RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (Full Version)

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blessedinnyc -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 12:00:12 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: OLEEguacamole
didn't say not to think. said math wasn't part of figuring angel visits out. gave my logical, based on who God says He is, reason.

And I am giving the logical reason that if you see an angel, chances are you need your vision checked.

Perhaps here is a simpler argument:

Assume that three or four people every year actually get a visit from an angel (if there were any more, scientific journals would be covering it.) Hundreds of thousands of people claim to see angels every year. Therefore, by the pigeon-hole principal, the vast majority of people who claim to see angels didn't actually see angels.

quote:

I'm sure it didn't pass the logic test for Abraham either.

So next time someone tells you that an angel told him to tell you to take your son up a mountain and kill him, what will your response be?



rawr.ben -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 12:11:32 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: blessedinnyc

quote:

I'm sure it didn't pass the logic test for Abraham either.

So next time someone tells you that an angel told him to tell you to take your son up a mountain and kill him, what will your response be?

What difference does my response make?

Either an angel actually told him, or it didn't. The same with Abraham.

I mean, yes, we have to use discernment, but do you think you would have believed Abraham when he came down from the mountain and his kid started telling the story about how dad almost killed him?

Defying logic, commons sense, and odds does not disqualify something from being true.



sirwintery -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 12:24:20 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Limulus


Something else was brought to my attention. Our bible study leader said that people were seeing angels in physical form in their church. I know that Satan can masquerade as an angel of light. I can only conclude that the doctrine they teach, is not of God. As for what these angels are, that's a guess too and I don't really want to find out.



It would be a mistake for anyone to think that to "see" an angel shows an endorsement from God. Too frequently an "angel" appearance coincides with teachers going off the deep end.



blessedinnyc -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 1:12:24 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: 1love1God1way
What difference does my response make?

Either an angel actually told him, or it didn't. The same with Abraham.

I mean, yes, we have to use discernment, but do you think you would have believed Abraham when he came down from the mountain and his kid started telling the story about how dad almost killed him?

Defying logic, commons sense, and odds does not disqualify something from being true.

The question is whether logic is allowed to be a check on faith. If it isn't, you should immediate do whatever you're told without thinking about it.

quote:

It would be a mistake for anyone to think that to "see" an angel shows an endorsement from God. Too frequently an "angel" appearance coincides with teachers going off the deep end.

LOL, EXACTLY.



OLEEguacamole -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 1:38:26 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: blessedinnyc

quote:

ORIGINAL: OLEEguacamole
didn't say not to think. said math wasn't part of figuring angel visits out. gave my logical, based on who God says He is, reason.

And I am giving the logical reason that if you see an angel, chances are you need your vision checked.

Perhaps here is a simpler argument:

Assume that three or four people every year actually get a visit from an angel (if there were any more, scientific journals would be covering it.) Hundreds of thousands of people claim to see angels every year. Therefore, by the pigeon-hole principal, the vast majority of people who claim to see angels didn't actually see angels.




it's false logic.



blessedinnyc -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 1:52:09 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: OLEEguacamole
it's false logic.

No, it is correct until proven false. Please provide your reasoning for why it is false.



earthless -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 1:55:40 PM)

Good grief.



OLEEguacamole -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 1:56:54 PM)

it's based on a faulty premise. that God has a certain number of angel visits that He sends and that is is the same and will stay the same.

you have no idea how many actual angel visits there are in a year. there might be millions or one dozen. you have nothing to base the odds math on. you also can't say with any certainty that the current rate will remain the same. it could be drastically different tomorrow.



earthless -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 2:02:48 PM)

There are fifteen purple elephants on Jupiter. They are located on a mountain near a pink river that contains boxes of Corn Pops.

It's all true until proven false!!



raivyne -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 2:03:03 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: earthless

Good grief.


Amen

quote:

ORIGINAL: OLEEguacamole

it's based on a faulty premise. that God has a certain number of angel visits that He sends and that is is the same and will stay the same.

you have no idea how many actual angel visits there are in a year. there might be millions or one dozen. you have nothing to base the odds math on. you also can't say with any certainty that the current rate will remain the same. it could be drastically different tomorrow.


and Amen!


As I said, if I see an angel why would I run around telling the scientific community? Many in the scientific community think I'm nuts for believing in God in the first place. [8|] Its not like I would need publicity, or even validation. I wouldn't be surprised if others felt the same way.



blessedinnyc -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 2:09:42 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: earthless

There are fifteen purple elephants on Jupiter. They are located on a mountain near a pink river that contains boxes of Corn Pops.

It's all true until proven false!!

Did you provide any reasoning for this view?

I've made a logical statement:

quote:

Assume that three or four people every year actually get a visit from an angel (if there were any more, scientific journals would be covering it.) Hundreds of thousands of people claim to see angels every year. Therefore, by the pigeon-hole principal, the vast majority of people who claim to see angels didn't actually see angels.

