Perhaps a formal debate between NoGodaloud & TheDarkestOfAngels should be arranged? We haven't had one in ages, and it certainly seems like you two would have a lot to discuss.

If you want to come up with a debate plan privately, you can send it to me via PM and we can set up the debate. Here is a (very) good example of one we had last year: http://atheistforums.org/thread-1813.html

(August 24, 2010 at 12:40 pm)Tiberius Wrote: Perhaps a formal debate between NoGodaloud & TheDarkestOfAngels should be arranged? We haven't had one in ages, and it certainly seems like you two would have a lot to discuss.

If you want to come up with a debate plan privately, you can send it to me via PM and we can set up the debate. Here is a (very) good example of one we had last year: http://atheistforums.org/thread-1813.html

Also, @ Nogodaloud

I think I was actually poking through that the other day. Nonetheless...

I'm reasonably certain that this 'discussion' is over.
He's already showed that he doesn't accept scientific papers, textbooks, and now book quotes.
He's asked me to prove a negative (that miracles don't happen).

He's completely disregarded anything anyone states about the 'historical' past apparently because he's decided that that science is unreliable even though I've proven that no one actually believes that (by showing numerous evolution articles, thus showing that the scientific body relies on this knowledge for many of the benefits we enjoy today).
I've proven (through other articles) that humans have a significant genetic relationship with several animals (one article was even about why mice are used for scientific testing concerning this very reason).

Even though he's come up with nothing substantive to counter my arguements from way back concerning the cosmological arguement and I've decidedly pointed out that no phyicist actually has any professional data or even personal opinion to support his position on the matter.

He's simply going to request 'proof' on the matter and regardless of how much evidence I supply, I've no reason to believe he'll do anything other than disregard all of it and move the goalpost of the burdon of proof he keeps making sure is mine until his expectations are largely unrealistic and he declares victory.

In other words, whatever it'll be, it won't be an honest debate. I'm willing to bet it'll be a largely pointless exercise while I'm hounded by whatever kool-aid he'll try to feed me from his creationist websites as though they were actual 'science' just as he has been.

... but now that I'm looking over the archive link you've provided me, I'd be willing to give it the old college try given that it'll be a moderated discussion. So I'm for the idea, with reservation.
But then I have to remember what Arcanis said there:

"Nobody ever wins or loses in formal debates. Winners and losers are declared in subsequent conversations, of course, but it is no surprise that people's opinions about the debate seem to coincide with the prejudices they had before the debate. " - Arcanis

(August 24, 2010 at 1:22 pm)TheDarkestOfAngels Wrote: He's simply going to request 'proof' on the matter and regardless of how much evidence I supply, I've no reason to believe he'll do anything other than disregard all of it and move the goalpost of the burdon of proof he keeps making sure is mine until his expectations are largely unrealistic and he declares victory.

In the end, its the only defense the religious have ever had.

(August 24, 2010 at 1:22 pm)TheDarkestOfAngels Wrote: He's already showed that he doesn't accept scientific papers, textbooks, and now book quotes.

quit on the contrary. See over the other thread. i have picked one paper of yours, which you presented. We can discuss it indepth.

(August 23, 2010 at 7:23 pm)NoGodaloud ? Wrote: And based on the same reasoning, i conclude with a great deal of certainty, God exists.
The very existence of our universe, its beginning, the fine-tuning of the laws of nature, the constants of physics, and the initial conditions of the universe, the contained specific and complex information in DNA, the complexity of a cell and its irreducible complexity, human consciousness and ability of speech and thinkink, its consciousness of morality, and the bible do let me conclude with a great deal of certainty, God exists. Where is the difference ?

Richard Dawkins, Kenneth Miller and other scientists, who are sincerely attempting to come to logical rather than fanciful ways to explain the concepts you mention here, have addressed these points over and over, especially irreducible complexity and the "fine-tuning," as you call it, of the universe (I would say that's a misnomer). To ignore them and revert back to a prime mover to explain everything is lazy, for if we are resigned to take only that approach, we might as well stop trying to do science at all. As for the Bible as proof of anything other than man's fear of death and desire to believe anything ... please.

TheDarkestOfAngels Wrote:
That's how we know for the exact same reason that if we find a bloody knife in someone's back with the fingerprints of a specific jilted lover, we can conclude with a great deal of certainty that someone at a specific moment in time, based on evidence, that the jilted lover murdered the poor sap with the knife in the back.

Nogodaloud Wrote:
And based on the same reasoning, i conclude with a great deal of certainty, God exists.

@Nogodaloud

Nope your reasoning (apart from being circular) is that you have concluded that the guilty party was an invisible sky fairy. Nice work Columbo!

Hasn't it ever occurred to theists that if the conditions were not right, if the required elements and forces in the universe did not come together at the exact time necessary that we simply wouldn't exist? If life did not occur here on Earth through some cataclysmic halt to the natural process by which we did form from microbrial life, leave the water, and evolve into a wide variety of species spanning billions of years then it simply would have happened somewhere else. The problem isn't the mathematical probability of events happening at the right moment, the problem is that most of us cannot wrap our heads around our sheer and utter insignificance in the grand scheme of things.

This planet may be fine tuned for us, but it would have to be, otherwise we wouldn't exist, and life on some other planet would be discussing this very same issue.

(August 28, 2010 at 11:19 am)SleepingDemon Wrote: This planet may be fine tuned for us, but it would have to be, otherwise we wouldn't exist, and life on some other planet would be discussing this very same issue.

Life on some other planet is just as likely to be discussing the very same issue, whether we are here doing so or not.

True, just thought it would be a way to round out the point.

Quote:Hasn't it ever occurred to theists that if the conditions were not right, if the required elements and forces in the universe did not come together at the exact time necessary that we simply wouldn't exist?

The short answer to your question is "no." That's because their Big Book of Bullshit tells them that their sky-daddy made the world especially for them.

Really, when you think about it, a person has to be a grade-A moron to believe such nonsense.