I'm not at all conversant with evolution but I do vaguely recall learning about a species of frog in America.  This species of  frog has spread north (or south) but while the frogs from the middle of the region are able to reproduce with frogs to the north or the south, the frogs from the north cannot reproduce with the frogs from the south and vice versa. This has been interpreted as the formation of a new species and

evidence of observable evolution.  Has anyone else heard of it, or was I dreaming? 

Oh, I have no problem admitting that the universe has no meaning. I believe I also said this about 5 pages back. But that does not mean that we do not have local meaning. I am very meaningful to my wife, children, parents and (I hope) friends.

If we had not evolved to seek meaning, we would not be seeking meaning. You are looking down the tube from the wrong end.

I certainly failed to ask a lot of question that I should have for many years when I was a believer. I would say that I was unthinking.

It is not just a stretch, it is a numerical impossibility. No evolutionary biologist believes that flowers evolved through blind chance. Natural selection is not perfect, but it is far from blind.

Sara, what books have you read about evolution? What knowledge do you actually have of the evidence for evolution? Have you read Dawkins or Gould? Do you know about random mutations introduced by retroviruses in the egg that then propogate to all descendents which can then be used to establish common descent? If you do not know these things, please stop trying to refute evolution with philosophy and creationist "logic". Many of us here have read the books and are aware of the evidence. I don't mean to be unkind when I say this, but refutations such as this one simply make you look ignorant.

You obviously have a good mind. I'll risk sounding arrogant and suggest that you prove to yourself that evolution is wrong by learning what it is first.

Hi Sara, I'll take a crack at some of your objections and misunderstandings.

Our universe is not subject to physical laws that existed beforehand. Those laws exist concurrently with our universe. Without it, they don't.  As I understand it, other universes in the multiverse may have different natural laws. Then, by this reasoning, you must also conclude that the First Cause has the negative characteristics as well... or come up with superfluous ad hoc explanations. I think most skeptics are more adamant about the shortcomings of theism than about the possibility of a vague higher power. I'm willing to bet he was talking about absolute meaning... but that's not my place to say. Value exists only in the relationship between our mental states and states of affairs. Remove our desire and there is no value. There is no absolute morailty that Christians have successfully eliminated from interpretation either. Haven't the absolute moral principles of the OT been trumped by changing culture? Isn't God trumped by cultural changes (I probably don't have to illustrate OT laws that you would find inadequate today)? Don't all people want to offer their neighbor a principle for aversion to harm for their own wellbeing? Is that not motivation enough to establish principles of morality? How does a lack of a belief in God mean that a person has no desire to avoid suffering and have such a deterring system in place? Our objective standards for morality come from recognizing an aversion to pain/suffering objectively based on our physiological makup. Subjective opinions do not make facts, but they are still objective truths about the desire or belief of a person. If we mark right and wrong as "more or less harmful" humanistically, we can use those terms- but they are not absolute truths. An absolute "moment" cannot be compared to any other, because all the parameters have changed, and therefore it is empty. Objective is not absolute, nor is the subjective necessarily relativism. In moral ontology, not just objective function comes from that same place as our desire to avoid pain- moral ontology is contingent upon that desire, because again, when you remove desire, there is no value. Speaking of genetics, do you have a good explanation for endogenous retroviruses or the broken vitamin C gene in humans? Only conditionally in relation to this physical world. No, they are banking on those concepts being used by intelligent life. oh my. Intellectually lazy? You don't think that scientists, physicists, mathemeticians, etc. are trying to figure out order in the universe... and Christians are????? See above/objective morality. Just because we all have emotional responses/experiences, doesn't mean that there is equal understanding of the actual motivation for them. My desire to play guitar is an objective reality, but it does not exist absolutely so that everyone experiences it. That is why you cannot conflate the subjective with relativism. Same for Christians: 2 Cor. 10:5 “Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ” What your forgetting is that scientists have a vested interest in overturning poor research to make a name for themselves. There are checks and balances, which is why when hoaxes are proposed, scientists are usually, if not always, the ones that discover them first. Seems to me he is merely advocating continuing investigation based upon the results of previous scientific investigations that adhere to its known parameters, wherever they may lead... what's your beef? Yes, put the word "human" before every instance of the word "intelligence" in this quote and you are right. Yikes! No free will then... I hope since the Creator has placed a virus in my program, that He presses "Delete" instead of running my program for eternity. (Or I hope He fixes the bug) Pattern recognition is not an accident, it was a product of natural selection. Those who did not recognize patterns had a survival liability.  It seems that you do not understand natural selection and I wonder what actual study you have done on evolution (as you said) when this is such a basic tenet.   I assume you are referring to my post about Koko. In evolutionary theory, we would expect to find intelligence in some animals more than others. In Christianity, with all animals subjugated, such a diversity of intelligence makes no sense.  That is not true. The description is much broader than that. Are you saying that the "faith" of other religions should not be called "faith?" And again, what good reason is there for a "mystery element" (faith) to be neccessary in a salvation plan based on morality? How much evidence is there anyway?  Obviously not enough to negate the necessity of a serious leap of faith.  Richard Carrier goes into that some in his book. Self- awareness is the mental modeling process turned on itself. Not sure about what you mean by "intelligence not arising spontaneously", but if you mean what I think you mean, that's a circular argument. What about all of the convoluted theology in Christianity I mentioned in a previous post? You can't see the mountains of complexity necessary for God's salvation plan?  In purpose and desire?  If God exists he is at least as complex as anything humans have ever conceived and proposed scientifically, with the added elements of purpose, desire, and most superfluous of all: every viable and inviable potentiality- they're all factors when making a universe according to a will.  Because God is perfect and evolution is not. When compared to random chance/chaos, natural selection appears to "breed" efficiency- but there is still room for improvement. With a perfect God, this room for improvement doesn't make sense.  Of course, our standards are higher when a perfect Being creates something supposedly in His perfect image.  I think you're stretching it by saying any intelligence, but anyway, the point is that they hope to find evidence that aliens will take advantage of these natural laws contingent upon our shared universe and show us that they understand them... thus showing us how intelligent they are. In Carrier's book and (I think) in Mark Perakh's book, they say that several basic formulas arose very quickly- in the sense that the earliest actions arose with them. Again, we have never observed mind manifested by anything but a biological entity. You could start to give desire and will to natural forces like the weather if you want, but their actions are emperically causal and show no free will that we can determine. Thanks for your time.[/b][/b]

