Boy, Howdy!
Offline I'm new to this sort of group, so please be patient should I deviate from what is expected of me. My name is David Henson and I am a theist. I'm always looking for good discussion and have to admit that the argumentative side of me as well as an appreciation of at least some knowledge on the subject of the Bible leads me more often than not to the atheist Rather than the theist realm of discussion and debate.
I should probably point out how I may differ from what the atheists tend to expect from a theist. I was raised an atheist and in an attempt to debunk the Bible I began to study it carefully and became a believer. I hate organized religion. Religion always transmogrifies the original teachings. Taoism or Christianity (2 Timothy 4:3-4) I have read many "sacred" texts from various religions. The Dhammapada, Four Noble Truths, Analects of Confucius, Bhagavad-Gita, Quran, Pirque Aboth, Nihongi, Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, etc.
My beliefs could be most accurately described as being very familiar (though not completely in line with) the Jehovah's Witnesses, because they know their Bible pretty good and removed all of the pagan influences. Hell, cross, trinity, immortal soul, Christmas, Easter, rapture, etc.
Since July I have been working on a website called The Pathway Machine which is a response to the Skeptic's Annotated Bible.
I hope we can have some stimulating conversation and that you are not too put off by my appalling sense of grammar.
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Quit your whining, science fiction boy! That's evolution. Didn't you see it on the history channel? Soon your great, great, great, great, grandchildren will be electronic spiders. Bitter for having wasted a part of your life duped by dogma, but apparently having learned nothing, judging by your blind adherence to quasi science - the other religion. Out of the frying pan into the fire. The dogs gnashing their teeth on the outside of paradise eternal will not evolve into higher life forms! Repent this foolishness!
You might want to look into that, he knew the scripture was backing him up. You see, Galileo was, not only a scientist - who didn't find it necessary to create a ridiculous bullshit 200 year old dead theory in order to think for himself and come up with something better.
Imagine their surprise when they figure out Planet Of The Apes isn't real!
To be perfectly honest with you, I don't think you are the "bad guys" yet. I think you are religious idiots. Same as Christians.
I wonder why it keeps posting double!
It's starting to become clearer why you've been banned from the past sites you've been on. I still don't foresee us banning you, it's just really clear why others would've banned you in the past.
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All of them used logical fallacies as justification for disbelieving evolution and we listed them. What more do you want? The simple fact is the quotes you listed are so ridiculous we did not feel the need to elaborate, because anyone who has ever taken the least interest in science, logic or philosophy would have needed nothing more.
Do you want us to go into detail? I can if you want. I'm pretty sure you want to keep your head up your rectum though.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
Thank you for your demonstration of utter ignorance. The only one in this thread who should be ashamed is you. Thank you so much for your vacuous emotional reaction WITHOUT spending any length of time here.
YOU got us "you people" all figured out in 71 posts? THAT'S AMAZING considering how long this board has been here and the combined education and the diversity of education on this site.
Sorry guys, we are all wrong, lets just bow to this person because of his emotional reaction.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
Ok, thanks . Thanks for only only calling us idiots. The "idiots" on this board have a diverse range of expertise and scope of education and the are not all the same or to the same degree. BUT collectively there are enough people here that where one might lack a certain spot another can fill in.
AND we know more about the bible and it's history than most average believers and Sunday worshipers. I'd advise you not to call us "idiots" unless you yourself want to be schooled and embarrassed.
What exactly, for example makes us the same as Christians who buy claims of virgin births and zombie god's surviving rigor mortis? How can I be an "idiot" for accepting that it takes TWO sets of DNA to contribute to a zygote and beings with no DNA or penis or sperm are absurd claims? It takes a rocket scientist to reject that?
Please tell us exactly HOW the earth was made in 6 days according to that convoluted pile of tripe when geologists put the age of the earth at BILLIONS of years. Do I need to know every word of every Superman comic book to know that it is made up?
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
HOLY FUCKING CRAP BATMAN! I need to get off auto pilot, slow down and lay off the coffee. I knew that Hambi lurched her in the right direction but I didn't know the switch had become complete. How did I miss and or forget this momentous event?
You're next, you just don't know it yet. Our cookies are made with the magic of elves sprinkled with the meat of barbecued kittens.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
And babies. Don't forget the tender baby flesh.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
You would think that after being kicked from a few unrelated boards, someone might start thinking, "Wow, maybe it is *me* that's an idiot, not the rest of the world!"
