alphaparticle

Robby- Thanks for the response. For your first point, I agree, there are people who are attached to the abstracted teachings of Jesus, but I think they are wasting their time and I don't get it at all. I suppose you could be an atheist and get something from the Sermon on the Mount, but basic Christianity is far more radical than that. What I have in mind is what I'd call the bare gospel, and according to Paul in 1 Corinthians that is the belief in the resurrection (if you disagree here that is fine and won't affect things, so long as you know what I have in mind). Your second point, yeah I understand that. What I mean by my rhetorical question is why would an unmotivated unbeliever take any of this seriously? Your third point. What I have in mind is taking apart the Bible and finding individual historical sources in the way that historians, including secular ones who study the NT, do. As I'm sure you are aware, the bible isn't a single writing, it's a collection of writings from multiple authors, and sometimes the authors themselves draw on even other sources. So for instance, we could look at how the gospels were written, attempt to analyze each pericope (event/saying) in the gospels, and see how many sources support it, using the notion of Markan priority, as that is the standard view among scholars. And, actually, Paul's writings are considered the earliest, and his writings similarly analyzed. Each one of the facts I presented above could be established and vetted by looking at each *source* individually. You needn't give any special place to the Bible or treat it any differently from any other historical source. As I mentioned in my OP, the Bible's special authoritative place would only be established *after* establishing the truth of what I've called the basic gospel- the death, burial and resurrection of Christ.

Alright so a moral dilemma. I suppose it would have to be my (future) wife that I saved and it's not because I don't feel affection or loyalty to my mom but my wife is the one I have the greatest moral obligation to. I in fact will make an explicit covenant with her in terms of thinking of her first of people.

I can both use calculators and computers and do back of the envelope calculations. These things are not mutually exclusive and I don't see any reason to blame use of technology on it.

The question I want to explore, more particularly, are the biblical accounts about Jesus. The reason is because first, the Christian faith is about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus- things if they did not really occur would entail that Christians are wasting our time (1 cr 15:19). If Jesus was resurrected from the dead Christianity is almost certainly true, if He was not it is certainly false.The second reason is, when the basic historicity of these events is established then authority is given to the rest of the Bible insofar as Jesus implicitly took it as authoritative in His ministry (the OT anyway), and that the rest attests to the gospel. And the third and possibly most important factor is that when someone accepts the gospel then the Holy Spirit starts to help them out on these questions also. Jhn 14:26 But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. Which is gained by believing in the gospel: eph 1:13: In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit So I think there is a real question here- why would anybody believe what the Bible says about Jesus, or specifically, about His death and resurrection? I think it should be obvious that just because it's written down doesn't lend the account credibility. Lots of incredible things are written down, that we all know to be untrue. There are many things in the Bible which seem quite incredible. What I suggest is this. A pretty good case can be made for these basic events of Jesus' life, death and resurrection using ordinary historical criteria, the same which would be applied to any ancient writing to try to tease out historical facts: Jesus' existence, Jesus' basic message and understanding of Himself as sent by God, Jesus' crucifixion and death at the hands of the Romans, the disciples believing Jesus' tomb to be empty, the disciples believing to have seen and heard Jesus physically resurrected and the disciples convinced enough of that to commit their lives to a dangerous and unpopular cause. Please note my wording here. At this point in the case I am presenting I am not claiming to be able to establish that Jesus was in fact resurrected using ordinary historical criteria, merely that the disciples believed He was, and believed strongly enough to commit themselves fully to the cause. The second part to this is that this body of facts is enough to give rational reason to suspect the resurrection is a historical event. The resurrection certainly explains a lot. I have come to believe that fully accepting this in part involves interaction with God,but even if you do not believe in God, could give interesting pause for thought!

agreed. Same with the internet. Your productivity with certain software and information can skyrocket.

Speaking for myself only.....I'm not driving, on a date or meeting with customers or co-workers as I write ths. Nor am I neglecting my children, my home or my career. No one is waiting for me to notice them or respond to them. I don't post from my office unless I have the time to do so. This thread is about addiction to SMARTPHONES and neglecting the real world. Please reread the title of the thread. Please read the content of the rest of the thread, in which people who use their smartphones seem to be impugned across the board by people on an internet forum who, (myself included), use it a lot.

