Ok, here is my idea for you folks. A change of roles. I know Cris can argue against Religion and such really well. And I know who can argue for religion. But, to really be a master of debate, and to fully be able to defeat the other, you must be able to argue effectively for the other side!

Course, not only will this go with a change of pace, but I also hope to make people respect the other side a little more, realizing the difficulties they have. And also, hopefully cut down on the flaming. I noticed that, when I argued for Christianity, getting flamed left and right, even though that is not my current way of living.

So I hope you all find this fun and entertaining. So, to kick things off, perhaps an arguement for the existance of Christ and the Bible. I would post one of my own, but I already did that. And I would like to see some of the others come through first.

Originally posted by grimjester
...hopefully cut down on the flaming. ...
What flaming?

First off ... it's always nice to hear from you. Flames aside; though I recall that one or two of those might have been mine .... :o

Secondly, and as a last-minute addition, my first perusal of the words to follow indicate that I really should keep my bloody mouth shut from time to time. Whoops. ;)

At any rate, I've thought it would be interesting to watch, well, over time, Lori, TonyH2O, and a few other people try to cage Cris and Boris. Then Emerald and I could sit on the sideline and argue with Bowser about what's happening in the arena, and MoonCat could dance around to Randy Newman songs performed by Joe Cocker.

I think the role reversals would produce different results; in the scenario I offer, it appears that Cris and Boris only argue in tandem when circumstance happens that way. Watching the various adherents of the christos form a cohesive argument would be most educational in an aspect of group psychology you just don't get a chance to see naturally. I call it my "JesusFair question".

Essentially, I always wonder at the diverse crowd of faithful that attend large Christian-sponsored events. When you see a large number (in the thousands) of Christians gathered together (in a festive setting, unlike a televangelism church), you see an empowerment take place. Just like anyone else emerging from conflict to homogony, you see the tension slip out, the faces brighten, the eyes flash. Stronger for the reduced threat (not limited to religious faith), the people reach out and attempt to gain that true sense of fellowship that seems so important in a church society. However, when two strangers linked in the fellowship of Christ pass by each other at, say, the Jesus Fair, and greet one another, "Praise His name," or some such ... is there still the security of assumption that the one means the same as the other? In sharp rhetoric, I have in the past pointed out that gang members pimping or committing murder have worn the cross; I have in the past pointed out that some neo-Nazis believe in Jesus; I have in the past railed against Christian-based homophobia in Oregon; I have in the past asked the question How do you know that "your" Jesus is the same as "his" Jesus? That is, how do you know that the Jesus that guy over there is praising in unison with you isn't praising a Jesus that likes it when he beats up a black man in Portland, or pistol-whips a faggot to death in Wyoming? Obviously, you don't, until you're sitting beside him at a campfire and he pops off with something about the Niggers or the faggots or the Kikes.

In the end, the coming-together of the factions reversed from Christian to atheist would be enlightening. Whereas an atheist faction arguing for religion might find comfort in the perception that theists have no unison where unison is important, it would be compelling at least to see which instinct of theism wins: the unity of vision, or the individuality of detail. That is, two atheists arguing for the Bible might read it in completely different ways. This is okay, even if their arguments are contradictory. We are used to this. However, two Christians arguing for atheism will either have to unify and thus miss a key element of atheism, or else diversify and realize that the differences they seek lie on a moral level, and not necessarily in semantics. Some exceptionally bright scientists die defending faulty theories to their last hour. Such differences of opinion can be resolved through observation and testing. But the subjective moral idea of whether it's right to deliberately alter human DNA, or some such question ... we see the key is not in what you know, because what is known is what is available to all (an idyll, but you get the drift). Rather, the gift is in how one operates in relation to what is known. Watching the indoctrinated come to terms with an idea that threatens to exceed what flexibility the doctrine allows is a rare opportunity.

My nickel says, if it's something you really wanted to happen, at least invite the people you definitely want in on it, explain the terms, and see what happens. The worst anyone can do is say, "No."

Finally, let me nod to Cris and Boris, Lori and TonyH2O, Emerald and MoonCat and Bowser ... who have not given me permission to speculate on their characters in the course of my musings. I needed names for a moment, and theirs worked. Thank you.

--Tiassa :cool:

Hey tiassa, use my name all you like, I kinda like seeing it in print. LOL. But really I have difficulty seeing how I appear to others, so any analysis of my persona here would be of benefit to me at the very least.

Cris

Regarding changing roles:

If this were purely a debate based on reasoned arguments then I believe I could build a compelling argument for either side. However, religious debates are fundamentally different from almost any other form of debate. It is not just a matter of opposing sides, but more a matter of the methods of reasoning. The religionists base their arguments not on reason but on faith. A true atheist attempts to base all arguments purely on reason. The two approaches do not mesh together; they are opposites. I cannot construct a reasoned argument for religious beliefs, since faith defies reason, and I could only pretend to believe something based on faith; there would be no conviction or passion to my arguments under such circumstances.

I can see the value of attempting to understand an opponent’s viewpoint by placing oneself in that role, but it could only be very superficial when religions are concerned, and acting is not one of my strengths.

However, having been a willing Christian for a few years back in the very early 70’s, and having argued strongly for that cause, I feel I already understand the viewpoint of the Christian. It was largely that investigation and experience that convinced me of the futility of religious faith, especially Christianity.

So sorry, but I won’t be playing this game.

Cris

Originally posted by Cris
So sorry, but I won’t be playing this game.

Too bad. As I was reading your post, I thought this should be interesting, particularly when you said "I believe I could build a compelling argument for either side."
It would've been interesting to see what unconvinced and passionless arguments you could have come up with.

Then I realized that even though I'd been a pretty convinced atheist myself in the 70's, I couldn't come up with the lamest reasons to be an atheist now.

So, I see your point.

"The religionists base their arguments not on reason but on faith."

Then I submit to you, you have never really looked at religion with open eyes. Considering there are mean arguements for religion, based off religion. Read a whole book of them in fact. Uncaused cause theory being one of them. Theists merely look at the evidence of the world, pointing to a God, where as Atheists look at it, and say it points somewhere else.

"A true atheist attempts to base all arguments purely on reason."

I call bullshit on that one. Atheists have faith, that they have all the evidence, and that the evidence points where they want it to. A lack of God(s). Tell me Cris, do you know all the evidence? Has all the evidence been brought to your attention? Can you possibly believe some might not have been supressed, by Scientists, that might point to an existance of god.

Yes, much like The Catholic church did. Much like everyone does, when the information at hand does not fit what they want. Also, when you look at the past, you can see things we thought to be right, based off of reason that suddenly turned out wrong because of new evidence we never saw before.

So now, you are telling me an atheist bases all arguments purely off reason? Then, if that is true, they would all be agnostic, because you cannot possibly see all the reason, all the evidence to know. It is still a guess, a shot in the dark.

The reason why I posted this thread, is to see how many Atheists really know what the other side believes, or if they look at it with open eyes, like they claim.

Tell me Cris, when you look at an argument for religion, do you try to look for the holes first? Do you try and rip it apart because it does not fit your reality? It is ok. For instance, when I presented that Einstein was a christian, I was attacked and flamed. Did that scare some people? That a genius, who presented many of the laws that you use to argue against religion, believes in God?

And I would agree with Tony. Being a Christian in the 70s, is nothing like being a Christian in the 90s.

Grimjester,

Theists merely look at the evidence of the world, pointing to a God, where as Atheists look at it, and say it points somewhere else.

Well that’s a pretty biased and inaccurate statement. Here is a re-wording that I think is more precise: -

Theists state that a god exists and then look for physical evidence to support their claims. Atheists look at the same evidence and say there is inadequate evidence to reach a conclusion. Based on the evidence the atheist states that the theist claims are not credible since they require an explanation based on the supernatural for which we have absolutely no experience or knowledge. To persist in believing an imagined concept as something real, without providing any acceptable evidence, defies reason, i.e. it can only believed as a religious faith.

Atheists have faith, that they have all the evidence, and that the evidence points where they want it to.

No that is absolutely incorrect again. The point Atheists make is that there is insufficient evidence and that we cannot reach a conclusion yet. It is the theist who claims to know everything and who says god is the answer. That is the nature of faith, a belief in something without proof, and despite reason.

So now, you are telling me an atheist bases all arguments purely off reason? Then, if that is true, they would all be agnostic, because you cannot possibly see all the reason, all the evidence to know. It is still a guess, a shot in the dark.

You don’t seem to be using the terms atheist and agnostic in the way I understand them. As an atheist I do not believe the theists claims that a god or gods exist. Atheism is not an alternative belief system. An agnostic is someone who believes that a supernatural entity is beyond our understanding and as such we can have no knowledge. An agnostic can be either theistic or atheistic.

My viewpoint, which I have described here many times, is that reason is based on facts, which are based on proofs. If you reach a conclusion, which is not based on a proof, and is hence not a fact then you are not using reason. To use reason is to be rational, which is defined as one who uses reason. If reason is not used then the argument is irrational, e.g. faith does not use facts and any argument based on faith is therefore irrational

The reason why I posted this thread, is to see how many Atheists really know what the other side believes, or if they look at it with open eyes, like they claim.

Being open minded does not mean that one has to accept concepts that are not credible. I do not know whether gods exist or not, but I do not find the theist claims credible, in the same way that most disbelieve the claims for fairies and leprechauns. It does not matter whether it is Christianity of the 90s, 70s, or of hundreds of years ago, the thought processes are the same, e.g. first one must accept a belief based on faith. I can’t do that; it is the opposite of everything we experience in normal life that works.

Tell me Cris, when you look at an argument for religion, do you try to look for the holes first? Do you try and rip it apart because it does not fit your reality?

I look for something new that I haven’t seen before. But my reality is the same as yours, except that you have extended your perception of reality to include something that has not been proven. As an atheist I do not find it acceptable to define or extend the definition of reality based on unproven hypotheses, e.g. the idea of a god.

It is ok. For instance, when I presented that Einstein was a christian, I was attacked and flamed. Did that scare some people? That a genius, who presented many of the laws that you use to argue against religion, believes in God?

Darwin was also a Christian BTW.

Here is a quote I like made by Stephen Hawking.
The Catholic Church had made a bad mistake with Galileo when it tried to lay down the law on a question of science, declaring that the sun went round the earth. Now, centuries later, it had decided to invite a number of experts to advise it on cosmology. At the end of the conference the participants were granted an audience with the pope. He told us that it was all right to study the evolution of the universe after the big bang, but we should not inquire into the big bang itself because that was the moment of Creation and therefore the work of God. I was glad then that he did not know the subject of the talk I had just given at the conference -- the possibility that space- time was finite but had no boundary, which means that it had no beginning, no moment of Creation. I had no desire to share the fate of Galileo, with whom I feel a strong sense of identity, partly because of the coincidence of having been born exactly 300 years after his death! [Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (New York: Bantam, 1988), pp. 115-16.]

