Posted by blessing | Posted in Announcements | Posted on 25-01-2010
Tags: conversion, healing, miracle, poll, pray4healing, pray4trig, pz myers
The miracle poll has reached 390 votes. We have a winner!
With a 21-point lead, PZ Myers’ conversion to following the One True God beats all others. (Except “Other”, but people didn’t leave their suggestions, so that’s not very helpful.)
#2 was healing of Stephen Hawking’s ALS, and #3 was Larry Flint regaining the ability to walk.
Now, we need to find out if Dr. Myers (I believe he has a Ph.D., yes?) is willing to have the faithful pray for his miraculous eye-opening conversion on a particular date and time.
And as for you people who voted for the Obama Psalm 109:8 thing . . . For shame, you should pray for his conversion, not for him to die and his children to be fatherless and destitute. Did you know that’s what you were voting for? Do you realize that’s what you’re asking for with those bumper stickers and t-shirts?
I just don’t understand how people who (claim to) know Jesus can be so hateful.
Yes, of course he has a Ph.D., he’s a biology professor at UMM.
I’m certain he’ll be willing to have you pray for him–but why does he need to be willing?
Oh you missed that whole discussion… read way back to see what was said
Ben -
As ds.mama pointed out, one of the major issues people had with praying for Trig Palin was that neither he nor his family had agreed to the divine intervention.
Dr. Myers should agree to be prayed for, don’t you think?
I looked over his little blog, seems he’s traveling and “lecturing” on why he thinks God is imaginary. I’ll email him anyway; wonder if he’ll reply?
Shirlee – your attempt to damn with faint praise (“…his little blog…”) is pretty cute. I see the poll here concluded with 390 “votes”. At Pharyngula, a similar exercise would net thousands of responses.
Well, let’s get on with the praying! That heathen has denied the divinity of the One True God, Ahura Mazda, for way too long now.
I believe you meant to say Cthulhu.
Don’t you mean The Flying Spaghetti Monster?
Pz myers all ready believes. FSM!!!!
R’Amen
So he’s gonna worship Thor?
Cool!
My god has a mighty hammer!
Cheers & Happy Monkey,
Ray
Haha, your poll has been Pharyngulatet as the pointless poll it is.
So what’s better to ask you to pray for than a pointless miracle. Totally waste of time.
There is no evidence for praying have made any difference at all. Christians do not have better and safer lives than others and you’re not spared in catastrophies. A strange way for a shepherd to look after his herd…
Nonono the one true god(tm) is of course Eris
>I just don’t understand how people who (claim to) >know Jesus can be so hateful.
Thats easy. You say you should pray for Obama’s conversion (and by extension any non Christian like me) because (or otherwise)?
The poll author suggests that people pray for Obama’s conversion.
Since Obama is a Christian, I presume you are praying for his conversion to some other religion? Hinduism? Pastafarianism?
Obama going and sitting in a church no more makes him a Christian than sitting in my garage makes me a car.
He supports murdering unborn babies. That is not Christian.
If Obama murders babies, then so does God. We call it abortion, he calls it miscarriage, ecclampsia, and myriad other diseases.
By your logic, God kills everyone eventually.
BUT, can you show me a case where God forcibly terminated a pregnancy?
Well, yes, God does eventually kill everyone, but that’s not my logic it’s yours ^^ By my logic, nature kills everyone.
What is miscarriage then, if not the forcible termination of a pregnancy by God’s hands?
I assume you mean a case in the bible where God forcibly terminated a pregnancy. You might re-read the passages concerning mass slaughters and genocides. When whole populations are destroyed, you can count on at least a few pregnancies being terminated along with the expectant mothers. So, is this what you meant?
WHERE’S THE BEEF?
“And as for you people who voted for the Obama Psalm 109:8 thing. . . For shame.”