Please explain the flaw in my reasoning.

quote:

it's based on a faulty premise. that God has a certain number of angel visits that He sends and that is is the same and will stay the same.

If an extraordinary event happens more than a few times in a year, the scientific community takes notice.

Therefore, by modus tollens, if the scientific community has not taken notice of a certain extraordinary event, it probably doesn't happen more than a few times a year.

quote:

Amen

"AMEN! IT IS GOD'S WILL."
-The crowd responding to Pope Urban II's announcement of a second crusade, which ended when a bunch of children crusaders were sold as slaves to the Turks by Italian church officials.

Events like these are part of the reason that Christians need to use reason.



earthless -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 2:21:49 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: blessedinnyc

quote:

ORIGINAL: earthless

There are fifteen purple elephants on Jupiter. They are located on a mountain near a pink river that contains boxes of Corn Pops.

It's all true until proven false!!

Did you provide any reasoning for this view?

I've made a logical statement:



Yes, the reasoning is that I see them every night from my bedroom window.



blessedinnyc -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 2:24:14 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: earthless

Yes, the reasoning is that I see them every night from my bedroom window.

Ah, this is an example of a test that is not repeatable by all other individuals. I didn't see them from my bedroom window last night.

However, my logic is- unless you are claiming there is a flaw in my reasoning:

quote:

Assume that three or four people every year actually get a visit from an angel (if there were any more, scientific journals would be covering it.) Hundreds of thousands of people claim to see angels every year. Therefore, by the pigeon-hole principal, the vast majority of people who claim to see angels didn't actually see angels.




One of the things that I was taught as an Algorithms, CS Theory, and Proofs TA was that I am not to say a proof is wrong unless I provide an explanation as to why the logic in that proof is incorrect. So if somebody does a Proof By Induction but doesn't include a base case, I can state that the proof is wrong because the reasoning in the induction is flawed.

So where do you disagree with my argument? I think the only part that's really debatable is the threshhold at which scientists start taking notice of angels' visits or whether they have taken notice.



earthless -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 2:25:51 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: blessedinnyc
Ah, this is an example of a test that is not repeatable by all other individuals. I didn't see them from my bedroom window last night.



Maybe you just don't have enough faith.

Maybe those elephants are angels!!



blessedinnyc -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 2:30:42 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: earthless
Maybe you just don't have enough faith.

Maybe those elephants are angels!!

Exactly. Maybe if I try hard enough and stop being skeptical, the clouds will transform into angels and purple elephants! (Sorry, it took me a post or two to get your point.)



blessedinnyc -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 2:34:39 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: raivyne
As I said, if I see an angel why would I run around telling the scientific community? Many in the scientific community think I'm nuts for believing in God in the first place. [8|] Its not like I would need publicity, or even validation. I wouldn't be surprised if others felt the same way.

Well again, if the angel was physically there, you wouldn't need to run around telling the scientific community- they would plenty of opportunities to stumble on these angels accidentally if they were really coming as often as you think.

quote:

you have no idea how many actual angel visits there are in a year. there might be millions or one dozen. you have nothing to base the odds math on. you also can't say with any certainty that the current rate will remain the same. it could be drastically different tomorrow.

If there were a million angel visits, scientists would be taking these visits much more seriously, right?



raivyne -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 3:31:07 PM)

quote:

Well again, if the angel was physically there, you wouldn't need to run around telling the scientific community- they would plenty of opportunities to stumble on these angels accidentally if they were really coming as often as you think.


right... because angels always appear in full view of as many people as possible so that everyone will believe they are really there.

/sarc off

I am only disagreeing with your quantification of an event one cannot possibly measure to any degree of certainty without having omisience. I'm not saying I think there are millions of angel sightings all over the world. Just that there is no way to know for certain how plentiful or rare they are. You can throw out as many latin terms as you like and it doesn't change that.

FYI using modus tollens doesn't automatically mean your deduction is true. You must first determine if P and Q can both be + or - and if so you must then determine that P can only be true if Q is also true. I don't believe there is any way for you to ascertain that P can only be true if Q is true in this situation. Perhaps you have another syllogism?

The scientific community can't take notice of something it is not aware of. There are perhaps thousands of species in the deepest depths of the sea that have yet to be discovered. We've never seen them. Does that mean they do not exist and are not plentiful? Nope. In fact, every so often you hear about a new species being discovered (and not even just at the bottom of the ocean) that has apparently been in existance for quite a while.

If it makes you feel more cozy to limit the abilities and acts of God into what the scientific community can and/or does study, then by all means have at it. I'll continue to believe in miracles (and angels).



phosadaud -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 4:28:53 PM)

Yep. I don't think any one of us here think anytime someone says they saw an angel that automatically means it WAS an angel and it WAS from God. I'm a born skeptic - self-described doubting Thomas. However, I also believe that if something WAS real and from the Lord and we automatically dismiss it or say it must be from the devil and it really IS from God, we have just sinned against our brothers and sisters AND the Lord. So, I tend to be cautious in making a judgement either way and use other ways to try and deduce if there could be credibility to someone's claim.

