So, you created everything, blah blha u know the story

Please! Try the God simulator! It will really help with this game, because it will help you get the point.

And let's say its judgement day and you come down from Heaven and some murderer...named, uh, Sam comes and is trying to get into Heaven. Now, remember, Heaven is for the pure in heart. Is a muderer a good person? Um, no he's not. Is he gonna get inside Heaven? No, because Heaven is for the pure in heart.

You didn't try it, did you. Sigh. Fine,

Let's suppose you saw Sam preparing to murder somebody. You're God, right? You can do anything. So you turn his knife into swiss cheese just as he swings it and splat, his victim is cheesy but unharmed. Sam is still angry and pulls out his gun. But when he pulls the trigger, out pops a flag that says "Bang!" a la Bill and Ted. Not to be denied, Sam takes a step towards his victim but suddenly, miraculously, there is a banana peel in front of him and he slips majestically, landing on his ass. In the meantime, there is a heavenly voice going "Ho, ho, ho...." For good meaasure, Sam gets a cream pie in the face and feels his anger disappear to be replaced by laughter. He and his victim, now his friend, run to get more guns and knives so that they can have more fun trying to hurt one another when it is literally impossible, against natural law, in this fine Universe you made. The worst thing that ever happens to you is that you get pied if you are being a butt-head to your neighbors.

And look. Why is Sam angry in the first place? Could it be that he wants something more than what he has? He is bored, he is greedy, he is deprived. So put him in Heaven -- make everyplace heaven, cream-pie heaven. Then Sam gets whatever he desires (or something -- heaven is pretty difficult to specify because getting everything you desire would actually suck, very fast). Not only can't he hurt anyone or anything, he has no reason to hurt anything as whatever he really wants, he gets. He can even have a turn at being God, just by wishing for it. Infinity is big enough that you can be given your own copy to play with as God and still not use up a measurable fraction of it. You too can invent your own strange creatures and torment them.

Or, let's really think about Sam's murder. Sam may not be a "good person", but is this Sam's fault? You have God-vision, remember, not your own flawed vision. You were there, watching, when Sam was conceived. One of Sam's chromosomes was very slightly flawed and is programmed to make a brain with incorrect levels of serotonin. You knew that this would mean trouble, but even though fixing this would have been an invisible act, a miracle that would have prevented Sam's eventual damnation and showered blessings on his life, you didn't do it.

Sam is born, but his father (for similar reasons, recursive to the beginning of time) is an alcoholic and drug user. He comes home drunk and beats Sam's mother in front of him, terrifying him with her screams. Sometimes Sam gets beaten too. One dark knight his father stumbles into bed with him, reeking of gin, and does things that makes Sam feel nasty and ashamed.

You were there, watching all of this. You could have done something by simply wanting to -- you are all powerful. Your slightest whim is instantly made real. Obviously, you didn't have any whimsical desire to, say, cause Sam's Dad to have a heart attack before he raped his own son or beat his mother to the point where she is now slightly brain damaged.

Flash forward. Sam is now a bit brain damaged himself. He drinks and smokes weed, and drops X whenever he can get it because it makes him feel good and he cannot remember the last time a good thing happened to him. He's in a gang, and has been roughed up by the other gang members, who have made it clear that if he doesn't earn his bones by stomping some hobo to death, they'll stomp him to death. Or maybe just use him like the girls they rape whenever they can catch them. You were there, watching, as his young brain was being bruised and parts of it went dark forever. You feel his pain, his shame, his sadness, his fear, his anger as he watches the ones you have permitted to be lucky lead happy lives in contrast to his misery. It would take only the tiniest exercise of your will to give Sam a break, to heal a bit of the damage done by a horrible life that you have allowed to be inflicted upon him since before he was born. A single moment of compassion is all it takes to heal Sam and prevent his crime. But you are merciless. Sam stomps the hobo to death, as you predestined from before the Universe began, the better to glorify You as you send him to hell. You righteously cast him out into the fire for being flawed -- as you made him.

Or, perhaps, you leave Sam to work out his destiny, but do so in perfect compassion, holding him responsible, truly, for nothing. After all, whose fault is it, really?

That's right. Yours.

rgb

And let's say its judgement day and you come down from Heaven and some murderer...named, uh, Sam comes and is trying to get into Heaven. Now, remember, Heaven is for the pure in heart. Is a muderer a good person? Um, no he's not. Is he gonna get inside Heaven? No, because Heaven is for the pure in heart.

Here's the problem. It isn't just murderers who don't get into Heaven according to Christianity. It's members of any other religion and members of no religion at all. I'm not a bad person. Yet I will burn in Hell for eternity because I am an atheist.

Nathan wrote: "He wants to erase us of our sins so we can live with Him in Heaven. It's really that simple.

No, it is exactly what rgb said. God made up all the rules. If he really wanted us to live in Heaven ..."

Hold up.

Let's use our imaginations 4 a second and let's say u were God.

So, you created everything, blah blha u know the story

And let's say its judgement day and you come down from Heaven and some murderer...named, uh, Sam comes and is trying to get into Heaven. Now, remember, Heaven is for the pure in heart. Is a muderer a good person? Um, no he's not. Is he gonna get inside Heaven? No, because Heaven is for the pure in heart.

It's also a great time to repost the ever popular Christian God Simulator!

http://www.jraxis.com/atheism/simulator/

You too can pretend to be God, and see if -- using your best effort at moral sense now, no cheating -- there is any way in hell you could end up with our Universe making rational moral decisions along the way...

rgb

He wants to erase us of our sins so we can live with Him in Heaven. It's really that simple.

No, it is exactly what rgb said. God made up all the rules. If he really wanted us to live in Heaven with him, he could just let us live in heaven.

It would be like me making up a game on the playground where the rules are:

1 - You must always listen to what I say.

2 - Whether you want to play or not is irrelevant, you are playing.

3 - If you don't listen to what I say, I will punch you in the face repeatedly.

4 - Most importantly, stay off of the monkey bars.

Then I start the game, tell everyone the rules and begin punching people in the face who don't listen to what I say. When my teacher asks me why I was punching people in the face and that it wasn't a nice thing to do, I say, "Well, they knew the rules. I told them to stay off the monkey bars and they didn't listen. How is it my fault that they got punched in the face? It was their choice to go on the monkey bars."

It isn't their fault. I made up the rules. It is my fault.

That's not what it's like at all. That's more the opposite.

He wants to erase us of our sins so we can live with Him in Heaven. It's really that simple.

ummm....

...no.

God does the same for us. He holds us over the fountain "Spit out the dirt, honey." our Father urges. "I've got somethign better for you." And so, he cleanses our flith: immorality, dishonesty, prejudice, bitterness, greed. We don't enjoy the cleansing; sometimes we even opt for dirt over the ice cream. "I can eat dirt if I want to!" we pout and proclaim. Which is true-we can. But if we do, the loss is ours. God has a better offer."