I sure can't learn so much about God and have Christian fellowship on my cell phone.Which one do you think God would want me to spend more time on? you can access this site on your phone. Yes,but I choose to have only one obsessive object in my life.Worthy=Learning about God and Socializing with his people vs. Cell phone= What Kwik said "I dunno,,,seems the phones are smart and sucking the smart out of this generations brains?!!!"I think I will go with the Christian website on my computer.I am on this website ALOT less than people are on their cell phones.Plus my cell phone bill is $30.00 a month because I have so few minutes per month because I am not on it.How much do you pay to have your cell phone a month? I don't know, bopeep, I don't have a smartphone. I'm tired of people with different habits being looked down on though.

Well the kissing question aside, if you are interested in someone, the 'trying to impress' the other person will be present whether or not you are 'just friends' at the moment. I don't know that element can be whisked away with a mere change of terms.

I sure can't learn so much about God and have Christian fellowship on my cell phone.Which one do you think God would want me to spend more time on? you can access this site on your phone.

This reminds me of an episode of Star Trek... (and if you know which one I have in mind based on that alone, I'll be greatly disturbed). But I will say, I find it odd to see so many people complaining about people basically being online... on an online forum.

And this, the rope-a-dope, is the exact same line used by the atheist...once he has you believing Adam was not real, you have no need for Christ. He can then tempt you to deny the deity of Christ and the fight is over. Atheist wins. If you believe the world is billions of years old, you have a weakness in your defense from the get go. The godless will exploit that weakness. One can go to their death bed believing in God and evolution, though that may very well be a difficult task and I commend those that do, but my point is not about the strength of faith of a man, but the motives of those that are teaching him lies. A non literal adam means we aren't sinful and in need of salvation? That doesn't follow at all. The fact that humans are sinful is something that is confirmable aside from the question of Adam's literal historical existence (which is also why I don't lose sleep over that particular question). What does the age of the universe have to do with anything?

I suspect that at some point God gave humans special souls, hypothesis on my part but it seems to make the most sense out of the information. I suspect that it happened about the time our cognitive development was sufficient for certain things.

Sunni's have been killing Shia's and the opposite for about 1,400 years. they both have been killing Jews and Christians along with anyone who disagree with them for a bit longer than that. We do not need to be involved in any fight between each other. Both sides kill whole communities including women and children and it really doesn't matter to me if you use gas or a sword. If it weren't for the fact that so many are finding the Lord, I'd recommend the roundup approach. Sterilize the area and start over without the weeds..... however, we can't do that, so we must decide if one weed is worse than the other....... So the question seems to be, who can we be neighbors with.... if either. I would never recommend liquidating peoples, even in a hypothetical sense. Honestly that's disturbing.

I wonder how many civilian deaths the rebels are responsible for? I wonder how many civilian deaths there would be in Syria if neither the US or Russia was supplying sides? I wonder if anyone would care if Syria didn't happen to be in the Middle East, but perhaps say, Africa?

Good day Alpha, well, I commented on a fellow poster's post saying "having a child that is a problem [...]". Moreover, all she had to tell about her child was, as I understood it, negative about him. The poster also added "If you were around him 5 minutes you would know something was off.". Please explain, what is it that I didn't understand in your opinion? Have a good day, Thomas thomas, I think she's described it pretty well. She has a boy who likes to get into trouble and literally has mental problems. If you meet someone with say, a brain injury, you might realize that shortly after meeting them. I don't think that would go away just because she brushed it off or pretended like he was perfect. Given the context of the thread I don't think it's necessary for her to add in a bunch of positive descriptors of her son as well, after all, the thread is about youths who get into trouble and have other issues, explicitly. I see nothing inappropriate in the way she described the situation and I really do not think you should be accusing her of impropriety.

The issue insofar as I see it is that you're a man, and you're responsible for your own sin. You can't control the way that others dress so obsessing about that isn't going to help you or minimize your own responsibility in the world. Nothing in that means that women aren't responsible for*their own* sin also, but it makes more sense to me to focus on what you can and can't actually control.

