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the American government, just like every true democracy, is secular. The term "secular" means it does not officially endorse any religion. This is in contrast, say, to Tudor England, where the Church of England was an arm of the government, or Saudi Arabia, where the penalty for apostasy is death. Technically, a country cannot even claim to be a democracy in any sense of the word unless it is secular. The founding fathers were a diverse bunch, some were atheist, some were agnostic, some were Christian, some of them positively hated Christianity, but all of them agreed on the principle of secularism, as shown by the Treaty of Tripoli. The US government does not technically endorse any church, mosque, temple or any religious organization (this is why they all have tax-exempt status but cannot recieve government funding).

 Hello again!

It's good to be back. Upon chuckling and seeing more of the "born without a brain" threads from desperate dualists, I decided to compose this and inserted it into my essay on the absurdity of dualism.  

Of the most ludicrous attempts to prove the existence of the “soul”, surely, the so-called “born without a brain” is one of them.

Of course, it is possible to be born without a brain. The precursor to the neural clusters of the brain are called neural tubes, which close and develop around 25 weeks into embryonic development, and partition along the brain’s major longitudinal axis into the four major partitions (prosencephalon,  mesencephalon, rhombencephalon and the cerebrospinal fluid duct. The first three then split again into the brain’s sub-partitioning, the prosencephalon develops along the optic ducts and into the precursor of the cerebrum, which contains all of the higer-level functions and partitions (temporal lobe, occipatal lobe, prefrontal cortex and parietal lobe), and the rest develops into the sub-structures of the primary and secondary tiers of the brain, the midbrain, the fluid ducts that run between the lobes, the pons medullas and hypothalamus, the cerebellum and the brain stem.

In this thread I'm going to try and quash some of the misconceptions and misrepresentations about theists (Christians in particular) that have been kicking around on this forum lately.  The purpose of this thread is not to defend theism per se, but I felt as though it was appropriate to place it here due to the fact that most of the misconceptions and misrepresentations that I've encountered have been in this particular forum. 

The more that I try and further the dialog between myself and the RRS, the more I notice that many of the hardcore RRS members don't actually seem to be interested in "freeing humanity from the mind disorder known as theism", but rather exposing fundamental Christianity.  Needless to say, these things are not one in the same.  

Below are a few observations about atheists:

Atheists love to spend a lot of online time berating God, the Bible and believers in general. They never actually prove there is no God; they simply insist there isn't a God because they can't see or feel or touch Him, and therefore, He doesn't exist. Circular logic. And no matter what you say to an atheist, the pat response is always, "No, that isn't true," or "That's a myth," or "Well, prove it!"....And when you do provide proof, they again repeat the same mantra.

I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. -Matthew 16:28(NIV)

And he said to them, "I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power." -Mark 9:1(NIV)

Behold, I am coming soon! Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy in this book. -Revelation 22:7(NIV)

...how does one deal with the fact that these verses deal with an immenant return of Jesus Christ to Earth, yet after around two millenia of waiting, he has still not returned?  Sure, you could explain it away by saying he wasn't talking about the immediate future, he was being metaphorical, etc. but if you are wanting to take the Bible literally(YEC's, I'm talking to you), doesn't this demonstrate that your faith is at least inconsistant?

What sort of phenomenon would be better explained by an appeal to the supernatural than by a natural explanation? The obvious response is "any phenomenon that violates the regularities of the natural world". But how would we know what those regularities are in the first place? Changing the criterion to "any phenomenon that violates the observed regularities of the natural world" assumes that every regularity of the natural world has been observed. Even as an atheist, this irks me. Events like Christ's resurrection seem intuitively like things that, if they occurred, would indicate the existence of the supernatural ("woah!

This has always confused me for the longest...?

 I heard it said today that Kelly is the philosopher of the RRS. If this is true, I invite Kelly to call professor Craig Hawkins on his radio program which airs every Sunday night between 10 PM -- 12 AM, pacific standard time. Craig is an expert in logic and epistemology. He has taught logic for 13 years. He is a strong theist and a philosophical and evidencial apologist. You can hear the program on www.hischannel.com every Sunday at 10 PM.  The show is called "Living by the Word," and the number is 866-livebyword. Infact, I invite any atheist to give him a call.

Didn't know where to post this.

Has anybody met any Christians/Jews/Muslims that use good logic to back up their claims?
I'm really getting tired of the same, centuries old bullshit.