(April 8, 2014 at 7:21 am)Crossless1 Wrote: Rev, let's try this: In your own words, tell us why you think atheists would find the testimony of the NT to be insufficient for establishing the truth of the claim that Jesus rose from the dead, was divine, etc. I ask because I'm pretty sure you don't get it.

(April 8, 2014 at 2:07 am)Cinjin Wrote:

(April 7, 2014 at 11:14 pm)Revelation777 Wrote: When the hardened Roman Centurian witness what He did at the cross two thousand years ago he said, "Certain, this was the Son of God!"

Again - that phrase is taken from the same book that makes the claim of his deity.
With that sort of logic, every religion can argue that they have proof of their deity simply by drawing attention to the witnesses they wrote in for themselves.

You mentioned that we can call you a 'Fool for Christ.' Sadly for you the word fool has a certain happy-go-lucky foppishness to it. The word is rather endearing in a way ... as if to say, "yes he's the town fool, but he's our beloved town fool." You sir are no such thing. You sir, are a blithering idiot.

Can we call you a blithering idiot for christ instead?

(April 8, 2014 at 2:11 am)Jiggerj Wrote:

(March 28, 2014 at 10:39 pm)Revelation777 Wrote: He appeared to His disciples. These men's lives were changed and God used them to change the world.

And thank god for Jesus and his disciples! Without them there'd still be war today. And cruelty to animals and children. And starvation in impoverished nations. And greed and tyranny and murder and rape and intolerance and honor killings and wife beatings and pedophiles and...?

How did they change the world again?

(April 8, 2014 at 10:47 am)Rampant.A.I. Wrote:

(April 7, 2014 at 10:17 pm)truthBtold Wrote: Minority huh? Say that to a black guy..

Argument ad populum, you're not addressing what was said. And I don't know who told you I was an atheist. Anyway:

Innumerable? Let's see how how many scientists embrace ID:

Quote:The vast majority of the scientific community and academia supports evolutionary theory as the only explanation that can fully account for observations in the fields of biology, paleontology, molecular biology, genetics, anthropology, and others.[19][20][21][22][23] One 1987 estimate found that "700 scientists ... (out of a total of 480,000 U.S. earth and life scientists) ... give credence to creation-science".[24] An expert in the evolution-creationism controversy, professor and author Brian Alters, states that "99.9 percent of scientists accept evolution".[25] A 1991 Gallup poll found that about 5% of American scientists (including those with training outside biology) identified themselves as creationists.[26][27]

These don't seen like innumerable numbers. You've presented it as if the majority of scientists support intelligent design, which is simply not true.

Quote:An overwhelming majority of the scientific community accepts evolution as the dominant scientific theory of biological diversity.[1][2] Nearly every scientific society, representing hundreds of thousands of scientists, has issued statements rejecting intelligent design[2] and a petition supporting the teaching of evolutionary biology was endorsed by 72 US Nobel Prize winners.[3] Additionally, US courts have ruled in favor of teaching evolution in science classrooms, and against teaching creationism, in numerous cases such as Edwards v. Aguillard, Hendren v. Campbell, McLean v. Arkansas and Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.

So I have to ask: where are you getting your information?

Did someone tell you it's scientific consensus?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_of_..._evolution

(April 9, 2014 at 12:35 pm)Bob the Dugong Deity Wrote: Can a cave be a grave or does it imply a hole in the ground?
Ye well if a grave can be a cave he didn't have to rise,
he just had to mosey on out.

(April 8, 2014 at 11:14 am)Esquilax Wrote:

(April 8, 2014 at 10:45 am)DeistPaladin Wrote: There's so much about presuppositionalism that is just so laughably batshit but for now this part is my favorite.

Essentially, it boils down to "Look! Nothing! That proves something!"

Or more specifically, "Look! Nothing unusual happened! That proves some unseen supernatural force must have acted upon it to prevent anything unusual from happening!"

It's a masterfully deft display of mental slight of hand. It turns zero evidence into evidence of its own kind.