Is this make up your own religion and name it Christianity day?

I think a better metaphor for the Bible is that it portrays God saying "Don't you eat any ice cream, you'll get fat. No, I really mean it. NO ICE CREAM! Not even a lick. I don't care if you're hungry." (The little girl licks anyway.) "OK, now you've done it. To HELL with you!"

Whereupon God throws the little girl, ice cream and all, into a flaming pit of eternal fire where all of the fat in her body renders out to feed the flames, and then he recreates her just to enjoy watching the skin crisp off her over, and over, and over, and over, and over again (for eternity, remember) ensuring that she is conscious and awake and fully experiencing her pain the entire infinite time.

Bet she'll never eat ice cream again!

rgb

but they all have important morals that are helpful.

I disagree. Some stories have good morals in the Bible, but some stories have horrific morals.

I am completey confused by your post, Max...even though you were talking to Nathan

Nathan wrote: "Would it have been better for God to have appeared in a vision to tell a prophet, that the earth actually goes around the sun, or to try and explain what radioactive decay is?

Yes.

Would ancient ..."

i usually agree with you but the bible wasnt used for controlling people, it is a giant metaphor, most storys are untrue in th bible but they all have important morals that are helpful. (but these storys were writen by people hiding in caves, they could have gotten bored and added things, i dont know) it wasnt until the Romans got hold of the bible did it become a manipulative tool. i think Jesus was a wise man, i just think he has ignorant friends.

Nicole wrote: "Rainrocks^o^(aka Breanna) wrote: "back to the actual discussion now. as a christian i know that if i do something wrong, i feel very guilty about it. so hence, i try not to do it in the first place..."

No, you don't need God to tell you what is wrong or right. That takes simply commen sense, which most people have. I would say all, but there are some weird people out there :)

Anyway, even though you don't need God to tell you what's right or wrong, you can say this: you aren't perfect. God simply wnats people to be as good as they can get. Like the author Max Lucado said when his little daughter ate dirt one day "Did I love her with dirt in her mouth? Absolutely....Was I going to allow her to keep the dirt in her mouth? No way. I carried her to the water fountain to wash her mouth. Why? Because I love her.

God does the same for us. He holds us over the fountain "Spit out the dirt, honey." our Father urges. "I've got somethign better for you." And so, he cleanses our flith: immorality, dishonesty, prejudice, bitterness, greed. We don't enjoy the cleansing; sometimes we even opt for dirt over the ice cream. "I can eat dirt if I want to!" we pout and proclaim. Which is true-we can. But if we do, the loss is ours. God has a better offer."

So you see, it's not like we don't know right from wrong, it's like we need direction. I think Max explains it pretty well.

haha

Nicole wrote: "What would the 12-step program look like for a murderer?

1) Admitting that I can have control over my blood lust, if I so choose."

It wouldn't make much sense unless you were a habitual murderer, a serial killer. In which case the best possible twelve step program is probably the twelve steps from the door to the lethal IV table in the prison.

rgb

Ya im underage. i do agree though, kids, tweens and teens learn from their parents, bad or good habits

So I'm right, you are underage.

I bet the kids lie because their parents do. Children, especially tweens and teens, learned everything they know from the people who raised them.

i know that. i accept peoples decisions, because it is their choice. but mainly what im talking about is cheating and lying to adults. everything is else is fine! i make my mistakes too..

Rainrocks^o^(aka Breanna)-
im not trying to put these people down, but i don't know how they can deal with all of the bad things they have done

All of the bad things they have done?! Who are you hanging out with? And how old are you?

Dollars to doughnuts you're under 20 years old and the "bad things" that other people are doing are actually completely natural, normal and reasonable to expect from children of that age.

Brennan...maybe they don't have guilt about the
"bad things" because they haven't been told they need to have guilt about those things. That's why I think the "bad things" are not ACTUALLY bad things but instead are just Christian dogma points like "Don't have sex before you are married."

Usually, humans feel guilt. When they don't then one of two things is happening: 1) They're sick in the head. 2) The person judging them (that would be you) has shame attached to something that the other person doesn't.

Unless your friends are all sick, twisted sociopaths who are not capable of empathy, then they're probably just not Christians. And it's ok to not be a Christian.

It's also ok to have sex before you are married.

What would the 12-step program look like for a murderer?

1) Admitting that I can have control over my blood lust, if I so choose.

They are connected. It's when they get disconnected that things go bad.

I do mean things, I feel bad.

I haven't done anything mean, but still feel shame. This is unhealthy from a psychological perspective. I need to let go of the "all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of god" meme so that I can be healthy. For me, believing in a sinful flesh is not a healthy thought for me, so I discard it.

Not everyone feels guilt. Have you heard of sociopaths? Antisocial personality disorder? Psychopaths? An intro-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_...

oh and i do say that my sense of right and wrong does come first. all of the time. i was just saying that they are connected. but sorry about your landlord issue nicole:(

haha sorry thats not what i meant. i just meant that yes everyone feels guilt, but because im christian i just thought i would say what was on my mind.

Nathan wrote: "I do a pretty good job of not killing people

Only "pretty good"? Yikes. Ha, ha."

Yeah, for me it's been weeks now! But then, I'm in a twelve step program...

rgb

I do a pretty good job of not killing people

Only "pretty good"? Yikes. Ha, ha.

Rainrocks^o^(aka Breanna) wrote: "back to the actual discussion now. as a christian i know that if i do something wrong, i feel very guilty about it. so hence, i try not to do it in the first place. people i know call it "christian..."
I am not a christian, and I feel guilt all the time. Even when I haven't actually done anything, so it seams that god sends me lots of guilt/anxiety/fear to "make me a christian? Sounds like another version of believe or else hell" meme I hate so much. The problem is in you assumption that all people are sinful without god.

I do a pretty good job of not killing people, and in fact don't really have a reason to hurt anyone.

That's not exactly true. I am angry at one person, our ex-landlord from the house we rented. He has yet to return our 2k and we will now have to sue him in small claims because he wanted us to pay for landscaping his property among other unfairness.

It does make me mad, and while I fantasize about telling homeless people where the house is (it is uninhabited right now) so they can trash the place while squatting, that would be unethical.
I do not need god to tell me what is wrong or right.

Rainrocks^o^(aka Breanna) wrote: "back to the actual discussion now. as a christian i know that if i do something wrong, i feel very guilty about it. so hence, i try not to do it in the first place. people i know call it "christian..."

Perhaps many people who aren't Christian refrain from doing evil and thereby have little to feel guilty about. Perhaps many people who mark "Christian" on forms that ask about their religion and who go to church do evil and either feel guilty or don't feel guilty. Perhaps doing good things or bad things isn't about being Christian, maybe it is about being human, with humans of all religious and philosophical persuasions doing good things and doing bad things.