It really doesn’t matter whether scientists, famous or otherwise, favor a theistic route or not, none have the proofs that support a theistic claim. Einstein’s genius is actually a complicated issue, and one, which does not stand up well to too much scrutiny. He expressly claimed that he was a deeply religious man, but that was because of many other things that were largely not related to his work.

The quote from Hawking is not intended to show that as a scientist he is religious or not, the issue is that the question of creation and whether gods might exist is open. We simply do not know enough yet to reach a conclusion. And all the time scientists can formulate believable alternatives to a creation hypothesis or otherwise explain the existence of the universe then no one can claim with any certainty that they have the answer, and that goes with equal weight for the idea that a god did it.

This later notion leads us to true open-mindedness. If you have decided, with certainty, that a god is the creator but you cannot prove it, then you will have effectively closed your mind to other possibilities. To be truly open minded on these issues is to say we simply don’t know yet. Our quest must continue to look for credible answers, and the supernatural is to my mind the least credible so far, but as I said earlier, I really don’t know. If you can show that a god exists then that would be neat, but you must expect that with a question of such importance and enormity you will attract equally weighty scrutiny. And so far the scrutiny shows you have no proof.
Cris

Tiassa,

You've got me pretty well pegged here. I think I'll just stay on the sidelines until Bowser comes along and says something worth squabbling over.

Emerald

Cris,

Hello again Cris, I know you are gonna blow me away somehow, however, I like to put in a few words now and then. Alright I pretty much followed you till you said

"An agnostic is someone who believes that a supernatural entity is beyond our understanding and as such we can have no knowledge."

Now I am a Christian and I believe that God is beyond our understanding. But I'm not sure what you mean by not being able to have knowledge; and considering that knowledge is fact then I have no knowledge about God. Does that make me agnostic?

Also, believing that God is beyond our understanding, it is no supprise that there is no proof to whether God exists. If we cannot understand Him, how on earth do you expect to prove/disprove His existance. If you get my drift.

-Redcat

RedCat,

Cris' definition of "agnostic" shifts around somewhat in his post, and in places doesn't agree very well with the dictionary definition ( http://www.m-w.com ):


Main Entry: 1ag·nos·tic
Pronunciation: ag-'näs-tik, &g-
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek agnOstos unknown, unknowable, from a- + gnOstos known, from gignOskein to know -- more at KNOW
Date: 1869
: a person who holds the view that any ultimate reality (as God) is unknown and prob. unknowable; broadly : one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god
- ag·nos·ti·cism /-t&-"si-z&m/ noun


So, being an agnostic really means "don't know", or in other words "have no conclusive evidence". It's a position common to many who are often described as "atheist" -- only they are not since they do not care to postulate one way or the other. It is a reasonable position to take, but a weak one.

Atheism is the strong position that there is nothing supernatural, or in other words scientifically unquantifiable, in existence. The position does not mean so much that an atheist has proof to that effect. Rather, an atheist chooses to take the pro-active stance and proclaim that everything in existence is ultimately knowable. At first glance, that would appear to be irrational faith. But if you think about it more carefully, you'd realize that it is instead a working hypothesis (which historically has proven very successful.)

To wit, consider a situation where something baffling and unexplained occurs. A person of religious faith would attribute the "miracle" to their god(s) (which is an absolute dead end as far as enlightenment goes.) An agnostic wouldn't know whether the "miracle" is for real, and would think that both natural and supernatural explanations are equally likely (somewhat better, but still a lot of time wasted on idle speculation about the supernatural.) An atheist would just plain assume that the "miracle" has a perfectly natural explanation, and can ultimately be deciphered and understood scientifically. And so atheism is the most geared toward enlightenment of the three stances; it is a positive philosophy with respect to human capabilities.

Should the "miracle" be extraordinarily difficult to explain, the religious person would give up first and proclaim something to the effect of mysterious ways beyond man's grasp. The agnostic would hold out longer, but would eventually do the same. The atheist, being the most predisposed against giving up, will stubbornly persist trying to unravel the mechanisms behind the miracle. Indeed, the atheist will never be convinced that anything was supernatural, unless a god shows up in person and reveals the inner workings of the universe in such a way as to perfectly fit all observations and make it clear that the mechanisms of the universe are ultimately being driven by this god (otherwise the "god" could merely be a very advanced alien.) Even then it would take the atheist quite a while to verify all the claims going beyond known observables experimentally -- and only following such a verification would the atheist accept the existence of the deity. Either that, or the quest of science itself eventually uncovers redundant and reliable evidence that a deity is the source of the universe, the evidence being such that it can't be explained in any other way.

So is it possible, in principle, for an atheist to come to believe in the supernatural? Yes, but only via that proof everyone keeps talking about. Absent the proof, there is no reason for an atheist to change his or her primary working hypothesis.

For instance, when I presented that Einstein was a christian, I was attacked and flamed. Did that scare some people? That a genius, who presented many of the laws that you use to argue against religion, believes in God?
Grim, I'll never say I didn't lay into any of your ideas with my teeth bared. However if you feel people reacted poorly to your assertion that Einstein was a Christian, we might consider the veracity of the assertion, and people's perceptions thereof. I offer the following URL: http://www.stcloud.msus.edu/~lesikar/einstein/index.html

If I may ... As the first way out there was religion, which is implanted into every child by way of the traditional education-machine. Thus I came - though the child of entirely irreligious (Jewish) parents - to a deep religiousness, which, however, reached an abrupt end at the age of twelve. Through the reading of popular scientific books I soon reached the conviction that much in the stories of the Bible could not be true.
andThe road to this paradise was not as comfortable and alluring as the road to the religious paradise; but it has shown itself reliable, and I have never regretted having chosen it.
Einstein was known to comment on prayer:A child in the sixth grade in a Sunday School in New York City, with the encouragement of her teacher, wrote to Einstein in Princeton on 19 January I936 asking him whether scientists pray, and if so what they pray for. Einstein replied as follows on 24 January 1936:

I have tried to respond to your question as simply as I could. Here is my answer. Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being.

However, it must be admitted that our actual knowledge of these laws is only imperfect and fragmentary, so that, actually, the belief in the existence of basic all-embracing laws in Nature also rests on a sort of faith. All the same this faith has been largely justified so far by the success of scientific research. But, on the other hand, every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe-a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.
In 1954: I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.
1927 .... I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance-but for us, not for God.
It would be prudent if I did not reproduce the whole of this one site here. But it's a place to start.
The reason why I posted this thread, is to see how many Atheists really know what the other side believes, or if they look at it with open eyes, like they claim.
It's a fair reason. Even as theistic notions still play a major role in my thought process, I can tell you that what I would argue about Christianity would play off the Christian as either stupid or cruel. Why? It's what I remember from trying to grasp the concept of a loving, Christ-fearing, backstabbing, whining community. It was a great message that had absolutely no effect on its adherents. By the time I was living daily among Catholics, in high school, I was already wary of the seemingly fanatical devotion to unsubstantiated authority awarded ideas by the Jesuits at the school. Read any fair-sized article from the Catholic Encyclopedia, and you'll see it. A casual dismissal or affirmation that can only come from presupposition. This was reminiscent of something I experienced among the Lutherans, only more so. But as I go through life and meet more and more people of the flock, I am repulsed ever more by the dichotomy of a gospel believer carrying so much bitterness of assumption. People can argue their "non-doctrine" or "non-dogma" (it's been an issue here before) and present the lofty aspirations of Bible excerpts, but none of it goes to change the fact that what this biblical manifesto causes is a greater practical failure at the individual level than the Bolsheviks.

Somewhere around here in my running arguments with Tony1, I wrote a capsule paragraph retelling the Bible. Sure, it sounds bitter, but it's composed of the summary rhetoric Christians present in their evangelizing. That's what I mean by making the Christian seem stupid or cruel. One must be either stupid to submit to it, or cruel to take advantage of it.

For instance, Tony1 didn't understand my reference to America's puritanical obsessions with sins. I am now wondering why I didn't think of this sooner. It isn't just a sermon from 1741, but also an enduring picture of American colonial Christianity. Some have argued in the past that the United States was originally a Christian nation, and other ideas brought up in this country from time to time. I agree that a good portion of our heritage is Christian. When I hear of the censorship and demonization and general whining shouted at the nation by some of our contemporary Christian neighbors, I remember this sermon, given by Jonathan Edwards, 8 July, 1741: http://douglass.speech.nwu.edu/edwa_a45.htm 1. There is no want of power in God to cast wicked men into hell at any moment. Men's hands cannot be strong when God rises up. The strongest have no power to resist him, nor can any deliver out of his hands.-He is not only able to cast wicked men into hell, but he can most easily do it. Sometimes an earthly prince meets with a great deal of difficulty to subdue a rebel, who has found means to fortify himself, and has made himself strong by the numbers of his followers. But it is not so with God. There is no fortress that is any defence from the power of God. Though hand join in hand, and vast multitudes of God's enemies combine and associate themselves, they are easily broken in pieces. They are as great heaps of light chaff before the whirlwind; or large quantities of dry stubble before devouring flames. We find it easy to tread on and crush a worm that we see crawling on the earth; so it is easy for us to cut or singe a slender thread that any thing hangs by: thus easy is it for God, when he pleases, to cast his enemies down to hell. What are we, that we should think to stand before him, at whose rebuke the earth trembles, and before whom the rocks are thrown down?
2. They deserve to be cast into hell; so that divine justice never stands in the way, it makes no objection against God's using his power at any moment to destroy them. Yea, on the contrary, justice calls aloud for an infinite punishment of their sins. Divine justice says of the tree that brings forth such grapes of Sodom, "Cut it down, why cumbereth it the ground?" Luke xiii. 7. The sword of divine justice is every moment brandished over their heads, and it is nothing but the hand of arbitrary mercy, and God's mere will, that holds it back.
Essentially, sir, this is the reason I placed myself on the sidelines in my prior speculations. I can guarantee you that no Christian on this board would think what I said is fair; my behavior defending Christianity would be one of three methods: to be unconscious of what Christianity is, merely believing that accepting John 3.16 is enough; to be conscious of what Christianity is, and somehow accepting the fact that my "compassion" in helping people into God's Kingdom after our mortal time was actually hurting them in the here and now; or else wildly flinging biblical excerpts about, and enacting psychological dysfunctions in order to avoid accounting for my beliefs.

