(October 8, 2015 at 12:16 am)Redbeard The Pink Wrote:

(October 5, 2015 at 11:18 am)Rekeisha Wrote: Earlier you said you don't know why things are uniform so why can you do it now?

You said I could. Make up your mind...or learn to type.


You keep flinging around this word..."uniform, uniformity, etc." I really think you mean to say "constant." The Universe is anything but uniform. It's completely rife with variables and chaos. It functions according to consistent rules, but I really wouldn't actually call it "uniform."


There are two main reasons why it's acceptable to assume that the Universe behaves according to consistent norms: that conclusion is affirmed by literally billions of years worth of evidence all throughout the Universe, and there is not one shred of evidence to the contrary. Those two facts make it a pretty safe bet that physics does not take breaks. Ever. There's a difference between an assumption and an unfounded assumption. An assumption would be that the Universe behaves more or less consistently. An unfounded assumption would be that this happens because Gaud makes it so.

Quote:God doesn't make you sin. You can't blame your faults on Him. If I tell my child not to do a thing, and I make him aware of the consequences, if he does it it is his fault for disobeying me.  It would be evil to allow someone to disobey and not give them a warning but that isn't what God does. He tells us explicitly through His word and implicitly through the systems of the earth as well as our conscious. If we willfully do it then it is us who choose evil but we can not claim ignorance. Also since you don't know all things you don't know how much evil God has stopped.

If Gaud is truly the cause and creator of everything, then he is personally responsible for all sin on many levels. For one thing, in order for sin to enter his system, he must have either created sin or created the thing that invented sin. Regardless of who or what invented sin and introduced it to the system, Gaud invented that thing and introduced it into the system, so the introduction of sin is still Gaud's fault.


For another thing, he also allegedly decides which behaviors are moral and immoral, aka which things are sins. He could decide that nothing is a sin, effectively eliminating the concept of sin from even being possible. He also could have created beings that had the choice not to love him, but didn't have the choice to sin and therefore damn themselves. Any way you slice it, Gaud is either personally responsible for evil or he's personally responsible for the source of evil. There is no escaping this except by ignoring it.


The same goes for suffering, and before you start I'd like to point out that not all suffering is caused by "sin." Some of it is merely caused by our environment, like diseases and natural disasters. Gaud designed the microbes and systems that cause all of that, and he designed us to be susceptible to those things, and he put us here with those things. Obviously he wanted us to suffer from disease and natural events. Otherwise he wouldn't have put us here and made us so destructible.


I mean, hell...our own otherwise healthy cells have the genetic capacity to do this thing called "cancer" where they just fuck up into this nasty, useless stuff and then start multiplying til they kill you. Germs don't do that...our bodies do it to themselves, basically. What all-knowing designer builds in something like that unless he intends for us to suffer horribly and die wasting deaths from it? In what way would he not be responsible for the suffering caused by such a feature? Satan didn't invent cancer, and neither did humans. If there were a creator god, he would be personally and solely responsible for all suffering, all sin, all failure, and all death. He made himself responsible merely by being the one who set it all into motion, even if he never touched it after that.

Quote:Again don't have a foundation for what evil is because you think morals are subjective. What you said was evil when you claimed Christianity you don't claim now. So your idea of an evil God is just your opinion but it isn't based on any true foundation.

My morality, like virtually all human morality, is a personal amalgam of empathy and cultural influence. For me, it all boils down to the Golden Rule. Because the Bible depicts Jehovah as doing a whole bunch of things to people that I wouldn't want done to me and that Jehovah probably wouldn't want done to him, I recognize Jehovah as being evil and immoral. Yes, this is basically my opinion when you get right down to it, but at least my opinion isn't based on cherry-picked passages from the Bible, and at least I recognize that it's an opinion and not a decree from an invisible bogey man in the sky.

Quote:You have no proof this is just conjecture. I also said that God lead me to the bible because that is His word. What I have told you is reality and it will not change the truth. I don't put my faith in a religion I put my faith in God. He is my foundation.

The proof is that what I described is exactly what happened, just with the Bible instead of the Quran. You had a personal "encounter" with a voice in your head who claimed two characteristics that are exceedingly vague and exceedingly common amongst god characters, and then you converted to the first religion you tripped over. That series of events is evidence that it wouldn't have mattered what religion you actually found, so long as it had a god who is eternal and does not have parents. You obviously were looking to convert to a religion, and because you're American you picked Christianity because it's the most accessible and it happened to feed into your confirmation bias from your imaginary conversation with your imaginary friend.

