In article ,
says...

On Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 7:08:27 AM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote:

In article ,
says...

On Friday, November 2, 2018 at 11:15:02 AM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote:

Why is uncritical faith so desirable? To a dictator who wants to
enslave his supporters it is, of course. Is God a dictator?

"verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed,
ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it
shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you." -- Matt. 17:20

....and yet, no single Christian has been able to actually move a whole
mountain by merely using their will power. If someone did, it wouldn't go
unnoticed, it would be clearly visible in seismographs all over the
world.

(1) Perhaps no one has that much faith.

If so, why does the Bible even suggests this? If faith beyond human
capability is required, then it is not possible for a human to do this.

(2) Why would one who did have that much faith want to move a mountain.

You, yourself DO exercise restraint, don't you?

I do, but that doesn't mean everybody does. Why would anyone who is drunk
want to drive a car? They all know it is both very dangeous and illegal,
and most people refrain from doing it. But some people don't, and drive
drunk anyway.

Likewise, even if most people with faith enough to move a mountain would
refrain from doing it, some people wouldn't restrain from doing it. It's
a bit like e.g. distributing nuclear weapons to everyone under the motto
"Nukes don't kill people, people kill people". Most people would realize
that the nukes are very dangeous and would not detonate them. But it is
enough that only one or a few would detonate them for a great catastrophy
to occur. Most likely, people doing so would be strongly religious people
who believed they had "God's right" to do this to "destroy the infidels
and apostates"...


Another example of exaggreated claims and false promises, this time from
the Bible itself.

However, you failed to answer the question: why is uncritical faith so
desireable?

Why do you believe true faith is blind?

Isn't that the very definition of faith? Trusting someone or something
without the tiniest bit of evidence...

and then, later, throw the non-believers in hell, to suffer and
scream and anguish, for ever and ever until the end of time?

I don't believe that.

The Bible says so. Don't you believe in the Bible? That would make
you an arrogant apostate who deserves hell...

Nope. That would make me a skeptic that the Bible survived two millenia
without without being changed by uninspired people.

Matthew 5:29-30:
And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee:
for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and
not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.
And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for
it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not
that thy whole body should be cast into hell

Mark 9:43-46:
And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter
into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire
that never shall be quenched:
Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.
And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter
halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire
that never shall be quenched:
Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

Luke 12:5:
But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath
killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.

Revelation 21:8:
But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and
whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have
their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is
the second death.

Need I say more than this?

I already said it: All translations of the Bible that we have today have
been influenced by the translators. Also, the Bible uses simile, rhetoric
and metaphors. You claim "moving mountains" is exaggeration yet you now
demand literalness :-)

If so, why do you quote the bible yourself from time to time? You know
these quotes have been influenced by the translators (and I would add
also by the original authors) and therefore are corrupt.

And how do you even manage to form your own religious belief? All of
today's churches are corrupt, you say, because they don't follow the
Bible. But even if they followed the ible, that wouldn't make much of a
difference since even the Bible itself is corrupt. Still, you don't want
to be "arrogant" against God's commands. But how do you even know what
God's commands are? You think all available sources to them are corrupt,
don't you?


"in every instance in near death experiences of an encounter with the
"being of light" in all of the above studies patients reported the
experience to be one of intense love."

https://www.magiscenter.com/love-and...h-experiences/

"In 69% of the cases, people who experienced Near Death (NDE) felt that
they were in the presence of an overwhelming love in the company of
family and friends or other mystical bodies."

http://godloveletters.com/near-death-experiences/

Carl Sagan, in his TV series "Cosmos" of the 1980's, gave an interesting
explanation for this. Near-death experiences often share some common
things, such as pushing yourself through a narrow tunnel and then
emerging into light were friendly beings of light are nice to you and
take care of you. Sagan suggests that this actually is a vague
recollection of an experience that all humans have - the experience of
birth!

Of course, that's just an opinion. If birth is such a great experience,
why do babies cry when they're born? Maybe it's because they just LEFT
a happy, friendly world and they have been cast out into the cruel world.