And this is a problem we'll encounter on both sides of the board; at heart, the representatives would still perceive their own perceptions of Christianity and atheism, and would thus base their constructions on those core perceptions.
The reason why I posted this thread, is to see how many Atheists really know what the other side believes, or if they look at it with open eyes, like they claim.
We should take a quick show of hands. How many atheists emerged from a religion? How many were born, raised, and educated to be atheists? While it is not my place to speak for Cris, I'm curious about the occasional assertion that some of us don't understand what it's like to be Christian. I can speak for myself when I say I walked away for the reasons I've mentioned, and more. I feel safe in asserting that Cris, too, experienced prevailing Christianity and has even offered us some insight into those experiences on former occasions. One cannot know what you, individually, are thinking. But many of Christianity's critics know what "the other side" believes because they've been there.
Being a Christian in the 70s, is nothing like being a Christian in the 90s
I would assert that the primary difference in the relations between Christians and others in the last twenty to thirty years can be explained very simply, in American terms: We, the people, are sick of it. Every time we have fun, the Christians say it's immoral. Every time we try to do what's best for the most people, the Christians say we're persecuting. Ad nauseam, ad nauseam, ad nauseam. And in this, the Television Age, that means--for me, at least, and I know for many others--sound bites galore. In the end, it's like the classic stereotype of a nagging wife or girlfriend: nothing can get done by one because that one is always responding to another. For instance, the First Amendment is quite clear, and designed to protect religions. How is it that preserving the First Amendment is persecutory toward Christians? And then compound the frustration of listening to moralists and religionists tell you what you think because you listen to this music or read that novel. Year after year after year after year. 1971-2000 ... thirty years. If I start at my voting age and count until I'm 48, I can say that I, too, would be tired of hearing the broken-record voice telling me "No," for no better reason than because they think they have the right to say so.

It's a lot harder--fire codes notwithstanding--to burn books in this country and get a positive response. It's getting harder to badmouth women and diminish children and call it "family values". I wonder if any pro-lifer has ever thought about what happens if we say that Yes, a life occurs conception; women would stop bearing children after a while because the nine months of pregnancy would equate to prison. And the whole time, our reproductive factories would simply breed, as the limitation of living experience would eventually impact the whole of womanhood in society. Thus, in the end, we would accomplish the same effect of men scrambling for the answers while their wifeys sit home barefoot and pregnant, afraid to do anything that might violate Baby's Constitutional Rights.

If the Christian experience has changed over the last thirty years, I guess the question becomes, In which way? If the infidels seem more hostile, it's a response to persecutionby Christians; this I guarantee. If it's that Christianity itself is changing ... that's up to the faithful to figure out.

thanx,
Tiassa :cool:

I would like to apologize, I ment to say Einstein believed in God. And sadly enough, I cannot find the book that I gathered this information out of, I believe my dog ate it.

Anyway, the point was not to validate a belief in God, or the bible, by pointing out that Einstein believed in a God, or that many scientists do. But rather to say, that one can come to a rational belief in god, based off of evidence around them.

As I said before. Atheists look at the world around them, and say "This is not the work of a God(s)". Where as Christians say "This is the work of a God". Wonderful example of this. (little story for everyone).

My brother and I, both atheists at the time, were talking to each other in the dining room. My mother walks in (fanatical Christian), all happy. She says she has this read this article that scienctist have found a gene that determines how religious you are. And my mom decided this is absolute proof of God. My brother and I laugh, and mention how this completely refutes God.

It is merely looking at the evidence from the right or left, that gives the meaning to the evidence. They saw the stars traveling in the sky, and this was belief for the world being the center of the universe. Someone else looked at that, and said..nope, that means something else.

What I am trying to do, with this thread, is stop the strong Atheists from continually saying "We use nothing but logic and reason", while attacking whatever the other side tries to say. A good majority of Atheists are as bad as Theists. You can use all the reason and logic you want, but make sure it is a healthy balance. Not just the things that support your side, that prove your side.

And yes, I was a catholic before I became what I am now. But that does not mean, I turn away from positions that support a belief in God. I do not attack them instantly, but rather think upon them and decide later. The proof for God, or the ability to argue there is a god, is becoming easier, now, for people. Perhaps it is because of new findings, that Christians say point to god, or other reasons, but the arguments of today, vastly differ from those of a century ago, or even 10 years ago.

One last interesting point. If it was to be proved beyond a doubt, that there is a god, and that Jesus did live, would all the atheists become Christians?

Originally posted by Cris
Theists state that a god exists and then look for physical evidence to support their claims.
This is almost never how it happens.
No one is born a theist.
Everyone pretty much fumbles along until God demonstrates his own reality.

Atheists look at the same evidence and say there is inadequate evidence to reach a conclusion. Based on the evidence the atheist states that the theist claims are not credible since they require an explanation based on the supernatural for which we have absolutely no experience or knowledge.
You do state this accurately.
Since the believer has experienced the reality of God to some extent and the atheist hasn't, it is safe to say that the atheist doesn't have the evidence, in any but secondhand form.

To persist in believing an imagined concept as something real, without providing any acceptable evidence, defies reason, i.e. it can only believed as a religious faith.
To restate this in mathematical terms...

One cannot therefore believe in the complex number system because it consists of imaginary and real numbers which in turn consist of rational and irrational numbers.

The set of complex numbers must doubly difficult for you to believe in, since it contains the set of irrational numbers as well as the set of imaginary numbers, as well as the set of imaginary irrational numbers.

How can you function as a computer programmer if you cannot believe in the greater portion of the complex number system?

No that is absolutely incorrect again. The point Atheists make is that there is insufficient evidence and that we cannot reach a conclusion yet. It is the theist who claims to know everything and who says god is the answer. That is the nature of faith, a belief in something without proof, and despite reason.
The actual nature of faith is the nature of your a priori assumptions.
Thus far, you, and/or others, have been making the point that a person can choose his/her a priori assumptions, state a hypothesis and set out to prove this hypothesis, either pro or con.

The real a priori assumption before all of this is that you can make an a priori assumption and this assumption makes no difference to the final outcome of your efforts after that. The assumption you and others make, based on this, is that no action, thought or belief makes any difference on the proof you find.

However, you are wrong.

That is easily proven by asking anyone who has accomplished anything whether they accomplished it before or after they believed they could.

Atheism is not an alternative belief system.
Here is where the religious nature of atheism comes into view.
It is a belief religiously held by atheists that atheism is not a belief, nor a belief system, nor an alternative belief system.

"not alternative" - This is not true for the simple reason that you cannot both believe in God and at the same time doubt his existence due to lack of proof.
Thus atheism is alternate because you have to choose.

"not a system" - This is not true for the simple reason that atheists all eventually end up saying the same thing, If it weren't a system, there would be some variability of belief.

"not a belief" - This is not true for the simple reason that atheists themselves give. There is insufficient proof, therefore you cannot know, therefore you must believe.
Not only that, the idea that there is insufficient proof is itself a major fundamental belief in atheism.

Thus the fundamentalist atheist believes in two things...
<ol><li>There is insufficient proof</li><li>I cannot believe because of #1</li></ol>

My viewpoint, which I have described here many times, is that reason is based on facts, which are based on proofs. If you reach a conclusion, which is not based on a proof, and is hence not a fact then you are not using reason. To use reason is to be rational, which is defined as one who uses reason. If reason is not used then the argument is irrational, e.g. faith does not use facts and any argument based on faith is therefore irrational
This argues that mathematicians are religionists because they believe in the existence of irrational and imaginary numbers.
I would like to see you attempt to prove this to a mathematician.

... first one must accept a belief based on faith. I can’t do that; it is the opposite of everything we experience in normal life that works.
There are many things in normal life that you take on faith...
<ol><li>You believe that the water that comes out of your faucet is drinkable. Many have found that it isn't.</li>
<li>You believe that when you stand up in the morning that you will stay standing. Many find out after a lifetime of experience that this isn't true.</li>
<li>... You may be able to see where this is going.</li></ol>

Darwin was also a Christian BTW.
He started out as one. It is possible due to the times, that he underwent a change of belief which simply hasn't been reported.

Here is a quote I like made by Stephen Hawking.
This is a very interesting quote.
In my view, if you are dead set on being wrong, then be wrong.
Further, it highlights where the error lies.
If "science" establishes that there was no "point of creation," then "science" will have completely missed the point.

Using the creation of Adam as an example, at the point of his creation, his age would have been zero, yet every scientific test known to man would have established his age as something else.

Einstein’s genius is actually a complicated issue, and one, which does not stand up well to too much scrutiny. He expressly claimed that he was a deeply religious man, but that was because of many other things that were largely not related to his work.
OTOH, he expressly denied believing in the Christian God.
He may have been a theist, but for sure not a Christian, unless he changed his mind and didn't tell anyone.
The quote from Hawking is not intended to show that as a scientist he is religious or not, the issue is that the question of creation and whether gods might exist is open. We simply do not know enough yet to reach a conclusion. And all the time scientists can formulate believable alternatives to a creation hypothesis or otherwise explain the existence of the universe then no one can claim with any certainty that they have the answer, and that goes with equal weight for the idea that a god did it.
As my point about Adam may illustrate, there is the possibility that the "proof" may be of the wrong thing.
This proof may turn out to be deliberately delusional, too...

And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie:
(2 Thessalonians 2:11, KJV).

This later notion leads us to true open-mindedness.... And so far the scrutiny shows you have no proof.
Your error may be the assumption that seeing is believing.
If the truth is believing is seeing, what logical, scientific method would you use to uncover this?

Your entire argument for being an atheist is based on this one point, that believing follows seeing.

OTOH, if you are wrong, you have no way to find out, nor to prove it.

Originally posted by RedCat
...Cris, I know you are gonna blow me away somehow, however, I like to put in a few words now and then.

If you are a Christian, you need not fear or even think that a non-Christian can "blow you away."

And there we saw the giants, the sons of Anak, which come of the giants: and we were in our own sight as grasshoppers, and so we were in their sight.
(Numbers 13:33, KJV).
If you think of yourself as a mental grasshopper, everyone in the world will pretty much jump to agree with you.

You have the mind of Christ, which is, unfortunately for Cris, far beyond what he can understand...
For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ.
(1 Corinthians 2:16, KJV).

Even though you may have been foolish, God chose you to confound those who think of themselves as wise...
But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;
(1 Corinthians 1:27, KJV).

Originally posted by Boris
Atheism is the strong position that there is nothing supernatural, or in other words scientifically unquantifiable, in existence. The position does not mean so much that an atheist has proof to that effect. Rather, an atheist chooses to take the pro-active stance and proclaim that everything in existence is ultimately knowable. At first glance, that would appear to be irrational faith. But if you think about it more carefully, you'd realize that it is instead a working hypothesis (which historically has proven very successful.)
This looks like it should clear some of the smoke out of the air, but it won't actually do that.
The Christian also states that everything in the universe is ultimately knowable, and at first glance, that also appears to be irrational faith.

