So I guess I should start by saying that I am a Christian. Please . . . try to contain your overwhelming disgust!

My question is this. After watching the debate on niteline I started thinking. I understand why Kirk Cameron and other Christians go to such lengths to argue the existence of Jesus and God and all other Holy things. What I don't get is why you guys seem to care so much that there are Christians out there. Christians, whether you believe it or not, are just trying to save people. That is what we believe. What exactly is your cause? What difference does it make to you if your neighbor believes in God? Why are you so hell bent on proving that there is no God?

Hi,

I stumbled on this site yesterday and have been reading about the recent Nightline debate and about your organization.   I read several of the forum discussions, but of course have not had time to read all of them.  I am a Christian, and I love to talk about my Christianity.  I understand that the odds of me convincing anyone through debate that Christ is real are very slim.  It's not a matter of debate, it's a matter of faith and a matter of love. 

 I do have a question:  Why is a group of atheists so focused on disproving the Christian faith?  There are many religions in the world that worship and follow a God or a God concept.  If the objective is to disprove God and to end religious dissillusionment, then I'm just curious why I haven't found any other religions under scrutiny here.   

...computer scientists already use evolution in controlled fashion and achieve very real results?

I worte this hoping I could get some tips / feedback.  Any arguments as well.

The Concept of God

 The Christian, before saying that his god exists, must intelligently describe what his god is.  The Christian must give some meaning to the word god or it truly becomes a word with out any content at all.  Before we start talking about the Christian concept of God, lets just clean a few things up first.  Much of the confusion with the word "god" has to do with those people that label things like love, freedom, power, and hope as being god.  I think that this is used as just another way to belittle the atheist by saying things like, "Come on man, don't you believe in hope???"  And then under this ridiculous redefinition of god (god is love), then of course "god" exists and not to many people will argue about that.  To quote George H. Smith, I could say that god exists but that my god is the continent of North America.  Then of course my "god" would exist but this would be highly irrational.  Again quoting Smith, this is rather like transforming atheism into "the serious concerns with ones own life" thereby converting anyone who takes life seriously to atheism.  This is basically pantheism- the doctrine that god is contained within the entire universe- and it reduces god to a triviality.  Why even label love as being god?  What is the point?  Also say for instance we find highly advanced aliens on another planet.  Should we label them as gods?  No.  They are subject to natural law just as we are.  It would be much like a middle aged peasant visiting today's world.  Should we be called gods?  No.  This is a point that Dawkins and Smith have hammered out extinsively but it is very important because it shows why a god must be supernatural.  So God must be a different KIND of existence, not just existence to a higher degree.
 
 I will now talk about natural law for a bit.  Natural law has to do with limitations.  I cannot do anything at anytime.  I will grow into my future self but I will not turn into a pumpkin.  A seed will turn into a plant but it will not turn into a dog.  All beings under natural law are of a limited nature, they have limitations and they therefore are naturally knowable.  From these limitations, we derive attributes and charateristics to label entities with.  We can predict what an acorn will do under certain conditions because of its nature.  So we now know that limitations provide us with attributes and to be subject to natural law is to have a limited nature therefore having characteristics.  We know that god must be supernatural so he must exist with an unlimited nature.  One cannot divorce limitations from attributes so we must conceive of a being that is nothing at all in particular.  To say that god is good or mercifull is to limit god's nature , implying therefore, that god is naturally knowable.  But to talk intelligibly about god, the Christian must give some content to what it is he beleives.  Maybe such a being exists but to claim to have knowledge (and certain knowledge for must Christians) is irrational because the human mind cannot perceive of a being that is nothing because this is in contradiction to existence itself.  If god exists he must be COMPLETELY UNKNOWABLE and therefore, god cannot be known to exist.

Why do certain members of the "Body Of Christ" feel the need to "justify" or "validate" their "Faith" by trying to manufacture "scientific evidence", when Jesus Himself said:

Matthew 16:4 A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them, and departed.

There never will be scientific evidence, hence the reason for "Faith".

Why search in vain for something that God will never reveal? Is not His Grace "sufficient" for thee? We are only saved by Grace through Faith, if that faith is not enough, then do they need to re-examine their salvation?

