. This reduces the argument of there being "something" after death to our fundamental views of what mind and consciousness is. For duelists, there is some possibility of "life" after death (though it takes some pretty big leaps to get there even for duelists). For materialists (for which all the evidence points) there isn't a chance in hell of "mind" being the kind of thing that can persist without a body. Brains make minds. > Then there's Pascal's wager. If there isn't an other side, but we act as > if there were one, what harm has happened? But if there is an other side, > and we act as if there weren't, what will happen to use when we get there? The problem with Pascal's wager is that it is always presented as two options. Either there is no god, or God insists on worship or "acceptance into your heart" or such. But of course in terms of the wager we need to consider other kinds of gods. Suppose there is a god who would punish exactly those people who surrendered God's gift of reason by believing in a god without evidence. Or suppose there is a god who will punish those who hop on one foot during the Sabbath. Pascal's wager only works when there is a single, very specific, option for God's rules of reward and punishment. Otherwise, it provides no rational for behaving one way or another. > Considering Occam's Razor, though, I'll take that wager because I doubt > that God is the spoiled brat that's portrayed in the Bible. Exactly. Indeed, if God is the kind of entity that would insist on blind worship, He certainly isn't deserving of it. -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg http://goldmark.org/jeff/ I rarely read HTML or poorly quoting posts Reply-To address is valid |