But I guess then they wouldn't be an idiot.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
No no no no, call me a rebel atheist, but even I draw the line at babies. Kittens are as far as I will go. I know I know, this board is going to revoke my membership and atheist card. It is so hard being a minority amongst minorities.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
You'll get my baby flesh when you pry it from my sick, twisted hands. Besides, kittens are all hairy. Yuck!
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
There seems to be no point in attempting to discuss science with you at this time - not only are you ignorant of science, but you seem to be unwilling to further your knowledge or understanding of it.
But I am still curious about your belief.
As a theist, what evidence do you have to justify your belief in a god - and why the Christian God?
You can't be serious. You are implying that research institutes are the equivalent of religious organisations and you're quoting a tract as proof of the "ridiculous, dogmatic evolution". Wow. You really just came here to tell us what you think, didn't you?
Let's just agree to disagree mate, and talk about music or chicks or something.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
It's true you don't flatter christians but it is becoming clear why. You, unlike they, are mysteriously enlightened with a greater understanding of exactly the same text. Apparently their modest strength is delusion lite. Almost everything you insist is your subjective conviction supported by holes in actual research. The fact is that aside from the thorny issue of abiogenesis, evolution is a provable fact. If you want to know more about it don't read a bloody 6-page tract written by a theologian. Go to your public library and read something written by people who've spent the last 40 years on their hands and knees in a desert searching for fossils with a toothbrush.
Oh - and yelling at us won't make you one of the 140,000. You are going to die like the rest of us.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
The form of this argument follows:
P1 - Life is complex, enormously and unfathomably so.
P2 - Complex things require intelligence in order to exit.
C - Life requires an intelligent origin.
This is blatantly incorrect. First, there is no valid reason to expect that something complex must require an intelligent origin. This is a fallacy of affirming the consquent. Another way to present the argument is in this form:
If life is complex, then it must have an intelligent origin. Life is complex. Therefor life must have an intelligent origin.
The failure in this type of fallacy is that the conclusion can be false regardless of the truth of the premises. In the case of this argument the first premise is at least true. The second premise is not. The argument is invalid and unsound and therefor the conclusion is incorrect.
Now, life can, indeed, be conceeded to be complex by a number of measures. Scientific scrutiny, however, has not defeated the theory of evolution by any account and has rather strengthened it. Lonning makes a serious error by presuming the Bible to be prima facie true and to be an alternative explanation on the evidence for evolution. It is not. Very simply, and obviously, evolution does not agree with the Bible because the Bible is not a book of science nor is it a book which contains even an inkling of an alternative to evolution from which a theory could be wrought to explain the evidence collected thus far.
Lonning also showcases a bizzare sort of ignorance when he lapses into cosmology and misapplies the Anthropic principle and performs another fallacy wherein he concludes that the universe is 'perfectly adjusted' so that life can exist on Earth. In fact, it's the other way 'round; the universe is not the way it is so that life can exist on Earth. It requires a strange reversal of the logic in order to conclude that the universe exists the way it does to support life.
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
I am implying just that as the qualified scientists did in the article.
Music I can discuss, but I'm a non-practicing homosexual so chicks are right out.
If you don't or can't grasp that ultimately complexity does arise from simpler things, like beautiful crystals of limestone forming in a cave from the formless trickle of water containing a little dissolve mineral, or an amorphous cloud of gas collapsing to form our sun and planetary system, or at a larger scale, the whole Milky Way Galaxy. Even the growth of a giant tree from a tiny seed demonstrates that complex structure can emerge spontaneously from something which could not remotely contain enough information to define the tree in any detail.
On an abstract level, a few simple lines of math generate the truly infinite complexity of the Mandelbrot Set.
The evolutionary concept is so basic you are obliged to show why it could not work.
We know, from observation, that genetic materlal (DNA) is subject to copying errors such as deletion and duplication of single elements of whole sequences, or swapping between different strands. Strands can join or split. We habe one less strand of DNA than chimps, which looks like it was formed by two strands becoming joined.
IOW, mutations happen at measurable rates. There is no limit to what one sequence can eventually change to, in a sequence of simple mutations, so no magical macro/micro evolution divide. Some mutations will be harmful, many neutral, some beneficial - which in an evolutionary context, means will tend to give rise to more thriving offspring. That's it. Everything there has been directly observed. That is all that is required to allow evolution by natural selection to occur.
