Nice debate going on.  At least people have had the intelligence not to raise the second law of thermodynamics as a barrier to evolution or abiogenesis or I would have had to take my blood pressure pills.

And that would be bad. 

Sarah,

 You said:

"Without God there is:

1. No answer for the origin of the universe that doesn't involve either infinite regression (a logical impossibility) or a violation of known natural laws."

Would you care to elaborate on how God "solves" the "violation of known natural laws" problem, and on how an infinite chain of causes and events is "a logical impossibility"? 

Looks like I left out a quote in my last post. My responses are indented, but mixed in with the quote.

Sara, you were doing really well in the first couple of days of this debate and were holding your own on the materialism vs. supernaturalism and basic assumptions stuff, but then with this reply post it broke down and you went for the bad arguments.

It did take intelligence: human intelligence invented these concepts.

Science and math were not "placed" into the universe anymore than the color blue was "placed" on the daytime sky. "Blue" is a word invented by humans and used to describe that particular wavelength of light. Science and math are human concepts that we use to describe observations in the natural world. The fact that we can backtrack the development of these concepts in our own history shows that we invented them.

But this is probably a strawman reply. I think what you meant is that the fact that the universe conforms to consistent principles implies it was designed? Because that's what comes next:

Post hoc fallacy. There's no evidence of a necessary causal relationship between order and intelligence. Sometimes there's a correlation, but sometimes--like again with crystals--order happens by chance or by natural processes (always at the cost of increased disorder somewhere else incidentally, which answers the thermodynamics objection).

This is an opinion, so I won't address it on logical grounds. I just wanted to throw in my opinion that I don't agree that trying to figure out how things work is more intellectually lazy than saying "God must have done it."

No true Scotsman fallacy.

I also fall into this category--a former evangelical Christian who very reluctantly deconverted after actually reading the bible and not being able to reconcile what it says with what I was being told by the church. My experience of salvation was as real as anybody's.

Yeah, I guess all those thousands of respectable researchers studying these questions for decades didn't take any of the usual freshman biology class precautions against anthropomorphizing and experimental bias. It takes a casual non-scientist theist to really be able to point out these basic, elementary errors that invalidate all the experimental results of primate biology for the last fifty years.

Okay, that's kind of an ad populam argument. But I challenge you to actually look at the experiments done in primate behavior and evaluate for yourself the carefully quantifiable instruments that researchers use to evaluate behavior in empirical terms and then show how such a basic, elementary error could have biased their results. I recommend Melvin Konnor's "The Tangled Wing" as a good starting resource.

The whole "no new information" line of argument is a semantic game based on a misapplication of legitimate information theory (which never says that information can't increase). Spetner and Gitt have defined "new" and "gain" in such a way that their conditions can never be fulfilled, and then defined "information" in tautological terms as something that must originate in intelligence. This is a joke of an argument.

In practice, organisms with genetic material combined in novel ways (mutations) out-compete organisms that lack these structures in well-documented experiments. The nylon-eating bacteria are probably the most famous example, but there are tons more of examples that would answer this claim if the claim weren't defined in such a way as to exclude the way mutations apparently actually work.

The creationist crowd's claims that these mutations don't represent new structures because they're just recombinations of existing elements is like claiming that the word "hyperambulate" (a word I just now made up, meaning "to walk fast&quot is not a new word because it's just a recombination of existing letters of the alphabet. Bogus.

gatogreensleeves:

My point is that since Christianity explains we were made in the image of God, an intelligent Being, we should be able to detect signs of intelligence. Understanding natural laws and mathematics (as SETI explained) are such signs. Now, if I might make an analogy here. If we equate knowledge of math and science with the ability to read a common sign, shouldn't we wonder Who put the sign there in the first place?

Well, that's not really the point of my comment about the Fibanocci sequence. I was thinking more along the lines of why should a mathematical sequence be in something as mundane as flower petals or bee mating rituals?

Like what?

How does detecting evidence of "things not seen" not fit with science? Isn't that what scientists attempt to do when they come up with origin theories?

Furthermore, this verse does not apply to general claims of truth or falsehood. The biblical writer of Hebrews is not asking for people to have "faith" in any unseen entity or concept. The author encouraging faith in a God Who has acted throughout history and in the Person of Jesus Christ. A God Who has revealed Himself over time and proven Himself in prophecy and miraculous events. Whether or not you believe those events occurred does not mean you can alter the meaning of the text to fit some random concept truth or fiction.