I agree. For that matter, I think the psalmist was behaving shamefully in composing that screed. It reads like stuff you might find on the walls of public restrooms. But the “Holy” Bible is full of similarly shameful episodes. Are you going to repudiate each of them? If so, you won’t be left with much bible.
Not to mention, people who believe in Jesus can be real dicks on a regular basis. It’s hardly unusual. Besides, it was on the poll. What to expect?
Let me get this straight, PZ agrees upon a date and time for his Christian conversion which, at the appointed moment all you “pray4healians” will crank out “mass quantities” (no quality issues?) of prayer for his (miracle) conversion.
Meanwhile PZ sits at home or in class or the lab or wherever, and waits for Jebus to show up?
Uh, I dunno. Either you will be ignored, ooooor…He takes you up on it, and after the predicted failure of his conversion…Wait, wait…it’s…it’s coming to me…I see, I see…I see another deserved cracker desecration-like powning from the mighty legions of the pharyngulati will swiftly be forthcoming.
But good luck with that though.
Might I suggest you ask him to participate in a blind study in which he doesn’t know the time of the mass prayer, that would probably be the best and most scientific way of convincing the rest of those atheists.
I’d prefer that. One problem . . . how do you get out word to congregations worldwide and keep it a “secret”? Answer: You don’t.
Surely only one prayer is necessary? Or does Jesus not listen to individual prayers?
Perhaps if God gets a DDOS(Divine Denial of Service) for exceeding His bandwidth, his magical invisibility shield shall go down long enough for Myers to get a peek?
Perhaps so. Surely this divine botnet should suffice to overload his heavenly firewall and let us insert a prayer virus?
I must have missed the reason why a congregation is needed for this project. Wouldn’t a single person with faith – like unto a mustard seed – be enough? What’s the problem?
Don, the point of this “project” is to demonstrate the Glory of God to the world. If two people pray together and PZ Myers converts, then how much weight does their claim to have prayed carry?
If thousands pray together, there’s a recorded “movement” involved.
Okay, good point. Still, it looks to me like you’re leaving yourself space to weasel out of taking responsibility for your claims when you don’t find enough people willing to look silly because they pray their little hearts out and nothing happens. It would be much more forthright to just state publicly that you – or maybe you and a few friends – were about to do this thing at a certain time, and then do it.
My prediction is this: if you do it by yourself, or with a few friends, or with every christian in the world, the result will be the same as if you didn’t do anything at all. When was the last time you saw anyone move a mountain?
What miracles,is this an Americian site,man the world is laughing at you guys.
Well, now that Myers is worshiping the One True God™ I suppose all us phyrangulites will have to come here instead for our commentary. Beats FOX news.
Dentroman
Shirlee, how can you possibly know it will be insincere? How do you go about making such a Judgment of my sincerity?
The eminence of my death has been obvious to me since I first began to comprehend my mortality, (maybe age 10?) so in many ways I have been on a death bed since, living it up! Does that mean repentance from me at any time in my life will be insincere?
What if I don’t plan on waiting until my death is obvious, and instead I just wait another decade or so when I’m 40 to repent? Does the fact that I’ve scheduled it imply validity again, since it won’t be a last ditch effort to save myself? (And if I happen to die for whatever reason before that, then “oh well”, my loss.)
And why are you so biased against deathbed repentance? You don’t think those people are truly afraid of something?
Just so you know where I’m coming from, I’m a “militant” atheist raised by wonderfully loving christian parents, who I love dearly, and I estimate the likelihood of my embracing jesus as equal to mohammad, judaism and zeus. But, if you did somehow manage to convince me christianity was true, I would become a misotheist, and a dystheist, not a christian. But I do raise these questions to you in complete sincerity, because I think it is very important that we learn to accept one another for who we are. Best wishes.
I can know it is insincere, Cody, because you told me so yourself. You want to sin now, and then say you’re sorry just before you die. That’s not repentance. That’s not recognizing God’s sacrifice for you, and how you hurt Him every time you disobey Him. That’s trying to get a “Get Out of Hell Free” card.
