I meant to write "how finite man is".

My apologies.

First of all I don't believe that evolution is true. Darwin was in outer space thinking it was, as most atheist must be to believe it. He favored his race (Caucasian) and viewed blacks and Australian aberigenies as inferior; as sub species of man. He justified this belief by his theory.

I hope you understand the usage of the word justify in this context.

Let me explain it again, He looked down on blacks and aberigenies. He wanted to believe they were inferior, his theory which emphasized natural selection produced the idea of sub species and all that. He thought to justify his prejudice with his theory. It doesn't mean it was a true conclusion (in fact it isn't) but it was his conclusion.

Hitler thought to justify his genocidal actions and so do the KKK.

They would say they were/are justified.

I would say they weren't/aren't, because evolution isn't true.

People who are racists look down on others. They could easily use evolution as a vehicle to justify their racism.

This reply is long enough without having quotes all over the place apologies if you need to bounce between the various toing and froing but I’m conscious of the fact that we’re on someone else’s platform here.

It may appear to you that I am flip-flopping but I am attempting one thing and one thing alone - to show you that you cannot prove that the Bible or anything that it contains is anything more than (admittedly a very entertaining) a fairy tale. You can no sooner prove that there has been no change in the Bible than a person at the end of a line of chinese whispers can tell what was actually said at the beginning. For example why was the Gospel of Judas excluded? (ref:http://www.nationalgeographic.com/lostgospel/)

I apologize if demonstrating that there is at least the possibility of errors or omissions from the Bible or indeed inconsistencies and contradiction with the way the church interprets it’s words are not to your liking. May I suggest you don’t engage in conversations with people who might point that out to you?
Why do I reference Homer? Because Homer also wrote fairy tales that contained elements of verifiable historical fact a very long time ago. I could just have easily cited Herodotus or perhaps Shakespeare…

You keep promising to provide proof but you have not and I put it to you that you can not. Neither can you use your proposed methodology to to prove it (being disprove everything else) because you clearly do not understand every other worldview. How can you say “My view is the only valid view” when without doubt you do not know or understand all of the other worldviews on offer? I handed you Buddhism, gift-wrapped it even, to allow you to show me how your ‘disproving-proves-my-argument’ system works and your response to that demonstrated you don’t even understand the basics of this extremely common worldview. Imagine if I had given you something obscure like Skoptsy (as a fundamentally Christian faith) or Akan culture’s religion.

You continually assert that your beliefs are “devoid of inconsistencies and contradictions” often masking it behind the Scriptures. By the simple fact there are estimates that indicate there may actually be more than 30,000 various sects of the Protestant Christian religion this cannot possibly be correct. If the scriptures were devoid of inconsistencies and contradictions, there could only be one form of Christianity.  This in itself demonstrates that it’s not the Scriptures at all that produce a worldview (your definition of worldview), it’s man’s interpretation of the scriptures that creates it. See here http://www.religioustolerance.org/ifbooks.htm for a description of the different Bibles you can choose from further underlining my point that there is no absolute truth and there is without question inconsistencies and contradictions within Christianity.

Do I see the connection between my point on Calvin and yours on Dawkins? Absolutely! But I do not claim - and never have claimed Dawkins to be - of the same import in my life as you have claimed with Calvin. I strongly doubt whether he is the world authority on Evolutionary Theory but I think he does a very good job of trying to explain it to simpletons such as myself.

I agree completely that I cannot use this to disprove your worldview. I don’t think that it is possible to disprove your worldview because right now, at this point in human history, I don’t think we’re even close to being able to determine the ‘truth’ of matters such as these. The best that I can hope to achieve is demonstrate to you that you cannot prove it either.

I have no quarrel with you as to Atheism being flawed as a worldview - I don’t even consider Atheism to be a worldview!

You are almost correct in your understanding that I am“one of those people who claim that you can never know the effective meaning of any text of any writing” but I would add “that has the ability to be interpreted”. Any work of literature (both fiction and non-fiction, and make no mistake, I believe the Bible to be fiction) falls into this category, including the Bible, the Qur’an, the Torah, the Tripitaka, Tao-te-Ching, Shakespeare, Harry Potter and The Bourne Identity.
The only form of writing that we can know the true meaning of is that which requires no interpretation, Mathematics for example. Mathematics, being the only pure language, is not open to interpretation. It does not require tone or inflection or body language to be correctly understood.

Whether you recognize this or not, you too understand this. In English, we use such crude substitute as bold text or italics or CAPITALS in the written word to substitute for our inability to express ourselves correctly. We do this to emphasize a certain point because we cannot use our voice or body to do it for us. Many European languages use accents to do the same. This most certainly includes me and my writings here. I have lost count of the amount of times I have chatted with someone online trying to describe something for hours only to have it resolved in minutes by a phone conversation. I don’t consider this to be unique to me because great writers use this exact flaw in written communication to their advantage. Often that is exactly what makes their works great! I doubt whether even you would disagree with that.

Does that make this conversation meaningless? I guess that depends on what you are hoping to achieve from the conversation. If you hope to convert me and likely anyone else visiting this site, I dare say yes, this is meaningless. If I for a minute thought that you may disavow your beliefs then that too would be meaningless. Establishing truth? Definitely meaningless. Having an interesting and entertaining conversation with someone who’s point of view is diametrically opposed, that I consider to be a wonderful way to expand my understanding of people that are different to me. You are a curiosity to me. I have never had the privilege of speaking directly with someone who steadfastly refuses to believe any ‘science’ (other than that which God gave us the knowledge for - in itself a ridiculous distinction) and insists on attacking the merits of scientific conclusions without sufficient knowledge of the discipline they are attacking! To borrow a term from Mastercard, it’s priceless. If this is not enough for you, I will not think ill of you for ending the conversation.