I'm sorry, but I'm only speaking from a biblical view point. Since you seem to have some knowledge of scripture, I'm sure you are familiar with 1 John 2:19-20 "These people left our churches because they never really belonged with us; otherwise they would have stayed with us. When they left us, it proved that they do not belong with us. 20 But you [a true Christian] are not like that, for the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and all of you know the truth.." NIV.

I'm not trying to negate your experience, I am simply adhering to what the bible says on the matter.

Why is purpose complex? Does it upset you that you don't know why God made the universe so you like to have a "purely" natural explaination because it makes it easier?

I'm not a Calvinist, I just believe what the bible says. Furthermore, I have no problem being a slave of Christ. The problem is that you freely admitted, by quoting Dawkins, you are a slave to your genes. How is your position more admirable than mine?

Again, this goes back to whether or not it can be proven intelligence or minds are products of matter. In order to prove that, you would have to show that thoughts are identical to a physical process in the brain. I don't think that's been established. You could also say that a thought "causes" a physical process in the brain.

Animals have a form of intelligence, there's no denying that. But that does not mean humans are more evolved animals.

Your question about intermediary intelligence and fossils is interesting. It's sort of like asking you to provide a criteria for testing for an Intelligent Designer.

But if I were to conceive of an intermediary fossil, it would be one in which there is an appendage, with no apparent function, that seems to be morphing into a different appendage. I'm sure you don't like that answer, but it's the only one that could not be addressed with a theological answer.

I remember when the appendix was declared a "vestigial" organ (i.e. not having any function or apparent purpose) and thus touted as proof of "evolution". Since the appendix has now been found to have a very important function, it has been discarded as an evolutionary left-over. So if the criteria for an organ to be considered vestigial is loss of functionality, shouldn't portions of the intermediary fossil be similarly non-functioning?

Because animals have not been shown to become progressively intelligent over time.

Huh?

No, they pretty much blast people who disagree with their pet theories even those of their own kind. I don't see that as being very open minded.

Yes, well I'm always open to hearing theories about why the Egyptians let a group of slaves go without much of a fight. What's your take on that?

I'm sorry you don't agree with God's method of reaching the world.

Jesus came to the Jews first because they were God's chosen people through whom He revealed His law and prophecies. And after Jesus was resurrected, there was a large number of Gentile conversions. So it's not as if people don't have an opportunity to be saved. It's simply that they choose, as you did, not to believe.

Thanks for the reply and interesting thoughts, though.  I will be back tomorrow to check in on any responses.   

 Enjoy your weekend.

Sara,

I've been reading some of your posts here. You are obviously an intelligent person who is at least familiar with the terminology and have a very good grasp of language and are, therefore, able to articulate very well. But there is a fundemantal set of errors underlying your argumentation that I am not quite yet able to articulate myself. I will adress the points in your latest post and perhaps a sufficient critique will emerge--or not, we'll see.

The error here is that you are implying that any information found implies that the information was desgned, intentional, or "put there." This does not necessarily follow.

Paley's classic argument for a designer of a complex object--in his case a watch--has merit for some types of complexity. But the fact that our intelligent ability to recognize patterns, processes, and mechanics behind the behavior/processes of things in the world do not necessarily imply that some intelligence is behond it.

Our brain is a pattern-recognition machine, and it is so for good reason. In order for our ancestors--as well as ourselves!--to avoid harm, we need to be able to detect where harm is. Had our ancestors not had the complex processes to detect sources ofdanger, they would not have reproduced.

Now, the fact that we can use the same pattern-recognition machinery to figure out how to make sense of how the natural world works is merely an accident. And the fact that when we try to assertain the laws or rules that govern things at the very small and very large (quantum and cosmological) should tell us that our brain had little use to understand these things, thus they are awkward concepts taht we don't intuit the same way as we do falling apples or running predators.

The intelligence comes, as said above by another poster (tex-something?), that it is simply our intelligence that imposes the abstraction of intelligence onto the world. That is, we recognize a pattern and thus infer that the pattern itself is indicative of an intelligence on the other side of the pattern. (I might hypothesize, here, that this is a result of the nature of the self-reflective consciousness which tends to also project itself onto the world...but that's another post for later).