Since both sides are saying the same thing on this issue, this can't be what differentiates the atheist from the Christian.

What does, is that the atheist says there is no God and the Christian says there is a God.

To wit, consider a situation where something baffling and unexplained occurs. A person of religious faith would attribute the "miracle" to their god(s) (which is an absolute dead end as far as enlightenment goes.) An agnostic wouldn't know whether the "miracle" is for real, and would think that both natural and supernatural explanations are equally likely (somewhat better, but still a lot of time wasted on idle speculation about the supernatural.) An atheist would just plain assume that the "miracle" has a perfectly natural explanation, and can ultimately be deciphered and understood scientifically. And so atheism is the most geared toward enlightenment of the three stances; it is a positive philosophy with respect to human capabilities.
This looks like a powerful argument for atheism from the rationalist standpoint, however some of those human capabilities might be just a tad overestimated.

tiassa, for example, is already defining the world as complex and while he is nowhere near being the most intelligent man in the world, he isn't exactly a dummy, either.
What kind of mental powers are you proposing a person have to be able to quantify, say, the existence of demons? Or do you prefer to reject their existence because you can't see them?

Indeed, the atheist will never be convinced that anything was supernatural, unless a god shows up in person and reveals the inner workings of the universe in such a way as to perfectly fit all observations and make it clear that the mechanisms of the universe are ultimately being driven by this god (otherwise the "god" could merely be a very advanced alien.)
Of course, this is one of the promises.

Even then it would take the atheist quite a while to verify all the claims going beyond known observables experimentally -- and only following such a verification would the atheist accept the existence of the deity.
At that point, time may be in short supply for the atheist.
Either that, or the quest of science itself eventually uncovers redundant and reliable evidence that a deity is the source of the universe, the evidence being such that it can't be explained in any other way.
Science being so slow to find things out, many have chosen to go to this step first.
So is it possible, in principle, for an atheist to come to believe in the supernatural? Yes, but only via that proof everyone keeps talking about. Absent the proof, there is no reason for an atheist to change his or her primary working hypothesis.
The proof is forthcoming, but on the basis of believing is seeing.
There are two possible scenarios for you...
<ol><li>You either die before the end of time, in which case the proof is forthcoming when you are resurrected, or</li><li>You will receive a clue as to what to believe when the entire universe disappears in a blaze.</li></ol>
You can, of course, wait for this, or realize that this has happened already, in principle.
You can wait to find out for yourself, or realize that this is what science will find, as you postulated yourself.

Originally posted by tiassa
However if you feel people reacted poorly to your assertion that Einstein was a Christian, we might consider the veracity of the assertion, and people's perceptions thereof. I offer the following URL
Good post.
I was getting tired myself of listening to other Christians claiming that Einstein was a Christian, when I could remember (from quotes) that he wasn't.

... the Christian as either stupid or cruel. Why? It's what I remember from trying to grasp the concept of a loving, Christ-fearing, backstabbing, whining community. It was a great message that had absolutely no effect on its adherents. By the time I was living daily among Catholics, in high school, I was already wary of the seemingly fanatical devotion to unsubstantiated authority awarded ideas by the Jesuits at the school.
Here you seem to be substantiating an assertion of mine that you are the Catholic's Catholic, thoroughly indoctrinated and prepared to defend "the," not your, faith to the end.
Furthermore, this appears to be proof that Catholics aren't in fact Christians since you say it had no effect on its adherents.
Christians pay lipservice, at the very least.
Read any fair-sized article from the Catholic Encyclopedia, and you'll see it. A casual dismissal or affirmation that can only come from presupposition. This was reminiscent of something I experienced among the Lutherans, only more so. But as I go through life and meet more and more people of the flock, I am repulsed ever more by the dichotomy of a gospel believer carrying so much bitterness of assumption. People can argue their "non-doctrine" or "non-dogma" (it's been an issue here before) and present the lofty aspirations of Bible excerpts, but none of it goes to change the fact that what this biblical manifesto causes is a greater practical failure at the individual level than the Bolsheviks.
Lost: one timescale.

The Bolsheviks lasted for less than a century.
Christianity has been around for two millenia.
Even its mangled image, Catholicism, has been around for around 1700 years.

Somewhere around here in my running arguments with Tony1, I wrote a capsule paragraph retelling the Bible. Sure, it sounds bitter, but it's composed of the summary rhetoric Christians present in their evangelizing.
I thought it was cute, summarizing the Bible in a paragraph.

For instance, Tony1 didn't understand my reference to America's puritanical obsessions with sins.
Sure I did.
I simply understood it in the framework of your Catholic indoctrination...
"Finally the Immaculate Virgin, preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course of her earthly life was finished, was taken up body and soul into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as Queen over all things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her Son, the Lord of lords and conqueror of sin and death." The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin is a singular participation in her Son's Resurrection and an anticipation of the resurrection of other Christians:

In giving birth you kept your virginity; in your Dormition you did not leave the world, O Mother of God, but were joined to the source of Life. You conceived the living God and, by your prayers, will deliver our souls from death.
(CCC, Part I, Sect. II, Chap. 3, Art. 9, Para. 6, I, 966)
Any religion that thinks that a woman can be a virgin after giving birth has some serious issues with sex, which issues you happen to have picked up.

...a sermon from 1741,...
Essentially, sir, this is the reason I placed myself on the sidelines in my prior speculations. I can guarantee you that no Christian on this board would think what I said is fair; my behavior defending Christianity would be one of three methods: to be unconscious of what Christianity is, merely believing that accepting John 3.16 is enough; to be conscious of what Christianity is, and somehow accepting the fact that my "compassion" in helping people into God's Kingdom after our mortal time was actually hurting them in the here and now; or else wildly flinging biblical excerpts about, and enacting psychological dysfunctions in order to avoid accounting for my beliefs.
Your point being...?

We should take a quick show of hands. How many atheists emerged from a religion? How many were born, raised, and educated to be atheists? While it is not my place to speak for Cris, I'm curious about the occasional assertion that some of us don't understand what it's like to be Christian. I can speak for myself when I say I walked away for the reasons I've mentioned, and more.
The Bible describes it thus...
Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God.
Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.
They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away.
(Luke 8:11-13, KJV).

I feel safe in asserting that Cris, too, experienced prevailing Christianity and has even offered us some insight into those experiences on former occasions. One cannot know what you, individually, are thinking. But many of Christianity's critics know what "the other side" believes because they've been there.
Likewise, for atheism's critics.

I would assert that the primary difference in the relations between Christians and others in the last twenty to thirty years can be explained very simply, in American terms: We, the people, are sick of it.
Or, at least, you, the tiassa, are sick of it.
Every time we have fun, the Christians say it's immoral. Every time we try to do what's best for the most people, the Christians say we're persecuting.
The communists also thought they were doing it for the best of most people, and with the added bonus of coming right out and saying they stood against God in the process.
End result for pretty much every single communist country? They couldn't even feed themselves.
And who fed them? The US and Canada, with very few exceptions. Oddly enough, those are pretty much the only two Christian countries in the world, with the US far in the lead, and coincidentally(?) also by far the most powerful.

...1971-2000 ... thirty years...
Your point is lost in the bitterness of complaining that others don't approve of your sin.

Originally posted by grimjester
What I am trying to do, with this thread, is stop the strong Atheists from continually saying "We use nothing but logic and reason", while attacking whatever the other side tries to say. A good majority of Atheists are as bad as Theists. You can use all the reason and logic you want, but make sure it is a healthy balance. Not just the things that support your side, that prove your side.
What is a strong atheist?
One last interesting point. If it was to be proved beyond a doubt, that there is a god, and that Jesus did live, would all the atheists become Christians?
No.

The Christian also states that everything in the universe is ultimately knowable, and at first glance, that also appears to be irrational faith.


That's news to me. Your God is ultimately knowable, then? There's physics behind the alleged tricks of your messiah?

You can explain how ice cores from the Antarctic contain seasonal layers stretching back hundreds of thousands of years (as opposed to your beloved 6000)? Oh, right, you ultimately know that the distance to all visible celestial objects is less than 6000 light-years. No, wait, let me guess: your ultimate knowledge tells you that the practical infinity of the rest of the universe will blink out of existence when "judgement day" comes on this particular planet; you aren't being delusional there, it's just that you possess ultimate knowledge. Sure, the fact that certain modern mountain peaks used to be ancient sea floor doesn't bother you at all in terms of how long the deformation of the crust must have taken. No, the rates of radioactive decay of thorium in this universe tell nothing about its age. Nor do the rates of hydrogen burning in stars. Nor do the rates of sediment buildup in the oceans. Radio carbon dating has no basis in fact. Tectonic plates do not exist. The surface of Earth is flat. Reversals of the magnetic dipole do not register in ancient lava flows. Cratering of celestial bodies tells nothing of their history, age or timeline. Radiometric ages of all solar system objects do not agree on the same 4.5 billion year figure. We can't observe other solar systems and stars being formed just like ours did. There are no planets around other stars. The visible billions of galaxies are all illusory. Quasars don't exist. Cosmic background radiation is a fake. Stars are not powered by fusion. Earth's core is not kept hot by radioactivity; hell, Earth doesn't even have a core. We never landed on the moon. We certainly didn't land on Mars. Physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics have nothing to do with any of the modern technology, nor with elimiation of diseases, extension of life spans, artificial conception, brain surgery, artificial hearts, dialysis machines, skin grafts, cancer therapy, vaccines, interplanetary travel, global weather monitoring, airplanes, computers, clothing materials, fuels, engines, agriculture, planetary science, astronomy, art, civil engineering, economy and economics, etc. No, there's absolutely no genetic evidence of common descent among the modern species. It's not like dates of evolutionary branching derived from study of genes and rates of mutation agree with the radiometric, fossil layer deposition, volcanic, tectonic, atmospheric, or meteoritic evidence. Rather it's the case that your deity must have set everything up on purpose so as to deceive rational thinkers into believing that the universe is billions of years old, that life evolved, and that the said deity does not exist -- but it's not like your doctrine is against rational thought, it's only against rational thought when it doesn't agree with that same cultural doctrine that conveys the existence of your deity.

Sorry, I must have wildly underestimated your powers of observation and your knowledge of modern science. My bad.


This looks like a powerful argument for atheism from the rationalist standpoint, however some of those human capabilities might be just a tad overestimated.


With respect to the multitudes of individuals such as yourself, I agree.


Science being so slow to find things out, many have chosen to go to this step first.


