[Vision2020] Mere Christianity!

[Paul Rumelhart]

Ted,

Thank you for the links.  They look really interesting. 

To me, existence is just the first step.  There are many ways that I can 
think of that would lead me to believe that a powerful being exists.  
Miracles, precognition, talking burning bushes, etc.  But why assume 
that powerful equates to good?  How could we, as lowly human beings, 
understand a being that is so much more advanced than us?  Does your pet 
parakeet understand you enough to know if you are good enough to be 
worthy of worship?  Worshiping power alone doesn't appeal to me.

If an immensely powerful (and presumably more sophisticated) being even 
hinted at the idea that I should worship it, alarm bells would be going 
off in my head.  Yet that's what the God of the Old Testament appears to 
require. 

It also doesn't follow that because a being created you, it can do with 
you what it pleases. 

Paul


Ted Moffett wrote:
>  
> Paul, Joe et. al.
>  
> Joe wrote in response to Paul:
>
> This is a VERY interesting comment! One might ask, What on earth would 
> it take you to
> believe the above claims if a meeting with the Almighty wouldn't do it?
>
> And herein lies the issue. What would it take you to believe in the 
> existence of God?  What would count as evidence, for you, that God 
> exists?
> ---------
> Here is a response from Philosopher/Mathematician Bertrand Russell below:
>  
> http://www.solstice.us/russell/agnostic.html
>  
>
>
>       What kind of evidence could convince you that God exists?
>
> I think that if I heard a voice from the sky predicting all that was 
> going to happen to me during the next twenty-four hours, including 
> events that would have seemed highly improbable, and if all these 
> events then produced to happen, I might perhaps be convinced at least 
> of the existence of some superhuman intelligence. I can imagine other 
> evidence of the same sort which might convince me, but so far as I 
> know, no such evidence exists.
>
> ----------------
> Here is a link to Russell's famous essay, "A Free Man's Worship."
>  
> http://www.solstice.us/russell/freeman.html
>  
> Other Russell writings on this web site:
>  
> http://www.solstice.us/russell/
>  
> Russell received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950:
>  
> http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1950/
>  
> ------
> Ted Moffett

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