I'll let that be a primer for the rest of my replies.

The natural processes that help structure the flower petal is based upon a simple mechanical pattern that happens as a result of a simple process happening over and over again to create a pattern. The fact that we can decribe the resulting structure based upon relationships of space and time using the symbolic logic of mathematics is a testament that even the "mundane" has immense beauty amd the ability to awe. This is why I think nature is so amazing, because of things such as beautiful patterns in flowers.

Why should this be? Because if the natural world, which works accordning to simple relationship rules based upon a small set of constituent parts, didn't show these kinds of patterns then that would be the surprising part.

If you've ever played with any simple programs such as life or similar simulation programs, you can see how a set of simple rules can generate very complex patterns. Dennett's recent work Freedom Evolves talks about this.

The differnece is that things in the natural world are, in principle, seeable. What hebrews seems to be saying, to me anyway, is that we are supposed to believe in things that cannot be seen. Perhaps my interpretation of the text is wrong, but this is what must happen when it comes to faith in the supernatural. The supernatural cannot be seen ir experience in principle because if it could, it would be natural. This is an ontological problem that is based in the interaction of nature and supernature--if any interaction were possible, then they would not be ontologically distinct and thus faith would not be necessary as we could simply use normal naturalistic means to investigate it.

Cosmologists look at the remnants of an evant to theorize abou the nature of the event, which is different than looking at the world an trying to deduce what something that competely transcends it might look like.

That's all well and good, but frankly the evidence for these historical events is lacking, at least insofar as linking any one of them to something supernatural.

I'll skip the lot about the Bible, as I've never been a Christian nor studied it thoroughly, thus my understanding of it is insufficient to discuss it with any authority.

My answer is that all I know is the natural--it's all I can know by definition of how we know and what the natural is (and what the supernatural is supposed to be). There is nothing easy about naturalistic properties of the formation of the universe. But putting God in there certainly doesn't answer any questions.

In fact, I don't know what a god in there does at all to solve anything, even theoretically. It adds nothing.

Actually, the harder problem would be to show how a non-physical anything could interact with a physical anything. If thoughts are not physical, how do they influence, interact with, or have anything at all to do with the brain?

And if they don't, then why does removing parts of the brain, putting certain chemicals in the brain, or otherwise altering the brain change our thoughts?

I guess I can sum up to say that if intelligence is needed to create the laws of the universe, the patterns in the universe, and the universe itself, then why didn't that intelligence, which is a complex pattern itself, need an intelligence to create it.

At some point, complexity, intelligence, etc needed to come about on it's own or to have been there always. In either case, to choose that it must be something supernatural and not something natural is to beg the question. I know this point is made to you, and you've asked why we choose nature over god, the simple answer is this;

we know nature exists. It is all around us. To postulate something transending that is to add something that doesn't explain anything. We don't know it exists but some people infer it due to complexity, intelligence, etc. But if complexity and so forth could conceivably arise without a supernatural creator, then the supernatural creator thesis is unnecessary and ad hoc.

Shaun

I am new to the board, so hi

 First of all, I just watched the debate and I must say that the atheists looked like complete fools. They were disrespectful and rude, and could not even look Ray and Kirk in the face while they were talking to them. Rolled their eyes and made snide comments. Atleast Ray and Kirk were respectful towards their counterparts and had the decency to let Brian and Kelly finish what they were saying. All I heard from Kelly and Brian was sarcasm and just plain hate. They weren't real atheists, as I can tell one when I see one. They were adamantly AGAINST God the whole time, and honestly, I believe God could hit them on the head with a coconut themselves and they wouldn't listen. At the end, Kelly said, "Let's humble our hearts and pray to Poseideon." *sigh* You obviously were not at the debate to search for truth, but to spread your own hateful agenda because obviously, you have no idea what you are talking about.

Second of all, I find it ironic that Kelly mentioned God being a "baby killer" several times, yet Brian was arguing with Todd outside the debate about abortion and how the government wants to take away a woman's "choice". Don't worry, Brian, abortion is alive and well in this country and I don't believe it will stop anytime soon. 4,000 innocents are murdered everyday in the name of choice. Less than 1% are aborted due to the mother's safety. Most are murdered just because the baby is an inconvenience to the mother, father, or both. Now, how is this not selfish? One of the safest places to be, the womb, is now one of the most dangerous. You better thank God you were conceived to parents who chose to give you birth. I will quit now, as I know this subject is overdone as it is.