Why is there order?

He does not make people sin but He does take responsibility for us and our sin. It is done through Jesus' death and resurrection. All who believe can be saved by putting their faith in the fact that their sin is paid for through His sacrifice. Another way He does this is that He will judge and remove those who cling to their sin. After his judgment He will in set everything else right.

He doesn't wink at sin because He has integrity. Since, God is good anything that is against His nature is evil. He is a just God and justice requires that evil be paid for. Either through the sacrifice He preformed on the cross or the unrepentant soul pays for their own sin in hell.

God has providence over everything and will use all tools at His disposal to show us our need for salvation. Still, our sinful actions do affect the world and the health of ourselves and others. I am not going to say that God doesn't set things in motion or allow suffering to happen. I do know that God work things out for the good of those who love Him. I can testify to this myself. Suffering can teach us many things and make us aware of our blind spots. I don't know why somethings happen and I may never know but I trust God. You clearly see that things are not as they should be. So the question for your world view is if it is not sin then what is broken?

Do you really live by the Golden rule? You always treat other in the way you want to be treated or is that just what you use against God?

What you described is a figment of your imagination because reality doesn't fit into your presupposition that God does not exist.
I was 5 when I met God and I was not concerned about religion. I didn't have a need that wasn't met and before I met Him I didn't give Him much though.

Ugh please use hide tags!

(October 8, 2015 at 9:22 pm)Rekeisha Wrote:

(October 7, 2015 at 5:01 pm)Thena323 Wrote:

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No. According to the myth, your God set the bait in the Garden of Eden. That is what's known as entrapment.

In continuing with the story, it is your God that illegitimately implicates the whole of humanity for a single transgression, and deems everyone to be an unworthy sinner. That was God's judgement, His determination, His will and therefore His fault, by design.

Your God created the very idea of sin, the conditions for the original sin to transpire, as well as the capacity/predisposition to sin in every man, woman, child and infant.

Your God made you sick, so that He could sell you the cure...and you're actually buying it.
None for me, thanks...I know a shakedown when I see it.

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Yes, God does make the rules and they are based on His perfectly good nature. He is the bar at which all people will be judged and your fabrications will not save you from the truth. You can't account for what is right without Him because He is the standard. You can pretend otherwise but it is at your own risk. This is not a threat but a warning.

You're not very good at this, are you? 


"God is real. God is good. You are bad. You will see." is for the drive-by's, Rekeisha.
You should be able to respond to a difficult question or significant statement with more than mantra at this point.

(October 8, 2015 at 9:11 pm)Rekeisha Wrote:

(October 7, 2015 at 1:49 pm)TheRocketSurgeon Wrote:

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Well isn't that special? I must have infinite knowledge to read the works of top physicists who are debating the subject, notice that they, who would be in the best position to know such a thing, say they don't know but have some pretty good ideas, and accept that at face value.

Obviously I don't believe in werewolves. But if a person came up to me (or to you) and suggested that werewolves were what kept the laws of physics from changing, I'd likely have a pretty hard time not simply laughing at their suggestion, unless they backed up that assertion with some pretty serious evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

You continue to assert that the laws of physics may be variable, and must be fixed in place by the action of a Deity. I see no reason to suppose this assertion is true. As far as I can tell, the physicists are right when they demonstrate (via experiments at the high-speed particle colliders) that the properties of the universe, such as gravity, density, and electromagnetism, are emergent properties from the way in which subatomic particles interact with one another. Going back after the fact and imagining that some werewolf (or god) "fixed" those particules just so, so they would interact in this way, rather than some other hypothetical way, is irrelevant except in the context of those people who try to claim that we live in a world ordered by magic, and not the discovered laws of physics.

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So you just know that some physicist says that no one knows and you accept it without question? Do these physicist possess  infinite knowledge?

The only reason why their is order in the universe is because God keeps it in order. He made the universe and he keeps it in order don't by magic but because he posses infinite knowledge and power and wants it to still exist. You may not understand it but that doesn't make it magic.

You get extraordinary evidence every day but you choose not to accept it. The fact that there is life on the earth is extraordinary. The universe is vast, amazing and full of wonder and yet finely tuned. Our bodies have DNA which has a purpose and a reason to be there.  It is not evidence that you lack.

