In article ,
says...

On Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 10:52:48 AM UTC-6, Paul Schlyter wrote:

In article ,
says...

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

....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.

Moses caused the Red Sea to part. Do you think he did this on his own?
He didn't. Faith is a principle of power, and that power comes from God.
And God doesn't do anything to satisfy someone's whim.

Yes, Moses caused the Red Sea to part. And the world was created in
merely six days some 6000 years ago. All according to the Bible, a book
which even you have admitted is corrupt.

(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"...

The faith to move mountains is based on righteousness, which is necessary
to receive power from God. No righteousness, no power, no mobile mountains.

How do you know that? From the Bible? You have yourself admitted that the
Bible is corrupt...

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...

Nope. True faith is believing in what is true.

And how do you know what is true and what is not true?

Critical analysis aims at believing in what is true. True faith aims at
believing no matter what.

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.

There are basic truths in the Bible and there are errors. And people
misunderstand the truths and some cling to the errors. The Old Testament
had prophets to guide the people and Jesus corrected the religious rulers
who were teaching false doctrine. So you bring up a good point: Quis
custodiet ipsos custodes. Who will correct the people today?

And how do **you** know what is true and what is not true in the Bible?
By your own judgement? Then you have become an arrogant ******* who
believes that you yourself are God (and what about others, who use their
own judgement and arrive at conclusions contradicting your conclusions -
who is then right?). Or do you use some other source? If so, which
source?

And how do you even manage to form your own religious belief?

I believe that everyone that comes into the world has a sense of what's
right and wrong.

Including Adolf Hitler?

"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me" -- John 10:27

Why do you quote from a book that is corrupt?

If YOU heard his voice, you would follow him too.

Indeed I would ... if I was a sheep, that is...

All of today's churches are corrupt, you say, because they don't follow
the Bible.

I didn't say that. I said ALMOST all do not teach the full truth.

If so, which churches teach the full truth? Please list them.

But even if they followed the Bible, that wouldn't make much of a
difference since even the Bible itself is corrupt.

You are conflating having errors with rottenness.

The only difference between "errors" and "rottenness" is the intents of
the author. But to the reader, both is equally misleading.

Now, the Bible claims, repeatedly at several different places, that those
who don't believe will end up in hell, to suffer, anguish and scream, for
ever and ever till the end of time. Is this true? Or is it an error? Or
is it rottenness?

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?

No.

Then please list the non-corrupt sources which informs about God's
commands. That list ought to be quite short...


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.

My first child cried her eyes out for WEEKS.

None of my children did that. Most other children don't either. So your
poor child must have had a disease of some kind, or some other unusual
reason to suffer.

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.

One tends to forget unpleasant experiences. Not carrying grudges is not
so much a virtue with me as a sign of a poor memory.

Well, most people do not directly remember their birth. My very first
memories is from when I was 3-4 years old.

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? ;-)

Non sequitur.

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 ).

True faith is belief in things that are true.

A circular argument. Who wouldn't believe in something they knew was
true?

But you avoid the real problem: how do you know what is true and what is
not true? You must know that in order to decide what to believe in. So
how do you find that out? Yep, that's right, by critical thinking and
examining evidence.

Faith is belief without critical thinking.

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.

This may be unavoidable;

It's actually up to us and our actions. But even if some heat wave is
unavoidable (we're in one heat wave already), our actions can still
determine how severe that heat wave is goind to be.

"For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud,
yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh
shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them
neither root nor branch." -- Malachi 4:1

Another quote from a corrupt book...

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?

I wonder if we're having more cloudiness and humidity today than in the
past. Cloudiness would have a long-term cooling effect but a short-
term
warming effect, and higher humidity would have a greater greenhouse effect.

https://www.climate.gov/news-feature...imate-humidity

"most regions experienced moister-than-average atmospheric conditions (in 2013
than in 1981-2010) including the midlatitude northern Pacific and northern
Atlantic, Southeast Asia, and most of tropical Africa."

Thus a larger greenhouse effect, which will warm the oceans and produce
more moisture in the atmosphere.

That's one of the tricky details which MODTRAN probably isn't very good
at handling.

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.

Millions of people have experienced NDEs. THEY are VERY confident about
life after death. Perhaps doubters should try for an experience rather
than doubt. After all, that's the scientific method :-)

Millions of people also "have seen" UFO's and even have been taken aboard
a UFO and travelled with it for awhile. And they are very convinced that
it actually happened. If this was true, the Earth must have had a massive
invasion of alien spacecrafts.

In the past, millions of people "have seen" elves, trolls, giants,
witches, and various other kinds of creatures believed to live in the
woods where people did not live. Some were believed to have lived near
human settlements, or even in human houses. A large number of poor women
were burnt alive because they were accused of witchcraft.

You cannot just trust what people claim. People imagine things and
fantasize about things. They hallucinate. Sometimes they even lie. But
human stories all by themselves are not very useful for science, they
must be supported by additional evidence.

An example: for a long long times astronomers denied that stones could
fall from the sky. They continued denying this until meteorites actually
were encountered, and could be shown to have a different origin than
terrestial rocks. After that, astronomers changed their mind.

And here is the core of science: to change your mind if and when solid
evidence for it is encountered.

If trolls and elves actually did exist, one can expect them to leave
remnants of some kind when they die. We ought to have found a large
number of skeletons of "little humans" from these trolls and elves. And
skeletons of "huge humans" from the giants. But these skeletons or other
remnants have not been found.

Likewise, "life after death" needs more solid evidence than just human
stories to be taken seriously by science.


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?

See above response.

The above responses did not mention any such alternative reason. Please
either answer the question, or admit that you don't have any answer.

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?

See above response.

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

Correlation does not confirm causation.

True, but a correlation could have another common cause. It ought to be
investigated. Since you're fond of statistics, please compute the
probability that this correlation is due to pure chance, without any
common cause whatsoever.

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...

Of course it isn't flawless. There are studies on this, but it actually
works and gives excellent results.

I wouldn't think the quite large discrepancies you pointed out as
"excellent results". MODTRAN is wrong by about a factor of two or more.

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?

Perhaps CO2 levels are a result of GW and not a cause. Or they may be
independent. Modtran suggests that CO2 is only partly responsible for GW.

And what about the CO2 produced by us humans? Does it just vanish into
thin air? (pun intended)

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?

Man doesn't necessarily obey God.

And God made man that way, didn't he? ;-)

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.

You're forgetting this:

"That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee,
that they also may be one in us" -- John 17:21

Yet another quote from a corrupt book...