The Problem with Christians

[robvalue]

Denmark isn't a real place you guys. It's like the North Pole.

[pocaracas]

You don't need DNA to get life started. Before that, it got by on RNA,

But RNA is made from DNA is it not?

:???:
No, it's not.
I mean, it can be made from DNA, but need not be.
RNA is simpler than DNA.

http://www.diffen.com/difference/DNA_vs_RNA

[God of Mr. Hanky]

You don't need DNA to get life started. Before that, it got by on RNA,

But RNA is made from DNA is it not?

No, Idiot, DNA is not required to produce RNA! That is true only in modern organisms! Life was at least as simple as a virus when it began through chemical reactions, and many modern viruses do not have DNA!

Modern RNA viruses cause diseases today, including ebola, SARS, influenza, hepatitis, West Nile, polio, and measles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA_virus

So now you will probably raise the regress on RNA, as if the prime-mover "organism" should not be presumed to have been far simpler than a virus. It was a long progression of chemical reactions before anything really resembled any sort of organism with even this stuff.

"Science degree", my ass!

[Esquilax]

How about the fact that that random = disordered and code = ordered.  A random code is an oxymoron. Can you show me a scientific proof that codes form through random activity?

So, the more I think about this, the more I find new ways that your argument here is horrible: the DNA that you see in extant organisms today is not exactly random. There is a non-random filter applied strictly to every iteration of DNA in the form of the environment. Mutations are random, but natural selection is not: every organism enters into an environment, and that environment applies its conditions to the organism in a non-random fashion. Those that survive this process, the ones that you have to investigate, are the ones that are ordered and functional enough to exist in the world. There are countless examples of less functional "codes" that either died very quickly, were stillborn, or just plain not viable as a pregnancy.

What you see as a code is not delivered randomly, it's the result of millions of years and potentially trillions of iterations, with the non-functional and failed instances of it filtered out. You're only seeing the successes: it's like firing at a wall at random, painting bullseyes around your bullet holes, and then claiming that the shots could not have been random because they all hit the bullseye!

[God of Mr. Hanky]

some of the nucleotide monomers exist in the clay particles which flowing stream water interacts with - yes, it could have been as simple as that, so say the scientists at Cornell U:

So you're saying that ultimately, man came from the clay? Funny that I was being ridiculed earlier on this thread for believing that God made Adam from the dirt.

The difference is that your god is in all likelihood completely unnecessary for jump-starting life anywhere in this universe.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

So you're saying that ultimately, man came from the clay? Funny that I was being ridiculed earlier on this thread for believing that God made Adam from the dirt.

The difference is that your god is in all likelihood completely unnecessary for jump-starting life anywhere in this universe.

It's funny that the best argument I've seen to argue against Occam's razor is that William was a Christian, or that theists somehow think introducing a completely unevidenced and unknowable (by their own admission) being into the equation of origin is somehow parsimonious.

[AJW333]

Obviously studying magic book doesn't tell us that we're in the end times.  People have been studying magic book since magic book was written and have been confidently declaring their own generation to be the last, that the end is nigh.  They've been wrong.  I don't blame them, as we've determined, magic book says many things.   Perhaps you should have all taken a breath, and waited for the return of your king, before declaring any specific time to be the end time?  

Why do you think people have been getting it wrong?  Is magic book wrong?  Is magic book unclear?  Have it's readers, including yourself, failed to properly leverage magic book?

Studying the "magic book" does indeed tell us we are in the last days. If you study the Greek, you'll find that one of the signs of the lasts days is "nation rising against nation" and "kingdom against kingdom." The only time the world has been at war in such a manner is WWI and WWII. So from that time on, the last days have been in operation. It's anyone's guess as to how long this period will last.

You can't have the return of Christ until there is a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem and a range of other factors. The fact that people have missed this and misinterpreted Scripture doesn't make the Scripture wrong.

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The antichrist system has been around for a long time and is growing. The fact that persecution of Christians has grown dramatically in recent years is testament to this. It is interesting that a handful of Jewish Christians would predict that not only would their religion be around in 2000 years but that it would attract such opposition.

You still haven't answered the question. I'll rephrase it. How do you tell the difference between a failed prediction and one that hasn't happened yet?

A failed prediction is one that doesn't happen by the time it was specified to happen.

[Esquilax]

Studying the "magic book" does indeed tell us we are in the last days. If you study the Greek, you'll find that one of the signs of the lasts days is "nation rising against nation" and "kingdom against kingdom." The only time the world has been at war in such a manner is WWI and WWII. So from that time on, the last days have been in operation. It's anyone's guess as to how long this period will last.

It must be very convenient to be able to construct conditions for your beliefs that make them unfalsifiable and without a failure state. The rest of us don't really have that luxury: we have to bend to certain reasonable requirements for logical beliefs, rather than just making up whatever we want to insulate what we want to be true from being refuted.

You can't have the return of Christ until there is a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem and a range of other factors. The fact that people have missed this and misinterpreted Scripture doesn't make the Scripture wrong.

How do you know you aren't misinterpreting the scripture too? Hell, how do you even know there's something to interpret in the scripture that corresponds to reality?

A failed prediction is one that doesn't happen by the time it was specified to happen.

And you don't see a problem, then, in posing that a prophecy is coming true, but that the specified time is "anyone's guess?"

[Cyberman]

a) How can you tell the difference between a failed prediction and a false one?

b) There's a specified time to which you're alluding?

[God of Mr. Hanky]

Obviously studying magic book doesn't tell us that we're in the end times.  People have been studying magic book since magic book was written and have been confidently declaring their own generation to be the last, that the end is nigh.  They've been wrong.  I don't blame them, as we've determined, magic book says many things.   Perhaps you should have all taken a breath, and waited for the return of your king, before declaring any specific time to be the end time?  

Why do you think people have been getting it wrong?  Is magic book wrong?  Is magic book unclear?  Have it's readers, including yourself, failed to properly leverage magic book?

Studying the "magic book" does indeed tell us we are in the last days. If you study the Greek, you'll find that one of the signs of the lasts days is "nation rising against nation" and "kingdom against kingdom." The only time the world has been at war in such a manner is WWI and WWII. So from that time on, the last days have been in operation. It's anyone's guess as to how long this period will last.

You can't have the return of Christ until there is a rebuilt temple in Jerusalem and a range of other factors. The fact that people have missed this and misinterpreted Scripture doesn't make the Scripture wrong.

---

You still haven't answered the question. I'll rephrase it. How do you tell the difference between a failed prediction and one that hasn't happened yet?

A failed prediction is one that doesn't happen by the time it was specified to happen.

It doesn't make half a shit's worth of a difference what anyone builds in Jerusalem, nor who kills who in that city - your utterly useless and nonexistent god will never, ever intervene. Fuckheads like you need to be put away for the violence which you stir up, as you are a certain doomsday threat to the human species.