You know what would be more impressive than nothing unusual happening?

Something unusual happening!

Oh, but god promised that everything would be as it is until the end, so the fact that nothing unusual is happening is proof that something unusual happened in the past when god made everything!

You couldn't have this complete normalcy without a past filled with magic creation and enchantments, because god sez so!

(April 8, 2014 at 8:31 am)Chas Wrote:

(April 7, 2014 at 10:13 pm)Revelation777 Wrote: Innumerable intellectuals, professionals, and even scientists embrace intelligent design. Over 80% of Americans believe there is a God. Name me one US President that was an atheist? Sir, you are in the minority.

Do you think the U.S. is representative of all of mankind? There have been, and are, atheist leaders in many countries.

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(April 7, 2014 at 10:47 pm)Revelation777 Wrote:

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Nice pictures, but consider this:
The Physiology Problem

A number of land animals have been proposed as the whale's ancestor, including Darwin's bear, grazing ungulates, wolf-like carnivores (Mesonyx), and the hippopotamus. In each case the morphological differences are significant. If whales (cetaceans) did evolve from land mammals, they did so at an unbelievable rate, accruing an amazing number of "beneficial" mutations and adaptations.

The skeletal features would need to change radically, as well as the physiology (the collective functions of an organism). For example, the supposed early "whale," Ambulocetus, drank fresh water probably throughout its life "50 million years ago," and Indocetus was a saltwater drinker "48 million years ago." This means that in perhaps three million years there had to be an extreme change in the physiology of these creatures.6

These "proto-whales" would have had to mutate in a beneficial manner to produce the above physiological adaptations. However, science shows that organisms don't survive a rapid rate of mutation. Additionally, a popular encyclopedia recently stated: "Presumably, various physiological mechanisms for handling oxygen debt and lactic acid buildup, as well as the development of blubber for fat storage and for temperature regulation, evolved early, though evidence of the evolutionary history is unavailable."7

Less obvious essential design features would ensure the cetaceans against hypothermia. Mammals are warmblooded creatures designed by the Creator to function at a constant body temperature higher than fish, reptiles, or amphibians.

Maintaining a core body temperature while being bathed in an ocean of cold water would be a definite problem for the cetaceans. However, whale fins have fascinating biological structures called countercurrent heat exchangers to conserve heat. Also, zoologists have recently discovered exchangers located at the base of the massive tongue of grey whales.8 These exchangers are a series of blood vessels arranged so that they too function as heat exchangers to minimize heat loss. The grey whale would otherwise lose much body heat through the tongue's extensive vascularization.

Macroevolutionists cannot appeal to natural selection to produce amazing structures like the countercurrent system, although comparative physiologists present countercurrent exchange found in gills and kidneys as structures that repeatedly evolved. Indeed, no known process can turn a four-legged land creature into a blue whale: "Natural selection can act only on those biologic properties that already exist; it cannot create properties in order to meet adaptational needs."9 Specifically, natural selection cannot produce new structures as is often stated in evolutionary just-so stories; it can only preserve the best-adapted varieties which occur by other means.

Problems from Head to Tail

Gould10 proclaims the long and slim Basilosaurus as ". . . the 'standard' and best-known early whale." However, evolutionist Barbara J. Stahl states: "The serpentine form of the body and the peculiar serrated cheek teeth make it plain that these archaeocetes [i.e., Basilosaurus and related creatures] could not possibly have been ancestral to any of the modern whales."11 Today there are two major groups of cetaceans: the baleen whales, called the mysticeti with double blowholes; and the toothed whales, odontoceti with a single blowhole. Stahl presents irritating morphological facts such as: ". . . the structure of the skull in the odontocete and mysticete forms shows a strange modification not present, even in a rudimentary way, in Basilosaurus and its smaller relatives. . . ." She also describes sperm whales (odontocete) which have an asymmetric arrangement of bones that roof the skull, while mysticeans have a symmetrical arrangement.