Simply saying a church had worship and some people saw angels is not enough for me to say without reservation they must all be mad or something demonic is going on NOR for me to say that God is doing something amazing in that church. Either could be true - or even something less innocuous. I am not willing to call something that COULD be from the Lord demonic or mass histeria simply because it seems pretty wild to me. So, I withhold my judgement, either way (you will note that not once have I said those folks seeing angels really were seeing something from the Lord), and try to be open to what the Lord would say (not what a mass equation or logic would say).

So, test everything, evaluate all against Scripture, remember to keep the Main thing - the Main thing and give God all the glory whether we understand what He's doing or not.



rcjames -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 4:29:04 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: blessedinnyc
Exactly. Maybe if I try hard enough and stop being skeptical, the clouds will transform into angels and purple elephants! (Sorry, it took me a post or two to get your point.)


Do you really not believe the Scriptures when it talks about the interacrtion between angels and man?

Or do you just not believe the Bible at all?

Thanks
RC



earthless -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 4:39:05 PM)

RC,

Are you asking blessed or me?



blessedinnyc -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 4:44:12 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: rcjames
Do you really not believe the Scriptures when it talks about the interacrtion between angels and man?

Or do you just not believe the Bible at all?

Thanks
RC

Yes, I do believe the Bible about when it talks about the interaction between angels and man. However, I also believe that, by the pigeon-hole principle, 99.8% of "angel" visits are falsehoods. I am not sure that God sent his angels even in biblical times as much as people claim he sends them now.

When John closed the canon, God was saying that he didn't really have any more scripture level revelations to make. That meant that the number of visits and other miracles probably decreased at least a bit, right?



OLEEguacamole -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 4:53:40 PM)

certainly there must be a formula for calculating the decrease in angel visits from the closing of the canon till now.



raivyne -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 4:54:35 PM)

I guess I fail to see how Dirichlet's Box applies to this situation. If true sightings and untrue sightings are your two pigeon holes there is still no way to determine how many pigeons are in each box. i.e. how many sightings are true and how many are false. You would have to know how many pigeons are in one of the boxes to determine how many are in the other. Even then you would have to know the sum of the pigeons in both boxes. You know neither variable, nor the sum.

p.s. 99% of statistics are made up.



rcjames -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 4:56:40 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: blessedinnyc
Yes, I do believe the Bible about when it talks about the interaction between angels and man. However, I also believe that, by the pigeon-hole principle, 99.8% of "angel" visits are falsehoods. I am not sure that God sent his angels even in biblical times as much as people claim he sends them now.

When John closed the canon, God was saying that he didn't really have any more scripture level revelations to make. That meant that the number of visits and other miracles probably decreased at least a bit, right?


Oh I see; Scripture is overridden by your logic, reason, and opinion.

Now that is sad.

How many angels are there blessedinnyc?

Thanks
RC



blessedinnyc -> RE: Charismatics - seeing angels in their church (12/3/2008 4:56:51 PM)

quote:

ORIGINAL: phosadaud

Yep. I don't think any one of us here think anytime someone says they saw an angel that automatically means it WAS an angel and it WAS from God. I'm a born skeptic - self-described doubting Thomas. However, I also believe that if something WAS real and from the Lord and we automatically dismiss it or say it must be from the devil and it really IS from God, we have just sinned against our brothers and sisters AND the Lord. So, I tend to be cautious in making a judgement either way and use other ways to try and deduce if there could be credibility to someone's claim.

I am not saying these things didn't happen. I am just saying that it is 500,000 times more likely that they didn't happen (and possibly 20 times more likely that said person could benefit from professional help, along with 5 times more likely that the person will get struck by lightning in the next five years). And this notion that God sends angels to all of these different pentecostal services where people are falling on the ground in convulsions and speaking in tongues seems a little unlikely to me.

quote:

Simply saying a church had worship and some people saw angels is not enough for me to say without reservation they must all be mad or something demonic is going on NOR for me to say that God is doing something amazing in that church. Either could be true - or even something less innocuous. I am not willing to call something that COULD be from the Lord demonic or mass histeria simply because it seems pretty wild to me.

I'm not saying that this IS demonic or mass hysteria- I am just saying that it is PROBABLY not real. Being the rationalist I am, I agree that the odds of it being demonic in a church that acknowledges Jesus as Lord and savior are probably even slimmer than the odds of it being a real angel.

quote:

So, I withhold my judgement, either way (you will note that not once have I said those folks seeing angels really were seeing something from the Lord), and try to be open to what the Lord would say (not what a mass equation or logic would say).

I withhold judgement, but not generic probability. I work in finance, and my life revolves around probability. I can't say for certain that GM will need federal assistance, but I am willing to put the odds at 95%. Naturally, I don't want to have the GM CEO as my counterparty (he has more information than me), but given the information I do have, the odds appear to be 95%.



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