I’d appreciate it if you refrained from patronizing me for not being an expert on the scriptures or the bible or any of the other fallacies you believe in. The onus is not on me to to prove the truth of it, that responsibility falls squarely on you.

If you’ve told me all there is to know about Christian’s epistemology - and thereby established inconsistencies and contradiction are completely absent from your beliefs - then all you’ve managed to do is reaffirm but initial thoughts before we started this conversation. Not only is a belief in God folly, it is completely unnecessary for my life.

It is not even my responsibility to prove to you that Atheism is a worldview, let alone a valid one. If I do not understand you, that is your inability to effectively convey your opinion - something that could perhaps be overcome if we weren’t simply using the written word?

Am I saying it’s a legitimate argument to judge a system (whether it be Christianity, Atheism, or what have you) on the ignorance or faithlessness of its professors?

Almost - I am saying it’s a legitimate argument to judge a system (whether it be Christianity, Atheism, or what have you) or any authority. I don’t think you should accept anything on faith. Incidentally, that includes anything I say. I should also qualify that I do not consider Atheism to be a ‘system’.
As to “So that when an atheist lies, cheats, steals, rapes, or murders, etc I can fault the atheism that they profess to?” To that the answer is absolutely and categorically no.

You have not proven to me that Jesus claimed to be God. The passages from Luke demonstrate that his followers regarded him as God, the passage you supplied from John comes closest but again he claims to be the son of God not God himself. He claims that God is inside him but then again, so do you. Are you claiming to be God?

I asked you to provide me a passage in which Jesus himself claims to be God. Not the son of God, not to have God inside him but to be the living God. I will not accept accounts from disciples or prophets, only a direct quote from Jesus.

I will concede that Jesus believed himself to be the son of God but I have not questioned that.You accuse me of creatively taking passages out of context, which makes it curious to me that you would begin with the line of ‘He and I are one’. The set up to this statement implies he and I are one refers to their ability to protect and preserve their sheep (followers), not an outright claim of being God. Indeed he repeated refers to God as his father throughout Matthew 10. 

You are continually asking me to concede. Concede what? That you have managed to point out all those around Jesus thought him God but at no point quoted Jesus claiming deification? Conceded.

That I do not understand the Bible like you do? Conceded.

When it comes to pointing out the vile and obscene behavior of Christians you seem to be responding with ‘they weren’t really Christians’. Or you may be saying that they didn’t interpret the Bible correctly - which is exactly what I am saying! Neither they, nor you - not even a talking parrot - are capable of interpreting the Bible correctly. So yes, I concede.

I also see an interesting parallel here with your thinking. It is quite reasonable and rational for you to attack those fields of science that you perceive to be undermining your beliefs while at the same time supporting those that make your life easier. Apparently God gave those scientist would provide ‘good’ thing the knowledge to do so. It seems as though it’s fine that medical scientists haven’t found a cure for cancer yet because some day, when God feels like it, he’ll grant man the knowledge to sort that little inconvenience out (sincere apologies to you or anyone else reading this is if that appears callous or inconsiderate on my part). Why not take the same stance with these other fields of science that (because they don’t have all the answers) they must be false and we should cease all support of these clearly incomplete theories? Alternatively, why not accept that fields like evolution are just as incomplete in their knowledge but no less valid?
You’ve asked me to explain human thought, unless I want to concede that there are non physical things that exist - well I concede there are non physical things that exist. I’d prefer not to allow you to narrow it to human thought alone because it is undeniable that animals can think as well.  In answer to non-physical things - I’ll start with Blue, mainly because I like the color, but any other one will do. How about happy? Again use any emotion you like, I sense frustration would likely be more applicable for you. Before you start on about ‘blue is only blue because of the physical properties of an object reflecting only one spectrum of light, blah, blah’ I am referring to the concept of blue. If that’s not enough, try explaining blue to a blind man. Equally, try explaining happy to someone with autism.

There are uncounted physical and non physical things in this world however I choose not to substitute the lack of knowledge with a God. I am quite happy to accept that I don’t know it all and nor does humankind. In the interests of not seeming to dodge the question, I think that thought is an extension of the ability to learn and life experiences. Again, I am not the right person to ask this of but as I understand it the frontal lobe of our brain is where we store memory and it’s only those animal with a frontal lobe that are capable of of thought. Perhaps you may want to ask a neurosurgeon.

Which leads me on to the illusion of choice. I don’t blame you for not picking up “The Lucifer Principle”, it is a long and involved book with very heavy concepts and ultimately irrelevant to your life. The particular point I was referring to is the concept that our decisions and choices are driven largely by the society in which we live and crucially the position we hold in that society. Bloom references various university studies on human behavior that strongly indicate that we have no more choice in the role we play in society as a whole than ants in a colony do. Of all people I think the comedian Chris Rocks summed it up best with “A man is as faithful as his options allow”.

I’m disappointed you didn’t follow the links though. I would have thought you’d have some interesting things to say about the discovery and verification of a new species of human that became extinct about 21,000 years ago. As I understand it, that is well before Adam and Eve. Did God get it wrong the first time and decide to start over? In case you want to follow them, here they are again http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8036396.stm and http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2008/s2563065.htm

I find it interesting you think Darwin would have considered black people inferior. Aren’t you claiming ‘might is right’? By that reckoning, physically black people on the whole seems to be far superior to caucasians or asians. In fact I can’t think of an ethnicity that can hold a candle to black people.

And I should also point out, it’s Australian Aborigines. I’m trying not to believe it was just a simple typo when you spelt it ‘aberiginies’ but I can’t help but ignore that it's possible you don’t have enough respect for this race of people to be bothered getting the spelling right...