Sure. If you can't discover the truth, invent it. You've just stumbled upon the explanation for all of the world's religions, your particular one included if not especially notable in any way.


There are two possible scenarios for you...
1. You either die before the end of time, in which case the proof is forthcoming when you are resurrected, or
2. You will receive a clue as to what to believe when the entire universe disappears in a blaze.


Only two? Why, I could do better than two. Here's a sample:

1. You die and find yourself in Hades because you did not worship or offer sacrifices to Zeus.
2. You die and find yourself reincarnated in another body, where once again you take up Christianity and so repeat the endless cycle of reincarnation absent any personal growth, to which you doom yourself by your own stupidity -- after all, how can you not see that Buddha is the only source of ultimate ascention?
3. You die and are eternally punished by Allah because you never accepted the obvious fact that Mohammed is the Prophet.
4. You die and are forbidden from entering Valhalla, because you didn't die an honorable death.
5. You die and appear before Osiris, only to be torn to pieces and thrown to the dogs for being unable to recite the prescribed testimony of purity.
6. You die and your spirit is doomed to return only in the lowliest of animals and plants, since you never had any respect for them.

I'd go on, but then again I can't keep on listing all the various possibilities offered by the world's thousands of past and contemporary religious doctrines -- I'd grow old and die before I got through the list.

What, sir, is the malfunction you're experiencing?
Here you seem to be substantiating an assertion of mine that you are the Catholic's Catholic, thoroughly indoctrinated and prepared to defend "the," not your, faith to the end.
Tony, you seem to be forgetting that the most part of Christianity is a failure in my opinion. The only reason Catholocism is important to any debate is that you seem to think that the church which escorted the Word of God exclusively for 1700 years is not Christian. This is based either on your arrogant assumption that you know who's Christian and who's not--essentially, then, who is written in the Book--or else your inability to understand the relationship of the failures of Christianity's history to its contemporary state of affairs. If you can't connect history from one day to the next, much less one era to the next, then how can you possibly claim to understand the context in which the Bible was written? After all, it's part of that history. Stop confessing both your ignorance of and your apathy toward your claimed faith.
Furthermore, this appears to be proof that Catholics aren't in fact Christians since you say it had no effect on its adherents.
Actually, Tony, if you were capable of figuring out what's quite obvious, my long-expressed opinion at Exosci indicates that if Catholics failed to achieve that effect of faith, such a condition should make them exactly what I've claimed of Christianity.
Lost: one timescale.

The Bolsheviks lasted for less than a century.
Christianity has been around for two millenia.
Even its mangled image, Catholicism, has been around for around 1700 years.
Irrelevant. There are still people who call themselves Communists. Just like there are people who call themselves Christians. What's in a name is what it is given by the person who claims it.

The Bolsheviks made serious errors in their interpretation of their manifesto. The same can be said of Christians.
I simply understood it in the framework of your Catholic indoctrination.
Funny. I always thought of Puritans as Protestant. :rolleyes:

Inasmuch as you tried to make a point, I can tell from where you're going with it that you missed the point. Both, actually. Mine, and whatever it was you were trying to say.
Any religion that thinks that a woman can be a virgin after giving birth has some serious issues with sex, which issues you happen to have picked up.
And what of a religion that believes a guy can be stapled to a tree, can die, can rise, can heal the sick, can raise the dead ...?

And what of a religion that believes these things happened, and that the point of it is to restrict all manner of human leisure?

Sounds pretty damned lunatic to me.
Your point being...?
Something far too complex for you to understand, boy. But, essentially, the point is that this attitude prevails. If you managed to actually read the post instead of cut and paste it among your blithering you might have noticed why such a passage was included.
Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God.
Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.
They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away.
Until Farmer Brown looks in his seed bag and realizes he's throwing rocksalt.
Likewise, for atheism's critics.
Yes. These people rush toward the sacrifice of the intellect. (Yeah, I see why you want so badly for Catholics not to be Christians. If people treat Catholic rhetoric the way you treat people whose opinions you don't understand, some pretty funny results come forward.)
The communists also thought they were doing it for the best of most people, and with the added bonus of coming right out and saying they stood against God in the process.
End result for pretty much every single communist country? They couldn't even feed themselves.
And who fed them? The US and Canada, with very few exceptions. Oddly enough, those are pretty much the only two Christian countries in the world, with the US far in the lead, and coincidentally(?) also by far the most powerful.
And in the meantime the US scared the hell out of the world spending enough money to physically destroy the world. You must be kidding me that dragging the world to the edge of annhilation is the best such a "Christian" nation could do. Oh, wait! I forgot! Y'all just can't wait for the apocalypse! :rolleyes:

Nothing had to go the way it did; the "good" Americans did their part to make sure things went the way they did. Of course, the idea of tearing down one's neighbor in order to "uplift" them in the name of God is as old as Christianity itself.

It is my experience that, unlike the Communists, the ultimate motivation for a Christian hoping for the best for people is that God will punish them if they don't, which is where this whole damned thing started. You have led us the full circle, Tony, and your only valid point along the way was my mistaking Latin and Greek. This wonderful demonstration of the absurdity of the Cult Mind has been brought to us courtesy the Bible and its subsidiary philosophies.

--Tiassa :cool:

Now I am upset. Exosci Christian forums were really good forums up until recently. Have you all lost complete sight of every topic? Every single thread comes up with the same arguments between tiassa and tony with my occasional post that tony floods with useless phrases. I read every day and see a pattern. When the RCC popped up in one forum tony brought it to all of them and of course tiassa had to refute him. It ended up the same damn thing copied over and over again with a few words changed. I would like to actually carry this topic out, as it sounds very interesting. I do this anyway but never have anybody on my side to argue with. I would also like to hear tony argue against religion, that would be funny.

also have to say that I got quite a laugh out of your last post Borris.

To tony, as far as i can tell the virgin birth is in the bible.

" Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. " (Isaiah 7:14, KJV)

" Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. (Matthew 1:23, KJV)"

" Any religion that thinks that a woman can be a virgin after giving birth has some serious issues with sex, which issues you happen to have picked up."

Your right, they do. Are you saying that the bible is wrong?!?!?! I am very interested in your response.

Unfortunately I have also done that which I was saying not to do in the first paragraph. The virgin birth was just to big a point to ignore. Sorry grimjester.

Now I am upset. Exosci Christian forums were really good forums up until recently. Have you all lost complete sight of every topic? Every single thread comes up with the same arguments between tiassa and tony with my occasional post that tony floods with useless phrases.
I'll throw my hat in with your assessment, FA_Q2. I keep hoping Tony will figure out that he might learn or actually teach something if he changes his tactic to something a little more representative of the alleged qualities of his proclaimed faith. In the meantime, it is, I must admit, becoming a concern how much time I spend fending off Tony's hodgepodge excuse for empathy.

On the other hand, it's kind of like free advertising. Were I to derive an actual goal from my sentiments re: Christianity, I would hope not necessarily for conversion away from faith, but perhaps a positive actual response rather than any form of rhetorical response.

A long-standing sentiment I've carried is currently reawakening; long have I discounted the idea that a Christian should literally work their self to death for someone else's benefit, but our recent focus on hell and punishment, for instance, has made me reexamine that forgiving discount. Should I begin to address such a topic in greater detail, I would not hope for a conversion away from faith, per se, nor a dedication of oneself to working charitbly into the grave and redemption. Rather, I would hope that Christians on the whole would figure out that they are not alone in the Universe, and that if each of them held a functionally proper regard for the least of His brethren, charity would be less necessary, and nobody would have to work themselves to death at all. This is something I hope to explore in greater detail in the future, but I'm not going to put up with unfounded hatred directed toward the RCC or other cliques among the flock.

In the meantime, I'm trying to figure how something like the Word of God can apparently skip 1,500 years--as Tony has pointed out--and revive itself in its full glory over the course of four centuries while the central players of the story become completely irrelevant.

As far as I'm concerned, I first consciously laid into him in the Cult post, which has only proven to be a mistake in the sense that I figured the poster was capable of recognizing the cult influences within himself. But such introspection is a bad idea for that brand of faith, so I'm left wondering how to regard something that has no regard for itself.

But you've a point to consider, FA_Q2 ... if I figure out what to do about it, I'll let you know. ;)

thanx,
Tiassa :cool:

Originally posted by Boris
That's news to me. Your God is ultimately knowable, then? There's physics behind the alleged tricks of your messiah?
And they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.
(Hebrews 8:11, KJV).

You can explain how ice cores from the Antarctic contain seasonal layers stretching back hundreds of thousands of years (as opposed to your beloved 6000)?
As I may have mentioned, the moment Adam was created, his appearance would have of a person whose age is greater than zero.
Similarly, after the earth was created, it, too, would have looked older than it actually was.
Oh, right, you ultimately know that the distance to all visible celestial objects is less than 6000 light-years.
Why would that be the case?
The light from more distant objects can be created in transit.
Your assumption is that created objects such as a star would start emitting light after it is created.
That is not necessarily the case.
It could be created already emitting light.
No, wait, let me guess: your ultimate knowledge tells you that the practical infinity of the rest of the universe will blink out of existence when "judgement day" comes on this particular planet;
But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.
(2 Peter 3:10, KJV).

This, incidentally, is the cosmological prediction if the density parameter of the universe (related to the cosmological constant) is greater than 1.

Current scientific random guesses, sorry, "knowledge," places this value at 0.1 - 0.3, but the absence of references makes this guess likelier to be wrong than right.

Sure, the fact that certain modern mountain peaks used to be ancient sea floor doesn't bother you at all in terms of how long the deformation of the crust must have taken.
Noah's flood explains how mountain peaks were ancient sea floor quite handily.

This verse covers at least a portion of the deformation of the crust issue, i.e. going from Pangaea to the continents.
And unto Eber were born two sons: the name of one was Peleg; for in his days was the earth divided; and his brother's name was Joktan.
(Genesis 10:25, KJV).

No, the rates of radioactive decay of thorium in this universe tell nothing about its age. Nor do the rates of hydrogen burning in stars.
What basis do you have for assuming these rates are linear?

Nor do the rates of sediment buildup in the oceans.
If the earth really were 5 billion years old, the oceans would be pretty much full of sediment by now.

The oceans average about two, or so, miles deep.
A tenth of an inch of sediment per year for 5 billion years would mean about 500 million inches of sediment in the oceans by now.
That is about 8000 miles deep.
So, according to you, the oceans should have 8000 miles of sediment in them.

Right.

And, let's not forget that in the early days of the space program, scientists calculated that the dust on the moon should be many feet deep.
As it turned out, from watching video of the astronauts on the moon, it can be seen that it is only millimeters deep.