Much is said about what buildings and infrastructure religion has built while the insult goes that Atheists have built nothing. It's much easier to build things when you get tons of taxpayer money for these projects. According to an article by today's New York Times the Republicans have shelled out $318 million to religious groups between 1998 and 2007.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/business/13lobby.html?ex=1336708800&en=240435eba13e63d7&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permali...

Yup, that's a lot of godless cash going to build things like community centers and soup kitchens. Perhaps if churches got a tax break so they didn't have to pay income taxes on their investments or pay property taxes they could afford to do these sideline projects. Right now their budgets are filled building megachurches with basketball courts and swimming pools so they don't have much money left over to expand college programs or combat youth violence.

I'm rather disappointed that there are no new arguments. All the arguments I've heard from theists ever have been so old and repetative and don't actually give anything else new. Come on. Are you really as bright as you'd like to think you are? I'm bored! Is there anything interesting you have to say?

This would be the as-of-yet unresponded to post. 

Hey folks,

The word apologetics is so great. It has a common root with apology. And apology is a contronym, meaning it has two definitions that are opposite to each other:

apology - 1. admission of fault in what you think, say, or do; 2. formal defense of what you think, say, or do

I think apologetics is a parallel contronym. The definition depends on whether you're a theist or not.

Cheers,

Stefan 

1. The complexity of living systems could never evolve by chance— they had to be designed and created.
A system that is irreducibly complex has precise components working together to perform the basic function of the system. (A mousetrap is a simple example.) If any part of that system were missing, the system would cease to function. Gradual additions could not account for the origin of such a system. It would have to come together fully formed and integrated. Many living systems exhibit this (vision, blood-clotting, etc.). When you look at a watch, you assume there was a watchmaker. A watch is too complex to “happen” by chance. Yet such living systems are almost infinitely more complex than a watch. They could not be random—they simply had to be designed and created.

2. The high information content of DNA could only have come from intelligence.
Information science teaches that in all known cases, complex information requires an intelligent message sender. This is at the core of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). DNA is by far the most compact information storage/retrieval system known. A pinhead of DNA has a billion times more information capacity than a 4-gigabit hard drive. Ironically, evolutionists scan the heavens using massive radio telescopes hoping for relatively simple signal patterns that might have originated in outer space, all the while ignoring the incredibly complex evidence of superior intelligence built into every human’s DNA. While we’re waiting to hear signs of intelligence behind interstellar communication, we’re ignoring those built into us.

3. No mutation that increases genetic information has ever been discovered.
Mutations which increase genetic information would be the raw material necessary for evolution. To get from “amoeba” to “man” would require a massive net increase in information. There are many examples of supposed evolution given by proponents. Variation within a species (finch beak, for example), bacteria which acquire antibiotic resistance, people born with an extra chromosome, etc. However, none of the examples demonstrate the development of new information. Instead, they demonstrate either preprogrammed variation, multiple copies of existing information, or even loss of information (natural selection and adaptation involve loss of information). The total lack of any such evidence refutes evolutionary theory.

4. Evolution flies directly in the face of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics.
This law of physics states that all systems, whether open or closed, have a tendency to disorder (or “the least energetic state”). There are some special cases where local order can increase, but this is at the expense of greater disorder elsewhere. Raw energy cannot generate the complex systems in living things, or the information required to build them. Undirected energy just speeds up destruction. Yet, evolution is a building-up process, suggesting that things tend to become more complex and advanced over time. This is directly opposed to the law of entropy.

5. There is a total lack of undisputed examples (fossilized or living) of the millions of transitional forms (“missing links”) required for evolution to be true.
Evolution does not require a single missing link, but innumerable ones. We should be surrounded by a zoo of transitional forms that cannot be categorized as one particular life form. But we don’t see this—there are different kinds of dogs, but all are clearly dogs. The fossils show different sizes of horses, but all are clearly horses. None is on the verge of being some other life form. The fossil record shows complex fossilized life suddenly appearing, and there are major gaps between the fossilized “kinds.” Darwin acknowledged that if his theory were true, it would require millions of transitional forms. He believed they would be found in fossil records. They haven’t been.