Have we reached the seventh day already! How time flies. Enjoy your rest, I'll look forward to hearing from you again when you return. I'll remind you, it's never too late to remove the scales and see the world still exists and is wonderful even without God.

If it's OK with you all I would like to engage in dialog with one of you at a time until one of us says no longer wants to interact with the other. All of you seem to be arguing on the same side, but I'm only one person. I cannot respond to you all, but I want to. If you all can agree to restrain yourselves until the active opponent steps aside, I think we can have an interesting dialog. If anyone who is not the active responder posts, I will not respond to your comments unless it's to notify of changes or updates. I would like begin with HisWillness. Please wait for my post if your comment is aimed at me; otherwise continue to talk amongst yourselves.

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Read the following and see what damage you can do. I've done plenty of damage to your worldview already, let's see if you can find any inconsistencies within the presupposition and/or with what we see in the physical world.

After you're done, I'll respond to both Post #169 & your next post.

The following claims are derived from the Old and New Testament Scriptures.

Just some more info for Darwin fans out there to chew on.

I think people pretty much understand that intellectual and social elites in the 19th century believed in eugenics and racism. They not only believed that other "races" were inferior, they believed that all humans outside their peculiar social group were inferior. This is a belief that has existed through the entirety of recorded human history and it says nothing about the theory of evolution any more than the fact that the religion that you espouse has been used as justification for racism says about christianity.

 WTF ? I don't espouse religion.  That's why I'm an atheist.  

I was contrasting the so-called worldview of Christian theism ( which supposedly regards all humans as being equally deserving of human dignity ) with the historical record of slave owning Christians in America.  Cognitive dissonance was the issue that I was addressing.

  Sorry, my bad.

If it's OK with you all I would like to engage in dialog with one of you at a time until one of us says no longer wants to interact with the other. All of you seem to be arguing on the same side, but I'm only one person. I cannot respond to you all, but I want to. If you all can agree to restrain yourselves until the active opponent steps aside, I think we can have an interesting dialog. If anyone who is not the active responder posts, I will not respond to your comments unless it's to notify of changes or updates. I would like begin with HisWillness. Please wait for my post if your comment is aimed at me; otherwise continue to talk amongst yourselves.

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I couldn't help myself, but I’ll only respond first to your first two paragraphs and one closer to the end because of the subject covered. I’ll respond to the rest sometime after I receive your response to Christian presuppositions.

You ought to point out that you haven’t pointed out the possibility of errors or omissions from the Bible. You simply assume from your worldview assumption (that there’s the absence of supernatural aid to combat the fallibility of man – a point we disagree on – which begs the question on your part) and from that draw your conclusion. Have I done that in my critique of atheism? I’ve attacked it on its own assumptions, I don’t bring mine into the argument to disprove it because that would be begging the question wouldn’t it? Now I’ve asked you repeatedly to demonstrate how inorganic matter can be made into a living organism (that is what evolution teaches you). I can ask this of you because of your worldviews heavy emphasis on empirical verification or even inference (that is after all the yardstick you claim, measures the validity of something). But you can’t provide me an answer, not even in the simplest way (except for the question begging or arbitrary variety).

I’ve brought up objections about evolution, that it renders human thought and actions to be nothing more than purely automatic stimulant reactive processes (which you in some weird way agree with but it goes completely over your head when this shows that human thoughts and reason (derived from human thought from your words) are not really thoughts and reason as we think and reason in reality). I mean are we debating? Or are my thoughts and actions not really in my control. If this is the case, why are we debating? I can no more help arguing the Christian theist position as you can the atheist position.

This tells me that evolutionists do believe in things they haven’t experienced or seen but with a degree of blindness and intellectual hypocrisy that rivals absurdness. The most basic theist position is even more intelligent than that; at least they’ve rationalized that it’s far more believable to assume a supernatural being than to believe that matter is all there is in the universe. I’m going to conclude as you have arbitrarily concluded (I’ve provided proof however) that you cannot prove evolution to be anything more than a fairy tale.

Regarding changes in the Bible, I’ve told you about the manuscript data available and even secular (non Christian) professional conclusions on the matter. If there are inconsistencies why hasn’t someone come forth yet to prove that the doctrine of the trinity (for example) is wrong because in this copy of John’s Gospel, it reads that God is three gods thus emphasizing polytheism or something like that? I told you if you take a copy that is a thousand years old and compare it to the earliest extent manuscript, you’ll find no essential variation.

The rule in ancient writings is that, as the number of copies multiply and the span of years between them widens the greater the probability of errors, but we see the New Testament documents beating these odds with “miraculous” results (there are hundreds of manuscripts – far far far more than any other writing of antiquity). The best you can do at this point is to exercise prejudicial conjecture and arbitrarily say that people back then simply destroyed the incriminating evidence to which I’ll respond why stop there, why not destroy all the rest that got the prepositions, the articles, and even some words here and there and throughout copied incorrectly to produce even better results? You got nothing Kirby.

As for the Gospel of Judas, what would you say if some unknown author wrote a paper that had a title like “Secret confessions of Sir Thomas Huxley” and in there was found all kinds of contradictory statements (beyond what is already found) regarding evolution, based on your argument, evolutionist would have to count that as part of evolutionist teaching?

Did you know that the Gospel of Judas contains no doctrines taught in the canonical four and not only this it makes reference to the four Gospels later canonized in 4th Century A.D (implying that the four Gospels were at the time the GOJ was written already circulating within the Christian community which is no surprise to me) in its epilogue. Not only that, it exist in the Coptic text, not Greek. You have so much going against you Kirby.