I'm not sure atheism necessitates "agents" as secondary, but certainly 'supernatural agents' are put on the back burners if not down right excluded. A common counter-argument I hear from atheists regarding your bookcase in alphabetical order is that we have seen and confirmed agents putting books in alphabetical order. We know such agents exist, why they do this, that such is common practice, and on top of that we know of no known naturalistic processes that will alphabetize books. So when you walk into your room and see your books alphabetized, even if you have no idea who did it, you have good reason to assume that an agent did it. On the other hand, when it comes to the universe, we have no hard evidence that such supernatural agents even exist, but we do know natural processes do. One line of argumentation that I find makes me very cautious to suppose any supernatural explanation, is our historical inkling to explain things with God that we later discover is purely the result of natural phenomena. It is similar to the god of the gaps. You said earlier that you aren't positing a god of the gaps because you are questioning why anything exists at all, and in response I will argue/ask why God exists at all? To me I see you pushing back the ultimate foundation of existence to a metaphysical plane, which I'll grant is a possibility and not a god of the gaps argument provided we have hard evidence God exists as a metaphysical entity. But without proportional evidence, I think the default position is that there is no reason to think God did it, and no reason to suggest this metaphysical plane exists. In terms of a default position, any claim requires proportional evidence. And in that respect, absence of evidence, the default is neither philosophical naturalism or theism as both are making a positive claim about the fundamental structure of existence. However through hard evidence we know that the physical/natural exists, yet we cannot say the same thing when it comes to theism. In that respect atheism has a point in favor over theism IMHO. The reason I brought up the alphabetized bookshelf is to argue that it alone would give us reason to think that alphabetizing agents might exist- apart from other background information. Likewise, an ordered universe is one reason to think that an agent is at the bottom of it all. The fundamental question for me is this: why is it that we can explain things in terms of naturalistic causation at all? You could argue there is no further explanation, but I'd wonder why you stop there instead of because an agent ordered the world. The fact that I want explained is the fact that there is natural ordering... at all, not some particular phenomenon, the very order that is the necessary condition for there to be naturalistic explanations at all. And there it makes no sense to me to claim that atheism has explanatory superiority, there it is merely a choice that is made between two basic candidates- naturalistic causation vs agent causation, and there is no really good grounds for excluding one against the other at that level.

I suspect-- if I may-- that this may be a translation issue, as english is not thomas' first language. The term 'problem youth' in the US has a clinical/psychological sense and doesn't have to have derogatory implications. In this case it's a mere statement of fact that the 'youth' in question has certain types of struggles.

The way that most women are attracted to men is more complicated than vice versa. There are a lot of interesting differences that way. The key is that people, particularly believers (I should think) bear responsibility for treating others with respect and being aware of our own weaknesses. I have faced situations in which the face and voice of certain women distracted me, and I needed to help them for tutoring. I had to figure it out, and I realized that as an unbeliever. Life is full of temptations and struggles, that's just the way it is. Individual women waking up should think about it, men should also and I don't think we should be assuming the worst about each others intentions.

Because we implicitly assume there is a reason for every other state of affairs or events, so why are we putting this particular one in a special exempt class?

Hi alpha, I look at it slightly differently, and I think the most rational response is a humble "I don't know." We start with an observation, the world follows certain 'laws' and is 'ordered'. Theism basically gives us a hypothesis, God ordered and created the world. That is a positive claim where the default of a positive claim would be the null-hypothesis that God didn't create and order the world, until there is evidence to support the positive claim. Then you get into the definition of atheist and agnostic, which Robby covered. I think most atheists are specifically agnostic atheists, where when pressed they lack a belief in God but cannot rule out the possibility of a God due to limitations in human knowledge. Take the Dawkins' scale test of where you fall on the theist-atheist scale, 1 being theist with 100% certainty and 7 being atheist with 100% certainty. Dawkins labels himself as a 6 instead of a 7, and makes the case that this is the norm for most atheist-agnostics. With that in mind, I think you can make a reasonable case that atheism as understood by most as a 6 instead of a 7, is a rational default position in absence of any evidence to support theism. Of course any evidence in favor of theism will change the playing field, however the burden of proof will fall on the theist as they are making the positive claim. The problem I have with this is that atheism, even if it's not making a strong positive claim, is still implicitly making a lot of claims about the world that are not easy to substantiate. The most fundamental one I see is that naturalistic or physical causation is primary, explanation in terms of agents is secondary. I don't see any good reason why I should be assuming this. The reason I say this is because if you are someone who truly gives a 50/50 chance to explanations in terms of agents as being primary then the fact that there is anything at all, and the fact that it is ordered will be interpreted as strong reason to suspect there's an agent, just as if I walk into my room and see all of my books put away alphabetically I will have strong reason to suspect an agent is responsible. It would not make sense for me, in that case, to refuse to think an agent walked in until someone gave me further evidence. What I mean by my OP is this, atheism takes a lot more implicit assumption than it appears on the surface, and I don't think it deserves to be the default "least evidence required" position.