Babies cry to draw their very first breath of air. I never said one's
birth is all-through a pleasant experience. Being born is probably just
as painful as giving birth to a child (ask any mother you know how that
feels). Being hungry is not pleasant but forces you to become active to
get food so you don't starve to death. Most diseases are not enjoyable -
some are just more or less uncomfortable while others are really painful.

In short, pain is part of life. And staying in your mother's womb to
avoid getting born into the cruel world is no option - quite soon your
mother and yourself would both die. If your mother dies first you will di
from lack of oxygen - is that a pleasant death?

Anyway, events in your life which you remember are not only pleasant
events. You will also remember unpleasant, or outright painful, events.

So maybe NDEs are a recollection of the world of spirits that they just
left, implying that there was such a world :-)

Is spirituality really a desire to re-enter your mother's womb? ;-)

Hmmm, I wonder what the other 31% felt. But don't worry Paul, since:

"Interestingly, 75% of people who consider themselves atheists reported
these divine figures."

If you want to read about what it's really like:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.29793228ba55

An all-powerful God could of course do such a thing, but not a God
which is both all-powerful and all-benign...

Are you claiming that God is evil?

YOU are the one who is claiming that.

FYI: something which does not exist cannot be evil. But those who
made up this "God story" certainly weren't all-benign...

You're conflating those who wrote the Bible with those who copied and
translated it.

Nah ... all of them were humans, with human waknesses, weren't they?

Yes, but some had more inspiration from God than others.

That's your belief, but you don't know that. You can only have faith ( =
uncritical belief ).

You should be more skeptical of the models because they aren't
reality.

Actual measurements are of course preferable. So what does the
measurements say? Do we have a global warming or not? What's your
opinion?

I believe that the earth is getting warmer overall, but it doesn't seem
to be mainly because of CO2 increase. And I worry that we may NEED some
extra CO2 if we head into another Little Ice Age.

We already have this extra CO2. Several scientists believe this dosn't
merely cancel any future "little ice age" but perhaps even the next major
ice age. Which of course is a good thing, if the human civilization
survives the heat wave in between.

I don't think focusing on the wrong cause helps survival.

I agree. The focus should be to avoid the heat wave in some 50-100 years
and not to avoid an ice age 100 times farther into the future.

Wrong! You'll learn more than you realize by actually looking upp
support for your claims.

Wrong! I DO look up support and I receive criticism from you and others.

GREAT!!!

Now write on Wikipedia about your findings. Don't forget to include the
references....

Naw.

OK, I see. Wikipedia would demand too much from you. It's easier to
babble on Usenet...

Who knows, you might even find good reasons for changing your mind.

And I have because of John Savard's point about temperature increase due
to CO2 feedback through water vapor. I had to figure out how to apply
that to modtran.

And your modtran results disagree significantly from empirical data...

And that's probably because CO2 isn't the main reason why global warming
is occurring.

Any idea what that extra warming is coming from then?

Likewise, you won't find studies trying to find out if the Earth is flat
or not. Should we therefore conclude that the claim "the Earth is not
flat" is unproved?

This is sophistry, Paul. There ARE such studies every time a satellite
or astronaut takes a photo of the earth from space. This clearly refutes
flat-earth assertion. OTOH, there are no studies that refute MacDougall's
work.

I'm just mimicing your way to argue, to (hopefully) make you realize that
it is flawed.

Your argument is flawed. There IS evidence that the earth is not flat, and
there IS evidence that there is a spirit which leaves the body at death.
The latter doesn't have near the confidence level as the former, of course,
but it's still data.

Precisely! It's the huge difference in confidence levens which is the
reason for different conclusions.

The final numbers are 300.81 K and water vapor scale of 1.07. So
we have a temperature rise of 1.11 K for a doubling of CO2 levels.

From empirical data we've had a temperature rise of close to one degree
compared to preindustrisl levels,

Actually, reliable data from 1882 to 2015 shows temperature rise was -0.41
in 1882 to +0.98 K in 2015 (with 0 being the reference around 1950 to
1970, or thereabouts). I don't know what you want to call "preindustrial"
but it looks more like 1.4 K to me.

Well, that's even worse for you.

No, it's not. It just demonstrates that CO2 is not the major cause of GW.