What the heck is "infinite knowledge"? Do you mean to say that if we don't know everything, we don't know anything?

That's the most ridiculous claim I've ever heard. After the claim that the universe only has laws of physics because Divine Magic Makes It So, of course. Hard to get more ridiculous than that.

What have we said here that gives you the first inkling that we atheists accept anything at all  "without question"?!?

I accept what physicists say because I have a good general knowledge of the claims of physicists, and know how the scientific process works: if a physicist puts an idea out there that is poorly supported or based on bad math or false assumptions, the other physicists tear him/her apart for it. It's the Scientific Method, and it's specifically designed to protect against the errors of individual human brains, however smart they are. I can do a lot of physics, myself, and have personally done the math to prove many concepts I used to just have to accept from experts who knew more than I did, but some of it will forever remain beyond my capacity. That's okay, because I have seen firsthand how the process of proving this stuff works, and I am confident that the physicists will continue to keep one another in check.

You need to be very careful speaking about what the "purpose" of DNA is; you're now on my personal turf. Not only am I a former biologist with a specialty in viral genetics, but my fiancee (a devout Christian and fellow evolutionary biologist) works as a researcher in a genetics lab. I definitely know what the proofs are for evolution, common descent, and so on. There is nothing "finely tuned" about our DNA... in fact, it's a marvel of inefficiency and malfunction, which is why cancer and deformities are things. The process is good enough to keep the DNA reproducing, but it's far, far from "finely tuned". They universal laws may appear "finely tuned", in that they work together to make the universe operate as it does, but the universe is also a mass of chaos and randomness; you need only look at the surface of any moon or planet to see what I mean. Even if one of the random asteroids or comets doesn't get us, there are dozens of ways the planet could wipe most of humanity out, tomorrow. The universe, to me, gives every appearance of being the product of random chance operating according to the way the particles just-so-happen to interact, a way which is demonstrable mathematically (that's why they knew the Higgs Boson would exist before they actually found it... math!), and there is no indication that it has or needs a divine influence to keep itself going. You're welcome to make an argument, of course, but be aware that I will spot bullshit the moment it lands on the screen.

What you call "extraordinary evidence", I call magical thinking and a lack of actual understanding of the world around you.

I'd just like to chime in from a "semi"-Christian perspective.

I don't appreciate how he goes to insult creationists by calling them "fucktards." They are human too, and its wrong to call anybody names. It really just makes the guy look stupid, no professional debater will directly insult the guy he's debating with, so why is he doing it. Now about his argument. Well, honestly I do definitely agree, you can't "just follow Jesus." The old testement is just as important as the new testement and to exclude one means you might as well not follow the bible at all. And I agree with everything he said really, i'm not going to argue with him, because I can't argue with him. So I just simply agree.

I personally feel like the bible is a colossal waste to read anyway. Its riddled with contradictions, shows just how evil God is, and isn't even followed word by word by almost all Christians (no not almost all, basically ALL Christians).

I identify as Christian, but I don't follow God. I'm probably as close to atheist as you can get, I'm just not ready to fully admit it yet. So I still continue to attend church.

Thanks for sharing the video.

Connie

(October 9, 2015 at 12:24 am)connietheTgirl Wrote: I'd just like to chime in from a "semi"-Christian perspective.

I don't appreciate how he goes to insult creationists by calling them "fucktards." They are human too, and its wrong to call anybody names. It really just makes the guy look stupid, no professional debater will directly insult the guy he's debating with, so why is he doing it. Now about his argument. Well, honestly I do definitely agree, you can't "just follow Jesus." The old testement is just as important as the new testement and to exclude one means you might as well not follow the bible at all. And I agree with everything he said really, i'm not going to argue with him, because I can't argue with him. So I just simply agree.

I personally feel like the bible is a colossal waste to read anyway. Its riddled with contradictions, shows just how evil God is, and isn't even followed word by word by almost all Christians (no not almost all, basically ALL Christians).

I identify as Christian, but I don't follow God. I'm probably as close to atheist as you can get, I'm just not ready to fully admit it yet. So I still continue to attend church.

Thanks for sharing the video.

Connie

Your point is well-taken, Connie, but this isn't a professional debate by any stretch of the imagination!

I promise you, if you hang out here long enough, and watch the saaaaame Creationist insanity being repeated over and over again, with them refusing to listen to actual scientists (of which I am one) or even decent explanations of why what they think about evolution is not at all what evolution actually claims, you'll understand why many of us tend to get testy with them and use degrading terminology.

