PLEASE MAKE
SURE TO
FOLLOW THE
RULES!
RULES
This is the
Kill Em
With
Kindness
Forum!
PLEASE MAKE
SURE TO
FOLLOW THE
RULES!
RULES
This is the
Kill Em
With
Kindness
Forum!
PLEASE MAKE
SURE TO
FOLLOW THE
RULES!
This is the
Kill Em
With
Kindness
Forum!
RULES
PLEASE MAKE
SURE TO
FOLLOW THE
RULES!
This is the
Kill Em
With
Kindness
Forum!
PLEASE MAKE
SURE TO
FOLLOW THE
RULES!
RULES
This is the
Kill Em
With
Kindness
Forum!
PLEASE MAKE
SURE TO
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An evidentiary default, though not a cultural one. And, no, one doesn't have to defend a non-claim the same way one would a claim. A non-concept demands no substance, and is always substantiated in that regard until a competing reality comes along. In other words, until an adherent to one of these cults backs up their stuff.
Wait... are you trying to substantiate the Old Testament prophecy with New Testament claims? Holy failure, Batman. The text was written with prior knowledge of the prophecies, and the the supposed fulfillment never substantiated. By that standard, any sequel to a fictional work could be considered prophetic fulfillment.
What's so hard to understand about my stance? It says your position is full of refuse. And I brought as much backing as you did for your position. But since you asked so nicely...
What would you like to bring up? The interpolation in Josephus that wasn't written by him? The stuff from Roman historians who wrote about Chrestos (not Christ)? The early church fathers who confused Chrestos with Christos and spun like dervishes to harmonize the two?
At best, those show Christianity existed, not necesarily Christ. Much of it also came well after the gospels were written so they do more to support my point than yours. The early church fathers had the same reason to sell Jesus as the gospel writers - keep the sheep in line.
The gospels aren't history. They were written with an agenda - " But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name." (John 20:31)
What other evidence do you have? If you've got tons, drag a couple shovelfuls over here.
BTW, I do like the horizontal vagina sketch that's part of your avatar...oh wait, you think that has something to do with the male Jesus.
"I do this real moron thing, and it's called thinking. And apparently I'm not a very good American because I like to form my own opinions."
— George Carlin
I just read that book, I love prophacy claims because their apologists never lack the naked assertions and ambiguity I am never suprised to see. It is easy to shout "See, I was right" when the apologists reads ambigious language and incerts what they want into it after they read it.
Of course the Jews talked of a messiah, but what Christians dont want to consider is that early Christians looked at the Jewish motifs and worked it into a new religion and, not because of magic being real, but because of effective marketing, were able to spread their new idea based on an old religon.
For the same reason Ra was popular in north Africa for over 3 thousand years....for the same reason Islam is popular and for the same reason Jews are insistant on staying in the middle east, is quite simple. It has nothing to do with any of these religions emperically proving their fantastic claims, it has to do with defending the ego of the alpha male mentality. These religions are popular, not because a god exists, but because their advocates believe they exist and are good at marketing.
"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog
NO! NO! NO, no, no! *stamps feet* NO! *screams*
Read here: Dispelling the False Etymologies of Atheism and Atheist
BigUniverse wrote,
"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."
Hello seth. Regarding biblical evidence to support your claims:
Followers of Judaism, who being theists fully embrace the idea of an all powerful God and who also claim Isaiah as a prophet, will immediately reject your concept of God :
No triune God in Jewish faith
( as well as your concept of the Messiah )
Jewish Messiah is not God,
He will come in victory and establish earthly rule upon his arrival,
The Messiah was never intended to be a sacrifice
My point is simply that biblical evidence can be interpreted in different ways, and that even among the "god-believers" there is no concensus as to where the evidence leads.
If even theists cannot agree among themselves as to what the alledged "evidence" is implying is it any wonder that atheists would be skeptical of their claims ?
Even among Christians themselves the specifics of absolute truth vary according to which denomination you ask.
Isn't that like asking if someone can make something unmakeable, like a four-sided triangle? Did you mistype, or do you mean it as written?