I have to ask you -- if you decided tomorrow that Jesus may or may not have existed, but that in any event he wasn't the son of god a perfect human -- would you suddenly run amok and start hurting people, or doing bad things without feeling guilty? Which one comes first -- your sense of right and wrong and tendency to feel bad about hurting others or being Christian? How can you even judge Christianity as a good or bad thing to believe without a prior moral sense?

Just curious. Try to bear in mind that there are good Buddhists out there, good atheists out there, good Muslims out there, good Jews out there and bad ones as well. To my own direct experience there is no particular evidence that Christians are, on average, any better than any other group. The US is overwhelmingly Christian, but that doesn't seem to affect its crime rate, in particular its murder rate. Some of the most horrendous crimes known to mankind were committed by Christians, or people who were raised Christian.

I don't mean to imply that Christians are automatically bad, either. Just that they are human, and that their morality does not seem to be dramatically improved by attending a weekly lecture on examples of morality drawn from the Bible, perhaps because the Bible's morality is so, well, immoral. Moses, for example, was very much not, not a good man. Nor was David. Isaiah (often touted for his prophecies of Jesus) was a lousy prophet -- his most famous prophecy (Isaiah 7) wasn't about Jesus at all -- it was a prophecy of a sign to a king concerning a war he was in at that time. Isaiah prophecied that he would win, and that the sign of his victory would be the birth of a child named emmanuel to a young woman (not a virgin, as that is a different word in ancient hebrew) in the tribe.

The king lost, as you can learn if you read Chronicles. Lost badly. His family and sons were killed. Isaiah was dead wrong. His prophecy failed, and the failed prophecy was taken out of context and mistranslated in order to become a "prophecy" of Jesus's birth to a virgin. And Jesus was not called emmanuel by anyone in the New Testament, certainly not by his mother or father.

If you are willing to wait hundreds of years and compare every line that was ever written that a supposed prophet said with current events, sooner or later they will correspond to "something" and a person desperate for something to believe will believe it. But if you read the rest of what they wrote, it is all mindless meandering, delusional, irrelevant to anything at all. It prophecies destruction here, earthquakes there -- when has that ever been a "prophecy" on this sorry planet?

I "prophecied" the fall of the Soviet Union and reunification of Germany some five or six years before it happened, and have witnesses who will attest to that. The prophecy, of course, was based on being in touch with world history and having a sense of its likely progress, not divine insight or magic. Still, it puts me one up on Isaiah, who couldn't even get the outcome of a war that was loosely underway when he made it correct.

rgb

back to the actual discussion now. as a christian i know that if i do something wrong, i feel very guilty about it. so hence, i try not to do it in the first place. people i know call it "christian guilt" :) but, im sure the christian mindset is very much like anyone else, except many that i know who aren't christian do not feel guilty. im not trying to put these people down, but i don't know how they can deal with all of the bad things they have done

Molly wrote: "This site is tripping. I thought it was a I love Jesus and not a let's prove Jesus! ):

Moderators, what is poppin?"

i know. i joined the group because i thought everyone on here loved Jesus...

Rob wrote: "no one alex...sometimes I just need a good rant to clear my head, that was one. Still, it had some useful nuggets in there if you want to read/comment."

Oops, sorry, I'm a Rob too and replied out of turn.

Things that cross the religion/reality line include:

Condom use.

Inequality in the Church (the disenfranchisement of slightly over 1/2 of the world's population, for example. and how many black popes have there been? Would that be zero?).

Prevalence of sexual predators among a "celibate" clergy, both historically and today.

The many, many places the church crosses the religion/politics barrier to push a social agenda that denies rights to homosexuals, pregnant women, the very sick or aged, or interferes with the relationship between a physician and their patients, parents and their children, husbands and wives. It's one thing to push their agenda in church -- that's fine as long as church membership and belief are freely elective. It's another to seek to implement them as law.

The ongoing conflict between all of the world's religions, both dialectic and material. As has been noted (I think by Nathan) several times in this discussion, it isn't possible to address "Christian belief" because there is no such thing. Christianity is fragmented into an enormous number of sects, named and unnamed. Jack Chick is at one extreme. Quakers at another. The Catholic Church is the Roman half of a schism that occurred 1000 years ago. The protestant sects are the result of a schism that occurred 600 years ago. The Mormons are the result of a MAJOR schism that occurred 200 years ago. The Jehovah's Witnesses are remnants of a schism that occurred 100 years ago. The list here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chr...

is a bit staggering. The differences between these sects are not small -- they have an evolutionary family tree (a superorganismal memetic evolutionary family tree, in fact), and the earlier the main split from the original trunk, the greater the divergence between the various branches and twigs and leaves. If one follows the tree back to its Abrahamic roots and tracks the split of Christians from the Jews, then the Muslims from the Christians and Jews, then the split of the Muslims into Sunni and Shia and Jews into the many Jewish sects, the differences are enormous and responsible for wars, famines, murders, crimes against humanity (torture and imprisonment and rape and genocide and slavery) over some three and a half thousand years.

And amazingly, to every one of these sects, they are the only true religion and all the other sects are heretics, blasphemers, pagans, heathens, apostates. To many of the Christian sects, members of competing sects are just as destined for hellfire and damnation as members of other competing religions altogether. Only a tiny handful of them -- notably the Quakers -- do not claim to be divinely inspired perfect truth, revealed by the Holy Ghost to the fathers or founders of that particular sect, and ignored by the unbeliever at risk of being tormented for eternity by a "loving" God for their mistake.

Religion is indeed about power, nothing more. The clearest evidence of it is that there is a nearly perfect correspondance between the proposed structure of the relationship between man and god and that of organized crime. They don't call the leader of the latter "the Godfather" for nothing.

When it comes right down to it, the arguments offered up for Christian faith are not "these are right actions independent of your beliefs", it is "you must have the correct beliefs or you will be tortured for eternity". Pure, unadulterated extortion. Believe in Jesus or God will Shoot This Dog (fans of National Lampoon, anyone?). Believe or else!

Let me repeat that. Turn off your rational mind. Forget the evidence or plausibility of the assertions made by any particular JCM sect out of the dazzling array of variant assertions that arise from the scion of an ancient Sumerian mythological tree that today lacks a single adherent. The fundamental argument, the sine qua non of Christianity and Islam in particular is this:

Believe, or else...

Catholicism preaches believe or else, because the New Testament contains numerous places where the divinely inspired apostles are reported as saying believe or else. The OT is full of examples of believe or else. Islam, God help it, has 500 or so independent verses that explicitly state believe or else mixed into only 100 or so Suras. It never says that living a good life is sufficient. It is always live a good life and believe in Allah or else.

