Why belief in a god is an unfalsifiable claim that serves no purpose

[Patrick1966]

How many of the artists that painted Jesus white have been dead for centuries? Should they be exhumed, horse whipped, executed, and returned to their grave?

 

[bbyrd009]

If you don’t have any answer, maybe I’m not the one confused.

"when you dance with the devil, the devil dont change; the devil changes you"
might apply there

 

[Wrangler]

So you're saying there were no dark skinned people in Gethsemane ? You're evidence for this please?

So irrelevant. Implied is your embrace of multculturalism that not only is wrong, didn't exist at the time in question. Holding people to a non-existent standard is a sign extreme stupidity is at play.

 

[Illuminator]

How many of the artists that painted Jesus white have been dead for centuries? Should they be exhumed, horse whipped, executed, and returned to their grave?

Good point. Artists of every age are influenced by their culture when Jesus is depicted. The fact that they painted Him at all is a good thing. The variety of Jesus portraits are massive, it could involve an interesting historical study of surrounding influences. For what it's worth, Jesus was a Palestinian and most likely had an olive complexion, neither white or black, as are Palestinians today. If someone chooses to paint Jesus with blue eyes and blonde hair, it doesn't bother me in the least. Jesus gave His whole Being out of infinite love for humanity, so it doesn't matter what an artists tries to invoke. But to say He was gay is a blasphemous insult.

Three of the oldest images of Jesus portray him as the “Good Shepherd”​

just to irritate the legalists.

 

[Illuminator]

Education should not be confused with indoctrination. The Catholic Church was the strongest advocate of their version of education.

How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization​

Ask someone today where Western Civilization originated, and he or she might say Greece or Rome. But what is the ultimate source of Western Civilization? Bestselling author and professor Thomas E. Woods, Jr. provides the long neglected answer: the Catholic Church. In the new paperback edition of his critically-acclaimed book, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Woods goes far beyond the familiar tale of monks copying manuscripts and preserving the wisdom of classical antiquity. Gifts such as modern science, free-market economics, art, music, and the idea of human rights come from the Catholic Church, explains Woods. In How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, you’ll learn:

• Why modern science was born in the Catholic Church
• How Catholic priests developed the idea of free-market economics five hundred years before Adam Smith
• How the Catholic Church invented the university
• Why what you know about the Galileo affair is wrong
• How Western law grew out of Church canon law
• How the Church humanized the West by insisting on the sacredness of all human life
  
  No institution has done more to shape Western civilization than the two-thousand-year-old Catholic Church—and in ways that many of us have forgotten or never known. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization is essential reading for recovering this lost truth.

​

note: Bestselling author and professor Thomas E. Woods, Jr. is not a Catholic, so you can't complain of doctrinal bias.

Reviews:

“An excellent work…. We are reminded by Professor Woods that the earliest universities fostered a dialogue between faith and reason, along with logical theory and a spirit of investigation. Perhaps this is the greatest secret of Western civilization over the past four centuries. It is my cherished hope that this book will serve to unlock this hidden mystery.”
-from the foreword by Cardinal Antonio Cañizares

“This book couldn’t have come at a better time for Catholics clinging to their faith against an increasingly hostile and skeptical world…. Well argued and well researched.”
–Dallas Morning News

“Engaging and engrossing, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization is a mine of information and a stimulus for reflection on the debt we owe to Catholic life and thought.”
-Michael P. Foley, assistant professor of Patristics, Great Texts Program, Baylor University

“Dr. Woods’s book is a superb and scholarly refutation of the widespread and deeply rooted prejudice that the supernatural outlook of the Roman Catholic Church disqualifies Her to make any valuable contribution to the ‘progress’ of humanity. This book is a magnificent illustration of Christ’s saying: ‘Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His justice; the rest will be added unto you.’ Whether we turn to science, legal questions, economics, education, scholarship, fine arts, Dr. Woods shows convincingly the fecundity of a supernatural approach to life. This book is highly recommended.”
-Alice von Hildebrand, professor emeritus, the City University of New York

Read the original article at TomWoods.com. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization | Tom Woods

 

[Illuminator]

Education should not be confused with indoctrination. The Catholic Church was the strongest advocate of their version of education.

Care to offer the correct version of education? Where do I sign up?
Education should not be confused from indoctrinating relativistic Modernist liberals and materialist sceptics.

What exactly do you mean by their version of education??? Universities are universal, that's why they are called "universities." There are Catholic and non-Catholic universities, so where do you think the basic structure of all of them originated???

It was, after all, in the High Middle Ages that the university came into existence. The university, which developed and matured at the height of Catholic Europe, was a new phenomenon in European history. Nothing like it had existed in ancient Greece or Rome. The institution that we recognize today, with its faculties, courses of study, examinations, and degrees, as well as the familiar distinction between undergraduate and graduate study, comes to us directly from the medieval world. And it is no surprise that the Church should have done so much to foster the nascent university system since, according to historian Lowrie Daly, it was "the only institution in Europe that showed consistent interest in the preservation and cultivation of knowledge."​

​

The precise origins of the very first universities are lost in obscurity, though the picture becomes ever clearer as we move into the thirteenth century. We cannot give exact dates for the appearance of universities at Paris and Bologna, Oxford and Cambridge, since they evolved over a period of time — the former beginning as cathedral schools, and the latter as informal gatherings of masters and students. But we may safely say that the process occurred during the latter half of the twelfth century.​

The Catholic Church and the Creation of the University

The Church played a central if not exclusive role in the establishment and encouragement of the university.

www.catholiceducation.org

The institution that we recognize today, with its faculties, courses of study, examinations, and degrees, as well as the familiar distinction between undergraduate and graduate study, comes to us directly from the medieval world. Is that the '"their version of education." you are talking about?