And the reason we can calculate them is, you guessed it, SCIENCE. Handy, ain't it? It makes me wonder what we'll be able to learn about the formation of life given a few centuries.
Anyone who decides on suicide can calculate the day they die. Although to be fair, that's more deciding than calculating.
Value in terms of exchange rate with the British pound? The price of gold? The cost of Cheerios?
That's only true if you buy it. If you don't, it's a collection of middle eastern mythology, and not much else. The fact that the sequel was written by people who were intimately familiar with the first volume has already been pointed out; if it didn't conform, they wouldn't have been particularly persuasive.
--
maybe if this sig is witty, someone will love me.
Ah, an Intelligent Designist, I've been looking for one of your ilk. And I want you to remember that you provided the pieces of the metaphore.
So, you want a watch and you have all these pieces from watches in a bag. There has to be energy put into the system so just laying the pieces on a table isn't going to work. You need to shake the bag so the pieces jumble together. Then we need some form of natural selection. Why, Seth, if you're not busy, would you make the selections? Pick out the pieces that look like they're forming some portion of the watch's mechanism. Now since we actually want a completed product in your life time, you should probably study a little bit about the construction of watches so you know what pieces to select. This is something that life's intelligent designer must have failed to do when starting out. Else, why would there be so many failures in evolution's trash can? One would almost think that Lucky Selector would be just as viable a name. Lucky, of course, is a relative term. I supose that 99% of all the species that have existed but are now extinct wouldn't consider themselves lucky.
But back to the bag and its shaken contents of watch parts and after a hundred or a thousand selections you have all the pieces (subassemblies if you will) of a very nice pocket watch. Here of course is where my little allegory comes to a screeching halt. I knew it would from the very beginning but I just couldn't help myself. There's no way for all these inanimate pieces to assemble themselves. Seth, we need a miracle.
Wait a minute - don't do anything magical yet. I'd rather cheat instead. What if the cogs and gears and springs and all the other whatnots weren't made of stainless steal and bronze? What if they were made of four simple amino acids that only bound together in certain set ways? We could probably watch them assemble themselves in ways far more intricate than a watch and do more interesting things than give us the time of day. I guess there's something to the slogan, 'better living through chemisrty.'
Well, if you really must hear it:
All mainstream religions (as well as any other lesser known ones I know of) have elements within them that cannot exist within our assumed universe, and therefore teach falsehoods (some to greater degrees than others).
If only all challenges in life were this simple to meet.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Well, first, there was nothing to assemble the raw ingredients to make the amino acid. Second, the was nothing to mix the amino acids together so that they could bond together, plus the extra ingredients needed to make that happen. Third who is shaking the so called "bag" for a billion years to make it happen? Where did the "bag" come from anyway? Ok now for a real question, let's say by some miracle that despite the odds a short DNA strand is formed. What's to say that it means anything. If formed at random, it's probably useless anyway. But I'm willing to work with you here because I'm interested where you are going. Ok you have a simple and useful piece of DNA. How do you get that piece of DNA to do anything. DNA in and of itself is not life, it's more like the instructions for life. How does nature do what scientists are not able to, and make life? I don't have centuries to wait for this answer, my life depends on it. That is why for now, my default position is God exists, prove to me otherwise. Because, you know that argument, Christians have nothing to lose if they are wrong, we will go on living a good life, respecting one another and treating each other with love, if we are good Christians. If an atheist is wrong he has everything to lose, that's why my default position is what it is.
It's been replicated in a lab, as have self-replicating molecules. Deludedgod's apt to clean your clock, or watch as the case may be, if you keep this line of rhetoric.
Begging the question. "Who" implies an agency, which you've not justified inferring.
Words fail.
Virologists?
Argument from incredulity.
Fallacy of equivocation. You're using "make" to imply an agency where none may be necessary, and none has been justifiably inferred by you. At best, you have the statement that we haven't the knowledge and ability to create life, which still leaves your agency inference an argument from ignorance and a non-sequitur.
Sigh.
