Atheism is unreasonable

[Mister Agenda]

That external means 'outside of Egypt' is a standard you've made up.

No it isn't. I am being asked to provide evidence outside of (external) the Bible, as if that is supposed to somehow diminish the truth value of the Bible...well, I want external sources too.

Surely you're not too stupid to understand the difference between asking for corroborating evidence outside of one set of documents and asking for corroborating evidence outside of the region the events supposedly occurred iin?

I've already stated that each Gospel is independent and therefore "external" from the other, but all you would do is move goal posts.

What goal post have I previously moved that justifies you making that assertion? I lean towards Jesus being a real person, I'm more than happy to accept convincing corroboration. It's not like confirmation that there really was an apocalytiic preacher named Yeshua who ran afoul of the authorities whose teaching formed the basis of Christianity would mean he was really a miracle worker. I've got no more issue with Jesus existing than with Mohammed existing. Mohammed being a real person doesn't make Islam the one true religion, and Jesus being real doesn't make Christianity the one true religion. Having a confirmed founder isn't the criteria for religious truth.

We have both internal and external evidence for Jesus.

I'm aware of the internal evidence, that's why I lean to better than 50/50 odds of the man having existed. The external evidence is faint and of very doubtful authenticity and implication. Unless you've got something new we haven't heard before, which you're keeping to yourself for some reason.

So in other words, once you solve one problem, you have to deal with the other problem? Well, that was my point

On opposite day, maybe.

I know deep down inside you like my analogies...so I have another one for you, regarding these two "problems".

I don't like anyone making themselves seem stupid. It makes me cringe inside. It's why I can't enjoy 'I Love Lucy' reruns.

Imagine you are running through the woods being chased by Jason with a machete...you are fast, and he is slow...so you are doing a great job of out running him...as you are running, you are approaching a road, and you proceed to run across the road, and right when you get to the middle of the road.......BAM, you get hit by a big mack truck going 70 mph.

Well, you managed to escape one problem (Jason / abiogenesis), but now, you have a completely different problem on your hands (truck /origin of consciousness).

So?

How was that one?

Profoundly pointless, and I feel embarassed for you.

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Because dogs produce dogs, cats produce cats, fish produce fish. Have you ever observed any exceptions to this? I will answer for you: No. So why do you believe that the animals of yesterday was able to do something that the animals of today have never been observed to do?

You misunderstand evolution so profoundly that you posit an event that would prove it wrong as evidence against it. No species EVER produces another species in one generation. No offspring is EVER different enough from its parents to constitute a new species. Evolution is built from small changes accumulating over hundreds or thousands of generations. A grade school understanding of biological evolution would be an improvement over the understanding that you currently possess. Blame the people who have been lying to you about what evolution claims for making you look so foolish. If you never heard of evolution, you would know more about it than you do now with all the misinformation you've aborbed.

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All of that information...yet when it comes to actually demonstrating it..no one can do it?

We've never been able to do anything prior to discovering how to do it. Concluding that we therefore CAN'T do it has a poor track record. And it's people like you convincing fellow believers that abiogenesis is incompatible with Christianity that will deconvert many of your fellow believers if we ever CAN do it. Fundamentalist creationists have made more atheists than all the efforts of atheists put together.

Well, I am arguing for the Christian God. Explain to me how this God cant exist....now you can either do that or you can just continue with more rhetoric. Your choice.

An omnipotent being can do anything. An omniscient being can only do what it knows it will do in advance. A God concept that combines omniscience and omnipotence is a married bachelor, it can't exist. Omnipotence can't exist, because it necessarily includes the ability to omniscient if the omnipotent being desires to be so, and in that moment all of its future actions will be set; because perfect future knowledge is only possible if the future is immutable, but an omnipotent being must be able to change it. Both attributes must be weakened for the God of Christianity as you've defined it to be saved. I suggest 'ultrapotence' and 'ultrascience'. God is very powerful and wise, but not all-powerful and all-knowing, and doing the best he can within his necessary limitations.

