What you said is in effect "the fact that a story bears no relationship with reality does not negate its truth".

Actually I will agree with him on that idea of Genesis not being literal not destroying the idea of the fall. The ancients did write using symbolism at times and I don't think that the Genesis creation account being non-literal or metaphorical in nature would destroy Christianity at all.

I believe there are more serious issues with the biblical text then just that. If that was the ONLY issue with the Bible it would be a lot more trustworthy. I cannot comment exactly on all of the details of why Genesis would have been non-literal in the first place but there has been some scholarship done on it.

As far as applying logic with creationists so far it has been my experience that logic can do some pretty hefty damage to Christianity. Again I am not quiet about my ideas here at the Christian college and have gotten some people curious if nothing else. Most of the time you don't have to fight unless one or two people are hostile/dogmatic/sensitive about their ideas.

That or people get pissed due to redundancy. For me as long as I don't get pissed at someone in the discussion I will probably be able to keep steering it in a peaceful direction. I haven't always done that but when I do things seem to go a lot better.

That depends on to what degree an assertion of fact must be discredited before you consider it destroyed. To christians that fact that it is totally false and then some is insufficient to destroy it so long as they have conditioned themselves to want it to be true in some way. To us, that it is false destroy it utterly beyond any possibility of repair, for the ladjust our conditioning and wants to exclude it.
One might say christians like everyone else is entitled to their opinions, including the opinion that there is some great goodness in considering humans fallen and raising one particularly objectionable specimen called Jesus above all the more creditable specimens to such a point as to encourage fully functional humans to relinguish their most critical human facilities in mindless sycophancy. But they are not entitled to their own fact, they are not entitled to claim humans have actually fallen, or that base on evidence, the Jesus character indeed possess outstanding traints other than advanced mental illness.

(December 9, 2011 at 8:22 am)tackattack Wrote: Just because the fall from grace isn't literally as represented from the Bible does not negate it from happening, as an event, in it's entirety. You can see where your argument fell apart I presume?

I might be able to see if I understood how a metaphoric fall from grace would work. Can you help me out here?

(December 9, 2011 at 12:24 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote:

(December 9, 2011 at 8:22 am)tackattack Wrote: Just because the fall from grace isn't literally as represented from the Bible does not negate it from happening, as an event, in it's entirety. You can see where your argument fell apart I presume?

I might be able to see if I understood how a metaphoric fall from grace would work. Can you help me out here?

I don't think he thinks of it as a metaphore. He thinks of it as an event that definitely happened based on the words of a text which makes a claim, and by the way of supporting that claim produced nothing but bullshit. He is basically saying that, if every testable part of a story is shown false, that should not subtract from the credibility of the story overall.

He may or may not be able to but I believe, if you curious simply for curiosity's sake, that it may be covered in a book by Marcus Borg called "Taking the bible seriously but not literally" or whatever its called.

You may not be THAT curious but there it is if you want it I bought it but never read it back when I was first starting to investigate the issue of God more in depth.

I am okay with arriving at a point with someone where they refuse to listen to reason. That simply means there is no further point in discussing the matter. I love the back and forth of discussion though so even though I may get tired of it I usually like coming back for more >.<.

I already know that I will be relatively active in trying to de-convert people at least for awhile. Not saying I have to but its something I feel passionate about so I will continue to try. Funny enough the best way to get people, I think, is the best way for religious people to get people and that is talk to people one on one and find out where they are coming from.

I don't believe the internet is the best place for it especially since a lot of communication is non-verbal anyway and I feel a lot is lost in the lack of contact.

(December 9, 2011 at 12:40 pm)Voltair Wrote: He may or may not be able to but I believe, if you curious simply for curiosity's sake, that it may be covered in a book by Marcus Borg called "Taking the bible seriously but not literally" or whatever its called.

You may not be THAT curious but there it is if you want it I bought it but never read it back when I was first starting to investigate the issue of God more in depth.

I am okay with arriving at a point with someone where they refuse to listen to reason. That simply means there is no further point in discussing the matter. I love the back and forth of discussion though so even though I may get tired of it I usually like coming back for more >.<.

I already know that I will be relatively active in trying to de-convert people at least for awhile. Not saying I have to but its something I feel passionate about so I will continue to try. Funny enough the best way to get people, I think, is the best way for religious people to get people and that is talk to people one on one and find out where they are coming from.

I don't believe the internet is the best place for it especially since a lot of communication is non-verbal anyway and I feel a lot is lost in the lack of contact.

You can either be more curious about what is true, or you can be more curious about how to deceive yourself. I am more curious about what is true.

(December 8, 2011 at 11:11 pm)Chuck Wrote: The problem of scientific nature is what neurological malfunction could it be for there to still be "theology" after the bronze age.

That’s actually kind of funny, if you’re an Evolutionist you’d have to believe that Humans developed a belief in God because it provided some sort of survival advantage. So being an atheist would actually make you a bit of an evolutionary throw back.

(December 9, 2011 at 3:08 am)stephensalias Wrote: These religion and science debates are fascinating to me. A poster above mentioned that our physical laws show no evidence of changing. Given that, and the law of entropy, how does any model of cosmology make sense? The chain of events that produced life is infinitely ordered. It is so ordered, in fact, that it produced a self ordering human race. Not only that, but the order can be seen even at microscopic levels. How does one account for this scientifically?

