No,

I think you got it right. This is where this post belongs.

Antsy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObLBKIk13CI Note interview beginning at 6:02

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbAKxzy-pm0

http://www.corbisimages.com/stock-photo/rights-managed/DWF15-1149221/hiroshima-nagasaki-60-years-on?popup=1&caller=enlargement

Some people can afford to buy good rural bug out land. They can set themselves up to survive with elaborate preparations in remote areas. For people who can't afford to do much and are stuck in urban areas, it can be very discouraging. Part of the reason I'm posting this stuff is to point out that there were people who were within a couple of miles of the atomic bomb detonation (last link) who not only survived, but went on to lead long and healthy lives. Never underestimate Divine Providence.

Hi Martha,

I don't intend to debate you on the subject of thiesm. You believe, which is great for you. I don't, and I'm really comfortable with my decision. What I would like to do though, is explain why these claims of "divine providence" gall secularists. When you take an incident of such epic human tragedy, and then isolate a small number of fortunate survivors for whom you choose to claim salvation by supernatural means, you make an equal judgement about the victims who were not as fortunate as those you have isolated. You do not have, of course, any real data about the personal lives of the victims. Were they good people? Bad people? Pius? (clearly not pius enough!) So the offense, although probably not intended overtly, is for the way the unlucky victims of this war crime are treated.

As I said, I don't intend to write anything that would ever change your beliefs. You already know that you offend people; I think it may be useful to articulate how.

Best regards,

Antsy

Antsy

Your points are good, but I think you misunderstand my position. I'm sure that many good people perished in that tragedy as they do in countless other tragedy's. It's likely that some evil people escaped, and, as you point out, even the survivors which I've linked to may not be people of virtue, we don't know.

My point is more that for those of us who don't own a BoV or retreat in the woods with all the necessities to survive into the future, well that doesn't mean that our goose is certainly cooked. There's miracles that happen, strange turns of what you might call "coincidence" which I call "providence" which sometimes bring about totally unexpected outcomes.

That is not to say that I would advocate making no preparations, but rather just hope that "Providence" will take care of my every need. Part of providence is having a brain and using your reason to take whatever precautions are within your ability. So, I'm gonna keep feeding my mealworms because I don't have the ability to raise bigger livestock and they might come in handy as a protein source... And I'm going to try not to get discouraged when I hear discussions of fully equipped underground bunkers and bug out land and homesteads that are far superior to what I could ever reasonably hope to attain.

I believe in Jesus who made it clear that He is on everyone's side. He doesn't hate sinners, if he did I'd really be up the creek without a paddle. He is trying to win sinners over, to help us be converted, to bring us to a more peaceful and just life. If an evil person miraculously pulls through tragic events, that's His love behind it. If a good person dies in the same tragic event, His love accompanies them also along with any evil who perish as well. God extends his Mercy to all, it is only those who remain steadfast in unrepentant evil who choose to separate themselves from his goodness.

Don't have much time to compose this better but hope I got my thoughts across

Peace to you Buggie

Martha,

I read your response with some relief. I don't, however, believe that the makers of the videos and websites that you linked to share in your pragmatism. If I understand you correctly, you are merely trying to point out that in extreme times of unrest; such as an atom bomb going off in your neighbourhood, even the most unprepared have been shown to survive whether by the fickle whim of a deity, or by secular chance. This should give those preppers, like myself, who do not have an underground bomb shelter, a little comfort. I completely agree that this should not be read as "license to count on the cosmic crap shoot". You go on to write some things about your god, love, mercy, and that if you do get fried, it's not because your personal god doesn't care. I don't think that those details are relevant to your greater point though. Please let me know if I am somehow not on the same page.

I too wish peace to Buggie 😉

Antsy.

Hey, Ants are Bugs and Bugs can be Ants right?? That's the second time recently I've gotten people's handles mixed up. Sheesh.

Yes, I think you're understanding me better now. But there's something more I should add. Because I believe in Jesus and try to follow His teachings (and believe me, I have a lot of failures to live up to them, but overall I'm a better person than when I didn't try), I do believe in prayer.

Now, please let me 'splain more... I'm not a model Christian, I should be though... my faith is not that great, but I do have a mustard seed of faith... I believe in prayer, because that is what Jesus taught us... He said to "ask, seek, knock... " He told a parable about a woman who pestered an unjust judge so long that he finally relented and gave her justice and he used that quaint little story to teach us to persevere in prayer. Now, where I'm going with this is ... in addition to what I've said previously as well as your correct understanding of me, I do believe that prayer might very well increase your chance of survival.

Now, please let's slow down or you might not follow my exact meaning. The Lord answers all sincere prayers. As someone more clever than me said, He answeres "yes" or "no" or "wait". So, there's the chance I'm in dire straights, I pray to be rescued and the Lord answers "no", yet next to me is Joe Blow who is a huge cruel jerk who would never pray and yet the Lord spares him. Why? I don't know and the Lord doesn't owe me an answer (although I think that after death we will probably know why a lot of things were allowed to happen). Nevertheless, I believe that there are supernatural interventions that sometimes come as a response to prayer. I had a dramatic one about 25 years ago, but mostly I don't notice a lot of responses to my prayers and, of course it's hard to say what would happen in a given situation if you didn't pray vs the outcome that occured when you prayed.

Now, if it's not too dangerous to mention, I also believe that "the prayer of a righteous man availeth much". That means that prayer might tip a given situation in your favor, and even moreso if you are a "righteous" person. Now, "righteous" can have an obnoxious connotation, that's not the "righteous" I mean. What I mean is a kind hearted modest person who tries to help others and treats people fairly, a good person, a person with integrity. Even though I don't share his denomination, it always seemed to me that Billy Graham was a person of integrity, a truly Godly man (I may be wrong). The Bible seems to indicate that the prayer of certain people of outstanding goodness is especially effective. Sometimes I think this is why my prayers are lacking, I'm just not that good.

