Atheist son prays for his mother to win the lottery, she does.

[Chukie sue]

Cool thanks. After pizza and a phonecall then.

[Sinue_v2]

Cool thanks. After pizza and a phonecall then.

No problem. We got a pizza here tonight too, so that sounds like a good plan to me.

*Edit: Noticed a pretty big error in my argument. The children/youth were from Beth-El, not Jericho where he purified the waters. I don't think it's a fatal error to the bulk of my argument, but on the point of the good will of the people of Jericho can't be used as an argument against the potential for animosity in the children.

I'm not going to edit the original post, but I'll wait for your response and then go from there. This is just to let you guys know I goofed.

[washuguy]

No problem. We got a pizza here tonight too, so that sounds like a good plan to me.

*Edit: Noticed a pretty big error in my argument. The children/youth were from Beth-El, not Jericho where he purified the waters. I don't think it's a fatal error to the bulk of my argument, but on the point of the good will of the people of Jericho can't be used as an argument against the potential for animosity in the children.

I'm not going to edit the original post, but I'll wait for your response and then go from there. This is just to let you guys know I goofed.

Just chips here... For me at least, enjoy your pizza LOL

[Lady Nadia]

[Chukie sue]

Might just wait 'till tomorrow. Got the house to myself (which is quite the rare occasion) and I'd like to enjoy the peace by thinking to myself.

Anyhoo, bacon pizza was the event with "the house bread" with garlic sauce. 'Night, or morning.

[sCI]

How can they prove he prayed for anything? Trust his word of mouth?
How can you prove anyone actually prays for a thing? How do you know they aren't sidetracking and thinking of a doughnut they forgot, or how they need to finish some work?
I don't understand how you can write an article documenting something that's completely undocumentable that couldn't be proven in any realistic manner. First you have to believe in luck, then you have to trust whether the person was actually praying and not wondering if he put the leftovers in the fridge. Then you have to prove how luck and praying have an effect on the real world and how these theoretical "real" things actually changed the future.

Bullshit.

[Jehosaphaty]

Sinue, have you read Plantinga? He offers, perhaps, the strongest rebuttal to most of the issues you've raised--many of which are quite standard or classic--in the conversation thus far. I'm thinking primarily of God and Other Minds, although his other works cover a pretty vast breadth of apologetics and moral philosophy.

[Sinue_v2]

Sinue, have you read Plantinga? He offers, perhaps, the strongest rebuttal to most of the issues you've raised--many of which are quite standard or classic--in the conversation thus far.

No, I haven't. I've brushed over a few of his arguments a few years ago, and found them lacking... especially the argument for Free Will as an answer to the problem of evil. I don't think it works because it assumes that the current spectrum of human experience, emotion, and consciousness is all that there is. I don't think that can be substantiated, and if our perceptions are not all that there is... then we're already limited in our free will because we're making our decisions ignorant of perhaps a vast multitude of additional dimensions of perception and conceptualization. And if that's the case, then there's no reason why we could not have been created with both free will and without evil.

Secondly, advancements in the field of cognitive neuroscience has pretty much definitively refuted the concept of free will as a useful illusion (much like how "color" or concepts of "solidity" are useful illusions). There's still room for it in a philosophy which makes allowances for the existence of souls, or some form of dualism, but from a naturalistic philosophy the "soul" we tend to conceptualize can be accounted for entirely by natural processes.

I might look over his arguments again sometime, but for now I'm busy with Karen Armstrong's "A History of God" and Murray Gell-Mann's "The Quark and the Jaguar".

[Jehosaphaty]

No, I haven't. I've brushed over a few of his arguments a few years ago, and found them lacking...

Only brushed over the works of one of the greatest living philosophic minds? His work in advancing modal logic is quite profound, though complex. His debate against Dennett is worthy viewing material if you can find it.

[Sinue_v2]

Only brushed over the works of one of the greatest living philosophic minds? His work in advancing modal logic is quite profound, though complex. His debate against Dennett is worthy viewing material if you can find it.

Yes, well, there are still quite a few of the classical philosophers I'm still catching up on... I'll give YouTube a search after bit, but if you have a link to the specific debate (or a transcript), then feel free to post it. I'm already of the Deistic persuasion, so philosophical or logical arguments for the existence of god are far from out of the question to me. However, if they're going to be used as apologetics for Christianity (or the Abrahamic faiths in general), then they must make allowances for what is known about those faiths and about the natural world.

In other words, it has to provide real utility and demonstrate concordance with other lines of evidence. If you can make a philosophical argument which supports the proposition of a literal global flood as described in Genesis, then it's still not going to carry much weight unless you can demonstrate evidence for it in the geological column, a homology of genetic bottlenecks, etc. Furthermore, if that same process can be used to equally demonstrate the validity of both Christianity and Hinduism, or Voodoo and Shintoism, then it's utility as a basis for Christian apologetics is limited. It would, I think, by necessity strip it down to an interpretation of pure metaphor... which I suppose is fine, but it would come as an unacceptable shock to most believers who hold either a literal or semi-literal interpretation.