Christianity is a religion built on the basis of fear. Judaism almost completely lacked a hellfire meme. Death was death, not an opportunity for eternal torture as part of some sort of horrendously disproportionate punishment for the sins committed by nonexistent progenitors. The word used for the state of being they posited as an afterlife was consistently mistranslated by authors of European-variant OTs. It is not certain where the meme came from in the NT -- possibly from pagan religions (just like Jesus's virgin birth and resurrection came from pagan religions) -- because we have almost no manuscript copies of any fragment of any book of the gospels from the first or early second centuries CE. But either way, after Constantine granted the church what amounted to a state-sanctioned monopoloy within the Roman empired in 325 CE, the hellfire meme became dominant and can be summed right up as:

Believe, or else...

How repugnant! How evil! How immoral! How unreasonable! How false! Not even all Christians (naturally) embrace this meme. A very few Christian websites reject the notion of hell and trace it as a probable insertion in the early manuscript copies of the Gospels that was tremendously amplified by the early Catholic church as a method of crowd control, to solidify its political hold on the people.

Believe, or else.

rgb

One fact that crosses the religion/reality barrier is condom use. The pope says that condoms are worse than hiv. Because it prevents more catholics from being born. Iguess the pope doesn't care about children being born with hiv. That's not bad, in his eyes, or at least it is not as bad as giving up control of people's sex lives.

Religion is about POWER. Nothing more.

no one alex...sometimes I just need a good rant to clear my head, that was one. Still, it had some useful nuggets in there if you want to read/comment.

Alex wrote: "Rob
Who are you talking to?

Me or somebody else.
"

You, specifically the Kreeft quote:

"Faith cannot contradict science. There are thousands of truths that make up the Catholic faith and billions of truths that the sciences have discovered, yet there is not a singal contradiction between any of them."

This is such patent nonsense that I'm surprised you'd offer it up even for propaganda, as I think I rather resoundingly proved with multiple examples. The history of the Catholic Church and Christianity in general has been little more than a series of discoveries by science that contradict tenets of faith. This is an objective fact. The process continues today. Deal with it, instead of quoting somebody who is obviously in deep denial about it.

rgb

Nathan wrote: ""Education has spoiled many a good plow hand." - Booker T. Washington"

I like that quote.

Rob
Who are you talking to?

Me or somebody else.

"Education has spoiled many a good plow hand." - Booker T. Washington

But isn't that what Adam and Eve's sin was? Partaking the fruit of knowledge.

If you want to control people, education is your enemy. This always has been true, and it always will be.

Every *!?&ing time I hear someone who is religious tell me about their "moral" world view I want to vomit. you don't mean ACTUAL morality, like fighting oppression or genocide. You don't mean morality as in fighting for a liveable wage, or equal rights for gay people. You mean maintaining a status quo of apparent righteousness in order to instill an American Taliban that keeps our people as sheep-like as possible.

Here's a tip about morality - it's immoral to intentionally keep yourself uneducated just so that you can be happy. I did't learn that lesson from a special book, either. All I had to do was live 30 years.

And, really, if you doubt evolution that is ALL you are doing; remaining uneducated so that you can remain happy. To me, there is no greater sin, or crime, one can committ against oneself or one's neighbor.

READ about evolution. If you are well-off enough to access the internet, there is no excuse for you to doubt this theory. It is literally this generation's round earth, thqt is why the religious are so hard agaist it - if god didn't even bother to make us then how are we special.

Here's another hint...we're not!

Nathan answered your specific points quite accurately. I should point out that in the Puranas of Hinduism, they get the general idea of the Big Bang correct in a metaphorical way, and manage to convey a lifetime of the Universe that is actually accurate to within an order of magnitude (or maybe two). That is, they manage to express a billion just fine by using multiplication and actually defining the duration of a cycle of the Universe as four ages (Yugas), each Yuga as being so many "years of Brahma", where each such year is so and so many days of Brahma, where a day of Brahma is so and so many years of humans. Not terribly accurate, and not to be taken seriously as "proof" that Hinduism is correct even though it makes far better sense than Christianity otherwise as well and even though Hindus, at least, recognize their myths as being myths, there to inspire humans to meditate upon God and nothing more. So it is certainly possible to get the facts correct.

I cannot resist pointing out God's instruction of Lilith in my book, The Book of Lilith:

This Earth
took 13,132,737,159 years to ripen
although to me it was but
a few days on vacation
twiddling my cosmic thumbs
a blink of the cosmic eye.

...

This was quite overwhelming. However, I could not help but ask. "God, from what was I made?"

"Stardust, daughter, you are made of stardust. From stardust you are born, and to stardust you will return. In between, though, you will grant to the dust the light of vision, the light of knowledge. You are henceforth self-aware stardust."

See? If you're having a conversation with God for real, instead of for imaginary, it is pretty easy for God to give you real facts instead of lies or metaphors. Remember, understanding the science -- stuff like the earth going around the sun instead of the other way around -- is the easy part, the part that can serve as a signpost in a world filled with false doctrines that this particular doctrine is actually divinely inspired and contains correct knowledge that was impossible for the author to have known any way besides communication with a vastly more knowledgeable power.

The Abrahamic JCM-BOM-JW religions are staggeringly lacking any such corroboration. If anything, they always get it wrong in places where they can actually be checked. The world is flat. Pi is three. The Earth is fixed. The Sun goes around the Earth. The moon glows with its own light. The sky is a firmament through which God pours rain, hung with little lamps that can get shaken down by Earthquakes. The world was created in six days in an absurd order that included a single pair of humans made out of clay (one of whom was supposedly Lilith, who I set up as being created first in my fictional novel;-) followed a short time later by a third made out of the rib of the second or some such. That second pair of humans were tempted by God, failed the test, and were cursed with pain and death and cast out of paradise by a God who was justified. Not one word of which makes the slightest bit of sense in light of the actual facts.

Where, exactly, are the signposts? Why is it reasonable to believe its moral and spiritual teachings when it gets all the actual facts wrong wherever we can check? Why (as Nathan also points out) is it reasonable to believe those teachings when the "morality" that is promoted is slavery, the subjugation of women, the disproportionate response of violent tribal execution for the "crime" of thinking for oneself instead of complying with the silly commandments of the tribe, genocidal infanticidal racism, and pointless mysticism and ritual that has tribe members randomly killed because they are burning the wrong incense?

Why is it reasonable to believe Jesus when he contradicts himself, when he openly states that he preaches in a way that is designed to deceive many who hear "lest they be saved", when he calls non-Jews dogs, when he openly and directly endorses the Old Testament Law (except where he wants to break it, which is often), where he is portrayed as somebody who hangs out getting drunk with his home-boy Apostles and their female hangers-on every evening, where he refers to Noah as a real person and the Flood as a real event, where he endorses Moses by appearing with him at the ascension where Moses would be tried and executed as a war-criminal by the standards of modern secular human morality for crimes that precisely mirror those of Hitler, only just a bit worse?