That's not a default position, it's a very specific and unjustified claim. You're just shifting the burden of proof; which, if accepted as a criteria for argument, can justify literally any conceivable claim. You'd be forced, unless you apply some arbitrary criteria and commit special pleading, to accept every conceivable notion as true unless explicitly excluded from possibility.
Why do so many Christians think Pascal's Wager is so potent. It is, at best, bifurcation.
...I don't usually do these, because clearly quotee already has it set in their mind how the rules of their assumed universe (if you will) works. Evidence and facts are no longer really relevent, because they are discarded in light of the fact that they don't mesh with the laws of the universe as he sees them (however flawed that perception may be).
That said, just this one time...
So, to begin with, this analogy effectively provides us with a law within seth's universe that we can examine, then bring over to our universe to see if it matches or can fit alongside it's laws. If it does, both universes can co-exist (in otherwords, they are one and the same thing, and the belief is correct in any sense):
The Law
Complex systems require intelligent guidance / intervention / maintenance in their creation, and likely their continued operation.
The watch example leaves us with an impression that this is true in our assumed universe; watches cannot assemble themselves according to our laws. Neither can anything (I hesitate to use that word here; I know that someone is totally going to make me look like a dumbass by posting a link to some awesome robot that can de-assemble and re-assemble itself) mechanical.
However, looking at non-mechanical examples, we not only see that complex systems can develop without intelligent oversight, but that intelligent oversight cannot often create the most complex systems we know of. The simplest example would be that of human reproduction. Not a single person in the world, provided any length of time, could transform a deconstructed human body into a functioning human being - yet the simple act of procreation sets in motion the extremely complex, yet totally autonomous process of growing a human being.
Further examples would be things like the birthing of a sun, formation of a planet, building of a thunderhead, etc.
So, seth's law cannot apply to our assumed reality. Either his law is correct, in which case we exist in his universe and ours is false (our perceptions are lying to us), or his law is incorrect, in case he exists in our universe (his perceptions are lying to him).
I'm inclined to go with the latter. Of course, I'm biased in favor of my perceptions / assumptions.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Seth,
Please do some research on the following subjects:
1) Abiogenesis (which, btw, != evolution)
2) Why Pascal's Wager is invalid (available on this site)
3) The fact that atheists can be good people
4) The problem with the "God of the Gaps"
You'll be better informed about what you are arguing about.
Thanks,
Triften
I sense a buddha has come aboard
he goes by Kevin R Brown
so what is a buddha , ???
WISE ....
Atheism Books.
If scientists have already created life, than why does this article say that they are still trying to do it and do expect to be able to for several years. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20249628/>1=10252 can you send me an article that confirms that they have created life. I would think that I would have heard about it, that's a pretty major accomplishment. Thanks for your condescending aproach, very kind indeed.
Just because this is a major theme in seth's posts:
Alongside many notions that there are no absolute turths.
I disagree on both accounts.
For the latter, consider the fact that you absolutely must exist. If you didn't, you wouldn't be able to consider it either way (this, of course, does not mean that you must exist in the way you percieve yourself to exist. That's merely an assumption).
For the former, I can say that with 100% certainty that God cannot exist within our assumed universe. He does not conform to the absolute laws that govern it, and everything within it.
Taking away the assumption that our universe is not what we actually exists within and / or exists as we percieve it, yes - there is some degree of chance that God exists within the realm of the 'actual' universe. The chance is absolutely miniscule, however, given that the assumptions we base our existence in this universe on are the same ones we fell back on when theorizing the concept of God (so, odds are that if this universe isn't actually real, the term 'God' - along with everything else - is no longer likely to have any application) - and believing in God's existence (much less vocally and publicly so) is absolutely ludicrous.
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Me? While I thank-you for the complement good sir, I'm afraid I'll accept no such delegation. I'm a damn moron, actually... Hell, I didn't even spell 'venomous' right in my sig.
Sigh. Fixing...
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
I'm not sure how we're supposed to have a conversation if you're not going to pay attention to the words being written.
yeah you , buddha
know one when I see one !
Look up pantheism
How did you calculate this probablility?
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