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These are some arguments that were not properly conveyed in the debate on the Existence of GOD between the Rational Response Squad (atheist) and Kirk Cameron with Ray Comfort (believers). I would like to clarify a few things here.

Did GOD create evil?

No, GOD did not create evil. GOD created the BASIS for the matter and existence of the universe. THEN he gave freewill to his creations who THEN misused that freewill to do evil upon one another. An example would be if I created a hammer, and then gave that hammer to someone and said, “Go build a house for you and your family”, but instead they took the hammer and beat someone with it THEY through their own freewill and decision making did evil, I did NOT do evil by creating the hammer since my intention for the hammer was GOOD, not evil.

No where in the bible is it stated that GOD created evil. Read in context, the passages on creation obviously talk about the creation of the physical existence of the universe, NOT the emotional states and actions of its inhabitants.

Also I do realize the argument that since GOD is omnipotent the idea of freewill is false. But GOD also states that he “wipes out our transgressions for his own sake”. He is saying that he wipes out the memory of our sin so that he can continue to love us unconditionally. GOD is admitting that he can alter HIS own memory, for our sake, which defiantly lends itself to plausible discussions of how much of HIS knowledge he uses in conjunction to us? GOD claims to know the overall plan for the course of events on earth. He lets YOU decide your path along that course of events through the use of your free will, so that where you end up at the end of these events, which side you are on in other words, is strictly up to you.

 

Is the absence of a record of creation PROOF that GOD did not create the universe?

Mr. Sapient made the comment that we could check building permits and contact the builder of a building and therefore prove where the building comes from. In doing this it is implied that since there are no tangible records of creation (I believe there are tangible records all around us but that’s an entire other discussion) GOD must not have created the universe. But the absence of records in itself does not prove that something didn’t happen it only shows that we have not been exposed to what happened.

From and atheist/evolutionist point of view since we can’t see/hear/feel/taste/smell GOD then he doesn’t exist. But there are many fish in the ocean that have never seen/heard/felt/tasted/smelled mankind, these fish also do not possess the mental capacity to conceive of land or mankind on land, this does not mean that we do not exist, it simply means they have not been exposed to us yet.

For thousand of years mankind could not begin to conceive of existence of electricity, it existed, but their lack of scientific understanding simply didn’t allow them to harness or experience it. Since they could not harness or experience it that was not proof it didn’t exist. They just had not reached the point where their intelligence would allow them to experience electricity.

Lack of tangible records is therefore a moot point; it does not prove the absence of GOD.

 

3^rd Law of Thermodynamics

Mr. Sapient brought up the 3^rd law of Thermodynamics to show that the universe had existed for all eternity since the law states that matter and energy cannot be created or destroyed, it must always exists. So does the 3^rd law of Thermodynamics support GOD’s claim that he has always existed also?

God claims to have created us out of the “dust of the earth” and brought us to life with “the breathe of life”. Humans thousands of years ago had no concept of terms such as genetics and biology that we have today so he used that terminology instead to make it understandable to the people of that time. GOD created us out of the “dust of the earth”, which is the matter our bodies are made up of, and “the beathe of life” which is energy from GOD that turns an inanimate pile of meat and bone into a walking human being. Just because we do not understand the nature of this energy does not mean it doesn’t exist because as I showed earlier not understanding something, like electricity, doesn’t mean it does not exist. There are many different forms of the same energy (kinetic, electric, etc…) that were discovered each individually over time. We can’t test the existence of this energy (yet) but we can see the effects of a person WITHOUT this energy in such things as cryogenics. Modern science has played with the idea of freezing a person to perfectly preserve them until such a time as a cure could be found for whatever disease that person has. We have the technology to perfectly freeze a person preserving them in a pristine state, but we cannot revive this person after all his body functions cease EVEN THOUGH there has been no major damage to the individual. This is because GOD provides the energy and once a person’s body ceases to function that energy returns to GOD. This is what GOD says, not I. Otherwise everything should still be available in that persons body to slowly defrost them and they should return to consciousness with some medical assistance, but once GOD’s “breathe of life” energy, a major ingredient of life, is gone there is simply no way to revive a human.

