An oxymoron?

I believe this is called a arguement from authority fallacy? Just because this man came to the conclusion that they were reliable, does not make them reliable. Simply because he was the principle "Founder" of harvard means nothing.

The facts are that documents can be fabricated. And the documents you use that you deem reliable could easily be fabricated. You have to realize, that you have to use real evidence if you want to back up your claims.

If the history books serve right, Napoleon was not the least bit religious. He was, infact an Atheist, or somewhere near it I believe. He saw religion as a means to get what he needed, so he used it to what suited him best. Considering many people of his time were of a zealot-like religious nature.

My suggestion to you, is when you can come back and argue your points without using the bible, then you will be taken seriously. Many people do not even consider the bible worthy of quoting. And quite personally, I don't think you can use the bible to prove your point to people who do not believe in it.

What makes it valid? Your opinion? I say it's not valid. Who's right? 

Practically all of your complaints are aswered here: http://rookthehistorian.blogspot.com/2007/05/revised-look-at-resurrection-and-its.html

I'm extremely well versed in Apologetics and I find it a disgusting and dishonest profession.  Try me.

On your first note: No, I'm not an apologetic for atheism, as apologetics is defined as a defender of a faiths shortcomings, or a positions shortcomings. This is not only the origin or etymology of the word but also what it is still defined as today. There is no such way a position of apologetics can be held by atheism since it is not a positive position nor is it a faith - it's a lack of both.

One your second note, it was MY blog essay I posted, and it answers your questions. It's that simple. Perhaps if you read more of peoples works instead if debated in a forum point by point you may know as much as you claim to know, instead of coming up short.

On your third note - since apologetics is basically apologizing for your positions shortcomings, it uses a lot of false history, false claims in order to provide dishonest rationalizations. A perfect example is claims like "The bible proved events that are happening today, like flight and nuclear war." Such is not accurate, but false, and apologetics in all it's dishonest glory.

Finally,based on the above, it's more then obvious that the individual doesn't even matter, nor their personal belie or what God they believe in or whatever it may be - especially in the discussions of theism, however, there is an inherent dishonesty in apologists becauseone starts from the position of being right and works to make the facts fit his conclusion, as opposed to what modern historians do, which is to examine everything from the position of neutrality and weigh it against others to allow the facts to present to us the conclusion, and then we alter out conclusions based on new facts.  The apologist does not do this.   

So, like I said - apologetics is the most disgusting and dishonest form of profession there is.

I'm sorry but you failed to show me the positive belief.  Can you please point me to the positive claim in the statement "There is no God?"  

That is why there are four pages of endnotes.  Please do some independant research. 

No modern historian would disagree that the Bible has contradictions.  That being said, you can't provide me with any peer reviewed essay which suggests and backs up your claim above.  I dare you to try. 

 I certainly don't have to agree to that.  That point is far from accurate.

 I feel my points have been adequately made in my blog.

No this is inaccurate.  Theism is a mind disorder with an additional note that all theists are dishonest.  There is an inherent dishonesty in all theism. 

 Actually it does.  You didn't read it.

I have.  Read the article. 

Again, had you bothered to read the article you'd have this kn owledge, but it is apparent you either skimmed it or just looked at the titles of the sections without reviewing the work itself. Hell, maybe you didn't even look at it at all.  This is where the inherent dishonesty in theism is shown.   You are a perfect example of that diagnosis. 

Rook: you cannot convert people with insults. People like Phelps and Falwell insult the people they had no interest in, in order to bring the bigots who share those views under their wing.

But why are you doing it? By calling theists (the people that you're trying to clear the eyes of) "disgusting and dishonest" and "suffering from a mind disorder", you are not endearing them, and you are damaging the rest of your message: they see that one part of the message is clearly wrong, so they need not give any weight to the rest of it.

Worse, by combining an ad hom attack with the "poisoning the well" fallacy, you make yourself look bad even to those who agree with your points. It doesn't come across as a "rational response".

The reason I haven't done the challenge is that it's embarrassing to be associated with an organisation founded by people who say this kind of stuff: I want to be able to distance myself from the worst excesses, like the above insults.

The challenge is good and works - it is advertising and draws people in. But once they get to the forums, you are out of the realm where you should be using "shock-tactic advertisting" and into the realm where you should be using "user-friendly customer service".

That is, at least, if the RRS is about rationally convincing people of the truth, rather than just scoring points.

Damn, I came back to delete my post and PM it instead Too late now. I apologise for posting publicly about a personal behaviour issue. Doing so was bad form on my part, and probably means that the man who I hoped to convince will (rightly, perhaps) ignore an opinion expressed in that way. PMs are the right channel for this stuff.

Ah, well.

I can't help but feel that there are better ways to spread rationality than through irrational attacks.

