Why won't God heal amputees - Page 11

On March 22 2009 06:57 Cloud wrote:
What?, animals 'murder', commit adultery (lol), steal, lie, and the offspring do not protect their parents, its the way around.

On March 21 2009 22:35 Jibba wrote:

The question applies just as much to those who believe in God. Is your concept of morality defined by God's choosing it to be moral? Or does your God support what is moral because it is inherently moral? If morality is contingent upon God, then couldn't it just as easily be conceived that rape is moral for another possible God?

On March 22 2009 07:15 Jibba wrote:
How many animals kill eachother in competition for mating? Very few. Sharing isn't part of the 10 Commandments, and extraordinary circumstances aside, they don't eat their own children because any species that did that would die out very quickly.

The point is you don't need reason to arrive at most of the Commandments. Animals exhibit most of them and early peoples did so without pondering the basis for their morality.

early peoples did so without pondering the basis for their morality

On March 22 2009 14:07 BackHo wrote:
To answer your question - oh yes, without God we atheists might as well go commit suicide because we would have no morals. -________________-

On March 22 2009 16:19 0xDEADBEEF wrote:
The only good thing about being religious is the confidence boost you gain... because life feels a bit easier with a powerful imaginary friend at your side at all times while you just have to follow its "rules" (written by humans of course), and most of those rules are in fact common sense (i.e. every good person will follow a large subset of them automatically because that's how you have to live in a society, most of it is also regulated by law).

Fortunate events are associated with God's doing, especially if you prayed for it before. But it's just coincidence of course, or the result of your own doing. In terms of curing power (e.g. miraculous recovery from a tumor or something) it has the same power as a placebo - it might help if you believe in it, but it actually did nothing. And it doesn't always help of course.

Good thing then that unfortunate events can be conveniently ignored via the excuse "God's ways are inexplicable" (or similar excuses, e.g. "God wants to test my faith", "God wants to punish me").

So in essence every religious person has a life of good events (God's favors) and bad events (where God's motive is not clear or you did something wrong and are "punished" for it).
And this is exactly not different from the life of any other person at all - we all experience fortunate and unfortunate events. We just don't like to constantly lie to ourselves and lean on invisible friends for help. We manage life on our own. We also can deal with the fact that we may well be totally insignificant within the universe, and that there is no afterlife. In short: we're grown up.

On March 22 2009 19:41 Savio wrote:


Here is another question I have wanted to ask someone who actually believes that there is NOTHING after this life. Please take this seriously and try it out....imagine your death (which in reality isn't that far away, ask any old person)...you are lying on a bed knowing that soon you will die. What happens to you after you die? Will you float in nothingness doing nothing? What does it mean to be nothing? Can you honestly even conceive of yourself as not existing. I can't because its like imagining a space within a nothing. It seems as unatural to me as the thought of breathing water or jumping off a cliff. Its all fine and dandy when you talk about it on a forum, but when it comes time to actually do it, the truth comes out and I think that most people will realize that they always believed that there was more, but pretended not to.

I think that this feeling of "naturalness" in the thought that we can't ever stop existing is there and is universal because its truth. Our spirit knows better. It was around a long time before our body was ever made. Matter and energy can't cease to exist, NOTHING can cease to exist. How can we (not our bodies, but US), cease to exist?

On March 22 2009 19:41 Savio wrote:
In short, it goes either way. But there IS a wrong and a right that is not just what we choose it to be. For someone who doesn't believe in God (as Idra just explained), there is no real wrong or right, but just what is evolutionarily advantageous.

On March 22 2009 19:46 Boblion wrote:

Nothing. Like when you are sleeping ( but without dreaming ).
Nothing happen, you don't even think, you have no sensations etc ... The only difference is that you never wake up.
You are so naive Savio that it is almost funny :D

On March 22 2009 19:46 Boblion wrote:

Why if "there IS a wrong and a right" innocent children die everyday and some criminals live comfortable lifes ?
The whole concept of God makes no sense ( at least if he is like in the Coran / Bible / Torah )
Why he created us ? If he is so good why we have to suffer ?
That makes absolutly no sense...

On March 22 2009 19:59 Savio wrote:
actually your response was a little bit funny. "you don't think, you have no sensation etc..." is all still thought about in terms of "you" as existing.

On March 22 2009 19:59 Savio wrote:
Its like I asked you to imagine a piece of paper does not exist and asked you to describe it and you said "the piece of paper cannot be seen or felt".

On March 22 2009 19:59 Savio wrote:
This may be too abstract an exercise for some people reading this. Abstract thought is one of the later things to develop in puberty (high school students on average have not developed it). I don't mean to pick you out personally (I don't even know your age) but this thought exercise may be lost on many in this forum.

"Early adolescence is a time of concrete thought processes, you can't foresee consequences. And then by late adolescence, which is like college age - senior year of high school and college age - abstract thought becomes more normative, so you can start seeing the big picture and the forest for the trees"

--http://www.wksu.org/news/features/adolescence/story/08

On March 22 2009 20:06 Savio wrote:


Reread my long post a couple of pages ago cause I don't feel like repeating it all. Focus on the part of eternal point of view and the whole "itch analogy".

Also do you think he sent us to a spa? "Why do we have to suffer" is like a college student whining about why his parents can't just magically make it so he already knows the material and doesn't have to study.

We are not here to experience. We are here to become like Jesus Christ. Did he ever suffer at all? Were his sufferings fair? But he was STRONG. That's the whole point. We leave this life more powerful than we were when we got here.

We are not here to just "experience this wonderful world". We are here because it is here that we can finally go through the learning phase that involves learning about pain, sin, etc and overcoming them like Christ did. We couldn't do that if we still lived with God in a perfect world.

On March 22 2009 19:12 Savio wrote:
I think that God put us here on earth in large part so we could learning what is right and wrong and learn to choose the right without being coerced. Some laws (of what is good) are probably unchanging to which God himself conforms (like the principles/laws of mercy and justice), while other laws define something as "good" or "bad" simply because God commanded it so. For example, in the Garden of Eden, God commanded them not to eat of a certain tree. There is nothing inherently wrong about eating off a tree but it was wrong because doing so would be blatant disobedience to our parent. Other laws have been transitory like the Law of Moses, but the law of sacrifice has always existed in one form or another (animal sacrifice, or a "broken heart and contrite spirit).