There are places where one can find a better morality, with better examples, more clearly expressed, missing all of the myth and mysticism, with arguably better empirical support for the one or two mythical assertions that underlie the theory. If it were sensible to judge a book not by its cover, not on the basis of how many threats of hellfire it makes as it attempts to extort belief (where The Skeptics Annotated Quran would then win hands down, with some 500 promises that unbelievers will burn in hell distributed over only 100 or so Suras) but on the clarity of its exposition, its appeal only to reason and to the compassionate sense within us that does not arise out of fear of God but as a common but possibly not universal aspect of the human mind, then the "book" we would all choose would be Buddha's, not Christ's. Of course it is not reasonable to do this.

What is reasonable is for us to use our heads and our collective hearts and assemble a rational, compassionate ethic for our modern society. The standard for such an ethic is amazingly simple -- what rules do we want to live by? It's our choice, but we will reap what we sow -- if we seek tyrannical control over others by majority rule, we will risk the tyrannical control by a majority of others over ourselves. If we promote a religious oligarchy, we have no one but ourselves to blame if they interpret the moral teachings literally and start stoning adulterers and homosexuals and "witches" and breakers of the Sabbath and kids who sass their parents once again, or (should the religion in question be Islam) find that our daughters are the seventeenth slave girl sex toy of a "righteous" Muslim man, permitted quite explicitly in the Quran, and find ourselves dead or enslaved as well. What seems to me to be pretty reasonable is to utterly reject all such myth-based theistic scriptures as the basis for either behavior or government, trusting that the same reason that helps you cherry-pick "good" stuff in any religious text to hold up and say "But look, Jesus said love thy neighbor, that's good isn't it?" helps us to recognize that this principle is in pretty much every religious text and several non-religious ones and that we're free to include it or other "moral truths" not because Jesus said them (because often, as in the case of "slavery is bad", he didn't), but because it makes sense and we understand its implications and wish for them to apply to us and not just others.

You are on a quest not for moral truth or knowledge of the world, Alex, but for spiritual certainty. You want some basis for believing that "you" will survive death, that there is cosmic justice that transcends death, that there is "purpose" in existence, its all part of a benevolent master plan where you are a starring character. As self-aware stardust with the light of vision, you are the center of the Universe of your perceptions, prey to the terrible longing that this state of affairs never cease. Open your eyes, my friend, and look around you.

Of course it does.

rgb

Would it have been better for God to have appeared in a vision to tell a prophet, that the earth actually goes around the sun, or to try and explain what radioactive decay is?

Yes.

Would ancient man have even understood the number 4.54 billion?

God could have made them understand it.

The intention of the Bible has always been to reveal the nature of God to mankind.

There has never been only one intention of the Bible. The intention of the Bible has been to tell stories and to control humans. To pretend it tells you anything about God is ridiculous. It tells you what ancient, ignorant people thought about the universe. Big deal.

It is a moral and spiritual text not a scientific thesis.

Where is the morality in promoting slavery and the subjugation of women?

\it always turns out to be no contradiction at all. One or both have been misunderstood. \

Didnt you read the above quote.

Ultraliteral interpretations of the Bible are unnecessary.

The Bible was written during a time that people did not have our modern understanding of the universe. Would it have been better for God to have appeared in a vision to tell a prophet, that the earth actually goes around the sun, or to try and explain what radioactive decay is? Would ancient man have even understood the number 4.54 billion?

The intention of the Bible has always been to reveal the nature of God to mankind. It is a moral and spiritual text not a scientific thesis.

Oh, and if we need more evidence, don't forget:

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/index...

The "Index of Prohibited Books". The work of Copernicus has some extremely distinguished company. Or perhaps we should review some of the tenets advanced in Vatican Council 1:

"9. Hence all faithful Christians are forbidden to defend as the legitimate conclusions of science those opinions which are known to be contrary to the doctrine of faith, particularly if they have been condemned by the Church; and furthermore they are absolutely bound to hold them to be errors which wear the deceptive appearance of truth."

"10. Not only can faith and reason never be at odds with one another but they mutually support each other, for on the one hand right reason established the foundations of the faith and, illuminated by its light, develops the science of divine things; on the other hand, faith delivers reason from errors and protects it and furnishes it with knowledge of many kinds."

The doublespeak of 1984 could have said it no more self-contradictorily. You see, faith is absolutely independent of reason. It is what one has in the absence of reason. It is anti-reason. And unfortunately, reason cannot develop a "science of divine things", as David Hume clearly and resoundingly proved.

Oh, wait -- Hume, Hume -- wasn't he on the prohibited list? Why, I believe he was. "All works" by Hume were banned, because Kreeft's apologia is a pitiful lie -- the Church wasn't then and isn't now interested in "truth" of any sort. It is interested -- very interested indeed -- in not being proven wrong, in not losing its political and economic power in the world. Without them, it is just a bunch of old cranky men who wear funny costumes to chant mystical nonsense, sort of like the BPOE or the masons.

And of course provision number 9 was for a century used to threaten any Catholic who dared to publicly endorse Darwin's theory of evolution (or anything else that contradicted scripture) with "anathema" -- excommunication -- since by the mid-1800's they were no longer permitted to hang, burn, torture, or imprison them, at least in the more civilized parts of Europe or the US.

Oh, one can go on and on. As of 1950, Pius XII published Humani Generis: In it he concludes that all men have descended from an individual, Adam, who has transmitted original sin to all mankind. Catholics may not, therefore, believe in "polygenism," the scientific hypothesis that mankind descended from a group of original humans (that there were many Adams and Eves).

Catholics "may not believe", but that doesn't prevent the truth from being that mankind descended from many individuals, that there was no single progenitor pair, that we evolved and were not created, and that there is no such thing as "original sin".

Let's face the truth, shall we? The Catholic Church has sought to control human thought from its inception, bidding and forbidding it in its entirety. To assert that it has ever, ever, sought "truth" is sheer insanity. It has sought its own superorganismal continuation, and has defended its dogmatic body with deadly force repeatedly over its lifetime. It has repressed the unbiased search for truth -- the only kind that has a prayer of actually finding it -- with a wholehearted devotion that continues to this very day.

The Catholic Church has had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, in order to accept every single major revolution in science that challenged and ultimately refuted its prior conceptions. Those prior conceptions were without exception drawn, quite reasonably, from the Bible. It has been forced, very much against the will of its top leadership even today, to accept the fact that that leadership is fallible, that the Bible is not a divinely inspired work of perfect truth, that there was no actual original sin. They're still coping with that one, which will probably lead to the ultimate collapse of Christianity since without the original sin, whence the need for salvation?

