Three Claims of Uniformitarian Naturalism

SetiAlpha6:

It looks like you've given me a whole lot more excuses to avoid engaging with any of the substantive points and questions I put to you. This is a pattern I've noticed with you.

I'm wondering why you come to this forum. If it is not to discuss anything of substance, then why come? Are you just trying to virtue-signal to co-believers by repeatedly stating what you believe, without ever attempting to give any reasons for why you believe it? Are you here to evangelise, hoping that if you mention Jesus often enough some non-Christian might go and look him up, wondering what all the fuss is about?

In starting this thread, you tried to lay down a challenge to atheists, which you assumed they could not meet. In fact, your post was answered in detail by a number of different people. My own replies to your topic started almost exactly one month ago. They were detailed. In characteristic fashion, you ignored the vast majority of the substance, as well as most of the questions I put to you. Specifically, in my post #270 I answered the three specific claims you put in your opening post, one by one. Following that post, as you will recall, I responded in detail to a number of your other posts in the thread. You ignored most of my responses there, and most of the questions I put to you.

But then, just today, you posted #394, complaining that you still haven't seen the scientific proof of two of your statements from your opening post.

What happened? Did you forget all the previous responses to those claims? Did you forget how I told you that nobody has claimed to have proofs of those claims, and neither are they relied upon by atheists?

You tried to set up a straw man, saying, essentially: atheists believe these things, but none of them can prove them. Therefore, God.

Your straw man failed. First, as you have been told, those things are not articles of faith that atheists have. We don't need to assume they are true. We don't need to prove them. Moreover, even if we did need them and were unable to prove them, that does nothing at all to show that your God is real or your religion is correct. Besides, as I showed, you don't even understand those claims, as is evidenced in the way you expressed them in your opening post. You made several mistakes about what atheists require and what science requires. Since those claims are all vaguely related to the theory of evolution, it is fair to conclude that your understanding of the theory of evolution is lacking, too.

As far as I can tell, there's little point in trying to get you to think things through. All you want to do is to make excuses as to why you don't have to or don't want to. Meanwhile, you seem to find plenty of time to preach about your unsupported beliefs.

Are you done here? Do you actually want to discuss the topic you posted any further - along with the spin-off questions and points of discussion that have been put to you - or should I close the thread because you're unwilling to do anything other than post more proclamations of your faith in God?

 

How about you try answering some of the excellent questions I asked you? Then, if you still have time to spare, you can explain which of my questions are inappropriate, and why.

Then concentrate on answering just a few of the more excellent ones.

Also, it will help if you can remember that people have responded to you. It will save a lot of time, since you won't be repeating yourself unnecessarily.

Maybe you should stop asking yourself questions and try listening to the questions other people are putting to you, for a change. Obviously, you're asking yourself the wrong questions. You need some outside help.

Nobody expects that. I would like to see you try, that's all. You know, put in more than the bare minimum effort. Drop the platitudes and actually think about things for a minute or two. This is a forum. It isn't TV. Veging out on the sofa is not supposed to be what you're here for.

Again, nobody expects you to have an answer to everything.

You'll find yourself in a much stronger position in debates if you admit that you don't know everything. There is a tendency around here for people to overstep the limits of what they can prove, or what they actually know. They almost always end up looking silly, making a bunch of claims they can't hope to support.

I don't ask questions unless I want answers.

Don't worry about me. I'll be fine, I assure you. Tell me what you really think. This act of pretending you love everybody is wearing thin anyway.

Maybe I'm different from you, but I like to have reasons to holding a certain view. I ask you what you think about specific things and most of the time I get nothing back from you other than repetitious proclamations of your faith in God etc.

Take one example: you say you believe that God heals people miraculously. But why? Is it just your gut feeling that this is what happens? Is it because if you can't explain why somebody was healed then you just assume it must have been God, because God is the plug that fills all holes in your knowledge? Is it because you can't admit you don't know how or why the healing happened, so you need to put God into the picture as an ignorance substitute? Is it because you've read lots of religious stories about God healing people and you've never bothered to check whether there's reliable evidence for any of them? Is it just faith?

Which ones?

I wish I could say the same about you, but you don't come across as very genuine to me. I guess it's possible that you're as naive and foolish as you make out, but it seems unlikely given your selective avoidance of all the hard questions.

 

What you're doing there is what is known in the trade as the "Gish Gallop".

When Miracle #1 is debunked by the skeptic, you say "Oh, but there's still another 1399 miracles that you haven't disproven! Until you disprove every one of them, you haven't shown there are no miracles." And when those 1399 are disproven, you say "I have a new list of 150 miracles. You have to disprove those, too!"

Here's how it is supposed to work:

You choose your best miracle from the 1550 miracles you have mentioned. Give us all the details and we'll talk about it. If this is your best case, and you can't establish that the alleged miracle ever happened, then it will be safe to assume that you probably won't do any better with the other 1549 miracles.

So, do your homework. You've read up on those 1550 miracles, I assume. Pick your best one. Line up your ducks and prove to us that this was a legitimate God-given miracle. If you can establish a reasonable case that your favorite miracle happened, then we might start to take this whole miracle claim of yours more seriously.

I should mention, too, that you have a track record of failure in proving miracles. Case in point is the miraculous cure of your father, which you admitted you could not prove had anything to do with your God. But maybe you can do better with one of the 1550 miracles you refer to.

I can wait while you conduct any research you require.

 

The short answer is: we can't; we have to wait until the light from Andromeda has had time to get here.

The longer answer is that it's hard to destroy an entire galaxy in just 2.5 million years, so it's very likely that it's still there.

See what I did there? An honest, straightforward answer to the question you asked. I didn't pretend you didn't ask it. I didn't change the subject. And I certainly didn't say "Each person has to find his own answers to that. I believe that it's still there, but I'm not going to tell you why."

Really, who cares what you believe?

The question we all want to know the answer to is: can you establish, using evidence, that Jesus performed miracles?

We don't really have to wait with bated breath for your answer to that, though, do we? The answer is obviously no, you can't. If you could, somebody else would have got to it before you. For that matter, you can't even establish with reasonable certainty that the biblical Jesus was a historical rather than a fictional figure.

 

I have not made the claim that he never existed.

Understand?

If you claim to know that Jesus Christ was a real person, then you should be able to prove it. Can you?