GOD states that we were made in HIS image. Image is a simplified translation of the original depth of that meaning. This is verified by language experts, not just Christians, research it and you will see. Image in this case has a much larger function meaning we are created like GOD. If we are created like him and we are matter and energy, then HE by his own words is also matter and energy, just in much higher forms than we can currently comprehend.

Therefore if matter and energy are eternal then GOD’s claim of eternal existence is completely supported by the 3^rd Law of Thermodynamics since the law states that matter and energy can never be created or destroyed.

Now all we need is intelligence. Can matter have intelligence? We are matter and we have intelligence so yes, matter can have intelligence. Are there different levels of intelligence? Obviously there are because we have life from bugs, up to animals and on to humans with there being even different levels of intelligence in humans. Only man’s own arrogance would lead him to assume there could be nothing more intelligent than him. The existence of an eternal GOD of absolute intelligence is completely scientifically plausible.

The painting/building analogy and evolution

I will be honest; I really hate it when creationists try to use this to prove the existence of a creator. Basically they are doing the same thing the evolutionists are doing. They find something that is an END RESULT and extrapolate backwards to come up with a beginning. It doesn’t work to prove Evolution and it doesn’t work to prove Creation.

Neither do the bones at the Natural History Museum prove evolution. They are still an end result without proof of how they started out; they are only proof that “something” died. You have to “personally interpret” that they are transitional forms, nothing about them proves they are transitional forms.

I understand what Mr. Sapient was trying to say when he said we are all transitional forms. Unfortunately the fossil record does not show it neither does us, the living specimens. If we ARE transitional forms then all life forms around us should be in different transitional states. In other words I should be sharing a world with MANY different types of humans that still have either ape shaped hands and feet or eyes. And while I realize we are similar, what I am saying, to be even more precise is that there should be humans, with the ability to communicate, that have elongated features of an ape. Nature is just NOT that precise that all members of a species would jump to a new transitional state all at once or even at a close period in time together. There are 6 BILLION of us on the planet now, there should be MANY different forms of ape/human hybrids to support the theory of evolution, but unfortunately there are none, nor is there any recorded in science or history, nor are there millions or billions of skeletal remains of this slow transition. If the dinosaur bones supposedly lasted millions of years, wouldn’t the ape/human transitional forms, which came AFTER the dinosaurs, have lasted that long as well? There should be MILLIONS of ape/human transitional fossils and skeletons buried all over the earth with which we could use to map the gradual changes.

Where are they? We do not simply have a missing “link”, we have a missing “chain”!

 

Does GOD burn people forever in HELL?

No. This is an unfortunate misunderstanding of the terms such as “everlasting” in the bible. The simplest example I can think of is where the bible talks of Sodom and Gomorrah burning with an “everlasting flame”. Obviously Sodom and Gomorrah are not still burning. By using the bible to understand the context and also using the original languages to confirm the meaning and usage of descriptive words like this we can see that the word “everlasting” in this way means the EFFECTS of the fire were everlasting, as in the cities were eternally destroyed, not that the fire itself was everlasting. Taking this in context with bible passages about us being returned to ashes and the dust of the earth we can see that the EFFECTS of punishment are everlasting, we cease to exist, not the punishment itself.

This misconception did not start until the Roman Catholic Church realized it could twist the bible this way and use it to get money out of Christians of the early Roman Catholic periods; they realized they could scare people into coming to church with it, which is really a disgrace to GOD and Christianity as a whole. When the Roman Catholics first started using it most Christians weren’t even allowed to have bibles and so had no way to confirm this interpretation.

If churches would only start to realize that LOVE is a much better motivator than FEAR I think they would start clearing up this misunderstanding, but it is so ingrained into the Christian culture now because when it first originated no one had the proper information and access to the bible they needed to dispute it. Over time it continued to be erroneously taught and unfortunately way too many people thought they needed it to keep Christians coming to church or simply used it to continue the Roman Catholic money making scam. Once it was allowed to pervade our religion for so long it became accepted as truth so much so that many Christians consider it is blasphemy or heresy to say otherwise when it is obviously not blasphemy since it does not deny any of the base principles of Christianity, such as belief in GOD or the acceptance of Jesus’ gift of salvation.

Mr. Sapient at one point made the accusation that Mr. Cameron, through his arguments, showed that he new nothing about evolution. But through Mr. Sapients’ similar sayings such as GOD burns people forever in hell and his questioning of whether GOD created evil shows only a generic understanding of the bible. Unfortunately I do have to concede that most people have only this generic understanding which is where so much of the confusion around Christianity comes from. But if he is going to try and argue away the existence of GOD I think he should be much more familiar with the bible than just the generic, and unfortunately Roman Catholic contaminated, interpretations of the bible.

 

Radiometric Dating validity in proving age of specimens in relation to evolution

The validity of radiometric testing isn’t even a religious debatable topic in relation to evolution, it’s HEAVILY disputed even between secular scientist! You don’t have to take my word for it though, just go to www.google.com and do a search for “radiometric dating accurate” (without quotes), notice I didn’t say “inaccurate” you can put “accurate” and the very FIRST screen of search returns will be papers and articles on how radiometric dating is not accurate. Don’t take my word for it. Go Look!