The Catholic Church has been firm in its attempt to argue that Luke and Matthew do not present accounts of the Nativity that are impossible to reconcile, separated historically by at least ten years and referring to two completely different Herods, all of which is perfectly obvious from simply looking at the contemporary histories of the region. Matthew is Herod the Great, uniquely and directly so identified by Matthew. Luke is Herod Antipas, Herod the Great's son, uniquely identified by the Roman census and Quirinius. Unfortunately, that census occurred in 6 CE, and Herod the Great died in 4 BCE. They have had to give up Genesis, Psalms, and lots of other old testament stuff, but they are still defending factual errancy in the NT tooth and nail, because they don't care what the real truth is; what they care about is that the gospels not be disproven -- again. Especially about the Nativity, since everybody likes Christmas, and a falsehood here throws the whole virgin birth thing into disrepute, and Catholicism would not survive it, since it has long since deified Mary.

This is not all intended to pick on Catholicism. As versions of Christianity go, it is no longer the worst, not by a long shot. It is often quite liberal and progressive, and of course individual Catholics just believe what they like about science and deal with the contradictions as best they can independent of the Pope or church hierarchy. They've even kind-of-apologized about the Galileo thing and produced some tolerably good scientists over the centuries.

A search for truth, however, cannot begin with the kind of bias they must operate with. One cannot be afraid of the answer in a search for truth, and one cannot state a priori that some answer or another is forbidden, unthinkable, evil. The answers found in nature are what they are. Deal with them.

rgb

False a third time:

"Whereas you, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzio Galilei, of Florence, aged seventy years, were denounced in 1615, to this Holy Office, for holding as true a false doctrine taught by many, namely, that the sun is immovable in the center of the world, and that the earth moves, and also with a diurnal motion; also, for having pupils whom you instructed in the same opinions; also, for maintaining a correspondence on the same with some German mathematicians; also for publishing certain letters on the sun-spots, in which you developed the same doctrine as true; also, for answering the objections which were continually produced from the Holy Scriptures, by glozing the said Scriptures according to your own meaning; and whereas thereupon was produced the copy of a writing, in form of a letter professedly written by you to a person formerly your pupil, in which, following the hypothesis of Copernicus, you include several propositions contrary to the true sense and authority of the Holy Scriptures; therefore (this Holy Tribunal being desirous of providing against the disorder and mischief which were thence proceeding and increasing to the detriment of the Holy Faith) by the desire of his Holiness and the Most Emminent Lords, Cardinals of this supreme and universal Inquisition, the two propositions of the stability of the sun, and the motion of the earth, were qualified by the Theological Qualifiers as follows:

1. The proposition that the sun is in the center of the world and immovable from its place is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical; because it is expressly contrary to Holy Scriptures.
2. The proposition that the earth is not the center of the world, nor immovable, but that it moves, and also with a diurnal action, is also absurd, philosophically false, and, theologically considered, at least erroneous in faith.

Therefore . . . , invoking the most holy name of our Lord Jesus Christ and of His Most Glorious Mother Mary, We pronounce this Our final sentence: We pronounce, judge, and declare, that you, the said Galileo . . . have rendered yourself vehemently suspected by this Holy Office of heresy, that is, of having believed and held the doctrine (which is false and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures) that the sun is the center of the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move, and is not the center of the world; also, that an opinion can be held and supported as probable, after it has been declared and finally decreed contrary to the Holy Scripture, and, consequently, that you have incurred all the censures and penalties enjoined and promulgated in the sacred canons and other general and particular constituents against delinquents of this description. From which it is Our pleasure that you be absolved, provided that with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, in Our presence, you abjure, curse, and detest, the said error and heresies, and every other error and heresy contrary to the Catholic and Apostolic Church of Rome

(1633 CE)

Galileo's Tribunal. Oh, so very, very false:

"It being the case that thou, Galileo, son of the late Vincenzio Galilei, a Florentine, now aged 70, wast denounced in this Holy Office in 1615:

"That thou heldest as true the false doctrine taught by many, that the Sun was the centre of the universe and immoveable, and that the Earth moved, and had also a diurnal motion: That on this same matter thou didst hold a correspondence with certain German mathematicians....

"That the Sun is the centre of the universe and doth not move from his place is a proposition absurd and false in philosophy, and formerly heretical; being expressly contrary to Holy Writ: That the Earth is not the centre of the universe nor immoveable, but that it moves, even with a diurnal motion, is likewise a proposition absurd and false in philosophy, and considered in theology ad minus erroneous in faith.....

"Invoking then the Most Holy Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and of His most glorious Mother Mary, ever Virgin, for this Our definite sentence, the which sitting pro tribunali, by the counsel and opinion of the Reverent Masters of theology and doctors of both laws, Our Counsellors, we present in these writings, in the cause and causes currently before Us, between the magnificent Carlo Sinceri, doctor of both laws, procurator fiscal of this Holy Office on the one part, and thou Galileo Galilei, guilty, here present, confessed and judged, on the other part:

"We say, pronounce, sentence, and declare, that thou, the said Galileo, by the things deduced during this trial, and by thee confessed as above, hast rendered thyself vehemently suspected of heresy by this Holy Office, that is, of having believed and held a doctrine which is false, and contrary to the Holy Scriptures, to wit: that the Sun is the centre of the universe, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the Earth moves and is not the centre of the universe: and that an opinion may be held and defended as probable after having been declared and defined as contrary to Holy Scripture; and in consequence thou hast incurred all the censures and penalties of the Sacred Canons, and other Decrees both general and particular, against such offenders imposed and promulgated. From the which We are content that thou shouldst be absolved, if, first of all, with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, thou dost before Us abjure, curse, and detest the above-mentioned errors and heresies and any other error and heresy contrary to the Catholic and Apostolic Roman Church, after the manner that We shall require of thee.

"And to the end that this thy grave error and transgression remain not entirely unpunished, and that thou mayst be more cautious in the future, and an example to others to abstain from and avoid similar offences,

"We order that by a public edict the book of DIALOGUES OF GALILEO GALILEI be prohibited, and We condemn thee to the prison of this Holy Office during Our will and pleasure; and as a salutary penance We enjoin on thee that for the space of three years thou shalt recite once a week the Seven Penitential Psalms, reserving to Ourselves the faculty of moderating, changing, or taking from, all other or part of the above-mentioned pains and penalties.

"And thus We say, pronounce, declare, order, condemn, and reserve in this and in any other better way and form which by right We can and ought.

Ita pronunciamus nos Cardinalis infrascripti.

F. Cardinalis de Asculo.
G. Cardinalis Bentivolius
D. Cardinalis de Cremona.
A. Cardinalis S. Honuphri.
B. Cardinalis Gypsius.
F. Cardinalis Verospius.
M. Cardinalis Ginettus.