Catholicism has never claimed to be the only candy store on the block. And we don't shrink from strictest scientific investigation either.

“Science can purify religion from error and superstition; religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes. Each can draw the other into a wider world, a world in which both can flourish.”​

― Pope John Paul II

 

[Matthias]

Dinosaur fossils have been found to be millions of years old through radiometric dating which blows the 6000 year-old of Earth out of the water. Yet these are the same people who claim they use reason.

x.com

x.com

 

[Matthias]

 

[Skovand]

There is no actual scientific issues with radiometric dating. It works consistently across the board. Which is why 99.99% of scientists accept the theory of evolution. Out of roughly 8,000,000 scientists about 10,000 reject the new modern synthesis. Those who reject radiometric dating do so only because they don’t understand it and that’s why they constantly bring up stuff that makes nonsense like the at Helen stuff. Literally millions of scientific papers that shows the evidence for it.

 

[Skovand]

CSL accepted the theory of evolution.

C.S. Lewis on Science, Evolution, and Evolutionism - BioLogos

C.S. Lewis believed God was the creator and designer of all things, but what would he think of the Intelligent Design movement?

biologos.org

 

[amigo de christo]

CSL accepted the theory of evolution.

C.S. Lewis on Science, Evolution, and Evolutionism - BioLogos

C.S. Lewis believed God was the creator and designer of all things, but what would he think of the Intelligent Design movement?

biologos.org

many peoples of all tribes , tongues , religoins and even within christendom accept the theory of evolution .
This lamb refuses it . just cause they support a lie dont mean i have too or even should .
rather let no man decieve you with science falsey so called .

 

[Riven]

View attachment 53539

If he can't trust his own thinking, how did he function day to day?

 

[Matthias]

If he can't trust his own thinking, how did he function day to day?

With the aid of a greater mind than his own.

 

[amigo de christo]

There is no actual scientific issues with radiometric dating. It works consistently across the board. Which is why 99.99% of scientists accept the theory of evolution. Out of roughly 8,000,000 scientists about 10,000 reject the new modern synthesis. Those who reject radiometric dating do so only because they don’t understand it and that’s why they constantly bring up stuff that makes nonsense like the at Helen stuff. Literally millions of scientific papers that shows the evidence for it.

You trust in man . Which is your downfall .

 

[Eternally Grateful]

I would recommend those who question if there is a God to read or look up the documentary Case for Christ and Case for a creator. Both of these are done by a former athiest. or went out to try to disprove God. who found out the deeper he dug, the more he could not longer believe the way he did.

 

[Riven]

With the aid of a greater mind than his own.

His words seem like deception to me. If one doesn't believe in the scientific consensus on evolution, then just say so. Instead he cloaks it in this sort of word salad, about not trusting in his own thinking.

 

[Matthias]

His words seem like deception to me. If one doesn't believe in the scientific consensus on evolution, then just say so. Instead he cloaks it in this sort of word salad, about not trusting in his own thinking.

(Read widely. Read deeply.) Read thoughtfully. Read critically.

You did.

 

[KUWN]

One of the worst arguments for God is that whenever something isn’t understood or doesn’t make sense, believers will say, “God works in mysterious ways. Unless you have the mind of God, you cannot understand since you’re a limited human.” By that same token, saying things such as God is good or loving is also inaccurate because according to believers, we are limited humans. It’s a convenient copout because it involves an unfalsifiable claim i.e. ad hoc reasoning. It’s like saying there’s a dragon in my garage even though you can’t see it. I can’t prove it, but you can’t disprove it either.

The word “god” can literally be replaced with any other word or entity such as a winged rabbit and believers would respond the same way an atheist would. However, that same reasoning is absent when referring to God specifically. A winged rabbit and God are both “things” that can’t be proven. Why would a believer feel otherwise about God? My guess is because to the believer, their God is superior to any other concept that’s similar in nature such as a winged rabbit. Believers and atheists are similar in that they both would not believe in the winged rabbit, but they are different because an atheist would also not believe in a god. The same logic believers apply to the existence of a winged rabbit seems to escape them when it comes to their god. And it is perfectly fine for a believer to admit that they would not believe in a winged rabbit but that they would believe in a god instead. What’s not fine is claiming that their belief is founded in sound logic and reason, which further obfuscates the difference between what’s rational and irrational.

So what is the point of claim which cannot be falsified? There’s none. It’s completely open ended because it can’t be proven nor disproven. This is why science and religion are actually diametrically opposed. God can’t be put under a microscope or test tube. The idea of a god is useless in science given the scientific method. It is also fallacious to infer that God exists by observing “his creation”. What could the creation ever know about the creator given that creation is limited? It’s a contradiction that just doesn’t get admitted to.

The argument for the existence of God can be put into propositional form where all that is given are deduction conclusions. But, can you give us your definition of "God?" It doesn't seem to resemble the Christian definition of God.

 

[Riven]

(Read widely. Read deeply.) Read thoughtfully. Read critically.

You did.

I was taught critical thinking at a very young age. We had good teachers in the 90's. Apparently I've also been denied entry into the rest of the forum. So I guess I'll just be sticking around here for a while longer.

 

[Matthias]

I was taught critical thinking at a very young age. We had good teachers in the 90's.

They served you well in that regard. That’s commendable.

Apparently I've also been denied entry into the rest of the forum.

Since you’ve become a Christian, I don’t understand why a request to change your registration from “Agnostic” to “Christian” would be denied. Only a moderator or administrator could answer that.

You might want to consider closing your account and then re-registering as “Christian” with a new user name.

So I guess I'll just be sticking around here for a while longer.

I hope you will. I could use the company and I’ve found you to be good company.