Finally in regards to the different interpretations of the scriptures by Christians, does this mean that if one evolutionist disagrees with another (now I know that there is not one universal catholic orthodox view of evolution) that that automatically proves evolution to be false? If this is your argument it’s a self defeating argument. The same as your other two (1) that no historic literary data can be a reliable source unless it’s the original or a photocopy of the original and (2) no letter or writing can be accurately understood unless the author’s tone of voice or body language is present in the reading of the writing.

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To ProzacDeathWish, not that your conclusion of my thoughts on the human race is not correct but the quote system is to quote.

I feel like a broken record having to repeat this over and over again. What a person who professes to be Christian does or a Christian (but is ignorant of the scriptures in certain areas) does, doesn’t disprove Christianity. Over and over again in the Bible we’re warned by God, not to think and do anything that is beyond what He teaches or commands. If they do evil, they didn’t get it from the Bible.

Having said that, no where in the Bible does it say that the Christian is to abolish Slavery in the world, but puts things that man’s laws permit in perspective. For example that the man is still the head of the house, has authority over the wife, the Governing authorities have power over it’s subjects, and concerning slavery, that masters have authority over their slaves. But it also says that husbands love their wives even as Christ loves His Church and died for her, that the Governing authorities ultimately exist because God decreed it and they are in that respect in His service and for the better part is to punish evil doers and reward those who do good, and for masters to not mistreat slaves because the master is God’s servant and the slave is the Lord’s free man. Now remember that this life is temporal in the Christian's worldview, the next world is what Christians live for. Slavery wasn’t meant to be a perpetual institution (I distinctly remember mentioning in earlier posts that it was meant as an object lesson for God’s people).

As for Kirby’s response to my Darwin comment, did he forget that at the time Darwin lived, there was no black nation that could even come close to the military might of Europe and America (not to mention even to this day). They were still fighting with swords and arrow, while the white man had guns and explosives. Tell me Kirby, in light of this who had might? The Asian with all their “superior” intellect could fair no better (although Japan did eventually adopted western warfare). Hitler had his German war machine and the KKK have white menacing hoods.

Now just because Darwin or Huxley and other atheists are racists doesn't mean that all evolutionists are racists. But what I've been pointing out in my posts is that in an evolutionist universe there is no obligatory authority and where there is the lack of an obligatory authority, morality is relative (which a lot of you happily confess to but miss the point of that ideology). If morality is relative, racism is not wrong, murder is not wrong, rape, torture, infanticide is not wrong. It may be painful, unpleasant to the person on the receiving end, but it's not wrong if it's just matter in motion and relative.

Regarding the Aborigines, my MS Word spell checker didn’t show me the correct spelling and when I googled the way I spelled it, it showed it spelled that way in the search results. So I apologize for that, no disrespect meant. So chill out Kirby.

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I’ll respond to the rest after your response to Christian presuppositions provided. Have a good weekend Kirby and remember God can be your savior also. It’s never too late while you still draw breathe.

Eh, not to be annoying, but you can be believe in many irrational things and still be an atheist. I guess, what I'm saying is, I would change this to, "Atheism is by definition no faith in a god or gods."

I agree you be an Athiest and believe in many irrational things, no question in my mind about that, but that has nothing to do with whether or not Atheism is a faith. I use 'faith' as a noun meaning a system of beliefs, eg. The Christian Faith. There is no such thing as "The Atheist Faith" and this seems to be beyond the comprehension of those that need to believe in something. What you have said is equally true.

But thank you for pointing it out - it provides further reinforcement to my argument that any written text that can be interpreted is open to misinterpretation

Now I know you guys live in perpetual denial all the days of your atheist lives. The intellectual and philosophical credibility and integrity of evolution is being destroyed and you’re worried about the word Atheism being misconstrued as a belief system. Here’s a parallel, you’re house is burning up all around you but you’re worried about being seen in your sleepwear.

I’m going to correct butterbattle’s remark it should rather read like this “…there’s apparently no rational reason to be an atheist…”

As for ProzacDeathWish, I’m convinced you don’t even read my posts. You made your irrelevant comments, but I posted what’s quoted below 5 posts before yours. Did it take you two hours to write your comment?

(I do have to make a correction I made it sound as if the man having authority over the woman in the family and church is man's doing, it was the design of God, including governments. Out of the three listed only slavery is man's doing including divorce but God uses them as object lessons to teach His people)

BACK TO ProzacDeathWish, You seem to claim that slavery is evil (and your point contained in parentheses seems to depend on this claim). I want to know from you, how slavery can be "evil" from within the evolutionist worldview (where morality is relative and there's no obligatory authority anywhere in the universe - What can "evil" or "good" even mean in an evolutionist universe). If I was somewhere in Asia that permitted the owning of slaves, would my owning a slave be evil? (Come on Pro, I'm giving you a chance to remedy the inconsistency I'm implying)

 You were timing how fast I responded to your post ?   Were you in a race with me to see who can post the fastest ?  You base your sense of superiority on some pretty weak premises.  

   My knowledge of the intricacies of evolution is superficial and shall likely remain that way because I don't really give a damn.  Evolution has no moral aspect in my world view.  As well, I don't care about Quantum Mechanics or any other scientifically based discoveries that currently exist or whether they have any significance to theist critics or atheist proponents. 

  My atheism stems from being a former Christian who made the mistake of looking too closely at my religion not from being some kind of Darwin nut hugger. 

You don't have to imagine - just read the posts above!

It is isn't it? glad if you get something out of it. 

I'D STILL PREFER TO STAY HERE AND I'LL REPLY BACK TO YOU WHENEVER YOU POST IN YOUR THREAD BUTTER, BUT MY ANSWERS MAY NOT COME AS QUICK.

