Posted: Apr 08, 2012 6:13 pm
I live in Shelton, WA, and (like you) received the "Incredible Prophecies" slick. Like you, I was thinking of going for the recreation of it, and went online to do some advance research. I appreciate your information. Given what you've revealed, I may save my time, and not go. If there was an opportunity for audience input, it would be worth the time to stand and insert some rationality, but absent that, I think not.
What rationality would I insert?
I believe I'd resist directly attacking the so-called "evidence," and instead bring up a few more general, larger and more overriding concerns.
First, I would ask why it is that folks who so celebrate faith (claiming it's one of the highest virtues, an act and mode God himself values and rewards) are striving so mightily to find evidence? If faith is so damn good, in other words, why do its practitioners so yearn to end it via an embrace of evidence?
It's easy to realize, after all, that if true and convincing evidence were indeed found, the role of faith would instantly end. That great and wonderful thing, in other words, would at once be kaput! For consistency (not that any theistic believer was ever a fan of consistency), the theist must grant either that his evidence is much weaker than he claims, or that faith no longer has a role. Consistency demands one or the other.
Third, I've always thought it fascinating how you can judge the weakness of a proposition by how pitiful are the evidences folks array in its support. This follows because proponents for a position will naturally trot out the evidences they see as strongest. When you look at such "best" evidences and find they are pitiful, it speaks volumes about the proposition in general. To state it another way, it's obvious just how desperate proponents are -- for any real and legitimate evidence -- when they resort to supposed elements that are so flawed, corrupt and fraudulent as involved in cases like this. Truly bad evidence, in other words (when offered by proponents who apparently possess nothing better), in itself becomes evidence against the proposition it's employed to advance.
Perhaps that's what I'd most like to tell the audience. The piteousness of what you're grasping at here is perhaps the best evidence, of all, manifesting just how corrupt and baseless are your mystical and irrational conclusions.
What rationality would I insert?
I believe I'd resist directly attacking the so-called "evidence," and instead bring up a few more general, larger and more overriding concerns.
First, I would ask why it is that folks who so celebrate faith (claiming it's one of the highest virtues, an act and mode God himself values and rewards) are striving so mightily to find evidence? If faith is so damn good, in other words, why do its practitioners so yearn to end it via an embrace of evidence?
It's easy to realize, after all, that if true and convincing evidence were indeed found, the role of faith would instantly end. That great and wonderful thing, in other words, would at once be kaput! For consistency (not that any theistic believer was ever a fan of consistency), the theist must grant either that his evidence is much weaker than he claims, or that faith no longer has a role. Consistency demands one or the other.
Third, I've always thought it fascinating how you can judge the weakness of a proposition by how pitiful are the evidences folks array in its support. This follows because proponents for a position will naturally trot out the evidences they see as strongest. When you look at such "best" evidences and find they are pitiful, it speaks volumes about the proposition in general. To state it another way, it's obvious just how desperate proponents are -- for any real and legitimate evidence -- when they resort to supposed elements that are so flawed, corrupt and fraudulent as involved in cases like this. Truly bad evidence, in other words (when offered by proponents who apparently possess nothing better), in itself becomes evidence against the proposition it's employed to advance.
Perhaps that's what I'd most like to tell the audience. The piteousness of what you're grasping at here is perhaps the best evidence, of all, manifesting just how corrupt and baseless are your mystical and irrational conclusions.