Hmm, didn't those scientists know their science?
Or, is last year's scientist a complete idiot, whereas today's scientist has everything figured out?

Radio carbon dating has no basis in fact.
If it had some accuracy besides just the assertion that it is accurate, it might be believable.
Tectonic plates do not exist.
Ge. 10:25 again.
The surface of Earth is flat.
Why?
Reversals of the magnetic dipole do not register in ancient lava flows.
Why is reversal of the magnetic dipole against the Bible?
Cratering of celestial bodies tells nothing of their history, age or timeline.
Big assumptions made here.
The rate of cratering isn't necessarily linear, either.
Radiometric ages of all solar system objects do not agree on the same 4.5 billion year figure.
They might agree, but their agreement is based on the assumption of certain original amounts of the elements used for dating.
We can't observe other solar systems and stars being formed just like ours did.
*chuckle*
If ours was created, then, no, we can't.
OTOH, why shouldn't we see the formation of solar systems and stars being formed?

There are no planets around other stars.
What do planets around other stars have to do with the price of yams in Antarctica?
The visible billions of galaxies are all illusory. Quasars don't exist. Cosmic background radiation is a fake. Stars are not powered by fusion. Earth's core is not kept hot by radioactivity; hell, Earth doesn't even have a core. We never landed on the moon. We certainly didn't land on Mars.
This is pure antichristian mythology.
If you believe that Christianity is against this stuff, I could see why you'd be against it.
Physics, chemistry, biology and mathematics have nothing to do with any of the modern technology, nor with elimiation of diseases, extension of life spans, artificial conception, brain surgery, artificial hearts, dialysis machines, skin grafts, cancer therapy, vaccines, interplanetary travel, global weather monitoring, airplanes, computers, clothing materials, fuels, engines, agriculture, planetary science, astronomy, art, civil engineering, economy and economics, etc.
?
I suppose where this is heading is that the existence of rocks proves that there is no God.

BTW, how is the existence of airplanes contrary to the Bible?
No, there's absolutely no genetic evidence of common descent among the modern species.
There is genetic evidence of common design, and lots of it.
It's just being interpreted as evidence of common descent.
The transitional fossils are missing, and if your starting and ending points in a particular line of descent are hundreds of millions of years apart, there would be more transitional fossils than any other kind.
There aren't any.

It's not like dates of evolutionary branching derived from study of genes and rates of mutation agree with the radiometric, fossil layer deposition, volcanic, tectonic, atmospheric, or meteoritic evidence.
It's not like wishful thinking has anything to do with this, either.
You appear to be a believer in the Moral Purity and Supreme Altruism of the Scientist.
I'm not.

Rather it's the case that your deity must have set everything up on purpose so as to deceive rational thinkers into believing that the universe is billions of years old, that life evolved, and that the said deity does not exist -- but it's not like your doctrine is against rational thought, it's only against rational thought when it doesn't agree with that same cultural doctrine that conveys the existence of your deity.
The problem is that you're thinking that there are thousands of dedicated scientists out there whose only purpose is to uncover Truth.
One reality is that most of them have to cover their rents, which means they're doing it for the paycheck.
Nothing wrong with that in itself, but the focus goes off the Truth.
Another reality is the almost unbelievable level of Hero worship in the scientific community.
Any number of "scientists" will accept what a great name says even if it is bald-faced crap.

Thus, my choice is to believe in God, otherwise I'm stuck believing in random crap that is continually being proven wrong year after year.

Sure. If you can't discover the truth, invent it. You've just stumbled upon the explanation for all of the world's religions, your particular one included if not especially notable in any way.
Of course, the same works for science, if you can't discover the truth, invent it.

There are some clues, though.
Countries which have few Christians in them, are usually extremely poor and/or they are deserts.

Countries with large numbers of Christians in them are rich and not deserts.

Countries with declining numbers of Christians are slowly going down the tubes.

Countries with increasing numbers of Christians are generally improving in wealth, standards of living, life expectancy, etc.

Only two? Why, I could do better than two. Here's a sample:

1. You die and find yourself in Hades because you did not worship or offer sacrifices to Zeus.
What happened to all the Zeus worshippers?
Of course, you're going to die and "find" yourself there, anyway.
The grave is a tough place to avoid.
2. You die and find yourself reincarnated in another body, where once again you take up Christianity and so repeat the endless cycle of reincarnation absent any personal growth, to which you doom yourself by your own stupidity -- after all, how can you not see that Buddha is the only source of ultimate ascention?
Buddhist and Hindu countries are in rough shape.
3. You die and are eternally punished by Allah because you never accepted the obvious fact that Mohammed is the Prophet.
Muslim countries and Muslim areas in the US are mostly wastelands.
4. You die and are forbidden from entering Valhalla, because you didn't die an honorable death.
As we all know, the Vikings are a major world power today.
5. You die and appear before Osiris, only to be torn to pieces and thrown to the dogs for being unable to recite the prescribed testimony of purity.
Egypt is known worldwide for their wealth and high standard of living.
6. You die and your spirit is doomed to return only in the lowliest of animals and plants, since you never had any respect for them.
The Jains (who?) are known worldwide for...uh...um...not swatting mosquitos. Great.

I'd go on, but then again I can't keep on listing all the various possibilities offered by the world's thousands of past and contemporary religious doctrines -- I'd grow old and die before I got through the list.
You would have a large list to go through, for sure.
Or, you could apply some of your observational skills to the issue.

Originally posted by tiassa
[quote]you seem to be forgetting that the most part of Christianity is a failure in my opinion.
It's pretty hard to forget, given your regular reminders.
The only reason Catholocism is important to any debate is that you seem to think that the church which escorted the Word of God exclusively for 1700 years is not Christian.
I'm supposed to believe that the RCC did this, and no one else had anything to do with it, on your say-so?
Was the Coptic church Catholic?
This is based either on your arrogant assumption ... your claimed faith.
Sorry, Catholicism can't be claimed as faith.
And, I'm not claiming it as mine, either.

my long-expressed opinion ... exactly what I've claimed of Christianity.
You don't know what Christianity is, because you keep confusing it with Catholicism.

I always thought of Puritans as Protestant.
Maybe so, but your RC-colored glasses color all your statements.

And what of a religion that believes a guy can be stapled to a tree, can die, can rise, can heal the sick, can raise the dead ...?
This has what to do with the fact you have gripes about sex?

Originally posted by FA_Q2
Now I am upset. Exosci Christian forums were really good forums up until recently.
Me, too.
There should be a Catholic forum so tiassa could have it all to himself.
When the RCC popped up in one forum tony brought it to all of them and of course tiassa had to refute him.
For a guy with an IQ of 150, you can't read very well.
I've been refuting tiassa and his RC slant on every single topic.
I would also like to hear tony argue against religion, that would be funny.
It would probably be more boring than funny.

Against Christianity: " "
Against all other religions: "Nix"

There, done.

To tony, as far as i can tell the virgin birth is in the bible.

" Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. " (Isaiah 7:14, KJV)

" Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. (Matthew 1:23, KJV)"

" Any religion that thinks that a woman can be a virgin after giving birth has some serious issues with sex, which issues you happen to have picked up."

Your right, they do. Are you saying that the bible is wrong?!?!?! I am very interested in your response.
The virgin birth, with virgin first, then the birth, is in the Bible.
The RCs have it with the virgin part after the birth, which isn't in the Bible.

Originally posted by tiassa
...empathy.
Empathy? Who said I was being empathetic?

I figured the poster was capable of recognizing the cult influences within himself. But such introspection is a bad idea for that brand of faith, so I'm left wondering how to regard something that has no regard for itself.

I keep hoping you'll notice how thoroughly the RC has indoctrinated you.
You're at a point where the RC should be elevating you to sainthood already, just for the defence of the Catholic system you've expressed in the short time I've been at this board.

Behold, a virgin shall be with child

As I see, she is a pregnant virgin.
Then again virgin seems to mean to me a person that has not had sex.
Are you working with another definition?


" I've been refuting tiassa and his RC slant on every single topic."

It seems to me that you brought it from one topic to another as you referred everything he said was RC slanted as a way to avoid actually thinking.

The problem is that you're thinking that there are thousands of dedicated scientists out there whose only purpose is to uncover Truth.
One reality is that most of them have to cover their rents, which means they're doing it for the paycheck.
Nothing wrong with that in itself, but the focus goes off the Truth.
Another reality is the almost unbelievable level of Hero worship in the scientific community.
Any number of "scientists" will accept what a great name says even if it is bald-faced crap.

Thus, my choice is to believe in God, otherwise I'm stuck believing in random crap that is continually being proven wrong year after year.

Scientists do not just accept something if a big name says it either. As a matter of fact it gets more attention and is scrutinized much more. They are searching for the truth, and if they cant find it then they look someplace else. Why would they fake truth, get discovered when the experiments is repeated in a week, and then loose all credibility.

" And, let's not forget that in the early days of the space program, scientists calculated that the dust on the moon should be many feet deep.
As it turned out, from watching video of the astronauts on the moon, it can be seen that it is only millimeters deep. "

hehe. Now that is funny. The dust on the moon is many feet deep. If there is no atmousphere for the dust to go into then you will not see a dust cloud. Hmmm.... I thought you said you studied astronomy before. Apparently not.

" The oceans average about two, or so, miles deep.
A tenth of an inch of sediment per year for 5 billion years would mean about 500 million inches of sediment in the oceans by now.
That is about 8000 miles deep.
So, according to you, the oceans should have 8000 miles of sediment in them. "

This show a lack of understanding on your part. I wont even go into it as you seem to oblivious to reality to understand anything.

" What basis do you have for assuming these rates are linear? "

The fact that today they are completely linear. They do not change today, why would they have changed yesterday?

" Why would that be the case?
The light from more distant objects can be created in transit.
Your assumption is that created objects such as a star would start emitting light after it is created.
That is not necessarily the case.
It could be created already emitting light. "

I see, so god purposely put light in transit to confuse us as to the age of the universe. So god is here to deceive us. That's really rich.

" It would probably be more boring than funny.

Against Christianity: " "
Against all other religions: "Nix"

There, done. "

Case in point. You have no idea what we are thinking at all.
You have no idea what thought is.

Tony: "I don't want to think of what's on the other side of the fence, I like ignorance"

There is a reason I like debating for the other side of an argument. If I cant then I am not suited for debating. I do not have enough info to choose sides.

" Of course, the same works for science, if you can't discover the truth, invent it.

There are some clues, though.
Countries which have few Christians in them, are usually extremely poor and/or they are deserts.

Countries with large numbers of Christians in them are rich and not deserts.

Countries with declining numbers of Christians are slowly going down the tubes.