The only remaining argument is statistical, probabilities. How long would it really take for the diversity of life to evolve from those first self-replicatiing molecules of RNA, which it has been recently shown to be able to form arise naturally under the kind of conditions that could easily have been present on the early Earth.
A twenty year experiment with a colony of bacteria has shown how novel abilities can evolve repeatedly in that time-scale. Significant evolutionary changes have been documented in the wild in decade time-scales. These observations and other suggest that remote possibilities can easily become inevitabilities when we go from decades to billions of years....
The evidence in support of evolution simply keeps growing.
Anyone with a professed lack of understanding and interest in science is rendering himself ridiculous in dismissing with any confidence such a well-justified theory.
You are simply not qualified to offer an opinion.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
As admin of atheist forums, I felt it appropriate to comment on your assertion that we aren't capable of "open minded debate". Perhaps you should put your mind back about a year ago, when you went by the name "Daystar" and debated with us perfectly well for around 300 posts. Then of course, you started thinking the rules and common courtesy were somehow above you. The insults, the ignoring of people who spent time writing rebuttals to your points, etc, etc. We banned you because you weren't the sort of person we wanted on our forums; we have many theist members, and most of them are the honest, open kind who love to talk about their beliefs and debate concepts. You simply aren't one of them.
Of course, once you were banned the first time, you came back a few days later under the name "Raymond" and spammed the PM system with links to your new forum that you created because of our "closed mindedness".
As to why you were banned a couple of months ago, it's because we saw the link to your forums, made the connection, and banned you for another violation of our rules: having multiple accounts (especially when two others were banned).
By the way, my apologies for posting this as my first post here. I just saw the thread as one linking back to atheistforums.org and read David's comment. There are two sides to every story of course, and I felt this one needed telling.
You petty little prick. If there is any such thing as an open minded atheist all they would have to do is go over your list of banned people and about 99% of them are believers. As long as a believer really has nothing to say about God and the Bible and are potentials for converting to the dogma of science and Atheism you would allow them to hang around, otherwise they are banned for the same reason over and over again.
The record is there for anyone to see. When you banned me you said it was because of spam. You hadn't quite perfected your bullshit but it is clear to anyone who looks at your list that there is a pattern. You are ass achingly stupid, so much so that you don't realize this. The name Raymond was created before you banned me because I could tell the way you and a couple others were acting that you were threatened by my debating abilities. I created the new account and figured if you banned me I could come back long enough to do what I did before you banned me again, rightfully so in the later case.
When you banned me there was a big debate - most people there didn't want me banned and agreed with me that it was wrong. You banned me for "spam" which was, in fact, two posts I made in a row reviewing the first two chapters of Richard Dawkins book "The Blind Watchmaker." You said that I should have read the entire book and then posted my review, so desperate is your need to convert everyone to your own narrow minded ignorance. So fragile is your petty ego, easily threatened.
Shortly before you banned me you asked and were granted permission to post my article on hell on your blog, so your lame ass little story of all theist posting about 300 posts and then behaving badly because they can't convert anyone is a fucking lie. You are an idiot and a liar.
The last time you banned me you were right in doing so and I knew that from the start.
Just don't backslide David. The first few threads you had on RSS you were a total prick, but your debating style has matured since then. I still don't agree with you, but at least I can stomach reading the stuff you write now.
Can't we all just get along? :P
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
I can be a total prick but I can be a nice guy as well. I am fair, though, even when I'm a prick. I think that when I came here I was more of a prick then when I went to Adrian's place. I've gotten to where I can't do this too much or I become more and more of a prick. The last couple of days I've been posting over at JREF and there you have to be nice. I would rather get at least somewhat down and dirty. There was an atheist there argueing with me and he had to edit what he called meanness and he apologized and I said I understand completely, I'm doing the best I can myself. No worries. But, at the same time, I am aware that I can take that down and dirty too far too easily and be a total prick like I was when I first come here.
So you think a lack of belief is a belief?
Which side do you fall on - "atheists have faith too" or "atheists believe in Yahweh - they just deny it because they don't want to be held accountable"?