I happen to agree that it's better to remain calm and present "just the facts, ma'am", but as I said, it's all but impossible when you're being barraged by an avalanche of inanity, usually by the same few posters, using the same points even after they have repeatedly been refuted the last ten times they used that argument. I hope you stick around, whatever your beliefs, because you seem nice, as well as thoughtful, and we welcome Believers of all stripes who fit into that category.

And I won't be surprised a bit, once you've picked up some of the E-v-C debate points in here, and see how willfully dishonest they're being, if you start insulting a few of them, yourself.

Welcome to the forum.

While I don't think it's "wrong to call anybody names", particularly if it's deserved, I can agree that it's not necessary to make creationists look stupid. They don't need anyone's help for that.

(October 8, 2015 at 10:06 pm)Rekeisha Wrote: Why is there order?

Because Brahma wills it to be so...I thought we covered this already...


Jokes aside, that's a complicated question, especially since the word "order" is another one of those that means something different depending on what you're actually talking about. In short, order exists because the materials and energies in the Universe exert consistent forces on each other, causing them over time to form increasingly organized systems once they enter each other's field of influence.

Quote:He doesn't wink at sin because He has integrity. Since, God is good anything that is against His nature is evil. He is a just God and justice requires that evil be paid for. Either through the sacrifice He preformed on the cross or the unrepentant soul pays for their own sin in hell.

Justice doesn't require anything. God invented justice, so whatever justice requires is required by justice because God said so.


The thing you don't seem to be understanding is that a perfect, omnipotent, omniscient being would be capable of creating a world where free will is possible but evil is not. If justice requires punishment for sin, it's because Gaud defined justice and sin and himself requires sin to be punished to meet his standard for justice. If he HAS to have the evil and HAS to punish it because justice is some nebulous idea that he can't change and to which he is beholden, then HE IS NOT ALL-POWERFUL.


Simply put: if your Gaud is all-powerful and created everything, then he is personally responsible for ALL evil, and he is personally responsible for the strict requirements of "justice." If he is not personally responsible for ALL evil and has no say in what justice requires, then he is NOT all-powerful.

Quote:God has providence over everything and will use all tools at His disposal to show us our need for salvation.

All tools except for materially and empirically proving his own existence, right?

Quote:Still, our sinful actions do affect the world and the health of ourselves and others.

Ok, murder yes, but eating shellfish? Wearing mixed-cloth garments? Men dressing in women's clothes? These things aren't inherently harmful to anyone, so why is Gaud so offended by them?

Quote:I am not going to say that God doesn't set things in motion or allow suffering to happen. I do know that God work things out for the good of those who love Him. I can testify to this myself. Suffering can teach us many things and make us aware of our blind spots. I don't know why somethings happen and I may never know but I trust God. You clearly see that things are not as they should be. So the question for your world view is if it is not sin then what is broken?

I don't see the world as broken, and I don't see things in terms of what "should be." Everything just is. There is no goal or intent behind the Universe, so it can't be "broken." Whatever happens happens, for better or worse.

Quote:Do you really live by the Golden rule? You always treat other in the way you want to be treated or is that just what you use against God?

Yeah, pretty much. I generally don't do things to others if I wouldn't want them done to me. Pretty simple.

Quote:What you described is a figment of your imagination because reality doesn't fit into your presupposition that God does not exist.
I was 5 when I met God and I was not concerned about religion. I didn't have a need that wasn't met and before I met Him I didn't give Him much though.

You were 5. You were prone to believe anything, and you are probably unaware of the ways in which you'd already been introduced to the Gaud concept by that age. Of course the Bible didn't sound strange to you. Santa Claus wouldn't sound strange to you either if nobody had challenged your belief in him until you were an adult.

(October 8, 2015 at 7:52 pm)Redbeard The Pink Wrote:

(October 8, 2015 at 6:56 pm)Rekeisha Wrote: You are now Hindu? So how does Brahma keep the universe in order?

The same way your Gaud does: by willing it to be so because he's Brahma. What more explanation do you need?

So you are also a Hindu?

(October 9, 2015 at 11:27 am)Rekeisha Wrote:

(October 8, 2015 at 7:52 pm)Redbeard The Pink Wrote: The same way your Gaud does: by willing it to be so because he's Brahma. What more explanation do you need?

So you are also a Hindu?

You're fucking with us, right? You can't be that thick.