Countries with increasing numbers of Christians are generally improving in wealth, standards of living, life expectancy, etc. "

Incredibly disgusting. This is the center of what tiassa has been talking about. You have not leaned that you are not above everyone else. You are doomed to repeat the Catholics. I will let you in on a little secret. We have been in existence for the last 200 years. Romans were in existence for 2000 years. They controlled the world during their time as we do now. For some reason those evil polytheists had become the most dominate country in the world without you god. How is this possible since you equate the number of Christians to be the prosperity of a nation. I will go further into this in another thread. It deserves more attention.

" " But you've a point to consider, FA_Q2 ... if I figure out what to do about it, I'll let you know. "
"

Why thank you tiassa but it was not necessarily an attack on you. I to participate in the never ending debate with that wall. It seems that you basically have no choice as there aren't a lot of posters anymore who disagree with our standpoint. I would like to stop this useless waste of time as well but the only solution would be to completely stop responding to tony. It is to tempting to go on even if I know it will be fruitless. Oh well. OTOH It is getting boring fast.

Originally posted by FA_Q2
Behold, a virgin shall be with child

As I see, she is a pregnant virgin.
Then again virgin seems to mean to me a person that has not had sex.
Are you working with another definition?
Nope.

It seems to me that you brought it from one topic to another as you referred everything he said was RC slanted as a way to avoid actually thinking.
Ooh, dynamic, hard-hitting, let-im-have-it!!!
With a pinch of sarcasm, yet!!
Is he down for the count?

It could be that you can't recognize the RC slant when you see it.

Scientists do not just accept something if a big name says it either.
Just how do you think they get to be big names?

As a matter of fact it gets more attention and is scrutinized much more. They are searching for the truth, and if they cant find it then they look someplace else. Why would they fake truth, get discovered when the experiments is repeated in a week, and then loose all credibility.
Ask the ones who do try it, and lose credibility.

The dust on the moon is many feet deep. If there is no atmousphere for the dust to go into then you will not see a dust cloud.
Dust clouds on the moon? or just in your mind?

The concern in the early days was that astronauts might sink into the dust. Their footprints are only millimeters deep.

Hmmm.... I thought you said you studied astronomy before. Apparently not.
You've confused me with someone else.
You must be in a great hurry to jump on whatever I say.

This show a lack of understanding on your part. I wont even go into it as you seem to oblivious to reality to understand anything.
Tough to refute, huh?
Otherwise, another dynamic, pulverizing, can-he-recover point.

The fact that today they are completely linear. They do not change today, why would they have changed yesterday?
You seem bent on setting new records for density.
Your argument is that if it didn't change while you were looking at it, it never changes.

I see, so god purposely put light in transit to confuse us as to the age of the universe. So god is here to deceive us. That's really rich.
What is the deception?

According to your previous and amazingly astute retort, if it is in transit now, it was always in transit.

You have no idea what we are thinking at all.
You have no idea what thought is.
A typical 150 IQ, I'm-smarter-than-everybody-else comment.
You should do a little bit of statistical analysis on just how many people on the face of the earth are smarter than you are.

The 19 other people you know might be less intelligent than you are, but among 6 billion people, you might be surprised to find out how many hundreds of thousands of people can leave you looking like you can't think your way out of the center of an empty room.

" Of course, the same works for science, if you can't discover the truth, invent it.

There are some clues, though.
Countries which have few Christians in them, are usually extremely poor and/or they are deserts.

Countries with large numbers of Christians in them are rich and not deserts.

Countries with declining numbers of Christians are slowly going down the tubes.

Countries with increasing numbers of Christians are generally improving in wealth, standards of living, life expectancy, etc. "

Incredibly disgusting. This is the center of what tiassa has been talking about. You have not leaned that you are not above everyone else. You are doomed to repeat the Catholics. I will let you in on a little secret. We have been in existence for the last 200 years. Romans were in existence for 2000 years. They controlled the world during their time as we do now. For some reason those evil polytheists had become the most dominate country in the world without you god. How is this possible since you equate the number of Christians to be the prosperity of a nation.
The first Christians, ever, showed up in the Roman Empire 2000 years ago.
Your point appears to be that the Roman Empire was somehow prosperous, but not because of the Christians who have been in the Roman Empire for 2000 years.

It lines right up with what I say, yet you see it as a decisive victory for your side.

Your thinking processes appear to have ground to a halt.

I to participate in the never ending debate with that wall. It seems that you basically have no choice as there aren't a lot of posters anymore who disagree with our standpoint. I would like to stop this useless waste of time as well but the only solution would be to completely stop responding to tony. It is to tempting to go on even if I know it will be fruitless. Oh well. OTOH It is getting boring fast.

You're just bummed out because I won't bow down to your inferior intelligence.
You're used to most people thinking of you as quite sharp, but I'm not hampered that way.

It's pretty hard to forget, given your regular reminders.
And yet you persist. The place of the Catholic Church in history can be assessed regardless of how it stacks up to your perception of god's word.
I'm supposed to believe that the RCC did this, and no one else had anything to do with it, on your say-so?
The RCC had a bad habit in their earlier phases of committing large numbers of thefts, murders, and covetings in the name of their god. These actions are derived from the Bible and their detailed, if specious, records of the history of their stewardship thereof.
Was the Coptic church Catholic?
And the Coptics have had such massive impact on Western development: universities, charity foundations, holidays in honor of ... and last November my mother voted against Coptic-sponsored legislation to fire teachers in Oregon. :rolleyes:

When the word reached the "New World", it was protestants and Catholics, not Coptics. We can deal with the Coptics later, if you like.
Sorry, Catholicism can't be claimed as faith.
Says you. Otherwise, this is preposterous. I'd ask you to defend that assertion but I know you won't or can't.
And, I'm not claiming it as mine, either.
Good for you. A) What has that to do with anything? B) Again you identify your faith by telling everyone what you're not. :rolleyes:
You don't know what Christianity is, because you keep confusing it with Catholicism.
Since you keep asserting that the two are separate, please provide some valid, documentable evidence to back your assertion. Otherwise, quit knocking the Catholics. You're just afraid to examine your faith long enough to know what it is, so you'd rather define yourself by pointing out other people's failures, kind of like an accuser in the Bible.
Maybe so, but your RC-colored glasses color all your statements
You keep pushing that statement, to no avail. The only anti-Catholic separatism I will grant you is a discussion of those traits of faith wholly unique to Catholocism; in other words, those which exist among Catholics and have never existed among the protestant reformation churches nor their eventual descendency. But you don't seem to care about those aspects. Rather, you've declared interpretations of the Bible described by Catholics not a part of Christianity; that includes the Trinity, Nicene Creed, and the canonization of merely four Gospels, as well as commentary and instruction relating to pretty much every verse of the Bible. With all that off-limits, I'd say there's not much left of Christianity, so why are you persisting?
This has what to do with the fact you have gripes about sex?
Actually, nothing. But I'm not surprised you missed it. Specifically, you had complained about and mocked the absurdity of a virgin birth; I merely pointed out that there are plenty of absurdities throughout Christianity. And Tony ... I'm not the one saying people should not be allowed to have sex; I don't know where you get off saying I'm griping about sex.

Just a couple of other things I thought I'd chime in on:
It would probably be more boring than funny.
And, as you've demonstrated that you have absolutely no capacity to make such an argument, except inherently in your behavior, I think you're quite correct. In the meantime, your current act is a riotous parody of faith in Christ.
Empathy? Who said I was being empathetic?
Nobody. Your lack of human empathy is exactly the point. Thank you for clarifying any sense of speculation. One of the reasons you sound like you don't know what you're talking about is that apparently you don't. I say this because you have admitted that you have no sense of what your ideas mean in any context but your own. For instance, your obsession with Catholics: you cannot understand, apparently and based upon your words here, the idea that how something came to be might be as important as what it is. If a man promises a crime-free society, we might wonder how he would accomplish that. History demonstrates that forced conformity does not work, and has the effect of elevating the crime rate simply by declaring human diversity illegal. On the other hand, if one plans to address crime, knowing that the ideal is not yet possible, from the standpoint of figuring out why people commit crimes, we might be able to establish a longer-term solution to crime than violence and incarceration. Christianity has promised a good number of ideals, and generally failed to deliver. This is important in many ways, not the least of which is when making the decision to sacrifice the intellect and adopt a religion. After all, the only reason this salesman can stand here and promise me peace is because he hacked so much of the competition to bits. One of the reasons Christianity has become so persecutory in its time is this exact lack of empathy which you have confessed to. The people, seeking their own ends--salvation--have reshaped the idea of what is best for all into the idea of what is best for the self vis a vis salvation. Thus, when addressing your salvation, the evangelist is actually working toward their own. Your questions will not be adequately resolved in this framework because of the lack of empathy on the part of the evangelist; the evangelist cannot necessarily make the idea relevant to the infidel without some sense of empathy.

Empathy is an inherent part of the human condition. If we apply the pre-Catholic writings of Barnabas, and the Epistle to Diognetus, we might say that the "new organism" that a man becomes when he adopts faith in Christ involves the forfeit of a specific brand of empathy.
I keep hoping you'll notice how thoroughly the RC has indoctrinated you.
Again, you'll have to justify that using ideas found exclusively among Catholics, and then weigh that out according to the following indoctrination formula: 14 years Lutheran, 3 years in a Catholic school, 2 years Satanism and variations, and several years melding Wicca and reality, among a host of others. Must be the Catholocism, eh?

Have a point, or go buy one.
There are some clues, though.
Countries which have few Christians in them, are usually extremely poor and/or they are deserts.

Countries with large numbers of Christians in them are rich and not deserts.

Countries with declining numbers of Christians are slowly going down the tubes.

Countries with increasing numbers of Christians are generally improving in wealth, standards of living, life expectancy, etc.
As a last note, Tony ... if you choose to point out the "success" of Christianity, we might look at how those people you've noted above reached their success. Here we run into the usual complaints of barbarous atrocities, political shennanigans, sexism, racism, slavery, blackmail, theft and other deceptions. In other words, the Christians in your argument climbed to the top of a pile of corpses that they put there, which is the reason we might wonder about Christian history in the first place. The tendency to overlook such ideas comes up among the faithful, Tony, when they start exscinding portions of history. With no history to examine, there is no lesson to learn or concept to derive. Without a past, there is no progress, though some would assert that social stasis is exactly what earthly, mortal christians would seek.

If you choose to take the good from something, you must also recognize the bad, else you are merely ignoring what is really there.

--Tiassa :cool:

Tony1,

Could you tell us your age please.

Cris

Boris, Redcat,

Agnosticism: There seems to be more definitions for this than there are for atheism. I don’t believe that the definition that Boris quoted is the most appropriate.

