Me vs. Michael - Unanswerable Questions?
April 2, 2008 by chillinatthecabstand
This is the second round of me and http://thisword.wordpress.com/ trying to resolve his “unanswerable questions.” See my previous response a few posts back. You can read his rebuttal un-chopped up in the comments section of the previous post “Re: This Word’s Unanswerable Questions.”
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“Thank you for taking up my questions Thanks indeed.”
>>Thanks for responding to my answers.
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“To my first qn. you said,
3/8 responders said they had done so, 2/8 said Jesus had helped them, but didn’t mention drugs OR sex. That’s three people for you, and out of only eight people answered, many of whom are Christian. Additionally, recovery is a gradual process and there is no such thing as an overnight recovery,”
Your answer is very clear. Though you made a google search you could not one person who had an over-night transformation from drugs and sex and gutter. The three who answered said the transformation was gradual. You yourself said that two of them did not mention drugs and sex. Please tell me, does this answer my question at all?”
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>>The two who did not mention drugs or sex were the ones who said Jesus helped them. 3 of the 8 people who answered my question (this was Yahoo! Answers, not Google) made a complete recovery through the use of their own faculties. It answers your question because I have there 3 people who recovered from drugs and life in the gutter by relying on themselves and shunning any form of deity.
“Thne you said,
“You know what they say - every day is a choice to NOT fall back into addiction.”
Yes, I do know what people transformed by Jesus tell. They tell they had an over-nigt hate towards their past and they abhor thinking about it. To them it is not gradual. It is an over-night transformation. I know it personally people who have experienced it in their lives.
Then you said, ” I suppose a placebo like Jesus helps, but it is still a daily struggle”.
Jesus is not a placebo. He is the only remedy for such people. He can give them an over-night recovery. He gives them a hate towards durgs and loose sex that they would never want to do it again. This is true experience. Not imagination.
The Bible says, “If any man be in Christ, He is a new creation”. This truly is the experience of many”
>>That’s all you think this magical overnight recovery is? Thinking drugs and gutter life are wrong and never wanting to do it again? I don’t see what’s so special about that - realizing “overnight” that drugs are bad for you. Your question is completely without merit.
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“You said,
“Since they are without faith in Jesus, that’s a few hundred thousand or million people for you”.
Yes, indeed, I know many people who have recovered slowly by discipline and hard work and by rehabilitation centres and by medical supervision. I am yet to find one person who had an over-night transformation from drugs, sex and gutter without Christ. You could not find either. I will be happy to find one and I will be too glad to withdraw my question.”
>>What about the people who go to rehab and counseling and physical therapy who believe in Jesus, but still struggle valiantly and relapse a few times?
What, is Jesus selective in who he “saves”?
As a counter, I would like you to give me the story of someone who had an overnight recovery through Jesus.
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“You said”You also ask for an “overnight recovery” which never happens, despite what recovering Christian addicts might try to attest. Rather dishonest”.
You are right. It never happens outside Christ and His transorming power. You can never say that it is dishonest as my atheist guru himself testified that He had an over-night transormation from drugs,sex and gutter, though now he says that it was his ‘faith’ which changed him and not Christ. That is why I asked him to produce another person who was transformed over-night by ‘faith’ in some thing, any thing other than in Christ.
You can not say that over-night transformation does not take place. My atheirst guru himself is the best example.”
>>Ask any rehab worker or psychiatrist - there is no such thing as an overnight recovery. There may have been people who converted to Christianity and went cold turkey, but that is just going cold turkey with some extra confidence because you think there’s a supernatural being out there who cares. It’s a combination of will power and the placebo effect. There is no such thing as an overnight recovery. Because of this, I will concede that no atheist has an overnight recovery, just like no Christian has an overnight recovery.
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“To my second qn You answered,”>Ghosts, devils, supernatural curses and the like, a way to live forever, etc”.