Furthermore it is also just another example of starting with an END RESULT and extrapolating backwards to get a beginning, without a reliable BASE or STARTING POINT with which to verify it’s validity the answers gotten will be purely based on human assumption and not FACT.

In the end, using radiometric dating to try and prove evolution and/or creation is therefore useless.

 

If you don’t follow GOD what happens to you?

Since you don’t want GOD in your life, and he provides the energy that keeps you alive (see Genesis), if you say you don’t want him to interfere, then by leaving you alone, which is YOUR CHOICE you cease to reborn, recreated, have your DNA repaired, however you choose to look at it, after judgment.

He doesn’t WANT to leave you alone, but he respects your FREE WILL CHOICES.

People are punished because of their crimes against others, just as our laws punish criminals, but afterwards you are just “let go” because you told GOD to let you go by denying him and saying you don’t WANT him in your life. You are not reborn and burned forever. What would be the purpose of that?

GOD cannot leave you alone AND keep you alive at the same time without violating your freedom of choice, since the energy that keeps you alive comes directly from HIM.

GOD claims that everyone will be punished according to their works, and an average 70 year life span does not equal an eternity of pain. Also GOD states that the “wages of sin is death”. Death is the complete absence of life. How can you be dead and still be alive somewhere burning, it’s an impossibility. I refer you back to the earlier section of this article titled “Does GOD burn people forever in hell”, where I covered the reasons for the continued belief in this interpretation.

Can you ask to be forgiven and you are forever forgiven?

NO. You have to be sincere, and the only way to be sincere is to start doing what GOD asked of you AFTER ACCEPTING FORGIVNESS. There are obviously MANY people who SAY they are saved, but obviously are not saved due to the way they behave. Matthew 25 states that there will be people like this at the end who will not receive salvation because their acceptance of Jesus was not sincere and they continued to just do whatever they wanted without trying to live a better, GOD lead life. If they continue to live a sinful life after accepting forgiveness then it is obvious they were NOT sincere to begin with.

The idea of being able to sin and sin over and over again and then go ask for forgiveness over and over again is a Roman Catholic twist of the bible that is not taught in the bible. Once a Christian sincerely accepts Jesus’ gift of payment for his sins he will even start to lose a desire to comment sinful acts. This is something that has to be experienced to be understood. Explaining a change in your emotions to someone who has never experienced that change is an impossibility, and an atheist could not understand this change, NOT because they are unintelligent but simply because of the same factors that effect the fact that a man could never fully understand the pain of childbirth because he has never experienced giving birth. A woman would tell you that just saying, “giving birth is extremely painful” in no way fully conveys the pain of her experience, in just the same way a Christian saying, “my feelings have changed”, could never fully convey to an atheist how deep the emotional change of accepting Christ truly is.

 

Does GOD ok the killing of innocents?

One of the atheist debaters mentioned something along the lines of “GOD saying it’s ok to kill babies”. It was only a brief statement made in the middle of some muddled conversation but I can only assume she was talking about the times in the old testament where GOD ordered the Jews to kill every man, woman and child in an area. This seems horribly harsh, but GOD ordered this due to the fact that these people were rampant with sin. To understand this deeper we have to consider what GOD considers sin, things such as murder, theft, and what concerns us most in this case would be adultery, or the an abundance of unmarried sex between many partners. To further understand the implications of this we have to look at a current society that has mostly lived outside of GOD’s commandments and instruction. That society in our present time would be Africa. Due to its sexual promiscuity, and lack of basic medical knowledge and practices that the bible teaches, AIDS has just about eaten that nation alive. Imagine such a disease loose in biblical times? AIDS in itself would have been horrendous during those time periods when people had little or no medical knowledge, and even diseases such as we have today that we can easily treat would have been devastating then. Diseases are unfortunately also passed down from mother to child during pregnancy so even children could not be allowed to live for fear of bringing the entire human race to a quick death through plague or another rampaging disease.

This would have been the biggest cause for such a horrible order to be given, and I am sure GOD did not take it lightly. But if he had not made these tough decisions we might not be here today to be able to debate his existence.

Are there other references to GOD using similar quarantining methods to stifle the spread of disease? Yes, Sick Jews were often put outside the village areas and cared for until they were well again, while their bedclothes and other items that might carry germs were burned. If they didn’t get better they were left on their own to die rather than risk infecting the others. So these actions were taken as much against themselves as others in an effort to preserve human health.

All these things were necessary to preserve the survival of the human race.

 

 

Why does the Rational Response Squad want to wipe out Theism?

This is one thing that REALLY doesn’t make sense to me, why attack Christianity?

Is it so that people can do what they want guilt free? What is it that Christians are keeping people from doing that they are not free to do anyway? Nothing that I can tell, it’s just that without GOD you can do what you want without feeling like you have to appease some big “sky daddy” as the RRS puts it. But in reality you can do that anyway. You have free will already; you really don’t need to attack GOD to do that. I believe GOD exists, but a persons denial of GOD will not cause GOD to NOT exist if he does exist, therefore going on the internet and blaspheming against the Holy Spirit shouldn’t make any difference to someone who claims to be an atheist. After all, if you don’t believe in GOD who are blaspheming against??? Apparently some part of you does believe in GOD otherwise you wouldn’t feel the need to tell him to go away by denying him. How do you tell someone that you don’t believe exists to go away?