Third, I highly commend Ray in his closing remarks. Yes, the things of God are as foolishness to those who are perishing. (1 Cor. 1:18) And Brian's closing remarks... Wow. A complete distortion of history and twisting of Scripture. Religion is good, if you take out.. blah blah blah. Pedophile priests? Do you HONESTLY believe that God condones that? Slavery -- in the Bible slavery was NOTHING like it is today and has been in the recent past. It was actually a very helpful to those that had nowhere else to go, and "slaves" or servants were to be treated fairly, housed, clothed, fed, and many times were like a part of the family, like many nannies are today.

The Bible is THE highest selling book today. It was the first book ever printed. Over 150 million are printed every year, that surpasses every other book. Harry Potter, John Grisham, Stephen King.. Can't even come close.

Thousands of prophecies are within the Bible, including 300 that describe the birth, life, and death of Christ. The odds of 300 prophecies describing one person coming true is nearly scientifically impossible. For example, one prophecy in Psalm 22 describes Him being pierced in His hands and feet cleary describing crucifixion. I find this one most fascinating because this prophecy was written nearly 600 years before crucifixion was ever a form of death and punishment. And again, that is only one. The rest are on the Internet to look up. Or of course, in your nearest Bible.

And another thing. I'm not even going to touch on Kelly's statement that Jesus did not even exist. Seriously. A man who never existed is responsible for more national growth, charity, nursing, music, book history, art, than anyone else who ever lived? Why are the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John not considered "history" to you? Ok, I guess I did touch on it.

I honestly have no idea why there is such hostility towards Jesus. I would like for one person to name ONE THING that He taught that was wrong, evil, not good for society.. whatever you want to call it.. One thing that was not about love, forgiveness, mercy, and grace. He forgave the men who were nailing him to the Cross. The soldiers that slashed his skin to pieces. He forgave them even when the look of evil had yet to disappear from their faces. He told us to love the poor, the widows, the orphans, the CHILDREN, the least of these. Yes, Christians do a horrible job of this sometimes (but other times, we do a wonderful job) but that does not take away the effect the words of Jesus have had on the world. Are you telling me a country that would uphold these values (which I believe cannot happen until Jesus returns because like Ray stated, we simply live in a fallen, evil world of which Satan is the god of) would not be a wonderful place to live in?

 And about the comment that you can do whatever you want to do and Jesus will forgive you. This is correct, but in the wrong context. Ok. Say you are a murderer. You have killed someone on purpose. In your jail cell, you realize what you have done was wrong, so you repent (which does NOT just mean saying your sorry, but doing a 180 of sorts.. confessing you were wrong and sinned against God, and so you do not murder again) and ask Christ to forgive you. NO, you cannot go around murdering again because you would not want to. This is one of those things Ray talked about the manifesting of the Holy Spirit, and the experience of conversion. We Christians cannot explain it, but your feelings just CHANGE. The murderer hates his sin, and does not desire to murder anymore, but now desires to help others and love others. If the murderer continues to murder, he probably did not genuinely repent because the fruits of the spirit are love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Murder does not fit in with this description.

I'm not familiar with the bee example, but I do know that things like the shapes of cells in a honycomb or wasp nest or the ratio of the increasing size of spirals in a nautlus shell grow from the fact that those are efficient shapes that make the most economical use of materials--spheres (sea urchins) have maxed out interior space and small surface area, hollow cylinders (plant stems) have flexibility and compression strength. So evolutionary theory would predict that organisms that correspond to those mathematical forms would have a competitive edge.

But it's a chicken and egg question to say that the numbers determined the forms. The forms could just have easily come about because they are efficient, and then humans came along billions of years later and described those forms with mathematics.

Much of cognitive psychology are devoted to this question and there's ample evidence of correspondences between electrochemical brain processes and "thoughts." For example, they can put you into an MRI and ask you particular kinds of questions and know in advance which parts of your brain will light up based on the type of question. The strict answer to this question depends on what you mean by "thought," but so far the evidence indicates that what we experience as mental processes corresponds to consistent, predictable physical brain processes.