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
I don't believe in the rapture. This means that I believe the rapture to be untrue. That is a belief. Its like that old Rush song, [paraphrasing: "If you decide not to choose you still have made a choice." ] For most atheists this is difficult to accept because they seem to think in terms of "unbelievers (us)" and "believers (them)" and I personally don't see it like that. I see it as "us (believers and unbelievers)."
I don't see unbelievers as believers in denial, that is just stupid. The closest I would come to that is that in the heat of the moment, in battle, your hatred for belief being opposed to unbelief, becomes quite strong so that it manifests itself in a way which makes the God of believers so . . . real [edit: for lack of a better word] that the hatred seems directed at the god of the unbeliever but it isn't done so in the sense that the god is real, in other words exists in your mind but rather what that god represents through his so called believers. In fact I think it far more likely that a believer doesn't believe than an unbeliever does believe. When an atheist says something like "Your God is so evil for killing children, raping women etc." it isn't a literal admission of belief or denial of some deep dark belief.
Actually, the vast majority of people banned are spambots. Yes, there are a larger percentage of theists who get banned than atheists, and the reason for this is simple: We have a rule that prohibits mindless preaching, yet people still seem to think it's ok to post long rants about their religion again and again without having it discussed. Other people we ban are outright bigots, and that includes atheist ones.
As I said, we banned you for refusing to discuss criticisms to your ideas, personally attacking people who disagreed with you, and yes, spamming the forums. I wasn't threatened by your debating tactics; your laughably poor reasoning against evolution provided much amusement. We've had far better theistic debaters than you on the forums Daystar, believe me (oh, and they are still unbanned since they respect alternate viewpoints).
Yeah, I remember that debate. We almost unbanned you since people though you deserved another chance. Pity that you decided to create a multiple account and then *actually* spam the PM system, pissing everyone off and turning all of your supporters against you. Even the Christian users thought it was a poor move, but then they were actually nice people to talk to.
What story are you talking about? I've said no such thing. You behaved badly from the start Daystar; your reasons for being banned were plain and simple, and I'm not going to go over them again.
Yet I find you here complaining that we are not "open-minded". Typical...
Heh, that flood thread on Randi is brutal. Are you going to start answering their questions, or are you just getting them riled up?
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
Also, from the standpoint of someone not involved in that conversation: Your weakness in a debate like that is that you are not able to extend your reasoning outside of the Bible. You have lots of evidence built on Biblical stuff, but you are debating with people who don't accept the Bible as a source of evidence for extraordinary claims.
When people bring up problems with the science aspects of the flood like geology, biology, climatology, you tend to ignore them and that makes your argument seem very weak, since that is what most skeptics accept as evidence.
If you're just looking to fight about Biblical interpretation (which is your strong suit), fine...but reading that thread just made you look ignorant. I can understand why you like someone like Rambo from SAB, because he is willing to debate on your terms using Biblical reference. If that is what you respect, why not stick to theistic forums, where you will get more Bible study types?
Simply put: You won't convince anyone on these types of forums that your position has an ounce of credibility unless you get some science under your belt. If you don't care about that and just want to fight, carry on.
Just my $0.02.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
This, Adrian, of course, is an April Fools gag?
Please don't pull a Todd Friel variant here.
Friel: You're an atheist because you hate Jesus
You: You're an atheist because you hate belief/believers.
I can't hate you - I don't know you well enough to invest that kind of energy.
I can question the logic of your belief in Jehovah/Yahweh/God and I most likely will.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
I am seeing a pattern here, by looking at your threads in other forums. Essentially, you seem to get off by jumping into a forum and typing a misleading and ambiguous post that sounds sort of like a fundy protestant.
Then when people act on the reasonable assumption that your views are typical, you swamp them with a wall-o-text that uses dubious Biblical interpretation to justify your unique take on Christianity.
That about right?
I don't get why you are on so many atheist forums. You would really be better off debating other theists. Maybe they don't let you have so many smug, Nelson "HA-HA!" moments.
Well, or it might just be that atheist forums don't ban people as easily, as a general rule.
