Excerpts From 20/20’s ‘Charlie Sheen: In His Own Words’ « : Crushable - Crushable gives you the celebrity news, style and scoop on the stuff you care about.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Excerpts From 20/20’s ‘Charlie Sheen: In His Own Words’ « : Crushable - Crushable gives you the celebrity news, style and scoop on the stuff you care about.
Excerpts From 20/20’s ‘Charlie Sheen: In His Own Words’ « : Crushable - Crushable gives you the celebrity news, style and scoop on the stuff you care about.
Batman, 'The Daily Show', and the Fall of Western Civilization - ComicsAlliance | Comic book culture, news, humor, commentary, and reviews
Batman, 'The Daily Show', and the Fall of Western Civilization - ComicsAlliance | Comic book culture, news, humor, commentary, and reviews
Behind the Scenes at 'The Daily Show': My Day at the Fake News Headquarter
FacePalm of the Day #62 - Debunking Christianity: A New and Better Pascal's Wager: If God Asked You to Wager Before Being Born What Would You Choose?
Why didn't we get a choice in whether or not we would be born on earth? Wouldn't the reasonably good thing to do is to create us and then ask us if we would want to be born knowing the risks involved? God could have presented us with an informed choice to either be born or to be put out of existence forever, with heaven up for grabs if we wanted to take the risk. God would accurately inform us what the probabilities are to gain heaven should we be sent to earth as a babies somewhere. And we would know the probabilities that we might not be raised in the right Christian family and might therefore be sent to hell because of it. We would be fully informed persons about the risks involved. After all, this would be our lives! We're sentient conscious moral beings. Why wouldn't God give us a choice in the matter? It's unethical for him not to do so. It would be a Pascal's Wager in heaven before being created on earth. If I were given that choice I would simply say "No, count me out! Put me out of existence now." That would be the reasonable thing to do if I became informed about the odds. Only a fool would choose otherwise. And yet here I am without my choice who apparently will be condemned to hell.
John Loftus is forgetting the scripture he claims to know. He seems to think that God capriciously puts people in situations where they could possibly end up in hell. This is exactly opposite from what the Bible says.
22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: TO AN UNKNOWN GOD. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[b] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[c]
29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.” - Acts 17:22-31
God tells us that he has placed us all in the circumstances where we can best find him, but does not promise that we will all find him. This explains how people who are not raised in Christian families can still find Jesus. I also always amazed by the attitude that says that we have opinions and rights that God should respect. Why? He made us. He is control. We don't know nearly as much as he does. Why should he listen to anything we have to say? We don't even know what we need or even how to pray. Compared to him we are not equals but more like unconscious clay. And he is the potter.
14 What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! 15 For he says to Moses,
“I will have mercy on whom I have mercy,
and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”[f]
16 It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. 17 For Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”[g] 18 Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.
19 One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” 20 But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’” 21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?
22 What if God, although choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction? 23 What if he did this to make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory— 24 even us, whom he also called, not only from the Jews but also from the Gentiles? - Romans 9:14-24
Debunking Christianity: A New and Better Pascal's Wager: If God Asked You to Wager Before Being Born What Would You Choose?
The Philosophy of Ayn Rand Refuted - apologetics - blip.tv
The Philosophy of Ayn Rand Refuted - apologetics - blip.tv
Dealing with Bible Contradictions MP3 - Apologetics 315
Dealing With Contradictions
Dealing with Bible Contradictions MP3 - Apologetics 315
Debunking Christianity: Were the "Dark Ages" Really Dark?
I'm being taken to task for publishing a graph depicting the Medieval Ages as the "Dark Ages" leaving a huge gaping hole in Western history, which can be seen here. What some people failed to realize is the title to the post in which Augustinian Platonism shares a large part of the blame (no, it is not totally to blame). Augustine like Plato before him placed a much greater value on the heavenly world (the realm of the eternal "forms" or ideas) over the empirical earthly world.
Sure, that makes just as much sense as assuming that the material reality that we experience is all there is.
Christians in earlier centuries therefore destroyed many ancient manuscripts--science manuscripts--which were preserved by the Muslims. Who needs earthly wisdom? Paul basically said it was worthless. When people like Aquinas re-discovered these ancient texts it brought on a new awareness of what the ancients taught and helped bring in the Enlightenment.
Paul was not saying that earthly wisdom that was worthless is the same as science. He was talking about the kind of wisdom that says there is no God and that we are the standard or reality. Or you know the "wisdom" that says that we don't need God to explain the world? Yup, that kind of "wisdom". I'd like to know where does Paul say that science is worthless? Easy Answer: He didn't.
I remember visiting The Art Institute of Chicago and seeing a dramatic change in the art of the 1500's. Artists were now painting pictures of real people, and even ("aghast*) a bowl of fruit on a table! This came after they had thrown off the shackles of Augustinianism. This is undeniable.
Since when should Augustine (even great as he was) be considered a higher authority than the Bible. He didn't have things completely right. Who does? No one is perfect but Jesus and that is why we should follow him and no one else.
And yes, it was mainly the French philosophes who labeled these centuries the "Dark Ages." That was probably due to several reasons. Of Sir Isaac Newton it was said by Alexander Pope:
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in Night;Prior to Newton the previous centuries were considered the "Dark Ages" by comparison, and that too is undeniable.
God said, 'Let Newton be!' and all was light.
Do you know what else is undeniable. Newton was a Bible-believing Christian who loved Jesus and served him. Hmmmmmm. Curious. It was the fact that he believed there was a creator who made an understandable universe that lead him to his discoveries in Mathematics and Physics. Same thing with Galileo and Copernicus.
The French philosophes also thought the atrocities committed by the church in the previous centuries, like the Crusades, Inquisitions, and witch-hunts, were a very dark period in Western history, and I agree. Superstition like that reigned. If I was being brought into the light with a new awareness of the writings of the ancients, which helped Newton to write his Principia, I would describe it that way too, for all the same legitimate reasons.
The Bible can't be blamed for the atrocities and evil perpetrated by the Church. Those thing happened because people didn't follow the Bible.
I do understand that the church made many strides during that period of history in science, literature, and so forth. And so the huge drop-off represented by the graph is not indicative of that period of time. But I have been persuaded that it was a dark period of history, even if not completely dark.
And here we have Loftus backing away from slightly from the unfounded assumption he and the image makes. That during the Middle Ages in Europe they would have been further along had they not been Christian. According to this logic, why not embrace Islam if you think the Muslims made more scientific discoveries and were more advanced? Very flawed. Loftus wouldn't want to make such an equivocation. It's silly but we must ask why would you not if you think Christianity was the problem with Europe in the Middle Ages? It had way more to do with politics than what the Bible says. That was the problem.
Of course, anyone who thinks otherwise can volunteer to go back in time to that period and see what you think. Good luck with that! I'll stay in my own century thank you. ;-)
For further reading on the origins of science there is no better place to look than Richard Carrier's chapter in The Christian Delusion
.I'm not sure why anyone would think that to believe the Bible means turning your back on science. I agree that people do that, but it's not by necessity. If that is what you think that is what being a Christian is, you are doing it wrong and you have nothing in the Bible to stand on in doing it.
Debunking Christianity: Were the "Dark Ages" Really Dark?
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