That is a rational statement, and reads reasonably, and without insulting the whole population amongst whom you want to spread reason.

Because it's one of the better communities of its type, despite some of the bigotry. If you keep an eye out for the people listed in my sig, you'll soon see the kind of well-reasoned, polite and thoughtful discussions I come here for. I disagree ith many of them intensely, but it doesn't degrade to mudslinging, and we learn stuff.

If someone questioning their faith comes here and sees people insulting them, they will retreat back into their faith. Aggression makes people defensive like that.

It may be more honest and more fun to write aggressively, but, as one of the mods here wisely said about one of my own aggressive posts: it's less fun to read. (She was right, of course, so I apologised.)

So... science and the Bible agree? We should tell the media. They've been getting it wrong all these years, claiming there's a creation debate, and an age of the earth debate and so on.

That's correct. No scientific FACT has ever contradicted anything in the Bible. Scientific theories which come and go and get modified and put aside when some new discovery comes along may disagree with the Bible, but no scientific fact does.

Let me ask you a couple of questions.

How old exactly is the earth according to scientists?

Has science been revising the estimated age of the earth for some time now?

Does the Bible say how old the earth is, if so where?

Is macro-evolution a fact or a theory?

Well you see, that's where I would have to disagree with you because unless we invent a time machine or something like that we can only apply scientific principles in studying the materials that we have available to us to come up with a guess. That "more accurate" guess could be smiled upon by scientists of the next century  who have made new discoveries just like the scientists of today do at the things their earlier counterparts put forth with great assurance in their times.

I'm not familiar with how these two terms are used by different groups of people. When I use the term "macro-evolution" what I am primarily referring to is the theory that over time members of one class of the sub phylum vertebrata have evolved into another class that was not in existence prior to this process.            

You might be interested in one of the more recent scientific theories designed to account for apparent logical gaps in the evolving theory of evolution. Perhaps you are already familiar with the "sudden origins" addition, but if you are not here is the link  http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-01/uop-ppt012506.php

Pitt professor's theory of evolution gets boost from cell research

Jeffrey H. Schwartz's sudden origins closed Darwin's gaps; cell biology explains how

Click here for full article: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/112349521/PDFSTART

m

Oh, you mean like the belief that there is no supernatural explanation for the existence of matter in this universe, that either something came from nothing or that matter has just always existed with no explanation for it's origin even though there is no evidence to support such a belief system?

Yep - nothing is ever certain. I'm happy with that. I'm also happy that what we know today may be overthrown completely and proven false in the future, in the face of better evidence. That's a strength of science, not a weakness.

Alll we can do is establish probabilities based on the evidence we have to hand, as you say.

So when dozens of different fields of science from cosmology, geology, biology, genetics, kinetic physics, thermal physics, and most tellingly radioactive decay, all independently come up with dates in a similar age range, then it is reasonable to give that age range a high probability.

When the beginning of that age range

When none come up with "ten thousand years" or ten trillion, it is reasonable to give those a very low probability.

But it is unheard of for a scientific revolution to move backwards, and make our predictions less accurate. In the study of cosmology and gravitation, by studying the movement of the planets, various theories were proposed which made the precision by which we could predict their movements more and more accurately: moving from earth-centred circles to sun-centred, from circles to ellipses, then finetuning with the theory of gravity. With relativity, we are now finally able to predict the orbits as accurately as we can measure them.

Equally, with age-of-the-earthism.

I am afraid I was unable to view the PDF.

I note that you have not commented on the post I linked to: however, if you read it, you will spot a few strawmen that the introduction you linked to seems to believe.

1) New traits do not come about through mutation.
2) Mutation is 100% random.
3) Significantly novel traits do not come about in a single generation

There are others, but... bleh.

From 1 and 2, you can't have a recessive mutation that implies a "cause", but only shows itself considerably later on.

I can't speak for the article, not having read it, but whoever wrote the intro needs to be given a good spanking.

And the quotes by schwarz seem to be completely out of touch with reality, so I do hope they were taken out of context.

I mean, the whole "gaps" assumption for a start: assuming that because there are (claimed to be) gaps in the fossil record, this is not simply because those things never fossilised, not because we just never found fossils, but rather because of a "mechanism of the gaps". If I see a bird fly past outside one window, then another, I can assume that in between the two, it was doing much the same as what I saw it doing in the windows: flying. Not teleporting or anything else.

I would pot this article down as "bad science". That's OK: a lot of proposed science is bad science, and that is why we have peer review, attempts to reproduce experiments, and falsification of hypotheses.

I would be very surprised if this man's hypothesis (as described in the intro) survived the process, but who knows, maybe it is true. Either way, no great blow to evolution I guess.

Quote:

Most people in human history have been, and are, theists. This shows that atheism is an aberation.