None of the suggested whale's terrestrial ancestors (ungulates or carnivores) have a vertical tail movement. However, whales (and an alleged link, Ambulocetus) do have a spinal up-and-down undulation. When did this happen? Where are all the fossils documenting how the side-to-side movement of the land mammal's tail changed to the down and up movement of Ambulocetus (and the whales)? This is quite significant! The land ancestor of the whale would have to gradually eliminate its pelvis, replacing it with a very different skeletal structure and associated musculature that would support a massive, flat tail (with flukes). Pure undirected chance would have to simultaneously produce these horizontal tail flukes independently, diminish the pelvis, and allow the deformed land creature to continue to live and even flourish in the sea.

The Problem of Molecular Biology

At the 1997 keynote lecture of Darwin Day at the University of Tennessee, Douglas Futuyma stated that ". . . the molecular revolution in biology has furnished us with mountains of information that not only attests to the history of evolution, but also sheds even more light on evolutionary processes." A far different evaluation was given the same year by three evolutionary biologists who stated: ". . . even with the appropriate genes, the molecular tree of life is difficult to interpret."12 Few systematists (biologists who study taxonomy and are involved in reconstructing phylogenetic, or evolutionary, history) would say that morphological patterns of form line up with the molecular evidence.

Regarding the supposed relationship between terrestrial and aquatic mammals, one publication reported: "These results reveal a large discordance between morphological and molecular measures of similarity. Rats and mice are classified in the same family, while cows and whales are classified in different orders. Perhaps molecular sequences are not necessarily giving us an accurate picture of ancestry."13

Zoologist John Gatesy reports competing interpretations of whale origins using phylogenetic analyses of a blood-clotting protein gene from cetaceans, artiodactyls (pigs, hippopotamuses, ruminants, and camels), perissodactyls (rhinos and horses), and carnivores. He says that in combination with published DNA sequences, the data of this clotting protein " . . . unambiguously support a hippo/whale clade and are inconsistent with the paleontological perspective."14

Ever since Darwin we have seen that neither natural selection nor random mutations could possibly serve as remotely sufficient mechanisms of change that would turn terrestrial tetrapods into whales. Molecular biology, physiology, and morphology present impenetrable roadblocks for tracing a common ancestry from tetrapods to archaeocetes to modern whales.

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Do you think that quoting someone else's bullshit without attribution is honest? Thou shalt not steal.

And do you actually think that the Institute for Creation Research is scientifically credible? Here's where you stole that text from.

(April 9, 2014 at 11:18 pm)Revelation777 Wrote: I know that the majority of scientists embrace evolution. The point I was making is that there are scientists that embraced intelligent design.

(April 8, 2014 at 11:23 am)DeistPaladin Wrote:

(April 8, 2014 at 11:06 am)pocaracas Wrote: Oh, no, no, no, no... you'd have no free will, then!

Love that argument too. My usual response is to point out that the god of the Bible strangely enough had no problems with overt displays of supernatural events, from booming voices in the sky at Jesus' baptism to angels killing Herod Antipas to people of faith performing miracles.

Did you know that Peter was so cool, he could heal the sick just by walking by? Jesus had to lay on hands. Peter could cast multiple cure spells as a free action at extended ranges. I wish my D&D cleric could do that.

Quote:ACTS 5:15-16 Insomuch that they brought forth the sick into the streets, and laid them on beds and couches, that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might overshadow some of them.
There came also a multitude out of the cities round about unto Jerusalem, bringing sick folks, and them which were vexed with unclean spirits: and they were healed every one.

Yeah, Yahweh was just so subtle in the Babble.

(April 9, 2014 at 11:17 pm)Minimalist Wrote: If only the fucker would do it.

But he can't. He doesn't exist.

(April 9, 2014 at 11:18 pm)Revelation777 Wrote: We are in a season of Grace and Faith. God first sent prophets, then His Son, now His church. Soon He returns. Time is short, please repent.