Evolutionary theory says that genetic mutations become more frequent in a population as a result of environmental pressures. So you wouldn't expect to find this kind of appendage. The competitive cost of having such an appendage would tend to make the organism go extinct.

For example, humans are sometimes born with an overextended tailbone (which we might be allowed to call a tail). Having such an appendage would be likely to interfere with your chances of reproducing successfully, so it would extinguish pretty quickly in the population, and they are rare.

But junk DNA is this on a small scale. Lab experiments show that bacteria who adapt to novel conditions (like the nylon eating bacteria again) do so sometimes by drawing on unused DNA or psuedo-genes that doesn't serve any function in their normal environment. Since the cost
of carrying around extra DNA is apparently less than the potential benefit if the environment changes, that is something that has been observed.

The transitional forms that are observed in the fossil record are more typically changing from one environmental adaptation to another, not developing random appendages for no reason. For example, ambulocetus natans, which is thought to be a transitional form between terrestrial mammals and whales, has a middle ear structure that is partway between a terrestrial mammal's air-based hearing structure and a whale's water-based hearing structure.

The theory of evolution is scientific truth, determined using the most advanced and rigorous means at our disposal. It is embraced by anyone who is actually interested in the truth about nature. Let's hear your attempt to actually argue against evolution instead of bitch about its strength as a competing theory to "godidit."

Typical projection from a theist. Unlike Christian sheep, atheists are not required to all sing from the same hymnbook and think the same thoughts. You cannot hold up any one atheist's position and tar the rest of atheism with the same brush.

Atheists don't worship anything and the above quote doesn't show that even that atheist does. Dunphy is calling for teachers to be as passionate in their promotion of rationality as theists are in their promotion of faith. Essentially, he's calling for teachers to be in the vanguard AGAINST the primitive practice of worship.

You know damn well that there's no Hell and you are lying when you say that you believe there is. Your rational mind understands that Hell is an incoherent concept, for which there is no evidence. You understand that there is nowhere for Hell to be, and that the hysterical accounts of lakes of fire and demons were invented to scare simple medieval peasents into listening to their priest. You know all this. Quit faking. 

Couldn't have said it better myself.  

Oh, sorry - I must have missed your post.

1) You are correct that statistics will help determine "normalcy." However, YOU never denied that the only difference between some religious beliefs (such as the commonly held thoughts on God that I referenced with the Holy Cat story) and mental illness is the number of people who hold those beliefs. This tacitly implies that you agree with me on some level about the similarity between religious ideas of "skydaddy" watching you and paranoid mental disorders. 

Wouldn't a person who believes in the Holy Cat story be considered possessed of a mental disorder? If the only reason why we think it's "normal" to replace "cat" with "God" is because lots of people do it, then don't we owe it to all those we've diagnosed as mentally ill because they believe in essentially the same God story, but with different characters, to revise their diagnoses? Shouldn't they be considered totally normal because they believe an invisible being hears all their thoughts and is judging their every move and emotion? After all, most people on Earth feel that way, but we've decided as a society to accept that when you feel that "God" is watching and judging you, it's normal; when it's a cat in the heavens, it's abnormal.  Apparently, this decision has been at least somewhat arbitrary, since we will readily label somebody who believes in the Holy Cat as being mentally ill while somebody who replaces "Holy Cat" with "Holy Ghost" is totally a-okay.

Why does that make sense to you?

2) I still maintain that the Middle East conflict is PURELY about religion (and I am referring to the Israel/Palestine conflict here specifically, because it is the longest-running). Why? It's simple. Why are they FIGHTING so viciously over control of the particular land in dispute? Because each "side" believes that God promised it to them. How is that NOT purely about religion? The fact that they want to control some land is pretty much incidental when they both want to control land that they believe God gave to them and only them.

3) Religion is always harmful to the mind because it demands that one throw out logic in order to go along with the rituals. We are expected to be logical and reasonable in EVERY other aspect of our lives. Clearly we, as a human society, see value in reason and logic. But not when it comes to something that is inherently illogical and irrational.