Be careful, this board doesn’t do well with such difficult questions. You might be better off asking them why they think God is a big meanie-face.

(December 9, 2011 at 3:33 am)Voltair Wrote: Stalter, what exactly is your position on the earth then? Do you not believe in YEC? I am not trying to attack you just trying to understand what your exact position is.

I am a YEC.

Quote: Again Stalter I don't want to make false assumptions but you clearly do not believe evolution represents good science. Are you a proponent of Intelligent Design Science? If I am not mistaken one of the criticisms of evolution is the idea that you can't design an experiment to prove evolution per say.

Creationists I suppose do believe in Intelligent Design, but I prefer the Creation movement over the ID movement as a whole because the ID movement has trouble explaining imperfections that we observe, creationists do not. There are some great minds that are part of the ID movement that are also creationists, even though most of them are “old-earthers”. The greatest thing the ID movement did was point out some of the intellectual fraud and dishonesty that was involved with teaching Evolution. It created a whole dialogue about whether the theory was really all it was cracked up to be. So for that, I give them kudos.

Quote: Assuming that is true though you can definitely not design an experiment to prove intelligent design either. Wouldn't that also necessitate you criticizing intelligent design scientifically? I have never understood why Intelligent Design, which cannot experimentally test for anything, contributes much to the discussion. I am not heavily invested in either of the ideas yet so for me there is a third alternative namely that we don't know yet.

I don’t believe that is the chief objection the ID movement has towards evolution. I think their objection is that all the observed cases we have of information arising are only from an intelligent mind, yet we belief that the greatest wealth of information the world has ever known somehow arose and built itself by natural means? That’s a better and more powerful objection to the theory.

(December 9, 2011 at 5:06 am)AnunZi Wrote: You’re trying to apply logic to creationists?! I see where you went wrong there….

Why?

Quote: As to evolution, there is metric fucktons of evidence out there. Many experiments to prove it is in fact possible.

How is proving something is “possible” proof that it actually happened? (I object to your assertion that it has been proven to be even possible though, all the experiments that make this claim sneak intelligence in through the back door one way or another).

Quote: Now I’m not saying evolution is a fact or 100% defiantly the way it happened. That would be foolish, nobody apart from religious loons claim absolute knowledge.

Oh really? “Evolution is a fact” – Richard Dawkins, Washington Post (08/23/2011)

Quote: But don’t take my word for, go forth and read! Come to your own conclusion, that’s the point of science. It doesn’t need to try and “convert” people, science is just there, the information and experimental results are there. Read them, think about it, then make your own mind up based on what you have found.

We agree on something.

(December 9, 2011 at 7:51 am)Zen Badger Wrote: And not one of them worth pissing on

Well opinions won’t get you far in science, if the math works with the models then the models are valid, which it does indeed work.

Quote: BTW, how's your ASC holding up? I have a refutation for that, in the very discovery that revealed that lightspeed was not infinite as previously thought.

Holding up just fine actually.

Quote: No, they are theological only, we have yet to see any scientific basis for your bullshit.

Creationism is not based on science!
Yes it is, they have plenty of scientific evidence.
That’s not scientific evidence.
Why not?
Because Creationism is not based on science!

You are the king of the circular argument, did you know that?

(December 9, 2011 at 12:24 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: I might be able to see if I understood how a metaphoric fall from grace would work. Can you help me out here?

I think he is pointing out the fact you are committing a composition fallacy. Just because there are allegedly aspects of Genesis that are figurative, does not necessitate that all parts of the story are indeed figurative (i.e. the fall).

Quote:Just because there are allegedly aspects of Genesis that are figurative, does not necessitate that all parts of the story are indeed figurative (i.e. the fall).

Cherry-Picking to the nth degree. I'll bet your fucking god told you which are literal and which are figurative, too. Personally spoke to you, I imagine.

(December 9, 2011 at 10:32 am)Chuck Wrote: What you said is in effect "the fact that a story bears no relationship with reality does not negate its truth".

No what I'm saying is that the reality of an event being true is based on a lot more inputs than 1. As observing the actual experience isn't an option due to a lack in time travel; I have to look for remnants of the effect from that cause to validate it. If you have any direct evidence for Abiogenesis it still wouldn't invalidate the event, unless it was taken literally. A figurative interpretation applies the why not the how.
I don't believe that humans have suffered the Fall because of the literal interpretation presented in Genesis. I believe humans suffered the fall because I see humans continuing to exhibit a propensity to reject God off the cuff and seek knowledge over faith and because trust the figurative interpretation of the Bible from personally applying it's lessons.

(December 9, 2011 at 4:35 pm)Statler Waldorf Wrote:

(December 9, 2011 at 12:24 pm)DeistPaladin Wrote: I might be able to see if I understood how a metaphoric fall from grace would work. Can you help me out here?

I think he is pointing out the fact you are committing a composition fallacy. Just because there are allegedly aspects of Genesis that are figurative, does not necessitate that all parts of the story are indeed figurative (i.e. the fall).

yup, what he said