At its root, any attack on Christianity is nothing more than an attack on one’s own personal guilt for something which stems from within them selves. And vice-versa any Christian who would attack someone to try and force them to accept Jesus is not working within the teachings of true Christianity.

Therefore true Christianity is no threat to anyone.

Christianity instructs it members to “do no violence to no man”, “do unto others as you would have them to do unto you”, “feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for this sick”.

This is what we need to get rid of?

Would the atheists take up this job? If so why aren’t they doing it already? Nothing is stopping them. Check the net and you will find no atheist charity effort anywhere near the size of Christian charity efforts.

If Mr. Sapient and the RRS are successful what will the outcome be? In trade for a guilt free, so that we can “party a little hardier” life, without worrying about GOD, we lose WORLD WIDE help and support for millions of homeless, starving and sick people. The Christian Church does more than the US government to help the needy people of the world. And the RRS wants to wipe that out for no other reason than to alleviate the guilt of some people?

That is a truly sickening goal.

Also, in the event of the disappearance or major weakening of Christianity it would only clear the way for the sudden expansion of militant Islam. The Rational Response Squad’s website states they are trying to correct the “mind-disorder known as Theism”, this implies they are against ALL religion. Unfortunately the Muslims are not as forgiving about people committing blasphemy against Allah and right now with Mr. Sapient’s current belief system Christianity one of the only things standing between his RRS and a gory beheading regardless of whether or not GOD truly exists.

 

I have explained my thoughts in a mature, professional adult manner and I expect any responses to be the same way or the will be ignored at the first signs of childish insults. I don’t mind people disagreeing with me but outright insults will not win you credibility with anyone, especially me. In debate after debate that I have seen in which atheist and/or evolutionists went up against believers in GOD the Christians 95 percent of the time present their cases in a mature manner while the atheist/evolutionists always seem to go the smirky, condescending and insulting route. To me this erodes their credibility.

And I am talking about true, peaceful, non-violent Christians, NOT the George Bush spread Christianity with a bomb type of Christianity. They are NOT the same.

In the end don’t take my word for the gospel truth, and don’t take the RRS as the whole anti-gospel truth, the only way to be SURE is to go find out for yourself! Study, study, study and Learn. Your eternal existence depends on it; don’t leave your wellbeing in the hands of no man. I recommend www.answersingenesis.org for discussions of how the earth was created by intelligent scientist with degrees just as valid as any college educated person at the Rational Response Squad or anywhere else, and www.amazingfacts.com for discussions about the interpretation of the bible. It is just simply way to easy to nitpick at the bible and call yourself disproving GOD, at the end of it all I follow Jesus because he offers me hope, what does the Rational Response Squad, or atheism, offer?

A guilt free life? Why would I need them for that? I can decide that on my own.

Sadly, the Rational Response Squad is doomed to fail regardless of the answer since if they are right they will never come back from the dead to revel in their victory, and if they are wrong it will be too late to do anything about it. They actually have nothing to gain in this.

 

In conclusion I would like to say that atheists provide themselves a lot of leeway when giving their evidence for Evolution and therefore the non-existence of GOD. They are willing to accept the discrepancies of their theories as long as they can push their overall goal to prove evolution. But their forgiveness then wanes when it comes to Theism. Theists are expected to explain in exquisite detail every perceived or obvious discrepancy down to the most infinitely small point of discussion. If not being able to explain away in complete detail every discrepancy of evolution, which atheist/evolutionist cannot do, is allowed, why aren’t Theist given the same allowance of forgiveness in their theories of creation? It is not a fair, just or unbiased discussion to hold one group to such overwhelmingly strict standards (Theist) while being generously lenient to another group (Atheists/Evolutionists). To be more precise if any discrepancies brought up in defense of creation invalidates creation, then by that same atheist/evolutionist set standard any discrepancy brought up in the defense of evolution should invalidate evolution.

Google “evolution discrepancies” for about 1,130,000 (literally) pages from religious and non-religious sources if you want examples of discrepancies in the theory of evolution.

 

Ken Elliott JR

[email protected]

www.call2christ.org

I cannot speak for the RRS, but for me, your own words are clear enough an answer.  

 

I can't help but noticed that the idea of "ownership" seems to be a key point in both the authority behind God dictating morality and the act of abortion. However the conclusion of ownership seems to be the side effect of someone looking for answers as to "why" something happens where there is no observable answer.  

In other words: If a couple has sex, but it does not always result in pregnancy, they will naturally wonder why. Since the actual details were not known at that time, a supernatural force was assigned as the deciding factor. However, as a side effect of this decision, becoming pregnant became a act of God. As such, aborting a pregnancy was viewed as defying God's will.

The same could be said for morality. When God is used to answer the question of why we exist, he becomes an authority over us. This is a side effect of using God to answer questions about our reality. 

Ah, so your god concept is not all-knowing. Yeah, a God who is not omniscient is more likely than one who is. I hope you are not going to try to have it both ways, though, and say he IS omniscient but chooses to forget. That would be silly. Either he has the knowledge or he doesn't have it.

No one ever claimed that it was. There is also no proof that Visnu, Thor or the invisible pink unicorn do not exist. But lack of any evidence is reason to disregard the idea. Otherwise we will spend our entire existence disproving every flight of fancy.