I believe you are specifically taking umbrage with my assertion that even religious moderates harm society as a whole (when one would expect that only religious fundamentalists cause true harm). While it is true that probably no religious moderates are committing acts of suicide bombing or going on any Crusades to destroy those who don't believe the same way they do, moderates still pose a very great danger to society in that they demand unfailing, unquestioning respect for their beliefs. It's easy to give them that, too, when they don't actively do any harm to anybody else. However, if we make a "respect shelter" for those who don't kill and maim in the name of their religion, we quickly make ourselves unable to logically draw the line for fundamentalists.

In other words, if we say, "It's okay that you have totally unsubstantiated beliefs and we will not question, debate, or criticize them because you are moderate," then we make ourselves look like huge hypocrites when we say, "We WILL question, debate, and criticize YOUR beliefs" to fundamentalists who want to do real harm in the name of their religions.

I suppose I could have summed this up more succinctly by saying simply that I share Sam Harris' beliefs about the harmfulness of religion in modern society. If you haven't already read The End of Faith, you might want to pick it up. It's at the very least a well researched, well cited book that deserves a read even if you don't agree, just so you can understand where people like me are coming from.

I am only going to address your first three responses at this time.  As a REV.  I have many responsibilities on the weekend.  I will make my way through your questions and I will restate my positions where I thought there was any misunderstanding.

YOU WROTE:  I think Kelly can be forgiven for her obvious mistake of leaving off the words "in god."  However, her point was sound.  You do not believe in any other god than the one you call God.  Therefore, you are an atheist with regards to the other gods who have been thought up throughout human culture.  "atheist" doesn't mean "no Judeo-Christian God."  It means "no god," period, no matter what you define as "god."  When it comes to Zeus, you ARE an atheist. 

Kelly never postulated that one must be either a polytheist or an atheist.  You are simply stating that to try to shore up your weak-ass argument.

YOU WROTE:  Says you and your bible.  If you assert that all things MUST have been created, then ALL things must have been created.  To say that God is exempt from your rule is just a weak deflection of the logic trap you've sunk yourselves into.  "All things MUST have been created!  Oh, except for God.  That doesn't apply to him."  How can that make sense to you?  Just because YOU have chosen to label God as "the Creator" doesn't mean a thing.  Either all things require creation in order to exist, or all things do not require creation. 

Yeah, but the difference between science and dogma is that science feels free to change its collective mind when enough evidence comes along.  Dogma tries to change the evidence to fit itself. 

Scientists have figured out that there was a beginning to the universe AS WE KNOW IT TODAY.  Scientists also have not yet found any way to disprove the First Law of Thermodynamics, so scientists must assume that all the matter and energy in the universe has always existed - just in a DIFFERENT FORM.  

Carl Sagan was referring to the First Law of Thermodynamics in his Cosmos statement.

And again, Carl Sagan can be forgiven for providing the best information we had in the 1960s even if it turned out to be more complex than that once we learned more.  Again:  The beauty of science.

Neither you nor I can even comprehend this universe before the beginning.  You speculate (at best) with science and I have faith in God.  I do find it interesting that the first book of the Bible states "In the beginning" – and yet it took science up until the 60’s to come to the same conclusion.  The information was right in front of their face the whole time. 

Just curious, which statement is dogmatic???

1. I cannot prove the existence of God, but God does exist.
2. You cannot prove that God does not exist, but God does not exist.

1) You are correct that statistics will help determine "normalcy."

However, YOU never denied that the only difference between some religious beliefs (such as the commonly held thoughts on God that I referenced with the Holy Cat story) and mental illness is the number of people who hold those beliefs.

This tacitly implies that you agree with me on some level about the similarity between religious ideas of "skydaddy" watching you and paranoid mental disorders. 

Wouldn't a person who believes in the Holy Cat story be considered possessed of a mental disorder? If the only reason why we think it's "normal" to replace "cat" with "God" is because lots of people do it, then don't we owe it to all those we've diagnosed as mentally ill because they believe in essentially the same God story, but with different characters, to revise their diagnoses?

Shouldn't they be considered totally normal because they believe an invisible being hears all their thoughts and is judging their every move and emotion? After all, most people on Earth feel that way, but we've decided as a society to accept that when you feel that "God" is watching and judging you, it's normal; when it's a cat in the heavens, it's abnormal.  Apparently, this decision has been at least somewhat arbitrary, since we will readily label somebody who believes in the Holy Cat as being mentally ill while somebody who replaces "Holy Cat" with "Holy Ghost" is totally a-okay.