If it's OK with you all I would like to engage in dialog with one of you at a time until one of us says no longer wants to interact with the other. All of you seem to be arguing on the same side, but I'm only one person. I cannot respond to you all, but I want to. If you all can agree to restrain yourselves until the active opponent steps aside, I think we can have an interesting dialog. If anyone who is not the active responder posts, I will not respond to your comments unless it's to notify of changes or updates. I would like begin with HisWillness. Please wait for my post if your comment is aimed at me; otherwise continue to talk amongst yourselves.

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I provided the following quotes because I don’t think you know what you write half the time. The comment about original writing or photocopy of the original was partly in response to your comment in Post #158. You are essentially saying that unless the person writes his own autobiography (from point a.) and the copy you have is the original (from point b.), no writing in that time of history (yes I include all writings, because you can’t be arbitrary and only include Biblical writings) that doesn’t meet those qualifications can be used as a reliable source.

Now regarding understanding writing (forget the fact that it’s translated from one language to another because your argument implies all writings of any derivative) do you know how ridiculous your claim is? If your claim is true, why do people write anything at all? Why even have historians to record events and give accounts from their eye witness perspective if in the end, the readers will most certainly misinterpret it or miss any truth in it? You not only hurt theists but atheists as well (all people). Why are we even exchanging writings? Your prejudice against Christianity is so irrational that you undermine all written communication.

(It should be noted that the theory of evolution excludes knowing anything at all, including mathematical logic. Knowledge would be impossible if the theory of evolution were true - man’s behavior (at best) would be automatic and purely stimulant driven, instinctive, and therefore mindless (not brainless).

If there’s any miscommunication, it’s not because of the absence of voice or body. I don’t care how it sounds coming out of your mouth or what movements your body’s making. If the same exact words are coming out of your mouth, I still would point out your poor arguing skills.

First of all Kirby, I’ve tried to satisfy your little quirk about the word usage. I’ve called your position by many things to avoid it, like materialist, physicalist, evolutionist, so forth. You have a worldview (everyone does); however your worldview is atheistic (ask Gauche about it sometime), from whence atheistic worldview is derived.

Now if you have a problem still and tell me that my problem is with evolution and not atheism, I have to ask you Kirby, for what reason are you even an atheist? Is it even rational? Maybe it’s emotional like ProzacDeathWish’s, who thinks Bob is a Darwin nut hugger and maybe you too.

The information I’ve provided you on the Christian can account for the universe, human intelligence, rationality, science, knowledge. It’s all in that post. You won’t like the answer but you won’t be able to show any inconsistencies between the parts and if they disagree with your methods, you’ll have to prove your methods are valid methods within your own worldview or else you have no right to employ them.

Do you even know what you’re talking about (30,000 sects)? I distinctly remember you asking me about what group I belonged to and I replied correcting you on how Christians group themselves and what qualifies as a Christian according to Christians. The three creeds provided are the benchmark of Christian orthodoxy. Christians are Trinitarian. Mormons, Jehovah’s Witness, etc are considered cults to us because they reject Trinitarian doctrine. I can talk to Baptists, Methodists, Lutherans, Pentecostals, and Presbyterians and call them my brothers and sister and they can do the same with me, so what’s the problem?

As for scripture, I distinctly remember CORRECTING your understanding of the passages you provided (demonstrating your lack of simple reading comprehension and expository skills and the error not stemming from inconsistencies in the text). I told you that the reform faith has THE correct understanding of it because it’s bullet proof from critics like you. We didn’t “decide” what books were in the Bible, we just understand it. You haven’t pointed out any inconsistencies; you just assume it based on really poor premises. I mean if the text was inherently contradictory, it wouldn’t matter how you read it, it’ll still be wrong on the whole. And that is what I’m pointing out to you about the materialist worldview. No matter who defends it, you or Sapient, or the Infidel Guy, or Richard Dawkins, it still can’t explain how human thoughts, rationality, ethics, or argumentation can result from a matter & energy only universe, because our behavior in the real world IS NOT automatic and purely stimulant responsive/reactive and if it was, it would make no sense for us to reason or to argue or to label something good or evil/right or wrong because all these actions require the ability to choose.

Therefore you conclusion is in error.

But I can and I have Kirby. I’ve proven that my worldview doesn’t violate the demands of rationality (logic) and yours does. This would be a bad argument on my part if being logically cogent wasn’t a concern of yours, but again we are “arguing” so I would have to say that logic is important in this discussion.

The funny thing though is that your worldview can’t account for the TRUTH of anything, naturally or supernaturally. Your worldview places you as finite man with no trustworthy point of reference and I think that is why many of you claim that there’s no such thing as absolute truth and that knowledge is at best probable, including your claims of mathematical truth (do you see how atheists are always undermining their own positions). I hope you can see the contradiction in this; if there’s no absolute truth, how do you KNOW that there’s no absolute truth?

The Christian knows that God must be true, because He knows everything (because all knowledge belongs to Him) and reveals truth about the universe to us in the natural order (His providential governing), in our mind’s constitution (being made in the image of God), and through supernatural revelation (His spoken, written, and incarnate word); so that even though we’re finite, we can know things; know truth. Jesus said, “I am the truth” and the scriptures declares that Jesus is “the true light that gives light to every man.” and “in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge”

Kirby, your behavior doesn’t surprise me one bit. Atheists are so ignorant of so many things and cannot support or defend their theories, so they go around purposefully misinterpreting their opponent’s arguments and trying to draw them away from the deficiencies of their atheistic worldview’s assumptions.

What science are you claiming that I’m refusing? The only science I’m refusing is the science that is atheistically biased, because Christians can do science just fine without believing in evolution (isn’t this sounding like your argument – but my argument is a lot better than this).