Well I agree that this is all that Christians do for their side, but it is certainly not all scientists do for evolution. Have you read any books explaining evolution by the theory's advocates? If not, please learn what the theory is before making blanket statements about it.

We are. That is why I have blue eyes while my wife's are brown. Some of us have resistances to diseases that others lack. Each of us has a unique genetic blueprint and the most successful blueprint is more likely to propogate. That is actually less true of humans now since our cultural development has allowed many more to survive. But you still see it.

Why do we suddenly have more autistic children? Probably because nerds who could never get a girl before are making big bucks in computers and getting married. Higher levels of intelligence has an unfortunate correlation with autistic offspring.

It is very unfortunate. How did God let this happen? The Hell doctrine is the worst form of mental terrorism that I can think of and my primary beef with most Christian churches. Even the Pope recently came out to reaffirm the existence of Hell. I am glad that you do not believe in Hell but you are in the minority of Christians on this.

Much more reasonable and I agree that you can find biblical support for your position. And personally, I'm happy with the idea of being extinguished. Unlike some folks (even many atheists), I have no desire to live forever. I might like to live for a few thousand years, but at some point, I'll want an end.

The bible was canonized by the Catholic Church in the late 4th century. So no bible exists that is free of "Catholic contamination".

Good idea. Let's see what we get. OK, the top hits are from such amazing science sites as:

christiananswers.net
wikipedia (good article, supports rd)
answersincreation.org
cryingvoice.com
actionbioscience.com (Ph.D. says it is accurate)
A Creation Perspective
answeringenesis.org
trueauthority.com
palaeos.com (says it is accurate)
creationtheory.org

OK, so we have established that Christian's do not want to believe radiometric dating. I already knew that.

Not useless but not even strictly necessary given all of the other evidence for evolution. I'm not going to list it out since there are whole books on the topic written by scientists. Learning actual science takes a time investment.

And adopting those babies would have been a bad idea... Sorry, killing babies is not defensible, regardless of how wicked you claim the parents were.

So you have to kill the babies because their wickedness is somehow caused by a disease... but you can keep the virgin girls alive?

Because Christianity uses the terror tactic of Hell and believes that there is a man in the sky who sanctions the killing of babies. Because Christianity divides people. Not only does it divide believers and non-believers, it even divides believers and believers, since it divides people like you from others who believe in an eternal Hell. I have friends who will tell you that you are going to Hell because you obviously misunderstand the nature of God.

Ah, the elusive "true Christianity". I am glad you have found it. Tell the other 99% of Christians who believe something different from what you believe and you can all live in harmony together.

Hmm, sounds like Buddhism.

I couldn't agree more. Would you like a book list Kinnith? I have read quite a bit of apologetics. How many books on evolution, comparative religion, history of the early church and evidence against God have you read? I ask in all sincerity?

I recommend "The Selfish Gene" and "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins.

Hey guys! 

First off, I’m a theist.  I guess you could call me an agnostic theist of the Christian persuasion. 

Second, great job in the debate.  You guys were concise, well-spoken and I thought very generous in your dealings with Kirk and Ray.  It honestly went as I expected it to.  I know those guys mean well, but damn….  I actually laughed at them while at the same time feeling extremely sorry for them (perfect analogy, by the way, of someone getting peed on)…but then I couldn’t feel sorry for them because they screwed themselves by trying to argue the way that they did for an “absolute proof.”  Completely idiotic.  There is no “absolute proof” for anything, especially God. 

You get a ton of mail, I’m sure, and I know how the internet discussion rabbit trail of debate often goes, so I just wanted to stick to one thing.  You brought up the very good question, “Who created God?”  Ray brought up that God exists outside of the confines of time, and thus has no beginning and end.  And while he didn’t back this up when you countered, I think there are points to be made. 

The thing that theists are positing is a “supernatural” entity.  The universe, on the other hand, is “natural.”  By definition, then, wouldn’t you expect that a “supernatural” something would not correspond with all of the laws of something that is natural, just as you would not expect a three dimensional being to be bound completely by the laws of two dimensions, or a four-dimensional being bound by the laws of three dimensions.  You would expect a “supernatural” something to transcend these laws of ours somehow, would you not?  And as we understand time to be a dimension, it is feasible to conceive of it as being transcended.  Thus transcended, chronology would be irrelevant, and thus cause and effect would be irrelevant when applying it to God. 

I’ll leave it at this for now.  I’m anticipating a “that’s convenient” response, but really the “convenience” of an argument is irrelevant, and I’ll be happy to debate that point if I have to.  But I think you guys can come up with something better than that.

Thanks doing the debate!  I just wish there could have been more capable people defending the theist side.

...bracing myself for similar pwnage...

-Adam

My problem with this line of thinking is that there is still a gigantic gap between some theoretical non-detectable God who is not bound by any laws over to Jesus.

Can God remember the things that he has decided not to remember?

If your answer is yes, then God is not omnipotent.

If your answer is no, then God is not omnipotent.

Your description of God is a logical violation. If you wish to position God outside of logic, then you must admit that we can have NO knowledge of Him, His "desires" or His commands.

Your alternative is to limit God to the be within the limits of natural law. At which point God becomes, at best, a super-powerful alien. Which raises the question of why we should worship Him.