Why does that make sense to you?

[DUG853] NO, "arguement" from me regarding this 'comment'...

[/DUG853]

2)  I still maintain that the Middle East conflict is PURELY about religion (and I am referring to the Israel/Palestine conflict here specifically, because it is the longest-running). 

Why? 

It's simple. 

Why are they FIGHTING so viciously over control of the particular land in dispute? 

Because each "side" believes that God promised it to them. 

How is that NOT purely about religion? 

The fact that they want to control some land is pretty much incidental when they both want to control land that they believe God gave to them and only them.

[DUG853]

Actually, (IMO) there are some BIG differences between "Judaism" (Orthordox) and the "Zionism" that had been imposed upon that region, there was very-little to NO 'friction' between "Jews-and-Muslims" BEFORE the imposition of a "State-of-Israel" (AGAINST (ORTHODOX-JUDAISM) "biblical&quot-(gods' supposed-mandate regarding the 'chosen-people))

Does anyone REALLY want to know-?

Ask a Rabbi-!-!   

Here's a google-search about Anti-Zionist Orthodox-Jews-!

http://tinyurl.com/26ylwu

Therefore, (IMO) it really is NOT the 'religion' of "Judaism" that had DEMANDED a "STATE", because it really is completely AGAINST the mandate of their (so-called) "god" ,.... it is something else completely-!

However, it most certainly underscores how a concept of 'religion' will 'most-certainly' be used for 'ulterior-motives', IMO

[/DUG853]

3)  Religion is always harmful to the mind because it demands that one throw out logic in order to go along with the rituals. 

We are expected to be logical and reasonable in EVERY other aspect of our lives. 

 Clearly we, as a human society, see value in reason and logic. 

 But not when it comes to something that is inherently illogical and irrational.

I believe you are specifically taking umbrage with my assertion that even religious moderates harm society as a whole (when one would expect that only religious fundamentalists cause true harm). 

While it is true that probably no religious moderates are committing acts of suicide bombing or going on any Crusades to destroy those who don't believe the same way they do, moderates still pose a very great danger to society in that they demand unfailing, unquestioning respect for their beliefs. 

It's easy to give them that, too, when they don't actively do any harm to anybody else. 

However, if we make a "respect shelter" for those who don't kill and maim in the name of their religion, we quickly make ourselves unable to logically draw the line for fundamentalists. 

In other words, if we say, "It's okay that you have totally unsubstantiated beliefs and we will not question, debate, or criticize them because you are moderate," then we make ourselves look like huge hypocrites when we say, "We WILL question, debate, and criticize YOUR beliefs" to fundamentalists who want to do real harm in the name of their religions.

I suppose I could have summed this up more succinctly by saying simply that I share Sam Harris' beliefs about the harmfulness of religion in modern society.

If you haven't already read The End of Faith, you might want to pick it up. 

It's at the very least a well researched, well cited book that deserves a read even if you don't agree, just so you can understand where people like me are coming from.

[DUG853]

I also have NO 'complaint/s' about the previous comment.

[/DUG853]

I would like to jump in and correct several fallacies that you stated about the Arab-Israeli wars.

1) This was not a religious war until the 1990's, after the Oslo Accords were signed, and Hamas made it a point to introduce suicide bombers and religious motifs to the war. Arafat adopted those motifs in the early 2000's, but let's be honest, he would have qualified as a borderline atheist by the standards you employ.

2) This is a war over land. A small strip of land, barely the size of New Jersey. Why fight over it? Because the Jews have no where else to go, and the Arabs refuse to allow the Jews to return to their ancestral home. The war began in 1920, when the British took over the Mandate from the League of Nations, and the Arabs started to riot. The British refused to protect the Jews, so they formed Haganah, Etzel and Lechi, and began to defend themselves. In 1937 the Peel Commission advocated dividing the land into two, with the Arabs getting the bigger slice. (75% of the mandate, namely everything east of the Jordan river had already been turned into the Hashemite kingdom of Jordan). The Jewish Agency accepted the Peel partition, the Arabs said no and continued to riot. So the Brits outlawed Jewish immigration into Palestine, sending hundreds of thousands of Jews who might otherwise have been spared back to their deaths at the hands of the Nazis, Yemach Shemam.