6. Pictures of ape-to-human “missing links” are extremely subjective and based on evolutionists’ already-formed assumptions. Often they are simply contrived.
The series of pictures or models that show progressive development from a little monkey to modern man are an insult to scientific research. These are often based on fragmentary remains that can be “reconstructed” a hundred different ways. The fact is, many supposed “ape-men” are very clearly apes. Evolutionists now admit that other so-called “ape-men” would be able to have children by modern humans, which makes them the same species as humans. The main species said to bridge this gap, Homo habilis, is thought by many to be a mixture of ape and human fossils. In other words, the “missing link” (in reality there would have to be millions of them) is still missing. The body hair and the blank expressions of sub-humans in these models doesn’t come from the bones, but the assumptions of the artist. Virtually nothing can be determined about hair and the look in someone’s eyes based on a few old bones.

7. The dating methods that evolutionists rely upon to assign millions and billions of years to rocks are very inconsistent and based on unproven (and questionable) assumptions.
Dating methods that use radioactive decay to determine age assume that radioactive decay rates have always been constant. Yet, research has shown that decay rates can change according to the chemical environment of the material being tested. In fact, decay rates have been increased in the laboratory by a factor of a billion. All such dating methods also assume a closed system—that no isotopes were gained or lost by the rock since it formed. It’s common knowledge that hydrothermal waters, at temperatures of only a few hundred degrees Centigrade, can create an open system where chemicals move easily from one rock system to another. In fact, this process is one of the excuses used by evolutionists to reject dates that don’t fit their expectations. What’s not commonly known is that the majority of dates are not even consistent for the same rock. Furthermore, 20th century lava flows often register dates in the millions to billions of years. There are many different ways of dating the earth, and many of them point to an earth much too young for evolution to have had a chance. All age-dating methods rely on unprovable assumptions.

8. Uses continue to be found for supposedly “leftover” body structures.
Evolutionists point to useless and vestigial (leftover) body structures as evidence of evolution. However, it’s impossible to prove that an organ is useless, because there’s always the possibility that a use may be discovered in the future. That’s been the case for over 100 supposedly useless organs which are now known to be essential. Scientists continue to discover uses for such organs. It’s worth noting that even if an organ were no longer needed (e.g., eyes of blind creatures in caves), it would prove devolution not evolution. The evolutionary hypothesis needs to find examples of developing organs—those that are increasing in complexity.

9. Evolution is said to have begun by spontaneous generation—a concept ridiculed by biology.
When I was a sophomore in high school, and a brand new Christian, my biology class spent the first semester discussing how ignorant people used to believe that garbage gave rise to rats, and raw meat produced maggots. This now disproven concept was called “spontaneous generation.” Louis Pasteur proved that life only comes from life—this is the law of biogenesis. The next semester we studied evolution, where we learned that the first living cell came from a freak combination of nonliving material (where that nonliving material came from we were not told). “Chemical Evolution” is just another way of saying “spontaneous generation”—life comes from nonlife. Evolution is therefore built on a fallacy science long ago proved to be impossible.

Evolutionists admit that the chances of evolutionary progress are extremely low. Yet, they believe that given enough time, the apparently impossible becomes possible. If I flip a coin, I have a 50/50 chance of getting heads. To get five “heads” in a row is unlikely but possible. If I flipped the coin long enough, I would eventually get five in a row. If I flipped it for years nonstop, I might get 50 or even 100 in a row. But this is only because getting heads is an inherent possibility. What are the chances of me flipping a coin, and then seeing it sprout arms and legs, and go sit in a corner and read a magazine? No chance. Given billions of years, the chances would never increase. Great periods of time make the possible likely but never make the impossible possible. No matter how long it’s given, non-life will not become alive.

10. The scientific method can only test existing data—it cannot draw conclusions about origins.
Micro-evolution, changes within a species on a small scale, is observable. But evidence for macro-evolution, changes transcending species, is conspicuous by its absence. To prove the possibility of anything, science must be able to reproduce exact original conditions. Even when it proves something is possible, it doesn’t mean it therefore happened. Since no man was there to record or even witness the beginning, conclusions must be made only on the basis of interpreting presently available information. If I put on rose-colored glasses, I will always see red. I accept the Bible’s teaching on creation, and see the evidence as being consistently supportive of that belief. When dealing with origins, everyone who believes anything does so by faith, whether faith in God, the Bible, himself, modern science, or the dependability of his own subjective interpretations of existing data. I would rather put my faith in God’s revealed Word.