I will spare you the pitiful image of the 70 year old Galileo, down on his knees before this court, forswearing his discoveries to avoid being tortured and killed, agreeing to spend the rest of his life reciting magical spells with no meaning whatsoever in "penance", to die in captivity -- all to preserve a lie.

Case closed. Now can we stop quoting the lies of modern Catholic apologists? By your own argument, the only way there could be no contradiction between the world and the Bible is if they were both written by the same hand. There is a clear and absolute contradiction between them, as Bellarmine noted, a council of cardinals voted, and the pope affirmed.

Which one do you think God really wrote? The world, or the Bible. You cannot choose both, unless God is a liar in the Bible.

rgb

Alex wrote: "Faith cannot contradict science. There are thousands of truths that make up the Catholic faith and billions of truths that the sciences have discovered, yet there is not a singal contradiction between any of them."

False:

"I have gladly read the letter in Italian and the treatise which Your Reverence sent me, and I thank you for both. And I confess that both are filled with ingenuity and learning, and since you ask for my opinion, I will give it to you very briefly, as you have little time for reading and I for writing:

"First. I say that it seems to me that Your Reverence and Galileo did prudently to content yourself with speaking hypothetically, and not absolutely, as I have always believed that Copernicus spoke. For to say that, assuming the earth moves and the sun stands still, all the appearances are saved better than with eccentrics and epicycles, is to speak well; there is no danger in this, and it is sufficient for mathematicians. But to want to affirm that the sun really is fixed in the center of the heavens and only revolves around itself (i. e., turns upon its axis ) without traveling from east to west, and that the earth is situated in the third sphere and revolves with great speed around the sun, is a very dangerous thing, not only by irritating all the philosophers and scholastic theologians, but also by injuring our holy faith and rendering the Holy Scriptures false. For Your Reverence has demonstrated many ways of explaining Holy Scripture, but you have not applied them in particular, and without a doubt you would have found it most difficult if you had attempted to explain all the passages which you yourself have cited.

"Second. I say that, as you know, the Council [of Trent:] prohibits expounding the Scriptures contrary to the common agreement of the holy Fathers. And if Your Reverence would read not only the Fathers but also the commentaries of modern writers on Genesis, Psalms, Ecclesiastes and Josue, you would find that all agree in explaining literally (ad litteram) that the sun is in the heavens and moves swiftly around the earth, and that the earth is far from the heavens and stands immobile in the center of the universe. Now consider whether in all prudence the Church could encourage giving to Scripture a sense contrary to the holy Fathers and all the Latin and Greek commentators. Nor may it be answered that this is not a matter of faith, for if it is not a matter of faith from the point of view of the subject matter, it is on the part of the ones who have spoken. It would be just as heretical to deny that Abraham had two sons and Jacob twelve, as it would be to deny the virgin birth of Christ, for both are declared by the Holy Ghost through the mouths of the prophets and apostles.

"Third. I say that if there were a true demonstration that the sun was in the center of the universe and the earth in the third sphere, and that the sun did not travel around the earth but the earth circled the sun, then it would be necessary to proceed with great caution in explaining the passages of Scripture which seemed contrary, and we would rather have to say that we did not understand them than to say that something was false which has been demonstrated.But I do not believe that there is any such demonstration; none has been shown to me. It is not the same thing to show that the appearances are saved by assuming that the sun really is in the center and the earth in the heavens. I believe that the first demonstration might exist, but I have grave doubts about the second, and in a case of doubt, one may not depart from the Scriptures as explained by the holy Fathers. I add that the words ' the sun also riseth and the sun goeth down, and hasteneth to the place where he ariseth, etc.' were those of Solomon, who not only spoke by divine inspiration but was a man wise above all others and most learned in human sciences and in the knowledge of all created things, and his wisdom was from God. Thus it is not too likely that he would affirm something which was contrary to a truth either already demonstrated, or likely to be demonstrated. And if you tell me that Solomon spoke only according to the appearances, and that it seems to us that the sun goes around when actually it is the earth which moves, as it seems to one on a ship that the beach moves away from the ship, I shall answer that one who departs from the beach, though it looks to him as though the beach moves away, he knows that he is in error and corrects it, seeing clearly that the ship moves and not the beach. But with regard to the sun and the earth, no wise man is needed to correct the error, since he clearly experiences that the earth stands still and that his eye is not deceived when it judges that the moon and stars move. And that is enough for the present. I salute Your Reverence and ask God to grant you every happiness."

Saint Bellarmine to Galileo, April 12, 1615

False again:

In 1616 the Congregation of the Index -- founded by St. Pius V in 1571 and now headed by Cardinal Bellarmine acting in the name of Paul V -- was forced to take action, based on the findings of consultors to the Holy Office. Without naming Galileo, it banned all writings which treated of Copernicanism as anything but an unproven hypothesis:

"Because it has come to the attention of this Congregation that the Pythagorean doctrine which is false and contrary to Holy Scripture, which teaches the motion of the earth and the immobility of the sun, and which is taught by Nicholas Copernicus in De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium and by Diego de Zuniga's On Job, is now being spread and accepted by many - as may be seen from a letter of a Carmelite Father entitled 'Letter of the Rev. Father Paolo Antonio Foscarini, Carmelite, on the Opinion of the Pythagoreans and of Copernicus concerning the Motion of the Earth and the Stability of the Sun, and the New Pythagorean System of the World,' printed in Naples by Lazzaro Scoriggio in 1615: in which the said Father tries to show that the doctrine of the immobility of the sun in the center of the world, and that of the earth's motion, is consonant with truth and is not opposed to Holy Scripture."

"Therefore, so that this opinion may not spread any further to the prejudice of Catholic truth, it ( the Sacred Congregation ) decrees that the said Nicholas Copernicus' De Revolutionibus Orbium, and Diego de Zuniga's On Job, be suspended until corrected; but that the book of the Carmelite Father, Paolo Foscarini, be prohibited and condemned, and that all other books likewise, in which the same is taught, be prohibited."

(cont)

Hi DG
I will try and explain why I have Faith. Faith and belief are two different things. In doing so I hope to give you an insight into my minds processes and those who have influenced my own path to Faith.

I was brought up a Catholic in Australia. You may like to say that I have be brainwashed in my youth, but as I see it, I had the opportunity to look at the world from a spiritually and moral point of view. I consider myself very fortunate to have had this chance. I think I should make it very clear that Catholics in Australia are very open minded and generally rational thinking not like some christians who refuse to trust God enough to understand this scientific world. In addition I have a natural urge to pursue a more spiritual life.
I grew up in Australia a very hedonistic and secular country and did not pay much attention to religion or God for most of my youth and university years. I acted as most young Aussies do in pursuing the good times, live life to the fullest and so on. I had very loose belief in Christianity and thought that if there was a God then he wouldnt be like the old testament God and that Jesus was probably just a very wise teacher, and that God just wants us to be happy... In fact these beliefs are not Christian at all, there were just a combination influence (brainwashing) from modern society, peer pressure and my own hard hearted ness contributing to my idea of what a modern Christian is.