We likewise have no evidence for the existence of unicorns. Does that mean that I can make a valid claim that they exist?

 

Wonderful! You have realized that God can only really exist as a natural being, made of matter and energy and subject to the limitations of physics.

Congratulations, God is now a Vulcan. Why should we worship Him or believe anything that He says?

Further, how does God violate physics? If He is made of matter and/or energy, then there is no way that He could have retained sentience during the Big Bang. It also seems highly unlikely that He could have performed the miracles in the Bible, such as making the sun stop moving across the sky, no matter how advanced his technology.

There also remains the absence of the slightest shred of evidence for such a being. The Bible clearly identifies God as pre-existing creation, which means he can't be made of the stuff of this universe. The Bible also calls God omnipotent. This is not the being you are describing. 

 

Your whole line of argument here stems from ignorance of how fossils are created. Only one dead creature in thousands will ever become a fossil, and fossils are routinely broken up and destroyed by geological activity. Then there's the fact that we have only searched a tiny proportion of the areas of the Earth that might harbour informative fossils. It is not surprising, at all, that we don't have an entire fossil record for our species, or others.

Your claim that there should be transitional phenotypes running around ignores the central premise of natural selection: species change when a new phenotype is more successful than the old. How does this change occur? Members with the new phenotype mate with members of the old phenotype and pass along their superior characteristics. Those offspring are more successful than those from old-old pairings, so over time each successive generation shows less and less of the old phenotype. The ENTIRE MATING POPULATION moves to the new phenotype. Of course, some populations don't get included in the process, and that's why we have the variety of primates that we see: their ancestral populations were seperated somehow from the populations that became humans, so their evolution took a different path.

Plus, it is a fact that there ARE transitional types of humans everywhere. Just look at the variety in people, even within your own community. Only time will tell which characteristics will result in increased breeding and more evolutionary success. The reason we don't think that we see transitional forms is because we don't know which direction evolution will take in the future, and therefore cannot identify transitional forms now. 

 

Brian was arguing from what it ACTUALLY SAYS in the Bible. You are arguing from your own tortured interpretation of those words - an interpretation, I might add, that is not shared by the majority of Christians in America today. Brian's knowledge of the Bible exceeds your own by a wide margin. If you don't believe me, challenge him on these forums on some Biblical aspect and watch him hand you your ass. 

Christians constantly come back to this position that atheists are ill informed about the Bible. The reason Christians feel this way is because you all had these discussions in Sunday school years ago, and accepted the glib exlainations of your teachers. So you feel like atheists are going back over ask-and-answered questions.  But the reality is that those questions were NEVER answered properly, in a way that would stand up to rational scrutiny. You all accepted the answers and moved on to talk about higher-level Biblical stuff. But atheists understood that those answers didn't make sense, and since they don't, the entire conversation that follows has about as much relevance as debating whether a Star Destroyer could defeat the Enterprise. (it could)

I agree with you that the whole concept of Hell is silly, but it IS a part of Christian beliefs for most Christians. 

Go check out Yellow #5's forum for information on this topic. You have been hoodwinked by creationist sources. Radiocarbon dating is reliable, accurate and accepted as such by the entire scientific community. Rmember, when you are reading about this stuff CONSIDER THE SOURCE. Scientists have no motive to mislead you. Creationists do.

BTW your position that you can't find out about things in the past by examining things in the present is assinine. What else do we have to go on? Please point to something in the past that you can look at to establish these baselines you are so keen on. Then go collect your Nobel Prize for inventing a time machine. 

The Bible states, directly, that we are NOT saved by acts but by grace. Your arguments here do not reflect an educated reading of the Bible at all, but rather an interpretation that has been tortured to fit into your limited understanding of science. God does not provide the energy we live on, and neither the Bible nor science claims that He does.

You are showing the signs of someone who has a great deal of difficulty believing what the Bible and other Christians tell you about God. This is a good start.

 This is the no true Scotsman fallacy. It enables you to argue that no one who sins is really a Christian. You are presuming the ability to read minds and declare that a person who sins wasn't sincere in the first place. You are further claiming the ability to read all the minds of all the Christians who ever lapsed into sin. What remarkable powers you must have. You will forgive me for finding it rather more likely that you are mistaken, and that it is quite possible for a person to sincerely repent, then later lapse back into sin. In fact, I find it unremarkable that a person might do this over and over again.

Just because becoming Christian made you not want to sin, does not mean that it does that for everyone. I feel no impulse to sin, and I'm not a Christian. 

Anyway, you are ignoring the Bible's statement that we are not saved by acts by by grace. There is no reason I can see that a person could not be as evil as hell all their lives, then repent on their deathbeds and go straight to heaven. As morality, Christianity is seriously broken. 

 

Let me get this straight: we ask why God kills innocent babies, and you respond with EXCUSES!? First you imply that those babies needed to die because their parents were "rampant with sin (there's that good old Christian morality again). Then you portray God as some kind of middle manager at the CDA, caught between conflicting priorities, desperate to resolve a disease crisis and not knowing what else to do. Here's a suggestion: kill the sinning parents and command the Israelites to take the babies home and care for them!

Your God is a monster. 

Because Christianity attacks us, daily, with atempts to stifle learning and manipulate the political agenda of this country.