You are basically starting a god of the gaps argument. Just because someone doesn't have a concrete answer to a question of "why things are the way they are" doesn't automatically assume the answer must be a god, and more specifically, it certainly doesn't assume the answer is any specific god. Another way to put this: lets say the scientists found some evidence that completely invalidated all current scientific models for things like the big bang, abiogenesis, and evolution. All that would mean is that science wouldn't (currently) have any answers to those questions. It wouldn't automatically prove the existence of any gods, let alone any specific god(s). Proving any particular god exists is a separate task. It's actually not a "God of the gaps" argument for the following reason. I am not positing God as an explanation for any particular phenomenon that a naturalistic explanation might possibly be a perfectly good explanation. So for instance, I hear thunder, I posit God is directly causing that because I can't think of an explanation in terms of physical causes, there is a "God of the gaps argument" because I could come up with a number of naturalistic hypotheses for the thunder. And of course, it turns out, we can explain thunder in terms of physical causation. "Why is there *anything* at all" is a state of affairs which is logically prior to there being any physical causal events happening at all. It is in fact the grounding necessary for there to be physical causal explanations to exist. There is no potential explanation in terms of physical explanations- any that you posit will have to assume the very thing we are trying to explain.

judge what? You can't tell if a 'youth' has good parents or not by seeing if he has problems. That's just a fact about the world.

Yes and no. I know many girls who "dress for attention" - which is in the form of short short shorts, short short skirts, tight pants, tight top, very low cut top, exposed midriff, and the like. They may not think they are trying to "provoke" guys, but they know/believe such attire will draw attention from guys, and so they dress this way. But there are also those who dress this way because "everyone" dresses this way, and anyone who doesn't is a nerd. OK, let's talk about the boys and young men who wear their pants as if they are falling of and exposing their drawers! My concern actually is not about being "better than you", but rather about a culture that teaches women their value is in their looks, their sexuality, outdoing the next girl in "attractiveness", and so forth. Alright, some women do it purposefully, but we don't know who just by seeing her do we? That's my point.I don't think it's cool to assume the worst about someone just because we don't approve of their clothing. I don't care about Miley Cyrus (as an issue), she's a product and she's doing what will get attention. All right, I can appreciate the not judging part. But my heart still feels angry and grieved at the brainwashing of our society to make products out of women. (The choice of words you gave to Miley is fitting.) Here is my model, to take or leave lol... I don't think society has to do that, it's a part of our nature to do that. Men want to see women as potential sexual partners, and that has manifested itself in commodifying women in varying ways throughout history. I suppose i don't think it is any better where women are expected to cover up all over, because that is an expression of the same sort of thing, men wanting to control *their* women. Now women have lots more legal rights and standings, so they both feel compelled to, but also purposefully (at times) use their power to manipulate men. Now don't get me wrong, I think for the large majority of both men in women in most social situations this isn't a live issue (hence my worry about judging others about their intentions) but it only takes a handful to cause a a huge change across the board in fashions and whatnot. But I find it ridiculous and meanspirited for people, particularly in the christian community, to judge women harshly for merely putting on what their peers put on, and that is the main point I want to make in these threads.

Just as people have the right to deny services to whomever, so do potential customers have the right to boycott. It goes both ways. But, in terms of your OP, that is interesting an interesting thought about if the train is being missed in not baking cakes for gay marriages. I have been thinking a lot about the way the christian right asserts itself in the public sphere and I have to admit, I don't get it. There's a lot of hand slapping and not a lot of sharing the actual gospel. Why should unbelievers care if a bunch of believers think that extramarital sex at all is wrong? You tell them it's sinful, they give you a funny look, because they don't believe in sin, or God, or know that a savior has died for them. Suppose you get them to stop their particular sinful behavior, but to what end if they don't believe in Jesus? That goes for many,many who do not believe in Jesus Christ.Not only the homosexual. Yeah that is my point. I think the Christian right pushes things backwards. What's the point of getting a couple, heterosexual or homosexual, to stop having extramarital sex if they don't believe in Jesus?