Since coming to China I have gradually felt the urge to try and find out what it actually means to be a Christian. Fortunately I also met the right people and circumstances to allow me to try and understand what it means to be a christian with my whole heart. Here in lies a very specific barrier for you to understand how the Christian mind works. You have been turned off Christianity as I see it through your own narrow interpretation of what a Christian is, plus the negative influence of some Christians who are ignorant of Gods gift of natural reason. I dont know what caused you to choose not to have faith, but I would hope if you truly are a person willing to look for the truth in life than you would not let false reasoning contribute to your decision. You should understand that if you really want to know you have to open your heart and look for the reasons for. Not just against.

'Faith can never contradict reason, when reason is properly used, though faith goes beyond reason. As a result of divine revelation, the Catholic faith tells us many things human reason could never have discovered by itself. But faith and reason are both roads to truth, and truth never contradicts truth.

There is one God who is the source of all truth, whether that truth is know by faith or reason, and God never contradicts himself. God is like a teacher who wrote two books and teaches from them: natural reason and supernatural reason. There are no contradiction between the two books because they both come from the same author.
It follows that every argument against the true faith, every objection to the faith, makes some mistake of reason. It either misunderstands the meaning of some terms or assumes some false premise or makes some mistake in reasoning, some logical error.
Faith cannot contradict science. There are thousands of truths that make up the Catholic faith and billions of truths that the sciences have discovered, yet there is not a singal contradiction between any of them.
When there seems to be a contradiction- for instance between creation and evolution- it always turns out to be no contradiction at all. One or both have been misunderstood. For instance the doctrine of creation does not say how or when God made mans body "of the dust from the ground." and the theory of evolution does not say how souls were made, only bodies.'(Catholic Christianity, by Peter J Kreeft.)

Indeed reason leads to faith, discovers clues to faith, good reasons to faith.

I will talk about them later, gotta go.

Coyle wrote: "Given that Jesus has taken the punishment that we deserved -despite the fact that we were completely guilty and engaged in open warfare with him- we ought to be happy to tell others about him in a way that geniunely listens to what they have to say and treats them with kindness and consideration."

We deserved? Were you alive back then? We were completely guilty? Coyle, just what were you up to back when Adam and Eve were supposedly alive? Is there something you're not telling me?

And quite seriously, I've never declared war on God. In fact, I openly invite God -- in particular Jesus -- to show up and have a chat with me, like friends often do!

Whoops. Once again, Jesus didn't take me up on it, any more than he returned in the lifetime of his own disciples the way that he promised that he would.

Again, it isn't plausible that the world is a video game or a cosmic version of "Find Waldo".

Just curious. Newton's laws, however imperfect, are a rather accurate description of the way quotidian events are causally linked. It was completely apparent in every single action that humans took from whatever beginning you imagine for them; one just had to look.

Would it be reasonable to condemn anyone who failed to realize the truth of Newton's Law to hell? Would it be reasonable to condemn NSA to hell now, because of his rejection of God's word as written in the very stones of the world, the very genes of his body, in God's own hand (as opposed to the lies of men as written in the Bible)?

I would argue otherwise. I would argue that this is rather silly. And yet you argue that we are supposed to believe in not just God, but a particular mythological view of God, one promoted by a document that is obviously pure fantasy from beginning to end, one that requires that you believe that Newton's laws are violated at will in this Universe -- without anything like quotidian evidence. Without any evidence at all, really.

WHy?

rgb

Jennifer wrote: " "Sorry for approaching an rgb-length post (whatever happened to that guy, anyway? I totally miss his input!)!"

To answer your question Coyle...I think he got kicked out by the moderator over a ..."

Aw, now you're REALLY making me blush. I'll read through to the end and see if I can't contribute a little mite somewhere. But at the time you wrote this I was getting ready to go to the beach to teach...;-)

rgb

N.S.A wrote

"....I am just happy that I am not the only one trying to tell these guys that what they believe is the wrong thing"

You sound 100% sure of yourself. You have made many assertions, but have only backed it up with dogma. Here is an example.

"and Evaluation (sic) is not proved. No one ever saw it take place. But if you go by what the bible says ((I do)) God created Man and Woman and they lived with every animal."

Once again a strawman argument. (Look it up along with a complete list of logical fallacies, so you don't make this or any of the other common mistakes.)
Evolution does not claim to be proved. A theory is the highest "understanding" a scientist can claim. We have many different disciplines of science (Physicians, Biologists, Astronomers, ect.) that all collect data. This data all confirms the theory of evolution. If christian apologists like you would actually use data to argue the theory, then we could actually have a meaningful debate. As it stands, there is no evidence or data that disagrees with the theory of evolution.

Seriously, form your list of books, I can see that you haven't actually done your homework. Read a few books about science, or click on the link that was provided for you on post 38. It's not sin to read about science. You are not well informed, and sound completely moronic.


I believe that the thread was supposed to be about christian minds. I have been thinking a lot about this myself. I think it really is easier to not read the article, but it's just possible that they really just don't get it. That maybe N.S.A read the entire article, very carefully and critically, and didn't understand it. This might just be the difference with some christian minds. Because not all christians think that evolution is a lie. Some christians have phds in chemistry and they understand that evolution is the best explanation of our existence.

It can be very frustrating talking to people like you, because you aren't a scientist, you make wild claims, and then you don't answer questions.

Did you read the article that was posted on an introduction of evolution? Post 38

D.C. wrote: "Okay D.G. what exactly are your sound beliefs? Are you an atheist, agnostic, deist, nihlist, existentialist, transcendentalist? There are many beliefs, what are your end all beliefs? Just curious"

Hi D. C., I am the proud survivor of Sunday school brainwashing. I consider my self a free thinker which puts me closer to being an existentialist. I believe there are beings superior to man but not in a god-like capacity, making me also slightly deist and agnostic all in one.

People are entitled to believe and do what works for them, within the law of course (and I don’t mean divine law), but my opposition is when unfounded beliefs are imposed on others, such as in schools, and with laws. I get along with the pious as well the person who punctuates his sentences with curse words, without envying either. I am my own person and not easily influenced by the crowd mentality.

I have sat by for too many years while the more vocal but less realistic have tried to force their unfounded beliefs on others. So for whatever years I have left on this earth, I will be encouraging people to use their brains and carefully analyze things before they believe. One way I do this is by asking questions.

I am just happy that I am not the only one trying to tell these guys that what they believe is the wrong thing

There is nothing quite as convincing as someone telling you what you believe is the wrong thing and then when you ask why, they say "I just told you. It is wrong."

Spectacular argument.

....I am just happy that I am not the only one trying to tell these guys that what they believe is the wrong thing