On the other hand, God is supremely merciful, so He doesn't scorn the sinner's plea either. That give me courage to continue to pray, and it should give everyone courage. He's on our side, no matter what, He's simply on our side, all of us. However, He's given us free will, it's part of our dignity that we are not mindless robots, and we choose good or evil, repentance or unrepentance of our own accord and with eternal consequences. It's a high stakes operation.

Now dear Antsy, please, pretty please, don't be offended!! I was so happy that we had reached a degree of understanding that smoothed some of the rough edges and I'd be so sorry to have ruffled things up again, really. And please forgive me if I rambled too long or sounded too preachy or my grammer was too sloppy. Some things take a few paragraphs to explain, and even then, you have to leave a lot of stuff out and run the risk of being misunderstood.

martha

Martha,

I think you have explained your position clearly enough. Please don't worry about offending me with your beliefs. I was born here in Canada and am very familiar with Christian beliefs. Further, the things you and others choose to believe costs me nothing. I'm not one of those "frothing at the mouth" atheists who is determined to kick the supernatural crutches from every believer he meets. Your beliefs presumably give some degree of comfort and that is fine by me. You seem very sincere in your attempts to encourage your fellows in this forum, just as your own preparations appear to be sincere. I personally hope we never have to use the vast majority of our preps. I have enjoyed our little discussion here on this thread. I think that it was an excellent opportunity to make a case for our positions in an environment where we were not going to draw fire from our peers. That is why I think it's best that we have these dialogs in the Fringe section of the IPN. I appreciate that the administrators of this forum went out on a limb to create this arena.

Cheers,

Antsy

Thankyou for that Antsy. What does your motto mean about plurality?

The plurality quote comes from Occam's Razor. Occam was a Franciscan Monk and theologist who waged a theological war with the Pope at the time. He was eventually excommunicated. Essentially it means, one should not complicate causality if it is not required. I could introduce the idea of Leprechauns interceding unnoticed when explaining why any little thing happens in our lives. The question is, does our reality require the meddling of Leprechauns in order to adequately be explained? Or is this addition superfluous? The following link better explains the quote. http://www.skepdic.com/occam.html

Antsy

There's also those who go to great lengths to explain away supernatural events by doing elaborate maneuvers to make natural data sufficient to explain their causality.

There's also those who go to great lengths to explain away supernatural events by doing elaborate maneuvers to make natural data sufficient to explain their causality.

Such as? Examples?

Oh Antsy, I'm not sure I want to open this can of worms, even though I did respond your motto with a similar critique for the non-believers. If I give you an example, I'll need to take the time to support my reasoning and that will require a little more time than i have at this moment. Furthermore I appreciate being at peace with you and if we get into another debate I am hoping that we can continue in respect and keep in mind that a different opinion doesn't necessarily mean malicious motivation. I say "necessarily" because, of course, there are malicious motives behind some extremes.

I'll try to get back to this soon, when I have a bit more time and am prepared for the angst of another round of disagreement. Even relatively peaceful disagreement is not fun for me, yet I'd rather live with it than remain silent and refuse to enter into reasonable dialogue on important matters.

I guess the last word goes to you then.

Alright Antsy, here goes. I don't enjoy debating, I do it because sometimes it's good to speak up so that maybe you can dispel a misunderstanding about the reasons for belief in God.

Stonehenge. Your motto - don't posit plural causes without necessity. Alright then, why attribute the order of the rocks to humans? Could it not just be that when the universe formed through the billenia after the big bang, that somehow these stones came to rest upon each other in this arrangement? What absolute proof is there that attributes it to man?

You might say, well, cremated human remains have been found there, so most likely the stones were arranged in some tribute to the dead. Well how do you know that's true? Maybe Stonehenge was a product of a unique but random outcome of the evolution of the cosmos and the peoples who discovered it were so taken by it that they wanted to bury their dead close by. In other words, why attribute the arrangement of the stones to a secondary causality when it might have just been a fluke of nature?

You could say same thing about many historical artifacts and non historical ones as well, after all, were we there to verify their causes?

Yet we know very well that it is rational and fitting to attribute stonehenge to humans or, at least beings of a higher order. We rightly scoff at anyone who sincerely wants to argue for a "random forces of nature causality". Why? There's no absolute proof. Well, maybe there isn't proof in the sense that we can really pin it down irrefutably and inarguably. But the evidence is certainly there in the fact that the stones are arranged in an order which speaks of and intelligent and purposeful cause. Something smart did this, and for some reason... This evidence is before us and the fact that we can't prove it beyond pointing to an intelligent order does not make our position any less substantial or realistic. Quite the contrary.

Now I'd like to go one step further, you may or may not agree... there is a certain elegance or beauty to this massive monument which likewise might give us pause to think that the "thing" which caused this to come into being is a thing with a capacity for beauty. Now by putting all these clues together (intelligence + purpose + capacity for beauty) with the fact that the only beings which we normally have experience of which fit the bill are humans, we conclude with quite comfortable security that they indeed were the artists behind this work. Lawyers call this a circumstantial case. However most of us have no problem accepting the conclusion and wouldn't waste our breath with anyone who wanted to argue otherwise.

Why then, when we behold the grandeur of nature, the supreme intelligence of order, intricacies layered upon intricacies, beauties and marvels and powers and synergy, and yet we somehow think it irrational to consider that maybe a higher being created this?

Because I spent so many years arguing against the existence of God, I think I have an insight as to why, but I think it's more important for each person to answer that for himself.