On the subject of Hell and Salvation

[MilesAbbott81]

No we won't. We will all be dead and incapable of finding anything out. If I am wrong, I will find myself standing before an immoral thug who I would reject anyway. On moral grounds. You, by nature, are more moral the the celestial bully that you worship. This forces you to favour slavery, misogyny, elitism, human sacrifice, incest, rape and so forth. You know these things to be wrong, but you abandon your own morality in favour of an imaginary cosmological santa claus who will put presents under your dead moral tree if only you sufficiently grovel.

The Bible is not in favor of slavery, misogyny, elitism, human sacrifice, incest, rape or anything like this. This is your lack of knowledge and understanding speaking, not truth. These things are all wrong, and God never allows any of these things to occur unless He is making a point or meting out punishment/chastisement for evil.

Oh right, waving the white flag of victory is it?

If your ideas were remotely reasonable, then they would gain traction, or at least some robust discussion. But your ideas are so risible that at the first mere hint of any challenge, you run for cover. Your belief is a swiss cheese of holes and you are scared of the holes being identified.

Bluntly, you came to a vigorous discussion board armed with no more than a spork.

The rest of us have a full set of professional chef's knives and we keep them sharp.

Has it ever occurred to you to wonder why it is that your magic sky fairy is so fragile? And ineffectual?

I'm not surrendering anything. I'd have continued my argument with possibletarian if I thought there were any point to it, for one. Second, I came in here angry, was angered even further by the intense condescension that is so pervasive around atheists, and wrongly responded with a vengeful spirit. I needed to walk away from that. There is so much vitriol here that it's infectious; can't be pleasant for you all, either. Your name is very appropriate, Abbadon Ire.

To be clear, I'm not reopening my debate with possibletarian. I gave him the last word. Everything I said was true, even if delivered in a wrongful spirit. The blind cannot see their blindness.

The answer is evidence. We can observe the evidence so we know for a fact something is happening. "Dark Matter" is a label of convenience until we work it out.

This is a recurring feature with the religious, if we don't know this thing then we don't know anything therefore all science is suspect and open to question.

Somehow, they glom onto the fact that all science is open to question as a weakness and that is it's strength. Do the religious believe that their faith du jour is open to questioning? Examination? Testing?

Of course not.

That wasn't my point in arguing about Dark Matter, though I do believe I made a mistake in conflating that reply in that particular line of argument. Actually, I'm not sure I had the point developed at all, but no matter. I have a response.

Faith in the existence of Dark Matter is still a kind of faith. It's something that hasn't been proven to you to exist (not taking its lack of definition into account), but you believe it exists. Yes, you could actually see it if you took the time to learn the science. But if you would repent, i.e. "do the work for yourself," God would manifest Himself to you as well. You would be given further proof (not that it's necessary), if only you behaved as He says you should. Feel true remorse, make restitution to your victims, confess your sins to the people you need to, and turn from your evil. Still, repentance is a gift from God; you have no power to do these things on your own.

Anyway, I think where I was initially going with that is that faith in Dark Matter is something you have because you want to have it; faith in God you don't actually want, or He would give it to you. Or, you don't want it for the right reasons:

"You crave what you do not have. You kill and covet, but are unable to obtain it. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask. And when you do ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may squander it on your pleasures." (James 4:2-3)

That is unrelated, however, to God's existence, which as I've said many times over, is clearly observable to you all. You demand higher standards of proof because you have no interest in God. Your cry of "there is no proof" is how you justify this lack of desire, or it's your angry and bitter reply to His withholding Himself from you due to your seeking Him with the wrong motives. He seeks contrition, not a spirit coveting knowledge or power or glory. Those things only bring misery.

That's how miles rocks. He claims to be all humble and contrite and promptly hurls hell and damnation on any who disagree with him. Bog standard fundie.

I do regret my anger, and have repented of it. Not because you all are right; you deserve every bit of hell and damnation, as we all do. I'm sorry for it because it grieves the Lord to see hell and damnation hurled without reluctance. As the Scriptures say, "For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord GOD; so turn, and live." (Ezekiel 18:32)

Hammurabi predates your magic book and was literally written in stone. The chinese kept written records all the way through your magic global flood without noticing it happened at all, speaking of which, the holey babble plagiarised that from the earlier Epic of Gilgamesh. Do you even make a vague attempt to address such glaring fuckups? No. You glom onto the hyperbole of "bronze age" in order to distract from the glaring inconsistencies and flat out lies in your big bumper book of bullshit.

This is all assumption. The Torah could have easily been copied from earlier manuscripts extant at the time or passed down via oral tradition. To say otherwise is simply intellectually dishonest, and to spout off in the manner you do as though you are dealing with ironclad facts is totally irresponsible. Arguing that Moses wrote about his own funeral is similarly irresponsible. Obviously, someone else, likely Joshua, wrote that portion of Deuteronomy.