I don't have video evidence no...but I have a long list of arguments that I use to demonstrate why Intelligent Design is more plausible than any other theory used to explain the question of "origins".

You know what would make it REALLY plausible? A confirmable prediction that can't be made with the current established theory that turns out to be confirmed. You know, doing science.

I will, once someone can show how inanimate matter, for whatever reason, came to life and begin thinking, eating, talking, and laughing..and how a mindless and blind process gave me eyes to see, ears to hear, a digestive system to break down food and give me energy, a circulatory system for blood traffic, a immune system to fight diseases which invade my body, a reproductive system for me to produce offspring in my likeness, and a nervous system that helps coordinate my actions and movements.

Evolution is the explanation for your features. Abiogenesis is a plausible hypothesis for what kicked it off. Your dissatisfaction with it not being the answer you want isn't my problem.

I'd like someone to explain to me how a mindless process can make all of this good stuff happen.

At some point, the student has to take responsibility for not being able to learn.

I don't see how. We see intelligent minds create things ever day...we never seen life coming from nonliving material.

When you're dealing in assertions, one is as good as another.

Well, fortunately for my side of things, we actually have reasons to believe our position to be true.

Funny how the reasons never seem to preced the belief, 99% of the time. Most of us here used to be Christians, many of us know what it's like to be raised to believe something as the default setting.

Infinity cannot be traversed, therefore a timeless cause is needed....consciousness cannot come from unconsciousness based on the mind/body problem, therefore the cause of human consciousness had to itself be consciousness...life cannot come from nonliving material, therefore the origin of life had to be actually LIVING...intelligence cannot come from non-intelligence, therefore the intelligence that we have comes from something that was ITSELF...intelligent. And another one that I like, one that no one uses..is the argument from language...which I will make in another thread.

The more assertions you make, the more you have to prove, and you haven't successfully proven ANY of them. But go ahead and keep on making new ones. The more unsupported assertions you make, the less believable you become, and the more fencesitters who read this will turn away from buying what you're selling.

When it comes to which position is more reasonable, its not even close.

More argument from 'nuh uh!'.

Right, because the concept I gave actually has explanatory value.

You can't explain a what and a how with a who. God has less explanatory value than 'I don't know', because at least 'I dont' know' doesn't pretend to settle the matter.

As I said before, on judgement day, there won't be any distinction between naturalists, atheists, agnostic, and any other label for unbelievers. You all are the same to God.

Non sequitur.

Either God did it, or nature did it. No semantics necessary.

There's only one nature, but many theistic creation myths. If you prove 'God did it', you've got miles to travel from there to 'the Christian God did it'.

Yeah, but they aren't foolish enough to believe that "naturedidit" either. We can debate about "which" God all day long, but we share the common belief that some kind of God did it.

Brahma won't care if you were a Christian, Jew, agnostic, or atheist when the fate of your soul is decided.

hock: We agree????

We probably agree on lots of things. This type of thread isn't conducive to discovering many of them, though.

Dogs produce dogs..

According to the modern synthesis of evolution, they have to in order for evolution to work. Dogs producing cats would be evidence of a designer, since there's no way for that to happen without intelligent intervention.

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Wrong yet again, Esquilax...I guess being wrong all the time doesn't seem to bother you Paul was writing to the church in Corinth in the mid-50's AD...now Corinth is 3257 miles away from Jerusalem..so if within 25 years after an event (the Resurrection) in Jerusalem, Paul is already writing to a church 3257 miles away from where the event took place, that mean that Christianity had already spread quickly throughout the empire...and not only that, but shortly after Paul wrote to the church, it was the Christians that were getting persecuted, not unbelievers...and this was at least 10 centuries before the Crusades...so Christianity was already full blown by the time of the Crusades and all of the "indoctrination" that came with it.

That was an awfully long sentence. And the distance from Jerusalem to Corinth is barely more than a third of the distance you cite. Kind of ironic considering how you're crowing about Esquilax being wrong. A little over 1200 miles would take a caravan about four months to cross.