In fact I argue (I think I’ve argued this in the previous posts) that only Christians have a justification for doing science in the first place. We have a God who created and governs the world and makes it uniform so that we can apply induction and causation and not only that, we have the mandate to do science; “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.”; to know chemistry and physics and biology so as to have dominion over the earth and subdue it. To build the great pyramids, extract metals out of the earth to create stronger metals, use moving water for electricity, discover medicines, perform surgeries, promote athleticism, etc.

While all you have as a materialist atheist is matter in motion. Curiosity is just what is. The brain of man just does what it does according to the “inherent” character of the matter he’s comprised of. A total automated but “lifeless” piece of  organic “machinery”. Furthermore, there’s no basis for the uniformity in nature; no accounting for induction and therefore no science. David Hume and Bertrand Russell both renown atheists, both confessed to this huge problem they saw as atheists (you can’t prove induction by using induction to prove it – that would be begging the question).

And I have proved the consistency of the contents of scripture to you and if you continue to make uneducated and superficial claims as you’ve made, I wouldn’t have to. I pointed this out to you already.

And the only fallacies present in our discussions are your fallacious arguments. I have to ask how old you are. I have an image of some teenager or early twenties something.

Tell me Kirby when are you going to answer my questions and objections regarding man being nothing more than a mindless piece of organic machinery in your materialist worldview?

If you don’t know the answer and no one else here knows the answer, then the reason as I have concluded before is that evolution is the blindest “religion” there is. Isn’t that what you claim theism to be?

There is no reason to reject the Christian God, because only His existence can account for human intelligence, knowledge, rationality, morality, and science. All humans are without excuse, because you know that the belief system you adhere to is contradictory to human experience.

Once again you show your ignorance and dodge my questions, Dodger.

According to you, atheism is not based on rationality. It’s actually based on the lack of empirical evidence, again something your materialist worldview places heavy emphasis on. Not to mention philosophically it’s inconsistent internally and contradictory to human experience.

Regarding the question, it was meant to be sarcastic by the way Kirby. Remember I’m always pointing out your poor arguing abilities.

Kirby, you must have the dullest mind on the face of the earth. The title Son of God means God. The Jews understood it as that and that’s why their encounters with Jesus were so “controversial”. What did the Jews say was their reason for wanting to kill him in the John passage because, He (Jesus) being a man claims to be God. And in His trial (the Luke passage), they couldn’t get out of Him whether He was the Messiah, so they asked Him if He was the Son of God, to which He replied, “IT IS AS YOU SAY.” The Jewish reason for wanting Him dead besides Him exposing their ignorance and hypocrisy was for what they claimed was Blasphemy; no man can claim deity, but Jesus being God could and He did. And did they not say that Jesus testified Himself. Whether He said He was God or not instead of claiming to be the “Son of God”, the point is the title is synonymous with God, when the Jews prosecuted Him for blasphemy, Jesus could have easily explained to them that the phrase Son of God is not synonymous with God and so would have avoided being put to death.

You seem to be just as deluded as Bob who refuses to believe that Darwin was racist when the proof is in Darwin’s own writing which I posted for you all to read.

If you read back Kirby, I continually asked you to concede because that was something you kept demanding of me from the very beginning and maybe you forgot but the section of my POST with all the concedes were about the claim that Jesus was a communist. REMEMBER. Your memory is like crap (much like what is in your head it appears). You go and read back on it and learn something please, like how to read. Or go read a math book and learn about all the PROBABLE truths in it because according to your materialist universe, you can’t know anything to be true.

Tell me Kirby when are you going to answer my questions and objections regarding man being nothing more than a mindless piece of organic machinery in your materialist worldview (according to your worldview’s own assumptions)?

You concede because you lack any simple reading comprehension and if there were no God and only matter and energy, you or I wouldn’t even be able to function anywhere at the level of a bird (remember mindless piece of organic machinery), so maybe a talking parrot is a complement?

How old are you Kirby, really? I must be talking to a kid, because you reason like a fifteen year old.

For one, animals are nowhere near the level of man’s intellect (maybe yours however). Secondly, animals don’t think like man can. Their actions are almost automatic and stimulant responsive, that’s why when it’s mating season, they mate. When winter’s approaching, they hibernate or travel to warmer client, they’re very regular in their behavior; purely instinctive. Man on the other hand is unpredictable; no two men are the same. Man can choose to conceive a child only to leave it in a garbage can. He can choose to kill a family member to collect on the insurance policy, a mother can choose to abandon her children in the midst of danger (while a mother bear will always fight to the death for her cubs), etc. You get the point: Humans chose and can rationalize.

Now if evolution were true, man would only be a mindless body composed of matter, subject to the uniform behavior of the matter he’s comprised of. He wouldn’t be responsible for getting himself from point A to point B.

My objection still stands: man would be nothing more than a mindless piece of organic machinery if materialist atheist theories were true (based on the atheist’s own assumptions of reality – what the universe is comprised of)

You are begging the question always. Again how do you go from the brain of man that is nothing but matter subject to immutable laws to self and social awareness. You seemed to have arbitrarily skipped what constitutes as thoughts and logic (totally dodged it). Again my objection is that this formula will only make the man’s behavior (at best) automatic and purely stimulant driven, instinctive, and therefore mindless (not brainless) from the human perspective.

Kirby, you know this is not proof. Some fossilized remains of ONE deformed person or ape appears and automatically it’s a missing link? The scientist who hold to this belief are atheists and so their conclusions will be made in this light.