Since you believe modtran is so flawless, can you suggest an alternative
reason for the excess heating?

A rise in CO2 levels of somewhat less than 50% (280 ppm pre-industrial to
410 ppm current) gives a temperature increase of 1.4 degrees, while
modtran says that an 100% in CO2 gives a temperature rise of 1.11 degrees.

"You still refuse to face the truth" -- J. J. Adams to Dr. Morbius

If modtran is as accurate as you claim, how do you explain this discrepancy?

Why do you keep repeating the question when I have answered it?

I repeated it before you answered, silly. Now you've told me you think
that the excess warming has some other cause than rising CO2 levels. So
please explain these two things:

(1) What other cause would this be?

(2) Why is this other cause in perfect synchronisation with the rising
CO2 levels?

despite that we haven't yet had any doubling of CO2 levels but merely an
increase of less than 50%.

The CO2 level in 1959 was 316 ppm and was 401 in 2015, an increase of 31%
in POST-industrial. Furthermore, it looks like there was cherry-picking
to come up with that 50% number: there were measurements as high as the
1959 number in the 1880's.

Again, that's even worse for you: a CO2 increase of 31% yields a
temperature rise of 1.4 degrees, while modtran claims a 100% rise in CO2
gives a temperature increase of 1.11 degrees. Why this discrepancy?

You still refuse to face the truth

I see you've found a new religion - it's MODTRAN. Well, I don't share
your faith that MODTRAN is the absolute flawless truth...

Therefore modtran must be underestimating the global warming.

Modtran was developed by the U. S. Air Force and has been used by them
and climatologists and tested for decades, so that is unlikely. You are
assuming that a certain increase ratio at lower CO2 levels is equivalent
to the same ratio at higher CO2 levels. It's not. You COULD calculate
it using modtran rather than making vacuous assertions, and you might
learn something :-)

And if I did, I would probably end up with the same result as you. And we
would **still** have a big discrepancy between modtran calculations and
empirical data.

When this happens to REAL scientists who have models with proven accuracy,
they start looking for other causes. Poor scientists just bang their
heads against a wall.

So why don't you help them by suggesting what this other cause might be?
And why this other cause is in perfect synchronisation with rising CO2
levels?

I don't think there are many non-Nicaean churches left. Virtually all
conventional churches are Nicaean, I.e. they follow dictates by people
you consider to have been apostates.

Some protestants accept it after redefining the word "Catholic." Others
don't use it because it's the "work of man" and lacks inspiration from
God. And others accept it after defining for themselves what "one
substance" means. Most people simply don't understand it and don't worry
about it. Which just supports my point that most churches are wrong.

And will God send all the members of those majority of churches which are
wrong to hell because they are wrong?

Have you even LOOKED at some of those NDE reports? Did you find any of
that kind of rhetoric there?

The word "catholic" really means "universal doctrine". Orthodox churches
sometimes refer to themselves as "Roman Catholic" churches. They call
themselves "Roman" because they refer to "East Rome" i.e. Constantinople
(which became the capital of the Roman Empire around AD 300, and after
the split of the Roman Empire, the East Roman Empire survived the West
Roman Empire by almost 1000 years). And they call themselves "Catholic"
because they believe that their doctrine applies universally to all
Christians.
So we have two differnet "Roman Catholic" churches. Confusing, isn't it?

And so there is no such thing as "universal doctrine." Thank you for\
making my point.

True. But there are several claims for a "universal doctrine". And one
"universal doctrine" could be expected from one single God, couldn't it?

But if we give up the idea of one single God, and instead view
Christianity as a method for several gorernments in the world to dominate
the other governments, then it becomes quite natural that several,
mutually different and mutually competing, "universal doctrines" co-
exist.

Anyway, you celebrate Christmans and Easter according to dictates from
the majority of the Catholic and Protestant churches, even though you
think that a majority, perhaps all, of them are wrong. Why do yo do
that? Do you want to end up in hell, or what?

Have you even LOOKED at some of those NDE reports? Did you find any of
that kind of rhetoric there? Why do you believe God cares about when we
celebrate Christ's birth and resurrection?

What does NDE has to do with celebrating holidays dictated by corrupt
organisations?