3) In response to the White Paper, the Jewish underground rebelled against the Brits, and in 1947 the UN voted to partition the land. Again the Jews accepted, and the Arabs said no. This time, the Brits decided to leave, and in 1948 David Ben Gurion (who would also meet your definition of an atheist) declared independance. Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq responded by invading. My grandfather, OBM, a Holocaust survivor barely in the country a year, fought in that war. He was not a trained soldier, his unit was poorly armed, yet the Israelis won. That's meets my definition of a miracle by the way.

4) Forty years ago, Gamal abdel Nasser (another pesky atheist in a supposedly religious war) blockaded the Straits of Tiran, and evicted UN peace-keepers from the Sinai. Israel responded to these acts of war by attacking (but only after Israeli PM Levi Eshkol dithered for days) and wiping out the Egyptian air force. After six days of fighting Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq (I'm not sure if Lebanon took part in '67) Israel was three time's it's size, holding Sinai, the Golan, the West Bank, and most importantly Jerusalem. Once again that meets my miracle definition.

Anyway, that's just a few facts, and my POV. Try to read a few books about the middle east, especially anything by Benny Morris (but Ilan Pappe. He's the worst historian, new or old, in Israel).

There may be a lot of ID''ers who laugh at them but think about all the new born again christians who were going to pay their hard earned money they very possibly couldn't afford  to purchase their idiot witnessing tactics.   I have no doubt Brian and Kelly helped those new innocent victims to be more wiser by watching this debate and hearing Brian and Kelly bring them down with intelligent questions, common sense, facts and their honesty.  I don't see that Brian and Kelly were being conceited in fact I saw them as actually debating whereas the two christians weren't,  They gave testimony and preaching along with stupidity.  But you see we see their stupidity but many new christians, they call baby christians, would not think to question the way Brian and Kelly did. 

I don't see Brian and Kelly as trying to score points, what I saw in my mind was the audience was cheering their scoring points.  Most of the christians in the audience were quiet IMO because they are taught to be that way in church, given the fact that ray and kirk did all tesitmony and preaching more than anything else it was expected of the christian audience to be quiet and that may attribute to their appearing to be polite in thier minds in my mind they were just quiet little obedient sheeple. 

 I have been witnessed to by so many christians who use the same nonsense ray and kirk did and I tell them they wasted their money.  The evangelicals they purchased the books, videos from didn't research any other possible answers, they never thought it through. They use this witnessing baloney on people when they least expect to have those questions asked. They are blindsided on the street, work, shopping, in the hospital, at funerals, etc.  BTW thanks again Brian for pointing out a person doesn't have to be a christian to be a good person.

 One last thing what really got me about kirk was the half truth he told in his testimony about how he was an atheist.  I saw two tv interviews years ago with kirk saying "you have to have a lobobomy to believe in god" I quote it because that is exactly how I remember what he said.  He later did another interview regretting what he said in the first interview and explained how the evangelical christians & ray comofort got a hold of him and it was after being proselytized - brainwashed by them that he did the questioning god in his car.  He left out a lot of info. and truth about how he was changed from being an atheist to christian.  They are hiding that fact.  I remember those videos.  They won't admit no one beieves in the god until they are brainwashed by being told about the made up god.  I'd like to catch him blindsided and ask him if he ever told a lie and bring up those interviews.  If I could remember what talk show it was on I might be able to find it.  Though I wouldn't be surprised if they had the copies.  I wonder what happens to old videos, recorded tv programs?

Just my two cents  sorry if this was long.LOL.

I have two questions for Sapient and Kelly. I am honestly curious and open.

1. Where did the first atom come from? Where did the first shred of existence come from? Did it come from nothing (Did it just happen?)? Because if it did, then there is no other alternative than to accept that it was created. Right? If there is any other logical conclusion as to where that came from then I am open to hear it.

2. This isn't scientific, but why the blatant disrespect (especially Kelly)? The two men you debated against were respectful and kind and you treated them like scum. What justifies that behavior? Atheist friends of mine were disgusted at the debate because the only reason ya'll "beat" the WOTM was because ya'll were louder than they were.