How do you derive that conclusion? Do you base it upon a lack of scientific knowledge in previous centuries or do you think that most people are basically gullible yourself being a notable exception? 

How do you account for the existence of matter in this universe?

Do you subscribe to the "something came from nothing"  idea or the "matter has just always existed and there is no explanation needed for it being here in the first place" notion? Or do you just shrug your shoulders and say "I can't explain it, maybe scientists in the future will come up with an explanation, but one thing I can say with certainty is that it wasn't created by some 'God'"?

 If you don't have an alternative explanation and fall into the last category then please explain how you can be certain that there is no supernatural entity responsible for the existence of matter in the 4 dimensions that we can observe? Remember that the "big bang" theory does not explain where the material came from to "go bang". In fact that theory sounds very similar to the first verse in the Bible where it says that God spoke the universe into creation.

Would you say that Dr Francis S Collins is gullible, delusional, both, or something else?

http://www.tektonics.org/scim/sciencemony.htm

Dr. Francis S. Collins is Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. He currently leads the Human Genome Project, directed at mapping and sequencing all of human DNA, and determining aspects of its function.  His previous research has identified the genes responsible for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, Huntington's disease and Hutchison-Gilford progeria syndrome. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences. For the rest of his credentials, click on the link here: http://www.genome.gov/10000980.   Collins spoke with Bob Abernethy of PBS, posted online at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/transcripts/collins.html, in which he summaries the compatability of fact and faith thusly:

"I think there's a common assumption that you cannot both be a rigorous, show-me-the-data scientist and a person who believes in a personal God. I would like to say that from my perspective that assumption is incorrect; that, in fact, these two areas are entirely compatible and not only can exist within the same person, but can exist in a very synthetic way, and not in a compartmentalized way. I have no reason to see a discordance between what I know as a scientist who spends all day studying the genome of humans and what I believe as somebody who pays a lot of attention to what the Bible has taught me about God and about Jesus Christ. Those are entirely compatible views.

"Science is the way -- a powerful way, indeed -- to study the natural world. Science is not particularly effective -- in fact, it's rather ineffective -- in making commentary about the supernatural world. Both worlds, for me, are quite real and quite important. They are investigated in different ways. They coexist. They illuminate each other. And it is a great joy to be in a position of being able to bring both of those points of view to bear in any given day of the week. The notion that you have to sort of choose one or the other is a terrible myth that has been put forward, and which many people have bought into without really having a chance to examine the evidence. I came to my faith not, actually, in a circumstance where it was drummed into me as a child, which people tend to assume of any scientist who still has a personal faith in God; but actually by a series of compelling, logical arguments, many of them put forward by C. S. Lewis, that got me to the precipice of saying, 'Faith is actually plausible.' You still have to make that step. You will still have to decide for yourself whether to believe. But you can get very close to that by intellect alone."

The DSM in previous versions (up until the III I believe) had homosexuality listed as a diagnosable "mind disorder". So, if you want to use that source to say that theism isn't a mind disorder (today, I might add, since it does tend to change), then obviously you believe that homosexuality is also some form of neurosis. Also of note is that Freud (you know - the father of psychoanalysis despite his flaws) considered theism a neurosis along with the founder of modern cognitive-behavioral therapy Albert Ellis.

AL500,

Do you even read the thread topics???

There is already a thread addressing your issue. Here:

http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/miscellanous_forums/trollville/6936

You can take up where ShoottoKill left off.

No more off-topic bullshit. Find the right thread please. For the most part, we are more than happy to respond as rationally as possible to everyone. You are making that difficult to do.

Please, don't post in this thread again until you are willing to address the topic. 

Here are a few I can think of:

1.- The earth is not flat and immovabale. (1 Chronicles 16:30, Psalm 93:1, Psalm 96:10, Daniel 4:10-11, Job 38:12-13 and many more)

2.- The earth is not supported by pillars. (Psalm 104:, Job 9:6)

3._ The earth does not have a crystalline dome covering it. (Psalm 19:1, Job 37:18)

4.- God is not above this dome looking at humans like grasshoppers. (Isaiah 40:22, Psalm 14:2)

5.- This dome is not a tent for us to live in. (Isaiah 40:22, Hebrews 8:1-2)

6.- The stars are not small objects that can fall on the earth. (Matt 24:29)

7.- There are no waters above the said dome (firmament) from which rain or food or fire can fall on earth. (Gen 1:7-8, Gen 7:11-12)

8.- The sun does not rise and set and the runs back to its initial place the next morning (Ecclesiastes 1:5, Psalm 19:1-6)

There's many more but I'm getting tired. Apologists bring all kinds of pathetic arguments to convince us otherwise. They try to convince us that firm does not mean firm, that dome does not mean dome. I guess it all depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is, right?