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
That, to me, is just the most ridiculous thing. It isn't uncommon, though. Many people don't always think to come out and say exactly that but it is often indirectly implied. Atheist are in error in thinking that you can provide evidence of Jehovah God a) without the Bible and b) with science. Actually they know this so they demand it because they know it and it makes them feel secure. Science doesn't test the supernatural but it also doesn't lean towards a demonstration of evidence for or against God which means that, really, the conclusion is left in the eyes of the beholder. Example: On television scientific explanations are often given to explain some supernatural phenomenon. These rarely, if ever, hold any water from a scriptural point of view. Moses parting the Red Sea, for example, is moved to a part of the world where it obviously couldn't have taken place and a tsunami is provided when the description in the Bible gives no reason to think it might have been a tsunami. People who really know anything about science know that tsunamis exist but don't have any evidence that Moses existed and are not going to change their thinking - even to the possibility let alone the probability of Moses' existence because it is explained with a tsunami. At least no one with any sense would.
I don't know anything about those things. I don't see it as my obligation to point those things out beyond what a limited interest in research would allow. If, as you suggest, people are not going to even consider the possibility of Jehovah God through the Bible do you really think they will do so with the aid of science? I have seen people who are real scientist who are believers that atheists who have very little if any real scientific credibility will dismiss simply because they conclude there is a God. It really has nothing to do with science. Wasn't it here that I posted a list of JW scientist in various fields, including biology? This isn't anything new, or exclusive to science. Religion and astrologers responded the same way to Galileo's telescope. What was the atheists response to Ben Stein's Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed? Or Lee Strobel's Case For A Creator?
[Shudders] No . . . don't make me go back there, mellestad . . . I, I, I c-c-c-can't go back there . . . I WONT! No, no, no, no!
Right. That's what I will do. Actually it is interesting that Adrian should turn up here of all places and have converted to Christianity at a time when I am beginning to seriously doubt faith myself.
WRONG! I think if Jehovah appeared in the sky to every one on the earth at the same time for 10 mins, and made it known who he was I don't think we'd have a hard time testing and proving it happened. I wonder what kind of unique verbal gymnastics you'll have to perform explain why god doesn't convince the skeptics. I've heard all the regular explanations, what's yours exactly. Does it defy his nature to convince skeptics (that cannot choose their non-belief?) What?
I get what you are saying, but when you have a thread about "The Deluge" and someone asks you, say, why there is no evidence of a flood in the geological column, or give you try to give a rational answer to, "Where did the water come from and where did it go and you resort to canopy theory (which breaks multiple laws of physics), those answers or lack of answers have more weight to an atheist or skeptic than all of your Biblical reasoning put together.
To us the Bible has weight as a historical document, but like other historical documents, when it claims something that does not match known science, science wins. Now, I know you understand this, because I've seen you literally write, "When science contradicts the Bible, the Bible wins." so I don't expect any response. I'm just stating that, in debate, there isn't going to be any common ground when you try to argue the miracle claims of the Bible since there is no agreement as to acceptability of evidence.
I know I'm not telling you anything new though, I'm just rambling.
Say, I remember seeing you say you were retired and run a website now. Is that just the pathway machine?
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.
Given the position you outline above there's no question you're going to get annoyed with us. Thinking the way you do is impossible for my brain to do. There's an undercurrent of strong faith and even a cognitive bias that must exist in a mind applying the content of the bible to the vast unknowns of the natural world. The habit of comparing the open ended pursuit of empirical evidence to religion - and insisting on it over and over again is an odd thing too, though most theists tend to do it. Importantly, your brain is the one that needs to create this short cut in order to categorize our way of thinking into a manner you understand.
From a personal perspective, when I think about this real stuff openly I come at it from a point of mentally 'listening' for something. P'raps that doesn't make sense to you - I'm not trying to wrap the world in my subjective interpretations. Everything I'm learning is new, all the time. Our knowledge is a baby. I do agree that I don't believe there is a supernatural or accept there is any evidence for a supernatural. But does that constitute religiosity?
Open mindedness and religion are like reversed poles. You can't truly understand a rational mindset that needs evidence - a mindset that won't be governed by fear or threat, or by dogma. The real history you see in the bible is to me endless layering of fallacious assertions and fabrications built on a strata of real geography. If you can't prove me wrong with evidence you are proving me right, accept this or not.
I don't mind your stubborn and quirky subjective position. It proves to me that atheism, at its core, is a far more coherent position that religion. I can imbibe the observations of BobSpence or Cristina Rad, or Hamby or Nonstampcollector, or Brian37 or Dawkins, or Darwin, or any evolutionist or rationalist, and generally find I am not fundamentally opposed to the things they are saying - except maybe Brian's love of hot-buttered kittens.