Here are my current views on these issues (very briefly) -

Agnosticism is concerned with knowledge whereas atheism is concerned with existence.

The Gnostics claimed to have knowledge of God, and the word Agnostic is a play on that concept as a negative – i.e. no knowledge of God. An Agnostic might well believe that a god exists but says that such a being is beyond human comprehension so that we can have no knowledge of the nature of such a being. Such a person is an Agnostic Theist. However, the Agnostic Atheist states that a god would be unknowable and that the theist’s claims for the existence of gods are baseless – i.e. any discussion about gods is pointless.

Atheism has two primary definitions –

1. The skeptical form, which says that there is inadequate evidence to claim the existence or non-existence of a god. We simply do not know one way or the other. This form is also known as weak atheism.

2. Strong atheism, which claims that gods do not exist. More usually such an atheist makes the claim against a specific god and will be prepared to defend the claim.

Does that help?

Cris

Redcat,

Now I am a Christian and I believe that God is beyond our understanding. But I'm not sure what you mean by not being able to have knowledge; and considering that knowledge is fact then I have no knowledge about God. Does that make me agnostic?

No not really. I might describe you as an Agnostic Theist; however, you claim to be Christian, which implies that you have some knowledge of some aspects of God – e.g. you ‘know’ that he wants you to ask for forgiveness, you ‘know’ that he is all love, etc. A true agnostic would say that you cannot ‘know’ any of these things.

The distinction here seems to be between ‘understanding’ and ‘knowledge’. I would say that it is impossible to understand something unless you had appropriate knowledge of that thing. The converse must also be true, i.e. if you have knowledge then it must be assumed that you understand the knowledge that you possess.

But what you are really claiming is that as a Christian you have some knowledge of your god (otherwise it would be meaningless to call yourself Christian) but that many aspects of his nature are beyond your comprehension. This is different from the agnostic who would claim that ALL aspects of a god would be incomprehensible and therefore unknowable.

So don't worry, you seem to be just a regular theist.

Cheers
Cris

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
" Originally posted by FA_Q2
Behold, a virgin shall be with child

As I see, she is a pregnant virgin.
Then again virgin seems to mean to me a person that has not had sex.
Are you working with another definition?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nope"

Well then. The quote says that she is a virgin that is pregnant. If she does not have sex before she gives birth then she has had a virgin birth. Can you follow?

" Ooh, dynamic, hard-hitting, let-im-have-it!!!
With a pinch of sarcasm, yet!!
Is he down for the count?

It could be that you can't recognize the RC slant when you see it. "

Once again you need to read. Look back a few posts and try to comprehend what we were talking about. You have missed it.

" Just how do you think they get to be big names? "

They say something big, it is tested and it is correct. Duh!

" Ask the ones who do try it, and lose credibility. "

Why don't you since you seem to believe they do. Your the one who is accusing the grater part of the scientific community of inventing truth instead of searching for it.

" Dust clouds on the moon? or just in your mind?

The concern in the early days was that astronauts might sink into the dust. Their footprints are only millimeters deep. "

Still ignorant as ever I see. Without an atmousphere and weighing only 1/6 of their earthly weaight it seems very logical that yoou would not sink in the dust.
Lets think this out logically shall we.
First what is dust?
Ground rock. Obviously hard, dense and solid.
Why would you sink in dust?
Dust is light and contains many air pockets allowing the dust to shift easily out of the way of your body.
Why would you not sink in moon dust?
There is no air making the dust packed together. This makes it almost like a sedimentary rock. Not hard but easily stood on.
Is this a little better for you?

"Your argument is that if it didn't change while you were looking at it, it never changes. "

Exactly. I see you are learning. It is called observation. I look at something and assume that it is what it is until it changes. Then I change its definition to better fit the new discovery. You just assign it a random identity that agrees with your current view. This way you never have to redefine what you think and never have to think about anything.

" What is the deception?

According to your previous and amazingly astute retort, if it is in transit now, it was always in transit. "

hehe. Funny how you can completely misunderstand things. If it is in transit now then it must have been traveling before with the same properties. If its speed is constant then it was constant before. With this I can trace the traveling object back to its origin and the time its journey began. Now I see many other things emitted with the same properties. So I can Now determine that is the source of the emitted object. The difference with movement and decay rates is movement is not a basic property of the object. It is the result of interaction with other objects.

" The 19 other people you know might be less intelligent than you are, but among 6 billion people, you might be surprised to find out how many hundreds of thousands of people can leave you looking like you can't think your way out of the center of an empty room. "

Typical evasion of the topic. Not to say that I am not responsible as well with my comments, sometimes can't resist. I would not be amazed at all. Happen to have meant quite a number of them myself. Now get off your high horse and lets get back to the topic at hand.

" The first Christians, ever, showed up in the Roman Empire 2000 years ago.
Your point appears to be that the Roman Empire was somehow prosperous, but not because of the Christians who have been in the Roman Empire for 2000 years.

It lines right up with what I say, yet you see it as a decisive victory for your side.

Your thinking processes appear to have ground to a halt. "

Are you trying to make me laugh? The Roman Empire fell shortly after Christianity was introduced. It adopted the Greek gods for the 2000 years of its dominance.

" You're just bummed out because I won't bow down to your inferior intelligence.
You're used to most people thinking of you as quite sharp, but I'm not hampered that way."

Is attacking me the best you can do? I thought you were not supposed to judge others? Maybe its that RC thing that you keep blaming all you problems on. Oh well.

"Are you trying to make me laugh? The Roman Empire fell shortly after Christianity was introduced. "

Only if by shortly, you mean approximately 476 years.

"It adopted the Greek gods for the 2000 years of its dominance."

Are you talking about the Roman Empire, Roman Republic or Byzantine Empire?

The Byzantine Empire lasted about 1000 years. The roman empire, 476. The Roman Republic, 510. If you are taking them all in one, I guess that could work out though.

FA_Q2 ... I hate to bring it up ...Exactly. I see you are learning. It is called observation. I look at something and assume that it is what it is until it changes. Then I change its definition to better fit the new discovery. You just assign it a random identity that agrees with your current view. This way you never have to redefine what you think and never have to think about anything.

It's not a big issue.

I'd just never seen it explained in so many words. But sometimes the detail is necessary, I suppose.

But I could swear that you've just described the learning process.

Your astute observations aside ... I would think twice about using the phrase "never have to think about anything". You know what you mean and I'm pretty damn sure I know what you mean, but humanity being as diverse as it is .... ;)

thanx,
Tiassa :cool:

tony1,


Similarly, after the earth was created, it, too, would have looked older than it actually was.


Oh, sure. Layered glaciers in the polar ice contain 150,000 years of detailed seasonal record just for the heck of it. It's not like they could just be uniform without yearly fluctuations in water isotopes or atmospheric dust -- those chemical layers in the arctic must really have been important to how the rest of the Earth works. The layers reflecting ancient volcanic eruptions are, of course, also fake -- they were just included for the completeness of illusion. And the fossilized forests under the Antarctic ice were put there just for the heck of it, too. Why not? If your deity is to fake extreme old age for the universe, then I suppose it would fake perfectly -- being how infallible it is...


The light from more distant objects can be created in transit.


Of course, silly me. The universe was created with a complete 15 billion year age 6,000 years ago. I take it you no longer dispute all the physical evidence for that age. Rather, you are now claiming that all of this evidence is faked to perfection by your deity.

Quite perverse of your deity to create such a complete simulation of old universal age. Well, that's actually not quite right. It's perverse in the extreme for you to hold such a belief.


This, incidentally, is the cosmological prediction if the density parameter of the universe (related to the cosmological constant) is greater than 1.

Current scientific random guesses, sorry, "knowledge," places this value at 0.1 - 0.3, but the absence of references makes this guess likelier to be wrong than right.


Oh, so suddenly scientific theories are not pure nonsense, and you wish to quote them in support of your doctrine's proclaimed mystical origins.

Of course, I could remind you that the same cosmological prediction stems from the Big Bang cosmology which you disparage. But that would be too obvious.

On the other hand, I could note that the latest observations actually suggest that the universe is continuing to explode outward -- presumably under the same influence that overcame gravity in the Big Bang -- and accelerating at that. Of course, I'd hardly rely on prognostications of the universe's fate until the nature of dark matter/energy is satisfactorily explained, and general relativity successfully integrated with quantum mechanics in a unified field theory.

Then again, even if the Big Bang cosmology as currently framed by theories-in-progress truly reflects reality, and the omega parameter is greater than 1, then the eventual collapse of the universe will take exactly as long as it took the universe to expand -- which means we would all be in for a ride of another 15 billion years at least. Man, that's a long time to wait for the second coming -- won't you agree?


Noah's flood explains how mountain peaks were ancient sea floor quite handily.


No, it doesn't. Because non-volcanic mountain peaks are ancient sea floor sediment layers, all distorted and crumpled up. The deposits weren't formed on the pre-existing mountains; the mountains were formed out of the pre-existing deposits. The processes that drove this crumpling of the crust are still active today in the form of tectonic plate movement -- and the crust continues to slowly deform by measurable yearly amounts.

Of course, it doesn't matter to you one way or another -- since you believe that the universe is an elaborate practical joke. So why don't you just stick to that central argument, and forget your ignorant attempts at rationalizing your insanity?


<i>No, the rates of radioactive decay of thorium in this universe tell nothing about its age. Nor do the rates of hydrogen burning in stars.</i>

What basis do you have for assuming these rates are linear?


The rates derive from those same quantum mechanical constants that characterize the matter of which everything in the universe is made. As many religionists gleefully point out, the constants of quantum physics form a very delicate equilibrium; a slightest change in those constants would fail to agree with the observed universe.

On the other hand, what basis do you have for assuming these rates are not linear? Oh, wait, I forgot: the survival of your doctrine is at stake. Isn't it funny, that you have the very same acute case of denial that you ridicule when it manifests during shifts in scientific paradigms? And what's even more funny, your particular scientific paradigm goes all the way to the stone age -- and you <u>still</u> cling to it, thousands of years and a score of scientific revolutions later.

But then again, what's this with objections concerning rates? Don't you believe that the universe is a fake anyway? So why should the rates matter -- why should any rational argument matter -- when the 15 billion year old universe just blinked into existence 6 thousand years ago?


If the earth really were 5 billion years old, the oceans would be pretty much full of sediment by now.

The oceans average about two, or so, miles deep.
A tenth of an inch of sediment per year for 5 billion years would mean about 500 million inches of sediment in the oceans by now.
That is about 8000 miles deep.
So, according to you, the oceans should have 8000 miles of sediment in them.

Right.

And, let's not forget that in the early days of the space program, sci