That isn't what we are doing. We are pointing out that belief in God is not rational. There is no motivation from guilt whatsoever.

No, we aren't attacking personal guilt. We are attacking unfounded beliefs. If you want to claim that we aren't doing what we think we are doing, then you had better present something better than more unfounded beliefs.

And BTW, there's that no true Scotsman fallacy again. This country is under seige from Christians trying to force others to accept Jesus and live by his laws. 

Christianity also instructs its members to persecute gays, proslytize and struggle against all non-believers, put faith before rationality, slavishly obey authority, abuse and marginalize women, hold erroneous beliefs about the natural world, feel bad about sex and shelve their morality in favor of blind obedience to an ancient book of fairy tales. Yes, we need to get rid of it.

Give us the money and following that Christianity has, and we'll see what atheists can accomplish. You've had two thousand years to make the world a better place and failed miserably. Now its our turn.

Almost as sickening as denying birth control to women in AIDS-riddled Africa in order to force a Christian ethic of sexual behaviour on them.  Or crippling the minds of a generation of American students with the idea that evolution is somehow in question. Or propping up the Nazis.

The American government doesn't do as much foreign aid as churches do because most Americans are told by their churches to send aid through them and to oppose any effort to spend public dollars on aid. Then they turn around and attach strings to the aid in order to further their agenda in these areas. Frankly, the world would be much better off without the churches' help, and that money redirected through secular agencies.

What crap. First of all, RRS and atheists everywhere are just as opposed to Islam as Christianity. You just hear less about it here because this is an American website. Secondly, it is CHRISTIAN MODERATES that created the atmosphere in this country, and in Europe, where you are not allowed to question religious belief at all. This means that Islamists have had free reign to spread their extremist message free from all debate, examination or rhetorical opposition. Christians AIDED AND ABETTED Islamists in their efforts to bring their craziness to the developed world, and now they persist in resisting all efforts to pinpoint the real source of terrorism in this world: religion.  

 

You deliver a Sunday school lecture on politeness then have the stones to warn US against a condescending tone?! Fuck you, you arrogant prig!

Mr. Scotsman, meet Mr. Pretends-to-be-a-Scotsman. What's that? Why, yes, you do look a lot alike.

We offer the truth and a route to correct understanding of the world we live in.

Your so-called scientists are charlatans, and the more we look at the Bible, the harder it is to believe anything in it.

Woo hoo! Let's all welcome the triumphant return of Mr. Pascal! 

You are so right, Kinnith. Despite the fact that I find everything about Christianity to be completely unbelievable, I'm going to SAY I believe in order to cover my bases. Just, uh, don't mention anything to God, OK? Maybe St. Peter won't look too carefully at my Super Saved card.

All crap, all straight projection. Scientists have volumes of hard empirical data to back up every claim they make about evolution and everything else. Theists present us with a fantasy and one ancient book of myths. Theists are the ones who insist that we must accept God's existence in violation of probability and induction because we cannot present 100% proof of the falsity of their non-falsifiable claim. That entire paragraph is the purest possible example of the pot calling the kettle black.

No one disputes that creationists are energetic and determined in their efforts to destroy the intellectual life of this country. 

 

Stillmatic:  "My problem with this line of thinking is that there is still a gigantic gap between some theoretical non-detectable God who is not bound by any laws over to Jesus."

Thanks for the comment!  Correct me if I'm wrong, but it would seem that your problem is not with my "line of thinking" as it was developed above, but rather with where you imagine it going from there, no?  May I infer, then, that you agree that my logic on that is sound?

I kind of agree with what this guy is saying, but I dont think anybody really needed any practice to dominate kirk and ray.  They were like two little babies, why bring in an einstein to tear down the mentally crippled?

His arguments werent really bad, so much as they were shallow.

Although he really pwned the living crap out of him by associating the condemnation of hell as religious terrorism. That was an intensely substantial argument.

Shallow?

 What do you mean?  Easily refuted?  If so, how could they be refuted?   Which arguments do you mean, specifically?

 

Yes, regrettably. I view it as kind of a dues-paying thing to take it in turn to answer these tedious posts so that there's never the appearance that they aren't being dealth with. I'll get Kinnith, you get the next one. 

That's interesting! I was always under the impression that the various hominids we have found were seperated by large gulfs in time, so that it was difficult to tell if they coexisted or not.

Given the success of Homo Sapiens, however, it isn't hard to see why there aren't other hominds running around. We've invaded every niche and bred with everything that would stand still until the whole world has been homogenized into one pretty tight phenotype. 

Some would postulate that considering that we didn't ask for your opinion, you shouldn't come here and try to impose your own arbitrary guidelines upon us. Assuming that we're going with some kind of moral imperative here given the frequent use of the word "should".

As far as the arguments go, we've already addressed this a thousand times so maybe you should try reading the damn thread before you post your blathering.

*gasps* I do so adore the air of superiority here. I love it how intellectuals name-drop as if that gives them some kind of authority.

Our goal is to do nothing other than represent ourselves, as imperfect as we may be, and generate discourse about the dangers of religion. So far, unless you happen to be Dawkins, Harris, or the like then we have done more in that regard than you. One more time, if you don't like us, feel free to associate yourself with somebody else. And go post your "advice" to us somewhere else.

Thanks,

Kelly