Anyway. Have a good weekend mate. I'm off to the country where I will sit in front of the fire and drink beer with my friends. And that's pretty much heaven to me.
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Of course no one with any sense would believe it was a tsunami. No one with any sense believes the story at all. There is not a speck of evidence for hundreds - let alone thousands - of people roaming about the desert. For one year, let alone 40. No garbage dumps. No latrines. Did god/s/dess run around after them cleaning up their shit and garbage so as to mystify archeologists thousands of years later? So much for god being the god of truth if that is the case. If anthropologists have found paleolithic camp fires in the Australian desert where they figured 5-6 men camped for one night on a hunting trip, how much easier to find camp fires in the Sinai desert for thousands of people? No camp fires.
The bible proves that middle eastern goat herders have great tall tales. Period.
I watched as much as I could stand of the videos.
Look, the Smithsonian thing? The editor deserved to be pounded for publishing that article. It was chock full of the usual disqualified unintelligent grasping for the "god of the gaps" argument the intelligent design advocates all use. I sometimes feel sorry for those guys that their faith is so small, their god has to fit in a single cell. And then I read something one of them wrote and I'm back to wanting to string them up by the thumbs for being so arrogant in their ignorance.
FYI. there was a professor of biology at my alma mater who was a creationist. He had tenure and taught plant classification - not cladistics which is the modern version, but the older taxonomic version. His lecture notes - my husband took a class from him - were so old they were yellowed and the edges were flaking off the paper. No one openly ridiculed him in the department seminars, but there was little respect coming his way.
Let's examine the evidence for an intelligent creator. Let's start with men. What kind of intelligence would design a flexible waste tube that goes through a structure that expands with age? Yes, it is your prostate gland I am talking about. If you aren't getting up a couple of times during the night to go pee, trust me, it is in your future. This is intelligent?
Or how about eyes? Are you wearing reading glasses yet? You will be. I have progressive lenses, with the center focused specifically for computer work. Since that is what I usually do. Why would an "intelligent" designer make corneas that fail with age? Why would they fail somewhere around age 40-45 - long, long before you are ready to retire, let alone before you are about die. Why can't eyes have been "designed" to stay in focus until age 90 or so?
I could go on and I am neither physiologist or doctor. If this is "intelligent" design, I would definitely stay away from any bridge this designer designed.
I'm assuming the other video was a lead in for all the reasons Strobel thinks science proves god/s/dess. That's nice. Since he was a law reporter, not a science reporter, I'm sure he understands all the evidence he found. I don't feel like wading through it since I'll bet he quotes Behe and the other usual suspects. All of whom have been discredited by real scientists over and over and over..... ad vomitum.
I don't try to fool myself. A lot of people believe because they feel small, they need the comfort, they have no other source of unconditional love or acceptance, because their family and friends believe, because they can not or do not understand science and don't want to learn, because they have no other source of self-esteem, because they have no other community. These are very strong reasons for most people to continue to believe - but they are not a reason to deny your intelligence or the evidence as found in the world around you. If god/s/dess wants me to believe, s/he/it has to give me better reasons than "I said so in the book I dictated to a bunch of goat herders 3000 years ago and no, you can't have any more modern evidence. Oh, and just ignore all the contrary physical evidence that I haven't bothered to tidy up."
-- I feel so much better since I stopped trying to believe.
"We are entitled to our own opinions. We're not entitled to our own facts"- Al Franken
"If death isn't sweet oblivion, I will be severely disappointed" - Ruth M.
I can see why you think that, but actually I don't see it that way. My main objective was that the Atheists see the Bible as it is misrepresented by apostate Christianity. All I want them to do is see this. I'm not foolish enough to continue under the assumption that that is a very productive apporach, though, because as has been pointed out to me repeatedly very recently that doesn't matter with atheist.
Years ago I posted on theist forums and you are wrong about them, as a general rule they are more prone to ban people who disagree with the mainstream Christianity. [Edit: I just realized that I screwed this last part up. Atheists ban people for being theist, just as much as theist ban people for not subscribing to some form of mainstream Christianity or Judaism. Both are threatened, or perhaps more insulted, by confidence and knowledge.]