I should point out how funny the atheist faith works here. Here’s a quote from butterbattle for example:

So I have to ask which is it, (1) a clear progression to more complicated life forms or (2) humans and their physically and intellectually inferior cousins residing together?

In the beginning, point (1) was emphasized but when the “new” evidence that arrived that contradicted point (1), that didn’t make you drop point (1), it made you modify your belief system to incorporate point (2). So we get things like “living fossils” and several different species of man living together simultaneously (you not only have this new discovery but Cro-Magnon man and of course Homo sapiens). This illustration only proves what I’ve pointed out earlier before. That atheists believe things they have yet to see or experience; but as I point out it’s BLIND faith.

Also you know that fossil dating techniques are not accurate and are not agreed upon. The funny thing is you could never know if the dating methods worked or not past 4000 years and I personally don’t even know how the scientist who developed it knows that carbon dating is accurate only up to 4000 years and unpredictable after that.

Yes, so much freedom to murder, rape, sodomize, steal, lie, or what have you and not feel any guilt but on the contrary feel justified for anything we do. Absolute freedom.

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MORE SPECIFICALLY TO POST #182 & #196

I should point out that in order for you to even judge God’s actions to be vile or inhumane (on a universal stage), you would first have to explain how in an atheistic universe (where morality is relative - evil, good, right, or wrong is defined by the individual and therefore meaningless) it makes sense to call someone vile or inhumane and for it to have timeless universal meaning (because your “outrage” over His actions suggest that).

It’s simple deduction Kirby, you should learn how to employ it. We know from His revelation that after the fall, man’s condition put him at enmity with God, so that God’s supernatural revelation became redemptive (the main theme in all of scripture is God’s salvation of man). Before the fall, God communicated with man “face to face” and there was unhindered fellowship between God and man, it would be illogical to reason that He would not need to have anything in writing. Do you see how simple that was.

What are you talking about Kirby? How is it that even now you still don’t know what presupposing means. Could it be because you don’t really read much of what I write or conveniently forget it? It doesn’t mean that we make up stuff about God. It means we start our thinking with the truths found in His word, as opposed to the thinking pattern of the world which is inherently hostile toward the truth of God and works to suppress the knowledge of God that is present in every man. Only then when we presuppose the truth of His word can we arrive at the right conclusions.

Here’s a parallel: You’re putting together a fancy desk (it arrived unassembled). You could ignore the instructions altogether, but if you don’t know any of the physical features of the desk, have never experienced a desk like this one, or even assembled any furniture or worked with wood and tools, etc, you would most certainly get the assembly wrong. But if you take the time to carefully read the instructions, you’ll be assembling the desk correctly from point A to point B so that in the end you would know that your conclusion is correct.

Another parallel is this: Suppose you’re solving a complicated mathematical equation and at the very onset, you make a calculatory error but continue to progress until you arrive at your answer. You would be wrong in your conclusion because of the initial error committed in the beginning. That explains well the dilemma of all atheistic and all non Christian theistic worldviews; your beginning assumptions are wrong therefore your conclusions in the end are wrong.

You conveniently left out the image of God in man and His supernatural revelation. His revelation is comprehensive and therefore there is no reason or excuse to reject the Christian God, because only His existence can account for human intelligence, knowledge, rationality, morality, and science. All humans are without excuse, because you know that the belief system you adhere to is so antithetical to human experience. The natural order tells us that there is intelligent design, that life didn’t originate from non life, that the concept of morality is meaningless if it’s relative, how complex and amazing our thoughts and rationality are and how uniform and error free the scriptures are.

And with that, we can go out and discover and learn things about the universe, how it operates, and how to manipulate it for our use and for the glory of God.

(Yes, your mental capacity is very little – but be of good cheer – it’s because of your atheism – accept truth and be free)

Kirby, I don’t mean to diminish your dignity in anyway but your atheism certainly hasn’t helped you in anyway to think coherently.

Pointing out Darwin’s ideas has nothing to do with what atheism logically concludes.  Darwin didn’t carry out his atheism to its logical conclusion as most atheists do not and they wouldn’t agree with my statement about “might makes right” He underestimated the theory of evolution, He didn’t foresee that anyone with a screwed up ideology and military might to back it up could impose his will on anyone who lacked the resources to protect himself. The one subjugated could be a genius mind compared to the aggressor.

Understand that when I say that atheism is true to explain morality in an atheistic universe, it’s hypothetical. I’m granting you that human intelligence is possible (remember my reasoned objection about it being impossible which you haven’t removed). Now in light of this granting on my part, it wouldn’t matter if a man of Darwin’s intellect was right or not, if his opponent was significantly less intelligent but had might in any form over Darwin, he could enforce his will on Darwin.

Here’s a parallel situation: suppose you’re walking with a couple of your friends at night and suddenly are surrounded by a group of thugs with guns and knives possessing less than a high school education who want to hurt you, would you get out of it unscathed because your intellect surpasses theirs? Not likely

Kirby if it’s alright with you, I would like you to step down and give someone else a chance. I’ve told you that it’s frustrating debating with you because you don’t answer the questions I ask, your arguments are fallacious, and when you respond to my posts, they’re usually not even related to the quote you’re responding to. All this means that I have to correct you first before I can even begin to answer or respond and that’s a lot of writing. Even now you still don’t understand what we’re supposed to be doing and regardless of tone of voice or body language, you will not anytime soon. Now if you think I’m in error, in your next POST, explain to me what we’re suppose to be doing and if I think you understand, then we’ll go on, otherwise this correcting of your objections before responding is tiresome.