I don’t have a bias against deathbed repentance. I’m sure they are afraid of an eternity in the fires of Hell. But for their entire lives, they put their own pleasure above the sacrifice God made for them, spitting in His face.
I guess I have trouble seeing how any repentance could possibly be sincere (at least from me). I don’t think I could ever repent sincerely, since the only reason to do so is the appeasing of a being with whom I strongly disagree in nearly every matter conceivable.
It is an unfortunate situation that such a supreme being and myself can’t find common ground but, being a man with principles, I could not live in good conscience sacrificing my own standards of good for a being that is not open to discussing it (god).
Though you raise some other interesting questions; what did god sacrifice for me? What does it even mean for an omnipotent being to sacrifice something? And how can an omnipotent being be hurt?
Also, Shirlee, Thank You very much for responding to me, I enjoy discussing these things, and I know sometimes it can feel very offensive, and I want you to know I really only mean the best for all of us.
Discussing is good, Cody . . . That way, we can learn.
No, I don’t see how you could sincerely repent if you don’t believe in God. That’s why many believe that atheists cannot have morals; everything is relativistic, not absolute truth/absolute morality.
A Christian knows that she does not need to find common ground with God. God is the Creator. He makes the rules; it is our job to obey, not to tell Him that we don’t like His ideas.
God took on human form and came to Earth, lived among sinners, and allowed Himself to be torturously executed in a manner commonly applied to thieves and political dissidents, then remained dead for three days. What greater sacrifice could He have made?
Don, do you comprehend the difference between “murder” and “execution”?
God executed populations because they sinned against Him. Since He is omniscient, He is quite capable of knowing whether the pre-born babies in the womb will follow Him or reject Him.
WHAT!? Oh, my goodness. You did not honestly just tell us that all disasters and acts of God are okay, even such things as miscarriages, are fine because those people are sinners? Do you have no sympathy, or even any sense at all that that is wrong? What happened to free will? Isn’t the point of forgiveness that God doesn’t kill people for what they might do? How does he decide what person to give a miscarriage to? And how did he not, with his ‘omniscient’ ways, not see HITLER coming?
Shirlee, you make no sense, and you really need to back up this statement, because right now you sounds completely and utterly uncaring and frankly laughable.
Dan, you’re missing a key component of forgiveness: Repentance.
God does not forgive the sins of those who do not repent.
Repentance is not just saying, “Oh, I’m about to die . . . Sorry for all those bad things I did, God! I can go to Heaven now, right?”
Repentance means recognizing that God came to Earth in human form to provide the ultimate sacrifice, and that every time you break His law, you are spitting in His face. It means sincerely apologizing for your sins and STOPPING IT, not repeating some prayer 20 times as “penance” so you can go do it again next week.
Do you think God doesn’t know who will or will not stop sinning, who will truly repent?
And YOU are missing a key component of free will; it’s free. As in, unpredictable. I’ll reference you back to an older comment of mine about omniscience/omnipotence if you want more. But you didn’t answer my question; why didn’t God kill Hitler in the womb? Surely, if all babies who die before birth are ones who will not repent for their sins, surely he would have aborted Hitler!
Don’t you think God, if he really existed, he would try to stop human suffering? Or was it okay to kill 6 million Jews because they aren’t Christian?
Shirlee, is it okay if I plan on sincerely apologizing for my sins and stopping them, when I’m older? You know, why should I do it now, I wouldn’t mean it now, maybe if I mean it later I’m all set, right?
Also, as someone who really enjoys “sinning”, if I do sincerely repent, and am indeed accepted into heaven, can I go back to sinning once I’m there? If I can’t, but I do, do I get kicked out of heaven?
Cody, the “deathbed repentance” is, by nature, insincere and not repentance.
I sincerely hope you realize this before it is too late for you. After all, only God knows when you will die.