Well, I see what you are saying and from your perspective I can see where that might make sense, but back in the day when I had more faith in the open mindedness of atheists I would diligently provide evidence to answer those sorts of question and it made absolutely no difference other than the amount of time I had to devote to it. The same applied to articles I would provide against the trinity, rapture, cross, immortal soul etc. to theists. People believe what they want to believe. This is a game, dude, nothing more. Games can be intense but they are pretty pointless, aren't they?
Yeah, as of yet, though if you will notice it has almost been a month since I did anything with it. I'm thinking about taking some time off, getting a feel for what I percieve as the newer and more aggressive atheist and we will see if the Pathway Machine remains as it is or not.
I am well aware that the pagans took a dump in the bible..oh wait no they didn't. Christians took the pagans crap and placed it in the bible in order to make conversion easier. This largely invalidates the whole in my opinion. This is without getting into any scripture that is not pagan related, of which I am also very condescending of in most of it's literal translations. I feel like, if a god were here, he would have that shit corrected and smitten any blasphemer who tried to put pagan beliefs or ritual in his book OR tried to reinterpret it later to suit their own ends.
I'm glad you are here to debate by the way, even though I myself have been harsh with you, however this does not mean I may not be harsh at a later date =D
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
I disagree. If a serpent or an ass (as in Balaam's ass rather than an ass like me) spoke to you, or as Jesus said, the stones came to life, you wouldn't believe, you would explain it away or have yourself committed. If God appeared as you said most atheists would say it was some natural phenomenon or some hoax by some foreign group or anything as long as you didn't have to accept something which you didn't believe in. I think that if God presented himself in the traditional manner that is attributed to him in Christendom's interpretation of the book of Revelation - in a way that puts their backs against the wall while the reality of man is hanging in the ballance - then they would believe.
God has revealed himself to you, kid, you either rejected or more likely weren't paying attention. Its in the Bible. You may not like him, but he is there.
A better example would be a loud voice in everyones mind at the same time saying "this is god etc etc.." That would be more convincing. Everyone on the planet would be babbling about hearing the same voice in their head. An ass or burning bush or w/e can be faked, but a universal voice in everyones head, now that would be convincing to me. But it can't happen because a god does not exist.
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
Mass hallucination. They put something in the water supply.
But that couldn't be the explanation if there were very specific ideas and concepts included, and if it really did happen world-wide at the same time.
Of course it would be more likely that something like that was caused by a very advanced alien race.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
This is absolute bullocks, what a bunch of crap. You know nothing of my journey to athiesm, my extensive search for god, my many many prayers asking him to reveal himself to me. I have read the bible many times, as well as many other holy books. I have had no devine experience, or revelation. If the bible is suppose to be god reaching out to me it is quite a pathetic attemp indeed. Are you saying their is no more effective way to convince the skeptics than the bible? Like, tah-dah forget your questions just believe, are you kidding me?
There are so many ways "god" could more effectively convince us of his presence, he's doing an absolutely terrible job of convincing the skeptics. Why would god punish skeptics, I'm not a bad person for requiring more than these holybooks to believe. And again, even if this burnt flesh sniffin madman Christian god did reveal himself to me, we'll great now I have to believe in this wacko jacko whip out the belt if I jackoff mental terrorist.
serious expansion...
"Experiments are the only means of knowledge at our disposal. The rest is poetry, imagination." Max Planck
Or, you know, you might just be wrong. Honestly, the deluge is the best example I can think of, because it is the only miracle claim that is so easy to test (well, besides stopping the sun, since that would have destroyed the solar system) because the deluge would have left enormous and obvious traces. We can see when an area had a flood, landslide, volcanic eruption or forest fire thousands and thousands of years ago, buried under hundreds of feet of sediment layers, but when the entire world is covered in water it didn't leave any traces. I remember flood apologetics when I was a kid, and it was all absurd. "There are fish fossils on top of mountains, so that means the water must have been a mile deep!". Stuff like that shows a willful ignorance about why things are the way they are. It sounds great as long as you never make it to a real class about geology.
I know it is a game, but deluge theory is just...stupid. Honestly, it shocks me when I see the kind of in depth historical research you are obviously cape able of right next to 'canopy of water over the earth' or claiming that all modern species could come from the 'kinds' of animals you think were on the ark in 6,000 years.
I get it though, your interpretation of what is literal and what isn't in the Bible doesn't give you any room to align your theism with science, you choose theism and run with it to a fault (not that you would think that).
Everything makes more sense now that I've stopped believing.