On Tue, Dec 03, 2002 at 10:28:54PM -0500, Rick Castello wrote: > >> If you believe that God does not exist, and God *does* exist, > >> then you will go to Hell. (A very bad thing.) > > > > Unless God is a rationalist, and thinks all these faith-based religions > > are really dumb and silly, and only selects good skeptics for the > > afterlife. By choosing to believe without evidence you make yourself > > uninteresting in God's eyes. (A very bad thing.) > > This comment has value only in its feeble attempt at humor, > as a serious response would have taken into account the far > too numerous to cite examples in various works where God > obviously gives a damn about faith. It is an entirely valid and serious comment, meant to point out that we can't ever know the mind, motivations, will, etc. of any entity that is that much more powerful than we are, unless it manifests in some way perceivable to us and fills us in. Even then, it could be deceiving us: there may be numerous "examples" where this entity in particular gives a damn about faith, but you seem to be assuming that they are accurate. They do nothing to prove or disprove the existence / properties of said entity. They were all written/recorded by humans, as were any other examples of any other supernatural entities. > > Bet we could make more ocunterexamples... > > You could *make up* lots of things... but is that useful? Yes, because *all* of it is either speculation / made up stuff, or based entirely upon subjective experiences that cannot be validated beyond ourselves. By making up counterexamples, we show the people on the other side of the argument that there are more ways to think about it than the one they've put forth. Anon, Kat