This is the point that I made. Man talked about nothing else other than god- meaning spirituality, spirit world, immortality etc. non-stp. Nothing else. To me that is one of the reasons why god is a reality. God has given in man an eagerness to know him”
>>Okay, now you’re sinking. The supernatural is not synonymous with God. Religion is just a big clusterfuck of superstitions and politics and naturally immortality, morality, and demons are to be found in Christianity since the point of it is to provide adherents with a spiritual placebo and alleviate any emotional or mental problems they may have. There is a difference between “How to live forever/the fountain of youth” and “God.” Very different. Your question has been answered.
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“See, even an atheist like you, you are talking about god. Why don’t you talk about something else which does not exist at all? Why talk about god which according to you does not exist?”
>>Because so many people still believe in him and want to use that ignorant belief to dominate the world and I do everything I possibly can to prevent something like that.
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“I suggest that you begin to talk about Harry Potter from tomorrow. Not about god. After all, god does not exist! Why beat a dead horse?”
>>Because a few billion people are still trying to ride that dead horse.
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“You said,
“There are billions more questions people have asked forever, but they have since been answered, like a cure for polio or what causes weather”
Nothing non-stop as about the spirit world and about god! Polio and weather. Yes, indeed. Off and on. Do we talk about polio, for example, today as we talk about god and religion? No chance.”
>>No, we don’t talk about polio or the weather much anymore because they are questions that have been answered and are commonplace and in the past now.
God can be neither proven nor disproved, so he can never be fully in the world’s past. He is an unanswerable question, which is why he is a question that has endured, just like “If a tree falls in a forest and no one/nothing is around to hear it, does it still make a sound?”
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“At last you said, “You don’t specify what your results were, but I am going to assume that you mean how “good” you are. There are tons of “good” atheists. Anyone who knows atheists knows that”.
I am sorry if you did not find my link in the blog there. Here it is. http://www.mathewpaul.org/exciting! They are answers to prayers. Kindly read other posts in the blog as well. I honestly wish to see if any one could produce such results in life except by prayer to the God of the Bible. I will be too glad to withdraw/modify my question if you could please help me find an answer. Your help is most welcome.”
>>People produce many marvelous results through their own strength and then unfortunately refuse to give themselves credit for it.
Actually, Anton LaVey addresses this argument in his seminal work “The Satanic Bible,” when he is discussing the effectiveness of magic, ritual, and prayer.
He says that ritual is better than prayer because those who pray have anxiety and are always looking for results to validate their beliefs. People that pray automatically chalk up anything good that happens as “God’s blessing as a result of prayer.”
Maybe I’ll buy into prayer when I can drop a quarter and enough praying can stop it from falling.
There are many experiments that show that prayer doesn’t work - the most recent one is the foolish couple who prayed for their daughter to recover from diabetes instead of giving her medical treatment. Naturally, the girl died.
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I maintain that all of your questions have been answered except for the first one since no one, no matter their religion, can make an overnight recovery.
Try beyond the universe
If you left this world and came back 1,000 years youwould find a semblence or remnants that “something” was here or someone. Nothing can come from nothing. for the largets mountains and oceans to the smallest “nannoscopic object.”
Did the universe eemingly form itself? What about man? The simlplest creature this is? Unclothed, No “natural defenses.” Was he born full / grown / upright?
Able to feed, cloth and comprehend his surroudings from first dawn? People are engineered to feed upon the land. Are the earth’s protective coverings just mere coincidence? Just plain luck that the earth is 3/4ths warter? What about oxygen? Just happened to be on the right planet at the right time? Coincidence?
Creation has a name…Call him (or some would believe her). Cycle of life; thoughts, innovations, pain joy, suffering, sight, smell, taste… All random particles in the universe?
What about that void called space? All though stars—all those galaxies moving; surely cannot be called shear coincidence?
Technology and divinity…Why is it a choice? God or Science? Why can’t it be two, or three choices? How many dieties do whe have? Exactly how many are there? Who exactly knows if any?
Try this:
Something made everything…
We just don’t know who….
When….
What….. Or
Where……
And the “not knowing” is what’s killing us…
Like a child spoiled or merely aching for the truth–the factor of time has cast a great many doubts in our minds. The answer to thsi question is not unaswerable… Start with what you know and work backwards…
If you are willing (wether scientific or spiritual) to at least admit that something made you; you can seek the answer…
But knowing the answer that you seek comes at a price.