Now you have to remember that you asked me why the Gospel of Judas was excluded from the New Testament canon and I answered that it was written after the canonical 4 were already widely used in the church because they're mentioned and it's implied in its own epilogue and the teachings were new (not taught in the 4) and Gnostic. Not to mention the text that was found was Coptic and not Greek. And from your statement it implied that it should have been included in the New Testament canon because, I don’t know, it mentioned Jesus and Judas in its text and had a title that sounded like it belonged. That’s what was implied in your question/statement. I went on to show you how fallacious this argument was by giving you a parallel:

My point was that atheists have no obligation to include this as their own. If it contradicts their theory, they can exclude it on that basis alone.

You’re so blind and dull minded that you can’t even see that, but instead talked about the scientific process and Alexander Fleming and penicillin. The fact that you use penicillin as a parallel to literary writing is beyond mine or anyone’s comprehension and demonstrates your poor arguing skills?

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(Kirby if it’s alright with you, I would like you to step down and give someone else a chance. I’ve told you that it’s frustrating debating you because you don’t answer the questions I ask, your arguments are fallacious, and when you respond to my posts, they’re usually not even related to the quote you’re responding to. All this means is that I have to correct you first before I can even begin to answer or respond and that’s a lot of writing. Even now you still don’t understand what we’re supposed to be doing and regardless of tone of voice or body language, you will not understand anytime soon. Now if you think I’m in error, in your next POST, explain to me what we’re suppose to be doing and if I think you understand, then we’ll go on, otherwise this correcting of your objections before responding is tiresome.)

If it's OK with you all I would like to engage in dialog with one of you at a time until one of us says no longer wants to interact with the other. All of you seem to be arguing on the same side, but I'm only one person. I cannot respond to you all, but I want to. If you all can agree to restrain yourselves until the active opponent steps aside, I think we can have an interesting dialog. If anyone who is not the active responder posts, I will not respond to your comments unless it's to notify of changes or updates. I would like begin with HisWillness. Please wait for my post if your comment is aimed at me; otherwise continue to talk amongst yourselves.

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Unfortunately for me Kirby, it has not been entirely entertaining for me except only when your ridiculous arguments were shown to my friends for a good laugh. I liken the experience to arguing with a retarded child. J

Most if not all you wrote in your last and final post (Thank God) was gibberish. You didn’t prove what you were suppose to prove, only that if the evidence and reason didn’t approve with evolution (based on blind and non provable assumptions), you didn’t accept it.

So let me recap what has been shown in our exchanges:

·        I’m sure that some writings out there are purposefully written as riddles or such, but other than those, all writing is not meant to be “interpreted”. All writing can be understood or misunderstood depending on the level of attention paid to it by the reader. So what you have argued is that all writing is unreliable, even your own.

·        The reason why people misunderstand the text is because of lack of proper attention to the Bible, especially as a whole (As you have repeatedly pointed out in your writing and arguing. One reason they get it wrong is because they adopt the thinking pattern of non-Christians and we know what that results in; fallacious arguments, poor literary comprehension, and lack of honesty in debate (but then again I shouldn’t have thought that an atheist had any obligation to be honest)

·        That if one judges an opposing view with his (the judge’s) own assumptions and arbitrary standards, there’s no way to prove anything to him (the one judging).

·        I never in any of our discussions assumed that Atheism is a worldview (you need to look back at page one and read that I acknowledged this error) and you only brought it up to steal attention away from the fact the theory of evolution requires blind and contradictory faith to accept.

·        That if morality jumped up and bit you on your butt, you wouldn’t know it. It simply flies over your tiny “monkey” brain (I hope that wasn’t an admission of conceding). Relative morality means, murder can be interpreted by one person one way and by another person the complete opposite. And this goes well with rape, stealing, lying, cheating, etc.

Furthermore that;

·        Truth can be known and can only be known if God is true otherwise all your claims are not true and not even probable if atheism is true.

·        I have proven the truthfulness of Christianity because of the impossibility of the contrary. If God is not true, you have no basis for morality, logic (never got an answer to that), or science, and certainly no basis for debate at all.

·        That Jesus claimed to be God but because the way in which He claimed it wasn’t satisfactory to your arbitrary standard, it wasn’t accepted. You should go and polish your reading comprehension skills. Claiming to be the Son of God meant that you were claiming to be God (as was shown in John’s Gospel), and when asked by the Jews whether He was the Son of God, He said “It is as you say”, but if I’m wrong and you’re right, then after being found guilty because of His statement, it would mean that Jesus consciously and purposefully failed to correct their misunderstanding and save His life. Yes your explanation is much more plausible on the literary level.

·        Because God is true we are able to think, even you Kirby. J But if God is not true then you and I are nothing more than mindless organic “machines” saying and doing whatever the matter in our brains and body are “programmed” to do according to the laws of science internally and reactively to stimuli.

·        I have effectively and demonstrated my use of deductive reasoning which cannot be accounted for and explain by the evolutionist theory.

·        Kirby must be a foreign exchange student, possibly from Dumb Town, Stupidburg. J

I suppose only intelligent and honest minds will decide for us, so keep hoping that you wrote and reasoned clearly Kirby. Keep your dream alive.

As for your so called Penicillin/evolution analogy, your reason is flawed there also. Penicillin works and is practical while evolution is a theory and is not necessary to believe to perform science.

Penicillin is something we can physically hold and administer to the ill and infected, while evolution is read about (talked and discussed about – I’ll easily grant that) in books and writings (literary).

I just can’t see the connection you’re claiming, sorry I really don’t. J

Goodbye E.T., don’t forget to phone home.

WHO’S NEXT? BUTTER DO YOU WANT TO DISCUSS HERE OR ON ONLY ON YOUR THREAD? I CAN DEBATE HERE WITH SOMEONE ELSE AND CONTINUE WITH OUR DISCUSSION ON YOUR THREAD.